What will American drug culture look like once prohibition is finally over and we can start to legally use more substances in more settings? No one is better situated to start that discussion than Hamilton Morris, the 32-year-old host of Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, a documentary series that has aired for two seasons on the Viceland cable channel. The show explores the variety of drugs that are available, how they work, and how we might best use them to fulfill our hopes and dreams.
In one early episode, Morris confounds the conventional wisdom by telling “a positive story about PCP,” a drug about which even legalizers typically have nothing good to say. He visits with Timothy Wyllie, an artist and visionary who used the drug as part of his creative process. In another, Morris travels to the Brazilian Amazon, where locals get high on a substance taken from hallucinogenic frogs.
Morris also does laboratory work at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, where he and his collaborators create new medicines for testing and research trials. In May, he sat down with Reason‘s Nick Gillespie to talk about how the drug war has warped the conversation about intoxicants and what a post-prohibition landscape will look like.
Q: Why are you so interested in drugs?
A: I need to think of a better answer to that question, because I get asked it a lot. They have an absolutely enormous influence on our culture. So much of our political landscape is dictated by drug policy and the prison-industrial complex. Philosophically, medically, scientifically, drugs are a huge subject. Once you start seeing the world through that lens, you realize it would be crazy not to be interested in drugs.
Q: People seem to be getting more interested in erasing the arbitrary distinction between legal and illegal. Why is that happening?
A: I think journalism is largely driven by this swinging pendulum of novelty. For a long time, it was novel and interesting and engaging to report on how dangerous and horrible and life-destroying drugs are. Somebody pulled their eyes out on PCP; somebody ate their best friend; somebody set themselves on fire.
But then the novelty of scare stories wears off and the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. It’s more engaging to say, “Hey, those psilocybin-containing mushrooms that you thought were a drug? Well, it turns out that these guys at Johns Hopkins actually think they’re a medicine. Isn’t that a novel take on all of this?”
Q: What do you think of food writer Michael Pollan’s How To Change Your Mind?
A: I was amazed by his restraint. He created this extremely palatable, sterile history of psychedelics where, if you read the book cover to cover, it’s very hard for any reasonable person to think psychedelics are bad. So on that level, I think it’s fantastic.
On a more pedantic level, I resent how much emphasis is placed on the clinical use of these things. They should be legal regardless of whether or not they’re viable treatments for depression, or [obsessive-compulsive disorder], or anxiety, or end-of-life pain.
Q: How does looking at drugs as medicine limit us?
A: I have nothing against thinking of drugs as medicine, because they often are. But the distinction between drugs and poisons and medicines is illusory. These categories aren’t chemically or pharmacologically meaningful.
I just don’t want that to be the be-all, end-all of our understanding of the subject. Do we go back to a prohibitionist interpretation of these substances if the medical model fails? There’s something a little bit precarious and fragile down this path, though I know it’s working really well from a political perspective.
Q: One of the most memorable episodes of your show is about PCP, which you depict in both a positive and a negative light. What’s going on in that episode and what can we learn from it?
A: I had proposed making a TV show for Vice about drugs, and one of the executives said, “Oh, we already have this tentative show that’s about all these crazy drug stories.” I objected [to that framing] and he said, “You can’t say that something like PCP is good.” I said, “Sure you can. Of course you can.” And he said, “If you can tell me a story about how PCP isn’t bad, then we’ll do that.” So that was the pilot for Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia.
PCP became shorthand for a bad drug experience. If you had something negative happen to you, you say there must’ve been PCP in whatever drug you thought you were taking. It’s a perfect example of a substance that’s been totally mischaracterized. When used carefully under controlled circumstances, it’s no worse than anything else. Pretty much every drug has the potential to be extremely dangerous under certain circumstances.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. You can listen to the full conversation, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Reason Podcast.
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What will American drug culture look like once prohibition is finally over and we can start to legally use more substances in more settings? No one is better situated to start that discussion than Hamilton Morris, the 32-year-old host of Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia, a documentary series that has aired for two seasons on the Viceland cable channel. The show explores the variety of drugs that are available, how they work, and how we might best use them to fulfill our hopes and dreams.
In one early episode, Morris confounds the conventional wisdom by telling “a positive story about PCP,” a drug about which even legalizers typically have nothing good to say. He visits with Timothy Wyllie, an artist and visionary who used the drug as part of his creative process. In another, Morris travels to the Brazilian Amazon, where locals get high on a substance taken from hallucinogenic frogs.
Morris also does laboratory work at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, where he and his collaborators create new medicines for testing and research trials. In May, he sat down with Reason‘s Nick Gillespie to talk about how the drug war has warped the conversation about intoxicants and what a post-prohibition landscape will look like.
Q: Why are you so interested in drugs?
A: I need to think of a better answer to that question, because I get asked it a lot. They have an absolutely enormous influence on our culture. So much of our political landscape is dictated by drug policy and the prison-industrial complex. Philosophically, medically, scientifically, drugs are a huge subject. Once you start seeing the world through that lens, you realize it would be crazy not to be interested in drugs.
Q: People seem to be getting more interested in erasing the arbitrary distinction between legal and illegal. Why is that happening?
A: I think journalism is largely driven by this swinging pendulum of novelty. For a long time, it was novel and interesting and engaging to report on how dangerous and horrible and life-destroying drugs are. Somebody pulled their eyes out on PCP; somebody ate their best friend; somebody set themselves on fire.
But then the novelty of scare stories wears off and the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. It’s more engaging to say, “Hey, those psilocybin-containing mushrooms that you thought were a drug? Well, it turns out that these guys at Johns Hopkins actually think they’re a medicine. Isn’t that a novel take on all of this?”
Q: What do you think of food writer Michael Pollan’s How To Change Your Mind?
A: I was amazed by his restraint. He created this extremely palatable, sterile history of psychedelics where, if you read the book cover to cover, it’s very hard for any reasonable person to think psychedelics are bad. So on that level, I think it’s fantastic.
On a more pedantic level, I resent how much emphasis is placed on the clinical use of these things. They should be legal regardless of whether or not they’re viable treatments for depression, or [obsessive-compulsive disorder], or anxiety, or end-of-life pain.
Q: How does looking at drugs as medicine limit us?
A: I have nothing against thinking of drugs as medicine, because they often are. But the distinction between drugs and poisons and medicines is illusory. These categories aren’t chemically or pharmacologically meaningful.
I just don’t want that to be the be-all, end-all of our understanding of the subject. Do we go back to a prohibitionist interpretation of these substances if the medical model fails? There’s something a little bit precarious and fragile down this path, though I know it’s working really well from a political perspective.
Q: One of the most memorable episodes of your show is about PCP, which you depict in both a positive and a negative light. What’s going on in that episode and what can we learn from it?
A: I had proposed making a TV show for Vice about drugs, and one of the executives said, “Oh, we already have this tentative show that’s about all these crazy drug stories.” I objected [to that framing] and he said, “You can’t say that something like PCP is good.” I said, “Sure you can. Of course you can.” And he said, “If you can tell me a story about how PCP isn’t bad, then we’ll do that.” So that was the pilot for Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia.
PCP became shorthand for a bad drug experience. If you had something negative happen to you, you say there must’ve been PCP in whatever drug you thought you were taking. It’s a perfect example of a substance that’s been totally mischaracterized. When used carefully under controlled circumstances, it’s no worse than anything else. Pretty much every drug has the potential to be extremely dangerous under certain circumstances.
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. You can listen to the full conversation, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Reason Podcast.
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Mark Esper is expected to be confirmed in coming days as the new US Secretary of Defense. His appointment is awaiting final Congressional approval after customary hearings this week before senators. The 55-year-old nominee put forward by President Trump was previously a decorated Lieutenant Colonel and has served in government office during the GW Bush administration.
But what stands out as his most conspicuous past occupation is working for seven years as a senior lobbyist for Raytheon, the US’ third biggest military manufacturing company. The firm specializes in missile-defense systems, including the Patriot, Iron Dome and the Aegis Ashore system (the latter in partnership with Lockheed Martin).
As Defense Secretary, Esper will be the most senior civilian executive member of the US government, next to the president, on overseeing military policy, including decisions about declaring war and deployment of American armed forces around the globe. His military counterpart at the Pentagon is Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, currently held by Marine General Joseph Dunford who is expected to be replaced soon by General Mark Milley (also in the process of senate hearings).
Esper’s confirmation hearings this week were pretty much a rubber-stamp procedure, receiving lame questioning from senators about his credentials and viewpoints. The only exception was Senator Elizabeth Warren, who slammed the potential “conflict of interest” due to his past lobbying service for Raytheon. She said it “smacks of corruption”. Other than her solitary objection, Esper was treated with kid gloves by other senators and his appointment is expected to be whistled through by next week. During hearings, the former lobbyist even pointedly refused to recuse himself of any matters involving Raytheon if he becomes the defense boss.
As Rolling Stone magazine quipped on Esper’s nomination, “it is as swampy as you’d expect”.
“President Trump’s Cabinet is already rife with corruption, stocked full of former lobbyists and other private industry power players who don’t seem to mind leveraging their government positions to enrich themselves personally. Esper should fit right in,” wrote Rolling Stone.
The linkage between officials in US government, the Pentagon and private manufacturers is a notorious example of “revolving door”. It is not unusual, or even remarkable, that individuals go from one sector to another and vice versa. That crony relationship is fundamental to the functioning of the “military-industrial complex” which dominates the entire American economy and the fiscal budget ($730 billion annually – half the total discretionary public spend by federal government).
Nevertheless, Esper is a particularly brazen embodiment of the revolving-door’s seamless connection.
Raytheon is a $25 billion company whose business is all about selling missile-defense systems. Its products have been deployed in dozens of countries, including in the Middle East, as well as Japan, Romania and, as of next year, Poland. It is in Raytheon’s vital vested interest to capitalize on alleged security threats from Iran, Russia, China and North Korea in order to sell “defense” systems to nations that then perceive a “threat” and need to be “protected”.
It is a certainty that Esper shares the same worldview, not just for engrained ideological reasons, but also because of his own personal motives for self-aggrandizement as a former employee of Raytheon and quite possibly as a future board member when he retires from the Pentagon. The issue is not just merely about corruption and ethics, huge that those concerns are. It is also about how US foreign policy and military decisions are formulated and executed, including decisions on matters of conflict and ultimately war. The insidiousness is almost farcical, if the implications weren’t so disturbing, worthy of satire from the genre of Dr Strangelove or Catch 22.
How is Esper’s advice to the president about tensions with Russia, Iran, China or North Korea, or any other alleged adversary, supposed to be independent, credible or objective? Esper is a de facto lobbyist for the military-industrial complex sitting in the Oval Office and Situation Room. Tensions, conflict and war are meat and potatoes to this person.
During senate hearings this week, Esper openly revealed his dubious quality of thinking and the kind of policies he will pursue as Pentagon chief. He told credulous senators that Russia was to blame for the collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. That equates to more Raytheon profits from selling defense systems in Europe. Also, in a clumsy inadvertent admission he advised that the US needs to get out of the INF in order to develop medium-range missiles to “counter China”. The latter admission explains the cynical purpose for why the Trump administration unilaterally ditched the INF earlier this year. It is not about alleged Russian breaches of the treaty; the real reason is for the US to obtain a freer hand to confront China.
It is ludicrous how blatant a so-called democratic nation (the self-declared “leader of the free world”) is in actuality an oligarchic corporate state whose international relations are conducted on the basis of making obscene profits from conflict and war.
Little wonder then than bilateral relations between the US and Russia are in such dire condition. Trump’s soon-to-be top military advisor Mark Esper is not going to make bilateral relations any better, that’s for sure.
Also at a precarious time of possible war with Iran, the last person Trump should consult is someone whose corporate cronies are craving for more weapons sales.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LxDAqd Tyler Durden
UFO sightings have been making headlines again lately, notably with The New York Times running an interesting article about several U.S. Navy fighter pilots encountering mysterious objects near the southeastern coast of the United States.
That high-profile story remains unexplained and so do plenty of other UFO sightings reported by members of the public every year like strange lights crossing the night sky or orange disks hovering in the distance.
There were just over 8,000 reported sightings in 2014 and in 2018, there were 3,343. So far in 2019, 2,371 UFO sightings have been reported. Despite the decline in sightings,interest in UFOs and alien life remains strong judging by an event that went viral on social media this week.
Conspiracy theorists have long maintained that a secret U.S. base in Nevada known as Area 51 harbors alien life or parts of a crashed spacecraft. The event called for people to storm the base and find out and it attracted 1.4 million signatures. Entitled “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All Of Us”, it also prompted the Air Force to issue a warning to stay well away from the facility.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XRkzFL Tyler Durden
Far from a perfect solution, in the event of a shooting war, one sunk tanker would be enough to stop traffic for a considerable period of time. But, and that’s a big but, anything short of that level of bellicosity, such as current Iranian piracy, would make having an alternative to the Straits of Hormuz a strategic and tactical asset.
The linked piece references the proposed north-south Salman canal but there have also been proposals for longer east-west canals that avoid Iran’s beachhead, Yemen and connect the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea.
Saudi Arabia is planning to build a canal that will connect the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea bypassing the Strait of Hormuz controlled by the Iranians.
Since the canal would pass the Shia territories in Yemen, Riyadh needs to take the country under full military control.
Study calls for 950-kilometre canal bypassing Hormuz
According to the project by the Riyadh-based Arab Century Centre for Studies, the canal will be 630 kilometres in Saudi Arabia and 320 kilometres in Yemen and will reduce by half the distance ships are currently taking by passing through the Strait of Hormuz.
“It will be 150-metre wide and 25 metres deep,” Saad Bin Omar, the head of the centre, said.
“The canal will have a main course across Saudi Arabia and Yemen; however, we have thought of Oman as an alternative for Yemen if the country suffers political instability,” he said.
Additionally, as part of their spat with their LNG producing brothers, the Saudis are threatening to build the Salwa canal across the base of the Qatar peninsula and turn Qatar into an island.
A ‘noose’ found last month at the University of Michigan Medical School turns out to have been a practice knot used in fishing after an employee came forward to ‘clear the air,’ according to MLive.
An investigation by UM’s Division of Public Safety and Security concluded the spool rope used for medical procedures was being used by a person on a break to practice tying a “Uni Knot,” which is a type of knot used for fishing. After the spool was returned to the storage area, the knot was still in place and discovered the following day by an employee. –MLive
The ‘noose’ was fashioned out of a rope typically used for traction following surgical procedures, according to DPSS Director of Strategic Communications Heather Young, who noted that the loose end of the rope was tied in the knot while still connected to the spool.
Not one to hedge his language amid an ongoing investigation, UM Medical School Dean Marschall Runge said in an employee email following the June 20 discovery of the ‘noose’: “Yesterday, in one of our hospitals, a noose — a symbol of hate and discrimination — was found at the work station of two of our employees,” adding “We have taken immediate action to have this investigated as both an act of discrimination and a criminal act of ethnic intimidation. This act of hate violates all of the values that we hold dear and will not be tolerated.”
‘It was the friends we made along the way…’
Without acknowledging that he participated in ‘sewing racial discord’ with false assumptions, Runge now says that while the incident has affected the entire community, it united people in their hatred of hate (and hate-shaped fishing knots?).
“Our community came together to support each other, reaffirmed our stance against hate, and began having open dialogues about this incident and ways to make our community more inclusive,” he said in a follow-up email.
“We continue to stand strong as we make it clear to all that this organization — its leaders, faculty, staff and learners — fiercely values and defends equality, inclusiveness, respect and dignity for all, and the elimination of discrimination and intimidation in all forms.”
In short, the whole noose incident managed to bring the community together. And in case you’re interested in learning the Uni Knot, see below:
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2xY0kH9 Tyler Durden
A Babylonian clay tablet helped unlock an understanding for how our ancestors saw the world.
Dating all the way back to the 6th century BCE, the Imago Mundi is the oldest known world map, and it offers a unique glimpse into ancient perspectives on earth and the heavens.
While this is the first-known interpretation of such a map, it would certainly not be the last. Today’s visualization, designed by Reddit user PisseGuri82, won the “Best of 2018 Map Contest” for depicting the evolving shapes of man-made maps throughout history.
AD 150: Once Upon A Time in Egypt
In this former location of the Roman Empire, Ptolemy was the first to use positions of latitude and longitude to map countries into his text Geographia. After these ancient maps were lost for centuries, Ptolemy’s work was rediscovered and reconstructed in the 15th century, serving as a foundation for cartography throughout the Middle Ages.
1050: Pointing to the Heavens
The creation of this quintessential medieval T-and-O Beatine map is attributed not to an unknown French monk, but to the Spanish monk Beatus of Liébana. Although it shows several continents—Africa, Asia, and Europe—its main objective was to visualize Biblical locations. For example, because the sun rises in the east, Paradise (The Garden of Eden) can be seen pointing upwards and towards Asia on the map.
1154: The World Turned Upside Down
The Arabic geographer Muhammad al-Idrisi made one of the most advanced medieval world maps for King Roger II of Sicily. The Tabula Rogeriana, which literally translates to “the book of pleasant journeys into faraway lands”, was ahead of the curve compared to contemporaries because it used information from traveler and merchant accounts. The original map was oriented south-up, which is why modern depictions show it upside down.
1375: The Zenith of Medieval Map Work
The Jewish cartographer Abraham Cresques created the most important map of the medieval period, the Catalan Atlas, with his son for Prince John of Aragon. It covers the “East and the West, and everything that, from the Strait [of Gibraltar] leads to the West”. Many Indian and Chinese cities can be identified, based on various voyages by the explorers Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville.
After this, the Age of Discovery truly began—and maps started to more closely resemble the world map as we know it today.
1489: Feeling Ptolemy and Polo’s Influences
The 15th century was a radical time for map-makers, once Ptolemy’s geographical drawings were re-discovered. Henricus Martellus expanded on Ptolemaic maps, and also relied on sources like Marco Polo’s travels to imagine the Old World. His milestone map closely resembles the oldest-surviving terrestrial globe, Erdapfel, created by cartographer Martin Behaim. Today, it’s preserved at the Yale University archives.
1529: A Well-Kept Spanish Secret
The first ever scientific world map is most widely attributed to the Portuguese cartographer Diego Ribero. The Padrón Real was the Spanish Crown’s official and secret master map, made from hundreds of sailors’ reports of any new lands and their coordinates.
1599: The Wright Idea
English mathematician and cartographer Edward Wright was the first to perfect the Mercator projection—which takes the Earth’s curvature into consideration. Otherwise known as a Wright-Molyneux world map, this linear representation of the earth’s cylindrical map quickly became the standard for navigation.
1778-1832: The Emergence of Modern World Maps
The invention of the marine chronometer transformed marine navigation—as ships were now able to detect both longitude and latitude. Jacques-Nicolas Bellin, a French geographer, was responsible for the 18th century’s highly accurate world maps and nautical charts. His designs favored functionality over the decorative flourishes of cartographers past.
Finally, the German cartographer and lawyer Adolf Stieler was the man behind Stieler’s Handatlas, the leading German world atlas until the mid-20th century. His maps were famous for being updated based on new explorations, making them the most reliable map possible.
Is There Uncharted Territory Left?
It is worth mentioning that these ancient maps above are mostly coming from a European perspective.
That said, the Islamic Golden Age also boasts an impressive cartographic record, reaching its peak partially in thanks to Muhammad al-Idrisi in the 11th century. Similarly, Ancient Chinese empires had a cartographic golden age after the invention of the compass as well.
Does this mean there’s nothing left to explore today? Quite the contrary. While we know so much about our landmasses, the undersea depths remain quite a mystery. In fact, we’ve explored more of outer space than we have 95% of our own oceans.
If you liked the visualization above, be sure to explore the world’s borders by age, broken down impressively by the same designer.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30IYgyX Tyler Durden
The Mueller report, which had no choice as there was no evidence, but to clear Donald Trump of conspiring with Russian President Putin to steal the last US presidential election from Hillary Clinton, nevertheless managed to keep an aspect of the manufactured hoax known as “Russiagate” alive by indicting some Russian intelligence officers and a Russian Internet clickbait operation for attempting to discredit Hillary with Internet postings.
At the time I noticed that Muller’s indictments were based only on his assertion and not on any evidence. As there was no prospect whatsoever of the fake indictments coming to trial, I did not comment on them. I focused instead on Mueller’s statement that Trump might have obstructed justice although he lacked evidence to support the charge. I noted how corrupt American law has become when it is possible to obstruct justice in the absence of a crime.
Democrats and presstitutes were determined to get Trump by any means and remain uninterested in how justice is obstructed when there is no crime.
In retrospect, not picking up on Mueller’s indictment-by-hearsay of Russians was a mistake. Not only have the Democrats continued their Russiagate campaign on the basis of the unsubstantiated indictments, but, more importantly, the indictments-by-assertion-alone show Mueller’s total lack of moral character. A prosecutor, indeed a former Director of the FBI, who confuses his unsubstantiated allegation with evidence, is not only a person devoid of any respect for law, but also an extremely dangerous person to have been vetted for the high government positions that he has held.
How did a person as corrupt as Robert Mueller get confirmed in his appointments as US Attorney, US Assistant Attorney General, US Deputy Attorney General, and Director of the FBI? That a person as ethically-challenged as Robert Mueller could breeze through so many confirmations by the US Senate proves how utterly corrupt the US government is.
How does an American patriot respond to a government filled with corrupt individuals serving their private careers by serving not the American people, but the powerful private interests that control their careers or the interest of a foreign country that purchases their loyalty. Many of these permanent Washington fixtures, such as Trump’s National Security Advisor, John Bolton, serve Israel’s interest at the expense of America’s interest. An American nationalist who attempts to serve American interests has little chance against a powerful lobby. Every year Congress hands over to Israel enough billions of dollars for Israel to purchase every federal election and many state ones.
It is not possible today for anyone who is not “a friend of Israel” to serve in a presidential appointment that requires confirmation by the US Senate. As Admiral Tom Moorer, Chief of Naval Operatons and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of staff said, “no American president can stand up to Israel.” No truer words have ever been spoken. Before any American president can attend to America’s interests, he must first attend to Israel’s interest. Generally speaking, the Israel Lobby stresses that American interests conform to Israel’s interest. Therefore, Israel’s interests are America’s interests. If you disagree with this, you will not go far in the US government.
That Mueller’s indictment of Russians for attempting to throw the presidential election to Trump is unsubstantiated has been highlighted by US Federal District Judge Dabney Friedrich. The judge just ruled that Mueller’s assertion of Russian “sweeping and systematic” interference in the presidential election does not constitute proof of the charge. It is nothing but an unsubstantiated indictment based on nothing but an assertion by the special prosecutor. Mueller provides no evidence in his report to support his claim. Mueller is so corrupt that he uses his unsubstantiated indictment as evidence for the indictment!
In other words, the Federal Judge has ruled that Mueller has made a false indictment.
If that is not a felony, it should be.
The corrupt Mueller covers up his absence of evidence for his indictments by using language such as “widely reported,” “confirmed,” “established.” He is referring to the words used by his stable of presstitutes, media whores who paved the way for his false accusation.
A country without a media is a Police State. The only media the West has is the English language Russian media and the alternative media on Internet sites, such as this site, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Lew Rockwell, Unz Review.
The Russian media was banned from the conference on press freedom, because the Russian media is free and the UK and US media are not. The People Really In Charge – PRICs – are at work shutting down the rest of us as fast as they can.
Before long, the only words you will hear willl be those used to control you. The word freedom will be redefined as per George Orwell’s 1984 or be prohibited. It will die as a word whose meaning is unknown.
In the 21st century, the US government has destroyed civil liberty, free speech, and accountable government. There is no longer any reason for people who want to be free to support any Western government or political party that is in power. The Western World has no greater enemies than its own governments and the private interests governments represent.
While you await the final cutting out of tongues, say a prayer for Judge Friedrich. Americans don’t know that a federal judge, indeed any judge, can be arrested by police on false charges and prosecuted by prosecutors based on fake evidence. The judiciary no longer has the independence that the separation of powers provides. Judges can be punished if they rule against the interests of those in whom the predominance of power resides.
Those with the predominance of power rule, not the law, the Constitution, or the people.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2M1Vm45 Tyler Durden
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB, formerly the KGB) was hit by a massive hack – after 7.5 terabytes of data was extracted from a major contractor.
The breach exposed several secret FSB projects, including efforts to de-anonymize the Tor browser, scrape social media, and help Russia to sever its internet from the rest of the world, according to Forbes.
A week ago, on July 13, hackers under the name 0v1ru$ reportedly breached SyTech, a major FSB contractor working on a range of live and exploratory internet projects. With the data stolen, 0v1ru$ left a smiling Yoba Face on SyTech’s homepage alongside pictures purporting to showcase the breach. 0v1ru$ then passed the data itself to the larger hacking group Digital Revolution, which shared the files with various media outlets and the headlines with Twitter—taunting FSB that the agency should maybe rename one of its breached activities “Project Collander.” –Forbes
This isn’t the first time Digital Revolution has targeted the FSB, however this is the most successful hack to date – with the BBC suggesting that it was possibly “the largest data leak in the history of Russian intelligence services.“
As well as defacing SyTech’s homepage with the Yoba Face, 0v1ru$ also detailed the project names exposed: “Arion”, “Relation”, “Hryvnia,” alongside the names of the SyTech project managers. The BBC report claims that no actual state secrets were exposed. –Forbes
Programs exposed
The hack revealed that the Kremlin’s ‘Nautilus’ program is designed to ‘scrape’ user information from social media, while the ‘Nautilus-S’ program is a data-collection effort designed to de-anonymize internet users. Meanwhile, the ‘Mentor’ program collects data on Russian corporations, while the ‘Hope and Tax-3’ project appears to be related to Russia’s effort to disentangle itself from the global internet, and to identify and manually remove information from people under state protection.
According to the BBC, contractor SyTech’s projects were almost exclusively conducted for Military Unite 71330 – a component of the FSB’s 16th Directorate responsible for signals intelligence.
Nautilus-S, the Tor de-anonymization project, was actually launched in 2012 under the remit of Russia’s Kvant Research Institute, which comes under FSB’s remit. Russia has been looking for ways to compromise nodes within Tor’s structure to either prevent off-grid communications or intercept those communications. None of which is new news. It is believed that some progress has been made under this project. Digital Revolution claims to have hacked the Kvant Research Institute before
The preparatory activities for splitting off a “Russian internet,” follow Russian President Vladimir Putin signing into law provisions for “the stable operation of the Russian Internet (Runet) in case it is disconnected from the global infrastructure of the World Wide Web.” The law set in train plans for an alternative domain name system (DNS) for Russia in the event that it is disconnected from the World Wide Web, or, one assumes, in the event that its politicians deem disconnection to be beneficial. Internet service providers would be compelled to disconnect from any foreign servers, relying on Russia’s DNS instead. –Forbes
Forbes notes that while the hacks concern projects which were already ‘known or expected,’ the scale of the hack and ease with which the contractor’s systems were penetrated is ‘more of note.’
“Contractors remain the weak link in the chain for intelligence agencies worldwide—to emphasize the point, just last week, a former NSA contractor was jailed in the U.S. for stealing secrets over two decades. And the fallout from Edward Snowden continues to this day,” reads the report.
Little is known about the 0v1ru$ group, which has not come forth with a statement.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2xZp020 Tyler Durden
International Man: Everything seems to be increasingly politicized these days… in a way that it wasn’t just a few years ago. To name a few, we see it in sports, with large corporations like Procter & Gamble in their razor blade ads.
Politics is creeping into more and more areas. It’s a trend that seems to be accelerating.
How did this happen and what does it mean?
Doug Casey: The politicization of the country is poisonous. Politics is not like the fiction of some friends getting together and deciding what movie to see. It’s about force and coercion. This is the myth of democracy, which amounts to a somewhat gentler version of mob rule.
Politics is about getting control of the reins of the State. It’s a question of one group of people getting to tell every other group what they must and must not do. And how much they have to pay for the privilege.
It’s astonishing politics has become so popular—considering that only the worst kind of people are drawn to it. As evidence, I’d offer the current slate of Democratic presidential candidates. Although, I promise you, their Republican counterparts, waiting in the wings, are no better. Remember that lineup of buffoons who were on stage in 2016?
In theory, the purpose of the State—which itself is congealed force—is to protect its citizens within its bailiwick from illegitimate force. That means police to protect you from force within the country, a military to protect you from outside force, and a court system to allow you to adjudicate disputes without resorting to force.
But the State has gone far, far, beyond those boundaries. In fact, it does none of those three things well today. Instead, it tries to control every other aspect of life, at the expense of its subjects.
That’s why everything has become politicized in the US. Americans have come to see the State as their parent, so they’re constantly pleading with it, like children, asking it for favors and benefits. Like children, they expect the State to magically support them.
They don’t seem to understand that the State isn’t a cornucopia. It’s the opposite. It’s a dangerous parasite. A huge tapeworm in the body of society.
Over the last 100 years the average American’s mind has been captured by the idea of politics and the State. It’s the Stockholm syndrome—where people are captured by kidnappers and actually grow to love and support them—writ large.
Where’s this trend going to go?
I’m a believer that trends in motion tend to stay in motion until they reach a crisis. Only then can the trend change. So the growth of the State—which is abetted by the politicization of American society—is going to continue growing until we reach a crisis. I don’t know what will happen during that crisis. Will it change direction, or will it mutate into something even worse? Could it be as bad as what happened in France in 1789, Russia in 1917, Germany in 1933, or China in 1946? It’s unpredictable.
International Man: Where do you think this shift in seeing everything through a political lens comes from?
Doug Casey: The State has expanded hugely from its original function of protecting people from actual force. It’s now perceived as a cornucopia that can give everybody everything.
For instance, it’s completely taken over the education system—and the public applauds that, because they think it’s “free” and “fair.” Most teachers today—almost all college professors—are cultural Marxists, leftists, socialists, welfare statists, and the like. And they indoctrinate the students in their classes.
There was always a tendency for this to be the case, because academics naturally tend to live in a bubble. They resent the fact that although they’re well educated, they generally earn far less than businessmen. That resentment is evident in their political and economic views.
Even as recently as the ‘60s relatively few kids went to college. Now practically everybody goes to college. Not only is the indoctrination now far more virulent, but far more people are being exposed to it.
You can see this in the Democratic Party, where the two dozen or so people running for president vie with each other to promise more free stuff than the last person. They’re coming up with the most collectivist possible ideas. The millennials—who’ve been indoctrinated in college, high school, and even grade school—accept these ideas. Kids will have a much bigger effect on the 2020 elections than they did in 2016.
Not only don’t I see any change in the trend—I only see an acceleration of the current trend from every point of view.
International Man: A big part of this trend involves the politicization of Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook.
When people engage in discourse that is at odds with mainstream ideas on these platforms—not just in politics but in health, nutrition, economics… everything—there seems to be a concerned effort to silence it.
How did these powerful platforms become guardians of the mainstream and leftist propaganda?
Doug Casey: It seems the main way people communicate with each other today is through platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and the like. And these platforms—as huge as they are—are indirectly controlled by elements of the government.
People on these platforms who believe in ideas at odds with what “everybody” believes are apparently being de-platformed in large numbers.
I personally know people who’ve had a presence on Facebook or YouTube, and have been kicked off it. Because of what they believe or say. That makes it very hard for them to communicate with their previous audiences.
Now on the one hand, Facebook, YouTube, and others have a perfect right to kick anybody off their platforms because they’re privately owned. On the other hand, these companies are indirect arms of the government. Or, more precisely, the Deep State.
The CIA, the NSA, the FBI and the other praetorian agencies all have black budgets. Part of it is money from Congress that’s siphoned into corporations run by sympathetic individuals and cronies. It’s augmented by activities like running drugs, weapons, and God knows what else. This is rather famous in the case of the CIA. But there are probably two dozen government agencies that have black budgets, hidden by the veil of “national security.” They’re governments within the government, secret and untouchable.
I have little doubt that people from these praetorian agencies invested in and supported outfits like Google, Facebook, and Amazon from the very beginning. And influence them today.
It used to be in the ‘60s and ‘70s, that computer guys were libertarian oriented. Remember when the guys at Google used to have a sense of humor, and their motto was “Don’t be evil”? Most people have forgotten that was actually their official motto. They now have a lot of power, and power corrupts.
International Man: With these Big Tech companies it seems to go beyond politics. They’re now policing people who have alternative views on health and medicine.
For example, recently, Facebook targeted the global exercise brand CrossFit. The group, which had about 1.6 million users on Facebook, was de-listed without warning because the individuals in that group were discussing a low carb, high fat diet.
This is contrary to the mainstream ideas on health and nutrition, which is of course dictated by large government agencies like the USDA. Is this further proof that companies like Facebook have become extensions of the government?
Doug Casey: It really is. Busybodies are naturally drawn to organizations where they can impose their views on others.
Like most government departments, the USDA should be abolished. It has over 100,000 employees and it doesn’t produce a single bushel of wheat, or a single cow. On the contrary, it makes farmers lives miserable. Any useful functions it has would be easily provided by entrepreneurs in the market.
In the area of food recommendations, the USDA’s food pyramid puts grains at the foundation. However, since modern humans came into being probably about 200,000 years ago, humans have primarily lived on the meat, vegetables, roots, and nuts. Our ancestors didn’t live on grains for 95% of human history, and humans aren’t bred to do so. Grains are fine for maintaining large masses of people cheaply, but they’re not optimal for individual health. Especially not once they’re highly refined and processed.
Who knows what’s going on in this bureaucracy’s hive mind? But it shouldn’t make any difference to us, because nobody should be getting health advice or medical advice from a government bureaucracy.
Related to that, I thought it was interesting that the founder of CrossFit is a self-described libertarian.
Could that have anything to do with the fact that his group was de-platformed? I don’t know. But if you’re off Facebook and you can’t use Google, it makes it much harder to communicate with people. Right now these companies have an immense amount of power.
However, I’m not overly concerned.
Why not? I think, barring State intervention, the market will to solve the problem. I’m certainly not looking for the government to intervene. If anything, by making more laws the government will only cause more distortions making the situation worse directly and indirectly.
Hopefully, Facebook will annoy enough people that millions, then tens, then hundreds of millions will just cancel their accounts. That will drain power from them. And perhaps a hundred other Facebook or YouTube lookalikes will grow up and decentralize the market. Various innovations using blockchain technology will accelerate the process. Instead of having a few giant platforms, maybe there’ll be hundreds of platforms, with many different characteristics.
Facebook and most all of the other major tech corporations are tremendous short sale opportunities. Not only are they in an enormous market bubble today. But people are starting to actively distrust and dislike them. They’re like any other large organization – once they get to a certain size they inevitably become corrupt, concrete-bound, unmanageable, and counterproductive.
I’d look at pair trades – short things like Facebook, and long equal amounts of smaller companies and startups looking to dethrone them.
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The politicization of everything is spreading like a wildfire across all parts of life. It’s contributing to a growing wave of misguided socialist ideas. All signs point to this trend accelerating until it reaches a crisis… one unlike anything we’ve seen before. That’s exactly why Doug Casey and his team just released this urgent video. Click here to watch it now.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2y1lX9u Tyler Durden
