Erica,
You are a terrific asset to the list, or to me, anyway. You're young and tech
savvy and apparently, you can do all the things that I can't . I'm 83 and was
never technically capable or confident from the day that I knew that I had to
get a computer to do the work that I did. But I'm into all the things that the
young journalists on the left are doing because of the articles that I can
access and because of the podcasts that I learned about through those articles.
Would you be comfortable telling us a bit more about yourself? People on this
list already know , probably more than they'd like to, about me. But I'll tell
you anything you're interested in knowing, either publicly or privately.
I'm relieved to know that Rania is OK. The episodes of their podcasts have
been a bit irregular, recently. They used to appear on my VR Stream on Sundays
and sometimes on Mondays. Do you also listen to Pushback, Moderate Rebels, and
Clearing The Fog?
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Erica R
Sent: Thursday, August 6, 2020 10:49 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: can we say, Industrial/Military takeover?
I do not know anything about Liz's background.
I am not familiar with Unauthorized Disclosure but I will take a listen. I just
checked their social media. Rania is okay, and it says she might be discussing
the incident on the next episode of the podcast.
On Thu, Aug 6, 2020 at 8:37 AM Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
Erica,
That's fascinating. It sounds like he has a rather sophisticated understanding
of the Syrian situation. On the podcast, he tends to act more sort of
clownish. Liz takes the more rational role. I know that she, too, is a
Leninist. Do you know any more about her history and background?
Do you listen to Unauthorized Disclosure? Rania, who is a journalist and spends
a lot of time in Lebanon, where her family comes from, has been staying with
family in the US but just recently returned to Lebanon. Seems like her timing
was really bad. I wonder what happened to her.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > On Behalf Of Erica R
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2020 10:24 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: can we say, Industrial/Military takeover?
Hi Miriam,
Thanks for your reply. I am one of those young people who listens to true anon.
Haha. I know what you mean about the weird style. I don't know about Ken
Klippenstein's podcast.
Here is an interview with Brace Belden in the Yale Review of International
Studies if you want to learn more about why he went to Syria and his experience
there.
In May, YRIS Editor-in-Chief Elisabeth Siegel (MY ‘20) had the chance to talk
over the phone with Brace Belden, a former soldier for the YPG (In Kurdish,
Yekîneyên Parastina Gel), a mainly-Kurdish militia in Syria formed in 2004.
The militia group fought against ISIS, and Belden spent 6 months among their
ranks as a foreign volunteer. In 2015, after a major victory against ISIS at
Kobane, the United States government began to send munitions to the YPG. Most
recently, Turkey, who considers the YPG a “terrorist organization” has moved
against YPG occupied areas in Northern Syria.
Belden himself achieved Twitter fame during his time in Syria as he posted
regular tweets and photos from the battlefield, often accompanied by humorous
observations in an iconically ironic, internet-native style. He was among the
foreign fighters profiled by the Rolling Stone in 2017, which called him an
anarchist, much to his chagrin.
In the interview with YRIS, Belden, an avowed communist, discussed his own
personal experiences during his time with the YPG, the situation facing Kurds
in Kurdish-controlled areas of Syria, and the political future of the militia
group and its associated political party, the PYD (Partiya Yekîtiya Demokrat /
Democratic Union Party).
_____
Elisabeth Siegel: To start out, could you give a short rundown of how you got
involved and why you wanted to join the YPG?
Brace Belden: I think, in 2014, I read about the story of this woman Ivanna
Hoffman who went there and fought with a Turkish group within the YPG, the MLKP
(The Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Turkey). She died in a fight, and
there was a hubbub in Leftist media about it, and it got me more interested in
it. After a long time of trying to figure out how to go, I went. My political
ideology — communism, specifically a kind of Marxism-Leninism — that I
subscribe to isn’t the same as the YPG, but it is the same as some of the
groups that fight alongside or under them, so I went with the intention of
joining them. I was there a little over six months and got back about a year
and a couple weeks ago.
ES: You came back before the big push to liberate Mosul, right?
BB: I was part of the beginning of the push to liberate Raqqa and then I fought
on a different front.
ES: So, what specific area of the fighting were you part of during your time
with the YPG, and what was day to day life like on the front lines?
BB: Originally I was part of this push at Ain Issa, two hours south of Kobane,
and all rhetoric we were getting was saying we were going to go West to connect
with Afrin, and we thought that going south was just a feint at first. We
covered a lot of territory, because it’s pretty barren desert out there — it’s
not like we have to fight for every inch or anything. We took this big town,
ten small villages around it, and then I went to a different front that was
west of there called Qalta and then fought around there.
It sucked. I wouldn’t recommend it. It was really hot and confusing. And some
strange maneuvers on everybody’s part. It’s scary. It’s pretty much just like
you read about, it’s not fun. The second part, I was with a different unit and
that was a little more organized.
ES: I hear they’re making a Jake Gyllenhaal movie about it.
BB: Not if I can help it. Apparently if you just write a story about someone
the author can sell the rights to it, which is surprising… and that’s what
happened to the Rolling Stone article, but I think I made a big enough stink so
that it probably won’t happen. 1% of movie ideas that get bought or whatever
actually get made, so I’m not too worried about it. However, if it does start,
I’m just going to do something really embarrassing and then have them cancel it
out of shame. Although they’re smart and so would just change the name and
story.
ES: Were you surprised at the level of popularity that your Twitter account,
with the handle of @PissPigGranddad, got?
BB: Sort of. I was at first, and then it kind of made sense. I speak the same
language of people of a certain age cohort and sensibility so people kind of
latched onto that. A lot of political stuff is spoken or transmitted rather
mechanically, and I am too stupid to talk like that. I think that people got a
better insight because of the way I spoke.
ES: Are you still in touch with anyone that you met in Syria?
BB: Quite a few people.
ES: Are they still there?
BB: Some of them are. Some of them are back. I went to a funeral for a buddy
named Jack Holmes and saw a lot of guys that I hadn’t seen since I was over
there.
ES: So now, in terms of what the YPG has currently been facing, from your
perspective of having been there on the ground, what do the areas that the YPG
liberated look like on the ground in the wake of the invasion of Afrin?
BB: Turkey sees YPG as its main — or only — enemy in Syria. While the Syrian
government is an enemy, it’s much more difficult to attack a sovereign state
rather than a separatist group up north — well, semi-separatist. The
Westernmost region of the Kurdish controlled zones has always been separate
from the main bulk area where the YPG and the PYD (Democratic Union Party) are.
It was separated first by a large group of ISIS fighters, and then Turkey came
down with the Turkish-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) which is the regular FSA
with Turkish army involvement. They came down there and replaced ISIS in a
weird quasi-battle, and it was even more isolated after that.
That happened like a year and a half ago. Ever since then, Erdogan has been
ratcheting up the rhetoric around Afrin — “We gotta destroy these terrorists on
the borders,” stuff like that — and they staged some cross-border incidents,
one of which I saw, but that was in the east, near Kobane. They would fire
across the border and try to provoke YPG, and obviously the Turkish army, which
is the largest or second largest army in NATO, is a little better equipped. Any
sort of retaliation they would point to as the reason they would need to
invade.
They started massing tanks and troops near the border with Afrin, and then
invaded. There was no hope that YPG would ever beat them — you’re going against
a NATO army with an airforce and advanced weaponry. They’ve lost 1500 people,
and after two months, pretty much lost all of Afrin city and most of the
territory. They still have a little bit where they share a front line with a
Syrian government-aligned force. The main Turkish plan is to make this rebel
protectorate up north linking the Euphrates Shield area at Al Bab, which is
sort of the center of the north, with the new Afrin-based FSA zone.
ES: What has been the effect on the Syrian Kurdish groups of the recent
referendum with the Kurdish population in Iraq, and what that has meant for
Kurdish unity or separatism?
BB: The way that I sort of saw it, and the way that a lot of people interpreted
the referendum, was that the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq has been
ruled by the Barzani tribe for a long time and are growing increasingly
unpopular. The peshmerga’s salaries hadn’t been paid in a year, and the oil
revenues were clearly being sapped by members of the Barzani family, and
tensions with the central [Iraqi] government were increasing. I think that the
ruling party, the KDP, saw their influence ebbing. They weren’t doing very well
and needed to shore up some support. They assembled this bullshit referendum,
which I don’t think anyone really believed would succeed, and which of course
would not, and people voted for it, but nothing happened. [The KDP] basically
tried to exacerbate tensions with the central government to shore up support at
home. And it didn’t work, it just discredited the government more.
For overall Kurdish unity, the left-wing Kurdish groups that are involved with
the Kurdish freedom movement, like the PKK, had a cautious view towards it —
“We don’t support the referendum completely, but people should vote for it if
they want to” — which is a pragmatic thing. The baseline, non-super-ideological
Kurdish nationalists will vote for this — like, people who support the PKK but
also want Kurdish independence — and I think [the PKK took that stance] not to
alienate their base. They sort of played it quiet on that.
ES: Having spent time with the YPG, how do you reflect on the way Kurds are
treated or referred to within the scope of domestic American politics?
BB: The American government treats Kurds as a monolith. They’ll just say
“Kurds” when they’re talking about pretty wildly different groups and different
political alignments. They mean “Kurds everywhere but Turkey,” because they
never talk about those Kurds. It’s funny, with the YPG and the way they’re
portrayed in the media, it really depends on who’s talking about them. You’ll
see these really idealistic takes from every side, from left wing to right wing
— they have no basis in reality. The American government always tries to
isolate these minorities and then boost them specifically to divide people in
certain regions, like the Hmong in Vietnam and stuff like that.
The YPG is a left-wing nationalist movement. They use a lot of words like
democracy, which has a different connotation to them. They don’t mean liberal
democracy, and I think that a lot of American politicians — I mean, some of
them are dumb, and some of them are cynical, sort of use that and use the
“Syrian Democratic Forces,” which is a total f—ing sham. They try and use the
Kurds as, “These are the civilized people in that area. They’re not like the
Arabs. They’re different,” as their main point. I think a lot of it has to do
with cynicism and then racism, the way that the American government talks about
them and tries to use them. They think they’re the most palatable group in the
region for their audience.
ES: Yeah, and then there’s those articles about the YPJ [Women’s branch of the
YPG]…
BB: Those ones are really weird. Any sort of article written about the YPJ is
either by someone who is breathlessly regurgitating YPJ propaganda. And like,
I’m for YPJ propaganda, but it’s creepy to see people repeat it basically
word-for-word. Or [they’re written by] really horny people. The worst kind of
writers. It’s super weird. The way that articles are written about the YPJ
creep me the f— out.
ES: What do you see as the political future of the group that you were involved
with?
BB: It’s impossible to predict what’s going to happen in the Syrian Civil War.
The worst case scenario, and kind of a likely one, is that the Turkish armed
forces will probably move east and try to take out all of northern Syria, like
the YPG-held areas. I didn’t mention this before, but the invasion of Afrin by
Turkey came about because they made a deal with Russia over what seemed to be
Syrian government objections to have rebels surrender in Douma and Ghouta and
move to Idlib in exchange for Turkey getting free reign in the north or the
northwest. I hope a similar deal doesn’t happen. Russia seems to play both
sides in this. They flew a YPG leader to Moscow and gave him a medal in a sort
of semi-secret ceremony, but then a month later gave the green light for Turkey
to invade the north, so who knows.
What most people I know want to happen is, they want the Syrian government to
come to an agreement with YPG or PYD for not quite an autonomous area in the
north but one with more minority rights and representation for the political
parties they’ve started. Whether that’s likely I don’t know, because the US
government certainly doesn’t want that to happen and has recently been trying
to inflame tensions with SDF, the front group that the YPG started. The group
has a lot of either reformed FSA people or just tribal militants — and I don’t
mean tribal in the insulting way, but literally they’re in tribes, that’s how
they refer to themselves — and a lot of those tribal elements especially those
from Deir al-Zour and rocket country are political and occasionally descend
into gangsterism. I think the US is trying to use some of those unreliable
elements to fight the Syrian government to inflame tensions between the SDF-YPG
and the Syrian government. It’s their last chance to topple Assad, which won’t
work.
ES: Is there anything else you’d like to say to our readership about the Syrian
Civil War or your personal experience?
BB: I hope [the YPG] are able to overcome what I think is mistaken tactical
alliance with the United States, because if history guides us at all, which it
should, that won’t turn out well for them. I think that the only hope is to
come to an agreement with the Syrian government, and they should do whatever it
takes for that.
There’s a lot of cyclical propaganda in the US government — Assad is, of
course, the devil and the “Free Syrian Army is democratic” rhetoric — but that
FSA line disappeared when it became too obvious that most of them were in
Al-Nusra. If there’s one thing [my time in Syria] taught me it’s just that all
of the press that comes out in America and a lot of the takes on the Syrian
Civil War you see from America or even Lebanon-based writers is just bullshit.
A lot of it is almost state department propaganda, which makes it very
difficult to navigate any news sources for actual truth about it. I hope the
conflict ends soon.
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 8:45 PM Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
Erica,
Wow, am I glad that you posted this whole article! First, it's interesting.
Second, I've seen articles by Ken Clippenstein or his name as author of
articles and I didn't know he has a podcast. I wonder what the name of the
podcast is and what it's about. But most interesting to me is what is in the
discussion of antiFa. It isn't an organization or anything. It's just a lot of
people on the left who have been labeled that way. Some of them actively
identify with the label, while others don't. But most interesting to me was the
explanation of who Brace Belden is. For many weeks, I listened to the podcast,
gtrueanon which focuses on the Jeffrey Epstein case, its background and
history, and the fallout. I listened because it's a fascinating case and there
is a set of multiple articles about it on the Mint Press website that were
difficult to access, or at least some of them were, and they were very long. So
when I heard about the Trueanon podcast on Useful Idiots, I subscribed. But it
is a podcast for much younger people and its style is, I thought, sort of
weird. I listen to other podcasts for young people like Unauthorized
Disclosure, but this was different. Anyway, what I learned about Brace Belden
from his participation on Trueanon, is that he had been drug addicted, is
Jewish, and did some kind of manual labor. It was very strange. Now, having
read this article, I understand a bit more about him, but not why he went to
fight in Syria. I suppose he's like some of the other young Americans who,
because of their own personal inner conflicts, went off to fight other people's
wars in Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > On Behalf Of Erica R
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2020 8:45 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: can we say, Industrial/Military takeover?
Thank you Miriam. Here is the text of the article for those who are interested.
Homeland Security Is Quietly Tying Antifa to Foreign Powers
An intelligence report obtained exclusively by The Nation mentions several
Americans, including a left-wing podcast host.
Ken Klippenstein
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) intelligence officials are targeting
activists it considers “antifa” and attempting to tie them to a foreign power,
according to a DHS intelligence report obtained exclusively by The Nation.
The intelligence report, titled “The Syrian Conflict and its Nexus to the
U.S.-based Antifascist Movement,” mentions several Americans, including a
left-wing podcast host who traveled to Syria to fight ISIS. The report includes
a readout of these individuals’ personal information, including their Social
Security numbers, home addresses, and social media accounts, much of the data
generated by DHS’s Tactical Terrorism Response Teams. As the intelligence
report states, “ANTIFA is being analyzed under the 2019 DHS Strategic Framework
for Countering Terrorism (CT) and Targeted Violence.”
Dated July 14, the document, marked for official use only and law enforcement
sensitive, draws on a blend of publicly available information and state and
federal law enforcement intelligence. It was provided to The Nation by a source
who previously worked on DHS intelligence.
“They targeted Americans like they’re Al Qaeda” a former senior DHS
intelligence officer with knowledge of the operations told The Nation. The
officer, who served for years in the DHS’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis
(I&A), compared the operations to the illegal surveillance of activists during
the civil rights era. “They essentially were violating people’s rights like
this was the ’60s…the type of shit the Church and Pike committee[s] had to
address.”
While the law generally prohibits intelligence agencies from spying on US
residents, many of those protections do not apply if the individual is believed
to be acting as an agent of a foreign power.
“Designating someone as foreign-sponsored can make a huge legal and practical
difference in the government’s ability to pursue them,” explained Steven
Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of
American Scientists. “It’s a crucial distinction. Once someone (or some group)
is identified as an agent of a foreign power, they are subject to warrantless
search and surveillance in a way that would be illegal and unconstitutional for
any other US person. The whole apparatus of US intelligence can be brought to
bear on someone who is considered an agent of a foreign power.”
Last week, the DHS reassigned its intelligence chief after The Washington Post
revealed that the agency had been compiling intelligence reports on American
journalists and activists in Portland. In response to President Trump’s
executive order to protect monuments and other federal property, the DHS
created the “Protecting American Communities Task Force,” which sent DHS assets
to Portland and other cities. The agency has found itself in transition under
the Trump administration.“They are always pressuring I&A for political reasons;
it’s been like that since the election,” the former intelligence officer said.
This weekend, Politico reported that DHS Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli
loosened oversight of I&A. Cuccinelli, at I&A’s request, curtailed the
requirement that the DHS’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties approve
I&A’s intelligence products prior to distribution to law enforcement partners.
The intelligence report’s executive summary states:
In June 2020, U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) National Targeting
Center (NTC) Counter Network Division (CND) compiled CBP encounter data on
individuals who returned from Syria and fought with the Yekîneyên Parastina Gel
(YPG, translation: PEOPLE’S PROTECTION UNITS), and had some with reported ties
to a U.S.-based ANTIFA (Anti-fascist) movement. CBP concerns about and interest
in these individuals stem from the types of skills and motivations that may
have developed during their time overseas in foreign conflicts.
These skills were also appreciated by the US military, which cooperated with
the YPG in fighting ISIS for years. Last year, President Trump enraged many in
the US military when he green-lighted a Turkish offensive against the Kurdish
militia. Jim Mattis reportedly resigned as defense secretary in part because of
what he considered a betrayal of our Kurdish allies.
The intelligence report describes over half a dozen people who traveled to
Syria in order to fight alongside Kurdish factions—usually the YPG, but also
other Kurdish groups like the PKK and the Peshmerga. Some of the individuals
described have denied membership in antifa but variously identified with
far-left causes. The DHS appears to define antifa broadly, to encompass various
left-wing tendencies: “[A]ntifa is driven by a mixed range of far-left
political ideologies, including anti-capitalism, communism, socialism, and
anarchism.” In two cases, evidence of antifa affiliation was limited to photos
taken in front of an antifa flag. As the intelligence report itself notes,
“ANTIFA claims no official leadership,” raising questions about whether antifa
even exists in any sort of operational capacity.
The first individual mentioned in the intelligence report, Brace Belden,
cohosts the popular left-wing podcast TrueAnon, and fought with the YPG in
2016. The information appears to be partly drawn from a 2017 article on Belden
in Rolling Stone. Belden is described as “a minor criminal and drug addict who
started reading Marx and Lenin in drug rehabilitation treatment and became
involved in a number of political causes before deciding to fight alongside the
YPG.”
The report goes on to describe an encounter between Belden and border
authorities.
U.S. citizen (USC) Brace BELDEN was encountered on 08 April 2017, arriving in
San Francisco, California from Frankfurt, Germany. BELDEN was returning from a
six month tour of volunteering to fight with the YPG under the umbrella of the
Syrian Democrat Forces (SDF) fighting ISIS in Syria as part of the ongoing
Raqqa offensive starting in November 2016 to retake Raqqa from ISIS. BELDEN
stated he recently learned that an open source article had been written about
him and his “Anarchist” fighters.
Belden scoffed at the association. “I am not now nor have I ever been a member
of any antifa organization,” he told The Nation. “The US government has been
spying on and smearing communists for 100 years, but they usually have the
decency not to call a Red an anarchist!”
“There appears to be a clear connection…between ANTIFA ideology and Kurdish
democratic federalism teachings and ideology,” the intelligence report states.
At least one of the activists listed is described as being ethnically Kurdish.
On May 31, Trump vowed to designate antifa a “terrorist organization.” While
antifa groups have engaged in acts of property destruction, antifa has not been
linked to a single murder in the United States, according to data compiled in
the past 25 years by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. By
contrast, the same data found that far-right extremist groups had killed 329
people.
The intelligence report appears to conclude that the individuals described were
not acting on behalf of a foreign group—save for one unnamed person.
“Aside from a single instance derived from open-source reporting, there does
not appear to be evidence of a centralized effort to give marching orders to
returning ANTIFA-affiliated USPER [US person] foreign fighters once they return
to the United States.”
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 4:25 PM Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
Hello Erica,
Yes, it's fine to share a link. I try, when it's not too difficult, to share
the article because it's more difficult for some of us to get to some links
than for others of us, me included. I guess I don't try to read more of those
online Nation articles than three because I've never been barred when I access
an article from that free daily email I receive each day.
That reminds me, I do read The Nation which I download from BARD, or some of
it, and also, The New Yorker. Just now, I've been reading an article in the
August 3/10 issue of The New Yorker about the 1960 Kennedy campaign by Jill Le
Por. It reminds me that political campaigns are run by incredibly cynical
people and some of what happened, is reminiscent of the 2016 primary campaign
between Clinton and Sanders.
Miriam
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > On Behalf Of Erica R
Sent: Wednesday, August 5, 2020 5:14 PM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: can we say, Industrial/Military takeover?
Thanks for the share. I was particularly struck by this passage: "AIC acting
director Nand Mulchandani advanced this narrative when he claimed China had
“the world’s most advanced [AI] capabilities, such as unregulated facial
recognition for universal surveillance and control of their domestic
population, trained on Chinese video gathered from their systems.” Mulchandani,
nevertheless, conceded that the “U.S. is capable of doing similar things,” but
offered only the U.S. Constitution as the barrier that would prevent America
from building “such universal surveillance and censorship systems.”"
Regarding the constitutionality of surveillance--I was reminded of reports
released earlier this week by The Nation's Ken Klippenstein revealing DHS
surveillance of Americans with previous involvement in the YPG. Linked here
https://www.thenation.com/article/society/dhs-antifa-syria/
I am new to the list. Let me know if this is an appropriate way to share links.
The Nation does have a paywall after 3 articles have been read in a month, I
believe.
Erica
On Wed, Aug 5, 2020 at 9:52 AM Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx
<mailto:carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
Of course we can!
Miriam, I was going to comment on the post, along with my complaining.
When we look at our military expenditures and the profits "earned" by
the Corporations profiting directly off the military, and the huge tax
supported employment of military personnel(servicemen and service
women, generally known as Grunts)what more proof will it take?
Strange behavior for a nation that professes to be able to communicate
directly with God, but can't hear the rattle of sabers and the
explosion of many bombs.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/5/20, Carl Jarvis <carjar82@xxxxxxxxx <mailto:carjar82@xxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
Miriam,
I thought I'd sent out several messages, but happened to check to see
if I'd entered the right address on an email, and discovered that the
process of entering only part of an address, and having the entire
address appear, no longer worked. Since I have over 800 names in my
Contact file, having to search for each address makes me feel like
shutting down my computer and getting some long overdue work around
the house taken care of.
I've tried everything including contacting the google help center.
They gave me a huge number of suggestions, and people who had the same
problem, but most of it was not helpful, and the rest did not work on
my ancient machine.
Carl Jarvis
On 8/5/20, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> > wrote:
The reason I couldn't send this article last night was that as I was
trying,
my internet went down. We had a severe tropical storm yesterday. Up to
that
point, we'd been unaffected because when this house was purchased, I
purchased a generator for it, having been traumatized by Hurricane Sandy.
But the cable? That, I had no control over. It just came back now.
Miriam
From: Raul at MintPress News <share@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:share@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> >
Sent: Tuesday, August 4, 2020 8:09 PM
To: =?utf-8?Q??= <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<mailto:miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> >
Subject: US aggression against China's AI officially a bipartisan effort
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Raul Diego
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reports on the bipartisan anti-China plan for Artificial Intelligence
Does anyone really believe the US has public interest in mind when it
comes
to technology and artificial intelligence?
The bipartisan plan on AI offers five “Key Principles” the first of which
involves the implementation of the DoD’s “Ethical Principles for AI,” a
set
of broad
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rules meant to guide “both combat and non-combat functions” of AI, which
are
to be enforced by the Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC);
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an agency established in 2018 within the Pentagon.
Should the Pentagon be trusted to dictate AI ethics?
Read more
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about the plan and make sure to share the article with a friend.
In solidarity,
Raul at MintPress News
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