The United States has about five percent of the world’s population and houses around 25 percent of its prisoners. In large part, that’s the result of the “war on drugs” and long mandatory minimum sentences, but it also reflects America’s…
Notice how the White House moved quickly to thwart the only substantive NSA changes the Review Group was making
In case you missed it, on Thursday night, the Wall Street Journal and New York Times published leaked details from the recommendations from the Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, a panel President Obama set up in August to review the NSA's activities in response to the Edward Snowden leaks.
The stories described what they said were recommendations in the report as presented in draft form to White House advisors; the final report was due to the White House on Sunday. There were discrepancies in the reporting, which may have signaled the leaks were a public airing of disputes surrounding the Review Group (both articles noted the results were "still being finalized"). The biggest news item were reports about a recommendation that the director of the NSA (DIRNSA) and Cyber Command positions be split, with a civilian leading the former agency.
Before the final report was even delivered, the White House struck. On Friday, while insisting that the commission report was not yet final, national security council spokesperson Caitlin Hayden announced the White House had already decided the position would not be split. A dual-hatted general would continue to lead both.
By all appearances, the White House moved to pre-empt the results of its own Review Group to squelch any recommendation that the position be split. The Christian Science Monitor even reported that the final report now recommends that DIRNSA and CyberCom remain unified, suggesting either that the faction that supported that recommendation prevailed on the review, or the review changed its recommendations to accord with the president's decision, announced after receiving initial recommendations to split it.
Then there was the Sunday night CBS 60 Minutes interview with General Keith Alexander, a seeming sideshow to the real issues of NSA reform.
Consider that by the end of the day Friday, NSA deputy director John "Chris" Inglis, who weeks earlier had been floated as the leader of a civilian-led NSA, retired. (His plan to do so had been reported earlier this year).
Two things are at issue with this jockeying. First, all the evidence about this Review Group suggested it was a typical Washington DC whitewash. Rather than appointing outsiders, as Obama had promised, the group members – made up of Cass Sunstein, Geoffrey Stone, Peter Swire, Richard Clarke, and led by former acting CIA director Michael Morrell – have close ties to the president and/or the national security community. And the group reported through director of national intelligence James Clapper, whose performance should have been reviewed. No pure technical experts were included on a panel that ought to be assessing technical alternatives.
As the Guardian reported in September, experts who had advised the group came away with the impression that the team wouldn't consider substantive changes. All the evidence suggested this group was designed to stave off change, not recommend it.
Nevertheless, as soon as it did recommend changes, the White House moved quickly to shut down any discussion of that main recommendation. More important is the substance of the rejected recommendation, which will keep the NSA and CyberCommand under the same military general. One of the most alarming reports from the Snowden documents pertains to how NSA has weakened encryption to make both data collection and offensive cyberattacks easier. As the Guardian reported in September, the NSA has covertly worked to make encryption standards weaker. NSA's British partner GCHQ has been working to break the encryption of the top email programs. Ultimately, the NSA is trying to "insert vulnerabilities" into commercial encryption systems.
That means the NSA, to fulfill its data collection and cyberoffensive roles, has been creating holes that cyberattackers – hackers, thieves, and other countries – can also exploit. Meanwhile, the NSA's domestic collection programs increasingly focus on preventing cyberattackers from exploiting those and other vulnerabilities. That's even one of the biggest successes it touts from the FISA Amendments Act bulk collection program. The NSA is creating holes. Then it says it needs to collect more and more data domestically to prevent anyone from exploiting those holes.
A different independent review even suggested our cybersecurity continues to fail because our intelligence agencies are so busy building offensive weapons rather than building up our defenses. As a top intelligence venture figure told the New York Times last month:
It is easier and more intellectually interesting to play offense than defense.
Whatever else the dual-hatted DIRNSA and CyberCom position does, it fosters this condition. Not only is the combined position incredibly powerful from a bureaucratic standpoint, but having the same person oversee information collection and cyberattacks puts a premium on those encryption holes that make both collection and attacks easier. As a result, no powerful entity champions cyberdefense, plugging the holes that makes us all less safe.
The Wall Street Journal also reported the Review Group planned to recommend the NSA move the Information Assurance Group – the entity within NSA that makes code and plugs holes – out of the NSA. And that may improve things somewhat (though the most likely place to move it is Department of Homeland Security, not exactly the most effective bureaucratic agency). Yet that function would still be fighting the bureaucratic weight of a dual-hatted general.
The Obama administration revealed two things on Friday: first, even a whitewash review group proved too disruptive for the White House and the military figures who won in last week's pissing contest. Second, Obama has chosen to continue prioritizing attacks over keeping us safe.
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
The U.S. death toll from gun violence since Newtown is more than 33,000. When will we wake up?
One year ago this week, a seemingly unimaginable event took place in Newtown, Connecticut. Adam Lanza, a disturbed and isolated young man took the guns that were legally purchased and kept in his home and drove to the Sandy Hook elementary school. He shot his way inside with an AR-15 assault rifle and proceeded to kill 26 people – 20 of them young children.
It was a crime that spoke, perhaps more than any other in recent memory, to America's deadly and debilitating fascination with guns. Here was the sickness of this nation's gun culture on vivid display.
But a year later what is even more unimaginable, more difficult to comprehend and more shocking than this horrible act of violence – is that the carnage continues with seemingly no end in sight.
Soon after Newtown, Slate.com began assembling an extraordinary (and deeply depressing) database of every media mention of a gun death in America. The stories are often short crime blotter articles. The victims are frequently unidentified and the motive unclear, but the senselessness was all too evident.
Just take the past two weeks: a three-year old in Indianapolis pulled his parents' loaded gun off a kitchen counter and shot himself in the head. Neighbors were surprised because even though the little boy's parents frequently carried their arms in public, they always seemed "responsible" enough not to leave a gun where their child could get it. A 16-year girl in Noblesville, Indiana was shot and killed when her friend pointed a gun at her chest and pulled the trigger. He thought the weapon was not loaded. In Arkansas, a grandfather with a gun killed himself and three others including his two grandchildren – one was 4 years old, the other only 4 months.
In Chickamauga, Georgia a 34-year old man heard a prowler outside and rather than wait for police, he went outside with his .40 caliber handgun and fired four shots at the silhouette of a man behind his house. It turned to be a 72-year old suffering from Alzheimer's who had wandered away from his house. And there was the 21-year old San Diego man whose "long-time friend" was showing him a gun. He dropped the weapon and it went off, striking the man in the chest – and ending his life.
These are just a few of the more than 11,000 gun deaths that Slate has compiled in the year since Newtown. Assembling gun statistics is quite difficult – largely because the NRA and its congressional allies have pushed for legislation to make it harder for the federal government to collect such data. So the actual number is likely much higher. In fact, researchers at Slate believe the death toll from gun violence since Newtown is more than 33,000 people.
Of course, what made Newtown so uniquely awful was that the victims were young children. But, in the year since Newtown, children continue to die from gun violence at a terrifying clip. According to a recent report from Mother Jones, 194 kids have been gunned down since last year. It's an appalling number, but it may actually underestimate the problem. Two Boston-based researchers believe that as many as 500 children and teenagers die every year (and 7,500 are hospitalized) at the hands of a firearm.
As if to add insult to unspeakable tragedy, rarely is anyone punished when a child dies in this manner. Justin Peters at Slate.com has done yeoman's work in addressing this issue. He points out that when children find a gun in their home and harm themselves or someone else that the parent, guardian or the friend is almost never held responsible. In fact, in 23 states there are no child gun-access prevention laws on the books. In the states where the laws do exist they are rarely enforced. Take, for example, the aforementioned case of the three-year old Indianapolis boy who found his parents gun and killed himself. The police are still not sure if a crime was committed.
But it seems almost impossible to understand how a three-year old being able to procure a loaded gun is anything but a crime of negligence. It's even more difficult to understand how there can even be an affirmative defense for parents who are so careless.
At some point, someone left a loaded gun where they clearly shouldn't have – and a child died as a result. With tougher punishments would a parent think twice about bringing a gun into their home? Would they take greater precaution to make sure that a gun in the home was locked and unloaded? Would they install gun safes in their home or gun locks on their weapons?
We're unlikely to find out any time soon. One might think that such unceasing bloodshed and the shock of Newtown would lead to not just national outcry but reform of America's lax gun laws. And it has. Ironically, they've been further weakened.
As the New York Times reported earlier this week there have been 109 gun laws passed in state legislatures since Newtown – 39 of them tightened gun restrictions and 70 loosened them. On the federal level, a bill to expand background checks for potential gun buyers was defeated by a Republican filibuster. In Colorado, which is one of the few states to toughen its gun laws in the last year, two state legislators who supported the bill were defeated in recall elections. The NRA's power to thwart public opinion and to uphold the narcissistic belief among gun advocates that their "freedom" must outweigh the costs to society of practically unfettered access to guns remains as strong as ever.
At the same time, gun manufacturers are seeing higher profits and gun sales, at least in the first quarter of the year, appeared to increase dramatically. Of course, this will mean even more gun deaths. A 2010 meta study by a researcher at the Harvard Injury Control Center lays out the sobering consequences of expanded gun ownership:
The evidence is overwhelming … that a gun in the home is a risk factor for completed suicide and that gun accidents are most likely to occur in homes with guns.
Ah, but what about protection say gun advocates? How will I ever keep my family safe from the hordes of home invaders? As the study says, "There is no credible evidence of a deterrent effect of firearms or that a gun in the home reduces the likelihood or severity of injury during an altercation or break-in."
If there is one thing that we do know about gun ownership in America, it is that buying a gun and keeping it one's home for "protection" dramatically increases the possibility of dying (or having a family member or friend die) from gun violence.
It's even worse for children. By one estimate, more than 75% of guns used in suicide attempts and unintentional injuries in those between birth and age 19 were kept in the home of the victim, at relatives or with friends. Imagine if Americans were told that every time they went to the gun store to buy a weapon.
It begs the question if the United States can't protect its own kids from gun violence is there any hope for the rest of us? In the end, this is what makes Newtown such an enduring tragedy. An event this devastating should have woken Americans up to the horror of gun violence – a horror that is all around them and that not only takes tens of thousands of lives but destroys families and communities in its wake.
But alas a year later nothing has changed – and the death toll from America's gun culture continues to rise.
As you may have heard, Time magazine just plastered the pontiff on its cover as person of the year. Some of us in the US take that to mean that, indeed, the meaning of life is not about how many securitized derivative products you can create that will cause the collapse of banks and financial markets. Nor is it about how many government shutdowns you can mastermind, or how many food stamps you can take from the hands of the hungry and poor.
Hark the herald angels are finally singing, one of whom is … tada! John Boehner.
The Republican speaker of the House of Representatives, who earlier this fall shrugged his shoulders at a corporatist-led shutdown of the federal government, appears to have gotten the pope's memo. Or maybe Representative Paul Ryan passed the pope's memo to Boehner. Ryan, the former GOP vice presidential candidate has also shirked his Tea Party masters by authoring a budget deal that will stave off any more shutdowns and defaults, at least for two years.
When asked this week if the modest US budget deal worked out by Ryan and Democratic Senator Patty Murray deserved to be immediately blasted by conservative groups, Boehner delivered his own scathing bit of fire and brimstone:
You mean the groups that came out and opposed it before they ever saw it?
That was just the warm up. Boehner then expanded on his sermon by unmasking the GOP civil war that has not only plummeted the Republican party into a death spiral but also hijacked Congress by keeping it from doing any meaningful work on behalf of the American people.
They are using our members and they are using the American people for their own goals. This is ridiculous. Listen, if you're for more deficit reduction, you're for this agreement, Boehner said.
We're thankful this holiday season that Boehner has decided to (finally) declare that the emperor has no clothes; that the Koch brothers, Ted Cruz, the Club For Growth, Dick Armey and Freedom Works are now the Wizards of Oz left standing naked before us. The American people deserve to see just how it is that the so-called "grassroots" movement called the Tea Party was long ago co-opted by these billionaire corporatists.
Never mind that nagging voice inside our heads that begs the question: where was this version of Boehner three months ago? Did he develop a conscience and a spine in two months? Can a merlot hangover produce some long overdue cut-the-crap honesty?
Or maybe it was the pope, because some of us consider the Time magazine cover of an alms-delivering pontiff and Boehner's political epiphany as very good signs, even if they're simply, oddly, coincidental.
In a time when the anti-government forces got a little too close to being "in charge" of Congress during the $24bn-in-lost-revenues-courtesy-of-Ted-Cruz's shutdown, some of us have even had a fleeting, flirtatious idea about converting to Catholicism. A world leader who is willing to call the end game of capitalism antithetical to humanity? What? When did the Vatican take over the wheels of John McCain's straight-talk express?
Boehner's latest "outburst" is so out of left field, so refreshing, that some of us wonder whether Boehner's brain and Twitter accounts might have been hacked.
So far, it doesn't appear to be that way. There are no retractions, no capitulating to the campaign-donor captors who threaten primaries against Republicans who dare to make deals with Democrats.
Today, Boehner went back to the congressional leader's pulpit and expanded on his civil-war-cracking diatribe against the handful of rich people who are trying to goad an entire nation to work against the interests of a majority of its people. As he said:
You know, they pushed us into this fight to defund Obamacare … It wasn't exactly the strategy I had in mind. But if you recall, the day before the government re-opened, one of the people at one of these groups stood up and said, 'well we never really thought it would work.' Are you kidding me?
No, sir. You've got to be kidding us. Even since the days after Boehner and Barack Obama went golfing and tried to cook up the grand bargain, Boehner toddled away from the reservation called procedural and policy sanity.
However, in the spirit of Nelson Mandela's forgiveness, which the South African leader granted his jailors, we'll forgive Boehner, who has finally emerged from a three-years-long, Club-For-Growth-induced coma.
Welcome back to the real America, Mr Speaker.
Richard "Dick" Cheney was once tremendously uncool, but now that Vanity Fair has declared George W. Bush to be a hipster icon, it made us realize that if there's one warmonger who could use a media makeover, it's the Wyoming Kid. And since the arbiters of Internet cool were tweens in 2009 when Cheney left office, they're more likely to know how much he loves his gay daughter then the fact that he earned five deferments, because what's a deferment? Here's why Cheney's the VP all the kids want to be.
1. He's an extreme hunter.
Long before hipsters started strapping handguns smithed in the '70s by men with unironic beards, Dick was out there shooting his friends in the face just to watch them cry.
2. He's got a hacker-proof heart.
Try as they might -- and they try mightily -- no hacker will ever find his way into Dick Cheney's heart. His pacemaker contains security protocols that make Apple weep with envy.
3. He knows a fine pair of hipster spectacles when he spies one.
Who's rocking those rims? Rumsfeld's rocking those rims.
4. He put the "self" in "self-esteem."
When they asked him who should be vice president, he just looked in the mirror and smiled.
5. Man. Sized. Safe.
Strong enough for classified top secret documents, but large enough for something man-sized.
6. He was into invading Iraq before you'd ever even heard of it.
Cheney and The Project for the New American Century wanted to invade Iraq in 1997, four years before anyone had even heard of 9/11.
7. He makes the Batman cringe every time he impersonates the Penguin.
Which is only every time he laughs.
8. He has an undisclosed location, but you’ve probably never been there.
It’s, like, totally underground.
9. He was into domestic surveillance way before it went mainstream.
Obama is like Stone Temple Pilots to his Pearl Jam when it comes to spying.
Image credits:
["Portrait Of A Hunter Isolated On White" on Shutterstock]
["Wrench On The X-Ray Film Background , Health Care" on Shutterstock]
["President Gerald Ford’s White House Chief of Staff Donald Rumsfeld, right, and his deputy, Richard Cheney, Nov. 7, 1975, in Washington"]
["Campaign Rally In Ohio Attended By Vice Presidential Candidate Dick Cheney, 2004" on Shutterstock]
["The Metal Safe" on Shutterstock]
["Silhouette Of Soldier With Machine Gun On A Car Against A Sunset" on Shutterstock]
["King Penguins At Volunteer Point On The Falkland Islands" on Shutterstock]
["An Almost Empty Field In Rural South Africa Against A Dramatic Blue Sky" on Shutterstock]
["Girl Is Spying On Boyfriend He Is Using A Smart Phone" on Shutterstock]
Since Barack Obama’s election, Democrats have been united by an increasingly reactionary oppposition. But beneath that veneer of tranquility, longstanding political and philosophical differences over the role the government should play in our economy…
As climate change transforms our planet and the polar ice caps recede, new, previously inaccessible areas of the Arctic are opening up for business. Ironically, a notable amount of that business has to do with extracting and transporting the fossil…
The challenge is to design a game where instead of being a badass in LA, you can be a goodass on a communal farm
You walk into a village inn and it turns out the landlord sells swords. You're short of gold so you pop out and shoot some wolves with your bow and arrow. You add their pelts into the deal and buy the sword. Where's this? Skyrim, of course.
Skyrim is a computer game set in the mythical world of Tamriel, where human intercourse consists of fighting, stealing, magic and trade. Whether you're here, or in the deep space of EveOnline, or among the low-life in Grand Theft Auto V, the economics of computer games nearly always resemble early capitalism: trade, conquest and ruthless rule-bending are the sources of wealth; actual human labour and ingenuity almost never. With about half of all households owning a games console, and 8 million people a day secretly amassing fortunes on Facebook games like Farmville, that is one huge dollop of free-market ideology getting dumped into our leisure time.
But what happens if you try to subvert in-game economics? Players in complex online worlds are well used to "gaming the game" – that is, trying to exploit inconsistencies of the economic model to scam other players. Last year one player, by bidding up the price of a worthless object and then getting his friend to destroy it, almost wiped out all the value in the entire universe. The game's fulltime economists – such jobs exist – spent days unpicking the trades.
What I am proposing is something different. What if, just as in an Occupy camp, where they try to "live despite capitalism", you could live "despite" the property forms and voracious market economics of a computer game?
With Skyrim, the "modding" community – techies adept at creating unofficial versions of the game – have already done clever things with the economy of Tamriel. One limited the amount of natural resource (you can run out of wolves); another made the money supply finite; a third introduced a banking system, so that by saving your hoarded gold you could increase the supply of credit to other players.
But what if you could choose to play any of these games without trying to gain wealth through conquest, violence or the mercantile capitalist strategy of buying cheap and selling dear? What if you could pursue a strategy to create things collaboratively, outside the market, and give the basic necessities of life away for free? Would you be able, singly or in groups, to screw the slash-and-grab economy so badly that you forced it into a transition state beyond destructive competition?
These are good questions, because a whole school of economists thinks what they describe is the basic problem facing us in the real world.
Yochai Benkler, a Harvard law professor, has described how the rise of free stuff, collaborative production and non-commercial products such as Wikipedia, create a glitch within capitalism. In a networked information economy, he writes, "co-operative and co-ordinated action, carried out through radically distributed non-market mechanisms … plays a much greater role than it did". (Benkler Y, The Wealth of Networks, New Haven 2006).
Information goods undermine economic systems based on scarcity. Free, collaboratively made products, like Wikipedia potentially, kill commercial products in their market. Open source products – even when commercialised, like the Android system that runs on 70% of all new smartphones – can reduce the market share of closed, proprietary products.
If Benkler is right, the real-world economy of the 21st century becomes itself a giant game, in which non-market forms interact with the classic models based on scarcity and competition. Monopolies form but are undermined by the impossibility of enforcing property rights. Hierarchies soften, but cannot react effectively to the rise of networks.
In multi-player games there is already a lot of collaborative play, even inside the kill-and-shoot environments. Now designers have begun to respond overtly to demands for modelling collaboration: Journey (2012) is a wordless, ethereal game in which players, by interacting, produce mutual benefit and emotional connection but do not explicitly trade.
But most games remain trapped in the economics of their time: they are closed markets, with a variety of static business models, most of which involve destroying your opponent, monopolising designs, or plundering resources.
The challenge is to design a game where the economy can evolve: from competition to collaboration. Where instead of being a badass in LA, you can be a goodass on a communal farm in Andalusia. A game where the "modding" goes on within the official product, not through unauthorised experimental versions. A game where it's possible to "refuse" the basic Jungian call to adventure in an alien world and instead transform the world you live in.
For many of us, economic reality is already a mixture of the market and something beyond the market. Against this, the world of competitive plunder on which most computer and console games are based begins to look boring.
Next year, Skyrim itself goes multiplayer. Designers promise the mythical world of Tamriel will offer a choice of three warring alliances, nine ethnicities and unlimited face tattoos. The proposed economics look like a version of 18th-century mercantilism: conquer a castle, set up your trading post there, exploit need and scarcity.
As a fan of the game, I'd like the opportunity to do something radically different: #OccupyTamriel anyone?
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
It's a bit of a slow period for political news: Congress is going into recess, the Affordable Care Act is in a kind of procedural limbo, most people are turning their attention to the holidays – and, perhaps most disheartening, the economy just continues to trudge along, offering neither much hope nor much political urgency. That there should be more political urgency regarding jobs and the economy is a topic of eloquently-expressed frustration by my friend Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post. But economic numbers are hard, while idle speculation about the 2016 presidential candidates is super-easy! And, to be fair, it's a subject that will be on the minds of regular folks soon enough. With that in mind, some thoughts on how to discuss – and perhaps even report on – the candidates and their chances.
1. It's OK to say someone is inevitable!
I mean, that's strong language, but the pseudo-sophistication of pooh-poohing a frontrunner is a short-term strategy for punditry. While it's true that the chattering class deemed Hillary Clinton "inevitable" in 2008, there's little evidence that the inevitable label had a role in her eventual loss. Barack Obama's unprecedented levels of organization and fundraising were, you know, significant factors.
In GOP races, there's even less reason to hedge: conservatives are historically conservative in their choices, not just for the past few, either: for almost 20 years, 1976-2004, there was a Bush or Dole on every ticket! Between 1952 and 1972, Richard Nixon was on five out of six of them. 2016 will be a little different, what with the GOP not having an obvious front-runner, but don't be afraid to stick to the safest name (Chris Christie) even if seems kind of boring. Unless you just don't want to be boring. See next items.
2. If you're going to think out-of-the-box, have some data on your side.
On the Democratic side, the Elizabeth Warren "boomlet" is almost entirely of journalistic blue-skying. The lady says she does not want to run for president, and she seems far too level-headed to try to muscle her way in based on the pining of some Beltway insiders.
On the Republican side, the words "Donald Trump" and "Sarah Palin" are actually Democratic fund-raising slogans. But drop this knowledge: a schism in the Iowa GOP has made that influential (though by no means predictive) caucus especially friendly ground for a Libertarian candidate (Rand Paul). The GOP's dismal relationship with minorities could nudge its leaders to embrace a black or Hispanic candidate – but why not also cite polling that shows most Republicans actually agree with the majority of Americans who say Roe v Wade should remain the law of the land? Softening their pro-life stance would almost instantly give the female voters who fled the GOP in 2012 a reason to reconsider.
Names to drop: Brian Sandoval, the Hispanic (and pro-choice) governor of Nevada. Don't forget the rousing 2012 GOP Convention speech by choice supporter Condoleezza Rice! (who is going to have a new book out in 2015; the pre-election-year book is a fairly reliable sign of presidential ambitions.)
3. Parse the difference between "lack of interest" or "no plans" in a presidential run and a denial that one will run.
Warren, for instance, has "pledged to serve out her term", which is about as high as one can go on the scale of "not going to" as you can get. New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez has explained her desire to not abandon her family to the rigors of a presidential campaign, which is arguably an even more unambiguous rejection. Compare these statements to Clinton's ("I have absolutely no plans to run") or Jeb Bush's ("I'm not thinking about it") or Christie ("I'm nowhere near making a decision yet"). Non-denial-denials will become increasing untenable positions as donors and organizers make their/i> decisions about who to support. Caveat: Even Warren- and Martinez-strength denials can be subject to repeal based on intense personal soul-searching or donor entreaties. (See: Obama, Barack.)
4. Gaffes are not death sentences.
Corollary: gaffes are not the same as unintended revelations about core beliefs. (Confusingly, "a politician accidentally telling the truth" is one classic definition of a gaffe. We need a new lexicon!) Sure, Rick Perry's moment of innumeracy marked the start of a deep dive in the polls, but that's probably an exception to the general rule that most politicians can survive an embarrassing moment, especially if it's handled with humor and grace afterwards. (Perry's inability to recover probably had more to do with his backstage lackadaisical attitude toward the campaign itself than his on-stage brain freeze.)
Politicians say stupid things all the time: Obama's visit to 57 states. Romney's affection for Michigan's perfectly-sized trees. George W Bush. Joe Biden. Sarah Palin. Saying something stupid is not the same as saying something that reveals something about your character: That's the difference between loving Michigan's trees and dismissing 47% of the electorate, or implying there is such a thing as "illegitimate" rape. This is all by way of saying that Joe Biden is still a pretty strong candidate.
[IMAGE: Outgoing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks to State Department employees in a lobby of the State Department on February 1 2013 in Washington DC, via AFP]
Self-styled celebrity super family the Kardashians love their annual Christmas card. Over the years they've built up a smorgasboard of festive snaps, which have become more overblown as the family has slowly risen up the celebrity food chain. Last year's was an all-white number with ticker tape and bubbly, which made it look as if they were trapped in a 2013 version of The Crystal Maze, but this year their yuletide snap went further and almost broke the internet.
Looking like a mix between a scene from Boogie Nights and the interior of a jazzed up Blackpool Pleasure Beach arcade, it's gaudy clickbait replete with thinly veiled digs at celebrity culture. Their subtle subliminal missives are communicated via piles of trashy magazine covers, Bruce Jenner trapped in a tube and graffiti that says stuff like "fame". Most media outlets took the card at face value and instinctively laughed heartily at it, before mocking the Kardashians and moving on, but others looked a bit deeper and started to see the HIDDEN ILLUMINATI MESSAGES.
Conspiracy theorist and shouty bloke du jour Alex Jones summed it up, calling the card "a rather grim and depressing summation of the entertainment world", which most people would happily agree with. But then he went on to add the whole thing was a homage to the "shadowy elite that is turning popular culture into a toxic wasteland". At that point most people switched off, but then even mainstream news sources started to ask; what is the secret Illuminati message? It's a question that has increasingly been asked of celebs linked to hip-hop over the last decade, with artists such as Jay-Z regularly having to bat away accusations that he's part of an occult conspiracy. And Hova is far from the only rapper accused of having Illuminati ties.
An internet search for Canadian cry-baby rap star Drake, for example, will throw up a treasure trove of Illuminati hip-hop conspiracy material. It ranges from Drake being in cahoots with crack-smoking Toronto mayor Rob Ford, to the fact that his clothing line features an owl (which is a sure sign of Illuminatiness) and theories that his tracklists contain hidden messages about the end of the world. The rabbit hole goes even deeper with a whole host of theories about the death of Tupac, which mostly revolve around him being murdered by the Illuminati with Kanye West and Jay-Z (of course) masterminding the whole shady operation.
Rappers are just the latest fall guys and they've taken the place of rock stars, who were regularly accused of occult connections in the 70s. David Bowie's interest in the work of Aleister Crowley around the time of his Berlin triptych which manifested itself via lyrical hat tips, and the Beatles' decision to include Crowley on the cover of Sgt Pepper's was enough to have them accused of dark connections.
So are the Kardashians simply the latest celebrity Illuminati messengers? Probably not – it's more likely they are just the latest celebrities to understand the publicity-spinning potential of Easter egg-laden promo shots that can be interpreted as having a darker meaning. But then again I would say that, wouldn't I? I could be part of the shadowy media cover-up squad.
• The commissioning of this article was suggested by Juicylicious. If there's a subject you'd like to see covered on Comment is free, please visit our You Tell Us page
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media 2013
["The Door Knob To Storkyrkan In Stockholm With The All Seeing Eye On It" on Shutterstock]
The future is here! Flying robots will, any second now, be delivering your Christmas books, DVDs and gadgets to your door within 30 minutes of you ordering them, thanks to a new initiative announced by Amazon on CBS News' 60 Minutes on Sunday.
It's a brave new world, a whole new paradigm. Or so you'd think if you read most of the breathless coverage about the announcement, which will only get worse: expect a torrent of turgid think-pieces in the next 48 hours about who's going to get "disrupted" as a result of this latest shake-up – and what it means for the US's already beleaguered postal service.
Here's the problem: it's all hot air and baloney. As Jeff Bezos, Amazon's CEO, acknowledged in the 60 Minutes segment, his plan to begin delivery by drone won't be enacted until around 2018 – and that's a hugely optimistic timeline.
The practical issues are manifold: the technology to make the drones operational in any sense is not yet in place. It's all well and good for the unmanned vehicles to fly to a particular GPS site, but how does it then find the package's intended recipient? How is the transfer of the package enacted? What stops someone else stealing the package along the way? And what happens when next door's kid decides to shoot the drone with his BB rifle?
None of that starts to come close to the legal minefield using drones in this way entails. At present, flying drones of this sort for commercial use would be illegal in the US. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which regulates this area, intends to make commercial drones legally viable and workable by 2015, but this deadline is all-but impossible: managing the skies with this much low-level traffic is a problem people are nowhere near solving. Opening up crowded urban areas full of terror targets to large numbers of flying platforms is always going to be packed with conflicting interests and difficulties. And all this has come before the first lawsuit caused after someone is injured by a faulty drone (or that one your neighbour shot), crashing down to earth.
What Jeff Bezos announced amounted, essentially, to an aspiration to change how his company delivers products, in about five years time, if technology advances and regulation falls his way. If his TV appearance hadn't included the magic word "drones", Bezos's vague aspirations to change an aspect of his company's logistics probably wouldn't have made waves. Lucky for him, he did – winning his company positive publicity just ahead of what is usually the biggest online shopping day of the year, the dreadfully named Cyber Monday.
Floating an exciting-but-impractical innovation for a swath of press coverage is such an old PR tactic you'd hope no one would fall for it, and yet everyone still does. In an industry dominated by page views, stuff people will click on that is easy to produce is an irresistible draw. Who cares if it actually stands up?
Bezos' neat trick has knocked several real stories about Amazon out of the way. Last week's Panorama investigation into Amazon's working and hiring practices, suggesting that the site's employees had an increased risk of mental illness, is the latest in a long line of pieces about the company's working conditions – zero-hour contracts, short breaks, and employees' every move tracked by internal systems. Amazon's drone debacle also moved discussion of its tax bill – another long-running controversy, sparked by the Guardian's revelation last year that the company had UK sales of £7bn but paid no UK corporation tax – to the margins. The technology giants – Amazon, Google, Microsoft et al – have have huge direct reach to audiences and customers, the money to hire swarms of PR and communications staff, and a technology press overwhelmingly happy to incredulously print almost every word, rather than to engage in the much harder task of actually holding them to account.
It's too late for the clickfarms already. But outlets and journalists who'd like to think of themselves as serious must stop regurgitating this crap. And, even more importantly, you,concerned citizen, must try to stop clicking on it.
The roll-out of the Affordable Care Act has hatched a spasm of obituaries for Obama's second term, and more than a few for Liberalism as We Know It. That's right, Error 404: Ideology Not Found. At best, pundits have surmised that Obama's popularity will never recover. Comparisons between the implementation of insurance exchanges and the Iraq War or Katrina, as infuriating as they are (how many times do we have to say it: Bush lied, people died; website crashed, people complained on Twitter) do suggest that a mid-term catastrophic failure can derail an entire presidential agenda. Charlie Cook, writing in The National Journal, had the most concise rebuttal of this theory: it's way too early to tell. Or, put as a critique of the logic behind the death notices: pundits tend to think that any given political situation is static, but the truth is that a variety of circumstances can change either voters' perspective or the real impact of presidential actions. Here's a few things that could lift Obama out of his slump.
1. Wait until you see the other guy
Obama benefits when he can function in full campaign mode and present an "apples to apples" comparison to voters. When the GOP primary ramps up, he'll get a chance to do this again. His last sustained high in approval came in November 2012; that 56% high-water mark was in the week after the Newtown shootings and many attributed it to a "rally around the flag" surge in patriotism, but the week previous – in the direct aftermath of the elections – it had been at 54%. In fact, Obama sporadic surges throughout 2012 all came after voters were given a chance to think about another specific politician doing the same specific job, most notably after the Democratic and Republican conventions in late summer.
The White House's attempts to push non-ACA stories is clearly an attempt to take advantage of this strength. Whereas the ACA has made it possible for the GOP to simply point at the mess and not necessarily offer solutions, when it comes to immigration reform or foreign policy, Obama has a chance to define himself against an existing set of competing ideas. Think of that situation as judging two applicants for a position: Obama interviews better. Contrast this to what happens when, say, you have two teams on a field playing a penalty-ridden scoreless game (such as during the budget negotiations): spectators are disgusted by both sides. (Some strategists in the GOP seem to believe that such chaos has at least short-term benefits for their side, hence their glee in perpetuating it.)
2. The Republican Party is fighting itself
The GOP's fraught internal battles have fractured it severely, perhaps irreparably (considering that many are asserting the demise of liberalism, I should probably make clear here that I'm sureconservatism will do just fine). While most commentators, including myself, have adopted the shorthand of "The Tea Party versus the establishment", the schisms range across ideological, attitudinal, generational and even regional lines. There is no reason to believe that that the debates will stay civil; indeed, they've already gotten pretty ugly. Some fist fights have broken through at the national level (Rand Paul versus Chris Christie, Ted Cruz versus John McCain, Boehner versus his caucus). Those simmering at the state level threaten party unity just as much, especially the split in Iowa GOP between a libertarian faction that gained control in 2012 and a legacy cohort that wants to regain the advantage and steer the First-in-the-Nation Caucus to anyone not named Rand Paul. Imagine a primary battle that starts with a drawn-out slugfest among Cruz, Rand and Christie.
In Ohio, Governor John Kaisch, once lauded as a lauded 2016 GOP presidential contender, now faces a barrage of criticism for his embrace of the ACA's Medicaid expansion. As long as the ACA stays symbol of all that's wrong with "big government", the message is damaging. But it could backfire if Kaisch gains re-election (as it looks like he will) using a defense of the Medicaid changes that, with the exception of a single word, could just as easily come from Elizabeth Warren as a Republican: "I think its critical that we're able to help people to help themselves to get them to work. … Conservatism means that you help people so they can help themselves and so they can enter in the economic strength of our country."
3. The success stories from the ACA will come out
The dysfunctional exchange websites have meant that ACA "success stories" – struggling families gaining health insurance they once could not afford – are all but buried, while conservatives push into that void the "horror stories" of relatively affluent self-insured households (on Fox at least, many of the featured case-studies seem to have existing ideological objections to the ACA). As the roll-out has continued, however, the trickle of stories about working-class families breathing easier (and thus contributing to a more robust economy) thanks to the ACA exchanges has gained strength. The numbers will eventual outweigh the anecdotes: Republicans have counted about about one million Californians as among those to whom Obama broke his "if you like it, you can keep it" promise. But it's estimated that about two million residents, including almost all of the holders of those cancelled policies, will receive subsidies to purchase insurance plans that pass the ACA minimum requirements (aka, better plans) that are also ultimately cheaper – even if the premiums are higher, their out-of-pocket expenses will go down thanks to fully covered preventive care, lower deductibles and no penalties for previously existing conditions.
The California numbers reflect analysis that takes into consideration not just cancelled policies but all those who might benefit from subsidies, but even if one sticks to the outcomes for those with cancelled plans, the picture is far from bleak – in North Carolina, 60% of those with cancelled policies will qualify for subsidies; in Florida, 66 percent; in Utah, 84% do. Between five and six million people who do not qualify for the Medicaid expansion and are currently uninsured – arguably the precise demographic for whom the ACA was created – will get subsidies that cancel out entirely the cost of the cheapest policies available, at least one million more Americans than have had their existing policies cancelled. The individual stories of these policy holders exist with or without a functioning federal website, and some reporters have found them, so they will just take longer to get out. But they will get out.
I'm not exactly sure what it is about the hit British TV series, Downton Abbey, that has enthralled so many of us. The scenery is great, Lady Mary's wardrobe is just fabulous, but there are plot holes so huge one could drive Lady Edith's car through them. I suspect the fascination it provokes has something to do with nostalgia – a hankering for a simpler time, when everyone knew their place and where the classes, though separate and unequal, were at least able to be polite to one other. Whatever it is that we find so charming about the series, however, we should try to keep in mind that the rampant inequality it celebrates is not something we should be hankering after.
America has its own real-life upstairs/downstairs thing going on at the moment, best embodied by the Walton clan, who own the lion's share of Walmart Stores, Inc. Walmart is the single largest private employer in America with a work force of some 1.3 million. Each of the four Walton's who have an interest in the stores increased their net worth by $7bn last year alone. Meanwhile, the company's sales associates, who make up the bulk of the work-force, earn an average of $8.81 per hour – less than the federal poverty level for a family of four.
So it's a bit like Downton Abbey on a bigger budget, most of which is allocated to the above the line players. While the Walton's, with their occasional charitable doings and their apparent detachment from reality, seem to feel very comfortable in their role as modern day Lord and Lady Granthams, their poverty-wage workers seem less inclined to imitate the subservient behavior of their below-stairs counterparts. And that's a good thing.
Today, Black Friday as it's known among shopaholics, a slew of protests are being planned outside some 1500 Walmart stores across the country to demand better pay and work conditions. I can only imagine what Downton's dowager countess (she, of "What is a weekend?" fame) would have to say if the workers at Downton Abbey dropped their pitchforks (or raised them perhaps) on one of the estate's busiest days of the year. I'm sure she would be shocked at the ingratitude of the Walmart employees, particularly since at least one Walmart store was recently kind enough to organize a food drive for its impoverished workers so they could enjoy a decent Thanksgiving meal. It's unlikely that the dowager would ever have come around to thinking that it might be better for everyone if the serving classes were given a chance to rise up the social ladder. But the Walmart bosses may someday learn that their disinclination to share the wealth may not be entirely in their best interests.
Although the Walton family made out like bandits last year and the outgoing CEO of Walmart Stores, Inc, Michael T Duke, took home nearly $20m in compensation, the company is not actually doing very well. The US stores have reported shrinking sales for three straight quarters. In a rare moment of clarity, the president and CEO of Walmart US, William Simon, attributed the drop in sales to the over stretched incomes of the low wage consumer the store typically attracts. He explained:
Their income is going down while food costs are not. Gas and energy prices, while they're abating, I think they're still eating up a big piece of the customer's budget.
The irony, of course, is that by paying so many of its 1.3 million employees poverty wages, and setting a low bar for wages across the board, the company is eating into its customer base and thus may be contributing to its own decline.
Writing about this issue recently, former secretary of labor, Robert Reich, made the comparison with Henry Ford's approach to wages. In an effort to boost sales of his Model T's, Ford decided to pay his own workers triple the average factory wage of the time. Ford would be called a socialist if he were alive today, and no doubt was called worse at the time. His cunning plan did work, though. By raising the wages of his own employees, wages for factory workers increased across the board. More workers were then in a position to buy the product Ford was trying to sell them and he made a killing.
With so many workers in America today being paid so little that they can't even afford to buy food, it's no wonder that even low price stores like Walmart are suffering a decline in sales. For now, however, the company seems content with the Downton Abbey model of doing business, where the top 1% get to monopolize the wealth and the long suffering workers are expected to keep a stiff upper lip about it.
The problem with this economic model is that it tends to crash under its own weight. As Nobel prize winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, wrote last year in Vanity Fair, if people like the Waltons (aka the 1%) are to survive and thrive, they should have the sense to know that "there would be no top of the pyramid without a solid base." The best thing the top brass at Walmart could do to preserve their own privileged status would be to raise wages for their workers. A recent study by the progressive thinktank Demos illustrated that the company could afford to pay its workers an additional $5.83 an hour (pdf), enough to bring their wages just above the poverty level, simply by ending the company's share-buyback program. This way prices could stay as they are but sales would increase as more workers would have more money to spend.
Even the dowager countess could get down with that scenario. So far, however, the Walton's and their ilk have resisted such a move at every turn, preferring instead to loll around in smoking jackets a la Lord Grantham does while his estate collapses around him. Hopefully the workers, who have more to fight for, will not be so foolish or complacent.
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