Monthly Archives: February 2022

On His Way to Theoretically Colonize Mars, Elon Musk Is Actually Colonizing South Texas – Jacobin magazine

Posted: February 28, 2022 at 7:44 pm

Elon Musk has for years been telling anyone who will hear him and plenty who would prefer not to that he intends to colonize Mars. On a podcast earlier this year, Musk said that his SpaceX ships would start transporting people to Mars within ten years. The best-case scenario, he said, was a mere five years.

Musk says that he is intent on colonizing Mars because a multi-planetary existence is the only hope for humanity after we render Earth inhabitable. But in his headlong rush to colonize another planet, what Musk has actually done, according to a number of activists and residents, is colonize a small border city in South Texas.

Brownsville, Texas, is one of the poorest cities in the country. The poverty rate is nearly 30 percent overall, and higher for children. Nearly 35 percent of residents under sixty-five years of age are without health insurance. The city was recently ranked as the unhealthiest in the country, with high rates of diabetes among other illnesses. Internet connectivity is a problem. The border militarization of the area following the attacks of September 11 hamstrung the economy the city shares with Matamoros, its sister city in Mexico. The challenges are numerous, and, in a sense, unsurprising. Brownsville is almost 94 percent Hispanic and Latino, its history studded with episodes of colonization and disinvestment.

Despite all of that, Brownsville isa remarkable place. Set on a beautiful stretch of the Gulf Coast, its a culturally rich city that has resisted assimilation into the American mainstream. The first time I really left Brownsville, I left for about six months for some internships, and I remember, almost a week in, I was like, Im ready to go back, says Emma Guevara, an organizer with the South Texas Environmental Justice Network.

Now Brownsvilles future may be out of its hands, and in Musks instead.

Musk began looking for a site to base his space travel project in 2011, somewhere near the equator and a large body of water. Sites in Florida and Georgia were reported as potential options. But in 2012, it was reported that a parcel of land near Boca Chica Beach, some twenty miles east of Brownsville on the Gulf Coast, was a leading candidate for the facility. That was enough for the Texas Legislature to spring into action,passing a $15 million incentive package and a bill to allow the temporary closure of state beaches during rocket launches to try to lure Musk. Cameron County kicked in a ten-year property tax abatement.

While the state maneuvered, SpaceX did too, buying real estate around the site and buying out homeowners in nearby Boca Chica Village. In 2014, SpaceX made the announcement: they were officially coming to South Texas.

Many were excited. We grew up in school being promised that this was going to be amazing, a saving grace to the Valley, says Caelan Mitchell-Bennett, who grew up in Brownsville. This was all that we were good for. This was what was going to lift us out of poverty: the worlds richest man wanted to live here. To the poorest city in America, thats everything.

From the beginning, it was clear that Musk thought little of the people and the culture he was joining. In 2018, Musk paid tribute to Brownsvilles rich history thusly: Weve got a lot of land with nobody around, and so if [a rocket] blows up, its cool.

For Juan Mancias, chair of Carrizo/Comecrudo tribe of Texas, its difficult to miss how the logic of colonialism suffuses SpaceXs presence in the Rio Grande Valley. If Musk imagines there is no one and nothing on Mars, that it is simply unclaimed land waiting for humanity to wring some value out of it, he seems to imagine Brownsville similarly. Theyve got this invader mentality, Mancias said, where the weaker people are just going to be decimated, and they consider themselves stronger because they have the money.

Musk has long said that his intention is to terraform Mars to transform the planet, where the average temperature is -81 degrees, so it resembles Earth and is similarly habitable. Terraforming comes from science fiction, and the term is primarily used to refer to altering other planets. But in his book The Nutmegs Curse, the Indian author Amitav Ghosh writes that there is no intrinsic reason why the concept of terraforming should not be applicable to planet Earth.

Musk is seeking, in a way, to terraform Boca Chica and Brownsville, to make this area of South Texas more supportive of the forms of human life Musk and SpaceX executives are willing to see and able to comprehend.

In August 2020, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, SpaceX added a job listing to its website seeking a resort development manager for Boca Chica. The manager would be responsible for supervising the construction of a luxury resort where space tourists those taking trips to Mars and the Moon in a SpaceX rocket ship or simply taking in the spectacle from Earth could stay in comfort and style. SpaceX is committed to developing this town into a 21st-century spaceport, the listing read.

Future plans aside, SpaceX has already shown flagrant disregard for the land and people of South Texas. SpaceX rockets have exploded on multiple occasions, leaving tidal flats and peoples front yards alike covered with debris. Noise and light pollution are constants. A liquified natural gas project intended to eventually transport 4 million tons of gas annually has residents nervous as well.

All of that land is being destroyed for buildings and launchpads to be built, Guevara said. There have been a lot of issues with ocelots being hit by cars because of the road closures or the traffic in general, and a lot of issues with birds and pelicans being hit as well.

Then there is the beach. As the Texas Observers Gus Bova highlighted in the fall, Boca Chica Beach is not just any strip of sand. It is, for many in Brownsville and the surrounding area, a treasure: a place where generations of local families have gone to fish, picnic, engage in community cleanups, and unwind in the South Texas heat. The beach is also a sacred gathering and trading site for the areas indigenous peoples. But since SpaceX started launching rockets next door, people have increasingly been unable to access their public beach or, in a few cases, have gotten stuck on it.

Mitchell-Bennett said that, in February 2020, his father and sister were at the beach when a SpaceX prototype burst apart during a pressure test and the only road from the beach back to Brownsville was closed. Mitchell-Bennetts family members did not arrive home until 3 AM. Musk tweeted a video of the test failure with the caption, So . . . how was your night?

Under the terms of the original agreement, SpaceX is supposed to give two weeks notice if it wants to shut the beach down for testing and is only permitted to shut it down for three hundred hours per year. In practice, that three hundred hours has not been enforced, and the two weeks notice has at times turned into just a days notice or less. Guevara said that they often get text messages multiple times per day announcing that the beach is closed effective immediately.

For many in Brownsville and the Rio Grande Valley, all of this inconvenience is a bargain worth making to have Musk bringing jobs, investment, and positive attention to a community and an area of the country that has for so long been neglected. For others, there is nothing new or exciting about a wealthy and powerful outsider bulldozing his way through this part of Texas in pursuit of more wealth and power.

What are we to them in the end aside from cheap labor? Its just insulting, said Michelle Serrano, a communications strategist with Voces Unidas RGV. Ultimately, what Brownsville is right now is not just militarized on all sides, its privatized on all sides. And we are just the workforce that is being utilized as a means to an end. Well fill in the gaps that nobody else wants to fill because weve done so forever.

SpaceX has hired its share of South Texans. But many of the jobs it offers, particularly the highest-paying jobs, require advanced degrees in a town where fewer than 20 percent of residents have graduated from college. As a result, many SpaceX employees have arrived in Brownsville from elsewhere in the country driving up housing costs in the city by nearly 25 percent in the last year alone. The Brownsville metropolitan area and the entirety of the Rio Grande Valley is already one of the least affordable places to live in Texas, a state that includes a capital city where rents rose 40 percent last year.

It appears that Musk and SpaceX are trying to change Brownsville via other avenues as well. Last year, shortly after tweeting out a plea for engineers, technicians, and builders to move to Brownsville and bring their friends along, Musk donated $10 million to Brownsville for ambiguous downtown revitalization. In furtherance of that goal, Musks foundation tossed more money to the city to hire a Los Angelesbased muralist who painted a massive six-thousand-square-foot mural on the side of the old Capitol Theater downtown centered around the letters BTX a moniker that Guevara said no one in Brownsville is familiar with.

The mural has continued to be a lightning rod in the new year. Just last week, a local activist and coworker of Guevaras was arrested for allegedly vandalizing the mural with the words Gentrified Stop SpaceX. The small act drew a significant response from Brownsvilles pro-SpaceX mayor Trey Mendez, who posted the activists mugshot to his public Facebook account and wrote that the City of Brownsville takes all crimes, especially those to city property, very seriously.

Others in Brownsville feel that there are more important matters to attend to than the public persecution of someone charged with a misdemeanor.

People see a billionaire coming in and trying to build stuff, and its bad news, Guevara said. Because weve come to learn that rich people showing up to our community usually doesnt mean good things for us and the only people who actually believe those things are the people who are usually richer than the rest of us and are deluded into thinking that they can reach that level of capital. Its very, very textbook.

Of the people whove moved to Brownsville to work at SpaceX in the last four years, Mitchell-Bennett says, They are somewhat hostile. The original SpaceX employees from when the first rocket pad was built called themselves Mudders, because, they say, When we got there, there was nothing but mud.

All of the investment from and excitement about Musk, from the remaking of Boca Chica to the downtown Brownsville mural, seem aimed at crafting a new urban identity unmoored from the experience of people with roots that run decades and centuries deep in the area.

Five hundred years ago, they showed up in this land here, Mancias said. They came here for one thing: to take resources and export them back to where they came from. Five hundred years later, its still happening.

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On His Way to Theoretically Colonize Mars, Elon Musk Is Actually Colonizing South Texas - Jacobin magazine

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Myles Cosgrove also won’t testify in Hankison trial citing 5th Amendment rights – WLKY Louisville

Posted: at 7:43 pm

Myles Cosgrove also won't testify in Hankison trial citing 5th Amendment rights

Updated: 3:20 PM EST Feb 28, 2022

It looks like neither ex-LMPD officer who fired shots along with Brett Hankison the night Breonna Taylor died will testify at his trial.The trial for Hankison, who was indicted on wanton endangerment charges, began last week.The night Taylor was killed by gunfire in March 2020, three officers pulled their triggers -- Hankison, John Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove.Both were set to take the stand, but Mattingly invoked his Fifth Amendment right before the trial began, and now, Cosgrove is doing the same.In criminal cases, the Fifth Amendment guarantees the right to a grand jury, forbids double jeopardy and protects against self-incrimination.On Monday, both attorneys agreed and a judge ruled that he "does have a legitimate Fifth Amendment privilege that then makes him an unavailable witness for the purposes of our trial."The trial resumes on Tuesday.Trial coverage:Day 1 - Breonna Taylor's neighbor recounts bullets whizzing through his apartmentDay 2 -Jurors hear his interview from days after Breonna Taylor raidDay 3 - Jurors taken to Breonna Taylor's apartment

It looks like neither ex-LMPD officer who fired shots along with Brett Hankison the night Breonna Taylor died will testify at his trial.

The trial for Hankison, who was indicted on wanton endangerment charges, began last week.

The night Taylor was killed by gunfire in March 2020, three officers pulled their triggers -- Hankison, John Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove.

Both were set to take the stand, but Mattingly invoked his Fifth Amendment right before the trial began, and now, Cosgrove is doing the same.

In criminal cases, the Fifth Amendment guarantees the right to a grand jury, forbids double jeopardy and protects against self-incrimination.

On Monday, both attorneys agreed and a judge ruled that he "does have a legitimate Fifth Amendment privilege that then makes him an unavailable witness for the purposes of our trial."

The trial resumes on Tuesday.

Trial coverage:

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Myles Cosgrove also won't testify in Hankison trial citing 5th Amendment rights - WLKY Louisville

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Trump lawyer says whole family may plead the fifth amendment in probe into their finances – The Independent

Posted: at 7:43 pm

A lawyer working on behalf of the Trump family has told a right-wing news outlet that she may yet advise her clients to plead the fifth amendment as a long-running investigation into their finances closes in on them.

Speaking on Newsmax, Alina Habba remarked that the Trumps had been put between a rock and a hard place.

I havent made a determination on what I think is best, she said when asked by the host if her clients would be invoking their protection against self-incrimination.

The investigation in question is a probe into the Trump real estate empires business practices, specifically allegations that properties were deliberately and dramatically over- and undervalued to minimise tax burdens and obtain more favourable loan conditions.

It is being led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, who last week succeeded in her effort to obtain testimony from Donald Trump and his children Ivanka and Donald Jr. A judge ruled that the three can be questioned under oath, thwarting an effort by the family to block her from questioning them on the basis that she is politically biased.

In the Newsmax interview, Ms Habba laid into Ms James along the same lines, appearing to confirm that the Trumps are intent on obstructing her. We are going on all avenues against Letitia James, she said, not just with the courts, and it has to be stopped.

"And people in this state should really be frightened if youre a real estate tycoon, and you have valuations of property and you happen to be on the other side of politics with Letitia James.

She and the host then joked about the allegations, which they mused are not so unlike the supposedly routine overvaluing of residential property on the everyday American residential real estate market. (Mr Trump is accused of overvaluing some of his properties by a factor of 10.)

Mr Trumps hopes of avoiding scrutiny were recently dealt a severe blow when his longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA, abruptly broke off its relationship with him and the Trump Organization and declared that the last decades worth of his financial statements should no longer be regarded as reliable.

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Letters to the editor for Wednesday, February 23, 2022 – News-Press

Posted: at 7:43 pm

Letter writers| Fort Myers News-Press

Florida House Bill 1557 titled Parental Rights In Education sounds benign doesn't it? However, part of the intent of the bill is to shut down discussions on sexual orientation and gender identity in classrooms. Why are we being asked to treat these subjects as shameful or offensive? Why are we asked to single out a group of people who can't and shouldn't have to change who they are? An open discussion of differences done in a supportive atmosphere free from judgment will foster empathy, tolerance and compassion, not derision.

Donald Howard, Naples

The Parental Rights in Educationbill is what a writer is referring to in his emotional appeal to have it defeated.

Having taught high school he is very erudite. However, I suspect that he has been co-opted and mentored by the LGBT+ lobby.

This legislation is in no way forcing a bias in our school system nor would it ban the word gay,It simply would protect children from teachers and other school officials who seek to indoctrinate them with gender ideology and pushing discussions on sexual orientation. It would also require schools to be transparent and get permission from any health services their child receives.

The writer's appeal to reject the bill because its passage would permit bullying or diminisha respectful classroom environment is indeed a straw man argument. These are disciplinary problems.

This bill is not two steps backward but a great leap forward in re-engaging parents in the education of their children.

Rev.Michael P. Orsi, Naples

Swearing in under oath in a courtroom or before Congress seems to be the kryptonite of the Trump cultists. Donald Trump stated that only guilty individuals take the Fifth Amendment. His son Eric took the Fifth Amendment more than500 times under oath when testifying about Trumps business practices. Based on a recent court ruling, Mr. Trump and his other two children may themselves soon get the chance to validate Trumps belief that only guilty parties take the Fifth. I hope good citizens takenotice, but rest assured, should Mr. Trump and his offspring invoke the Fifth Amendment or give self-incriminating testimony, you will not hear of it on the Fox network. During Hillary Clintons more than11 hours of under oath televised testimony before the Republican-led Benghazi witch hunt,she never took the Fifth Amendment once. Hmmm. Now those Republicans known to be involved in planning to overturn the 2020 presidential election are running for the hills rather than face having to defend their actions leading up to and on the day that will truly live in infamy in this countrys history. They could of course take the Tucker Carlson approach as his lawyer stipulated in court that no one can literally believe the facts that Carlson tells them.Problem is, it does not appear other Trump cultists were listening.

Thomas Minor, Colonel, USMC (retired), Bonita Springs

A gubernatorial candidate in Wisconsin along with others in a number of states are trying to decertify the electoral votes awarded to President Biden in an attempt to reinstall Donald Trump as president. There is no pathway in the law or Constitution for this to occur and yet they persist. Question: Why are these persons not being charged with sedition and/or insurrection? They are actively trying to overthrow the current government of the United States, which is a crime. Charge them. Prosecute them. Enough of this nonsense. More than60 lawsuits and not one person has offered ANY legally sufficient proof of fraud affecting the outcome of the last presidential election. Time to move on. Put a stop to the nonsense now!

Bruce Goldstein,Ave Maria

The Florida House budget proposal punishes 12 counties to the tune of $200 million for requiring face masks last year -- a district-wide policy that defied Gov.DeSantis' executive order banning such mandates. Be reminded that the federal agency Centers for Disease Control (CDC), President Biden's administration and the mainstream medical community all strongly endorsed the wearing of face masks in 2021.

The affected 12 districts followed science. These 12 superintendents demonstrated leadership, courage and rational thinking -- attributes that education seeks to instill in its students.The 12 counties placed greater importance upon safeguarding the welfare of their children, staff and larger community rather than succumbing to political whim that endangered the public good. If the House budget retains this egregiously punitivescheme, those county schoolchildrenwill bear the brunt of House members' spiteful retribution.

James L. DeBoy, Fort Myers

In arecent letter, the writer states that he, and millions of like-minded people, are speaking up for babies whose mothers are seeking an abortion. I would strongly suggest that he imagine what the future holds for unwanted children.

I worked in British prisons for 20 years and met countless inmates who blamed their miserable childhoods for leading them into drugs and/or crime.

Being an unwanted child in any circumstances causes immeasurable heartache. It leads to feelings of loneliness, sorrow and a sense of not being worthy. Unwanted children are often victims of abuse and neglect, leading to further emotional damage.

No matter what the law says, women will continue to find ways to end unwanted pregnancies. It's a devastating decision to have to make, but it's usually the best decision for both mother and child. The very least we can do is ensure these women get the support and health care they need.

What those of us who support a womans right to choose wantis for every child to be a wanted child.

Nina Mold, Naples

Sometimes you read news that really irritates you but you let it go.Well this morning I just couldn't just let it go, News-Press Feb. 19 article on Florida budget -- naming a new bill,quoting, "And since Republicans control the House, it is formally named the Budgeting for Inflation that Drives Elevated Needs, or BIDEN Fund."

Grow up, Republicans, and acquire some class!

Arlene S. McCarthy, North FortMyers

The TSA has seen a large rise in guns found in carry-on luggage and is seeking ways to prevent this. Enforcement of the penalty for doing so is all over the place. People who carry guns have a huge responsibility and if they lack the ability to keep track of their guns, there should be huge penalties.

I propose a new federal law: no pleading ignorance, no copping to a lesser charge or hand slapping. First offense: gun is surrendered and destroyed. A $10,000 fine. If fine is not paid in 30 days, offender is placed on a no fly list. Second offense, $15,000 fine, gun surrendered and destroyed and offender is placed on an automatic no fly list for six months even after the fine is paid.

Once the word gets out about this new law and a few idiots get busted, the incidents at the airports will plummet.

Denni Brown, Bonita Springs

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4 New Things We Just Learned About The Special Counsel Investigation – The Federalist

Posted: at 7:43 pm

Since Friday, several developments have exposed more of the behind-the-scenes details of the special counsel investigation into Spygate, including the public release of the deposition of Tech Executive-1, Rodney Joffe. Joffes deposition, coupled with other details previously known, reveals several significant facts while highlighting the many questions that remain unanswered.

Heres what we learned and what investigative trails require further probing.

Earlier this month, the Russian-connected Alfa Bank filed a motion in a Florida state court seeking an extension of time to serve the numerous John Doe defendants it had sued there in June 2020. Alfa Bank had sued John Doe, et al. as stand-ins for the defendants it claimed were responsible for executing a highly sophisticated cyberattacking scheme to fabricate apparent communications between [Alfa Bank] and the Trump Organization in the months leading up to the 2016 presidential election.

After filing suit, Alfa Bank began discovery in an attempt to learn the identity of the individuals responsible for what the large, privately owned Russian bank alleged was the creation of a fake computer trail connecting it to the Trump Organization. Among others Alfa Bank sought information from was Joffe, the man identified as Tech Executive-1 in Special Counsel John Durhams indictment against former Hillary Clinton campaign attorney Michael Sussmann.

Joffes attempts to quash Alfa Banks subpoena failed. On February 11, 2022, the tech executive alleged by Durham to have exploited sensitive data from an executive branch office of the federal government to mine for derogatory information on Trump sat for his deposition. On Friday, an internet sleuth discovered the public filing of Joffes deposition, which revealed that Joffe had finally been deposed by Alfa Bank.

In addition to revealing that Joffes deposition had taken place, the transcript from the deposition established that Durham had asked to interview Joffe more than a year earlier, but Joffe refused to speak with Durhams team. After Joffe refused to submit to a voluntary interview, the special counsels office subpoenaed him to testify before a grand jury.

Joffe told Alfa Bank lawyers that he refused to answer questions before the grand jury, exercising his Fifth Amendment rights. The former Neustar tech executive likewise asserted his Fifth Amendment rights in response to a subpoena for documents served by the special counsels office.

Friday also saw Joffes attorneys, Steven Tyrrell and Eileen Citron, file notices of appearances for Joffe as a proposed intervenor in the special counsels criminal case against Sussmann. Joffe could seek to intervene in the case to challenge a subpoena, to seek a protective ordermaybe because of purported attorney-client communications Joffe had with Sussmann or to prevent Durham from discussing his alleged role in public filingsor to otherwise protect a legal right or interest.

We should know more shortly, when Joffes attorney files the related motion to intervene. That motion is likely to come within the next week or so, given that on Friday, the court in United States v. Sussmann scheduled a hearing for March 7, 2022, to address potential conflicts of interests between Sussmann and his current attorneys, and Joffe is likely interested in ensuring Durhams team does not further implicate him in the matter.

The transcript of Joffes deposition testimony discovered on Friday consisted mainly of the former tech executive refusing to answer questions because of the special counsels pending investigation, with Joffe responding to Alfa Banks inquiries by pleading the Fifth. However, several times Joffe responded to questions about specific individuals by saying he had not heard of the person or organization.

One such exchange proved intriguing and seemingly contradictory to an email obtained pursuant to a Right-to-Know request served on Georgia Tech, the university where two of the researchers who allegedly mined data for Joffe worked.

Just a few questions more, Alfa Banks attorney began, before asking, Mr. Joffe, are you a member of the so-called Union of Concerned Nerds as described by L. Jean Camp? Basically, shes used it as a description to describe a group of computer researchers who search for malware and other malicious content and actors on the internet, the attorney for the Russian bank continued.

Joffe responded that he cant remember having heard that term, before adding: And I dont belong to any organization. However, when asked whether he was a member of a group of individuals who sought to investigate potential foreign interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election or compiled supposed evidence of the Alfa Bank server connecting to the Trump campaign, Joffe pled the Fifth.

In posing these questions, Alfa Bank sought to connect Joffe to the reports of the supposed secret communication channel between it and the Trump administration and specifically to Slates reporting from October 31, 2016, headlined: Was a Trump Server Communicating With Russia?

Author Franklin Foer opened the article by highlighting a small, tightly knit community of computer scientists . . . some at cybersecurity firms, some in academia, some with close ties to three-letter federal agencies, who claimed to have discovered the Alfa Bank-Trump server connections. Foer then quoted Indiana University computer scientist L. Jean Camps wry formulation of the group: Were the Union of Concerned Nerds.

Apparently, Joffe was not in on Camps joke, even if he was in on the research, as Durhams indictment of Sussmann suggests.

But what about Joffes second claim that I dont belong to any organization? As I reported last week, a random email included in a trove of documents provided by Georgia Tech in response to a Right-to-Know Request showed Joffe forwarding an email sent to cw-general@ops-trust.net to university researcher Manos Antonakakis. That Joffe had received the ops-trust.net email and then forwarded it to Antonakakis proves important because Ops-Trust matches many of the details included in the Slate article (and later two New Yorker articles) discussing the researchers behind the Alfa Bank claims.

For instance, Ops-Trust is aself-describedhighly vetted community of security professionals, which includes, among other experts, DNS administrators, DNS registrars, and law enforcement officials. Membership in Ops-Trust is extremely limited, with new candidates accepted only if nominated and vouched for by their peers.

Unfortunately, Alfa Banks attorney did not quiz Joffe on Ops-Trust, but his denial of belonging to any organization raises several questions. What was his connection to Ops-Trust? Did Joffe use that connection to obtain non-public information to mine for data to destroy Trump? Is he no longer connected to Ops-Trust, and is that why he claimed not to be a member of any organization?

Requests last week to Joffes attorney and other individuals connected to Ops-Trust seeking information concerning Joffes continued involvement with Ops-Trust went unanswered. A request to Camp on whether she was a member of Ops-Trust in 2016 and whether she knew Joffe or the Georgia Tech researchers through that organization also went unanswered.

In the special counsels criminal case against Sussmann, Durhams team revealed that Sussmann had provided the evidence of the Alfa Bank-Trump covert communication channel to the FBI on September 19, 2016 and shared an updated version of the Alfa Bank allegations with the CIA on February 9, 2017. According to the special counsels office, Sussmann also provided the CIA data that purported to show traffic at Trump-related locations connecting to the internet protocol or IP addresses of a supposedly rare Russian mobile phone provider.

The questioning of Joffe by Alfa Banks attorney now suggests Sussmann may have also provided that same data to the Senate Armed Services Committee.

It has been known for some time that after Americans elected Trump, Democrats regrouped and continued to push the Russia collusion hoax, including the Alfa Bank angle. The New Yorker, in a 2018 article rehashing the Alfa Bank claims and referring to Joffe with the pseudonym Max, wrote that after Trumps inauguration two Democrat senators had reviewed the data assembled by Maxs group.

One of the Democratic senators approached a former Senate staffer named Daniel Jones and asked him to give the data a closer look, The New Yorker article continued. Jones then spent a year researching the Alfa Bank allegations and writing a report for the Senate.

According to The New Yorkers coverage, then, the senators had the data and provided it to Jones. Jones confirmed that sequence when a former Sen. Dianne Feinstein staffer and founder of the left-wing The Democracy Integrity Project sued Alfa Bank seeking to keep confidential his deposition testimony and documents provided to the Russian bank.

In his complaint, Jones stated in court filings that in early-to-mid 2017, the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee asked him to research the alleged connections between Alfa Bank and the Trump Organization. Specifically, the Senate committee requested that Mr. Jones evaluate information it had received about DNS look-ups between Alfa Bank servers and Trump Organization servers.

Significantly, Jones stated that the Senate Committee informed him that the source of the DNS records had a history of providing accurate information, a lengthy history of reliably assisting the U.S. law enforcement and intelligence communities and was an individual or entity with sensitive contracts with the U.S. government. Jones added that he met with a representative for the source of the DNS records at the committees request.

While Jones does not identify that source or the sources representative with whom he met, in Joffes deposition, Alfa Bank lawyers stated that Jones had testified he had liaised with Mr. Joffe on various issues related to the server allegations. The sensitive contracts language from Jones filing also seems eerily like Durhams charge that Joffe had exploited internet data, including some accessed under sensitive government contracts.

Alfa Banks questioning of Joffe also seems to suggest a similar theory: Were you aware that Mr. Sussmann provided documents including white papers and data files to Congress? Alfa Banks counsel asked, clarifying that she meant not just the actual senators or representatives but also their staff. And did you direct Mr. Sussmann to provide such documents to Congress? the Russian bank attorney continued.

While Joffe refused to answer the questions, again pleading the fifth, Joffe admitted in his deposition that he knew Kirk McConnell. McConnell worked as a staffer for Sen. Jack Reed and in that role McConnell served as a contact for Jones related to the Alfa Bank research.

If Sussmann had provided the Alfa Bank data to the two Democrat senators on behalf of Joffe, as appears possible from these details, that would represent the fourth time Sussmann had served as an intermediary for Joffe with federal officials: In addition to the FBI and CIA, we know from Durhams filings that Sussmann also provided the DOJs inspector general information purporting to show that Joffe had observed that a specific OIG employees computer was seen publicly in Internet traffic and was connecting to a Virtual Private Network in a foreign country.

While at this point there is no evidence that Joffes tip to the DOJs inspector general connects to the other efforts undertaken by Joffe and his lawyer to push a Trump-Russia conspiracy theory within the Deep State, questions remain that are only heightened by the possibility that the Joffe-Sussmann team also fed senators on the Armed Services Committee their intel.

How exactly did Joffe see this internet connection? Did he exploit any government or private data? Was he specifically watching computer traffic at the DOJ? Where else was he monitoring internet connections? And why?

Of course, the more global question remains as well: When will the corrupt media begin reporting on the biggest political scandal of the last century?

Margot Cleveland is a senior contributor to The Federalist. She is also a contributor to National Review Online, the Washington Examiner, Aleteia, and Townhall.com, and has been published in the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prizethe law schools highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. As a stay-at-home homeschooling mom of a young son with cystic fibrosis, Cleveland frequently writes on cultural issues related to parenting and special-needs children. Cleveland is on Twitter at @ProfMJCleveland. The views expressed here are those of Cleveland in her private capacity.

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‘Scattered All Over the Earth’: Yoko Tawada’s utopia rejects present-day conventions – The Japan Times

Posted: at 7:41 pm

It is perhaps unsurprising that a novel written by a Japanese author living in Germany, who regularly writes in both her native and adopted tongues, should focus so much on the nature of communication. The connection between language and identity is at the heart of Scattered All Over the Earth, a new novel by Yoko Tawada, translated from Japanese into English by Margaret Mitsutani.

Scattered All Over the Earth, by Yoko TawadaTranslated by Margaret Mitsutani256 pagesNEW DIRECTIONS

The novels protagonist, Hiruko, is a climate refugee cast adrift in northern Europe after Japan has succumbed to an unspecified environmental disaster. The Japanese populace is scattered all over the Earth, and it has been a long time since Hiruko has spoken to anyone in her first language. She works as a storyteller for children in Denmark, translating folk tales and legends into Panska, a language of her own invention based on a blend of Scandinavian languages. Armed with Panska and her own positive, can-do attitude, she is able to converse with anyone she meets but still yearns to speak Japanese.

This desire sets her on a journey that is something of a Canterbury Tales for the 21st century. As Hiruko travels around Europe, she collects a band of lost souls, each with a story to tell. Each chapter is told by a different character, giving rise to an orchestra of voices intermingling, echoing, reinterpreting and retranslating one another. This is a thoroughly modern novel that reflects the seismic changes technology and globalization have wrought on humanity.

The voices are all those of young people, comfortable with the idea of having fluid identities and being rootless. Toward the end of the novel, the rag-tag group congregates in a closed restaurant, where their connections, fears and expectations are laid clear across a symbolic roundtable. There is no judgement or rejection; acceptance is the watchword of the group until one of their mothers arrives and begins forcing old-fashioned ideas on them. She categorizes them by race, gender and nationality effectively excluding Akash, a transgender woman from India, because she doesnt neatly fit into the rigid definitions the older generation clings to.

Although the novel has been described as dystopian, in actuality, it is supremely utopian. Tawada looks at contemporary identity politics as a revolution that can bring people together, a potential way out of the hideous mess weve made of the world.

Author Yoko Tawada | NINA SUBIN

The dystopia is the present day in which the reader lives, the one remembered by the characters in flashbacks, where people fear increasingly authoritarian governments and nations are paralyzed in the face of an impending climate crisis. Hamstrung by an inability to see beyond the weight of systems and institutions, the worlds inaction literally sinks Japan beneath the waves. The broken society, for Hiruko and her friends, is behind them. Now they are rebuilding a new, better future severed from the binaries, assumptions and demands of their parents generation.

Through Hirukos use of Panska, Tawada proposes that identities tied to nationalities, race and gender are holding us back as a species. It isnt unusual for multilingual speakers to fashion a new personality to go with a new language our very thought processes adjust to fit into the rhythms of an existing language and culture. For Hiruko, however, the process is reversed. She does not change who she is to adapt to a certain language. Rather, she creates a way of communication that is simple, open and friendly. The honesty of Panska arises from Hirukos nature, and because the invented language doesnt stem from a national identity, it isnt synonymous with a specific culture. It is, in Joycean terms, free from the nightmare of history.

Tawadas real skill as a novelist is in making none of this didactic. Instead, she uses the polyphonic structure of the novel and the natural positivity of her characters to carry the argument, allowing the reader to lose themselves in the beautiful language, vivid descriptions of near-future Europe and the exciting thought experiments of a post-climate crisis renaissance.

This is not a novel for grumpy curmudgeons confused by pronouns or those who hark back to a simpler past; this is the first great utopian novel of the 21st century. Through Hiruko, Tawada encourages us to reject the exclusive, miserly conservative tendencies of the day and embrace the promise of a youthful revolution.

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'Scattered All Over the Earth': Yoko Tawada's utopia rejects present-day conventions - The Japan Times

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Apartment Building Will Ruin Utopia, Queens Residents Fear – Patch.com

Posted: at 7:41 pm

BAYSIDE, QUEENS An apartment building is going to ruin Utopia, Auburndale residents say.

Developers have city permission to build a three-story apartment complex on Utopia Parkway and 37th Avenue, much to the chagrin of residents who cherish the block's single-family homes and Tudor-style duplexes.

"The city is all too willing to diminish the quality of life for hard working people in the outer boroughs," wrote a commenter in a private neighborhood Facebook group.

Added another, the building will "look like a sore thumb."

The three-unit Auburndale complex will stand 40 feet tall and feature a backyard and two parking spots, records show.

City records name the owner as Rong Chen of NYDC GROUP LLC and estimate the job will cost about $920,550.

The Department of Buildings issued a signed work order for the new building on Feb. 8, city records show.

News of the development angered neighbors of the Bayside, Queens Facebook group, most of whom contended that the apartment building would worsen neighborhood problems such as a short supply of parking spaces.

"People already have trouble visiting," one commenter said.

Arguments over new construction are not new for neighbors in Bayside. Locals often push back against new apartments and schools alike on the basis of area overcrowding.

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Wars don’t start when the first bullets whistle – PRESSENZA International News Agency

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Every war is a disaster and an anachronism. There is no because that justifies the destruction of human life.

By Javier Tolcachier

But war does not begin when the first bullets whistle, but long before.

War begins when the possessors of nuclear weapons hold the worlds population hostage and refuse to denuclearise the planet once and for all.

War begins when military bases are maintained outside ones own territory for decades, forcing other peoples to accept conditions of obedience.

War begins when nationalist slogans are adopted and differences between brotherly peoples are exacerbated.

All these elements are present in the current conflict between Russia and Ukraine, whose government in this case is just a painted cardboard in a larger geopolitical game.

It is the struggle between the supremacism and historical belligerence of the United States and its extended arm NATO, which today represent the last phase of the Western colonial world and are trying by all possible means to stop the rise and partnership of the powers in the East, such as China, Russia and the security pact called the Shanghai Cooperation, which also includes four other Central Asian countries.

It must be said that the conflict in Ukraine is also being used to once again discipline and calumniate Europeans and prevent them from turning their gaze fully towards Asia, participating in Chinas Belt and Road project, in the Asian Investment Bank and continuing to increase trade with Russia.

Nor should we forget the recent events in Belarus and Kazakhstan, which, although they constitute a legitimate expression of protest by the peoples against stagnant rulers, from a geopolitical point of view can be interpreted as meddling strategies to penetrate areas adjacent to Russias border and advance through the heart of Central Asia towards strategic positions.

Nor can economic interests, with which moral business trolls gloat.

In Latin America and the Caribbean, most governments called for dialogue and a peaceful solution, which is undoubtedly a path consistent with the Peace Zone Declaration achieved by the region at the CELAC Summit in 2014.

It is necessary to understand that we are heading towards a unique planetary civilisation, in which we will have to embrace a new utopia, the utopia corresponding to this period of History: that of building a Universal Human Nation, where different peoples and cultures fit, where only violence, discrimination or misery have no place.

We know when wars begin and why: only to maintain or conquer power, which cannot be justified.

That is why we also know when wars and invasions must end, not only this war but also all other wars: Right now.

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Stathis’ A Therapy for Dying Democracies – The National Herald

Posted: at 7:41 pm

As threats to democracy everywhere seem to be increasing, the discussions surrounding the threats rarely offer practical solutions to the problems plaguing the system. A Therapy for Dying Democracies by Theodore C. Stathis is an impressive book offering insights as well as a plan of action for saving democracy which is especially timely at this particular moment in history.

The books description notes that the world economic crisis and the provocatively unjust distribution of wealth have exposed the real crisis, which is a political one. All the malfunctioning democracies that are gradually growing into oligarchic governments have become the main focus of many political experts.

Books about democracy including such titles as Are Democracies Dying? and How Democracies Die have reinvigorated global interest in ancient Greek democracy and even though many publications refer to it, they do not propose any functional and substantial solutions that keep up with the present; as a result, direct democracy is being rejected, not only by the enemies of this political system, but also by well-meaning prominent figures and public officials, who consider it as being nothing but a utopia, Stathis writes.

A Therapy for Dying Democracies contains a remedy for our modern malfunctioning democracies, which suffer from a lack of democracy. Actually, the dying democracies, one by one, are removing their democratic masks and reveal their real identity, which is oligarchic in nature, Stathis notes.

A Therapy for Dying Democracies is a unique proposal and shows how the operational difficulties of ancient Greek democracy can be bypassed, and presents for the first time worldwide an effective way that shows how true democratic governments can be established today.

Stathis has the equivalent of a B.Sc. degree from the Technical University in Vienna, as well as a M.Sc. and an Eng. Sc.D. degree from Columbia University, New York. He is president of the Foundation for Mediterranean Studies. He has worked as an assistant researcher at Columbia University and as an assistant professor at Manhattan College, New York, and at New York University, where he also worked as a researcher. He was a scientific expert, and later a lecturer, at the University of Patras, and a visiting professor at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki.

Stathis was president of Advanced Acoustical Research Inc. in New York, executive director of N.B.G. Bancassurance, president and executive director of National Capital S.A. (National Bank of Greece Subsidiaries), and Adviser to the Board of the National Bank of Greece, as well as president of the Musical and Educational Organization of Greece (Athens Camerata Friends of Music Orchestra).

He served for 15 years as a Member of the Greek Parliament, and as an Undersecretary for the Greek Ministry of Defense, as a Deputy Minister for the Greek Ministry of Culture, and as Minister of Agriculture.

He is the composer of four operas (three of which have been performed at the Athens Concert Hall- Megaron Mousikis): Antigone, based on the play by Sophocles (see excerpts on YouTube), Opus Elgin: The Destruction of the Parthenon, Alcestis based on the play by Euripides, and Theodora (set in the time of Justinian); he has also composed a number of quartets for strings, and numerous songs. As a writer, he has published several articles on science and politics, and is the author of National Defense and Its Achilles Heel, In Search of a Model for Democracy Today, and The Trojan Horse of Democracy.

A Therapy for Dying Democracies by Theodore C. Stathis is available online: https://bit.ly/3IuqhAG.

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Stathis' A Therapy for Dying Democracies - The National Herald

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York Theatre Royal to host brand new show this March | York Press – York Press

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York Theatre Royal will be hosting Utopia Theatres production of Heres What She Said to Me on March 17 and March 18.

The production has been developed and will be directed by Mojisola Elufowoju who graduated from York St John with a degree in Theatre and Directing in 2011.

She said: I found almost that Id found myself when I did that particular course. I knew what I wanted to do. You just try your hand at something, and you just know that something about it feels within the skills youve already got.

Heres What She Said To Me was written by Oladipo Agboluaje after conversations with Mojisola Elufowoju.

The production will combine drama with music, poetry and more to tell a moving story.

Mojisola Elufowoju said: We are so excited to finally be able to take our production of Heres What She Said to Me on tour. Since its first staging in 2020, we always intended to bring the production to audiences across the country.

Tickets are available here, at the York Theatre Royal website.

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