Category Archives: culture

A Chinese Firewall

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…erected by the European Court of Justice.  The ruling is a partial victory for Alphabet’s Google subsidiary in a “right to be forgotten” case brought by Google as it appealed a fine imposed by the French watchdog, the National Commission for Computing and Liberties, which wanted Google to delete all references worldwide to personal data an EU citizen wanted “forgotten.”

The ECJ ruled that the EU’s “right” applied only within the EU—the partial victory.  However, it added that

search engine operators such as Google must put in place measures to discourage internet users from going beyond European borders to obtain information.
Dereferencing must “if necessary, be accompanied by measures that effectively prevent or, at the very least, seriously discourage Internet users” from accessing “via a version of this engine and outside the EU, the links that are the subject of the request,” the court added.

And so it begins in Europe, too.

More on “Pressure”

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The whistleblower’s stuff has been released, and his cover letter and the complaint itself can be read in their entirety here.

A couple things jump out at me right from the start.

One that’s readily apparent in the cover letter is that the whistleblower repeatedly makes clear he has no knowledge of the events about which he claims such concern—it’s all related to him by carefully unnamed source—often “multiple” sources.  He does cite, in attempts to corroborate, remarks publicly made Rudy Giuliani, President Trump, and selected Ukrainian officials, but those remarks are removed from the context in which they were made and given only the context of the whistleblower’s complaint.  Beyond that, he cites claims made by an organization called the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.  This is an organization comprised of Eastern European, Caucasus, Central Asian, and Central American “media and journalists” and unknown personnel represented to be from unidentified “investigative centers.”  The claims made by OCCRP are unsubstantiated in the whistleblower’s cite, yet he presents them seriously and expects those to whom he’s complaining—outside of channels, mind you—to take them at face value.

And this lead paragraph from the whistleblower’s cover letter (right-click and select from the popup menu to get a bigger image):

As we know from the released telecon transcript, no such pressure was applied, nor did Giuliani or Barr play any sort of central role in this non-existent letter, being mentioned on as points of contact in Ukraine’s investigations of corruption.  We also know more generally, from Wednesday’s press conference, that Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelenskiy said bluntly that he felt no pressure to do anything.

One last thing, an apparently small item, but it illustrates the general level of…sloppiness…with which the “complaint” was prepared. The whistleblower wrote, in the 3rd paragraph of page 3 of his missive that a “readout” of the telecon posted on “the website of the Ukrainian President” was translated “from the original Russian.” The Ukrainian and Russian languages are similar, but they are distinct from each other. Any translation here would have been from Ukrainian.

Wow.

A couple things appear, also, from the ICIG’s (Michael Atkinson) transmittal letter to Acting DNI Director Joseph Maguire.

One concerns the whistleblower’s characterization of Trump’s 25 July telecon with Zelenskiy. Atkinson, in his own words, says that “the ICIG did not request access to records” pertaining to that telecon. The ICIG made no attempt to corroborate or refute the whistleblower’s characterization. Atkinson’s rationale for that decision boils down to his finding such an attempt “too hard, so don’t bother.”  Never mind that Trump, with Zelenskiy’s agreement, released that transcript in a timely manner.

There’s also no indication that Atkinson made any effort to talk with any of the whistleblower’s “multiple US government officials” sources or even any of his named sources—Giuliani and Barr, for instance—to see if they agreed or disagreed with any of the whistleblowers claims of what they said.

That’s not much of a “preliminary review.”

Again, wow.

Many in Congress complain about Fraud, Waste, and Abuse in the Federal government….

Dishonest Journalism

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Kyle Smith is too polite to call it that, but he comes very close in his National Review piece about an interview Robin Pogrebin gave to WMAL back on the 17th.

Some excerpts:

[Pogrebin’s and Kelly’s story [sic]] failed to mention that a woman who, according to a man named Max Stier, had Kavanaugh’s penis pressed into her hand at a campus party by multiple friends of his has said she recalls no such incident. That woman has also declined to talk about the matter with reporters or officials. Why even publish Stier’s claim, which was discounted by Washington Post reporters who heard about it a year ago, that he witnessed such an incident during a Yale party in the 1980s? Because of the narrative, Pogrebin says. “We decided to go with it because obviously it is of a piece with a kind of behavior,” she said on WMAL.

“Behavior” that has already been shown nonexistent, repeatedly.  Of what piece, exactly?  And what incident? The principle doesn’t remember it, and the principle witness refused to be interviewed.

Even if she were the victim of sexual misconduct, the [New York] Times would ordinarily take steps to protect her identity. Yet she has made no claim along these lines, and Pogrebin and Kelly outed her anyway. Is there no respect for a woman’s privacy?

Not when she needs to be outed in order to tell a tale.

[Emphasis in the original]:

Pogrebin repeatedly refers to the woman as a “victim.” This word choice is instructive about Pogrebin’s thought process. … She has made no claim to be a victim, yet Pogrebin describes her as one anyway. This is a case of a reporter overriding her reporting with her opinion.

And [emphasis in the original]:

If this is true, it means Max Stier was also drunk and his memories also can’t be trusted. (Someone should ask Pogrebin whether she was present at this party about which she knows so much.) By what journalistic standard does a reporter discount what is said by the person with the most direct and relevant experience of a matter—the woman in question at the Yale party—in favor of a drunken bystander? If both the woman and Stier were drunk, why is his memory more credible than hers? If something like this had actually happened to her, wouldn’t she be more likely than anyone else to remember it? Maybe Stier is remembering a different party. Maybe he’s remembering a different guy. Maybe he made it up.

And the kicker:

Of the woman at the party, she says, “Remember that she was incredibly drunk at that party as was everyone. And so I think we’re talking about memory here as really kind of a questionable issue. There are plenty of things that are conceivable that could happen when people are too drunk to remember them.” So the standard here is not whether something is true, it’s whether it’s “conceivable.” If a story is “of a piece with a kind of behavior,” even if such behavior is itself not established, and if a story is “conceivable” when filtered through that confirmation bias, and even if it’s undercut by the person the story supposedly happened to, and even if the person telling the story was “incredibly drunk,” you just go with it anyway.

That’s not gross journalistic malpractice, as Smith put it.  That’s blatantly, deliberately dishonest reporting.

RTWT.

“Trump Repeatedly Pressured Ukraine President”

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…regarding Biden’s intervention with Ukraine’s law enforcement in favor of his son.  At least that’s how The Wall Street Journal has characterized a phone call between heads of state.

Except that’s not what happened, and to call it “pressure” is to insult, grievously, the mettle and courage of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.  In that phone call, Trump did ask Zelensky to investigate Biden’s role in getting Ukraine’s Prosecutor Generall, Viktor Shokin fired in order to get a billion dollars in already promised aid to Ukraine.

No one serious, though, sees requests as pressure.  There were no or elses; not even the WSJ alleges that. Nor have the tabloids that have taken up the cry, The Washington Post or The New York Times.  Nor is there any reason to believe Zelensky is such a Milquetoast as to feel pressured because someone merely asked him to do something.  Indeed, Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko was blunt and clear:

I know what the conversation was about, and I think there was no pressure.  There was talk, conversations are different, leaders have the right to discuss any problems that exist. This conversation was long, friendly, and it touched on many questions, sometimes requiring serious answers.

And

President Trump is interested, his advisor, Giuliani, newspapers, Democrats, Republicans are interested in whether pressure had been put on Ukraine.  I want to say that we are an independent state, we have our own secrets.

No pressure.  Except, perhaps in the minds of Progressive-Democrats who are projecting their own responses to such questions.

Which brings me to Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and ex-Vice President (during the time of his threat vis-à-vis that Prosecutor Genera) Joe Biden and his distortion of the current situation.

He is violating every basic norm of a president. He’s using the abuse of power and every element of the presidency to try to do something to smear me.

Because the truth is smearing.

On the contrary, the abuse of power and the misuse of every element of the presidency is Biden’s own interference with that Ukrainian investigation into his son’s role in what the Ukrainians were investigating as an illegal, if not criminal, activity.  He demanded Shokin be fired so the investigation couldn’t go forward, or he would withhold all that foreign aid.

And then Biden bragged about his successful interference at a US Council on Foreign Relations event.

I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. … He got fired.

That’s pressure, and it was successfully applied by a badly misbehaving American Vice President.

One more thing.  Progressive-Democrats and their communications facility, the press, all have the vapors because Trump is insisting misbehavior be investigated.  As though it’s OK to misbehave, so long as it’s a Progressive-Democrat government official doing the misbehavior.  It puts me in mind of a remark reported to have been made by then-President Richard Nixon (R), that “if the President does it, that means it’s legal.”  I’ll paraphrase, slightly. It seems to be the position of the Left that “if a Progressive-Democrat mucky-muck does it, that means it’s legal.”

No.  Wrong-doing should be investigated, thoroughly, regardless of who’s suspected of doing it.  And that’s what Trump is insisting on.

The Progressive-Democratic Party

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Today’s Party, the evolution of the Democratic Party, is little distinguishable from the modern Progressive movement as devised by that movement’s founders, Herb Croly, Theodore Roosevelt, and Woodrow Wilson.

Brief for instances:

Roosevelt and Wilson both wanted to nationalize broad swaths of the American private economy, and Wilson did so, until the Supreme Court struck his move and released his seizure.

Today’s Progressive-Democrats take pride in their Progressivism, including seeking to nationalize broad swaths of today’s economy: Barack Obama seized our health care and health care coverage industries, and Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden wants to expand on that.  Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidates and Senators Bernie Sanders (I, VT) and Elizabeth Warren (D, MA) want to go further and replace our health industries with Medicare-for-All and to eliminate altogether all vestiges of privately obtained health insurance.

Both want to seize our wealth property in the form of much higher taxes—in Warren’s case, an explicit tax on the mere possession of wealth.  Ex-Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate and New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio (D) is even clearer, if that’s possible: he says there’s plenty of money, it’s just in the wrong hands.  And we need to seize it and put it where we say it belongs.

Beyond that, today’s Progressive-Democrats are proud of their Progressivism: Hillary Clinton is a proud Progressive, Biden says he’s the most Progressive of the current Party candidates.  House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D, CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) have averred their pride in their Progressive policies.  Sanders and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D, NY) are so far Progressive, they’re openly Socialist.

Today’s Party shares, also, the movement founders’ contempt for ordinary Americans.  Croly said the average American was inadequate to his duties as a democrat, and Wilson wrote that Americans generally could not handle a republican form of government and that blacks in particular were so incapable that they should be grateful for the protection of segregation.

This is echoed with ex-President Barack Obama’s (D) dismissal of Americans as nothing more than bitter Bible-clingers and gun-toters, Hillary Clinton’s slur that tens of millions of us are irredeemably deplorable, racist, and homophobic.  Others in Party dismiss Republicans as Trump-cultists and say that anyone who supports Trump is necessarily racist.

The list goes on for a long distance.