Just want to stress how insane it is the Justice Department put this in writing: "public demonstrations designed to further the propaganda or other goals of the foreign power ... may result in significant civil or criminal sanctions"
I swear we are like two more billionaires’ bunkers away from being forced to use AI. Like mandatory logins per day so the tech lords get their pound of flesh.
"...the Justice Department instructed 'citizens and noncitizens' that anyone furthering the 'goals' of a foreign power in 'any public activity' — including even “public demonstrations” — must formally notify the government to avoid arrest and prosecution.
Have Larry Ellison, his son, Bari Weiss and Tony Dokupil formally notified the government?
Great reporting. This has all been a steady campaign (which you have done the most focused investigation of) to demonize and criminalize Americans for protests, but it didn't start with Trump. Biden and the Democrats cracked down brutally on students protesting in Gaza, and for years we have heard that anyone opposing genocide is a supporter of Hamas, anyone calling for a peace in Ukraine is a Russian agent, etc. The Democrats have been marking out the road that got us here for years, and there is zero reason at this point to think that if they took over they would take us down a different path. Rather they would (and will) continue the ratchet - implement and lock in the policies that he Republicans develop, and wait for the next Republican administration to give the whole thing another crank.
The encampment clearings and arrests that occurred across American universities like Columbia University and UCLA when Biden was in office were done by local police departments and campus security acting under the authority of university administrations and local officials, not the federal government.
Were administrators reacting to pro-Israel/anti-protester rhetoric coming from Biden?
I’m sure it had an impact, but that is a pretty far fucking cry from these assholes trying to scare people into silence by overtly stating that if they are against a data center they are subject to federal scrutiny on national security grounds in a time where we have seen them deploy Feds to the streets of blue cities where they jack-booted around and eventually murdered protesters — with impunity (So far, dickheads, so far. We didn’t forget.)
That's great, unless anyone was actually alive at the time and remembers the crackdowns that were supported by the administration (including Biden personally, who told fake stories about photos he had seen of atrocities). It also helps if no one here was alive during Black Lives Matters, and so doesn't remember Democrats perfomatively taking the knee while funding 100,000 new police officers across the country. It also helps if no one alive remembers the denunciation of everyone as being Russian agents, Hamas agents, Chinese agents, etc.
You are right there are not "both sides" here. Both parties have been on the same side, which is how we have steadily gotten to this point.
Agree the pre-MAGA uniparty and their fealty to their paymasters is the proximate cause for the mess we are in.
…but comparing the Biden admin’s shameful support for aggressive local treatment of protesters to their left to what the Trumpers are doing now is still a false equivalence. I’msorry, but the incredible amount of resources they have poured into DHS to create an armed force that is loyal to the White Nationalist ideology of Miller and the rest of the neo Nazis and that pays for a network of detention centers and literal concentration camps is not anywhere near the same fucking ballpark as cops pepper spraying Occupy Wall Street protestors.
You keep ignoring that this is all the same path. Saying you are good with the first steps along the path but are horrified by the next steps is "I didn't expect leopard's to eat MY face" level of unawareness.
We see this with so many issues. We see this internationally with Democratic government militarism. People warned for 8 years about Obama's casual bombing and droning in Somalia and Yemen, and they were complete dismissed by Democrats since Obama is a good guy who only targets bad guys (and some guys we are unsure about, and the occasional wedding party, and a US citizen now and again). But Democrats were shocked by Trump's casual use of drones and bombs across the world.
Likewise, Democrats have been expanding and empowering federal, state and local law enforcement to coordinate against "domestic terrorism" (and they variously define it) for many years. They can't pretend to be shocked when this massive power is used in a way they find abhorrent.
If you are against what the Blob (the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank (MICIMATT) complex) is in favor of, you're a commie foreign-controlled, domestic terrorist. Obviously.
Phew, thank you for that, I was starting to take this stuff maybe t-o-o-o-o seriously... Whatever, it struck me that this is hasbara, American style - we're the victims, they are out to get us, the threats are unending, we're the only ones who can save you. Oy.
Because I’m older than dirt, my first instinct is to laugh at the claptrap emanating from official Washington, aka the kakistocracy I’m learning to love. But I know it’s not funny. Everything I feared after 9/11 is coming to pass, and McCarthyism is almost benign in comparison.
I have been reading the excellent biography of Walter Cronkite, "Cronkite" by Douglas Brinkley. There is a passage in the book I want to reproduce here because your substack deals with the same issue regularly. I can only imagine what Cronkite would think of the point we have reached now.
To introduce the passage, you should know that Cronkite had made a CBS Reports program dealing with the famous book by Orwell, "1984" prompted by the world arriving at 1984. He also wrote an opinion piece for the NYT (behind NYT paywall). The TV program is archived by the BBC. It's free, but you must be a student or graduate of a school in the UK to register. That rules me out but here is the Link: https://era.org.uk/lit-resource/1984-walter-cronkite/
Keep in mind 1984 was 42 years ago. Have we the people been successful in stopping what is described? Can we stop AI? Things don't happen on their own, they happen because they are pushed by those who can gain power or wealth with them. We the people are busy, deal with life day to day, don't push back and get what we get.
The passage:
"To Cronkite, the dystopian 1984 was prescient in showing that America's civil liberties were being gutted by a right-wing agenda. To coincide with the CBS Reports documentary, Cronkite wrote a far-reaching opinion piece for the NYT, warning about Orwell's Thought Police fast becoming the new American reality. "The total absence of privacy," he wrote, "the idea that the government is (or may be) always watching, means, most of us would agree, the ultimate loss of freedom."
As Cronkite imagined it, '1984 Revisited' would be a libertarian defense of the Fourth Amendment, which was under assault. Cronkite visited banks, supermarkets, and department stores to watch surveillance cameras spying on customers. The very fact that Miami Beach had cameras trained on street corners to monitor sidewalk activity, Cronkite believed, was Orwellian prophecy come true. To Cronkite, the fact that the U.S. government now had access to individuals' bank statements, medical files and credit card records was a sign of creeping Big Brotherism."
Wait, I thought the Trumpster said we have to call it SI, Super Intelligence. Does that mean that they now have to re-write all those letters and warnings from the DOJ. Do all the companies have to call it SI, what if we fail to call it that. Is that treasonous. This is all so confusing!!!
It took me a day to get to this article, but I'm here to comment that the first I heard this line of rhetoric was when former OH Congressman Steve Stivers, now the head of the State of Ohio's Chamber of Commerce, started using it publicly at local business roundtables. So it's not just national Republican politicians, but also their state-level proxies who have decided to set their sights on China as an agitator spreading false information on social media that is riling up local protests.
Another irony: Trump, the target of Russiagate, is trying to Chinagate legitimate concerns about AI. He must think he can polarize MAGA in his favor. We'll see.
If you work as an agent under the trump admin, there is no world anyone with critical thinking skills respects you in our civil society going forward. The sheer volume of civil liberties demolished…
Trying to reconcile this with Pam Bondi's (remember her?) first official act as Attorney General (OK, second, after touching up her roots), specifically this section of her 02/05/2025 memorandum—"Shifting Resources in the National Security Division: To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion, the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded. Recourse to criminal charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and 18 U.S.C. § 951 shall be limited to instances of alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors."
Just want to stress how insane it is the Justice Department put this in writing: "public demonstrations designed to further the propaganda or other goals of the foreign power ... may result in significant civil or criminal sanctions"
I dare them to try.
I swear we are like two more billionaires’ bunkers away from being forced to use AI. Like mandatory logins per day so the tech lords get their pound of flesh.
This peasant will still revolt.
I can’t understand a damn thing you wrote, Ken. Please rewrite in Mandarin. Thank you.
lmaooo
🤣
With egg roll.
Get a life, loser.
It’s been over 50 years and I’m still trying, lady. It ain’t easy.
I'll be 78 next month. Keep trying.
78, huh? You don’t say. And such a pleasant personality, too! Somewhere out there in the world there’s some little kids who hate grandma. 😊
"...the Justice Department instructed 'citizens and noncitizens' that anyone furthering the 'goals' of a foreign power in 'any public activity' — including even “public demonstrations” — must formally notify the government to avoid arrest and prosecution.
Have Larry Ellison, his son, Bari Weiss and Tony Dokupil formally notified the government?
"Have Larry Ellison, his son, Bari Weiss and Tony Dokupil formally notified the government?"
Perfect. Touche'. Pot-kettle. Well, maybe they don't have to notify because although not technically, they really are part of the government.
Great reporting. This has all been a steady campaign (which you have done the most focused investigation of) to demonize and criminalize Americans for protests, but it didn't start with Trump. Biden and the Democrats cracked down brutally on students protesting in Gaza, and for years we have heard that anyone opposing genocide is a supporter of Hamas, anyone calling for a peace in Ukraine is a Russian agent, etc. The Democrats have been marking out the road that got us here for years, and there is zero reason at this point to think that if they took over they would take us down a different path. Rather they would (and will) continue the ratchet - implement and lock in the policies that he Republicans develop, and wait for the next Republican administration to give the whole thing another crank.
There is no “both sides” -ing this.
The encampment clearings and arrests that occurred across American universities like Columbia University and UCLA when Biden was in office were done by local police departments and campus security acting under the authority of university administrations and local officials, not the federal government.
Were administrators reacting to pro-Israel/anti-protester rhetoric coming from Biden?
I’m sure it had an impact, but that is a pretty far fucking cry from these assholes trying to scare people into silence by overtly stating that if they are against a data center they are subject to federal scrutiny on national security grounds in a time where we have seen them deploy Feds to the streets of blue cities where they jack-booted around and eventually murdered protesters — with impunity (So far, dickheads, so far. We didn’t forget.)
That's great, unless anyone was actually alive at the time and remembers the crackdowns that were supported by the administration (including Biden personally, who told fake stories about photos he had seen of atrocities). It also helps if no one here was alive during Black Lives Matters, and so doesn't remember Democrats perfomatively taking the knee while funding 100,000 new police officers across the country. It also helps if no one alive remembers the denunciation of everyone as being Russian agents, Hamas agents, Chinese agents, etc.
You are right there are not "both sides" here. Both parties have been on the same side, which is how we have steadily gotten to this point.
Agree the pre-MAGA uniparty and their fealty to their paymasters is the proximate cause for the mess we are in.
…but comparing the Biden admin’s shameful support for aggressive local treatment of protesters to their left to what the Trumpers are doing now is still a false equivalence. I’msorry, but the incredible amount of resources they have poured into DHS to create an armed force that is loyal to the White Nationalist ideology of Miller and the rest of the neo Nazis and that pays for a network of detention centers and literal concentration camps is not anywhere near the same fucking ballpark as cops pepper spraying Occupy Wall Street protestors.
You keep ignoring that this is all the same path. Saying you are good with the first steps along the path but are horrified by the next steps is "I didn't expect leopard's to eat MY face" level of unawareness.
We see this with so many issues. We see this internationally with Democratic government militarism. People warned for 8 years about Obama's casual bombing and droning in Somalia and Yemen, and they were complete dismissed by Democrats since Obama is a good guy who only targets bad guys (and some guys we are unsure about, and the occasional wedding party, and a US citizen now and again). But Democrats were shocked by Trump's casual use of drones and bombs across the world.
Likewise, Democrats have been expanding and empowering federal, state and local law enforcement to coordinate against "domestic terrorism" (and they variously define it) for many years. They can't pretend to be shocked when this massive power is used in a way they find abhorrent.
If you are against what the Blob (the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank (MICIMATT) complex) is in favor of, you're a commie foreign-controlled, domestic terrorist. Obviously.
😩
New McCarthyism.
Drudge is right to highlight this.
"It gets funnier."
Phew, thank you for that, I was starting to take this stuff maybe t-o-o-o-o seriously... Whatever, it struck me that this is hasbara, American style - we're the victims, they are out to get us, the threats are unending, we're the only ones who can save you. Oy.
gotta laugh!
Because I’m older than dirt, my first instinct is to laugh at the claptrap emanating from official Washington, aka the kakistocracy I’m learning to love. But I know it’s not funny. Everything I feared after 9/11 is coming to pass, and McCarthyism is almost benign in comparison.
Thanks, Ken.
Related, there is that line central to "Rosemary's Baby" as she's being raped by the devil, "This is no dream, this is really happening!"
Ha! I’d forgotten that great line. Thanks for reminding me.
It was on Turner the other night. I always watch it for that line, for Mia Farrow's spectacular performance. It always scares the hell outta me.
I have been reading the excellent biography of Walter Cronkite, "Cronkite" by Douglas Brinkley. There is a passage in the book I want to reproduce here because your substack deals with the same issue regularly. I can only imagine what Cronkite would think of the point we have reached now.
To introduce the passage, you should know that Cronkite had made a CBS Reports program dealing with the famous book by Orwell, "1984" prompted by the world arriving at 1984. He also wrote an opinion piece for the NYT (behind NYT paywall). The TV program is archived by the BBC. It's free, but you must be a student or graduate of a school in the UK to register. That rules me out but here is the Link: https://era.org.uk/lit-resource/1984-walter-cronkite/
Keep in mind 1984 was 42 years ago. Have we the people been successful in stopping what is described? Can we stop AI? Things don't happen on their own, they happen because they are pushed by those who can gain power or wealth with them. We the people are busy, deal with life day to day, don't push back and get what we get.
The passage:
"To Cronkite, the dystopian 1984 was prescient in showing that America's civil liberties were being gutted by a right-wing agenda. To coincide with the CBS Reports documentary, Cronkite wrote a far-reaching opinion piece for the NYT, warning about Orwell's Thought Police fast becoming the new American reality. "The total absence of privacy," he wrote, "the idea that the government is (or may be) always watching, means, most of us would agree, the ultimate loss of freedom."
As Cronkite imagined it, '1984 Revisited' would be a libertarian defense of the Fourth Amendment, which was under assault. Cronkite visited banks, supermarkets, and department stores to watch surveillance cameras spying on customers. The very fact that Miami Beach had cameras trained on street corners to monitor sidewalk activity, Cronkite believed, was Orwellian prophecy come true. To Cronkite, the fact that the U.S. government now had access to individuals' bank statements, medical files and credit card records was a sign of creeping Big Brotherism."
Wait, I thought the Trumpster said we have to call it SI, Super Intelligence. Does that mean that they now have to re-write all those letters and warnings from the DOJ. Do all the companies have to call it SI, what if we fail to call it that. Is that treasonous. This is all so confusing!!!
Anyone see Trump's delusional speech at the UN?
Nukes after miderms y'all. We in trouooooble.
So Bernie Sanders, Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson and Ken Klippenstein are all foreign agents? Plus a plethora of others.
It took me a day to get to this article, but I'm here to comment that the first I heard this line of rhetoric was when former OH Congressman Steve Stivers, now the head of the State of Ohio's Chamber of Commerce, started using it publicly at local business roundtables. So it's not just national Republican politicians, but also their state-level proxies who have decided to set their sights on China as an agitator spreading false information on social media that is riling up local protests.
Another irony: Trump, the target of Russiagate, is trying to Chinagate legitimate concerns about AI. He must think he can polarize MAGA in his favor. We'll see.
If you work as an agent under the trump admin, there is no world anyone with critical thinking skills respects you in our civil society going forward. The sheer volume of civil liberties demolished…
Trying to reconcile this with Pam Bondi's (remember her?) first official act as Attorney General (OK, second, after touching up her roots), specifically this section of her 02/05/2025 memorandum—"Shifting Resources in the National Security Division: To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion, the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded. Recourse to criminal charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and 18 U.S.C. § 951 shall be limited to instances of alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors."
I was thinking the same thing!
Are people going to start caring about climate change next?
Wouldn't that be nice.