A senior Department of Defense official linked to an organization that lobbies for the mullahs in Tehran has continued to hold the highest level of security clearance and visit the White House. //

Senior Department of Defense official Ariane Tabatabai participated in multiple meetings organized by the White House’s Presidential Personnel Office, which is responsible for recruiting and vetting scores of nominees across the government, visitor logs reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon show.

Tabatabai was at the White House just two months after Semafor revealed she was a key member of a secretive Iranian influence group, the Iran Experts Initiative, that reported back to Tehran’s foreign ministry, according to the logs. She participated in at least seven other White House gatherings throughout the end of 2023 and into April 2024, mixing with officials from a range of cabinet-level agencies. //

Her patron is none other than Phil Gordon, Kamala Harris's national security adviser.

As Phil Root, the deputy director of the Defense Sciences Office at DARPA, recounted to Scharre, “A tank looks like a tank, even when it’s moving. A human when walking looks different than a human standing. A human with a weapon looks different.”

In order to train the artificial intelligence, it needed data in the form of a squad of Marines spending six days walking around in front of it. On the seventh day, though, it was time to put the machine to the test.

“If any Marines could get all the way in and touch this robot without being detected, they would win. I wanted to see, game on, what would happen,” said Root in the book. //

the Marines, being Marines, found several ways to bollix the AI and achieved a 100 percent success rate.

Two Marines, according to the book, somersaulted for 300 meters to approach the sensor. Another pair hid under a cardboard box.

“You could hear them giggling the whole time,” said Root in the book.

One Marine stripped a fir tree and held it in front of him as he approached the sensor. In the end, while the artificial intelligence knew how to identify a person walking, that was pretty much all it knew because that was all it had been modeled to detect. //

The moral of the story? Never bet against Marines, soldiers, or military folks in general. The American military rank-and-file has proven itself more creative than any other military in history. Whether that creativity is focused on finding and deleting bad guys or finding ways to screw with an AI and the eggheads who programmed it, my money's on the troops.

Clinton's village involved outside influences on your child. However, the real village that it takes to raise a child is one of extended family members, and that's a decaying idea.

Historically, family units weren't nuclear. They included grandparents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters, and more. The nuclear family as we knew it wasn't truly a thing until around the 1950s, when a self-contained family situation was the standard and a sign of success. Historically, multi-generational family households weren't necessarily uncommon. According to the American Enterprise Institute, only about eight percent of Americans between 18 and 50 live in the same household as their parents, as this is now considered a sort of failure.

Moreover, 55 percent of Americans live within an hour of extended family, while the more successful you are financially, the further away you likely live, according to The Survey Center on American Life. This separation often leaves families in an isolated state geographically, making extra-familial connection something that only happens on occasion instead of regularly. //

I don't think it's any accident that we're seeing fewer children born as the extended family becomes less important. Modernity and consumerism have played a large role in destroying the family unit, but the extended family unit has also taken a hit, and from many sides.

Leitmotif
4 hours ago
Civil asset forfeiture is an egregious scam, a violation of basic human rights, and should be completely abolished at the federal, state, and local levels.

Period.

Full stop.

Adam Selene / Simon Jester Leitmotif
3 hours ago
We, as a society have somehow rationalized that 'civil' charges from government are not a big deal - just another lawsuit, so the constitutional protections afforded from 'criminal' charges don't apply. They just take your savings, your property and the labors of years of work. So in the end, you worked (retroactively and involuntary without the option to leave and against your will) without compensation. So basically ex post facto slavery.

The idea that a reporter would think that the White House has any legal means to interfere with any American, particularly a candidate for the presidency in an election year, saying any damn thing they want to demonstrates how thoroughly corrupt and fascist-adjacent the mainstream press has become. The fact that a reporter from a newspaper that shared a Pulitzer prize for pushing a totally discredited hoax thinks he has any moral ground to protest "misinformation" is the official death knell of irony.

To the extent that 'misinformation' is a problem, Ground Zero of that problem is the mainstream press. They are the ones who insisted that an obviously demented and sometimes drugged Joe Biden was completely in control of his faculties. //

Giving the yahoos in the press corps a license to police misinformation is like giving a three-year-old a can of gasoline and a lighter. //

RiverRev
29 minutes ago
I think I trust the three year old more.

In his resignation letter, Dunleavy criticized how the committee conducted its investigation into the Afghanistan withdrawal and the series of failures involved in the disaster. He describes the situation as "a diplomatic failure, an intelligence failure, a military failure, a strategic failure, a policy failure, a planning failure, a political failure, a truth-telling failure, and a moral failure" and stresses that each of these aspects needed thorough investigation.

The investigator explained that his efforts to look into key aspects of the withdrawal were “repeatedly stymied by our chief investigator and by senior staff,” which resulted in what he calls “investigative paralysis.”

Much of Dunleavy’s frustration stems from a reluctance to hold high-ranking officials accountable for their missteps – especially Vice President Kamala Harris, who he describes as a key decision-maker in the withdrawal. //

In his closing remarks, Dunleavy expressed concerns that the failures of the Afghanistan withdrawal have not been adequately addressed and fears these oversights will have serious consequences for future U.S. foreign policy.

Glenn Greenwald

@ggreenwald
·
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The way the US corporate media transformed Kamala Harris from a national embarrassment to a transformative pioneer overnight -- without even pretending to care about anything that she thinks or believes -- is a powerful testament to how potent the science of propaganda is:
TIME
@TIME
The reintroduction of Kamala Harris https://ti.me/4fCTs5n
10:06 AM · Aug 12, 2024. //

The article is titled, "The Reintroduction of Kamala Harris,” and like similar headlines and stories in newspapers, magazines and websites around the country, they try to depict a candidate who’s been reborn, who’s undergone a magical metamorphosis and gone from an ugly caterpillar to a beautiful butterfly. //

But here’s the reality: Nothing about this woman has changed in the past 22 days, not her record, not her cringe-inducing mannerisms, not her lack of accomplishments as vice president—not a single thing. Yet the media is seemingly in lockstep pumping out story after story about how exciting and competent she’s suddenly become. //

Brian Doherty
@BDOH
·
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Kamala Harris has been reintroduced more times than the McDonalds McRib sandwich.

7:32 AM · Aug 12, 2024. //

anon-xztj
6 hours ago
Also remember or for those who didn't know Time Magazine had Adolf Hitler on their cover in 1938 as "Man of the Year"!