Persona non grata

If Julian Assange was hoping that Donald Trump might display an iota of gratitude or loyalty towards him, given the role that Wikileaks played in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, then those hopes should have died today, after the embattled U.S. President threw the Wikileaks founder under the bus in what's come to be recognizable as Trump's singular style.

Besos on scrutiny

I'd written before about how Facebook's lack of ethics, morals, truthfulness, and accountability simply had no parallel in other FAANG companies. Here's a quote from Amazon's Jeff Besos that throws that difference into sharp relief, from CNBC:

This isn't the first time that Bezos has addresssed the issue of his company's scale with employees. In an earlier all-hands meeting in March, Bezos was asked whether tech companies like Amazon need to be more closely regulated because of their sizable market power and influence.

"It's a fact that we're a large company," Bezos said, according to a recording. "It's reasonable for large institutions of any kind, whether it be companies or governments, to be scrutinized."

[...]

Bezos said at the March employee meeting that the best way to respond to increased scrutiny is to "conduct ourselves in such a way that when we are scrutinized we will pass with flying colors."

It's an old-fashioned notion, isn't it?

The return of Jim Acosta

It looks like the U.S. court system isn't done pushing back against the unconstitutional excesses of Trump. As reported by CBC News:

A U.S. federal judge on Friday ordered the Trump administration to immediately reinstate CNN reporter Jim Acosta's credentials to cover the White House.

U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Kelly announced his decision following a hearing in Washington. The judge said Acosta's credentials would be returned immediately and reactivated to allow him access to the White House.

CNN had asked the judge to force the White House to immediately hand back the credentials that give Acosta, CNN's chief White House correspondent, access to the complex for media briefings and other events. CNN asked for Acosta's credentials restored while a lawsuit over his credentials' revocation goes forward.

[...]

The judge said the government could not say who initially decided to revoke Acosta's hard pass.

The White House had spelled out its reasons for revoking his credentials in a tweet from White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders and in a statement after CNN filed its lawsuit. But the judge said those "belated efforts were hardly sufficient to satisfy due process."

The judge also found that Acosta suffered "irreparable harm," dismissing the government's argument that CNN could just send other reporters to cover the White House in Acosta's place.

Good.

I've said before that Trump is in the process of doing generational damage to every institution within the United States, and to their place on the world stage, but no part of his selfish, short-sighted corruptness is as corrupting as his assaults on the very idea of verifiable facts, the existence of objective truth, and the necessity of a free press to the functioning of democracy. Trump may well be desperate to avoid scutiny and silence criticism, but he absolutely cannot be allowed to succeed in doing so. It's heartening to see that some of the checks and balances that are in place, precisely to keep bad Presidents in check, actually are working.

Stop me if you've heard this one...

Originally posted on the Anti-Hype Machine.

Under pressure over the NY Times' bombshell story detailing Facebook's own campaign of anti-Semitic disinformation which they pursued in order to deflect criticism over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, Mark Zuckerberg offered a truly defense in response. In essence, he claimed:

1. the everybody knew that Facebook had employed Definers Media (i.e. nothing to see here);
2. that he himself didn't know that Facebook was employing Definers (i.e. it wasn't me);
3. that an un-named comms staffer had actually decided key details of Facebook's damage-control/PR strategy, apparently without anyone signing off on it (this, after testifying before Congress about how he "took full responsibility for" exactly this sort of decision-making at Facebook); and
4. that Facebook had now cut ties with Definers, literally yesterday (i.e. now that we all know about their shady business, they'd like to be seen doing a right thing).

As reported by Gizmodo:

Today, Facebook set up a press conference addressing a bombshell report from The New York Times that alleged, among other things, that the company contracted a Republican opposition research firm called Definers to run interference on the company’s image, a job which reportedly included leaning on George Soros conspiracy theories.

On the call, Mark Zuckerberg claimed he only found out the group was working for Facebook yesterday—which would mean the CEO learned about his company’s dealings well after most reporters.

Facebook ended its relationship with Definers yesterday, following backlash from the public as well as from the president of the Open Societies Foundation: one of the groups run by Soros, who has been a frequent target of anti-semitic conspiracy theories. In the wake of that abrupt dismissal, Facebook published a rebuttal which included the following statement:

Our relationship with Definers was well known by the media – not least because they have on several occasions sent out invitations to hundreds of journalists about important press calls on our behalf.

“Me personally, I didn’t know we were working with them,” Zuckerberg said during today’s Q&A. [...] Who would have known or approved of such a relationship? Zuckerberg, who previously stated that personnel matters are outside the purview of public disclosure, pinned the blame on “someone on our comms team.”

At this point, I can't help but wonder if anyone in Facebook's senior leadership had any idea what ethics even are. They've certainly behaved with reckless disregard for the truth, and utter contempt for the consequences of their decisions, with such consistency and for so long that I can no longer believe anything that they say without supporting documentation. Zuckerberg, personally, has done almost nothing but hide the truth and deflect criticism, all while espousing his own commitment to transparency, love of facts, and personal qualities of responsible leadership. The extent of the cynical hypocrisy on display here is simply breathtaking.

And I'm far from being the only person who's not buying it anymore.

This week in Facebook

Originally posted on the Anti-Hype Machine.

It's shaping up to be another bad week for Mark Zuckerberg.

The NY Times have published a blockbuster piece, reporting that Facebook were not only fighting the spread of fake news on their service, but actually spreading some fake news of their own: in particular, to paint their wave of post-Cambridge Analytica negative PR as some sort of George Soros-funded anti-Facebook conspiracy.

[As] evidence accumulated that Facebook’s power could also be exploited to disrupt elections, broadcast viral propaganda and inspire deadly campaigns of hate around the globe, Mr. Zuckerberg and Ms. Sandberg stumbled. Bent on growth, the pair ignored warning signs and then sought to conceal them from public view. At critical moments over the last three years, they were distracted by personal projects, and passed off security and policy decisions to subordinates, according to current and former executives.

When Facebook users learned last spring that the company had compromised their privacy in its rush to expand, allowing access to the personal information of tens of millions of people to a political data firm linked to President Trump, Facebook sought to deflect blame and mask the extent of the problem.

And when that failed — as the company’s stock price plummeted and it faced a consumer backlash — Facebook went on the attack.

While Mr. Zuckerberg has conducted a public apology tour in the last year, Ms. Sandberg has overseen an aggressive lobbying campaign to combat Facebook’s critics, shift public anger toward rival companies and ward off damaging regulation. Facebook employed a Republican opposition-research firm to discredit activist protesters, in part by linking them to the liberal financier George Soros. It also tapped its business relationships, lobbying a Jewish civil rights group to cast some criticism of the company as anti-Semitic.

This means that Facebook funded anti-Semitic propaganda for no other reason that petty material self-interest. Which means that Facebook now have real blood on their hands, after a wave of anti-Semitic social media content on their own site helped inspire one of the worst incidents of anti-Semitic mass murder in U.S. history. And Jews weren't the only targets of Facebook's fake news campaign.

The importance of objective truth

If you were wondering just why Justin Trudeau has remained so popular, both at home and around the world, in spite of all the political headwinds he has faced at home in Canada, from Trump in the U.S., I suggest you watch this statement of principle on how necessary it is for democracy that we have a fact-based media capable of identifying objectively verifiable facts, and able to speak truth to power on behalf of the nation's citizens. As reported by CBC News:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a press freedom event in Paris Sunday that one of the bulwarks protecting democratic governments from being undermined is also an institution under stress — a free-thinking, robust media.

"If a democracy is to function you need an educated populace, and you need to have an informed populace, ready to make judicious decisions about who to grant power to and when to take it away," Trudeau said.

"When citizens cannot have rigorous analysis of the exercise of the power that is in their name and they have granted, the rest of the foundation of our democracies start to erode at the same time as cynicism arises."

Throw the bum out!

I've posted before about Julian Assange being a horrible person, but guess what? It turns out he's stupid, too.

As reported by Sky News:

Julian Assange is launching legal action against Ecuador, accusing its government of violating his "fundamental rights and freedoms".

It comes after Ecuador cut off communications for Mr Assange, who has been living inside the country's London embassy for more than six years.

Baltasar Garzon, a lawyer for WikiLeaks, has arrived in Ecuador to launch the case, which is expected to be heard next week in a domestic court.

WikiLeaks claims Mr Assange's access to the outside world has been "summarily cut off" and says Ecuador has threatened to remove the protection he has had since being given political asylum.

Assange, remember, was hiding in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid be extradited to Sweden to face sexual assault charges. Assange himself always claimed that the sexual assault charges were the result of a complex international conspiracy to extradite him to the U.S., a claim which seemed rather egotistical even at the time, and which has aged poorly since #MeToo started happening; regardless, Swedish prosecutors have since been forced to close the investigation (since time expired with Assange still hiding in Ecuador's embassy, if memory serves), but Assange has continued to hide on Ecuadorian soil, while doing everything he can to embarrass his increasingly-reluctant hosts, for months.

Apparently, the Ecuadorian government has finally had enough, though, and had cut off Assange's internet access to prevent further Assange-related embarrassment, and maybe encourage Assange to finally leave their embassy. Assange, naturally, is now repaying years of free rent and Ecuadorian protection from prosecution by suing them, apparently because he's an ungrateful, self-absorbed, over-entitled asshole.

The idea that the Trump administration, whom Assange helped put into power, are still plotting to have him extrajudicially rendered to a CIA black site and disappeared is laughable. And since he's not facing the sexual assault charges anymore, either, there's no reason for him to still be living like a fugitive. The fact that he is still living like a fugitive would seem to be a matter of choice for Assange, not necessity - maybe he just likes the romance of it all - but the reality of life as a fugitive is that you don't get to be a fugitive and also continue to live with all the same conveniences that a free man would have.

Don't try to tell Assange that, though... or anything else, really. Seriously, fuck Julian Assange.

Victory!

In an age when the President of the United States baldly admits, in black and white, that he absolutely paid $130K in hush money to a porn star to keep their affair secret just before the election, you might think that the power of shame to move politicians towards doing the right thing was well and truly behind us. And you'd be forgiven for thinking that, by almost everybody.

Shame, however, turns out to be not so much dead as undead, and it can still move around and bite you in the ass occasionally. It's rare, true, but it still can happen, and it happened today. From Gizmodo:

In a monumental decision that will resonate through election season, the U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted 52-47 to reinstate the net neutrality protections the Federal Communications Commission decided to repeal last December.

For months, procedural red tape has delayed the full implementation of the FCC’s decision to drop Title II protections that prevent internet service providers from blocking or throttling online content. Last week, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai confirmed that the repeal of the 2015 Open Internet Order would go into effect on June 11. But Democrats put forth a resolution to use its power under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to review new regulations by federal agencies through an expedited legislative process.

Under the CRA, only a simple majority is needed to pass legislation. With Republican Senator John McCain currently hospitalized and all Democrats on board, only a single Republican needed to vote in favor of restoring net neutrality rules. However, Senators Susan Collins, John Kennedy, and Lisa Murkowski all broke from their GOP colleagues and ensured that the resolution passed.

Yes, the telecom stooge's attempt to blow up net neutrality for the benefit of the giant telecom corporations that he clearly represents has actually failed. Huzzah!

Keeping track of the chaos: This is not normal.

One of the dangers of the Trump administration is not merely that the constant drumbeat of ludicrous bullshit will serve to obscure the less dramatic, and more pernicious, damage being done to the fabric of American society, and to the global community. No, the real danger is that the constant chaos of Trump has been going on so long without letup that it's starting to feel normal.

This is not normal. The world must never lose sight of how utterly abnormal the Trump administration actually is.

Thankfully, there's a resource of people far more industrious than me, who are working to keep track of every bit of Trump madness, no matter how large or small. The less-dramatic stories that would be huge scandals for any normal White House, but that can't get traction during Trump's exercise in escalating effrontery? Amy Siskind is keeping track. Are you starting to think that George W. Bush wasn't all that bad, after all, because look what Trump's done today? Amy Siskind has your antidote.

Because the unmitigated disaster of the Bush administration wasn't normal, either. It's just that Trump's is worse... and getting even worse still, with every passing day. America, and the world, will be repairing the damage from these years for the next twenty years at least; you should be arming yourself with the knowledge of what damage is being done, so that you can hit the ground running when the damage finally stops happening on a daily basis.

Ladies, gentlemen, and others, it is my great pleasure to point you in the direction of The Weekly List: This is how democracy ends. No, no, don't thank me. I'm just spreading the word.

(BTW, this week's list of madness is 154 items long. That's just this week's list; last week's list was even longer. Yikes.)

And this would be why term limits are a thing

OMG, he's such a fucking moron. From Huffington Post:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump praised Chinese President Xi Jinping Saturday after the ruling Communist party announced it was eliminating the two-term limit for the presidency, paving the way for Xi to serve indefinitely, according to audio aired by CNN.

“He’s now president for life, president for life. And he’s great,” Trump said, according to audio of excerpts of Trump’s remarks at a closed-door fundraiser in Florida aired by CNN. “And look, he was able to do that. I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll have to give that a shot someday,” Trump said to cheers and applause from supporters.

[...]

U.S. Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat, said on Twitter that “whether this was a joke or not, talking about being President for life like Xi Jinping is the most unAmerican sentiment expressed by an American President. George Washington would roll over in his grave.”

The Chinese government is currently cracking down on anything resembling criticism of Xi Jinping's plans to be dictator for life - among other things, they've banned the letter "n," something that sounds like an Onion article except that it's actually happening - and to say that the international community isn't exactly thrilled with the leader of the world's 2nd largest economic (and 3rd largest nuclear) power turning into North Korea would be something of an understatement. The only reason that it isn't getting more attention is that Vladimir Putin also decided that he wanted to model himself after Kim Jong-un, and did so even more explicitly with literal nuclear saber-rattling.

This would seem to be an excellent time for the leader of the world's leading democratic nation to step up to defend democratic principles, by maybe pointing out that "presidents for life" have always proved to be a terrible thing (no matter how charming that president may have seemed beforehand), and even showing some small iota of awareness of why he himself is term-limited. Unfortunately, the current U.S. President is Donald J. Fucking Trump, who thinks that the sun shines out of his own ass, and thinks that being president for life sounds just swell, in spite of the fact that his own administration is already a disaster.

This effectively undermines any sort of response that any of the planet's other democratic nations might have been planning. After all, if the United States isn't going to do anything, and they very clearly aren't planning to, and Vladimir Putin is obviously down with the whole "strong man dictator" thing, then there's not much that nobody else can effectively do that Xi Jinping will be compelled to take any notice of whatsoever. China had spent the entire Obama administration slowly moving in a more open and democratic direction, but that's all over now, and the orange idiot in the White House is too much of an idiot to even realize that this is a bad thing.

I'd written before about the Trump damage being a generational thing that the United States will be dealing with for decades to come. It's becoming increasingly clear, though, that the U.S. won't be the only ones dealing with Trump damage for the next twenty years, as his ham-fisted, ignorant approach to foreign policy continues to push both Russia and China further away from liberal democracy, cementing them into oppressive, nuclear-armed dictatorships that the rest of us will now have to deal with the foreseeable future. GG.

Can this idiot please just get his ass impeached, already?

Planning to fail

From CBC News:

Florida's governor is proposing a plan to prevent gun violence that includes banning the sale of firearms to anyone younger than 21 in the wake of a mass shooting that killed 17 people at a Florida high school last week.
Gov. Rick Scott announced the plan at a news conference Friday in Tallahassee. He began by reading aloud the names of the victims who were fatally shot Feb. 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland.
Scott's plan also calls for:

• A trained law enforcement officer in every school in Florida by the time the 2018 school year begins.
• One officer for every 1,000 students on campus.
• The sale of bump stocks be banned.
• Mandatory "active shooter training" at all schools. Students, teachers and staff must complete all training and "code red" drills by the end of the first week of each semester.
• Prohibiting a "violent or mentally ill person" from purchasing a firearm through a sworn request by a family or community member, called a "violent threat restraining order."
• $50 million in additional funding for mental-health initiatives.

So, having failed to plan to safeguard the right of those 17 high school students and teachers to live,  Rick Scott's new plan is to plan to fail to safeguard their lives, and instead plan for school shootings to be the new normal. Because, let's be honest, none of these proposals are going to do anything - it's all security theatre, and none of it really addresses the main contributing factor in gun violence: guns.

The numbers do not lie, on this issue. Countries that enacted gun control laws after their first mass shooting were able to prevent them from becoming a regular occurrence. The United States, however, failed to do so, and now have more guns than residents... literally in excess of one gun for every man, woman, and child living inside their borders, whether legally or not. Bringing that situation under control is going to require more than going through the "security theatre" motions. And, as long as Republicans are in control of the government, nothing more than lip service will ever be paid to this issue.

Did I ever mention how glad I am to be Canadian, at times like this? Seriously, I have zero desire to even visit the U.S. right now. Much as I love our American neighbours, they just have way too many extremely well-armed idiots and nutjobs down there.

This isn't a problem that I can do much about; as a Canadian, I can't even donate to the campaigns of candidates that might enact gun control laws. Americans have to do that. All I can do is urge everyone in America who cares about their safety, and the lives and safety of those around them, to register to vote, and then show up to vote, for Democrats. Even voting for well-meaning Republicans means voting for more mass shooting carnage, because anything that keeps Republicans in power, or even keeps them close to parity with Dems, means that the GOP will refuse to evolve on this issue, remaining enslaved to the most reactionary elements who make up their Primary voting pool.

And that assumes that there are well-meaning elected Republicans on this issue, something for which I'm not yet seeing any evidence. Voting for change means voting "D," both this year and in 2020. Nothing else convince Republicans that they even need to change, let alone make that change happen.

Thankfully, the American electorate seems to have realized this, and is voting Democratic in every special election that comes up; one can only hope that continues through the mid-terms, and into the next Presidential cycle. And, for a wonder, the NRA is suddenly looking vulnerable for the first time in years.

So, maybe there's hope for change, even if it is a new generation that has to make it happen. I certainly hope that sanity will reassert itself south of the border. One might want to visit, sometime before the end of the century.

Now can we say that Israel's hard-liners have lost their way?

Seriously, you can't make this shit up. From CBC News:

Muluebrhan Mesgna walked out of an Israeli immigration office near Tel Aviv clutching a white piece of paper that he worries is his death warrant.

"I feel that [Israel is] killing me — to deport me to Uganda or Rwanda is no less than killing me," said the 30-year-old Eritrean, who has lived in Israel since 2011.

Mesgna is one of hundreds of men from Eritrea and Sudan who have been handed notices giving them a stark choice. They can leave Israel voluntarily, along with a cheque for $4,400 and a plane ticket to an undisclosed country in Africa, or be locked up.

The deportations of 37,000 African migrants, who the government views as "illegal infiltrators," are expected to begin in March.

The state's plans have drawn harsh criticism from Holocaust survivors and sparked demonstrations, with immigration and human rights advocates saying the expulsions are not the Jewish way.

That's right... having spent years illegally settling Jewish citizens on Palestinian-occupied lands, turning a blind eye to violence those settlers perpetrate on their Palestinian neighbours while harshly punishing any hint of Palestinian reprisals, the hard-liners of Israel have officially moved on from the annexation of other peoples' lands for their own "living space," and are now establishing actual concentration camps for non-Jews. And while the hard-liners' plan doesn't yet involve actually killing the detainees, knowingly sending them back to face the same persecution and death that these people have already fled once isn't much better.

It's no wonder Holocaust survivors are horrified, and they really shouldn't be the only ones.

The pending deportation of thousands of people has struck a chord in Israel, as the Jewish state was created as a safe haven for Jews fleeing persecution.

Asylum seekers and their Israeli supporters vow to keep protesting the government's plans, ahead of the start of the deportations in March. Dozens of Holocaust survivors sent a letter to Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month, urging him to reconsider.

"The State of Israel, under your rule, has set itself a goal of reminding the world of the lessons of the Holocaust," the survivors wrote. "Therefore we ask you: Stop the process! Only you have the ability to make a historic decision and show the world that the Jewish state will not allow the suffering and torture of people under its protection."

Israelis and African migrants have voiced similar messages at a number of rallies held in support of the asylum seekers. A demonstration outside of the Rwandan Embassy in the city of Herzliya earlier this month attracted thousands of protestors.

"I think this is against our tradition and against our history as Jews, who for centuries tried to escape from different places," said renowned Israeli sculptor Dani Karavan, who added that several members of his family perished at the hands of the Nazis.

"Now we are doing this, against our culture."

The hard-liners of Israel have been losing their way for a long time, having clearly failed to learn or completely forgotten the lessons of history. Netanyahu and his ilk have spent years undermining the peace process, and with Trump's help finally killed it completely last year. Now we see their next move, and it's every bit as ugly as their critics had warned people, for years, to expect. Comparisons to the Holocaust are a lot more apt today than they were a week ago; Jewish people inside Israel are able to clearly see the ugliness of what's being done here, and are calling it what it is. The only question is, how far down this path with Netanyahu's supporters have to go, before the rest of the world starts to do the same?

Support for Israel cannot continue to be unquestioning and unconditional. The suffering that Jewish people have endured at the hands of others does not entitle them to do the same to non-Jewish people living inside Israel's borders. Jewish people inside Israel recognize this; it's time for the global community to start doing the same, before Israel's hard-liners stray any further into this brutal, racist territory. It's time for Western nations, in particular, to actually learn the lessons of history... while there's still time to avoid repeating the worst of them.

AT&T, after fighting against Net Neutrality for years, now wants to be seen as its champion

OK, this one is a little bit tech related, but it's more political than anything else. As reported by engadget:

Few people would call AT&T a champion of net neutrality, but that isn't stopping it from trying to claim the title. CEO Randall Stephenson has posted an open letter calling on Congress to write an "Internet Bill of Rights" that enforces "neutrality, transparency, openness, non-discrimination and privacy protection" for American internet users. [...] The company chief also insisted that AT&T honored an open internet and doesn't block, throttle or otherwise hinder access to content.

The problem, as you might suspect, is what the company isn't saying. The US already had protections for net neutrality that do what it's asking for, but AT&T and other telecoms (including our parent Verizon) have spent years fighting net neutrality regulation whenever it comes up. The carrier spent over $16 million in lobbying just in 2017, and it maintained its anti-regulatory stance throughout the FCC's repeal process. While it has argued that FCC regulation isn't predictable (policies tend to swing back and forth depending on who's in power), why champion for an end to the rules now, when Congress is less likely to pass neutrality laws?

A: Because there's no risk involved in advocating for new net neutrality laws, which the GOP are not going to pass. I mean, the GOP-controlled Congress can barely pass gas, but they're definitely not interested in passing legislation which would not only restore an Obama-era FCC policy, but enshrine it in law, making it harder to for future Ajit Pai's to undermine. Duh.

Look, this is a pure PR move from AT&T, and means absolutely nothing. After lobbying against net neutrality for years, AT&T have suddenly realized how popular it is with their own customers, and are trying to mitigate the PR damage with this meaningless gesture.

How popular is net neutrality, you ask? It's this popular:

Yes, that's fucking Burger King, weighing in on the side of net neutrality. When a corporation like BK weighs in on a political issue, any issue, you know that they've either (a) seen some financial benefit in doing so, or (b) seen no PR downside to doing so, or (c) both. Which is why AT&T now want a piece of this PR action. Don't be fooled. AT&T, Comcast, and Charter Spectrum are the enemies of net neutrality, not its allies.

The beginning of the end of America's global dominance in technology

In a world where conspiracy theorists are still trying to claim that NASA faked the moon landings (hint: they not only didn't, they couldn't have), it probably shouldn't be a huge surprise that American's don't always appreciate just how much they've benefited from the Apollo program. Modern technology ranging from microprocessors to microwave ovens, from burglar alarms to heart monitors, and from aluminum foil to dialysis machines, all of it owes a debt to the Apollo program. The huge boost to American technological development has lasted for decades.

But Apollo ended over forty years ago, and the Republicans who currently control all three branches of the U.S. government are very much antagonistic towards the actual science which fuels genuine technological development... and very much in the pockets of a variety of monopolistic corporations who are desperate to stifle competition, and innovation, from smaller firms. With China, and various EU countries, all pushing in the opposite direction, it really was only a matter of time before America's Apollo-fuelled technological edge ran out. The question really wasn't one of whether it would happen; it was only a question of when.

Well, I think we know the answer to that question: now. As reported by Bloomberg:

The U.S. dropped out of the top 10 in the 2018 Bloomberg Innovation Index for the first time in the six years the gauge has been compiled. South Korea and Sweden retained their No. 1 and No. 2 rankings.

The index scores countries using seven criteria, including research and development spending and concentration of high-tech public companies.

The U.S. fell to 11th place from ninth mainly because of an eight-spot slump in the post-secondary, or tertiary, education-efficiency category, which includes the share of new science and engineering graduates in the labor force. Value-added manufacturing also declined. Improvement in the productivity score couldn’t make up for the lost ground.

“I see no evidence to suggest that this trend will not continue,” said Robert D. Atkinson, president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation in Washington, D.C. “Other nations have responded with smart, well-funded innovation policies like better R&D tax incentives, more government funding for research, more funding for technology commercialization initiatives.”

That point about this being an ongoing trend is particularly important. The U.S., once the country that put men on the moon, had already dropped to 9th after years of poor policies; today was not the day that America dropped out of the #1 spot, it was only the day that they finally dropped out of the top ten.

And while the U.S. does play host to the corporate headquarters of companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, none of them are doing all that much innovating anymore; they're just more monopolies, consolidating their gains while avoiding their taxes. The actual innovation is happening elsewhere, a momentum shift that may prove incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to reverse.

So, where is innovation happening, you ask?

South Korea remained the global-innovation gold medalist for the fifth consecutive year. Samsung Electronics Co., the nation’s most-valuable company by market capitalization, has received more U.S. patents in the 2000s than any firm except International Business Machines Corp. And its semiconductors, smartphones and digital-media equipment spawned an ecosystem of Korean suppliers and partners similar to what Japan developed around Sony Corp. and Toyota Motor Corp.

China moved up two spots to 19th, buoyed by its high proportion of new science and engineering graduates in the labor force and increasing number of patents by innovators such as Huawei Technologies Co. [...] Japan, one of three Asian nations in the top 10, rose one slot to No. 6. France moved up to ninth from 11th, joining five other European economies in the top tier. Israel rounded out this group and was the only country to beat South Korea in the R&D category.

The new isn't great for countries like my own home of Canada, either (the home of CANDU reactors and the Canadarm dropped from #20 to #22), but it's the ongoing shift away from American dominance in science and technology which is likely to have the biggest global impact. Most American policymakers cite America's history of technological innovation as being a potential source of solutions for a lot of what's ailing the U.S. right now, but the reality is that American isn't the driving force for science and technology in the world, anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. Continuing to make policy as if the U.S. were still capable of calling the tune, as it were, in any field of technological endeavor, rather than just being another nation in the pack, has all sorts of disastrous potential.

This is what I mean, when I say that we're watching the end of the American era in global politics. Just like the British did, as faltering European colonial expansion brought an end to the British Empire, Americans are now going to have to spend the next few generations watching as other nations move to the forefront in areas that American once dominated, with no obvious path to turning that trend around. And while it won't necessarily be China that takes their place, the fact that they moved up into the top-20 for the first time may just be a sign of things to come.

It may be time to start learning Mandarin, folks. Just saying.

Head over to Bloomberg for the complete list.

Government shutdown fails to shut down Muller's team

It never occurred to me that Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation might be one of the things that Trump wanted to shut down, along with the rest of the U.S. government, but if Muller was meant to be the target of the shutdown, or even collateral damage, then Trump's fecklessness has (once again) led to failure. As reported by HuffPost:

Congress was unable to pass a spending bill late Friday night, shutting down everything but what is considered the “essential” parts of the federal government. Social Security checks are still being processed, the military is still working (although troops won’t get paid until afterward) and air traffic controllers are still helping keep the skies clear.

Meanwhile, much of the work of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will stop ― right at the height of the flu season ― and about 800,000 federal employees will be furloughed until Congress resolves the issue.

And one thing that is still going: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

The Justice Department confirmed this week that employees in Mueller’s office are exempt from the shutdown and can continue their work. His office is not funded through the regular congressional appropriations process.

So the probe, which Trump desperately wants shut down, is going on even as other government functions cease.

I'd describe this as an ironic outcome, except that we're well past that point by now. Regardless, the result is that the Muller investigation will continue to drive the agenda, while all other aspects of the Trump agenda are put on hold. And with the GOP in control of both houses of Congress, and the Presidency, there's not much doubt who's to blame for the shutdown, either.

It probably won't have an enormous impact on the upcoming midterms, but people who care about functioning government should be thinking long and hard about whether Republicans are capable of governing the country at all, whatever you think about their ideological agenda. That burgeoning Democratic wave that Republicans were worried about is looking more and more likely all the time.

GG, GOP! Keep up the good work!

There was collusion, they know there was collusion, and they knew it was wrong.

Assuming that this reporting bears out, in the same way that every other piece of reporting on this story has been borne out, I don't see how any other conclusion can be drawn. From CBC News:

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon called a June 2016 meeting with a group of Russians attended by Donald Trump Jr. and his father's top campaign officials "treasonous" and "unpatriotic," according to excerpts from a new book seen by Reuters on Wednesday.

Bannon expressed derision and astonishment over the meeting in Trump Tower in New York in which a Russian lawyer was said to be offering damaging information about Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, according to the book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff.

The meeting, arranged by Trump's son, also included Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort. It has become part of a federal investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia in the election. Trump has denied any such collusion.

"The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor — with no lawyers. They didn't have any lawyers," Bannon says in the book excerpts seen by Reuters.

"Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it's all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately."

[...]

Bannon was incredulous about the meeting shortly after it was revealed, according to the book, concluding sarcastically: "That's the brain trust they had."

Boy, Steve Bannon is just a gift that keeps on giving, isn't he?

Trump is, naturally, denying everything ("When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind," looks to be the Trump quote du jour), but he and everyone else associated with him have categorically denied absolutely everything else up to now, only to be proven over and over and over again to be outright lying. And Trump lies habitually anyway, even when the truth is not only easily knowable but probably would better serve him.

I've been saying this for a while now, but I'm going to say it again: Trump is guilty, and his presidency is going to end badly and earlier than scheduled. If the GOP-controlled Congress doesn't throw him under the bus before the mid-terms, then the Democratically-controlled Congress which looks poised to replace them almost certainly will. That's assuming that Robert Muller doesn't bring him down first.

I can't even gloat over Trump's inevitable downfall from safely north of the 49th parallel, in part because the damage that Trump is doing while still in office is global in scope, but also because watching your friends suffer (and American is a long-time friend of Canada) is just no fun at all. Ye gods, what a mess...

I stand by my earlier assertion: Trump's disastrous presidency is doing damage to America, and to our planet, that will take generations to undo, and the end of America as the leading nation of the world is happening as we watch. And while I know that the nature of empires is to end, it's still weird to watch it happen to your next door neighbour.

UPDATE:

Trump's lawyers have now issued the emptiest of all possible threats to sue Steve Bannon over this, simultaneously confirming that everything described in the Wolff book actually did happen. Coverage of this late development comes courtesy of Lawrence O'Donnell at MSNBC.