Sacre bleu! I have been expecting more than a few high-level arrests to take place as a result of the Draining of the Swamp, but I was not expecting one of them to be a President of the Fifth Republic!
Former French President Nicolas Sarkozy was placed in custody on Tuesday as part of an investigation that he received millions of euros in illegal financing from the regime of the late Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi.
A judicial source with direct knowledge of the case told The Associated Press that Sarkozy was being held at the Nanterre police station, west of Paris. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
Sarkozy and his former chief of staff have denied wrongdoing in the case, which involves funding for his winning 2007 presidential campaign.
Though an investigation has been underway since 2013, the case gained traction some three years later when French-Lebanese businessman Ziad Takieddine told the online investigative site, Mediapart, that he delivered suitcases from Libya containing 5 million euros ($6.2 million) in cash to Sarkozy and his former chief of staff Claude Gueant.
A lawyer for Sarkozy did not immediately respond to a message from the AP seeking comments. Investigators are examining claims that Gadhafi’s regime secretly gave Sarkozy 50 million euros overall for the 2007 campaign.
Now, it is possible that this has nothing at all to do with Trump’s swamp-draining. But considering all the shady connections between Clinton, Obama, Libya, Gadhafi, and the death of the US Ambassador to Libya, I tend to doubt it.
Macron is certainly proving to be a more interesting, and potentially more independent, character than I expected him to be.
China said it will begin applying its so-called social credit system to flights and trains and stop people who have committed misdeeds from taking such transport for up to a year.
People who would be put on the restricted lists included those found to have committed acts like spreading false information about terrorism and causing trouble on flights, as well as those who used expired tickets or smoked on trains, according to two statements issued on the National Development and Reform Commission’s website on Friday.
Those found to have committed financial wrongdoings, such as employers who failed to pay social insurance or people who have failed to pay fines, would also face these restrictions, said the statements which were dated 2 March.
The move is in line with President’s Xi Jinping’s plan to construct a social credit system based on the principle of “once untrustworthy, always restricted,” said one of the notices which was signed by eight ministries, including the country’s aviation regulator and the Supreme People’s Court.
China has flagged plans to roll out a system that will allow government bodies to share information on its citizens’ trustworthiness and issue penalties based on a so-called social credit score.
This is a brilliant application of what Big Social is doing, only instead of allowing the hand-picked SJWs of the Twitter Trust and Safety Council or the Facebook-endorsed SPLC to do the restricting, the Chinese government will do it. And why not? The basic principle has been established and broadly accepted, from Twitter to the Her Majesty’s Government. As Q said, “why are trips allowed?”
Imagine if the God-Emperor and his Grand Inquisitor were to launch a similar program in the United States. After all, who has proven themselves more untrustworthy than Facebook? How could the SJWs legitimately complain if Mark Zuckerberg and his executives found themselves placed under permanent restriction? This principle of “once untrustworthy, always restricted” is merely an adaptation of Facebook’s own approach to banning thoughtcrime and legally controlling the public discourse, and it represents a welcome return to pre-Enlightenment philosophy on the part of a people who were always rightly dubious about it being genuine. There can be no “freedom of speech” in any non-Western, non-Christian, non-American society, because the concept doesn’t even make sense in any other context.
If you wanted to keep what passed for free speech in America, then you shouldn’t have permitted entry to Catholics and Jews, followed by wave after wave of various peoples whose beliefs and cultural traditions are entirely antithetical to the concept. And given those waves of immigration, you can’t be surprised that it’s no longer even possible to publicly state that a man is not a woman without negative legal and social and employment and financial consequences.
The devil, of course, is in the definitions. But the devil is out. Let’s not shed too many tears for the SJWs once they discover the difference between “influence” and “power”, for as another Chinese leader once said, “power comes from the barrel of a gun”. It does not come from control of a momentarily popular software application.
A former Obama campaign official is claiming that Facebook knowingly allowed them to mine massive amounts of Facebook data — more than they would’ve allowed someone else to do — because they were supportive of the campaign.
That’s because the more than 1 million Obama backers who signed up for the [Facebook-based app] gave the campaign permission to look at their Facebook friend lists. In an instant, the campaign had a way to see the hidden young voters. Roughly 85{8f3a20e95123fc761e5b6545cdcf28fe932999778b1965cb4dd78a3d9b063320} of those without a listed phone number could be found in the uploaded friend lists. What’s more, Facebook offered an ideal way to reach them. “People don’t trust campaigns. They don’t even trust media organizations,” says Goff. “Who do they trust? Their friends.” The campaign called this effort targeted sharing. And in those final weeks of the campaign, the team blitzed the supporters who had signed up for the app with requests to share specific online content with specific friends simply by clicking a button. More than 600,000 supporters followed through with more than 5 million contacts, asking their friends to register to vote, give money, vote or look at a video designed to change their mind.
Let’s see… 5 million times $40,000 is $200 billion in potential FTC fines. Another $200 billion on top of the $2 trillion they might already owe.
A self-driving Uber car hit and killed a pedestrian as she was crossing the road in the first fatality involving the controversial fleet of autonomous vehicles. Elaine Herzberg, 49, was hit by an SUV around 10pm on Sunday in Tempe, Arizona, when she was walking outside of a crosswalk. She was immediately rushed to the hospital where she died from her injuries, ABC 15 reported. Tempe Police say the SUV was in autonomous mode at the time of the crash.
I have to admit, despite being an early fan, I have been exceedingly frustrated with Jeff Sessions’s seeming passivity myself. But it’s hard to argue with the point that he has quietly made more progress draining the Swamp than anyone in the government that we’ve ever seen.
Sessions is the quintessential Eagle Scout. He will follow the rules down to the last subclause and will not make his move until every “t” has been crossed and every “i” dotted.
We saw the first results of this approach last Friday – in dealing with Andrew McCabe, this century’s prime example of a “cookie full of arsenic.”
Sessions waited until the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility (which is run by Assistant Director Candice Will, who was appointed by Robert Mueller, of all people) recommended that McCabe be fired. He then had McCabe officially informed beforehand, following established procedure to the letter.
This comes under the rubric of “strategy,” a concept unfortunately foreign to too many active conservatives. A large number of cons recognize only one course of action: a headlong charge against the closest target while howling at the top of their lungs. Not only do they dismiss any more subtle form of action, but they often attack those engaging in it of cowardice or corruption, or of being an “Alinskyite-Obamaist commie stooge” – despite the fact that their kamikaze runs usually end up heading over the nearest cliff.
So it was with Sessions, who has been routinely dismissed as “paid off,” being “asleep under his desk,” or as “part of the swamp.”
Sessions took his time, did things according to the book, and dealt the swamp a good, stiff blow while leaving its denizens little recourse but to throw tantrums in the media, which they have been doing the weekend long. Compare this to all the would-be conservative champions – McCarthy, LeBoutillier, Moore – piled up under the cliff while the leftist monolith trundles on nearly unscathed.
At this point, having taken multiple scalps at the FBI alone, the man has earned more than a little slack. There is some reason to be optimistic that the winning in this regard hasn’t even seriously begun.
A number of people have asked me why I stopped blogging at Alpha Game, and then, delisted it from the Day Trips here. The answer is pretty simple: I got bored of the subject, bored of the discussions of the subject, and was beginning to find the people who wanted to discuss the subject to be increasingly tedious as well.
The social heuristic of the socio-sexual hierarchy is, in my opinion, one of the most valuable ideas I have ever encountered. In my opinion, it is up there with Taleb’s concept of uncertainty and the Black Swan. I use it effectively on an almost daily basis, both in my work and in my personal life. I use it to anticipate and avoid problems, to artfully resolve situations that arise, to advise others, and to plan for the future. I use it to present a broader range of characters in my writing and to better understand the perspectives from which the authors I am editing are writing.
Which is why I’m simply not at all interested in trying to prove its legitimacy or its utility to doubters anymore. I’m not interested in trying to explain socio-sexual theory 101 when I am actively implementing its practical applications. Nor am I interested in listening to the endless nattering from the gammas that a) gamma isn’t even a thing, b) there is nothing wrong with being a gamma, c) being a gamma is better than being an alpha, d) they’re totally alphas when they’re not busy being Navy SEALs, and e) they’re not gammas, I’m the gamma.
And above all, I am aggressively disinterested in listening to the constant and inescapable refrain of “what about me” and “where do I rank” heard from nearly every male individual who encounters the theory for the first time. I am not the socio-sexual police nor do I convey a place on the hierarchy to anyone… and the mere fact that anyone would turn to me to provide it is indicative of a complete failure to grasp the concept in the first place. I am merely an observer of human behavior who happens to be aware of a few behavioral patterns that most people reliably exhibit.
All war is murder for profit. Some organizations are just more open about it. WARDOGS INCORPORATED is one of the largest and most professional mercenary corporations operating in the Kantillon subsector. If you need a bodyguard, an assassination team, or an armored cavalry regiment complete with air support, WARDOGS Inc. can provide it for you… for a very steep price. Tommy Falkland is proud to be a Wardog. And he’s delighted when WDI’s executives sign a massive contract to arrange for a little regime change on a no-account low-tech planet that looks like a highly profitable cakewalk. But when the transportation company unexpectedly fails to deliver their armor and artillery dirtside, Tommy and his fellow Wardogs find themselves caught in the middle of the killing zone. And there they learn that bullets will kill a man dead just as quickly as a plasma bolt.
Created by Vox Day and set in the universe of Quantum Mortis, BATTLESUIT BASTARDS is the first book in the Wardogs Inc. military science fiction series written by G.D. Stark. Available on Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
Some of you have been saying you want more Quantum Mortis. Well, here is more Quantum Mortis. Graven Tower is not the protagonist, but the events taking place in the new series are roughly contiguous with those of A Man Disrupted and are occurring in the same subsector. You can consider Wardogs Inc. to be one of our responses to the stunning success of Nick Cole’s bestselling Galaxy’s Edge series…. but there are others on the way soon. And yes, Wardogs Inc. will be appearing in comic book form, illustrated and colored by the two gentlemen responsible for the action-packed cover.
And “action-packed” barely begins to describe this series. It is, like the Wardogs themselves, off the chain. An excerpt from Chapter 1:
We unceremoniously stuffed the bodies into the small personnel airlock and flushed them out into space. “Sergeant Thrasher, cargo is clean,” I reported. “Find anything interesting?” “Mostly just industrial equipment. Construction stuff,” I said. Four-eyes cut in, “To be precise, mining equipment.” “Roger,” Squid said. “No problems?” “Nothing illegal. Some more slug-throwers though, in wood crates,” I said. “Not our business. Everyone meet up on the bridge in five. We’ve cleared our bodies here, we’ll finish there.” “Roger,” I replied. Park hammered the tops back on the boxes, then exited cargo. I reset the seals on the door and we headed up to the bridge. It wasn’t a huge ship, so no lifts. Just ladders and stairs like an old atomic model. We entered the bridge just as Private Ward was dragging out the body of the captain. Park saluted the dead man ironically and Jock laughed. “Now what?” I said. “Now we wait for a new crew,” said Squid from the late captain’s chair, a flask in his hand. “Lieutenant says their ship is on the way and they should be here within the hour. At ease for now.” I looked around the bridge. Everything looked clean and well-maintained, though it was an older ship. Garamond read the name plate on the wall. Registration 1001x235htfg22789.113. Gruppo ENIL-EX, Valatesta. I took off my helmet and set it on the navigation table next to a personal tablet, still displaying a colorful picture story its owner would never finish. Probably lots of time to read on freighters. Almost exactly an hour later, a sleek black transport pulled alongside and hailed us. A few moments later, the boarding party joined us. The men wore the same navy blue jumpsuits of the guys we’d just spaced. Gruppo ENIL-EX uniforms, I assumed. Their leader engaged with Sergeant Thrasher and a severe little man walked up to me. “Do you mind?” he said, then powered up the nav board. He tossed the tablet onto a chair as I gathered up my helmet. “Good to meet you too,” I said, getting out of his way. “Hmm,” he said, keying in some numbers. “So,” I pressed, partly because I was annoyed, “got a hot date, then?” “Not likely on Ulixis,” he sniffed. “What? You don’t like furry chicks?” I remember jokes about the women of Ulixis, though I really only had a vague idea where the place was. “Go away, Wardog, I’m working,” he said, waving his hand dismissively. I considered shooting him in the back of the head, just on principle, then decided I’d rather not lose my bonus today. Squid didn’t take kindly to freelancing.
It’s fascinating to see that after all the ways that Big Social is spying on everyone, what has the media in an uproar is the belated realization that a sword can always cut two ways. They didn’t mind when they knew it was the Obama, Hillary, and the SJW-converged corporations that were data-mining, but now that they realize the Right – and in particular, Steve Bannon and Donald Trump – can and have done exactly the same thing, they suddenly have reservations about the wisdom of letting organizations have access to that level of data.
Facebook is facing an existential test, and its leadership is failing to address it.
Good leaders admit mistakes, apologize quickly, show up where they’re needed and show their belief in the company by keeping skin in the game.
Facebook executives, in contrast, react to negative news with spin and attempts to bury it. Throughout the last year, every time bad news has broken, executives have downplayed its significance. Look at its public statements last year about how many people had seen Russian-bought election ads — first it was 10 million, then it was 126 million.
Top execs dodged Congress when it was asking questions about Russian interference. They are selling their shares at a record clip.
The actions of Facebook execs now recall how execs at Nokia and Blackberry reacted after the iPhone emerged. Their revenues kept growing for a couple years — and they dismissed the threats. By the time users started leaving in droves, it was too late.
There’s no outside attacker bringing Facebook down. It’s a circular firing squad that stems from the company’s fundamental business model of collecting data from users, and using that data to sell targeted ads. For years, users went along with the bargain. But after almost a year of constant negative publicity, their patience may be waning.
Facebook did not initially respond to questions or a request for comment from CNBC.
Here is a less generous theory. We know that Facebook was being propped up by the CIA from the start. But the CIA is now under the control of the God-Emperor. Which means that a) Facebook’s dirty laundry is more likely to come out, and, b) Facebook is not going to be financially propped up the way it has been from the very beginning.
Which, of course, raises the interesting question about whether it ever was a viable business at all. Or even a legal one.
Facebook may face more legal trouble than you might think in the wake of Cambridge Analytica’s large-scale data harvesting. Former US officials David Vladeck and Jessica Rich have told the Washington Post that Facebook’s data sharing may violate the FTC consent decree requiring that it both ask for permission before sharing data and report any authorized access. The “Thisisyourdigitallife” app at the heart of the affair asked for permission from those who directly used it, but not the millions of Facebook friends whose data was taken in the process.
If the FTC did find violations, Facebook could be on the hook for some very hefty fines — albeit fines that aren’t likely to be as hefty as possible. The decree asks for fines as large as $40,000 per person, but that would amount to roughly $2 trillion. Regulators like the FTC historically push for fines they know companies can pay, which would suggest fines that are ‘just’ in the billion-dollar range. Given that there are already multiple American and European investigations underway, any financial penalty would be just one piece of a larger puzzle.
Would you not just love to see Facebook hit with a $2 trillion fine?
The early reviews of the first Arkhaven comics are very good. This comes as a relief, because I’m not talking about the art, the characters, the writing, or the story, but about the physical production quality, which was the one element that was a known unknown from the very start of the entire project. We have taken a very aggressive pricing strategy, which combined with the 6.14 x 9.21 royal octavo size and the help of Ingram has enabled us to hit a $3.00 retail price with a full regular distribution discount.
Just got my Jeeves and QM today. Vox, these things are gorgeous. A little smaller than I had calculated, but absolutely beautiful. I don’t think upsizing is worth it, given that this is a lovely product as is. And the coloring is amazing. That background in one panel on page 10 of Right Ho #1 is major league. Fantastic work. – E Deploribus Unum
I received my QM and Jeeves yesterday. The artwork is well done, with background detail to sustain the story (and in Jeeves case, add more hilarity to the upper class tweaking). The color palettes work very well for both. Dialogues boxes are good, with nice size on the “tell” boxes needed for story background. Nothing looks compressed or stretched out of shape. The smaller size (about 6 x 9 inches) is easier to pack and take places, but still large enough to handle read easily. The heavy cover is amazing – no smudges, deformation, hard to tear. Great idea. Now, about the Hildy poster … any complaints about sexism halt at the muzzle of her weapon. She would be nearly as popular as Dynamique or Rebel. – SilentDraco
My shipment arrived today. Couldn’t be more pleased. Beautiful work. The top trim on Jeeves was a little tight (though well within industry standards and not worth carping about), and QM was perfect. Colors, paper, binding – everything is wonderful. Bravo! You guys need to be patting yourselves on the back for hitting it out of the park this early in the game. I do notice the smaller size, but the product is definitely nicer than the average comic, and I’d be really surprised if anyone will care. It does not seem worth it to me to upsize it at greater cost. It will still rack in the comic stores just fine. Frankly, I can’t believe you can sell this for $3.00. – AP
If you haven’t picked up a copy or two yet, you can do so in the Arkhaven section of the Castalia Direct Store. Our next two print editions will be premium Dark Legion projects that will be 10×7 and priced at $6.99 for the 40-page Rebel Dead Revenge teaser and $9.99 for the 64-page Chicago Typewriter. After that, we’ll get Right Ho, Jeeves #2 and Quantum Mortis: A Man Disrupted #2 out.
All four of these will be Gold Logo editions. The next two after that will be Alt★Hero #1: Crackdown and Chuck Dixon’s Avalon #1: Conscience of the King, both of which will be 10×7 and $3.99. And since everyone loves Rebel, here is a panel from her behind the wheel of her Mustang from Alt★Hero #2: Falls the Hammer.
