News — At The Edge — 2/3

Appears the infrastructure for a dystopian future — domestic disregard for truth, monitoring all movement and communication, and international conflict — is being tested for surpressing social unrest ahead in 2020s.

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A severe case of ‘truth decay’ —

“Optimists [hope]…’truth decay’ can be vanquished,…Vietnam war and Watergate [had]…not been accompanied by…stark disagreement over objective facts and scientific truths….Social media…blamed for inflaming partisan tensions, cannot explain the decades-long uptick in political polarization….

‘As passions rise, post hoc reasoning rises…[and] makes people much more willing to believe any outlandish thing.’” https://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2018/01/what-video

Steve Mnuchin Has Some Explaining to Do —

“Trump campaign [had]… extensive links with…Russian contacts [several]… known intelligence agents…[and] campaign operators lied about their contacts…[while] Trump repeatedly refused to acknowledge that Russia had hacked U.S. computers in connection with the elections, and…praised [Putin]….

[So] both houses of Congress voted to adopt the new…Sanctions Act (CAATSA)…[requiring] a detailed report identifying ‘the most significant senior foreign political figures and…other members of the Russian ruling elite’ and an ‘identification of any indices of corruption with respect to those individuals’…popularly called the ‘Kremlin list’….

[U.S.] government bodies…carried out conscientious work on these lines…[but] somebody high up…threw out the whole expert work…[and] simply wrote down the top of the Russian presidential administration and government plus the 96 Russian billionaires on the Forbes list….

[Any] Russian who reads [it]…can only conclude that U.S. intelligence is as dumb as it gets…[and] the U.S. government has…made a major push to solidify the Russian elite behind Putin….

By signing this list, the secretary of the Treasury has…mocked the U.S. sanctions on Russia and rendered CAATSA ineffective.” https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/31/steve-mnuchin-russia-sanctions-list-forbes-216556

What Truthiness and Post-Fact Era Means_Seriously, the present fiasco feels like we have a gun pointed to our collective head. Does anyone really want more of…_medium.com

ICE to gain access to database that tracks license plates —

“[Using] database, ICE agents will be able to see where license plates have been located over the past five years, as well as find individual’s residences…[and] be instantly alerted when new records of specific plates are located….

Civil liberties groups slammed ICE’s access to the database….’Are we as a society, out of our desire to find [immigrants]…willing to let our government create an infrastructure that will track all of us?’” http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/370855-ice-to-gain-access-to-database-for-tracking-license-plates

Trump team considers nationalizing 5G network —

“Trump national security officials are considering…federal takeover of a portion of the nation’s mobile network to guard against China… within three years….

[Primary] debate will be [whether]… government owns and builds [or]…[carrier] consortium to build the network…[as] ‘the 21st century equivalent of the Eisenhower National Highway System’….

[It’s] because ‘China has…dominant position in the manufacture and operation of network infrastructure…[is] dominant malicious actor in the Information Domain’…[and] slowly winning the AI ‘algorithm battles,’ and…puts us at a permanent disadvantage…[though] unclear what at all that has to do with a mobile network.” https://www.axios.com/trump-team-debates-nationalizing-5g-network-f1e92a49-60f2-4e3e-acd4-f3eb03d910ff.html

Our Twilight Zone & What Comes Next *_“You’re traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind.”_medium.com

Doomsday Clock just moved: It’s now 2 minutes to ‘midnight,’ the symbolic hour of the apocalypse —

“Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists advanced… [Clock] closer to the end of humanity…[after] ‘grim assessment’ of the state of geopolitical affairs…[and] ‘the failure of…Trump and other world leaders to deal with looming threats of nuclear war and climate change’….

[Now] as close to midnight today as it was in 1953, when Cold War fears perhaps reached their highest levels…[with] members of Congress, White House advisers, and…president implying that they think war with a nuclear state is not only likely, but potentially desirable. That’s unusual and disturbing’….

[Also] the threat posed by climate change…is ‘nearly as dire’ as the dangers of nuclear weapons…[yet Trump] has promised to impede progress…[and] calls for expanding the role of U.S. nuclear weapons.

‘So the risk of a nuclear conflict by accident or by design is [growing]’…[with] misconceptions and accidents quickly ratcheting up an escalation ladder that spirals out of control’….The outlook for the environment isn’t much better….[Clock’s] an urgent warning of global danger.’” https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/the-doomsday-clock-just-moved-it’s-now-2-minutes-to-‘midnight’-the-symbolic-hour-of-the-apocalypse/ar-AAv9usQ?li=BBmkt5R&ocid=spartandhp

The Evolution of Mind Games_In biological evolution, natural selection is agnostic about what succeeds or fails. But being agnostic isn’t an option…_medium.com

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May you live long and prosper!Doc Huston