Tuesday, February 04, 2020

UPDATED
'Majority of Mine Victims Are Children': EU Condemns Trump Rollback of Landmine Restrictions
"Their use anywhere, anytime, and by any actor remains completely unacceptable to the European Union."

by
Published on Tuesday, February 04, 2020 
by
U.S. soldiers from the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry Regiment collect land mines, in the northern city of Mosul, Iraq on January 8, 2005. (Photo: Mauricio Lima/AFP via Getty Images)


The European Union on Tuesday condemned U.S. President Donald Trump's decision last week to roll back restrictions on the American military's use of landmines despite the deadly history of the weapons around the world.
Virginie Battu-Henriksson, spokesperson for the E.U.'s diplomatic service, said in a statement that Trump's rescission of an Obama administration order banning landmine use outside of the Korean peninsula "undermines the global norm against anti-personnel mines."
That international norm, said Battu-Henriksson, "has saved tens of thousands of people in the past twenty years."
"The conviction that these weapons are incompatible with International Humanitarian Law has led 164 states to join the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention."
—Virginie Battu-Henriksson, European Union
"The majority of mine victims are children," Battu-Henriksson added. "The conviction that these weapons are incompatible with International Humanitarian Law has led 164 states to join the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Convention, including all member states of the European Union. Their use anywhere, anytime, and by any actor remains completely unacceptable to the European Union."
The E.U.'s statement came days after the Trump White House announced Friday that it officially canceled the previous administration's policy restricting landmine use by the U.S. military, a move arms control groups and peace activists warned could lead to an increase in civilian deaths and set back the global movement to rid the planet of the dangerous weapons of war.
"Mr. Trump's policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines," anti-war activist Jody Williams, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines, told Common Dreams in an email last week.
Leading 2020 Democratic presidential candidates joined the chorus denouncing Trump's decision.
In a tweet on Saturday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) called the move "abhorrent" and vowed to "reverse this decision and work with our allies to eliminate landmines."
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), in a statement to Vox on Monday, said "Trump's landmine policy reversal is barbaric, weakens America's moral leadership, and is quite simply a giveaway to the military-industrial complex."
If elected, Sanders said his administration would "reinstate the ban on their production and use outside of the Korean peninsula, and also work to achieve a North-South Korean peace agreement that would ultimately result in their being withdrawn from the Korean peninsula as well."

Trump lifts US restrictions on anti personnel landmines
AMERICA IS A ROGUE STATE
The 164 states that signed the Ottawa Convention met last November in Oslo to reaffirm their commitment to limiting the use of landmines, which can cause horrific injuries to civilians, and pledged to phase them out by 2025.

Around 30 countries, including the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan have so far refused to sign the 1997 Ottawa treaty.



AMERICA RESUMES ITS WAR ON THE WORLDS CHILDREN
 AND THEIR CIVILIAN PARENTS  

ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF ARMS SALES DRIVE THE US ECONOMY










US lifts restrictions on 'smart' landmines

(ALL LANDMINES ARE ANTI PERSONNEL BOMBS THAT HARM CHILDREN AND CIVILIANS NONE OF THEM ARE SMART THEY ARE A DUMB WEAPON)

The Trump administration lifted restrictions on the deployment of "smart" anti-personnel landmines. Traditional landmines are notorious for injuring civilians, including children, years after conflicts have ended.
The US military will now again be free to deploy landmines after the Trump administration lifted restrictions, saying new technology made them safer.
Restrictions will be lifted for anti-personnel landmines that can be switched off or destroyed remotely rather than staying active in the ground forever, according to a White House statement.
The new generation "non-persistent" landmines could be deployed anywhere in "exceptional circumstances," said the White House.
The ban is a reversal of US former-President Barack Obama's policy that outlawed all types of anti-personnel landmines, except on the Korean peninsula along the border with North Korea.
"The Department of Defense has determined that restrictions imposed on American forces by the Obama administration's policy could place them at a severe disadvantage during a conflict against our adversaries."

Traditional landmines left in the ground after conflicts continue to maim thousands of civilians, including children, each year. Landmines that cannot be turned off or remotely destroyed will still come under the ban.
Groups speak out against landmines
Many groups reacted strongly to the Trump administration decision. The Arms Control Association, a Washington-based research and advocacy group, said "smart" landmines have failed to work and been rejected by all NATO allies of the United States.
"The world has moved on from the use of landmines. The US should, too," said Jeff Abramson, a senior fellow at the association.
"This shameful move will ultimately be reversed by future US leaders," said Mary Wareham from the group's arms policy division.
How dangerous are landmines?
In 2018, a total of 6,897 people worldwide were killed or injured by mines or leftover explosives from war, according to research by the Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor.
Nearly 75% of victims whose identities were known were civilians, and more than half of the civilians were children, said the report.
A total of 164 countries, but not China, the US or Russia, have signed up to the United Nations 1999 Ottawa treaty — an international anti-landmine convention imposing restrictions and controls on the explosives.
President Donald Trump on Friday lifted US restrictions on deployment of landmines

31 JAN 2020
AFP/File / Nhac NGUYEN
Vietnamese landmine victim Nguyen The Nghia in January 2020 shows
 his wounds caused by a munitions explosion when he was younger
in Quang Tri province

President Donald Trump on Friday lifted US restrictions on deployment of landmines, saying a new generation of high-tech explosives would improve security for US forces.

In the latest reversal of a policy of his predecessor Barack Obama, Trump gave the green light to so-called "non-persistent" landmines that can be switched off remotely rather than staying in the ground forever.

"The Department of Defense has determined that restrictions imposed on American forces by the Obama administration's policy could place them at a severe disadvantage during a conflict against our adversaries," a White House statement said.

"The president is unwilling to accept this risk to our troops," it said.

"President Trump is rebuilding our military, and it is stronger than ever."

Obama in 2014 banned the use of anti-personnel landmines with the exception, under pressure from military planners, of the Korean peninsula where the explosives dot the last Cold War frontier with North Korea.

Obama also ordered the destruction of anti-personnel stockpiles not designed to defend South Korea and said the United States would not cooperate with other nations in developing landmines.

Trump said the US military will now be free to deploy landmines around the world "in exceptional circumstances."

In rescinding the White House directive, Trump said that policy would now be set by the Pentagon, which is expected still to prohibit traditional landmines that cannot be turned off or destroyed remotely.

Neither Obama's nor Trump's orders affect anti-tank mines, which are not prohibited.
Despite Trump's move, the United States is not expected immediately to deploy anti-personnel mines, which it has not used in a substantial way since the 1991 Gulf War.
More than 160 countries are party to the 1999 Ottawa Convention that aims to eliminate anti-personnel mines, including most of the Western world.

Major outliers include the United States, Russia and China as well as India and Pakistan.


US plans to relax restrictions on landmines


AFP / AHMAD AL-BASHA
Jamila Qassem Mahyoub, a Yemeni woman whose legs 
were amputated after stepping on a landmine while herding
 her sheep in 2017, holds a prosthetic leg in a house in 
Yemen's third city of Taez on March 20, 2019.

The US government plans to relax restrictions on the army's use of anti-personnel mines, reversing an Obama-era commitment that more than 160 countries have signed up to, and which aims to limit injuries to civilians, US media reported Thursday.

According to CNN, President Donald Trump wants to reverse an order issued by his predecessor Barack Obama to bring the US in line with the Ottawa Convention that bans the use, production, stockpiling or transfer of anti-personnel mines, although Obama exempted the use of landmines in the Korean peninsula's de-militarized zone.Trump was expected to rescind the 2014 order and leave it up to the Pentagon to decide on its use of landmines, CNN said, quoting unnamed military officials.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper did not deny the reports.

"There will be a change coming out. I'm not going to comment on it until it is," he told reporters at a news conference.

The Pentagon is expected to only deploy anti-personnel mines if they are fitted with a feature that allow them to automatically self-destruct or deactivate after 30 days, CNN said.

It added that a 2017 review ordered by then defense secretary Jim Mattis found that the prohibition of all anti-personnel mines could put US troops at increased risk.

The US news site Vox quoted an internal State Department cable designed to allow US diplomats to explain the decision.

"The United States will not sacrifice American service members' safety," Vox quoted the cable as saying, "particularly when technologically advanced safeguards are available that can allow landmines to be employed responsibly to ensure our military's warfighting advantage, while also limiting the risk of unintended harm to civilians."


The 164 states that signed the Ottawa Convention met last November in Oslo to reaffirm their commitment to limiting the use of landmines, which can cause horrific injuries to civilians, and pledged to phase them out by 2025.

Around 30 countries, including the United States, Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan have so far refused to sign the 1997 Ottawa treaty.


A report last year by the NGO Landmine Monitor said that 6,897 people were killed or injured by landmines in 2018, with a record 3,789 of those caused by improvised explosive devices. That figure was up from 3,998 victims in 2014.

‘Absolutely horrific’: Trump reportedly prepares to roll back restrictions on use of landmines

A CAUSE FOR SUSSEX INC. HARRY AND MEGHAN, MOM; PRINCESS DI FOUGHT AGAINST LAND MINES, NEW HOME CANADA DOES TOO

 January 30, 2020 By Jake Johnson, Common Dreams


President Donald Trump is reportedly preparing to roll back established constraints on the U.S. military’s ability to use landmines overseas despite the weapons’ long history of killing and maiming civilians around the world.

CNN, citing multiple anonymous Defense Department officials, reported Thursday that the Trump administration is expected to loosen landmine restrictions in the coming days by rescinding a 2014 order by former President Barack Obama that limited U.S. landmine use to the Korean Peninsula.

“President Obama’s policy brought the U.S. policy closely in line with the obligations of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty,” Jody Williams, an anti-war activist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work to ban landmines, told Common Dreams in an email. “Mr. Trump’s policy rollback is a step toward the past, like many of his other decisions, and sends exactly the wrong message to those working to rid the world of the scourge of landmines.


More than 160 nations have ratified the Mine Ban Treaty, also known as the Ottawa Treaty, which prohibits the stockpiling, production, and use of landmines. The United States is one of just 32 U.N. member states that have not ratified the treaty.
“The beauty of the treaty is that it has established a new norm and even countries outside the treaty felt the stigma related to landmines and changed policies, even if they didn’t join the treaty,” said Williams. “Mr. Trump’s landmine move would be in line with all of his other moves to undercut arms control and disarmament in a world much in need of them. The landmine ban movement will do what it has always done with governments that still remain outside the Mine Ban Treaty—push back and continue the push to universalize the treaty—including the U.S.”

The Landmine and Cluster Munition Monitor, a non-governmental research initiative, estimated in a November 2019 report that 130,000 people were killed by landmines between 1999 and 2018. The majority of the deaths were civilians.

According to CNN, the Trump administration’s new policy will place the authority to use landmines in the hands of “commanders of the U.S. military’s combatant commands, usually a four-star general or admiral, such as the commanders of U.S. Africa Command and U.S. Central Command which oversee operations on the African continent and the Middle East respectively.”

“The new policy… is expected to permit the operational use of landmines only if they have a 30-day self-destruction or self-deactivation feature,” CNN reported. “The new policy would also allow for the development, production, and procurement of landmines only if they have these features.”



MATTIS CALLED FOR THIS
The decision to rescind the Obama administration’s 2014 policy was recommended following a Pentagon review launched in 2017 by then-Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis.

“So horrific that after decades of international efforts to rid the world of landmines, Trump is about to ‘make landmines great again’ by loosening restrictions on their use,” Medea Benjamin, co-founder of anti-war group CodePink, told Common Dreams.


Advocacy group Public Citizen echoed that reaction on Twitter.

“Is this what Make America Great Again means? Who in their right mind can justify this?” the group asked. “Landmines have a long history of killing and wounding civilians and are banned by more than 160 countries. Absolutely horrific.” 


Pictured: 

The harrowing plight of children maimed in Afghanistan by the thousnds of landmines scattered across the country after decades of war

Up to 10 million mines lay in schools, fields and pathways, and dozens of children are maimed and killed every day.

There are nearly 100,000 amputees in Afghanistan and the slow process of demining will take hundreds of years.

Mines from Britain and the U.S. have been found but the vast majority are from a war with Russia that ended in 1989. 

Helicopter crews dropped millions of 'butterfly mines', which are made of green plastic and are mistaken for toys. 
WHO KNOWS WHAT EVIL LURKS IN THE HEART OF MAN? THE SHADOW KNOWS 

ONE OF THE MANY SHADOW RADIO SHOWS, THIS ONE FROM 1938, 
WITH ORSON WELLES 


THE 1994 THE SHADOW IS AN OVERLOOKED GEM, OF THE GENRE. OF COURSE THE SHADOW PREDATED DOCTOR STRANGE BUT THE LOST HORIZON THEME IS USED AGAIN IN THE DOC STRANGE COMICS AND MOVIE AS IT IS HERE. 


FINALLY BUT NOT LEAST 
THIS IS A GREAT BLOG SITE, I CAME ACROSS LOOKING FOR SHADOW COMIC COVERS 
Matt Furie - Monster Brains Logo 1
http://monsterbrains.blogspot.com/
HERE ARE A FEW HE POSTED FROM 1944-48

THE ORIGINAL HYDRA


THE ORIGINAL SPIDER MAN 


THE SHADOW MEETS A LOVECRAFT GREAT OLD ONE FROM
THE SHADOW OVER INSMOUTH 

DOC SAVAGE THE MAN OF BRONZE
ONE OF MY FAVORITE PULP CHARACTERS
WOULD BE GREAT TO SEE THE ROCK (DWAYNE JOHNSON)  PLAY THE DOC

YOU WILL NOTICE NO COMIC CODE STICKER 
SO LOTS OF BLOOD, GORE AND HORROR 



The Art of the Deal, Pentagon-Style
Wars without victories, weapons without end.


by William Astore Published on Tuesday, February 04, 2020 by TomDispatch

The U.S., after all, hasn’t won a major conflict since World War II, when it was aided by a grand alliance that included Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s godless communists. (Photo: Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

The expression "self-licking ice cream cone" was first used in 1992 to describe a hidebound bureaucracy at NASA. Yet, as an image, it’s even more apt for America’s military-industrial complex, an institution far vaster than NASA and thoroughly dedicated to working for its own perpetuation and little else.

Thinking about that led me to another phrase based on America’s seemingly endless string of victory-less wars: the self-defeating military. The U.S., after all, hasn’t won a major conflict since World War II, when it was aided by a grand alliance that included Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s godless communists. And yet here’s the wonder of it all: despite such a woeful 75-year military record, including both the Korean and Vietnam wars of the last century and the never-ending war on terror of this one, the Pentagon’s coffers are overflowing with taxpayer dollars. What gives?

Americans profess to love "their" troops, but what are they getting in return for all that affection (and money)? Very little, it seems. And that shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s been paying the slightest attention, since the present military establishment has been designed less to protect this country than to protect itself, its privileges, and its power. That rarely discussed reality has, in turn, contributed to practices and mindsets that make it a force truly effective at only one thing: defeating any conceivable enemy in Washington as it continues to win massive budgets and the cultural authority to match. That it loses most everywhere else is, it seems, just part of the bargain.

Why should military leaders have to think when the president and Congress keep rewarding them for lies and failures of every sort?

The list of recent debacles should be as obvious as it is alarming: Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen (and points around and in between). And even if it’s a reality rarely focused on in the mainstream media, none of this has been a secret to the senior officers who run that military. Look at the Pentagon Papers from the Vietnam War era or the Afghanistan Papers recently revealed by the Washington Post. In both cases, prominent U.S. military leaders admitted to fundamental flaws in their war-making practices, including the lack of a coherent strategy, a thorough misunderstanding of the nature and skills of their enemies, and the total absence of any real progress in achieving victory, no matter the cost.

Of course, such honest appraisals of this country’s actual war-making prowess were made in secret, while military spokespeople and American commanders laid down a public smokescreen to hide the worst aspects of those wars from the American people. As they talked grimly (and secretly) among themselves about losing, they spoke enthusiastically (and openly) to Congress and the public about winning. In case you hadn’t noticed, in places like Afghanistan and Iraq that military was, year after endless year, making "progress" and "turning corners." Such "happy talk" (a mixture of lies and self-deception) may have served to keep the money flowing and weapons sales booming, but it also kept the body bags coming in (and civilians dying in distant lands)—and for nothing, or at least nothing by any reasonable definition of "national security."

Curiously, despite the obvious disparity between the military’s lies and reality, the American people, or at least their representatives in Congress, have largely bought those lies in bulk and at astronomical prices. Yet this country’s refusal to face the facts of defeat has only ensured ever more disastrous military interventions. The result: a self-defeating military, engorged with money, lurching toward yet more defeats even as it looks over its shoulder at an increasingly falsified past.

The Future Is What It Used to Be

Long ago, New York Yankee catcher and later manager Yogi Berra summed up what was to come this way: "The future ain’t what it used to be." And it wasn’t. We used to dream, for example, of flying cars, personal jetpacks, liberating robots, and oodles of leisure time. We even dreamed of mind-bending trips to Jupiter, as in Stanley Kubrick’s epic film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Like so much else we imagined, those dreams haven’t exactly panned out.

Yet here’s an exception to Berra’s wisdom: strangely enough, for the U.S. military, the future is predictably just what it used to be. After all, the latest futuristic vision of America’s military leaders is—hold onto your Kevlar helmets—a "new" cold war with its former communist rivals Russia and China. And let’s add in one other aspect of that military’s future vision: wars, as they see it, are going to be fought and settled with modernized (and ever more expensive) versions of the same old weapons systems that carried us through much of the mid-twentieth century: ever more pricey aircraft carriers, tanks, and top of the line jet fighters and bombers with—hey!—maybe a few thoroughly destabilizing tactical nukes thrown in, along with plenty of updated missiles carried by planes of an ever more "stealthy" and far more expensive variety. Think: the F-35 fighter, the most expensive weapons system in history (so far) and the B-21 bomber.

For such a future, of course, today’s military hardly needs to change at all, or so our generals and admirals argue. For example, yet more ships will, of course, be needed. The Navy high command is already clamoring for 355 of them, while complaining that the record-setting $738 billion Pentagon budget for 2020 is too "tight" to support such a fleet.

Not to be outdone when it comes to complaints about "tight" budgets, the Air Force is arguing vociferously that it needs yet more billions to build a "fleet" of planes that can wage two major wars at once. Meanwhile, the Army is typically lobbying for a new armored personnel carrier (to replace the M2 Bradley) that’s so esoteric insiders joke it will have to be made of "unobtainium."

In short, no matter how much money the Trump administration and Congress throw at the Pentagon, it’s a guarantee that the military high command will only complain that more is needed, including for nuclear weapons to the tune of possibly $1.7 trillion over 30 years. But doubling down on more of the same, after a record 75 years of non-victories (not to speak of outright losses), is more than stubbornness, more than grift. It’s obdurate stupidity.

Why, then, does it persist? The answer would have to be because this country doesn’t hold its failing military leaders accountable. Instead, it applauds them and promotes them, rewarding them when they retire with six-figure pensions, often augmented by cushy jobs with major defense contractors. Given such a system, why should America’s generals and admirals speak truth to power? They are power and they’ll keep harsh and unflattering truths to themselves, thank you very much, unless they’re leaked by heroes like Daniel Ellsberg during the Vietnam War and Chelsea Manning during the Iraq War, or pried from them via a lawsuit like the one by the Washington Post that recently led to those Afghanistan Papers.

My Polish mother-in-law taught me a phrase that translates as, "Don’t say nothin’ to nobody." When it comes to America’s wars and their true progress and prospects, consider that the official dictum of Pentagon spokespeople. Yet even as America’s wars sink into Vietnam-style quagmires, the money keeps flowing, especially to high-cost weapons programs.

Consider my old service, the Air Force. As one defense news site put it, "Congressional appropriators gave the Air Force [and Lockheed Martin] a holiday gift in the 2019 spending agreement... $1.87 billion for 20 additional F-35s and associated spare parts." The new total just for 2020 is "98 aircraft—62 F-35As, 16 F-35Bs, and 20 F-35Cs—at the whopping cost of $9.3 billion, crowning the F-35 as the biggest Pentagon procurement program ever." And that’s not all. The Air Force (and Northrop Grumman) got another gift as well: $3 billion more to be put into its new, redundant, B-21 stealth bomber. Even much-beleaguered Boeing, responsible for the disastrous 737 MAX program, got a gift: nearly a billion dollars for the revamped F-15EX fighter, a much-modified version of a plane that first flew in the early 1970s. Yet, despite those gifts, Air Force officials continue to claim with straight faces that the service is getting the "short straw" in today’s budgetary battles in the Pentagon.

What does this all mean? One obvious answer would be: the only truly winning battles for the Pentagon are the ones for our taxpayer dollars.

"Dopes and Babies" Galore

I can’t claim that I ever traveled in the circles of generals and admirals, though I met a few during my military career. Still, no one can question that our commanders are dedicated. The only question is: dedication to what exactly—to the Constitution and the American people or to their own service branch, with an eye toward a comfortable and profitable retirement? Certainly, loyalty to service (and the conformity that goes with it), rather than out-of-the-box thinking in those endlessly losing wars, helped most of them win promotion to flag rank.

Perhaps this is one reason why, back in July 2017, the military’s current commander-in-chief, Donald Trump, reportedly railed at his top national security people in a windowless Pentagon room known as "the Tank." He called them—including then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Joseph Dunford, Jr.—"a bunch of dopes and babies." As the president put it, America’s senior military leaders don’t win anymore and, as he made clear, nothing is worse than being a loser. He added, "I want to win. We don’t win any wars anymore... We spend $7 trillion, everybody else got the oil and we’re not winning anymore." (And, please note, that hasn’t changed a whit in the year and a half since that moment.)

Sure, Trump threw a typical tantrum, but his comments about losing at a strikingly high cost were (and remain) absolutely on the mark, not that he had any idea how to turn America’s losing wars and their losing commanders into winners. In many ways, his "strategy" has proven remarkably like those of the two previous presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Send more troops to the Middle East. Drone and bomb ever more, not just in Afghanistan and Iraq but even in places like Somalia and Libya. Prolong our commitment to "loser" wars like the Afghan one, even while talking ceaselessly about ending them and bringing the troops home. And continue to "rebuild" that same military, empowering those same "dopes and babies," with yet more taxpayer dollars.

The results have been all-too predictable. America’s generals and admirals have so much money that they don’t ever have to make truly tough choices. They hardly have to think. The Air Force, for example, just keeps planning for and purchasing more ultra-expensive stealth fighters and bombers to fight a future Cold War that we allegedly won 30 years ago. Meanwhile, actual future "national security" threats like climate-related catastrophes or pandemics go largely unaddressed. Who cares about them when this country will clearly have the most stealth fighters and bombers in the world?

For the Pentagon, the future is the past and the past, the future. Why should military leaders have to think when the president and Congress keep rewarding them for lies and failures of every sort?

Trump believes America doesn’t win anymore because we're not ruthless enough. Take the oil, dammit! The real reason: because America’s wars are unwinnable from the git-go (something the last 18 years should have proved in no uncertain way) and—irony of all ironies—completely unnecessary from the standpoint of true national defense. There is no way for the U.S. military to win "hearts and minds" across the Greater Middle East and Africa with salvos of Hellfire missiles. In fact, there’s only one way to "win" such wars: end them. And there’s only one way to keep winning: by avoiding future ones.

With a system that couldn’t work better (in Washington), America’s military refuses to admit this. Instead, our generals just keep saluting smartly while lying in public (the details of which we’ll find out about only when the next set of "papers" is released someday). In the meantime, when it comes to demanding and getting tax dollars, they couldn’t be more skilled. In that sense, and that alone, they are the ultimate winners.

"Dopes and babies," Mister President? No, just men who are genuinely skilled in the art of the deal. Small wonder America’s leader is upset. For when it comes to the military-industrial complex and its power and prerogatives, even Trump has met his match. He’s been out-conned. And if the rest of us remain silent on the subject, then so have we.


William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), who has taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, and now teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology. He welcomes reader comments at wjastore@gmail.com.
© 2019 TomDispatch.com

Top Hollywood celebrities and Silicon Valley investors are linked to the app that failed in Iowa

TUE, FEB 4 2020 Ari Levy@LEVYNEWS
KEY POINTS


Sequoia’s Mike Moritz wrote a $1 million check to Pacronym in October, according to data from the Federal Election Commission. 

Steven Spielberg and Jeffrey Katzenberg are also big contributors. 

Pacronym is the political action committee for Acronym, which invested in the app that was used by Iowa Democrats.

Steven Spielberg arrives at the premiere of ‘Ready Player One’ 
held at Dolby Theatre on March 26, 2018 in Hollywood, California
Michael Tran | Getty Images


Some of the best-known Silicon Valley investors and top names in Hollywood are behind the nonprofit group that launched the app that broke down during the Iowa caucus Monday night.

Results from the first-in-the-nation voting event for the 2020 election are still unknown after Iowa officials reported irregularities with the data from the app, forcing them to switch to manual counting. Iowa Democrats were using an app developed by Shadow, a progressive start-up managed by a three-year-old nonprofit called Acronym.


To raise capital, Acronym established a political action committee called Pacronym, which the organization’s web site says helped elect 65 “progressive candidates across the country” in 2018, a year before it invested in Shadow. Pacronym has raised $7.8 million since the beginning of 2019, according to data from the Federal Election Commission.

That funding is going toward “advancing progressive causes through innovative communications, advertising and organizing programs,” Acronym says on its site. In addition to Shadow, Acronym is an investor in a digital news organization called Courier Newsroom and digital strategy firm Lockwood Strategy.

Fourteen investors have each contributed at least $100,000 to Pacronym, all between October and December. From Silicon Valley, backers include Kenneth Duda, the chief technology officer of Arista Networks; Mike Moritz, the Sequoia Capital partner who made a fortune backing Google and Yahoo; Jim Swartz, the co-founder of venture firm Accel; and Mimi Haas, who’s not in tech but is a major Bay Area figure and the widow of Peter Haas of the Levi Strauss family.


Michael Moritz
Scott Mlyn | CNBC


The entertainment industry’s ties to Acronym are even more notable. Director Steven Spielberg contributed $500,000 to Pacronym as did his wife, the actress Kate Capshaw. Producer Jeffrey Katzenberg and Katie McGrath, co-CEO of J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot Productions, each put in $100,000.


Pacronym’s other million-dollar backers are hedge fund managers Seth Klarman and Donald Sussman, with big checks also coming from philanthropist Geoffrey Gund and John Fisher of the family that started Gap.

Pacronym’s website features a campaign called “Four is Enough,” which is raising money to try and help defeat President Donald Trump’s bid for a second term, focusing on “swing voters in key 2020 battleground states.”

″Through innovative advertising campaigns on Facebook, Youtube, and other platforms, Four is Enough will reach voters online and on their mobile devices and explain what’s at stake in the November elections,” the site says.

Acronym is led by co-founder Tara McGowan, a former journalist who also previously served as digital producer for Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. The group has close to 50 employees, according to LinkedIn, including former employees from Facebook, Amazon, Pandora and political campaigns.

In a statement, Acronym acknowledged that it’s an investor in Shadow, but said that the nonprofit itself has not provided any technology to Iowa Democrats or any other political groups.

“We are reading confirmed reports of Shadow’s work with the Iowa Democratic Party on Twitter, and we, like everyone else, are eagerly awaiting more information from the Iowa Democratic party with respect to what happened,” a spokesperson wrote.

SEE 

NEW DETAILS SHOW HOW DEEPLY IOWA CAUCUS APP DEVELOPER WAS EMBEDDED IN DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT

The App That Disrupted the Iowa Caucuses

After Epic 'Nightmare' in Iowa, Democratic App Built by Secretive Firm Shadow Inc. 
Comes Under Scrutiny "This outfit is inexcusably secretive." 

Iowa Caucus Night Is an Utter Disaster





---30--
The App That Disrupted the Iowa Caucuses
A cascading set of failures led us here.

by Cari Hernandez Published on Tuesday, February 04, 2020 by Medium
The IDP intended the app to be used the primary method of gathering and transmitting results, but apparently failed to impress this upon the people actually working with the app. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
The IDP intended the app to be used the primary method of gathering and transmitting results, but apparently failed to impress this upon the people actually working with the app. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Last night, we watched as the Iowa caucuses slowly unfolded and ultimately collapsed in real-time. Today, my little corner of the internet is abuzz with righteous anger and, in some cases, conspiracy theories. One thing is certain: we are all shocked at the sheer incompetence displayed by the Iowa Democratic Party and all those involved in the development of the app that was supposed to simplify and expedite the process.

According to a New York Times report, the app had only been under consideration for state-wide use for a couple of months. As more stories come out, a picture starts to form showing that a series of decisions and mistakes were made that led us here. By all accounts, it seems that users were unclear as to the app’s purpose. The IDP intended the app to be used the primary method of gathering and transmitting results, but apparently failed to impress this upon the people actually working with the app.

Many users did not even get to the point of attempting to use the app, in part because of requirements related to the installation process that would cause the average use to skip using an app, especially if they believe they don’t have to. The average user is not going to bypass their phone’s permissions and sideload an app that they believe is simply a backup method to what they’re putting on paper and calling in. 

Unsurprisingly, users were also not required to be trained on the app before the caucuses, and based on the information currently available it appears no significant end-user testing was performed. One indication of the failure to communicate basic information about the app is people like Pete Buttigieg’s comms director tweeting out pictures that contained PIN numbers that would allow one to access the app if they were able to get it on their phone.

Once it became clear the app was not working, users turned to the usual method of calling in their results. Troy Price, the chairman of the state party previously stated that there would be multiple redundancies in place and that he was “confident” in their contingency planning. 

What we actually saw was an abject failure of planning. This backup method was an embarrassment. One precinct secretary was on hold with the party’s hotline for over an hour, and then had his call disconnected by the person on the other end live on CNN

Des Moines County Democratic Chair Tom Courtney described similar scenes across his county, where caucus organizers attempted to call in their results to no avail. It seems they were unprepared for the amount of calls they were swamped with after the app’s failure.

As another backup method, this was the first time Iowa instituted a paper trail, paper ballots were to be returned to the caucus chair in order to be eligible to be counted in the event of a recount. But it appears that some caucus chairs were not even aware that the paper ballots would be returned to them, again likely in part due to a failure in training.

It’s tempting to blame a general reliance on tech or jump to conspiracy theories, and in this case it’s somewhat understandable. According to FEC filings, the Biden and Buttigieg 2020 campaigns have both paid the company who made the app, Shadow Inc., though it’s unclear for what. It’s also emerged that many of the people involved in the app’s development were previous Hillary for America employees in various technology roles. Screenshots of the employee’s LinkedIn profiles began circulating on twitter not long after it became clear that something was amiss.

But I think there is a simpler explanation here. Anyone who has worked at a badly managed software company or on a poorly run team on a tight deadline is very familiar with this situation. Based on the employment histories of those involved, it appears the revolving door between campaigns and the private sector, as well as the symbiotic relationships between former campaign workers and their professional political network is likely to blame. It’s not difficult to imagine technologists failing up through campaigns and using their connections to be awarded these contracts once they enter the private sector, leading to a situation where no one involved in the decision making process has worked at this scale.

What you get from this is a group of people who have no idea what they are doing, being responsible for the integrity of our electoral process. From the actions of those who decided Shadow Inc. was the right company for this job, to those along every step of the way who neglected basic development practices, a cascading set of failures led us here. This is not only a failure in the planning, development, testing, and deployment of this app, but in the creation of backup methods, to the point where the electoral process is compromised. To me this doesn’t seem necessarily or purposely malicious, it seems more like incompetence and negligence.

This morning, the Iowa Democratic Party released a statement stating that their data is sound and confirming that there were no cyber security issues. It seems that while most people were focused on the looming threat of Russian election interference, much more common and less nefarious villains entered the scene: executives, product managers, developers, and party officials who did not know what they were doing. The statement conveniently does not mention that their data is incomplete, due to all the issues mentioned above.

The statement goes on to describe the issue in this way: “We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed. The application’s reporting issue did not impact the ability of precinct chairs to report data accurately.”

A lot of what we’re thinking around this situation is speculative due to the amount of information that’s available to us. But there are many questions to be asked. Who decided Shadow Inc. was capable of designing and deploying this application? What were the Biden and Buttigieg campaigns paying for when they sent thousands of dollars to Shadow Inc.? Who decided it wasn’t necessary to train the users, or to even relay to the users of the purpose of the app? Who was responsible for failure of the backup methods? Are we to believe that the issue that was identified and fixed was deployed last night, and that users again went through the process of sideloading an updated version of the app? As we go into the Nevada caucuses where the app will also be used, should we trust the people responsible for all these issues to be competent enough to fix them in time?

We deserve answers. Personally, I don’t feel confident that every process failure that we’ve seen here can be corrected in the short amount of time before Nevada. Ideally, external auditors would get involved to figure out and document what happened and give us the answers we need. We can’t settle for depending on the people who got us into this mess. If they won’t give us the transparency we deserve, we must demand it.
Update: Although initial reports indicated the same app would be used in Nevada, the Nevada Democratic Party has since released a statement vowing not to use it.
Cari Hernandez
Cari Hernandez is an engineer and socialist feminist based in Philadelphia. Follow her on Twitter @eatinginmycar.



Iowa caucus debacle is one of the most stunning tech failures ever

PUBLISHED TUE, FEB 4 2020 Kate Fazzini@KATEFAZZINI

KEY POINTS

The Iowa caucus debacle represents one of the most stunning failures of information security ever.

It was delivered by the very officials who have said for four years they were “ramping up” technology capabilities, convening numerous security task forces and collaborating with federal agencies to make sure everyone was in the loop on voting security.

Voters will be paying close attention to how party leaders ensure that votes going forward have clear contingency plans in place, not just to protect against hackers, but from all types of technology failures.



WATCH NOW VIDEO
Here’s what happened at the Iowa caucuses, and what the candidates have to say

The Iowa caucus debacle represents one of the most stunning failures of information security ever.
This failure was delivered by the same Iowa Democratic Party officials who have said for the last four years they were “ramping up” their technology capabilities, convening seemingly endless security task forces to ensure foreign powers did not disenfranchise voters, and collaborating with federal agencies like the Department of Homeland Security to make sure everyone was in the loop on voting security.

Voters will be paying close attention to how party leaders ensure that votes going forward have clear contingency plans in place, not just to protect against hackers, but from all types of technology failures, including applications that might not work.

What happened?

Iowa officials counting the results coming in Monday from the caucusing app reported irregularities that required them to switch from the app to counting votes manually. Party officials said the “underlying data” put into the app was fine, but it is unclear as of yet how they know this or even what they consider “underlying data.”

“Last night, more than 1,600 precinct caucuses gathered across the state of Iowa and at satellite caucuses around the world,” the Iowa Democratic Party said in a statement Tuesday. “As precinct caucus results started coming in, the IDP ran them through an accuracy and quality check. It became clear that there were inconsistencies with the reports. The underlying cause of these inconsistencies was not immediately clear, and required investigation, which took time.”

Read more: Nevada Democrats say they won’t use the app involved in Iowa caucus

The Iowa Democrats were using an application made by a partisan progressive start-up named Shadow Inc., managed by a nonprofit investment company called Acronym. In a statement, Acronym distanced itself from Shadow.
“We are reading confirmed reports of Shadow’s work with the Iowa Democratic Party on Twitter and we, like everyone else, are eagerly awaiting more information ... with respect to what happened,” Acronym said in a statement.

Iowa Democrats explained that backup measures for the Shadow app took “longer than expected.”

“We have determined that this was due to a coding issue in the reporting system. This issue was identified and fixed. The application’s reporting issue did not impact the ability of precinct chairs to report data accurately,” the Iowa Democratic Party statement said. Voters will surely be asking the Iowa Democrats to prove how they know the information is accurate with so many reported irregularities.

Shadow apologized on Twitter Tuesday afternoon. “We sincerely regret the delay in the reporting of the results of last night’s Iowa caucuses and the uncertainty it has caused to the candidates, their campaigns, and Democratic caucus-goers.”
Why did it happen?

The Iowa Democrats and Democratic National Committee will have to answer several puzzling questions about why they chose to use the application in the first place.

First, in 2016, the Iowa caucuses used an application made by Microsoft, which worked. It’s unclear why they didn’t keep the same application, created by an established company instead of one from an untested start-up.

Microsoft is making sure people know it didn’t make this year’s app. “We had a great partnership with the Iowa political parties in 2016, but we are not part of the caucuses this year and have not been involved in building or supporting their app,” a company spokesperson tweeted.

Second, in August, the Democratic National Committee recommended Iowa stop using an app altogether. The Democratic National Committee’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted to follow those recommendations. It said a security review had determined the virtual caucus did not meet standards for cybersecurity and reliability.
“We are — over the last week and continuing today and in the days ahead — continuing to look at what options might be available to us given the time frame that’s left,” Iowa Democratic Party Chairman Troy Price said in September, according to NPR. “We know there’s not a lot of time left. There’s 4.5 months between now and when Iowans head to the caucus sites.”

DHS acting Secretary Chad Wolf told Fox News on Tuesday that the app “was not vetted for cybersecurity.”

Now, Iowa is scrambling for answers.

Cybersec vs. Infosec: Why it matters here

Iowans are learning about the important distinction today between cybersecurity and information security.

Loosely speaking: In cybersecurity, organizations work to defend against hackers. In the broader field of information security, organizations work to be able to recover quickly whether they have been hit by a cyberattack, someone tripped over a cord in a data center or a server farm gets knocked out by a hurricane. Cybersecurity falls into the bigger bucket of infosec and resiliency planning.

In this case, it appears as though cybersecurity wasn’t the issue, but the proper back-up planning, testing and vetting procedures were completely deficient or simply absent entirely. They had an app that they knew was problematic. They used it anyway without properly testing their back-up plans, each stage of which have proved to take longer than usual.

Preparing for the inevitably of a cyberattack meant the Iowa Democrats, Democratic National Committee and DHS should all have been ready to bounce back from a problem like this. The fact that they still haven’t recovered is likely to be more disheartening to voters than any malicious Twitter campaign or fake Facebook ad or Russian phishing bid.

All of these organizations owe it to the electorate to never let something like this happen again. Because if they can’t recover from a bad app, a hack or a hurricane could be far more devastating.

Image result for the shadow"


SEE 

NEW DETAILS SHOW HOW DEEPLY IOWA CAUCUS APP DEVELOPER WAS EMBEDDED IN DEMOCRATIC ESTABLISHMENT

Top Hollywood celebrities and Silicon Valley investors are linked to the app that failed in Iowa

After Epic 'Nightmare' in Iowa, Democratic App Built by Secretive Firm Shadow Inc. Comes Under Scrutiny "This outfit is inexcusably secretive." 

Iowa Caucus Night Is an Utter Disaster

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Wall Street might actually be fine with Sanders moving to the front of the Democratic pack

PUBLISHED TUE, FEB 4 2020 Jeff Cox@JEFF.COX.7528@JEFFCOXCNBCCOM

KEY POINTS

A potential matchup between Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump is being given greater possibility after recent developments.

Wall Street might like the scenario on the assumption that Sanders would be an easier opponent.

Stocks have done well under Trump, and might not do so under Sanders given his disdain for big business.


Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) addresses supporters during his caucus night watch party on February 03, 2020 in Des Moines, Iowa. Iowa is the first contest in the 2020 presidential nominating process with the candidates then moving on to New Hampshire. Alex Wong | Getty Images


The momentum of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential field sets up a potential clash of polar opposites in November, one which Wall Street might relish.

A clash between President Donald Trump and the Vermont democratic socialist gathered more attention Tuesday amid reports that Sanders showed impressively the day before in Iowa and is pushing closer to the front of the Democratic pack.

“There is a lot of chatter that a Sanders nomination would roil markets, but there’s another way to consider that possibility,” Nick Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research, said in his daily market note. “Investors may assume that Sanders’ platform of radically remaking American society/commerce will not resonate with voters during a time of relative economic prosperity. That would make President Trump’s reelection more likely, preserving a market-friendly tone to government policy.”

WATCH NOW VIDEO
Bloomberg wants an ‘establishment freak-out’ after Sanders gains early lead, strategist says

Stocks have been on a tear this week. While it’s impossible to tell how much the changing political dynamics tie into that (if at all), there’s clearly a sentiment across the investing community that a Sanders presidency, with its expected broadsides against wealthy Americans and big business, would be trouble for the market.

Wall Street, of course, has done well during the Trump years.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has risen about 58% since Trump’s election. Anything that suggests status quo, then, would garner support from the Street.

“There’s enough of an analogy to hang your hat on,” Colas said in an interview. “People reject an old-school socialism-oriented politician in factor of, ‘Look, follow me. The future is bright and it can get brighter.’”

Predicting Trump vs. Sanders

No one knows yet what really happened in Iowa during Monday’s caucus due to a tabulation fiasco that left the party in confusion. But Sanders’ camp was claiming victory, and at least anecdotally, there were indications that former Vice President Joseph Biden had underperformed.

With New Hampshire then Super Tuesday on the horizon, Sanders likely will continue to build momentum. Biden still leads nationally by 3.3 points, according to the latest RealClearPolitics consensus, but things can change quickly when it comes to presidential politics.

PredictIt, a marketplace that allows bets on a variety of events including the presidential election, puts Trump well in front, with Sanders second and the rest of the pack well behind.

As the muddied electoral picture gets clearer, markets will start to make their bets. Trump against a Biden or Mike Bloomberg would present an entirely different choice than Trump vs. Sanders.

“Trump now is starting to call Bernie a communist. Trump can demonize an opponent faster than any politician I’ve seen in my career,” said Greg Valliere, veteran political analyst and chief global strategist at AGF. “For most establishment Democrats in the party, they’re terrified that if Bernie is at the top of the ticket, they’re going to have big losses.”

However, Valliere said the market isn’t necessarily all-in on Trump and actually would entertain alternatives — just not one named Bernie Sanders.

“For the markets, there’s only three candidates who can win in November — Trump, Biden, who’s fairly moderate especially on trade, and Bloomberg. The market could live with those three and those are the only three in my opinion who could win,” he said. “If Bernie were the nominee ... I think it would be a pretty easy victory for Trump.”

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Saudi Arabia fund dumped nearly all of its Tesla shares in the fourth quarter before the rally

PUBLISHED TUE, FEB 4 2020 Yun Li@YUNLI626

KEY POINTS

The Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund now holds just about 39,000 shares of the stock after selling 99.5% of its holding.

The fund held more than 8.2 million shares by the end of the third quarter of 2019, which would have been worth more than $7 billion at Tuesday’s price.

The fund missed out on Tesla’s massive rally in the new year. Shares of the electric-car maker soared 20% to above $900 on Tuesday, bringing its 2020 gains to more than 110%.



Tesla CEO Elon Musk presented the first batch of made-in-China cars to ordinary buyers on January 7, 2020 in a milestone for the company’s new Shanghai “giga-factory”, but which comes as sales decelerate in the world’s largest electric-vehicle market.
STR


The Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund in the fourth quarter of last year dumped nearly all the shares of Tesla it owned, missing out on a big windfall, a new filing Tuesday revealed.

The fund now holds about 39,000 shares of the stock after selling 99.5% of its holding last year, according to InsiderScore.com and public filings. The fund held more than 8.2 million shares by the end of the third quarter of 2019, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Those shares would be worth more than $7 billion at Tesla’s price Tuesday.

The selling by the end of fourth quarter means the fund missed out on Tesla’s massive rally in the new year. Shares of the electric-car maker soared 20% to above $900 on Tuesday, bringing its 2020 gains to more than 110%.

Before the latest sale, the sovereign wealth fund had dramatically cut its net exposure to Tesla stock in early 2019 after CEO Elon Musk settled fraud charges with the SEC over the claim to take his company private.

Tesla’s epic run recently has been fueled by analysts raising price targets to catch up to the stock and short covering by investors betting against the shares. Musk’s Tesla has more investors betting against the company than any other U.S. stock, according to S3 Partners. Short sellers have lost more than $8 billion since the beginning of the year, S3 said.

The company’s rapid rally has pushed its market capitalization above $160 billion, which tops Netflix’s $157 billion market cap.

Investors turned more bullish after the company reported deliveries of 112,000 vehicles globally during the fourth quarter, a personal best for Tesla. That number significantly topped Wall Street estimates, and hit the low end of Musk’s year-end sales goal.

Correction: The Saudi Arabia Public Investment Fund now holds about 39,000 shares of Tesla after selling 99.5% of its holding last year, according to InsiderScore.com and public filings. An earlier version misstated the number of shares

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CLEARLY THEY HAD NOT CONSULTED