Cross-posted from Pando Daily:

Chinese state media is slagging the U.S. as a “mincing rascal” and “high-level hooligan” in response to federal hacking charges filed against five members of the People’s Liberation Army’s Unit 61398.

As is the usually the case when you interpolate between the Sino-Tibetan and the Indo-European language families, something has obviously been lost in translation. But, as with North Korea’s bellicose tirades — they recently called South Korea’s president a “crafty prostitute” and President Obama her “powerful pimp” — weird interpretations are 99% of the fun.

Despite the trans-Pacific linguistic hiccups, however, the Chinese government’s gist — that Americans are playing cute with their hypocrisy, deploying lawyerly distinctions without a difference in a lamely transparent attempt to validate its own NSA’s electronic eavesdropping against China — is clear. Not to mention hard to deny.

There was once a time when Americans were like John Wayne: Straight shooters, who did what they had to do. We weren’t stylish like the French or smart like the Brits or terrifyingly accurate with firearms like the Afghans. But you could always count on Americans to keep their word. I say “word” because, being people of few words, we preferred singular to plural.

When General MacArthur said “I shall return,” everyone knew exactly what it meant (never mind that he actually returned somewhere else.)

That era is dead.

Now we, or at least our government, is known around the world as a culture of “mincing rascals,” of weasely lawyers who parse what the meaning of “is” is.

Follow, if you can, the U.S. government’s official “why we are not hypocrites” line on hacking. If you agree, congrats! You are a rare bird. For, as The New York Times notes in a piece bearing the headline “With Spy Charges, U.S. Draws a Line That Few Others Recognize, “while American officials are loath to admit it, Washington’s view has relatively few advocates around the world.”

As usual.

As The Times explains, the NSA spies on people in other countries, including China. It spies on foreign government, including China. But it does not spy on foreign companies for the direct benefit of specific American companies. However, it does spy on foreign economic sectors:

Even before Mr. Snowden walked out of the Hawaii facilities of the N.S.A. with a trove of documents, it was clear that the United States was not above economic espionage, as long as it was not for the direct benefit of specific companies.

For example, the United States spies regularly for economic advantage when the goal is to support trade talks; when the Clinton administration was locked in a high-stakes negotiation in the 1990s to reach an accord with Japan, it bugged the Japanese negotiator’s limousine. At the time, the chief beneficiaries would have been the Big Three auto companies and a smattering of parts suppliers. It is also widely believed to be using intelligence in support of trade negotiations underway with European and Asian trading partners. But in the view of a succession of Democratic and Republican administrations, that is fair game.

Of course, China’s nominally communist, authoritarian political system maintains close government ties to “private” companies, closely integrating Communist Party officials into boards of directors. So, in many business sectors, there’s one dominant “private” corporation or family of companies. As far as we know, the NSA doesn’t share what it learns about Chinese companies with, say, Cisco or Apple. But it’s an apple-to-oranges comparison that neither China, nor just about anyone else, is buying.

Anyway, the NSA does spy on specific companies abroad:

Companies can also be targets. Documents released by Mr. Snowden showed that the American government pried deep into the servers of Huawei, one of China’s most successful Internet and communications companies. The documents made clear that the N.S.A. was seeking to learn whether the company was a front for the People’s Liberation Army and whether it was interested in spying on American firms. But there was a second purpose: to get inside Huawei’s systems and use them to spy on countries that buy the company’s equipment.

Huawei officials said they failed to understand how that differed meaningfully from what the United States has accused the Chinese of doing.

Pretty mincey.

[image via simpsons.wikia.com]

Cross-posted from Pando Daily:

If a blog is, in the words of my friend the film critic Cole Smithey, “a column without the responsibility,” a tweet must be something yet more trifling. Off the cuff. Unvarnished. Unfiltered. A revolution is not a dinner party and a tweet is not a political platform.

The kerfuffle (<- word that must be used in pieces about this sort of thing) over game-show host Pat Sajak’s climate-denialist tweet proves that enough is enough. It is time for a Tweet Manifesto, a definitive, universally agreed-upon declaration that restores the tweet’s rightful, inherent status as a free-fire zone for stupid thoughts for which no one may be held responsible, much less, say, fired over.

On May 19, 2014 at 10:38 pm, well into the hours during which most alcoholic beverages are consumed in the United States, the master of “Wheel of Fortune” master of ceremonies issued the following bit of brilliance: “I now believe global warming alarmists are unpatriotic racists knowingly misleading for their own ends. Good night.”

Global warming alarmists (i.e., reasonably intelligent and/or attentive people, including 97% of climate scientists) took issue with being accused of racial bigotry and treasonous loyalty to America’s numerous enemies. Salon accused Sajak of “unhinged denialism — throwing wild allegations of racism against the overwhelming majority of scientists.”

A day and a half into SajakTweetGate, Sajak backpedaled:

 “As most of you know, original Tweet was intended to parody the name-calling directed at climate skeptics. Hyperbole.”

He doubled down.

“Of course I was joking. Just mocking the name-calling that is directed at global warming skeptics within and without the scientific community.”

But then — have you no mercy, Viceroys? — the cruel journo-detectives at Vice scrolled down investigated Sajak’s Twitter feed. There they discovered a series of (a) straightforward tweets doubting that climate change is real, including the inevitable shot at Al Gore, (b) anti-environmentalism generally and (c) strong evidence of Republicanism.

E.g., May 7^th: “My interest in Al Gore’s pronouncements could fit into a gnat’s navel & still leave room for a Liberal’s sense of humor.”

J’accuse!

So now, a question and a plea.

Question first: Why do we/would we/should anyone give a shit what Pat Sajak thinks about climate change?

Now the plea: From now on, can we let Twitter be what it was always meant to be: a forum where nothing you say can be used against you?

Do we really want to live in a world where a comic actor can be chastised for making fun of reality show contestants who die in tragic extreme-sports accidents? Where a football player — working in a game known for its progressive politics — is suspended for tweeted gay-bashing? Where a governor is forced to beg for forgiveness because a state bureaucrat failed to think through a tweet urging rape prevention?

People need a place where they can be their own, stupid selves online. Where they can express their dumbest prejudices, their unsourced political opinions and their peculiar unjustified bigotries free, not of the ridicule they richly deserve and cannot be blocked, but of the real-world fear that they’ll get suspended or fired for something their brains coughed out during a random moment of whateverness.

On Twitter, if nowhere else, let 1,000 moronic flowers bloom.

Cross-posted from Pando Daily:

Cross-posted from Pando Daily:

Everyone deploys propaganda during wartime, but people know more about their enemy’s lies than their own government’s. Which is why you probably know that comrades who fell out of favor in the Soviet Union got their faces erased from official photos, but perhaps not that the famous newsreel of Hitler doing a silly dance to celebrate the defeat of France was faked by the Allies, or that a U.S. Marines psy-ops team choreographed the group of supposedly random Iraqis who supposedly spontaneously pulled down Saddam’s statue in 2003.

The latest example of propagandists behaving badly (i.e., getting caught) concerns a photo that Russian media presented as proof that American mercenaries from the company formerly known as Blackwater are in Ukraine, backing the new post-coup Ukrainian government in Kiev.

In fact, it appears that the image of heavily armed goons actually depicts police or security contractors (more on that below) carrying automatic assault rifles on the streets of New Orleans after hurricane Katrina struck the city in 2005.

Like a certain enigma wrapped in a whatever, layering makes this story fascinating.

First there’s Internet as double-edged sword. The Russians found the Katrina photo online. Here it is:

To turn Katrina-era New Orelans into eastern Ukraine under U.S. thug occupation, shirt insignias were changed to what the German national tabloid newspaper Bild am Sonntag said were mercs working for Academi, corporate heir to the infamous Blackwater security firm.

Also, that Wendy’s had to go:

What the Web giveth it taketh away, and so bloggers located the original source material, debunking the “proof.”

“The Internet is a wonderful thing, and eventually people can find out where photographs came from,” Daniel Baer, U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe told The Los Angeles Times.

Yes they can and yes they did. Baer continued: “The allegations that there are somehow ‘U.S mercenaries’ operating in Ukraine are false.” Well, maybe. One thing about propaganda is, in order for it to be effective, it has to hit close to some bigger truth — not exactly The truth — or no one will buy it. The truth is, the United States is providing support, both overt and covert, to the new government of rump Ukraine.

It’s like Hitler’s dance. People believed it because they thought he was nuts.

People all over the world may or may not believe that the U.S. has sent rent-a-goons to Ukraine. That said, it’s hardly beyond the American government to sic private contractors on foreign civilians, or blow kids up with drones, or crawl in bed with sketchy regimes. So the mud sticks, at least a little — and, because we’re on their side, reduces the credibility of Ukraine-minus-Crimea.

The underlying politics are even more convoluted and fascinating.

In their search for imagery that would smear their Ukrainian foes as pawns of the same mooks who shot up a square full of Iraqi civilians for the hell of it — and an American government happy to let them off the hook — Russian propagandists inadvertently date-checked the U.S. government’s appalling response to Hurricane Katrina, a debacle epitomized by The Onion headline: “Officials Uncertain Whether to Save or Shoot Victims.” Oh, the irony: it’s entirely possible that the men in the photo really did work for Blackwater.

A little more peeling:

Russia got caught faking “U.S. Mercenaries in Ukraine,” only to remind the world that “U.S. Doesn’t Care About Americans Unless They’re Not Black and Not Poor.” Katrina, of course, has nothing to do with Ukraine. But here’s the thing about that doctored “Ukraine” photo: It still shows goons. Goons somewhere they ought not to have been, intimidating innocent people.

So we wind up with a draw. We get to laugh at the clumsy propagandists. They convince more people that we’re scum, and that the Ukrainian government is guilty by association.

Cross-posted from Pando Daily:

Finding yourself in the vortex of a media firestorm has never been fun. Every White House intern is a sloppy encounter away from triggering a horde of reporters determined to unearth your elementary school report card, your driver’s license photo and the real reason Tori Spelling didn’t invite you to her party.

The Internet is making it even worse.

Ask Donald Sterling.

Sterling has plenty on his plate. Exposed as a racist of the troglodyte variety we assumed went extinct with the John Birch Society (as opposed to the new, improved Obama-is-Kenyan genus), the disgraced NBA owner has been summoned to a June 3^rd hearing whose highlights will include a vote to determine whether to strip him of his-but-maybe-not-for-long Los Angeles Clippers. The 80-year-old Sterling’s 31-year-old ex-girlfriend V. Stiviano is due on Dr. Phil Wednesday. (Adding to the weirdness, someone tried to break into Stiviano’s house last night.)

Due to vast keyword-searchable archives of public data, however, sleazy (and relatively trivial) deeds that never would have seen the light of day are emerging as fast as eager journalists can summon up Boolean search phrases — and items that would have elicited yawns from old-school editors are breaking big. Which is why Sterling is watching reputation-scorching fires burst out faster than dry tinder in drought-stricken San Diego County.

From its grandiose title and presentation, “Divorce, death and Donald Sterling’s boyhood home: A USA TODAY Sports investigation finds a 30-year secret in a Los Angeles neighborhood” promises ginormous, must-read dish — in all honesty, I was hoping/fearing that the Gannett-owned hotel paper had found dead babies in the Golden State’s currently most notorious bigot’s manse.

What this bait-and-switch offers instead is something highly amusing — if you stop to think about it, but that would interfere with the witch-burning fun — though not particularly scandalous: a man worth $1.9 billion cheats on his property taxes.

To the tune of roughly 11 grand a year.

USA Today’s Josh Peter explains:

“California law requires the death of a homeowner to be reported to the county assessor — a step that triggers a reassessment of the property at market value and typically a property tax increase. The responsibility to report the death falls upon the surviving spouse or partner, executor of the will, administrator of the estate or the successor trustee of the trust. The report must be made within 150 days of the death to avoid penalties, according to the Los Angeles County Assessor’s Office.”

To avoid a reassessment that would result in a higher tax rate, Sterling, it appears, issues annual money orders to Los Angeles County Treasurer and Tax Collector’s office for two modest houses he inherited from his mother and grandmother, both of whom died decades ago, under the dead women’s names. As far as Peter can tell, their estates never went to probate.

“In 2013, the property tax for Sterling’s boyhood home was $603.66; the tax for the property listed in his mother’s name was $1,545.11. Based on their current market value, the combined annual taxes would be at least $13,000.”

Net annual savings: “at least” $10851.23.

The issue here is moral: Sterling’s alleged property tax fraud costs hurts other, law-abiding, Angelenos — the poorest of whom pay the highest rates. California is just coming out of nearly a decade of serious budget problems; billionaires who don’t pay their (tiny) fair share aren’t helping.

“This is just the first wave.” Nancy Armour writes, also in USA Today. “Reporters across the country have been combing through Sterling’s life and business since NBA Commissioner Adam Silver banned the Clippers owner for life April 29 for the derogatory and racially insensitive comments he made to a girlfriend, V. Stiviano. What else might they find? And who else could be caught up in it?” She answers her own question: “His sister, perhaps. Or one of his children. Or the wife he claims to be so sorry for hurting.”

Is it a big deal? To be spectacularly wealthy is almost always to have skeletons in your fiscal closet — and often to dazzle and amaze with your cheapness. Even in the context of the sordid racist and sexual revelations about Donald Sterling, skipping out on property taxes is more of a footnote to an endnote than a scandal.

But it sure is easy to find out about. Not to mention, fun to read.

[illustration by Brad Jonas for Pando]

Cross-posted from Pando Daily:

The Daily Dot reports:

“On Friday, Vogue’s creative director Grace Coddington posted her first photo [sic] to Instagram: a nude cartoon selfie of her sitting in a beach chair. It was a promotional photo for the Paddle8 ‘No Clothes‘ auction, but it apparently violated Instagram’s terms of service, which prohibit nudity. On Saturday, her account was removed.”

Artist Anna Gensler, the photographer Petra Collins and Rihanna have also had direct or indirect run-ins with Instagram over various depictions of nudity, including Gensler’s drawings of gross dudes.

Here’s the drawing:

Following the outcry, Instagram backed down. Yay for cartoon boobs and cartoon dot nipples!

But now that we have Instagram back on its heels, as it were, I wonder — as a boundary-pushing artist myself — whether we can push transgressive/obscene/nude cartoon art even further:

Cross-posted from Pando Daily:

Maksim Ksendzov had a shitty weekend.

The Russian official, who threatened to block social media sites like Twitter has been publicly dressed down by his boss as well as the prime minister, reports state-owned RT television.

“Based on the conclusions of the commission that carried out the official investigation against Deputy Head of Roskomnadzor Maksim Ksendzov, it has been decided to apply a disciplinary sanction,” the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media said in a statement.

Chair without armrests? Non-dairy creamer? Forced to tweet Gulag jokes? No word on the exact nature of said disciplinary sanction.

As if being hung out to dry in front of the entire Internet didn’t suck enough, Prime Minister/Putin Handpuppet Dmitry Medvedev posted the following on Facebook: “As an active user of social networks, I hold that the Russian laws must be observed by everyone – the networks and the users alike. But certain civil servants responsible for the development of the industry must sometimes turn their brains on and give no interviews that announce the shutdown of social networks.”