Back to the Future With Legations and Diplomatic Agents - Yes!

 

Would a legation offer an alternative in future situations — North Korea, Taliban Afghanistan come to mind — where the U.S. would want to establish more than an “interests section” housed within a foreign embassy, but less than full embassy status with an ambassador?

Now, that (this, in the current Foreign Service Journal) is an exceptionally good idea. 

While some of my betters are currently sweating out a proposal for how the Department might establish smaller and more responsive diplomatic missions in odd places around the globe and do so much, much, faster than would be possible with an Inman-ish Fortress Embassy, the co-authors of FSJ's Time to Bring Back Legations Headed by Diplomatic Agents? have the answer. Legations!

Please read the whole article at the link above. 

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p.s. - Don't dismiss the possibility of opening a post in North Korea. There was a time, right after the reunification of Germany when former East German embassies around the world were up for grabs (and USAID got a couple in Africa), that a team from DS and OBO surveyed Pyongyang's vacated DDR embassy for our potential use as a diplomatic post. That could happen again. 

 

Trump Files Civil Suit Against Hillary and a Couple Dozen Others

Filed today in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Trump v. Hillary Clinton et al, asking for damages with a RICO kicker. 

All those defendants "orchestrated a malicious conspiracy to disseminate patently false and injurious information about Donald J. Trump and his campaign, all in the hopes of destroying his life, his political career and rigging the 2016 Presidential Election in favor of Hillary Clinton" for starters.

Twitter Likened to 1920s Paris

Classical liberals haunt Twitter as White émigrés once haunted Paris, calling for the restoration of a regime they proved incapable of defending. https://t.co/kUYQtPoTDv

— Hippokleides (@Hippokleides) February 11, 2022

To freely quote Lenin, an ideology that cannot defend itself is worth nothing.

Refusing to Read the Hunter Biden Laptop Story Until Miss Dismal Approves

I'm aware of the New York Times story, of course. But as a responsible citizen I refuse to read it until I know it has been cleared by the trained information cops of Homeland Security. 

Has that information, or narrative as we are instructed to say these days, been sanitized for my protection, like those paper bands on motel toilets used to say? Because it sounds extremely interesting, but then, I remember how just a year or so ago the White House spokesperson roundly debunked and denounced that story as the work of Putin when it was first reported in the New York Post. 

I have to agree this seems just the sort of situation that might be brimming with mis, dis, and even mal information - Miss Dismal! - and therefore not at all something for common citizens, like me, to mess with. 

Hey DHS, c'mon man!©, stop the malarky and tell me whether or not it's safe to read that story.

Investigating Sensitive Matters (Too Sensitive for Rules)

Let me get this straight. The FBI's own internal auditors found out that FBI agents routinely violate the rules when conducting investigations of 'sensitive' matters? Actually, yes. 

Put on your shocked face and then read the internal 2019 audit report here.

FBI agents violated their own rules at least 747 times in 18 months while conducting investigations involving politicians, candidates, religious groups, the news media and others, according to a 2019 FBI audit obtained by The Washington Times.

This rock was turned over report was disclosed in the course of a lawsuit, naturally.

Chronic Appropriations Rider Lights Up DC Weed Advocates

The Hill reported recently on the latest dissapointment to DC wastoids.

A GOP-backed ban on weed sales in Washington, D.C., was preserved in a sprawling government funding bill passed by Congress on Thursday, despite opposition from advocates who say the provision overrides the will of the District’s residents years after they voted to legalize marijuana.

- snip -

While District residents are allowed to grow and consume their own cannabis, they cannot buy or sell it under the Harris rider. Marijuana businesses use a loophole in the law to “gift” weed to customers while bundling it with another product or service, creating a gray market that D.C. cannot tax or regulate.

With that 'gift' loophole, the law doesn't really hinder any DC resident from toking up in the privacy of his own home. 

Weed continues to be illegal for the federal government, however, which I believe accounts for much of the reluctance we see from millenials to seeking, or even accepting offer of, government employment. "I think the private sector is a better fit for me" = my roommates can smoke and it's practically legal, so why should I undergo random drug testing?

Read it here.

Miss Dismal Says Unapproved Information Is Dangerous, Read Her Comic Book To Learn More

It was a bright cold day in February and the clocks were striking thirteen when Homeland Security's latest Summary of the Terrorism Threat to the United States popped up on my telescreen.

(Forget I said that. I should cut out the 1984 references for fear that DHS will suspect me of thoughtcrime.)

So the latest threat to America's homeland comes from MDM, or Mis-Dis-and-Mal Information, and it will take trained info-cops from Homeland Security to police the marketplace of ideas for anything that might mislead, harm, or manipulate you and me.

I say, first of all, Mis-Dis-Mal needs an acronym you can pronounce, something like "Miss Dismal." Second, it needs a good judicial review because, hard as it may be to believe, there are some people who would not want federal agents and their contractors policing our public and private media for signs of MDM.

What would Thomas Jefferson say about this initiative? Or about Homeland Security itself, I wonder? But before I get on a watchlist for wondering about that, I'll stay on the safe side and let the trained info-cops of DHS explain:

Misinformation, disinformation, and malinformation make up what CISA [Cybersecurity Infrastructure Security Agency] defines as “information activities”. When this type of content is released by foreign actors, it can be referred to as foreign influence. Definitions for each are below.

• Misinformation is false, but not created or shared with the intention of causing harm.

• Disinformation is deliberately created to mislead, harm, or manipulate a person, social group, organization, or country.

• Malinformation is based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.

What should our corps of trained professional info-cops do about the threat posed by Miss Dismal? Naturally, it should deploy comic books – yes, comic books – to counter the influence spread by any malign 'threat actor.'

Foreign and domestic threat actors use MDM campaigns to cause chaos, confusion, and division. These malign actors are seeking to interfere with and undermine our democratic institutions and national cohesiveness. The resources provided at the bottom of this page provide examples and more information about MDM activities.

First in the series, Real Fake demonstrates how threat actors capitalize on political and social issues (especially around election cycles) to stealthily plant doubt in the minds of targeted audiences and steer their opinion.

Readers follow protagonists Rachel and Andre as they discover that a command center in Russia is using a network of troll farms to spread false narratives about elections to American voters. With the elections coming up, Rachel and Andre follow the trail of synthetic media and stop the cyber assailants from causing chaos, confusion, and division.

They're calling this comic book "Real Fake?” Really? I wonder who it was in DHS who greenlighted that term because it makes me recall the “fake but accurate” excuse that Dan Rather came up with after he was fired from CBS News for using forged documents to – come to think of it – influence an election.

Rathergate was big news once, but that was back in 2004, when most of today’s DHS employees were in grade school. See the CBS News' final word on it here: CBS Ousts Four For Bush Guard Story.

This is where things get funny, because Rathergate had a simply hilarious aspect in that Rather and his producers exposed George W. Bush’s purported misdeeds by producing four old Texas Air National Guard memos. The perfect smoking gun, right?

But, as some TV viewers noticed the very night the story was broadcast, those memos, which were dated in 1972 and ‘73, had been typed in Microsoft Word with default settings. They had proportionally spaced font, and even superscripts (as in Rathergate), things that did not become available to office workers until Steve Jobs invented the MacIntosh computer

Although Rather still keeps on defending himself all these many years later, game over, man. Those documents weren’t fake but accurate, they were just plain fake.

I don’t think DHS intended for Americans to associate their Mis-Dis-and-Mal-fighting comic books with that failed attempt to influence the 2004 election. Although, I would be totally open to a comic book series based on Rathergate.