Year: 2017

I Didn’t Go There, but Other People Are

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On Friday, I made it a point to reflect on other victims of the Holocaust.

I did so in a way that specifically mentioned Jews.

Saturday, I took a rare day off from blogging, and on Sunday, I noted, among other things, that Trump had not mentioned Jews at all in their Holocaust Remembrance Day message.

Given the sh%$ storm that erupted, it was at the end of this post, though.

Now Tim Kaine, of all people, is saying that the omission of Jews is a form of Holocaust denialism:

Senator Tim Kaine said on Sunday that it was “not a coincidence” that the White House did not mention Jews or Judaism on Holocaust Remembrance Day yet Donald Trump signed an executive order banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.
“The final solution was about the slaughter of Jews,” said Kaine, Hillary Clinton’s running mate in her defeat by Trump in November, in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday. “We have to remember this. This is what Holocaust denial is.

“It’s either to deny that it happened, or many Holocaust deniers acknowledge, ‘Oh, yeah, people were killed. But it was a lot of innocent people. Jews weren’t targeted.’ The fact that they did that and imposed this religious test against Muslims in the executive orders on the same day – this is not a coincidence.”

Kaine spoke after White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, appearing on the same show, stood by the original statement.

“I don’t regret the words,” Priebus said, adding: “I mean, everyone’s suffering in the Holocaust, including, obviously, all of the Jewish people.”

On Friday, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the White House said: “It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.”

Pressed on the omission on Saturday, after criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and Anne Frank Center, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told CNN: “Despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group and we took into account all of those who suffered.”

Certainly, one of the tropes of Holocaust deniers from the more antisemitic side of that crowd (there is also a more pro Nazi side) is to assert that the deaths of Jews,* and say that everything has to be viewed in the context of overall Nazi brutality.

Steve Bannon is clearly on one of those sides, and given that Trump just put him in every meeting of the National Security Council, it’s pretty clear that he is the power behind the throne right now.

So I am inclined to agree with Kaine’s assessment, though it is unclear to me whether or not this was Bannon freelancing or not.

In the final analysis, it does not matter, and my Orthodox Jewish friends and relatives who voted for Trump need to keep this on their list when asking God for forgiveness on Yom Kippur.

*Pretty much everyone ignores the Roma (Gypsies), because they are perhaps the most despised minority in the Western world.

You Gotta Love the Right Wing Media

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Fox and its ilk are continuing to proclaim that the terrorist who shot up a mosque in Quebec is a Moroccan, despite the fact that this is not true.

The  Mohamed el Khadir, who is of Moroccan extraction in this crime was the guy who called 911:

A mass shooting at a Quebec City mosque last night left six people dead and eight wounded. The targeted mosque, the Cultural Islamic Center of Quebec, was the same one at which a severed pig’s head was left during Ramadan last June. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the episode a “terrorist attack on Muslims.”

Almost immediately, various news outlets and political figures depicted the shooter as Muslim. Right-wing nationalist tabloids in the UK instantly linked it to Islamic violence. Fox News claimed that “witnesses said at least one gunman shouted ‘Allahu akbar!’,” and then added this about the shooter’s national origin:

Suspect in Quebec mosque terror attack was of Moroccan origin, reports show https://t.co/oRzxGHEXDm pic.twitter.com/aEsEtccMvi

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 30, 2017

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer exploited the attack to justify President Trump’s ban on immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries. “It’s a terrible reminder of why we must remain vigilant and why the President is taking steps to be proactive rather than reactive when it comes to our nation’s safety and security,” Spicer said at this afternoon’s briefing when speaking of the Quebec City attack.

But these assertions are utterly false. The suspect is neither Moroccan nor Muslim. The Moroccan individual, Mohamed el Khadir, was actually one of the worshippers at the mosque and called 911 to summon the police, and played no role whatsoever in the shooting.

The actual shooting suspect is 27-year-old Alexandre Bissonnette, a white French Canadian who is, by all appearances, a rabid anti-immigrant nationalist. A leader of a local immigration rights groups, François Deschamps, told a local paper he recognized his photo as an anti-immigrant far-right “troll” who has been hostile to the group online. And Bisonnette’s Facebook page – now taken down but still archived – lists among its “likes” the far right French nationalist Marine Le Pen, Islam critics Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the Israeli Defense Forces, and Donald J. Trump (he also “likes” the liberal Canadian Party NDP along with more neutral “likes” such as Tom Hanks, the Sopranos and Katy Perry).

Clearly, we need to ban Katy Perry fans from entering the United States.

They are dangerous.

I Take One Day off from Blogging, and the Whole World Goes Pear Shaped

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Trump just issued an executive order banning entry from seven predominantly Muslim countries.  Rather unsurprisingly, given the motley crew of racists populating his senior administration, this applies to legal residents of the United States (green card holders) as well:

President Trump on Friday closed the nation’s borders to refugees from around the world, ordering that families fleeing the slaughter in Syria be indefinitely blocked from entering the United States, and temporarily suspending immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries.

In an executive order that he said was part of an extreme vetting plan to keep out “radical Islamic terrorists,” Mr. Trump also established a religious test for refugees from Muslim nations: He ordered that Christians and others from minority religions be granted priority over Muslims.

There’s something that I think even Clarence Thomas would rule as unconstitutional before the ink was dry.

“We don’t want them here,” Mr. Trump said of Islamist terrorists during a signing ceremony at the Pentagon. “We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit those into our country who will support our country, and love deeply our people.”

Earlier in the day, Mr. Trump explained to an interviewer for the Christian Broadcasting Network that Christians in Syria were “horribly treated” and alleged that under previous administrations, “if you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible.”

BTW, the Trump administration is now walking back applying the EO to green card holders.

This clusterf%$# was complete with Customs and Immigration refusing a federal court order to allow lawyers to talk to the detainees:

………

Early in the evening, a huge piece of news broke: Two federal judges, Ann Donnelly of the Eastern District of New York and Leonie Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia, had made rulings that would stall the implementation of Trump’s anti-refugee executive order.

For the lawyers at Dulles Airport, Brinkema’s ruling generated a ton of excitement. She ruled that the travelers detained by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had a right to see lawyers. 

 ………

 But lawyers who spoke to The Daily Beast said it’s also unheard of for government agencies like CBP to prevent people who have the legal right to live in the U.S. from seeing their lawyers. And that’s what was happening.

After Brinkema’s order came down, and lawyers at Dulles prepared to meet their new clients, the CBP balked, barring these lawyers from seeing their would-be clients. 

It’s gotten so bat that Richard Bruce Cheney is calling it a bad idea.

And in the bad idea area, Trump Trump put Steve Bannon on the National Security Council, while dropping the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Director of National Intelligence from the Principal’s Committee:

President Donald Trump is reshuffling the US National Security Council (NSC), downgrading the military chiefs of staff and giving a regular seat to his chief strategist Steve Bannon.

 Mr Bannon, formerly the head of the populist right-wing, Breitbart News website, will join high-level discussions about national security.

 The order was signed on Saturday.

 The director of national intelligence and the joint chiefs will attend when discussions pertain to their areas.

 Under previous administrations, the director and joint chiefs attended all meetings of the NSC’s inner circle, the principals’ committee.

I actually have mixed emotions on this, on one hand, he is clearly removing experienced voices in the American intelligence establishment from a major role, on the other hand, these American intelligence establishment has been a giant clusterf%$# of fail since well before the Bay of Pigs invasion.

And finally, and I am sure that Bannon had something to do with this. they issued a statement acknowledging Holocaust Rememberance Day which neglected to mention Jews at all.

I Am Losing My Motherf%$#Ing Mind

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I was talking with Sharon* about our schedule for the weekend, and I noted that we needed to get me, “……… Those things with aglets on the end.”

I had forgotten the word for shoe laces, but I had remembered the word for the little tips of the shoelaces.

Clearly, I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue.

*Love of my life, light of the cosmos, she who must be obeyed, my wife.

Too F%$#ing Soon Folks, Too F%$#ing Soon………

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Having nothing better to do, the Washington Post has taken to viewing the votes of Senators through the lens of the 2020 Presidential campaign.

Please, make it stop:

This tweet has gotten 85,000 retweets and likes in the past 27 hours.

The only person who voted “no” on every Trump appointment was Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.

Remember that in 2020.

— Rachel Gonzalez (@RachelRGonzalez) January 24, 2017


 Remember that in 2020, indeed.

 Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-N.Y.) name has come up as a potential Democratic presidential candidate before, of course — pretty much ever since she was appointed to replace that other female senator from New York who ran for president. Our own Chris Cillizza has put Gillibrand on his shortlist of leading 2020 Democratic candidates, and The Post’s Paul Kane, who covers her in the Senate, concurs.

 Since that tweet, she broke her streak — voting for Nikki Haley to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations later Tuesday — but it is conspicuous that this former moderate congresswoman turned more-liberal senator has been so anti-Trump on the first few votes of the Trump era. She has now voted against three of four Trump Cabinet-level nominees, which is still more than any other Democrat.

For the love of God, can we wait until after the 2018 primaries, or after Trump leaves office, whichever comes first, before we start talking about the 2020 campaign?

Please?

Headline of the Day

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Dems to David Brock: Stop Helping, You Are Killing Us

I am not surprised. He raised a huge amount of money, and much of it went for lavish parties and an army of paid trolls.

He’s been selling it as fighting Koch-sucker fire with fire, but it’s not: The Koch’s have been trying to destroy America, Civil Rights, and Democracy for decades, and they don’t go all ADHD humming bird every Presidential year.

I get that every political movement has its share of grifters, but David Brock’s tale of conversion from the right wing has passed its expiration date:

As David Brock attempts to position himself as a leader in rebuilding a demoralized Democratic Party in the age of Trump, many leading Democratic organizers and operatives are wishing the man would simply disappear.

Many in the party—Clinton loyalists, Obama veterans, and Bernie supporters alike—talk about the man not as a sought-after ally in the fight against Trumpism, but as a nuisance and a hanger-on, overseeing a colossal waste of cash. And former employees say that he has hurt the cause.

 ………

 During Trump’s inauguration weekend, Brock held a conference for activists, politicians, and donors at a resort in South Florida to pitch his grand vision. All but one of the candidates currently running to chair the Democratic National Committee attended, conspicuously missing the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday.

 Meanwhile, many Democratic grassroots activists and campaign alums have been giving his proposed plans some stern side-eye.

 “His ability to produce wins for Democrats is nonexistent,” Jeff Weaver, former campaign manager for Bernie Sanders’s 2016 presidential run, told The Daily Beast. “He does not have the kind of understanding of what kind of coalition you have to bring together to win national races—that’s his fundamental problem.”

 ………

 It’s clear why Brock has acquired a long list of enemies on the more progressive corners of his own party. Brock’s political evolution is well-known: the former anti-Clinton right-winger who starting in the late 1990s transformed into a relentlessly pro-Clinton Democratic operative.

 But the friction between Brock and Democrats is not merely limited to its more progressive faction—many alumni of Obama’s campaigns and White House, as well as Hillary Clinton’s failed 2016 run, say they want Brock to stay far away from the Democrats’ future plans.

  ………

 Another senior 2016 Clinton aide, who asked not to be named because the ex-staffer did “not want to deal with Brock’s bullshit,” described Brock and his organizations in 2016 as “useless—you might as well have thrown those [tens of] millions of dollars down a well, and then set the well on fire.”

 ………

 “I met with him a couple times—he’s f%$#ing weird,” a former Obama administration official, who also requested anonymity, told The Daily Beast. “I felt like I was meeting Mugatu from Zoolander… I don’t know what the f%$# [Brock’s network] did besides raise a ton of money, and I don’t think the after-action report on 2016 says we need more David Brock. Probably the opposite is true.”

You know things are weird when a discussion of political operatives invokes Zoolander, but weird I can handle, weird, self-absorbed, and incompetent is another thing entirely.

This Has Got to Be the Single Most Corrupt Thing Said This Year

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And it Wasn’t said by a member of the Trump administration:

“[Hillary Clinton] understands that a forensic exam of the campaign is necessary, not only for her, but for the party and other electeds, and for the Investors in the Campaign,” said a close Hillary Clinton friend in Washington who, like several others, declined to speak on the record because their conversations with one or both Clintons were private. “People want to know that their Investment was treated with respect, but that their mistakes wouldn’t be repeated.”

“Investors” in the campaign?

Seriously?

While I understand that this wasn’t said by the Clintons, it is emblematic of how thoroughly corrupt, and clueless, the Democratic Party establishment is, particularly the Clinton wing of the establishment.

We REALLY need to clean house, because these folks cannot see beyond their next big donor or consulting gig.

He’s Gonna Fold Like Overcooked Broccoli

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Greek PM Alex Tsipras is insisting that he will go no further with austerity.

While I agree with his sentiments, Angela Merkel and her Evil Minions™ have turned Greece into the world’s largest debtor’s prison, Tsipras has been saying this for years now, and when push comes to shove, he folds:

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras dug in against creditor demands for more pension cuts and tax increases before a meeting of euro-area finance ministers to unblock the country’s bailout review.

“There is no way we are going to legislate even one euro more than what was agreed in the bailout,” Tsipras said in an interview with Efimerida ton Syntakton, to mark the two-year anniversary since he was elected on an anti-austerity platform. “The demand to legislate more measures, and contingent ones, no less, is alien not just to the Greek Constitution but to democratic norms.”

Euro-area finance ministers will discuss Greece when they meet in Brussels on Thursday, with Greece and officials representing the European Commission, the European Central Bank, the European Stability Mechanism and the International Monetary Fund locked in a stand-off over how to complete the country’s second bailout review, now a year behind schedule. The IMF, in particular, views the projections shared by Greece and the European creditors that the country can reach a primary budget surplus of 3.5 percent of gross domestic product by 2018 as too optimistic.

The IMF will make noises about the unsustainability of the program, but will then break its own rules and go along.

The Greeks will protest, and then capitulate.

Angela Merkel will use her “toughness” as a cudgel in the next round of elections.

The Greek people will continue to suffer.

Bet on it.

Damn!

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Mary Tyler Moore just died:

Mary Tyler Moore, whose witty and graceful performances on two top-rated television shows in the 1960s and ’70s helped define a new vision of American womanhood, died on Wednesday in Greenwich, Conn. She was 80.

Her family said her death, at Greenwich Hospital, was caused by cardiopulmonary arrest after she had contracted pneumonia.

Ms. Moore faced more than her share of private sorrow, and she went on to more serious fare, including an Oscar-nominated role in the 1980 film “Ordinary People” as a frosty, resentful mother whose son has died. But she was most indelibly known as the incomparably spunky Mary Richards on the CBS hit sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Broadcast from 1970 to 1977, it was produced by both Ms. Moore and her second husband, Grant Tinker, who later ran NBC and who died on Nov. 28.

A part of my childhood just left us.

I Think That This Is a F%$# You to Erdogan

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Germany is revoking a law that made it an offense to insult foreign leaders:

Germany is ditching a law specifically protecting heads of state and government against insults, after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan tried to sue a prominent satirist. Slander and libel laws still apply.

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cabinet decided on Wednesday to abolish the rarely enforced section of the criminal code by January 1, 2018.

“The idea of ‘lese majeste’ dates back to a long-gone era, it no longer belongs in our criminal law,” Justice Minister Heiko Maas (pictured above) said. “The regulation is obsolete and unnecessary,” he added.

Maas said heads of state and government would still be able to defend themselves against slander and defamation “but no more or less so than any other person.”

Insulted foreign leaders will still be able to pursue their own libel and defamation cases. The main difference between the laws was the extent of the sentence, insulting a political leader could carry up to three years in jail while ordinary libel or slander can carry a one-year jail sentence or a fine.

This is a good thing, terrible law, but this is really about Merkel dissing the Turkish President, and I think that a significant amount of political self-interest is part of the motivation for doing this.

Linkage

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The truth about the McDonalds coffee lawsuit:

Well, We Now Have a List of Democrats Who Should Be Flipping Burgers………

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BTW, the headline for this article is not a normal one for Slate, “Top Democrats Missed Women’s Marches to Attend Luxury Donor Retreat Thrown by Clinton Henchman, which implies that even the reliably “New Democrat” online news site is having enough of Clinton and their Evil Minions™:

Saturday was probably the best day for progressives in the United States since the last time Barack Obama was elected. Roughly 3 million(!) people joined women’s marches across the country in an unexpectedly enormous demonstration of enthusiasm (and, perhaps more crucially, organization). And yet a number of the most influential figures in Democratic politics—the people who are ostensibly responsible for translating this energy into political and electoral action—missed the marches completely because they were at a retreat for bajillionaire donors at something called the “Turnberry Isle” luxury resort near Miami.

The gathering was hosted by David Brock, the onetime Clinton-hating right-wing quasi-journalist goon who switched sides and, during the latest election cycle, ran a number of pro-Hillary super PACs and advocacy groups. (Hat tip to the Observer for its colorfully accurate description of Brock as a “henchman.”) Among the attendees at Brock’s event, via a program helpfully snagged by the New Republic:

  • Five of the candidates running for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee, including Keith Ellison and Thomas Perez. (The one candidate who marched instead of attending the retreat was South Bend, Indiana, mayor and Slate contributor Pete Buttigieg. Attaboy, Mayor Pete!)
  • Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, AFL-CIO political director Michael Podhorzer, and the presidents of EMILY’s List, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and the Democracy Alliance. (Richards and NARAL president Ilyse Hogue were at retreat events on Friday but also spoke at the Women’s March on Washington on Saturday. EMILY’s List president Stephanie Schriock and Democracy Alliance president Gara LaMarche attended both the Miami retreat and the D.C. march as well.)*
  • “More than 120” major Democratic donors. (The event was also a fundraiser for Brock’s organizations.)
  • James Carville
  • Rahm Emanuel
  • Jennifer Granholm
  • Former Joe Biden chief of staff Ron Klain
  • New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman
  • Keith Olbermann, for some reason
  • Harold Ford Jr., who was last seen in electoral politics losing a 2006 Senate race, has worked on Wall Street ever since, and who somehow nonetheless appeared on a panel called “Democratic Messaging That Can Work.”

In case you were wondering, yes, the phrase “thought leader” did appear in the program.

I am a bit depressed at Ellison being there, but now we have a list of people we should not trust with elections, starting, of course, with the odious David Brock.

Being Born on 3rd Base and Thinking That You Hit a Triple

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It turns out that the single most statististically segnificant characteristic of successful entrepreneurs is that they come from rich families:


We’re in an era of the cult of the entrepreneur. We analyze the Tory Burches and Evan Spiegels of the world looking for a magic formula or set of personality traits that lead to success. Entrepreneurship is on the rise, and more students coming out of business schools are choosing startup life over Wall Street.

But what often gets lost in these conversations is that the most common shared trait among entrepreneurs is access to financial capital—family money, an inheritance, or a pedigree and connections that allow for access to financial stability. While it seems that entrepreneurs tend to have an admirable penchant for risk, it’s usually that access to money which allows them to take risks.

And this is a key advantage: When basic needs are met, it’s easier to be creative; when you know you have a safety net, you are more willing to take risks. “Many other researchers have replicated the finding that entrepreneurship is more about cash than dash,” University of Warwick professor Andrew Oswald tells Quartz. “Genes probably matter, as in most things in life, but not much.”

………

For creative professions, starting a new venture is the ultimate privilege. Many startup founders do not take a salary for some time. The average cost to launch a startup is around $30,000, according to the Kauffman Foundation. Data from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor show that more than 80% of funding for new businesses comes from personal savings and friends and family.

“Following your dreams is dangerous,” a 31-year-old woman who runs in social entrepreneurship circles in New York, and asked not to be named, told Quartz. “This whole bulk of the population is being seduced into thinking that they can just go out and pursue their dream anytime, but it’s not true.”

I’m not surprised, but I am a bit disgusted.

We need to understand that much of the sociology of success in the US, as it is everywhere, boils down to nepotism and tribalism.

Eleven Hours in the Tin Pan. God, There’s Got to Be Another Way!

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I Felt a Little Like a Dying Clown, with a Streak of Rin Tin Tin

Even when everyone is on the same page, even when everyone is pleasant to each other, even when they are productive, meetings suck.

What’s more, the agony increases exponentially as the length goes up.

  • 15 minutes: Annoying
  • 30 minutes: Uncomfortable
  • 60 minutes: Agony
  • 2 Hours: Where is your God Now!
  • 3 Hours: I ache for the sweet succor of oblivion!
  • 5½ Hours: Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!

All in all though, it was productive day.

Not Enough Bullets

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At Davos, Jamie Dimon, the famously humorless head of JP Morgan Chase, shouted, “Make Elites Great Again!”:

Why did that avalanche hit that hotel in Italy, rather than those rat-f%$#s:

The most telling exchange at the World Economic Forum in Davos came on Thursday afternoon during a closed-door lunch hosted by the Washington Post, Foreign Policy, and Slate.

A couple hundred people were gathered at the Hotel Seehof, an expansive five-star hotel on the Davos promenade, to discuss the state of the world on the eve of the inauguration of Donald Trump. There were heads of state, both current and former, and captains of industry and finance.

The hostess, Lally Graham Weymouth, a senior associate editor at the Washington Post and daughter of the late Katharine Graham, was calling on people around the room to share their thoughts when she hit upon David Rubinstein, the jovial co-founder of the Carlyle Group. His remarks were different — and, people in attendance said, made as a joke. Rubenstein, three people in attendance told BuzzFeed News, pleaded to those gathered that elites were people too. With feelings! And they deserved to be listened to.

And then Jamie Dimon, the head of JPMorgan Chase, replied in his own way, letting out an expressive: “Make elites great again!” The banker, who was compensated $28 million last year, is not known for his sense of humor.

Joseph Evangelisti, a spokesperson for JPMorgan, told BuzzFeed News: “It was tongue-in-cheek.” Those who heard Dimon’s private riposte weren’t so sure.

Amazingly enough, it gets worse from there.

I have a request for ISIS/ISIL/Daesh/Whatever: How about hitting Davos next year?

With careful planning you might get some Saudi princes as well.

The Canary in the Facebook Coal Mine

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Alex Stamos, who quit Yahoo over CEO Marissa Mayer’s playing footsie with the NSA: (Limited time link, it goes behind a paywall in about a day)

Interesting piece on Re/Code this morning about the “secret meeting” of Valley engineers who fear that Trump is very, very bad for tech.

They’re right of course, and they’re also right when they talk about the potential for an engineers’ strike to grind major tech companies to a halt.

And yet, Re/Code still managed to bury the lede by breezing past a mention of one significant attendee…

The rules say all attendees are granted anonymity unless willing to be outed, which made Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos’s appearance all the more significant. He declined to comment, but did give Recode permission to print his name.

And that’s all the piece had to say about Alex Stamos. Which is a shame because simply describing Stamos as Facebook’s CSO doesn’t do him – or his appearance at the meeting – justice. In fact, taken at face value it almost suggests that Facebook had send such a high ranking exec to a “secret meeting” of rank and file techies to keep tabs on potentially troublesome workers.

The truth is something far more interesting, and far more encouraging.

It’s certainly true to say that Stamos is a high ranking Facebook exec, but he’s also something else: The canary in the coal mine. Anyone worried about Zuckerberg and Sandberg’s willingness to cosy up to Trump (and in Zuck’s case, his increasingly weird willingess to cosy up to ultra-nationalist demagogues and authoritarian regimes generally) should keep a very close eye on what Stamos does next.

For one thing, it’s hard to find a bio of Stamos that doesn’t include the phrase “vocal NSA critic.” Back in 2014, when Stamos joined Yahoo as its CSO, Entrepreneur magazine described him thus:

………

A year later, now at Yahoo, Stamos “clashed” with the director of the NSA over the agency’s demands for backdoors to access encrypted user data. Per the BBC…

………

A few months later, it was reported that Stamos had been “poached” by Facebook. In fact, as Reuters revealed in 2016, Stamos resigned from Yahoo after discovering that his employer had agreed to pass data to the American government.

According to two of the former employees, Yahoo Chief Executive Marissa Mayer’s decision to obey the directive roiled some senior executives and led to the June 2015 departure of Chief Information Security Officer Alex Stamos, who now holds the top security job at Facebook Inc.

Which brings us to this week’s “secret meeting” and Stamos’ willingness to be mentioned by name as an attendee.

………

The question is whether Facebook continues to try to keep Trump happy when those requests start rolling in (see also: requests to hire fewer immigrants or, even worse, to share information on those immigrants currently employed.)

In that regard, at least based on past performance, Alex Stamos is someone to whom we should all be paying attention. And in that context the timing of his very public attendance at an anti-Trump meeting looks a lot like a shot across the bows of his own employer.

Should Stamos suddenly get “poached” by another company or decide to leave Facebook for some other unspecified reason, the rest of us should probably take that as a cue to get our data as far away from Mark Zuckerberg’s servers as possible.

Mark Zuckerberg is not to be trusted.  There has never been a privacy promise that Facebook has not broken, and his dealing with his partners has been problematic, and now there are rumors that he wants to run for President in 2024.

Unfortunately, the Web 2.0 Suicide Machine is gone, but I am sure that there are services out there that perform the same function in a more trustworthy and reliable manner than does Facebook.

If he leaves,