(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Legacies [1] ['Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags', 'Showtags Popular_Tags'] Date: 2023-04-16 Drew Harwell of The Washington Post examines what the Pentagon does to attract and keep recruits on the gaming/chat app Discord. For years, the U.S. military has pushed to meet prospective Generation Z recruits on Discord, the online group-chat tool where many spend their time. It even runs a 17,000-member chatroom there for service members to talk about first-person shooter games, meet with career counselors and participate in what one sergeant in 2019 called the “Army of tomorrow.” But Defense Department officials have also struggled to confront the risks of how Discord’s closed channels operate — and the ease with which they can be used to expose military intelligence. Last month, in a detailed guide aimed specifically at Discord users, Special Operations Command, which oversees the country’s most elite forces, told service members: “Don’t post anything in Discord that you wouldn’t want seen by the general public.” [...] ...the arrest doesn’t end the dilemma for the military: how to supervise a young workforce that has access to classified secrets but lives much of its life online — including in corners of the internet where many share a fascination with military hardware and an eagerness to show off for strangers and friends. Two-thirds of U.S. military personnel are under the age of 30, with the vast majority of those under 25. Brianna Rosen of Just Security looks at the threat of domestic extremism inherent in apps like Discord. While the Pentagon and law enforcement agencies recently have taken steps to counter extremism in their ranks – particularly in the wake of the January 6th attacks on the U.S. Capitol – domestic extremism within the U.S. Intelligence Community remains a growing and under-appreciated threat. There was no reference to this threat in the recent 40-page unclassified version of the 2023 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community, which contained only a brief section on “transnational racial or ethnically motivated violent extremists.” This insider threat is compounded by risks emanating from disinformation campaigns. That’s true for both inputs and outputs. In terms of inputs, anti-government extremist conspiracy theories may motivate more insiders to think they have a righteous cause. In terms of outputs, allegations that some aspects of the leaked intelligence documents were deliberately altered, for example, raises the prospect of more sophisticated disinformation operations based on partially correct intelligence. [...] From a legal perspective, monitoring private online chatrooms raises a host of concerns about mass surveillance programs, potential privacy violations (notwithstanding reduced protections for national security officials), and intercepting U.S. communications. But these legal concerns are finely balanced against the need to improve investigations into domestic threats. The House Jan. 6 Committee previously concluded that the FBI and other agencies were “too cautious” in acting on information gleaned from social media due to exaggerated concerns about free speech. Lucian K. Truscott IV of Salon notes that the subject matter of the intelligence leaks plays right into the hands of the usual suspects on the right. On Thursday, after the arrest of Teixeira on charges of violating the Espionage Act, the greater right-wing media and political sphere took up for Teixeira and started turning him into a conservative cause-celeb. Right-wing Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeted, misspelling his first name, "Jake Teixeira is white, male, Christian, and anti-war. That makes him an enemy to the Biden regime. Ask yourself who is the real enemy? A young low level national guardsmen? Or the administration that is waging war in Ukraine, a non-NATO nation, against nuclear Russia without war powers?" Tucker Carlson was right behind her with his show on Fox News, claiming that Teixeira's arrest was part of some kind of vast conspiracy to cover up the secret involvement of American ground forces in Ukraine. "Tonight, the news media are celebrating the capture of the kid who told Americans what's actually happening in Ukraine. They are treating him like Osama Bin Laden, maybe even worse actually, because, unlike Al Qaeda, apparently, this kid is a racist," Carlson said. [...] Some of this stuff is just political signifying, making a symbol of someone who is under criticism by the so-called liberal media by turning him into a right-wing hero. But I think it's deeper than that. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson believe this stuff. They are real admirers of signifiers who bubble up out of the racist swamp for whatever reason. In the case of Teixeira, the fact that his emergence is tied to his theft of government secrets about the war in Ukraine makes it all the better. Carlson and Greene are reflexively against American support of Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression because Biden and "the libs" are for it. Camille Squires of The New York Times states that the threat to our nation’s elections has gone local. With far less effort than it would take on a national level, Republican officials are gumming up the mechanics of local election administration, making it harder to cast a vote, harder to tally votes and harder to get results in a timely fashion. Officials are policing elections, establishing task forces and election police units that are supposedly there to root out fraud but could have the effect of intimidating voters from exercising their civic right. Every little bit of friction that’s added to the election process makes it that much harder for it to function. Through the typical channels of government bureaucracy and under the pretense of merely asking questions, these conspiracy-theory-influenced Republicans are often creating this friction for their own voters. Their actions might seem like inconsequential outliers, but it’s there at this grass-roots level that our voting system is most vulnerable. Which means these obscure election boards aren’t where denialism goes to die; it’s where it takes root and starts to grow. Just last month, North Carolina state election officials voted to remove two local election officials. In November the pair initially refused to certify election results (though one ultimately did), as well as in a redo election this year after a bizarre circumstance in which a poll worker was accused of telling voters at one precinct that a candidate had died. The officials questioned state election practices and a 2018 federal court decision striking down strict voter ID requirements North Carolina had in place at the time. “We feel that the election was held according to the law that we have but that the law is not right,” one said. Jemer Tisby writes for the Louisville Courier-Journal wondering why only one April 10 shooting in Louisville received extensive coverage. There were two shootings that happened on April 10. Just 1.5 miles away from the mass shooting at Old National Bank, in another part of downtown, a shooter had killed a man and injured a woman outside the Jefferson Community and Technical College, a local school offering associates degrees and job skills training. No flowers for this shooting. Just some tape around the handrails and stairs near the scene. With the orange cones also standing nearby, it simply looked like an area cordoned off for construction or repairs. The other site of the other shooting was much more conspicuous. [...] The outcry about the mass shooting in Louisville is understandable. It is one of the 145 such incidents so far in 2023 according to the Gun Violence Archive. It is further deadly evidence that we need better laws and policy around gun control. But the shooting at JCTC represents the kind of killings that have become endemic in poor communities. The kind of killing that doesn’t make as many headlines anymore because they are so commonplace. Point taken but I think that the shooting at Jefferson Community and Technical College received more national news coverage because of the shooting at Old National Bank. Or, perhaps, Tisby is referring to local news coverage. Paul Schofield of BBC News looks at the political situation in France following the Constitutional Council ruling that the most significant parts of the government’s pension reform is constitutional. In a functioning democracy the opposing arguments would surely find some form of compromise. After all, a majority of the population, while rejecting the Macron plan, also agrees that some reform of pensions is needed. But is French democracy functioning? Faith in conventional politics and the parliamentary system is in fact at rock-bottom. How else to explain the collapse of Gaullists and Socialists, who ran France for half a century, and the rise of the far-right and far-left? President Macron encouraged the death of the ancien régime, that old order which he exploited to pose as the lone moderate, picking sensible bits from programmes of left and right. Hyper-intelligent and hyper-keen he may have been, but France never liked him and he was elected, twice, by default. Because the alternative, Marine Le Pen, was unacceptable to most. By eliminating the moderate opposition, he made the opposition extreme. Finally today, Le Monde in English wrote and editorial that the French Left simply needs to get its act together. Eleven months after it was created, the Nouvelle Union Populaire Ecologique et Sociale (New Popular Ecological and Social Union, NUPES) is acting incoherently. While its members may be waging a relentless battle against the pension reform, marching alongside angry demonstrators and showing empathy with the concerns of the popular electorate, they are unable to achieve any meaningful gains. Even worse, they can only recognize a chilling reality: As shown in polls published in the last few days, the only person scoring points in the current context is Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right party Rassemblement National. Long hampered by the front républicain, the customary alliance of parties or voters to prevent far-right victories. Le Pen is feeding on the unpopularity of the government and the inability of the left to offer an alternative. Serious introspection is necessary. Have the best possible day, everyone! 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