Buzzfeed Gets 500 of 18 Billion Pages From Mueller Investigation

From Buzzfeed:

"Beginning last April, BuzzFeed News has pursued five separate Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to pry loose all the subpoenas and search warrants that Mueller’s team executed, as well as all the emails, memos, letters, talking points, legal opinions, and interview transcripts it generated. In short, we asked for all the communications of any kind that passed through the special counsel’s office. We also requested all of the documents that would reveal the discussions among Attorney General Bill Barr, former deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, and other high-ranking officials about whether to charge President Donald Trump with obstruction.

Justice Department lawyers said the volume of records at issue could total 18 billion pages and could take centuries to produce. . .

Today, in response to a court order, the Justice Department has released the first installment of documents: 500 pages of summaries of FBI interviews with witnesses, available here for the first time. Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years."

They ask readers to look through the documents and send tips to one of their reporters, Jason Leopold.

So I browsed a little.   Thought I'd skip toward the end.  But scrolling down I landed in the middle.  There was an email from Steve Bannon to Jared Kushner warning him off of Paul Manafort a few days before the 2016 election:

"We need to avoid this guy like the plague
They are going to try and say the russians worked with wiki leaks to give this victory to us
Paul is a nice guy but can't let word get out he is advising us.
Get Outlook for IOS."

This is on page 238.  But when I went back and read the rest of the Buzzfeed article, they'd already highlighted this email and several others in the range of pages I was looking at.


But here's one on page 286, that is ironically interesting.  It's an email from Sergei Millian, the head of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce to Catherine Belton, a reporter for the Financial Times.  She had sent him questions and he was answering them one by one.

Sorry, It was hard getting clear copies.

This is Sept 2016.  This Russian-American promotor of business between the US and Russia is telling the reporter that Obama built favorable business climate.  Was this what he really thought or was this a way to make him not seem a Trump supporter?

And here he warns that policies such as 'using trade as a threat'  are the instruments of "politically weak minds."  Again, are these his real thoughts or his Chamber of Commerce pitch?I Or is this prescient jab at Trump?

I picked up my handy guide to all the players in the Mueller and Impeachment investigations, Seth Abramson's Proof of Conspiracy.  The index gives me "Millian, Sergei, 36-37."

There we learn that Millian, "a Kremlin-linked Russian national, Soviet-born businessman Sergei Millian - who will shortly "offer to serve as a go-between for a Belarusian author with ties to the russian government and the Trump campaign" - contacts George Papadopoulos and says he has "inside knowledge and direct access to the top hierarchy in Russian politics,"  Later he contacts him via Facebook "telling him he wants to 'share with [him] a disruptive technology that might be instrumental in your political work for the campaign."

[I'd note that in an earlier page to Belton, he denied being Russian.  Is this an error in Abramson's source?  He was from Belarus, and would have been born into the Soviet Union, not Russia.]

Abramson also says that "Millian is later revealed to be a key source - if an 'unwitting' one - for much of the dossier complied by former M16 Russia desk chief Christopher Steele in 2016 an published in January 2017 by Buzzfeed News.


There's a lot in just the 500 pages.  And Buzzfeed says after this first 500 page document

"Another installment will be released every month for at least the next eight years."

Here's the link to the documents.


I'd note that emptywheel says this is just the DOJ releasing documents just before and pertinent to the Donald Stone trial and that it will be a way to hide other information.  I didn't quite understand how it puts other info out of reach of the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Alaskans For Better Elections Now Have Petitions To Collect Signatures To Change Alaska's Elections To Ranked Choice Voting

A group called "Alaskans for Better Elections" has gathered enough signatures to get an initiative approved.  They've received enough valid signatures, however the Lt Governor, on the advice of the Attorney General has said the initiative was not valid because it covered more than one topic.  Alaskans for Better Elections has appealed that decision and a judge agreed with them.  The State is asking that the group should not be allowed to collect signatures before their appeal of the judge's decision is heard by the Supreme Court.

But this tweet suggests that the judge didn't buy the argument to delay the collection of signatures and the initiative petition to change how Alaskans vote and how large campaign contributions are reported is now available for signatures.  You can visit the website here..

Look who just picked up 500 petition booklets to get help get more open, transparent, and fair elections in our great state! Who is ready to sign? #alaska #akleg #RankedChoiceVoting #elections pic.twitter.com/htUuexf20A

— jason (@jgrenn) November 1, 2019

And, as I see it, the only reason to delay the collection of signatures would be to keep the initiative off the ballot, since they need to collect enough signatures before the Legislature goes back into session in mid-January.  Let them start now and if the Supreme Court agrees with the Lt. Governor's finding this initiative is invalid, they'll stop collecting signatures.  What's the big deal?  Unless you don't want them to get enough signatures in time.

What's the Difference  Between Initiative And Petition?
Initiative is the document that outlines what changes are wanted Petition with a summary of the initiative is what people sign

BUT, MORE IMPORTANT, what's the initiative going to do?


The initiative has three components, according to their website::

• End "Dark Money" in Alaska Elections
• Open Our Primaries to All Alaskan Voters
• Form Ranked Choice Voting Elections

Dark Money
Their counter to the US Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v allowance of unlimited campaign contributions is basically this:

"All individuals and committees will have to immediately disclose the name and the true source of all donations over $2,000."

 Primaries

Right now, the state funds primary elections.
The Republicans choose to make their primary open to Republicans and people who are not affiliated with another party.
The Democratic primary is open to all voters and includes candidates from various parties (except Republicans) and independent candidates.
Voters must pick either the one party ballot or the other.

The ballot initiative would change that.  There would be one primary and all candidates would be listed for each office.  And this is supposed to work because of the third component of the initiative.

Form Ranked Choice Voting
Their website explains it this way:

In a ranked choice voting (RCV) election, voters are able to rank candidates in order of choice - 1st choice, 2nd choice, and so on. When the votes are counted, if a candidate has a majority of 1st choices, they win - just like today. But if no candidate receives a majority of 1st choices, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and voters who ranked that candidate 1st have their vote instantly go to their 2nd choice. This process continues until a candidate is elected with a majority of voters’ support.

Their website explains all this in a little more detail, but still in an easy to read format.


Here's the text of the initiative.  I promise that fewer than 5% (that's probably high) voters will read the whole thing.  It's 25 pages long.  Basically, it goes through the existing Alaska Election statutes and rewrites them to enact the changes they want.  Section by section.

The disclosure requirement seems like a good idea, just so voters know in a timely fashion who is making large donations to support a candidate.

The primary change is technically necessary to make the ranked choice voting work.

And ranked choice voting is designed to elect the candidates they support most, by allowing their second, third, etc. choice be known.  This should end two similar candidates splitting the vote between them and allowing a third, but less popular candidate to win.  It also means that two Republicans or two Democrats could end up on the final ballot.  This happens in California's new system, but they don't have ranked voting, just a combined primary.

Votes have been counted by machine for a while now.  But double checking by hand counting was pretty easy.  Checking the accuracy of the voting machine programs will be much harder if this initiative wins.  That means we'll need some sophisticated procedures to make sure the machines are programmed correctly and aren't tampered with.

Their website says Maine already does this and a number local governments do too.

One more thing.  Alaskans For Better Elections has all their disclosure documents on their website.  They also disclose that their three biggest donors are organizations Outside of Alaska.  That's not necessarily bad (unless your against a candidate or an initiative).  In this case, they seem to be getting money from national organizations that support the idea of ranked choice voting, but otherwise don't have a substantive interest in Alaska politics.  I'm guessing they aren't interested in exploiting our election for their financial gain.  Just to support their vision of fairer elections.

The three biggest funders are (the links go to Ballotopedia or Influencewatch descriptions:

Action Now - John and Laura Arnold Foundation
Represent Us
American Promise - Jeffrey Clements

Ted Talks As News - Trees And Food -The Good News The MSM Tends Not To Cover

I woke up early this morning - too early to get up, but late enough that I was awake.  So I plugged in the headset for my phone and listened to a Ted Talk.  Suzanne Simard "How Trees Talk To Each Other."

No, this wasn't some vague imagining about talking trees.  It was based on Simard's childhood and  education.  She did studies with isotopes to see how they moved from one tree to another through the mitochondria in the soil.  And how all this interconnected-ness makes forests more resilient to things like climate change.

This isn't technically 'news' because this talk is about ten years old.  And it's based on research she began that's much older.  And I've heard hints of this, but never anything so coherent that it made sense to me.  But don't take my word for it:

Next up was Jamie Oliver - Teach Every Child About Food

Screenshot from Jamie Oliver's Ted Talk

His basic message is that food is the number one cause of death in the United States. He backs it up with this chart. All the ones in red are 'diet-related diseases.' (Heart disease, cancers, stroke, diabetes.)

Jamie is a chef.  He talks about power - about fast food and markets owned by corporations and that food now is  largely processed and full of extra ingredients, while 30 years ago it was mostly fresh and local.  (This talk was given in 2010, so that would get us back  to 1980.)  He talks about portion size and labeling problems.  At home and school kids are eating food that will kill them.
Milk, he says, now has sugar added, though he's talking about chocolate milk. He uses a wheel barrow full of sugar cubes to show how much sugar kids get from five years of school lunch milk. School food systems are run by accountants, not food experts.

Lightbulbs turned on above my head.  This isn't new to me in general. I grew up when most food was fresh or lightly processed and fruits were only available in season.  Growing up in LA meant we probably had more fresh vegetables and fruits all year than people in colder climates.   But he's talking about more than that. He's talking about taking the power back from the big agricultural corporations.  And he thinks they should be sued like the tobacco industry was.  So, you can understand why this stuff doesn't get much attention on corporate media which makes its money from advertisements from, to a great extent, the food industry - fast food, processed food, soft drinks, beer, etc.

Then came Britta Riley and A Garden In My Apartment

This talk is about hydroponics. .  Just growing some of our own food, she quotes Michael Pollen, is one of the best things we can do for the environment.  This is what got her started.  Listening to experts talk about the food problem, she quotes Pollen further, is precisely how we got to where we are.  NASA's hydroponics in space inspired her.  She wanted to get into this, but didn't want to copy the food corporations, so she set up a website where they displayed their products and they crowd sourced to keep improving the systems.  They have 18,000 people connected through the website.  R&DIY - she calls it Research and Development Do It Yourself.  Anyone around the world can duplicate these products themselves for free.   And this is now a community.  We should ditch the term consumer and get behind the people doing things themselves.  The website - rndiy.com - isn't working now.  Not sure where to find this community today.

Followed by Roger Doiron - My Subversive (Garden) Plot

Doiron took the whole idea of gardens as a way to take back food and make it healthier and fresher a little further.  His plot is to radically alter the balance of power, not just in our own country, but around the world.  Here's what he says near the beginning:  Food is a form of energy, but also a form of power.  When we encourage people to grow their own food, we're encouraging them to take power into their hands, power over their diets, power over their health, and power over their pocketbooks.  And we're also talking about taking that power away from someone else.  Those actors who have power now over food and health.  See gardening as a healthy gateway drug to food freedom.  Not long after you start a garden, you starting thinking, "I might want to learn how to cook."  He talks about Michele Obama's vegetable garden at the White House that he helped on.  And the food needs of the planet as the human population grows   Plenty to chew on.



Then, finally, I heard Ron Finley - A guerrilla Gardener in South Central LA

He got in trouble with the City of LA because he planted a food court in front of his house on the strip between the sidewalk and the street with edibles.

Screen shot from Ron Finley Ted Talk

The city owns that land, he said, but the homeowner is supposed to keep it up. Fortunately he got enough publicity to overcome that obstacle.  His job is to spread the idea of growing your own food, and in particularly in neighborhoods that are food deserts.  He says that LA owns enough vacant lots to create 20 Central Parks.


The corporate news media today - and that includes to a certain extent National Public Radio - are focused on offering a constant diet of breaking news, with headlines and video, aimed at attracting the most possible eyeballs.  We get short vignettes that often disappear and we never learn what happened.  Or the opposite, as with the never ending election coverage, where the focus is on the horserace, not where the horses are headed.  We only hear about who's up this week, this day, this hour.  Every new poll becomes top news.  Conflict sells.  What we need is cool headed analysis of the policy proposals and how candidates plan to carry them out.

What these Ted Talks suggest to me is there is a lot going on in the US (and the world), but it's not initiated by corporations and it doesn't get much coverage.  It's people taking control of their own food, in this case, something that agribusiness, which advertises widely on corporate media, doesn't really want being covered.  These people powered activities don't get covered much, unless there's conflict or violence involved - say the Keystone Pipeline standoff last year.

So I suggest you watch and listen to the positive things people are doing all over the country, the innovations that come from crowdsourcing, or in response to the disgust with the hazardous - to the environment, to health, to sustainability, to family finance - offerings of corporate America.  Check out the endless options from Ted Talks and go looking for other podcasts that do similar things.  There's lots of good news out there.  It doesn't need blood covered to be covered by the news.  

Dear Dan Sullivan, I'd Like To Recommend John F. Kennedy's Profiles In Courage

You served in the Marines and still do part of the year.  The Marines are known as courageous and never giving up until they have victory.  They are also supposedly fighting for democracy.

I don't have any details on how you served on the battlefield, but in Congress, I don't see any courage or backbone or do or die fight for Democracy.  Instead I see you and many other Republican Senators holding back, weighing the personal consequences of doing the right thing, and waiting until it is safe.

That doesn't seem to me to be the Marine we elected to the Senate.

The evidence against the president is overwhelming.  Just read, or have your staff read for you, Seth Abramson's Proof of Conspiracy and then let me know all the places he's wrong.

Just read the Mueller Report.  The whole report with the grand jury material as well.

I would also suggest you read John F. Kennedy's slim volume, Profiles in Courage, which is about eight US Senators.  (The link takes you to an online version.)  I know your time is limited, but sometimes people need to take a break to reflect on their values.  There's also a free audio version so you could listen while working out.

Kennedy writes:

"This is a book about that most admirable of human
virtues — courage. “Grace under pressure,” Ernest
Hemingway defined it. And these are the stories
of the pressures experienced by eight United States Senators
and the graee with which they endured them — the risks to
their careers, the unpopularity of their courses, the defama-
tion of their characters, and sometimes, but sadly only some-
times, the vindication of their reputations and their
principles.
A nation which has forgotten the quality of courage which
in the past has been brought to public life is not as likely to
insist upon or reward that quality in its chosen leaders today
— and in fact we have forgotten."

Kennedy, the junior Senator from Massachusetts when he wrote the book, also asked readers to be understanding of the pressures a senator faces.  He quotes two former senators and others whose descriptions of the senate are not laudatory.  Then he continues:

"I am convinced that the complication of public business and the com-
petition for the public’s attention have obscured innumerable
acts of political courage — large and small — performed almost
daily in the Senate Chamber. I am convinced that the decline
— if there has been a decline— has been less in the Senate
than in the public’s appreciation of the art of politics, of the
nature and necessity for compromise and balance, and of the
nature of the Senate as a legislative chamber. And, finally, I
am convinced that we have criticized those who have for-
lowed the crowd — and at the same time criticized those who
have defied it — because we have not fully understood the
responsibility of a Senator to his constituents or recognized
the difliculty facing a politician conscientiously desiring, in
Webster’s words, “to push [his] skiff from the shore alone”
into a hostile and turbulent sea. Perhaps if the American
people more fully comprehended the terrible pressures which
discourage acts of pohtical courage, which drive a Senator
to abandon or subdue his conscience, then they might be
less critical of those who take the easier road — and more
appreciative of those still able to follow the path of courage."

Senator, this book is short and the stories of

• John Quincy Adams 
• Daniel Webster
• Thomas Hart Benton 
• Sam Houston
• Edmund G. Ross 
• Lucius Quintus Cincinnatus Lamar
• George Norris 
• Robert A. Taft

may, I hope, remind you of your duty to truth, to the people of the Alaska and the United States, and to the Constitution as you ponder the pros and cons of voting to convict the president if and when the Senate takes up his impeachment.  Also talk to Alaska's senior Senator who seems to know some of this already.

[I'd note that Kennedy cites these Senators for specific acts that displayed great courage. Those acts have not always redeemed other actions these men committed.  And perhaps John F. Kennedy's view from the US  culture of 1955 would not always be consistent with more modern understandings of American history.]

Pushing Around Leaves

The cottonwood trees in the back have been acting as personal trainers, giving me a certain number of new leaves each day to sweep up off the deck.  I think they used up their supply finally.

In front the mountain ash leaves have been dancing with the wind into different patterns on the driveway.

Looks a little like a map.

They tend to crowd together against steps and in corners.

And this October has allowed me time to procrastinate gathering up enough leaves to cover the various flower beds.  Yesterday was a record 54˚F in Anchorage, today was balmy again.  The low temperatures have been regularly higher than the normal lows.  You could say, well, it's just a blip, except we've had the 'warmest month ever' regularly this year.  

Cottonwood leaves covering the back yard.  I just need to rake up enough to get the flower beds covered.  There are some decaying amur maple leaves in the mix too.  

 And here's a small bed that I just used mountain ash leaves to mulch.

It's so wondrous that the trees give us this free mulch to protect the wintering plants from the cold and then this all goes into the compost heap where it becomes compost to fertilize everything next year.  

After all, that's what happens in untended forests every year.  Somehow they manage to maintain exquisite gardens without humans to take care of them.  

ACS Tech Help Doesn't Exist After 5pm Saturday Until 8am Monday, But Finally Our Internet Is Working Again [UPDATED]

So, Saturday night, about 10:45pm, our internet stopped.  It's pretty dramatic when you're streaming a movie.

We'd had an interruption just last Wednesday as well.  ACS (Alaska Communications Systems) phone tech couldn't fix it, but the next level was able to do something that got it on again in a couple of hours.

But when I called to report Saturday night, the recording said to call again during business hours.  Business hours do not include Sunday!   I was encouraged to report online.  But I never use the online system and couldn't figure out my id and password for sure, or even if I had one.

I did try to update my password with a user id that did get the response that they had send me an email telling me how to do that.  But I never got the email.  I tweeted ACS, but no response.  But even if you report it on Sunday, nothing will happen until 'business hours."

So this morning I finally got through and within 90 minutes (I only just tried the internet now after having breakfast) it's working again.

In this internet era,  how can an internet service have a 38 hour period where there is no one to restore someone's interrupted internet service?  Before I got my smart phone - which was only last December - I had no backup if internet went out.  And blogging on my phone is painful.

It turns out that you can't (have an internet service with a 38 hour help blackout period.)  ACS has this announcement on one of their webpages:

"We know how important it is to have a reliable internet connection. That’s why we are committed to keeping you connected with our reliable, dedicated business internet services that include a 24-hour repair guarantee. In the case of an outage, it is our priority to fix your internet within 24 hours of your initial call to tech support. If we are unable to fix your internet connection within 24 hours, you will be eligible to receive a $100 account credit.
In the instance that we don’t meet our 24-hour repair guarantee, simply call our Account Support team within 30 days of the outage to claim your credit."

Let's see if this works.  I see two potential problems for me:

• This is on a page for business customers, not residential customers
• It says within 24 hours of your initial call to tech support, but you can't get tech support between 5pm Saturday and 8:00 am Monday.  They didn't answer my initial call, but I made it around 11pm on Saturday night and service was working at 11pm Sunday night, or even until around 9:30 or 10am Monday.  

There are caveats below  including that it only applies to business customers.  But there is a different phone number that I'll try next time I have an outage during non-business hours.   

Alaska Communications Tech Support at 855-565-2556.

I'm less interested in the $100 than just getting my service back. (Though if I'm paying for service they don't provide, I should have a refund, right?  But $100 is way more than one 40 hours blackout.)

I have left a message at their corporate number.

[I'd note that when people have problems like this with a government agency, the reaction is often to rant and rave about how bad government is.  So I'd note that if that is a reasonable conclusion to make, then it would be equally justifiable for me to rant and rave about how bad business in general is.  But I think neither is a sensible response.  My problem is with a specific business, just as people having trouble with a government agency is a problem with a specific agency.  And with government, we are all the owners.  If we don't elect competent representatives, that's our problem.  And if we complain about having bad choices, that's also our problem.  In a Democracy we have to work to keep it working - even if that means finding and supporting good candidates to run.  Or even running for office ourselves.]


It's nice to have these little, eventually solvable problems, in these times of huge seemingly unsolvable ones.  But the House is working on impeachment, and there are things we can do about climate change - a carbon fee and dividend,  non-fossil fuel sources of energy; changing our eating and agricultural habits.  Solving little problems gives encouragement for the bigger ones.

And not having internet for a day, well, before the 1990s, I didn't have internet every day.  I finished a book yesterday and did household chores and had brunch with friends.

But still.  ACS, please get your act together.  I like having a local internet carrier rather than some conglomerate.  But I'm sure you can devise a work schedule to take care of problems between Saturday night and Monday morning.

[UPDATE October 28, 2019:  Over the weekend I also send a message to ACS via Twitter.  The Twitter reader apparently was off until Monday morning too because I got a message this morning telling me to call in today.  I responded with a brief summary of my issues and a link to this post.  I just got another Twitter message from ACS:

"Hi Steven, we're sharing your blog post with our tech support manager. Thanks, for your thoughtful comments. We are sorry for the trouble with your service this weekend. We appreciate you."]

A Thinking Break

So, does that mean a break from thinking?  Or a break so I can think?  More the latter, but it's the thoughts invading my brain more than my deliberately saying, "Whoa, I need to stop and think a while."

So this post is just a brief (yeah, that's always my intent) overview of the action taking place in my brain, in hopes of not forgetting the many loose ends.  [And it didn't stay brief so I'm adding an overview so you don't get lost in the meanderings.]

• OLÉ classes - Project Innocence and the Fairbanks Four  and a proposal for police to have Devil's Advocates keeping them from straying after the wrong suspects
• OLÉ classes - Homelessness 
• The Struggle for Modern Tibet
• Dan Sullivan and the tension between loyalty and the rule of law and Profiles In Courage

I've bolded these highlights and enlarged them so you can scan on down to the ones you're most interested in.  Or just quit right here.


Thursday I went two OLÉ classes:  The Innocence Project and the Pebble Mine class.
Friday was State and Federal Courts in the morning and Homelessness in the afternoon.

I'm also reading ahead for my December book club meeting - The Struggle for Modern Tibet, by Goldstein, Stebeschuh, and Tsering.  It's Tsering's story and the other two helped him getting written down in English.  He's a Tibetan, from a peasant family, who gets to Indian and works with the Dalai Lama's older brother and then manages to get a scholarship to the US.  He feels the Tibetans in India who follow the Dalai Lama are basically supporting the old Tibetan class system and he feels appreciation for the Chinese who are interrupting that and bringing roads and schools and hospitals to Tibet.  He wants to help with bringing Tibetan culture into the modern world (he was partly influenced by reading medieval Western history in the US and thinking they had the same kind of religiously dominated class system then too, but were able to modernize yet keep their distinct cultures.  Everyone thinks he's crazy to go back, but he does and gets sent by the Chinese to a    that is training Tibetans to be teachers and to go back to Tibet.  It's the beginning of the Cultural Revolution and gets to go on a field trip to march before Mao at Tiananmen Square.  That's as far as I've gotten.  I'm still waiting to see how it ends up.  (Well, I know he got back to the US somehow and with the two co-authors to write the book.)

Tibet was one of about three or four topics that my Chinese students were united and unbudging on:  China saved the Tibetans from a slave culture run by the Dalai Lama and the ruling class.  And Tshering gives support for this interpretation.  So I'm challenging my own Western take on Tibet by even reading this book.

So what else am I thinking?

The Innocence Project - Thursday was the last class.  The executive director and until recently the only employee, Bill Oberly, is the main speaker, sometimes backed up by Board president, Mark Johnson.  Thursday, Bill finished up the reasons people are wrongly convicted and then chronicled the Fairbanks Four trials, the one case the the Alaska Innocence Project has overturned and gotten the wrongly convicted freed.
As he told the saga, he illustrated the reasons for wrongful convictions he'd just finished.  The problems included:

• false confessions
• false eye-witness testimony, 
• misuse of forensic pattern identification (in this case using bootprints to 'prove' a suspect's boot was involved) (I did a blog post on this topic a week or so ago)
• false informant testimony
• police misconduct (intentional and unintentional)

In fact, all of the problems as Oberly tells it (and I don't doubt him, but he's my only source) seemed  to stem from police misconduct - from how they got the confessions, how they pressured a witness to tell their story even though it was different from the witnesses original and then later story, and the coached testimony of a prison inmate who said one of the Fairbanks Four had confessed to him in prison.

This issue is one that's been rummaging through my brain and has come up with the idea that police (and probably many other types of government, and for that matter private companies) need to have some form of Devil's Advocate involved in murder and other felony investigations.  The Devil's Advocate would be there to challenge the lead investigators when they seem to be caught up in confirmation bias (seeing the facts that confirm their suspicions, and not seeing ones that challenge their theory of the case).  The Devil's Advocate's job would be to put pressure on the investigators when their not following proper procedures for interrogating suspects (no lawyers, no parents even for minors, planting false scenarios (in this case on pretty intoxicated suspects who couldn't remember anything from the previous couple of hours), etc.

We have people who do this sort of work after the fact - Ombuds offices, Inspectors General, etc.  But if this work had been done on the front end, innocent people wouldn't end up spending five, ten, fifteen, and more years in prison.  And the actual murderers wouldn't still be loose killing other people.  And overzealous cops and prosecutors would be checked early, and perhaps disciplined or terminated before doing more damage.

Would this cost more?  Cost isn't supposed to be a factor in getting to justice.  But trying innocents suspects costs way more than the cost of a position of Devil's Advocate.  And if the victims are able to sue and win a wrongful conviction case, well, there's money that would have funded a dozen Devil's Advocates.

I've not given details of this case yet and won't today.  So it's hard for readers to feel the injustices done in this case.  But I've recommended several times already that readers here watch the Netflix short series When They See Us about the Central Park Five.  All the reasons for wrongful convictions are clearly illustrated in that case.  It's heartbreaking, but compelling viewing.  And all five have been exonerated and released.

Tied to all this is a notion of written about professionally on corruption.  There's a natural tension in all of us between following our human social value of loyalty and the value of following the rule of law.   We all have genetically built into us a loyalty to our 'group' whether that be family, team, school, profession, work group, whatever.  And that notion of loyalty is reinforced by our society and every other society.  Studies show that loyalty is a more important value for political conservatives in the US than for liberals.  We can see that playing out in Washington now as the Republicans are being held tightly in control by the president, despite their private misgivings.  It's the power that mafia bosses and platoon leaders and sports coaches have.   They are far less likely to vote, as the Democrats did with Senator Al Franken, to give up one of their own because of a violation of principles.

The idea of rule of law is, in part, to counter blind loyalty so that people are treated fairly and equally.  While loyalty can work in concert with the rule of law, it can also thwart the rule of law.  In police and military and corrections organizations unwritten "Codes of Silence" or "The Blue Wall" will keep police and corrections officers from reporting crimes within their ranks.

This loyalty vs rule of law tension also got me to thinking about one of my Senators - Dan Sullivan.  While he has said he did not vote for Trump, he's since been caught up in the loyalty to the Republican Bully in Chief (sorry conservatives, that characterization is pretty accurate - just look up any literature on bullying and the spell they hold on those around them).  He even signed Sen. Graham's letter condemning the House impeachment investigation.  (My other Republican Senator did not.)

So I've been wrestling with how to reach out to him - not to attack him, but to find ways to open his brain to alternative ways of seeing all this.  He's a Marine (still in the reserves) and their values are all for courage.  But they are also indoctrinated into a loyalty to the Marines that means not following orders to run into danger takes less courage than not.  So while he might have tremendous physical courage and be willing to risk his life on the battlefield, the moral courage to break with his loyalty to the president and the Republican Party is much more difficult.

So how can someone talk to him about that?  I've started looking at John Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage (it's available at the link online.)
 Kennedy wrote about six US Senators who stood out by overcoming all the pressures weighing dow US Senators.  Maybe that would help, but I doubt it.

I'm also pondering all the data we've gotten on homelessness.  The Municipality of Anchorage is participating in a data gathering and management plan based on a nation wide data system, Built For Zero. It tracks monthly:

• newly homeless (and where they come from in terms of previous housing)
• current homeless
• exiting homelessness

 The intent is to always have enough beds so that zero people spend the night homeless.  It involves collecting and sharing data on all the homeless, why they're homeless, what level of services they need, etc. so that they can find the right level of help for people in different categories of need.  And always making sure there are enough beds.   The plan they have addresses most of the questions the class raised the first week.   Here are some links - though they don't quite deal with some of the programs and data we've seen in class:

• MOA Housing and Homelessness Page - the basic Muni page on homelessness with links
• Data Dashboard - some numbers on the Anchorage homeless population

That's just a smattering of the activity going on in my skull.  When things get so busy, it's hard to sit and write something that doesn't meander a bit.

Alaska Heritage Museum - Seal Gut Parka, Wooly Mammoth Tusk, And Other Dazzling Objects

It's not exactly hidden away, but I've never noticed a sign outside announcing it.  The Alaska Heritage Museum is inside the lobby of the, now, Wells Fargo Building.  I say 'now' because this used to be the National Bank of Alaska Building (from Alaska.org):

"Even though the art-gallery-sized space feels intimate, this is the largest private collection of its kind in Alaska.  The museum was started by the First National Bank of Alaska in 1976, as a way for the bank’s owners, the Rasmussen family, to create a space for high-quality art and artifacts largely from Alaska's native tribes, such as the Northwest Coast Indian, Athabascan, Aleut, Yupik and Inupiaq tribes."

Alaska.org also says the museum is in downtown, but I think most Anchorage folk would disagree, saying it's in midtown.  A heftier walk for tourists in downtown hotels, but still doable.

My Pecha Kucha class was in the library of the museum and after the last class, I decided to take some pictures to give folks an idea of the range of items.  By the way, the museum is free, and as the sign says, it's open Mondays through Fridays from 12 - 4 pm.  

Those are murres, not penguins, as pawns on the left.

 The sign says this is an Athabascan Chief's Coat.  The beaded coat and the seal gut parka below were the two most stunning items for me.

   

Here are assorted SE Alaska items.











Mike Healy is an interesting Alaskan character - an important sea captain of the north as the story says.  All the while, it seems one of his major attractions to historians, is the notion that he 'passed for white" although his mother was a "light skinned" slave.  Of course, that sort of characterization reminds us that for the dominant culture, if you have 'a drop of black blood' then you are black.  Even though most of your heritage is white and no one suspects you aren't white.

I've put this sign up twice to highlight the problems I'm having with editing on iPhoto lately - the edits don't stick when I export the photo.  I upped the contrast so it would be easier to read.  So if I'm insistent, I have to take a screen shot of the edit and use that.  Which is what I did for the version below.  But, of course, that degrades the quality in different ways.

A reminder, also, that most pictures enlarge and focus better if you click on them.

Here are some much older artifacts.  Some 2000 years old.










Even older - 12,000 to 15,000 years old - is this wooly mammoth tusk.

And much more recent are these Russian samovars.


The museum is at the corner of C Street and Northern Lights, in the Wells Fargo Building.

Steller Jay, Escape Room, Homeless Camp At Valley Of The Moon

A Steller Jay dropped by yesterday just outside the kitchen window.  These bird are beautiful and brazen and there's some kind of a turf war in our yard now and then between the jays and magpies.







My OLÉ one time class at the Anchorage Escape Room near G and 5th Avenue, was a lot of fun.  There were about ten of us on this hour long adventure to escape.   And it took all of us to figure out the clues to open pad locks that got us more clues to get us to the final room and out the last door.  There were some cool surprises.  I don't want to say more.  Here we are gathering in the downstair office.  The room with the Tree Door is a new escape adventure that isn't completed yet. They want to make it perfect.  We went into the door on the left.

Our group reminded me that everyone has something valuable to contribute if others just give them a chance.  We didn't get out in the allotted hour, but since there was no one else waiting, they let us keep going and we got out in 90 minutes instead of 60.  They said only 30% of the groups make it out in 60 minutes.


I was pleased that the weather was warm enough and dry enough I didn't have to think about ice and could ride downtown for the escape room.

On the way home I passed a large homeless camp in the woods to the east of Valley of the Moon Park.  I'd guess there were 15 to 20 tents.  I didn't see anyone so could do an impromptu extra-credit for my Homelessness class.  Last Friday's was full of the kind of data I was looking for.  Dr. Richard Mandsager was the speaker and he had lots of data about the different causes of homelessness, how many in the different categories in Anchorage, and looked at the larger environmental factors that push people into the streets.  I hope I can get more into that here one of these days.

The sign says, "Camp Here - Occupy to Overcome."  (I'm having trouble with iPhoto.  It's not saving the edits when I crop photos.  And Apple would rather we move 'up' to their newer software, Photo, and hook us into paying monthly fees for iCloud.   No wonder no one has any money.)

A Chilean Student's View Of Chile's Current Upheaval

This a follow up to yesterday's post on Chile's protests and government response.  It's based on a Skype chat with Sebastían, my college student friend in Santiago.  He was the catalyst for yesterday's post.  I'll use some images of the Skype chat to give a sense of this 'interview' but I've abbreviated it somewhat to cut out repetition and side conversations. I've made the images as big as I think I can fit them here.  You may have to work a bit to read them, but the visual of the chat seemed to capture our chat better than just the words.

I began by letting him know I'd posted about our previous chat (he'd said it was ok),  about the protests, whether he had any comments, (he did) and  by asking how he got to school today if the subway stations were damaged.

[Note:  OCDE - mentioned below- is Spanish initials for OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ]

Let's look at that picture of crowd for a subway train in Santiago at peak time a little larger.  

Also, some clarification - "minimum salary is 300,000 clp (Chilean pesos).  300,000 clp would be (today) $413. That's per month.  Here's a chart from wage indicator.org that shows 300,000 clp is below what a single person needs to live.  

Data for Chile Sept. 2019 - From wage indicator.org

Let's catch up a bit. First he sent me to an instagram that shows Chile's current president Pinera saying "Estamos en guerra" or "We are at war." Then it shows president Pinochet saying almost the exact same words 30 years ago. [I couldn't figure out how to get the GIF from Instagram to here (this is just a screenshot, but if you click on the image below, it will take you to the GIF.]




And an Instagram response:

(We are not at war)

Then he sent me to this video on Twitter, shot from a window above, of police or military, who could be snorting coke.  Or not.  You can judge for yourself.

PACOS JALANDO! pic.twitter.com/lByZsJcXo8

— gonzalosoyyo 👑 (@gonzalosoyyo) October 20, 2019

And this video Esto pasa en Chile - This is happening in Chile.  It begins with the president saying we are in war.  Then it has shots of the police attacking citizens.  Some particularly troubling ones include police cars intentionally running over people fleeing.

 

There is so much conflict around the world now:

• Hong Kong 
• Kurds in Syria
• The British are in knots over Brexit
• Venezuela 
• Yeman 
• Refugees in camps around the world
• US president facing impeachment

It's easy to not pay attention to what's happening in Chile.  But one of the Instagram sites Sebastían sent me to had this message:

"Friends of the world TV is not going to show this, help us to make visible. THE POLICE AND THE MILITARY ARE KILLING PEOPLE!"

Which included this:

"KNOW THAT IN CHILE TODAY, OCTOBER 2019 THE PEOPLE TIRED AND THE PIÑERA GOVERNMENT IS REPRESSING IT WITH DEATH, THE SAME AS IN THE PINOCHET DICTATORSHIP.."
[Translations from Google Translate.  Overall it's a messy translation so that's all I'll offer.]

Here's the Spanish from the Instagram, but I can't seem to get the link right on my Mac - it works on my phone.

que nosotrxs no lo vivimos, nosotrxs lo estamos viviendo. Amigxs del mundo la tv no va a mostrar esto, ayudenos a visibilizar. LA POLICÍA Y LOS MILITARES ESTÁN MATANDO GENTE! DESPUÉS DE UNA SEMANA DE MANIFESTACIONES DETONADAS POR EL ALZA EN EL TRANSPORTE PÚBLICO, QUE INVOLUCRARON LA EVASIÓN EN EL PAGO DEL MISMO, INFILTRADOS EN LAS MANIFESTACIONES COMIENZAN A REALIZAR MONTAJES TANTO DE INCENDIOS, BARRICADAS COMO DE SAQUEOS, PARA ASÍ EL INCOMPETENTE QUE TENEMOS POR PRESIDENTE, TENER EXCUSAS PARA DECLARAR UN TOQUE DE QUEDA Y SACAR A LOS MILITARES A LA CALLE VELANDO POR "EL ORDEN PÚBLICO" QUE SUS MISMOS PERKINES HAN DESTRUIDO EN BASE A MONTAJES. HOY ES EL 3ER DÍA Y YA HAY FALLECIDOS Y GENTE DESAPARECIDA. QUE SE SEPA QUE EN CHILE HOY, OCTUBRE DE 2019 EL PUEBLO SE CANSÓ Y EL GOBIERNO DE PIÑERA ESTÁ REPRIMIENDOLO CON MUERTE, IGUAL QUE EN LA DICTADURA DE PINOCHET. .HERMANX QUE ESTÁS AQUÍ SI TE TOMAN #DITUNOMBRE GRITALO! Y QUE APAREZCAN TODXS LXS QUE HOY NO ESTÁN! ..NO QUEREMOS MÁS MUERTES NI MÁS DESAPARECIDXS. NO QUEREMOS TU MIERDA DE DOCTRINA DE SHOCK!!! FOTO: CONCEPCIÓN @afpphoto