#trump content is really its own trigger warning at this point

[annacaffeina]

Yes it is super creepy the way trump talks about his daughter. I have 2 theories about why he might say shit like that, and to be honest I think they are equally likely.

The first is the creepy child abusing way we all hear.

The second is that he is one of those men who cannot even conceive of the value of a woman/girl outside of his ability to find her attractive. He thinks saying a female is attractive to him is the highest compliment he can bestow and he literally can't think of any other compliment for women/girls.

I mean, it's possibly both.

[hypermoyashi]

Okay, so, hi everyone? I’ve gotten some new followers, which is a bit surprising, and I’m sure some of you are aware of the discourse currently happening the mdzs fandom. Normally, as my about page states, I will not participate in fandom discourse under any circumstances, but as I was personally signaled out in this, I’ll be making an exception just this once. I’ll be placing everything under a cut just so those of you who don’t want this discourse showing up on your dash can avoid it.

Okay, so if you’re unaware, a blocklist was recently created of people in the fandom that minors should avoid/be aware of. I, as well as one of my good fandom friends, was on this list. I will not be posting links to said list in any way, shape, or form, as I believe it is poorly worded and just wholely not handled well in its original context.

I’d like to preface this entire post with one important idea: you curate your own fandom experience. I actually encourage blocking/blacklisting things and people who make you uncomfortable, just be respectful about it. You don’t need to announce it, or let someone know you’re blocking them. If I in any way make you uncomfortable for any reason, and you are uncomfortable talking to me about it to try and fix the problem, then please unfollow me, block me, or whatever will make you the most happy and comfortable. In the end, fandom is about fun, and it shouldn’t be taken too seriously. It shouldn’t be used to hurt people. 

I can’t say I’m not upset that I and my friend were included, and while I don’t know most of the people on that list enough to make a judgment, based on the reasons my friend and I were listed, I don’t believe the judgment of the original creator of the list was wholly sound. For full transparency, I am going to include why I, personally, was signaled out.

The first reason is for my submission here: https://mxtxpositivity.tumblr.com/post/183334608470/fic-rec-realize-what-you-never-knew-by

The fic I recommended is a fic that the friend I previously mentioned wrote, and I recommended it because I enjoy it and I enjoy supporting my friend’s writing. Now, the fic in question is about the junior trio, but it is written in a context where they are older and not minors. To be fair, my friend did not tag for this, and the lack of a tag for it was not something that I, as her beta, caught, either. I don’t particularly intend to debate whether or not it’s okay to write sexual content about young characters after they’ve been aged up, as it’s a rather gray area and whether it will bother you will vary. If it does bother you, however, that’s perfectly valid and I encourage you to avoid it. Blacklisting is a wonderful thing, and ao3 now includes a function to exclude ships.

The second reason I was signaled out in this post is for this: http://hypermoyashi.tumblr.com/tagged/yaoi

And just so it’s clear that I have not altered or cleared this in any way, here’s a screenshot with the time and date in the corner:

I would scroll down to show you guys more of the tag, but there is none. My yaoi tag is just two posts. This is the basis for which I was said to “support yaoi.” I’d like to point out that one post is literally a criticism of the genre as a whole. I have no idea why I tagged the second post as yaoi, but it was reblogged three years ago. It is not something I would reblog and tag that way today. I’ve used the same blog, the same username, for well over seven years now. There is bound to be some stuff here that doesn’t reflect who I am today, and there is also bound to be things that I’ve mistagged or not tagged appropriately in the past. I do not have the energy to clean absolutely everything out, but if you would like to point something out to me, I will be happy to change it. For my purposes, I’m not going to be altering my yaoi tag, in case anyone wants to check it for themselves.

Now, just as an off-topic, I’d like to point out that I’m bi/gray ace. I don’t hate yaoi per say, but I do dislike the picture its common tropes paint of the lgbtqa+ community, as anyone who has spoken with me for five minutes about it can tell you.

This is all I was flagged for, but in the name of transparency, I am also going to include something that, had our original poster of the list seen, would’ve been additional reasons for me to land on the list.

I am writing an A.B.O. fic for HOB. It will also contain an explicit scene in the future, and it contains some pretty heavy triggers such as attempted suicide and CSA/abuse. I know A.B.O. tends to be controversial for many, many reasons, but for the record, all characters retain their full facilities during any and all explicit scenes, on or off screen, and are able to consent or not consent to what is going on. Anything of that nature that happens to a minor does not happen on screen and is appropriately tagged as CSA. I also do not endorse or want minors reading this fic, but I’ll get into that later.

Now, does any of this disprove that I’m a potential danger to minors? No, it does not.

For one, disproving a negative is an impossibility. To demonstrate this, I’ll be using the same analogy my statistics teacher used. You have a field. You’re looking for cows. To find some cows, you divide the field up into twenty sections. Unfortunately, you only have the capability to check five of the sections. You check these five sections, and you don’t find any cows. Can you say, for sure, that there are no cows in the field? Nope. Because it’s impossible to check every section, and there could be cows in the sections you don’t check.

I cannot open up the entirety of my memory and history to prove that I have definitely never hurt a minor. It is absolutely never my intention, and if I have, I deeply apologize for it. But I have no way of disproving a negative because it is mathematically impossible.

Now that we’ve gotten up to this point, some of you might be thinking, isn’t treating such a baseless accusation so seriously, in a way, giving it validity? Well, in a way, sort of. The accusation is entirely baseless, yes, and this is going to be the only time I’m going to argue something like this in this way. It upset me, and it’s there, so I want to address it.

Now, I’m going to reference my about page. Here it is:

The text reads, “Hello! I thought, after about five years of owning this blog, give or take, it was probably time to make an about page.

“I mainly write fanfiction, which is almost always posted to ao3 and linked here unless it’s particularly short. Minors are definitely welcome; I don’t reblog or post N**SFW images or videos, nor do I write smut, though please be aware that this blog is “view at your own risk.” I tag for common triggers and potentially harmful content, so it’s up to you to know your limits and blacklist appropriately. That being said, if you need me to tag anything in addition to what I already do, please don’t hesitate to ask!

“My fandoms right now are mainly Bungou Stray Dogs, Heaven Official’s Blessing, Mo Dao Zu Shi, Hakata Tonkotsu Ramens, Pandora Hearts, Vanitas no Carte, Akatsuki no Yona, and D.Gray-man. Please be aware that although I do have particular ships I like, I’m not really that into shipping as a whole.

“I don’t reblog shipping discourse nor will I interact with hostile shippers. If you would like to talk about shipping with me, please do, just be nice! As a bonus, I love platonic relationships, so please talk with me about those if you enjoy them, too.

“ところで、私の日本語はちょっとわるいですけど、話すのが好きです。

“Finally, I consider this blog to be a safe place for me and others that does not discriminate based on race, gender identity, sexual orientation, mental health, physical ability, national origin, or religion. If that bothers you, please click the ���back” or “x” button on your browser.

“With all that out of the way, welcome to my blog! I love talking with people, so feel free to message me or leave an ask. I swear you won’t be bothering me. Happy blogging!”

Now, I am going to edit this at some point, because I have written smut now. It’s not posted, but it’s still something I intend to post. But yeah, as of 3/13 around 5pm, that was my about page, and I have not changed it for quite a while. (Sorry I’m not quite as chipper today ^^”)

One of the links on my about page leads to this page:

Which reads:

A quick guide to my tagging system!

my fanfiction: stuff I’ve written

text post: stuff I’ve made/said

q: things posted from my queue (it is a very long queue)

art by op: If there’s no source, then I’m reasonably certain that this art was created by the original poster. If I’m wrong, please let me know and I’ll delete it imeidiately.

icons: whenever I save an icon, whether I use it or not, I reblog it under this tag

personal and/or ramblings: just me talking. Sometimes I won’t even tag these kinds of posts

— mention: normally reserved for common triggers, i.e. “Donald Trump mention” or “sex mention”

n**sfw warning: as stated in my about page, I don’t reblog n**sfw images or videos, but I do reblog n**sfw fic recs (ie links to explicit content) that is unsuitable for minors. If you’re a minor viewing my blog, please blacklist this tag if you feel the need to!

spoilers: anything and everything I think constitutes a spoiler. Sometimes I’m bad about tagging these, though. I don’t tag for specific fandoms, like “su spoilers” or “bsd spoilers,” so please beware of that.

And, for reference, this is the basis for which I generally rate my fics:

G (General Audiences): Anyone can read this

T (Teen Audiences): Anyone 13+ can read this

M (Mature Audiences): Anyone 17/18+ can read this (16 is fine, too, I think, depending on what the reader is comfortable with. My M rated fics often include dark/sexual themes, though, so 17/18 is the more comfortable range)

E (Explicit): Only people who are 18+ should read this (probably not gonna rate anything this since I don’t write smut unless I just really don’t want to endorse any minors reading it)

Again, this should probably be updated as I have written smut, however infrequent. I try to tag for common triggers, and I have asked here that minors under a certain age not read particular fics. All of my fics that depict unhealthy relationships, darker or sexual themes, or anything that I would be uncomfortable with a minor reading are rated Mature or Explicit, depending.

So all in all, I have tried my best to provide a positive experience to anyone who enjoys my content, and I try to tag so that potentially harmful content doesn’t reach those that it might hurt. I’m not perfect, and I can’t control everything. A minor can still go in and read my Explicit/Mature fics on ao3, no matter how much or how loudly I ask them not to. My content is meant to inspire, to show that life can suck, but in the end, everyone is worth it and continue on.

And, on that caveat, I’d like to point out that I generally take a stance of “create and let create.” Freedom of expression is the greatest gift anyone can be given. Yes, avoid content that hurts you, but please don’t lash out at those who create it. Until you know exactly why they’ve created it, what their history is, and what thoughts or feelings they were working through while creating it, please leave them be. Creators should tag their works so people can avoid content that might be harmful to them, but content that is harmful to one person might be another person’s lifeline.

But the reason I’ve laid this all out is that I want you to judge for yourself. Do I seem like someone you want to be friends with? Do I seem like someone harmful? Do I seem like someone you are indifferent to? Please make the decision that is best for you, and if you happen to want to be friends, please let me know ^^

Now, finally, I hope to see a more positive fandom experience come of this. I say all this, however negative or bleak it might be for me, because it was important for me to work through my thoughts, and I hope that something positive can come of honesty and communication.

Please don’t go after the original poster of the list, if you know who they are. It’s better just to let it go. The person seemed to have had good intentions, however ill-executed they were, and talking to them is only going to create more ill will and negativity for everyone. I believe, at least in part, the reason their list is so unfounded and baseless is because the content they cited genuinely hurts them, and when creating the list, they did not look at the full context of everything they were citing. And, well, context is everything, really. This doesn’t really excuse them, as they still hurt people with a largely unhelpful and thoughtless post, but brewing the negative feelings helps no one. I would also like to state that the fact that the content hurts them is not the fault of any of the creators. If you tag appropriately, but someone doesn’t take the time to blacklist or otherwise protect themself from content they know will hurt them, then that’s on them.

Fandom is a really interesting place. It’s full of so many diverse and wonderful people--minors and adults, lgbtqa+ and allies, tons of different nationalities--we should really take more steps to look out for one another. If there’s anything I could be doing better, please let me know. My experience with the mdzs fandom hasn’t been great up to this point, and I want to change that. I love this show, and I also want to love the people who love it alongside me.

Remember, for every not so great person, there are twenty more lovely people just waiting to meet you. And I hope that, from here on, those lovely people get every good thing they deserve.

[orbemnews]

After Barring Trump, Fb and Twitter Face Scrutiny About Inaction Overseas LONDON — In Sri Lanka and Myanmar, Fb saved up posts that it had been warned contributed to violence. In India, activists have urged the corporate to fight posts by political figures focusing on Muslims. And in Ethiopia, teams pleaded for the social community to dam hate speech after a whole bunch have been killed in ethnic violence infected by social media. “The offline troubles that rocked the nation are totally seen on the web area,” activists, civil society teams and journalists in Ethiopia wrote in an open letter final yr. For years, Fb and Twitter have largely rebuffed calls to take away hate speech or different feedback made by public figures and authorities officers that civil society teams and activists stated risked inciting violence. The businesses caught to insurance policies, pushed by American beliefs of free speech, that give such figures extra leeway to make use of their platforms to speak. However final week, Fb and Twitter lower off President Trump from their platforms for inciting a crowd that attacked the U.S. Capitol. These selections have angered human rights teams and activists, who at the moment are urging the businesses to use their insurance policies evenly, significantly in smaller nations the place the platforms dominate communications. “After I noticed what the platforms did with Trump, I believed, ‘You need to have finished this earlier than, and it’s best to do that constantly in different nations world wide,’” stated Javier Pallero, coverage director at Entry Now, a human rights group concerned within the Ethiopia letter. “Around the globe, we’re on the mercy of once they resolve to behave.” “Generally they act very late,” he added, “and generally they act by no means.” David Kaye, a legislation professor and former United Nations monitor for freedom of expression, stated political figures in India, the Philippines, Brazil and elsewhere deserved scrutiny for his or her habits on-line. However he stated the actions in opposition to Mr. Trump raised tough questions on how the ability of American web corporations was utilized, and if their actions set a brand new precedent to extra aggressively police speech world wide. “The query going ahead is whether or not it is a new type of customary they intend to use for leaders worldwide, and have they got the assets to do it?” Mr. Kaye stated. “There’s going to be an actual enhance in demand to do that elsewhere on the planet.” Fb, which additionally owns Instagram and WhatsApp, is the world’s largest social community, with greater than 2.7 billion month-to-month customers; greater than 90 p.c of them dwell exterior the US. The corporate declined to remark, however has stated that the actions taken in opposition to Mr. Trump stem from his violation of present guidelines and don’t symbolize a brand new international coverage. “Our insurance policies are utilized to everybody,” Sheryl Sandberg, Fb’s chief working officer, stated in a current interview with Reuters. “The coverage is you could’t incite violence, you may’t be a part of inciting violence.” Twitter, which has about 190 million every day customers globally, stated its guidelines for world leaders weren’t new. In reviewing posts that would incite violence, Twitter stated the context of the occasions was essential. “Offline hurt because of on-line speech is demonstrably actual, and what drives our coverage and enforcement above all,” Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief govt, stated in a submit on Wednesday. But, he stated, the choice “units a precedent I really feel is harmful: the ability a person or company has over part of the worldwide public dialog.” There are indicators that Fb and Twitter have begun performing extra assertively. After the Capitol assault, Twitter up to date its insurance policies to say that repeat offenders of its guidelines round political content material would have their accounts completely suspended. Fb took motion in opposition to plenty of accounts exterior the US, together with deleting the account of a state-run media outlet in Iran and shutting down government-run accounts in Uganda, the place there was violence forward of elections. Fb stated the takedowns have been unrelated the Trump determination. Many activists singled out Fb for its international affect and never making use of guidelines uniformly. They stated that in lots of counties it lacks the cultural understanding to determine when posts might incite violence. Too usually, they stated, Fb and different social media corporations don’t act even once they obtain warnings. In 2019 in Slovakia, Fb didn’t take down posts by a member of parliament who was convicted by a court docket and stripped of his seat in authorities for incitement and making racist feedback. In Cambodia, Human Rights Watch stated the corporate was sluggish to behave to the involvement of presidency officers in a social media marketing campaign to smear a distinguished Buddhist monk championing human rights. Within the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte has used Fb to focus on journalists and different critics. After a wave of violence, Ethiopian activists stated Fb was getting used to incite violence and encourage discrimination. “The reality is, regardless of good intentions, these corporations don’t assure uniform utility or enforcement of their guidelines,” stated Agustina Del Campo, director of the middle for research on freedom of expression at College of Palermo in Buenos Aires. “And oftentimes, once they try it, they lack the context and understanding wanted.” In lots of nations, there’s a notion that Fb acts based mostly on its enterprise greater than human rights. In India, house to Fb’s most customers, the corporate has been accused of not policing anti-Muslim content material from political figures for concern of upsetting the federal government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his ruling get together. “Developments in our nations aren’t addressed significantly,” stated Mishi Choudhary, a know-how lawyer and founding father of the Software program Freedom Regulation Heart, a digital rights group in India. “Any takedown of content material raises the questions of free expression, however incitement of violence or utilizing a platform for harmful speech shouldn’t be a free speech matter, however a matter of democracy, legislation and order.” However at the same time as many activists urged Fb and Twitter to be extra proactive to guard human rights, they expressed anger in regards to the energy the businesses have to manage speech and sway public opinion. Some additionally warned that the actions in opposition to Mr. Trump would trigger a backlash, with political leaders in some nations taking steps to forestall social media corporations from censoring speech. Authorities officers in France and Germany raised alarms over banning Mr. Trump’s accounts, questioning whether or not personal corporations ought to be capable of unilaterally silence a democratically elected chief. A draft legislation into account for the 27-nation European Union would put new guidelines across the content material moderation insurance policies of the most important social networks. Barbora Bukovská, the senior director for legislation and coverage at Article 19, a digital rights group, stated the danger is especially pronounced in nations whose leaders have a historical past of utilizing social media to stoke division. She stated the occasions in Washington supplied momentum in Poland for a draft legislation from the ruling right-wing nationalist get together that will high quality social media corporations for taking down content material that’s not explicitly unlawful, which might enable extra focusing on of L.G.B.T.Q. folks. “These selections on Trump have been the correct selections, however there are broader points past Trump,” stated Ms. Bukovská. Supply hyperlink #barring #Face #Facebook #inaction #Scrutiny #Trump #Twitter

[glittergummicandypeach]

‘Dangerous levels of contempt’: Trump deploys a convention to attack Dems on religion - POLITICO

“You’re not allowed to go to church, but mass chaos in the streets gets a pass,” Donald Trump Jr. warned viewers in his speech on opening night of the GOP convention, an evening that began with a prayer from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York for the Catholic Church.

“It’s almost like this election is shaping up to be church, work and school versus rioting, looting and vandalism,” Trump Jr. added.

The younger Trump’s comments came hours after one of the president’s most powerful evangelical supporters, embattled Liberty University president Jerry Falwell Jr., became entangled in a public sex scandal involving himself, his wife Becki and a former business partner of the couple. The Falwell episode played directly into the hands of Trump critics who have routinely questioned the sincerity and judgment of religious figures who work inside the Trump administration or serve as surrogates for his campaign. Becki Falwell has been a frequent Trump defender on television and served as a member of the president’s “Women for Trump” advisory board.

Campaign officials have stacked the speaking roster with conservative clergymen, church-going Americans, abortion foes and rising stars of the religious right. Many of the highest-priority issues for white evangelicals and white Catholics will be weaved into the high-profile speeches from Trump, his wife Melania and Vice President Mike Pence that will cap each evening. And the second-term agenda that Trump allies are expected to outline during the convention will cover areas where religious conservative continue to seek gains.

“Four years ago, many evangelicals voted on faith,” said Ralph Reed, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition and a top surrogate for the Trump campaign. “Now they have an outstanding record on life, religious freedom and Israel.”

Indeed, many religious conservatives were asked to take a gamble on Trump four years ago. Nudged along by former Indiana Gov. Pence, Trump’s genteel running mate and a familiar figure in Christian conservative circles, and repeatedly reminded of the stakes if Hillary Clinton were to fill a Supreme Court vacancy, they were gradually persuaded to overlook the president’s character flaws. Trump won 81 percent of the evangelical vote in 2016 — despite endless stories about his personal life and just weeks after the release of the “Access Hollywood” recordings.

This time, Trump’s religious supporters don’t need to be convinced of his devotion to their cause. They need to be made excited about supporting him come November.

Overt appeals to religious conservatives that Republicans will sprinkle throughout their programming next week follow a cluster of recent polls showing waning enthusiasm for Trump among religious Americans, including his most steadfast supporters. Even more concerning to some of his allies is the uptick in support for Democratic presidential nominee Biden among evangelical voters, a development that suggests some religious voters are not only abandoning Trump but plan to pull the trigger for his opponent.

In a Fox News poll released Aug. 13, before the Democratic National Convention, 28 percent of white evangelicals said they would vote for Biden if the election were held today — a 12-point increase from the 16 percent of white evangelicals supporting Clinton four years ago.

Biden, a lifelong Catholic, repeatedly invoked his faith during his party’s convention last week, as did several speakers close to the former vice president who testified to the paramount role religion has played in his life. Meanwhile, most Americans do not consider Trump to be a candidate with deeply held religious beliefs. Even among white evangelicals, who have defended some of his most controversial actions as president, only 40 percent believe he is a person of faith like them.

“For Joe, faith isn’t a prop or political tool,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) during an appearance at the Democratic convention last week. “People, Joe believes, were made in the image of God. Joe learned that from his parents and the nuns and priests right here in Delaware, who taught him and inspired in him a passion for justice.”

A survey by Pew Research Center underscores the critical role the GOP convention must play in terms of injecting enthusiasm into Trump’s evangelical base, in addition to persuading religious Americans outside the president’s current fan club to support him in the general election. The June 2020 survey, conducted at the height of sweeping anti-racism demonstrations and the coronavirus pandemic, showed Trump’s approval rating among white evangelicals at 72 percent and white Catholics at 54 percent. At the same time, the poll found that 82 percent of white evangelicals and 57 percent of white Catholics intend to support Trump in November, illustrating an enthusiasm gap among pro-Trump religious voters that has so far shown few signs of abating.

To motivate Christian conservatives and faith-based voters, the president and his allies plan to keep the focus during the GOP convention on both his accomplishments and the threat they claim Biden and his running mate Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) pose to religious communities inside the U.S. and abroad.

One person familiar with the speech Trump will deliver when he formally accepts the party’s nomination on Thursday said his remarks “will illustrate the dangerous levels of contempt Democrats have for people of faith in this country.” This person did not specify how or whether the president will address Biden’s own faith background as a practicing Catholic, noting that the president’s speech is still being written.

“The president will continue to have this opportunity, which he started at the Council for National Policy, to explain that he’s the first president in U.S. history to preside over a United Nations General Assembly on religious persecution,” said White House counselor Kellyanne Conway. “He is the most pro-life president in history. He is also trying to broker peace between religious countries that have been at war for years, and this UAE deal with Israel is the latest example of that.”

Trump’s remarks at the Council for National Policy meeting last Friday did preview the message he and other featured convention speakers — like Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood director-turned-abortion foe, and Nick Sandmann, a Catholic high school student who recently settled defamation lawsuits against two national media outlets — will deliver this week to energize religious conservatives. Trump‘s hourlong appearance before hundreds of conservative donors and activists featured numerous references to the administration’s reversal of pro-abortion rights directives, appointment of conservative judges and close relationship with Israel. At one point, the president explicitly acknowledged the political upside of supporting Israel given its high-priority status in white evangelical communities.

“Look what we just did … with the United Arab Emirates and Israel,” Trump said last Friday. “We did something that should have been done many, many decades ago … and it’s been really quite historic. And you know who appreciates it the most are the evangelical Christians. They appreciate it the most.”

At another point in his remarks, the president claimed he or Biden could have “anywhere from two to four, to maybe even five” Supreme Court vacancies during the next presidential term. The suggestion was aimed directly at conservative voters who harbor new or existing misgivings about the president, but would be more disturbed by the addition of liberal justices to the high court.

While appearing in Charlotte on Monday to formally accept the Republican nomination for president, Trump delivered a dark warning to conservatives: The “American dream will be dead” if Biden prevails on Nov. 3.

“They want no guns. They want no oil and gas, and they want no God,” he said inside the scaled-back party gathering.

Looking for more conventions coverage?

The Covid-19 election is here and both parties have reimagined their conventions. This week, it's the Republicans' turn. Check out our 2020 national convention page for the latest news, video, live interviews and analysis.

With the ongoing coronavirus pandemic preventing Trump from maintaining a vigorous public campaign schedule, the convention still will be his largest platform yet to convince religious conservatives it is worth sticking by him and turning out in November.

Trump campaign officials have long held that, despite anticipated declines in the president’s support with women and suburban voters, he can still win in November if he marginally improves his standing with religious Americans.

According to the Fox News poll from early August, 75 percent of white evangelicals are “extremely committed” to either Trump or Biden with less than three months to go until Election Day, which suggests a sizable chunk of the key religious demographic remains uncertain about which candidate they will support or whether they will vote.

This content was originally published here.

[thecoroutfitters]

Over the years, the media has done an excellent job of minimizing the immense risk of nuclear contamination.

No matter whether mainstream media makes their reports late at night, or the newspapers print somewhere in the middle of the paper, American citizens remain largely unaware of just how bad the nuclear contamination problem really is.

While these problems continue to be understated or ignored, cancer rates continue to skyrocket and large scale animal die offs go on without other explanation.

Since the media cannot provide an accurate barometer, preppers must take extra care to investigate nuclear risks and be ready to deal with them long before a critical level warning is issued.

Fukushima

Even as I write this article, the #2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is pumping out over 530 sieverts of nuclear radiation per hour. It only takes 1 sievert to cause radiation sickness, and 10 to kill. Right now, the radiation levels inside the reactor are so high, even the best radiation shielded robots cannot survive more than 2 hours.

Now, if you do a Google search in the news section for Fukushima, you only find Fox News reporting on this matter. If you watch TV or read a newspaper from other mainstream sources, there is every chance that you won’t even know that the ongoing situation in Fukushima has gotten much worse.

To add insult to injury, for some time now there are massive die offs of fish all along the west coast from Alaska to Chile. There are also genetic mutations popping up in fish and other animals that suggest they have been exposed to nuclear radiation.

Very soon, perhaps, the US government will have to admit that coastal areas of the Western United States are experiencing higher rates of cancer; and those cancers are being caused by nuclear contamination from Fukushima. In the meantime, all we hear from Japan is that it can take 40 years or more to stop the radiation leaks and fully decommission the reactors.

If you live along the west coast, or plan to bug out to any area west of the Rocky mountains, it is best to move further inland as quickly as possible. Your best options will be locations that are on the east side of the Rockies, and in the lowest valleys on that side. Just make sure that you aren’t near any nuclear plants or nuclear waste dumps.

Because nuclear radiation from Fukushima is being detected all over the world, it is also very important to have your own Geiger counter as well as a Kierney Fallout Meter. In addition, it is also extremely important to avoid buying foods, beverages, or anything else from Japan or anything from businesses along the western seaboard.

Since people are not aware of the level of nuclear contamination, it is all too easy to ship products that have low levels of contamination all over the place.

Never forget that ionized radiation exposure produces effects as it accumulates in the body. What looks like a safe amount right now may not be when added to continual exposure.

The Bear is Still out There

Right now the media claims that just about nothing can stop the tawdry bromance between Trump and Putin. Nevertheless, there are many tangible points of contention between our two nations.

While Trump and Putin may ultimately agree on Syria and be able to work together on this issue, there is a very real possibility that they will not be able to reach common ground on nuclear disarmament.

Relations between the United States and Russia soured during the Obama administration. Virtually all of the work done starting with the Reagan administration is lost, as evidenced by Putin’s videos saying that war with the United States was inevitable. While he often said that he held hopes for better chances with a new president (Trump), his actions since the election say there are problems.

For example, Russia is performing snap air raid drills and has been conducting civilian nuclear bomb shelter drills even before Trump was elected.

Keep any eye out for more news of large scale civilian preparedness drills and military maneuvers, especially in relation to the Ukraine or Russia’s border with other nations.

Chinese Aggression

Even though former President Clinton was eager to sell China super computers, it remains very clear that this communist nation can and will flex its muscles in military matters. Aside from serious trade deficits, China is becoming increasingly hostile to the United States with regards to the South China Sea.

There are several tiny islands in the South China Sea that are claimed by different nations. They may not be worth much of anything in terms of real estate, but the sea floor beneath and around them is believed to be rich in natural resources such as oil and natural gas. Given China’s economic growth and population size, it is very clear they need the South China Sea for fossil fuels.

While China isn’t likely to start a nuclear war over this incident, they may be more inclined to follow North Korean aggression if the situation is to their advantage. Never forget that the government of China takes the issue of saving face very seriously.

A nation that issues decrees that attempt to tell supernatural entities where they can and cannot incarnate is not likely to forget a slight no matter how minimal. This, in turn, can make China very easy to control by North Korea even as they seek to make it look like they are the ones controlling the situation.

The very fact that North Korea continues with its nuclear arsenal says that China will use them as a scape goat to start a nuclear incident, and then follow up, either from the position of “protecting an ally”, or more likely defending Chinese honor.

North Korea

Considering the number of other nuclear threats we face, it is not likely that North Korea will develop its own arsenal (including delivery systems) fast enough to be a risk to us or any other country.

The real risk from North Korea stems from it’s position as an ally of China and the interest ISIS has in being recognized by North Korea. We cannot discount the role of South Korea in this problem given that the people of both nations are keen in being one nation again.

While that is a positive thing in cultural terms, it is not so good for the global economy because South Korea has been infiltrated by Sharia Banks. Even though the majority of these banks may be peaceful, we cannot ignore the possibility that these banks secretly support ISIS and other terror organizations.

As it stands, the greatest risk we face from North Korea is a diplomatic one. Because it is a small country, other nations such as China can use it as a front for hostile actions.

It is, and remains my contention that China, and perhaps even Russia will not attack directly. They will attack through North Korea, a state run by what western media paints as a “madman”. In my opinion, it gives North Korea far more leverage in the nuclear arena than we are led to believe.

Video First seen on AFP news agency.

Watch the news carefully for signs of these developments, as well as the Sharia watch group site that gives excellent information on the progression of Sharia law and banks throughout the world.

Israel Upping the Stakes in Iran

Iran is similar to North Korea in the sense that it is not likely it will develop a nuclear arsenal and delivery system fast enough to compete with established nuclear nations.

On the other side of the equation, Iran is favored by many people in Islamic nations and seen as a crown jewel. As messy as the situation was in 1981 when Israel bombed Iranian nuclear material sites, it did give the rest of the world some time to think about how to manage a nuclear capable Iran.

History still paints this action as something of a disaster because Iran is now far more protective of its nuclear sites and has gone to great lengths to protect them from bombings.

Even though Israel stopped short of bombing Iranian nuclear targets just a few years ago, there is a definite chance they will go through with their plans sometime soon.

Because there are no Middle Eastern nations that admit to having nuclear weapons, it is not likely this action would trigger an immediate nuclear attack on the United States from a country in this region.

On the other hand, Russia remains supportive of Iran as front much as China does North Korea. Given that stance, it is likely both Russia and the United States would be drawn into the fray. If other tensions continue to escalate, there is a chance we will be right back to facing nuclear war with Russia.

Before closing the topic of Iran, let me point out that two of the five nuclear weapon states (United States, Russia, China, UK, and France) have puppet nations in front of them that claim to want access to nuclear arms. I think these puppets hold far more power than we estimate because they might be bought for the right price by the nations hiding behind them as well as other nations that want to push China or Russia into a war with the United States.

In the end, never forget that smaller nations always want to get bigger and have a better place in the global pecking order, while large and powerful nations must struggle to maintain it at their own level plus watch out for the effects of smaller nations acting en masse.

Use business activity sites to watch for where large companies are moving or building their factories as well as FOREX sites that revel changes in one nation’s currency in relation to another.

The Dilemma of Pakistan

Even though Pakistan is a nuclear nation and ally of ours, it is at odds with India, another ally and nuclear nation. At this time, Russia makes no secret of its interest in strengthening economic and cultural ties with India while Pakistan struggles with terrorist groups trying to take it over from within.

Unlike Iran and North Korea, I don’t necessarily see Pakistan as a puppet that could be used by the Trump administration. Nor do I see Pakistan as a nation that would attempt to start a nuclear war on its own.

However, if a terror organization gets control of any of nuclear assets (not just weapons), it can spell disaster for nations surrounding Pakistan that are aligned with the United States. It is through this form of aggression that a major global nuclear war can be triggered.

This weapon that can instantly end modern life in America by knocking out our power grid!

In the arena of Mutually Assured Destruction, diplomatic ties are always complicated when two groups are leery of each other. In this situation, the media tends to sway public opinion into thinking that “other countries” will break their promise first, or fall to terrorism long before the United States will.

The mirror here works two ways and the media in these other countries may also cast doubt on the strength and integrity of the United States. No matter whether Pakistan chooses to align with Iran, or gives another non-Israeli Middle Eastern country the promise of nuclear weapon support, it can be a very dangerous trigger.

Escalating levels of mistrust alone can create a self-fulfilling prophecy of horrifying proportions. If there is one warning I would look for insofar as Pakistan serving as a trigger to a major nuclear encounter, it would be support of a Middle Eastern nation against Israel, or increasing indicators that radical Islamic terrorists are controlling the government and nuclear assets.

A World Ready to Stop Our Nation

When Trump made his inaugural speech, many people in the United States cheered when the candidate they voted for proclaimed “America First”. This phrase, however, has become a point of mockery via viral videos that are being shared around the world. These videos, which seek to “introduce” Trump to their nations say “we don’t mind you being first, but us second, or third, etc.”

While these videos pretend to be humorous, the “me second” theme can be seen as threatening from the standpoint of war, in particular, MAD.

In a MAD scenario, it is often thought that the first strike is not always the defining one. Instead, as other nations join not the fray and launch nuclear weapons, the destruction of the first striking nation, and quite possibly the rest of the world, is assured. Since many of these nations “nuclear sharing” contracts with NATO, it is entirely possible these videos are a warning.

Many of our allies, including Israel have made these videos. While they may, in fact, just be a joke (which in an of itself can be seen as an act of aggression), the fact remains that nations will always look for the most advantageous positions for themselves. Mocking a president of a world power is not a way to grow an alliance. If anything, it will only lead to more aggression.

Insofar as nuclear risks, watch for points where nations making these videos move to contribute to the destabilization of the United States or act in some way that increases the risk of the United States being drawn into a nuclear conflict with one of the other main nuclear nations.

Never forget about France and the UK. While they are historically some of our best allies, they also have many ties to other nations and are on a path to global unity. Trump may not want to bring the United States into that conglomeration especially if our nation cannot be the leader or act with unreserved autonomy.

Aging US Nuclear Reactors

If you think the overseas based threats of nuclear disaster are troubling, then you haven’t been watching Fukushima or Chernobyl close enough.

Source: Radiation Network

What is happening at Fukushima can easily happen right here. We have hundreds of aging nuclear power reactors spread throughout the nation. For example, Indian Point has been showing signs of trouble for decades, however it never gets shut down because it brings in too much money.

For the most part, you won’t get any warnings from the media or government sites about nuclear reactors that may be in trouble. Earthquakes, hurricanes, or other natural disasters could also cause problems at these power plants.

As a prepper, you will be best served by always being informed and aware of how close or far away you are from nuclear reactors. Avoid being downwind of a nuclear power plant and within 200 miles.

It is also very important to have several Kierney Fallout meters located around your home and work place. These will help you detect sudden changes in ionized radiation. If you see something going on, you can always follow up with a Geiger counter.

What Else is ISIS Hiding?

One of the biggest problems with ISIS and other terror groups is they have a lot of money. While many people want to stereotype radical Islamic terrorists as being of Middle Eastern descent, the fact of the matter is many radicals are in Asian and Oceanic countries.

For example, Indonesia and the Philippines both have fairly large terror cells that may well rise up and take the place of ISIS on the world scene. In some cases, some of these groups may already be aligned with the Taliban, ISIS or Al Quaeda or are offshoots of these groups.

This is how you prepare to face ISIS threat to put the entire American nation on our knees!

Since these groups have so much money and access to gullible people of all races, lone wolves can slip through even the best clearance processes for nuclear facilities. No matter whether they get in as janitors for a nuclear medical testing facility or work in a nuclear power plant, there are probably dozens of ways they can gain access to nuclear materials.

Also, with money comes the capacity to buy scientists. In this case, even if we don’t have the technology to turn medical grade nuclear materials into warheads, that doesn’t mean terrorist based scientists aren’t trying their hardest.

Unlike other scientists committed to curbing or inhibiting weapons development, rest assured that drugged up, knocked up, brainwashed and radicalized terrorists will not hesitate to find as many deadly tricks as they can. Just as sadly, they more than likely have all kinds of money at their disposal to do the job.

From dirty bombs to close range warheads, the best thing preppers can do is be aware. Keep a close watch on abandoned buildings and people that go in and out of them. Get to know the homeless people in your area so that you can figure out who is new or using that as a cover. Make it your business to keep a Kierney Meter with you at all times. If you detect suspicious levels of radiation, report it. You just never know what might be hiding under your own nose.

Other than that, never assume that it is just Middle Eastern people that may be plotting to launch an inside nuclear attack in our nation. Even if the final perpetrators wind up being from this part of the world, it is entirely possible that people from other races were part of the process.

In short, let the trail of ionized radiation be your guide and suspicious behavior patterns be your guide more than race based stereotypes.

Improper Medical Testing and Nuclear Waste Disposal

Speaking of obvious sources of a nuclear disaster, never forget about how much radiation you are getting from x-rays, mammograms, CT scans, and other medical diagnostic systems. While these are supposed to be safe over a lifetime, they may be enough to cause serious damage when combined with contaminated food, air and water.

It is best to limit your exposure to these tests as much as possible. Ask for, and demand tests that use other means to view internal organs and systems while providing suitable information. If your insurance company will not pay for alternative tests, do not hesitate to take the matter to social networking, the media and your elected representatives.

From mundane things you deal with every day to large scale conspiracy theories turned real, our nation is in serious danger from nuclear fuels and technologies.

Now is the time to make sure you know how to detect nuclear radiation and spot global trends that indicate dangers are increasing. This is also the time to make sure you can follow appropriate steps based on what you find. Do not forget to include nuclear survival gear in your bug out bag and EDC, and learn how to survive an attack!

This article has been written by Carmela Tyrell for Survivopedia. 

References:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/09/fukushima-nuclear-cleanup-falters-six-years-after-tsunami

http://www.ibtimes.com/russia-nato-war-moscow-deploys-nuclear-missiles-europe-subsonic-weapons-sea-2504854

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/islamic-finance-insouth-korea-pastandfuture-yagoub-elryah-phd-

http://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Politics-And-Diplomacy/Peres-bombshell-I-stopped-an-Israeli-strike-on-Iran-469112

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/jan/22/isis-finds-easy-recruits-in-prisons-of-indonesia/

  from Survivopedia Don't forget to visit the store and pick up some gear at The COR Outfitters. How prepared are you for emergencies? #SurvivalFirestarter #SurvivalBugOutBackpack #PrepperSurvivalPack #SHTFGear #SHTFBag

[blogpostnhacai]

Sewage and sewerage. New media and news

pic.twitter.com/STCgxGezrQ

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 28, 2020

“Regulate Twitter if they are going to start regulating free speech.” @JudgeJeanine @foxandfriends Well, as they have just proven conclusively, that’s what they are doing. Repeal Section 230!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 29, 2020

Mark Zuckerberg – Dead At 36 – Says Social Media Sites Should Not Fact Check Posts https://t.co/YC0ewn4xnu pic.twitter.com/FK72v8fv1u

— The Shovel (@TheShovel) May 28, 2020

There’s always a tweet. Donald Trump had long baited the public through his twitter account, but this time he went too far.  In relation to the George Floyd case, he inveighed against rioters, with the stirring words: “Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts”.  

These words would have been inflammatory without context, but they in fact echo the boast of a southern police chief against the civil rights movement. This was too much for Twitter, which put a trigger warning over it that it “violated the Twitter Rules about glorifying violence.”

President Trump and Twitter were already at loggerheads. He was already unhappy with their decision to fact-check him and this only added petrol to the flames. He has declared his intention to repeal section 230 of the Communications Decency Act 1996 and has issued an executive order issuing regulations to remove social media companies’ liability shield if they enter into censorship or any political conduct.

Donald Trump is motivated by his own political interest, of course. That doesn’t mean that he is wrong.

A lot of people have pointed out that Donald Trump has done very well out of Twitter, and that he is biting the hand that feeds him. But Twitter has done very well out of Donald Trump too. While he is president, Twitter is an indispensable news source. So let’s have a look at the rights and wrongs of this.

1996 was a different eon in the history of the internet. For starters, it still had a capital I. Amazon was two years old, Google was still two years off being founded. Facebook and Twitter were years in the future. No one was really making money off the internet and the question whether anyone even should make money off the internet was still controversial. So using laws from 1996 to regulate the internet is like using the Locomotive Acts to regulate road traffic.

The Communications Decency Act works on the basis that the internet companies are providing only the means of communication and not taking any responsibility for the communication itself. A similar approach is taken elsewhere in the world. As a judge in an English case put it, “persons who truly fulfil no more than the role of a passive medium for communication cannot be characterised as publishers” (and as such do not owe duties in defamation law). The relevant EU directive provides additional immunities in which internet intermediaries can avoid liability for material which is hosted, cached, or carried by them but which they did not create.

All this is, of course, great for the internet giants. As a starting principle, they don’t have to concern themselves with what courses through their conduits; they need only provide the infrastructure.  

This conceit long ago broke down. You only have to look at these platforms to see that the division is artificial. When was the last time that your water company pushed advertising material at you through the pipes?

The companies tacitly accept this. Facebook, for example, currently uses something like 15,000 contractors to remove pornography, terrorism, hate speech and other unwanted content. It, and the other large platforms, do so in an attempt to run ahead of the whip of legislation. They no longer seek to maintain that they have no role in relation to content.

It is against this background that Twitter has made its move against President Trump.  And do you know what, he has a point. If Twitter is going to start policing the statements of elected politicians (no matter how loathsome you might find them personally), it can’t expect to be making final decisions about their appropriateness under the cloak of legal protections.  

Does this mean that social media companies should be required to take responsibility for every statement posted on their platforms? That would be onerous indeed. However, there are intermediate points, where the social media companies need to show that they have taken reasonable steps to monitor what is said through them and to remove posts that do not meet a necessary standard.

Donald Trump himself is not going that far. He would be entirely happy for social media companies to revert to their hands-off approach so he can say what he likes.

Following the many controversies about data manipulation on social media, that approach is very much going out of favour. There is a widespread feeling that something must be done.

It should be noted that social media companies are now fighting on a playing field with old media companies that is very much tilted in their own favour, and one where some of the upstarts are now colossally wealthy in comparison to the old media companies. The public for nearly 25 years has benefited by having new media forms promoted. It now looks like time to seek to raise the standard of the material being pumped through those new media forms.  

That will require more regulation. So Donald Trump may unwittingly have set in motion a train of events that will make it much harder for those who come after him to follow his path to power.

Alastair Meeks

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[marymosley]

The Constitutional Defibrillator: Trump To Invoke Unprecedented Power To Adjourn Congress

Below is my column in USA Today on the pledge of President Donald Trump that he would adjourn Congress under a never used and rarely discussed power of Article II.  While Trump pledged to do so a week ago, there has been no mention of the invocation since that time.

In the White House press conference, President Trump stated:

“If the House will not agree to that adjournment, I will exercise my constitutional authority to adjourn both Chambers of Congress. The current practice of leaving town while conducting phony, pro forma sessions is a dereliction of duty that the American people cannot afford during this crisis. It is a scam. What they do. It’s a scam and everybody knows it, and it’s been that way for a long time, and perhaps it’s never done before. It’s never been done before. Nobody’s even sure if it has, but we’re going to do it.”

He later added:

“[Congressional leaders] know. They’ve been warned and they are being warned right now. If they don’t approve it, then we’re going to go this route, and we’ll probably be challenged in court and we’ll see who wins, but when the court hears that we aren’t getting people approved . . . for two and a half years for an important position that we need because of this crisis. We needed these people before, but now we really need these people.”

Here is the column:

President Donald Trump this week continued his curious legacy as a type of constitutional defibrillator that shocks to life long-dormant clauses related to executive authority. For decades, questions under emoluments, appointment clause and other provisions were little more than parlor games for law professors. That all changed with President Trump where flat-lined language suddenly bounced back into life with myriad of controversies.

The latest example is Article II, Section 3’s adjournment provision. Never used before, the provision allows a president “on extraordinary occasions” to formally adjourn Congress. Trump has said that he expects to be challenged in court and that is the only thing that is certain about this untested provision.

When the Framers drafted the adjournment provision, they specifically rejected the English model that allows a prime minister to dissolve Parliament to force new elections. Indeed, in Federalist 69, Alexander Hamilton assured New Yorkers that the Constitution does not allow for the power of “The British monarch [to] prorogue or even dissolve the Parliament.” Instead, “the president can only adjourn the national legislature in the single case of disagreement about the time of adjournment.” The key to the provision, and to Hamilton, is the word “disagreement.” A president can only use this power “in case of disagreement between them.”

Bal attempt to bypass Congress

The “them” refers to the House and Senate; not the president and Congress. There is no current disagreement. Both houses currently agreed on the adjournment date on Jan. 3, 2020. During the pandemic, the houses have used pro forma sessions to continue a functioning legislature while allowing members (like most Americans) to work from home. Pro forma sessions have been commonly used (to the chagrin of many presidents) to technically stay in session to block the use of “recess appointments,” where a president can temporarily fill vacant positions. Presidents will often use recesses to appoint controversial figures or to circumvent Congress during gridlock over appointments.

Trump is not the first president to long for a recess in order to unilaterally appoint officials. However, no president has ever used this nuclear option for forced adjournment. The reasons President Trump has given for such an unprecedented act are strikingly weak. He complained about his ability to secure the confirmation of an official to oversee the Voice of America because he did not like the content of the coverage. He also complained about the failure to confirm judges despite the fact that the Senate has already set a record with roughly 200 judicial confirmations, a record that will be hard for any president to beat for some time. He insists that these and other appointments are needed to deal with the pandemic, a claim that seems transparently opportunistic.

Of course, the Constitution does not make a president’s motivations a criterion for using this power. However, it does require a disagreement between the houses. This threat will test the fealty of members of both houses and both parties to their institution. They should refuse to adjourn and, absent such a disagreement, the president’s gambit will fail.

As it stands, the president first has to force a disagreement over the date of adjournment, use this unprecedented power to order adjournment, place the houses in recess, and then use the recess to trigger his authority to make unilateral appointments. Moreover, the Senate would not only have to cooperate in a scheme to nullify its own authority but it would likely have to torch long-standing rules governing things like cloture to end debate — rules designed to protect minority interests in what Senators like to call “the world’s greatest deliberative body.” That daisy-chained strategy can break easily at various critical points.

Obama lost related case

The greatest problem is that the litigation alluded to by the president would create uncertainly over the legitimacy of government decisions by these officials. I have been a long critic of recess appointments, particularly judicial recess appointments. In 2012, I testified before Congress that President Barack Obama’s use of recess appointments, including the appointment of Richard Cordray to a consumer protection board, were flagrantly unconstitutional.

While he did not use the adjournment provision, Obama adopted an abusive interpretation of both his power and what constitutes a “recess.” Like Trump, he also railed against the “pro forma” session of Congress and refused to respect the decision to stay in session. (Notably, back then, Democratic members and law professors supported Obama’s effort to circumvent Congress).

Two years later in Noel Canning v. NLRB, the Supreme Court unanimously agreed and found President Obama violated the Constitution with his appointments. In words that should resonate today, the court declared that “the Recess Appointments Clause is not designed to overcome serious institutional friction . . . Here, as in other contexts, friction between the branches is an inevitable consequence of our constitutional structure.”

However, that was not the end of it. Many then objected that any decisions made over those two years by illegitimate officials were invalid.

The unconstitutional actions of Obama were costly but would pale in comparison to President Trump’s call for a host of appointments to both the judicial and executive branches after a forced adjournment. Some would be judges who would be ruling in cases in trial and appellate courts. If they were later found to be illegitimately appointed, those cases could be challenged as illegitimate.

None of this needs to happen. This is a dormant provision that should be left in well-earned slumber. Indeed, the recess appointments that Trump seeks to use have themselves been denounced as archaic and unnecessary In the 2014 decision in Canning, the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote a concurring opinion denounced that transformation of a narrow rule “into a weapon to be wielded by future presidents against future Senates.”

While both Justice Stephen Breyer and Scalia acknowledged this power, Scalia added that “The Recess Appointments Clause therefore is, or rather, should be, an anachronism — ‘essentially an historic relic, something whose original purpose has disappeared.’” Ironically, President Trump expressly confirmed yesterday what Scalia said next: “The need it was designed to fill no longer exists, and its only remaining use is the ignoble one of enabling the president to circumvent the Senate’s role in the appointment process.”

Scalia was right. This is as unnecessary as it is unprecedented. During a pandemic, there has never been a more important time for “regular order” and bipartisanship in Congress. Citing the current emergency is hardly compelling when Congress is scheduled to resume full business in just two weeks on May 4 and can resume business at any time in this pro forma status. A pandemic is not an invitation for pandemonium.

Jonathan Turley is a Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and a member of USA TODAY’s board of contributors. He also served as lead counsel representing the United States House of Representatives in litigation over the health care law. Follow him on Twitter: @JonathanTurley

The Constitutional Defibrillator: Trump To Invoke Unprecedented Power To Adjourn Congress published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[biofunmy]

A Report On Vaping Bots Triggered The #NotABot Backlash

WASHINGTON — As President Donald Trump and Congress weigh e-cigarette bans amid an outbreak of deadly lung injuries, a fight has erupted over whether vaping supporters online are real people — or bots funded by an industry under attack.

The fight was sparked by a controversial report released two weeks ago by the Public Good Projects, a public health nonprofit. Its analysis — which looked at 1,288,378 tweets related to e-cigarettes or tobacco sent between Feb. 1 and June 1 — concluded that nearly 80% were likely generated by bots, or automated accounts, “posing as passionate pro-vaping individuals.” The findings have been called into question by experts skeptical about its methodology.

The bots report sparked panic among public health officials who are suspicious that the vaping industry, backed by Big Tobacco, is using shady marketing tactics to sway public opinion with misinformation about the dangers of nicotine. But it has also triggered furious backlash online from e-cigarette users concerned about losing access to potentially life-saving vapes. This group has flooded the #NotABot hashtag with conspiracy theories and political threats aimed at the Trump administration, which is grappling with a proposed ban on flavored e-cigs.

Paranoia about the lessons learned from the 30-year-old battle with Big Tobacco loom large on both sides as public health officials worry that vaping companies are borrowing from its playbook, and vaping users fear being driven back to smoking cigarettes.

The findings made headlines when they were first reported by the Wall Street Journal, which linked the report to a congressional committee holding a hearing that week investigating the four major sellers of e-cigarettes, Juul Labs, Fontem Ventures, Japan Tobacco International USA, and Reynolds American. The hearing was actually a look at legislation aimed at curbing youth vaping, rather than corporate behavior. But in August, the committee requested a “list of all social media influencers the companies have paid to market their products and any handles and usernames for social media bots that the companies use to market their products.”

Rep. Frank Pallone of New Jersey, the chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, linked the inquiry to a nationwide outbreak of severe lung injuries under investigation by the CDC — now standing at 1,604 cases and 34 deaths — to the vaping of THC oil from the black market. Congress was already alarmed by reports of a sharp increase in e-cigarette use among teens. Twenty-one percent of high school seniors had reported vaping in the last 30 days. States such as Massachusetts and Michigan have instituted full or partial vaping bans as a result.

The reliability of the bots report was soon called into question. On Oct. 15, Amelia Howard, a University of Waterloo graduate student and vaping advocate, tweeted that a draft version of the report shown to her by a reporter had listed five illustrative “bot” accounts in a middle section. In at least four cases, those so-called bots were actually people she knew or had met.

Over a week ago the Wall Street Journal asked me to comment on the report that occasioned this story. Sadly none of my comments made the cut. But that’s ok, I’m happy to repeat what I told WSJ (and more!) on twitter in this thread you’re gonna want to read http://bit.ly/2C3upH4

11:59 PM – 15 Oct 2019

That six-page section was cut from the final report when it was released to the public, a move that Howard suggested was to hide its flawed findings. She called it part of a larger “moral panic” aimed against e-cigarettes by public health officials and scientists. “Tobacco control is a very political field and is morally motivated,” Howard told BuzzFeed News.

In defense of the report, Joe Smyser of the Public Good Projects told BuzzFeed News, “What we were really looking for is automation” by Twitter accounts, which might encompass people setting their accounts to automatically retweet certain hashtags. So while real people might own the Twitter accounts, their use of automated tools might leave them flagged as a “bot,” what Smyser called a “cyborg.”

“There is a great deal of messaging that e-cigarettes are safe, nicotine can’t poison people, and that public health authorities are lying,” Smyser said.

Public Good Projects

Automated accounts responding to the news of Trump’s proposed “ban.”

The write-up of five accounts was removed when the group learned the accounts could still be identified despite attempts to redact their names, Smyser said. The point of the report was to show how automation helps sell e-cigarettes and how the practice outweighs public health messages that urge people not to vape — not to attack specific accounts.

“The recent talks about banning e-cigarettes and the vaping illnesses have provided automated accounts with fuel,” Smyser told BuzzFeed News. “This is just the new normal now, and the public health community is behind the eight ball on catching up.”

Other experts say that the numbers in the report sound reasonable based on prior research, but called into question the study’s poorly described methodology for detecting automation.

In a 2017 study cited by the report, Jon-Patrick Allem, an assistant professor of research preventive medicine at the University of Southern California, analyzed more than 6 million tweets related to e-cigarettes with computer code posted online to allow other people to check the approach, relying on about 1,000 characteristics of bot accounts to ferret them out. That study found about 70% of tweets about e-cigarettes came from social bots.

The Public Good Projects report’s results rested on about 100 signs of automation, according to Smyser, such as automatic retweets in response to hashtags and never tweeting original content, to rate 80% of accounts it saw as bots. Those numbers don’t sound unreasonable in 2019, said Allem, especially as scrutiny around vaping has skyrocketed amid the lung injury outbreak. But without detailed methodology describing how the researchers found this phenomenon getting stronger, the results can’t be taken at face value. That “isn’t how we do it in scientific studies,” Allem said.

Smyser said his group is planning to submit the report to a scientific journal to more rigorously address such concerns, arguing that the original paper was “meant for general readers, not scientists.”

7/8 If you’re looking for info on #ecigs & #vaping, pro info often really is easier to find, because of a united front. Here’s a chart showing the recent increase in hashtags used by pro-vape advocates

09:24 PM – 16 Oct 2019

Public Good Projects / Twitter

“Bots are really pretty sophisticated now, compared to 10 years ago,” Allem said. The online world is filled with a bewildering grab bag of vaping stores that automatically post sales announcements, advocates who auto-respond to hashtags, and genuine bots that steadily disperse misinformation, he said, intermingled with real people who turn automatic behavior on and off in random fashion.

Bots “are becoming harder to detect,” he added.

This round in the fight over the future of vaping dates at least back to September 2018, when the FDA, in the largest coordinated investigation in the agency’s history, issued more than 1,300 warning letters and fines to stores that illegally sold Juul and other e-cigarettes to minors during a self-described “nationwide, undercover blitz of brick-and-mortar and online stores.”

A month later, the National Youth Tobacco Survey reported a sudden increase of more than 1.5 million high school and middle school students in the US who had used an e-cigarette in the previous month, taking the total up to 3.6 million people and noting a significant increase in flavored vapes.

“These new data show that America faces an epidemic of youth e-cigarette use, which threatens to engulf a new generation in nicotine addiction,” said Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar in response. Suspicion of fakery in Juul’s marketing campaign, and among purported vaping supporters, emerged from Allem’s 2017 study and a long-standing, merited distrust of the tobacco industry.

Abaca Press / Sipa USA via AP

From left: Melania Trump, Donald Trump, and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar at a September meeting about vaping.

In the 1950s, tobacco companies settled on the “Doubt is our product” advertising strategy to delay regulation. Over the next four decades, the tobacco industry employed front groups, fake scientists, and lobbyists to sow confusion about the links between tobacco and lung cancer, heart disease, and other deadly illnesses. The World Health Organization has called the industry effort, revealed through lawsuits in the 1990s, “a relentless defence of its economic interests,” that put profits ahead of public health.

The descendants of those same companies are now heavily involved in selling e-cigarettes, with industry leader Juul headed by a CEO, K.C. Crosthwaite, installed last month from Altria (formerly Philip Morris Companies), which owns 35% of the vaping firm. Lobbying efforts like Juul’s “Project Switch” — which sought to connect customers with a public relations firm that specializes in “grassroots” political messaging for business clients to push against a New York state ban — have public health officials suspicious that a history of fake front groups is repeating itself.

Ironically, foes of vaping fans have their own suspicions of fakery. There was a blowup in July 2018 over some 500,000 anti-vaping comments submitted to the public comment section of a proposed FDA “Regulation of Flavors in Tobacco Products” that the pro-vaping website RegulatorWatch decried as “spam,” or fake comments meant to overwhelm the 22,000 pro-vaping comments submitted to the docket.

“The FDA is aware that a number of auto-generated comments were submitted to the docket for the advance notice of proposed rulemaking on flavors in tobacco products,” the FDA’s Stephanie Caccomo told BuzzFeed News by email. “However, as noted on regulations.gov‎, the comment process is not a vote — agencies make determinations for a proposed action based on sound reasoning and scientific evidence.”

I am just one of over 10 million adult smokers who have quit by switching to legal FDA-regulated nicotine e-cigarettes. I plan to attend the first-ever US national Vaping Rally in Washington DC on November 9, 2019.

DO YOU? @LegionVaping @thr4life @Vapingit @whycherrywhy

06:31 PM – 25 Oct 2019

The brawl over whether the support for vaping comes from real people or astroturfing (fake grassroots efforts invented by companies or politicians), looks familiar, drug policy expert Leo Beletsky of Northeastern University told BuzzFeed News. The two sides — public health officials concerned about vaping teens, and ex-smokers scared to death of vaping bans — are talking past each other with language borrowed from the 30-year fight over cigarettes, he said.

“When the conversation shifts to talking about any addictive substance use by teens and kids, we totally lose our minds,” he added.

Congressional hearings about vaping regularly feature laments from lawmaker parents and grandparents about vaping among their offspring, even as public health officials struggle to explain that millions of adults have shifted from smoking with the help of e-cigarettes.

“Really there is no honest conversation going on here,” he said.

Tobacco, abetted by its addictive nicotine ingredient, kills more than 7 million people a year worldwide. On the public health side, e-cigarette firms are investors, owners, or peddlers of that same nicotine, making it easy to see claims by the vaping industry and its fans as just another industry smoke screen for hooking teenagers. Juul’s high-strength nicotine pods — packed with 59 milligrams of nicotine per milliliter, more than 2.5 times stronger than legal limits on nicotine in the United Kingdom — flaunts a strategy of tapering nicotine levels in tobacco products called for by public health researchers to cut teen smoking since 1994.

“Nicotine levels in e-cigarettes are quite harmful to the developing brain, which doesn’t stop developing until age 25,” Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the CDC, told reporters in a news briefing on Friday. In a statement on the outbreak, the agency advises former smokers and anyone else addicted to nicotine using e-cigarettes to “consider utilizing FDA-approved nicotine replacement therapies.”

Against this, a few voices have pointed out that banning legal e-cigarettes could drive users back to cigarettes or to the illicit market for vaping liquid, which has already been linked to the deadly outbreak.

“THC is just a proxy for illicit,” said Beletsky. “It’s the illicit part that matters.”

Perhaps in response, the pro-vaping world of social media has been “very combative,” said Allem, who studied sentiments voiced on Twitter about vaping liquids in a 2018 study. He found that most posts were about sales (29%) and flavors (24%). Health risks from nicotine were rarely mentioned (6%) and “Quit Smoking” was almost nonexistent (less than 1%).

Conspiracy theories have also increased along with the combativeness. One popular theory, #MSABloodMoney, references the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement that limited cigarette advertising and steered tobacco industry revenue to states to pay for tobacco-related diseases in perpetuity. The conspiracy theory — which has also been touted by Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax activist hugely influential within the Republican Party — paints parents and doctors worried about teens vaping as being motivated by greed for cigarette tax revenue.

The government tax collectors make more money on every pack of cigarettes than the farmers, manufacturers, retailers of cigarettes–combined. Of course, the tax and spend liberals want to stop people from moving to vaping. They want your money. Could care less about your health

12:11 PM – 23 Oct 2019

Norquist’s involvement shows how the political side of the #NotABot furor adds to its intensity. In September, the Trump administration shocked the vaping industry by saying it was moving to ban flavored vapes nationwide. “A lot of people think it’s wonderful,” Trump said to reporters. “It’s not a wonderful thing.”

That has led to another hashtag, #WeVapeWeVote, sweeping Twitter amid threats that vaping fans turning against Trump in battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, per Axios, could cost him the 2020 election. A “WeVapeWeVote” protest took place before a Trump rally in Dallas, and news reports emerged on Friday that the president’s ban was losing steam in the White House, causing him to retreat from a full flavor ban to one that would spare menthol and mint flavors.

The Vapor Technology Association launched an ad campaign this month on Fox News to influence Trump to halt his ban. Sean Hannity vaped on his show in 2017 during a commercial break, and listeners have complained about vaping ads supporting his radio show.

Underneath the fights over vaping on Twitter, there’s little doubt that Juul and its lookalikes are sold by businesses that aim to maximize their sales, health policy expert Kar-Hai Chu of the Center for Research on Media, Technology, and Health told BuzzFeed News. Chu’s research, for example, has found that a quarter of all tweets by Juul were retweeted by teenagers, showing who was targeted in its lifestyle ads. Touted by Instagram and YouTube influencers popular with teens and young adults, Juul’s marketing has cast doubt on its self-proclaimed public health benefits.

“Flavors are what get kids interested in e-cigarettes, a lot of evidence shows,” said Chu, explaining the interest in flavor bans by states.

Rather than an outright ban, said Beletsky, the e-cigarette market requires sensible, nationwide regulation aimed at letting people who genuinely benefit from vaping continue while also curbing teens’ access to the products. Outlawing e-cigarettes will just drive people to the black market.

But he’s not optimistic, he added: “It’s very rare in drug policy where we use a scalpel. Usually we use a wrecking ball.”

CORRECTION

Oct. 29, 2019, at 22:08 PM

The name of the Public Good Projects was misstated in an earlier version of this post.

Sahred From Source link Science

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[theextraspoon]

Your favorite hemp brands and companies may go missing from Facebook! However, can Facebook really be used as a place to obtain honest unbiased information anymore? It would seem if you have a differing opinion you better not say it, less you risk your social media, payment processors and entire existence online be taken from you.

Youtubers of all shapes and sizes have been falling risk to censorship lately. Since the recent deplatforming of TheRalphRetort (now located at stream.me) and their #1 late night show the #Killstream, twitter has been a mess of deep dives and deletion with the assumption that only one side would face censorship, but as we all knew would happen, that isn't the case. Now creators like MumkeyJones have been removed from the platform for his dark humor surrounding killer Elliot Rodger, which leaves creators questioning how can someone just delete history? Mumkey  had two channels deleted from the platform, the final nail in his coffin being a private, never before seen video.This leaves many with concerns and nowhere to place them. What is grounds for censorship? How can we prevent ourselves from being completely deleted across social media platforms simply for disagreeing with or posing an opposing opinion of someone with a bigger voice?

It's been said as a private platform, Youtube can do whatever they'd like.in terms of censorship. However if Google runs the ads all across the internet, how would their censorship be considered a fair practice under federal law? It's been said "if you don't like it, create your own platform."

Okay, even if the mass of the internet came together to collect the funds needed to host the space needed for an unlimited upload platform, it doesn't automatically compare. For example, creators don't get seen unless you already know about them and businesses have no one else to advertise to.

The best way to explain this concept is to imagine Youtube as an island. If you don't like the rules of their island, you can leave and buy your own island. 

Okay, but islands are expensive and even if I buy my own island, I'm still alone on my island. I don't need an island, I just want a banner on that island because all of the people are already on that island. If you burn my banner and kick me off the island, that isn't fair, because I can't talk to those people on that island... even if they want to hear me.

Natural Healthy CBD has been warning others about the impending censorship since last year when their payment processor was shut down and their youtube deleted. They knew it was only time before it would begin happening to others but luckily, people have begun to notice the island starting itself on fire.

Natural Healthy CBD (@CBDHealthy on twitter) has always been a compete together not against each other platform. If you are a hardworking, lab tested CBD hemp provider they will allow you a chance to sell with their platform with proper lab testing, which can be rather lucrative,  which is why they're often partnered and silenced first. Platforms find concern with businesses that stand for free speech, especially those as connected with as many influencers, celebrities, and businesses as Natural Healthy. That said, now that their facebook and their brand Hemperpedic's facebook has been deleted along with their main instagram, which means it's about to happen to all of us again. 

Sadly it's been happening as seen in this article on the Free Thought Project:

Because government is the antithesis to freedom, industrial hemp has been banned nationwide since 1937 ostensibly due to the plant’s similarities to marijuana. Many have speculated that this move was also due to the fact that cannabis is in direct competition with the pharmaceutical industry by providing far safer alternative treatments as wel. However, all this changed this month after President Donald Trump signed the Agriculture Improvement act of 2018, legalizing industrial hemp on a national scale.

Industrial hemp is once again legal in all 50 states but its legalization has set off a new disturbing trend. In a move that appears to be a give away to big pharma, Facebook has begun banning hemp pages.

Just as the farm bill was passed by the House and Senate earlier this month, the page for hemp grower “Franny’s Farmacy” was banned.

“We had that up for about the first month, got a few thousand followers, it was great, it was really driving sales, then it disappeared,” co-owner Franny Tacy said.

The reason Facebook gave them for banning their hemp page was utterly bogus too. The social media giant claimed that Franny was “Promoting the sale of prescription pharmaceuticals.”

“Being an ex-pharmaceutical rep, there is no way we posted anything that violates Facebook’s terms of service,” says Tacy. “We make no claims, we make no recommendations … but we do use the words hemp and CBD and those seem to be becoming trigger words as well.”

Days after being banned, Franny started a new page which began amassing new followers, but after just four days, it was taken down too. This time, Facebook accused Franny and Jeff Tacy of “encouraging drug use.” They sell no drugs whatsoever.

But Franny’s hemp page was not the only victim to Facebook’s give away to the pharmaceutical industry in the name of suppressing the legal sale of hemp. This week, the page for the Carolina Hemp Company was also unpublished. they were given the exact same reason: “promoting the sale of prescription pharmaceuticals.”

Page admin Brian Bullman noted that they have never made any claims which could be interpreted as such. What’s more is the fact that they are a hemp company — not a pharmaceutical company — and they sell no pharmaceuticals at all.

“The stated reason should be of concern,” Bullman wrote. “Our curators do an exceptional job of making sure our content is clean and void of claims. CHC also tends to sell mostly non-isolate products not only due to the superior performance, but also to avoid the possibility of infringing on a pharmaceutical model under the current unfolding conditions as stated by the FDA’S non-binding statement/interpretation.”

Highlighting the sheer insanity of Facebook’s bogus claims is the fact that pages like Pfizer — who actually do promote the use of dangerous pharmaceuticals — are still thriving. For those who may be unaware, Pfizer is the company behind the drug Chantix (prescribed to people to quit smoking) which has been shown by the FDA to have caused thousands of serious injuries and dozens of deaths. Meanwhile, no one in the history of cannabis has ever died from its use.

But Pfizer’s ability to promote deadly drugs on Facebook’s platform — while those who promote hemp are banned — should come as no surprise to those who have been paying attention. As TFTP reported in October, after we were banned, Facebook joined with the Atlantic Council which is directly funded and made up of groups tied to the pharmaceutical industry as well as the military industrial complex, and even government itself.

In fact, Pfizer’s Director for Advocacy and Professional Relations, Mia Masten, is a member.

As Facebook continues to crackdown on folks who promote peace, healthy lifestyles, and sustainable alternatives to deadly medicines, they are showing their true colors — as well as their true masters. To those who don’t know how deep the Atlantic Council’s tentacles reach into all things tyranny, war, and corporatocracy, below is an eye opening short video that explains it.

As TFTP previously reported, in May, after Americans were successfully whipped into a tizzy of Russian hacking and meddling, along with the fake news hysteria, the Americans begging for censorship craze came to a head when Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council.

Facebook announced that it partnered with the arm of the council, known as the Digital Forensic Research Lab that was brought on to help the social media behemoth with “real-time insights and updates on emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world.”

Apparently, Free Thought Project was one of those threats and now the hemp industry is too.

Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council, so what, right? They can do whatever they want and hire outside third parties to help them police the platform they own, right? Yes, this is correct. However, the Atlantic Council is funded by government which makes this move especially insidious.

The Atlantic Council is the group that NATO uses to whitewash wars and foster hatred toward Russia, which in turn allows them to continue to justify themselves. It’s funded by arms manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. It is also funded by billionaire oligarchs like the Ukraine’s Victor Pinchuk and Saudi billionaire Bahaa Hariri.

The list goes on. The highly unethical HSBC group — who has been caught numerous times laundering money for cartels and terrorists — is listed as one of their top donors. They are also funded by the pharmaceutical industry, Google, the United States, the US Army, and the Airforce.

The “think tank” Facebook partnered with to make decisions on who they censor is directly funded by multiple state actors — including the United States — which voids any and all claims that Facebook is a wholly “private actor.”

Daniel McAdams@DanielLMcAdams

Oct 12, 2018

Replying to @caitoz @InmanAlex

The entity that is making censorship decisions for Facebook, as publicly announced, is the Atlantic Council, a partly US government-funded entity. At what point will the extremely tight ties between these companies and the US government end the "they are private" argument?

Daniel McAdams@DanielLMcAdams

Is this a private entity? pic.twitter.com/5oGABYjMqz

197

7:26 AM - Oct 12, 2018

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It gets worse.

The Atlantic Council wields massive influence over mainstream media too, which is why when this partnership was announced, no one in the mainstream press pointed it out as the Orwellian idea that it is. Instead, headlines such as “US think tank’s tiny lab helps Facebook battle fake social media(Reuters)” and “Facebook partners with Atlantic Council to improve election security (The Hill)” were put out to spin the fact that a NATO propaganda arm is now censoring the information Americans see on Facebook.

They have even been caught engaging in the creation of actual fake news and no one in the mainstream has called them out on it.

As Bryan MacDonald so aptly noted, some of the stuff the Atlantic Council itself gets away with serves to show its power over the mainstream media. For instance, when Ben Nimmo, a one-time NATO press officer, and Atlantic Council board member, himself ludicrously insisted grammar mistakes were “proof” that social media users critical of NATO were paid Kremlin trolls, and later when he smeared a British man by labeling him a Russian bot, the popular press didn’t bother to question whether he was a fit and proper person for Facebook to engage as a censor. Even after the victim appeared on Sky News to prove he was a real person. Thus, what should have been a warning of the dangers of DFR Lab was essentially ignored.

At the time, Nimmo, instead of apologizing, wrote “interesting to see the real face of Ian56789, rather than the David Gandy one, at last (referring to his Twitter avatar). Not a troll factory account. Rather, a pro-Kremlin troll(definition based on [sic&91; use of someone else’s picture, systematic use of Kremlin narratives, and repetitive abusive behaviour),”

WikiLeaks was the sole voice of reason, and challenged the lobbyist. “You literally produced, with money from weapons companies and dictatorships, a fake news story that spread all over the world, defaming a very British retiree, who wants to reduce arms company profits, as a Kremlin bot,” they wrote. “So who’s the paid troll?”

Ben Nimmo✔@benimmo

Apr 20, 2018

Interesting to see the real face of Ian56789, rather than the David Gandy one, at last. Not a troll factory account. Rather, a pro-Kremlin troll (definition based on use of someone else's picture, systematic use of Kremlin narratives, and repetitive abusive behaviour).

WikiLeaks✔@wikileaks

You literally produced, with money from weapons companies and dictatorships, a fake news story that spread all over the world, defaming a very British retiree, who wants to reduce arms company profits, as a Kremlin bot. So who's the paid troll?

2,319

4:31 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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This is the group Facebook is now taking direction from in regard to who is allowed to post information on their platform. The Atlantic Council has been proven to create fake news to slander people who have an antiwar stance in an effort to keep their pro-war weapons companies in the black. It is utter insanity. However, in today’s information war, it is to be expected.

However, unless we fight back in the form of sharing information deemed “wrong think” by the censors, this problem will only continue to get worse. We must continue to alert our fellow humans to this censorship before it becomes the norm. We must use this recent purge as our Streisand moment and turn this massive and blatant act of censorship around as a tool to expose the tyrants behind it.

So we pose the question to you... are you scared yet? Is it time to work together? Hemp Hookahzzz and CBDinstead think so. They've used this opportunity to show what the community is made of by joining Natural Healthy to spread the news to their fellow hemp accounts. Now THAT is what the media should be made of!

Do you believe in free thought and speech? SHARE THIS ARTICLE!

via Natural Healthy: Latest News

[robertawilliams]

Alt-Right Activists Thrust Silicon Valley Into Debate on Hate Speech

Even as it wrestles with its own diversity issues, Silicon Valley has become the reluctant arbiter of the line where free speech crosses into hate speech in the wake of the deadly protests in Charlottesville.

In an age where a lack of condemnation is tantamount to complicity, experts say tech firms have no choice but to disassociate from the alt-right, although as a growing number of tech companies cut off white nationalist groups from the platforms they use for communication, commerce, and content distribution, some have criticized the response as too little, too late.

Outcry after Trump defends Confederate monuments

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“There’s a very intimate history between internet service providers and white supremacist groups,” said Joan Donovan, media manipulation research lead at the Data & Society Research Institute. “There was plenty of warning that this stuff was being coordinated in their spaces,” she said, but tech companies initially resisted policing the activity.

Historically, Silicon Valley has presented itself on embracing diversity in all its forms, albeit for pragmatic rather than political reasons: Cutthroat competition for users and talent means that companies can’t afford to be exclusionary.

Tech companies are stumbling in the gap between “bro culture” and open-mindedness.

“The reason this is a heightened issue in technology is technology is much more heterogeneous — it’s all over the world,” said Dave Carvajal, CEO of a technology-focused recruiting firm.

“It’s this belief people have that the tech industry should be the most modern, the most cutting edge,” said Brian Kropp, HR Practice Leader at CEB (now Gartner). “It also has this promise of capturing what tomorrow is going to be like.”

But putting these egalitarian principles into practice hasn’t always been easy. Even before Charlottesville, companies have stumbled in the gap between “bro culture” and Silicon Valley’s self-image of open-mindedness.

Uber’s ouster of CEO Travis Kalanick shone an embarrassing spotlight on the ingrained misogyny at some firms, and Google’s recent firing of engineer James Damore, who argued in a widely distributed memo that women are biologically less well-suited for tech jobs, triggered accusations that the search giant is intolerant of conservative views.

“I think what’s happening is a lot of these kinds of deep-rooted issues are being brought to the surface because of the political theater that’s happening right now. It’s stirring up a lot of this,” Carvajal said.

The violence at a white nationalist rally that left one counter-protester dead and others injured has brought this tension into sharper focus.

“They’ve been pushing very hard on many of these issues. Now they’re at a point where they have to make really hard decisions... whether or not they stand up to all the values they’ve talked about and promoted,” Kropp said.

Some tech firms have been more receptive to curtailing alt-right activity than others, said Rashad Robinson, executive director of advocacy group Color of Change.

“A lot of them seem super-focused on terms of services and this idea of an open platform,” he said. “We hear things like they share our values… but at this time there’s not going to be an update to policy.”

Some of the challenges are logistical rather than ideological, since much of the enforcement can’t be automated. It takes humans making judgement calls, and the line between talk and action online isn’t always clear. “There hasn’t been a good model so far for policy around how to monitor or prevent certain amounts of content,” Donovan said.

Tech companies also don’t want to alienate potential customers or trigger a public relations backlash. According to Ted Marzilli, CEO of YouGov BrandIndex, consumer sentiment metrics for Facebook, Apple and GoDaddy reflected little change this week. “They’re not getting a lot of credit from consumers, but they’re not being punished, either,” he said.

This could embolden other Silicon Valley leaders to terminate alt-right and white nationalist business relationships, Marzilli said, even if it costs them. “These things are always a bit risky for companies from the perspective of dollars and cents,” he said.

Whether driven by a sense of moral obligation, concern about public perception or some combination of the two, last weekend’s violence seemed to be a wake-up call, Robinson said. “It’s certainly accelerated since Charlottesville,” he said of companies’ willingness to cut ties with white nationalist groups.

“They started to think about their role in promoting this kind of talk,” Donovan said. “One thing these platforms really understand about themselves is they don’t just allow speech to flow, they do the job of coordinating action… They saw that this kind of open unmoderated speech online produced violent effects.”

Source

http://nbcnews.com/business/business-news/alt-right-activists-thrust-silicon-valley-debate-hate-speech-n794576

[trendingnewsb]

The Reason Harvey Weinstein Is Just The Beginning

We’ve had little time to breathe since the revelation of Harvey Weinstein’s platinum dirtbag behavior. In just a few weeks, hundreds more have found the courage to speak out against various entertainment industry names like David Blaine, James Toback, Twiggy Ramirez, Terry Richardson, and the overall predatory beast that is Hollywood. Not to mention Screen Junkies creator Andy Signore, whose accusations came right at the same time as Weinstein’s. It appears the true monsters of October were sweaty film majors and guys who dress like vampiric nightclub owners — two groups which surprisingly happen to intersect:

Anyone paying attention knows that Harvey Weinstein’s behavior was documented for years prior to this. Similarly, you’ve no doubt watched the cringe-inducing 2013 interview wherein Barbara Walters dismisses stories of pedophilia from Corey Feldman, who first named his abusers all the way back in fucking 1993. Since then, Hollywood has spent more time failing to remake Godzilla than addressing this problem.

So if many of these accusations aren’t new to the public, why are people only now deciding to listen? Why did this suddenly become the month we exposed an industry so fraught with scandal that Variety now reads like a newspaper crime section?

I’ll go ahead and warn you now: It has to do with Trump.

Ugh. Yeah, I know, sorry.

But before we get to America’s inflaming boil of a president, I’d like to start at the heart of the story … which is obviously the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. A student there conducted a test in which he had subjects describe a situation in their lives when they felt either powerful or powerless. They would then carry out a specific task involving gambling or problem-solving. What they found was that when powerless-feeling people described their situation as “unjust,” they were far more likely to take big risks than those who had no perceived injustice. In other words, people who felt that life was unfair had a much grander “burn it to the fucking ground” attitude toward unrelated situations.

This is a long way of saying that everyone has a little John Wick in them (and not only because Keanu Reeves totally fucked all our mothers). If you feel cheated by a situation, you’re a little more inclined to show caution the door. There’s actually an extreme version of this called “post-traumatic embitterment disorder.” It’s when a person feels an injustice on their lives so hard that they seek retribution wherever they can get it. Slightly less extreme, people suffering PTSD from terrorist attacks or disasters will have a similar need to better the world around them to avoid future tragedy. Like how if you were really affected by The Day After Tomorrow, you might start a foundation to prevent Roland Emmerich from making more films.

So what I’m describing here is a psychological mindset in which something so unbelievably unfair happens that it triggers distress, a taste of nihilism, and the extreme desire for justice where you can take it.

Hey, did you know that Donald Trump has 30 movie and TV show credits to his name? Since the ’90s, anytime someone wants to film in one of his terrible properties, he insisted on getting a cameo. And thanks to his reality TV stardom, he’s as much an entertainer as a businessman. There are countless harrowing stories from Hollywood about working with Donald Trump. But more than that, Trump isn’t anything new for Hollywood, as Seth MacFarlane once pointed out on Twitter:

Stewie is right; Donald Trump’s personality is a bigger Hollywood staple than ignored poverty and improv theaters, down to the fact that he’s had countless sexual misconduct accusations pinned to him for the last three decades. And then he was elected president of the United States, taint-punching all probability like some perverse cosmic boxer.

Imagine how that must have felt if you personally knew Trump and watched him waft into the Oval Office. Your instinct would be to never let another powerful asshole get off easy again. But I bet you don’t have to imagine it.

See, we’ve all been plagued by our own personal Trumps — ghouls who seem to flow between every attempt at comeuppance. “The Trumps” even sounds like some kind of unstoppable grundle infliction to begin with. But I’m specifically talking about people who have harassed or abused others, only to move up the ranks. And that’s why, for a lot of us, Trump’s victory not only hurt on a political level, but a personal one. There have already been numerous articles about the low-level post-traumatic stress some people have potentially felt from last November, and the need to regain control that comes with those feelings. And I believe that’s the reason we’re now ready to listen, and why the entertainment industry (a place swarming with Trumps) was the first to begin its purge.

But we have to make sure it doesn’t stop there. Because as you well know, every industry has its Trump. It could be a groping engineer, racist librarian, or abusive sergeant — slippery human trash isn’t exclusive. And now that even the POTUS is a serial assaulter, never has it been a more important time to hold these people accountable.

Dave is on Twitter if you want to jam sometime.

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[itsnelkabelka]

Speech: Foreign Secretary Speech at Chatham House London Conference 2017

Good morning everybody,

It is fantastic to be here in this wonderful hotel, that I think that I opened or reopened. I opened many hotels across London in my time as Mayor and I definitely reopened this hotel at one stage and this is after all an example of the kind of infrastructure that you were just talking about Robin. It is an inspirational structure that was created many, many decades ago, over a hundred years ago, and it has been beautifully upgraded and it has stood the test of time and that is what I want to talk about this morning.

All you young, thrusting Chatham House types look far too dynamic to remember the early 1980s or indeed the late 1970s. Do you? I certainly do.

I remember being chilled to the marrow not just by the newspaper graphics, the hundreds of nuclear missiles trained on this country by the Warsaw Pact.

Scarier still were the attempts by the UK Government to reassure the population, the pamphlets and films that told you such things as how to build a fallout shelter.

You took several doors off their hinges and propped them up diagonally against a wall, reinforced by suitcases full of books, and then you were told to tune to Radio 4, where the contingency plan was to play endless re-runs of Just a Minute.

And there really was a time when British children knew all about the four-minute warnings, and the perils of radiation sickness, and we all read a book called Where the Wind Blows by Raymond Briggs, and brooded, as I did as a teenager, on the horror of those weapons.

For decades now that threat has seemed to vanish. It went with the end of the Cold War.

We don’t want it back.

That is why people are now watching with such interest – and the first stirrings of apprehension – the events in the Korean Peninsula.

Kim Jong Un has tested 19 missiles so far this year, and has conducted four of the six nuclear tests ever carried out by that country.

It is now widely accepted that Kim is coming closer to being able to launch a nuclear-armed ICBM at the continental United States.

I should stress that this has not only prompted outrage in America, but it is a prospect that has been unanimously condemned by Russia, by China, by the EU, to say nothing of the dismay of those quintessentially peaceable countries – Japan and South Korea.

It is this increased tempo of nuclear testing, coupled with florid outbursts of verbal belligerence, that have reawakened – even in this country – those forgotten fears.

The public can be forgiven for genuinely starting to wonder whether the nuclear sword of Damocles is once again held over the head of a trembling human race.

So now is perhaps a good moment, in a calm and dispassionate way, to take stock.

Before we reissue that old pamphlet called Protect and Survive, before we teach our kids how to hide under the desks or lay on stocks of baked beans or spam, let us look at the history of nuclear proliferation, how nuclear weapons have spread, and how we have collectively sought to contain their spread.

Back then, as now, most predictions were gloomy – and yet those gloomy predictions have been utterly confounded by events.

America was of course the first to use the bomb, in 1945; then the Soviet Union detonated a device at Semipalatinsk in 1949; then we were next, the UK, in 1952; then the French did their test in the Sahara in 1960.

At that point the then American presidential candidate, John F Kennedy, predicted that by 1964, within only four years, there would be ten, 15 or 20 nations that would acquire nuclear weapons.

As things have turned out, it is now almost 60 years after he issued his warning – and yes, the NPT has some notable non-signatories including India and Pakistan; and yet the number of nuclear-armed countries has yet to reach double figures.

This is on the face of it an absolutely astonishing statistic and an extraordinary achievement.

When you consider that every previous military development – from firearms to fighter jets – has spread among humanity like impetigo, you have to ask yourselves: why? Why have nuclear weapons been the great exception?

It can’t just be the kit. They can’t be so complex that only a handful of so-called advanced nations have the intellectual wherewithal to make them.

It is true that the process is laborious and highly expensive – but the basic technology is more than 70 years old and indeed has been taught in universities – if not schools – for decades, for generations.

The answer is partly that many countries wisely decided, after the war, that they were going to take shelter under the nuclear umbrella provided by the United Nations.

Nations in both Europe and in Asia opted for this protection, a commitment that must be rated one of the greatest contributions by America to the unprecedented epoch of peace and prosperity that we have all been living through.

I should observe that some European countries found themselves under a rival umbrella provided by the Soviet Union, though at that stage they had no choice in the matter.

And it was that American offer – that guarantee – that made possible the global consensus embodied by the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

By this treaty 191 countries came together to recognise the special role of the five existing nuclear powers, and also to insist that there should be no further dispersal of such weapons.

Nuclear technology would be made available to other countries, provided it was used exclusively for civilian purposes.

That was a great diplomatic achievement.

It was an effort in which the UK – as one of the leading upholders of the post-war rules based international order – played a crucial role.

[political content deleted]

That diplomacy has helped to make the world safer, more secure, more confident and therefore more prosperous.

It has helped avoid what might otherwise have been a Gadarene Rush to destruction, in which the world was turned into a great arena of Mexican stand-offs, a nuclear version of the final scene of Reservoir Dogs.

That far-sightedness is now needed more than ever, not only to keep the NPT, but also one of its most valuable complementary accords, the nuclear deal with Iran.

To grasp the importance of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, we should remember that just before it was signed in 2015, Iran had enough centrifuges and low-enriched uranium to be only months away from producing the essential material for at least one nuclear weapon.

Let us remember what the consequences would have been – for Iran and the world – if Tehran had gone down that road.

Never mind the response of Israel, or indeed the United States to the fact of nuclear weapons in the grip of the Iranians, a regime that has been capable of blood-curdling rhetoric about the mere existence of the “Zionist entity”.

A nuclear-armed Iran would have placed irresistible pressure on neighbouring countries to up the ante, and to trigger an arms race in what is already one of the most volatile regions of the world.

Imagine all those mutually contaminating sectarian, dynastic and internecine conflicts of the Middle East today. Then turn the dial, and add a nuclear arms race.

Think of the nightmare that deal has avoided.

It is a nightmare we can continue to avoid if we are sensible, if we show the same generosity and wisdom as the negotiators of the NPT.

And first and most important it is vital to understand that President Trump has not withdrawn from the JCPOA. He has not junked it.

He has continued to waive nuclear-related sanctions against Iran, and having spoken to some of the most influential figures on Capitol Hill – none of them fans of the Iranian regime – I have absolutely no doubt that with determination and courage the JCPOA can be preserved.

This is not just because the essential deal is in the interests of Western security – though it is – but because it is profoundly in the interests of the Iranian people.

This is a great nation, of 80 million people – two thirds of whom are under the age of 30.

They are highly educated, both men and women.

They watch Youtube; they dance to music videos, even if it is in the privacy of their own home.

They use and understand technology and they are bursting with a capitalist and entrepreneurial spirit.

If we can show them that they are welcome in the great global market-place of ideas and innovation then, in time, a very different relationship is possible with the modern heirs, of what is after all, one of the greatest of all ancient civilisations.

That is the possibility the JCPOA holds open - not just averting a perilous and debilitating arms race, but ending the long and largely self-imposed exclusion of Iran from the global mainstream that so many millions of Iranians yearn to join.

Of course, we in the UK, we share with our American friends and with many of our allies – in Europe and across the Middle East – their legitimate concern over the disruptive behaviour of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in countries hundreds of miles from their borders.

It is simply provocative and dangerous that Iran has supplied tens of thousands of rockets and missiles to Hizbollah in Lebanon - weapons that are even now pointing at Israel - but whose use would bring the most destructive retaliation not upon Iran – the responsible party – but upon the people of Lebanon.

It is no conceivable benefit to the tormented people of Yemen that Iran should be supplying missiles that Houthi rebels use routinely to strike targets in Saudi Arabia; behaviour which alas can only strengthen the convictions of those in the region who believe they have no choice but to respond to Iran’s actions.

And frankly it’s astonishing that the Iranians – who rightly complain that the world looked the other way when they suffered so tragically from the chemical weapons deployed by Saddam Hussein in the 1980s – should even now be abetting and concealing the crimes of Bashar al-Asad who has used the same methods against his own people.

So I think it’s right that we should join with our American friends and allies to counter this kind of behaviour wherever possible.

But that does not mean for one minute that we should write Iran off, or that we should refuse to engage with Iran or that we should show disrespect to its people.

On the contrary, we should continue to work to demonstrate to that population in Iran that they will be better off under this deal and the path of re-engagement that it prescribes.

And that is the model – of toughness but engagement, each reinforcing the other – that we should have at the front of our mind as we try to resolve the tensions in the Korean Peninsula.

It is right that Rex Tillerson has specifically opened the door to dialogue.

He has tried to give some sensible reassurances to the regime, to enable them to take up this offer.

Remember the four Noes – that have been offered by the South Korean president and reinforced by the US Secretary of State.

No seeking regime change in North Korea; No seeking to force the collapse of North Korea’s regime; No seeking to deploy US forces beyond the 38th parallel; No attempt to accelerate the reunification of Korea.

These are the commitments that we hope will encourage Kim Jong Un to halt his nuclear weapons programme, to come to the negotiating table, and thereby to take the only path that can guarantee the security of the region as a whole. You will often hear it said that in weighing up those options Kim must bear in mind the woeful precedents of those who disarmed.

Of Libya, where the leader listened to the blandishments of the West and gave up his nuclear weapons programme – only to be overthrown with Western connivance.

Or of Ukraine, which actually surrendered its nuclear arsenal, only to suffer the first forcible loss of territory in Europe since 1945.

It is therefore suggested that Kim would be sealing his own fate if he were to comply.

I reject those analogies.

What finished Gaddafi was an uprising of his own people, including on the streets of Tripoli.

Even if he had been able to perfect a nuclear arsenal in time, and even if it is true he had a justified reputation for mercurial and unpredictable behaviour, it seems unlikely that he would have decided to nuke his own capital – including himself.

As survival strategies go, that would have been eccentric even by his own standards.

As for Ukraine, the fundamental difference is that no one, not South Korea nor any other neighbour, has any designs on the national territory of North Korea.

And the crucial question Kim Jong Un surely needs to ask himself is whether his current activities are making Pyongyang any safer for himself and his regime.

No one, I’m sure no one in this room, certainly no one in the UK or around the world wants any kind of military solution to the problem. No one actively desires that outcome.

But Kim Jong Un and the world need to understand that when the 45th President of the United States contemplates a regime led by a man who not only threatens to reduce New York to “ashes”, but who stands on the verge of acquiring the power to make good on his threat, I am afraid that the US President – whoever he or she might be – will have an absolute duty to prepare any option to keep safe not only the American people but all those who have sheltered under the American nuclear umbrella.

And I hope Kim will also consider this: that if his objective is to intimidate the US into wholesale withdrawal from East Asia, then it strikes me that his current course might almost be designed to produce the opposite effect.

Already President Moon of South Korea – hitherto seen as one of the political leaders most open to engagement with the North – is installing the US-made THAAD missile defences.

And in Japan and South Korea it is easy to imagine the growth of domestic pressure for those governments to take further steps to protect their own populations from a nuclear North Korea.

In short Pyongyang faces the same dilemma as Tehran:

By continuing to develop nuclear capabilities Kim risks provoking a reaction in the region that is at once defensive and competitive, that reduces not increases his security and therefore reduces not increases the survival chances of the regime.

And therefore I hope that Kim will see that it is no part of Juche – his family doctrine of national self-reliance – nor is it in his interest of national security to end up with an escalation of America’s military presence in East Asia, let alone to run risks that could imperil his regime.

And until he understands that I am afraid that we have no choice collectively but to step up the pressure on Pyongyang.

It is one of the most encouraging developments this year that the UN Security Council – with the strong support of the UK - has unanimously passed three resolutions to tighten the economic ligature around the regime.

When I joined a debate on North Korea in the Security Council earlier this year, I was struck by the unaccustomed absence of discord.

For the first time the Chinese have agreed to impose strict limits on the export of oil to North Korea, which until now was taboo.

There has been an unmistakable change in Chinese policy, and that is warmly to be welcomed.

In his speech to the 19th Party Congress last week, President Xi hailed China’s standing as a world power

And I would say there is no more urgent problem for China to address – nor any where Beijing has greater influence – than the threat to international security represented by the behaviour of North Korea.

There is also unprecedented discussion between China and the US on how to handle this crisis, a closeness, by the way, that I believe bodes well for the world; and I should again pay tribute to my colleague Rex Tillerson for his efforts.

Whatever we may think of the regime and its behaviour, the ruling elite of North Korea is in the end composed of human beings.

We must find ways of getting through to them, and at the same time not just toughening the sanctions regime but enforcing those already in place; and in this respect again, the Chinese hold the key.

This is the moment for North Korea’s regime to change course – and if they do the world can show that it is once again capable of the diplomatic imagination that produced the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty – arduously negotiated – and that after 12 years of continuous effort produced the JCPOA nuclear deal with Iran.

It will not be easy, but the costs of failure could be catastrophic.

We cannot dis-invent nuclear weapons or wish them away; and the events on the Korean Peninsula are the clearest possible rejoinder to those [political content deleted] who say that we should unilaterally cast aside our nuclear weapons.

To wield a nuclear deterrent, as this country does, is neither easy nor cheap; indeed it imposes a huge responsibility on this country.

We are one of the handful specifically recognised by the NPT to possess such dreadful weapons, and we do so not just in the name of our own security but – via NATO – for the protection of dozens of our allies.

And by holding that stockpile – a minimum stockpile, I should say, which has been reduced by half since its Cold War peak – we play our part in deterring the ambitions of rogue states.

It is 25 years since the end of the Cold War, and a new generation has grown up with no memory of the threat of a nuclear winter, and little education in the appalling logic of mutually assured destruction.

Hiroshima, Nagasaki. Their destruction, the full horror of what took place is now literally fading from living memory.

When people like Alun Chalfont drew up the NPT, those horrors were still fresh in the hearts of the world.

We must not be so forgetful or so complacent as to require a new lesson in what these weapons can do, or the price of failing to limit their spread.

The NPT is one of the great diplomatic achievements of the last century. It has stood the test of time.

In its restraint and its maturity it shows an unexpected wisdom on the part of humanity, and almost evolutionary instinct for the survival of the species.

It is the job of our generation now to preserve that agreement, and British diplomacy will be at the forefront of the endeavour.

Thank you all very much for your attention.

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By: Elias J. Atienza

Milo Yiannopoulos was riding high at the start of February. Communist rioters and student protests prompted the University of Berkeley to cancel his speech, helping propel Milo even further into the mainstream. His book, aptly titled “Dangerous”, shot to be Amazon’s number one bestseller despite it not being published yet and just last week, he was invited to be a keynote speaker at CPAC, one of the most prestigious conservative gatherings in the United States.

But now in the wake of comments he made on two different podcasts about pedophilia, his book has been canceled, his invitation to CPAC was rescinded, and he has resigned from his senior editing role at Breitbart News. All of which forced him  to do something Tuesday, that he had never done before; apologize.

So, how did Milo rise from relative obscurity to become one of the most controversial and polarizing commentators of today? How did a man who used to debate feminists on British programming become such a rising star in the United States? And how did he fall so quickly?

Milo was relatively obscure in the United States until Gamergate. Before then, he was a tech writer focusing on start-ups and editing The Kernel a European tech journalism outlet.

Gamergate is how Milo began writing in Breitbart. He slammed the response from what he called an “army of sociopathic feminist programmers and campaigners” to gamer’s complaints about a lot of things. It’s here where he began his crusade against political correctness and what he claimed were leftist control of important institutions such as the media and universities. From here, his rise was inevitable because he was everything the left claimed to protect (besides his skin color); he was gay, a religious minority (ethnically Jewish), and an immigrant.

In a year  he was made Breitbart’s tech editor, a section that talked more about politics and campus culture than its title. He became one of the most recognizable faces of Breitbart alongside former CEO Steve Bannon and former editor at large Ben Shapiro.

His style of writing was provocative and aimed at combating everything the left portrayed. His style was not new, as he had called someone at Wired a “bitch” five years prior, but it captivated a growing audience on Breitbart and with the election in full swing, his exposure and celebrity only grew.

His columns are usually geared towards feminism, Islam, liberals, and college campuses. He called his birthday “World Patriarchy Day,” said that in order to make women happy you need to remove the pill and the washing machine, along with other provocative articles that made the left squirm and cringe. His point is to attack the “Cultural Marxism” prevalent on institutions such as college campuses.

But what made him even more famous (or infamous) was his “Dangerous Faggot Tour” which he embarked on in late 2015. Stretching all across the United States, from DePaul University to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, he spoke topics relevant in our current political environment. It was met with loud protests, often disruptive and on the verge of violent (with UC Berkeley and the University of Washington tipping into the violent categories), which gathered him even more attention. And it wasn’t even the content of his speeches that made him famous; it was the response.

At Rutgers, feminists rubbed blood on themselves in protest. DePaul, where students threatened him physically and disrupted his speech. UCLA, where students blocked the entrance to the event. UMass, where the infamous “TrigglyPuff” appeared and was widely mocked on the internet. And the most infamous one, UC Berkeley, where rioters caused $100,000 in damages while propelling Milo to the national stage once again.

It caused a cultural shift of a kind, as free speech protection became more and more of a topic discussed on campuses. Robust free speech protections were proposed and the University of Chicago even sent out a letter affirming their support for free speech on their campus and disdain for safe spaces and trigger warnings. It is not a coincidence that the fight for free speech gained steam as he began his tours.

I wrote on this for my local newspaper:

“But most importantly, Yiannopoulos has become a symbol of the fight for free speech. Time and time again, liberal and progressive groups have tried to shut down his speech, further ensuring that he gains more and more support. Every time a brick is lifted against Milo, every time a protest gets violent, every time a cowardly mob blocks people from trying to hear his words, he wins.”

His tour also caused some division among libertarians. The Young Americans for Liberty, which is the largest libertarian organization on college campuses, was embroidered in this division when the UC Santa Barbara YAL chapter hosted Milo back in May. It has since been cleared up, but there remains an underlying of unease among libertarians in regards to Milo; some hate him, some love him, and people like myself, often find themselves in the middle of the road.

It is also not a coincidence that the rise of the alt-right and of Milo happened at the same time. Though Milo is not a part of the alt-right, he is not their enemy (nor their friend in some cases). In March last year, he and Allum Bokhari wrote a long profile exploring their origin and rise, along with the different intellectual strains of the alt-right such as Richard Spencer’s brand that has gotten much media attention lately. It is also not a surprise that Steve Bannon, the former CEO of Breitbart told Mother Jones in a July interview that “[Breitbart] [is]the platform for the alt-right.”

Hillary Clinton referenced his work during a campaign speech on the alt-right, which gained him even more attention. His career was boosted by the responses by liberals who did not react with reason, but with vitriol and emotional idiocy such as calling him a racist, white supremacist, lesbophobic, and transphobic. His support for Donald Trump lifted him up in the eyes of his supporters, while Hillary Clinton’s gaze brought him much more fame than she could have ever anticipated.

So what caused his fall? Despite vehement opposition from the left and a mere toleration from the establishment right, what caused Milo’s star to come crashing down so quickly? What caused his book to be unpublished, CPAC to distance themselves from him, and his resignation from Breitbart? 

It was not the left who caused his downfall. It was the right. Specifically The Blaze. It was TheBlaze who first posted his comments talking about pedophilia in an article that was quickly picked up (the video itself) by the mainstream media. It was The Blaze’s Matt Walsh who wrote an article, on why conservatives needed to defend principles and not personalities. And despite backlash from Milo’s fans along with Milo’s defense, Walsh stood firm in his condemnation of Milo.

He writes:

“As far as Milo is concerned, he’s obviously a disturbed person with a troubled past. Part of his child abuse advocacy stems from him attempting to rationalize his own abuse. I pray he gets the help he needs. But in the meantime, he is not equipped nor qualified to be a spokesman for the conservative cause. He never was. He was always a spokesman for his own cause, his own cult, and even before his foray into pederasty-promoting, his cult never had very much to do with anything resembling conservatism. Sure, he believes in free speech, I guess, but that’s the easy part. The more crucial point is what we do with that speech. As conservatives, our goal is to use our free speech to promote the cause of truth — especially moral truth. Milo was never an effective advocate in that regard, and never really tried to be.”

And of course Milo has responded back.

He said in a Facebook post: “I do not support pedophilia. Period. It is a vile and disgusting crime, perhaps the very worst. There are selectively edited videos doing the rounds, as part of a coordinated effort to discredit me from establishment Republicans, that suggest I am soft on the subject.

In addition, the National Review published two separate articles attacking Milo as well, such as David French writing that if “Milo’s the poster boy for free speech, then free speech will lose.” In addition, the Review’s editorial board called his invitation to CPAC a “disgrace.”

They write:

“On Monday morning, the ACU cited those recordings as its reason for rescinding Yiannopoulos’s invitation. But that Yiannopoulos did not have a place at CPAC, or at any forum that describes itself as “conservative,” should have been obvious from the start. Instead, the ACU put conservatives in a no-win situation. Had they permitted him to speak, it would have been considered a tacit endorsement of his opinions. Now, having rescinded his invitation, CPAC will be portrayed by Yiannopoulos’s many fans as one more organ of leftist-style speech-policing. Whatever happens later this week, CPAC has diminished true conservatism’s appeal.”

It is the classic battle between the new populist conservatism and the old guard conservatism and Milo was caught right in the middle of it. Of course, Milo will take advantage of it and it will help him in the long run. How? Because Milo can claim that the establishment Republicans are out to get him, which he has already done. But it does not dismiss the fact that the old guard of the conservative movement still has a lot of bite, a bite it used to help in Milo’s current free fall.

I would recommend Philip DeFranco’s breakdown of the whole controversy.

I am not going to defend or attack Milo in any regard and I’ve tried not to in this article. However, it is not astonishing to see someone rise and fall so quickly. It happens all the time. Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Mark Sanford, but it is how they bounce back which remains to be seen.

Milo is in a better position than most people to recover. He has an adoring fan base that has responded to him well, backed him up, and promise to keep supporting him. In his press conference he vowed to continue to speak on live tours similar to his “Dangerous Faggot” Tour along with hinting that his book may still be published by another publisher. He also announced he would be starting an independent media venture, which he has experience with, (The Kernel earlier this decade), and he would continue to fight. He has options, a lot better options than most people who are accused of this kind of thing have.

Milo is a fighter, no matter what side you are on. You have to admire his tenacity in the face of this kind of adversity, where both the right and left are after him. Once more, I will not attempt to defend or attack Milo in regard to his comments or his political views. But I will acknowledge his defense of free speech on college campuses along with his rise and fall.

The question now is Milo’s legacy. Will he regain his prominence? Or will he drift once more into obscurity, back to bickering with feminists on British television again? Only time will tell.

 EDITOR’s NOTE: The views expressed are those of the author and are not representative of The Libertarian Republic.

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The post The Rise and Fall of Milo: Will He Recover? appeared first on The Libertarian Republic.

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Your favorite hemp brands and companies may go missing from Facebook! However, can Facebook really be used as a place to obtain honest unbiased information anymore? It would seem if you have a differing opinion you better not say it, less you risk your social media, payment processors and entire existence online be taken from you.

Youtubers of all shapes and sizes have been falling risk to censorship lately. Since the recent deplatforming of TheRalphRetort (now located at stream.me) and their #1 late night show the #Killstream, twitter has been a mess of deep dives and deletion with the assumption that only one side would face censorship, but as we all knew would happen, that isn't the case. Now creators like MumkeyJones have been removed from the platform for his dark humor surrounding killer Elliot Rodger, which leaves creators questioning how can someone just delete history? Mumkey  had two channels deleted from the platform, the final nail in his coffin being a private, never before seen video.This leaves many with concerns and nowhere to place them. What is grounds for censorship? How can we prevent ourselves from being completely deleted across social media platforms simply for disagreeing with or posing an opposing opinion of someone with a bigger voice?

It's been said as a private platform, Youtube can do whatever they'd like.in terms of censorship. However if Google runs the ads all across the internet, how would their censorship be considered a fair practice under federal law? It's been said "if you don't like it, create your own platform."

Okay, even if the mass of the internet came together to collect the funds needed to host the space needed for an unlimited upload platform, it doesn't automatically compare. For example, creators don't get seen unless you already know about them and businesses have no one else to advertise to.

The best way to explain this concept is to imagine Youtube as an island. If you don't like the rules of their island, you can leave and buy your own island. 

Okay, but islands are expensive and even if I buy my own island, I'm still alone on my island. I don't need an island, I just want a banner on that island because all of the people are already on that island. If you burn my banner and kick me off the island, that isn't fair, because I can't talk to those people on that island... even if they want to hear me.

Natural Healthy CBD has been warning others about the impending censorship since last year when their payment processor was shut down and their youtube deleted. They knew it was only time before it would begin happening to others but luckily, people have begun to notice the island starting itself on fire.

Natural Healthy CBD (@CBDHealthy on twitter) has always been a compete together not against each other platform. If you are a hardworking, lab tested CBD hemp provider they will allow you a chance to sell with their platform with proper lab testing, which can be rather lucrative,  which is why they're often partnered and silenced first. Platforms find concern with businesses that stand for free speech, especially those as connected with as many influencers, celebrities, and businesses as Natural Healthy. That said, now that their facebook and their brand Hemperpedic's facebook has been deleted along with their main instagram, which means it's about to happen to all of us again. 

Sadly it's been happening as seen in this article on the Free Thought Project:

Because government is the antithesis to freedom, industrial hemp has been banned nationwide since 1937 ostensibly due to the plant’s similarities to marijuana. Many have speculated that this move was also due to the fact that cannabis is in direct competition with the pharmaceutical industry by providing far safer alternative treatments as wel. However, all this changed this month after President Donald Trump signed the Agriculture Improvement act of 2018, legalizing industrial hemp on a national scale.

Industrial hemp is once again legal in all 50 states but its legalization has set off a new disturbing trend. In a move that appears to be a give away to big pharma, Facebook has begun banning hemp pages.

Just as the farm bill was passed by the House and Senate earlier this month, the page for hemp grower “Franny’s Farmacy” was banned.

“We had that up for about the first month, got a few thousand followers, it was great, it was really driving sales, then it disappeared,” co-owner Franny Tacy said.

The reason Facebook gave them for banning their hemp page was utterly bogus too. The social media giant claimed that Franny was “Promoting the sale of prescription pharmaceuticals.”

“Being an ex-pharmaceutical rep, there is no way we posted anything that violates Facebook’s terms of service,” says Tacy. “We make no claims, we make no recommendations … but we do use the words hemp and CBD and those seem to be becoming trigger words as well.”

Days after being banned, Franny started a new page which began amassing new followers, but after just four days, it was taken down too. This time, Facebook accused Franny and Jeff Tacy of “encouraging drug use.” They sell no drugs whatsoever.

But Franny’s hemp page was not the only victim to Facebook’s give away to the pharmaceutical industry in the name of suppressing the legal sale of hemp. This week, the page for the Carolina Hemp Company was also unpublished. they were given the exact same reason: “promoting the sale of prescription pharmaceuticals.”

Page admin Brian Bullman noted that they have never made any claims which could be interpreted as such. What’s more is the fact that they are a hemp company — not a pharmaceutical company — and they sell no pharmaceuticals at all.

“The stated reason should be of concern,” Bullman wrote. “Our curators do an exceptional job of making sure our content is clean and void of claims. CHC also tends to sell mostly non-isolate products not only due to the superior performance, but also to avoid the possibility of infringing on a pharmaceutical model under the current unfolding conditions as stated by the FDA’S non-binding statement/interpretation.”

Highlighting the sheer insanity of Facebook’s bogus claims is the fact that pages like Pfizer — who actually do promote the use of dangerous pharmaceuticals — are still thriving. For those who may be unaware, Pfizer is the company behind the drug Chantix (prescribed to people to quit smoking) which has been shown by the FDA to have caused thousands of serious injuries and dozens of deaths. Meanwhile, no one in the history of cannabis has ever died from its use.

But Pfizer’s ability to promote deadly drugs on Facebook’s platform — while those who promote hemp are banned — should come as no surprise to those who have been paying attention. As TFTP reported in October, after we were banned, Facebook joined with the Atlantic Council which is directly funded and made up of groups tied to the pharmaceutical industry as well as the military industrial complex, and even government itself.

In fact, Pfizer’s Director for Advocacy and Professional Relations, Mia Masten, is a member.

As Facebook continues to crackdown on folks who promote peace, healthy lifestyles, and sustainable alternatives to deadly medicines, they are showing their true colors — as well as their true masters. To those who don’t know how deep the Atlantic Council’s tentacles reach into all things tyranny, war, and corporatocracy, below is an eye opening short video that explains it.

As TFTP previously reported, in May, after Americans were successfully whipped into a tizzy of Russian hacking and meddling, along with the fake news hysteria, the Americans begging for censorship craze came to a head when Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council.

Facebook announced that it partnered with the arm of the council, known as the Digital Forensic Research Lab that was brought on to help the social media behemoth with “real-time insights and updates on emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world.”

Apparently, Free Thought Project was one of those threats and now the hemp industry is too.

Facebook partnered with the Atlantic Council, so what, right? They can do whatever they want and hire outside third parties to help them police the platform they own, right? Yes, this is correct. However, the Atlantic Council is funded by government which makes this move especially insidious.

The Atlantic Council is the group that NATO uses to whitewash wars and foster hatred toward Russia, which in turn allows them to continue to justify themselves. It’s funded by arms manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing. It is also funded by billionaire oligarchs like the Ukraine’s Victor Pinchuk and Saudi billionaire Bahaa Hariri.

The list goes on. The highly unethical HSBC group — who has been caught numerous times laundering money for cartels and terrorists — is listed as one of their top donors. They are also funded by the pharmaceutical industry, Google, the United States, the US Army, and the Airforce.

The “think tank” Facebook partnered with to make decisions on who they censor is directly funded by multiple state actors — including the United States — which voids any and all claims that Facebook is a wholly “private actor.”

Daniel McAdams@DanielLMcAdams

Oct 12, 2018

Replying to @caitoz @InmanAlex

The entity that is making censorship decisions for Facebook, as publicly announced, is the Atlantic Council, a partly US government-funded entity. At what point will the extremely tight ties between these companies and the US government end the "they are private" argument?

Daniel McAdams@DanielLMcAdams

Is this a private entity? pic.twitter.com/5oGABYjMqz

197

7:26 AM - Oct 12, 2018

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It gets worse.

The Atlantic Council wields massive influence over mainstream media too, which is why when this partnership was announced, no one in the mainstream press pointed it out as the Orwellian idea that it is. Instead, headlines such as “US think tank’s tiny lab helps Facebook battle fake social media(Reuters)” and “Facebook partners with Atlantic Council to improve election security (The Hill)” were put out to spin the fact that a NATO propaganda arm is now censoring the information Americans see on Facebook.

They have even been caught engaging in the creation of actual fake news and no one in the mainstream has called them out on it.

As Bryan MacDonald so aptly noted, some of the stuff the Atlantic Council itself gets away with serves to show its power over the mainstream media. For instance, when Ben Nimmo, a one-time NATO press officer, and Atlantic Council board member, himself ludicrously insisted grammar mistakes were “proof” that social media users critical of NATO were paid Kremlin trolls, and later when he smeared a British man by labeling him a Russian bot, the popular press didn’t bother to question whether he was a fit and proper person for Facebook to engage as a censor. Even after the victim appeared on Sky News to prove he was a real person. Thus, what should have been a warning of the dangers of DFR Lab was essentially ignored.

At the time, Nimmo, instead of apologizing, wrote “interesting to see the real face of Ian56789, rather than the David Gandy one, at last (referring to his Twitter avatar). Not a troll factory account. Rather, a pro-Kremlin troll(definition based on [sic&91; use of someone else’s picture, systematic use of Kremlin narratives, and repetitive abusive behaviour),”

WikiLeaks was the sole voice of reason, and challenged the lobbyist. “You literally produced, with money from weapons companies and dictatorships, a fake news story that spread all over the world, defaming a very British retiree, who wants to reduce arms company profits, as a Kremlin bot,” they wrote. “So who’s the paid troll?”

Ben Nimmo✔@benimmo

Apr 20, 2018

Interesting to see the real face of Ian56789, rather than the David Gandy one, at last. Not a troll factory account. Rather, a pro-Kremlin troll (definition based on use of someone else's picture, systematic use of Kremlin narratives, and repetitive abusive behaviour).

WikiLeaks✔@wikileaks

You literally produced, with money from weapons companies and dictatorships, a fake news story that spread all over the world, defaming a very British retiree, who wants to reduce arms company profits, as a Kremlin bot. So who's the paid troll?

2,319

4:31 AM - Apr 21, 2018

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This is the group Facebook is now taking direction from in regard to who is allowed to post information on their platform. The Atlantic Council has been proven to create fake news to slander people who have an antiwar stance in an effort to keep their pro-war weapons companies in the black. It is utter insanity. However, in today’s information war, it is to be expected.

However, unless we fight back in the form of sharing information deemed “wrong think” by the censors, this problem will only continue to get worse. We must continue to alert our fellow humans to this censorship before it becomes the norm. We must use this recent purge as our Streisand moment and turn this massive and blatant act of censorship around as a tool to expose the tyrants behind it.

So we pose the question to you... are you scared yet? Is it time to work together? Hemp Hookahzzz and CBDinstead think so. They've used this opportunity to show what the community is made of by joining Natural Healthy to spread the news to their fellow hemp accounts. Now THAT is what the media should be made of!

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The Reason Harvey Weinstein Is Just The Beginning

We’ve had little time to breathe since the revelation of Harvey Weinstein’s platinum dirtbag behavior. In just a few weeks, hundreds more have found the courage to speak out against various entertainment industry names like David Blaine, James Toback, Twiggy Ramirez, Terry Richardson, and the overall predatory beast that is Hollywood. Not to mention Screen Junkies creator Andy Signore, whose accusations came right at the same time as Weinstein’s. It appears the true monsters of October were sweaty film majors and guys who dress like vampiric nightclub owners — two groups which surprisingly happen to intersect:

Anyone paying attention knows that Harvey Weinstein’s behavior was documented for years prior to this. Similarly, you’ve no doubt watched the cringe-inducing 2013 interview wherein Barbara Walters dismisses stories of pedophilia from Corey Feldman, who first named his abusers all the way back in fucking 1993. Since then, Hollywood has spent more time failing to remake Godzilla than addressing this problem.

So if many of these accusations aren’t new to the public, why are people only now deciding to listen? Why did this suddenly become the month we exposed an industry so fraught with scandal that Variety now reads like a newspaper crime section?

I’ll go ahead and warn you now: It has to do with Trump.

Ugh. Yeah, I know, sorry.

But before we get to America’s inflaming boil of a president, I’d like to start at the heart of the story … which is obviously the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. A student there conducted a test in which he had subjects describe a situation in their lives when they felt either powerful or powerless. They would then carry out a specific task involving gambling or problem-solving. What they found was that when powerless-feeling people described their situation as “unjust,” they were far more likely to take big risks than those who had no perceived injustice. In other words, people who felt that life was unfair had a much grander “burn it to the fucking ground” attitude toward unrelated situations.

This is a long way of saying that everyone has a little John Wick in them (and not only because Keanu Reeves totally fucked all our mothers). If you feel cheated by a situation, you’re a little more inclined to show caution the door. There’s actually an extreme version of this called “post-traumatic embitterment disorder.” It’s when a person feels an injustice on their lives so hard that they seek retribution wherever they can get it. Slightly less extreme, people suffering PTSD from terrorist attacks or disasters will have a similar need to better the world around them to avoid future tragedy. Like how if you were really affected by The Day After Tomorrow, you might start a foundation to prevent Roland Emmerich from making more films.

So what I’m describing here is a psychological mindset in which something so unbelievably unfair happens that it triggers distress, a taste of nihilism, and the extreme desire for justice where you can take it.

Hey, did you know that Donald Trump has 30 movie and TV show credits to his name? Since the ’90s, anytime someone wants to film in one of his terrible properties, he insisted on getting a cameo. And thanks to his reality TV stardom, he’s as much an entertainer as a businessman. There are countless harrowing stories from Hollywood about working with Donald Trump. But more than that, Trump isn’t anything new for Hollywood, as Seth MacFarlane once pointed out on Twitter:

Stewie is right; Donald Trump’s personality is a bigger Hollywood staple than ignored poverty and improv theaters, down to the fact that he’s had countless sexual misconduct accusations pinned to him for the last three decades. And then he was elected president of the United States, taint-punching all probability like some perverse cosmic boxer.

Imagine how that must have felt if you personally knew Trump and watched him waft into the Oval Office. Your instinct would be to never let another powerful asshole get off easy again. But I bet you don’t have to imagine it.

See, we’ve all been plagued by our own personal Trumps — ghouls who seem to flow between every attempt at comeuppance. “The Trumps” even sounds like some kind of unstoppable grundle infliction to begin with. But I’m specifically talking about people who have harassed or abused others, only to move up the ranks. And that’s why, for a lot of us, Trump’s victory not only hurt on a political level, but a personal one. There have already been numerous articles about the low-level post-traumatic stress some people have potentially felt from last November, and the need to regain control that comes with those feelings. And I believe that’s the reason we’re now ready to listen, and why the entertainment industry (a place swarming with Trumps) was the first to begin its purge.

But we have to make sure it doesn’t stop there. Because as you well know, every industry has its Trump. It could be a groping engineer, racist librarian, or abusive sergeant — slippery human trash isn’t exclusive. And now that even the POTUS is a serial assaulter, never has it been a more important time to hold these people accountable.

Dave is on Twitter if you want to jam sometime.

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