Month: July 2018

Lindsey Graham Inside Turkish Occupied North Syria: US Pullout Would Be “Terrible”

A certain outspoken pro regime change interventionist and neocon hawk from South Carolina must have heard that the war in Syria is winding down.

No doubt he spit out his coffee mid-gulp when reading a recent Washington Post headline declaring, “The world learns to live with Assad in Syria” set just above an image of the Syrian president with the bold-faced type, Here To Stay.

Senator Lindsey Graham inside northern Syria on Monday. Via “SMM Syria”

So what was Senator Lindsey Graham to do?

Naturally, he popped up in Northern Syria early this week, where he made a surprise visit to Manbij (near government-held Aleppo) to declare before cameras that a premature US troop withdrawal would be “terrible”. 

In a video of the brief trip which also included Senator Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Graham is shown speaking with local US-backed forces, assuring them he would tell President Trump that it’s “important we stay here and help you, you are friends of the US and if we leave it will be terrible, I will tell the story of Manbij to my colleagues, it is a place of hope in a region that needs hope.”

Though leaders of local Kurdish forces (the Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF) smiled for the camera, it is unclear what their real feelings on the high level delegation might have been, as just days prior Graham met with Turkish President President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and said after the meeting, “Turkey needs to be a strategic partner for the US in a win-win fashion.”

Of course, it is Erdogan’s Turkey who early this year invaded Syrian Kurdish towns and villages in months-long swift military action it dubbed ‘Operation Olive Branch’ — killing untold numbers of men, women, and children, resulting in hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing their homes. 

Even the Associated Press has recently painted a picture of what amounts to ethnic cleansing and a deliberate campaign of demographic engineering carried out by the Turks: “Turkey is growing long-term roots in northern Syria, building up an enclave on the model of its own towns. Turkish is taught in some schools and teachers are paid by Ankara,” according to the AP report.

US forces which “partner” with Syrian Kurds have given a de facto stamp of approval to Turkish occupation:

After Turkish forces annexed Afrin Canton, Kurdish leaders called on the world “to stop cultural and political genocide against our society” at a moment when Turkish-backed FSA groups were openly vowing ethnic cleansing against Syrian Kurdish minorities.

And surely not lost on Syrian Kurdish leaders in Manbij is the fact that on the same day of Senator Graham’s visit the official US coalition spokesman tweeted the following in praise of ongoing joint US-Turkish occupation patrols in Manbij:

As we recently explained, Syrian Kurdish groups are drifting into further negotiations and quiet de facto cooperation with Damascus at a time when the US is increasingly seen as throwing their Kurdish proxies under the bus after acquiescing last month to Erdogan’s demands that Kurdish fighters withdraw from Manbij. 

Syrian Kurdish leaders were enraged by the agreement, which allows for US and Turkish forces to patrol the northern Syrian city — though the Syrian Kurdish SDF wrested the city from ISIS in a major 2016 offensive.

In the midst of talks leading to the US-Turkey agreement for armed Kurdish withdrawal, Turkey’s foreign minister called the YPG a “terrorist organization” which “cannot have any role in any city” (the YPG is the core component of the US-backed SDF).

Turkish forces now occupy what the AP has identified as “over more than 4,000 square kilometers (1,500 square miles) of Syrian territory” and with “almost a quarter of Syria’s population… under Turkish control indirectly or directly — including 3.6 million refugees in Turkey, around 600,000 people living in the enclave [of Turkish controlled northern Syria].”

Meanwhile, Trump has again voiced his desire that US troops should withdrawal from Syria, reportedly discussing the issue with Jordan’s King Abdullah in a closed door meeting last week. 

Apparently, Lindsey Graham is making a last, desperate attempt to ensure US pullout doesn’t happen, but likely his Syrian Kurdish hosts know the writing is on the wall: as “partner” US forces give a de facto stamp of approval to brutal Turkish occupation, the YPG and other groups will have no choice but to enter under Assad’s umbrella. 

No doubt, all of this likely made Sen. Graham’s visit incredibly awkward. He should probably go home and not return again. 

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Mythbusting: Why Bitcoin Can Never Go To Zero

Authored by Darryn Pollock via CoinTelegraph.com,

Bitcoin’s polarizing effect has people on both ends of the scale either proclaiming it is going to the moon or it is going to zero. The volatile, unprecedented, and revolutionary monetary system that is cryptocurrency has a future that not many can accurately predict, but as time has gone on, the idea that Bitcoin is going to zero seems more and more far fetched.

Image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

A number of commentators, just recently — when Bitcoin has been booming — have come forward with predictions of doom and gloom, warning investors that this new system of money — and investment opportunities — will fall to complete worthlessness.

Bitcoin is barely 10 years old, and has gone from being worth zero to being worth $20,000. So, as we sit with the price lower than many would have hoped, is it feeble to think it can reach as low as zero?

‘It’s going down’

It doesn’t matter if it is skeptical friends around a dinner table, or Dr. Doom himself Nouriel Roubini, the prediction that Bitcoin will go to zero often comes up as a counter punch to all the positive strides that cryptocurrencies are making.

Being a new and unprecedented ecosystem, which operates in such established ecosystems as finance and money, it is fascinating to watch how the volatile asset advances. One day it is up, and one day it is down — but what makes people think it will fail all together?

In early February, when Bitcoin was crashing down toward $6,000, the chairman of Roubini Macro Associates, Nouriel Roubini — also known as “Dr Doom” for his pessimistic economic outlooks — made a bold claim:

Dr Doom had some backup at this low point for Bitcoin as Joe Davis — Vanguard’s global chief economist and the head of its investment strategy group — weighed in. He wrote in a blog post:

“I see a decent probability that its price goes to zero.”

He also chimed in that he is optimistic about blockchain, however. But this separation of blockchain and Bitcoin by investors and institutionalized money movers is flawed, and wrongly brought up over and over again as ‘blockchain over Bitcoin’.

Goldman Sachs has also had their say on cryptocurrencies and the possibility of going to zero, but with the caveat that the bigger — and therefore stronger ones — will evolve and survive. Head of investment research, Steve Strongin said:

“Whether any of today’s cryptocurrencies will survive over the long run seems unlikely to me, although parts of them may evolve and survive. Because of the lack of intrinsic value, the currencies that don’t survive will most likely trade to zero.”

The reasons given by these men for Bitcoin going to zero, — or, in Strongin’s case, other cryptocurrencies — range from market manipulation to asset bubbles to lack of intrinsic values. All of these instances and reasons, however, are starting to feel a little outdated.

The fast moving cryptocurrency world has outgrown a number of detractions, most notably the Tulip comparison, which is one of Joe Davis’ favorite comparisons. In recent months, even with the market being so low, there has been a big wave of adoption in the use of blockchain, as well as cryptocurrency.

The blockchain revolution

While Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are a financial and monetary phenomenon, they are also classed as a technological advancement, thanks to the underlying blockchain technology. This means that there is a whole wave of adoption that can take place across different sectors which can use blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

The adoption that has happened recently has been seen at the top level in a few sectors, namely banks, major corporations and even governments.

There have been big moves by some major global banks to try to get an effective crypto-trading desk that their customers can use, and that they can be party to offering, up and running. Banks are looking to jump on the cryptocurrency bandwagon because demand from customers is so high.

Farzam Ehsani, a former blockchain lead at Rand Merchant Bank and now co-founder and CEO of VALR, told Cointelegraph:

“All banks are realizing they need to get onto this blockchain boat, I don’t think many banks necessarily understand where the boat is going, but they realize that this is a development that is taking off and that, if they want to be on this journey that everyone is going on, they need to be on the boat.”

Furthermore, Companies on the scale of Microsoft, Amazon, IBM and Oracle are also racing to start providing customer-facing blockchain solutions — often tied to cryptocurrencies — in order to be the first to market with an effective and revolutionary product.

Finally, the governments, so often the handbrake of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption, are starting to come around, with the Dutch government being a good example of how this is happening. Just last month, it was reported that the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs and Climate Policy had created a unit tasked with researching the further development of blockchain across technology.

So, what does this all mean for Bitcoin and the idea that it can go to zero?

A lot of this hinges on the belief that cryptocurrencies and blockchain can be separated. There is a big push for blockchain adoption — as described above — but the same cannot be said to be as strong for Bitcoin and cryptocurrency adoption.

However, the argument is that the two are definitely linked. Those outside of the blockchain and cryptocurrency space are arguing that the two facets cannot be separated, and thus, if there is an adoption in blockchain, there must be a correlation of benefit to the cryptocurrency space.

With so many faculties as large and dominate as global banks, major corporations and even governments, entering the blockchain space, it would seem hard to see them going on without the cryptocurrency aspect of it.

CEO of Lightning Labs — the developer of the blockchain-scaling Lightning protocol — Elizabeth Stark has spoken out to challenge the Wall Street and traditional financial sector narrative that puts its faith in blockchain, not Bitcoin, in trying to seperate the two so distinctly.

“When we first pitched my company Lightning Labs, we actually took the word ‘Bitcoin’ out of our deck and our marketing material because it was so much about blockchain. Now, I feel like we’ve entered into a ‘Bitcoin, not blockchain’ world, where people understand the value of cryptocurrency technology and what these can bring. You also have proof-of-work in Bitcoin, you have the public/private key cryptography. There are other things that make Bitcoin special. Somehow, the blockchain part got separated and became a thing.”

Adaptable cryptocurrency

Emin Gün Sirer, an associate professor at Cornell University, shared some light on the robustness of cryptocurrencies with Cointelegraph and just how difficult it is for them to completely disappear.

“We have seen that these technologies are quite robust. Chains do not just disappear, they are resilient and stick around. Many of us spent years proselytizing for these technologies in general and Bitcoin in particular. As a result, it had immense goodwill and brand recognition built around it. So there will always be a community around the brand that will ensure that that chain makes progress.”

Gün Sirer’s point — about Bitcoin in particular — is somewhat tied to blockchain technology and where it now stands. The adoption of Bitcoin and blockchain has almost reached a critical mass, where it is difficult for it to suddenly lose total support.

Bitcoin’s brand has exploded last year, and there is evidence both to back up its popularity and just how important that popularity is to its growth and survival.

Source: Google Trends

There is a correlation between Google search trends for Bitcoin and the price of Bitcoin, which shows that higher interest in and popularity of the coin is intrinsically tied to its price, and thus, in many respects, its success.

This has been noted before in what is called a ‘Satoshi Cycle’

However, Gün Sirer does add:

“They might need to hard fork it to breathe new life into it after a chain death spiral, and it might serve a niche function, its medium of transfer and store of value functionality having been usurped by others. But still, I suspect there will always be a Bitcoin brand and a niche community around it.”

Intrinsically unstoppable

While its adoption continues to grow and become more entrenched as a technology and a financial system in everyday life, Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies — as well as blockchain — becomes harder and harder to simply move on from.

But even more than that, now that it is becoming established, it is also showing that it is harder to kill than, say, a stock, a technological fad or countless other comparisons which can die.

Many will compare Bitcoin to a company or stock, which can go to zero, as a reason not to invest in it. However, Bitcoin is decentralized and autonomous. There is not one man, group or board of directors that can run it into the ground.

On that same note, it is also impossible to stop — as regulators are finding out. With the likes of China and others trying to ban Bitcoin outright, they are discovering that they are not fighting anything tangible.

But Bitcoin is also adept at evolving and adapting — again, based on its intrinsic values. It is governed by a majority vote, and as things change and challenge it, the community chooses a path that is best for its survival. There may be battles and ‘civil wars’ along the way, but ultimately, the advancements of Bitcoin are for its survival.

Finally, even the biggest detractors of Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency space are finding it hard to fault the potential of blockchain technology. Some like to try and differentiate cryptocurrency from blockchain, but they are mistaken in that sense.

Jehan Chu, co-founder of Kenetic Capital — a firm working towards spreading the adoption of blockchain technology — is also of the opinion that this new system is something that is fixing the problems of the past. Chu told Cointelegraph:

“Bitcoin will never go to zero because it is a hedge against falling currencies, inefficient economies and increasingly systemic inequality. Bitcoin represents the currency of a better future for society, and people will always invest in their future.”

Too many vested parties

Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, blockchain, all these interlinked parts are slowly spreading through society into all different ecosystems. And, as they entrench themselves, their very makeup means it is hard for them to be eliminated.

Regulators have tried, and also come to a realization that they can’t totally oust cryptocurrencies, so now they are trying to work with them. This has opened the door for the traditional sectors of the globe to enter the market and make cryptocurrencies more part of the everyday.

This system of decentralized, adaptive, autonomous and democratic money has too many vested parties and too many strong characteristics, making it hard to eliminate totally in its current form.

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Trump Reverses Obama-Era Policies On Use Of Race In College Admissions

As Donald Trump moves to undo every last trace of Obama’s legacy, the WSJ reported that on Tuesday, the Trump administration reversed Obama-era policies that encourage the use of race in college admissions “to promote diverse educational settings.”  Instead, the Trump administration will encourage the nation’s school superintendents and college presidents to adopt race-blind admissions standards.

The reversal would restore the policy set during President George W. Bush’s administration, when officials told schools that it “strongly encourages the use of race-neutral methods” for admitting students to college or assigning them to elementary and secondary schools.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions made the official announcement Tuesday afternoon.

“The American people deserve to have their voices heard and a government that is accountable to them. When issuing regulations, federal agencies must abide by constitutional principles and follow the rules set forth by Congress and the President,” Sessions said. “In previous administrations, however, agencies often tried to impose new rules on the American people without any public notice or comment period, simply by sending a letter or posting a guidance document on a website. That’s wrong, and it’s not good government.”

The decision comes amid a DOJ probe whether Harvard was illegally discriminating against Asian-American students by holding them to a higher standard in its admissions process. The administration revived the probe last year after Obama civil rights officials dismissed a similar complaint.

While the decision does not change current US law on affirmative action, it provides a strong illustration of the administration’s position on an issue that could take on renewed attention with the departure of Justice Anthony Kennedy from the Supreme Court.

The guidelines, which were issued jointly by the Obama Justice and Education departments, laid out legal recommendations for schools looking to use race as an admissions factor to boost diversity at their schools. Call it state-sponsored affirmative action. However, the WSJ reports that Trump admin officials will argue that the documents, published in 2011 and 2016, go beyond Supreme Court precedent on the issue and mislead schools to believe that legal forms of affirmative action are simpler to achieve than what the law allows.

It is hardly a surprise that the Obama officials who implemented the policies disagree: Anurima Bargava, who headed civil rights enforcement in schools under Obama’s DOJ, disagreed with that assessment, saying the documents simply offered guidelines to schools and colleges looking to continue using affirmative action legally; she countered by attacking the current administration’s action as signaling that it doesn’t favor racial diversity.

“The law on this hasn’t changed, and the Supreme Court has twice ruled reaffirming the importance of diversity,” she said. “This is a purely political attack that benefits nobody.”

Then again, perhaps the guidelines were not that innocent, and come as a 2014 lawsuit is unfolding in federal court against Harvard, filed by a group called Students for Fair Admissions, which alleges Harvard intentionally discriminates against Asian-Americans by limiting the number of Asian students who are admitted. It is expected to go to trial in October.

In the bigger picture, the action to rescind Obama-era guidelines comes at a rather sensitive time for the nation, just as Trump is set to appoint a new SCOUT judge, and is also likely to inflame a long-running national debate over the role of race in college admissions, an sensitive issue the U.S. Supreme Court has revisited on several occasions since the 1970s.

In 2016, the high court reaffirmed the practice in a 4-3 decision, but in his opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy left the door open to future legal challenges by saying universities must continue to review their affirmative-action policies to assess their positive and negative effects.

Kennedy has since announced his retirement, and advocates on both sides say his successor, to be nominated soon by President Donald Trump, may take a different view on the practice as the Harvard case wends its way through the courts.

As such, the motive behind the process to undo one of Obama’s core legacies may be to serve as a litmus test by the Trump administration to gauge just how conservative Kennedy’s replacement will be, especially since the affirmative action guidelines are relatively innocuous.

Meanwhile, Harvard has previously objected to the lawsuit, claiming its admissions process is consistent with the legal precedents set over the past 40 years by the Supreme Court, which have allowed universities to consider race as a factor in admissions to obtain the benefits of a diverse student body.

But the plaintiffs suing Harvard said in court filings the school displayed a “stunning failure to take the elementary steps required by the law” to achieve diversity without taking race into account, such as considering applicants’ socioeconomic backgrounds, eliminating early admissions and increasing community college transfers.

And here is where Asian students felt cheated: as the WSJ reports, in court filings published last month as part of its continuing litigation, the university revealed that Asian-American applicants on average had higher academic marks and received higher scores from alumni interviews than other racial groups. But on a “personal” score that admissions officers used to gauge applicants’ character, Asian students scored the lowest.

Whatever the outcome of the challenge, it is inevitable that the aggrieved social grouping, whether conservatives or liberals, will allege that this is another example of racism escalating to dominate ever more aspects of daily life, at a time when social, racial, ethnic and wealth polarization in the US is already nearing its breaking point.

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Protests Turn Violent After Anti-ICE Demonstrators Arrested In Philadelphia

Three days after a violent riot broke out in Portland, the result of clashes between antifa and a right-wing conservative group, on Tuesday protests again turned violent, this time in the city of brotherly love, as activists were taken into custody on the streets of Philadelphia as they were called for the abolishment of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The protests took place in front of the ICE office on 8th and Cherry Streets in Center City, according to CBS Philadelphia.

CBS3 video captured police and some activists clashing while officers were clearing an encampment outside the ICE building on Tuesday afternoon.

According to Philadelphia police, 29 arrests were made and they were issued failure to disperse citations. Two people sustained minor scrapes and bruises during the arrests, as one was taken to the hospital. Protesters had been out since Monday afternoon.

According to an organizer, the small but resilient protest group has donations of cold water and food coming in constantly because the goal is to be out here in front of ICE’s office indefinitely until certain demands are met.

On a national level, they have been calling for an end to mass deportations and to abolish ICE. This is a new movement that has sprung up saying the agency has gone rogue and needs to be replaced.

The protesters also want to end family detentions and close a detention center in Berks County. They say what we are seeing at the border is also happening in our backyard and it needs to stop.

Lastly, they are calling for the City of Philadelphia to have no cooperation policy with ICE.

In other words, a rather lengthy list of demands.

“Despite Philadelphia’s reputation as a sanctuary city, it is the case that Philadelphia also has one of the most active ICE offices in the country. Part of the reason for that is that they are able to access the city’s residential data,” said protester Anlin Wang.

For those who wish to see the civil protest first hand, you have time: Protesters say they are going to be out here standing up for the treatment of undocumented immigrants until their demands are met.

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Strzok Slapped With Subpoena To Testify In Public After Getting Cold Feet

Embattled FBI agent Peter Strzok has been subpoenaed by two powerful House committees to testify in public at a joint hearing slated for 10 a.m. on July 10. 

It is unknown whether Strzok will comply with the order issued by the House Judiciary Committee and the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, however it didn’t look promising on Tuesday. His attorney, Aitan Goelman, said in a letter to the House Judiciary Committee that Strzok may decline their invitation to testify, despite previously expressing interest in doing so – over what Goelman said would be a trap.

As we reported on Tuesday, Strzok testified last Wednesday in a closed door session a week after declaring he would do so “without immunity” and without invoking his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself during questioning over his anti-Trump / pro-Clinton bias while heading up investigations into both candidates. None of that mattered, however, as those present say “It was a waste after Strzok kept hiding behind a “classified information” excuse, while DOJ attorneys prevented Strzok from answering anything remotely entering productive territory. 

Now, Goelman says the committee has “sharpened their knives behind closed doors” and will spring a trap on Strzok by seizing “on any tiny inconsistencies” with last week’s testimony “to ‘prove’ that he perjured himself or made false statements,” Goelman wrote in a letter to the panel somehow obtained by CNN

“Having sharpened their knives behind closed doors, the Committee would now like to drag back Special Agent Strzok and have him testify in public — a request that we originally made and the Committee denied,” Goelman wrote.

Sounding suspiciously like Rudy Giuliani, he continued: “What’s being asked of Special Agent Strzok is to participate in what anyone can recognize as a trap.”

In his email, Goelman wrote that it was “generous to characterize many of these inquiries as ‘questions’” — suggesting instead that the GOP’s closed-door queries had been “political theater and attempts to embarrass the witness” through various leaks.

Among the questions Goelman complained Republicans put to Strzok were one about whether he loved Lisa Page, the recipient of his anti-Trump texts with whom he was having an affair, and another asking “what DO Trump supporters SMELL like, Agent?” — a reference to an August 2016 text Strzok sent in which he told Page he could “SMELL the Trump support” at a Walmart in southern Virginia. –WaPo

Goelman also called for a transcript of last week’s 11 hours of testimony, and while he didn’t rule out testimony in front of other committees, it is unclear whether Strzok will accept the House Judiciary Committee’s invitation to testify unless the transcript is released. 

Goelman anticipated that Strzok would be criticized for refusing to testify on July 10, writing that Strzok “is willing to testify again, and he is willing to testify publicly. Any suggestion that he is trying to avoid doing so is an outright lie.”

But Goelman suggested that he would not consider Strzok to be bound by the Judiciary Committee’s demands that he not speak to other congressional panels before their work was done — leaving an opening for other congressional panels to attempt to schedule interviews with Strzok. –WaPo

Perhaps Goelman realized how absurd it would look if Strzok kept de-facto pleading the fifth with the phrase: “On the advice of FBI counsel, I can’t answer that question.” 

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Ignore the Salaciousness of the Ali Watkins Affair. The Real Story Is Feds Spying on a New York Times Reporter.

NYTNew York Times Editor-in-Chief Dean Baquet announced Tuesday that he had reassigned Ali Watkins, a young national security reporter whose romantic relationship with James Wolfe, a Senate Intelligence Committee aide 30 years her senior, has raised ethical concerns.

The story has “rattled Washington media,” according to the Times‘ own reporting on this matter. But there’s an issue here that’s much more important than two consenting adults carrying on an ill-advised affair: the behavior of federal prosecutors, who obtained Watkins’ emails and very clearly spied on her in service of a dubious war on leakers.

In his memo explaining that Watkins would be transferred from D.C. to New York City, receive a mentor, and start a new beat, Baquet wrote:

We hold our journalists and their work to the highest standards. We are giving Ali an opportunity to show that she can live up to them. I believe she can. I also believe that The Times must be a humane place that can allow for second chances when there are mitigating circumstances.

Baquet makes a strong case that this was the correct course of action. It’s not entirely clear Watkins used Wolfe a source while they were dating, nor does it seem like she misled anyone at The Times about the relationship. She’s a talented reporter, and deserves the chance to learn from this experience.

It’s tempting to see every story as a story about the media, and salaciousness is inherently distracting. But the bigger issue is still the government’s involvement.

Federal authorities investigated Wolfe for allegedly leaking classified secrets to reporters, including Watkins. He was arrested last month as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on leakers, though he was ultimately charged with lying to the FBI, not with leaking.

FBI agents did not merely question Watkins about her relationship with Wolfe; they obtained her emails and phone records. At one point, a man claiming to work for the government met with her at a bar and threatened to expose the relationship. This man, who did not give his name or profession, had apparently been spying on her:

He then stunned her by reciting the itinerary of her recent vacation to Spain, including stops at Heathrow Airport and the Canary Islands.

He also knew with whom she had traveled: Mr. Wolfe.

The man said he had temporarily relocated to Washington to work on leak investigations, and asked Ms. Watkins to help him identify government officials who were leaking to the press. “It would turn your world upside down” if this turned up in The Washington Post, the man said to Ms. Watkins, who told her editors she believed he was threatening to expose her personal relationship.

Ms. Watkins later went back to the bar and obtained a receipt with the man’s name on it: Jeffrey A. Rambo, a Customs and Border Protection agent stationed in California.

Two former Justice Department officials said there was a surge last year in government personnel assigned to hunt for leaks—a priority of the Trump White House—but a current official said there is no evidence that Mr. Rambo was ever detailed to the F.B.I.

The crackdown on leaks did not begin with this administration. President Barack Obama waged an unprecedented war on whistleblowers, prosecuting more leakers than all previous presidents combined. But the treatment of Watkins is stunning behavior that gravely undermines press freedom. If it makes officials less likely to leak information to reporters, that will probably please President Trump, but it should worry everyone who wants a transparent government and an adversarial press.

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Facebook Algorithm Flags, Removes Declaration of Independence Text as Hate Speech

America’s founding document might be too politically incorrect for Facebook, which flagged and removed a post consisting almost entirely of text from the Declaration of Independence. The excerpt, posted by a small community newspaper in Texas, apparently violated the social media site’s policies against hate speech.

Since June 24, the Liberty County Vindicator of Liberty County, Texas, has been sharing daily excerpts from the declaration in the run up to July Fourth. The idea was to encourage historical literacy among the Vindicator‘s readers.

The first nine such posts of the project went up without incident.

“But part 10,” writes Vindicator managing editor Casey Stinnett, “did not appear. Instead, The Vindicator received a notice from Facebook saying that the post ‘goes against our standards on hate speech.'”

The post in question contained paragraphs 27 through 31 of the Declaration of Independence, the grievance section of the document wherein the put-upon colonists detail all the irreconcilable differences they have with King George III.

Stinnett says that he cannot be sure which exact grievance ran afoul of Facebook’s policy, but he assumes that it’s paragraph 31, which excoriates the King for inciting “domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages.”

The removal of the post was an automated action, and Stinnett sent a “feedback message” to Facebook with the hopes of reaching a human being who could then exempt the Declaration of Independence from its hate speech restrictions.

Fearful that sharing more of the text might trigger the deletion of its Facebook page, The Vindicator has suspended its serialization of the declaration.

In his article, Stinnett is remarkably sanguine about this censorship. While unhappy about the decision, he reminds readers “that Facebook is a business corporation, not the government, and as such it is allowed to restrict use of its services as long as those restrictions do not violate any laws. Plus, The Vindicator is using Facebook for free, so the newspaper has little grounds for complaint other than the silliness of it.”

Of course, Facebook’s actions here are silly. They demonstrate a problem with automated enforcement of hate speech policies, which is that a robot trained to spot politically incorrect language isn’t smart enough to detect when that language is part of a historically significant document.

None of this is meant as a defense of referring to Native Americans as “savages.” That phrasing is clearly racist and serves as another example of the American Revolution’s mixed legacy; one that won crucial liberties for a certain segment of the population, while continuing to deny those same liberties to Native Americans and African slaves. But by allowing the less controversial parts of the declaration to be shared while deleting the reference to “Indian savages,” Facebook succeeds only in whitewashing America’s founding just as we get ready to celebrate it.

A more thoughtful approach to Independence Day—for both celebrants and social media companies alike—would be to grapple with those historical demons.

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Snyder: Civil Unrest Is Here, Prepare For A “Summer Of Rage”

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

On Friday, Michael Moore went on Bill Maher’s HBO show and suggested that the U.S. military would side with progressives in a civil war against Donald Trump.  You can watch Moore make these comments on YouTube right here. 

The very next day, Antifa thugs violently clashed with pro-Trump conservatives that had gathered for a prayer rally on the streets of Portland, Oregon. 

Flash-bang grenades were thrown by Antifa activists, the police confiscated “mace, clubs, gloves with reinforced knuckles, batons, knives and handgun clips”, and many were injured and had to be taken to the hospital.  The violence was so dramatic that some are actually calling this the first skirmish in America’s next civil war. 

Last week, a shocking poll found that 31 percent of all Americans believe that there will be a civil war in America within the next five years and that 59 percent of Americans believe that Donald Trump’s opponents will resort to violence.  But after the events of this past weekend, we no longer have to wonder if civil unrest is coming to America.  Civil unrest is already here, and it is going to get much worse in the months ahead.

The next several months are being billed as a “summer of rage”.  Progressive leaders continue to insist that they are “the majority” and that it is time for them to “start acting like the majority”.

Of course they aren’t talking about mobilizing voters and taking the country back at the polls in November.

Instead, they are talking about more direct action.

For example, Michael Moore told Bill Maher that if they don’t act now, Americans are going to deeply regret not rising up against “fascism” while there was still time to do so…

Documentary filmmaker Michael Moore was fired up on Friday night’s “Real Time,” telling host Bill Maher that now is the time to stand together to stop the “madness” in the Trump administration, even comparing it to the dystopian world seen in “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

“We are living ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’” Moore said. “This is a serious point. The best part of the show is the flashbacks, where she tries to figure out where was the point where it was too late. Where was the point that if we all just had risen up, just done something? But because it happens in little increments. That’s how fascism works.”

And Michael Moore certainly intends to be at the tip of the spear.

In fact, he also told Bill Maher that he plans “to join a million other Americans to surround the United States Capitol” to protest Donald Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court.

Of course we don’t even know who the nominee will be yet.  There are rumblings that it could be Amy Coney Barrett, and if that is the case the left is really going to freak out then.

Chris Matthews of MSNBC is speaking in apocalyptic terms as well.  He says that this is a time “to fight”, and he is convinced that “it’s gonna be almost like Spanish Civil War stuff”…

“So I would say I think this is gonna be the fight of the century,” he told MSNBC. “I think the Democrats have to say no way. No one passes this line. I think it’s gonna be almost like Spanish Civil War stuff – you watch!”

“It’s time for Democrats to play Hardball,” he added. “I’m Chris Matthews and I’m urging them to do just that. There are times to fight and this is one of them.”

I don’t think that most conservatives really understand what is happening.

These radical leftists are ready to put their lives on the line.  They are entirely convinced that Donald Trump is another version of Hitler and that Trump supporters are all a bunch of fascists, and they truly believe that they need to do whatever is possible to fight “the rising tide of fascism” in this country.

The following excerpt from an opinion piece by Charles M. Blow in the New York Times is a glimpse into how these crazed progressives currently view Donald Trump…

He is a racist who disparages black and brown people, whether they be immigrants, Muslims, people from Haiti and Africa, Barack Obama, the mayor of San Juan or Maxine Waters. People equivocate about it and excuse it.

He is attacking the press in the most aggressive of terms so that what they reveal about him will be viewed with skepticism.

He is attempting to weaken our institutions, our protocols and conventions, our faith in the truth, our sense of honor and our respect for the rule of law.

To these progressives, there is no greater cause then resisting Donald Trump and trying to take America back.

During his conversation with Bill Maher, Michael Moore insisted that the “moment is now” and that this movement is something worth giving your life for…

“What are people willing to commit to? What would you give your life for?” Moore said. “What would you be willing to actually put yourself on the line for? That moment is now. We are going to lose our democracy if we haven’t already. We have no choice, my friends. We all have to rise up.”

When people are ready to die for a cause, suddenly they will do things that they would not normally do.

Normally, Americans do not throw flash-bang grenades at one another, but that is precisely what happened in Portland over the weekend.  Trump supporters that had gathered to pray were caught unprepared for the violence that erupted, and one woman was entirely convinced that Antifa had come down there to “try to murder us”…

‘They were throwing rocks, they were throwing bottles, you need to tell the truth,’ one middle-aged woman in a Make America Great Again hat said after the clashes, addressing media in remarks caught on camera.

‘No one on our side did anything violent, everything was self defense,’ she claimed. ‘You guys have to stop it because you’re encouraging these people to come down here and try to murder us.’

You can watch five minutes of footage from the Portland riot here.  Even though I have been warning that this is coming for a very long time, even I was greatly shocked by the ferocity of the violence.

The thin veneer of civilization that we all take for granted is rapidly disappearing, and it is going to be exceedingly hard to stop civil unrest from erupting in major cities all over the nation.

As I end this article today, let me leave you with an ominous warning from a progressive that was just published by the Washington Post…

The backlash is coming. It is the deserved consequence of minority-rule government protecting the rich over everybody else, corporations over workers, whites over nonwhites and despots over democracies. It will explode, God willing, at the ballot box and not in the streets.

You can only ignore the will of the people for so long and get away with it.

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Conservatives #BoycottWalmart for Selling ‘Impeach 45’ Onesies

Enraged that Walmart’s website would dare sell clothing imprinted with the phrase “Impeach 45,” a group of conservatives has launched a #BoycottWalmart campaign.

It started Monday night when Ryan Fournier, chairman of Students for Trump, tweeted about a line of “Impeach 45” onesies advertised on Walmart’s website. (The “45” is a reference to Donald Trump’s status as 45th president of the United States.) “What kind of message are you trying to send?” Fournier wrote:

It didn’t take long for Fournier’s tweet to go viral, and soon #BoycottWalmart was trending on Twitter:

What those users didn’t realize was that Walmart is also selling a variety of pro-Trump hats and shirts. The company isn’t pushing a liberal, anti-Trump agenda; it’s just trying to get people to buy clothes.

Nor is Walmart itself selling the “Impeach 45” clothing. As noted by Bloomberg, the real sellers are companies such as Old Glory and Teespring Inc., which advertise on Walmart’s website and give the retail giant a cut of the profits. (Some of the “Impeach 45” merchandise seems to have disappeared from Walmart’s website after Fournier’s tweet.)

People have the right to deny Walmart their business for any reason they please. But conservatives love to call easily offended liberals “snowflakes.” In this case the snowflakes are the ones who can’t handle the sight of swag sporting a viewpoint they don’t agree with.

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Imran Awan Gets Sweetheart Plea Deal; DOJ Won’t Prosecute Alleged Spy Ring, Cybercrimes

The Department of Justice won’t prosecute Imran Awan, a former IT administrator for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and dozens of other Democrats, for allegations of cybersecurity breaches, theft and potential espionage, as part of a plea agreement one one count of unrelated bank fraud. 

After the entry of your client’s plea of guilty to the offense identified in paragraph 1 above, your client will not be charged with any non-violent criminal offense in violation of Federal or District of Columbia law which was committed within the District of Columbia by your client prior to the execution of this Agreement -Awan Plea Agreement

Awan withdrew hundreds of thousands of dollars after lying on a mortgage application and pretending to have a medical emergency that allowed him to drain his wife’s retirement account. He then wired large sums of money to Pakistan in January, 2017.

When word of a plea agreement emerged last week, President Trump was none too pleased: 

Awan and several family members worked for Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz along with 20% of House Democrats as IT staffers who held – as the House Inspector General called it – the “keys to the kingdom,” when it came to accessing confidential information on Congressional computer systems. 

And while ample evidence of potential crimes were found by the House Inspector General, the DOJ says they found no evidence of wrongdoing.

The Department of Justice said it “found no evidence that [Imran] illegally removed House data from the House network or from House Members’ offices, stole the House Democratic Caucus Server, stole or destroyed House information technology equipment, or improperly accessed or transferred government information.”

That statement appears to take issue — without explaining how — with the findings of the House’s Nancy Pelosi-appointed inspector general, its top law enforcement official, the sergeant-at-arms, and the statements of multiple Democratic aides.

In September 2016, the House Office of Inspector General gave House leaders a presentation that alleged that Alvi, Imran, brothers Abid Awan and Jamal Awan, and a friend were logging into the servers of members who had previously fired him and funneling data off the network. It said evidence “suggests steps are being taken to conceal their activity” and that their behavior mirrored a “classic method for insiders to exfiltrate data from an organization.”

Server logs show, it said, that Awan family members made “unauthorized access” to congressional servers in violation of House rules by logging into the servers of members who they didn’t work for. –Daily Caller

Awan was arrested at Dulles airport while attempting to flee the country – one day after reports emerged that the FBI had seized a number of “smashed hard drives” and other computer equipment from his residence. While only charged with bank fraud, there is ample evidence that the Awans were spying on members of Congress through their access to highly-sensitive information on computers, servers and other electronic devices belonging to members of Congress. 

Luke Rosiak of the Daily Caller has compiled the most comprehensive coverage of the Awan situation from start to finish – and outlines exactly why the Awans’ conduct warranted serious inquiry. 

On Feb. 3, 2017, Paul Irving, the House’s top law enforcement officer, wrote in a letter to the Committee on House Administration that soon after it became evidence, the server went “missing.”

The letter continued: “Based upon the evidence gathered to this point, we have concluded the employees are an ongoing and serious risk to the House of Representatives, possibly threatening the integrity of our information systems.”

Imran, Abid, Jamal, Alvi and a friend were banned from the House network the same day Kiko sent the letter.

The alleged wrongdoing consisted of two separate issues.

The first was the cybersecurity issues. In an April 2018 hearing spurred by the Awan case, Chief Administrative Officer Phil Kiko testified: “The bookend to the outside threat is the insider threat. Tremendous efforts are dedicated to protecting the House against these outside threats, however these efforts are undermined when these employees do not adhere to and thumb their nose at our information security policy, and that’s a risk in my opinion we cannot afford.”

The second was a suspected theft scheme. Wendy Anderson, a former chief of staff for Rep. Yvette Clarke, told House investigators she believed Abid was working with ex-Clarke aide Shelley Davis to steal equipment, and described coming in on a Saturday to find so many pieces of equipment, including iPods and Apple TVs, that it “looked like Christmas.”

Meanwhile, as we noted in June, the judge in the Awan case, Tanya Chutkan, was appointed to the D.C. US District Court by President Obama on June 5, 2014, after Chutkan had contributed to him for years.

Opensecrets.org

Prior to her appointment to the District Court, she was a partner at law firm Boies Schiller & Flexner (BSF) where she represented scandal-plagued biotechnology company Theranos – which hired Fusion GPS to threaten the news media. Because of this, Chutkan had to recuse herself from two cases involving Fusion GPS.

Meanwhile, BSF attorney and crisis management expert Karen Dunn – who prepped Hillary Clinton for debates and served as Associate White House Counsel to Obama – represents Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Another BSF attorney, Dawn Smalls, was John Podesta’s assistant while he was Obama’s Chief of Staff. And if you still had doubts over their politics, BSF also republished an article critical of Donald Trump in their “News & Events” section.

In short, the Judge in the Awan case – appointed by Obama after years of contributing to him, was a partner at a very Clinton-friendly law firm. It should also be noted that Obama appointed Chutkan’s husband, Peter Krauthammer, to the D.C. Superior Court in 2011. 

The left has, of course, seized upon the plea deal to suggest that there was no wrongdoing. 

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