Property:Accusation
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C
I think this was a lie. Indeed, it is a mix of lies and truth by
the way the opinion piece was written to back the truth of the title.
The actual ratings in 2020 were the best ever while 2021 was lower and the
second half still lower, but they fired the top producer Cuomo then.
My suspicion was that Zucker...the guy who made Trump by giving him the "Apprentice"
job, and who probably manipulated the 'attacks' on Trump in CNN (with Cuomo)
was actually a Trumpist Their opinion was less credible and left Zucker as
an anti-Trumpist and incompetent.
https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/592969-cnns-collapse-is-now-complete
The actual ad ratings that fell 90% happened just recently but only for prime time (it is still the 3rd best cable channel .. and has been that solidly). And,
they fired their top producer (by far) in the second half.
The title in any even is a big lie. No matter what.
https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/2021-ratings-cnn-has-its-2nd-most-watched-year-ever-but-sees-sharp-declines-in-2nd-half/496930/
https://www.adweek.com/tvnewser/2020-ratings-cnn-averages-most-viewers-in-its-40-year-existence-and-ends-year-by-dominating-in-demo/466472/
CNN will also close out 2021 as one of the five-most-watched networks in all of cable in all dayparts. In Total Day, the network ranks No. 3 in total day and No. 5 in primetime. CNN was also among the 10-most-watched cable networks in 2021 among adults 25-54, coming in at No. 5 in Total Day and No. 9 in primetime.
Overall, CNN averaged 1,078,000 total viewers in prime time, 268,000 adults 25-54 in prime time, 773,000 total viewers across the 24-hour day and 185,000 adults 25-54 across the 24-hour in 2021.
What do these figures look like compared to its final 2020 ratings? Well, CNN fell -40% in total prime time viewers, -48% in the prime time demo (adults 25-54), -32% in total viewers across the 24-hour day and -40% among adults 25-54 across the 24-hour day.
TheHill.com
CNN's collapse is now complete
BY JOE CONCHA, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR — 02/06/22 11:00 AM EST 3,817THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT THE VIEW OF THE HILL
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It all began 42 years ago — Ted Turner's creation of a 24/7 news network that would exist on something called cable TV. Few believed it could succeed.
And, for its first decade, CNN largely chugged along but wasn't seen as a game-changer or a true competitor to big broadcast news entities based in New York in the form of CBS, NBC and ABC. That all changed when war broke out between the United States and Iraq in 1991.
On the night war exploded over Baghdad, CNN was the only news organization that was able to broadcast from the city under siege as the U.S. onslaught began, all courtesy of the CNN team’s ability to convince the Iraqi government to grant them a line out of the city to broadcast, one that the competition could not secure.
"How CNN Won the War" was the glowing headline from The Washington Post on a story that perfectly chronicled the events that led to CNN officially becoming a major player. And off it went.
Until 2002, CNN was No. 1 in the cable news race. But competition that hadn't existed before ended its dominance forever, primarily in the form of Fox News and, to a lesser extent, MSNBC. Despite the ratings results, CNN continued to carry itself as a credible, facts-first network of integrity that leaned heavily on solid reporting with a sprinkling of opinion and infotainment mixed in via programs such as "Larry King Live" and "Crossfire."
In 2013, the network hired former NBC Universal President Jeff Zucker to take the reins as ratings continued to be below average at best. This gave Zucker a mandate to radically change the network from its journalistic roots of more than three decades — the months-long wall-to-wall coverage of a missing Malaysian airliner being an early example.
But two years later, the move to insert heavy doses of partisan opinion into its news reports only accelerated when former President Trump — a Zucker hire at NBC for "The Apprentice" — jumped in to the 2016 presidential race. At first, CNN bear-hugged Trump's every move. (Hillary Clinton's giving a speech somewhere? Screw it. Let's show an empty Trump podium with chyrons stating "Trump to speak soon" instead.) The real estate mogul's 17 Republican challengers never had a shot; Trump blotted out the sun in terms of media coverage on his way to winning the nomination.
At that point, Zucker and CNN began to worry. Because while it was a ratings boon for the network to make Trump the centerpiece, there was growing concern that the guy could actually beat Hillary and become the nation's 45th president. So Zucker unleashed the hounds, but it was too late. Trump would go on to shock the world in November 2016.
Undeterred, CNN decided there would be no honeymoon period for the new president. Talk about Russian collusion handing Trump the White House began even before the inauguration. And after the nonstop Trump-bashing, Harvard University concluded that CNN led the way, along with Zucker's former home of NBC, in giving Trump 93 percent negative coverage in his first 100 days.
For the next four years, CNN served as the leading media resistance to Trump, throwing objectivity out the window. And after President Biden got elected, the network cheered the new president as it had throughout the entire campaign while still making Trump a prime centerpiece for over-the-top negative coverage despite his being out of office.
But as much as CNN tried to resurrect its lead character — who was banned from social media and largely off the grid for the year — his absence clearly showed the network was a one-trick partisan pony. Ratings fell 90 percent overall when comparing January 2021 to January 2022. That’s hard to do.
Which brings us to the events of this week: Zucker released a statement saying he had to resign because of a consensual affair with an executive named Allison Gollust. WarnerMedia apparently has a rule against this, so Zucker — instead of a slap on the wrist for a benign offense — simply had to go abruptly.
Nobody believed this excuse. Turns out they may have had plenty of reason to be skeptical.
Per several reports, Zucker and Gollust allegedly advised then-New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) – the older brother of then-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo — on what to say during his COVID-19 daily briefings in the spring of 2020. They also reportedly told Cuomo how to respond to and how to criticize Trump, to make it more compelling TV. (Gollust is a former communications director for Andrew Cuomo.)
Let's unpack all of this:
In the spring of 2020, the country was in a horrific place. Businesses shut completely; people were scared. There were no COVID-19 therapeutics, no vaccines. Hospitals were overwhelmed, thousands were dying each day. If ever there was a time for news organizations to educate and inform the public, this was it.
Instead, Zucker apparently believed it was the perfect time to exploit the situation for political gain and to help the network's ratings.
Andrew Cuomo benefited from briefings that made him appear to be the adult in the room regarding COVID-19 and Trump appear to be the villain. Cuomo got a $5.1 million book deal as a result.
Chris Cuomo and Zucker/Gollust/CNN benefited from marathon interviews with Cuomo's governor/brother, which didn't touch the governor's alleged nursing home scandal. Ratings soared.
So, was Zucker's departure simply about a consensual relationship with a co-worker? One might be forgiven for questioning that.
Moving forward, what's next for CNN when the company falls under the Discovery Channel umbrella later this year? Let's hear from its soon-to-be largest shareholder, John Malone of Liberty Media.
"I would like to see CNN evolve back to the kind of journalism that it started with, and actually have journalists, which would be unique and refreshing," Malone said in an interview that recently aired on CNBC.
Espresso's popularity is booming. Now is a great time to learn how to...
Andrew Yang in now-deleted tweet: 'I don't think Joe Rogan is a...
The collapse of CNN is now complete: 9 out of 10 viewers, gone. Its top-rated anchor, Chris Cuomo, gone. Its network president, gone. Its integrity in shambles.
Climate Change Is A Lie
How and why labeling our crisis as “change” has cost us time.
I would argue this title is not true. "Climate Change" is not a lie. It is
literally, correctly, and for what it communicates, completely true and there
is no deception in fact or motivation by the people who use the phrase.
I do not she is lying about lying, she is simply wrong.
Here is her argument:
Change is inevitable, this was not.
I read the article and she makes the case, but it was extremely disappointing
that she didn't actually offer a new phrase for "climate change". Just some
descriptors (thundersnow? .. etc). I don't think she read the definitive book on the subject...
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
By: David Wallace-Wells
I really really wish she had not wasted my time without a good suggestion.
Perhaps
Earth Death?
Earth Murder?
Planet Death?
Planet Murder?
Climate Murder?
Climate Poisoning?
I dunno.
Here is her case for saying ...
Climate change, by that name is a lie.
The now obvious global threat, was most often referred to as “The greenhouse effect” through the first half of the twentieth century.
Although Svante Arrhenius discovered the phenomena in 1896, he variously called it “climate fluctuations, climate warming, greenhouse warming,” and even “dangerous warming.”
By the time he was completing his body of work, Arrhenius had come to believe that the additional carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could very well be positive. Additional warming by adding the emissions could possibly avert the next ice age and mellow out the frozen north.
Let’s not forget that Arrhenius lived in Sweden, and the multi-factorial details of slight changes making enormous challenges, feedback loops, and more, were little known. One would think that given the modest amount of warming by greenhouse gases prior to the 20th century might make a long, Scandinavian winter, and a more productive green summer, a welcome benefit.
Time has shown that hoping for a milder climate is not the change we got.
Power of influence
When Arrhenius won the Nobel prize in 1903, it was not for his all-important discovery of the carbon warming effect. Carbon dioxide? Who knew, why care?
His awarded Nobel was for chemistry, and cross-over sciences of physics, which was more novel, studied, and widely influential in their own time.
Nevertheless, carbon rise in the mid-century of the 1960’s and 1970’s alarmed many observers. Pollution wasn’t very welcome, dependency on fossil fuels for national security wasn’t welcome, and a whole host of voices arose decrying obvious greenhouse warming. Population size and consumption had grown considerably.
It was about this time that fossil fuel giants, and their political allies, first began to realize they had better shape public opinion in their favor. They launched a disinformation campaign and spent billions on it.
James Hansen testified to congress about Climate in 1988, and as the Bush years unrolled, so did new terminology which suggested, the phrase “climate change” should be used to “emphasize the scientific uncertainty” of the new research.
This was notably the position of the Republicans at the time, who overwhelmingly were polled to discover that belief in “climate change” was much higher than “climate warming, or global warming,” and a whole lot less threatening, especially to lobbyists.
“We lost decades of opportunity,” reported geophysicist Michael Mann. The last three decades, have indeed been crucial in stepping up to the challenges we see now.
It was advisor Frank Luntz who notoriously warned that the new label should stick because on the topic of environmental concerns, and the prospect of global heating, the Bush administration was “most vulnerable in their stance.”
The publication Grist declared that Luntz is a “founding father of climate denial.”
Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn said of nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson that “You have made clear that you believe judges must consider critical race theory when deciding how to sentence criminal defendants.”
Blackburn was referring to a 2015 speech in which Jackson described how she encouraged students to study federal sentencing policy as an academic area implicating many topics.
“Sentencing is just plain interesting on an intellectual level, in part because it melds together myriad types of law — criminal law, of course, but also administrative law, constitutional law, critical race theory, negotiations, and to some extent, even contracts,” Jackson said in her speech. “And if that’s not enough to prove to them that sentencing is a subject ... worth studying, I point out that sentencing policy implicates and intersects with various other intellectual disciplines as well, including philosophy, psychology, history, statistics, economics, and politics.”
In other words, she indicates that critical race theory might be one of many potential factors in play in sentencing, not a mandatory consideration. +
https://doctorow.medium.com/what-is-chokepoint-capitalism-b885c4cb2719
This is an exchange from a short medium article by the
famous author Cory Doctrinow on his subject called Chokepoint
Capitalism. This is just a version of the evils of trusts and
monopolies.
This one is special because I thought a paragraph was a lie, I
wrote a response to his lie, Cory responded with why it was not a lie, and I
responded on why he was wrong, thus proving he was in fact,
intentionally lying.
Speaking of chokepoints…
The audiobook market is controlled by one company, Audible, a division of Amazon. In some genres, Audible has more than 90 percent of the market. If you’re an audiobook listener, you almost certainly have an Audible subscription, which means that anyone who wants to sell an audiobook needs to be on Audible.
But Audible has a rule: to sell in its marketplace, you have to let Audible wrap your audiobook in “Digital Rights Management” — an encryption scheme that can only be legally decrypted using the apps and devices that Audible has authorized.
That means that every dollar a listener spends on an audiobook is a dollar they’ll have to give up if they quit Audible, because there’s no (legal) way to convert Audible books so they’ll work on non-Audible players.
The more Audible dominates the audiobook market, the worse they treat creators. Professional narrators’ wages have been steadily squeezed, as have payments to the independent studios that produce audiobooks. The self-published audiobook creators who use Audible’s ACX platform report hundreds of millions of dollars in wage-theft.
Naturally, we won’t sell our audiobook with DRM, so naturally, it won’t be available on Audible.
Instead, we’re kickstarting pre-sales of the audiobook (along with print and ebooks). We’re currently at about $75,000, with 25 days to go. So far, our readers have pre-ordered about 1,500 DRM-free ebooks, 1,175 DRM-free audiobooks, and 650 hardcovers. They’ve also donated about 700 hardcover copies to libraries (if you work at a library and want to call dibs on one of those donated copies, fill in this form!).
This is the LIE:
That means that every dollar a listener spends on an audiobook is a dollar they’ll have to give up if they quit Audible, because there’s no (legal) way to convert Audible books so they’ll work on non-Audible players.
My comment to him:
I must be goofy but this is misleading, I think. For example, if you narrate a book yourself or hire a narrator and get the raw audio files, you can put the book on audible (DRMed) and ALSO distribute DRM free, or use another DRM distributor/seller. I don't recall an exclusive distribution provision by Audible of the performance content or a grant of copyright to them. Similarly for kindle.
That said, collecting pre-orders on non-DRMed material seems like a good idea if you can get the kickstarter community to want them. But once it's out without DRM, what exactly stops the pirates? At one time in history, the content providers did not have to worry about pirates, but then came bit-torrent (and others).
That said, you make a great argument about the failure of the government in its anti-trust responsibilities and the FTC/FCC in theirs. Under the US Constitution I believe it would be legal, and expected, to have a public enforcement agency for copyrighted and patented material. Big companies can afford their own enforcers, but not individuals or little guys. No such agency exists. The FBI LITERALLY LAUGHS IN YOUR FACE when you try to report the crime to them.
His comment back to me:
Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
AUTHOR
about 20 hours ago
Yes, you can sell elsewhere, but how do you get your listeners non-DRM copies if you leave Audible and want to take them with you? Audible won't tell you who bought your book through its service, much less help you deliver MP3 versions to them so they can resign from Audible without losing your books.
My comment back to him, saying he is wrong:
Robert Thibadeau
Robert Thibadeau
YOU
about 5 hours ago
What Cory wants is the sales contact list from his reseller or a willingness of his reseller to sell the form of the release that he wants. As they say, "you can ask" but I've never seen any reseller agree to reselling something they don't want to resell.
I actually know the DRM that Audible uses (when I was designing the Self-Encrypting Drive technology for Seagate Technology). It is pretty sophisticated and contains many features that are very consumer oriented in terms of meta data markup associated with the Audible releases. Anybody who prepares an audible book for Audible can see some of this. i.e., Audible is adding content performance value with the DRM and they are in part a performance contributor of consumer value to what they are willing to sell. It's like a band performer saying he want to sing all his songs without a microphone to an audience of 10,000 people. The distributor (event producer) can say no.
Again, we need an enforcement division of the Gov. for Copyright and Patent Infringement. Copyright and Patent law already provides for protection but without any enforcers. This is like writing criminal law without any police or Justice Dept. That is what we have in Copyright and Patent Law.
Cory does not seem to want this. Probably because a lot of lawyers make their living as paid enforcers and do not care about writers and inventors who have no money to pay them their $400-1200/hr fees. And, Cory does not want to address this. Yet we do have law (National and Local) that DOES cover misdemeamor enforcement. What do you think police do? Let the CONGRESS correct this with a written responsiblity to the Dept. of Justice. As would be expected by any RIGHT that has supposedly been guaranteed and protected in the Constitution.
I would argue even further. That certain forms of DIVISIVE PERNICIOUS LYING even by Candidates for Office should be illegal and enforced under the Constitution. Slander is slander. We don't let certifiably insane people do anything they want to do. George Washington made exactly this point in his Farewell Address to us, before we had laws, just the Constitution. Read it here:
https://medium.com/liecatcher/hobgoblins-are-not-real-43d7a749067e
Cory's Bio:
Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction author, activist, and blogger. He has a podcast, a newsletter, a Twitter feed, a Mastodon feed, and a Tumblr feed. He was born in Canada, became a British citizen and now lives in Burbank, California. His latest nonfiction book is How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism. His latest novel for adults is Attack Surface. His latest short story collection is Radicalized. His latest picture book is Poesy the Monster Slayer. His latest YA novel is Pirate Cinema. His latest graphic novel is In Real Life. His forthcoming books include The Shakedown (with Rebecca Giblin), a book about artistic labor market and excessive buyer power; Red Team Blues, a noir thriller about cryptocurrency, corruption and money-laundering (Tor, 2023); and The Lost Cause, a utopian post-GND novel about truth and reconciliation with white nationalist militias (Tor, 2023).
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has continually put forward a lie—that we don’t need gun control in the US. Now he is spreading a lie about that lie! He says the best way to avoid school shooting is to make schools more like prisons or military facilities, to “harden” them. The general idea, apparently, is that if a school has one point of entry, and that doorway is well guarded, a gunman might have greater difficulty killing people inside. Who needs gun control, the argument goes, when all we really need is door control.
There are a variety of reasons this is a difficult idea to take seriously.
First, I’m reasonably sure this would be a serious fire hazard in many school buildings nationwide.
Second, a lot of schools have windows.
Third, what about schools made up of several buildings, with students walking outdoors between them. Mandating “one door that goes in and out of the school” would be literally impossible.
Fourth, mass shootings don’t just happen in schools — and I’m not sure having one entry point to a grocery store is realistic.
Finally, there’s also reason to be skeptical of the underlying point. Juliette Kayyem, a veteran of the Obama administration’s Department of Homeland Security, and currently a lecturer in international security at Harvard, wrote on Twitter, “The ‘one door’ theory of schools is not how we think about education or design, but it’s also not how we think about security. It actually is bad safety planning. A ‘psychopath’ would then just target the kids backed up in line and waiting for this ‘one door’ to let them through.”
Or put another way, those looking at Cruz’s idea as a credible policy proposal are almost certainly making a mistake.
https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/latest-school-shooting-ted-cruz-focuses-doors-rcna30630
URL: https://www.salon.com/2022/05/26/ted-cruz-thinks-he-has-a-better-solution-to-uvalde-school-than-control-door-control/ +
D
This is a the truth to anyone from left or right but a lie to the other from the right or left in the context of who is speaking it.
#2A Wisdom
@2AWisdom
God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it. - Daniel Webster
I believe Webster spoke or wrote it, and it doesn't matter what context he was coming from since it would only reinforce the accusation either way. +
On Transgender Athletes Debate
David Wharton, latimes.com, tweeted the following on Jun 20, regarding an article the LA Times published on transgender athletic issues (As Title IX turns 50, it plays a surprise role in transgender athlete access debate):
"The 1st thing you should know: Lots of people on both sides of the #transgender athlete argument are passionate & sincere. Not just politics, but real concern for the sports they love & for human dignity. @feliceduffy"
https://twitter.com/LATimesWharton/status/1538923817979981824
Solomon Georgio tweeted the following response
"Both sides my ass. This is a direct attack on trans women and an insult to all women. It is indirectly saying that trans women are men and men are better athletes than women. There is a right and wrong side to this debate and it’s not the transphobic one."
https://twitter.com/solomongeorgio/status/1538982308794859520
I think the Georgio tweet is dishonest on it's face and attempts to present a false dilemma.
1) Wharton doesn't explicitly reference trans women athletes in his tweet (although they are prominent in his published LA Times article); 2) Wharton's article attempts to present both sides - it is not "a direct attack on trans women and an insult to all women."; 3) There are separate men's and women's sporting competitions because men and women are physically different and in many sports male size, muscle mass and strength are advantageous. This is not valuing male athletic achievement over female athletic achievement but recognizing the physical factors that contribute to athletic performance, which in many instances give men and advantage over women in heads-to-head competition. To explicitly discuss these differences is not transphobic, in my opinion. One can support transgender identity and equal protection under the law on the one hand, but not necessarily support transgender athletes as "equivalent" when it comes to athletic competition. +
E
There is a popular narrative making the rounds that theUS government's stimulus aid to Americans during the height pandemic had big economic benefits — but it also fueled inflation. How do we know that government aid isn’t the reason the economy’s tanking now? Just by looking around the world, and observing. If it were the case that stimulus led to inflation, then of course countries with the greatest support would have the highest inflation. But that’s not true. Europe, which offered people way, way more support than America and the UK, has lower inflation rates. And plenty of countries which offered people no support — because they’re poor nations — have skyrocketing inflation rates.
It’s not about stimulus.
This isn’t demand-led inflation. When people subscribe to this naive pop myth that “printing money during the pandemic caused inflation,” what are they really saying? That the economy’s cratering right now because people have too much money. LOL. Do you know anyone who has too much money? That’s an absurd thing to say.
This is supply side inflation: for example, tampons and baby formula at the moment.
Why? One reason is Covid — it caused labour shortages across sectors from healthcare to transportation. But the bigger picture here is about climate change and resource depletion. And the failure of industrialized capitalism, which is extractive, Exploitative. Rent-seeking. It doesn’t nourish, create, care, give birth to, just manufactures lowest-common-denominator stuff and literally turn life into death: plastic, fossil fuels, forests ripped down, oceans polluted, skies full of carbon, rivers turned to poison. They take without giving,
As the resources of the planet dwindle, in anticipation, warlords and oligarchs start conflicts to try and seize what of them they can. +
Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.
While is going to pay around 12 bilion dollar worth of taxes over 2021.
He also said it is the largest tax payment an US individual has ever done. +
Let’s change the rigged tax code so The Person of the Year will actually pay taxes and stop freeloading off everyone else.
While he is paying around 12 bilion dollar worth of taxes over 2021.
He also said it is the largest tax payment an US individual has ever done. +
F
CNN recently featured this headline: "Eat farm-to(-your-kitchen)-table because it’s good for you and the earth." “Farm-to-table” – a term that implies food--in America, at least--that is locally sourced and purchased by a restaurant or for your own kitchen table directly from a farmer or producer, has been trending, and its related cuisine has become increasingly popular among foodies who appreciate seasonal fare as well as those concerned with the health of the environment and the local economy. “It’s essentially a way of eating based around food that has been grown and harvested in a sustainable way,” said Kristy Del Coro, a registered dietitian and culinary nutritionist. The term is also used to describe the movement that promotes this way of eating. Farmers' Market shopping is a mainstay of the practice.
While this seems to be on its face an obviously true statement, the truth is more nuanced. Yes, it's good to eat healthy food. But is farm-to-table mostly a marketing gimmick designed to make us feel good about an elitist practice?
One of the supposed positive benefits to farm-to-table is that food sourced this way is more flavorful and more nutritious. Yes, produce and other foods that have been picked ripe and haven't been shipped thousands of miles probably do have a somewhat better flavor. But as for being more nutritious, even CNN's article admits that this claim hasn’t been scientifically proven. Yes, it would seem that these types of foods might be more nutritious, but the fact is, we just don't know.
Another F-to-T claim is that the practice is more sustainable and better for the environment. I've been to farms that actually supply my local farmer's market, and I can tell you point blank that a good number of them (if not most) are water and fertilizer intensive and mimic agribusiness mega-farms, only on a smaller scale. To be sure, the distances that the crops are shipped is much less, so there is a substantial benefit in that regard. So it the practice better for the environment? Well, yes, but perhaps only marginally.
F-toT is also seen as a way to democratize food consumption by bringing better foods to everyone. This is most likely not true. Farmers' Market food is much more expensive than its grocery-store counterparts. F-toT customers tend to be upscale whites, so in this regard F-toT is an elitist practice.
Finally, F-toT is claimed to benefit the local economy by supporting local agriculture. I suppose this is true, since by definition a local farmer is part of the local economy. But how much of the money that we spend at the farmers' market stays in the local economy? Farmers are buying mostly the same products and services as everyone else, and almost none of these are in any sense of the word "local."
The camelia would bloom in the spring, but it not spring and he is blooming +
G
WHEREAS, Representatives Cheney and Kinzinger are participating in a Democrat-led
persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse, and they are both
utilizing their past professed political affiliation to mask Democrat abuse of prosecutorial power
for partisan purposes +
Ginni Thomas, the controversial wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, says her activities on behalf of Donald Trump and other conservative causes have no bearing on the work of her husband.
https://www.npr.org/2022/03/14/1086535100/wife-of-justice-thomas-rebuts-claims-of-conflict-of-interest +
50 migrants were found dead from heat exposure after they were left trapped in an abandoned truck in San Antonio, Texas, this week. On 6/27/2022 Texas Gov Greg Abbott tweeted, “These deaths are on Biden. They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”
As University of Texas Rio Grande Valley political science professor Terence Garrett told PolitiFact while responding to Abbott’s previous lies about Biden’s immigration policies, “There's no such thing as an open border.” According to Garrett, current border security measures include nearly 20,000 Border Patrol agents, aerial surveillance systems, and hundreds of miles of fencing. “We don’t have an open border,” Garrett said. “That’s absurd.”
The Washington Post, for example, pointed out that Customs and Border Patrol had made 239,416 arrests in May, further commenting: “The agency is on pace to surpass the record 1.73 million border arrests tallied in 2021 — presenting an ongoing logistical and political challenge for the Biden administration.”
While politicians argue about how to address the flood of immigrant/refugees on the southern border few ever discuss the reasons that these people are fleeing their countries of origin. The economic, political and security threats (including criminal and state-sponsored violence) that are driving this immigration, which has deep roots in Latin America, can often be traced of the exploitative 20th century banana republic practices of US companies and the resulting social and political conflicts aggravated by US foreign policies in the region.
According to Wikipedia, in 1904, the American author O. Henry coined the term banana republic to describe Honduras and neighboring countries under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations, such as the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Brands International) and Dole. Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites of that society. The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of the exploitation of labor; thus, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.
Workers rebelling against these practices often adopted socialist models for redistributing the wealth of state controlled assets and political power, which turned most countries in the regions into proxy state wars between the US and the USSR. The US favored strong-man, anti-communist leaders and trained their ruling elites in suppressive military and police practices, many of which have evolved into the failed social and political structures present today.
So, in my humble opinion, one hundred years afterward the US is reaping what it sowed when it exploited these Central and South American countries. It is a very difficult and complex task to address the economic, social and political problems now festering in these countries today, if the US was seriously inclined to do so. But, in the end, that is really the only way to stem the flow of immigration from those regions to the US southern border.
H
"She's always got such a great sense of humor with me and I'm just making sure she's protected and got the right people around her,"
Prince Harry claimed he was checking in on the Queen to make sure she was protected, but in reality Prince Harry dropped in to see his grandmother with wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, on the way to the Invictus Games in the Netherlands last week.
The same BBC article says that Prince Harry and Meghan, had not visited the UK together since they stepped back from royal duties in early 2020. If he was really worried about her, he would have seen her earlier, especially given the dangers of the pandemic.
The 37-year-old did not attend a memorial service for his grandfather, the Duke of Edinburgh, in London last month.
He is currently engaged in a legal case against the UK government
over his police protection in the UK.
"Protected" from what?
The short clip from US television doesn't reveal what Prince Harry was "making sure" the Queen was protected from. Problems with her health? Bad advice?
But his comments, following his flying visit to the UK, are likely to raise some eyebrows and maybe even some hackles among those already looking after the Queen in Windsor Castle.
Prince Harry and Meghan made a deal with Netflix in September 2020 to make a range of programs which they said would focus on creating content that, "Informs but also gives hope”.
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-61157345
In other reports, Royal experts have slammed 'delusional' Harry's 'gross insult to William and Charles': Prince tells US TV show that HE’S 'making sure the Queen is protected' despite being 'nowhere to be seen' at Prince Philip's memorial as Palace braces for more comments today.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10734159/Royal-experts-slam-delusional-Prince-Harrys-protecting-Queen-remark.html +
On the Tim Ferris show podcast Balaji made the following statement:
far Left and far right agree that institutions with power are terrible.
His prediction is that we are moving towards a anarchy where police gets defunded and government has less control +
Hoax calls are lies typically using phone or internet media that
threaten violence. This is called swatting.
The question is how to dissect such calls if indeed they do turn out of be lies. Here the motive appears to be
in question. This article suggests a general motive.
They are intended to set off a massive and immediate deployment of armed law enforcement to a specific target, including SWAT teams. The results can be quite dangerous, as they were in a fatal incident in 2017, when police swatted a man in Wichita, Kansas.
A shift from bomb threats to false calls about active shooters may also reflect that bad actors understand how heavily school shootings have come to factor into communities' fears in the U.S.
"The underlying reason that it is effective as a disruption or as an emotional, psychological attack is because we know it could be real," said Amanda Klinger, director of operations for the Educator School Safety Network, a national nonprofit organization that does school safety for primarily K-12 educators. "Our fear of school shootings and school-based violence is being weaponized against us."
The background is given on the NPR page.
False calls about active school shooters are rising. Behind them is a strange pattern
October 7, 20229:49 AM ET
Odette Yousef headshot
ODETTE YOUSEF
In response to a false call about an active shooter, police and emergency workers descended on Robert Anderson Middle School in Anderson, South Carolina, on Oct. 5. Parents rushed to pick up their children, causing a traffic jam in front of the school.
Ken Ruinard/USA TODAY Network/Reuters
When Emmi Conley first heard in September about a rash of hoax calls reporting active shooters in schools, she dismissed it. Conley, an extremism researcher who studies groups and people behind public displays of violence, said she found no indication that these calls were connected to fringe online spaces where these pranks often originate.
But as the number of these reports swelled over time, Conley said she began to discern some very strange patterns — including the possibility that the calls may have come from overseas, and perhaps specifically from Africa.
"The scale and the timeline of the events is highly, highly unusual," she said. "The calls are consistent. They are coordinated. They are grouped state-by-state and district-by-district, and they're also sustained. So somebody is putting significant effort to keep these going."
As Conley began digging further, more questions emerged. Elements of these calls were notably different than what she has typically seen in school-based threats. Nobody has taken credit for these calls, even as they stretched over several weeks, and the technological planning and research behind the calls betrayed a level of sophistication not typically seen.
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In a statement, the FBI has said it is aware of the incidents, but has "no information to indicate a specific and credible threat."
The agency said it is working with law enforcement at every level to investigate the cases. But some news reports, including in Minnesota and Louisiana, have cited local authorities who said the calls may be originating in Africa or, specifically, Ethiopia. The FBI would not comment on this detail.
For Conley, particulars around these calls suggest that the people or person behind them are, indeed, overseas.
"Our big questions now are whose attention are they after?" she said. "Is it the public? Law enforcement? Media? Something else? And why they're after it?"
Swatting as the new 'bomb threat'
The hoaxes are called "swatting," a term that refers to calls that falsely report an act of violence in progress or about to occur. They are intended to set off a massive and immediate deployment of armed law enforcement to a specific target, including SWAT teams. The results can be quite dangerous, as they were in a fatal incident in 2017, when police swatted a man in Wichita, Kansas.
"It was popularized by extremely online communities with proclivities toward violence and perceived ideological enemies," said Conley. Those have included live-gaming communities and extremist groups, where perpetrators aim to harass specific individuals. The recent targeting of institutions, namely schools, appears to be a new development.
NPR has found, primarily through local news reports, at least 113 instances of hoax calls across 19 states between Sept. 13 and Oct. 5. Louisiana, Minnesota and Virginia tallied the greatest number. This is likely an undercount, as many locations may not have garnered media attention. School safety experts worry that these hoaxes could inspire copycats, putting school communities and law enforcement officers at significant risk.
"You know, for decades, those of us in the school safety world have dealt with false bomb threats," said Mo Canady, executive director for the non-profit organization National Association of School Resource Officers (NASRO). "If we get a call that someone is actively shooting, injuring, killing people, that's a whole different matter. That requires really an all-out response."
Canady said swatting presents a higher set of risks than bomb threats. In Ohio, one father was reportedly detained for arriving at Licking Valley High School with a gun after hearing that there may be an active shooter at that location. That response from a parent is understandable, said Canady, particularly as the horror of a school massacre in Uvalde remains fresh in many parents' minds. But, he notes, it could lead to confusion and worse at the scene.
A shift from bomb threats to false calls about active shooters may also reflect that bad actors understand how heavily school shootings have come to factor into communities' fears in the U.S.
"The underlying reason that it is effective as a disruption or as an emotional, psychological attack is because we know it could be real," said Amanda Klinger, director of operations for the Educator School Safety Network, a national nonprofit organization that does school safety for primarily K-12 educators. "Our fear of school shootings and school-based violence is being weaponized against us."
'A connection to overseas'
In audio obtained by NPR of some calls in Ohio and one call in Minnesota, the person reporting an active shooting breathes heavily and follows a nearly identical narrative. He identifies himself as a student at the school, although he sounds like an adult male. He also speaks with a heavy accent. NPR also requested call records from locations in other states, but many were denied on the basis that the incidents are under investigation.
Drew Evans, superintendent at the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, said he has also heard audio of hoax calls that were placed in states other than Ohio and Minnesota. He said they sounded very similar.
"There was an accent here and it appeared to be a similar person or the same person in all the calls either heard or reported in to us," Evans said. The MBCA is investigating 17 swatting calls that occurred Sept. 21 in Minnesota.
Evans said that the calls in his state were all made directly to schools or to non-emergency dispatch lines, rather than to 911. He said they appeared to be coming from Internet-based phone numbers, which either originated in or were routed through foreign countries through a VPN connection.
"There's indications that there's a connection to overseas," he said. "What we don't know is whether or not overseas could have been used as a mask."
Conley said the possibility that the calls came from a foreign individual or entity may be bolstered by details that the caller provided that are atypical of school shootings in the U.S. For example, the particular model of gun the caller referenced as the weapon was often different from what is commonly used in school shootings.
"America has a very particular relationship with guns," she said. "The the cultural object of the mass shooting in the United States is the AR-15."
But both Conley and Evans noted this campaign indicates a tremendous level of detailed local knowledge or research.
"Whoever is doing this has managed to make phone calls relating to specific schools, reach the correct dispatchers, and give specific information about local school districts and threats within them without being caught," Conley said. "You couldn't do that without some considerable effort and investigation into knowing where you're targeting, how you're targeting it and how you were avoiding detection."
An earlier wave
Some are considering the possibility that the person or group behind the calls is building on prior experience. In the spring, schools in several states reported receiving false calls about bomb threats. In Minnesota, the MBCA confirmed that nine schools were targeted. Evans said there were similarities between how those calls were placed, and the more recent wave of false active shooter reports.
"There [were similarities] in terms of the specificity in which they were calling in the particular threat, it appeared to be one individual that was making the calls, and they certainly seemed to be one individual that was a live person," he said. Evans said that those calls, as with the calls in September, were also made to non-emergency lines.
"Some of the schools believe there's a potential they could be connected," he said.
NPR identified at least six states where schools received bomb threats starting in mid-March and mostly concentrated through April. Minnesota, North Carolina, Maine, Louisiana and Hawaii each saw multiple hoax calls on a single day.
In Louisiana, where at least five schools received false calls about bomb threats on April 21, one local report said that investigators had linked the IP address of the caller to Ethiopia. More recently, a report from Minnesota cited Alexandria Police Chief Scott Kent saying that he believed the calls made in September to schools in his state were linked to an IP address in Ethiopia. Kent did not respond to interview requests.
Evans said the investigation into the April calls to Minnesota schools remains open.
The difficulty of discerning a motive
Whether the source of these hoaxes is domestic or foreign, one perplexing question remains the same: Why?
"I would find myself wondering, especially if it's coming from another country, is someone potentially trying to test our systems to see how we respond to those types of events?" said Canady.
NASRO recently issued guidance to schools on handling swatting calls. Chief among it, said Canady, is to continue to operate under the assumption that each call is a real threat.
"If we hesitate, it can cost lives," he said. "So unfortunately, we have to continue to proceed in an emergency manner... until we know for a fact that it's not a real incident."
But there's also concern that if the dramatic uptick in swatting sustains or continues to rise, that emergency response itself can create trauma. Klinger said even hoaxes can create fearful situations that exact a psychological and emotional toll upon students, educators and parents. She said she would like to see more federal guidance on how to keep school communities safe, but still nurturing.
"If I continue to just shut down the schools, shut down the school, shut down the school... how does it end? How do you ever stop it?" she said.
Without a clear ideological aim behind these calls, or any known organization, the effort may not clearly qualify as terrorism under the FBI's definition of the term. But many note that its effect may be the same.
"There's a significant amount of intentionality based on the information that's been reported," said Evans. "They were doing this with a purpose to cause fear in our communities."
The intelligence 'experts' who falsely discredited Hunter Biden's laptop -- and still won't say sorry.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/10/giuliani-and-the-new-york-post-are-pushing-russian-disinformation-its-a-big-test-for-the-media/ Mother Jones
Susan Walsh/AP
Fight disinformation. Get a daily recap of the facts that matter. Sign up for the free Mother Jones newsletter. A newly discovered laptop, the FBI, a trove of emails, October, a presidential election—it sounds familiar. Especially when you add in a Russian disinformation campaign. On Wednesday, the New York Post released what it hailed as a bombshell: an unidentified computer repair store owner in Delaware had come to possess a laptop that contained Hunter Biden emails (and purportedly a sex tape), the hard drive and computer was seized by the FBI, the store owner at some point passed a copy of the hard drive to Rudy Giuliani, and one of the emails suggested that Hunter, who served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, may have in 2015 introduced a Burisma official to his dad, Vice President Joe Biden. The story depicts this as a big scandal, and Guiliani tweeted, “Much more to come.”
But the key point of the article was predicated on false information that Giuliani
has been spreading for a long time—and that appears to be linked to a Russian disinformation operation that the Post neglected to note in its article. That is, the Post piece, based on an unproven smear, is in sync with Moscow’s ongoing effort to influence the 2020 election to help President Donald Trump retain power. (The FBI and other parts of the US intelligence community have stated that Vladimir Putin is once again attacking the US political system to boost Trump.)
And this story presents a challenge to the American media: how to report on an orchestrated campaign to affect the election that relies on disinformation, salacious and sensational material, and the revival of allegations that have already been debunked.
Coca Cola advertises their plastic bottles as if they are helping the environment. But they are one of the biggest plastic polluters in the entire world.
Besides this they say their bottles are 100% recycled plastic while the caps and the labels aren't.
It is hypocritical to say they are helping the environment when they know the impact of their actions is zero to none.
https://www.breakfreefromplastic.org/globalbrandauditreport2020/
https://www.cocacolanederland.nl/promoties-en-campagnes/campagnes/recycle-me +
... more about "Accusation"
1.0 - First managed version +
- 1.0 - First managed version
Has type"Has type" is a predefined property that describes the datatype of a property and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki.
