1641: Lock the Clock

Hi Adam, I was wondering if you saw the trump chant and booing of NY AG Letitia James at the FDNY promotional ceremony. It is kind of a lot to explain so I will try to break it down as simply as possible. It has to do with the hot topic of DEI and a black woman being at the center of it.

There’s a little more than meets the eye here. The promotion ceremony was for all ranks excluding Firefighters being promoted to lieutenant.

There is currently a lot of drama surrounding the lieutenants exam, which was a major reason for the boos. Even though many disagree Letitia James’ policies, we feel personally set back by the DEI agenda being pushed by the city.

To put it very simply, it’s the Lieutenants exam should be about every 4 years. However due to Covid they extended the previous list from the exam which was in 2015 (before my time but I’m pretty sure it was 2015 or 2014). The new lieutenant exam was administered in December 2022. The agency DCAS in charge of administering tests for the city took 10 months and put out a botched list in September 2023. After the Fire Department rejected the list due to an obvious error, they released a new list around November 2023. However on this new list they decided that different questions would be worth different amounts, no longer 1 point each. With no reasoning as to how or why, many believe it is to artificially increase diversity in the ranks. This list was also rejected by the department. So now everyone on the list is in limbo, waiting for answers while we get ignored by everyone involved in the decision making.

Majority of the boos were from people who have waited years and spent countless hours preparing for the exam. Just to have it compromised by some city agency which wants to push diversity over merit. I tried to keep this brief while providing the relevant details.

If you’d like more details on the situation I’d love to discuss further and get your highly valued opinion!

------------------------------------------------

For the exam it is technically speculation. The mayor and the civilian side of the fire department have openly said they want to increase diversity through out the city. And I have a friend working with the civilian side who says that it is the center of every conversation.

When they released the new list people started noticing that some people’s grade changed and some people’s didn’t.

There is an organized group of “eligibles” that reached out to DCAS for explanation of why they took it into their own hands to change the grading and they did not answer. DCAS is a notoriously incompetent organization so this didn’t surprise anyone. The eligibles group hired a lawyer who submitted a lawsuit looking for an explanation. They have until March 27th to respond and we are assuming they’ll take every second.

I honestly didn’t realize how much of this is just rumors. When I saw the lawsuit I figured it was legitimate. I do have a personal example though, a woman firefighter I am friends with originally scored in the 60s on her written exam and now her grade is over 80. While my grade was a 72 and stayed exactly the same. So if there was some sort of a curve or certain questions thrown out, the chances of her gaining 20 points and my grade not changing are extremely slim.

Trump moderna vaccine Jan 13 2020 - only 1 dead in China

But the Avian Flu was just getting started

Started in 2013 in China

GoF in 2019 in Wisconsin

Crimson Contagion in 2019

H7N9 taken out of influenza testing (Type A)

COVID19 released to cover up the avian flu deaths

Same as 2017 Influenza Pandemic

VIDEO - Was The Vax For Something Else | Dr. Scott Jensen, Dave Collum, John Cullen (TPC #1,429)

Dear Adam & John,

Your sole knight in Iceland has ventured back into the motherland once again and has a BOTG report from my recent holiday in Moscow. For context I visited at the end of February and stayed for about 2 weeks.

---

[Warning: this email turned out longer than I thought it would be]

---

For anyone wondering how it's even possible to get to Russia from Europe, it's not easy as all direct flights to Russia have been stopped ever since the war began. So the most convenient way for Europeans is via Istanbul, which has multiple direct flights to Moscow and St Petersburg daily.

With this many flights coming in daily, it's no surprise to see a lot of Arab tourists around Moscow, in addition to many, many Chinese and Korean tourists in the city centre. I didn't notice or hear any other English speakers during my time there, as it seems like most Westerners don't realise that it's relatively easy to get a visa and enter Russia right now.

Tourism as an industry seems to be doing just fine with all these visitors from the East coming into the country. Also, I was reliably informed that ever since the West blocked Russians from visiting, tourist destinations within country are getting huge investments from the government in order to improve infrastructure and promote growth throughout the Federation. It feels like Russia is playing a long game here and are no longer relying on income from the West, but rather focusing on improving themselves and fostering trade with their neighbours.

Well pretty much anything! While some companies certainly did pull out of Russia since the start of the war, many others still have products for sale there.

You can buy:

Coke/Sprite/Fanta etc.

Oreos

Kinder chocolates

Ritter Sport (German chocolates)

Mars/Snickers/M&Ms

Swiss chocolates

Milka chocolates

French cheeses

Italian pasta

Imported beers from all over Europe

Imported wines from all over Europe, South America, Australia and New Zealand

Imported vodka from Europe

Hiking/mountaineering stores still sell major American/European brands

Burger King is still operating

KFC is still operating

Samsung is still operating

I could keep going with this! Anyway, most of these goods come into Russia through a process they call "parallel import". Basically they just buy these goods off their neighbours, Kazakhstan being a major partner in this. Having said this, I have a sneaking suspicion that many European countries are still trading with Russia, just at a heavily reduced rate or very sneakily.

Some final information about what else I saw and heard about the Russian military:

I was reliably informed that the majority of military manufacturing is done near the Ural Mountains, and has been like that since WW2. It was decided to move manufacturing away from bigger cities as a way to protect their military-industrial capabilities and prevent them from being taken over or destroyed in a conflict. Everything that is made out there is then sent via rail to the front. Having said that, there is also some small scale military manufacturing scattered around Moscow, but these are tiny factories that may only specialise in generators or engines.

I visited the "Victory Museum" in Moscow, which celebrates the Red Army defeating Germany during WW2. Lots of interesting historical WW2 stuff there, I would highly recommend everyone visiting Moscow to check it out.

While I was at the museum, many young students were visiting as well, but they weren't ordinary students, rather they were attending what appeared to be military academies due to the uniforms they were wearing. Very interesting to see, it almost feels like they are gearing up the next generation for a prolonged conflict.

---

(There's much more about this that I can go into if you're interested, and I can provide pictures as well)

---

That's about all I have to report for the moment, if you want any further clarification on things then please just ask. I can also send some pictures of the captured NATO books and field guides if you want.

Thank you for your courage!

Best regards,

Josh

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Sun, 10 Mar 2024 14:22

There seems to be a connection between left hemisphere brain functions and the political left and between right hemisphere functions and the political right.

Commentary

The single thing our divided culture can agree on is that we can agree on nothing. Left and right, conservative and liberal, traditional and progressive'--all our divisions are absolute. We can't even agree to disagree. We agree only that a gap separates us, one no bridge can span. And yet, many of us continue to attempt reconciliation between these unreconcilable sides or, worse, try to convince the other side that our side is right. In short, the situation is hopeless.

Enter Iain McGilchrist. Mr. McGilchrist is a British psychiatrist and author whose work as a research fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins University led him to investigate the differences between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. What he found, after writing and reviewing a rich neuroscience literature, was that both hemispheres are necessary to a functioning human but that each has a unique function.

His findings refuted an older, pop-culture view of the hemispheres, in which, for example, the right was ''good at poetry'' while the left was ''good at math'' and so forth. In fact, each hemisphere is required for every action, mental and physical, but they serve different functions. The right hemisphere (RH) sees the big picture, while the left hemisphere (LH) handles details. It follows that the RH oversees general experience and behavior, while the LH ''isolates and grasps,'' making it possible to hunt or buy a hamburger.

To illustrate the difference, Mr. McGilchrist in his book ''The Master and His Emissary'' (2009) cites the example of a bird (brain division applies throughout much of the animal world) swooping into a field to catch a mouse. While the LH is focusing on the prey to isolate and grasp, the RH is monitoring the scene, looking out for predators, and keeping an eye out for additional prey. So long as the two are coordinated, with the RH in charge (the master) and the LH acting on its orders (the emissary), all is well. But if the LH rebels and attempts to act on its own, things fall apart; ''the center cannot hold.'' The LH may act recklessly in pursuit of prey without regard to safety.

Mr. McGilchrist makes the case that, in our current cultural condition, the two hemispheres ''are engaged in a power struggle,'' specifically one in which the LH has usurped the role of the RH, just as the emissary usurps the role of the master in the Nietzschean fable that gave Mr. McGilchrist the title for his book.

Left Hemisphere Versus Right HemisphereThe list of specific differences in function between RH and LH is long, but here are some items on it, taken from the introduction to Mr. McGilchrist's most recent exploration of this rich and difficult subject, his 1,597-page, multi-volume study, ''The Matter with Things'' (2021):

''The LH is principally concerned with manipulation of the world; the RH with understanding the world as a whole and how to relate to it.''''The LH deals preferentially with detail, the local, what is central and in the foreground, and easily grasped; the RH with the whole picture, including the periphery or background.''''The LH aims to narrow things down to a certainty, while the RH opens them up into possibility.''''The LH is superior for fine analytic sequencing and has a larger linguistic vocabulary and more complex syntax than the RH. Pragmatics, the ability to understand the overall import of an utterance in context is, however, [an] RH function.''The last item is key. The LH can command the structure of language but can't fully understand it without the RH's global view. Think of the employment of the term ''political rights'' to mean the ''right'' to be the gender of one's choice or to cross a country's borders at will. On its own, such demands can be defended by language that employs complex syntax to seemingly make its case, an LH skill. But when examined for semantics, for meaning, and for context (the purview of the RH), the arguments fall apart. In the context of DNA properly understood, people can't change sex. And national sovereignty doesn't violate rights but rather protects the rights of those encompassed by it.

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The implications of the RH/LH division for thought, for society, for culture, and for politics are staggering. When the RH is in charge, the big picture is kept in view. Society functions to maintain peace and security for all or at least to attempt it. The job of the LH is then to obtain those things that serve the whole. But if the LH begins to act on its own, it may reject the whole for individual or tribal concerns apart from the whole. We see that everywhere today. The LH demands perfection, gratification, and completion; the political left demands an end to all differences among people; reparations for long-ago injustices, both real and imagined; and the immediate institution of rule-by-ideology.Left Hemisphere and Left PoliticsI don't know Mr. McGilchrist's politics, nor are they relevant here, and it should be noted that the implications of LH/RH are of such complexity that, between his two books on the subject, Mr. McGilchrist has written more than 2,000 published pages. Nevertheless, a parallel between the LH/RH division and the positions of political left and right strongly suggests itself.

The most compelling example of such a parallel might be this: The RH lends context to everything it does, while the LH is concerned only with what is at hand, isolated from the whole. Likewise, the natural law that is the heart of traditional ontology provides context for moral and political choices on the right, while the left knows no such context; in fact, the denial of nature (and thereby natural law) is its very credo.

It's pure chance that the term ''left hemisphere'' aligns with the political bias of what we call the left, as does the term ''right hemisphere'' with the inclinations of the right. Serendipitous though this nominal alignment is, there's nonetheless a real connection between LH functions and the political left on the one hand and between RH functions and the political right on the other. To return to the bird imagery above, the left is swooping down on its prey of ending Western values without regard for the wider context of the value systems waiting to replace them: communism, fascism, and radical Islam. It refuses to listen to the context provided by the RH, the context of tradition, ancestry, and reason.

Even reason itself has been twisted to serve the LH. In this regard, Mr. McGilchrist is clear in his condemnation of mainstream Western philosophy since Descartes. The division of experience into ''subject'' and ''object'' has led to the isolation of entities from one another. Truth can't be known, nor can meaning exist, in a universe divided against itself.

Mr. McGilchrist follows certain 20th-century philosophers, including Henri Bergson, A.N. Whitehead, and Martin Heidegger, in understanding experience (Whitehead called it ''process") as productive of individual entities, not ''subjects'' and ''objects'' as productive of experience. The whole (RH) precedes the individual (LH). Descartes et al. had it reversed, and the past 400 years of steady rot testify to that reversal as error. It's just this error that Mr. McGilchrist seeks to correct by linking biological fact to cultural truth. In a sense, Mr. McGilchrist can be seen as the philosopher giving biological foundation to the insights of Bergson, Whitehead, and Heidegger.Nature and ValuesPart of the inherently divisive nature of post-Cartesian philosophy is that it refuses to recognize a necessary link between biological truth and values. It's part of the LH's material bias that it will not give preference to big-picture, contextual viewpoints over individual or tribal demands. It can't be proven, the left will say, that, as Mr. McGilchrist puts it, ''the right hemisphere is a more reliable guide to reality than the left hemisphere.''

The LH demands certainty and completion, and the addition of big-picture context to its demands'--the observation, for example, that national borders provide protection for the values and belief system of nations'--is thrown aside as irrelevant to the prey upon which it wishes to pounce. This circumspection of the RH, compared with the arrogant certainty of the LH, puts the RH at a disadvantage. The LH will always scream louder than the RH, gaining more attention and increasing its power. To this, Mr. McGilchrist concluded that the biggest context of all is what finally matters:

''God situates us firmly in the cosmos ... religion takes seriously both the thisness of the individual, at one end of the scale, and the fate of the cosmos at the other, and shows them to be part of one whole.''

Morality'--how we live'--matters because of this final, cosmological context:

''Something depends on our way of being, and it is not just we ourselves. ... The how of life, not just the what'--its mere existence or non-existence, huge as that it'--matters: it has a value and price we cannot fully conceive.''

Life, in other words, has meaning beyond mere existence, a meaning that has been obscured by centuries of bad thinking and worse politics. Mr. McGilchrist offers a way of seeing how we have reached this place by giving in to the LH's desires over the larger concerns of the RH. If we understand how we have gotten here, it might be possible to chart a course back to the headwaters of our conflict and engage in real reconciliation.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

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Archived Version

Sun, 10 Mar 2024 11:32

Russian President Vladimir Putin has slammed the woke agenda being promoted in the Western world that teaches children there are dozens of genders and that biological sex does not exist.

According to Putin, the woke agenda is part of the New World Order's satanic agenda to spread degeneracy in the West, corrupt the traditional family, normalize pedophilia, and destroy the traditional social and cultural fabric of society.

''We are all equals from the moment of our birth thanks to our mother and our father,'' corrected Putin. ''That's precisely how people are born into this world. Today there is no other way despite modern technologies.

As Putin explained ''there is only male and female,'' and regardless of the fashions and fads that come and go in the West, this biological principal will always remain. Watch:

President Putin slamming wokeness and gender ideology. ''There is only male and female.'' 👏👏ðŸ--¥ #VladimirPutin #Putin pic.twitter.com/XQ1z5OjNg7

'-- Rosy (@rose_k01) March 6, 2024Putin also gave an address last year in which he exposed the New World Order's satanic agenda to normalize pedophilia in the West.

''See what they do with their own peoples '' the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, mockery of children and pedophilia are declared the norm. The norm of their life, and priests are forced to bless same-sex marriages,'' Putin said.

''Adults have the right to live as they want, we have always thought like this in Russia and we always will, no one will invade private life, we are not going to do this. But I want to tell them, look at the Holy Scriptures, the main books of all other world religions, everything is said there, including that the family is the union of a man and a woman,'' he added.

Putin would go on to call out the attacks against Christianity coming from Western governments whose societies are imploding.

''The Anglican Church, for example, considers the idea of a gender-neutral God. What can we say? Forgive us, Lord, for they don't know what they do. Millions of people in the West understand that they are leading to a real spiritual disaster. The elites, directly I must say, go crazy, and it seems that they can no longer be treated. But these are their problems, as I said, and we must protect our children. And we will do this, protect our children from degradation and degeneration,'' he said.

His comments can be seen here:

THREAD: Highlights from President Putin's speech today where he calls out the West's normalization of pedophilia'' ''See what they do with their own peoples '' the destruction of the family, cultural and national identity, perversion, mockery of children and pedophilia are'... pic.twitter.com/pZAqtPuYSW

'-- LIZ CROKIN (@LizCrokin) February 21, 2023

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Sun, 10 Mar 2024 11:23

SpaceX satellite explodes during solar stormSolar storms are a feature of our solar system like any other, though comes with a serious amount of risk. They can be beautiful and benign, with pictures showing great displays of auroral lightships.

They can also be devastating, as NASA has time and again wanted, inflicting untold chaos right here on Earth.

The space agency's Parker Solar Probe (PSP) has successfully travelled through solar winds in space to understand the phenomenon better, but still, much remains to be discovered.

Scientists have long warned about the potential negative consequences of such storms, perhaps the biggest being what has been coined as an "internet apocalypse" which could happen in the next year.

READ MORE NASA spots 'eerie' holes in clouds over Florida linked to UFOs

A thermal image of an eruption or flare on the surface of the Sun (Image: GETTY)

But what exactly is an internet apocalypse? It sounds like the stuff of science fiction, but the threat is very real.

Put simply, when a solar storm occurs, magnetic fields rip through the Earth's atmosphere and send current surging through manmade infrastructure.

The bursts, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), can travel up to 11,000,000 kilometres per hour. The Sun fires them off towards the Earth as many as 20 times per week, depending on where it is in its 11-year activity cycle.

No one in living memory has experienced such a blast. A near miss came in 2012, and the only event before that happened in 1859, well before humans became reliant on electricity.

If a CME on a similar scale struck the Earth today as it did back then, electronics in orbiting satellites would be seriously damaged, disrupting navigation and communications systems, and crucially the GPS time synchronisation that the internet relies on to work.

The repercussions would be grave. Without power and the internet, society would grind to a halt.

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The northern and southern lights that often light up the night sky are examples of solar storms (Image: GETTY)

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Some prediction models suggest that such an event could come as soon as 2025 when the Sun enters a particularly active period known as the "solar maximum".

Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, a computer science professor at the University of California at Irvine, coined the term "internet apocalypse" in her science paper titled, Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse.

"We've never experienced one of the extreme case events, and we don't know how our infrastructure would respond to it," she told The Washington Post. "Our failure testing doesn't even include such scenarios."

She noted that a solar storm could even interfere with things such as submarine communication cables, which might interrupt long-distance connectivity.

The northern latitudes of the planet are particularly vulnerable to such solar activity which happen to double up as the places where much of the internet infrastructure is concentrated.

When solar plumes burst from the Sun, magnetic fields rip through the Earth's atmosphere (Image: GETTY)

There's no way to predict how long the outages might last, but experts say they could go on for months.

The economic impact of just one day lost to a solar storm is mind-boggling. In the US, it would account for more than $11billion (£8.6billion), according to the internet watcher NetBlocks.

NASA's successful PSP mission found a multitude of new information about the sun's solar projections which could go at least some way in helping to fend off any destructive potential.

It identified a phenomenon known as "supergranulation flows" within coronal holes, where magnetic fields emerge and are believed to be the ground zero for high-speed solar winds, and are typically found at the Sun's poles during quiet periods.

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Archived Version

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 22:54

An off-duty bartender who ordered a patron not to use the women's bathroom and shoved the woman when she tried to explain her gender identity was found guilty of second-degree bias crime and harassment charges Wednesday.

The confrontation, captured on surveillance camera footage, showed Cassie McIntyre pushing customer Riis Larsen, a transgender woman, outside the women's restroom at Jake's Place.

McIntyre had finished her shift at the Sellwood bar and was drinking after work when the 15-second confrontation occurred on Dec. 27, 2022.

The two-day jury trial in Multnomah County Circuit Court is part of a trend for Portland prosecutors, who file more hate crime charges per capita than any other district attorney's office in the state, The Oregonian/OregonLive previously reported.

Testifying in court Tuesday, Larsen said she had just stepped out of the women's bathroom, a single-user room with a locking door, when McIntyre cornered her and told her she ''was a man'' and should use the other toilet.

Larsen, 35, said she tried to explain her gender identity but McIntyre, 40, told her to ''get out'' using an expletive, then shoved her. The video showed the shove but didn't record audio.

Surveillance footage showed both women approaching the on-duty bartender following the brief altercation. Another patron, R.J. Stangland, testified that he could hear McIntyre continuing to use the wrong pronouns for Larsen and saying Larsen should not be allowed to use the women's bathroom.

Larsen said she settled up and left the establishment in tears and called 911 later that night.

''She is scrutinized in a different way than most of us in our day-to-day lives are scrutinized,'' prosecutor Charlie Weiss told the jury during closing arguments. ''People sometimes express disagreement not with what she says, or what she does, but who she is.''

In her own testimony, McIntyre claimed Larsen had cut in line for the women's bathroom and pushed another regular, who complained. McIntyre said she then intercepted Larsen but didn't understand she was misgendering her.

''I wasn't trying to misgender her '-- I had to look up what transgender was in the dictionary,'' McIntyre said. ''We were just arguing over spilt milk.''

McIntyre didn't deny pushing Larsen but called it ''making space.'' Larsen said she never jostled anyone.

Judge Christopher Marshall sentenced McIntyre to 50 hours of community service and two years of probation.

McIntyre apologized in court and volunteered to stay away from another neighborhood bar so Larsen would have a place to go without worry. Her defense attorney, Henry Oostrom-Shah, said McIntyre hoped to find an LGBTQ nonprofit that would accept her community service.

Larsen, who sat in the gallery throughout the trial, said she had suffered wondering whether the jury's verdict would simply be ''another instance of transphobia swept away.''

''Because that's the essence of transphobic bias '-- erasure. It's not being believed,'' Larsen said. ''In our system, people are innocent until they're proven guilty, but in the real world I was judged and sentenced within moments when Ms. McIntyre decided to harass me.''

'--Zane Sparling covers breaking news and courts for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach him at 503-319-7083, zsparling@oregonian.com or @pdxzane.

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Portland hate crime assailant who stomped on stranger's face gets less prison time in deal with DAThe standard sentence for most hate crimes in Oregon? Probation, not jail time.Man who bashed naked Portland cyclists with pipe gets 3 years in prisonTigard man and his stepson sentenced for racially motivated beating of Black neighborPortland hate crime defendant who went on the run avoids prison in plea dealIf you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.

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Sat, 09 Mar 2024 22:47

New International Version (NIV)

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Ai Destroyed 8 Then the Lord said to Joshua, ''Do not be afraid;(A) do not be discouraged.(B) Take the whole army(C) with you, and go up and attack Ai.(D) For I have delivered(E) into your hands the king of Ai, his people, his city and his land.

Read full chapterdropdown

New International Version (NIV)Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright (C)1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Archived Version

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 22:30

The defense policy bills that passed the House and Senate last month each include provisions that would block public reporting on greenhouse gas emissions by military contractors, according to a new open letter from more than two dozen activist groups and research organizations.

''[W]e urge you to ensure that this bill is not used to protect defense contractors from accounting for their role in driving climate change,'' they wrote in a letter addressed to the leaders of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees. ''In a budget authorization that expands funding for the most polluting sector of our government yet again, this carve-out for defense contractors is a particularly egregious attempt to shirk even the possibility of future emissions reductions.''

The letter's signatories include the Center for International Policy, Just Foreign Policy, the Project on Government Oversight, Win Without War and the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft.

The open letter comes amid a growing debate over how to balance America's world-spanning military '-- which emits more greenhouse gasses each year than most countries '-- with the Biden administration's efforts to fight climate change. Researchers have been able to get reasonable estimates of the Pentagon's annual emissions, but data on emissions produced by weapons contractors is far harder to come by and often relies on back-of-the-napkin math. Research from Neta Crawford of Brown University suggests that the U.S. military industry may actually emit more than the Department of Defense itself.

The White House proposed a regulation last year that would force all major federal contractors to disclose their emissions and create a plan to reduce them, but lawmakers in both chambers of Congress quietly added carve-outs for the defense industry in this year's National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA).

The Senate NDAA includes provisions that would remove the emissions reporting requirements for ''nontraditional defense contractors'' and place a two-year moratorium on the regulation for the rest of the weapons industry. This is tantamount to ''attempting to run out the clock on federal enforcement of the rule, likely in hopes that a different administration will roll it back completely,'' the letter argues.

The House version of the NDAA is more direct. It completely bans the implementation of the policy as well as ''any substantially similar rule'' and exempts the military from an executive order aimed at fighting climate change.

Given the differences in the two NDAAs, the administration will have a chance to argue against these carve-outs as the bills go to conference. But it remains to be seen whether the White House will be able to find a deal to protect the regulation.

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Archived Version

Sat, 09 Mar 2024 22:28

NewsGuard announced last week it's using AI to automatically prevent American citizens from seeing information online that challenges government and corporate media claims about elections ahead of the 2024 voting season.

''[P]latforms and search engines'' including Microsoft's Bing use NewsGuard's ''ratings'' to stop people from seeing disfavored information sources, information, and topics in their social media feeds and online searches. Now censorship is being deployed not only by humans but also by automated computer code, rapidly raising an Iron Curtain around internet speech.

Newsguard rates The Federalist as a ''maximum'' risk for publishing Democrat-disapproved information, even though The Federalist accurately reports major stories about which NewsGuard-approved outlets continually spread disinformation and misinformation. Those have already included the Russia-collusion hoax, the Brett Kavanaugh rape hoax, numerous Covid-19 narratives, the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop, and the deadly 2020 George Floyd riots.

NewsGuard directs online ad dollars to corporate leftist outlets and away from independent, conservative outlets. The organization received federal funding for developing these internet censorship tools that now include artificial intelligence.

''The purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop artificial intelligence (AI)-powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others,'' says a recent congressional report about AI censorship. These '''...projects threaten to help create a censorship regime that could significantly impede the fundamental First Amendment rights of millions of Americans, and potentially do so in a manner that is instantaneous and largely invisible to its victims.''

Numerous federal agencies are funding AI censorship tools, including the U.S. Department of State, the subject of a December lawsuit from The Federalist, The Daily Wire, and the state of Texas. The report last month from the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government reveals shocking details about censorship tools funded by the National Science Foundation, one of hundreds of federal agencies.

It says NSF has tried to hide its activities from the elected lawmakers who technically control NSF's budget, including planning to take five years to return open-records requests legally required to be returned within 20 to 60 days under normal circumstances. NSF and the projects it funded also targeted for censorship media organizations that reported critically on their use of taxpayer funds.

''In my dream world,'' censorship technician Scott Hale told NSF grantmakers, people like him would use aggregate data of the speech censored on social media to develop ''automated detection'' algorithms that immediately censor banned speech online, without any further human involvement.

''Misinformation'' that NSF-funded AI scrubs from the internet includes ''undermining trust in mainstream media,'' the House report says. It also works to censor election and vaccine information the government doesn't like. One censorship tool taxpayers funded through the NSF ''sought to help train the children of military families to help influence the beliefs of military families,'' a demographic traditionally more skeptical of Democrat rule.

Federal agencies use nonprofits they fund as cutouts to avoid constitutional restraints that prohibit governments from censoring even false speech. As Foundation for Freedom Online's Director Mike Benz told Tucker Carlson and journalist Jan Jekielek in recent interviews, U.S. intelligence agencies are highly involved in censorship, using it essentially to control the U.S. government by controlling public opinion. A lawsuit at the Supreme Court, Murthy v. Missouri, could restrict federal involvement in some of these censorship efforts.

Yet, as Benz noted, corporate media have long functioned as a propaganda mouthpiece for U.S. spy agencies. That relationship has continued as social media displaced legacy media in controlling public opinion. Today, dozens of highly placed Big Tech staff are current or former U.S. spy agency employees. Many of them manage Big Tech's censorship efforts in conjunction with federal agency employees.

Nonprofit censorship cutouts use ''tiplines'' to target speech even on private messaging apps like WhatsApp. AI tools ''facilitate the censorship of speech online at a speed and in a manner that human censors are not capable,'' the House report notes. A University of Wisconsin censorship tool the federal government funded lets censors see if their targets for information manipulation are getting their messages and gauge in real-time how their targets respond.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology team the federal government funded to develop AI censorship tools described conservatives, minorities, residents of rural areas, ''older adults,'' and veterans as ''uniquely incapable of assessing the veracity of content online,'' says the House report.

People dedicated to sacred texts and American documents such as ''the Bible or the Constitution,'' the MIT team said, were more susceptible to ''disinformation'' because they ''often focused on reading a wide array of primary sources, and performing their own synthesis.'' Such citizens ''adhered to deeper narratives that might make them suspicious of any intervention that privileges mainstream sources or recognized experts.''

''Because interviewees distrusted both journalists and academics, they drew on this practice [of reading primary sources] to fact check how media outlets reported the news,'' MIT's successful federal grant application said.

People who did this were less likely to believe the federal government's propaganda, making them prime obstacles to government misinformation. Researchers are targeting people in these categories to figure out how to manipulate them into believing government narratives, emails and documents in the House report show.

Joy Pullmann is executive editor of The Federalist, a happy wife, and the mother of six children. Her ebooks include "

Classic Books For Young Children," and "

101 Strategies For Living Well Amid Inflation." An 18-year education and politics reporter, Joy has testified before nearly two dozen legislatures on education policy and appeared on major media from Fox News to Ben Shapiro to Dennis Prager. Joy is a grateful graduate of the Hillsdale College honors and journalism programs who identifies as native American and gender natural. Her traditionally published books include "

The Education Invasion: How Common Core Fights Parents for Control of American Kids," from Encounter Books.

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Sat, 09 Mar 2024 22:05

U.N. on allegations of Hamas' sexual violence

Second U.S. airdrop for Gaza; U.N. reports on allegations of Hamas using sexual violence 04:34 Officials from Gaza's Hamas-run Ministry of Health and an eyewitness told CBS News that five people were killed Friday by an aid airdrop package when at least one parachute failed to properly deploy and a parcel fell on them. The people were in the Al-Shati refugee camp in northern Gaza, and the incident occurred at around 11:30 a.m. local time (4:30 a.m. Eastern).

CBS News was told there were two boys among the five people killed and that 11 others were injured in the incident. The exact ages of the casualties were not clear, but those injured were said to be between 30 and 50 years old.

The U.S., Jordan, Egypt, France, the Netherlands and Belgium dropped aid over Gaza Friday in an attempt to get supplies, including desperately needed food, to residents amid an ever-worsening humanitarian crisis there . A U.S. defense official told CBS News an initial review indicated the U.S. airdrop was not responsible for the fatalities on the ground, but said that further investigation was required.

U.S. Central Command stated that the fatalities were not caused by U.S. airdrops in a Friday evening social media post.

"We are aware of reports of civilians killed as a result of humanitarian airdrops," CENTCOM said. "We express sympathies to the families of those who were killed. Contrary to some reports, this was not the result of U.S. airdrops."

Video posted on social media showed a large cluster of aid parcels suspended from parachutes drifting through the sky but appearing to get tangled before one, with its chute deployed but not fully opened, drops much more quickly than the rest.

An image from video posted on social media on March 8, 2024, which CBS News could not independently verify, appears to show airdropped aid parcels falling to the ground in northern Gaza, where a witness and officials from the Hamas-run health ministry said 5 people were killed when at least one of the parcels' parachutes failed to properly deploy. One parcel can be seen near the bottom center of this screengrab that was seen falling much more quickly than the rest, with its parachute partially collapsed. The airdrops have been criticized by international aid agencies and others as wholly insufficient to meet the needs of the people of Gaza.

The United Nations has warned of widespread famine among Gaza's roughly 2.3 million residents, and the global body's top humanitarian aid coordinator, Martin Griffiths, said Friday in a social media post marking six months of war in Gaza that the airdrops were a "last resort."

"All those concerned about the situation in Gaza should put pressure on Israeli government to grant unimpeded humanitarian land access & not blocking convoys," the European Union's foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Thursday, calling the airdrops "good but insufficient."

U.S. officials have acknowledged to CBS News that the airdrops are not enough to meet the huge need in Gaza. They say they're a statement that the world is not just standing by as a famine unfolds.

Friday's airdrops took place one day after President Biden announced that the U.S. military would build a temporary pier on Gaza's Mediterranean coast capable of receiving shipments of humanitarian aid including food, water, medicine, and temporary shelters, to increase the flow of such goods into the enclave.

Two U.S. officials told CBS News the current plan is for the pier to be installed by the U.S. Army's 7th Transportation Brigade, based at Ft. Story, Virginia. The ships required to do the work were still docked in Virginia as of Friday, and officials made it clear that it would be weeks before the project could be up and running.

Lior Haiat, a spokesperson for Israel's Foreign Ministry, said in a statement on Friday that Israel welcomed the plan, adding that it would "allow the increase of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, after security checks are carried out in accordance with Israeli standards."

Haiat said Israel would "continue the fight against Hamas '-- an organization that calls for the destruction of the State of Israel and carried out the 7 October massacre '-- until its elimination and the return of all the hostages," while also continuing to facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid in Gaza "in accordance with the rules of war and in coordination with the United States and our allies around the world."

Israel & Hamas At War More More In: Food Emergency War Hamas Israel Palestinians Gaza Strip Haley Ott Haley Ott is the CBS News Digital international reporter, based in the CBS News London bureau. Haley joined CBS News in 2018, prior to which she worked for outlets including Al Jazeera, Monocle, and Vice News.

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Sat, 09 Mar 2024 20:43

We're announcing three new members to our Board of Directors as a first step towards our commitment to expansion: Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann, former CEO of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Nicole Seligman, former EVP and General Counsel at Sony Corporation and Fidji Simo, CEO and Chair of Instacart. Additionally, Sam Altman, CEO, will rejoin the OpenAI Board of Directors.

Sue, Nicole and Fidji have experience in leading global organizations and navigating complex regulatory environments, including backgrounds in technology, nonprofit and board governance. They will work closely with current board members Adam D'Angelo, Larry Summers and Bret Taylor as well as Sam and OpenAI's senior management.

Bret Taylor, Chair of the OpenAI board, stated, ''I am excited to welcome Sue, Nicole, and Fidji to the OpenAI Board of Directors. Their experience and leadership will enable the Board to oversee OpenAI's growth, and to ensure that we pursue OpenAI's mission of ensuring artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.''

Dr. Sue Desmond-Hellmann is a non-profit leader and physician. Dr. Desmond-Hellmann currently serves on the Boards of Pfizer and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She previously was a Director at Proctor and Gamble, Meta (Facebook), and the Bill & Melinda Gates Medical Research institute. She served as the Chief Executive Officer of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation from 2014 to 2020. From 2009-2014 she was Professor and Chancellor of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), the first woman to hold the position. She also previously served as President of Product Development at Genentech, where she played a leadership role in the development of the first gene-targeted cancer drugs.

Nicole Seligman is a globally recognized corporate and civic leader and lawyer. She currently serves on three public company corporate boards - Paramount Global, MeiraGTx Holdings PLC, and Intuitive Machines, Inc. Seligman held several senior leadership positions at Sony entities, including EVP and General Counsel at Sony Corporation, where she oversaw functions including global legal and compliance matters. She also served as President of Sony Entertainment, Inc., and simultaneously served as President of Sony Corporation of America. Seligman also currently holds nonprofit leadership roles at the Schwarzman Animal Medical Center and The Doe Fund in New York City. Previously, Seligman was a partner in the litigation practice at Williams & Connolly LLP in Washington, D.C., working on complex civil and criminal matters and counseling a wide range of clients, including President William Jefferson Clinton and Hillary Clinton. She served as a law clerk to Justice Thurgood Marshall on the Supreme Court of the United States.

Fidji Simo is a consumer technology industry veteran, having spent more than 15 years leading the operations, strategy and product development for some of the world's leading businesses. She is the Chief Executive Officer and Chair of Instacart. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors at Shopify. Prior to joining Instacart, Simo was Vice President and Head of the Facebook App. Over the last decade at Facebook, she oversaw the Facebook App, including News Feed, Stories, Groups, Video, Marketplace, Gaming, News, Dating, Ads and more. Simo founded the Metrodora Institute, a multidisciplinary medical clinic and research foundation dedicated to the care and cure of neuroimmune axis disorders and serves as President of the Metrodora Foundation.

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Sat, 09 Mar 2024 20:16

Middle East and North Africa: More than 45 Armed Conflicts This is, in numbers, the most affected region: more than 45 armed conflicts are currently taking place throughout the Middle East and North Africa in the following territories: Cyprus, Egypt, Iraq, Israel, Libya, Morocco, Palestine, Syria, Turkey, Yemen and Western Sahara.

The majority are non-international (NIACs), involving a multitude of armed non-state actors and foreign interventions by Western powers, Russia, and neighbouring countries '' except for the NIACs taking place in Egypt and Turkey.

'Syria is the most affected country in the region. Several multiple and overlapping NIACs are taking place in the country '' involving numerous armed groups who fight against the government and against each other '', along with two military occupations and three international armed conflicts' explains Dr Chiara Redealli, Research Fellow at the Geneva Academy.

(C) Mahmoud Sulaiman, Unplash

Africa: More than 35 Armed Conflicts Africa comes second in the number of armed conflicts per region with more than 35 non-international armed conflicts (NIACs) taking place in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, the Central African Republic (CAR), the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan. Several armed groups '' fighting against government forces and/or against each other's '' are involved in these conflicts.

Western powers and/or neighbouring countries are intervening in the NIACs that take place in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Somalia.

'CAR is on the top of the list with several NIACs involving multiple armed groups. The Government is involved in NIACs against a wide array of rebel groups, including the anti-Balaka and the ex-S(C)l(C)ka. There are also parallel non-international armed conflicts due to the infighting between various armed groups' underlines Dr Redealli.

(C) UN Photo/Stuart Price

Burkina Faso,

Cameroon, the

Central African Republic (CAR), the

Democratic Republic of the Congo,

Ethiopia,

Mali,

Mozambique,

Nigeria,

Senegal,

Somalia,

South Sudan and

Sudan. Several armed groups '' fighting against government forces and/or against each other's '' are involved in these conflicts.

Western powers and/or neighbouring countries are intervening in the NIACs that take place in Burkina Faso, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Somalia.

'CAR is on the top of the list with several NIACs involving multiple armed groups. The Government is involved in NIACs against a wide array of rebel groups, including the anti-Balaka and the ex-S(C)l(C)ka. There are also parallel non-international armed conflicts due to the infighting between various armed groups' underlines Dr Redealli.

">

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Sat, 09 Mar 2024 04:21

Sheldon Johnson became a youth worker with the Queens Defenders after his release from prison last year.

Sheldon Johnson's post-prison success story came to an abrupt halt this week when he was accused of murder. Credit... David Dee Delgado for The New York Times Since his release from prison last May, Sheldon Johnson had become a public face of rehabilitation and even redemption.

Mr. Johnson, 48, spoke to people about how he had been a big shot in the Bloods, had been convicted of attempted murder and had spent a quarter-century behind bars.

He was a counselor for at-risk youth at the Queens public defenders' office, and appeared last month on Joe Rogan's popular podcast, where he discussed his incarceration and his work.

But Mr. Johnson's success story came to an abrupt halt this week when he was accused of murder.

Mr. Johnson, of Harlem, was charged with murder, manslaughter and criminal possession of a weapon on Thursday in the killing of Collin Small, 44, inside the victim's Bronx apartment, according to police officials. It was unclear on Thursday how Mr. Johnson knew Mr. Small.

The Queens Defenders declined to comment on Thursday.

Early Tuesday morning, the police received a 911 call regarding gunshots inside an apartment building in the High Bridge neighborhood of the Bronx, according to internal police reports and two high-ranking law enforcement officials familiar with the case.

At least one neighbor told the police she heard two shots from inside a sixth-floor apartment, according to an internal police report. Moments later, she heard a person shout, ''Please don't, I have a family!''

Then, she told the police, two more gunshots rang out, followed by silence.

Shortly after hearing the shots, the neighbor saw a man carrying bags and cleaning supplies walk in and out of the apartment, according to the police reports. The neighbor did not recognize the man, and told the building superintendent, Orlando Medina, what she had heard and seen.

Minutes before calling the police, Mr. Medina thought to check the security camera footage.

''I thought, Let me see what I see,'' Mr. Medina said in a phone interview.

When he looked at the footage, Mr. Medina saw a man walking in and out of the apartment. He noticed that the man had changed clothes several times: At one point, he was wearing a dark jacket, khaki pants and a plaid golf cap, and carting a plastic blue storage bin on wheels. At another point, he was wearing a light jacket and a fisherman's hat, holding two bags. On a third occasion, he wore a dark puffy coat, sunglasses and a blonde wig.

''I thought, I don't know who this man is, but he is coming in and out with a key, like he owns the place,'' he said.

Mr. Medina said he also saw the victim, Mr. Small, walk into the apartment around 10 p.m., but he never saw him leave. Mr. Medina called 911 for a wellness check.

''I said to myself, 'I don't think this is something good. I think this is bad, and I think the tenant is in danger,''' Mr. Medina said. '''I think he is dead.'''

When patrol officers arrived at the apartment on Summit Avenue, near the corner of West 162nd Street, they knocked on Mr. Small's door and Mr. Johnson opened it.

Police detectives later confirmed that the man captured on camera coming in and out of the apartment was Mr. Johnson, the reports said. They took Mr. Johnson into custody soon afterward.

Once the detectives obtained a warrant to search the apartment, they discovered the victim's torso and feet inside the bin, the reports said. They also found his legs, arms and head in the freezer. Mr. Small had been shot at least once in the head.

Roughly 17 hours later, Mr. Johnson was charged with murder.

Mr. Johnson has spent about half of his life behind bars. In 1997, under the alias Thomas Smalls, he was convicted of criminal possession of stolen property in Manhattan, according to state prison records.

Two years later, Mr. Johnson was convicted of attempted murder, robbery and other charges in Manhattan, according to the records. He served the maximum sentence of about 25 years, and was released last May.

His attempted murder case and long incarceration had prompted public efforts to convince the state to grant him clemency. A fund-raising page on the website newyorkersforclemency.com described him as a ''community leader and mentor'' as well as a ''creative writer and thespian.''

In his own writings and in other media reports, Mr. Johnson described his incarceration as part of a family legacy of crime and punishment. Mr. Johnson's father also served time in prison, and his son, also named Sheldon Johnson, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in family court in connection with a fatal attack on a Columbia graduate student in 2008, when the younger Mr. Johnson was 12.

Still, the serious accusations against Mr. Johnson are not the norm for people leaving prison, said the Rev. Peter Cook, the executive director of the New York State Council of Churches, a faith-based group that supports prison policy reform.

''I grieve for the family mourning this tragic loss,'' Mr. Cook said, adding: ''It's important that we not lose sight of the fact that countless formerly incarcerated people have safely returned home and dedicated their remaining years to giving back to their community and promoting healing and safety.''

On Mr. Rogan's podcast, Mr. Johnson described himself as a member of the Bloods who was at ''the top of the food chain.'' He continued in his leadership role even while behind bars.

In 2005, Mr. Johnson said, he began to rethink the drug dealing, the guns and the gang life. He wanted to leave it all behind.

''My son was growing up hearing stories about my so-called notoriety. I just didn't want to be that dad,'' Mr. Johnson said.

''I said to myself, 'I've been doing bad for so long, I'm going to try to do something good,''' he added. ''If all else fails, I could always go back to doing something bad. But let me try. Let me give it a shot.''

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Hailed as Face Of Clemency, Man Charged With Murder

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Fri, 08 Mar 2024 17:46

BLOG March 3, 2024 · 4 minutes to read

I'm somewhat of a power user of podcast apps, as you might expect.

On Android, I used Pocket Casts. It remains an excellent podcast app, with lots of features that are worth using.

Now that I have an iPhone (and, for better or worse, am inside the Apple ecosystem for the next twelve months), I used Apple Podcasts for a while. It is a great-looking and very capable podcast app, though I can't say much about it currently because I'm using the new iOS in developer beta, which you're not supposed to write about until it's actually launched.

However, I was also excited to try Overcast. It's a podcast app developed by Marco Arment, and has a lot of fans; and it's almost ten years old.

The reason why I was interested to try it is the audio player. The reason Overcast came into being is because Marco had two ideas: ''voice boost'' and ''smart speed''. I think last time I looked, both of those are trademarks of his; and rightly so, because they're not what you get elsewhere.

Apple Podcasts has neither of these features.

''Voice boost'', first of all, is not a simple ''turn the volume up by 3dB'' setting that some other podcast apps have. As far as I understand it, it's a mix of EQ and dynamic compression to ensure that all voices are clear and the same level. It's more subtle than others, and doesn't squish the voices too much; and it sounds good. I have it turned on for most of the shows I listen to - you can choose your settings per-podcast if you want to.

Voice boost, by itself, is an excellent feature - because of podcasting's open nature. The app is literally playing the sound file, direct from the podcast hosting company, so there is no opportunity for podcast apps to do any form of quality control. This is not something fully understood by my broadcast friends, who assume there is some form of ingestion process: there is for YouTube; there isn't anywhere else. Apple (and others) have asked nicely if you wouldn't mind producing stuff at -16 LUFS, but that's as far as they can go really.

But: it's ''smart speed'' from Overcast that is very good. And it's also very opaque in terms of how it works.

Yes, Overcast has a setting that speeds up playback, like Apple Podcasts does. It does it in a normal way - making everything faster. But ''Smart Speed'' is a separate toggle, and it says something about removing silences, but listening closely and critically to the audio, it doesn't just seem to remove silences.

Pocket Casts has a thing called ''Silence Skip''. That looks for silences (or bits below a certain volume) in the audio, and cuts them out. You can hear the system doing this when you listen: it results in some audio sounding as if it has been badly edited as it skips past pauses and breaths. It's quite noticeable; and I found that, because it destroys the gaps that help you understand speech, it makes the audio harder to listen to. You sometimes have to make the speed a little slower and then turn on the feature, negating the time savings anyway.

Overcast's ''Smart Speed'' seems to be doing something different. I'm not really sure how it works or what it's doing. Turning it on gives a visible difference: the display shows the actual playback speed, which begins to fluctuate depending on the gaps it's editing out. I think it works differently at different speeds.

What's very clear is that with ''Smart Speed'' on, I appear to be able to go much faster on playback without losing intelligibility. Smart Speed doesn't edit out all the gaps. It's deliberately leaving some in, so that the pacing of the speech isn't destroyed. That's very clever, and I've still no idea how it's doing it.

Podcast apps - and I've tried a lot - appear to have focused on the UX of the selection of podcasts, or sharing, or a queue, or some other frippery. But almost all podcast apps don't appear to have done anything special for the thing you use them 99% of the time for: actually playing the podcast.

And perhaps that's why Overcast is different - because it was designed as a better podcast player, first and foremost. The playback of the audio is the more important thing, rather than bodging up a quick audio control when the rest of the coding is finished.

I'm super impressed at it. And you should give it a go too.

Previously: Thieves steal 200 foot AM transmitter mast Related Coming around to the Apple way of thinking Where next for podcast measurement? YouTube has RSS feeds... kind of Radiodays Europe - my keynote on open podcasting alternateEnclosures in RSS - why to do them Are you LIT? Live radio meets podcasting Chapters on Spotify - to kludge or not to kludge? Podcasting's ''Privacy Problem'' The BBC Sounds app by the numbers The Standards Innovation Paradox: is it real? Why you only need three buttons to promote your podcast Clubhouse: podcasting has nothing to fear, but other industries might How to get another billion podcast listeners Pocket Casts for Sale: Where Did It Go Wrong? Kahlimah Jones vs Gimlet'Š'--'Šthe fight for podcast accessibility Blog · Speaking · Biography · Contact me

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Fri, 08 Mar 2024 05:11

There's few things in the world quite like Linux. Even when it comes the time when two statements get to be true at the same time.

Linux is both the most important '' and the least recognized by general population '' software on this planet.

We are now hearing that Linux (''desktop'' usage) has crossed the 4% global market share. A new milestone. But is that number newsworthy?

It is. And this is why.

People in general often confuse the Linux kernel and various Linux ''distros'' (OS's) as one and the same thing. Sadly they are not.

On the one hand, the 30+ year-old kernel '' this ''low level'' heart of an operating system (OS) '' has long since established itself as the infrastructural foundation of the entire global internet.

And all those giant corporations now depend on it, for all that power, money, and influence.

One could easily say that Linux is the most important software to ever hit the world. And the best kept secret '' from ''ordinary'' people.

Every Android user is also a Linux user '' because Android OS kernel is Linux. So that's Linux pretty much ''ruling the (digital) waves.''

But then, what about ''the desktop'' (PCs, laptops).

That's where sadly most people are ''blissfully unaware.''

They continue to run closed-source, spying and security holes-ridden OS's.

There's Microsoft/Windows, betting on user inertia, and Apple, on people thinking they're ''affluent'' because they get overcharged for hardware.

And then, there are people who are running various, full-fledged at this point in computing history, Linux ''distros.'' 10 or 15 years ago, sure, it might have been a hassle to install and maintain one.

But now, the likes of Ubuntu and Mint (based on ''granddaddy'' Debian), or Fedora (Red Hat) varieties are simple to install, easy to use/update, free (as in freedom, but also as in, ''beer'') and open-source.

Because it's open source and allows access to and knowledge of the deepest recesses of the OS, at one time, the benefit might have been to amend a few lines of code in a kernel module to, say, make the headphones work properly on a particular laptop.

But these days '' the stakes are so much higher.

And if in 2024, you consider yourself a ''privacy and security conscious user'' but are not running a Linux OS '' what are you doing?

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

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Fri, 08 Mar 2024 05:10

In January, the House Judiciary Committee sounded the alarm about the federal government asking banks to surveil transactions related to certain keywords, such as ''MAGA'' and ''Trump,'' as part of investigations into January 6, 2021 at the Capitol. But new documents obtained by the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government have revealed that the surveillance that was initially identified by the House Judiciary Committee in January was much broader than these early reports suggested.

The House Judiciary Committee's initial letter about this financial surveillance revealed that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) sent several financial institutions lists of terms that it deemed to be indicators of potential violent extremism and suggested that banks use these search terms to flag suspect transactions. These lists included terms such as MAGA and Trump and also recommended searching for more generic terms, such as terms related to purchases of transportation and terms related to purchases of books (including religious texts) and other media that FinCEN deemed to be ''extremist.''

These new documents, which were shared in a report titled ''Financial Surveillance in the United States: How Federal Law Enforcement Commandeered Financial Institutions to Spy on Americans,'' show that the list of terms FinCEN asked banks and financial institutions to flag was much wider.

In one document, FinCEN brands lawful activities, such as ''frequent ATM withdrawals and wire transfers with no apparent economic or business purpose'' and ''purchases that appear excessive or unusual for hobbyist or other legitimate use,'' as potential indicators of violent extremism.

In another document, FinCEN brands purchases of privacy-preserving tools, such as virtual private networks (VPNs), ''counter-surveillance equipment,'' or ''secure communications equipment,'' as potential ''red flags'' for ''active shooter detection.''

And in another document, FinCEN describes purchases of gift cards, ''transfers to GiveSendGo or other crowdsourcing sites,'' and ''use of debit cards for Crypto'' between November 3, 2020 and January 12, 2021, as ''subjects of interest'' for January 6 investigations.

In addition to revealing the vast scope of FinCEN's financial surveillance dragnet, this report also revealed that FinCEN sent financial institutions links to the Anti-Defamation League's (ADL's) lists of ''hate symbols'' and a link to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue's (ISD's) report on ''funding of American hate groups.'' FinCEN described these as links to ''key terms applicable to matters related to racially and ethnically motivated violent extremism, which may have application to the Capitol riots and related activity.''

The ADL's hate symbols list has been criticized for including fake hate symbols and the report notes that anti-Antifa images, and the Okay Hand Gesture are some of the contentious examples of what the ADL deems to be hate symbols.

Meanwhile, the ISD, a UK think tank that receives State Department funding, has faced criticism for its involvement in the censorship of Americans. The report notes that the ISD has incorrectly characterized several conservative groups as ''hate groups.''

Another revelation from the report is that the FBI shared intelligence products with financial institutions via a web portal that was operated by the Domestic Security Alliance Council '-- a public-private partnership led by the FBI's Office of Private Sector and the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis.

The report also reveals that since January 6, FinCEN and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have held multiple discussions with many of America's biggest banks as part of an attempt to get them to ''voluntarily'' share customer data with federal law enforcement agencies ''outside of normal legal processes.'' According to the report, some of the banks and financial institutions that these discussions were held with included Barclays, U.S. Bank, Charles Schwab, HSBC, Bank of America, PayPal, KeyBank, Standard Chartered, Western Union, Wells Fargo, Citibank, Santander, JPMorgan Chase, and MUFG.

The report claimed that the financial surveillance that the subcommittee uncovered was ''aimed at millions of Americans.''

While the January 6 Capitol investigation was used by federal investigators as a pretext for this financial surveillance, a source with knowledge of the documents told Fox News Digital that the government has used the information for investigations extending beyond January 6.

You can read the full report here.

In a hearing examining this Big Government-Big Bank financial surveillance collusion, Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) branded the surveillance as ''Orwellian'' and ''scary.''

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net.

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Sun, 10 Mar 2024 14:11

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Sun, 10 Mar 2024 12:19

Ozempic, the injectable weight loss drug, is discussed by Calley Means and Robert F. Kennedy Jr is this short episode.

A second longer episode with Calley Means is coming soon. Please share and subscribe.

Calley Means is on a mission to steer more healthcare dollars to incentivize metabolic habits at the root of disease (healthy food, exercise, sleep, stress management).

--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/rfkjr/message

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Sat, 09 Mar 2024 23:39

Was The Vax For Something Else | Dr. Scott Jensen, Dave Collum, John Cullen (TPC #1,429)",0);return i.querySelector("template").content}switch(r){case"thead":case"tbody":case"tfoot":case"colgroup":case"caption":return a("

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Sat, 09 Mar 2024 22:37

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul joined Good Day New York to discuss a variety of topics, including deploying the National Guard to NYC subway systems, the ongoing city migrant crisis, and the latest with congestion pricing.

Posted 2 days ago

Copy Link Email Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Reddit Show more Top Videos Watch Full Episodes Good Day New York

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Sat, 09 Mar 2024 21:54

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WTVF) '-- A Fort Campbell soldier responsible for safekeeping the country's secrets is now accused of sharing them with a conspirator claiming to be in China.

U.S. Army intelligence analyst Korbein Schultz allegedly did all that for $42,000, according to court documents. The conspirator apparently requested information on ballistic missiles and fighter aircraft.

Lipscomb University political science professor Marc Schwerdt said it's concerning.

''This one is especially disturbing as it is. This is direct treason. He's getting paid money for information that he passes to a known rival of the United States," Schwerdt said. "He's just a traitor."

In June 2022, the indictment indicated Schultz provided information on how the U.S. would defend Taiwan from an attack.

When discussing payment, investigators noted he responded: ''I need to get my other BMW back!" Schwerdt said, ''It is scary, that does seem like such a mundane sort of consideration."

In an encrypted messaging system, he allegedly told the individual in China he wanted to be "Jason Bourne," who is a movie character.

''That just also suggests to me that you're looking at an immature young man who that's probably why he got into his financial problems. I mean a young man like that getting a BMW '-- he's probably got something that's outside of above his pay grade," Schwerdt said.

Marc believes they will make an example of the soldier to deter other service members from sharing classified information. Schwerdt said, "and maybe there might be something within the procedures that he was a part of that may need to be tightened up.''

In federal court Friday in Nashville, they discussed Schultz being a flight risk. According to documents, Schultz was making plans with the conspirator to meet at a Formula One race overseas.

He's now behind bars.

Carrie recommends:Arizona journalist explains voucher outcomes before Tennessee considers the same

I have two boys in elementary school, so as the school voucher debate takes center stage again '' I wanted to really understand this issue. Arizona started its school voucher program 13 years ago and is the first state in the nation to offer universal school vouchers. That's what Governor Lee is proposing in two years. I leaned on the expertise of an investigative reporter in Arizona - and she came through with facts, figures and plenty of insight. This reporting gave me a lot to think about as a mom and a taxpayer. I think it will for you too.

-Carrie Sharp

Copyright 2024 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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The FBI in Miami is seeking an Iranian intelligence officer wanted in connection with the targeting of U.S. government officials for assassination.

Majid Dastjani Farahani is wanted for questioning in connection with the recruitment of individuals for various operations in the United States, the FBI in Miami said in a wanted poster issued Friday.

Farahani is believed to be connected with the targeting of current and former U.S. officials as revenge for the killing of Iranian Commander Qasem Soleimani.

Seeking Information: Iranian intel officer Majid Dastjani Farahani is wanted for questioning regarding the recruitment of individuals for operations in the U.S., to include lethal targeting of current/former USG officials. https://t.co/jyL3ZYRbo3

'-- FBI Miami (@FBIMiamiFL) March 1, 2024Soleimani, who headed the expeditionary Quds force of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020 that was approved by then-President Donald Trump.

Iraq later issued an arrest warrant for Trump over the killing.

Farahani, believed to be 41, speaks Farsi, English, Spanish, and French, and has ties to Iran and Venezuela, the FBI said.

Farahani also reportedly recruited individuals for surveillance activities focused on religious sites, businesses, and other facilities in the United States, the FBI said.

The FBI included a photo of Farahani, who they said has brown eyes and brown and gray hair.

Anyone with information on Farahani is asked to contact their local FBI officer or nearest American Embassy or Consulate.