Critics of Silicon Valley censorship for years heard the same refrain: tech platforms like Facebook, Google and Twitter are private corporations and can host or ban whoever they want. If you don’t like what they are doing, the solution is not to complain or to regulate them. Instead, go create your own social media platform that operates the way you think it should.
The founders of Parler heard that suggestion and tried. In August, 2018, they created a social media platform similar to Twitter but which promised far greater privacy protections, including a refusal to aggregate user data in order to monetize them to advertisers or algorithmically evaluate their interests in order to promote content or products to them. They also promised far greater free speech rights, rejecting the increasingly repressive content policing of Silicon Valley giants.
Over the last year, Parler encountered immense success. Millions of people who objected to increasing repression of speech on the largest platforms or who had themselves been banned signed up for the new social media company.
As Silicon Valley censorship radically escalated over the past several months — banning pre-election reporting by The New York Post about the Biden family, denouncing and deleting multiple posts from the U.S. President and then terminating his access altogether, mass-removal of right-wing accounts — so many people migrated to Parler that it was catapulted to the number one spot on the list of most-downloaded apps on the Apple Play Store, the sole and exclusive means which iPhone users have to download apps. “Overall, the app was the 10th most downloaded social media app in 2020 with 8.1 million new installs,” reported TechCrunch.
It looked as if Parler had proven critics of Silicon Valley monopolistic power wrong. Their success showed that it was possible after all to create a new social media platform to compete with Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And they did so by doing exactly what Silicon Valley defenders long insisted should be done: if you don’t like the rules imposed by tech giants, go create your own platform with different rules.
But today, if you want to download, sign up for, or use Parler, you will be unable to do so. That is because three Silicon Valley monopolies — Amazon, Google and Apple — abruptly united to remove Parler from the internet, exactly at the moment when it became the most-downloaded app in the country.
If one were looking for evidence to demonstrate that these tech behemoths are, in fact, monopolies that engage in anti-competitive behavior in violation of antitrust laws, and will obliterate any attempt to compete with them in the marketplace, it would be difficult to imagine anything more compelling than how they just used their unconstrained power to utterly destroy a rising competitor.
The united Silicon Valley attack began on January 8, when Apple emailed Parler and gave them 24 hours to prove they had changed their moderation practices or else face removal from their App Store. The letter claimed: “We have received numerous complaints regarding objectionable content in your Parler service, accusations that the Parler app was used to plan, coordinate, and facilitate the illegal activities in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 that led (among other things) to loss of life, numerous injuries, and the destruction of property.” It ended with this warning:
To ensure there is no interruption of the availability of your app on the App Store, please submit an update and the requested moderation improvement plan within 24 hours of the date of this message. If we do not receive an update compliant with the App Store Review Guidelines and the requested moderation improvement plan in writing within 24 hours, your app will be removed from the App Store.
The 24-hour letter was an obvious pretext and purely performative. Removal was a fait accompli no matter what Parler did. To begin with, the letter was immediately leaked to Buzzfeed, which published it in full. A Parler executive detailed the company’s unsuccessful attempts to communicate with Apple. “They basically ghosted us,” he told me. The next day, Apple notified Parler of its removal from App Store. “We won’t distribute apps that present dangerous and harmful content,” said the world’s richest company, and thus: “We have now rejected your app for the App Store.”
It is hard to overstate the harm to a platform from being removed from the App Store. Users of iPhones are barred from downloading apps onto their devices from the internet. If an app is not on the App Store, it cannot be used on the iPhone. Even iPhone users who have already downloaded Parler will lose the ability to receive updates, which will shortly render the platform both unmanageable and unsafe.
In October, the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial, and Administrative Law issued a 425-page report concluding that Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google all possess monopoly power and are using that power anti-competitively. For Apple, they emphasized the company’s control over iPhones through its control of access to the App Store. As Ars Technica put it when highlighting the report’s key findings:
Apple controls about 45 percent of the US smartphone market and 20 percent of the global smartphone market, the committee found, and is projected to sell its 2 billionth iPhone in 2021. It is correct that, in the smartphone handset market, Apple is not a monopoly. Instead, iOS and Android hold an effective duopoly in mobile operating systems.
However, the report concludes, Apple does have a monopolistic hold over what you can do with an iPhone. You can only put apps on your phone through the Apple App Store, and Apple has total gatekeeper control over that App Store—that’s what Epic is suing the company over. . . .
The committee found internal documents showing that company leadership, including former CEO Steve Jobs, “acknowledged that IAP requirement would stifle competition and limit the apps available to Apple’s customers.” The report concludes that Apple has also unfairly used its control over APIs, search rankings, and default apps to limit competitors’ access to iPhone users.
Shortly thereafter, Parler learned that Google, without warning, had also “suspended” it from its Play Store, severely limiting the ability of users to download Parler onto Android phones. Google’s actions also meant that those using Parler on their Android phones would no longer receive necessary functionality and security updates.
It was precisely Google’s abuse of its power to control its app device that was at issue “when the European Commission deemed Google LLC as the dominant undertaking in the app stores for the Android mobile operating system (i.e. Google Play Store) and hit the online search and advertisement giant with €4.34 billion for its anti-competitive practices to strengthen its position in various of other markets through its dominance in the app store market.”
The day after a united Apple and Google acted against Parler, Amazon delivered the fatal blow. The company founded and run by the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, used virtually identical language as Apple to inform Parler that its web hosting service (AWS) was terminating Parler’s ability to have AWS host its site: “Because Parler cannot comply with our terms of service and poses a very real risk to public safety, we plan to suspend Parler’s account effective Sunday, January 10th, at 11:59PM PST.” Because Amazon is such a dominant force in web hosting, Parler has thus far not found a hosting service for its platform, which is why it has disappeared not only from app stores and phones but also from the internet.
On Thursday, Parler was the most popular app in the United States. By Monday, three of the four Silicon Valley monopolies united to destroy it.
With virtual unanimity, leading U.S. liberals celebrated this use of Silicon Valley monopoly power to shut down Parler, just as they overwhelmingly cheered the prior two extraordinary assertions of tech power to control U.S. political discourse: censorship of The New York Post’s reporting on the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the banning of the U.S. President from major platforms. Indeed, one would be hard-pressed to find a single national liberal-left politician even expressing concerns about any of this, let alone opposing it.
Not only did leading left-wing politicians not object but some of them were the ones who pleaded with Silicon Valley to use their power this way. After the internet-policing site Sleeping Giants flagged several Parler posts that called for violence, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez asked: “What are @Apple and @GooglePlay doing about this?” Once Apple responded by removing Parler from its App Store — a move that House Democrats just three months earlier warned was dangerous anti-trust behavior — she praised Apple and then demanded to know: “Good to see this development from @Apple. @GooglePlay what are you going to do about apps being used to organize violence on your platform?”
The liberal New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg pronounced herself “disturbed by just how awesome [tech giants’] power is” and added that “it’s dangerous to have a handful of callow young tech titans in charge of who has a megaphone and who does not.” She nonetheless praised these “young tech titans” for using their “dangerous” power to ban Trump and destroy Parler. In other words, liberals like Goldberg are concerned only that Silicon Valley censorship powers might one day be used against people like them, but are perfectly happy as long as it is their adversaries being deplatformed and silenced (Facebook and other platforms have for years banned marginalized people like Palestinians at Israel’s behest, but that is of no concern to U.S. liberals).
That is because the dominant strain of American liberalism is not economic socialism but political authoritarianism. Liberals now want to use the force of corporate power to silence those with different ideologies. They are eager for tech monopolies not just to ban accounts they dislike but to remove entire platforms from the internet. They want to imprison people they believe helped their party lose elections, such as Julian Assange, even if it means creating precedents to criminalize journalism.
World leaders have vocally condemned the power Silicon Valley has amassed to police political discourse, and were particularly indignant over the banning of the U.S. President. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, various French ministers, and especially Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador all denounced the banning of Trump and other acts of censorship by tech monopolies on the ground that they were anointing themselves “a world media power.” The warnings from López Obrador were particularly eloquent:
Even the ACLU — which has rapidly transformed from a civil liberties organization into a liberal activist group since Trump’s election — found the assertion of Silicon Valley’s power to destroy Parler deeply alarming. One of that organization’s most stalwart defenders of civil liberties, lawyer Ben Wizner, told The New York Times that the destruction of Parler was more “troubling” than the deletion of posts or whole accounts: “I think we should recognize the importance of neutrality when we’re talking about the infrastructure of the internet.”
Yet American liberals swoon for this authoritarianism. And they are now calling for the use of the most repressive War on Terror measures against their domestic opponents. On Tuesday, House Homeland Security Chair Bennie Thompson (D-MS) urged that GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley “be put on the no-fly list,” while The Wall Street Journal reported that “Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them.”
So much of this liberal support for the attempted destruction of Parler is based in utter ignorance about that platform, and about basic principles of free speech. I’d be very surprised if more than a tiny fraction of liberals cheering Parler’s removal from the internet have ever used the platform or know anything about it other than the snippets they have been shown by those seeking to justify its destruction and to depict it as some neo-Nazi stronghold.
Parler was not founded, nor is it run, by pro-Trump, MAGA supporters. The platform was created based in libertarian values of privacy, anti-surveillance, anti-data collection, and free speech. Most of the key executives are more associated with the politics of Ron Paul and the CATO Institute than Steve Bannon or the Trump family. One is a Never Trump Republican, while another is the former campaign manager of Ron Paul and Rand Paul. Among the few MAGA-affiliated figures is Dan Bongino, an investor. One of the key original investors was Rebekah Mercer.
The platform’s design is intended to foster privacy and free speech, not a particular ideology. They minimize the amount of data they collect on users to prevent advertiser monetization or algorithmic targeting. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, they do not assess a user’s preferences in order to decide what they should see. And they were principally borne out of a reaction to increasingly restrictive rules on the major Silicon Valley platforms regarding what could and could not be said.
Of course large numbers of Trump supporters ended up on Parler. That’s not because Parler is a pro-Trump outlet, but because those are among the people who were censored by the tech monopolies or who were angered enough by that censorship to seek refuge elsewhere.
It is true that one can find postings on Parler that explicitly advocate violence or are otherwise grotesque. But that is even more true of Facebook, Google-owned YouTube, and Twitter. And contrary to what many have been led to believe, Parler’s Terms of Service includes a ban on explicit advocacy of violence, and they employ a team of paid, trained moderators who delete such postings. Those deletions do not happen perfectly or instantaneously — which is why one can find postings that violate those rules — but the same is true of every major Silicon Valley platform.
Indeed, a Parler executive told me that of the thirteen people arrested as of Monday for the breach at the Capitol, none appear to be active users of Parler. The Capitol breach was planned far more on Facebook and YouTube. As Recode reported, while some protesters participated in both Parler and Gab, many of the calls to attend the Capitol were from YouTube videos, while many of the key planners “have continued to use mainstream platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube.” The article quoted Fadi Quran, campaign director at the human rights group Avaaz, as saying: “In DC, we saw QAnon conspiracists and other militias that would never have grown to this size without being turbo-charged by Facebook and Twitter.”
And that’s to say nothing of the endless number of hypocrisies with Silicon Valley giants feigning opposition to violent rhetoric or political extremism. Amazon, for instance, is one of the CIA’s most profitable partners, with a $600 million contract to provide services to the agency, and it is constantly bidding for more. On Facebook and Twitter, one finds official accounts from the most repressive and violent regimes on earth, including Saudi Arabia, and pages devoted to propaganda on behalf of the Egyptian regime. Does anyone think these tech giants have a genuine concern about violence and extremism?
So why did Democratic politicians and journalists focus on Parler rather than Facebook and YouTube? Why did Amazon, Google and Apple make a flamboyant showing of removing Parler from the internet while leaving much larger platforms with far more extremism and advocacy of violence flowing on a daily basis?
In part it is because these Silicon Valley giants — Google, Facebook, Amazon, Apple — donate enormous sums of money to the Democratic Party and their leaders, so of course Democrats will cheer them rather than call for punishment or their removal from the internet. Part of it is because Parler is an upstart, a much easier target to try to destroy than Facebook or Google. And in part it is because the Democrats are about to control the Executive Branch and both houses of Congress, leaving Silicon Valley giants eager to please them by silencing their adversaries. This corrupt motive was made expressly clear by long-time Clinton operative Jennifer Palmieri:
It has not escaped my attention that the day social media companies decided there actually IS more they could do to police Trump’s destructive behavior was the same day they learned Democrats would chair all the congressional committees that oversee them.
The nature of monopolistic power is that anti-competitive entities engage in anti-trust illegalities to destroy rising competitors. Parler is associated with the wrong political ideology. It is a small and new enough platform such that it can be made an example of. Its head can be placed on a pike to make clear that no attempt to compete with existing Silicon Valley monopolies is possible. And its destruction preserves the unchallengeable power of a tiny handful of tech oligarchs over the political discourse not just of the United States but democracies worldwide (which is why Germany, France and Mexico are raising their voices in protest).
No authoritarians believe they are authoritarians. No matter how repressive are the measures they support — censorship, monopoly power, no-fly lists for American citizens without due process — they tell themselves that those they are silencing and attacking are so evil, are terrorists, that anything done against them is noble and benevolent, not despotic and repressive. That is how American liberals currently think, as they fortify the control of Silicon Valley monopolies over our political lives, exemplified by the overnight destruction of a new and popular competitor.
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Highest French Court Rules Killer of Jewish Woman Cannot Stand Trial
To the alarm of Jewish leaders, Sarah Halimi’s killer will go unpunished because of his mental state, brought on by cannabis, at the time of the crime.
PARIS — The highest court in France has ruled that the man who killed a Jewish woman in 2017 in an anti-Semitic frenzy cannot stand trial because he was in a state of acute mental delirium brought on by his consumption of cannabis.
Kobili Traoré, who has admitted to the killing and is in a psychiatric institution, beat Sarah Halimi, 65, before throwing her out the window of her Paris apartment to cries of “Allahu akbar,” or God is great, and “I killed the devil.”
Michigan: ‘Strongest public health order in the Midwest’ now requires masks for 2-year-olds
The Michigan state government this week directed state residents as young as two years old to begin wearing masks in the hopes that doing so will help bring down the state’s coronavirus numbers.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services said in a press release on Friday that the state will expand its COVID-19 response — what the state DHHS calls “the strongest public health order in the Midwest” — to apply its masking requirement “to children ages 2 to 4” in order to “further protect the state’s residents.”
“Expanding the mask rule to children ages 2 to 4 requires a good faith effort to ensure that these children wear masks while in gatherings at childcare facilities or camps,” the announcement says, adding that the order “follows recommendations from the American Academy of Pediatrics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.”
Maryland adds 1,500 COVID cases while positivity ticks up, hospitalizations decline
Maryland health officials reported 1,500 new coronavirus cases Saturday, marking five days in a row where the state has recorded at least 1,000 new infections.
Worldwide COVID-19 death toll tops 3 million
The global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million people Saturday — a number bigger than the population of Chicago and equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.
RIO DE JANEIRO — The global death toll from the coronavirus topped a staggering 3 million people Saturday amid repeated setbacks in the worldwide vaccination campaign and a deepening crisis in places such as Brazil, India and France.
The number of lives lost, as compiled by Johns Hopkins University, is about equal to the population of Kyiv, Ukraine; Caracas, Venezuela; or metropolitan Lisbon, Portugal. It is bigger than Chicago (2.7 million) and equivalent to Philadelphia and Dallas combined.
And the true number is believed to be significantly higher because of possible government concealment and the many cases overlooked in the early stages of the outbreak that began in Wuhan, China, at the end of 2019.
When the world back in January passed the bleak threshold of 2 million deaths, immunization drives had just started in Europe and the United States. Today, they are underway in more than 190 countries, though progress in bringing the virus under control varies widely.
While the campaigns in the U.S. and Britain have hit their stride and people and businesses there are beginning to contemplate life after the pandemic, other places, mostly poorer countries but some rich ones as well, are lagging behind in putting shots in arms and have imposed new lockdowns and other restrictions as virus cases soar.
Worldwide, deaths are on the rise again, running at around 12,000 per day on average, and new cases are climbing too, eclipsing 700,000 a day.
“This is not the situation we want to be in 16 months into a pandemic, where we have proven control measures,” said Maria Van Kerkhove, one of the World Health Organization’s leaders on COVID-19.
US Army Prepares for Possible Global Land Conflict with China
The classic assumptions surrounding a possible war between the United States and China focus on regional naval battles in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, but U.S. Army Major General Richard Coffman recently stated that Americans must be and are already preparing for a worldwide ground conflict with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The development of the Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) under his leadership is one technology and piece of equipment being prepared for such a conflict. Chinese General Xu Qiliang, vice chairman of the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission and second-in-command besides Xi Jinping, called for increased military spending in early March, in part because he judged that a military conflict between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States was inevitable. It was the first time such a statement was made publicly at the highest level of the PLA. A few days later, on …
Bannon’s War Room | Saturday Edition | Recorded April 17, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 49 Seconds
“In any major disaster the most obvious thing to do is to figure out how the disaster occurred,” he said. “You can’t let the Russians investigate Chernobyl and take their word for it.” Guest is: Josh Rogin
U.S. Intel Walks Back Claim Russians Put Bounties on American Troops
It was a huge election-time story that prompted cries of treason. But according to a newly disclosed assessment, Donald Trump might have been right to call it a “hoax.”
‘Mysterious headless beast’ spotted in a tree in Poland turns out to be a CROISSANT
- The Krakow Animal Welfare Society received a panicked call from a local describing a mysterious creature that had been lurking in a tree for days
- The woman said that people had been frightened to open their windows in case the beast came into their homes
- Inspectors headed to the scene, only to discover that the creature in the tree, which appeared to have no head or legs, was actually a croissant
Schiff and Swalwell Went All in on the Dubious Russia Bounty Story
by Chuck Ross
Reps. Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, hyped reports last year that the Russian government paid bounties to kill American soldiers, an allegation that the Biden administration now says is based on inconclusive intelligence.
Schiff and Swalwell, along with other Democrats, used reports of the alleged bounty payments to accuse President Donald Trump of turning a blind eye to Russian aggression against the U.S.
Schiff, the chairman of the House Intelligence panel, accused Trump and other Republicans of refusing to confront Russian President Vladimir Putin over the alleged bounties. In a tweet on Aug. 27, Schiff said that their silence put U.S. troops “in danger.”
“Americans are outraged by reports that Russia offered bounties on U.S. troops,” Schiff tweeted on July 2.
“The only American who isn’t? Donald Trump. Trump is again taking the Kremlin’s side and calling it a hoax.”
Swalwell accused Trump of not supporting U.S. troops, saying that the Republican “hasn’t said shit about serious allegations Russia is paying bounties to kill them.”
The two Democrats, who also pushed since-debunked theories of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, were responding to reports first published by The New York Times.
On June 26, The Times reported that U.S. officials believed that Russian intelligence had paid Taliban operatives to kill American troops in Afghanistan. What’s more, according to the initial Times report, Trump had been briefed on the intelligence but done nothing in response.
Cracks soon emerged in the story. For one, Trump was not directly briefed on any intelligence regarding bounty payments, The Times subsequently reported. Some intelligence was included in a presidential daily brief that was reportedly not communicated to Trump.
Some U.S. officials, including military officials, also doubted the credibility of the intelligence. The Biden administration appears to broadly concur with the Trump administration’s interpretation of the intelligence.
On Thursday, U.S. officials told reporters that the intelligence community has “low to medium” confidence in the allegations.
“The United States intelligence community assesses with low to moderate confidence that Russian intelligence officers sought to encourage Taliban attacks U.S. and coalition personnel in Afghanistan in 2019 and perhaps earlier,” a U.S. official told reporters Thursday.
Progressive group ramps up pressure on Justice Breyer to retire
Demand Justice, an advocacy group led by a former top aide to Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), is pressing longtime liberal stalwart Justice Stephen Breyer to retire from the Supreme Court….
Trump Ally Vernon Jones Announces Run for Georgia Governor
Democrat-turned-Republican and former Georgia state Rep. Vernon Jones is launching a 2022 bid for governor of Georgia against incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, who lost favor with former President Donald Trump and many in the Republican Party over his state’s handling of the Nov. 3 presidential election. Jones made the announcement on Friday from Liberty Plaza in Georgia’s Capitol during a press conference to officially launch his campaign for governor. “On this historical day, I am planting my flag on the hallowed grounds of the Georgia state Capitol,” Jones said. “I am officially announcing my candidacy for governor of the great state of Georgia.” Jones has been a strong ally to Trump, his America First agenda, and calling for election integrity in Georgia, saying that if he becomes governor, he will overhaul the election system. He also said Kemp had failed to secure free and fair elections in the state. “The governor’s …
Most Colorado counties loosened COVID-19 restrictions Friday, despite rising hospitalizations
The majority of Colorado counties loosened their COVID-19 restrictions Friday as the state’s dial framework expired and hospitalizations were on the rise in some places.
Each county can now decide on its own restrictions, though the state could require counties to tighten the rules if they’re on track to go over 85% of hospital capacity. It also will continue to regulate large events and require masks in some settings.
Ending the dial, which attempted to standardize reopening decisions based on cases compared to population, hospitalizations and the percentage of COVID-19 tests coming back positive, comes as coronavirus hospitalizations are at their highest number since Feb. 5 (551), according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
As of Friday afternoon, 28 counties had said they didn’t intend to set local public health rules, meaning most businesses don’t face any COVID-19 restrictions, other than requiring masks if more than 10 people will be in the same room. Most of them would have been in one of the two loosest tiers — Level Green or Level Blue — with a few exceptions.
Douglas and Weld counties, which both removed their restrictions Friday, have seen hospitalizations rise at least seven days in the last two weeks. That, combined with the high percentage of positive tests, would have pushed them under the dial into Level Orange, where most businesses are limited to 25% capacity.
Departure from the state’s metrics is widespread. Most of the Denver area will move into Level Blue, which removes the cap on customers in restaurants and gyms, as long as different parties stay six feet apart. Of the 12 counties statewide that will be in Level Blue, only Gunnison and San Miguel had the necessary numbers under the old framework.
How a podcast helped police find alleged killer of California student gone missing in 1996
Chris Lambert would like to get back to making music but he can’t seem to stop chasing a ghost that has haunted him for nearly 25 years. A billboard on the side of the road on California’s Central Coast led him on a detour three years ago from his career as a singer-songwriter and recording…
Alleged sex trafficking victim may be cooperating with feds in Matt Gaetz investigation, ex-girlfriend says
Rep. Matt Gaetz’s (R-Fla.) former girlfriend has expressed fears that a woman who is allegedly a sex-trafficking victim of the Florida lawmaker recorded a call with her, raising the prospect that a second cooperating witn…
The Justice Department sues Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally, alleging tax evasion.
Mr. Stone and his wife failed to pay almost $2 million in federal income taxes, the government said in its complaint, which also said they tried to hide their wealth in an investment entity.
Lance Armstrong stands by son accused of sexual assault
Lance Armstrong is standing by his son, who is accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl three years ago on the disgraced cyclist’s couch.
Armstrong posted a photo of himself with Luke Armstrong, now 21 with the caption “Head [up] [heart] full. You’re my NORTH Luke. I love you,” on Instagram Friday night.
White House: Ambassador won’t be punished for publicly linking U.S. founding to ‘white supremacy’
The White House said on Friday that the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations will not face punishment for publicly linking the United States’ founding documents and principles to “white supremacy.”
Amb. Linda Thomas-Greenfield told the National Action Network on Wednesday that she has “seen for [herself] how the original sin of slavery weaved white supremacy into our founding documents and principles,” arguing that the U.S. is an “imperfect union” and has “been since the beginning.”
April 16, 2021 | Nightly News Rebroadcast | Video: 54 Minutes 48 Seconds
A suspect has been identified in the Indianapolis mass shooting, President Joe Biden and Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga talk at the White House about countering threats from the Chinese communist regime and North Korea, and human smugglers are advertising their services on Facebook.
April 16, 2021 | Nightly News Rebroadcast | Video: 54 Minutes 48 Seconds
A suspect has been identified in the Indianapolis mass shooting, President Joe Biden and Japan’s Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga talk at the White House about countering threats from the Chinese communist regime and North Korea, and human smugglers are advertising their services on Facebook.
Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 1 | Recorded April 16, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 27 Seconds
The truth was murdered in front of our eyes,” Kassam said. “This just isn’t about left vs. right. That’s a veneer, a facade, that’s the game they keep trying to get us to play. We’re all guilty of playing it.
Bannon’s War Room | Morning Edition Hour 2 | Recorded April 16, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 49 Seconds
Liz Yore, founder Yore Children, exposes the Vatican’s upcoming “mind, body, and soul” conference for what it truly is: a séance to one world religion. Guests are: Natalie Winters, Darren Beattie, Liz Yore, James O’Keefe.
Bannon’s War Room | Evening Edition | Recorded April 15, 2021 | Video: 48 Minutes 59 Seconds
“What Fauci did during the AIDs epidemic, he was effectively the AIDs czar,” Navarro said. “He had the power to withhold drugs from AIDs patients and what he did was the same thing…he said that because there were no randomized clinical trials what was then a cocktail of drugs, that those folks couldn’t use them.”
SolarWinds hack got emails of top DHS officials, AP sources say
Suspected Russian hackers gained access to email accounts belonging to the Trump administration’s head of the Department of Homeland Security and members of the department’s cybersecurity staff whose jobs included hunting threats from foreign countries, The Associated Press has learned.
The intelligence value of the hacking of then-acting Secretary Chad Wolf and his staff is not publicly known, but the symbolism is stark. Their accounts were accessed as part of what’s known as the SolarWinds intrusion and it throws into question how the U.S. government can protect individuals, companies and institutions across the country if it can’t protect itself.
The short answer for many security experts and federal officials is that it can’t — at least not without some significant changes.
“The SolarWinds hack was a victory for our foreign adversaries, and a failure for DHS,” said Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, top Republican on the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “We are talking about DHS’s crown jewels.”
The Biden administration has tried to keep a tight lid on the scope of the SolarWinds attack as it weighs retaliatory measures against Russia. But an inquiry by the AP found new details about the breach at DHS and other agencies, including the Energy Department, where hackers accessed top officials’ private schedules.
The AP interviewed more than a dozen current and former U.S. government officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the confidential nature of the ongoing investigation into the hack.
The vulnerabilities at Homeland Security in particular intensify the worries following the SolarWinds attack and an even more widespread hack affecting Microsoft Exchange’s email program, especially because in both cases the hackers were detected not by the government but by a private company.
In December, officials discovered what they describe as a sprawling, monthslong cyberespionage effort done largely through a hack of a widely used software from Texas-based SolarWinds Inc. At least nine federal agencies were hacked, along with dozens of private-sector companies.
U.S. authorities have said the breach appeared to be the work of Russian hackers. Gen. Paul Nakasone, who leads the Pentagon’s cyber force, said last week the Biden administration is considering a “range of options” in response. Russia has denied any role in the hack.
Since then, a series of headline-grabbing hacks has further highlighted vulnerabilities in the U.S. public and private sectors. A hacker tried unsuccessfully to poison the water supply of a small town in Florida in February, and this month a new breach was announced involving untold thousands of Microsoft Exchange email servers the company says was carried out by Chinese state hackers. China has denied involvement in the Microsoft breach.
Sen. Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat and head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the government’s initial response to the discovery of the SolarWinds hack was disjointed.
Multiple people shot at FedEx facility in Indianapolis
Multiple people were shot at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis on Thursday night, a report said. Police first responded to reports of an active shooter at the building near the Indianapolis International Airport at about 11:10 p.m., WISH reported. Dispatchers declared the shooting a “mass casualty” incident, which allows for more emergency responders, the report…
(CENSORED) James O’Keefe of Project Veritas
James O’Keefe, founder of Project Veritas, was suspended from Twitter after Project Veritas released surreptitiously recorded videos of a CNN technical director criticizing the network’s overhyped Covid-19 coverage. According to the New York Post: “The CNN staffer who was secretly recorded admitting the network used “propaganda” to help get Joe Biden elected president also said they played […]
Fox News hires high-profile defense team in Dominion defamation lawsuit
Fox News has hired two high-profile defense attorneys to combat a $1.6 billion lawsuit filed against it by voting technology company Dominion.
The media outlet disclosed in a court filing that it had hired Charles Babcock and Scott Keller for its defense. Fox News confirmed the hirings to The Hill.
Babcock currently works at the Texas law firm Jackson Walker. He “has tried over 100 cases to a jury and argued over 50 appeals” and has “represented individuals such as Warren Buffet, Oprah Winfrey, Dr. Phil McGraw, George W. Bush, and Reggie Love,” according to his online biography.
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His corporate clients have included Orix USA, Celanese Corp., Fox News Network, CNN, Google, CBS Television Studios, Vantage Drilling International, Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, 3M Corp. and the Oprah Winfrey Network.
Keller, of the Texas law firm Lehotsky Keller LLP, has argued several cases in front of the Supreme Court and served as Texas’s solicitor general.
Babcock and Keller are joining Valerie Caras, Blake Rohrbacher and Katharine Mowery, who are all currently listed in court filings as Fox News’s defense attorneys.
The hirings come after Dominion Voting Systems filed the lawsuit in March that accuses Fox News of peddling “baseless conspiracy theories” that the election was stolen from former President Trump in an effort to boost its ratings.
Facebook Faces Formal Irish Privacy Probe Into Data Leak
Facebook Inc. faces a formal probe by its main privacy regulator in the European Union following the leak of the personal data of more than half a billion users of the social media service.
Ireland’s Data Protection Commission on Wednesday opened an inquiry following media reports earlier this month showing “that a collated dataset” of Facebook users’ personal data “had been made available on the internet,” the authority said in a statement.
Personal information on 533 million Facebook users reemerged on a hacker website in early April. The information included phone numbers and email addresses of users, the Irish regulator said in a statement earlier this month. Facebook has said the data is old and was already reported on in 2019.
Mike Lindell: Free, Clean Speech Social Media Site Set to Launch Monday
MyPillow’s Mike Lindell announced on April 15 that his new social media platform called “Frank,” with the mission of providing a place for free speech as laid out in the U.S. Constitution, will launch on April 19. In a video statement, Lindell said he’s taken steps to make sure the site is most secure, with his own servers, and will not be subject to censorship on the whims of big tech companies such as Amazon and Google. “And we are going to get our voice of free speech out there,” Lindell said. “On Monday morning at 9 a.m., we’re going to have the biggest launch. … I call it a Frank-a-thon.” “I’m going to be on there live all day long. … It’s like a YouTube Twitter combination; you’ve never seen anything like it,” Lindell said of his new project. “You’re not going to have to worry about what you’re saying …
YouTube Suspends Rebel News over ‘Election Misinformation’
The Rebel News, a leading source of conservative news and commentary in Canada, was suspended for one week on Google-owned YouTube, its primary platform, over a three-month-old video about social media censorship of President Donald Trump.
Kristen Clarke, Bigot and Liar
Having sworn to answer all questions truthfully, in an appearance Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee, President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division offered a series of answers that strained credulity and veered into outright falsehood.
The most bald-faced of the lies Kristen Clarke offered in her own defense relates to her activism while a Harvard University undergraduate in the 1990s.
Pressed about a 1994 letter published in the Harvard Crimson making the case that blacks are intellectually and physically superior to whites, Clarke waved it off as a “satirical” attempt to refute The Bell Curve, which came out the same year.
Everybody knew she was joking, she said, when she wrote that “black infants sit, stand, crawl and walk sooner than whites,” and, in a demonstration of scholarly rigor, pointed to the work of the writer Carol Barnes to assert that “human mental processes are controlled by melanin—that same chemical which gives Blacks their superior physical and mental abilities.”
The letter concluded: “It is completely naive to say that Blacks have achieved economic equality with whites. It seems that whites have grown tired of hearing about racism.” Was that a joke, too?
In Wednesday’s hearing, Clarke assured lawmakers that “contemporaneous reporting by the campus paper made very clear” she harbored no racist views.
False. The editors of the Crimson called on her to retract her claims. In an editorial titled, “Clarke Should Retract Statements,” they wrote: “We searched in vain for a hint of irony in Clarke’s letter.” She had, they concluded, “resorted to bigotry, pure and simple.”
Five days after the editorial was published, a student columnist wrote: “By disseminating racist theories of her own—however ambiguously—Clarke has done nothing to refute what she abhors and has done much to poison the atmosphere further.”
Even her defenders weren’t in on the joke. They explained that, having spoken with Clarke, it became clear she meant to question why the “racist opinions of white Harvard ‘scholars’ are publicly debated while racist opinions of Black ‘scholars’ are categorically rejected.” And indeed Clarke invited the racist black “scholar” Tony Martin to Harvard’s campus to discuss his book The Jewish Onslaught—another move the Crimson condemned.
Engaging in radical politics while studying at college is not an unforgivable sin. But brazenly perjuring oneself before the U.S. Senate is cause enough for her nomination to go down.
The post Kristen Clarke, Bigot and Liar appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.
Border Agents Report Being Overworked, Understaffed And Exposed To COVID-19 During Migrant Surge
- Customs and Border Protection agents don’t have the resources they need to effectively do their jobs, two active agents told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
- Field agents are routinely exposed to positive COVID-19 cases and expected to return to work immediately after if they aren’t showing symptoms.
- Border officials work 50-hour weeks and are required to work 10-hour overtime shifts due to a lack of manpower.
Sub-Saharan Africa: The devastating impact of conflicts compounded by COVID-19
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Pandemic hits those shackled by oppression hardest thanks to decades of inequalities, neglect and abuse
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It lays bare massive systemic inequality with marginalized communities, unemployed people, health workers, and women among the most severely impacted
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Report finds COVID-19 was weaponized by leaders to ramp up assaults on human rights
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New Secretary General Agnès Callamard calls for reset of broken systems
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the terrible legacy of deliberately divisive and destructive policies that have perpetuated inequality, discrimination, and oppression across Sub-Saharan Africa, Amnesty International said in its annual report published today.
Across the region, the devastating impact of armed conflict in countries such as Ethiopia, Mozambique, Cameroon, and Nigeria, was compounded by the pandemic as a number of states weaponized it to crack down on human rights. The crackdowns included killings of civilians and arrests of opposition politicians and supporters and human rights defenders and activists in countries such as Angola, Guinea, and Uganda.
Amnesty International Report 2020/21: The State of the World’s Human Rights covers 149 countries – including 35 in Sub-Saharan Africa – and delivers a comprehensive analysis of human rights trends globally in 2020.
In it, the organization highlights conflicts between states and armed groups and attacks on civilians continuing or escalating in most parts of the region.
Texas Ranchers Dealing With Armed Smugglers on Land
McALLEN, Texas—Two heavily armed suspected smugglers drive down a dirt road to hand their cargo of illegal aliens over to the next vehicle. One, the front passenger, is filming the bumpy drive with one hand, while pointing an AR-15 with a drum magazine out the windshield. They’re speaking Spanish, talking about how much farther to […]
The post Texas Ranchers Dealing With Armed Smugglers on Land appeared first on NTD.
Trump-supporting ex-Democrat Vernon Jones to run against Gov. Kemp in Georgia GOP primary
Vernon Jones, a lifelong Democrat who switched to the GOP after supporting Donald Trump, has decided to challenge Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp in next year’s Republican primary, multiple sources familiar with the decision told Just the News on Thursday evening.
Jones, a former state representative, is expected to announce his candidacy at an event Friday morning outside Georgia’s state Capitol, the sources said.
His entrance would set up a challenge between a close Trump ally and an incumbent governor that Trump has lambasted for allowing Democrats too lenient absentee ballot rules to win the 2020 election in that state.
Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee, Among 10 HK Dissidents to Be Sentenced Over Outlawed Pro-Democracy Protest
10 Hong Kong dissidents are expected to be sentenced on April 16, including media mogul Jimmy Lai, for taking part in unauthorized assemblies in 2019 during the height of the anti-Beijing, pro-democracy movement. Lai and six other dissidents attended a mitigation hearing at the West Kowloon court building in the morning, over their roles at […]
The post Jimmy Lai, Martin Lee, Among 10 HK Dissidents to Be Sentenced Over Outlawed Pro-Democracy Protest appeared first on NTD.
Facebook’s Oversight Board Will Remove Posts Flagged By Users
An independent panel created in part to stop Facebook from censoring content now has the ability to remove posts in response to user complaints, the company announced Tuesday.
Facebook created the Oversight Board in October 2020, in response to complaints that the social media giant was stifling free speech. The board was originally meant to determine whether content that Facebook had banned should stay up. Now, it will also be tasked with the reverse, determining whether content that Facebook has allowed to remain on the site should be removed.
BBC Diversity Chief Declares Idris Elba Character Not Black Enough to Be ‘Authentic’
Wanting more “representation” in entertainment is an understandable goal. It’s an important goal I support. Don’t let my mayonnaise-looking complection imply otherwise. “Diversity” for diversity’s sake is silly and something the needs to be ridiculed at all times. We’ve seen cartoon voice actors losing jobs because the actor and the cartoon character look different. A dinner theater was canceled in Minnesota recently because it had too many white folks in it. We’ve gotten to the point where a black actor isn’t black enough to play a black character. Or the actor is black enough but the character isn’t black enough. It all gets too confusing.
Idris Elba plays the title character on the BBC’s Luther, a popular crime drama. The BBC also has a diversity chief, Miranda Wayland, to ensure the BBC’s diversity. Idris Elba is black (he’s British, so “African American” doesn’t apply). He’s the lead character of a hugely successful show. Yay diversity, right? Not so fast, according to Wayland. She addressed a media conference recently.
When [Luther] first came out everybody loved the fact that Idris Elba was in there — a really strong, black character lead.
The .gifs are because I have quite a few friends who get warm and tingly just hearing the name “Idris Elba.” You’re welcome, ladies.
We all fell in love with him. Who didn’t, right? But after you got into about the second series you got kind of like, okay, he doesn’t have any Black friends, he doesn’t eat any Caribbean food, this doesn’t feel authentic.
Luther’s white creator Neil Cross nervously responded:
It would have been an act of tremendous arrogance for me to try to write a Black character. We would have ended up with a slightly embarrassed, ignorant, middle-class, White writer’s idea of a Black character.
It appears Idris Elba was cast in the role just for being the right person and an incredible actor. His race wasn’t a factor. In the older days, meaning pre-2018, that was the goal. The irony here being if Cross wrote Elba as eating Caribbean food and hanging out in whatever the British version of the barbershop is, there would be calls for him to be fired. Hell, half the jokes I want to make would get me deplatformed by the bollocks wankers at Facebook.
I’ve never watched Luther. After Matt Smith transitioned into an older Scottish man, I don’t even know what channel the BBC is. Maybe Luther just doesn’t like Caribbean food. Maybe he’s never been to the Caribbean. He’s a British detective. At the end of a long day doing Luther things, maybe he just wants a burger and a lukewarm beer. The BBC diversity chief seems to think it’s a bad thing that Luther/Elba doesn’t match her stereotype of what someone who looks like Luther/Elba should be. In the olden days (again, pre-2018) wee didn’t call that diversity. It was called something else.
Chelsea Clinton calls on Facebook to ban Tucker Carlson
Chelsea Clinton is calling on Facebook to ban Fox News host Tucker Carlson from the platform following a surge in online engagement with a post that included the conservative television personality’s speculation on the effectiveness of coronavirus vaccines.
The former first daughter on Wednesday tweeted a screenshot of a Facebook post that included Carlson’s monologue from the night before, in which he said, “If the vaccine is effective, there is no reason for people who have received the vaccine to wear masks or avoid physical contact.”
“So maybe it doesn’t work and they’re simply not telling you that,” he added at the time.
According to data from the social media tool CrowdTangle, Carlson’s segment had become the most popular post on Facebook by Wednesday.
BREAKING: Facebook Blocks New York Post Story About BLM Founder Spending Millions On Luxury Homes
Facebook has blocked a New York Post story on BLM co-founder Patrisse Khan-Cullors’s property-buying spree from being posted on its platform.
Last week, the New York Post revealed that Patrisse Khan-Cullors, one of the co-founders of the Black Lives Matter movement, had purchased four high-end properties worth millions of dollars. As the Post reported:
The self-described Marxist last month purchased a $1.4 million home on a secluded road a short drive from Malibu in Los Angeles, according to a report. The 2,370-square-foot property features “soaring ceilings, skylights and plenty of windows” with canyon views. The Topanga Canyon homestead, which includes two houses on a quarter-acre, is just one of three homes Khan-Cullors owns in the Los Angeles area, public records show.
The revelation led to anger among many on the left, who had perhaps come to the realisation that the millions of dollars raised by BLM may not have just gone into activism. Hawk Newsome, the head of Black Lives Matter in the Greater NYC area, said that there should be an “independent investigation” into how BLM spends its money “If you go around calling yourself a socialist, you have to ask how much of her own personal money is going to charitable causes,” he said. “It’s really sad because it makes people doubt the validity of the movement and overlook the fact that it’s the people that carry this movement.”
BLM is the biggest and most dangerous scam in American history. The grifters at the top of the organization enrich themselves while poor communities across the nation are devastated by the chaos they foment and profit off of. How could anyone still support these con artists?
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) April 11, 2021
On Thursday, people started to realise that the New York Post story on Khan-Cullors was being blocked from posted on Facebook. Anyone attempting to share the post would be met with an error message, claiming that it goes against Facebook’s Community Standards. National File was able to independently confirm the blocking of the link in a number of tests, including on the Facebook timeline and within direct Messenger messages. No other New York Post stories are currently subject to the same restrictions on Facebook.
Facebook is up to its usual tricks. A New York Post story on BLM's co-founder buying millions in property is not allowed to be posted on their platform! I'd guess Facebook would claim it's "targeted harassment," aka exposing embarassing facts about people we want to protect! pic.twitter.com/I7cj3b3vuK
— Jack Hadfield 🇬🇧 (@JackHadders) April 15, 2021
This isn’t the first time that Big Tech has cracked down on a viral New York Post story in an attempt to prevent it from gaining even more traction. In October last year, both Facebook and Twitter blocked the posting of the New York Post’s article that revealed emails and embarassing photos from Hunter Biden. Despite the fact this content came from his laptop which he had left at a repair shop, Twitter also suspended the Post’s account for the “distribution of hacked materials.”
April 15, 2021 | Nightly News Rebroadcast | Video: 49 Minutes 02 Seconds
President Joe Biden is imposing new sanctions on Russia and expelling ten Russian diplomats, human smugglers armed with AR-15’s are crossing through ranchers’ properties in Texas, and NTD speaks to a former law enforcement officer on what may have happened in the Daunte Wright case.