Federal agencies to investigate 'left-wing civil unrest': Trump

The U.S. Departments of Justice and Homeland Security are setting up a joint operations center to investigate “left-wing civil unrest,” President Donald Trump said on Monday, as he accused Democrat Joe Biden of giving moral aid to vandals. Trump, hammering a “tough on crime” approach to curb violence in American cities gripped by protests over police brutality and racial inequality, said more than 200 people had been arrested in cities across the country, including 100 in Portland, Oregon, alone. “In America, we will never surrender to mob rule, because if the mob rules, democracy is indeed dead,” Trump said.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-race-usa-agencies/federal-agencies-to-investigate-left-wing-civil-unrest-trump-idUSKBN25R2YU?il=0

Facebook says will stop news sharing in Australia if new regulations become law

Facebook Inc said it would block news publishers and people in Australia from sharing news on Facebook and Instagram if a proposal to force the U.S. tech giant to pay local media outlets for content becomes law. The Australian government said in July it would require tech giants Facebook and Alphabet Inc’s Google to pay for news provided by media companies under a royalty-style system that is scheduled to become law this year. “This is not our first choice – it is our last. But it is the only way to protect against an outcome that defies logic and will hurt, not help, the long-term vibrancy of Australia’s news and media sector,” Facebook Australia managing director Will Easton said in a statement published on Tuesday.

Following an inquiry into the state of the media market and the power of the U.S. platforms, the Australian government late last year told Facebook and Google to negotiate a voluntary deal with media companies to use their content. After those negotiations failed, Australia’s competition regulator drafted laws that it said would allow news businesses to negotiate for fair payment for their journalists’ work. Easton said the proposed legislation misunderstands the dynamic of the internet and will damage news organisations. Australia’s Ministry for Communications did not immediately respond to questions on Tuesday.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-media-facebook/facebook-says-will-stop-news-sharing-in-australia-if-new-regulations-become-law-idUSKBN25S36J?il=0

Israeli, U.S. officials land in UAE, Kushner urges Palestinians to negotiate

ABU DHABI (Reuters) - Senior U.S. and Israeli officials landed in the United Arab Emirates on Monday on a historic trip to finalise a pact marking open relations between Israel and the Gulf state, and they told Palestinians it was now time for them to negotiate peace. White House senior adviser Jared Kushner also said on arrival that Washington could help maintain Israel’s military edge while advancing its ties to the UAE, the Arab world’s second largest economy and a regional power. Announced on Aug. 13, the normalisation deal is the first such accommodation between an Arab country and Israel in more than 20 years and was forged largely through shared fears of Iran.

Palestinians were dismayed by the UAE’s move, seeing it as a betrayal that would weaken a long-standing pan-Arab position which calls for Israeli withdrawal from occupied territory and acceptance of Palestinian statehood in return for normal relations with Arab countries. Kushner said Palestinians should not be “stuck in the past”. “They have to come to the table. Peace will be ready for them, an opportunity will be ready for them as soon as they are ready to embrace it,” said Kushner, part of a U.S. delegation that accompanied Israeli officials on the first official Israeli flight from Tel Aviv to the UAE. In a joint statement, the UAE, Israel and the United States urged Palestinian leaders to re-engage with their Israeli counterparts. The Abu Dhabi crown prince earlier said that the UAE was committed to the establishment of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital, state news agency WAM reported. “Peace is a strategic choice, but not at the expense of the Palestinian cause,” WAM cited him as saying. Kushner and U.S. national security adviser Robert O’Brien headed the U.S. delegation on the two-day visit. The Israeli team was led by O’Brien’s counterpart, Meir Ben-Shabbat.

Israel and the United Arab Emirates will discuss economic, scientific, trade and cultural cooperation on the visit. Direct flights between the two countries will also be on the agenda, an Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman told al Arabiya television after landing in Abu Dhabi. “That’s what peace for peace looks like,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tweeted, describing a deal for formal ties with an Arab state that does not entail handover of land that Israel captured in the 1967 Middle East war. At a news conference in Jerusalem late on Monday, Netanyahu said: “It will be a warm peace because it will be based on cooperation in the realm of economics, with an entrepreneurial economy like ours, with vast economic capabilities, with big money looking for investment channels.”

ARABIC GREETING Even before landing, the delegates made aviation history when the Israeli commercial airliner flew over Saudi territory on the direct flight from Tel Aviv to the UAE capital. Israeli officials hope the trip will produce a date for a signing ceremony in Washington, perhaps as early as September, between Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan. That could give U.S. President Donald Trump a foreign policy boost ahead of his re-election bid in November. The Trump administration has tried to coax other Sunni Arab countries concerned about Iran to engage with Israel. The most powerful of those, Saudi Arabia, while opening its airspace to the El Al flight, has signaled it is not ready. On board the packed airliner, passengers were welcomed in Arabic as well as English and Hebrew. “Wishing us all salaam, peace and shalom, have a safe flight,” the pilot, Captain Tal Becker, said on the intercom, using all three languages to also announce the flight number and destination. Like all El Al 737s, the aircraft was equipped with an anti-missile system, an Israeli spokesman said, and carried security agents of the U.S. Secret Service and the Israeli Shin Bet.

Palestinian leaders expressed anger at a deal which they believe further erodes their struggle for an independent state. “Peace is not an empty word used to normalize crimes and oppression. Peace is the outcome of justice,” politician Saeb Erekat said in a tweet. “Peace is not made by denying Palestine’s right to exist and imposing an apartheid regime. Apartheid is what Netanyahu means by peace for peace.” The Islamist Hamas group, which controls the Palestinian enclave of Gaza, also condemned the UAE. The flight represents a “stab in the back of the Palestinian people, a prolonging of the occupation, and a betrayal of the resistance of the (Palestinian) people,” Hamas said in a statement.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-emirates-usa/israeli-u-s-officials-land-in-uae-kushner-urges-palestinians-to-negotiate-idUSKBN25R0LX

Facebook partners with external researchers to study its impact during U.S. election

Facebook Inc said on Monday it is partnering with external researchers to examine the impact of the social media site on society during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The company said findings of the studies will not be published until the middle of next year, at the earliest. The initiative expands on its Social Science One project with academics who study political impacts of social media. A group of 17 independent researchers from the fields of elections, democracy and social media will now work with internal Facebook data scientists to design the studies. The company expects between 200,000 and 400,000 users to opt into the project, which will log what they see and how they behave on Facebook and Instagram. It will introduce targeted changes to some participants’ experiences, such as advertising or types of posts shown to them. Facebook employees will supply aggregated data to the external academics to protect the privacy of those users.

Online social networks have been drawing flak for what has been called a lax approach to fake news reports and misinformation campaigns, which many believe influenced voters and affected the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Facebook said it would not pay the researchers or restrict them from publishing their findings, but is entitled to review the research before its publication. While not compensating researchers, Facebook will pay for the costs of the study, such as payments to survey vendors, said Joshua Tucker, professor of politics at New York University and one of the project’s researchers. Philanthropies backing the Social Science One project, which Facebook started organizing in 2018, backed out last year citing the company’s delay in delivering pledged data to researchers. It had said the delays were the result of privacy concerns.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-facebook-elections/facebook-partners-with-external-researchers-to-study-its-impact-during-u-s-election-idUSKBN25R301

Judicial Watch Opposes Effort to Toss Civil Rights Lawsuit Alleging DC Mayor and other DC Officials Violated Judicial Watch’s First Amendment Rights

Judicial Watch announced today that it has filed an opposition to a request to dismiss its civil rights lawsuit against DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and other responsible DC officials who failed to grant Judicial Watch permission to paint “Because No One Is Above the Law!” on a DC street. Judicial Watch told the court in its opposition that Mayor Bowser and the other DC officials acted arbitrarily and engaged in prohibited viewpoint discrimination in failing to grant Judicial Watch’s request. The lawsuit (Judicial Watch. v. Muriel Bowser, et al. (No. 1:20-cv-01789)) arose after two political messages – “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police” – were painted on 16th Street NW, across from the White House. On June 5, 2020, after days of protests and riots in Washington, DC led by the Black Lives Matter movement, a team of artists, residents, District employees, and demonstrators painted “Black Lives Matter” and the District’s crest, which resembles three stars above an “equals” sign, on 16th Street NW. The following day, demonstrators painted “Defund the Police,” a key demand of the Black Lives Matter movement, alongside the “Black Lives Matter” message. The District government admits that the demonstrators lacked permission to paint “Defund the Police” on the street. To a reasonable viewer, the entire message can be read “Black Lives Matter Equals Defund the Police.” On June 10, 2020, Judicial Watch asked the Mayor Bowser for permission to paint its motto, “Because No One Is Above the Law!” on a DC street. Mayor Bowser and other District officials largely ignored Judicial Watch’s request. Deputy Mayor John Falcicchio eventually told Judicial Watch to pursue a permit through the District Department of Transportation’s online permit application process, but the Mayor, Deputy Mayor, and Transportation Director Jeffrey Martoonian now admit there is no permit for street painting.

At least two other organizations also formally requested permission to paint their own expressive messages on the District’s streets after “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police” were painted on 16th Street. Each organization was treated very differently from the painters of “Black Lives Matter” and “Defund the Police.” When in late June 2020 a veterans’ advocacy group requested permission to paint “Veterans Lives Matter” on the street in front of the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, a block from the “Black Lives Matter Equals Defund the Police” message, the Mayor’s Office of Legal Counsel told the group they could not do so unless the street was closed. The Mayor’s attorney also told the group that they could apply for a block party or special-event permit to have the street closed on a temporary basis. When a student organization sought to paint “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a District street in early August 2020, police reportedly told them they could do so, then told them they could not do so. When they tried to write their message in chalk on a nearby sidewalk, they were arrested.

As Judicial Watch demonstrated in its opposition: Whether the District’s streets are considered traditional public fora, designated or limited public fora, or nonpublic fora, the First Amendment forbids arbitrary treatment of requests to engage in expressive conduct and viewpoint discrimination. Judicial Watch argues that the Mayor and other DC officials did the opposite of what the First Amendment requires: they acted arbitrarily and discriminated against Judicial Watch because of its message. “Mayor Bowser gave us the runaround rather than equal access to the District’s streets to paint our ‘Because No One is Above the Law!’ message,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “Judicial Watch’s First Amendment rights shouldn’t take a back seat to the Mayor’s political promotion of ‘BLM/Defund the Police’.”

https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-releases/paint-lawsuit-continues/

>>10489402

Keep thinking that they need to keep up with the victim mentality, seems like the leader in that part of the world like to have chaos with that said as long as they can all find something to complain about no matter how big or how small they won't have peace, but what they will walk away with is excuses.