Conservative Facebook Employee Who Wrote Memo On "Intolerant" Liberals Quits

A Facebook engineer whose controversial memo on the company's "political monoculture" that is "intolerant" of conservatives, had quit his job according to Business Insider.

Engineer Brian Amerige sent an internal message to co-workers on Wednesday, writing:

"These problems can be solved — just not by me, not any more, at least. I care too deeply about our role in supporting free expression and intellectual diversity to even whole-heartedly attempt the product stuff anymore, and that's how I know it's time to go."

Amerige goes on to say that he is starting a company with a friend "at the intersection of applied philosophy (epistemology, specifically) and technology."

In August, Amerige - who identifies politically as an objectivist - came under fire for an internal memo denouncing the Silicon Valley's "intolerant" culture. "We are a political monoculture that's intolerant of different views … we claim to welcome all perspectives, but are quick to attack — often in mobs — anyone who presents a view that appears to be in opposition to left-leaning ideology," he wrote.

His memo led to the creation of "FB'ers for Political Diversity," a group of hundreds of conservative employees who came together to protest the company's liberal bias. Posters promoting the group began to appear across the company's campus, while debates over Facebook's political bias have broken out between employees.

There have also previously been some incidents in which Facebook employees have refused to work with or talk to certain colleagues because of their political beliefs, an employee previously told Business Insider. -Busines Insider

Friday will be Amerige's last day, according to his message.

"I've been thinking about this for almost a year, and though a certain leak delayed me a bit, I know it's time for me to move on," he wrote.

"I'm not leaving because 'it's time for something new.'" -Busines Insider

Amerige wrote: "I'm leaving because I'm burnt out on Facebook, our strategy, our culture, and our product. Strategically, we've taken a stance on how to balance offensive and hateful speech with free expression. We've accepted the inevitability of government regulation. And we've refused to defend ourselves in the press. Our policy strategy is pragmatism — not clear, implementable long-term principles — and our PR strategy is appeasement — not morally earned pride and self-defense."

He added: "While I remain as in love as ever with our mission and my colleague's nearly-always good intentions, I disagree too strongly with where we're heading on these issues to watch what happens next. These issues hang over my head each morning, and I don't want to spend all of my time fighting about them."

The largely liberal Silicon Valley has drawn harsh criticism over allegations of political bias and punishment of conservative views.

In July 2017, Google found itself at the centre of a political firestorm after engineer James Damore wrote an internal post decrying what he characterised as "Google's Ideological Echo Chamber," in which he attacked the company's diversity efforts. (Amerige has been described as "Facebook's aspiring James Damore.") Some conservatives also allege that social media firms are deliberately silencing and censoring non-liberal voices on their platforms. -Busines Insider

Here's Amerige on having personal values:

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-11/conservative-facebook-employee-who-wrote-memo-intolerant-liberals-quits

Italy Slumps Into Bear Market As European Stocks Hit 20-Month Lows

European stocks have all but erased all gains since the end of 2016..

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-10-11/italian-stocks-slump-bear-market-european-stocks-hit-20-month-lows

Senate Dem hopeful Kyrsten Sinema promoted events featuring convicted terror lawyer

U.S. Democratic Senate hopeful Kyrsten Sinema promoted events at Arizona State University featuring a lawyer convicted for aiding an Islamist terror organization and its leader.

Sinema, a co-founder of the activist group Local to Global Justice, invited people in a now-closed Yahoo group to attend two events with Lynn Stewart, both in 2003.

At the time of the invite, Stewart had been charged with helping her former client Omar Abdel Rahman, a radical Egyptian spiritual leader of a terror group, to pass on secret messages to his followers to commit terror attacks.

Rahman was a former client of Stewart’s who was charged and sentenced to life in the 1990s for plotting to blow up the United Nations, an FBI building, two tunnels, and a bridge in New York City.

In the first event’s invite, Sinema said the lawyer was “emphatically not guilty” and would not have been charged with the crime if it weren’t for “the hastily enacted PATRIOT Act,” that expanded the U.S. government’s power to surveil people and thus catch Stewart passing on the messages in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks.

“Prior to September 11th and the hastily enacted ‘Patriot Act,’ Lynne Stewart never would have been indicted at all,” the invite posted by Sinema read.

“Last April, FBI agents arrested Stewart at her Brooklyn home. As they took her away in handcuffs, the FBI invaded and searched her Manhattan office. Her crime? Doing her job for the past 27 years as an outspoken criminal defense lawyer,” it added.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/senate-dem-hopeful-kyrsten-sinema-promoted-events-featuring-convicted-terror-lawyer

US military grounds its entire fleet of F-35 fighter jets in the wake of South Carolina crash

The entire fleet of F-35 fighter jets has been grounded to inspect the aircraft for suspected faulty fuel tubes, the US military said. The decision comes in the wake of a Marine Corps’ F-35B crash in South Carolina last month.

The grounding order affects all variants of the advanced fighter jets, including the Air Force’s F-35A and the Navy’s F-35C. The engines of the aircraft will be checked for suspected faulty tubes and replacements made where necessary.

The military say that the inspection process is expected to take up to 48 hours.

The decision comes amid the investigation into the September 28 crash, which happened after the F-35B’s take-off from an air station in Beaufort.

“The primary goal following any mishap is the prevention of future incidents,” said Joe DellaVedova, a spokesman with the Pentagon’s Joint Program Office, which oversees the F-35. “We will take every measure to ensure safe operations while we deliver, sustain and modernize the F-35 for the warfighter and our defense partners.”

Foreign operators of the F-35, such as Britain or Israel, are also grounding their fighter jets for inspection, according to the JPO statement.

The South Carolina crash – the first ever for the 5th-generation plane – ironically happened just a day after an F-35B successfully completed a mission in Afghanistan, an event that was reported by the Pentagon as a major milestone for the program. Luckily, the pilot of the crashed aircraft ejected and landed safely.

Problems have been surrounding the expensive Lockheed Martin-produced aircraft for years. Touted as an unprecedentedly advanced fighting machine, combining stealth capabilities with vast sensor dataflow and integration with other weapon systems, it has notorious for being riddled with hundreds of “deficiencies,” even as the aircraft was drawing closer to going into full-scale production. Those include dozens of serious drawbacks that could potentially be life-threatening.

The issues partially stem from the decision to design three different variants for different branches of the armed forces. The program is estimated to have a lifetime cost of over $1.5 trillion.

https://www.rt.com/usa/440992-us-military-grounds-f-35/

‘Ambitious as Lucifer’: Steve Bannon takes dig at Nikki Haley and her ‘suspicious’ resignation

Ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon has offered up a stinging back-handed compliment to Nikki Haley, describing the former UN envoy as "ambitious as Lucifer." He said her resignation announcement before the midterms is “suspect.”

Bannon said in an interview with Bloomberg News that the timing of Haley’s decision was “horrific” and “suspect,” noting that it undermines the administration’s efforts to rally support ahead of November’s midterm elections.

“Everything she said about stepping down could have been done on the evening of November 6. The timing could not have been worse,” he added.

Although Bannon credited Haley as “very talented,” he also said that she was “incredibly politically ambitious – ambitious as Lucifer.”

However, some on social media questioned whether Bannon meant his comment as a compliment or an insult.

“Can you clear something up for me? If Steve Bannon says she is ‘ambitious as Lucifer,’ is that a dig or is he showing admiration?” one Twitter user pondered.

Another joked: “Steve Bannon knows Lucifer personally,” in an apparent dig at the former White House strategist’s controversial ties to the “alt-right.”

Haley announced her resignation as US ambassador to the UN on Tuesday, igniting speculation that she may be preparing for a presidential run. Another popular theory is that she was forced to resign after being unmasked as the anonymous author of an op-ed published by the New York Times last month, which made a number of incendiary but unsubstantiated claims, including that there was a shadow government of “adults” preventing Trump from leading the US astray.

Haley, however, says that she is not running for office and will campaign for Trump. The president on Wednesday defended the timing of Haley’s announcement, arguing that there’s “no good time” to resign and that if she had waited until after the midterms it would have sparked similar suspicions Haley’s political ambitions.

Her resignation announcement caught much of the Trump administration off guard, according to reports, including White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Vice President Mike Pence.

https://www.rt.com/usa/440986-haley-lucifer-bannon-trump-ambitious/

Donald Trump Endorses Prison Reform; Jeff Sessions ‘Overruled’

President Donald Trump endorsed prison reform on Thursday, warning Attorney General Jeff Sessions to get on board with the idea.

Trump said he is interested in reducing sentences for people like Alice Marie Johnson, a nonviolent drug offender whose life sentence the president commuted in June.

“There has to be a reform because it’s very unfair right now,” Trump said. “It’s very unfair to African Americans. It’s unfair to everybody. And it’s also very costly,” the president commented on Thursday morning in a phone interview with Fox & Friends.

Trump plans to meet with hip-hop superstar Kanye West at the White House on Thursday to discuss prison reform and other issues important to the black community.

Trump questioned some of the life sentences for nonviolent drug offenders but said he would continue to be tough on crime in other ways. He noted that West’s wife, Kim Kardashian, was also pushing for prison reform.

Fox News host Brian Kilmeade asked Trump for a response to Jeff Sessions, who opposed prison reform.

“If he doesn’t, then he gets overruled by me,” Trump replied. “Because I make the decisions; he doesn’t.”

https://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2018/10/11/donald-trump-endorses-prison-reform-jeff-sessions-overruled/