dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

‘Political correctness’ drives global persecution & ‘genocide’ of Christians – UK

Christians are the most persecuted of any religious group and face near-genocidal levels of oppression in some parts of the world, says a report commissioned by the UK Foreign Office.

Prepared by Reverend Philip Mounstephen, the Bishop of Truro and an Anglican missionary, the report estimated that one in three people worldwide experience some form of religious oppression, finding Christians are the most widely targeted group.

“Evidence shows not only the geographic spread of anti-Christian persecution, but also its increasing severity,” said the report, adding that “in some regions, the level and nature of persecution is arguably coming close to meeting the international definition of genocide.”

https://www.rt.com/uk/458337-persecution-christians-political-correctness/

‘Click-Gap’ Is Facebook’s Latest Tool to Favor Establishment Media

Facebook received a lot of attention for overt censorship last week. But the social network is engaging in covert suppression of independent media too — most recently with its introduction of “Click-Gap,” a way of favoring established websites and suppressing non-established ones.

The Click-Gap system will penalize websites that haven’t established “authority” outside Facebook, where “authority” is measured by the number of clicks they receive from sources outside the platform, such as mainstream media sources.

Here’s how Facebook’s “VP of integrity” and “VP of news integrity” explained it on the company’s official blog:

Click-Gap looks for domains with a disproportionate number of outbound Facebook clicks compared to their place in the web graph. This can be a sign that the domain is succeeding on News Feed in a way that doesn’t reflect the authority they’ve built outside it and is producing low-quality content.

Given how important Facebook has become to the growth of new websites, the system seems designed to promote sites that build up their followings before the rise of the social network. It favors older, established outlets and punishes upstarts. Which, of course, is exactly what the establishment media wants.

It also favors establishment media in another way. One of the largest sources for links and citations of news sources is Wikipedia, the leftist-dominated “online encyclopedia.” But conservative sources including Breitbart News are frequently blacklisted as “unreliable” on the site. In practice, there are essentially no links to Breitbart News throughout the entirety of Wikipedia, based on the actions of its zealous administrators and editors — actions Facebook’s new policy is designed to exploit.

The high number of citations and links to establishment sources on Wikipedia pages – which frequently appear at the top of Google search results – will favor those websites in Facebook’s new algorithm.

Breitbart News has reached out to Facebook for comment.

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/05/07/click-gap-is-facebooks-latest-tool-to-favor-mainstream-media/

Powerful explosions heard in Saudi Arabia’s port city of Yanbu': Local sources

A number of powerful explosions have been heard in Saudi Arabia’s port city of Yanbu', local sources said Monday, with reports falling short of giving any reason for the blasts or possible casualties.

No further details have been made available up to this moment and no group or individual has assumed responsibility for the blasts.

Yanbu' is an important petroleum shipping terminal for Saudi Arabia and home to three oil refineries, a plastics facility and several other petrochemical plants.

The second largest Saudi city along the Red Sea coast, Yanbu is also the second port, after Jeddah, and serves as the main port for the holy city of Medina.

Some social media activists claim the port city has been struck by rockets.

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/05/06/595262/Saudi-Arabia-Yanbu

Kellyanne Conway Warns Hillary Clinton Is Playing a ‘Dangerous Game’ by Questioning 2016 Election Results

Tuesday on Hugh Hewitt’s nationally syndicated radio show, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway rejected 2016 Democratic presidential nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s claim Donald Trump’s presidential election win wasn’t on the up-and-up.

Conway warned that Clinton was playing a “dangerous game,” particularly as she had warned against Trump making similar statements if he had lost that election.

“We got 304 electoral votes under her nose,” Conway explained. “She never saw it coming. Most people didn’t, and these media wrote these stories that Donald Trump had a 0% chance of winning. I’ve got all the stories clipped, and we’ll use them at some point. She knows she lost the election fairly and squarely because she was A) she was a candidate, she was overwhelming, excuse me, overestimated, underwhelming candidate who had this unbelievable fierce inability, intractable inability to connect with Americans. And contrast her to President Trump who as a candidate went out and said I’m here for the forgotten man and forgotten woman, and said exactly what he meant by that, Hugh, that people who were in the factories, factories that were closing, the people who were languishing in prison long after their jail sentences should have been finished, the people who were looking to get into…the folks who were being strangled by our regulatory scheme that was hurting small businesses and property owners and taxpayers and public school parents.”

“But when Hillary Clinton is out there claiming that the election was stolen from her where nobody told her not to go to Wisconsin or Michigan or Pennsylvania,” she continued. “Nobody told her to not have a good message. Nobody told her to be the second-most popular person in a two-person household. Ooh, that must really hurt every morning. She lost that election fairly and squarely. And when she says it was stolen from her to hoots and hollers by the audience, she’s playing a dangerous game, because after the October 19, 2016 debate when Candidate Trump was asked will you accept the election results, and he said I’ll let you know, I’ll keep you in suspense, and she said that is frightening. She tweeted out that’s democracy. And let’s just say that hasn’t aged well. None of it.”

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2019/05/07/kellyanne-conway-warns-hillary-clinton-is-playing-a-dangerous-game-by-questioning-2016-election-results/

UK Govt Concedes Country Will Take Part in EU Elections Near Three Years After Brexit Vote

LONDON (AP) – The British government on Tuesday acknowledged for the first time that the country will definitely take part in the European Parliament elections this month because there’s no chance that a Brexit deal can be approved in time to avoid them.

Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government had been desperate to avoid U.K. participation in polls for U.K. seats in the 751-seat European Union legislature. The vote in Britain on May 23 is being held almost three years after U.K. voters chose to leave the EU

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/05/07/uk-govt-concedes-country-will-take-part-in-eu-elections-near-three-years-after-brexit-vote/

Anonymous ID: 9f3f45 May 7, 2019, 12:19 p.m. No.6438985 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>9070

Israel wants the Trump administration to attack Iran, but U.S. mainstream media ignores Netanyahu’s instigating

Why is the Trump administration escalating its economic war against Iran, a dangerous policy that could eventually lead to a shooting war and trigger a world recession? Iran in 2019 is no danger to U.S. interests anywhere. Tehran is not threatening American shipping, or military bases; its allies, like Hizbollah in Lebanon, have not targeted U.S. civilians or soldiers for years.

The U.S. is squeezing Iran mainly because Israel wants it to. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in a de facto alliance with Saudi Arabia, and has warm relations with the other Gulf states and with the Abdel Fattah el-Sisi dictatorship in Egypt. Iran is the only regional power that is deterring him from completely annexing the West Bank. Iran is also a major supporter of Hamas, the resistance movement in Gaza.

Israel wants the Iranian government destroyed, and Netanyahu has been instigating the United States for years to attack Teheran. Now that American foreign policy is in the hands of incompetent, bellicose officials like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, Israel senses that its hour has arrived. First, it encouraged the Trump administration to pull out of the Iran nuclear deal, even though all the inspectors recognized Teheran was fully in compliance with the agreement. This economic assault is the next step. How long until an actual war?

The U.S. mainstream press is mostly missing the the Israel angle. Let’s start with the New York Times front-page report on the U.S. efforts to tighten the existing boycott and reduce Iran’s oil exports to zero by threatening importers like China and India. The word “Israel” appears nowhere in the fairly long article. Not once. The Washington Post made exactly the same omission: no mention of “Israel.”

Most mainstream coverage takes at face value Secretary of State Pompeo’s contention that U.S. pressure is only meant to make Iran act like a “normal” country. But it fell to the New York Times editorial board to tell the truth that should have been reported in its news pages; back in February, the Trump administration sponsored a conference in Warsaw that attracted officials from many Arab states and Israel. The Times dismissed the administration’s stated reason for the gathering. “The goal of their meeting. . . was not peacemaking,” the Times said. “It was to rally support for economic and political war with Iran. . .”

https://mondoweiss.net/2019/05/administration-mainstream-instigating/

Crime Down 15 Percent Under Salvini Interior Ministry

Following criticism from his coalition partners, the Five Star Movement, that he should focus less on migrants and more on the Mafia, Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini revealed that crime has reduced by 15 per cent between 2018 and 2019.

The populist Lega leader, who heads the police as Interior Minister, revealed that according to police statistics, crime had decreased by 15 per cent with murders down by 12.2 per cent and attempted murders down 16.2 per cent, Il Giornale reports.

Other crimes were down as well, come even more drastically such as sexual violence which had seen a 32.1 decrease and robberies which were down 20.9 per cent.

The comments from Salvini came in reaction to a statement by Five Star Leader and co-deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio who said, “Rather than terrifying migrants or visiting walls, the owner of the Interior Ministry should take care of fighting the mafia.”

The statement over visiting walls was likely a swipe at Salvini’s recent trip to Hungary where he once again met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban to speak about cooperation within the European Parliament and the European Union as a whole.

“I’ve done more committees for order and security in Naples than in all the other Italian cities,” Salvini said and then went on to refer to the notorious Neapolitan Camorra Mafia saying, “It is clear that the Camorra is an ugly beast and it will take time to defeat it.”

Salvini said he was also still committed to the arrests of “mafia, murderers, drug dealers and criminals in general,” but noted that it would require more police officers and that to tackle the issues would require thousands of new uniformed personnel.

While crime is falling overall, the number of crimes committed by migrants has reached such a level where one in three suspects in various criminal cases come from migrant backgrounds.

On the issue of halting migration, many sources, including the European Union border agency Frontex, have admitted that the anti-mass migration policies of Salvini have reduced new landings over 90 percent and as a result have also led to a sharp decline in the number of drowning deaths in the Mediterranean sea.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/05/07/crime-down-15-percent-under-salvini-interior-ministry/#

Monsanto Argues Roundup Cancer Victim Should Receive Less Money Because of Imminent Death

August 10, 2018, a jury found Monsanto (now owned by Bayer AG1,2) had “acted with malice or oppression” and was responsible for “negligent failure” by not warning consumers about the carcinogenicity of its weed killer, Roundup.3,4 The plaintiff in this historic case was 46-year-old Dewayne Johnson, who is dying from Non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Johnson sprayed about 150 gallons of Roundup 20 to 40 times per year while working as a groundskeeper for the Benicia Unified School District in California, from 2012 through late 2015.5 His lawsuit, filed in 2016 after he became too ill to work, accused Monsanto of hiding the health hazards of Roundup.

The jury ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million in damages to Johnson, $33 million of which was noneconomic damages for pain and suffering. In October, the judge upheld the guilty verdict but reduced the total award to $78 million.6,7,8

Monsanto/Bayer Wants Damages Reduced on Grounds That Plaintiff Is Near Death

As expected, Bayer/Monsanto appealed. What’s shocking is the company’s argument for significantly reducing the damage amount further. In its appellate brief,9 the company asks for reversal of the damages awarded based on the fact that Johnson is near death. On page 87, the appeal states:10

“A jury may award future noneconomic damages only for pain and suffering that a plaintiff is reasonably certain to experience based on his ‘projected life span at the time of trial’ …

[‘[D]amages for future pain and suffering are based upon plaintiff’s probable life expectancy in his or her injured condition … [C]ompensation for pain and suffering is recompense for pain and suffering actually experienced, and to the extent that premature death terminates the pain and suffering, compensation should be terminated’] …

An award is excessive if it ‘suggest[s] the jury was influenced by improper considerations’ … At closing argument, Plaintiff’s counsel ignored these principles. He implored the jury to award $1 million per year for both past and future noneconomic damages, and asserted that Plaintiff ‘will live between two more to 33 years.’

In so doing, Plaintiff’s counsel urged the jury to disregard the evidence presented through his medical expert, Dr. Nabhan, that Plaintiff would not live past December 2019, or roughly one and a half years after trial …

He then asked for $33 million in future noneconomic damages: ‘[I]f he lives for only two years, then the remaining years that he doesn’t get to live is also a million dollars. So it doesn’t matter if he dies in two years or dies in 20 … [H]e deserves that money’ … [asking jury to award $33 million in future noneconomic damages based on Plaintiff’s ‘potential life expectancy over the years he won’t live’ … ]).

And the jury awarded Plaintiff exactly what his lawyer requested: $33 million in future noneconomic damages … The court posed two questions for the parties to address at argument:

https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/05/07/big-industry-wants-roundup-victim-to-receive-less-money.aspx

Anonymous ID: 9f3f45 May 7, 2019, 12:31 p.m. No.6439100 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>9141

White House orders McGahn to defy House subpoena

The White House has ordered former White House counsel Don McGahn not to turn over documents to Congress because President Trump may exert executive privilege to block their release.

Pat Cipollone, the current top White House lawyer, wrote a letter on Tuesday asking the House Judiciary Committee to go through the White House to request documents related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

“The White House provided these records to Mr. McGahn in connection with its cooperation with the special counsel's investigation and with the clear understanding that the records remain subject to the control of the White House for all purposes,” Cipollone wrote to Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Judiciary panel.

“The White House records remain legally protected from disclosure under longstanding constitutional principles, because they implicate significant executive branch confidentiality interests and executive privilege,” Cipollone added.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney gave the directive “not to produce” the records through a separate letter Cipollone sent Tuesday to McGahn’s attorney.

While the letters stop short of invoking privilege, which keeps private conversations between the president and his advisers from public view, it suggests the White House might take that step to block McGahn’s testimony, which could trigger a major legal battle with congressional Democrats investigating Trump.

Democrats and some legal experts say the White House lost its ability to invoke privilege when it allowed McGahn to speak to the special counsel’s office, which then published a report containing the details of his testimony. Trump decided against making privilege assertions over the contents of the report.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/442490-white-house-orders-mcgahn-to-defy-house-subpoena

>>6439070

I see am I supposed to only find truth from Zionist own sites????

Can't attack the content so attack the sauce, fucking shills

Why is Israel taking over cloud computing for the Pentagon?

ISRAEL TAKES OVER CLOUD COMPUTING FOR THE PENTAGON

Microsoft, Amazon are the last bidders standing for the $10 billion DoD JEDI cloud contract

The Pentagon is expected to award its $10 billion JEDI cloud contract to either Amazon or Microsoft sometime later this summer, at the earliest.

U.S. Department of Defense officials have decided this week that the only two cloud vendors able to meet their requirements for a huge, winner-take-all project are Amazon and Microsoft. That decision takes Oracle and IBM out of the running for the $10 billion JEDI contract.

The DoD’s JEDI (Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure) contract is designed to upgrade legacy systems with newer cloud services. According to the original proposal, “JEDI Cloud will provide enterprise-level, commercial IaaS (infrastructure as a service) and PaaS (platform as a service) to the Department and any mission partners for all Department business and mission operations.”

Google dropped out of the JEDI bidding last year, acknowledging it couldn’t meet the requirements (and citing its AI principles, as well). Oracle officials had protested the bidding process, claiming bias against a former military employee who also worked at Amazon AWS. Oracle filed a lawsuit over this late last year. In February his year, it looked like the DoD was going to have to postpone the award of the contract as a result of a required review.

Microsoft in Israel.

Bill Gates: Israeli tech ‘changing the world’

Execs from Facebook, Google, and Microsoft explain why they use Israel for their R&D

Unit 8200 in New York.

Veterans of Israeli Army’s Elite Code-breaking Unit Are New York’s Best-kept Secret

What can we say except other than what George says: “Oh my….”

If you criticize Israel or Jews or publicly begin discussing any of what this post contains, you will be taken down for being “Anti-Semitic”, the “Christian” Mike Pompeo (Ziocon-Christians like Pence and Pompeo are slaves to Israel and Jews as instructed by the Chabad Lubavitchers) will make certain of this.

Pompeo: America to “Push Back” Against “Anti-Semitism” Worldwide

Why? Why indeed. Ray McGovern has a fairly good idea.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-amazon-are-the-last-bidders-standing-for-the-10-billion-dod-jedi-cloud-contract/

https://www.abeldanger.org/israel-takes-over-cloud-computing-for-the-pentagon/

https://www.timesofisrael.com/bill-gates-israeli-tech-changing-the-world/

https://www.businessinsider.com.au/facebook-google-microsoft-israel-rd-2016-10?r=US&IR=T

https://www.haaretz.com/hblocked?returnTo=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.haaretz.com%2Fisrael-news%2Fny-s-best-secret-alumni-of-israels-elite-code-breaking-unit-1.5463880

Rebelling against ‘globalism’ & a ‘new world order’ doesn’t make Farage an ‘anti-Semite’

Anti-Semites do favor conspiracies about shadowy international networks of influence, but that doesn’t mean that anyone who raises concerns about “globalism” or the emergence of a “new world order” should be labeled a neo-Nazi.

The accusation was aired against Nigel Farage in a two-part hitpiece by the Guardian, a fortnight before an EU parliamentary election in which his Brexit party is now predicted to become the biggest faction representing the UK. The British newspaper rummaged through a decade of the former UKIP leader’s interviews with Infowars host Alex Jones, and then invited activists and political adversaries to condemn him.

“For Jones’s conspiracy-minded audience, Farage’s references to ‘globalists’ and ‘new world order’ will be taken as familiar codewords for anti-Semitic conspiracy theories,” responded Jewish monitoring group Community Security Trust.

“It is vital that our politicians distance themselves from conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists, including those who trade in anti-Semitic tropes. We would call on Nigel Farage to repudiate these ideas,” said the Board of Deputies of British Jews.

Sterner criticisms still came from Labour MP David Lammy and the Muslim Council of Britain.

So, what are these vile views that Farage is promulgating?

On the left: “They also want to abolish the nation state – they want to get rid of it. They want to replace it with the globalist project, and the European Union is the prototype for the new world order.”

On Bilderberg: “These lunatics genuinely believe that they know what’s best for us, genuinely believe in this concept of global government, and it will be a disaster.”

On the coalition of international corporations and neoliberal governments: “It all fits together, doesn’t it? Hand in glove – the big businesses, the bureaucrats, they have the sole right to make laws. It all fits together. They’re all very happy with the world they’re creating.”

https://theduran.com/rebelling-against-globalism-a-new-world-order-doesnt-make-farage-an-anti-semite/

“Case Closed!” Mitch McConnell Slams Unhinged Democrats Using Mueller Report to Attack President Trump, Bill Barr (VIDEO)

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Tuesday slammed unhinged Democrats using Mueller’s report to attack President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr.

McConnell, speaking from the Senate floor, defended Trump from rabid Democrats using Mueller’s report to smear and attack the President and said, “case closed!”

“What we’ve seen is a melt down — an absolute melt down! An inability to accept the bottom line conclusion on Russian interference from the special counsel’s report which said, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities,” McConnell said speaking about the Democrats and their media sycophants.

McConnell accused Dems and “TV talking heads” of peddling Russian collusion conspiracy theories.

“The special counsel’s finding is clear — case closed! Case closed,” McConnell said.

McConnell accused Democrats of publicly working through the 5 stages of grief (TDS) — “First stage is denial,” he said.

“Totally baseless speculation that perhaps Attorney General Barr hadn’t quoted the report properly,” McConnell added.

McConnell said the Democrats are “angry that the legal system won’t magically undo the 2016 election for them and they’ve opted to channel all of their partisan anger onto the attorney general.”

Fake Indian and 2020 Dem hopeful Elizabeth Warren on Tuesday called for impeachment proceedings against President Trump from the Senate floor.

The Massachusetts Senator cited Mueller’s report and argued the information provided by the special counsel “clearly constitutes adequate information to begin an impeachment proceeding in the House of Representatives.”

McConnell, who refers to himself as the “grim reaper” and vowed to stop the left’s Socialist agenda, will not move forward with impeachment so the Democrats are just screaming at the sky.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2019/05/case-closed-mitch-mcconnell-slams-unhinged-democrats-using-mueller-report-to-attack-president-trump-bill-barr-video/

Israeli Media Instigates Washington Fears That Iran Would Attack US Troops Soon

Israel’s Mossad Intelligence Agency allegedly passed on “credible” information to the US of a potential Iranian attack on US troops, pro-Israeli outlet Axios reported.

This was reportedly the reason why US National Security Adviser John Bolton announced the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group, according to anonymous Israeli officials.

“Information about possible Iranian plots against the U.S. or its allies in the Gulf were raised two weeks ago in talks held at the White House between an Israeli delegation headed by national security adviser Meir Ben Shabbat and a U.S. team led by Bolton,” the unnamed Israeli officials told Axios White House correspondent Barak Ravid.

According to the report, Mossad presented several scenarios for what the Iranians might be planning:

“It is still unclear to us what the Iranians are trying to do and how they are planning to do it, but it is clear to us that the Iranian temperature is on the rise as a result of the growing U.S. pressure campaign against them, and they are considering retaliating against U.S. interests in the Gulf,” an unnamed Israeli official said.

The entire Axios report is practically based on nothing and it also simply alleges that Iran was “up to something” rather than providing anything specific:

“The intelligence about a possible Iranian plot is not very specific at this stage, but the officials said it was clear the threat was against a U.S. target in the Gulf or U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia or the UAE.”

CNN’s Barbara Starr cited anonymous US officials who shared the same information. In a Twitter response it was reminded that John Bolton was also part of the story that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

https://southfront.org/israeli-media-instigates-washington-fears-that-iran-would-attack-us-troops-soon/

Anonymous ID: 9f3f45 May 7, 2019, 12:59 p.m. No.6439353 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>9396

Jewish teen charged in killing of Palestinian to be released to house arrest

An Israeli court has ordered that a Jewish teen suspected of hurling a stone that struck and killed a Palestinian woman in a car in the northern West Bank last October be released to house arrest.

The suspect’s attorney tells The Times of Israel that his client will be released next Tuesday and will wear an electronic monitor.

The 16-year-old suspect, who cannot be named because of privacy laws protecting minors, was charged in January in the death of 47-year-old mother-of-eight Aisha Rabi.

Prosecutors has said DNA belonging to the suspect was found on a stone that hit the vehicle in which Rabi was traveling.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/may-7-2019/

Instagram to “Fact Check” & Remove Memes

Instagram has announced that it will begin “fact checking” and removing memes.

The social media giant, which is owned by Facebook, will use its 52 global “fact checking partners” to censor “false photos and memes on its platform,” according to Poynter.

“Instagram is taking those fact checks and applying them to the same false photos and memes on its platform,” according to the report.

Memes deemed factually incorrect will no longer appear under tabs where they can be discovered by random users.

The Poynter Institute, which partners with Facebook, recently had to shut down its own database highlighting unreliable news sites “after discovering inconsistencies between sources used to build the database and its final report.”

So you can trust them.

Quite why memes have to be “fact checked” given that are almost always satirical and are not intended to be statements of fact may be a mystery to some.

It’s actually not a mystery at all.

Studies have repeatedly shown that the political right is far better at spreading memes.

A study undertaken by researchers at University College London found that the most effective memes largely originated in two places – the subreddit r/the_donald – a forum devoted to boosting President Donald Trump, and 4chan’s politically incorrect /pol forum.

A VICE write-up of the study acknowledges that the most “effectively spread” memes originated on r/the_donald and /pol.

Earlier this year, BuzzFeed lobbied Twitter to ban a meme which made fun of Democrats and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Last year, “Facebook announced the deployment of a large-scale machine learning system named Rosetta, which it’s using to automatically and proactively identify “inappropriate or harmful content” in images on the social network,” reported Fox News. “In other words, Facebook developed an AI that can tell if a meme is offensive.”

It’s a scientific fact that the left can’t meme, so far easier just to ban memes!

https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/72536/instagram-to-fact-check–remove.html

Facebook contractors categorize your private posts to train AI

The practice raises a few privacy concerns.

At any given time, Facebook has thousands of third-party staffers around the world looking at and labeling Facebook and Instagram posts. The work is meant to help train AI and to inform new products. But because the contractors see users' public and private posts, some view it as a violation of privacy.

According to Reuters, as many as 260 contract workers in Hyderabad, India have spent more than a year labeling millions of Facebook posts dating back to 2014. They look for the subject of the post, the occasion and the author's intent, and Facebook told Reuters, the company uses that information to develop new features and to potentially increase usage and ad revenue.

Around the globe, Facebook has as many as 200 similar content labeling projects, many of which are used to train the company's AI. As Reuters points out, that's not uncommon. Many companies hire staff for "data annotation" – like helping AI identify traffic lights or pedestrians in videos.

But that probably won't make Facebook users feel any better. The contractors working in Hyderabad told Reuters they see everything from text-based status updates to videos, photos and Stories across Facebook and Instagram – including those that are shared privately. And even as Facebook embarks on its "the future is private" platform, one Facebook employee told Reuters he can't imagine the practice going away. It's a core part of training AI and developing the company's products.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/05/06/facebook-privacy-content-labeling/

Anonymous ID: 9f3f45 May 7, 2019, 1:04 p.m. No.6439395 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>9438

U.S. Intelligence Black Budget: $80 Billion for 17 Agencies

In a new report, William Hartung and Abby Smithberger, reliable and informed analysts of U.S. military spending, say U.S. security spending will total $1.1 trillion, most of which goes to foreign wars and weapons systems and veterans care.

One small but crucial portion of the budget goes to intelligence activities that are not disclosed to taxpayers and the public. These funds are paid out in what are known as “black budgets,” ie you can’t see what is inside.

From TomDispatch

We know remarkably little about the nature of the nation’s intelligence spending, other than its supposed total, released in a report every year. By now, it’s more than $80 billion. The bulk of this funding, including for the CIA and NSA, is believed to be hidden under obscure line items in the Pentagon budget. Since intelligence spending is not a separate funding stream, it’s not counted in our tally below (though, for all we know, some of it should be).

They identify the 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that spend this money.

In addition to the DHS Office of Intelligence and Analysis and the FBI, … they are the CIA; the National Security Agency; the Defense Intelligence Agency; the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research; the Drug Enforcement Agency’s Office of National Security Intelligence; the Treasury Department’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis; the Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and Counterintelligence; the National Reconnaissance Office; the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency; Air Force Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance; the Army’s Intelligence and Security Command; the Office of Naval Intelligence; Marine Corps Intelligence; and Coast Guard Intelligence. And then there’s that 17th one, the Office of the Director

https://deepstateblog.org/2019/05/07/u-s-intelligence-black-budget-80-billion-for-17-agencies/

Offended By What Someone Said? Now You Can Report Them To Law Enforcement

Soon free speech will be a thing of the past in paranoid America.

DIGIT Lab's "Hate Incident Reporting" app promises to turn complete strangers into secret, hate speech/bias spies.

Watch what you say, because the person sitting next to you could be reporting you to law enforcement.

Gone are the days when Americans were unafraid to voice their opinions or make snide comments in public. Because DIGIT Labs will turn smartphones into bias reporting devices.

According to a PHYS.org article, DIGIT LAB's new app allows strangers to report someone for exercising their first Amendment rights.

"The first of its kind, the app accepts reports beyond crimes captured in police records. Users from around the country can document all incident types, from derogatory epithets written in bathrooms to slurs yelled from a car window in addition to violent assaults."

This app will make swearing at a fellow motorist or flipping someone off: hate speech.

Where in our Constitution does it say that it is acceptable to report someone who has not committed a crime?

Since 9/11, Homeland Security has tried to turn the entire country into home-grown spies with their "See Something, Say Something" campaign that essentially does the same thing as DIGIT LAB's Hate Reporting app. If someone see's something or see's someone acting suspiciously they are encouraged to report it to law enforcement.

But the University of Utah's, Hate Incident Reporting app, promises to create a Federal free speech blacklist.

"The major problem we're dealing with is that hate crimes are so underreported, not only to police, but from police to the federal government," said Emily Nicolosi, researcher, and Richard Medina, professor of geography. (Nicolosi helped develop the app.)

Creating a national blacklist of people who use derogatory epithets and slurs will turn this country into a mirror image of China.

"We'd like to see it used nationally to get better hate incident statistics, and to understand why, how, and where people are active in hateful incidents, and how that offends or hurts people," said Medina.

Although the PHYS article claims that all reporting is confidential and anonymous, the amount of detailed information a person is asked to provide would make it easy for law enforcement to identify someone.

https://massprivatei.blogspot.com/2019/05/offended-by-what-someone-said-now-you.html

Facts and Figures on Washington's Immense Defense Lobbying Industry

I haven't posted on this specific subject for some time and, given the upcoming midterm elections and the meeting between the leaders of Russia and the United States, I thought it was time to revisit one of the most powerful groups in the United States, the defence industry. Thanks to Open Secrets, we have ready access to how much the defence sector has contributed to politicians and how much it spends on lobbying. This is particularly pertinent given the hundreds of billions of dollars that are transferred from American taxpayers to a handful of companies every year.

Let's start by looking at the defence industry's contributions to those who are supposed to represent Americans in Washington. Here is a graphic showing the sector's long-term political contributions: