Sunday, August 28, 2022

Disgusting Facebook


House Republicans want to haul Mark Zuckerberg in front of Congress to explain himself after the Meta chief admitted Facebook throttled the Hunter Biden laptop story.

In a surprise appearance Thursday on the Joe Rogan Experience, Zuckerberg revealed that the company's decision to clamp down on the dissemination of the laptop story came after the FBI warned the company that Russia-backed campaigns may dump misinformation ahead of the 2020 election. The remarks have sparked outrage among many Republicans.


"This isn’t just insane, it’s election interference. The Oversight Committee must immediately invite Mark Zuckerberg to testify — under oath — about the FBI’s attempts to circumvent the First Amendment. The American people deserve answers and accountability," Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-GA) tweeted.

Clyde sits on the powerful House Oversight Committee, which serves as a major investigative body in the lower chamber. Current Oversight Chairwoman Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), who recently lost her primary race for reelection, has not yet signaled an eagerness to call on Zuckerberg for testimony. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy hinted Republicans will take action if they regain the House.
"The FBI colluded with Big Tech to silence news stories weeks before the 2020 election in an attempt to control your access to information. Democrats in Congress have been intentionally ignoring the facts. When Republicans are back in charge, we will hold all of them accountable," he tweeted.

 

 Jonathan Turley offers:

It is not clear why the FBI considered this type of media outreach was part of its responsibility as a law enforcement agency. This was before the presidential election and actively discouraged a major platform to allow discussion of major allegations of corruption. The use of the FBI for such a role gave Facebook officials ample cover to expand their censorship operations.

The company only recently allowed customers to discuss the lab theory of the origins of Covid after years of biased censorship. Facebook’s decision to allow people to discuss the theory followed the company’s Oversight Board upholding a ban on any postings of Trump, a move that even figures like Germany’s Angela Merkel and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) have criticized as a danger to free speech.  Even Trump’s voice has been banned by Facebook. Trump remains too harmful for Facebook users to hear . . . at least until the company decides that they are ready for such exposure. Facebook has tried to get customers to embrace censorship in a commercial campaign despite its long record of abusive and biased “content modification.”

 

Both sources above make strong points.  Here's the point that's not made that needs to be made:  You don't say that two years after the fact.  You don't.  If you're being asked to silence/limit/censor a story, you need to reveal at that time.  It's not only censorship, it's also betraying the trust of your users.

"Iraq snapshot"(THE COMMON ILLS):

Friday, August 28, 2022.  War Monger Joe Biden, the Iraqi judiciary, Liz Cheney, Terry Gross, so much to coer.


Michelle Olson Tweets:

Amnesty International: "Were Julian Assange to be extradited or subjected to any other transfer to the USA, Britain would be in breach of its obligations under international human rights law" #FreeAssangeNOW




Yet the persecution of Julian Assange goes on.  US President Joe Biden doesn't care about anything except destroying Julian because Julian told the truth about War Crimes in Iraq.   Julian's 'crime' was revealing the realities of Iraq -- Chelsea Manning was a whistle-blower who leaked the information to Julian.  WIKILEAKS then published the Iraq War Logs.  And many outlets used the publication to publish reports of their own.  For example, THE GUARDIAN published many articles based on The Iraq War Logs.  Jonathan Steele, David Leigh and Nick Davies offered, on October 22, 2012:



A grim picture of the US and Britain's legacy in Iraq has been revealed in a massive leak of American military documents that detail torture, summary executions and war crimes.
Almost 400,000 secret US army field reports have been passed to the Guardian and a number of other international media organisations via the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The electronic archive is believed to emanate from the same dissident US army intelligence analyst who earlier this year is alleged to have leaked a smaller tranche of 90,000 logs chronicling bloody encounters and civilian killings in the Afghan war.
The new logs detail how:
US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers whose conduct appears to be systematic and normally unpunished.

A US helicopter gunship involved in a notorious Baghdad incident had previously killed Iraqi insurgents after they tried to surrender.
More than 15,000 civilians died in previously unknown incidents. US and UK officials have insisted that no official record of civilian casualties exists but the logs record 66,081 non-combatant deaths out of a total of 109,000 fatalities.

The numerous reports of detainee abuse, often supported by medical evidence, describe prisoners shackled, blindfolded and hung by wrists or ankles, and subjected to whipping, punching, kicking or electric shocks. Six reports end with a detainee's apparent death. 


Stella Assange Tweets about a new filing:


NEW: Julian #Assange's Perfected Grounds of Appeal will be filed with the High Court this afternoon. JULIAN ASSANGE Appellant v GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Respondent Case No: CO/2334/2022
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Meanwhile, no work has been done by the Austrlain government to protect Julian -- they've apparently forgotten he's an Australian citizen.  John Jiggens (INDEPENDENT AUSTRALIA) notes:

WHEN LABOR WON the Federal Election in May 2022, the hopes of supporters of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange soared. In 2021, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus had issued a statement saying that Labor wanted the Assange matter ‘brought to an end’, while Labor’s leader Anthony Albanese had declared that he couldn’t see any purpose to keeping Assange in gaol. Enough is enough,” he affirmed.  

That hope was fuelled further when, in the Government’s first week, the ABC reported on 26 May that Albanese was a signature to an online petition, the Bring Julian Assange Home Campaign. Signing the petition seemed odd because it went to Albanese as Prime Minister.

However, Albanese did not deny the story, which was confirmed by a reliable source who disclosed Albanese had signed up on his first day in office, even before he flew off to Tokyo for the Quad meeting with the Japanese PM, the Indian PM and U.S. President Joe Biden. Despite Albanese’s alleged championing of Assange, there was no indication that he discussed his U.S. extradition. 

At a press conference on 31 May, a Guardian journalist asked Albanese whether it was his position that the U.S. should be encouraged to drop the charges against Assange and whether he had made any such representations to the U.S. Government. Albanese sidestepped the question, replying it was his position “that not all foreign affairs should be done by loud hailer”. Labor claimed it was practising quiet diplomacy.


While Joe Biden tries to destroy Julian, Terry Gross tries to destroy the truth.  It's Terry so you know a man was involved -- she got a break and that's a last break a woman ever deserved in her mind.  See "Terry Gross Hates Women (Ava, C.I. and Ann)" and "Terry Gross Still Hates Women (Ava, C.I. and Ann)."  We supposedly want the ERA in this country but we can't even demand NPR books an equal number of women as guests.  So of coruse, Terry's latest embarrassing moment was when she was talking to a man because, honestly, when is she on air without a man?  Sam Husseini (ANTIWAR.COM) reports:

In a remarkably unhinged analysis, NPR host Terry Gross and New York Times Magazine writer Robert Draper claimed that Russia is a communist country – as they went on about how detached from reality rightwing Republicans are.

Here’s the crux of the clip (many thanks to Bryce Greene), which almost comes off like a comedy sketch (text at bottom):

After I and others tweeted about this, NPR posted this correction:

POST-BROADCAST CORRECTION: In the audio version of this story, Terry Gross incorrectly states that Russia is a communist country, when she meant to say that Putin was the head of the KGB during the communist era.

Which almost makes it worse. If you substitute what NPR now claims Gross meant to say, it really doesn’t make any sense. Gross and Draper were riffing off each other in what can most charitably be described as a ridiculous example of groupthink.

It displays the all-too-frequent smugness of liberals, going on about other people’s failing to fact check, in this case talking about seniors with “a lot of time on their hands” – while getting the most elementary facts wrong. It’s remarkable projection.

The “correction” ignores that Draper similarly remarked that Putin is “the one great promoter of that [communist] ideology.”

The “correction” is also wrong because Putin wasn’t “head of the KGB during the communist era” – he quit the KGB in 1991 as a lieutenant colonel. He would be appointed head of the successor group, the Federal Security Service, in 1998, years after the fall of communism in Russia, by U.S. tool Boris Yeltsin.

(One of Draper’s most recent books is To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq, which came out last year. If Google books search is to be believed, the book is something of a cover-up. It has nothing on Biden’s presiding over the rigged hearings that helped ensure the invasion, which Biden has continuously lied about.)



Joe Biden is a War Mongerer.  You vote for one and soon enough you're applauding other War Mongerers which explains the faux left's love for the disgusting Liz Cheney.  Margaret Kimberley (BLACK AGENDA REPORT) notes:

Soon to be former Wyoming congresswoman Liz Cheney is the flavor of the month for liberals. The cause of the undeserved adulation is her condemnation of Donald Trump and his role in the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot.

She lost her Republican Party primary precisely because she turned on Trump, who is still loved by the masses of republican voters. Conversely, the idol worship from democrats has reached bizarre levels, including support for a Liz Cheney presidential campaign.

Of course that was Cheney’s goal all along. She saw attacking Trump as her own ticket to the Oval Office. She always has been a rank opportunist. She began her political career challenging republican senator Mike Enzi by claiming that the arch conservative wasn’t conservative enough. Voters in the very red state of Wyoming weren’t fooled and she later had to settle for its lone congressional seat.

Liz Cheney and her father Dick Cheney are among the republican establishment class. Cheney père was the man chosen to guide dim bulb George W. Bush as his Vice President. That’s how they work. The white masses are not to be trusted with their choices and more reliable people are chosen to keep them in line.

But Trump was cut from a different cloth. The establishment didn’t want him, but he surprised them with his win and insisted on going his own way. Of course they got what they wanted from him, including a long sought after tax cut for rich people, more deregulation and a foreign policy that upped the imperialist ante by punishing countries such as Iran, Venezuela and Cuba for daring to exist at all.

Trump was indeed different, and fought with party leaders and refused to concede after his November 2020 defeat. His army of incompetent lawyers like Rudy Giuliani ran around the country trying to throw out votes wholesale. They were laughed out of every courtroom but Trump didn’t care. He riled up his supporters and even attempted to interfere with the vote counting process in states directly.

That sort of behavior is anathema to the Cheneys and their ilk. After all Dick Cheney helped Bush 43 steal his election in November 2000. Sending a mob into the Capitol is amateurish and not their thing. Doing the dirty work of voter suppression was and Bush the younger cheated his way into office when his brother the Florida governor took mostly Black Floridians off the voter rolls. In 2004 they repeated the crime, this time in Ohio and the craven John Kerry refused to fight for every vote.



In Iraq, the political stalemate continues.  Elections were held October 10th and yet no prime minister or president.  August 30th might provide some movement.  RUDAW reports:

Iraq's Federal Supreme Court set August 30 as the date to convene to decide on the case of dissolving the parliament filed by a Sadrist official, it said on Thursday after demonstrators gathered at the gates of Iraq's top judicial body.

"The subject matter of the case included the ruling to dissolve parliament and oblige the President of the Republic to set a date for holding legislative elections in accordance with Article 64," the statement read.

Nassar al-Rubaie, the head of the Sadrist Movement's political wing, submitted the case to the court following leader Muqtada al-Sadr's calls on the judiciary to dissolve parliament.

Iraq's Supreme Judicial Court earlier in August said it lacks the authority to dissolve the parliament and it does not reserve the right to interfere in legislative or executive matters. 


Iraq’s Federal Supreme Court said it will hold a session next Tuesday, August 30, to discuss the case for dissolving parliament amid a political deadlock.

The court said it will discuss the case brought by the head of the Sadrist movement's political body, Nassar Al Rubaie, according to a brief statement carried by the Iraqi News Agency.

The case submitted by Mr Al Rubaie calls for a ruling to dissolve parliament and force the president to set a date for holding legislative elections in accordance with the Iraqi constitution.


Let's wind down with this press release from IAVA:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
August 25, 2022
CONTACT: press@iava.org

New York, NY – On Tuesday, August 30th, Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America’s (IAVA) Senior Advisor Matt Zeller, will join Khalil Arab, SIVs & Allies Program Manager for Combined Arms, Rye Barcott, Co-Founder and CEO of With Honor, and Mohammad Raffiq Bawar, Afghan Initiatives Coordinator for the Travis Manion Foundation to discuss the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the evacuation efforts, resettlement efforts, the Afghanistan Adjustment Act and more.

“A year has passed since Afghanistan fell to the Taliban. 300,000+ Afghan wartime allies (interpreters & their families) remain left behind. They need our help. IAVA will not abandon them,” said Matt Zeller, Senior Advisor for IAVA. “Events like this are critical because they allow us to share and amplify pertinent information about our Afghan allies. We will fight to ensure that our country keeps its promise to those who served us.”

“We at Combined Arms have supported Special Immigrant Visa recipients (SIVs) and other non-SIV Allies and their integration in Houston since 2019, well before the fall of Kabul,” said Khalil Arab, SIVs & Allies Program Manager for Combined Arms. “We’ve rapidly scaled our efforts to meet the immediate and evolving needs of the estimated 11,000 evacuees that have arrived in Texas since August 2021.”

“The passage of the Afghan Adjustment Act is a national security imperative,” said Rye Barcott, Co-Founder and CEO of With Honor. “We must do right by our Afghan Allies, getting them out of the legal limbo they currently face, so our future allies continue to value the American promise. It is critical we hold discussions like this on the work we have left.”

WHO: Matt Zeller, Senior Advisor for IAVA
Khalil Arab, SIVs & Allies Program Manager for Combined Arms
Rye Barcott, Co-Founder and CEO of With Honor
Mohammad Bawar, Afghan Initiatives Coordinator for the Travis Manion Foundation
 
WHAT: Event discussing the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the evacuation, and the current resettlement efforts.
   
WHEN:  Tuesday, August 30 at 2:45 pm ET.
   
WHERE:  Join the Facebook Live event here. The event is open to the press.

Combined Arms (CAX) delivers innovative technology solutions that improve the quality of life for veterans and military families. Since 2019, CAX has supported the successful resettlement of over 5,000 Special Immigrant Visa recipients (SIVs) and wartime allies in Houston and across Texas. By design, CAX engages veterans and other volunteers to collaborate with local resettlement agencies to fill resource gaps and provide resource navigation support for recently-arrived SIVs and wartime allies. To learn more about Combined Arms’ SIVs & Allies Program or get involved, please visit: https://www.combinedarms.us/siv

With Honor Action is a cross-partisan movement dedicated to promoting and advancing principled veteran leadership in elected public service. As a part of our overall effort to highlight the importance of veterans and veteran issues, we support principled military veterans in Congress and help amplify their cross-partisan agenda that finds solutions for the American people. We also work with veteran candidates on the nuts and bolts of running for Congress, helping them organize their own campaigns and build a winning strategy.

Travis Manion Foundation (TMF) unites communities to strengthen America’s national character by empowering veterans and families of fallen heroes to develop and lead future generations. In 2007, 1stLt Travis Manion (USMC) was killed in Iraq while saving his wounded teammates. Today, Travis’ legacy lives on in the words he spoke before leaving for his final deployment, “If Not Me, Then Who…” Guided by this mantra, veterans continue their service, develop strong relationships with their communities, and thrive in their post-military lives by serving as character role models to youth. As a result, communities prosper and the character of our nation’s heroes lives on in the next generation.

IAVA is the voice for the post-9/11 veteran generation. With over 425,000 veterans and allies nationwide, IAVA is the leader in non-partisan veteran advocacy and public awareness. We drive historic impacts for veterans and IAVA’s programs are second to none. Any veteran or family member in need can reach out to IAVA’s Quick Reaction Force at quickreactionforce.org or 855-91RAPID (855-917-2743) to be connected promptly with a veteran care manager who will assist. IAVA’s The Vote Hub is a free tool to register to vote and find polling information. IAVA’s membership is always growing. Join the movement at iava.org/membership.

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The following sites updated: