Mass Surveillance Silences Minority Opinions, According to Study

/2 Comments/in , /by

A new study shows that knowledge of government surveillance causes people to self-censor their dissenting opinions online. The research offers a sobering look at the oft-touted “democratizing” effect of social media and Internet access that bolsters minority opinion.

The study, published in Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, studied the effects of subtle reminders of mass surveillance on its subjects. The majority of participants reacted by suppressing opinions that they perceived to be in the minority. This research illustrates the silencing effect of participants’ dissenting opinions in the wake of widespread knowledge of government surveillance, as revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden in 2013.

The “spiral of silence” is a well-researched phenomenon in which people suppress unpopular opinions to fit in and avoid social isolation. It has been looked at in the context of social media and the echo-chamber effect, in which we tailor our opinions to fit the online activity of our Facebook and Twitter friends. But this study adds a new layer by explicitly examining how government surveillance affects self-censorship.

Participants in the study were first surveyed about their political beliefs, personality traits and online activity, to create a psychological profile for each person. A random sample group was then subtly reminded of government surveillance, followed by everyone in the study being shown a neutral, fictional headline stating that U.S. airstrikes had targeted the Islamic State in Iraq. Subjects were then asked a series of questions about their attitudes toward the hypothetical news event, such as how they think most Americans would feel about it and whether they would publicly voice their opinion on the topic. The majority of those primed with surveillance information were less likely to speak out about their more nonconformist ideas, including those assessed as less likely to self-censor based on their psychological profile. (Read more from “Mass Surveillance Silences Minority Opinions, According to Study” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Parents Upset Elementary Students Taught Inappropriate Topics

/2 Comments/in , /by

A Collin County charter school says it’s considering making changes after parents complained that their elementary-age students were taught age inappropriate topics; such as depression, divorce and identifying as transgender.

Every year the 10th graders at Imagine International Academy of North Texas in McKinney spends months working on a “personal project”.

This year some chose projects about topics like the impact divorce has on elementary students, depression and being transgender.

The high school students then presented their projects to the entire school; including to elementary students.

The school’s administration officer Julia Brady said teachers reviewed all the projects ahead of time and deemed them all appropriate. (Read more from “Parents Upset Elementary Students Taught Inappropriate Topics” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Fidel Castro Lashes out at Obama After Cuba Visit

/4 Comments/in , /by

Fidel Castro rebuked President Obama in a lengthy diatribe Monday just days after the president’s historic visit to Cuba.

The former Cuban revolutionary leader published a letter in state-controlled media titled “Brother Obama,” in which he recalled the U.S.’s past efforts to overthrow his government.

“We do not need the empire to give us anything,” Castro wrote.

It was the elder Castro’s first response to Obama’s two-and-a-half-day visit last week, during which the president said he came to the country to bury the final vestige of the Cold War in the Western Hemisphere.

Obama met with Cuban leader Raul Castro, Fidel’s younger brother, but did not meet with the revolutionary leader, who is reportedly in poor health. Fidel Castro handed over power in 2008. (Read more from “Fidel Castro Lashes out at Obama After Cuba Visit” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Feds to Fine Schools for Not Following Michelle Obama’s Lunch Rules

/6 Comments/in , /by

The federal government is taking steps to fine schools that do not comply with first lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch rules.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service issued a proposed rule Monday to codify parts of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which was championed by Mrs. Obama.

The regulation would punish schools and state departments with fines for “egregious or persistent disregard” for the lunch rules that imposed sodium and calorie limits and banned white grains.

A West Virginia preschool teacher was threatened with fines for violating the rules by rewarding her students with candy for good behavior in June 2015. The teacher ultimately did not have to pay, but the school had to develop a “corrective action plan” with training on the policies . . .

The government insisted that fines would be limited only to schools, school food authorities, and state agencies that have “failed to correct severe mismanagement of any program, disregarded a requirement of which it has been informed, or failed to correct repeated violations of program requirements.” (Read more from “Feds to Fine Schools for Not Following Michelle Obama’s Lunch Rules” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Beware: All Eyes on ISIS While Ergodan Seeks De Facto Sultanate

/2 Comments/in , /by

Explosions rip through a group of protesters staging an anti-government peace rally in Ankara, October 2015, resulting in the worst ever single terror attack in Turkey’s modern history. The upsurge in violence helped propel President Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) to a stronger showing in the November elections, but he did not receive enough votes to change the constitution.

Secular and liberal Turks sighed with premature relief when on June 7, 2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in general elections for the first time since it came to power in November 2002. With 41 percent of the national vote (compared with 49.8 percent in the 2011 general elections), the AKP won eighteen fewer seats than necessary to form a single-party government in Turkey’s 550-member parliament. More importantly, its parliamentary seats fell widely short of the minimum number needed to rewrite the constitution in the way Erdogan wanted it so as to introduce an executive presidential system that would give him uncontrolled powers with few checks and balances, if any.

Undaunted by what looked like an election defeat, Erdogan chose to toss the dice again. At his instructions, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu pretended to hold coalition negotiations with opposition parties while secretly laying the groundwork for snap elections. In Erdogan’s thinking, the loss of a few more seats would make no difference to AKP power, but re-winning a parliamentary majority would make the situation totally different. Then a terrible wave of violence gripped Turkey.

First, the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (Partiya Karkeren Kurdistan, PKK), which had been fighting a guerrilla war from mountain hideouts in northern Iraq, declared an end to its unilateral ceasefire begun in 2013. Then on July 20, a Turkish suicide bomber killed more than thirty people at a pro-Kurdish gathering in the small town of Suruc. Claiming that the Turkish state had a secret role in the bombing, the PKK killed two policemen in the town of Ceylanpinar. The three-decades-old violence between the Turkish and Kurdish communities had suddenly roared back with a vengeance. In one of Turkey’s bloodiest summers ever, more than a thousand PKK fighters and Turkish security officials were killed. (Read more from “Beware: All Eyes on ISIS While Ergodan Seeks De Facto Sultanate” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Alaska Airlines Cancels Flights After Volcano Erupts

/0 Comments/in , /by

Alaska Airlines said Monday it has cancelled more flights because of a massive cloud of volcanic ash from Alaska’s Pavlof Volcano that spewed into the air.

The Seattle-based airliner said it has canceled 41 flights involving six Alaska cities until the airline can evaluate weather reports after daylight Tuesday. The cancellations include all flights to and from Fairbanks . . .

Pavlof Volcano, one of Alaska’s most active, is 625 miles southwest of Anchorage on the Alaska Peninsula.

The volcano erupted Sunday afternoon, and by Monday morning an ash cloud had stretched northeast more than 400 miles into interior Alaska.

The U.S. Geological Survey reported that the volcano, located erupted at 4:18 p.m. local time (8:18 p.m. ET). The agency said that the eruption also led to tremors on the ground. (Read more from “Alaska Airlines Cancels Flights After Volcano Erupts” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Mental Illness Mostly Caused by Life Events Not Genetics, Argue Psychologists

/4 Comments/in , /by

Mental illness is largely caused by social crises such as unemployment or childhood abuse and too much money is spent researching genetic and biological factors, psychologists have warned.

Over the past decade funding bodies like the Medical Research Council (MRC) have spent hundreds of millions on determining the biology of mental illness.

But while there has been some success in uncovering genes which make people more susceptible to various disorders, specialists say that the true causes of depression and anxiety are from life events and environment, and research should be directed towards understanding the everyday triggers.

Peter Kinderman, Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Liverpool, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Of course every single action, every emotion I’ve ever had involves the brain, so to have a piece of scientific research telling us that the brain is involved in responding emotionally to events doesn’t really advance our understanding very much . . .

“It detracts from the idea that trauma in childhood is a very very powerful predictor of serious problems like experiencing psychotic events in adult life, so of course the brain is involved and of course genes are involved, but not very much, and an excessive focus on those issues takes us away from these very important social factors” (Read more from “Mental Illness Mostly Caused by Life Events Not Genetics, Argue Psychologists” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Woman Named as Ted Cruz ‘Mistress’ Speaks out With Bombshell Statement – ‘They Know…’

/55 Comments/in , /by

One of the alleged mistresses who the National Enquirer claims Sen. Ted Cruz had an affair with dismissed the charge as “BS.” Further, she does not believe the other four women the tabloid supposedly uncovered had affairs with him either. Two of the five women have already publicly called the allegations false.

The Gateway Pundit obtained an exclusive statement from one of the women. “It’s ridiculous. Anyone with half a brain knows it’s false,” the anonymous woman said. “I don’t think the article is true. I can’t see Cruz being like that… All I know is it’s not me. There’s a reason they don’t use my name. They know it’s BS.”

A National Enquirer teaser used pixelated pictures of five women, but named none of them, though it promised to do so in its print edition. According to the tabloid: “‘Private detectives are digging into at least five affairs Ted Cruz supposedly had,’ claimed a Washington insider.”

Various Twitter users believe they have matched the photos to three of the women, who include former Cruz senate staffer Amanda Carpenter, a former deputy campaign manager with Carly Fiorina’s campaign, and Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson.

After a Trump supporter raised the allegation against Carpenter on CNN (which is not reporting on the story) on Friday, she labeled it “tabloid trash” adding if people want to make such “categorically false” charges, they should speak to her lawyer.

Pierson took to Twitter to shoot down the allegation against her.

(Read more from “Woman Named as Ted Cruz ‘Mistress’ Speaks out With Bombshell Statement – ‘They Know…'” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Clinton Email Probe Enters New Phase as FBI Interviews Loom

/8 Comments/in , /by

By Del Quentin Wilber. Federal prosecutors investigating the possible mishandling of classified materials on Hillary Clinton’s private email server have begun the process of setting up formal interviews with some of her longtime and closest aides, according to two people familiar with the probe, an indication that the inquiry is moving into its final phases.

Those interviews and the final review of the case, however, could still take many weeks, all but guaranteeing that the investigation will continue to dog Clinton’s presidential campaign through most, if not all, of the remaining presidential primaries.

No dates have been set for questioning the advisors, but a federal prosecutor in recent weeks has called their lawyers to alert them that he would soon be doing so, the sources said. Prosecutors also are expected to seek an interview with Clinton herself, though the timing remains unclear.

The interviews by FBI agents and prosecutors will play a significant role in helping them better understand whether Clinton or her aides knowingly or negligently discussed classified government secrets over a non-secure email system when she served as secretary of State. (Read more from “Clinton Email Probe Enters New Phase as FBI Interviews Loom” HERE)

________________________________________

FBI Says It Has Limited Records on Clinton Email Case

By Josh Gerstein. The FBI hasn’t traded any correspondence with Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton or her representatives in the course of the law enforcement agency’s “active, ongoing investigation” of the private email account and server she used as secretary of state, an FBI official told a federal court on Friday.

Responding to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for FBI records about the probe, which is believed to have been underway for about nine months, FBI records official David Hardy said his agency had only a smattering of correspondence with the State Department about the matter and no records at all of authorizations to discuss the Clinton email inquiry with the media or other outside parties.

The suit, filed by Vice News reporter Jason Leopold, also sought copies of all emails and other files the FBI has managed to retrieve from Clinton’s server and backup devices such as thumb drives. The FBI appeared to acknowledge that some such records exist but said releasing them at this time could impair the probe.

“Any records responsive [to that request] still cannot be disclosed without adversely affecting the pending investigation,” Hardy said in a written declaration. The FBI official wrote that he was limited in what he could say publicly about the inquiry, but he added that the agency was submitting a classified declaration to U.S. District Court Judge Randolph Moss with more details about the probe. (Read more from “FBI Says It Has Limited Records on Clinton Email Case” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Trump Won’t Say If He’d Rule out War With China

/3 Comments/in , /by

As part of an extensive interview with The New York Times posted Saturday, the GOP presidential front-runner [Donald Trump] was asked about China’s aggressive island-building in the South China Sea, and what the U.S. response should be . . .

“I would use trade to negotiate,” he added. “Would I go to war? Look, let me just tell you. There’s a question I wouldn’t want to answer. Because I don’t want to say I won’t or I will… That’s the problem with our country.”

“A politician would say, ‘Oh I would never go to war,’ or they’d say, ‘Oh I would go to war.’ I don’t want to say what I’d do because, again, we need unpredictability. You know, if I win, I don’t want to be in a position where I’ve said I would or I wouldn’t. I don’t want them to know what I’m thinking.” (Read more from “Trump Won’t Say If He’d Rule out War With China” HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.