For all the attention on battleground polls giving Hillary Clinton the edge, Donald Trump enjoys at least one electoral advantage in his uphill climb to the White House: Republicans are outpacing Democrats in registering new voters in key states.
A review of registration figures shows that in the swing states that sign up voters by party, Republicans are seeing a significantly bigger boost since 2012. In states like Florida and Pennsylvania, the party has added tens of thousands of voters to the rolls at a time when Democrats have seen their base shrink.
“The numbers [in those states] … are a huge shift from what we’ve seen in 2012,” Republican National Committee spokeswoman Lindsay Walters said.
The surge doesn’t change the fact that Clinton leads, if only by a thin margin, in most battleground state polls, which presumably reflect the current voter make-up.
Fox News ratings show Clinton maintains the advantage in the Electoral College, while a Washington Post survey this week of registered voters in all 50 states reflects a similar dynamic. And in big swing states ranging from Florida to North Carolina to Pennsylvania, there are still more registered Democrats than Republicans. (Read more from “Trump Card? Republican Voter Registration a Bright Spot for Campaign” HERE)
George Soros’s Open Society Foundations is seeking to expand the use of electronic and online voting systems nationwide, according to a leaked Foundations document reviewed by Breitbart News.
While the directive was issued two years ago, the issue of electronic voting has become a hot button topic in this year’s presidential election amid fears digital voting systems can be compromised.
The online voting plan was contained in a 67-page hacked file detailing the September 29-30, 2014 Open Society U.S. Programs board meeting in New York.
A significant portion of the board meeting was dedicated to methods the Foundation’s U.S. Programs (USP) could use to further the use of President Obama’s executive action authority to bypass Congress during Obama’s final two years in office.
The Open Society, together with partner grantees, assembled a general list of potential presidential executive actions on numerous issues. Significantly, the Soros-backed group zeroed in on the expansion of online voting. (Read more from “George Soros Trying to Convince More States to Adopt Vote-Fraud-Plagued Electronic Platforms” HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/13307602303_5bc17185ce_b-1.jpg6821024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-09-10 01:06:032016-09-10 01:06:03George Soros Trying to Convince More States to Adopt Vote-Fraud-Plagued Electronic Platforms
This is a portion of remarks Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, delivered on the Senate floor on Thursday.
The Obama administration’s proposal to give away control of the internet poses a significant threat to our freedom, and it’s one that many Americans don’t know about. It is scheduled to go into effect on Sept. 30, 2016. Twenty-two days away. Just over three weeks.
Now what does it mean to give away control of the internet?
From the very first days of the internet, when it was developed here in America, the United States government has maintained its core functions to ensure equal access for everyone with no censorship. The government role isn’t to monitor what we say, it isn’t to censor what we say, it is simply to ensure that it works — that when you type in a website, it actually goes to that website and not somewhere else. And yet, that can change.
The Obama administration is instead pushing through a radical proposal to take control of internet domain names and instead give it to an international organization, ICANN [Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers], that includes 162 foreign countries. And if that proposal goes through, it will empower countries like Russia, like China, like Iran to be able to censor speech on the internet, your speech. Countries like China, Russia, and Iran are not our friends, and their interests are not our interests.
Imagine searching the internet and instead of seeing your standard search results, you see a disclaimer that the information you were searching for is censored. It is not consistent with the standards of this new international body, it does not meet their approval.
Now, if you’re in China, that situation could well come with the threat of arrest for daring to merely search for such a thing that didn’t meet the approval of the censors. Thankfully, that doesn’t happen in America, but giving control of the internet to an international body with Russia, and China, and Iran having power over it could lead to precisely that threat, and it’s going to take Congress acting affirmatively to stop it.
You look at the influence of foreign governments within ICANN, it should give us greater and greater concern.
For example, ICANN’s former CEO Fadi Chehadé left ICANN to lead a high-level working group for China’s World Internet Conference. Mr. Chehadé’s decision to use his insider knowledge of how ICANN operates to help the Chinese government and their conference is more than a little concerning.
This is the person who was leading ICANN, the body that we are being told to trust with our freedoms. Yet this man has since gone to work for the Chinese Internet Conference, which has rightly been criticized for banning members of the press such as The New York Times and The Washington Post.
But you know what, even reporters you may fundamentally disagree with have a right to report and say what they believe. And yet, the World Internet Conference banned them — said “we do not want these reporters here, presumably, because we don’t like what they’re saying.” — which led Reporters Without Borders to demand an international boycott of the conference, calling China the “enemy of the internet.”
Mr. President, if China is the enemy of the internet, do we want the enemy of the internet having power over what you’re allowed to say, what you’re allowed to search for, what you’re allowed to read online? Do we want China, and Russia, and Iran having the power to determine if a website is unacceptable, it’s taken down?
I would note that once this transition happens, there are serious indications that ICANN intends to seek to flee U.S. jurisdiction and flee U.S. laws. Indeed, earlier this summer, ICANN held a global conference in Finland in which jurisdiction shopping was part of their agenda, trying to figure out what jurisdiction should we base control of the internet out of across the globe.
A representative of Iran is already on record stating, “we should not take it [for] granted that jurisdiction is already agreed to be totally based on U.S. law.” Our enemies are not hiding what they intend to do.
Not only is there a concern of censorship and foreign jurisdictions stripping U.S. law from authority over the internet, there are also real national security concerns. Congress has received no assurances from the Obama administration that the U.S. government will continue to have exclusive ownership and control of the .gov and .mil top-level domains in perpetuity, which are vital to our national security. The Department of Defense, the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines all use the .mil top-level domain. The White House, the CIA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security all use .gov.
The only assurance ICANN has provided the federal government regarding .gov and .mil is that ICANN will notify the government in the future if it decides to give .gov and .mil to another entity. So if someone is going to the IRS, or what you think is the IRS, and you’re comforted that it’s on a .gov website so that you know it must be safe, you may instead find yourself victims of a foreign scam, a phishing scam, some other means of fraud with no basic protections.
Congress should not sit by and let this happen. Congress must not sit by and let censorship happen.
Now, some defenders of the Obama proposal say “this is not about censorship. It’s about handing control to a multi-stakeholder unit. They would never dream of censoring content on the internet.”
Well recently, leading technology companies in the United States — Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Microsoft — reached an agreement with the European Union, to remove “hate speech” from their online platforms within 24 hours. Giant U.S. corporations signing on with the government to say, “we are going to help you censor speech that is deemed unacceptable.”
And by the way, the definition of “hate speech” we have seen can be very, very malleable depending upon what norms are trying to be enforced. For example, the Human Rights Campaign, which is active within ICANN, has featured the Family Research Institute, the National Organization for Marriage, the American Center for Law and Justice, and other conservative and religious groups in a report entitled “The Export of Hate.”
We are facing the real possibility of an international body having the ability to censor political speech if it is contrary to the norms they intend to enforce. In their view, it is hate to express a view different from whatever the prevailing orthodoxy is being enforced.
Now it is one thing dealing with government organizations that try to stifle speech that is profoundly inconsistent with who we are as Americans. But to hand over control of the internet, to potentially muzzle everybody on the internet, is to ensure that what you say is only consistent with whatever is approved by the powers that be, and that ought to frighten everybody. And there is something we can do about it.
Along with Congressman Sean Duffy [R-Wis.] in the House, I have introduced the Protecting Internet Freedom Act, which if enacted will stop the internet transition, and it will also ensure that the United States government keeps exclusive ownership and control of the .gov and .mil top-level domains. Our legislation is supported by 17 key groups across the country, advocacy groups, consumer groups, and it also has the formal endorsement of the House Freedom Caucus.
This should be an issue that brings us all together — Republicans, Democrats, all of us coming together. There are partisan issues that divide us, there always will be. We can have Republicans and Democrats argue till the cows come home about the top marginal tax rate, and that is a good and healthy debate to have. But when it comes to the internet, when it comes to basic principles of freedom, letting people speak online without being censored, that ought to bring every one of us together.
As members of the legislative branch, Congress should stand united to rein in this president, to protect the constitutional authority expressly given to Congress to control disposition of property of the United States. To put the matter very simply: The Obama administration does not have the authorization of Congress, and yet, they are endeavoring to give away this valuable, critical property, to give it away with no authorization in law. I would note the government employees doing so are doing so in violation of federal law, and they risk personal liability in going forward contrary to law. That ought to trouble all of us.
And if the Obama administration jams this through, hands control of the internet over to this international organization, this United Nations-like, unaccountable group, and they take it overseas — it’s not like the next president can magically snap his or her fingers and bring it back. Unscrambling those eggs may well not be possible. I suspect that’s why the Obama administration is trying to jam it through on Sept. 30, to get it done in a way that the next president can’t undo it, that the internet is lost for generations to come. To stop the giveaway of our internet freedom, Congress should act by continuing and by strengthening the appropriations rider in the continuing resolution that we will be considering this month, by preventing the Obama administration from giving away control of the internet.
Next week, I will be chairing a hearing on the harms to our freedom that come from the Obama administration’s proposal to give away the internet.
As President Ronald Reagan stated, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it on to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States when men were free.”
I don’t want you and I to have to tell our children and our children’s children what it was once like when the internet wasn’t censored, wasn’t in the control of the foreign governments.
And I urge my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to come together, to stand together and ensure that we protect freedom of the internet for generations to come. It is not too late to act, and I am encouraged by the leadership of members of both houses of Congress to stand up and protect freedom of the internet going forward. (For more from the author of “Obama’s Radical Internet Proposal Could Result in Censorship Online” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/16018574316_c450277836_b-1.jpg5761024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-09-10 00:42:572016-09-10 00:42:57Obama’s Radical Internet Proposal Could Result in Censorship Online
Brown University, located in Providence Rhode Island, was founded by Baptist leaders in 1764 with the Latin motto In Deo Speramus, in God we hope. I imagine these godly founders would be quite surprised with the recent announcement that “Brown University’s student body president will be hand-delivering menstrual products to all nonresidential bathrooms on campus, including men’s rooms, with the help of 20 other students.”
As reported by Sydney Hutchison on CampusReform.org, “The initiative is intended to communicate the message that ‘pads and tampons are a necessity, not a luxury,’ and that not all people who menstruate are women.”
So there are menstruating men who need tampons?
And note that this is being done by Viet Nguyen, President of the Undergraduate Council of Students, who hopes that by “putting menstrual products in women’s, men’s and gender-inclusive bathrooms” the school can “‘set a tone of trans-inclusivity, and not forget that they’re an important part of the population.’”
In nearby Worcester, Massachusetts, Clark University’s new chief diversity officer has put forth guidelines for incoming students, including: don’t say “you guys,” since that could be interpreted as excluding women; don’t ask an Asian student for help in math or ask a black student if he plays basketball, since to do so would be to stereotype and thereby commit a “microaggression.” These must be avoided at all costs.
Ironically, an article announcing this stated that these guidelines were for “freshmen” — but doesn’t that very term exclude women? Isn’t this a microaggression in and of itself? Perhaps, just as Princeton University is trying to ban the “m” word from campus (meaning, the infamous “man” word), Clark U needs to follow suit, referring to the “freshmen” class as the “freshpeople” class or the “freshindividuals” class? Now we’re talking.
Campus Trigger Warnings Gone Batty
Across the country, at California State University, San Marcos, a “trigger warning” was sent out notifying all students and faculty that there would be a pro-life display on campus next week. An email from the university’s Office of Communications, obtained by CampusReform.org, pointed out that the “presentation is not a university sponsored presentation,” that it could be “disturbing and offensive,” but that presentations like this on campus were “protected under the First Amendment.” Oh, the evils of free speech.
The email also explained that resources would be available for students “who may need assistance” after being exposed to the pro-life display. They must not be traumatized by the reality of abortion. God forbid.
As for the meaning of “trigger warnings,” the Urban Dictionary offers a definition replete with what I would call sarcastic sanity. A trigger warning is
A phrase posted at the beginning of various posts, articles or blogs. Its purpose is to warn weak-minded people who are easily offended that they might find what is being posted offensive in some way due to its content, causing them to overreact or otherwise start acting like a dip***t. Popular on reddit SRS or other places that social justice warriors like to hang out.
Trigger warnings are unnecessary 100% of the time due to the fact that people who are easily offended have no business randomly browsing the internet anyways. As a result of the phrase’s irrelevance, most opinions that start out with this phrase tend to be simplistic and dull since they were made by people ridiculous enough to think that the internet is supposed to cater to people who can’t take a joke.
How dare the Urban Dictionary post such insulting stuff without a trigger warning!
Gender Pins and Privilege
Over at Champlain College in Vermont, “In an effort to become more inclusive for gender nonconforming students,” the school “handed out hundreds of pronoun pins during first-year orientation advertising the wearer’s preferred gender pronouns.”
What exactly did this look like? “Options included ‘she/her,’ ‘he/him,’ ‘xe/xer,’ and even ‘Hello, my pronouns are fluid. Please ask me!’”
And at Pomona College in California, new students “were welcomed to campus with posters in their dorms giving instructions on ‘How to be a (Better) White Ally’ and stating that all white people are racist.” (Note carefully: If you are white and you differ with this assessment, then you are definitely racist.)
“The signs state white people should ‘acknowledge your privilege’ and ‘apologize if you’ve offended someone,’ adding that offensive language includes words like ‘sassy’ and ‘riot,’ which are ‘racially coded.’”
Yes, “‘Understand that you are white, so it is inevitable that you have unconsciously learned racism.’” And don’t you dare deny it! So say the so-called social justice warriors.
Segregation Good Again?!
Also in California, reports earlier this week claimed, “Segregated housing will now be available to black students at California State University Los Angeles as a means of combating ‘microaggressions’ and ‘racially insensitive remarks’,” with these alleged infractions coming from both students and faculty.
Wouldn’t the only solution, then, be fully segregated schools, where no such offenses could take place (at least theoretically)? Could it be that segregation is the new way forward, the path of progressivism, the wave of the future? Asian schools, black schools, Hispanic schools, white schools … what utopias they will be!
Of course, this probably won’t be enough, because microaggressions can still occur, which would necessitate perhaps breaking these down into all male and female schools as well, and perhaps requiring LGBT schools vs. straight schools as well, thus you could go to an all-Asian, female, lesbian school or an all-black, male, straight school. Progress is wonderful, isn’t it?
The New York Times is denying these reports, citing Cal State campus spokesman Robert Lopez to the effect that the school had simply created dorm space for 24 students “oriented around the black community,” although the dorm space is “open to all students.”
Am I the only one who doesn’t follow exactly what this means? Either way, whether or not this is segregation, it’s not the first time this has been done in recent years.
Anti-Semitism Gets a Pass
Finally, at Cal Berkeley, a course is being offered entitled, “Palestine: A Settler Colonial Analysis,” sponsored by faculty member Dr. Hatem Bazian, who is so adamantly anti-Israel that he has called for an “American intifada.”
As Abraham H. Miller notes on Observer.com, Dr. Bazian “is co-founder of the militant Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization so virulently anti-Israel that it can shut down any speaker it disagrees with on almost any campus even before you could enunciate the monosyllabic word ‘Jew.’”
And while Dr. Bazian denies that he is anti-Semite, “he blocked the appointment of a Jewish student to San Francisco State University’s Student Judicial Council on the grounds that the individual supported the State of Israel and was thus a racist by definition.”
With good reason Miller’s article claims that the course is intended “to Erase Jewish History from Israel.”
Yet there are no trigger warnings or concerns about microaggressions here. After all, it’s only Jews who will be offended!
But with that, I’m out of space and will have to stop here, with one last word of wisdom: Parents, think twice before sending your kids off to a particular college. Some campuses are better than others, and your kids are anything but guinea pigs to be thrown into the latest social experiment. (For more from the author of “Tampons in the Men’s Room and Other Campus Insanity” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/bathroom-453420_960_720.png451960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-09-10 00:38:382016-09-10 00:38:38Tampons in the Men’s Room and Other Campus Insanity
In recent years, a common refrain accompanying nearly every demand for newly invented “rights” has been: “It doesn’t affect you, so you can’t be against it.”
This claim—whether false or true, subjective or objective—has been played as the ultimate trump card.
If you could not point to a direct, immediate, and significant intrusion on your life, then your concerns—no matter how thoughtful and legitimate—were sacrificed at the altar of the New Regime.
Times change.
On Wednesday, Alliance Defending Freedom filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of high school students and parents, asking the court to strike down a Minnesota school district policy that empowers a male student to enter the girls’ locker room and disrobe.
Not surprisingly, many girls have been distressed by the actions of the male student, which include twerking, grinding, and other sexually explicit actions. The response of the district and other authorities to the concerns has been a collective yawn.
This, along with recent actions by President Barack Obama’s Department of Education and Justice Department, illustrates the evolution of the push to manufacture special privileges for a select few.
The pretense that such demands don’t affect the lives of others now has been abandoned, replaced by two options: (1) get over it and get in line; or (2) be pushed to the margins of society, losing your reputation—and possibly your career—in the process.
In version 2.0 of the New Regime, even if you can point to a direct, immediate, and significant intrusion on your life, your opinion is irrelevant (and perhaps bigoted) when compared to “social progress.”
For example, when the New Mexico Supreme Court ruled that wedding photographer Elaine Huguenin and her husband Jonathan must set aside their freedom to peacefully live according to their faith, a concurring justice stated that the pair “now are compelled by law to compromise the very religious beliefs that inspire their lives.” Chillingly, the justice added that this compulsion “is the price of citizenship.”
As the situations in Minnesota, North Carolina, and elsewhere demonstrate, the latest test sites for this theory of “social progress” are locker rooms, showers, and other private changing facilities.
In what would have been an unthinkable battleground just a few short years ago, these tile-floored, plastic-stalled, chrome-fixtured, and (formerly) sex-specific sanctuaries are now ground zero for experiments in the subjective theory of gender.
And the wisdom of the New Regime 2.0 goes like this:
The march toward true liberty requires 18 girls to squeeze into a prison cell-sized changing space or abandon their bodily privacy, and their right to safety and comfort in the most intimate and vulnerable of settings.
Why? So that a “bearded individual” can fully disrobe in the girls’ locker room at a parks department swimming pool on New York City’s Upper West Side. Empowered by the mere proclamation that he is a woman, he appropriates the entire space for himself.
Use whatever analogy you want:
The New Regime has flushed common sense down the toilet.
The New Regime has pulled back the curtain and washed away any remaining vestiges of bodily privacy.
The New Regime has transformed locker-room peepholes into doorways.
The point is, the New Regime embraces the idea that individuals can stride with impunity into any private space they choose, regardless of biology. This dismissal of biological fact in bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers reeks of irony, in what may be the best example to date of the lengths to which the New Regime will go to impose its orthodoxy.
These spaces, perhaps more than any other physical location, exist for and because of biological differences. Bathroom doors easily could have been labeled as the kid in “Kindergarten Cop” would have it, but decorum prevailed and we used “men” and “women” instead.
Separate locker rooms for men and women do not symbolize a sinister effort to force anyone’s conformity with “gender stereotypes.” They exist because men, women, and children should not be forced to encounter the opposite sex in private spaces or be viewed by the opposite sex while in various stages of undress.
There are reasonable solutions. There are ways to accommodate men and women and boys and girls who struggle to align their subjective beliefs with biological realities.
Consider the family changing room that 18 girls in New York now are forced to use to avoid encountering a man in the girls’ locker room. Indeed, one of the purposes of single-use or “family” facilities like these is to allow fathers to assist their young daughters, or mothers to assist their young sons.
It is an acknowledgement that neither the men’s or women’s restroom is an ideal solution in such circumstances. The same fact holds true for individuals who do not personally feel comfortable entering the private space that corresponds to their biology.
These accommodations protect the privacy of all individuals, not just a select few at the expense of everyone else.
Reasonable solutions are available that protect everyone from unwelcome bodily exposure. But under the New Regime, “social progress” trumps reason. (For more from the author of “When ‘Liberty’ Forces 18 Girls Into a Single-Stall Shower Room” please click HERE)
Fifteen years ago, in the wake of the terrorist assaults on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, I wrote about the tidal wave of patriotism that swept across America.
There was an overnight surge in military enlistments by teens and young adults often dismissed as spoiled and self-absorbed. Thousands of Americans lined up to give blood.
Tens of millions of dollars in donations flowed to the American Red Cross and to the Salvation Army and other faith-based organizations.
Attendance at churches, synagogues, and mosques doubled and tripled. There was a runaway sale of American flags—one Chicago store sold 25,000 flags in one day, more than it had in all of the past year.
There were less dramatic examples of patriotism. There was the quiet eloquence of a man explaining why he risked his life to help someone buried beneath the rubble at ground zero in lower Manhattan. A fire chief choked back tears as he spoke of a priest friend who suddenly disappeared in a cloud of dust as he looked for people to comfort.
Since then, we have been through a series of radical challenges, including wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a Great Recession, the great expectations raised by our first ever African-American president, the emergence of new political forces like the tea party and Bernie Sanders-style socialism, an ever present and ever expanding social media, and an unprecedented presidential election that pits the first woman nominee versus the first billionaire nominee.
Any other nation would have collapsed under such a succession of crises, but America still stands strong and resolute because it rests on what the Founding Fathers institutionalized and Alexis de Tocqueville observed—a unique mix of political and economic liberty and faith in “we the people.”
As President Ronald Reagan said about the American Revolution in his farewell address: “Ours was the first revolution in the history of mankind that truly reversed the course of government, and with three little words: ‘We the people.’”
“We the people,” Reagan said, “tell the government what to do, it doesn’t tell us.”
If the people respond as they have in the past, we will have not the divided “red” and “blue” America of the mass media and political junkies, but a united red, white, and blue America resting on faith and freedom. (For more from the author of “On 9/11 Anniversary, Remembering a Red, White, and Blue Nation Is Possible” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/american-flag-1208660_960_720-3.jpg720960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-09-10 00:20:262016-09-10 00:20:26On 9/11 Anniversary, Remembering a Red, White, and Blue Nation Is Possible
Google is trying to stop online radicalization of wannabe jihadists with a new, seemingly-effective program. While it could be a mild boon for counter-terrorism efforts, it also comes packaged with some reasonable suspicions — especially for conservatives.
Google is trying to combat extremist indoctrination by tinkering with its search and advertising algorithms, as well as YouTube’s video platform, to redirect would-be ISIS militants to content that counters the insurgency’s narrative — for example, sending someone looking for ISIS propaganda videos to a video testimonial by a former jihadist.
Jigsaw, the Google-owned tech incubator and think tank—until recently known as Google Ideas—has been working over the past year to develop a new program it hopes can use a combination of Google’s search advertising algorithms and YouTube’s video platform to target aspiring ISIS recruits and ultimately dissuade them from joining the group’s cult of apocalyptic violence. The program, which Jigsaw calls the Redirect Method and plans to launch in a new phase this month, places advertising alongside results for any keywords and phrases that Jigsaw has determined people attracted to ISIS commonly search for. Those ads link to Arabic- and English-language YouTube channels that pull together preexisting videos Jigsaw believes can effectively undo ISIS’s brainwashing—clips like testimonials from former extremists, imams denouncing ISIS’s corruption of Islam, and surreptitiously filmed clips inside the group’s dysfunctional caliphate in Northern Syria and Iraq. […]
The results, in a pilot project Jigsaw ran early this year, were surprisingly effective: Over the course of about two months, more than 300,000 people were drawn to the anti-ISIS YouTube channels. Searchers actually clicked on Jigsaw’s three or four times more often than a typical ad campaign. Those who clicked spent more than twice as long viewing the most effective playlists than the best estimates of how long people view YouTube as a whole. And this month, along with the London-based startup Moonshot Countering Violent Extremism and the US-based Gen Next Foundation, Jigsaw plans to relaunch the program in a second phase that will focus its method on North American extremists, applying the method to both potential ISIS recruits and violent white supremacists.
Cyber radicalization is a huge problem in the global war against jihadism, as evidenced by the staggering number of terrorists in recent years who have been inspired to carry out terror attacks in the United States and Europe. Among the responses to the phenomenon have been Twitter’s efforts to shut down hundreds of thousands of ISIS-related accounts and the Obama administration’s attempts to combat online jihadist propaganda as part of its largely-failed anti-extremism agenda. Efforts like these, however, have resembled a game of online Whac-A-Mole, with extremists constantly making new social media profiles and with the Obama program being outsourced to Abu Dhabi, for example.
First off, it’s essential to remember that even if the jigsaw program works perfectly, it won’t be a catch-all for radicalization in the West. Yes, ISIS has capitalized on social media and other online platforms to recruit in ways never imagined, but person-to-person radicalization through extremist mosques and Islamic centers is still going to happen.
Regardless of whether or not this project proves to be effective brings us to the next caveat. Jigsaw could have very well produced the free market’s best response yet to addressing the jihadist threat online; however, given recent stories of leftist bias in Silicon Valley, the efficacy of the program should give conservatives at least a moment’s pause.
Depending on the platform, Google currently boasts anywhere from roughly 80 to 95 percent of the search engine market share, according to recent numbers from StatCounter. The tech giant has also been criticized in recent months for skewing search results in favor of Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Analysis by the Washington Free Beacon in June shows a clear distinction between the kinds of search results produced for Hillary Clinton across different search engines.
Additionally, Facebook and Twitter have also come under fire over the past year for allegedly suppressing conservative content. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg went as far as inviting conservative media figures to his house in May after it was revealed that the site’s “Trending Topics” feed wasn’t based on a news algorithm, but rather a group of people with a bias against conservative content. Furthermore, a New York Post story from February highlights how Twitter’s ostensible efforts to crack down on online harassment have led to conservative voices being shut out.
“The power of Facebook, Google and Twitter is enormous. One could argue that they have a monopoly on the content Americans see every day. The content that people read is a way to control public opinion and voting patterns,” explains CR’s Brian Darling. “[W]e as liberty minded people need to recognize the enormous power that these companies have over the news we read every day.”
When someone develops a new, more efficient hammer, it’s good to remember that it’s still capable of hitting more than nails. What Google is creating here through Jigsaw isn’t just a market-driven solution to just one part of jihadist recruitment, it’s also a means by which Google could more effectively and surreptitiously suppress other kinds of content while redirecting readers elsewhere.
Google’s latest efforts may offer a slight hand against one of the most dangerous and pervasive threats to the civilized world, but it should also be viewed with caution and scrutiny for however else — and, against whomever else — it could be applied. (For more from the author of “Here’s Why Conservatives Should Be Wary of Google’s New Anti-ISIS Efforts” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/Google_web_search-1.png7411202Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-09-10 00:15:162016-09-10 00:15:16Here’s Why Conservatives Should Be Wary of Google’s New Anti-ISIS Efforts
A recent report from the United States Commission on Civil Rights shows how the political fig leaf covering up the LGBT lobby’s assault on religious freedom is slowly starting to rot away.
According to a story published Thursday at the Washington Times, the USCCR — an independent, bipartisan commission — released a report in which Chairman Martin R. Castro referred to Americans’ first freedom as “code words” for simply opposing the agenda of the sexual identity movement:
The phrases “religious liberty” and “religious freedom” will stand for nothing except hypocrisy
so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia,
Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance.
Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions, or a veto
power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others. However, today, as in the past, religion is
being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality.
“Progress toward social justice depends upon the enactment of, and vigorous enforcement of, status-based nondiscrimination laws,” wrote commissioners Castro, Achtenberg, Kldaney and Yaki — every Democrat on the commission — later in the report. “Limited claims for religious liberty are allowed only when religious liberty comes into direct conflict with nondiscrimination precepts.”
RFRA [the Religious Freedom Restoration Act] protects only religious practitioners’ First Amendment free exercise rights, and it does not limit others’ freedom from government-imposed religious limitations under the Establishment Clause.
Federal legislation should be considered to clarify that RFRA creates First Amendment Free Exercise Clause rights only for individuals and religious institutions and only to the extent that they do not unduly burden civil liberties and civil rights protections against status based discrimination.
States with RFRA-style laws should amend those statutes to clarify that RFRA creates First Amendment Free Exercise Clause rights only for individuals and religious institutions. States with laws modeled after RFRA must guarantee that those statutes do not unduly burden civil liberties and civil rights with status-based discrimination.
Clearly the targets here are corporations and institutions that don’t necessarily fall under the government’s narrow view of a “religious institution.” These would be entities like the bakery owned by Aaron and Melissa Klein, which is still going through a legal battle after the state of Oregon shut it after the owners declined bake a wedding cake for a same-sex wedding. Or the Little Sisters of the Poor, who despite being an order of consecrated religious sisters in the Catholic Church, were being forced to go against their conscience with the Obamacare contraception mandate.
Of course – as Castro states – the sort of provisions for which the report calls should only get narrower and narrower and the enumerated right to free expression outlined in the First Amendment will be legally redefined to freedom of worship. This would, of course, be akin to telling a protestor that they’re still free to carry a picket sign in their backyard, so long as they have the proper government permits to demonstrate in said backyard.
Furthermore, the fact that report comes from an independent, nonpartisan commission ought to help us realize that this assault won’t magically go away once Barack Obama is out of office, and it won’t simply be staved off by preventing a Hillary Clinton administration. The idea that millennia-old faiths should lose out when their tenets clash with the whims of a decades-old political agenda, that thought has permeated nearly every sector of our government.
But it does show that the argument that conservative Christians and the LGBT movement’s political agenda could somehow balance out the enumerated constitutional rights of the former with the judicially-manufactured ones of the latter was nothing more than a fig leaf. The real end goal of policies like these — or, at least, their natural logical end — is to enforce an over-sexualized brand secularism as a de facto state religion.
Finally, the title of the USCCR report — “Peaceful Cooexistence” — is nothing short of ironic, because what its authors demand is anything but peaceful. A truly peaceful coexistence is where people engage in free association, and don’t resort to using government force when they get their feelings hurt. A truly peaceful coexistence between people of different views looks like a story from earlier this week in which a baker refused to make a Trump cake for a girl’s 18th birthday party. Rather than seek out ways to harness the government’s coercive power for her own ends, the woman simply found another bakery to do the job. Just like with the Klein’s, it clearly wasn’t a matter of discrimination; it was a matter of the specific services rendered.
Free to believe, free to express, free to associate, free to find another vendor — that’s how it works.
This isn’t just a matter of acceptance, or even peaceful coexistence; this is a matter of coercion. This is a matter of making sure that people who have adhered to the same set of values and beliefs for thousands of years don’t get in the way of creating the Left’s brave new world. (For more from the author of “The Left’s Religious Liberty Fig Leaf Is Slowly Falling Off” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/statue-of-liberty-1045266_960_720.jpg720960Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-09-10 00:10:022016-09-10 00:10:02The Left’s Religious Liberty Fig Leaf Is Slowly Falling Off
Hillary Clinton is taking heat for saying that, in Libya, she “put together a coalition that included NATO, included the Arab League, and we were able to save lives. We did not lose a single American in that action.” She made this claim during Wednesday’s presidential forum on NBC.
Some would beg to differ, citing the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi on September 11, 2012.
Politifact investigated Hillary Clinton’s claim, and while deeming it “narrowly accurate,” acknowledges that it is also “so narrowly framed as to be misleading.”
Clinton is correct when she says that no Americans died in the coalition effort to oust Moammar Gadhafi over seven months in 2011, but the direct result of that coalition was a power vacuum in Libya that Islamic extremists have taken advantage of. Ted Bromund, a researcher at the Heritage Foundation, told Politifact, “In the forum, Clinton used ‘a very narrow definition, one custom-built to define away any of the larger problems with the Libyan intervention.’”
Exactly. Four Americans died in Libya — including U.S. Ambassador Chris Stevens — as a result of the power vacuum created under NATO while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state. It’s misleading for Hillary Clinton to ignore these deaths when claiming no American lives were lost in Libya. (For more from the author of “Hillary Declares ‘We Did Not Lose a Single American’ in Libya” please click HERE)
https://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/459271639_07cb09817a_b-3.jpg6831024Joe Millerhttps://joemiller.us/wp-content/uploads/logotext.pngJoe Miller2016-09-10 00:03:592016-09-10 00:03:59Hillary Declares ‘We Did Not Lose a Single American’ in Libya
When chief of staff Andrew Card knelt down and told George Bush “America is under attack” 15 years ago Sunday, the words he whispered in the president’s ear in a Florida classroom launched what was supposed to be a planned, orderly response to a national emergency.
But what followed instead was chaos, a breakdown in communication and protocol that risked international conflict and could have made Sept. 11, 2001, a still bigger tragedy. There were live nukes on the tarmac at U.S. airbases, a failed communications system, and a security protocol for the president and his potential successors — the “continuity of government” plan — that only one top official followed.
Based on a review of newly unclassified documents, memoirs and other published accounts, and interviews with U.S. officials, NBC News has learned that:
*Three dozen live nuclear weapons were aboard U.S. Air Force bombers at three airbases when al Qaeda struck New York and Washington.
*Because of inadequate communications equipment and procedures, top U.S. officials couldn’t talk to each other or to anyone else. Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to speak to Bush to know why the U.S. was preparing to go to DEFCON 3 — but the White House couldn’t put him through to Air Force One. Bush had no way to receive phone calls. (Read more about 9-11 Chaos HERE)
