By Chris Menahan
As PJ Media’s Megan Fox noted, our media has been selling shipping container houses and tiny homes as the hot new thing for impoverished young people.
Andrew Yang even said earlier this month the thought of living in a shipping container apartment “was downright appealing.”
What could go awry with human editors in charge? Facebook should know, since the company was forced to fire its last team of human content-pickers over revelations of bias against conservative viewpoints.
The platform said Tuesday that the new team â which will likely be fewer than 10 employees at the beginning â will choose the content for the âTop Newsâ section of the News Tab. Stories found in the other sections will be chosen by algorithms and determined by specific user interests, the New York Times reported.
âTrendingâ no more: Facebook removing controversial news feature
Facebook said it made the decision to go after human curators after discussions with publishers convinced them that algorithms would not be capable of ânews judgementâ the way real journalists would and that it would take too long to train an algorithm to that level.
But there are pitfalls to consider with human editors, too. Facebook ditched its âTrending Topicsâ section last year after being plagued by accusations that it was politically biased and amplified âfake news.âÂ
An explosive Gizmodo story put the spotlight on Trending Topics in 2016, revealing that human editors, independently contracted by Facebook, were asked to suppress conservative news and even stories about Facebook itself.
The contractors were also told to artificially âinjectâ preferred stories into the trending module, even if they were not trending organically. Rather than relying on algorithms (as it claimed), Facebook was acting like a traditional news organization and reflecting the personal biases of its employees.
The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month that Facebook is planning to pay publishers âmillions of dollarsâ to include their content in its News Tab.
A source told Digiday that the new batch of curators will be given the option to include that content in the Top News section, but they will not be obliged to. The new hires will be full-time employees, unlike the contractors used for the doomed Trending Topics section.
As Facebook rolls out the News Tab, users will no doubt be waiting to see if it has learned its lesson after the last debacle.
READ MORE: Google is censoring political content? *Gasp!* Who knew?
AUGUST 21, 2019
The movie, scheduled to be released this week, titled American Factory, focuses on the economy in the heartland of the US.
The review states:
The documentary, which debuts on Netflix on August 21, never mentions President Donald Trump by nameâbut its message is clear: Trumpâs promise to reinvigorate the industrial heartland is going to take a lot more than a campaign slogan. There are no easy solutions. And if some manufacturing jobs do come back, theyâre going to look nothing like they used to. Americans will have to accept a new reality to stay competitive in the global marketplaceâone that they might not like, and one that Trump doesnât acknowledge.
itâs a message that echoes Obamaâs declaration in 2016 that some jobs in the manufacturing sector are âjust not going to come back.â
The movie argues that Trumpâs efforts to reinvigorate manufacturing have not been successful, despite there being more employed in factory jobs now than before Trump was elected.
The message is clear. The Obamas are trying to hit Trump where it matters ahead of the election, in an effort to prevent history repeating.
Last year, when the Obamas inked the deal with the streaming service, the former president declared that the projects would focus on âtraining the next generation of leaders.â
âI continue to believe that if we are hearing each otherâs stories and recognizing ourselves in each other, then our democracy works,â Obama said at the time.
AUGUST 21, 2019
GOP campaign strategist Patrick Griffin argued that the so called âSquadâ of Democrats, including Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., has âhijackedâ the Democratic Party.
âItâs so interesting that you use the term â the only two Muslim women in Congress, the term you chose to use, sir, is âhijacking,ââ Rye, the former Congressional Black Caucus executive director, ridiculously responded.
âIt has nothing to do with whether theyâre Muslim or not,â Griffin hit back, âNothing to do with that⊠Theyâve hijacked from their own principles.â
âThatâs a real interesting word choice, and you understand why,â Rye continued, insisting that Griffin used the term to connect the Democrats to terrorists.
âYou can talk over me all you want to but the bottom line is the greatest terrorist threat in this country is white men, white men who think like you. That is the greatest terrorist threat in this country.â Rye blurted.
Griffin described Ryeâs remarks as âsilly rhetoric.â
âNo, itâs not!â Rye responded.
âYou know whatâs silly? The fact that youâre on here knowing how dangerous times are right now defending this nonsense.â she added.
CNN, bringing the nuanced debate as usual.
Published on Aug 21, 2019
By Virginia Kruta
When news broke that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would not allow freshman Democratic Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib and Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar, pundits and political figures alike were quick to voice their criticisms.
But The Daily Wireâs editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro reminded former Vice President Joe Biden of the Obama administrationâs move to ban Israeli Knesset member Michael Ben Ari in 2012.
Ben Ari, who belonged to Israelâs National Union coalition of right-wing parties, requested a visa in order to attend two conferences â a request which was denied by the Obama administration in February of 2012. The American consulate denied the visa on the grounds that Ben Ari âbelonged to a terrorist organization.â
The American consulate never publicly released the name of the terrorist organization to which they believed Ben Ari belonged, but he told Israeli outlet Haaretz that he suspected it was his association with Kach â a far-right political movement that was considered a terrorist organization and had been banned in Israel 18 years prior in 1994.
Ben Ari responded to the move saying, âThe U.S. government, who receives with open arms [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, who calls for the destruction of Israel, [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas, who planned the murder of children in Jerusalem, and [Israeli Arab MK] Ahmed Tibi, who enthusiastically encourages shahids, chose to bar me from meeting with Jewish communities in the U.S. and to encourage aliyah to Israel, with claims that I am a terrorist.â
Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin called the move âunacceptable,â saying in a letter to then U.S. Ambassador Dan Shapiro, âNational Union is a completely legitimate faction of the Israeli parliament, and Ben Ari an elected representative of the State of Israel, a close American ally. To impugn him as belonging to a terrorist organization and bar him from visiting the country is unacceptable.â
Ben Ari, now a part of the far-right Otzma-Yehudit party, was banned from running for office in March of 2019. The High Court of Justice voted 8-1 to ban him, citing his âanti-Arab ideology,â marking the first time an individual candidate has been banned from elections. The court approved a far-left Jewish candidate and an Arab party slate.
AUGUST 20, 2019
According to a report by Swedish newspaper Expressen, the Kjell & Company retail chain announced that sales of the self-defense item have spiked 90 per cent in August compared to June.
The sales figures are being described as an âaccelerating, increasing trend,â with manufacturer Plegium revealing sales have been rising for years but âofficially explodedâ this summer.
Another pepper spray company called Bodyguard also revealed that its sales had increased by 21 per cent despite stiff competition from market newcomers.
âThe Swedish summer has been shaken by a series of assault rapes. The most notable events have taken place in Uppsala, where two completed rapes and two attempted rapes took place between August 3rd and 7th alone,â reports Expressen.
After a string of four sexual assaults and rapes in the span of five nights, Swedish police in numerous cities advised women to not walk alone at night and to go home early.
Figures released last year found that 58 per cent of convicted rapists and 85 per cent of all convicted assault rapists in Sweden were born outside of Europe.
In cases where the victim did not know the attacker, the proportion of foreign offenders was more than 80 per cent. Nearly 40 per cent of the convicted rapists are from the Middle East or from Africa, areas of the world from which Sweden has accepted large numbers of migrants in recent years.
A study by the Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet found that 88 per cent of gang rapists in the Scandinavian country over the last six years have had a migrant background.
Other figures show that migrants from Muslim-majority nations commit 84 per cent of âvery violentâ rapes in Sweden.
As we reported yesterday, robberies targeting children in Sweden have also hit a new record high, with young men with migrant backgrounds being blamed for the spike.
By Joe Hoft – August 20, 2019
This totally destroys the FBI and Muellerâs claims that Russians hacked the DNC to obtain these emails.
Butowsky claims in his lawsuit:
Ms. Rattner said Mr. Assange told her that Seth Rich and his brother, Aaron, were responsible for releasing the DNC emails to Wikileaks. Ms. Rattner said Mr. Assange wanted the information relayed to Sethâs parents, as it might explain the motive for Sethâs murder.
On November 9 2016 Ellen Ratner admitted publicly that she met with Julian Assange for three hours the Saturday before the 2016 election. According to Ratner, Julian Assange told her the leaks were not from the Russians, they were from an internal source from the Hillary Campaign.
We later reported that Butowsky and his attorney, Ty Clevenger, requested and obtained documents from the FBI related to their case which we were able to analyze.
According to the duo, they obtained the transcript from former FBI Chief of Staff James Rybicki where he states that the Obama White House was the entity that was pushing the Russia conspiracy as early as October 2016 â
Rybicki was corrupt cop James Comeyâs Chief of staff â
Clevenger stated in a post online that â
Newly released documents from the FBI suggest that the Obama White House pushed intelligence agencies to publicly blame the Russians for email leaks from the Democratic National Committee to Wikileaks.
This afternoon I received an undated (and heavily redacted) transcript of an interview of James Rybicki, former chief of staff to former FBI Director James Comey, that includes this excerpt: âSo we understand that at some point in October of 2016, there was, I guess, a desire by the White House to make some kind of statement about RussiaâsâŠâ and then the next page is omitted.
The comment is made by an unidentified prosecutor from the U.S. Office of Special Counsel or âOSC,â not to be confused with the office of former Special Counsel Robert Mueller (the OSC is a permanent office that investigates Hatch Act violations, and Mr. Comey was under investigation for trying to influence the 2016 Presidential election).
Trump friend Roger Stone is facing charges from the Mueller gang that are based on this key question â who provided the DNC the Podesta emails to WikiLeaks?
The corrupt FBI and Mueller team claim the emails were hacked but neither entity inspected the DNC server which was supposedly hacked. They have provided no proof of this.
The DNC instead hired a firm Crowdstrike, with connections to Mueller and former Obama Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, who provided a redacted report to the FBI and Mueller stating the emails were hacked by Russia.
Former NSA whistleblower Bill Binney claims he has evidence the DNC emails were not hacked but copied most likely on to a flashdrive or something similar.
When Ty Clevenger requested documents from the FBI related to any investigation into the death of Seth Rich, they replied that they never investigated Seth Rich and they donât even have any records on him â
But when documents were requested from the NSA, they replied that they wonât release their records regarding Seth Rich because itâs a matter of national security â
USC 552(b)(1)Â states:Â This section does not apply to matters that areâ
(A) specifically authorized under criteria established by an Executive order to be kept secret in the interest of national defense or foreign policy and (B) are in fact properly classified pursuant to such Executive order;
Hat tip D. Manny
By Jim Hoft
On Thursday Democrats Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar were banned from entering Israel after months of their frequent attacks on the Jewish state and their promotion of the anti-Semitic BDS movement.
Their trip was planned by the antisemitic, pro-terror Miftah organization.
On Monday the radical Democrats lashed out at Israel for blocking their entry.
** Rashida Tlaib lashed out at the Israel security wall that eliminated terrorist attacks in their country.
The two Democrats also threatened US aid to the Jewish State.
Rep. Ilhan Omar:Â We give Israel more than $3 million in aid every year. This is predicated on them being an important ally in the region and (airquotes) âthe only democracyâ in the Middle East. But denying a visit to duly elected members of Congress is not consistent with being an ally and denying millions of people freedom of movement, or expression or self determination is not consistent with being a democracy. We must be asking as Israelâs ally the Netanyahu government stop the expansion of settlements on Palestinian land and ensure full rights to Palestinians if we are to give them aid. These are not just my views.
Tom's Blog 