Published on Jun 13, 2019
Google staff keep ‘blacklist’ of conservative and ‘fringe’ sites – report
Google reportedly runs two “blacklists,” one allowing staff to remove “fringe” websites from search results and another for filtering out opinion articles, according to conservative news outlet the Daily Caller.
The lists allow Google employees –who CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress in December never “manually intervene on any particular search result”– to suppress certain addresses in a user’s search results.
The Daily Caller claims to have seen screenshots of the lists in question. Google did not address whether its staff deliberately weed out certain political content, but did say they are working to filter out “inappropriate” search results.
The first list, titled “webanswers_url_blacklist,” lets staff block specific web addresses from popping up in Google’s ‘featured snippets’ when a user asks a question. Many of the pages blocked are op-ed articles, which a user could mistake for straight news reporting. This list appears to target opinion pieces in general, regardless of their political bent.
Another list, which the Daily Caller suggests was compiled by algorithm, blanket blacklists a host of conservative and “fringe” sites from appearing in the ‘featured snippets.’ The American Spectator, Breitbart, The Gateway Pundit and the website of Bring Your Bible to School Day are among those included. Several progressive sites, including Consortium News and a blog called Breitbart Unmasked also reportedly made the list.
That Google would censor conservative or “fringe” content will come as no surprise to some. The company, along with a bevy of other Silicon Valley tech giants, has been accused of harboring a liberal bias for several years now, with new stories of favoritism surfacing regularly.
A recent study found that Google’s search algorithms display a “left-leaning ideological skew,” while video footage of an internal company meeting recorded after the 2016 election showed executives calling Donald Trump’s victory “deeply offensive” and talking about using AI to fight populism in future.
YouTube, a subsidiary of Google, implemented a blanket ban on “hateful” and “supremacist” videos last week. The ban, which came about after Vox journalist Carlos Maza led a campaign against conservative shock-jock Steven Crowder, swept away or demonetized thousands of videos critical of the social justice movement and several video reports on extremist movements by legitimate journalists.
‘This will not go well’: YouTube cracks down on pundits & journalists after policy change
Though the right has made the most noise about big tech’s alleged censorship efforts, a growing number of left-wing voices have been sounding the alarm too. Facebook has been perhaps most overt in clamping down on anti-establishment content across the political spectrum, but Google has also come under fire for changing its algorithms to de-rank left-wing, socialist, and anti-war websites.
Journalist Max Blumenthal called the tech giants’ clampdown part of “a wider war on dissident narratives in online media.”
LA Pride Paraders Can’t Admit That TRUMP IS NOT THAT BAD
Published on Jun 11, 2019
This week we hit the LA Pride Parade in West Hollywood. Some people were able to admit that Trump is not that bad, others, not so much.
DOZENS OF POLICE OFFICERS INJURED IN MEMPHIS RIOTS
Violent protests in response to shooting of armed felon during arrest
JUNE 13, 2019
At least 25 officers were injured in violent clashes with protesters after US Marshals fatally shot a multiple-felony suspect during an arrest. Mounted police, a helicopter and tear gas were all required to disperse the crowd.
Two journalists were injured and six police officers were hospitalized in the clashes late Wednesday, according to Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland.
“Let me be clear – the aggression shown towards our officers and deputies tonight was unwarranted,” Strickland said in a statement.
The crowd launched bricks and rocks at Memphis police and multiple police vehicles were damaged; the windows of a local fire station were also smashed.
The violent clashes occurred in response to the reported death by shooting of a felony suspect, who was killed in a botched raid by US Marshals in North Memphis.
According to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, agents attempted to arrest the suspect –who reportedly had multiple felony warrants–– but the man entered a car and began ramming police vehicles indiscriminately before exiting with a weapon.
Police opened fire and the suspect was pronounced dead at the scene. It is, as yet, unknown how many shots were fired or how many times the suspect was hit. Memphis police were not directly involved in the shooting.
The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said it is “closely monitoring” the situation.
Russia Hoax 4-Eva: House Intel Committee Subpoenas Michael Flynn
By Joshua Caplan
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on Thursday subpoenaed retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn and former Trump Deputy Campaign Manager Rick Gates for documents and testimony.
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the panel’s chairman, claims the pair have been uncooperative in Congress’s “oversight” investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.
“As part of our oversight work, the House Intelligence Committee is continuing to examine the deep counterintelligence concerns raised in Special Counsel Mueller’s report, and that requires speaking directly with the fact witnesses,” Schiff said in a statement. “Both Michael Flynn and Rick Gates were critical witnesses for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, but so far have refused to cooperate fully with Congress.”
The California Democrat continued: “That’s simply unacceptable. The American people, and the Congress, deserve to hear directly from these two critical witnesses. We hope these witnesses come to recognize their cooperation as being with the United States, not merely the Department of Justice.”
Flynn and Gates are to turn over documents to the committee by June 26th and sit for an interview, under oath, on July 10th, the subpoena states.
Flynn admitted to making false statements to the FBI regarding conversations he shared with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in 2017, while Gates pleaded guilty to false statements and conspiracy charges related to political consulting efforts he and onetime Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort undertook for Ukraine. The trio was charged as part of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into now-debunked collusion between the 2016 Trump campaign and Russia.
The development comes a day after Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump’s first national security advisor, hired seasoned lawyer Sidney Powell as his new counsel as he awaits sentencing.
The former Assistant U.S. Attorney is an outspoken critic of the Mueller probe and has called Andrew Weissmann, often referred to as the special counsel’s “pit bull,” the “poster boy for prosecutorial misconduct.”
The move came after court filings revealed last week that Flynn terminated his lawyers Stephen Anthony and Robert Kelner of Covington & Burling LLP, as his counsel.
President Trump praised Powell’s hiring on social media Thursday morning, calling her a “great lawyer.”
“General Michael Flynn, the 33 year war hero who has served with distinction, has not retained a good lawyer, he has retained a GREAT LAWYER, Sidney Powell. Best Wishes and Good Luck to them both!” the president tweeted.
THIS WAS WRITTEN IN 1989 . . .
PLEASE READ THE MIDDLE PARAGRAPH
COLLUSION: Project Veritas Suspended From Twitter for Revealing Pinterest’s Censorship of Conservatives
The big tech platform suspended Project Veritas for reporting the shady actions taken by another big tech platform.
Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe revealed today that his organization was suspended from Twitter for tweets revealing Pinterest’s mass censorship of conservative websites and individuals on its platform.
On June 11, O’Keefe interviewed a whistle blower at Pinterest who revealed that the platform adds conservative news websites, including Big League Politics, to a list of “porn” websites in an attempt to prevent our links from being posted to the platform, and that employees at Pinterest consider Ben Shapiro, a Jewish conservative commentator, to be an anti-Muslim “white supremacist.” Project Veritas was suspended from Twitter for posting screen shots from the company’s Slack chat illustrating this.
“Twitter has decided that investigative journalism is a violation of their terms of service,” wrote O’Keefe on his personal Twitter account. “@Project_Veritas has been temporarily suspended from posting for tweeting internal communications from @Pinterest which show them calling @benshapiro a ‘white supremacist.’”
It would appear Twitter is doing its best to protect their fellow big tech platform in this latest move. Unfortunately, Big League Politics and others have already reported on the Pinterest employees calling Shapiro a “white supremacist”.
Further documents published by Project Veritas show an employee calling right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro a “white supremacist,” and putting listing Candace Owens alongside him as “ones to watch for content.”
“Ben Shapiro is a white supremacist who has regularly spewed anti muslim hate and he and candace owens and few others may be ones to watch content for over the next few days,” a post from an internal Slack chat said.
“I reported all the top instances of his “Myth of the tiny radical muslim” video from youtube that a number of journalists have been calling out,” the post continued. “There will no doubt be people searching for his content across platforms. I’ll start putting together a list of things like this video of his that may be worth creating an advisor for (though not blocking results).
As Big League Politics also reported, the platform considers our website to be “porn” and uses this as an excuse to prevent links to our stories from being posted to its platform.
In Pinterest’s text document, “porn_domain_blacklist”, dozens of conservative media outlets are considered “porn”. Big League Politics, Western Journal, TeaParty.org, PJ Media, and others are all covered in the dragnet, and considered “porn” by the big tech platform.
The whistle blower explained to Project Veritas’ James O’Keefe that the porn blacklist is used to ensure links to conservative and pro-choice websites are not posted to the platform.
It is unclear why Twitter took this action against Project Veritas, considering the leaked Slack chat does not identify a user by name, or identify private information about Slack employees, the rule Twitter claims was broken by the whistle blowing organization.
Pride Parade Not An Ally
Published on Jun 12, 2019
Millie Weaver aka Rainbow Snatch asks attendees at Pittsburgh PRIDE 2019 how they feel about the upcoming Boston Straight Parade and whether or not they would be willing to attend as ‘allies’ of heterosexuals.
Tom's Blog 