Tag: ANGELA MERKEL

The ‘Gilets Jaunes’ Are Unstoppable: “Now, The Elites Are Afraid”

By Tyler Durden

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Authored by Christophe Guilluy via Spiked-Online.com,

The gilets jaunes (yellow vest) movement has rattled the French establishment. For several months, crowds ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands have been taking to the streets every weekend across the whole of France. They have had enormous success, extracting major concessions from the government. They continue to march.

Back in 2014, geographer Christopher Guilluy’s study of la France périphérique (peripheral France) caused a media sensation. It drew attention to the economic, cultural and political exclusion of the working classes, most of whom now live outside the major cities. It highlighted the conditions that would later give rise to the yellow-vest phenomenon. Guilluy has developed on these themes in his recent books, No Society and The Twilight of the Elite: Prosperity, the Periphery and the Future of France. spiked caught up with Guilluy to get his view on the causes and consequences of the yellow-vest movement.

spiked: What exactly do you mean by ‘peripheral France’?

Christophe Guilluy: ‘Peripheral France’ is about the geographic distribution of the working classes across France. Fifteen years ago, I noticed that the majority of working-class people actually live very far away from the major globalised cities – far from Paris, Lyon and Toulouse, and also very far from London and New York.

Technically, our globalised economic model performs well. It produces a lot of wealth. But it doesn’t need the majority of the population to function. It has no real need for the manual workers, labourers and even small-business owners outside of the big cities. Paris creates enough wealth for the whole of France, and London does the same in Britain. But you cannot build a society around this. The gilets jaunes is a revolt of the working classes who live in these places.

They tend to be people in work, but who don’t earn very much, between 1000€ and 2000€ per month. Some of them are very poor if they are unemployed. Others were once middle-class. What they all have in common is that they live in areas where there is hardly any work left. They know that even if they have a job today, they could lose it tomorrow and they won’t find anything else.

spiked: What is the role of culture in the yellow-vest movement?

Guilluy: Not only does peripheral France fare badly in the modern economy, it is also culturally misunderstood by the elite. The yellow-vest movement is a truly 21st-century movement in that it is cultural as well as political. Cultural validation is extremely important in our era.

One illustration of this cultural divide is that most modern, progressive social movements and protests are quickly endorsed by celebrities, actors, the media and the intellectuals. But none of them approve of the gilets jaunes. Their emergence has caused a kind of psychological shock to the cultural establishment. It is exactly the same shock that the British elites experienced with the Brexit vote and that they are still experiencing now, three years later.

The Brexit vote had a lot to do with culture, too, I think. It was more than just the question of leaving the EU. Many voters wanted to remind the political class that they exist. That’s what French people are using the gilets jaunes for – to say we exist. We are seeing the same phenomenon in populist revolts across the world.

spiked: How have the working-classes come to be excluded?

Guilluy: All the growth and dynamism is in the major cities, but people cannot just move there. The cities are inaccessible, particularly thanks to mounting housing costs. The big cities today are like medieval citadels. It is like we are going back to the city-states of the Middle Ages. Funnily enough, Paris is going to start charging people for entry, just like the excise duties you used to have to pay to enter a town in the Middle Ages.

The cities themselves have become very unequal, too. The Parisian economy needs executives and qualified professionals. It also needs workers, predominantly immigrants, for the construction industry and catering et cetera. Business relies on this very specific demographic mix. The problem is that ‘the people’ outside of this still exist. In fact, ‘Peripheral France’ actually encompasses the majority of French people.

spiked: What role has the liberal metropolitan elite played in this?

Guilluy: We have a new bourgeoisie, but because they are very cool and progressive, it creates the impression that there is no class conflict anymore. It is really difficult to oppose the hipsters when they say they care about the poor and about minorities.

But actually, they are very much complicit in relegating the working classes to the sidelines. Not only do they benefit enormously from the globalised economy, but they have also produced a dominant cultural discourse which ostracises working-class people. Think of the ‘deplorables’ evoked by Hillary Clinton. There is a similar view of the working class in France and Britain. They are looked upon as if they are some kind of Amazonian tribe. The problem for the elites is that it is a very big tribe.

The middle-class reaction to the yellow vests has been telling. Immediately, the protesters were denounced as xenophobes, anti-Semites and homophobes. The elites present themselves as anti-fascist and anti-racist but this is merely a way of defending their class interests. It is the only argument they can muster to defend their status, but it is not working anymore.

Now the elites are afraid. For the first time, there is a movement which cannot be controlled through the normal political mechanisms. The gilets jaunes didn’t emerge from the trade unions or the political parties. It cannot be stopped. There is no ‘off’ button. Either the intelligentsia will be forced to properly acknowledge the existence of these people, or they will have to opt for a kind of soft totalitarianism.

A lot has been made of the fact that the yellow vests’ demands vary a great deal. But above all, it’s a demand for democracy. Fundamentally, they are democrats – they want to be taken seriously and they want to be integrated into the economic order.

spiked: How can we begin to address these demands?

Guilluy: First of all, the bourgeoisie needs a cultural revolution, particularly in universities and in the media. They need to stop insulting the working class, to stop thinking of all the gilets jaunes as imbeciles.

Cultural respect is fundamental: there will be no economic or political integration until there is cultural integration. Then, of course, we need to think differently about the economy. That means dispensing with neoliberal dogma. We need to think beyond Paris, London and New York.

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1000s of police on guard as Yellow Vests hit streets in France for 10th week in a row

For the 10th week in a row, Yellow Vest protesters filled the streets of Paris and other cities in France, with thousands of police standing guard. Earlier, President Emmanuel Macron launched his “national debates” on the crisis.

Around 84,000 people had joined the protests across the country on Saturday, the Interior Ministry said. The turnout was comparable to that of last week, meaning that the nation-wide debate on the crisis announced by President Emmanuel Macron so far did little to change the people’s moods.

In Paris, the Yellow Vest occupied the Champs-Elysees and the Esplanade des Invalides near the nation’s parliament. People were seen waving national flags and setting off firecrackers.

Some protesters brought cardboard coffins, in memory of the people who have died since the beginning of the protests (the majority was killed in traffic accidents during road blockades). They marched under a large banner reading “Citizens in danger.”

The law enforcers used water cannons and tear gas to disperse some of the protesters in Paris.

“Over in the distance, you might see a water cannon. They’re trying to disperse the protestors,” RT’s Charlotte Dubenskij reported from the heat of the action in Paris. “We did see the protestors trying to break down some of the traffic lights. We’ve also seen tear gas being dispersed… The protestors were trying to throw back the tear gas pellets back at the police.”

After the officers used force, there were people lying on the ground, who “potentially could’ve been injured,” Dubenskij said.

42 protestors were arrested in the capital for carrying illegal items and other violations, the police said.

The demonstrators have denounced Macron’s open letter to the country, in which he announced the launch of the nation-wide debate to defuse the tensions, as nothing but a “huge scam.”

“It contradicts everything he [Macron] says and does,” one of the protestors told RT, with the other saying that he’ll gladly send the letter back to the president.

“We hear a lot of fine words, but see very few decisions that somehow improve the wellbeing of the people. There must be a least a slight increase in living standard after we’ve been crying for help for the past ten weeks. We work hard, but we still have an empty fridge. That’s how we live,” a female demonstrator said.

The Yellow Vest processions took place in Caen and Rouen, both in northern France. The rallies were also held in Strasbourg, Bordeaux, Toulon, Dijon, Beziers, Avignon, among other places.

The authorities deployed 5,000 police officers in Paris, and 80,000 nationwide, according to local media.

Armored police cars were filmed moving through the southern city of Toulouse where 10,000 people took to the streets. There were scuffles between the police and the Yellow Vests, with at least ten people detained.

A major rally also took place in Bordeaux, with the attendance between 4,000 to 6,000 demonstrators.

Some French protesters carried placards, reading “Freedom, Equality, Flash-Ball,” referring to the type of ‘less-lethal’ guns used by law enforcement to quell the protests. The placards also contained pictures of Marianne – a national symbol of liberty – with an injured eye. That was apparently an allusion to a high-publicized incident in December when a young woman was hit in the eye by a projectile the activists say was fired from a Flash-Ball.

In Avignon, the protestors attempted to set the city hall on fire by gathering burning waste materials in front of the wooden doors to the building.

The Yellow Vest protests began in November as a movement against planned fuel tax hikes, but eventually grew to include wider demands, including the resignation of President Emmanuel Macron and his government.

Previous rallies have seen violent clashes with police. There have been injuries on both sides, and over 1,000 people have been detained in connection to the unrest, which has at times spilled out into street battles.

Saturday’s rallies take place days after President Emmanuel Macron launched“grand national debates,” a series of public discussions about the government’s policies. He hopes the debates will help in reaching a compromise with the protesters, but many have expressed skepticism regarding the format and intentions. As a result, some protesters appeared with placards denouncing the debates as a “scam.”

 

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Finland Reclassifies Sex Abuse Laws Amid Migrant Grooming Gang Scandal

The recent spate of sexual attacks on underage schoolgirls as young as ten has spurred the Finnish authorities into action.

A cross-party decision for legislative changes (to be made before elections due in April) has been reached in an attempt to stomp out grooming and sexual abuse.

Finland’s Justice Ministry is set to change rape laws to ensure that sex without consent is always a crime, in line with previous demands from a citizens’ initiative, reports national broadcaster Yle.

The changes, largely influenced by neighboring Sweden, are expected to tighten legislation concerning sex with minors and give more consideration to victims in helpless situations. In the future, sex with a child will always be considered rape, which is not the case nowadays.

Finnish girls dealing with Somali immigrants

Former editor-in-chief of Breitbart News London has warned for years about the Islamic invasion into Europe and has now been proven right.

At present, intercourse with someone below the age of consent is classified as aggravated child abuse. This led to massive outrage when Finnish prosecutors last year failed to charge a man convicted of sexually abusing a 10-year-old with rape.

Previously, a citizens’ initiative on consent law gained 57,000 signatures, but was initially met with a cool reception from Justice Minister Antti Häkkänen and was given the cold shoulder by parliament.

However, following last week’s series of arrests over child sex abuse featuring migrant suspects, Häkkänen changed his tune, which campaigners see as their victory. By his own admission, Häkkänen was shocked by the recent reports of rape and sexual abuse. Nevertheless, he stressed that the changes should be made after more careful consideration.

A similar consent law has been implemented in several countries, including Germany and Sweden. In Sweden, it has led to more convictions of rape, with more severe punishments handed out, according to Swedish Radio.

Additionally, the changes will affect police rules on data gathering to allow them to better track individuals suspected of grooming online. Furthermore, the government is to look at whether aggravated sex crimes constitute sufficient reason to rescind Finnish citizenship.

However, another, more radical petition demanding the deportation of foreign sex offenders is still gathering signatures in light of the recent grooming gang scandal. At the time of writing, it has amassed close to 104,000 signatures, almost double as the consent petition.

This initiative is backed by the right-wing Blue Reform party, who want the Finnish government to interpret international agreement more freely than before. The party’s requirement is to be able to deport refugees convicted of sexual offenses, regardless of whether their home country is considered safe or not.

This would require a constitutional change, an unlikely measure. Still, a number of Finnish politicians, including Interior Minister Kai Mykkänen, call for harsher penalties for foreigners convicted of sex crimes.

Meanwhile, the number of reports of sexual offenses against children increased markedly last year, reaching 1,400 and topping 2017’s figure by 18 percent, Yle reported.

About a quarter of all reported sexual offenses were carried out by people with a foreign background, police inspector Pekka Heikkinen informed, which signals clear over-representation.

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Rep. Ilhan Omar Furthers Homophobic Conspiracy: Lindsey Graham ‘Compromised’

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By John Nolte

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) is now spreading a homophobic conspiracy theory that originated with MSNBC anchor Stephanie Ruhle about Sen. Lindsey Graham being blackmailed by Trump over “something pretty extreme.”

Using her verified Twitter account, Omar wrote of Graham, “They got to him, he is compromised!”

Earlier this week, and without any evidence, Ruhle closed a MSNBC segment about Graham’s support for Trump with the media/left’s latest form of McCarthysim: “It could be that Donald Trump or somebody knows something pretty extreme about Lindsey Graham. We’re gonna leave it there.”

Everyone knows what Ruhle is referring to, which is why she was comfortable saying she would “leave it there.”

For years now, rumors have swirled that the never-married 63-year-old Graham is a homosexual. Ruhle wanted to get this rumor swirling as a means to punish Graham for his energetic and effective support for Trump of late, and it worked…

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And so on….

Ruhle was probably following the lead of Jon Cooper, chairman of the Democratic Coalition, who tweeted about Graham’s “pretty serious sexual kink” on Sunday:

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Regardless, this coordinated smear is straight-up homophobia, the use of homosexuality as a pejorative and weapon.

And we know it’s a smear because 1) Graham has said he is not gay and 2) even if he was, no one would care.

How do you blackmail someone for being a homosexual when no one cares?

Joining the sexual McCarthyites this week is Rep. Omar, who decided to further this conspiracy theory without citing any evidence. But it could be she’s too busy supporting Louis Farrakhan and defending her anti-Semitic comments about “the evil doings of Israel.”

Fox News reports that the freshman congresswoman is facing some blowback for her homophobic smear of Graham, but it is obviously not coming from the establishment media:

Harmeet K. Dhillon, a national committeewoman for the Republican National Committee, slammed Omar’s comment for bigotry: “Breathtaking bigotry, homophobia from a member of Congress. It’s not funny, and puzzling why Dems get away with outdated stereotypes and dumb conspiracy theories like this.”

“Is this a reference to the prominent & pernicious homophobic rumor that is circulating the internet? Because I might expect that from a troll, but you’re a Congresswoman,” Jerry Dunleavy tweeted.

“Here’s an elected representative promulgating the homophobic conspiracy theory, without evidence, that Lindsay Graham is a gay, blackmailed, shill,” writer Tiana Lowe seconded.

Omar hangs with hate leader Farrakhan, spreads anti-Semitism, and is now joining a homophobic smear campaign. But our oh-so progressive media continue to cover up for her.

As far as Graham, he is up for re-election in 2020 and because our media never leave their provincial and bigoted bubble, they will always see southerners as hicks and actually believe their smear campaign will cost Graham votes.

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(CENSORSHIP) – SWEDISH PUBLIC BROADCASTER CENSORS WORD “ISLAM” FROM MONOLOGUE ABOUT WHY SAUDI GIRL LEFT ISLAM

Swedish Public Broadcaster Censors Word "Islam" From Monologue About Why Saudi Girl Left Islam

Ruthless enforcement of political correctness exposed

 | Infowars.com – JANUARY 17, 2019

Sweden’s taxpayer-funded public broadcaster censored the world “Islam” from a monologue by refugee Rahaf Mohammad about why she left Islam.

During an interview, SVT omitted the words “Islam” and “haram” from the translation. Haram means “forbidden” in Arabic.

Mohammad used the word while describing how she was locked up for six months and suffered abuse from her family for getting her hair cut short because Islam forbids it.

The edit is major given that Mohammad’s entire plight is based around her rejection of Islam. As an apostate, she is under threat of death if returned to her native Saudi Arabia.

Sweden Democrat politician Kent Ekeroth first drew attention to the omission, accusing the network of state-sponsored censorship. The original English subtitles can briefly be seen behind the overlayed Swedish translation, meaning that the words “Islam” and “haram” were deliberately removed by SVT.

“For a Swedish SVT viewer, it is basically impossible to see the English subtitles that reflect what she actually tells. Instead, you are left to read the Swedish translation that omits most of what she said in that sentence,” he wrote.

The act of censorship was met with derision, with one person updating the network’s logo and name from Sveriges Television to “Stasi Vision TV”.

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“It’s like doing away with the word ‘Nazism’ in a report about World War II survivors! Or ‘communism’ in a report about the Soviet Union,” Twitter user Mikael Nilsson remarked.

The ruthless patrolling of politically correct boundaries is commonplace in Sweden, where a bizarre journalistic hive mind serves to manage acceptable discourse and shield Islam from criticism.

It appears as though Mohammad is set to prove herself problematic to leftists who simultaneously attempt to claim they are advancing “progressive” virtues while defending Islam, the least progressive belief system on the planet.

As we reported yesterday, one of the first things she did after arriving in Canada was proclaim her love for bacon.

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‘THE SMOKING GUN’: Google Manipulated YouTube Search Results for Hot Topics …Leaked Convo: ’Tons of White- and Blacklists That Humans Manually Curate’… …Pro-Life Videos Demoted — After Left-Wing Journo Complaint!

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By Allum Bokhari

In sworn testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress last month that his company does not “manually intervene” on any particular search result. Yet an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News reveals Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform – including a recent intervention that pushed pro-life videos out of the top ten search results for “abortion.”

The term “abortion” was added to a “blacklist” file for “controversial YouTube queries,” which contains a list of search terms that the company considers sensitive. According to the leak, these include some of these search terms related to: abortion, abortions, the Irish abortion referendum, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and anti-gun activist David Hogg.

The existence of the blacklist was revealed in an internal Google discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source inside the company who wishes to remain anonymous. A partial list of blacklisted terms was also leaked to Breitbart by another Google source.

In the leaked discussion thread, a Google site reliability engineer hinted at the existence of more search blacklists, according to the source.

“We have tons of white- and blacklists that humans manually curate,” said the employee. “Hopefully this isn’t surprising or particularly controversial.”

Others were more concerned about the presence of the blacklist. According to the source, the software engineer who started the discussion called the manipulation of search results related to abortion a “smoking gun.”

The software engineer noted that the change had occurred following an inquiry from a left-wing Slate journalist about the prominence of pro-life videos on YouTube, and that pro-life videos were replaced with pro-abortion videos in the top ten results for the search terms following Google’s manual intervention.

“The Slate writer said she had complained last Friday and then saw different search results before YouTube responded to her on Monday,” wrote the employee. “And lo and behold, the [changelog] was submitted on Friday, December 14 at 3:17 PM.”

The manually downranked items included several videos from Dr. Antony Levatino, a former abortion doctor who is now a pro-life activist. Another video in the top ten featured a woman’s personal story of being pressured to have an abortion, while another featured pro-life conservative Ben Shapiro. The Slate journalist who complained to Google reportedthat these videos previously featured in the top ten, describing them in her story as “dangerous misinformation.”

Since the Slate journalist’s inquiry and Google’s subsequent intervention, the top search results now feature pro-abortion content from left-wing sources like BuzzFeed, Vice, CNN, and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. In her report, the Slate journalist acknowledged that the search results changed shortly after she contacted Google.

The manual adjustment of search results by a Google-owned platform contradicts a key claim made under oath by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in his congressional testimony earlier this month: that his company does not “manually intervene on any search result.”

A Google employee in the discussion thread drew attention to Pichai’s claim, noting that it “seems like we are pretty eager to cater our search results to the social and political agenda of left-wing journalists.”

One of the posts in the discussion also noted that the blacklist had previously been edited to include the search term “Maxine Waters” after a single Google employee complained the top YouTube search result for Maxine Waters was “very low quality.”

Google’s alleged intervention on behalf of a Democratic congresswoman would be further evidence of the tech giant using its resources to prop up the left. Breitbart News previously reported on leaked emails revealing the company targeted pro-Democrat demographics in its get-out-the-vote efforts in 2016.

According to the source, a software engineer in the thread also noted that “a bunch of terms related to the abortion referendum in Ireland” had been added to the blacklist – another change with potentially dramatic consequences on the national policies of a western democracy.

youtube_controversial_query_blacklist

At least one post in the discussion thread revealed the existence of a file called “youtube_controversial_query_blacklist,” which contains a list of YouTube search terms that Google manually curates. In addition to the terms “abortion,” “abortions,” “Maxine Waters,” and search terms related to the Irish abortion referendum, a Google software engineer noted that the blacklist includes search terms related to terrorist attacks. (the posts specifically mentions that the “Strasbourg terrorist attack” as being on the list).

“If you look at the other entries recently added to the youtube_controversial_query_blacklist(e.g., entries related to the Strasbourg terrorist attack), the addition of abortion seems…out-of-place,” wrote the software engineer, according to the source.

After learning of the existence of the blacklist, Breitbart News obtained a partial screenshot of the full blacklist file from a source within Google. It reveals that the blacklist includes search terms related to both mass shootings and the progressive anti-second amendment activist David Hogg.

This suggests Google has followed the lead of Democrat politicians, who have repeatedly pushed tech companies to censor content related to the Parkland school shooting and the Parkland anti-gun activists. It’s part of a popular new line of thought in the political-media establishment, which views the public as too stupid to question conspiracy theories for themselves.

Here is the partial blacklist leaked to Breitbart:

2117 plane crash Russian

2118 plane crash

2119 an-148

2120 florida shooting conspiracy

2121 florida shooting crisis actors

2122 florida conspiracy

2123 florida false flag shooting

2124 florida false flag

2125 fake florida school shooting

2126 david hogg hoax

2127 david hogg fake

2128 david hogg crisis actor

2129 david hogg forgets lines

2130 david hogg forgets his lines

2131 david hogg cant remember his lines

2132 david hogg actor

2133 david hogg cant remember

2134 david hogg conspiracy

2135 david hogg exposed

2136 david hogg lines

2137 david hogg rehearsing

2120 florida shooting conspiracy

The full internal filepath of the blacklist, according to another source, is:

//depot/google3/googledata/superroot/youtube/youtube_controversial_query_blacklist

Contradictions

Responding to a request for comment, a YouTube spokeswoman said the company wants to promote “authoritative” sources in its search results, but maintained that YouTube is a “platform for free speech” that “allow[s]” both pro-life and pro-abortion content.

YouTube’s full comment:

YouTube is a platform for free speech where anyone can choose to post videos, as long as they follow our Community Guidelines, which prohibit things like inciting violence and pornography. We apply these policies impartially and we allow both pro-life and pro-choice opinions. Over the last year we’ve described how we are working to better surface news sources across our site for news-related searches and topical information. We’ve improved our search and discovery algorithms, built new features that clearly label and prominently surface news sources on our homepage and search pages, and introduced information panels to help give users more authoritative sources where they can fact check information for themselves.

In the case of the “abortion” search results, YouTube’s intervention to insert “authoritative” content resulted in the downranking of pro-life videos and the elevation of pro-abortion ones.

A Google spokesperson took a tougher line than its YouTube subsidiary, stating that “Google has never manipulated or modified the search results or content in any of its products to promote a particular political ideology.”

However, in the leaked discussion thread, a member of Google’s “trust & safety” team, Daniel Aaronson, admitted that the company maintains “huge teams” that work to adjust search results for subjects that are “prone to hyperbolic content, misleading information, and offensive content” – all subjective terms that are frequently used to suppress right-leaning sources.

He also admitted that the interventions weren’t confined to YouTube – they included search results delivered via Google Assistant, Google Home, and in rare cases Google ’s organic search results.

In the thread, Aaronson attempted to explain how search blacklisting worked. He claimed that highly specific searches would generate non-blacklisted results, even controversial ones. But the inclusion of highly specific terms in the YouTube blacklist, like “David Hogg cant remember his lines” – the name of an actual viral video – seems to contradict this.

Aaronson’s full post is copied below:

I work in Trust and Safety and while I have no particular input as to exactly what’s happening for YT I can try to explain why you’d have this kind of list and why people are finding lists like these on Code Search.

When dealing with abuse/controversial content on various mediums you have several levers to deal with problems. Two prominent levers are “Proactive” and “Reactive”:

  • Proactive: Usually refers to some type of algorithm/scalable solution to a general problem
    • E.g.: We don’t allow straight up porn on YouTube so we create a classifier that detects porn and automatically remove or flag for review the videos the porn classifier is most certain of
  • Reactive: Usually refers to a manual fix to something that has been brought to our attention that our proactive solutions don’t/didn’t work on and something that is clearly in the realm of bad enough to warrant a quick targeted solution (determined by pages and pages of policies worked on over many years and many teams to be fair and cover necessary scope)
    • E,g.: A website that used to be a good blog had it’s domain expire and was purchased/repurposed to spam Search results with autogenerated pages full of gibberish text, scraped images, and links to boost traffic to other spammy sites. It is manually actioned for violating policy

These Organic Search policies and the consequences to violating them are public

Manually reacting to things is not very scalable, and is not an ideal solution to most problems, so the proactive lever is really the one we all like to lean on. Ideally, our classifiers/algorithm are good at providing useful and rich results to our users while ignoring things at are not useful or not relevant. But we all know, this isn’t exactly the case all the time (especially on YouTube).

From a user perspective, there are subjects that are prone to hyperbolic content, misleading information, and offensive content. Now, these words are highly subjective and no one denies that. But we can all agree generally, lines exist in many cultures about what is clearly okay vs. what is not okay. E.g. a video of a puppy playing with a toy is probably okay in almost every culture or context, even if it’s not relevant to the query. But a video of someone committing suicide and begging others to follow in his/her footsteps is probably on the other side of the line for many folks.

While my second example is technically relevant to the generic query of “suicide”, that doesn’t mean that this is a very useful or good video to promote on the top of results for that query. So imagine a classifier that says, for any queries on a particular text file, let’s pull videos using signals that we historically understand to be strong indicators of quality (I won’t go into specifics here, but those signals do exist). We’re not manually curating these results, we’re just saying “hey, be extra careful with results for this query because many times really bad stuff can appear and lead to a bad experience for most users”. Ideally the proactive lever did this for us, but in extreme cases where we need to act quickly on something that is so obviously not okay, the reactive/manual approach is sometimes necessary. And also keep in mind, that this is different for every product. The bar for changing classifiers or manual actions on span in organic search is extremely high. However, the bar for things we let our Google Assistant say out loud might be a lot lower. If I search for “Jews run the banks” – I’ll likely find anti-semitic stuff in organic search. As a Jew, I might find some of these results offensive, but they are there for people to research and view, and I understand that this is not a reflection of Google feels about this issue. But if I ask Google assistant “Why do Jews run the banks” we wouldn’t be similarly accepting if it repeated and promoted conspiracy theories that likely pop up in organic search in her smoothing voice.

Whether we agree or not, user perception of our responses, results, and answers of different products and mediums can change. And I think many people are used to the fact that organic search is a place where content should be accessible no matter how offensive it might be, however, the expectation is very different on a Google Home, a Knowledge Panel, or even YouTube.

These lines are very difficult and can be very blurry, we are all well aware of this. So we’ve got huge teams that stay cognizant of these facts when we’re crafting policies considering classifier changes, or reacting with manual actions – these decisions are not made in a vacuum, but admittedly are also not made in a highly public forum like TGIF or IndustryInfo (as you can imagine, decisions/agreement would be hard to get in such a wide list – image if all your CL’s were reviewed by every engineer across Google all the time). I hope that answers some questions and gives a better layer of transparency without going into details about our “Pepsi formula”.

Best,

Daniel

The fact that Google manually curates politically contentious search results fits in with a wider pattern of political activity on the part of the tech giant.

In 2018, Breitbart News exclusively published a leaked video from the company that showed senior management in dismay at Trump’s election victory, and pledging to use the company’s power to make his populist movement a “hiccup” in history.

Breitbart also leaked “The Good Censor,” an internal research document from Google that admits the tech giant is engaged in the censorship of its own products, partly in response to political events.

Another leak revealed that employees within the company, including Google’s current director of Trust and Safety, tried to kick Breitbart News off Google’s market-dominating online ad platforms.

Yet another showed Google engaged in targeted turnout operations aimed to boost voter participation in pro-Democrat demographics in “key states” ahead of the 2016 election. The effort was dubbed a “silent donation” by a top Google employee.

Evidence for Google’s partisan activities is now overwhelming. President Trump has previously warned Google, as well as other Silicon Valley giants

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New cases of child rape revealed in Finland – President says asylum seekers brought evil with them

By Emma R. – 16 January 2019

A number of cases of rape and abuse of children, with foreign perpetrators, have been revealed in Oulu in the northern parts of Finland since last autumn, Fria Tider reports.

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The police are investigating another four cases with girls under the age of 15, where three perpetrators of foreign background have been arrested suspected of rape and serious sexual abuse of children.
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In all cases, the suspects have background as refugees or asylum seekers.
And now the police in Helsinki have arrested several migrants suspected of serious rape and serious sexual abuse of children. The crimes have been committed in the last two months.
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No direct link with the cases in Oulu is currently known.
Finland’s Prime Minister Juha Sipilä wrote on Twitter: “As a result of the inhuman and reprehensible events in Oulu and Helsinki, the Government will meet next week in negotiations both on Tuesday and Friday.”
Helsinki police point out the importance of parents informing their children to be cautious on social media, where the foreign rapists find their victims.
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“This is Islam”: BBC interviews Muslim cleric who claims he has the right to marry a 9-year-old girl

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At least 25% of all girls in Niger are married by the age of 15 – and 76% by the age of 18. It is the highest rate of child marriage in the world.

Under Islamic Law (Sharia) girls can marry at any age, as long as they are “mature enough”.
In Muslim countries like Yemen, Iran, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan and Sudan girls are considered “adults” and being sold into forced marriages with grown men by their families. There are even some cases of child marriages in Western countries since immigrants brought this tradition into the West.
Look at this BBC interview. It is from 2014, but nothing has changed since then.
The term “Islamophobia” was created by the Muslim Brotherhood to silence any possible debate about the problems Islamism has got with modernity.
The left uses it to portray anyone who criticises Islam as a “racist”. They ignore the fact that Islam is an ideology that has nothing to do with race.
There even is an attempt in the West to impose a sharia-blasphemy law to criminalise criticism of Islam. It started when Saudi Arabia and Muslim countries tried to pass a UN resolution to force Western states to criminalise criticism of Islam.
The Parliament in Canada passed “Motion M-103” to condemn the so-called “Islamophobia” (fear of Islam) in a preparation for a blasphemy law in Canada.
According to the sharia blasphemy law anyone who criticises Islam or the Prophet Muhammad should be killed. In Saudi Arabia and Iran Muslims are executed if they are accused of blasphemy. In Pakistan, where the situation is even worse, radical Muslims use the blasphemy law to persecute the Christian minority.
Is this the law the left wants to adopt?
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‘Land of censorship & home of the fake’ Facebook is getting into the local news business

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Facebook is investing $300 million in local newsrooms and training initiatives for regional journalists over the next three years. But can Mark Zuckerberg be trusted to keep the press free?

With print newspapers’ advertising revenues in freefall for almost two decades, and local newspapers conglomerating and laying off staff to survive, the industry will take any help it can get. Facebook – with its mountains of fake news, clickbait, and a tricky environment for digital publishers to make money in – has in no small way contributed to the precarious state of modern journalism, but the company now wants to give the fourth estate a booster shot.

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Russian security chief calls BBC ‘fake news factory that Britons themselves take with a smile’Russian security chief calls BBC ‘fake news factory that Britons themselves take with a smile’

The company decided to focus specifically on local news. Vice President of Global News Partnerships Campbell Brown said in a blog post that after examining what kind of news people want to see on Facebook, the company “heard one consistent answer: people want more local news, and local newsrooms are looking for more support.”

Facebook’s support for the new industry has thus far been limited to funding a small selection of news programs from CNN, Fox News, and a handful of others. The social media giant has been far more keen to play policeman, partnering up with an array of third-party “fact checkers”last year to filter out “false narratives” and “intentionally divisive headlines and language that exploit disagreements and sow conflict”from users’ timelines.

Troublingly, even Facebook’s own staff could not explain what exactly the term “false narratives” meant. Additionally, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with a consortium of media executives shortly afterwards to talk about his company’s use of algorithms to promote ‘reputable news’ and suppress other content, all to ensure that “people can get trustworthy news on our platform.”

Drawn from CNN, the New York Times, Buzzfeed and others, the overwhelmingly liberal makeup of the panel of executives did little to persuade conservatives – who have long accused the platform of bias – that Facebook would act impartially.

Neither did Facebook’s announcement in August that it would partner up with the aggressively pro-NATO think tank, the Atlantic Council. The Atlantic Council vowed to serve as Facebook’s “eyes and ears” in the fight against fake news, but that fight resulted in hundreds of alternative news pages being purged from the platform in October. The 800 pages spanned the political spectrum, and their removal triggered cries of censorship and accusations that Facebook was waging “a wider war on dissident narratives.”

One banned cartoonist declared Facebook to be “land of the censorship and home of the fake,” while anti-war journalist Caitlin Johnstone called the purge the “latest escalation of corporate censorship used as state censorship in the West.”

Can Facebook then be trusted to fund local journalism?

The answer is unclear. The $300 million will be given to a number of organizations to distribute further. Some of these organizations, like the Pulitzer Center, are household names. Others, like Report for America, are less well known. The Pulitzer Center will receive $5 million to award as grants to local newsrooms around the country, and social justice non-profit Report for America will get $2 million to go towards the hiring of 1,000 journalists over the next five years.

Pulitzer Center founder and executive director Jon Sawyer welcomed the funding, and took time to “applaud Facebook’s commitment to the editorial independence that is absolutely essential to our success.”

No matter how hands-off Facebook stays, some commentators were angered by the company’s new-found role as champion of the local press. After contributing in a large way to the decline of print media, Facebook’s $300 million investment in the industry is, as one cartoon implied, “peanuts.”

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FRENCH POLICE DEPLOY RIFLES WITH LIVE AMMUNITION TO YELLOW VEST PROTESTS

French Police Deploy Rifles with Live Ammunition to Yellow Vest Protests

French officers were caught on video brandishing what appeared to be Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifles

by Chris Tomlinson

French riot police (CRS) are alleged to have begun deploying assault rifles with live ammunition for the first time during the ninth weekend of protest in a row by the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow Vest) movement.

French officers were caught on video brandishing what appeared to be Heckler & Koch G36 assault rifles on the streets of the French capital near the Arc de Triomphe on Saturday, the Daily Mail reports.

Several users on Twitter posted other pictures of officers armed with rifles, with one user claiming he had counted at least a dozen armed officers at around 3 p.m. near the famous monument.

Only a week prior to the “Act IX” protest, former French Minister of Education Luc Ferry had seemingly endorsed the use of live ammunition on Yellow Vest protestors in an interview with French media.

A police officer points a non-lethal hand-held weapon at protesters in front of the Cathedral of Bordeaux, southwestern France, during an anti-government demonstration called by the 'Yellow Vest' (Gilets Jaunes) movement on January 12, 2019. - Thousands of anti-government demonstrators marched in cities across France on January 12 in a …

“When you see guys beating up an unfortunate policeman on the ground, let them use their weapons once and for all, that’s enough, these kinds of thugs, these bastards of far right and extreme left or the suburbs that come to beat police officers, we have the fourth-largest army in the world, it is capable of putting an end to this crap,” he said.

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Ferry later clarified his statement, saying: “I have obviously never called to shoot the Yellow Vests of which I defended the movement from the beginning. I am simply asking that the police be able to use their NON-lethal weapons… when some people are trying to kill them.”

Yellow Vest activist Gilles Caron commented on the display of the weapons by the officers, saying: “[T]he CRS with the guns were wearing riot control helmets and body armour – they were not a specialised firearms unit.”

He added: “Their job was simply to threaten us with lethal weapons in a manner which is very troubling. We deserve some explanations.”

The Act IX protest saw a return in momentum for the Yellow Vests and once again saw incidents of violence, including several activists attacking a group of journalists in the northern city of Rouen.

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