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New (fake?) Facebook 'whistleblower' emerges with explosive claims on hate speech

Theo Wayt
New York Post
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 18:12 UTC
facebook Joel Kaplan Zuckerberg

Facebook public policy chief Joel Kaplan (L) and CEO Mark Zuckerberg (R)
A new whistleblower is speaking out against Facebook executives and how they allegedly undermined attempts to guard against misinformation and hate speech

There's more trouble in Zuck-town.

A new Facebook whistleblower has reportedly emerged, dishing to US regulators that an official at the social network in 2017 blew off concerns about hate speech as a "flash in the pan," adding that while "some legislators will get pissy" Facebook is "printing money in the basement."

The new whistleblower told the Securities and Exchange Commission under penalty of perjury that the company has constantly shrugged off concerns about hate speech and misinformation in pursuit of growth, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

Comment: It will be interesting to see if this new figure gets the same celebrity treatment accorded to Haugen, or will be hounded into obscurity like those who turn to Project Veritas.
Haugen came seemingly out of nowhere to testify before the Senate on Tuesday, yet she revealed nothing besides well-rehearsed bromides about the Menlo Park behemoth putting "profits over people" and somehow endangering Our Democracy by refusing to police misinformation, or something. Stunning and brave!

She also landed a 60 Minutes interview over the weekend, got instantly verified on Twitter, and received praise from the extremely online Democrats (aka the 'Resistance' during the Trump era) for her stunning bravery. Her advice to the Senate wasn't to break up Facebook, either, but to turn it into an arm of the government - for the "common good," of course, and to protect the children.
The charge that Facebook was concerned with keeping Trump happy is very strange, except for the fact that the ongoing attention was filling Facebook's coffers. He was still booted off the platform in the end.

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Bad Guys

Outrage forces National School Boards Association to pen apology for comparing parents to 'domestic terrorists'

Colton Salaz
Just the News
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 17:57 UTC
School board meeting pennsylvaia
The initial letter from the NSBA called on the White House to "deal with the growing number of threats of violence and acts of intimidation occurring across the nation."

The National School Boards Association apologized Friday for a letter it previously sent to the Biden administration in which it likened the actions of parents at school board meetings to acts of "domestic terrorism."

In a memo to its members, the NSBA addressed the recent media attention it has received, as well as the distancing of over 20 state school boards associations.

"On behalf of NSBA, we regret and apologize for the letter," the association wrote in the memo. "There was no justification for some of the language included in the letter. We should have had a better process in place to allow for consultation on a communication of this significance. We apologize also for the strain and stress this situation has caused you and your organizations.

Comment:

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Pistol

Baldwin shooting incident: Court documents reveal Assistant Director - who worked on The Crow sequel - unknowingly handed actor loaded gun

Aya Elamroussi, Chloe Melas and Claudia Dominguez
CNN
Sat, 23 Oct 2021 11:45 UTC

Comment: That is one freaky-deaky coincidence...


baldwin shooting
An assistant director handed Alec Baldwin a prop firearm and yelled "cold gun" before the actor fired and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza, according to court documents.

The "cold gun" remark was meant to indicate that the weapon did not have live rounds, according to an affidavit for a search warrant for the movie set filed by the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office and obtained by CNN affiliate KOAT.

According to the affidavit, Baldwin was handed one of three prop guns by assistant director David Halls that were set up in a cart by an armorer.

Halls did not know there were live rounds in the gun, the affidavit said.

But when the actor fired the gun, a live round hit Hutchins, 42, in the chest and wounded Souza, 48, who was nearby, according to the affidavit. Hutchins was pronounced dead at the hospital after being airlifted, the affidavit says.

Comment: The court documents also name the armourer:
According to court documents, the gun was one of three that the film's armourer, Hannah Gutierrez, had set on a cart outside the wooden structure where a scene from western Rust was being acted out.

Assistant director Dave Halls grabbed the gun from the cart and brought it inside to Alec Baldwin while unaware that it was loaded with live rounds, a detective wrote in the search warrant application.

Halls handed Baldwin the loaded weapon and told him it was safe to use.

"Cold gun", the assistant director announced, before giving the gun to Baldwin, according to a search warrant filed in a Santa Fe, Arizona court.

But the gun was loaded with live rounds and when Baldwin pulled the trigger...
Who is Hannah Gutierrez?
The gun Halls picked up was reportedly one of three laid on a cart by the film's armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed.

It's not clear at this time how many rounds were fired.

Gutierrez-Reed, 24, is the daughter of longtime film industry armorer, Thell Reed. She said in a recent podcast interview that she had trained from a young age.

She also said that she had recently completed her first job as a head armorer on a film called The Old Way, starring Nicolas Cage.


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Fire

Devastating explosion at gunpowder production facility near Russian city of Ryazan leaves 16 people dead & one badly injured


RT
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 07:01 UTC
gunpowder explosion

Firefighters work at the site after an explosion at a gunpowder factory in Ryazan region of Russia on October 22, 2021
An explosion and fire at the gunpowder production department of a synthetic fibers plant near the Russian city of Ryazan, about 270 kilometers south of Moscow, has killed sixteen people and injured one other, it has been reported.

"17 people were injured, seven of them died, one was hospitalized, the fate of nine people remains unknown," the press service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations confirmed to RIA Novosti, on Friday morning. However, in the time since, the nine missing persons have all reportedly died.

The fire broke out early Friday morning due to what was described by the ministry as "the result of a technological process." According to Vladimir Lukantsov, the head of Shilovsky District, the region where the factory is located, a total of 17 people were in the facility at the time of the explosion.

Comment: It would appear that, in this instance, the likely cause behind the incident is poor safety practices, however it's worth noting that explosions and fires appear to be occurring with an increasing frequency:

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Car Black

Parts shortages hit auto repair shops, taking weeks to fix vehicles

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 20:40 UTC
auto repair shop
A global semiconductor shortage has reduced new car production and boosted used car demand. The average used car age on U.S. highways hit 12.1 this year, a record high, and has unleashed a repair boom. But with snarled supply chains, auto repair shops have had difficulty sourcing parts and told customers their cars could take weeks to fix, according to Bloomberg.

Paul McCarthy, chief executive of the Automotive Aftermarket Suppliers Association, said that auto parts and repair industry is getting slammed like everyone else - delays stretching from weeks due to port congestion have produced hefty backlogs.

"This is the most difficult supply-chain environment that I have ever seen," AutoZone Inc. CEO William Rhodes said in a September earnings call. AutoZone is operating at "the lowest level of in-stock that I can ever remember," he said.

For repair shops, breaking the news to customers that their broken cars might not be fixed for weeks because of a part of backorder has been difficult.

Comment: See also:

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Cardboard Box

US retailers lining store shelves with props to hide supply shortages caused by lockdowns

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Fri, 22 Oct 2021 13:55 UTC
empty shelves props

Empty shelves stocked with one row of macaroni and cheese
Americans are waking up to the fact that shortages of everyday products such as ice cream, frozen food, soda, chicken, spices, coffee, fish sticks, snacks, and toilet paper are popping up all over the country as supply chains remain heavily congested 19 months after the virus pandemic first began. Instead of leaving some store shelves bare, which might insight fear and buying panic among consumers, some stores are lining their empty shelves with meaningless items to appear as full as possible.

A little more than a week ago, hashtag #EmptyShelvesJoe was one of the hottest trends across Twitter but was quickly squashed by Twitter police. People from all over the country went to their local supermarkets and big-box outlets to point out how supply chain snarls have left some store shelves bare.

Comment: The establishment initially tried to blame these shortages on a lack of workers until it became undeniable that, unsurprisingly, this was actually the result of the 19+ months of government enforced, global lockdowns that disrupted critical supply chains and also resulted in employees either being furloughed or laid off: Also check out SOTT radio's: NewsReal: Is The Government Hyping Shortages? And is 'Vaccination Shedding' Really a Thing?



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Microscope 1

China-linked campaign pushes unfounded claim tying Maine lobster to COVID: report

Rebecca Beitsch
The Hill
Thu, 21 Oct 2021 11:05 UTC
lobster
© Red Lobster
Researchers have spotted an unusual Chinese campaign to suggest that Maine lobsters may have been the source of COVID-19.

An investigation conducted by University of Oxford in conjunction with NBC News found the idea was floated by a Chinese diplomat, who tweeted an unfounded claim that lobster shipped from Maine to a market in Wuhan, China, could be the source of the outbreak.

Disinformation researcher Marcel Schliebs then found some 550 other Twitter accounts that amplified the theory, sharing the baseless claim in English, Spanish, French, Polish and Korean, with the accounts all posting at similar times.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

NIH changes story, confirms it funded Wuhan experiment that made bat coronavirus more dangerous

Greg Piper
Just the News
Thu, 21 Oct 2021 16:22 UTC
National Institutes of Health
Two weeks after National Institutes of Health director Francis Collins announced his retirement, his agency has complicated congressional testimony by Collins and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Anthony Fauci about alleged gain-of-function virus research sponsored by the U.S.

Both officials have denied approving grants for such research through the EcoHealth Alliance and Wuhan Institute of Virology, but a letter Wednesday from NIH Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak to House Oversight Committee ranking Republican James Comer describes an unforeseen experimental result that calls the denials into question.

The letter shows that "NIH — and specifically, Collins, Fauci, and Tabak — lied to Congress, lied to the press, and lied to the public," Richard Ebright, lab director at Rutgers University's Waskman Institute of Microbiology, tweeted Wednesday night when sharing the letter. "Knowingly. Willfully. Brazenly."

Comment: See also:

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Stop

Anti-Asian hate crimes 'up 76 per cent' in Los Angeles County


South China Morning Post
Thu, 21 Oct 2021 12:45 UTC
anti-asian hate rally
© TNS
A rally against anti-Asian violence in Los Angeles in February.
Anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 76 per cent in Los Angeles County last year, mirroring a disturbing trend in many other jurisdictions as physical and verbal attacks on Asian-Americans rose during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Of the 44 anti-Asian hate crimes reported in LA County in 2020, more than three-quarters involved physical violence - a marked increase from 58 per cent in 2018, the LA County Commission on Human Relations said in a report released Wednesday.

In 2019, 25 anti-Asian hate crimes were reported.

Comment: See also:

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NPC

Teachers at Colorado Springs school force children to tape masks to their face

Paul Joseph Watson
Summit News
Tue, 19 Oct 2021 00:01 UTC
teacher tapes mask to kids
© Michelle Malkin/Will & Deni McIntyre via Getty Images
Teachers at a Colorado Springs middle school forced children to tape masks to their face in what is being described as an act of "child abuse."

Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin highlighted the case of 6th grader Rylee M., who texted her mother to tell her that a teacher had given her a warning then handed her blue painter's tape to seal the mask to her face.

According to Rylee, at least one other student was forced to perform the same humiliating and potentially dangerous procedure because the teacher insisted their masks were not being worn "properly."

Comment: Apparently we didn't learn anything from this previous incident: Teacher accused of taping masks to 4th graders' faces

See also:

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