Helen Buyniski
RTFri, 06 Mar 2020 02:28 UTC
© Reuters/Stephen Lam
Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg
Facebook's efforts to crack down on "fake news" have actually made the problem worse, as a recent study found. Who knew that asking users to outsource their critical capabilities to the platform would make them more credulous?!
When Facebook sent its army of fact-checkers to do battle with the disinformation scourge, ordering them to tag all "fake news" with a label to warn future readers, they must have known that even the fiercest truth-warriors couldn't possibly get to every single false story. Facebook claims to have 1.25 billion daily users, and mere human moderators are hopelessly outmatched against the sheer volume of (dis)information transmitted on the platform.
Add to the mix that
Facebook, working hand in hand with ideological actors like the Atlantic Council, are not just tagging obviously false stories, but also stories that counter the narrative certain political interests want to pass off as fact, and the task becomes even more Sisyphean.
Fact-checkers have to weigh a given story against both reality and Approved Reality™ before determining whether to slap the label on, and even the supposedly-reliable "fact-checkers" used by Facebook have their own biases that must be factored in.
RTFri, 06 Mar 2020 07:52 UTC
© Tolo News
High Peace Council Chairman, Mohammad Karim Khalili
The High Peace Council Chairman, Mohammad Karim Khalili, was forced to flee as the incident erupted while he made a speech.
Tensions have risen in the country in recent weeks, as Abdullah Abdullah, Chief Executive of the Unity Government, has challenged the results of the September 2019 presidential election which elected the incumbent Ashraf Ghani. Abdullah also declared victory. His spokesman said that
Abdullah was present at Friday's ceremony, but escaped unharmed.
Eyewitness footage from the scene shows former Vice President Khalili interrupted during a commemoration ceremony for the killing of Abdul Ali Mazani, a leader of the predominantly Shia Hazara ethnic group in 1995.
Comment: If it wasn't the Taliban, who else wants to disrupt the peace process and scuttle progress towards a sovereign Afghanistan free of interference and occupation?
© Radio Farda
Farhad Dabirian, a senior officer of Iran's Revolutionary Guard
A senior member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Farhad Dabirian, has been killed in Syria, the Iranian news agency Fars said on Saturday.
The media outlet did not provide further details on the death of Dabirian, previously an IRGC commander in the central Syrian city of Palmyra, but
described him as a "defender of the Sayida Zainab shrine", a Shiite holy site near Damascus.
Iranian troops deployed abroad are usually designated as the defenders of a particular shrine. In Syria, according to Tehran's official position,
there are only Iranian advisers who provide counselling support to Syrian forces in the fight against terrorism.
RFE/RLSat, 07 Mar 2020 16:06 UTC
© REUTERS / WANA NEWS AGENCY
Iran's death toll from the coronavirus hit 145 on March 7 after another 21 people were confirmed to have died during the previous day, including a conservative lawmaker.
In a televised briefing, a Health Ministry official said
the tally of confirmed infections in Iran had increased by more than 1,000 during the last 24 hours, bringing the total to 5,823 by March 7.
Fatemeh Rahbar, a newly elected lawmaker from Tehran, was among those who died on March 6, Iranian media earlier reported.
Iran is one of the countries outside China most affected by the epidemic.
The coronavirus has claimed the lives of several other Iranian officials, including an adviser to Iran's supreme leader and a former envoy to the Vatican.
A number of other officials have tested positive for the virus, including Vice President Masumeh Ebtekar, Deputy Health Minister Iraj Harirchi,
and more than 20 parliament deputies.
Iran has closed schools and universities, suspended major cultural and sporting events, and reduced working hours across the country to slow the contagion,
which has spread to all of its 31 provinces.
Comment: In the U.S. 46 passengers were
tested on a cruise ship off the Californian coast, 21 of whom tested positive (there are over 3500 people on board). Apparently there is a shortage of tests, which will delay whatever decision is made about quarantine. Fifteen American tourists in the West Bank are
under quarantine in a hotel in Bethlehem as a precaution after cases popped up in Palestine. Two attendees to the
AIPAC conference have been tested positive, raising the possibility that U.S. lawmakers may have been exposed (quite fitting, given the virus-like nature of AIPAC) - 18,000 people attended.
In Italy, Nicola Zingaretti, leader of the co-ruling Democratic Party, has
tested positive:
Italy reported the sharpest rise in the national coronavirus death toll. The authorities confirmed that 49 people died in just 24 hours bringing the total number of the deadly disease victims in Italy to 197.
A U.S. Navy soldier stationed in Italy is the
first case among American servicemen. France confirmed
100 new cases (bringing the total to 716). European tourism is
losing a billion euros a month.
Facebook
shut down their London offices after a visiting Singapore employee tested positive. Austin
cancelled the SXSW festival this year. The mayor of Agra
called on the Indian government to shut down all historical monuments, including the Taj Mahal. Modi took a page out of Netanyahu's book to
recommend people use "Namaste" instead of handshakes. Over 1200 IDF
soldiers have been quarantined.
See also:
Emma Specter
VogueThu, 05 Mar 2020 00:01 UTC
© Getty Images
It's been a turbulent election season for female candidates, from
Kamala Harris's relatively early exit from the 2020 presidential race to Amy Klobuchar's more recent
withdrawal and ensuing endorsement of Joe Biden.
As more and more female candidates
exited the field, many voters who hoped to see a woman in the White House rallied around Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, only to see her
suspend her campaign this Thursday. That leaves just one woman in the race — Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard — and a whole lot of questions about how she's made it this far.
Gabbard's campaign has always been something of a slow burn, with many voters seemingly unaware that she's actually still in the race; after all, she hasn't been present at recent Democratic debates, and she walked away from Super Tuesday with only
two delegates. So what is it that keeps Gabbard's campaign going, when far better-funded candidates like Tom Steyer and
Michael Bloomberg have dropped out?
Comment: It's a puff piece, but good on Vogue for actually acknowledging Tulsi is still in the race when the rest of the MSM has pretended she doesn't exist.
See also:
RTSat, 07 Mar 2020 13:30 UTC
© Twitter/@jo6uu
A hotel has collapsed in the southeastern Chinese city of Quanzhou, burying dozens of people under the rubble. The building was reportedly used as a quarantine site for the deadly Covid-19 coronavirus.
Footage from the scene showed the building reduced to rubble and emergency services searching the debris.
So far, at least 23 people have reportedly been rescued.
The hotel building abruptly crumpled on Saturday evening. According to local media, at least 70 people have been trapped under the hotel's remains. No information on potential casualties was immediately available.
Bo Winegard
QuilletteFri, 06 Mar 2020 00:01 UTC
Orthodoxy whether of the right or of the left is the graveyard of creativity.
~Chinua Achebe
Until a week ago, I was a tenure-track assistant professor at a small college. Then I was fired. And although I am but one professor at one small college in one small town, I want to persuade you that, if you care about free speech and free inquiry in academia, you should be alarmed by my termination. My troubles began in October 2019 when I was invited to address an evolutionary group at the University of Alabama. I had decided that I would discuss human population variation, the hypothesis that human biological differences are at least partially produced by different environments selecting for different physical and psychological traits in their populations over time. I planned to defend this view as most consistent with a Darwinian understanding of the world.
My first day in Tuscaloosa was uneventful. On the second day, I visited a class and had an enjoyable discussion with students about various topics, including human evolution and social signaling. I was then supposed to meet professors and students for lunch, but instead my guide delivered me to an empty room where I received a number of texts from my host: The professors had found my RationalWiki entry, which accuses me —
inter alia — of writing "racist bullshit for the right-wing online magazine Quillette."
© Reuters/Elizabeth Frantz
Joe Biden
FOX News host Tucker Carlson said Joe Biden's success is good news for the Democratic establishment and the candidate will be pliable for the "stronger forces around him" to mold him into whatever type of leader they tell him to be.
"
Joe Biden is fading and uncertain," Carlson said Wednesday. "Weak leaders are vessels for the stronger forces around him. And no force in Amercian politics is stronger — more aggressive or better organized — than the narrow little interest groups that comprise the Democratic coalition. There's a reason Governor Ralph Northam of Virginia swung far so far from the center after he was caught wearing a Klan costume. Northam was badly wounded, on the brink of resigning. Democratic interest groups swooped in and took control of his administration. Now, it looks nothing like it once did."
"Every power center in America is arrayed against Donald Trump — and we'd add to that list, the government of communist China, which would badly like to return to the compliant American leadership of yesterday," Carlson said on his primetime show. "All of these groups will be working tirelessly for Joe Biden. They'll use whatever tools they possess, some of them public, many not. Above all, they'll have the media, which needless to say is already playing its prescribed role."
© Keystone / Andrea Fasani
A man in Casalpusterlengo, one the northern Italian towns placed under lockdown, and not far from the Swiss border
Quarantined Italian towns are buckling under the strain, major cities are emptying out and some of those infected say they are being stigmatised as Europe's worst outbreak of coronavirus takes hold.
As of Thursday night, 3,916 cases had been detected as Italy aggressively tests for the virus. Out of that number, 197 people have died.
Eleven towns are under lockdown - 10 in Lombardy and one in Veneto - and schools have been closed across the country as the government tries to contain
a virus about which there are still many unknowns.
Stories that have emerged since the outbreak began reflect the contrasting nature of the virus's impact, from the reassuring accounts of people cured to the suffering of those who have died or are in a critical condition. The heavily pregnant wife of "patient one", the 38-year-old man who was Italy's first confirmed locally transmitted case, was dismissed from hospital on Thursday; her husband, a marathon runner and amateur footballer, remains in intensive care.
Comment: What a barmy spectacle this has all been. We blame the media, but only partially. It's just doing what it always does, selling newspapers - attracting clicks, these days. Besides the impetus from governments, international bodies and Big Pharma, public figures of every hue - including those usually critical of mass media - have been harping on since the very beginning in early January about how what is essentially just another round of flu is in fact 'The Plague'.
Then, when governments gradually, tentatively roll out quarantine and testing measures, they rant about 'muh freedoms' and 'kommie-ism'. Hang on a minute! YOU actively co-created this mess. YOU helped bring this hysteria and government control down on everybody's heads. YOU are participants in this, not observers or - with a few exceptions - critics.
The thing is; the hysteria-mongers are - unwittingly - correct. 'We' are all pro-actively dooming each other because the species mass unconscious knows, at some level, that 'we' are all doomed. Self-isolation is, in some respects, the way to go from here on out. The masses, especially in larger urban areas - after two decades of spooking them with false-flag terrorism, combined with the increasingly extreme planetary and cosmic weather - are a freaky, freaked-out herd, and you do not want to be around that when a pandemic takes off for real.
If you're wondering what makes us so 'chill' about all this, it's because we've seen this coming for many years. The population is gradually being weakened by crap diet, EM smog, propaganda, and terrible health advice (not least dangerous, untested vaccines). Because of this, we will not be surprised when what might otherwise be just another innocuous 'seasonal flu' comes around and wipes out much of the population. This Coronavirus aint it, but you can be sure that the vaccines they push as a result of it will do their part to contribute to, down the road, an actual pandemic.
In the meantime, we've been strengthening our resistance to viruses - of both the biological and psychological kinds - by optimizing our diet, expanding our knowledge base, and applying EM counter-measures. Together with 'communing with like minds' and networking about issues and events, thereby disentangling from the frequency fence that corrals the wider body politic, this all serves to build faith and resilience against whatever's coming down the pipeline...
Chris Tomlinson
BreitbartTue, 03 Mar 2020 02:14 UTC
© SVT Play/Screenshot from the video
Loubna Stensaker Goransson and Naouel Aissaoui are debating on a headscarf ban in schools
A teacher in Sweden has expressed strongly-worded opposition to a mooted ban on religious headscarves in schools, saying that those opposed to the garment have no place in the country at all.
Naouel Aissaoui, who is employed as a teacher in the municipality and follows the Muslim faith, said she will defy any ban on the Islamic headscarf, also known as the hijab, which she wears.
Aissaoui engaged in a conversation with centre-right Moderate Party member Loubna Stensåker Göransson, who is supportive of a ban on the hijab in local schools, and said she associates the veil with the oppression of women and religious indoctrination.
Comment: RT provides more detail on the
debate:
The heated exchange between Naouel Aissaoui, a school teacher in the Swedish municipality of Skurup, and local politician Loubna Stensaker Goransson was over a ban on veils in public schools, which Goransson and other council officials enacted in December. The decision angered many educators, and Aissaoui is among those leading the pushback.
[...]
She sees the controversial piece of clothing as a tool of oppression and sexualization of little girls, and not as a symbol of purity and goodness, as Aissaoui does.
The televised clash over the Skurup controversy was a microcosm of a larger debate over immigration in Sweden. The rapid influx of migrants put a strain on the country's welfare system and a surge in crime as ethnic gangs wedged their way into the shadow economy. There is also a strong sentiment among many Swedes that the newcomers have no intention of integrating culturally and would rather isolate themselves in their own communities than adopt the customs of their hosts.
But talking about the negative side of welcoming droves of asylum seekers is a challenge, since Sweden has long hailed its open-door policy towards refugees as a matter of national pride, which opened a window of opportunity for politicians, who previously remained on the margins.
The Skurup headscarf ban was pushed by the right-wing anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD) party, which used to be a political pariah, but saw a rapid surge in popularity over the past several years. The SD has a majority in the municipality council and has found allies in people like Goransson, who is a member of the Moderates, to enact the headscarf ban.
Others became vocal opponents of the ban. Mattias Liedholm, the headmaster of Skurup's largest school, declared the ban illegal and said he would not enforce it. His uncompromising position however was not shared by as many fellow Moderates as he probably hoped, so last week he announced he was leaving the party.
The SD's suggestion to people not happy with the policy is remarkably similar to that of Aissaoui.
"If you find it so important to wear a headscarf, you go to Saudi Arabia or Iran. The police are happy to lend a hand if you forget that headscarf," said Lars Nystrom, a Skurup council member for the SDs.
See also:
Comment: If it wasn't the Taliban, who else wants to disrupt the peace process and scuttle progress towards a sovereign Afghanistan free of interference and occupation?