I must be going deaf.
"With ambiguity and euphemism, extremists are showing their skill in bending words" by Astead W. Herndon Globe Staff August 14, 2017
WASHINGTON — Ambiguity. Euphemisms. Dog whistles.
The coded language of the white supremacist playbook has been displayed in abundance since the Charlottesville, Va., rally exploded in violence Saturday, sowing confusion for the public and masking the sentiment behind some of the responses.
Well, the AmeriKan pre$$ is the all time champ in those regards.
Trump’s initial, vague statement — and even some elements of his more specific denunciation Monday, two days after the protests horrified the nation — heartened extremist groups, who are adept at weaponizing ambiguous language and who cited Trump’s language as vindication.
I'm going to ignore the endless wars started with the help of front page lies and simply note that he doesn't even get President in front of his name anymore.
In fact, this is no longer about him. It's about the media trying to make it -- and everything else -- about him when it is really all about them.
A prime example of the groups’ rhetorical tactics: a “Free Speech Rally” that may take place Saturday on Boston Common with scheduled speakers who have espoused white supremacist views.
Related: ‘Boston does not want you here,’ Walsh says of hate groups
Because he's still waiting for his thugs to be set free, and that's nothing new and as they cite a
"Joe Biggs, a former Army staff sergeant who lives in Austin, Texas, [and] worked until recently for Infowars, a website founded by Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist. Biggs was among those promoting the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely claimed a pedophile ring with links to Hillary Clinton was operating out of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria."
Jones has become a joke in terms of being a limited hangout type stirring up trouble and inciting violence, and using him to debunk the debauchery that occurs amongst the elite cla$$ is perfect cover for discrediting it while sowing confusion. Imho.
Oh, yeah, good luck finding a room.
The feel-good title of the rally is intended to divert attention from its purpose of sowing racial discord, said Ian Haney Lopez, a racial justice professor at University of California Berkeley’s law school who has written a book on racial “dog whistles.”
That is the turn-in.
“When you use a phrase like ‘free speech’ to mobilize those who are racially fearful, it switches the conversation. It pretends that the conversation is about the right to express unpopular views — which is a quintessential American value that is enshrined in our Constitution — when in fact, the dynamic is about the expression of ugly views of racial prejudice,’’ Lopez said.
For some reason Israel just came to mind.
Trump has previously been criticized for repeatedly talking about violence in “inner cities” and his multiple warnings about “thugs,” coded words often used to invoke stereotypical images of black men.
I'm using to describe the Teamster muscle Walsh sent over to Top Chef. They white.
On Saturday, when he first addressed Americans in response to the Charlottesville rallies, he told the country to “cherish our history,” which some took as code that he was weighing in on the side of preserving Confederate memorials.
It has to be the black-and-white, politically-correct version of history, no matter how absurd.
“That was a very interesting comment,” white nationalist Richard Spencer, a founder of the “alt-right’’ movement told the Times of Israel. “I think there is reason to believe he wants an America where we can look back upon the Civil War as a deeply tragic event, but we can honor great men, like Robert E. Lee.”
I wasn't going to mention Jewi$h $upremacy, but.... C-Span and the History channel have been running programs all week long about the Civil War, the strategies, and the valor and honor on both sides. Yeah, Lee was a great general but he also made mistakes. It's the political whitewash of history that disturbs me.
Spencer told reporters Monday, after the president’s recent round of remarks, that he did not believe Trump had repudiated white nationalists or the “alt-right’’ movement, which combines elements of nationalism, racism, and populism.
“I don’t think he condemned it, no,” Spencer said. “Did he say white nationalist? ‘Racist’ means an irrational hatred of people. I don’t think he meant any of us.”
Hate groups have long worked to mask their views behind traditionally accepted language, in an attempt to make them more palatable to the public. Instead of denouncing America’s increasing ethnic diversity, they created the phrase “reverse-racism.” The term “alt-right” was born to rebrand white supremacist ideology as Internet friendly and cutting-edge.
The use of dog whistles — a cloaked political message that can only be understood by a particular group, much as dogs can hear whistles of certain frequencies that humans cannot — has become more common.
Blow your lungs out.
American politicians have a bipartisan history of deploying coded words to dance around the topic of race. Lee Atwater, the Republican political consultant and former confidant to Ronald Reagan, had his infamous “Southern Strategy,” which he explicitly said was created to disenfranchise black Americans without being called racist.
Reagan, during his presidential campaign of 1976, pushed a narrative that some black women were lazy and manipulating government aid. Hillary Clinton blasted youths in gangs as “super-predators.”
Where Trump stands out, however, is the specific way he emboldens white nationalists, said specialists who study racism in America. Trump “eradicates distinctions” by being uniquely obtuse and coded about his racial messaging, said Geoffrey Nunberg, a linguistics professor at the University of California Berkeley’s School of Information.
Instead of overtly criticizing then-President Barack Obama’s race, Nunberg said, Trump peddled the myth that the first black president was born in Kenya. On Saturday, Trump embraced a false equivalence between the bigots and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, condemning violence on “many sides.”
He may have peddled the myth, but it was the Clintons that started it!
“There’s a cultural battle that’s going on that Trump is engaged in — and part of that is a redefinition of what is factual,” said Sam Fulwood, a fellow on race at the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington. “If they can redefine racism as what’s against white men . . . then they’re able to impose their will on society.”
Do they have an AIPAC behind them?
That's the real cultural battle. Whether Zioni$m will continue to impose its will in Congre$$ and killed the BDS movement.
Even in his stronger statement Monday, Trump denounced the Klu Klux Klan along with neo-Nazis and “other hate groups,” which he did not define. Combined with the fact that it took him days to address the criticism, experts said, this is the type of ambiguity that the extremist groups rely upon.
Many people posting in online forums, which often serve as testing grounds for the white nationalist ideology, said they saw hope in Trump’s statements. They pointed to his phrase “other hate groups,” which they interpreted as a nod to their main targets: civil rights organizations who advocate for nonwhites.
“He left the door open,” wrote one user on Reddit.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, the civil rights organization based in Alabama that has tracked extremists groups for years through its blog “Hatewatch,” said extremists groups see Trump as a “champion.”
Their appearance in my pre$$ is no surprise.
Part of this is the language he and his close advisers used on the campaign trail and on Twitter, including the sharing of popular white nationalist memes and using phrases such as “cuckservative,” a term combining cuckold and conservative that is used to describe Republicans seen as traitors.
In a post on its home page, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Richard Cohen, said Trump’s responses to Charlottesville will be interpreted by the “alt-right” as a nod of approval, a license that allows them to become more emboldened.
This also happened when Trump, during the 2016 campaign, took days to denounce the endorsements of David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, and the Klan at large.
Every time they flog Duke it makes me laugh.
Cohen said extremist groups saw that and took heart. And he said they would be encouraged again, after the president’s response to Charlottesville.
“I’m sure white supremacists remain reassured,’’ he wrote, “that they have a friend in the White House.”
Woof.
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We know who is not a friend:
"After backlash, Trump says ‘racism is evil’" by Glenn Thrush New York Times August 14, 2017
WASHINGTON — President Trump’s remarks came too late to reverse the self-inflicted damage on his moral standing as president.
What moral standing?
How can you inflict damage on something you allegedly don't have?
Trump has had a career-long pattern of delaying and muting his criticism of white nationalism. During the 2016 campaign he refused to immediately denounce David Duke, a former Klansman who supported his candidacy.
There they go again, to quote a certain president I despised.
Some human rights activists, skeptical that Trump’s latest remarks on the issue represented a change of heart, called on him to fire nationalists — a group of hard-right populists led by Stephen K. Bannon, the White House chief strategist — working in the West Wing.
All this is about removing him?
“The president should make sure that no one on his staff has ties to white supremacists,” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a telephone briefing Monday afternoon, adding, “nor should they be on the payroll of the American people.”
He said the Justice Department and the Office of Government Ethics should “do an investigation and make that determination” if anyone in the White House had ties to hate groups.
Has the whiff of McCarthyism, doesn't it?
Trump and his staff have consistently denied any connection to such organizations, and the president called for racial harmony in his remarks Monday.
As Trump was delivering the kind of statement his critics had demanded over the weekend, Fox News reported that the president is considering pardoning former Maricopa County (Ariz.) Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a political ally accused of federal civil rights violations for allegedly mistreating prisoners, many of them black and Hispanic.
“I am seriously considering a pardon for Sheriff Arpaio,” the president said in the interview Sunday, speaking from his golf club in Bedminster. “He has done a lot in the fight against illegal immigration. He’s a great American patriot.”
It is not unusual for Trump to attack, via Twitter, any public figure who ridicules, criticizes or even mildly questions his actions, but his decision to take on Kenneth C. Frazier, the head of Merck Pharmaceuticals, a self-made multimillionaire who rose from a modest childhood in Philadelphia to attend Harvard Law School and one of the country’s top African-American executives, was extraordinary.....
They are now on a deadline.
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What was interesting is all the print regarding the patsy was removed in the web version.
Also see: Charlotteville victim’s mother calls for peaceful fight against injustice
I saw the video of the crash on CBS overnight and it looked weird. The car comes cruising in on a totally open street (in noontime sun?), plows into people, puts it in reverse and leaves at the same speed he came? 20-year-olds don't drive that good. The video looked fake and the mother's reaction is classic crisis actor.
Here is one only women can hear, and don't worry ladies, you are not alone.
There’s no hate speech exception to the First Amendment
The answer to offensive speech is more speech
Just piling on:
"Old pilings in Maine divide a town. Are they a treasure or a nuisance?" by Brian MacQuarrie Globe Staff August 14, 2017
POPHAM BEACH, Maine — A ragged cluster of rotting pilings juts from the water here, the cracked, crooked remnants of a wharf where 19th-century steamships from Boston and elsewhere brought throngs of summer visitors to seaside hotels.
The wood pilings aren’t pretty, but they are treasured by families who have lived and summered here for generations, a stark yet familiar presence that recalls the beach’s storied past.
Soon they could be gone, removed by a relative newcomer who has received permission to pull up this weathered piece of history from the state waters in front of his property.
The dispute — a classic example of how one person’s nuisance can be another’s treasure — has ratcheted up emotions in a speck of a village that is better known for quiet days, pot-luck suppers, and spotty cellphone service.....
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Yeah, “times are different now,” but still.....
"Protesters gather, security heavy as Trump visits Manhattan home" Associated Press August 14, 2017
NEW YORK — Protesters and heavy security turned out in force to greet President Trump on Monday as he returned to his New York City home for the first time since his inauguration.
More than 1,000 demonstrators were in pens police erected across the street from Trump Tower by early Monday evening, hours before his expected arrival.
A Free Speech pen!
An inflatable caricature of Trump rose above pedestrians on a nearby block.
It wasn't a chicken, was it?
Among the protesters was the Rev. Jan Powell, a retired United Church of Christ minister. She said she’s bothered by the Republican president’s response to the white supremacist rally that descended into violence Saturday in Carlottesville, Va.
While there are fears nationwide that the election of Trump has emboldened far right groups to try to increase their influence, the diverse group of people who protested the rally of white nationalists in Charlottesville outnumbered the white nationalists.
The counterprotesting groups didn’t organize their appearances. Instead, it was a largely organic effort among groups who shared the same mission: showing that hate wasn’t welcome.
Yeah, right, Soros didn't help with funds and messaging and with all due respect, the hate coming from the "counterprotesters" is even worse.
In one example of the growing national antihate movement, people are trying to harness the power of social media to identify and shame the white nationalists who attended last weekend’s rally in Charlottesville.
One Facebook media post resembled a wanted poster or a missing-persons flier: Photographs of men were arranged in rows, seeking their names and employers.
A Twitter account dedicated to calling out racism identified people who attended the rally using photos culled from the news and social media and listed their places of employment and other information.
More going on in Charlottesville than meets the eye.
The account with the handle YesYoureRacist was created by Logan Smith of Raleigh, N.C., who said his followers grew from around 64,000 on Saturday to more than 300,000 Monday afternoon.
A website created Sunday dedicated itself to collecting the names, social media profiles, colleges, and employers of people photographed at the rally. At least one person has lost his job as a result.
Now he is angry unemployed, perfect prey for undercover instigators.
Together, the efforts showed that angry online groups can be used to renounce racism and promote it.
‘‘The goal with online shaming is very short term and driven by people’s desire to feel as if they are fighting back and having an impact,’’ said Brian Reich, who’s written several books on digital communications, behavior and political influence. ‘‘They are afraid, appalled, and they want to stop it.’’
So when are they going to name all the elite pedophiles, and why does authority and the pre$$ shy away from such things (except when it comes to Catholics)?
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Reminds me of Monday's Minority Report.
"Boston firm’s artificial intelligence technology may have broader applications" by Hiawatha Bray Globe Staff August 14, 2017
A Boston company called Neurala is teaching body cameras worn by police officers to detect suspicious people or locate missing children faster than the human eye.
The company uses artificial intelligence to distinguish different objects: a person from a pet, for example, or a bench from a street light. That can be programmed into a camera to help pick out a person in a crowd based on an identifying object — a brightly-colored hat, for example — and it may soon be able to distinguish facial features as well.
You can't even hear the Total $urveillance $ociety being constructed around you!
Neurala’s technology has broader applications, to help guide self-driving cars, military robots, and drones. That potential is why alarm bells went off in Washington when a Chinese investment firm, Haiyin Capital, took a small stake in Neurala. It also raises questions about whether nosy governments or corporations could use the company’s software to keep tabs on anybody and everybody.
It's already being done, this is just allowing them to fill in the holes in the data collection net.
The body camera project is being done in conjunction with Motorola Solutions, a major maker of police and military electronics. Essentially, Neurala feeds millions of images into powerful computers, which learn from the data in much the same way as a human brain does. Gradually, the computers create digital models of objects and people, shapes, and colors.
These models, capable of identifying hundreds of objects and body types, are transmitted to the body cams. So if police were looking for, say, a lost boy wearing blue jeans and a red shirt, an officer could program his body cam to scan a crowd and pick out potential matches.
Yeah, it's all to find missing kids. Who can argue with that?
If new information comes into the system — additional photos of the child, for instance — the software could update its model to improve its accuracy.
For now the Neurala body cam software is designed to recognize clothing, objects, and body types, but chief operating officer Heather Ames said it could eventually be upgraded to support facial recognition, allowing it to identify specific people.
Neurala’s and Motorola’s project for police cams are but the latest new technology to raise questions about privacy issues, especially as facial recognition systems are being tested by law enforcement agencies for surveillance and identity checks.
“The privacy issues are huge,” said David Schubmehl, research director of artificial intelligence systems at IDC Corp. in Framingham. Schubmehl said technology similar to Neurala’s body cam system could be embedded into millions of cameras in public places. Governments could use the system for surveillance, while businesses might use it to track customers’ activities for marketing purposes.
“At least the police are regulated by government,” Schubmehl said. “Private industry is not regulated today.”
But Neurala president Warren Katz said that we already live in a world of ever-present video cameras. His company’s products will simply make video surveillance more efficient and effective.
“The privacy question has already been answered,” Katz said. “What we’re talking about here is adding some automation on top of that.”
The company hopes to begin real-world tests of the Motorola system sometime next year.
The company was spawned in 2006 by Massimiliano Versace, now its chief executive, Ames, and Anatoly Gorshechnikov after the trio earned doctorates in cognitive and neural systems at Boston University. In the company’s first project, it worked with NASA on building artificial intelligence into robots for exploring the surface of Mars.
It takes up to 24 minutes for a radio signal to travel between earth and Mars — not nearly fast enough to send new orders to a robot in case of emergencies. So Neurala worked on “offline AI,” a system that can think for itself, without constant connections to remote data centers.
Was "The Terminator" a warning?
Offline AI has an array of earthly applications too, because it can run on cheap, low-powered chips like the kind in smartphones or consumer-grade drones.
For instance, Neurala created a “selfie” app for the French drone maker Parrot, enabling a camera-equipped drone to recognize a person’s face and literally zoom in for personalized photos and videos.
“We are replicating the way the human cerebral cortex works, and in particular the ability to learn instantaneously on the fly, and we are putting this in software,” said Versace. “The applications are endless.”
In June, 2016, Haiyin Capital, which has invested in several other Massachusetts technology companies and US robotics firms, participated in a $1.2 million funding round in Neurala.
At the time, Neurala said the deal would give it access to Haiyin’s network of equipment makers and technology businesses in China.
But the Haiyin investment triggered a warning from the Washington research firm Defense Group Inc. In October, Defense Group warned in a report to Congress that the deal with Haiyin risks allowing Neurala’s AI know-how to fall into the hands of the Chinese military.
But Versace said the investment from Haiyin Capital includes language that bars the Chinese from obtaining seats on the company board, or access to Neurala’s intellectual property.
Meantime, Neurala said it is looking beyond the law enforcement market for less politically sensitive uses of its AI system. The company is working with the Charles A. and Anne Morrow Lindbergh Foundation, which uses drone aircraft to identify wildlife poachers in several African countries.
The goal is to use Neurala technology to report the movements of animals, vehicles, and people in real time. The company is also developing navigation software for self-driving cars, and is working with two toy manufacturers to build playthings that learn from the children who own them. Since no two children are alike, each toy will be different. And unlike other smart toys, Neurala said these will not pose privacy risks, because they won’t be capable of connecting to the Internet.
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Also see:
"The Trump administration has said it will follow through on promises to crack down on sanctuary cities. But the result for some has been growing confusion, budgeting headaches, worries about increased crime, and more tension with immigrant residents. ‘‘They’re not getting clarity,’’ said Yucel Ors, a program director for public safety at the National League of Cities. ‘‘When you’re planning budgets or there’s an expectation for grants and applications, it becomes very difficult to properly judge what your resource is going to be, especially with law enforcement.’’
What's the problem? You cooperate with ICE, you get the money.
Questions about lawyers’ fees put El Chapo defense in limbo
Then it is not a fair trial, right?
Three killed at race track were known gang members
They worked in state government?
17 immigrants found locked in rig at Texas truck stop
At least he has saved Medicaid.
Breaking updates as I finish:
Boston’s Holocaust Memorial Attacked
Bomb Threat in New York City
The phone call traces back to Israel?
What's with the truck parked on the bridge?
