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Meet the Next Generation of Black Lives Matter Activists Who Are Using TikTok To Create Change – Well+Good

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TikTok user Gems bio reads the revolution will be TikTokdand theyre certainly not alone in that belief or intention given that TikTok activism is, well, a thing. Recently, a number of TikTok users claimed to register for tickets to President Donald Trumps rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, without having any intention to attend. The effect was a silent protest of sorts, with the rally attendance numbers falling dramatically shorter than what was predicted.

Furthermore, the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag on TikTok has garnered more than 12 billion views, and many users of the social media platform have deemed the short vide clips it supports their medium of choice for striking effective change. Which, as a reminder, can take shape in a number of ways, including disrupting, storytelling, and guiding.

Gem and a host of other Black Lives Matter activists are leading the charge of using TikTok as a medium for striking change, and allies to the Black community would benefit from following them, stat. Take note of what each of the following five TikTok activists has to say about issues like defunding the police, shadowbanning on TikTok, and white fragility. Then use your own voice to amplify their worthy messages conveyed via TikTok activism.

Gems videos are poignant callouts of white privilege, white fragility, and white centering. In the video above, they focus on the fact that, although many white liberals are pro-abolition, they often still hold some hypocrisy if they believe in the existing prison and police system. Also be sure to watch Gems videos on self-congratulatory allyship and distinguishing between the terms Black and POC.

Joyola Dokun uses her vocal talents to lyricize about oppression, white guilt, and the Black experience in America. More of her videos to watch include signature songs dedicated to the Black community.

Naomi Brook is all about celebrating and taking pride in Black culture. Shes also about calling out negative comments directed at her that are laced with racismand the internet is better off for it.

Jailyns lightning-fast TikTok videos cram a ton of useful, timely information about the Black Lives Matter movement into short (often funny) videos. The one above, for example, uses an extended garden metaphor to explain what it means to defund the police. Watch her four-part TikTok videos series about what to do instead of calling the cops.

User Pastrami On Rai has actively called out TikToks shadowbanning of Black voices in late Maythe practice of blocking a users content on social media without the user readily knowingand shes only continued to call out both macro and microaggressions on TikTok and beyond. Check out her videos about Juneteenthand police use of LRADs weapons.

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Meet the Next Generation of Black Lives Matter Activists Who Are Using TikTok To Create Change - Well+Good

Trump Administration: Social Media Platforms Need to Police Calls for Violence That Aren’t the President’s – Gizmodo

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The Trump administration, home to some of the most prominent voices that cry wolf about supposed politically biased censorship online, is calling on some of the biggest names in tech and social media to crack down on how users post about ongoing racial-justice protests.

As first reported by the Washington Post, this week the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, sent letters to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, Snap, Apple, and Googles parent company, Alphabet, demanding that they take action against posts that encourage protestors to commit violence, break curfews, or tear down statues representing white supremacy.

In a copy of one of these letters shared by the Verge, Wolf condemns platforms for their lack of censorship on this kind of content (of which he cites zero examples). He argues that while the Constitutions First Amendment protects free speech, the power of social media can also serve as a weapon to perpetuate criminal activity and the inaction of Facebook, Twitter, and the like has helped facilitate burglary, arson, aggravated assault, rioting, looting, and defacing public property amid nationwide protests.

Of course, its unclear exactly what posts Wolfs referring to here because, again, his letter doesnt reference any. One of the more prominent subjects of online censorship in recent weeks has been the so-called boogaloo movement, a loosely coordinated group of far-right extremists based around the idea that America is headed into a second Civil War. After several posts in boogaloo groups pushed members to grab their guns and crash otherwise peaceful protests, Facebook purged nearly 200 accounts associated with the movement and stopped promoting Facebook groups tied to such violent calls for action as well.

G/O Media may get a commission

But something tells me thats not what Wolf was referring to, since the idea of violent right-wing extremists causing trouble doesnt fit the narrative of the antifa boogeyman spun up by conservative media and, by extension, President Donald Trump himself.

In the wake of George Floyds death, America faced an unprecedented threat from violent extremists seeking to co-opt the tragedy of his death for illicit purposes, he continued. At the Department of Homeland Security, we are committed to safeguarding the American people, our homeland, and our values, which includes protecting our First Amendment rights while keeping our citizens, law enforcement officers, and property safe.

It should be noted that Wolf makes no mention in these letters of Trumps own controversial post in which he encouraged a violent military response to protestors by proclaiming when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Ironically, that post did run afoul of Twitters policies against glorifying violence and was quickly flagged with a warning.

Facebooks decision to keep the presidents post up for the sake of public interest prompted a wave of criticism, including from within the company itself, that led several advertisers to pull their business (in part, at least) from the platform. The company has since back-pedaledheavily, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying Friday that Facebook will begin affixing labels or taking down posts from public figures that violate its rules moving forward.

Since these letters are a general call to action rather than an announcement of any official legal proceedings, its uncertain whatif anyaction these platforms might take in response. Though it does mark the latest escalation of the administrations attempt to curb speech online that the president doesnt care for, all while simultaneously ranting about how social media platforms silence right-wing voices. At the end of May, Trump signed an executive order tasking the Federal Communications Commission with investigating whether tech companies are censoring, harassing, and shadow banning conservatives even though previous investigations have found insufficient evidence to support this conspiracy theory.

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Trump Administration: Social Media Platforms Need to Police Calls for Violence That Aren't the President's - Gizmodo

Core Update? YouTube Is Shadow-banning Bitcoin Related Videos, According To Popular Crypto Channels – CryptoPotato

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Some of the most popular cryptocurrency-related channels on YouTube indicated that the giant video platform is shadowbanning Bitcoin videos. Several YouTubers complained that the new practice began two days ago, which coincides with a recent core update from Google.

The most widely used video-sharing platform has a continuous quarrel with cryptocurrency content creators. The so-called Crypto Purge popped initially late 2019, when YouTube began issuing warnings, removing crypto-related videos, and even deleting channels related to digital assets.

It appears that now the Google-owned platform is taking another drastic action towards silencing the Bitcoin community. Popular crypto YouTubers outlined that YouTube is shadowbanning videos related to the ecosystem. Meaning, such content is removed from the feed of most users.

Alex Saunders, the person behind the Nuggets News Au channel, said that even subscribers with turned-on show all option settings are not able to locate his videos.

Carl Eric Martin, operating the popular channel The Moon that recently crossed the 100,000 subscribers, told CryptoPotato earlier today that he witnessed a change since yesterday (Monday). Since then, all Bitcoin-related videos uploaded to the platform start with the usual boost of views, but in a matter of a few hours, the numbers decrease significantly.

This can be seen on the following screenshots, which were taken today from YouTube Analytics of two different affected videos:

YouTube has shadowbanned my videos about Bitcoin. Three hours after uploading my videos, the views completely drop off and no longer show up in the search results on YouTube. This is yet another attack against Bitcoin YouTubers. The Moon added.

Martin also confirmed that some other leading cryptocurrency YouTubers were affected, and he called it a coordinated ban against videos talking about Bitcoin.

Chris from the MMCrypto channel told CryptoPotato that the Purge has evolved into something even more dangerous.

Especially during these times, of reckless fiat currency printing and the financial crisis it is crucial for us to educate our audience about how to protect their wealth and whats going wrong in the economy.

Shortly after the start of the Crypto Purge at the beginning of this year, YouTube insisted that it was a mistake and restored most of the crypto content. However, the suspension and strikes kept happening occasionally, and it seemed that the platform had issues identifying if cryptocurrency videos are legitimate content or scams.

Now, though, the situation could be different. Approximately at the same time when the reports on the shadowbanning began, Google, the parent company of YouTube, introduced a broad core algorithm update. Such huge updates are taking place once every couple of months.

According to Google, after this update, some of the previously high rated content could be lowered in rankings. However, it reassured that theres nothing in a core update that targets specific pages or sites.

Pages that drop after a core update dont have anything wrong to fix. This said we understand those who do less well after a core update change may still feel they need to do something. We suggest focusing on ensuring youre offering the best content you can.

Additionally, Google said that its automated systems use a mix of many different signals to rank great content. Those included aligning what human beings would agree is great content as they would assess it according to our Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness (E-A-T) criteria.

While searching on YouTube for Bitcoin, we do notice changes and removal of some of the most well-known crypto channels that are missing from the top results. However, as Google said, core updates take up to two weeks to settle if thats the case.

With that being said, its unclear yet if this update is the primary reason; however, suppressing some legitimate videos could harm each YouTuber. Consequently, such events could push cryptocurrency content creators to search for an alternative.

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Core Update? YouTube Is Shadow-banning Bitcoin Related Videos, According To Popular Crypto Channels - CryptoPotato

The botched extortion scheme that forced the UK’s hand on Assange – Crikey

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Read an extract from the updated edition of The Most Dangerous Man in the World, Andrew Fowler's definitive book about Julian Assange.

This is an extract from the The Most Dangerous Man in the World: Updated Edition, by Andrew Fowler.

A sunny spring evening in Madrid. WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson and the organisations Spanish lawyer Aitor Martnez meet up at a caf in the palatial Reina Victoria hotel in the city centre. Three men approach their table and introduce themselves.

One is a journalist, the other two are computer experts, but what they are doing on that April evening in 2019 involves neither journalism nor any particular expertise in computing. Theyve turned their hands to something far more dangerous and potentially rewarding.

On a laptop they show Hrafnsson and Martnez an extraordinary sight: video and audio recordings of the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange inside Londons Ecuadorian Embassy where he had taken refuge in 2012, talking with his lawyers, and meeting journalists and supporters.

The three men want money for the footage and believe they can get 9 million. They will sell to the highest bidder and mention that a foreign TV station is interested. Although Martnez and Hrafnsson want to know why its worth anything to see Assange in the embassy, Hrafnsson negotiates with them and discusses the sum of 3 million.

What the amateur extortionists who claim to be working for freedom of expression and who support Assange dont know is that every word is being recorded. Both Hrafnsson and Martnez are wired for sound.

Martnez asks them, If you are benefactors working for freedom of expression and for Assanges legal battle, why do you want money?

We have to put food on the table too, replies one of the men.

Hrafnsson had been alerted that the material was on offer on Twitter. He had made contact, but hed also tipped off the Spanish police. Several officers from the kidnapping and extortion department are nearby recording every word of the conversation. The deal has hardly been clinched when the police pounce. The audio recordings and surveillance footage, covertly shot by Hrafnsson as he sat at the table, are enough to arrest two of the men.

It could be reasonably argued that uncovering the espionage operation against Assange might have tipped the scales of justice in his favour. The only charge Assange faced in the United Kingdom at the time was the relatively minor offence of skipping bail when he entered the Ecuadorian Embassy. Sex allegations against him by two Swedish women had long been dropped.

But on April 11, 2019, within hours of Hrafnsson calling a press conference in London to reveal the covert operation at the Ecuadorian Embassy, the Metropolitan Police stormed in and dragged Assange out.

Exposing the internal surveillance had seemingly forced the British governments hand.

***

For the seven years that Julian Assange lived there, the Ecuadorian Embassy, just around the corner from Harrods the luxury department store in Knightsbridge, was publicly recognised as one of the most surveilled places in the world from the outside.

In the early days, shortly after Assange sought political asylum in 2012, the security was obvious. Dozens of police surrounded the ornate Queen Anne style red brick building in a show of force.

As the months passed, the number of uniformed police dwindled, but in their place arose a more insidious threat. Across the road from the embassy high resolution cameras peered down on every person who entered the building.

When I first visited Assange at the embassy in November 2013 I was stopped at the door by a uniformed officer from the Metropolitan Police who demanded my name. I told him he had no right to ask and he went no further. It was an act of mild intimidation.

Inside, as we sat down to talk in the booklined conference room, Assange opened the window. Along with a fresh breeze the noise of trucks delivering goods to Harrods entered the narrow room, making it harder for us to be overheard. During another meeting, although the window remained closed, Assange turned on a machine that created white noise to make the job of eavesdropping that much harder.

He had every reason to be concerned about his conversations being overheard. Just a few months earlier a bugging device had been under the desk in the ambassadors office in the next room. Exactly who planted it there is still a mystery, but suspicion fell on everyone from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to the UKs domestic spies at MI5 to renegade Ecuadorian intelligence officers opposed to the then-Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa who had granted Assange asylum. Just who was spying on whom at the embassy became what former CIA counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton famously described as a wilderness of mirrors.

Without taking into account what other countries were up to, the British government itself was spending 4 million a year on watching the embassy. British security agencies photographed and identified everyone who entered the embassy. Assange estimated that employed 30 people a day.

The embassy already had its own security and surveillance operations in place. They were run by a little-known company based in the Spanish town of Jerez de la Frontera. Twelve kilometres inland from the Atlantic Coast, close to the Cdiz mountains, Jerez de la Frontera is better known for its fortified wine than spying. But not far from the ancient city centre, former Spanish naval officer David Morales had managed to build a successful business, Undercover Global (UC Global), specialising in security and surveillance.

In 2015 Ecuador signed a contract with Morales to protect its London embassy. What we now know is that some time later, according to documents filed in a Spanish court, UC Global began working as a double agent, around January 2017.

The material the company gathered wasnt only being collected for the Ecuadorian government; secret access to the UC Global server had been given to others, with the explicit instruction from Morales that the Ecuadorian government was not to be told about this special arrangement.

Morales boasted repeatedly to his staff in emails that I have gone to the dark side and that those in control are the American friends. Morales spoke of US intelligence and believed the North American will get us a lot of contracts around the world.

Questioning the euphemistic references to Americans, one employee demanded to know exactly who they were working for. According to a court statement, Morales replied: la inteligencia de los Estados Unidos (United States intelligence).

Whatever the truth of that, material from surveillance of the Ecuadorian Embassy certainly ended up with the US government. Detailed evidence pieced together during research for my book, The Most Dangerous Man in the World, unmasks at least some of the secret recipients of Assanges private conversations. As we shall see, the trail goes all the way to the US State Department and a Trump family adviser.

UC Globals spying activities might have remained secret but for that clumsy attempt to extort 3 million from WikiLeaks. It was bad luck for Morales. The extortionists had nothing to do with his company, but their greed exposed what he had been up to.

When the Spanish police raided Morales home, they found 20,000 and guns with their serial numbers filed off. Morales was charged with privacy violations, illegal possession of guns and money laundering.

At the company headquarters police seized computers, mobile phones and thousands of records. As they sifted through the material, details of UC Globals secrets began spilling out.

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The botched extortion scheme that forced the UK's hand on Assange - Crikey

US indictment against Assange fails to disclose crucial information as required by UK law – The Canary

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The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has issued a new superseding indictment against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But the indictment fails to disclose crucial information as generally required under UK law.

This failure could be seen as highly prejudicial and therefore present another opportunity for the defence to lodge a challenge to the extradition request.

On 24 June, the DoJ released a statement accusing Assange of conspiring with Anonymous affiliated hackers, among others. A 49-page document accompanying that statement provides further details.

According to Shadowproofs Kevin Gosztola, the document, one-third of which merely reiterates the original 18 charges, significantly:

expands the [original] conspiracy to commit computer intrusion charge and accuses Assange of conspiring with hackers affiliated with Anonymous, LulzSec, AntiSec, and Gnosis.

The computer crime charge is not limited to March 2010 anymore. It covers conduct that allegedly occurred between 2009 and 2015.

In the document, the DoJ identifies a witness, simply referred to as Teenager. According to WikiLeaks, that witness is a convicted felon, child abuser, and an FBI informant:

It was just over a year ago that WikiLeaks forewarned that the DoJ would likely use this Star Witness, who it claimed was central to an FBI entrapment operation:

In its accompanying press release, WikiLeaks named this Star Witness as Sigurdur (Siggi) Thordarson. WikiLeaks pointed out how Thordarson had served time in prison for paedophilia (involving nine boys) and additionally two years imprisonment on 18 charges of embezzlement, theft, and fraud.

Birgitta Jonsdottir, an Icelandic MP with the Pirate Party who worked on the WikiLeaks Collateral Murder video, commented:

When Julian met him [Thordarson] for the first or second time, I was there. And I warned Julian from day one, theres something not right about this guy I asked not to have him as part of the Collateral Murder team.

Another key witness named in the superseding indictment is Sabu, who represented the hacker groups Lulzsec and offshoot AntiSec. Sabus real name is Hector Xavier Monsegur. The superseding indictment refers to the hacking of Intelligence Consulting Company. From the context, that company can safely be inferred as Stratfor.

Monsegur worked for the FBI to entrap anarchist activist Jeremy Hammond via the Stratfor hack, though ultimately to try and implicate Assange too.

Daily Dot quotes Monsegurs lawyer regarding his relationship with the FBI:

The government tracked everything he typed with a key-logging program, attorney Peggy Cross-Goldenberg told the court. In addition to monitoring his Internet activity, the FBI installed a camera in his house to provide constant video surveillance. Judge Loretta Preska, who repeatedly praised Monsegurs extraordinary level of cooperation, described the relationship as virtual around-the-clock cooperation where Mr. Monsegur was sitting with agents.

Hammond claims that Monsegurs hacking ops were not only sanctioned by the FBI but were on behalf of the Feds:

What many do not know is that Sabu was also used by his handlers to facilitate the hacking of targets of the governments choosing including numerous websites belonging to foreign governments.

The documents hacked from Stratfor were leaked to WikiLeaks and became known as the Global Intelligence Files. Hammond was jailed for 10 years for his part in the Stratfor hack. However, Monsegur, who worked with the FBI for approximately three years, was sentenced to just time served (seven months).

According to World Socialist Web Site, in early 2011 Thordarson contacted Lulzsec to see if it could help hack into Icelandic government departments. At that point in time, Sabu was working with the FBI. To prove he was a bona-fide WikiLeaks worker Thordarson uploaded to Lulzsec a video that showed Assange in a room at Ellingham Hall, where he was staying while on bail, interspersed with Thordarsons and Sabus chat logs:

In effect, the alleged hacking operation was instigated and carried out by two FBI informants (Thordarson was later paid $5,000 by the FBI) apparently to entrap Assange (he subsequently denied all knowledge of the op).

These alleged email exchanges between the FBI and Thordarson talk of payment. According to Thordarson a receipt was provided by the FBI to Thordarson for delivery of 1TB of data across eight hard drives that included chat logs, videos, documents, pictures, and other related data to WikiLeaks:

According to the US Office of the Attorney General, informants are expressly forbidden from engaging in entrapment. They also cannot initiate or instigate a plan or strategy to commit a federal, state or local offense. The evidence suggests that Thordarson and Monsegur clearly violated those rules.

Furthermore, in the UK context, unless there are exceptional circumstances, an informants identity is generally required to be disclosed to the courts as, according to the Crown Prosecution Service, openness of judicial proceedings is:

a fundamental principle enshrined in Article 6(1) of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to a fair trial). This underpins the requirement for a prosecution witness to be identifiable not only to the defendant, but also to the open court. It supports the ability of the defendant to present his case and to test the prosecution case by cross-examination of prosecution witnesses.

The US superseding indictment, lodged with the UK court, fails to disclose information regarding the true identity of key witnesses, full details of their role as FBI informants; or their criminal background. In doing so, rather than enhancing the prosecution case, the superseding indictment arguably undermines it, thus providing Assanges lawyers with a potential legal challenge to the extradition.

That challenge, together with other alleged flaws and errors in the US case, and UK procedural irregularities, could result in a request to dismiss the extradition case.

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US indictment against Assange fails to disclose crucial information as required by UK law - The Canary

University of Iowa doctors monitor and help COVID-19 patients remotely – UI The Daily Iowan

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Doctors at UIHC created a program to help track and monitor symptoms of patients recovering from COVID-19 at home.

Tate Hildyard

University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics are seen on Tuesday, June 23, 2020.

Cole Krutzfeild, News Reporter June 29, 2020

A team of doctors at University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics have created a program to monitor people with COVID-19 from the comfort and safety of the patients homes.

The UI Health Cares Home Treatment Team is co-run by Clinical Assistant Professors of Internal Medicine Andrew Bryant and Bradley Manning.

We created the Home Treatment Program to allow for us to monitor, treat, and safely remain in contact with COVID-19 patients who were not able to come and be treated at the hospital, Bryant said.

He said the program has proven successful with a 99.7 percent recovery rate and one death being reported.

While similar programs have been created in certain major cities and some major universities, the University of Iowa still has one of the best and most comprehensive home treatment programs for COVID-19 patients, Bryant said.

Spokesperson for UI Health Care Jennifer Brown said in an email to The Daily Iowan that the program monitored more than 525 patients in May.

More than 320 patients recovered and have been discharged from home monitoring, and only 9 percent of patients being monitored through the program have been admitted for inpatient care, Brown said.

RELATED: Johnson County hospitals on high alert for potential uptick in COVID-19 cases

Bryant said the program is able to help patients remotely by checking on them through phone calls and giving them equipment to conduct certain tests themselves and report their results back to a doctor.

All COVID-19 patients who are interested in the program are enrolled, Brown said in the email, including patients who have been discharged from the hospital and those who tested positive as outpatients.

Brown said patients receive a home monitoring kit with a blood pressure cuff and pulse oximeter, and staff from the Home Treatment Team call patients every 24 to 72 hours for an average of 15 days.

Patients often worsen around day 10, so this extended monitoring period enables providers to better help patients manage their recovery or instruct them to go to the hospital for necessary care, she said.

Patrick Hartley, a clinical professor of internal medicine at the UI, utilized the program when he and another member of his household tested positive for COVID-19.

Within four hours of me having reported that I had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, me and another member of my family who had tested positive a few days earlier were contacted by the Home Treatment Program and we were very soon sent devices to check our blood pressure, and our oxygen levels, and we were advised to drink plenty of fluids, Hartley said.

Bryant said the Home Treatment Team is prepared for the return of students, faculty, and staff to campus in the fall.

We are prepared for any enlargement in patient size we will face in the fall and we will monitor any student or member of the faculty who cannot be placed in the hospital, he said.

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University of Iowa doctors monitor and help COVID-19 patients remotely - UI The Daily Iowan

The Korean War Atrocities No One Wants to Talk About – The American Conservative

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For decades they covered up the U.S. massacre of civilians at No Gun Ri and elsewhere. This is why we never learn our lessons.

June 25th was the 70th anniversary of the start of the Korean War. Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers fought bravely in that war, and almost 37,000 were killed. But the media is ignoring perhaps the wars most important lesson: the U.S. government has almost unlimited sway to hide its own war crimes.

During the Korean War, Americans were deluged with official pronouncements about how the U.S. military was taking all possible steps to protect innocent civilians. Because the evils of communism were self-evident, few questions arose about how the U.S. was thwarting Red aggression. When a U.S. Senate subcommittee appointed in 1953 by Sen. Joseph McCarthy investigated Korean War atrocities, the committee explicitly declared that, war crimes were defined as those acts committed by enemy nations.

In 1999, forty-six years after the cease fire in Korea, the Associated Press exposed a 1950 massacre of Korean refugees at No Gun Ri. U.S. troops drove Koreans out of their village and forced them to remain on a railroad embankment. Beginning on July 25, 1950, the refugees were strafed by U.S. planes and machine guns over the following three days. Hundreds of people, mostly women and children, were killed. The 1999 AP story was widely denounced by American politicians and some media outlets as a slander on American troops.

The Pentagon promised an exhaustive investigation. In January 2001, the Pentagon released a 300-page report purportedly proving that the No Gun Ri killings were merely an unfortunate tragedy caused by trigger-happy soldiers frightened by approaching refugees.

President Bill Clinton announced his regret that Korean civilians lost their lives at No Gun Ri. In a January 2001 interview, Clinton was asked why he used regret instead of apology. He declared, I believe that the people who looked into it could not conclude that there was a deliberate act, decided at a high enough level in the military hierarchy, to acknowledge that, in effect, the government had participated in something that was terrible. Clinton specified that there was no evidence of wrongdoing high enough in the chain of command in the Army to say that, in effect, the government was responsible.

In 2005, Sahr Conway-Lanz, a Harvard University doctoral student, discovered a letter in the National Archives from the U.S. ambassador to Korea, John Muccio, sentto Assistant Secretary of State Dean Rusk on the day the No Gun Ri massacre commenced. Muccio summarized a new policy from a meeting between U.S. military and South Korean officials: If refugees do appear from north of U.S. lines they will receive warning shots, and if they then persist in advancing they will be shot. The new policy was radioed to Army units around Korea on the morning the No Gun Ri massacre began. The U.S. military feared that North Korean troops might be hiding amidst the refugees. The Pentagon initially claimed that its investigators never saw Muccios letter but it was in the specific research file used for its report.

Conway-Lanzs 2006 book Collateral Damage quoted an official U.S. Navy history of the first six months of the Korean War stating that the policy of strafing civilians was wholly defensible. An official Army history noted: Eventually, it was decided to shoot anyone who moved at night. A report for the aircraft carrier USS Valley Forge justified attacking civilians because the Army insisted that groups of more than eight to ten people were to be considered troops, and were to be attacked.

In 2007, the Army recited its original denial: No policy purporting to authorize soldiers to shoot refugees was ever promulgated to soldiers in the field. But the Associated Press exposed more dirt from the U.S. archives: More than a dozen documentsin which high-ranking U.S. officers tell troops that refugees are fair game, for example, and order them to shoot all refugees coming across riverwere found by the AP in the investigators own archived files after the 2001 inquiry. None of those documents was disclosed in the Armys 300-page public report.

A former Air Force Pilot told investigators that his plane and three others strafed refugees at the same time of the No Gun Ri massacre; the official report claimed all pilots interviewed knew nothing about such orders. Evidence also surfaced of other massacres like No Gun Ri. On September 1, 1950, the destroyer USS DeHaven, at the Armys insistence, fired on a seaside refugee encampment at Pohang, South Korea. Survivors say 100 to 200 people were killed.

Slaughtering civilians en masse became routine procedure after the Chinese Army intervened in the Korean war in late 1950. U.S. Commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur spoke of turning North Korean-held territory into a desert. The U.S. military eventually expanded its definition of a military target to any structure that could shelter enemy troops or supplies. In a scoring method that foreshadowed the Vietnam war body counts, Air Force press releases touted the square footage of enemy-held buildings that it flattened. General Curtis LeMay summarized the achievements: We burned down every town in North Korea and some in South Korea, too. A million civilians may have been killed during the war, and a South Korean government Truth and Reconciliation Commission uncovered many previously unreported atrocities.

The Pentagon strategy on Korean War atrocities succeeded because it left truth to the historians, not the policymakers. The facts about No Gun Ri finally slipped outten presidencies later. Even more damaging, the Rules of Engagement for killing Korean civilians were covered up until after four more U.S. wars. If U.S. policy for slaying Korean refugees had been exposed during that war, it might have curtailed similar killings in Vietnam (many of which were not revealed until decades after the war).

Former congressman and decorated Korean War veteran Pete McCloskey warned, The government will always lie about embarrassing matters. The same shenanigans permeate other U.S. wars. The secrecy and deceit surrounding U.S. military interventions has had catastrophic consequences in this century. The Bush administration exploited the 9/11 attacks to justify attacking Iraq in 2003, and it was not until 2016 that the U.S. government revealed documents exposing the Saudi governments role in financing the hijackers (15 of 19 were Saudi citizens). The Pentagon covered up the vast majority of U.S. killings of Iraqi civilians until Bradley Manning and Wikileaks exposed them in 2010. There is likely reams of evidence of duplicity and intentional slaughter of civilians in U.S. government files on its endlessly confused and contradictory Syrian intervention.

When politicians or generals appear itching to pull the U.S. into another foreign war, remember that truth is routinely the first casualty. The blood of civilian victims of U.S. wars is the political version of disappearing ink. But the kinfolk and neighbors of those victims could pursue vengeance regardless of whether cover-ups con the American people.

James Bovard is the author ofLost Rights,Attention Deficit Democracy, andPublic Policy Hooligan. He is also aUSA Todaycolumnist. Follow him on Twitter@JimBovard.

Originally posted here:
The Korean War Atrocities No One Wants to Talk About - The American Conservative

Trump fans are flocking to the social media app Parler its CEO is begging liberals to join them – CNBC

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Parler CEO John Matze

EpochTimes

Jim Jordan, Elise Stefanik and Nikki Haley all have something in common, other than a strong affection towards President Trump.

The three Republican politicians joined social media app Parler this week, adding their profiles to a site that's emerged as the new digital stomping ground for anti-Twitter conservatives. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas arrived earlier this month and Rep. Devin Nunes of California started in February, while Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky has been a member since 2018, the year the app launched.

"It's about time y'all joined me on @parler_app," Paul tweeted on Wednesday. "What's taking the rest of you so long?!"

To be fair, Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has also been on Parler since 2018. Eric Trump, the president's son, and his wife, Lara, joined on the same day last month.Like Twitter, the app lets users share comments, photos and news stories with their followers.

The catalyst for the latest growth surge was a story from The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, which said that the Trump administration was looking for alternatives to Facebook and Twitter over concern that more content is going to be blocked as the election campaign heats up. The Journal named Parler as a possible alternative.

Two days later, Parler was the top-ranked iPhone app in the news category, ahead of Twitter and Reddit, and 24th overall, just behind Venmo and WhatsApp, according to App Annie.User growth surged to 1.5 million from 1 million over the course of about a week, said John Matze, Parler's 27-year-old founder and CEO.

"We're a community town square, an open town square, with no censorship," Matze said in an interview on Thursday, from his home in Las Vegas. "If you can say it on the street of New York, you can say it on Parler."

Parler is playing into the hands of conservatives, who have become more vocal in their criticism of Twitter since the site started flagging Trump's tweets for promoting violence or abusive behavior or making false claims that could confuse voters. Trump supporters have long argued that the dominant Silicon Valley platforms have been out to censor conservative voices, even as those very same people continue to post on those sites and rack up followers by the thousands.

Rep. Jordan of Ohio told his 1.4 million Twitter followers on Friday to come over to Parler, where they "don't censor or shadow ban," referring to the practice of banning users in a way that's not apparent to them. By late afternoon he had about 3,100 followers on Parler.

Twitter regularly denies treating people differently based on their political views.Liz Kelley, a Twitter spokeswoman, told CNBC in a statement that, "We enforce the Twitter Rules impartially for everyone, regardless of their background or political affiliation."

When Nunes joined in February, he told his Twitter fans, which number 1.1 million, to join him on Parler if they're "tired of left wing censorship of big tech." Nunes has an infamous relationship with Twitter, after attempting to sue the company for defamation and negligence and naming as defendants two anonymous parody accounts, "Devin Nunes' Mom" and "Devin Nunes' Cow."

"With Devin Nunes came a whole pack of haters," said Matze. He said that parody accounts are fine and even welcome, but Parler draws a line when it comes to spammers. "You can't spam people's comment sections with unrelated content," he said.

That's not the only no-no on Parler, which has a fairly thorough set of community guidelines. The app doesn't allow terrorist organizations or support for terrorism, the sharing of false rumors, violent language (what the site describes as "fighting words") toward others, blackmail or pornography.

For verification, Parler awards a gold badge to public figures to distinguish them from parody accounts, which get a purple badge.

Matze, a computer scientist who founded the company in 2018, is grateful for the growth even if all the new verifications are creating a lot of extra work for his 30-person team.

But Matze doesn't want the app to be just an echo chamber for conservative voices. Personally, he says he doesn't like either political party and he wants to see more healthy debate. He's so intent on getting some liberals onto the platform that he's offering a $20,000 "progressive bounty" for an openly liberal pundit with 50,000 followers on Twitter or Facebook to start a Parler account.

The company will judge the best one, based on engagement with the community, and pay that person the reward. Matze said there's been such little response that he increased the original proposed payment from $10,000 to $20,000.

"The whole company was never intended to be a pro-Trump thing," Matze said. "A lot of the audience is pro-Trump. I don't care. I'm not judging them either way."

Brad Parscale, manager of U.S. President Donald Trump's re-election campaign, speaks during a rally for U.S. President Donald Trump in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., on Thursday, Jan. 30, 2020.

Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Where Matze is in full agreement with the Parler audience is in his opinion of Twitter. He thinks the company is targeting conservatives with censorship.

"I don't see why you need to censor the president's tweets," he said. "If you don't like what he has to say, vote him out of office."

Matze expects Parler to become a more attractive site for a more diverse audience over time because he sees Twitter continuing down a path of alienating right-wing voices, and "no one is going to want to stay on Twitter if the conservatives are gone."

But he recognizes that the political tone of his platform will probably make it hard for him to raise money from investors in Silicon Valley, which leans Democratic and is decidedly anti-Trump. Thus far, he's funded the company with angel money and said he'll soon be looking to raise a first institutional round of financing.

"I can only speculate that they wouldn't be interested unless they're ideological," he said, referring to traditional venture investors.

His bigger challenge, and one that venture capitalists know well, is the difficulty in turning a big audience into a massive audience and turning that into a business. Few ad-supported companies have managed that feat. Matze said the site has a nascent ad business, but that revenue has not been a focus of the company. One model he's considering is a revenue share, so that users can monetize their own fanbase without all of the benefits going to the company.

There's much more to do first, though, on the product side. For example, sharing content isn't as easy as on other networks. If you share a post with a friend via a text message, the other person can't view it without being logged in. Matze says he's "fully intent on opening the platform" but user growth has gotten in the way of building it out.

For the Trump campaign, that appears to be a significant hurdle. Parscale, who has 159,000 followers on Parler, compared to almost 700,000 on Twitter, made a number of suggestions to the company last month, like recommending that it spend money to lure more media members and hire a designer.

With just a few months until the election and Trump sinking in the polls, he's not hiding his ultimate goal.

"It must be buttoned up," he wrote on May 29. "I want to love it. I want to use it, I want to help. However, more than anything I want to win in November."

WATCH: Trump to sign executive order aimed at cracking down on Facebook, Twitter

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Trump fans are flocking to the social media app Parler its CEO is begging liberals to join them - CNBC

The PACT Act would force platforms to disclose shadowbans and demonetizations – The Verge

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A new bipartisan Senate bill is taking aim at the liability protections enjoyed by internet platforms like Facebook and YouTube.

The Platform Accountability and Consumer Transparency (PACT) Act, introduced by Sens. Brian Schatz (D-HI) and John Thune (R-SD) on Wednesday, would require online platforms like Facebook and Google to reveal their content moderation practices through a range of mandatory disclosures. The bill would also create a new avenue for holding these companies responsible for hosting illegal content by making changes to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

The bill is a combination of measures that encourage platforms to remove bad content and measures that keep those moderation systems in check, hoping to draw support from both sides of the ongoing debate over platform regulation.

If approved, the bill would force large tech platforms to explain how they moderate content in a way that is easily accessible to users and release quarterly reports including disaggregated statistics on what content has been removed, demonetized, or had its reach algorithmically limited. Platforms would then be required to roll out a formal complaint system for users that processes reports and explains their moderation decisions within 14 days. Users would then be allowed to appeal those moderation decisions within a companys internal reporting systems, something that already exists on platforms like Facebook.

Other bills aimed at Section 230 would allow users to report certain content moderation decisions to the government, primarily the Federal Trade Commission. The PACT Act is in direct opposition to those proposals and allows for moderation reports to remain internal. Over the last year, both Republicans and Democrats have taken aim at 230 as a means of addressing misinformation or what conservatives believe to be bias or shadowbanning of right-leaning posts. President Donald Trump signed an executive order last month that would pare back 230 protections. Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has called for 230 to be repealed entirely.

Our approach is a scalpel, rather than a jackhammer, Schatz said in a call with reporters Wednesday.

On top of formalizing moderation behavior, the bill amends Section 230 in a way that requires large platforms to remove court-ordered illegal content within 24 hours. It also opens them up to civil lawsuits from federal regulators, which are currently limited by Section 230. State attorneys general would also be empowered with the ability to enforce federal civil law against platforms. The likely result would be a flood of new lawsuits against large tech companies, with unpredictable consequences.

There is a bipartisan consensus that Section 230, which governs certain internet use, is ripe for reform, Thune said in a statement Wednesday. The internet has thrived because of the light touch approach by which its been governed in its relatively short history. By using that same approach when it comes to Section 230 reform, we can ensure platform users are protected, while also holding companies accountable.

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The PACT Act would force platforms to disclose shadowbans and demonetizations - The Verge

Trump Administration: Social Media Platforms Need to Police Calls for Violence That Arent the Presidents – Gizmodo Australia

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The Trump administration, home to some of the most prominent voices that cry wolf about supposed politically biased censorship online, is calling on some of the biggest names in tech and social media to crack down on how users post about ongoing racial-justice protests.

As first reported by the Washington Post, this week the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, sent letters to the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter, Snap, Apple, and Googles parent company, Alphabet, demanding that they take action against posts that encourage protestors to commit violence, break curfews, or tear down statues representing white supremacy.

In a copy of one of these letters shared by the Verge, Wolf condemns platforms for their lack of censorship on this kind of content (of which he cites zero examples). He argues that while the Constitutions First Amendment protects free speech, the power of social media can also serve as a weapon to perpetuate criminal activity and the inaction of Facebook, Twitter, and the like has helped facilitate burglary, arson, aggravated assault, rioting, looting, and defacing public property amid nationwide protests.

Of course, its unclear exactly what posts Wolfs referring to here because, again, his letter doesnt reference any. One of the more prominent subjects of online censorship in recent weeks has been the so-called boogaloo movement, a loosely coordinated group of far-right extremists based around the idea that America is headed into a second Civil War. After several posts in boogaloo groups pushed members to grab their guns and crash otherwise peaceful protests, Facebook purged nearly 200 accounts associated with the movement and stopped promoting Facebook groups tied to such violent calls for action as well.

But something tells me thats not what Wolf was referring to, since the idea of violent right-wing extremists causing trouble doesnt fit the narrative of the antifa boogeyman spun up by conservative media and, by extension, President Donald Trump himself.

In the wake of George Floyds death, America faced an unprecedented threat from violent extremists seeking to co-opt the tragedy of his death for illicit purposes, he continued. At the Department of Homeland Security, we are committed to safeguarding the American people, our homeland, and our values, which includes protecting our First Amendment rights while keeping our citizens, law enforcement officers, and property safe.

It should be noted that Wolf makes no mention in these letters of Trumps own controversial post in which he encouraged a violent military response to protestors by proclaiming when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Ironically, that post did run afoul of Twitters policies against glorifying violence and was quickly flagged with a warning.

Facebooks decision to keep the presidents post up for the sake of public interest prompted a wave of criticism, including from within the company itself, that led several advertisers to pull their business (in part, at least) from the platform. The company has since back-pedaledheavily, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying Friday that Facebook will begin affixing labels or taking down posts from public figures that violate its rules moving forward.

Since these letters are a general call to action rather than an announcement of any official legal proceedings, its uncertain what if any action these platforms might take in response. Though it does mark the latest escalation of the administrations attempt to curb speech online that the president doesnt care for, all while simultaneously ranting about how social media platforms silence right-wing voices. At the end of May, Trump signed an executive order tasking the Federal Communications Commission with investigating whether tech companies are censoring, harassing, and shadow banning conservatives even though previous investigations have found insufficient evidence to support this conspiracy theory.

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Trump Administration: Social Media Platforms Need to Police Calls for Violence That Arent the Presidents - Gizmodo Australia


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