Category Archives: Transhuman News

The Office almost included a cameo by Dwight Schrutes UK counterpart, but the moment never played out on screen, unfortunately. During the May 27 Office Ladies podcast, Jenna Fischer revealed the details of how that meeting was supposed to happen but a scheduling conflict prevented the cameo from becoming a reality.

In The Office Season 3, Episode 2, titled The Convention, Dunder Mifflin branches collide as Michael and Dwight from Scranton, Josh and Jim from Stamford, and Jan from corporate meet up at the Northeastern Mid-Market Office Supply convention in Philadelphia. Michael attempts to throw a party in his hotel room as he struggles with wondering why Jim left Scranton. Jim seems to have bonded with his new boss Josh and that doesnt sit well with Michael.

Back in Scranton, Pam is now single so Kelly sets her up on a date but she doesnt have a love connection when she goes on a double date with Ryan and Kelly. Jim reveals to Michael that he didnt leave the Scranton branch because of him but because Pam rejected him.

The Convention episode could have been even more entertaining if a cameo had worked out. The plan was that the UK Offices Dwight character Gareth Keenan, played by Mackenzie Crook, would be at the convention in a booth and he and Dwight would have a run-in.

Alas, there were scheduling issues, so fans never got to seethis epic idea play out. Can you imagine the exchange between Dwight andGareth?

Crook was in town doing a press junket for Pirates of the Caribbean so they hoped they could get him for the episode. Unfortunately, that didnt work out, Fischer explained on Office Ladies. The scheduling did not work out, he couldnt come, Fischer shared. He couldnt come. He wanted to hes the nicest guy, Ive met him, hes awesome.

RELATED: The Office: This Dwight and Jim Scene Was So Funny, the Stars Couldnt Stop Laughing and Production Had to Shut Down

While Dwight and Gareth never shared the screen on The Office, the two actors did eventually meet in person. In November 2018, actor Rainn Wilson, who played Dwight, met Crook backstage when Crook appeared in the play The Seagull.

The Office did get a bit of a crossover with the British version in season 7 episode 14, titled The Seminar. In the episode, Michael bumps into David Brent from the original Office, in a brief cameo played by Ricky Gervais.

In the brief scene, David exits the elevator and he has an exchange with Michael, who says hes working on a British character. The two then exchange impersonations of a politically incorrect character and discuss how people dont accept those kinds of impressions. David drops a thats what she says line and Michael, thoroughly appreciating the reference, gives him a hug. David asks Michael if the company is currently hiring and Michael says not right now.

View post:
'The Office': Dwight Almost Met His British Counterpart on 1 Episode but They Couldn't Pull Off the Epic Cameo - Showbiz Cheat Sheet

object(WP_Post)#894 (24) { ["ID"]=> int(67119) ["post_author"]=> string(1) "1" ["post_date"]=> string(19) "2020-05-31 18:37:20" ["post_date_gmt"]=> string(19) "2020-05-31 13:07:20" ["post_content"]=> string(9039) "

On Thursday, May 28, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the narrowing of legal immunity enjoyed by online platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube with respect to liability arising from user-generated content. Calling such platforms 21st century public squares that are key enablers of free and open debate, the order expressed concern over several instances of selective censorship conducted by politically biased corporations, and instructed US regulators to take action, including by proposing federal legislation to clarify the scope of immunity and to protect free expression online.

This is a significant development in global Internet jurisprudence as it is expected to reanimate some key questions surrounding platform accountability, and warrants a closer examination of its implications for the digital world.

At the heart of the debate lies Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, whereby online platforms are broadly protected from being held liable on account of the content posted by their users. Platforms are also prevented under the provision from incurring civil liability for censoring offensive content, whether or not the content is constitutionally protected. In other words, Section 230 allows American platform providers to offer their services without being made to answer for illegal content posted by users, and makes them responsible for developing internal mechanisms to keep their platforms free from offensive material within the boundaries of US law.

The safe harbour protection offered by Section 230 is believed to have played a crucial role in allowing the Internet to become a forum for open discourse over the past years. In the absence of safe harbour protection, platforms would have been unable to operate at scale without mass censorship and vetting (highly impractical), retarding their growth and proliferation. Section 230 served as a way to address these concerns, treating platforms as mere intermediaries between content creators and consumers, with limited content moderation functions on their own terms.

This approach gained favour amongst regulators in other jurisdictions as well, prompting many of them to adopt similar legislations to allow online platforms to flourish. Articles 12 to 15 of the European e-Commerce Directive, for instance, exempts platform providers from a general obligation to monitor content or verify its legality. In India, Section 79 of the Information Technology Act, 2000 exempts platform providers from being held liable for any third-party content, so long as certain baseline conditions are satisfied.

However, the moderation role that many platforms are increasingly dispensing, is now becoming the bone of contention in the US and in other geographies.

Though strong safe harbour protection for online platforms was considered a good practice in Internet regulation for many years, we are now witnessing a gradual shift in this narrative, driven largely by the evolving roles played by platforms in contemporary societies. Gone are the days when social media websites were used primarily by small clusters of individuals to keep abreast of one anothers lives. Instead, they have matured into powerful, omnipresent vehicles of public debate that are as valuable to governments and institutions as they are to individuals, businesses and communities. Billions of users now turn to these platforms each day to engage with the world around them in all manner of ways, ranging from trading in news to participating in democratic processes. It is no stretch then to say that the norms and frameworks used by platform providers to shape conversations on their networks also shape larger public discourses. And this creates a new dynamic.

Cognisant of the enhanced relevance of online platforms in modern society, governments around the world have begun to seek greater control over the form and substance of digital information flows, including by holding platform providers to higher standards of accountability with respect to the content they host. China and Russia represent one end of the spectrum on this front, both having introduced numerous laws and regulations over the years imposing the strictest of legal sanctions on platforms that allow national and public interests to be undermined in any way. Indias draft amendments to its intermediary liability laws, while more modest than the aforementioned, demonstrate a clear intent to tighten platform accountability through expedited content take-downs and proactive monitoring of networks among other things. Calls for elevated accountability can be seen even in western liberal democracies like the European Union, where legislative intervention is being passively explored to tackle issues such as online disinformation.

Seen against this backdrop, President Trumps executive order to clarify the scope of legal immunity under Section 230, irrespective of its underlying motivations, is just the latest in a series of global developments related to the introduction of stricter accountability frameworks governing online platforms.

Despite its scathing indictment of selective censorship by online platforms and unambiguous call for narrower immunity provisions, President Trumps order is unlikely to significantly change American law in the short term and will almost certainly fail to withstand judicial scrutiny. As the US Chamber of Commerce pointed out, an executive order cannot be deployed as the vehicle to change federal law, which means the order is at best, a very vocal declaration of intent by the Trump administration. However, this is not to say that it is an insignificant one, for if nothing else, it will add more vigour to such propositions elsewhere in the world by virtue of originating in a jurisdiction that is seen as a legislative trendsetter so to speak.

Furthermore, the order raises several key questions that will now feature more prominently in global policy circles. Should private corporations be allowed to dictate the terms of engagement in public spheres? At what point do the actions of corporations turn into active interference with governance and political functions? Should statements made by world leaders and politicians remain accessible to the public, no matter how factually incorrect or otherwise objectionable they might be? How can nation states prevent domestic discourses from being influenced by external values and considerations? How will grey-flagging of a political statement by a ruling party or opposition leader on Twitter during animated elections in any country go down? Add to that the fact that these platforms are essentially foreign corporations (in all but one or two countries) moderating local political content.

What transpires in the Trump Versus Jack saga over the US election cycle will be as interesting as what other jurisdictions do with their existing efforts to tame the platform nation that resides within national boundaries but speaks free of territorial encumbrances.

Originally posted here:
No safe harbour? Platform wars in the US - Observer Research Foundation

By Walter E. Block, American economist and libertarian theorist who holds the Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in Economics at the J. A. Butt School of Business atLoyola University New Orleans, and is a senior fellow of theLudwig von Mises InstituteinAuburn, Alabama, and is the author of two dozen books, including his most famous, Defending the Undefendable.

Despite all the efforts of equalization, women in high-ranking corporate positions are still exceedingly rare. But they are almost as rare in the dredges of society and the reasons for both run deeper than sexism.

It is more than passing curious that at a time when women constitute roughly half the workforce, and are in the actual majority in terms of earning college degrees, there are still so few female CEOs. The distaff side accounts for CEOs in only 167 out of 3,000 large companies, which translates into a rather modest 5.5 percent of the total.

Various explanations have been put forth to account for this fact. Women do a disproportionate share of household tasks, such as cooking, cleaning, childcare, shopping. This accounts for some of the gap, but not all of it. Females are less ambitious; they do not as readily seek promotions as do males.

Why not? They are more attached to home and hearth, and realize that the higher up you go in the work hierarchy, the more on the job responsibility there is, which will detract from their family obligations. This, too accounts for their greater reluctance to seek greener pastures in more lucrative employment elsewhere; the wife is more likely to be the trailing spouse, who has to accept whatever is available in another city or state, than her husband.

Recently, a new elucidation has been added to these more traditional accounts. It is that men are more likely to occupy positions that feed into CEO jobs than women. For example, more males than females take on line roles which are directly responsible for profits and losses, such as heading up a division of a large firm. In contrast, women specialize in areas that do not as readily account for the bottom line, such as heading up human resources, the legal team, or administration.

This phenomenon, too, could possibly explain part of the divergence in CEO representation, but is unlikely, even along with the other accounts, to do the entire job. One difficulty with it is that one can easily push back, and ask why this divergence occurs in the first place?

The preceding is all politically correct; or, at least, not too politically incorrect. Blatant facts are blatant facts, and it is difficult to hurl the charge of sexism at social scientists supporting these explanations.

Dare we consider an explanation that does not pass muster in this regard? We must, if we really want to unearth the cause of this situation. Here we go.

CEOs, along with presidents and prime ministers of countries, chess grandmasters, Nobel Prize winners in STEM pursuits such as physics, medicine, chemistry, economics, the Fields Medal in math, occupy the extreme right tail of the normal distribution of intelligence. But, due to the fact that the standard deviation of men is much larger than that of women, there simply are very, very few of the latter to be found at three or four standard deviations above the mean. Larry Summers lost his job as president of Harvard for merely musing about this, but if we want to fully understand the CEO divergence (along with all these other glass ceilings) we cannot ignore it.

According to one study, the standard deviation of boys IQ was around 15 and for girls, around 14. This translates to roughly double the amount of the former with scores about 130, and a whopping six times greater than 160, where CEOs, and other highly accomplished people tend to roam.

At the other end of the normal curve, women are also almost as scarce as hens teeth. There are virtually no females who are homeless, or are in jail, or are on death row, or are in mental institutions, or who die as a result of committing violent crimes. Men dominate this tail of the distribution, as they do the other. Females are Gods, or natures, insurance policy. They are to a greater degree clumped into the middle. Males are Gods, or natures, crap shoot. When they are brilliant, they are very, very gifted. When they are not, they veer to a relatively stupendous degree in the opposite direction.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

See the rest here:
Why are there so few female CEOs? Its for the same reason there are so few women on death row - RT

Saudi Arabia this spring sent shockwaves through the world when it embarked on an economically disastrous game of chicken with its petro-rival Russia. After walking away from an oil-production conference, the kingdom opened its spigots to drive down prices in protest of what it saw as a lack of Russian support, sending global markets plunging right as Covid-19 began shutting down economies. Not long before that, the Saudi government itself had undergone a dramatic purge led by Mohammad bin Salman, the young prince who appears to have rapidly consolidated power in the past three years, and who enjoys the favor of the Trump administration.

What happened? Who saw all this coming? And what does this behavior say about the person the Trump White House has chosen as an ally?

If Americans assume their intelligence apparatus has a handle on these questions, they should listen more closely to what Riedel and others have been saying.

Expert watchers such as Riedel point out that the Trump administration has embraced Mohammad bin Salman (or MbS, in diplomatic shorthand) in much the same way that the Obama administration embraced his predecessor, Mohammad bin Nayaf: with a highly politicized intelligence apparatus that likely leaves significant holes in what the president knows. Already, the results are bleak: In his time in power, MbS has plunged America into his Yemen quagmire, cavalierly murdered a U.S.-based journalist, destabilized the energy market and courted U.S. rivals Russia, China and Iran.

When it comes to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, American policy has long relied on intelligence-gathering to help determine its true motives and internal dynamics. Saudi Arabia is an opaque country, with rulers subject to no internal transparency and minimal outside accountability. The country is now ruled by the enfeebled 84-year-old King Salman, whose reign is likely to be short and is already largely serving as cover for the actual governing by his son. So trustworthy intelligence on whats happening there a country with which the U.S. has a multibillion-dollar military, diplomatic and business relationshipis more important than ever.

However, informed critics such as Riedel, as well as former operatives and others who have spoken out in the media, have been pointing out that the US intelligence community, and particularly its last three CIA directors, have taken a very politicized approach to Saudi intelligence gathering. Rather than asking difficult questions and then empowering collection efforts, intelligence leaders have been choosing their conclusions and then steering away from any inconvenient facts about them.

This trend appears to be continuing: According to recent media reports, Secretary of State (and former CIA director) Mike Pompeo pushed State Department officials to find an after-the-fact justification for an emergency declaration he issued last year, bypassing Congress and allowing an $8 billion arms sale to Saudi Arabia.

Riedel's comments, and the recently mounting critiques, point to a worrisome turn in Americas approach to Saudi Arabia: Faced with a complex and perhaps dangerous diplomatic partner, successive White Houses have instead sought to look the other way concerning Saudi behavior, allowing themselves to be steered by intelligence chiefs with their own motives, and comfortably basking in feigned ignorance regarding the truth beneath the Kingdoms pervasive veil.

Politicization of intelligence need not always be heavy-handed to undermine the truth. Often, the decision not to ask certain questions has the same impact as manipulating or discrediting what you already know. There's no evidence, for example, that the George W. Bush, Obama or Trump White Houses ever sought a National Intelligence Estimate on Saudi Arabia, a thorough and forward-looking analytical document that integrates the knowledge of the entire intelligence community. Such an initiative would have generated the questions and ensuing body of evidence to provide the kind of thorough assessment that might have exposed understanding of Saudi Arabias leadership, politics, human rights record and internal stability, generating insights that would be shared far and wide across the government.

Though critics have levied similar charges against both the Obama and the Trump approaches to the intelligence community, the Trump administrations current behavior is unprecedented in my own nearly four decades of service. Never have I witnessed the National Security Council and CIA so focused on controlling information that might expose, contradict or offend the president. The two most recent CIA directors, Pompeo and Gina Haspel, have prioritized control over the narrative of any public reflections concerning the CIAs thinking, and more importantly, their own positions and comments, to shape their image with the president.

(The CIAs objection to this article validated these observations. Despite the absence of any classified information, a CIA board, to whose review my 34 years in the clandestine service obliges me for anything I publish, pushed to redact much of the most critical prose. My ensuing depiction is therefore more vague than the reality warrants.)

For both economic or security reasons, what transpires in the Kingdom directly affects all Americans. So what went wrong with our Saudi intelligence operationand how can we fix it?

During a visit to Saudi Arabia in the not so distant past by then CIA Director John Brennan, I found myself standing in line for a lunch being hosted by Salman bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud.

At the time Salman was the kingdom's crown prince, second in command to his brother, then-King Abdullah, but Salman himself was already an elderly man. He was courteous and polite, greeting each of his guests with a handshake that was warm but notably weak. Prince Salmans hand trembled violently; his engagement with his guests was short, perfunctory and limited to the brief period for which he could remain standing. He did not engage in anything more than an exchange or well scripted platitudes; he took a seat and ultimately exited after but a brief period. (Riedel has speculated in the press that the elderly royal even then was suffering from at least pre-dementia.)

Another character was also present at that lunch, one whose importance was not yet clear. All the while, Prince Salman remained under the watchful eyes of not only his protocol aides, but a serious looking young Saudi male assistant. After greetings, we were ushered to another tent where a traditional Saudi meal had been prepared. The same young Saudi assistant passed a plate with a kind smile and encouraged me to feel welcome. He was deferential with the guests and struck me as a bit unsure about his own English language skills. Still, he was nothing but proper. Intrigued by the young mans access to the crown prince, I was surprised when protocol aides identified him as Salmans son, Mohammad bin Salman.

This was not a person that the intelligence community would have expected to be there. In fact, the intelligence community knew practically nothing about MbS beyond where his name placed in the House of Sauds family tree. I watched as Director Brennan spoke in hushed tones with the young prince in a corner of the tent after his father had retired for the day. There was little animation in this exchange, in part because the United States had already picked its favorite among the Saudi princes.

That person was Mohammad bin Nayef, or MbN for short, then the Saudi interior minister. Appropriately referred to as the darling of Americas counterterrorism and intelligence services, MbN had by then become the CIAs best friend in Saudi Arabia, if not Americas. Riedel depicted MbN as a legitimate hero in the Kingdoms fight against terrorism, a royal who survived a nearly successful assassination attempt in 2009 by an al-Qaeda suicide bomber.

Directors of the CIA lavished praise on MbN. Former director George Tenet, who served under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, called the minister my most important interlocutor; Obamas first CIA director, Leon Panetta, dubbed him the smartest [Saudi] of his generation.

Brennan, who Obama appointed as director of the CIA in March, 2013, was all in on MbN, selling President Obama on the value of backing this horse. But Brennan also micromanaged the CIAs Saudi enterprise, limiting the agency's agility to report on vibrations within the House of Saud that might reflect poorly on MbN and his prospects, and thus limiting the president's visibility into his potential weaknesses.

In micromanaging CIAs Saudi portfolio, and the vision of Saudi Arabia on which the president relied, Brennan effectively crossed the Rubicon: He became MbNs active advocate with the Obama White House, with the goal of helping install him on the Saudi throne.

Brennan convinced President Obama to invest US interests with MbN that extended well beyond the Kingdom itself. The CIA director sought to leverage Saudi influence and affluence to support US initiatives that spanned the globe. Such objectives were both broad and critical, on issues ranging from Iran, Syria and Middle East peace, to Africa, Russia and even East Asia.

While Brennan could use his powers to assure that MbN was seen in the best light at the White House, he could do nothing to spare his partners vulnerabilities at home. And MbN, we now know, was not lacking for vulnerabilitiesnor enemies within his own family. He was an intimate of King Abdullah, the ailing monarch who died in 2015, but any Saudi with whom I have ever spoken appreciated royal family dynamics enough to know there wasnt a great deal of love lost between MbN and Crown Prince Salman and Salman's branch of the royal family. (Although Salman was Abdullahs brother, and thus MbNs paternal uncle, his and Abdullahs marriages created distinct bloodlines that resulted in friction among their respective heirs.)

It was known that the assassination attempt by Al Qaeda had left MbN dependent on narcotics. Riedel observed that the weight of the evidence I have seen is that he was more injured in the assassination attempt than was admitted, and that he then got onto a painkiller routine that was very addictive. I think that problem got progressively worse. In Saudi Arabia, this weakness proved his undoing: According to New York Times reporting, members of the Allegiance Council, a body of princes who approve changes to the line of succession, were told of MbNs drug problem in justifying what was, in practicality, a palace coup in June 2017, in which Mohammad bin Salman had his cousin placed under house arrest.

So within two years, the horses that the US had bet on were suddenly sidelined. The ailing Salman became king when Abdullah died in January, 2015; in June 2017, MbS engineered his palace coup, leaving the U.S. dealing not with the ally it had cultivated, but with an ascendant star it had known little about.

How did the intelligence community get it so wrong? Despite being himself a self-professed Saudi expert and career CIA analyst, trained to inform decision making with unbiased, intelligence-driven assessments, Brennan had politicized his role, and certainly the CIAs. As he told NPR in 2015, we dont steal secrets. Rather, he said we solicit. To his proud espionage service, trained to uncork information, this was a demoralizing sentiment, but it was deeply reflective of how Brennan fancied himself more policymaker and emissary than spymaster. Implicitly Brennan was not only redefining the Agencys mission, but grading its analytical homework. The facts, after all, had to align with Brennans recommendations to the president. Conveying too much about how the sausage was made could have jeopardized Brennans vision of American partnership with the Kingdom concerning Syria, Iran and Yemenissues all publicly placed within MbNs official portfolio.

Brennans recipe of half-measures, micromanagement and unreliability in delivering on his promises to MbN and other Middle East partners would wind up doing far more harm than good. Ultimately, his conduct torpedoed MbN, whose advisors were savvy enough to see the writing on the wall apparent in MbNs vulnerabilities and MbSs ambition, and turned their support to MbS. It could do little to spare their patron from the coming catastrophe to which he had long made himself vulnerable. With MbN out of power and a young, little-known prince in the ascendant, the United States now found itself out of the loop when it came to an important but troublesome ally.

Some seven years after backing the wrong horse, it's not clear if the US intelligence community has learned its lessons. And in Trump, it has a leader with another problem: an instinctive style in foreign policy, and an unwillingness to hear contradictory information from his own experts.

In Pompeo, during his tenure at both CIA and State, the president has a security and foreign policy adviser who lacks curiosity, depth or a willingness to introduce possibilities and reasoning that do not already align with his bosss point of view. Moreover, theres risk in stealing secrets, and Pompeo has shown no appetite to rock the boat and enrage the president for the sake of providing him with better information.

Unlike Brennan, current CIA director Gina Haspel has made no pretense of developing or leveraging engagement with MbS or any other Saudi star. Thats not necessarily a bad approach, so long as one empowers and enables those whose job it is to develop allies. But despite being a career operations officer and former Chief of Station herself, her approach is more suited to Europes stately capitals than the frontier. Haspel is no Near East hand, and not the type who can cultivate and leverage the personal relationships so critical in Saudi society. Sitting in a tent and affecting a smile, telling stories and swapping politically incorrect jokes over ceaseless cups of green Saudi coffee at hours well past bedtime is not Haspels style.

To her credit, Haspel has been more forthright in carrying the CIAs mail to the president concerning the Kingdoms realities. She did not divorce herself publicly from what the press reported to have been the CIAs confidence that MbS was culpable in the despicable 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Unfortunately, much like her predecessor, shes reluctant to look hard for bad news that might contradict or embarrass her boss. Indeed, Trump, who holds a rather positive personal impression of MbS, publicly derided his own CIAs assessment of the young crown prince. Were Haspel to support greater collection against the Kingdom, shed have to answer to Trump for opening a Pandora's box he preferred kept shut.

As president, Trump has been both boon and source of worry for MbS. Trump has backed him in some areas where another president would hold him accountableespecially the Khashoggi murder and Saudi conduct in Yemen. But at the same time, Trumps policies with regard to Syria, the Arab-Israeli conflict and Iran have been more problematic for the young Saudi ruler. The presidents deployment of US military personnel and material following the Iranian facilitated September 2019 attack on Saudi Arabias refineries was little assurance that American forces would come to the rescue if the Kingdom faced direct hostilities. Indeed, they have since been redeployed to support our own forces in Iraq and address North Koreas more threatening posture in East Asia.

Saudi Arabia is a complex and fascinating country with all manner of permutations among the various tribes, sub-tribes, cliques and regional bases of power. The House of Saud itself is hardly homogenous, with assorted blocs, bloodlines and drama that influences decision making but known best to insiders. It would behoove President Trump and the US to hedge their bets at least to some degree. After all, MbS currently operates under the protection of his elderly and weakened father. Upon King Salmans passing, MbS could, like his cousin, face the night of the long knives, as Riedel observes, if he is unable to comprehensively check each and every possible internal threat. And MBS is taking no chances.

In actions that reflected MbSs growing uncertainty over how long King Salman will be able to provide top cover, he ordered the March 2020 arrest of his fathers brother, former Crown Prince Ahmad bin Abdulaziz, along with his son Nayif Bin Ahmad. Former rival MbN was also detained, as was his brother Nawaf bin Nayif. All were accused of treason.

The U.S., which had eased Prince Ahmads return from self-imposed exile in London with security assurances, did nothing. It likewise offered no resistance to the detention of stalwart one-time partner MbN, in whom the U.S. had long invested. MbS followed by pressuring former Saudi intelligence official Dr. Saad Bin Khalid Bin Saad Allah Al Jabri to return to the Kingdom by arresting his two youngest children remaining in the country.

As a senior intelligence official and long-time MbN adviser, Jabri was a key Western partner. He got things done that advanced his countrys interests, as well as Americas, without gamesmanship or pretense. A man who the press correctly suggests knows where the bodies are buried, he prudently fled the Kingdom following MbNs removal and his own sacking. Despite his close U.S. ties, Jabri is hiding out in Canada, fearful that the Trump administration would deport him to Saudi Arabia.

By arresting those considered close to the U.S. or who otherwise believed themselves safe based on past American security assurances, MbS has shown his ruthlessness, and has sent an unmistakable message about the risks of cooperation with the U.S., the price of dissent and the powerlessness of America to protect its interests within the Kingdom. Meanwhile, the last thing Trump wants is illumination of such dynamics from the intelligence community, which could threaten his unconditional support to the Kingdom and its young prince.

MbS has his own domestic challenges. He needs to contend with the powerful Al-Shaykh family, which includes Saudi Arabias Grand Mufti, Abdulaziz bin Abdullah Al-Shaykh. Descendants of Muhammad bin Abd al-Wahhab, the 18th-century Wahhabi founder, the family formed a power-sharing arrangement nearly 300 years ago with the House of Saud, in which the Al-Shaykh family retains authority in religious matters in exchange for supporting the House of Saud's political authority. The families are also integrated by marriage. One must wonder how supportive the al-Shaykhs are of the social reforms MbS has imposed, allowing women to drive, music to play in restaurants and men and women to mix in public. All that now occurs without the watchful eyes of the since defanged Mutawa, Saudi Arabias once pervasive and intimidating religious police.

As in Iran prior to the Shahs fall, its not that CIA cant learn the realities that foreshadow Saudi Arabias future, or assess its decisionmaking today. Rather, its a deliberate choice. Knowledge incurs a level of responsibility, and the CIA steals only those secrets and produces assessments that its political leaders request. That the agencys 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment reported optimistically on the Kingdoms stability, reforms and economic progress reflects the reality that little was based on anything but public information, and that information usually comes from palace-controlled media and messaging.

Saudi Arabias 34 million people, resources, and military capabilities cant be ignored or wished away. The Kingdom has for years been spending between 9 and 13 percent of its annual GDP on military procurements, making it one of the best-equipped forces on the globe. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the International Institute for Strategic Studies regularly place Saudi Arabian military spending third after only the US and China.

Saudis economic gamesmanship as reflected by the oil machinations of this spring also demonstrates its ability to inflict economic pain on the U.S. as well, when it chooses. Without the foresight of the Covid pandemics forthcoming economic impact, MbSs measures were, like Russias, aimed at the competition felt from the U.S. energy sector, with collateral damage more broadly ensuing across the entire American economy.

See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, is a dangerous business model for the US to embrace concerning this important country, one that likewise reportedly has nuclear ambitions. Whatever the reality is in Saudi Arabia, US interests are best served with a cold look at the facts and more calculated leveraging of its influence. While its the presidents prerogative to chart US foreign policy, Americans have the right to see that their duly elected representatives have the opportunity to provide advice, consent and oversight.

Trump should be able to make the case for his positive relationship with the Crown Prince, but based on the facts our intelligence services are charged to provide, and which can withstand scrutiny. Not doing so risks the kinds of failures that have caused Americas greatest embarrassments in the Middle Eastfailing to see the coming of Irans 1979 revolution, and the manipulation of intelligence to justify the 2002 invasion of Iraqbut with perhaps even more frightening consequences yet to come.

Go here to see the original:
How John Brennan and Mike Pompeo Left the U.S. Blind to Saudi Problems - POLITICO

Southern Sense is conservative talk with Annie "The Radio Chick-A-Dee" Ubelis, as host and FL State Rep. Mike Hill, co-host. Informative, fun, irreverent and politically incorrect, you never know where we'll go, but you'll love the journey! Southern-Sense

Jim Simpson, Candidate MD Dist. 2 - "Jim loves Maryland and can't stand to see what the hard Left is doing to it.Here is a Republican ready,willingand able to bring a refreshingly conservative perspective to the people of the second congressional district. Governor Bob Ehrlich jimsimpsonforcongress

Jon Bebbibgton, author, "RAWHEAD" A historical and military novel based on a true story, a family of award-winning cheese makers on a large estate in Cheshire, England and wages of war during World War I.

Bob Lee game and wildfife enforcement officer. Hear him speak about resting alligators and going after poachers. bobhlee

Dr. Lee Edwards, the leading historian of the conservative movement. His latest piece, "The Case for Capitalism," along with his other writings in support of freedom/against socialism. heritage.org

Dedication: Officers Kaulike Kalama and Tiffany-Victoria Bilon Enriquez, End of Tour: January 19, 2020

Link:
Politics and People, Unsung Heroes brought to life. - BlogTalkRadio

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson doesnt follow the President of the United States on Twitter.

She was sitting in her basement office eating breakfast May 20 when her staff called to inform her that Donald Trump had called Benson a rogue Secretary of State, accusing her of mailing ballots to Michigan voters (in fact, they were ballot applications) and suggesting (incorrectly) that vote by mail would lead to fraud. Oh, and he threatened to withhold funding from Michigan over the issue. (Its unclear what funding he was referring to; the White House did not respond to a request for comment.)

What stood out about the episode to Benson, a Democrat, wasnt just how Trump had addressed her, the factual inaccuracies, or the threat tucked into his tweet. It was that she was hardly the only Secretary of State to take a step like this. States like Iowa, Georgia, Nebraska, and West Virginiawhich Trump won in 2016, and which have Republican Secretaries of Statehave taken similar actions in sending out applications for absentee ballots in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, at least for their primaries.

This is nothing other than me doing my job. And its the same policy, vote by mail, that voters on both sides of the aisle embrace, Benson says. To me it was just disingenuous that while you have Republican colleagues of mine doing the same thing, that I get singled out, in part Im sure because Im a Democrat. Im sure its relevant that Michigans playing an important, prominent role in this years election. It helps feed into a national narrative that there are shenanigans happening in states that are critical to the election. A false narrative.

Before the pandemic, five states (Washington, Utah, Hawaii, Oregon and Colorado) conducted all-mail elections, and three (California, North Dakota, and Nebraska, the latter with some exceptions) gave counties the ability to determine their rules, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Twenty-nine states plus Washington, D.C. have no-excuse absentee voting, which means voters do not need to provide a reason to request an absentee ballot.

But with the prospect of the coronavirus disrupting elections looming, others have moved to make vote-by-mail more easily accessible, with some taking action for primaries and others for the general election. Three states (Michigan, New Hampshire and California) have made changes to enhance vote-by-mail availability in November. Michigan announced it will send out absentee ballot applications for the general election. New Hampshire, which typically is not a no-excuse absentee voting state, decided to allow absentee voting in November if the pandemic is still a factor, a decision announced by the states Republican governor. And California will distribute vote-by-mail ballots to all of its registered voters.

In recent weeks, Trump has seized on these changes, turning a process designed to safeguard voters health and ballot access into a political wedge, arguing falsely that it will lead to widespread voter fraud and creating fear among election experts that the President is undermining the legitimacy of the contest. The irony in this goes beyond the fact that Trump often votes by mail himself. There is little evidence, experts say, that either party benefits politically from allowing citizens to vote by mail, while places that use it see increased voter turnout overall. And its not just Democrats pushing the idea: Republican Secretaries of State and other executives in red states have also employed it.

Im bumfuzzled by the Presidents objections to vote by mail. Republicans historically have done fine if not better in heavy-mail scenarios, says Michael Steel, a Republican strategist. They disproportionately tend to be used by older voters who disproportionately tend to vote Republican.

Its kind of a mystery why hes picked this particular fight to have at this particular time with a pandemic raging and a very tight election, Steel adds. If I were the President, I would be encouraging the Republican Party nationally and across the country to invest in the infrastructure to make sure that we can vote by mail successfully.

You dont need to reach back very far to find an example of vote-by-mail helping Republicans. The May special election in Californias 25th congressional district was mostly conducted by mail. Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom had ballots and prepaid postage-return envelopes sent to every registered voter. An analysis by Political Data Inc., a voter data firm, showed that of the approximately 425,000 ballots sent to all voters, 34% were mailed back in. Though more ballots went out to Democrats, Republicans returned them at a higher rate. The seat, previously held by a Democrat, was won by the Republican candidate, Mike Garcia.

Which isnt to say vote-by-mail favors Republicans, either. A study published earlier this spring by Stanford University examined counties in a handful of states that implemented vote-by-mail programs and concluded vote by mail does not appear to increase either partys vote share. The researchers noted its difficult to extrapolate their findings to wider use during a pandemic. But generally, vote by mail doesnt overwhelmingly advantage one party over the other, says Daniel Thompson, a PhD candidate at Stanford and the papers lead author.

In Michigans May 5 county and municipal elections, turnout was double past May contests, coming in at 25% of eligible voters, with 99% of those who cast a ballot doing so by mail. Vote-by-mail was equally popular in Republican and Democratic communties, Benson said. The ability to vote by mail actually significantly increased turnout across the board.

Despite this, many of Trumps allies have followed suit in attacking the process. The Republican National Committee, the National Republican Campaign Committee, and the California GOP this week filed a lawsuit against Newsom and Secretary of State Alex Padilla over expanding vote-by-mail in California, arguing it would invite fraud, coercion, theft, and otherwise illegitimate voting. Lawsuits over voting rights are playing out in several states, including Texas, where Democrats also sought to expand vote by mail.

Sam Reed, an advocate for vote-by-mail who served from 2001 to 2013 as a Republican Secretary of State in Washington, says suggesting that vote by mail will lead to voter fraud is totally incorrect. He pointed to checks in place to avoid it, like election staff taking training from the state police on how to verify signatures. We have really tight systems, Reed says.

Yet Trump has a history of pushing false narratives about voter fraud. He has long propagated conspiracy theories of widespread voter fraud despite the fact that studies have found it to be rare. A voter fraud commission the President put in place was disbanded by January 2018 with nothing to show for it.

The Presidents tweets on voter fraud even led to Twitter attempting to fact check him for the first time on Tuesday. In response to a tweet claiming in part that Mail boxes will be robbed, ballots will be forged & even illegally printed out & fraudulently signed, the social media platform added a label directing users to Get the facts about mail-in ballots.

Asked on Thursday by TIME whether the Presidents comments on vote-by-mail were an effort to lay groundwork to cast doubt on November election results, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany responded: No, hes certainly not doing that.

With reporting by Brian Bennett.

Thank you! For your security, we've sent a confirmation email to the address you entered. Click the link to confirm your subscription and begin receiving our newsletters. If you don't get the confirmation within 10 minutes, please check your spam folder.

Write to Lissandra Villa at lissandra.villa@time.com.

Visit link:
Donald Trump Is Waging War on Vote-By-Mail. The Facts Don't Support It - TIME

President Trump has finally goaded Twitter into starting the fight that Trump has been itching to have. Unfortunately for the social media giant, its a fight Twitter cannot win anymore and one that Trump and his allies do not want to end.

Over the course of his term, the president has flouted Twitters terms of service countless times with impunity as hes used the platform to launch personal attacks and wildly mislead the public (often with bold but false assertions that he eventually deletes). On Tuesday, Twitter whose leadership moves with tectonic speed finally called him on it, flagging two of his posts about vote-by-mail fraud in California as potentially misleading.

Naturally, Trump responded with outrage, accusing Twitter of trying to sway voters:

On Wednesday, Trump showed more of his cards. By pushing back against his tweets on voter fraud, Trump argued, Twitter was confirming its bias against conservatives:

The rhetorical jujitsu on display is, you have to admit, masterful. As is the case with so many of those who defy Trump, Twitter is playing checkers and Trump is playing Warzone.

For starters, Twitter singled out the wrong tweets. As distorted and factually wrong as Trumps tweets about Californias mail-in voting system were, they werent the ones that had provoked a groundswell of public outrage. Those would be the smear campaign Trump was simultaneously waging against MSNBCs Joe Scarborough, vaguely accusing the former congressman of having been involved in the death of a staffer 20 years ago. The staffers widower asked Twitter to take those tweets down, and Twitter refused.

More important, though, was the timing. Twitter has ignored Trumps line-crossing for so long that any move it makes now invites an accusation that its trying to influence voters. Had it taken action the first time the president abused its platform, it would have set a precedent that no one was above Twitter rules. By waiting until now, it has delivered exactly the opposite message.

Some readers might argue that the public has an interest in hearing whatever the president wants to say, on any platform. Thats nonsense. The president has a unique platform of his own that he can use at any hour of any day. When he ventures onto Twitter, Facebook or any other nongovernmental space, he is leveraging someone elses resources to broadcast his thoughts. He has no entitlement to do so no one does.

Under a provision of federal communications law known as Section 230, Twitter has a clear right to enforce its terms of service against any user who violates them. And given that its a private company,and not an arm of government, there are no 1st Amendment issues in play. In fact, Twitter has its own 1st Amendment speech right to mark offending tweets as it sees fit.

But conservatives have campaigned steadily in recent years to turn those rights into liabilities, arguing that Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other online powerhouses have been biased against their tribe. Never mind that the supposed targets of this alleged bias have been extremists like Alex Jones of Infowars (and Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan, not exactly a Republican). The point is to play the victim card over and over, so that Twitter and company will hesitate to act even against obviously improper posts.

The fact that it took Twitter until Tuesday to act and that it used the blandest possible language in flagging Trumps tweets shows how well conservatives have worked the refs.

So what might Trumps big action be? He cant simply create a new watchdog to oversee the tech giants because, again, they are protected by Section 230. But there may be a legislative play; some Republicans (and some Democrats) are trying to weaken or even undo that shield because they believe it protects too much bad behavior. Thats why Congress carved a hole in Section 230 two years ago in the name of fighting sex trafficking.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has been in the vanguard of the effort to neuter Section 230, pushing a bill that would force tech companies to earn the laws liability shield by proving to a supermajority of the Federal Trade Commission every two years that their algorithms and content removal practices are politically neutral. Its a ridiculous idea that would defeat the whole purpose of Section 230, which was to enable companies to enforce their terms of service. Not only do we not want a political body to decide what is and isnt politically neutral, but any objective measure could be easily gamed. If Twitter removes 100 tweets by neo-Nazis but only 10 by communists, does that mean that Twitter is biased against the far right? Or that neo-Nazis simply spew more hate on the platform?

The bill would put so much power into the hands of a minority of the members of the FTC that it seems unlikely to obtain the bipartisan support needed to make it through the Senate. But as Trump shows, the point here isnt to change the law. Its to be able to complain, continually, that the deck is stacked against Republicans and by doing so, making sure that few if any cards get played.

See more here:
Twitter waited too long to enforce its rules on Trump - Los Angeles Times

Brendan Smialowski / Getty Images

US President Donald Trump speaks as US Attorney General William Barr listens before signing an executive order on social media companies in the Oval Office on May 28.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order targeting social media companies on Thursday. The move came after Twitter fact-checked two of his tweets as containing "potentially misleading misinformation."

"Twitter now selectively decides to place a warning label on certain tweets in a manner that clearly reflects political bias," the order reads. "Twitter seems never to have placed such a label on another politicians tweet. As recently as last week, Representative Adam Schiff was continuing to mislead his followers by peddling the long-disproved Russian Collusion Hoax, and Twitter did not flag those tweets. Unsurprisingly, its officer in charge of so-called Site Integrity has flaunted his political bias in his own tweets."

This will be a Big Day for Social Media and FAIRNESS! the president tweeted on Thursday morning before attacking by name the Twitter employee whom some conservatives have falsely claimed was responsible for adding the fact-check label to his tweets.

While signing the executive order on Thursday, the president said he would shut down Twitter if his lawyers found a way to do it. "I'd have to go through a legal process," he told reporters.

Trumps executive order will affect Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects online platforms like Facebook and Twitter from being held liable for content posted by their users. The 1996 law states: "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

US Attorney General William Barr said Thursday that the executive order will not revoke Section 230, but did not further explain how the order would impact it, only saying that social media companies have stretched the meaning of its original intention. The president argued on Thursday that once a platform like Twitter edits content, it "ceases to become a neutral public platform and becomes an editor with a viewpoint."

The president continued the feud late on Thursday night, tweeting, ".@Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is today criticizing Twitter. We have a different policy than Twitter on this. I believe strongly that Facebook shouldnt be the arbiter of truth of everything that people say online. Did Twitter criticize Obama for his you can keep your Dr.?

On Thursday evening, Twitter released a statement in which the company said, "This EO is a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law. #Section230 protects American innovation and freedom of expression, and its underpinned by democratic values. Attempts to unilaterally erode it threaten the future of online speech and Internet freedoms."

Twitter slapped Trump on the wrist. Trump responds with an attempt to blow up the entire internet.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has dubbed Section 230 the one of the most valuable tools for protecting freedom of expression. Passed following two court decisions that forced early internet services to choose between moderating content and enjoying immunity from being sued over what users posted on them, Section 230 solved the "moderator's dilemma" by allowing internet services to both patrol user-generated content and sidestep lawsuits for content they hosted.

Although the Communications Decency Act was passed on a bipartisan basis, Jeff Kosseff, assistant professor of cybersecurity law at the United States Naval Academy, told BuzzFeed News that Section 230 has been stuck for years in a political purgatory. You have one contingent saying there is too much moderation, he said, but then you have another contingent saying overall there is not enough moderation.

But legal experts said that regardless of whether the provision needed to be changed, Trump's action Thursday will add even more confusion to what responsibility platforms have about what is posted in their communities.

How [Trumps executive order] would work is very unclear. If there are effects, it will take a long time and be likely struck down by the courts, Katie Fallow, senior staff attorney at Columbia Universitys Knight First Amendment Institute, told BuzzFeed News. I believe the purpose of this is to put a burden on the social media companies.

Fallow said it was ironic that the executive order treats Twitter, a private company, as a public square where people have free speech rights protected by the First Amendment when conservatives historically have opposed government regulation of speech on private property.

The executive order is unlikely to have many tangible effects, according to Eric Goldman, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law. It's largely atmospherics. It's largely performative, he told BuzzFeed News.

Twitter slapped Trump on the wrist, Goldman said. Trump responds with an attempt to blow up the entire internet.

President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order on social media companies in the Oval Office on May 28.

In advance of Trumps announcement, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel released a statement on Thursday saying an order pulling the agency into Trumps spat with Twitter was a bad idea.

This does not work. Social media can be frustrating. But an Executive Order that would turn the Federal Communications Commission into the Presidents speech police is not the answer. Its time for those in Washington to speak up for the First Amendment. History wont be kind to silence, Rosenworcel said.

In his remarks, the president made it clear that the order was retaliation for Twitter fact-checking his tweets. The executive order says that the "Attorney General shall develop a proposal for Federal legislation that would be useful to promote the policy objectives of this order."

Attorney General Bill Barr has been exploring options to change Section 230 for months. In a December speech, Barr said the Justice Department had started thinking critically about the issue, describing social media companies relative immunity as staggering.

I think the leaked order is trolling all these legal scholars.

But the Department of Justices focus, according to Barrs speeches, has been less about political bias and more about whether or not social media companies are doing enough to make the internet safe. In February, the Department of Justice held a workshop on the future of Section 230. Barr said in his opening remarks that the threat of lawsuits could force social media companies to do more to limit speech that facilitated terrorism and human trafficking; the issue of whether Twitter and other platforms were targeting conservative speech barely came up, according to coverage of the workshop by the Verge.

Mary Anne Franks, the president of the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative and a member of Twitter's Trust and Safety Council, criticized Trumps order, saying it would "reinforce the baseless claim that conservatives are being discriminated against on social media, she told BuzzFeed News.

Franks also took issue with the way the executive order was announced: first by press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to reporters on a flight back to Washington on Wednesday night and then leaked later that evening.

I think the leaked order is trolling all these legal scholars, Franks said.

Franks didnt think the executive order would change much in the law, but it would influence how online platforms carry out their fact-checks and moderate content.

It's meant to have a cultural impact, not a legal impact, she said. All they did was slap a tiny label on something that will probably not have any real effect except make him angry. It's really a shame this really modest step in that direction has set this off.

Ahead of the executive orders signing on Thursday morning, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg differentiated his company from Twitter, saying during a Fox News interview that Facebook should not be an arbiter of truth.

Private companies probably shouldn't be, especially these platform companies, shouldn't be in the position of doing that, he said, adding, In general, I think a government choosing to censor a platform because they're worried about censorship doesn't exactly strike me as the right reflex there.

In a statement late on Thursday, Facebook spokesperson Liz Bourgeois said that repealing or limiting Section 230 would "restrict more speech online, not less."

The Trump fact-check on Twitter infuriated Republicans and set off waves of abuse at an employee incorrectly believed to be responsible for applying the label.

On Wednesday evening, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defended the Trump fact-check, tweeting, "Fact check: there is someone ultimately accountable for our actions as a company, and thats me. Please leave our employees out of this. Well continue to point out incorrect or disputed information about elections globally. And we will admit to and own any mistakes we make."

The dispute between Trump and Twitter also included members of Congress.

The law still protects social media companies like @Twitter because they are considered forums not publishers, Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted on Tuesday. But if they have now decided to exercise an editorial role like a publisher then they should no longer be shielded from liability & treated as publishers under the law.

On Wednesday, Sen. Josh Hawley shared an open letter to Dorsey.

.@jack a few questions for you below, he wrote. Bottom line: Why should @twitter continue to get special treatment from government as a mere distributor of other peoples content if you are going to editorialize and comment like a publisher? Shouldnt you be treated like publisher?

Last year, Hawley introduced legislation to amend Section 230 to revoke what he called the immunity big tech companies receive ... unless they submit to an external audit that proves by clear and convincing evidence that their algorithms and content-removal practices are politically neutral.

He said on Tuesday that he plans to introduce similar legislation again.

At the time of its passage, the liability shield was not tied to an expectation that platforms would act in a neutral manner toward political speech that they hosted. The law's text makes no such requirement either. But conservatives like Hawley have recently attempted to tie the two together, arguing that platforms should only enjoy immunity from lawsuits if they act in a politically neutral fashion.

President Donald Trump speaks before signing an executive order on social media companies in the Oval Office on May 28.

In a statement last June, Hawley said, With Section 230, tech companies get a sweetheart deal that no other industry enjoys: complete exemption from traditional publisher liability in exchange for providing a forum free of political censorship. Unfortunately, and unsurprisingly, big tech has failed to hold up its end of the bargain.

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who drafted Section 230 along with former Republican Rep. Chris Cox, said in an interview with BuzzFeed News Thursday that he thinks its clear Trump is targeting the provision in his order because it protects private businesses right not to have to play host to his lying.

The bottom line is, I have warned for years the administration was threatening 230 in order to chill speech, bully, you know, companies Facebook and YouTube and Twitter into giving him favorable treatment, and today he proved that that take was right, Wyden said.

In February of last year, Barr argued that [t]echnology has changed in ways that no one, including the drafters of Section 230, could have imagined. But Wyden said he thinks Barrs argument is less about the changing landscape of the internet and more about his personal agenda.

I think Barrs agenda has been really clear from the beginning. What he has been interested in is a speech control program, because he, like the president, feels that any coverage that isnt favorable to him is somehow a crime, he said.

The attack on Section 230 is also antithetical to conservative principles, the senator argued.

And the idea that these conservative officials think that the government should take control of private companies and dictate exactly how they operate, that just turns on his head what you think conservative principles are all about, he said. Now, I understand these conservative politicians are upset that there are large corporations don't toe their party line, and then when they talk about it shout about it it's popular with their base. But theyre just plain wrong.

Wyden said hes particularly bothered by the argument some conservatives have made that Section 230 requires platforms to be neutral, something the law itself, he noted, doesnt say at all. He also said hes disturbed by the idea of a panel deciding what constitutes neutrality or discrimination against conservative ideas.

Nathaniel Persily, a professor at Stanford Law School, told BuzzFeed News that Trumps executive order is the first missive in a larger battle over whether Section 230 is a special privilege that's given to internet platforms or whether it's a core extension of the First Amendment.

Persily said an attack on Section 230 was bound to happen, whether from the right or left.

This reads like a stream of consciousness tweetstorm that some poor staffer had to turn into the form of an executive order.

In January, Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden told the New York Times he also wanted to revoke Section 230, saying, "The idea that its a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one."

On Thursday, Biden for President Spokesperson Bill Russo told BuzzFeed News that the executive order was an "extreme abuse of power."

"It will not be the position of any future Biden Administration or any other administration that is aware of our basic constitutional structure that the First Amendment means private companies must provide a venue for, and amplification of, the President's falsehoods, lest they become the subject of coordinated retaliation by the federal government. Joe Biden understands that no President should use Executive Orders as menus to abuse the power of the presidency," he said.

Russo added that "Vice President Biden believes that social media companies should be held accountable for disseminating content they know to be false, just as any other private company would be."

Regardless of what comes of the executive order, Trump's action is already being celebrated in right-wing media and among his base online.

Daphne Keller, director of the program on platform regulation for Stanfords Cyber Policy Center, told BuzzFeed News that the executive order was political theater. This reads like a stream of consciousness tweetstorm that some poor staffer had to turn into the form of an executive order, she said.

Keller said that an informed public debate about the power of platforms over public discourse was important. But thats not what this executive order had led to.

This is a distraction, she said. We have only ourselves to blame if it makes us avert our gaze from the crises that are right in front of us: 100,000 Americans dead in a profoundly mismanaged pandemic, for example, or the potential failure of democratic process in the 2020 elections.

Addy Baird and Zoe Tillman contributed reporting to this story.

The rest is here:
Its Unclear What Trumps Section 230 Executive Order Will Do Beyond Bully Social Media Companies - BuzzFeed News

"Is Soros Behind the War on Hydroxychloroquine?" So queried a headlineon the U.S. evangelicals-orientedBreaking Israel Newssiteearlier this week. Thepiece suggests that George Soros, the Hungarian-born American billionaire philanthropist, is set to benefitboth financiallyfrom the coronavirus pandemic,andpolitically byundermining President Donald Trump.

The U.S.president has been pushing use of hydroxychloroquine as an antidote to,or preventative measure against,the virus andlast week announcedthat he was taking it himself.

"A bit of research into the separate elements shows some disturbing connections, indicating the media war against hydroxychloroquine may be backed by some nefarious forces," the piece opens.

There is, to be clear, no war on hydroxychloroquine, but rather a plethora of warnings of itsserious side effectsincluding ahigher risk of heart problems and even death. The World Health Organizaton has halted clinical trials for the drug, and France has just banned its use in COVID-19 cases, citing patient safety concerns.

The somewhat obscure Breaking News Israel is hardly alone in fingering Soros as the hidden hand behind COVID-19: the theory is all over pro-Trump hard right social media and right-wing news platforms with soft spots for conspiracy theories from Gateway Pundit to Trumps newest best friend, One America Network.

How should we understand this latest iteration of the storied and ever-versatile anti-Soros smear campaign, which invariably paint himasringleader ofaglobalconspiratorial plot?

Most clearly,the Soros as hydroxychloroquine antagonist conspiracy theory has something in common with many a Soros conspiracy theory.

We've got more newsletters we think you'll find interesting.

Please try again later.

The email address you have provided is already registered.

While Soros himself, as a financier, Jew and donor to liberal causes, is the initial target, "Soros" has also become a metonym for any opposition to the worldview not just of full-time conspiracy theorists, but also of more mainstream and powerful politicians and commentators. Soros conspiracies are thus also a tool to delegitimize that opposition.

Soroshimselfis, of course, the most obvious target.

Today, as protesters across the United States take to the streets against police brutality, the name George Soros trends on Twitter;right-wingersassert that these protesters are notgenuinely expressinggrief and anger about the continued killing of black Americans by police officers, but aredemonstratingbecause they were put up to it by Soros. Some prominent conservatives areeven sayingSoros should be arrested.

Nor is this a wholly 2020 phenomenon. In 2018, ahead ofthe U.S.midterms,Soros was blamed for everything-from protests against then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh to a migrant caravan threatening to "invade" Americas southern border.

Cesar Sayoc mailed Soros, among other high-profile and liberal-leaning figures, a pipe bomb; his social media accounts were full of anti-Semitic and pro-Trump memes, one of which described Soros as a "Judeo-plutocratic Bolshevik Zionist."The Pittsburgh synagogue shooter claimed Soros was secretly behindthe migrant caravan. He killed 11 Jews in prayer whom he blamed for participating in the plot.

That same year, citing "an increasingly repressive political and legal environment in Hungary," Open Society Foundations, Soross philanthropic operation,announceditsinternational operations would move from Budapest to Berlin.Clearly, Soros himself is a key subject of these conspiracy theories and they directlyimpact himand his philanthropic work.

But Soros, whose net worth is estimated to be $8.3 billion, is not the only victim. There are many otherswho dont have billions and who are alsodamagedby Soros conspiracy theories.

To take thehydroxychloroquinecoronavirus example: Its not just Soros whos being attacked. Its also an attemptto delegitimize scienceitself(as being contaminated by "Soros")while boosting a right-wing political force.

Insinuating a Soros plot is adeliberatedistraction fromthe 100,000 (and counting)Americandead. It is an excuse not to take responsibility, a pivot bya president who refused to take the virus seriouslyatfirst, and now recommendspoppinga miracle pill that could kill them.

Back in2018,theNew York Postjumped on the "Soros connection" oftwo women who confrontedthen-SenatorJeff Flake over the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh, accused of attempted sexual assault. "Look who was behind the Jeff Flake elevator setup," the headlineread, the implication being that Soros pushed the two women to confront the senator.

That the centerthat employed the protestorsreceived money from Open Society was a fact. But the idea that Soros was behind that particular confrontation,and the protests more generally,was not only untrue, but insulting toa substantial number ofpeople, some themselves survivors of sexual assault, whofreely chose to speakup against Kavanaughsspeedyconfirmation.The Soros tropewas more than insulting; it was delegitimizing.

The same goes for Rudy Giulianis unhinged attack on SorossJewishness late last year. After accusing Soros of controlling U.S. diplomats, he declared, "Soros is hardly a Jew. Im more of a Jew than Soros is. He doesnt belong to a synagogue, he doesnt support Israel, hes an enemy of Israel. Hes a horrible human being." Giuliani was talking about Soros the individual, and handily pointing out his Jewish origins for an appreciative hard right but he wasalsousing "Soros" to slur and delegitimize Democrat-voting U.S. Jews(some 80 percent of American Jews in the 2018 midterms).

Its no accident that Donald Trump used the same tack of trying to police and demean his Jewish political opponents a few months earlier, announcing that voting for a Democrat means, "you're being disloyal to Jewish people and you're being very disloyal to Israel."

The United States is hardly alone inpushing conspiracy theories that smearSoros, yes, butalso push the people supported by his philanthropy further into the margins.

TheHungarianparliament(which has alreadypassedthe "Stop Soros" law criminalizing assistance to undocumented immigrants) recently ratified legislation(ostensibly due to the coronavirus pandemic) whichgavePrime Minister Viktor Orbn unchecked power. Orbnsaidon state radio that those critical of the move were part of a network led by Soroswhose tentacles reached deep into the Brussels bureacracy.

Like Orbansprevious attacks on Soros, thisconspiracy theory smacks of anti-Semitism, with its whispers of a Jewish financier controlling politicians all over the world, and the nefarious intention to turn nation-states more "cosmopolitan," or (((globalist.))) Butit does something else, too: it renders moot any criticism and any critics of Orbns parliamentary power grab.

It was in Budapest, incidentally, that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus son, Yair Netanyahu, said that "radical" Soros organizations were "destroying Israel from the insideworking day and night with an unlimited budget to rob the country of its Jewish identity."

Thats a conscious insult aimed at Soros.But more significantly, it is also aboutdelegitimizingthose causes Soros and Open Society support in Israeland the Palestinian territories, such as providingscholarships forPalestinianstudents in the West Bank and Gazaandfunding human rights groups usingthejudicial systemto challenge discrimination. If Soross efforts are destructive, the thinking goes, then thesePalestinianstudents andIsraeliactivists are, too.

And while the right wingprovides themostnotoriousexamples of blaming the meta-Soros-for dissent and to strip activists of agency, there are offenders on the left, too.

When, for example, Max Blumenthal goes on The Jimmy Dore Show toallegethat Soros is funding regime change in Venezuela and Hong Kong, hereduces those protesting,at great personal risk,to mere pawns.

Thousands in Hong Kong have taken to the streets to protest national security lawsimposedby Beijing. To say that they are Soros stooges(or shills) removes their individual capacity and volition to think, choose, and take sides. It also acts to whitewash and legitimize the authoritarian regimes against whom theyre protesting.

Conspiracy theories about Soros, ubiquitous though they are,must bedisputed, andnot only because they are factually incorrect, or because they are unfair to one man. They arealsounfair tothemany men and women whom these conspiracy theoriespatronize,delegitimizeand, often, furthermarginalize.

These theories arent only about increasingly vicious political partisanship, but about the attempt to strip political agency from those with dissenting views, to subvert their standing and, sometimes, even to endanger them.

Those pushing theSorosconspiracy theoriesare well aware of their malign power.The rest of us need tobe, too.

Emily Tamkin is the U.S.editor at the New Statesman and the author of the forthcoming book,The Influence of Soros: Politics, Power, and the Struggle for an Open Society. Twitter:@emilyctamkin

This op-ed was updated on 31 May 2020 to reflect the expansion of the Soros conspiracy theory to include protests following George Floyds death

More:
COVID-19 to George Floyd to caravans: Is Soros now the worlds most versatile, dangerous conspiracy theory? - Haaretz