Hillary Clinton believes that were it not for James Comey, Russia, Wikileaks, Facebook, fake news, voter ID laws, or America’s “endemic” sexism and misogyny, she would currently be president of the United States.
In just under two minutes, Clinton rattled off eight separate excuses for losing the 2016 election.
Clinton claims that, “If the election were on October 27, I would be your president,” singling out James Comey in particular for re-opening an investigation into her mishandling of classified material. (Others notably argue that Comey kept Clinton in the campaign by preemptively exonerating Clinton before the FBI had concluded its own investigation.)
“I went from 26 points ahead to 13 points ahead, and I needed about 18 points in order to be sure to win Pennsylvania,” Clinton said of the impact of Comey’s notorious letter explaining he was re-opening the investigation. “I watched how analysts who I have a great deal of respect for, like Nate Silver, burrowed into all the data and said that ‘but for that Comey letter, she would have won.'”
“So it was very personal to me,” she said in an interview with CBS’s Jane Pauley. “I think my general election prospects were badly damaged because of that, so that even though I was starting to come back, it was not enough time to overcome it.”
Clinton also rattled off Russia, Wikileaks, and even fake news as other culprits in her failed presidential run.
“But even though [the Comey letter] was the primary blow to my campaign at the very end, it has to be looked at in context — with the Russians weaponizing information, negative stories about me; this whole Wikileaks beginning to leak in early October of John Podesta’s emails — which if you read them all were, they’re pretty anodyne, but they were taken out of context; stories were made up about them.”
Clinton then cited a recent story about Facebook accepting advertising from a Russian firm as another reason for her loss.
“We now know that Facebook was taking money from Russian companies to run negative stories about me,” she continued. “If you look at all of this, yes, it affected me and my campaign. But I am more concerned now going forward that we haven’t come to grips with what it means for future elections.”
In comments that echo Donald Trump’s claims that the votes from illegal aliens affected the vote totals, Clinton likewise claims that Republican-led “voter suppression” enabled Trump to win toss-up states.
“I would also add that the voter suppression that we now know had been in the works and really put into effect in a lot of states like Wisconsin and North Carolina, etc., played a role,” she said.”
And she blamed America’s “sexism and misogyny, which are endemic to our society. And certainly as I write in my chapter called ‘On Being a Woman in Politics,’ have to be factored in as well.”
RELATED: Clinton Bizarrely Lists Putin’s ‘White’ Race First Among His Negative Qualities
SAN FRANCISCO — Facebook, Google and Twitter are being sued by the families of three victims slain in the mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub for allegedly providing “material support” to the Islamic State.
The lawsuit, first reported by Fox News, was filed Monday in federal court in the eastern district of Michigan on behalf of the families of Tevin Crosby, Javier Jorge-Reyes and Juan Ramon Guerrero.
The lawsuit is the latest to target popular Internet services for making it too easy for the Islamic State to spread its message. In June, the family of a California college student killed in last year’s terrorist attacks in Paris sued Facebook, Google and Twitter. Keith Altman, the attorney representing the three families in the Orlando nightclub lawsuit, also represents the family of that student, Nohemi Gonzalez, in the Paris terrorist attacks lawsuit.
The Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL, uses popular Internet services such as Facebook, Twitter and Google’s YouTube to spread propaganda, to attract and train new recruits, to celebrate terrorist attacks and publicize executions.
Earlier this month, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Twitter said they would share a database of terror images and videos to more quickly remove terrorism content.
Omar Mateen opened fire inside Orlando’s Pulse nightclub in June, killing 49 patrons and injuring 53 others in one of the deadliest shooting sprees in U.S. history. A 29-year-old security guard who pledged his allegiance to ISIS, Mateen was not a member of the terrorist group but had been inspired by it.
“Without Defendants Twitter, Facebook, and Google (YouTube), the explosive growth of ISIS over the last few years into the most feared terrorist group in the world would not have been possible,” the lawsuit alleges.
Facebook declined to comment. Google and Twitter did not respond to requests for comment.
The biggest hurdle the lawsuit faces is a federal law that shields publishers from liability for the speech of others.
In an interview, Altman said Facebook, Google and Twitter should be held liable for what users post on their services because they pair content with advertising.
“They create unique content by combining ISIS postings with advertisements in a way that is specifically targeted at the viewer,” the lawsuit alleges. “Defendants share revenue with ISIS for its content and profit from ISIS postings through advertising revenue.”
Earlier this month, Altman revised his lawsuit on behalf of Gonzalez’s family to allege there, too, that the companies created “original content.”
“Although defendants have not created the posting, nor have they created the advertisement, defendants have created new unique content by choosing which advertisement to combine with the posting,” the lawsuit contends.
Source: Pamela Geller | Breitbart |
There is a new initiative in Germany that donates one euro for every “racist” (Islam is not a race) anti-migrant comment on the Internet.
The “Hate Helps” propaganda campaign is organized by an NGO called Demokratische Kultur (ZDK), otherwise known as the Orwellian “Center for Democratic Action” in Germany. And it’s being funded by Facebook and Sky Germany. They will pay 1€ (euro) for each negative post about immigrants.
Sky Germany is not the same entity as Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News, although Rupert’s son, James Murdoch, is chairman of its supervisory board. Sky Germany mainly broadcasts soccer games and other sports – but even it is jumping into the political realm and bowing down to the new propaganda initiative.
This is essentially a payment of the jizya, the tribute money that subservient and subjugated non-Muslims must pay to their Muslim overlords under Islamic law. In this case, the money goes to various refugee help programs and — get this — an organization that helps people get out of the “nazi scene” (an opt-out scheme).
Meanwhile, the German yellow press newspaper Bild is publishing the names of offenders in the media. Perhaps the thousands of Muslim migrants who have gone AWOL from the refugee camps can hunt them down.
Source: The Washington Times | Stephen Dinan |
Even the massive Republican presidential field isn’t enough to contain Donald Trump, the billionaire businessman who on Tuesday inserted himself into Democrats’ race as well by live-tweeting their first presidential debate.
It’s another indication of just how thoroughly he has come to dominate the battle for the White House and how Republican and Democratic candidates have come to realize that their path to the White House runs through Mr. Trump.
The billionaire is enjoying every minute of it, gloating over his 4.4 million followers on Twitter and millions more on Facebook, whom he regaled with thoughts on what he pronounced — even before it started — a “boring” Democratic debate.
“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin is not feeling too nervous or scared,”Mr. Trump said in a post as the candidates introduced themselves at the top of the CNN broadcast.
“@releafpen: Dem debate message summary = More free handouts. They will be voting in droves. We need to get out and vote Trump BIG TIME!”
Notice that illegal immigrants will be given ObamaCare and free college tuition but nothing has been mentioned about our VETERANS #DemDebate
A police representative warned that Americans could be arrested for bad language or insulting someone on Facebook after a woman was charged with “harassment by computer” for posting a selfie of herself holding a gun.
The controversy began when 26-year-old Kristin Holmes got into a Facebook argument with a woman who had mistaken her for someone else.
Holmes posted an image of herself pointing a gun at the camera alongside the words, “I’ll post a few actual pics of me so you know the difference when you come find me.”
Holmes later realized that the picture was “a little bit intimidating” and took it down, but police later arrested her and charged her with a class 1 misdemeanor. Holmes now faces up to one year in prison and/or a $2,500 fine.
“It wasn’t a threat. I thought it was a funny picture….What happened to freedom of speech?” Holmes told WWBT.
However, just as alarming as Holmes being arrested were comments made by Kevin Carroll, president of the Virginia Fraternal Order of Police.
“Free speech doesn’t say you have the right to insult somebody,” Carroll told the NY Daily News.
During a WWBT interview, Carroll also said that using bad language online should also be considered a crime.
“It’s actually against the law to say it in public. It’s a part of the disorderly conduct statute. If it’s against the law to say it in public why wouldn’t it be against the law to say it to someone through a computer?” said Carroll, who also told NBC News there is “no such thing as a petty crime”.
This is by no means the first time Americans have been arrested for making comments on Facebook.
The most egregious example occurred back in 2012 when former Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Brandon Raub was kidnapped from his home by police, FBI and Secret Service agents and forcibly incarcerated in a psychiatric ward by authorities in Virginia in response to Facebook posts which the FBI deemed “terrorist” in nature.
Raub’s posts questioned the official story behind 9/11 and referred to corruption within the U.S. government.
The framework process supposedly protects personal data. In 2013, however, it was discovered the NSA and its British counterpart — the GCHQ, short for Government Communications Headquarters — had siphoned off data transfers by tapping directly into under sea cable networks.
In fact, according to a lawyer representing the Austrian government before the CJEU, Safe Harbor is better suited for pirates than the protection of data of EU citizens. In other words, the system was designed to be hijacked by the NSA and GCHQ.
“You might consider closing your Facebook account if you have one,” Schima told attorney-general Yves Bot at the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.
Edward Snowden had earlier revealed that the NSA’s notorious PRISM program had provided access to a number of US tech companies and social media services, including Facebook.
Facebook, Apple and Google have argued they had no idea the NSA was illegally vacuuming up customer data. Last year, however, Rajesh De, the NSA’s general counsel, said the companies knew about the practice.
In 2009, Mark Zuckerberg told the world Facebook is in essence a platform for harvesting data and conducting surveillance.
“People have really gotten comfortable sharing more information and different kinds,” he told an audience at the 2009 Crunchies Awards ceremonies in San Francisco. Zuckerberg said “sharing” data — that is, surrendering private data to the government and corporations — has become the “social norm.”
In 2007, Matt Greenop documented Facebook’s indirect connection to the CIA and the military industrial and now surveillance complex:
Facebook’s first round of venture capital funding ($500,000) came from former Paypal CEO Peter Thiel. Author of anti-multicultural tome ‘The Diversity Myth’, he is also on the board of radical conservative group VanguardPAC.
The second round of funding into Facebook ($US12.7 million) came from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Its manager James Breyer was formerly chairman of the National Venture Capital Association, and served on the board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. One of the company’s key areas of expertise are in “data mining technologies”.
Breyer also served on the board of R&D firm BBN Technologies, which was one of those companies responsible for the rise of the internet.
Dr Anita Jones joined the firm, which included Gilman Louie. She had also served on the In-Q-Tel’s board, and had been director of Defense Research and Engineering for the US Department of Defense.
“Facebook may as well be called Stasibook,” I noted in 2012 when the corporation rolled out its IPO. “It is the most effective surveillance tool the world has ever known. Nearly a billion people love to be not so secretly data-mined, every chat and friend connection tucked into super-computer data reservoirs at the NSA.”
“The scientific dictatorship has done a ‘good’ job in brainwashing and manipulating the masses,” writes Sandeep Parwaga. “Don’t be fooled by the deceit. The mainstream media has been very reluctant to cover the disturbing Google/Facebook ties as it would expose important assets for the Big Brother machine and its secret use to destabilize.”
European Commission admits Safe Harbour framework cannot ensure privacy of EU citizens’ data when sent to the US by American internet firms
The European Commission has warned EU citizens that they should close their Facebook accounts if they want to keep information private from US security services, finding that current Safe Harbour legislation does not protect citizen’s data.
The comments were made by EC attorney Bernhard Schima in a case brought by privacy campaigner Maximilian Schrems, looking at whether the data of EU citizens should be considered safe if sent to the US in a post-Snowden revelation landscape.
“You might consider closing your Facebook account, if you have one,” Schima told attorney general Yves Bot in a hearing of the case at the European court of justice in Luxembourg.
When asked directly, the commission could not confirm to the court that the Safe Harbour rules provide adequate protection of EU citizens’ data as it currently stands.
The case, dubbed “the Facebook data privacy case”, concerns the current Safe Harbour framework, which covers the transmission of EU citizens’ data across the Atlantic to the US. Without the framework, it is against EU law to transmit private data outside of the EU. The case collects complaints lodged against Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, Microsoft-owned Skype and Yahoo.
Schrems maintains that companies operating inside the EU should not be allowed to transfer data to the US under Safe Harbour protections – which state that US data protection rules are adequate if information is passed by companies on a “self-certify” basis – because the US no longer qualifies for such a status.
The case argues that the US government’s Prism data collection programme, revealed by Edward Snowden in the NSA files, which sees EU citizens’ data held by US companies passed on to US intelligence agencies, breaches the EU’s Data Protection Directive “adequacy” standard for privacy protection, meaning that the Safe Harbour framework no longer applies.
Poland and a few other member states as well as advocacy group Digital Rights Ireland joined Schrems in arguing that the Safe Harbour framework cannot ensure the protection of EU citizens’ data and therefore is in violation of the two articles of the Data Protection Directive.
The commission, however, argued that Safe Harbour is necessary both politically and economically and that it is still a work in progress. The EC and the Ireland data protection watchdog argue that the EC should be left to reform it with a 13-point plan to ensure the privacy of EU citizens’ data.
“There have been a spate of cases from the ECJ and other courts on data privacy and retention showing the judiciary as being more than willing to be a disrupting influence,” said Paula Barrett, partner and data protection expert at law firm Eversheds. “Bringing down the safe harbour mechanism might seem politically and economically ill-conceived, but as the decision of the ECJ in the so-called ‘right to be forgotten’ case seems to reinforce that isn’t a fetter which the ECJ is restrained by.”
An opinion on the Safe Harbour framework from the ECJ is expected by 24 June.
Facebook declined to comment.
