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January 2018

MEDIA Comments turned off

Google’s New ‘Fact-Checker’ Is Partisan Garbage The tech giant is dishonestly manipulating perceptions about conservative sites before people even read them.By David Harsanyi

By on January 11th, 2018

In the midst of the “fake news” hysteria last year, Google launched a project to help curate reliable information for its readers by identifying articles and sites that need fact-checking. And this may come as a surprise to some of you, but it looks like the tech giant’s truth project is imbued with a tiny bit of ideological and political bias.

Eric Lieberman at The Daily Caller recently found that the fact checks displayed in Google’s search engine results are targeted almost exclusively at conservative publications. You can test it out yourself.

Now, you may believe that conservatives are hopeless liars in need of relentless correcting, so I’ll concede the point for argument’s sake. Even then, you’d have to admit it’s a small miracle that, according to Google’s search engine, not a single prominent liberal or mainstream site in the entire universe has ever uttered a dubious or questionable claim.

Luckily for us, there are methods available to analyze the veracity of Google’s project. One way, for example, is to take a “reviewed claim” made against The Federalist, the site I happen to know best, and contrast it to the coverage of other sites.

Consider the case of a woman named Eileen Wellstone. Out of many thousands of pieces published by The Federalist over the past four years, a single one mentions the name Eileen Wellstone. That article, detailing the sordid history of Bill Clinton, mentions her name exactly once: “Another woman, Eileen Wellstone, claimed Clinton raped her while he was at Oxford University in the late 1960s.”

For some reason, in this “reviewed claim” against The Federalist, Google sends the reader to a Snopes fact-check that argues that Clinton wasn’t expelled from Oxford over this alleged rape — a point I concede sounds completely accurate and is also an assertion that no one has ever made in this publication.

So the question is, does Google tag every article that relays accusations of sexual misconduct or rape as “unproven,” or just the ones against Bill Clinton? Or is the mention of Wellstone specifically worthy of a claim? The Wellstone case has not only been cited in all types of publications (and not in efforts to debunk it, either; 1,2,3,4,5, and so on) but by The Washington Post’s own fact-checker.

In a 2016 article detailing allegations against Bill Clinton that might be brought up by then-candidate Donald Trump, WaPo notes, “Eileen Wellstone says she was assaulted by Clinton when he was a student at Oxford University in 1969.” There is virtually no difference between that statement and the one published in The Federalist. Not that Google search engines users would know this when they search for the influential newspaper.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

The Fusion Transparency Rap Per Sen. Feinstein, let’s get the full FBI-Trump-Russia record out.

By on January 11th, 2018

California Senator Dianne Feinstein is getting media raves for flouting Judiciary Committee rules Tuesday and releasing the testimony of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson without committee approval. Mrs. Feinstein’s disrespect for procedure aside, she has the right idea. Let’s make all of the Russian- Trump -FBI record public.

Democrats seem interested in revealing only what adds to their hope that Donald Trump canoodled with the Kremlin. This includes Mr. Simpson’s self-serving account of the origins of the infamous dossier about Mr. Trump that he hired British ex-spy Christopher Steele to compile. Mr. Simpson, a political gun for hire, spun a heroic tale of noble intentions and praise for Mr. Steele, calling him a “Boy Scout” with “quality” intelligence-gathering skills.

Yet Mr. Simpson couldn’t corroborate the dossier’s claims and had to backtrack on his newsiest allegation. Democrats and the media seized on his claim that the dossier supported information the FBI already had from “a human source from inside the Trump organization.” The Fusion CEO used the same language about a source “inside the Trump camp” last week in a New York Times op-ed.

Yet Fusion waited until after the testimony was released to inform its media friends that this was a “mischaracterization” by Mr. Simpson. Turns out he wasn’t referring to a confidential informant from within Team Trump, but to the fact the FBI had been tipped off by a foreign diplomat about a Trump staffer, George Papadopoulos. Mr. Simpson has a hard time telling a straight story.

The bigger point is that the public is in an evidence-free zone in which Democrats spin the dossier’s unproven claims, while Republicans speculate about the FBI’s partisan motives. The way out is to release to the public the documents the FBI used to justify spying on Trump officials during a presidential campaign. The good news is that Congressional investigators have finally obtained those documents from the FBI and Justice Department.

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FOREIGN POLICY, ISRAEL Comments turned off

The U.N. Agency That Keeps Palestinians From Prospering The administration’s freeze on funds for Unrwa is a first step in breaking the Mideast stalemate. By Alex Joffe and Asaf Romirowsky

By on January 11th, 2018

Frustrated by Palestinian intransigence, the Trump administration has reportedly frozen $125 million of the American contribution to the internationally funded welfare agency for Palestinian “refugees,” the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East.

Mr. Trump had expressed his irritation with the agency, known by the acronym Unrwa, in a characteristic tweet, noting that the U.S. provides “HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year” and gets “no appreciation or respect” from Palestinians. Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., echoed the sentiment, saying the U.S. would use funding as leverage “until the Palestinians are agreeing to come back to the negotiation table.”

This approach is unprecedented. The U.S. is Unrwa’s largest single donor, contributing more than $360 million of the agency’s annual $1.25 billion budget. Historically, U.S. support to Unrwa has been untouchable despite the agency’s role keeping Palestinians in social stasis, providing health, education and welfare services while undermining resettlement efforts and fomenting rejectionism—thereby perpetuating the Palestinians’ “refugee” status for decades.

The Trump administration is not the only factor militating for change. The titanic crisis created by the Syrian civil war, which has produced millions of actual refugees (along with half a million civilian deaths), puts the Palestinian issue in a new and dramatically diminished light. Unrwa’s own mismanagement—such as reports that the agency has dramatically overcounted the Palestinians it serves in Lebanon—also makes the status quo more difficult to sustain.

The U.S. supported Unrwa for decades largely because it did not wish the Palestinian issue to threaten other policy imperatives. During the Cold War, that meant containing communism and maintaining the flow of oil from Arab states. Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. policy has revolved around containing the Arab-Israeli conflict in order to prevent regional conflagration and preventing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, especially Iran.

American diplomatic support for a Palestinian state began in these contexts but was routed through the Oslo process and the Palestinian Authority, which has deliberately failed to create stable foundations for a functioning state. The Trump administration’s Middle East policy is not yet formally wedded to any existing diplomatic process, whether with Iran or in the Israeli-Palestinian arena. While stability is a long-term American political goal, shifting funds from Unrwa and addressing other refugee crises has become likelier than at any time in the past 60 years.

So how can the Trump administration move forward regarding Unrwa? The first step needs to be a clear presidential policy statement on the question, made with the support of key congressional leaders: Unrwa has outlived its usefulness; the Palestinians are not “refugees” but are entitled to citizenship in the countries where they’ve lived for decades, and the Palestinian Authority must assume its responsibilities toward it own population.

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Drilling in Alaska Is Good for the Earth It’s greener than fracking and less risky than deep-water rigs. By Thomas Landstreet

By on January 11th, 2018

It has been a good month for American energy development. The tax reform signed by President Trump contained a provision allowing for oil exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Last week the Interior Department proposed opening up wide swaths of territory offshore.

This is good policy for a lot of reasons, but the least obvious is that it will help the environment. Despite howls from the green lobby, the truth is that it’s less hazardous to drill for oil on land and in shallow waters using conventional rigs.

BP’s Deepwater Horizon was drilling in about 5,000 feet of water when it exploded in 2010. If the accident had occurred on land or in shallow seas, the spill could have been contained in three days instead of three months.

The company took the blame for the disaster, paying $19 billion, but I blame U.S. environmental policy for chasing oil producers further and further out on the risk curve. For more than 40 years, the U.S. government has had a moratorium on drilling in shallow water, putting nearly 100 billion barrels out of reach.

This overregulation has been neither prudent nor partisan. President George H.W. Bush, a former oilman, enacted a separate and redundant moratorium in 1990; Bill Clinton extended it in 1998. And approval rates for drilling permits on federal lands plummeted during the Obama administration.

The ANWR is thought to hold at least 10 billion barrels of crude oil, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The actual number is likely greater. The nearby Trans-Alaska Pipeline is ready to go, with the capacity to move ANWR oil 800 miles to the Port of Valdez. That pipeline operates at 25% of capacity and could use the extra flow for efficiency’s sake.

Drilling in the ANWR poses less risk to the environment than fracking. It would also be cheaper. Fracking was invented in response to drilling restrictions, as a way to produce oil from shale formations on private land, where government restrictions don’t apply.

But fracking is no walk in the park. A fracked well consumes an average of 4.2 million pounds of sand and between two million and nine million gallons of water. The sludge created as a byproduct requires careful handling and underground disposal. From an environmental standpoint, drilling in the ANWR ought to be attractive by comparison. CONTINUE AT SITE

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Why the EU’s Migration Commissioner Should Resign by Jan Wójcik

By on January 11th, 2018

Claiming recently that there is no way to protect Europe’s borders, which is his job, EU Commissioner Avramopoulos openly admitted to powerlessness in the face of the massive influx of migrants, yet had the gall to accuse European Council President Donald Tusk — one of the few EU bureaucrats who opposes the quota mechanism — of lacking a sense of European solidarity.

Tusk was behind the closing of the migrants’ Balkan route through Macedonia, a policy that Avramopoulos attempted to torpedo; it ultimately worked to decrease immigration to Greece. This is not surprising, as having the route open was a “pull factor” for migration.

A genuinely honest discussion needs to take place on what measures are feasible, which risks are worth taking and which migration movements are welcome. We owe it to Europe to replace multiculturalism-gone-wild with rational thought and sensible action. Avramopoulos is the wrong person to lead this task.

The European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, should resign. Claiming recently that there is no way to protect Europe’s borders, which is his job, he openly admitted to powerlessness in the face of the massive influx of migrants. He said that neither “erect[ing] fences” nor “harsh language” will curb or stop the flow; yet had the gall to accuse European Council President Donald Tusk — one of the few European bureaucrats who opposes the quota mechanism — of lacking a sense of European solidarity.

Tusk was behind the closing of the migrants’ Balkan route the Macedonia, a policy that Avramopoulos attempted to torpedo; it ultimately worked to decrease immigration to Greece. This is not surprising, as having the route open was a “pull factor” for migration. Another such factor was German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mantra about absorbing refugees — “Wir schaffen das” (“We can do it.”)

So, too, were the welcoming and colorful advertisements of the asylum process presented by Germany’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees (BAMF), with translations into Urdu, Arabic, Turkish and other languages. Germany’s campaign to portray itself as a paradise for migrants has been so successful over the past three years that BAMF is now in the uncomfortable position of having to dispel its own myth.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Sweden: Not Everyone Can Say #MeToo by Nima Gholam Ali Pour

By on January 11th, 2018

Sweden has let in a huge wave of young male migrants, many of whom have created an insecure environment for women; when these women have cried for help and tried to share their stories, the Swedish media and politicians have refused to listen.

The Swedish media recently reported that police no longer time to investigate rape cases because of the many murders.

The main problem with the “#MeToo Movement” is that instead of relying on the rule of law, people start relying on the rule of social media. The number of “likes” or “retweets” decides whose experiences of sexual assault are recognized. If you have not been harassed or assaulted by a celebrity, nothing happens. If you were sexually assaulted by a nobody, nobody cares.

Interest and involvement in the “#MeToo Movement” has been strong in Sweden. Internet searches for the phrase “me too” show that Swedes made almost three times as many as the Dutch population, in second place for the number of searches for “me too”.

What the #MeToo Movement reminds us of in Sweden is how the issue of sexual harassment has become very politicized. While many Swedes are eager to expose celebrities who have sexually assaulted or sexually harassed women, Sweden is still a country where sexual assaults and rapes by newly arrived and illegal migrants is denied and concealed in the most vicious ways by parts of the official establishment.

One of the clearest examples is a recent case where a rapist was not condemned and his victim was blamed. On October 11, 2017, Arif Moradi, an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan who lives in Sweden, was convicted of sexually abusing a 14-year-old girl. Moradi had been appointed in November 2016 to be a youth leader at a “Confirmation camp” by the Church of Sweden. At this camp, Moradi began to make sexual advances towards the 14-year-old girl, until on the night of November 12-13, 2016, the most serious abuse took place as the other children were sleeping.

The victim succeeded in fleeing to the bathroom, where she sent several text messages to a friend at the camp. Together, the two girls woke up the parish educator, Eva-Lotta Martinsson, and told her what had taken place. The parish educator, however, decided not to report the incident to the police. The reason the parish educator did not inform police was apparently because, as she later told the police, she did not perceive it as “serious.” When the girl’s mother found out about the assault, she did report it to the police.

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