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November 2023

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Poll: Most Americans Believe AI Will Lead to More Misinformation in 2024 By Eric Lendrum

By on November 3rd, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/03/poll-most-americans-believe-ai-will-lead-to-more-misinformation-in-2024/

A new poll released on Friday shows that a majority of Americans believe that artificial intelligence (AI) will lead to more misinformation being spread on the Internet during the 2024 presidential election.

According to The Hill, the poll from AP-NORC and the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy found that 58% of Americans believe AI will lead to an increase in election misinformation. Among respondents who said they have “heard a lot or some about AI” 61% believed in the threat of more misinformation.

When asked about possible actions to combat the misuse of AI, 66% said they support the federal government banning AI-generated images from being used in political ads. Among those 66%, 78% were Democrats and 66% were Republicans.

When asked if the government should ban all AI-generated content from political ads, 54% of Americans said yes. On another question, 65% said they support technology companies and social media platforms explicitly labeling AI-generated content as such, with another 60% saying they support social media companies banning AI-generated images that are false or misleading.

The poll featured a sample size of 1,017 Americans, and was conducted between October 19th and October 23rd.

The rise of AI has begun to draw the attention of elected officials, with Joe Biden issuing an executive order on Monday aimed at addressing concerns regarding AI, from national security to threats to American labor. Meanwhile, the U.S. Senate is set to hold a forum focusing on AI and its impact on elections.

The use of AI-generated images has already impacted several campaigns in the 2024 cycle. The presidential campaign of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) was widely criticized after its official “DeSantis War Room” account posted a video that included several fake, AI-generated images of President Trump and Anthony Fauci embracing.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Barbarism: Tape emerges of Hamas terrorist ‘playing’ with severed heads By Monica Showalter

By on November 3rd, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2023/11/barbarism_tape_emerges_of_hamas_terrorist_playing_with_severed_heads.html

Is there any sicker, viler, more demonic movement in the world today than the Hamas terrorist organization?

The latest from them is that Hamas’s terrorists, fresh from murdering 1,400 people on October 7, blood undoubtedly still dripping from their hands, made a tape of themselves describing how they “played” with severed heads of their Israeli victims:

According to William A. Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

Audio was recovered of the terrorists admitting they played with decapitated heads while at Kibbutz Nirim:

“They cut off their heads with knives…. take photos of the heads as the guys are playing with them.”

And of course, they took selfies of themselves doing it.

These savages are depraved beyond belief. Did someone ask them if they had fun? They have a funny idea of fun.

It’s not the first we have heard of Hamas’s depravities and atrocities in that horror attack they conducted on innocent Israeli civilians on that terrible day last October.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Israeli flag torched, flyers for captive Israelis trampled at anti-Israel rally in New York City

By on November 3rd, 2023

https://worldisraelnews.com/israeli-flag-torched-flyers-for-captive-israelis-trampled-at-pro-palestine-rally-in-new-york/?utm_source=

Demonstrators trample posters of Israelis held captive by Hamas during protest in New York City.

Pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian protesters clashed on the streets of New York Thursday evening, outside the offices of the chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY).

Hurling insults at pro-Israeli demonstrators, a number of pro-Palestinian protesters tore down posters of Israelis held captive by the Hamas terrorist organization in the Gaza Strip, and trampled flyers of Israelis reported missing since the October 7th Hamas invasion of southwestern Israel.

One of the pro-Palestinian protesters set an Israeli flag on fire, while a pro-Israeli demonstrator attempted to carry the flag off, before being kicked by a protester wearing a Keffiyeh.

The New York Police Department arrested one person for disorderly conduct.

A number of anti-Israel demonstrations on and around college campuses in the U.S. have led to harassment of Jewish students and even violent attacks on pro-Israel demonstrators.

At Harvard, a Jewish student was mobbed by anti-Israel protesters, including the editor of the Harvard Law Review.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Would The ‘Woke’ Movement Please Hurry Up And Die Already?

By on November 3rd, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/03/would-the-woke-movement-please-hurry-up-and-die-already/

In recent weeks, we’ve seen a number of pundits, columns, and articles predict the imminent demise of the odious and anti-American “woke” movement. As Shakespeare once said, ” ‘Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.” But if woke is indeed passing on, it sure is taking its time.

What do we mean by “woke”? It’s the extreme-left mindset encouraged by the “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” movement, the ugly offspring of Marxism and critical race theory. Its intent is all-inclusive, covering the entirety of culture, social interactions, and commerce. Indeed, the movement’s ultimate goal is to plant a permanent flag of ideological conquest in your brain so you’ll be frightened to transgress even a little bit of the thought boundaries they’ve set for you.

It’s working.

From once-sensible cops in Britain tearing down posters of Israelis kidnapped by Hamas, to Hollywood’s awful woke remakes of classic entertainment, to drag queens parading in children’s classrooms and events, to our own woke military, “woke” now seems culturally pervasive, almost inescapable.

It’s a sick, inhumane, and ultra-Orwellian mindset that is being served daily to our children via the forced feeding tube of public education, which is now run not by local boards but by ultra-woke teachers’ unions and allied radicals. Hollywood and social media, with their pervasive censorship cultures, double down on the thought control.

The woke indoctrination may begin in elementary school, but it continues and intensifies at the college level. Young Americans have never been so disenchanted with their country, its culture, and its shimmering promise of a better life and liberty than they are today. All thanks to the woke movement, now firmly in control of higher education.

But in case you’re wondering, this is an old script, nothing new at all. Former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin reportedly put it this way: “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.”

We’re pretty sure it’s real because we found it in “Inspiring Quotes.” Hey, nothing is more inspiring than your children being brainwashed by a communist tyrant, right? The far-left wokesters clearly learned from Lenin. And, just like communism, woke seeks to become a secular religion, replacing all the old ones.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

How Hamas Won Hearts and Minds on the American Left For 30 years, the terror organization has made a concerted effort to appeal to Western intellectuals. By Lorenzo Vidino

By on November 3rd, 2023

https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-hamas-won-hearts-and-minds-on-the-american-left-1abafc2f?mod=opinion_lead_pos6

Support for Hamas on college campuses and in city streets has shocked Americans. But we shouldn’t be surprised. It’s the fruit of an influence campaign dating back at least 30 years.

In October 1993, the Federal Bureau of Investigation wiretapped a Philadelphia hotel room where a dozen senior Hamas members—some of them U.S.-based—had gathered. The men had called the meeting weeks after the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. For days they debated how to sabotage the agreement and generate support for Hamas among American Muslims, the political class and wider society. They correctly foresaw that the U.S. government would designate Hamas a terrorist organization and agreed on a strategy to frame the conflict in religious terms for Muslims while using more-palatable frames for non-Muslim Americans. They plotted to create an array of mainstream organizations to conduct this dual-track work.

“Let’s not hoist a large Islamic flag, and let’s not be barbaric-talking,” one of the participants said. “We will remain a front so that if the [terror designation] happens, we will benefit from the new developments instead of having all of our organizations classified and exposed.”

“I swear by Allah that war is deception,” another said. “Deceive, camouflage, pretend that you’re leaving while you’re walking that way.”

Thirty years later, this strategy has proved effective. Widespread support for Hamas’s barbaric actions on Oct. 7 didn’t come out of thin air. Several things gave life to the phenomenon—from the identification of Israel with “white privilege” to old-fashioned anti-Semitism—but the terror group’s networks in the U.S. and Europe played a key role.

Now run largely by Western-born activists, these networks understand how politics and media narratives work in the West. They frame the conflict in religious terms to local Muslim communities, labeling Israelis as “infidels” and evoking hadiths about the killing of Jews. On college campuses those same networks use the language of postcolonial theory to tar the Israelis as “European settlers.” Unsurprisingly, a few days ago, a Hamas leader told a Vice.com journalist that “the same type of racism that killed George Floyd is being used by [Israel] against the Palestinians”—a comparison tailored to the ears of Western progressives.

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

The Boycott Formula How conservatives can restrain left-wing corporate culture. Christopher Rufo

By on November 3rd, 2023

Conservatives have recently scored surprise victories against left-wing corporate culture, with successful pressure campaigns against a trio of blue-chip companies—Disney, Target, and Bud Light—that have revealed the potential of a culture-war tactic once considered the Left’s stock-in-trade: the consumer boycott.

The campaigns are notable because they drew blood, figuratively speaking. Disney, which promised to embed radical gender theory in its children’s programming, watched its stock price plummet and signaled a retreat from the culture war. Target, which featured “breast binders” as part of its seasonal “Pride Collection,” saw a decline in sales and promised to “pause, adapt, and learn.” Bud Light featured a transgender “influencer” in an advertising campaign, sending its reputation and sales into freefall.

What lessons can be drawn from these examples? And how can conservatives use boycotts to fight left-wing cultural capture?

To answer these questions, let’s consult the academic literature on consumer boycotts. First, it’s important to understand the genesis—or, in narrative terms, the “inciting incident”—of a potential boycott. Research suggests that in successful boycotts, activists often highlight a firm’s “egregious act,” a transgression of some deeply held value among consumers, and channel the resulting “negative arousal” into a boycott. To expand participation, activists must create a sense that partaking in the boycott provides an opportunity to “make a difference,” change company behavior, and join in a widely shared cause. The research also suggests that boycotts must begin with a sense of optimism, as the “perceived efficacy“ of a campaign significantly determines its likelihood of success. 

Next, the mechanics. Northwestern University professor Brayden King collected data from 133 boycott campaigns conducted between 1990 and 2005 and used statistical analysis to identify which tactics are most correlated with success. King argues that boycott campaigns succeed through “market disruption,” targeting a firm’s stock price, and “mediated disruption,” targeting a firm’s public reputation. These two strategies are mutually reinforcing, as economic damage can lead to greater media coverage, and greater media coverage of a company’s difficulties can lead to economic damage.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, ISRAEL Comments turned off

One Sick War The best way of understanding it is that Israelis are Jews and the ancient plague of anti-Semitism is again sweeping the globe Victor Davis Hanson

By on November 2nd, 2023

https://amgreatness.com/2023/11/02/one-sick-war/

There is something surreal, even sick about the current Gazan war.

Throughout European and American cities and campuses, tens of thousands of Middle East immigrants and students, and radical leftists chant nonstop “Free Palestinian from the River to the Sea.”

More recently, they are also yelling, “Israel, you can’t hide, we caught you in genocide.”

Consider the hypocrisy of that dual messaging.

Hamas and its supporters are openly and eagerly calling for the genocidal end of Israel by wiping it out from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Yet at the same time they also claim it is Israel that is committing genocide—the very current self-described agenda of Hamas and its expatriate community of devotees!

The war has become crazier still.

Hamas and its megaphones abroad also blast Israel daily for retaliating for the October butchery of some 1,300 Israeli infants, children, women, and the elderly.

They further demand Israel must be selective in its airborne targeting of the Hamas killers, who burrow beneath hospitals, mosques, and hospitals and use civilians as shields.

Hamas takes for granted that a supposedly heartless Israel nevertheless will be reluctant to strike the Hamas terrorists when and if they are surrounded by civilians.

Indeed, Gazans are put in more danger by Hamas than they would otherwise be by the Israel Defense Forces.

Yet the world accepts that Israel itself would never employ such a ruse of using civilians to shield its cities from indiscriminately fired Hamas missiles.

The world further knows that if Israel ever employed such a barbaric tactic, Israeli civilian shields would attract—not deter—Hamas rockets.

Hamas’s apologists insist that Israel warn in advance civilians to keep clear of Israel bombs.

Yet at the same time, daily Hamas launches rockets into Israel. And no one in the international community lectures Hamas first to drop leaflets or text Israeli civilians that Hamas rockets are on their way into their vicinity.

Instead, the only purpose of Hamas rockets is to indiscriminately strike and kill Israeli civilians.

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BOOKS Comments turned off

The Elite Conspiracy to Monopolize Opinion Through Propaganda By Janet Levy

By on November 2nd, 2023

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2023/11/the_elite_conspiracy_to_monopolize_opinion_through_propaganda.html

Humankind is supposedly ruled by reason. But logic isn’t effective in influencing people, individually or in a group. Advertising, public relations, and propaganda succeed precisely because they bypass reason. They hack the shortcuts the brain uses, changing people’s beliefs and behavior without their realizing it.

Sadly, we are not taught how to guard against these techniques, writes Michelle Stiles in One Idea to Rule Them All: Reverse Engineering American Propaganda. This ignorance, she says, has “devastating consequences for both individuals and society as a whole.”

Some techniques are as old as civilization. Many books cover those used in advertising. Stiles’s scholarly book instead addresses how the ubiquitous manufacture of consent has eclipsed faith in the media and democracy, with stagecraft and narrative supplanting the search for truth. Like a 21st-century Orwell, she warns that tyranny begins with control and abuse of language. She aims to help us recognize the modus operandi of Idea Bullies, who use nefarious means to make an unwary public accept the dominant narrative.

Stiles begins with a startling fact. It wasn’t Nazi Germany or communist dictatorships that first mastered mass persuasion. It was the American government in the lead-up to U.S. involvement in World War I. The working and middle classes saw the war as a businessman’s venture and were reluctant to enlist. To overcome this resistance, President Woodrow Wilson set up the Committee on Public Information (CPI) headed by George Creel. Other key figures were Arthur Bullard, Edward Bernays, and Walter Lippmann.

Together, they drew on and orchestrated the skills of intellectuals, journalists, local leaders, artists, businessmen, and others to get young men to believe in the cause and sign up to fight. Every means was deployed to sell the war to Americans and the world—the printed word, the spoken word, motion pictures, posters, and radio. ‘Four-minute men’—essentially paid shills—would give seemingly extempore speeches at public meetings, plays, and other places to push the war effort. They doubled up as snitches. Those expressing anti-war sentiments were shamed, censored, or faced legal action. In the end, Creel could boast that the committee’s work was a “vast enterprise in salesmanship, the world’s greatest adventure in advertising.”

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HOMELAND SECURITY, IMMIGRATION Comments turned off

Wray Warns of Possible Attacks, While Mayorkas Harbors Hamas Sympathizer Milt Harris

By on November 2nd, 2023

https://pjmedia.com/miltharris/2023/11/01/wray-warns-of-possible-attacks-while-mayorkas-harbors-hamas-sympathizer-n4923535

Wray told the senators that after the October Hamas attack on Israel, there is an elevated terrorism risk in the U.S. That risk includes homegrown supporters of the group. However, Wray failed to mention that Joe Biden has allowed thousands of the Jihadist groupies to stream into the country through the open border and still, even while he was speaking, was allowing the infiltration to happen. 

“We assess that the actions of Hamas and its allies will serve as an inspiration the likes of which we haven’t seen since ISIS launched its so-called ‘caliphate’ several years ago,” he said.

Wray went on to say: 

The terrorism threat has been elevated throughout 2023. The ongoing war in the Middle East has raised the threat of an attack against Americans in the United States to a whole other level since the horrific terrorist attacks committed by Hamas against innocent people in Israel a few weeks ago. We also cannot and do not discount the possibility that Hamas or another foreign terrorist organization may exploit the current conflict to conduct attacks here on our own soil.

When Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) asked him to assess the threat to Americans, Wray responded, “This is not a time for panic. We shouldn’t stop conducting our daily lives, going to schools, houses of worship, and so forth, but we should be vigilant.”

That’s sound advice, but perhaps as the Director of the FBI, you should take it yourself. Shouldn’t you be thoroughly looking into these pro-Hamas, anti-Israel demonstrations on major college campuses? Shouldn’t the FBI insist on much more sophisticated screening procedures at the border, and shouldn’t the FBI be harassing if not actually arresting and deporting known threats?

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ENVIRONMENT AND JUNK SCIENCE Comments turned off

Say, They Want A Revolution …

By on November 2nd, 2023

https://issuesinsights.com/2023/11/02/say-they-want-a-revolution/

In his book “Barack Obama’s Rules for Revolution,” David Horowitz, a New Left movement founder in the 1960s, refers to a member of the radical Students for a Democratic Society who “once wrote, ‘The issue is never the issue. The issue is always the revolution.’ In other words the cause – whether inner city blacks or women – is never the real cause, but only an occasion to advance the real cause which is the accumulation of power to make the revolution.” Now apply that to the tussle over man’s impact on the climate and things become much clearer.

In the minds of the climate alarmists, the revolution looks like tearing down “the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution.” Their objective is to force “major structural changes in economic growth and development,” and the “fight” against climate change “is just a part of it.”

That great revolutionary of the U.S. House, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, dreamed up a way to use the global warming scare through the Green New Deal, which was less of an environmental bill than a “how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing.” In other words, a back door for more Marxist revolutionaries to enter.

It doesn’t matter that free-market capitalism is the only economic system in recorded history that has allowed the masses to escape from grinding poverty. All that matters to revolutionaries is the revolution.

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