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Ruth King

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The Trouble With Facebook Zuckerberg wants to tell you what to think. Daniel Greenfield

By on May 16th, 2016

Despite the denials, the stories about Facebook’s bias are real. But the bias isn’t there because of the company’s new technology. Facebook is biased because of its reliance on the biased old media.

Facebook’s trending topics wasn’t the automatic system that the company wanted people to think it was. Instead it hired young journalists with new media experience to “curate” its news feed. And plenty of them proved to be biased against conservative news and sources. Meanwhile someone at the top of Facebook’s dysfunctional culture wanted to play up Syria and the Black Lives Matter hate group.

Mark Zuckerberg’s fundamental mistake was recreating the biases and agendas of the old media in a service whose whole reason for existing was to allow users to create their own experience. The big difference between social and search is that social media is supposed to let you be the curator.

But, like Facebook’s trending topics, social curation was another scam. Facebook users don’t really define what they see. It’s defined for them by the company’s agendas. This includes the purely financial. It would be foolish to think that the fortunes that Buzzfeed spends on Facebook advertising don’t impact the placement of its stories by Facebook’s mysterious algorithm. And there is the more complex intersection of politics and branding in an age when business relevance means social relevance.

Twitter piggybacked on the Arab Spring to seem relevant. Facebook has used Black Lives Matter. Social media needs to be associated with political movements to seem more important than it is. Zuckerberg doesn’t want to head up a shinier version of MySpace that was originally set up to rate the attractiveness of Harvard girls. Being socially relevant is better for business. Especially when the business is vapid at its core.

Social media needs social relevance to disguise the narcissism at the center of its appeal.

Finally, a company worth hundreds of billions of dollars is not about to let users define their own experience even if that’s what they signed up to do. Facebook does not empower users. It seeks to shape and control their experience for its own power and profit. Facebook’s news feed is just as curated as its trending topics. The news feed depends more on algorithms, but those are still shaped by agendas even if they aren’t as simple as overworked left-wing journalism majors spitefully purging stories about IRS corruption from the trending topics on the right.

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Perpetrator As Victim: No End To A Self-Inflicted “Tragedy” What “Nakba” commemorations really disclose. Daniel Mandel

By on May 16th, 2016

Yesterday, May 15, Palestinians and their supporters, as they have done increasingly over recent years, marked the nakba (Arabic for ‘catastrophe’) –– the day 68 years ago that Israel came into existence upon the expiry of British rule under a League of Nations mandate.

That juxtaposition of Israel and nakba isn’t accidental. We’re meant to understand that Israel’s creation caused the displacement of hundreds of thousand of Palestinian Arabs.

But the truth is different. A British document from the scene in early 1948, declassified in 2013, tells the story: “the Arabs have suffered … overwhelming defeats … Jewish victories … have reduced Arab morale to zero and, following the cowardly example of their inept leaders, they are fleeing from the mixed areas in their thousands.”

In other words, Jew and Arabs, including irregular foreign militias from neighboring states, were already at war and Arabs were fleeing even before Israel came into sovereign existence on May 15, 1948.

Neighboring Arab armies and internal Palestinian militias responded to Israel’s declaration of independence with full-scale hostilities. In fact, the headline for the New York Times’ famous report on that day includes the words, ‘Tel Aviv Is Bombed, Egypt Orders Invasion.’ And, indeed, the head of Israel’s provisional government, David Ben Gurion, delivered his first radio address to the nation from an air-raid shelter.

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Israel Celebrates Its Birthday While Its People Are Among the World’s Happiest By Quin Hillyer

By on May 16th, 2016

As Israel celebrates its 68th birthday today, even facing talk of a possible new border war, its people are among the happiest on Earth. A look at its founding document helps explain why – and helps show the power of a faith-infused cause, rightly understood.

Even as a confirmed admirer of Israel, I had never read “The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel” (linked above) until I saw it in a full-page ad in the May 12 Wall Street Journal. It was a revelation.

For those willing to see, it has long been obvious that Israel is a remarkable oasis of human rights in a region notably hostile both to those rights and to Israel itself. It guarantees voting rights not just for Jews but for Arabs, including Muslims, and it protects most of the rights to speech and religious practice that are so central to Western, especially American, republics.

What I didn’t know is that it was founded that way. I had imagined that in its violent beginnings – Arab neighbors attacked it immediately upon the Jewish state being formally constituted on May 15, 1948 – it probably had started as an only semi-free state, aspiring to full republican rights but too beleaguered at the time to guarantee them.

But the Declaration says otherwise. The document says the new nation, from day one, “will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education, and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.” It appealed to Arab inhabitants by reassuring them of “full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.” Finally, rather than declaring hostility towards its neighbors, it said “we extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness.”

Israel has lived up to those pledges. Its courts feature non-Jewish judges. (Surrounding nations, of course, would never consider allowing a Jew to sit in judgment of any matter under law or equity – or, usually, even to openly acknowledge his own Jewishness without fear of arrest.) Its streets teem with non-Jewish merchants. And yes, the non-Jewish holy places operate freely – or, rather, freely for their own adherents, even to the exclusion of Jews and Christians. CONTINUE AT SITE

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Trump, Ryan and the Islam Problem By Roger L Simon

By on May 16th, 2016

One of the main areas of contention between Donald Trump and Paul Ryan is the question of Muslim immigration. In early December, when Trump first made his proposal (now a “suggestion”) to stop all such immigration until we “understood what was going on,” one of the first to react in high dudgeon was Ryan, who declared: “This is not conservatism.”

He was applauded for his four-word pronouncement by those “conservatives” at the Washington Post, who called his response “near-perfect.” Actually, to me it seemed morally narcissistic and had little to with conservatism, pro or con. Ryan wanted to disassociate himself as quickly as possible from the ugly and seemingly racist Trump.

But let’s look more closely at what the speaker said during that response:

When we voted to pause the refugee program a few weeks ago, I made very clear at the time: there would not be a religious test. There would be a security test. And that is because freedom of religion is a fundamental Constitutional principle. It’s a founding principle of this country.

Aside from the obvious — if people are fighting and killing you in the name of a religion, how do you ignore the “religious test” — what about that “security test”? Is it really happening or are people slipping into the country by various means, including an open border, with no test whatsoever? What about reports of an ISIS camp eight miles from El Paso?

And, perhaps more importantly, did that “pause” Ryan voted for actually take place in any meaningful way? According to the New York Post a “surge operation” bringing Syrian refugees to America was already in operation this past April. By “surge operation,” Gina Kassem — regional refugee coordinator in Amman — told reporters, it was meant the resettlement process that normally took 18 to 24 months would be sped up to 3 months. (Some pause!) And the figure of 10,000 refugees that has often been proffered by the administration was a minimum, not a maximum.

What is the maximum and how will they be vetted? And just how do you “vet” during a “surge”? Is that what Ryan really meant by a “security test”? I doubt it, but Trump should ask him at their next reconciliation meeting. As they say, Paul’s got some “xplainin” to do.

Now this isn’t a simple question. The Syrian people have suffered mightily at the hands of various psychotic despots, secular and religious. Trump has called for supporting more extensive refugee camps in the region, an idea that makes more sense than bringing them here. (He has also called for the Gulf states to pay for them — good luck with that.) CONTINUE AT SITE

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Peter Smith: Saving Women from Islam

By on May 16th, 2016

Sure, people have the right to dress as they wish, within the bounds of decency, of course. And that’s why the vile misogyny of imprisoning women in head-to-foot draperies must be banned: it is a foul and indecent assault on everything our society should stand for.
I’m changing my mind, and that doesn’t happen too often. In an article in the March 2011 issue of Quadrant (“Struggling with the Burka”) I argued from a classical liberal tradition that the way people dress in purely public situations — where no professional interactions are required — is a matter for them and certainly not for the law. I brought in John Stuart Mill (On Liberty), no less, to bolster this position.

I was taken to task in the following May issue by Babette Francis from Toorak, Victoria. In her letter, among other astute observations, she wrote that I arrived at my conclusion “from the comfortable perspective of a male, one moreover who has never had to live as a citizen of an Islamic country.” My reaction at the time was to think that she had misunderstood my position. After all weren’t we on the same side?

The tenor of my article was hardly pro-Islam and, accordingly, I had concluded that the only option available to Western societies was “to limit the size of Muslim populations through selective immigration policies.” But now I don’t think we were quite on the same side at all. I believe that I was on the wrong side when it came to the burka.

Let me be clear, I now believe that the Islamic face veil – the niqab – should be outlawed in all public places, as it is in France. Moreover, I believe that the Islamic head covering – the hijab – should be banned for teachers and students in all schools in receipt of any government funding. Would I extend this ban to other religious symbols? No, I wouldn’t, unless, say, Catholics, Anglicans, Buddhists or Hindus developed supremacist tendencies and turned particularly nasty.

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Steve Kates: Media Is The Massage

By on May 16th, 2016

https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2016/05/media-massage/

Obama’s ratings remain astonishingly healthy, given eight years of foreign-policy debacles, a wan economic ‘recovery’ and a nation more deeply divided than when he took office. His secret, as a White House spinner explains, is having grasped that voters know little and reporters even less
How do you account for this: Obama report card: Approval up, economy down? In fact, Obama’s approval rating remains well up into his eighth year in office despite of the wreckage not just to the economy, but to the American health care system, the refugee crisis across the Middle East and throughout Europe, the open borders on the American south (and increasingly its north), continuous reductions in living standards, worsening racial relations, and an all-round deterioration in every aspect of American life.

You account for it by understanding that the average American knows less about America than you do and lives in a media bubble almost as tight as the bubble that once surrounded the Soviet Union.

Which is why this remains the single most important story of the Obama years because it explains everything else that would otherwise be inexplicable:

In the New York Times Sunday Magazine, David Samuels details how Ben Rhodes, a script writer, author of the Beloit Journal fiction piece titled “The Goldfish Smiles, You Smile Back,” and brother of CBS president David Rhodes, a man with zero foreign policy experience, shaped and promoted the president’s foreign policy narratives.

Samuels observes: “His lack of conventional real-world experience of the kind that normally precedes responsibility for the fate of nations — like military or diplomatic service, or even a master’s degree in international relations, rather than creative writing — is still startling.” (In this respect, of course, he matches the president’s foreign policy background: None.)

The article details how these two shaped and spun make-believe about the facts and their policies and with the aid of a supine press and a number of think tanks and social media outlets helped propagate the false narratives these two wove out of their fantasies.

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Islamists Infiltrate the Swedish Government One Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Sweden: April 2016

By on May 16th, 2016

The library in Arvika surprised patrons by offering Arabic language courses. Many Swedes wondered if offering courses in Swedish to the Arabic-speaking immigrants would not be more productive. The library, however, does not offer any such service.

The Immigration Service released a new report on April 8, entitled “Are You Married?”, which showed how its own case officers allow child marriages.

Swedish authorities have approved hundreds of polygamous marriages among immigrants, law professor Göran Lind revealed on April 4.

According to the police, the man became angry with his wife, because she was trying to learn Swedish.

April was the month when the Islamist scandals in the Green Party (Miljöpartiet) came one after the other. The Green Party sits in Sweden’s government, along with its coalition partner, the Social Democrats (Socialdemokraterna). They have made themselves known as a party favoring open borders, and with a passionate love for multiculturalism. These infatuations are precisely why the party has been a perfect candidate for Islamist infiltration. Within theGreen Party, even to ask the question whether Muslims view Islam as a political force has been considered rude and “Islamophobic.”

On April 17: Housing Minister Mehmet Kaplan was forced to resign after it was reported that he not only socialized with Islamists and fascists, but also compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians with Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews.

April 20: A would-be member of the Green Party executive, Yasri Khan, refused to shake hands with a female TV reporter, Ann Tiberg, causing much hoopla and eventually forcing Khan to resign.

April 22: The scholar Lars Nicander of the Swedish Defense University warned that the Green Party may have been infiltrated by Islamists: “It is obvious they are trying to get in and ascend to positions of trust,” Nicander told the daily Aftonbladet.

Green Party party secretary Anders Wallner commented on Nicander’s remarks:

“What is being put forth by Lars Nicander is something we take very seriously. Extremism has no place in our party, something our spokespersons have been very clear about.”

April 23: Semanur Taskin, spokesperson for the Green Youth in Stockholm, decided to drop out of politics. As a Swedish Muslim, she said, she felt “misunderstood and no longer secure in politics.” Taskin is also a member of an organization founded by Mehmet Kaplan — Swedish Muslims for Peace and Justice (Svenska muslimer för fred och rättvisa). The organization is best known for working for Muslim rights in Sweden; participating in “Ships to Gaza,” and criticizing all things they perceive as “Islamophobic” or the government’s work against Islamism.

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Iran’s Anti-Semitism by Majid Rafizadeh

By on May 16th, 2016

Thanks to the lifting of sanctions, the prize for best Holocaust cartoon was lifted as well. Iran is now offering $50,000 for the best Holocaust cartoon, more than quadruple last year’s prize, which was $12,000.

The competition is expected to draw participants from more than 50 countries. It is sponsored by two organizations which are directly or indirectly linked to the Iranian regime: the Owj Media and Cultural Institute, funded by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the Sarsheshmeh Cultural Center, which is supported by the Islamic Development Organization (IDO). The Iranian parliament provides the IDO’s budget.

These kinds of Holocaust events and conferences in Iran are based on the notion that Holocaust did not occur.

This week, Iran is hosting its second annual Holocaust Cartoon Competition, even as some politicians and world leaders continue to argue that Iran is becoming a stabilizing force because it is re-joining the international community, by implementing the nuclear agreement and integrating into the global financial system.

The exhibition of Holocaust cartoons will open on May 14. Iran’s Holocaust Cartoon Competition reflects the Iranian regimes’ attempts to expand its efforts to promote anti-Semitism beyond the borders of its nation.

As Iran’s revenues are rising, thanks to the lifting of sanctions, the prize for the best Holocaust cartoon was lifted, as well. Iran is now offering $50,000 for the best Holocaust cartoon, more than quadruple last year’s prize, which was $12,000. According to Iran’s semi-official IRNA news agency, the conference is expected to draw participants from more than 50 countries.

The Iranian regime seems to be using global legitimacy, granted to its leaders by many Western politicians through the nuclear agreement and business deals, to promote the core pillars of its Islamic revolution, opposing the US and rejecting Israel’s right to exist, as well as its fundamental ideals.

In addition, it is worth noting that these kinds of global conferences, which work to deny the historical fact of the Holocaust, are aimed at undermining Israel’s legitimacy, as well as its right to exist. One of Iran’s major foreign policy and ideological objectives, which rests on the religious teachings of Ayatollahs Khomeini and Khamenei, is the struggle against Israel.

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Palestinian Leaders and Child Sacrifice by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on May 16th, 2016

The Palestinian Authority (PA) is now hoping that the tragedy of the Abu Hindi family will push Palestinians in the Gaza Strip to revolt against Hamas.

Hamas is hoping that the tragedy will further undermine the credibility of the Palestinian Authority among Palestinians, shown as being complicit in the blockade on the Gaza Strip to prevent it from receiving weapons.

These charges and counter-charges constitute yet more proof that the PA and Hamas are determined to pursue their fight to the last Palestinian child.

What happened in the Abu Hindi home is an unspeakable family tragedy. What is happening to the Palestinian people, who have forever been led by leaders who care nothing for their well-being, is a tragedy of national proportions.

The tragic death of three Palestinian siblings, killed in a fire that destroyed their house in the Gaza Strip on May 6, demonstrates yet again the depth to which Palestinian leaders will go to exploit their children for political purposes and narrow interests.

The three children from the Abu Hindi family — Mohamed, 3 years old, his brother Nasser, 2 years old and their two-month infant sister Rahaf, died in a fire caused by candles that were being used due to the recurring power outages in the Gaza Strip.

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Britain’s Muddled Priorities? by Douglas Murray

By on May 16th, 2016

On the one hand, the overwhelming cause of our current security problems is Islamist terror. It is the number one cause of concern to our police, intelligence services and everybody else with the nation’s security at heart. The public expects to be protected from such terror and expects that protection to come from that security establishment.

Yet all the time, a vocal lobby of Muslim and non-Muslim figures tries to pretend that the threat is not what it is, or that an attempt to depict any and all efforts to protect the country — even one phrase said by one actor in one simulated attack scenario — is some terrible crime of bigotry.

An actor saying “Allahu Akbar” in a simulated terror attack may be offensive to somebody’s religion. But if so, what is more offensive to their religion: one actor saying “Allahu Akbar” as part of a simulation, or countless Muslims around the world shouting the same phrase before real attacks in real time?

Sometimes you can see a whole society’s self-delusion in under a minute. Consider a single minute that occurred in Britain this week.

On Monday night, Greater Manchester Police staged a pre-prepared mock terrorist attack in a Manchester shopping centre in order to test emergency responses capabilities, readiness and response times. At one stage, an actor playing a suicide bomber burst through a doorway in a crowded part of the shopping centre and detonated a fake device.

It turned out that the actor pretending to be a suicide bomber had shouted the words “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is Greatest”) before the simulated attack. This may have helped make the simulation more realistic, but it had an immediate backlash. Nobody complained about the simulated attacks. What disturbed some people was the simulation of the signature Islamist sign-off.

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