RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13129/google-censorship-china

If the big social media companies choose what to publish and what not to publish, they should be subject to the same licensing and requirements as media organizations.

Google has decided it will not renew a contract with the Pentagon for artificial intelligence work because Google employees were upset that the technology might be used for lethal military purposes. Yet Google is planning to launch a censored search engine in China that will empower a totalitarian “Big Brother is watching you” horror state.

Freedom Watch filed a $1 billion class-action lawsuit against Apple, Facebook, Google, and Twitter, claiming that they suppress conservative speech online.

A Media Research Center report found that Google, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube stifle conservative speech and that in some instances staffers have admitted that doing so was intentional.

Chinese officials prevented a journalist, Liu Hu, from taking a flight because he had a low “social credit” score. According to China’s Global Times, as of the end of April 2018, authorities had blocked individuals from taking 11.14 million flights and 4.25 million high-speed rail trips.

The internet, especially social media, has become one of the primary places for people to exchange viewpoints and ideas. Social media is where a considerable part of the current national conversation takes place.

Arguably, big tech companies, such as Google, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, therefore carry a responsibility to ensure that their platforms are equally accessible to all voices in that national conversation. As private commercial entities, the social media giants are not prima facie legally bound by the First Amendment to the US Constitution, and are free to set their own standards and conditions for the use of their platforms. Ideally, those standards should be applied equally to all users, regardless of political or other persuasion. If, however, these companies choose what to publish and what not to publish, they should be subject to the same licensing and requirements as media organizations.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/female-reporters-literallyshaking-after-trump-treats-them-exactly-like-male-reporters/

Feminists confuse me. On the one hand, they want us to believe that women are equal to men and in need of more fairness and equal treatment. On the other hand, the minute the president treats them just like the boys they freak out, claiming they were “bullied.” In case you’re not paying attention, “bullying” is anything that makes a leftist upset. The current weeping and gnashing of teeth are over a moment during a press conference on Nafta, when ABC White House correspondent Cecilia Vega refused to ask the president questions about the topic at hand. He refused to take her question and took a jab at her.

But which one is it, ladies? The president has been sticking it to Jim Acosta for two years. Trump is brutal to the press. It’s his thing! The rest of us find it hilarious and entertaining. It’s not like the press is respectful to him. He has just done what no other Republican president has done and gotten into the mud with the press! If they would like to be treated better, maybe they should stop writing fake news to harm his presidency.

And what’s with these girls? Are they weaker than Jim Acosta? Can’t they handle being in the Colosseum with the gladiators? If you can’t play with the boys, then get the heck out of the arena! They keep talking about respect, but did they respect the president’s wish to do trade questions first? CONTINUE AT SITE

http://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/09/fashion-industry-pretty-looks/

Double standards are far more consistent than hemlines in an industry which recently saw Teen Vogue, published by the decidedly capitalist Condé Nast, honour the anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth with a gushing article describing how he exposed the evils of, yes, capitalism.

Contra la moda toda lucha es inútil.
—Josep Pla

Fashion: A despot whom the wise ridicule and obey.
—Ambrose Bierce
The haute couture is a degenerate institution propped up by a sycophantic press.
—Kennedy Fraser

_____________________

fashionWhat most of us immediately associate with the word fashion is its ephemeral nature, likewise its capacity to generate irrational attachment. The most familiar object of such an attachment is clothes, anything from haute couture to jeans with holes scratched out at the knees, where the banal nature of the product is disguised (or in fact celebrated) by brand marketing. Moreover the emetic cult of catwalk celebrity and the narcissistic economy of fashion design would collapse if the majority, at any rate the majority of women, became so contented with last year’s fashion that they just decided to keep their closets unreformed. “The fashion industry is loath to see many days go by,” wrote Kennedy Fraser in The Fashionable Mind (1981), “without trumpeting new eras, and whenever a style emerges, or reappears after an absence, it hurries to coin a title before shoppers can rummage sinfully in closets.” “Fashion,” remarked the Queen of Romania dourly, “exists for women with no taste, just as etiquette is for people with no breeding.”

Happily for the industry, the particular nature of what has been tweaked to make a new frock is less important than the necessity of its purchasers to be, and be seen to be, up with the latest fashion. To quote Fraser again:

If, for many women, the choice of clothes is an anxious, irrational affair, it is made doubly so by our craving to be fashionable. The vagaries of fashion are a denial of constant aesthetic standards, objective ideas of grace or flattery, and the fact that women’s bodies remain much the same from one season to the next.

Dressing in fashion is therefore a matter of status as much as aesthetics, part of what Thorstein Veblen described as “conspicuous consumption”, now expanded to tempt those on lesser incomes with what the drugs industry calls “generic” versions of the stuff paraded before the fakes, cynics, psychopaths and allegedly creative geniuses at the annual fashion shows.

In Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) Veblen explained that, after the second industrial revolution, the emergent nouveaux riches established their social status through patterns of consumption, a conscious attempt to distance themselves from the less well-off and advertise their position in “the leisure class”. An unashamed contemporary demonstration of this phenomenon is afforded by a weekend supplement of the Financial Times stuffed with advertorial matter and the glossiest of glossy pictures, which emphasises the nature of the readership it aims at through its title, How to Spend It. Its critics have dubbed it the “Argos catalogue for the 1 per cent” (Argos being a downmarket mail order business), and it specialises in ludicrous and ludicrously priced goods for the über-rich, especially alpha males (a Rolex Steve McQueen Explorer II watch at £20,000, which is ridiculously cheap when you could instead buy a Franck Muller Aeternitas Mega watch for £2 million; or how about a Maybach Exelero car at £6 million or a Learjet at the giveaway price of £550,000?). Two things are notable about this supplement: first, the rest of the FT is emphatically liberal, even leftist, in its editorials, comment and news coverage. Second, the magazine is by far the most profitable part of the paper and indeed the editor apparently lamented recently that they hadn’t invented another money-spinner like How to Spend It.

http://politicalmavens.com/

“Outsider Faced Culture of Privilege and Alcohol” reads the title of one of the NYT daily attempts to undo the candidacy of Brett Kavanaugh (NYT 9/26/18) It reduces Deborah Ramirez, the woman who can’t be sure that she knows the difference between a plastic penis and a human one, into a half-Puerto Rican student who was the daughter of a telephone company lineman and a medical technician. Rather than praise her accomplishment in qualifying for a scholarship to an expensive Ivy League school on her own merits, it contrasts her with the wealthy Kavanaugh boy, son of a lobbyist and a judge. The only problem is that Martha Kavanaugh did not become a judge until 1995, several years after Brett graduated from Yale Law School and more than a decade after his possible penis got flashed as an undergraduate. In 1983 or 84, at the time that Deborah was sitting in the same circle as those super-privileged white people, the Kavanaugh parents were two hard-working lawyers, one of whom had gone to law school at night while working full time to support his family.

Does privilege cast any shadow on Robin Pogrebin, another Yale graduate who is one of the reporters of this article? Robin grew up on Central Park West, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in NYC , and went to private school along with her two siblings before attending college. Her father is a successful lawyer and her mother, a well-known writer and feminist. Though she is from an even smaller ethnicity than Deborah Ramirez, it doesn’t count as one since she is Jewish.

We don’t learn wither Deborah belonged to a sorority but we do know that she had friends while she was an “outsider,” though none of them can corroborate her fuzzy memory of that troublesome appendage. But never mind – we all know that everyone with a vagina is a truth-teller when it comes to sexual matters, so the hundreds of democrats who have come forth to affirm their conviction that Deborah must be believed – must actually be sentient people as opposed to useful idiots. A disturbing sign that the alcohol culture at Yale has adversely affected the faculty is the mindset allowing the administration to cancel classes at the Law School so that students could demonstrate their support for the woman who admits that she herself can’t be sure of her accusation. This is incredible training for a career upholding the foundations of our legal system – due process and the presumption of innocence. Sic transit lexes humanae……………………….

http://thefederalist.com/2018/09/25/new-york-times-hid-multiple-key-facts-in-kavanaugh-yearbook-hit/

A New York Times article scrutinizing inside jokes in the 1983 yearbook of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s Georgetown Preparatory School hid multiple problems with its claims, including that it was sourced to a rabidly anti-Trump politician in Maryland and his associate.

The article reveals inside jokes about a friend of Kavanaugh and his classmates named Renate Schroeder Dolphin. The classmates are featured in a picture with a caption “Renate Alumnius,” which the Times’ named and anonymous sources argue is bragging about sex. The classmates strenuously insist that the reference was nothing of the kind and that none of the men had sexual relations with the friend. They say that they attended each other’s dances and prep school functions and maintained the friendship throughout the next several decades.

The original article published online on Monday night was quickly scrubbed of a reference to a “Mr. Madaleno.” The Times uses full names on first references to sources and titles on second references, though it was the first time his name was mentioned in the article. The claim of sexual braggadocio is sourced earlier in the article to one named and one anonymous individual who claims to fear retribution. NewsDiffs, a site that tracks changes to articles at the New York Times, caught the rapid deletion of his name. Reporters Kate Kelly and David Enrich did not explain why it was removed.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-shameful-season-for-american-journalism-1537830679

Ian Buruma was forced out last week as editor of the New York Review of Books after publishing an essay by a man who admitted that he has abused women. Mr. Buruma’s sudden departure caps a shameful season of American journalism.

In July, the Nation apologized for a poem for the first time in its 153-year history. In August, the New Yorker canceled a conversation at its annual festival between editor David Remnick and former White House aide Steve Bannon. All three publications were responding to outrage that they had dared provide a platform for views—or people—seen by a certain segment of the population as offensive, even dangerous.

The U.S. is deeply polarized, with divisions over race, class and sexuality widening under a president who exploits them. Social media brings out the worst in us. But good journalism has traditionally helped society find balance in unsettled times by giving voice to all sides of the debate, by helping people talk through their differences and seek compromise.

These three august institutions failed to do that. To put it plainly: They caved in.

In “How-To,” the poem published by the Nation, a street hustler offers advice on how to panhandle. The use of dialect suggests that the hustler is black, drawing complaints that the poem is racist. Because the hustler suggests faking a disability, it was condemned as “ableist.” The poet, Anders Carlson-Wee, who is white, was also accused of “cultural appropriation.” “We are sorry for the pain we have caused to the many communities affected by this poem,” wrote the magazine’s poetry editors, Stephanie Burt and Carmen Gimenez Smith. They said they were “revising our process for solicited and unsolicited submissions.” The New Yorker’s change of heart occurred after many liberals expressed outrage that Mr. Bannon had been invited to its festival and several celebrity speakers threatened to withdraw.

https://pjmedia.com/trending/peter-schweizer-google-and-facebook-brought-ag-anti-trust-meeting-on-themselves/

On Tuesday, state attorneys general met with Attorney General Jeff Sessions to discuss strategies to rein in Big Tech companies like Google and Facebook, using anti-trust laws. The team behind “The Creepy Line,” a new documentary about Big Tech, praised the meeting as vital, and argued that Google and Facebook brought this meeting on themselves.

“Google and Facebook have brought this meeting between the Department of Justice and several attorneys general on themselves,” New York Times bestselling author Peter Schweizer, writer and producer of “The Creepy Line,” said in a statement Tuesday. “With documented bias that has harmed consumers, Google’s abuse of the public trust has impacted users of all political stripes, and the recent leaked emails show them considering putting their finger on the scale on important national debates.”

Schweizer was referring to one email revealing a Google executive bragging about helping to increase the Latino vote, assuming Latinos would vote for Hillary Clinton, and another series of emails showing Google employees scheming about how to tweak he search engine function to harm Trump’s travel ban.

“Because of these documented problems, Google, Facebook, and other Internet platforms warrant closer scrutiny from government and non-government organizations,” Schweizer declared.

He further warned about an earlier leaked video in which “Google leadership and employees expressed their desire to use their platform to ‘spread our company’s values.’ With control over 90% of searches, they have the ability to do it.”

Finally, Schweizer cited the work of Ph.D. psychologist Robert Epstein, revealing that “Google and Facebook have the ability to manipulate and bias the information we see without us even knowing it. This is not only creepy, it’s dangerous. And, it’s time all of us took a closer look at these companies, their capabilities, and their goals.”

Epstein, senior research psychologist at the nonpartisan American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, and author of 15 books and more than 300 articles on Internet influence and other topics, also emphasized the importance of the meeting.

“Randomized, controlled, peer-reviewed research I have been conducting since 2013 has repeatedly demonstrated the unprecedented power that Big Tech companies — Google, in particular — have to shift opinions and votes on a massive scale,” Epstein said in a statement. “My research suggests, for example, that Big Tech companies can shift upwards of 12 million votes in the November, 2018, election without people knowing they are being manipulated.”

CONTINUE AT SITE

https://pjmedia.com/trending/quick-roundup-of-the-latest-anti-kavanaugh-lunacy/

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think the unbiased liberal media can’t find any proof for the stuff they really want to believe. But hey, rumor and innuendo and wild conjecture will do in a pinch. Who cares? It’s not as if Kavanaugh was nominated by a Democrat.”

Sorry to turn my humble blog into All Kavanaugh All the Time, but I have a keen interest in liberal insanity, and right now this story is where all the action is.

All this stuff is happening really fast, and it’s only going to get crazier until Christine Blasey Ford fails to appear testifies before the Senate on Thursday. We already know that Brett Kavanaugh is probably a rapist because a couple of women have made completely unsupported accusations against him. But wait, there’s more! Here’s the latest proof that he’s probably a rapist, and even if not, he still stinks:

Exhibit A: Kavanaugh claims he was a virgin in high school, as if that exonerates him from rape.

On Monday Kavanaugh was interviewed by Martha MacCallum from Fox News (boo, hiss!), and he defended himself from a very serious claim by not-a-creepy-porn-lawyer Michael Avenatti. The claim is that Kavanaugh participated in a gang rape ring in high school. That sounds plausible, right? Kavanaugh’s rebuttal is that he was a virgin in high school, and for quite some time after. So I can add that to my list of Things I Didn’t Particularly Want Nor Need to Know.

But Kavanaugh’s claim of youthful sexlessness may have been a fatal mistake! It has now been thoroughly debunked by, um, a tweet from a guy who claims to have gone to Yale with him:
Steve Kantrowitz @skantrow

Perhaps Brett Kavanaugh was a virgin for many years after high school. But he claimed otherwise in a conversation with me during our freshman year in Lawrance Hall at Yale, in the living room of my suite.

I have questions.

How can a fact-checker ascertain whether a decades-old recollection of a college classmate’s sexual boast actually happened?
If somehow the fact of Kavanaugh’s boast is proven, via time travel or astral projection or some other unspecified means, how can a fact-checker determine if the boast was true or false?
How does any of this prove the so-far-unproven allegations against Kavanaugh?

I know, I know. I’m just nitpicking.

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/jane-meyer-accuser-told-ronan-farrow-she-wasnt-sure-of-story/

Jane Mayer said on Monday that Deborah Ramirez, who accused Brett Kavanaugh of sexually harassing her, told her New Yorker colleague Ronan Farrow that she couldn’t be sure of the Supreme Court nominee’s guilt.

Confronted with a New York Times report indicating Ramirez expressed doubts about Kavanaugh’s guilt to former Yale classmates, Mayer said Ramirez shared those doubts before they published their bombshell report on Sunday.

“To Ronan she said she wasn’t absolutely certain, she needed to make certain before she was going to say anything publicly. She remembered the specifics, the graphic specifics, and she tried to remember for sure who that man was who was in her face,” she told MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.“With all due respect to the New York Times, which is the best paper in America, just because they couldn’t get the story and speak to her or find the person that we found, who remembered it from back then, doesn’t mean it’s not true.”

Ramirez, who opted to come forward after learning Senate Democrats were independently investigating the incident, claims Kavanaugh drunkenly thrust his penis in her face during a dorm party at Yale when he was a freshman.