90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, January 14, 2018

Attorney: Google Has “Re-Education” Camps for Its Conservative Employees

It’s a sure sign of a totalitarian system.

Those who don’t toe the party line on any politically sensitive topic tend not to last very long – they’re either removed or forced to change their way of thinking to match the prevailing power until diversity of thought is a thing of the past.

And when it comes to one of the world’s best-known companies, it’s a system that’s in full swing, according to an attorney suing the technology giant Google.

Harmeet Dhillon, a lawyer suing Google on behalf of James Damore, an engineer who was ousted in August after a memo he wrote criticizing the company’s “diversity” efforts went public, was a guest Thursday on “Breitbart News Tonight” on Sirius XM’s Patriot channel.

She outlined the lengths Google she said was prepared to go to enforce orthodox thinking among its employees when it comes to liberal attitudes toward the workplace.

“From top to bottom there’s this bubble of very, very liberal groupthink that is at the same time very intolerant of people who have more traditional values,” Dhillon said.

“So, James is somebody who I would call — he calls himself a classical liberal, not necessarily a conservative, more libertarian, free-thinker type, guy who was in a Ph.D. program at Harvard after getting his master’s and decided to join Google — he was recruited there. He worked there for a few years and he got tremendously good reviews throughout his entire tenure there.”

But Dhillon said there is more to advancement at Google than technical ability.

“To get promoted at Google you have to check off the boxes prescribing to their diversity policies by attending diversity training, etc.,” she said.

“So, he went to one of these and you know it was all groupthink and it was all about how the fact that Google has fewer female engineers than male is because of bias and how everybody needs to get rid of their biases so we can achieve 50/50 parity. He [James] said ‘well wait a minute, why are we only looking at gender and these sort of characteristics? Are we thinking about diversity of thought here or are we thinking about anything else? And, you know, is your model really true?’”

After that “diversity training,” Damore and others who participated were asked to write down their reactions, Dhillon said. That’s when Damore composed the draft of what became the memo on diversity that put his name in the news – and cost him his job at Google.

As Dhillon explained it, Damore was simply asking questions – like how Google could seriously have a goal of making 50 percent of its engineering hires female when only 20 percent of computer engineering graduate are women.

“It’s their right to have that goal if they want,” Dhillon said. “They cannot achieve their goal legally by quotas, by putting men down, by shaming them, by refusing to promote them, by booing them in companywide meetings, which has been done and is...

The newly elected leader of South Africa's ruling ANC (African National Congress), Cyril Ramaphosa, has come out strongly in favour of a Zimbabwe-style land grab in the country, promising to confiscate white-owned farms without compensation.

In recent speeches Ramaphosa has also vowed to change the country’s constitution, which nominally guarantees private property rights, with the help of the radical Afro-Marxist party, the EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters). Together with the EFF, the ANC commands a two-thirds majority in the South African parliament, allowing it to change the country’s constitution at will.

Addressing the Zulu king, Goodwill Zwelithini, in Nongoma, Kwazulu-Natal, last week, Ramaphosa said that South Africa could be turned into a “garden of Eden” without its mainly white farmers.

“We can make this country the garden of Eden,” Ramaphosa said. “In fact, it is possible for us to begin a process of working the land and improving agriculture — making it a very successful factor in our country.”

In his reply to Ramaphosa, the Zulu king said: “We look to you to act…with speed.”

Since 1994, South Africa’s ruling party has already implemented a programme of so-called “land reform” whereby land was expropriated or bought from white farmers and turned into Soviet-style collective farms with hundreds of people living on one farm. The programme has been widely acknowledged as a complete failure, with 90 percent of previously productive farms coming to a standstill within the first two years.

Already in 2010, an opposition member in the national council of promises had asked the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform, Gugile Nkwinti, “whether any previously productive farms purchased by the Government in the Free State since 1994 under the Land Reform Programme are now (a) abandoned and/or (b) unproductive”. In his reply, the minister confirmed that in the Free State, which is only one of South Africa’s nine provinces, 20 farms “had been abandoned” and that 144 more had been “found to be unproductive”.

In one infamous case in 2014, Thandi Modise, an ANC politician and former terrorist who served in the movement’s armed group attacking civilians known as Umkhonto we Siwe, had given herself a “land reform farm” and subsequently left about 100 animals on the property to die without food and water.

Modise, a former premier of the Northwest Province and who still serves as chairperson of the National Council of Provinces, was subsequently charged with cruelty to animals, with SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) pressing charges against her. However, it is now almost four years later and the court case is still “pending”, according to state prosecutors, with the system protecting one of its own.

While billions of rands were spent on these old “land reform farms” that have mostly failed, Ramaphosa believes that repeating the Zimbabwean experiment by simply taking farms from their white owners will “turn South Africa into a garden of Eden”.

The South African mainstream media has mostly supported Ramaphosa as a “moderate” in his power struggle with former party leader and still the country’s president, Jacob Zuma.

However, since assuming leadership of the party, he has given several anti-white speeches reminiscent of the rhetoric of former president Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. On Saturday, Ramaphosa blamed the lack of economic growth in South Africa’s economy on “white control” of the private sector. He also announced that the mandate of the country’s competition authority would be broadened to see white ownership of any business as “anti-competitive”, saying:

“In order to reduce the ownership and control of the economy (by whites) and open up the market for new, black-controlled companies, we agreed to...

WASHINGTON – Quietly, and without any fanfare from major media, Donald Trump has unveiled his plan for getting Mexico to pay for the border wall.

He says he plans to offer a new deal on NAFTA that will share increased revenues between the two countries more equitably, a small portion of which will be diverted to pay for the cost of the wall.

The Trump administration is currently seeking federal funding for the wall while renegotiating the U.S. trade deal with both Mexico and Canada.

“They can pay for it indirectly through NAFTA,” Trump said Thursday in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “We make a good deal on NAFTA, and, say, ‘I’m going to take a small percentage of that money and it’s going toward the wall.’ Guess what? Mexico’s paying.”

Trump’s comments came hours after he was updated by his administration’s top economic and trade advisers on the progress of those negotiations and the administration’s trade actions more broadly.

Trump repeatedly promised during the campaign that he would build a wall on the Southern U.S. border and get Mexico to pay for it. Democrats are refusing even to approve a budget without a bill to approve DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which he rescinded in the fall.

Trump warned Thursday that if Mexico did not agree to new terms on the free trade deal, known formally as the North American Free Trade Agreement, then he would simply “terminate” the deal.

“Now, Mexico may not want to make the NAFTA deal, which is OK, then I’ll terminate NAFTA, which I think would be frankly a positive for our country,” Trump ...

Report DACA-Age, Other Illegals in AZ Are 142% More Likely to Commit Crimes

The narrative for the last decade and more has been that illegal aliens, especially DACA-age illegals, are less likely to commit crimes, but newly compiled data doesn’t bear that out. It suggests otherwise.

A report from the Crime Prevention Research Center used detailed information on prisoners who were illegal or legal residents from January 1985 through June 2017.

The report found that undocumented immigrants are “at least 142% more likely to be convicted of a crime than other Arizonans. The report further claims they also tend to commit more serious crimes and serve 10.5% longer sentences, more likely to be classified as dangerous, and 45% more likely to be gang members than U.S. citizens.”

The data, they believe, might “underestimate the share of crime committed by undocumented immigrants.”

According to the abstract, “young convicts are especially likely to be undocumented immigrants. While undocumented immigrants from 15 to 35 years of age make up about 0.81% of the Arizona population, they make up almost 8% of the prison population.”

It continues: “Even after adjusting for the fact that young people commit crime at higher rates, young undocumented immigrants commit crime at twice the rate of young U.S. citizens. These undocumented immigrants also tend to commit more...

Chelsea Manning, formerly Bradley Manning who in 2013 was convicted of the biggest leak of classified documents in U.S. history, has filed to challenge Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) for his Senate seat, the Washington Post reported.

Manning, who became transgender during the six years he was incarcerated, had his 35-year prison sentence commuted by President Barack Obama before he left office.

Maryland radio station WBAL reported:

Manning, 30, settled in North Bethesda after she was granted clemency by then-President Barack Obama.

At an appearance in New York in October, Manning was asked whether she’d been afraid that her disclosures would hurt people by exposing the names of informants. She insisted the material included no such sensitive information.

“These aren’t intelligence documents,” Manning said. “It’s historical data.”

“There’s nothing sensitive in there, there’s no troop movements,” Manning said. “It was a historical record of everything that had happened in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

WBAL reported that Manning wanted to give the classified documents to the Washington Post or The New York Times, but the media outlets weren’t willing to establish encrypted channels, so he went to WikiLeaks.

Maryland’s primary election is set for June 26.

Last year, Breitbart News reported that Harvard University hired Manning as a visiting fellow at their Institute of Politics.

In the announcement of his hiring on the Harvard website, Manning is described as “a Washington D.C. based network security expert and former U.S. Army intelligence analyst.”

After Obama commuted his sentence, Manning shifted his focus to queer and transgender rights activism.

Last week on Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, Manning tweeted a vulgarity aimed at first responders:

You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?

It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,

from the beautiful to the repugnant,

from the mysterious to the familiar.

If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,

you could be inspired, you could be appalled.

This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.

You have been warned.

NBC 2016 Election Night - Highlights - A True Story With A Happy Ending!!

Girls With Guns

If we are to believe the transcript of Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson's testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, released unexpectedly by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), the search for a smoking gun in the dossier scandal may lead us to a dead body, at least according to Simpson's lawyer:

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in August 2017, Glenn Simpson was questioned about whether he tried to "assess the credibility" of sources behind information uncovered by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent who compiled the dossier.

"Yes, but I'm not going to get into sourcing information," Simpson said.

Asked again what "steps he took to verify their credibility," Simpson declined to answer.

His lawyer, Joshua Levy, then intervened and said Simpson was just trying to protect his sources.

"Somebody's already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work," Levy said.

The interview didn't pursue the line of questioning further.

Well, maybe somebody should pursue this hand grenade tossed in the middle of the room. Whoa! Somebody's already been killed as the result of the dossier put together by former British spy Christopher Steele from questionable Russian sources and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, and possibly used by the FBI to obtain FISA warrants to spy on the campaign of Hillary's opponent, Donald J. Trump?

As shocking as this revelation may be, it dovetails nicely with fear expressed for her safety by former DNC chair Donna Brazile. In a stunning interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos about her new book, Hacks, Brazile made cryptic references to murdered DNC I.T. staffer Seth Rich and revealed that afterward, she took the precautions one takes when one fears for his life.

So far, speculation about the unsolved murder of Seth Rich have been dismissed as right-wing conspiracy theories, but Brazile's references to him in the light of all that has come out about WikiLeaks, the Fusion GPS dossier, and Hillary's purchase of the DNC that rigged the primaries against Bernie Sanders may be a missing piece of...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s plan to order markets to slash prices of food - an attempt to combat speculation and rampant inflation of the bolivar - has apparently backfired as mobs of hungry Venezuelans have started looting supermarkets and slaughtering cattle in the open to survive, Reuters reports.

Last week, we reported on near-riots that broke out in Caracas after the mandatory price cuts for food stoked widespread shortages as what little inventory that remained on market shelves quickly disappeared.

Venezuelans are suffering from a plethora of economic and social maladies.Four years of recession and an inflation rate approaching 4,000% by some measures have made the country’s currency practically worthless. Widespread shortages of food and medicine led to violent riots during the spring and early summer of 2017 that resulted in more than 100 deaths, including the burning alive of one suspected Maduro supporter by a crowd of citizens. Law enforcement in the capital and many of the country’s smaller cities has effectively disbanded, leading to a rise in lynchings and streets justice. Indeed, suspected thieves are sometimes killed.

Venezuela’s regime probably would’ve collapsed by now if it weren’t for the aide of Russia and China, which have lent the Maduro regime money in exchange for a discount on future oil deliveries. But now that the price of oil is finally climbing again, Maduro could find himself rescued by commodity markets. In apparent anticipation of higher oil prices, the administration announced late last year that it would finally introduce "the Petro” - a state-designed cryptocurrency that will help Venezuela’s customers pay for their goods while circumventing the petrodollar system.

In a shocking example of just how severe Venezuela’s food shortages have become, a video on social media showed roughly a dozen men running into a lush pasture, chasing a cow, and then apparently beating it to death for the meat.

"They're hunting. The people are hungry!" says the narrator of the video, who filmed the incident from his car. Lawmaker Paparoni said some 300 animals were believed to have been killed, though this hasn’t been independently confirmed.

Something strange is going on in the financial system. And according to The Wall Street Journal, it’s causing some investors to move massive amounts of money out of the banking system.

Violent lootings and hijackings - long a staple of life for Venezuela’s remaining merchants - are also growing increasingly common.

Zuley Urdaneta, a 50 year-old vet in Merida, witnessed the looting of a truck along the highway around 2 pm Thursday afternoon, she told Reuters. About two hours later, he said some 800 people converged on a food collection center and proceeded to plunder it.

"They knocked down the gates and looted flour, rice, cooking oil, cooking gas," said Urdaneta. "The police and the National Guard tried to control the situation by giving out what was left."

Despite the grinding poverty and widespread social unrest that has challenged the last vestiges of Chavismo, Maduro has effectively sidelined his opposition while brutally suppressing...