Ninety miles from the South Eastern tip of the United States, Liberty has no stead. In order for Liberty to exist and thrive, Tyranny must be identified, recognized, confronted and extinguished.
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Thursday, September 13, 2018
Wednesday, September 12, 2018
Are the Terms "Illegal Alien" and "Criminal Alien" Hate Speech?
Twitter Ads censors Center's content
Washington, D.C. (September 12, 2018)
Yesterday, Twitter rejected four Center for Immigration Studies tweets for use in the Center's Twitter Ads campaign, alleging hateful content. (Several others were approved.) All four tweets use the statutory phrases "illegal alien" or "criminal alien", and all of the tweets referenced law enforcement, either at the border or in the interior. One of the tweets contained a powerful Daily Caller video showing illegal aliens in camouflage carrying large backpacks across the border unimpeded.
Twitter's only response to an inquiry about why promotion of the tweets was rejected: "We've reviewed your tweets and confirmed that it is ineligible to participate in the Twitter Ads program at this time based on our Hateful Content policy. Violating content includes, but is not limited to, that which is hate speech or advocacy against a protected group."
Organizations of all kinds pay Twitter to promote specific tweets in order to drive traffic to an organization's website. Twitter advertises that the ads "can get you more likes, amplify your message, and get more people talking about the things that matter to you most - your cause, project, business, or brand." This is exactly why the Center selected these specific tweets to be placed as ads.
At a July congressional hearing on social media filtering practices, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte said that social media platforms need to “do a better job explaining how they make decisions to filter content and the rationale for why they do so."
We agree.
You judge: Do these tweets illustrate "hateful content", or is Twitter filtering content with a political bias?
Twitter's only response to an inquiry about why promotion of the tweets was rejected: "We've reviewed your tweets and confirmed that it is ineligible to participate in the Twitter Ads program at this time based on our Hateful Content policy. Violating content includes, but is not limited to, that which is hate speech or advocacy against a protected group."
Organizations of all kinds pay Twitter to promote specific tweets in order to drive traffic to an organization's website. Twitter advertises that the ads "can get you more likes, amplify your message, and get more people talking about the things that matter to you most - your cause, project, business, or brand." This is exactly why the Center selected these specific tweets to be placed as ads.
At a July congressional hearing on social media filtering practices, House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte said that social media platforms need to “do a better job explaining how they make decisions to filter content and the rationale for why they do so."
We agree.
You judge: Do these tweets illustrate "hateful content", or is Twitter filtering content with a political bias?
Democrats Have A Long History In America...
..And It's Finally Starting To Catch Up To Them!!!
-Diamond And Silk
EXCLUSIVE: Diamond and Silk Call on Trump to Probe Social Media Giants
CBS ‘fact check’ tries its best deny Trump economy is better than Obama’s . . . and its best is not very good
Ah, the “fact check” genre of journalism. Legacy journalists love it because it allows them to appear all about “facts” while actually giving them a platform to editorialize.
The classic journalism fact-checker used to check things like the spelling of names, the correctness of addresses and dates – you know, actual objective facts. The new wave of “fact-checkers” takes statements by Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, and attempts to instruct you they are wrong using “facts” that could including anything from the opinion of some “expert” to a government body’s future projections.
I have seen “fact-checkers” claim it was “false” when a Republican predicted an economic bill would spur a certain level of growth, because a projection from the Congressional Budget Office said otherwise. So Party A’s forecast for the future is “false” because Party B’s projection for the future is different. That is not fact-checking. That is editorializing.
So it’s in this vein that today we consider the latest effort from CBS News, which can’t let stand the claim by President Trump that the present economy is better than the one we had under Barack Obama. That this is true seems wholly beyond dispute just by looking at the GDP growth numbers of the last several quarters. But CBS has to defend its hero, so this is how they tried to do it:
HASSETT: “There was an inflection at the election of Donald Trump, and … a whole bunch of data items started heading north.”
THE FACTS: If you look at a chart of monthly job gains or the economy’s growth rate, that inflection point is hard to spot. Hassett notably did not include in his presentation any mention of overall job creation or the broadest measurement of the economy’s output, GDP.
That’s probably because the growth rate Mr. Trump repeatedly cites, the 4.2 percent expansion at an annual rate that occurred in the April-June quarter, isn’t out of line with Obama’s record. The economy grew more quickly than that four times during Mr. Obama’s eight years in office.
Economists generally acknowledge that growth has accelerated this year compared with 2016 and 2017, and most of them partly credit last year’s tax cuts for fueling more consumer and business spending. The economy is on pace to grow at a 3 percent or faster pace in 2018, which would be the first time since 2005 it would reach that mark.
Yet it barely missed that cutoff in 2015, when it expanded 2.9 percent under Mr. Obama.
(Hassett is White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett.)
So what has CBS tried to do here? It’s attempted to rebut Trump and Hassett on the 4.2 percent growth rate in the second quarter by pointing out that Obama had four different quarters that hit that mark or did better. That’s true.
But talk about “lacking context,” which is a favorite thing of media “fact-checkers” to do . . . Trump has been president for six full quarters. He’s averaged close to 3 percent GDP growth and he’s already topped the vaunted 4 percent mark once, with many economists thinking he’ll do it again in...
The classic journalism fact-checker used to check things like the spelling of names, the correctness of addresses and dates – you know, actual objective facts. The new wave of “fact-checkers” takes statements by Republicans, particularly Donald Trump, and attempts to instruct you they are wrong using “facts” that could including anything from the opinion of some “expert” to a government body’s future projections.
I have seen “fact-checkers” claim it was “false” when a Republican predicted an economic bill would spur a certain level of growth, because a projection from the Congressional Budget Office said otherwise. So Party A’s forecast for the future is “false” because Party B’s projection for the future is different. That is not fact-checking. That is editorializing.
So it’s in this vein that today we consider the latest effort from CBS News, which can’t let stand the claim by President Trump that the present economy is better than the one we had under Barack Obama. That this is true seems wholly beyond dispute just by looking at the GDP growth numbers of the last several quarters. But CBS has to defend its hero, so this is how they tried to do it:
HASSETT: “There was an inflection at the election of Donald Trump, and … a whole bunch of data items started heading north.”
THE FACTS: If you look at a chart of monthly job gains or the economy’s growth rate, that inflection point is hard to spot. Hassett notably did not include in his presentation any mention of overall job creation or the broadest measurement of the economy’s output, GDP.
That’s probably because the growth rate Mr. Trump repeatedly cites, the 4.2 percent expansion at an annual rate that occurred in the April-June quarter, isn’t out of line with Obama’s record. The economy grew more quickly than that four times during Mr. Obama’s eight years in office.
Economists generally acknowledge that growth has accelerated this year compared with 2016 and 2017, and most of them partly credit last year’s tax cuts for fueling more consumer and business spending. The economy is on pace to grow at a 3 percent or faster pace in 2018, which would be the first time since 2005 it would reach that mark.
Yet it barely missed that cutoff in 2015, when it expanded 2.9 percent under Mr. Obama.
(Hassett is White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett.)
So what has CBS tried to do here? It’s attempted to rebut Trump and Hassett on the 4.2 percent growth rate in the second quarter by pointing out that Obama had four different quarters that hit that mark or did better. That’s true.
But talk about “lacking context,” which is a favorite thing of media “fact-checkers” to do . . . Trump has been president for six full quarters. He’s averaged close to 3 percent GDP growth and he’s already topped the vaunted 4 percent mark once, with many economists thinking he’ll do it again in...
Land Reform and Farm Murders in South Africa
South African farm murders have long been a niche cause on the Internet, and the country has made headlines again due to a South African government plan to seize the land of white farmers under the guise of “South African land reform.”
News of these farm murders and land seizures have gained steam with the release of Lauren Southern’s documentary Farmlands. And United States President Donald Trump has brought even more attention to the plight of Afrikaners with his tweet that he would be looking into the South African land and farm seizure.
Most people don’t know much about the history of South Africa beyond the simplistic propaganda of the 1980s – white South Africans bad, ANC good. The history and current situation of South Africa, however, is much more complex.
Defining Terms: Who Are the Key Players?
Before going any further, terms should be defined and the key players identified:
A Brief History of South Africa: From Early Settlement to the Boer War
A Brief History of South Africa: The Boer Wars
The first concentration camps were built for Boers. Not just any Boers, but primarily the wives and children of Boer Commandos (irregular guerilla troops) fighting the British Empire. The strategy was simple: Lock up their women and children, and they...
News of these farm murders and land seizures have gained steam with the release of Lauren Southern’s documentary Farmlands. And United States President Donald Trump has brought even more attention to the plight of Afrikaners with his tweet that he would be looking into the South African land and farm seizure.
Most people don’t know much about the history of South Africa beyond the simplistic propaganda of the 1980s – white South Africans bad, ANC good. The history and current situation of South Africa, however, is much more complex.
Defining Terms: Who Are the Key Players?
Before going any further, terms should be defined and the key players identified:
- ANC: The African National Congress, the leading party in South Africa since the end of apartheid.
- Afrikaners: Dutch-, German- and French Huguenot-descended white South Africans who primarily speak a language called Afrikaans.
- Bantu: A group of black South Africans including the Xhosa (of which Nelson Mandela was a member) who originally lived in the northeast of the country.
- Boers: A subset of Afrikaners who still lead a rural and agricultural existence.
- Democratic Alliance: Currently the second-largest party in the South African parliament, the Democratic Alliance is a broad-based centrist party that is comparatively economically liberal for South Africa. It enjoys broad, multiracial support, though it is most popular among all racial minorities – white, Coloured and Indian. Its black supporters are often derided as “clever blacks” by ANC supporters.
- EFF: The Economic Freedom Fighters, a far-left political party in South Africa that has pushed the South African government to seize land from white farmers. Sometimes derisively called “Everything for Free,” the EFF is the third-largest party in South Africa, but is poised to become the second.
- Khoisan: A popular name for the original inhabitants of most of the territory now known as South Africa. This is not an ethnic designation, but a linguistic one. These are who the Dutch settlers first encountered.
A Brief History of South Africa: From Early Settlement to the Boer War
To understand the current situation in South Africa, it is important to first understand the country before, during and after apartheid.
South Africa’s modern history begins with the Dutch East India Company, which established trading posts for sailors along the coast. Dutchmen soon started settling the area, with little, if any, conflict with the native Khoisan population. Dutch settlers, however, quickly came into conflict with the Dutch East India Company’s authoritarian rule.
Freedom-seeking Dutch settlers moved north starting in the 17th Century. In 1852, Boers founded the South African Republic (known as the “Transvaal Republic”) and then the Orange Free State in 1854. These are called “Boer Republics” and they, in turn, came into conflict with both southward-expanding Bantu tribes (most notably the Zulu, who were in the process of conquering other nearby Bantu tribes) and the British Empire.
“White South Africans” are typically treated as a monolith, but there are two main, distinct groups: The Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaners and the English-speaking British. Indeed, there were intense hostilities between these two groups, especially after the Second Boer War when the Boer Republics were reforged as British colonies.
Telling the Afrikaners to “go home” is a nonsensical statement. They are not Dutch. They do not hold Dutch passports, nor would they at any point have been welcomed back by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In many regions of South Africa, the Afrikaners have been around longer than the Bantus and have a stronger claim on the land, having purchased it from Khoisans. On the other hand, traditionally Bantu land was conquered from other Bantu tribes or taken by the Bantus from the Khoisans.
South Africa’s modern history begins with the Dutch East India Company, which established trading posts for sailors along the coast. Dutchmen soon started settling the area, with little, if any, conflict with the native Khoisan population. Dutch settlers, however, quickly came into conflict with the Dutch East India Company’s authoritarian rule.
Freedom-seeking Dutch settlers moved north starting in the 17th Century. In 1852, Boers founded the South African Republic (known as the “Transvaal Republic”) and then the Orange Free State in 1854. These are called “Boer Republics” and they, in turn, came into conflict with both southward-expanding Bantu tribes (most notably the Zulu, who were in the process of conquering other nearby Bantu tribes) and the British Empire.
“White South Africans” are typically treated as a monolith, but there are two main, distinct groups: The Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaners and the English-speaking British. Indeed, there were intense hostilities between these two groups, especially after the Second Boer War when the Boer Republics were reforged as British colonies.
Telling the Afrikaners to “go home” is a nonsensical statement. They are not Dutch. They do not hold Dutch passports, nor would they at any point have been welcomed back by the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In many regions of South Africa, the Afrikaners have been around longer than the Bantus and have a stronger claim on the land, having purchased it from Khoisans. On the other hand, traditionally Bantu land was conquered from other Bantu tribes or taken by the Bantus from the Khoisans.
A Brief History of South Africa: The Boer Wars
“The Boer Wars” refers to two wars between the Boer Republics and the British Empire, but mostly the second one. The first was a rout for the Boers and left the British Empire with egg on their face. They would not be embarrassed a second time.
The first concentration camps were built for Boers. Not just any Boers, but primarily the wives and children of Boer Commandos (irregular guerilla troops) fighting the British Empire. The strategy was simple: Lock up their women and children, and they...
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