90 Miles From Tyranny

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

Google CEO: Russia-Linked Ad Accounts Spent $4,700 in 2016

Google CEO Sundar Pichai testified on Tuesday that “ad accounts linked to Russia” spent “about $4,700 in advertising” to politically influence Americans during the 2016 presidential election season, offering his remarks during an exchange with Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) in House Judiciary Committee hearing on Tuesday in Washington, DC.

WATCH:

Transcript below.

NADLER: According to meda reports, Google found evidence that Russian agents spent thousands of dollars to purchase ads on its advertising platforms that span multiple Google products as part of the Russian agents’ campaign to interference in the election, two years ago. Additionally, Juniper Downs, head of global policy for YouTube, testified in July that YouTube had identified and shut down multiple channels containing thousands of videos associated with the Russian misinformation campaign. Does Google now know the full extent to which its online platforms wre eploited by Russian actors in the election, two years ago?

PICHAI: We undertook a very thorough investigation, and in 2016 we now know there were teo main ad accounts linked to Russia, which advertised on Google for about $4,700 in advertising. We also found other limited —

NADLER: — A total of $4,700?

PICHAI: That’s right, which was — no amount is okay, here, but we founded limited activity, improper activity. We learned from that and we dramatically increased the protections we have around our election offerings leading up to the current elections, we again found limited activity both from the Internet Research Agency in Russia as well as accounts linked to Iran.

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Harvard Grad Students Perform Study, Debunk Gender Wage Gap

We’ve long been telling you the “wage gap” is a bigger pile of bullhickeythan Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Well, now there are academics coming out and saying the same thing. A pair of Harvard grad students did a study on the wage gap and they’re calling shenanigans on the whole thing.

In a paper titled, “Why Do Women Earn Less Than Men?” Valentin Bolotnyy and Natalia Emanuel study the unionized environment of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).

[In the MBTA], workers are promoted on the basis of seniority rather than performance, and male and female workers of the same seniority have the same choices for scheduling, routes, vacation, and overtime. There is almost no scope here for a sexist boss to favor men over women.”

And yet, Bolotnyy and Emanuel reported that “female workers earn $0.89 on the male-worker dollar (weekly earnings).” The Ph.D. candidates used “confidential administrative data” on the authority’s bus and train operators “to show that the weekly earnings gap can be explained by the workplace choices that women and men make.”

And, all across the land, feminist hambeasts’ heads began to spontaneously combust.

When you adjust the gap for the number of hours worked, it disappears faster than a plate of Oreos on Amy Schumer’s coffee table. Put simply, men are usually willing to work longer hours than the ladies. More hours equals more ducats in your coin purse.

I’ll clue you in on a little secret. Men and women are different. We have different priorities. Generally speaking, women put more value in experiences and relationships. Including spending time with and taking care of their families and children. Not a bad thing by any stretch. Men, on the other hand, tend to be of a single mind with regards to work. We’re here solely for the purpose of making copious amounts of greenbacks. If achieving that means longer hours, so be it.

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Steele shared Trump dossier with longtime Clinton insider, fmr DOJ official. More dots connecting.

Christopher Steele disclosed information from his infamous dossier to Strobe Talbott, a longtime Clinton insider and former State Department official
Court documents released on Tuesday show that Steele shared information with Talbott because of the latter’s position on the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board
Talbott’s link to the dossier has not been previously reported. His brother-in-law, another Clinton insider, compiled an anti-Trump dossier of his own during the campaign.

Christopher Steele, the author of the infamous anti-Trump dossier, disclosed information from his Trump-Russia investigation to a longtime Clinton crony because of his position on a State Department advisory board, according to court documents filed on Tuesday.

According to the court filing, Steele told a court in the United Kingdom on Aug. 1 that he provided Strobe Talbott, the Clinton insider, with anti-Trump research because of his position on the Foreign Affairs Policy Board, an independent advisory board set up in 2011 by then-Sec. of State Hillary Clinton.

Clinton appointed Talbott chairman of the advisory board, and he served in that role through John Kerry’s tenure.

“As regards disclosure to Strobe Talbott (if relevant to this claim), the Defendant relies on US Department of State Foreign Affairs Policy Board,” reads the Aug. 1 filing.

Steele’s link to Talbott, which has not previously been revealed, shows the lengths to which Steele went to disseminate the fruits of his Trump investigation, which started in June 2016 when he was hired by Fusion GPS, an opposition research firm hired by the DNC and Clinton campaign.

The Steele document was revealed on Tuesday in a lawsuit filed by three Russian bankers who have sued Steele in the U.K. and U.S. over the dossier. A Sept. 14, 2016 memo in the dossier alleges links between the founders of the bank, Alfa Bank, and the Kremlin. They have sued Steele and Fusion GPS for defamation.

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French Christmas market shooter was radical Islamist on government’s radar

The man who sprayed gunfire at a Christmas market in Strasbourg, killing three people and wounding 13 others, was identified as a radicalized Islamist with a lengthy rap sheet who was on France’s national security list as a possible terror threat, according to reports.

Cherif Chekatt, 29, who was known to be part of radicalized networks in his native Strasbourg, is a “repeat offender” and “delinquent” who served time in French and German prisons, the UK’s Independent reported.

Senior Interior Ministry official Laurent Nuñez said on France-Inter radio that police had sought to arrest Chekatt on Tuesday morning, hours before the shooting, in connection to an attempted murder and armed robbery.

He was not at home – where explosives were reportedly found — but five other people were detained, authorities said, according to the Guardian of the UK.

Nuñez said the failed arrest might be one reason for the attack.

“Right now, the terrorist motive for this attack has not been established, and I would advise extreme caution over this. The hunt is taking place and the priority is to find this attacker,” he said.

Police officers patrol in the railway station of the city of Strasbourg following a shooting at a Christmas market.

Chekatt has been on France’s “Fiche S,” a French register of those who are considered to pose a threat to national security. The S-card permits police to place suspects under surveillance, but is not grounds for arrest.

Among people on the list are suspected Islamist extremists, major criminals, political militants and anarchists.

France raised the security alert level as hundreds of police and soldiers hunted for Chekatt, who may have fled to neighboring Germany, officials said.

A cabdriver, flagged down by the gunman and ordered to take him out of the city center, told authorities that the suspect had been injured during a gun battle.

“Three hundred and fifty police and gendarmes are currently on the ground to apprehend the suspect, supported by two helicopters, the RAID [French anti-terror police], the BRI [anti-gang brigade] and the Sentinel force,” Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said.

“The government has decided to move the security level to ‘Emergency Attack’ with stricter controls at the borders, and the implementation of reinforced controls on all the Christmas markets that are taking place in France to avoid the risk of copycat attacks.”

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Here’s a great example of the mainstream media distorting information to promote a liberal agenda, an act that is especially pervasive when it comes to immigration coverage. A story published by NBC news, and reiterated by various other outlets, claims illegal immigrants don’t bring disease into the United States. The headline reads: “Migrants don’t bring disease. In fact, they help fight it, report says.” The article focuses on a study commissioned by a medical journal called the Lancet and University College London. The finished product is titled “Global patterns of mortality in international migrants: a systematic review and meta-analysis” and one of the researchers, Dr. Paul Spiegel, proclaims that migrants spreading disease is a “false argument” used to keep them out. The editor of the Lancet said; “In too many countries, the issue of migration is used to divide societies and advance a populist agenda.”

Nevertheless, buried deep in the news article the reporter offers this important nugget from the study, only after writing that migrants are less likely than people in their host countries to die of heart disease, cancer, respiratory diseases and other ills: “The exceptions are hepatitis, tuberculosis and HIV.” Last we checked those are deadly diseases and Judicial Watch has interviewed medical experts that confirm illegal immigrants do indeed pose a serious public health threat to the U.S. by bringing dangerous diseases into the country. This includes tuberculosis, dengue and Chikungunya. Just last month a prominent physician in a key border state warned that the caravan streaming north from Honduras will undoubtedly bring infectious diseases into the U.S. Among them are extremely drug resistant strands of tuberculosis and mosquito-borne diseases such as dengue and chikungunya that are widespread in the region.

The same week Judicial Watch published the story about the caravan health threat a major newspaper reported on the health crisis created by the influx of Venezuelans fleeing to neighboring countries. The migrants are spreading malaria, yellow fever, diphtheria, dengue, tuberculosis and AIDS throughout South America. Many of the diseases had been considered eradicated in the neighboring Latin American countries, according to government officials cited in the article, which states that “contagion from Venezuela’s economic meltdown is starting to spread to neighboring countries—not financially, but literally, in the form of potentially deadly diseases carried among millions of refugees.” As an example, the story reveals that “measles reappeared with a vengeance” in a Brazilian city near the Venezuelan border that had declared the highly contagious airborne disease “vanquished” nearly two decades ago. “Measles is already spreading beyond the Brazilian Amazon to other Brazilian states, as well as Colombia, Peru and as far south as Argentina, according to recent Pan American Health Organization reports,” the article states. “Other diseases racing through communities in Venezuela are now crossing borders and raising concerns among health authorities as far away as the U.S.”

Years ago, when Barack Obama let tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors into the country, health experts warned about the serious hazards to the American public. Most of the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) came from Central America, like the current caravan, and they crossed into the U.S. through Mexico, in the same way that the caravan expects to. Swine flu, dengue fever and Ebola were among the diseases that the hordes of UACs brought with them, according to lawmakers and medical experts interviewed by Judicial Watch during the influx. At the time, a U.S. Congressman, who is also a medical doctor, told Judicial Watch about the danger to the American public as well as the Border Patrol agents forced to care for the UACs. The former lawmaker, Phil Gingrey, referred to it as a “severe and dangerous” crisis because the Central American youths were importing infectious diseases considered to be largely eradicated in this country. Many migrants lack basic vaccinations such as those to prevent chicken pox or measles, leaving America’s young children and the elderly particularly susceptible, Gingrey pointed out then. To handle the escalating health crisis the CDC activated an Emergency Operations Center (EOC) that largely operated in...

James Bovard notes the threat to private gun ownership posed by the “deep state,” the “officials who secretly wield power permanently in Washington, often in federal agencies with vast sway and little accountability.”

While such laws were made by elected officials, it is unelected bureaucrats who are largely left in charge of enforcement, and that can cause big problems for gun owners. Just before press time for this issue, it was reported that a California farmer who was simply trying to meet the state’s ever-changing restrictive gun laws by registering his rifle is being charged with 12 felonies after the state DOJ determined his AR-15 to be “illegally modified.”

Questionable Federal Background Checks

Bovard’s observations should not come as a surprise. As government agencies — unlike lawmakers — are able to directly access databases that relate to gun ownership, the agencies themselves are often in a position to abuse this information. These databases are under the control of gigantic bureaucracies like FBI that face little to no accountability from voters.

The National Instant Background Check System (NICS) is the pillar of all background check systems for firearms purchases and was a part of the 1994 Brady Act. Any time a prospective gun owner wants to buy a gun from a federally licensed firearms dealer (FFL), they must go through a background check. Under this system, the FBI looks at certain factors such as criminal history and mental health to determine if an individual presents too much of a risk to own a firearm.

Although NICS is marketed as a speedy background check system, it comes with its own set of problems. NICS has gained notoriety for producing false positives. In other words, law-abiding citizens are mixed and matched with criminals who have the same name. In turn, these individuals are prevented from acquiring guns due to bureaucratic errors.

Particularly worrisome is the rate of initial NICS denials that turn out as false positives. Some estimates from the Crime Prevention Research Center indicate that in 2009 alone, 93 percent of initial NICS denials were false positives.

Regardless, NICS has remained intact even when evidence has shown that it is ineffective in combatting crime. For example, crime rates had already gone into steep decline by the mid-1990s, well before NICS went into effect in 1998.

Fear of Gun Registration is Warranted

Yet, the gun-control bureaucracy continues to grow. This was on full display when Fix NICS was recently signed into law— it was the largest gun expansion at the federal level since the Brady Act was enacted in 1993. Under Fix NICS, state governments are now being incentivized to share records with the federal government in order to streamline the background check process. Proponents of Fix NICS claim that these tweaks would have prevented the Charleston church and the Sutherland Springs mass shootings, in which both shooters supposedly fell through the cracks of the NICS system.

Certain gun owners worry that the federal government’s program to incentivize states to hand over their gun records could lead to the creation of a federal gun registry. And these fears are not without their...