90 Miles From Tyranny

Thursday, March 1, 2018

Health of world’s last male northern white rhino in decline

The health of the world’s last male northern white rhino is deteriorating and minders say his “future is not looking bright.”

The 45-year-old rhino named Sudan was listed on the Tinder dating app last year as “The Most Eligible Bachelor in the World” as a fundraiser. He lives with the last two female northern white rhinos in Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy, which said Thursday that Sudan is suffering from an infection despite 24-hour care by veterinarians.

The three rhinos, along with another male from the same subspecies that since died, arrived at Ol Pejeta from a Czech zoo in 2009.

Scientists hope to save the northern white rhino from extinction by using southern white rhinos as surrogates to carry northern white rhino embryos and give birth.

..and walls too:

Vatican walls are tall and strong.

Commie Pope Refuses To Tear Down His Walls And Let ALL Migrants in: He Is CLEARLY NOT A CHRISTIAN

Pope Promotes Islamic Invasion: Sacrificing European Culture On His Marxist Altar

Curious Death

When Pope Paul VI died, in 1978, it was the mark of the beginning of the year of three Popes. Albino Luciani was elected to succeed him and he chose as his regnal name Pope John Paul I. Curiously, upon his election he told his housekeeper that he would not reign for long. Thirty-three days later he died. The Vatican reported that the near-66-year-old Pope most likely died the previous night of a heart attack. It has been claimed that the Vatican altered some of the details of the discovery of the death to avoid possible unseemliness in that he was discovered by Sister Vincenza, a nun. An autopsy was not performed which, along with inconsistent statements made following the Pope’s death, led to a number of conspiracy theories concerning it. These statements relate to who found the Pope’s body, the time when he was found, and what papers were in his hand. Many believe that John Paul I was murdered either by communists (for planning to resume the traditionally strong stand against it) or freemasons (believed to have infiltrated the Church to its highest echelons).

Tucker Slams Google For Partnering With 'Wholly Discredited Hate Group' SPLC to Censor YouTube

YouTube is getting help from the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center in its effort to identify extremist content.
YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers” police the platform for so-called hate speech to terror-related content.
The SPLC has labeled pedestrian conservative groups as hate groups in the past.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is assisting YouTube in policing content on their platform, The Daily Caller has learned.

The left-wing nonprofit — which has more recently come under fire for labeling legitimate conservative organizations as “hate groups” — is one of the more than 100 nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and government agencies in YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers” program, a source with knowledge of the arrangement told TheDC.

The SPLC and other program members help police YouTube for extremist content, ranging from so-called hate speech to terrorist recruiting videos.

All of the groups in the program have confidentiality agreements, a spokesperson for Google, YouTube’s parent company, previously told TheDC. A handful of YouTube’s “Trusted Flaggers,” including the Anti-Defamation League and No Hate Speech — a European organization focused on combatting intolerance — have gone public with their participation in the program. The vast majority of the groups in the program have remained hidden behind their...

EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s Facebook Engagement Declined By 45 Percent Following Algorithm Change

Engagement on Donald Trump’s Facebook posts has dropped by approximately 45 percent since the platform introduced a new algorithm change, following a year of pressure from left-wing employees and the mainstream media for “allowing” the President to win the 2016 general election.

In January, Facebook introduced a major change to its newsfeed algorithm. In a post, CEO Mark Zuckerberg claimed that the change aimed to give greater emphasis to posts from “friends, family and groups” and less to “businesses, brands and media.” The change was followed by a promise to promote what Facebook calls “broadly trusted” news sources on the platform.

In the month following the algorithm change, engagement on Donald Trump’s Facebook posts dropped sharply. Total engagement dropped by approximately 45 percent, according to data from leading social media analytics firm NewsWhip. In an email to Breitbart News, a representative of Newswhip confirmed that...

Obama Pushes For Internet Censorship During Off-The-Record MIT Speech

Former President Barack Obama gave an off-the-record, hour-long speech at MIT last Friday where he called for Facebook, Twitter and Google to do more to censor free speech on the internet.

Reason Magazine reports the speech was "kept completely secret by virtually all attendees, who had to agree that they would not record, photograph, tweet, or report on the event before being granted a seat in the audience."

Nonetheless, someone secretly recorded the speech and gave a copy to Reason.

Obama thinks Google, Facebook, etc., are "a public good as well as a commercial enterprise," and should consider whether they are corroding our democracy.

Obama described social media platforms as a "hugely powerful potential force for good," but then immediately hedged. "What's also true is that our social media platforms are just a tool," he said. "ISIS can use that tool. Neo-Nazis can use that tool. I do think the large platforms—Google and Facebook being the most obvious, Twitter and others as well, are part of that ecosystem—have to have a conversation about their business model that recognizes they are a public good as well as a commercial enterprise. They're not just an invisible platform, they're shaping our culture in powerful ways."

Much of that shaping is bad, according to Obama. "Essentially we now have entirely different realities that are being created with not just different opinions, but now different facts," he said. "And this isn't just by the way Russian inspired bots and fake news. This is Fox News vs. The New York Times editorial page. If you look at these different sources of information, they do not describe the same thing. In some cases, they don't even talk about the same thing. And so it is very difficult to figure out how democracy works over the long term in those circumstances."

Obama noted that in other countries—like China—the government simply decides which viewpoints can be aired in public....

As the elected sheriff of Broward County, Scott Israel has been fond of self-promotion and found comfort among friends.

After he was first elected in 2012, he opened the Broward Sheriff’s Office pocketbooks to surround himself with campaign supporters. When he ran for reelection, he had his mug festooned on the facade of community outreach vehicles.

It’s a tactic that’s earned him criticism during his five-plus years as the top law enforcement officer at Florida’s largest sheriff’s department, but one that may come in handy now that he’s under intense scrutiny for the way his agency responded to a Parkland shooting that killed 17 — and how it handled calls and tips before the tragedy about shooter Nikolas Cruz.

If his crisis is of his own making, then his salvation may be as well.

“[Scott Israel] stood with us now we must stand with him,” Col. Jim Polan, one of Israel’s top lieutenants, wrote Monday in an email urging other brass to rally deputies. “It’s important that they are reminded about all of the great things that our agency has accomplished under the direction of Sheriff Israel.”

Now two weeks removed from the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Israel is on an island.

Republicans are demanding his ouster following the sheriff’s belated disclosure that a deputy assigned to the school waited outside the building where Cruz did his killing and “never went in.” Democrats are keeping their distance as outside investigators review how BSO handled dozens of calls and tips that painted a portrait of an armed, volatile teenager.

And as Israel deflects any responsibility for errors his deputies may have made — touting his own “amazing leadership” on CNN Sunday — the rank-and-file are beginning to “grumble.”

“It’s a low grumble now, but it’s starting to build,” said Jeff Bell, president of the Broward Sheriff’s Office Deputies Association.

The pressure — including a subpoena for documents issued Wednesday by the Florida House of Representatives — is forcing Israel and his allies to try and gin up support, relying on the sheriff’s skills as a politician in order to defend his abilities as a law enforcement agent. On Thursday, with conservative media painting him as “the Barney Fife of Parkland,” Israel’s supporters will gather at a Pompano Beach church to show their support for the sheriff.

Broward Sheriff Scott Israel said Thursday the school resource officer stationed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas was suspended without pay after he learned the deputy never went into the building when the shooting began. Broward Sheriff's Office

But it’s hardly an independent event: The gathering is scheduled at the Word of the Living God Ministries, where pastor John Mohorn is a former BSO chaplain.

If Israel has few people outside his department to lean on, it may be because he’s done himself few favors since Cruz killed 17 students and faculty on Feb. 14 and wounded 15 more.

Immediately after the shooting, for instance, the sheriff touted his agency’s swift response and said the tragedy was a reminder that the public has to help law enforcement identify people on the edge of violence.

“If you see something, say something,” he told the media. “If anybody has any indicator that someone is going through a behavioral change, or on their social media that there are disturbing photos, perhaps bombs or firearms or videos or pictures that are just not right, please make sure law enforcement knows about it.”

As it turned out, members of the public had done exactly that: In call after call, they warned BSO deputies, as well as the FBI, that Cruz owned weapons and was a threat to himself and others. He was a “school shooter in the making,” one tipster stated. He was posting photos with guns on Instagram, another warned.

But little was done.

The sheriff’s office — which has shut down the release of information while the investigation continues — has adamantly stated that none of the tips or calls it received...