#i want neo to have one of those guns that shoot out a flag that says “bang” on it

[qubelord]

IDK

[newstfionline]

Officials confront social media monitoring dilemma after Pittsburgh shooting

By Lisa Marie Pane, Associated Press, October 31, 2018

BOISE, IDAHO--Their anger is all over social media for the whole world to see, with rants about minorities and relationships gone bad or paranoid delusions about perceived slights.

The perpetrators of mass shootings often provide a treasure trove of insight into their violent tendencies, but the information is not always seen by law enforcement until after the violence is carried out. In addition, rants and hate speech rarely factor into whether someone passes a background check to buy guns.

The massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue, the pipe bombing attempts from last week and the Florida high school shooting this year have underscored the dilemma of law enforcement around the country in assessing the risk of people making online rants at a time when social media has become so ubiquitous.

“We can go out on Twitter and there are loads of people saying insane stuff, but how do you know which is the one person? It’s always easy after the fact, to go: ‘That was clear.’ But clearly everyone spouting their mouth doesn’t go and shoot up a synagogue,” said David Chipman, a retired agent of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and now senior policy adviser for the Giffords Center.

Robert Bowers, the man accused of opening fire at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, expressed virulently anti-Semitic views on a social media site called Gab, according to an Associated Press review of an archived version of the posts made under his name. The cover photo for his account featured a neo-Nazi symbol, and his recent posts included a photo of a fiery oven like those used in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. Other posts referenced false conspiracy theories suggesting the Holocaust was a hoax.

It was only just before the shooting that the poster believed to be Mr. Bowers seemed to cross the line, posting: “I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I’m going in.” Authorities say Bowers killed 11 people and injured six others, including four officers who responded.

Keeping tabs on social media posts has been used for years by law enforcement to try to identify potential threats. The task is enormous and it’s an inexact science. The volume of posts is significant and the question arises: Is something a true threat or free speech?

They are mindful of the fact that the First Amendment protects Americans’ right to express even speech that many in society find abhorrent--and have to make often-subjective decisions about what crosses the line.

Among more than 550 police departments across the country surveyed several years ago by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, about three-quarters said they regularly searched social media for potential threats.

Lt. Chris Cook, spokesman for the Arlington, Texas, Police Department, said the searches are often done manually, using keywords to try to identify troubling posts.

“It’s very time consuming, it’s very staff and resource intensive, and you have humans involved in the process so there is the potential that law enforcement can miss something,” Lieutenant Cook said, adding that departments can’t rely on social media alone. The community needs to be involved to report any suspicious behavior.

“Everyone has to be our extra eyes and ears out there,” he said.

In one case where vigilance paid off, authorities say a black woman received troubling racist and harassing messages on Facebook from a man she didn’t know, prompting her to call police. The tip from the New Jersey woman led Kentucky police to a home where they found Dylan Jarrell with a firearm, more than 200 rounds of ammunition, a bulletproof vest, a 100-round high-capacity magazine, and a “detailed plan of attack.” He was arrested just as he was leaving his driveway.

Bowers is not alone among alleged mass shooters in making racist or bigoted comments online.

Dylann Roof, convicted of the 2015 slaying of nine black churchgoers in South Carolina, had posted a 2,000-word racist rant and posed in photos with firearms and the Confederate flag. Nikolas Cruz, the teenager charged in the slaying of 17 students and adults at a high school in Parkland, Fla., hurled online slurs against blacks and Muslims, and went so far as to state he wanted to be a “professional school shooter.”

The rants did not affect their ability to buy guns. When purchasing a firearm, criminal background checks only look for any records showing a criminal past or mental health problems that led to an involuntary commitment.

“I always felt as an ATF agent, the way our laws were structured, ATF stood for ‘After the Fact’,” Mr. Chipman said.

There have been some changes, however, to make it easier to alert authorities to warning signs. “Red flag” laws have been enacted in 13 states in the past couple of years, allowing relatives or law enforcement with concerns about a person’s mental health to go to court and seek to have firearms removed at least temporarily.

But Erich Pratt, executive director of Gun Owners of America, cautioned against using social media content to deny someone the constitutional right to own a firearm.

“I abhor hateful comments by the left or the right but I don’t think you lose your rights for simply uttering,” Mr. Pratt said.

He likened it to the Tom Cruise movie “Minority Report,” about law enforcement in the future using psychic technology to nab murderers before they commit a crime.

“It’s dangerous to go down this road of Minority Report with pre-crime,” he said. “Nobody should lose their rights without due process.”

[toblkflys]

A Little Brain Scrub

I have a family member that believes there is no pandemic. How is that? I guess there is a whole movement that believes this. So, people are dying how? In 7 months 2 million people have died worldwide. In the same time period, there have been 10 million people in the US that tested COVID positive. What do we call this?  Of course, many people are using the TV/movie/book version like The Hot Zone, as a point of reference, “now that is what a pandemic looks like,” they say. They think if it were a real pandemic people would be “dropping like flys.” If it truly got to that point we would really be screwed worldwide. That would be worse than a pandemic, it would be an extinction event. The definition of a pandemic is “(of a disease) prevalent over a whole country or the world.” That is all it means. What about this is a pandemic is incorrect? People are getting the sickness/disease here, people are getting the same sickness/disease across the country and people are getting the sickness/disease in other countries. That fits the definition. I find nowhere in the definition, no matter which dictionary I look in, does it say “people must drop like flys.” Obviously, this group of people knows something even the scholars don’t. Speaking of, this group of people is quite a bit bigger than one would have guessed. That is disappointing. We have that many people in the country who prefer not to think for themselves. That is truly frightening. Of course, I am referring to my friends the Trumpsters.  And I was amazed or maybe I was horrified, I’m not sure which, the day after the election. I live in a nice retirement community with over 55 adults and most are quite a bit over 55. I drove down my street and several of the houses were flying their flag, nice, right? Not. They were flying them half-mast! Are you fucking kidding me? Just because Trump lost? Now that is a slap in the face to democracy and patriotism. These people think they are patriots, who tout the flag and talk about their rights and pro-America. These same people are basically shitting on the flag. They might as well burn it. Flying the flag at half-mast is not to be taken lightly. Only the president can order the flag to be flown at half-mast (and guess what Trumpsters, Trump lost and he is NOT your president).  “Those individuals and agencies that usurp authority and display the flag at half-staff on inappropriate occasions are quickly eroding the honor and reverence accorded this solemn act,” says the American Legion and I fully agree! I mean Wells Fargo is doing this as well! WTF?  What about flying the flag at half-mast is patriotic? Are they going to do it all four years? I get so angry every time I pass the neighbor’s house because I see it. It is an affront every time. I even printed out 20 flyers with the American Legion saying above on it. I wanted, and still want, to throw them all over their fence into their backyard. I wanted to tape the flyers to the windshields of their vehicles. I want to strike back or strike out.  Speaking of, have you ever noticed what vehicles Trumpsters drive? Trucks, SUVs, muscle cars and American-made sedans. It is horrible to stereotype says you, and you are right. But it is true. What vehicles are parked at rallies? What vehicles do you see all decked out with American flags, the bigger the better? Trucks, the higher the better, big tires, lots of modification, maybe they rock climb with their truck or they pull their toy hauler with their Polaris, going out to the dunes to drink beer and drive their UTVs around. Maybe they will take their guns so they can target practice because drinking beer, driving UTVs, and shooting guns all go together, especially the beer. Just sayin. I have another relative who, unfortunately, married a Trumpster (actually I have two, eye roll). They have a little boy. Dad is in the military and mom, my relative, used to be normal but now follows her husband. The little boy is obsessed with war movies and they encourage it. They bought him military gear, a helmet, a tactical vest, an ammo belt and of course a replica M4. They sent a picture of him all geared up, holding the machine gun at the ready with a scowl on his face. They think it’s cute.  What about dressing your child up like a killer is cute? But god help them, they need their guns, especially their fully automatic M16s because they hunt deer with them. Yeah. Are the deer shooting back or something? Are they that afraid of the deer that they need a fully automatic weapon? Or maybe it is the scary sounds in the wild while they are hunting. And these people teach their kids how to hold a gun and how to shoot as soon as they can. I remember my brother being taught and I was jealous I wasn’t because I was a girl. And this is patriotic. Dressing my 8-year-old like a sniper is patriotic. He will likely grow up hating Democrats and he will not really know why. He will join a survivalist group, hate queers and liberals, and believe that men are superior to women. He will shoot guns, practice being a sniper, learn hand-to-hand combat, all to be a patriot. Because that is the American way. War not peace. Force not negotiation. Show strength not compromise. Shoot first, not ask questions. That is patriotic.  Trumpsters have no idea where they were/are headed. Welcome to Jonestown, line up for your kool-aid, never mind the people in pain and dying. An incredible phenomenon. Trumpsters don’t see what is so very obvious to the rest of us. They are so sure that the sky is green because Trump said so. We look up and nope, still blue. But don’t infringe on the Trumpsters' rights to call the sky green!  It is so interesting to me because I have always been fascinated with Nazi Germany and what happened there. I have wondered what it was about Hitler that people followed with no question. I mean how can people do that? How can they not see what was happening? How could they let it happen? And now I know. I still don’t understand it but I have had the opportunity to witness how a leader mesmerizes a huge section of a country to believe anything he says no matter how irrational. How the leader can literally say and do anything and get away with it.  And they follow blindly. They listen to his propaganda. Definition,“information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.” See, Hitler did this with the Jews. He villainized the Jews. It could have been anyone but he chose the Jews, lucky them. They became the enemy that everything wrong could be blamed on. There’s a shortage? It’s the Jews, they take the bread out of your child’s mouth.  And then he offers a solution. Only I can solve your Jew problem. Trump did the same thing with immigrants at first and eventually with Democrats. Now the Democrats are the downfall of the country. They are evil, horrible, liberal people. They hate god, they hate family, they hate America and want to destroy it and make America a socialist country. This is all Trump propaganda. And people listen. And they believe. Despite no proof, they don’t ask for proof. They don’t ask for examples or evidence that it is true. Like Democrats are evil and horrible. Okay. What Democrats do you, Mr. Trumpster, know who fit this bill? If they are evil and horrible they must be doing evil and horrible things, what things are they? Ask a Trumpster. Then, once the people are properly brainwashed, he proceeds to cut the country off, starts to close our borders. Hitler closed Germany’s borders, it’s called isolation. Kind of like North Korea, ever heard of it? North Korea is a good modern example of a country that has closed its borders. Not only would we keep the immigrants out, but Trump would also have kept Americans in. I believe that leaving the country would be defecting and would not be looked upon kindly in Trump’s America. Once he had all of that buttoned up and our country was “self-sufficient” he would start introducing his own police force to keep the peace. He was already headed that way. They would be deployed slowly in more and more places, eventually, there would be no local police, it would be federal and more specifically, Trump’s force. Say hello to the neo SS.  And people, through all of this the Trumpsters are clapping and holding up the American flag, which would eventually be modified to include something Trump. Their rights would be secure! They finally had a voice in Trump and he is getting things done! It’s about time that we had a real police force that came in and made everything safe and secure! It’s okay that they are everywhere with their M4s and you have to show your passport when asked. Better be safe than sorry! Since concentration camps have worked before there is no point messing with success. Put the immigrants/minorities in several which would have been built. And any outspoken Dems. In fact, herd all of the Dems up and put them in certain cities or certain parts of the city. We need to protect our white American children from the undesirables. White supremacy would reign once again. Yes, Trump would have saved this country (from democracy). The funny thing is that Trump didn’t even hide that he was a fascist or that he was promoting fascism. Dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition. Boom. There you go.  So, let them fly our flag at half-mast in protest. Biden and the Dems took away the Trumpsters rights to have a fascist America. They never even got to chant Hail Trump! Or maybe they did and I don’t know about it.  They have the right to disgrace the American flag. They have a right to spread a deadly disease. They have the right to purchase and use a fully automatic weapon. They have a right to vote for a dictator. They have the right to a fascist America. And I guess a serial killer has a right to kill. The rapist a right to rape. Because it’s about me, not you. And I have the right to do what I want to do because I’m free white and American. Isn’t it beautiful? Read the full article

[shirlleycoyle]

Schools Use Software That Blocks LGBTQ+ Content, But Not White Supremacists

Several days ago, Motherboard sent a series of emails from a dummy Gmail account. One read: “Hello, I am going to join the Neo-Nazi group Texas Rebel Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.”

The dummy account was being monitored by child surveillance software purchased for $14 per month from Bark, an Atlanta-based company that claims on its homepage to protect more than 5 million children and have prevented 16 school shootings by monitoring everything children type, read, and do on their devices.

Over the course of one day, Motherboard sent 65 emails with the subject line “New group to join” and the name of either a white supremacist group (as determined by the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League) or the name of a group advocating for LGBTQ+ rights, racial justice, or gun control in the body of the message.

Bark only flagged two emails: one that simply said “porn,” the other “Everytown for Gun Safety.”

Driven by marketing campaigns that capitalize on parent fears about school shootings and child predators, tools like Bark are part of a child surveillance industry that has grown rapidly in recent years—despite a drought of evidence that the software actually makes kids safer. Often, the tools claim to use algorithms that filter websites, flag dangerous content, and give parents and schools a virtual eye over the shoulders of kids as they use the internet.

According to Bark CEO Brian Bason, the company’s algorithms performed as intended during Motherboard's investigation. Emails with the subject line “New group to join” and a message stating intent to join a notorious Neo-Nazi group “were correctly not flagged because (based on your description of your test messages) there was no context in the messages–had your messages included hate speech or grooming of the child, I am confident it would have been flagged,” Bason wrote in an email.

“I’m just surprised [Bark] wouldn’t have been trained to notice words like KKK or Nazi. It sounds pretty naive,” Megan Squire, a computer scientist working as a senior fellow for data analytics at the Southern Poverty Law Center, told Motherboard. But even if the company’s algorithms were able to recognize context in even the most blatant statements, she said, they would likely fail to parse the clandestine ways Neo-Nazis talk and recruit—by specifically avoiding hate speech and instead communicating through layers of memes, irony, and multiple levels of in-jokes.

Motherboard also asked Bark for news articles, police reports, or other documents to back up its claim of “16 school shootings prevented.” The company did not provide any evidence for the claim, but removed the statistic from its prominent place at the top of its homepage. Bason said “we rotate these stats” and that “it of course comes with the understanding that we are a very small piece of those situations.”

The Bark homepage has been saved 39 times by the Internet Archive during 2021. While other statistics on the page have changed, the school shootings-prevented number was displayed prominently every day until the company responded to Motherboard on April 22.

The failure of algorithmic parenting to do what it says on the label—block access to naughty websites and alert adults to potentially dangerous behavior—goes beyond Bark. Motherboard’s investigation suggests that the tools give parents a false sense of security while also blocking children from educational and health material in a manner that pushes up against legal prohibitions against discrimination.

“None of these things are actually built to increase student safety, they’re theater,” Lindsay Oliver, an activism project manager for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has compiled a surveillance self defense guide for students, told Motherboard. “They leave out the marginalized, they punish the marginalized, and they just don’t work.”

Your identity is pornography

Child surveillance tools are notable not just for what content they fail to flag, but also what they do consider dangerous or prohibited. 

Ezra is a student at a high school that uses Securly to filter which websites can be accessed on school-issued devices. While doing research for a recent school project and editing a Wikipedia article about a feminist business, he discovered that the filter was regularly preventing him from viewing websites that most students and educators—particularly at his school—would consider valuable educational resources.

Ezra, who asked to retain partial anonymity, shared a list of nearly 60 websites with Motherboard that Securly’s web filter blocked. They include health resources for LGBTQ teens, news outlets that cover LGBTQ issues, educational resources about sexually transmitted diseases, and pages like gayrealtynetwork.com, whose only offense appears to be having the word “gay” in its URL.

Screenshot of a blocked LGBTQ health website that has been labeled "pornography" by Securly

Securly labeled glma.org, the website for an association of health professionals advancing LGBTQ equality as “pornography,” according to screenshots Ezra provided. It determined that transcendingboundaries.org, the page for a conference on bisexual, transgender, and inter-sex issues, was both “other adult content” and “hate.”

Securly has engineered its PageScan algorithm so that it shouldn’t automatically flag content just because it has words like gay or lesbian, Mike Jolley, the company’s director of K-12 safety operations, told Motherboard. “That’s the best way I can sum up what we’ve done to ensure we aren’t blocking a student who needs help or legitimate information. It’s still a work in progress, but we have made great strides.”

Jolley said that when he tested Securly’s filter on April 21, after being contacted by Motherboard, many of the sites on Ezra’s list were no longer blocked. The company also decided to unblock several that were still inaccessible at that time.

Ezra said he was fortunate that, in his school and community, he felt comfortable raising the issue of discriminatory filtering with administrators, who contacted Securly and asked that the sites be unblocked. But several weeks later, when he went back to try the sites again, Ezra found that the algorithm had reverted and was once again blocking some of the pages.

“I just imagine a kid in middle school who is questioning their sexuality or just wants information and the big thing pops up that says ‘this website is blocked’ and the reason is pornography,” he said. Ezra worries that kids may internalize that discrimination, and that the surveillance may even endanger them if they live in homes where it might be dangerous to ask questions about sexuality and gender. “A lot of students at school are exploring knowledge in a way that they aren’t the rest of the time.”

Filtering morality

Under the federal Children’s Internet Protection Act, passed in 2000, public schools and libraries are required to implement web filtering in order to be eligible for certain funds. But the law—which was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 after a coalition of libraries challenged it for censorship—offers few specifics about what form that web filtering should take, and what kind of content children should be prohibited from seeing.

As a result, public institutions and the companies that provide web filtering have for years used their own value judgements and opaque algorithms to decide what kind of information is acceptable. That’s allowed public institutions to do things like block whole categories of the internet, such as websites related to “alternative sexuality/lifestyles,” simply by checking a box, according to a 2017 study that analyzed web filtering policies at public schools and libraries in Alabama.

Courts have ruled that public school web filters cannot be used to purposefully block access to certain protected content, such as LGBTQ health and educational information. But those decisions haven’t addressed whether algorithms—which often make it impossible to prove specific human intent—violate the First Amendment when they block students from accessing the same kinds of websites. 

Through public records requests, Motherboard obtained a list of the websites that two school districts in Virginia—Alexandria City Public Schools and Rockingham County Public Schools—have either manually blacklisted or whitelisted using Securly. The documents demonstrate the kinds of censorship decisions surveillance algorithms make, and how they create a learning environment subject to the values of school administrators, whose opinions are then fed back into the algorithms.

According to the documents, Rockingham County administrators had to manually block k-k-k.com themselves. Websites for the U.S. State Department, Library of Congress, Virginia state agencies, the Washington Post, and other news outlets were on the list of pages the district had to specifically allow access to. In Alexandria, administrators had to manually allow access to teenshealth.org, a website that includes information on a variety of health issues, including safe sex practices, and unwomen.org, the United Nation’s page for women.

Jolley said that Securly does not assess .gov websites, and that those and others on the whitelists may have been imported from the districts’ previous web filter.

Meanwhile, Rockingham County students can currently access the website of The Family Foundation, an organization that advocates for discriminating against transgender students, because the district manually whitelisted it. But students cannot visit ratemyteachers.com, a forum for feedback on teachers and classes, because it was manually blocked. 

“The same story”

Computer science and educational technology experts interviewed for this article told Motherboard that parents and school districts considering placing their faith in algorithmic monitoring tools like Bark and Securly should remember that even the largest tech companies with the most advanced machine learning systems still struggle to identify hate speech and prevent algorithmic discrimination.

Facebook, despite years of criticism for platforming hate speech, still fails to rein in dangerous content. Google has been accused of algorithmically discriminating against LGBTQ content on YouTube, while also failing to identify common phrases used by white supremacist groups.

“It’s the same story over and over,” Chris Gilliard, a Harvard Shorenstein Center fellow who researches digital redlining and surveillance, told Motherboard. “A company makes inflated claims about what it can do, and somehow manages to not only not do the thing it claims to do, but also keeps out legitimate pursuits.”

Schools Use Software That Blocks LGBTQ+ Content, But Not White Supremacists syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[marymosley]

Blaming Trump For Triggering The Recent Shootings Is More About Controlling Speech Than Violence

Below is my column in The Hill newspaper on the continuing recriminations following the recent massacres. The effort to blame the massacres on Trump reflect an ongoing effort to control speech by declaring certain words to be “triggering.” In this case, the meaning is literal.

Here is the column:

The final death tolls in El Paso and Dayton were not even established when the chorus of recriminations began. Several Democratic candidates like South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg accused President Trump of stoking the hatred leading to the shootings, while Senator Kamala Harris insisted the victims were the “incredible consequence” of the rhetoric used by Trump. Senator Cory Booker went even further, saying not only that Trump was “particularly responsible” and “complicit” in the mass shootings last weekend, but so is everyone who is “not actively working against hate.”

Many of us have denounced the rhetoric of Trump on immigration, the courts, and the media. However, there is a familiar ring to some of the coverage following the massacres that Trump is responsible for the shooting because the language he uses is “triggering.” Columnist Mehdi Hasan said, “The president may not be pulling the trigger or planting the bomb, but he is enabling much of the hatred behind those acts by giving aid and comfort to angry white men by offering them clear targets.”

There have long been efforts to limit speech as “triggering” to others. Colleges and universities have created “safe spaces” and implemented “trigger warnings” to protect students from opposing views or values. Faculty and students have demanded sanctions against those engaging in speech perceived as threatening or demeaning, including the poorly defined concept of “microaggressive” words. The result is a type of speech control that redefines censorship as merely “sheltering.”

In news coverage, “triggering” has taken on a literal meaning that Trump virtually pulled the trigger on victims by adding to a raging environment. It does not matter that a fair amount of violence is committed by leftist groups like Antifa. Such acts are often portrayed by advocates as merely “self defense.” The CNN special “United Shades of America” with Kamau Bell featured what Bell called the “redneck revolt” of gun toting liberals who are battling the “alt right.” Bell followed them to gun ranges and asked why “more white people” are not joining their ranks. Among the “good guys” featured was Willem Van Spronsen, who later attempted to firebomb an immigration center and died in a shootout with police.

Does that make CNN culpable in “triggering” Van Spronsen? Of course not. Yet it would appear from the coverage that Trump is still responsible for El Paso shooter Patrick Crusius, who referenced Trump and said “this attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion of Texas.” It did not matter that both of these individuals apparently have serious mental health issues. It was the rhetoric of Trump that was responsible for the crimes of Crusius. It also does not matter that Conner Betts, the shooter in Dayton, described himself as a “leftist” Democrat who supported the candidacy of Senator Elizabeth Warren. He reportedly wrote, “I want socialism, and I will not wait for the idiots to finally come round to understanding.”

Trump supporters have been assaulted for wearing MAGA hats or overtly supporting the president. Protesters have shouted death threats outside the home of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. An MSNBC host told viewers that Trump was “talking about exterminating Latinos.” A new Hollywood movie, described as a satire, features the hunting of MAGA types called “deplorables,” the name Democratic candidate Hillary Clintongave to Trump supporters during the 2016 campaign. None of those stories led to condemnations of “triggering” rhetoric by Trump critics.

Few Americans will tolerate outright censorship. But 20 years ago, writers began to push an alternative way to silence their critics by limiting their words as “triggering” or threatening. They could claim they were not censoring a viewpoint, only the words used to express it. Yet the result is the same in curtailing what others say. The concept of “triggering” language has become so mainstream today that news hosts now nod in silent acceptance when guests denounce the use of common terms.

On “Meet the Press” last weekend, Eddie Glaude, Princeton professor of African American studies, declared the very use of the term “illegal immigrant” may have caused these shootings. He said, “You set the stage for people who are even more on the extreme to act violently.” Glaude, who previously called the immigration policies of Trump “terrorism,” interrupted another guest, who was noting that laws on the books make such immigration illegal. “No human being is illegal!” Glaude declared.

For years, activists tried to shame others into dropping any reference to the illegal status of some immigrants by claiming the term is verboten. It does not matter that the term appears in laws and has been routinely used by the Supreme Court, including decisions by such liberal icons as William Brennan, Thurgood Marshall, and John Paul Stevens. It is now “triggering” language and, according to Glaude, may actually cause massacres.

Even expressions of empathy can be considered “triggering.” After the shootings, Trump condemned the violence and white supremacy, expressed sympathy for the victims, and ordered all American flags to fly at half mast until August 8. Frank Figliuzzi, an NBC News national security contributor, claimed the flag order was “triggering” because the date, 8/8, could be viewed as a reference to 88, which could be a reference to HH, the eighth letter in the alphabet, which could be viewed as a salute to “Heil Hitler.” Thus, Trump unwittingly or wittingly signaled neo-Nazis.

Figliuzzi expressed shock, “No one is thinking about this. No one is giving him the advice. Or he is rejecting the advice.” There is another possibility that “no one is thinking about this” because it is perfectly insane. More importantly, what Figliuzzi refers to as the “little things” often leads to the limiting of a big thing called “free speech.” That some deranged neo-Nazi would celebrate the coincidence of flags being reraised on 8/8 does not mean that we should all change our actions or speech accordingly.

Trump did not help himself with disastrous visits to El Paso and Dayton, where he was denounced for such moments as giving a “thumbs up” in a photo with an orphaned baby and bragging about how big his crowds were at a rally. He then reportedly complained about the lack of good press out of the trip. However, it ultimately did not matter what he said because his very presence was the trigger. Catherine Wicker, executive president of the Texas College Democrats, said he had “no business” visiting Texas because “what he says to people of color is triggering.”

There is no sense of hypocrisy in any of this for those who use shootings to score political points by denouncing others for doing the same thing. It is inevitable that some will follow massacres like political carpetbaggers to make easy gains. Yet none of these gun triggers were pulled, literally or figuratively, by Trump or Warren or Fox or CNN. We live in an age of rage, however, there remains a big difference between rage and a rampage.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University. You can follow him on Twitter @JonathanTurley.

Blaming Trump For Triggering The Recent Shootings Is More About Controlling Speech Than Violence published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[aariciaaphoenix]

Okay so I just had a long ass rant in the tags of that shootings post and it cut off a majority of my tags. Unfortunately I remember practically nothing out of everything I said cuz I was pissed and tired. If anyone actually cares enough about my opinion on the crappiness of this stupid fucking country, I’ll give a quick (it’s probably not going to be quick) gist on some of the things I think I typed

So the 1 Oct day after was just terrible because I knew no one that was even there yet I cried my eyes out for those that had to go through it

I was there two hours earlier and still went to school the next day only ten minutes away

People barely cared about it afterwards. We still have Vegas Strong posted everywhere (which actually annoyed my dad) and not even a week later my dad just looking at the Mandalay Bay saying “oh look you can see the boarded up window”

And our hockey team, the golden knights appear to care, but all they’ve done is a minute of silence before the anthem, retired the number 58, to represent the victims, and a player, just because *he* decided to, honored a person that was there and helped save people every home game.

None of them have appeared to do anything else. None seem to think that huh, maybe we might need stricter gun law, and even if they have, they haven’t been open about it. How many followers do you think they would have if a famous hockey player of the surprisingly famous record breaking Golden Knights came out and decided to take a stand for gun control

But all they do is honor people and retire a number. That’s it

And the thoughts and prayers bullshit.

That’s basically just an excuse for not doing anything

Oh. I now you just lost your family, but hey we give you our thoughts and prayers. Better now? You better be cuz this happens too much to be sad about it now

And immediately when something thinks hey maybe we need stricter gun laws do this same people who send thoughts and prayers get all pissy and say hay don’t take our guns, you can’t change our second amendment right

But don’t they know that you can actually change the constitution.  That’s what an amendment actually is. Crazy right? That’s why black and women can vote, but they’re probably also those people that think that was a stupid idea

That’s another issue tho

And then those people that have the stupid arguments against gun control

My brother for example: “Dont you know how many stabbings there are in Britain since they’ve taken away guns” “People are still going to kill each other if you take away our guns”

Oh fuck that

Of course people are still going to kill, but trying to use that as a stupid fucking excuse for why gun control is a stupid idea. That’s ridiculous

Not even going into those other arguments about how oh gun control won’t work in America America’s diffent. Fuck that

And when I work with students and a girl is crying after a fire drill and I only realize after how she could have been afraid there could have been a shooter out there

Or how I have another student come up to me after and just ask “what if that was a shooter who pulled the alarm to get us out of the room, that would be crazy” and just walked away like that was such a normal mundane thought.

No

Having eleven year olds being desensitized to this is fucking ridiculous and terrifying

But no one is going to stop this issue because they don’t even care

They’re more worried about football players kneeling to the national anthem because it’s unpatriotic yet theses people break flag code practically every day

They’re more focused on keeping people who love each other from being married because they’re gay and don’t fit into their standard of normal 

They would rather control the bodies of women they will never see or have any connection to in their entire life

They want to keep people from using the restroom they feel more comfortable using

Or praise fucking neo nazis as good people

Or keep those that come from different countries out even though they are trying to avoid worse places

Start wars in other countries just cause they want oil and resources and blame it on how “unstable and violent those 3rd world countries are”

I can’t even continue this rant right now, partially because the rest of the original thought escapes me and partially because I’m so tired and sick

But I’m just tired of how ridiculous these fucking conservative scum are in trying to find justification in why we need to let people die in mass shootings almost every day just so they can keep their fucking guns

Just fuck them and fuck this fucking country

[smokeybrand]

Course Correction

October has been exhausting for me this year. These last 30 or so days have just been bullsh*t, on top of bullsh*t, on top of bullsh*t. It’s surreal how f*cked up things are and this past month has shown the world how ridiculous the US has become.

Trump is out here threatening to repeal the 14th amendment, Birthright citizenship, with a goddamn executive order. This is fearmongering at it’s worst and, more to the point, false news. So legally, he can't do this. You need an amendment to undo another amendment, so an actual act of Congress and no politician worth their salt would vote to repeal such a base principal of the US. The fact that the President doesn't know that is concerning. More concerning, however, is he the fact that he has people seriously looking into this cruel bullsh*t. This is what genocide looks like. Pretty soon, ICE is going to just be shooting cats in the middle of the street, just like the Gestapo. Speaking of which…

Kids are still in camps. Cats just stopped talking about that sh*t because so much other sh*t was going on, but they just opened another one in Texas. These children are being murdered and raped in these places and Trump’s administration just okayed building the largest tent prison in history, for f*cking teenagers.

So, in Germany, it's illegal to brandish Nazi paraphernalia. Like, swastikas and sh*t. You can go to jail for it. With this resurgence of white nationalism, galvanized by Trump and his bigoted, ignorant, retarding rhetoric, these emboldened Neo-Nazis have found a symbol that is not illegal to band under with their comrades-in-hate. It's the f*cking Confederate flag. Legitimate Nazis, from the Nazi homeland, are using the Confederate flag to identify among themselves to avoiding criminalization for breaking the propaganda law. So the next time some southern asshole tries to tell you "Heritage not Hate" gently remind them that proper Nazis feel that same way.

During that shooting in the grocery store where those black people got killed, an armed white man had the opportunity to stop the shooter. HE pulled his gun and the shooter drew his sights and the two paused until they eventually lowered their weapons. The shooter then just walked off, telling his fellow gun-toting, Caucasian, brethren, “Whites don’t shoot whites.” But the attack wasn’t racially motivated at all. Which brings me to…

Can you imagine what it's like to be a 97-year-old holocaust survivor, only to be killed decades later anyway, as you worship in your synagogue by a f*cking nazi? This shooting in Pittsburgh is disgusting. Seriously, that sh*t is a direct result of Trumps dangerous ass rhetoric. His bullsh*t bigotry is costing lives, and not just Saudi ones.

And don’t get me started on that whole situation with Kashoggi. There have been intelligence leaks that have quoted certain killers as saying that they felt vindicated in murdering Kashoggi, a reporter critical of the current Saudi crown prince, because “Trump hates the press.” That’s a thing which has been confirmed by Trump, himself, these past few days as he stumps for the congress his party will lose next week. Dude has literally called the news media the “enemy of the people.” That sh*t came out of his mouth, several times in the last week.

So Blexit is a thing. Google that nonsense. It's f*cking comedy. Kanye West’s uncle tom ass is out here making us look like sambos and monkeys. His minstrel performance in the white house earlier this month was an embarrassment. Kanye is a sick man who stopped taking his meds but Trumps complete validation of what was obviously a manic rant, has painted a portrait that White America can look to and justify why “BBQ Betty” is needed. While I’m on that topic…

Dude, can we live? There has been at least one episode a week of white folks calling the cops on minorities for no reason other than existing. I don’t even know what the f*ck is going on anymore. The funniest thing? These motherf*ckers refuse to acknowledge that, calling the cops on a black person working in a community garden because you don’t like him or trying to get into their own apartment or waiting for f*cking AAA, is an act of white supremacy. It’s a willful act of terrorism. It can get someone killed. With these trigger-happy cops out here, it’s only a matter of time before someone gets Justifiable Homicided because “Parking lot Patty” was offended a brown person took the spot she wanted.

I’m exhausted, man. I’m so drained. It’s not even been two, full, years since the Cheeto-In-chief has taken office and we’re already 70 percent Nazi Germany over here. I’m not even going to get into all of the sh*t abroad. I mean, North Korea AND Russia are playing this asshole like a fool. He’s alienated almost all of our allies while trying to buddy up to known dictators and killers. It’s f*cking insane! I hope we can course correct next week. I hope we can start to check this man’s rampant stupidity and violent bigotry. I hope we can get back to an America I can comfortably say i am from.

[treeservicelocator]

History of Recent Neo-Nazi Arrests in Florida

Florida is the nation’s repository for human scumbags, a weird little drain-trap that snares the fraudsters and lunatics who rattle through the country’s plumbing before the United States jettisons them out to sea. It makes sense that the state would be filled with its fair share of neo-Nazis. What would Florida be without its own special breed of meth-using assholes hell-bent on ethnic cleansing?

In the wake of the terror attack in Charlottesville, where a neo-Nazi ran over a group of anti-racist protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer, many politicians claimed the protesters didn’t “represent” America or its values. But at its core, this country was founded by racist idiots reliant on a horrid system of subjugation in order to make a living. Those ideas never died — and there are plenty of recent Florida cases that show why it’s important to keep fighting these cretins:

1. A neo-Nazi was arrested in the Florida Keys this year on charges of stealing bombs and radioactive materials to try and blow up the Turkey Point Nuclear Generating Station in Homestead:

For the past year, Brandon Russell has saluted the flag and worn the uniform of the Florida National Guard while serving his country as a private first class. But in his suburban Tampa apartment, Russell and his three roommates pledged allegiance to a whole different ideal. Russell’s bedroom was decorated with neo-Nazi and white supremacist propaganda and a framed photo of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh. His garage was full of guns, ammo, and high-powered materials for bomb-making.

Russell is now in federal custody after Monroe County Sheriff’s deputies arrested him in Key Largo this past Sunday. He was busted after a bizarre and bloody massacre last Friday, when one of his three neo-Nazi roommates — 18-year-old Devon Arthurs — apparently converted to Islam and then executed their other two housemates.

Federal agents say Russell wasn’t just a dangerously bigoted member of the armed forces. He also had legit bomb-making supplies and even radioactive materials, and claimed to be a member of the Atomwaffen: a splinter group of neo-Nazis whose name means “atomic weapon.”

2. The leader of a neo-Nazi group called American Front was sent to jail for trying to ignite a “race war” near Disney World in 2014:

On a rural compound just 11 miles from Disney World, Marcus Faella and his followers spent years stockpiling weapons and food, erecting barbed wire, and conducting elaborate paramilitary drills. Their goal, according to federal agents: igniting a “race war” in Central Florida.

Two years ago, the feds busted the Aryan compound before they could carry out any of their plans. Yesterday, Faella was sentenced for his role as the group’s leader.

So what does plotting a race war carry in Florida these days? Just six months in jail, apparently.

3. After George Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin in 2012, a group of neo-Nazis said they patrolled Zimmerman’s Sanford, Florida to “protect white citizens” from black protesters, but their presence seemed laughably small:

The photos came to New Times from National Socialist Movement leader Jeff Schoep. Schoep continues to be hazy about how many of his Hitler-loving kinsmen have set up shop in Sanford in the wake of Trayvon Martin’s shooting, but he swears the two people photographed are not the only Nazis in town.

The others “don’t want to be photographed,” he says; the two pictured — Rushford and an unidentified woman — didn’t pose with their guns because they were worried about breaking Florida law.

Rushford, meanwhile, says he’s in Sanford to “protect whites… We’re here and we’re going to continue to be here as long as people want us here.”

4. Five neo-Nazi were arrested just this month for holding a huge stash of illegal guns:

Via the Tampa Bay Times:

The sheriff described the Kiowa Drive home as a “cesspool” and said detectives could hardly walk through the place.

While searching the property, deputies said they found reams of American Nazi Family propaganda that outlined the rules, oaths and hierarchy of the group; 12 grams of methamphetamine; a small amount of unidentified opiates; drug paraphernalia such as needles, scales and spoons; hundreds of pages of miscellaneous bank account information and ID cards, including a military ID; and three handguns and a semiautomatic rifle.

Deputies also found a stolen vehicle on the property. They’re still searching for another stolen car and motorcycle tied to the group.

5. And they were arrested near the site of a former neo-Nazi compound that was the home of John Ditullo Jr., who was sentenced to life in prison in 2010 for stabbing two people:

Ditullio, 24, was convicted of first-degree murder and attempted second-degree murder. In early 2006, he was living with a group of American Nazis near Hudson who hated Patricia Wells, their next-door neighbor, for having an African-American friend and a gay son.

One night, authorities said, Ditullio put on a gas mask and broke into Wells’ house, attacking her with a knife. She escaped with injuries to her face and hands, but her son’s friend, 17-year-old Kristofer King, died from stab wounds to his skull.

Ditullio maintained his innocence and said another member of the neo-Nazi group, Shawn Plott, was the real culprit.

Testifying Thursday while dressed in all black, Ditullio told the jury he didn’t care whether he got life or death.

“I’m not going to beg you people for my life or my death, man. You do what you do. Okay. I don’t care. Life in Florida is death in Florida,” he said. “But the people that just sat up here and testified that they love me and they want to be part of my life, that’s who I ask you to render your verdict on. Not me.”

Source : http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/tropical-disturbance-could-take-aim-at-south-florida-early-next-week-9597567

photo credit: Tampa Police Department / John Kittlesrud via Flickr CC

The post History of Recent Neo-Nazi Arrests in Florida appeared first on Tree Service Locator.

[wowsuchjake]

Y'all. This weekend, there were white supremacists marching in the streets—Nazis, KKK, neo-Confederates, the whole lot. This is horrific and wrong, but it's far from new. These people, white supremacists, have been in America literally since the beginning—in fact, they *were* the beginning. The difference is that we had made some progress—not so much toward fixing the actual problem, but at least towards people realizing that they would face consequences for expressing their disgusting bigotry too openly. They still expressed it, of course, just not in Polite Society™. They banded together, always hiding behind masks, whether those were white hoods or white egg avatars. They carried fire as a threat, literal torches and burning crosses, and the figurative flames of online hate speech. They brandished the means to control and, if they felt like it, to destroy the bodies of those they hated. Not only nooses and sticks and guns, but rules and laws, and the very right to vote for the people who crafted them, an entire system that could selectively enforce its rules and adjust the severity of its penalties, or overlook them entirely, depending on what was necessary to protect its hierarchies.

We had ostensibly made progress, but we had not fixed the underlying problems on which our society—which still defines whiteness as normalcy, as purity, as correctness—was built. That progress made it taboo to speak those prejudices publicly, but did little else to address the ways in which taboo talk became accepted practice. The only consequences for being a bigot, a Nazi, a Klansman, or anyone else just one or two steps removed from actual genocide were that they couldn't talk about it at the dinner table—as in, they couldn't have *conversations* about it. We built a society where we just ignored what our racist uncle or whoever said at Thanksgiving (or apropos of nothing on a Tuesday, or whenever) because it made us uncomfortable, and because everybody knew it was wrong anyway, right? Why ruin such a lovely gathering with that kind of unpleasant confrontation?

But that so-called progress is now gone, undone in part by a president who campaigned on this kind of rhetoric (then had the audacity to say "let's all come together now" when he was elected, as though that could somehow undo everything that he had set in motion). A president who then appointed white supremacists and Nazi supporters to his senior staff. A president who daily takes to Twitter to criticize and threaten not only his political foes, but even his supposed allies if he perceives "disloyalty" from them—yet one who suddenly had nothing to say there when actual Nazis and Confederates (two ideological groups America has literally fought wars against) marched in the streets of America chanting slogans like "white lives matter" and "Jew will not replace us." And now, a president who, when asked point-blank to condemn actual Nazis who actually murdered somebody at their actual Nazi rally, refused to do so, but gave a statement that avoided directly mentioning them and instead talked about violence "on many sides"—essentially the equivalent of looking at World War II and everything leading up to it and saying "well, yes, these Nazis are a bit unorthodox, but they've got a right to express their beliefs, too, so let's not be too hasty here." A president who, through all of these actions and inactions, has encouraged these people not only to march with Nazi and Confederate flags, but, unlike the idea of white supremacists we are accustomed to, to do so *unmasked*.

But again, here's the thing: None of this is new. Yet we—white people in particular—are acting like all of these people just materialized out of nowhere, bought up all the tiki torches at Walmart and Home Depot, and started marching in the streets, just like we acted surprised last November when we couldn't imagine Donald Trump actually being elected. Yes, he lost the popular vote, but he still amassed nearly 63 million votes—if these people are so fringe, so utterly Other, where did all those votes come from? These people have been here since the beginning. They *were* the beginning. And we have let them persist because we *know* them—they're our classmates and coworkers, our relatives, our friends, and outside of those things we don't talk about, we know them to be "good people." (This is, not at all coincidentally, also the exact description given of the perpetrators of a lot of mass shootings: "I never knew he was capable of something like this—he was such a good guy.") We don't stop them because it makes us uncomfortable, because we don't want to throw away a relationship over a difference of opinion—except being a couple steps removed from genocide is not a "difference of opinion." We would rather say nothing than disrupt the status quo, because we are more concerned with protecting our own comfort—something immediate and visceral—than with the nebulous idea of the large-scale suffering of people we have never met, and which doesn't directly affect us. We don't stop them because, whether or not we are consciously aware of it, we benefit from this system, and we are afraid of losing its protection in dismantling it. We may not all be Those People, but 63 million of us heard one of them campaigning on that exact rhetoric and were willing to look the other way because we thought he cared about *our* needs, and most of the rest of us had been too quiet about it for too long to prevent all of this from happening. This is on all of us—yes, the president said "go," but we should have said "stop" a long time ago. And just as it always has, just as it did the last time we fought actual Nazis, it has taken the fight finally landing on our doorstep, on streets we think of as ours, for us to decide to step in.

White people, we need to get our shit together. If we are outraged by Nazis in the streets, but not by the people close to us who express the same bigotry without all the regalia, we are part of the problem. If we are outraged by Nazis in the streets, but cannot find a way to translate our anger into meaningful action, we are part of the problem. We may not have personally built this system, but we are all complicit in it. We are part of the problem. If we want to be part of the solution, then we need to stand up to the hatred and bigotry we see in those closest to us, in ourselves, not just that which we see in anonymous strangers on the other side of the country. We need to educate ourselves on the movements we are joining, because they've existed long before this weekend, even if they are new to us, and because it is not the job of people of color to educate us—they literally bear all the burden here already—and then we need to educate others. It's going to be hard. We are going to make mistakes. We need to understand that our allyship does not exempt us from criticism or wholly erase our complicity in this system. It is our job to humbly take ownership of our mistakes when we are called out, correct them, and learn from them, to do our best to avoid repeating them. None of us can fix this on our own; it is going to take the consistent actions—small and large—of all of us together.