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Syria Becoming Breeding Ground for Attacks on Europe, U.S. - US News and World Report - 0 views

  • U.S. inaction in Syria has created a "cauldron of bad activity" that is breeding thousands of foreign extremist fighters to eventually launch attacks against the U.S. and Europe, according to senior U.S. lawmakers.
  • He also cited infighting among Islamic extremist groups, some of which wish to launch foreign attacks from strongholds in eastern Syria. Al-Qaida affiliates there are advocating for patience to establish a foundation before provoking Western military response, Rogers said.
  • When it's over, these people will be combat trained, combat hardened and they're going to want to go home," Rogers said of the extremists. "We are going to have a wave of individuals who are committed, who have training that we haven't seen before going to Europe, and by the way the U.S. as well."
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  • The U.S. stated after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks that it would not allow such havens to exist again. Syria today is perhaps the largest safe haven the U.S. has seen without an ability to conduct counter operations, said Rogers. "That should concern all of us." The U.S., Russia, and other players in the civil war, now well into its third year, will likely meet this November for a second round of talks in Geneva, following a similar summit in July 2012.
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Why Is Israel Losing a War It's Winning? - Jeffrey Goldberg - The Atlantic - 1 views

  • Israel’s political leadership has done little in recent years to make their cause seem appealing. It is impossible to convince a Judeophobe that Israel can do anything good or useful, short of collective suicide. But there are millions of people of good will across the world who look at the decision-making of Israel’s government and ask themselves if this is a country doing all it can do to bring about peace and tranquility in its region.
  • I do know that Israel, while combating the extremists, could do a great deal more to buttress the moderates. This would mean, in practical terms, working as hard as possible to build wealth and hope on the West Bank. A moderate-minded Palestinian who watches Israel expand its settlements on lands that most of the world believes should fall within the borders of a future Palestinian state might legitimately come to doubt Israel’s intentions. Reversing the settlement project, and moving the West Bank toward eventual independence, would not only give Palestinians hope, but it would convince Israel’s sometimes-ambivalent friends that it truly seeks peace, and that it treats extremists differently than it treats moderates. And yes, I know that in the chaos of the Middle East, which is currently a vast swamp of extremism, the thought of a West Bank susceptible to the predations of Islamist extremists is a frightening one. But independence—in particular security independence—can be negotiated in stages. The Palestinians must go free, because there is no other way.
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Jewish hate of Arabs proves: Israel must undergo cultural revolution - Opinion Israel N... - 0 views

  • Abu Khdeir’s murderers are not “Jewish extremists.” They are the descendants and builders of a culture of hate and vengeance that is nurtured and fertilized by the guides of “the Jewish state": Those for whom every Arab is a bitter enemy, simply because they are Arab; those who were silent at the Beitar Jerusalem games when the team’s fans shouted “death to Arabs” at Arab players; those who call for cleansing the state of its Arab minority, or at least to drive them out of the homes and cities of the Jews. No less responsible for the murder are those who did not halt, with an iron hand, violence by Israeli soldiers against Palestinian civilians, and who failed to investigate complaints “due to lack of public interest.”
  • The term “Jewish extremists” actually seems more appropriate for the small Jewish minority that is still horrified by these acts of violence and murder. But they too recognize, unfortunately, that they belong to a vengeful, vindictive Jewish tribe whose license to perpetrate horrors is based on the horrors that were done to it.
  • The Israel Police was quick to label the murderers “Jewish extremists,” meaning they aren’t part of the herd, they are outliers, “wild weeds.” This is the police’s way of trying to justify a sin, to “make the vermin kosher.” But the vermin is huge, and many-legged. It has embraced the soldiers and other young Israelis who overran the social media networks with calls for revenge and with hatred for Arabs. The vermin was welcomed by Knesset members, rabbis and public figures who demanded revenge. Nor did it skip over the prime minister, who declared “Vengeance for the blood of a small child, Satan has not yet created.”
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Worried about the return of fascism? Six things a dissenter can do in 2016 | openDemocracy - 0 views

  • 2015 was the year that concerns about the return of fascism went mainstream, thanks to the popularity of the likes of Donald Trump, who leads the polls to be the Republican presidential candidate in the US
  • When you dehumanised the people of Afghanistan and Iraq so that their fatalities weren't even worth counting.When you applauded drone attacks on nameless “combat-age men”.When you insisted that we really *must* have an "honest conversation" about "Muslim extremists".When you asked in total ignorance “where are the Muslim voices condemning X, Y and Z”?When you singled out something called the "Muslim community" as having a "problem" with "radicalisation".When you justified all of the above by swearing you weren't against *Islam*, just *Islamism*.Yes, Western liberals, when you did all of this and more, you were the warm up act for the main show now being brought to you by Donald Trump.
  • Secondly, resist the ‘war on terror’
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  • The declaration of a global ‘war on terror’ was a blank cheque to proto-fascist democracies and dictatorships everywhere
  • While counter-terrorism has become a servant of tyranny, the narratives underpinning the ‘war on terror’ have filled the troughs of the neo-fascists.
  • This includes the outright rejection of Bush’s greatest triumph: the premise that “you’re either with us or with the terrorists”.
  • This is what a “war on extremism” looks like – and this where it leads. Dissent and you too must be an extremist who should fall in line.
  • It is something of an aside, but when your own citizens can’t express religious or ideological beliefs, or study or debate terrorism without fear of a visit from the police, forcing a parliamentary debate on banning Donald Trump from Britain for his vile politics is the hollowest of victories for anti-fascism
  • Thirdly,  demand rights for refugees
  • All of this while their elites – with honourable exceptions – consigned the progressive ideals on which the European Union was founded to the dustbin by continuing the pandering to the Far Right that created “Fortress Europe”
  • As Steve Cohen argued a decade ago in Standing on the Shoulders of Fascism, there is a linear ideological and political connection between the popular acceptance of the brutality and repression of immigration controls and the softening-up process that enables other authoritarian legislation to be enacted.
  • Right
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New Zealand Massacre Highlights Global Reach of White Extremism - The New York Times - 0 views

  • New Zealand may be thousands of miles from Europe or the United States, but videos of the killer show that he was deeply entrenched in the global far right, a man familiar with the iconography, in-jokes and shibboleths of different extremist groups from across Europe, Australia and North America, as well as a native of the extreme-right ecosystem online.
  • The ubiquity of social media, as well as the accessibility of websites such as 4chan and 8chan where the extreme-right congregate online, allowed him to immerse himself easily in extremist conversation, said Matthew Feldman, director of the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right, a Britain-based research group
  • “People who read this stuff are just as likely to be in New Zealand, Norway or Canada as they are in America,” Mr. Feldman said. “The internet is borderless. Not only is it borderless, but places like 4chan were built for right-wing extremists. You have anonymity if you wish it, and these posts of incitement aren’t going to be taken down immediately.”
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  • The primary goal of the manifesto’s author was to prevent Muslims and non-whites from taking over Western society, calling on white-majority countries to “crush immigration,” deport non-whites and have more children to stop the decline of white populations.
  • The killer’s ability to livestream the attack via his own social media channels — which led to the dissemination of the video and manifesto across YouTube, Facebook and several mainstream media outlets — also highlights how the far-right has harnessed the reach of major media and technology companies, even as it continues to spread its message through the dark corners of obscure internet sites.
  • By broadcasting his atrocity himself, the killer was able to both circumvent the traditional gatekeepers of news coverage, while also encouraging those same gatekeepers to subsequently regurgitate some of his footage and even unwittingly amplify his ideas to millions more potential imitators than he might otherwise have reached
  • “One of the sickest and most upsetting parts of this for me is that the killings, the actual terrorist attacks, are forms of propaganda for the statements,” said Mr. Feldman of the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. “They draw attentions to their statements through their actions.”
  • “The coverage will be wall-to-wall today,” he said, “and tomorrow it will set someone else off.”
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A Conversation With Christian Picciolini - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • That’s the warning of a former violent extremist, Christian Picciolini, who joined a neo-Nazi movement 30 years ago and now tries to get people out of them
  • It’s no longer a lone-wolf-type situation, which is something we were pushing in the ’80s and ’90s. The ideology then was that there were no leaders, there was no centralized movement, individuals were empowered to act on their own. But the internet has really solidified this movement globally through all these forums online; they’re connected in the virtual world in ways that we often can’t be in the real world. I would say that the threat of a transnational, global white-supremacist terrorist movement is spreading.
  • Picciolini said that even if the U.S. could get a handle on its gun problem, terrorists can always find other ways. McVeigh had his car bomb, the September 11th hijackers had their airplanes, Islamic State attackers have suicide bombings, trucks, and knives. “I have to ask myself, Do we have white-nationalist airline pilots?” Picciolini said. “There have to be. I knew people in powerful positions, in politics, in law enforcement, who were secretly white nationalists. I think we’d be stupid and selfish to think that we don’t have those in the truck-driving industry.”
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  • The [white-supremacist] ideology is spreading more into the mainstream than it ever has before. There aren’t checks and balances to counter it. There aren’t programs being funded to help people disengage from extremism. Some of the rhetoric coming from the very top is emboldening extremists.
  • Picciolini: Unfortunately, I think that the underpinnings of the ideology have always been there. The extremists were on the fringe, and very visible, but other people weren’t willing to voice those beliefs.
  • I never thought we would have a social and political climate that really kind of brought it to the foreground. Because it’s starting to seem less like a fringe ideology and more like a mainstream ideology.
  • Kathy Gilsinan: What role does the internet play? There’s a lot of discussion about internet radicalization for members of ISIS—is this a parallel process for white-supremacist movements
  • Thirty years ago, marginalized, broken, angry young people had to be met face-to-face to get recruited into a movement. Nowadays, those millions and millions of young people are living most of their lives online if they don’t have real-world connections. And they’re finding a community online instead of in the real world, and having conversations about promoting violence.
  • White-supremacist terrorists—the ones who have left dozens dead in attacks in Pittsburgh, New Zealand, and El Paso, Texas, in recent months—aren’t just trying to outdo one another, he told us. They’re trying to outdo Timothy McVeigh
  • If ads are being served on their videos, chances are good, depending on how many views, they’re making ad revenue based on Google, Facebook, YouTube, serving ads against their content. So, in that sense, de-platforming is good. It does slow them down quite a bit. From my perspective, it also makes people harder to reach.
  • Picciolini: It’s a whole lot of listening. I listen for what I call potholes: things that happen to us in our journey of life that detour us, things like trauma, abuse, mental illness, poverty, joblessness. Even privilege can be a pothole that detours us. As I listen to those—rather than debate or confront them about their ideology, but creating a rapport with them—I start to fill in those potholes. I will find resources in their community to help them deal with the trauma, with whatever it is that was the motivation for them to go in that direction. Nobody’s born racist; we all found it. Then I leverage the community around them to try to engage them and support them, and try to find ways for them to crawl out of that hole. Typically what I found is, people hate other people because they hate something very specifically about themselves, or are very angry about a situation within their own environment, and that is then projected onto other people
  • Bayoumy: What are some of the things that prompt these people to question their beliefs?  Picciolini: Certainly not facts. It’s very emotional. I try to take them through an emotional journey where they come to the conclusion that they’ve changed, and it’s not me telling them that they’ve changed. What I’ve found least effective is me telling them that they’re wrong, or me telling them that they need to think a certain way. Typically these people are pretty idealistic, although they’re lost, typically pretty bruised emotionally, and they have very low self-esteem.
  • Picciolini: I’ve always found it very difficult to sway opinion when it’s a group of people. When people are in a group, they tend to not be as vulnerable or as forthcoming. So I think it has to be a personal journey
  • it’s not an easy process; it’s a very, very long process. If you think about quitting smoking, or drinking, or anything like that. For me, from the time I was 14 years old till I was 23, those were kind of the adult developmental years, so there were a lot of things that I had to unlearn.
  • Picciolini: I think we can be equipped. There’s just no will to build something about domestic extremism. We don’t currently have any hate-crime laws that apply to online activity, but photoshopping someone’s face onto an Auschwitz prisoner on Twitter isn’t so different from spray-painting a swastika in a synagogue. I think we need to start asking ourselves what kind of policies need to be in place, not to limit speech, but to protect people from it. I don’t know what the answer is there.
  • I just think it’s going to get worse before it gets better. They’re all trying to outdo each other, not just the last person, but Timothy McVeigh. Terrorists will always find another way to do it. I have to ask myself, Do we have white-nationalist airline pilots? There have to be. I knew people in powerful positions, in politics, in law enforcement, who were secretly white nationalists. I think we’d be stupid and selfish to think that we don’t have those in the truck-driving industry.
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After London Attack, Tech Firms Urged to Do More to Fight Extremists - 0 views

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    LONDON-Hours after the third terrorist attack in the U.K. in three months, British leaders escalated their criticism of Silicon Valley, calling for international regulations to hinder extremists who use cyberspace to spread their message and recruit supporters.
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Qatar blockade: Gulf states silent on Tillerson plea to ease measures - BBC News - 0 views

  • Qatar blockade: Gulf states silent on Tillerson plea to ease measures
  • Nations behind a blockade on Qatar have welcomed strong comments from President Donald Trump backing their move, but were silent on calls from his secretary of state to ease the measures.
  • Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt and Bahrain have cut ties, accusing Qatar of funding terrorism. Qatar denies the accusations.
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  • He said: "I decided with Rex Tillerson that the time had come to call on Qatar to end funding and extremist ideology in terms of funding."
  • However, the tone of his comments contrasted with those of Mr Tillerson, who had earlier said the blockade was having humanitarian consequences.Mr Tillerson also said the ongoing row was affecting regional co-operation on countering extremism.He said the blockade was "impairing US and other international business activities in the region" and that the US backed mediation efforts being pursued by Kuwait.
  • Bahrain's official BNA news agency stressed "the necessity of Qatar's commitment to correct its policies and to engage in a transparent manner in counter-terrorism efforts".UAE ambassador to the US Yousef al-Otaiba praised Mr Trump's leadership in the face of Qatar's "troubling support for extremism".
  • Indeed, his tone and approach undercut that of Secretary Tillerson, who barely an hour earlier had delivered a more nuanced appeal for de-escalation, making clear he expected all parties to end the crisis. While Mr Tillerson said Qatar must respond to its neighbours' concerns, he also urged the others to take action against extremists within their borders. US officials insisted the two men were sending the same message with different emphases, aimed at encouraging their Arab allies to put aside grievances and focus on fighting terrorism.
  • But it was the differences that resonated: another example, it seemed, of Trump forging a path at variance with that of his top officials.
  • The tiny, oil and gas-rich Qatar strongly denies supporting Islamist extremists.Qatar's Sheikh Mohammed says his country has been isolated "because we are successful and progressive", calling his country "a platform for peace not terrorism".Qatar's Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani has travelled to Europe to seek support.
  • "We do not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries or their bilateral relations. But it does not give us joy when relations between our partners deteriorate," Mr Lavrov said.On Friday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said he had never known Qatar to support terrorist groups and called for the blockade to be fully lifted.Mr Erdogan was meeting Bahrain's foreign minister on Saturday.
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Opinion | What Happened When Germany's Far-Right Party Railed Against Lockdowns - The N... - 0 views

  • In November, as Covid-19 cases began to rise, thousands of people gathered in Berlin to protest against restrictions. In among the conspiracy theorists and extremists were several lawmakers from the country’s main opposition party, the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany.
  • the AfD’s support has slipped. Already struggling to reach new voters, its embrace of anti-lockdown sentiment seems to have further limited its appeal — and sped up its transformation into an extremist organization.
  • the AfD’s initial response was cautious. Prominent party legislators warned about the virus, encouraged the government to act swiftly and voted for a package of economic relief. “Closing ranks is our first duty as citizens now,” Alexander Gauland, a co-leader of the party, said.
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  • But this attempt to cater to the average voter came at a cost. The party soon found itself deprived of many of its usual supporters, who took a different course, downplaying the danger and castigating the government. On Facebook and social media, the party stuttered.
  • As the first lockdown was tentatively lifted, through April and May, many leading AfD figures performed a 180-degree turn. No longer consensual, they fiercely railed against restrictions of any kind, which they claimed were unconstitutional as well as economically ruinous.
  • The historic showing of 2017 — when the AfD became the first far-right party to enter Germany’s postwar parliament — is unlikely to be repeated, let alone surpassed.
  • The move made sense. By the time the pandemic arrived, the party “had started to struggle,” Kai Arzheimer, a professor of political science at the University of Mainz, told me. Migration had vanished from the top of voters’ concerns, depriving the party of its momentum. It was unclear how it might make further inroads.
  • What’s more, the party was increasingly seen as extreme and radical. The media uncovered many ties to extremist groups
  • In November, to demonstrate its defiance, the party held an in-person convention with hundreds of participants packed into a hall. That same month, an AfD legislator appeared in the parliament, where masks are mandatory, wearing one riddled with holes. And prominent party members not only attended some of the anti-lockdown protests that spread across the country last year but also adopted the protesters’ talking points, for example by calling Germany a “Corona dictatorship.” The AfD became something like the anti-lockdown party.
  • That doesn’t make the party less of a danger, though. In ways reminiscent of former President Donald Trump, the AfD is seeking to scuttle public trust in the political system.
  • Ahead of an election where many may vote remotely — Germany’s vaccination program probably won’t be complete by fall — this amounts to a calculated strategy of subversion. Though the party’s influence is limited, the fact that 8 percent to 10 percent of the electorate seems unshakable in its support is deeply concerning.
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Prosecutors Allege Oath Keepers, Proud Boys Coordinated On Capitol Riot : NPR - 0 views

  • A member of the Oath Keepers paramilitary group who is charged with conspiracy in connection with the Capitol riot claimed to be coordinating with the Proud Boys and a far-right, self-styled militia to form an "alliance" on Jan. 6, according to court papers filed by the Justice Department.The allegation emerged in a motion federal prosecutors filed overnight in the case against Kelly Meggs, one of 10 alleged members or associates of the Oath Keepers charged with conspiring to interfere in Congress' certification of the Electoral College count.
  • The investigation into the Capitol riot is one of the largest in American history. More than 300 people have been charged so far, and prosecutors have said they could charge at least another 100 more. The conspiracy case against the Oath Keepers is one of the most closely watched, and Meggs' communications are the first that prosecutors have publicly revealed that point to possible coordination among extremist groups in the runup to Jan. 6 and on the day itself.
  • In its new filing, the government said Meggs engaged in "extensive planning and financing" to travel to Washington, D.C., and to "coordinate with his coconspirators and others on how to accomplish his goals of disrupting Congress."Prosecutors presented several of Meggs' Facebook messages and posts that they said document his outreach to and coordination with other groups following the Nov. 3 election.
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  • The government cited another Facebook message exchange from Dec. 25 in which Meggs allegedly told an unidentified individual his plans for Jan. 6.
  • The government cited another Facebook chat conversation Meggs had with an individual whose name is redacted in the court papers.According to the government, Meggs wrote: "[W]e have made contact with PB and they always have a big group. Force multiplier," in an apparent reference to the Proud Boys.
  • Three days later, Meggs wrote another message that read: "He wants us to make it WILD that's what he's saying. He called us all to the Capitol and wants us to make it wild!!! Sir Yes Sir!!! Gentlemen we are heading to DC pack your sh**!!" Meggs appeared to be echoing the language of former President Donald Trump, who in a Dec. 19 tweet called on his supporters to travel to Washington on Jan. 6 for a rally that the then-president said "will be wild."
  • He also told the individual that he or she could meet up with Meggs, although he said he and his contingent would probably be providing security during the day for an individual whose name is blacked out.
  • Several alleged Proud Boys have been charged in separate cases with conspiracy related to the attack on the Capitol.The exact nature of any "alliance" Meggs allegedly struck with other extremist groups is unclear from the text messages. There is also no mention in the communications of a plan to storm the Capitol.
  • On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered one of his co-defendants, Laura Steele, to be released on strict conditions, pending trial.Judge Amit Mehta said there was no evidence before him that Steele engaged in recruiting or planning ahead of Jan. 6, in contrast with some of her co-defendants. Mehta ordered Steele to be restricted to home confinement and barred access to cellphones, computers and other electronic communication devices.
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New Warnings of Violence as Security Tightens for Inauguration - The New York Times - 0 views

  • WASHINGTON — Law enforcement officials are vetting hundreds of potential airplane passengers and beefing up airport security as officials amplify warnings of violence before the presidential inauguration from extremists emboldened by the Capitol attack last week.
  • The extremists “remain a concern due to their ability to act with little to no warning, willingness to attack civilians and soft targets, and ability to inflict significant casualties with weapons that do not require specialized knowledge,” federal officials wrote in the bulletin obtained by The New York Times.
  • Commercial airlines have tracked an increase in passengers checking in firearms on their way to airports in the Washington area, according to a separate bulletin from the Justice Department.
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  • Federal agencies have also begun to identify those captured on video at the Capitol with weapons or engaging in violence and putting them on a “no-fly” list aimed at preventing suspected terrorists from boarding flights, according to an administration official.
  • Federal law enforcement officials have said they continue to be alarmed by an increase in chatter from groups like the boogaloo, a far-right group that aims to start a second civil war, and other racist extremists threatening to target the nation’s capital to protest Mr. Biden’s decisive victory in the popular vote and Electoral College.
  • Defense Department and National Guard officials said on Friday that they were pressing governors of all 50 states for reservists to fill a growing demand for security.
  • National Guard officials said they would most likely need at least 25,000 troops in Washington, 5,000 more than they projected this week, for duties ranging from traffic control to security in and around the Capitol itself. That number, roughly more than three times the number of American troops in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Syria, could still grow.
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The U.S. faces heightened threats from violent domestic extremists in the wake of the C... - 0 views

  • The United States will face heightened threats from violent extremists emboldened by the assault on the Capitol for weeks, according to a rare national terrorism warning released on Wednesday by the Department of Homeland Security.
  • The breach may have encouraged domestic extremists to target elected officials and government facilities, according to the advisory, which was issued by the acting secretary of homeland security, David Pekoske.
  • he Homeland Security Department will periodically release bulletins to the public to warn of potential threats to national security. But the decision to release a warning about the threat of domestic terrorism is a pivot from the Trump administration, in which some White House officials sought to suppress even the use of the phrase “domestic terrorism.”
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Black Lives Protesters See Disparity In Handling Of U.S. Capitol Mob : NPR - 0 views

  • a mob of largely white extremists stage an insurrection in Washington, D.C., set up a noose on a wooden beam outside the U.S. Capitol and walk a symbol of violence and slavery — the Confederate flag — through the building as they stormed and raided it.
  • There were white extremists who felt at ease giving their names to media outlets and taking selfies with a white police officer.
  • "Now the world gets to see the difference between these two situations, where one is us protesting to be seen, to be heard, to not be killed, right?" she said. "And then you have these other people who are just mad because they lost."
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  • The president took a different tone on Wednesday than this summer, when he called overwhelmingly peaceful protesters for racial justice "thugs," "agitators" and "looters." He tweeted "when the looting starts, the shooting starts." He threatened protesters outside the White House with "vicious dogs" and "ominous weapons."
  • But when the Capitol was stormed Wednesday, Trump told the extremists threatening to execute Democrats and target journalists and BLM activists "we love you, you're very special ... but you have to go home." Prior to the mob storming the Capitol, he'd told the rally of his supporters to "fight like hell."
  • "It just exaggerated the contradictions to me around how the state and how police respond to Black and Indigenous and Latinx and Asian and Pacific Islander folks when we protest," she said. "Versus how they responded to gun-toting white supremacists that were coming into the Capitol."
  • Black and brown people protesting for social justice are seen as criminals; a mostly white mob attacking the Capitol are seen as demonstrators.
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Facebook Executives Shut Down Efforts to Make the Site Less Divisive - WSJ - 0 views

  • A Facebook Inc. team had a blunt message for senior executives. The company’s algorithms weren’t bringing people together. They were driving people apart.
  • “Our algorithms exploit the human brain’s attraction to divisiveness,” read a slide from a 2018 presentation. “If left unchecked,” it warned, Facebook would feed users “more and more divisive content in an effort to gain user attention & increase time on the platform.”
  • That presentation went to the heart of a question dogging Facebook almost since its founding: Does its platform aggravate polarization and tribal behavior? The answer it found, in some cases, was yes.
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  • in the end, Facebook’s interest was fleeting. Mr. Zuckerberg and other senior executives largely shelved the basic research, according to previously unreported internal documents and people familiar with the effort, and weakened or blocked efforts to apply its conclusions to Facebook products.
  • At Facebook, “There was this soul-searching period after 2016 that seemed to me this period of really sincere, ‘Oh man, what if we really did mess up the world?’
  • Another concern, they and others said, was that some proposed changes would have disproportionately affected conservative users and publishers, at a time when the company faced accusations from the right of political bias.
  • Americans were drifting apart on fundamental societal issues well before the creation of social media, decades of Pew Research Center surveys have shown. But 60% of Americans think the country’s biggest tech companies are helping further divide the country, while only 11% believe they are uniting it, according to a Gallup-Knight survey in March.
  • Facebook policy chief Joel Kaplan, who played a central role in vetting proposed changes, argued at the time that efforts to make conversations on the platform more civil were “paternalistic,” said people familiar with his comments.
  • The high number of extremist groups was concerning, the presentation says. Worse was Facebook’s realization that its algorithms were responsible for their growth. The 2016 presentation states that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendation tools” and that most of the activity came from the platform’s “Groups You Should Join” and “Discover” algorithms: “Our recommendation systems grow the problem.”
  • In a sign of how far the company has moved, Mr. Zuckerberg in January said he would stand up “against those who say that new types of communities forming on social media are dividing us.” People who have heard him speak privately said he argues social media bears little responsibility for polarization.
  • Fixing the polarization problem would be difficult, requiring Facebook to rethink some of its core products. Most notably, the project forced Facebook to consider how it prioritized “user engagement”—a metric involving time spent, likes, shares and comments that for years had been the lodestar of its system.
  • Even before the teams’ 2017 creation, Facebook researchers had found signs of trouble. A 2016 presentation that names as author a Facebook researcher and sociologist, Monica Lee, found extremist content thriving in more than one-third of large German political groups on the platform.
  • Swamped with racist, conspiracy-minded and pro-Russian content, the groups were disproportionately influenced by a subset of hyperactive users, the presentation notes. Most of them were private or secret.
  • One proposal Mr. Uribe’s team championed, called “Sparing Sharing,” would have reduced the spread of content disproportionately favored by hyperactive users, according to people familiar with it. Its effects would be heaviest on content favored by users on the far right and left. Middle-of-the-road users would gain influence.
  • The Common Ground team sought to tackle the polarization problem directly, said people familiar with the team. Data scientists involved with the effort found some interest groups—often hobby-based groups with no explicit ideological alignment—brought people from different backgrounds together constructively. Other groups appeared to incubate impulses to fight, spread falsehoods or demonize a population of outsiders.
  • Mr. Pariser said that started to change after March 2018, when Facebook got in hot water after disclosing that Cambridge Analytica, the political-analytics startup, improperly obtained Facebook data about tens of millions of people. The shift has gained momentum since, he said: “The internal pendulum swung really hard to ‘the media hates us no matter what we do, so let’s just batten down the hatches.’ ”
  • Building these features and combating polarization might come at a cost of lower engagement, the Common Ground team warned in a mid-2018 document, describing some of its own proposals as “antigrowth” and requiring Facebook to “take a moral stance.”
  • Taking action would require Facebook to form partnerships with academics and nonprofits to give credibility to changes affecting public conversation, the document says. This was becoming difficult as the company slogged through controversies after the 2016 presidential election.
  • Asked to combat fake news, spam, clickbait and inauthentic users, the employees looked for ways to diminish the reach of such ills. One early discovery: Bad behavior came disproportionately from a small pool of hyperpartisan users.
  • A second finding in the U.S. saw a larger infrastructure of accounts and publishers on the far right than on the far left. Outside observers were documenting the same phenomenon. The gap meant even seemingly apolitical actions such as reducing the spread of clickbait headlines—along the lines of “You Won’t Believe What Happened Next”—affected conservative speech more than liberal content in aggregate.
  • Every significant new integrity-ranking initiative had to seek the approval of not just engineering managers but also representatives of the public policy, legal, marketing and public-relations departments.
  • “Engineers that were used to having autonomy maybe over-rotated a bit” after the 2016 election to address Facebook’s perceived flaws, she said. The meetings helped keep that in check. “At the end of the day, if we didn’t reach consensus, we’d frame up the different points of view, and then they’d be raised up to Mark.”
  • Disapproval from Mr. Kaplan’s team or Facebook’s communications department could scuttle a project, said people familiar with the effort. Negative policy-team reviews killed efforts to build a classification system for hyperpolarized content. Likewise, the Eat Your Veggies process shut down efforts to suppress clickbait about politics more than on other topics.
  • Under Facebook’s engagement-based metrics, a user who likes, shares or comments on 1,500 pieces of content has more influence on the platform and its algorithms than one who interacts with just 15 posts, allowing “super-sharers” to drown out less-active users
  • Accounts with hyperactive engagement were far more partisan on average than normal Facebook users, and they were more likely to behave suspiciously, sometimes appearing on the platform as much as 20 hours a day and engaging in spam-like behavior. The behavior suggested some were either people working in shifts or bots.
  • “We’re explicitly not going to build products that attempt to change people’s beliefs,” one 2018 document states. “We’re focused on products that increase empathy, understanding, and humanization of the ‘other side.’ ”
  • The debate got kicked up to Mr. Zuckerberg, who heard out both sides in a short meeting, said people briefed on it. His response: Do it, but cut the weighting by 80%. Mr. Zuckerberg also signaled he was losing interest in the effort to recalibrate the platform in the name of social good, they said, asking that they not bring him something like that again.
  • Mr. Uribe left Facebook and the tech industry within the year. He declined to discuss his work at Facebook in detail but confirmed his advocacy for the Sparing Sharing proposal. He said he left Facebook because of his frustration with company executives and their narrow focus on how integrity changes would affect American politics
  • While proposals like his did disproportionately affect conservatives in the U.S., he said, in other countries the opposite was true.
  • The tug of war was resolved in part by the growing furor over the Cambridge Analytica scandal. In a September 2018 reorganization of Facebook’s newsfeed team, managers told employees the company’s priorities were shifting “away from societal good to individual value,” said people present for the discussion. If users wanted to routinely view or post hostile content about groups they didn’t like, Facebook wouldn’t suppress it if the content didn’t specifically violate the company’s rules.
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Trump's crazy designation of Antifa as terrorist organization (Opinion) - CNN - 0 views

shared by delgadool on 01 Jun 20 - No Cached
  • President Donald Trump's announcement that his administration will designate Antifa as a terrorist organization is surely unconstitutional because it would effectively criminalize joining an American domestic ideological group.
  • Belonging to such groups is consistent with the legitimate exercise of your First Amendment right to freedom of speech and belief — whether you are a white supremacist or an environmental activist.
  • but she can't be prosecuted for merely belonging to the group, no matter how objectionable its views might be.
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  • since 9/11 right-wing terrorists in the United States have killed 110 people for political reasons, while Antifa supporters have killed exactly no one for political reasons.
  • Yet there is no indication that the Trump administration will effectively criminalize being a member of an American right-wing extremist group. And for good reason: The First Amendment is the first for a reason, and it allows Americans to hold extremist beliefs of all flavors without fear of prosecution — including Antifa supporters.
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Boko Haram claims abduction of students in northern Nigeria | AP - 0 views

  • Rebels from the Boko Haram extremist group claimed responsibility Tuesday for abducting hundreds of boys from a school in Nigeria’s northern Katsina State last week in one of the largest such attacks in years, raising fears of a growing wave of violence in the region.
  • 330 students remain missing
  • “The kidnappers had made contact and discussions were already on, pertaining to the safety and return” of the children to their homes
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  • The Islamic extremist group has carried out mass abduction of students before. The most serious took place in April 2014, when more than 270 schoolgirls were taken from their dormitory at the Government Secondary School
  • In the audio message about Friday’s attack, Shekau said his group abducted the schoolboys because Western education is against the tenets of Islam.
  • If Boko Haram is proven to be behind the abduction, it could mean a new wave of religious extremism is on the rise in Nigeria.
  • The International Criminal Court’s chief prosecutor last week said a probe has found enough evidence to merit opening a full-scale inquiry into allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity by Boko Haram extremists as well as into charges that Nigerian government forces have also perpetrated abuses.
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Police Planning To Reinstall Capitol Fencing Ahead Of Far-Right Rally | HuffPost - 1 views

  • Law enforcement officials concerned by the prospect for violence at a rally in the nation’s capital next week are planning to reinstall protective fencing that surrounded the U.S. Capitol for months after the Jan. 6 insurrection there, according to a person familiar with the discussions.
  • “We intend to have the integrity of the Capitol be intact.”
  • Police continue to track intelligence indicating far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers are planning to attend next week’s rally, which is designed to demand “justice” for the hundreds of people who have been charged in connection with January’s insurrection. Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, however, has said he doesn’t expect his membership to attend.
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  • the FBI released new information in hopes of catching the person suspected of leaving behind two pipe bombs on Capitol Hill the night before the riot, one of the enduring, unsolved mysteries of that chaotic week.
  • The potential presence of the extremist groups at next week’s event is concerning because, while members and associates of Oath Keepers and Proud Boys make up just a fraction of the nearly 600 people who have been charged so far in the riot, they are facing some of the most serious charges brought.
  • Those charges include allegations that they conspired to block the certification of Biden’s victory. Several Oath Keepers have pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and are cooperating with investigators in the case against their fellow extremists, who authorities say came to Washington ready for violence and willing to do whatever it took to stop the certification of the Electoral College vote.
  • Perhaps the most concerning: A series of unexploded pipe bombs placed near the Capitol on Jan. 5 remain unexplained and no suspect has been charged.
  • “I would hope that we wouldn’t have to fence in the Capitol every time there’s a demonstration,” Norton said. But she added, “If they go with the fence, I’m not going to criticize them.”
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MLK's famous Playboy criticism of Malcolm X was a 'fraud,' author says - The Washington... - 0 views

  • Haley asks, “Dr. King, would you care to comment upon the articulate former Black Muslim, Malcolm X?”King responds: “I have met Malcolm X, but circumstances didn’t enable me to talk with him for more than a minute. I totally disagree with many of his political and philosophical views, as I understand them. He is very articulate, as you say. I don’t want to seem to sound as if I feel so self-righteous, or absolutist, that I think I have the only truth, the only way. Maybe he does have some of the answer. But I know that I have so often felt that I wished that he would talk less of violence, because I don’t think that violence can solve our problem. And in his litany of expressing the despair of the Negro, without offering a positive, creative approach, I think that he falls into a rut sometimes.”
  • That is not how King’s response appeared in the published interview. While the top part is nearly identical with the transcript, it ended in Playboy like this: “And in his litany of articulating the despair of the Negro without offering any positive, creative alternative, I feel that Malcolm has done himself and our people a great disservice. Fiery, demagogic oratory in the black ghettos, urging Negroes to arm themselves and prepare to engage in violence, as he has done, can reap nothing but grief.”
  • What Haley appears to have done amounts to “journalistic malpractice,” Eig said.
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  • Some of the phrases added to King’s answer appear to be taken significantly out of context, while others appear to be fabricated:
  • “We should remember that King was always more radical than we like to imagine or talk about,” Eig continued. “He was a Christian radical, and his radicalism came from a different place than Malcolm’s did, but they always had a lot in common. They always believed that you had to take radical steps to change America, to end racism, to create a country that lived up to the words of its promises.”
  • in another part of the transcript, Haley asks King about critics labeling him an “extremist,” to which King responded: “At first, it disturbed me. Then I began to consider that, yes, I would like to think myself an extremist — in the light of Christ-like spirit which made Jesus an extremist for love.”
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ISIS Hotbed Looms as Risk in Mosul Fight - WSJ - 0 views

  • ISIS Hotbed Looms as Risk in Mosul Fight
  • Iraqi forces closing in on Islamic State-held Mosul are bypassing pockets controlled by militants such as the strategic town of Hawija, leaving the extremists free to launch counterattacks elsewhere in Iraq.
  • But just days into the Mosul offensive, Islamic State mounted a massive coordinated attack on oil-rich Kirkuk,
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  • the fighters were all originally from the Kirkuk area and Hawija.
  • Islamic State has been pushed in recent months out of places closer to Baghdad, such as Ramadi, Fallujah and Beiji.
  • Instead, Iraqi forces went straight for the high-profile prize of Mosul.
  • There is tension between Baghdad and the Kurdistan regional government over the future of the province and whether it will become part of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region.
  • Sunni Arabs are the majority in Hawija, as well, though it is unclear whether the local population will back the Sunni extremists of Islamic State, who failed to rally residents of Kirkuk to their side in the recent attack.
  • Hawija is now one of Islamic State’s last remaining hubs for assembling car bombs and roadside explosive devices that have devastated cities and towns throughout Iraq and proved to be the militants’ deadliest weapon against allied Iraqi forces pushing into Mosul, according to Iraqi and U.S. officials.
  • “It’s like a knife sticking in the side of northern Iraq,”
  • “We believe the government hurried up to liberate Mosul before Hawija for political reasons,”
  • “Military plans are being made now about how to liberate Hawija and where the operation will start.”
  • Gen. Qadr shared photos he said were taken from a dead militant’s tablet computer after the recent Kirkuk assault that showed a GPS-marked trail he took to get to Kirkuk from Mosul. It included a stop in Hawija.
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Raqqa Offensive Against ISIS to Begin Within Weeks: Ash Carter - NBC News - 0 views

  • The offensive to oust ISIS from its capital will get underway within weeks
  • t starts in the next few weeks," he said, referring to the timeline for the assault on the militants' Syrian stronghold of Raqqa. "That has long been our plan and we will be capable of resourcing both."
  • 5,000 U.S. personnel are supporting the massive military campaign to retake Mosul from ISIS that began on Oct. 16.
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  • "They are not near [Mosul] at this time ... Our forces do accompany .... the Iraqi security forces and the Peshmerga. So they will get nearer to the city as those forces get nearer to the city ... We are not going to be part of the occupation or hold forces."
  • European leaders have said they were concerned the effort to take Raqqa had not begun yet, which would allow the extremists to continue planning and inspiring the sorts of attacks that have hit France and Belgium during the last year.
  • We need do justice. And we need to do it fast," said Carter, who was heading to a meeting with NATO defense chiefs in Brussels later on Wednesday.
  • Iraqi security forces and the Kurdish militia have faced ISIS suicide attacks, car bombs and other attacks in their march toward Iraq's second-largest city which the extremists captured in 2014.
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