Letters to the Editor: If Americans reject Biden's agenda, it's because of warped GOP values

Sun, October 24, 2021, 


Vice President Kamala Harris listens as President Biden speaks at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington on Oct. 21. (Associated Press)

To the editor: Columnist Jonah Goldberg claims that President Biden's Build Back Better plan isn't as popular as people think. He's undoubtedly right if you consider that the United States fails to fall even in the top 10 countries worldwide on quality-of-life indicators, including education, income distribution and healthcare.

In the 2021 U.S. News & World Report ranking, our country comes in at No. 20. We are barely competitive.

Such quality-of-life measures are of little interest in Washington, especially among conservatives, who place a high priority on low taxes, small government and a strong national defense.


For them, it would appear to matter little that if quality of life were an international sporting event, another year would have passed without the U.S. even making the playoffs. And no, the answer is not to fire the coach.

Bernie Schaeffer, Goleta

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To the editor: I am frequently in opposition to Goldberg's opinions, but I will concede his points usually seem to be well researched and supported by facts.

But he slips in one claim that should not go unchallenged. He states, "Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez may turn heads by scrawling 'tax the rich' on her ballgown, but the truth is we already do — at a remarkably progressive rate."

His research and facts seem to have been omitted. Did he run out of space ? Perhaps he will address the personal income tax rates for Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffet and Donald Trump in a future column.

Jeff Wiley, Monrovia

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To the editor: Goldberg repeats two Republican talking points that mislead.

He says the rich are already taxed progressively in this country. Yes, some rich people pay high income tax rates.

For example, Bill Maher is paid to do his HBO program as well as make appearances at comedy shows. However, as a part owner of the New York Mets, he increases his wealth the way the truly wealthy do: by buying an asset that increases in value, on which you pay no taxes unless you sell it.

Wealthy people earn much of their money through capital gains, taxed at no more than 20%.

Goldberg also repeats the Republican mantra that even if we confiscated all the wealth of the top 1%, it still wouldn't pay for the Green New Deal or Medicare for all.

Forbes magazine says there are 2,755 billionaires in the world who control $13.1 trillion in assets. There are 724 American billionaires, who together are worth more than $4 trillion. That sure would pay for a lot.

Ronald Townsend, Los Angeles

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

COVID takes a bite from Bazoulé’s cult of sacred crocodiles


In this photo provided by Religion News Service, Alfred Kabore poses with a sacred crocodile in Bazoule, Burkina Faso, Oct. 17, 2021.

 (Joseph Hammond/Religion News Service via AP)

JOSEPH HAMMOND
Fri, October 22, 2021

BAZOULÉ, Burkina Faso (RNS) — The small live chicken, offered as a lure to get the crocodile to come out of the lake, barely convinced the massive male reptile to the water’s edge. The croc, himself the lure for the sprinkling of visitors who had come 20 miles from the capital, Ouagadougou, to pose with the beings held sacred by locals, seemed disinterested in tourists and chicken alike.

“We used to have large groups coming and students. That has slowed a lot in the last couple of years,” said Pierre Kaboré, president of the Association for Tourism and Development of Bazoulé and the head of a local association of 15 crocodile caretakers.

A recent visit confirmed that there were more crocodiles lounging on the shore of the holy lake than cars in the parking lot. With an uprising in Burkina Faso’s north and the travel disruptions of COVID-19, the number of tourists has slowed in this village of some 2,000 people and 100 or more fully adult crocodiles, with another 100 still maturing.

The local cult of the crocodile dates to sometime in the 1500s, when, during a period of severe drought, locals believe, a crocodile appeared and led local women to a source of fresh water. A thanksgiving was held by the grateful villagers and the reptiles have been revered ever since.

Since the early 1960s, the crocodiles of the lake have again provided for the people of the area, as the crocodiles of Bazoulé have become one of the country’s premier tourist attractions.

It is common to find crocodiles in the compounds of local families in the dry season, which runs from November to April. At other times crocodiles wander into the village seeking safe places to lay their eggs, and the locals protect the nests from predators.

West African crocodiles are generally less aggressive than their counterparts on the Nile, and the villagers and tourists pet them and large cattle from the village drink from the lake without fear.

Most of the crocodiles subsist on fish, birds and other small game, but a handful are selectively groomed to chase chickens for tourists. The locals collect the teeth of the crocodiles, who shed them often, to make into amulets, earrings and other jewelry.

“The local boys swim in the lake despite the crocodiles, and I did it too,” said Kaboré. “We know not to swim, though, too soon after the babies hatch — the mothers are very protective.”

But the crocodile cult goes beyond the commercial advantages: Their potentially valuable crocodile skin is not harvested for leather and the carcasses are buried intact in a small, unmarked cemetery in a quiet grove dedicated to crocodiles that is barred to tourists. Dead crocodiles receive burial services similar to those of humans in the village and are often buried in coffins.

At the center of the faith practice of the people of Bazoulé are the large male crocodiles known as the “old man of the lake.” The current holder of this esteemed position is believed to be 110 years old and thus has lived through the entire arc of Burkina Faso’s modern history: From the brutal colonial war raged by France to control “Upper Volta” during World War I to the rise and assassination in 1987 of rebel leader Thomas Sankara, who gave the country its name, which combines several Indigenous languages.

The previous old man of the lake, who died more than a decade ago, had lived even longer. “He was about 136, which is quite old for a male, but some females here potentially live up to 150 years,” said Kaboré.

In an annual ceremony known as Koom Lakre, offerings are made to the old man of the lake by a village elder. While chickens are sufficient for the entertainment of visitors, the old man is propitiated with sheep, goats and occasionally small donkeys.

Crocodiles’ cries heard by villagers are treated as omens that are interpreted by elders. Yet, there are increasingly fewer ears to hear those cries.

“We used to have over 100 people on the weekends coming here to see the crocodiles. Now it’s just a few cars a day,” said Alfred Kaboré, another crocodile caretaker. A small compound with a café and benches shaped like crocodiles sits empty.

Locals once keen on the tourist trade have refocused on the vegetable gardening for which the village is also known.

“There will always be a connection between us and the crocodiles. Even if someone leaves the village or shows interest in another religion, they still venerate the crocodiles as (a) god. Respect — this is the animist way,” said Alfred Kabore.

NBA-Kanter denounces China's human rights record again amid backlash


FILE PHOTO: NBA: Boston Celtics-Media Day

Amy Tennery
Fri, October 22, 2021

(Reuters) - Boston Celtics center Enes Kanter posted a new video on Friday denouncing China's human rights record regarding Uyghur people and other Muslim minorities.

The video comes two days after Kanter, who has a history of activism speaking out against his native Turkey's President Tayyip Erdogan, condemned the Chinese treatment of Tibet in a similar video, prompting a backlash in China L1N2RH0K2.


"Heartless Dictator of China, XI JINPING and the Communist Party of China. I am calling you out in front of the whole world. Close down the SLAVE labor camps and free the UYGHUR people!" Kanter wrote on Twitter. "Stop the GENOCIDE, now!"

Chinese authorities have been accused of facilitating forced labour by detaining around a million Uyghurs and other primarily Muslim minorities in camps since 2016.

China denies wrongdoing, saying it has set up vocational training centres to combat extremism.

"It's so disappointing that the governments and leaders of Muslim majority countries are staying silent while my Muslim brothers and sisters are getting killed, raped and tortured," Kanter said in a video accompanying the tweet, posted hours before the Celtics' home opener against the Toronto Raptors.

Kanter, 29, was pilloried on Chinese social media and his name appeared to be blocked on the popular Weibo messaging platform.

Celtics highlights were absent from China's Tencent Holdings Ltd sports platform on Thursday.

The United States voiced concern on Friday at China's actions against the National Basketball Association following Kanter's criticism of China's treatment of Tibet.

A State Department spokesperson said in an email, referring to the People's Republic of China: "The United States is deeply concerned by the PRC's actions against the National Basketball Association for statements one player made regarding Tibet."

The Celtics and the NBA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Amy Tennery in New York and Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Ken Ferris)

Udoka: Celtics haven't talked to Kanter about Tibet comments

Raptors Celtics Basketball

Boston Celtics' Enes Kanter wears shoes with a political message during the first half of an NBA basketball game against the Toronto Raptors, Friday, Oct. 22, 2021, in Boston. AP Photo/Michael Dwyer

JIMMY GOLEN
Fri, October 22, 2021

BOSTON (AP) — Boston Celtics coach Ime Udoka said Friday night that he hasn’t talked to center Enes Kanter about the player's criticism of the Chinese government that led to the team's games being pulled off television there.

“We know it’s out there,” Udoka said before the team's home opener against the Toronto Raptors. “He is very passionate about a lot of things and he has the freedom to say what he wants. That’s above my department.”

In a series of social media posts, Kanter proclaimed his support for Tibetan independence and called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “dictator.” Kanter also wore shoes with the phrase “Free Tibet” on them during the Celtics game on Friday against Toronto, when he played five minutes and scored two points.


“More than 150 Tibetan people have burned themselves alive!! — hoping that such an act would raise more awareness about Tibet,” he wrote on Twitte r. "I stand with my Tibetan brothers and sisters, and I support their calls for Freedom."

Chinese broadcaster Tencent did not show the Celtics’ opener against the Knicks on streaming services that typically air the games, an apparent response to Kanter’s statements.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Thursday that Kanter was “clout-chasing, trying to get attention with Tibet-related issues.”

“His wrong remarks are not worth refuting,” Wang said.

Neither the NBA nor the Celtics have commented.

A native of Turkey, Kanter has been an outspoken critic of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Turkish government. Kanter has said his passport was revoked by his homeland in 2017.

It’s not the first time the league has been forced to navigate its relationship with the Chinese government — and the gigantic media market it controls. In October 2019, then-Houston general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of government protesters in Hong Kong, also leading to games being pulled from the air.

The NBA estimated that the strained relationship with the Chinese and lost broadcast rights cost the league about $400 million in revenue during the 2019-20 season alone.

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AP Basketball Writer Tim Reynolds contributed to this story.

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More AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Enes Kanter: Boston Celtics star under fire for Xi Jinping comments

Fri, October 22, 2021

In a video posted to Twitter, Kanter expressed support for the Free Tibet movement


Boston Celtics basketball player Enes Kanter is under fire in China after calling President Xi Jinping a "brutal dictator".

In a video posted to Twitter, he also expressed support for the Free Tibet movement.

His name has since been blocked from Chinese social media site Weibo, and the streaming of Celtics games has reportedly been cancelled.

China's foreign ministry has accused Kanter of "trying to get attention".

It comes two years after tweets from then Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey prompted China's broadcaster to cease showing NBA games.

"My message for the Chinese government is free Tibet," Kanter told his followers. "Tibet belongs to Tibetans."

China has long been accused of suppressing cultural and religious freedom in Tibet, a remote and mainly Buddhist region. The government denies the accusations and says Tibet has developed considerably under its rule.

On the same day as his video, Kanter showed off shoes with the phrase "Free Tibet" designed by Australia-based Chinese dissident cartoonist Badiucao. He had planned to wear them for his match against the New York Knicks but did not play. It's unclear whether the decision not to play Kanter was related to his political message.



Badiucao told the BBC that Kanter reached out to him weeks ago regarding collaborating on this project. "He has a very clear idea that he wants to advocate for the Tibetan community," the cartoonist said.

"It's a disappointment that he was not given a single minute on the court."

Chinese backlash to NBA boss's Hong Kong tweet

Protest held at Beijing Olympics torch lighting

Future Celtics matches are not listed as available for live broadcast on Chinese streaming app Tencent.

On the Celtics' official page, some fans called for him to be removed from the team while others urged an apology.

China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Kanter's remarks "were not worth refuting".

"We will never accept those attacks to discredit Tibet's development and progress," he said.

Kanter, who is known for his activism, has had his Turkish passport removed by the country's government over his remarks about President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In 2019, prosecutors in Turkey issued an international arrest warrant for Kanter, claiming he had links with armed groups behind a 2016 failed coup. Kanter denies the allegations.
When politics and sports tangle

Zhaoyin Feng, BBC News, Washington

The NBA has once again stepped onto a political landmine in one of its biggest markets.

Overnight, Enes Kanter has been largely wiped out from China's internet, but compared to Daryl Morey's Hong Kong tweet that set off a social media firestorm two years ago, reactions in China toward Kanter's comments have been relatively subdued.

Many NBA fans in China may know little about what exactly Kanter said, only realising the fact that he has offended the authorities. Without mentioning Kanter's comments, an NBA blogger in China says the player "forgot his own place" and tried to ingratiate himself with the US. "He is just a basketball player… He should focus on playing the ball."

The bigger picture of this controversy is that with the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics around the corner, politics and sports appear to be on a colliding path.

Activists have been urging a boycott of the Beijing Olympics over the country's human rights record, while China has repeatedly slammed these calls as "politicisation of sports". A senior member of the International Olympic Committee recently said that it's beyond the organisation's power to hold the Chinese government accountable for any human right abuses.

As both China's sporting prowess and its tension with the West continue to rise, it will soon be almost impossible for athletes, companies and international leagues to untangle the complicated link between politics and sports.

The story of Carol and Karen: Two experimental Facebook accounts show how the company helped divide America

Jessica Guynn and Kevin McCoy, USA TODAY
Sat, October 23, 2021

In 2019, two users joined Facebook. Both had similar interests: young children and parenting, Christianity, civics and community.

"Carol," 41, was a conservative from North Carolina. She was interested in news, politics, then-President Donald Trump and the nation's first family. She followed the official accounts for Trump, first lady Melania Trump and Fox News.

"Karen" was the same age and lived in the same state. But she was a liberal who liked politics, news, and Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. She disliked Trump. She followed a local news site, pages about North Carolina and the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.

Facebook's algorithms got to work, suggesting what they'd be interested in.

Accepting recommendations for sites supportive of Trump led Carol to suggestions for a site called “Donald Trump is Jesus,” and another for QAnon, a wide-ranging extremist ideology that alleges celebrities and top Democrats are engaged in a pedophile ring. Karen was presented with anti-Trump pages, including one that posted an image showing an anus instead of Trump's mouth.

The two women were not real. They were created by a Facebook researcher to explore how the social media platform deepened political divides in the U.S. by recommending content rife with misinformation and extremism.

The experiment shows that Facebook, which had 2.9 billion monthly active users as of June 30, knew before the 2020 presidential election that its automated recommendations amplified misinformation and polarization in the U.S., yet the company largely failed to curtail its role in deepening the political divide.

Reports describing the experiments are among hundreds of documents disclosed to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by attorneys for Frances Haugen, a former Facebook employee. The redacted versions were obtained by a consortium of 17 news organizations, including USA TODAY.

In the summer of 2019, a Facebook researcher created two fictitious accounts with similar demographics but opposite political beliefs. Facebook's recommendation algorithm quickly suggested the users follow accounts on extreme ends of the political spectrum.

Jose Rocha said he's experienced the divisiveness firsthand.

A military veteran who grew up in a Democratic, pro-union family in Selah, Washington, Rocha said Facebook normalized racist views and led him down a rabbit hole to far-right ideologies.

For a time, Rocha said, he became a Nazi sympathizer and a backer of other extremist views – behavior he now blames on Facebook's recommendations system.

"I wouldn't have even known they existed if it wasn't for Facebook. So I wouldn't have went out seeking them," said Rocha, 27.

Bill Navari, 57, a conservative sports commentator from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, said a cousin blocked him on Facebook after he suggested she get her TDS ("Trump derangement syndrome") checked.

“I’ve seen people on Facebook saying, ‘If you are voting for Trump, unfriend me.' But I didn’t see anyone saying, ‘If you are voting for Biden, unfriend me,'” he said. “Facebook has become like oil and water, and never the two shall meet.”

These days, he steers clear of political debates on Facebook.

“I’ll post pics of my family, of my dog, where we went on vacation, and I stay in touch with the friends and family. But posting a meme or putting something on Facebook, it’s not going to change anyone’s mind,” he said. “I just think the conversation has become so coarse.”

Is Facebook to blame? “I don’t like pointing fingers without direct knowledge,” he said. “But I do think that Facebook is a party to this.”

The internal Facebook documents show how swiftly its recommendation algorithms can amplify polarization by sending users to content that's rife with misinformation and extremism.

The company's experiment with the hypothetical conservative user was called "Carol's Journey to QAnon." Within five days of going live on June 2, 2019, the user was barraged by "extreme, conspiratorial and graphic content," the researcher wrote.

One of the recommendations included an image labeling former President Barack Obama a "traitor" with a caption that read, "When we're done he'll claim Kenyan citizenship as a way to escape." (Despite racist claims to the contrary, Obama is a U.S. citizen.)

The report on the fictitious liberal user was called "Karen and the Echo Chamber of Reshares." That account went live on July 20, 2019. Within a week, Facebook's recommendations pivoted to "all anti-Trump content." Some recommendations came from a small Facebook group that had been flagged for "promoting illegal activity," the Facebook researcher wrote.

One image served to Karen showed then-first lady Melania Trump's face superimposed on the body of a bikini-clad woman kneeling on a bed. The caption read, "Melania Trump: Giving evangelicals something they can get behind."

Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen appears before the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Subcommittee at the Russell Senate Office Building on October 05, 2021, in Washington, D.C. Haugen left Facebook in May and provided internal company documents about Facebook to journalists and others, alleging that Facebook consistently chooses profits over safety. (Photo by Matt McClain-Pool/Getty Images)

Haugen, the former Facebook employee who has blown the whistle on the company, is a former product manager who worked on Facebook’s Civic Integrity team, focusing on elections. She had a front-row seat to the most divisive political events in recent memory, including the Jan. 6 insurrection in which Trump supporters tried to block Congress from certifying Joe Biden's win in the presidential election.

Concerned that Facebook was prioritizing profits over the well-being of its users, Haugen reviewed thousands of documents over several weeks before leaving the company in May.

The documents, some of which have been the subject of extensive reporting by The Wall Street Journal and CBS News' "60 Minutes," detail company research showing that toxic and divisive content is prevalent in posts boosted by Facebook and shared widely by users.

"I saw Facebook repeatedly encounter conflicts between its own profits and our safety. Facebook consistently resolves these conflicts in favor of its own profits," Haugen alleged during a Senate hearing this month. "The result has been more division, more harm, more lies, more threats, and more combat."

Haugen has called on Facebook to limit its practice of prioritizing content that has drawn shares and comments from many users.

She has sought federal whistleblower protection from the SEC, alleging that Facebook, a publicly traded company, misled investors. She could get a financial award if the SEC were to penalize the company.

In this file photo illustration, a smartphone displays the logo of Facebook on a Facebook website background, on April 7, 2021, in Arlington, Virginia. Facebook's independent Oversight Board announced on April 13, 2021, it would start accepting requests to remove "harmful content" that users believe has been wrongly allowed to remain on the leading social network. The move broadens the mandate of the so-called "supreme court" of Facebook, which up to now had been tasked with reviewing instances of whether content was improperly taken down from Facebook or Instagram.

Facebook denies that it is the cause of political divisions in the U.S.

“The rise of polarization has been the subject of serious academic research in recent years but without a great deal of consensus," said spokesman Andy Stone. "But what evidence there is simply does not support the idea that Facebook, or social media more generally, is the primary cause of polarization."

Facebook cited a research study that showed polarization has declined in a number of countries with high social media use even as it has risen in the U.S.

As for the test accounts, Stone said the experiment was "a perfect example of research the company does to improve our systems and helped inform our decision to remove QAnon from the platform."
Facebook tweaks its algorithms to increase engagement

After Russia used Facebook to interfere in the 2016 presidential election, pressure built on the company and its CEO Mark Zuckerberg to do something about misinformation and divisive content.

Meanwhile, critics charged that the company's apps exploited human psychology to hook people on social media, hijacking their time and undermining their well-being.

Facebook and Instagram ads linked to Russia during the 2016 election.

Especially worrying to company leaders was that users were less engaged on the platform. They scrolled through updates on their timelines, reading articles and watching videos. But they commented and shared posts less than before.

In response, Facebook radically altered the algorithm that determines what to display at the top of users' News Feed, the stream of posts from friends, family, groups and pages. The change was aimed at bringing users more updates from friends and family that spark meaningful social exchanges, the company said at the time.

But the focus on posts with high numbers of comments and likes rewarded outrage and resulted in the spread of more misinformation and divisive content, according to internal documents reviewed by USA TODAY. The more negative or incendiary the post, the farther and faster it spread.

The change was noticeable.

Kent Dodds, a software engineer from Utah, said he rarely uses Facebook. In September 2019, he hopped on to voice his support for then-Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

Soon Dodds' News Feed shifted. Instead of seeing posts from his social circle, he was bombarded by political posts from distant Facebook connections.

“I remember coming away from that thinking, Facebook wants me to fight. They really want me to engage with these friends I haven’t talked to in a long time about their very different political views, and clearly not in a positive way,” Dodds said.

“Whether or not Facebook is intentional about what their algorithm is doing, it is responsible for it, and it’s doing harm to our society and they should be held accountable,” he said.

The debates over user engagement and polarization are complex, said Eli Pariser, author of "The Filter Bubble" and a researcher and co-director of New_Public, an incubator seeking to create better digital spaces.

"I think it’s also pretty clear that the company had made a whole bunch of decisions to prioritize engagement, and those have had public consequences,” he said.
One user's rule: Don't mix friends and family on Facebook

Deanie Mills struggled to deal with those consequences.

Mills is a 70-year-old crime novelist and grandmother who lives with her husband on a remote West Texas ranch. Half her family are Democrats; the other half are old-school conservatives, many of them military veterans.

For years she bit her tongue at family gatherings. “I didn’t want to get into a barroom brawl over politics with friends,” she said.

In 2008, she joined Facebook and used her account to speak out against the Iraq War at the urging of her son, a Marine who had become disillusioned with the war effort.

Facebook friend requests from relatives started to roll in. “I thought, oh crap,” said Mills, who backed Barack Obama for president. “I support the troops 100%, but I don’t support this war and I don’t want to lose family over it.”

She created a rule: Don’t mix Facebook with family. Relatives agreed to stay in touch in other ways.

Today she said her heart breaks every time she hears about families and friendships ripped apart by Facebook feuds. The problem, she said, is that people have a predilection for sensationalism, fear and outrage.

“People just want to be whipped up,” Mills said. “And Facebook says, ‘Here’s your drug. Come back here in the alley and I can fix you up.'"

Experts who have studied Facebook say that's how the platform is engineered.

Brent Kitchens, an assistant professor of commerce at the University of Virginia, co-authored a 2020 report that found Facebook users' News Feeds become more polarized as they spend more time on the platform. Facebook usage is five times more polarizing for conservatives than for liberals, the study found.

"Everything leads me to believe it's not malicious, and not intentional, but it's something they're aware of from their engagement-based content curation," Kitchens said.

Chris Bail, the director of Duke University's Polarization Lab, said he believes Facebook has played a role in deepening political divisions, but he cautioned there are other factors. He partly blames social media users who – consciously or not – seek validation and approval from others.

"Changing a few algorithms wouldn't do the trick to change that," said Bail, the author of "Breaking the Social Media Prism."

Alex Mayercik, a 52-year-old from Houston, also blames human nature.

“I have often said to people: It was harder for me to come out as a gay conservative than it was for me to come out,” she said.

Her political views and support of Trump cost her friends on Facebook, including her best friend from grade school, she said. "These were people that were friends, that I knew, that I broke bread with, that I went to church with."

But she also blames Facebook.

“I feel it leans one way politically, and that does not promote open dialogue,” said Mayercik. “People have to disagree. It seems to me that whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or any other social media platform, everybody is entitled to have an opinion.”
Facebook removes guardrails after election

Haugen told U.S. senators this month she was alarmed when, after the 2020 presidential election and before the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, Facebook disbanded her team and turned off safeguards to combat misinformation and dangerous movements.

Removing those measures, such as limits on live video, allowed election fraud misinformation to spread widely and for groups to gather on Facebook as they planned to storm the Capitol, she testified.

Protesters attempt to enter the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6 after mass demonstrations during a joint session of Congress to ratify President-elect Joe Biden's 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.

"Facebook changed those safety defaults in the runup to the election because they knew they were dangerous. And because they wanted that growth back, they wanted the acceleration of the platform back after the election, they returned to their original defaults," Haugen said when she testified before Congress earlier this month.

"The fact that they had to 'break the glass' on Jan. 6 and turn them back on, I think that’s deeply problematic," she said.

Facebook rolled back the measures when conditions returned to normal after the election, a decision "based on careful data-driven analysis," Nick Clegg, Facebook’s vice president of policy and global affairs, wrote in a recent memo to employees.

Some of those measures were left in place through February, he wrote. "And others, like not recommending civic, political or new groups, we have decided to retain permanently."

The Facebook researcher who created Carol and Karen suggested deeper changes. The platform's recommendations should exclude groups or pages with known references to conspiracies in their names, such as QAnon, and those with administrators who broke Facebook's rules.

The researcher left the company in August 2020 as Facebook banned thousands of QAnon pages and groups, criticizing the failure to act sooner, BuzzFeed News reported. The FBI labeled QAnon a potential domestic terrorism threat in 2019.

Stone said Facebook adopted some of the researcher's recommendations earlier this year, such as eliminating the "like" button in the News Feed for pages that had violated the company's rules but had not yet been removed from the platform.

Bail said Facebook should change its system in a more fundamental way.

Rather than boost posts that get the most likes, he said, the platform should boost those with a large number of likes from a cross-section of sources, including Democrats and Republicans.

Regardless of whether Facebook makes such changes, it has already lost its hold on Katie Bryan. The interior designer from Woodbridge, Virginia, said she got fed up with the spread of hate and misinformation by Trump supporters when he first ran for president. She responded by unfriending friends and relatives.

Now, she said, “I don’t really even enjoy logging on to Facebook anymore."

Since Haugen came forward, Bryan deleted the Facebook and Instagram apps from her phone.

Contributing: Grace Hauck and Rachel Axon

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Facebook whistleblower documents: Company knew it was dividing America

US Blueprints for a 'national cloud' have been drawn up. Big Tech wants in.

David Ingram and Jacob Ward

Fri, October 22, 2021

Big tech has big designs on a big cloud.

A steady drumbeat from some of the most influential executives in the technology industry has emerged in recent months to push the idea that the U.S. government should invest in a "national research cloud" — a hub for U.S. research into artificial intelligence where researchers from academia and smaller tech companies could share data sets and other resources.

It's an idea that has been backed by a government commission led by ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt and including executives from Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle, which recommended that the Biden administration create a hub for U.S. research into artificial intelligence. The White House has warmed up to the idea, ordering another report on it due next year with an eye toward competing with China on the development of artificial intelligence.

“We should be able to stay ahead of China. We estimated that we are one to two years ahead of China, broadly speaking, in this area. I hope that’s true,” Schmidt said in an interview with NBC News.

“Investments that are targeted in research — new algorithms — should be able to keep us ahead,” he said.

The stakes could be enormous. Some experts in artificial intelligence believe it has the potential to transform the economy — automating some jobs, while creating new ones — and the potential military applications have spurred investment by the Pentagon.

But this month, the idea began getting fresh pushback. Research groups including New York University's AI Now Institute and Data & Society, a nonprofit technology research group based in New York, say the very tech companies pushing this idea stand to profit from it, because the national hub would likely be housed in the same companies' commercial cloud computing services.

They say that's a conflict, and little more than a cash grab by what's effectively the next generation of military contractors. The plan also could entrench the very same tech companies that President Joe Biden's antitrust enforcers are working to rein in, these critics say.

"What this essentially is, is a subsidy to large tech companies," said Meredith Whittaker, a co-founder of the AI Now Institute, a research center for artificial intelligence at NYU.

A former researcher at Google, Whittaker was active within the company in pushing back against its handling of AI ethics. She left in 2019 and has continued to be a consistent critic of how large tech companies handle AI research and its impact.

Whittaker pointed out that the Biden administration pledged in July to rein in a "small number of dominant Internet platforms" that use their power to "extract monopoly profits."

"We need to break out of these narrow frames that are set by self-interested tech oligarchs," she said.

Other criticisms from her and fellow researchers are that the government has barely put thought into the privacy issues or potentially harmful influence of ramping up AI research, and that the alleged competition with China to win an AI arms race may be exaggerated in a replay of Cold War panic.

The idea of a national cloud for AI has been kicking around for years as a way to provide cutting-edge computing power to academic researchers and other people who don't happen to work at a place like Google or Amazon, which have specialized and lucrative divisions dedicated to cloud computing.

One potential advantage, advocates say, is that a national cloud could be the home for huge, secure sets of data that could help train AI systems. Some Americans fear that Chinese researchers have a leg up in AI development because they already have access to large, government-sanctioned data sets in China.

This month, the AI Now Institute and Data & Society submitted written comments on the idea. They argued that the plan for a national cloud would help big tech companies consolidate power and that a Cold War-style competition with China was misleading and dangerous.

“Winning at whose expense?” Brittany Smith, policy director for Data & Society, said in an interview. She said the federal task force that's reviewing the idea should consider evidence that large-scale AI systems result in discriminatory treatment, and proceed with caution.

“It’s always just, ‘Go go, go. Launch the thing. Build the thing. Scale the thing,’” she said. Researchers need to take time, she said, “talking about the costs and talking about who’s hurt and why they are considered expendable in this fake race to do things that don’t actually make any sense.”

More skepticism has come from other organizations. The Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington, said in written comments this month that the government should “set rigorous restrictions on the influence of companies involved,” in part to protect civil liberties.

Andrew Moore, head of Cloud AI at Google Cloud and a member of the federal task force on the subject, said in an interview that the role of Google and other corporations would be limited in any national effort.

"It will be driven by academics and the government funding agencies that are involved," he said.

And, he said, it's important that no single cloud-services provider take on a dominant role. A national cloud would be more like a "multi-cloud," he said. "We would never want to see a future where researchers were tied to specific clouds. We very much believe in competition, both among the big established cloud providers and many of the other folks that are involved."

Last year, a bill to develop a national cloud got bipartisan support in Congress as well as endorsements from tech companies and several large research universities.

Another boost came in March, when the federal commission chaired by Schmidt included a national cloud among its recommendations for winning an AI arms race against China. The commission also included Oracle CEO Safra Catz; Andy Jassy, who has since become the CEO of Amazon; and executives at Google and Microsoft.

Representatives for Amazon, Microsoft and Oracle did not respond to requests for comment. The federal government is already a big customer of commercial cloud computing services.

Next up, the Biden administration and Congress are weighing a major investment of money. In June, the White House announced the creation of a task force to help draw up a blueprint for a national cloud — which would officially be called the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource, or NAIRR.

The task force is due to submit an interim report to Congress in May and a final report in November 2022.

Boom times for Shell amid record gas prices

Rachel Millard
Fri, October 22, 2021

Shell

Major oil companies are expected to reveal booming profits after global gas prices soared.

Shell is forecast to post quarterly revenue of $2.1bn (£1.5bn) for its natural gas division when it reports on Thursday, an almost three-fold increase on the same quarter last year.

Gas prices have climbed globally amid a global crunch in supplies, with Asian spot liquified natural gas prices four times higher than during the third quarter of 2020.

The rally is leading to painful increases in household bills across Britain and Europe, while factories have been forced to curb output.

None the less, higher prices mean windfalls for producers as well as potentially for the pension pots invested in their stocks.

Oil prices have also climbed, with Brent Crude rising more than 60pc since the start of the year to more than $85 on Friday.

Shell’s shares have climbed 35pc this year, to 1,749p, while BP’s have climbed 40pc to 356p.

Analysts at HSBC expect cash flows for the third quarter - covering July to September - among integrated oil companies to be double than those of a year ago.

“The strength of oil and gas prices means the companies are even more free cash positive than we had already expected,” they said.

“While some of this excess free cash should enable them to accelerate low-carbon spending, much of it is likely to be seen in cash returns to shareholders.”

Shell is reaping the rewards of its £47bn purchase of rival BG Group, a major liquefied natural gas producer, in 2016.

FTSE 100 rival BP is set to report third quarter results on November 2.

HSBC believes its results “will show the strength of its excess free cash flow,” albeit its “leverage to stronger oil and gas prices isn’t as great as many of its peers”.

The sector is under growing pressure to invest more in renewable energy and cut carbon emissions.

BP announced plans last year for a 10-fold increase in low carbon investment by 2030 and a 40pc fall in its own oil and gas production by 2030.

Shell plans to cut the net carbon footprint of its products by 20pc by 2030 and by 100pc by 2050.

The Great Resignation gives way to the Dee Snider workforce

“We've got the right to choose it

There ain't no way we'll lose it

This is our life, this is our song”

—“We’re Not Gonna Take It,” Twisted Sister

What to make of the labor market, where unfilled jobs are near a record high, unemployment claims hit yet another pandemic-era low — but workers appear to be in a particularly foul mood and, as Dee Snider famously bellowed, are simply not gonna take anymore?

With her comprehensive dispatch on the state of an unhappy labor force — where strikes and support for organized labor are on the rise — Yahoo Finance’s Dani Romero hit the nail on the head. It highlights how The Great Resignation is clearly stressing out the workers left behind:

“From health care to entertainment, nearly 100,000 U.S. workers are either striking or preparing to strike in a bid to improve working conditions,” Romero wrote. “New data signals that worker unrest is growing: a Cornell Labor Action Tracker shows that more than 180 strikes have been recorded this year, and over 24,000 workers have walked off the job this month.”

Over at TKer, former Morning Brief scribe Sam Ro (in his newly inaugurated Substack blog) also breaks it down succinctly: “People are quitting low-paying jobs for higher-paying jobs. People are quitting great jobs for even better jobs. People are quitting to become their own boss. People are quitting because they don’t actually need the income.”

To summarize, workers are not only quitting at historically high rates, they’re being increasingly choosy about picking their next jobs. The tight labor market is creating a self-reinforcing loop: Demand is strong, and prices are rising everywhere, but so are wages, as desperate employers trip over themselves to hike pay in a bid to retain and attract talent.

Goldman Sachs tracking data shows wages are rising sharply.

Added to the mix are several other components conspiring to make long-term trends “more inflationary,” Deutsche Bank chief economist Jim Reid wrote this week. These include less support for globalization (which has kept pay low), the shift away from fossil fuels, and — wait for it — “declines in the working-age population causing labor shortages.”

All of these factors are heaping more pressure on an economy and workforce that are clearly in transition. Companies are paying more, which has the ancillary effect of boosting demand and price pressures: Both BlackRock (BLK) and Goldman Sachs (GS) recently warned about rising wage costs. 

Still, it’s simply not sufficient to placate anxious workers in virtually every industry.

The Morning Brief has previously covered the double-edged sword of rising pay, which is giving workers unparalleled bargaining power. However, it puts upward pressure on inflation, which threatens to “ravage” the economy, as former President Donald Trump told Yahoo Finance a couple of weeks ago.

So where does that leave employers? Struggling to fill open jobs while also bending over backwards to keep their current staff happy. And by all indications, the dynamic is less than healthy.

“Corporations aren’t as culturally fluent as they need to be,” The Britto Agency's Marvet Britto told Yahoo Finance Live on Thursday, speaking about Dave Chappelle’s Netflix backlash. Engaging stakeholders “must happen... in order to navigate the landmines and trip hazards that organizations will continue to face,” she added.

The situation at Netflix — buffeted by bad press in the wake of the Chappelle flare-up — is a bit of its own animal.

Although the stock set a new record high on Thursday (I covered some of the reasons why earlier this week), the streaming giant’s conundrum shows how big companies are being forced to navigate a fraught workplace defined by employee activism, picky hires-in-waiting, and more demanding customers. That only feeds the impression of unhappy workers and out-of-touch employers.

Friday, October 22, 2021

By Javier E. David, editor at Yahoo Finance. Follow him at @Teflongeek

Turkey slams Israel’s plans for new settlements in West Bank

http://ahval.co/en-129867

Oct 23 2021 

Turkey’s foreign ministry sharply criticized Israeli plans to begin construction of new settlements in the Palestinian controlled West Bank in a press release shared on Saturday.

In their statement, the ministry condemned plans to create 3,100 new housing units across the West Bank.

"Unilateral and unlawful policies, including the expansion of illegal settlements, that destroy the vision of a two-state solution, which is the only option for a just, lasting and comprehensive settlement of the Palestinian conflict, must be ended," the foreign ministry said in a statement.

"We call on the international community to take action to ensure the protection of the Palestinian territories and the rights of the Palestinian people, in order to achieve lasting peace and stability in the region in the long term."

Turkey has frequently criticised the Israeli government for its settlement activities on Palestinian territory. Ankara has been a vocal critic as well of overall Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan referring to Israel as a “terrorist state” in the past over its actions in the Palestnian lands.

Turkey and Israel were once strong allies, but relations deteriorated after the 2010 Mavi Mamara incident when Israeli commandos killed 10 Turkish citizens trying to enter Gaza by sea. The two were initially thought to be considering how they could reconcile ties, but this was disrupted by Erdoğan’s criticisms of Israel for its May military campaign in Gaza.

However in early July, Israel’s President Isaac Herzog received a phone call from Erdoğan, congratulating him on his election victory. The two reportedly discussed the “high potential for cooperation in the field of energy, tourism and technology” between the two countries.

US concerned about Israeli plans for 3,000 settler homes

The announcement about settler housing plans comes amid media reports that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is under extra US pressure to freeze such plans.

By TOVAH LAZAROFF, OMRI NAHMIAS
OCTOBER 23, 2021

A Jewish settler walks past Israeli settlement construction sites around Givat Zeev and Ramat Givat Zeev in the West Bank, near Jerusalem June 30, 2020.
(photo credit: AMMAR AWAD/REUTERS)

The US is “concerned” by the IDF’s intention to advance plans for 3,000 settler West Bank homes, including for the legalization of two outposts.

It is the first such large-scale advancement of settler housing plans by the Higher Planning Council for Judea and Samaria since US President Joe Biden was sworn into office.

The announcement comes amid media reports that Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is under extra US pressure to freeze such plans. Cabinet ministers and officials close to Bennett have denied those reports.

US State Department spokesman Ned Price was queried about the announcement at Friday’s news briefing.

“We are concerned about the announcement of a meeting next week to advance settlement units deep in the West Bank, and believe it is critical for Israel and the Palestinian Authority to refrain from unilateral steps that exacerbate tension and undercut efforts to advance a negotiated two-state solution,” said Price. “This certainly includes settlement activity, as well as retroactive legalization of settlement outposts.”

View of the Jewish settlement of Efrat and the surrounding fields, in Gush Etzion, West Bank, on December 1, 2020. 

(credit: GERSHON ELINSON/FLASH90)

The council usually meets four times a year to advance settlement plans, but this year it has met only once, in January, to promote plans for 780 settler homes, a fraction of the amount it advanced in past years.

According to the left-wing NGO Peace Now, the Higher Planning Council pushed forward plans for 12,159 homes in 2020, and advanced plans for 8,457 settler homes in 2019.

The council had initially been set to convene in August to approve plans for 2,223 settler homes, prior to Bennett’s departure for his first meeting with Biden.

That meeting was canceled due to a strike and has only now been rescheduled, with a larger number of planned homes.

The Civil Administration has said that it intends to debate 30 projects that involve plans for 3,144 homes. Out of those, 1,800 homes will receive final approval.

This includes plans for the legalization of both the Mitzpe Danny outpost as a new neighborhood in the Ma’aleh Mishmash settlement, and the Haroeh Haivri as an educational institution, according to Peace Now. It added that its count of the plans came to 2,862, due to the double-counting of some plans.

On October 31, the council is also set to advance six projects totaling 1,303 homes for Palestinians in Area C of the West Bank, which is under IDF military and civilian control.

This includes 270 homes in Al-Ma’assara village in the Bethlehem area, 233 homes in Almasqufa in the Tulkarm area and 200 in Dkeika in the South Hebron Hills.

In addition, plans for the Jenin area will be debated regarding 160 homes in Abba a-Sharqiya, 170 homes in Khirbet Abdallah Younas and 270 in Bir Albasha.

Of all those, only the 170 homes in Abdallah will receive final approval. A plan for 50 Palestinian homes in Khirbet Zakariya in the Gush Etzion region was dropped.

Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.

Israel to build over new ILLEGAL 1,300 W.Bank settler homes

Issued on: 24/10/2021 - 

A Palestinian man waves his flag next to the Israeli outpost of Evitar in the occupied West Bank on October 10

 JAAFAR ASHTIYEH AFP

Jerusalem (AFP)

The announcement from the housing and construction ministry in right-wing Prime Minister Naftali Bennett's government said tenders had been published for 1,355 homes in the West Bank, which has been occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War.

Those new homes add to the more than 2,000 residences which defence sources have said in August would be authorised for West Bank settlers.

Final approval is expected from the defence ministry this week for those homes.

Palestinian prime minister Mohammed Shtayyeh, speaking at a weekly cabinet meeting, called on world nations, and especially the United States, to "confront" Israel over the "aggression" that settlement construction poses for the Palestinian people.

The Palestinian Authority will be keenly watching for a response from US President Joe Biden's administration, which has said it opposes unilateral Israeli settlement construction as an obstacle to the two-state solution to the conflict.

About 475,000 Israeli Jews live in settlements in the West Bank, which are considered illegal under international law, on land Palestinians claim as part of their future state.

'Wake up'

Jordan, a key Israeli security partner with whom Bennett has sought to improve ties since taking office in June, condemned the announcement as "a violation of international law."

Jordanian foreign ministry spokesman Haitham Abu Al-Ful blasted settlement construction and general "confiscation" of Palestinian land as "illegitimate."

Anti-occupation group Peace Now said Sunday's announcement proved that Bennett's ideologically diverse coalition, which ousted ex-premier Benjamin Netanyahu's pro-settlement government in June, was not "a government of change."

"This government clearly continues Netanyahu's policy of de facto annexation," Peace Now said, calling on Bennett's left-wing governing partners, the Labor and Meretz parties, to "wake up and demand the wild building in settlements cease immediately."

Bennett, the former head of a settler lobby group, opposes Palestinian statehood.

He has ruled out formal peace talks with the Palestinian Authority during his tenure, saying he prefers to focus on economic improvements.

The tenders come after Israel last week gave approval for 4,000 Palestinians to register as residents of the West Bank, the first such move in the Israeli-occupied territory in 12 years.

The new Jewish homes are to be built in seven settlements, according to the statement from the Housing and Construction Ministry.

Israeli settlement expansion in the West Bank and annexed east Jerusalem has continued under every Israeli government since 1967.

However, construction accelerated in the last few years under Netanyahu, with a significant boom during former president Donald Trump's US administration, accused of egregious pro-Israel bias by Palestinians.

© 2021 AFP

Evacuations as burning cargo ship spews toxic gas off Canada's coast

Issued on: 25/10/2021 

The container ship Zim Kingston off the coast of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada October 24, 2021. Gerald Graham Gerald Graham/AFP

Text by: NEWS WIRES

The Canadian coast guard has evacuated 16 people from a burning container ship that is expelling toxic gas off Canada's Pacific coast, but there is "no safety risk" to those on shore, authorities said Sunday.

The Zim Kingston is anchored off the city of Victoria in British Columbia, in the Strait of Juan de Fuca which marks the maritime border between Canada and the United States, according to the marine tracking site MarineTraffic.

It had been bound for Vancouver when the flames erupted, with the fire reported to the coast guard at around 11:00 pm local time Saturday, CBC News reported.

"The ship is on fire and expelling toxic gas," the Canadian coast guard said in a navigational warning on its website.

Later a statement on the coast guard's Twitter account said 16 people had been evacuated from the Zim Kingston "after a fire broke out in ten containers."

"The fire remains a dynamic event and an Incident Command Post has been set up to manage the situation, the statement early Sunday said, adding that responders were mobilising to fight the fire and recover containers that broke away from the ship Friday.

"Currently there is no safety risk to people on shore, however the situation will continue to be monitored," the tweet said.

On Sunday the Coast Guard said an emergency zone around the ship had been expanded to two nautical miles, up from one mile the day before.

"Due to the nature of chemicals onboard the container ship, applying water directly to the fire is not an option," it said, adding that a tugboat had instead sprayed cold water on the hull.

Later, however, the vessel's manager Danaos Shipping said in a statement that the incident was caused by "excessive listing due to extreme weather," and indicated the fire was contained.

"No injuries were reported. The fire appears to have been contained and DANAOS have commissioned a Salvage & Fire Extinguishing Agency to come on board in order to ensure that conditions are appropriate for the safe return of the vessel's crew," the company added.

The coast guard said the ship is carrying more than 52,000 kilograms (115,000 pounds) of chemicals located in two of the containers that are on fire, according to CBC News.

(AFP)

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

KOREA

Regulator takes action against Nissan, Porsche over false emissions info

SEJONG, Oct. 24 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's antitrust regulator said Sunday it has decided to order Nissan Motor Corp., Porsche AG and their two Korean units to take corrective steps for falsified information over gas emissions of their diesel cars.

Nissan Motor, Nissan Korea, Porsche and Porsche Korea are alleged to have stated false information about gas emissions of their diesel vehicles imported for sale in South Korea, according to the Korea Fair Trade Commission (KFTC).

The KFTC also decided to impose a fine of 173 million won (US$146,700) only on Nissan Korea.

Illegal software installed in their cars caused gas emission reduction devices to not fully operate during normal driving conditions.

The practice meant that the cars did not meet permissible emission levels, but the automakers falsified such facts in signs attached to their cars, according to the commission.

In September, the regulator fined Audi-Volkswagen Korea and Stellantis Korea a combined 1.06 billion won for similar allegations over gas emissions.


This undated photo, provided by Yonhap News TV, shows the exterior of the main building of the Korea Fair Trade Commission in the administrative city of Sejong.