US Senators urge Agriculture secretary to help Western states in ’22-year mega-drought’

Story by Alexander Bolton • Today

Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) is leading a letter signed by 14 other senators urging Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to help Western states survive what they are calling a “22-year mega-drought” that is threatening farms and ranches across the West.


Senators urge Agriculture secretary to help Western states in ’22-year mega-drought’© Provided by The Hill

“The American West is in crisis. Across the major basins of the American West … farm and ranch families hang in the balance as they grapple with a 22-year mega-drought,” they warned. “The acute shortage of water for Western growers threatens productive farmland across our states, which are both a pillar of our rural economies and drivers of America’s food production.”

The letter is the latest sign of growing economic pressure posed by the changing climate and the competition for federal money to help communities across the country cope with severe weather.

A study by UCLA published in the journal Nature Climate Change earlier this year reported the American West is suffering its most severe drought in 1,200 years.

Two major reservoirs, Lake Mead and Lake Powell, are at their lowest levels on record.

The senators want the Department of Agriculture to use its authority to help Western farmers and ranchers conserve water, improve their water infrastructure and protect lands plagued by drought.

They say improved water conservation, cover crops that slow erosion and improve soil health, will help farmland store more carbon from the atmosphere, which could help mitigate climate change.

The letter’s signatories include Sens. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Jacky Rosen (D-Nev.), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash).

The senators argue that many existing Department of Agriculture programs “do not translate well to the needs of Western agriculture” and want the department to promote projects to help basins such as Colorado River Basin, the Rio Grande Basin, the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Basin and the Columbia River Basin.

“As you know, American farmers and ranchers manage over 895 million acres of ground in the United States, giving them a vital role in combating climate change risks while continuing to feed America,” the senators wrote.

They said the $20 billion Congress recently provided for agriculture conservation programs should be allocated “equally across the country to reflect the contribution of every region, including the West.”

They urged Vilsack to address the understaffing of Agriculture Department field offices and to prioritize hiring more staff with expertise in West agricultural production.

UK has never looked uglier and that's why I'll never stop talking about racism

Story by Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu • Today


Oh dear, Britain.


Ngozi Fulani was subjected to relentless attempts to discredit her 

(Picture: REX/ITV/Shutterstock)© Provided by Metro

This country has rarely looked uglier than it does at this moment.

Last week, with wearying predictability, I watched as a Black British woman was vilified over her experience of racism at the hands of a white member of staff in Buckingham Palace.

The ugliness of those defending racially charged comments is on public display, and while the savagery and ferocity of it is nothing new or surprising, it never fails to take my breath away.

After Ngozi Fulani shared her experience of being repeatedly challenged on ‘where she is from’, she has been subjected to an unholy combination of relentless attempts to discredit her and distortion of facts around the actions of Lady Susan Hussey, who has since resigned.

As a recipient of relentless smear campaigns, racist abuse, harassment and gaslighting on a daily basis, I know how she feels.

Instead of holding Lady Hussey to account for her actions and using this as a teachable moment for all, her defenders sanctified her record of service, and blamed her offensive line of questioning on her age or even ‘friendly curiosity.’

A strange phenomenon happens when we Black British people experience racism – our lived experience is misinterpreted as an attack on Britain itself, or British values.

Rather than dispelling my conviction that Britain is a systemically racist country, incidents like last week’s in fact validate it.

I believe that the reaction to Ngozi Fulani is both hypocritical and bigoted.

It begs the question why people continue to claim that Britain is ‘not racist’ or indeed, ‘one of the least racist countries.’



Ngozi was even accused of appropriation 

To me, the only explanation that makes sense is that those who defend racist behaviours so vehemently do so because they are guilty of racism themselves – it reflects who they are.

I think there’s a fear among some of her prominent defenders that if Lady Hussey is held to account, then they will be held to account.

According to some of her detractors, Ngozi Fulani can’t be a victim of racism because she changed her name from Marlene, apparently making her some kind of fraud.

Related video: ‘Racism Should Be…:’ Here’s What UK PM Rishi Sunak Said On Royal Family Racism Row

Duration 4:30

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Well if Ngozi is a fraud I assume the Royal Family are too after changing their original German name to Windsor.

Ngozi was even accused of appropriation by wearing African attire, which was also used to excuse Lady Hussey’s questioning.

Apparently, Ngozi went looking for trouble and set Lady Hussey up – I assume she must have psychic powers to know Lady Hussey (someone she’s never met before) would make a beeline for her in Buckingham Palace and interrogate her on her identity.

The utter idiocy of these groundless accusations is evidence of the kind of cognitive dissonance from reality Black British people have come to expect.

Never mind that witnesses present corroborate the truth of Lady Hussey’s relentless interrogation and that Lady Hussey stood down without denying the comments.

But these are inconvenient truths to those determined to make an example of Ngozi Fulani.

As is the oversimplification of Lady Hussey’s line of question to merely ‘where are you from’?

That deliberately ignores the escalated variations of the question, including ‘where are you really from’ and ‘what part of Africa are you from’ even after Ngozi clearly told her ‘I was born here and I am British.’

There’s even been white people implying it is somehow comparable to them also being asked ‘where are you from’.

I just want people to stop with the false equivalences.

My theory is that those powerful people who use incidents like last week’s at the Palace to deny Britain’s problems with racism are sticking to their furious lies, gaslighting and smears because they have a much wider target.

I know they aren’t just trying to teach Ngozi Fulani a lesson but sending a message to all Black British people to be quiet about racism or face this kind of abuse.

The exception being the racial gatekeepers who legitimise these discredit and smear campaigns by their actions.

It’s a threat to our lives and liberty.

As one of many Black British subjected to this threat, I’m confronted with this attempted silencing every day.

But we will not be silent, and we will not be silenced.

I refuse to be cowered because of a truth the detractors cannot deny.

I am British, this is my country of birth and my home. It belongs to me too. Therefore, I will not be hushed about racism and will help build this country into something it can aspire to.

A country where, as a Black woman, I have freedom, and the right to exercise that freedom without fear, intimidation or discrimination.

I am determined to fight the good fight and rid this country of mine of the kind of ugliness we saw after Ngozi Fulani’s experience.

If you agree racism is unacceptable at any level, then you will do the right thing and join me.

D

Operators of 13 Pittsburgh-area McDonald's locations accused of child labor violations

Story by Julianne McShane • Yesterday 

Thirteen McDonald's franchise locations in the Pittsburgh area are accused of violating child labor laws by allegedly employing 101 14- and 15-year olds outside of permissible work hours, the Department of Labor announced Monday.


Operators of 13 Pittsburgh-area McDonald's locations accused of child labor violations Provided by NBC News

Santonastasso Enterprises LLC, which is owned and operated by John and Kathleen Santonastasso and based in Bridgeville, Pennsylvania, a borough about 10 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, paid a penalty of $57,332 after investigators with the department’s Wage and Hour Division allegedly found the violations at the 13 McDonald’s locations they operate in and around Pittsburgh.

Investigators determined that the franchisee allegedly violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, which stipulates that teens cannot work more than three hours on a school day; after 7 p.m. on any day; later than 9 p.m. between June 1 and Labor Day, when they are allowed to work until 9 p.m.; more than 8 hours on a non-school day; or more than 18 hours a week during the school year, among other regulations.

Department officials also allegedly found an occupational violation at one of the four Pittsburgh locations where an employee under the age of 16 allegedly operated a deep fryer that was not equipped with a device to automatically lower and raise the baskets.

In a statement provided to NBC News, John and Kathleen Santonastasso said: “We take our role as a local employer very seriously and we regret any scheduling issues that may have occurred at our restaurants. Our biggest priority is always the safety and well-being of our employees and we have since instituted a series of new and enhanced processes and procedures to ensure employees are scheduled appropriately.”

The Facebook page for the franchisee states the family "has been working in the McDonald’s corporation for over 40 years."

Related video: Operator of 13 Pittsburgh-area McDonald's accused of child labor violations
Duration 2:33
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The McDonald's corporate office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A spokesperson for the Department of Labor said officials do not reveal the reason that investigations are initiated but pointed to information on the department's website that states that many investigations are initiated by confidential complaints and that the division also monitors low-wage industries that typically have high rates of violations or employ vulnerable workers.

The spokesperson added that, in addition to paying the fine, Santonastasso Enterprises LLC had to agree to full future compliance with department regulations. The spokesperson added that the department does not disclose if they plan to investigate other McDonald’s locations across the country.

The violations follow more than 4,000 child labor violations the Department of Labor has identified affecting more than 13,000 minor workers from 2017 to 2021.

Last month, the department accused a food sanitation company, Packers Sanitation Services, or PSSI, of allegedly employing at least 31 kids to work overnight cleaning shifts at three slaughterhouses in Nebraska and Minnesota, in violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

That investigation led U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh to ask the Federal District Court of Nebraska to issue a temporary restraining order and nationwide preliminary injunction against the company to stop it from employing minors while the Labor Department continues its investigation, which a court partially granted, requiring PSSI to “immediately cease and refrain from employing oppressive child labor” and comply with the Department of Labor’s investigation.

A spokesperson for the company said in a statement that PSSI has "zero tolerance" for such violations.

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

Watch: This dance by sheep herders is winning hearts online

The ease and popularity of social media have helped popularise talent from wide corners of the internet. Now a dance video, which appears to have been shot by herders in a desert, is going viral.


Watch: This dance by sheep herders is winning hearts online

A post shared by Oosm Dance (@oosm.dance)

In the video, a young boy and a man are seen dancing to the beats of Aaye Dulhe Raja Gori Khol Darwaza from the film Hum Kisi Se Kam Nahin. They are soon joined by another boy riding a donkey. As the three move ahead, they are followed by a herd of goats and sheep.


ALSO READ |Woman performs traditional Rajasthani folk dance on rollerblades, internet cannot stop applauding

Their short dance video was posted online by an Instagram page that goes by the Oosm Dance (oosm.dance) in October. Since then, it has gathered hundreds of views. Commenting on the video, a Twitter user wrote, “i envy the happiness they are having. i wish i could have them.”

In 2021, a video of a young girl dancing in her village had left netizens impressed after it was widely circulated online. The girl was dancing to the song Ghunghat Nahin Kholoongi Saiyan from the 1957 film Mother India. The clip was also retweeted by Bollywood actor Madhuri Dixit, who appreciated the girl’s dancing skills. She wrote, “She is dancing so beautifully. There is so much talent waiting to be discovered”.

Watch Rare Video Of Lion Giving Birth In Wild Because Nature Is Breathtaking

Story by Ron Dicker • Monday

Precious video of a lion giving birth recently in South Africa’s MalaMala game reserve is going viral. (Watch it below.)

The delivery-in-the-wild footage shared by ranger Mrisho Lugenge on Latest Sightings last week is “quite rare,” a spokesperson for the wildlife-viewing platform told HuffPost on Monday.

The edited clip begins with the restless lion alone and moving gingerly. When she lies on her side, observers get a clue that this is no ordinary big-cat sighting.

“It looked as though her stomach was moving,” Lugenge told Latest Sightings. “She was having contractions. Then she sat up straight and began licking herself, which we mistook for grooming. When she turned around, we realized what had just happened. She had just given birth! There it was, the tiniest little cub in her mouth.”

Lions gestate for about 110 days, according to Britannica.

When the time comes, expectant moms generally seek out isolated, hidden areas and don’t rejoin the pride with their offspring until the little ones can walk, according to lionalert.org.

This lion and her cub made their way to a drainage line, and the excited observers wisely chose not to follow. “We thought that might have added extra pressure on her,” Lugenge said. “Hopefully, this will allow her to rest and tend to her young cub without undue stress.”

Black talent still facing barriers, says retiring head of African Nova Scotian Music Association
Monday

The president and chair of the African Nova Scotian Music Association (ASMNA) is retiring from his role after 21 years, but says there's still work to do to get local Black artists noticed on bigger stages.

“I’m just trying to wean myself out a little bit and let somebody else be in charge,” Lou Gannon said. “Every single place, business, whatever it is, always needs some new blood to make things change.”

Gannon said ANSMA recently received funding to hire an executive director, consultants, program staff, full-time administration staff, and to possibly lease a new office space.

“I don’t know if it’s because of the incident [killing of George Floyd] in the States that everything has gone Black all of a sudden, and everybody’s trying to show that they’re not on the other side, that they wanna help. But anyway, we were fortunate enough in September to get one of the grants that I put in for every year,” he said.

Gannon said a new chairperson was hired at a recent AGM who will take over his role. ANSMA will soon be advertising for the role of executive director.

ANSMA was founded in 1997 to advocate on behalf of Black Nova Scotian music artists.

Gannon said ANSMA was formed after a roundtable meeting hosted by the Black Business Initiative and various Black Nova Scotian music artists, including members of Four The Moment and Mark Riley.

“The reason that it got together was because for our artists that were out at the time … there were no awards for them,” Gannon said. “You had [East Coast Music Association awards] at the time because they started a couple years before that, but there was no genre of music or no awards for them, the Black artists, at their event.”

A board of directors was created and the association organized a showcase called Black Vibes, which still runs to this day as part of the annual ECMAs and Nova Scotia Music Week.

ANSMA held its first awards ceremony in 1999. It was there that Gannon, a former guitar player with a band called Free Stone, received a heritage award.

A couple of days later, he said he was asked to sit on ANSMA's board of directors. Gannon eventually took on the role of president and chair of the board of directors and has served in the role ever since.

“Being a Black artist, we didn’t have all the opportunities," Gannon said. “I mean right now Music Nova Scotia, they have an African Nova Scotian Award that we were involved in, the Bucky Adams Award, but those awards weren’t there.”

Gannon said ANSMA has an ongoing working relationship with Music Nova Scotia, but many Black artists continue to face barriers.

“The music industry is just like any other. It's like education or employment. People are being passed over because of who they are, because of who they know, that kind of situation. It’s got nothing to do with quality and skill level,” Gannon said.

“I just came back from Sydney with Music Nova Scotia, and we did our Black Vibes show. Well, we sat and talked with those guys, and things worked out very well, and then when we got to the venue, well, the venue’s not a good venue. There’s always a little thing that ends up messing things up and [we’re] taking a step backwards.”

In addition to Black Vibes and the ANSMA Awards, Gannon said ANSMA runs about 18 shows each year, including a Freedom Festival with HRM, and a show called Lift Every Voice with the Halifax Public Libraries.

They also conduct music industry training and a mentorship program for artists called Deeper Than Music, which is funded by the Association of Black Social Workers.

“The goal of ANSMA, besides the mandate, was to create a start that’s gonna be international,” Gannon said. “In the past, you had Four the Moment, you had Carson Downey, you had Jeremiah Sparks, you had Gary Beals, you had Jordan [Croucher]. And now there’s a new bunch starting out right now that are getting really good recognition.”

Though he said none of them are yet at “that Usher-level,” Gannon points to Black Nova Scotian music artists like Owen ‘O’Sound’ Lee, Reeny Smith, Keonté Beals, and Zamani Millar as artists who have the quality and skills to reach an international level of stardom.

“What I find most interesting is that the new modern artists nowadays are looking at their craft as a business. In my day it was a weekend gig or sort of a hobby,” Gannon said.

“The thing is trying to get our young people to understand that this could be a livelihood for them.”

Matthew Byard, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Halifax Examiner

MSF warns of impact of closed detention centers on the health of migrants and refugees in Greece

The NGO Doctors Without Borders (MSF) warned Monday of the impact of the closed detention center model on the health of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers on the Greek Aegean islands a year after the first such center was opened on Samos.


Archive - New migrant detention center in Samos, Greece - NIK OIKO / ZUMA PRESS / CONTACTOPHOTO© Provided by News 360

In a statement, the organization has pointed out that people arriving on the island are "confined in the access-controlled center of Zervou, in an isolated place subject to a high level of security, where they find it very difficult to seek medical care, obtain treatment or receive legal advice."

The Zervou center, as well as those on Leros and Kos and those planned for 2023 on Lesvos and Chios, are "the result of an aggressive containment policy, funded by the European Union (EU), to open controlled access centers" in remote locations on five Aegean islands", as stated in the text, which warns that there "people seeking safety are confined while their asylum application is being processed".

These people, MSF has warned, "arrive in Greece distressed since most of them have fled conflict or persecution in their countries of origin, and many of them have suffered atrocious violence during their journey".

"People at the Zervou center tell us that they have survived human trafficking, sexual assault, forced labor and beatings," lamented Nicholas Papachrysostomou, MSF's general coordinator. "Some people have witnessed the death of their relatives in previous forced returns or shipwrecks. The internment centers do not meet their basic needs and unnecessarily harm their mental and physical health," he explained.

He also stressed that MSF's experiences show "the dangers of closed centers" and highlight that "asylum seekers need access to quality and timely medical care".

"Authorities should invest in decent reception conditions and safe accommodations, such as housing within communities, and create integration programs. Everyone needs a safe, supportive and humane environment to be able to register and process their asylum claim without the risk of re-traumatization, as set out in international law, EU law and national legislation," he said.

MEDICAL ASSISTANCE MSF has denounced that the main shortcoming is the "lack of access to health care". Sonia Balleron, coordinator of the MSF project in Samos, stated that these are "people who have been traveling for a long time without receiving medical attention".

However, since February 2022, the center has only been visited by medical staff on occasional days and for only a few hours. Healthcare inside the centers remains problematic due to the continuing lack of medical personnel and medical equipment.

Thus, MSF has warned that those who have lived traumatic experiences "suffer a deterioration of mental health due to the prison conditions of the centers and the segregation and security infrastructures."

Between September 2021 and September 2022, 40 percent of people with mental health problems treated by MSF on Samos presented symptoms related to psychological trauma.

"Now everyone presents with a basic level of psychological distress," said Elise Loyens, MSF medical coordinator in Greece, who noted that "it always presents with the same symptoms: body aches, dissociation, depression, sleep disorders." "People feel humiliated in these conditions," she added.

QAnon, white nationalists and hate speech: Experts reveal how the floodgates opened on Elon Musk’s Twitter

Story by Alex Woodward • Yesterday 

One day after officially acquiring Twitter, the world’s wealthiest person pledged that a “content moderation council” would review the restoration of previously banned accounts. Elon Musk said that civil rights groups – as well as those who had experience “hate-fuelled violence” – would be a part of the process.


Musk’s Twitter takeover copy.jpg© Getty

Then, on 23 November, Musk introduced a Twitter poll asking users whether he should grant “general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided that they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spam”.

Extremism researchers and experts who have closely studied the spread of online hate and mis- and disinformation have warned that Mr Musk’s acquisition and the mass return of previously banned users could rapidly deteriorate the platform. Under the disingenuous banner of “free speech”, Twitter could become one of the most toxic spaces on the internet for marginalised groups, according to experts.

Without critical guardrails, the platform risks turning into a “hostile environment for people that might be subjected to abuse and the people who don’t want to see it, and that’s the vast majority of people,” according to Imran Ahmed, founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate.

On 18 November, Mr Musk created another poll asking whether to allow Donald Trump back to the platform. The former president had been permanently suspended from Twitter “due to the risk of further incitement of violence” in the aftermath of the attack on the US Capitol fuelled by his election lies.

Mr Musk also reinstated at least 11 accounts belonging to prominent far-right and anti-trans influencers, including Jordan Peterson and right-wing satirical media company the Babylon Bee, which were both suspended for misgendering transgender people.

Twitter also restored an account for activist group Project Veritas, despite its ban “for repeated violations of Twitter’s private information policy,” as well as the personal account belonging to far-right Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene had been suspended for flagrant violations of the platform’s policies against spreading Covid-19 misinformation.

Effective 23 November, Twitter announced that the platform “is no longer enforcing the Covid-19 misleading information policy”.

‘Trust and safety and content moderation are dead’

The platform has reinstated tens of thousands of previously suspended accounts. Of these, roughly 62,000 accounts have more than 10,000 followers each, including one account with more than 5 million followers, and 75 accounts with more than 1 million followers, according to Platformer. Employees have reportedly called the mass reinstatement “the Big Bang.”

Dozens of clips of a video filmed by a white supremacist who murdered 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch in 2019 – footage that is illegal to share in New Zealand – were not caught by the platform’s moderation tools at the end of November. The clips were only removed after the country’s government told Twitter about it.

“Effectively, trust and safety and content moderation on Twitter are dead under Elon Musk,” according to Sam Woolley, head of the Propaganda Research Lab in the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin and the author of The Reality Game: How the Next Wave of Technology Will Break the Truth. “Twitter has taken … a lot of time and put in a lot of effort over the last several years to respond to the problems of disinformation and propaganda on its platforms. What we have now is a completely confusing environment that Musk contends is free speech for everyone but which is really an informational dictatorship that prioritizes Musk’s whims over any kind of systematic governance of the platform.”

Within the first week of his acquisition, Twitter’s most popular untrustworthy accounts saw their engagements increase by more than 57 per cent, according to an analysis from NewsGuard with data from NewsWhip. Posts from the 25 most-followed Twitter accounts tracked by NewsWhip and associated with publishers that NewsGuard has identified as “repeatedly spreading false information” received more than 3 million likes and shares, the report found.

Two weeks earlier, those same accounts had received roughly 1.98 million likes and shares.

“The findings highlight how Musk’s public statements about potential future changes to Twitter policies appear to have encouraged greater activity by malign actors, boosting the popularity of misinformation on the platform,” according to NewsGuard.

Even without any apparent policy changes, and Mr Musk’s insistence that its policies remain the same, “the simple and highly publicized fact of new ownership and Musk’s public speculation about changes to the platform coincided with a significant increase in the popularity of false narratives,” NewsGuard stated.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate’s analysis of Brandwatch analytics also found a significant “uptick” in hateful and sexist language on the platform within the same time frame that Mr Musk claimed the company’s “strong commitment to content moderation remains absolutely unchanged” and that hateful speech declined to “below our prior norms”.

In the first full week under his ownership, there were more than 26,000 posts mentioning the n-word – triple the average in 2022, according to the report. There were also more 50,000 posts mentioning transphobic and homophobic slurs, up by 53 per cent and 39 per cent, respectively, than 2022 averages.

Within his first two weeks at the helm, from 31 October to 13 November, there were more than 204,000 tweets and retweets using the gender-based slur “c**t” – up 30 per cent from the 2022 average – and more than 831,000 posts mentioning “sl*t,” up 75 per cent from the 2022 average. Posts mentioning “wh*re” were also up by 60 per cent. The platform also saw significant spikes in antisemitic slurs and racist abuse towards Hispanic and Latino people, the report found.

Despite claims from Twitter’s now-former head of Trust and Safety, Yoel Roth, that the platform had reduced the number of times hate speech appeared on Twitter’s search and trending pages, “the actual volume of hateful tweets has spiked,” according to the center’s report. Asked during an interview at the Knight Foundation on 30 November whether he still believed Twitter’s safety had improved under new ownership, Mr Roth said “no”

The European Union has signalled that the platform could be regulated or banned in EU countries unless it adheres to stringent rules for content moderation.

“In an offline context, it would be blisteringly obvious that if every time I opened my door and went onto the street, someone shouted a racial slur or religious slur, I would think, ‘Crumbs, I don’t want to leave the house,’” Mr Ahmed told The Independent. “The problem is that Musk recognizes the virtues of Twitter, clearly, because he recognizes the way that it brings people together and has allowed him to communicate to millions of people. He seeks to deny that ability to people from marginalized groups who know that the price of taking part in Elon Musk’s Twitter is an intensified wave of abuse, the likes of which they haven’t seen before.”

On 30 November, the company said in a statement that “none of our policies have changed,” but that its policy enforcement will instead rely on the “de-amplification of violative content: freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach”.

“We have to move beyond a surface-level understanding of what free speech means and actually begin to understand that free speech doesn’t mean the right to practice open hate and violence,” Mr Woolley told The Independent. “You’re not legally meant to be able to threaten people with violence or harm. You’re not meant to be able to sow purposefully false content about electoral processes, but all of these things are happening on Twitter. And so that’s not free speech. It’s informational anarchy and chaos that prioritizes powerful voices who know how to manipulate the system in order to get their content amplified.”

‘I will salute my leader, Elon Musk’

Shortly after his account was restored on the platform, alt-right figure Patrick Casey of the white nationalist group Identity Evropa said on his livestream broadcast that “other than Trump, Elon Musk has done the most for us, absolutely.”

“You have people like [Fox News personality] Tucker [Carlson] who have in some cases broadcast our ideas to tens of millions, hundreds of millions,” he said. “But Elon Musk, he’s up there … and we thank him for his service. … I will salute my leader, Elon Musk. Thank you, buddy.”

Conservatives, Republican officials, right-wing personalities and far-right figures have embraced Mr Musk and his ownership of Twitter, projecting the billionaire as a key figure in their crusade against perceived censorship under a leftist online regime. QAnon influencers who have amassed followings on platforms like Telegram and Truth Social after their bans elsewhere are also returning to the platform, while hashtags and phrases connected to the conspiracy theory movement – like WWG1WGA, an acronym for QAnon slogan “where we go one we go all” – are readily searchable.

Conspiracy theorist influencer John Sabal, known as “QAnon John”, is currently running a Twitter account affiliated with The Patriot Voice, which organises QAnon-affiliated conferences that attract well-known Republican figures and far-right personalities. He also believes Mr Musk is a so-called “white hat” working within the government to dismantle the alleged “deep state” against them.

Mr Musk – who said he intends to “vote Republican” and would support Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis for president in 2024 – frequently interacts with far-right influencers on the platform, building his own so-called “filter bubble” of right-wing admirers and opinions.

He has accused the platform, in its previous incarnation, of advancing “far left San Francisco/Berkeley views” and asserted that Twitter “obv[iously] has a strong left wing bias”. But the company’s own research shows that the platform amplifies right-wing content more than left-leaning posts. Right-wing accounts drove most conversation and topics in the leadup to the 2020 presidential election, according to an analysis from Politico and the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.

Much in the same way that the world paid attention to the former president’s every tweet, media outlets are closely watching Mr Musk’s bully pulpit, from which he broadcasts to nearly 120 million followers.

On 29 October, Hillary Clinton shared a link to a Los Angeles Times story detailing Paul DePape’s digital trail of far-right conspiracy theories before he brutally attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul. The following day, Mr Musk replied with a screenshot of a bogus report accusing Mr Pelosi of getting into a drunken fight with a male prostitute. He deleted the tweet, but thousands of people had already shared it, along with the original widely debunked article which inspired thousands of similar posts.

On November 28, Mr Musk shared – then quickly deleted – a photograph of neo-Nazi influencer Tim Gionet, a.k.a “Baked Alaska”, saluting a McDonald’s.

Two days later, he asserted without evidence that Twitter had interfered with elections in the past. The claim was widely circulated as a breaking news item among right-wing accounts that have baselessly claimed Twitter helped “steal” the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump.

On 1 December, hours after Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — praised Adolf Hitler and said he “loves Nazis” during a virulently antisemitic rant on InfoWars with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Mr Musk approvingly replied to a post made by Ye that mentioned Mr Musk and the First Amendment.

Later, after Ye posted a swastika embedded within a Star of David, he was suspended from the platform.

“I tried my best,” Mr Musk said. “Despite that, he again violated our rule against incitement to violence. Account will be suspended.”

That same day, neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin, founder of antisemitic white supremacist website The Daily Stormer, was reinstated.

While he pledges to combat the presence of “bots” or fake accounts used to manipulate engagement on the platform, Mr Musk has relied on easily manipulated Twitter polls in an apparent attempt to justify his decision-making.

“These surveys are just a means to an end,” Mr Woolley told The Independent. “They’re so easily gameable that Musk is able to get exactly what he wants out of them. … Musk is doing what I call manufacturing consensus. He’s creating the illusion of popularity for his ideas and other people’s ideas.”

‘A Faustian bargain’ and a race to the bottom

If users begin to leave Twitter, experts say that the platform risks becoming another closed-loop app indistinguishable from competitors like Truth Social and Parler. Such platforms also tout their alleged “free speech” bonafides and are dominated by right-leaning users and false information.

“His current direction of … turning it into a free-for-all of abuse and hatred is commercially unviable in one sense, because advertisers are already flooding out,” according to Mr Ahmed. “The alternative path, which is to make it a subscription-based model, is increasingly going to turn it into a right-wing paid version of Truth Social, and who wants to pay to be on Truth Social?”

Its viability also relies on its utility for media organisations, publishers and journalists. Specifically, it depends on whether they are willing to accept a kind of “Faustian bargain,” in which they can continue to draw highly engaging and valuable content from the platform while enabling Mr Musk’s worst impulses, according to Mr Ahmed.

“The problem with social media at the moment is that the industry for a decade now has been in a race to the bottom of, ‘How can we acquire as much market share as possible with the attention of eyeballs?’ By gaming the algorithm to engage with [them] for as long as possible,” he told The Independent. “Everything they’re doing is perfectly legal, and in fact, reflects their fiduciary responsibilities to their shareholders. The truth is that this is a classic example of where a race to the bottom needs to be arrested through regulation that sets minimal standards. It’s a classic example of it.”

Mr Musk provides “the best possible argument that we need to... say that they are part of the democratic space and so therefore they should be subject to democratic norms and democratic accountability,” according to Mr Ahmed.

“At some point we’ve got to wean ourselves off the teat of hoping that billionaires are going to save us,” he added. “Because they’re not.”

ZIONIST ON ZIONIST VIOLENCE

Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Militia
An IDF assault on left-wing activists in Hebron reveals an emboldened security force—and signals a step toward annexation.

Elisheva Goldberg
December 6, 2022

An Israeli soldier assaults a left-wing Israeli Jewish activist in Hebron in the occupied West Bank, November 25th, 2022.
Courtesy of Breaking the Silence

ON FRIDAY, November 25th, Israeli soldiers verbally and physically attacked left-wing religious Jewish activists—Israeli citizens—in the city of Hebron in the occupied West Bank. One of the soldiers taunted the activists, vowing that Itamar Ben-Gvir—the Kahanist lawmaker who is expected to become Minister of National Security in Israel’s new right-wing government—would “make order here.” “You’re through,” the soldier promised. Another soldier put one of the activists in a chokehold, punched him in the face, and stuck a loaded gun in his back. “They were like thugs with guns,” Mikhael Manekin, a longtime activist who was present on the scene, told +972 Magazine.

The assault stoked a national debate over the position of the Israeli armed forces in society and politics—raising basic questions about what they should be allowed to say and do. Aviv Kochavi, IDF chief of staff, wrote a public letter denouncing the soldiers’ behavior. Two soldiers were suspended. The one who taunted the activist was sentenced to 10 days in military prison by his commander, a punishment Avner Gvaryahu of the veterans’ organization Breaking the Silence called “a slap on the wrist” in an interview with Jewish Currents. Ben-Gvir, on the other hand, decried the punishment as “not reasonable,” “disproportionate,” and “inappropriate.” The soldier who punched the activist is currently awaiting military trial.

The public split between Kochavi and Ben-Gvir showcased an increasingly dramatic ideological and socioeconomic cleavage in Israeli society. “Kochavi is perceived as a symbol of the army of high-tech,” Manekin said—that is, the army of the elite, who tend to fill the IDF’s intelligence and cyberwarfare units. Meanwhile, “Ben-Gvir—who didn’t even serve in the army—is the symbol of the ground troops.” (Ben-Gvir was exempted from service due to his extremist views and association with the Jewish supremacist activist Meir Kahane.) In other words, from the standpoint of many enlisted soldiers, Ben-Gvir stands for the little guy—and for empowering the little guy to act with impunity. He campaigned on making the army’s already lax open-fire rules even more permissive, and on granting soldiers immunity from prosecution should they commit violent crimes against Palestinains. Last month he put his position bluntly: “If they throw stones, shoot them.”

Ziv Stahl, executive director of Yesh Din, an organization that tracks human rights violations in the West Bank, agrees that Ben-Gvir’s rise encourages violence. “A soldier that knows he can do whatever he wants and no one will prosecute him, no one will hold him accountable, will likely use violence more easily than before,” she said in an interview with Jewish Currents. Stahl believes that this atmospheric shift has already led to the use of more lethal force on the ground. She noted that in the last month, there has been “a definite rise in Palestinian death from lethal injuries.” Back in October, the UN Mideast envoy said that 2022 is on course to be the deadliest year for Palestinians in the West Bank since the institution started tracking fatalities in 2005. The UN’s latest figures, which run through the third week of November, count 168 Palestinians killed by Israelis so far this year, including more than 130 in the West Bank; media and human rights organizations report at least ten more killed in the West Bank in the past week alone.

The attack on the activists occurred on the heels of a coalition deal, signed by presumptive Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that also pitted Ben-Gvir against Israel’s top military brass. The agreement grants Ben-Gvir authority over parts of the Border Police which had previously operated in the West Bank under the authority of IDF leadership. In other words, Ben-Gvir’s authority over the Border Police fractures the military’s monopoly on power in the West Bank. Benny Gantz, Israel’s outgoing Minister of Defense and former IDF chief of staff, warned that Ben-Gvir’s newfound authority over the Border Police risked politicizing the entire security system and causing “serious harm,” likening the move to Ben-Gvir “establishing a personal militia.”

Meanwhile, many combat soldiers have celebrated Ben-Gvir’s ascent. Yagil Levy, professor of political sociology and public policy at the Open University of Israel, argues that Ben-Gvir’s message resonates in part because of a long-standing class divide within the IDF. The cyber and intelligence units that tend to be filled by the Israeli elite—who are often associated with the political center and left—provide an alternative to draft-dodging and a pathway to a career in Israel’s lucrative high-tech sector, Levy says. By contrast, the combat units that draw mainly from Israel’s socioeconomic and geographic periphery offer little prestige or professional benefit in exchange for doing the army’s dirty work. In a recent opinion piece for Haaretz, Levy wrote about the profound frustration of combat soldiers, who feel that they receive the blame when the army fails to prevent the deaths of soldiers, and complain that their “hands are tied” by the army’s rules of engagement. Levy says that these same combat soldiers see Ben-Gvir as their champion. “He treats them as castrated heroes, prevented from triumph by the politicians,” he said, and endows “blue-collar policing with the significance of a national mission . . . Suddenly these soldiers feel that their work matters, and they stand up straighter.”

Not only are Ben-Gvir’s new executive powers likely to influence the behavior of soldiers on the ground—they also serve to formalize a de facto one-state reality. This past Monday, Ben-Gvir’s running mate, Bezalel Smotrich, head of the Religious Zionism party, signed a separate coalition agreement with Netanyahu, which gives his party unprecedented power to appoint the heads of various bodies responsible for the government’s civil policy in the West Bank—bodies previously under the full authority of the army. Like Ben-Gvir’s coalition agreement, Smotrich’s agreement takes power away from the military and puts it into the hands of elected politicians. But the people governed by Israel in the West Bank did not elect Smotrich or Ben-Gvir. Nor, of course, did they elect Israel’s military commander, who has long acted as sovereign in the occupied territory. But the partial shift from military to political authority in the West Bank signals Ben-Gvir and Smotrich’s intentions to make Israeli domination there an official as well as de facto reality. As Stahl told me, when the keys to Palestinian lives are handed to Israeli politicians, it is “a big step towards annexation.”

Elisheva Goldberg is the media and policy director for the New Israel Fund and a contributing writer for Jewish Currents. She was an aide to former Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and has written for The Daily Beast, The Forward, The New Republic, and The Atlantic.

2 earthquakes detected west of Port Hardy on Vancouver Island

By Amy Judd  Global News

Posted December 6, 2022 

Earthquakes Canada said there are no reports of any damage and none would be expected.

There was also no tsunami warning.

2:12B.C. expands Alert Ready system

In July, a study published by the Washington state Department of Natural Resources found that if a major earthquake were to happen along the Seattle Fault, tsunami waves could arrive in minutes in the Greater Seattle area.

University of Victoria assistant professor of earth and ocean sciences Lucinda Leonard gave her opinion on what B.C. would experience if a major earthquake occurred at the Seattle Fault.

“Thankfully, we are quite a bit further away from the Seattle Fault. We expect the tsunami would be a lot smaller by the time it reaches the shores in B.C., certainly less than one metre in height,” Leonard said.

The assistant professor said that although we most likely wouldn’t see large tsunami waves, there still would be impacts on the B.C. coast.