control

The Large Magazine Debate: How Much is Too Much?

How Google and other Tech Companies are Working to Turn People Against the 2nd Amendment

(from American Gun News, in part)

Google and other companies in the Silicon Valley are no longer content to simply donate as much spare cash as possible to anti-gun candidates for federal office. The tech moguls in the bluest of blue districts in the United States have chosen a side in the culture wars and are taking direct aim at the 2nd Amendment. Here is how Google and other tech giants are actively working to turn people against your gun rights.

Google
eBay was the first tech giant to ban firearms sales from its platform, but Google was not far behind. This should come as no surprise considering the eight-year game of “musical chairs” between Google and the notoriously anti-Second Amendment Obama administration. A staggering 258 executives and government employees rotated jobs through the revolving door between the Obama White House and Google between 2009 and 2016. At the end of Barack Obama’s first term, Google suddenly banned the sale of firearms from its shopping platform, declaring guns and ammo to not be “family safe.” Not family safe? That bigoted statement alone has the power to shape public perception about firearms.
Then consider the creepy report from the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in 2015. Researchers discovered that Google’s search algorithm can manipulate 20 percent or more of undecided voters to switch their votes!
Robert Epstein, the senior research psychologist on the study, told Politico that Google has the ability to “control a wide variety of opinions and beliefs … [more] than any company in history has ever had.” If Google can trick people into switching their voting preferences, it’s easy to see that it could be doing the same thing with opinions on gun rights.

Facebook
This social media giant has been moving toward becoming an online shopping platform more and more in recent years, but in 2016 Facebook suddenly began treating gun owners as pariahs. To this day, Facebook refuses to say how many gun enthusiast pages it took down in a massive purge when it rolled out a new policy to ban the private sales of firearms — which are legal in most states.
Facebook has assigned a liaison to help bring gun enthusiast pages into compliance with its policy, but many gun owners simply abandoned the platform and went elsewhere, according to Forbes. This is just another instance of a giant Silicon Valley company treating gun owners as second-class citizens, with a separate set of rules and regulations that other retailers do not have to abide by. This is compounded by anti-gun activists poring over Facebook posts and flagging anything related to guns as “offensive” until Facebook takes the post or a user’s entire page down.

Shadowbanning
Insiders at Twitter admitted in 2016 that the company has been shadowbanning the tweets of prominent conservatives, including many Second Amendment patriots. A “shadowban” is simply a form of censorship in which the tech giant that censors you never tells you that you’ve been censored. You can still tweet a picture of that new sidearm you purchased, but none of your friends or family members will ever see it because it was shadowbanned. Many Facebook users have reported that their posts have been shadowbanned as well.

Payment Platforms
Online services PayPal, Stripe and Square have all banned gun stores from using their platforms for business. Never mind that these are lawful businesses operated by federal firearms license holders who conduct background checks before all sales.

Gladwin Guns and Ammo in Merced, CA filed a lawsuit against the three Silicon Valley money transfer services in June of 2017. Owner Blair Gladwin told the Merced Sun-Times, “They flat-out shut me down. My livelihood is on the line, because my revenue is going to drop.” 2nd Amendment enthusiasts will want to keep an eye on this case, because it could have a nationwide impact on whether lawful gun stores are allowed to use the same services as most other businesses.

Conclusion
Google and other tech giants are sending gun owners, gun shops and people who simply support gun rights to the “back of the bus” in 2017. Constant discrimination like this against gun owners does have an impact on public perception and this is a problem that all gun owners should be concerned with — especially knowing the tremendous power that the Silicon Valley wields with its vast troves of data on Americans.

This should be of no surprise, as Northern California (and California in general) is a bastion of liberal political thought.  It is surprising that Amazon (farther North in Washington State), while not selling firearms, does allow sale of  accessories, stocks, lubricants and novelty items (a chocolate Glock?).

The problem is, unless we ‘protest’ these entities by going off the grid (no cellular telephones, tablets, payment platforms or social networking, or using their services), they will continue to make huge dollars unabated.  And continue to ‘control’ the masses.

I Never Thought I’d Agree With Al Jazeera, Let Alone Post Something From It!

My good friend, veteran (and sometime blogger) Donovan posted this on Facebook, with the following comment:

Well. This is interesting. I agree with this. When even Al Jazeera says you’ve gone too far, I sit up and take notice. This applies to BOTH sides of the political aisle.

In 1943, the US War Department released this video to tell Americans not to fall for fascist rhetoric. Share this video if you’ve heard language like this recently.

AMEN, Brother!

I don’t mind saying, watching this made me a little misty…

Certainly, we should stand up for American Values.  And one of these values is Individual Liberty for All.

(My apologies to Donovan and Tom.  In an earlier post, I confused you two…)

Freedom-Of-Speech On One College Campus…

Or not…

“I was told that I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t express my concerns, and I couldn’t ask any questions because I’m White.”

McKenzie Kyger is a white Evergreen State College student who made news when she appeared at a public legislative hearing about the problems at Evergreen related to Prof. Bret Weinstein.

Kyger told the legislators about her experience with pervasive anti-white racism being taught as part of the integral model of social justice learning currently foregrounded in American universities.

We covered her testimony in the post Evergreen Student: ‘I’ve been told I’m not allowed to speak because I’m white’.

(…)

Kyger sat down for an interview with Benjamin Boyce (Patreon page here) and shared her thoughts on “social justice” and the distressing state of Evergreen. (h/t Badger Pundit)

Kyger is the type of student whom colleges embraced only a few years ago.  She’s open-minded, has absorbed and speaks fluently the language of the regressive handbook on “diversity” and “social justice,” she’s not a conservative, and she’s definitely not a racist.  That she is now experiencing what so many white college students across the country are should sound alarms on the left, particularly among white progressives.

Kyger talked about her experience at the college and how it affected her.  For example, she discusses her experiences with the faculty and students who “overgeneralize” and state that “all white people” are the root of all problems, she explains how “social justice” has become a battering ram and weapon that is hurting higher education and students, and she describes her experience being shut out of a student event on campus explicitly because she is white.  After walking down a hallway lined with other white students denied admittance, she agreed to the terms (that she not speak and stand in the back).

h/t truthrevolt.org, Legal Insurrection

I remember being on a college campus in the 70s.  There were folding tables set up on the mall.  Some for the Vietnam War; some against.  Some about saving the planet.

Some about Greek Week!

ALL speech was welcomed!

And sometimes, there were confrontations…

What happened?

Anti-Libertarian Ideologies On The March: The Existential Threat To Liberty

(From Libertarianism.org)

featuring  Tom G. Palmer

Tom Palmer lectures on modern threats to liberalism and individualism, exploring the philosophical roots of these threats and explaining the danger they pose. He touches on the theocratic threat of Islamism and the leftist threat of identity politics, but the bulk of the discussion focuses on the recent re-emergence of the type of nationalist, racist collectivism previously exhibited by fascists in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s.

The slides associated with Palmer’s lecture are posted on SlidesLive.

The Opioid Crisis 

There has been much media attention of late regarding ‘the opioid crisis’.

This is directly parallel to the the so-called Drug War.

Or ‘gun violence’.

Those who wish to insert governmental controls into private actions often label (insert issue here) as a ‘crisis’.

President Nixon started the War On Drugs in 1971. Here 40 years later, billions of dollars later, thousands have been incarcerated, and little illegal drug commerce has been stopped.

And numerous States have decriminalized and/or medicalized previously illegal drugs.

People continue to be shot en mass in Illinois and elsewhere.

And people with legitimate prescriptions are being squeezed more and more because their physicians and pharmacies are. 

By the ‘well meaning’ federal government.

A recent study noted that something like a whopping 1% of those who have opioid prescriptions are abusing them.

The lions share of abuse comes from those who steal, smuggle and illegally obtain such drugs.

Are you surprised?

I’m not.

I sometimes take a relatively low dose narcotic, which I get through a legal prescription, to deal with my chronic pain. I know others who take a much higher dosage than I, who must constantly wrestle with the increasing pressure on the medical community.

While the bad guys make billions from illegal users, largely unchecked.

Read between the lines.

FACEBOOK – Now Even Creepier!

(from Peter – Bayou Renaissance Man)

Facebook becomes the corporate face of ‘creepy’

If Facebook were actively trying to define itself as ‘creepy’, it couldn’t do much better than this.  Two reports over the past few weeks have caused me to wonder at the sanity of anyone who still uses the service.First, it seems Facebook actively marketed to advertisers its ability to ‘target 6.4 million younger users, some only 14 years old, during moments of psychological vulnerability’.  Wired reports:

Data mining is such a prosaic part of our online lives that it’s hard to sustain consumer interest in it, much less outrage. The modern condition means constantly clicking against our better judgement. We go to bed anxious about the surveillance apparatus lurking just beneath our social media feeds, then wake up to mindlessly scroll, Like, Heart, Wow, and Fave another day.

But earlier this month, The Australian uncovered something that felt like a breach in the social contract: a leaked confidential document prepared by Facebook that revealed the company had offered advertisers the opportunity to target 6.4 million younger users, some only 14 years old, during moments of psychological vulnerability, such as when they felt “worthless,” “insecure,” “stressed,” “defeated,” “anxious,” and like a “failure.”

The 23-page document had been prepared for a potential advertiser and highlighted Facebook’s ability to micro-target ads down to “moments when young people need a confidence boost.” According to The Australian’s report, Facebook had been monitoring posts, photos, interactions, and internet activity in real time to track these emotional lows. (Facebook confirmed the existence of the report, but declined to respond to questions from WIRED about which types of posts were used to discern emotion.)

There’s more at the link.

Not content with that, it seems Facebook is trying to patent ‘creepy technology which spies on people and automatically analyses their facial expressions’.  The Sun reports:

The social network applied for a patent to capture pictures of a user through their smartphone.

The creepy designs, which date back to 2015, were discovered by software company CBI Insight, which has been analysing Mark Zuckerberg’s “emotion technology”.

. . .

Researchers at CBI Insights warned that the plans could put a lot of people off using the service.

“On the one hand, they want to identify which content is most engaging and respond to audience’s reactions, on the other emotion-detection is technically difficult, not to mention a PR and ethical minefield,” it wrote in a blogpost.

Again, more at the link.

So Facebook now wants to use the camera on your smartphone to watch you while you use the device.  Why would anyone in their right mind allow a social media network this kind of intimate access to their thoughts, feelings and emotions?  Is there no value attached to privacy any more?

From my moral perspective (which is admittedly that of an older generation), this seems not only an invasion of privacy, but actively evil – trying to use your own emotions to manipulate you, and/or sell data about you to advertisers and others (for example, political parties analyzing voter emotions and behavior) who will use it to manipulate you.

News reports like this make me devoutly grateful that I have no Facebook presence at all!  If you do, in heaven’s name, why do you want to expose yourself to this???

Peter

Maxine Waters Admits: Obama Has Put In Place a Secret Database ‘Everything On Everyone’

Liveleak unearthed an interview with Maxine

Waters where she admits that because eventually

he would not be in charge, that Obama has created

a HUGE “Secret Database”!

Waters was speaking in an interview on the Roland Martin show when he asked her, “What happens in 2016?

Waters very candidly admits:

“The President has put in place an organization with the kind of database that no one has ever seen before in life,” Representative Maxine Waters told Roland Martin on Monday.

 

“That’s going to be very, very powerful,” Waters said. “That database  will have information about everything on every individual on ways that it’s never been done before and whoever runs for President on the Democratic ticket has to deal with that. They’re going to go down with  that database and the concerns of those people because they can’t get around it. And he’s [President Obama] been very smart. It’s very powerful what he’s leaving in place.”

That video only has 13,000 views. This was not done in secret. This video and interview was seen little and talked about less when it came out in 2013.

We are also reporting today that Freedom Watch has uncovered some disgusting information as well.

Our own Nancy Hayes reports that a massive amount of data on 47 hard drives from a government whistle blower was turned over to the Freedom Watch group recently.

Americans should be OUTRAGED! It looks pretty solid that Illegal and unconstitutional electronic surveillance was committed by the Obama administration. Not only did the illegal electronic surveillance involve Obama, it involved several top level officials within the NSA, CIA, DHS, FBI and Treasury Department. Heads should roll! President Trump was right when he said he was “wiretapped” by Obama and “The Hammer” is about to go down.

The information proves Obama and company spied on everyone. He has spied on Trump! He has most likely spied on many of you!

I remember how J. Edgar Hoover had something on everyone.  This enabled him to not be fired as FBI Director.  When he died (code name Open Territory) everyone scrambled to find the hidden files.

Or maybe that was just a Robert Ludlum book…?

Who knows?

The scary part is people like this keep getting reelected…

h/t Joe for America (in part)

OH,YEAAHH!

(from FNC, in part)

The Big Establishment Lie: Kool-Aid from the Poisoned Chalice

Via Mike

To the political and cultural globalist establishments of the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe, respectability has for a long time trumped reason and truth. Establishment history, sociology, psychology, religion, politics, and even science must protect the establishment and its special interests and future. The big lies in all these spheres of influence reflect a terrible axiom about the human condition: Most people prefer present comfort and respectability over truth, reason, and reality. Sometimes the big lies stretch to absurdities to suppress obvious truths. More often than not a willful moral and intellectual blindness must be marshaled to shut out the light of truth. This often results in fanatical or hysterical action by politically correct partisans and paid intellectual zombies to keep a single ray of sunlight from shining through and restoring some truth. The biggest lies usually weave an elaborate false narrative of history and human understanding.

The freer the nation in its politics and culture, the more truth will flourish. The more false narratives prevail the less free a nation becomes until it finally collapses from totalitarian government and intellectual or spiritual folly.

More @ The Tribune

The essential English leadership secret does not depend on particular intelligence. Rather, it depends on a remarkably stupid thick-headedness. The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.^{[2] – Joseph Goebbels (wikipedia)}

Beware The Ides Of March? 

(March 15 for the Julius Caesar/Shakespeare impaired!)

I subscribe to a smattering of emails from allegedly like-minded individuals.

Sometimes I am in agreement with their themes.

Other times, not so much.

One guy, who operates a small libertarianesque, survivalist business has been promoting a book ‘not yet in bookstores’, purporting to describe the next financial collapse, and confiscation of bank accounts(!) by the government!! 

(Other nations wherein this has begun, or is beginning! – ZeroHedge)

Allegedly, this is to begin MARCH 15!  (The Ides of March, for all you Julius Caesar fans.)

Coincidence? Astrology? A soothsayer’s truth?

I’ve no idea. I cannot afford the book, and probably wouldn’t buy it, anyway.

Most of my income is direct deposit disability.  I suspect if BIGGOV wanted to take it, they would so do.

With impunity!

WHY?  Because they can!

(So, you thought you’d withdraw your cash and hide it in your mattress?  Not so fast there, Bucko!)