CROSSING OVER THE CREEPY LINE: Google Hosts Sharia Law App Enabling Muslims to Report Blasphemy and Heresy to the Police.
(Classical reference in headline.)
Archive for 2018
December 15, 2018
HIGHER EDUCATION LIES: USM gave false info in response to anti-Kavanaugh course backlash.
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MICHAEL WALSH: Does the Unfortunate 20th Century Foretell a Worse 21st?
That would be a most depressing prospect indeed.
JUDICIAL OVERREACH ENCOUNTERS THE STREISAND EFFECT:
An Australian court’s gag order and the forces of the Information Age collided on Thursday in a largely futile effort to keep news about the conviction of a high-ranking Vatican official from reaching readers.
While some U.S. and British news organizations, including the New York Times, did not report on the conviction of Australian Cardinal George Pell on the judge’s order, social media and other news outlets defied it.
Pell, 77, was convicted Tuesday on five counts of child sexual abuse in Melbourne, becoming the most senior official ever found guilty in the Catholic Church’s long-running child sexual-abuse scandals. The judge in the case, Peter Kidd, immediately subjected news of Pell’s conviction to a suppression order, the Australian equivalent of a gag order on press coverage.
Australian courts impose such orders to shield defendants from negative publicity that could prejudice future jurors in upcoming trials. Pell faces another trial next year on a separate set of abuse charges dating to the 1970s.
Kidd’s order prevented Australian media outlets from reporting the news about Pell. But news organizations based outside the country also complied with it, apparently out of concern that their Australian operations could be subjected to contempt of court penalties.
Oh, well.
THESE WARNINGS GET LESS ATTENTION THAN THE CLIMATE-CHANGE ONES: Federal panel warns of national blackout in EMP attack.
It said that the grid is a “prime target” of terrorists and that Americans are not ready for living without electricity, transportation, fuel, money, and healthcare.
“People no longer keep enough essentials within their homes, reducing their ability to sustain themselves during an extended, prolonged outage. We need to improve individual preparedness,” said the report.
“There needs to be more individual accountability for preparedness,” adds the report, Surviving a Catastrophic Power Outage.
Secrets earlier this week pointed out some of the issues raised in the report:
Given the growing frequency and severity of disasters and other risks, there needs to be an increase in individual accountability, enterprise, and community investment in resilient infrastructure.
There is a misconception that events occur infrequently.
There needs to be more individual accountability for preparedness.
Resilience at the state and local level will be critical to enable people to shelter in place and facilitate faster recovery. Any event that requires a mass evacuation will use up critical resources, clog transportation pathways, and reduce the workforce necessary for infrastructure recovery.
Electricity, fuel, clean drinking water, wastewater services, food/refrigeration, emergency medical services, communications capabilities, and some access to financial services have been identified as critical lifeline services that would be needed to sustain local communities and prevent mass migration.
As I’ve been writing for years, we should be hardening our systems. And I don’t want to live in One Second After, or even in Lightning Fall.
TRUMP SPRANG THREE TRAPS ON PELOSI AND SCHUMER ON WEDNESDAY:
Never forget that Trump was the most successful producer of reality television in the history of the medium. He understands drama and a story arc. Chuck Schumer leading a Senate filibuster right before Christmas to stymie border protection is exactly the story Trump wants the nation’s TV-viewers to absorb.
Read the whole thing.
THAT DANGED CONSTITUTION: “In a rare and somewhat frightening bout of honesty, California Democrat Ted Lieu made two stunning (or maybe not) admissions on the air recently 1) that he would love to control speech and 2) the only thing stopping him from doing so is that danged US Constitution.”
TRIBUNE, TRONC AND BEYOND: A SLUR, A SECRET PAYOUT AND A LOOMING SALE:
At the dinner, as at other moments, [Chicago investor Michael Ferro, who ran Tribune Publishing, which then-published the L.A. Times] railed against those who he felt were impeding him — including perceived rivals and competitors. Among them: the Southern California billionaire and civic leader Eli Broad, whom Ferro called part of a “Jewish cabal” that ran Los Angeles.
* * * * * * * *
Early this year, however, Tribune Publishing made the first in a series of secret payments to total more than $2.5 million to avert a threatened lawsuit filed by a fired newspaper executive, according to three people with knowledge of the deal. That had the effect of keeping Ferro’s anti-Semitic slur out of the public spotlight.
The payments, reported here for the first time, are stark embodiments of the consequences of Ferro’s actions that contributed to a series of crises at Tribune Publishing. The LA Times has been sold. Tribune Publishing has put itself on the auction block and is reviewing three bids from potential buyers.
Ferro no longer controls day-to-day operations; he stepped down as chairman after sexual harassment accusations arose involving his conduct outside Tribune Publishing.
According to NPR, the fired official was then-editor in chief Davan Maharaj, who “hired a prominent Beverly Hills attorney to pursue a wrongful termination suit. Maharaj had ammunition, having recorded Ferro in unguarded conversation with associates.”
Read the whole thing.
Harriet Ryan of the L.A. Times tweets, “You’re the editor of the LA Times. You find out the CEO is an anti-Semite. Do you: a) confront him? b) assign an investigative reporter to expose him? Or c) use the information to get a $2.5M personal payout at a time the company is laying off journalists and closing bureaus?”
C’mon – it’s the L.A. Times; the newspaper that “kept rockin’” as it buried the John Edwards story in 2008 and has still kept the tape of Obama’s meeting with former PLO mouthpiece Rashid Khalidi in 2003 in the vault. Of course, you ignore the story. Or as Jim Treacher would say:
TONI AIRAKSINEN: Creepy New App Lets You See What Your Kid’s Googling in Real Time. “This should never be a thing.”
MATTHEW CONTINETTI: China’s Drive To The Western Pacific.
I’ve had to wait on the tarmac for planes ahead of mine to take off before, but never F-15s. Naha airport here shares a runway with Japan’s Air Self Defense Forces, leading to delays whenever Japanese fighters scramble to counter Chinese incursions into the airspace above the Senkaku Island Chain in the East China Sea. The pace of such incursions has accelerated over the last half decade. The Japanese scrambled a high of 1,168 times in 2016, mostly in response to Chinese activity. The sight of active afterburners on a U.S. commercial runway would be shocking. In Okinawa, it’s everyday life.
More than 1 million Okinawans share the southernmost prefecture of Japan with some 25,000 U.S. air, ground, naval, and marine forces. More than half of U.S. bases in Japan are located within these 463 square miles. The crowded space has long been a site of tension. A brutal crime committed against a local girl by American soldiers in 1996 precipitated negotiations between the United States and Japan over the consolidation and relocation of our forces.
The process has been delayed by local and national Japanese politics. Opposition to the expansion of Camp Schwab in the less densely populated northern part of the island to replace Futenma airbase became a rallying cry for opposition lawmakers. The prefectural governor, Denny Tamaki, was elected on an anti-expansion platform last October. Tamaki defeated the candidate backed by Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party by a surprisingly large margin. His father was a U.S. Marine.
The national interests of the United States, Japan, and China meet in Okinawa. The island has been essential to the forward deployment of U.S. forces in Asia since World War II. The base is the keystone of the U.S.-Japan alliance. Our presence signifies America’s guarantee of Japanese security and helps sustain the economy of Japan’s poorest prefecture.
Expect the Chinese to try to stir up local “grassroots” opposition to the U.S. bases.
ON THIS DAY IN 1791, THE BILL OF RIGHTS WAS RATIFIED BY THE REQUISITE NUMBER OF STATES: The Commonwealth of Virginia had the honor of putting the amendments over the top. It had earlier ratified proposed amendment I. Then on December 15, it ratified proposed amendments II through XII. That made three-quarters of the 14 states (Vermont had been recently admitted) for proposals III through XII, which were then re-numbered 1 through 10.
Proposed amendment I and proposed amendment II didn’t make it (though, in one of history’s quirkier moments, the latter made it into the Constitution many years later).
LIFE IN THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF MADISON: “Having been shouted down and bullied at several meetings of the Madison School Board over the past several months … Blaska is uniquely qualified to expose the pusillanimous hand-wringing that passes for decision-making by those who shape educational policy in this city. He has seen firsthand how a small cadre of vocal extremists, called Freedom Inc., have cowed the current School Board with their unique brand of cop-hating venom.”
SUDDEN BLINDING WHITEOUT IMPERILS NATION:
● Shot: CNN Election Analyst On Dems’ 2020 Race: “I am not sure it’s the time to nominate a white man.”
—Headline, Hot Air, yesterday.
● Chaser: The best shot for Democrats is Biden/Beto.
—Headline, Real Clear Politics, today.
THE ONLY CRIME HERE IS THE FIRST AMENDMENT VIOLATION BY THE UNIVERSITY: West Virginia University Student Investigated For Border Patrol Halloween Costume. The university even admits that he has a constitutional right to wear the costume. FIRE is on the case.
OPEN THREAD: Put your special stamp on it.
COURT: ObamaCare mandate unconstitutional.
UPDATE: More here.
IT WOULD TAKE A HEART OF STONE NOT TO LAUGH: Hero to Zero — The Rise and Fall of Michael Avenatti.
AND THEY’LL DO ANYTHING FOR A SMOKE: Former nicotine research monkeys now at primate sanctuary.
THE UNIVERSE IS NOT ONLY STRANGER THAN WE IMAGINE, IT IS STRANGER THAN WE CAN IMAGINE: Giant Black Hole Powers Cosmic Fountain.