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Author Stephen King has threatened to “defeat” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, if she votes to confirm President Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court, Brett Kavanaugh.
Presuming to speak for “most Americans,” King tweeted that people are “angry” over how the conformation “is being railroaded through.”
“IF Susan Collins votes to confirm Kavanaugh, and IF she runs for re-election—two bigs ifs—she will be defeated. It would be unwise for anyone to mistake how angry most Americans are at the way this is being railroaded through,” King tweeted.
As The Washington Post reports,Christine Blasey Ford, now a 51-year-old professor at Palo Alto University in California, has come forward as the person who wrote a confidential letter to a senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were high school students in suburban Maryland.
As The Hill reports,Ford described an incident between the two in high school, alleging that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed one summer in the 1980s and forced himself on her.
Ford told the Post that Kavanaugh "groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it."
She also said Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth when she attempted to scream for help.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford said.
“He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
Kavanugh vehemently denied these allegations last week:
"I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation,” Kavanaugh said in a statement provided by the White House, his first comments on the allegations.
“I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
"We are women who have known Brett Kavanaugh for more than 35 years and knew him while he attended high school between 1979 and 1983,” the letter states.
“For the entire time we have known Brett Kavanaugh, he has behaved honorably and treated women with respect.”
"We strongly believe it is important to convey this information to the Committee at this time," they added.
Grasssley's office added that Kavanaugh has undergone six FBI investigations since 1993 and "no such allegation resembling the anonymous claims" was included in the FBI reports, and that, separately, no similar allegations have been brought to Republican members of the Judiciary Committee or staff.
Of course, this new escalation has prompted a whole new swarm of politiki-speak from both sides...
Sen. Chuck Schumer: "Senator Grassley must postpone the vote until, at a very minimum, these serious and credible allegations are thoroughly investigated."
Sen. Diane Feinstein: "I support Mrs. Ford's decision to share her story, and now that she has, it is in the hands of the FBI to conduct an investigation. This should happen before the Senate moves forward on this nominee."
Sen. Kamala Harris: "Christine Blasey Ford courageously stepped forward to tell her story — it is a credible and serious allegation. The Senate has a constitutional responsibility to scrutinize SCOTUS nominees. A vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination must be delayed until there is a thorough investigation."
There's just one thing that makes all that holier-than-thou-speak a little awkward:
Democrats:
Believe Christine Blasey Ford's allegations against Kavanaugh fully because victims should be taken seriously
Also democrats:
Keith Ellison abuse allegations do not have enough evidence despite a 911 call which actually exists.
"It’s disturbing that these uncorroborated allegations from more than 35 years ago, during high school, would surface on the eve of a committee vote after Democrats sat on them since July. If Ranking Member Feinstein and other Committee Democrats took this claim seriously, they should have brought it to the full Committee’s attention much earlier. "
Egyptian archaeologists draining water from a temple in the southern city of Aswan have uncovered a sandstone sphinx likely dating to the Ptolemaic era, the antiquities ministry said on Sunday.
Senate Judiciary Committee Republicans are calling on Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) to publicly release a letter reportedly detailing sexual assault accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh after his a...
(Breitbart) Authorities have arrested and charged a woman in Long Island for making up a story about a Trump-related hate crime, police said.
Adwoa Lewis, 19, told detectives Friday four teenagers confronted her as she was driving home on September 2, yelling “Trump 2016!” before stating that she did not belong here.
Lewis also claimed that she parked her vehicle in front of her house, then woke up the next morning to find her car’s tires slashed and a note with the words, “Go home,” police said.
But when authorities investigated the alleged incident, police found that Lewis fabricated the tale and the incident never took place.
Amazon has launched an investigation to track down a sophisticated network of employees running a "black market" of confidential information and favors, illegally sold through intermediaries to site merchants in order to give them a competitive advantage over other sellers, reports the Wall Street Journal.
In addition to providing sales metrics, search keywords and reviewers' email addresses, bribed Amazon employees would delete negative feedback for around $300 per review, with middleman brokers typically demanding a five-review minimum from merchants looking to game the system.
Employees of Amazon, primarily with the aid of intermediaries, are offering internal data and other confidential information that can give an edge to independent merchants selling their products on the site, according to sellers who have been offered and purchased the data, brokers who provide it and people familiar with internal investigations.
...
In exchange for payments ranging from roughly $80 to more than $2,000, brokers for Amazon employees in Shenzhen are offering internal sales metrics and reviewers’ email addresses, as well as a service to delete negative reviews and restore banned Amazon accounts, the people said.
...
Amazon is investigating a number of cases involving employees, including some in the U.S., suspected of accepting these bribes, according to people familiar with the matter. -WSJ
The data brokers primarily operate ion China, as the number of new Amazon sellers in the country has been skyrocketing. The Journal speculates that "Amazon employees in China have relatively small salaries, which may embolden them to take risks."
Considering that Amazon employees in the US are some of the most poorly paid in tech and retail (Jeff Bezos was recently booed by his own employees over low wages), perhaps the WSJ's theory holds water.
The internal probe was launched after a tip over the practice in China was sent to Eric Broussard, an Amazon VP in charge of overseeing global marketplaces. The company has since moved key executives into different positions in China to try and "root out the bribery," reports the Journal.
“We hold our employees to a high ethical standard and anyone in violation of our Code faces discipline, including termination and potential legal and criminal penalties,” an Amazon spokeswoman said of the situation, confirming that the company is investigating the claims. The same applies to sellers: "We have zero tolerance for abuse of our systems and if we find bad actors who have engaged in this behavior, we will take swift action against them," she said.
Merchant network
A major component of Amazon's success is its massive network of third-party merchants, where the company derives the majority of merchandise sales. Over two million merchants now offer an estimated 550 million products over Amazon, which constitutes over half of all units sold on the site. Third party sales constituted an estimated $200 billion in gross merchandise volume last year, according to estimates by FactSet. As such, "Sellers must aggressively compete to get their products noticed on the first page of search results, where customers typically make most of their purchase decisions," notes the Journal.
Evolving manipulations
Merchants have long sought competitive advantages over each other - first gaming Amazon's automated ranking system, by paying people to leave fake reviews and drive traffic to products.
After some time, the black market for internal information emerged, as bribed employees began providing data and access to various benefits, according to a person who has facilitated by brokers.
Brokers are the middlemen between Amazon employees and sellers who want negative reviews deleted or access to internal sales information. Brokers search for Amazon employees on Chinese messaging platform WeChat and send messages asking them if they would like to provide these services in exchange for cash, according to brokers and sellers who say they have been approached by brokers.
The going rate for having an Amazon employee delete negative reviews is about $300 per review, according to people familiar with the practice. Brokers usually demand a five-review minimum, meaning that sellers typically must pay at least $1,500 for the service, the people said. -WSJ
For a lower fee, merchants can pay Amazon employees for the email addresses of verified reviewers, giving them the opportunity to reach out to those who have left negative reviews for the opportunity to persuade them to adjust or delete their comment - sometimes bribing the reviewer with a free or discounted product.
Also offered for sale is proprietary sales information, "such as the keywords customers typically use to search for items on Amazon’s site, sales volume and other statistics about buyers’ habits, according to the people," enabling Amazon sellers to better craft product descriptions in a manner which will boost their search result rankings.
At a recent conference hosted for sellers—which wasn’t run by Amazon—a broker pulled up internal keyword results on his laptop. The broker said $80 can buy information on sales data, the number of times users searched for a certain product and clicked on a product page, which sellers are bidding for advertisements and how much those cost, according to the person who viewed the results. -WSJ
One seller in China told the Journal that competition on the website had become so intense that he needs to cheat in order to gain a competitive advantage. "If I don't do bad things I will die," he said.
If all else fails in rooting out the black market, perhaps Bezos will simply release the hounds:
The European Parliment has passed a controversial copyright directive that contains provisions which force tech giants to install content filters and sets in place a potential tax on hyperlinking.
The bill was passed in a final vote of 438 – 226 and will need to be implemented by individual EU member states.
Critics of the directive have been laser-focused on two key provisions: Articles 11 and 13, which they have dubbed the “link tax” and “upload filter.”
The most important parts of this are Articles 11 and 13. Article 11 is intended to give publishers and papers a way to make money when companies like Google link to their stories, allowing them to demand paid licenses. Article 13 requires certain platforms like YouTube and Facebook stop users sharing unlicensed copyrighted material.
Critics of the Copyright Directive say these provisions are disastrous. In the case of Article 11, they note that attempts to “tax” platforms like Google News for sharing articles have repeatedly failed, and that the system would be ripe to abuse by copyright trolls.
Article 13, they say, is even worse. The legislation requires that platforms proactively work with rightsholders to stop users uploading copyrighted content. The only way to do so would be to scan all data being uploaded to sites like YouTube and Facebook. This would create an incredible burden for small platforms, and could be used as a mechanism for widespread censorship. This is why figures like Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales and World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee came out so strongly against the directive. – The Verge
Member of the European Parliament, Axel Voss, who played a lead roll in pushing for both articles 11 and 13, thanked his fellow MEPs “for the job we have done together” in the wake of the vote.
“This is a good sign for the creative industries in Europe,” Voss said.
Dutch MEP Marietje Schaake was not nearly as excited as Voss after the vote. In a statement, the Dutchman said: “The Parliament squandered the opportunity to get the copyright reform on the right track. This is a disastrous result for the protection of our fundamental rights, ordinary internet users and Europe´s future in the field of artificial intelligence. We have set a step backwards instead of creating a true copyright reform that is fit for the 21st century.”
Opponents of the directive have been using the hashtag #SaveYourInternet on social media.
A summary of the directive describes the internet as the main marketplace for distribution and access to copyright-protected content. Those who support further EU intervention in copyright law say that the difficulty for content creators to enforce their rights to the work they post online “could put at risk the development of European creativity and production of creative content.”
According to a letter signed by world-renowned computer scientist Tim Berners, and internet pioneer Vint Cerf, articles 11 and 13 will not only affect the professional content creator but also the average internet user:
In particular, far from only affecting large American Internet platforms (who can well afford the costs of compliance), the burden of Article 13 will fall most heavily on their competitors, including European startups and SMEs. The cost of putting in place the necessary automatic filtering technologies will be expensive and burdensome, and yet those technologies have still not developed to a point where their reliability can be guaranteed. Indeed, if Article 13 had been in place when Internet’s core protocols and applications were developed, it is unlikely that it would exist today as we know it.
The impact of Article 13 would also fall heavily on ordinary users of Internet platforms—not only those who upload music or video (frequently in reliance upon copyright limitations and exceptions, that Article 13 ignores), but even those who contribute photos, text, or computer code to open collaboration platforms such as Wikipedia and GitHub.
While it will be interesting to see how EU member states take to the copyright overhaul, this latest piece of legislation isn’t the only move by the superstar which should have those suspicious of censorship worried
And just as a side note, it appears Twitter doesn’t want its users to know about Article 13.
Article 13 was number 2 on trending and Twitter have just removed it.
As PFW reported on September 5, the European Union is in the final stages of crafting legislation that will force big tech and internet companies to censor “extremist” content and cooperate with law enforcement
The bill is expected to be released by the end of the month and will absolutely require companies such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter to swiftly remove any content considered terroristic from their platforms.
EU Commissioner in charge of Justice, Consumers and gender equality, Věra Jourová , speaks at a news conference on a second monitoring of the illegal online hate speech code of conduct in Brussels, Belgium, 1 June 2017. [Olivier Hoslet/EPA]
In March, the European Commission told such companies that they had three months to show they were removing “extremist” content more rapidly or face legislation forcing them to do so.
EU recommendations were sent out at the time regarding the speedy removal of all content including terrorist content, incitement to hatred and violence, child sexual abuse material, counterfeit products, and copyright infringement.
According to European Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova, that an existing code of conduct to counter hate speech could remain voluntary.
“(But on) terrorist content, we came to the conclusion that it is too serious a threat and risk for European people that we should have absolute certainty that all the platforms and all the IT providers will delete the terrorist content and will cooperate with law enforcement bodies,” Jourova said on Wednesday.
“Yes, this is in the final stage,” she added, addressing the new bill.
While details of the new legislation remain hidden, the Financial Times in August learned that law enforcement will be in charge of flagging content for censorship.
EU security commissioner Julian King also had mentioned last month that the bill will “likely” turn the agreed upon “code of conduct” into mandatory law, placing the prediction by Jourova that it will remain voluntary on shakey grounds.
The big tech – EU code of conduct establishes “public commitments” for tech companies, including the requirement to review the “majority of valid notifications for removal of illegal hate speech” in less than 24 hours. It was also crafted to make it easier for law enforcement to notify firms directly of any unwanted content.
Within the code is a narrow explanation of “hate speech,” being defined as “all conduct publicly inciting to violence or hatred directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin.”
The nature of enforcing censorship based on a narrow and subjective term such as “hate speech” is likely to keep suspicions high that these types of decision aren’t about creating a safer world, but rather a world in which superstates like the EU control the content people see online for political purposes.
