Beet L. Jooz

Scaffolding, bottles and street furniture thrown at officers during afternoon of disorder

Claims deleted YouTube videos endorse "child endangerment," when the opposite is true.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is reportedly set to deport the wife of a former U.S. Marine and Iraq combat veteran early next month.Alejandra Juarez, 38, was notified on Tuesday that she will be deported back to Mexico in nine days...

A report from All Africa reveals the extent of disaster from a recent attempt to protect the rare black rhinoceros breed: Nine of 11 rhinos relocated are dead.

It’s likely they were killed by the salt water they were given to drink after their move to Tsavo National Park in Kenya.

It has been described as the biggest-ever rhino translocation mishap. And experts from South Africa and the United Kingdom were invited to study what caused the problem.

“Preliminary investigations point to salt poisoning as the rhinos tried to adapt to saltier water in their new home. The investigations team is being headed by senior officers from the Directorate of Criminal Investigations, Ministry of Tourism and Wildlife, local and international experts. A comprehensive report to be concluded within a week,” explained Najib Balal, Kenya’s tourism and wildlife minister, in the report.

Eight animals died almost immediately on their move, and the ninth shortly later.

A report in the EastAfrican said the agency was told: “Things did not go according to the script. The wildlife agency had taken all the necessary precautions including their quality of water and also housing them in a holding pen as they transitioned to their new ecosystem. Something went wrong and given the effects of the stress of moving, the animals felt thirsty and took saline water that was being pumped from a borehole.”

Conservationists were alarmed.

Cathy Dean of Save the Rhino said in the report: “Finding new places for rhinos to thrive and protecting viable populations are crucial, and we understand the Kenyan Wildlife Service’s desire to re-establish rhinos in Tsavo East. Now that we are faced with this truly tragic situation, we must learn from it. We call on the Kenya Wildlife Service to examine what happened and why things went so wrong. Then steps must be taken to ensure that this never happens again.”

Such moves are endorsed by Save the Rhino because “moving rhinos from one place to another is essential to ensure genetic diversity across the population and to re-establish populations in areas where they had previously been poached to near extinction.”

Officials said Kenya’s goal is to have 2,000 black rhinos.

And the report pointed out that of the 149 rhino moves in the last decade or so, there have been only eight deaths, until now.

“We look forward to the outcome of the investigation and reassurances that we will adopt global best practice in translocating wildlife to learn from this disaster and prevent it from ever happening again,” said Paula Kahumb of Wild Life Direct in the report.

A blood moon will appear in the night sky around much of the world on Friday night as the moon moves into the shadow of the earth for the longest lunar eclipse of the 21st century.

LAPD officers unintentionally killed a Trader Joe's manager, 27-year-old Melyda Corado, during a shootout with Gene Evin Atkins Saturday afternoon.

CNN host Jake Tapper last Tuesday reportedly berated his staff after a series of video clips from the joint Trump-Putin press conference were not properly rolled.

The home secretary has ordered research into the ethnicity of grooming gangs and is working to improve the "targeting" of child sex abuse networks and "prevention activity.”

Fox News judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano ripped the decision by 11 House Republicans to file articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, calling it a “symbolic” move.

Napolitano noted that while he respects and admires these lawmakers, “on this I profoundly disagree with them.” He explained the Constitution has a “very, very narrow basis for impeachment,” covering “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The analyst said the case against Rosenstein presents “good arguments for ethical violations, but not for impeachable offenses.”

Fox & Friends host Steve Doocy noted that the Department of Justice is now handing over some documents — which Napolitano argued is in response to “baseless” threats.

“They are going to cough them up because of threats like this, which are in my opinion wrong and baseless, but embarrassing for everybody involved. The DOJ has a legitimate lawful basis for keeping certain documents secret in a pending investigation. I want this Mueller thing over as soon as possible. But it is still pending. And you would be interfering with it if you forced the public revelation of some of those documents.”

Watch above, via Fox News.

[image via screengrab]

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Follow Aidan McLaughlin (@aidnmclaughlin) on Twitter

‘I believe in building the wall’

An online petition has been started with the intent of blocking Internet sensation Jordan Peterson from speaking at an event scheduled for 7:30 p.m. October 10, at the Tobin Center for Performing Arts in downtown San Antonio.

The petition describes Peterson has “one of the most vocal and divisive anti-LGBTQ individuals in North America” who “makes a living promoting conversion therapy and spreading lies about transgender people.” The petition demands that the Tobin Center cancel the event and “commit to scheduling programming that does not discriminate against people on the basis of an individual’s race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, veteran status, disability, familial status, national origin or age.”

While Peterson, a Canadian professor, is no stranger to controversy, he has never shown any inclination towards supporting or promoting gay conversion therapy. In fact, as a clinical psychologist he seems to have significant reservations about such types of purported medical practices, saying “Do not try to rescue someone who does not want to be rescued.”

That hasn’t stopped Ashley Smith, the organizer of the petition drive circulating on Change.org. Smith is a transgender San Antonio LBGTQ activist. Smith’s main claim to fame is trolling Texas Gov. Greg Abbott with a year-old Facebook post of a picture of Smith with Abbott. The post was captioned “#Bathroombuddy” and protested Abbott’s proposed “bathroom bill” that requires government offices to preserve single-sex private facilities.

When asked by the San Antonio Current about Smith’s petition to block Peterson from speaking, Smith argued Peterson’s ideas are “very harmful to our city” and should not be given a taxpayer-subsidized platform, like the Tobin Center. However, the managers over at the Tobin Center appear to disagree. They billed Peterson’s scheduled appearance as “a one-of-a-kind uplifting lecture, where he discusses overcoming life’s biggest obstacles [and] how to improve oneself…”

Smith’s initiative has been endorsed by the University of Texas, San Antonio chapter of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, which tweeted a link to the petition along with the caption “No platform for transphobes.”

Before 2016, Peterson was a mild-mannered, non-notorious psychology professor at the University of Toronto. His meteoric rise into the public spotlight was largely propelled by his opposition to Bill C-16, an amendment to the Ontario Human Rights Code that included gender identity and gender expression to anti-discrimination laws.

Under the provisions of the law, failing to address someone by his or her preferred pronoun would be considered hate speech and could result in litigation. However, the grounds for Peterson’s opposition wasn’t the transgender issue per se. He opposed government forcing citizens to use certain words, saying this violates the principle of free speech.

Since then, Peterson has become a massively popular public intellectual and member of the enigmatic Intellectual Dark Web. Lately, he’s been filling lecture halls and auditoriums across the country to expound on his philosophical views and promote his new book, “12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos.”

According to Campus Reform, one member of the socialist group said, “Peterson uses his platform to reinforce transphobia and gender essentialism historically and in the present moment. Those have informed government policy and cultural attitudes that enact structural and interpersonal violence against, well, really everyone in our society, but especially the people who are least able to defend themselves. Peterson is either clever enough to see this for himself (and thus malicious) or else not (and thus a fraud).”

Several Twitters users recognized inaccuracies in the petition and took to the comments section to point them out. Many demanded citations or sources of any instance in which the Canadian professor promoted conversion therapy. None were provided.

One user compared the group to “thought police” before adding, “Let us judge his ideas on their merits.” Others used irony and sarcasm to chide the socialist efforts, saying things like “LOL. How dare you have a dissenting thought!” and “Hahahaha, you don’t like JP [Jordan Peterson] so you lie about his positions to promote censorship. At least you are staying on brand for socialists.” Another user quipped, “Peterson does preach conversion therapy. It is no easy task converting neo Marxist sheep into free thinking individuals.”

The petition to block Peterson from speaking, which currently has 856 signatures, can be found here. Tickets to Peterson’s Oct. 10 lecture can be found here.

On Saturday night, heavily redacted copies of the FBI’s application to wiretap Trump campaign affiliate Carter Page were released. The portion of the 412-page document that was not redacted supported the claims of Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), as well as those made by the majority of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

The senators and the representatives had issued reports alleging that the FBI used an unverified Clinton campaign document to secure a wiretap against an American citizen, that the application for the wiretap used circular reporting and lacked verification for its central claims, and that it made materially false claims related to the source’s credibility.

President Trump tweeted triumphantly and hyperbolically about what the documents showed regarding the FBI’s behavior toward his campaign. Whatever you think about Trump’s reaction to the release of the FISA application, the media reaction to the story was disingenuous and even more hyperbolic than the president’s tweets. After a year of continuous and alarming revelations, the media are still more interested in proving the Trump campaign treasonously colluded with Russia than wrestling with the fact that the FBI spied on a presidential campaign, and used dubious partisan political research to justify their surveillance.

The media reaction to both the redacted Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) wiretap applications and President Trump’s tweets was pure gaslighting. They claimed the FISA applications hurt the critics’ case. It wasn’t that they reported the news that critics of the FISA application felt vindicated while defenders of the wiretap applications also felt vindicated. They wrote as partisans in a war with those skeptical of FISA abuse.

The New York Times went with both “Without Evidence, Trump Claims Vindication From Release of Carter Page Documents” and “How a Trump Decision Revealed a G.O.P. Memo’s Shaky Foundation.” The latter headline was in reference to the House Intelligence report. The accompanying article completely ignored the criminal referral from Graham and Grassley that buttressed the HPSCI allegations.

USA Today went with “President Trump, allies dismiss revelations in new court documents tied to Russia probe.” The Washington Post went on a days-long tantrum. See, for example, “Carter Page FISA warrants underscore the difficulty of disproving presidential falsehoods,” “The Carter Page wiretap dispute isn’t a fair fight,” and an error-riddled, tangent-laden “fact” “check” headlined “Over four days, false claims dominated Trump’s Twitter feed.”

When Facts Get In The Way Of Narratives

This is part of a pattern for the media when they encounter facts related to the surveillance of the Trump campaign. When Department of Justice officials leaked to the media that they had run at least one informant against the Trump campaign, a breathtaking admission by any sense of news judgment, the news was buried in the middle of the story and completely downplayed.

Others joined in with the gaslighting, spending weeks arguing — and I’m not joking here — that running a secret government informant against a campaign is not spying on a campaign.

The Times headline was — hand to God — “F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims.” CNN contributor and Obama director of national intelligence James Clapper told the viewing audience that actually “it was a good thing” that Trump’s campaign was spied on. A Washington Post journalist wrote in defense of obscuring the spying: “Trump’s win: We’re debating a ‘spy,’ not an ‘informant.'”

Blaming Republicans For Comprehending Facts

If you go back to last year, CNN’s Jake Tapper mocked and derided Republican voters who told pollsters they thought the Obama administration had spied on the Trump campaign. This mockery took place after CNN reported that … the Obama administration had spied on Page!

Still, he called it the definition of fake news and compared it to believing in ghosts.

32 percent of the public thinks President Obama intentionally spied on Donald Trump and members of his campaign and 52 percent of Republicans believe this charge. A charge that there is literally no evidence to support. It is the definition of fake news.

Now, look, this is America and you can believe whatever you want to believe. 18 percent of the public says they’ve seen or been in the presence of a ghost. I mean whatever. But in a thriving democracy, truth matters and facts matter.

Again, this segment aired weeks after CNN itself reported that the Obama administration had secured a wiretap to spy on Page.

What We Know of FBI’s Trump Campaign Surveillance

Sometimes it’s good to take a step back from a complicated story and view it from a distance. Rather than think about whether the wiretap application against Carter Page supports this party or that party, let’s just take a moment to reflect on where the story stands.

In January 2017, days before Trump’s inauguration, high-level intelligence officials leaked to CNN the news that “Intel chiefs presented Trump with claims of Russian efforts to compromise him.” The Hillary Clinton campaign had latched onto “Russia” as an explanation for her loss, encouraging a largely compliant media to hype up reports of Russian meddling in the election.

This leak enabled the media to discuss the “salacious and unverified” (in former FBI director James Comey’s words) gossip that was in a dossier. For the next year and many months into this year, this leak and other leaks from intelligence officials fed a theory that President Trump was a traitor who had conspired with Russia to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.

A few lonely skeptics of the Grand Russia Theory began asking questions about the dossier, its provenance, its weaponization, and the larger investigation into the Trump campaign. Fighting against an incredible media onslaught, they discovered things the media and their cadre of leakers had not shared with the American public. And they’re important.

1. Hillary Clinton and the DNC Secretly Paid for the Dossier

When the dossier first appeared on the scene, it was portrayed as a top-notch intelligence product put together by a top-notch intelligence official whose work history was credible.

It turned out to have been secretly bought and paid for by Hillary Clinton and the Democratic National Committee. They took extreme care to cover their tracks by funneling the money through a law firm that hired the Democratic researchers to cook up the dossier. The research product was then funneled to the media and the federal government.

Republican investigators found this out over the strenuous objections and process wrangling of Democratic members such as Rep. Adam Schiff, who fought tooth and nail to keep the funding of the dossier hidden. This information was leaked to friendly media only under pressure from congressional investigators.

This fact of the funding was obscured, just as the HPSCI report said, by the FBI in a page-long word salad when they applied to a secret court to wiretap a Trump affiliate. It was obscured so well that Comey, who signed one of the applications, could get away with claiming he had no idea that Clinton and the DNC funded the dossier.

Speaking of gaslighting, CBS News ran an Associated Press “fact” “check” that claimed “It’s not correct to call the Steele dossier a ‘Clinton Campaign document.'”

2. The Dossier Was Used to Secure a Wiretap Against a Trump Affiliate

When CNN received its leak about the dossier from highly placed intelligence officials, it reported as if the dossier was a legitimate piece of research that sober-minded intelligence agencies took very seriously. The unintentional hero of the story was BuzzFeed, which ran the actual dossier in all its glory.

Americans learned that the dossier claimed a senior advisor to Trump and three of his colleagues had met with Kremlin operatives in Prague in late August or early September to undermine the Clinton campaign. They also learned the Russians had a file of “kompromat” on Trump, including an amazing story about him renting a hotel room that the Obamas had used and paying prostitutes to urinate on the bed.

People could see for themselves how ridiculous, preposterous, and immediately debunkable some of the most important claims were. The revelation of how fever-dreamed and sophomoric the dossier was, at least in major parts, cast doubt on the wisdom of the top political brass at intelligence agencies, much less their propriety and ability to handle information with any discretion. Obviously they were leaking like sieves in an ongoing war against the president-elect.

Then Grassley began asking some rather serious questions that suggested the dossier might have been used to secure a wiretap against a Trump campaign affiliate. That’s when the defensive leak to a friendly media outlet occurred, and we learned the dossier had in fact been used to secure a wiretap against Page.

Trump critics say that since Page wasn’t on the Trump campaign at the time of the wiretap, it wasn’t really surveillance of the campaign. There are multiple problems with that. One is that wiretaps can be used to obtain information into the past, of the time Page was on the campaign. Another is that the wiretap would capture communications with any Trump campaign members Page spoke with. Another is that the FBI itself claimed in its wiretap application that Page was the conduit between Russia and the campaign.

The case against Page laid out in the wiretap application began with an unverified claim pulled straight out of the dossier. When Page responded to public reporting of the dossier’s claims by denying it, that was also mentioned in the application. The geniuses at the FBI wrote that they don’t believe the news reports of the dossier claims were fed by the dossier author, all evidence to the contrary.

3. Informants Were Run against the Trump Campaign

For most Americans, the idea that the FBI would run secret government spies human informants against the Republican Party’s presidential campaign is a huge scandal. It happened, according to government leakers who told friendly media outlets. Again:

The F.B.I. investigated four unidentified Trump campaign aides in those early months, congressional investigators revealed in February. The four men were Michael T. Flynn, Paul Manafort, Carter Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current and former officials said…

The F.B.I. obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters — a secret type of subpoena — officials said. And at least one government informant met several times with Mr. Page and Mr. Papadopoulos, current and former officials said.

If the FBI genuinely believed that Russians were trying to illegally infiltrate the Trump campaign, the proper course of action would be to give the Trump campaign a defensive briefing warning them of the efforts. To run spies human informants, wiretaps, national security letters, and other surveillance against the campaign is truly breathtaking and invasive.

4. The FBI Also Used Secret Subpoenas Against the Trump Campaign

From the same excerpt above:

The F.B.I. obtained phone records and other documents using national security letters — a secret type of subpoena — officials said.

You can, along with the partisan and gaslighting media, claim it’s not a big deal to run human informants or secretly gather intelligence against a presidential campaign. But you can not deny it happened.

A bomb exploded outside the U.S. embassy in Beijing on Thursday, wounding the lone assailant, the embassy said in a statement, but police described the weapon merely as a "firecracker" according to Reuters. The explosion happened on the street outside southeast corner of the embassy compound, the embassy said.

A 26-year-old man from China’s northern region of Inner Mongolia detonated an explosive device around 1 p.m., the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau said on its official Weibo social media account. The man was being treated in a hospital for a non-life-threatening injury, Bloomberg reported .

Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang said the case had been properly handled by local police. “It is an isolated case of public security,” Geng said.

The US Embassy released a statement, saying there was an explosion outside the embassy compound. “According to the embassy’s regional security officer, there was one individual who detonated a bomb. Other than the bomber, no other people were injured and there was no damage to embassy property.”

Update from the Embassy on the July 26 Incident
There was an explosion at approximately 1pm today on the street outside the South East corner of the Embassy compound. According to the Embassy’s Regional Security Officer, there was one individual who detonated a bomb. pic.twitter.com/luGv57OwlA

— 美国驻华使领馆 US MissionCN (@USA_China_Talk) July 26, 2018

Witnesses told Reuters that they heard an explosion near the embassy and felt tremors.

“I’d just arrived and started to queue and then heard a loud explosion about 100 meters away,” a 19-year-old high school student who gave his name as Li told reporters.

Li said the blast happened shortly after 1 p.m. as he queued to apply for a U.S. visa to take an exam in Los Angeles.

A police SUV appeared to have been damaged, with its back windshield missing, and was cordoned off by police before being removed, a Reuters witness said. The embassy resumed normal operations at about 1.45 p.m., it said.

Crowds were still queueing outside the embassy after the explosion and traffic was moving as normal in an area of northeastern Beijing that is home to numerous embassies including those of France, India and Israel.

As Reuters adds, postings on social media showed pictures of smoke close to where people line up outside the compound for visa appointments. Some video clips and images were later removed.

刚刚北京美国驻华大使馆发生爆炸 pic.twitter.com/YRwJxKNLGn

— 摄影与诗歌 (@hdjdjsjxw) July 26, 2018

Li Shaohui, a 58-year-old sanitation worker, said he felt the ground shake and that some people screamed. “I thought first there was big a car crash,” Li told Reuters, adding that the smoke had cleared quickly.

Staff members at the Indian and South Korean embassies said they were unaware of any unusual incident and were working as normal.

* * *

Separately, the state-run Global Times reported that Chinese police took away a woman who sprayed herself with gasoline in a suspected self-immolation attempt outside the embassy at around 11 a.m. on Thursday.

#Breaking Witness says police took away a woman spraying gasoline on herself in suspected attempt at self-immolation outside US embassy in Beijing around 11 am Thursday. pic.twitter.com/wLXmIDSfp5

— Global Times (@globaltimesnews) July 26, 2018

Beijing police did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Jack Dorsey may have pushed his apparent anti-conservative agenda just a little too far after evidence mounts - even among the liberal media - that Twitter has been 'shadow-banning' various 'right of socialist' members on the social media site ( by limiting the number of people who are able to view content from the affected users).

Following CEO Jack Dorsey's attempt to play down the actions, saying "It suffices to say we have a lot more work to do to earn people's trust on how we work."

We’ve heard questions from some of you relating to our work to drive healthy conversation on Twitter. People are asking us 1) about the breadth and precision of our work & 2) the impact of our work on the Search experience. We wanted to address these questions transparently here.

In May, we started using behavioral signals and machine learning to reduce people’s ability to detract from healthy public conversation on Twitter. This approach looks at account behavior & interactions with other accounts that violate our rules.

On 1) We’re always working to improve our behavior-based ranking models - their breadth and accuracy will improve over time. It’s important to note that these behavior signals are not binary, and they are one of many other signals that factor into ranking.

To be clear, our behavioral ranking doesn’t make judgements based on political views or the substance of tweets. We recently publicly testified to Congress on this topic https://judiciary.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/Pickles-Testimony.pdf

On 2) Some accounts weren’t being auto-suggested even when people were searching for their specific name. Our usage of the behavior signals within search was causing this to happen & making search results seem inaccurate. We’re making a change today that will improve this.

We believe this work is really important to creating a healthier Twitter and we want to continue improving. Your feedback helps us do that so please keep it coming.

And after his son blasted Dorsey...

So now @twitter is censoring @GOPChairwoman?

Enough is enough with this crap. @Jack it’s time for you to #StopTheBias against conservatives and Trump supporters and fix this once and for all. https://t.co/JC6i6y01Ek

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) July 25, 2018

President Trump has decided to step into this debacle (presumably in an effort to avert Dorsey's attempt to 'meddle' in the midterms), warning that " We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! "

Twitter “SHADOW BANNING” prominent Republicans. Not good. We will look into this discriminatory and illegal practice at once! Many complaints.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2018

Trump's tweet comes after his 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, along with Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, wrote a letter in May calling for the CEOs of Facebook and Twitter to address concerns over conservative censorship ahead of the 2020 election, as well as a call for transparency.

"We recognize that Facebook and Twitter operate in liberal corporate cultures," the letter reads. "However, rampant political bias is inappropriate for a widely used public forum."

A West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's deputy at the center of an investigation into allegations that he stalked and sexually assaulted several women has been placed on unpaid administrative leave, Sheriff Mike Cazes said Wednesday in a prepared statement.

In mid-June, Marie-Josée Perron was walking her dog, Tikka, when she came across a once in a lifetime find — a snapping turtle had ascended from the lake to lay her eggs on a park footpath.

That's a win for the First Amendment

‘We will also work to reduce barriers and increase trade and services, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, medical products as well as soybeans’

Singer Billy Joel wore a Star of David at a performance at New York City’s Madison Square Garden last year to send a message to President Donald Trump that Nazis aren’t good people.

Joel explained his move to CBS in a new interview.

According to Joel, he donned the star shortly after Charlottesville because he had something to say to Trump.

“I don’t think it’s right for me to get up on a soapbox because that’s not why people are there,” Joel said about why he usually doesn’t get political in shows.

He then said that night was an exception.

“I had to do something that night. The President said, you know, ‘There’s some good people on that side …’ No, Nazis aren’t good people. It really enraged me, actually,” Joel said. “My old man, his family got wiped out. They were slaughtered in Auschwitz. Him and his parents were able to get out. But then he was in the U.S. Army during the war and fought with Patton and was shot at by Nazis.”

Joel’s comments were part of an interview marking his landmark 100th  concert at the famed New York City venue.

Watch more of his interview above, via CBS

[image via screengrab]

 

 

 

Documents show "curious children" partially entered parts of the school undergoing asbestos removal.

The older brother of the gunman responsible for one of Toronto’s worst mass shootings was facing drug and weapons charges when he went into a coma last year.