Category Archives: Society

Immigration and crime: What does the research say?

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Charis Kubrin, University of California, Irvine; Graham C. Ousey, College of William & Mary; Lesley Reid, University of Alabama, and Robert Adelman, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

Editor’s note: In his first week in office, President Donald Trump showed he intends to follow through on his immigration promises. A major focus of his campaign was on removing immigrants who, he said, were increasing crime in American communities.

In his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, Trump named victims who were reportedly killed by undocumented immigrants and said:

“They are being released by the tens of thousands into our communities with no regard for the impact on public safety or resources…We are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration, to stop the gangs and the violence, and to stop the drugs from pouring into our communities.”

Now as president, he has signed executive orders that restrict entry of immigrants from seven countries into the U.S. and authorize the construction of a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico. He also signed an order to prioritize the removal of “criminal aliens” and withhold federal funding from “sanctuary cities.”

But, what does research say about how immigration impacts crime in U.S. communities? We turned to our experts for answers.

Across 200 metropolitan areas

Robert Adelman, University at Buffalo, and Lesley Reid, University of Alabama

Research has shown virtually no support for the enduring assumption that increases in immigration are associated with increases in crime.

Immigration-crime research over the past 20 years has widely corroborated the conclusions of a number of early 20th-century presidential commissions that found no backing for the immigration-crime connection. Although there are always individual exceptions, the literature demonstrates that immigrants commit fewer crimes, on average, than native-born Americans.

Also, large cities with substantial immigrant populations have lower crime rates, on average, than those with minimal immigrant populations.

In a paper published this year in the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice, we, along with our colleagues Gail Markle, Saskia Weiss and Charles Jaret, investigated the immigration-crime relationship.

We analyzed census data spanning four decades from 1970 to 2010 for 200 randomly selected metropolitan areas, which include center cities and surrounding suburbs. Examining data over time allowed us to assess whether the relationship between immigration and crime changed with the broader U.S. economy and the origin and number of immigrants.

The most striking finding from our research is that for murder, robbery, burglary and larceny, as immigration increased, crime decreased, on average, in American metropolitan areas. The only crime that immigration had no impact on was aggravated assault. These associations are strong and stable evidence that immigration does not cause crime to increase in U.S. metropolitan areas, and may even help reduce it.

There are a number of ideas among scholars that explain why more immigration leads to less crime. The most common explanation is that immigration reduces levels of crime by revitalizing urban neighborhoods, creating vibrant communities and generating economic growth.

Across 20 years of data

Charis E. Kubrin, University of California, Irvine, and Graham Ousey, College of William and Mary

For the last decade, we have been studying how immigration to an area impacts crime.

Across our studies, one finding remains clear: Cities and neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have lower rates of crime and violence, all else being equal.

Our research also points to the importance of city context for understanding the immigration-crime relationship. In one study, for example, we found that cities with historically high immigration levels are especially likely to enjoy reduced crime rates as a result of their immigrant populations.

Findings from our most recent study, forthcoming in the inaugural issue of The Annual Review of Criminology, only strengthen these conclusions.

We conducted a meta-analysis, meaning we systematically evaluated available research on the immigration-crime relationship in neighborhoods, cities and metropolitan areas across the U.S. We examined findings from more than 50 studies published between 1994 and 2014, including studies conducted by our copanelists, Adelman and Reid.

Our analysis of the literature reveals that immigration has a weak crime-suppressing effect. In other words, more immigration equals less crime.

There were some individual studies that found that with an increase in immigration, there was an increase in crime. However, there were 2.5 times as many findings that showed immigration was actually correlated with less crime. And, the most common finding was that immigration had no impact on crime.

The upshot? We find no evidence to indicate that immigration leads to more crime and it may, in fact, suppress it.

The Conversation

Charis Kubrin, Professor of Criminology, Law and Society, University of California, Irvine; Graham C. Ousey, Professor and Chair of Sociology, College of William & Mary; Lesley Reid, Professor and Department Chair of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Alabama, and Robert Adelman, Associate Professor of Sociology, University at Buffalo, The State University of New York

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

11-Page Memo Proposes Using National Guard To Round Up Immigrants

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Homeland Security proposed mass deportations in 11 states in a memo leaked through the Associated Press yesterday, while the Trump administration claims it was rejected as an ‘early draft’

White House spokesman Sean Spicer said there was “no effort at all to utilize the National Guard to round up unauthorized immigrants” despite the leaked memo from the Department of Homeland Security reaching the media. DHS staffers had said on Thursday that they were told by colleagues in two DHS departments that the proposal was still being considered as recently as Feb. 10. The memo gives insight into what the Trump administration is attempting as part of President Trump’s promise to stop illegal immigration in the United States.

Congressmen on both sides of the aisle have been critical of the White House after Donald Trump’s executive orders regarding illegal immigration in late January and this memo did not do anything to quell the outrage both in congress and from the public. “Regardless of the White House’s response, this document is an absolutely accurate description of the disturbing mindset that pervades the Trump administration when it comes to our nation’s immigrants,” said U.S. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-Nev.)

Republican Governor Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas said the National Guard did not have the resources to carry out such a task, while two other Republican governors, Gary Herbert  of Utah and Brian Sandoval of Nevada, condemned the proposal as “unconstitutional” and “an inappropriate use of guard resources”, respectively. Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn) called the immigration efforts of the White House “offensive”, saying it’s “inability to manage its own message and policy” was causing chaos.

Spicer’s comments are being called out as a lie by critics of the Trump administration throughout the press and social media with the recognition of Trump’s campaign promise to end illegal immigration by any means necessary, even using terms such as “round up” when being interviewed by 60 Minutes in 2015, saying

“We’re rounding ’em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they’re going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesn’t sound nice. But not everything is nice.”

The Associate Press said they reached out to Spicer before releasing the document, but had not heard back from him until after the document had been released and caused an uproar.

This wouldn’t be the first time the National Guard was used to enforce immigration law, but would have been the first time it was used so broadly. If implemented, the impact could have been significant. Nearly one-half of the 11.1 million people residing in the U.S. without authorization live in the 11 states, according to Pew Research Center estimates based on 2014 Census data.

 

ACLU Has Filed Lawsuit Challenging Executive Order on Refugees

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President Trump’s executive order banning Muslims and refugees from terrorist prone Middle Eastern nations is being challenged by the American Civil Liberties Union

The National Legal Director of the ACLU, David Cole, tweeted this morning that the ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging President Trump’s executive order barring refugees from middle eastern countries to enter the United States.

The move comes after a sweeping ban on all Muslims from countries known to have problems with Islamic extremists dubbed terrorists in the Middle East, including Sudan, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen among others, was issued by President Trump via executive order in the first few days on office. Other executive orders included backing out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, removing funding from NGOs who offer abortions in foreign countries, and discontinuing Obama’s government employment program which helped to create tens of thousands of new jobs in the past few years. Trump also issue an executive order to start moving funding into building a wall on the southern border of the United States between itself and Mexico, issuing a 20% tariff Mexican imports which the American people would be liable for.

All but the cancellation of the U.S.’s role in the TPP have set off a firestorm of negative criticism from the Democratic party and liberal media outlets who viewed the TPP as bad for American workers and the rest of Trump’s executive orders as extensions of supposed Republican xenophobia and racism. Most liberals argue that immigration is the very fabric of Americanism and that Donald Trump’s actions set a poor standard of what actually makes America great.

Trump’s decision comes after a year and a half of focusing on immigration during his campaign for presidency and has been well received by the so-called “alt-right” branch of the Republican party. However, such measures were never fully explained throughout the his campaign and executive orders alone cannot fully get the job done, so many analysts have their doubts about whether or not anything will last beyond Trump’s first few months of presidency.

 

2017 is Stranger Than George Orwell Imagined..

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A week after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, George Orwell’s “1984” is the best-selling book on Amazon.com.

The hearts of a thousand English teachers must be warmed as people flock to a novel published in 1949 for ways to think about their present moment.

Orwell set his story in Oceania, one of three blocs or mega-states fighting over the globe in 1984. There has been a nuclear exchange, and the blocs seem to have agreed to perpetual conventional war, probably because constant warfare serves their shared interests in domestic control.

Oceania demands total subservience. It is a police state, with helicopters monitoring people’s activities, even watching through their windows. But Orwell emphasizes it is the “ThinkPol,” the Thought Police, who really monitor the “Proles,” the lowest 85 percent of the population outside the party elite. The ThinkPol move invisibly among society seeking out, even encouraging, thoughtcrimes so they can make the perpetrators disappear for reprogramming.

The other main way the party elite, symbolized in the mustached figurehead Big Brother, encourage and police correct thought is through the technology of the Telescreen. These “metal plaques” transmit things like frightening video of enemy armies and of course the wisdom of Big Brother. But the Telescreen can see you, too. During mandatory morning exercise, the Telescreen not only shows a young, wiry trainer leading cardio, it can see if you are keeping up. Telescreens are everywhere: They are in every room of people’s homes. At the office, people use them to do their jobs.

The story revolves around Winston Smith and Julia, who try to resist their government’s overwhelming control over facts. Their act of rebellion? Trying to discover “unofficial” truth about the past, and recording unauthorized information in a diary. Winston works at the colossal Ministry of Truth, on which is emblazoned IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. His job is to erase politically inconvenient data from the public record. A party member falls out of favor? She never existed. Big Brother made a promise he could not fulfill? It never happened.

Because his job calls on him to research old newspapers and other records for the facts he has to “unfact,” Winston is especially adept at “doublethink.” Winston calls it being “conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies… consciously to induce unconsciousness.”

Oceania: The product of Orwell’s experience

Orwell’s setting in “1984” is inspired by the way he foresaw the Cold War – a phrase he coined in 1945 – playing out. He wrote it just a few years after watching Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin carve up the world at the Tehran and Yalta conferences. The book is remarkably prescient about aspects of the Stalinist Soviet Union, East Germany and Maoist China.

Orwell was a socialist. “1984” in part describes his fear that the democratic socialism in which he believed would be hijacked by authoritarian Stalinism. The novel grew out of his sharp observations of his world and the fact that Stalinists tried to kill him.

In 1936, a fascist-supported military coup threatened the democratically elected socialist majority in Spain. Orwell and other committed socialists from around the world, including Ernest Hemingway, volunteered to fight against the rightist rebels. Meanwhile, Hitler lent the rightists his air power while Stalin tried to take over the leftist Republican resistance. When Orwell and other volunteers defied these Stalinists, they moved to crush the opposition. Hunted, Orwell and his wife had to flee for their lives from Spain in 1937.

George Orwell at the BBC.

Back in London during World War II, Orwell saw for himself how a liberal democracy and individuals committed to freedom could find themselves on a path toward Big Brother. He worked for the BBC writing what can only be described as “propaganda” aimed at an Indian audience. What he wrote was not exactly doublethink, but it was news and commentary with a slant to serve a political purpose. Orwell sought to convince Indians that their sons and resources were serving the greater good in the war. Having written things he believed were untrue, he quit the job after two years, disgusted with himself.

Imperialism itself disgusted him. As a young man in the 1920s, Orwell had served as a colonial police officer in Burma. In a distant foreshadowing of Big Brother’s world, Orwell reviled the arbitrary and brutish role he took on in a colonial system. “I hated it bitterly,” he wrote. “In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the gray, cowed faces of the long-term convicts…”

Oceania was a prescient product of a particular biography and particular moment when the Cold War was beginning. Naturally, then, today’s world of “alternative facts” is quite different in ways that Orwell could not have imagined.

Big Brother not required

Orwell described a single-party system in which a tiny core of oligarchs, Oceania’s “inner party,” control all information. This is their chief means of controlling power. In the U.S. today, information is wide open to those who can access the internet, at least 84 percent of Americans. And while the U.S. arguably might be an oligarchy, power exists somewhere in a scrum including the electorate, constitution, the courts, bureaucracies and, inevitably, money. In other words, unlike in Oceania, both information and power are diffuse in 2017 America.

Those who study the decline in standards of evidence and reasoning in the U.S. electorate chiefly blame politicians’ concerted efforts from the 1970s to discredit expertise, degrade trust in Congress and its members, even question the legitimacy of government itself. With those leaders, institutions and expertise delegitimized, the strategy has been to replace them with alternative authorities and realities.

In 2004, a senior White House adviser suggested a reporter belonged to the “reality-based community,” a sort of quaint minority of people who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.… That’s not the way the world really works anymore.”

Orwell could not have imagined the internet and its role in distributing alternative facts, nor that people would carry around Telescreens in their pockets in the form of smartphones. There is no Ministry of Truth distributing and policing information, and in a way everyone is Big Brother.

It seems less a situation that people are incapable of seeing through Big Brother’s big lies, than they embrace “alternative facts.” Some researchers have found that when some people begin with a certain worldview – for example, that scientific experts and public officials are untrustworthy – they believe their misperceptions more strongly when given accurate conflicting information. In other words, arguing with facts can backfire. Having already decided what is more essentially true than the facts reported by experts or journalists, they seek confirmation in alternative facts and distribute them themselves via Facebook, no Big Brother required.

In Orwell’s Oceania, there is no freedom to speak facts except those that are official. In 2017 America, at least among many of the powerful minority who selected its president, the more official the fact, the more dubious. For Winston, “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four.” For this powerful minority, freedom is the freedom to say two plus two make five.

The Conversation

John Broich, Associate Professor, Case Western Reserve University

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Misinformation on social media: Can technology save us?

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If you get your news from social media, as most Americans do, you are exposed to a daily dose of hoaxes, rumors, conspiracy theories and misleading news. When it’s all mixed in with reliable information from honest sources, the truth can be very hard to discern.

In fact, my research team’s analysis of data from Columbia University’s Emergent rumor tracker suggests that this misinformation is just as likely to go viral as reliable information.

Many are asking whether this onslaught of digital misinformation affected the outcome of the 2016 U.S. election. The truth is we do not know, although there are reasons to believe it is entirely possible, based on past analysis and accounts from other countries. Each piece of misinformation contributes to the shaping of our opinions. Overall, the harm can be very real: If people can be conned into jeopardizing our children’s lives, as they do when they opt out of immunizations, why not our democracy?

As a researcher on the spread of misinformation through social media, I know that limiting news fakers’ ability to sell ads, as recently announced by Google and Facebook, is a step in the right direction. But it will not curb abuses driven by political motives.

Exploiting social media

About 10 years ago, my colleagues and I ran an experiment in which we learned 72 percent of college students trusted links that appeared to originate from friends – even to the point of entering personal login information on phishing sites. This widespread vulnerability suggested another form of malicious manipulation: People might also believe misinformation they receive when clicking on a link from a social contact.

To explore that idea, I created a fake web page with random, computer-generated gossip news – things like “Celebrity X caught in bed with Celebrity Y!” Visitors to the site who searched for a name would trigger the script to automatically fabricate a story about the person. I included on the site a disclaimer, saying the site contained meaningless text and made-up “facts.” I also placed ads on the page. At the end of the month, I got a check in the mail with earnings from the ads. That was my proof: Fake news could make money by polluting the internet with falsehoods.

Sadly, I was not the only one with this idea. Ten years later, we have an industry of fake news and digital misinformation. Clickbait sites manufacture hoaxes to make money from ads, while so-called hyperpartisan sites publish and spread rumors and conspiracy theories to influence public opinion.

This industry is bolstered by how easy it is to create social bots, fake accounts controlled by software that look like real people and therefore can have real influence. Research in my lab uncovered many examples of fake grassroots campaigns, also called political astroturfing.

In response, we developed the BotOrNot tool to detect social bots. It’s not perfect, but accurate enough to uncover persuasion campaigns in the Brexit and antivax movements. Using BotOrNot, our colleagues found that a large portion of online chatter about the 2016 elections was generated by bots.

In this visualization of the spread of the #SB277 hashtag about a California vaccination law, dots are Twitter accounts posting using that hashtag, and lines between them show retweeting of hashtagged posts. Larger dots are accounts that are retweeted more. Red dots are likely bots; blue ones are likely humans.
Onur Varol, CC BY-ND

Creating information bubbles

We humans are vulnerable to manipulation by digital misinformation thanks to a complex set of social, cognitive, economic and algorithmic biases. Some of these have evolved for good reasons: Trusting signals from our social circles and rejecting information that contradicts our experience served us well when our species adapted to evade predators. But in today’s shrinking online networks, a social network connection with a conspiracy theorist on the other side of the planet does not help inform my opinions.

Copying our friends and unfollowing those with different opinions give us echo chambers so polarized that researchers can tell with high accuracy whether you are liberal or conservative by just looking at your friends. The network structure is so dense that any misinformation spreads almost instantaneously within one group, and so segregated that it does not reach the other.

Inside our bubble, we are selectively exposed to information aligned with our beliefs. That is an ideal scenario to maximize engagement, but a detrimental one for developing healthy skepticism. Confirmation bias leads us to share a headline without even reading the article.

Our lab got a personal lesson in this when our own research project became the subject of a vicious misinformation campaign in the run-up to the 2014 U.S. midterm elections. When we investigated what was happening, we found fake news stories about our research being predominantly shared by Twitter users within one partisan echo chamber, a large and homogeneous community of politically active users. These people were quick to retweet and impervious to debunking information.

In this graph of echo chambers in the Twittersphere, purple dots represent people spreading false claims about the Truthy research project; the two accounts that sought to debunk the false information are in orange on the far left.
Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, CC BY-ND

Viral inevitability

Our research shows that given the structure of our social networks and our limited attention, it is inevitable that some memes will go viral, irrespective of their quality. Even if individuals tend to share information of higher quality, the network as a whole is not effective at discriminating between reliable and fabricated information. This helps explain all the viral hoaxes we observe in the wild.

The attention economy takes care of the rest: If we pay attention to a certain topic, more information on that topic will be produced. It’s cheaper to fabricate information and pass it off as fact than it is to report actual truth. And fabrication can be tailored to each group: Conservatives read that the pope endorsed Trump, liberals read that he endorsed Clinton. He did neither.

Beholden to algorithms

Since we cannot pay attention to all the posts in our feeds, algorithms determine what we see and what we don’t. The algorithms used by social media platforms today are designed to prioritize engaging posts – ones we’re likely to click on, react to and share. But a recent analysis found intentionally misleading pages got at least as much online sharing and reaction as real news.

This algorithmic bias toward engagement over truth reinforces our social and cognitive biases. As a result, when we follow links shared on social media, we tend to visit a smaller, more homogeneous set of sources than when we conduct a search and visit the top results.

Existing research shows that being in an echo chamber can make people more gullible about accepting unverified rumors. But we need to know a lot more about how different people respond to a single hoax: Some share it right away, others fact-check it first.

We are simulating a social network to study this competition between sharing and fact-checking. We are hoping to help untangle conflicting evidence about when fact-checking helps stop hoaxes from spreading and when it doesn’t. Our preliminary results suggest that the more segregated the community of hoax believers, the longer the hoax survives. Again, it’s not just about the hoax itself but also about the network.

Many people are trying to figure out what to do about all this. According to Mark Zuckerberg’s latest announcement, Facebook teams are testing potential options. And a group of college students has proposed a way to simply label shared links as “verified” or not.

Some solutions remain out of reach, at least for the moment. For example, we can’t yet teach artificial intelligence systems how to discern between truth and falsehood. But we can tell ranking algorithms to give higher priority to more reliable sources.

Studying the spread of fake news

We can make our fight against fake news more efficient if we better understand how bad information spreads. If, for example, bots are responsible for many of the falsehoods, we can focus attention on detecting them. If, alternatively, the problem is with echo chambers, perhaps we could design recommendation systems that don’t exclude differing views.

To that end, our lab is building a platform called Hoaxy to track and visualize the spread of unverified claims and corresponding fact-checking on social media. That will give us real-world data, with which we can inform our simulated social networks. Then we can test possible approaches to fighting fake news.

Hoaxy may also be able to show people how easy it is for their opinions to be manipulated by online information – and even how likely some of us are to share falsehoods online. Hoaxy will join a suite of tools in our Observatory on Social Media, which allows anyone to see how memes spread on Twitter. Linking tools like these to human fact-checkers and social media platforms could make it easier to minimize duplication of efforts and support each other.

It is imperative that we invest resources in the study of this phenomenon. We need all hands on deck: Computer scientists, social scientists, economists, journalists and industry partners must work together to stand firm against the spread of misinformation.

The Conversation

Filippo Menczer, Professor of Computer Science and Informatics; Director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems Research, Indiana University, Bloomington

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Recent News for election fraud
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  • Common Confusion About Voter Fraud vs. Election Fraud Helps Rigged Elections To Continue
  • EXCLUSIVE: Interview With Ohio Election Fraud Lawyer Cliff Arnebeck

    • Federal Election Fraud Case Filed In Ohio to Halt Electronic Voting On Election Day

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    Election Justice USA reports that Ohio lawyer Cliff Arnebeck has filed a lawsuit against Ohio Secretary of State and Election Systems & Software to halt electronic voting

    Ohio election fraud lawyer Cliff Arnebeck (see our interview with him) filed a case against the Ohio Secretary of State in an effort to retain the voting rights of African Americans, who Arnebeck claims have been at repeated risk of election fraud by use of electronic voting equipment that has not been properly certified and tested, thereby rendering this equipment vulnerable to hacking, vote dilution based on race in the notorious swing state. The case is set to be heard tomorrow, November 8th, otherwise known as the day everyone in the United States can’t wait to get over with.

    The case asks for a temporary restraining order from the use of electronic voting machines  in Ohio, which, if granted, will undoubtedly delay the election in Ohio. EJUSA states that, according to the filing, Ohio has again permitted “last minute third party or manufacturer changes to electronic voting equipment that has not been certified in accordance with state law.”

    Arnebeck has said repeatedly that he plans to file a RICO (racketeering) case against Hillary Clinton, Karl Rove, and those associated with the electronic voting machines such as software developer Mikey Cunnyngham.  Arnebeck claimed in his interview with Cosmoso that Rove and his “operatives” have assassinated Arnebeck’s witnesses every time he gets close to filing this case every election year.  When asked how he plans to prove these assassinations took place, Arnebeck said, “I don’t have to prove that, what I have to prove is the election stealing, which I can do.”

    The RICO case has yet to be filed, so it’s possible that Arnebeck and EJUSA do not have enough data to file yet and Arnebeck is using this restraining order as a last-ditch effort before the election to delay the polling in the name of restoring democracy.

    EJUSA has broken the story, but with no references to verify the details of the case as of yet. A search of Ohio records currently does not show any record of the filing.

    Recent News for North Dakota
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  • Donald Trump and Dakota Access Pipeline Have Close Financial Ties
  • Documentary Filmmaker Deia Schlosberg Arrested For Filming Dakota Pipeline Protest

    • North Dakota Sheriff Paul Laney Lies Through His Teeth About DAPL Protesters

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    NBC finally covers the DAPL protests and interviews a local sheriff who says protesters are building pipe bombs, are trespassing and are causing violence — all of which are not true

    The ongoing peaceful demonstrations by protesters at the Standing Rock reservation have amplified the local authorities’ use of pepper spray, batons and attacks dogs to scare off or inflict physical harm on protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline project in North Dakota.

    Today, Sheriff Paul Laney of North Dakota told local NBC affiliate KFYR-TV that there were reports of pipe bombs being manufactured in the camps of the protesters, yet he is the only person who has made this claim thus far. He also said that protesters were lighting things on fire, and while there seems to have been some fires on the location, no word has come out yet as to who was responsible, or if the fires were intentional.

    Laney claims he asked protesters to “get off the private property, let’s go back to your camps and talk,” however, protesters say he never said any such thing to them.

    His full interview is below:

    It’s important to note that Laney has a history of referring to himself and other police officers as “warriors” and that they are “being hunted”, according to Say Anything Blog’s Rob Port, despite 2015 being the safest years for police officers in the U.S.

    Ongoing coverage of the protests today can be seen in the live FB feed from user Atsa E’sha Hoferer below:

    Recent News for North Dakota
    X
  • North Dakota Sheriff Paul Laney Lies Through His Teeth About DAPL Protesters
  • Documentary Filmmaker Deia Schlosberg Arrested For Filming Dakota Pipeline Protest

    • Donald Trump and Dakota Access Pipeline Have Close Financial Ties

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    Financial disclosure papers reveal Donald Trump invested in Energy Transfer Partners, operators of the controversial DAPL, while its CEO donated to Trump’s campaign

    It just got harder to choose the lesser of two evils for most Americans on November 8th, and even worse for those in the progressive movement who were planning on voting Donald Trump to oust Hillary Clinton in the coming U.S. presidential election as Trump’s financial disclosure forms have revealed he has put his money where his mouth is on fossil fuels.

    A growing movement against the controversial Dakota Access Pipeline has welcomed people from mostly progressive backgrounds to protest the construction site on the grounds that it violates the law governing the preservation of Native American land while also potentially damaging the local water supply and general environment in North Dakota. Despite the ongoing protest and a recommendation from the Department of Justice, the construction has continued as protesters are being rounded up, arrested or charged, amongst them actress Shaileen Woodley, journalist Amy Goodman, and none other than presidential candidate of the Green Party, Jill Stein.

    But one thing many actors in the protest may not know is that they are also protesting against presidential candidate Donald Trump, who owns shares of Energy Transfer Partners (ETP), the operating company behind the construction. To make matters even more compelling for those who may have thought about voting Trump in protest against Clinton, Trump’s campaign in return has received over $100,000 in campaign contributions from ETP’s top executive, Kelcy Warren, who also tossed another $66k to the Republican National Committee.

    The Guardian reports,

    Trump is therefore indirectly linked to Dakota Access, a $3.8bn pipeline development that will funnel oil from North Dakota to Illinois. Trump has signaled his opposition to any restrictions on the development of oil, coal or gas, telling a crowd in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, last week that he would “lift the Obama-Clinton roadblocks to allow these vital energy infrastructure projects to go ahead. We have roadblocks like you’ve never, ever seen – environmental blocks, structural blocks,” he said. “We are going to allow the Keystone pipeline and so many other things to move forwards. Tremendous numbers of jobs and good for our country.”

    Ecuadorian Embassy Gets Surrounded By Police Amidst Twitter DDoS Attack

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    Shortly before a massive DDoS attack against DynDNS, who serves Twitter, Pinterest, Spotify and other large internet services, Wikileaks tweeted that the Ecuadorian embassy was being surrounded by heavily armed police since Tuesday

    Just hours before the massive internet service outage, Wikileaks tweeted a photo of heavily armed police outside the embassy, a photo which was taken Tuesday and presumably still valid today:

    Julian Assange may have asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy, but since Saturday he no longer has the ability to communicate with the outside world via the internet. The move was instructed by the Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa in response to pressure from U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry after a treasure trove of emails from John Podesta, Clinton campaign’s chief official, was leaked over the past month.

    Since our main source of info from Wikileaks was Twitter, details about the development are scarce, but we do know that the DDoS attack targeted a DNS service that works with Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, Shopify, Pinterest and other large websites, so the attack may not be related. However, if the U.S. wanted to silence Wikileaks while they arrested Assange, this would be one way to do it, albeit at the expense of a whole host of services that were not complicit in any Wikileaks events.

    While the cyber attack may cause millions of dollars of lost revenue, if it was carried out by the NSA, or some other U.S. intelligence organization, we all know that something that is “a matter of national security” trumps all other things.

    The Twitter outage comes just hours after the Wikileaks official Twitter account tweeted that they had a surprise in store for Time Kain and Donna Brazile, Hillary’s VP and DNC chairwoman respectively.

    UPDATE: DynDNS service has been restored and Twitter is back up, with a tweet from Wikileaks asking hackers to stop the DDoS for the good of what Wikileaks is trying to do. They also tweeted a somewhat cryptic message regarding U.S. “instruments of state” attempting to silence them:

    Hillary Clinton’s Dirty Plot Against Julian Assange Uncovered By Redditors

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    A Reddit user managed to get to the bottom of the false accusations of pedophilia against Julian Assange and it’s straight from Hillary Clinton’s desk

    A few days ago, the Ecuadoran embassy in London decided to cut off Julian Assange’s internet access for unknown reasons, but rumors quickly spread regarding an allegation that he had been sending naked photos of himself to an 8-year-old girl through a dating site and that he had an open investigation against him by the Royal Bahama Police Force (RBPF) regarding the matter. The claim is absolutely false and, as it turns out, looks to have been fabricated by a contracted company named Premise Data Corporation in San Francisco, according to a very curious reddit user.

    The allegation that Assange was being investigated, and the story that went along with it, broke through Daily Kos, a website where anyone can sign up and post articles related to politics. The article has since been deleted and replaced with a message saying “I’ve deleted the post because the evidence was fabricated.” And, as it turns out, Buzzfeed helped to prove that the allegation was not true when they contacted the RBPF and were told that no investigation exists by its assistant commissioner, Stephen Dean, who also said the RBPF was given information about the case, but that no complainant had ever followed up on it.

    So then, where did this story come from?

    The origin of the story can be traced to Premise Data Corporation, the CEO of which who is a close friend of Hillary Clinton, as redditors discovered. Premise is a global intelligence operation (aka spies) harvesting and harnessing big data, a private corporation based in San Francisco, and whose street address happens to be the same address that dating website Todd and Clare uses.

    Todd and Clare had put out a press release on October 11th claiming Assange had approached them about being the ambassador to their anti-rape campaign promoting their KATIA software in June 2016, but had since used the website to lure an 8-year-old girl into performing sex acts. Following this release, the United Nations Global Compact group, which T&C had recently joined in an effort to promote gender equality internationally, dropped T&C citing misuse of both the UNGC logo and reporting procedure, along with violating UNGC’s Integrity Measures, according to UNGC’s Communications Chief Carrie A. Hall in an article from Buzzfeed today.  T&C had aligned themselves with the United Nations in order to “bluewash” their brand, or use the UN affiliation to boost sales around the world. But now it looks like they had done it to smear Assange’s name.

    Basically, Todd and Clare tried to make it look like the lies they were spreading about Assange came from an official United Nations desk.  But it gets worse.

    In another press release from February 2016, T&C explains how their KATIA system works, and it sounds just like something a government intelligence organization like the NSA would use to find terrorists, complete with facial recognition software and background checks. T&C says they use this technology to weed out sex offenders and get their female customers the best matches possible.

    T&C Network Solutions, the official name of Todd and Clare Hammond’s dating website, may actually be a front organization for Premise. The site claims to have over 40,000 female users, according to their blog, but if you ask anyone you know, nobody has ever even heard of T&C. Since they share the same address and are in the same industry, it wasn’t too far of a stretch to assume there may be something fishy going on, so reddit user sf-78lXQwy_7 decided to look a little deeper. Low and behold, the CEO and founder of Premise, David Soloff, had posted an image of himself with Hillary Clinton back in July this year. Soloff’s linkedin profile is astonishing. A graduate of Columbia University and UC Berkley, Soloff holds a PhD in Economic and Social History and a Bachelors in linguistics, two areas which are perfect for anyone looking to make an impact on the world through intelligence operations.

    On the board of directors page, another name linked to Hillary Clinton shows up, Larry Summers. Summers is a Harvard professor, and former president of the university, who now is next in line to be Treasury Secretary under Clinton’s inevitable presidency, a position he held under her husband’s presidency in the 1990s.

    Another board member for Premise is Antonio Gracias, who also happens to be Hillary’s campaign bundler.  But what’s most obvious to the link between Hillary and the false accusation from T&C is that Larry Summers is Center for American Progress was founded by John Podesta, whose emails had been hacked and are currently being leaked by Wikileaks. (And George Soros funds the Center).

    Further investigation by Assange’s defense team yielded a thorough report of their findings on T&C as a business, saying, “It is our conclusion that T&C Network Solutions exhibits the characteristics of a highly suspicious and likely fabricated business entity.”  They go on to note that no official records exist for T&C Network Solutions, none of the phone numbers associated with the organization were operational, the social media profiles for the company are all followed by zombie accounts (aka fake profiles) to inflate its presence, the first capture on Archive.org for the site is in October 2015, user profile pics on the site were clearly scraped from the web and altered slightly to avoid reverse image searches, the woman listed as the domain’s registrar doesn’t seem to exist in relation to Todd and Clare, and probably the most damning piece of evidence of it all: Todd and Clare themselves don’t seem to exist either.

    Today, Wikileaks has claimed it was Secretary of State John Kerry who pressured Ecuador into cutting off Assange’s internet, to which Kerry hasn’t commented on and other members of the White House have denied.

    A full list of relative sources for uncovering this smear against Assange is below:
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    a00006 – Julian Assange Fake Paedophilia Case Archives – Last Updated 10/19/16 4:49am CST
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    For Researchers – DO NOT CLICK SHADY LINKS ESPECIALLY DISCORD – THIS IS FOXACID – THEY CAN FIND YOUR LOCATION WITH IT

    ARCHIVE and Read the archive instead – [Info from 4chan so take with a grain of salt]
    //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

    > Wikileaks Report – INVESTIGATION: T&C Network Solutions and ToddAndClare.com
    Summary: Shows steps taken to make it seem like ToddAndClare.com to seem like a legitimate company. Acutally a shell for an entity.
    http://archive.is/1fgVJ – Last Updated 10/19/16 12:31am CST

    > 4chan.org /pol/ Proof of collusion connection with PAC or HRC
    Summary: 4chan.org /pol/ report linking T&C to HRC to frame Julian Assange for Paedophilia
    http://archive.is/sVsNF – Last Updated 10/19/16 1:16am CST (thread #1)
    https://archive.is/tJ1Np – Last Updated 10/19/16 4:33am CST (thread #3?)

    > Reddit Research Team posts
    Summary: Research of collusion, with explaination of methodology
    >https://archive.is/YQbcq – Last Updated 10/19/16 1:42am CST
    https://archive.is/MIZnh – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:44am CST
    https://archive.is/TfzuQ – Last Updated 10/19/16 3:23am CST

    > Wikileaks Report – Todd and Clare emails to Julian Assange
    Summary: T&C offered Julian Assange $1,000,000 for a “Commercial” for T&C and other implications
    https://archive.is/UEOj7 – Last Updated 10/19/16 12:31am CST

    > Wikileaks Report – Background and Documents on Attempts to Frame Assange as a Pedophile and Russias spy
    Summary: Summary and timeline of steps taken by 3rd parties, in detail, to frame Julian Assange under false allegations to get him out of hiding.
    https://archive.is/cRlE1 – Last Updated 10/19/16 12:31am CST

    > Physical Location of T&C
    Summary: Physical location T&C is connected as an entity of the Premise Data Corporation. Shows address and map of location.
    http://archive.is/AVxwe – Last Updated 10/19/16 12:34am CST

    > David Soloff’s Twitter page (various connections)
    Summary: Founder of Premise Data Corporation, personal friend of HRC
    http://archive.is/HbvAo – Last Updated 10/19/16 12:38am CST
    https://archive.is/491KD (date of connection) – Last Updated 10/19/16 12:38am CST
    https://archive.is/dEwtl (package from feed) – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:25am CST
    https://archive.is/2MHuq (connection) – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:25am CST

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    > Premise Data Corporation team page
    Summary: Shows founder “David” and his team in connection to PDC
    http://archive.is/3Zz11 – Last Updated 10/19/16 12:38am CST

    > Americanprogress.org profile on Lawrence H. Summers
    Summary: Lawrence is connected to David Soloff and Super PACs linking them to DNC and HRC. Podesta founded the Center for American Progress.
    http://archive.is/a7XP9 – Last Updated 10/19/16 12:40am CST

    > Yamiechess.com, trafficsail.com, and findingmeg.com
    Summary: All connected to T&C servers
    https://archive.is/lHUge – Last Updated 10/19/16 1:14am CST
    https://archive.is/tq9Wd – Last Updated 10/19/16 1:14am CST
    https://archive.is/OfcRt – Last Updated 10/19/16 1:14am CST

    > Wikileaks connection to physical location and plot
    Summary: Tweet and Picture of Building from location of headquarters of the front or PAC behind the allegations or plot
    http://archive.is/Z3q1H – Last Updated 10/19/16 1:29am CST

    > LoopNet plot listing address and location for “10685 Hazelhurst Houston, TX 77043”
    Summary: LoopNet plot listing for Industrial location of headquarters of the front or PAC behind the allegations or plot
    http://archive.is/bwH9k – Last Updated 10/19/16 1:29am CST

    > White House Visitation Records
    Summary: Visitation records of civilians meeting those in the White House. Archival made to preserve incase of tampering.
    http://archive.is/mV6MU

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    > Equador statement
    Summary: This is the “Official” statement by Equador and the reason for cutting Julian’s connection
    https://archive.is/wrQA4 – Last Updated 10/19/16 3:35am CST

    > Datagovus.com – Premise Data Corportation
    Summary: Buisness listing of PDC and its D.B.A. with mailing details and such. Connections include CA and TX address.
    https://archive.is/qJNJq – Last Updated 10/19/16 3:35am CST

    > Noam Chomsky on Date Rape – KATIA PROJECT
    Summary: Connection of Noan Chomsky and T&C with the KATIA Project. Tool connection with T&C.
    https://archive.is/NlRre – Last Updated 10/19/16 3:35am CST

    > LinkedIn – Alexandra Graboski
    Summary: Profile of face for T&C. Connection now to Assistant at McGowan / Rodriguez Management. Location in LA, Ca.
    https://archive.is/fEcxA – Last Updated 10/19/16 3:35am CST

    > Twitter Mobile – David Soloff
    Summary: David threatening control and use drone on civilians. Connections possibly to US GOVT.
    https://archive.fo/7UkQV – Last Updated 10/19/16 3:35am CST

    > United Nations Report on T&C (Right click > View Image)
    Summary: On June 8, 2016, ToddandClare.com was contacted by a representative of Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, stating that due to MIT Professor Noam Chomsky’s support in the KATIA Project, Mr Assange was interested in becoming a #HeForShe Ambassador for KATIA
    https://archive.is/1gm2W – Last Updated 10/19/16 3:35am CST
    https://archive.is/1gm2W/c557e189a83124805824e2bb4a9f05aea8005877.png (direct link to pic) – Last Updated 10/19/16 3:35am CST

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    > Bipartisanreport.com – Smear piece on Julian Assange
    Summary: BR collusion with T&C shadow company with connection to DNC and HRC to Detain Julian Assange on false pretenses.
    https://archive.is/kjeQG – Last Updated 10/19/16 4:49am CST

    > Buzzfeed.com – Smear piece on Julian Assange
    Summary: Buzzfeed collusion with T&C shadow company with connection to DNC and HRC to Detain Julian Assange on false pretenses.
    https://archive.is/bY08w – Last Updated 10/19/16 4:49am CST

    > Lexi Graboski – About Page
    Summary: Background and details in acting/modeling for Lexi (T&C Actress)
    https://archive.is/OGTYq – Last Updated 10/19/16 4:49am CST

    > Various Unsorted Connections, Pictures, And Shared IPs w/ T&C
    Summary: Various archived pictures showing connections and shared IP’s
    https://archive.is/Z39Re – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:29am CST
    https://archive.is/VsiWt – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:29am CST
    https://archive.is/0eo7X – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:29am CST
    http://archive.is/NHJ96 – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:29am CST
    https://archive.is/SgMYc – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:38am CST
    https://archive.is/FhSuN – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:41am CST
    https://archive.is/KcstU – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:43am CST
    https://archive.is/MhMvi – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:43am CST
    https://archive.is/e25WJ – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:43am CST
    https://archive.is/keDw6 – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:48am CST
    https://archive.is/ntkTI – Last Updated 10/19/16 2:57am CST

    http://archive.is/G6XKs
    http://archive.is/LCZvq
    http://archive.is/mvmkl
    http://archive.is/XE37V

    Post – #4 of 4
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