Tuesday, January 26, 2021


UK in danger of becoming 'failed state' if 'massive inequalities' not addressed

What utter tripe. Britain has always had massive inequality, including during the glory days of its empire

The United Kingdom is in danger of becoming a "failed state", Gordon Brown has warned, with people in some parts treated like "second class citizens".

The former prime minister told Sky News the COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp focus the "massive inequalities" between the different parts of the union that need to be addressed.

And he hit out at the Scottish National Party's push for a second referendum on Scottish independence, saying now is not the time for a "divisive" vote.

"I want a reformed state, not a failed state," Mr Brown said, explaining his call for reform.

He continued: "There is dissatisfaction, not just in Scotland, but right round the regions and in Wales and Northern Ireland.

"People don't feel that over the virus, over the lockdown, over the quarantines, over the business support...people in the regions don't feel they're being properly consulted or listened to.

Mr Brown, who was PM from 2007 to 2010, said "trust is breaking down in Boris Johnson" and there should be a review of the UK's constitutional settlement to see what is working and what is not.

He said the goal should be to "repair relations between all the different parts of the United Kingdom and have a more inclusive United Kingdom in future".

"There are massive inequalities between the regions - they've got to be addressed," Mr Brown added.

"The government admits it when they talk about levelling up. But that will need new powers of economic initiative - in Manchester, Liverpool, Newcastle, Bristol and so on.

"I think we've got to consider this, as well as considering the future of Scotland and Wales."

But he added that simply devolving more powers away from Westminster would not be enough.

Urging the government to "rebuild the relationships between the centre and the outlying communities", Mr Brown said the House of Lords should be reformed to offer representation for the UK's nations and regions.

And he urged the PM to forcefully make the case for the Union.

"We've got to show that what we provide as a United Kingdom is to the benefit of all parts of the United Kingdom and I don't think the government is doing that at the moment."

Twitter launches fact-checking program called Birdwatch where ANY member can flag a tweet they think is misleading or inaccurate

Twitter has unveiled a feature aimed at bolstering its efforts to combat misinformation by permitting users to add fact-check notes to tweets they believe are false in - but critics say it will target legitimate commentary and enable users 'to take down anything they don't agree with'.

The pilot program unveiled Monday, called Birdwatch, adopts a Wikipedia-like ‘community-driven’ approach to fact-checking, and will first be rolled out as a standalone section of Twitter, for a small, pre-selected set of US-based users.

It will allow regular users, called ‘Birdwatchers’, to identify tweets they think contain inaccuracies or false information and write notes on those tweets to provide ‘informative context’.

Under Birdwatch, no account or tweet is exempt from annotation, meaning users will be able to add ‘context’ to tweets posted by news outlets, reporters and elected officials.

In a press release Monday, Twitter Vice President of Product Keith Coleman said: ‘We believe this approach has the potential to respond quickly when misleading information spreads, adding context that people trust and find valuable.’

However, critics of the new feature have been quick to point out the risk that such a system could be abused to target legitimate commentary.

‘So basically a group of ideologically aligned people can get on here [and] take down anything they don’t agree with,’ Twitter user wrote Ryan Ashe.

Twitter did not specify whether users would face any disciplinary measures - such as posts being removed or accounts being banned - for either those whose tweets are frequently annotated, or those who repeatedly annotate posts in bad faith.

It did say, however, that it wants both experts and non-experts to write Birdwatch notes. It cited Wikipedia as a site that thrives with non-expert contributions.

Birdwatch will allow users, called 'Birdwatchers,' to identify tweets they think have misinformation and write notes to provide 'informational context', which is similar to Wikipedia.

Anyone can apply to be a Birdwatcher, and the only requirements are a valid phone number, email and no recent violations of Twitter’s rules. Birdwatch notes will appear beneath a tweet.

No account or tweet is exempt from annotation, meaning users will be able to add ‘context’ to tweets posted by news outlets, reporters and elected officials.

To prevent people using the service in bad faith, Birdwatcher will be able to rate the effectiveness of each note, impacting its ranking.

The program is currently a pilot, and is only available via a separate website to a select number of users.

During the pilot, Twitter said it wants to focus on making Birdwatch ‘resistant to manipulation attempts and ensure 'it isn’t dominated by a simple majority or biased based on its distribution of contributors.’

Twitter did not specify whether users would face any disciplinary measures for either those whose tweets are frequently annotated, or those who repeatedly annotate posts in bad faith.

‘In concept testing, we’ve seen non-experts write concise, helpful and easy-to-understand notes, often citing valuable expert sources,’ the company wrote in a blog post.

Twitter, along with other social media companies, has been grappling how best to combat misinformation on its service. Despite tightened rules and enforcement, falsehoods about the 2020 election and the coronavirus continue to spread.

During Birdwatch's piloting stage, the San Francisco-based company said it want to focus on making the service ‘resistant to manipulation attempts and ensure it isn’t dominated by a simple majority or biased based on its distribution of contributors.’

To help weed out unhelpful or troll-created notes, for instance, Twitter said it plans to attach a ‘helpfulness score’ to each one and will label helpful ones ‘currently rated helpful.’

The company said Birdwatch will not replace other labels and fact checks Twitter currently uses — primarily for election and COVID-19-related misinformation and misleading posts.

The program will start with 1,000 users and eventually expand beyond the US.

‘If we have more applicants than pilot slots, we will randomly admit accounts, prioritizing accounts that tend to follow and engage with different audiences and content than those of existing participants,’ Twitter wrote.

The program is currently only available via separate website, but Twitter says it hopes to eventually expand Birdwatch to appear for all users on its native site.

‘These notes are being intentionally kept separate from Twitter for now, while we build Birdwatch and gain confidence that it produces context people find helpful and appropriate,’ Coleman said.

‘Additionally, notes will not have an effect on the way people see Tweets or our system recommendations.

‘Eventually we aim to make notes visible directly on Tweets for the global Twitter audience, when there is consensus from a broad and diverse set of contributors.’

Speaking to Fox News, Twitter said that Birdwatch is not a ‘true or false tool’, or a ‘fact checking’ feature, but instead a way of adding context to posts.

Participants will be able to annotate any tweet once. They will have the option to cite source material in their annotation, including from news outlets.

This means users can annotate one news outlet’s tweets by citing other news outlet’s tweets.

The company said while it acknowledges the pilot might be ‘messy and have problems at times’, they believe ‘this is a model worth trying.’

‘We know there are a number of challenges toward building a community-driven system like this,’ Coleman said, referencing any potential bad actors. ‘We will be focusing on these things throughout the pilot.’

Twitter's staff software engineer Jonah Grant said Birdwatchers, upon signing up will learn of the tool’s ‘values’, which are to ‘contribute to build understanding, act in good faith, and to be helpful, even to those who disagree.’

‘We want people to write for a different audience than they do on Twitter,’ Grant clarified. ‘We want people to be helpful, even for those who disagree.’

Coleman concurred, adding that on a Twitter, a user’s audience is their followers, which are ‘typically people who agree with you’.

‘Birdwatch is a different mindset,’ he told Fox, adding that a user is ‘contributing to everyone … [including those] who may not share the same perspective.’

Twitter has taken a more aggressive approach to misinformation on its platform in recent months. Aside from removal, it has relied on labeling, or adding context below tweets that spread misinformation.

In March, amid a spread of misinformation at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, Twitter began removing ‘misleading and potentially harmful content’ about COVID.

Two months later, it introduced labels to attach to tweets containing unfounded conspiracies about the origins of the virus and fake cures.

In the final two weeks before the election, Twitter said it labelled some 300,000 tweets for ‘disputed and potentially misleading’ content.

It then took the unprecedented step to permanently suspend former President Donald Trump from the platform, after the company said he violated their policies in relations to the Capitol riots.

The move provoked the ire of some who claimed conservative speech was being censored by the tech giant.

Similar criticisms were reignited on Monday, amid concerns Birdwatch could be abused to target legitimate commentary from a minority view.

Talk show host Dana Loesch was among those voicing such a concern. ‘Let’s be real: Birdwatch will be mainly progressives gaslighting center and right-of-center stores,’ she tweeted Monday afternoon.

One follower agreed, writing of Twitter: ‘Today we’re introducing @Birdwatch, a community-driven approach to censoring anything that doesn't support the left woke narrative.’

Others came out to push back against the concerns, with one user writing: ‘Fact-checking isn't taking something down. I don't understand why people are actually opposed to facts.’

In response, a user hit-back: ‘If they appointed Sean Hannity to pick the gatekeepers, you'd see the problem. The leftist editors who already infest Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia etc. constantly censor facts, including some they admitted were true after the election. That's the point, in fact.’

Denmark sets a target of ZERO asylum seeker applications to protect 'social cohesion'

A more effective policy would be to ban all Muslims from applying. With their supremacist religion, they are largely unassimilable.

Denmark's prime minister today set a target to drive down the country's asylum seeker applications to zero to protect 'social cohesion'.

The country is already seeing the lowest number of asylum seekers since 1998, with 1,547 people applying in 2020. By comparison, applications in the UK were 32,423 last year.

'We cannot promise zero asylum seekers, but we can set up that vision,' Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said in parliament.

'We need to be careful that not too many people come to our country, otherwise our social cohesion cannot exist.'

The low number of applications last year can be partly explained by the Covid-19 pandemic but it is less than a tenth of the figure in 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis in Europe.

Denmark's figure of 21,300 applications in 2015 was only about an eighth of the number in neighbouring Sweden.

Denmark, a country of 5.8 million inhabitants, makes no secret of its desire to discourage people from seeking refuge.

Immigration Minister Mattias Tesfaye said yesterday the country's strict immigration policies were to be thanked for the low number of applications.

'Very many of those who come here have no need at all for protection,' he also claimed in the statement.

Among the country's strict policies was the planned deportations of Syrian refugees announced in 2019.

After an assessment by the Danish Immigration Service, the government ruled that some migrants could be sent back to Damascus. They concluded the capital, and its surrounds, were no longer dangerous enough for asylum to be automatically granted.

Asylum was rescinded for some Syrian refugees. Deportations, however, were limited due to a reluctance on the part of the Danish government to negotiate with the Assad regime.

Tesfaye said that similar repatriation difficulties for refused asylum seekers made it all-the-more important to curb the number of arrivals.

'Fewer asylum seekers means, all other things being equal, lower spending on processing applications, accommodation and deportation of those whose claims for asylum are rejected.

'We can spend that money on more welfare at home and on persecuted people in local regions [near to conflict zones, ed.],' he said.

In 2017, as leader of the Social Democrats Frederiksen presented a plan to send all 'non-Western' migrants back to so-called reception centres in North Africa and the Middle East.

In September, Copenhagen appointed an ambassador for migration to speed up the creation of one or more migrant camps outside the European Union as part a new European asylum system.

The figures announced yesterday aren't a true reflection of the actual number of asylum seekers to arrive in Denmark. They include individuals who travelled without asylum and some who were approved, for reasons including family reunification.

President Biden Signs Executive Order Prioritizing 'Gender Identity' Over Biology

President Biden signed a host of executive orders on Wednesday, including one that takes aim at gender and sex-based discrimination. The newly-minted president said that his administration hopes to ensure that Americans receive “equal treatment under the law” without gender or sexual orientation as a factor.

The order goes hand-in-hand with a Supreme Court ruling from June of 2020 in Bostock v. Clayton County, in which the the high court held that workplace discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation is a violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

“All persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation,” Biden wrote on Wednesday. “These principles are reflected in the Constitution, which promises equal protection of the laws. These principles are also enshrined in our Nation’s anti-discrimination laws, among them Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as amended (42 U.S.C. 2000e et seq.). In Bostock v. Clayton County, 590 U.S. ___ (2020), the Supreme Court held that Title VII’s prohibition on discrimination ‘because of . . . sex’ covers discrimination on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation.”

The president’s order would allow subjective gender identity to take priority in schools, and the administration said that children should not be concerned about “being denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.” In turn, the order would allow biological males to compete with biological females, for the sake of gender identity.

In his quest for "unity" Biden is expected to sign even more executive orders during the first days of his administration.

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