Oversight Board tells Meta to stop complying with police requests to censor rap music

Meta’s Oversight Board said that Meta should not have complied with a request from London’s Metropolitan Police to ban a drill music track. Drill music is a rap genre that politicians and law enforcement agencies have associated with gang violence.

In January, rapper Chinx (OS) posted a video of his song “Secrets Not Safe.” Shortly after posting the song on Instagram, Meta received an email from the police requesting the removal of the song. Meta escalated the case to a team for special consideration, and ruled that it violated its policies because it referenced a shooting that took place in 2017 and included what police believed to be a “threatening call to action.”

After the song was removed, Chinx appealed and had it reinstated by a moderator who was not part of the special consideration team. The decision was overruled and the song got banned again after a week, again following a request by the police.

The board questioned whether Meta considered the context, or simply compiled because it was a request from the police.

“Not every piece of content that law enforcement would prefer to have taken down — and not even every piece of content that has the potential to lead to escalating violence — should be taken down,” the board wrote in its decision.

Social media platforms are less transparent about informal requests like the email from the Met.

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Colorado club shooting suspect is nonbinary, attorneys say

The public defenders for the suspect in the mass shooting at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub said in a Tuesday night court filing obtained by a New York Times reporter that their client is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.

The big picture: The suspect, Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, is facing multiple murder and hate crime charges over the shooting at Club Q last weekend that killed five people, per Max D’Onofrio, a city spokesperson.

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Vaccinated people now make up a majority of covid deaths

For the first time, a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine.

Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

It’s a continuation of a troubling trend that has emerged over the past year. As vaccination rates have increased and new variants appeared, the share of deaths of people who were vaccinated has been steadily rising. In September 2021, vaccinated people made up just 23 percent of coronavirus fatalities. In January and February this year, it was up to 42 percent, per our colleagues Fenit Nirappil and Dan Keating.

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Cox told The Health 202.

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Killing By Drone: Hunting Enemies In Urban Combat

A new drone from Israel’s Elbit Systems called Lanius combines a number of technologies that put it at the forefront of how drones are transforming war.

At the same time, reports about the drone may raise questions about how this technology may make war more controversial as “robots” play a larger role in it.

The more armies and defense companies invest in new technology that enables combat to take place remotely — without soldiers interacting with civilians, for instance — the more it seems like “robot wars.”

Elbit Systems has said that Lanius is “part of the Legion-X robotic and autonomous combat solution.” Elbit is one of Israel’s three largest defense companies and is at the forefront of defense technology.

Its website says the drone “is a highly maneuverable and versatile drone-based loitering munition designed for short-range operation in the urban environment.”

The drone can scout and map buildings, flying around small corridors and through doorways. This means it can help a user find “points of interest for possible threats, detecting, classifying and syncing to Elbit Systems’ Legion-X solutions. Lanius can carry lethal or non-lethal payloads, capable of performing a broad spectrum of mission profiles for special forces, military, law enforcement, and HLS.”

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NBC ‘journalist’ claims reporting on the sexualization of children is ‘anti-LGBTQ’

The liberal about-face on free speech and the free press has been nothing short of astonishing. Those who once declared that freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and freedom of religion were paramount values to America, now routinely seek to silence conversations about ideas that they don’t agree with. And the way they do it is insidious, even as they believe, fully, that they are doing the moral and just thing by silencing other journalists and their ideas.

Libs of TikTok has been accused of violence for exposing teachers, authority figures, and activists in their own terms. Account holder Chaya Raichik has been said to incite terrorism for sharing marketing materials for things like drag queen story hour. Matt Walsh has been said to incite violence by asking “what is a woman?” A question that no one on the left wants to answer because they are more concerned with placating males who present as females than with recognizing the reality of biological sex.

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First Trans Representative in New Hampshire Arrested After Stalking Woman, Violating Restraining Order

The first openly transgender person elected to public office in New Hampshire has been jailed on charges related to stalking a victim who had a protective order against him. Stacie Laughton’s arrest comes just days after he was re-elected to the New Hampshire House as a Democrat.

Laughton, born Barry Charles Laughton Jr., was arrested on November 12 after his most recent violation of a stalking order that had been placed against him by an unidentified woman in his community in July. Laughton, 38, had contacted the victim over social media.

According to the Hudson Police Department, this is not the first time Laughton has violated his restraining order. In August, Laughton had similarly attempted to make contact with the victim, and was arrested in September for the violation. He was released from custody shortly after.

There was virtually no media coverage of his September arrest, which likely meant voters were unaware of it ahead of the November 8 elections, during which Laughton ran for re-election as a Libertarian Democrat candidate in Nashua’s 4th Ward.

Laughton placed second out of four candidates, securing him a seat in the House of Representatives. New Hampshire has the largest state House in the country with 400 representatives, and all three top finishers in the race took seats.

In addition to his recent stalking order violations, Laughton is on bail for a 2021 arrest in which he was charged with misusing the Nashua 911 emergency system.

Between May and July 2021, he sent seven texts to Nashua 911, prompting police officers to respond to his address. On each occasion, they determined there was no emergency. At the time, Laughton denied sending the texts and claimed that he was being “spoofed” by an unknown perpetrator.

He also complained that media coverage of the arrest was making him look bad.

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HHS Report Recommends Government ‘Encourage or Mandate’ Masking to Fight Coronavirus

A report from the Health and Human Services (HHS) Department is recommending that government officials “encourage or mandate” masking to fight against “long COVID,” conveniently after the completion of the midterm elections.

The HHS report details policies to combat the Chinese coronavirus, which has now been around for almost three years. One of the recommendations includes the reintroduction of masking, contending that it will assist those suffering from lingering effects from their infection.

“The lifting of mask mandates and indifferent attitude toward masking and social distancing typical in many public and private places further isolates people with Long COVID,” the report stated, recommending those in government “encourage or mandate policies and protocols regarding masking and social distancing in public spaces.”

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Massachusetts Taxpayers Asked to Pay $139M to House More Illegal Aliens

Massachusetts taxpayers are being asked to foot a $139 million bill that would “expand emergency shelter capacity” for border crossers and illegal aliens arriving in the state.

Just as Massachusetts residents are starting to see housing prices cool off, Gov. Charlie Baker (R) is asking for $139 million to hugely increase shelter space for border crossers and illegal aliens increasingly arriving in the state with little-to-no means.

“Massachusetts’ emergency shelter system provides support for thousands of families each year, but a recent uptick in new migrant arrivals, coupled with a strained housing market have led to a need for greater capacity across the system,” Baker said in a statement:

These expanded resources will help us quickly and effectively address this humanitarian crisis, especially as we enter the winter months. We look forward to working with our partners in the legislature, the nonprofit community and local government as we all address this unprecedented challenge, which is unfortunately driven by the federal government’s inability to address our country’s immigration challenges. [Emphasis added]

The millions in new taxpayer funds would go to expand the capacity of the state’s shelter system, where many border crossers and illegal aliens are ending up, by adding 1,300 additional units and an initial intake center.

Nearly $40 million of the total amount would fund resources needed to place newly arrived foreign students in Massachusetts public schools.

For months, officials in a number of Massachusetts towns said they have been blindsided by the arrival of hundreds of border crossers and illegal aliens who have been subsequently placed in hotel rooms.

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Do These Documents Prove That Call Of Duty Is A Government PsyOp?

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II has been available for less than three weeks, but it is already making waves. Breaking records, within ten days, the first-person military shooter video game earned more than $1 billion in revenue. Yet it has also been shrouded in controversy, not least because missions include assassinating an Iranian general clearly based on Qassem Soleimani, a statesman and military leader slain by the Trump administration in 2020, and a level where players must shoot “drug traffickers” attempting to cross the U.S./Mexico border.

The Call of Duty franchise is an entertainment juggernaut, having sold close to half a billion games since it was launched in 2003. Its publisher, Activision Blizzard, is a giant in the industry, behind titles games as the Guitar Hero, Warcraft, Starcraft, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, Crash Bandicoot and Candy Crush Saga series.

Yet a closer inspection of Activision Blizzard’s key staff and their connections to state power, as well as details gleaned from documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, reveal that Call of Duty is not a neutral first-person shooter, but a carefully constructed piece of military propaganda, designed to advance the interests of the U.S. national security state.

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