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Biden Admin to Drop Half a Million on Artificial Intelligence That Detects Microaggressions on Social Media

The Biden administration is set to dole out more than $550,000 in grants to develop an artificial intelligence model that can automatically detect and suppress microaggressions on social media, government spending records show.

The award, funded through President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, was granted to researchers at the University of Washington in March to develop technologies that could be used to protect online users from discriminatory language. The researchers have already received $132,000 and expect total government funding to reach $550,436 over the next five years.

The researchers are developing machine-learning models that can analyze social media posts to detect implicit bias and microaggressions, commonly defined as slights that cause offense to members of marginalized groups. It’s a broad category, but past research conducted by the lead researcher on the University of Washington project suggests something as tame as praising meritocracy could be considered a microaggression.

The Biden administration’s funding of the research comes as the White House faces growing accusations that it seeks to suppress free speech online. Biden last month suggested there should be an investigation into Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter after the billionaire declared the social media app would pursue a “free speech” agenda. Internal Twitter communications Musk released this month also revealed a prolonged relationship between the FBI and Twitter employees, with the agency playing a regular role in the platform’s content moderation.

Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton likened the Biden administration’s funding of the artificial intelligence research to the Chinese Communist Party’s efforts to “censor speech unapproved by the state.” For the Biden administration, Fitton said, the research is a “project to make it easier for their leftist allies to censor speech.”

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4 More Arrested for Alleged Role in 2021 Assassination of Haitian President

Four more people were arrested on Tuesday and charged in connection with the 2021 assassination of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse, the Justice Department announced.

Colombian national Arcangel Pretel Ortiz, 50, of Miami; Venezuelan American Antonio Intriago, 59, of Miami; and Walter Veintemilla, 54, of Weston, Florida, face charges that include conspiracy to kill or kidnap a person outside the United States.

Frederick Bergmann, 64, of Tampa, Florida, faces charges for allegedly committing export violations and smuggling ballistic vests.

Ortiz and Intriago are part of Counter Terrorist Unit Federal Academy and Counter Terrorist Unit Security (collectively known as CTU), which is based in South Florida, and Veintemilla is a principal for Worldwide Capital Lending Group, also based in South Florida, according to prosecutors.

The four men worked out of South Florida to plan and finance the plot to oust Moïse either by kidnapping or murdering him, and later replace him with someone who would serve their own political goals and financial interests. The intended replacement was Christian Emmanuel Sanon, 64, a Haitian American dual citizen with political aspirations, prosecutors say.

Prosecutors allege that in April 2021, just three months before Moïse was shot 12 times at his private home, Ortiz, Intriago, John, Solages, and Sanon met in South Florida and agreed to a plan in which Sanon would become president and would award lucrative contracts to CTU for infrastructure projects in Haiti.

Additionally, Sanon would also award them with the provision of security forces and military equipment, federal prosecutors say.

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Scientists Looking to Scatter Moon Dust Around Earth to Combat ‘Climate Change’

A group of scientists has proposed creating a shield made of moon dust positioned between the Earth and the sun as a way to lower the planet’s temperature in a bid to combat “climate change,” a plan that could have devastating consequences.

In a Feb. 8 study published in the journal PLOS, three researchers from the University of Utah proposed their moon dust shield idea while calling climate change an “existential threat.” Large quantities of moon dust between the Earth and the sun can “reduce the amount of sunlight received on our planet,” they claimed while estimating that billions of kilograms of moon dust will be needed annually to maintain the shield. “Because dust grains between Earth and the Sun tend to drift out of alignment, they must be replenished,” the study said.

The “most promising” scenario for creating the shield involves mining lunar dust and ballistically blasting it from the moon on a trajectory toward the Earth-sun L1 Lagrange point, a gravitationally stable point located 900,000 miles from Earth.

The plan is estimated to potentially lower sunlight by 1.8 percent or around six days of sunlight per year, thereby lowering the Earth’s temperature.

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Canada Deploys Air Force to Search for Downed Object’s Debris in ‘Complex Alpine Terrain’

Canada’s Royal Air Force has deployed multiple aircraft to search for debris from an object that was shot down over the Yukon Territory on Feb. 11, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand has said.

A CC-130H Hercules, two CC-138 Twin Otters, a CH-148 Cyclone, and a CH-149 Cormorant aircraft were deployed by the Royal Canadian Air Force to help recover the debris, Anand said on Twitter on Monday.

“Additional support is being provided from units forward deployed to Whitehorse, and Dawson City, Yukon Territory,” she said. “The debris is located in a remote location northeast of Dawson City, in complex alpine terrain that is prone to challenging northern weather conditions.”

Dawson city is a small town about 40 miles east of Canada’s border with Alaska.

Anand told CNN earlier in the day that the object was “cylindrical” and “smaller” than the “object shot down over the United States East Coast” the day before, citing “visuals” she and other officials have seen.

“But it would be imprudent for me to speculate at this time until we gather the debris and until we do the analysis. The FBI is involved in that analysis as is the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) here in Canada,” the minister added.

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John Podesta: The Trilateral Commission Link To UFO/Alien Mania?

All of a sudden, UFO mania is sweeping America after the shootdown of some unknown object in Alaska. NORAD says it doesn’t rule out aliens. Washington creates a UFO Task Force to investigate if it was aliens. A top 4-star general in charge of US airspace says he isn’t ruling out aliens. Well, this was unexpected, wasn’t it? Not really.

This writer was watching closely when Trilateral Commission member John Podesta left the Obama Administration in 2015 where he served as Counselor to the President. He is currently Senior Advisor to President Joe Biden for clean-energy innovation and implementation; that is, he is in charge of doling out all Green New Deal spending in the United States. Actually, Podesta is credited as being the chief architect of the entire US climate policy starting way back when he served as President Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff.

When Podesta exited his stint with Obama in early 2015, Washington Post carried a story, Obama aide John Podesta says ‘biggest failure’ was not securing the disclosure of UFO files. I listened to the interview and heard him say this with his own mouth.

What? The architect of all climate policy and the creator of the Green New Deal policies is worried about UFOs and aliens and having not released the UFO files from places like Area 51 in New Mexico?

This struck me as being completely out of context, out of nowhere. I have scratched my head ever since… until now: The UFO/Alien card is finally being played.

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Google project is running “prebunking experiment” on social media

Who better than Google to “uphold technology as a force for good” – all joking aside, but that is exactly how the tech behemoth presents Jigsaw, its unit that “explores threats to open societies, and builds technology that inspires scalable solutions.”

According to a blog post, the latest such solution is “the largest prebunking experiment on social media to date” launched in September, with the goal of “countering the threat of disinformation.” Speaking of jigsaws – this also appears to be a piece in the puzzle that is the fierce “war on disinformation” that is being waged by Big Tech and traditional media.

“Prebunking” could be described as “precrime’s little cousin” – it means debunking what is deemed to be lies, tactics or sources before they happen/can act. Developing effective ways to do this can be a force for good – or evil, and so given its track record with censorship, Google (via Jigsaw) conducting this kind of experiment is sure to raise a few eyebrows.

Perhaps to make the whole thing more palatable, Jigsaw tied this effort to an actual war – that in Ukraine – and explains the need to test “prebunking” techniques as a way to protect refugees.

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Rail Companies Blocked Safety Rules Before Ohio Derailment

Before this weekend’s fiery Norfolk Southern train derailment prompted emergency evacuations in Ohio, the company helped kill a federal safety rule aimed at upgrading the rail industry’s Civil War-era braking systems, according to documents reviewed by The Lever.

Though the company’s 150-car train in Ohio reportedly burst into 100-foot flames upon derailing — and was transporting materials that triggered a fireball when they were released and incinerated — it was not being regulated as a “high-hazard flammable train,” federal officials told The Lever.

Documents show that when current transportation safety rules were first created, a federal agency sided with industry lobbyists and limited regulations governing the transport of hazardous compounds. The decision effectively exempted many trains hauling dangerous materials — including the one in Ohio — from the “high-hazard” classification and its more stringent safety requirements.

Amid the lobbying blitz against stronger transportation safety regulations, Norfolk Southern paid executives millions and spent billions on stock buybacks — all while the company shed thousands of employees despite warnings that understaffing is intensifying safety risks. Norfolk Southern officials also fought off a shareholder initiative that could have required company executives to “assess, review, and mitigate risks of hazardous material transportation.”

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Lawmakers Propose ‘Dream Act,’ Amnesty for 1.9 Million Illegal Immigrants

Two senators have introduced the Dream Act of 2023 seeking to provide legal status to illegal immigrants who were brought into the United States as children—a move that would provide lawful permanent residence to almost 2 million people.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, have introduced the same legislation in the last three sessions of Congress, but it failed each time.

In June 2012, the Obama administration implemented the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which seeks to protect “Dreamers,” illegal immigrants who came to America when they were children. The Dream Act of 2023 would allow roughly 1.9 million people to receive legal status to live and work in the United States.

This number includes about 600,000 current DACA applicants. Graham suggested that strict immigration reforms must be implemented for the Dream Act to become a reality.

“While I continue to support relief for Dreamers, I hope my Democratic colleagues understand we must repair a broken border and address a tsunami of illegal immigration before that is remotely possible,” Graham said in a statement Friday.

“The Dreamers represent a class of illegal immigrants that have much public support because they were minors brought here by their parents and America has become their home,” Graham said. “To provide relief to this population, we must first convince Americans that the unending wave of illegal immigration will stop.”

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Derailed train spills about 2,000 gallons of diesel near Yaquina River

A train derailment at the Georgia-Pacific Mill in Toledo, Ore. spilled about 2,000 gallons of diesel Friday and state officials said some of it entered a slough that feeds into the Yaquina River. 

The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality responded to the emergency Friday. Officials said some of the spilled diesel may have entered a storm drain that flows into the nearby Depot Slough, which feeds into the Yaquina River.

The Oregon DEQ does not know how much fuel entered the storm drain or how much was absorbed into the ground near the spill site. 

“This is a difficult number to calculate because there is no easy [way] to measure how much fuel is in soil or how much fuel was recovered from the stormwater system versus how much made it beyond the containment measures,” Oregon DEQ spokesperson Dylan Darling explained. 

On Friday, crews placed a barrier in the slough to prevent the fuel from spreading. They also used an oil-absorbing boom and other absorbent materials within the barrier and around the spill site to prevent additional fuel from spreading. 

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Inside the Scandal That Took Down the DEA’s ‘Cowboy’ Chief in Mexico

Relations between the U.S. and Mexico were extremely tense when the DEA’s top boss in Mexico City decided to throw himself a birthday party. It was late October of 2020, and Mexico’s president was furious over the DEA’s arrest of a top military general accused of cartel corruption. But at the fiesta, the mood was jovial. There was drinking and food and a mariachi band to entertain the guests.

The attendees included several high-ranking Mexican officials, along with a few bigwigs from other U.S. law enforcement agencies. At least one person left wondering how the host, who was celebrating his 50th birthday, managed to score a taxpayer-funded house so large and outside the zones typically authorized for housing for senior U.S. officials in Mexico City. One person described the house as a “mega-mansion.”

The party was one of several events that contributed to the downfall of regional director Nick Palmeri, who quietly retired from the DEA last year one day before he was due to be fired. Parts of his undoing, including allegedly improper meetings with defense attorneys who represent cartel members, have recently been made public. But there’s far more to the story, including bitter infighting at the highest levels of the DEA, allegedly

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