China Know More About You than Apple, Biden Repeat Nixon's War Crimes?, Street Racing is Killing Civilian Bystanders, Murder of Chicago Cop (And New Mom) Was Easily Avoidable (The Five for 08/10/21)
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Be warned, it’s a heavy one…but I don’t pick the news, just report it.
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Let’s dive in.
—UPDATE—
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has resigned, according to breaking911.com, a source I’ve found to be consistent and reliable.
Given that this news is still developing less than an hour from the publication time for The Five, there isn’t adequate time for research/coverage here.
[one]
Controversy swirled yesterday online when Apple announced a move to scan images on iPhones for child pornography before the images are uploaded to iCloud. In other words, Apple’s algorithm is scanning the device in your pocket, not just the files in cyberspace.
Apple defended its new system that will scan iCloud for illegal child sexual abuse materials, or CSAM, on Monday amid a controversy over whether the system reduces Apple user privacy and could be used by governments to surveil citizens.
Last week, Apple announced it has started testing a system that uses sophisticated cryptography to identify when users upload collections of known child pornography to its cloud storage service. It said it can do this without learning about the contents of a user’s photos stored on its servers.
Apple reiterated on Monday that its system is more private than those used by companies such as Google and Microsoft because its system uses both its servers and software that will be installed on people’s iPhones through an iOS update.
Privacy advocates and technology commentators are worried Apple’s new system could be expanded in some countries through new laws to check for other types of images, such as photos with political content.
While this is concerning, there’s also a public good here. In the short term, I don’t see this as one of the biggest issues facing consumer privacy, especially when compared to a new Senate report.
Matthew Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser for the Trump administration, sounded the alarm about Beijing’s perusal of data during the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing.
“Assembling dossiers on people has always been a feature of Leninist regimes but Beijing’s penetration of digital networks worldwide has taken this to a new level,” Pottinger told the panel Wednesday.
“The party compiles dossiers on millions of foreign citizens around the world, using the material it gathers to influence and intimidate, reward and blackmail, flatter and humiliate, divide and conquer.
“Beijing has stolen sensitive data sufficient to build a dossier on every American adult — and on many of our children too.”
China is exploiting US social media platforms, Pottinger said, and using them to spread propaganda.
Pottinger pointed out that much of the tech development in China is funded with American dollars, including facial recognition and data mining that can be used to spy on American citizens.
Compared to that news, I can’t muster more than a mild shrug for Apple’s new scanning policy. While there are some ethical questions, worrying about what’s happening with your iPhone in light of China’s digital aggression would be like staying up at night worrying about street pickpockets in 1943, when Nazi Germany was on the brink of overrunning England.
[two]
Unless you’ve been in a complete news blackout this week, you likely know of the death of 29-year-old Elle French, a Chicago Police Officer who had just returned to active duty from maternity leave.
Turns out, the murder only happened because the alleged cop killers were given lenient parole for recent violent felonies.
The two tattooed brothers arrested in the fatal shooting of a Chicago cop are both felons — with the 21-year-old alleged shooter on probation for felony robbery and his sibling for theft.
Emonte Morgan was busted on a charge of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Officer Ella French on Saturday night. His 22-year-old brother Eric Morgan was charged with unlawful use of a weapon by a felon and obstruction of justice.
The alleged shooter also pleaded guilty to robbing a man in the Windy City in August 2019, CWB Chicago reported.
He had arranged to meet the 36-year-old victim to buy his $900 iPhone, but when the two men met, Morgan snatched the phone and fled, according to the report.
The victim chased Morgan down and tackled him in a nearby parking lot, where the robber began punching him, prompting the man to defend himself, the news outlet reported.
Morgan — who was charged with felony robbery and misdemeanor battery — pleaded guilty to one count of robbery on Nov. 25, 2020, in exchange for a sentence of two years of probation, CWB reported, citing court records.
On May 18, prosecutors filed a motion for violation of probation, but the reason for the filing is not included in court records, according to the report.
Observations:
More lenient parole trends have become more popular as a result of prosecutors over-indicting the accused in order to strike more plea bargains, to avoid the hassle of a trial. For an example of this, see NY defense attorney Toni Messina’s account of defending a client who was charged with attempted murder as an unarmed witness to a shooting.
Public outcry is emotional, has no room for nuance, and demands big changes. The anger at injustice was real and righteous, in many cases, but has now just led to…a different kind of injustice. The pendulum has swung so far the other way that we have violent felons free to walk the streets and (allegedly) murder a new mom rather than accept the ticket for a minor traffic violation (expired sticker).
One element of this story that no one is talking about is that the city of Chicago is a huge loser here. While Chicago has a strong base of jobs in the financial, business and blue collar sectors, tourist dollars do play a huge role in the city’s tax base and serve as a lifeblood for many small businesses. Do you think the mounting violence will attract, or repel, tourists in the near future?
So much of our day-to-day lives are affected by local government, which most Americans ignore. These “boring” issues at city and county council meetings, filter down into how crimes are handled by local prosecutors. And when the prosecutors mess up? A brave public servant lays bleeding out on the street, and a three month old infant cries for the mother who will never hold her again.
[three]
American servicemen push a helicopter into the ocean, to allow more to land, during the fall of Saigon. Not pictured: the 7.5 million South Vietnamese who died at the hands of their Communist overlords after this day, many for helping Americans.
The deadline is looming to remove Afghani aids who aided U.S. troops before American forces withdraw from the country on September 11, 2021.
The Biden administration hatched an eleventh-hour plan, known as Operation Allies Refuge, to evacuate thousands of Afghan interpreters as well as other employees of the US government or allied forces, and their families. An initial group of about 2,500 started arriving at Fort Lee in northern Virginia on July 30.
They’re coming to the US on a Special Immigrant Visa (SIV), more than 73,000 of which have already been issued to Afghans in the last 13 years. The House recently voted on an overwhelmingly bipartisan basis to make 8,000 more of those visas available, and to make it easier to apply for the program.
The Biden administration is also pursuing agreements with other countries to allow eligible Afghans to relocate to safety while the US finishes processing their applications. And the administration has opened up a new pathway for Afghans (and their families) who have worked for a US government-funded program, US-based media, or non-governmental organizations, but who don’t meet the narrow requirements for the SIV program, to come to the US as refugees.
“Those who helped us are not going to be left behind,” Biden told reporters at the White House last month.
But in practice, those efforts may not be enough to protect all of the Afghans who helped the US government. There are more than 18,000 applicants for the SIV program waiting for processing, and thousands more who may have worked with the US government but aren’t eligible for the program. If they live in the outer provinces of Afghanistan, they might not be able to reach Kabul, where the US is carrying out evacuations for SIVs, let alone another country where they can apply for refugee status.
Afghanistan has been compared to Vietnam, an analogy that’s especially on point when comparing the near certainty that allies will be left behind in Afghanistan to the U.S. government’s abandonment of the South Vietnamese who aided and fought alongside American troops, which resulted in as many as 7.5 million deaths after the fall of Saigon.
The most brutal losses were taken by the tribal Hmong people, an ethnic group who lost 1/4 of all men and boys fighting in the war and the persecution that followed.
While we leave loyal Afghans to die, more than one million immigrants have crossed the southern border in 2021, dwarfing the 18,000 Afghani applicants who want to flee near certain death when the Chinese-backed Taliban retakes the country.
Part of my family fled to America due to the fall of Saigon, when the poverty, ethnic cleansing and mass murder that always follow Communism swept into Laos and Cambodia.
When I think of the Afghanis we’re leaving to be thrown from buildings by Afghan forces, I see the faces of my own neighbors and cousins growing up, and wonder how so many who decry deporting Hispanic immigrants with no claim to be here care so little for the Arab lives who have earned a spot in America through bravery and service.
This week, Barack Obama trended on Twitter for his 60th birthday party, which brought back the controversial statement from his pastor, Chicago Reverend Jeremiah Wright:
”It’s not God bless America, it’s God damn America.”
That’s a statement and sentiment I’ve never related to, and couldn’t relate to when the controversial video hit the news cycle in the 2008 election.
But today, I’m pretty damned close to repeating it myself.
Richard Nixon was a war criminal for abandoning our South Vietnamese allies,
Joe Biden will be a war criminal if he leaves one Afghan ally behind.
You want the Oval Office? Then you bear the deaths on your shoulders.
God be with our allies.
Because, unless something drastic changes in the next 45 days, the U.S. sure isn’t.
[four]
One of the unintended consequences of defunding the police is an uptick in bystander deaths from illegal street races, which are now more easy to facilitate with less cops out on patrol.
Fox News reports:
One of the most recent attempts to crack down on the problem happened in Texas over the weekend, when at least 60 adults and seven juveniles were either arrested or cited in Fort Worth after police said scores showed up to participate in an "illegal reckless driving exhibition hosted by a local street racing group," Fox 4 reported. At least 30 vehicles were towed from the scene.
Meanwhile, two 22-year-old men were killed by street racers in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Saturday afternoon.
According to police, their vehicle was attempting to make a turn when a second and a third vehicle "racing at a high rate of speed" plowed into them at an intersection. A 37-year-old driver of one of the vehicles street-racing sustained injuries that were serious but not life-threatening, police said.
He and the second driver, a 30-year-old man, were arrested.
Just days earlier, a fiery crash in Burbank, California, left three dead, including 21-year-old Cerian Baker, the son of comedian and actor Tony Baker. The two others killed were 19-year-old Natale Maghaddam and 20-year-old Jaiden Johnson. Police said the trio were not involved in street racing.
Two other vehicles believed to have been racing at an accelerate speed struck their Volkswagen sedan, the Los Angeles Times reported.
[five]
West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin sent a letter to the Fed expressing grave concern over printing additional money, further increasing the rate of inflation.
From manchin.senate.gov:
With the recession over and our strong economic recovery well underway, I am increasingly alarmed that the Fed continues to inject record amounts of stimulus into our economy by continuing an emergency level of quantitative easing (QE) with asset purchases of $120 billion per month of Treasury securities and mortgage backed securities. The Fed has sustained $120 billion per month in asset purchases since June 2020, despite increasing vaccination rates to combat the virus and additional fiscal stimulus from Congress in the ARP. The record amount of stimulus in the economy has led to the most inflation momentum in 30 years, and our economy has not even fully reopened yet. I am deeply concerned that the continuing stimulus put forth by the Fed, and proposal for additional fiscal stimulus, will lead to our economy overheating and to unavoidable inflation taxes that hard working Americans cannot afford.
A recent story from the New York Times backs up Manchin’s claim of inflation at a 30 year high.
Meanwhile, salaries are not rising at the same rate as goods and services, meaning many Americans will feel more cash-strapped and are functionally poorer than a year ago.
[epilogue]
Built around 600 A.D., Afghanistan’s Buddha statues were truly a site to behold. Standing 180 feet high (see the trucks in front for scale in the left pic), the site had once hosted a city of more than 10,000 monks, and was a holy site in Buddhism.
In March 2001, Taliban commanders declared the Bamiyan Buddha statues to be “idols" and ordered their destruction.
Mirza Hussain was 26 when he was pulled from prison for being an “infidel” (as a Shia Muslim, he was in the wrong sect of Islam for the Taliban’s liking) and ordered to destroy the statues.
The Taliban had fired guns, and later tanks and artillery, and the massive sandstone structures, to no avail.
Hussain was ordered, under penalty of death, to affix explosive to the statue. Even then, the first bombing only blew the legs off the Buddha, and more and more rounds were required. The Taliban originally planned to cave in the full cliff, which proved to be impossible. They took demolishing the statue and leaving an empty arch as a consolation prize.
The original artisans did their work well, because it took a group of terrorists 26 days to destroy two, 1400 year old statues.
"I regretted it at that time, I regret it now and I will always regret it," he told the BBC in 2015. "But I could not resist, I didn't have a choice because they would have killed me."
Today, Mirza hopes that private donors will one day fund the statues being rebuilt. with the hopes it will bring tourism money flowing into his country.
Considering the fact that the Taliban is about to rule Afghanistan once again (this time with Communist China’s backing, a notorious persecutor of religious faith), the possibility of this rebuild appears to be slim to none without a governmental shift.
Until the next one,
-sth