UK: Can Javid Stop the Boats?

by David Brown • January 10, 2019 at 5:00 am

"A question has to be asked: if you are a genuine asylum seeker, why have you not sought asylum in the first safe country that you arrived in? Because France is not a country where anyone would argue it is not safe in any way whatsoever, and if you are genuine then why not seek asylum in your first safe country?" — British Home Secretary Sajid Javid.
Asylum seekers in Britain are entitled to free accommodation, cash support at £37.75 per person per week, free healthcare, free dental care, free eyesight tests, free glasses, maternity grants and free schooling -- much to the chagrin of many British nationals and former service personnel who do not have access to many of these benefits.
Another tragedy of Alan Kurdi proportions is only a matter of time. The media are poised and salivating at the prospect of capturing this impending disaster for their front pages; the hackles of a hundred migrant and refugee charities are raised in anticipation of the PR opportunities ahead of them.
Sajid Javid is a rising star in the British Conservative party. If he can stop the boats across the Channel, he will be perfectly positioned to take control of the British Conservative Party as well as the rising migrant crisis.

The British Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, has called in the Royal Navy to help deal with the migrant crisis in the Channel. Pictured: HMS Mersey patrols the Strait of Dover on January 9, 2019, in a bid to prevent further illegal migrant crossing attempts. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

The British Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, has called in the Royal Navy to help deal with the migrant crisis in the Channel.

Since November, 239 migrants successfully made the crossing from Calais, France to Dover, England in small inflatable boats. A total of 539 migrants tried to make the crossing in 2018.

According to the Daily Mail, "Most of those held by police crossing the world's busiest shipping lane from France since November have claimed to be Iranian." Whether this is factually correct, or a line given to them by the people smugglers they pay for their journey, is a reasonable question.

According to UK immigration lawyer Colin Yeo, "The latest asylum statistics show that around three-quarters of Iranian asylum claims succeed," -- a fact the people-smugglers presumably know well and capitalise on for profit.

Continue Reading Article

Peter Schweizer's "The Creepy Line" Takes Tech Giants to Task

by Ruthie Blum • January 10, 2019 at 4:00 am

As if this were not "creepy" enough, there is another process going on that is far less transparent: "listing" -- the order in which information appears on Google. The "list effect" on our cognitive functioning, Epstein explains, is that we believe that the items appearing at the top of a set of search results -- whether the category is dog food or political candidates -- are the most relevant, valuable or true. Google and Facebook are able, thus, to prioritize the information we receive, while pretending to be neutral platforms, rather than content producers exercising editorial control. It is this pretense that exempts them from being subject to the laws governing publishers.
"If they have this kind of power, then democracy is an illusion... There have to be in place numerous safeguards to make sure not only that they don't exercise these powers, but that they can't exercise these powers. The Internet belongs to all of us. It does not belong to Google or Facebook." — Dr. Robert Epstein, American psychology professor; "The Creepy Line".
"Today, we essentially have a totalitarian force in the world, and that is these large tech companies. But guess what? They didn't use storm troopers.... We all opted in... We volunteered for this arrangement. And we live in a world today in which these tech giants have a level of control and an ability to manipulate us that Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Mussolini could only have dreamed of." — Peter Schweitzer, producer of "The Creepy Line".

"The Creepy Line," a new documentary, reveals the way in which Google and Facebook manipulate consumers through the collection of users' data, and sheds light on current controversies surrounding privacy and political bias. (Image source: thecreepyline.com/video screenshot)

A new documentary, revealing the way in which the major technology companies Google and Facebook manipulate consumers through the collection of users' data, sheds light on current controversies surrounding privacy and political bias. Called "The Creepy Line," the film argues that even the most intelligent people among us are serving as unwitting pawns in a power grab, enabled by mathematical algorithms, without our being aware of it.

The title of the 80-minute movie is taken from a phrase used by the former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt, who in a 2010 interview said:

"There's what I call the 'creepy line,' and the Google policy about a lot of these things is to get right up to the 'creepy line' but not cross it."

Continue Reading Article