The Department of Homeland Security will be utilizing its resources to pore over the social media accounts of American citizens to root out potential “threats” following the Jan. 6 Capitol incursion, according to a report. NBC News on Sunday reported DHS officials intend to use personnel, and not computer algorithms, to mine data from public social media accounts. The department will look at the online activity of those who haven’t yet been banned by Big Tech with the purpose of spotting potential “targets” based on how users, presumably conservatives, exercise their free speech in patterns. “We’re not looking at who are the individual posters,” an individual identified as a “senior DHS official” told the network. “We are looking at what narratives are resonating and spreading across platforms. From there you may be able to determine what are the potential targets you need to protect.” “Domestic violent extremism poses the most lethal, persistent terrorism-related threat to our homeland today,” said DHS spokeswoman Sarah Peck.
Law & Crime
Top leaders in the Texas county where George Floyd grew up supported a resolution Tuesday calling for him to be posthumously pardoned for a 2004 drug arrest by a former Houston police officer now facing murder charges in a separate case. The five members of Harris County Commissioners Court unanimously approved the resolution in support of the pardon request, which was submitted last month to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. The board still must decide whether to recommend a pardon, and Gov. Greg Abbott will have the final say. “I think this is a phenomenal opportunity to fix a miscarriage of justice in George’s case,” Tera Brown, a cousin of Floyd, told commissioners before they approved the resolution. The May 2020 killing of Floyd, who was black, by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, prompted worldwide protests against racial injustice. Chauvin was convicted last month of murder and manslaughter for Floyd’s killing and also faces federal civil rights charges.
Community members are holding an emergency rally in front of the Israeli consulate in Toronto to protest against the ongoing violence in East Jerusalem that’s left hundreds of Palestinians injured. The violence comes following a series of sit-ins and protests over the potential eviction of Palestinians from homes on land claimed by Jewish settlers in the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. Organizers say the protest in Toronto is being held to condemn the violence and the pending forced evictions, which the United Nations’ human rights office has stated, “may amount to war crimes.”
A spokeswoman for the Extinction Rebellion group on Tuesday said one of its cofounders had been arrested by officers from London’s Metropolitan Police. The group, whose stated aim is to use nonviolent protest to force government action on climate change, has staged numerous high-profile protests in the UK, US and other developed nations including Germany. The group said Bradbrook had been arrested on charges relating to its action campaign against financial institutions known as “Money Rebellion.” “Extinction Rebellion cofounder Gail Bradbrook was arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police at her home in Stroud at around 5:30 a.m. this morning for conspiracy to cause criminal damage and fraud in relation to Money Rebellion’s debt disobedience,” a spokeswoman for the group said.
Seven children and two adults have been killed in a shooting at a school in the Russian city of Kazan, officials say. Twenty one other people, mostly children, were injured. A 19-year-old suspect was detained. The attack happened in the capital of the republic of Tatarstan, 820km (510 miles) east of Moscow… Russian PM Mikhail Mishustin spoke of “great sorrow” while Tatarstan’s leader Rustam Minnikhanov described the attack as a “major tragedy”. Officials did not comment on the possible motive for the attack although Mr Minnikhanov called the attacker a “terrorist”. The suspect went on social media before the attack, posting that he planned to kill a “huge number” of people before shooting himself. Screenshots of his account, now blocked, show him wearing a black mask with the word “god” written across it in red.
I ignored the story that Bill and Melinda Gates are getting a divorce. Their personal life holds no interest for me, although I care that Bill Gates is having an outsize say in both the climate change debate and in the response to COVID. His skills as a computer programmer and his genius as a shark, scooping up other people’s creations, do not make him qualified to weigh in on the climate or COVID. But as I said, his personal life was a “meh” — that is, right until the Wall Street Journal hinted that Bill Gates’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein led directly to his divorce. It’s been public information for a long time that Bill Gates met Epstein several times beginning in 2011. Even the New York Times, back in October 2019, reported on those meetings: Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender who committed suicide in prison, managed to lure an astonishing array of rich, powerful and famous men into his orbit. Few, though, compared in prestige and power to the world’s second-richest person, a brilliant and intensely private luminary: Bill Gates. And unlike many others, Mr. Gates started the relationship after Mr. Epstein was convicted of sex crimes.