RealClearInvestigations' Picks of the Week
November 12 to November 18, 2023 In RealClearInvestigations, Lee Fang examines NewsGuard, a federally funded for-profit that casts itself as an arbiter of online truth -- part of a growing effort by governments to police speech, ranging from outright lies to dissent from official narratives. Fang reports: -
As the Twitter Files revealed, censorship can come in 1) direct government cajoling of social media and news outlets; or 2) through seemingly benign non-governmental organizations – such as the Stanford Internet Observatory. -
Another way is 3) the for-profit path of NewsGuard, which sees speech policing as a $1.74 billion market. -
NewsGuard uses zero-to-100 grades in its “nutrition labels” to classify entire news sites as safe or untrustworthy. Clients, including U.S. government agencies, pay for the service. -
But that creates conflicts of interest with NewsGuard’s financial model: Buyers of the service can be problematic entities too, with an interest in suppressing or shaping information. -
NewsGuard’s largest investor represents Pfizer – whose COVID vaccine has been questioned by some news outlets that have received low scores. -
And NewsGuard’s ratings are subjective: The New York Times, for example, which repeatedly carried false and partisan information during the Russiagate hoax, gets a 100% rating. -
RealClearInvestigations has an 80% rating, after attracting NewsGuard's attention when it unmasked the “whistleblower” of the first Trump impeachment. (Verbatim sidebar: The NewsGuard-RCI exchange.) -
NewsGuard also offers a “BrandGuard” service for advertisers, with an “exclusion list” that warns them off buying space on sites deemed problematic. -
Consortium News, a critic of U.S. foreign policy, has sued NewsGuard, saying it’s a victim of pay-for-censorship due to NewsGuard’s big Pentagon contract.
Waste of the Day
by Adam Andrzejewski, Open the Books Millions for Sri Lanka's 'Social Cohesion', RCI
DC’s Big Metro That Couldn't, RCI
Wisconsin Pension Honcho Gets 8X Gov’s Pay, RCI
Food-Fave Study Causes Budget Nausea, RCI
$12 Billion EV Jump-Start for Car Plants, RCI Biden, Trump and the Beltway No Charges Likely in Biden Classified-Documents Probe, Daily Caller
Pentagon Aide's 'Covert Campaign' to Smear Iran Opposition, New York Post
State Dept. Memo Accuses Biden of Mideast Misinformation, Axios
Did Climate Focus Leave U.S. Intel Unprepared for Oct. 7?, Free Beacon
Feds Keep Hidden Books on Vaccine Injuries, Just The News
Hunter Biden Seeks to Subpoena Trump in Delaware Case, Just/News
Leaked NSA Document Reveals 34-Page Woke Glossary, Daily Wire Other Noteworthy Articles and Series After Israel’s military used a precision strike in 2019 to kill “Iran’s money man in Gaza,” the Ayatollahs found a new way to support terror: cryptocurrency. This article reports that money exchanges increasingly sent digital tokens to digital wallets controlled by the Hamas-affiliated money exchanges that could also be swapped for cash at their offices in the Gaza Strip: This pivot helped Hamas and affiliates such as Palestinian Islamic Jihad to receive large sums from Iran during the two years that preceded the attacks on Israel in October, [Israeli and U.S.] officials said. It was an attempt to use a new financial technology to lessen the risks of moving physical money and goods. … Digital wallets identified by the NBCTF in two of these orders as being connected to the exchanges had received $41 million in crypto, according to research by Tel Aviv-based analytics and software firm BitOK. Wallets linked by the bureau in another order to PIJ have received a further $93 million. In a separate article, the New York Post reports that “the Biden administration has extended a sanctions waiver that will grant Iran access to roughly $10 billion from Iraq in exchange for electricity purchases. … Under the conditions of the waiver, Iran will receive nearly $10 billion being held in escrow accounts in Iraq that may only be used for humanitarian trade.” In a separate article, the Washington Post reports that Hamas is getting exactly what it wanted from its Oct. 7 attack – “an overwhelming Israeli response”: Hamas leaders have publicly expressed a willingness to accept heavy losses — potentially including the deaths of many Gazan civilians living under Hamas rule. “Will we have to pay a price? Yes, and we are ready to pay it,” Ghazi Hamad, a member of the Hamas politburo, told Beirut’s LCBI television in an interview aired on Oct. 24. “We are called a nation of martyrs, and we are proud to sacrifice martyrs.” From the Annals of Big Government at Work, the trillions of dollars of COVID aid Congress shoved out the door with almost no oversight became, predictably, a bonanza for criminals. This article reports that thousands of thieves “perpetrated the greatest grift in U.S. history,” plundering “more than $280 billion in federal COVID-19 aid; another $123 billion was wasted or misspent”: An AP review of hundreds of pandemic fraud cases presents a picture of thieves and scam artists who spent lavishly on houses, luxury watches and diamond jewelry, Lamborghinis and other expensive cars. The stolen aid also paid for long nights at strip clubs, gambling sprees in Las Vegas and bucket-list vacations. Their crimes were relatively simple: The government’s goal was to get cash into the hands of struggling people and businesses with minimal hassle, particularly during the early stages of the COVID-19 crisis. Safeguards to weed out the swindlers were dropped. … stealing the money was as easy as lying on an application. In another sign of government incompetence, this article reports that only about 3,200 defendants have been charged with COVID-19 relief fraud, according to the U.S. Justice Department and just $1.4 billion in stolen pandemic aid has been seized to date. American consumers are starting to lose one of their unpaid gigs -- self checkout at the store -- in part because too many are helping themselves. This article reports that retailers including Walmart, Costco, Wegman are rethinking what they thought was a money-saving advance in the automated economy: They have found that self-checkout leads to higher merchandise losses from customer errors and intentional shoplifting — known as “shrink” — than human cashiers ringing up customers. Shrink has been a growing problem for retailers, who have blamed shoplifting for the increase and called for tougher penalties. But retailers’ self-checkout strategies have also contributed to their shrink problems. One study of retailers in the United States, Britain and other European countries found that companies with self-checkout lanes and apps had a loss rate of about 4%, more than double the industry average. Some products have multiple barcodes or barcodes that don’t scan properly with self-checkout technology. Produce, including fruit and meat, typically needs to be weighed and manually entered into the system using a code. Customers may type in the wrong code by accident. Other times shoppers won’t hear the “beep” confirming an item has been scanned properly. The rise of the machines is being marked by the proliferation of digital sweatshops. This article reports that raw data used to train machine-learning algorithms is first labeled by humans, and human verification is also needed to evaluate their accuracy. These tasks are often outsourced to gig workers – including children who lie about their age - via online crowdsourcing platforms such as Clickworker in developing countries: These workers are predominantly based in East Africa, Venezuela, Pakistan, India, and the Philippines – though there are even workers in refugee camps, who label, evaluate, and generate data. Workers are paid per task, with remuneration ranging from a cent to a few dollars – although the upper end is considered something of a rare gem, workers say. “The nature of the work often feels like digital servitude—but it's a necessity for earning a livelihood,” says [a teenage worker]. … The lack of worker oversight can even prevent clients from knowing if workers are keeping their income. One Clickworker user in India, who requested anonymity to avoid being banned from the site, told Wired he “employs” 17 UHRS workers in one office, providing them with a computer, mobile, and internet, in exchange for half their income. As the world’s population has grown, more land on Earth has been converted to fields and pastures. Thanks to technological and land use advancements, humanity has avoided Malthusian nightmares, producing enough food to feed the world and reduce hunger. But we are said to be running out of suitable land to convert to new fields and pastures. This series of articles details the challenges in the years ahead. It includes: -
A look at how people have changed the planet to feed themselves – and why doing it the same way isn't an option for the future. -
A report on ho food is harder on the environment than beef -- and how ranchers and researchers are trying to make burgers less burdensome. -
A report on meat cultivated from cells — with no need to raise and slaughter an animal. But this reality be made cheaply enough to displace animal agriculture? -
A look at the veggie burger, which has come a long way from the dry patties of the past — just not far enough to convert legions of meat lovers. But new techniques are in development. -
A report on soaring demand for seafood. Can fish be farmed in more sustainable ways? -
How poverty is killing the Amazon, and how Treating the soil and farmers better could help save what's left. -
How pastoralists in Senegal and Mongolia draw on millennia of experience to raise livestock in harsh, volatile climates. What can they teach about dealing with environmental changes? -
A look at Singapore, which is trying to produce more of its own food with almost no land. Is this the food future?
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