mass shooting – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

History can Repeat Itself

David Posnett — Thu, 01 Nov 2018 12:46:23 +0000

Letter published in Pittsburgh Post-Gazette October 30, 2018, by Steve Ludsin (East Hampton, NY):

History can repeat itself

“Dispatch From Squirrel Hill: Dread in a Peaceful Place” by David M. Shribman (Oct. 27) was moving and eloquent. The sadness of the murders of 11 innocent victims killed just for being Jewish evokes the horrors of the Holocaust.

I visited Pittsburgh many years ago, and I sensed a feeling of community. I spent most of my life in the New York metropolitan area, so being Jewish doesn’t make you feel like an outsider or threatened. Those days are over. I imagined myself back in Nazi Germany in the ‘30s while Hitler’s words bellowed in the air.

The tragedy is that history can repeat itself. We cannot be deaf, dumb and blind to the rise of hateful words and, even worse, hateful deeds. I am reminded of Elie Wiesel’s closing words at the first meeting of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust in February 1979. He said, “I don’t know what we accomplished today, but we all said oy. Let’s turn oy into deeds to protect the Jewish community. We have no choice.”

STEVEN A. LUDSIN
East Hampton, N.Y.

The writer was a member of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust and the first U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, which built the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Yesterday, the leaders of Bend the Arc’s Pittsburgh Moral Minyan and their allies literally interrupted Trump’s visit.

“Trump’s motorcade forced to turn around after thousands of protesters
flood Pittsburgh streets” — RawStory

“Donald Trump, Meet America’s Jews.
They Are Protesting Your Hate.” — Forward

Pittsburgh March (Oct. 31st 2018)

Fight White Nationalism here TODAY:

https://www.facebook.com/events/1932358347068816/

A Mom Speaks Out: Wake up America, we are at War!

David Posnett — Wed, 21 Feb 2018 22:50:15 +0000

Speaking at Tuesday’s Feb 20 Rally on gun violence and international security: Mara Gerstein

Thank you for being here. I’m Mara. I’m a mom, a lifelong New Yorker, and a constituent of Lee Zeldin. And I’m here to tell my representative, and everyone who will listen, that as of this week, I am a single issue voter.

I only vote for people who will take basic steps to protect me and my family from preventable threats – both foreign and domestic. I am here to tell Rep Zeldin that if he cannot fight for the most basic measures to keep our children safe from gun violence. If he cannot fight for our country to defend itself from information and cyber warfare, then he is worse than useless to any of us.

Trump and Rep Zeldin and so many men like them run on “law and order”, borders, “security”, building up our military, “keeping us safe”. And here we are: 100 of us dying daily from gun violence, another day, another school shooting. Another 15, 20, 50 young lives lost. There is not a parent in this country who wasn’t afraid to send their children to school this week. There wasn’t a kid over the age of 5 in America who didn’t sit in their
classrooms this week afraid that maybe they were next. What is this? Why do we have to live like this? When the majority of Americans are desperate for sensible gun safety laws, why is Lee Zeldin actively working hard to make gun laws more lax?

At what point does this failure to address gun violence become a dereliction of his basic duty to protect us? At what point? A long time ago!

We have a couple of brilliant people who will talk more about our so-called “moderate” congressman’s voting record on gun safety so we can all understand why the NRA loves Zeldin so much. But I want to talk about one specific bill, voted on and passed by the House of Representatives in December. H.R. 38/ Senate Bill 446, the so called “concealed carry reciprocity” bill. It means that states with the weakest requirements for allowing people to carry concealed, loaded guns in their communities will set the national standard. So whereas now states are free to decide what gun laws will keep their communities safe, and can then enter into agreements with other states to honor out of state gun laws. Concealed Carry would mean that all states would be forced to accept the lowest gun safety standards in the country. And no one is talking about it.

It is time that we understand – and make sure everyone we know understands – what HR 38 / Senate Bill 446 – Concealed Carry will mean for New York.

NY awards concealed carry permission only to citizens with justifiable need who are not a danger to themselves or others, and can demonstrate a high level of knowledge of firearm use and safety. Our laws recognize and protect us from the potential threat of dangerous and violent people carrying concealed guns. This is one reason why NY has such a low incidence of gun deaths and injuries per capita. If the NRA – with the tens of millions of dollars they have spent to do so — succeeds in getting the Senate to pass Zeldin’s Concealed Carry Bill it would put domestic abusers and people convicted of violent crimes with hidden weapons on the streets of our towns — Patchogue, Bellport, Montauk, Smithtown, etc. I want Zeldin to tell me how this will make it more safe for me and my child to walk those streets, to go to school, to go to work. Tell me how!

And when you tell me, I will tell you this. You are lying to our faces. More guns, more concealed weapons, and looser gun laws will not make us safer. Until you stop serving the NRA over your constituents, until you stop selling our children’s lives to gun manufacturers, we are all single issue voters. And I ask all of you to tell everyone you know, about what HR 38 / Senate Bill 446 – Concealed Carry will do to NY and why it is
keeping you up at night. Here’s what else is keeping me up at night! We learned this week that there is incontrovertible evidence that the US is under attack from a foreign adversary. What most defense experts are calling the worst attack on our country since 9/11.

We know that Russia penetrated the systems of our major political parties, tampered with our voting machines, discouraged voting with fake information and media campaigns built on lies, that they rounded up support for Trump and are sowing disinformation and confusion about the harm he is inflicting upon us every day. We know that Russia helped sway public opinion to push Al Franken out of office. That they are acting to control social discourse after the Parkland shooting last week. America
needs to wake up. We are at war.

And the president said nothing. He attacks the FBI and goes golfing. He spends NO TIME thinking about how to protect us from the very real threat that Russia will decide in 2018, who runs our government. Russia, is clearly exercising control over the people they have handpicked for the job. Why are Trump and Zeldin doing nothing? Why won’t Trump institute sanctions (H.R. 3364) that were passed by a huge margin 419-3 in the House?

Why is that ok with Zeldin? Is it because the GOP & Zeldin know that they can only stay in power with Russia’s help? Well I’m sorry. That’s too bad. If you can only keep your jobs with Russian help, you’re out. This is OUR country. Not Russia’s.

The people in Washington running the Republican party are dirty. They give tax cuts to the rich and spend millions of dollars to fly first class, and in the same breath take away veterans healthcare, children’s healthcare, food for the poor. They are dirty and corrupt from the inside out. Lying to the FBI, money laundering, tax evasion, defrauding consumers, bank fraud, exploiting their office for personal gain.

Before we even get to collusion with a foreign adversary, if even half of the things these people are accused of are true, Republican leadership in Washington should be in jail. And if they were black they would be.

Every day in this country feels more and more like a national version of the godfather. Here’s what we know. 130 white house staff didn’t have security clearance as of Nov of 2017. The people with the highest levels of security access in the country, have been deemed by our FBI to be unfit for that access. Unfit means that – for whatever reason – be it domestic abuse or foreign debts or lying repeatedly on disclosure forms – our top law enforcement has said that giving these people access puts our lives in danger.

This is not hyberbole. Our government is burning. It is being run by people who are beholden, literally, financially and probably more, to a foreign adversary, and special interests, like the NRA, that is controlled by companies who sell guns and, it turns out, has its own ties to Russia.

What has happened, and is happening, in our government is so insane that we can’t admit it. Because no one knows what to do in the face of this all being true.

What does Donald Trump do? He goes golfing. And what does Lee Zeldin do? He defends him. And worse. Zeldin is actively working to derail the Russia investigation and to attack people who have devoted their lives to protecting our country. A proud member of Devin Nunes #CoverUpCaucus, Zeldin is doing far worse than nothing. Just this morning on Twitter, Zeldin continues his constant and desperate scramble to undermine the efforts of those who are trying to understand what happened and protect us from attack.

And all of these people – Trump, Zeldin, Devin Nunes – every person who holds elected office – has taken an oath to “protect and defend our constitution.” And they won’t even try. A basic dereliction of duty to perform their basic oath of office.

So we are all single issue voters! If Zeldin cannot take basic steps to protect us from threats – both foreign and domestic – he is worse than useless, he is doing us great harm. He is endangering our children, our rule of law, our constitution, and our basic rights as Americans. Zeldin, we are all single issue voters. If you cannot put basic gun safety measures in place, you need to step aside. If you fail to recognize and respond to Russia’s attacks, you need to step aside. You need to step aside and make room for someone who will do their job to protect us and to protect our constitution.

Response to Rep. Lee Zeldin’s 10-point Plan for Gun-violence-prevention Advocates

David Posnett — Tue, 10 Oct 2017 15:28:56 +0000

Dear Congressman Zeldin,

Every American is saddened and appalled by the massacre in Las Vegas. Yet while the public is overwhelmingly united in wanting Congress to act, you continue to try to divide us by belittling and misrepresenting the positions of gun violence prevention constituents and scaring pro-gun constituents by egregiously mischaracterizing the solutions being suggested.

Rep Zeldin, your overwrought claim to be ready to lay down your life to prevent something like Las Vegas from ever happening again would be a little more credible if you had the courage to support even one of the practical solutions that both gun owners and gun-violence prevention advocates support and that well-respected researchers have deemed effective.

In answer to your recent response to the Las Vegas shooting in the form of a condescending 10-point plan to the gun violence prevention community, our answer is this: We are not idiots. We are tired of being lectured to. We’re tired of platitudes and recycled talking points and no action. We are especially insulted by the tone of your snarky list of criticisms against us, which we feel compelled to answer:

1) Not one of the many respected gun-violence-prevention groups demeans gun owners or is threatening the second amendment or gun ownership. Gun owners and cops and veterans are volunteers and members of our Boards! Stop using the NRA’s caricature of who the advocates of stronger laws are, and what we want. Try actually reading and listening instead. Since Las Vegas, gun violence groups have never had so many gun owners say they’ve had enough and now want to work for stronger laws.

2) I’m sorry if you’re feelings are hurt because some advocates hold you personally responsible for the ongoing slaughter on our streets, or for not backing laws to keep guns away from terrorists or away from the severely mentally ill who are so impaired they can no longer handle their own affairs. But as the body count mounts, year after year, I suggest that it would be much more upsetting if citizens weren’t furious at Congressional inaction when their loved ones are being killed every day. And by the way, if you want to talk about abuse, your pro-gun allies intimidate and threaten us constantly – on social media, at peaceful vigils and educational rallies, and at our places of work. And did I mention that your guys are armed and most of us are not? Your allies have posted photos of the kids and homes of the women I work with, and I can’t imagine how many hours of close-up footage of us your video-toting Oathkeeper friends must have. It’s a nasty form of intimidation.

3) We get it that that Hillary is your favorite whipping post but let’s set her aside (she is not in office, you are) and actually talk about silencers. Let’s talk about all the law enforcement groups that oppose deregulating them because it will make their jobs harder, including the Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies, Inc. (CALEA), the Hispanic American Police Command Officers Association (HAPCOA), the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators (IACLEA), the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), the Major Cities Chiefs Association (MCCA), the National Association of Women Law Enforcement Executives (NAWLEE), the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives (NOBLE), the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF), and the Police Foundation (PF), which together comprise the National Law Enforcement Partnership to Prevent Gun Violence.

4) We all agree that a lack of interest in facts is appalling. But in the heat of the moment after a terrifying massacre, police and government officials (and the media) are trying to communicate using the information available, then correcting it as more is known. What I find disturbing is not a mistake in the heat of the moment but afterwards, when you continue to refuse to consider any research or reports that don’t back up your pro-gun myopia. If you want truth, why don’t you vote to fun gun violence research? What are you afraid of?

5) Playing with semantics about the definition of an “assault weapon” is an effete and cowardly way to avoid the issue that weapons developed for use in war have no place on our streets. Other developed countries have no problem defining – and banning — assault-style weapons and do not have the kind of mass murders that we keep seeing over and over again. I have offered to introduce you to longtime gun shop owner and a blogger for stronger gun laws, Mike Weisser, who would be more than willing to enlighten you on the subject.

6) Accusing people who don’t want terrorists carrying guns of being emotional and frivolous is a characterization that’s beneath contempt. Americans do not lack interest in keeping guns out of the hands of terrorists. The vast majority of Americans support this measure – gun owners and reformers alike — and Congressional obstruction and your purposely unworkable bill, offered as a killer to the real proposal, is the flaw. Why does your concern for the accuracy of the Terror Watch list begin and end only when “no fly no buy” is mentioned. May I once again remind you that Americans make up only 0.5% of the total number in all the US Terror Watch Lists databases?

7) At a guess, people will stop tying you to the NRA when you stop taking their money, spouting their talking points, and offer one position that is at odds with their agenda of selling more and more guns and devices to the American public.

8) Misleading statistics? Yours are the ones out of date. In 2016 the numbers of gun fatalities soared to 36,000. Moreover, gun suicides are a major focus of many in the gun violence prevention community. We do not hide that fact. You maybe don’t care that there’s an epidemic of suicide among white rural males but we do. We think it’s a preventable, national tragedy. You maybe don’t care that there’s an epidemic of suicide among Veterans, especially those suffering from PTSD, but we do, and we – and the mental health community — are working hard to prevent that, even as you’ve voted to overwhelmingly cut back funding for mental health.

9) We work with the victims of gun violence every single day and their pain is often overwhelming to bear. We do not criticize anyone for sending prayers to them. But prayers are not enough, especially from our elected leaders, especially not now. The criticism is directed at you and other electeds who offer prayers, then do nothing.

10) By mentioning the creation of gun-free zones, I guess you’re referring to keeping guns out of schools and off college campuses, where the debate is most fierce right now. You’re right. Administrators, professors, students, campus police and parents have all strongly opposed guns on campuses whenever they’re introduced, but pro-gun politicians in several GOP states think they know better and have passed these measures anyway. Since the proposals are new, we can’t yet measure the result yet, but after the shooting Oct. 9th 2017, of a Texas Tech campus police officer, guns on campus looks like as bad an idea as everyone feared. I would point out that it is exceedingly ironic that the NRA forbids guns inside its convention hall and the US Congress and almost every legislature, including those controlled by the GOP, do not allow guns. Why exactly is that?

Finally, we are not the ones in an echo-chamber, Mr. Zeldin: We suggest you leave yours. Whenever you want to. We’re still waiting for an open town meeting.

Sincerely your constituent,

Sue Hornik

Fake News Regains Its Megaphone: “Keyword Bombs”!

David Posnett — Tue, 03 Oct 2017 15:14:07 +0000

After Las Vegas Shooting, Fake News Regains Its Megaphone

The Shift By KEVIN ROOSE OCT. 2, 2017

When they woke up and glanced at their phones on Monday morning, Americans may have been shocked to learn that the man behind the mass shooting in Las Vegas late on Sunday was an anti-Trump liberal who liked Rachel Maddow and MoveOn.org, that the F.B.I. had already linked him to the Islamic State, and that mainstream news organizations were suppressing that he had recently converted to Islam.

They were shocking, gruesome revelations. They were also entirely false — and widely spread by Google and Facebook.

In Google’s case, trolls from 4Chan, a notoriously toxic online message board with a vocal far-right contingent, had spent the night scheming about how to pin the shooting on liberals. One of their discussion threads, in which they wrongly identified the gunman, was picked up by Google’s “top stories” module, and spent hours at the top of the site’s search results for that man’s name.

In Facebook’s case, an official “safety check” page for the Las Vegas shooting prominently displayed a post from a site called “Alt-Right News.” The post incorrectly identified the shooter and described him as a Trump-hating liberal. In addition, some users saw a story on a “trending topic” page on Facebook for the shooting that was published by Sputnik, a news agency controlled by the Russian government. The story’s headline claimed, incorrectly, that the F.B.I. had linked the shooter with the “Daesh terror group.”

Google and Facebook blamed algorithm errors for these.

A Google spokesman said, “This should not have appeared for any queries, and we’ll continue to make algorithmic improvements to prevent this from happening in the future.”

A Facebook spokesman said, “We are working to fix the issue that allowed this to happen in the first place and deeply regret the confusion this caused.”

But this was no one-off incident. Over the past few years, extremists, conspiracy theorists and government-backed propagandists have made a habit of swarming major news events, using search-optimized “keyword bombs” and algorithm-friendly headlines. These organizations are skilled at reverse-engineering the ways that tech platforms parse information, and they benefit from a vast real-time amplification network that includes 4Chan and Reddit as well as Facebook, Twitter and Google. Even when these campaigns are thwarted, they often last hours or days — long enough to spread misleading information to millions of people.

The latest fake news flare-up came at an inconvenient time for companies like Facebook, Google and Twitter, which are already defending themselves from accusations that they have let malicious actors run rampant on their platforms.

On Monday, Facebook handed congressional investigators 3,000 ads that had been purchased by Russian government affiliates during the 2016 campaign season, and it vowed to hire 1,000 more human moderators to review ads for improper content. (The company would not say how many moderators currently screen its ads.) Twitter faces tough questions about harassment and violent threats on its platform, and is still struggling to live down a reputation as a safe haven for neo-Nazis and other poisonous groups. And Google also faces questions about its role in the misinformation economy.

Part of the problem is that these companies have largely abrogated the responsibility of moderating the content that appears on their platforms, instead relying on rule-based algorithms to determine who sees what. Facebook, for instance, previously had a team of trained news editors who chose which stories appeared in its trending topics section, a huge driver of traffic to news stories. But it disbanded the group and instituted an automated process last year, after reports surfaced that the editors were suppressing conservative news sites. The change seems to have made the problem worse — earlier this year, Facebook redesigned the trending topics section again, after complaints that hoaxes and fake news stories were showing up in users’ feeds.

There is also a labeling issue. A Facebook user looking for news about the Las Vegas shooting on Monday morning, or a Google user searching for information about the wrongfully accused shooter, would have found posts from 4Chan and Sputnik alongside articles by established news organizations like CNN and NBC News, with no obvious cues to indicate which ones came from reliable sources.

More thoughtful design could help solve this problem, and Facebook has already begun to label some disputed stories with the help of professional fact checkers. But fixes that require identifying “reputable” news organizations are inherently risky because they open companies up to accusations of favoritism. (After Facebook announced its fact-checking effort, which included working with The Associated Press and Snopes, several right-wing activists complained of left-wing censorship.) The automation of editorial judgment, combined with tech companies’ reluctance to appear partisan, has created a lopsided battle between those who want to spread misinformation and those tasked with policing it. Posting a malicious rumor on Facebook, or writing a false news story that is indexed by Google, is a nearly instantaneous process; removing such posts often requires human intervention. This imbalance gives an advantage to

The automation of editorial judgment, combined with tech companies’ reluctance to appear partisan, has created a lopsided battle between those who want to spread misinformation and those tasked with policing it. Posting a malicious rumor on Facebook, or writing a false news story that is indexed by Google, is a nearly instantaneous process; removing such posts often requires human intervention. This imbalance gives an advantage to rule-breakers, and makes it impossible for even an army of well-trained referees to keep up.

But just because the war against misinformation may be unwinnable doesn’t mean it should be avoided. Roughly two-thirds of American adults get news from social media, which makes the methods these platforms use to vet and present information a matter of national importance.

Facebook, Twitter and Google are some of the world’s richest and most ambitious companies, but they still have not shown that they’re willing to bear the costs — or the political risks — of fixing the way misinformation spreads on their platforms. (Some executives appear resolute in avoiding the discussion. In a recent Facebook post, Mark Zuckerberg reasserted the platform’s neutrality, saying that being accused of partisan bias by both sides is “what running a platform for all ideas looks like.”) The investigations into Russia’s exploitation of social media during the 2016 presidential election will almost certainly continue for months. But dozens of less splashy online misinformation campaigns are happening every day, and they deserve attention, too. Tech companies should act decisively to prevent hoaxes and misinformation from spreading on their platforms, even if it means hiring

The investigations into Russia’s exploitation of social media during the 2016 presidential election will almost certainly continue for months. But dozens of less splashy online misinformation campaigns are happening every day, and they deserve attention, too. Tech companies should act decisively to prevent hoaxes and misinformation from spreading on their platforms, even if it means hiring thousands more moderators or angering some partisan organizations.

Facebook and Google have spent billions of dollars developing virtual reality systems. They can spare a billion or two to protect actual reality.