YOUTUBE CENSORSHIP USED TO DEFEND THE POWERFUL AT THE EXPENSE OF THOSE WHO ARE MARGINALIZED - NEEDTOKNOW.NEWS

YouTube Censorship Used to
Defend the Powerful at the
Expense of Those Who Are
Marginalized

A Vox reporter, Calos Maza, insisted that Youtube punish
comedian Steven Crowder for insulting him. Maza complained
that he is oppressed, but he is posing as a victim. Youtube
caved in to Vox media and demonetized Crowder, and then used
the opportunity to censor other conservative Youtube videos.
Intercept journalist Glenn Greenwald explained that
journalists themselves are the major force behind censoring
free speech because they have demanded that certain voices be
removed from the internet.

In an abrupt reversal amid an ongoing online firestorm,
YouTube announced Wednesday
that it would block conservative commentator Steven Crowder
from making
any money on videos he uploaded to the site, following a
torrent of
outrage from left-wing groups about insulting remarks he made

about a
gay political personality working at Vox.

YouTube,
a Google subsidiary, claimed Crowder had engaged in a
“continued
egregious actions that have harmed the broader community,” but
acknowledged that Crowder’s videos “did not violate our
Community Guidelines.”
The company stopped short of banning Crowder and deleting his
videos
entirely, as many progressive groups and journalists demanded.

Crowder’s
demonetization, in turn, prompted conservatives to renew
charges of
large-scale censorship and hypocrisy against the big tech
giant. Several
right-leaning    content   creators,   as   well   as   nonpartisan
journalists
documenting hate speech, charged that YouTube was engaged in
an broad
“purge” Wednesday against their channels, which were not
directly
related to the Crowder dispute.

“Vox is still going to be
pissed; they’re not going to be happy with this,” Crowder said
in a
video posted to his Twitter account after learning about
YouTube’s
action, calling the situation a brewing “Adpocalypse.” Crowder
has more
than 3.7 million subscribers on YouTube.

“It’s not a win,” he
continued, “because their goal is to completely get rid of
people. We’re
at a point in time right now where people can still have a
voice, but a
lot of people are going to lose their ability to lose
revenue.”

 “Their goal is to completely get rid of people.”— Steven
 Crowder

In
a livestream Wednesday afternoon, Crowder highlighted a series
of
unpunished hateful comments made by liberal commentators —
including
Stephen Colbert’s reference to President Trump as “Putin’s
c–kholster,”
and Samantha Bee’s mockery of Ivanka Trump as a “feckless
c–t.”

The
episode began May 30 with a viral Twitter post by left-wing
Vox
personality Carlos Maza, which contained video montage of
derogatory
comments Crowder had made about Maza in the past two years. In
the
various clips, Crowder variously refers to Maza as an “angry
little
queer,” a “gay Mexican,” and “Mr. Lispy queer from Vox.”

Maza, an
openly gay partisan activist, has himself previously used
aggressive
language on social media. “Milkshake them all,” he wrote May
21,
referring to right-wing activists. “Humiliate them at every
turn. Make
them dread public organizing.”

Read full article here…

Los Angeles Homeless Crisis
Worsens By 16%

The homeless crisis in the liberal city of Los Angeles soared
by 16%, to more than 36,000 people. The overall county saw an
increase of 12%, approaching 59,000 people. About three
quarters of the homeless people are living outdoors, which is
causing concern over a potential public health crisis due to
rats, sewage and trash near homeless encampments downtown.

As Los Angeles officials were wasting taxpayer dollars to
virtue-signal about Alabama’s abortion ban, the homeless

crisis in the city increased by 16% while the overall county
saw an increase of 12%.

According to the Los Angeles Times,
the number of people now living on the streets, in vehicles,
or in
shelters steadily increased throughout the past year,
following a small
decrease in the previous year.

“The annual point-in-time count,
delivered to the Board of Supervisors, put the number of
homeless people
just shy of 59,000 countywide,” reports the outlet. “Within
the city of
Los Angeles, the number soared to more than 36,000, a 16%
increase.”

“And as in past years, most — about 75% — were living outside,
fueling speculation of a growing public health crisis of rats
and trash near homeless encampments downtown,” the report
continued.

Officials
largely blame the problem on the lack of affordable housing
while
vowing to pledge more taxpayer dollars into supposedly
“fixing” the
problem. So far, government programs have done little to help.
For
instance, the city’s Measure H sales tax
from 2017 barely scratched the surface of the problem by
helping to get

roughly 20,000 people off the streets only to be outpaced by
the number
of people that were becoming homeless.

“If we don’t change the
fundamentals of housing affordability, this is going to be a
very long
road,” Peter Lynn, executive director of the Los Angeles
Homeless
Services Authority, told the Times. “If we don’t get ahead of
affordability, we’re going to be very hard pressed to get
ahead of
homelessness.”

“Overall, the service portion of the effort on mental health,
substance use, the issue of housing, rent subsidies, those are
important
and we should stay the course,” County Supervisor Mark Ridley-
Thomas
told the Times. “Where we have to work much harder is in the
area of
affordable housing.”

Ridley-Thomas admitted that the numbers are
deeply discouraging following the small          downturn   in
homelessness that
the previous year showed.

“At this point of unprecedented wealth
in the county of Los Angeles, we are equally confronted with
unprecedented poverty manifesting itself in the form of
homelessness,”
County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas told the Times. “Last

year’s count,
we felt we were trimming in a way that would suggest we were
getting
our arms around this. And yet this year we are pretty well
stunned by
this data.”

Read full article here…

Rand Paul Says the Deep State
Defied a Direct Order from
Trump    to    Revoke    John
Brennan’s Security Clearance

Senator Rand Paul said that the Deep State ignored President
Trump’s order last summer to revoke former CIA Chief John
Brennan’s security clearance, and said, “People talk about the
Deep State, now the Deep State’s actually protecting their own
and not listening to the President’s orders.” The New York
Times recently reported that John Brennan, a rabid Trump
hater, still has his security clearance because the White
House never followed through with the bureaucratic work it

would have taken to strip the clearance.

In August 2018, President Donald Trump revoked former CIA
Director John Brennan’s security clearance.

 .@POTUS revokes security clearance for former CIA director
 John          Brennan          https://t.co/QZrKVuD4LY
 pic.twitter.com/847QEo2pW5

 — Fox News (@FoxNews) August 15, 2018

On Tuesday Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) said that the Deep State
ignored President Trump’s order last summer to revoke former
CIA Chief
John Brennan’s security clearance.

According to a report out by the New York Times, John Brennan,
a rabid Trump hater, still has his security clearance because
the White House never followed through with the complex
bureaucratic work it would have taken to strip the clearance.

Attempts to revoked Brennan’s security clearance were
“hampered by
aides who slow-rolled the President and by Justice Department
officials
who fought Trump, warning he was jeopardizing national
security,”
reported the Times.

Read full article and watch video here…

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and
Google Amassing a “Lobbying
Army” to Fight Potential
Investigations

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have reportedly amassed a
“lobbying army” in preparation for the upcoming anti-trust
investigations and calls to break the Silicon Valley tech
monopolies. The four technology giants have spent a combined
$55 million on lobbying in 2018, doubling their previous
record $27.4 million spent in 2016. Currently, the four tech
titans have amassed 238 lobbyists. Big Tech’s lobbying
influence extends to calls with members of Congress,
advertising, funding of think-tanks, and efforts to influence
President Donald Trump.

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have
reportedly amassed a
“lobbying army” as they prepare to deal with an
increasing amount of
antitrust investigations and calls to break up the

Silicon Valley
Masters of the Universe.

Although America’s largest tech companies have historically
stayed
away from lobbying Congress, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and
Google have transformed into some of the largest influencers
in Washington, D.C.

The four technology giants have spent a combined $55 million
on
lobbying in 2018, doubling their previous record $27.4 million
spent in
2016, and some of the tech companies are spending at an even
higher rate
this year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

The tech companies’ rapid hiring of lobbyists arises as the
House
Judiciary Committee announced that it will start a “top-to-
bottom”
investigation of America’s largest tech giants, the Donald
Trump
Department of Justice (DOJ) said it will investigate Google
for potential antitrust violations, and the Federal Trade
Commission (FTC) has reportedly started asking Amazon’s rivals
about the e-commerce giant’s business practices.

Big Tech’s rapidly growing influence puts
these companies at relative parity with traditional lobbying
powerhouses such as the defense, automobile, and banking
industries.

The four tech companies have reportedly amassed 238 lobbyists
for the
first quarter of 2019, both in-house and contracted lobbyists;
roughly
75 percent of the lobbyists come from government offices or
political
campaigns.

Big Tech’s lobbying influence extends to calls with members of
Congress, advertising, funding of think-tanks, and efforts to
influence
President Donald Trump, who has occasionally criticized Big
Tech’s
censorship of conservatives and even Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’
ownership of
the establishment Washington Post.

Breitbart News has reported that
Google has donated to conservative          think-tanks   and
publications such as
the American Enterprise      Institute   (AEI),   Competitive
Enterprise
Institute (CEI), the National Review, the Cato Institute, the
American Conservative Union (ACU). Many of these institutions,
such as the National Review and
CEI have been critical of calls to rein-in Big Tech’s dominant
status
and censorship of conservative and alternative viewpoints.

Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of the Center for
Responsive Politics, told the New York Times that these
companies have ramped up their lobbying efforts.

Krumholz said, “They are no longer upstarts dipping a toe in
lobbying. They have both feet in.”

Big Tech also has rapidly picked up former high-level
congressional staffers to increase their influence on Capitol
Hill.

Facebook hired Catlin O’Neill, who worked as Rep. Nancy
Pelosi’s
(D-CA) chief of staff, and who now works as the company’s
American
director of public policy for the social media giant. Pelosi
reportedly
received nearly $43,000 in total donations during the 2018
midterm cycle
from employees and political action committees (PACs) of the
Big Tech
companies, each of which ranks among her top sources of
campaign cash.
Pelosi has typically served as a champion of Big Tech
companies.

Read full article here…