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Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton sat for a conversation with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Monday in Clintons new capacity as a professor of practice at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs.

I think the idea of two of the most powerful women in U.S. history chatting with one another is compelling stuff, no matter your politics. And this chat met my expectations.

The full convo is available here. One of the most compelling parts of the discussion came when Clinton discussed the dangers of disinformation, social media manipulation, and nefarious actors gaining access to all of our private information online.

Both Clinton and Pelosi are frequent subjects of right-wing propaganda and disinformation.

Of course, Clinton and Pelosi were having this rather amiable conversation about the dangers that online disinformation and incitement can create as former President Donald Trump awaited arraignment on criminal charges in Manhattan. Oh, the irony.

Both Clinton and Pelosi are frequent subjects of right-wing propaganda and disinformation, including images and video deliberately spread to make it seem as though they were unwell or inebriated.

Clinton mentioned, for example, Facebooks initial refusal to take down a viral video of Pelosi in which the creator slowed down audio of her speaking. The account that posted the video falsely claimed Pelosi was intoxicated.

During the Monday talk, Clinton shared the following warning:

The capacity for extortion and blackmail based on your data including data that is not even 100% true becomes a huge problem in the world of unfettered social media use. We are all going to be racing around saying, But I didnt do that. I didnt say that. Or, Yeah, I said that. But I didnt mean this. And we are going to be in a constant state of uncertainty and instability because other people have captured so much information about us.

Those remarks are a great reminder of the dangers all social media companies pose, even as many U.S. lawmakers Democrats and Republicans alike home in on TikTok exclusively. (Read more about that here.)

Clinton too had a personal story to share on the ability for nefarious actors to use these manipulative tactics to achieve their political goals. She referenced the recent conviction of Douglass Mackey, a Trump-supporting social media user charged in a 2016 election scheme in which prosecutors say he "conspired with other influential Twitter users and with members of private online groups to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages that encouraged supporters of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to vote via text message or social media.

Mackey has become a cause clbre in far-right circles, where members claim the newly minted convict has been targeted solely for harmless trolling. In fact, Mackeys case revealed he conspired with other right-wing influencers on social media to target potential Clinton supporters with fraudulent claims about how they could vote, all while Mackey and others discussed a need to limit Black voter turnout.

Prosecutors even presented evidence that Mackey promoted one image that used a similar font to that found on Clinton campaign materials.

Clinton noted that this internet-borne scheme crossed the line from free speech into action meant to subvert an election.

"Democracy requires at least a minimal level of trust, and how do you compromise with somebody unless you have some way to trust what theyre saying and what they will do, for example?" Clinton said. "So if we are going to turn our politics over to people who maybe just for the heck of it are making up stuff to misrepresent leaders, or maybe because they know they can achieve it if they do, then where does this stop?"

Watch the clip here:

I appreciate these urgent warnings from Clinton. There's a battle underway for control of the most powerful communication technologies on the planet. And in the wrong hands (as in, those of the far right), these technologies can blur the lines between truth and fiction.

Beware.

Ja'han Jones is The ReidOut Blog writer.

Originally posted here:
Hillary Clinton responds to Trump fan convicted for 2016 election crimes - MSNBC

Clips from two speeches by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appear in a video circulating social media as evidence that Earth is flat and humans live under a glass dome.

In the first speech, from June 2008, when Clinton conceded the Democratic presidential nomination to former President Barack Obama, she said: "Although we werent able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, its got about 18 million cracks in it."

In the second speech, from June 2016, after Clinton clinched that Democratic presidential nomination, she said: "It may be hard to see tonight, but we are all standing under a glass ceiling right now."

"Hilary Clinton mentions the Glass Dome Firmament," reads text flanking the video in an April 2 Instagram post, misspelling Clintons first name.

"Hilary Clinton knows we live under a glass dome," the post says, using hashtags connected to unfounded conspiracy theories like #fakemoonlanding #spaceisfake and #flatearth.

This post was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

First, some helpful background for those unacquainted with flat Earth-speak. Some people who believe that the Earth is flat think its under a dome. In a 2020 interview with Scientific American, Michael Marshall, project director of the Good Thinking Society, a United Kingdom-based charity that aims "to promote science to challenge pseudoscience," said the idea that the Earth is a disc housed under a dome "goes back to the biblical idea of the firmament from and being the roof on top of the world."

But its clear from the context of these video clips that Clinton isnt suggesting Earth is flat, or discussing a glass dome. Shes alluding to challenges women face, often in their professional lives.

The phrase "glass ceiling" was first used by workplace advocate Marilyn Loden at a womens business conference in 1978, and it became a metaphor for the struggles women encounter as they try to progress in their careers.

Loden spoke about how her company had tapped her to explore why more women werent entering management positions, The Washington Post reported in 2018, and "she had gathered enough data that she felt confident the problem extended beyond what her colleagues were wearing or saying."

The paper quoted Loden saying that "it seemed to me there was an invisible barrier to advancement that people didn't recognize" the glass ceiling."

We previously fact-checked another claim that Clinton was discussing a glass dome over Earth iwhen she conceded the 2016 presidential election to former President Donald Trump. She was, of course, still referring to the "glass ceiling" women encounter in society.

We rate this post Pants on Fire!

The rest is here:
In past speeches, Hillary Clinton talked of figurative glass ceiling, not ... - PolitiFact

Twenty-five women who made a significant contribution to peace in Northern Ireland and around the world are to be honoured by Hillary Clinton.

The former US secretary of state, who is now the chancellor of Queens University Belfast, will present them with the Chancellors Medal for Civic Leadership as part of events marking the 25th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement.

The awards aim to recognise those who sat at the negotiating table, who broke glass ceilings, who supported the community and who made sacrifices for peace.

Recipients include former presidents Mary McAleese and Mary Robinson; former first minister Arlene Foster; Judith Gillespie, who was the Norths most senior woman police officer; and Northern Irelands first Lady Chief Justice, Siobhan Keegan.

Also recognised is US ambassador Nancy Soderberg, former police ombudsman Nuala OLoan and former minister Liz ODonnell.

Dr Mo Mowlam, Baroness May Blood and Lyra McKee will receive posthumous awards.

The former first lady, who previously visited Northern Ireland with her husband, former US president Bill Clinton, said that for a long time, we saw politics being played out by men, and men only.

When I visited in 1995, I saw at first-hand how the women on the ground were making an indelible mark and helping shape the peace process in a variety of ways.

I am so pleased that these awards fully recognise the commitment, skills and determination of a diverse group of women, from across the political and civic spectrum, who helped secure and drive forward peace on this island.

Congratulating the recipients, she said she was pleased to recognise all of you, I am proud of your impact and I am thankful for what you have done.

Queens University Belfast vice-chancellor, Prof Ian Greer, said the impact of these 25 inspirational women has had and will continue to have a lasting effect on life here.

The university is also to award honorary degrees to a number of women who contributed to the peace process, including Pat Hume and Daphne Trimble.

Former US ambassador-at-large for global womens issues, Melanne Verveer, and Martha Pope, former secretary of the US Senate and deputy to senator George Mitchell during the agreement talks, will also receive honorary degrees during the conference to be held at the university to mark the 25th anniversary of the agreement which will take place from April 17th to 19th.

A number of high-profile current and former politicians, including the Clintons, Mr Mitchell, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, are expected to attend.

Continue reading here:
Hillary Clinton to honour women who 'made sacrifices for peace' in ... - The Irish Times

A video drawing Facebook views sounds star-studded, politically speaking, if you believe the posts caption.

It promises starring roles from FBI Director Christopher Wray; U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; Peter Strzok, the former FBI agent who was fired over text messages critical of former President Donald Trump; and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who the caption claims cant quite keep it together.

"CR.O.WED E.R.U.PTS as Jim Jordan drives Wray to SH0CKING charing Strzok decisionClinton cries," the March 25 post says.

It was flagged as part of Facebooks efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

First of all, this video is more than 5 years old.

Its a clip of a December 2017 House Judiciary Committee hearing about FBI oversight. Jordan questioned Wray about Strzok, but the hearing didn't end with Wray deciding to charge Strzok. No crowd erupts. And Clinton is not even there.

We rate this post Pants on Fire!

Continue reading here:
Politicians dont cry in this video, despite the captions promise of ... - PolitiFact

Perhaps the rarest creatures in American politics are those who can accept that our political order might be designed, and reasonably so, to thwart what their hearts desire.

That it is, for instance, possible to support legal access to abortion but also accept that there isn't really a right to it in the Constitution, or to oppose capital punishment but also accept that the Constitution as written clearly permits it, or to support particular gun-control laws but also accept that some of which is proposed in that area is inconsistent with an honest reading of the Second Amendment.

The absence of such conflicted (and thus reasonable) thinking was especially evident in the reaction to the indictment of Donald Trump by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg--most of which has been based on what one thinks of Trump, not the merits of the legal case brought against him, as if that which should matter most matters not at all.

If you opposed Trump, then the indictment was justified, if you support him, it wasn't.

But, again, it is possible to hold two ideas at the same time; in this case, and given the circumstances and facts as we so far know them, perhaps necessary: to both despise Trump and also believe that his indictment constitutes a spectacular abuse of prosecutorial power.

It becomes virtually impossible for those who hate Trump to acknowledge that the case against him in New York is an exceedingly dubious one, because what matters is Trump, not the case.

Since Trump is deplorable, any legal indictment of him must be justified, whatever the particulars. So goes what passes for the logic.

Many of the same folks who (appropriately) condemned "Lock Her Up" when directed at Hillary Clinton (containing as it did the banana-republic suggestion that the law should be used against your political opponents), now seem to have no problem with the concept when directed at Trump (even though an objective observer could plausibly conclude that Clinton's alleged legal transgressions regarding her email server and classified material were of greater consequence than Trump's alleged falsification of business records as part of a hush-money payment).

Charles Lipson, writing in The Spectator U.S., effectively summarizes Bragg's approach when noting, "He had to do it with the thinnest of evidence, the weakest of legal theories. He focused on a misdemeanor for which the statute of limitations has expired. Using a novel legal theory, he wants to tie that misdemeanor to other alleged crimes and package them all as a felony. ... That's not how our justice system is supposed to work. Prosecutors are not supposed to begin with the target and then look for a crime."

Indeed, perhaps the most damning evidence that Bragg's indictment constitutes a case of politicized justice was the fact that an array of far more seasoned federal prosecutors as well as the Federal Election Commission (FEC) examined the same evidence and concluded there were insufficient grounds to justify even one count at the misdemeanor level, but Bragg, who had been elected on a promise to get Trump, lest we forget, was able to somehow find no less than 34 felony counts.

Sheer quantity is thus apparently expected to create the kind of perception of guilt in the public eye that quality and actual legal merit can't.

All of which brings us back to the degree to which an ugly "ends justify the means" dynamic has overtaken our politics in the Trump age, in which the unsavoriness of Trump has provoked a similarly unsavory resistance; to the point where just about any means can be justified in bringing him down, even if it means undermining the integrity of our criminal justice system in the process.

It is possible that the only thing which has threatened our democracy more in recent years than Trump has been the response to him, and Alvin Bragg has now taken that response into genuinely dangerous uncharted territory.

The idea that one party can legally target a former president (and, in Trump's case, also declared candidate for president) of the other party without reciprocity is the epitome of shortsightedness and navete.

The age of hyper-polarization and tribalism thus threatens to bring us a new normal consisting of serial impeachments and criminal indictments of presidents, current and former.

Yes, cleansing the body politic of the menace Trump is important, but how we go about it, and whether those methods preserve the cherished principles of our political order, matters even more.

Trump in that sense isn't so much a threat to the rule of law as a test of our commitment to it.

The great irony in all this is that the Manhattan D.A., having cut in line with the flimsiest of cases, will now make it politically more difficult to prosecute Trump on other, potentially stronger and more significant ones (including possible mishandling of classified documents and encouragement of election fraud in Georgia).

Additional irony is found in the spectacle of a prosecutor with a reputation for being "soft" on crime finally deciding to prosecute someone.

That that someone is Donald Trump is the only thing which explains it all.

Freelance columnist Bradley R. Gitz, who lives and teaches in Batesville, received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois.

Excerpt from:
Into the abyss - Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette