Trump did not make any statements of opposition against the Iraq war until a 2004 interview with Esquire.

'What an extraordinary young man'

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Due to its past status as a bastion of user and privacy-respecting free and open-source technology, Firefox (Mozilla) veering off in the opposite direction (or being perceived as such) always causes a commotion. The latest controversy is building around a feature known as “Privacy-preserving attribution” (PPA), which is trialed as a prototype in the browser’s version 128. The very name sounds like a PR spin, given that PPA has everything to do with advertising, specifically, providing advertisers with Firefox users’ interaction data – although the privacy angle is supposed to be that this data is “anonymized.” Related: How “anonymized” data is a myth This, coupled with the fact that Firefox has been working on this with none other than Meta, inevitably provoked a backlash. Still, Firefox CTO Bobby Holley took to Reddit to defend the feature with a lot of big ideas and promises. The gist of the argument presented by Holley is that Firefox is out to produce an “industry-wide privacy-preserving mechanism” and that this will somehow continue to line ad industry’s pockets and protect user privacy. As to why users might have thought differently when PPA was announced, Holley blamed “insufficient communication” from Mozilla. The Reddit post goes into how the internet is now “a massive web of surveillance,” and that Firefox’s previous idea for how to do something about it – namely, anti-tracking features – is lacking. The reason is that advertisers can find ways to bypass them, and, it “only helps the people that choose to use Firefox” (and that’s at this point a small number of people in the overall browser market share). So, Holley is suggesting that Firefox is not only hell-bent on protecting people’s privacy but also generous toward everyone – hence the ambition of creating an “industry-wide mechanism.” The Firefox CTO claims that PPA is basically an alternative to collecting “a bunch of personal data,” while still allowing advertisers to keep making a bunch of money. And – “We’ve been collaborating with Meta on this, because any successful mechanism will need to be actually useful to advertisers, and designing something that Mozilla and Meta are simultaneously happy with is a good indicator we’ve hit the mark.” But working with Meta, notorious for its unscrupulous personal data collection policies, and making this software that’s baked in as “opt-out,” as well as the general slippery-slope nature of such schemes, continues to rub users the wrong way. Says Holley: “The prototype is temporary, restricted to a handful of test sites, and only works in Firefox. (…) It’s about measurement (aggregate counts of impressions and conversions) rather than targeting.” And you can disable it by unchecking the option under “Website Advertising Preferences” in the settings “Privacy & Security.” If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Firefox Faces Backlash Over New Data Collection For Advertisers appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Sign Up To Keep Reading This post is for Reclaim The Net supporters. Gain access to the entire archive of features and supporters-only content. Help protect free speech, freedom from surveillance, and digital civil liberties. Join Already a supporter? Login here If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post The Secret Life of Phone Repairs: Privacy Risks Exposed appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

As Democrats Fracture, Biden Calls Himself the Unifier

Labour Experiencing Their First 'Fiery But Peaceful' Weekend of Cultural Differences

Comedy Central’s The Daily Show took the air early Friday morning for a live reaction show to day four of the Republican National Convention. Host Jordan Klepper was not happy that Republicans are simultaneously claiming that God spared Donald Trump’s life on Saturday while continuing to reject gun control. Introducing a montage of conservative media personalities, Republican politicians, and Trump campaign officials, Klepper declared, “This one seemed to have a higher purpose.”     After the montage, Klepper returned to quip, “If God did save Trump from that bullet, he kind of procrastinated till the last second, didn't He? He could have stopped the gunman at any point during the day, but instead, he waited until the bullet was in the air and went, ‘Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! That was close. I got to stop looking at my phone all the time.” Later, Klepper played a clip of vice presidential nominee JD Vance’s acceptance speech, where he recalled his family discovering 19 loaded handguns in his grandmother’s house after she died. A displeased Klepper reacted, “Yeah, that's the American spirit! Unhinged paranoia! You know what, I love how gun nuts in this country are always like, ‘We're responsible gun owners. Anyway, here is a Glock I taped under my baby's crib.’" He further mourned that the attempt on Trump’s life hasn’t changed Republicans’ stance on gun control, “Let me just remind everyone that five days ago, their nominee was almost taken out by an assault rifle and I thought that might lead to a moment of introspection. But you guys are like, ‘You know what's hilarious? How guns are everywhere!’" Liberals had a similar reaction after the GOP Congressional baseball shooting, but if Republicans still oppose gun control, maybe they should consider whether such oppositions are genuine and not because the big, bad NRA is pulling their strings.  Here is a transcript for the July 19 show: Comedy Central The Daily Show 7/19/2024 1:35 AM ET JORDAN KLEPPER:  This one seemed to have a higher purpose. SEAN HANNITY: This convention is happening, frankly, by the grace of God. ANNA PAULINA LUNA: It is a divine intervention by God that President Trump is not dead right now. CORY MILLS: This is divine intervention. CAROLINE SUNSHINE: The bullet pierced President Trump at 6:11 PM. Ephesians 6:11 tells us "put on the full armor of God, take your stand against the Devil and his schemes." ROGER MARSHALL: This was Providence. NARSGA BLACKBURN: God’s divine providence. ROB SCHMITT: A millisecond before he fired the shot, a little tilt. RIC GRENELL: A God-given tilt. A God-given tilt TIM SCOTT: If you didn't believe in miracles before Saturday, you better be believing right now. BEN CARSON: That God lowered his shield of protection. KIMBERLY GUILFOYLE: God has put an armor of protection over Donald Trump. SARAH HUCKABEE SANDERS: God is not finished with him yet. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: I believe we all witnessed a miracle, literally. From, you know, before it happened, the flag above got blown in the wind and it got tied into literally what looked like an angel. KLEPPER: Divine origami? That is what we are going with? I mean, you see an angel. I see the G-string from the cover of that Black Crows album. You see what you want to see, but I don't mean to nitpick God, but if God did save Trump from that bullet, he kind of procrastinated till the last second, didn't He? He could have stopped the gunman at any point during the day, but instead, he waited until the bullet was in the air and went, "Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! That was close. I got to stop looking at my phone all the time.” … KLEPPER: Yeah, that's the American spirit! Unhinged paranoia! You know what, I love how gun nuts in this country are always like, "We're responsible gun owners. Anyway, here is a Glock I taped under my baby's crib."  Let me just remind everyone that five days ago, their nominee was almost taken out by an assault rifle and I thought that might lead to a moment of introspection. But you guys are like, "You know what's hilarious? How guns are everywhere!"

PBS’s coverage of Night Four of the Republican National Convention again featured the Washington Post’s Jonathan Capehart holding up the liberal end of the political analysis. (David Brooks of the New York Times was the ostensible conservative on the panel, but as usual they often agreed with each other.) Capehart spent most of the four nights of the convention whining that the speakers weren’t displaying the promised “unity,” and on Night Four declared Donald Trump’s 90-minute acceptance speech “hateful.” After all the distress seeping out of the Democratic camp regarding President Biden’s fitness to run again, Capehart still carried a torch for the president, saying at 9:06 p.m. “We’re in July. This is not September, there is time to pull things back, but it seems like the party has made up its mind. They want him out.” At 10:08 p.m., pre-Trump speech, after insisting crime rates were falling “in record numbers” under Biden, Capehart went on a rather insulting rant about Trump’s supporters in the hall. Capehart: “And one other thing. All week, I’ve been hearing references to God and divine intervention and guardian angel. This is not the Republican Party and I’ve seen stories about this being a coronation of Donald Trump. I think for the people in this room it goes beyond a coronation. He’s being deified. He is being deified. And I noted when the crowd started chanting ‘We Love Trump,” I understand where it comes from, it comes from a good place. But there’s a part of me that’s terrified by that chant, given everything that I heard from Eric Trump and a bunch of other speakers we’ve been listening to since Monday.” Capehart defended Biden after Trump's speech. Capehart: “I think it should make Democrats reconsider what’s going on. Because I don’t understand and I have not heard from anyone what happens if they succeed in getting President Biden to step away from the ticket.’ Co-host Geoff Bennett, sounding exasperated with the GOP, made a silly comparison of Biden’s disturbing debate performance to Trump’s long acceptance speech. Bennett: When I used to cover the Trump White House we had a running joke that being his teleprompter operator was the hardest job in all of Washington. And Jonathan, what do you make of this asymmetry, where Joe Biden has his disastrous debate performance and there are calls for him to exit the race. Donald Trump gives a, I think it’s fair in many ways rambling, more than 90-minute speech, and that’s accepted, that’s accepted by this Republican base. Capehart: It’s accepted by the Republican base, but it’s also accepted by us in the media. Quite frankly, I would love it if folks in our profession would treat this speech the way they treated Joe Biden’s debate. This speech was not presidential, this speech was not unity. This speech was hateful, it was not unifying, and quite honestly, if Democrats don’t get their act together, they’re going to prove David [Brooks] right, both campaigns are out to lose the campaign. That was the final word of PBS’s analysis before saying farewell until the Democratic National Convention in August (whoever may be on the Democratic ticket by then).

An inch. One inch, and President Donald J. Trump would be dead. One slight turn of the head. One slight turn of the head saved Donald J. Trump’s life. The fact that Donald J. Trump is alive today is a miracle. There is no other way to see it. His assassin had a clear line of sight. He was 135 meters from Trump. He got off multiple rounds. And Trump was wounded. Barely grazed in the ear, bleeding profusely, Trump rose from the ground, pumped his fist, and shouted, “Fight!” Whatever the reason -- and who knows the reasons of God? -- God decided that Donald J. Trump would live on Saturday. And that demands an answer of us: Can we, as Trump has now said, unify? Can we come together as Americans? Because if that assassin’s bullet had been one inch the other way, our country would have found itself in an unprecedented crisis. The leading candidate for the candidacy, the ex-president of the United States, a man targeted by his political opposition more than any figure our lifetimes, would have been murdered on national television. What would have come next? It is almost impossible to imagine. Given the obvious questions about the failures of the Secret Service to secure the roof from which the assassin fired his deadly shots, given the crisis of confidence in our institutions, given the fact that Joe Biden has run an entire campaign on the basis that Trump is an existential threat to the republic -- could we ever come together again? Or would the assassination of Trump have ushered in an era of extreme violence in our politics? Would it have presaged the breaking apart of our social bonds, the actual dissolution of our national ties? God didn’t just save Donald J. Trump on Saturday. He may have saved the United States as well. What comes next? What should come next is a realization that Americans are, in fact, compatriots. That we share a country and a future together. The language of dissolution -- the line that “if (INSERT CANDIDATE) wins the presidency, there will never be another election” -- must stop. It is a lie. It was always a lie. Neither candidate on the ballot is Hitler. Neither candidate wishes to end America’s elections or send his opponents to concentration camps. I want Donald Trump to win. I’ve given money to his campaign. I think Joe Biden is the worst president in modern history. But I do not believe that Joe Biden will end America itself if he wins. America will continue to exist, and my political side will continue to fight for its principles. Joe Biden had the opportunity to deliver such a message in the hours after the Trump assassination attempt -- and he failed signally. He reminded Americans of “the need for us to lower the temperature in our politics” but didn’t say the one phrase that might have given such a statement credibility: “everyone, including me.” And indeed, just the next day, he gave an interview to NBC’s Lester Holt in which he denied any role in ramping up the hysterical tone of America’s political rhetoric. Instead, he suggested, that hysterical tone was all the fault of Donald Trump. In essence, it was Trump’s own fault someone tried to shoot him. This is an absurdity. More than that, it is morally disgraceful. This week, Trump has the opportunity to do what Biden wouldn’t: unify the country. He says he wants to do just that. And he can do so by reminding us of the better angels of our nature and by decrying the catastrophist rhetoric that has infected our politics. He can point out that while he disagrees with Joe Biden -- while he thinks Biden is the worst president in American history -- Joe Biden will not be the end of America. We will continue to live together, to work together and to be a nation. God gave us all another chance on Saturday. We ought to take it.

Though not as bombastic as ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Today still made their point Friday about how they viewed President Trump’s Thursday speech at the Republican National Convention, crediting him for his vivid retelling of Saturday’s assassination attempt and the tribute to the late Corey Comperatore, then knocking him for “riffing” and “repeating...grievances, conspiracies, and insults”. Co-host Savannah Guthrie said in a tease that Trump gave an “emotional description of that attempted assassination” before throwing “fiery red meat” to “the party faithful” then later offered the same notes in tossing to senior Washington correspondent Hallie Jackson.     “[I]n many ways, it was also a tale of two speeches with the former President returning to the controversial rhetoric more familiar to his campaign remarks, even after promising a departure from the divisions he had a hand in stoking. But at the outset of that 93-minutes speech, he positioned himself as a unifier, describing in dramatic detail, the attempted assassination against him,” Jackson began. Jackson at least spent some time on Trump discussing Saturday’s horror before pivoting to him “riffing, rally style, off script, repeating the grievances, conspiracies and insulting characteristic of his campaign speeches” and delivering “ominous warnings” (click “expoand”): JACKSON: In his first speech after the assassination attempt against him — [TRUMP CLIP] JACKSON: — Mr. Trump, his ear still bandaged, recounting the moment he was shot Saturday in Pennsylvania, surrounded by images from that day, tears streaming down the faces of some in the crowd — [TRUMP CLIP] JACKSON: — the former President kissing the helmet of Corey Comperature, the firefighter who died at the rally protecting his family before a moment of silence and later, displaying the chart Mr. Trump had turned to see on the rally stage, a move he credited with saving his life. [TRUMP CLIP] JACKSON: But despite the former President’s pledge to deliver a more unifying message after the shooting, only a brief nod — [TRUMP CLIP] JACKSON: — before riffing, rally style, off script, repeating the grievances, conspiracies and insulting characteristic of his campaign speeches — [FIVE TRUMP CLIPS] JACKSON: Mr. Trump, in the longest campaign speech ever, issuing ominous warnings —  [TRUMP CLIP] JACKSON: — repeating his election fraud lies and slamming Democrats, though notably only mentioning President Biden by name briefly. [TRUMP CLIP] In the analysis portion, Guthrie told Jackson that the RNC “was...really interesting...because it really — I was so struck by the way convention organizers seem to be pulling off a real softing of Donald Trump” until Thursday with “Hulk Hogan ripping off his shirt”, “Kid Rock and the crowds yelling, fight,” and Trump’s stemwinder of a speech that “many, many, many people love, but he’s trying to reach across and get new voters.” Jackson agreed and said this signaled the belief in the Trump camp to boost base enthusiasm so their “loyalists...show up” so “then maybe they don’t need quite as many of those independent, suburban, swing state voters as well.” NBC’s Biden coverage was far more contained, but was still devastating. Guthrie framed Biden’s problem in existential terms: “President Biden in isolation with Covid, facing the biggest decision of his political career: Carry on with the campaign or bow out amid mounting and relentless pressure from prominent Democrats?” Senior White House correspondent Gabe Gutierrez said from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware that “[t]he political ground seems to have shifted” and “[t]here’s been a distinct change in the last 24 hours” with it being “simply not clear how the next few days will play out.” Gutierrez noted that while the public posture of the Biden campaign is full speed ahead, a source told the network that “we’re close to the end” of its existence. “This morning, in self-isolation as he recovers from Covid, President Biden is also growing more isolated politically,” Gutierrez added. In a shot to Biden that he’s not the leader of the party, Gutierrez said “anxiety among Democrats reaching the top of the party,” citing former President Obama and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi (CA). Guthrie and Meet the Press moderator Kristen Welker weren’t any less charitable (click “expand”): GUTHRIE: The many, many Democrats that you talked to think it’s all but done. Although, apparently he has not made that decision. WELKER: That’s right. It’s not done until he makes that final decision, if he does. There is an air of inevitability, though, right now given that you have these mounting calls both publicly and privately. Jon Tester becoming the second U.S. Senator to call on him to step down. I am told that he is increasingly reflective. He’s obviously in Rehoboth with his family as he recovers from Covid, but I’m also told he’s increasingly resentful of this pile-on, and it underscoring the divisions in the party. GUTHRIE: Yeah. And his circle of advisers has reportedly gotten narrower and narrower — WELKER: Yeah. GUTHRIE: — and it wasn’t exactly wide to start with.     WELKER: Well, exactly. And this is part of the concern with the Democratic Party that he hasn’t been given the full picture that shows he’s increasingly trailing former President Trump nationally and in key battleground states as well. So, what’s happening though is those conversations are becoming more realistic, I’m told. Despite rehasing much of his report from the first hour, Gutierrez dropped the w-word in the second hour: “The walls seemingly closing in on his campaign.” To see the relevant transcripts from July 19, click here (for Trump coverage) and here (for Biden coverage).