New York’s Liberalism Is a Threat to New Bedford [OPINION] – wbsm.com

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Six men accused of operating a $7 million fentanyl distribution ring from a Bronx apartment were released without bail under New York's new criminal justice law on Wednesday after Assistant District Attorney Michael Di Paolo said none of the defendants were eligible for bail.

The New York Post says the apartment was being used as a "heroin and fentanyl packaging mill." The New York Drug Enforcement Task Force says it found hundreds of thousands of envelopes filled with suspected fentanyl that was being prepared for distribution in New York City and New England. That's New Bedford and Fall River and Taunton. To you and your kids and your co-workers and their kids.

A judge in Manhattan District Court ordered the defendants to turn over their passports, as a number of them have connections to the Dominican Republic. The judge ordered them to appear for arraignment on February 27 before releasing them. How dare he?

The Post says lawyers for the defendants convinced the judge that the men are not flight risks because none of them have criminal records and family members with court dealings of their own turned up for their arraignments.

New York's liberal criminal justice reform, drafted and enacted by Democrats, is threatening all of society. Six men who were aiming to flood the streets of New York and New England with $7 million worth of fentanyl were allowed to walk free from a courtroom in Manhattan. That is disturbing.

New York's sanctuary policies recently allowed a 24-year-old illegal immigrant to evade deportation by ICE and once released he is charged with raping and murdering a 92-year woman, breaking her spine and ribs in the process before leaving her for dead on a sidewalk.

Nice going, New York.

There are those in state government who are proposing similar laws for Massachusetts while refusing to enforce existing laws that protect law-abiding residents. We must continue to resist them.

Barry Richard is the host of The Barry Richard Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard weekdays from noon to 3 p.m. Contact him at barry@wbsm.com and follow him on Twitter @BarryJRichard58. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.

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New York's Liberalism Is a Threat to New Bedford [OPINION] - wbsm.com

Liberal elites shaming of Western culture ignores the true international offenders – Washington Times

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ANALYSIS/OPINION:

An ancient habit of Western elites is a certain selectivity in condemnation.

Sometimes Westerners apply critical standards to the West that they would never apply to other nations.

My colleague at the Hoover Institution, historian Niall Ferguson, has pointed out that Swedish green-teen celebrity Greta Thunberg might be more effective in her advocacy for reducing carbon emissions by redirecting her animus. Instead of hectoring Europeans and Americans, who have recently achieved the planets most dramatic drops in the use of fossil fuels, Greta might instead turn her attention to China and India to offer her how dare you complaints to get their leaders to curb carbon emissions.

Whether the world continues to spew dangerous levels of carbons will depend largely on policies in China and India. After all, these two countries account for over a third of the global population and continue to grow their coal-based industries.

In the late 1950s, many elites in United States bought the Soviet Union line that the march of global communism would bury the West. Then, as Soviet power eroded in the 1980s, Japan Inc. and its ascendant model of state-sponsored industry became the preferred alternative to Western-style democratic capitalism.

Once Japans economy ossified, the new utopia of the 1990s was supposedly the emerging European Union. Americans were supposed to be awed that the euro gained ground on the dollar. Europes borderless democratic socialism and its soft power were declared preferable to the reactionary United States.

By 2015, the EU was a mess, so China was preordained as the inevitable global superpower. American intellectuals pointed to its high-speed rail transportation, solar industries and gleaming airports, in contrast to the hollowed-out and grubby American heartland.

Now the curtain has been pulled back on the interior rot of the Chinese Communist Party, its gulag-like re-education camps, its systematic mercantile cheating, its Orwellian surveillance apparatus, its serial public health crises and its primitive hinterland infrastructure.

After the calcification of the Soviet Union, Japan Inc., the EU and the Chinese superpower, no one quite knows which alternative will next supposedly bury America.

The United States and Europe are often quite critical of violence against women, minorities and gays. The European Union, for example, has often singled out Israel for its supposed mistreatment of Palestinians on the West Bank.

Yet if the purpose of Western human rights activism is to curb global bias and hate, then it would be far more cost-effective to concentrate on the greatest offenders.

China is currently detaining about a million Muslim Uighurs in re-education camps. Yet activist groups arent calling for divestment, boycotts and sanctions against Beijing in the same way they target Israel.

Homosexuality is a capital crime in Iran. Scores of Iranian gays reportedly have been incarcerated and thousands executed under theocratic law since the fall of the shah in 1979. Yet rarely do Western activist groups call for global ostracism of Iran.

Dont look to the U.N. Human Rights Council for any meaningful condemnation of worldwide prejudice and hatred, although it is a frequent critic of both the United States and Israel.

Many of the 47 member nations of the Human Rights Council are habitual violators of human rights. In 2017, nine member nations persecuted citizens who were actively working to implement U.N. standards of human rights.

There are many reasons for Westerners selective outrage and pessimism toward their own culture. Cowardice explains some of the asymmetry. Blasting tiny democratic Israel will not result in any retaliation. Taking on a powerful China or a murderous Iran could earn retribution.

Guilt also explains some of the selectivity. European nations are still blamed for 19th-century colonialism and imperialism. They will always seek absolution, as the citizens of former colonial and Third World nations act like perpetual victims even well into the postmodern 21st century.

Virtual-signaling is increasingly common. Western elites often harangue about misdemeanors when they cannot address felonies a strange sort of psychological penance that excuses their impotence.

It is much easier for the city of Berkeley, California, to ban clean-burning, U.S.-produced natural gas in newly constructed buildings than it is to outlaw far dirtier crude oil from Saudi Arabia. Currently, the sexist, homophobic, autocratic Saudis are the largest source of imported oil in California, sending the state some 100 million barrels per year, without which thousands of Berkeley motorists could not get to work. Apparently, outlawing clean, domestic natural gas allows one to justify importing unclean Saudi oil.

Western elites are perpetually aggrieved. But the next time they direct their lectures at a particular target, consider the source and motivation of their outrage.

Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is the author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won (Basic Books, 2017).

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Liberal elites shaming of Western culture ignores the true international offenders - Washington Times

The strange new liberal attraction to the feds – The Spectator USA

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In a political era defined by abnormalities, few developments are as bizarre as the newfound liberal admiration for federal law enforcement.

Given its rich history of activism and countercultural tendencies, the left has traditionally regarded federal law enforcement with hostility. Looking back, this attitude has been largely earned.

Throughout the 20th century, radical leftists were relentlessly targeted under the guise of protecting America from seditious ideologies. For instance, from 1919 to 1920 thousands of suspected communists were arrested in sweeping raids that spanned 23 states. Subsequent attempts to combat subversives would prove no less appalling: in 1964, the FBI hatched at blackmail plot aimed at coercing Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. to commit suicide.

Given this sordid past, its unsurprising that many Democrats viewed the FBIstreatmentof Hillary Clinton in 2016 as more of the same. In the New York Times, Andrew Rosenthalaccused erstwhile FBI director James Comey of interferingon behalf of the Republican party. The Guardian went further, offering a portrait of the FBI that suggested it was Trumpland.

But the world spins in a different direction only a few years later: allegations of a partisan conspiracy come from the right, while federal investigators arehros de la rsistance. Indeed, firing the man onceblamedfor Clintons electoral demise has become an impeachable offense, and his testimony fit foryoga watch parties.

Of course, tribal loyalties easily explain these transformations investigating enemies is righteous, while investigating allies is nefarious. Once federal agents began probing Trumpworld, many of his supporters discovered the virtues of due process overnight, while Democrats began sounding like rural sheriffs, spewing platitudes about innocent people having nothing to hide.

So whose side are the feds really on? This is likely the wrong question. As Jack Goldsmith and Bob Bauer note, the problems at the FBI revealed by multiple inspector-general investigations do not cut politically in one direction. Individual political biases exist, but the overarching bias is institutional. Federal investigators fashion themselves as guardians of order and seek to defeat those they think threaten it, whether environmental activists, right-wing populists, or drug dealers. While the vast majority are patriots committed to the public good, their righteousness can manifest itself in dangerous ways, fostering an ends justify the means mentality.

One such case study is presented by DoJ Inspector General Michael Horowitzs report examining the FBIs use of FISA while investigating the Trump campaign. The IG report exposes a pattern of misconduct that, in every significant instance, disadvantaged the suspect. This is all the more disturbing given that FISA applications are approved 99 percent of the time. While FISAs defenders have long claimed that this statistic is misleading, Horowitzs report compels us to ask whether the hurdles we expect the government to clear before jettisoning our liberties are, in reality, mere rubber stamps. If rules are bent in such a high-profile case, how often do run-of-the-mill suspects fall prey to such oversights?

While we romanticize ideals like innocent until proven guilty, the truth is that the scales are tipped heavily in the governments favor. In fact, they almost never lose: the DoJs conviction rate regularly exceeds 95 percent. This unsettling statistic is largely explained by a draconian federal code and the aggressiveness of prosecutors. For example, if someone accused of bribing her daughters way into USC dares mount a defense, prosecutors will likely hit Aunt Becky with charges better reserved for someone washing money for the Sinaloa cartel.

The goal? Capitulation. While we like to imagine the adjudication of truth or fair justice to be the principal motivation driving our system, the desire to swiftly dispose of cases and protect prosecutors near-perfect records more often prevails.The latest US Sentencing Commissionsreport reveals that a staggering 97.4 percent of offenders pleaded guilty, rather than being convicted in trial. The prospect of years in a hellacious federal prison reliably inspires people to leap for any deal on offer.

Some readers will surely be unmoved, confident that they are law-abiding citizens. But have they ever gotten lost in the woods? Faked a sick day? As Mike Chase hilariously demonstrates inHow to Become a Federal Criminal, federal law criminalizes a virtually infinite range of behavior, from moving a park bench to making an unreasonable gesture to a passing horse. Indeed, no oneactually knows the total number of federal crimes (allattemptsat a tally have ended in failure.) Sure, prosecutorial discretiontypically prevents the most obscure of these offenses from being charged. But the potential for abuse remains: just ask the Michigan Fish Dealer doing time for trout trafficking.

Federal investigators can devise a plausible justification to target almost anyone. And if their initial suspicions prove unfounded, they are adept, as former prosecutor Ken White notes, at turning investigations of crimesinto schemes toproduce new crimes. It is routine, he emphasizes, to convict people not for the subject of the investigation but for how they react to it.

There is no shortage of hypocrisy on either side. But our views of law enforcement cannot be governed by tribalism: overlooking injustices perpetrated against our adversaries only reinforces behavior that harms all Americans.

Our system grants federal law enforcement extraordinary power to ruin lives. The time has come for Americans of all stripes to ask how freely they should be allowed to wield it.

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This is a slippery slope: Petition against Liberal assault rifle ban receives thousands of signatures – Edmonton Journal

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Semi-automatic AR-15's are for sale at Good Guys Guns & Range on February 15, 2018 in Orem, Utah.George Frey/Getty Images

An Alberta-led federal petition opposing a ban on military-style assault rifles without first having a debate has received more than a hundred-thousand signatures in just a short period of time.

As of Saturday, the 60-day petition, known online as e-2341, has received more than 107,000 signatures since launching on Dec. 17. The petitions main problem is how the Liberal government plans to impose a ban on military-style assault rifles through an Order in Council instead of having it debated in the House of Commons.

Medicine Hats Brad Manysiak, who started the petition, said how the government is approaching this doesnt sit well with him.

Thats an egregious overreach of parliamentary power, he said. When we change laws in Canada, historically, its debated, it goes to the Senate, it has a specific path it has to take in order for something to become law. Usually, there has to a lot of public support for it. This is a slippery slope.

A spokesperson from the Minister of Public Safety in an email said a ban is coming.

Military-style assault rifles have been used in Canada to target women and students, the spokesperson said. Police chiefs in our country have been advocating for restrictions on assault weapons for more than four decades. Weve listened, and, as promised to Canadians in the recent election, we will ban military-style assault rifles.

The spokesperson said the ban would not affect rifles and shotguns designed for hunting and pest control.

Ottawa is also looking at introducing a buyback program but the cost to do so is estimated to be in the hundreds of the millions. Public Safety Minister Bill Blair told reporters months ago that there are about 250,000 semi-automatic assault rifles legally owned in Canada.

Manysiak called this a kneejerk reaction by the government, especially in light of an increased amount of handguns used in Toronto-area shootings. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised he would allow municipalities and provinces to implement handgun bans if they so choose.

Its not being directed in the proper way, Manysiak said. Its not directed at the problem.

He said owning a gun in Canada is a long and arduous process and even when someone passes, a gun owners name is constantly being run through the RCMPs database to ensure no crimes have been committed.

Medicine Hat MP Glen Motz is expected to present the petition in the House after its closed on Feb. 15. Manysiak didnt believe it would be enough to change the governments mind but will send a message to the Liberals given the amount of support and media attention the petition has received.

With files from The Canadian Press

jlabine@postmedia.com

Twitter.com/jefflabine

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This is a slippery slope: Petition against Liberal assault rifle ban receives thousands of signatures - Edmonton Journal

With Boris Johnson in control, the danger is that liberals will give up the fight – The Guardian

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Historians will debate the reasons for the complacency that descended on the British in the first months of the 2020s. Had their government duped the nation into ignorant passivity? Were they really as stupid as they appeared to be? Nothing had been settled. The pain was yet to come. Yet they behaved as if they believed Boris Johnson when he said he could get Brexit done. And, as Im certain the historians of the future will say, believing Boris Johnson never ended well.

A few causes of our torpor appear obvious. The Conservatives won a handsome majority. Brexit bored the public rigid. The opposition was hopeless. Journalists werent doing their job. The prime minister was thus free to announce: Now we can put the rancour and division of the past three years behind us and focus on delivering a bright, exciting future, and not be met with derisive laughter.

Yet the delusions that follow are anything but obvious. As the clock chimes 11 on Friday night, we can, apparently, build high-speed rail lines, reinvigorate the north, bail out a regional airline and let a thousand bus services bloom. We can tear up our economic model without having the smallest idea what to put in its place.

The listless acceptance extends to those who believe that leaving the European Union is an act of monumental folly. Brexits inevitability, the possibility that we are in for another decade of rightwing rule, is leading opponents of the status quo to retreat into private life, as the defeated so often do. Perhaps they are almost grateful for the chance to concentrate on their friendships, family and love affairs: these are in the end what matter most to everyone except obsessives.

Arent you sick of an argument about a subject no one except a handful of zealots cared about before 2016?

On this reading, the country has not been wholly deceived by Johnson and his propagandists. The British are just exhausted. In a piece for the Parisian news magazine, LExpress, the French journalist and historian Agns Poirier interviewed psychiatrists dealing with voters who had looked on appalled as Britain made a disastrous choice. They were devastated, angry, depressed, betrayed and ashamed, as a psychological study of Remain supporters put it. Brexit allowed the old to enforce their worldview on the young and broke ties between the generations. My patients talk about the impossibility of mentioning the subject in family, to avoid clashes. In extreme cases, they have cut ties, Dr Ian Martin, a London psychiatrist, said a story I have heard several times myself.

Its not the fear that kills you but the hope, runs the cliche. And now all hope of a second referendum or a change of government has gone, a kind of liberation follows. You can just sigh, move on and patch up differences. What else is there to do?

Perhaps many will be relieved. Poirier repeats the echoingly grim phrase the French socialist Lon Blum used to describe the decision by France and Britain to allow Hitler to dismember Czechoslovakia at the Munich conference of 1938: a lche soulagement a cowardly relief. Selling out Czechoslovakia was shameful, but Blum, who had campaigned for peace, could tell himself that at least it avoided war in Europe. Do you feel a lche soulagement of your own? Arent you sick of an argument about a subject no one except a handful of zealots cared about before 2016?

The millions who think they can now avoid the bitterness of 2016-19 will find that it has just been postponed

Wouldnt it be more truly British to come together, let bygones be bygones, and make the best of it? I dont see how you can if you are one of the three million EU nationals in Britain or 1.5 million Britons in the EU who have seen their sense of who they are and where they belong torn to shreds. But if you face no immediate stresses, the temptation to walk away is seductive.

The Munich agreement did not avoid war, it merely postponed it for a year. Likewise, the millions who think they can now avoid the bitterness of 2016-19 will find that it, too, has just been postponed. You may not be interested in Brexit but Brexit is interested in you.

The hard break the government is proposing as the only way to leave the EU without following EU law will be a direct attack on the pharmaceutical, chemical, aerospace, food processing, farming, fishing and car industries. Businesses that rely on the frictionless movement of goods will suffer. The absence of regulatory checks and arguments about the source of components and applicable tax rates is essential for their health, just as the absence of border checks on perishable food is essential for fresh food and fish exports. Hundreds of thousands of jobs and everyones living standards are at stake. The Food and Drink Federation said last week that the Johnson administrations policies sounded like the death knell for frictionless trade with the EU and were likely to cause food prices to rise.

You can tell we are in a state that borders on the catatonic when Sajid Javid responded by telling the Financial Times that some businesses would indeed suffer. It was a welcome outbreak of honesty from a dishonest administration. But what an admission from a chancellor of the exchequer charged with protecting the economy.

As telling was the indifference with which his dereliction of duty was greeted. The liberal elite, the chattering classes, the remoaners, call them what you will, once worried about the fate of car workers. Every serious study of the consequences of Brexit has shown that it will hit the old manufacturing regions of the north-east, Wales and Midlands hardest. London will be all right, as London always is. Yet at the moment they need support, they will be met with indifference. They will hear educated voices say that they voted for Brexit in 2016 and then voted for Johnson in 2019. They were warned and chose not to listen.

I fear that the most damaging effect of the languid complacency that has infected the national mood is the collapse of any notion of solidarity. The most characteristic gesture of Brexit Britain will be a shrug of the shoulders.

Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist

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With Boris Johnson in control, the danger is that liberals will give up the fight - The Guardian

Idaho’s Liberal Media Embarrass Themselves Attacking Climate Realism – The Heartland Institute

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Idahos liberal media showed this past week just how ill-informed and out-of-touch with everyday Idahoans they are by viciously attacking climate science and the people who deliver such science to their state. Their unfortunate attacks came in response to a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation I delivered January 23rd at the invitation of the Idaho House Resources and Conservation Committee.

I took great pains during my presentation to be as factual, cordial, and professional as possible. Every one of the 22 slides was populated with the best available information objective charts and data produced by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the United States Department of Agriculture, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and other objective, authoritative sources. I welcomed questioning from the House committee after my presentation and disparaged nobody during or after my presentation. Nevertheless, the Idaho media responded with nasty, false, and often personal attacks in an attempt to divert attention away from the science that was presented.

The central message of my presentation was that temperatures are rising in Idaho at a slower pace than is the case nationally or globally, that precipitation in the state is increasing especially in the dry summer months and that the modest warming and increasing precipitation are bringing net benefits like longer and more-productive growing seasons and increasing plant density in the state. I documented these points with objective data from NOAA, NASA, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The response from the liberal Idaho media has been personal and rabid.

Rocky Barker of the Idaho Statesman published an article calling me an Illinois-based lobbyist. I neither live in Illinois nor am I a lobbyist. He could easily have learned the truth about both points simply by asking me.

Barker continued by saying The Heartland Institute is heavily funded by the fossil fuel industry. In fact, Heartland receives the vast majority of its funding from private individuals and charitable foundations with no connection to the fossil fuel industry. In fact, our funding from the fossil fuel industry is miniscule. Thats important to note because leftist environmental groups like the Sierra Club with annual budgets much larger than Heartlands have received much more money from the fossil fuel industry than we have. I would have been happy to share that information with Barker if he had asked.

An Idaho Falls Post Register house editorial, titled, Heartland Institute presentation was an embarrassment, was even more vicious and erroneous.

The Post Register claimed I presented lies from the very start in a Policy Brief I wrote on the topic. I stated in that paper that Idaho Gov. Brad Little in January 2019 said climate change is real and a big deal, and that he did it following a hearing on climate change on March 6, 2019. They got me! I made a mistake by correctly identifying Gov. Littles statement as occurring in January, but later saying it occurred after the March hearing. That is a regrettable oversight, but hardly a lie. [NOTE: We have corrected that passage in the Policy Brief.]

Heres another attack designed to take attention away from the science: The Post Register, as well as Rocky Barker in the Idaho Statesman, made a point to derisively assert I repeatedly referred to Idaho as Iowa during my presentation and lectured that I should know the difference. Guilty as charged. I certainly know the difference, but such childish attacks have nothing to do with the science I presented. Moreover, I mentioned the state of Idaho by name 40 times during my presentation, and apparently said Iowa four times. As somebody who grew up in Iowa and frequently talks about and with people from Iowa, I think it is understandable for me to occasionally make that easy slip of the tongue. I certainly have experienced people from Idaho inadvertently refer to my home state of Iowa as Idaho, but I dont take offense or respond childishly to it.

The Post Register further lied about me, and in a childish manner, when it stated, The whitebark pines in the high mountains here, which Taylor has never seen. I have been to Idaho several times and have certainly seen the whitebark pines in the state. I could have confirmed this to the Post Register if they had exercised minimal journalistic standards and asked before publishing their childishly asserted falsehood.

Moving on to the actual science, Barkers Statesman article asserts in the caption of the accompanying video that A new study out of the University of Idaho and Columbia University shows human-caused climate change doubled size of wildfires in the West. The new study was published four years ago in 2016 and its findings have been thoroughly debunked since then. Perhaps by falsely referring to the old study as new, the Statesman believes it can induce people not to check into the newer, more accurate information that debunks the alarmist assertion.

The Statesman article responded to the data I presented showing increasing Idaho precipitation and a lessening of Idaho drought by asserting, But in fact the fire season has grown by 47 days annually over the past 25 years, according to Boise State University geology professor Jen Pierce. Of course, a lengthening of fire season (i.e., the number of days in which fires may potentially occur) is of minimal significance when drought conditions throughout the potential fire season are less frequent and severe due to increasing precipitation.

The Statesman also quoted geologist Pierce stating, Even the increased crop yields could drop if the lower snowpack forecast reduces the water supply. Yet my presentation delivered objective data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture showing Idaho crop yields are consistently increasing and setting frequent new records, even with a modest decline in recent snowpack, as more abundant annual precipitation and longer growing seasons enhance crop output.

A follow-up editorial from the Statesmans editorial board devoted most of its space to saying this years Australian wildfires debunk my presentation and show what Idaho could soon experience. Had the Statesmans editorial board examined the data before leaping to alarmist assumptions, they would have learned that there has been a long-term increase in Australian precipitation, droughts were much more severe 100 years ago, and the past two decades have been wetter than normal in Australia. Our modest recent warming is responsible for many benefits, but it cant make all droughts and wildfires disappear.

I would mention science errors presented by the Post Register editorial board, but the Post Register editorial board barely mentioned any science. They hoped to avoid the topic by making their house editorial almost entirely personal. To the limited extend the Post Register addressed the science I presented, they couldnt even get that right.

The Post Register stated, Taylors two key messages were: Climate change isnt happening in Idaho, and climate change is good for Idaho. While the two messages contradict each other. I never said climate change isnt happening in Idaho. In fact, most of my talk centered on how the pace of Idaho warming is modest, has occurred primarily during the coldest winter cold spells, and has brought beneficial increases in annual and dry-season precipitation. How could any competent reporter or editorial board describe that as climate change isnt happening?

Ultimately, the Idaho Statesman and the Idaho Falls Post Register made themselves look bad by resorting to ill-informed and childish attacks against somebody invited to present information to an Idaho House of Representatives committee. The scientific information I presented was objective, authoritative, and delivered in a cordial and professional manner. Given a choice between objective science and childish personal attacks, I suspect Idahoans will choose objective science. Watch and listen to the PowerPoint presentation yourself and make up your own mind.

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Idaho's Liberal Media Embarrass Themselves Attacking Climate Realism - The Heartland Institute

President Trump Restores the Original Intent of the First Amendment – CNSNews.com

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President Donald Trump gives a speech in Austin, Texas. (Photo credit: Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)

President Trump truly made Religious Freedom Day a day of celebration on Jan. 16 for those communities and individuals who live a religious life. In a long-needed and bold gesture, the President leveled the playing field so that people of faith are no longer treated as second-class citizens by our public institutions.

There can be no doubt that the eight years of the previous administration instituted orders and promoted an attitude that purposely made people of faith uncomfortable in our public institutions, including schools, and promoted a sense that religious people were outside the mainstream and harmful to general society. It was a low point in our nations history.

There are many concrete demonstrations in todays guidelines and announcements by President Trump that will, thank God, dramatically change the atmosphere and resurrect the religious freedom upon which this country was founded. The biblical life and the values and manners that derive therefrom are and have been the most vital feature in shaping the unique American society and opportunities from which we continually receive blessing.

More than any president in my lifetime, President Trump has fulfilled his campaign pledges and done so with clarity, full heart, and in a manner filled with conviction and designed for effectiveness.

Rabbi Aryeh Spero is spokesman of the Conference of Jewish Affairs, author of Push Back: Reclaiming our American Judeo-Christian Spirit, president of Caucus for America, and a frequent guest on Fox News.

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President Trump Restores the Original Intent of the First Amendment - CNSNews.com

‘This Type of Surveillance Threatens Us All’ – FAIR

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Janine Jackson interviewed Defending Rights & Dissents Chip Gibbons about the FBI vs. the First Amendment for the January 17, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Janine Jackson: We invoke protest a lot in this country, but many people are confused about the right to political expression: They dont want to get on the wrong side of the law while arguing for righteousness; thats not a familiar or comfortable spot for many people.

Some are honestly confused about which side the law is on. They havent accepted that their belief in the value of human life might make them a criminal, if the life in question is a child whose parents seek asylum, or an Iranian whose country isthis weekon the hot list of enemies of the state. Thats a hard thing to get your head around. Mainly, people think the law will uphold our rights, despite our knowledge that sometimes the state is the one stepping on them.

Our next guest examines just how state actors intervene in and undermine what should be protected political activity and speech. Chip Gibbons is a journalist and a researcher. Hes policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent, and author of the recent report Still Spying on Dissent: The Enduring Problem of FBI First Amendment Abuse. He joins us now by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Chip Gibbons.

Chip Gibbons: Always a pleasure to be on CounterSpin, one of my favorite programs.

JJ: Well, thank you.

You make clear that this report is not about Donald Trump per se, because these are issues that long predate him. But one of the more perverse developments, I would say, of the Trump moment is liberalsunderstandably eager for there to be some commensurate power to counter that of the White Houseseeming to endorse the FBI as that force. So the report is completely relevant to the present moment, as history generally is.

But lets just start briefly with what you looked at. What was the material for this project?

CG: Sure. So the material is all information that was already in the public domain. But what we went through and did was we looked at known incidences of FBI surveillance, monitoring or tracking of political protest since the year 2010, for the last decade. And what we found is that over that decade, the FBI has repeatedly used its counterterrorism authorities to spy on and monitor environmental groups, antiwar groups, labor groupsso basically, civil society activity for justice. And when you look at the incidences together, what you realize is that theyre not isolated incidents.

If you ever see media coverage of an FBI political spying scandal, it will be like, FBI Spies on Environmental Protesters in Houston, but it wont say, And just last week, the FBI was knocking on the homes of Palestine solidarity activists in Berkeley. When you put these things together, what you see is how systemic the problem is.

And after we did that, we went a step further and looked at the history of political surveillance in the United States, to make the case that the trends that we see in the last 10 years, which continue to this day, are part of a larger history of political surveillance in the United States, as carried out by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

JJ: And lets be clear, the FBI themselves have acknowledged that theyre not talking about groups that have been engaged in known violence. They explicitly say, some of the people theyre surveilling are nonviolent, are peaceful organizations.

CG: In many of the cases, they do. We know from the files released via the Freedom of Information Act about the surveillance of Occupy Wall Street, the FBI acknowledged they were nonviolent. We know about the files released about School of the Americas Watch, which is a pacifist antiwar group that protests a notorious military training facility, where it has been training death squads and dictators in Latin America, that they were a peaceful group with peaceful intentions. They try to rationalize this by saying that at an unknown point in the future, that an unknown actor could infiltrate these groups and act violently, or in the case of Occupy Wall Street, they said the group could be exploited by a lone offender. But whats really insidious here is that they clearly think that certain types of speech, therefore, are somehow suspicious.

And you see this logic even more in play with the Black Identity Extremism intelligence assessment, which states that if African Americans are concerned about police racism and social injustice, theyre more likely to engage in lethal retaliatory violence against law enforcement, and thats a threat the FBI has to counter in the present. And what thats saying is that being angry about social injustice you experience is somehow a pretext that one might then use to go and engage in crime. Its a predetermining factor in criminality.

And you see that again with one of the FBI field offices had a report on, because of anger at the horrible treatment of migrant children who are in concentration camps in this country, that youre more likely to see anarchists engage in violence against the government. So this treatment that certain types of speech lead to crime, and therefore are inherently suspicious. And you also see the government just, quite frankly, conflating speech itself with criminality or with terrorism.

JJ: I have to say, media play a role here, lifting up every foiled terror plot as justification for anything at all, because, you know, Look, we foiled a plot, even if the plot was the work of an FBI agent provocateur ginning up some confused man in a chat room. Whatever civil liberties or rights you want to hold up, I feel media play into countering that with, But wait, this unknowable number of deaths has been prevented, so this whole idea of preemptively preventing violence is incredibly insidious.

CG: Absolutely. And its good that you pointed out agent provocateurs, because the FBI has always used confidential informants to spy on dissent. But since 9/11, and especially in the Muslim community, those confidential informants have increasingly acted as agents provocateurs, going to people who are not suspected of any crimein one case, they met someone, a random person in a parking lot of a mosqueand then suggesting, and in many cases enticing them to agree to terror plots that exist only in the FBIs minds. And then when they agree to partake in them, theyre then arrested, and the FBI does these big press releases, a big press conference saying, Oh, we foiled terrorism, we foiled a terror plot. And that further justifies more repression.

Donald Trumps Muslim ban, there are multiple iterations of it through multiple executive orders, but in the second executive order, to try to overcome the legal challenges to it, he cited a rationale for it, and he named two terror plots carried out by refugees. In both of those cases, the plots were the work of an FBI agent provocateur; in one of the cases, the judge found the plot to be an example of imperfect entrapment. So here you have the FBI manufacturing fake terror plots, and then going around using that to claim theres a larger threat from terrorism than there actually is, and then that being used to justify more state repression.

JJ: Lyndon Johnson called the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, like Grannys night shirt, it covers everything. And I think that getting folks to accept the idea of a War on Terror, getting reporters to take that phrase out of quotation marks and suggest that its a solid, identifiable thing, thats a real Grannys nightshirt of a victory for some, including the FBI. I mean, the idea of just saying terrorism is allowed to justify a great deal.

CG: It is, and it unfortunately, in some cases, it predates, with the FBI, 9/11. They certainly accelerated the abuses after 9/11. But in the 1980s, they were using the threat of international terrorism to investigate opponents of Ronald Reagans foreign policy, and specifically the Committee In Solidarity with the People of El Salvador. And as part of this massive foreign counterintelligence investigation against a domestic group engaged in domestic political activity, once again protesting horrible injustices, they came up with a list of organizations who were in support of CISPESs goals, and included the Maryknoll nuns on it. So theyve long used the threat of terrorism or subversion or whatever to spy on dissent, and 9/11 and the existence of a War on Terror has only given them more legitimacy for delegitimizing dissent.

JJ: I said at the outset that some folks havent accepted that their desire to speak out for their beliefs can get them labeled criminal. Of course, some of us were born with that label; our opposition is stamped in our ethnicity or our gender presentation or our neighborhood. And something has changed, that 2008 decision about assessments, things have shifted, so that simply belonging to a certain communityon paperis allowed to make you suspicious, yeah?

CG: Sure. So in 2008, Attorney General Michael Mukasey, George W. Bushs lame duck attorney general, literally weeks before Obama comes into office, he puts out new attorney general guidelines. And what are the attorney general guidelines? The FBI was created as the Bureau of Investigation in 1908, without Congresss approval. So to this day, they have no congressional or legislative charter, outlining who they can investigate, what techniques they can use, and why they can investigate someone. Theyre not only a law enforcement agency, but theyre also an intelligence and national security agency.

So law enforcement, in theory, is supposed to be about investigating people for crimes and then prosecuting them. I think your listeners know thats not really what law enforcement does. Its more about social control.

But intelligence, on the other hand, doesnt have any such mandate, so its much more broad. And theyve always used that to spy on dissent. But in the Church Committee in the 70s, a lot of this starts to come out, and people are outraged, and as a result, they dont impose a legislative charter on the FBI; instead, they agree to this compromise where the attorney general creates guidelines for the FBI. And because these guidelines are created by the attorney general, any attorney general can change them.

And in 2008, like I said, Michael Mukasey issues new guidelines that are unprecedented in the scope of authority they give the FBI. They let the FBI carry out whats called assessments, which are investigations that do not require a factual predicate to believe the individual is involved in crime, or threatens national security, merely a authorized law enforcement purpose. So for the first time since the Church Committee, the FBI has the authority to investigate people not suspected of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

JJ: The report also includes some recommendations and some thoughts about going forward. Youve said the guidelines around them are murky, a lot of folks dont understand whos in charge of the FBI. Courts dont call what they do entrapment, straight out, very often, just like we know law enforcement can lie to suspects, straight up lie to them. But the response is not to give, somehow, the FBI more power.

Chip Gibbons: In the last decade alone, theyve spied on Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Abolish ICE movements, Palestinian solidarity movements, environmental movements. Obviously, thats only the tip of the iceberg.

CG: No, I think what we need to do is, we need to actually have a legislative charter that defines what the FBIs powers are, and they need to be limited to investigating only violations of the federal criminal code. And we need to have serious protections for the First Amendment, so that the FBI cannot initiate or conduct investigations involving the exercise of free speech unless there are specific and articulable facts that actually indicate that the subject of the investigation is engaging in a criminal act. I think that would be a huge one. I think limits on the use of informants, to not allow themabsent, once again, suspicion of crimeso theres not the sort of dragnet informants you see, where you send a confidential informant into the Muslim community, where theres no suspicion of any wrongdoing, and then you try to entrap people, or what should be called entrapment. You know, barring the informants from acting as agents provocateurs would be helpful.

And I think Congress needs to actually engage in its oversight roleI know thats a shocking ideaand actually investigate what the FBI is doing, because we know from information in the public domain, that in the last decade alone, theyve spied on Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Abolish ICE movements, Palestinian solidarity movements, environmental movements. Obviously, thats only the tip of the iceberg, because we dont have access to all of the information which Congress could get, and they could ask the question: Why are these investigations been initiated? What other similar investigations have taken place? What is the scope of this political surveillance?

JJ: We should be able to argue that this infiltration and surveillance of protected activity is wrong, without having to tack on the note that, Oh, and also, it actually doesnt make you safer.

CG: Absolutely.

JJ: And yet, the context is that we do need to make that clear to folks.

CG: Yeah, its unfortunate, but the more time the FBI spends investigating people who are engaged in nonviolent, political protected speech, the less time they spend investigating actual threats. If you actually believe the FBI is a tool to counter actual threatswhich I suspect many of your listeners may not, but if someone did believe thatwhy would you then be OK with them being allowed to investigate people without any evidence of a crime, because that means theyre just out there doing futile or wasteful investigations, and diverting resources away from their stated purpose into this sort of political policing instead?

JJ: And then lets just bring it back, because I am trying to say to folks, You know, maybe you dont think youre a black identity extremist. But if you go through a checkpoint and you have some Assata Shakur in your backpack, hey. Theres kind of an essentialism undergirding this, that theres good people and bad people, and if people are bad, it doesnt matter what you do to them. And I just would encourage folks to think, This could be you. This can be you. This may be you right now.

CG: Yeah, I think thats important to remember that this type of surveillance threatens us all if we are engaged in political activity, and the FBI should not be allowed to investigate political activity, should not be allowed to investigate people who they have no factual predicate to suspect of wrongdoing. Its insidious.

JJ: Weve been speaking with Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent. They, and this report, are online at RightsAndDissent.org. You can find Chip Gibbons piece, Never Trust the FBI, at Jacobinmag.com. Chip Gibbons, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

CG: Thank you for having me.

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At EWU and the Spokane Public Library, local protests highlight difficulty police have in balancing constitutional rights and public safety – Pacific…

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Last year's Drag Queen Story Hour brought out lots of protesters and police as well as supporters like Nova Kaine, left.

When religious activists set up in the middle of Eastern Washington University's campus in November intending to share their anti-abortion and anti-LGBT beliefs there was little question that they had a right to be there.

There was also no question that the hundreds of students who engulfed them in opposition had a right to be there as well. This was a public space, after all. They were protected by the First Amendment.

But did police have the right to keep two groups separate?

That's the question posed by Steve Graham, an attorney representing an EWU student who was arrested during the protest on Nov. 7. Police were worried that the protest could turn violent, so they created a "safety zone" to separate the students from the religious activists. But the EWU student, named Maya Caruth, crossed the invisible barrier to get closer. Cheney Police Officer Zebulon Campbell stopped her. Caruth argued that he had no right to tell her where to be. After continuing to refuse the officer's request, Caruth was arrested for obstruction.

Graham argues the arrest was unconstitutional and invoked the First Amendment in asking Cheney Municipal Judge Robert Leland to dismiss the charge. Last week, Leland declined to do so, saying in his order that "law enforcement had to make decisions to protect the safety and interests of the public," and that Caruth's actions "created a significant safety concern."

Graham, however, thinks the charge will be dismissed once video evidence of the encounter comes out.

"I think it's clear that Ms. Caruth was singled out," Graham tells the Inlander. "I think would also show that the order of the Police Department not to enter this zone was not clearly communicated whatsoever."

It's a case that's indicative of the difficult balance that local police must strike when handling large protests. Yet the EWU protest is just one local example of that.

In June of last year, protesters and counter-protesters gathered outside the Spokane Public Library on the South Hill because of the planned Drag Queen Story Hour, where drag queens read stories to children.

Afshin Yaghtin, a pastor at the New Covenant Baptist Church, wanted to go in the library to speak against the event. Spokane Police wouldn't let him, so he and a small group of people gathered on a strip of grass in the parking lot, separate from the other crowds, which had been divided into protesters and counter-protesters.

When asked to move to a designated protest zone, he refused. Spokane Police arrested him.

Yaghtin, like Caruth, argued that it was an unlawful arrest that violated his First Amendment rights. But unlike Caruth, he was successful in that argument. Spokane County Judge Tracy Staab threw out the case last month. In the order, Staab wrote that "the command to move to a protest zone was not narrowly tailored to apply to only those who wished to protest" and that the grass strip where he stood was not closed to the public but "apparently closed to persons who manifested a certain belief regardless of whether that belief was being conveyed to the public."

As Jorge Ramos, attorney for Yaghtin, puts it: "Beliefs alone are not enough to tell someone to go here or there."

Of course, there are exceptions. It can depend on whether or not an event is permitted, and what kind of public space it is. Some college campuses may be a traditional public forum, just like a sidewalk, and others may not be, depending on where they're located, says Nancy Talner, a staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington.

Balancing free speech rights with public safety only became more difficult after the Charlottesville protests in 2017, which resulted in a woman being killed by a neo-Nazi who intentionally drove his car into a crowd. Police want to err on the side of caution. If a group of people is marching down the street and another group is heckling them, police will generally try to keep space between them to reduce the risk of violence. In Portland, police regularly keep far-right and far-left groups separated to avoid violence though some have argued that only increases tension.

"It's hard for the police to make these distinctions," Graham admits.

But he says the case with Caruth at EWU should be dismissed just like Yaghtin's case. Once more evidence is gathered, he'll likely try to get it dismissed again.

"I'm really confident this is going to go the way of Yaghtin's case," he says, "once we establish just how similar it is."

Aside from police separating groups based on their beliefs, the Drag Queen Story Hour and EWU protests both raise other concerns with free speech, attorneys say.

In January, Yaghtin filed a lawsuit against the city and Police Chief Craig Meidl claiming his First Amendment rights were violated in the protests at the downtown library for the Drag Queen Story Hour days after he was arrested at the South Hill location. He claims he went downtown as a journalist for Saved Magazine and that police through threats and intimidation prohibited him from conducting interviews.

Graham takes a different angle when it comes to the First Amendment. He argues the religious "street preachers" who went to EWU in November could have consequences for the things they've said targeting students. One of the activists Caruth was protesting against, Thomas Meyer, was accused of slapping a different student's butt and calling her a "whore" and "harlot," according to police reports though no charges have been filed.

"I'm not sure that the students really need to tolerate a lot of the verbal abuse and threats by these agitators," he says.

Graham knows that the First Amendment protects the right to make derogatory statements generally in public spaces. But when they single out individuals, he argues those can be "fighting words." A U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1942, Chaplinsky v. New Hampshire, established that words inflicting injury or incite violence could be an exception to free speech.

Graham imagines what would happen if a woman was called a "whore" in a tavern: The people making those statements would be "picking up their teeth off the floor," he says.

"But on a college campus, you make the same statements about these women face-to-face," he says, "and police haven't taken action on that."

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At EWU and the Spokane Public Library, local protests highlight difficulty police have in balancing constitutional rights and public safety - Pacific...

Free speech should not come at the expense of safety – University Star

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Amira Van Leeuwen, Opinion Columnist

College campuses tend to encompass an overwhelming amount of different opinions and ideas when it comes to controversial topics. The First Amendment guarantees freedoms concerning religion, press, expression, assembly and the right to petition, which select college students tend to use as a scapegoat to express their racist ideologies. Although not necessarily a bad thing, it can pose a magnitude of threats to college life.

Texas State is not the only university plagued with white supremacy, racist ideology and fascism. Two years ago, a large banner hung above Alkek Library with the painted words of America is a White Nation, shortly after the 2016 presidential election. A Boston College campus faced a similar ordeal in 2018 when a student vandalized a dorm with racist graffiti, which was later linked to a student who expressed support for the Ku Klux Klan and Hitlers perfect race.

It is often left unsaid how these white supremacy and alt-right groups on campus provide an unsafe environment for college students that do not share such views. Lives are often taken as a result of hate groups who believe in things that have resulted in past genocide and racial segregation, which should have diminished dramatically in the late 1900s.

College campuses are playing tug-of-war with students who argue they have the right to express harmful ideals and hate speech. If there is any backlash from college campus officials, students cry First Amendment violation.

However, the U.S. Constitutions First Amendment does not protect behavior that is targeting, harassing, inciting violence or creating a hostile environment for vulnerable students.

Campus life has entered a new realm of protest and de-platforming other social groups. The issue is not students being prohibited from expressing their opinions; the issue is when equality and free speech are directly opposed in a seditious manner. In times when students have drawn attention to high-strung situations relating to a violation of the First Amendment, universities have tended to provide a general statement to soften the blow.

Although the perseverance of college administrators is more than admirable, the issue cannot be contained in a box with a few words placed in a mass email. Safety on campus should be just as important as ensuring students right to free speech.

However, when this right infringes on the safety of others, it is constitutionally prohibited if encouraging unlawful behavior. The Supreme Court case Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969) held the government may forbid incitement speech, which is likely to produce lawless action.

The right to free speech is vital to civic education. Without it, society would be unable to have public discourse among students. A person has the right to their opinion at any given time unless it stimulates an act of violence.

The polarization of the U.S. has led to severe acts of violence on college campuses. A recent example can be seen when an altercation arose on campus after a student knocked off anothers Make America Great Again hat. This resulted in a hostile situation leading to the arrest of four people.

The U.S. Constitution is a living, breathing document up for interpretation in any situation. There is no such thing as valuing another persons First Amendment rights over others unalienable rights.

Protecting a students right to feel safe on campus needs to be weighed heavily when the legitimacy of right-winged idealists are discussed.

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How The Iowa Caucuses Work And Why They’re Important | NPR – KCRW

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Written by Domenico Montanaro Jan. 30, 2020

Iowa Democrats gather Monday to kick off the nominating contests that will pick the party's presidential nominee the person who will take on President Trump in November.

But how they do it is complicated.

The Iowa caucuses are kind of like neighborhood meetings where people get together and out in the open, with no secret ballot try to win over their friends, family and neighbors to support their preferred candidate.

The caucuses start a months-long process that eventually leads to the selection of 41 delegates, who will vote for a candidate at the party's national convention. It's a complex, unique and exhausting process that might go a little differently if done in a place that was temperamentally unlike Iowa.

The caucuses quadrennially come under fire for being overwhelmingly white and not representative of the country, let alone the Democratic Party. But the candidates have spent millions there and over the past 40 years, and it has been very predictive of who becomes the Democratic nominee.

Let's break down how all this works.

What time do the caucuses take place?

They begin at 7 p.m. CT (8 p.m. ET) and are expected to last roughly an hour. The Iowa Democratic Party is trying to expedite the process this year with just two rounds of caucusing, so they may very well be wrapped up in less than an hour.

Who can vote?

The caucuses are "open." In other words, any registered voter in the state can participate.

But for as much attention as the caucuses get, not many Iowans actually participate. In 2016, for example, fewer than 16% of people eligible to vote actually caucused.

And that was the second-highest turnout in the history of the Iowa Democratic caucuses, at more than 171,000 people. The record was 239,000 in 2008.

For what it's worth, given the number of candidates this year, the Iowa Democratic Party is anticipating a record-breaking turnout.

Where do the caucuses happen?

They happen all around the state's 99 counties at 1,678 precinct locations, including in people's homes, public libraries and school gymnasiums.

How will we know who wins?

This year will be extraconfusing, because the state party will release three different results:

SDEs are the estimated number of delegates each candidate would get to the congressional district and state conventions.

Various campaigns will use the potentially differing results to their advantage, but delegates are the name of the game in Iowa. That's why the campaigns have built up operations with hundreds of staffers and volunteers in the state, to show their grassroots support and campaign strength of organization.

So while the first two results will be useful to inform analyses, the "winner" will be who gets the most SDEs.

How are the delegates selected?

The caucusgoers from the 1,678 precincts determine 11,402 delegates, who will go to county conventions on March 21.

They are then filtered to a smaller universe of delegates who go to the congressional district conventions on April 25, the state convention on June 13 and then, finally, just 41 delegates who get to go to the national convention July 13-16 in Milwaukee.

To hold onto delegates, campaigns have to try to keep activists and staffers at each of these steps because they are not bound to their candidates, and often the results can be very different from the caucus night results.

For example, on the Republican side in 2012, Ron Paul's band of activists gamed the system, stuck around for each step, wound up with the most delegates out of Iowa in the end (despite losing on caucus night), and took over the Iowa GOP.

How do the caucuses themselves work?

There are two rounds of caucusing, and candidates need to get at least 15% of the assembled crowd in order to receive any delegates.

If a candidate does not get 15%, they get no delegates, and their voters can re-sort and go to their second choice in the next and final round.

Once the re-sorting is finished, the number of people in each candidate's corner is tallied and submitted using a complicated worksheet to figure out the number of delegates that would be assigned.

So if a candidate doesn't get 15% in the first round, he or she is eliminated?

Pretty much. That's why candidates who have been polling far below that threshold have little chance of picking up any delegates.

It's also worth noting that there is a 15% threshold to pick up delegates in every Democratic nominating contest in every state. This is a longstanding Democratic National Committee rule to avoid lots of candidates splitting the vote and creating brokered conventions.

Are there any exceptions?

There is one caveat in Iowa. Someone who doesn't get enough support in the first round has a chance to move into the final round if they can persuade enough supporters of other nonviable candidates to lend them their votes for the second round.

Here's an example: Say 100 people caucus, and in the first alignment, 25 go for Bernie Sanders, 22 for Joe Biden, 17 for Pete Buttigieg, 14 for Elizabeth Warren, 10 for Amy Klobuchar, nine for Andrew Yang and three for Tom Steyer.

Sanders', Biden's and Buttigieg's support is locked in. Their numbers can't decline in the next round. If Warren's team convinces one Klobuchar, Yang or Steyer first-round supporter to go with her, she would be viable and would get some delegates. In theory, if Warren's supporters persuaded, say, all of Klobuchar's, Yang's and Steyer's backers to go with her, Warren would actually win the most delegates from the caucus site. The odds of that are not very good, but the "zombie candidate" is, in theory, possible.

Is there any check on the number of caucusgoers tallied?

Yes. For the first time this year, caucusgoers will write down who they are supporting so there will be paper backups, in case recounts are necessary.

There was no way to do a recount in previous years, and that became a problem in some caucus locations in 2016 when at least a dozen precincts were decided by coin flip between Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

What about "superdelegates"?

There are eight unpledged delegates in Iowa who bypass this whole process and go straight to the national convention. They are officially called "automatic delegates" now.

They used to be colloquially called "superdelegates." That was never their official name, but the media would call them that and members of the DNC would use it, too, because these current and former party leaders' and elected officials' "super" power used to be that they were able to vote however they wanted at the convention.

They could tip the scales of a campaign for their preferred candidate, although most went with the direction the political wind was blowing and backed the candidate ahead in the delegate race.

Still, as a result of the 2016 election, when so many came out early for Clinton, the party listened to the protests of the Sanders campaign and supporters and stripped superdelegates of their ability to vote on the first ballot at the national convention (unless there is already an overwhelming majority of delegates for one candidate).

Does Iowa have a big number of delegates at stake?

Not really. Iowa only has 41 pledged delegates to the national convention, and as noted, it takes months to pick them. Those 41 delegates account for just 1% of all pledged delegates. (A candidate needs at least 1,991 delegates to become the nominee.)

Iowa and New Hampshire combined have just 2% of the delegates, and the first four states, including Nevada and South Carolina, have just 5%.

Then why are they so important?

The real impact of these early contests is momentum who does well, who doesn't and who beats expectations will determine who continues to see a viable path for themselves to the nomination.

And Iowa in particular is important for the Democratic nomination. The last seven of nine people who have won Iowa have gone on to be the nominee, including the last four.

It's all why despite the caucuses being more than 90% white as of two weeks ago, the candidates had spent $50 million on ads in Iowa alone.

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A Million Iraqis Asked Us To Leave We Should Listen – Antiwar.com

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You wouldnt know it from US mainstream media reporting, but on Friday an estimated million Iraqis took to the streets to protest the continued US military presence in their country. What little mainstream media coverage the protest received all reported the number of protesters as far less than actually turned out. The Beltway elites are determined that Americans not know or understand just how much our presence in Iraq is not wanted.

The protesters were largely supporters of nationalist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who opposes both US and Iranian presence in Iraq. Protesters held signs demanding that the US military leave Iraq and protest leaders warned of consequences unless the US listen to the Iraqi people.

After President Trumps illegal and foolish assassination of Iranian general Soleimani on Iraqi soil early this month, the Iraqi parliament voted unanimously to cancel the agreement under which the US military remains in Iraq. But when the Iraqi prime minister called up Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to request a timetable for a US withdrawal, Pompeo laughed in his face.

The US government answered the Iraqi parliaments vote with a statement that the US military is a force for good in the Middle East and that because of the continuing fight against ISIS US troops will remain, even where they are not wanted.

How many billions of dollars have we sent to Iraq to help them build their democracy? Yet as soon as a decision of Iraqs elected parliament goes against Washingtons wishes, the US government is no longer so interested in democracy. Do they think the Iraqis dont notice this double-dealing?

The pressure for the US to leave Iraq has been building within the country, but the US government and mainstream media is completely and dangerously ignoring this sentiment. Its one thing to push the neocon propaganda that Iraqis and Iranians would be celebrating in the streets after last months US assassination of Iranian general Soleimani, who was the chief strategist for the anti-ISIS operation over the past five years. Its a completely different thing to believe the propaganda, especially as more than a million Iranians mourned the popular military leader.

The Friday protesters demanded that all US bases in Iraq be closed, all security agreements with the US and with US security companies be ended, and a schedule for the exit of all US forces be announced. Sadr announced that the resistance to the US troop presence in Iraq will halt temporarily if an orderly departure is announced and implemented. Otherwise, he said, the resistance to US troops would be activated.

A million Iraqi protesters chanted no, no to occupation. The Iraqi parliament voted for us to leave. The Iraqi prime minister asked us to leave. Maj. Gen. Alex Grynkewich, the US deputy commander in Iraq and Syria, said last week that US troops in Iraq are more threatened by Shiite militias than ISIS.

So, before more US troops die for nothing in Iraq, why dont we listen to the Iraqi people and just come home? Let the people of the Middle East solve their own problems and lets solve our problems at home.

Reprinted from The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity.

Ron Paul is a former Republican congressman from Texas. He was the 1988 Libertarian Party candidate for president.View all posts by Ron Paul

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Why These Might Be The Most Competitive Iowa Caucuses Ever – FiveThirtyEight

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Were now less than a week away from the Iowa caucuses, and the contest there can best be described as a four-way race. As of Tuesday morning, former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Elizabeth Warren were all clustered within about 8 percentage points of each other in our average of the states polls, with Sanders and Biden at 22 percent, Buttigieg at 17 percent and Warren at 14 percent.

Given just how close things are in Iowa, our forecast doesnt give anyone more than a 36 percent chance of winning the caucuses next week. This got us thinking: How unusual is it for the field to have this many candidates within a few points of each other? Answer: Its pretty unusual.

[Our Latest Forecast: Who will win the Iowa caucuses?]

Number of candidates (including the leader) within 10 points of the lead in Iowa a week before the caucuses, in FiveThirtyEights polling averages

Excludes cycles for which we have insufficient polling data.

Source: Polls

Using our forecasts historical Iowa polling averages from the week before the caucuses in each presidential election since 1980, we found that the 2020 contest not only has the largest number of contenders within 10 points of the polling leader, but also is tied for the most candidates polling at or above 15 percent, with one candidate polling just under that threshold. As you can see in this table, while there were three candidates within 10 points of the Iowa leader (counting the leader themselves) in both the 2008 Democratic primary and the 2012 GOP primary, theres never been a primary where four candidates were clustered so tightly until 2020.

This isnt to say the 2008 and 2012 contests werent nail-biters in their own right. In the 2008 Democratic contest, then-Sen. Hillary Clinton was in first, averaging 30 percent in the polls a week before the caucuses, while then-Sen. Barack Obama had 26 percent and former Sen. John Edwards had 22 percent. And four years later in the 2012 GOP race, Rep. Ron Paul and former Gov. Mitt Romney were essentially tied at about 21 percent each, while former House Speaker Newt Gingrich had about 15 percent.

The top Iowa polling average and the number of candidates polling 15 percent a week before the caucuses, in FiveThirtyEights polling averages

Excludes cycles for which we have insufficient polling data.

Source: Polls

But even setting aside that there are more competitive candidates in Iowa this year than ever before, there are two other things that make the 2020 Democratic race in Iowa especially close. First, Sanders, whose Iowa polling average is just a hair ahead of Bidens, isnt polling that high for a front-runner. At 22.6 percent, he has the second-lowest polling average for a leading candidate one week before the caucuses. (Paul sat at 21.5 percent in 2012.) Second, there are three contenders polling above 15 percent, which is tied for the most candidates in any presidential election cycle.

But a fourth candidate, Warren, is just short of the 15 percent mark, so this years caucuses could produce a historic result: Since the start of the modern primary era theres never been a major-party contest in Iowa where more than three candidates won at least 15 percent of the vote statewide. Moreover, since 1992, when the Democratic Party implemented some of the rules that continue to define its nomination races, there has not been a single Democratic primary or caucus in any state or territory in which more than three candidates have won at least 15 percent of the vote statewide. Although Warren has fallen slightly below the 15 percent mark, she also just got an endorsement from the Des Moines Register, which might help her reverse her polling slide in the state. So if Sanders, Biden, Buttigieg and Warren all go on to finish above 15 percent, it would be a first.

However, the Democrats caucus rules could make it tough for four candidates to clear that 15 percent bar. In each precinct, candidates must clear a viability threshold, typically 15 percent of the votes at the caucus site, in order to advance. If they arent able to clear that bar, their backers are asked to realign themselves to candidates who do.

So you could imagine a situation where a candidate polling around 15 percent in Iowa (Buttigieg, Warren) doesnt actually earn 15 percent of the vote statewide next Monday because they fall short of the viability threshold at a number of caucus sites, causing their supporters to move to other candidates and their overall numbers to fall. Yet despite that hurdle, its still plausible that Biden, Buttigieg, Sanders and Warren all have enough second-choice support to end up above 15 percent statewide a New York Times Upshot/Siena College poll of Iowa released on Saturday found that all four candidates surpassed 15 percent when respondents had to choose among just that quartet of candidates. Remember, though, that there are many more candidates in the race. And some of them, especially someone like Sen. Amy Klobuchar, whos polling at just shy of 9 percent in Iowa, could throw an interesting curveball in the realignment process.

Of course, Klobuchar (or another candidate) could also surge here in the last week, throwing a real wrench in our analysis. This kind of surprise, last-minute surge has actually happened before. In 2012, former Sen. Rick Santorum averaged only 7 percent in the polls a week before the Republican caucuses granted, he had been steadily ticking upward in the preceding month yet he not only surpassed 15 percent statewide, he won Iowa by a handful of votes.

Another challenge in our analysis is that some older election cycles just dont have that much data to work with. For example, there were only two polls from the 1996 GOP race that were conducted between one and five weeks before the caucuses. And we dont have a polling average for the 1992 Democratic race because there werent enough polls available, although the 1992 caucuses were also kind of unusual because they werent considered competitive Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin had a massive home-field advantage (he won in a landslide).

But despite those caveats, the data we do have suggests that this years caucuses may be the most competitive and crowded Iowa has ever had. There are more candidates polling within 10 points of the leading contender than in any race since 1980 and a record-tying number of candidates polling above 15 percent, with another just below that mark. Whether one candidate will get a late boom or bust remains to be seen, but with a week to go, no candidate is close to being a clear favorite. That makes for an exciting and potentially unpredictable finish, so get ready for the final sprint.

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Why These Might Be The Most Competitive Iowa Caucuses Ever - FiveThirtyEight

Virtual Reality (VR) Market in Gaming, Education, and Simulations 2020-2025 – Yahoo Finance

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Dublin, Jan. 29, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Virtual Reality (VR) Market in Gaming, Education, and Simulations 2020-2025" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

This report evaluates VR applications for the consumer and enterprise sectors for which we see gaming, education, and simulations training leading the way. The report assesses leading companies, strategies, products and services. It provides analysis and forecasts for VR gaming, education, and simulations for 2020 through 2025.

Report Benefits

The report's analyst sees fully immersive virtual reality systems gaining substantial market momentum in consumer markets within the next few years. These VR systems will provide an unprecedented digital experience for humans, often including multiple senses as well as interaction with virtual objects and/or interaction between the real and virtual worlds.

In terms of the consumer segment, we see current VR gaming evolving from current offerings such as HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, and PlayStation VR to more sophisticated entertainment that involves elements of casual gaming combined with real-world interests involving economy and social status.

In many respects, VR gaming is a greenfield opportunity, which will bring many new market entrants into the fray as application and content providers aggressively compete to establish a loyal user base. For example, Skydance Interactive, a division of Skydance Media, has recently unveiled The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners, initially available on Oculus Rift, Rift S, Quest, and HTC Vive.

Successful companies will be those that develop communities of interest based on game-play and follower dynamics including innovation in interactive e-sports entertainment, in-game reward systems, and real-world to VR gamification integration. Long-term success will be dependent upon game delivery platform, system, and connectivity independence. This will occur coincident with a few key trends in platform/network transformation and service delivery such as the shift from console to cloud supported platforms and 5G communications supported by edge computing.

Some very compelling enterprise VR applications are anticipated to emerge over the next three to five years. Many of these will be solution-focused upon achieving very specific internal business goals such as risk mitigation, expense reduction, and employee training.

For education, we see everything from situational training (such as Verizon using Striver to train its employees how to better deal with robberies) to more traditional expectations such as VR enhanced simulations for flight and vehicle training.

We also see enterprise applications extending beyond internal use and B2B as businesses embrace the use of VR to reach consumer markets. Real estate is a prime example where VR may be used for education-sales such as training new home buyers while simultaneously marketing properties.

The analyst sees the virtual reality market gaining ground once 5G is more firmly in place commercially, but not entirely due to wireless VR. Instead, we see a massive build-out of broadband as a whole (due to competition from the 5G market) as one of the fundamental drivers for VR adoption. This will be driven in part by substantially greater availability of FTTX and HFC as well as greater bandwidth overall at lower costs.

5G will act as a launchpad for enhanced consumer wireless services such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and cloud gaming. Previously encumbered by a combination of technology gaps and consumer readiness issues, virtual reality market is poised for substantive global growth, providing abundant opportunities for service providers, content developers, and ecosystem component providers.

While today many apps and services within the XR universe are very device-dependent and network constrained, convergence is on the horizon from a device perspective as well as substantial opportunities through untethering via 5G and Mobile Edge Computing (MEC).

MEC will be particularly important in support of latency-sensitive apps and services for various consumer, enterprise, and industrial use cases. This will be particularly the case for VR portability, and to some extent, mobility to the extent that there is good 5G coverage.

Substantially lower latency facilitated by the combination of 5G and MEC will lead to many new and enhanced applications. For example, VR based telepresence will ultimately become the norm, starting with private enterprise solutions and the SMB markets through the likes of Zoom.

Through Voice over 5G (Vo5G), there will also be support for Ultra High Definition (UHD) audio communications, streaming video and ultra-clear voice communication for next-generation virtual reality applications and services. Vo5G will benefit VR for consumer and enterprise applications in many respects such as UHD becoming the norm in immersive experiences.

Story continues

Key Topics Covered

1. Executive Summary1.1 Target Audience1.2 Company Coverage

2. Introduction2.1 Immersive Technologies2.2 Virtual Reality Market Overview2.2.1 Virtual Reality Systems2.2.2 Virtual Reality Technologies, Systems, and Architectures2.3 Virtual Reality Ecosystem2.3.1 Virtual Reality Devices2.3.1.1 Head Mounted Displays2.3.1.2 Gesture Tracking Devices2.3.1.2.1 Haptic Gloves2.3.1.2.2 Haptic Suits2.3.1.2.3 Other VR Devices2.3.1.3 Projectors and Display Walls2.3.1.4 Heads-Up Displays2.3.2 Virtual Reality Hardware Components2.3.2.1 Sensors2.3.2.1.1 Accelerometers2.3.2.1.2 Proximity Sensor2.3.2.1.3 Magnetometers2.3.2.1.4 GPS System2.3.2.1.5 Gyroscopes2.3.2.1.6 3D Image Sensor2.3.2.2 Semiconductor Component2.3.2.2.1 Haptic Controller and Integrated Circuits2.3.2.2.2 Graphic Processing Units2.3.2.2.3 VR Displays2.3.2.2.4 Central Processing Units2.3.2.2.5 Memory2.3.2.2.6 Tracking System2.3.2.2.7 Process Acceleration Cards2.3.2.2.8 Input Devices2.3.2.2.9 USB Connector2.3.2.3 Audio Hardware2.3.3 Virtual Reality Software Market2.3.3.1 Virtual Reality Applications2.3.3.2 Software Component2.3.3.2.1 Reality Engine2.3.3.2.2 Software Development Kits2.3.3.2.3 3D Modeling2.3.3.2.4 2D Graphics2.3.3.2.5 Digital Sound Editing2.3.4 Virtual Reality Services Market2.3.4.1 Virtual Reality Simulation Services2.3.4.2 Virtual Reality Application Store Services2.3.4.3 Deployment and Management Service2.3.5 Virtual Reality Content Market2.3.5.1 Games and Entertainment2.3.5.2 VR, Video, and an Emphasis on Instructional Content2.3.5.3 VR Theme Park: An Immersive Experience2.3.5.4 VR Content Developer Engagement2.4 Virtual Reality Market Drivers2.4.1 Increasing Popularity of Immersive Vision2.4.2 Usability to Increase Adoption of VR Devices2.4.3 Virtual Reality Functions Embedded in Devices2.4.4 Virtual Reality in Training and Simulation2.4.5 Increasing Affordability of Devices and Components2.4.6 Virtual Reality in Enterprise

3. Virtual Reality Ecosystem Analysis3.1 Virtual Reality Stakeholder Analysis3.1.1 Virtual Reality Device Manufacturers3.1.2 Virtual Reality Component Manufacturers3.1.3 Virtual Reality Software Solution Providers3.1.4 VR Service Suit Providers3.1.5 Virtual Reality Content Providers3.1.6 Virtual Reality End Users

4. VR Company Analysis4.1 Oculus VR, LLC4.2 Sony Corporation4.3 Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd.4.4 HTC Corporation4.5 EON Reality Inc.4.6 Google Inc.4.7 Microsoft Corporation4.8 Vuzix Corporation4.9 Cyber Glove Systems4.10 Sensics Inc.4.11 Leap Motion Inc.4.12 Sixense Entertainment Inc.4.13 Avegant Corp.4.14 FOVE Inc.4.15 Open Source Virtual Reality (OSVR)4.16 Zeiss VR One4.17 Intel Corporation4.18 Alcatel Mobile4.19 ZTE Corporation4.20 Unity Technologies4.21 Magic Leap4.22 NVidia Corporation4.23 BARCO4.24 MYO4.25 NGRAIN Corporation4.26 WorldViz4.27 Wevr4.28 NextVR4.29 Osterhout Design Group (ODG)4.30 Niantic Inc.4.31 Virtual Reality Company (VRC)4.32 VIRTALIS4.33 Facebook4.34 Huawei Technologies4.35 Qualcomm Inc.4.36 SK Telecom4.37 LG Corporation4.38 Nokia StarGazing VR Application4.39 VREAL4.40 StreamVR4.41 Analog Devices Inc.4.42 Atmel Corporation4.43 Cypress Semiconductor Corp.4.44 NXP4.45 Integrated Device Technology Inc.4.46 Maxim Integrated4.47 NKK Switches4.48 Rohm Semiconductor4.49 Semtech Corporation4.50 Texas Instruments

5. Virtual Reality Market in Gaming, Learning, and Simulations 2020-20255.1 Virtual Reality by Consumer and Enterprise 2020-20255.2 Virtual Reality Consumer Applications 2020-20255.3 Virtual Reality Enterprise Applications 2020-2025

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/68pklv

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.comLaura Wood, Senior Press Managerpress@researchandmarkets.comFor E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900

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Virtual Reality (VR) Market in Gaming, Education, and Simulations 2020-2025 - Yahoo Finance

No smoke, no water, no waste. VR could train the next generation of firefighters – CNN

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As these disasters become more frequent, firefighters are turning to new technology to help tackle them. Some fire departments in Australia and the United States have started using virtual reality (VR) to train firefighters.Australia-based FLAIM Systems has built a VR training simulator for firefighters. Wearing a headset, trainees are immersed in real-life scenarios that can be too dangerous to reproduce in the real world.

"The whole point of VR is that we can put people in a traditionally dangerous situation, let people make decisions, and let people make mistakes," James Mullins, founder and CEO of FLAIM Systems, told CNN Business.

The VR technology produces realistic renders of smoke, fire, water and fire-extinguishing foam in several different scenarios, such as a house fire, an aircraft fire or wildfire.

Trainees wear a heat suit that replicates the likely temperature in each scenario, controlled by software that determines the proximity and orientation to the fire and how that would affect the individual.

"We can heat a firefighter up to 100 degrees Celsius or so, roughly," says Mullin, but only for short timeframes. He adds that they can also replicate the force felt from the hose, and simultaneously measure the heart and respiration rate of the trainee.

The company was launched in 2017 by Deakin University in Victoria, Australia, where Mullins is an associate professor. In the two years since then, it has grown from a two-man team to 18 people and now distributes to firefighting training providers in 16 countries worldwide including Australia, the United Kingdom, Netherlands, Belgium and the United States.

Last year, Australia's Country Fire Authority (CFA) piloted the training system, and though it has yet to be approved for wider use, Greg Paterson, CFA's deputy chief officer, told CNN Business that it could be valuable in remote areas of the country.

It could be particularly useful in a bushfire context, he adds. "The ability to provide exposure to dangerous bushfire conditions allows volunteers to immerse themselves in realistic scenarios they would not normally be exposed to during training," says Paterson.

California trials

In October 2019, the Cosumnes Fire Department in California, teamed up with VR developers RiVR and Pico Interactive, to create its own training system for 20 new recruits. The trial was successful, and the department will continue to use VR in its training program.

"It allows them to experience first hand the unique challenges with communication, limited visibility and come face to face with the flames in fire situations that they most certainly will encounter during their firefighting career," said fire department captain Julie Rider.

An experienced firefighter herself, Rider said that she was impressed by how lifelike the VR scenario was.

"I could feel my heart rate climb as I looked around the room, seeing where the fire started, watching the rapid rate of fire spread," she said. "It was amazing to experience the inherent risk, extreme danger and fire intensity without feeling any of the dangerous effects from the fire."

Environmental impact

Using VR technology also reduces the environmental impact of firefighter training. Traditional training releases smoke and pollutants into the atmosphere from burning substances, affecting the surrounding air quality.

"Our technology enables people to train without discharging foam into the environment, without creating smoke, or using water," said Mullins.

Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly reported the temperature that FLAIM's firefighting suits can be heated to.

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No smoke, no water, no waste. VR could train the next generation of firefighters - CNN

Texas New virtual reality treatment brings veterans with PTSD back to where it all began 11 – KXXV News Channel 25

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Post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, is a mental health condition that can develop after a person witnesses or experiences a traumatic event.

It can be triggered by a life-threatening event like a car accident, a sexual assault, a natural disaster - or combat.

In Texas, a new virtual reality treatment is being used to help veterans suffering from PTSD.

For some, maybe they were on a crowded Iraqi street, or maybe, in a rural afghan village, but for as many as 30 percent of veterans, something happened

They are hiding from to this day.

The Strongmind system is designed to take them back there.

"We're trying to help patients to confront and reprocess difficult emotional memories, but in a safe place, Dr. Skip Rizzo from USC Institute for Creative Technologies said.

The system Dr. Skip Rizzo has developed for 15 years is being introduced to clinicians at the North Texas VA this week for them to use with their post-traumatic stress patients.

Traditionally, patients are asked to imagine the scenario they're troubled by.

"And then we can of course, blow stuff upall of a sudden things start to come back. They've been trying to avoid thinking or talking to anybody about it. And once you break that seal, you start to hear more and more and more, Rizzo said.

"it goes beyond what you see and what you hear. Down to what you were holding that day, and even what you were feeling that day," Jason Allen from Dallas said.

Charitable organization Soldierstrong has donated Strongmind to 13 Veteran Affairs Hospitals including three in Texas.

And that real-world use is expected to help develop the system further.

And I think we can move the needle forward not just for veterans but the whole civilian sector and improve the lives of people who are confronted by high stress," Rizzo said.

The Department of Veterans Affairs says up to 20 percent of vets who served in Iraq or Afghanistan have PTSD in any given year.

The VA says about 30 percent of Vietnam vets have had PTSD in their lifetime.

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Texas New virtual reality treatment brings veterans with PTSD back to where it all began 11 - KXXV News Channel 25

UCSF Business Accelerator Studying Digital Therapeutics, Virtual Reality – mHealthIntelligence.com

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January 29, 2020 -A business accelerator launched out of the University of California at San Francisco is studying how digital therapeutic platforms, including virtual and augmented reality, can be used to improve access to care for underserved populations.

USCFs S.O.L.V.E. Health Tech is partnering with AppliedVR, a Los Angeles-based developer of virtual reality treatments, on the program.

The opportunity to work alongside AppliedVR in its quest to deliver virtual reality treatment to all patients helps fulfill our mission because of the sheer unmet need in the space of safe and effective pain management, Urmimala Sarkar, MD, MPH, a professor of medicine at UCSF Professor and co-founder of S.O.L.V.E. Health Tech, said in a press release. The unique ability of virtual reality to create an immersive and interactive environment has the potential to be a cost-effective strategy to deliver pain management for diverse patients, in the time and place of their choosing.

Patients who face socioeconomic or social determinant-related burdens and challenges should not be limited in treatment options especially if or when in need of novel or non-pharmacological treatment alternatives, added Matthew Stoudt, AppliedVRs co-founder and chief executive officer.

The project, which began in December, involves interviews with healthcare providers who are using virtual reality and other mHealth platforms in treating underserved populations. By identifying barriers to sustainability and scalability, researchers hope to create best practices that would allow providers and companies like AppliedVR to improve their AR and VR services.

Championed by health systems like Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai, which hosts an annual conference focused on VR applications in healthcare, the mHealth platform is now in use in dozens of locations around the country to help patients with issues like pain management, physical therapy and treatment of nervous disorders like anxiety. Earlier this year, Cedars-Sinaipresented the results of a studythat found VR to be effective as a digital therapeutic for in-patient treatment of pain.

We found that on-demand use of VR in a diverse group of hospitalized patients was well tolerated and resulted in statistically significant improvements in pain versus a control group exposed to an in-room health and wellness television channel, the study, led by Brennan Spiegel, MD, concluded. These results build upon earlier studies and further indicate that VR is an effective adjunctive therapy to complement traditional pain management protocols in hospitalized patients.

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UCSF Business Accelerator Studying Digital Therapeutics, Virtual Reality - mHealthIntelligence.com

Virtual reality is a bonkers fad that no one takes seriously but anyway, here’s someone to tell us to worry about hackers – The Register

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Enigma You'd think virtual reality's biggest problems right now are breaking into meaningful mainstream adoption, and not making wearers of the headsets look utterly ridiculous. But no, it's possible you are wrong.

For we're told the re-emergence of virtual and augmented reality hardware may bring with it hackers tormenting folks in new ways, or so believes an organization that says it's tackling said hackers.

Speaking at this year's USENIX Enigma conference in San Francisco, Kavya Pearlman, founder of the non-profit XR Safety Initiative (XRSI), outlined a number of ways miscreants could cause mischief after compromising headsets.

Her initiative is seeking donations to, among other goals, "establish safety and ethics standards" in virtual reality. The organization fears hackers could pwn internet-connected headsets just like they can break into home and corporate networks which isn't too unbelievable, truth be told. Witness the hijacking of poorly secured Ring devices by scumbags to intimidate and scare families.

On the one hand, it's perhaps a little premature to be worrying about future security problems with virtual reality gear, given it's a fad that surfaces and sinks every few years. On the other hand, fiends love finding new stuff on the internet to pwn be it printers, hospitals, cloud servers, security cameras, and so on so perhaps, with more net-connected techno-specs in use, this is something we can look forward to this decade.

"The attack surface that used to be your server or your network or your backend," as Pearlman put it, "has now expanded to your living room, your objects that you surround yourself with."

The most obvious dangers, according to Pearlman, are physical. Pointing to research conducted by XRSI and university eggheads, Pearlman warned of people being turned into "human joysticks" by hackers manipulating paths and directions in virtual worlds to redirect folks into harm's way. Like stubbing your toe on a cupboard or tripping up over a coffee table, we presume. At a stretch, someone could, we dunno, fall on a buzz saw or into a vat of molten iron if they were, for some reason, using the gear in an industrial plant.

Meanwhile, folks could maybe fall victim to "chaperone" attacks in which boundaries preventing people from wandering into danger areas are removed. Then there's the usual threat of ransomware scrambling device data, denial-of-service attacks knocking multi-user environments offline, remote-code execution bugs exploited to inject spyware into the techno-goggles, and, yeah, you get the idea.

Speaking of spyware: it's possible, we're told, to surveil someone by monitoring their compromised head gear. "Most of these devices have a front-facing camera," Pearlman said, adding a team of researchers were "able to turn on the camera without the person's knowledge and stream the video back to their server."

Then there's the potential for psychological attacks that use the immersion of virtual reality environments to freak out the wearer... until they pull the goggles off. "These technologies are so compelling," Pearlman opined. "We can use these technologies to hijack somebody's system and put them in a horror environment."

While XRSI's efforts to secure these gadgets are commendable and forewarned is forearmed with security with no documented exploits or attacks in the wild, and no mainstream adoption, panic ye not.

Sponsored: Detecting cyber attacks as a small to medium business

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Virtual reality is a bonkers fad that no one takes seriously but anyway, here's someone to tell us to worry about hackers - The Register

NASA is pushing virtual reality software to aid scientific discovery – SDTimes.com

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A planetarium in your living room might not be as far away as you think. NASA built a VR simulation that animated the speed and direction of 4 million stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, and has many other VR projects underway.

The work is being done through NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center. The virtual reality team, led by Thomas Grubb, animated stars in a simulation to make the classification and creating groupings easier.

Using this VR simulation, researchers were able to classify which stars were put into the wrong groups as well as star groups that could belong to larger groupings, according to NASA researcher Susan Higashio.

Observing stars in VR will redefine astronomers understanding of some individual stars as well as star groupings, Higashio said. Rather than look up one database and then another database, why not fly there and look at them all together.

Grubb began looking at ways to develop for VR ever since the first viable headsets came to market in 2016. The team is also working on virtual hands-on applications for engineers working on next-generation exploration and satellite servicing missions.

However, there is still progress to be made to realize VRs full potential.

The hardware is here; the support is here, Grubb said. The software is lagging, as well as conventions on how to interact with the virtual world. You dont have simple conventions like pinch and zoom or how every mouse works the same when you right click or left click.

To work around these shortcomings, the team created a framework called the Mixed Reality Toolkit, which assists in science-data analysis and enables VR-based engineering design: from concept designs for CubeSats to simulated hardware integration and testing for missions and in-orbit visualizations like the one for Restore-L.

For engineers and mission and spacecraft designers, VR offers cost savings in the design/build phase before they build physical mockups, Grubb said. You still have to build mockups, but you can work out a lot of the iterations before you move to the physical model.

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NASA is pushing virtual reality software to aid scientific discovery - SDTimes.com

Training A New Generation Of Truck Drivers With Virtual Reality – Forbes

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SAN JOSE, CA - JANUARY 19: Fans experience the Clear the Ice Zamboni VR experience at the NHL ... [+] Centennial Truck Tour at SAP Center at San Jose on January 19, 2017 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Don Smith/NHLI via Getty Images) *** Local Caption ***

The trucking industry in the United States has been in arecession since 2019. Despite the fact that companies like Amazon and e-commerce companies are stressing an already weakened trucking industry, the industry needs to replace close to 90,000 drivers in this decade to keep up with demand.

A2019 studyfrom Brandon Hall Group showed theres an increase in using VR as a training tool in high-consequence industries where operator or driver mistakes can cause significant property damage and fatalities.

Companies in the survey said VR tools were a top learning priority for the next 24 months.

UPS started putting drivers in virtual reality (VR) simulators in 2017 as part of basic safety training. Other trucking companies are turning to VR simulation companies to create immersive learning opportunities for drivers.

We see that in the motor freight industry, saidJohn Kearney, CEO, Advanced Training Systems LLC. Kearney. Trucking companies, driving schools, and the general public are increasingly aware that simulation trainingthat is to say, virtual realityhelps produce drivers who are better prepared to deal with any situation they might encounter.

Historically, we used to have books and video. Now we have VR where we can physically operate equipment and gain the additional insight needed for comprehensive learning, added Kearney. VR solves a classic training dilemma: how do you safely prepare trainees to deal with dangerous or extraordinary situations?

Kearney says that if a truck driver had traditional training in a classroom with a book and ride-along methodology and then experiences an accident, theres no proof he or she was trained in a particular skill and road hazard.

With digital simulation, there is a record of the training and a record of the responses the simulation, said Kearney. For example, we cant have someone run out in front of a real truck, but can in VR; we cant experience ice and skidding in actual truck but can in VR so for trucking companies and driving schools thats a plus for documentation and chain of custody training and could even have an impact on liability.

Kearney says he hopes that VR training will help bring new candidates to the trucking profession and create better prepared, safer drivers.

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Training A New Generation Of Truck Drivers With Virtual Reality - Forbes