Friday, January 18, 2019

MARCH FOR LIFE! - WATCH LIVE! - THOUSANDS MARCH ON D.C. NATIONAL MALL

Solidarity With the Weakest and Most Vulnerable

https://townhall.com/capitol-voices/congressmanchrissmith/2019/01/18/solidarity-with-the-weakest-and-most-vulnerable-n2539284

 


Source: (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

Editor's note: The following are excerpts from the remarks Congressman Smith delivered at the 46th annual March for Life. 
Thank you, President Trump, for making it absolutely clear today that you will veto any piece of legislation that undermines or nullifies any pro-life policy, regulation, or rule.
Your extraordinary announcement—your bold solidarity with the weakest and most vulnerable—couldn’t come at a better time.
The new Democratic majority in the House has made it clear that they want to eviscerate all pro-life protections including the Hyde taxpayer abortion funding ban which alone has saved over 2 million people from death by abortion.
Mr. President, be assured that 169 House Members and 49 Senators—well in excess of the requisite number required to prevail—have pledged in writing to sustain your veto.
Why is this so important? Because women and children deserve better than the violence of abortion.
Just ask the brave and amazing women who are silent no more, who sacrifice everything to warn other women—and society—about the tragic consequences of their abortions.
The shocking number of unborn children killed in America is unconscionable: 2,500 each day, approximately 61 million dead babies since 1973—a death toll that equates with the entire population of Italy.
All this as our knowledge concerning the breathtaking miracle of life before birth is unparalleled and when science had made it absolutely clear that birth is an important event in the life of a child – but only an event not its beginning.
Doctors today routinely diagnose and treat a myriad of conditions, illnesses, and diseases suffered by society’s littlest patients—unborn babies—significantly enhancing their health and chances to survive and thrive.
Even first baby pictures proudly shared and displayed are most often ultrasound photos showing the baby alive and maturing in the womb.
The humanity of the unborn child is beyond doubt.
Yet, the pro-abortion movement, like some kind of modern-day flat earth society, continues to cling to outdated indefensible arguments cloaked in euphemism.
Even the seemingly benign word “choice” withers under scrutiny. Choice to do what? Dismember a baby? Starve a child to death and then forcibly expel her or him from the womb?
In order to facilitate the baby’s extermination, pro-abortionists aggressively deny and disrespect the unborn child, and loudly mock and belittle those like each of you who defend a child’s right to life.
I say, let their harsh criticism cause us to work even harder and more effectively—and as our Lord admonished, all the while loving even those spew hatred at you and me.
I believe that your presence here today— your prayers, fasting, and commitment throughout the year –will help ensure that one day soon protection of the weakest and most vulnerable from abortion violence will be restored.


Watch Live: Thousands Gather on National Mall to ‘March for Life’



Washington, D.C.109
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Thousands of pro-life activists will gather on the National Mall on Friday for the anniversary of the United States Supreme Court Roe v. Wade decision that made abortion on demand the law of the land in 1973.

The annual rally attracts individuals from across the country who gather despite frigid winter weather to express their support for overturning the law and advocate for national policy that honors life from conception to natural death.
The rally program will begin at noon, at which time a video will appear above.
The event will conclude after participants march to the steps of the Supreme Court.
Pro-life lawmakers will be speaking at the event, including Sen. Steve Daines (R-MT) and Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ).
Vice President Mike Pence will be the keynote speaker at the March for Life Rose Dinner on Friday night.
Follow Penny Starr on Twitter



America’s baby murdering factories…. Your tax dollars at work

“I Cut the Vocal Cord So The Baby Can't Scream.”
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Dr. Leah Torres, an OB/GYN in Salt Lake City, Utah, said that when she performs certain abortions she cuts the vocal cord of the baby so "there's really no opportunity" for the child to scream. She also described herself as a "uterus ripper outer" because she performs hysterectomies.

Watch the Pro-Life YouTube Videos Google Doesn’t Want You to See



Google blames users for "behaving badly" leading to censorship
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
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Google has been downranking pro-life videos in abortion-related search results on YouTube, as uncovered as part of manual blacklisting and manipulation of search results uncovered by Breitbart News’Allum Bokhari. Here are just a few of the videos that Google doesn’t want you to see.

Breitbart News recently published yet another leak from within Google, which reveals that YouTube has manually intervened to blacklist pro-life videos in its search results on numerous occasions. The internal leak also revealed that Google often engages in “manual actions” in order to correct controversial search results in their search product, as well as their Google Home and Google Assistant device search results.
In December of 2018, Slate journalist April Glaser wrote an article discussing abortion-related content on YouTube. In the article, Glaser bemoaned the fact that pro-life videos ranked highly in YouTube’s search results and sought to fix this issue, contacting YouTube about it. Glaser claims that a week later the results had been altered by YouTube to feature more pro-abortion content. An excerpt from Glaser’s article can be read below:
If, until recently, you did the same over on Google-owned YouTube, it felt like you were searching in a whole other universe. Before I raised the issue with YouTube late last week, the top search results for “abortion” on the site were almost all anti-abortion—and frequently misleading. One top result was a clip called “LIVE Abortion Video on Display,” which over the course of a gory two minutes shows images of a formed fetus’ tiny feet resting in a pool of blood. Several of the top results featured a doctor named Antony Levatino, including one in which he testified to the House Judiciary Committee that Planned Parenthood was aborting fetuses “the length of your hand plus several inches” in addition to several misleading animations that showed a fetus that looks like a sentient child in the uterus. The eighth result was a video from conservative pundit Ben Shapiro, just above a video of a woman self-narrating a blog titled, “Abortion: My Experience,” with text in the thumbnail that reads, “My Biggest Mistake.” Only two of the top 15 results struck me as not particularly political, and none of the top results focused on providing dispassionate, up-to-date medical information.
I emailed YouTube Friday afternoon asking why anti-abortion videos saturated the search results for “abortion,” and if the platform thought accurate, health-focused information had a place there. By Monday morning, before the company got back to me, the search results had changed to include a number of news outlets among the top results, including a video from Vice about how women trying to get abortions are being stymied by anti-abortion centers that masquerade as clinics. The second video was a clip of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee describing his anti-abortion philosophy, and the third was a video titled “Speak Out: Abortion Is Not a Human Right.” By the end of this week, the top results (which are dynamic) included a news segment in Tamil, a video in which the director Penny Marshall (who died this week) “Opens Up on Drugs and Her Abortion,” and a clip of an anti-abortion advocate responding to the abortion-legalization law passed in Ireland. Anti-abortion content meant to enrage or provoke viewers was no longer purely dominating the results, though they still looked very different from the generally more sober Google results.
So here is a small selection of the videos that YouTube appears to have manually downranked in search results following Glaser’s emails:
The first video shows Dr. Antony Levatino testifying before the House Judiciary Committee, in her article Glaser appears to be offended that Dr. Levatino claimed that Planned Parenthood was aborting fetuses “the length of your hand plus several inches.”
Another video features a woman speaking about her experience when having an abortion and why she regrets the act:
Another video is titled “LIVE Abortion Video on Display in Washington, DC Jan. 21-22,” and shows the graphic dissection of a human fetus during an abortion:
The majority of these videos appear to be manually downranked by Google in YouTube’s search results, something which Glaser appears to be taking credit for. While Google has repeatedly claimed not to manually manipulate search results, Glaser’s claims combined with the latest internal Google leak appears to show that the company regularly blacklists and whitelists search results based on ideology and other factors.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan_ or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com





‘THE SMOKING GUN’: Google Manipulated YouTube Search Results for Abortion, Maxine Waters, David Hogg



YouTube Blacklists Pro-Life videos
Alex Wong, Win McNamee/Getty, Screenshot/YouTube
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In sworn testimony, Google CEO Sundar Pichai told Congress last month that his company does not “manually intervene” on any particular search result. Yet an internal discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News reveals Google regularly intervenes in search results on its YouTube video platform – including a recent intervention that pushed pro-life videos out of the top ten search results for “abortion.”

The term “abortion” was added to a “blacklist” file for “controversial YouTube queries,” which contains a list of search terms that the company considers sensitive. According to the leak, these include some of these search terms related to: abortion, abortions, the Irish abortion referendum, Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters, and anti-gun activist David Hogg.
The existence of the blacklist was revealed in an internal Google discussion thread leaked to Breitbart News by a source inside the company who wishes to remain anonymous. A partial list of blacklisted terms was also leaked to Breitbart by another Google source.
In the leaked discussion thread, a Google site reliability engineer hinted at the existence of more search blacklists, according to the source.
“We have tons of white- and blacklists that humans manually curate,” said the employee. “Hopefully this isn’t surprising or particularly controversial.”
Others were more concerned about the presence of the blacklist. According to the source, the software engineer who started the discussion called the manipulation of search results related to abortion a “smoking gun.”
The software engineer noted that the change had occurred following an inquiry from a left-wing Slate journalist about the prominence of pro-life videos on YouTube, and that pro-life videos were replaced with pro-abortion videos in the top ten results for the search terms following Google’s manual intervention.
“The Slate writer said she had complained last Friday and then saw different search results before YouTube responded to her on Monday,” wrote the employee. “And lo and behold, the [changelog] was submitted on Friday, December 14 at 3:17 PM.”
The manually downranked items included several videos from Dr. Antony Levatino, a former abortion doctor who is now a pro-life activist. Another video in the top ten featured a woman’s personal story of being pressured to have an abortion, while another featured pro-life conservative Ben Shapiro. The Slate journalist who complained to Google reportedthat these videos previously featured in the top ten, describing them in her story as “dangerous misinformation.”
Since the Slate journalist’s inquiry and Google’s subsequent intervention, the top search results now feature pro-abortion content from left-wing sources like BuzzFeed, Vice, CNN, and Last Week Tonight With John Oliver. In her report, the Slate journalist acknowledged that the search results changed shortly after she contacted Google.
The manual adjustment of search results by a Google-owned platform contradicts a key claim made under oath by Google CEO Sundar Pichai in his congressional testimony earlier this month: that his company does not “manually intervene on any search result.”
A Google employee in the discussion thread drew attention to Pichai’s claim, noting that it “seems like we are pretty eager to cater our search results to the social and political agenda of left-wing journalists.”
One of the posts in the discussion also noted that the blacklist had previously been edited to include the search term “Maxine Waters” after a single Google employee complained the top YouTube search result for Maxine Waters was “very low quality.”
Google’s alleged intervention on behalf of a Democratic congresswoman would be further evidence of the tech giant using its resources to prop up the left. Breitbart News previously reported on leaked emails revealing the company targeted pro-Democrat demographics in its get-out-the-vote efforts in 2016.
According to the source, a software engineer in the thread also noted that “a bunch of terms related to the abortion referendum in Ireland” had been added to the blacklist – another change with potentially dramatic consequences on the national policies of a western democracy.
youtube_controversial_query_blacklist
At least one post in the discussion thread revealed the existence of a file called “youtube_controversial_query_blacklist,” which contains a list of YouTube search terms that Google manually curates. In addition to the terms “abortion,” “abortions,” “Maxine Waters,” and search terms related to the Irish abortion referendum, a Google software engineer noted that the blacklist includes search terms related to terrorist attacks. (the posts specifically mentions that the “Strasbourg terrorist attack” as being on the list).
“If you look at the other entries recently added to the youtube_controversial_query_blacklist(e.g., entries related to the Strasbourg terrorist attack), the addition of abortion seems…out-of-place,” wrote the software engineer, according to the source.
After learning of the existence of the blacklist, Breitbart News obtained a partial screenshot of the full blacklist file from a source within Google. It reveals that the blacklist includes search terms related to both mass shootings and the progressive anti-second amendment activist David Hogg.
This suggests Google has followed the lead of Democrat politicians, who have repeatedly pushed tech companies to censor content related to the Parkland school shooting and the Parkland anti-gun activists. It’s part of a popular new line of thought in the political-media establishment, which views the public as too stupid to question conspiracy theories for themselves.
Here is the partial blacklist leaked to Breitbart:
2117 plane crash Russian
2118 plane crash
2119 an-148
2120 florida shooting conspiracy
2121 florida shooting crisis actors
2122 florida conspiracy
2123 florida false flag shooting
2124 florida false flag
2125 fake florida school shooting
2126 david hogg hoax
2127 david hogg fake
2128 david hogg crisis actor
2129 david hogg forgets lines
2130 david hogg forgets his lines
2131 david hogg cant remember his lines
2132 david hogg actor
2133 david hogg cant remember
2134 david hogg conspiracy
2135 david hogg exposed
2136 david hogg lines
2137 david hogg rehearsing
2120 florida shooting conspiracy
The full internal filepath of the blacklist, according to another source, is:
//depot/google3/googledata/superroot/youtube/youtube_controversial_query_blacklist
Contradictions
Responding to a request for comment, a YouTube spokeswoman said the company wants to promote “authoritative” sources in its search results, but maintained that YouTube is a “platform for free speech” that “allow[s]” both pro-life and pro-abortion content.
YouTube’s full comment:
YouTube is a platform for free speech where anyone can choose to post videos, as long as they follow our Community Guidelines, which prohibit things like inciting violence and pornography. We apply these policies impartially and we allow both pro-life and pro-choice opinions. Over the last year we’ve described how we are working to better surface news sources across our site for news-related searches and topical information. We’ve improved our search and discovery algorithms, built new features that clearly label and prominently surface news sources on our homepage and search pages, and introduced information panels to help give users more authoritative sources where they can fact check information for themselves.
In the case of the “abortion” search results, YouTube’s intervention to insert “authoritative” content resulted in the downranking of pro-life videos and the elevation of pro-abortion ones.
A Google spokesperson took a tougher line than its YouTube subsidiary, stating that “Google has never manipulated or modified the search results or content in any of its products to promote a particular political ideology.”
However, in the leaked discussion thread, a member of Google’s “trust & safety” team, Daniel Aaronson, admitted that the company maintains “huge teams” that work to adjust search results for subjects that are “prone to hyperbolic content, misleading information, and offensive content” – all subjective terms that are frequently used to suppress right-leaning sources.
He also admitted that the interventions weren’t confined to YouTube – they included search results delivered via Google Assistant, Google Home, and in rare cases Google ’s organic search results.
In the thread, Aaronson attempted to explain how search blacklisting worked. He claimed that highly specific searches would generate non-blacklisted results, even controversial ones. But the inclusion of highly specific terms in the YouTube blacklist, like “David Hogg cant remember his lines” – the name of an actual viral video – seems to contradict this.
Aaronson’s full post is copied below:
I work in Trust and Safety and while I have no particular input as to exactly what’s happening for YT I can try to explain why you’d have this kind of list and why people are finding lists like these on Code Search.
When dealing with abuse/controversial content on various mediums you have several levers to deal with problems. Two prominent levers are “Proactive” and “Reactive”:
  • Proactive: Usually refers to some type of algorithm/scalable solution to a general problem
    • E.g.: We don’t allow straight up porn on YouTube so we create a classifier that detects porn and automatically remove or flag for review the videos the porn classifier is most certain of
  • Reactive: Usually refers to a manual fix to something that has been brought to our attention that our proactive solutions don’t/didn’t work on and something that is clearly in the realm of bad enough to warrant a quick targeted solution (determined by pages and pages of policies worked on over many years and many teams to be fair and cover necessary scope)
    • E,g.: A website that used to be a good blog had it’s domain expire and was purchased/repurposed to spam Search results with autogenerated pages full of gibberish text, scraped images, and links to boost traffic to other spammy sites. It is manually actioned for violating policy
Manually reacting to things is not very scalable, and is not an ideal solution to most problems, so the proactive lever is really the one we all like to lean on. Ideally, our classifiers/algorithm are good at providing useful and rich results to our users while ignoring things at are not useful or not relevant. But we all know, this isn’t exactly the case all the time (especially on YouTube).
From a user perspective, there are subjects that are prone to hyperbolic content, misleading information, and offensive content. Now, these words are highly subjective and no one denies that. But we can all agree generally, lines exist in many cultures about what is clearly okay vs. what is not okay. E.g. a video of a puppy playing with a toy is probably okay in almost every culture or context, even if it’s not relevant to the query. But a video of someone committing suicide and begging others to follow in his/her footsteps is probably on the other side of the line for many folks.
While my second example is technically relevant to the generic query of “suicide”, that doesn’t mean that this is a very useful or good video to promote on the top of results for that query. So imagine a classifier that says, for any queries on a particular text file, let’s pull videos using signals that we historically understand to be strong indicators of quality (I won’t go into specifics here, but those signals do exist). We’re not manually curating these results, we’re just saying “hey, be extra careful with results for this query because many times really bad stuff can appear and lead to a bad experience for most users”. Ideally the proactive lever did this for us, but in extreme cases where we need to act quickly on something that is so obviously not okay, the reactive/manual approach is sometimes necessary. And also keep in mind, that this is different for every product. The bar for changing classifiers or manual actions on span in organic search is extremely high. However, the bar for things we let our Google Assistant say out loud might be a lot lower. If I search for “Jews run the banks” – I’ll likely find anti-semitic stuff in organic search. As a Jew, I might find some of these results offensive, but they are there for people to research and view, and I understand that this is not a reflection of Google feels about this issue. But if I ask Google assistant “Why do Jews run the banks” we wouldn’t be similarly accepting if it repeated and promoted conspiracy theories that likely pop up in organic search in her smoothing voice.
Whether we agree or not, user perception of our responses, results, and answers of different products and mediums can change. And I think many people are used to the fact that organic search is a place where content should be accessible no matter how offensive it might be, however, the expectation is very different on a Google Home, a Knowledge Panel, or even YouTube.
These lines are very difficult and can be very blurry, we are all well aware of this. So we’ve got huge teams that stay cognizant of these facts when we’re crafting policies considering classifier changes, or reacting with manual actions – these decisions are not made in a vacuum, but admittedly are also not made in a highly public forum like TGIF or IndustryInfo (as you can imagine, decisions/agreement would be hard to get in such a wide list – image if all your CL’s were reviewed by every engineer across Google all the time). I hope that answers some questions and gives a better layer of transparency without going into details about our “Pepsi formula”.
Best,
Daniel
The fact that Google manually curates politically contentious search results fits in with a wider pattern of political activity on the part of the tech giant.
In 2018, Breitbart News exclusively published a leaked video from the company that showed senior management in dismay at Trump’s election victory, and pledging to use the company’s power to make his populist movement a “hiccup” in history.
Breitbart also leaked “The Good Censor,” an internal research document from Google that admits the tech giant is engaged in the censorship of its own products, partly in response to political events.
Another leak revealed that employees within the company, including Google’s current director of Trust and Safety, tried to kick Breitbart News off Google’s market-dominating online ad platforms.
Yet another showed Google engaged in targeted turnout operations aimed to boost voter participation in pro-Democrat demographics in “key states” ahead of the 2016 election. The effort was dubbed a “silent donation” by a top Google employee.
Evidence for Google’s partisan activities is now overwhelming. President Trump has previously warned Google, as well as other Silicon Valley giants, not to engage in censorship or partisan activities. Google continues to defy him.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. You can follow him on TwitterGab.ai and add him on Facebook. Email tips and suggestions to allumbokhari@protonmail.com.

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