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FMD100 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Gentlemen, Donald J. Trump is the new President-elect of the United States. Though a a few results may still be unclear, Trump has captured the perennial large battleground states of Ohio, Florida, Iowa, and North Carolina, plus Georgia. And, in a change not seen in more than a generation, he has seized Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.
Pennsylvania and Michigan have not voted for a Republican Presidential candidate since 1988 and Wisconsin since way back in 1984. It appears also that states the Democrats thought were well and truly in the bag for them, such as Minnesota, Maine and Virginia, have stayed blue with only wafer-thin or very disappointing margins. The 2nd Congressional district of Maine, a state which divides its electoral votes along with Nebraska, has been called for the Republicans for the first time in nearly 30 years. The last time any Maine district voted for a GOP Presidential candidate was 1988, when George H. W. Bush seized all four electoral votes there.
Importantly, too, avowedly liberal states have seen significant turnouts for Trump. For example, counts so far show that some 40% of voters in Connecticut and Rhode Island, states with even more liberal media bias than the nation generally, have opted for the “racist,” “sexist,” and “homophobic” Republican candidate. Their votes ultimately did not change the electoral college map, but it is heartening to know that even in the eye of the liberal storm, plenty of people are happy to support Trump. This is despite them facing fierce rebukes and, often enough, violence if they make their views public.
The “clown” candidate has beaten 16 more “experienced” Republican challengers and now Hillary Clinton, the most elite-backed candidate in the world’s political history.
As tonight’s results have shown, plenty of Trump voters in red and blue states alike have been forced to keep their beliefs quiet. Media airtime for pro-Trump views and stories has been deliberately minimized and frequently demonized by the major networks. Mainstream “journalists” such as Glenn Thrush , Wolf Blitzer , Jake Tapper , Jessica Valenti , and Brent Budowsky have been caught collaborating with both the DNC and Clinton campaign (if you believe that these two groups are actually separate). This only increases the esteem in which the emphatic, resounding Trump victory needs to be held.
And let’s not forget the Senate and House races! After months of spineless GOP cucks rushing to differentiate themselves from Trump, The Donald has still carried them to victory in both Houses of Congress . The White House, Senate and House of Representatives are all in Republican hands until at least the 2018 House midterms. Can you taste the very salty tears of the liberals and SJWs yet?
Every powerful vested interest not only supported Hillary, but did everything they could to ruin Trump Yes, it’s happening.
Did you see the last major Hillary Clinton rallies? Celebrities-cum-political hacktivists, chief among them Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Jay Z, Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, and Katy Perry, all fell into Clinton’s corner well before their final appearances for her, excoriating anyone who had the gall to support Donald Trump. Even long-term Republicans who betrayed Trump, like Arnold Schwarzenegger, were attacked by celebrity SJWs such as Robert DeNiro after they joined the “Never Trump” ranks, as if they were dangerous saboteurs. The celebrity paranoia has been palpable for months. Hollywood, that broad industry taking in not just film stars but also singers, silver screen actors, and comedians, has become little more than an overpaid trade union for Hillary Clinton.
Likewise, every major American company that has come out for a candidate has come out for Hillary. Plenty of “neutral” corporations have undoubtedly been funneling support to the Clinton campaign behind the scenes as well. Prominent billionaires like George Soros and Warren Buffett have done all they could to drag Hillary’s stumbling half-corpse, both literally and figuratively, across the line. Whilst Trump has been supported by a number of ten-figure businessmen, these men are regularly attacked in the media. They include the scapegoated but brave Peter Thiel and Carl Icahn.
And then there’s the mainstream media. Countless studies have indicated that about 85-90% of all journalists are liberal. This over-representation is more salient still in the upper echelons of newsmen and women, particularly prominent mastheads such as The New York Times , Washington Post , and Huffington Post , plus Democratic TV surrogates like CNN and NBC. The 2016 campaign has inflated this preexisting liberal bias, one that plagued the two George W. Bush Administrations but raged even more ferociously against Donald Trump over the last 18 months.
All of these media elites have lambasted Trump for over a year, at the same time they give the paltriest coverage of the disgusting Hillary, Podesta and DNC emails. Everything newsworthy on this front, from the overwhelming presence of Clinton Foundation donors in Hillary’s Secretary of State diary book to more recent revelations about John Podesta’s involvement with Satanic rituals, has been brushed off the balcony by the Wolf Blitzers and Chuck Todds of the American mainstream media. Yet Trump has triumphed nonetheless!
The new administration must crush the criminal Democratic elites and Clinton Foundation with the rule of law Will Hillary now find herself stumbling into jail?
Inasmuch as the Clinton campaign, the SJWs, and their big business and media enablers have been defeated in this year’s election, they retain very well-oiled and effective means for trying to undermine President Trump once he takes office. Trump’s first priority as Commander-in-Chief must be to remove the bureaucratic apparatchiks preventing a full and frank investigation of the Clinton Foundation. He also needs to clear the way for legal inquiries into the various criminal activities, as uncovered by Wikileaks, perpetrated from within the DNC and Hillary Clinton’s campaign.
The Department of Justice in particular has engaged in all manner of skulduggery, most notably when Attorney-General Loretta Lynch had a private meeting with Bill Clinton during the most crucial time of the FBI investigation into Hillary’s emails. Additionally, elements of the State Department illegally informed Hillary about new developments in that same case. Enough is enough. It’s time to drain the swamp.
Election night produced another curve-ball: after weeks of calling Donald Trump a “sore loser” for him not saying if he would respect the final result, Hillary Clinton refused to speak to her supporters and the American people. It would seem that she only telephoned Trump privately. So who’s the sore loser now?
Last night we were witnesses to the greatest electoral sea-change in American—and perhaps global—history. We cannot lose sight of the work to be done, but for the next 24 hours we can bask in this unprecedented victory against all odds.
Hail to the Chief, Donald J. Trump.
Read More: 4 Reasons Donald Trump Will Win The Presidential Election Of 2016 | 0 | [
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FMD101 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Russia and China inflicted a destructive blow to the dollar by signing an intergovernmental agreement on payment exchanges in national currencies. Further measures, such as payment mechanisms outside the SWIFT system and standardised exchange rates, will follow in the frame of a “de-dollarisation” process initiated in 2018. | 0 | [
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FMD102 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Islamic State has formally taken responsibility for the slaughter at the Reina nightclub in Istanbul, issuing an unusually direct official statement that hailed the gunman as a “heroic soldier of the caliphate. â€[“In continuation of the blessed operations that Islamic State is conducting against the protector of the cross, Turkey, a heroic soldier of the caliphate struck one of the most famous nightclubs where the Christians celebrate their apostate holiday. He used hand grenades and a machine gun and transformed their celebration to mourning,†read the statement from the terror state, as translated by and the New York Times. “The apostate Turkish government should know that the blood of Muslims shed with airplanes and artillery fire will, with God’s permission, ignite a fire in their own land,†ISIS added, in an apparent reference to Turkey’s military operations in Syria. Although several terrorist attacks in Turkey have been blamed on the Islamic State, the New York Times notes it is rare for ISIS to formally claim responsibility for attacks in Turkey, possibly because it did not want to provoke the Turkish government into taking more severe actions against it. Turkey is now fighting both Kurdish militias and ISIS in Syria, announcing airstrikes on Monday that killed at least 22 ISIS fighters on Syrian soil. Leaders of the Kurdish separatists in Turkey, the PKK, condemned the nightclub attack, and insisted they had nothing to do with it. The attack on the Reina nightclub in Istanbul killed 39 and wounded 70 at last count. The Times reports 27 of slain victims were foreigners: “Seven victims came from Saudi Arabia Iraq and Lebanon each had three citizens among the dead India, Jordan, Morocco and Tunisia each had two and Canada, Israel, Kuwait, Russia and Syria each had one. †Heavy. com notes that ISIS began circulating a message on social media in December warning Muslims that “to celebrate New Year’s Eve with the kuffar is to embrace their idolatry and paganism and to shun the rulings of our Lord. †Kuffar is a derogatory term for those who do not believe in Islam. “There is nothing to celebrate. The Gregorian calendar is rooted in kufr and blatantly ignores the lunar calendar and that introduced to follow the Hijrah of our honorable Prophet,†the Islamic State’s theologians insisted. | 1 | [
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FMD103 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: My grandmother, F. Helen Hunt, was tough. I learned this when I was 13, the year I moved alone from London to Clinton County, Ind. to live with her on her farm. I sailed in amid the wreckage of my parents’ marriage. Maybe I should say as part of the wreckage. Upon my arrival, my grandmother took one look at furious, hurt, young me and prescribed hugs — she was never stingy with them — and what felt to me, lately prowling the streets of South Kensington and St. John’s Wood, like outrageous amounts of manual labor. These weren’t chores: She paid me, not unfairly, for what I did. But it wasn’t quite voluntary either. I hauled wood, I mowed her enormous lawn with a little push mower, I cleared fallen branches, I raked, I burned, I strung and tested electric fences, I dug holes, I ran a rototiller, I pulled weeds, I knocked down derelict buildings with a crowbar and sledgehammer, I washed windows, I worked a scythe. One of my early jobs was learning how to drive my late ’s temperamental 1951 Farmall Cub tractor so that I could tear out a vineyard, relic of a winemaking project started by my aunt and uncle that had by that time, in the early 1980s, run its course. It turned out the Cub had a functioning mowing element, and when I had finished tearing out the rows of Foch grapevines, I regularly used it to shear the grass and weeds of my grandmother’s east and west woods. Even if from time to time I also found myself detasseling corn in hot fields or baling and stacking hay in even hotter barns for neighboring farmers, the core of what I did was always for my grandmother. And I didn’t do it alone. My grandmother stood a smidgen over five feet tall in her Sunday heels, was a retired teacher of Latin who knew all the declensions and had once interviewed Thomas Wolfe’s brother and traveled the world, but man, could she get to it. After school and church duties were done — and there was no monkeying around about either — we went out rain or shine, cold or heat. It didn’t matter if I was walking with a limp or had sore muscles from playing football or basketball the night before. If it wasn’t torn or broken, you worked on it. That first year, on a day when we were shifting old from one spot to another for no clear — to me — reason in a cold, steady springtime drizzle, I let one I was supposed to be holding steady slip, and it smacked her hard in the mouth. I already stood a foot taller than her and outweighed her by 50 pounds and that blow would have laid me out. But my grandmother just spat, instructed me through her swelling lip to get a tighter grip, and we went back to it, got it done. On those occasions when we worked independently — say my grandmother in her greenhouse and me at the woodpile — she was never loath to raise a steely eyebrow in the face of my highball estimates about how many chunks of wood I had carried. I’m painting a picture of a taskmaster here — the older who runs everyone else into the ground — but she also remained generous with those hugs. There were kisses too. My grandmother was, in addition, fond of affectionately grabbing and squeezing my forearm. At the end of a big job, or when I’d done something passable at school or on the field, we would link hands, throw our heads back and spin around together. She would also brag about me to anyone, in any context, within earshot, whether she knew them or not. Much as my teenage self rebelled against the one and sometimes only grudgingly tolerated the other, when I look back on it now, it is clear to me that with these sturdy threads of hard work and fierce affection my grandmother was weaving the torn world back together for me. My grandmother’s admirable grit, which she displayed in just about every aspect of her long life (she variously credited these qualities to having been born breach and not breathing or to having come of age during the Great Depression) not only helped see me through my troubled teens and early adulthood, it has become the subject of my life’s work. Indeed, I recently finished my third novel set in and around rural Indiana, featuring strong women as protagonists. These novels, which take place in the deep well of the past, aren’t studies of my grandmother’s life, but they are absolutely and unapologetically inspired by it. Each character is different, each is admirable and flawed in near equal measure, but they all have in common my grandmother’s inability to quit in the face of challenge and a thundering capacity for love. When I first went to my grandmother’s, the idea was that I would stay in Indiana for a year. I ended up staying five with her, and nine if you count college in Bloomington, a couple of hours away. In the process, in the company of my outsize, diminutive grandmother, I grew to adulthood. And although she has been gone for years, I keep her close both in my characters and in myself. There is no way to pay off a debt like the one I owe her, but I make regular payments in the only kind of currency she would have accepted: dedication to the task at hand and the ability, when it has been merited, to link hands with those close to me and spin with joy. | 1 | [
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FMD104 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Rameshwar Natholi received an unexpected gift from the government recently when workmen descended on his modest home in this rural village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and built a brand-new toilet in his front yard.
Natholi, a farmworker, said he never wanted one. Most people in his village have been relieving themselves in the open fields for years.
But as part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s “Clean India†campaign to provide new sanitary toilets to more than 60 million homes by 2019, Mukhrai has been in the midst of a toilet-building boom since April.
More than 53 percent of Indian homes — about 70 percent in the villages — lack toilets. Poor sanitation and contaminated water cause 80 percent of the diseases afflicting rural India, and diarrhea is a leading killer of children younger than 5, UNICEF says.
Modi says that this is a shame for a country that has global aspirations and that the lack of sanitary conveniences is demeaning to women.
But building toilets is the easy part. Getting people to use them is the real challenge, officials say.
“We never asked for a toilet. Now we are stuck with it,†said Natholi, 22, as he opened the squat toilet to show that it has not been used. His 62-year-old father peered in and shook his head. “Having a toilet so close to the house is not a good idea. The pit is too small; it will fill up quickly. I don’t want the bother of cleaning it up frequently. Going out to the open field is healthier. The open breeze outside is better than sitting inside this tiny room.â€
Modi has made toilet-building and sanitation a rallying cry since October. He has enlisted large companies to help. In the past year, his government has built more than 5.8 million toilets — up from 4.9 million the previous year. But reports show that many of them have gone unused or that they are being used to store grain or clothes or to tether goats, thwarting Modi’s sanitation revolution.
“Even as we accelerate toilet construction now, much more needs to be done to persuade people to use them,†said Chaudhary Birender Singh, India’s minister for rural development, sanitation and drinking water. “For long, we assumed that if the toilets are built, people will automatically use it. But we have to diligently monitor the use over a period of time and reward them with cash incentives to the village councils at every stage. Only then will it become a daily habit.â€
The government budget for raising awareness largely remained unspent for years. Thousands of villages were declared to have ended open defecation since 2006, but many have since returned to the practice.
Critics also say that the government’s great toilet race has turned into a vortex of corruption in which villagers and middlemen siphon money by creating fake ledger entries about toilet construction.
After years of promoting toilet use by advocating the health benefits, many regions of India began using women as toilet ambassadors. Prospective brides were urged to shun potential grooms whose villages did not have toilets. Now, the campaign has begun to promote toilets as key to women’s security.
Numerous television ads and signs on village walls ask families to forbid their daughters and daughters-in-law to defecate in the open.
But an unintended consequence of this campaign has been the perception that toilets are just for women.
“Men can go out to the open fields, but for women who wear veils all day, a toilet in the home is a good idea,†said Sarvesh Sharma, 28, speaking with her face covered in Mukhrai, in front of her half-built toilet.
In the southern state of Karnataka, a film about responsible fathers of adolescent daughters was used to get men to build toilets in their villages.
“Whether you like it or not, it’s the men who make the decisions. And sanitation is just not a priority for the men. So we had to convey a message about toilets that enhances their manliness,†said Jayamala Subramaniam, chief executive of Arghyam, a group in Bangalore that works on sanitation and water projects.
In many villages, the new toilets are being used by women and the elderly. Researchers say that families use toilets sparingly because they do not want the pits to fill up quickly.
Natholi said he wants a toilet pit so large that he can forget about emptying it for 20Â years.
India’s poor toilet habits have little to do with income or limited access to water. They are influenced more by India’s centuries-old caste system, in which members of the lowest group — formerly called “untouchables†— would clear away human waste.
“The act of emptying the pit latrine is associated with the socially degrading caste system,†said Sangita Vyas, managing director at Rice, a New Delhi-based research group that studies sanitation issues. “People fear a situation when their pit fills up and there is nobody willing to clean it because of the social stigma. That fear discourages sustained use of toilets. â€
A Rice survey in 300 villages last year showed that more than 40Â percent of homes with working toilets still showed evidence of open defecation. The report said that toilets built by the government, typically smaller, are least likely to be used.
But conversations about caste are not part of the government’s toilet and sanitation campaign, activists say.
“How can you speak about Âtoilets for everyone without first freeing certain caste groups from the degrading work of cleaning human waste?†said Bezwada Wilson, founder of the Sanitation Workers Movement. “For any sanitation program to be successful in India, the government has to first mechanize the entire cleaning activities of the pit latrines, sewer lines and septic tanks.â€
Sanitation is not just a rural problem in India. Even in big cities, only 30Â percent of sewage is treated and disposed of.
“If all of us begin to use toilets in India tomorrow, India will still not be in a position to solve the public health problem,†said Madhu Krishna, senior program officer for sanitation at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation based in Delhi.
Meanwhile in Mukhrai, Man Pal Chaudhury, the Mukhrai village chief, said the 114 new toilets will bring change, but slowly. “The goal is to free my village of open defecation. But for that, each and every person has to fall in line,†he said. “That is several years away.
For a new American ambassador, India is a kind of homecoming
India’s Narendra Modi completed one year in power. Here’s how he did.
India’s roads are among the deadliest in the world. Can new laws tame drivers?
Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world | 1 | [
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FMD105 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: 21st Century Wire says Late last year, search engine giant Google announced its plans to protect users from the horrors of fake news by changing the way it presents search results. According to corporate officials, they hope to shelter readers by limiting access to what the company deems as low-quality information while promoting what it calls established mainstream sources. Critics believe that the company, which now has a virtual monopoly on internet traffic, is now playing god over the info-sphere. While its known that Eric Schmidt, the head of Google s parent company, Alphabet Inc, is regular attendee at the annual secretive Bilderberg meeting which charters the globalist agenda, not much is known about new Google CEO Sundar Pichai and what his personal ideology is, or whether he personally believes that Google s role is to control what the public think about any given issue by fixing the search results on the world s number one search engine. Judging by the culture of conformity at Google, it s not likely that Pichai would be allowed to express any dissenting views if he had them.As 21WIRE pointed out last week regarding the controversy over the recent Google Memo and the firm dismissing employees who are seen to divert from the company s prescribed group think, this same repressive political culture at Google is reflected in its broad new automated censorship program administered by algorithms on its Google search engine a bold move which effectively disappears political views and articles it does not like, and wishes to bury.Watch this segment from RT America, with guest Andre Damon, editor of the World Socialist Web Site, to explain why he believes his site and other alternative sources are being unfairly targeted in Google s new reordering of visible information through its portal. Watch: SUPPORT 21WIRE SUBSCRIBE & BECOME A MEMBER @ 21WIRE.TV | 0 | [
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FMD106 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Wegmans $80 Coupon Scam Claim summaries: Grocery chain Wegmans warned Facebook users that a digital coupon was a scam.
contextual information: In late January 2016, Facebook users began sharing a post that promised a $200 coupon for the Wegmans supermarket chain to users who completed a short series of steps. In July 2019, social media users encountered a similar offer for an $80 coupon. The embedded links in those posts pointed to a URL not associated with Wegmans. Users who attempted to complete the steps and claim the coupon were directed to a page that resembled content hosted on Facebook, but its URL didn't match the social network's. The landing page was familiar to all who had encountered similar scams in the past. Wegmans' official Facebook page warned customers about the coupon scam, and a Better Business Bureau article provided shoppers with tips on avoiding survey and coupon scams operating in that fashion. The article advised, "Don't believe what you see. It's easy to steal the colors, logos, and header of an established organization." Scammers can also make links look like they lead to legitimate websites and emails appear to come from a different sender. Legitimate businesses do not ask for credit card numbers or banking information on customer surveys. If they do ask for personal information, like an address or email, be sure there's a link to their privacy policy. When in doubt, do a quick web search. If the survey is a scam, you may find alerts or complaints from other consumers. The organization's real website may have further information. Watch out for a reward that's too good to be true. If the survey is real, you may be entered in a drawing to win a gift card or receive a small discount off your next purchase. Few businesses can afford to give away $50 gift cards for completing a few questions. | 0 | [
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FMD107 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did Kevin Sorbo of 'Hercules' Fame Die in 2020? Claim summaries: This was not the first time a living actor was featured in a misleading advertisement.
contextual information: Kevin Sorbo appeared in at least one strange online advertisement in early 2021 that read: "Celebrities Who Passed Away in 2020." The actor is perhaps best known for his work on "Hercules." However, Sorbo was not dead. As of Jan. 29, 2021, the actor was alive and tweeting. tweeting The ad led to a lengthy slideshow story on the website Definition.org with the headline: "All the Celebrities We've Lost in the Past Year." Definition.org Like it or not, death comes for us all. Many of us never know when our time will come, and rightfully so, but some of our friends and family have gone too soon. While they may not be our friends from down the street but we still a connection to the lost celebrities that have entertained us for years or decades. Whether they be from the world of sports, red carpets of Hollywood, behind the glass in the recording studio, or simply on the television and movie screens, these lost celebrities are sorely missed. Some of these celebrities have been around since our parents were children, others have sprung up in the last few years but all have made notable contributions to our entertainment and influences. Let us remember each and every one of these lost celebrities for their selfless contributions to their respective fields. Their work still continues to inspire us each and every day. The person or people who managed the page recently updated the end of the article to include pages for late sports icon Hank Aaron and actress Cloris Leachman. Both had died recently before this fact check was published. Hank Aaron Cloris Leachman Sorbo was perhaps best known for his work as Hercules in "Hercules: The Legendary Journeys." He also starred in the "Andromeda" television series as well as "Let There Be Light" and "God's Not Dead." This was not the first time a living actor was featured to trick readers into clicking an ad about dead celebrities. A picture of Nick Stahl, who also was not dead, had also been used in advertisements for Definition.org. Stahl was perhaps best known for starring in the 2003 film "Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines" and the HBO series "Carnivle." picture of Nick Stahl In sum, an online advertiser used a picture of "Hercules" actor Sorbo to draw clicks and profits in a lengthy article about recently deceased celebrities. Snopes debunks a wide range of content, and online advertisements are no exception. Misleading ads often lead to obscure websites that host lengthy slideshow articles with lots of pages. It's called advertising "arbitrage." The advertiser's goal is to make more money on ads displayed on the slideshow's pages than it cost to show the initial ad that lured them to it. Feel free to submit ads to us, and be sure to include a screenshot of the ad and the link to where the ad leads. submit ads to us | 0 | [
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FMD108 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Why Are Coins Left on Gravestones in Cemeteries? Claim summaries: Modern tradition holds that leaving coins on military graves denotes visits from living soldiers.
contextual information: Humans have been leaving mementos on and within the final resting places of loved ones almost from the beginning of the species. Excavations of even the earliest graves uncover goods meant to serve the deceased in the next world, such as pottery, weapons, and beads. But what about coins being left on graves? The earliest known coins date to the late seventh century B.C., and as societies began embracing such monetary systems, the practice leaving of coins in the graves of citizens began as yet another way of equipping the dear departed for the afterlife. earliest Mythologies within certain cultures added specific purpose for coins being left with the dead. In Greek mythology, Charon, the ferryman of Hades, required payment for his services. A coin was therefore placed in the mouth of the dear departed to ensure he would ferry the deceased across the rivers Styx and Acheron and into the world of the dead rather than leave him to wander the shore for a hundred years. In England and the U.S., pennies were routinely placed on the closed eyes of the dead, yet the purpose for that practice was not clear some say it was to keep the eyes of the corpse from flying open (even though the eyes, once shut by the person laying out the body, do not reopen). In these more recent days, coins and other small items are sometimes discovered on grave markers, be they plaques resting atop the sod or tombstones erected at the head of the burial plot. These small tokens are left by visitors for no greater purpose than to indicate that someone has visited that particular grave. It has long been a tradition among Jews, for example, to leave a small stone or pebble atop a headstone just to show that someone who cared had stopped by. Coins (especially pennies) are favored by others who wish to demonstrate that the deceased has not been forgotten and that instead his loved ones still visit him. Sometimes these small remembrances convey meaning specific to the person buried in that plot. For more than twenty years, every month someone has been leaving one Campbell's tomato soup can and a pocketful of change on the plain black granite tombstone that marks the grave of Andy Warhol. The soup can is easy to explain, given Warhol's iconic use of that commodity in his art, but the handful of change remains a bit of a mystery. In similar vein, visitors often leave pebbles, coins and maple leaf pins at the grave of Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, the man who replaced Canada's Red Ensign with the Maple Leaf flag. soup can Regarding the 'tradition' of soldiers leaving on the headstones of fallen comrades varying denominations of coins to denote their relationship with the deceased, the earliest reference to this practice we've found so far dates only to June 2009, when it appeared as a web site post. A version now commonly circulated in e-mail appears to have been drawn from it, albeit some changes have slipped in, such as "A buddy who served in the same outfit, or was with the deceased when he died, might leave a quarter" becoming "By leaving a quarter at the grave, you are telling the family that you were with the soldier when he was killed": COINS LEFT ON TOMBSTONES While visiting some cemeteries you may notice that headstones marking certain graves have coins on them, left by previous visitors to the grave. These coins have distinct meanings when left on the headstones of those who gave their life while serving in America's military, and these meanings vary depending on the denomination of coin. A coin left on a headstone or at the grave site is meant as a message to the deceased soldier's family that someone else has visited the grave to pay respect. Leaving a penny at the grave means simply that you visited. A nickel indicates that you and the deceased trained at boot camp together, while a dime means you served with him in some capacity. By leaving a quarter at the grave, you are telling the family that you were with the soldier when he was killed. According to tradition, the money left at graves in national cemeteries and state veterans cemeteries is eventually collected, and the funds are put toward maintaining the cemetery or paying burial costs for indigent veterans. In the US, this practice became common during the Vietnam war, due to the political divide in the country over the war; leaving a coin was seen as a more practical way to communicate that you had visited the grave than contacting the soldier's family, which could devolve into an uncomfortable argument over politics relating to the war. Some Vietnam veterans would leave coins as a "down payment" to buy their fallen comrades a beer or play a hand of cards when they would finally be reunited. The tradition of leaving coins on the headstones of military men and women can be traced to as far back as the Roman Empire. [Collected via Facebook, October 2015] While "Cleaning of the Stones" at the National Cemetery in Holly. I noticed a quarter placed on one of the stones. Later I also noticed a nickel placed on another stone. I was so touched with this that I took pictures.I googled about the coins, and found this out. I am very proud to share this. A coin left on a headstone lets the deceased soldiers family know that somebody stopped by to pay their respect. Leaving a penny means you visited. A nickel means that you and the deceased soldier trained at boot camp together. If you served with the soldier, you leave a dime. A quarter is very significant because it means that you were there when that soldier died. Despite the claim of this tradition dating back to the days of the Roman Empire, there's no reason to suppose that it does. A coin might be placed in the mouth of a fallen Roman soldier (to get him across the River Styx), but the deceased's comrades would more likely have been expending any further coinage on a funeral banquet in his honor rather than interring it with his remains. Given the lack of documentation attesting to the origins and consistency of this 'tradition,' it is perhaps best regarded not as an actual common practice but instead as someone's idealized legend of what should be. Roman Empire Yet military folk do sometimes leave very special remembrances at the graves of deceased servicemen: challenge coins. These tokens identify their bearers as members of particular units and are prized and cherished by those to whom they have been given; thus any challenge coins found at gravesites were almost certainly left there by comrades-in-arms of the deceased. challenge coins It needs be mentioned that not only coins, medallions, and stones have been found on military headstones. In July 2013, a wife of a deceased serviceman discovered another woman's name on her husband's marker in place of her own. Edna Fielden, widow of Air Force Master Sergeant Billy Fielden (buried at Fort Logan Cemetery in Denver 25 years earlier) was shocked to discover the headstone bore the inscription "Dolores" over the legend "His Wife" when she brought her grandchildren to visit the grave. Update: In early 2021, coins on graves was the subject of a number of online advertisements. One of the ads read: "[Pics] Here's Why You Should Never, Ever Touch Coins Left On A Gravestone." Another claimed: "[Pics] If You See Coins Placed On A Gravestone, Here's What It Means." Both ads led to lengthy slideshow articles. Buchan, Rebecca. "Toy Cars and Coins Taken from Toddler's Graveside."
Aberdeen Press and Journal. 6 October 2011 (p. 3). Caswell, Emily. "Ask Us: Pennies on Gravestones Reflect Greek Mythology."
The [Manchester] Union Leader. 13 July 2011 (p. D36). Hamill, Sean. "An Homage in Coins and Soup Cans."
The International Herald Tribune. 27 February 2007 (p. 9). Hogan, Jim. "Tokens of Remembrance."
Los Angeles Times. 27 May 2013 (p. A15). Lang, Sarah. "Coins Gone from Strong's Grave."
The Lebanon Reporter [Indiana]. 11 May 2011. McArthur, Douglas. "A Historical Stroll Through Canada's Prime Ministerial Grave Sites."
The Globe and Mail. 7 October 2000 (p. T4). NBC News. "Military Widow Finds Another Woman's Name Engraved on Her Husband's Tombstone."
18 June 2013. San Jose Mercury News. "Fans Still Pay Tribute to Allison."
The Globe and Mail. 14 July 1994 (p. F2). | 1 | [
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FMD109 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said on Monday he believed U.S. President Donald Trump understood the value of free trade and that he would keep pitching a multinational trade pact that Trump’s administration has vowed to exit. “I believe President Trump understands the importance of free and fair trade, so I’d like to pursue his understanding on the strategic and economic importance of the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) trade pact,†Abe told a session of parliament’s lower house. Abe also said he wanted to strengthen the U.S.-Japan security alliance, based on mutual trust with Trump. “When we met last time, I believed him to be trustworthy, this belief has not changed today,†Abe added, referring to his November meeting with then-president-elect Trump. Abe also said Tokyo wanted to explain how its companies have contributed to the U.S. economy, a stance the Japanese government has adopted to try to fend off threats of a “border tax†on imports into the United States. Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said separately that Tokyo would closely monitor any impact of the new U.S. administration’s policies on its companies and that he wanted to deepen economic ties between the two countries. Trump took office as the 45th president of the U.S. on Friday and pledged to end what he called an “American carnage†of rusted factories and crime in an inaugural address that was a populist and nationalist rallying cry. The new Trump administration said on Friday its trade strategy to protect American jobs would start with withdrawal from the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) trade pact. The trade deal, which the United States signed but has not ratified, was a pillar of former president Barack Obama’s pivot to Asia, and Abe has touted it as an engine of economic reform, as well as a counter-weight to a rising China. | 1 | [
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FMD110 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: 'Hello Barbie' Eavesdropping Doll Claim summaries: Rumor: Mattel's new Hello Barbie toy will record and transmit children's conversations.
contextual information: Claim: Mattel's new Hello Barbie toy will record and transmit children's conversations. Example: [Collected via e-mail, March 2015] I just read an article (sent by Campaign for a Commercial-FreeChildhood) about a new Barbie Doll made by Mattel that is sent to hitmarkets this fall. This doll records the child's conversations, transmitsthem to Mattel's technology partner "Toy Talk" and they can then use thatinfo..........this all sounds so far out! ? Origins: On 14 February 2015, Mattel introduced a new Barbie model at the New York Toy Fair. In initial media reports, Hello Barbie was simply described as an innovation based upon feedback from young customers who wished to interact with their beloved Barbie dolls, and one of a number of planned interactive toys from Mattel: "The number one request we hear from girls around the world is that they want to have a conversation with Barbie. Now, for the first time ever, Barbie can have a two-way conversation," said a spokeswoman for Mattel. The Hello Barbie will be able to play interactive games and tell stories and jokes. A dinosaur, connected to one of the world's cleverest machines, is also being developedIt will also listen to the child's conversation and adapt to it over time so, for instance, if a child mentions that they like to dance, the doll may refer to this in a future chat. The doll requires a wi-fi connection and can provide an hour's worth of playtime when fully charged. On 15 February 2015, video footage from the New York Toy Fair that demonstrated how Hello Barbie worked was posted on YouTube: Interest in Hello Barbie waned until 11 March 2015, when the group Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) published a petition that called upon Mattel to cancel the doll's production based upon the notion that the toy would be recording children's conversations and transmitting them to Mattel: petition Imagine your children playing with a doll that records everything they say (and other nearby conversations) and transmits it all to a corporation which analyzes every word to learn "all of [your child's] likes and dislikes." That's exactly what Mattel's eavesdropping "Hello Barbie" does. Unless we take action, it will be in toy stores this autumn. Kids using "Hello Barbie"' won't only be talking to a doll, they'll be talking directly to a toy conglomerate whose only interest in them is financial. It's creepy- and creates a host of dangers for children and families. Please join CCFC in demanding that Mattel halt marketing and production of "Hello Barbie." By Mattel's own description, Hello Barbie will record and process portions of ambient conversation. However, the petition ascribed a number of additional functions to Hello Barbie which have not been confirmed, such as analysis of captured audio for marketing purposes. While the technology involved alarmed many consumers once the petition began to circulate, it didn't differ meaningfully from the functionality of smart TVs or other popular interactive gadgetry such as Apple's Siri virtual assistant. (iPads and iPhones are not infrequently used by small children despite their similar ability to record and transmit ambient conversation to a third party.) smart TVs ToyTalk, the company that partnered with Mattel to produce Hello Barbie, attempted to assuage parental fears about the new product: In an interview, ToyTalk chief executive Oren Jacob stressed that the audio files the doll collects will be used only to improve the product, including helping it build better speech recognition models for children. "The data is never used for anything to do with marketing or publicity or any of that stuff. Not at all," Jacob said. While it's true that Hello Barbie can record and transmit household conversations, the same could be said for nearly every smartphone, almost all newer televisions, and a number of other personal gadgets. Hello Barbie's interactivity may have alarmed some parents, but it is similar to voice recognition features included on many popular technological devices and by itself presents no more risk or exposure than an iPad or a smart TV. Last updated: 12 March 2015 "Barbie Doll Will Be Internet Connected to Chat to Kids" BBC News. 17 February 2015. | 2 | [
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FMD111 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Despite recent assertions from certain Democratic presidential candidates, the dream of a single-payer national healthcare system in the United States is alive and worth fighting for even if it may not be implemented tomorrow. Thousands of physicians have recently endorsed a proposal to make that dream a reality.On Thursday, the Physicians for a National Health Program released their final proposal for creating a single-payer or as it is commonly referred to a Medicare-for-all national health care plan. The proposal was crafted by 39 top physicians and released in an editorial titled Moving Forward from the Affordable Care Act to a Single-Payer System, which was published in the American Journal of Public Health. The proposal also came with a political punch. At the time of the proposal s release 2,280 physicians and 168 medical students endorsed the plan. If you are a physician or work in the healthcare industry, you can endorse the proposal on PNHP s website. Our nation is at a crossroads, said Dr. Adam Gaffney, a Boston-based pulmonary disease and critical care specialist, lead author of the editorial and co-chair of the Working Group that produced the proposal. Despite the passage of the Affordable Care Act six years ago, 30 million Americans remain uninsured, an even greater number are underinsured, financial barriers to care like co-pays and deductibles are rising, bureaucracy is growing, provider networks are narrowing, and medical costs are continuing to climb. PNHP notes that their proposal would save about $500 billion annually by eliminating the high overhead and profits of insurance firms, and the massive paperwork they inflict on hospitals and doctors. Furthermore, since there is only one health insurance plan, there would be no bars in place from insurers that prevent individuals from seeing whichever doctor they choose. That has been a major talking point for conservatives over the past few years that would be immediately invalidated. Going back to the cost savings benefits of the program, since there would only be one major healthcare provider, the cost of medications and other medical devices would almost instantly decline, due to strengthened negotiating power.It almost understandable why some progressives might think that a serious push for a single-payer healthcare system might be a waste of resources, and instead advocate for small reforms. However, I don t think that there has ever been a better time to go all in for a single-payer healthcare system.Republicans have been fighting the Affordable Care Act tooth and nail since its implementation. During this time, they have not been able to come out with any real alternative proposals or ways to improve the system. Instead, right-wing politicians and pundits have programmed their supporters to hate the ACA, or Obamacare, without question. Despite having an outright hatred for the concept as a whole, conservatives actually tend to have fairly high favorable attitudes towards specific elements of the plan.This gives progressives an incredible talking point to make that they, too, want to end Obamacare. That may sound like a heretical statement to make considering the all-out rhetorical war that has raged over keeping the healthcare reforms in place for over half a decade. However, progressives shouldn t shy away from such a statement. The ACA was meant to end one day. It was created with the intention of being a stepping stone towards a single-payer system. That doesn t mean that the successful aspects of the law would need to be done away with if we switched to a single-payer system; if anything, the last few years have taught us much about how such a system would need to work in order to be successful. Featured image from Photo by Lefteris Pitarakis WPA Pool/Getty Images | 0 | [
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FMD112 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Obama administration on Friday weighed in on the debate over allowing consumers to switch from pricey cable television boxes to less expensive devices, urging regulators to set an example for the rest of government on how to boost competition. Consumers can spend nearly $1,000 over four years renting cable set-top boxes. Allowing consumers to chose devices or apps they can own could mean quick savings, according to the administration. “Competition is good for consumers,†President Barack Obama said in an interview with Yahoo Finance. “And ultimately it’s good for business. The more competition we have, the more products, services, innovation takes place.†The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in February proposed a rule to open competition in the $20 billion television set-top box market. It set a 60-day comment period for the rule that could deal a financial blow to cable companies. The administration issued a rare filing on the rule by the FCC, an independent agency. The rule would allow consumers to obtain video services from providers such as Alphabet Inc’s Google, Apple Inc and TiVo In, instead of cable, satellite and other television providers such Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc. It was unclear if the rule will be implemented before Obama leaves office in January. Cable and television companies have lashed out against the proposal, saying it could stifle innovation. Under the rule, minority programmers would be damaged, consumers would lose privacy protections and be saddled with the costs of re-engineering networks, said Michael Powell, the head of trade group National Cable & Telecommunications Association. The companies also contended the White House is pressuring the FCC, which they said was inappropriate. “This action not only damages the only companies seriously investing to build broadband infrastructure for this country, it also does great harm to the confidence we should be able to have in the impartiality of the FCC’s proceedings,†said Jim Cicconi, a senior executive vice president at AT&T Inc. Obama will also sign an executive order on Friday calling on federal agencies and departments to report in 60 days on areas where additional measures can be taken to open competition. In a teleconference call with reporters, Jason Furman, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, would not speculate on what kind of pro-competition measures the order could spur. The administration is looking to add to consumer-friendly actions on cell phones, net neutrality and retirement advice. “This is going to be a whole of government effort to empower consumers, workers and small businesses,†Furman said. | 1 | [
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FMD113 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Is Aldi Giving Away Free Groceries on Facebook? Claim summaries: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
contextual information: A phenomenon know as "like-farming" refers to unscrupulous online activity in which fraudsters post salacious material in order to generate as many likes, shares, and comments as possible. As the popularity of these posts and pages grows, so do the opportunities to scam social media users. For instance, a fraudster may edit a post to include a malware link or request personal information or, if the audience has grown large enough, change the page's focus entirely and start selling spammy products. In January 2020, the popular grocery chain Aldi was used in one such scam. A fraudulent post from a page resembling the official Aldi USA Facebook page promised everyone who shared or commented on it the chance to win a year's worth of free groceries: This post did not originate with the official Aldi Facebook page, and the grocery chain is not giving away a year of free groceries to any Facebook fans who like, comment, or share this post. For starters, the post does not appear on the official Aldi USA Facebook page, nor on any of the store's other social media pages. We also checked the grocery chain's website for any mention of a grocery giveaway, but this too-good-to-be-true deal is not listed among Aldi's specials. official Aldi USA Facebook page social media Aldi's specials Lastly, this fraudulent Facebook post follows the same script of dozens of other like-farming scams: It makes a big promise (a year of free groceries) in order to entice readers, then makes a simple request (to comment or share) to ensure that this post reaches a larger audience. The post is also light on specifics (11 pm in what time zone? And what Sunday?) and originated on a page unaffiliated with the grocery chain. Here's how the Better Business Bureau described like-farming scams: What Exactly is Like-Farming? Like-farming on Facebook is a technique in which scammers create an eye-catching post designed to get many likes and shares. Posts often give people emotional reasons to click, like, and share, such as adorable animals, sick children, or political messages. For example, some posts claim that Facebook will donate money for every comment or share. As more people like and share the post, it appears in more news feeds, giving the post a much wider audience. Why Do Scammers Farm for Likes? As with many scams, like-farming has several different aims. When scammers ask you to register in order to win a free iPad or a free flight, this is a way to steal your personal information. Other versions can be more complex. Often, the post itself is initially harmless albeit completely fictional. But when the scammer collects enough likes and shares, they will edit the post and add something malicious. Thats often a link to a website that downloads malware to your machine. Other times, once scammers reach their target number of likes, they strip the pages original content and use it to promote spammy products. They may also resell the page on the black market. These buyers can use it to spam followers or harvest the information Facebook provides. This is not the first time that Aldi has been used for this type of scam. In 2015 (and again in 2019), a scam post offering free Aldi coupons was circulated on social media. free Aldi coupons We reached out to Aldi for more details and will update this article if more information becomes available. Better Business Bureau. "Like-Farming: A Facebook Scam Still Going Strong." 27 February 2018. | 0 | [
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FMD114 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Bolivia’s opposition entered a putschist phase against president Evo Morales. The ongoing coup is financed by the US, who learnt from previous experiences on how to make their moves, sustaining a narrative against the government and empowering local actors, which are heavily funded for their trips around the territory. | 0 | [
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FMD115 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Leave a reply
The Angels – We know so many of you feel as if you have been disappointed in this lifetime. Some of you feel you have disappointed yourselves. Many of you feel disappointed by others. Even more feel disappointed by life. Take heart! Each one of you, in every breath, has opportunity for change! Each one of you has the ability to release yourselves and others from the bondage of expectations, and to dance with life, exactly as you are, and exactly as life is.
We hear you now! “I expect to be treated kindly! I expect myself to do my best. I expect others to be honest! I expect my children to listen to me” and on the list goes. You may have these expectations dear ones, but what happens when you do not live up them? What happens when others do not? While it is fine to have expectations, you already know that life and others do not always act as you expect. You do not always live up to your own expectations. What then?
Far better to say, “I expect to be treated kindly but if I am not I will discern what to do next.” “I expect to do my best, but when I do not, I will choose to learn.” “I expect others to be honest with me but when they betray my trust, I will walk away or let them know kindly what it takes to earn it once again.” “I expect my children to listen to me, but if they don’t, I will lovingly guide them in their lessons here upon the earth.”
Expect the best of yourself and others dear ones, if you wish, but when you or they do not live up to these expectations, be flexible. Dance with the present moment, as you are, as life is, because in that reality you are no longer resisting life. You are no longer chained to your expectations in the past. You are open to guidance in the moment, dealing with reality of life in front of you.
In this fashion, you free yourself to find the most loving course of action based on how you are, how life is, and how others are being… right here and right now, in the present moment. SF Source Visions of Heaven | 0 | [
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FMD116 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Republicans priorities are out of whack. In Texas, the GOP is currently waging a war on women specifically on their ability to have a safe and sanitary abortion instead of taking a wire hanger to the bathroom. Top GOP legislators in the state have waged an extended war on Planned Parenthood based on fraudulent, heavily-edited videos depicting the health organization as an evil cabal that murders babies and sells their body parts to the highest bidder.Top GOP legislators in the state have waged an extended war on Planned Parenthood based on fraudulent, heavily-edited videos depicting the health organization as an evil cabal that murders babies and sells their body parts to the highest bidder. Though the creators of the baby parts videos were ultimately indicted by a grand jury and face decades in prison, the war on Planned Parenthood rages on in the Lone Star State.Texas latest assault on women s rights comes in the form of an attempt to legislate bathrooms so that transgender women even those some would call passable in a callous and offhanded sense would be forced to use the men s restroom. A bill filed Sunday would institute harsh penalties for anyone who was born with a penis if they entered a women s shower or toilet facility regardless of whether or not they identify as a woman. In fact, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick recently called this blatant act of discrimination a priority of the highest order. That s not a euphemism while Republicans are focused on legislating vaginas in one way or another, it is not a crime for someone to unzip his pants and violate a feline with his penis. This may seem shocking, but it s true.On Tuesday, Bloomberg published a report that revealed some horrific facts about the latest state to embarrass our nation with ridiculous attempts to legalize human rights violations:When Katie Jarl started her job as the Texas state director for the Humane Society of the U.S., she received calls on a monthly basis from law enforcement and animal cruelty officers about bestiality cases. They asked whether they could arrest individuals for animal cruelty and how they could remove the animals from the home, she said.Jarl was forced to tell them they couldn t do anything because bestiality is still legal in the state of Texas. The problem is we simply don t have a law, she told Bloomberg BNA. When something s not illegal, it s a problem for law enforcement. Texas is one of nine states and the District of Columbia whose criminal codes do not include an enforceable bestiality statute.Jarl says that unless someone has sex with an animal in public so they can be charged with another crime, there are no limits to what a motivated and sick individual could do to the neighborhood cat, horse, or iguana population. There is absolutely no way to stop someone from exercising their apparent right to violate an animal, Jarl says. This, of course, is a problem because crimes against animals often escalate into crimes against humans, including the children whom Republicans claim their bathroom bill would protect: Animals are often the gateway to abusing children, women, and other human beings, she said.Prosecutor Jessica Milligan agreed. Milligan heads the animal cruelty division for the District Attorney s Office of Harris County, Texas.Violence against animals and humans typically arise in a domestic violence context, but Milligan told Bloomberg BNA that she has seen more sinister cases. Right now they aren t considered criminals, Jarl says. They re allowed to do this legally. Under current laws, animal rescuers are forced to return runaway pets to their owners when there are clear signs of sexual abuse something that is certainly not OK.Unfortunately, one major problem is that Texas legislators don t know what the f*ck is going on in a general sense, but moreso when it comes to bestiality. Jarl says she is working with lawmakers to get a law on the books that would officially ban bestiality. She says that many are surprised it is not already against the law. I never thought I would have to convince anyone that bestiality should be illegal, she says, but in Red States, anything is possible. Unfortunately, even if she manages to make a law banning bestiality happen, Bloomberg notes that rural areas, where animals are seen as tools, will present a problem because unless the media gets involved, it will be difficult to bring attention to the problem.Milligan says that bestiality is becoming more common in Texas, noting an upswing in such horrific would-be crimes since about the time President Obama was re-elected (within the last four years) though she concedes that she is unsure if bestiality is on the rise or if people are just more open about posting their exploits on social media.Interestingly, Texas legislators remain silent on this issue, preferring to expend energy and taxpayer money on a nonsensical, multi-pronged war on women.Featured image via My San Antonio/Visualizeus | 0 | [
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FMD117 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Share on Facebook Tweet Short stories told by water protectors at Standing Rock, North Dakota. Part 1 - Introduction: Since mid-August 2016, thousands have set up camp near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. They stand in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline and its planned crossing of the Missouri River. This is the largest gathering of Native Americans in over 100 years. Many plan to make... read more
Short stories told by water protectors at Standing Rock, North Dakota.
Part 1 - Introduction: Since mid-August 2016, thousands have set up camp near the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota. They stand in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline and its planned crossing of the Missouri River. This is the largest gathering of Native Americans in over 100 years. Many plan to make this their home until DAPL is stopped. (4mins)
Part 2 - Frank from Standing Rock, ND. "Tears do heal people. They help you learn. They help you move on." (5mins)
Part 3 - Helen from Wounded Knee, SD. "I still couldn't sit there and pray freely, until I had to get up and pick up a gun, and fight for my rights. I fought in Wounded Knee." (5mins)
Part 4 - Tyger from Gaffney, SC. "When I was 17 I went into the army. My first unit was the Army Corps of Engineers. And I thought I was fighting for my country. And I was. And now I'm fighting for my country again." (7mins)
Part 5 - Darwyn from Omak, WA. "Something was telling me... you need to go, you need to go, you need to go." (5mins)
Part 6 - Audrey De La Rosa from Kayenta, AZ. “If you’re a young able person, your back better be straight. You better be sitting in a position where if you have to get up and start running, you better go. I'm here. I'm able. As an academic scholar I’ve written my own papers on how social change begins on the reservation… and it’s happening.” (6mins)
Part 7 - Alvin C Jacobs Jr from Charlotte, NC. "I'm a photojournalist. This is hard work. I mean, what the hell are we doing out here? Waking up angry. Going to sleep frustrated. Seeing people brutalized. Seeing racism flourish. Seeing people go through a living hell, just for simply existing." (6mins)
Part 8 - Duane from Standing Rock, ND. "To understand one another brings unity. We need to share our lives. Without fear. Without judgement. And that will create unity that will be unbreakable." (6mins)
Part 9 - David from Denver, CO. "The first interaction that Christopher Columbus had with any Indian on this hemisphere was with the Taíno Nation. Both sides of my family have Taíno blood in them. I say that I am a Boricua before I say that I'm a Puerto Rican." (5mins)
Unless otherwise stated: | 0 | [
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FMD118 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: By Stephen Lendman
Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy suffers greatly from low crude oil prices and US economic warfare – waged to destabilize the country, create enormous hardships, mobilize majority opposition to President Nicolas Maduro’s leadership, and end nearly 18 years of economic and social progress. The collapse in the price of crude oil was the result of a carefully designed speculative operation.
Neocons in Washington want control over Venezuela’s vast oil reserves, among the world’s largest. With full US support and encouragement, the right wing opposition which controls the National Assembly want Maduros ousted – its latest tactic by recall referendum as constitutionally permitted.
On October 18, Venezuela’s Supreme Court ruled valid signatures of 20% of voters in each of the nation’s 24 states must be collected to proceed with a process against Maduro.
“(F)ailure…will render the call for the presidential recall referendum as nullified,” the High Court said in its ruling.
On October 21, Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) suspended the referendum until further notice, following Supreme Court allegations of fraud. Over 30% of signatures collected had irregularities – including listing over 10,000 deceased persons.
A previous article explained how Venezuela’s recall referendum works. Article 72 of Venezuela’s Constitution states “(a)ll magistrates and other offices (including the president) filled by popular vote are subject to revocation.”
“Once half (their) term of office…has elapsed, 20% of (registered) voters (by petition may call for) a referendum to revoke such official’s mandate.”
“When a number of voters equal to or greater than the number of those who elected the official vote in favor of revocation (provided the total is 20% or more of registered voters), the official’s mandate shall be deemed revoked…”
Signatures collected must be verified for authenticity before proceeding further with the recall process. If achieved, it’ll be organized within 90 days. Removing Maduro requires support from more than the 50.6% of voters supporting his 2013 election.
Timing is important. If held by January 10, 2017, a new election will be called if Maduro loses. If things go against him after this date, Vice President Aristobulo Isturiz will serve as president until January 2019, when his term expires.
In response to CNE’s suspending the recall process, the factions controlling the National Assembly barely stopped short of urging coup d’etat action to remove Maduro forcefully.
Last Sunday, they said they’ll impeach him for “violating democracy.” The body has no legal standing after ignoring the Supreme Court’s October 18 ruling.
United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) leader Hector Rodriguez mocked them, saying parties violating the “rules of the game come and talk about democracy…There will be no recall referendum in 2016 because of fraudulent signatures collected.”
Violent demonstrations may follow, similar to what occurred in 2014 – perhaps another US coup attempt.
On October 24, WaPo editors disgracefully headlined “How to derail Venezuela’s new dictatorship.” What followed was a disgraceful litany of misinformation, exaggeration and Big Lies.
WaPo: Maduro “made clear (he and his government are) prepared to shred what remained of the country’s constitutional order…(They) stripped the opposition-controlled national assembly of its powers, imprisoned several top leaders and tried to slow” the recall process.
Fact: Maduro and Venezuela’s CNE observe the letter of constitutional law. No opposition powers were “stripped.” Their imprisoned officials plotted to remove Maduro by coup d’etat.
Collecting fraudulent signatures “slow(ed)” the recall process, not administration officials.
WaPo: Opposition National Assembly members “issued a declaration saying Mr. Maduro had staged a coup. That is accurate – and it ought to provoke a consequential reaction from the United States and Venezuela’s Latin American neighbors.”
Fact: No Maduro “coup” occurred, nor is one in prospect. WaPo calling for “consequential” action sounds ominously like urging Washington to oust him forcefully.
WaPo: “The recall referendum the opposition was pursuing offered a democratic way out of what has become one of the worst political and humanitarian crises in Latin America’s modern history.”
Fact: US dirty tricks and economic manipulation leading to disruptions in the distribution of food, bear much responsibility for hard times in Venezuela. Real problems exist. Hunger isn’t one of them. WaPo lied claiming “(t)he vast majority of low-income families say they are having trouble obtaining food.”
Venezuelans changed their dietary practices because of the scarcity of commonly eaten foods, at times consuming less than earlier. Profiteers hoarding and diverting foodstuffs for resale are responsible, along with high inflation resulting economic manipulation.
WaPo: “(T)he United States should be coordinating tough international action.”
Fact: Neocon WaPo editors want Maduro toppled and replaced. Do they mean by coup d’etat by calling for “tough international action?”
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected] . His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: How the US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com .
Source: Global Research | 0 | [
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FMD119 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Portugal s interior minister resigned on Wednesday after wildfires killed more than a hundred people in the past four months, but the move did little to appease the opposition which called on Prime Minister Antonio Costa also to step down. Hundreds of fires have raged across northern and central Portugal since Sunday after the driest summer in nearly 90 years, killing at least 41 people and overwhelming firefighting and rescue services. In June, a forest fire killed 64 people. The government, which has enjoyed strong approval ratings due to an improving economy, faces a no-confidence vote next week over its slow response to the fires and a failure to prevent heavy loss of lives. Although the motion is unlikely to pass, the Socialist government has been weakened by the public clamor over the fires and a further reshuffle may be on the cards, some analysts believe. Costa, who said he felt secure about confidence in his government, nonetheless accepted the resignation of Interior Minister Constanca Urbano de Sousa whose office is in charge of firefighting, and the police and civil protection services. Although this tragedy resulted from many factors, I no longer have the political and personal conditions to remain in my position, the minister said in her resignation statement. The Social Democrats, the main opposition, on Wednesday threw their support behind the no-confidence motion launched by a relatively small centre-right party CDS-PP. The two, however, do not have enough seats to bring down the government, whose left-wing allies closed ranks around it on Wednesday. You would do a favour to the country by submitting your resignation, Social Democrat bench leader Hugo Soares told Costa during a fierce debate in parliament. In order to stay in power, you are telling Portuguese to go screw themselves. But Left Bloc leader Catarina Martins called the no-confidence motion a grotesque trick and exploitation of the country s vulnerability after the tragedy. The minority government relies on support from Left Bloc and Communists in parliament. Both parties have blamed previous governments, especially the Social Democrat-CDS coalition which ruled in 2011-15 and imposed painful austerity measures, for bad forestry management and underfinancing of fire prevention. Costa once again promised reforms to meet any new such challenges in the future and blamed severe drought for the fires and decades of neglect in management of forested areas. He was due on Wednesday to meet President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who has also been critical of the state s response. This year s fires have burnt a record 520,000 hectares of forest, 52 times the size of Lisbon proper and representing nearly 60 percent of the total area burnt in the entire European Union in 2017, data from the EU showed on Wednesday. Portugal represents just about 2.1 percent of Europe s total landmass. | 1 | [
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FMD120 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: David Kerans Strategic CultureBoth inside the US and around the world, political observers have been waiting a long time for an election that would promise relief from the most noxious features of the American system. Alas, while it is high time that the US lead the way in reversing these trends, the outcome of the 18 month struggle to elect a new administration looks likely to scuttle all hopes for serious leadership and reform. I m looking forward to a market crash to awaken the electorate out of our rut, honestly. Because if a Loony Tunes candidate {meaning Donald Trump DK} doesn t give Democrats the courage to put up a push-left candidate {Bernie Sanders, or some facsimile DK}, then catastrophe is the only correction we have left. Commenter Snapshotist Both inside the US and around the world, political observers have been waiting a long time for an election that would promise relief from the most noxious features of the American system, such as neoliberal economic austerity policies that hamstring governments ability to maintain basic services and safety nets, military aggression and destabilization of regimes across a wide swathe of the globe, wholesale violation of privacy via NSA surveillance, trade agreements designed to maximize the power of international corporations over national governments, facilitation of fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure in the face of dire climate change consequences, a financial system sucking wealth away from the population and accelerating wealth inequality, and more.Alas, while it is high time that the US lead the way in reversing these trends, the outcome of the 18 month struggle to elect a new presidential administration looks likely to scuttle all hopes for serious leadership and reform on any of these critical issues. It follows, therefore, that in the near term (if not longer), progress will not be possible unless new forms of politics arise to deliver pressure from below on Washington, DC. But how much hope can we have for that?Continue this story at Strategic CultureREAD MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files | 0 | [
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FMD121 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Has Fox News stated that Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club was served a foreclosure notice by Deutsche Bank? Claim summaries: "BREAKING FOX NEWS: Deutsche Bank has filed a notice to foreclose on Mar-a-Lago," a popular post on X read.
contextual information: On Nov. 15, 2023, a user on X with the handle @PatMaguire10 published a post (archived) claiming that Fox News had reported that former U.S. President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club in Palm Beach, Florida, had received a foreclosure notice from Deutsche Bank. We received reader mail asking if this was true. The post read, "BREAKING FOX NEWS: Deutsche Bank has filed a notice to foreclose on Mar A Lago. The Trump property is part of a larger estate lien that is $190 million delinquent. Court documents show a $3.4 billion loan that's in default. Trump hasn't responded to repeated attempts for comment. Developing story." However, a quick check of @PatMaguire10's X bio revealed that the account posts "parody" content. In other words, Fox News did not report on any such foreclosure notice, nor was there any public record of a foreclosure of Mar-a-Lago taking place or scheduled to happen in the future. For a little more background on the subject referenced, on the same day that the post was created, Trump's legal team reportedly asked for a mistrial to be declared in the civil fraud trial brought against him in New York. Weeks earlier, the same trial featured testimony from retired Deutsche Bank executive Nicholas Haigh. Haigh provided information to the court about the bank's decision to loan Trump roughly $125 million for the purchase of the Trump National Doral property in Miami in 2011, according to ABC News. As for Mar-a-Lago, the Miami Herald reported in August 2022 that Trump had received a loan from Chase Manhattan Bank, not Deutsche Bank, for his 1985 purchase of the property. Mar-a-Lago itself cost Trump $8 million, which he financed with an $8.5 million loan from Chase Manhattan Bank. The other parcel—oceanfront land next to the manor—cost $2 million. Trump was able to use $500,000 from the estate loan and a $1.5 million mortgage from the seller, Jack C. Massey, to cover the bill. For further reading, we previously published a report titled "Media Literacy: How Can You Tell if a Post Is Satire/Parody?" | 0 | [
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FMD122 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi told U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday there was no need to complicate matters in the Middle East after Trump phoned him to talk about his decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, a Cairo presidential statement said. It said Sisi cautioned Trump against taking measures that would undermine the chances of peace in the Middle East . The Egyptian president affirmed the Egyptian position on preserving the legal status of Jerusalem within the framework of international references and relevant U.N. resolutions, the statement said. U.S. endorsement of Israel s claim to all of Jerusalem as its capital would break with decades of U.S. policy that the city s status must be decided in negotiations with the Palestinians, who want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. The international community does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over the entire city. | 1 | [
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FMD123 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Two years ago, the creative and design teams at the toy company Spin Master came up with a big idea they called “Hatchimals†— an interactive, furry creature that hatches out of an egg and grows up before your eyes. Coaxing a creature out of its shell “resonates very well with kids,†said James Martin, senior vice president and head of global business at Spin Master, a Canadian toy company that also sells Etch A Sketch, among many other products. “They don’t know what’s inside and they get excited about what they may get. There’s this anticipation that builds. †The company, however, did not bargain on quite this much anticipation. Since their introduction in October, Hatchimals, which have a suggested retail price of $59. 99, have become the hot toy of the holiday season that nobody can find. Desperate parents intent on buying a Hatchimal are waiting in long lines at retailers, putting their names on waiting lists, and even buying lottery tickets for the toy. Sellers on Amazon and eBay were asking more than three times the retail price on Friday. Hatchimals arrive inside a colorful spotted egg. They come in five species — Draggles and Pengualas (which look like penguins) Owlicorns (owls with a unicorn horn) and Burtles and Bearakeets (which look like little turtles and bears). Rub, tap and warm the egg and it will coo, light up and tap back at you for about half an hour, as it eventually gurgles, hiccups and slowly pecks its way through the hard shell. (A video review showing the hatching and growth of a Draggle has more than 1. 3 million views.) Though Spin Master is rushing distribution by airfreighting the remaining Hatchimals from factories in China, the company has not said how many more will be available throughout December, and the shortage is expected to continue. A new batch of Hatchimals will not be available until early in 2017. Spin Master worked to generate buzz for Hatchimals with a secretive launch, and managed to keep all images off the internet until the toy officially “hatched†on Oct. 7, which it called “Global Hatchimals Day. †Company executives also planned for what they thought would be the right amount of product supply to meet the holiday demand. The company declined to release sales figures. “By all analyses, we thought we had enough,†Mr. Martin said. “We had no idea that it would be this big. It’s been exciting but it’s also been daunting as we try to catch up and fill that demand. †The toy is finding an audience in both boys and girls ranging in age from 3 to 12 years old — which is a larger demographic than the company expected. “Nobody knows why these things happen. They’re an act of God,†said Richard Gottlieb, chief executive of Global Toy Experts and publisher of Global Toy News. While the product may be clever, said Mr. Gottlieb, “it’s all about a moment in time, and it’s hard to predict what makes a product connect. †Mandy Nigbur, a stockbroker in Riverton, Utah, knew it wasn’t going to be easy to find a Hatchimal when her daughter requested one from Santa. So when Santa Claus made an appearance at her family party over Thanksgiving weekend, he “knew to tell her his elves weren’t making very many and they might be hard to come by,†Ms. Nigbur said. “But I was on the hunt. †Ms. Nigbur and three of her friends took to the internet and found a website that alerts customers to what’s in stock at retailers near them. They learned that their local Target was supposed to get a small shipment of Hatchimals on Friday, so the women arrived at Target at 4:45 a. m. and waited outside in the cold. Their efforts paid off. They each purchased a Hatchimal, which Target sold for the suggested retail price — and quickly sold out of. “I haven’t decided if Mommy gets to be the star or if Santa will be the one who gets to bring it to her,†said Ms. Nigbur, who said she may be more excited about nabbing the product than her daughter will be to receive it. The chase and the rush to find the item is actually part of the appeal when a certain toy — such as Cabbage Patch Kids and Tickle Me Elmo — becomes a phenomenon, according to Mr. Gottlieb. “There is an irrational exuberance on the part of the consumer with these buying frenzies, which leads to a scarcity of product and crazy high prices,†he said. Some parents have given up on finding a Hatchimal before the holidays. “I am not proud to say I entered into a raffle to win a Hatchimal on a Facebook group,†said Lindsey Hunter Lopez of Los Angeles, whose daughter asked for the toy. “It was a $10 for a spot, with 16 spots,†she said. Ms. Lopez did not win the raffle, and said that she would not be hunting for the toy any further. Spin Master hopes to keep the excitement going well past the holidays, and promises that 2017 will bring new species of Hatchimals with more features. “We’re telling consumers to just be patient,†said Mr. Martin. “The magic is just as magical in January as it is in December. The experience is just as exciting then. In fact, it may be even a little more because you’ll be getting the first batch of 2017. †But will kids still want Hatchimals next year, or will they have moved on? “It’s a industry and this is an expensive item, which really tend to sell only at holiday time,†said Gerrick Johnson, an equity research analyst at BMO Capital Markets in New York. “That’s why the company is willing to airfreight, which is expensive, in order to capture those spending dollars now rarely do you have an item like this that works two seasons in a row. †Sarah Gough, who lives near Guatemala City, is still halfheartedly searching for a Hatchimal for her daughter, but is not expecting to find one soon. “I looked at our major retailer twice and they don’t have it yet,†Ms. Gough said. She plans to ask her parents to look for the toy in the United States. “But they aren’t really into standing in any lines to pick up toys,†she said. To those parents who are not able to buy the toy in time, Dr. Deborah Gilboa, a family physician in Pittsburgh and a parenting and youth development expert, said: “It’s a great lesson in delayed gratification. †| 1 | [
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FMD124 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Ronald Reagan Beat Jimmy Carter in a Landslide Despite Trailing 6% in Polls? Claim summaries: The claim that Reagan won the 1980 presidential election in a landslide despite trailing well behind Carter in late public opinion polls is cited as a reason to get out and vote for Donald Trump.
contextual information: Two and a half weeks before the 2016 presidential election, GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump trailed behind Democrat Hillary Clinton by an average of 6% in national polls, a statistic that buoyed Clinton supporters yet failed to rattle diehard supporters of Trump, who had managed, as The Guardian put it, to "confound expectations" all year. As the smoke clears from weeks of political bombardment, White House watchers are convinced the only questions now are how big Hillary Clinton's win will be and whether the Democrats can take Congress, too. Those Republicans still loyal to Trump cling to the hope that all the polls are wrong and that in barely two weeks' time, angry voters will again stun the world. Over and over, Donald Trump is saying one word: Brexit. "We will win," he told a rally in Pennsylvania on Friday. "We will shock the world. This is going to be Brexit-plus." Hubris aside, some of his supporters remained worried about voter defections in the wake of the Trump "groping" scandal, prompting calls for an eleventh-hour get-out-the-vote drive, not to mention homebrew efforts to rally people to the polls, like the image macro below: groping drive. The Internet meme was accurate insofar as public opinion polls taken in October 1980 showed Democrat Jimmy Carter holding as much as an eight-point lead over Republican Ronald Reagan (a Gallup poll two weeks before the election had Carter at 47% and Reagan at 39%), yet Reagan won a landslide victory in the general election, beating Carter 489 to 49 in electoral votes and by almost 10% in the popular vote. (It should be noted that 6.6% of the popular vote also went to a third-party candidate, John Anderson.) To conclude from that single example that polls simply ought not to be believed is a stretch, however. The 1980 upset was anomalous, the polling organization Gallup says, and based on factors unique to that year's campaign. Reagan's late-breaking surge that year is generally attributed to the only presidential debate between Carter and Reagan, held one week before the election on Oct. 28, which seemed to move voter preferences in Reagan's direction, as well as the ongoing Iran hostage crisis, which reached its one-year anniversary on Election Day. After trailing Carter by 8 points among registered voters (and by 3 points among likely voters) right before their debate, Reagan moved into a 3-point lead among likely voters immediately afterward, and he won the Nov. 4 election by 10 points. By contrast, in 2016, the two major party candidates had already faced off in three head-to-head debates, all held well before Election Day, that resulted in little or no improvement in Trump's underdog position in the polls. Among the many issues and challenges facing America, none looms in the forefront the way the Iranian hostage crisis (and the Iranian Revolution in general) did throughout the final year of Jimmy Carter's presidency. As Jonathan Chait noted back in 2012 when Republican challenger Mitt Romney found himself in a similar underdog position against incumbent president Barack Obama in that year's campaign home stretch: "In 1980, the economy cratered (nothing remotely comparable has occurred this year), and then the Iranian hostage crisis, after an initial rally-around-the-flag blip, steadily corroded Carter's popularity." No equivalent of those factors can be seen yet today, and pinning your hopes on a scenario where your campaign suddenly picks up ten points in the final month seems to be either an act of self-delusion or a ploy to keep anxious conservatives at bay. John Sides similarly observed when commenting on the 2012 presidential race that the notion President Carter held a polling lead over Ronald Reagan in 1980 right up until the very end of the campaign is something of a misconception: "1980 is a poor comparison with 2012 for many reasons. One is simply that the economy is not as bad in 2012 as it was in 1980. But there is another apparent misconception in the Romney campaign, which Nate Silver rightly picked up on: Carter didn't lead Reagan for much of the campaign. The [poll tracking] plot shows what Chait describes, which is the ebbing of Carter's poll standing throughout 1980. Indeed, Reagan didn't need his convention bump—which he certainly got—to put him in the lead. The Democratic convention helped erode Reagan's lead, but it never closed it altogether. At the end of the campaign, Reagan did surge, but this only increased his lead. His surge appears to have been brought on first by the debate, and then perhaps by several other events in the final week of the campaign: "On Friday of that week, the final economic indicator of the campaign showed inflation still seriously on the rise. And on Sunday morning, November 1, the Iranian parliament announced their conditions for freeing the American hostages. Jimmy Carter immediately abandoned campaigning and appeared on national television in the early evening to repeat much of what the public had been hearing all day. It was a week, in effect, with much that could affect the choices made by voters." Carter's pollster, Patrick Caddell, believed that Iran's rebuff doomed Carter, saying, "It was all related to the hostages and events overseas." Harry Enten of the statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight confirmed that in ordinary circumstances, October public opinion polls are usually reliable and highly predictive of final election results: "In most years, the early-October polls [since 1952] were pretty close to the mark, with a correlation of +0.96 between the polls and the final result. Ten of the 16 elections featured errors of 3 percentage points or less, and in all but three campaigns, the polls were within 5 percentage points of the final outcome. Even in 2012, when Mitt Romney closed his deficit against President Obama after the first debate, the polls at this point still showed Obama leading. At this point in the election cycle, the average error of polls for all elections is just 3.3 percentage points (much lower than the 4.7-point error we found for just after the conventions), and every candidate who's been ahead in the popular vote in mid-October went on to win the election." Given the rarity of last-minute upsets, did Enten think Donald Trump still had a chance to stage a comeback and win the general election despite lagging 6% in the polls? "It's possible," he wrote. "But it would be basically unprecedented." Is that an excuse for anyone, regardless of party affiliation, not to turn out to vote? No, it is not. | 2 | [
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FMD125 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: SHOCKING: Hillary’s Looking At Disaster & Anthony Weiner’s To Blame Posted on October 28, 2016 by Rebecca Diserio in Politics Share This
Hillary Clinton just got hit with a huge roadblock by the FBI in her quest for the presidency, and things are looking pretty dire for her campaign and election hopes. However, the Clintons play dirty, and she won’t go down easily. Yet, in a crazy turn of events, it looks like the fall of Hillary Clinton is linked to none other than Anthony Weiner, and what’s been exposed now going to shock the whole world. Hillary Clinton (left), Anthony Weiner (right)
Hillary’s campaign was rocked today by FBI James Comey as he announced the reopening of the investigation into Hillary’s email server and sending of classified emails. When Hillary spoke in Iowa after the huge announcement, she was delusional as she gave her prepared comments and said nothing about the FBI’s case against her.
Adding fuel to the fire, Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook did something pretty damning, just minutes after the Comey announcement. He deleted his entire Twitter feed and years of tweets that must have incriminated him in some way to Hillary’s email scandal. But, that’s not all.
Fox News is reporting that the FBI found other emails from another government official, not from WikiLeaks but coming from an investigation into Anthony Weiner , which may indicate that his wife Huma Abedin, Hillary’s closest aide, is the link to the disaster Hillary is now facing:
“A senior law enforcement official separately told Fox News the FBI decision is not linked to WikiLeaks messages or any hack, and the newly discovered emails did not come from the Clinton server – but from another device from another government official.”
Hillary doesn’t live in the real world very well, so she won’t go quietly, even though it’s pretty clear her campaign is probably over. Even when facing defeat against Barack Obama in 2008, she would not give up.
Even when it came to the battle for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton refused to concede defeat until the bitter end and then past it. Not only did Hillary refuse to drop out even when Obama was the clear winner, while her people threatened a convention floor fight, but she insisted on staying on in the race for increasingly bizarre and even downright disturbing reasons.
In South Dakota, Hillary explained that there was no reason for her to drop out because somebody might shoot Barack Obama, “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.” [via Sultan Knish ]
Even after Obama had clinched the delegate votes, Hillary’s speech brought back the Al Gore argument that George Bush didn’t win the election in 2000, saying, “Nearly 18 million of you cast your votes for our campaign, carrying the popular vote with more votes than any primary candidate in history. Even when the pundits and the naysayers proclaimed week after week that this race was over, you kept on voting.” Robby Mook (left) deleted his entire Twitter feed after FBI re-opened email case, Huma Abedin & Hillary Clinton (right)
Look for Hillary, refusing to drop out of this campaign, and We the People need to put pressure on the FBI to conclude this investigation before Election Day. We cannot have a sitting president who will be going to prison, and yet, we know that Hillary Clinton will refuse to drop out no matter how dire this situation truly is.
The mere fact that we all know she is guilty of sending classified documents makes her unfit to hold any political office ever again, and Americans must demand Hillary Clinton is held accountable. It’s time we take back our country and put Hillary in prison where she belongs. | 0 | [
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FMD126 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: If you haven t noticed, but you probably have, the news media never calls Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump out on his constant lying.The most recent example of this was during the NBC Commander-in-Chief Forum when Matt Lauer went really hard on Hillary Clinton when it came to demanding answers, and then was ridiculously soft on Trump, even though Trump believes Lauer was too hard on him.Well, one person in particular is absolutely fed up with these media shenanigans and that person is Samantha Bee of TBS s Full Frontal. Bee said: There s no time to report the facts and what people feel are the facts. You ve got to choose one. Guys, we are swimming in bad information. Our dads are on Facebook. Chemtrails are not real, dad. Adding: Why can t the media just tell us what s true and what s bullsh*t? Bee also points out that many in the media are refusing to call Trump out for lying because then it could appear that they are biased with their own opinion. However, she lays to rest that common misconception when she says: Calling a liar a liar isn t an opinion if you can prove it. That s what we call a fact. The idea that news network executives traded their balls for ratings, that s just my opinion. And as many in the media are trying to make Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton somehow equal when it comes to being qualified, or equally as bad, they are clearly mistaken. Bee lets them have it and does NOT hold back, saying: Maintaining the image of fairness requires them to portray Hillary and Trump as equally flawed candidates, even though they know that s incorrect. On the one hand you have the most breathtakingly, unqualified, ignoramus to of heave his balls within striking distance of office. A race-baiting bully who, according to two meticulously researched biographies, is a tax cheating, investor swindling, worker- shafting, dictator-loving, pathologically lying, attorneys general bribing, philandering, mobbed up, narcissistic serial con artist who hasn t got the attention span to read a fortune cookie much less a f*cking intelligence briefing. Adding: But on the other hand, Hillary used a private email server. See? Perfectly even. BOOM!Yeah, not exactly even. Trump is the LAST thing we need for this nation in general, let alone as Commander-in-Chief.Well f*cking done, Sam.Watch Same Bee tear the media a new one here:Featured image via video screen capture, HT C&L | 0 | [
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FMD127 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Google Pinterest Digg Linkedin Reddit Stumbleupon Print Delicious Pocket Tumblr
Here we are, on the cusp of what is most definitely the most important presidential election of our lifetimes. There’s a lot on the line that goes far beyond politics. It goes into the character of the candidates, and their fitness for office. In GOP nominee Donald Trump, we have an unstable reality star who is dangerously unqualified, temperamentally unfit, and nothing more than a bigoted demagogue who has managed to fleece half the nation into believing his authoritarian ways will solve all their problems.
On the other hand, we have Hillary Clinton taking up the mantle for the Democrats. She will take the nation forward into a brighter future, reassure and protect our allies, and continue the social and economic progress that President Obama has done so much for. We’re talking about a woman who has been First Lady, a United States Senator, and Secretary of State. She performed admirably in all of those roles.
And now, at the end of what has been a bruising, ugly campaign thanks to the dangerous rhetoric of one Donald J. Trump, we have forgotten one thing: We are witnessing history. Hillary is the first woman to shatter the glass ceiling to become the nominee of one of America’s two major parties. It’s easy to lose sight of all of that in such a crazy election season, but we have much to celebrate.
Luckily, Hillary’s campaign didn’t lose sight of that, and they released an amazingly inspiring video that chronicled her meteoric rise to the Democratic Party’s nomination for President. It goes from the announcement, through the primaries, and through the ridiculousness of having to run against Donald Trump. And here we are, waiting with bated breath on the eve of this stressful election, and Hillary has given us the priceless gift of something to celebrate in a world that feels quite bleak right now. Without further ado, here it is, The Story of Us, via Hillary’s Twitter: The story of this campaign. pic.twitter.com/8cft9HD0RI
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 5, 2016
So, take a deep breath, watch that amazing video, and remember – VOTE BLUE.
Here’s to you, Hillary, and hopefully, in two days we’ll be calling you what you’ve been destined to be called your whole life: MADAME PRESIDENT.
Featured image via Hillary Clinton Twitter Share this Article! | 0 | [
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FMD128 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Yesterday we told you about the company who buys aborted baby organs from Planned Parenthood. Many of our readers were in disbelief and demanded proof that StemExpress was an actual company that sold baby parts online. Here is the undercover video that exposed Planned Butcherhood: Here is your proof: StemExpress, the California-based company that serves as a middleman between Planned Parenthood and the organizations that seek body parts harvested from aborted babies, once advertised bulk discounts for baby organs and body parts. A screencap taken from a StemExpress page listing fetal liver products shows that the company openly boasted of bulk buying discounts available to new customers. Become a StemExpress customer today to receive 25% off your first order up to $1,000! blasted an archived web page from 2012.The baby organ trade is a lucrative one for StemExpress. As recently as December 2014, packages of what StemExpress described as fresh fetal liver stem cells were listed at more than $24,000, according to an archived page listing its products and prices.Yesterday morning news broke that Planned Parenthood, the nation s largest and most profitable abortion provider, was in the business of trafficking organs taken from aborted unborn babies. Planned Parenthood s top medical director, Deborah Nucatola, was captured on tape trying to sell body parts from aborted babies and bragging about how she conducts abortions in order to maximize the number of organs and body parts that can be extracted from the children.StemExpress also advertised the financial rewards and benefits that can come from buying and selling baby body parts.Although Planned Parenthood vehemently attacked the Center for Medical Progress for releasing its damning video, the billion-dollar abortion provider did not deny charges that it was harvesting organs, tissue, and body parts from aborted babies.Via: The Federalist | 0 | [
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FMD129 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: In the context of Brexit and rise of right-wing parties, EU countries are adopting sanctions in order to keep the unity. Europe needs an external enemy and uses Russia for this role.
Europe does not care about the Kerch confrontation, it needs to promote Berlin's and Paris' agenda for EU integration. | 0 | [
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FMD130 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: . Gardasil is a Decision We Will Always Regret Reading about the young lives that have effectively been destroyed by Gardasil tears my soul; not on... Print Email http://humansarefree.com/2016/11/gardasil-is-decision-we-will-always.html Reading about the young lives that have effectively been destroyed by Gardasil tears my soul; not only for these young women, but for their parents, their friends and for the millions of families around the globe that may yet be hoodwinked into thinking they are protecting their daughter — or son. Sharyl Attkisson, the former CBS reporter who became an independent truth investigator and author, filed this report back in 2008. In 2006, the National Vaccine Information Center railed against Merck’s insistence that Gardasil was just fine to inject into preteens. President Barbara Loe Fisher was livid when she wrote: "Merck’s pre and post-licensure marketing strategy has positioned mass use of this vaccine by pre-teens as a morality play in order to avoid talking about the flawed science they used to get it licensed." But nothing stopped the train. And the shots, and the serious injuries, including death, kept mounting. Natural News reported the tremendous grief of Katy Robinson’s parents, after this vibrant child took the Gardasil shot in 2010 at the tender age of 11. “Katie’s list of symptoms included the following: 24/7 headaches and migraines, 24/7 stabbing ear pain, hyperacusis, fatigue, abdominal pain, nausea, all over joint pain, constant sore throat, visual disturbances, light sensitivity, cognitive issues such as memory and severe comprehension problems, random numbness and tingling, weird “bug crawling” skin sensations, generalized weakness throughout her body (it was difficult for Katie to just sit in the shower to bathe), dizziness, fainting and heart palpitations. “She slept long hours and stayed in her bedroom shielding herself from the noise of everyday living... She was also highly positive for Mycoplasma Pneumonia... Katie even had the classic Bartonella rash (looks like purple and red stretch marks) surrounding her breasts and hips which is confirmation of an active Bartonella infection... [a] diagnostic center diagnosed Katie with the beginning stages of Dysautonomia (a malfunctioning automatic nervous system). We were told that there was no cure and that symptoms were managed with medications...” Thousands of dollars and hours later, the parents discovered that the Gardasil Vaccine can “activate a latent Bartonella infection that was otherwise being suppressed by a properly functioning immune system.” They finally knew that it was Gardasil injections that nearly destroyed their daughter and still do not know if she will ever return to normal. They live with regret. Finally, a little too late, the American College of Pediatricians is now warning parents about Gardasil. But what they are warning about is an entirely new subset of difficulties. The Holistic Works reports: “Gardasil vaccines could be ‘associated with the very rare but serious condition of premature ovarian failure (POF),’ says the America College of Pediatricians (ACP)... “[L]ong-term ovarian function was not assessed in either the original rat safety studies or in the human vaccine trials,” explains the ACP. “Even more, because doctors are so aggressively propagandized by the cash-rich vaccine industry, they don’t even realize that HPV vaccines can cause ovarian failure.” Toxic ingredients in Gardasil and all vaccines are already known to cause harm. From The Holistic Works also stated: “The ACP explained that ‘potential mechanisms of action have been postulated based on autoimmune associations with the aluminum adjuvant used and previously documented ovarian toxicity in rats from another component, polysorbate 80.’ “In other words, the science already knows about the mechanisms of potential harm caused by these ingredients. “It’s not a mystery, and it’s not even debatable that injecting children with aluminum, mercury, MSG, formaldehyde and polysorbate 80 will inevitably cause severe damage in some of those children.” By D. Samuelson | 0 | [
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FMD131 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Fannie Mae is loosening credit standards in order to assist in providing mortgage loans. Claim summaries: E-mail reproduces a 1999 newspaper article warning about potential troubles with Fannie Mae?
contextual information: E-mail reproduces a 1999 newspaper article warning about potential troubles with Fannie Mae. Example: [Collected via e-mail, September 2008] Right out of the pages of the NY Times!!! And look at the date..!!! September 30, 1999 Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending. In a move that could help increase home ownership rates among minorities and low-income consumers, the Fannie Mae Corporation is easing the credit requirements on loans that it will purchase from banks and other lenders. The action, which will begin as a pilot program involving 24 banks in 15 markets, including the New York metropolitan region, will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans. Fannie Mae officials say they hope to make it a nationwide program by next spring. [Rest of article here.] Origins: In any crisis, one of the most common reactions is to ponder the question, "How did we get into this mess?" People begin to search for explanations about who was responsible for bringing about the current state of affairs, who had the ability to head it off (but failed to act or was thwarted), and who foresaw the looming danger (but declined to speak up or was ignored). With the United States currently in the throes of an economic crisis, one symptom of which was the September 2008 government takeover of the foundering Federal National Mortgage Association (commonly known as Fannie Mae), a nine-year-old warning about the home mortgage underwriter's vulnerability to economic problems that could require government rescue was bound to pique public interest. On September 30, 1999, the New York Times published an article entitled "Fannie Mae Eases Credit to Aid Mortgage Lending" by Steven A. Holmes. The complete text of the article is available online, but in a nutshell, the Times reported that Fannie Mae was easing its credit requirements for home mortgage loans in response to increasing pressure from a variety of groups: Clinton administration officials who wanted Fannie Mae "to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate-income people" (particularly minority groups); stockholders who wanted Fannie Mae "to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits"; and banks, thrift institutions, and mortgage companies (from whom Fannie Mae purchases loans) who wanted the company to facilitate "more loans to subprime borrowers." In light of recent events, what caught the attention of most readers was a couple of paragraphs in the middle of the article cautioning about the possible consequences of Fannie Mae's loosening its credit requirements: In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980s. "From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us," said Peter Wallison, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. "If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry." Another New York Times article that has attained a significant amount of retrospective interest is an September 11, 2003 article entitled "New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae" by Stephen Labaton, which reported on the efforts of the Bush administration to create a new regulatory agency to assume oversight of those mortgage lenders: The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago. Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry. The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business and determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios. The plan is an acknowledgment by the administration that oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together have issued more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding debt, is broken. A report by outside investigators in July concluded that Freddie Mac manipulated its accounting to mislead investors, and critics have said Fannie Mae does not adequately hedge against rising interest rates. Of especial interest to current readers were the following paragraphs about Congressional resistance to the Bush administration's regulatory proposal: Significant details must still be worked out before Congress can approve a bill. Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing. "These two entities—Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac—are not facing any kind of financial crisis," said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. "The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing." Last updated: October 2, 2008. Sources: Holmes, Steven A. "Fannie Mae Eases Credit to Aid Mortgage Lending." The New York Times. September 30, 1999. Labaton, Stephen. "New Agency Proposed to Oversee Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae." The New York Times. September 11, 2003. | 2 | [
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FMD132 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Was it necessary for the Trump Campaign to provide refunds for recurring donations? Claim summaries: A report by The New York Times outlines Trump donors who were surprised to find their bank accounts drained.
contextual information: In early April 2021, Snopes readers asked about social media posts and memes that claimed that former U.S. President Donald Trump "tricked" them into making recurring campaign donations. For instance, one such meme said contributors to the campaign who though they were making a one-time donation "were unaware the fine print stated they would be billed the same amount every single week until election day." Donald Trump In many cases, these claims are rather exaggerated, mean-spirited takes on a New York Times story, as we will explain below. As we previously reported, it's true that the Trump campaign was soliciting recurring donations with a pre-checked box, even after the Nov. 3, 2020, presidential election. It's also true that many Trump supporters demanded refunds from the Trump campaign, although it seems mathematically impossible that the number of people who requested refunds was in the millions (as was claimed in social media posts). New York Times story previously reported The April 3 Times report details the experience of Trump donor Stacy Blatt, a retiree who was in hospice care, suffering from cancer, when he discovered his bank account depleted from those recurring donations. Stacy Blatt was in hospice care last September listening to Rush Limbaughs dire warnings about how badly Donald J. Trumps campaign needed money when he went online and chipped in everything he could: $500. It was a big sum for a 63-year-old battling cancer and living in Kansas City on less than $1,000 per month. But that single contribution federal records show it was his first ever quickly multiplied. Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge until Mr. Blatts bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell, for help. What the Blatts soon discovered was $3,000 in withdrawals by the Trump campaign in less than 30 days. They called their bank and said they thought they were victims of fraud. Contrary to the takes offered in partisan memes and posts, Blatt and others like him were not "low IQ," but instead, fell victim to the complicated and evolving wording in a pre-checked box on Trump's online donation portal, according to the Times. As a result, the Times reported, the Trump campaign and WinRed, a for-profit company that processed the online donations, were forced to issue $122 million in campaign contribution refunds to people like Blatt. pre-checked box As Election Day neared in November 2020, the Times report described what amounted to a sense of panic that cropped up inside the Trump campaign, as Democrats out-raised and spent them. During that time, the text on the online donation portal for Trump's donation website changed from simply asking donors to make donations a monthly gift, to including a pre-checked box with more complicated text that made donations weekly. asking donors As the election drew closer, text in that bright yellow box went from containing a pre-checked field that in March 2020 simply said, "Make this a monthly recurring donation," to more complicated and emphatic demands by late 2020 that contained fake ultimatums. As of Sept. 30, 2020, the box looked like this: looked like this As the pre-checked box evolved, the result was an increase in refunds issued to donors who had missed the finer print in the box that allowed the refunds to be weekly recurring. The refunds issued by the Trump campaign outpaced and dwarfed the $21 million in refunds issued by his political rival, now-U.S. President Joe Biden. The effect can be seen in a graph posted by Shane Goldmacher, the Times report's author: The evolution of the text in the box on Trump's online donation portal can be viewed by clicking on various dates via the Internet Archive. Internet Archive A search for Blatt's name can be found on OpenSecrets.org, a campaign finance transparency tool run by the nonpartisan organization Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in politics. It confirms the Times reporting that Blatt, who listed himself as retired, was billed $500 multiple times by the Trump campaign between mid-September and October 11, 2020. Sadly, Blatt died of cancer in February 2021, according to the Times. found on OpenSecrets.org We sent emails to WinRed and the Trump campaign seeking comment, but didn't get an answer in time for publication. We will update if we do. But we note that in their public statements responding to the Times story that neither Trump nor WinRed refute the financial figures or facts laid out by the Times. Instead, the stance taken by both WinRed and Trump is that the Times' report was unfairly negative about their approach to fundraising. In a series of tweets, WinRed called the Times report a "hit piece" and said WinRed's practices were comparable to that of ActBlue, the fundraising portal that serves Democratic candidates. "So when Republicans do it to stay competitive, its nefarious, and when Dems - who created the technology - do it, its a 'platform for little experiments that gently squeeze even more money out of donors,'" WinRed tweeted. called tweeted In a statement responding to the report, Trump referenced his pre- and post-election disinformation campaign, namely false claims that the 2020 election was beset by a massive-scale voter fraud conspiracy. Like WinRed, Trump said his own fundraising efforts were based on those of ActBlue, and also like WinRed, he claimed that the percentage of donors who formally disputed the charges with their financial institutions was low: statement We learned from liberal ActBlue and now were better than they are! In fact, many people were so enthusiastic that they gave over and over, and in certain cases where they would give too much, we would promptly refund their contributions. Our overall dispute rate was less than 1% of total online donations, a very low number. This is done by Dems also The Times story reported that WinRed "typically granted [refunds] to avoid more costly formal disputes." It also pointed out that while WinRed is a for-profit company, ActBlue is a non-profit organization. As such, WinRed "makes its money by taking 30 cents of every donation, plus 3.8 percent of the amount given. WinRed was paid more than $118 million from federal committees the last election cycle; even after paying credit card fees and expenses like payroll and rent, the profits are believed to be significant." We reached out to ActBlue for a response to WinRed and Trump's comments. A spokesperson told us by email that the average contribution amount across the platform in 2019-2020 was $38.08. The spokesperson also referred to this portion of the Times report that included a statement by ActBlue: was $38.08 ActBlue said in a statement that it had begun to phase out prechecked recurring boxes unless groups were explicitly asking for recurring contributions. Some prominent Democratic groups, including both congressional campaign committees, continue to precheck recurring boxes regardless of that guidance. Still, Democratic refund rates were only a small fraction of the Trump campaigns last year. On April 7, 2021, Timothy Miller, a writer for the political news site The Bulwark, tweeted that he received a fundraising text from the National Republican Congressional Committee with a similar, pre-checked fundraising box: Despite aggressive efforts to pursue claims of widespread voter fraud, no evidence was ever presented by the Trump camp that widespread fraud occurred in the 2020 election. Biden won by 7 million votes and 74 electoral college points. widespread voter fraud won | 1 | [
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FMD133 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Pentagon on Tuesday proposed a $582.7 billion defense budget that emphasizes emerging threats from Russia, China and Islamic State rebels, but the plan is already under fire from Republican lawmakers who charge it short-changes the U.S. military. President Barack Obama’s last budget would boost spending on the war against Islamic State militants to $7.5 billion during the 2017 fiscal year, a 50 percent jump over the $5 billion approved this year. Some $200 million of that would go to fight militants in north and west Africa. The proposal also would quadruple funds to counter Russian pressure in Europe, including its seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and repeated strategic bomber flights near NATO air space. Spending to boost U.S. military presence and training in Europe would rise to $3.4 billion from $800 million this year. The budget heralds a strategic shift as Washington looks beyond the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and enters a new period of great power competition from Russia and China as well as threats from smaller rivals like Iran and North Korea, officials said. “This budget marks a major inflection point for the Department of Defense,†Defense Secretary Ash Carter said in a statement. “Even as we fight today’s fights, we must also be prepared for the fights that might come in 10, 20 or 30 years.†Overall, the administration is seeking a Pentagon base budget of $523.9 billion for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, plus $58.8 billion for war funding and overseas operations. The base budget is about $2.5 billion more than this year’s while war spending remains relatively flat, officials said. The spending proposal is in line with a congressional budget deal last year that set Pentagon funding guidelines for 2016 and 2017. But Republican lawmakers have criticized the war funding plan, saying the $59 billion figure in the budget deal was a floor, not a ceiling, and the president should have sought more. “This request is inadequate to address the national security threats we face,†Senator John McCain, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. Congressman Mac Thornberry, chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, accused the administration of playing “budgetary games.†McCain said by seeking the minimum level of war funding in the budget deal, the president had left the Pentagon with $17 billion less than it estimated it would need for 2017 in last year’s budget. To make up the shortfall in planned spending, the Pentagon cut more than $5 billion by adjusting its assumptions about expected fuel costs and inflation levels, Pentagon Comptroller Mike McCord said. It also cut procurement to $112.1 billion, down 6 percent, from this year. The reductions would come mainly from planned aircraft purchases, including five fewer F-35 Joint Strike Fighters (LMT.N) and a reduction in several types of Army helicopters(BA.N), budget documents show. While cutting procurement, the Pentagon proposed increasing spending on research and development by 4 percent, to $71.8 billion, as it looks to develop new technologies to give it a military edge. The department said it would spend $16.8 billion in its classified military intelligence accounts. It also agreed to delay until 2022 its controversial plan to retire the A-10 close air support aircraft, which is being used in the fight against Islamic State. Retaining the aircraft will cost $3.4 billion over the five-year period. The budget would continue to shrink the size of the U.S. Army, which will drop to 460,000 soldiers in 2017 from the current 475,000. Separately, the president’s budget would fund a new $150 million polar icebreaker vessel to ensure year-round accessibility to the Arctic for Coast Guard missions. | 1 | [
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FMD134 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Lou Holtz Nails It Claim summaries: Was an essay about 'Two Americas' penned by former football coach Lou Holtz?
contextual information: Did Lou Holtz really say this, or is it yet another hoax? See the text below. I tried to search for it on your site and cannot find it. The Democrats are right; there are two Americas: the America that works and the America that doesn't, the America that contributes and the America that doesn't. It's not the haves and the have-nots; it's the dos and the don'ts. Some people do their duty as Americans, obey the law, support themselves, and contribute to society, while others don't. That's the divide in America. It's not about income inequality; it's about civic irresponsibility. It's about a political party that preaches hatred, greed, and victimization in order to win elective office. It's about a political party that loves power more than it loves its country. That's not invective; that's truth, and it's about time someone said it. The politics of envy was on proud display a couple of weeks ago when President Obama pledged the rest of his term to fighting "income inequality." He noted that some people make more than others and that some people have higher incomes than others, and he says that's not just. That is the rationale of thievery. It is the electoral philosophy that is destroying America. It conceals a fundamental deviation from American values and common sense because it ends up not benefiting the people who support it, but rather betraying them. The Democrats have not empowered their followers; they have enslaved them in a culture of dependence and entitlement, of victimhood and anger instead of ability and hope. The president's premise that you reduce income inequality by debasing the successful seeks to deny the successful the consequences of their choices and spare the unsuccessful the consequences of their choices because, by and large, income variations in society are a result of different choices leading to different consequences. Those who choose wisely and responsibly have a far greater likelihood of success, while those who choose foolishly and irresponsibly have a far greater likelihood of failure. Success and failure usually manifest themselves in personal and family income. If you choose to drop out of high school or skip college, you are likely to have a different outcome than someone who gets a diploma and pursues purposeful education. If you have your children out of wedlock, life is likely to take one course; if you have them within a marriage, life is likely to take another course. Most often in life, our destination is determined by the course we take. My doctor, for example, makes far more than I do. There is significant income inequality between us. Our lives have had an inequality of outcome, but our lives also have had an inequality of effort. While my doctor went to college and then devoted his young adulthood to medical school and residency, I got a job in a restaurant. He made a choice; I made a choice, and our choices led us to different outcomes. His outcome pays a lot better than mine. Does that mean he cheated and Barack Obama needs to take away his wealth? No, it means we are both free men in a free society where free choices lead to different outcomes. It is not inequality Barack Obama intends to take away; it is freedom—the freedom to succeed and the freedom to fail. There is no true option for success if there is no true option for failure. The pursuit of happiness means a whole lot less when you face the punitive hand of government if your pursuit brings you more happiness than the other guy, even if the other guy sat on his arse and did nothing, or made a lifetime's worth of asinine and shortsighted decisions. Barack Obama and the Democrats preach equality of outcome as a right while completely ignoring inequality of effort. The simple Law of the Harvest—"as ye sow, so shall ye reap"—is sometimes applied as, "The harder you work, the more you get." Obama would turn that upside down. Those who achieve are to be punished as enemies of society, and those who fail are to be rewarded as wards of society. Entitlement will replace effort as the key to upward mobility in American society if Barack Obama gets his way. He seeks a lowest common denominator society in which the government besieges the successful and productive to foster equality through mediocrity. He and his party speak of two Americas, and their grip on power is based on using the votes of one to sap the productivity of the other. America is not divided by the differences in our outcomes; it is divided by the differences in our efforts. It is a false philosophy to say one man's success comes about unavoidably as the result of another man's victimization. What Obama offered was not a solution but separatism. He fomented division and strife, pitting one set of Americans against another for his own political benefit. That's what socialists offer: Marxist class warfare wrapped up with a bow. Two Americas are coming closer each day to proving the truth of Lincoln's maxim that a house divided against itself cannot stand. Origins: Shortly after President Obama gave a speech about income inequality in December 2013, writer Bob Lonsberry published an essay on his website titled "Two Americas" about "The America that works and the America that doesn't." The article didn't initially gain much attention, but that situation changed when the text of Lonsberry's essay started circulating via e-mail with former football coach Lou Holtz's name featured prominently at the top in ways that inaccurately suggested he was the article's author, such as "Lou Holtz Nails It!", "Told As Only a Coach, An Old Coach Can," "Lou Holtz on America Today," and "Lou Holtz's Viewpoint." As Bob Lonsberry has confirmed, however, the "Two Americas" essay was not penned by a famous former football coach. It was written and originally published by Lonsberry on his own website on December 9, 2013. Last updated: December 30, 2014. | 2 | [
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FMD135 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: "A nation established by brilliant minds, yet governed by fools." Claim summaries: Did a list of "A Country Founded by Geniuses but Run by Idiots" entries originate with comedian Jeff Foxworthy?
contextual information: Collected via email, 2013: A Country Founded by Geniuses but Run by Idiots Attributed to Jeff Foxworthy: If you can get arrested for hunting or fishing without a license, but not for entering and remaining in the country illegally you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If you have to get your parents permission to go on a field trip or to take an aspirin in school, but not to get an abortion you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If you MUST show your identification to board an airplane, cash a check, buy liquor, or check out a library book and rent a video, but not to vote for who runs the government you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If the government wants to prevent stable, law-abiding citizens from owning gun magazines that hold more than ten rounds, but gives twenty F-16 fighter jets to the crazy new leaders in Egypt you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If, in the nations largest city, you can buy two 16-ounce sodas, but not one 24-ounce soda, because 24-ounces of a sugary drink might make you fat you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If an 80-year-old woman or a three-year-old girl who is confined to a wheelchair can be strip-searched by the TSA at the airport, but a woman in a burka or a hijab is only subject to having her neck and head searched you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If your government believes that the best way to eradicate trillions of dollars of debt is to spend trillions more you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If a seven-year-old boy can be thrown out of school for saying his teacher is "cute," but hosting a sexual exploration or diversity class ingrade school is perfectly acceptable you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If hard work and success are met with higher taxes and more government regulation and intrusion, while not working is rewarded with Food Stamps, WIC checks, Medicaid benefits, subsidized housing, and free cell phones you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If the governments plan for getting people back to work is to provide incentives for not working, by granting 99 weeks of unemployment checks, without any requirement to prove that gainful employment was diligently sought, but couldnt be found you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If you pay your mortgage faithfully, denying yourself the newest big-screen TV, while your neighbor buys iPhones, time shares, a wall-sized do-it-all plasma screen TV and new cars, and the government forgives his debt when he defaults on his mortgage you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. If being stripped of your Constitutional right to defend yourself makes you more "safe" according to the government you might live in a nation that was founded by geniuses but is run by idiots. What a country! How about we give God a reason to continue blessing America! The above-referenced list of entries detailing "A Country Founded by Geniuses But Run by Idiots" was widely circulated via the internet in early 2013 with an "Attributed to Jeff Foxworthy" tag at its head, leading many to believe it was actually the work of that nationally famous comedian. Jeff Foxworthy However, othen than its basic "If you ... you might be ..." pattern that mimics Jeff Foxworthy's popular "You might be a redneck" routines, this item bears little resemblance to anything produced by Foxworthy: his comedic material is typically affectionate and self-deprecating and involves poking fun at his own milieu; his brand of humor is much more apolitical and non-partisan than the list reproduced above. (Nonetheless, Jeff's name has been falsely attached to other similar political pieces that have little in common with the tenor and substance of his comedy material.) attached Jeff's brother, Jay, confirmed for us that this material was not written by his sibling. The original compiler of this list appears to be Fritz Edmunds, who posted it to his "Politically True" blog back on Feb. 3, 2013 (albeit with a disclaimer noting that "some of the ideas were from an email that did not contain any copyright"). Politically True As usual, the list has seen numerous alterations in the process of being passed around the Internet, and several of the entries appearing in earlier versions have since dropped off: If the only school curriculum allowed to explain how we got here is evolution, but your government stops a $15 million construction project to keep a rare spider from evolving to extinction you might live in a country founded by geniuses and run by idiots. If your government believes that using steroids or other drugs will ruin your life, but throwing you in prison for years will not you might live in a country founded by geniuses and run by idiots. If children are forcibly removed from parents who discipline them with spankings while children of addicts are left in filth and drug infested homes you might live in a country founded by geniuses and run by idiots. If your government believes that the way to make a school of unarmed children safe is to pass another law, this time with the illusion that three 10-round magazines in a rifle is safer than a 30-round magazine you might live in a country founded by geniuses and run by idiots. The phrase "founded by geniuses and run by idiots" appears to be a variant of a similar statement that appeared in Herman Wouk's 1951 novel "The Caine Mutiny": "The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots." In the 1954 film of the same name, the line was rendered, "The first thing you've got to learn about this ship is that she was designed by geniuses to be run by idiots." <!-- Sources: Metz, Ken. "It's Never Wise to Insult the Police Officer." The Bath County News-Outlook. 30 August 2007. Update [Aug. 2, 2022]: Updated SEO and title. | 0 | [
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FMD136 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Email
Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) James Comey is again under fire, this time by supporters of Hillary Clinton for permitting the re-opening of the investigation into her use of personal servers to store and send classified material, the second round of a scandal that could prove fatal to the Democratic nominee's chance to occupy the Oval Office in January.
Republicans had their own go at Comey when he declared after the original investigation of Clinton's mishandling of classified documents and information that there was insufficient evidence to charge her with any criminal violation.
Comey, it seems, has become a punching bag being worked over by partisans on both sides of the political aisle.
Regarding the sound and fury coming out of the Clinton camp, they don't see that their candidate has fallen into a pit she dug for herself. She knew, or should have known, that there are rules governing the treatment and transmission of data that could place U.S. national security in danger.
She broke those rules, and despite what Comey claimed, whether she did so knowingly or not is irrelevant, as the requisite mental state codified into the regulation is "negligence." That is to say, in order to be in violation of the relevant statute, one need only fail to take reasonable care in the behavior in question.
It is beyond dispute that there was a duty of care, and Hillary Clinton's behavior fell well below that bar.
What is also beyond dispute is that neither the Republicans — when Clinton was exonerated — or the Democrats — when the whole affair was brought back into the light of investigation — ever questioned the authority of the FBI to carry on as a federal police force.
The larger question, the constitutional question, is why does the federal government have an armed police force with nearly unlimited authority (at home and abroad) and with the power to conduct most of its work in secret, beyond the oversight of the American people, whose interest they ostensibly serve?
Perhaps Ryan McMaken has hit upon the answer to that question in an article published on the Mises Wire blog. McMaken writes of the federal government's law enforcement agency: Of all federal police forces, the FBI is the most romanticized, and every FBI agent is assumed to be the modern embodiment of a fictionalized version of Eliot Ness: incorruptible, professional, and efficient. Decades of pop culture has driven this home with TV series and movies such as The Untouchables , The FBI Story , and This Is Your FBI have long perpetuated the idea that when local police fail, the FBI will step in to be more effective and simply better than every other law enforcement agency. Corruption cannot touch the FBI, we are told, and they apply the law equally to everyone.
According to a piece penned in 2012, "A Stasi for America," reporter James Bovard painted a darker, less egalitarian picture of the FBI's application of the law: A ripple of protest swept across the Internet in late March after the disclosure that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was teaching its agents that “the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” This maxim was inculcated as part of FBI counterterrorism training. The exposure of the training material — sparked by a series of articles by Wired.com’s Spencer Ackerman — spurred the ritual declaration by an FBI spokesman that “mistakes were made, and we are correcting those mistakes.” No FBI officials were sanctioned or fired for teaching lawmen that they were above the law.... At least the FBI has been consistent. Since its founding in 1908, the bureau has rarely let either the statute book or the Constitution impede its public service. Tim Weiner, the author of a superb exposé of the CIA ( Legacy of Ashes ) has delivered a riveting chronology of some of the FBI’s biggest crimes with his new book, Enemies .
There's no question that in its roughly 100 years of existence, the FBI has seen its reputation rise and fall.
McMaken recites a bit of recent history in support of his assertion that the creation and the continuation of the FBI as a federal secret police force is an assault on the liberty of the United States: The reality and the romance, of course, have always been two totally different things, and it's helpful to remind ourselves that it was the FBI that was in charge of the Waco massacre where 26 children were killed. It was the FBI that led the raid on Randy Weaver's house where an FBI sniper shot a woman dead while she was holding a 10-month old baby. It was the FBI that spied on Martin Luther King, Jr., and targeted peaceful anti-war organizations for political reasons during the 1960s and 70s. It was the FBI that came of age arresting opponents of the First World War. Naturally, in all of these cases, the FBI has actively covered up the facts and denied wrongdoing.
Next, the history lesson looks further back to the beginnings of the FBI to illuminate the transformation of the FBI from crime-fighting force (albeit no less unconstitutional) to powerful partner in the surveillance state: Thanks to war hysteria during World War I, the FBI rose to prominence as Woodrow Wilson's shock troops against "dissidents" (i.e., peaceful opponents of the war). Indeed, persecuting and prosecuting political enemies of the American state would become something of the forte of the FBI, with the role of the agency being expanded ever more during times of perceived national crisis. The idea of the FBI as a crime-fighting organization — the primary message of fawning treatments of the FBI such as The Untouchables and The FBI Story — for decades served as cover for the FBI's political activities. As Foreign Policy pointed out in 2014, though, the FBI quietly dropped its claims of being a crime fighting organization and began declaring itself a "national security" organization. Down the memory hole goes the FBI's original claimed raison d'etre.
This point is borne out in the FBI's own description of its purpose. On the "Questions and Answers" section of its official web page, the agency describes itself as "an intelligence-driven and threat-focused national security organization with both intelligence and law enforcement responsibilities."
Where, one wonders, does the Constitution grant the federal government or any of its associated agencies any intelligence gathering and federal law-enforcement power?
Finally, not only is the FBI's assumption of its current role as federal police force and armed branch of the federal surveillance apparatus unconstitutional and a persistent threat to freedom, but it represents yet another example of the inability of the government to perform any task on par with a privately owned entity with the same or similar objective. Again, from the Mises Wire: "The unreliability of metropolitan police, with their strong local and partisan ties, prompted major businesses and industrialists to establish the Pinkertons and other private police forces. The Pinkertons ultimately functioned as a de facto national detective and policing service until the 1920s, when the FBI finally came into its own."
As one scandal blends into the next, and as each generation sees the occurrence of some serious act of FBI abuse of power, perhaps it is time to consider the abolition of the agency and the return of its assumed duties to the private sector. Please review our Comment Policy before posting a comment
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FMD137 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Will Jesus Be Portrayed as Homosexual in an Upcoming Film? Claim summaries: Long-standing false rumor holds that Jesus and His disciples will be portrayed as homosexual in a soon-to-be-released movie.
contextual information: This piece about an upcoming "gay Jesus film" is one of those examples that demonstrates a good petition never goes away, even when the issue it addresses has long since been settled (or was never really an issue in the first place). The "gay Jesus film" petition first hit the fan in 1984, and by the end of 1985 more than a million Christians had written protest letters in an attempt to have the non-existent movie it referenced banned. Yes, non-existent. There never was such a film in production, but petitions likes these were circulated anyway: Modern People News has revealed plans for the filming of a movie based on the SEX LIFE OF JESUS in which Jesus is portrayed as a swinging HOMOSEXUAL. This film will be shot in the U.S.A. this year unless the public outcry is great. Already a French Prostitute has been named to play the part of Mary Magdalene, with who Christ has a blatant affair. We CANNOT AFFORD to standby and DO NOTHING about this disgrace. We must not allow this perveted world to drag our Lord through the dirt. PLEASE HELP us to get this film banned from the U.S.A. as it has been in Europe. Let us show how we feel. Detach and mail the form below to the address shown. Make a few copies and give them to your friends. Only one name per copy. -------------------------------------------------------- Attorney General Scott,301 South Second Street,SpringfieldILLINOIS 62606 Dear Attorney General Scott, I would like to protest, in the strongest terms possible, the production, filming, and showing of any movie that supposedly depicts the sex life of JESUS CHRIST by MODERN PEOPLE NEWS, 11030 West Addison Street, Franklin Park, Illinois 60181. Such a movie would be blasphemous and would be an outrage and contrary to the truth. We urge you to take proper action against this moral corruption. NAME:...................................................ADDRESS:.............................................CITY:.....................................................STATE:..............................CODE:.......... In the early incarnations of this call to arms, people were asked to fill out an attached form letter of protest and mail it to the Attorney General of Alabama. The message often contained the following postscript: Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart recently reported that the above mentioned movie HAS BEEN COMPLETED!!! According to Brother Swaggart, the movie company has released word that the movie is scheduled to be shown in various locations around the country during the Christmas Season. So, the time is short to put a stop to it. We sincerely hope that all spiritually and morally minded people will band together and keep this UNGODLY type of filth out of Alabama. Many readers fell for it, including a radio station that happily passed the story along to their listeners and later had to retract it, according to folklorist Jan Brunvand: By later the same day the radio station [in Gadsen, Alabama] personnel had attempted to contact Modern People News and had been in touch with the Alabama Attorney General's office. Following these efforts at verification, a statement was read on the air saying that although the attorney general had received between two and three thousand letters over a period of several weeks concerning the supposed gay-Jesus movie, no evidence could be found that such a project ever existed. Modern People News, it was stated, seemed to have either gone out of business or changed their name. In January 1985 Ann Landers published a letter from the Attorney General's office of Illinois which tried to set the record straight. By then it was Modern Film News (not Modern People News) who supposedly had offices in Illinois, which is how that state got dragged into this issue). People were exhorted to write to Attorney General William J. Scott . a man who had last held that office four years earlier: Dear Ann Landers: The office of the Attorney General of the State of Illnois respectfully requests your assistance in combating an international chain letter that is distressing hundreds and thousands of Christians and those of other faiths as well. The chain letter is a plea to protest "in the strongest possible language" the making of a movie in which Jesus Christ could be depicted as a swinging homosexual. Both this office and the Associated Press have chased down every possible clue and cannot find a shred of truth in the story that such a film was ever in production. Modern Film News, which reported the film plans, has been out of business for more than two years. Moreover, 90 percent of the protest mail that has been overwhelming our staff is addressed to the former attorney general, William J. Scott, who has been out of office longer than four years. Despite our efforts to get the word to the public that the chain letter is a hoax, we continue to receive approximately 1,000 protests every week and at least a dozen phone inquiries each working day. The inquiries and protests have come from 41 states, Canada, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Australia, Cambodia, Spain, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, India, the Philippines, Guatemala, Costa Rica and Portugal. We have concluded that the "Jesus movie" rumor originated in 1977 when a suburban Chicago publication, Modern People News, reported that certain interests in Europe were planning such a film and requested that readers express their opinion of the purported project. The result was the chain-letter protest, which, for some unknown reason, has been revived and is again sweeping the world. We are appealing to you, Ann Landers, to help us get the word out. The scope of your readership and impact on millions of newspaper readers around the world cannot be overestimated. The postage and phone calls, not to mention the valuable time of employees, run into a great deal of money that could be used for so many worthwhile purposes. Will you please help us? Neil F. Hartigan, Attorney General, State of Illnois Dear Attorney General Hartigan: Hoaxes die hard and the zanier the hoax, the more difficult it is to convince people that it is not true. If any of you, my readers, receive a copy of that wacky chain letter, take my word for the fact that there is not an iota of truth in it. And please tell friends that chain letters are illegal and should be tossed into the handiest wastebasket or fed to the nearest goat. The only such movie that seems to have been planned or made when this petition originally began circulating decades ago was the 1974 film Him, described briefly in Harry and Michael Medved's 1980 book, The Golden Turkey Awards, as an "everything you ever wanted to know about bad movies, but were afraid to ask" offering: This innovative film, designed exclusively for gay audiences, goes into excruciating detail concerning the erotic career of Jesus Christ. The ads for the film show the face of The Savior (with a cross glistening in one eye) while the headline inquires 'Are You Curious About HIS Sexual Life?' Filmmaker Ed D. Louie satisfies that curiosity by showing us that the Son of Man was a voracious homosexual. (After all, why did he spend all that time hanging around with the Apostles?) The central character of the film is actually a young gay male in contemporary America whose sexual obsession with Jesus helps him to understand the "hidden meaning" of the Gospels. Contrary to common belief, the entry for Him in the Medveds' book was not a hoax concocted by them. However, the minor, low-budget film was so obscure even after its release that it's hard to imagine it could have triggered a massive outpouring of petitions to halt its production. obscure The non-existence of a "gay Jesus film" did not stem the ire of those who heard about it. Blasphemy even the mere hint of it is enough to mobilize good Christian soldiers everywhere. In 1988, Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ reaped massive publicity and long lines at the box office after fundamentalist Christians picketed theaters. The uproar wasn't over a gay Jesus, merely one who both questioned his fate and who had a dream about a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene. The film remains controversial to this day. We take our religious icons seriously, as Denis Lemon, editor of the British publication Gay News, found out in 1978. He lost his appeal against conviction for blasphemous libel involving poem he had published about a Roman centurion's homosexual love for Jesus. Though the nine month suspended sentence was set aside, the $900 fine against him and $1,900 fine against his magazine were upheld. A non-film version of a work similar to the one described in the petition was produced in 1998, when Terrance McNally's dramatic offering Corpus Christi began previews at the Manhattan Theater Club in New York. As described by the New York Times, the production "retells the Biblical story of a Jesus-like figure from his birth in a Texas flea-bag hotel with people having profane, violent sex in a room next door, to his crucifixion as 'king of the queers' in a manner with the potential to offend many people." Corpus Christi And it did. The Manhattan Theater Club's announcement of the play as part of its fall season was greeted with bomb threats promising to "burn the place to the ground" if the production opened. In May 1998 the theatre announced it was pulling "Corpus Christi" from its line-up. A week later it changed its mind, reinstating the play to its fall roster. Caught between cries of censorship on one side and outraged sensibilities on the other, the theatre had to make a choice. Additional security measures were taken during the play's run to protect both the actors and the audience. The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights (self-described as the nation's largest Catholic civil rights group) planned an opening-night protest at the theatre involving busloads of people from as far away as Baltimore and Philadelphia as well as nuns, priests and lay people from Long Island. "Hopefully we'll send a message that this is basically unacceptable," said William A. Donohue, the league's president. Corpus Christi continues to play various live theatres from time to time. It completed a four-week engagement at London's Pleasance Theatre in late 1999, and in March 2001 it became the subject of a brouhaha at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton when several state lawmakers threatened to cut funding for FAU because their theatre department staged the play. In March 2010, Tarleton State University's decision to host to a student performance of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi drew ire from some residents of Stephenville, Texas, home of that institute of higher learning. Corpus Christi is undoubtedly the "play that went on for a while but never stopped" referred to in the current petition, but there are still no plans to make a movie out of it. The 2010 release Corpus Christi: Playing with Redemption is often mistakenly cited as a film version of the play Corpus Christi, but it is not; it's a documentary about the controversy surrounding one particular troupe's production of the play, not a movie version of the play itself. Likewise, the 2006 DVD release entitled Corpus Christi is simply a documentary about the historical figure of Jesus, not a film version of the similarly titled play. documentary Corpus Christi Abrams, Joseph. "Texas Town Cross Over Play's 'Gay' Christ."
FOXNews.com. 25 March 2010. Applebomb, Peter. "In Reversal, Theater Vows to Stage Play That Drew Threats."
The New York Times. 29 May 1998 (p. A1). Brunvand, Jan Harold. The Mexican Pet.
New York: W. W. Norton, 1986. ISBN 0-393-30542-2 (pp. 175-177). Landers, Ann. "Ann Landers."
20 January 1985 [syndicated column]. Leo, John. "Bigotry Still Has No Place in World of Art."
The Detroit News. 9 June 1998 (p. A7). Medved, Harry and Michael Medved. The Golden Turkey Awards.
New York: Perigee Books, 1980. (pp. 122-124). O'Haire, Patricia. "Curtains for Play Depicting Christ As Gay."
[New York] Daily News. 22 May 1998 (p. 7). Reel, Bill. "Artistic Freedom Is Not a License to Commit or Aid Artistic Assault."
Newsday. 2 June 1998 (p. A40). Associated Press. "Florida University Under Fire for Play with Gay Christ Character."
30 March 2001. The New York Times. "Lemon Loses Appeal."
18 March 1978 (p. 7). renovated | 0 | [
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FMD138 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: According to what White House press secretary Sean Spicer said, Trump requested the resignation of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn due to the erosion of trust. Flynn lied to the administration regarding discussions with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Trump literally fired Flynn but he s now calling the scandal fake news. The amateur president has been lashing out at networks reporting on the scandal, calling them fake news, too. Thursday morning, Trump went on quite a tweet-storm. FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and sources, is far more effective than the discredited Democrats but they are fading fast!, Trump tweeted.FAKE NEWS media, which makes up stories and sources, is far more effective than the discredited Democrats but they are fading fast! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017In the following tweet, he wrote, The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story RUSSIA. Fake news! The Democrats had to come up with a story as to why they lost the election, and so badly (306), so they made up a story RUSSIA. Fake news! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 16, 2017Trump is clearly unhinged. Trump has previously admitted that Russia engaged in cyber attacks during the U.S. presidential election. And again, he fired Flynn for lying to the administration about talks with the Russian ambassador about sanctions. Regardless, today he s calling it fake news.The Internet pounced after Trump unleashed his crazy-time tweets and fact-checked him.@realDonaldTrump And Russia was not INVENTED by the Dems, it s been confirmed by the FBI that your aides had contact w/ Russian intelligence Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/UvI5RGNyPl Khary Penebaker (@kharyp) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump Your PHONE RECORDS show your campaign had contact with Russian Intelligence. Who invented that? Kristina Wong (@mskristinawong) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump It s not fake news when three of your advisers are forced to resign because of exposed Russian ties. Ruwayda Mustafah (@RuwaydaMustafah) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump It s not fake news when foreign banks such as Deutsche bank start to investigate your account for Russian links. Ruwayda Mustafah (@RuwaydaMustafah) February 16, 2017 It can t be leaked information and fake news. @realDonaldTrump yesterday you were saying it was leaked information . It can t be leaked information and fake news. Matt Haig (@matthaig1) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump You know what s not fake news? Your approval rating https://t.co/MOjPG26MIu Brandon Neely (@BrandonTXNeely) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump You should release your taxes to prove to the Dems and failing/lying media you have ZERO financial entanglement with Russia Evan Dashevsky (@haldash) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump #TrumpLied? #FlynnGhazi #RiggedElection #WaterGate #maddow pic.twitter.com/k2NYaW8e3B Diva (@sammypolsen12) February 16, 2017.@mikd33 @jules_su @realDonaldTrump General Mattisjust CONFIRMED Russian involvement in election.You gonna ask for HIS resignation too? JustJanis (@jsavite) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump but the FBI isn t the democrats Brandon Keating (@BrandonTalks) February 16, 2017.@mikd33 @jules_su @realDonaldTrump General Mattisjust CONFIRMED Russian involvement in election.You gonna ask for HIS resignation too? JustJanis (@jsavite) February 16, 2017.@realDonaldTrump Russia, if you re listening, I hope you re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. https://t.co/3tMzMn2EN6 Shannon Watts (@shannonrwatts) February 16, 2017@realDonaldTrump You have literally fired 3 advisors because of their ties to Russia. The only fake news is you being a legitimate president Matthew A. Cherry (@MatthewACherry) February 16, 2017 You fuck nut. @realDonaldTrump you fuck nut nicholasstoller ?? (@nicholasstoller) February 16, 2017Trump won t even take questions about Flynnghazi from reporters. And by the way, there s a Russian spy ship patrolling off the coast of the U.S. Presently, it s near Virginia. So naturally, Trump is planning to hold a rally in Florida.Photo by Isaac Brekken/Getty Images with added tweet. | 0 | [
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FMD139 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Twitter Users DESTROY Clinton Puppet James Comey #ComeyResign Twitter Users DESTROY Clinton Puppet James Comey #ComeyResign Breaking News By Amy Moreno November 7, 2016
If you thought FBI Director James Comey was a bought and paid for Obama shill, today proved it.
Sunday afternoon Comey announced he had completed the investigation of 650K emails, which he started nine days ago, and that there would be no charges against Hillary Clinton.
Um, first off, it took him over a YEAR to go through 53K emails, so how the hell did he BUST through 650K so fast?
Impossible.
Next, we just learned today that Hillary had her MAID printing off classified emails for her.
And finally, the FBI said that they were 99% certain at least FIVE countries had HACKED Hillary’s ILLEGAL server.
My God, what more does a person have to do to get friggen arrested?
It’s obvious the FBI has been compromised, and James Comey is a Clinton and Obama flunky.
Twitter exploded at the news, and the cries for Comey to resign are shaking the very foundation of the social media platform using the hashtag #ComeyResign. FBI Director Comey has officially killed every ounce of integrity the FBI had left. #ComeyResign
— Boss Trump (@TrumpTheBoss) November 7, 2016 This "news" from Comey should only help Trump get more votes. The corruption is overwhelming & very disturbing. #ComeyResign | 0 | [
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FMD140 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Comedian George Lopez lashed out a female audience member who was apparently offended by his jokes. [“There are only two rules in the Latino family,†Lopez said Saturday night during a live show in Phoenix. “Don’t marry somebody black and don’t park in front of our house. †Video posted by TMZ shows a woman in the audience giving Lopez the middle finger and appearing to be offended by the comic’s pun. Lopez apparently saw the woman protesting his set and proceeded to offer her some pointed advice: “Sit your f*ckin’ ass down! Sit your f*ckin’ ass down! I’m talking, b*tch. You paid to see a show. So sit your f*cking ass down!†[Warning: Explicit Language] But the former ABC star’s harsh demands appeared to enrage the woman even more. Determined to take back control of his show, he doubled down: “You can’t take a joke, you’re in the wrong motherf*cking place,†he said as the crowd cheered him on. “Sit your f*cking ass down or get the f*ck out of here,†Lopez warned. Toward the end of the clip, Lopez apparently had the woman removed from the building. “I tell you what, I’ll make the choice for you. Get the f*ck out of here,†he said as the woman was escorted from her table. “Four seats just opened up front. †The comedian appeared to address the controversy on his Twitter account Tuesday morning. “You have 2 choices have a good day or get the f*ck out,†he tweeted. Follow Jerome Hudson on Twitter @jeromeehudson | 1 | [
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FMD141 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: By Shem El-Jamal
For almost a decade, many of us have heard about the concept and process of Disclosure . This is the complete release of formerly secret, official and governmental information through the public media. We have heard about the numerous possibilities of the truth of past events which exists behind closed doors—locked away in secret files protectively stamped with the word “Classified.” We know that to a very large extent, we as the common public know very little about the truth behind roughly a century of government and corporate secrecy on matters of high technology, ET life, and the heinous crimes committed for the sake of maintaining this secrecy.
The subjects within the topic of disclosure are extremely dense and weighty to consider. One could spend hours digesting just one of these topics, which are commonly considered fringe in today’s society. However, we are here to discuss a different and yet parallel subject. This is the subject of individual choice, or more specifically, the choice to know .
In order to see Disclosure, we must make the choice to be aware and have the courage to face the possibilities behind the truth which the disclosure will bring to light. Many of these truths will be unconventional, considering the fact that secrecy has defined convention for the past century. This does not mean that we should abandon our responsibility of thorough research and verification. It simply means that from vigorous research and diligent scrutiny, we must have the courage to face the information we encounter.
Conscious Life Expo – David Wilcock – Page 1 – New Intel, The Human Evolutionary Leap, Sacred Geometry, Illuminati Secrets, and More
This article is dedicated to examining the concept of the partial disclosure , or the hindrance of the Disclosure process for the sake of a few financial interests. It is my hope that this article will help each and every one of us to discern and to face the truth the moment it is revealed.
The Balance of Power There is one main reason for the need for a full-disclosure event to revolutionize the various societies of this planet. This Full Disclosure is to end the entirety of the secrecy for the sake of respect for the equality of all people. This disclosure is an acknowledgment to our right to know about all that affects our daily lives and represents the balancing of power among all people around the globe. With this balance in mind, it is important for us to know what power truly is.
When we speak of power , many ideas may come to mind. Some of us may believe this word refers to one’s ability to control others. Others may think of it as a matter of economic influence, and there are those who simply think of power as one’s own ability to make their own choices. The truth is that all of these are valid definitions.
To clarify, let’s check the definition from Merriam-Webster for the word “power.”
the ability or right to control people or things political control of a country or area a person or organization that has a lot of control and influence over other people or organizations http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/power
If we consider these definitions of this word, we may notice something. Aside from the definitions which refer to mathematical applications, there seems to be no reference to human equality of any kind. It seems that in this official definition, the modern English language has all but completely done away with the fact that true power comes from the individual, and in essence, is equally distributed among all people. Let’s consider a few examples.
American Mind Control: The Cost of Secrecy Part 1 – Examining the Effects of Secrecy, Propaganda, and Organized, White-Collar Crime
Most of us are familiar with the concept of governmental monarchy. This is of course, the form of centralized government in which a single figurehead holds complete control over an area, province, or country. Yet even though this one individual supposedly holds all of this power, they would have no control at all unless everyone else agreed to allow them that control.
Jacques Louis David – The-Coronation of Napoleon
In every ancient monarchical government structure, no single ruling figure could have held any such authority without the entire kingdom agreeing that they should. Generally speaking, if the people do not decide to follow, no authority can lead anyone in any way. A king or queen has dozens of servants, maids, butlers, cooks, groundskeepers and gardeners, craftsmen, and guards. They have advisers and clergymen who direct their political decisions, and armies of thousands who obey their every whim. However, not a single order of this monarchic figure would ever mean anything if the people chose not to follow them.
Full Disclosure and Ascension – Commentary of the Latest Article from David Wilcock
In the common social interaction in which equality of power is acknowledged, there is no hierarchy. When one person starts giving orders to another, they probably won’t get much from the person (except maybe the finger and/or some choice words). Now take these same two people—one giving the order and the other receiving that order—and place beside these two, five other people who are following the orders. Due to this situation, the compulsion to obey is somewhat increased. Now add in 10, 20, 50, or even an entire country of people doing as they are mandated to do by some unseen authority, and the compulsion to obey is compounded. Add in the ability of the authority to order punishment upon those who disobey, and this control is solidified.We as human beings have the conditioning to conform to whatever social situation we find ourselves in. This is not to say that this tendency cannot be overcome. It is merely to say that we are raised to conform to the collective of society. This social conformity may have a few positive aspects up to a certain point. However for those who appreciate independent thought and the freedom to choose for themselves, this pull to conform can be somewhat of an annoyance. The above example of this social tendency to conform demonstrates the psychological concept of social conditioning , or what many in modern days refer to as the sheep effect .
Psych Central – “Herd” Mentality Explained
The sheep effect could be described as the tendency of a person to automatically do whatever those around them are doing. This could simply be initiated by one person repeating an action, or it could be an entire group practicing . Eventually, you may have a large group of people doing the same thing over and over again without knowing why. The following clip comes from a show which airs on the National Geographic channel called Brain Games , and demonstrates a prime example of the sheep effect in action.
Brain Games — Social Conformity What Lies Beyond the Haze of Social Conditioning?
So as we can see, it seems fairly easy to subtly coerce a suggestible person into following a social norm even though they have no logical reason for doing so. To be fair, this woman most likely reasoned to herself that the bell had something to do with being called for her appointment. What is interesting to see is that she never actually asked about why the group kept standing. There seems to have simply been the rationalization, immediately followed by conformity.
This tendency of social conformity is a pervasive phenomenon which seems to grip the entirety of developed societies around the world. In fact, this conformity may be the one of the main reasons why large civilizations have developed in the way that they have. It is very likely that this coercion to conform has been used to create various facets of society, and to build that which has been built. However, as we may have seen, modern society doesn’t serve all people equally. Instead the supposedly civilized world appears to be designed to use the individual for their entire lifetime. When society has taken the best years of life of the individual, it discards them while at the same time, it grooms their children to be used in the exact same way.
Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock – Illuminati Salvage Plan – The Cabal’s Attempt at Damage Control from the World of Entertainment
Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock – “The Cabal’s Downward Spiral” – Assessing the Final Days of a Crumbling Cabal, and a Prelude to Breakthrough
This grossly exploitative societal structure appears to have been designed by those who benefit from it most. These benefactors don’t work. They don’t contribute, but in many ways they use and enjoy the spoils of everything that we the people work for. Due to their elitist mentality and upbringing, these manipulators have, in a sense, domesticated the rest of humanity to work as their own servants, and have collectively assumed the position of the monarch of ancient times—creating an oligarchy. So what’s the significance of these discoveries, and what do they have to do with to partial disclosure?
The Nature of Unbalanced Power The bottom line is that a partial disclosure would serve as a prime opportunity for more elitists to assume even more influential positions, and to seize more power than they deserve. Just like we have seen over the last century, any excess of power only compounds, and eventually corrupt those who hold it.
Who’s Investing in the Dakota Access Pipeline? Meet the Banks Financing Attacks on Protesters – Extended Commentary and Links Included
Over time, the common people will typically adapt to their lower societal positions—becoming more and more comfortable and increasingly dependent upon the state to direct their lives. At the same time, the common people will become less and less self responsible. Eventually, the people become so dependent and the state becomes so domineering and power-drunk that the people will submit to any plan—no matter how foolish or ridiculous—simply so that they can avoid self-awareness and self-responsibility.
It is a historical trend that when ethical integrity of a government dips farthest, nationalistic propaganda is most heavily promoted.
Report: At least 50 teams were paid by Department of Defense for patriotic displays
Immature, centralized dependency upon the state can have some fairly horrendous results. As we have seen throughout history, this dependency has lead to the horrors of the Holocaust. This blind submission of the people led to one of the most notorious and most destructive governmental and military developments of the modern world. This blind conformity has also enabled virtually every war fought in the last century, and has lead the United States to its sad and violent role as world terrorist nation .
Four Unicorn Riot Journalists Face Charges for Covering #NoDAPL – Links and Commentary Included
Today in America, we have a state of social conformity that seems to have abandoned all common sense ages ago. The acting governance has become so overgrown, so over-privileged, overconfident, and self-consumed that many of those who hold positions of governmental and legal power have abandoned their actually duty entirely, and have instead used their positions to serve themselves.
Many of the citizenry of the United States have become so complacent, so inattentive to the real world, and so thoroughly dependent upon the State that they care nothing about what the State actually does. We have seen policies written to benefit only the banks and the corporation of America—receiving dozens of tax break—while the common people are left to pay the bill.
Controlled Demolition – A Peer-Reviewed Scientific Analysis of the World Trade Center Collapses by Europhysics News
We have seen dangerous trends of militarized law enforcement which have converted many of our police departments into domestic armies. These armies have shown themselves to be severely lacking in human decency, and who behave as storm-troopers who create just as many problems as they solve. We have also seen this domestic army assault the supposedly free people of this country for little more than speaking out against rampant, common-place injustice. The corporate criminals who orchestrated the societal problems and hired crooked police take further and further steps to increase their own power by taking more and more from the common people through fear and violence.
The Media and Emotional Manipulation We may have noticed how music and entertainment have become so negative, so centered on the idea of hopelessness, fatalism, and despair that it is difficult to find any other theme in music in modern times. These outlets used to have a wide verity of choices of themes and genres. Now entertainment seems to have become a gateway to clinical depression and perpetual fear. However, when observing these trends, we may wonder, “Why would any entertainment company choose to depress and demoralize its audience?” The answer is simple.
Studies have shown that the plethora of corporate media sources are actually a highly centralized conglomerate of corporations all with the same ownership at the very top. These corporations have close relationships with government interests who often use corporate media outlets as their own person mouthpiece to disseminate whatever message is most politically advantageous for the masses to believe.
Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock – Business not as Usual – Examining Clear Signs of Progress toward Planetary Liberation
It seems that the people are conditioned to accept and maintain these corporately approved belief systems for as long of a time is necessary to achieve the intended political agenda. This message is maintained until it becomes convenient to change the corporate rhetoric to a different script. (This has been seen numerous times in the recent tendency of NASA to report on whatever hints at ET life when in the past, the subject of ETs was never communicated as anything but a joke.)
So corporate media pushes the message that is most advantageous to the corporate world—keeping the people dependent upon corporate sources for their sense of comfort and security. However, more often than not, this comfort is grossly misplaced. In modern times, we have an American governance which claims to spread peace around the world and to have a goal of defeating terrorism, but this governance is funding and aiding this terrorism while claiming the continued aid is accidental.
Unmasking Fascism – The United Nations Makes a Shocking Admission about Syria and Western Corruption – Commentary and Links Included
We see the United States waging war around the world—war which has lasted over a decade with no sign of ceasing. We have seen human rights all but completely abandoned in the United States, and we have seen nothing but empty promises for positive change from the mouths of these acting political parties. These officials have many nice things to say, but behind the words, they seem to have little or no desire to improve the status quo for the people. Time has proven that the addiction to wealth and power are just too strong to break without outside influence. So what does this mean for each of us?
Misplaced Power The key reason why a partial-disclosure scenario would not be to the greatest benefit of the planet its people is simple. This reason is that power in essence is equally distributed among all sentient beings. This individual power is an aspect of the equality of each individual, and represents our right to make our own choices and to act in ways that benefit us in the greatest way possible. (This power is, of course, exercised as we respect the rights of others.) This is the concept of Human Rights —the rights the United States Constitution claims to uphold.
BREAKING: FBI in Revolt — Top FBI Official Exposes Massive Corruption Which Let Clinton’s Crimes Slide
Each individual has the power to guide their own lives the way they see fit. However, in modern days this principle is ignored and substituted with something far less beneficial; something which holds little respect for human rights at all. This is the concept known as collectivism . Within a collectivist society, there is no such thing as the individual. There is only the sacrifice of individuality for the sake of the collective. Within collectivism, human rights are commonly ignored while the good of the collective is emphasized. However, within these types of societies, the people are rarely the true benefactors of the societal structure.
Just as we have seen in modern times, in a collectivist society, the rights of the people to life, freedom and prosperity are steadily eroded away by those who seek only to gain for themselves. These self-serving political and financial figures speak flowery words from behind the podium every chance they get, but their true nature is commonly seen in their actions. They work only toward their own gain and to the benefit of their elitist cohorts. This has been the state of America for over half a century. However, this debilitated condition of the country has not been so obvious until more recently.
Dakota Access Pipeline – The Standoff between Corporate Kleptocracy and the Enduring Spirit of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe
From the podium, freedom and liberty are praised as staples by politicians who set comfortably in the pockets of financial interests. These interests have done everything in their power to attack and destroy American freedom from the shadows. This condition has infuriated many among the population—causing them to speak out. Others become pacified by the propaganda and become agreeable to any and every ideology that this propaganda pushes onto them. This could be considered to be the doing of the acting American governance as well as the complacent among the population who allow such crimes against humanity to continue the same way German citizens did during the rise of the Nazi regime.There is little need to prove this is possible because Nazi ideals can easily be seen in our world at present. Due to the excessive psychopathic corruption of Western corporations, much of the world has become a wasteland of bombed-out structures, broken and/or murdered families, genocidal foreign leaders, and terror groups who wait for orders from their Western puppet masters. So with all this in mind, what could all of this have to do with partial disclosure?
The End of Ignorance The prospect of a disclosure comprised of little more than a laundry list of half-truths is not at all preferable in my view. This is because it would leave the door wide open for all of the violence, the violations of humanity and human rights, the war crimes, and all of the corruption to be reborn later on. These crimes would have the opportunity to gradually and subtly take root the exact same way they did during the last century. The only difference this time around would be that these crimes would have a new face.
Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock – The Ceres Pyramid – A Brazen Statement from an Anxious Cabal
It is true that a partial disclosure which was composed of only the existence of ET life and alternative energy technology would be a step toward change. However, the world needs much, much more in order to ensure that the Nazi regimes that have come out of Germany, the United States, Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia do not have a chance to rise again.
Crimes against humanity are no small issue to deal with. If we allow those responsible to escape without full restitution for their crimes, this leaves the door open for either them or their peers to attempt the same thing again. This is not to say that those guilty of these crimes should all be executed. It is to say that all of their crimes should be brought out into the open and the people of the world should learn 100% of the ways in which such criminals seize power.
This mass revelation of truth would also open the door to countless advancements in human and social development. The populations of the world have been under the hypnotic spell of commercial propaganda for over a century of time. Virtually everything the people presently believe has been twisted in some way by corporate powers to the advantage of those corporate powers alone. The rights of we the people to think and choose for ourselves has been all but completely ignored. To hand the people the respect we have always deserved would allow the equality and freedom (presently praised during live national speeches) to actually mean something.
Wisdom Teachings with David Wilcock – NASA’s Quiet Disclosure Part 1
As stated before, the main reason for the need for a full disclosure is to ensure that the true nature of power—the nature which the official definition seems to deliberately omit—is respected and upheld. This is the fact that each and every one of us possesses our own power to be used and enjoyed by ourselves and no one else. The only reason monarchs and figureheads ever had power is because they, their families, and their cohorts tricked their respective populations into thinking that the common people did not have any power. (This is the secret behind any large totalitarian regime.)It is the choice of the people to behave like sheep and to get in line without ever knowing why they are doing so. As the State encourages this thoughtless tendency of the people, manipulative leaders ensure their continued harvest of power from them.
The Disclosure Project – “The Lakenheath-Bentwaters Incident” – An Eye-Witness Account of one of the Most Significant Events in UFO and Military History
Full Disclosure is the only way to ensure that this world becomes and remains free. By my observation, there is no other way of preventing the Neo-Nazi, Zionistic, and genocidal barbarism that has plagued our world for centuries. Only when we the people observe, think and act by our own efforts will this world remain free. Only in a society where there is individual maturity and independent intellect can the people truly be free. The alternative is the continuation of some form of thoughtless dependency on whatever ideology is thrown at us. Only some form of collectivist conformity results for those who gradually agree to do less, to think less, and to accept less responsibility.
The choice is clear. Do we choose to know, or do we risk prolonging the age of ignorance? The only way to ensure that everyone becomes aware of this choice is to realize the variety of ways this choice has been denied. Only through a full disclosure can this full revelation be achieved, and only in a society of courageous people with open eyes can this realization be complete.
Source: Discerning the Mystery | 0 | [
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FMD142 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three.
contextual information: At several points in his State of the Union Address, President Barack Obama noted the importance of manufacturing to the nations economy.Our first priority is making America a magnet for new jobs and manufacturing, Obama said. After shedding jobs for more than 10 years, our manufacturers have added about 500,000 jobs over the past three. Caterpillar is bringing jobs back from Japan. Ford is bringing jobs back from Mexico. After locating plants in other countries like China, Intel is opening its most advanced plant right here at home. And this year, Apple will start making Macs in America again.The claim about job numbers is an update of a line Obama included in his acceptance speech at the 2012 Democratic convention in Charlotte, N.C. We checked that one and rated itTrue.The main difference between Obamas two versions was that the timeline in the most recent claim has been extended by six months.Because of the wording of his claim, we are examining whether the numbers are right, not whether Obama's policies were instrumental. To check the numbers, we turned to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the federal governments official source for employment numbers. We used seasonally adjusted statistics for manufacturing jobs.Shedding jobs for more than 10 yearsIts not news that manufacturing jobs have been in decline in the United States in recent years, though sometimes with ups and downs. Generally, the decline has been due to broad economic shifts both inside and outside the United States, as well as changes in technology. Manufacturings share of U.S. employment was 29 percent in 1960, but it fell to just 9 percent by 2011. Even the raw numbers of manufacturing jobs fell over that period -- from 15.7 million to 11.7 million -- despite a large expansion of the overall U.S. workforce.Between March and April 1998 and December 2009 -- the decade-plus that Obama appears to be referring to -- manufacturing employment fell from 17.6 million to 11.5 million, a decline of just over one-third. So Obamas correct that manufacturing jobs had been shedding jobs for more than 10 years by the time he took office.Added about 500,000 jobs over the past three yearsDuring the period Obama chose -- from January 2010 to January 2013 -- manufacturing jobs began to rise again, by 490,000. We think that qualifies as about 500,000, as Obama put it.Its worth noting that while the reversal has been striking, this rise has still replaced only a fraction of the manufacturing jobs lost during the decade of decline. The manufacturing jobs gained during the turnaround replaced less than 10 percent of the jobs lost during the decade of decline.Our rulingThe rise in manufacturing jobs that Obama is referring to is modest compared to the prior decades decline, but he has described the numbers carefully. We rate his statement True. | 1 | [
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FMD143 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Yada, yada, yada Hillary Clinton announced her 2016 presidential bid in a two-minute video that she uploaded to YouTube. Is everyone else as 100% FED Up! with the Hillary 2016 push from the main stream media? Yep, I thought so BUT THIS IS AWESOME AND YOU SHOULD PARTICIPATE ON TWITTER: Within minutes of her announcement, Twitter blew up with the following hashtag: #WhyImNotVotingForHillary. It quickly became the number one trending hashtag.In honor of this awesome hashtag, here is a list of some of the best reasons why Americans are choosing to NOT vote for Hillary Clinton: America should not be run by crooks. She hasn t cared about the Middle Class in 70 years. She s starting now???? I support women! That includes the unborn in the womb. I won t support anyone that supports Planned Parenthood. When terrorists murdered a US ambassador and 3 other Americans, her response was, What difference does it make? She takes money from countries that execute homosexuals and oppress women. She couldn t satisfy her husband how is she going to satisfy a whole country? Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods, and Glen Doherty. Because she s morally bankrupt! Judge Jeanine: Hillary Clinton is only out for herself. She is the poster child for what s wrong with our government. She is a criminal. She is a liar. She has accomplished nothing. I don t believe in socialism. The left believes in the supremacy of govt over the individual. Do you want tyranny or liberty? I don t believe in political dynasties. Because God must be ignored to adopt her Ends Justifies the Means ideology. She is Bill and Obama but without the charm. Enough is too much already. Corruption, incompetence, dishonesty, elitism just a few reasons. As a Hispanic, black woman I feel insulted by Dems who feel my needs are only abortion, immigration and racism. Because her greatest accomplishment has been accomplishing nothing worthy of our votes. I ve taken European History. I know the dangers of a socialist leader. Because she s worse than Caligula. Worse than the Oakland Raiders. Worse than Obamacare. Almost as bad as cancer. Boo yah!Please feel free to join in on the trend and issue your own #WhyImNotVotingForHillary tweet!Via: Down Trend | 0 | [
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FMD144 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The 100-day trade talks announced after a Sino-American presidential summit last week will aim to deal with decades of thorny trade issues, leaving some U.S. business leaders wary that the short timeline might yield superficial results. Business executives are also worried that President Donald Trump’s focus on curtailing North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs could undercut U.S. commercial interests in China. Days after Trump’s meeting with President Xi Jinping, Trump tweeted that Beijing would get a better trade deal with Washington if it helped resolve the U.S. problem with Pyongyang. The U.S. business community should not be used as a “bargaining chipâ€, said James Zimmerman, a Beijing-based lawyer and the former chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China. “Trump’s ‘far better trade deal’ linkage to North Korea is amateurish, illogical horse trading, at best,†Zimmerman said. The White House has said U.S and Chinese officials are still at the early stages of “fleshing out†a pledge by Trump and Xi to develop the 100-day plan to reduce the U.S. trade deficit with China, which last year reached $347 billion. It was among the limited set of public outcomes from their first meeting in Florida. While Trump has promised to aggressively address trade imbalances and open the Chinese market to more American goods and services, William Zarit, the Chamber’s current chairman, said the talks need to address the “structural impediments†U.S. companies face in China. “We’d rather be talking than having a trade war. But remember we’ve been talking for 20 years and haven’t gotten very far,†Zarit said. The White House has said that issues including opening up China’s financial services sector and getting U.S. beef exports into China were up for talks. “We are pleased to hear the issue has been elevated to the highest levels of both governments and that there is commitment to resolve the U.S. beef access issue in an expedited fashion,†CEO of the U.S. Meat Export Federation Philip Seng said. Others remain skeptical. “Beef should have been done 10 years ago. The fact that that has been going on for so long is emblematic of the imbalance in the way we negotiate and deal with each other,†said James McGregor, Chairman of APCO Worldwide in Greater China. China has purchased hardly any American beef since it conditionally lifted an import ban last year that was imposed in 2003 due to a case of mad cow disease in Washington state. Despite initial media reports suggesting Xi may have offered access for U.S. beef as a concession to stave off rising trade tensions, China’s Premier Li Keqiang this week appeared to link progress on the issue to U.S. restrictions on imports of some Chinese poultry products for food safety reasons. “China is willing to import market-competitive U.S. beef that meets quality and health standards,†Li told a U.S. Congressional delegation in Beijing on Monday, according to the state-run Beijing News. “Chinese chicken is also very competitive in the international market. We hope the United States can quickly lift the ban on Chinese chicken imports. Only in this way can we better embody fair trade,†Li said. While individual companies are hesitant to criticize China for fear of backlash, critics from U.S. business groups accuse Beijing of unfairly subsidizing domestic firms and restricting foreign investment into much of the world’s second-biggest economy. A 50-percent ownership cap for foreign life insurers, for example, despite China’s 2001 World Trade Organization commitments to lift it, has helped limit their market share to about 6 percent. Beijing has repeatedly promised to open up financial services more widely to foreign firms, but has given few details on implementation. Jacob Parker, vice president of China operations at the U.S.-China Business Council, said concerns persist that China would make commitments but not follow through or take only incremental steps. While the government could remove some industries from a list of sectors restricted for foreign investment, businesses could still face red tape and licensing hurdles or be restricted to regional pilot zones. “There are lots of ways China can call something an opening and it is not,†Parker said. Xi proposed further cooperation on infrastructure development in meetings with Trump, but Chinese state-owned companies working on major U.S. public works is a politically fraught issue in the United States, where Trump campaigned on creating jobs. High-tech industries where China hopes to funnel investment, such as semiconductors, virtual reality and autonomous vehicles, are considered sensitive. Such partnerships would likely also have to clear national security hurdles. Skeptics also wonder if Chinese cooperation in redressing the trade imbalance will be limited to areas that serve Chinese needs, such as increasing imports of U.S. gas, oil and coking coal. Xi stopped in Alaska on his way home, meeting with Governor Bill Walker, who touted the state’s oil, gas, and mineral resources. On the market access side, lowering restrictions on foreign investment in Chinese banking, securities, investment management, futures, insurance, credit ratings and accounting sectors, as Beijing has already promised, would help China improve the quality financial of instruments and make their markets more stable and professional, said McGregor. “If you look at the things that China is talking about opening, it’s all areas where China needs help,†McGregor said. | 1 | [
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FMD145 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Snowden Pronounced Dead by His Girlfriend in Russia Claim summaries: A fake news web site's claim that Edward Snowden was "pronounced dead by his girlfriend" has been aggregated by other low-credibility sites but remains false.
contextual information: On 10 August 2016, the unreliable website Disclose.tv published an article reporting that former National Security Agency (NSA) employee and whistleblower Edward Snowden was "pronounced dead by his girlfriend" in Russia. Days after Snowden's rumored death was debunked by journalist Glenn Greenwald and a Russian lawyer, a report emerged claiming that his mistress and girlfriend had confirmed the leaker's demise. Quoting MKRU News of Russia, a conservative site called Get Off the BS stated that Snowden's mistress said he was killed Saturday by a drunken, knife-wielding Buryat man in the Republic of Buryatia. The article from which the claim was aggregated was presented in the style of fiction rather than reporting and was interspersed with salacious fabrications. Late Monday afternoon, the mistress of the infamous Edward Snowden announced his death, alleging that he was killed this past Saturday by a drunken, knife-wielding Buryat man in the Republic of Buryatia. MKRU News reported that a drunken man, who for some reason took exception to a man, presumably Snowden, saving his wife from drowning, attacked a woman by slicing her neck and stabbed her male companion in the thigh, who later died from severe blood loss in a local hospital. The injured were taken to a nearby hospital, where one of them died as a result of extensive blood loss. The unidentified man was allegedly 27 years old. (Snowden, who was born on June 21, 1983, would be 33 now.) That outlet connected the purported death of Snowden to a cryptic, since-deleted tweet issued by the exiled contractor on 5 August 2016. While it was true that the disappearing tweet was interpreted by many as an ominous signal, an insurance key, or a dead man's switch, journalist Glenn Greenwald, who works closely with Snowden to publish leaked material, quickly confirmed that Snowden is alive and well. Disclose.tv and Get Off the BS are sites known for publishing outlandish fabrications and fake news in order to attract readers. On 15 August 2016, Snowden reappeared on Twitter, putting concerns for his safety to rest. | 0 | [
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FMD146 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: (1 fan) - Advertisement -
"China installed 26 gigawatts (Gw) of renewable electric generation in the last two years," said Colleen Regan, Head of North American Environmental Markets and Cross-sector Research, Bloomberg New Energy Finance. She was presenting at Colorado State University's 21 st Century Energy Transition Symposium.
Afterword, she confirmed that China installed 20 gigawatts of solar photovoltaic (PV) panels in the first 6 months of 2016, dwarfing the 4.3 Gw California installed in all of 2014.
Regan's information demonstrates how rapidly renewable energy can overtake fossil fuel. Twenty Gw of capacity equals roughly 40, 500 megawatt coal-fired generating stations. It's 8 times more than the 2.5 Gw of generating capacity at Colstrip, Montana's mammoth mine-mouth coal-fired complex.
To reduce human-caused climate change, Regan forecasts China will meet its 5 year goals of installing 26 Gw of wind and solar generation each year by 2020. By August 2016 China had cut 150 million metric tons of coal capacity, 60 percent of its annual target.
This demolishes assumptions that increased coal sales to China will prop up bankrupt US coal companies, and dwindling coal tax and royalty revenues in coal producing states. China has moved away from the coal generating frenzy. Its cities have pollution levels 8 times higher than the maximums which trigger alarm in the US. And it can no longer afford to use 20% of its water to cool power plants. Horrible pollution day at the Great Wall License DMCA
Hence, Chinese coal use dropped 2% in 2014 and 3% in 2015. That helped cause "1,000 of China's 11,000 coal mines to close," according to symposium presenter, Jennifer Turner, Director of the China Environment Forum at the Woodrow Wilson Center. There are "now 1.3 million unemployed Chinese coal miners," she said. Chinese are preoccupied with finding them jobs rather than importing coal to help keep Montana's 1900 coal miners employed. Consequently, rational investors who are cognizant of this reality should be less optimistic about developing coal export terminals on our west coast.
What about the 1.3 to 1.5 billion people still without electricity? Won't they want to use cheap coal-fire electricity? They would if it were cheaper. But it's not. So they are skipping fossil fuel technology--just like they skipped landline telephones--and are moving to renewable electric generation, much of it coming from distributed micro grids and battery storage. - Advertisement -
Confirmation that renewables are often cheaper came from Symposium panelist Cathy Woollums, Sr. Vice President, Environmental & Chief Environmental Counsel for Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Energy. She said, "MidAmerican Energy received Iowa Utilities Board approval to install 1000, 2 Megawatt Vestas wind turbines" by 2019. It will ensure that Iowa--which now gets 35% of its electricity from the wind--will be running on 85% clean electrons by 2019, far ahead of Colorado's 30% and Montana's 15%.
Ms. Woollums said, "To do the 2 gigawatt project, MidAmerican did not ask to increase electricity rates" for the 752,000 electric customers in Iowa, Illinois, Nebraska and South Dakota. She also said Mid-America was not planning to build natural gas facilities to integrate the wind into its system. The project--which rivals the capacity of Colstrip's four largest coal-fired facilities--will generate more than $1.2 billion in landowner easement and property tax payments over the next 40 years.
Thus, Montana and other coal-state businesses will have a tougher time competing in surrounding states whose utilities are incorporating more no-fuel-cost electricity (i.e., renewables) into their electricity generation mix.
Mid-America has a 100% renewable energy vision. At least 17 US cities have committed to work toward 100% too, including: Fort Collins, Boulder, and Aspen, Colorado; Rochester, Minnesota; Greenberg, Kansas; and San Francisco, San Diego, and Santa Barbara, California. Palo Alto, California, and Burlington, Vermont are already there.
Xcel Energy will close two Minnesota coal-fired plants by 2026. Xcel will add at least 1 Gw of cost-effective wind turbines by 2019, and 0.65 Gw of community solar gardens or other cost-effective solar installations by 2021. So, as Montana's neighbors install more green electricity, it'll be less able to export dirty electrons unless exports meet green energy requirements. - Advertisement -
2015 produced $349 billion in clean energy investment. Some believe that's a "war on coal" that Trump and some Republicans can stop. Others know they'll just "make electricity more expensive again." | 0 | [
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FMD147 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: CNN is evaluating Kathy Griffin’s role in its annual New Year’s Eve coverage after the comedian posed for a photo shoot holding a decapitated, bloody head resembling that of President Donald Trump. [“We found what she did disgusting and offensive,†CNN said in a statement Tuesday, according to Mediaite. “We are pleased to see she has apologized and asked that the photos be taken down. We are evaluating our New Year’s Eve coverage and have made no decisions at this point. †A picture from the photo shoot — conducted by Griffin and Los artist Tyler Shields — surfaced online Tuesday morning, setting off a firestorm on social media. While some liberals defended Griffin, others condemned the photograph. Chelsea Clinton called the photo “vile and wrong. †Griffin initially defended herself after the photo surfaced, but then later apologized profusely in a video posted on Twitter. “I sincerely apologize,†she said. “I’m a comic. I cross the line. I move the line and then I cross it. I went way too far. The image is way too disturbing. †Griffin has CNN’s New Year’s Eve Live broadcast every January since 2007, along with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper. But even Cooper tweeted that he was offended by her actions. For the record, I am appalled by the photo shoot Kathy Griffin took part in. It is clearly disgusting and completely inappropriate. — Anderson Cooper (@andersoncooper) May 31, 2017, | 1 | [
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FMD148 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did Jimmy Carter participate in the building of low-cost housing despite encountering difficulties from an eye injury? Claim summaries: For more than two years, fans of the president have circulated images and memes of the alleged incident.
contextual information: For years, liberal social media users have shared photographs or videos supposedly depicting former U.S. President Jimmy Carter doing woodworking with what appears to be an eye injury, apparently to emphasize that his age and medical history hadn't stopped him from volunteering. One Twitter user, for example, posted a meme about the 39th president in April 2022. A reverse-image search of the meme revealed numerous instances in which internet users promoted the underlying claim: that Carter, at age 95, fell, received stitches, and then the following day helped build houses for Habitat for Humanity, a Christian nonprofit that assists low-income families in building homes and paying their mortgages. The claim was true, though the incident had occurred more than two years prior, as of this writing. On Oct. 7, 2019, The Associated Press published the photographs featured in the meme, writing: "NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — With a bandage above his left eye and a large, red welt below it, former President Jimmy Carter was greeted by a cheering crowd Monday morning as he prepared to help build a home with Habitat for Humanity in Nashville. Carter fell at home on Sunday, requiring 14 stitches, but he did not let his injuries keep him from participating in his 36th building project with the nonprofit Christian housing organization. He turned 95 last Tuesday, becoming the first U.S. president to reach that milestone." The newspaper reported that he and his wife, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, worked that day on building corbels, a type of support bracket, for a home. CNN also reported on the public appearance, including the following quote from the former president in its Oct. 8, 2019, story: "I fell down and hit my forehead on a sharp edge and had to go to the hospital. They took 14 stitches in my forehead, and my eye is black, as you've noticed," he said. "But I had a No. 1 priority, and that was to come to Nashville and build houses." According to the nonprofit's website, the couple formed a partnership with Habitat for Humanity in the 1980s and have rallied "thousands of volunteers and even celebrities" to join the organization's cause since then. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, Habitat for Humanity paused its so-called "Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter Work Project," a recurring event during which the couple fundraises to build a grouping of homes. Interested in presidential trivia? We recently combed our archives to compile exclusive stories regarding presidents' pets, drinking, alleged extramarital affairs, purported after-death hauntings of the White House, and more. They are listed in order of presidential term and include the following nuggets of information about Carter: Yes, Carter once helped contain a potentially dangerous accident at a nuclear reactor in Canada. He and his wife, Rosalynn, are the longest-married couple in presidential history. Carter indeed published an open letter entitled "Losing My Religion for Equality." | 1 | [
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FMD149 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: MARTON, England — Andrew Woodward grew up with a soccer ball between his feet. His room, in a housing estate, was filled with posters of famous players and his head with dreams of becoming a defender for England. When he was 9, he scored a goal from the halfway line in a school match and raced across the field into the arms of his father, who said he was “the proudest dad in the world. †Two years later, Mr. Woodward was spotted by Barry Bennell, a soccer scout and youth coach in northern England. It was September 1984, and Mr. Bennell told Mr. Woodward’s parents that he could turn their son into a professional player. Could he come train at Crewe Alexandra, a professional club, and stay with him on weekends to improve his skills? It would prove to be the beginning of a ordeal of harrowing sexual abuse — and it has turned out not to be the only one. After scandals in children’s homes, in the Roman Catholic Church, in the police and in the entertainment industry, where the child abuser Jimmy Savile is said to have assaulted dozens of youngsters, soccer is the latest British institution to face allegations of the sexual exploitation of children on a broad scale. The nature and extent of the abuse has come as a shock to the country that invented modern soccer and is home to the Premier League, the richest and most widely watched league in the world. Just as troubling is the apparent reluctance at club level to act decisively to stop the abuse then, and more recently. Two years ago, Chelsea, one of the richest clubs in the world, paid a former player, Gary Johnson, 50, 000 pounds, about $63, 000, in an agreement that stopped him from going public with his allegations of sexual abuse at the hands of a former Chelsea youth coach. Four weeks ago, Mr. Woodward, who eventually became a defender for Crewe Alexandra, became the first professional soccer player to go public with his claims of abuse. Since then, at least 20 other former players have followed, and many more have contacted the police privately. A help line has fielded over 1, 000 calls. At least 20 police forces across Britain have opened investigations into 83 suspects in cases involving about 350 possible victims and 98 soccer clubs from the amateur level to the Premier League. In the words of Greg Clarke, the chairman of the Football Association, the governing body that oversees much of soccer in England, it is “one of the biggest crises†in the sport’s history, one that has left Mr. Woodward and many others who suffered at the hands of coaches and officials permanently scarred. At first, Mr. Woodward recalled in an interview last week, the opportunity to become a professional player seemed almost too good to be true. Mr. Bennell could spin a ball on his finger, flick it off his shoulders and rest it on his neck before catching it with his heel. “Like a magician,†Mr. Woodward said. The coach’s home, an isolated cottage on the edge of the Peak District in the middle of England, was the stuff of a boy’s dreams. There was a pool table and a jukebox and a monkey that would sit on Mr. Woodward’s shoulder and eat cucumbers. Mr. Woodward said the television was the biggest he had ever seen. The first time Mr. Woodward stayed at the cottage, Mr. Bennell gave him a pair of soccer cleats to keep. The second time, he asked him to come into bed and play a game he called “follow me,†where they took turns touching each other, at Mr. Bennell’s direction. The third time, the rapes started and they continued for four years: in a bunk bed with another boy lying above in a car on the way to training in youth hostels during soccer tournaments and, occasionally, in Mr. Woodward’s own house, after Mr. Bennell had eaten dinner with Mr. Woodward’s family. When Mr. Woodward resisted, he would be dropped from the next match and made to sit on the bench. “I can ruin your football tomorrow,†Mr. Bennell would tell him, warning: “Keep quiet or you’re finished. †Mr. Woodward did keep quiet, until 1998, when the police knocked on his door and told him that Mr. Bennell faced charges of sexual abuse. Mr. Woodward became an anonymous witness in a case in which Mr. Bennell, now 62, was sent to jail for nine years on 23 charges of sexual abuse, including buggery, against six boys. Mr. Bennell had already served a prison sentence in the United States for raping a boy at a soccer holiday camp, and he was convicted again as recently as 2015. Since then, Mr. Bennell has been living under an assumed name, but he was taken back into custody after Mr. Woodward went public with his story in The Guardian, a British newspaper, on Nov. 16. Mr. Bennell now faces eight counts of child sexual assault, the Crown Prosecution Service announced last month. For years, Mr. Bennell and other pedophilic coaches appear to have been protected by powerful individuals at the clubs where they worked. The manager of Crewe Alexandra when Mr. Woodward was being abused, Dario Gradi, was still employed as the club’s director of football until this last weekend. Mr. Gradi was suspended by the Football Association only after another former player said that when Mr. Gradi was assistant manager of Chelsea in the 1970s, he had visited the player’s parents to smooth over the sexual advances of another youth coach, Eddie Heath. Mr. Gradi, who in 1998 was honored by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to soccer, could not be reached for comment. In the past, when players tried to bring abuse to the attention of the soccer authorities, they found little sympathy. The settlement between Chelsea and Mr. Johnson, who says he was also abused by Mr. Heath, who is now dead, came after Mr. Johnson tried in 2013 to tell the police and soccer authorities about the abuse, prompted by the investigation into Jimmy Savile’s actions. He was ignored every step of the way, Mr. Johnson says. Only last week did Chelsea’s leadership apologize to Mr. Johnson in person, after the club waived the condition that he remain silent. The Heath problem has been an internal headache for Chelsea for some time, according to one lawyer familiar with the case, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a continuing investigation. The instinct to close ranks and protect the club is one of the reasons Richard Scorer, a lawyer at Slater and Gordon who has worked on sexual abuse cases for 20 years, says he believes that the scandal in soccer will snowball. His firm represented abuse victims in children’s homes in the in the Catholic Church in the late 1990s, and, more recently, Mr. Johnson. “Professional football unites all the risk factors,†he said. Like priests, soccer coaches have easy access to children and the trust of parents. But they also have the opportunity for intimate contact with children in showers, changing rooms and on tours. Above all, coaches have a relationship with their players characterized by what Mr. Scorer called “near absolute power. †“They are the gatekeepers of dreams,†he said. Mr. Bennell always had two boys to stay for the weekend and sometimes three. During the day, he played soccer with them, took them to matches and treated them to meals at McDonald’s. At night, he showed them scary movies to frighten them and then pull them close. Mr. Bennell had a nunchaku — a weapon made of two short bars with a chain in the middle — that he liked to show off. He made the boys hold a newspaper and then split it in two with the chain. “What we have is special,†he would say. “Don’t ruin it. †Mr. Woodward, and introverted, was his favorite. “He would always pick the soft ones with the quiet parents who were less likely to challenge him,†Mr. Woodward recalled. Mr. Bennell would come for dinners at his home and wink at him across the table. Sometimes he would stay over in the room next to his parents’ bedroom. Mr. Woodward’s mother would ask her son why he was so quiet when his coach visited. When Mr. Woodward was 14, Mr. Bennell began seeing his sister. Two years later, he married her. It is a subject Mr. Woodward cannot bear to talk about except to say that his sister left Mr. Bennell in 1998, the year his former coach went to prison and he finally mustered the courage to tell his family about the years of abuse. Coming forward has been a relief, said Mr. Woodward, who has been told he has stress disorder and who has tried to take his life several times. His soccer career ended because of recurring panic attacks on the field. “I was playing under a cloud,†he says today. For 12 years, he worked for the police, but he was recently dismissed after a disciplinary tribunal over his having had a relationship with the adult sister of a victim of a crime. Even now, age 43, when the soccer results are read out on the radio and his old club is mentioned, he says his stomach turns. He has never returned to Crewe, though it is less than an hour’s drive from his house. | 1 | [
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FMD150 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A group of about a dozen Republican governors is pushing for its own set of national healthcare reforms, flexing its considerable muscle in the national debate over the future of Obamacare as the U.S. Senate begins writing its bill. Led by Governor John Kasich of Ohio, the governors are using a nine-page proposal they crafted in February as the platform to shape what they think a critical portion of an Obamacare replacement law should look like, according to a half dozen people who helped write the plan. Among the group’s recommendations for the Senate include maintaining the expansion of Medicaid, the government health insurance program for the poor and disabled, while also limiting federal spending for certain populations, according to a copy of the proposal. Members of the group, which include governors from Utah, Tennessee and Michigan, are also now looking to form a bipartisan coalition of states to propose reforms for the individual insurance market, according to one source, that they hope the Senate will also use. To see a graphic, click tmsnrt.rs/2qOZScv They have not yet met or decided on specific reforms about the individual insurance market, but the goal is to address issues such as how to make insurance more affordable and stabilize the markets. The House of Representatives narrowly passed its national healthcare bill earlier this month, called the American Health Care Act, which would slash federal Medicaid funding by more than $800 billion over the next decade. It has prompted fierce criticism from both Republican and Democratic governors. Kasich recently called the bill “inadequate,†and said it would leave millions of people without affordable coverage and “living in the emergency rooms again.†Pressure is building from their constituents. The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which has been tracking public opinion on health care issues for the past several years, has found that Republicans are more supportive than they were in 2013 of benefits including expanded Medicaid and insurance subsidies for low-income families and a government requirement that small businesses provide insurance for their employees. The latest Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English across the United States and gathered responses from 2,126 adults, including 887 Republicans. It has a credibility interval, a measure of accuracy, of 2 percentage points for the entire group and 4 percentage points for Republicans. The governors group is looking to the Senate for massive changes as they begin writing their own bill. Several groups, from insurers and hospitals to medical groups and patient advocates, are trying to influence the Senate. But the governors carry extra weight because they will ultimately be responsible for implementing whatever healthcare overhaul is signed into law, and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly spoken about the need to have fewer federal regulations apply to Medicaid and commercial insurance. Under Obamacare, more than 30 states, including about a dozen Republican-led states, expanded Medicaid. One of the thorniest issues Republicans have grappled with is treating both expansion and non-expansion states equally. Governors from both types of states united to craft Medicaid proposals in the hope that their voice would carry added weight and provide a surer path for lawmakers. The governors are also in the same boat politically as U.S. senators because both are elected statewide, rather than in smaller districts as House representatives are. So many governors and their senators have been better aligned on what healthcare reform should look like, several of the sources said. Several governors and their staff said they have been in regular contact with their senators, and will be pushing for the Senate to use the governors’ set of reforms as a framework in writing its bill. Senator Rob Portman of Ohio wrote in an op-ed Monday that he and other senators tasked with writing a healthcare bill have continued to engage with governors, “many of who share my concerns about Medicaid but who also want more flexibility to ensure they can design health care programs that meet the individual needs of their states.†He added that the Senate will continue to work with governors on healthcare reform. “They are definitely hearing our concerns and questions. They have been very attentive to our interests,†said Nathan Checketts, deputy director of the Utah Department of Health. The group of Republican governors has worked to have a unified voice to reconcile needs among a diverse set of states, including Arizona, Illinois, Wisconsin, Arkansas and Nevada. Its leaders, which also include Governor Rick Snyder of Michigan and Governor Doug Ducey of Arizona, deliberately chose some participants from states with influential Republican senators who would become key players in a federal healthcare overhaul. A 13-member Senate panel has been tasked with writing a healthcare bill, and at least five of its senators are from states from the Republican governors’ group, including Portman, Orrin Hatch of Utah, Mike Lee of Utah and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Other Republican senators with governors in the group | 1 | [
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FMD151 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Senator Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Judiciary Committee, said on Wednesday that he asked President Donald Trump’s top antitrust pick to meet to discuss any contact he has had with the White House regarding AT&T’s (T.N) plan to merge with Time Warner (TWX.N). Blumenthal told reporters on Capitol Hill that he requested the meeting with Makan Delrahim in the wake of a New York Times report that White House advisers battling television news station CNN mulled using a government review of AT&T’s merger plans as leverage. Delrahim was nominated to be the assistant attorney general for antitrust at the Justice Department and is awaiting Senate confirmation. The department’s Antitrust Division will decide whether the deal is legal under U.S. law. “(The White House) is ethically and morally barred from intervening,†said Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat. “The mere threat of it is a very serious potential violation of ethics.†On Tuesday, Bob Quinn, a spokesman for AT&T, declined to discuss the report. Quinn said that AT&T believes it can complete regulatory reviews and close the deal by the end of the year. Blumenthal also said that he had written to the CEOs of AT&T and Time Warner about the report. Blumenthal’s remarks echo those of Senator Amy Klobuchar, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee’s antitrust panel, who said last week in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions that “any political interference in antitrust enforcement is unacceptable.†Trump himself has not commented publicly on the deal since the election but during his campaign he said it was an example of a “power structure†that was rigged against him and “too much concentration of power in the hands of too few.†Blumenthal said that Delrahim had not yet responded to the request. The Justice Department declined comment. | 1 | [
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FMD152 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: During the revelations that Russia had a giant hand in influencing our election, one word has been used throughout the media: unprecedented. Well, unprecedented is not exactly true. While it is true that Russia s hacking has been blatant and Trump s involvement is becoming undeniable, this isn t the first time a foreign and hostile government has played a role in installing a Republican leader and we don t have to go very far back to see examples.Nearly 50 years ago, in 1968, the most famously scandal-ridden President began his term under a scandal. After his Democratic opponent Vice President Hubert Humphrey switched course from his president, Lyndon B. Johnson, and promised that we would pull out of the Vietnam war, Nixon began falling in the polls. On October 30th, Johnson, though, announced that there would be peace talks and Nixon s lead disappeared. So, Nixon invited Vietnam to intervene.Nixon s team met secretly with Anna Chan Chennault, a wealthy supporter of Taiwanese President Chiang Kai-shek, co-chair of Republican Women for Nixon and confidante of South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu. At Nixon s behest, Chennault informed Thieu that Nixon would secure a better deal for his country than either Humphrey or Johnson, and that the Democrats were effectively prepared to sell out Saigon in order to secure peace at any price. If Chennault could convince Thieu to stay away from the negotiating table, the talks would collapse, LBJ would look foolish and the Democrats 11th-hour gambit would fail.Johnson and the Democrats knew it was happening. The National Security Agency had intercepted cables between Thieu and his D.C. ambassador.( [I am] still in contact with the Nixon entourage, which continues to be the favorite despite the uncertainty provoked by the news of an imminent bombing halt, one communiqu began.) On the basis of these cables, LBJ ordered the FBI to tap Chennault s phone; the bureau, in turn, concluded that she contacted Vietnamese Ambassador Bui Diem and advised him that she had received a message from her boss (not further identified) which her boss wanted her to give personally to the ambassador. She said the message was that the ambassador is to hold on, we are gonna win and that her boss also said, Hold on, he understands all of it. Johnson didn t mince words. He called it treason, and a gross violation of the Logan Act, which prohibits civilians from negotiating with foreign governments. Still, there wasn t enough to firmly plant the smoking gun in Nixon s hands, so the American people didn t have this bit of information before the election.South Vietnam pulled out of the peace talks and well, we got a President Nixon. The rest is history, and well, people should be reminded that an administration that begins in scandal will likely end in scandal.The second recent instance happened fewer than 40 years ago. In 1979, university students in Tehran, Iran stormed the American embassy there and took 63 American hostages. In hindsight, we were kind of asking for it. In 1953, the CIA helped overthrow Iran s government because of oil. Instead, we installed the Shah, who was corrupt and brutal. When the Shah fell in 1979, then President Jimmy Carter allowed the Shah to seek medical treatment for cancer in the United States. Iran s new leader, Ayatollah Sayyid Ruhulla Musawi Khomeini, who hated us anyway, demanded extradition so the Shah could face trial. Carter refused.Still, as we were nearing the election, it appeared that the hostage situation was coming to a resolution, which would have nearly assured Carter of reelection. The Reagan camp couldn t let that happen. Reagan s campaign manager, William Casey talked to sources close to the ayatollah and convinced them to delay the release of the hostages. Reagan went on to win the election and the hostages were released on inauguration day.Of course, details of both these cases are different from the details in the Trump/Russia hacking scandal, but I would argue that today we are in a worse situation. By helping Trump, Russia is providing themselves blackmail ammo in case Trump does something they might not find agreeable. More than that, though, in the days when cyber security is at the top of everyone s minds, what Russia has done to us is as dangerous as any terrorist act and the ramifications are far bigger. Trump has allowed a hostile foreign government to infiltrate our electronic communication, which is almost everything. What s next, credit card information and IRS records of individuals who speak out against Trump?The bottom line is that we can t allow Donald Trump to take office. There s too much at stake. We can t afford another Nixon. We can t even afford another Reagan.Featured image via Sean Gallup/Getty Images. | 0 | [
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FMD153 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Charles Goyette https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/running-hillary-ticket-let-ask/
Unless you think “What’s your favorite color?” is a hard question, you shouldn’t expect much from lapdog press interviews of Statist candidates.
In a Wall Street Journal column this morning, James Freeman, an editorial page editor, notes that getting candidates in races below Donald Trump on the Republican ticket to denounce him has become a regular sport in the media. But he wonders why reporters “don’t force down-ballot Democrats to take a position on each new Clinton email revelation.”
That would be fine. Although there is nothing we didn’t suspect, thanks to WikiLeaks, we have more details than ever about Clinton venality and political corruption.
But there is a line of questioning that is even more important.
Why shouldn’t other candidates on the Democrat ticket be asked to endorse or disavow Hillary’s regime change wars in Libya and Syria?
Shouldn’t they be made to own the jihadist-generating carnage she champions? Wouldn’t it be wise to tie political supporters to her war trajectory with Russia as well, so that if she has her way the survivors will know who was to blame? 1:20 pm on October 28, 2016 | 0 | [
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FMD154 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did Obama Give Syria $195 Million to Celebrate a Muslim Holiday? Claim summaries: The White House announced in 2013 that the U.S. would provide an additional $195 million for food and humanitarian aide to Syria, not for the celebration of a Muslim holiday.
contextual information: On 15 December 2015, the disreputable American News website recycled an old article claiming that President Obama had given $195 million to Syria in honor of a Muslim holiday. The Facebook post shown above redirected users to an article originally published by American News a year and a half earlier, on 6 July 2014. According to recent reports, President Obama has decided to give 195 million taxpayer dollars to Syria to celebrate the Muslim holiday Eid al-Fitr. Once again, it appears Obama is unilaterally deciding what is best for the United States. What do you think? Are there better ways to spend American tax dollars? Although the American News article accurately quoted an official White House press release, its reposting in December 2015 deliberately misled readers into believing the release's contents were current news. In fact, President Obama's announcement that the United States would be providing additional humanitarian aid to Syria was issued over two years earlier, on 7 August 2013. The announcement stated, "Michelle and I send our warmest greetings to Muslims celebrating Eid al-Fitr here in the United States and around the world. During the past month, Muslims have honored their faith through prayer and service, fasting, and time spent with loved ones. At this year's White House Iftar, I was proud to spend time with some of the many American Muslims whose contributions enrich our democracy and strengthen our economy. Many of us have had the opportunity to break fast with our Muslim friends and colleagues—a tradition that reminds us to be grateful for our blessings and to show compassion to the less fortunate among us, including millions of Syrians who spent Ramadan displaced from their homes, their families, and their loved ones. To help the many Syrians in need this Eid al-Fitr, the United States is providing an additional $195 million in food aid and other humanitarian aid, bringing our humanitarian contribution to the Syrian people to over $1 billion since the crisis began. For millions of Americans, Eid is part of a great tapestry of America's many traditions, and I wish all Muslims a blessed and joyful celebration." It should also be noted that the United States did not give $195 million in cash to Syria simply to allow them to celebrate a Muslim holiday. The $195 million came in the form of food and other humanitarian aid and was intended to provide needed relief to citizens experiencing hardship and suffering in that war-torn country; the announcement was merely timely in that it coincided with the beginning of the important Muslim holiday of Eid al-Fitr that year. | 2 | [
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FMD155 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did Facebook Executive Jeff Rothschild Say 'We Need a Third World War'? Claim summaries: The former Facebook vice president supposedly advocates solving global problems by exterminating 90 percent of the human population.
contextual information: Jeffrey J. Rothschild, an American businessman now in his mid-sixties, is a successful engineer, entrepreneur, and former Facebook vice president whose net worth, according to Forbes, exceeds $3 billion. He is also, if online conspiracy theorists are to be believed, a thought leader in a CIA-backed New World Order plot to exterminate most of the world's population and enslave the survivors. In Internet memes circulating since 2013, Rothschild is quoted as saying a third world war will be required to accomplish these goals. Much as it may disappoint anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, however, Forbes states that despite his great personal wealth, Jeff Rothschild isn't related to the esteemed banking family whose patriarch was Mayer Amschel Rothschild (1744-1812) of Frankfurt, Germany. Jeff Rothschild's father, William B. Rothschild, inherited a rubber import business from his father, Marcus Rothschild, whose name appears nowhere in the Mayer Rothschild family tree. Although Jeff Rothschild did speak at a conference of Chinese and American entrepreneurs and investors in January 2013 (at which the above photo was taken), the event took place in Santa Clara, California (not China), and there is no record of him saying anything about a New World Order, a third world war, or a globalized feudal system. Nor have we been able to find such references in any other public statements made by Jeff Rothschild over the past two decades. This utter lack of evidence hasn't stopped anyone from promulgating these falsehoods, however. We came across a similar quote shared by someone using the Twitter handle "truther monkey" in 2014: "Jeff Rothschild gave this speech recently in China to some of the world's richest people ... please share .. pic.twitter.com/dPCqyyo8KT." Though their precise points of origin are uncertain, we traced both quotes to a 3 August 2013 post on a now-defunct "underground anarchist" blog called Anarchadia. Crucially, the anonymous author of the post cited no sources authenticating the statements. "Where is the evidence he actually said these things?" asked someone in the comments section of the page. "Where is the evidence he didn't?" was the response—a low evidentiary bar indeed. As is the case in so much conspiratorial discourse, the very existence of the quotes, if real, would be self-contradictory anyway. By definition, the Illuminati conduct their business in absolute secrecy, yet we find them, time and time again (going all the way back to the fictitious 1903 Protocols of the Elders of Zion), allegedly revealing their entire subversive agenda in public. If that's as secretive as they can be, we have nothing to fear from our supposed Illuminati overlords. | 0 | [
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FMD156 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Former FBI Director James Comey, who was fired by U.S. President Donald Trump, has signed a deal for a book on leadership and decision-making that will come out in spring 2018, the publisher said on Wednesday. The book deal with Macmillan’s Flatiron Books comes three months after Comey’s firing raised questions about whether Trump tried to interfere with the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s probe into Russia’s alleged meddling with the U.S. presidential election. Russia denies any interference, and Trump has denied collusion with Russia and interfering with the investigation. The book, which has not yet been given a title, will discuss “what good, ethical leadership looks like and how it drives sound decisions,†Bob Miller, president of Macmillan’s Flatiron Books, said in a statement on Wednesday. Flatiron won the rights to the book after an auction and did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In addition to reflections on Comey’s interactions with Trump this year, the book will feature anecdotes from his role in leading an investigation into the use of a private email server by Democrat Hillary Clinton during her 2016 presidential campaign. Comey’s announcement that the FBI was reopening the Clinton email investigation days before the November election led to accusations by some Democrats that he was unfairly influencing the outcome. The FBI eventually closed the probe without taking any action. | 1 | [
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FMD157 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A male colleague grabbing her leg. Another one suggestively rubbing her back. Others at work dinners discussing who they’d want to sleep with. Jane Park talked about experiencing all of this behavior in her career in business consulting and strategy. Never has she reported any of it to human resources or management. “It’s made into such a big deal that you have to make a decision: Do you want to ruin your career? Do you want this to be everything that you end up being about?†said Ms. Park, who is now chief executive of Julep, a beauty company she founded. “What you really want to happen is that it doesn’t happen again. †Her choice is more common than not, social science research shows. Employers, judges and juries often use women’s failure to report harassment as evidence that it was not a problem or that plaintiffs had other motives. But only a quarter to a third of people who have been harassed at work report it to a supervisor or union representative, and 2 percent to 13 percent file a formal complaint, according to a of studies by Lilia Cortina of the University of Michigan and Jennifer Berdahl of the University of British Columbia Sauder School of Business. Mostly they fear retaliation, and with good reason, research shows. In response to a New York Times report this month of payouts to women who had accused the Fox news host Bill O’Reilly of sexual harassment, 21st Century Fox, Fox News’s parent company, said: “No current or former Fox News employee ever took advantage of the 21st Century Fox hotline to raise a concern about Bill O’Reilly, even anonymously. †In interviews, women who worked at Fox said they didn’t complain to human resources because they feared they would be fired. Some women who experience harassment confront the perpetrator or confide in friends or family, the found. But the most common response is to avoid the person, play down what happened or ignore the behavior. Some don’t report a problem because they don’t think their experience qualifies as illegal harassment. An analysis of 55 representative surveys found that about 25 percent of women report having experienced sexual harassment, but when they are asked about specific behaviors, like inappropriate touching or pressure for sexual favors, the share roughly doubles. Those numbers are broadly consistent with other survey findings. Many victims, who are most often women, fear they will face disbelief, inaction, blame or societal and professional retaliation. That could be hostility from supervisors, a bad reference to future employers or the loss of job opportunities. Their fears are grounded in reality, researchers have concluded. In one study of employees, of workers who had complained about mistreatment described some form of retaliation in a survey. “They become troublemakers — nobody wants to hire them or work with them anymore,†Ms. Berdahl said. Paradoxically, official harassment policies and grievance procedures often end up creating obstacles to women’s ability to assert their rights, according to research by Marshall, a sociologist at the University of Illinois. “That is in part because companies put them into place as mini litigation defense centers,†Ms. Marshall said. “The way employers deal with it is to prepare to show a court or jury that they did everything they could, rather than to protect women in the workplace. †There are many ways that company cultures discourage people who are harassed from reporting it. Sometimes the harasser is a superstar — someone who makes the company so much money that he feels powerful and uninhibited in his behavior because the company has considerable incentive to look the other way. The more someone has a reputation for harassing, the less likely a woman is to complain, Ms. Berdahl said: “It’s natural to conclude that if he’s been getting away with this for a long time, then the organization tolerates it, so why become the problem yourself by going to H. R.?†Other times the human resources department has no interest in helping the employee — or there is no such department at all. This is common in Silicon Valley, where companies grow so fast — and where disdain for bureaucracy runs so deep — that human resources officials often serve only to recruit employees. In February, a former Uber engineer, Susan Fowler, wrote that when she reported to the Uber human resources department that her manager had tried persuading her to have sex with him on her first official day on her new team, the department declined to take action. It said she could change teams or accept what would probably be a poor performance review from the manager. Uber has a new human resources executive and is doing an internal investigation. Ellen Pao, a former partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, described an atmosphere of sexism and harassment at the venture capital firm — with little recourse. In fact, it had no human resources department. She sued and lost a trial. Organizations that are very hierarchical or masculine can breed more harassment, and less reporting of it, according to studies, because gendered power dynamics are a big driver. That’s one reason that harassment has been rampant — and underreported — in the military. Most sizable companies have policies banning sexual harassment and require some sort of training in what it is and how to report it. But much of the training has been shown to be ineffective, and at worst can backfire. The best way to avoid sexual harassment and ensure that it’s reported when it happens is to bake it into company culture, from the top leaders on down, executives and researchers say. “When you have an effective H. R. department that is supported by leadership, people feel safe about reporting harassment,†said Bettina Deynes, vice president for H. R. at the Society for Human Resource Management, a professional association. “It has a lot to do with the type of H. R. department: The motive is not the legal liability, but the culture you want. †Culture is a squishy concept, but companies can do concrete things. One counterintuitive idea is to reward managers when complaints of harassment increase in their department, because it means they’re creating an environment where people are comfortable reporting it, according to a frank report published in June by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Here are some other ideas from the commission and researchers in the field: ■Authorize dozens of employees throughout the organization to receive complaints, so that people can report to someone they’re comfortable with. ■Hire an ombudsman. ■Promote more women to positions of power. ■Train people not in what not to do, but in how to be civil to colleagues, and how to speak up as a bystander — and have senior leaders attend the training sessions. ■Put in proportional consequences, so that instances can be handled with conversations instead of firings or legal action. Ms. Pao, now the chief diversity and inclusion partner at the Kapor Center, a research, advisory and investment group that tries to make the tech industry more diverse, says she is pessimistic that company cultures will change unless it starts at the very top. “If you could fix the problem, then everybody could move on and thrive,†she said. “But often it’s not just the one bad player, so you may want to get out of the culture. †| 1 | [
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FMD158 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A House banking panel on Thursday passed a controversial bill that would drastically change how the U.S. government regulates the financial sector. With support only from the panel’s Republicans, the bill approved by the House Financial Services Committee would eliminate significant parts of the Dodd-Frank financial reform law and place new restrictions on regulators monitoring Wall Street. The odds of the bill offered by Representative Jeb Hensarling becoming law are long, given staunch opposition by Democrats to many of its central proposals. The bill marks the new Congress’ first attempt to significantly roll back existing financial rules after Republicans made gains in the 2016 election. President Donald Trump has identified easing rules on banks as a key component of his economic agenda and effort to spur lending and grow the economy. Critics of the bill argue that it undoes many of the critical protections enacted following the financial crisis and puts the nation at greater risk of another meltdown. If made law, the bill would repeal regulators’ ability to step in and wind down failing financial institutions. It also would hamstring their ability to identify and more closely regulate firms they believe are critical to the health of the financial system. Under the bill, banks that agree to adopt a 10 percent capital ratio would be allowed to receive an exemption from many of Dodd-Frank’s existing rules. It will also require regulators to get congressional approval on any major new rulemaking project, and overhaul the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The powers of that agency, created by Dodd-Frank, would be curtailed, limiting the steps it can take to punish wrongdoing by banks and subjecting it to a number of outside checks on its authority and funding. In addition, the bill significantly changes how the Federal Reserve operates, subjecting its monetary policy decision-making to a stricter rules-based process, while separating its economic policymaking from its financial regulatory work. Hensarling has said he expects the bill will be considered soon by the full House, where it likely would be passed by the Republican majority. However, the Senate Banking Committee will be considering its own proposals to rework financial rules. More modest legislation coming from that committee is more likely to become law, given it will likely be designed to attract necessary support from Democrats. | 1 | [
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FMD159 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: 'The Big Lebowski 2' Announced Claim summaries: Fake news reports the Coen brothers have announced plans to begin filming a 'Big Lebowski' sequel.
contextual information: Claim: The Coen brothers have announced plans to begin filming a Big Lebowski sequel in January 2015. Example: [Collected via e-mail, October 2014] Are they really making The Big Lebowski 2? Origins: On 10 September 2014, the National Report website published an article claiming that the Oscar-winning directorial duo of Joel and Ethan Coen had announced plans to begin filming a sequel to their popular 1998 film, The Big Lebowski, in January 2015. Exciting news for Big Lebowski fans around the world, as a sequel to the cult classic was just announced. Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, directors of the first Lebowski movie, confirmed with E! Online that they would both be returning to direct the sequel. "We're thrilled to be coming back to film a second part to this classic movie," Ethan Coen said. "For years we've been staying away from doing this project, but when we received this new script and the cast fell into place, it was a no-brainer. We just had to do it." By the following day, links and excerpts referencing this item were being circulated via social media, with many of those who encountered the article mistaking it for a genuine news item. However, the article was just another piece of misinformation from the National Report, a fake news site that publishes sensational, made-up stories such as "15 Year Old Who 'SWATTED' Gamer Convicted of Domestic Terrorism," "Solar Panels Drain the Sun's Energy, Experts Say," and "Vince Gilligan Announces Breaking Bad Season 6." The National Report's disclaimer page notes that all of the site's articles are fiction: "National Report is a news and political satire web publication, which may or may not use real names, often in semi-real or mostly fictitious ways. All news articles contained within National Report are fiction, and presumably fake news. Any resemblance to the truth is purely coincidental." In reality, the Coen brothers reiterated at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival that they had no interest in producing a Big Lebowski follow-up film: "Bummer, man, the Dude won't abide again. There will be no sequel to The Big Lebowski." That's the final word on the subject from filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen during a press day at the Cannes Film Festival for their new film, Inside Llewyn Davis. Despite a growing fanbase for the cult 1998 comedy about Jeff Bridges' hippie bowler character Jeff "The Dude" Lebowski and the clamor for a sequel, the writer/director duo aren't interested in revisiting the past, even though actors in the film, including Bridges, are keen to reprise their roles. "John Turturro, who wants it, talks to us incessantly about doing a sequel about his (bowler) character Jesus," Ethan Coen said. "He even has the story worked out, which he's pitched to us a few times, but I can't really remember it... No, I don't see it in our future." Joel Coen was even firmer: "I don't think it's going to happen... I just don't like sequels." Last updated: 21 October 2015. | 0 | [
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FMD160 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Is a Ukraine Pavilion Coming to EPCOT at Disney World? Claim summaries: A routine review of content labeled satire.
contextual information: In early March 2022, as Russia continued its invasion of Ukraine, Uncle Walt's Insider published an article positing that the Walt Disney World Resort theme park known as EPCOT would soon be adding a Ukraine pavilion to the World Showcase attraction. Russia invasion of Ukraine article Walt Disney World Resort EPCOT Ukraine However, this was satire. The beginning of the article referenced Bob Chapek, who is the chief executive officer for The Walt Disney Company: Bob Chapek The Walt Disney Company Ukraine Pavilion coming to EPCOT They probably shouldn't build it next to the Russia Pavilion. WORLD SHOWCASE LAGOON, FL Bob "Bob" Chapek has announced that he intends to bring a new country to EPCOT: Ukraine! Chapek probably said this in a phone call with our own Uncle Walt. EPCOT "As I was counting money with the news playing in the background, I suddenly had this great and innovative idea come to mind. I phoned up the boys in Glendale, and after a quick discussion we have decided to allow Ukraine to join the host of other nations around the World Showcase Lagoon!" The story also said that the Ukraine pavilion at EPCOT would feature "a brand new ride" called "Escape from Chernobyl" and even took a humorous jab at Chapek's intelligence. Ukraine EPCOT Chernobyl As noted above, this article was not a factual recounting of real-life events. It originated from a silly and lighthearted website that aims to write fun and interesting fiction for its loyal readers. Uncle Walt's Insider describes its output as being "loving" and satirical in nature, as follows: describes "While we all love Disney, the company really likes to control its own image and doesnt always look kindly on anything that might detract from it like a satire site that occasionally takes loving jabs at it." Disney The website also showed the following disclaimer on a policies page linked below the story about the Ukraine pavilion coming to EPCOT: page Ukraine EPCOT "All events, persons, and companies depicted herein, including Disney, Walt Disney, and The Disney Company, are fictitious, and any similarity to actual persons, living, dead or otherwise, or to actual firms, is coincidental. Really. The same goes for any similarities to actual facts." Walt Disney Fireworks light up the night sky at EPCOT in 2014. (Courtesy: Jeff Krause/Flickr) Jeff Krause/Flickr While the article from Uncle Walt's Insider was simply just humorous satire, we did find that a handful of social media users had mentioned the idea of having a Ukraine pavilion at EPCOT. One person seemed to hint at wanting a special place for the country to be created inside the theme park: Ukraine EPCOT hint at Another tweet conveyed the same sort of message: conveyed Others had the idea for something to be set up inside the park for charitable purposes: idea charitable purposes TheDisneyBlog.com even tweeted the following, saying: "It is becoming clear that EPCOT needs to add Ukraine to the World Showcase": TheDisneyBlog.com tweeted EPCOT Ukraine We found several past references to the possibility of a Ukraine pavilion being created in EPCOT. Ukraine EPCOT In 2003, a forum user on the wdwmagic.com message boards posted: "Did You Hear the One About EPCOT's Ukranian Pavilion?" wdwmagic.com posted The thread on the forum mentioned an old article that came from the Ukrainian Weekly publication. While the story link from 1996 was no longer accessible in 2022, we found that it had been archived by Archive.org: Ukrainian Weekly it had been archived Archive.org Ukrainian pavilion idea advances at Disney World's EPCOT Center by Natalia Warren LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. - Jason Harper, president of the Ukrainian Project Fund recently met with George Kalogridis, executive vice-president of EPCOT Center at Walt Disney World, to further discuss plans for the proposed Ukrainian Pavilion. EPCOT Walt Disney World As a result of the meeting, Mr. Kalogridis added Ukraine to a list that includes two other countries vying for the site between the Chinese and German pavilions. Mr. Kalogridis also gave Mr. Harper the go-ahead to discuss the pavilion project with other Walt Disney Company officials. Ukraine ... Besides architectural sketches of Ukrainian-style buildings, a drawing for a roller coaster ride, and photos of souvenirs, the proposal includes a videotape of Ukrainian dancing, provided by the Rusalka Dance Company of Winnipeg, which also has lent its name in part to the proposed sit-down restaurant, Club Rusalka. In an earlier agreement, the Canadian dance ensemble had agreed to perform twice a year to raise funds for the UPF Ukrainian Pavilion project and to appear live for future corporate proposal events. We also stumbled upon the following snippet from The San Francisco Examiner that had been published 30 years before Russia's invasion of Ukraine. The writer appeared to joke about the idea of a pavilion for Russia or Ukraine coming to EPCOT: snippet The San Francisco Examiner Russia's invasion of Ukraine Russia Ukraine EPCOT This story was published on March 8, 1992. (Courtesy: The San Francisco Examiner) While Russia and Ukraine do not have pavilions in EPCOT, the website for Walt Disney World Resort lists the 11 countries that do. They include Mexico, Norway, China, Germany, Italy, the United States, Japan, Morocco, France, the United Kingdom, and Canada: Russia Ukraine EPCOT website Join us on an inspiring journey through one of the most unique areas in any Disney theme parkWorld Showcase. The World Showcase: DestiNations Discovered tour is a fascinating 4.5-hour walking excursion through 11 "countries" and 4,000 years of history, culture, and food. From the streets of Paris to the Bavarian countryside, guests can immerse themselves in the architecture, landscapes, streetscapes, attractions, shops, and restaurants of 11 themed pavilionseach staffed by actual citizens from these countries. World Showcase began as a personal passion of Walt Disney, who envisioned an Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (EPCOT), a global community where visiting guests could assimilate the sights and sounds of the world. According to the Disney bloggers known as The Mouselets, EPCOT once announced pavilions for Spain, Israel, and Equatorial Africa. However, those plans never came to fruition. The Mouselets The Germany pavilion at the World Showcase at EPCOT. (Courtesy: Darcy/Flickr) Darcy/Flickr On Feb. 25, right after Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, Disney's Voices of Liberty appeared to sing a song for Ukraine in EPCOT's America Gardens Theatre. The tune was "Let There Be Peace On Earth." The post included the hashtag, "#prayforukraine": Voices of Liberty sing a song In sum, the rumor about a Ukraine pavilion coming to EPCOT's World Showcase originated from a satirical website. It's unclear what countries might be added in the future to the Disney World property. Ukraine Disney World | 0 | [
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FMD161 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Hollywood may experience one of the worst slumps at the box office in the last decade this summer as Americans grow tired of the seemingly endless number of sequels and tentpoles churned out by the film industry. [Multiple reports by the Los Angeles Times and the Hollywood Reporter show box office revenues are on track to decline by five percent this summer season when compared with last year, and could drop by as much as ten percent. In real dollars, that could calculate out to a net loss of $450 million for Hollywood’s film industry, with summer earnings for movies expected at about $4 billion, which would make box office performance during this year’s summer season the worst in at least ten years. The summer season kicked off with a bang with the release of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 on May 5. The ensemble superhero sequel starring Chris Pratt, Kurt Russell, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista and Bradley Cooper opened to a robust $145 million in its domestic debut, and is expected to top the box office in its second frame with an estimated $60 million haul. The James film has already crossed the $500 million mark in international sales. But the second weekend of summer hints at more trouble to come, as Warner Roadshow’s pricey tentpole King Arthur: Legend of the Sword is set to debut to around $25 million in its opening weekend, a disastrous projection when compared with its reported $175 million budget, before marketing costs. But the real test will come later this summer, when Paramount trots out Transformers: The Last Knight and Disney releases Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, both of which represent the fifth entries in their respective, franchises. Other key tests will include the sequel Alien: Covenant, War for the Planet of the Apes, and the third reboot of the Spiderman franchise, : Homecoming. Of course, Americans’ sequel fatigue also comes at a time when there are more programs available to watch on demand and in the comfort of one’s home than one could ever hope to watch in a lifetime. These options include hits like Game of Thrones and newly created cult classics like Netflix’s Stranger Things and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. Studios are looking to avoid a repeat of last summer’s uneven season, which saw numerous major releases — including Independence Day 2, Alice Through the Looking Glass, The BFG, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2, The Legend of Tarzan, and Warcraft — either underwhelm or else outright bomb at the box office. There appear to be at least a couple of bright spots this summer, as the animated family film Despicable Me 3 and Christopher Nolan’s World War II drama Dunkirk are expected to perform well for Universal and Warner Bros. respectively. But some executives are already blaming the upcoming season’s with sequels for the projected decline in box office. “Some of the tent poles are just not as strong this year,†20th Century Fox domestic distribution chief Chris Aronson told the Times. “Pirates of the Caribbean? It’s the fifth one. Transformers? It’s the fifth one. †John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder. | 1 | [
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FMD162 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: a reply to: kruphix Theocracy? Tim Kaine? In September 1980, as violence and civil war erupted throughout Central America, a quiet American left Harvard Law School to volunteer with Jesuit missionaries in northern Honduras. Around him, the United States-backed military dictatorship hunted Marxists and cracked down on the Catholic clergy for preaching empowerment to peasant farmers. But some locals also looked warily on the bearded and mop-haired Midwesterner in their midst. Just a few hours south, the Central Intelligence Agency was using Honduras as a staging ground in its covert war against Latin American communism, with right-wing forces training for operations in El Salvador and Nicaragua. “Some of the people were wondering what’s going on, who is this guy?” Tim Kaine, then a 22-year-old volunteer and now the Democratic nominee for vice president, said in an interview. He understood why. His mentors in the priesthood had also urged him to be wary of friendly American faces. Continue reading the main story Advertisement Continue reading the main story “It was a time of such intrigue and suspicion,” Mr. Kaine said. Far from being a C.I.A. operative, Mr. Kaine was a young Catholic at a crossroads, undergoing a spiritual shift as he awakened to the plight of the deeply poor in Honduras. In its far-flung pueblos, banana plantation company towns and dusty cities, Mr. Kaine embraced an interpretation of the gospel, known as liberation theology, that championed social change to improve the lives of the downtrodden. In Honduras, his recitation of the traditional Catholic mealtime blessing changed to “Lord give bread to those who hunger, and hunger for justice to those who have bread.” Honduran military leaders, American officials and even Pope John Paul II viewed liberation theology suspiciously, as dangerously injecting Marxist beliefs into religious teaching. But the strong social-justice message of liberation theology helped set Mr. Kaine on a left-veering career path in which he fought as a lawyer against housing discrimination, became a liberal mayor, and rose as a Spanish-speaking governor and senator with an enduring focus on Latin America. | 0 | [
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FMD163 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: If you don t have the proper glasses to watch the historic solar eclipse today, you can still watch it here LIVE as it happens.From NASA: Solar Eclipse 2017 On August 21, 2017, all of North America will be treated to an eclipse of the sun. Viewers around the world will be provided a wealth of images captured before, during, and after the eclipse by 11 spacecraft, at least three NASA aircraft, more than 50 high-altitude balloons, and the astronauts aboard the International Space Station each offering a unique vantage point for the celestial event.Watch here:https://t.co/oYED98vQyL Twitter News (@TwitterNews) August 16, 2017Where Can You See It? You can see a partial eclipse, where the moon covers only a part of the sun, anywhere in North America (see Who can see it? ). To see a total eclipse, where the moon fully covers the sun for a short few minutes, you must be in the path of totality. The path of totality is a relatively thin ribbon, around 70 miles wide, that will cross the U.S. from West to East. The first point of contact will be at Lincoln Beach, Oregon at 9:05 a.m. PDT. Totality begins there at 10:16 a.m. PDT. Over the next hour and a half, it will cross through Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and North and South Carolina. The total eclipse will end near Charleston, South Carolina at 2:48 p.m. EDT. From there the lunar shadow leaves the United States at 4:09 EDT. Its longest duration will be near Carbondale, Illinois, where the sun will be completely covered for two minutes and 40 seconds.If you missed the eclipse as it happened, here are a couple of incredible videos that were taken of the eclipse: More of the moon crossing in front of sun in Philly: https://t.co/fKHeCFSNKf #SolarEclipse2017 pic.twitter.com/fjxfUuxOy6 NBC10 Philadelphia (@NBCPhiladelphia) August 21, 2017#SolarEclipse2017 Breathtaking! pic.twitter.com/fvPwGwgn99 smail H. Polat (@ismailhpolat) August 21, 2017 | 0 | [
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FMD164 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Does the term 'Bar' in the 'Bar Exam' imply a covert collusion among lawyers? Claim summaries: A "sovereign citizen" conspiracy theory about the licensing of lawyers is riddled with bad logic and historical inaccuracies.
contextual information: One of the more unusual and complicated theories associated with the sovereign citizen and tax protester movements is the belief that lawyers who are members of bar associations in the United States are, in fact, agents of the British crown and do not have legitimate status in American courts. This theory is partly informed by a false but widely repeated claim that the word "bar" in this context is an acronym for "British Accreditation Register": Here's how the elaborate and confusing theory is outlined in an anonymously-authored essay called "Hiding Behind the Bar," which has been republished and shared in tax protester and sovereign citizen circles for more than a decade: essay During the middle 1600's, the Crown of England established a formal registry in London where barristers [lawyers] were ordered by the Crown to be accredited. The establishment of this first International Bar Association allowed barrister-lawyers from all nations to be formally recognized and accredited by the only recognized accreditation society. From this, the acronym BAR was established denoting (informally) the British Accredited Registry, whose members became a powerful and integral force within the International Bar Association (IBA). Although this has been denied repeatedly as to its existence, the acronym BAR stood for the British barrister-lawyers who were members of the larger IBA. Almost every part of this is factually inaccurate. For one thing, the International Bar Association was founded in 1947, not in the 1600s. Second, we could find no evidence of the existence of a professional association for lawyers called the "British Accredited Registry," either in 2018 or at any previous time in history. 1947 A History of the American Bar, a 1911 book by the Pulitzer Prize-winning legal scholar Charles Warren, contains no mention of any "British Accredited Registry" or "British Accreditation Registry" (with "accredited" and "accreditation" being used variously in different versions of this conspiracy theory). It would also make little sense for a group of lawyers in 17th century England to form a group describing itself as "British." Great Britain (composed of England, Wales and Scotland) does not have, and has never had, a unified courts system, instead being separated into two systems: England and Wales and Scotland. In fact, Great Britain itself was not even formally created until 1707, when the Acts of Union joined the Kingdom of Scotland with the Kingdom of England (which included Wales). book accreditation England and Wales Acts of Union But more broadly, this theory offers a confused summary of the history of "the bar." In the Middle Ages, lawyers in London established four "Inns of Court": Lincoln's Inn, the Inner Temple, the Middle Temple, and Gray's Inn. These were physical buildings but, more figuratively, they were also the professional associations for lawyers working in the more important English courts. A "barrister" was a legal expert or advocate who has been "called to the bar." This is a metonymic phrase which is rooted in the physical barrier that was present in a courtroom, to separate fully qualified lawyers entitled to plead cases before a judge from (roughly speaking) trainee lawyers and members of the public. In modern times, this physical barrier generally separates participants in a trial (such as lawyers, clerks, defendants, the jury, and the judge) from the gallery in which members of the public and the news media sit. established metonymic So someone who has been "called to the bar" has been given the right to advocate before a judge and is thereby known as a "barrister." A "bar association" is, roughly speaking, a professional association for lawyers, akin to a guild. In some jurisdictions, bar associations are limited to barristers (as opposed to solicitors, a different type of lawyer); whereas in others, they are open to all members of the legal profession. In some jurisdictions a bar association is the body that licenses and regulates legal professionals, and in others it is merely a professional association. The "BAR" conspiracy theory essay goes on to say: When America was still a chartered group of British colonies under patent established in what was formally named the British Crown territory of New England the first British Accredited Registry (BAR) was established in Boston during 1761 to attempt to allow only accredited barrister-lawyers access to the British courts of New England. This was the first attempt to control who could represent defendants in the court at or within the bar in America. Today, each corporate STATE in America has it's [sic] own BAR Association, i.e. The Florida Bar or the California Bar, that licenses government officer attorneys, NOT lawyers. In reality, the U.S. courts only allow their officer attorneys to freely enter within the bar while prohibiting those learned of the law lawyers to do so. They prevent advocates, lawyers, counselors, barristers and solicitors from entering through the outer bar. Only licensed BAR Attorneys are permitted to freely enter within the bar separating the people from the bench because all BAR Attorneys are officers of the court itself. Does that tell you anything? A 1930 essay published in the Cornell Law Review (page 393) refers to a bar association's having been established in Boston in 1761, but remember that a bar association is no more than a kind of guild for lawyers. "Bar" is not an acronym for "British Accredited Registry," because that acronym is a fabrication. As with many sovereign citizen theories, the essay builds on the shaky foundations of an inaccurate account of the history of bar associations in the United States and draws confused conclusions about the function and legal status of lawyers. page 393 Many of these claims are based on the etymology of certain words, rather than their modern meaning. For example, the author of the essay referenced above presents the origins of the word "attorney," citing Webster's 1828 dictionary definition, as: "In the feudal law, to turn, or transfer homage and service from one lord to another." That essay also proclaims: Here's where the whole word game gets really tricky. In each State, every licensed BAR Attorney calls himself an Attorney at Law. Look at the definitions above and see for yourself that an Attorney at Law is nothing more than an attorney one who transfers allegiance and property to the ruling land owner. That passage is false. Whatever the older origins of the word "attorney" might be, the modern definition of that word is much broader. Merriam-Webster defines an attorney as simply "one who is legally appointed to transact business on another's behalf." In common American parlance, "attorney" is used interchangeably with "lawyer." defines This fixation on word origins leads to something like a game of Telephone in the logic of the conspiracy theory, with false conclusions being drawn from inaccurate or incomplete premises. Here are more examples, summarized from the essay: The historical origins of the word "esquire" did have to do with the transfer of property between feudal land-owners, but that was hundreds of years ago. This argument is roughly analogous to claiming that because the title "Ph.D" derives from the Latin "philosophiae doctor" ("doctor of philosophy"), microbiologists with Ph.D at the end of their names have no legal right to conduct scientific research because they are actually philosophers and not scientists. "A BAR [British Accredited Registry] licensed Attorney is not an advocate," the theory goes on to falsely claim, "so how can he do anything other than what his real purpose is?": He can't plead on your behalf because that would be a conflict of interest. He can't represent the crown (ruling government) as an official officer at the same time he is allegedly representing a defendant. His sworn duty as a BAR Attorney is to transfer your ownership, rights, titles, and allegiance to the land owner. When you hire a BAR Attorney to represent you in their courts, you have hired an officer of that court whose sole purpose and occupation is to transfer what you have to the creator and authority of that court. It's not clear what the origins of the the fabricated acronym are, but "British Accredited Registry" was invoked as early as 2001 by Austin Gary Cooper, a long-time "sovereign citizen" activist. In 2003, a U.S. District Court in Colorado barred Cooper and his wife Martha Cooper from selling advice on how to avoid paying federal income tax after the couple set up groups called "Taking Back America" and the "Ten Foundation," which advised their paying customers that they could renounce their United States citizenship, call themselves "American citizens" instead, and escape their tax obligations. In 2006, Cooper was given a six-month prison sentence for criminal contempt after failing to comply with that court order, which obliged him to hand over the names of his customers, among other requirements. During court proceedings, Cooper accused the judge of treason and called him a "Nazi bastard" and a "British Accredited Registry" lawyer, saying: "You people are going to destroy our country. British accredited registry bar association, you're going to destroy our country ..." 2001 barred sentence proceedings In 2017, prosecutors in Tennessee charged Cooper, who is now 69 years old, with 10 counts of forgery and filing a fraudulent lien. The case was ongoing as of January 2018. charged ongoing Warren, Charles. "A History of the American Bar."
Little, Brown and Company, 1911. U.K. Parliament. "Act of Union 1707."
U.K. Parliament. Unknown publication date. Wickser, Philip J. "Bar Associations."
Cornell Law Review (Vol. 15.3, April 1930). Babcock, Chief Judge Lewis T. "Permanent Injunction Order, U.S.A v. Austin Gary Cooper et al."
U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado. 20 November 2003. Morlin, Bill. "Ten Sovereign Citizens Face 320 Felonies in Tennessee."
Southern Poverty Law Center. 28 March 2017. | 0 | [
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FMD165 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did Stalin Say 'America Is Like a Healthy Body with Threefold Resistance'? Claim summaries: Despite how frequently these words are shared in his name, there appears to be no record of Josef Stalin writing or uttering them.
contextual information: One of the forms of political expression that frequently arrives in our inbox for verification is the "evil plan" warning, items which present the notion that some malevolent entity (ranging from Communists to Satan himself) not only expressed an intent to destroy our society from within, but outlined a specific plan for doing so. A quote attributed to Soviet dictator Josef Stalin that a reader emailed us in November 2011 exemplifies the genre: Soviet dictator Josef Stalin "America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within." The specifics of these plans (no matter how long ago they may supposedly have been formulated) generally relate to current events, and the political purpose of circulating them is to make readers aware that trends which threaten the health of our society are currently in place (i.e., "This is EXACTLY what is happening now!"), and to warn them that we must be vigilant about holding our course and stopping or reversing the encroachment of these socially unhealthful trends. This form has been expressed in such widely circulated items as Paul Harvey's "If I Were the Devil" essay, an (apocryphal) quotation by Karl Marx about the perils of consumer debt, and an (also apocryphal) warning from Abraham Lincoln about the accumulation of vast wealth in the hands of a few. If I Were the Devil Karl Marx Abraham Lincoln The putative quotation from Stalin referenced above is another item of this genre, one which presents the concept that Communist enemies of the U.S. viewed patriotism, morality, and spirituality as America's greatest assets and cannily plotted that the U.S. could be made to collapse from within if these values were sufficiently undermined (and which, of course, serves as an admonition to American readers to be attentive in maintaining these values). Whatever level of truth one might find in this sentiment, however, it's highly unlikely that Stalin ever spoke these words. Proving a negative is often an uncertain proposition, but our reasons for believing this quotation to be of dubious origin are: Josef Stalin Internet Archive Stalin documents letter Cummings, Jeanne. "Gingrich Out to Save America."The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. 16 January 1994 (p. G1). "Readers Respond to 'The Day After'."Lawrence Journal-World. 23 November 1983 (p. 9). Stalin Internet Archive. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/stalin/works/subject/index.htm. Accessed 15 Sept. 2022. Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953 | The Online Books Page. https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Stalin%2c%20Joseph%2c%201879-1953. Accessed 15 Sept. 2022. Updated [Sept.15, 2022]: Sources and links refreshed. | 0 | [
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FMD166 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Eisenhower's Meetings With Extraterrestrials Are Only The Tip Of The Iceberg Please scroll down for video
On December the 11th 1984, a television producer and UFO researcher called Jamie Shandera was surprised to find an envelope left anonymously for him to find. The envelope would prove to be a revelation for Shandera who found that it contained copies of top secret documents intended for the former President Dwight Eisenhower. These documents referred to the presence of extra-terrestrials here on Earth and strongly suggested that the president had been dealing with them. President Eisenhower’s great-granddaughter speaks out about the secret alien meetings
The FBI took it upon themselves to investigate the documents but following a thorough investigation they claimed that the documents were nothing more than an elaborate hoax. Most people accepted the FBI’s explanation at face value and it might have been the case that nothing more would have been said about these unusual documents. However, this story has remained prominent for ufologists over the years because of the regularity in which other credible individuals have elaborated on Shandera’s story and furnished it with important details.
One of these individuals is Timothy Good – a former government consultant in the United States.
President Eisenhower suddenly went missing on the evening of February 20th 1954. In order to dispel the rumours that he was taken ill or that he had died, his official staff said that the president was undergoing emergency dental work. But according to Good, this story is nonsense. Eisenhower had actually been hurried away to an emergency meeting with delegates from an alien race from the Pleiades star cluster. These aliens, whose vivid blue eyes, pale skin and blonde hair has earned them the sobriquet of the ‘Nordics’ are believed to be a peace loving species. They offered humanity assistance with technology and medical knowledge so long as human beings agreed to turn away from fossil fuels and nuclear weapons technology. Their terms were not agreed to at this meeting.
Following the refusal of the Nordics proposals, a second alien race is said to have made contact with humanity and offered their own deal. This race, known as the Tall Greys (or simply the Greys) offered Eisenhower access to highly advanced technology on the proviso that the United States would give the Greys leeway to abduct and perform experiments on civilians before wiping their memories and returning them to Earth. It is said that Eisenhower grudging accepted this deal .
While it might seem extraordinarily callous for a sitting president to put his civilians in such danger, others have been sympathetic to Eisenhower’s dilemma. The deal came as the Cold War was growing tenser and it is assumed that if Eisenhower had refused the offer from the Greys that they would have contacted his counter-part in the Soviet Union and gifted them with extraordinarily advanced technology instead.
The Nordics continued their contact with human beings despite the fact that the government of the United States had entered into a pact with the Greys, an alien species the Nordics distrust. One such Nordic alien is referred to as ‘Valiant Thor’ who first appeared in 1957 in a quiet field, where he found a policeman and demanded to be taken to the president. Over the next three years, he attended meetings of high political importance in the United States and met with various other private individuals, including the creator of Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry.
Perhaps most compellingly of all is the testimony from Eisenhower’s own great-granddaughter, Laura who says that she has no doubt that the meetings between her great-grandfather and the two alien races took place. “It’s like there is this whole other reality going on that we don’t hear about!” she said, “These timelines and the deeper history connected to secret societies, connected to these deeper ET agendas that have been around for thousands of years!” According to Laura Eisenhower, the deal with the Greys has led the United States into a number of bizarre and highly dangerous secret space programs. She says that the actions of her great-grandfather should now serve as a warning about the dangers of the power and influence of the military industrial complex.
This article (Eisenhower's Meetings With Extraterrestrials Are Only The Tip Of The Iceberg) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with full attribution and a link to the original source on Disclose.tv 136316 | 0 | [
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FMD167 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: U.S. President Donald Trump made his first major tax reform speech on Wednesday, but in a long list of thank yous he did not mention Gary Cohn, the White House point man on taxes who traveled with Trump to the event. At a manufacturing company in Springfield, Missouri, Trump reiterated his longstanding call for slashing the U.S. corporate tax rate to 15 percent from 35 percent at a time when lawmakers believe they could be lucky to bring it down to 25 percent. When asked about the omission of Cohn’s name, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters on Air Force One, en route to Washington from Missouri, that it was customary for Trump to recognize Cabinet members, but not advisers, in speeches. Cohn traveled with Trump on Air Force One for the Missouri speech, in which Trump called on Democrats to join his tax overhaul effort. He said he would cut taxes and simplify the sprawling U.S. tax code for the middle class. But he offered few specifics, and tax reform will be an uphill task in Congress. “We must reduce the tax rate on American businesses so they keep jobs in America, create jobs in America and compete for workers right here in America,†Trump said in his first presidential speech specifically on tax reform, one of his key 2016 campaign issues. Both congressional Democrats and Republicans say tax reform is needed but the Republican goal of enacting legislation this year faces a battle in Congress, which has already failed to deliver on healthcare reform sought by Trump. During his speech, Trump did single out Cabinet members, including Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Small Business Administration head Linda McMahon, as well as members of Congress — more than a dozen people in all. He asked his daughter Ivanka Trump, who is not a Cabinet member but is a staff member, to stand and be recognized in his speech at a manufacturing company in Springfield. “Anybody I forgot?†Trump asked. Cohn, who stood next to the stage during the speech with Sanders, has worked side-by-side for months with Mnuchin developing Trump’s tax reform strategy. “It’s pretty standard practice for us not to specifically call out staff,†Sanders told reporters afterward. “He regularly mentions Cabinet members but very rarely mentions staff in speeches.†Asked if the oversight of Cohn was significant, Sanders said, “Well, look, Gary is here. The president is here. They’re both working hard and extremely committed to providing tax relief for middle-class America. The president has made very clear this is a top priority for him, for his administration, and Gary is one of the people leading the charge.†Cohn recently criticized Trump for his comments about violence at racially charged protests in Virginia earlier this month. Trump blamed “both sides†for the violence in Charlottesville, in which white supremacists and neo-Nazis battled anti-racism protesters. Trump’s comments drew condemnation from both Republicans and Democrats. Cohn told the Financial Times last week that the Trump administration “can and must do better in consistently and unequivocally condemning†hate groups. The former Goldman Sachs executive, who is Jewish, said he had come under “enormous pressure†to resign over Trump’s remarks. TAX REFORM UNLIKELY BEFORE YEAR-END Independent analysts and lobbyists are increasingly pessimistic that Congress can act by the end of 2017, and some believe final tax legislation could be more like a straight tax cut than a reform. “I don’t want to be disappointed by Congress. Do you understand me?†Trump said to cheers. Trump said business tax cuts would lead to higher wages for workers by boosting economic growth and making American companies more competitive, an argument Democrats dismiss as more of the “trickle-down†economics that they blame for leaving workers behind in recent decades. “If President Trump’s previous tax plans are any indication, the wealthy and big corporations will be the ultimate winner,†Representative Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement. There has been no comprehensive overhaul of the tax code since 1986. Trump singled out Missouri’s Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, telling voters to throw her out of office in the 2018 midterm elections if she does not get on board with tax reform. McCaskill’s office did not respond to queries from Reuters about Trump’s remark. After more than seven months in power, Trump and Republican leaders who control both the U.S. Senate and the House are still far from agreement on a tax package. Initially expected in the spring, tax reform legislation now may not emerge until as late as November, lobbyists say. Trump will discuss a tax overhaul at a White House meeting next Tuesday with the “Big Six†tax reform negotiators: House Speaker Paul Ryan, Mnuchin, Cohn, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and the Republican chairmen of two congressional tax committees. | 1 | [
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FMD168 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: John Podesta’s Sister-in-Law Lobbied For Raytheon While Hillary Was Secretary of State Michael Krieger, Liberty Blitzkrieg
The Podesta family seems particularly adept at earning extraordinary sums of money via selling out the American public. Earlier this year, I highlighted how John Podesta’s brother Tony was paid $140,000 per month by the medieval monarchy of Saudi Arabia. After all, who cares about women’s rights when the pay is good?
Here’s a excerpt from the post, “Getting Things Done”– The Brother of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign Chair is a Major Lobbyist for Saudi Arabia :
The kingdom employs a total of eight American firms that perform lobbying, consulting, public relations and legal work.
Five of the firms work for the Saudi Arabia Embassy, while another two — Podesta Group and BGR Group — have registered to represent the Center for Studies and Media Affairs at the Saudi Royal Court, an arm of the government. PR giant Edelman, meanwhile, is working for the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority to encourage international investment.
The Podesta Group is billing Saudi Arabia $140,000 a month for its public relations services. During the last few months of 2015, it sent 27 emails, had two phone calls and one meeting with lawmakers and staffers, journalists, and organizations including Human Rights Watch and the Center for American Progress, disclosure forms show.
DLA Piper receives $50,000 a month from the kingdom and sent hundreds of emails to top congressional staffers between September and the end of February regarding meeting requests and, more generally, “issues affecting U.S.-Saudi Arabia national security interests.”
Notice the firm DLA Piper mentioned above. You’ll want to remember that for later.
Moving along, the Podestas are diligent about making sure everyone gets to feed at the trough, including extended family.
As James Rosen of Fox News uncovers:
Amid the tumult of the 2016 presidential campaign, John Podesta is best known as Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and the individual from whose private account WikiLeaks is presently publishing some 50,000 hacked emails.
For several months in 2012, Clinton’s final year as secretary of state, Raytheon, the leading defense contractor, hired Podesta’s sister-in-law, Heather Podesta, as a lobbyist, federal records show.
Raytheon was looking to enlarge its share of foreign military sales – transfers of advanced weapons systems to other countries that are reviewed and approved by the Department of State, then implemented by the Department of Defense – and was beefing up its lobbying operation to accomplish that goal before Secretary Clinton left office.
At the same time, Raytheon retained two other lobbyists, John Merrigan and Matt Bernstein, both associated with the powerhouse D.C. law firm DLA Piper. All three of these lobbyists, including Ms. Podesta, were major donors or bundlers to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 and 2016 campaigns. Federal records show they have raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Clinton’s campaigns and earned hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying her State Department.
There’s DLA Piper again. They appears to have their fingers in all realms of the military-industrial complex cookie jar.
In the final three quarters of 2012, DLA Piper earned some $360,000 in lobbying fees from Raytheon, courting the State Department and other agencies, while Ms. Podesta, within that same time frame, received $100,000 from Raytheon for the same purpose.
The gambit appears to have worked: Records maintained by the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arm of the Defense Department that coordinates the transfers of weapons systems once they have received State’s approval, show Raytheon as a prime contractor in at least seventeen foreign military sales in 2012, worth an estimated total of $26 billion. Of those contracts, three with the Gulf nation of Qatar – for missile defense, Apache attack helicopters and other materiel – accounted for $19 billion.
The individual at the State Department who was statutorily entrusted to approve foreign military sales was Andrew Shapiro, the assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs. Prior to his nomination to that job, Shapiro had served as Clinton’s national security adviser in her Senate office. Today, Shapiro is a partner in a Washington consulting firm whose other co-founders include Philippe Reines, Clinton’s longtime press aide.
You starting to see how all this works?
The firm mentioned above is Beacon Global Strategies, and I covered them in this summer’s post: New York Times Fails to Disclose Op-Ed Writer’s Ties to Hillary Clinton’s ‘Principal Gatekeeper’ .
After Clinton stepped down as secretary of state in February 2013, Raytheon discontinued the services of Heather Podesta + Partners, and ceased its use of DLA Piper at State.
While experts do not believe any laws were broken, the affair illustrates how Washington worked in the first Obama term, and particularly at the Clinton State Department. The Raytheon operation bears some similarity to a pop-up store that materializes to serve a seasonal need, such as Halloween candy or July Fourth fireworks, then vanishes once that need has been met.
Simply incredible.
“I think this is as close an example of pay-to-play as we’ve seen,” said Raj Shah, deputy communications director at the Republican National Committee. “And that’s why [Raytheon] made these hires [of Heather Podesta, Merrigan and Bernstein]. … Their experience was getting access to Hillary Clinton and raising money for her.”
But hey… | 0 | [
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FMD169 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Security provided to John Kerry by the Secret Service Claim summaries: Would the Secret Service have to provide lifetime protection for all of John Kerry's homes?
contextual information: Claim: If John Kerry were elected President, the Secret Service would have to protect him and every property he owns for the rest of his life. Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2004] You will pay upkeep/Secret Service for 5 Kerry mansions. It is good to be John F. Kerry....... The F stands for Forbes in case you ever wondered. He is one of the richest Senators in Government. When someone is elected president, it means the Secret Service has to protect the President and his family as well as his property. The Kerry's have five US properties not counting the several foreign properties they own too. The cost to run these homes are more than what the average American could afford, even if the rent was free, and all you had to pay the water, gas & electric. Including ground keepers, maintenance, pool, and house keepers. To be President would require the taxpayers to pay for all that now if elected. Including a complete staffed Secret Service security 24 hours a day. In addition to that we will have to pay for each of their homes for security improvements even if they never go to them all there is that just in case. Who do you think will pay for all this? We Pay! This takes all the expense off Kerry and puts it on us. Nevertheless, factor another major cost to Americans that Kerry does not want you to know about. Becoming president would automatically include taking care of all their properties with Secret Service Agents that includes 5 agents per 6 hour shift 4 times a day 365 days of the year for the rest of their lives so long as they own those properties. It comes with being President once you are elected. It requires us the taxpayers, to pay for this as well as his annual salary as well as his retirements including the cost of living adjustments to boot. These salaries and agents protect all their real estate property with Secret Service Agents and pay the bills for the rest of his life. In addition, feed the Secret Service Agents and rotate new ones every 6 hours for the rest of his life. Do the math. Five properties need to be protected. This requires five Secret Service Agents per shift, daily every six hours, per property! That is 20 Secret Service Agents per day per property everyday including Holidays. Wow, what does that cost? Lets say an average of 20 agents per property, each earning a about $60K per agent to survey the perimeters and protect. Now times that by five properties so far. That is if the Kerry's do not buy any more properties afterwards. This also includes the Agents vehicles and repairs, gas, meals, days off, paid vacation, and medical plan visits etc per agent. Who pays? YOU pay, the whole time they are alive after becoming President! Is this the best use of our tax money electing Kerry to take care of all their properties both foreign and domestic? On the other hand, shouldn't he pay for his own? Yet, the Presidential salary could not afford it. The more I think about paying for Kerry's properties everyday, just makes me happy keeping President Bush all the more merrier. Without raising taxes to boot. How on earth would Kerry pay for everyone to have Healthcare, increase our military, and have us pay to protect his investments, all without raising our taxes? Tax and spend Kerry is his party motto. Which really has to make you wonder why anyone with his wealth, would take a salary of that of a U.S. Senator, never mind wanna be President? Do you believe him now why he needs to be the Prez? To serve the people? On the other hand, the people serve Him and his wife! IF YOU AREN'T COMPLETELY APPALLED, THEN YOU HAVEN'T BEEN PAYING ATTENTION Origins: The fact that Senator John Kerry's middle name is "Forbes" is about the only piece of information this latest political diatribe gets right. John Kerry and his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, together own several homes, but since they signed a prenuptial agreement and have kept their premarital assets separate, a Boston townhouse (which John Kerry mortgaged in 2003 to finance his presidential bid) is the only one of these homes that they technically own as a couple. The government is obligated to provide Secret Service protection to the President and his immediate family, so if John Kerry were elected to that office, of course he and his family would be entitled to the same level of security detail that the Secret Service provides to every President. That protection might indeed include the use of public funds to pay the costs of installation and maintenance for security systems at some of the Kerrys' homes, because the protection of First Families is viewed as a right and proper charge upon the nation. Security measures of this level would not be specific to the Kerrys; the homes of all Presidents are treated this way, as (to a lesser extent) are the homes of all former Presidents. homes It is not true, however, that every single residence owned by the either of the Kerrys (whether it be in America or abroad) would be staffed by five Secret Service agents around the clock, and that those agents would be guarding the Kerrys and all their properties for the rest of John Kerry's life. Secret Service staffing levels vary as the situation requires, and lifetime protection for former Presidents and their spouses was eliminated by Congressional legislation in 1997. President Clinton and his wife, Hillary, are the last First Couple who will receive such a benefit; President George W. Bush and all who succeed him in the White House will be limited to receiving Secret Service protection for a period of not more than 10 years from the time they leave office. protection In any case, the idea that U.S. voters would have to pay higher taxes if John Kerry were elected President in order to "protect his investments" is just silly. The projected U.S. federal budget for 2005 is $2.4 trillion the amount of money spent to protect the President and his family (whoever that President might be) is but a teeny-tiny fraction of a drop in that vast bucket. The only thing sillier than that notion that taxes would have to be raised to protect a putative President Kerry is the suggestion that the cost of Secret Service protection should be a factor in voters' choosing who should serve as President of the United States. budget For more information about the protection afforded former Presidents, see our article about a similar rumor that was attached to the previous First Couple when President Bill Clinton left office in 2001. article Last updated: 2 October 2004 Sources: Burger, Timothy and Kenneth Bazinet. "Hil and Bill Buy 3M Home, Sweet Home in Capital." [New York] Daily News. 30 December 2000 (p. 6). DeFrank, Thomas. "1st Family's N.Y. Bunker." Fuchs, Marek. "First Family's Arrival Changes the Focus of Secret Service Office." The New York Times. 29 October 2000 (Weekend Calendar; p. 5). Grove, Lloyd. "The Reliable Source." The Washington Post. 12 January 2001 (p. C3). | 0 | [
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FMD170 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: The state's transportation department is already burdened with a significant amount of debt, and it has made over $700 million in debt payments within the past two years.
contextual information: Infrastructure is one of Gov. Mike Parsons top priorities in the 100th legislative session, and some representatives have followed suit. House Budget Chairman Rep. Cody Smith, R-Carthage, presented a budget plan to fund road and bridge improvements throughout the state. Smith said his plan would fund the infrastructure improvements without raising taxes or accruing new debt. Smith wanted to do this by appropriating funds from general revenue to state infrastructure instead of taking out more bonds. Our state transportation department already has a heavy debt load and has paid more than $700 million in debt payments in just the last two years, Smith wrote in a Capitol report sent by his office. Has the Missouri Department of Transportation really paid more than $700 million in debt payments in the last two years? Lets take a look at the numbers Documents from MoDOTshow that his numbers are on point. MoDOTs 2018 Financial Snapshot shows the department paid a little more than that, totaling $702 million in 2017 and 2018. My preference is to avoid debt when possible, Smith said. But, the debt paid doesnt tell the whole story. The department paid $412 million in debt in 2017. The departments average payment since 2004 is about $242 million a year. The number was higher in 2017 than past years because the agency paid off some of its debt early. In 2017, $117.8 million of bonds were paid off early, saving future interest costs of $29.4 million, said Sally Oxenhandler, MoDOT interim spokeswoman. This helped inflate Smiths point when he said MoDOTs debt reached more than $700 million in just two years. This graph of MoDOTs borrowed funds and annual payments helps visualize the amount of debt MoDOT paid in 2017, compared to debt payments in the past. (Look for the mountain peak.) Graph courtesy of MoDOTs Financial Snapshot, November 2018 Compared to other state transportation departments, Missouri does not have a lot of debt, said Todd Grosvener, MoDOT assistant financial services director. Still, Smith wants to limit the state department accruing any more debt. Keeping our road funds stable over the coming years is of the utmost importance, Smith said. When MoDOT takes on more debt, it has fewer dollars to improve our roads and bridges. What is the borrowed money used for? The borrowed funds were and are still being used for hundreds of road and bridge projects throughout Missouri, the agency said. The department borrowed the most money in 2010 when it took on an additional $100 million to replace the Mississippi River Bridge in St. Louis. In 2010, the department also borrowed $685 million for theSafe and Sound Bridge Improvement Program. This three-and-a-half-year project replaced or rehabilitated more than 800 bridges across the state. On behalf of the House of Representatives, Ill be keeping a close eye on the amount of debt the state takes on to improve and maintain our transportation infrastructure, Smith said. Smith said, Our state transportation department already has a heavy debt load and has paid more than $700 million in debt payments in just the last two years. His numbers match MoDOTs records. They need clarification, however, because MoDOT paid off a big chunk of debt early, in order to avoid more interest accumulation. Because the statement is accurate and needs clarification, we rate the statement Mostly True. | 1 | [
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FMD171 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: While Donald Trump may have spent a lot of time dissing President Barack Obama during his presidential campaign, he has definitely changed his tone likely because he knows how incredibly screwed he is if Obama doesn t hold his little orange hands during this transition process.On Wednesday, Trump horrified the entire Republican Party by showering praise on our current president and even said that he thinks so highly of our current Commander in Chief that he has taken some of Obama s advice on his future cabinet. During an interview on The Today Show, Trump touched on several subjects, but his most shocking statements were his kind words about Obama. Trump, who rarely takes advice from anyone but himself, said: I take his recommendations very seriously and there are some people that I will be appointing and in one case have appointed where he thought very highly of that person. I love getting his ideas. And I may differ in many cases, I differ very greatly. It s safe to say that the one person Trump says Obama thought very highly of might be another one of Trump s lies, or there might be a small chance that at least one of the people in Trump s cabinet isn t a white supremacist (hopefully). And Trump continued, as he just couldn t stop gushing about Obama: I really like him. We have a really good chemistry together. I ve asked him what he thinks are the biggest problems, greatest assets We have very good dialogue. We wonder if Obama would say the same. You can watch Trump kiss up to Obama below, with his comments starting at about the 9:30 mark:You can only imagine how much this is going to bother the rest of the Republican Party.Featured image via Win McNamee/Getty Images | 0 | [
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FMD172 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: License DMCA
A mandala is a visual symbol often utilized in meditation practices and teachings. The mandala symbol itself is a geometric construction of points, lines, planes and solids symbolizing the universe. Mandalas are geometric designs depictive of the universe specifically. Other designs are similarly meditation tools, but may not be mandalas specifically. The visually conceived geometric symbols are visual meditation tools. A visual meditation tool is called a yantra. Mandalas and all other yantras are visual meditation points of concentration. Yantras are visual meditative tools similar in value to points of concentration. The image above is the sri yantra, sri meaning king or most important.
A mantra is the audio version of a mandala. A mantra is an audio meditation tool. Whether the sound of the mantra is a single syllable tone or a series of lengthy metaphysical musings, a mantra is an audio meditation tool. Mantras, as sound vibration, are wavy linear vibrations of connection.
The terms asana and mudra both reference physical positioning. An asana is a body posture as a meditation tool, and a mudra is a hand gesture or posture as a meditation tool. Asanas and mudras enable our own bodies to become a geometric representation of a meditation tool. The postures are physical meditation tools transforming self into one's own geometric figure or plane among the space and sensitive to the space of self and surroundings.
Tantra means unification, or looming/weaving together principles and practices, instruction and individual action. Tantra unites entirety. Tantra signifies confluence and integration; a fusion. It is Sanskrit for loom, the device which weaves together string into cloth. It is an ancient word with many properties and has been variously used to describe the knots of strings weaved together in a rug, and the cord on which sacred mala bead necklaces were strung, (Mala beads are Tibetan prayer necklaces of 108 beads used to assist mentally or vocally repeating a mantra 108 times.) and practices of unification of individual with the universal. Today the word tantra is often used in reference to the union of lovemaking. Though there is also a specific type of yoga called Tantra Yoga it means unification.
There is the potentiation of the unification of principle and practice. There is the potentiation of tantra of yantra, mantra and asana. And there is certainly the lesson of the potentiation of Yin Yang tantra. The combination of Yin and Yang potentials and energies within leads to all sorts of aspects of development. This can be energetically understood in the idea that there are only two types of energies, straight and circular, straight for Yang potentials and circular for Yin potentials. It can be understood on a tangible level that rest and work are both required. When straight and circular energies combine, a spiral results. A spiral is one of, if not the highest expressions of energy.
More broadly and generally, tantra notes a mutually accepted connection, a tied knot of intertwined being, like lovemaking, but not necessarily beginning with or limited to the act of lovemaking. Humanity itself is a tantra; a fused weaving knot or many strings, of many instructions and many individuals. - Advertisement -
Essentially tantra is spiritual understanding of the relationship and connections between individuation and universal energies. An ancient spiritual philosophy preceding both Buddhism and Hinduism, tantra represents integration, unifying the macrocosm with the microcosm, the universal and the individual, the feminine and the masculine, the Yin and the Yang. It also refers to integrative knowledge and its continuation and building refinement through the interaction of teacher and student, signifying union and fusion; the acceptance, integration and transmutation of knowledge between individuals, like the string of life.
Tantric ideas enhance and explore metaphysical merging of ideas and energies. Tantra is the merging of the physical and spiritual, through the merging of the conceptual. In essence, Tantra is the integration of yantra (the philosophy of visual symbols), mantra (communication of audio symbolism) and mudra (our very physical posturing) each of which is important on their own and increasing so when intertwined aspects of yoga, and life. Tantra unites meditation practices and enhances the individual unity expansion with entirety of the universal.
There is not necessarily the need for a specific yantra, or specific mantra, or specific asana in meditation, however each are tools that can be used and considered, and most are most powerful when practiced in unified tantric manner, or tantric mind state. A tantric mind state recognizes unity expansion and aims toward it, rather than cultivating a mind state of separation.
No matter how one approaches meditation the unifying tantra of our meditation principles and practices bring about the unity expansion of yantra no matter. No matter our level of refinement of posture, we are always in an asana, no matter if we utilize mantra, or yantra, we for th most part still see and hear and those who cannot can still concentrate and connect. And no matter the mantra, yantra or asana, it is the principles behind and pertaining to the symbolism that contains the real power, the highest potential for tantric connection. Yantras, mantras and asanas establish your sacred space and sacred perimeter and uniting with entirety in tantric balance.
Seed of Buddha Meditation - Advertisement -
One of my favorite meditations relates to the four dimensions of geometry, but is extracted from Buddhist lessons. It is one of the most powerful meditations I have learned and as I learned it, Buddha himself practiced and taught this meditation. I learned this meditation from a Tibetan Buddhist monk from Nepal before I considered the four dimensions of geometry applied to meditation. On later examination however the components of the meditation relate to the four dimensions of geometry.
This meditation is direct and simple, but can lead to infinitely complex profound lessons. The profundity of each of the ideas in this meditation cannot be understated. And each of the concepts has been elaborated on endlessly for centuries since Buddha, and so the presentation here is of course a simplification of the ideas and processes that might be endlessly explored and refined. And that is what meditation is all about really, our own personal inward exploration and refinement.
To begin, sit in a comfortable cross legged position on a meditation pillow. Sit for a time to simply settle into absorption and relaxation, focusing on the breath. The rhythm of the following meditation consists of mindfulness of an idea followed by mindfulness of no idea, where as much as possible we think on nothingness. The nothingness gives us a chance to relax, compared to processing the series of ideas which can all be quite intense. The process can be done in any time period. The point is to cover each idea as deeply as can be, given time or mental state circumstances.
The meditation is formed from important Buddhist concepts. Many meditations are derived from such teachings, Buddhist and otherwise, so that there are lessons in a sense for the secular, and meditation practitioners. | 0 | [
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FMD173 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: White House Psych Out Claim summaries:
contextual information: FACT CHECK: Did President Obama order that "behavioral experiments" be carried out on the American people? Claim: President Obama ordered "behavioral experiments" to be carried out on the American people. MOSTLY FALSE: President Obama issued an Executive Order on 15 September 2015 encouraging federal agencies to more frequently use behavioral research insights in the creation and adoption of policy. WHAT'S FALSE: President Obama ordered that "behavioral experiments" be carried out on American citizens; he specifically directed agencies to implement any form of behavioral insight usage; the word "experiment" appeared anywhere in the Executive Order. Example: [Collected via Twitter, September 2015] President Barry ORDERS BEHAVIORAL EXPERIMENTS ON AMERICAN PUBLIC!! https://t.co/MNHOSCvpAB #COSProject pic.twitter.com/0aQN33AqQ3 https://t.co/MNHOSCvpAB #COSProject pic.twitter.com/0aQN33AqQ3 TheFightingIrishDame (@TheIrishDame) September 16, 2015 September 16, 2015 Shock Executive Order: Obama Authorizes Behavioral Experiments On U.S. Citizens: To A ... - https://t.co/pl2RzxZr4q pic.twitter.com/ll7cWaFtqe https://t.co/pl2RzxZr4q pic.twitter.com/ll7cWaFtqe State of Globe (@StateofGlobe) September 17, 2015 September 17, 2015 Obama Executive Order Instructs Federal Agencies to Conduct Mass Behavioral Experiments on U.S. Citizens: https://t.co/mCynSnLP0e https://t.co/mCynSnLP0e Bill Periman (@BillPeriman) September 17, 2015 September 17, 2015 Origins: On 15 September 2015, the website Daily Caller published an article titled "President Obama Orders Behavioral Experiments on American Public," which claimed that the chief executive had "authorized federal agencies to conduct behavioral experiments on U.S. citizens." President Obama announced a new executive order that authorized federal agencies to conduct behavioral experiments on U.S. citizens in order to advance government initiatives. The article was aggregated by other news outlets such as DC Clothesline, which similarly claimed the President's executive order had instructed "Federal Agencies to Conduct Mass Behavioral Experiments on U.S. Citizens." Does anyone actually believe "behavioral experiments" on the US citizenry are about "designing government policies to better serve the American people?" Think Pavlov's dog. And can someone point to the Constitution and show where the government has the authority to "experiment" on the citizenry in any shape, form, or fashion? It's not there. The government possesses no authority whatsoever to conduct any type of experimentation, behavioral or otherwise, on the citizens of this nation. Both Daily Caller and DC Clothesline used the phrase "behavioral experiments" (conjuring up frightening scenarios of federal gaslighting), and the second article placed the phrase in quotes, suggesting specifically that the Obama administration had "ordered" sinister-sounding "behavioral experiments" to be inflicted upon Americans. The 15 September 2015 Executive Order referenced by the articles is available on the White House's website for open review. Tellingly, the word "experiments" does not appear anywhere within it; only words such as "encourage[d]," "identify," "review," and "improve." The executive order about "Using Behavioral Science Insights to Better Serve the American People" actually stated: To more fully realize the benefits of behavioral insights and deliver better results at a lower cost for the American people, the Federal Government should design its policies and programs to reflect our best understanding of how people engage with, participate in, use, and respond to those policies and programs. By improving the effectiveness and efficiency of government, behavioral science insights can support a range of national priorities, including helping workers to find better jobs; enabling Americans to lead longer, healthier lives; improving access to educational opportunities and support for success in school; and accelerating the transition to a low-carbon economy. Alongside the Executive Order, the White House issued a document titled "Fact Sheet: President Obama Signs Executive Order; White House Announces New Steps to Improve Federal Programs by Leveraging Research Insights." Aiming to provide details not included in the Executive Order about how "behavioral insights" could apply to the creation and implementation of policy, that document explained: Behavioral science insights—research insights about how people make decisions—not only identify aspects of programs that can act as barriers to engagement but also provide policymakers with insight into how those barriers can be removed through commonsense steps, such as simplifying communications and making choices clearer. That same study on financial aid found that streamlining the process of applying—by providing families with assistance and enabling families to automatically fill parts of the application using information from their tax return—increased the rates of both aid applications and college enrollment. When these insights are used to improve government, the returns can be significant. For instance, the Federal Government applied behavioral science insights to simplify the process of applying for Federal student aid and has made college more accessible to millions of American families. Similarly, the Pension Protection Act of 2006, which codified the practice of automatically enrolling workers into retirement savings plans, is based on behavioral economics research showing that switching from an opt-in to an opt-out enrollment system dramatically increases participation rates. Since the implementation of this policy, automatic enrollment and automatic escalation have led to billions of dollars in additional savings by Americans. Another relevant fact sheet detail came in the form of information pertaining to a new committee formed to facilitate the order's initiatives: The Executive Order also formally establishes the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team (SBST), a group of experts in applied behavioral science that translates findings and methods from the social and behavioral sciences into improvements in Federal policies and programs for the benefit of the American people. The passage excerpted above indicated that behavioral insights data targeted by the initiative stemmed not from government-led "behavioral experiments," but rather "findings and methods from the social and behavioral sciences." Another passage supported inferences that non-governmental research groups would be tasked with submitting the bulk of relevant findings to the SBST for consideration in the drafting of future policy: The Behavioral Science & Policy Association (BSPA) is launching a Behavioral Science and Policy Series to identify promising avenues for applying behavioral science to public policy at the Federal level in order to improve Americans' lives. Through this series, by September 2016, working groups will deliver white papers that propose particular applications of behavioral science that can be applied, tested, and implemented at the Federal level in the near term. A less harrowing interpretation of the executive order than that fostered by conservative news sites was offered by the Houston Chronicle in a 17 September 2015 article: Dr. Andrew Harper, a professor of behavioral science at the University of Texas Health Medical School, said behavioral science is an old discipline, used to maximize communication effectiveness, that is only now being applied to government-authored materials. "For example, in healthcare, there are simple things we want people to do—eat a balanced diet, sleep well," he said. "When just saying 'do it' doesn't work, we look to behavioral science to inform us on strategies that might work better." According to the executive order, research will be used to inform even the basic layout of federal agencies' websites and other outreach information. The newly founded team will consider "how the content, format, timing, and medium by which information is conveyed affects comprehension and action by individuals." In other words, researchers will conduct clinical studies to determine how agencies could more effectively present information in a way that will move people to action. The Executive Order didn't come to pass without some objections, however. The University of Oxford's Practical Ethics in the News Blog featured an editorial that questioned how scientifically rigorous the selection and application of such data might be, implying the initiative's mission was too ambiguous. Author Joshua Shepherd conceded that the proposal was overall "a good thing," but said "the order raises a number of ethical and practical issues": Given recent evidence that many results from experimental and social psychology fail to replicate, there might be reason to worry here. The executive order does not define what counts as an 'insight' from behavioral science. Is it the result of one study? A couple? Deployment of an insight that is nothing more than an experimental artifact could be damaging or wasteful. Suppose a genuine insight exists. Even so, implementing it is not straightforward. Other experts didn't think that the potential flaws outweighed the benefits. University of Michigan professor Andrew Hoffman outlined the potential practical effects of such initiatives on policy in a Scientific American article, positing that their application to the drafting of policy was "long overdue": [Hoffman] says that people might react rebelliously to a gas tax imposed by the government. A rise in its cost spurred by market forces, on the other hand, might prompt them to drive less. In that way, federal policies should consider the complicated ways that people filter, interpret, and process messages. You can't expect to put a price on something—whether that's gas, plastic bags, or emissions—and get an expected result, he said. These are things that sociology, psychology, and political science have been focusing on for decades, Hoffman said. So to bring in the notion that humans are not perfectly rational, utility-maximizing beings in the formation of policy is long overdue. It is true that President Obama issued an Executive Order on 15 September 2015 encouraging and facilitating the application of behavioral research insights, with a stated goal of creating more efficient policy and stronger compliance. Moreover, some credible questions were raised about how rigorous standards for inclusion of such data might be. But the order neither referenced nor described "behavioral experimentation" upon the American people, nor did it in any way suggest that the order's details involved using anything other than existing, ongoing research carried out by social and behavioral science experts. Last updated: 17 September 2015 Originally published: 17 September 2015 | 0 | [
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FMD174 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Spain moved closer on Monday to imposing central rule over Catalonia to thwart its independence push as Madrid s High Court signaled a hardening line by jailing the leaders of two of the largest separatist organizations. In the first imprisonment of senior secessionist figures since Catalonia s Oct. 1 independence referendum, the court ordered the heads of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Omnium held without bail pending an investigation for alleged sedition. Prosecutors say that the ANC s Jordi Sanchez and Omnium s Jordi Cuixart played central roles in orchestrating pro-independence protests that last month trapped national police inside a Barcelona building and destroyed their vehicles. Around 200 people flocked to the Catalan government s headquarters in Barcelona in a peaceful show of support for both men, with some chanting Freedom and waving Democracy banners. The ANC, which has organized protests of hundreds of thousands of secessionists in the past, called for further peaceful demonstrations around Catalonia on Tuesday. Catalan regional President Carles Puigdemont commented on Twitter: Spain jails Catalonia s civil society leaders for organizing peaceful demonstrations. Sadly, we have political prisoners again an allusion to Spain s military dictatorship under Francisco Franco. The High Court also banned the Catalan police chief, Josep Lluis Trapero, from leaving Spain and seized his passport while he is being investigated over the same incident, though it did not order his arrest. Last Tuesday, Puigdemont stepped back from asking the Catalan parliament to vote on independence, instead making a symbolic declaration and calling for negotiations on the region s future. In a confrontation viewed with mounting alarm in European capitals and financial markets, Puigdemont failed on Monday to respond to Madrid s ultimatum to clarify whether he had declared unilateral independence in a speech last week. He now has until Thursday to back down. In a letter to Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Puigdemont gave no direct answer on the independence issue, instead making a sincere and honest offer for dialogue over the next two months. In reply, Rajoy said Puigdemont s stance had brought Madrid closer to triggering Article 155 of the constitution, under which it can impose direct rule on any of the country s 17 autonomous communities if they break the law. The Catalan government s campaign to break away from Spain has pitched the country into its worst political crisis since an abortive coup attempt in 1981. On Monday the economy ministry told the EU that it had slashed its economic growth forecasts for next year partly due to the situation. The Catalan government says 90 percent of voters in the referendum backed a breakaway, but turnout was only 43 percent as most opponents of independence in the region boycotted the vote, already declared illegal by Spain s Constitutional Court. Thousands have demonstrated in Barcelona and other Spanish cities both for and against independence. So far the crisis has been largely violence-free, except for the day of the referendum when national police assaulted voters with batons and rubber bullets. The High Court ruled that Trapero, the Catalan police chief, would have his passport withdrawn but rejected a request from the state prosecutor for him to be held in custody. Trapero is a hero to the secessionists after his force took a much softer stance than national police in enforcing the ban on the referendum. Prosecutors say he failed to give orders to rescue national police trapped inside the Barcelona building. Puigdemont last Tuesday delayed by several weeks a formal declaration of independence from Spain to allow for talks. Madrid has ruled out talks unless Puigdemont gives up the independence demand. It had given him until 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) on Monday to clarify his position with a Yes or No , and until Thursday to change his mind if he insisted on a split. Following his failure to do so, a regional broadcaster said he also planned to ignore a final deadline on Thursday. Suggesting that Puigdemont and his team were in no mood to follow Rajoy s game plan, Catalan interior minister Joaquim Forn said Article 155 would not allow Madrid to remove members of the Catalan government. The article s terms on direct rule, which has never been applied, are vague. It says Madrid can adopt any measure to force a region to meet its constitutional obligations, with the approval of Spain s lower house. The wording suggests this could include anything from taking control of regional police and finances to installing a new governing team or calling a snap election. Underlining the deepening crisis, some of the largest companies in prosperous Catalonia, which accounts for a fifth of the Spanish economy, have already shifted head offices elsewhere and others are likely to follow if Puigdemont declares outright independence. Investors say a political split could undermine the economic rebound in Spain, the euro zone s fourth-largest economy. | 1 | [
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FMD175 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Trump Proudly Declares: Most Of The People I’ve Insulted Deserved It By Andrew Bradford on October 27, 2016 Subscribe
Arrogance is defined as “an insulting way of thinking or behaving that comes from believing that you are better, smarter, or more important than other people.” In other words, Donald Trump perfectly exemplifies arrogance, and he just proved that fact yet again.
Appearing on Good Morning America Thursday morning, the GOP nominee readily defended the insulting posts he’s made on Twitter: “It’s ok, most of them deserved it.”
Trump then declared : “I believe in fighting back when people are against me, when they tell lies, you know, I have the power of this instrument and frankly sometimes I’ll use that. And I agree sometimes it will revert back or sometimes maybe it doesn’t come out — you have to be careful with it.”
When exactly has Trump been careful with what he posts on social media? Try never.
Melania Trump, who was also interviewed, said that if she becomes First Lady, one of her primary areas of focus would be social media: “What’s going on is very hurtful to children, to some adults as well.”
Does that mean she’ll take away Donald’s cell phone and duct tape his hands to his sides so he can’t tweet out hateful and hurtful shit the way he normally does? Yeah, good luck with that, Melania!
Earlier this week, the New York Times ran a two-page spread listing all of the insults and unkind postings Trump has made on Twitter since he announced he would be running for President in 2015. If you want to see a completely unhinged, uninformed, and unfiltered mind at work, just take a look at the Times article and recall what Hillary Clinton said regarding the Donald: “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
Donald Trump cannot be trusted with a smart phone, let alone the reins of power for the most important nation in the world.
Featured Image Via YouTube Screengrab About Andrew Bradford
Andrew Bradford is a single father who lives in Atlanta. A member of the Christian Left, he has worked in the fields of academia, journalism, and political consulting. His passions are art, music, food, and literature. He believes in equal rights and justice for all. To see what else he likes to write about, check out his blog at Deepleftfield.info. Connect | 0 | [
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FMD176 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Hey, London! You love American football? Well, great news, we’re sending you the Browns! Don’t worry, you’ll be getting the Jaguars and the Rams, too. The N. F. L. announced on Tuesday the teams that will be heading to London next season for a record four games. The matchups are, well, not great. In Weeks 3 and 4, Wembley Stadium, the spiritual home of soccer, will get and . In Weeks 7 and 8, Twickenham, rugby’s iconic stadium, will get and . Fans in Britain have shown little discernment over the N. F. L. fare served up to them over the years, generally selling out every game in no time. Perhaps that explains why the league isn’t bothering to send over Tom Brady or Dak Prescott next season. This lineup will test even the most enthusiastic Briton’s patience. The Jaguars have become a virtual home team for London, and they will play a game there for the fifth consecutive season. That may be in part because they have not had a winning record since 2007. At they are staggering to another disastrous year. The Jaguars have been rumored to be the team most likely to move to London if the N. F. L. decides to put a franchise there. Their opponents, the Ravens, at least have a winning record. But after losing to the Patriots on Monday night, the Ravens are uncertain for a playoff spot. Next fall is a long way away, but right now this quarterback matchup would be Blake Bortles vs. Joe Flacco. Perhaps the most unpredictable game on the London schedule is . After a run of mediocrity, the Dolphins have sprung to life this year at although the playoffs are by no means secured. The Saints, expected by many to bounce back this year, are a sad . There is no telling what these teams will be like come September. The Cardinals have been one of the season’s biggest disappointments, slipping from Super Bowl contenders to afterthoughts. Carson Palmer will be 37 next season, so it is hard to see a huge improvement. But at least they are not the Rams: in their new home, Los Angeles, having just fired their coach, Jeff Fisher. And, of course, the Browns. On pace to be the second team in N. F. L. history, they are perhaps the worst advertisement possible for the American game. The Vikings, their opponent, are but two games behind the Lions — the Lions! — and looking at a season as well. The N. F. L. points out that after the coming season, 26 of its teams will have played in London since the games began in 2007. That does include the Patriots, twice, including a game in 2012, a year after they were in the Super Bowl. This year’s schedule included the Redskins, coming off a playoff season, and the Giants, a strong possibility for this year’s playoffs. The teams that have not played in London include some of the league’s most popular: the Seahawks, the Packers and the Eagles. The Panthers, the Texans and the Titans have also not made the trip. The N. F. L. must deal with television networks, who prefer that the good teams play at good hours, not early in the morning on United States time. And popular teams that pack their stadiums are reluctant to give up home games. Teams with less devoted fan bases are happy to do so because they make more money selling tickets in London. With eight slots to fill next season, the league has not rolled out its best, to say the least. At some point, football, because it is football, will lose its sheen for fans in Britain. They may start demanding better matchups, or even a team of their own. Until then, we may not see much meaningful football in London. | 1 | [
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FMD177 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Texas this fiscal year will have more money in reserve than the other 49 states combined.
contextual information: Texas state government can afford tax cuts and targeted investments while still having billions of dollars left over, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick told Austin radio station KLBJ AM. In the Feb. 25, 2015 interview, which we caught online, Patrick said: "We are in the best financial shape of any state in the country. We'll have about $11 billion or so in our rainy day fund by the end of our fiscal year. That's more money in reserve than the other 49 states combined." This fiscal year runs through August 2015. We emailed Patrick's office to seek the basis of his statement and to gauge whether he was trying to make an uncheckable prediction rather than a flat factual statement. We also looked for the latest information on each state's expected fiscal-year-end reserves. The Texas state comptroller, Glenn Hegar, issued his two-year state revenue forecast in January 2015. Hegar said the state's rainy day fund will have a balance of nearly $8.5 billion when fiscal 2015 ends on Aug. 31, 2015. Hegar projected the fund to grow to $9.8 billion a year later and to $11 billion through August 2017. Per Patrick's statement, then, all the other states together should be expecting to end their 2015 fiscal years with less than $8.5 billion combined. An online search led us to a fall 2014 report by the National Association of State Budget Officers, initially making us think Patrick was onto something. In the report, The Fiscal Survey of States, a section headlined Year-End Balances stated that generally, states have made progress rebuilding budgetary reserves since revenues plummeted during the Great Recession of 2009-10. State budgets passed into law for the 2015 fiscal year show reserve balances nationally totaling $53.1 billion, the report said. Furthermore, a disproportionate share of state budget reserves is concentrated in Alaska and Texas, which account for $20.6 billion or 38.8 percent of states' reported total balances in fiscal 2015. For more perspective, we sought guidance from the Pew Charitable Trusts, which in July 2014 issued a report on how states might build rainy day funds. By email, spokeswoman Sarah Leiseca passed along analyst Brenna Erford's conclusion—drawing on Fiscal 50, a Pew interactive breaking out the fiscal status of each state—that Patrick got it wrong. At the moment, per Pew, Texas has $10.3 billion in reserve funds (rainy day funds plus ending balances), providing enough for the state government to operate for 79.1 days. The only state with more reserve funds currently is Alaska, with $13.3 billion, providing enough for the state to operate for 181.9 days, Erford said. Going forward, Erford noted, the NASBO fall 2014 report indicates Texas is projecting a reserve balance of about $8 billion through the end of the 2015 fiscal year, which would run second to the projected year-end reserves for Alaska, $11.4 billion. According to these data, the sum total of reserves in California, New York, Ohio, Massachusetts, Florida, and Indiana is greater than Texas reserves, providing clear evidence, Alaska notwithstanding, that Texas reserves are not more than the other 49 states combined, Erford said. With a nudge from Michael Leachman, a state budget expert at the Washington, D.C.-based Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, we spotted charts in the NASBO report indicating the 50 states together in fall 2014 were projecting 2015 fiscal-year-end reserves, meaning regular balances plus rainy day fund set-asides, of about $53 billion—with Texas accounting for $10.7 billion of that and Alaska $10 billion, while other states altogether projected nearly $32 billion in ending reserves. An adjoining chart indicates Texas ending fiscal 2015 with $8 billion in its rainy day fund alone compared to other states together winding up with about $34 billion in such funds. Texas appears to have bigger balances than many states, but its predicted totals don't dwarf all other states' projected savings combined. After we looked over the charts, Patrick's office told us he made an unintentional error in the radio interview. By email, spokesman Alejandro Garcia said Patrick takes pride in the state stockpiling reserves, but he meant to talk about jobs created in Texas versus jobs created in all other states combined as he ad-libbed the comment. Our ruling: Patrick said Texas this year will have more money in reserve than the other 49 states combined. On our inquiry, Patrick acknowledged this was a misstatement. Indeed, what he celebrated turned out to be incorrect. | 0 | [
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FMD178 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Donald J. Trump and his allies struggled on Sunday to move beyond the revelation that he might have been able to legally avoid nearly two decades of federal income taxation, putting new pressure on the candidate just as he tries to recover from a lackluster debate performance. Mr. Trump’s campaign lurched between refusing to acknowledge that the 1995 tax records, portions of which were published on Saturday night by The New York Times, were bona fide, to insisting that his not having paid taxes was evidence of his unrivaled business prowess. The Times report, based on documents obtained by the newspaper, showed that Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee, declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns, which could have allowed him to legally avoid paying any federal income taxes for up to 18 years. At a rally in Lancaster County, Pa. that began shortly before the article was published, Mr. Trump seemed jarred by the pending revelation, shifting from topic to topic mocking his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, for having had pneumonia and insinuating that she might have cheated on her husband. The performance capped a bruising week for Mr. Trump, who went from a widely panned debate performance against Mrs. Clinton on Sept. 26 to repeatedly mocking Alicia Machado, a former Miss Universe who is Hispanic, including with a string of Twitter posts around 5 a. m. on Friday. That Twitter storm raised new questions about Mr. Trump’s temperament, for which Mrs. Clinton has often criticized him. Mr. Trump is now limping into the final five weeks of a race in which he has lost the momentum, some of his allies acknowledged. “This is the most important week of his campaign,†said Newt Gingrich, a former House speaker and an adviser to Mr. Trump. Mr. Gingrich was critical of the taxes article but said the candidate must prepare seriously for the second presidential debate, on Oct. 9. Mr. Trump, he said, will have to decide whether he cares enough about the presidency to change his style. To regain footing and try to turn attention back on Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump plans to use a speech on Monday in Colorado to call attention to how both Clintons became very wealthy after leaving the White House, said Jason Miller, a campaign spokesman. On Sunday, Mr. Trump’s advisers sought to play down questions about the tax returns. “The man’s a genius,†Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former New York mayor and a close adviser to Mr. Trump, said on Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union. †“He knows how to operate the tax code for the people that he’s serving. †In this case, Mr. Giuliani added, Mr. Trump had simply acted as any responsible American businessman would to save money for his enterprises. Mr. Trump’s investors, he added, could have brought legal action against Mr. Trump had he not taken advantage of the tax law’s provisions to avoid taxation. But in an ABC News interview, Mr. Giuliani, sounding increasingly frayed, offered a remark that focused explicitly on Mrs. Clinton’s gender. “Don’t you think a man who has this kind of economic genius is a lot better for the United States than a woman, and the only thing she’s ever produced is a lot of work for the F. B. I. checking out her emails?†he asked. Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, another adviser to Mr. Trump, argued that rather than demonstrating any kind of malfeasance, the tax records published by The Times showed Mr. Trump to be singularly qualified to overhaul the federal tax code. Not only that, Mr. Christie said, but the documents supporting the report illustrated Mr. Trump’s success in what the governor characterized as the weak economic climate of the early 1990s. “This is a guy who, when lots of businesses went out of business in the early 1990s, he fought and clawed back to build another fortune, to create tens of thousands of more jobs,†Mr. Christie said on “Fox News Sunday. †“This is actually a very, very good story for Donald Trump,†he added. Mr. Trump’s tax returns — which he has repeatedly refused to release, in defiance of what has become the norm for presidential candidates over the last four decades — have been a lingering battle in his contest with Mrs. Clinton, who has released her returns regularly throughout her political career. Mrs. Clinton seized on the Times report, using Twitter on Sunday to release a “Trump ‘Smart’ Tax Calculator†to show how much users would pay in taxes “if you paid the same as ‘billionaire’ Donald Trump. †The answer — at different income levels reaching into the tens of millions of dollars — came up as zero. The Times report has refocused attention on Mr. Trump’s finances as the campaign moves into its final phase, giving Democrats a new opportunity to discredit the Republican nominee and forcing his surrogates to quickly try to change the conversation. Mr. Trump’s campaign did not contest or confirm the report, but a lawyer for the candidate said in a statement that the publication of the tax records was illegal. Writing on Twitter on Sunday morning, Mr. Trump reiterated part of his campaign’s statement, boasting that he understood “our complex tax laws better than anyone who has ever run for president†and that he had created far more jobs than Mrs. Clinton. Supporters of Mrs. Clinton used the Times report not only to draw attention to Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his returns, but also to portray him as an unreliable businessman and the embodiment of a system “rigged†in favor of the wealthy, a line that Mr. Trump has favored on the campaign trail. “He crashes businesses into bankruptcy, leaving scores of businesses unpaid — people really hurting with the losses his companies have suffered — but he walks away unscathed,†Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri, said on “Fox News Sunday. †“It appears he walks away with a golden ticket that allows him under the tax code to avoid taxes for decades. †Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who battled for the Democratic nomination with Mrs. Clinton, said that far from making Mr. Trump a genius, the tax disclosure illustrated the unfair advantage given to wealthy Americans. “The rich are getting richer,†Mr. Sanders said on ABC’s “This Week. †“Almost everybody else is getting poorer. And yet billionaires like Donald Trump are able to manipulate the tax system so that they avoid paying federal income tax. †| 1 | [
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FMD179 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Congo s electoral commission announced on Sunday that long-awaited presidential elections to replace President Joseph Kabila would take place on December 23, 2018. Around 43 million voters have been registered for the vote so far, Corneille Nangaa told a news conference in Democratic Republic of Congo s capital, Kinshasa. The election will be held on December 23, 2018, with the results to be published on January 9, 2019, and the president to be sworn in on January 13, another official from the Independent Electoral Commission (CENI), Jean Pierre Kalamba, told the same news conference. The election, originally scheduled for late 2016, has been repeatedly delayed. Those delays have triggered unrest and raised fears the central African nation could slip back into the conflicts that killed millions around the turn of the century, mostly from hunger and disease. The electoral commission had said last month that the presidential vote could not take place until April 2019 at the earliest, and the opposition had warned that the population would take matters into its own hands . Opposition leaders reacted furiously to the new date. The predatory regime wants to prolong the instability and misery of the people. We do not accept this fantasy calendar, exiled opposition leader Moise Katumbi tweeted. Civil society activist organization Lucha on Twitter also condemned the announcement. Dozens died in protests against Kabila s refusal to step down at the end of his constitutional mandate last December. U.S. envoy Nikki Haley said during a visit to meet with Kabila last month that the vote must happen in 2018 or it will lose international support. With no imminent election in sight, a political crisis has set in that is fuelling increasing militia violence and lawlessness in Congo s east and center. Clashes between Congolese troops and supporters of a renegade colonel in Congo s eastern city of Bukavu killed seven people on Sunday before he surrendered and turned himself in to U.N. peacekeepers. Kabila has ruled Congo since his father was assassinated in 2001. He says delays are owing to problems registering millions of voters across the vast, forested country. Opponents say he is using them to eventually remove term limits that prevent him from standing again, as presidents in neighboring Rwanda and Congo Republic have done. He denies that, but has not categorically said he will step aside. | 1 | [
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FMD180 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Was the polio treatment for Mitch McConnell in the 1940s funded by the U.S. Government? Claim summaries: Partisan web sites misrepresent the source of funding for the Republican senator's care as an infant in Alabama.
contextual information: On 22 June 2017, the Occupy Democrats Facebook page posted a meme claiming that the United States government paid for Mitch McConnell's care and rehabilitation when the Republican senior senator contracted polio as an infant in the 1940s. meme This claim is contrasted, in the meme, with McConnell's support for the Senate Republican health care plan published that day: plan As a kid, Mitch McConnell had polio, and the government paid for ALL of his care and rehabilitation. Now, as the leader of the Republicans in the Senate, McConnell is taking government-funded care away from tens of millions of Americans. Let that sink in. An article accompanying this meme reports that government-sponsored, publicly funded healthcare saved the young McConnell's life: article Mitch McConnell has been relentlessly working to roll back Medicaid and deprive millions of Americans of government-sponsored healthcare coverage for eight years now. But if it werent for the government, McConnell wouldnt be able to walk at all. Young Mitch came down with a terrible case of polio as a child in Alabama. My mother was, of course, like many mothers of young polio victims, perplexed about what to do, anxious about whether I would be disabled for the rest of my life he admitted in a 2005 interview. But luckily for him, his mother took him 50 miles to the Warm Springs, where President Roosevelt won his own battle with polio and established a polio treatment center that was paid for by the public. President Roosevelt asked the people of America to send in dimes to the White House as part of his March of the Dimes foundation. Over two and a half million dimes were mailed in, and they paid for Mitchs physical therapy and treatment. A Death and Taxes article posted on the same date reports a similar story: article How did Warm springs fund McConnells therapy, you ask? This was two decades before Lyndon Johnson launched federal health coverage by signing into law the creation of Medicare and Medicaid. In the mid-30s, Roosevelt and his law partner Basil OConnor founded the Georgia Warm Springs Foundation and started organizing fundraising balls around the country. By 1938, however, the balls grew less effective and the president needed a new strategy. Using a phrase coined by vaudeville entertainer Eddie Cantor, March of Dimes a spin on the popular newsreel series March of Time Roosevelt founded the March of Dimes foundation and launched a campaign asking the public to mail ten-cent donations to the White House. Within a month, Roosevelt received around 2,680,000 dimes. The campaign continued through WWII. McConnell started visiting Warm Springs in 1944. In other words, he overcame polio with the help of public money allocated by the White House. Mitch McConnell has often told the story of his childhood affliction with polio, and the role of FDR's Warm Springs rehabilitation center in his recovery. In his 2016 memoir The Long Game, McConnell recounted how he was struck with polio at the age of two while staying with his mother in his aunt's home in Five Points, Alabama. memoir It's one of my life's great fortunes that Sister's home was only about sixty miles from Warm Springs, Georgia, where President Franklin D. Roosevelt had established a polio treatment center and where he'd often travel to find relief from the polio that paralyzed him at the age of thirty-nine. My mother took me there every chance she had. The nurses would teach her how to perform exercises meant to rehabilitate my leg while also emphasizing her need to make me believe I could walk, even though I wasn't allowed to. So it's clear that Mitch McConnell did indeed receive significant help primarily in the form of physical therapy and physical therapy training for his mother from the polio rehabilitation center established by Roosevelt at Warm Springs, Georgia. However, neither this particular center nor the care given to McConnell were government-funded. Roosevelt purchased the property at Warm Springs, Georgia and established a center there in 1927, having visited frequently for therapy for his own polio, which he contracted in 1921. He (and others) set up the Warm Springs Foundation, a nonprofit organization that depended on wealthy philanthropists and donations from members of the public. 1927 In 1934, Basil O'Connor (once a partner at Roosevelt's law firm and a close associate of the recently-elected President) began organizing fundraising for the Warm Springs Foundation, set around the President's birthday celebrations each year. Within four years, these birthday balls had raised $1,350,030 for the Warm Springs rehabilitation center (the equivalent of $23.3 million in 2017). equivalent In September 1937, Roosevelt reconstituted the Warm Springs Foundation as the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (as polio was then widely known); in January 1938, the directors of the foundation launched the first "March of Dimes", a phrase coined by vaudeville star Eddie Cantor who helped promote a nationwide fundraising drive which attracted the support of Hollywood stars as well as charitable middle-class families giving 10 cents each. In six months, the March of Dimes raised $81,073 (which would be about $1.4 million in 2017). In July 1938, the New York Times published a detailed auditor's report, which offered a breakdown of donations and expenditure. report Some aspects of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis perhaps reflect a more innocent time. For example, the hundreds of thousands of dimes sent by members of the public were processed at the White House and a cheque was given to Roosevelt, who then turned it over to O'Connor for distribution via the Foundation. However, in many ways the operation was a precursor of the professional, almost corporate style of non-profit fundraising and campaigning that has followed since. For example, a large portion of funds raised in 1938 came from attendees at 8,000 Presidential birthday balls throughout the country, labor organizations contributed the equivalent of $760,000, and the Western Union and Postal Telegraph companies wrote off the cost of thousands of birthday greetings sent to the President at 25 cents per message. The following year, charity sporting events were held throughout the country, and badges were distributed to donors as part of an awareness-raising "Give a Dime and Wear a Button" campaign. year Funds raised for the Warm Springs Foundation and National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis were also distributed in the form of research grants to scientists hoping for a breakthrough in the treatment of polio. grants This came to fruition in the 1950s when Dr. Jonas Salk who had received a grant from the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis developed a successful polio vaccine. Jonas Salk The Warm Springs center that helped in Mitch McConnell's recovery was indeed founded by Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was President at the time McConnell was struck by the disease, in 1944. Roosevelt was the driving force behind both the Warm Springs Foundation and its successor, the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, and used his political office to energetically promote fundraising for polio care and research. The funding came from the kindness and charity of the public, as well as wealthy celebrities and large corporations. However, it was operated as an innovative, nationwide nonprofit organization, not a federal or state agency, and it was not taxpayer or government-funded. The Warm Springs center visited by McConnell remained owned and operated by a nonprofit organization until 1974, when the state of Georgia took it over, making it truly government-run. Since 2014, it has been owned and operated by Augusta University. Augusta University McConnell, Mitch. "The Long Game." (pg 9,10).
Penguin Random House. 31 May 2016. New York Times. "$1,350,030 Raised for Warm Springs."
New York Times Archive. 16 January 1938. New York Times. "Net of $1,021,034 to Paralysis Fund."
New York Times Archive. 7 July 1938. New York Times. "Sport World Aids in Paralysis Drive."
New York Times Archive. 27 December 1938. | 0 | [
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FMD181 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: NICE, France — At times it was hard to know who was on trial, the smuggler or the state. The defendant, Cédric Herrou, 37, a slightly built olive farmer, did not deny that for months he had illegally spirited dozens of migrants through the remote mountain valley where he lives. He would do it again, he suggested. Instead, when asked by a judge, “Why do you do all this?†Mr. Herrou turned the tables and questioned the humanity of France’s practice of rounding up and turning back Africans entering illegally from Italy in search of work and a better life. It was “ignoble,†he said. “There are people dying on the side of the road,†Mr. Herrou replied. “It’s not right. There are children who are not safe. It is enraging to see children, at 2 in the morning, completely dehydrated. “I am a Frenchman,†Mr. Herrou declared. The trial, which began on Wednesday, is no ordinary one. It has been substantially covered by the French news media for its rich symbolism and for the way it neatly sums up the ambiguity of France’s policy toward the unceasing flow of migrants into Europe and the quandary they present. France, foremost among European nations, prides itself on enlightened humanitarianism, fraternity and solidarity. And yet, perhaps first among them, too, it is struggling to reconcile those values with the pressing realities of a smaller, more globalized world, including fear of terrorism. The contradictions are being played out in courtrooms, in politics and in farmers’ fields, on the sidewalks of Paris and in train stations from the Côte d’Azur to the northern port of Calais, where the government demolished a giant migrant camp in the fall. On the one hand, politicians in this year’s presidential election are competing to see who can take the toughest line on securing France’s borders. Most are promising a crackdown on migrants, with admission reserved for cases of political persecution. Terrorist attacks, including the one last summer in Nice that killed 85 people, have exacerbated sentiment. But in these remote mountain valleys, where Jews fleeing the Nazis and the Vichy collaborators found refuge during World War II, Mr. Herrou has become something of a folk hero by leading a kind of loosely knit underground railroad to smuggle migrants north, many destined for Britain or Germany. His work has won him admiration for his resistance to the state and his stand that it is simply right to help one’s fellow man, woman or child. Others in this region seem to agree. In the square outside the courthouse, hundreds of sympathizers gathered and shouted, “We are all children of immigrants!†Mr. Herrou got a hero’s welcome as he descended the steep steps late in the evening, trailed by television cameras. Inside, not even the prosecutor, Prêtre, seemed to want him there and praised his cause as “noble. †He asked for an sentence, but quickly reassured the court that it should be suspended, “of course. †Still, the law is the law. “He’s demonstrated a manifest intention to violate the law,†Mr. Prêtre told the court. “One can criticize it, but it’s got to be applied. †The verdict, which will be made by the panel of three judges who heard the case this week — there was no jury of peers — is scheduled to be announced on Feb. 10. The appeal for leniency was both an acknowledgment of widespread discomfort with the law, as a well as recognition of Mr. Herrou’s growing status in the region around Nice and its mountainous backcountry, the Roya Valley. Mr. Herrou was voted “Azuréen of the Year†last month by the readers of the leading local newspaper, to the fury of regional officials. “I am Cédric,†read one of the placards in the crowd. “Long live the righteous of the Roya,†read another. The courtroom on Wednesday was filled with people from the mountain — the men bearded and ponytailed, the women in duffel coats — who had come to support Mr. Herrou and who were convinced right was on their side. The notion that Mr. Herrou is trying to uphold what he sees as basic French values, rather than violating the law, is much of the reason he appears to enjoy a considerable measure of popular support. The argument formed the essence of his lawyer’s defense strategy. Remember the last word in the French Republic’s motto, “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,†his lawyer, Zia Oloumi, told the court. “They are saying M. Herrou is endangering the Republic,†Mr. Oloumi told the three judges. “On the contrary, I think he is defending its values. “You see, you have got this value, fraternity, and the dictionary is quite clear,†Mr. Oloumi said. “Think about the impact of your decision on the practical application of the idea of fraternity. †Mr. Herrou was not making any political points, Mr. Oloumi insisted. He was merely responding to a humanitarian crisis in his own backyard the Roya Valley had become a way station for migrants. The judges did not respond. But the lightness of the sentence called for by Mr. Prêtre suggested that the concepts invoked by Mr. Oloumi had resonance. Mr. Herrou’s accusers seemed most taken aback by his stubbornness. Not every migrant Mr. Herrou picks up is by the side of the road. He finds many outside the migrant camp across the Italian border at Ventimiglia, looking especially for women and children. The presiding judge, Laurie Duca, reminded him he had first been arrested in August, near his mountainside home at with a van full of migrants. At that time, the prosecutor released him, suggesting that Mr. Herrou’s humanitarian motivations absolved him. That first arrest was evidently merely a warning. “After August, you said you knew it was illegal,†Judge Duca remarked in court. No matter. Mr. Herrou persisted, describing his work to journalists last fall and even occupying a disused summer camp owned by the state railroad when his own modest homestead became overwhelmed. At that point, in the authorities decided they had had enough of him. “You were there, and you were extremely active,†the judge said. “Why so much press?†Mr. Herrou replied, “It is right that society should know about all this. †The judge and the prosecutor suggested that this time Mr. Herrou would not get the humanitarian pass he had benefited from previously. The local political establishment is furious with him. “At the very moment when we need strict controls, Mr. Herrou’s ideological, premeditated actions are a major risk,†Eric Ciotti, the president of the departmental council and a leading member of Parliament, wrote in . Mr. Prêtre, the prosecutor, suggested that Mr. Herrou’s persistence and openness had been his undoing. “Mr. Herrou acknowledges everything,†Mr. Prêtre said, with astonishment. “This trial springs from a communications strategy for a cause that I totally respect. †And yet, “this is what he told the police. He said, ‘I am violating the law.’ But I am the prosecutor. I must defend the law. †| 1 | [
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FMD182 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: False Message Promises Donations for the Care of a Raped Child Named Maria Claim summaries: Hoax claims Dell Hospital will donate 15 cents towards the care of Maria, a raped child, every time a particular text message is forwarded.
contextual information: An entreaty to help save the life of a victimized child who had been raped by an AIDS-positive attacker began circulating as a cell phone text message in June 2010. At that time, the message being sent from phone to phone described the rapist being sought, accompanied by a photograph of an African American male with gold teeth: "This guy raped a five-year-old little girl. He ruined her life; she is alive and in the hospital, can't move, and can never have children or a normal life. This guy goes by different names; he is in hiding and has AIDS. The girl came out positive. Please help us catch this animal. Every time this message is forwarded, Dell Hospital will donate $0.15 to Maria's medication and treatment. Please don't hesitate to forward this. It could have been your daughter or sister. God bless. Thank you! Forward this to as many people as possible." In October 2010, the hoax underwent a revival when it was circulated anew, this time accompanied by the photo of a Hispanic male sporting multiple tattoos. Since 2014, this Facebook post has been shared more than 77,000 times. A second post from 2016 has been shared more than 82,000 times with a different photograph. There was no such child; the whole thing was a leg-pull, said Dell Children's Medical Center of Central Texas. A false text message has been circulating that describes an incident involving a five-year-old girl. The message states that every time you forward it to someone, Dell Children's Medical Center will donate 15 cents to cover the child's healthcare expenses. This message is spam and is in no way affiliated with Dell Children's Medical Center or the Seton Family of Hospitals. If you receive this message, please delete it. As demonstrated so aptly by public efforts to provide relief to earthquake victims in Haiti, beneficences initiated by cell phone generally involve a tracking and billing mechanism that requires participants to text a specific short word or phrase to a particular five-digit number, not the indiscriminate forwarding of an explanatory narrative to as many people as possible. In 2009, we began to note that "Forward this message to help fund medical care for a sick or dying child" appeals were beginning to appear as cell phone text messages as well as being passed in email. That trend continues into the present, with the "shot 14-year-old boy" just another iteration of the same basic hoax that falsely claims the American Cancer Society, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, or some other large entity will donate a predetermined amount of money every time a particular message is forwarded. Such leg-pulls have been circulating via email since 1997. Typically, a large charity is named as the benefactor standing ready to direct funds towards the costs of medical care for the languishing child, but various corporations have also been implicated in this role in other iterations of the hoax, such as AOL and ZDNet in the Rachel Arlington leg pull (brain cancer sufferer in need of an operation) and McDonald's and Pizza Hut in the Justin Mallory prank (epileptic in need of long-term care). Everyone wants to help sick children get better, and the thought of a little boy or girl suffering from some dread disease or infirmity because people couldn't be bothered to forward a message tugs straight at the heartstrings. The problem is, hoaxsters know that, and they play upon these very human drives for their personal amusement. Once again, that is the case here: well-intentioned forwarding does nothing towards helping a sick child; it does, however, make the day of some prankster. If you want to make a difference in a sick child's life, the best way is still the old-fashioned one: donate your money or your time; don't passively share a worthless message. KEYE-TV [Austin]. "Text Messages About Dell Children's Med Center Donations Are False." 22 June 2010. Roser, Mary Ann. "Seton Alerts Public That Text Message to Help 'Raped' Child Is Bogus." The [Austin] Statesman. 22 June 2010. This story was updated on June 4, 2019, to add a second viral Facebook post. | 0 | [
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FMD183 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Did Derek Chauvin 'Under-Report Half a Million Dollars in Income'? Claim summaries: The former Minneapolis police officer, already sentenced for the murder of George Floyd, has been charged with nine counts of felony tax evasion.
contextual information: In June 2021, as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin faced sentencing for the murder of George Floyd, one widely-shared social media post accused Chauvin of other crimes, namely tax evasion. On June 25, @davenewworld_2 wrote on Twitter: "Derek Chauvin underreported half a million dollars in income while owing $20,000+ in taxes, and then fucking murdered George Floyd over an alleged $20 counterfeit bill..." wrote That tweet, and the claims it contained, were further promoted in a popular Reddit post, on the following day. popular Reddit post On June 25, Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill sentenced Chauvin to 22 and a half years in prison for the murder of Floyd, a Black man who died after Chauvin kneeled on his neck for more than nine minutes, in May 2020. sentenced The claim that Chauvin "underreported half a million dollars in income" stems from an ongoing criminal case against him, and his former wife Kellie May Chauvin. However, Chauvin has not yet entered a plea in that case, and has not been tried or convicted, as of June 28, 2021. As a result, we are issuing a rating of "Unproven," for now. When the case is resolved, we will update this fact check accordingly. A brief note: Kellie May and Derek Chauvin divorced in February 2021, and during those proceedings she expressed an intention to change her last name. However, we have not been able to find any record of that name change, so this article refers to her using her last-known last name, Chauvin. expressed an intention On July 22, 2020, the office of Washington County Attorney Pete Orput charged the Chauvins with nine counts each of felony tax evasion, claiming that they "failed to file income tax returns and pay state income taxes, underreported and underpaid taxes on income generated from various employments each year, and failed to pay proper sales tax on a vehicle purchased in Minnesota." charged The complaint against Derek Chauvin summarized the details of their alleged offenses, as follows: complaint The Chauvins did not file tax returns in 2016, 2017, and 2018. The filed tax returns for years 2014 and 2015 did not report income received from D. Chauvin's off-duty security work and K. Chauvin's photography income. Tax returns for years 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019 filed on June 26, 2020, did not report D. Chauvin's off-duty security work and K. Chauvin's photography income. According to prosecutors, the Chauvins under-reported a total of $464,433 in income between 2014 and 2019, just short of the "half a million dollars" included in the widely-shared tweet from June 2021: Source: Washington County Attorney's Office However, the Chauvins have not yet entered pleas in this case, as of June 28, 2021. An omnibus hearing, at which the two defendants could potentially enter pleas, was scheduled for June 30, the Washington County Attorney's office told Snopes. could potentially enter pleas Since Derek Chauvin has not yet pleaded guilty or been convicted of the charges against him, and neither might ever occur, the claim that he "under-reported half a million dollars in income" was unproven, as of June 28. When the case is resolved, we will update this fact check accordingly. | 2 | [
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FMD184 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Deceptive offer of complimentary Dunkin' Donuts voucher Claim summaries: An online Dunkin' coupon offering that promises a free box of donuts is part of an anniversary giveaway scam.
contextual information: Social media users are frequently targeted by anniversary giveaway and survey scams, with one common form of bait being fake coupon offers for free boxes of Dunkin' Donuts: Such scams typically provide links which lead to web pages (not operated or sponsored by Dunkin' Donuts) displaying the Dunkin' logo along with entreaties to spread the scam further by sharing those pages and writing thank you in the comments field. The free Dunkin' Donuts offers are a variation of the company anniversary survey scam, a ploy that depends on the unwary unwittingly promoting the phony offer to their social media friends: anniversary survey scam These web pages (which are not operated or sponsored by the companies they reference) typically ask the unwary to click what appear to be Facebook share buttons and post comments to the scammers site (which is really a ruse to dupe users into spreading the scam by sharing it with all of their Facebook friends). Those who follow such instructions are then led into a set of pages prompting them to input a fair amount of personal information (including name, age, address, and phone numbers), complete a lengthy series of surveys, and finally sign up (and commit to paying) for at least two Reward Offers (e.g., Netflix subscriptions, credit report monitoring services, prepaid credit cards). A representative for Dunkin' Donuts wrote on the company's official Facebook page that the online "free dozen" coupon was not one offered by the chain: The Better Business Bureau issued guidelines warning specifically of identical scams on Facebook that target shoppers: Dont believe what you see. Its easy to steal the colors, logos and header of an established organization. Scammers can also make links look like they lead to legitimate websites and emails appear to come from a different sender. Legitimate businesses do not ask for credit card numbers or banking information on customer surveys. If they do ask for personal information, like an address or email, be sure theres a link to their privacy policy. When in doubt, do a quick web search. If the survey is a scam, you may find alerts or complaints from other consumers. The organizations real website may have further information. Watch out for a reward thats too good to be true. If the survey is real, you may be entered in a drawing to win a gift card or receive a small discount off your next purchase. Few businesses can afford to give away $50 gift cards for completing a few questions. Legitimate Dunkin' Donuts offers are listed in a Promotions page on the company's website. Promotions | 0 | [
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FMD185 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: As commander-in-chief, shouldn t the Army field manual apply to the president as well as the men and women he commands?Because one psychiatrist brilliantly used the Army field manual to demonstrate that Donald Trump is mentally unfit to be president.Dr. Prudence L. Gourguechon wrote an editorial for the Los Angeles Times detailing how Trump s behavior makes him an unfit leader and she proved it by consulting the field manual used by the United States Army.After pointing out that the 25th Amendment of the Constitution has been getting a lot of attention recently because of Trump s behavior, Dr. Gourguechon said that after searching through thousands of articles and books written on leadership, primarily in the business arena, I have found only one source where the capacities necessary for strategic leadership are clearly and comprehensively laid out: the U.S. Army s Field Manual 6-22 Leader Development. That is particularly interesting since Trump is the commander of America s armed forces.Specifically, the manual discusses the areas of trust, discipline and self-control, judgement and critical thinking, self-awareness, and empathy. And as Dr. Gourguechon notes, Trump fails in every category.On trust, the manual states that Leaders shape the ethical climate of their organization while developing the trust and relationships that enable proper leadership. Gouguechon elaborated.A leader who is deficient in the capacity for trust makes little effort to support others, may be isolated and aloof, may be apathetic about discrimination, allows distrustful behaviors to persist among team members, makes unrealistic promises and focuses on self-promotion.As we know, Trump doesn t trust people and he sows an environment of distrust. And let s not pretend that Trump hasn t made unrealistic promises or promoted himself.On discipline and self-control, the manual mentions traits such as selflessness, respect, integrity, and courage. If you are laughing, it s because you know that Trump has none of these traits. In fact, he is the most undisciplined and selfish person on the planet. Or at the very least the most undisciplined and selfish person who has ever lived in the White House. Without discipline and self-control, a leader may not be able to resist temptation, to stay focused despite distractions, to avoid impulsive action or to think before jumping to a conclusion, Dr. Gourguechon wrote. The leader who fails to demonstrate discipline reacts viscerally or angrily when receiving bad news or conflicting information, and he allows personal emotions to drive decisions or guide responses to emotionally charged situations. On judgement and critical thinking, the manual makes it clear that Trump has no business being the commander-in-chief.A leader with the capacity for critical thinking seeks to obtain the most thorough and accurate understanding possible, the manual says, and he anticipates first, second and third consequences of multiple courses of action. A leader deficient in judgment and strategic thinking demonstrates rigid and inflexible thinking.The manual also makes it clear that Trump lacks self-awareness. It describes him perfectly. Self-aware leaders know themselves, including their traits, feelings, and behaviors, the manual says. They employ self-understanding and recognize their effect on others. When a leader lacks self-awareness, the manual notes, he unfairly blames subordinates when failures are experienced and rejects or lacks interest in feedback. The same goes for empathy.A good leader demonstrates an understanding of another person s point of view and identifies with others feelings and emotions. The manual s description of inadequacy in this area: Shows a lack of concern for others emotional distress and displays an inability to take another s perspective. So if we go by the military leadership standards outlined in the Army field manual, Trump should be removed from office as soon as possible. He definitely should not have been allowed to take office in the first place. Americans need to take Trump s behavior seriously. He literally controls the most powerful military in the world, and the military would never voluntarily make him their leader if they follow this manual. That speaks volumes.Featured Image: Ralph Freso/Getty Images | 0 | [
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FMD186 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: MIAMI — After returning from a honeymoon in the Dominican Republic, Jamie asked to be tested for the Zika virus. Ms. 28, a publicist in Rochester, N. Y. wants to get pregnant, but not before she knows her body is Zika free. But she and other parents are quickly learning that getting a Zika test isn’t easy. As worries about the spread of the virus in the United States continue to mount, public health department labs in Florida and New York City are running at or close to capacity, while private commercial labs have won emergency approval to run Zika tests and have ramped up their testing capacity. But that doesn’t mean that just anybody can get a test. Even people like Ms. who have compelling reasons to be tested for a virus known to cause devastating brain defects in the fetus, can’t walk into a local health department and get tested on demand. That’s because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued strict guidelines about who should be tested, giving priority to pregnant women with possible exposure to Zika and people with symptoms. Already public health officials in Florida say they face a backlog of tests for pregnant women, some of whom may be waiting to make decisions about whether to have abortions if they test positive. But the C. D. C. ’s testing policy largely ignores a sizable subgroup of women and men also at risk — those who are trying to conceive but fear they have been exposed to Zika. The C. D. C. recommends women contemplating pregnancy avoid travel to areas where Zika transmission is occurring and, if they have traveled, says they should wait at least eight weeks before trying to conceive. But it does not recommend testing. Guidance for men is inconsistent. Although the virus can persist in sperm for months after exposure, the C. D. C. recommends that men who may have been exposed to the virus have protected sex for at least eight weeks after potential exposure unless they have symptoms. The World Health Organization just changed its recommendation to six months of protected sex for men and women. Neither group recommends testing. The restrictions are aimed at preventing an onslaught of requests for Zika tests that could clog the system and prevent public health officials from identifying new cases quickly. They also shape medical practice and influence insurance coverage, making doctors reluctant to order tests and insurers unwilling to cover the costs — between $229 and $800 on the private market — if patients don’t fit the C. D. C. ’s testing criteria. In the case of Ms. and her husband, her obstetrician and primary care doctors declined to refer her for testing because she didn’t meet the criteria. “If I have to wait a year, I will, because you want a healthy baby,†said Ms. who booked her trip to the Dominican Republic almost a year ago, long before Zika had emerged as a threat. She and her husband already have a son and want to conceive now so the children are close in age. “If I could conceive sooner rather than later, that would be good for our family,†she said. Public health experts say the restrictions are necessary to ensure that people most at risk have access to testing. “We aren’t interested in stimulating the testing of simply anxious people,†Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases specialist and the head of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. “We want health care providers to provide the appropriate counseling and to be selective in the use of this test, as they are in the use of any other test. †Laboratories and public health agencies say they are inundated with requests for tests, but declined to provide specifics. Julie Kliegl, the president of Laboratories, a commercial lab in Lee’s Summit, Mo. said the demand for Zika testing had doubled between July and August. Clarissa Bradstock, the chief executive of Any Lab Test Now, a franchise company with headquarters in Alpharetta, Ga. said its central call center had been getting dozens of calls a day from people asking about Zika testing. The lab briefly offered testing, in defiance of C. D. C. guidelines, but last week stopped the practice after one of the company’s testing partners raised concerns. “We’re just trying to respond to customers’ demands,†she said. “We don’t want to add to the hype, but we’re getting many people who want to conceive or are concerned about themselves or their partners being infected. †One problem with private testing, health officials say, is that most commercial labs can’t offer all the tests needed to determine conclusively if a person has been exposed to the virus. Testing for Zika is surprisingly complex, and may require three tests to be sure of a result. One type is called a polymerase chain reaction, or P. C. R. designed to detect the active virus in blood and urine. The test is similar to those used for more common viruses like West Nile and influenza. But the P. C. R. test is reliable only if it’s used within a week or two of exposure. Since most people don’t have symptoms for Zika, many can’t pinpoint the date of exposure. While a positive P. C. R. test shows definitively that a person has Zika, a negative test does not mean a person is Zika free. If a P. C. R. test is negative, the next step is to test the blood sample for Zika antibodies. Antibody tests are not widely available and can also produce equivocal results. A negative antibody test means a person wasn’t exposed to Zika. But a positive result requires a third test to be sure the detected antibodies aren’t other viruses, such as dengue or chikungunya, both of which cause flulike symptoms and are present in Latin and South American countries. The third type, the plaque reduction neutralization test, or P. R. N. T. determines conclusively if a person was exposed to Zika. But the test is now done only by the C. D. C. and a limited number of local health department labs. For men, the story is even more complicated. Infected men can carry Zika in their semen for up to six months, but there is no approved test for screening semen. “Unfortunately, telling someone ‘you do not have Zika and never had Zika’ can be challenging. There are limitations to the best available tests,†said Dr. Jay K. Varma, the deputy commissioner for disease control at New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “There are situations in which we have to tell people, ‘We don’t know for sure whether or not you’ve been infected. We can’t conclusively say you were infected, and we can’t conclusively say you weren’t infected.’ That’s the limitation of the technology. †For Elizabeth 33, of Los Angeles, the lack of reliable testing for women who want to conceive has been disappointing. Ms. had her dream wedding in May on a beach in Puerto Rico, an active zone of Zika transmission, and didn’t realize the impact it would have on her path to pregnancy. A cancer survivor, she consulted a fertility specialist after returning home to Los Angeles to talk about getting pregnant. “My doctor just said, ‘No, you can’t. No, you have to wait,’†Ms. said. “It was kind of heartbreaking. †Some medical groups are pushing back against the C. D. C. guidelines. On Thursday, the American Society of Reproductive Medicine, a membership organization that represents fertility experts, recommended that men and women who may have been exposed to Zika consider being tested and embark on fertility treatments only if tests are negative. But while the new guidelines incorporate the option of testing, Dr. Kristin Bendikson, an assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California, said, “If you aren’t sure, your best option is to wait two months. †| 1 | [
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FMD187 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Is the USPS Intentionally Delaying Mail to Aid in Trump's Reelection? Claim summaries: U.S. Postal Service workers nationwide reported backlogs of letters and packages in summer 2020. But was the issue political?
contextual information: As U.S. President Donald Trump accelerated unsubstantiated attacks on the legitimacy of mail-in voting during the summer of 2020, numerous Snopes readers asked us to investigate whether the leader of the U.S. Postal Service was carrying out a nefarious scheme to help Trump win another presidential term. mail-in voting In late July and early August, various rumors surfaced regarding Louis DeJoy, a North Carolina businessman whom the Postal Service's governing board selected to run the agency in May 2020. For example, a viral tweet thread alleged: viral tweet My mailman just confirmed they have all officially been told to "SLOW THE MAIL DOWN," per trump's Postmaster General...He says that there is backed up mail ALL OVER THE FLOOR. He's never seen anything like it. It has ALREADY begun. But as long as we keep each other informed, we can beat their dirty tricks with INFORMATION. The claim's underlying notions were these: DeJoy was a political ally to the Republican president, and the new postmaster general had used his new authority to order Postal Service carriers and clerks to slow deliveries to help Trump win the 2020 November election. A backlog of ballots in the weeks or days before Election Day, critics of the president worried, could lead to votes going uncounted or deemed invalid due to state laws governing mail-in election deadlines. state laws What follows is an examination of federal documents obtained by Snopes including letters by members of Congress, campaign finance reports, and internal memos to Postal Service employees as well as interviews with postal union representatives and a Postal Service spokesperson, to determine the legitimacy of those questions. DeJoy could not be reached for an interview for this report. Note: Snopes not only investigated DeJoy's relationship to Trump, but his financial stake in companies that compete with the Postal Service to evaluate if, or to what extent, his past investments provided any evidence of a plan to undermine the Postal Service's longstanding mission: to provide mail service to every American, no matter their address or income. Yes. DeJoy, who lives in Greensboro, donated more than $1.2 million to the Trump campaign between August 2016 and February 2020, according to campaign finance reports compiled by the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). Federal Elections Commission It's unclear when or how DeJoy developed a relationship with Trump, and why he decided to support the billionaire's political pursuits. In a 2005 interview with Greensboro's local newspaper, DeJoy then-CEO of New Breed Logistics, a distribution and warehousing company appeared less supportive of Trump, saying his self-important attitude on the reality-TV show "The Apprentice" was destructive. 2005 interview The Apprentice "I'd be fired," DeJoy said, if he was a contestant. Nonetheless, by early 2017, DeJoy was among his state's top donors to Trump (see below for The Charlotte Observer's list that ranks DeJoy at No. 3 with a total contribution of $111,000). And by October of that year, DeJoy had become close enough to the president to host him and other donors for fundraiser at his Greensboro house. top donors Greensboro house. Also, by that time, DeJoy's wife, Aldona Wos, had been appointed by the president to serve as vice chair of a White House commission that oversees paid fellowships in federal offices, according to the couple's foundation website. foundation website In addition to his contributions to Trump's political campaigns specifically, DeJoy has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to Republican causes or campaigns over decades, the FEC records show. The Postal Service's governing board, a group appointed by the president with confirmation from the Senate, selected DeJoy as Postmaster General on May 6, 2020, after what it described as an extensive nationwide search for qualified candidates. At the time of that decision, Trump had appointed all six board members Chairman Robert Duncan, John Barger, Ron Bloom, Roman Martinez IV, Donald Moak, and William Zollars since the early days of his presidency. what it described Robert Duncan John Barger Ron Bloom Roman Martinez IV Donald Moak William Zollars DeJoy, who was in charge of fundraising for the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Charlotte when the board made its announcement, made the following donations since the start of 2020, according to filings from the FEC: National Republican Congressional Committee. National Republican Congressional Committee Facebook In sum, considering DeJoy's record of donations, as well as evidence of him hosting a Trump fundraiser at his Greensboro home in fall 2017, it is accurate to claim that the new postmaster general is a political ally to the Republican president. home The answer to this question is less clear. In summer 2020, the viral claim about DeJoy that he had directed carriers to delay mail to benefit Trump's reelection campaign (which we unpack below) took on another layer: that DeJoy had also allegedly invested $70 million of his own money in delivery companies that compete with the Postal Service. another layer allegedly That allegation, which we deemed true (see the explanation below), was particularly worrisome for critics of Trump and DeJoy, who believed the alleged holdings were more proof of the two leaders conspiring together this time in an attempt to privatize the Postal Service. critics Here's some context before we dive into DeJoy's personal assets: Conservative Republicans have long pushed to remove government from mail services that they believe should be left to the private commercial market. Since Trump took office, he has called the Postal Service "a joke" or Amazon's "delivery boy," considering its package rates, and has floated the idea of eventually privatizing the agency. a joke delivery boy eventually privatizing the agency Meanwhile, others fear dismantling the federally-mandated mail service would disproportionately affect people who live in rural areas, where private companies such as FedEx and UPS either charge higher rates or do no shipments at all. At the same time, the Postal Service which does not receive tax dollars for its operating expenses faces a worsening financial situation due to a 2006 congressional mandate that required the agency to prepay health care benefits of retirees, as well as a decline in first-class mail customers. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated those long-standing problems, forcing several post offices nationwide to completely close or scale back hours. congressional mandate coronavirus pandemic scale back hours For instance, on April 9, 2020, roughly one month before DeJoy was selected to lead the Postal Service, then-Postmaster General Megan Brennan said the agency was preparing for a $13 billion revenue shortfall due directly to COVID-19 and an additional $54.3 billion in losses over 10 years. Considering those projections, she said the agency could run out of cash this fiscal year or the end of September without federal intervention. (Brennan announced her retirement in October 2019, after more than 30 years with the agency.) April 9, 2020 announced her retirement The former Postal Service leader made those comments shortly after federal leaders negotiated a $2.2 trillion COVID-19 economic relief package, called the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, which, initially, included a $13 billion one-time boost for the mail service. But, purportedly at the urging of Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and aides to Trump, congressional leaders removed that provision from the stimulus package, and instead included a $10 billion loan that the Trump administration could leverage in its favor. Then, on July 29, 2020, The Washington Post reported that under DeJoy's leadership, the postal agency gave Mnuchin's office's proprietary information about the Postal Service's most lucrative private-sector contracts, such as Amazon, FedEx and UPS, in exchange for the loan money. economic relief package Steven Mnuchin The Washington Post By that time, Congressional leaders and Trump were battling yet again over another emergency relief package; Democrats proposed a $25 billion boost for the Postal Service but then lowered that amount to $10 billion during talks with Republicans. On Aug. 13, 2020, during an interview on Fox Business Network, the president said frankly the tug-and-pull over Postal Service funding was part of his administration's plan to try to make it harder for the agency to handle the expected surge in mail-in ballots in the November election. If we dont make a deal, that means they dont get the money, Trump told host Maria Bartiromo, referring to the false claim that Democrats are are proposing a universal mail-in voting system. That means they cant have universal mail-in voting; they just cant have it. told Which brings us to DeJoy's assets, and the above-mentioned claim that he had "$70 million invested in companies that compete with USPS." For the basis of this analysis, we considered private companies that provide shipping or distribution services, such as DHL, the FedEx Corporation, and United Parcel Service, Inc. (UPS), business competitors with the post office. For more than 30 years, DeJoy was the CEO of New Breed Logistics, a supply chain business that contracted with a variety of public and private companies, including the Postal Service. In 2014, XPO Logistics acquired DeJoy's company, and he served on the company's executive team or board of directors until May 2018. According to internal documents, which we obtained using the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's (SEC) database of company filings, XPO Logistics considered its competitors to include DHL, FedEx, UPS, and J.B. Hunt Transport Services. XPO Logistics DHL FedEx UPS J.B. Hunt Transport Services Aside from that evidence, which proved DeJoy's former company competed for business with organizations that also competed with the Postal Service, Snopes uncovered a letter from his wife, Wos, to a White House legal advisor on January 3, 2020, that listed her family's financial assets, known as "Attachment A." According to that list, the family had stock in companies including UPS, J.B. Hunt Transport Services, Inc., and XPO Logistics, Inc. letter She wrote the letter in response to a nomination by the Trump administration to serve as U.S. ambassador to Canada, and she said she would divest from all holdings in the document within 90 days of her confirmation. However, as of this writing, Wos had not been sworn into the position. The letter, which was available via the Office of Government Ethics, read: nomination Office of Government Ethics As of June 15, 2020, the day DeJoy assumed his role as postmaster general, The Washington Post reported the couple had between $30.1 million and $75.3 million in assets in Postal Service competitors or contractors. XPO Logistics represented the vast majority of those investments, and the couple's combined stake in UPS and trucking company J.B. Hunt, for examples, was roughly $265,000. The Washington Post reported On DeJoy's first day, the Senate's top Democrat, Charles Schumer of New York, said in letter to the Postal Service's board of governors' chairman: "[DeJoy's] financial interests in companies that have business ties with the Postal Services, as well as his extensive campaign fundraising efforts, raise questions" over his ethical conflicts of interest and partisan interests. letter By that point, a spokeswoman for DeJoy told journalists he had resigned as finance chair for the Republican National Convention, and would "comply with any financial divestitures that are required" for the new leadership position. told journalists In sum, reports proved the DeJoy family at one point had millions of dollars in assets in companies that compete or contract with the Postal Service, which lend credibility to the viral assertion. But the exact amount of such investments was unclear, and as of this writing, it was unknown if or to what extent the couple had divested any of the financial holdings. Not exactly but there is some truth to the claim. Upon our analysis, the rumor seems to have stemmed from a series of directives DeJoy gave Postal Service employees since he took over the agency. On his first day, for example, he addressed the agency in a video that alluded to impending changes under his leadership that aimed to create a "viable operating model," though he did not go into specifics. video Then, in mid-July, he issued several memos to employees, including a "New [Postmaster General's] expectations and plan." Those messages to all managers, clerks, and carriers nationwide appeared to be the source of the claim, and detailed changes to how and when the Postal Agency would deliver mail. A July 10, 2020, internal document to managers, which Snopes received from the American Postal Workers Union and refers to an "operational pivot" for the agency, said the following, for example: American Postal Workers Union The initial step in our pivot is targeted on transportation and the soaring costs we incur due to late trips and extra trips, which costs the organization somewhere around $200 million in added expenses. $200 million in added expenses The shifts are simple, but they will be challenging, as we seek to change our culture and move away from past practices previously used. But perhaps most relevant to the claim, the DeJoy-sponsored directives included instructions for employees to leave letters or packages at distribution centers if they delayed carriers from their routes contradicting previous rules for deliveries and said the Postal Service would no longer pay employees overtime to complete all mail deliveries. The July 10, 2020 memo said: contradicting One aspect of these changes that may be difficult for employees is that temporarily we may see mail left behind or mail on the workroom floor or docks [in Processing and Distribution Centers], which is not typical. We will address root causes of these delays and adjust the very next day. Any mail left behind must be properly reported, and employees should ensure this action is taken with integrity and accuracy. As we adjust to the ongoing pivot, which will have a number of phases, we know that operations will begin to run more efficiently and that delayed mail volumes will soon shrink significantly. We also considered a separate message to employees in July 2020 that said, under a new initiative, carriers in certain regions would not sort any mail during the morning and instead clock in, retrieve sorted mail from the previous day and limit time in the office as much as possible. Then, when they returned from the streets, they would sort all available mail for the next day. July 2020 The agency said the extra spending on employees' overtime or delivery trips had not improved "our performance scores," without going into detail on what that meant, and framed the changes as necessary steps to improve its financial position. A July 27, 2020, public statement from DeJoy said: said public statement Given our current situation, it is critical that the Postal Service take a fresh look at our operations and make necessary adjustments. We are highly focused on our public service mission to provide prompt, reliable, and efficient service to every person and business in this country, and to remain a part of the nations critical infrastructure. David Partenheimer, manager of media relations for the Postal Service, told Snopes that the postmaster general was not doing any media interviews regarding the initiatives, nor about the underlying claims of this report. In a roughly 760-word email to us, however, Partenheimer reemphasized what the agency viewed as the need for the adjustments, and said: "We acknowledge that temporary service impacts can occur as we redouble our efforts to conform to the current operating plans, but any such impacts will be monitored and temporary ... and corrected as appropriate." Soon after the directives, American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein told us in a phone interview that employees and customers across the country were noticing mail delays. In the Philadelphia region, for instance, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported situations where residents were going upwards of three weeks without receiving packages and letters, and postal union leaders and carriers said mail was piling up at offices, unscanned and unsorted. Mark Dimondstein employees Philadelphia Inquirer "When you ... say this is what you have to do as workers, then that's what we have to do [the change] runs counter to everything that the Postal Service is about, which is we treat the mail as our own; we get it to the customer as quickly as we can," Dimondstein said. "They've never seen mail backed up like this it's not being moved." That meant, while DeJoy had not told carriers to "slow the mail down" verbatim, he initiated changes to how and when carriers go about doing their job that the Postal Agency said would cause temporary mail delays. However, it would be inaccurate to assume all slow deliveries under DeJoy's leadership were a result of the July 2020 directives specifically, when they could also be linked to reduced hours for some post offices or other circumstances. Roughly three months before the 2020 presidential election, voting rights groups and outspoken critics to the president believed the new directives by DeJoy occurred at a convenient time for Trump: when a record number of Americans were preparing to vote by mail and avoid potential exposure to the COVID-19 coronavirus by casting ballots at in-person polling places. Specifically, they worried the new requirements for post office carriers and clerks would lead to backlogs of mail-in ballots and thus create challenges for elections officials who, in the majority of states, must invalidate ballots that reach them after Election Day even if they were postmarked before that date. Rep. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat from New York, for example, led colleagues in writing a letter to DeJoy on July 20, 2020, that said: Rep. Carolyn Maloney "While these changes [to mail service] in a normal year would be drastic, in a presidential election year when many states are relying heavily on absentee mail-in ballots, increases in mail delivery timing would impair the ability of ballots to be received and counted in a timely manner an unacceptable outcome for a free and fair election." We asked Dimondstein, APWU president, whether he believed the July directives by Postal Service leadership were somehow linked to a plan to cause mail service chaos before the November election and help Trump win reelection. He said: What we do know for truth is this administration is, in written record, proposing and planning to sell the post office to private corporations, i.e. privatizing...That was June 2018. We also know as a fact that ...that [there are] calls for reduced service, increased prices, and less workers' rights and benefits. So if you take those two things together, certainly if they're implemented, then they're going to cause delays in mail; they're going to cause service being undermined... written record This is a fact: [DeJoy is] what's considered a mega-donor of the Trump administration and the Republican party... Anything that undermines the Postal Service' [service to customers] ... has us concerned that it could be linked back to those who have an agenda to eliminate [the Postal Service]. But I can't sit here and tell you that that's a fact. Partenheimer said any notion that DeJoy made decisions for the Postal Service under directions from Trump (which include claims that he issued the July 2020 changes that resulted in delays to help Trump's re-election campaign) were "wholly misplaced and off-base." He said the Postal Service, typically an apolitical agency, remains committed to "fulfilling our role in the electoral process" in places where politicians allow voters to cast ballots by mail and "to delivering Election Mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards." He elaborated: "[Despite] any assertions to the contrary, we are not slowing down Election Mail or any other mail. Instead, we continue to employ a robust and proven process to ensure proper handling of all Election Mail consistent with our standards." Days later, he said in a statement to news media that certain deadlines concerning mail-in ballots, may be incompatible with the Postal Services delivery standards, especially if election officials dont pay more for first-class postage. To the extent that states choose to use the mail as part of their elections, they should do so in a manner that realistically reflects how the mail works, he said. news media Then, on Aug. 18, 2020, DeJoy issued a statement in which he said he would temporarily suspend initiatives "that have been raised as areas of concern as the nation prepares to hold an election in the midst of a devastating pandemic," including the controversial July 2020 directives that eliminated overtime and some delivery trips. The statement read: statement To avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail, I am suspending these initiatives until after the election is concluded. I want to assure all Americans of the following: In addition, effective Oct. 1, we will engage standby resources in all areas of our operations, including transportation, to satisfy any unforeseen demand. In sum, it was accurate to state that DeJoy, a political ally to Trump, ordered Postal Service workers to leave late-arriving mail at distribution centers for delivery the following day and eliminate extra trips in July 2020 a change the Postal Service was expecting to cause temporary mail delays although no verifiable evidence proved those directives were part of a deliberate scheme to disenfranchise voters in the November 2020 election. Additionally, there was no proof to show the changes aimed to help Trump win reelection. For those reasons, we rate this claim "Unproven." Ye Hee Lee, Michelle and Bogage, Jacob. "Postal Service Backlog Sparks Worries That Ballot Delivery Could Be Delayed In November".
The Washington Post. 30 July 2020. Naylor, Brian. "Pending Postal Service Changes Could Delay Mail And Deliveries, Advocates War".
NPR. 29 July 2020. Naylor, Brian. "Pending Postal Service Changes Could Delay Mail And Deliveries, Advocates War".
NPR. 29 July 2020. USPS Contributor. "What Is The History Behind The Unofficial USPS Motto?"
Postal Posts. 11 September 2015. USPS. "Postmaster General Statement On Operational Excellence And Financial Stability".
27 July 2020. Office of Inspector General. "U.S. Postal Service's Processing Network Optimization And Service Impacts".
USPS. 16 June 2020. Dawsey, Josh, et. al. "Top Republican Fundraiser And Trump Ally Named Postmaster General, Giving President New Influence Over Postal Service".
The Washington Post. 6 May 2020. Bogage, Jacob. "Postal Service Memos Detail 'Difficult' Changes, Including Slower Mail Delivery".
The Washington Post. 14 July 2020. Naylor, Brian. "New Postmaster General Is Top GOP Fundraiser".
NPR. 7 May 2020. Hummel, Marta. "New Breed CEO No One's 'Apprentice' Louis DeJoy Is A Big Supporter Of George W. Bush But Says The Clinton Era Was His Most Profitable".
News & Record. 7 January 2005. Heckman, Jory. "USPS Board Names Logistics Executive As New Postmaster General".
Federal News Network. 6 May 2020. Gordon, Aaron. "USPS Plans To Slash Hours At Many Post Offices, Hoping To Save A Buck".
Vice. 29 July 2020. Cohen, Rachel. "USPS Workers Concerned New Policies Will Pave The Way To Privatization".
The Intercept. 29 July 2020. Derysh, Igor. "With Trump Donor In Charge, Postal Service May Shut Locations And Cut Service Before Election Day".
Salon. 31 July 2020. Rushing, Ellie. "Mail Delays Are Frustrating Philly Residents, And A Short-Staffed Postal Service Is Struggling To Keep Up".
The Philadelphia Inquirer. 2 August 2020. Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney. "Maloney, King Lead Bipartisan NY Delegation Call For Immediate Help For The Postal Service".
28 April 2020. House Committee On Oversight And Reform. "Senior Democrats Request Information On Postal Service's Operational Changes".
20 July 2020. Bogage, Jacob. "Trump Ally Takes Over Crisis-Ridden Postal Service As Top Senate Democrat Demands Inquiry On Hiring".
The Washington Post. 15 June 2020. Murphy, Brian. "NC Businessman, A Big-Time GOP Donor, Is Tapped To Lead US Postal Service".
The News & Observer. 7 May 2020. Shear, Michael. "Mail Delays Fuel Concern Trump Is Undercutting Postal Service Ahead Of Voting".
The New York Times. 1 August 2020. Sargent, Greg. "Trump Just Told Us How Mail Delays Could Help Him Corrupt The Election".
The Washington Post. 31 July 2020. Reichmann, Deb, and Izaguirre, Anthony. "Trump Admits He's Blocking Postal Cash To Stop Mail-In Votes."
Associated Press. 14 August 2020. USPS. "Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Statement."
18 August 2020. This report was updated to include an interview by Trump with Fox Business Network on Aug. 13, 2020, where he acknowledged that he was intentionally blocking Postal Service funding in an attempt to make it harder for the agency to process mail-in ballots in the November presidential election. This report was updated to include a statement by DeJoy on Aug. 18, 2020, in which he announced the suspension of certain initiatives "to avoid even the appearance of any impact on election mail." | 2 | [
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FMD188 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Silicon Valley elites continue to push for a universal basic income in America that would give all citizens a guaranteed annual income from the government. [Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Y Combinator President Sam Altman are just two of the tech elites pushing for universal basic income in America. “We should make it so no one is worried about how they’re going to pay for a place to live, no one has to worry about how they’re going to have enough to eat,†said Altman in a speech at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco. “Just give people enough money to have a reasonable quality of life. †Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, also floated the idea in a Harvard commencement speech. “Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it’s time for our generation to define a new social contract,†said Zuckerberg during his speech. “We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to make sure everyone has a cushion to try new ideas. †Now Congressman Ro Khanna ( ) is getting onboard with the idea, pushing to introduce a $1 trillion expansion to the earned income tax credit that is currently available to families. “There’s a dignity to work,†Khanna told SiliconValley. com. “People, they don’t want a handout. They want to contribute to the economy. †Y Combinator has given 100 randomly selected families in Oakland an income of approximately $1, 500 a month. The organization GiveDirectly is currently attempting to raise money to launch a basic income study in Kenya. The group currently plans to provide a basic income to more than 26, 000 people, with some continuing to receive payments for up to 12 years. In January the country of Finland began giving 2, 000 Finnish citizens a monthly income of $600. This study is set to last up to two years. | 1 | [
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FMD189 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Donald Trump called the Atlantic City casino that he is so fond of, the Taj Mahal, the eighth wonder of the world. Now, the joint is shutting down likely for good. The shutdown comes after more than 100 days of striking on the part of union workers from the luxury hotel and casino. As negotiations went from difficult to impossible, it became official: there s no going back, and the Taj Mahal is closing.This really isn t surprising, considering that Trump is the king of bankruptcy, and has declared himself bankrupt four times. Despite his own ridiculous record, Trump told the Associated Press with regards to the casino s closing that there was no reason for it to close. However, he also says it will cost too much to re-open, so it s done.However, Trump s billionaire buddy, Carl Icahn, who operated the Taj Mahal, just might be using the cold months to do some negotiating in an effort to save the place and re-open it. This is a theory that the union president, Bob McDevitt, is running on. According to McDevitt, the re-opening after renovations and other improvements is a strong possibility. The Taj Mahal s closing will cost Atlantic City 3,000 jobs, bringing to the total to 11,000 jobs lost as a result of casino closings in the last two years. However, the workers who are on strike seem optimistic, despite the loss of their jobs and many admittedly being in financial trouble with the holidays coming. Tina Condos, who served cocktails at Trump s joint, says: We stood up to a billionaire and told him we wouldn t take it. I hope it gives him pause before he tries to come in and do this to anyone else. We feel like we succeeded here. Rose Hall, who took care of the rooms at the adjoining hotel, says: I gave most of my adult life to this place. I had to pay for health care out of my own pocket, and if you don t think that s expensive, you haven t looked. I lost my fiancee to cancer just when medical insurance came off the table for us.I m angry about what s happened, but I m not sad about what we did. I m at peace with myself. The last word on the situation from the point of view of the union workers president, Bob McDevitt is that the workers were in the midst of their Popeye moment: That s all I can stands; I can t stands no more. For the first time in 30 years, workers stood up to Carl Icahn and made him throw in the towel. Well, good on these workers, and may they find other means of employment soon.Featured image via Bobby Bank/Getty Images | 0 | [
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FMD190 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Traces of a deadly nerve agent that killed the estranged half-brother of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un were found on the clothes worn by the two women accused of the sensational murder, a Malaysian court was told on Thursday. Indonesian Siti Aisyah, 25, and Doan Thi Huong, 28, a Vietnamese, are charged with murdering Kim Jong Nam by smearing his face with VX, a chemical poison banned by the United Nations, at Kuala Lumpur airport on Feb. 13. A chemical weapons expert with the Malaysian government said his analysis showed traces of VX, its precursors and degradation products on the sleeves of a T-shirt worn by Huong, as well as VX degradation products on Siti Aisyah s sleeveless shirt. The presence of precursors and VX confirms the presence of VX itself, the expert, Raja Subramaniam, told the court outside the Malaysian capital. I also found degradation products of VX, which confirms the presence of VX. The testimony was used to back the prosecution s position that VX was used in the murder and was the sole cause of death, a scenario defense lawyers disputed this week. [nL4N1ME159] In response to a prosecution question, Raja agreed that VX could be applied on a bare palm and potentially have no effect on a person if washed off quickly enough. The lethality of VX depended on the dosage and where on the body it was applied, he added. The concentration required varies by a factor of 26, from the cheek, which is sensitive, to the palm, which is least sensitive, to have the same effect, Raja said. Raja said penetration of VX into the body is highest in areas with higher concentrations of blood, such as the head, neck, eyes and ears. On the least sensitive areas, such as the palm, where larger amounts of tissue and fat deposits block absorption, Raja said an individual would have up to 15 minutes to wash off the nerve poison with running water. If you decontaminate within 15 minutes, most likely no effect or delayed effect (from VX), Raja said, citing studies on human test subjects. The women have pleaded not guilty, saying they thought they were involved in some sort of prank for a reality TV show. They face the death penalty if convicted. [nL4N1MD1MK] The trial will resume on Monday. | 1 | [
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FMD191 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Will Banks Have To Report All Transactions Over $600 to IRS Under Biden Plan? Claim summaries: The American Families Plan has a reporting requirement for banks that has infuriated some.
contextual information: Announced in April 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden's American Families Plan is an ambitious proposal that aims to expand Americans' access to childcare and education and increase the number of women in the workforce. The plan intends to fund all of this through higher taxes on income earners and increased reporting requirements for banks that could potentially yield more tax revenue. These reporting requirements have drawn the ire of several banks that took issue with this less widely known section of the plan. A Facebook post by FNB Community Bank claimed: "The Biden administration has proposed requiring all community banks and other financial institutions to report to the IRS on all deposits and withdrawals through business and personal accounts worth more than $600, regardless of tax liability. This indiscriminate, comprehensive bank account reporting to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) could soon be enacted in Congress and will create an unacceptable invasion of privacy for our customers." Another screenshot shared by our readers expressed similar concerns: "The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) even began a campaign, calling on communities to send a letter to Biden to prevent this so-called intrusive proposal: 'Tell Congress: Don't Let IRS Invade My Privacy.' The Biden administration is proposing requiring financial institutions to report to the IRS all transactions of all business and personal accounts worth more than $600. This is an unprecedented invasion of privacy. In order to oppose this intrusive proposal, please send this letter to your representative and senators immediately." We looked up the proposal itself, and it does require more robust reporting of transactions across business and personal accounts. The proposal, which aims to go into effect after December 31, 2022, states: "This proposal would create a comprehensive financial account information reporting regime. Financial institutions would report data on financial accounts in an information return. The annual return will report gross inflows and outflows with a breakdown for physical cash, transactions with a foreign account, and transfers to and from another account with the same owner." This requirement would apply to all business and personal accounts from financial institutions, including bank, loan, and investment accounts, with the exception of accounts below a low de minimis gross flow threshold of $600 or fair market value of $600. We begin by explaining some of the more technical terms in this proposal. A "de minimis threshold" is broadly defined as the amount of a transaction that has such a small value that accounting for it would be unreasonable. We spoke to Visiting Assistant Professor of Tax Law at New York University, Nyamagaga Gondwe, who explained, "It is the amount below which the IRS would argue isn't worth investigating. It's the difference between your company giving you a $5 card to Subway versus traveling on a private jet on your company's dime. The latter is worth reporting." In this case, "gross flow" refers to the aggregate inflows and outflows of cash from bank accounts. In sum, the current proposal stipulates that an aggregate amount of less than $600 worth of cash flowing into and out of accounts is not worth reporting. The "fair market value" refers to the amount people are willing to pay for an asset in the open market. In this case, Gondwe argued, the use of the term could possibly refer to the changing market value of transactions exceeding $600 that may occur in foreign currency transactions. The ICBA claims that the proposal will make banks report "all transactions" above the limit, but this is misleading. While it is true that the IRS will have more information on cash flows above $600, that doesn't mean they will have all the information pertaining to all transactions. The Center for American Progress (CAP) points out that banks will only be providing aggregate numbers to the IRS after each year—gross inflow and gross outflow—and not individualized transaction information. This reporting requirement would also extend to peer-to-peer payment services like Venmo but wouldn't require people to report any additional information to the government. According to The Wall Street Journal, financial institutions must already report interest, dividends, and investment incomes to the IRS, and the IRS can obtain other information through audits. According to Marie Sapirie of Tax Notes, a publication focused on tax news, a parenthetical to the proposal indicates that there is some flexibility in raising the minimum account balance/inflow/outflow above $600. The Tax Notes report also states that the Treasury Department estimated this form of reporting would raise $463 billion over the 10-year budget window, making it the third-largest revenue raiser proposed in the budget. The aim is to target businesses outside of large corporations that carry out gross underreporting of their income, amounting to $166 billion per year. According to the proposal: "Requiring comprehensive information reporting on the inflows and outflows of financial accounts will increase the visibility of gross receipts and deductible expenses to the IRS. Increased visibility of business income will enhance the effectiveness of IRS enforcement measures and encourage voluntary compliance." Banks claim this would be an invasion of consumer privacy, with the ICBA saying it would allow the government to monitor account information. However, CAP analysts Seth Hanlon and Galen Hendricks argue, "Only the prior year's total inflow and total outflow would be reported on annual forms. No one would say that the IRS monitors you on your job because it receives a W-2 from your employer with your total wages every January." Another challenge not mentioned in the ICBA's consumer alert is the higher costs this reporting proposal may impose on banks. In May 2021, a coalition of banking associations wrote a letter to the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance, arguing that they already provide a lot of data to the IRS and that this would impose additional costs on their systems. The costs and other burdens imposed to collect and report account flow information would surpass the potential benefits from such a reporting scheme. New reporting would appear to require material development costs and process additions for financial institutions, as well as significant reconciliation and compliance burdens on impacted taxpayers. For example, reporting total gross receipts and disbursements would require a new reporting paradigm for depository institutions, necessitating system changes to collect the information. On the flipside, Sapirie wrote for Tax Notes, the benefits of such a reporting proposal may be difficult to realize: "Increasing the amount of information flowing into the IRS would not in itself lead to increased enforcement, and it might come with added challenges." Former IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti acknowledged that the IRS today cannot use all the information it already receives, and significant areas of noncompliance are barely addressed, so more reporting alone will not solve the problem. It would almost certainly have a deterrent effect for taxpayers contemplating evasion, but the extent of that effect is unclear, and it might be insufficient to justify the costs to financial institutions and the federal government of implementing such a large new reporting regime. But CAP's analysis argues that this will help prevent tax evasion while also providing more funding to enhance data security for consumers: "Additional funding would go to enhancing data security. Even at present, the IRS's data security is already much better than that of the financial industry, with only very rare and limited breaches compared to the exponentially larger data breaches from financial institutions. Second, the reporting of information flows only from financial institutions to the IRS and not in the other direction, as some earlier proposals had called for." The Biden administration's bank reporting proposal is a critical element of the Build Back Better agenda. It gives the IRS some visibility into opaque forms of income that disproportionately accrue to high-income individuals. Despite fearmongering from bank lobbies, the proposal protects taxpayers' privacy while simply requiring banks to provide basic, aggregated information about flows. That enables the IRS to select audits in a more efficient and equitable way so that the vast majority of taxpayers will be less likely to be audited. By deterring and helping catch tax cheats, the proposal raises substantial revenue for the Build Back Better agenda, which provides critical investments to increase economic opportunities for American families and communities. On October 12, 2021, Speaker Nancy Pelosi defended the proposal in response to a question from a reporter, who said, "[Banks] are concerned about the tracking of transactions that are greater than $600; Americans are starting to get worried about this. Do you think [this] is going to stay in the Reconciliation Bill?" "With all due respect, the plural of anecdote is not data," Pelosi said. "Yes, there are concerns that some people have. But if people are breaking the law and not paying their taxes, one way to track them is through the banking measure. I think $600—that's a negotiation that will go on as to what the amount is. But yes." Whatever the impact of this proposal is, it does require additional reporting of certain bank transactions, just not in the way the banks are portraying it. | 2 | [
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FMD192 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: What Is At Stake In This Election — Paul Craig Roberts ‹ › Since 2011, VNN has operated as part of the Veterans Today Network ; a group that operates over 50 plus media, information and service online sites for U.S. Military Veterans. The Clinton Crime Family. “Hillary is the Most Dangerous Presidential Aspirant in US History” By VNN on October 30, 2016 Hillary is the most recklessly dangerous presidential aspirant in US history,
by Stephen Lendman
The Bill and Hillary crime family long ago should have been held accountable for high crimes against peace and numerous others. Hillary is the most recklessly dangerous presidential aspirant in US history, supporting endless imperial wars and state terror, once saying “(w)hat do we have NATO for if not to defend our way of life.” There was never a war Hillary did not support – Crimes against Humanity She endorses first-strike nuclear weapons use, calling them peacekeeping deterrents, mindless of their power to destroy life on earth. She’s militantly anti-Russia, earlier compared the nation to Nazi Germany, Putin to Hitler, claiming “he doesn’t have a soul,” has revanchist aims, wanting Russian greatness restored – all of the above a perversion of truth, not to mention a pretext to wage war on Russia. The so-called Clinton Foundation is a suspected criminal enterprise, masquerading as a charitable NGO. It promotes Big Lies about “improving global health, increasing opportunity for women and girls, reducing childhood obesity and preventable diseases, (as well as) creating economic opportunity and growth…” Film producer Frank Huguenard believes Hillary Clinton faces impending federal racketeering charges under the 1970 Racketeering Influence and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO). Enacted to fight organized and white collar crime, racketeering is defined to include fraud, bribery, money laundering, embezzlement, drugs trafficking, murder, and various other offenses under the Federal criminal code (Title 18), even acts of terrorism. According to Huguenard, Obama-appointed FBI chief James Comey will recommend Attorney General Loretta Lynch treat “the Clinton Foundation (as) an ongoing criminal enterprise engaged in money laundering and soliciting bribes in exchange for political, policy and legislative favors to individuals, corporations and even governments both foreign and domestic.” Morning Joe Destroys Corrupt Clinton Foundation – “Total Corruption” Strong stuff if only partly true! Huguenard cites credible evidence, indicating the Clinton Foundation is largely a money laundering, influence peddling racket. Less than 10% of “tens of millions of dollars donated” went for charitable purposes, the rest for self-enrichment. “There is ample evidence already in the public record that the Clinton Foundation qualifies as a criminal enterprise and there’s no doubt that the FBI is privy to significantly more evidence than has already been made public,” said Huguenard. If Comey recommends Attorney General Lynch indict Hillary Clinton, it’s unlikely she’ll prosecute a woman she’s had close ties to for years. Bill Clinton appointed her US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York – serving from 1999 – 2001. From 2003 – 2005, she was a Wall Street controlled New York Federal Reserve Bank of New York board member – the mother bank most complicit with its member bank crooks. From 2002 – 2010, she was a Washington-headquartered Hogan & Hartson (H & H) law firm partner. Its New York-based partner Howard Topaz filed income tax returns for Bill and Hillary Clinton, beginning in 2004. In May 2004, H & H filed patent trademark documents for Denver-based MX Logic Inc., the computer software firm responsible for developing email encryption technology used to manage Hillary’s private email server, beginning in July 2013. Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton According to Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton, if H & H (now Hogan Lovells following a 2010 merger) “represented the Clintons on tax matters,” Lynch is responsible for disclosing any involvement she may have had, direct or indirect. In April 2008 during Hillary’s first presidential campaign, The American Lawyer called H & H one of her largest legal industry supporters. Partner Christine Varney was chief counsel to the Clinton/Gore 1992 campaign. The ties between H & H, Lynch and the Clintons are longstanding. In November 2014, Obama announced her appointment as attorney general, succeeding Eric Holder, effective April 27, 2015 after Senate confirmation. It’s hard imagining her biting a hand contributing greatly to her career advancement. Key for Clinton is how much more of her dark side becomes public knowledge besides what’s already known. If enough despite Lynch declining to indict and supportive media scoundrels downplaying or whitewashing her offenses, the Democratic (sic) National Committee (DNC) might be forced to jettison her as damaged goods. She’d be red meat for Trump to take full advantage of in the fall campaign. Would Bernie Sanders party bosses don’t want become Democrat standard bearer in July? Or will Joe Biden or another high-profile party member perhaps be chosen as a late-stage establishment nominee, a brokered convention manipulating things? America’s political system is too debauched to fix. Duopoly power eliminates governance of, by and for everyone equitably. Republicans and Democrats are two sides of the same coin – special interests served exclusively, ordinary people betrayed, the same outcome every electoral cycle. Whoever succeeds Obama, likely worse than ever governance will follow. The greatest concern is preventing possible WW III. Clinton’s rage for endless wars, along with her Sino/Russian hostility makes the unthinkable possible. Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at . His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html . Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
A historical milestone need not come at the expense of America. | 0 | [
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FMD193 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: WASHINGTON — President Trump’s executive order on immigration has prompted a constitutional showdown that could leave a mark on the law for generations and seems likely to end in a landmark Supreme Court decision. A ruling by the court on Mr. Trump’s travel ban on seven predominantly Muslim countries could help answer some crucial legal questions: How much independent constitutional authority does the president have over immigration, and how much power has Congress given him? The likely answer to both questions: a lot. But other parts of the Constitution may temper or defeat that power. Among them are the due process and equal protection clauses and the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion. Here is a look at the leading arguments in the case. Many trial judges around the country have blocked aspects of Mr. Trump’s executive order. But none have issued an order as broad as the one by Judge James Robart, a federal judge in Seattle, who blocked the key parts of the executive order, which had suspended travel from the seven countries and limited the nation’s refugee program. The case is now before the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco. That court on Saturday declined to issue an immediate stay of Judge Robart’s order, but it indicated that it would weigh in soon after additional briefs were filed, with the last one due Monday afternoon. After it rules, an appeal to the Supreme Court seems likely. Judge Robart’s brisk ruling contained almost no reasoning. By contrast, Judge Nathaniel M. Gorton, of the Federal District Court in Boston, issued a decision on Friday refusing to block the program and discussing the legal arguments in detail. Judge Gorton also sketched out the broader picture. “The rich immigrant history of the United States has long been a source of strength and pride in this country,†Judge Gorton wrote. “Conversely, the public interest in safety and security in this dangerous world is strong as well. †The balance, he wrote, tipped in favor of Mr. Trump. Article II of the Constitution confers authority on the president, the Supreme Court has said, to conduct foreign affairs and address immigration. In their brief to Judge Robart, lawyers for Washington State, one of the two plaintiffs, along with the State of Minnesota, said there were constitutional checks on these powers. “While courts generally give more latitude to the political branches in the immigration context, this does not mean that the political branches can act with impunity,†the brief said. “Federal courts,†the brief said, “have no more sacred role than protecting marginalized groups against irrational, discriminatory conduct. †In the Ninth Circuit, the Trump administration said judges were to decide cases involving national security. “Unlike the president,†the administration’s brief said, “courts do not have access to classified information about the threat posed by terrorist organizations operating in particular nations, the efforts of those organizations to infiltrate the United States, or gaps in the vetting process. †Noah G. Purcell, the solicitor general of Washington State, appeared to concede in court that there were areas in which Mr. Trump was entitled to act. But he asked the court to protect people whose lives had been changed by Mr. Trump’s order in a flash. “The focus of our claim,†he said, “is on people who have been here and have, overnight, lost the right to travel, lost the right to visit their families, lost the right to go perform research, lost the right to go speak at conferences around the world. And also people who had lived here for a long time and happened to be overseas at the time of this order, which came with no warning whatsoever, and suddenly lost the right to return to the United States. †On Friday, defending Mr. Trump’s executive order in a Seattle courtroom, Michelle Bennett, a Justice Department lawyer, cited Youngstown Sheet Tube Co. v. Sawyer, a 1952 decision in which the Supreme Court rejected President Harry S. Truman’s assertion that he had the authority to seize steel mills during the Korean War. The most famous part of the decision is a concurrence from Justice Robert H. Jackson, which set out a framework for considering clashes between presidential power and congressional authority. The president has the most power when he acts with congressional authorization, Justice Jackson said, and an intermediate amount when Congress is silent. The president’s power is at its “lowest ebb,†Justice Jackson wrote, when Congress has forbidden a particular action. Truman’s actions fell into the third category, Justice Jackson wrote. Ms. Bennett, by contrast, said Mr. Trump’s order was in the first category. “Here we have the president acting pursuant to power that Congress gave him, which means, under the Youngstown steel seizure case, he’s acting at the apex of his power,†she said. A key part of immigration law does give the president broad power. It says, “Whenever the president finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate. †But another part of the law forbids discrimination “because of the person’s race, sex, nationality, place of birth or place of residence,†but only “in the issuance of an immigrant visa. †The Trump administration argues that the power to bar entry, the subject of the first law, is broader than the limits on issuing visas. Lawyers for Washington State have said that the executive order violates the First Amendment’s prohibition against government establishment of religion because its provisions on the refugee program favor minority religions. “President Trump and his advisers have made clear that the very purpose of this order is to tilt the scales in favor of Christian refugees at the expense of Muslims,†they wrote in their brief to Judge Robart. The Trump administration urged the Ninth Circuit to reject arguments based on religious discrimination, even though Mr. Trump has said he meant to favor Christian refugees. Judicial consideration of the president’s motives, the brief said, would violate the separation of powers. “The more searching inquiry envisioned by the states would create substantial problems, by permitting probing of the president’s subjective motive in issuing the order,†the brief said. The states challenging the order face the initial hurdle of demonstrating that they have suffered the sort of direct and concrete harm that gives them standing to sue. Judge Robart ruled that they did, relying on a decision from the federal appeals court in New Orleans, which said Texas could sue to challenge President Barack Obama’s plan to defer the deportation of millions of unauthorized immigrants and allow them to work. “The executive order adversely affects the states’ residents in areas of employment, education, business, family relations and freedom to travel,†Judge Robart wrote. He said the states had been hurt because the order affected their public universities and their tax bases. In its Ninth Circuit brief, the Trump administration called the states’ asserted injuries “attenuated and speculative†and did not address the Texas decision. In court in Seattle on Friday, Ms. Bennett said the government disagreed with the Texas ruling. | 1 | [
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FMD194 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: By Marco Torres A new study has confirmed what many activists and environmental researchers have been stating for years. Hydroelectric power is not clean at all. In fact, Harvard University has found... | 0 | [
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FMD195 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Was JFK Jr. a U.S. Senate Frontrunner Before His 'Suspicious' Plane Crash? Claim summaries: John F. Kennedy Jr. was not a candidate in New York's U.S. Senate race before dying in a July 1999 plane crash, clearing the way for Hillary Clinton to win the seat.
contextual information: John F. Kennedy Jr. was a popular public figure from his childhood until he died in a plane crash at the age of 38 in 1999. While there is never a shortage of conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedys, or for that matter, the Clintons, an unfounded rumor circulating in political circles during the 2016 presidential election claimed that John-John was on the cusp of a successful U.S. Senate bid until Hillary Clinton threw her hat in the ring, with the insinuation that Kennedy was killed to clear the way for her candidacy. There is no evidence that Kennedy had definitively decided to stage a U.S. Senate run in 1999 in the face of Hillary Clinton's similar interest in the New York seat. Days after Kennedy's death on July 16, 1999, the New York Daily News ran a story quoting two unnamed friends of Kennedy who stated that he had considered running for the seat about to be vacated by retiring Senator Daniel Moynihan but had already dropped the idea when Hillary Clinton also expressed interest in it. Earlier that year, in one of the best-kept secrets in state politics, friends confirmed that Kennedy had considered seeking the seat of retiring Sen. Daniel Moynihan in 2000. The idea became moot once First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton signaled her interest in running, but the two friends said they expected the son of the slain President would eventually jump into politics as a candidate. One friend, who expected Kennedy to seek office in the "foreseeable future," also spoke of a conversation with Kennedy earlier that year about the Moynihan seat. "I asked him if he was casually thinking about it or if he was serious. He sort of said, 'I'm not sure. Let me think about it.' But the second friend called Kennedy's interest 'pretty serious,' adding, 'I think he was intrigued by the idea... Would he have decided in the end to go for it? I don't know. But he was clearly thinking about it. He talked to a few people about it. Then the Hillary thing ended it pretty quickly.' Clinton won the Senate election on November 7, 2000, beating Republican Rick Lazio more than a year after Kennedy Jr. was killed along with his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, 33, and his sister-in-law, Lauren G. Bessette, 34, in the crash of the single-engine plane he was flying to Martha's Vineyard. The implication that the Clintons had somehow engineered the death of Kennedy Jr. to prevent him from challenging her in her first bid for elective office is contradicted by the National Transportation Safety Board's (NTSB) report on the accident, which assigned the probable cause to pilot error. The probable cause of the accident, as stated in the report, is the pilot's failure to maintain control of the airplane during a descent over water at night, which was a result of spatial disorientation. Factors in the accident included haze and the dark night. There was nothing suspicious about the circumstances of the crash. Kennedy was an inexperienced pilot, and he chose to take his plane up despite questionable weather that caused haze to obscure the view of the horizon. The New York Times reported in 2000 that one of his instructors had offered to accompany him on the flight, but he declined. Kennedy only had about 72 flying hours logged without an instructor at the time of the accident. Weather reports on the night of the crash, July 16, 1999, cited haze or mist and visibility as low as four miles. Pilots who flew over the Cape Cod-Martha's Vineyard area that night reported serious haze; one told investigators he had flown over Martha's Vineyard and thought there was a power failure on the island because he could not see any lights. It's not inconceivable that the Kennedy family at one time eyed the seat being vacated by Moynihan. JFK Jr.'s death seemed to put a final nail in the coffin of the Kennedy myth known as "Camelot" and the family's political star power, but a July 25, 1999, Washington Post article on the family's future political prospects suggested that his cousin, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (who did not "conveniently" die), had been approached about entering the New York senatorial race. But there are suggestions among liberal Democrats that it is a fervent desire that Joseph P. Kennedy II's brother Robert F. Kennedy Jr., 45, might become a candidate. The environmental lawyer from the Hudson River Valley has some of the electricity of his martyred father and has said in the past that he could be interested in being governor of New York. According to one Kennedy insider, leading Democrats unsuccessfully approached RFK Jr. to run for the Senate seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan. John Kennedy Jr. had won the nation's heart when, at two years old, he was seen on camera saluting his father's coffin during the nationally televised funeral procession after President Kennedy's November 1963 assassination. Nicknamed John-John, he grew up handsome and charismatic and was thus seen as a potential heir to the family's glory days of political influence and celebrity. While his death was untimely and no doubt a tragedy, it was ruled an accident. And though Kennedy may have been personally popular and polled well, it is misleading to describe him as a "frontrunner" in a Senate race in which he was never actually a candidate. | 0 | [
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FMD196 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Tune in to the Alternate Current Radio Network (ACR) for this week s broadcast of The Boiler Room . Join us for uncensored, uninterruptible talk radio, custom-made for barfly philosophers, misguided moralists, masochists, street corner evangelists, media-maniacs, savants, political animals and otherwise lovable rascals.Join ACR hosts Hesher and Spore alongside Patrick Henningsen, Editor of 21WIRE, Daniel Spaulding from Soul of the East, FunkSoul (21WIRE & ACR contributor) and Randy J (21WIRE & ACR contributor), for the hundred and twenty-third episode of BOILER ROOM. Turn it up, tune in and hang with the ACR Brain-Trust for this weeks boil-downs and analysis and the usual gnashing of the teeth of the political animals in the social reject club.Direct Download Episode #123Please like and share the program and visit our donate page to get involved! Reference Links, for your consideration and research: | 0 | [
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FMD197 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: On the surface, this seems like such a simple request it s not! After digging and finding the TRUE agenda on the climate change scam, it s very clear that this entire thing is an effort to redistribute wealth around the world. Don t believe us? Just check out the comments from the people attending the Paris Climate Summit:For many years the public at large has been spoonfed the idea that Global Warming Climate Change, is caused by man s excessive release of carbon into the atmosphere. And that the solution to the Climate crisis was to decrease the production of said gas.Over the past several years the Global Warming fanatics have changed their tune. Many of us in the new media have been warning about their true motives for year.Now, instead of the climate crisis being caused by carbon emissions, it is being caused by inequality.On Monday, during a press conference at the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Paris, Ms. Camille Risler, a representative of the Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development (APWLD) which is an organization listed as an official consultant to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, stated that the cause of Climate Change is the unequal distribution of wealth, carbon, and power: This is the press conference of the Women and (unintelligible) constituency. It is one of the nine official constituencies of the UNFCCC, and we are composed of 15 women s rights and feminist organizations from all around the world. So I m going to begin with kind of an overview of our positions and then I will give the floor over to my colleagues that will go more into details of each section of negotiations.I m Camille Risler. I m from France but I m living in Thailand. I m working for a feminist network that is called Asia Pacific Forum on Women, Law and Development and I m working for the Climate Justice Program.So what we want to highlight here is that Climate Change is a clear symptom of an unequal and unjust world.So if we are to address the Climate crisis we need to challenge the structural causes of the crisis which lies on unequal distribution of wealth, of carbon, and of power. Whether it s political power, economic power, or even military power. Ms. Risler goes on to say that the solution to the Climate crisis is to create more just and equitable economies .Roughly translated that means an economy based along the lines of Socialism and Communism. Because now, according to the Climate preachers, nothing is more dangerous to the planet than a free market economy, individual free will, and inequality. Not even Islamic Terrorists.You can view the entire press conference HEREPope Francis has urged Christians to make caring for the environment a core part of their faith as he called for concerted action against ecological degradation and climate change. God gave us a bountiful garden, but we have turned it into a polluted wasteland of debris, desolation and filth, Francis said in a document released to coincide with the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation. He proposed adding care for the natural world to the seven works of mercy Catholics are meant to perform.Francis has placed environmental causes at the heart of his papacy, denouncing what he sees as a throwaway consumer culture, financial greed and rampant, market-driven economies. Economics and politics, society and culture cannot be dominated by thinking only of the short-term and immediate financial or electoral gains, he said, suggesting more ambitious action might be needed to curb climate change.Francis welcomed the Paris accord, but urged voters everywhere to make sure their governments did not backtrack. It is up to citizens to insist that this happen, and indeed to advocate for even more ambitious goals, he said.He asked the world s 1 billion Roman Catholics to embrace a green agenda, saying defence of the environment should be added to the works of mercy that provide believers with guiding principles and duties they are meant to follow. | 0 | [
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FMD198 | Task: Please determine whether the claim is 0. False, 1. True, or 2. Not Enough Information (NEI) based on contextual information, and provide an appropriate explanation.
The answer need to use the following format:
Prediction: [0. False, 1. True, or 2. NEI]
Explanation: [Explain why the above prediction was made]
Claim: Russian Star Has Testicles Stolen Claim summaries: Rumor: A Russian actor was drugged and his testicles stolen by an attractive stranger.
contextual information: Claim: A Russian man was drugged and his testicles stolen by an attractive stranger. PROBABLY Example: [Collected via e-mail, February 2015] There appears to be a new version of the kidney robbery articlegoing around. kidney robbery Now the Daily Mail in the UK has just published an article about a famousRussian actor (but not showing his face, but showing his name) beingdrugged and having his testicles stolen: Origins: On 26 February 2015, the British newspaper the Daily Mail published an article titled "Married TV actor wakes up to find his testicles have been STOLEN after he is drugged in Russian bar by attractive blonde working for organ traffickers." As the example quoted above observed, the article bore many hallmarks of long-circulating urban legends involving organ theft (often as the result article urban legends of an illicit or otherwise immoral sexual encounter). According to the article, 30-year-old married Russian celebrity Dmitry Nikolaev met a blonde stranger in a bar in Moscow. After he (presumably) pursued an extramarital encounter with the woman, he awoke to unexplained and severe pain in the area of his groin and was later informed by doctors that his testicles had been removed (without his knowledge or consent). Moreover, the site claimed, the surgical procedure was performed by a skilled individual and likely resulted from a larger organized crime outfit trafficking in human organs. Neither the Daily Mail nor the Russian news source to which it referred provided any date, specific location, or other verifiable details of the alleged crime. The narrative stated that the man was transported to a hospital and only learned after an examination that his testicles had been removed, which does not sound particularly likely given even a layperson's ability to detect whether or not he currently possesses testes. It's possible that the news source intended to imply the man's testicles were replaced with prosthetics, but the nature of his injury was not detailed: referred They kissed and had some more beer and after that the actor remembers nothing,' said a police source. He woke up next day at a bus stop, feeling acute pain, and with blood on his trousers. Rushed to hospital, he was told that his testicles had been removed and that 'it was done like proper surgery by someone with a medical education'. The operation was conducted in a 'skillful way', said police, who believe his beer was spiked by an unknown drug. As discussed elsewhere on this site, the usefulness of such a donation (willing or not) is debatable. It's highly unlikely a crime such as the one described truly constitutes a profit center for gangs in any country, as testicles are neither a commonly purchased medical commodity nor a commonly transplanted organ, and organs of any description are delicate and difficult to transport. donation Finally, the manner in which the site partially obscured the purported victim's identity was atypical and suspicious. While the man's face was pixelated, his full name, age, and general location were utilized by the Russian news outlet from which the Daily Mail sourced the story. The translated article from which the claims arose concluded with a claim that the man's wife remained ignorant of his experience, which is rather implausible given that his full name and other identifying details were released by the media: Interestingly, the wife of the injured man is still convinced that her husband was in the hospital because of surgery on the genitals caused by a serious illness. Last updated: 26 February 2015 | 0 | [
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FMD199 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Sinjar, Iraq (CNN) Plumes of smoke blackened the sky above Sinjar as Kurdish forces, backed by intense coalition air support, tried Thursday to take back the northern Iraqi town from ISIS .
The operation includes up to 7,500 Peshmergas -- the Kurdish military force -- who are attacking the city from three sides to take control of supply routes, according to the Kurdish Region Security Council.
CNN senior international correspondent Nick Paton Walsh is with one of the three fronts of fighters who launched their liberation operation early Thursday morning against a backdrop of airstrikes.
The U.S.-backed coalition Operation Inherent Resolve said coalition aircraft have conducted more than 250 airstrikes across northern Iraq in the last month. The strikes have reportedly destroyed ISIS fighting positions, command and control facilities, weapon storage facilities, improvised explosive device factories, and staging areas.
"A pitch-black sky was lit up by a lot of coalition airstrikes following days of bombing. At dawn, a large procession of Peshmerga started snaking their way through Sinjar mountain and behind it," Paton Walsh said.
The coalition strikes were pounding the strategic city itself, he said, with four different columns of smoke darkening the horizon above: "The strikes on Sinjar almost make the sky over it look black. There's a vast amount of air power -- more intense than the fight for Kobani."
According to a Pentagon spokesman, U.S. troops are in the field calling in airstrikes from positions in Sinjar.
"The Peshmerga forces are carrying this out with, as you said, the support of coalition advisers. There are U.S. personnel. My understanding is there are coalition advisers from other countries as well participating," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook told reporters.
He added: "Most of those folks as I understand it are behind the front lines advising and working directly with Peshmerga commanders. There are some advisers who are on Sinjar mountain assisting in the selection of airstrike targets."
Late Thursday, the Kurdish Region Security Council released a statement detailing the day's operations. It reported that more than 150 square kilometers (60 square miles) had been retaken from ISIS.
"Peshmerga units will continue from three fronts to set up defensive positions, allowing engineering teams to clear the heavily mined area. Peshmerga forces have already achieved two of three strategic goals, dealing a significant blow to ISIL morals," it read, using an alternative acronym for ISIS. "The final objective -- to enter and clear the city -- will be underway soon."
Reclaiming Sinjar is one big step toward dividing the "caliphate" that ISIS claims it is establishing across the region.
The artery that passes through the town links the Iraqi city of Mosul -- ISIS' prized possession -- with cities it holds in Syria.
Paton Walsh said the highway was a key goal for the Kurdish fighters, who were equipped with vehicles ranging from pickup trucks to armored Humvees.
"One of the targets of this offensive is the highway that runs through Sinjar, known as Route No. 47 to many. Now that's very important, not only of course because of what it does to liberate the population of Sinjar -- those who've not fled ISIS rule having endured it now for over a year -- but also because it is a vital supply route towards Mosul, another key target of any future coalition offensive," he said.
About 1.5 million people still live in Mosul, where prices are rising and activists report hunger.
The U.S.-backed coalition said "Operation Free Sinjar" was aimed at clearing ISIS from Sinjar and seizing portions of Highway 47.
"By controlling Highway 47, which is used by Da'ish to transport weapons, fighters, illicit oil, and other commodities that fund their operations, the Coalition intends to increase pressure on Da'ish and isolate their components from each other," it said in a statement. Da'ish is the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
"This operation will degrade Da'ish's resupply efforts, disrupt funding to the terrorist group's operations, stem the flow of Da'ish fighters into Iraq, and further isolate Mosul from Ar Raqqah," said coalition spokesman Col. Christopher C. Garver. The Syrian city of Ar Raqqah, also spelled Raqqa, is ISIS' de facto capital.
By Thursday afternoon, the Kurdish fighters pushing toward Sinjar had taken control of a number of villages near the Iraqi town.
"Along that highway there's one village, Kabara, that's been repeatedly hammered by airstrikes in the past hour or so and a lot of Kurdish forces have managed to move into the main road," Paton Walsh said. Tweets by Kurdish fighters showed that almost all the vehicles in the village had been "burned to a crisp."
Before the push to retake Sinjar began, Kurdish fighters said they knew it wouldn't be easy.
Peshmerga commanders estimate some 600 ISIS fighters are inside Sinjar, with recent reinforcements boosting the militants' numbers. The Kurdish fighters believe they will encounter hundreds of landmines and booby traps.
Paton Walsh said it was unclear how ISIS would respond to the offensive.
"As you've seen in the past, sometimes ISIS have decided that certain fights are not worth them staying for the long haul, and I think there is a certain amount of manpower and mass here -- and also coalition air power, which we heard from the top of Mount Sinjar, during a very dark, cold night yesterday, pound targets consistently around that particular city."
Paton Walsh said there had been a "substantial uptick" in airstrikes on Sinjar in the days leading up to the launch of the offensive.
Speaking to CNN's Fareed Zakaria, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he's confident Sinjar will fall, but was reluctant to say when.
"But I am convinced that Sinjar will be liberated, as we have liberated Tikrit. And currently the Iraqi forces are moving on Ramadi," he said.
"President Obama, at the very beginning, said we're going to degrade and defeat ISIL. We're going to stabilize the countries in the region -- Jordan, Lebanon, work with Turkey -- and we are going to seek a political settlement," he said. "That is exactly the strategy today and it is working -- to a degree -- not as fast as we would like, perhaps, but we are making gains."
"I think the issue will be for ISIS, given the nature of the offensive -- from three different directions -- quite what their best strategy is: to sit here and try and symbolically hold it as long as they can, or pull out," Paton Walsh said.
"ISIS of course may also be feeling pressure on other fronts. There's been a lot of talk about the possibility of a move against Ramadi for the past few months.
"We've not seen any evidence of that at this particular stage but there is a genuine feeling that maybe the coalition -- after months of paralysis, months of calm -- might also slowly be beginning to get some kind of harmony or synchronicity here in terms of moving on separate fronts against ISIS and perhaps stretching what resources they have a little bit thinner."
A coalition spokesman in Baghdad told reporters later Thursday that Iraqi security forces had begun to encircle Ramadi, with support from coalition air power.
ISIS fighters swept into Ramadi in May, tightening control of Iraq's Anbar province and gaining a base of operations about 110 kilometers (70 miles) away from the capital, Baghdad.
Paton Walsh said the operation to retake Sinjar was important symbolically.
"The Peshmerga here want to show that they can be united with coalition air power, with Western military advisers, who we understand are in their midst here as well, to launch a successful -- and they hope brief -- offensive towards this town, but also strategically, because of what Sinjar could mean in the future, down the line."
He said the Kurdish fighters appeared optimistic they would take back Sinjar.
"I think the hope amongst the Peshmerga and the coalition is that the level of manpower they have here, their dominance in the skies, means potentially this could be over in days," he said. "But with a town of this size which had tens of thousands living in it before -- which ISIS has had months to prepare for an onslaught against -- this could turn out to be trickier than some are hoping."
Retired Lt. Col. Rick Francona, a CNN military analyst, agreed that the fight in Sinjar would be slow going.
"They're going to have to slog through this house by house, street by street," he said. "It's going to be very difficult."
More than a year under ISIS
Since then, Sinjar has become a chaotic jumble of demolished buildings held by ISIS fighters.
"There is no reliable estimate as to how many civilians still live inside of Sinjar," Paton Walsh said.
"You can tell how many seem to have fled, from the tents the Yazidis have erected up around Mount Sinjar -- even in this bitter cold -- still enduring a life here, wanting to be near their hometown. But that is the key concern obviously in situations like this. Many will be fearing that the amount of lead-up time has given ISIS adequate ability to ensure the civilian population are in place to assist them in protecting themselves."
The Peshmerga said they wanted to establish a buffer zone to protect the civilian population, but it was not entirely clear how that would physically work, Paton Walsh said.
With the operation to retake the town looming, some 5,000 Yazidi fighters were mobilized under the command of the Kurdish Peshmerga. Most are farmers; a very few have military experience.
The Yazidis are one of the world's smallest and oldest monotheistic religious minorities. Their religion is considered a pre-Islamic sect that draws from Christianity, Judaism and the ancient monotheistic religion of Zoroastrianism. In ISIS' eyes, they're infidels.
The Yazidis and Kurds have lived side by side for thousands of years and are friendly neighbors.
The Kurds are Sunni Muslims, who have their own unique language and culture. They occupy an autonomous region in northern Iraq, but the Kurdish homeland also covers portions of Iran, Turkey, Armenia and Syria. | 1 | [
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