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FMD2300 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A bombing killed at least 20 people on Saturday during an auction at a vegetable market in a mostly Shiite town in northwestern Pakistan, ending a long lull in militant violence there, officials said. At least 43 people were wounded in the morning bombing in Parachinar, capital of the Kurram tribal region, which borders Afghanistan. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack. “I was in my shop when a deafening blast shook the market,†a Parachinar resident, Hussain Ali Tori, said by telephone. “I have seen dozens of shattered bodies lying on the ground. Some were dead, and many were crying for help. †A Taliban spokesman, Muhammad Khurasani, said a suicide bomber had carried out the attack, but a Kurram official, Nasrullah Khan, said the bomb appeared to have been planted in a crate. “The place is always crowded,†said Mr. Khan, a deputy administrator. Parachinar has been a center of resistance to the Taliban, specifically the Haqqani network, which is one of the movement’s most violent factions, and it has been the site of numerous bombings in the past. But there had been none since December 2015, when another market bombing killed 23 people. On Saturday, local television news channels broadcast images of people crying for help as others moved through scattered crates of tomatoes to help the wounded. A senior health official in Kurram, Dr. Sabir Hussain, said that many of the wounded were in critical condition and that the death toll could rise. The blast was the first terrorist attack of 2017 in Pakistan, which has been racked by Taliban violence in recent years. Militant attacks have decreased significantly since the military began an offensive in North Waziristan, a focal point for Taliban and foreign militants, in 2014. Much of the militant violence last year was concentrated in the southwestern province of Baluchistan. | 1 | [
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FMD2301 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: You are here: Home / US / BRUTAL Meme Exposes How Government REALLY Works BRUTAL Meme Exposes How Government REALLY Works October 26, 2016 Pinterest
Derrick Wilburn writes that if ever there was a governmental agency gone rogue it’s the Obama Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA has now become a faux-legislative body and through its vast overreach the federal government has assumed control over huge swaths of America, American industry and put tens if not hundreds of thousands of Americans out of work.
Last year the EPA passed a rule granting itself power over puddles by naming them wetlands which fall under federal jurisdiction. A blatant move to allow environmental groups to sue developers, halt natural resource exploration or any other project they’d like to stop.
Now it’s happening again.
When farmers plow their land in preparation for planting it produces grooves in the earth called “furrows.” These furrows are bordered on each side by small ridges of dirt.
The EPA, in its insatiable appetite for control via new regulatory powers, has come up with another term for furrows: “ mini mountain ranges .” You read correctly. This entirely absurd distinction is extremely important because, like wetlands, guess who has control over the nation’s mountain ranges? The feds. This ridiculous name –mini mountain ranges– could be enough for the federal government to seize control over private land use decisions by U.S. farmers.
This nonsense has come to light as a result of a U.S. Senate committee report . “A Senate Report on the Expansion of Jurisdiction Claimed by the Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency under the Clean Water Act” was released September 20th. America’s two largest environmental regulation agencies, the EPA and U.S. Army Corps (that’s pronounced “ core ”, by the way) of Engineers proposed this regulatory rule.
The rule uses the Clean Water Act to give the two federal agencies expanded jurisdiction over private land use decisions.
Like any good rogue body the EPA is not responding to inquiries about it activities and is instead referring questions to the Department of Justice. To no one’s surprise, DOJ is also refusing to comment claiming that because the new rule is being challenged in court it cannot. Sort of like a guy claiming he’s not going to publicly release tax returns while the subject of a federal audit.
Confused by its title many mistakenly presume the Army Corps of Engineers is in some ways a military or para-military body. Not so much. The Corps is a federal agency charged with oversight of America’s waterways. On its website the agency states that “environmental sustainability” is a “guiding principle.” Tell you all you need to know?
Jason Hayes, Director of Environmental Policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, said the 1977 amendments to the Clean Water Act specifically exempted plowing as a “normal farming activity.” The EPA is attempting to do away with that exemption.
“The Corps even tries to argue that these newly created small mountain ranges hamper the growth and development of wetland plant species, apparently ignoring the fact that farmlands are managed to produce crops, not cattails,” Hayes said. “No reasonable regulation of the nation’s farmland can demand farmers produce crops without moving dirt, or expect farmers to produce wetland plant species instead of corn or wheat.”
Daren Bakst, a research fellow in agricultural policy at The Heritage Foundation, said it is not surprising that the EPA and Corps claim furrowing can create small mountain ranges, “Does kicking a pebble next to water create a mini-meteor? Is a puddle a mini-ocean? Who knows?” Bakst wrote.
The Senate report concludes that if the EPA and Corps of Engineers interpretations were allowed, “most if not all plowing” would be considered a “discharge of a pollutant” and require a federal permit. Get that – U.S. farmers required to file for and obtain federal permits in order to plow their own land . And if you think those permits are going to be free or even cheap I’ve got a bridge you may be interested in.
Because this is what liberalism does.
If allowed to stand, in ten years those permits will be too expensive for all but the wealthiest of corporate-run farms and ranches. Why? All because of the left’s insatiable war on “global warming.” They don’t care how many coal-working families are put out of work, how many birds of prey are killed , nor how many family farmers are forced into bankruptcy. NOTHING is more sacred than the war against their boogeyman, climate change. | 0 | [
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FMD2302 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Bernays affiliation with his kin, Freud, helped him establish his credentials as a manipulator. T he American journalist, Edward Bernays, is often described as the man who invented modern propaganda. The nephew of Sigmund Freud, the pioneer of psycho-analysis, it was Bernays who coined the term “public relations” as a euphemism for spin and its deceptions. In 1929, he persuaded feminists to promote cigarettes for women by smoking in the New York Easter Parade – behaviour then considered outlandish. One feminist, Ruth Booth, declared, “Women! Light another torch of freedom! Fight another sex taboo!” Bernays’ influence extended far beyond advertising. His greatest success was his role in convincing the American public to join the slaughter of the First World War. The secret, he said, was “engineering the consent” of people in order to “control and regiment [them] according to our will without their knowing about it”. He described this as “the true ruling power in our society” and called it an “invisible government”. Today, the invisible government has never been more powerful and less understood. In my career as a journalist and film-maker, I have never known propaganda to insinuate our lives and as it does now and to go unchallenged. Imagine two cities. Both are under siege by the forces of the government of that country. Both cities are occupied by fanatics, who commit terrible atrocities, such as beheading people. But there is a vital difference. In one siege, the government soldiers are described as liberators by Western reporters embedded with them, who enthusiastically report their battles and air strikes. There are front page pictures of these heroic soldiers giving a V-sign for victory. There is scant mention of civilian casualties. In the second city – in another country nearby – almost exactly the same is happening. Government forces are laying siege to a city controlled by the same breed of fanatics. The difference is that these fanatics are supported, supplied and armed by “us” – by the United States and Britain. They even have a media centre that is funded by Britain and America. Another difference is that the government soldiers laying siege to this city are the bad guys, condemned for assaulting and bombing the city – which is exactly what the good soldiers do in the first city. Confusing? Not really. Such is the basic double standard that is the essence of propaganda. I am referring, of course, to the current siege of the city of Mosul by the government forces of Iraq, who are backed by the United States and Britain and to the siege of Aleppo by the government forces of Syria, backed by Russia. One is good; the other is bad. W hat is seldom reported is that both cities would not be occupied by fanatics and ravaged by war if Britain and the United States had not invaded Iraq in 2003. That criminal enterprise was launched on lies strikingly similar to the propaganda that now distorts our understanding of the civil war in Syria. Without this drumbeat of propaganda dressed up as news, the monstrous ISIS and Al-Qaida and al-Nusra and the rest of the jihadist gang might not exist, and the people of Syria might not be fighting for their lives today. Some may remember in 2003 a succession of BBC reporters turning to the camera and telling us that Blair was “vindicated” for what turned out to be the crime of the century. The US television networks produced the same validation for George W. Bush. Fox News brought on Henry Kissinger to effuse over Colin Powell’s fabrications. The same year, soon after the invasion, I filmed an interview in Washington with Charles Lewis, the renowned American investigative journalist. I asked him, “What would have happened if the freest media in the world had seriously challenged what turned out to be crude propaganda?” He replied that if journalists had done their job, “there is a very, very good chance we would not have gone to war in Iraq”. It was a shocking statement, and one supported by other famous journalists to whom I put the same question — Dan Rather of CBS, David Rose of the Observer and journalists and producers in the BBC, who wished to remain anonymous. In other words, had journalists done their job, had they challenged and investigated the propaganda instead of amplifying it, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children would be alive today, and there would be no ISIS and no siege of Aleppo or Mosul. There would have been no atrocity on the London Underground on 7 th July 2005. There would have been no flight of millions of refugees; there would be no miserable camps. When the terrorist atrocity happened in Paris last November, President Francois Hollande immediately sent planes to bomb Syria – and more terrorism followed, predictably, the product of Hollande’s bombast about France being “at war” and “showing no mercy”. That state violence and jihadist violence feed off each other is the truth that no national leader has the courage to speak. “When the truth is replaced by silence,” said the Soviet dissident Yevtushenko, “the silence is a lie.” The attack on Iraq, the attack on Libya, the attack on Syria happened because the leader in each of these countries was not a puppet of the West. The human rights record of a Saddam or a Gaddafi was irrelevant. They did not obey orders and surrender control of their country. The same fate awaited Slobodan Milosevic once he had refused to sign an “agreement” that demanded the occupation of Serbia and its conversion to a market economy. His people were bombed, and he was prosecuted in The Hague. Independence of this kind is intolerable. As WikiLeaks has revealed, it was only when the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad in 2009 rejected an oil pipeline, running through his country from Qatar to Europe, that he was attacked. From that moment, the CIA planned to destroy the government of Syria with jihadist fanatics – the same fanatics currently holding the people of Mosul and eastern Aleppo hostage. Why is this not news? The former British Foreign Office official Carne Ross, who was responsible for operating sanctions against Iraq, told me: “We would feed journalists factoids of sanitised intelligence, or we would freeze them out. That is how it worked.” The West’s medieval client, Saudi Arabia – to which the US and Britain sell billions of dollars’ worth of arms – is at present destroying Yemen, a country so poor that in the best of times, half the children are malnourished. Look on YouTube and you will see the kind of massive bombs – “our” bombs – that the Saudis use against dirt-poor villages, and against weddings, and funerals. The explosions look like small atomic bombs. The bomb aimers in Saudi Arabia work side-by-side with British officers. This fact is not on the evening news. Propaganda is most effective when our consent is engineered by those with a fine education – Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Columbia — and with careers on the BBC, the Guardia n, the New York Times , the Washington Post . These organisations are known as the liberal media. They present themselves as enlightened, progressive tribunes of the moral zeitgeist. They are anti-racist, pro-feminist and pro-LGBT. And they love war. While they speak up for feminism, they support rapacious wars that deny the rights of countless women, including the right to life. In 2011, Libya, then a modern state, was destroyed on the pretext that Muammar Gaddafi was about to commit genocide on his own people. That was the incessant news; and there was no evidence. It was a lie. In fact, Britain, Europe and the United States wanted what they like to call “regime change” in Libya, the biggest oil producer in Africa. Gaddafi’s influence in the continent and, above all, his independence were intolerable. So he was murdered with a knife in his rear by fanatics, backed by America, Britain and France. Hillary Clinton cheered his gruesome death for the camera, declaring, “We came, we saw, he died!” The destruction of Libya was a media triumph. As the war drums were beaten, Jonathan Freedland wrote in the Guardian : “Though the risks are very real, the case for intervention remains strong.” Intervention — what a polite, benign, Guardian word, whose real meaning, for Libya, was death and destruction. According to its own records, Nato launched 9,700 “strike sorties” against Libya, of which more than a third were aimed at civilian targets. They included missiles with uranium warheads. Look at the photographs of the rubble of Misurata and Sirte, and the mass graves identified by the Red Cross. The Unicef report on the children killed says, “most [of them] under the age of ten”. As a direct consequence, Sirte became the capital of ISIS. Ukraine is another media triumph. Respectable liberal newspapers such as the New York Times , the Washington Post and the Guardian , and mainstream broadcasters such as the BBC, NBC, CBS, CNN have played a critical role in conditioning their viewers to accept a new and dangerous cold war. All have misrepresented events in Ukraine as a malign act by Russia when, in fact, the coup in Ukraine in 2014 was the work of the United States, aided by Germany and Nato. This inversion of reality is so pervasive that Washington’s military intimidation of Russia is not news; it is suppressed behind a smear and scare campaign of the kind I grew up with during the first cold war. Once again, the Ruskies are coming to get us, led by another Stalin, whom The Economist depicts as the devil. The suppression of the truth about Ukraine is one of the most complete news blackouts I can remember. The fascists who engineered the coup in Kiev are the same breed that backed the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Of all the scares about the rise of fascist anti-Semitism in Europe, no leader ever mentions the fascists in Ukraine – except Vladimir Putin, but he does not count. Many in the Western media have worked hard to present the ethnic Russian-speaking population of Ukraine as outsiders in their own country, as agents of Moscow, almost never as Ukrainians seeking a federation within Ukraine and as Ukrainian citizens resisting a foreign-orchestrated coup against their elected government. There is almost the joie d’esprit of a class reunion of warmongers. The drum-beaters of the Washington Post inciting war with Russia are the very same editorial writers who published the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. To most of us, the American presidential campaign is a media freak show, in which Donald Trump is the arch villain. But Trump is loathed by those with power in the United States for reasons that have little to do with his obnoxious behaviour and opinions. To the invisible government in Washington, the unpredictable Trump is an obstacle to America’s design for the 21 st century. This is to maintain the dominance of the United States and to subjugate Russia, and, if possible, China. To the militarists in Washington, the real problem with Trump is that, in his lucid moments, he seems not to want a war with Russia; he wants to talk with the Russian president, not fight him; he says he wants to talk with the president of China. In the first debate with Hillary Clinton, Trump promised not to be the first to introduce nuclear weapons into a conflict. He said, “I would certainly not do first strike. Once the nuclear alternative happens, it’s over.” That was not news. Did he really mean it? Who knows? He often contradicts himself. But what is clear is that Trump is considered a serious threat to the status quo maintained by the vast national security machine that runs the United States, regardless of who is in the White House. The CIA wants him beaten. The Pentagon wants him beaten. The media wants him beaten. Even his own party wants him beaten. He is a threat to the rulers of the world – unlike Clinton who has left no doubt she is prepared to go to war with nuclear-armed Russia and China. Clinton has the form, as she often boasts. Indeed, her record is proven. As a senator, she backed the bloodbath in Iraq. When she ran against Obama in 2008, she threatened to “totally obliterate” Iran. As Secretary of State, she colluded in the destruction of governments in Libya and Honduras and set in train the baiting of China. She has now pledged to support a No Fly Zone in Syria — a direct provocation for war with Russia. Clinton may well become the most dangerous president of the United States in my lifetime –a distinction for which the competition is fierce. Without a shred of evidence, she has accused Russia of supporting Trump and hacking her emails. Released by WikiLeaks, these emails tell us that what Clinton says in private, in speeches to the rich and powerful, is the opposite of what she says in public. That is why silencing and threatening Julian Assange is so important. As the editor of WikiLeaks, Assange knows the truth. And let me assure those who are concerned, he is well, and WikiLeaks is operating on all cylinders. Today, the greatest build-up of American-led forces since World War Two is under way – in the Caucasus and eastern Europe, on the border with Russia, and in Asia and the Pacific, where China is the target. Keep that in mind when the presidential election circus reaches its finale on November 8 th, If the winner is Clinton, a Greek chorus of witless commentators will celebrate her coronation as a great step forward for women. None will mention Clinton’s victims: the women of Syria, the women of Iraq, the women of Libya. None will mention the civil defence drills being conducted in Russia. None will recall Edward Bernays’ “torches of freedom”. George Bush’s press spokesman once called the media “complicit enablers”. Coming from a senior official in an administration whose lies, enabled by the media, caused such suffering, that description is a warning from history. In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal prosecutor said of the German media: “Before every major aggression, they initiated a press campaign calculated to weaken their victims and to prepare the German people psychologically for the attack. In the propaganda system, it was the daily press and the radio that were the most important weapons.” This is adapted from an address to the Sheffield Festival of Words, Sheffield, England. ALL IMAGE CAPTIONS, PULL QUOTES AND COMMENTARY BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS • PLEASE COMMENT AND DEBATE DIRECTLY ON OUR FACEBOOK GROUP. CLICK HERE TO VISIT. ABOUT THE AUTHOR John Pilger can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com Note to Commenters Due to severe hacking attacks in the recent past that brought our site down for up to 11 days with considerable loss of circulation, we exercise extreme caution in the comments we publish, as the comment box has been one of the main arteries to inject malicious code. Because of that comments may not appear immediately, but rest assured that if you are a legitimate commenter your opinion will be published within 24 hours. If your comment fails to appear, and you wish to reach us directly, send us a mail at: [email protected]
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What will it take to bring America to live according to its own propaganda? REMEMBER: ALL CAPTIONS AND PULL-QUOTES BY THE EDITORS, NOT THE AUTHORS. Print this post if you want. Share This: | 0 | [
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FMD2303 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: RIO DE JANEIRO — The death toll from a riot in a penitentiary in northeastern Brazil rose on Sunday to 26 prisoners, increasing the number of prison killings in the country this year to more than 120. Decapitations and mutilations are common in Brazil’s violent, overcrowded prisons, in which 40 percent of inmates have yet to be sentenced, but the latest wave of brutality has appalled many here. The riot began around 5 p. m. on Saturday at the State Penitentiary of Alcaçuz, 13 miles from Natal, in the state of Rio Grande do Norte, and continued until around 7 a. m. on Sunday, when riot police officers took control of the prison. “The situation of the rebellion is controlled,†said Maj. Eduardo Franco of the Rio Grande do Norte police. On Sunday, the authorities initially said they had found 27 bodies, but the death toll was later revised to 26 Major Franco said there had been a mistake. Many of the bodies were mutilated. The prison has a capacity of 620 but was holding around 1, 100 prisoners when the riot began, the authorities said. All of the inmates had been sentenced, Major Franco added. Wilma Batista, the director of the prison agents’ union in Rio Grande do Norte, sent a photograph of two headless, mutilated corpses in a prison yard via a cellphone messaging service and said she had seen many others. “We are shocked,†she said. With Brazil swamped in recession, President Michel Temer’s government reeling from one graft scandal after another, and a wave of seemingly uncontrollable prison violence, many Brazilians feel they are going back to a darker recent past when crime, corruption and the economy were out of control. “We thought we had turned that page, and now it is coming back,†said Mauricio Santoro, a professor of international relations and political science at the State University of Rio de Janeiro. The killings reflected the escalation of a deadly gang war that exploded when 56 prisoners were massacred in Manaus, in Amazonas State, on Jan. 1. Four more were killed the next day in another jail in the city. The state authorities attributed the Manaus deaths to the Family of the North, an Amazon drug gang that had attacked prisoners connected to a rival gang, the São First Capital Command, known by its Portuguese abbreviation, P. C. C. The gangs were believed to be fighting for control of lucrative drug smuggling routes. The P. C. C. was for years allied with a Rio de Janeiro drug gang called the Red Command. Last year, the alliance fell apart, leading to a spate of prison killings. On Jan. 6, after the Manaus massacre, 33 prisoners were found butchered at a prison in Boa Vista in Roraima State, in the far north of Brazil. The state authorities said the P. C. C. was behind the killings. Four more prisoners were killed in a third Manaus prison after being moved from the site of the first massacre. The riot on Saturday night began when prisoners linked to the P. C. C. rebelled during visiting hours, Ms. Batista said. They were in a separate prison, Rogério Coutinho Madruga, which is next to Alcaçuz and effectively part of the same complex. She said that just six prison agents were on duty, and that they managed to free visitors before retreating to another block. “The agents saved the visitors and had to retreat†because prisoners set the block on fire, Ms. Batista said. The escaped prisoners then attacked a block inside the Alcaçuz jail that housed men from another gang, the Rio Grande do Crime Syndicate, Ms. Batista said. Since 2015, many of the cells inside Alcaçuz have had no bars, and prisoners wander freely 24 hours a day, Ms. Batista said. Police officers and prison guards managed to stop the killing from spreading further, but electricity to the prison was cut. The police decided to wait until dawn before entering, and they restrained desperate relatives who were trying to get inside. Lincoln Gakiya, a state prosecutor from an organized crime unit in São Paulo State who has specialized in the P. C. C. said its split with the Red Command was behind the crisis. The Rio gang has allied with five other gangs around Brazil, including the Crime Syndicate. “This war is for the hegemony of the drug trade,†Mr. Gakiya said. “The prison system is not prepared for this gang war. There is no place to separate the gangs. The system is overcrowded, so the tendency is to get worse. †A cellphone video circulating on social media showed a man with his face covered, brandishing what looked like a machete or a sword, walking among a large number of mutilated bodies in what appeared to be a prison yard. The letters P. C. C. were scrawled in what looked like blood on a wall. Although it was impossible to verify the video, the bodies visible were wearing blue shorts similar to those worn by prisoners shown in local news reports. Grisly videos like this have circulated after all of the attacks. Sublieutenant Eliabe Marques, a police officer and the president of a Rio Grande do Norte state association of police and firefighter sublieutenants, said the dispute between the P. C. C. and the Crime Syndicate had grown worse recently. “In jail, the prisoner has to join one or other of the gangs, P. C. C. or the Crime Syndicate,†he said. “It is a phenomenon that is making the situation in Rio Grande do Norte even more serious. †Ms. Batista said the prison agents’ union had warned of potentially explosive conditions inside the prison but had been ignored. “It is very sad, not just for the butchery, but to see organized crime face the state, the power of the state, leaving more scars on prison agents who suffer psychologically and physically from such a stressful profession,†she said. | 1 | [
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FMD2304 | 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 distressing experience of an Alabama mother under the Obamacare healthcare system. Claim summaries: Alabama mom's Obamacare horror story gives America a glimpse of government run healthcare.
contextual information: Claim: Alabama mom's Obamacare horror story gives America a glimpse of government run healthcare. CORRECTLY ATTRIBUTED Example: [Collected on the Internet, December 2013] My family's journey with securing our new insurance under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) started on October 1, 2013. I have decided to write this letter to let the American people know what it has been like for us. We are a family of four, with two little boys' ages seven years old and three years old. My husband and I have had full time jobs for 6 years and 13 years respectively. We have been with the same two companies for those years. We are a middle class family; we own our three bedroom two bath house, we own two cars, and previously provided our own insurance for the four of us. We have coverage through Individual Blue from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Alabama until 12/31/13. Our premiums have been $380.00 a month, which also included dental coverage for all four of us. On October, 1, 2013 we received our letters like other Alabamians about our new premiums and plans for 2014 from Blue Cross Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama. When I opened our letter to say I had sticker shock was an understatement. Our premiums for the Blue Saver Silver would now be $753.26. This included the ACA tax but did not include the additional $75.00 we would need to pay in order to keep dental for me and my husband. So we would need to pay total $828.26 to keep health and dental insurance for the four of us. This payment is roughly $64.00 less than what we pay for our mortgage each month. I was outraged that anyone thought we could afford this. Sure we have some savings, but with that price tag we would whittle it down to almost nothing very quickly. I consider savings as a rainy day fund, a start to saving for the kids college, our retirement, etc. I never dreamed in a million years we would need to use it to pay our insurance premiums each month how in the world could this help the economy too? [Rest of article here.] here Origins: The item referenced above, an open detailing one Alabama woman's extreme difficulty and frustration in obtaining ACA-compliant health insurance coverage for her family (including her 7-year-old son with ADHD) was posted under the name of Karri Kinder on 23 December 2013 as the sole entry in a blog and was republished (without additional comment) by the Independent Journal Review on 31 December 2013. blog republished Certainly her experience is not unique in kind, as many residents of Alabama covered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield (BCBS) of Alabama (an insurer who has an 88% share of the state's health insurance market) found out at the end of 2013 that they would be paying much higher premiums for ACA-compliant coverage through BCBS: Doug Hoffman, who works statewide to help people sign up for benefits through the Affordable Care Act, just received a Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Alabama notice in the mail to find health insurance rates for his family have doubled. And he's mad at Blue Cross. "I just got my benefits renewal from Blue Cross for next year and they doubled my rate!" he wrote AL.com in an email. "I was paying $675 for a family premium (2 adults, one 22 yo dependent) with a $1,500 deducible. The new rate for a comparable plan is $1,360 with a $3,000 deductible. Basically they have doubled my costs." "It appears as though Blue Cross is taking advantage of the ACA by hiking rates big time," said Hoffman, who is based in Birmingham with Enroll Alabama. Others, who have received the notices from the state's dominant health insurer are mad as well at Obamacare. "Obama thinks that he is making insurance affordable," wrote one reader to the Mobile Press Register Sound Off feature. "I just got a letter from my Blue Cross Blue Shield that if I want to keep their insurance it's going to cost me $300 more a month. I already pay $300 a month now and they're wanting right at $600 a month for this Affordable Care Act." Blue Cross posted an explanation for the rate hikes to its Facebook page, maintaining that several reasons are behind the increased premiums: more taxes and fees, a requirement to rate family members individually, and the elimination of health underwriting and waiting periods for preexisting conditions: explanation The new law requires all health insurance companies in the individual and small group markets to use a consistent rating method called "member level rating." For the individual market, this means each person on an insurance policy will now be rated based on age, whether he or she uses tobacco, and the county in which the policy holder lives. In the past Blue Cross was able to offer one family premium, no matter the size. For family plans, most family members will now be rated individually. Once each person has been rated, the amounts are added together to get a family's premium cost. For children age 20 and younger, the oldest three children will be individually rated and included in the family premium amount. As a result, larger families may experience higher premiums. As Mike Oliver noted in an article for AL.com, the elimination of health underwriting may have a substantial effect on health insurance premiums in that state: article "Alabama has allowed medical underwriting you're going to be quoted a high premium if you have something wrong with you," said Michael Morrisey, director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham Lister Hill Center for Health Policy. "The Affordable Care Act abolishes medical underwriting." This means that those with expensive health problems will likely now jump in and buy coverage because it will be less expensive for them or if they already have coverage their rates will go down. But that also means rates will go up for everyone else as the insurer spreads that new cost around. "The thing that happens when you eliminate underwriting is that you lump dissimilar people together," Morrisey said. "When you combine groups, one group is better off and the other group is worse off" in terms of premium prices. As a policy, the elimination of medical underwriting and preexisting condition clauses helps broaden access to health care coverage and that was the aim of its inclusion in the Affordable Care Act. Reformers say it eliminates insurers from "cherry-picking" and reduces uncompensated care. Karri Kinder subsequently posted followups to her original blog entry about her insurance issue, the update of 4 January 2014 stating that: Karri Kinder blog entry I do have some good news. Because I decided to write my letter and speak out, people stepped up and helped us. We were contacted on January 1, 2014 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I was told by the woman I spoke with that she had read my letter and wanted to get her team involved and see what they could do to help us. I recounted to her what was happening and that I had been advised to go ahead and sign me and my husband up for a plan on healthcare.gov. We went with a lower cost plan because it was going to just be the two of us. We had no idea what it was going to cost for the children once we got some answers. So we went with BCBS Blue Value Saver plan. The cost of the plan is $459.19. We qualified for $255.00 in subsidies so the final cost of the plan to us is $204.19 each month. I told the lady that I would cancel that plan if I needed to. What we wanted was to have all of us on one plan like we always have been. She said, "If the kids qualify for All Kids then I am pretty sure they have to go that route or you will have to buy them a plan at the normal rate." So again we were told more than likely we will have to go through All Kids. She took the rest of our information down and said she was getting her team to work on it and would either call us back or All Kids would contact us. Last updated: 4 January 2014 Oliver, Mike. "Blue Cross in Alabama: We Didn't 'Cancel' Health Policies." AL.com. 2 December 2013. Walsh, Alex. "Obamacare, Big Blue, and You." AL.com. 31 December 2013. | 1 | [
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] | 1 |
FMD2305 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The U.S. military said on Saturday it has opened an investigation into fake mobile phone alerts and social media messages advising U.S. military personnel and their families to evacuate the Korean Peninsula. The phony messages, which were spread on Thursday, came at a sensitive time, with tensions high after North Korea conducted its sixth and largest nuclear test on Sept. 3. The test and a series of missile launches have triggered a war of words between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korea s leader Kim Jong Un. U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) was not yet aware of how many people received the hoax messages or who was behind them, a spokesman for the USFK told Reuters. The USFK posted a statement on its official Facebook page on Thursday making clear that the U.S. military did not issue any evacuation-related alerts. It has also instructed all U.S. Department of Defense personnel and their family to confirm any evacuation-related communications before acting. The USFK conducts regular biannual noncombatant evacuation operation (NEO) exercises in the spring and fall to rehearse for possible evacuation. The second NEO exercise of the year is scheduled to take place in October. | 1 | [
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FMD2306 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Michael Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, failed to disclose payments from a Russian television network and two other firms linked to Russia in a February financial disclosure form, according to documents released by the White House. In a form signed by Flynn on March 31, the former White House official listed speaking engagements to Russian entities, including the Kremlin-funded RT TV, Volga-Dnepr Airlines and Kaspersky Government Security Solutions Inc, a U.S. subsidiary of Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab. The form, released on Saturday, does not say how much Flynn was paid but the speeches are in a section titled “sources of compensation exceeding $5,000 in a year.†The speeches were not included in a form that Flynn signed electronically on Feb. 11, which the White House also released. The discrepancy on reporting income linked to Russia could add to the scrutiny the retired general, who was forced to resign his White House post after only 24 days, is already under for his contacts with Russian officials. U.S. intelligence agencies have said Russia meddled in the 2016 U.S. presidential election in an effort to help Trump’s candidacy. Multiple congressional committees and the FBI are looking into Russia’s involvement. Flynn’s lawyer, Robert Kelner, said his client was in the process of submitting his financial disclosures forms in the days before he left the White House. “That process was suspended when he left. When asked this week to resume the process and finalize the form, he did,†Kelner said in an email. He added that it had been “far from clear†that Flynn was required to itemize each speech.The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday. Flynn was forced out on Feb. 13 for misrepresenting conversations he had with Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak before Trump took office and misleading Vice President Mike Pence about them. Flynn has requested immunity if he testifies before the intelligence committees of the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives, Kelner said last week. Trump, a Republican, has said Democrats were pursuing investigations because they were upset about his Nov. 8 victory over their party’s candidate, Hillary Clinton. The Russian government has denied the allegations that it interfered in the U.S. election and released hacked emails of Democratic groups to tip the election toward Trump, who has called for better U.S. relations with Moscow. | 1 | [
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FMD2307 | 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: We've got about $3 trillion in trapped cash overseas that basically can't come back in this country because of our tax laws.
contextual information: When U.S. House SpeakerPaul Ryanmet with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff on Sept. 1, 2017, an editor mentionedmajor tax cutsadopted under Republican President Ronald Reagan in 1981. At first, Ryan joked around. The music was bad in those days, and the tax laws were as well, he replied, chuckling. So, I think -- Im not a big 80s music guy; Im more of a 70s guy. But the 47-year-old Janesville Republican quickly got serious. Arguing that U.S. taxes are stopping U.S.-based multinational corporations from bringing giant sums of money to America,he stated: We've got about $3 trillion in trapped cash overseas that basically can't come back in this country because of our tax laws. Ryan has made essentially the same claim a number of times, including onMilwaukee television,on CNBC,on Twitterand to theNew York Times. So, do U.S. tax laws essentially prevent $3 trillion being held overseas from being brought to this country? Keep the wordrepatriatein mind. Taxing foreign earnings The object of Ryans criticism is the U.S. corporate tax rate. At 35 percent, as we reported in aDonald Trumpfact check during the 2016 presidential campaign, it isamong the highestin the world -- though its worth noting that, after deductions, companies typically pay an effective rate that can be much lower. (Trump, by the way, pledged during the presidential campaign to reduce the rate to 15 percent. That promise has been rated asIn the Workson PolitiFact NationalsTrump-O-Meter.) As for the focus of Ryans claim, hes talking about U.S.-based multinational corporations. More specifically, the foreign-earned profits of those companies.Heres an exampleof how the taxation works: If the company earns income in a country with a 20 percent corporate tax rate, it would pay that 20 percent tax immediately to that country. If that money is then repatriated -- that is, brought back to the companys U.S. headquarters -- the company would pay an additional 15 percent to the U.S. government. (In other words, the U.S. tax rate of 35 percent minus the 20 percent already paid to the foreign country.) So, as long as the profits stay parked overseas, there is no U.S. tax on it. Now to the specifics of Ryans claim. The $3 trillion figure To back up Ryans statement, his office cited an April 2017CNBC news articlethat said American companies are holding about $2.6 trillion in overseas earnings, and the figure has been growing. Thats thelatest estimateby Congress nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation, for 2015, although an estimate done in July 2017 for PolitiFact National put the figureat $2.8 trillion. So, Ryans claim of about $3 trillion is reasonable. Its worth noting that the figure has been rising. In fact, considering only the Russell 1000 index of large companies, the amount of parked cash overseas has more than doubled since 2008, as shown in a July 2017 report by the Massachusetts research firm Audit Analytics: Year Amount of foreign-earned profits by U.S.-based companies kept overseas 2008 $1.09 trillion 2009 $1.19 trillion 2010 $1.36 trillion 2011 $1.63 trillion 2012 $1.89 trillion 2013 $2.12 trillion 2014 $2.3 trillion 2015 $2.43 trillion 2016 $2.62 trillion Trapped and basically cant come back Ryan asserts that the money is trapped overseas and basically cant come back because of U.S. tax laws To be sure, a substantial amount of foreign profitsare repatriated each year. But Ryan didnt invent the term trapped cash. In fact, academicsfor yearshavereferred to itas a commonly used term to describe the growing amount of cash held by U.S. multinationals overseas to avoid, or at least defer, paying the 35 percent U.S. tax rate. Ryans claim is also backed bySeptember 2017 paperpublished by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonpartisan organization in Massachusetts. The paper found a dramatic increase in U.S. corporations holding onto cash; that the cash is concentrated in foreign subsidiaries of multinational corporations; and that it is explained by low foreign tax rates. News articlesalso havereported on the phenomenon. In August 2016,Apple CEO Tim Cook saidof his companys profits parked offshore: Were not going to bring it back until theres a fair rate. Theres no debate about it. Apple is second to Microsoft in the amount of cash parked overseas, according to Audit Analytics. And as the San Jose Mercury Newsreported in May 2017, the tax is such a deterrent that even though Apple was sitting on $240 billion in overseas cash, it has continued to borrow money. The reason: The borrowing cost Apple 4 percent or less, far below the 35 percent tax that would be paid for repatriating the overseas cash. One more point before we close: The companies would like to repatriate the money because bringing it back to the parent company enables them to do things such as paying dividends, doing stock buybacks and investing in U.S. operations. Several academic experts told us that some of the overseas money, while not repatriated directly back to the companies U.S. headquarters, is invested in U.S. securities. That doesnt trigger the 35 percent tax. Our rating Ryan says: We've got about $3 trillion in trapped cash overseas that basically can't come back in this country because of our tax laws. To avoid a 35 percent U.S. tax, U.S.-based multinational companies have opted not to repatriate roughly $3 trillion of their foreign profits, a figure that is growing. That is, they dont bring the money back to their U.S. headquarters, where it can be used for things such as dividend payments or investments in their domestic operations. But the overseas profits arent literally trapped and indeed some foreign-earned profits are repatriated, though they are subject to the 35 percent tax. Ryans statement is accurate but needs additional information, our definition of Mostly True. | 1 | [
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FMD2308 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Hundreds of athletes at the Rio Games showed the many ways to celebrate winning an Olympic medal. This was Claressa Shields’s on Sunday: She dropped to one knee after her middleweight boxing bout and quickly sprang to her feet. Then she kept moving — cartwheeling, laughing, running laps around the ring, the American flag billowing like a parasail over her head. She swayed to some internal music as she waited to step onto the podium. On the final day of the Summer Games, Shields won one of the last gold medals for the United States and became the first American boxer since 1904 to win two Olympic golds. “You know not everybody can be an Olympic gold medalist,†she said. “I’m a Olympic gold medalist. Oh my god, I can’t believe I just said that. †Shields, who won gold in London four years ago, nearly shut out her opponent Sunday in the bout, Nouchka Fontijn of the Netherlands. All three judges scored the first three rounds in Shields’s favor. One judge gave her the fourth as well, while the other two went for Fontijn. In the first round, Fontijn looked like a boxer with a plan. She was relaxed and confident, using her height advantage and long arms to counter and to keep Shields at a distance. Shields exploded forward several times, heaving big right hands. Shields glided in behind her triple jab. It wasn’t until seconds before the bell, however, that any of them landed flush. “I told her that was very close,†said the American coach Billy Walsh. “I’m not sure whether we got this round or not. We gotta close her down a bit more, start working a bit more, use your jab a bit more. Put that right hand over the top. †Shields got the message and started driving home her punches in in round two. She also began slipping Fontijn’s shots. Fontijn circled and jabbed, but Shields, determined, kept stalking her to the end of round three. Up by three rounds, Shields came out to play in the fourth. She crouched low and shimmied backward, luring Fontijn with her hands down. She danced and goaded, ducking nearly every shot Fontijn threw. She landed two hard right hands, and waved Fontijn in. “I hit you with a hard shot, hit me back,†she said later, recalling the moment. “I want to see if you can hit me. †Shields landed one more left hook as the final bell rung. Shields accepted her Rio Games medal and then pulled out the gold medal she won in London, and hung it around her neck alongside the new one. The favorite Eliud Kipchoge of Kenya won the Olympic marathon on Sunday, drawing away over the final four miles to win in 2 hours 8 minutes 44 seconds. Feyisa Lilesa of Ethiopia took second in 2:09:54, while Galen Rupp of the United States won the bronze medal in 2:10:05, his personal best. Kenya swept both marathons at the Rio Games. Jemima Sumgong won the women’s 26. race, becoming the first Kenyan woman to win a gold medal in the event. Caster Semenya of South Africa, whose body has been subjected to indelicate and unrelenting public scrutiny for years, won her first Olympic gold medal on Saturday at the Rio Games. Semenya won the 800 meters by a comfortable margin, in 1 minute 55. 28 seconds. While her performances tend to carry the weight of an issue that transcends sports, those looking for undeniable athletics excellence Saturday night were rewarded: her runaway victory solidified her standing as one of the best runners of her generation. Francine Niyonsaba of Burundi was second in 1:56. 49, and Margaret Wambui of Kenya was third in 1:56. 89. When Semenya, then 18, dominated the 800 at the 2009 world track and field championships, winning by more than two seconds, a fellow competitor called her a man, setting off a debate over how sports officials should navigate the complicated question of how to determine an athlete’s sex. The questioning of Semenya’s success led to a policy enacted in 2011 by the I. A. A. F. the sport’s governing body, that restricted the permitted levels of testosterone, which occur naturally high in some women. That condition is called hyperandrogenism. With that policy in effect, Semenya won silver at the 2012 London Games. Last year, the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the high court for international sport, suspended track and field’s testosterone policy for two years. The court said it had been “unable to conclude that hyperandrogenic female athletes may benefit from such a significant performance advantage that it is necessary to exclude them from competing in the female category. †• Mo Farah of Britain added the gold to the one he earned in the 10, 000. In the 1, 500, American Matthew Centrowitz upset Asbel Kiprop of Kenya to win the gold. • The United States concluded the final night of track and field with two commanding relay performances, raising the country’s tally to 43. The women’s team — Courtney Okolo, Natasha Hastings, Phyllis Francis and Allyson Felix — outran Jamaica (silver) and Britain (bronze) with a time of 3:19. 06. Felix, who ran the anchor leg, now has six gold medals the night before she became the first woman in the sport to win five. The only American female Olympian with more golds is the swimmer Jenny Thompson, who won eight. LaShawn Merritt ran the anchor for the United States in the men’s 4x400, creating a big gap between the Americans and Jamaica. Arman Hall, Tony McQuay, Gil Roberts and Merritt finished in 2:57. 30. With only the men’s marathon remaining, on Sunday morning, the United States track team has collected 31 total medals, including 13 golds. • In the men’s soccer final, Brazil got a measure of revenge on Germany, winning the gold medal on penalties after a draw. Germany had embarrassed Brazil in the 2014 World Cup semifinal, . Here’s our game story. • The American Gwen Jorgensen of the United States has won the last two world championships in the triathlon, but she had some unfinished Olympic business after a flat tire on her bike doomed her to 38th place at the London Games. The wheels stayed intact this time, and Jorgensen won the gold medal. The United States women’s basketball team extended their gold medal streak to six by beating Spain, . Here’s our story. • The boxer Shakur Stevenson of Newark lost his bantamweight title match against Cuba’s Robeisy RamÃrez. Stevenson, who was named after the rapper Tupac Shakur, was trying to win the first gold medal for the United States in men’s boxing since Andre Ward in 2004. • The major winner Inbee Park of South Korea won the first gold medal in women’s golf since 1900. Five strokes back was Lydia Ko of New Zealand, and Feng Shanshan of China won the bronze. • The defending champion, American David Boudia, grabbed another medal in men’s platform diving, this time a bronze. The winner was Chen Aisen from the strong Chinese diving team. | 1 | [
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] | 1 |
FMD2309 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Mises.org October 28, 2016
A recent op-ed piece in The New York Times urged the Republican Party not to “throw away free enterprise” and embrace populism. Arthur C. Brooks, the author of the article, makes two bold but erroneous claims. First, he asserts that populist moments throughout history — including the Trumpian moment in the US — are triggered by severe financial crises that result in protracted and uneven recoveries that exacerbate existing income and wealth disparities.
In resorting to naïve economic determinism to explain populism, Brooks completely overlooks the awakening of the broad American middle class to political institutions and policies that have been designed by the entrenched elites of both parties to oppress and plunder them. The never-ending and immensely costly war against “terror;” the Federal bailout of multi-billion dollar financial institutions both domestically and abroad; the ineffective and grossly expensive war on drugs; the pandemic of political correctness unleashed by Federal mandates and regulations that has infected American colleges and universities, and the egregious and unrestrained spying on American citizens by the bloated US security apparatus. All of these issues seem to count for nothing in Brooks’s simplistic analysis. For Brooks, “The real issue is weak, unevenly shared growth.” Brooks’s attribution of the rise of populism in the US and elsewhere almost exclusively to increasing income and wealth inequality is not only peculiar but absurd on the face of it and I will refrain from further comment on it.
The second claim that Brooks makes is more commonly accepted and is fervently promoted by the mainstream media, and academics and political analysts of the “responsible” left and right. This claim is that populism comprises specific ideological positions and policies. Thus, Brooks refers to “populist positions on issues such as trade and immigration” and to “populists who specialize in identifying culprits: rich elites who are ripping you off; immigrants who want your job; a free trade that’s killing our nation’s competitiveness.” According to Brooks, populist policies thus “involve some combination of increased redistribution, protectionism, and restrictionism.” In other words, on economic issues at least, populism is the polar opposite of classical liberalism and libertarianism.
Left-wing and Right-wing Populists
But nothing could be further from the truth. For populism is not a right-wing ideology but a strategy that may be used by any ideological group whose political agenda differs radically from that of the ruling class. Surely, Brooks has heard of left-wing populists such as Juan and Eva Perón, Huey Long, the “Radio Priest” Father Charles Coughlin, Fidel Castro, and Hugo Chávez. And what about classical-liberal and libertarian populists such as Thomas Paine and Samuel Adams, Richard Cobden and John Bright, and more recently, Dr. Ron Paul? Lately, we have seen the dramatic rise in popularity of the populist Pirate Party in Iceland , which may win the next election and whose membership is ideologically diffuse and comprises libertarians, hackers, Web geeks, and anti-globalist anarchists.
Although populism may be either ideologically left or right, libertarian or statist, it is always hated and feared by the political center. The reason is that the center is occupied by those individuals and groups comprising the “moderate” left wing and right wing who are allies in defending the political status quo and take turns ruling and operating the levers of power to distribute privilege and wealth to themselves and their cronies.
What Populists Stand For
Regardless of ideological bent, populist thinkers and movement builders take to heart, at least implicitly, the profound insight of great political theorists from La Boétie and David Hume to Mises and Rothbard that there is no such thing as an unpopular government. They thus set about exposing the moderates who run the State apparatus as a powerful and wealthy elite whose interests are inherently opposed to those of the masses of productive workers and entrepreneurs. In order to grab the attention of people who are not yet fully conscious that they are being exploited — or in Marxian terms, to help them develop a class consciousness — it is only natural that populist leaders employ extreme, emotional, and embittered rhetoric. Such inflammatory rhetoric is especially necessary for the US today and most European countries where the mainstream media, while ostensibly free, operate as a privileged mouthpiece for government and spew non-stop propaganda designed to camouflage State exploitation of the productive class and to discredit dissenting political movements.
Harsh and extreme populist rhetoric, such as that used by Donald Trump, strikes a responsive chord among the US electorate, but not because Americans are subject to irrational bouts of envy, xenophobia, and insecurity brought on by crises and recessions, as Brooks would have us believe. Rather, Americans are being awakened to the cold, hard fact that they have been plundered and oppressed by the “moderate” American globalist political establishment since World War Two. What Rothbard said about the populist French Poujadist movement of the early 1950s applies to the US and other interventionist democratic states today:
[T]here’s a lot to be bitter about: crushingly high taxes on businesses and individuals, submergence of national sovereignty in international organizations and alliances, fumbling and incompetent government, endless fighting in colonial wars. Especially taxes.
A final point: once it has penetrated into the public discourse, populism — precisely because it is the only effective political strategy for radical political change — will not wither away as a result of a few more percentage points of “evenly distributed” economic growth. Trump’s threat to contest the election, Brexit, the continuing growth of right-wing populist movements throughout Europe, all attest to the fact that populism is here to stay. This should be cause for celebration among the libertarians who for the first time since its inception in the mid-1960s have at their disposal an effective strategy for rolling back the US welfare-warfare State.
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute. The Best of Joseph T. Salerno Tags: Joseph Salerno [ ] is academic vice president of the Mises Institute , chairman of the graduate program in economics at Pace University, and editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics . | 0 | [
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FMD2310 | 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 Trump Administration Making Immigrants Pay $800 for DNA Tests to Get Their Children Back? Claim summaries: A handful of parents in Texas said they were told by social workers they would have to pay for DNA testing to be reunified with separated immigrant children.
contextual information: In mid-July 2018, outraged social media users shared a meme reporting that the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump was forcing migrants to pay $800 in out-of-pocket costs to prove familial ties in order to regain custody of children taken from them under the government's "zero tolerance" immigration policy. The text of the meme was based on a 10 July 2018 story originally reported by the Daily Beast, whose journalists spoke with Ruben Garcia, director of the El Paso immigrant shelter Annunciation House, and immigration attorney Iliana Holguin. In telephone interviews with Snopes.com, both individuals confirmed their account of the details in the Daily Beast's report: four adults (three mothers and one older sister) asserted that government social workers had told them they would have to pay $700 to $800 for DNA tests proving their relationship to the separated children before they could get their kids back. Shortly after the story broke, however, both Garcia and Holguin reported that the government had abruptly changed course, with Garcia stating, "If you ask me the question, 'Do you know for a fact that any of those parents had to pay the money [for a DNA test]?' I do not. We had about five people who at that point said they were told they would probably have to pay for [the DNA tests]. Since that story came out, the whole situation has changed because [the government] has now moved aggressively to reunite and release all of these kids." Holguin told us that no formal request was ever made for the women to pay for the tests. She described the entirety of "zero tolerance" and its aftermath as "very chaotic" and said that conflicting information had been the norm throughout. "With the DNA test, I think someone at one point said it, someone repeated it—things were changing so quickly that it was just impossible to know at any given moment. The left hand didn't know what the right hand was doing." We reached out to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the federal agency tasked with coordinating the care of unaccompanied immigrant children. An agency representative told us that HHS, not immigrant families, pays for DNA testing. The federal government is rushing to meet a deadline set by a federal judge after the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) successfully sued for an injunction on family separations under "zero tolerance," a policy initiated by the Trump administration in April 2018. Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California gave federal agencies until 10 July 2018 to reunify children under five years of age with their respective adults, and until 26 July 2018 to reunify kids aged five to 17. According to a status report submitted to the court by HHS on 13 July 2018, not all families with children in the older age cohort will be subjected to DNA tests, as HHS has truncated its process for confirming family relationships to meet the looming deadline for reunification. In a statement, HHS spokesperson Evelyn Stauffer said, "The department has been operating in good faith and earnestly trying to comply with court orders, including the rapidly approaching deadline for reunification. Our interpretation of the court's order is that HHS must make a determination of parentage, fitness, and safety before reunifying families, but that HHS need not undertake the fuller process of vetting for children's safety that HHS would ordinarily conduct in its operations. In the interests of transparency and cooperation, the department felt it necessary in our filings on Friday to share with the court our view that meeting the deadline would mean truncating the process we might have otherwise followed. Within the time the court allows, we will strive to implement the most comprehensive procedures possible to ensure child welfare. We look forward to continuing our close work with the court to accomplish the goals we share of safe, expeditious reunification." Under "zero tolerance," all immigrants caught crossing the southern border between ports of entry were charged with crimes—mostly misdemeanors. Adults accompanied by children were separated from them, and initially, the U.S. government appeared to have no plan to reunify families. With court orders and pressure mounting from public outrage over the policy, the Trump administration has more or less reversed course. Garcia told us the federal government would begin reuniting the remainder of separated families at centralized locations in Arizona and Texas in the coming week in order to meet the court's 26 July 2018 deadline. Judge Sabraw also temporarily halted deportations of those families to give them time to decide whether to leave children behind in the United States in hopes they will win their asylum cases or to be deported together. | 2 | [
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FMD2311 | 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 Matt Gaetz' Hair in This Photo Real? Claim summaries: If a social media posts explicitly states that an image is "not photoshopped," it just might be photoshopped.
contextual information: In April 2021, as Florida congressman Matt Gaetz was being investigated for lewd and potentially illegal behavior involving underage women, some social media users started to mockingly share a picture of Gaetz with unusually tall hair: investigated This is not a genuine image of Gaetz' hair. It comes from a July 2020 hearing before the U.S. House Judiciary Committee concerning the online dominance of companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Google and Apple. Here's a genuine screenshot of Gaetz from this hearing (left) and the doctored image (right). It's clear that the height of his hair was embellished in the fake image. House Judiciary Committee A video of the full "Online Platforms and Market Power: Examining the Dominance of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google" hearing can be seen below. Gaetz speaks several times during this hearing. He can be glimpsed, for example, around the 3:03:00 mark: | 0 | [
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FMD2312 | 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: Alka-Seltzer Marketing Claim summaries: Did Alka-Seltzer dramatically increase their sales by instructing consumers to use two tablets instead of one?
contextual information: Claim: Alka-Seltzer dramatically increased its sales by instructing consumers to use two tablets instead of one. Origins: The history of corporate America is replete with examples (both real and apocryphal) of schemes to manipulate consumers into not only purchasing new products but also buying more of the products they already use. Nearly everyone has heard the tale of the clever marketing man who doubled his company's sales of its shampoo product by adding the final word to the instructions: "Lather. Rinse. Repeat." Countless comedians have mused on the deliberate waste promoted by selling hot dogs in packs of eight while buns come in packages of twelve. "Artificial obsolescence"—the yearly introduction of superficial stylistic changes in big-ticket items such as automobiles and appliances to lure status-conscious consumers into replacing perfectly functional products—dates back to the 1920s. In that decade, the auto industry faced a crisis: by 1926, according to reliable estimates, everyone who could afford a car already had one, and in 1927, production and sales declined for the first time. The answer was not Fordism—the durable, dependable, unchanging Model T. No, the solution was Sloanism, or the annual style change named for Alfred P. Sloan, president of General Motors. The object of superficial changes in detail on a yearly basis, Sloan said, was "to create demand for new value and, so to speak, create a certain amount of dissatisfaction with past models as compared with the new one." When Sloanism began in the 1920s, the notion that a serviceable product could be rendered obsolete by appearance alone was transferred from the apparel of the upper class to the single most important industrial product in America. With the help of the ad copywriter, status and symbolism became compelling reasons for buying a new car, even though the old black Ford in the yard still ran like a top. In the early 1960s, Alka-Seltzer, the venerable fizzy heartburn and acid indigestion pain-relief tablet, found itself in a predicament similar to that of automakers in the late 1920s. As exemplified by Speedy, the "cartoon disk with a squeaky voice and pop eyes" who had been introduced in the early days of television and by the 1960s was one of the corniest mascots still in use to sell an adult product, Alka-Seltzer had fallen out of favor with the younger segment of the drug-buying public. Alka-Seltzer's customers were mostly older individuals, and the product was not attracting many new buyers among American youth, for whom it "had become the symbol of people who drank too much and ate too much ... the unforgivable symbol of a slob, a hangover cure." Nor was the typical advertising of the era likely to appeal to them: traditionally, pain-relief products had been advertised in gruesome commercials filled with horrors that would have caused pain if you didn't already have it. People ran around groaning, clutching their heads and stomachs; men and women crawled into corners and shrieked "Pain! Pain! Pain!" at television viewers who immediately turned off their sets. In one Frankensteinian commercial, an ugly Neanderthal man endured a series of tortures: hammers dropped from the skies to pound his head, hoses appeared like snakes to whip him with water, and straitjackets tied him up. You wanted to scream at him to "get off my telly!" People did not watch proprietary drug advertising unless they already had a headache or stomach problem and were looking for a quick fix, so most of the time, from the advertiser's point of view, advertising was like throwing money into a black hole. The creative minds at the (Jack) Tinker & Partners advertising think tank solved the problem by coming up with different reasons for people to take Alka-Seltzer and fashioning a series of entertaining commercials around those themes: [We] created the kickoff commercial that set the style for all the variety of commercials that followed. It was a truly wonderful, iconic commercial, an ovation to stomachs, a sweet-natured montage of big ones, little ones, slim ones, and fat ones, all filmed at stomach level. There was a street digger's jackhammer stomach, a young chick's bare midriff, and two men talking, facing each other—one with a flat stomach and one with a big round one—an array of stomachs presented with self-deprecating humor and sweet humanness to a happy, bouncy tune. "No matter what shape your stomach's in" was its opening phrase. Self-deprecating humor was new and popular in the sixties and unheard of in drug commercials; when it appeared, it was news. It was followed by 16 completely different commercials, each entertaining and stylish, each giving you a different reason to take Alka-Seltzer. One of these 16 commercials was based on an "Alka-Seltzer on the Rocks" theme, for which Tinker & Partners created "a frothy, luminous commercial composed of nothing but two Alka-Seltzers dropping into a crystal glass of water." The key phrase here was "two Alka-Seltzers"—up until this series of ads, both the Speedy commercials and Alka-Seltzer's packaging had promoted the use of only a single tablet at a time. We met an attractive doctor at Miles [Laboratories], Dorothy Carter, who demonstrated to us that in order for aspirin to break through the pain barrier, it often required two aspirins, not one, to do the job. As aspirin is one of the ingredients that make Alka-Seltzer effective, we asked her if two Alka-Seltzers would be better than one. Yes, two would work better than one. But the directions on the package said to take only one, and all the old Speedy commercials demonstrated only one fizzing in water. [We] did a little dance with Dorothy Carter in the laboratory. What a stroke of good fortune that was! We changed the directions on the packages and began showing two Alka-Seltzers dropping into a glass of water in every commercial. Miles created portable foil packs that held two Alka-Seltzers each and sold them in new places—magazine stands, bars, fast-food restaurants, powder rooms—they became ubiquitous, and, naturally, Miles began selling twice as much Alka-Seltzer. Alka-Seltzer's sales didn't quite double, and not all of the increase was directly attributable to consumers using two tablets instead of one, but Alka-Seltzer did experience a dramatic reversal of fortune due to the Tinker & Partners commercials and their emphasis on two tablets—an emphasis that was later fortified with the catchy and enduring "Plop, plop; fizz fizz" jingle, which drove from the public consciousness any thought that anyone had ever used anything less than two Alka-Seltzers at a time. A common bit of trivia claims that Alka-Seltzer's famous "Plop, plop; fizz, fizz" jingle was written by the father of actress Julianna Margulies (of TV medical drama ER and The Good Wife fame). Although Julianna's father, Paul Margulies, was an advertising executive who helped create the "Plop-plop, fizz-fizz, oh what a relief it is" campaign for Alka-Seltzer, the jingle was actually composed by musician Tom Dawes, a former member of The Cyrkle, who toured America with the Beatles in 1966 after scoring a #2 hit with a recording of Paul Simon's "Red Rubber Ball." | 2 | [
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FMD2313 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Gun control proponent Shannon Watts, founder of the Michael Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, claims the “gun lobby†is using the term “suppressor†instead of “silencer†as a way to confuse members of her group. [Both the NRA and the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) recently held their own suppressor demonstration for media members with the goal of showing what suppressors will and will not do. For example, suppressors reduce the sound of a gunshot — making it manageable and protecting hearing — but they do not silence firearms. NSSF’s Larry Keane said, “We prefer to refer to them as ‘suppressors,’ because that more accurately describes what they do. †He added: They reduce the noise of gunfire, but they don’t block it. They are simply a muffler for your gun. You hear a car go by without a muffler and it’s loud, but you can still hear it with a muffler. Even former ATF agent David Chipman, a Gabby Giffords’ gun control supporter, believes “suppressor†is the better term for devices that reduce the decibel level of a gunshot. But according to the Hill, Shannon Watts thinks the word “suppressor†is the result of a “gun lobby†tactic to confuse her members and other gun control proponents: “It’s all semantics. Focusing on the name distracts people from the real conversation,†Watts said. “They did the same thing with the debate over whether to use the term ‘assault rifles’ or ‘semiautomatic rifles,’ and then the whole conversation shifted to ‘What are we going to call these things? ’†“They want to get into semantics about the language, so we don’t talk about how dangerous they are. †Watts’s fellow gun controllers at the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence are also taking issue with the difference between silenced and suppressed, warning their members to be wary of “gun lobby†claims that suppressors do not silence guns: . @NRA @NSSF say silencers rn’t dangerous they don’t fully suppress sound of guns. We call that a gun lobby lie https: . pic. twitter. — Brady Campaign (@Bradybuzz) May 30, 2017, AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart. com. | 1 | [
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] | 1 |
FMD2314 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Travelers, beware: When you take your gadgets abroad, maintaining the security of the data on your devices is just as important as protecting yourself from muggers. For whatever reason, foreign and domestic governments may have an interest in your personal data, including your social media accounts. This is not just theoretical. Several travelers, including American citizens like Haisam Elsharkawi, were recently pressured into giving officers from the United States Customs and Border Protection access to their cellphones at the airport. Some travelers now face additional privacy risks because of a new regulation that separates them from their computing equipment. This week, the Department of Homeland Security announced that passengers traveling from eight countries to the United States could not bring devices larger than cellphones onto planes. So computers, tablets and other devices will have to be stowed in checked luggage. Legally, citizens are not required to unlock their cellphones or share their passwords with United States government officials. But rules may vary depending on where you are traveling to and from. And any stopping by a government official can be inconvenient, and even intimidating. What to do? There’s one thing all the experts agree on: Do not lie to government officials about your passwords or social media accounts. “They’d make your life miserable if they found that out,†said Jeremiah Grossman, the head of security strategy for SentinelOne, a computer security company. But there are methods for safeguarding your cellphones, tablets and computers from invasive searches, all while remaining honest. Here are some of the best tips, based on interviews with security and forensics specialists. The best way to prevent your information from being searched is to travel with a device that never had any of your data in the first place. It’s a wise idea to invest in a travel device, a cheap smartphone or computer that you use only abroad: You don’t want your nice equipment to get lost or stolen while traveling, anyway, let alone searched by border agents. So leave your fancy equipment — along with your photo album, Facebook, Snapchat and Twitter apps — at home. Which devices to buy? The Wirecutter, the product recommendations site owned by The New York Times, published a guide on budget Android phones, including the $100 Moto G4 Play that comes unlocked so that it can work with foreign SIM cards. For cheap computers, consider a $550 Acer laptop or a $430 Dell Chromebook. Fingerprint sensors, like the ones found on many Apple and Android smartphones, are a nifty security feature for unlocking your phone quickly. But Jonathan Zdziarski, a security researcher who has taught forensics courses to law enforcement agencies on collecting data from smartphones, said your best bet when traveling was to turn the feature off. That’s because in the United States, law enforcement agencies have successfully used warrants to compel people to unlock their cellphones with a fingerprint. But because of your right to remain silent, it would be tough (though not impossible) for the federal government to force you to share your passcode. So disabling your fingerprint sensor when traveling is generally a safer move. The best way to protect your passwords is to not know them. When resisting a data frisk, it is easier to say you didn’t memorize your password as opposed to refusing to provide it to border agents, Mr. Grossman said. “If you don’t know them it’s hard to compel you to give them over if you don’t know how,†he said. “Even if somebody put a gun to my head, I don’t know it. †Password management apps like 1Password and LastPass can automatically create strong, lengthy passwords for all your online accounts and keep them stored in a vault that is accessible with one master password. However, Mr. Grossman said you are better off traveling without your password management software loaded on your devices so that you won’t be asked to hand over the master password to your vault. You could store a copy of the password vault on a cloud service like Dropbox and get access to your vault of passwords when you reach your travel destination, he said. An alternative to using a app is to write your passwords down and leave them with someone you trust. After getting through customs, contact that person and ask him or her to read off your passwords. In the unlikely event that you are asked to provide a password to your email or social media account, having verification enabled will act as an extra safeguard — assuming that you left your primary cellphone at home. With verification turned on, whenever you enter your password, you will receive a text message with a code that you must enter before you can log in. Because the message containing the code would be sent to your phone at home, a customs agent wouldn’t be able to log in to your account even if you gave up your password. Of course, verification could make logging in to your accounts difficult for yourself if you left your primary cellphone at home. You could always leave your phone with someone you trust and contact them to ask for codes when you are trying to log in. However, it would generally be wiser to stay off your social media accounts while traveling to avoid leaving any traces of data on a burner device. Whether you are using a burner device or your own, always make sure to lock down the system with encryption, which scrambles your data so it becomes indecipherable without the right key. Desktop apps like BitLocker or Apple’s FileVault let you encrypt your hard drive, requiring a passphrase to decrypt your files. To avoid surrendering this passphrase, you could jot it down and hand it to a friend and contact that person for the passphrase after crossing the border. When you’re traveling, at minimum you will need access to your address book and calendar, and you may also want to take some photos. But this is all sensitive information that border patrol agents could get their hands on. Your best option is to back up your data to a cloud service and then wipe, or erase, all the data from your device before arriving at the border, Mr. Zdziarski said. After passing through customs, you could then restore your information from the online backup. | 1 | [
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FMD2315 | 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: Bovine Unite Claim summaries: Who's behind the Bovine Unite campaign?
contextual information: Claim: Bovine Unite is a viral marketing campaign for a chain of chicken restaurants. . Example: [Collected on the Internet, 2005] I had just left my friends downtown when apparently a van pulled up and cows jumped out and started handing out bells with BovineUnite.com printed on them. I'm not sure what to make of the website. Apparently C-Day is on May 5th. I'm not sure if it's a clever campagin from Chick-Fil-A or what. But the whole thing is kinda funny. Origins: In April 2005, reports began flowing out of Maryland regarding innocent bystanders being cowed by groups of roaming bovines. These bovines were not rampaging bulls let loose on city streets ( la Pamplona), however, but humans in cow suits who traveled in vans and trucks and handed out free goodies such as bells, all emblazoned with the words "Bovine Unite" and/or the domain name BovineUnite.com. Pamplona Intrigued visitors who surf the BovineUnite.com web site (Cows only! Humans get kicked out.) are greeted with a manifesto of bovine revolt, presented to the strains of martial music layered with moos: manifesto My fellow bovines. Every day the humans chase us with horses, rope us, and milk us for all they're worth. Quite frankly, I've had it up to my udders. All work and no play makes Buttercup a mad cow. So, we must take action. And we must take action now. The time has come to rise up and take destiny into our own hooves. The time has come to claim our right to play in greener pastures. It's time to live, cows. Oh yes. It's time to live. The interior of the site includes links for "Propaganda" (downloads), a hangman game, a Bovine Blog, and a "Talk to the Herd" message board. Bovine Blog Talk to the Herd What's it all about? The only hint is a notice informing fellow bovines: "The plan goes into effect on C-Day 05.05.05 Tune into the networks between 8:45 and 9:00 PM for further instructions." There seems little doubt that BovineUnite.com is a viral marketing campaign being conducted on behalf of some corporate client, but who that client might be remains a mystery. A couple of creative agencies have been fingered for possible involvement: A poster at Ask Metafilter reported that a classified ad run in the Baltimore section of Craigslist seeking to employ cow-suit wearers in Baltimore included a Ask Metafilter contact e-mail address at RedPeg Marketing, so one presumption is that RedPeg is handling the campaign (especially since they've created viral efforts for other major corporate clients). RedPeg Marketing The registrant of the BovineUnite.com domain name (Will Davis) is Vice President, Director of Operations of Eisner Interactive, so that firm might also be involved. Eisner Interactive, Guesses about the type of business engaged in by the mystery client include chicken restaurants (such as KFC or Chick-fil-A), cow-derived food products (e.g., milk), or animal rights campaigns. (We'd venture that the campaign seems a little too obvious to be connected with the food or restaurant industry, and too whimsical to be the effort of an animal rights group.) The restriction (so far) of the BovineUnite campaign to Maryland indicates it may be advertising something of regional rather than national interest, such as the Maryland state lottery an outfit which appears in Eisner Interactive's list of clients. (Cash cows, anyone?) clients We'll just have to wait and watch to see if any more clues slip out before C-Day. Update: Looks like we guessed right: Bovine Unite was an ad campaign for the Maryland Lottery. Maryland Lottery Last updated: 5 May 2005 | 0 | [
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] | 0 |
FMD2316 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Iraqi government accused Kurdish authorities on Sunday of bringing fighters from Turkey s separatist Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) to the disputed oil-rich city of Kirkuk, and said it considered the move a declaration of war. Vahal Ali, a media assistant to Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) President Masoud Barzani, denied the accusation. This is false, there are no PKK in Kirkuk, only Peshmerga, he told Reuters, referring to KRG military forces. In a statement published after a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi in Baghdad, and attended by top military and security commanders, the government said it would seek to impose its authority over Kirkuk and other disputed areas. Iraq s Kurdish leadership rejected on Sunday a demand by the Iraqi government to cancel the outcome of an independence referendum as a precondition for talks to resolve the dispute. Barzani and other Kurdish leaders, who met to discuss the crisis in the town of Dokan, renewed their offer to resolve peacefully the crisis with Baghdad. They rejected what they described as military threats from Iraqi forces against Kurdish Peshmerga fighters, and pledged to defend Kurdish-held territory in the event of an attack. The KRG and the Shi ite-led central government in Baghdad have been at loggerheads since the Sept. 25 referendum and its loud call for Kurdish independence. Tensions between the two parties have flared around the multi-ethnic oil city of Kirkuk, which Peshmerga forces took in 2014 when Iraqi security forces collapsed in the face of an Islamic State onslaught. The Peshmerga deployment prevented Kirkuk s oilfields from falling into jihadist hands. | 1 | [
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FMD2317 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Legendary actor Robert De Niro was in Sarajevo on Saturday to accept an award in recognition of the anniversary of his character in the film Taxi Driver. But while speaking about the movie, De Niro compared his character of Travis Bickle, who has psychological issues and violent tendencies, to the Republican nominee. I don t know, it s crazy that people like Donald Trump he shouldn t even be where he is, so God help us, he began as the crowd cheered. What he s been saying is really totally crazy, ridiculous he is totally nuts. But I think now they are really starting to push back, the media finally they are starting to say: Come on Donald, this is ridiculous, this is nuts, this is insane. Here s the video via YouTube.Indeed, Donald Trump has drawn outrage from around the world with his offensive and threatening remarks ever since he entered the race for the Republican nomination in June of last year.Perhaps most worrying to people living in Sarajevo is Trump s refusal to rule out using nuclear weapons in Europe.But Trump s outbursts have also included claims that the upcoming presidential election is rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton and his call for Second Amendment people to do something to stop Hillary Clinton from nominating liberal judges to the Supreme Court, which is essentially a call for gun nuts to shoot her.Bosnia and Herzegovina, whose capital city is Sarajevo, is probably also concerned about Trump s ties to Russian president Vladamir Putin, especially since the Republican nominee has threatened to pull American support from NATO and Russia has been aggressive in Eastern Europe.Make no mistake, Trump is crazy and the people in Sarajevo and the rest of the world really appreciated De Niro for speaking out against Trump at a time when many Americans really do want an egomaniacal dictator wannabe in the White House.Featured image via screen capture | 0 | [
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] | 0 |
FMD2318 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Email Print It has been revealed that there are about 650,000 emails on Huma Abedin’s husband’s laptop. Of the 650,000 emails, thousands are labeled “classified” National Security material forwarded from another email server. According to sources, the emails were discovered in a folder labeled, “Life Insurance”. Is it possible the folder was mislabeled by Abedin to deliberately conceal its contents? This also begs the question: How did Huma Abedin get National Security clearance?
The NY Post explains where FBI originally dropped the ball when they first investigated Abedin: Skeptical agents showed Abedin three separate email exchanges she had with an IT staffer regarding the operation of the private Clinton server during Clinton’s tenure at State. Abedin claimed she “did not recall” the email exchanges. So if you believe Abedin, she didn’t know the private clintonemail.com server that hosted her [email protected] account even existed until she heard about it in the news. Comey was a believer; he didn’t even bother to call her back for further questioning. Case closed. But Abedin’s role in this caper begs for fresh scrutiny. Making false statements to a federal agent is a felony. So is mishandling classified information. By forwarding classified emails to her personal email account and printing them out at home, Abedin appears to have violated a Classified Information NonDisclosure Agreement she signed at the State Department on Jan. 30, 2009, in which she agreed to keep all classified material under the control of the US government. An infographic puts it in a simpler form, stating how government emails were forwarded to her Yahoo account — for what? No one knows. There was allegedly a counter-espionage case going on around the time. With 500,000,000 email accounts hacked earlier last year, Abedin has put our National Security in danger. How did Huma Abedin get National Security clearance? How did #HillarysHuma get National Security Clearance⁉ #WheresHuma #GoHillary find Huma Abedin pic.twitter.com/wLS2JSYEQ1
— Νia🚨650,000Emails (@nia4_trump) October 30, 2016 Join us on Facebook to Stop The Takeover. Click on the button to subscribe. Leave a comment... | 0 | [
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] | 0 |
FMD2319 | 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: Coca-Cola is not offering a bottle with the label 'Share a Coke with the KKK' for sale. Claim summaries: Artwork from an online protest asking Coca-Cola not to sponsor the 2016 Republican National Convention led some to believe that the company actually sold a "KKK" bottle.
contextual information: In March 2016, photos showing a bottle of Coca-Cola with the words "share a Coke with the KKK" written on its label started circulating online. This is not a real product sold by Coca-Cola. While the "Share a Coke" campaign allows Coca-Cola drinkers to personalize their cans, some words or phrases (such as "KKK") are not available. The image showing the "KKK" bottle was created for an online petition on the website Color Of Change, asking the company to pull its sponsorship of the Republican National Convention due to Donald Trump's failure to condemn the KKK in an interview. Even with Trump refusing to disavow the support of the Ku Klux Klan this weekend and declaring All Lives Matter at a rally, Coca-Cola and other companies still have not canceled their sponsorship of the RNC. How can Coca-Cola, a company that heavily markets to and profits from Black people, fund a platform for a presidential nominee that is being bolstered into office by former Grand Wizard David Duke, the KKK, and other white supremacists? The petition presupposes that Coca-Cola will be sponsoring the 2016 Republican National Convention and that Coca-Cola would be effectively endorsing the Ku Klux Klan by sponsoring the RNC. On 23 February 2016, representatives from the advocacy groups ColorofChange, Americas Voice, CREDO Action, Million Hoodies, MoveOn, and Presente.org admitted as much in an open letter to Coca-Cola and other alleged sponsors of the 2016 RNC. Based on your corporate sponsorship of the 2012 Republican National Convention, we have reason to believe that your company is planning to again sponsor the RNC this year. We believe it is a sign of strong corporate leadership for you and your company to refrain from sponsoring Donald Trump's hateful and divisive rhetoric. While Coca-Cola did sponsor the Republican National Convention in 2012, the company also sponsored the Democratic National Convention that year. Many of the sponsors of the Democratic convention were also sponsors of the host committee in Tampa for the previous week's Republican National Convention. "The Coca-Cola Company believes we have a role to play in the political process and that includes helping to make the political conventions a success," said Coca-Cola spokeswoman Nancy Bailey. | 0 | [
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] | 0 |
FMD2320 | 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 This a Trump Tower Billboard in Mumbai? Claim summaries: A photograph purportedly shows a billboard for Trump Tower in Mumbai with homeless people sleeping in the street beneath it.
contextual information: An image purportedly showing a billboard advertisement for Trump Tower Mumbai which shows a photograph of the American businessman and President-elect alongside the slogan "There is only one way to live" with a group of apparently homeless people sitting and sleeping in the street beneath it was circulated on social media in December 2016: Embed from Getty Images A billboard for the upcoming luxury residential apartment complex Trump Tower Mumbai, which bears the name of billionaire real estate tycoon and US presidential hopeful Donald Trump, is seen next to a busy road in Mumbai on June 3, 2016. Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the US presidential elections, to his fans, is the definition of American success, the cut-throat tycoon who can magically fix all that ails a nation no longer sure of its place in the world, and home to an increasingly frustrated white working and middle class. But there is barely a corner of Manhattan that the Trump Organization hasn't conquered with luxury buildings. Its portfolio of hotels, golf courses, casinos and luxury estates straddles the world, from California to Mumbai. A photograph published by India news outlet Mid-Day in May 2016 also shows that a similar billboard in the same area displayed the slogan "Trump is back" rather than "There is only one way to live": Mid-Day We uncovered an image that was posted on 21 December 2016 by Muhammad Sabir, the founder of Slumabad (an organization that works to give homeless children access to education and economic opportunities) along with a message about income inequality: posted Muhammad Sabir Slumabad This photo tells a story of poverty, inequality and deprivation of basic human dignity and rights. It puts all human development in question and asks basic simple questions from us: Can we call ourselves civilized, while we see our fellow human beings living on footpath like animals? Is there only one way to live left for millions of deprived souls? Let us hope sun also rises for marginalized souls, I mean sun of equality, development and justice. While many people who viewed the image were initially skeptical about its authenticity (including us), the image is real. It was originally posted to Facebook on 27 August 2014 by Paul Needham, who took the photograph: Needham also sent us a high-resolution, uncropped version of the photograph to prove its authenticity: He also sent us different photographs of the same scene: Note: The original version of this article said that the image was not real, based on our initial inability to track down its photographer or source. We have now heard from him and updated our article accordingly. Singh, Varun. "Donald Trump Is Mumbai builder's Latest Poster Boy."
Mid-Day. 31 May 2016. | 1 | [
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] | 1 |
FMD2321 | 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 a Power Surge in a Plugged-In Air Fryer Cause a Fire, as Claimed in Viral Facebook Post? Claim summaries: Readers asked us to verify the contents of a Facebook post that described a purported fire hazard involving air fryers and power surges.
contextual information: On June 18, 2022, Facebook user Cindy Jennings posted that her kitchen had experienced what appeared to be a large fire, as shown in a picture. According to her post, the fire was caused by a plugged-in air fryer that had undergone a power surge when electricity was restored in her home. "So please unplug your air fryers when not in use," the post concluded. Readers asked us if this story was true, as it was being copied and pasted by other users. The post in question was being shared as follows: FROM CINDY- Ughhh, the one thing I wanted to tell everyone in my last post but forgot to mention is that my mind's not working right yet. What caused this was our air fryer. We left it plugged in, and when the electricity came back on, it surged through it. We even had it plugged into a special outlet for protection, but it failed anyway. What I wanted to tell you was that the fire inspector said this was the sixth air fryer fire he has had to deal with; they (firefighters) are trying to get air fryer companies investigated because of all the fires. So please unplug your air fryers when not in use. Note: Jennings' post mentioned a previous post; however, that previous post was not visible to users who were not her Facebook friends. We sought to verify three key pieces of information for the readers who asked us to look into this story. We wanted to confirm that a power surge in an air fryer, which was said to have been plugged in with a surge protection product, was the cause of a fire in Jennings' home. Second, we aimed to verify with the firefighters she claimed to have spoken with that they had seen several air fryer fires similar to this one and that they were trying to get the problem investigated. We also wanted to find more details about any past recalls of air fryers. According to publicly available information on Jennings' Facebook profile, she appeared to live in Surfside Beach, South Carolina. We attempted to reach out by phone and email using contact information we found online. We also sent her a message through Messenger. One of our questions was whether the fire she described occurred in the town listed on her profile or if it had happened elsewhere. We did not receive any responses. In the event that the kitchen fire involving the air fryer and the power surge did happen in Surfside Beach, we contacted the Surfside Beach Fire Department. The day after we first published this story, we spoke by phone with Keith Williams, the department's fire marshal. "We can find no calls that we have run that would match this nature," Williams told us. "We can't find a call in our county database or in our municipal database that would correspond to this call Ms. Jennings would have had." By email, Williams also added that he would bring the supposed incident up at an upcoming fire marshal meeting for Horry County to find out if any other members were aware of an air fryer fire under the name of Jennings. After finding no success with our Surfside Beach search, we noticed that Jennings' profile also mentioned that she was apparently originally "from Chesterville, Ohio." An online search for Jennings' name on the public-information website WhitePages.com showed a person with the same name supposedly residing in Marengo, Ohio. The listing showed an address at a mobile home park named Bennington Springs. Chesterville and Marengo are both located within the jurisdiction of the Big Walnut Joint Fire District. On the Facebook page for the Big Walnut Joint Fire District, a post was made on the morning of June 15, just three days before Jennings' air fryer fire post. The post stated that a storm had caused a power loss in the area and mentioned that there had been a structure fire at the Bennington Springs mobile home park. This information seemed to align with the details in Jennings' post. The Big Walnut Joint Fire District had been busy in the last 24 hours due to the storm and power loss, responding to 18 calls for service, including two structure fires. The first fire was with Fredericktown Fire on Yankee Road, and the second was in the Bennington Springs mobile home park. Many of our members had gone almost 24 hours without sleep. We want to thank the community for continuing to support the Big Walnut Fire District so we can be there for you in times like this. We soon received confirmation from the fire department that Jennings' story was true. Here's what a spokesperson for the Big Walnut Joint Fire District had to say via email: Our department, Big Walnut Joint Fire District, did have a fire on 6/14/2022 at Bennington Springs mobile home park. The picture you included is from that scene. It followed a power outage that was county-wide due to several tornadoes. The power had been restored to the area approximately three hours prior to the fire. The residents had left the premises before the power returned. Our investigator, who is with multiple agencies, ruled the cause as the air fryer. This is the only fire our department has experienced with the origin being an air fryer. He stated there have been others, based on his experience at other departments. This individual is no longer with our department. I do not know the final findings declared by their insurance investigator. The air fryer had been left plugged into a standard residential GFI outlet. The extension cord [visible in the picture] was for the refrigerator, which was being powered by a generator. With the mystery solved, we were also curious to find information on air fryer recalls that had occurred in 2022. On April 21, 2022, Best Buy recalled around 772,000 Insignia air fryers and air fryer ovens, stating it was because they could "overheat, posing fire and burn hazards." Later, on October 13, 2022, NewAir recalled 11,750 of its own Magic Chef air fryers for the same reason. It's unclear what make and model of air fryer appeared in the picture posted by Jennings. Note: We also found this picture and story being discussed and shared in other posts on Reddit, Twitter, and Facebook. "Best Buy Recalls Insignia Air Fryers and Air Fryer Ovens Due to Fire and Burn Hazards." U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, April 21, 2022, https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2022/Best-Buy-Recalls-Insignia-Air-Fryers-and-Air-Fryer-Ovens-Due-to-Fire-and-Burn-Hazards. "Big Walnut Joint Fire District." Facebook, June 15, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/bwjfd/posts/pfbid0XpieRQdCq8y6MrHNpKzkc3BSmRNZgm2qHD8tvkhefAA5Snr1jWdjCoirhkQ2H9TWl. ---. https://www.bwjfd.org/. Jennings, Cindy. Facebook, June 18, 2022, https://www.facebook.com/cindy.jennings.7798/posts/pfbid02o56oU9vsVh7nwphhcwyVXyz3YcTxq91thTYXMk8uLLigFPSjRvcLv3hFnJJm5JbUl. "Newair Recalls Magic Chef Air Fryers Due to Fire and Burn Hazards." U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, October 13, 2022, https://www.cpsc.gov/Recalls/2023/Newair-Recalls-Magic-Chef-Air-Fryers-Due-to-Fire-and-Burn-Hazards. Surfside Beach Fire. https://www.surfsidebeach.org/182/Fire. White Pages. https://www.whitepages.com/. December 1, 2022: This story was updated after the fire marshal for the Surfside Beach Fire Department responded to our inquiry to let us know they found no record of an air fryer fire under the name of Jennings. December 1, 2022: This story was updated after we found a link between an address in Ohio and a Facebook post from the Big Walnut Joint Fire District. December 5, 2022: This story has been updated from "Research In Progress" to "True" after we established with the Big Walnut Joint Fire District that the story was true. | 1 | [
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] | 1 |
FMD2322 | 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 a Police Drug Raid Unexpectedly Find a Bitcoin Farm Instead? Claim summaries: This rumor took us to the town of Santiponce, Spain, which is near Seville.
contextual information: On Feb. 1, 2022, a Reddit user posted a video in the r/Unexpected subreddit titled: "Police were looking for drugs." The video purportedly showed Spanish police busting down a door and expecting to find marijuana or other drugs, but instead uncovering a Bitcoin mining farm for cryptocurrency. Reddit posted a video r/Unexpected video cryptocurrency We found that the clip was originally posted by the National Police YouTube channel on Jan. 28. It was recorded in Santiponce, Spain, which is near Seville. It's unclear on exactly what date the bust took place: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5ET6kbChkA On the official website for the Spanish police, a news release also from Jan. 28 provided in-depth details on the Bitcoin mining farm bust: news release Police investigations began on a possible indoor marijuana plantation that could be located in some stables located in Santiponce. After carrying out the first inquiries, the agents realized that the existing indications did not correspond to the cultivation of marijuana, but rather that these facilities could be hosting a cryptocurrency farm of which there are hardly any records in Spain. With this information, the stables were entered and searched, where the agents discovered modern facilities for mining cryptocurrencies. In other words, it's true that the police originally thought the buildings might house a marijuana operation. However, according to the release, before the door was busted down, police had made inquiries and expected that they would find not marijuana or drugs, but rather a Bitcoin or other cryptocurrency mining farm. Inside the building. (Courtesy: National Police/YouTube) Research from NotebookCheck.net documented what was found in the raid and said that the electricity used by the Bitcoin mining farm was done in an illegal manner: NotebookCheck.net Over 21 Bitcoin mining ASICs were recovered from the location and what looks like five EVGA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics cards. The equipment, worth over 50,000, generated about 3,500 in revenue per month. The Bitcoin mine in question was relatively new, so it is unlikely that its owners came close to breaking even on their investment. Police are yet to identify who owns the farm in question and are investigating the matter. Like many other countries in the world, Spain does not have any laws against mining cryptocurrency, and mining is (somewhat) legal in the country. However, the electric connection for the Bitcoin mining farm was illegal and reportedly cost the state 2,000 per month. Regarding the illegal use of the electricity, the news release from police said: "Outside the premises, an illegal connection to the electrical network was located to power the equipment, observing a very high consumption of amps, which, according to technicians from the electrical company, could generate a monthly electricity fraud of 2,000 euros." An alternate view inside the building. (Courtesy: National Police/YouTube) In sum, the police seen in the video received information just prior to the bust that led them to expect that it was not marijuana or drugs that they would find, but rather the Bitcoin cryptocurrency mining farm that they eventually uncovered. Curious about how Snopes' writers verify information and craft their stories for public consumption? We've collected some posts that help explain how we do what we do. Happy reading and let us know what else you might be interested in knowing. help explain let us know | 0 | [
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FMD2323 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: KABUL, Afghanistan — Abdul Ali Shamsi had already covered a lot of ground before he moved to Kandahar Province to become deputy governor a year and a half ago. Mr. Shamsi was at the vanguard of a new generation of Afghan leaders. From an early job as a security guard in Kabul, he became a security expert in Helmand Province and moved up in the provincial government there. And he helped found the Afghanistan 1400 youth political movement, starting public campaigns to console victims of violence around the country and to raise support for Afghan governance. “These efforts have two impacts: One is we stand up against things we believe are wrong, but the other more important factor is we project courage,†he told The Guardian newspaper a few years ago, as he was spearheading an effort to clean up and reopen a lakeside picnic spot in Kabul after a Taliban attack. “We enable people to stand up against violence, people who in many ways have been passive because of fears instilled among the population. †On Tuesday, Mr. Shamsi, 38, became a victim of the kind of violence he had helped others withstand, killed along with 10 other people when explosives placed within the Kandahar governor’s guesthouse detonated during a reception for visiting Arab officials. He was the third Kandahar deputy governor to be killed in the line of duty in just a few years, and he knew, in taking the job, that he would be just as much a target as his two predecessors — one a young poet and writer who was gunned down in a university classroom and, before that, an engineer who was killed by a suicide bomber on his way to work. The attack in Kandahar this week seemed expressly aimed at breaking down the cause that Mr. Shamsi and his colleagues were dedicated to: trying to restore faith in government after years of devastating war and disappointing failures. Among the dead were an Afghan senator and a member of Parliament, five officials from the United Arab Emirates and an Afghan envoy to the United States, according to officials. Eighteen others were wounded. The governor of Kandahar, Humayoon Azizi, and the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates, Juma Mohammed Abdullah were among the wounded, but their injuries were not considered said Gen. Abdul Raziq, the security chief of Kandahar Province. The president of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed said in a statement that the officials were in Kandahar “to carry out humanitarian, educational and development projects. †He ordered flags to be flown at for three days of mourning in his country. The explosions in Kandahar capped a bloody day in Afghanistan. A bombing targeted a meeting of militia commanders in the Helmand provincial capital, Lashkar Gah, killing from seven to 11 people, according to various Afghan officials. Hours later, a double bombing that was claimed by the Taliban killed at least 38 people and wounded 86 others outside the Parliament during the early evening rush hour. Even by the standards of Kandahar, which has a long history of officials and elders being targeted in complex attacks over the years, the extent of the security breach raised questions. To get to the governor’s guesthouse requires passing through multiple security checks, and measures were so tight on Tuesday before the dignitaries’ visit that, according to one official, Mr. Shamsi’s own car was even searched. General Raziq said that an intense investigation into the attack was starting, and that the national security adviser was coming to Kandahar to lead the effort. In an interview, the police commander said the guesthouse had been under construction for months, with about three dozen workers coming to the site each day, raising the possibility that explosives could have been smuggled in that way. “We have detained several people who were working there, and they are under investigation,†General Raziq said. The general, who has survived dozens of attacks himself, barely escaped this one. He said he had walked out of the hall to offer his evening prayers in the next room when the explosives went off. “I wasn’t finished with my prayers when the loud explosion occurred,†General Raziq said. “It shook the whole building, blew out the windows, and the entire hall was in flames that were out of control. †Many of the bodies were burned beyond recognition, Afghan officials said. And despite the government’s formally declaring Mr. Shamsi among the dead, his brother, Fazal Bari Shamsi, said the family had yet to receive the body, which was awaiting DNA testing for identification. On Wednesday, tributes poured in after it was confirmed that Mr. Shamsi was among the dead. President Ashraf Ghani was described as openly grieving, remaining solemn through his morning meeting with aides and describing Mr. Shamsi’s death as a profound loss for the country. “This unfortunate and poor nation had such need for you,†wrote Baryalai Helmand in a Facebook post about Mr. Shamsi. “The martyrdom of youth like you breaks our back. †Shaharzad Akbar, who was one of the founding members of Afghanistan 1400 along with Mr. Shamsi, posted another emotional tribute. “He always gave us morale — in the hardest days he was hopeful, and in the darkest moments patriotic,†Ms. Akbar wrote. “He was more experienced than most of us. With me, a much younger girl with much less experience, he would interact with such respect that it would put me to shame. †The political group found itself developing a side specialty in trying to rebuild after violence. When a gruesome massacre took place in western Farah Province, Mr. Shamsi was among the group of young leaders who traveled to the province to console the residents of the shaken city. As the most experienced of the lot, having dealt with death and violence during his years in Helmand and the American troop surge, he often took the lead in those kinds of delegations. One of Mr. Shamsi’s first acts on the job the day he became deputy governor in August 2015 was to visit the elderly father of his assassinated predecessor, Abdul Qadeem Patyal, to pay his respects. Dawa Khan Meenapal, then the provincial director of culture in Kandahar and currently a deputy spokesman for Mr. Ghani, was with him. “It was the atmosphere of a funeral, especially after Patyal’s children came to the room,†Mr. Meenapal said about the visit. “The two deputy governors before him had been martyred. Shamsi knew that working in Kandahar meant being mentally prepared for that. †| 1 | [
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FMD2324 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Environmental issues have long turned into a noose, used by the West to restrain the development of dangerous competitors by convincing them that the intensive economy is very bad.
At the international level, the West is trying to impose onerous restrictions on other economies. Or they are trying to tarnish the reputation of certain economic products and to squeeze out a rapidly growing competitor from the market.
This global environmental propaganda successfully shapes public opinion in the direction it needs. | 0 | [
"0",
"1",
"2"
] | 0 |
FMD2325 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Republican tax bill unveiled last week in the U.S. Congress could disrupt the global supply chains of large, multinational companies by slapping a 20-percent tax on cross-border transactions they routinely make between related business units. European multinationals, some of which currently pay little U.S. tax on U.S. profits thanks to tax treaties and diversion of U.S. earnings to their home countries or other low-tax jurisdictions, could be especially hard hit if the proposed tax becomes law, according to some tax experts. Others said the proposal could run afoul of international tax treaties, the World Trade Organization and other global standards that forbid the double taxation of profits if the new tax did not account for income taxes paid in other countries. The proposed tax, tucked deep in the 429-page bill backed by President Donald Trump, caught corporate tax strategists by surprise and sent them scrambling to understand its dynamics and goals, as well as whether Congress is likely ever to vote on it. Reuters contacted seven multinational companies and four industry groups. None would comment directly on the proposal, with most saying they were still studying the entire tax package. The proposal is part of a broad tax reform bill unveiled by House of Representatives Republicans on Thursday, which promises to lower overall tax burdens and simplify the tax code. Whether the proposed reforms ever become law is uncertain, with weeks and possibly months of debate and intense lobbying still ahead. The House package overall has drawn criticism for adding too much to the federal budget deficit and too heavily favoring the rich and big business. However, the corporate tax part, experts said, included some ambitious proposals worthy of further discussion. They said the 20 percent excise tax is one such proposal targeting the abuses of so-called transfer-pricing where multinationals themselves set prices of goods, services and intellectual property rights that constantly move between their national business units. Under global standards, those prices should resemble those available on the open market. However, if a foreign parent charges U.S. affiliates inflated price, it can reduce its U.S. tax bill and effectively shift profits to a lower-tax country, reducing the entire corporation’s overall tax costs. “Clearly there’s a transfer-pricing issue and something should be done,†said Steven Rosenthal, senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan Washington think tank. “I would view this 20-percent excise tax as a blunt instrument to address the problem. And the problem with blunt instruments is sometimes they hit what you want to hit, and sometimes they hit what you don’t want to hit,†said Rosenthal, former legislation counsel at Congress’s Joint Tax Committee. Under the proposal, U.S. business units that import products, pay royalties or other tax-deductible, non-interest fees to foreign parents or affiliates in the course of doing business would either pay a 20-percent tax on these or agree to treat the amounts as income connected to their U.S. business and subject to U.S. taxes. As proposed, the new tax rule would apply only to businesses with payments from U.S. units to foreign affiliates exceeding $100 million. The rule would not take effect until after 2018. European companies that sell foreign-made products into the U.S. market through local distribution units could be among those most affected, said Michael Mundaca, co-director of the national tax department at the accounting firm Ernst & Young. Such companies could end up paying tax on the transfers twice | 1 | [
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FMD2326 | 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 Joe Rogan Confront Oprah Winfrey and The Rock About Maui Wildfires? Claim summaries: A popular report asked of Winfrey, "Could she be profiting from these disasters or even possibly be behind them?"
contextual information: In September and October 2023, various purported celebrity news YouTube channels published videos that claimed podcaster Joe Rogan had apparently confronted entertainment icon Oprah Winfrey and actor Dwayne Johnson, better known as The Rock, about supposed nefarious activities surrounding the August 2023 Maui wildfires. August 2023 Maui wildfires Their connection to Hawaii: Winfrey owns property on Maui, while Realtor.com reports that Johnson had a vacation rental on Oahu and had spent time in Hawaii when he was a child. Realtor.com According to the thumbnail images for these videos, in face-to-face interviews on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast, Rogan had accused Winfrey and The Rock of attempting to profit from the wildfires. Rogan Winfrey The Rock For example, one clip from the Drama Bay YouTube channel had the title, "5 MINUTES AGO: Joe Rogan CONFRONTS Oprah for Scamming Maui people!!!?" The video (archived) was viewed more than 228,000 times on YouTube. video archived Rogan never said this to Winfrey, nor had she ever appeared on his podcast. Then, on Oct. 8, the same YouTube channel posted a similar video (archived) about The Rock. The video title read, "Joe Rogan SLAMS The Rock And Elites For Scamming Maui People!!!?" video archived Again, Rogan never said this, nor had The Rock ever been a guest on his podcast. These and several other videos on other similar-looking YouTube channels all promoted similar rumors. One of those other videos came from the Celebrity Glance YouTube channel and had more than 621,000 views. The title of the video (archived) read, "Joe Rogan & Elon Musk Expose Oprah's Plan To STEAL From The People Of Maui." video archived Here's the kicker: All of these videos featured narration, scripting, sequencing and thumbnail images that appeared to have been a product of artificial intelligence (AI) tools. The Drama Bay YouTube channel's video about Rogan and Winfrey began as follows: AI-GENERATED NARRATOR VOICE: In the most recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, our candid podcast host, Joe Rogan, made some headlines by dropping a surprising bombshell. He suggested that media mogul Oprah Winfrey might be involved in shady land deals. Specifically, she's been eyeing properties owned by individuals caught up in various controversies. The Maui fires have left a community in turmoil, with many children affected by the tragedy and nowhere to be found, and the connection to the ongoing concerns surrounding Oprah Winfrey is undoubtedly cause for concern. Joe Rogan and several other commendable celebrities have tried to warn us time and time again about how these Hollywood elites would do anything to keep filling their well of riches. And once again, Oprah is suspected of being involved in this terrible incident. Could she be profiting from these disasters or even possibly be behind them? The other videos about Rogan, Winfrey, The Rock, Musk and Maui all followed a similar script. Musk Despite all of the claims made in these AI-generated videos, the truth of the matter was that neither Winfrey nor The Rock have ever been guests on Rogan's podcast. Further, no evidence was presented that would show Rogan had confronted Winfrey or The Rock for having orchestrated the wildfires or for scheming to profit from the disaster. Unfortunately, the comments under all of these videos were filled with many thousands of users who apparently believed the false rumors. In fact, most of the commenters didn't mention AI at all, perhaps because they didn't realize they were watching AI-driven videos. For more on the background of a relief fund set up by Winfrey and The Rock for Maui wildfire survivors and misinformation that surrounded the launch of the fund we encourage readers to visit our past detailed reporting. detailed reporting Liles, Jordan. Dolly Parton Didnt Ask for Fire Victims Donations, in Contrast with Oprah and The Rock for Maui? Snopes, 5 Sept. 2023, https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/dolly-parton-fire-donations/. ---. Dolly Partons Charitable Work Was Twisted on TikTok To Diss Other Celebs. Snopes, 11 Sept. 2023, https://www.snopes.com/news/2023/09/11/dolly-parton-tiktok-maui/. Zap, Claudine. "Take a Look Inside Dwayne 'The Rock Johnson's Hawaiian Vacation Rental."Realtor.com, 7 Apr. 2022, https://www.realtor.com/news/celebrity-real-estate/inside-dwayne-the-rock-johnson-hawaii-vacation-rental/. | 0 | [
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] | 0 |
FMD2327 | 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 there an anticipated asteroid impact on Earth during the Christmas period? Claim summaries: The Earth is constantly surrounded by "near-earth objects."
contextual information: On Oct. 23, 2019, the U.K. tabloid Express published an article that left some readers believing they need not make Christmas plans that year because Earth was in danger of being hit by a large asteroid. The article was entitled "Asteroid Terror: NASA Spot Mammoth Space Rock to Hit Earth's Orbit Five Days Before X-mas." The subheading gave earthlings an even smaller chance of survival: "AN ASTEROID the size of the World Trade Centre is on a dangerous Earth-bound orbit that could see the rock smash the planet during Christmas festivities." When the article was regurgitated by even less reputable websites, the fear-mongering title morphed into a factually inaccurate claim. For instance, the website Digital Wise rehashed this article under the title "NASA Issues Warning Over Asteroid Predicted To Hit Earth Five Days Before Christmas!" However, NASA has made no such announcement, and Earth is not in danger of being hit by an asteroid around Christmas. These articles are all based on a real asteroid (known as 216258 2006 WH1) and its holiday approach toward Earth. However, they present the information as if this asteroid is particularly dangerous. But there's nothing unusually threatening about asteroid 216258 2006 WH1. NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) currently lists 26 near-Earth objects that are scheduled to pass by our planet within the next 60 days. While asteroid 216258 2006 WH1 (which was discovered in 2006) will indeed be passing by Earth around Christmas, CNEOS reports that the asteroid is expected to safely pass by at a distance of about 15.19 LD (lunar distance), approximately 3.6 million miles. Dr. Paul W. Chodas, the Director of the Center for Near Earth Object Studies, told us in an email that there is "nothing unusual or dangerous" about asteroid 216258 2006 WH1. He stated, "It is simply making a close approach to the Earth. Astronomers have been observing this asteroid's position for 13 years; we know its orbit very accurately, we can predict its close approaches accurately for the next 200 years, and we know with certainty that it cannot hit our planet." Lindley Johnson, NASA's Planetary Defense Officer and Program Executive of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), also told us that this asteroid "poses no hazard to impacting Earth." NASA and other U.S. agencies are lead players in the international effort to develop plans to respond to a possible Near-Earth Object (NEO) impact. In 2018, the White House released the National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan, which identifies key steps that U.S. agencies need to take to better prepare the United States and the world for detecting and responding to a possible impact. NASA has been directed by Congress to catalogue and characterize all NEOs bigger than 140 meters, the ones that could be catastrophic. NASA is approximately 35% complete for NEOs 140 meters and larger, and approximately 96% complete for those 1 km and larger. Strategic investments in our space-based programs will benefit all of humanity as we continue to catalogue any NEOs that pose a potential threat. This particular asteroid's trajectory has been well tracked by NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies since its discovery 13 years ago and poses no hazard to impacting Earth. Here's a little more information about near-Earth objects from CNEOS. The organization writes on its website (emphasis ours): "On a daily basis, about one hundred tons of interplanetary material drifts down to the Earth's surface. Most of the smallest interplanetary particles that reach the Earth's surface are the tiny dust particles that are released by comets as their ices vaporize in the solar neighborhood. The vast majority of the larger interplanetary material that reaches the Earth's surface originates as the collision fragments of asteroids that have run into one another some eons ago. With an average interval of about 10,000 years, rocky or iron asteroids larger than about 100 meters would be expected to reach the Earth's surface and cause local disasters or produce tidal waves that can inundate low-lying coastal areas. On average, every several hundred thousand years or so, asteroids larger than a kilometer could cause global disasters. In this case, the impact debris would spread throughout the Earth's atmosphere so that plant life would suffer from acid rain, partial blocking of sunlight, and from the firestorms resulting from heated impact debris raining back down upon the Earth's surface. Since their orbital paths often cross that of the Earth, collisions with near-Earth objects have occurred in the past, and we should remain alert to the possibility of future close Earth approaches. It seems prudent to mount efforts to discover and study these objects, to characterize their sizes, compositions, and structures, and to keep an eye on their future trajectories. No one should be overly concerned about an Earth impact of an asteroid or comet. The threat to any one person from auto accidents, disease, other natural disasters, and a variety of other problems is much higher than the threat from NEOs. Over long periods of time, however, the chances of the Earth being impacted are not negligible, so some form of NEO insurance is warranted. At the moment, our best insurance rests with the NEO scientists and their efforts to first find these objects and then track their motions into the future. We need to first find them, then keep an eye on them. NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program is constantly monitoring the skies for approaching asteroids and meteors. So far, the program has discovered more than 19,000 NEOs. When NASA discovers an NEO, it works to determine as much information as possible about the object, such as its size, speed, and orbit, so that the agency can calculate when it will approach Earth and how close it will come when it does. But the 19,000 NEOs in NASA's database aren't really what we have to worry about. The organization writes that thousands of NEOs have yet to be discovered: "Asteroid impacts are a continuously occurring natural process. Every day, 80 to 100 tons of material falls upon Earth from space in the form of dust and small meteorites (fragments of asteroids that disintegrate in Earth's atmosphere). Over the past 20 years, U.S. government sensors have detected nearly 600 very small asteroids a few meters in size that have entered Earth's atmosphere and created spectacular bolides (fireballs). Experts estimate that an impact of an object the size of the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013—approximately 55 feet (17 meters) in size—takes place once or twice a century. Impacts of larger objects are expected to be far less frequent (on the scale of centuries to millennia). However, given the current incompleteness of the NEO catalogue, an unpredicted impact—such as the Chelyabinsk event—could occur at any time. Still, the chances of an asteroid larger than 140 meters hitting Earth in the next 100 years are minimal. The current congressionally directed objective of the NEO Observations Program is to find, track, and characterize at least 90 percent of the predicted number of NEOs that are 140 meters and larger in size—larger than a small football stadium—and to characterize a subset representative of the entire population. Objects of this size and larger pose a risk to Earth of greatest concern due to the level of devastation an impact would cause and should continue to be the focus of global search efforts. While no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next 100 years, less than half of the estimated 25,000 NEOs that are 140 meters and larger in size have been found to date. Asteroid 216258 2006 WH1 will pass by Earth a few days before Christmas. However, NASA has issued no warnings about a catastrophic impact, and CNEOS reports that this asteroid will get no closer than 3 million miles from Earth during its approach." | 0 | [
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FMD2328 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: BEIJING — They protest, picket and sing to defend Mao’s memory, yearning for the East to be red again. But lately some of China’s Maoists are finding inspiration in an unlikely insurgent in the West: Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump “has torn up the old rules of the ruling elites, not just of the capitalist West,†said Zhang Hongliang, a polemicist who is the loudest proponent of what could be loosely called “Maoists for Trump. †In a recent essay, Mr. Zhang lauded the American president as being alone among national leaders daring “to openly promote the political ideas of Chairman Mao. †President Xi Jinping of China will be sizing up Mr. Trump during a visit to his estate in Florida this week, in the leaders’ first summit meeting. Meanwhile, many ordinary Chinese people have also been taking the measure of the new American president and have been bewildered, incensed and yet, sometimes, inspired. The global wave of nationalist, sentiment that Mr. Trump rode to power has washed ashore in China, encouraging a fringe that is hostile to capitalism and Western influence, and that the Communist Party has long sought to cultivate — and contain. China’s Maoists are a small minority most Chinese have no desire to revive the ruthless, convulsive politics of the Mao era. But the Maoists’ growing assertiveness, echoed in their embrace of aspects of Mr. Trump’s agenda, could help push the country in a more authoritarian direction. They also complicate the efforts of Mr. Xi to play both sides of an ideological divide: as a robust defender of Mao’s legacy, but also a proponent of market liberalization and even a champion of globalization in the Trump age. It is a paradox that these admirers of Mao Zedong, a Marxist revolutionary who railed against Western imperialism, have found things to like about this American president, a property tycoon with a cabinet crowded with millionaires. But they want Mr. Xi to take a page from Mr. Trump’s “America First†script and protect Chinese workers from layoffs, privatization and foreign competition. “Trump opposes globalization, and so should China,†said one article on Utopia, a popular Maoist website. “Trump’s ideology has oriented toward China, and he is learning from China,†said another Chinese site. China’s as they are sometimes called, are loosely united by demands for stringent economic equality, zealous nationalism and a loathing of the capitalist West and liberal democracy. “Many of the same ideas now animating the global populist movement have been the hallmarks of the movement for over a decade,†said Jude Blanchette, a researcher in Beijing who is writing a book about the movement. “The have also clearly benefited from the rise of Xi Jinping, as he has blasted a pretty large dog whistle in their direction,†Mr. Blanchette added. Many on China’s far left see Mr. Trump as a dangerous foe who has questioned established American policy on Taiwan, vowed to confront China’s hold on the disputed South China Sea and threatened to cut Chinese exports to America. But some Maoists say Mr. Trump also offers a model. They think he led a populist revolt that humbled a corrupt political establishment not unlike what they see in China. They cheer his incendiary tactics, sometimes likening them to Mao’s methods. And they hear in his remarks an echo of their own disgust with Western democracy, American interventionism and liberal political values. Maoist meetings and websites dwell on a clutch of enemies, including the C. I. A. and America in general, genetically modified crops and advocates of privatizing state companies. But they reserve a particular venom for liberal Chinese intellectuals and celebrities who have condemned Mao. In the West, Mr. Zhang argued, the nationalists are on the right while the left generally supports internationalism. “But China is the opposite,†he said. “Chinese rightists are the traitors, while Chinese leftists are the patriots. †The Communist Party never repudiated Mao’s legacy after his death in 1976, but it condemned his excesses, including the violent Cultural Revolution, and for years he was ignored or discredited while Deng Xiaoping pursued economic liberalization. In the 1990s, though, the party refurbished Mao’s image and fostered a popular revival to bolster its authority and blunt calls for political liberalization. Officials started using Maoists to intimidate liberal academics, dissidents and other critics. Before Mr. Xi came to power in 2012, a political rival, Bo Xilai, openly encouraged “red†nostalgia for the Mao era as part of an effort to build a populist power base. Mr. Bo was purged in a scandal, but the Maoists regrouped as Mr. Xi associated himself more closely with Mao’s legacy than his predecessors and called for a return to Marxist purity. Under Mr. Xi, Maoists have become bolder in taking to the streets and organizing online campaigns. A court ruling last year and legislation adopted last month protecting Communist heroes buoyed them further. Nobody expects Maoists to seize power in Beijing. They are disdained by the middle class and kept on a tether by the party authorities. Across China, there are maybe a few thousand active supporters of Maoist groups and causes, and their petitions against liberal intellectuals have gathered tens of thousands of signatures online, according to Mr. Blanchette, the researcher. But the Chinese left’s broader message of muscular nationalism and its criticism of widening inequality have reverberated, especially among retirees, workers and former party officials dismayed by extravagant wealth and corruption. Mr. Trump and the global surge of nationalism and populism have added to the political tinder. Dai Jianzhong, a sociologist in Beijing, said Maoists could gain a bigger following if an economic slowdown caused mass layoffs, or if tensions with the United States escalated into confrontation. “It was a big shock for China to see American society overwhelmed by this tide of populism,†Mr. Dai said. “China is a different society, but if the economy stagnates and workers feel badly let down, populism will gain influence. The influence of Maoists and ultraleftists would spread. †In January, about a hundred protesters gathered in Jinan, a provincial capital in eastern China, to condemn a professor of communications and advertising, Deng Xiangchao, who had dared criticize Mao online. They chanted and held banners near Mr. Deng’s home, reviling him as a “traitor†and “enemy of the people,†and roughed up a few people who came to show their support for him. “We love Chairman Mao because we’re poor, and the poor all love Chairman Mao,†Yang Jianguo, a retired worker who was among the protesters, said by telephone after the protest. The university swiftly dismissed Mr. Deng rather than engage in a prolonged battle with the Maoists. Later, activists also successfully demanded the dismissal of a television station worker who had voiced support for Mr. Deng. It would be unthinkable for the party to be so obliging of protesters for free speech or other causes the party considers anathema. But while Mr. Xi has silenced the party’s liberal critics, the party has tolerated, even abetted, its opponents, giving the Maoist populists room to grow stronger. “Their influence has clearly grown with the leftist turn in ideology, especially since 2015,†said Deng Yuwen, a current affairs writer in Beijing who has criticized the Maoists. “It’s not that the top level of the party directly controls them, but the Maoists are politically astute, and they have a good sense of what they can get away with,†he added. “They know the officials use them, but they also use the officials. †While party leaders may find them useful for intimidating critics, the Maoists want to take China in a different direction and reverse market policies that have fueled decades of growth, by seizing the assets of the rich and strengthening state ownership of industry, for example. Most phrase their criticism of the party carefully, but some openly accuse it of betraying Mao. “China is a capitalist state under socialist guise,†said Mr. Yang, the retired worker. “Capitalists dominate the country. †Asked about the American president, Mr. Yang was more generous: “Trump has socialist tendencies, because the way he won power in a way reflected the workers’ demands. †Many Maoists see Mr. Xi as a fellow traveler who is taking China in the right direction by restoring respect for Mao and Marx. But others say privately that even Mr. Xi may not be a dependable ally. They point out that he has promoted himself abroad as a proponent of expanding global trade and a friend of multinational corporations, drawing an implicit contrast with Mr. Trump. He Weifang, a law professor at Peking University who is often reviled by China’s far left, said Mr. Xi was playing a dangerous game by allowing Maoist populists to silence liberal voices and risked igniting political fires that he cannot easily control. “If political currents in China increasingly converge with populism,†Mr. He added, “that would have a powerful effect on China’s future. †| 1 | [
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FMD2329 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Hill released controversial comments sore loser and RINO Senator John McCain made about Trump s leadership:Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said American leadership was stronger under President Trump s predecessor, President Barack Obama, according to a Guardian report published Sunday.Asked if the country stood on sturdier ground under Obama s leadership, McCain said yes, according to the report. As far as American leadership is concerned, yes, said McCain, who also vocally criticized many of the Obama administration s foreign policy decisions.For months, President Donald Trump has been trying to convince Cindy McCain a respected voice on refugees and other humanitarian issues and wife of Sen. John McCain, a Trump critic to join his administration. Now, it s a done deal for both parties, according to two senior administration officials.After months of being offered and rejecting several potential posts in the Trump administration, Cindy McCain and the president came to the agreement of a Washington, D.C.-based ambassador-at-large position, which would focus on anti human trafficking efforts, refugees, and humanitarian-aid matters. The title being kicked around internally is U.S. ambassador-at-large for human rights, though that title is subject to change, and it is unclear if a new office within the State Department would be created for her. [Trump personally], aggressively courted her for this, one White House official told The Daily Beast. It s a done deal now The president had floated several positions before this is the one that stuck. A formal announcement of that new role is expected within a matter of weeks. Early last month, the Associated Press was the first to report that Cindy McCain was expected to be offered a prominent role in the Trump administration s State Department. For entire story: The Daily Beast | 0 | [
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FMD2330 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Trump is off and running now, and I m here to confirm,There ll be a lot of changes by the end of his first term. Let s put the turbulence on hold and have a little fun . . . Here s my look at where we ll be in 2021.Trump s been re-elected with another strong campaign, Defeating Oprah Winfrey and her running mate . . . McCain. The wall has been completed and Obamacare is dead. America is great again . . . just like the Donald said.The president would not allow a migrant infestation, So, coastal California has become a separate nation. They opened up their borders and adopted the Quran, Made Ashley Judd their leader . . . and they called it Libastan.With Libastan seceding . . . and the lipstick off the pig, Waters and Pelosi had to find another gig. They both went into acting and received a handsome fee, For starring in the new release of Dumb and Dumber 3 .NBC and CNN have all but gone away. The day fake news was outlawed . . . they had nothing left to say. They doubled down on Trump and non-existent Russian spies. Now, Chuck Todd is at McDonalds . . . in the drive-up serving fries.And, wacky Rachel Maddow still has all the breaking news, Like the loss of the Titanic . . . and the death of Howard Hughes. Tonight, she has a bombshell scoop that s sure to make her shine . . . . . . Trump got a parking ticket back in 1989.Hillary has settled down with roommate Cheryl Mills. She keeps a secret server in their cell at Bedford Hills. There s little cause to worry on her 20-year vacation , She had Slick Willy neutered prior to incarceration.Al Gore waits for the ice to melt outside his padded room. An inconvenient outcome for his prophecy of doom. The world no longer buys the hoax that he has tried to sell em. The only thing that s melting is his unused cerebellum.For years, we ve speculated on the mental health of Schumer. The doctors then announced that in his butt there was a tumor. All the surgeons gathered round, and despite initial dread, When they looked a little closer, they could see it was his head.Fauxcahontas Warren has been banished by her tribe. She spent her people s wampum, and accepted heap big bribe. They say she spoke with forked tongue, and did some crazy deeds. She traded Massachusetts for a blanket and some beads.The pigment-challenged Dolezal is back to being white. Despite a valiant effort, she proved all her critics right. Three decades in a tanning booth . . . she failed at getting blacker. Everybody knows you don t put chocolate on a cracker.There s lots of stars in Tinseltown no longer on the clock. The earthquake they called Trump created quite an aftershock. Then came a tsunami of depression and despair, The kind of feeling we all get when we see Whoopi s hair.Entertainment s better now that Hollywood is gone. Billy Ray has moved away . . . likewise, his demon spawn. Yes, Miley pledged allegiance to the U.K. s Union Jack But, once the British got a taste . . . they tried to give her back.Rosie still plays Bannon for the skits on SNL. She bears a close resemblance . . . too much time at Taco Bell. She s mean and unappealing, and to use a metaphor . . . She looks like the result of cloning Slash with Michael Moore.Yes, the snowflakes are all melting and their binkies laid to waste. A fortune spent on therapy and loyalties misplaced. Now the country s being run by those that they deplore. There may not be a snowflake left by 2024.This poem (America 2021) is republished here with permission and attribution to author Tony Olson About the Author: Tony Olson is an American journalist, poet and bestselling author. His book SPIN GAME: Exposing Political Lies and Tactics was an Amazon Top Ten Bestseller. Tony also authored the recent poems Twas The Night Before Inauguration and Ode To Liberal Lunacy , both of which went viral. Tony currently lives in Boise, Idaho. | 0 | [
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FMD2331 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: 'Hungover' now recognised as a school of philosophy 12-11-16
THE wisdom and insight that comes with a hangover is to be taught as part of philosophy courses.
‘Hangoverism’ will be approached as an over-arching discipline, taking in elements from existentialism’s view that life is meaningless, all the way back to Socrates’ allegory of not being able to face leaving a cave and going outside.
Philosophy professor Nikki Hollis said: “Many students will be able to relate to the teachings of Jeffrey Barnard and his theory that reality is just a construct that needs ignoring on a Saturday morning.
“Now leave me the fuck alone. I went mental on Chardonnay last night. My head feels like it’s in a tumble dryer.”
Meanwhile, academic journals have begun printing hangoverism essays, including The Morality of Bacon Sandwiches and Vomiting and Nothingness .
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FMD2332 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Donald Trump, the Republican presidential primary front-runner and likely nominee, is under fire for making his supporters raise their right hands and pledge to vote for him. The pageantry of the pledge has led people to draw comparisons between Trump and Hitler.The pledge became known to the larger public after a campaign rally in Orlando, Florida. The language that Trump used during the event is worthy of analysis. During the campaign event, Trump asks his supporters to raise their right hand. Trump then tells them to pledge to vote for Donald J. Trump for president. Trump concludes the pledge, saying: Don t forget you all raised your hand. You swore. Bad things happen if you don t live up to what you just did. You can watch video footage of the event below:"Raise your right hand " Donald Trump makes FL crowd swear they'll show up to vote for him pic.twitter.com/9M2QRzrbpW Michael C. Bender (@MichaelCBender) March 5, 2016So once again, it appears that Trump is using intimidation tactics, to crystallize support among his followers. Trump has previously used similar vague threats while speaking of those who are working against his campaign.After finding out that Marlene Ricketts had donated money to a Super PAC that is working against his campaign, Trump went to Twitter where he called the out the Ricketts family (misspelling their name), where he said: They better be careful. They have a lot to hide. Former federal prosecutor Arthur Ferguson has some thoughts on the legality of the matter which you can read here.Trump s campaign has prompted many think pieces on the rise of authoritarianism in the United States. While Trump s campaign may be the one of the loudest examples of right-winger s recent zeal for authoritarian figures and policies, it is by no means the only or even best example.Let s look at what has been going on in Michigan under the administration of Rick Snyder. Snyder and Trump could not be farther apart in terms of how they present themselves to public. Though they are both extreme authoritarian figures. The heart of the Flint water crisis is Michigan s emergency financial manager law. The law allows for the Snyder administration to erode a local government s ability to do anything. Enough voters gleefully cast their ballot in Snyder s name believe in his cause elect him twice. The results of this erosion of democracy are now known internationally.Given the fact that Trump is polling very well in Michigan, Trump will likely win Michigan s primary in a landslide. That also means we can assume that Snyder and Trump have a substantial overlap in their fan base. So what we are seeing right now is the rise of a right-wing that is both willing to respond positively to a presidential candidate who is happy to make vague threats towards them at a campaign rally, while willing to suspend their voice in local political affairs.This should lend more credence to the idea that Trump s supporters are supporting a fascist candidate, more than any endorsement from a has been hate preacher should. There are many interpretations of what a fascist and fascism are. I prefer the interpretation that a fascist society is one where the means of production have been seized and perverted into a means of destruction. Or in other words, it is when a society s economy commits suicide. In Flint, and elsewhere across the U.S. we have seen that the right-wing is willing to destroy entire populations in the name of trickle-down economics while handing over their political agency to an authoritarian figure.Featured image from video screen capture via Twitter | 0 | [
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FMD2333 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: President Donald Trump paid $38 million in taxes on more than $150 million in income in 2005, the White House said on Tuesday, responding to an MSNBC report that the network had obtained two pages of the returns. MSNBC host Rachel Maddow said she received the documents from journalist David Cay Johnston, who said on her show that he received them in the mail. The returns, which MSNBC posted on its website, showed Trump paid an effective federal tax rate of 25 percent in 2005 after writing off $100 million in losses. The White House said in a statement that Trump took into account “large scale depreciation for construction.†Trump has repeatedly refused to release his tax returns, drawing criticism throughout his campaign last year and speculation from his political rivals he was hiding something. A New York Times report in October said Trump, a New York real estate developer, declared a $916 million loss on his 1995 income tax returns. The newspaper said the large tax deduction could have allowed him to avoid paying federal income taxes for up to 18 years. But the returns posted by MSNBC on Tuesday showed that he did pay taxes in 2005. The returns do not indicate whether he paid taxes in other years or how much he might have paid. The Washington Post reported last year that Trump paid no federal income taxes for at least two years in the late 1970s. The White House said in a statement on Tuesday that Trump, as head of the Trump Organization, had a responsibility “to pay no more tax than legally required.†Presidents and major candidates for the White House have routinely released their income tax returns. Trump says he has not released his tax returns because they are under audit by the Internal Revenue Service. Experts say an IRS audit does not bar someone from releasing the documents. During a September presidential debate, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton criticized Trump, a Republican, for paying no federal income taxes. “That makes me smart,†he responded. Trump has feuded with the media since his inauguration, often accusing it of promoting “fake news†intended to undermine his presidency. “The dishonest media can continue to make this part of their agenda, while the President will focus on his, which includes tax reform that will benefit all Americans,†the White House said on Tuesday. | 1 | [
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FMD2334 | 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: Hunters contribute more than $500 million to West Virginia.
contextual information: In a tweet that preceded West Virginias buck firearm season, West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice encouraged West Virginians to purchase a hunting license. In the tweet, he offered an economic rationale -- that hunting is an economic engine for the state. In theNov. 5 tweet, Justice wrote, I've said it before and I'll say it again, hunting is really something that can help our economy grow! Hunters contribute more than $500 million to our state each year and help support a lot of jobs. Get a license today athttp://wvhunt.com.#WV#WVHunt. I've said it before and I'll say it again, hunting is really something that can help our economy grow! Hunters contribute more than $500 million to our state each year and help support a lot of jobs. Get a license today athttps://t.co/burilhQECG.#WV#WVHuntpic.twitter.com/btBNdz4TR6 State offices have thrown around the figure more than once. The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources sent atweeton Nov. 24 that used the same dollar figure, adding that deer hunters in particular spend an estimated $230 million in West Virginia, much of it in the rural areas of the state. We wondered: Do bucks, and other game, really bring the state 500 million bucks? When we contacted Justices office, Jordan Damron, the governors assistant legal counsel and digital director, cited it to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. A Nov. 14press releasefrom the division includes the $500 million figure and said that hunting is estimated to be responsible for 5,400 jobs and $35 million in sales taxes on goods and services spent in West Virginia. The news release said the numbers came from Southwick Associates, a research firm focusing on outdoor markets. TheSouthwick Associates reportsaid that there had been $421,819,113 in retail sales in West Virginia, with a multiplier effect raising that amount to $552,085,233. The multiplier was used to estimate the total amount of spending that occurs in the economy as a result of hunters spending. The report also said that 5,377 jobs were created through hunting and $35,544,522 in state and local taxes were gathered due to hunting. The amount spent on deer hunting alone was $291,972,745. So the numbers cited by Justice exist. But well offer a few caveats. First, the report is from 2012 and the data is from 2011. Though Justice offered a specific-sounding figure, the actual figure might have grown or shrunk in the subsequent seven-plus years. Second, multiplier effects are estimates and are highly dependent on the assumptions used. Different assumptions will lead to different results. Using the retail sales figure without the multiplier adjustment might have been a more defensible approach. Finally, the report says it was funded by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) and produced in partnership with the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. The association represents government officials who oversee hunting, but the National Shooting Sports Foundationbills itselfas the firearms industry trade association. This means that the NSSF is an advocacy group that has a vested interest in promoting hunting. As with any advocacy group, its data should be understood in this context. Justice said that hunters contribute more than $500 million to West Virginia. This statistic comes from a comprehensive, 50-state report, but its worth noting that the data is more than seven years old, that it uses an estimate of economic impact beyond just retail sales, and that the report was funded by an industry trade group. We rate the statement Mostly True. | 1 | [
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FMD2335 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: By Joachim Hagopian October 31, 2016
This last Friday it became public record that FBI Director James Comey reopened the Hillary Clinton email server investigation after repeatedly testifying before Congress and the world up to last July that he’d closed the case , after in his words not finding sufficient evidence of “any criminal wrongdoing ” to indict her in spite of her four years as Secretary of State egregiously breaching our national security , committing obstruction of justice and willful tampering with evidence, deleting 30,000 emails after receiving a court subpoena constituting destruction of evidence, not to mention repeatedly engaging in perjury before Congress and the FBI.
But obviously, a federal investigation still in process in late June never stopped serial rapist-crime boss Bill Clinton’s illegal ambush at the Phoenix airport of Comey’s boss US Attorney General Loretta Lynch “clearing” the way for Hillary to proceed without consequence to be anointed as the next US figurehead puppet president by the ruling elite. Because it’s so blatantly obvious to the entire world that Hillary is guilty as sin, Comey’s whitewash didn’t go over well with either Americans or longtime FBI agents who reacted angrily to Comey’s over-the-top corruption. Subsequently, in recent months Comey has had a virtual mutiny on his hands as in the FBI boss has lost all credibility, respect, and moral authority.
A former federal attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova spelled it all out in a WMAL radio interview last Friday just hours after the news was released that Comey had sent a letter informing Congress that the case is being reopened. DiGenova said that with an open revolt brewing inside the FBI, Comey was forced to go public on Friday with reopening the investigation. The former DC attorney added that the FBI investigators discovered more emails on a phone confiscated from the former New York Congressman and separated husband Anthony Weiner that also included his wife and longtime Hillary’s right-hand woman Huma Abedin’s communications that allegedly bear pertinent relevance to the Hillary case. Funny how things have a karmic way of coming full circle – the Clintons first introduced Weiner and Abedin 15 years ago and they married a half dozen years ago.
In a separate FBI investigation involving Weiner’s alleged sexting messages with a 15-year old minor , the phone in question was handed over to the FBI. The investigating teams of both the Weiner and Hillary cases compared notes and apparently additional emails not already issued by WikiLeaks or already in FBI possession recently came to light on Weiner’s phone . The legions of rank and file FBI agents were already fuming over Comey’s complete ethical and legal lapses in his choice not to indict Hillary. Joe diGenova believes that FBI personnel forced Comey’s hand to reopen the investigation after giving him the ultimatum that if he failed to do so, the FBI defiantly would. According to diGenova, this latest plot twist only proves that:
The original investigation was not thorough, and that it was an incompetent investigation.
Otherwise, had a real investigation been conducted, that Weiner phone used by both Anthony and Huma would have been picked up by the FBI and its contents thoroughly scrutinized long before now.
In addition to stating the obvious, that the higher-up feds had already made the decision to not consequence Hillary for her crimes, speculating on why that phone was not already submitted to the FBI as evidence, the former DC attorney concluded:
There could be one explanation: Huma Abedin may have denied that any other phone existed, and if she did, she committed a felony. She lied to the FBI just like General Cartwright , and if she did, she’s dead meat, and Comey knows it, and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Finally, diGenova dropped one more bombshell in Friday’s interview. An inside source has revealed to him that the laptops belonging to key Clinton aides Cheryl Mills and Heather Samuelson, both wrongly granted immunity , were not destroyed after all as previously reported, but have been secretly kept intact by investigating FBI agents refusing to destroy incriminating evidence as part of the in-house whitewash. Additionally like their boss, Hillary’s aides also sent classified material using private servers. On top of that, longtime aide Cheryl Mills on multiple occasions has perjured herself lying under oath for the Clinton crime family, tasked with “cleaning up” (aka covering up) their countless scandals over the past several decades. Indeed the whole Clinton entourage not already “mysteriously” winding up in the growing Clinton dead pool are all unindicted criminals protected by the corrosively corrupt DC cronyism where backroom deals (a la Bill’s airport ambush) are brokered based on whatever dirt’s been gathered and used as bargaining blackmail chips against all parties involved. That’s how the Washington crowd stays immune from any and all accountability as well as stays alive. Violate that crime syndicate code of conduct and you lose your life as more recent victims earlier this year have.
In a “leaked” memo to his FBI that surfaced on Fox Friday night, Comey outlined his reasons for reopening the case in light of the new information the director believes would have ultimately been leaked to Congress and the public anyway. So in full damage control/CYA mode, the beleaguered director now going public really had no choice in the matter. His underlings were chomping at the bit to both out and oust him. In an obvious attempt to weakly claim some moral high ground, Comey wrote in his memo:
I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.
Though his leadership and character are perceived by the vast majority of both FBI personnel as well as American citizens to presently lay in ruin as a pathetically shameful stain and humiliating joke on both the FBI organization and Washington in general, James Comey appears to be feebly attempting to save his own career and reputation for appearing now to “come clean.” But make no mistake, his moral turpitude displayed throughout this Hillary debacle from early 2015 to now has over-exposed him as a total lackey and fraud, so at this late stage of the game, redemption is not even an option. But the criminal misconduct, rampant corruption and diabolical evil committed by those at the highest puppet levels of federal power, and especially the elite puppet masters controlling them, their sins produce far more devastating consequences than this morally lacking man in the middle of this latest controversy.
Because there is no way that the FBI will properly conclude this part 2 of the Hillary investigation saga before the November 8 th election, Hillary, and her Democrats are predictably crying foul , demanding that the FBI immediately disclose what it has, which of course is a moot point that won’t happen. It seems highly unlikely that the email texts from Abedin and Weiner found on his phone would not contain clear criminal evidence that implicates Hillary. Since Hillary was the globalist choice after Obama was selected in 2008, it seems unlikely that the puppet masters would not permit this latest development to even occur. But then perhaps the ruling elite is pulling the plug on Hillary, concluding that she simply carries too much liability baggage with her deteriorating health condition and never-ending scandals, maybe the globalists are rethinking an alternative replacement like her obnoxiously aggressive VP candidate, the Jesuit-trained and educated Tim Kaine.
That said, there are some cynics who believe that this recent odd turn is the last ditch desperado attempt being staged to overturn Trump winning by a landslide. This conjectured scenario goes something like this: a few days prior to the election the FBI will once again “clear” Hillary of all charges. This, in turn, would offer her the last minute much needed boost being able to cash in on her worn out persecution complex , plagued forever by her “right wing conspiracy” theory against the “much maligned” woman of destiny.
In response to all her scandals, Hillary’s M.O. has always been to falsely blame some villainous sinister force. This year it’s been Putin hacking into her emails, and Trump, Putin, and Assange colluding and plotting behind her back. She’s always been as paranoid as Richard Nixon , attempting to deflect the heat she draws from her own skullduggery lies by constantly pointing fingers to externalize blame onto others. It’s a deeply rooted pathological complex that certain tightly screwed sociopaths possess.
This latest sudden turn of events obviously has James Comey incurring the wrath of Hillary Democrats as well as the Justice Department. By disclosing the reopened investigation so close to the election date that undoubtedly casts some influence on the potential outcome, Comey is defying his AG boss while clearly violating DOJ written policy . Lynch herself even tried to quash Comey’s letter to Congress. But as diGenova alluded, by Comey’s own past misdeeds (and those of his boss and Obama as well), the FBI director placed himself between this rock and a hard place by his own slipshod, half-ass probe failing to acquire Weiner’s phone the first time around.
The entire sordid affair of this year’s totally rigged political election – pre-fixed in Hillary’s favor – blatantly reveals to America the gross misnomer of the US “justice” system being two-tiered, one for elitist crime cabal bosses like Hillary and the other for the rest of us 99% no longer protected in a totalitarian police state by our once rule of law the US Constitution. Regardless of what happens in the future, the truth genie’s already been let out of the bag, and for eyes open enough to see, it’s floating in the Washington cesspool of filth, debauchery and deception regularly perpetrated by our “entrusted perps” we have as our so called leaders.
Moreover, this year’s unending batches of Wiki-leaked DNC/Hillary emails and Project Veritas undercover campaign videos confirm that the entire US political, as well as economic system, is morally and financially bankrupt, irreparably broken and in need of complete overhaul. Voter fraud and election fraud are rampant. Soros funded electronic voting machines that are preprogrammed to vote for Hillary are operating in 16 key battleground states. America’s internal house now is in total disarray, badly in need of a deep cleaning purge like never before. Mainstream media is strongly biased against Trump in its blind support for Hillary . As Secretary of State she treasonously sold out our nation, placing us all at high security risk and under foreign interest control at the hands of high rolling bidders so she and her fat cats can get richer as fellow partners-in-crime from places like Saudi Arabia and Israel, destroying our once sovereign country while aiding, abetting, financing and supporting our enemies the global terrorists around the world. She helped create ISIS and plans world war against Russia, China and Iran. The traitors in our government and their globalist puppet masters – the Rothschilds, Rockefellers , the Bushes and Clintons all need to be rounded up, imprisoned and tried at The Hague for both treason and their endless crimes against humanity. The Best of Joachim Hagopian Tags: Joachim Hagopian [ ] is a West Point graduate and former US Army officer. He has written a manuscript based on his unique military experience entitled “Don’t Let The Bastards Getcha Down.” It examines and focuses on US international relations, leadership and national security issues. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field for more than a quarter century. In recent years he has focused on his writing, becoming an alternative media journalist. His blog site is at http://empireexposed.blogspot.com . | 0 | [
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FMD2336 | 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 an Incurable “Mexican Blood Flu” Creating a Health Crisis at the Southern Border? Claim summaries: Claims of a virulent outbreak at the U.S.-Mexico border mix inaccurate assertions from politicians with the claims of a supplement-peddling conspiracy publisher.
contextual information: In mid-May 2019, viral claims began to emerge on Facebook warning about XDR-TB, or extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, wreaking havoc at the Southern border. For example, a representative Facebook post asserted: "Let me describe how dire the current situation is because the government is staying tight-lipped. It's known as the Mexican Blood Flu or its scientific name XDR-T. And you wouldn't wish the symptoms (internal bleeding, coughing up blood, seizures, and even suffocation) on your worst enemy." For years, it was seen as a third-world problem, killing scores of people in the world's poorest countries, and a major outbreak within the U.S. was considered unthinkable. But here's the horrifying truth they don't want you to know: a U.S. outbreak has already begun, and officials have no idea how to contain it. The first case was discovered in McAllen, Texas, near the Mexican border. An illegal alien was detained by the U.S. Border Patrol, suffering from a scorching fever and coughing up blood. The Institute for Natural Healing is a subsidiary of a publishing company known as Agora, Inc., which has a lengthy history of using misleading tactics and politically charged language to get people to purchase supplements, eBooks, or stock tips. Snopes has previously debunked Agora content that suggested Hillary Clinton was hiding a cure for cancer, and an Agora advertisement for a $74 eBook explaining how to protect yourself from an alleged Klebsi plague set to ravage America. The founder of Agora once declared that "our customers don't pay us to be right." In point of fact, the scientific name of the disease in question is not XDR-T, but XDR-TB, a disease categorization that is a step more serious than multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB). According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), MDR-TB is resistant to at least isoniazid (INH) and rifampin (RIF), while XDR-TB is resistant to INH and RIF, any fluoroquinolone, and at least three of the injectable second-line anti-TB drugs. Agora often uses made-up names for commonly known conditions or cures to make it harder for potential buyers of supplements or eBooks to research them on their own. The term "Mexican Blood Flu" is another fabricated name, and it is also a poorly chosen one from a truth standpoint. The McAllen, Texas, incident referenced in the Institute for Natural Healing's advertisement took place in 2013 and concerned a Nepalese man who had traveled through South Asia, Brazil, and Mexico before crossing illegally into Texas, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. In medical isolation in South Texas, 100 miles or so from Mexico's border, is a man who embodies one of U.S. health officials' greatest worries: he is the first person to cross and be held in detention while infected with one of the most severe types of drug-resistant tuberculosis known today. The Nepalese man detained at the U.S. border carries a particularly deadly strain—XDR, "extensively drug-resistant" TB. His TB is resistant to at least eight of the 15 or so standard drugs, according to a U.S. government description of the case reviewed by the Journal. His XDR strain has been seen only once before in the U.S., in another patient of Nepalese origin, according to the government description. The assertion that a U.S. outbreak has already begun is similarly incorrect: following the McAllen incident, the United States reported zero XDR-TB cases in 2014 and 2015. In 2016, one case was reported in the entire United States. In 2017, the most recent year for which CDC data is available, two cases were reported. According to CDC data, the percentage of TB cases that are drug-resistant has remained stable for the last 20 years. The topic of multiple drug-resistant TB (not XDR-TB) at the Southern border was briefly revived in statements made by U.S. Rep. John Joyce, who in April 2019 participated in a fact-finding mission to the U.S.-Mexico border in Yuma, Arizona. During that trip, according to reporting by the Associated Press, Joyce said that there are 12 cases of multiple-drug-resistant strains of tuberculosis that had been identified in immigrants held in detention in Yuma, Arizona. Yuma, Arizona officials later stated that this information was incorrect, although the person who made the claim to the politician stood by it, according to the Arizona Republic. After a question from The Arizona Republic about a tuberculosis outbreak, Yuma County officials sought to set the record straight. "I can say, after confirming with the Yuma County Health District, there is no drug-resistant tuberculosis in Yuma County," said Kevin Tunell, a spokesman for the county. "Further, there are no cases of tuberculosis involving migrants in Yuma County at this time. All told, there is no basis for the claim that an XDR-TB outbreak is present at the Southern border." Belief in such a claim would require taking the word of a company that once sold a $74 eBook created to teach readers how to find an incredible cure for cancer hidden in the Book of Matthew, over the reports of health officials on the ground and health monitoring agencies such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. | 0 | [
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FMD2337 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: In line with the new Language Law, Russian is only allowed in private communication and for the religious ceremonies. In practice, Ukrainians are divided into Ukrainian-speakers and “outlaws”. And the latter ones are limited in their ability to study, receive health care and use other social goods. | 0 | [
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FMD2338 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Short and easy quiz. Which of these things is not like the other?1) A serial rapist who drugged dozens of women in order to forcibly have sex with them without their consent. 2) A serial adulterer who had sexual relations with consenting women. 3) Hillary Clinton.If you answered none of these things are like any of the others, then you answered correctly. Number one is, of course, Bill Cosby. Number two is, obviously, President Bill Clinton. And number three is, well, you know. And yet somehow, Donald Trump and the traditional media have managed to conflate all three in order to taint numbers two and three with the rapey stench of number one.That s really all that needs to be said. And by the way, I thought more than a few conservatives have been defending Cosby against the growing list of victims who were allegedly raped by the one-time television and comedy star. But Trump is counting on the fact that his low-information ignoramus voters won t know the difference or, in fact, bother thinking for themselves for a change. Instead, they ll simply agree with Trump in spite of the facts.On Sunday s Face the Nation, Hillary Clinton was asked point-blank what she makes of this nonsensical line of attack from Trump.CLINTON: Well, if he wants to engage in personal attacks from the past, that s his prerogative. You know, so be it.I m going to draw the distinctions between where I stand and where he stands when it comes to equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage, which affects two-thirds of the women, who are the ones receiving the minimum wage, protecting a woman s right to make the most personal health care decisions.That s why I m so proud to have the endorsement of the Planned Parenthood Action Fund that I received today in New Hampshire, because I m going to fight as hard as I can against any efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, something that he supports.So, there are very clear distinctions. He can say whatever he wants to about me. Let the voters judge that. But I am not going to let him or any of the other Republicans rip away the progress that women have made. It s been too hard-fought-for. And I m going to stand up and make it clear there s a huge difference between us.Yes, I get it. Trump is attacking Hillary for being a hypocrite by supporting women s rights while remaining married to a cheater. But it doesn t really make any sense. Guaranteeing continued access to affordable contraception and abortion services doesn t have anything to do with Hillary navigating a patchy marriage. But it s still an attack, I suppose.Frankly, Trump is attacking Bill Clinton more than anyone else. The message here is that a Cosby-like figure will have access to the Oval Office, and that s bad. Furthermore, there s definitely a bit of Trump racism on display here: Bill Clinton is just like a rapey black man. Run away! Trump s puritanical white voters won t like that, hence the Trump ad. The irony is that Trump s puritanical white supporters are also supporting Trump himself, who s had a rather spotty relationship with marriage fidelity himself.Bottom line: the ad makes zero sense, and it makes even less sense to demand that Hillary respond to it. Bill Clinton s behavior was Bill Clinton s behavior. Hillary had nothing to do with it. Full stop.Via Crooks & Liars:Featured image via video screen grab. | 0 | [
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FMD2339 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused the United States on Thursday of mistreating a strategic ally, in a blistering speech which appeared to rule out swift resolution to a dispute between two NATO members jointly fighting Islamic State. Hours after Ankara announced officials would meet soon to settle differences, Erdogan accused the U.S. consulate in Istanbul of hiding an individual with links to a network he blames for last year s failed coup. He also condemned U.S. support for Kurdish fighters in Syria and separate U.S. court cases against a senior Turkish banker and the president s own security guards, mocking what he said was Washington s claim to be the capital of democracy . Turkey s relations with the United States and many Western countries have been strained since last year s failed military coup against Erdogan, in which more than 240 people were killed. Turkey felt many allies were slow to condemn the coup attempt and failed to appreciate the danger it faced. Western countries have grown alarmed at the scale of Turkey s post-coup crackdown, with 50,000 people detained and 150,000 suspended from work. Ties with the United States hit a low when Turkey detained a locally employed worker at the U.S. consulate in Istanbul last week. The United States says it is still seeking an explanation for the arrest | 1 | [
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FMD2340 | 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 forces will be responsible for ensuring the safety at events held in the United States. Claim summaries: Will Russian forces be providing security at large events in the U.S.?
contextual information: Claim: Russian forces will be providing security at large events in the U.S. Examples: [Collected via e-mail, July 2013] I have been told that some sort of deal between the Obama administration and the Russian govt. would allow Russian military forces to act as security, on American soil, during large, special events (such as Super Bowl) or in the case of national emergencies. Any truth here? I already know how the Constitution treats such things. Now days, it doesn't seem to matter tho. Has FEMA struck an agreement with Russia that will provide for the Russian Military to provide crowd control at U.S. events on American Soil? This was reported as true in a post I saw on FB and reported that these soldiers would be able to fire on and kill Americans on U.S. soil. Origins: On 26 June 2013, Russia announced an agreement between the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry to share information and observation opportunities with first responders and emergency managers from each other's countries during joint rescue operations: announced The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry and the USA Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) are going to exchange experts during joint rescue operations in major disasters. This is provided by a protocol of the fourth meeting of the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission Working Group on Emergency Situations and seventeenth meeting of Joint U.S.-Russia Cooperation Committee on Emergency Situations, which took place in Washington on 25 June. The document provides for expert cooperation in disaster response operations and to study the latest practices. In addition, the parties approved of U.S.-Russian cooperation in this field in 2013-2014, which envisages exchange of experience including in monitoring and forecasting emergency situations, training of rescuers, development of mine-rescuing and provision of security at mass events. At the end of the meeting the parties expressed their satisfaction with the level of cooperation between the Russian Federation and the United States in the area of emergency prevention and response and agreed to develop it in order to respond efficiently to all kinds of disasters. The conspiracy site Infowars then spun this announcement into a claim that Russian military forces would be providing security for large events in the United States such as the Super Bowl and presidential inaugurations: Infowars As part of a deal signed last week in Washington DC between the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry and FEMA, Russian officials will provide "security at mass events" in the United States, a scenario that wont sit well with Americans wary of foreign assets operating on US soil. According to a press release by the Ministry of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense and Emergencies, US and Russian officials met on June 25 at the 17th Joint U.S.-Russia Cooperation Committee on Emergency Situations. In addition to agreeing with FEMA to "exchange experts during joint rescue operations in major disasters," the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry will also be providing "security at mass events" in the United States. This suggests that events designated as "National Special Security Events" by the Department of Homeland Security, which include the Super Bowl, international summits such as the G8 and presidential inaugurations, will now rely partly on Russian authorities to provide security. However, the Infowars article was an alarmist, far-fetched interpretation of the original announcement, which said nothing about Russia's providing security for events taking place within the U.S. The Russian Emergency Situations Ministry announcement merely noted that "provision of security at mass events" was one of the areas of interest which the two countries hoped to study and learn about from each other as part of their joint agreement. FEMA and the Russian news agency RIA Novosti quickly debunked Infowars' unsupported assumption, stating plainly that the U.S. and Russia would not be deploying security guards or military forces in each other's countries: The top US emergency response agency moved to quell a flurry of Internet-driven speculation that Russian security teams could be deployed at large public events in the United States, saying the two countries will not swap security guards or soldiers under a long-running partnership agreement. There will be "no exchange of security or military personnel" under a recently renewed partnership between the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Russias Emergency Situations Ministry, a FEMA spokesman told RIA Novosti. "The agreement continues information-sharing meetings and observation opportunities with first responders and emergency managers," the spokesman said. Picking up on an Emergency Situations Ministry statement declaring that partnership agreement "envisages the exchange of experience" in "the provision of security at mass events," numerous websites suspicious of the US governments encroachment on its citizens' rights suggested the deal means Russian security guards could be deployed at major public gatherings. The libertarian website Infowars.com, run by radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, proposed these events could include US presidential inaugurations and the Super Bowl. The FEMA spokesman said that while the US agency will not exchange security or military personnel with its Russian counterpart, the two sides "agreed to an exchange of emergency management experts to share best practices a continuation of a 17 year partnership." Last updated: 2 July 2013 | 0 | [
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FMD2341 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger said Wednesday that Ohio Gov. John Kasich should run for President again in 2020, challenging incumbent President Donald Trump in the Republican presidential primary. [Schwarzenegger made the endorsement in an interview with the Los Angeles Times: “He should run in 2020, yes,†Schwarzenegger said in an interview with The Times when asked whether Kasich, whom he supported over Trump in the 2016 presidential race, should launch another presidential campaign. “Kasich is an extraordinary guy. He’s a man of substance. He’s worked in Washington, he’s worked in local government, he’s worked in statewide government. He has the experience. He can see things. He has vision,†Schwarzenegger enthused. “He’s also a moderate. He’s a tough Republican and very fiscally conservative, but he also at the same time loves helping people. †Schwarzenegger backed Kasich in 2016, to little effect. In the Republican primary, the Ohio governor only carried his home state. Arguably, Kasich made Trump’s primary win easier by staying in the race so long that it became impossible for any Trump challenger — specifically, Sen. Ted Cruz ( ) — to round up the necessary delegates and campaign cash. During the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Kasich refused to show up, angering his own state’s delegation. Despite Kasich’s opposition, Trump carried the crucial Buckeye State by nearly 9 percentage points, taking all 18 Electoral College votes en route to victory. Trump and Schwarzenegger have carried on a war in social media, trading barbs over political issues and particularly over the ratings of The Apprentice, where Schwarzenegger filled in for Trump but later withdrew from the show. Joel B. Pollak is Senior at Breitbart News. He was named one of the “most influential†people in news media in 2016. His new book, How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak. | 1 | [
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FMD2342 | 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: Can You Text to 83361 to Receive a Free Target Gift Card? Claim summaries: An insidious scam ends not with free gift cards, but with Facebook users involuntarily spamming the groups to which they belong.
contextual information: In May 2018, social media users began reporting a new Target gift card scam in the form of a viral message that typically read something along the lines of "Text TARGET to 83361 and claim a free Target gift card": On Facebook, these messages follow a formula: a greeting followed by the text scam and a smiling emoji. This suggests the involvement of bots, and that some users' Facebook accounts may have compromised. At least one person whose account posted a similar gift card scam subsequently said that the message was posted without their knowledge to every Facebook group of which they were a member: As noted by sites such as IDTheftInfo.org, such messages are a form of "smishing" scam: IDTheftInfo.org This type of scam is known as smishing, a type of phishing scam where the scammer sends you a text message, instead of an e-mail. If you click on the link in the text message, youll be required to provide personal information such as your credit card number or social security number before you can claim any gift card. If the link provided in any text (or e-mail) message doesnt lead you directly to a page on the companys main website, its more likely than not that the offer is a scam. The most popular website being used in this particular smishing scam, for example, is www.walmartgift.mobi (rather than the stores actual site, which is www.walmartstores.com). Walmart does give away legitimate gift cards to the winners of drawings for receipt surveys, and these drawings take place four times per year. However, the winners of these gift cards are always notified by certified mail, not via email or text message. Almost all the Facebook posts we found came with photographs of food to give a false impression that the "gift card" has allowed its recipients to splash out on a bounty of Target products. In reality, we were able to confirm that many of these images are taken from other sources some from years ago and used to add credibility to the scam. posts many of these images taken from other sources This particular scam is similar to previous insidious hoaxes relating to free gift cards from Walmart and other retailers. On its web site, Walmart offered this advice to anyone who receives suspicious or unsolicited communications: previous advice Don't respond or reply to an email, phone call, or text message that: A spokesperson for Walmart confirmed by telephone that the previous similar "83361" gift card offer was a scam and "not legitimate." | 0 | [
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FMD2343 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: U.S. President-elect Donald Trump chose a former Goldman Sachs banker and a billionaire investor on Tuesday to steer economic policy in his administration and a fierce Obamacare critic to dismantle President Barack Obama’s signature healthcare program. Republican Trump is expected to name Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner and Hollywood financier, as his nominee for Treasury secretary, a source said, putting a Wall Street veteran in the top U.S. economic Cabinet post. Mnuchin, who spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs before leaving in 2002 to launch a hedge fund, served as Trump’s campaign finance chairman. Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross, known for his investments in distressed industries, is expected to be named commerce secretary, a source said. The announcements could come as early as Wednesday. The flurry of picks showed Trump, a real estate tycoon with no governing experience, rewarding loyalists and established Washington veterans as he rounds out his circle of top advisers. Republican U.S. Representative Tom Price, an orthopedic surgeon from Georgia, will be Trump’s health and human services secretary. Seema Verma, the founder of a health policy consulting company, will lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which is part of Health and Human Services and oversees government health programs for the poor and the elderly and insurance standards. Trump also announced his choice of Elaine Chao, labor secretary under President George W. Bush, to serve as secretary of transportation, saying in a statement that her expertise would be an asset “in our mission to rebuild our infrastructure.†While Trump made decisions on his economic team, he continued to mull over who should serve as his top diplomat. He dined with former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a one-time critic and the 2012 Republican presidential nominee, at a French restaurant in New York on Tuesday night. Romney sharply criticized Trump during the presidential campaign but he offered praise after their dinner. “He continues with a message of inclusion, of bringing people together,†Romney told reporters. He said Trump’s Cabinet choices so far and speech on Election Night were encouraging. Trump cast Price and Verma as a “dream team†to help him once he takes office on Jan. 20 with his campaign pledge to repeal Obamacare, the health law formally known as the Affordable Care Act. It has been a target of Republican attacks since its enactment in 2010. Price has characterized Obamacare as “doing real harm to American families†and has co-sponsored legislation to replace it. Verma helped Pence, the Indiana governor, add conservative pieces to Medicaid coverage for the state’s poor by requiring beneficiaries to make contributions to health savings accounts. She also worked on Medicaid programs in Iowa, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. Chuck Schumer, the incoming Senate Democratic leader, was among the defenders of Obamacare who criticized Price’s selection. “Nominating Congressman Price to be the HHS secretary is akin to asking the fox to guard the hen house,†Schumer said. The 2010 healthcare overhaul, aimed at expanding insurance coverage to millions more Americans, triggered a long, bitter fight between the White House and congressional Republicans, who said it created unwarranted government intervention in personal healthcare and private industry. Trump has said he will replace Obamacare with a plan to give states more control over Medicaid and allow insurers to sell plans nationally. Price and Verma will both need Senate confirmation. Congressional approval will be needed to repeal and change the health law. White House spokesman Josh Earnest defended Obamacare on Tuesday, saying it had expanded coverage to millions of Americans, boosted consumer protections and shored up the finances of the Medicare program for the elderly. “We’ll see if Trump care measures up,†he said. Trump said after meeting Obama following his Nov. 8 election victory that he would consider keeping the provisions of the healthcare law that let parents keep adult children up to age 26 on their insurance policies and that bar insurers from denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. Price, an early Trump supporter in the U.S. House of Representatives who leads the budget committee, has proposed a plan that would create age-based tax credits for people who buy insurance coverage on their own. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said on Tuesday the eventual congressional plan to replace Obamacare would likely have much in common with Price’s ideas. Price’s plan would also roll back the 2010 law’s expansion of Medicaid for low-income people, a change that helped Obamacare cut the number of uninsured Americans to 29 million in 2015 from 49 million in 2010. Trump vowed on the campaign trail to “save†Medicare, but Democrats said Price’s plans could amount to privatizing the government program for the elderly. Price has endorsed converting Medicare from a program that covers set benefits to a voucher-style program to help people buy coverage. “We say to Republicans who want to privatize Medicare: Go try it. Make our day,†Schumer said on Tuesday, saying the change would be unpopular with the public. Democrats also criticized the pick because Price has supported barring federal funds for Planned Parenthood, which provides some abortions in addition to birth control, health exams and other services. Trump has met about 70 people as he looks to shape his White House and Cabinet team. Chao, his pick for transportation secretary, was the first Asian-American woman to hold a Cabinet position, as labor secretary. She is married to Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump saw retired General David Petraeus, a potential candidate for the State Department or the Pentagon, on Monday. On Tuesday, he met Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Corker and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, as well as Romney, are in the running for secretary of state. Trump is set to launch a “thank you tour†of states he won in the election, starting with a rally on Thursday in Cincinnati, aides said. | 1 | [
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FMD2344 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Donald Trump is acting like a caged animal. Since around the time he fired FBI Director James Comey, he s been on the defensive. Three days after the firing, Trump, concerned that Comey would leak to the media, tweeted that he hoped there were no tapes of the conversations between the two.James Comey better hope that there are no tapes of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 12, 2017Comey responded in front of the Senate by saying, Oh Lordy, I hope there are tapes. Well, Comey might be disappointed to learn that, at least according to the Secret Service, there aren t. Trump was bluffing. No surprise there.The Wall Street Journal issued a freedom of information request to the Secret Service, who said this: In response to your request, the Secret Service has conducted a reasonable search for responsive records, the agency wrote. It appears, from a review of Secret Service s main indices, that there are no records pertaining to your request that are referenced in these indices. That doesn t necessarily mean there are no tapes, but it makes it far less likely. The Secret Service is generally the department that handles Oval Office tapes. They did it for Richard Nixon and for John F. Kennedy. Trump, though, has his own personal bodyguard in the Oval Office, as well as government Secret Service.Still, it s very unlikely there is a tape. While Trump has been teasing it like it s a reality show, his staff has been evading the question.At a press conference Friday, Trump said he would reveal whether he had taped his conversations with Comey in the very near future and over a fairly short period of time. Bloomberg s Toluse Olorunnipa recently noted that Trump has often made and missed deadlines as a way of delaying or avoiding answering tough questions. Why leave open this question of whether there are tapes? Reuters Ayesha Rascoe asked Spicer at his press briefing Monday. Don t the American people Do they deserve to know whether Comey was lying to the Senate? Why leave this question open? I think the President made it clear what his intention is on Friday, Spicer said.Source: Talking Points MemoThis wouldn t even be a question if Trump hadn t proven himself to be a serial liar. Americans overwhelmingly trust Comey, a fired civil servant, over Trump.Featured image via Pool/Getty Images | 0 | [
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FMD2345 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: 2016 elections by Robin D.G. Kelley
The author writes: “I am not suggesting that white racism alone explains Trump’s victory. Nor am I dismissing the white working class’s very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably, or as Kimberlé Crenshaw would say, intersectionally.” Trump Says Go Back, We Say Fight Back by Robin D.G. Kelley
This article previously appeared in Boston Review .
“We need to reject a thoroughly bankrupt Democratic Party leadership that is calling for conciliation and, in Obama’s words, “rooting for [Trump’s] success.”
“If we are to keep the enormity of the forces aligned against us from establishing a false hierarchy of oppression, we must school ourselves to recognize that any attack against Blacks, any attack against women, is an attack against all of us who recognize that our interests are not being served by the systems we support. Each one of us here is a link in the connection between antipoor legislation, gay shootings, the burning of synagogues, street harassment, attacks against women, and resurgent violence against Black people.” — Audre Lorde, “Learning from the 60s”
Donald J. Trump’s election was a national trauma, an epic catastrophe that has left millions in the United States and around the world in a state of utter shock, uncertainty, deep depression, and genuine fear. The fear is palpable and justified, especially for those Trump and his acolytes targeted—the undocumented, Muslims, anyone who “looks” undocumented or Muslim, people of color, Jews, the LGBTQ community, the disabled, women, activists of all kinds (especially Black Lives Matter and allied movements resisting state-sanctioned violence), trade unions. . . . the list is long. And the attacks have begun; as I write these words, reports of hate crimes and racist violence are flooding my inbox.
The common refrain is that no one expected this. (Of course, the truth is that many people did expect this, just not in the elite media.) At no point, this refrain goes, could “we” imagine Trump in the Oval office surrounded by a cabinet made up of some of the most idiotic, corrupt, and authoritarian characters in modern day politics—Rudolph Giuliani, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, John Bolton, Ben Carson, Jeff Sessions, David “Blue Lives Matter” Clarke, Joe Arpaio, to name a few. Meanwhile, paid professional pundits are scrambling to peddle their analyses and to normalize the results—on the same broadcast media that helped deliver Trump’s victory by making him their ratings-boosting spectacle rather than attending to issues, ideas, and other candidates (e.g., Bernie Sanders or Jill Stein). They deliver the same old platitudes: disaffected voters, angry white men who have suffered economically and feel forgotten, Trump’s populist message represented the nation’s deep-seated distrust of Washington, ad infinitum. Some liberal pundits have begun to speak of President-Elect Trump as thoughtful and conciliatory, and some even suggest that his unpredictability may prove to be an asset. The protests are premature or misplaced. All of this from the same folks who predicted a Clinton victory.
“Trump’s followers are attracted to his wealth as metonym of an American dream that they, too, can enjoy once America is ‘great’ again.”
But the outcome should not have surprised us. This election was, among other things, a referendum on whether the United States will be a straight, white nation reminiscent of the mythic “old days” when armed white men ruled, owned their castle, boasted of unvanquished military power, and everyone else knew their place. Henry Giroux’s new book America at War With Itself made this point with clarity and foresight two months before the election. The easy claim that Trump appeals to legitimate working-class populism driven by class anger, Giroux argues, ignores both the historical link between whiteness, citizenship, and humanity, and the American dream of wealth accumulation built on private property. Trump’s followers are not trying to redistribute the wealth, nor are they all “working class”—their annual median income is about $72,000. On the contrary, they are attracted to Trump’s wealth as metonym of an American dream that they, too, can enjoy once America is “great” again—which is to say, once the country returns to being “a white MAN’s country.” What Giroux identifies as “civic illiteracy” keeps them convinced that the descendants of unfree labor or the colonized, or those who are currently unfree, are to blame for America’s decline and for blocking their path to Trump-style success.
For the white people who voted overwhelmingly for Trump, their candidate embodied the anti-Obama backlash. Pundits who say race was not a factor point to rural, predominantly white counties that went for Obama in 2008 and 2012, but now went for Trump, and to the low black and Latinx voter turnout. However, turnout was down overall, not just among African Americans. Post-election analysis shows that as a percentage of total votes the black vote dropped only 1 percent compared with the 2012 election, even while the number of black ballots counted decreased by nearly 11 percent. (Why this happened is beyond the scope of this essay, but one might begin with Greg Palast’s findings about voter suppression and the use of “crosscheck” to invalidate ballots.) Moreover, claims that nearly a third of Latinxs went for Trump have been disputed by the website Latino Decision, whose careful research puts the figure at 18 percent. The turnout does not contradict the fact that Trump drew the clear majority of white votes. This is not startling news.
“We cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of white men and a majority of white women, across class lines, voted for a platform and a message of white supremacy.”
If history is our guide, “whitelash” usually follows periods of expanded racial justice and democratic rights. In the aftermath of Reconstruction, there were many instances in which southern white men switched from the biracial, abolitionist Republicans to the “redeemers,” whether it be the Democrats or, in states like Texas, the “White Man’s Party.” (No ambiguity there.) Or in the 1880s and ’90s, when white Populists betrayed their Black Populist allies in a united struggle to redistribute railroad land grants to farmers, reduce debt by inflating currency, abolish private national banks, nationalize railroads and telegraphs, and impose a graduated income tax to shift the burden onto the wealthy, among other things. Many of these one-time white “allies” joined the Ku Klux Klan, defeated the Lodge Force Bill of 1890 which would have authorized federal supervision of elections to protect black voting rights, and led the efforts to disfranchise black voters. Or the late 1960s, when vibrant struggles for black, brown, American Indian, Asian American, gay and lesbian, and women’s liberation, the anti-war movement, and student demands for a democratic revolution were followed by white backlash and the election of Richard Nixon—whose rhetoric of “law and order” and the “silent majority” Trump shamelessly plagiarized.
Of course, Hilary Clinton did win the popular vote, and some are resorting to the easy lament that, were it not for the arcane Electoral College (itself a relic of slave power), we would not be here. One might add, too, that had it not been for the gutting of the Voting Rights Act opening the door for expanded strategies of voter suppression, or the permanent disfranchisement of some or all convicted felons in ten states, or the fact that virtually all people currently in cages cannot vote at all, or the persistence of misogyny in our culture, we may have had a different outcome. This is all true. But we cannot ignore the fact that the vast majority of white men and a majority of white women, across class lines, voted for a platform and a message of white supremacy, Islamophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, homophobia, anti-Semitism, anti-science, anti-Earth, militarism, torture, and policies that blatantly maintain income inequality. The vast majority of people of color voted against Trump, with black women registering the highest voting percentage for Clinton of any other demographic (93 percent). It is an astounding number when we consider that her husband’s administration oversaw the virtual destruction of the social safety net by turning welfare into workfare, cutting food stamps, preventing undocumented workers from receiving benefits, and denying former drug felons and users access to public housing; a dramatic expansion of the border patrol, immigrant detention centers, and the fence on Mexico’s border; a crime bill that escalated the war on drugs and accelerated mass incarceration; as well as NAFTA and legislation deregulating financial institutions.
Still, had Trump received only a third of the votes he did and been defeated, we still would have had ample reason to worry about our future.
“White privilege is taken for granted to the point where it need not be named and can’t be named.”
I am not suggesting that white racism alone explains Trump’s victory. Nor am I dismissing the white working class’s very real economic grievances. It is not a matter of disaffection versus racism or sexism versus fear. Rather, racism, class anxieties, and prevailing gender ideologies operate together, inseparably, or as Kimberlé Crenshaw would say, intersectionally. White working-class men understand their plight through a racial and gendered lens. For women and people of color to hold positions of privilege or power over them is simply unnatural and can only be explained by an act of unfairness—for example, affirmative action. White privilege is taken for granted to the point where it need not be named and can’t be named. So, as activist/scholar Bill Fletcher recently observed, even though Trump’s call to deport immigrants, close the borders, and reject free trade policies appealed to working-class whites’ discontent with the effects of globalization, Trump’s plans do not amount to a rejection of neoliberalism. Fletcher writes, “Trump focused on the symptoms inherent in neoliberal globalization, such as job loss, but his was not a critique of neoliberalism. He continues to advance deregulation, tax cuts, anti-unionism, etc. He was making no systemic critique at all, but the examples that he pointed to from wreckage resulting from economic and social dislocation, resonated for many whites who felt, for various reasons, that their world was collapsing.” Yet Fletcher is quick not to reduce white working-class support for Trump to class fears alone, adding, “This segment of the white population was looking in terror at the erosion of the American Dream, but they were looking at it through the prism of race.”
A New York Times poll shows that Trump supporters identified immigration and terrorism, not the economy, as the two most important issues in the campaign. Immigration and terrorism are both about race—Mexicans and Muslims. That there are “illegal” immigrants from around the globe, including Canada, Israel, and all over Europe doesn’t matter: anti-immigrant movements target those who can be racially profiled. And while Trump’s America fears “terrorism,” it does not disavow homegrown terrorist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan, despite the fact that white nationalist movements are responsible for the majority of violent terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. On the contrary, Trump was not only endorsed by white nationalists and U.S.-based fascists, but during the campaign he refused to renounce their support, and Trump’s leading candidate for attorney general, Rudy Giuliani, has openly called Black Lives Matter “terrorists.”
So where do we go from here? If we really care about the world, our country, and our future, we have no choice but to resist. We need to reject a thoroughly bankrupt Democratic Party leadership that is calling for conciliation and, in Obama’s words, “rooting for [Trump’s] success.” Pay attention: Trump’s success means mass deportation; massive military spending; the continuation and escalation of global war; a conservative Supreme Court poised to roll back Roe v. Wade, marriage equality, and too many rights to name here; a justice department and FBI dedicated to growing the Bush/Obama-era surveillance state and waging COINTELPRO-style war on activists; fiscal policies that will accelerate income inequality; massive cuts in social spending; the weakening or elimination of the Affordable Care Act; and the partial dismantling and corporatization of government.
What must resistance look like? There are at least five things we have to do right now:
1. Build up the sanctuary movement.
In the 1980s, when nearly one million refugees fled U.S.-backed dictatorships in Guatemala and El Salvador, churches offered shelter, sanctuary, and assistance to those seeking political asylum, and over thirty cities were subsequently designated “sanctuary cities” by their local governments. The Obama administration’s deportations of undocumented workers rebooted the sanctuary movement, along with a vibrant immigrant rights movement that pushed the president to use executive authority to launch the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and the Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA). Trump has vowed to end both programs, leaving some five million immigrants vulnerable to deportation and identifiable through their applications, and he has promised to immediately cut all federal funding for sanctuary cities. To those who argue that millions of undocumented people are not “political refugees,” I counter that Trump’s war on immigrants is driven entirely by his quest to take power—they will become casualties of his political machinations. Some states have already outlawed the longstanding principle of sanctuary status, but this should not deter us from strengthening and expanding the sanctuary movement to other institutions. For example, many of us who work in the University of California system are working to turn our campuses into sanctuaries—preferably with legal and administrative backing. But even without the law behind us, we must act on moral principle.
2. Defend all of our targeted communities.
We must defend against hate crimes, Islamophobia, anti-black racism, attacks on queer and trans people, and the erosion of reproductive rights. There is no need to reinvent the wheel since there are already hundreds of organizations across the country dedicated to the fight, including INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence, Radical Women, the Immigrant Solidarity Network, the Praxis Project, the Praxis Center, CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA), the African American Policy Forum, the Network Against Islamophobia, and Causa Justa, to name only a few. One of the main targets of attack, of course, is the Movement for Black Lives, along with the dozens of organizations upon which it was built—Black Lives Matter, the Dream Defenders, Million Hoodies, Black Youth Project 100, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, We Charge Genocide, and Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity (BOLD), among others. We need to support these movements and institutions, financially and by doing the work. And we must defend the political and cultural spaces that enable us to plot, plan, build community and sustain social movements. Here in Los Angeles this means spaces such as the L.A. Black Workers Center, the Labor/Community Strategy Center and its new community space, Strategy and Soul, the L.A. Community Action Network, the Southern California Library for Social Studies and Research, the Community Coalition, and Revolutionary Autonomous Communities, among many others. In New York we can point to Decolonize This Place; in Detroit, the Boggs Center; in St. Louis, Organization for Black Struggle, and so on. There are literally hundreds of centers around the country building for local power, and while none were immune to state surveillance in the past, we can expect heightened monitoring and outright attacks under this extreme right-wing regime. Now is not the time to retreat to our identity silos. We need solidarity more than ever, recognizing that all solidarities are imperfect, often fragile, temporary, and always forged in struggle and sustained through hard work. In our state of emergency, political disagreements, slights, misunderstandings, and microaggressions should not prohibit us from fighting for peoples rights, privileges, and lives.
3. Stop referring to the South as a political backwater, a distinctive site of racist right-wing reaction.
First, white supremacy, homophobia, and anti-union attitudes are national, not regional, problems. Second, black and multiracial groups in the South are at the forefront of resisting Trump’s authoritarian agenda and building power outside the mainstream Democratic Party. Among them are Project South, Southerners on New Ground (SONG), the Moral Mondays Movement, Kindred: Southern Healing Justice Collective, Jackson Rising in Mississippi, Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) in Louisville, Asian Americans Advancing Justice in Atlanta, and the Georgia Latino Alliance for Human Rights.
The frontline battles that preceded Trump’s election must not be abandoned. On the contrary, they need to be strengthened. We must redouble our fight against the Dakota Access Pipeline and support the Standing Rock Sioux Nation’s historic resistance. There is no question that Trump’s election has further empowered the corporation behind the pipeline—the Texas-based Fortune 500 company Energy Transfer Partners—to continue to build no matter what the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or the Obama Justice Department says. We need to recognize Standing Rock as not only a struggle for environmental justice but an episode in Native people’s five-hundred-year resistance to colonialism. And speaking of colonialism, the crisis in Puerto Rico has not abated—not in the least. As I write, Puerto Ricans on the island and in the U.S. mainland are using every means at their disposal to resist PROMESA, the U.S. plan that empowers a seven-member, unelected board to impose austerity measures as a way of restructuring its debt—measures that include wage reductions, selling off public assets, altering retirement plans for public employees, and fast-tracking changes even if they violate existing laws.
4. Support and deepen the anti-Klan and anti-fascist movement.
We must especially support groups such as Southern Poverty Law Center, which has been on the frontlines of this movement for decades. Although the fight against white supremacist organizations has been continual since the 1860s, the federal government has never successfully outlawed the Klan and similar vigilante groups (although in the 1950s the state of Alabama succeeded in outlawing the NAACP). With Trump’s election we are likely to see a surge in white nationalist and other right-wing terrorism, including attacks on black churches, synagogues, mosques, abortion clinics; and against non-white, queer, and trans people and immigrants. Some on the left will argue that resisting the so-called “alt-right” is a secondary issue since these are fringe movements and building class unity across racial lines ought to be our priority. But with the memory of Colorado Springs and Charleston seared into our memory, this argument rings hollow. And while President Obama’s poignant rendition of “Amazing Grace” at Reverend Clementa Pinckney’s funeral moved much of the nation, the truth is that it is easier to pass laws criminalizing organizations that support the boycott of businesses and institutions complicit in Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine than it is to outlaw the Ku Klux Klan.
5. Rebuild the labor movement.
As obvious as this may seem, the entire labor movement is under attack on a global scale. Today labor unions are portrayed as corrupt, bloated, a drain on the economy, and modern-day cartels that threaten workers’ “liberty.” Corporations and the CEOs who run them are portrayed as the most efficient and effective mode of organization. In our neoliberal age, emergency financial managers are sent in to replace elected government during real or imagined economic crises; charter schools organized along corporate lines are replacing public schools; universities are being restructured along corporate lines with presidents increasingly functioning like CEOs; and a businessman with a checkered record, a history of improprieties and legal violations and allegations of sexual assault, and no experience whatsoever in government is elected president.
Today’s economic debates focus not on alternatives to capitalism but on what kind of capitalism—capitalism with a safety net for the poor or one driven by extreme free-market liberalization? A capitalism in which the state’s role is to bail out big banks and financial institutions, or one where the state imposes (or rather restores) greater regulation in order to avoid economic crises? In both of these scenarios, a weakened labor movement is a given. The once-powerful unions are doing little more than fighting to restore basic collective bargaining rights and deciding how much they are going to give back. Union leaders are struggling just to participate in crafting austerity measures. In the New Deal era, the state’s efforts to save capitalism centered on Keynesian strategies of massive state expenditures in infrastructure, job creation, a social safety net in the form of direct aid and social security, and certain protections for the right of unions to organize. All these measures were made possible by a strong labor movement. There was a level of militant organization that we did not see in our post-2008 collapse, in spite of Occupy Wall Street. While Occupy was massive, international, and built on preexisting social justice movements, it lacked the kind of institutional power base and political clout that organized labor had in the 1930s. Of course, labor unions have also been powerful engines of racial and gender exclusion, working with capital to impose glass ceilings and racially segmented wages, but the twenty-first-century labor movement has largely embraced principles of social justice, antiracism, immigrant rights, and cross-border strategies.
“I am talking about opening a path to freeing white people from the prison house of whiteness.”
Obviously there is much missing here, like abolishing the Electoral College and continuing to wage a fight for local power in the legislative and electoral arenas as well as in the streets. Local campaigns to raise the minimum wage, for example, have not only produced key victories but served to mobilize people around issues of injustice and inequality. The sites of resistance will become clearer as the political situation becomes more concrete, especially after January 20.
But I want to return to the white working class and how we might break the cycle of “whitelash.” First, we cannot change this country without winning over some portion of white working people, and I am not talking about gaining votes for the Democratic Party. I am talking about opening a path to freeing white people from the prison house of whiteness. True, with whiteness comes privilege, but many of the perceived privileges are inaccessible to most, which then generates resentment. Exposing whiteness for what it is—a foundational myth for the birth and consolidation of capitalism—is fundamental if we are to build a genuine social movement dedicated to dismantling the oppressive regimes of racism, heteropatriarchy, empire, and class exploitation that is at the root of inequality, precarity, materialism, and violence in many forms. I am not suggesting we ignore their grievances, but that we help white working people understand the source of their discontent—real and imagined.
Is this possible? The struggle to recruit the white working class is an old story. Black movement leaders have been trying to free white working people from the paltry wages of whiteness since Reconstruction, at least, and it seems to always end badly. This history is not necessarily legible because we tend to conflate populism and fascism with what Henry Giroux astutely identifies as authoritarianism. Populism is the idea that ordinary people ought to have the power to control their government and their communities, especially along lines that benefit the collective. In the 1880s and ’90s, the black populist movement adopted a vision of a new society based on cooperative economics. The great writer and activist Timothy Thomas Fortune gave their unique vision eloquent voice and plans for action in his book Black and White: Land, Labor and Politics in the South (1884), which offered a path for the emancipation of the nation as a whole, not just black people. He attacked America’s betrayal of Reconstruction, identified monopoly and private ownership of land as the central source of inequality, and articulated a vision of a democratic, caring political economy based on equity and fairness. The National Colored Alliance members had advanced beyond printing more money or demanding free silver, adopting instead a more radical redistribution of wealth and power. They wanted more than a short-term alliance just to raise wages for picking cotton or reducing debt. But Fortune understood that a genuine cooperative commonwealth is not possible unless white workers and farmers join the movement. “The hour is approaching,” he wrote, “when the laboring classes of our country, North, East, West and South, will recognize that they have a common cause, a common humanity and a common enemy; and that, therefore, if they would triumph over wrong and place the laurel wreath upon triumphant justice, without distinction of race or of previous condition they must unite!” Whatever unity they managed to create proved ephemeral. As in so many other scenarios, most whites chose white supremacy over liberation.
The lessons here are crucial. We cannot build a sustainable movement without a paradigm shift. Stopgap, utilitarian alliances to stop Trump aren’t enough. I concur with Giroux, who calls on all of us to wage “an anti-fascist struggle that is not simply about remaking economic structures, but also about refashioning identities, values, and social relations as part of a democratic project that reconfigures what it means to desire a better and more democratic future.” Robin Davis Gibran Kelley is the Gary B. Nash Professor of American History at UCLA. | 0 | [
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FMD2346 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: It was and relations between Donald J. Trump and the news media had taken another dreadful turn. He had already vowed to change the libel laws to make it easier to sue journalists, and his personal insults were becoming more vicious. (One news correspondent was a “sleaze†another was “third rate. â€) Most troubling was that he was keeping a blacklist of news organizations he was banning from his rallies, and it was growing. I called him at the time, to see what this would look like in a Trump administration. Would he deny White House credentials to select reporters and news organizations? No, he said. “There, I’m taking something away, where I’m representing the nation. †We can only hope he means it. Because if Mr. Trump keeps up the posture he displayed during the campaign — war footing — the future will hold some very grim days, not just for news reporters but also for the American constitutional system that relies on a free and strong press. It’s one thing to wage a press war as a candidate, when the most you can do is enforce reporting bans at your rallies, hurl insults and deny interviews and access (all of which are plenty bad). It’s another thing to do it from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where you have control over what vital government information is made public, and where you have sway over the Justice Department, which under President Obama has shown an overexuberance in investigating journalists and the who leak to them. Imagine what somebody with a press vendetta and a dim view of the First Amendment would do with that kind of power. For their part, American newsrooms are conducting their own reassessments, vowing to do a better job covering the issues that animated his supporters, and acknowledging that Mr. Trump tapped into something in the national mood, the power of which they failed to grasp. They now know they underestimate him again at their own peril. Yet they also know that the need to continue with probing, unflinching reporting that promotes the truth in the face of whatever comes at them will be great. In the days immediately after Mr. Trump’s victory, journalists that don’t work at organizations with Breitbart in their names were preparing for potential reporting challenges, the likes of which they have never seen, while lawyers were gaming out possible legal strategies should Mr. Trump move against press freedoms. Right after his victory Mr. Trump was telegraphing a gentler tone, declaring to The Wall Street Journal, “It’s different now. †Perhaps he was making his “pivot†to become “more presidential than anybody†save Abraham Lincoln. But then came the Saturday night release of his “60 Minutes†interview in which he said he would keep his Twitter account so that when any news organization gave him “a bad story,†he would “have a method of fighting back. †And he didn’t skip a beat on Sunday morning, when he attacked The New York Times with a Twitter post that read, “Wow, the @nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the ‘Trump phenomena. ’†The statement was false. The paper said Sunday that postelection cancellations were so substantially outstripped by a surge of new subscriptions that its subscription growth rate in the period that followed Tuesday’s result was four times the growth rate in the same period of last quarter. In an atmosphere in which it’s not shocking to hear about literature being sent to the home of a Jewish reporter — the address having been published online by supporters of Mr. Trump — it was hard to see any of this as very presidential, though the definition may be changing. The funny thing is that few major political figures have had a more codependent and at times friendly relationship with the press than Mr. Trump. Before he stopped doing news briefings in the later phase of the campaign, he was shaping up to be the most accessible nominee in modern history. But displeasing him could have an intensely personal cost, which the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly vividly recalls in her new book, “Settle for More. †Ms. Kelly, who became Mr. Trump’s leading television nemesis during the primary campaign, writes about how the candidate, unhappy with a segment she did in July 2015, threatened to unleash “my beautiful Twitter account against you. †After enduring her tough questioning at the first presidential primary debate, he made good on his Twitter promise, which in turn led to death threats against her, she said. (“I would spend many days of the coming months accompanied by security,†she writes.) It didn’t help, she wrote, that Mr. Trump’s special counsel, Michael Cohen, recirculated a Trump supporter’s tweet that read “we can gut her. †That was followed by what she took as another threat, from Mr. Trump’s campaign manager at the time, Corey Lewandowski. As Mr. Lewandowski unsuccessfully lobbied a senior Fox News executive to remove Ms. Kelly from the next Fox debate, she writes, he said he would hate to see her go through such a “rough couple of days†again. (Fox News described the conversation the same way earlier this year.) Mr. Lewandowski had been the living embodiment of Mr. Trump’s aggressive approach to the press. He was, after all, arrested on charges that he manhandled the former Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields. (Prosecutors in Florida ultimately dropped the charges.) After a paid stint at CNN, Mr. Lewandowski returned to the Trump fold last week, and could wind up in the administration or at the Republican Party headquarters. Another member of Mr. Trump’s transition team, the Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, broke new ground this year by financing the “Hulk Hogan†lawsuit against Gawker, which resulted in Gawker’s bankruptcy and sale to Univision. Though that was technically an case, it was a model for what Mr. Trump has said he wants to see in opening up libel laws. Most First Amendment lawyers agree that fundamentally changing the libel law would require a reversal of the landmark Supreme Court case New York Times v. Sullivan. And while that might seem like a long shot, Laura R. Handman, a First Amendment lawyer, said in an interview that Mr. Trump could find ways to “chip away†at it. First Amendment lawyers are more immediately concerned with potential leak investigations, as well as Freedom of Information Act requests, which can provide the best way to expose government secrets. Look no farther than the potential attorney general candidate Rudolph W. Giuliani, who as mayor of New York was so allergic to records requests that news organizations and others regularly sued him for basic information. Success at court was meaningless given that proceedings kept the information out of public view for so long that “he really won,†said George Freeman, who was the assistant general counsel for The New York Times then and is now the executive director of the Media Law Resource Center. I’ve said it before, but the solution will be what it has always been — good, tough reporting. For all the appropriate discussion about how they missed some key dynamics of the race, mainstream news outlets produced a lot of journalism. They provided a glimpse into the tax returns Mr. Trump wouldn’t share showed how he and Mrs. Clinton ran their charities investigated their family business dealings and bluntly called out falsehoods, more of which came from Mr. Trump. The wrong lesson to take from the past year is that reporters should let up in their mission of reporting the truth, wherever it leads. That’s more important than ever, given how adept Mr. Trump and his allies have proved to be at promoting conspiracy theories that can spread faster than ever through social media. But if there is one thing we learned this year, it was the wisdom of the old mnemonic device for the spelling of “assume†(makes an “ass†out of “u†and “meâ€). Mr. Trump campaigned through surprise and may well govern through surprise. We’ll know how this thing is going to go only when we know. Now, where’s my seatbelt? | 1 | [
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FMD2347 | 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: Are African nations implementing a massive tree barrier to halt the advance of the Sahara Desert? Claim summaries: The Great Green Wall is an ambitious effort to tackle climate change.
contextual information: An ambitious effort by a group of African countries to tackle the effects of climate change and desertification has been in the works since 2007. The Great Green Wall (GGW) initiative plans to have trees extend like a belt across the Sahel region, which is at the base of the Sahara, in order to prevent the expansion of the desert due to climate change. According to a meme shared with us by our readers, more than 20 African countries are part of this effort, and the wall of trees, the meme says, will spread 7,000 km across the continent from coast to coast. This meme is largely true, though the length of the GGW varies, as the project itself is far from being completed. According to the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD), the project aims to restore Africa's degraded landscapes and transform millions of lives in one of the world's poorest regions, the Sahel. Once complete, the Wall will be the largest living structure on the planet—an 8,000 km natural wonder of the world stretching across the entire width of the continent. The project aims to have the "wall" extend from Senegal in the west to Djibouti in the east by 2030. The official website for the GGW details the reason for all their efforts: the catalyst for the Great Green Wall is the daily impact of desertification and climate change that is undermining the futures of millions of communities across Africa's Sahel region. Since the 1970s, the Sahel has been heavily affected by recurrent periods of drought. These droughts have threatened the livelihoods and futures of entire populations across the region. The lack of rain has led to the disappearance of livestock and the destruction of cereal crops. The great famines that rocked the Sub-Saharan region in the 80s each affected millions of people. In addition, the high population growth rate is increasing demand for food and pressure to gain access to other natural resources, which are the basis for livelihoods and the survival of the rural population. Millions of people—particularly rural youth—are currently facing an uncertain future due to the lack of decent rural jobs and the continuous loss of livelihoods caused by land degradation and falling yields. But according to The Associated Press, since the project's inception in 2007, millions of the planted trees have died due to diminishing rains and rising temperatures. Only 4% of the project's original goal has been met, and around $43 billion is needed to complete it. Given the challenges facing them, the focus of the project has also shifted from planting just a wall of trees to a mosaic of smaller and more durable projects that emphasize community-focused solutions that support agriculture and prevent desertification. The GGW Accelerator, announced in January 2021, detailed these changes: the Great Green Wall Initiative has evolved from its initial focus on tree planting towards a comprehensive rural development initiative aiming to transform the lives of Sahelian populations by creating a mosaic of green and productive landscapes across 11 countries (Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti). Progress has been achieved into the second decade of the initiative, with almost 18 million hectares of degraded lands restored and 350,000 jobs created across the Sahel and the Great Green Wall countries. The Accelerator also highlighted additional challenges they encountered in the process of creating the GGW, which included insufficient coordination, exchange, and flow of information at the regional and national levels, weak organizational structures, and a lack of consideration in national environmental priorities. Some of the changes include planting orchards and circular gardens where large trees strategically protect smaller ones. A number of these have been thriving in Senegal's portion of the GGW. According to the GGW's official website, there have been a number of successes. Senegal planted around 12 million drought-resistant trees in less than a decade, while 5 million hectares of degraded land were restored in Nigeria, and 15 million hectares in Ethiopia. A November 2021 report in the Nature Sustainability journal assessed the economic impact of the program and concluded that it was economically worthwhile: the Great Green Wall program is a colossal initiative to restore 100 million hectares of degraded ecosystems across 11 countries in the region. We evaluated the economic costs and benefits of future land restoration projects under this program. We applied different scenarios that account for both market-priced and non-market benefits from restored ecosystems and consider the heterogeneity of local decision-making contexts in terms of investment planning horizons, discount rates, and the time needed for the restored ecosystems to start yielding their benefits in full. The results show that every US dollar invested in land restoration yields, on average, US$1.2 under the base scenario, ranging from US$1.1 to US$4.4 across the scenarios. At most, ten years are needed for land restoration activities to break even from the social perspective, accounting for both market-priced and non-market ecosystem benefits. To fund all proposed land restoration activities, an investment of US$44 billion is needed under the base scenario (US$187 billion across scenarios). The report added that violent conflicts in the Sahel are estimated to reduce accessibility to these degraded ecosystems from 27.9 million hectares to 14.1 million hectares. While originally only 11 countries were part of the effort, today there are more than 20 African nations involved. You can learn more about the impact and current projects here, and in this video. Given that the focus of the GGW has evolved beyond just planting trees and it is still an effort in progress, we rate this claim as true. | 1 | [
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FMD2348 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: students are overwhelmingly awarded the Truman Scholarship, a federal scholarship granted to U. S. college juniors for demonstrated leadership potential and a commitment to public service, according to a survey by The College Fix. [According to the survey, more than a third of Truman Scholarship recipients have ties to Democratic politicians or leftist activist groups. Only several had ties with Republican or organizations. More than 40 of the 112 scholars in 2015 and 2016 have ties to Democratic politicians or liberal groups while less than a handful were found to have worked for Republicans or conservative organizations. Among the 2015 Truman Scholars, at least 26 had either worked for Democratic politicians and administrations, organizations or were members of the College Democrats before or after they were awarded the Truman Scholarship. The Fix identified only two scholars as having ties to Republicans or conservative groups on their resumes. Multiple scholars interned for local and Congressional Democratic lawmakers, as well as at the White House during President Barack Obama’s tenure. Scholar Frank Smith was a fellow for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. Another, Katherine Hamilton, worked on Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign. Others worked for think tanks and advocacy groups such as the Brookings Institute, Planned Parenthood, Feminist Majority Foundation, NAACP and Urban Institute. The survey revealed that 16 recipients had worked for Democratic candidates, while only two had worked for Republicans. When asked about the discrepancy, Andrew Rich, the executive director of the Harry S. Truman Scholarship Foundation claimed that the foundation doesn’t discriminate based upon an applicant’s political activity. “We’re really focused on what they’ve done by way of service and then their engagement with leadership around it. It’s fairly infrequent that it’s political,†Rich said. “Most [scholars] aren’t very political at all. †“In all honesty, I mean, we do see both intellectual and ideological variety among our applicant pool. To the extent that there’s less … one direction or another, it really has to do with the schools are sending our direction,†he said. Tom Ciccotta is a libertarian who writes about economics and higher education for Breitbart News. You can follow him on Twitter @tciccotta or email him at tciccotta@breitbart. com | 1 | [
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FMD2349 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: President Donald Trump will ask Congress next Tuesday to provide $2. 6 billion in the September budget deal for border infrastructure in 2018, including the construction of new border walls, according to details provided to the New York Times. [According to the report: According to officials, $1. 6 billion of that money would go toward materials to build the wall. That would initially be used for continuing the levy [sic] wall in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and replacing existing fencing in El Paso and in San Diego. The Times‘ report did not explain how many extra miles of border fences or walls would be built, or even how much of the money would be spent building a fence or wall, but it did report that: the government intends to buy all sorts of equipment that will supplement or substitute for a physical wall. The budget request will allocate $239 million for aircraft and aviation sensors $197 million for fixed surveillance technology, including towers, radar and cameras and $202 million for what it described as “critical equipment†such as radios, computers and weapons … [plus] $111 million allocated for roads to gain access to parts of the border that are now hard to reach. “Levee wall†is a term for strong walls alongside rivers, particularly along the Rio Grande river which marks the border with Mexico. Trump’s primary promise in his 2016 campaign was the construction of the border wall, which is being desperately resisted by legislators who went to preserve the northward flow of roughly 550, 000 illegal immigrant workers and customers per year up to businesses and donors in their districts. However, illegal immigration has less of an impact on Americans than does the federal government’s policy of inflating the new labor supply by roughly 25 percent. Each year, four million young Americans enter the labor force, but the federal government also invites 1 million legal immigrants and 1 million temporary workers to compete for jobs against Americans. Also, legislators in Congress have proposed many bills to further increase the legal inflow of foreign workers. The $2. 6 billion request “seems less ambition, there’s no question about it,†said Mark Krikorian, director of the Center for Immigration Studies. The modest request may suggest they are trying to reduce opposition from Democrats in Congress, Krikorian added. “Maybe they’re trying to come up with something that [Democratic leader Chuck] Schumer won’t shut down the government over … but there’s no reason Schumer won’t threaten a government shutdown in September over wall funding — he did that in April and he got away with it. †The modest request may suggest they are trying to reduce opposition from Democrats in Congress, Krikorian added. “Maybe they’re trying to come up with something that [Democratic leader Chuck] Schumer won’t shut down the government over … but there’s no reason Schumer won’t threaten a government shutdown in September over wall funding — he did that in April and he got away with it. †“On the other hand, there is a lot of to buy if you are going to do more wall construction, and maybe [White House officials] are figuring it is not worth asking for money for construction until they have purchased the land,†he added. Trump is also asking to boost the Pentagon’s 2018 budget by $52 billion, which will be used to buy extra aircraft and ships. In March, Trump asked for $1 billion to quickly build an extra 48 miles of border fence during 2017. But Democrats threatened to shut down funding until the budget request was rejected, GOP legislators refused to fight for any money to build a wall, and so the May budget supplemental included no funds for new wall construction. In a White House official predicted the administration would ask for $2. 6 billion for “border protections†in the budget request for 2018. Most immigration reformers say border fences are better than new surveillance technology, which is expensive to buy and maintain and is also easily removed by future spending cuts. If Trump wants to Congress to fund his border wall, he has to start fighting now, said Krikorian. “They need to start making the case now because it takes time to build political momentum for something, and the fight over wall funding in September is going to be a political fight,†he said. “This is an important issue for Trump politically, and he needs to follow through because even those people who tell people they are not for the wall are not against the wall — only a kooky fringe are opposed categorically to the wall,†he added. citing the April comment by Democratic Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi that “the wall is, in my view, immoral, expensive, unwise, and when the president says, ‘Well, I promised a wall during my campaign.’ I don’t think he said he was going to pass billions of dollars of cost of the wall on to the taxpayer. †“Make Nancy and her kooky moral opposition to border enforcement the face of those who are opposing the budget request,†Krikorian suggested. Follow Neil Munro on Twitter @NeilMunroDC or email the author at NMunro@Breitbart. com, | 1 | [
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FMD2350 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: BUDAPEST — Agnes Galgoczi, 84, can no longer make it to the toilet on her own. It sits in the kitchen of her apartment in Budapest, just three feet from the bed, where she sings to herself to fight loneliness. Several blocks away, Vera Varga, 78, slides movies into her videocassette player. The images remind her of the outside world. They are two of the estimated remaining Holocaust survivors around the world, a group whose needs are growing in complexity and cost as they age, while funding from a variety of sources that have provided for them over the past two decades is starting to dry up. Both women are widowed and rely on help to shop, cook and clean. Neither can leave her apartment without assistance. Mrs. Galgoczi could use care, but even if Hungary had adequate nursing homes, neither she nor Mrs. Varga would make the move. The Nazis forced them out of their homes once before, marching them to the Budapest ghetto, ripping their families apart and sowing seeds of fear and mistrust that have resurfaced as the women enter their final years. The unique problems that are the legacy of the suffering of their youth, like an intense fear of institutionalization, as well as renewed in Eastern Europe and a lack of family, often mean that sending nurses and social workers into their homes is the only way to care for them. But care is costly, and in some places, survivors are left in lonely or unhealthy situations. “No matter how much you give, their needs are always greater,†said Taly Shaul, the director of the the Hungarian Jewish Social Support Foundation, which provides for about half of the country’s 10, 000 remaining Holocaust survivors. Dozens of volunteers check on survivors and bring them boxes of food staples. Social workers and nurses clean their homes, administer their medications and, in some cases, become like family. The growing costs of providing health care and social services to the survivors in Europe, the United States and elsewhere have raised the pressure on Germany, in particular, to increase aid. “This is the final chapter,†said Greg Schneider, the executive vice president of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, which distributes funding to 240 organizations that provide for survivors around the world. “Over the next five years, an additional amount is needed if the remaining survivors are to live with dignity. †In recent decades, the Claims Conference relied on financial support from a variety of sources. Payments came from a $1. 25 billion compensation fund from unclaimed Swiss bank accounts held by those murdered, a $5 billion fund to compensate slave laborers and other settlements negotiated in the early 1990s after the fall of Europe’s Communist governments. But as those funds have been spent, the burden has fallen back on Germany. Over eight months, the Claims Conference pressed German Finance Ministry negotiators with numbers and details to demonstrate the dwindling survivors’ increased level of need. of survivors worldwide live in the United States, and added pressure came from Congress. Last week, it passed a resolution calling on Germany “to continue to reaffirm its commitment to comprehensively address the unique health and welfare needs of vulnerable Holocaust victims. †An agreement between the German government and the Claims Conference, reached in July, resulted in an increase in funding for the care of Holocaust survivors in their homes over the next three years. The funding will increase to 350 million euros, or $390 million, in 2018 from €281. 75 million, or $314 million, this year. “This is pumping a significant additional amount of money into the budget that will have a significant impact in the field,†Mr. Schneider said. For Mrs. Galgoczi — who relies on caregivers to bring her breakfast and help her wash in the morning change the oxygen tank so she can breathe and, throughout the day, administer the bottles of prescriptions in the basket perched beside her bed — the increased funding could mean extra help at night. “I completely depend on them for everything,†said Mrs. Galgoczi, whose darkened apartment holds her bed, a chair and a few of the beloved books that she can no longer read. She refers to her regular nurse as her daughter. Under the new agreement, existing caps on the hours of care an individual survivor can receive will fall away for those who, like Mrs. Galgoczi, survived a ghetto, a concentration camp or life in hiding under the Nazis. Sometimes, the biggest challenge is persuading survivors to admit they need assistance. Gyorgy Rozsa, 77, another survivor of the Budapest ghetto, lies in a bed in a corner of the apartment where his wife has lived since she was a toddler. The acidic stench of urine from the catheter hanging beside his bed fills the dingy room, littered with empty soda bottles, laundry and a wheelchair. Bedridden for the past decade, only recently did he begin to accept outside help, first in the form of packages of nonperishable foods and, more recently, in that of caregivers who swab around his bed with disinfectant and help lift him. In an expression of trauma shared by many survivors, “he can’t stand any light, or anyone cleaning,†said Ms. Shaul of the Jewish support foundation. The fear of change or loss of home means that institutionalizing the survivors is not an option. The former Communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe also lack nursing home facilities comparable to those in the United States, Australia or Israel, making home care all the more important. The recent political shift to the right across much of Eastern Europe has exacerbated jealousies among neighbors, like the family living next door to Mrs. Varga, who threw rocks through her window after realizing she was receiving special services because she is Jewish. Under Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Hungary has become more tolerant of and Ms. Shaul said the foundation had seen an increase in episodes targeting survivors across the country. Even for survivors who are more financially secure, like Agnes Bartha, 94, who lives in an airy apartment with a balcony, caregivers are like family. After a stroke last year, she needs a walker to move around and a caregiver to cook, clean and help her make sense of the 30 pills she must take daily. Gone are the days when she could travel to Germany or visit Hungarian schools to tell children her story. Now, she relies on the internet to tell younger generations how in 1944 she was marched from Hungary to the Ravensbrück concentration camp, how she shocked an SS officer by insisting to him in fluent German that her friend join her as a slave laborer for or how the “biggest present of my life†was a cup of tea handed to her after she escaped in the final days of World War II. For a woman whose life depended on her perseverance and her ability to get by on her wit and fortitude, it is difficult to admit that she can no longer live independently. “Because of my past and my physical condition, I need more and more help,†she said, leaning on her walker, decorated with a star recovered from the archives of the Genshagen forced labor camp. “It is not easy when you lose your strength. †| 1 | [
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FMD2351 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: by Lambert Strether
Lambert: A round-up of Brexit options, hard and soft. Wouldn’t the Brits have an easier time of it if they wrote their Constitution down?
By Silvia Merler, an Italian citizen, who joined Bruegel as Affiliate Fellow at Bruegel in August 2013. Her main research interests include international macro and financial economics, central banking and EU institutions and policy making. Originally published at Bruegel .
What’s at stake: last week, the UK High Court ruled that the triggering of Article 50 – and therefore the Brexit process – should involve the UK Parliament. The Government will appeal the decision but this has created a new wave of uncertainty about the timing of Brexit, and on what this involvement can mean in practice. We review the different opinions.
Jo Murkens on the LSE blog has a very good explainer of the legal basis of the judgement, which he considers exemplary in its clarity and reasoning. The decision’s focus is strictly constitutional, not political: the only question it examined was whether, as a matter of UK constitutional law, the Crown, acting through the government, is entitled to use prerogative powers to trigger Article 50 in order to cease to be a member of the European Union. This – it turns out – hinges on a balance between constitutional requirements and individual rights.
Article 50 allows the UK to withdraw from the EU “in accordance with its own constitutional requirements”. Turning to these requirements, the government argued that the Crown – through the government – has a prerogative power to authorise the UK’s withdrawal from the EU, and that this power can only be taken away by express terms in an Act of Parliament. The court acknowledges the government’s position as correct, but only with respect to rights and obligations created as a matter of international law. As soon as individual rights protected by domestic law are affected, Parliament must be involved, especially because some individual rights would be lost upon withdrawal, as they cannot be replicated in UK law. Murkens argues that the decision amounts to a proper drubbing for the government particularly because it was not the claimants that landed the hammer blow, but the government itself, by acknowledging that the Art.50 notification would inevitably lead to the loss of some individual rights. The next stop, however, is the UK Supreme Court.
David Allen Green writes in the FT that the High Court decision is as strong as it could be and creates a substantial problem for the prime minister’s Brexit policy. The government should look hard at the reason for the court’s judgment. Central to the judges’ thinking is the impact that leaving the EU will have on the rights of UK citizens: the court has said that extinguishing such rights cannot be done by mere executive action. But the problem is more than one of form. The difficult and interlocking legal issues created by the UK leaving the EU are such that the matter is not for a prime minister, or indeed a court, to decide.
Allen Green argues that the government is not taking the opportunity offered by the judgment to start the exercise again, properly: an appeal has been announced and the court has been denounced. Those in favour of the UK remaining in the EU can draw only limited comfort from the decision, because there is no reason to believe parliament will directly defy the result of the referendum. The only thing that has been undermined by the High Court’s decision is May’s superficial approach to achieving Brexit. Eventually, the government will have to adopt a broader, more collaborative and more open approach to the process, as there is no alternative to making a success of it.
Camilla Macdonald discusses three options and argues that the ruling is not a victory for “soft” Brexit. The first option is for the government to succeed in overturning the result on appeal to the Supreme Court. MPs will then have the chance to debate at length, but they will have lost the leverage over the Government that the current ruling affords them. Second, the Government may lose the appeal and yet manage to “face down the rebels” in the Commons in time to meet May’s timetable of triggering Article 50 by March. This could be achieved by passing a non-amendable motion that presents MPs with a binary choice to approve or reject triggering article 50, assuming most MPs would not dare to risk the ire of the leave voting public. The third option – which Macdonald considers the most likely – is that the Government loses its appeal and is forced to introduce primary legislation, i.e. a Brexit bill, that will make it difficult, but not impossible, to meet the deadline. This is likely to force the Government to make concessions to MPs, but not necessarily in any form that will amount to a commitment to a “soft” Brexit.
“Soft Brexit” is what the majority of Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and part of Conservatives now want, but the biggest obstacle to this outcome is the lack of unity and of a negotiating strategy among this would-be coalition. In this situation, it is hard to see what red lines could be imposed on the government. Yet, Mcdonald thinks that involving Parliament in a process that will ultimately be defined by many complex and cross-cutting trade-offs might help to dispel the myths of simplistic “hard” and “soft” labelling. Nationalist parties would no longer plausibly be able to claim that they are excluded and the ruling could end up being an important victory for thought and reflection over rabble rousing on both sides.
Jolyon Maugham writes on FT Alphaville that after the High Court’s Brexit decision, we should forget about the activation of Article 50 in March. The Government’s appeal is likely to be heard in the Supreme Court in early December and this opens new risks. Lingering, unaddressed, in the background to this litigation is a question about whether an Article 50 notification is reversible. The High Court in reality proceeded on the assumption that a notification, once given, could not be withdrawn. But the Supreme Court has a different legal obligation and it might feel legally compelled to address that assumption directly. Addressing it would require a politically explosive referral to the European Court of Justice, because the question of whether a notification is reversible is one of European law. Beside the likely delay of around three months, a finding by the Supreme Court that an Article 50 notification could be “pulled” would leave ajar the door to a prospectively damaging continuation of the Referendum campaign until the time exit is formalised.
Assuming instead that the appeal fails, the government will have to draft a Bill and place it before parliament. And that Bill would have to pass both Houses of parliament. In the Commons there would be little or no enthusiasm for rejecting it, but it is likely that MPs would impose conditions on the triggering of Article 50, thus constraining the government’s negotiating position. Parliament may wish to choose whether to accept the outcome of the negotiations and it may even require that the deal negotiated by the government be put back to the people in the form of a second referendum. In practical terms, it is difficult to contemplate that these steps – drafting a Bill, debating it in the Commons, voting on amendments, placing it before the House of Lords and then addressing amendments introduced by the Upper Chamber in the Commons again – can sensibly be taken after the result of the Supreme Court appeal is known but before March. So, unless the Supreme Court overturns the High Court’s decision, Maugham thinks we should consider May’s March deadline ancient history.
Stephen Booth at Open Europe makes four main points about what this decision means going forward. First, if Government loses the appeal, then legislation is likely to be necessary. The reasoning of the ruling illustrates that, if the claimants’ argument holds (which regards rights stemming from EU membership set down in parliamentary legislation), the courts were never likely to be satisfied by anything short of legislation to trigger Article 50. Second, parliamentary moves to block Article 50 trigger would be politically explosive. It is unlikely that a majority of MPs in the Commons would actually move to block Brexit by preventing the Government triggering Article 50, especially having voted to give the public the opportunity to vote to leave the EU in the referendum. Booth argues that the same is probably true for the House of Lords, which would create a full-blown constitutional crisis if it opposed Article 50 outright.
Third, Parliament’s leverage over process is far greater than over any negotiating mandate or outcome. So process is likely to be the focus of any parliamentary tussles over legislation to trigger Article 50, with MPs and Lords seeking to amend the Bill to give them greater and more formal powers to scrutinise. Fourth, Booth argues that a general election is not out of the question. This would certainly mean missing the end of March 2017 deadline but would also mean that any MPs seen to be blocking the referendum result would find it very hard to keep hold of their seats and this is why he thinks it is likely that an Article 50 Bill would be passed.
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard of the Peterson Institute for International Economics argues that for now, this turn of events exposes the hypocrisy of May’s government position of wanting to repatriate all EU political powers back to the United Kingdom, but wishing to deny the country’s sovereign lawmakers a say on the Article 50 process. Whatever happens, the court ruling has dealt a blow to the small right-wing clique of hardcore euro skeptics in the Conservative Party and May’s government and the potential direct involvement of Parliament is good political news for Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party – as his only path to becoming prime minister is the one that opens up if May and the Conservatives completely botch the Brexit negotiations. He also argues that this should also harden further the EU negotiating position. These developments make it more likely that May will soon be forced to call an early election to seek a new mandate on Brexit. The Conservatives would probably win, but an accelerating economic downturn, the United Kingdom’s first past-the-post-electoral system, and a potential rallying of Remain supporters, could spring a surprise.
Tyler Cowen argues that the British parliamentary vote might matter. The more likely scenario in his view is simply that Parliament stalls, demanding that Theresa May give them “the right Brexit”. Of course there is no such thing, wrong Brexit is wrong Brexit, if only because EU-27 cannot agree on very much. But with enough stalling, eventually another national election will be held and of course Brexit would be a major issue, probably the major issue. That in essence would serve as a second referendum, and if anti-Brexit candidates did well enough, parliamentarians would have cover to go against the previous expression of the public will. 0 0 0 0 0 0 | 0 | [
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FMD2352 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Patrick Henningsen and Shawn Helton 21st Century WireOnce again, we ve arrived at our New Years Eve wrap-up of some of the most compelling and conspiratorial stories of the year. Like in years past, 2017 presented a polarizing political landscape, further exposing the current establishment paradigm. Unlike the establishment gatekeepers, when we use the word conspiracy here, we are talking about a real crime scene. Whether it was the ousting of thousands of western-backed terrorists in Iraq and Syria or a string of known wolf attacks amplified by made-to-order media agitprop, or the heavily manufactured Russia-gate narrative relentlessly pushed by mainstream outlets and Deep State actors it seemed there was no shortage of topsy-turvy stagecraft designed to mislead and confuse the masses at a time when the real world is undergoing some significant geopolitical realignments.As was the case in 2016, there were many high-profile incidents and individual stories which didn t make our annual compendium (but they are worth mentioning) like the red herring laced New Year s Eve mass shooting at Turkey s Reina nightclub that kicked off 2017 in classic Daily Shooter fashion, along with other dubious events like Fort Lauderdale s FBI-known shooter and subsequent CNN media circus. On the political front, it was a banner year for astroturfing starting with The Resistance which spent most of the first 3 months of the year demanding Trump s impeachment before he had served 100 days in office. As part of these efforts, we saw Hollywood and the Democratic Party s choreographed women s march backed by political agitator and perennial globalist George Soros, as well as MoveOn.org and other Soros-backed protests which followed Trump s highly controversial immigration ban, as contentious resignations by key members of the Trump White House loomed large. The stage was then set for Antifa s US riot tour which culminated the Charlottesville riots in Virginia followed by a series of social justice protests over Confederate statues, followed by more extremist left-wing antifascists foot-soldiers like black bloc throwing molotov cocktails and smashing buildings for kicks. And that only scratches the surface of what transpired in 2017.Other notable stories throughout the year included the Trump administration s decision to announce the creation of an Arab NATO headquartered in Saudi Arabia, the world s second-largest state sponsored of terror (US being the largest). That geopolitical gambit then teed up the Trump White House to announce that the US Embassy in Tel Aviv would begin proceedings to move to Jerusalem, a shift which some critics believe is further evidence of an ultra-Zionist agenda encroaching on Israeli-occupied Palestine and the West Bank. On the Asia front, questions emerged over what North Korea actually has in terms of ICBM missiles and a nuclear deterrent, while in the Middle East speculation raged about Saudi Arabia s historic palace purge and sabre rattling in the region. The year then saw the exposure of a giant US-NATO-Saudi weapons trafficking operation using diplomatic flight in order to arm terrorists in Syria and Iraq. 2017 also saw the mainstream media continue to market the media construct known as Bana of Aleppo, expecting the public to believe that an 8 year old girl who could not speak English was running a Twitter account from war-torn (and terrorist-occupied) East Aleppo from the autumn of 2016 all the while waxing poetic about the evil Assad, and the evil Russians and calling for US military intervention in Syria pure propaganda and a clear case of child exploitation. Interestingly, this outlandish Bana propaganda myth campaign has been shamelessly promoted by the multimillionaire Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling. 2017 also saw a wave of intelligence releases, set in motion by the CIA, who released more than 12 million documents pertaining to covert war programs, psychic research and the Cold War era, further outlining the symbiotic relationship between the agency and American media. This was followed by Wikileaks exposing much of the CIA s cyber hacking capabilities in their Vault 7 and later in their Vault 8 publications. Towards the end of the year, a new twist in the downing of MH17 revealed an apparent Netherlands cover-up, as another bizarre Daily Shooter event, the Texas Church shooting, would later disappear from headlines. Around the same time frame, new questions also emerged in the Sandy Hook saga concerning prior knowledge of the FBI, as New York was then stricken by a known wolf truck attacker. In December it was finally announced that after being held in prison for two years without trial, the Fed s Bundy Ranch Standoff case was declared a mistrial. However, most of the year s controversial stories were quickly pushed to the back page, buried underneath an avalanche of ready-to-go Weinstein-inspired sex abuse scandals involving Hollywood s elite punctuated by obligatory hashtag campaigns like #MeToo, before snagging a number of high-profile news media personalities and some of Washington s most coveted swamp dwellers. As an onslaught of new accusations flooded the media, the sordid revelation of a Congressional slush fund used to payoff sexual harassment accusers made headlines. The whole situation conjured DC s Conspiracy of Silence regarding tales of sexual misconduct in days past.All in all, it was another year of hyper-real media propaganda, as some stories published by mainstream media led to a cascade of retractions and corrections, and in certain cases, provided an all to convenient mask for other politically charged news throughout much of 2017. Unlike the mainstream media official conspiracies (like Russiagate), these ones are actually real 10. The JFK Files Over the course of 2017, one of America s most compelling conspiracies was reignited following the release of thousands of intelligence files long-held by the CIA and FBI. In late October, the Trump administration called for the release of the remaining JFK files, citing the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act deadline placed into law in 1992. While the material released was reportedly a mix of new and old, some critics declared that the recently declassified files revealed even more startling evidence related to the assassination of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. This prompted larger legacy media establishments to provide a murky retelling of the JFK saga. Predictably, a week after the releases, one newer CIA memo stated that any links between the CIA and Lee Harvey Oswald, were unfounded. In essence, the JFK file releases appear to have been a way for the political powers that be to shut the door on a conspiracy that has an overwhelming amount of information suggesting CIA links not only to Oswald, but many of the characters surrounding the case. In reality though, as newfound interest in the JFK files was reawakened, it cast light on the over five decade old case, reopening the door to coup d tat claims concerning JFK and Cold War era false flag terror. In particular, terror created by Operation GLADIO, a CIA-NATO construct, which utilized covert armies to subvert the political interests of various nations through the implementation of a Cold-War era strategy of tension. The further one digs into America s seedy underworld of organized crime, intelligence operations, unlikely coincidences and secretive relationships concerning the mysterious plot to kill Kennedy, a highly intricate web of activity emerges that points to a compelling case beyond almost any other modern-day conspiracy.9. Grenfell Tower Fire & Cover-Up It was Britain s biggest domestic disaster post WWII, and from the minute this story broke, reports of government and corporate corruption began to surface. This real-life Towering Inferno featured some of the most surreal revelations, including a corrupt government Qango known as TMO (Tenant Management Organisation) who had paid a contractor to install highly flammable petroleum-based cladding on the building, supposedly to meet green sustainability goals but also to cover-up what wealthy property developers deemed as an eye sore (social housing high rise building), part of London s continuous and rampant gentrification property bubble agenda. The controversy did not stop with the fire itself though, as residents and concerned members of the public began to question the abnormally low death count which was being trumpeted by the media and the government agencies. Meanwhile, thousands of residents from Grenfell Tower and the surrounding buildings continued to suffer and mourn the loss of loved ones and friends leaving in indellible scar on the community while the government s elite Common Purpose management class continued on with business as usual. Six months on, the public is still wondering whether anyone will be arrested, or held to account for this unprecedented story of criminal negligence. In one of its most seminal episodes, the SUNDAY WIRE radio show, along with its affiliate the UK Column, drove the investigative agenda early on in this story, with the mainstream media later picking talking points covered by this independent media outlet.8. The Crisis in Yemen Back in January 2015 while the world was focused on the war in Syria, 21WIRE first raised the alarm over Yemen after it noticed the insatiable war-time president Barack Obama, along with Deep State and Pentagon media outlet CNN began drifting out talking points about Yemen. It wasn t long after that, in March 2015, that Saudi Arabia with the full military and political backing of the US and UK, began an undeclared war of aggression against Saudi s neighbor Yemen. Nearly three years on, with tens of thousands slaughtered by Saudi airstrikes dropping their newly purchased US and UK munitions (and even enjoying air refueling by the US military) and with the Saudi and US military blockade which is keeping much-needed humanitarian aid from entering the war-ravaged country leading to mass starvation and disease outbreaks like cholera on the peninsula why isn t the international community calling out the illegal war against Yemen for what it is genocide? In order to prop-up their fake narrative on Yemen, the US and UK mainstream media conglomerates and their state propaganda directors from intelligence agency information warfare units have concocted a new batch of official disinformation lies and myths used to muddy the waters of this important discussion and ultimately justify their slaughter and arms sales bonanza in Yemen. On balance, what the US, UK and Saudi Arabia have done to Yemen is by orders of magnitude worse than what Nazi Germany did to its neighbors in the initial phase of WWII. Nothing less than a new Nuremberg Trial will be suitable to help correct this act of international barbarism.7. London s GLADIO-style Attacks On March 22nd, an apparent two-pronged terror attack stretched from London s Westminster Bridge to Parliament Square. In the days leading up to the London attacks, it was revealed that Met Police rehearsed a terrifyingly realistic drill on the River Thames prior to yet another known wolf act of terror taking place. Adding to the drama, the London attacks occurred exactly one year after the Brussels airport bombings. In addition, the bizarre and unexpected event took place during a massive uptick of Western allied involvement in the Syrian conflict and in less than 24 hours, London authorities revealed that the British-born attacker named Khalid Masood, (after media outlets erroneously reported the wrong suspect) was already well-known to MI5 and had worked in Saudi Arabia sometime between 2005-2008. Shortly after the attack, it was revealed that eye-witnesses reported seeing multiple assailants at the crime scene, this was something that directly contradicted the official story. In fact, in those reports, it was suggested that at least two individuals participated in the large-scale attack in one of the most heavily surveilled parts of London. This aspect of the case was quickly buried by major media outlets, echoing other high-profile cases involving known wolf terrorists. In recent years, there s been a pattern of multiple suspects often witnessed or said to be involved in other terror-related events. This proved to be the case in the aftermath of the Nice, France truck attack, as well as the Brussels airport bombing in 2016. Rather incredibly or unbelievably, London s acting Police Commissioner Craig Mackey, just so happened to be at the scene to witness the Parliament Square attack on Pc Keith Palmer. All in all, the latest symbolically charged ISIS-approved attack on the verge of spring, appeared to be an effort to polarize the perception of Western viewers with yet another round of wartime propaganda, while also providing a media smoke screen for recent US military action in Syria. By early summer, just after the Manchester arena bombing, London once again became a target of a purported multi-pronged terror event right on the heels of the UK s hotly contested 2017 general election. Afterwards, a number of questions were raised following the London Bridge attacks, just as there were following the Parliament Square, Westminster Bridge attacks and the Manchester Arena attack. It s important to note the common thread between each suspicious event, and the recent UK attacks are no exception there s now indisputable evidence linking MI5 and MI6 British security services to various known wolves prior to carrying out the terror crimes mentioned above. The precarious relationship between security and terror is an ongoing pattern seen after almost every major terror attack on Western soil. Throughout 2017, the London attacks seemed to increase racial and ethnic tensions in the West, while also pushing the public into accepting a more direct military intervention in Syria, and new police state measures and surveillance powers in the UK prompting us to ask, who benefited the most from the London Attacks? We d say the answer to that question is pretty obvious now 6. Manchester s Known Wolf Arena Attack Another day, another conspiratorial crime. In this case, the public was witness to yet another known wolf terror attack allegedly carried out by an ISIS-inspired individual who, as with numerous other cases, was under the gaze of MI5. The man named in the Manchester bombing attack, Salman Abedi, was also tied to a terror group supported by NATO in Libya during the operation to oust Muammar el-Qaddafi in 2011. The Manchester arena attack proved to be more than just blowback from security operations gone awry, it provided further evidence of complicity on behalf of the West in the War On Terror era. While some researchers and analysts were a buzz with the numerological synchronicities associated with the Manchester attack, others noted some very real political circumstances and significant timelines surrounding this apparent mass-tragedy in Manchester. The event just happened to arrive on the heels of a monolithic arms deals with Saudi Arabia worth $110 billion dollars that will total $350 billion over the next 10 years, and only shortly after the Manchester attack, there were US-led coalition airstrikes supposedly targeting ISIS in both Syria and Iraq that killed 121 civilians in the process. The strikes led to increased tension, placing external pressure on the Russian-led Astana Peace Agreement in Syria, while continuing to benefit the strategic movements of ISIS in Syria. The really damning link however, was exposed by one major UK Government eyesore after the Manchester attacks: the revelation that a community of outlawed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) terrorists were in fact living in close proximity to the Manchester attacker Abedi, and directly connected to Abedi himself. This was a deeply troubling development for a public unaware of the nearby danger, as British security services and officials allowed this thriving group of fighters to reside in the UK seemingly without consequence or disclosure of their previous activities until the Manchester attack. So naturally, when it was revealed that Ramadan Abedi (the father of the purported Manchester suicide bomber) was also a member of the UK government-backed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and was believed to have been a part of LIFG during the NATO-backed regime change operation in Libya in 2011 it only raised more questions concerning the attack. It s worth noting, Libya s militant governor of Tripoli, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, was also a part of the Mujahideen fighters closely linked to Bin Laden who became known as al-Qaeda. In fact, Belhadj returned to his home country [in 1995] as head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an underground paramilitary organisation dedicated to Gaddafi s downfall. Over the years, Belhadj was incarcerated and turned loose back into the field after being rendered by the CIA and British security services. As of 2015, despite the Manchester attack links to LIFG, the group is still on the US State Department s Delisted Foreign Terrorist Organizations. In the days after the attack, authorities released CCTV imagery apparently depicting the Manchester attacker Abedi, in what appeared to be a way to dramatize the bombing through emotionally charged imagery, as the media obscured other facts and connections observed in the aftermath of the attack itself. The Manchester attack was similar to other high-profile incidents used to distort public opinion in the wake of media styled mass-tragedies.5. The Las Vegas Mass Shooting October 1st marked the return of the Great American Mass Shooting a real record-breaker, complete with a shocking mile-long crime scene that stretched from the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino to the nearby Route 91 Festival, where thousands of concertgoers suddenly became a target. Although America had seen a host of smaller, less sensationalized mass shootings throughout the course of 2017, including the bizarre Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting and the strange Programmed to Kill Texas Church shooting, the high-profile Las Vegas calamity resuscitated the trauma inducing imagery so prevalent in the post-9/11 War On Terror era. This made-for-TV event was designed for media shock and awe, like the 9/11 of Mass Shootings. Over the past several years, 21WIRE has chronicled many bizarre shootings and mass casualty incidents that have rippled across America and Europe. These events have become a new kind of ritualized crimescape moving well beyond security concerns, but now accompanied by a complete range of socio-political mainstream media talking points including race, religion, gun reform , social media concerns and domestic extremism while concurrently obscuring and obfuscating the forensic reality of the crimes themselves. We re told that this tragic shooting attack was carried out by a classic lone gunman one individual without a criminal past (or nay past, as far as we could tell) but there proved to be much more to the story. Adding to this hyper-real incident, the main suspect in the Las Vegas tragedy was also revealed to be a multi-millionaire players club member, 64 year-old Stephen Paddock. With no motive and no criminal history, Las Vegas police were tasked with uncovering details of a crime overseen by billionaire bosses at MGM Resorts International and the FBI. As authorities failed to uncover a clear motive for the crime, police scanner audio, along with eye-witness testimony suggested that multiple shooters may have been at the scene, although this aspect was downplayed by mainstream media. This was quickly followed by several official revisions in the timeline of the shooting and even the crime scene itself, as evidenced by this disastrous press conference which failed to yield any new information in the case. The star-witness of the shooting, Mandalay Bay security guard Jesus Campos, also vanished and was declared missing right before a major media interview, only to resurface much later on the oddest of media venues, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, giving media gatekeepers the chance to run interference for DeGeneres s slot machine business partners at MGM. Along the way, bizarre media performances by Paddock s brother, Eric Paddock, only prompted more questions and deepened the mystery surrounding this surreal case. While the public waited for MGM to release CCTV footage of the alleged shooter Paddock, not one tape materialized, except for an older tape from 2011. Staged photos of the Mandalay Bay crime scene led to other forensic questions concerning the weaponry used, compounding other acoustic anomalies already noted. Other confusing elements of the case included the missing hard drive from Paddock s laptop, another brother s arrest, the wiring of $100,000 to his live-in girlfriend s (Marilou Danley) home country, the Philippines, Paddock s previous employment at the predecessor company of Lockheed Martin, a reported break-in at one of his homes after the shooting, the absurd insertion of an ISIS-inspired motive (which a number of dubious click-bait media outlets ran with), and later seeing a back drop of active shooter related drills and government activity, along with details suggesting Paddock may not have been alone and much more. In the search for answers in America s largest-ever mass shooting, months later, we still have yet to see any CCTV footage of the alleged killer or his whereabouts leading up to the tragedy, as he moved in and around Las Vegas. Imagine that: no CCTV footage. While some have attempted to make sense of the Las Vegas shooting tragedy, there are reports of a major push to revamp security in the hospitality industry through the use of gunfire detection systems, X-ray, body scanners and facial recognition in the wake of this confusing, if not partly manufactured event. The popular media concept of a lone wolf killer in today s world has reprogrammed the public mind in the very same way that the serial killer phenomenon did decades ago. This new fear-based saga has ushered in a string of improbable Hollywood-style scenarios, inducing a frozen apathy across the masses. Rather than looking deeply at crime scene forensics or pouring over piles of collected data, these Daily Shooter crimes hold the public psyche hostage until the next unexplained mass tragedy. Until the next episode 4. Syria s Sarin Gas False Flag In less than 24 hours after the highly dubious alleged chemical attack on April 4th (reported to be Sarin gas by Western media) in Khan Shaykhun in the Idlib province of Syria, wide-scale unsubstantiated condemnation laid blame at the doorstep of the Syrian government and Russia following the release of video footage that had yet to be forensically scrutinized. In fact, the mainstream media flooded the airwaves with a bevy of circumstantial and speculative evidence a far cry from actual hard evidence. Leaders in Washington and Western media outlets once again set the stage for wider military intervention in Syria. Days after the release of a forensically unproven chemical attack out of Khan Shaykhun, US President Donald Trump ordered a military strike on the Syrian government s Shayrat Air Base in response to the alleged chemical attack in Idlib. Trump s missile strike won him instant praise from the Pentagon media oracle CNN, as well as giddy celebrations by war-mongering neocons in the US. Perhaps the most telling aspect of Syria s most recent mass casualty terror tragedy, was the suspicious involvement of the US-UK-NATO-Gulf state backed NGO known as the White Helmets a group who once again was witnessed in wartime imagery that was not only full of anomalies but a production designed to evoke an emotional response rather than one based in rationality. Since their inception in late 2013, the White Helmets have largely conducted their so-called rescue operations in rebel-terrorist held areas in Syria, while producing an unprecedented amount of western-oriented war propaganda for nations deeply invested in arming and backing rebel-terrorists vying for regime change in Syria. Nearly two weeks after the alleged sarin gas attack, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Theodore Postol directly disputed claims concerning the official US report regarding the alleged chemical weapons attack out of Khan Shaykhun in the rebel-held terrorist-occupied Idlib province of Syria. Postol s initial analysis, along with its addendum, appeared to echo what MIT research affiliate and former US Congressional staffer Subrata Ghoshroy observed in the aftermath of the Syrian chemical incident in East Ghouta, Damascus in 2013. In addition, other award-winning American journalists like Seymour Hersh and Gareth Porter also exposed the sarin attack narrative as a fabrication promulgated by a corrupt OPCW but their reports were muted by mainstream gatekeepers. Both apparent attacks in Damascus and Idlib, were claimed through the presentation of dubious video imagery and suspicious photographs as a main source of evidence. Despite the absence of any real forensic investigation, the western media proclaimed certainty over images and videos largely supplied by the dubious NGO known as the White Helmets. It would later be revealed that on April 4th, the Syrian Air Force had also struck a warehouse in Idlib where chemical weapons were said to have been produced and stockpiled by US-backed militants. What was most disturbing, was that many in US-UK leadership seemed desperate for the public to buy into any WMD claims without concrete proof and in the process, they deliberately pushed heavily propagandized imagery presented on social media as proof of the as yet forensically unproven sarin gas attack. In essence, the whole event became a wag the dog moment ensnaring not only the White House, but many leaders in the UK as well.3. White Helmets Fraud The White Helmets. Who are they, who created them, who funds them, and which master do they serve in Syria? In the US and in Europe, these fundamental questions routinely go unanswered by the western mainstream media organizations and government officials. Since first appearing on the western media scene in late 2013, the UK and US government-funded pseudo NGO known as the White Helmets has achieved cult-like status as their pictures adorn the front pages of newspapers and CNN breaking news segments about Syria. For the last 4 years, their principle function has been to produce a steady stream of anti-Assad regime and anti-Russian propaganda tailored for western audiences. Since 2015, 21WIRE led the way in asking these important questions, and in 2017 the overwhelming pressure of mounting evidence of the White Helmet fraud eventually led to various shoddy academics in the US and in the UK mainstream media outlets attacking 21WIRE and its writers for challenging the official White Helmets narrative and for exposign how the UK government has been channeling hundreds of millions of pounds into terrorist-occupied areas of Syria under the thin guise building civil society (US and UK trojan horse) organizations in Syria. Establishment attacks included one mainstream media outlet promoting the White Helmets, The Guardian newspaper in the UK. According to The Guardian anyone who dared to question their official government-sanctioned narrative were conspiracy theorists and somehow part of a secret Russian-backed propaganda campaign. Despite mountains of evidence including various fake rescue videos, colluding in acts of murder and extreme violence and evidence which clearly depicts the dodgy search and rescue groups members as dual members in armed al Qaeda terrorist affiliates operating in rebel-held opposition areas of Syria western mainstream media are still determined to play dumb on this issue, which only goes to prove just how ignorant mainstream gatekeepers are as to the realities on the ground in Syria, or worse how controlled are mainstream editors desks by the western intelligence apparatus. Either way, Toto has already drawn the Wizard s curtain all the way back and it s only a question of time before western media apologists and clueless politicians retreat into full no comment mode on this issue.2. The Russia-Gate PsyOp It s been 18 months since the Democratic Party and the US mainstream media launched its Russia-gate narrative, claiming that Moscow had hacked the DNC, John Podesta and somehow influenced the result of the US 2016 Presidential Election. 18 months later, there s still no evidence to substantiate this mainstream conspiracy theory making Russiagate easily the biggest fake news story of the year. What s most telling about this official conspiracy theory (as it turns out, it s the mainstream that peddles the grandest conspiracy theories) is that its proponents have to resort to publishing repeated lies and wild exaggerations in order to maintain the pillars supporting their narrative. So desperate were the New York Times to tie Trump to Russia that it even claimed that the Russians where creating Facebook pages about puppies in order to confuse and mislead vulnerable American voters. New York Times also had to retract their central lie which claimed that 17 US Intelligence agencies had all agreed that the Russians meddled in the 2016 presidential election but still we hear legions of mindless journalists and shaky politicians like Adam Schiff (who, not surprisingly is also promoting the White Helmets) repeating that same old canard. As part of Washington s new McCarthyite red scare reboot, the US government labeled Russian international media network RT, and RT America as foreign agents forcing the channel and its journalists to register with the US government under old outdated pre-WWII espionage legislation. Other fake claims by US media include Kremlin bots deployed on Facebook to mess with the fragile minds of potential voters on social media, and CNN s all-time classic: an Exclusive! no less claiming that the Russians somehow infiltrated the computer game Pokemon Go in order to sow confusion among Americans. Honestly, we couldn t make it up if we tried. What s beyond ironic is that the same media who has been constantly crying fake news! as their prime talking point to explain how Trump beat Clinton has been dutifully recycling their own fake news narrative for over a year now. This one will surely go down in history as the biggest political hoax of all-time and all of the mainstream media outlets who helped promulgate this myth should also go down with it. Sadly, too many mentally-challenged lawmakers in the US, UK and Europe are actually basing their foreign policies of this mainstream fake news myth which is all too convenient for an ever-inflating the US defense budget, NATO s breakneck expansion eastward, and also for Brussels new roll-out of its EU Army 1. Fake News 2.0 2017 was the year of fake news. Last year, we crowned Fake News 1.0 as our top conspiracy, but this past year has seen it ascend to an entirely new level. From the beginning, this faux crisis had a clear set of political objectives. The first was to provide a scapegoat for Hillary Clinton s catastrophic imploding presidential run, and secondly, to try and prop-up the establishment s official conspiracy theory that somehow the Russians were spreading fake news across social media and alternative media websites in order to help Donald Trump win the election. On this front, many of us are indebted to Trump for branding CNN with the meme that keeps sticking, as the President hit CNN s bumbling White House correspondent Jim Acosta, with Trump pointing to Acosta and saying, You are fake news! live on national TV. If was a glorious moment for sure. Newspapers like the Washington Post performed a key role for the US Deep State by pushing-out fictional news features like the one claiming 200 of the leading alternative media websites were part of some Kremlin-orchestrated network of websites carrying out active measures (a defunct Cold War term) propaganda against the American people. The Post even presented a bogus anonymous construct, a website called PropOrNot in order to try and make their conspiracy theory look official. Around the same time, a radical progressive academic from Merrimack College in Massachusetts published a fake news list a database and virtual blacklist designed to defame and slander any independent medi | 0 | [
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FMD2353 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: (CNN) Conservatives at the Values Voter Summit cheered Friday morning when they learned that House Speaker John Boehner was retiring. Friday afternoon, they cheered again when someone suggested the next establishment Republican to lose his job should be Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
"Here's what I say in response to Speaker Boehner stepping down. Mitch McConnell, it is now your turn," Louisiana Gov. and GOP presidential candidate Bobby Jindal said to raucous applause.
After the news of Boehner's resignation, Arizona Rep. Matt Salmon told reporters he had texted his fellow conservative friend, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, with the simple message: "the next guy in the crosshairs is probably McConnell."
The Kentucky Republican has never been the favorite of tea party-aligned conservatives. His budget deals with the Obama administration -- most notably the December 2012 agreement with Vice President Joe Biden averting the so-called fiscal cliff -- haven't endeared him to the base who say he gives up too much. He has declined to get rid of the Senate filibuster in order to block the Iran nuclear deal, and critics say he surrendered the fight over federal funding for Planned Parenthood by declaring early on that he would actively seek to avoid a government shutdown.
But McConnell likely isn't going anywhere. While talk radio may call for his head, there are no signs of a true in-house groundswell against him. Making things more difficult for a would-be insurgent, the Senate leader is elected only by his or her conference, meaning it would be harder to get the critical mass needed to unseat him.
That doesn't mean conservatives will be silent -- McConnell epitomizes the Republican establishment in Washington that several of the top GOP presidential candidates such as Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina are running against.
Seventy-two percent of Republican primary voters said they are dissatisfied with the ability of Boehner and McConnell to achieve their party's goals, according to a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. And 36 percent wanted them immediately removed from their leadership positions.
Jindal's other big applause line at the Values Voter Summit regarding Boehner: "That's one down, that's 434 more to go."
McConnell's office declined to comment, but referred CNN to the second-ranking Senate Republican, John Cornyn. "As someone who's in constant contact with our members, it's clear Leader McConnell has overwhelming support within the conference," Cornyn said.
Rep. Bill Flores, R-Texas, said many House GOP members were frustrated with Senate Republicans for not pushing a more conservative agenda and taking up bills the House passed.
"In my view the Speaker fell on his sword for all of Congress, and I hope the Senate starts to get things done."
To reporters, Salmon aimed his frustration at the filibuster and the 60-vote threshold that Democrats have used to block House GOP initiatives.
"A lot of the problem that we're engaged in is because the Senate doesn't take any action on anything," Salmon said. "And there is nothing that any presidential candidate on our side says that will ever be realized as long as the modern day filibuster is enacted the way it is today."
McConnell has been tested before from the right. He defeated tea party challenger Matt Bevin in a contentious 2014 Republican Kentucky Senate primary. And in July, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, tore into McConnell in a rare personal attack on the Senate floor, accusing the majority leader of lying. Cruz said McConnell had promised he had not cut a deal to allow a vote on the Export-Import Bank, an institution Cruz believes is corrupt.
"If he was telling us the truth that there was no deal, why would he do what he just did?" Cruz asked. "We now know that when the majority leader looks us in the eyes and makes an explicit commitment that he is willing to say things that he knows are false."
Cruz's attacks, however, may only have served to remind conservatives about how powerful McConnell is. Several influential Republican senators chastised Cruz after the incident.
"Squabbling and sanctimony may be tolerated in other venues -- or perhaps on the campaign trail," Hatch said, "but they have no place among colleagues in the United States Senate." | 1 | [
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FMD2354 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: This is the economic policy that s bringing throngs of college-age young adults to rally for Bernie Sanders.It s a sad but true commentary on the generation of adults who will be leading our nation in the years to come. Note to college students, this is what mature bill-paying adults call B.S. economics. | 0 | [
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FMD2355 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Vice President Mike Pence delivered words of encouragement to the class of 2017 at the United States Naval Academy on Friday. He told them to look toward their future, to write a heroic story of service, selflessness, and leadership with their lives, and that President Donald Trump is the best friend the armed forces of the United States will ever have. [“People follow people they trust,†said Pence. He admonished the graduates to cultivate in themselves what he considers to be among the most important qualities of leadership: “humility, orientation to authority, and . †He told them to consider others more important than themselves and to be servant leaders. As for the president, Pence said, “President Donald Trump is the best friend the armed forces of the United States will ever have,†promising the graduates that no matter where they serve, Trump will always have their backs. He said that he and the President pledge to provide the armed forces with the resources they need. “Let me be clear, the era of budget cuts of the armed forces of the United States is over,†said Pence. He mentioned the $54 billion increase in defense spending in the President’s FY2018 budget, noting that a portion is allocated to “rebuild[ing] the Navy with 8 new battle force ships headed for the sea. †The Vice President stated that President Trump is reaffirming America’s role as leader of the free world. While we must always work and hope and pray for peace. The best way to ensure peace is for our adversaries and our enemies to know America is prepared to lead and fight and win any contest, any struggle, anywhere on behalf of freedom. He told the graduates that they will be the “instruments of American policy. †President Trump is currently on his first trip overseas as president, visiting Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the Vatican. While in Saudi Arabia, Trump pushed for countries to fight against terrorism, mentioning terror 31 times in his speech to Arab leaders. Pence commented that just yesterday the Navy conducted Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the South China Sea. The Vice President urged the graduates to “act every day not for self, but for country. †Pence encouraged the graduates, “if you’re of a mind, have faith that He who planted this miracle of Democracy on these wilderness shores and has seen her through every trial and has seen you through the challenges of the last four years, will never leave you, never forsake you and that no matter where your path may lead, He will always be there to calm the storm and guide you home. †He concluded, “May God bless you with fair winds and following seas. God bless the Navy and the Marines and God bless the United States of America. †Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana | 1 | [
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FMD2356 | 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: 'Cadbury Easter Egg Hunt' Scam Circulates on WhatsApp Claim summaries: Cadbury said in a statement that the viral post was "not been generated by us" and that consumers should not "interact or share personal information through the post."
contextual information: At the end of March 2022, social media users reported that a message was circulating on WhatsApp offering a free chocolate Easter basket from Cadbury. This was not a genuine offer from the famous chocolate company. This message was part of a phishing scam that used promises of free chocolate to lure users and trick them into giving away their personal information. On WhatsApp, many people encountered the following message: There are a few red flags here. First, social media users should be wary of any message offering something for free. Second, social media users should be wary of unfamiliar URLs. While companies may truly offer giveaways on occasion, these promotional offers will come from official company sources. The above-displayed message, however, was not posted by Cadbury, and the above-displayed link is not a link to Cadbury's official website. The Dorset Police Cyber Crime Unit wrote on Facebook: Dorset Police Cyber Crime Unit wrote on Facebook Keep your eyes peeled for this fairly convincing Cadbury themed phish! It's clearly designed to mirror the current Cadbury Easter Egg Hunt campaign, with the chance to win one of 5000 possible free gifts. The only thing more wrong than this is the act of biting the top off of a Creme Egg to lick the filling out. First thing to pay attention to is that short URL. There's a good reason why we don't like short URLs in the Cyber Crime Unit... They make it much harder to tell where you're actually heading. Also, that .ru domain. There's no good reason for Cadbury to have a Russian address. Then there's the website itself. DON'T CLICK THE LINK. Our Cyber Protect Officer has done it for you. The site looks fairly convincing, however the only buttons that actually work are the ones to answer the questions. The search icon and the three little lines do nothing at all. Once you answer those question, you're taken to a little game where you have to "find your prize". Conveniently, your first and second tries won't be successful, but you'll "win" on your third go! At that point, to claim your "prize", you'll be asked to hand over all sorts of personal information. That's where the scam comes in! Far too high a price to pay for some free chocolate. Especially when Creme Eggs are two for a quid! The 2022 Cadbury Easter Egg Hunt scam follows the same formula as other social media scams. The fraudsters use an enticing offer (free chocolate) to lure consumers and get them to click on a link. Then, the fraudsters use various tactics (in this case a brief game to "find your prize") to trick users into giving away personal information (such as a credit card number). same formula as other social media scams These scams often target consumers of well-known brands, such as Cadbury, and include media or logos that imitate the visual design of those companies. In fact, Cadbury has been repeatedly used in such scams. In 2020, for example, a scam claimed that Cadbury was giving away chocolate hampers for Christmas. scam claimed that Cadbury was giving away chocolate hampers for Christmas In March 2022, the Cadbury UK Facebook page posted a message warning its fans about the current scam: Cadbury UK Facebook page Weve been made aware of circulating posts on social media, claiming to offer consumers a free Easter Chocolate basket. We can confirm that this has not been generated by us and would urge consumers not to interact or share personal information through the post. Customer security is our priority and were working with the relevant organisations to ensure this is resolved. | 0 | [
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FMD2357 | 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: Ohios lost more jobs in March than any other state in the nation.
contextual information: During budget debates in the Ohio House, Democrats portrayed themselves as the defenders of middle-income Ohioans, announcing a plan they called their Targeted Middle Class Tax Cut. The plan, which majority Republicans did not include in the budget, was the brainchild of Reps. Mike Foley of Cleveland and John Patrick Carney of Columbus. The two Democrats announced their plan in the wake of new job figures which they said showed that Republican Gov. John Kasichs economic policies aren't working. In a news release posted to his House webpages, Foley cited the job figures and claimed that Ohio lost more than 20,400 jobs in March, and that those losses were the largest of any state in the nation. PolitiFact Ohio decided to check his claim. We asked Foleys staff to support his statement, and also checked ourselves with the U.S. Department of Labors Bureau of Labor Statistics, home of a vast array of jobs data. Foleys staff provided a news article from The Plain Dealer that relied on data from BLS and the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services. In March, according to BLS estimates, the seasonally adjusted estimate for the total number of non-farm jobs in Ohio was 5,176,900 jobs. That represents a loss of about 20,400 from the previous month, just as Foley said. You have to go back to June 2009, the month the recession officially ended, to find a greater monthly figure. That month about 33,000 jobs were lost. In April 2009, Ohio lost more than 44,000 jobs, the worst monthly performance so farin this century. But the March 2013 figure also is small enough that it did not change the unemployment rate. That remained 7.1 percent, just as it was in February, according to the state Department of Job and Family Services. So how did Ohio stack up against the rest of the nation? Foleys claim cites a raw number (rather than a percentage), which means Ohios size could come into play. The Buckeye State is the seventh most populous in the nation. But did it lead the nation in job losses? After all, California, with more than three times Ohios population, has a much larger economy. Texas has more than double the people. And New York and Florida, Nos. 3 and 4, each have populations more than 60 percent greater than Ohio. BLS figures show Ohio did indeed lose the most jobs. Nonfarm employment decreased in 26 states and the District of Columbia. It increased in 23 states. New Mexico was unchanged. The largest increases were in Florida, which added 32,700 jobs, and California, which gained. 25,500. The largest decreases were in Ohio (-20,400) and Illinois (-17,800). In Ohio, the industries posting big losses in March included leisure and hospitality (down 6,000 jobs), professional and business services (down 4,300 jobs) and construction (down 3,300 jobs),according to Job and Family Services.Even the category including health services posted a 2,500 decline. That is extremely unusual. That has been our best growth sector for decades, economic research analyst George Zeller told The Plain Dealer. A bright spot was manufacturing, which has fueled the recovery in Ohio and gained 1,800 jobs. It is also worth noting that the March job losses were preceded by three months in a row of job gains. And so far this year, the state still is showing a net job gain.The state lost jobs during four months of 2012, but nothing on the scale of Marchs decline. Foley, in his news release, said that Ohio lost 20,400 jobs in March and that it led the nation in jobs lost. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms both the number of jobs lost, albeit an estimate, and that Ohio lost more than any other state. Foleys statement is accurate, although he is focusing on a month in which the number of job losses is unusually high. With that point of clarification, on the Truth-O-Meter, his claim rates Mostly True. | 1 | [
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FMD2358 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives took a new step toward tax reform legislation on Wednesday by approving a fiscal 2018 budget resolution that would allow the Senate to pass a sweeping tax code overhaul without Democratic support. The House Budget Committee voted 22-14 along party lines to send the measure to the floor of the House for consideration by the full chamber, a day after the $4 trillion spending blueprint was unveiled. But it was not clear how the measure would fare in the full House, where it could become embroiled in Republican infighting between conservatives and moderates similar to the political tug-of-war that caused healthcare legislation to disintegrate in the Senate this week. Both the House and Senate must approve a budget agreement to unlock a legislative tool called reconciliation, which would allow Republicans to pass tax legislation with a simple majority in the Senate. Republicans control the chamber by only a 52-48 margin. Democrats oppose the Republican budget and Republican plans for a tax reform bill that is likely to offer steep tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. The House budget resolution would combine tax cuts in the same legislation as $203 billion in spending cuts to mandatory programs including food assistance for the poor. Enough Republican conservatives to prevent its passage already oppose the plan, because they believe it does not go far enough to cut spending. But Republican moderates are against larger cuts. Some House conservatives also want to see a Republican tax reform plan before supporting a budget that would facilitate its passage. The Trump administration and Republican leaders in Congress are not expected to unveil a tax plan until September. The budget resolution would also bundle a partial repeal of the 2010 Dodd-Frank Wall Street reform law into the same legislation as taxes and spending cuts. | 1 | [
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FMD2359 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A U.S. State Department official said on Tuesday that Washington has no plans to change a Cold War-era law granting special immigration benefits to Cubans, despite President Barack Obama’s moves toward normalized relations with the island country. “There continues to be a large migration flow out of Cuba. It reflects the difficult economic and human rights conditions in the country,†Francisco Palmieri, principal deputy assistant secretary in State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, told a Senate subcommittee hearing. “We have no plans to change the Cuban Adjustment Act at this time,†Palmieri said. The Cuban Adjustment Act provides Cubans with benefits granted to migrants from no other country. Once they enter the United States and ask for asylum, virtually all are granted the right to stay, can apply for work permits and, later, green cards, which convey lawful permanent residency. Some U.S. lawmakers have been demanding a fresh look at Cuban immigration policy since the surprise December 2014 announcement from Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro that the two countries would move toward ending decades of estrangement. They argue that most of the Cubans coming to the United States are coming for economic reasons and are not refugees from its Communist government. Fear of an end to their benefits has fueled a surge in departures from Cuba, many via third countries, which has left large groups of Cubans stranded in Central America. Earlier this year, thousands were airlifted from Panama and Costa Rica to northern Mexico, where they crossed the border into the United States. Senator Marco Rubio, the subcommittee chairman, asked Palmieri about reports that Panama might be planning to send more Cuban migrants north. “We have not told them not to do their airlift,†Palmieri said. | 1 | [
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FMD2360 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The godfather of whistleblowers: Remembering Phillip Agee, ex-CIA By Thomas C. Mountain Posted on November 2, 2016 by Thomas C. Mountain
Before Edward Snowden and Julian Assange there lived the godfather of whistleblowers, Phillip Agee, Ex-CIA. Phil named names, exposed CIA agents and brought down whole agency operations back when he published his book “Inside the Company” in 1975.
The difference with back then and today’s whistleblowers is that Phil Agee actually exposed CIA undercover agents, some of whom, being involved in covert wars, were killed as a result, something Snowden and Assange differ with Agee over.
From a Third World perspective, Phil Agee did us a lot of good by helping us kick the criminals working for the CIA out of our countries. The undercover agents who were killed were not the good guys Hollywood would have you believe. Kidnapping, torture, disappearances and assassinations is what the CIA does, or oversees.
If you are a political activist in the Third World, you want to know your enemy so you can protect yourself from these criminals secretly draped in the red, white and blue of Yanqui Imperialism.
Here is Africa we have learned from bitter experience that the CIA’s preferred fronts are aid workers, journalists and clergy.
Now if Snowden or Assange would publish the names of the clergy, journalists and aid workers working for the CIA, then maybe we could prevent them from committing their malicious crimes of espionage, you know, save lives and protect our loved ones and fellow countrymen and women.
If people living in the Western countries were shocked by Snowden’s exposé then they were pretty naive. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI never respected anyone’s privacy, least of all the president of the USA. And if you were deemed a threat, like over 200 Black Panthers and American Indian activists, no compunctions about gunning you down.
Exposure of US government spying doesn’t really help us here in the Third World because we are being kidnapped, tortured, disappeared and assassinated. Spying on our mobile phones is quite a way down on the list of our worries.
Hopefully the next generation of whistleblowers will remember Phillip Agee and not just expose crimes but actively prevent any future damage by naming names, exposing agents and destroying operations of the international criminal cartel known as the CIA.
Thomas C. Mountain is an independent journalist in Eritrea, living and reporting from here since 2006. His speeches, interviews and articles can be seen on Facebook at thomascmountain and he can best be reached at thomascmountain at g mail dot com. This entry was posted in Commentary . Bookmark the permalink . | 0 | [
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FMD2361 | 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: Michelle Obama volunteered at a soup kitchen. Claim summaries: Photograph shows Michelle Obama serving a government funded soup kitchen meal to a person with an expensive cell phone?
contextual information: Claim: Photograph shows Michelle Obama serving a government funded soup kitchen meal to a person with an expensive cell phone. REAL PHOTOGRAPH; INACCURATE DESCRIPTION Examples: [Collected via e-mail, June 2009] Recently Michelle Obama went to serve food to the homeless at a government funded soup kitchen. Cost of a bowl of soup at homeless shelter: $0.00 dollars Having Michelle Obama Serve you your soup: $0.00 dollars Snapping a picture of a homeless person who is receiving a government funded meal while taking a picture of the first lady using his $500 Black Berry cell phone and $100.00 per month cellular service: Priceless Origins: The above-displayed photograph is genuine, a snapshot taken on an occasion in March 2009 when Michelle Obama spent some time serving lunch to men and women at Miriam's Kitchen, a social service agency in Washington D.C., as part of the First Lady's effort to "spotlight local organizations, connect with the city and help those in need amid the economic crisis." However, all the assumptions and implications of the text accompanying this picture are incorrect or unsubstantiated. To wit: The photograph does not depict anyone "receiving a government funded meal": Miriam's Kitchen is a privately funded organization with the goal of "providing individualized services that address the causes andconsequences of homelessness in an atmosphere of dignity and respect"; it is not government run or taxpayer funded. Miriam's Kitchen A cell phone capable of capturing images (even a BlackBerry Pearl) is not necessarily a "$500 phone" with a "$100 per month cellular service." Many much more affordable options are available, including cellular providers who give free phones to low-income customers under the Lifeline assistance program. So a homeless person might very well carry a cell phone, as Scott Schenkelberg, the Executive Director of Miriam's Kitchen, observed when questioned about this photograph during an interview: BlackBerry Pearl affordable Lifeline interview Q: Since the First Lady's visit, both your guests and your food have been the subject of some criticism within the blogosphere. For example, some critics noted thatone of your guests had a cell phone and suggested that it was inappropriate to serve free food to someone who could afford a cell phone. A: I suspect some people don't understand how inexpensive cell phones are, or how critical they are to this population. These days, you can purchase a cell phone at 7-11 for $10, then pay for minutes as you go. Our clients have a very fragile safety net. Many of them don't have shelter and are extremely vulnerable. For them, cell phones could literally be a lifeline. If they're looking for a job, the cell phone would also be incredibly important can you even imagine trying to apply for a job without a phone number? Cell phones simply aren't luxuries anymore. If a guest can scrape together some money to purchase a cell phone, I think that's wonderful. The assumption that a truly homeless person wouldn't have (or couldn't afford) a cell phone is also a mistaken one. As Scott Schenkelberg noted, the ranks of the homeless served by organizations such as Miriam's Kitchen include not just the long-term, chronically homeless, but also the "newly homeless": those who had recently been getting by economically until a sudden job loss or other reversal left them with nowhere to go: Until recently, we served mostly the chronically homeless, people who had fallen out of the economy long ago. More recently, we've been seeing more new faces, people who just fell into homelessness or other hard times. These people are generally high-functioning individuals who were hurt by the poor economy. It's very troubling to see previously self-sufficient people coming to Miriam's Kitchen in such high numbers. Last updated: 16 June 2009 Sweet, Lynn. "Can Michelle Influence what We Eat, Too?" Chicago Sun-Times. 6 March 2009 (p. C10). Associated Press. "First Lady Puts Service on the Menu." The Australian. 7 March 2009. | 1 | [
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FMD2362 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Within hours of confirming plans to appear at the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, the Radio City Rockettes were plunged into a maelstrom of social media outrage on Friday amid reports that the performers were contractually obligated to dance at the ceremony or lose their jobs. But as the day wore on, both the Madison Square Garden Company, which manages the Rockettes, and the dancers’ union, the American Guild of Variety Artists, said that any of the dancers could opt out of the Jan. 20 performance in Washington. The day of statements followed reports that a Rockette was “embarrassed and disappointed†that the decision to perform had been made for her. The dancer’s private Instagram post was published by the gossip website Perez Hilton and quoted widely by news outlets. That dancer, Phoebe Pearl, did not respond to multiple requests for comment on Friday, nor did several of her fellow performers. Not long after those reports, a statement relayed through Mikyl Cordova, a spokeswoman for the Madison Square Garden Company, said that dancers’ appearances are voluntary. “For a Rockette to be considered for an event, they must voluntarily sign up and are never told they have to perform at a particular event, including the inaugural,†the statement read. “It is always their choice. †The statement also said that, among the dancers, Mr. Trump’s inauguration has been a popular opportunity: “In fact, for the coming inauguration, we had more Rockettes request to participate than we have slots available. We eagerly await the inaugural celebrations. †Nonetheless, the company did not respond to further inquiries or make any dancers available for interviews. Despite these assurances, many of the women may feel under pressure to perform. Much of the fear and confusion could be traced to an email sent on Thursday night by the union to some of the dancers. “If you are full time, you are obligated,†said that message, which was forwarded to The New York Times. “Doing the best performance to reflect an American institution which has been here for over 90 years is your job. I hope this pulls into focus the bottom line on this work. †Union officials did not return any calls, but on Friday evening, the guild said on Facebook that it had reached an agreement with the company that would allow all employees, even dancers, to opt out of the inauguration. It said the earlier email to its members had simply been an explanation of the existing contract. The pressure to perform at the inauguration ceremony will probably vary based on the circumstances of each Rockette, according to a performer who spent five years with the company. Heather Lang, a contemporary dancer who left the Rockettes in 2009, said in a phone interview that there are about 12 dancers who perform in both winter and spring shows. They are a minority of the company, which has about 80 Rockettes. All of the dancers were seasonal until about a year ago. Ms. Lang, 35, said that for and seasonal dancers, there is a fear of jeopardizing their future employment and of compromising their standing in the eyes of James L. Dolan, the executive chairman of the Madison Square Garden Company, and his executives, if they complain or try to bow out. “One of the most annoying situations about that job is it’s corporate,†Ms. Lang said. “It’s not like a Broadway show where you feel like you have an artistic voice. You’re sort of owned by this corporation. †So even if an appearance is considered voluntary, individual Rockettes may feel forced to perform if they are told that executives want them onstage in Washington. Ms. Lang said that performers are drawn to the company for the honor of dancing at Radio City Music Hall — as well as for the health benefits. Many of the women have feared standing up for themselves in the current controversy, she said. “Everybody’s in fear of losing their job. †The idea that Rockettes could be forced to perform prompted anger on Twitter among actors, performers and other celebrities, who began widely circulating contact information for the company, the Rockettes’s producers and their union. Chris Pappas, a tour guide with Radio City Music Hall, said employees there were angry. “I can say that as a member of the tour guide staff, we have discussed it, and it has upset us,†Mr. Pappas said in a telephone interview. “It’s not saying the Rockettes are invited to perform. It’s saying that the Rockettes will perform. †In announcing the appearance, Mr. Dolan said in a statement on Thursday that the Rockettes were “treasured American icons,†and noted that they had performed at the inaugurations of George W. Bush in 2001 and 2005. The dance company, known for pearly smiles and high kicks, is one of the most recognizable holiday institutions of the ’s hometown, and one of the few performers to confirm an appearance so far. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, which has performed at previous presidential inaugurations, confirmed its appearance on Thursday. On Friday, a petition was circulating among people who were urging the group to reconsider. Last week, Boris Epshteyn, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s inaugural committee, confirmed in an email that the opera singer Jackie Evancho would be performing the national anthem at the event, calling her a “true role model and inspiration for people young and old in our country and around the globe. †Other performers, including the Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli and the singer Elton John, have both said in recent days that, contrary to rumors, they would not be performing. In between commenting on Twitter about the proliferation of nuclear weapons and addressing business conflicts of interest within his family, the took time on Thursday evening to assure the nation that he did not want celebrities attending his inauguration. “I want the PEOPLE!†Mr. Trump tweeted. | 1 | [
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FMD2363 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: (Want to get this briefing by email? Here’s the .) Good evening. Here’s the latest. 1. The police chief in Charlotte, N. C. said a video of the fatal shooting that set off two nights of violent protests did not offer “absolute, definitive visual evidence†that the victim, Keith Scott, was pointing a gun. A lawyer for the dead man’s family said the video showed his hands were by his side when he was shot. In another fatal shooting that has prompted anger over race and policing, Officer Betty Shelby, who killed Terence Crutcher in Tulsa, Okla. was charged with manslaughter. _____ 2. Donald Trump, set to speak about fracking in Philadelphia, opened with comments about the unrest in Charlotte and, more broadly, about violence in largely black urban areas. “Drugs are a very, very big factor in what you’re watching on television at night,†he said. Hillary Clinton, who has called the recent spate of police killings of black suspects “unbearable,†had a day off from campaign events. But she did appear on the mock celebrity interview show “Between Two Ferns,†answering the oblivious questions of Zach Galifianakis, who asked how fast she typed as secretary, and how President Obama liked his coffee. _____ 3. Yahoo reported a vast email breach by an unnamed “ actor†dating to 2014. Some 500 million accounts were hacked — a number larger than the population of the United States — yielding names, email addresses, telephone numbers, birth dates, passwords, and in some cases security questions. Yahoo said it had begun notifying potentially affected users. Here’s what you can do to protect yourself. _____ 4. The father of the man accused of carrying out bombings last weekend in New York and New Jersey spoke to our reporters, clarifying the warnings he gave to federal agents about his son two years ago. He said he explicitly warned agents that Ahmad Rahami was interested in terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda and fascinated by jihadist music, poetry and videos. “In two months, the F. B. I. came back to me and said he’s clean,†the father said. “They didn’t find anything on him. But they didn’t interview him. †_____ 5. President Obama honored some of the country’s top filmmakers, artists and musicians at the White House, including Mel Brooks, above, Audra McDonald, Wynton Marsalis and 21 other luminaries. “We’ve got Terry Gross,†Mr. Obama said, referring to the “Fresh Air†host, “and a whole bunch of people who Terry Gross has interviewed. †The MacArthur Foundation also awarded its “genius†grants. Among the 23 recipients of the fellowship — $625, 000 over five years — are a few relatively figures, like the poet Claudia Rankine. Many appeared to be hard to categorize, working across existing genres, disciplines and institutions. _____ 6. “After what happened I had no short or long term plans, I just figured out how to get my life back together, to regain trust and hope that this world wasn’t a horrible place. †That was the woman above, one of 11 women who were brutally sexually assaulted during protests in Mexico State a decade ago. International human rights officials are demanding an investigation, which would sweep in President Enrique Peña Nieto, who ordered the crackdown as governor of the state. _____ 7. Scientists are warning of a surprisingly invasive species you may be familiar with — from your aquarium. Improperly released pet goldfish have spawned, swollen to the size of footballs, migrated, interbred with other species and become an ecological nightmare in places ranging from Australia to Nevada. So, the experts say, if you’re tired of your goldfish, give it back to the store or to a friend, or kill it in an ice slurry. Don’t toss it in a stream or flush it. _____ 8. Baseball fans — and regulators — want to know: What’s with all the home runs? A surprisingly long list of players are at or near 30 for the season, including previously unspectacular hitters like shortstop Brad Miller of the Tampa Bay Rays, above. Possible explanations: “juiced†balls, with interiors, a rush of doping — or maybe just the game’s turn toward raw power for both pitchers and hitters. _____ 9. No less a reviewer than the novelist Richard Ford (“The Sportswriter,†“Independence Dayâ€) offers high praise for Bruce Springsteen’s memoir, which comes out next Tuesday. Writing as one of “nine jillion†fans, he says “Born to Run†helps, as much as anything can, explain how the singer went from a New Jersey backwater to going “in front of 90, 000 people for years in 40 different countries. †He also says: “You’d think a guy who wrote “Spanish Johnny drove in from the underworld last night’ ’u2009With bruised arms and broken rhythm and a old Buick . ’u2008. ’u2008. †could navigate his way around a complete and creditable American sentence. And you’d be right. †_____ 10. Nine arrests in a corruption case dealt a serious blow to the inner circle of New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo. A former aide, Joseph Percoco, above with Mr. Cuomo, was among those accused of bribery, extortion and fraud linked to “hundreds of millions of dollars in state contracts and other official state benefits†in economic development programs. The case, the latest in a string of corruption cases plaguing Albany and Mr. Cuomo’s associates, spared the governor himself. _____ 11. Finally, it’s the autumnal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere, so happy fall. And if you’re feeling a little less than fulfilled, here’s a lesson from one of Stanford University’s most popular courses, Designing Your Life. Try using the same approach that goes into making successful products: prototyping, building teams and bias to action (meaning rapid decision making). “The question of ‘What do I do with the rest of my one wild and wonderful life?’ is on everyone’s mind,†said one of the course’s two professors. _____ Martin Tsai contributed reporting. _____ Your Evening Briefing is posted at 6 p. m. Eastern. And don’t miss Your Morning Briefing, posted weekdays at 6 a. m. Eastern, and Your Weekend Briefing, posted at 6 a. m. Sundays. Want to look back? Here’s last night’s briefing. What did you like? What do you want to see here? Let us know at briefing@nytimes. com. | 1 | [
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FMD2364 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson acknowledged on Tuesday that he and President Donald Trump disagree over the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and said the two men discuss how to use the international agreement to advance administration policies. Trump at times vowed during the 2016 presidential election campaign to withdraw from the agreement, which was signed by the United States, Russia, China and three European powers to curb Iran’s nuclear program in return for lifting most Western sanctions. Trump has preserved the deal for now, although he has made clear he did so reluctantly after being advised to do so by Tillerson. “He and I have differences of views on things like JCPOA, and how we should use it,†Tillerson said at a State Department briefing, using the acronym for the deal, formally called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Tillerson said that Washington could “tear it up and walk away†or stay in the deal and hold Iran accountable to its terms, which he said would require Iran to act as a “good neighbor.†Critics say the deal falls short in addressing Iran’s support for foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria, arms shipments around the Middle East and ballistic missile tests. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tillerson’s remarks. Trump said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal last month that he predicts Iran will be judged “noncompliant†with the Iran deal at the next deadline in October, and that he would have preferred to do so months ago. Tillerson expressed a more nuanced view of the deal’s potential benefits on Tuesday. “There are a lot of alternative means with which we use the agreement to advance our policies and the relationship with Iran, and that’s what the conversation generally is around with the president as well,†Tillerson said. European officials would likely be reluctant to re-impose sanctions, especially the broader measures that helped drive Iran to negotiate over its nuclear program in the first place. New U.S. sanctions on Iran in July were a breach of the nuclear deal and Tehran had lodged a complaint with the body that oversees the pact’s implementation, a senior Iranian politician said. Tillerson acknowledged that the United States is limited in how much it can pressure Iran on its own and said it was important to coordinate with the other parties to the agreement. “The greatest pressure we can put to bear on Iran to change the behavior is a collective pressure,†he said. | 1 | [
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FMD2365 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The NFL Draft has turned into a zoo, literally, and NFL Network draft guru Mike Mayock is having none of it. [The NFL has recently endeavored to spice things up and enhance the entertainment value of the draft. Long gone are the days of a bunch of football nerds sitting around a hotel ballroom calmly scribbling names on sheets of paper, to be carried by runner to the commissioner at the podium so he could announce the name of the player in which the franchise had entrusted its future hopes and dreams. Oh no, say goodbye to suspender moustache guy, and say hello to skinny jean wearing, having purveyor of social media guy. In short, the draft has become an entertainment event geared towards the NFL fan. An entertainment event that, especially in light of the recent, financial demise of ESPN, has to attract viewers in order to draw ratings and raise revenues. One of the new entertainment innovations of the marketing and advertising department of the NFL Network was to have draft pick announcements made . The Texans had their draft picks read from the International Space Station, the Chiefs had picks read from Whiteman Air Force Base, and the Colts had their picks made by … well … an orangutan at the Indianapolis Zoo. The orangutan announcing the #Colts selection is the pick of the #NFLDraft pic. twitter. — Jeffrey Kahn 247 (@jkahn247) April 29, 2017, This latter innovation did not sit well with Mayock. Following prompts from a zookeeper, the orangutan then tapped a TV screen, which then displayed the name of the player the Colts had selected. Funny, right? I thought so. Mike Mayock did not. According to Pro Football Talk, Mayock said, “If we’re going back to the zoo, I’m walking off the desk. I’ve about had the zoo, OK? Enough. Enough. I mean, is this good TV?†NFL Network’s Rich Eisen introduced the zoo segment with some sarcasm, saying, “If we don’t go to the zoo, the world will stop spinning. †When the orangutan revealed the Colts’ selection of defensive tackle Grover Stewart, Mayock indicated he thought it was unfair to Stewart to turn one of the most significant moments of his life into a circus. “I think we’ve got to be a little respectful,†Mayock said. “It’s a big day for Grover Stewart, and rather than talking about that chimp, let’s get back to some football here. It’s a big day for him. †While one can certainly see how having an orangutan announce the fulfillment of your life’s dream to reach the NFL could be considered disrespectful, at some point Mayock also has to understand that he’s in the entertainment business, and not just the sports business, which is something that’s probably quite easy to forget when you’ve been immersed in game tape and analysis of over 400 draft prospects for the last several months. The financial collapse of ESPN has heralded in the start of a new era for much of the sports world. Gone are the salad days when you could just name a price and the monster would pay it, then eagerly ask for more. Sports leagues and their affiliated news networks can’t be lazy anymore, relying on the financial largesse of the “Magic Kingdom. †Instead, they’re going to have to make their products more entertaining, lucrative, and productive in order to pay the freight. Does that mean the NFL Network did the right thing in having an orangutan announce a draft pick? No. Personally, I found it funny and thought Mayock completely overreacted about a moment of levity in the midst of bonanza about football players, the overwhelming majority of whom the country has never heard of before. Maybe I’ve got that wrong, and that’s fine. Here’s what I don’t have wrong: Gimmicky draft selection ideas aren’t going away, and Mike Mayock will not be receiving a Christmas card from the Indianapolis Zoo anytime soon. Follow Dylan Gwinn on Twitter: @themightygwinn | 1 | [
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FMD2366 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The BBC has run a series of online and radio segments claiming the “great meme war has travelled to France†implying Internet jokes could swing the French election for the Front National as the broadcaster alleges they did for Trump and Brexit in the UK and U. S.[“A group of anonymous keyboard warriors who claim they helped Donald Trump win his presidency have moved their fight to Europe and are trying to help elect a leader for France,†the radio programme’s description reads. “In 2016 politically and racially charged memes and symbols started spreading from U. S. and UK accounts,†opens the accompanying video on BBC Trending’s Facebook page. “Far right activists claim the results of the U. S. presidential elections demonstrated their influence,†the film says. Front National denies any role in ‘Great Meme War’ A glass of half full milk is code for white supremacy … and other shocking racially charged memes, Posted by BBC Trending on Monday, 10 April 2017, The BBC presenter says meme “activities†miraculously “stopped†in November 2016, after the election of President Donald J. Trump, with the “same accounts†becoming active again in January 2017, “this time targeting Franceâ€. According to the BBC, the “operation†has generated 50, 000 tweets so far, with right wing activists organising in online gaming chat rooms “like their U. S. counterpartsâ€. The prospect that memes are merely the result of unorganised and unlinked individuals amusing themselves online is not seriously considered. “The ‘Great Meme War’ symbols and memes have travelled to France. But their influence cannot yet be quantified,†concludes the film. The BBC does little to explain how such memes could influence elections, other than implying right wing politicians use them to “connect†with young voters. The example of Florian Philippot is given, a of the Front National and advisor to Marine Le Pen, who used a meme on his YouTube channel. He flashed the ‘Risitas’ or ‘Spanish laughing guy’ meme at the end of a video, which has been used by both left and right wing activists. Mr. Philippot’s spokesman responded to the BBC’s insinuation that using the meme might be racist. “El Risitas is not a symbol with a racist connotation that echoes the ideology of the far right. It is just funny,†he said. | 1 | [
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FMD2367 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Mexico will only remain within the North American Free Trade Agreement if the renegotiated treaty is good for the country, Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray said on Tuesday, as trade negotiators gathered in Washington for talks. The talks to update the 23-year-old NAFTA pact have turned increasingly acrimonious, with Mexico and business groups warning that several U.S. proposals would limit trade. Videgaray said Mexico must be ready for the “different scenarios†that the talks could produce. U.S. President Donald Trump was quoted on Tuesday as saying he believed NAFTA should be terminated. | 1 | [
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FMD2368 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Iraqi forces are deploying tanks and artillery south of a Kurdish-held area of northern Iraq where a section of a Kurdish oil export pipeline is located, security sources said on Monday. The buildup is taking place northwest of Mosul, an official from the Kurdistan Regional Government s (KRG) security council said by phone from the Kurdish capital, Erbil. An Iraqi government security advisor said the Fish-Khabur area, northwest of Mosul, is the location of crossings into Turkey and Syria that Baghdad wants to bring under its control. But he declined to say if a military move was being prepared. A pipeline carrying crude across Iraqi Kurdistan connects to a metering station in Fish-Khabur before feeding another pipeline that takes the crude to the Turkish Mediterranean coast for exports. The military buildup is taking place around Rabi a, 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of the Fish-Khabur, the Kurdish security official said. Turkey and Iran both support measures taken by the Iraqi government to isolate the KRG after it held a referendum on Kurdish independence on Sept. 25 and to bring the Kurdistan region s oil exports and land crossings under Baghdad s authority. Iraq has shown zero signs of de-escalating, said a statement by the KRG Security Council about the deployment, adding that units being brought to the region include Iranian-backed Popular Mobilisation paramilitaries. The Fish-Khabur crossing has been under Kurdish control since 1991, when the United States and western powers imposed a no-fly zone over northern Iraq to protect the Kurds from Saddam Hussein s army. The Syrian side of the border in the region is now under the control of U.S.-backed Syrian Kurdish forces. | 1 | [
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FMD2369 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Once again, the left eats its own Liberal reporters used the unexpected firing of NBC News anchor Matt Lauer for unspecified sexual misconduct as an opportunity to mention how hard he was on Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election. It was a liberal pile-on with brutal attacks on twitter from journalists who actually called Lauer a right winger and Trump apologist .Now that s funny!Annie Karni, White House reporter for Politico, tweeted about how Hillary Clinton condemned Matt Lauer s performance during the 2016 Commander-in-Chief forum.Hillary Clinton on Matt Lauer's performance during the Commander-in-Chief forum in 2016: "Trump should have reported his performance as an in-kind contribution . I can't say I didn't fantasize about shaking some sense into Lauer while I was out there." Annie Karni (@anniekarni) November 29, 2017BuzzFeed World correspondent Borzou Daragahi used the firing to remind followers to not forget about Lauer covering Clinton s email controversy.Let's not forget Matt Lauer's shining moment of journalistic glory last year when he bulldozed over Clinton about her emails while letting Trump get away with lies https://t.co/RVl0ZkC3jr Borzou Daragahi (@borzou) November 29, 2017The left attacks its own AGAIN! Many on twitter are blaming Hillary for the ouster of Lauer. This means that he s being fired NOT because of sexual misconduct but for not following the party line and supporting Hillary? They might have a point. Lauer s escapades with women are legend so why fire him now? Is it the trend in sexual harassment cases or because he s out of favor with the liberal elites since the election last year? With these people you have to march in lockstep or you re out! How confusing!Numerous people have commented on our report about Lauer s firing to say they blame Hillary Who knew?OUR PREVIOUS REPORT ON LAUER S FIRING: NBC was in cover your ass mode with their longtime anchor Matt Lauer s latest misstep coming to light via numerous news outlets. NBC News Chairman Andy Lack pulled the trigger to fire Lauer late last night after it was revealed that Lauer was going to be outed for sexual misconduct.Page Six reports:Longtime NBC anchor Matt Lauer allegedly sexually assaulted a female NBC staffer during the Rio Olympics. The staffer, who has not been named and wishes to remain anonymous, complained to NBC News bosses yesterday, prompting them to move fast and fire him. An NBC staffer come forward with a claim that Matt sexually assaulted her at the Olympics. There have been rumors about Matt having affairs with subordinates at NBC for years, but those were believed to be consensual. This incident in Rio was not. 2006 CRUEL AND INHUMANE His wife, Annette, famously filed for divorce in 2006, accusing him of cruel and inhumane behavior, but withdrew the filing a month later after they reached a private agreement. They ostensibly live separate lives, she living full time in the Hamptons with their children, while Matt resides in the city during the week.Lauer has been rumored to be a serial adulterer but this case was not consensual. A whole different ball of wax for the notorious cad.Rumors of an affair with Natalie Morales and other co-workers have been out there in the past. Lauer s current co-workers spoke out this morning claiming shock at what just happened:Matt Lauer has been terminated from NBC News. On Monday night, we received a detailed complaint from a colleague about inappropriate sexual behavior in the workplace by Matt Lauer. As a result, we ve decided to terminate his employment. pic.twitter.com/1A3UAZpvPb TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 29, 2017The victim wishes to remain anonymous we re wondering how long it will take for her name to be leaked out. | 0 | [
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FMD2370 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The state ideology of Ukraine is national socialism and facism. | 0 | [
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FMD2371 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Report: Friend Has Been Going By Middle Name This Whole Fucking Time CALABASAS, CA—Astounded that it had never come up at any point in the six years they had known each other, local woman Lucy Reed, 25, reported Tuesday that her friend Nicole Silberthau had apparently been going by her middle name this whole fucking time. Cake Just Sitting There Take It CHICAGO—Assuring you that there was nothing to worry about and not a soul around who would see you, sources confirmed Tuesday that a large piece of chocolate cake was just sitting there and that you should go ahead and take it. Man Approaches Box Of Powdered Doughnuts Like Snake Discovering Unguarded Clutch Of Bird Eggs ASHEBORO, NC—Quietly slinking into his office’s break room after spying the unattended confections from afar, area marketing associate Dan Keegan reportedly approached a box of powdered doughnuts Monday like a pine snake discovering an unguarded clutch of bluebird eggs. Reality Of Fatherhood Never Truly Dawned On Man Until He Held Newborn Son’s Hospital Bill MISSOULA, MT—Describing how he suddenly found himself overwhelmed by a flood of intense emotions, local man Mike Bentzen told reporters Monday the reality of fatherhood didn’t truly set in for him until the moment he held his newborn son’s hospital bill. All-Business Adult In Halloween Shop Beelines It Straight For Pinhead Mask BROOKLINE, MA—Without so much as glancing at the seasonal store’s wide selection of other Halloween-themed merchandise, all-business 34-year-old Brian Aubin reportedly strode right past several aisles of costumes and accessories Friday and beelined it straight for the Pinhead masks. | 0 | [
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FMD2372 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: We have roughly 92 billion opinion polls going around regarding the presidential election, and right now, they all show Trump and Hillary either locked in a dead heat, or Hillary leading, across the nation and in key states. Of course, this means the polls are rigged, or at least biased, right? Right. So Breitbart, being of sound editorial judgment, commissioned Gravis to conduct their own poll. The results?Hillary leads Trump 42 percent to 37 percent.That s in a four-way race, not a two-way. The poll surveyed 2,832 people on August 9, and carries a 1.8 percent margin of error. So Hillary is outside of even that.Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief at Breitbart, has this to say about their poll: It s an open secret that polls are often manipulated and spun to create momentum for a particular candidate or issue. Breitbart News Network s first national poll marks the start of a major initiative to give our readers an accurate assessment on where the American people stand on the key topics and people of the day without the mainstream media filter. It s pretty telling when the poll you conducted, with the intent of being as neutral as possible, brings back the same results as the polls you think are biased. This poll has Hillary leading Trump by five percent. In a four-way race, Reuters/Ipsos most recent poll likewise has Hillary leading by five points, Economist/YouGov has her up by six points, and even Rasmussen Reports has her up by three points.But Trump s crowds are huge and Hillary s aren t, so of course the polls are screwy. Breitbart and Gravis are trying to put a positive spin on it, though, saying that the poll reveals areas where Trump can reach more voters. For some reason, Doug Kaplan, managing partner at Gravis, thinks things like 11 percent support for Trump from the black community presents a problem for Hillary. His rationale seems to be based only on the fact that Hillary has less support from the black community than Obama did in 2012.Hillary also won big when it came to the question, Do you agree or disagree? Donald Trump/Hillary Clinton would fight for people like me. Overall, only 39 percent feel that Hillary would fight for them, and Trump had 38 percent of that. However, when it came to Muslims, a stunning 84 percent said they think she ll fight for them.Obviously, Trump won t have that kind of support from the Muslim community. Not with his Islamophobic remarks toward them.Overall, Breitbart walked away from this with egg on their face, because they sought to prove one thing and failed miserably. In the end, all they showed is that either Gravis is biased, too, or that (gasp!) the polls are more accurate than the right would like to believe.Photo of Hillary by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images. Photo of Donald Trump by Alex Wong/Getty Images. Images merged by Rika Christensen | 0 | [
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FMD2373 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The top Democrat on the House committee investigating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton s use of a private email system released an email exchange Wednesday between former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Clinton in which he advised her on circumventing State Department servers.The exchange between Clinton and Powell, two days before the start of her tenure as secretary of state, shows Clinton asked him for advice on the use of a BlackBerry. He responded with multiple tips, saying he used a personal computer for government and personal business that wasn t going through the State Department servers. Powell said, I even used it to do business with some foreign leaders and some of the senior folks in the Department on their personal email accounts. The emails were cited in the FBI s notes from their investigation into Clinton s and her aides handling of classified information during her time at the State Department. According to The Wall Street Journal, the FBI quoted some, but not all, of the conversations between Powell and Clinton.Clinton has told federal authorities she didn t follow Powell s guidance, even though she used a private email account to handle government business. FBI Director James Comey recommended no charges be brought against Clinton, but said that she had been extremely careless with classified information.What exactly Powell advised Clinton to do had been a matter of debate, and Powell even recently suggested Clinton s allies were trying to pin the controversy on him. Democrats released the full exchange in a bid to show that Clinton s predecessors did not use official email accounts.In his Jan. 23, 2009, response to Clinton, Powell said he used a personal computer and a PDA.The latest release appears to show that Powell acknowledged he exchanged work-related emails with foreign leaders and State Department officials using a personal device. He said the setup allowed him to bypass the government s computer network. The release of the email by Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md. came on the eve of a House Oversight hearing in which Republicans are expected to focus on Clinton s use of a private email server and whether the State Department had been forthcoming with Freedom of Information requests.However, Cummings came down on Republicans accusing lawmakers of holding Clinton to a double standard during the investigation into her private email server. If Republicans were truly concerned with transparency, strengthening FOIA, and preserving federal records, they would be attempting to recover Secretary Powell s emails from AOL, but they have taken no steps to do so despite the fact that this period including the run-up to the Iraq War was critical to our nation s history, he said.Read more: FOX News | 0 | [
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FMD2374 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: THERE’S something about pop culture that loves a coupling. Kim and Kanye. Brad and Angelina. Bill and Hillary. Batman and Robin. An exhibition at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington is adding a twist to the formula, and contemplating the enduring star power of another dynamic duo: Will and Jane. That’s Jane Austen, you rattlepate. True, she and William Shakespeare never met in person (outside the kinkier reaches of fan fiction, that is). But their parallel cultural afterlives illuminate the process by which some great authors are transformed into icons, beloved almost as much for their imagined personalities and our feelings of intimacy with them as for anything they wrote. That, at least, is the argument made by “Will Jane: Shakespeare, Austen, and the Cult of Celebrity,†a cheeky assemblage of the sometimes exuberantly goofy material objects that centuries of fandom have left behind. The show, which opens on Saturday, is the first Folger exhibition to pair Shakespeare with another writer, and the first to dig deep into some of the odder artifacts — antique bellows carved with Will’s face, anyone? — in its vaults, which are better known for treasures like 82 First Folios. They are shown alongside Austenalia sourced from all over, ranging from personal objects on loan from Jane Austen’s House Museum in Chawton, England, to modern tchotchkes more redolent of eBay. Shakespeareans may blanch at seeing Will and Jane bobbleheads on the exhibition poster — to say nothing of the prospect of Janeites flocking to the Folger’s hushed halls to swoon over the shirt worn (wet) by Colin Firth in his indelible turn as Mr. Darcy in the 1995 BBC adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice. †But the global sparked by that production, the show argues, has a striking parallel in the wave of Bardolatry kicked off by the 1769 Shakespeare Jubilee, which created Shakespeare as a symbol of Englishness, and inspired its share of souvenir mugs and other kitschy tributes. “Shakespeare was almost a kind of cheesy phenomenon in the 18th century,†said Janine Barchas, an Austen expert at the University of Texas who curated the show with Kristina Straub, a Shakespeare scholar at Carnegie Mellon University. “When you look at how his reputation was formed, and then grew,†she continued, “it’s very similar to what we’re seeing with Austen now, and the way that pop culture creates a foundation for high culture. †The cookie cutters in one display case may lack a patina of age. But they are not, Ms. Straub added, inherently more absurd or less than an mug bearing Shakespeare’s portrait — or, for that matter, a bundle of wood gathered at Shakespeare’s Birthplace in reputed to be remnants of a chair he may have sat on. “At the end of the day, they’re just sticks,†Ms. Straub said. “But they’re also being treasured in a vault, taking up valuable real estate. It should make you laugh, but it also tells you something about the nature of celebrity that you need to take seriously. †The exhibition was born out of a rather unserious conversation four years ago over a breakfast burrito. Michael Witmore, the Folger’s director, was in Austin, Tex. for a conference, and caught up with Ms. Barchas, who teased him about the fact that “my author is really giving your author a run for his money,†as she recalled it. After a rambling debate they hit, on a loose concept. “What if these two people were lovable roommates, like Will Grace, or Laverne Shirley?†Witmore recalled. “It really just started with the title. There was absolutely no scholarly thinking. †The resulting show, which arrives during the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death and a year ahead of the 200th anniversary of Austen’s, mixes deep scholarship with serious whimsy. It does not tell a linear story but instead groups its artifacts thematically, taking care to keep the two writers alongside each other. Even beyond sheer literary genius, the curators argue, Shakespeare and Austen have a lot in common — starting with their scantily recorded intimate lives, which leave tantalizing holes to fill. One display tracks the way devotees of both authors, who were captured in only a handful of portraits, improved their images. (The likeness of Austen that will appear next year on the British note is based on a Victorian portrait commissioned by the family in 1869, more than 50 years after Austen’s death, to prettify a casual sketch made by her sister, Cassandra.) Fans have also tended to prettify their love lives with embellished or invented romances, whether a forged love letter from Shakespeare to his wife, Anne Hathaway, that was created in the 1790s, or films like “Shakespeare in Love†or “Becoming Jane,†which depicts Austen’s falling in doomed love with a penniless lawyer, only to end up pursuing the lonely creative life. The show also examines how both authors’ names have been used in marketing, whether on a signboard for the Shakespeare’s Head tavern, from the or century, or an empty shoe box from a 1970s line of women’s footwear named, for obscure reasons, Jane Austen. “That one sort of broke my heart,†Ms. Straub said of the box, among several items on loan from Goucher College, a major American repository of Austenalia. “It’s just a plain cardboard shoe box. †“The Shirt,†as the label calls Mr. Firth’s chemise, may appear just to be a shirt. But the announcement in March that the Folger had secured it drew palpitating headlines around the world. (A satirical “tour rider†published in The New Yorker spelled out the garment’s contractual demands, including: “Selfies with THE SHIRT shall only be granted to persons who read actual works by Jane Austen, not just books about people who enjoy Austen books. â€) The Shirt is displayed near a series of homages, like a photographic featuring Benedict Cumberbatch, and as a parallel Shakespearean example, a series of porcelains showing famous actors as Richard III. Repetition “is a powerful reinforcing mechanism of celebrity,†a display text explains. “The cultural value of an image increases the more it is copied. †Literary celebrity is also reinforced by brushes with other forms of fame. Consider the case of Austen’s turquoise ring, which became a cause célèbre after the American singer Kelly Clarkson bought it at auction, prompting the British culture minister to declare it a national treasure that could not be exported. Jane Austen’s House Museum, which now owns the ring, declined to lend it to the Folger, forcing the exhibition to make do with a gold copy. But it did send a collection of domestic objects discovered under the house’s floorboards, including a nail and a clay pipe. It also sent a framed lock of Austen’s hair, now displayed alongside a single strand of auburn hair attributed to Shakespeare, which first surfaced for sale in the early 19th century. “We didn’t’ have it †Ms. Barchas said jokingly. “We didn’t want to dispel the myth. †The show doesn’t entirely neglect more traditional literary artifacts. There are Shakespeare and Austen volumes owned by famous people, like James Joyce’s copy of “As You Like It†and the actor Stephen Fry’s student paperback of “Mansfield Park,†complete with “strange annotations, circa 1977,†as an inscription explains. A display called “The End?†looks at the way some admirers seek total communion, even in death. The curators quote a letter from the director of Jane Austen’s House Museum, who in 2008 implored Janeites not to direct their heirs to scatter their ashes on the grounds. “It is distressing for visitors,†she noted, “to see mounds of human ash. †But the Folger itself is a mausoleum. As the show notes, the ashes of Henry Clay Folger and Emily Folger, the library’s founders, are interred in the nearby reading room behind a plaque paying tribute to “the glory of William Shakespeare and the greater glory of God. †“With that kind of idolatry, your first instinct may be to snicker,†Ms. Barchas said. “But then you have to stop and think seriously about what it is that you yourself love about literature. †| 1 | [
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FMD2375 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives have unveiled a plan to replace Obamacare, known formally as the Affordable Care Act, stripping away much of President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement that insured 20 million Americans. President Donald Trump and his Republicans had vowed for years to dismantle the law. It was a central campaign issue in 2016. The House of Representatives Ways and Means Committee approved the bill along party lines early Thursday after nearly 18 hours of debate. The House Energy and Commerce Committee was still debating the bill Thursday, after an all-night session where Democrats fought the measure and used numerous tactics to delay a vote. The bill could still change substantially as it makes its way through committees. Here are its main provisions: The Republicans want to eliminate next year Obamacare’s income-based tax credits that help low-income people purchase individual insurance. These would be replaced with tax credits ranging from $2,000 to $4,000 per year that would be capped at upper income levels. While Obamacare’s credits provided more assistance to those with lower incomes, those in the Republican plan would be largely based on age. The Republican bill would abolish most Obamacare taxes, including taxes on medical devices, health insurance premiums, tanning salons and prescription medications. It would also delay a tax on high-cost employer-provided insurance known as “Cadillac†plans until 2025. Those taxes paid for Obamacare. Republicans have not said how they would pay for the parts of the law they want to keep. The bill also repeals the Obamacare financial penalty for the 2016 tax year for not purchasing insurance, as well as a surtax on investment income earned by upper-income Americans. And it repeals the mandate that larger employers must offer insurance to their employees. Under Obamacare, more than 30 states, including several Republican states, made the Medicaid government health insurance more accessible to the poor. About half of Obamacare enrollees obtained insurance through the expansion. The bill would allow the Medicaid expansion to continue until January 1, 2020, providing states that chose not to expand under Obamacare a window to enroll more people. After that date, the expansion would end and Medicaid funding would be capped on a per-person basis. States that did not expand Medicaid would receive additional funds through a number of changes, including the reinstatement of disproportionate share hospital payments, money that is provided to hospitals that serve a large number of Medicaid and uninsured people. State Medicaid plans would no longer have to cover the same essential health benefits that health insurers on Obamacare’s exchanges must provide. That fulfills a Republican promise to return more control to the states, as they can decide what their Medicaid plans must cover. The Republican plan would maintain some of Obamacare’s most popular provisions. It would allow young people to stay on their parents’ health plan until age 26, ban insurers from discriminating against those with pre-existing conditions and bans insurers from setting a lifetime dollar limit on coverage. But the bill would allow insurers to mark up premiums by 30 percent for those who have a lapse in insurance coverage of about two months or more. Insurers won another provision they had long sought: The ability to charge older Americans up to five times more than young people. Under Obamacare, they could only charge up to three times more. It would also allow states to set their own ratio. The measure also provides states with $100 billion to create programs for patient populations, including high-risk pools to provide insurance to the sickest patients. The bill would also revoke federal funding for Planned Parenthood for one year. | 1 | [
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FMD2376 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Republican lawmakers will begin voiding dozens of new U.S. regulations at the end of the month to fulfill their promise to undo Democratic President Barack Obama’s legacy, focusing on environmental and labor rules, the House of Representatives’ second most powerful Republican said on Thursday. House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy said the Republicans who will shortly control both Congress and the White House for the first time in 10 years have made reforming federal regulation a top priority alongside repealing the Obamacare healthcare program and rewriting the tax code. Republicans are on a blitz to radically reform the vast federal bureaucracy, where they say appointed officials create costly, burdensome red tape that stifles economic growth. Once Republican President-elect Donald Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20, they will have a like-minded ally in the Oval Office to sign their measures into law. On the chopping block are dozens of new rules that the outgoing Obama administration has finalized since the end of May on energy, the environment, transportation, banking, finance, education and media ownership. Republicans will ax them using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to void a single regulation for a brief window of time after it is issued. Congress will begin a two-week marathon of voting to disapprove them on Jan. 30, according to McCarthy, who House aides say will lead the process. Disapproval resolutions can pass on simple majorities, giving Senate Democrats no power to block votes with filibusters. McCarthy told the conservative-leaning Hoover Institution that two of the first votes will be on new environmental regulations. Republicans will seek to kill a contentious rule intended to protect streams and forests from the impact of coal mining and a regulation curbing methane leaks on public lands. Congress will also take aim at new requirements for employers to report their workers’ gender, race and ethnicity that are intended to help root out pay discrimination. On Wednesday, the House approved a massive bill for creating accountability in rulemaking. The next day, it passed legislation largely along party lines requiring financial regulators to tally the costs of their rules. Democrats, though, have vowed to block any reform bills, saying the many extra procedures they require will stall agencies’ work, making it impossible to create needed regulations and properly oversee special interests. | 1 | [
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FMD2377 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), approximately 11% of American children between the ages of 4 and 17 have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) as of 2011. However, if you ask the American Psychiatric Association (APA), they maintain that even though only 5% of American children suffer from the disorder, the diagnosis is actually given to around 15% of American children. This number has been steadily rising , jumping from 7.8% in 2003 to 9.5% in 2007. Big Pharma has played a significant role in manufacturing the ADHD epidemic in the U.S., convincing parents and doctors that ADHD is a common problem amongst children and one that should be medicated. However, many countries disagree with the American stance on ADHD, so much so that they have entirely different structures for defining, diagnosing, and treating it. For example, the percentage of children in France that have been diagnosed and medicated for ADHD is less than 0.5% . This is largely because French doctors don’t consider ADHD a biological disorder with biological causes, but rather a medical condition caused by psycho-social and situational factors.
Why France Defines ADHD Differently French child psychiatrists use a different system than American psychiatrists to classify emotional problems in childhood. Instead of using the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) , the French use an alternative classification system produced by the French Federation of Psychiatry called Classification Française des Troubles Mentaux de L’Enfant et de L’Adolescent (CFTMEA). Not only does this significantly differ from the APA’s system, but it was actually created with the intention to “ offer French child psychiatrists an alternative to DSM-III ” because it didn’t compliment French psychiatric practices. The CFTMEA encourages psychiatrists to identify the underlying issues that cause a child’s symptoms and to address them using a psychopathological approach.
France defines ADHD as a sociological disorder that’s caused by a set of social situations, whereas the U.S. sees ADHD as a neurological disorder whose symptoms are the result of biological disfunction or a chemical imbalance in the brain. France’s definition of ADHD drastically differs from that of the U.S., which is in part because the pharmaceutical industry helped define ADHD in the U.S. (you can read more about that here ). France’s treatment methods, therefore, also greatly differ from those practiced in the U.S.
Treatment Methods for ADHD Used in France Once a French psychiatrist diagnoses their patient with ADHD, they hone in on the behavioural problems by searching for the underlying causes. Psychiatrists will study the child’s distress and compare it to their social situations. France views ADHD as a social context problem; therefore, ADHD is often treated with psychotherapy or even family counselling. Very rarely do French psychiatrists prescribe medications to treat ADHD, as it’s usually rendered unnecessary after taking a more holistic approach.
It’s important to note that French psychiatrists also consider a patient’s diet when searching for the causes of behavioural symptoms associated with ADHD. Poor eating habits such as consuming foods with artificial colours or flavourings, preservatives, sugars, and/or allergens may worsen a child’s behaviour. This isn’t difficult to imagine; even as adults we can feel the effects certain foods have on our mood, energy levels, and thought processes.
Why There Are Fewer ADHD Cases in France Than the U.S. A study conducted in 2011 stated that the amount of youth in France with ADHD may be as low as 3.5% — a far cry from the 11 to 15% estimate in the United States. Family therapist and author of A Disease Called Childhood: Why ADHD Became an American Epidemic Dr. Marilyn Wedge suggests that this may be as a result of the cultural differences between the U.S. and France in regards to raising children. According to Wedge, French parents will often impose more structured lifestyles onto their children, such as enforcing strict meal times and using the “cry it out” method with babies and toddlers. Children are taught self-discipline at a young age, which is why Wedge feels they don’t need to be medicated for behavioural issues.
Unfortunately, spanking is not considered child abuse in France, so this practice is used fairly often to encourage discipline. In March 2015, the Council of Europe, an international human rights organization, faulted France over the country’s lack of legislation regarding corporal punishment of children. As The New York Times explained , “Child abuse is illegal in France and is punished with long prison sentences, but it is not uncommon for French parents to slap or spank children, or for the French courts to view such actions as acceptable under a customary ‘right to discipline.’ “
As Dr. Wedge points out (although neither she nor Collective Evolution support spanking or any other form of child abuse), this simply adds to the discipline they’re encouraged to practice throughout their childhood ( source ).While Wedge makes some interesting points regarding discipline, I don’t think that’s the underlying reason why most French children don’t need to be medicated for ADHD. Rather, because ADHD is largely a behavioural issue, it rarely requires pharmacological intervention. I believe that these treatment methods are successful in France not because of their parenting culture, but rather as a result of their holistic approach in considering diet and behavioural and social context.
I believe France does not have an issue with over-diagnosing ADHD in the same way the U.S. does because pharmaceutical companies have not targeted them as heavily. Pharmaceutical companies play a substantial role in defining ADHD and deciding treatment methods in the U.S. For example, doctors and researchers in the U.S. have been paid to overstate the dangers of ADHD and the benefits of taking their drugs and understate the negative side effects. It’s easy for people to believe this misguided information when it’s affiliated with well-known universities like Harvard and Johns Hopkins. Many people don’t even realize that these studies are funded by the very companies that profit from the drugs’ sale because that relationship is hidden in small print ( source ). These drugs can have significant side effects and are actually considered to be within the same class as morphine and oxycodone due to their high risk of abuse and addiction. You can’t just blame all doctors, either; many of them genuinely believe they’re helping these children because of the information they’ve been given in these studies and by Big Pharma.
Another reason the U.S. has substantially higher rates of ADHD amongst children than France is because of the ADHD drug advertisements that run in the U.S. Big Pharma creates ads for ADHD drugs sold in the U.S. that are specifically targeted at parents, describing how these drugs can improve test scores and behaviour at home, among other false claims. One of the most controversial ones was a 2009 ad for Intuniv, Shire’s A.D.H.D. treatment, which included a child in a monster costume taking off his terrifying mask to reveal his calm, smiling self with a text reading, “There’s a great kid in there.” The FDA has stepped in multiple times, sending pharmaceutical companies warning letters or even forcing them to take down their ads because they are false, misleading, and/or exaggerate the effects of their drugs ( source ). This type of propaganda doesn’t take place in France, at least not on the same scale as the in U.S., largely because it doesn’t coincide with their ADHD diagnosis framework. You can read more about this topic in another article I wrote here .
How to Use This Information to More Effectively Treat ADHD France’s CFTMEA, definition for ADHD, and holistic approach to treating this disorder provide an excellent example of how we should be addressing ADHD patients, especially children. Instead of getting to the root of these children’s “attention deficits” like French psychiatrists do, American health practitioners typically assume ADHD is a medical condition that can only be fixed with medication. This is not only unethical, but also clearly damaging to a child’s self esteem. Many of these kids could simply be uninterested in the subject matter, suffering from some sort of emotional trauma, or even have heightened creativity and energy! You can’t just blame all doctors in the U.S., either; many of them genuinely believe they’re helping these children because of the information they’ve been given in these studies and by Big Pharma.
However, many scientists in the U.S. have suggested alternatives to medicine to treat ADHD and many of them don’t even recognize ADHD as a disorder (read our article on why ADHD may not be real here ). Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University School of Medicine and Editor-in-Chief of The Carlat Psychiatry Report Daniel J. Carlat, M.D , criticized the DSM, stating , “In psychiatry, many diseases are treated equally well with medication or therapy, but the guidelines tend to be biased toward medication.”
Holistic Mental Health Practitioner Dr. Tyler Woods further explains:
The DSM tends to pathologize normal behaviors. For instance, the label “Anxiety Disorder” can be given as a result of some kinds of normal and rather healthy anxieties but the DSM will have experts view it and treat it as mental illness. In addition simple shyness can be seen and treated as “Social Phobia”, while spirited and strong willed children as “Oppositional Disorder”. Consequently, many psychotherapists, regardless of their theoretical orientations, tend to follow the DSM as instructed. ( source )
Neurologist Richard Saul spent his career examining patients who struggle with short attention spans and difficulty focusing. His extensive experience has led him to believe that ADHD isn’t actually a disorder, but rather an umbrella of symptoms that shouldn’t be considered a disease. Thus, Saul believes it shouldn’t be listed as a separate disorder in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic & Statistical Manual. You can read more about his opinion in our article here .
Leading integrative pediatrician and author of ADHD without Drugs: A Guide to the Natural Care of Children with ADHD Dr. Sanford Newmark, M.D. has spent more than 15 years studying and successfully treating ADHD naturally. Some of his recommendations include improved nutrition, increased sleep, iron, zinc, and Omega-3 supplementation, family counselling, making positive social and behavioural changes, and pursing alternative modalities such as Traditional Chinese Medicine and Homeopathy. Dr. Newmark considers conventional medication a “last resort,” given the fact that ADHD drugs only work about 70% of the time and have potential negative side effects ( source ).
It is clear that many doctors are starting to recognize the importance of treating ADHD outside conventional methods. Misdiagnosis and over-diagnosis of ADHD is a serious issue in the U.S., one that is heavily fuelled by the pharmaceutical industry. If you or a loved one has been diagnosed with ADHD, I strongly suggest you research this subject more and explore alternatives to medication with the help of a healthcare practitioner!
“The very vocabulary of psychiatry is now defined at all levels by the pharmaceutical industry.”
– Dr. Irwin Savodnik, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California in Los Angeles ( source )
Related CE Articles:
A.D.H.D. Nation: How Big Pharma Created the A.D.H.D. Epidemic
The Truth About ‘ADHD’ That Should Prevent Parents From Needlessly Drugging Their Child
4 Facts About ADHD That Teachers & Doctors Never Tell Parents
Before His Death, Father of ADHD Admitted it Was an Over-Diagnosed Disease | 0 | [
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FMD2378 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Turkey signed a letter of intent with France and Italy on Wednesday to strengthen cooperation on joint defense projects including air and missile defense systems, Turkish defense ministry sources said. As a first step, the Franco-Italian EUROSAM consortium and Turkish companies will look into a system based on the SAMP-T missile system produced by EUROSAM and determine the common needs of the three countries, the sources said. NATO member Turkey says it plans to buy Russian S-400 surface-to-air missiles, a decision which has been seen in some Western capitals as a snub to the alliance, given tensions with Moscow over Ukraine and Syria. The Russian deal also raises concern because the weapons cannot be integrated into NATO defense. That deal has not been consummated. There are no S-400s in Turkey as we speak, U.S. Air Force General Tod Walters, head of NATO Allied Air Command, told Reuters in Berlin. He said he would continue to press Turkish air force officials to buy weapons that could work together with NATO systems, which the S-400 could not. We obviously have systems in the region now that possess that capability and demonstrate a high, high degree of interoperability, Wolters said. Raytheon, which builds the Patriot missile defense system, had also put in offer before Turkey chose the S-400. Turkey has continued talks with the EUROSAM consortium, which came in second in the tender. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg last month said Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan had told him that Ankara was discussing buying air defense systems from France and Italy in addition to the S-400s. The defense ministry sources said Turkey, France and Italy would strengthen cooperation on joint production of military electronic systems, software and simulation systems and warfare equipments, as well as air and missile defense systems. The letter of intent was signed in Brussels, where Turkey s Defence Minister Nurettin Canikli was attending a meeting of NATO defense ministers. | 1 | [
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FMD2379 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The Democratic National Committee is offering its "deep and sincere apology" to Bernie Sanders, his supporters and the entire party for what it calls "the inexcusable remarks made over email."
Incoming interim party leader Donna Brazile and six other officials said the emails "do not reflect the values of the DNC or our steadfast commitment to neutrality during the nominating process."
It wasn't signed by the outgoing DNC head, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who announced Monday that she will not gavel in her party's national convention.
"I have decided that in the interest of making sure that we can start the Democratic convention on a high note that I am not going to gavel in the convention," Wasserman Schultz told the Sun Sentinel of Ft. Lauderdale, according to The Associated Press.
In the wake of an email scandal, Wasserman Schultz said Sunday that she will resign her post as chairwoman of the DNC after the Democratic National Convention. Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, Robby Mook, said it was "her decision" to step down.
Clinton is all set to accept the Democratic Party's nomination for president. She will be the first woman ever to rise to such a position.
But that story is taking a backseat to the controversy brewing inside the Democratic Party.
Thousands of leaked emails show a supposedly impartial DNC working to secure the nomination for Clinton, even trying to paint the Jewish Bernie Sanders as an atheist to voters in the South.
The scandal comes as no surprise to Sanders' supporters who see Clinton as too establishment and cozy with Wall Street.
"I think the Clinton people stole it. The corruption has become more well-known with the WikiLeaks and such," claimed one Sanders supporter.
Meanwhile, Clinton has hired Wasserman Schultz to be a part of her campaign, according to Townhall.com. The Democratic presidential candidate sent an email to supporters, announcing Wasserman Schultz would become the "honorary chair" of the 50-state program to make sure Democrats win at the polls across the country.
Opponents of the Florida congresswoman heckled her at a breakfast of state delegates Monday, shouting, "Shame!" and "You're ruining our democracy!"
Supporters of Sanders displayed paper signs that said "E-mails" on one side and "Thanks for the 'help' Debbie," on the other.
Wasserman Schultz told the crowd during the uproar that "we have to make sure that we move together in a unified way."
The Hill.com reports that "allies" of Clinton believe Wasserman Schultz should not even stay on as DNC chairwoman during the convention. The news outlet says one ally referred to what happened at the Florida breakfast as a reason.
"It's causing the distraction no one wanted at the convention," one Clinton ally said, according to The Hill.
Wasserman Schultz's resignation after the convention, however, doesn't mean the end of the disunity problems. Liberals unhappy with Clinton's vice presidential pick, Sen. Tim Kaine, are looking to cause a stir.
"There's talk about walking out of the vice presidential or presidential acceptance speech. There's talk about total silence, remaining seated, turning backs," Normon Solomon, with the Bernie Delegates Network, said.
Even with this drama, the reality is Clinton will be the nominee. She then faces the challenge of reaching out to disgruntled progressives, while striking a more moderate tone for the General Election.
"It has been the Democratic Party's history that once the nominee is established and we know who that's going to be and we rally the troops and folks tend to come inside the tent. Of course, there are those who are not coming in the tent and they were never coming in the tent and that's okay," Leah Daughtry, CEO of the DNC, said.
All eyes will be on Sanders to see what he says to delegates Monday evening.
Meanwhile, Kaine will be facing the biggest speech of his career.
Liberals aren't happy he's the vice presidential choice and conservatives think he's too liberal, which leads many Democrats to believe he's just right.
The reality about Kaine is that once people know him, they tend to like him - even if they disagree with him. Â And he's never lost an election.
"I am so excited. I've known Tim Kaine for many years and so I know his heart. I know his heart and his commitment," reflected Alexis Herman, former secretary of labor.
Coming off one of the biggest days of his life Sen. Kaine walked through his Richmond neighborhood with his wife Anne to Saint Elizabeth Catholic Church. It's where the couple has worshipped for three decades.
Inside, Kaine got emotional at times and even sang a solo in the choir. Although he has worked to reduce abortions, he's come under fire for his support of pro-choice policies.
But at the DNC his position is just right.
"He's a committed Catholic, a social justice Catholic. He takes that very seriously. His work in politics is his outreach," Daughtry said.
Several hundred Democrats followed Kaine's example by gathering in Philadelphia at an interfaith service Sunday.
Rev. James Forbes of the Riverside Church says this week Americans will see a vastly different vision for the future.
"I would wish that the world gets a chance to see two major options - an option that they remember from people who are angry, who are afraid -- versus a group that's willing to risk possibilities that could probably do it together, but that the prospect of our working together is even brighter," Forbes told CBN News.
So far, it's been a mixed bag but the week is young. | 1 | [
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FMD2380 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Inside a sweltering nursing home, a crisis unfolded on Wednesday as 150 centers across Florida still lacked power days after Hurricane Irma ravaged the state. Firefighters and medics responding to an emergency call in Hollywood north of Miami found three people dead inside a building whose second floor the police chief later described as extremely hot. Altogether, city officials said eight people between the ages of 71 and 99 had died, but the causes were not yet determined. An investigation of possible criminal negligence has begun, Hollywood Police Chief Tomas Sanchez told reporters. Attempts by Reuters to reach an official of the for-profit Rehabilitation Center at Hollywood Hills home by phone and email were unsuccessful. While Sanchez declined to say what the temperatures were on the second floor of the building, the deaths illustrate the perils that can persist and even increase in the aftermath of a major disaster for the elderly and medically fragile. Heat is a top killer after hurricanes and disasters cause power outages, said Dr. Thomas Kirsch, director of the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health. Kirsch noted that hundreds of elderly people died in the 1995 Chicago heat wave and when Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans in 2005. The temperatures in Broward County north of Miami have reached 90 degrees Fahrenheit (32 degrees Celsius) in the three days since Irma smashed into Florida on Sunday. We often see that injuries and deaths after disaster in the United States are more common than those actually caused by the disaster itself, Kirsch said. After losing its full air conditioning on Sunday, the facility placed eight portable air coolers throughout the building and fans in the halls, state officials said in an emergency order late on Wednesday. Officials also contacted the power provider, the state said. Efforts to prevent such disasters in nursing facilities have improved in recent years, public health experts said, and that new federal regulations require facilities to have sufficient backup power to maintain reasonable temperatures. Such capacity is now being tested in Florida, home to among the highest concentrations of senior citizens in the United States with more than 1.6 million people ages 75 years or older, according to the 2015 U.S. Census. The U.S. Senate Aging Committee, citing the Florida deaths, on Wednesday said it would have a hearing next week on disaster planning for the elderly. At a housing community for senior citizens in Immokalee, Florida, some residents told a Reuters reporter on Tuesday they had nothing to eat in their small apartments that were without power. An office assistant was hunting for bottled water and ice for residents without running water. Among the state s nearly 700 nursing facilities, about 150 lacked power as of Wednesday morning, said the Florida Health Care Association, which represents most of the homes. Early on Wednesday, several calls were placed to emergency services from the Hollywood nursing home. More than 150 people were evacuated, many suffering from respiratory issues, dehydration and heat-related problems, according to Memorial Regional Hospital spokesman Randy Katz. As recently as Tuesday afternoon, the home had told state health officials it had power and access to fans and spot coolers, Florida Governor Rick Scott noted in a statement. An assisted living center that went without power for nearly three days said that its efforts to run fans and keep breezes flowing between open windows could only go so far. Inside temperatures climbed to 88 degrees Fahrenheit (31 Celsius), nearing a critical point. A day you can survive, two days ok, said Dan Nelson, chief operating officer for Cape Coral Shores assisted living, adding that after that things like what happened over in Hollywood unfortunately could happen somewhere else. The Hollywood center where the deaths occurred had earned a below average mark of two out of five stars from the nursing home rating system for Medicare, the U.S. health insurance program for the elderly and disabled, Medicare records showed. Elder care in disaster poses challenges even in the best circumstances, said Kathryn Hyer, a professor in the School of Aging Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa, whose research shows that evacuations can be deadly for the medically frail who are dependant on equipment and medications. While sheltering in place can be preferable at times, she said, doing so requires planning to survive the aftermath. It s just hard, Hyer said, noting at least nursing centers offered some protections. I really worry about the people who are in the community alone and how they are doing. | 1 | [
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FMD2381 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: MOST Voters Now Think Clinton Broke the Law … TWICE As Many As Think that Trump Did → kimyo
what is your interpretation of the following email from podesta re: a 2015 cnbc interview in which sanders stated “When you hustle money like that, you don’t sit in restaurants like this” and “That type of wealth has the potential to isolate you from the reality of the world.”
podesta: This isn’t in keeping w the agreement. Since we clearly have some leverage, would be good to flag this for him. I could send a signal via Welch–or did you establish a direct line w him? Donate Recent Posts | 0 | [
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FMD2382 | 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 GSA's Approval of Transition Process Mean Trump Conceded Defeat to Biden? Claim summaries: Losing candidates are not required to acknowledge defeat in order for a U.S. presidential transition to begin.
contextual information: Voting in the 2020 U.S. Election may be over, but misinformation continues to spread. Never stop fact-checking. Follow our post-election coverage here. On Nov. 23, 2020, U.S. General Services Administrator Emily Murphy, an appointee of President Donald Trump, wrote a letter to President-elect Joe Biden that allowed him to start a formal transition of power. The paperwork, obtained by Snopes and displayed below, was the first formal recognition by Trump's government of a Biden presidency. The document from the head of the General Services Administration (GSA), an executive branch agency that oversees presidential transitions, raised questions about whether it indicated that Trump himself acknowledged defeat to Biden. Concession statements to Americans or phone calls to winning candidates represent an informal step in the country's election process that typically occurs when one candidate secures the majority of electoral votes. Biden reached that milestone, winning key battleground states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, by comfortable margins weeks before Murphy's letter. However, Trump broke democratic norms by refusing to concede publicly. Instead, the president's campaign filed a barrage of lawsuits in local jurisdictions across the country and accelerated a misinformation campaign online that denied or falsely presented the election results. While legal experts said the litigation did not contain enough evidence to reverse Biden's win, Trump's supporters viewed the effort as a commendable, tough, not-going-to-back-down approach to electoral politics. "It is not a stain on our national honor for a candidate to refuse to concede when there are open and compelling disputes about an electoral outcome," read a Nov. 23 statement by supporters of the Conservative Action Project, an initiative founded by former Attorney General Edwin Meese III. Despite not receiving Trump's concession, Biden filled his Cabinet for the White House, addressing the country under the "Office of the President Elect," and states certified the results of the popular vote in order to begin the process of voting for president through the Electoral College. Cue Murphy's letter on Nov. 23. The document fulfilled the government's obligation under the 1963 Presidential Transition Act to allow presidents-elect and their appointees, aides, and other staff—otherwise known as a transition team—to access millions of federal dollars and set up White House operations before the swearing-in ceremonies that would take place in January after general elections. Murphy submitted the paperwork after election officials in Michigan certified Biden's win there, and a conservative Republican judge in Pennsylvania shot down a Trump campaign lawsuit, The Associated Press reported. Murphy's letter stated: "Because of recent developments involving legal challenges and certifications of election results, I have determined that you may access the post-election resources and services described in Section 3 of the Act upon request. The actual winner of the presidential election will be determined by the electoral process detailed in the Constitution." In short, a member of the Trump administration, Murphy, filed paperwork to change Biden's official title in government systems to "apparent president-elect" and, as a result, granted him new privileges that only someone with that job title in the federal government receives. But it was a misinterpretation of that procedural step to claim Trump had therefore conceded the 2020 presidential race. No constitutional mandate or federal law requires losing presidential candidates to acknowledge defeat for the election's processes to continue. Rather, concession speeches have been an informal tradition that often symbolizes a losing candidate's willingness to help with a peaceful transition between presidencies. In recent days, senior Trump aides, including chief of staff Mark Meadows and | 0 | [
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FMD2383 | 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: IRS Prepaid or Wire Transfer Fraud Claim summaries: Scam: Phony IRS telephone demands that overdue taxes be settled via prepaid debit card or wire transfers.
contextual information: Scam: The IRS contacts taxpayers by phone to demand that overdue taxes be settled via prepaid debit card or wire transfers. Origins: In March 2014, the IRS reported con artistsimpersonating their agents had stolen more than $1 million from thousands of people across the U.S. via a fraud perpetrated by telephone. The agency has called it "the largest scam of its kind" it has seen. In it, more than 20,000 people from nearly every state were successfully defrauded by fake tax agents who told victims they owed taxes and demanded payment by prepaid debit card or wire transfer. Those masquerading as IRS agents further informed their targets that if they refused to comply with their demands for immediate payment they could be arrested, deported, or lose their business or driver's licenses. Reports of the scam, which has been running since August 2013, continue to increase. The calls are made to look as if they originate with the IRS, with that agency's name appearing on the caller IDs of intended targets' phones. Often those conducting the fraud know the last four digits of their targets' Social Security numbers. Some of the attempts to defraud also follow up with false IRS emails and phone calls in which the con artists pretend to represent the police or motor vehicles officials. Per the IRS's description of this fraud: IRS's description Scammers use fake names and IRS badge numbers. They generally use common names and surnames to identify themselves. Scammers may be able to recite the last four digits of a victims Social Security Number. Scammers spoof the IRS toll-free number on caller ID to make it appear that its the IRS calling. Scammers sometimes send bogus IRS emails to some victims to support their bogus calls. Victims hear background noise of other calls being conducted to mimic a call site. After threatening victims with jail time or drivers license revocation, scammers hang up and others soon call back pretending to be from the local police or DMV, and the caller ID supports their claim. As a rule, the IRS contacts those who owe on their taxes first by mail or with personal visits from field agents. Real IRS agents never insist on payment by debit card or wire transfer. They also don't ask for credit card numbers over the phone. Says Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Russell George, "If someone unexpectedly calls claiming to be from the IRS and uses threatening language if you don't pay immediately, that is a sign that it really isn't the IRS calling." The IRS advises: If you get a phone call from someone claiming to be from the IRS, heres what you should do: If you know you owe taxes or you think you might owe taxes, call the IRS at 1.800.829.1040. The IRS employees at that line can help you with a payment issue if there really is such an issue. If you know you dont owe taxes or have no reason to think that you owe any taxes (for example, youve never received a bill or the caller made some bogus threats as described above), then call and report the incident to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration at 1.800.366.4484. If youve been targeted by this scam, you should also contact the Federal Trade Commission and use their FTC Complaint Assistant at FTC.gov. Please add "IRS Telephone Scam" to the comments of your complaint. Last updated: 20 February 2015 Norman, Jim. "Authorities Warn of IRS Phone Scam." The Record. 21 March 2014 (p. A5). Richter, Ed. "IRS scam continues to grow." The Journal-News. 23 March 2014. | 2 | [
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FMD2384 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: National security adviser Michael Flynn became the first high-profile member of President Donald Trump’s administration to resign, leaving the job late on Monday amid controversy over discussions he had with a Russian diplomat before Trump took office about U.S. sanctions on Russia. Following is the text of his resignation letter, which was released by the White House. In the course of my duties as the incoming National Security Advisor, I held numerous phone calls with foreign counterparts, ministers, and ambassadors. These calls were to facilitate a smooth transition and begin to build the necessary relationships between the President, his advisors and foreign leaders. Such calls are standard practice in any transition of this magnitude. Unfortunately, because of the fast pace of events, I inadvertently briefed the Vice President Elect and others with incomplete information regarding my phone calls with the Russian Ambassador. I have sincerely apologized to the President and the Vice President, and they have accepted my apology. Throughout my over thirty three years of honorable military service, and my tenure as the National Security Advisor, I have always performed my duties with the utmost of integrity and honesty to those I have served, to include the President of the United States. I am tendering my resignation, honored to have served our nation and the American people in such a distinguished way. I am also extremely honored to have served President Trump, who in just three weeks, has reoriented American foreign policy in fundamental ways to restore America’s leadership position in the world. As I step away once again from serving my nation in this current capacity, I wish to thank President Trump for his personal loyalty, the friendship of those who I worked with throughout the hard fought campaign, the challenging period of transition, and during the early days of his presidency. I know with the strong leadership of President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Mike Pence and the superb team they are assembling, this team will go down in history as one of the greatest presidencies in U.S. history, and I firmly believe the American people will be well served as they all work together to help Make America Great Again. Michael T. Flynn, LTG (Ret) Assistant to the President / National Security Advisor | 1 | [
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] | 1 |
FMD2385 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Outrage as May’s real idea of Brexit at Goldman Sachs speech leaks Outrage as May’s real idea of Brexit at Goldman Sachs speech leaks By 0 57
British Prime Minister Theresa May is facing growing criticism over her comments about Brexit at a leaked private speech to Goldman Sachs.
The premier, who has publicly made the case for a hard Brexit following a June referendum, speaks of the “benefits” of being an EU member in the hour-long session, whose audio file was leaked to the Guardian on Tuesday night, drawing harsh criticism on Wednesday.
“I think the economic arguments are clear. I think being part of a 500 million [population] trading bloc is significant for us. I think, as I was saying to you a little earlier, that one of the issues is that a lot of people will invest here in the UK because it is the UK in Europe,” she is heard saying. “If we were not in Europe, I think there would be firms and companies who would be looking to say, do they need to develop a mainland Europe presence rather than a UK presence? So I think there are definite benefits for us in economic… | 0 | [
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FMD2386 | 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: H.R. 4646 - Debt Free America Act Claim summaries: Is the Obama administration proposing a 1% tax on debit card usage and/or banking transactions?
contextual information: Claim: The Obama administration is proposing a 1% tax on debit card usage and/or banking transactions. Examples: [Collected via e-mail, July 2010] The Transaction Tax! WHAT THE HELL IS THIS??President Obama's finance team and Nancy Pelosi are recommending a 1% transaction tax on all financial transactions.The bill is HR-4646 introduced by US Rep Peter deFazio D-Oregon and US Senator Tom Harkin D-Iowa.Their plan is to sneak it in after the November election to keep it under the radar.See what Nancy has to say about this wonderful idea!https://tinyurl.com/24dn5udIt's only 1%! This is a 1% tax on all transactions to or from any financial institution i.e. Banks, Credit Unions, Mutual funds, Brokers, etc.Any deposit you make will have a 1% tax charged.Any withdrawal you make, 1% tax.Any transfer within your account, a transfer to or from savings and checking, will have a 1% tax charged.Any ATM transaction, withdrawal or deposit, 1% tax.If your pay check or your Social Security is direct deposited, 1% tax.If you carry a check to your bank to deposit, 1% tax.If you take cash in to deposit, 1% tax.If you receive any income from a bond or a dividend from stock, 1% tax.Any Real Estate Transaction, 1% tax.This is from the man who promised that if you make under $250,000 per year, you will not see one penny of new tax! Remember, he is completely honest and trustworthy.Keep your eyes and ears open. https://tinyurl.com/24dn5ud Folks, Nancy says this would be a minimal tax on the people, but 1 percent every time you pay a bill or make a deposit is not minimal. This would no doubt tax investment transactions as well as bank account transactions.This woman is nuts!!!If you know someone in California get this to them! While at the checkout of Wal-mart in Greeneville, TN I heard that in the future the government may be planning to place a 1% tax on people using debit cards at the check out. I have heard discussion and seen on emails the fear that the Obama administration is going to pass a 'banking tax' that will take 1% of each deposit and 1% of every transaction out of a bank account. Summary: The Obama administration has not proposed or recommended placing a 1% tax on all financial transactions. The idea of the 1% transaction tax stemmed from a bill repeatedly introduced by a single congressman which had no support from any other member of Congress and no chance of passing. Origins: Some members of Congress have what might be termed "hobby horse" issues: concepts about which they introduce legislation in Congress after Congress although their bills not only never come close to passing, but never even clear committee to be put to votes in the first place. The hobby horse of Representative Chaka Fattah of Pennsylvania is the notion of eliminating all federal taxes on individuals and corporations and replacing them with a revenue-generating system based on transaction fees (a concept he originally called the "Transform America Transaction Fee" and later referred to as the "Debt Free America Act"). Chaka Fattah Transform America Transaction Fee In 2004 Rep. Fattah presented a bill calling on Congress to fund a study regarding the replacement of the federal tax code with a transaction fee-basedsystem (H.R. 3759), he introduced a similar bill in 2005 (H.R. 1601), again in 2007 (H.R. 2130), and again in 2009 (H.R. 1703). None of these bills was ever put to a vote, and only one of them had so much as a single co-sponsor. H.R. 3759 H.R. 1601 (H.R. 2130), (H.R. 1703) In 2010, Rep. Fattah moved beyond proposing studies and submitted the Debt Free America Act (H.R. 4646), a bill calling for the implementation of a scheme to pay down the national debt and eliminate federal income tax on individuals by imposing a 1% fee on specified financial transactions: H.R. 4646 pay down One idea for raising taxes to pay down the debt is the bill introduced this February [2010] by Rep. Chaka Fattah (D-Pa.). His "Debt Free America Act" (H.R. 4646) would impose a 1 percent "transaction tax" on every financial transaction whether paid by cash, credit card or any form of financial transfer, the only exception being transactions involving the purchase or sale of stock. Theoretically, everyone would pay one cent on the dollar for every such transaction in America every day whether $3 million on a $300 million business acquisition, $300 on the purchase of a $30,000 car, or $5 on a $500 ATM withdrawal. Specifically, the text of the bill stated that: The purpose of [the transaction fee] is to establish a fee on most transactions. Such [a] fee: is different than a sales tax in that a sales tax is charged only on sales to the final consumer, [while] the transaction fee would apply to intermediate users as well as end users is different than a value added tax (VAT), commonly used in European and other countries, in that a VAT is imposed only on a portion of a transaction's value (roughly the difference between an item's selling price and its cost), [while] the transaction fee would apply to the entire amount of the transaction is intended to raise sufficient revenue to eliminate the national debt, which was $10.6 trillion in January 2009, during a period of 7 years, and to phase out the income tax on individuals. [This bill would] impose on every specified transaction a fee in an amount equal to 1 percent of the amount of such transaction. The term 'specified transaction' means any transaction that uses a payment instrument, including any check, cash, credit card, transfer of stock, bonds, or other financial instrument. The term 'transaction' includes retail and wholesale sales, purchases of intermediate goods, and financial and intangible transactions. Persons become liable for the fee at the moment the person exercises control over a piece of property or service, regardless of the payment method. (The bill provided for individuals earning $125,000 or less to receive a credit equal to 1% of their income against the tax, and it gave the Treasury Department discretion to exempt certain transactions on which lower-income people disproportionately relied.) Like Rep. Fattah's other Congressional efforts along these lines, his Debt Free America Act had no sponsors other than himself, languished in committee after being introduced, had no realistic chance of being passed. Thus, although e-mailed warnings about a "1% transaction tax" do reference a once-real piece of proposed legislation, the amount of attention those warnings garnered vastly, vastly outstripped any real possibility that such legislation would actually be enacted. Moreover, some of the additional details contained with such e-mailed warnings were erroneous: Neither "President Obama's finance team" nor Nancy Pelosi is "recommending a 1% transaction tax." The proposal for the Debt Free America Act was purely the effort of a single congressman, with no outside support. Neither Representative Peter DeFazio of Oregon nor Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa introduced the Debt Free America Act, co-sponsored it, or publicly supported it. The included link that supposedly showed Nancy Pelosi endorsing the Debt Free America Act antedated the introduction of that bill to Congress; her comments actually referred to a different, earlier transaction tax proposed in December 2009 by Rep. Peter DeFazio. That bill, known as the "Let Wall Street Pay for the Restoration of Main Street Act" (H.R. 4191), called for the funding of investment in middle class jobs by levying small percentage value taxes on the buying and selling of stocks, futures, swaps, options and other securities. (Although Rep. DeFazio's bill had 31 co-sponsors, it too languished in committee without being brought to a vote.) proposed H.R. 4191 Later versions of this item opened with the statement that "ON JANUARY 1ST 2012, THE GOVERNMENT IS REQUIRING EVERYONE TO HAVE DIRECT DEPOSIT FOR SS CHECKS. WONDER WHY?" The Social Security program did switch over to an electronic payments system as of 1 March 2013 that provided recipients with the options of receiving their benefits payments either through direct deposit to a bank account or via the reloading of a debit card, but that change had nothing to do with the Congressional bill discussed above. Rep. Fattah reintroduced his Debt Free America Act (as H.R. 1125) to the 112th Congress on 16 March 2011. Like Rep. Fattah's previous efforts along these lines, Govtrack.us tagged it with the prognosis "This bill has a 0% chance of being enacted." H.R. 1125 Govtrack.us Last updated: 22 October 2013 | 2 | [
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FMD2387 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A plan to block Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump struggled to gain traction on Friday as rival candidates rejected it, while Democrats reveled in the chaos they hoped would boost their chances of keeping the White House. The country’s top elected Republican, House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan, said he was not interested in an effort to draft him into the White House race. And U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, a conservative presidential hopeful, ruled out a deal to pick a compromise Republican candidate at the party’s July convention, which senior party figures see as their best chance to stop the unpredictable billionaire. “The D.C. power brokers will drop someone in who is exactly to the liking of the establishment. If that will happen we will have a manifold revolt in this country,†Cruz said at the Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington. “You want to beat Donald Trump, you beat Donald Trump with the voters,†he said. Party leaders worry Trump would not be able to beat Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton in the election, but time is running out after he won most of the states that voted in this week’s Super Tuesday. Senior Republicans also fear Trump’s plans to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border and ban Muslims from entering the United States will turn off voters in November and upset U.S. allies. Others note his past support for liberal policies and question whether he has any agenda other than advancing himself. “I don’t think he actually carries the conservative mantle. He’s a little too crass for me,†said Michele Minter, a San Diego executive assistant who was attending CPAC. Trump, a former reality TV star, often plays by his own set of rules. He canceled plans to speak at CPAC, normally an essential stop for ambitious Republicans, and will instead attend a rally in Kansas. The real estate magnate, who is drawing support from many blue-collar Republicans concerned about illegal immigration and stagnant wages, has won most Republican nominating contests and leads in many polls for the primary contests still to come. “I’m not a normal Republican,†he said to huge cheers at a rally in Warren, Michigan. Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, the only candidate to ever challenge Trump’s months-long lead in opinion polls, officially ended his White House bid. “There are a lot of people who love me, they just won’t vote for me,†Carson said in a speech at CPAC, held in National Harbor, Maryland. A new group called the Committee to Draft Speaker Ryan filed papers with the Federal Election Commission on Thursday, seeking to raise money to push Ryan as a Republican alternative. Ryan, a budget wonk who was the Republican vice presidential candidate in 2012, is seen by many in the party as a unifier after he took the speaker’s job last year to unite establishment Republican lawmakers and conservative upstarts in the House. “He is flattered, but not interested,†Ryan spokeswoman AshLee Strong said in an email on Friday. As Trump cements his front-runner status, senior party figures hope to deny him enough delegates to clinch the nomination, which would give them the chance to choose a compromise candidate at their convention in Cleveland. The last time that happened at a Republican convention was in 1948 when Thomas Dewey was nominated. Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said there was an 85 to 90 percent chance that the party will not face that scenario this year. Mitt Romney and John McCain, the party’s last two presidential nominees, called on Republicans to halt Trump’s rise by backing whichever candidate was strongest in their state, a form of tactical voting. Few elected officials are rallying behind the “Dump Trump†banner. The party’s 31 state governors, for example, are not lining up behind an alternative. Only five have endorsed Florida Senator Marco Rubio and one has backed Cruz, in a sharp contrast to previous years when governors overwhelmingly endorsed the party’s eventual nominee. Rubio has only one state so far and is gearing up for what could be a make-or-break contest in his home state on March 15. Cruz said Saturday he planned to open 10 campaign offices there, in what could be an effort to force the rival senator out of the race. Trump is expected to extend his lead on Saturday, when a total of 155 delegates are at stake in Kansas, Louisiana, Maine and Kentucky. Democrats were happy to let Republicans fight amongst themselves. “We can sit back and let them light their own dumpster fire and wait until they’re finished,†said Eddie Vale, spokesman for American Bridge, a Clinton-allied group which collects negative research on Republican candidates. “They’re giving us so much great video footage that we could run ads between now and November of nothing but Republicans attacking Trump,†Vale told Reuters. Nationally, Trump has the support of 41 percent of Republican voters, compared to 19 percent who back Cruz and 16 percent who back Rubio, according to Reuters/Ipsos polling data. (Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu, Emily Stephenson, Eric Beech, and Ginger Gibson; Writing by Andy Sullivan; Editing by Bill Trott and Alistair Bell) This article was funded in part by SAP. It was independently created by the Reuters editorial staff. SAP had no editorial involvement in its creation or production. | 1 | [
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FMD2388 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: The USPS is drowning in debt, has lost every one of its life-lines and has mismanaged its funds for decades. No worries though, the US Postal Union is quite certain Socialist Santa Claus will fix everything Presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) won the endorsement of the American Postal Workers Union on Thursday, giving the self-described democratic socialist a boost as he seeks more support from organized labor in the Democratic primary.APWU represents 200,000 U.S. Postal Service employees and retirees. It s the second major national union and member of the AFL-CIO labor federation to endorse Sanders over rival and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.Sanders stands above all others as a true champion of postal workers and other workers throughout the country, said Mark Dimondstein, the union s president, in a statement. The endorsement came from the union s 13-member executive board.The United States Postal Service (USPS) lost $5.5 billion last year. That is the eighth annual loss in a row and the third-highest ever. The only silver lining is that the loss was below the red-ink tsunami of $15.9 billion in 2012.Why does the federal government deliver the mail? Why does it have a monopoly over delivering the mail?Admittedly, the Postal Service is one of the few government programs with actual constitutional warrant. The Constitution authorizes Congress to establish post offices. And early American politicians rushed to take advantage of their opportunity, creating the Post Office Department in 1792.With politics rather than service as the post office s priority, Congress took the next step and approved the Private Express Statutes, which prevented anyone from competing with the government in delivering first-class mail. And Uncle Sam enforced his monopoly, fining would-be competitors, including celebrated libertarian author Lysander Spooner.The feds continue to prosecute anyone with the temerity to compete with the USPS, even threatening the Cub Scouts for once offering to deliver Christmas cards.Believing that Americans existed to serve the USPS left the system ill-equipped to adapt to changing circumstances. In 1971, Congress turned the Post Office Department into the semi-independent USPS. That removed its direct role in politics, but the USPS still is exempt from taxes and regulations, including local parking restrictions. Congress retained its control over postal policies and, of course, preserved the system s delivery monopoly.But banning competition could not preserve the postal market. The number of pieces of mail peaked in 2001 and continues to fall despite a rising population. Mail pieces dropped from 213 billion in 2006 to 155 billion last year, and the number is expected to decline to 130 billion by 2020. The USPS s last profitable year was 2006. Since then, losses have run between $2.8 billion and $15.9 billion. The Postal Service has maxed out its borrowing from Uncle Sam and missed four retiree program payments. With characteristic understatement, the Government Accountability Office observed, Given its financial problems and outlook, USPS cannot support its current level of service and operations. The postal unions insist that nothing is wrong at least, nothing that a federal bailout wouldn t solve. They reserve particular ire for the requirement that the USPS prefund workers retirement. Had this rule not been in place, noted former postmaster general Patrick Donahoe, the Postal Service would have earned money last year.But prefunding protects taxpayers. Washington s unfunded (government) retirement liability is about $800 billion and growing every year. That no other agency is required to prefund is unfair to taxpayers, not the Postal Service, since every agency should have to set aside sufficient money to fulfill its financial promises. With the Postal Service earning too little to pay and with nothing left of its federal credit line, the USPS has defaulted four times over the last three years on its mandated contributions.Sanders has long been a vocal backer of a robust postal service, particularly during the postal reform debate of recent years. APWU views itself as fighting a battle against postal service privatization, and it counts the Vermont senator as perhaps its leading defender.As the postal service bleeds millions in losses mostly due to unique funding mandates placed upon it by Congress Sanders has staunchly opposed the closure of postal facilities and cuts in postal service, such as Saturday delivery. He is also a leading proponent of the concept of postal banking, which would allow post offices to provide small loans and compete with payday lenders. Postal banking is a top issue for APWU, and Sanders has sought to make it a campaign issue.In his statement, Dimondstein noted Sanders long history of standing with workers on picket lines, as well as his support for a national $15 per hour minimum wage. Sanders spoke at a protest against Verizon last month that was held by the Communications Workers of America union, and he joined a Fight for $15 rally outside the U.S. Capitol building earlier this week.Via: Huffington Post | 0 | [
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FMD2389 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: This post was originally published on this site
southfront.org Donate
The Syrian army’s Tiger Forces, the Desert Hawks Brigade , Hezbollah, Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) and other pro-government groups are reportedly preparing to relaunch offensive operations in multiple fronts inside and outside the Syrian city of Aleppo. The operation will be supported by the Syrian Air Force and the Russian Aerospace Forces from the air and by Russian and Iranian military advisers on the ground.
[embedded content]
How the frontlines have evolved in western Aleppo from 27.10.2016 to 11.11.2016:
The army and its allies, using loud speakers, ordered militants remaining in eastern Aleppo to lay down arms and to surrender. If militants avoid to do this within 24 hours, the government forces will relaunch operations in the area.
Following the collapse of Jaish al-Fatah’s defenses in the al-Assad and Minyan areas of Aleppo city , the army and its allies already achieved some gains in the southern Aleppo countryside, seizing the villages of Kafr Haddad and Khirbat Al-Zuwari. Click to see the full-size map
The liberation of militant-controlled town of Khan-Tuman will be the strategic goal of military operations in the southern Aleppo countryside.
Desert Hawks Brigade fighters use the Russian-made Tigr infantry vehicle in Aleppo: Click to see the full-size image
Mohammed Jaber, commander of the Desterh Hawks Brigade, with alleged Russian advisers in Aleppo city: Mohammed Jaber, commander of Suqur al Sahara, with Russian advisers in Aleppo pic.twitter.com/HFON7YCnly
— BM-27 Uragan (@bm27_uragan) November 12, 2016
The video source:
More about the Desert Hawks Brigade: Click to see the full-size image
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FMD2390 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Ever since Donald Trump rode down the escalator at Trump Tower and announced his disgraceful bid for the White House, people have been making jokes about his alleged love affair with Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin. This is more than fair; after all, Putin is the ONE person Trump refuses to criticize. The orange one has viciously attacked everyone from the cast of the hit Broadway musical Hamilton, to Congresspeople and Senators in both his own party and the opposing party, too many celebrities to mention, cable news hosts, and just about anyone else you could think of. But not Vladimir Putin, not ever. The only close second is Trump s bizarre coddling of white supremacists and Nazis.Therefore, it must be the ultimate humiliation to have Putin do the unthinkable to Trump in a VERY public way: and say, and I quote, that, is not my bride. According to the New York Times, the Russian dictator seems to be tiring of Trump s chaos. At this point, Putin has spent a lot of political capital on the world stage helping get Trump elected, and yet Trump has failed to deliver sanctions relief, a better U.S.-Russia relationship, or anything else to the brutal dictator. Putin reportedly said of Trump: [He is] not my bride, and I am not his groom. Of course, Trump wants to be seen as a man s man, so to be emasculated by being referred to in the feminine by the man whose bitch everyone has accused him of being is really rubbing salt in that wound. Apparently, Putin made the remarks when being asked about what he thought of the idea that Trump might be removed from office forcibly before his four-year term is completed. Of course, no matter how humiliating this is for Trump, there will be no retaliation. He can t strike out at Putin; after all, this is the one man on the face of the planet who likely has the MAJOR goods on Trump.Now, if only Putin would grow tired of this game and release the most damning information ever and help us end this embarrassing American nightmare.Featured image via Sean Gallup/Getty Images | 0 | [
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FMD2391 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: U.S. President Donald Trump delivered his first speech before the United Nations on Tuesday, touting U.S. sovereignty and threatening to totally destroy North Korea. Trump has been critical of the United Nations and complained about the cost to the United States of helping to fund the 193-nation body. Below are some comments he has made about it over the years. Remarks at luncheon hosted by U.N. Secretary General September 19, 2017 For years I ve been a critic, but I ve also been somebody that said that the United Nations has tremendous potential. Remarks at U.N. General Assembly September 19, 2017 Too often the focus of this organization has not been on results, but on bureaucracy and process. The United States is one out of 193 countries in the United Nations, and yet we pay 22 percent of the entire budget and more. In fact, we pay far more than anybody realizes. Remarks at lunch with U.N. Security Council Ambassadors April 24, 2017 I also want to say to you that I have long felt the United Nations is an underperformer but has tremendous potential. There are those people that think it s an underperformer and will never perform. Twitter Dec. 26, 2016 The United Nations has such great potential but right now it is just a club for people to get together, talk and have a good time. So sad! American Israel Public Affairs Committee speech March 21, 2016 Which brings me to my next point, the utter weakness and incompetence of the United Nations. The United Nations is not a friend of democracy, it s not a friend to freedom, it s not a friend even to the United States of America where, as you know, it has its home. And it surely is not a friend to Israel. Twitter Oct. 3, 2012 The cheap 12 inch sq. marble tiles behind speaker at UN always bothered me. I will replace with beautiful large marble slabs if they ask me. Twitter Sept. 8, 2011 Why is the UN planning to attack @Israel s sovereignty and ignore Iran s nuclear program? The US should look at future funding. Senate committee hearing on renovation of U.N. headquarters July 21, 2005 I am a big fan, a very big fan of the United Nations and all it stands for. I cannot speak as to what has been happening over the last number of years because it certainly has not been good, but the concept of the United Nations ... is very important to me and very important to the world as far as I am concerned. | 1 | [
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FMD2392 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Austria s center-right People s Party (OVP) led by Sebastian Kurz and the anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) have agreed to form a coalition government. The deal marks a major victory for a European far-right party after a flurry of elections this year, in which right-wing parties have made gains but failed to enter coalitions elsewhere in Western Europe. Here are the main figures in the new government: Kurz became a conservative junior minister at 23, Europe s youngest foreign minister at 27 and leader of the People s Party at 30, moving it further to the right of the political spectrum. He has yet to complete his law degree while he pursues politics. An early critic of German Chancellor Angela Merkel s open-border policy as Europe s migration crisis escalated in 2015, he infuriated Berlin when he spearheaded the closure of the Balkan route into Europe. Known for his slicked-back hair, he speaks eloquently but often eschews discussing policy details in public. He won October s parliamentary elections promising to break with Austria s decades-old political consensus which shares power among conservatives, Social Democrats, labor and employer associations. HEINZ-CHRISTIAN STRACHE (FPO), VICE-CHANCELLOR The 48-year-old former dental technician is the longest-serving party chief in Austria and enters government for the first time. During the campaign he accused Kurz of stealing the FPO s ideas, but Strache toned down his rhetoric during coalition negotiations stressing joint political targets. Strache is keen on ridding his party of its neo-Nazi image, portraying it as a mainstream defender of the middle class. He has called for zero immigration and wants to ban political Islam. The multilingual Middle East and international law expert got her new job on an FPO ticket. She has never been a member of the FPO, which has expressed sympathy for Israel s desire to host embassies in Jerusalem and has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin s party. Kneissl, 52, has criticized Merkel s open-door policy toward refugees and has called the European Union s migrant deal with Turkey nonsense in newspaper comments. Kneissl, who owns a farm in Lower Austria province, worked in the foreign ministry under a conservative minister in the 1990s. The Freedom Party s general secretary is seen as its mastermind and powerbroker who wields influence in all party matters. The 49-year-old future police supremo, who started his career as speechwriter for charismatic late FPO chief Joerg Haider, is known for his sharp tongue. The political hardliner has been a member of parliament for more than a decade. The hardliner inherits a legal dispute with Europe s largest aerospace company Airbus over a 2003 fighter jet purchase and will soon have to decide how to modernize the neutral country s aerial defenses. Kunasek, 41, called for a night-time curfew for asylum seekers in 2016 and curbing asylum seekers access to health services in 2015, according to human rights group SOS Mitmensch. Last year, he published an article in Die Aula, a magazine linked to Austria s right-wing extremist scene, according to the Documentation Centre of Austrian Resistance that researches the far right. Loeger has no university degree, but over 30 years of experience in the insurance sector, where he has been the chief executive of Uniqa s Austrian unit since 2013. The 52-year-old manager, a surprise ministerial appointee who has not held public office before, enjoys sports and art. A close ally of Kurz s, whom he knows from their time in the conservatives youth wing, 36-year-old Bluemel studied philosophy in Austria and France, focusing on Christian social teachings . After various posts in the party he became chief of the conservatives in Vienna, a traditional Social Democratic stronghold, in 2015. He is in charge of the party s media portfolio. | 1 | [
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FMD2393 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: South Dakota’s Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard on Friday vetoed a pair of bills that would have loosened restrictions on carrying concealed guns in the state, after saying current laws made sense and were adequate. One measure would have allowed carrying concealed weapons in the state without a permit. The second proposed allowing carriers of an enhanced permit to carry concealed weapons at the state capitol. South Dakota bars convicted felons and those convicted of some violent or drug crimes from obtaining a concealed weapons permit. Eleven U.S. states allow gun owners to carry concealed weapons without a permit, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a gun-control advocacy group. Another 39, including South Dakota, allow concealed carry with a permit. In a letter accompanying one of the vetoes, Daugaard, who had previously pointed to his own membership in the National Rifle Association, defended the state’s existing concealed weapons laws as reasonable. “I am unaware of a single instance in which a person who could lawfully possess a gun was denied a permit to carry a concealed pistol,†Daugaard wrote. By comparison, he added, two counties in the state have turned down nearly 600 permit applicants “who were disqualified due to mental illness or due to violent or drug-related crimes.†The veto echoed statements Daugaard made in a Feb. 11 editorial in the Rapid City Journal, in which he said he viewed the state’s laws as “effective, appropriate and minimal.†Daugaard also vetoed a similar proposal loosening concealed-carry standards in 2012. Rep. Lee Qualm, who sponsored the proposal relaxing the state capitol restrictions, called the vetoes “frustrating,†and said in a phone interview on Friday that he would try to override them when the legislature returns from recess March 27. An override requires a two-thirds majority in South Dakota, and Qualm said both bills were only a handful of votes short of that threshold in both chambers. Rep. Lynne Disanto, sponsor of the broader of the two bills, did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment. The bills’ failure at the hands of a Republican governor pointed to a divide in his party over the regulations. Neither bill received full Republican support in either chamber, and the statewide measure was opposed by about one in five Republicans in the House and one in three in the Senate. | 1 | [
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FMD2394 | 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: Large Weird Truck Convoy? Claim summaries: Video shows an unexplained 'large weird truck convoy' in Virginia.
contextual information: Claim: A mysterious "large weird truck convoy" in Virginia remains unexplained. : : Video shows a large convoy of tractor trailers in Virginia. : No one knows why the convoy occurred. Examples: [Collected via e-mail, October 2014] I saw the following post on Facebook today with the caption 'ALERT: Virginia Highway Completely Closed for Mysterious Convoy. I'm wondering if there's any truth to it. Origins: On 25 October 2014, a Facebook user posted video of a large truck convoy spotted in Virginia involving dozens of tractor trailer trucks. The clip depicted several semis traveling on Virginia's Interstate 64 under what appeared to be State Trooper escort. video The unusual sighting and temporary interstate shutdown caused widespread speculation on social media sites as to what could possibly have been afoot. The most widely circulated clip of the large truck "parade" captured several branded trailers as they passed, including Coca-Cola and Walmart vehicles, further confusing the convoy's witnesses as to why the trucks might require a police escort. One user's comments echoed concerns repeatedly expressed as the truck convoy video circulated on sites like Facebook: I can tell you one thing. These trucks are transporting more than you think ? It's all starting. Some will know what I'm talking about and other's will just keep believing what FOX news tells them and vote for the candidate who lies the best ! We are SOOO screwed ! Well, we who are paying attention, know something big is going to happen for sure and really soon ! So many things and all of them are so close together........ I see a dictatorship being announced, military hitting the streets, jets overhead, forced Ebola/flu immunizations (rather true or not) Martial Law, food/water shortages, etc....... We'll see ? Many people worried the event was a covert maneuver to transport supplies, hide medical equipment, or engage in otherwise suspicious activity fears that particularly loomed large due to the then-current concern over Ebola. covert maneuver However, the convoy's purpose wasn't hard to discover with a small amount of digging: The truck convoy is a unique one-day celebration where police escort a convoy of trucks through cities and towns in 38 states and Canada. The event helps raise funds and awareness for Special Olympics athletes. About 110 vehicles participated in the ride. In 2013, over $20,000 was raised with 49 trucks participating in Virginia's nearly 50-mile round-trip convoy along Interstate 95 from Caroline County to Henrico County, according to a press release sent by Virginia State police. The footage from Virginia was taken during a leg of the Special Olympics' World's Largest Truck Convoy, described thusly on the organization's website: website Inspired by the powerful impact Special Olympics had on his life through his participation in the Law Enforcement Torch Run, combined with his family's involvement with the trucking industry, Norm Schneiderhan, a Corporal with the Orange County Sheriff's Department, created the Truck Convoy, a one-daycelebration of the trucking industry to help raise awareness and funds for Special Olympics. Post by ABC 8 News - WRIC. Post ABC 8 News - WRIC Although some drivers in Virginia were confused and alarmed by the truck convoy on 25 October 2014, local news stations covered and explained the event on their pages. The purpose of the convoy was not immediately obvious to bystanders, but an explanation was not difficult to find after the fact. Last updated: 16 July 2015 | 2 | [
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FMD2395 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Kirsten Powers USA TodayOver the past 18 months, whether in Midwestern airports or New Hampshire and Iowa hotels, I learned the best way to spot a Donald Trump supporter was to note who was remaining silent.As Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz or John Kasich voters enthusiastically shared their reasons for supporting their candidate, a family member or friend would often stand by quietly.When pressed, if they came clean, it was often with downcast eyes or an apologetic smile: I m voting for Trump, they d almost whisper.A few months ago, an Uber driver told me he was voting third party, then tepidly announced he was voting Trump as I exited the car. Why didn t he just tell me this in the first place, I asked. Because I thought you would judge me, he said.Here we can see why Donald Trump s constant inveighing against political correctness was so ingenious. It forged an unlikely but unshakable bond between a Manhattan billionaire who had manifestly lived a life of New York values with conservative white Americans who feel under constant assault by a cultural elite that treats them with contempt. Perhaps more importantly, it ultimately inoculated Trump against allegations that many believed would be his undoing: that he was a racist and misogynist who bragged of sexually assaulting women. Trump s success among women was in part a reaction against enforced political correctness (Image Source: Pulse.ng)After all, these same voters have watched as every Republican candidate in recent memory has been accused of waging a War on Women. If Democrats are going to claim that Mitt Romney and John McCain hate women (and they did), then they shouldn t be surprised when voters ignore them when they say Donald Trump hates women. If every Republican is a misogynist, then no Republican is.While many liberals have dismissed the idea of political correctness as a right-wing manufactured hysteria, it is in fact a real thing. That Trump has stretched its meaning to encompass pretty much any horrible thing he wants to say makes its existence no less real.Conservative white Americans have watched (often fearfully) as liberal cultural elites demand that everyone fall in line with their agenda or risk being called a homophobe, racist or misogynist. The concept of persuasion and debate has been overridden by a quest for immediate and forced cultural conformity. My friend Sally Kohn, the liberal commentator, summed up the left wing view fairly honestly when she told me in a recent debate over free speech that, If [conservatives on campus] feel like they can no longer speak against positive social change, good. This is a paradigm where honest disagreement about abortion makes one a woman-hater, holding orthodox religious views on marriage equates to gay-bashing, and refusing to cop to white privilege even if you are a working class white person struggling economically defines you as a racist.A recent Slate article explaining why a slight majority of white women voted for Trump asserted that these female Trump supporters were self-loathing racists who were doing the bidding of their husbands and fathers. This is the omnipresent lefty trope Republican women have lived with for a long time, yet people are actually shocked that they wouldn t throw their support behind a party that too often casts them as gender-traitors.It s not hard to see how accusations against Trump as a racist and misogynist would be met with eye rolls and knowing murmurs of political correctness by people who have had their worldview constantly caricatured and demonized by the cultural elites in academia, media and politics Continue this story at USA TodayREAD MORE ELECTION NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire 2016 Files | 0 | [
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FMD2396 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: Germany regards Friday s joint report on progress made in the negotiations on Britain s departure from the European Union as a step forward but believes much work remains even if the initial stage of Brexit talks is concluded, a spokesman said. I think everyone understands that there is still much work for negotiators to do even if the European Council decides to move into phase two of Brexit negotiations, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert told a regular news conference on Friday. He added that the second phase would be highly complex . The leaders of the other 27 EU countries are due to decide next Friday whether to accept the European Commission s recommendation that sufficient progress has been made on exit talks to begin discussions on Britain s future relationship with the bloc. | 1 | [
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FMD2397 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: A Thai court sentenced a 62-year-old man to 27 years in prison on Wednesday for planting a bomb at a Bangkok hospital that wounded 21 people. The explosion hit the Phramongkutklao Hospital in the Thai capital, Bangkok, in May on the third anniversary of a 2014 military coup. The hospital is popular with soldiers and their families and retired military officers. Police arrested Watana Pumret, a retired government employee, after the blast and said he had confessed to the bombing because he despises the military. From the evidence we believe the accused committed the offence ... the accused confessed to it, a judge said. Courts in Thailand often do not identify the names of judges, with the exception of some high-profile legal cases. Watana was seen crying after the verdict. He hugged his wife and refused to answer reporters questions, according to a Reuters reporter at the court. Reuters was unable to contact Watana s lawyer after the verdict. Thailand s military launched a coup in May 2014 after months of street protests that took a toll on Southeast Asia s second-biggest economy. The military promised to unite the politically divided country and restore stability but it has been accused by critics of not wanting to relinquish power. The military government has promised to hold a general election in November 2018 to return Thailand to democracy but senior government figures have said more time was needed to complete laws related to the vote. The government has also cited security concerns as a reason for not lifting a ban on politics that has been in place since 2014, despite increasing pressure from groups of all political stripes to lift the ban. | 1 | [
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FMD2398 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: VIDEOS 5 things you need to know about the Dakota Access Pipeline protests Early reports of protesters being armed and violent have proven to be misinformation spread to demonize the opposition By Nick Bernabe - October 28, 2016
A small Standing Rock Sioux site in North Dakota called the Sacred Stone Camp has been propelled into the national news narrative following their stand against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Due in part to independent media coverage of the ongoing standoff, the Sacred Stone camp has grown into a formidable opposition against the $3.8 billion, 1,200-mile long pipeline.
Due to misinformation coming from law-enforcement, political favoritism toward the pipeline builders, and the media’s blatant reluctance to report on the pipeline, it’s hard to tell truth from fiction. Anti-Media , along with our partners in the independent media and our embedded journalist at the opposition encampment, have been covering the unfolding standoff continuously. Here are five things you need to know. 1. Who is opposing the pipeline — and why
The Standing Rock Sioux tribe is leading the opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline. They have been joined by the largest tribal coalition in over 100 years in their stand against the pipeline. The coalition is also comprised of activists, allies, and environmentalists, collectively known as “water protectors,” at the Sacred Stone Camp, an encampment close to the location where the pipeline is planned to cross the Missouri River in North Dakota. According to the Sacred Stone camp website , they are opposing the pipeline because “[t]he Dakota Access threatens everything from farming and drinking water to entire ecosystems, wildlife and food sources surrounding the Missouri .”
The Standing Rock Sioux also say the pipeline is violating treaty land , Sioux territory that was established many years ago by the federal government. “We will not allow Dakota Access to trespass on our treaty territory and destroy our medicines and our culture.”
The opposition to the pipeline spreads across several states and is not opposed solely by Native Americans. Farmers, ranchers, and landowners are also opposed to the pipeline. Many of them have had their land taken from them against their will and given to the pipeline via eminent domain. 2. The U.S. government and the pipeline corporation are continuing a long tradition of disrespecting Native Americans
The United States has a very bad reputation for treating Native Americans, the original inhabitants of this land, as less than human. In many instances in the past, the land where Native Americans lived was deemed to be of higher value than the Natives’ lives.
Such has been the case in North Dakota — not only now, but in the past as well. According to The Atlantic :
“The land beneath the pipeline was accorded to Sioux peoples by the Treaty of Fort Laramie in 1868. Eleven years later, the U.S. government incited and won the Great Sioux War, and ‘renegotiated’ a new treaty with the Sioux under threat of starvation. In that document, the tribe ceded much of the Laramie land, including the Black Hills of South Dakota, where many whites believed there to be gold.”
After the federal government relegated the Sioux people to the “Great Sioux Reservation” in 1851 , the treaty was re-written and “renegotiated” by force whenever resources were discovered or when the U.S. government wanted land. Essentially, the Sioux people were victims of U.S.-sanctioned murder, and their land was stolen because gold was discovered on it.
Fast forward to 2016 and the Sioux people are once again making a stand on land that was once — and still is, according to the tribe — theirs. How is the government reacting to this stand? By brutally arresting the Native American water protectors for trespassing . If that is not a miscarriage of justice, I don’t know what is.
Further, Energy Transfer Partners, the company pulling the strings behind the DAPL, has deep pockets, and its lobbyists have cozied up to federal, state, and local governments with jurisdiction over the pipeline route. This could explain why the company began its construction of the pipeline on Army Corps of Engineers land without even securing an easement , which is required by law. Dakota Access LLC, a subsidiary of Energy Transfer Partners, has also used the strong-arm of government to force farmers and landowners to hand over their land to the pipeline against their will. 3. Violent acts are being carried out in North Dakota, but not by the water protectors
Violence is breaking out at the Dakota Access Protest site, but the protesters have nothing to do with it. Pipeline police, bolstered by the North Dakota National Guard and sheriffs imported from around the country, have turned the standoff into a war zone. Water protectors are regularly pepper sprayed, tear gassed, and violently arrested. Over the weekend, 127 people were detained in the biggest mass arrest to date.
Militarized police at the Dakota Access Pipeline site are decked out in riot gear, armed with military grade weapons, use armored cars or MRAPs with snipers on top of them, and have regularly used LRADs, a type of mass crowd dispersal weapon that uses a high pitched noise to hurt people’s ears — sometimes permanently .
Early reports of protesters being armed and violent have proven to be instances of misinformation spread by law enforcement apparently seeking to demonize the opposition. No credible reports of violence by the protesters have been confirmed or prosecuted. Nearly all arrests stem from trespassing charges or crimes of journalism.
When protesters initially began using civil disobedience to physically shut down the Dakota Access Pipeline site, they were confronted violently by security guards from British mercenary firm G4S. The mercs sicced dogs and used pepper spray on the protesters in an assault that went viral and helped catalyze even more support for the water protectors. 4. Independent media is under attack at the Dakota Access Pipeline — and the corporate media is ignoring it
Independent media’s broadcasts over the Internet are basically the only reason people around the country and the world now know about the struggle at Standing Rock. Unfortunately, journalists are not immune to the police crackdowns in North Dakota. Dozens of journalists have now been arrested, and an arrest warrant was issued for high-profile journalist Amy Goodman. One independent media outlet, Unicorn Riot , saw four of their journalists arrested in one day in North Dakota. One filmmaker is facing up to 45 years in prison for filming acts of civil disobedience against the pipeline.
Anti-Media ’s journalist on the ground, Derrick Broze, was tased by law enforcement while covering the protests on Thursday as this article was being written.
Meanwhile, the national corporate media ignored the battle against the Dakota Access Pipeline as long as they could. For months, despite the DAPL emergence into the national narrative, ABC and NBC refused to air any coverage about it. A woman was arrested for protesting the pipeline on her own farm after Dakota Access LLC gained access to it against her will via eminent domain — yet there was still no corporate media coverage on the incident. 5. How you can help the opposition
Now that you see what water protectors are up against in North Dakota, here’s what you can do to help. Get yourself to the Sacred Stone Camp. The water protectors need reinforcements as people are regularly arrested. The bigger the stand, the more likely the pipeline’s construction will be halted. Here’s how to get there . Send supplies or donations. Water protectors need your help with supplies and funding. Go to this link to send supplies. Go to this link to donate to the cause. Support independent journalists that risk arrest to bring you the news from the front lines. Follow Sacred Stone Camp on Facebook. Share this article.
For 10 more ways to get involved, click here. | 0 | [
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FMD2399 | Task: Please determine whether the text is 0. Fake or 1. True. Answer directly without explanations. Text: There s a new Gallup poll out showing that Donald Trump can, in fact, make other people popular. However, the people this poll refers to aren t Republican lawmakers. They aren t conservative television personalities. They aren t people working in the White House. The people gaining popularity because of Donald Trump are Barack Obama and George W. Bush.Obama s popularity has remained fairly steady since the final months of his presidency, and it s considerably higher than Herr Trump s at 63 percent. Nearly every demographic has a highly favorable opinion of Obama, including all age groups, and both men and women. Republicans are the only group with which he doesn t poll well, but that s not shocking. They re still convinced he was secretly the Muslim Kenyan communist socialist anti-Christ that ruined America.Surprisingly, George W. s popularity has soared since Trump took office. He s currently sitting at 59 percent overall. Among Democrats, who are supposed to loathe W., his popularity has shot up a whopping 400 percent, to a 41 percent favorability rating.Just Democrats view W. more favorably than everyone views Trump. That s really embarrassing for a man who considers his poll numbers to be more important than terror attacks in London and seven dead sailors aboard the U.S.S. Fitzgerald.Furthermore, Republicans are worried that working for Trump will damage their reputations. Many Republicans have turned down job offers in the White House, and they re making it hard for Trump to fill key posts. While Trump yells about Democratic obstruction on nominees, he hasn t nominated anyone to fill a lot of those posts.Of course, the administration claims that everyone wants to work there, but what can you expect from someone to whom lying is second nature?Trump can crow about the Rasmussen poll all he likes, and trash President Obama all he likes. He s just making everything harder on himself with his inability to act like an adult.Featured image via Joe Raedle/Getty Images | 0 | [
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