Tomi Lahren, the controversial millennial shock jock who is always all over your Facebook feed seems to have a whole bunch of folks who don’t like her.
Over 53 thousand people have signed a Change.org petition calling for Lahren to be removed from Glenn Beck’s Blaze television network because of her habit of being wrong and intellectually lazy.
“Everyone has a voice and an opinion,” the petition reads. “However, when the wrong voice is given a platform and is allowed to influence an audience of millions by perpetuating derogatory ideology toward select groups of individuals, this is where the injustice lies. Tomi Lahren (although her words are laden with passion and emotion) lacks the knowledge and experience to effectively communicate and facilitate.”
The petition campaign was created by a man named Cameron Tendaji and it has gained traction on social media.
“As a millennial in these “progressive” times, Tomi Lahren should be allowing safe spaces for all audiences,” The petition reads. “Instead, she attacks minority groups, fabricates historical “facts”, and is grossly misinformed on political topics.”
Lahren is pretty flawed as a media figure.
She has little experience and has been a darling of the right-wing since her schtick of attacking progressives started a couple of years ago.
She is a bomb thrower of the Rush Limbaugh variety and has almost no journalistic credibility.
Some of her commentary is borderline racist and almost always unfair.
However, should she really be silenced just because we disagree with her?
Is it really the job of media to create “safe spaces”?
Isn’t the role of media to stir the pot and chafe for change while identifying uncomfortable facts?
Just a thought.
Anyway, if the folks supporting this petition get their way then Lahren will soon be silenced.
“Tom [sic] Lahren’s hate speech against minority groups will no longer be tolerated,” the petition reads. “She will learn that although we have freedom of speech, there is no freedom from consequences. This may not solve the main issue; however, great things have small beginnings.”
But instead of removing Lahren, shouldn’t we just create a better alternative to her?
Stay tuned RISE NEWS readers, stay tuned.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. You can write for us.
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Why Did Putin Do It?
It is common knowledge that the Russian government attempted to interfere with the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
The success of that interference is, and may always be, up for debate.
The same can be said for understanding the true nature of their motivations behind these actions.
On January 6, 2017, The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a declassified report, assessing Russian activities and intentions in the most recent U.S. presidential election.
The twenty-three page report, created in union by The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI), and The National Security Agency (NSA), makes several, high confidence claims about Russia’s – and the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin’s – motivations and intentions behind their actions.
These actions, as identified by the report, include cyber espionage, the leaking of data collected by Russian Intelligence, interference in state and local electoral boards, and Russian propaganda efforts.
Getting inside the head of Vladimir Putin is impossible. Photo Credit: Lazopoulos George/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
The goals behind these actions were also laid out in the report.
“Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency,” the report reads. “We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump.”
But while understanding these actions is important and necessary, maybe even more important, is to understand the motivations behind them.
“The motivation, if we can guess it, was just to disrupt, and to create doubts, and weaken the integrity of the process,” William Wohlforth, a Dartmouth professor who studies, among other areas, international relations and Russian foreign policy said in an interview with RISE NEWS.
Robert Jervis, the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Politics at Columbia University, takes a similar view.
“It was a general attempt to discredit American democracy here and abroad,” Jervis said in an interview.
These attempts are not necessarily unusual – during the Cold War, the Soviet Union engaged in similar “active measures.”
In fact, the tactics used in 2016 are eerily similar to those used throughout much of the Cold War – primarily, the spreading of false information in an attempt to delegitimize or scandalize a perceived political opponent.
This horse really wanted Trump to win so Putin just went with it- probably. Ok not really. Photo Credit: Jedimentat44/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
Mark Kramer recently wrote about this history on WBUR’s Cognoscenti website:
“[The KGB’s] Service A, formed in the 1950s, almost immediately set to work spreading disinformation, producing forgeries, transmitting propaganda, and disrupting U.S. and Western public diplomacy.”
Some of the misinformation spread by the KGB includes rumors that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was a “gay transvestite” and that Martin Luther King Jr. and President Lyndon B. Johnson were colluding to continue black suppression.
During the Cold War- now seen as a more conventional battle between capitalism and communism, all behaviors stemmed from a fairly defined ideological starting point.
But in a post-Cold War era, these ideologies have become less defined, leaving the motivations behind these active measures more mysterious.
“Now, all bets are off, they don’t need to be particularly consistent with any political ideology,” Wohlforth said. “As long as it has the potential to weaken the cohesiveness of the block of states that they perceive to be against them.”
One of the more popular speculations is that Putin saw interference in the U.S. election as payback.
Russian President Vladimir Putin believes that the United States was secretly active in orchestrating the Color Revolutions of the early 2000s – a set of revolutions and protests in former Soviet republics.
Putin believes that the U.S. interfered so as to create a new geopolitical order.
Putin may also view his active measures as payback for his belief that the U.S. – and Secretary Clinton – was behind the massive protests in Moscow over his election in December 2011.
In 2014, Putin likened protests in his own country to the Color Revolutions.
“In the modern world, extremism is being used as a geopolitical instrument and for remaking spheres of influence,” Putin said in 2014. “We see what tragic consequences the wave of so-called color revolutions led to.”
“I really love this boat. Also, I like interfering with American elections.” Photo Credit: Jedimentat44/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
By interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Putin attempted to ruin the chances of victory for his perceived nemesis, Secretary Clinton, while also attempting to avoid any chance that he may have to interact with her as President of the U.S.
Also a popular speculation about Russia’s motivation is that Putin was actively hoping to change the outcome of the election – although there is little to no evidence to support this claim.
“I suspect that by some time in the fall that was one of the objectives,” Jervis said. “But the evidence for that is much weaker.”
When polls began to show Clinton as weaker than conventionally believed, Moscow may have seen an opportunity to test the ability of their active measures.
What is interesting about this possible motivation is that there is little evidence to suggest that any time Soviet/Russian active measures favored a candidate, the candidate ended up favoring the Kremlin.
In 1968, the Soviet Union was worried that if Richard Nixon won the presidential election, Soviet-U.S. relations would suffer even more than if the Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey won.
Instead, Nixon acted somewhat favorably towards the Soviet state after being elected.
Even in painting form, Putin looks unhappy. Photo Credit: Nikolay Volnov/ Flickr (CC By 2.0)
“The candidate that they often seek to undermine may not be so bad for Russian relations,” Wohlforth said.
The opposite can be said as well – it may have been easier for Secretary Clinton to act more favorably towards Russia than President Trump, who has received a mass of scrutiny for even just speaking favorably about Putin or Russia.
The true motivations behind Russia’s most recent active measures may never be known – needless to say, it is impossible to get inside the head of Putin.
Russia’s current posture towards the United States is not new – and the medium through which they acted is – and in truth, this behavior is not limited to Russia.
These actions are unlikely to stop anytime soon.
America is under siege.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in the world. You can write for us.
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Millennial Intelligencer: NATO Spits In Russia’s Eye By Inviting Montenegro To Join Alliance
On Wednesday, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization formally invited the former Yugoslav nation of Montenegro to join the ranks of the 28 member alliance, despite Russian protests to the contrary.
Montenegro has been a partner of the alliance for a long time leading up to this offer of admittance into the alliance, starting with membership with the Partnership for Peace (PfP) program in 2006, and being awarded a Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2009.
As such, this offer was seen by most observes as not a matter of if but when.
As a former Yugoslav country, Montenegro has traditionally been within the Soviet and later Russian sphere of influence.
Despite the 1999 bombing campaign by NATO, which included targets in Montenegro, the small country on the Adriatic coast has consistently sought integration into the Euro-Atlantic community.
Russia’s general antipathy to expansion of NATO, in addition to a continued loss of influence likely motivate the resentment to this announcement.
Montenegro’s ascension into the alliance would further seal the Adriatic Sea from Russian warships, and further its ability to project into the Mediterranean Sea.
In keeping with NATO’s values, Secretary General Stoltenberg has reiterated that: “on defense adaptation, on domestic reform, especially rule of law, and to continue to make progress in demonstrating public support for Montenegro’s NATO membership”.
This mirrors earlier calls by the Secretary General in June to bolster public support for membership, before becoming a member of NATO.
According to the New York Times, current public support in Montenegro for alliance membership is at 47 percent and opposition at 39 percent, though there are also fears that the Kremlin could pump money into parties opposed to NATO membership as they have with France’s National Front.
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I Almost Ran For Office Last Week
Anyone that actually knows me understands that I don’t buy the hype about much.
I’m the guy who wore sneakers to the 8th grade dinner dance and I’m rarely quick to buy a new app or gadget.
I just don’t believe in the drama of life. I try to abstain from it as much as possible.
That is especially true when it comes to politics and public life.
We, the people control our politics whether we want to believe it or not, and we have the power to make change whether we want the burden or not.
I don’t care about the pomp and ceremony of politics. I’m not interested in the game of it. I care about getting things done and making real progress for real people.
That is why it bothers me when I see the current crop of politicians on the local and national level.
Some are forward thinking and interested in making change, but most are wastes of space, seeking only their own career advancement.
From climate change to the widening income gap to the atrocious way in which we treat adults with developmental disabilities, we face real challenges in South Florida and across the country.
I almost ran for the state legislature last week after being encouraged to by family and friends.
I almost did it. Almost drove to Tallahassee to register as a candidate. Almost bought voter data. Almost designed a logo. Almost built a campaign team.
We could have put up quite the fight. And one day, we might.
But I didn’t run because I believe that RISE NEWS can become something really special and I want to focus all my energy on making this collective dream a reality.
Over the course of the last year, we have published pieces from scores of talented and idealistic young people from all over the United States and some other parts of the world.
We have broke news and made people think about the future while giving voice to the disparate parts of our generation.
But we still have much more to do and so many more stories to tell.
I don’t believe in the status quo way of doing things in either politics or journalism. Neither do large swaths of the public.
I don’t believe that politics should be a dirty game that few want to play.
And I don’t believe that journalism should be an elite endeavor that few feel connected to.
I do believe in speaking truth to power however and in shaking things up in order to bring about change.
So that is what we will strive to do.
We cannot allow our generation to grow cynical in politics. We are the only hope this country has to fix the biggest problems facing our future.
And we will do more in this publication to fight for the things we believe in moving forward.
Journalism can only work when you believe in it. And we hope to earn your trust as we work to find the truth, and labor for what is right and just in our society.
Finally, I’d like to encourage young people to get involved in public life in whatever way they feel that they best can, whether that is on the side of running for office or keeping those running for office accountable.
Accountability doesn’t have to be a big dramatic production after all.
It can be something as small as paying attention to how your representatives vote on important issues and remembering their votes come election time.
RISE NEWS is a grassroots journalism news organization that is working to change the way young people become informed and engaged in public affairs. You can write for us.
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