BIG DATA: A Tale of Two Campaigns
Posted: March 24, 2018 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Barack Obama, Big Data, Data, Donald Trump, Facebook, Presidential Election 2012, Presidential Election 2016, Social media | Leave a commentRate this:
Michael Moore, Russian Tool
Posted: February 21, 2018 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, Russia, U.S. News | Tags: Communism, Donald Trump, Marxism, Michael Moore, Moron, propaganda, Protest, Rally, Robert Mueller, Social media, Stooge, Vladimir Putin | Leave a commentDerek Hunter reports: Progressive director Michael Moore participated in an anti-Trump protest in New York that was organized by Russians, according to information released Friday by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.
Rosenstein announced indictments from Special Counsel Robert Mueller Friday against 13 Russian nationals for meddling in the 2016 election, highlighting how the Russians used social media to stir up strife and anger on social media using memes and unwitting Americans to do their bidding. One Russia-sponsored event was a protest of then President-Elect Donald Trump on Nov. 12, 2016, called “Trump is NOT my President,” and it involved Moore.
At today’s Trump Tower protest. He wouldn’t come down. Here’s my Facebook Live coverage: https://t.co/FzxOyljoK5 pic.twitter.com/PxjoALcyn8
— Michael Moore (@MMFlint) November 13, 2016
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Katie Roiphe: The Other Whisper Network
Posted: February 5, 2018 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Reading Room, Think Tank | Tags: Charlie Rose, Feminism, Harvey Weinstein, Jessica Valenti, Matt Lauer, Social media, Twitter, Twitter Feminism, Whisper networs | Leave a commentHow Twitter feminism is bad for women
Katie Roiphe writes: No one would talk to me for this piece. Or rather, more than twenty women talked to me, sometimes for hours at a time, but only after I promised to leave out their names, and give them what I began to call deep anonymity. This was strange, because what they were saying did not always seem that extreme. Yet here in my living room, at coffee shops, in my inbox and on my voicemail, were otherwise outspoken female novelists, editors, writers, real estate agents, professors, and journalists of various ages so afraid of appearing politically insensitive that they wouldn’t put their names to their thoughts, and I couldn’t blame them.
Of course, the prepublication frenzy of Twitter fantasy and fury about this essay, which exploded in early January, is Exhibit A for why nobody wants to speak openly. Before the piece was even finished, let alone published, people were calling me “pro-rape,” “human scum,” a “harridan,” a “monster out of Stephen King’s ‘IT,’?” a “ghoul,” a “bitch,” and a “garbage person”—all because of a rumor that I was planning to name the creator of the so-called Shitty Media Men list. The Twitter feminist Jessica Valenti called this prospect “profoundly shitty” and “incredibly dangerous” without having read a single word of my piece. Other tweets were more direct: “man if katie roiphe actually publishes that article she can consider her career over.” “Katie Roiphe can suck my dick.” With this level of thought policing, who in their right mind would try to say anything even mildly provocative or original?
For years, women confined their complaints about sexual harassment to whisper networks for fear of reprisal from men. This is an ugly truth about our recent past that we are just now beginning to grapple with. But amid this welcome reckoning, it seems that many women still fear varieties of retribution (Twitter rage, damage to their reputations, professional repercussions, and vitriol from friends) for speaking out—this time, from other women. They are, in other words, inadvertently creating a new whisper network. Can this possibly be a good thing?
Most of the new whisperers feel as I do, exhilarated by the moment, by the long-overdue possibility of holding corrupt and bullying men such as Harvey Weinstein, Charlie Rose, and Matt Lauer to account for their actions. They strongly share some of its broader goals: making it possible for women to work unbothered and unharassed even outside the bubble of Hollywood and the media, breaking down the structures that have historically protected powerful men. Yet they are also slightly uneasy at the weird energy behind this movement, a weird energy it is sometimes hard to pin down.
Here are some things these professional women said to me on the condition that their names be withheld:
I think “believe all women” is silly. Women are unreliable narrators also. I understand how hard it is to come forward, but I just don’t buy it. It’s a sentimental view of women. . . . I think there is more regretted consent than anyone is willing to say out loud.
If someone had sent me the Media Men list ten years ago, when I was twenty-five, I would have called a harmlessly enamored guy a stalker and a sloppy drunken encounter sexual assault. I’d hate myself now for wrecking two lives.
One thing people don’t say is that power is an aphrodisiac. . . . To pretend otherwise is dishonest.
What seems truly dangerous to me is the complete disregard the movement shows for a sacred principle of the American criminal justice system: the presumption of innocence. I come from Mexico, whose judicial system relied, until 2016, on the presumption of guilt, which translated into people spending decades, sometimes lifetimes, in jail before even seeing a judge.
I have never felt sexually harassed. I said this to someone the other day, and she said, “I am sure you are wrong.”
Al Franken asked for an investigation and he should have been allowed to have it; the facts are still ambiguous, the sources were sketchy.
Why didn’t I get hit on? What’s wrong with me? #WhyNotMeToo
I think #MeToo is a potentially valuable tool that is degraded when women appropriate it to encompass things like “creepy DMs” or “weird lunch ‘dates.’” And I do not think touching a woman’s back justifies a front page in the New York Times and the total annihilation of someone’s career.
I have a long history with this feeling of not being able to speak. In the early Nineties, death threats were phoned into Shakespeare and Company, an Upper West Side bookstore where I was scheduled to give a reading from my book The Morning After.That night, in front of a jittery crowd and a sprinkling of police, I read a passage comparing the language in the date-rape pamphlets given out on college campuses to Victorian guides to conduct for young ladies. When I read at universities, students who considered themselves feminists shouted me down. It was an early lesson in the chilling effect of feminist orthodoxy.
But social media has enabled a more elaborate intolerance of feminist dissenters, as I just personally experienced. Twitter, especially, has energized the angry extremes of feminism in the same way it has energized Trump and his supporters: the loudest, angriest, most simplifying voices are elevated and rendered normal or mainstream.
[Read the full story here, at Harper’s Magazine]
In 1996, a six-year-old boy with Coke-bottle glasses, Johnathan Prevette, was suspended from school for sexual harassment after kissing a little girl on the cheek. This was widely interpreted as a sign of excess: as the New York Times put it, a “doctrine meant to protect against sexual harassment might have reached a damaging level of absurdity.” Yet I wonder what would happen today. Wouldn’t feminists be tweeting, “Don’t first grade girls have a right to feel safe?” Wouldn’t the new whisperers keep quiet?
One thing that makes it hard to engage with the feminist moment is the sense of great, unmanageable anger. Given what men have gotten away with for centuries, this anger is understandable. Yet it can also lead to an alarming lack of proportion. Rebecca Traister, one of the smartest and most prominent voices of the #MeToo movement, writes:
The rage that many of us are feeling doesn’t necessarily correspond with the severity of the trespass: Lots of us are on some level as incensed about the guy who looked down our shirt at a company retreat as we are about Weinstein, even if we can acknowledge that there’s something nuts about that, a weird overreaction.
At first glance, this seems honest and insightful of her. She seems, for a moment, to recognize the energy that is unnerving some of us, an anger not interested in making distinctions between Harvey Weinstein and the man looking down your shirt—an anger that is, as Traister herself puts it, “terrifyingly out of control.” But weirdly, she also seems to be fine with it, even roused. When Trump supporters let their anger run terrifyingly out of control, we are alarmed, and rightly so. Perhaps Traister should consider that “I am so angry I am not thinking straight” is not the best mood in which to radically envision and engineer a new society. Read the rest of this entry »
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Zuckerberg’s Dilemma: When Facebook’s Success Is Bad for Society
Posted: January 8, 2018 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Censorship, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Content Moderators, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, media, Mental health, Snapchat, Social media, Twitter | Leave a comment
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg met with entrepreneurs and innovators at a round-table discussion in St. Louis on Nov. 9. Photo: Jeff Roberson/Associated Press
Facebook’s chief has signaled he will do what it takes to curb the social network’s negative effects—but how far will he go?
Christopher Mims reports: When scientists started linking cigarettes to cancer, the tobacco industry silenced them—only acknowledging the extent of the truth decades later, under legal duress.
Imagine if, instead, they had given these researchers license to publish papers, or even taken the information to heart and crippled their own moneymaking machines for the good of their addicted users.
No one has accused Facebook FB 1.37% of causing cancer, but Mark Zuckerberg now stands at a similar crossroads.
In the face of pressure brought by a growing roster of Facebook investors and former executives, many of whom have publicly stated that Facebook is both psychologically addictive and harmful to democracy, the Facebook founder and chief executive has pledged to “fix” Facebook by doing several things, including “making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent.”
Mr. Zuckerberg has also recently told investors he wants his company “to encourage meaningful social interactions,” adding that “time spent is not a goal by itself.”

Facebook researchers have acknowledged that while direct sharing between individuals and small groups on Facebook can have positive effects, merely scrolling through others’ updates makes people unhappy. Photo: ISTOCK
So here’s the multibillion-dollar question: Is he willing to sacrifice revenue for the well-being of Facebook’s two-billion-plus users?
Mr. Zuckerberg has already said the company will hire so many content moderators to deal with fake news and Russian interference that it will hurt profit, but whether he will go further and change the basic fabric of Facebook’s algorithms in the name of users’ mental health, he has yet to say.
[Read the full story here, at WSJ]
Clearly, Facebook, a company Mr. Zuckerberg started when he was in college, has changed so much that even its creator is playing catch-up to the reality of its globe-spanning power.
In June, he changed the company’s mission from “connecting” the world to bringing the world closer together. He said he used to think giving people a voice would make the world better on its own, “but our society is still divided. Now I believe we have a responsibility to do even more.”
In December, Facebook researchers surveyed the scientific literature and their own work and publicly acknowledged that while direct communication and sharing between individuals and small groups on Facebook can have positive effects, merely lurking and scrolling through others’ status updates makes people unhappy. Read the rest of this entry »
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#Wheredidmattgo? Matt Lauer Apparently Quits Social Media Amid Firestorm
Posted: December 1, 2017 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Entertainment, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: #Wheredidmattgo?, Facebook, Instagram, Matt Lauer, sexual harassment, Social media, Television, Twitter | Leave a comment#Wheredidmattgo? A day after Matt Lauer was fired by NBC the now-former Todayhost appears to have deleted all of his social media accounts and been excised from those of his ex-employer.
The online world quickly noticed today that the disgraced morning-show stalwart’s Twitter, Instagram and Facebook accounts have gone inactive. Read the rest of this entry »
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Twitter Says Rose McGowan Account Was Suspended Over Phone Number in Tweet
Posted: October 13, 2017 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Entertainment, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: Rose McGowan, Show Business, Social media, Twitter | Leave a comment
Rose McGowan – Photo by Andrew H. Walker/REX/Shutterstock
New York Academy of Art Tribeca Ball, America – 04 Apr 2016
Rose McGowan’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended because one of her tweets included a private phone number.
Todd Spangler reports: Rose McGowan’s Twitter account was temporarily suspended because one of her tweets included a private phone number, according to the social-media company.
Over the past week, McGowan has been outspoken on Twitter in lambasting Harvey Weinstein, who she says sexually harassed her 20 years ago.
“We have been in touch with Ms. McGowan’s team. We want to explain that her account was temporarily locked because one of her Tweets included a private phone number, which violates of our Terms of Service,” a Twitter rep said in a statement. “The Tweet was removed and her account has been unlocked. We will be clearer about these policies and decisions in the future.”
[UPDATE, 2:55 p.m. ET: McGowan, in her first post after her account was unlocked, quoted @TwitterSafety’s statement and asked rhetorically, in a reference to President Trump, “when will nuclear war violate your terms of service?”] Read the rest of this entry »
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[VIDEO] BUT I AM ALWAYS RIGHT! How the Internet Tricks You Into Thinking You’re Always Right
Posted: July 13, 2017 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Breaking News, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: Anecdote, Confirmation Bias, Facebook, Fallacy, Ideology, Internet, media, New York Times, news, Scientific Method, Social media, video | Leave a comment
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[PHOTOS] East-West World: Abandoned American Frontier Theme Park in Japan
Posted: January 19, 2017 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment, Japan, Mediasphere | Tags: American Frontier, American West, Cowboys, Donald Trump, Ghost Town, Japan, Photography, Social media, Tokyo, Westworld, Wild West shows | Leave a commentWestern Village first opened its doors back in the early 1970s. Originally quite a modest affair known as Kinugawa Family Ranch, the Wild West theme park did well and gradually expanded, hence the name change. Yet despite such success, changing times resulted in changing fortunes, and in 2006 it was forced to close — meaning that the park now sits empty and forlorn by the side of the road. An odd, wholly unexpected sight in a relatively sparsely populated area a few hours north of Tokyo.
Increasingly battered by the weather and years of neglect, it nonetheless still retains the look one would expect.
Visiting at the end of a politically tumultuous 2016, however, it wasn’t these out of place structures that made an impact. Instead, it was the park’s haunted looking residents and their unintended, yet no less terrifying depiction of a world turned utterly upside down. The world in which we currently live in, basically.
Considering its theme, and the period in which Western Village opened, it’s perhaps not surprising that one particular, distinctly larger-than-life personality was chosen to front it.
And, as a follicly challenged right winger with a weirdly orange complexion, such a choice seems disturbingly prescient.
So now, instead of an innocent recreation of all things cowboy-related, this celebrity led world feels like a truly disturbing vision of a potentially very near future. One in which the inner machinations and ulterior motives of those pulling the presidential strings are very much to the fore.
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[VIDEO] M&M’s Dissolving in Water, Viewed Under a Sony A7R M2 Camera
Posted: December 20, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Entertainment, Food & Drink, Mediasphere, Science & Technology | Tags: Archie McPhee, Beauty of Science, Cooking school, Culinard, M&Ms, novelty, Social media, Sony A7R M2 camera, Sony Camera | Leave a commentSometimes there’s nothing more awesome than finding beauty in unexpected places. When the team at Beauty of Science dropped a few M&M’s into water under a Sony A7R M2 camera they discovered that the time-lapse process of the candy dissolving was incredibly beautiful.
Watch as each piece of candy becomes a sugary supernova:
Head over to Beauty of Science to learn more about this dazzling project. Read the rest of this entry »
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Facebook User Verifies Truth Of Article By Carefully Checking It Against Own Preconceived Opinions
Posted: December 1, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Censorship, Education, Entertainment, Humor, Mediasphere | Tags: Facebook, Google, journalism, LinkedIn, Marketing, media, news, News satire, Parody, satire, Snapchat, Social media, Social network, Twitter | Leave a comment“You can’t just accept everything you see online, which is why I always take a closer look at the claims that are made in every article and make sure that each one of them is backed up by my existing assumptions and personal feelings about the world.”
CLARKSVILLE, TN—Explaining that people need to be critical of the news stories that circulate on social media these days, area Facebook user James Wheatley, 44, reportedly took the time to verify the truth of an article he came across Thursday by carefully checking it against the opinions he already holds.
“There are all kinds of bogus news stories out there, so it’s important to take a step back and hold each article up against my personal convictions to find out for myself whether what I’m reading is true or not. It’s pretty sad, but once I got in the habit of looking at articles this way, I could see just how many awful sites there are on the internet that don’t even adhere to the most basic tenets of my individual worldview, so now I just disregard them completely.”
“You can’t just accept everything you see online, which is why I always take a closer look at the claims that are made in every article and make sure that each one of them is backed up by my existing assumptions and personal feelings about the world,” said Wheatley, who told reporters he had to correct several friends on Facebook earlier this week after an investigation of his beliefs and individual political perspectives proved the articles they had posted to be entirely false. Read the rest of this entry »
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Social Media Is Killing Discourse Because It’s Too Much Like TV
Posted: November 29, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Art & Culture, Censorship, Entertainment, Health and Social Issues, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: 2016, Ali Khamenei, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, News satire, propaganda, Social media, The Wall Street Journal, Twitter, United States presidential election | Leave a commentWe need more text and fewer videos and memes in the age of Trump.
Hossein Derakshan writes: If I say that social media aided Donald Trump’s election,
you might think of fake news on Facebook. But even if Facebook fixes the algorithms that elevate phony stories, there’s something else going on: social media represents the ultimate ascendance of television over other media.
I’ve been warning about this since November 2014, when I was freed from six years of incarceration in Tehran, a punishment I received for my online activism in Iran. Before I went to prison, I blogged frequently on what I now call the open Web: it was
decentralized, text-centered, and abundant with hyperlinks to source material and rich background. It nurtured varying opinions. It was related to the world of books.
[Order Neil Postman’s book “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business” from Amazon.com]
Then for six years I got disconnected; when I left prison and came back online, I was confronted by a brave new world. Facebook and Twitter had replaced blogging and had made the Internet like TV: centralized and image-centered, with content embedded in pictures, without links.
[Read the full story here, at technologyreview.com]
Like TV it now increasingly entertains us, and even more so than television it amplifies our existing beliefs and habits. It makes us feel more than think, and it comforts more than challenges. The result is a deeply fragmented society, driven by emotions, and radicalized by lack of contact and challenge from outside. This is why Oxford Dictionaries designated “post-truth” as the word of 2016: an adjective “relating to circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than emotional appeals.”
Neil Postman provided some clues about this in his illuminating 1985 book, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. The media scholar at New York University saw then how television transformed public discourse into an exchange of volatile emotions that are usually mistaken by pollsters as opinion. One of the scariest outcomes of this transition, Postman wrote, is that television essentially turns all news into disinformation. “Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information—misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information—information that creates the illusion of knowing something but which in fact leads one away from knowing … The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining.” (Emphasis added.) And, Postman argued, when news is constructed as a form of entertainment, it inevitably loses its function for a healthy democracy. “I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information. I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?” Read the rest of this entry »
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[VIDEO] Can You Trust The Press?
Posted: October 3, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Breaking News, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: Asia, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, News media, Newspaper Association of America, Sharyl Attkisson, Social media, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Twitter | 1 Comment
Prize-winning former reporter for the New York Times, explains why Americans’ trust in the news media has fallen, and why that matters.
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[VIDEO] Harvard Faculty, Students, Alumni Condemn Social Club Blacklist
Posted: July 12, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Censorship, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, Blacklist, Chancellor (education), Facebook, First Amendment, Free speech, Harvard, Left Wing, propaganda, Social media | Leave a comment
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Stephen Hawking Debuts With a Big Bang on Chinese Social Media
Posted: April 13, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Asia, China, Mediasphere, Science & Technology, Think Tank | Tags: A Brief History of Time, China, Facebook, Instagram, ISO 216, Sina Weibo, Social media, Stephen Hawking, Twitter, United States | Leave a commentOne of the world’s most celebrated cosmologists stretched the fabric of China’s social-media universe with a simple greeting on Tuesday.
“Greetings to my friends in China! It has been too long!” celebrated black-hole theorizer Stephen Hawking wrote in an inaugural, bilingual post on Chinese social media platform Weibo. “I hope to tell you more about my life and work through this page and also to learn from you in reply.”
The response was, well, astronomical.
The account amassed more than a million followers in its first six hours. In that time, Mr. Hawking’s first message was…(read more)
Source: China Real Time Report – WSJ
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U.S. Doesn’t Know How Many Foreign Visitors Overstay Visas
Posted: January 1, 2016 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Global, Health and Social Issues, Terrorism, U.S. News | Tags: Background check, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Government agency, Illegal Immigrant, Imigration, Indiana, Migration, National Terrorism Advisory System, Self-defence in international law, September 11 attacks, Social media, United States, United States Department of Homeland Security | 1 CommentAfter two decades of failed attempts to track such visitors, some officials call the visa program a critical national security weakness.
WASHINGTON — Ron Nixon writes: The question from the congressman to the Obama administration official was straightforward enough: How many foreign visitors overstay their visas every year?
The reply was simple too, but not in a satisfying way. “We don’t know,” the official said.
The testy exchange during a recent congressional hearing between Representative Mark Meadows, Republican of North Carolina, and Alan Bersin, the assistant secretary for international affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, highlights what some law enforcement officials call a critical weakness in the United States foreign visa program.
The issue has taken on added urgency as part of a broader examination of immigration policy following the mass shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., that left 14 people dead and 22 wounded. Tashfeen Malik, one of the attackers, was granted entry to the United States under a K-1 visa, also known as a fiancé visa. Her husband, Syed Rizwan Farook, was an American-born citizen. Both died in a shootout with the police. While Ms. Malik did not overstay her visa, the attack added to fears that a terrorist could exploit gaps in the system.
Nearly 20 years ago, Congress passed a law requiring the federal government to develop a system to track people who overstayed their visas. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, an entry and exit tracking system was seen as a vital national security and counterterrorism tool, and the 9/11 Commission recommended that the Department of Homeland Security complete a system “as soon as possible.” Two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Satam al-Suqami and Nawaf al-Hazmi, had overstayed their visas.
Since then, the federal government has spent millions of dollars on the effort, yet officials can only roughly estimate the number of people in the United States illegally after overstaying visas.
Officials blame a lack of technology to conduct more advanced collection of data like iris scans, resistance from the airline and tourism industries because of cost, and questions about the usefulness of tracking people exiting the country as a counterterrorism measure.
[Read the full story here, at The New York Times]
Some experts also note that a sizable number of those who overstayed their visas are highly skilled workers who come under the H-1B program or are foreign students.
One widely cited statistic, from a 1997 report by the Immigration and Naturalization Service, puts the number of people who overstay their visas at 40 percent — which now would mean about 4.4 million of the estimated 11 million undocumented residents in the United States. Numerous lawmakers, including the Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, have used that figure when trying to describe the scope of the problem. But even that number has never been conclusively substantiated.
Federal agencies have not provided a new report to Congress on overstays since 1994, despite the congressional mandate. Read the rest of this entry »
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[VIDEO] Why Is Homeland Security Welcoming Terrorists into the US?
Posted: December 19, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Global, Mediasphere, Terrorism, War Room, White House | Tags: Jeh Johnson, Michael McCaul, National security, Obama administration, Social media, United States Department of Homeland Security, United States House of Representatives, United States Secretary of Homeland Security, United States visas | 1 Comment
Should the Department of Homeland Security respect online privacy, even if terrorists are behind it? How did these ISIS sympathizers involved in the San Bernardino massacre pass visa screenings? Should immigration check social media before granting visas?

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson, left, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 24, as they testify on Capitol Hill in Washington before the House Homeland Security Committee hearing regarding the growing problem of unaccompanied children crossing the border into the U.S. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)
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Trending: #NotJustAGun
Posted: December 9, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Guns and Gadgets, Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics, Self Defense, White House | Tags: #NotJustAGun, 2nd amendment, Barack Obama, Civil Rights, Democrats, Gun control, Gun Grabber, Gun rights, hashtag, Justice, Self-defense, Social media, Tryanny, Twitter, White House | 1 CommentRate this:
Damage Control at MSNBC: ‘We regret that we briefly showed images of photographs and identification cards that should not have been aired without review’
Posted: December 4, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Breaking News, Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, U.S. News | Tags: ABC World News, Brian Williams, CBS, CBS Evening News, CNN, Damage Control, Donald Trump, Fox News Channel, media, NBC, NBC Nightly News, news, Republican Party (United States), Social media | Leave a commentEddie Scarry reports: MSNBC said Friday that the cable network regrets having shown images on live TV of material that personally identified details about relatives of the San Bernardino shooters.
“We regret that we briefly showed images of photographs and identification cards that should not have been aired without review,” the network said in a statement given to the Washington Examiner….
Josh Feldman reports:
Right after MSNBC, CNN, and other networks got news crews inside the home of the San Bernardino attackers, two CNN analysts absolutely tore into law enforcement for allowing it to happen.
MSNBC and CNN toured through the entire place, and MSNBC ended up broadcasting some personal details about the attackers that weren’t blurred out on live TV.
CNN legal analyst Paul Callan reacted to the media being allowed in by saying, “I think this indicates a shocking degree of negligence and, really, recklessness by law enforcement authorities here.” He said there could have easily been another suspect, and if there is, the crime scene is “contaminated” now.
CNN law enforcement analyst Jonathan Gilliam called this “the biggest visible screw-up in investigative history that I think has ever occurred.”…(read more)
NBC, the parent network of MSNBC, along with other media outlets, gained access to the home of the married couple who shot up a health center in San Bernardino this week.
Oh yuck, my MSNBC tweet attracted right wingers. No, go away! MSNBC is still 100,000,000 times better than Fox.
— Brandon Marcus (@MrBrandonMarcus) December 4, 2015
While rummaging on live TV throughout the house, NBC reporter Kerry Sanders and his cameraman showed images that appeared to reveal the identity of people related to the shooters, including the photo of a young child. The shooters, who were killed in a stand off with police, were the parents of a six-month-old girl.
John Nolte reports:
One of the most bizarre and possibly irresponsible and craven scenes in media history just unfurled on MSNBC and CNN as reporters from both networks (and a handful of others), during a live broadcast, toured the apartment of the San Bernardino Islamic terrorists. While a MSNBC reporter rummaged through the deceased terrorists’ closets and boxes and photo albums, Andrea Mitchell reassured viewers that the disturbing scene was okay. “The landlord told us authorities were done with the crime scene,” she said. Read the rest of this entry »
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USA Opens Can of Whoop-Hashtag on ISIS
Posted: November 24, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Comics, Mediasphere, Terrorism, War Room, White House | Tags: Air Force, Cartoon, hashtag, ISIS, Islamic extremism, Islamism, Jihadism, Paris Attacks, Ramirez, Social media, Twitter, Twitter Attack | Leave a commentRate this:
Captured Fugitive: Mexican Female Drug Lord Ana Marie Hernandez ‘La Muneca’ Bribed Feds
Posted: October 27, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption | Tags: Ana Marie Hernandez, Bribery, Drug lord, Drug Trafficking, EL PASO, La Muneca, Mexico, Miguel Aleman, Social media, Texas, U.S. Marshals Service | 1 CommentMCALLEN, Texas — Ildefonso Ortiz reports: Mexican authorities arrested a top female drug lord wanted in the United States for bribing federal officers. The female drug trafficker. known for her glamorous photographs on social media, was a common sight in this border city and in the Mexican cities of Reynosa and Miguel Aleman.
Mexico’s Attorney General’s Office (PGR) announced this week the arrest of 38-year-old Ana Marie Hernandez better known as “La Muneca” at the request of the Interpol and the U.S. Marshals Service, information provided to Breitbart Texas revealed.
Hernandez was recently caught after a lengthy series of surveillance operation in order to track her down, according to the PGR, she is currently in a Mexican prison where she will undergo and extradition process.Court records obtained by Breitbart Texas reveal that Hernandez had been on the run for a few years after she pleaded
guilty to drug conspiracy charges and bribery in El Paso….(read more)
Source: Breitbart.com
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Narcissus and the iPad
Posted: October 19, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Art & Culture, Entertainment, Humor | Tags: Classical, Instagram, iPad, iPhone, Millennial, Narcissism, Narcissus, Painting, Photography, Renaissance, Selfie, Social media | 2 CommentsRate this:
[VIDEO] The Kelly File: Imagine That
Posted: October 17, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Breaking News, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: African American, Charles Koch, Donald Trump, Fox News Channel, Gateway Pundit, Megyn Kelly, Pundit Planet, punditfromanotherplanet, Republican Party (United States), Social media, Trump, Twitter | Leave a commentRead this:
And watch this:
Imagine watching a “Kelly File” interview, with a laptop, typing a comment in Twitter, then moments later, hearing Megyn Kelly say those exact words on Live TV.
It was a highlight of our week here at Pundit Planet.
[Final segment of transcript, Charles Koch interview, Oct 15, 2015]
KOCH: Yes.
KELLY: Charles Koch, thank you.
KOCH: Well, thank you, Megyn. I appreciate it.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KELLY: Getting lots of feedback online with Charles Koch, like this one, quote, “Such a disappointing lack of evilness! Imagine that.”
Thanks for watching. This is “The Kelly File.”
Do the Koch brothers have critics with legitimate complaints? Interests groups that object to the various causes the Koch brothers, with their considerable resources, advocate? Of course they do. But perhaps because they don’t seek the limelight, they’re referred to as “shadowy figures”, and attacked relentlessly from the highest public offices in the United States, including the Senate floor, and the Presidency itself.
Private citizens, using their wealth, and right to free speech, to advocate causes they believe in (causes that up until recently, were embraced as mainstream values in America) are routinely smeared by opponents, and treated as the most evil, corrosive influence in modern politics. Do the Kochs deserve to be characterized by their opponents as pure Evil? The idea is laughable.
The full transcript of the show is here.
The full Kelly File video from October 15, 2015 is online here. Individual segments featuring the interview with Charles Koch appeared on pundit planet a few days ago, and can be seen here, and here.
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Proof That Millennials Are Stupid
Posted: October 13, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Education, Entertainment, Mediasphere, Politics, U.S. News | Tags: 24-hour news cycle, Barack Obama, Election, literacy, Low-information voters, media, Millennials, Narcissism, news, Social media, Twitter, Washington Post | Leave a commentRate this:
[PHOTO] Statement of the Day
Posted: October 13, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere, Politics, White House | Tags: Democratic Party, Hillary Clinton, Jail, media, news, Photography, Prison, scandal, Social media, Socialism, T-Shirt | 1 CommentRate this:
Still-Unnamed Oregon Gunman Singled Out Christian Students, Shot Them in the Head
Posted: October 1, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice, Religion, White House | Tags: American Red Cross, Barack Obama, Beijing, China, Christianity, Christians, Community college, Emergency management, International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, Macomb County, Mass murder, Michigan, murder, Persecution, Red Cross Society of China, Social media | 2 CommentsChris Perez reports: The gunman who opened fire at an Oregon community college was forcing people to stand up and state their religion before he began blasting away at them, survivors said Thursday.
“The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were Christian. If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs.”
A woman who claimed to have a grandmother inside a writing class in Snyder Hall, where a portion the massacre unfolded, described the scene in a tweet.
“The shooter was lining people up and asking if they were Christian,” she wrote. “If they said yes, then they were shot in the head. If they said no, or didn’t answer, they were shot in the legs. My grandma just got to my house, and she was in the room. She wasn’t shot, but she is very upset.
The Twitter user then recalled how her grandmother attempted to save the life of one of her close classmates.
Two women wait outside Umpqua Community College campus after a shooting.Photo: AP
“She tried to perform CPR on her friend, but it was too late,” the woman said. “I hope nothing like this ever happens again.”
Kortney Moore, an 18-year-old student at Umpqua Community College who was also in the room, told Oregon’s News Review that the shooter was indeed on the hunt for Christians.
Moments after hearing a bullet come flying through a window, she said the 20-year-old shooter made his way inside and targeted their teacher, pumping a single round into their head. Read the rest of this entry »
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CRACKDOWN: China’s Censors Scramble to Contain Online Fallout After Tianjin Blast
Posted: August 14, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Mediasphere | Tags: Agence France-Presse, Alexander Nevsky, AsiaNews, Eva DouEva-Dou, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Social media, Tianjin warehouse explosion, Volga Federal District, Weibo, Yangtze River, Yunnan | Leave a commentCensorship rates on Weibo up tenfold after the Tianjin blast
Eva Dou reports: The Tianjin warehouse explosion has horrified and gripped China’s netizens, with the topic racking up more views on social network Weibo than the country’s total population of nearly 1.4 billion.
It’s also sent the country’s Internet censors scrambling to make sure online discussion stays within approved confines.
Censorship rates on Weibo were up tenfold after the Tianjin blast compared to earlier in the month, said King-wa Fu, an associate professor at the University of Hong Kong’s journalism school who built censorship tracker Weiboscope.
The topic “Tianjin Tanggu Explosion” has more pageviews on Weibo than the number of people in China. 1.68 bln vs 1.36 bln
— Eva Dou (@evadou) August 14, 2015
Censorship of traditional and social media is common in China after disasters and has actually been looser this time than in some other recent tragedies. Whereas China’s local newspapers turned into clones after the capsizing of a ship on the Yangtze River in June, Chinese media reports on the explosion in Tianjin’s Tanggu district have been more varied. Discussion of the topic has also been widespread on social media.
[Read more here, at China Real Time Report – WSJ]
But some online comments go too far, such as those that criticize the government’s response or discuss the chemicals inside the warehouse, which officials say they have not yet been able to identify. Those types of postings have been scrubbed, according to Weiboscope and another censorship-tracking site, Free Weibo. Read the rest of this entry »
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Emojigate Threatens Clinton Campaign
Posted: August 12, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Entertainment, Humor, Mediasphere, Politics, The Butcher's Notebook | Tags: Clinton Foundation, DOJ, Email server, Emoji, Hillary Clinton, media, Millennial, news, Pantsuit Report, Parody, Personal Server, satire, Social media, Twitter | Leave a commentHillary Clinton’s Student Debt Emoji Tweet Backfires
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China’s Latest Crackdown: Homemade Porn
Posted: August 11, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Asia, Censorship, China, Mediasphere | Tags: Beijing, China, Chinese Internet, Communism, Fujian, Fuzhou, Mainland China, Pingyang County, Pornography, Social media, The Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications, Uniqlo, viral, Xinhua News Agency, Zhejiang | Leave a commentThe Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications mentioned the videos in its notice and declared that they are ‘having an extremely bad impact on society’.
Felicia Sonmez reports: Chinese authorities are striking back after a string of high-profile incidents involving explicit homemade videos, according to a notice by the country’s antipornography office.
“So-called ‘indecent videos’ are harming social virtue, promoting pornography, severely disturbing order on the Internet and trampling on the moral and legal bottom line,” reads the notice, which was posted Thursday on the website of China’s National Office Against Pornographic and Illegal Publications.
Last month, a clip of a couple having sex in a Uniqlo dressing room went viral on the Chinese Internet, in an episode that inspired scores of online parodies and prompted thousands of couples to take selfies outside of the downtown Beijing store where the incident took place. Four people have been detained in connection with the video.
[Read the full story here, at WSJ – Follow Felicia on Twitter @feliciasonmez]
Since the Uniqlo incident, several other risqué videos have found their way to the Chinese public eye. In one case, a clip made by several people in Shengzhou in coastal Zhejiang province after a night out at a karaoke parlor went viral online late last month. Read the rest of this entry »
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Half-Naked Foreigners Controlled by Police After Causing Sensation
Posted: July 23, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Mediasphere | Tags: Beijing, Beijing Youth Daily, China, Internet, Internet in China, Sanlitun, Sina Weibo, Social media, Uniqlo | Leave a commentWhile some people joked about the defeat of the mighty Spartans, others took the incident seriously, citing safety issues. They were hired to promote salad by a food store.
A group of half-naked foreigners dressed as Spartan warriors made a mighty debut in Beijing on Wednesday, but soon lost their first battle against the police.
They showed up in some of the busiest areas in east Beijing around the afternoon, including Guomao and Sanlitun, drawing large crowds of admirers taking snaps.
They were hired to promote salad by a food store, according to Beijing Youth Daily.
However the fun ended when police arrived at the scene. Officers asked them to leave after the half-naked men started to cause “disorder,” according to Beijing Youth Daily. The report said they were forcibly detained after that request was ignored.
There is no information yet on whether those detained have been released or what charges the models might face. But according to a statement released by the food store on Thursday, they have already “cleared the air” with the police.
Photos of the scene soon went viral on Chinese social platforms. While some people joked about the defeat of the mighty Spartans, others took the incident seriously, citing safety issues. Read the rest of this entry »
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#Unfollowed: King George III
Posted: July 4, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Comics, History, Humor | Tags: 1700s, America, Declaration of Independence, England, George III of the United Kingdom, Independence Day, John Adams, July 4th, King George, Revolutionary war, Social media, Thomas Jefferson, United States | 1 CommentKing George III (1738-1820), Reigned 1760-1820
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Seen on Facebook: Justice Thomas & George Taki
Posted: July 3, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Humor, Law & Justice, Mediasphere, Politics | Tags: comedy, Facebook, George Taki, Internment Camp, Japanese Internment, Justice Thomas, Political Satire, Racism, satire, SCOTUS, Social media, Supreme Court, Twitter | 1 CommentRate this:
‘Correct’ Sex is Mandatory: California’s Sexual Re-Education Camps are Coming Soon
Posted: June 4, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Education, Health and Social Issues, Law & Justice | Tags: California, California State Senate, Consent (criminal law), Democratic Party (United States), Grindr, Health Department, Hiv And Aids, Human sexual activity, Jerry Brown, Jerry Hill (politician), Joplin High School, Online dating service, Sexual assault, Sexual intercourse, Sexually transmitted disease, Social media | Leave a commentAshe Schow writes: Not content to redefine consent to mean asking permission before every step of the sexual process, California is now on the path to teaching high school students the proper way to have sex — because human nature is now wrong.
“The ‘yes means yes’ law effectively defines every sexual encounter as rape unless you follow the law’s specific requirements — or unless neither party turns the other in to police.”
To recap: Last year California Gov. Jerry Brown signed a law aiming to redefine consent as an “affirmative, conscious, and voluntary agreement,” that is “ongoing throughout a sexual activity and can be revoked at any time.” Saying “no” to unwanted sexual contact was no longer necessary, as a “lack of protest or resistance does not mean consent, nor does silence mean consent.” Also, previous sexual history “should never by itself be assumed to be an indicator of consent.” Alcohol also negates consent, since the line between “intoxicated” and “incapacitated” can be decided after the fact by an accuser.
“Now de Leon is moving on to round two: Teaching high school students the “correct” way to have sex. Human nature is no longer the correct way. De Leon knows the correct way — and it involves a lot of questions.”
This means that every time two college students have sex they have to act like they’ve never met before and ask for approval for everything from the first kiss and touch through intercourse. I tried multiple times to ask the sponsor of the California bill, State Sen. Kevin de Leon, how someone could prove they obtained consent under his law, but only received press releases and quoted paragraphs from the bill. When asked to clarify how one would prove they had obtained consent, his spokeswoman didn’t respond. Read the rest of this entry »
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Official NSA Telephone Manners Guide
Posted: May 7, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Entertainment, Humor, Law & Justice, The Butcher's Notebook, War Room | Tags: CIA, Data Collection, Edward Snowden, FBI, NSA, satire, Social media, Surveillance, Telephone, vintage, Wiretapping | Leave a commentRate this:
MIT Technology Review: Some Companies See Virtual and Augmented Reality as a Way to Make Money from a New Type of Ad
Posted: March 22, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Mediasphere, Science & Technology | Tags: Advertising, Augmented Reality, Bendik Kaltenborn, Biotechnology, design, Illustration, MIT, Social media, typography, Virtual reality | Leave a comment(Read the full story / Illustration by Bendik Kaltenborn)
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Jon Gabriel: ‘I suppose I could categorize my friends by ethnicity, but the thought makes my skin crawl. They’re friends, not racial statistics’
Posted: March 21, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Food & Drink, Health and Social Issues, Politics, Think Tank | Tags: #RaceTogether, Coffee, Progressivism, Social media, Starbucks, Target Corporation, Your Race Relations Reality Check | Leave a commentThe Broader Problem with Starbucks’ Racialism
Jon Gabriel writes: In an effort to solve America’s race issues once and for all, Starbucks is offering a discussion guide named “Your Race Relations Reality Check.” The document is featured to the right. This is not a Photoshop. This is real. One of the biggest companies on Earth thought this was A Good Idea.
“I’ve grown accustomed to the hand-wringing of rich white liberals, the smug preachiness of corporations, and the intrusion of politics into everyday life. But this ‘Reality Check’ revealed something deeper.”
Starbucks asks how many of your friends are of a different race and how that compares to your parents’ and kids’ racial quotas. They want to know the racial makeup of your neighborhood, workplace and Facebook stream. Have you let people of other races into your home? Have you entered theirs? And why didn’t you keep up with that childhood friend of a different race?
“I can’t even answer the Starbucks questionnaire. I have no idea the races of my parents’ or kids’ friends and even if I did, why would it matter? I suppose I could categorize my friends by ethnicity, but the thought makes my skin crawl. They’re friends, not racial statistics.”
For the past few days, I’ve tried to identify what most bugs me about this Starbucks stunt. I’ve grown accustomed to the hand-wringing of rich white liberals, the smug preachiness of corporations, and the intrusion of politics into everyday life. But this “Reality Check” revealed something deeper.
[Read the full text here, at Ricochet]
Let me veer onto a tangent; I’ll get back to the point in a minute. Starting with my first job out of college, I’ve had to mingle at trade shows, launch parties and corporate events where I was ordered to chat up complete strangers. I’m an introvert, so this was almost a fate worse than death. I’m some punk kid and they’re middle-aged bankers and software developers — what on earth am I supposed to talk about?
“This reveals one of my fundamental issues with the progressive mindset: they are obsessed with dividing Americans into discrete, controllable categories.”
So I came up with a conversation hack to sidestep my inner wallflower. I needed them to tell me something — anything — we might have in common. It would go like this:
“Where is your office located?”
“Nebraska.”
“So, what’s going on with those Huskers? Could be an interesting year…”
Then I’d shut up and nod for 10 minutes.
In that first job, most of the guests were male and often from rural areas, so I would just mention the name of the nearest college and let them educate me on the sports there. Read the rest of this entry »
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‘Let’s Give ISIS the Benefit of the Doubt’
Posted: March 16, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Art & Culture, Mediasphere, Politics, Religion, War Room | Tags: Anti-Christian sentiment, Barack Obama, BBC, Greek History, Guardian Media Group, Iraq, ISIS, Islamic state, Islamism, Jihadism, Jonah Goldberg, MI5, Public Broadcasting, Social media, Stewart Lee, The Guardian | 1 Comment“The suicide of the west in one opening sentence. Amazing.”
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[VIDEO] From His Bathroom, Shirtless ‘Minecraft’ Game Critic Offers Important Commentary About #Ferguson Cop Shooting
Posted: March 12, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Crime & Corruption, Mediasphere | Tags: Ferguson, media, Minecraft, news, Player versus player, Police officers, Shooting, Social media, video, Violence | 1 Comment‘My name is Stephen Henry Richards, and I’m here to inform you that two police officers have been shot, in Ferguson Missouri, due to the violent video game named ‘Minecraft’. Minecraft is teaching young youth violence by shooting, stabbing, PVP, that’s player versus player, and now it’s getting out on the streets.”
Stephen Henry Richards continues,
“These unfortune-nate incidences, where people who are trying to protect us and uphold the law are being shot, by children, and young adults, because they’re coming up to them unsuspected, unaware, and now we have this shooting of two police officers in this United States town of Ferguson Missouri.”
Stephen concludes with an invitation to subscribe to his channel.
“I’m Stephen Henry Richards, and I’ll be back soon to talk about this unfortunate incident, please give me thumbs up to the video, not to what happened, please subscribe, and let me know what you want me to talk about.”
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Study: China is Growing Less and Less Enamored with Social Media
Posted: February 5, 2015 | Author: Pundit Planet | Filed under: Asia, China, Global | Tags: Hong Kong, media, news, Singapore, Social media, Twitter, Wall Street Journal | 1 CommentStudy: China is growing less and less enamored with social media. http://t.co/gvgiVTjhH3 pic.twitter.com/05tVnpyYpM
— WSJ Asia (@WSJAsia) February 6, 2015