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arcticdementor · 5 years

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There's a frustrating game that the left plays with conservatives. It's an Alinksy tactic called, "Make them live up to their values." Now, living up to one's values isn't a bad thing, but setting high standards ultimately means that you'll sometimes fall short.

The left loves to exploit these shortcomings--every Christian who falls short of perfection is a hypocrite; the social values candidate you voted for just got arrested for drunk driving. Haha, everything you believe and advocate is now discredited.

They got away with it for years, waving away the lies, hypocrisy, indiscretions, and criminal behavior from their own politicians while beating the right mercilessly with the missteps of their own. It's effective because the right always maintains a baseline of integrity not displayed by the left, as evidenced by comparing what happens to Republican politicians when they're caught in criminal behavior with what happens to Democrats. Republican voters and politicians reluctantly dump the malefactor while Democrats defend their guy and launch an offensive against those who demand accountability.

…

This same indifference that helped Trump carry the election has continued into the early days of his administration. With it comes a refreshingly freeing state of mind. Personally, I don't feel in any way responsible for Trump, nor do I feel compelled to defend him against attack.

Why? Because I voted for retribution.

"He's think-skinned and petty!" shrieks the left. "He takes everything personally!"

Good, I say. I want him to take attacks personally and deal out payback. I know I won't be the target, you will be.

"He's unpresidential! He'll destroy the integrity of the office!"

No, that's already happened. Remember, you elected a shit-talking jackass who takes selfies at state funerals when he's not giving stealth middle fingers to his opponents during debates. There is no dignity of the office, not after Clinton and Obama.

"He's a narcissist! He's got totalitarian impulses!"

Yes, he's basically a mirror version of Obama. Except now, he'll be working for what I want. The end justifies the means. You taught me that.

"A sitting president going after the media. OMG!"

Oh, like Obama trashing Rush Limbaugh and Fox News? How about when he sent his lackeys to berate news reporters for failure to flatter him at all times. Oh, and NSA spying on the press. That was pretty great, too.

…

And this is where everything funnels down to the very nexus of my change in attitude from "Do unto others" to "I will do unto you what you do unto me."

It's two words: Memories Pizza.

It was that moment that everything changed for me--not only the harassment, fake Yelp reviews and the death threats that forced them to temporarily close up shop--oh, that was bad enough, but the most powerful man on Earth bullying a couple of small town pizza owners from Indiana simply for expressing an opinion on a hypothetical asked of them by a reporter with a malicious agenda? That was when I snapped.

…

It's this that sent me to a place from which I'll never return. I literally don't care what Donald Trump does because nothing he can do is worse than what they've already done.

Donald Trump isn't the bully; he only insults and abuses people in power who have attacked him. They're the fucking bullies. The left, with their smears, their witch hunts, their slanders, their insults, their riots, their violence, and their weaponizing of the federal bureaucracy.

There aren't any rules anymore because the left only applies them one way. And in doing so, they've left what once was a civil compact between the two parties in smoldering ruins.

I have no personal investment in Donald Trump. He is a tool to punish the left and roll back their ill-gotten gains, no more and no less. If he succeeds even partially in those two things, then I'll consider his election a win.

Further, I no longer have any investment in any particular political values, save one: The rules created by the left will be applied to the left as equally and punitively as they have applied them to the right. And when they beg for mercy, I'll begin to reconsider. Or maybe not. Because fuck these people.

This new philosophy has freed me of more emotional angst that I can describe. Literally nothing the left says or does matters to me anymore. I don't care about their tantrums. I don't care about their accusations. I don't care if they say Trump is lying. I don't care if Trump is lying.

They created this Frankenstein. They own it. I am free of all obligation. I will never play defense again. I will attack, attack, attack, attack using their own tactics against them until they learn their lesson.

What I will not do is let them play my values against me ever again. I don't need to prove that I'm better than them. I already know it.

#ace of spades #read the whole thing #tit-for-tat

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endenogatai · 4 years

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Sentinel loads up with $1.35M in the deepfake detection arms race

Estonia-based Sentinel, which is developing a detection platform for identifying synthesized media (aka deepfakes), has closed a $1.35 million seed round from some seasoned angle investors — including Jaan Tallinn (Skype), Taavet Hinrikus (Transferwise), Ragnar Sass & Martin Henk (Pipedrive) — and Baltics early stage VC firm, United Angels VC.

The challenge of building tools to detect deepfakes has been likened to an arms race — most recently by tech giant Microsoft, which earlier this month launched a detector tool in the hopes of helping pick up disinformation aimed at November’s US election. “The fact that [deepfakes are] generated by AI that can continue to learn makes it inevitable that they will beat conventional detection technology,” it warned, before suggesting there’s still short term value in trying to debunk malicious fakes with “advanced detection technologies”.

Sentinel co-founder and CEO, Johannes Tammekänd, agrees on the arms race point — which is why its approach to this ‘goal-post-shifting’ problem entails offering multiple layers of defence, following a cyber security-style template. He says rival tools — mentioning Microsoft’s detector and another rival, Deeptrace, aka Sensity — are, by contrast, only relying on “one fancy neural network that tries to detect defects”, as he puts it.

“Our approach is we think it’s impossible to detect all deepfakes with only one detection method,” he tells TechCrunch. “We have multiple layers of defence that if one layer gets breached then there’s a high probability that the adversary will get detected in the next layer.”

Tammekänd says Sentinel’s platform offers four layers of deepfake defence at this stage: An initial layer based on hashing known examples of in-the-wild deepfakes to check against (and which he says is scalable to “social media platform” level); a second layer comprised of a machine learning model that parses metadata for manipulation; a third that checks for audio changes, looking for synthesized voices etc; and lastly a technology that analyzes faces “frame by frame” to look for signs of visual manipulation.

“We take input from all of those detection layers and then we finalize the output together [as an overall score] to have the highest degree of certainty,” he says.

“We already reached the point where somebody can’t say with 100% certainty if a video is a deepfake or not. Unless the video is somehow ‘cryptographically’ verifiable… or unless somebody has the original video from multiple angles and so forth,” he adds.

Tammekänd also emphasizes the importance of data in the deepfake arms race — over and above any specific technique. Sentinel’s boast on this front is that it’s amassed the “largest” database of in-the-wild deepfakes to train its algorithms on.

It has an in-house verification team working on data acquisition by applying its own detection system to suspect media, with three human verification specialists who “all have to agree” in order for it to verify the most sophisticated organic deepfakes.

“Every day we’re downloading deepfakes from all the major social platforms — YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, then there’s Asian ones, Russian ones, also porn sites as well,” he says.

“If you train a deepfake model based on let’s say Facebook data-sets then it doesn’t really generalize — it can detect deepfakes like itself but it doesn’t generalize well with deepfakes in the wild. So that’s why the detection is really 80% the data engine.”

Not that Sentinel can always be sure. Tammekänd gives the example of a short video clip released by Chinese state media of a poet who it was thought has been killed by the military — in which he appeared to say he was alive and well and told people not to worry.

“Although our algorithms show that, with a very high degree of certainty, it is not manipulated — and most likely the person was just brainwashed — we can’t say with 100% certainty that the video is not a deepfake,” he says.

Sentinel’s founders, who are ex NATO, Monese and the UK Royal Navy, actually started working on a very different startup idea back in 2018 — called Sidekik — building a Black Mirror-esque tech which ingested comms data to create a ‘digital clone’ of a person in the form of a tonally similar chatbot (or audiobot).

The idea was that people could use this virtual double to hand off basic admin-style tasks. But Tammekänd says they became concerned about the potential for misuse — hence pivoting to deepfake detection.

They’re targeting their technology at governments, international media outlets and defence agencies — with early clients, after the launch of their subscription service in Q2 this year, including the European Union External Action Service and the Estonian Government.

Their stated aim is to help to protect democracies from disinformation campaigns and other malicious information ops. So that means they’re being very careful about who gets access to their tech. “We have a very heavy vetting process,” he notes. “For example we work only with NATO allies.”

“We have had requests from Saudi Arabia and China but obviously that is a no-go from our side,” Tammekänd adds.

A recent study the startup conducted suggests exponential growth of deepfakes in the wild (i.e. found anywhere online) — with more than 145,000 examples identified so far in 2020, indicating a ninefold year-on-year growth.

Tools to create deepfakes are certainly getting more accessible. And while plenty are, at face value, designed to offer harmless fun/entertainment — such as the likes of selfie-shifting app Reface — it’s clear that without thoughtful controls (including deepfake detection systems) the synthesized content they enable could be misappropriated to manipulate unsuspecting viewers.

Scaling up deepfake detection technology to the level of media swapping going on on social media platforms today is one major challenge Tammekänd mentions.

“Facebook or Google could scale up [their own deepfake detection] but it would cost so much today that they would have to put in a lot of resources and their revenue would obviously fall drastically — so it’s fundamentally a triple standard; what are the business incentives?” he suggests.

There is also the risk posed by very sophisticated, very well funded adversaries — creating what he describes as “deepfake zero day” targeted attacks (perhaps state actors, presumably pursuing a very high value target).

“Fundamentally it is the same thing in cyber security,” he says. “Basically you can mitigate [the vast majority] of the deepfakes if the business incentives are right. You can do that. But there will always be those deepfakes which can be developed as zero days by sophisticated adversaries. And nobody today has a very good method or let’s say approach of how to detect those.

“The only known method is the layered defence — and hope that one of those defence layers will pick it up.”

Sentinel co-founders, Kaspar Peterson (left) & Johannes Tammekänd (right). Photo Credit: Sentinel

It’s certainly getting cheaper and easier for any Internet user to make and distribute plausible fakes. And as the risks posed by deepfakes rise up political and corporate agendas — the European Union is readying a Democracy Action Plan to respond to disinformation threats, for example — Sentinel is positioning itself to sell not only deekfake detection but bespoke consultancy services, powered by learnings extracted from its deepfake data-set.

“We have a whole product — meaning we just don’t offer a ‘black box’ but also provide prediction explainability, training data statistics in order to mitigate bias, matching against already known deepfakes and threat modelling for our clients through consulting,” the startup tells us. “Those key factors have made us the choice of clients so far.”

Asked what he sees as the biggest risks that deepfakes pose to Western society, Tammekänd says, in the short term, the major worry is election interference.

“One probability is that during the election — or a day or two days before — imagine Joe Biden saying ‘I have a cancer, don’t vote for me’. That video goes viral,” he suggests, sketching one near term risk.

“The technology’s already there,” he adds noting that he had a recent call with a data scientist from one of the consumer deepfake apps who told him they’d been contacted by different security organizations concerned about just such a risk.

“From a technical perspective it could definitely be pulled off… and once it goes viral for people seeing is believing,” he adds. “If you look at the ‘cheap fakes’ that have already had a massive impact, a deepfake doesn’t have to be perfect, actually, it just has to be believable in a good context — so there’s a large number of voters who can fall for that.”

Longer term, he argues the risk is really massive: People could lose trust in digital media, period.

“It’s not only about videos, it can be images, it can be voice. And actually we’re already seeing the convergence of them,” he says. “So what you can actually simulate are full events… that I could watch on social media and all the different channels.

“So we will only trust digital media that is verified, basically — that has some method of verification behind that.”

Another even more dystopian AI -warped future is that people will no longer care what’s real or not online — they’ll just believe whatever manipulated media panders to their existing prejudices. (And given how many people have fallen down bizarre conspiracy rabbit holes seeded by a few textual suggestions posted online, that seems all too possible.)

“Eventually people don’t care. Which is a very risky premise,” he suggests. “There’s a lot of talk about where are the ‘nuclear bombs’ of deepfakes? Let’s say it’s just a matter of time when a deepfake of a politician comes out that will do massive damage but… I don’t think that’s the biggest systematic risk here.

“The biggest systematic risk is, if you look from the perspective of history, what has happened is information production has become cheaper and easier and sharing has become quicker. So everything from Gutenberg’s printing press, TV, radio, social media, Internet. What’s happening now is the information that we consume on the Internet doesn’t have to be produced by another human — and thanks to algorithms you can on a binary time-scale do it on a mass scale and in a hyper-personalized way. So that’s the biggest systematic risk. We will not fundamentally understand what is reality anymore online. What is human and what is not human.”

The potential consequences of such a scenario are myriad — from social division on steroids; so even more confusion and chaos engendering rising anarchy and violent individualism to, perhaps, a mass switching off, if large swathes of the mainstream simply decide to stop listening to the Internet because so much online contents is nonsense.

From there things could even go full circle — back to people “reading more trusted sources again”, as Tammekänd suggests. But with so much at shapeshifting stake, one thing looks like a safe bet: Smart, data-driven tools that help people navigate an ever more chameleonic and questionable media landscape will be in demand.

TechCrunch’s Steve O’Hear contributed to this report

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numberonesharkflower-blog · 5 years

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Iphone x

On the front of the phone, a 7-megapixel TrueDepth camera has an f/2.2 aperture,[49] and features face detection and HDR. It can capture 1080p video at 30 frames per second, 720p video at 240 frames per second,[48] and exclusively allows for the use of Animoji; animated emojis placed on top of the user's face that intelligently react to the user's facial expressions.[52][53]

iPhone X also supports Qi-standard wireless charging.[30] In tests conducted by MacRumors, the iPhone X's charging speed varies significantly depending on what types of cables, powerbanks, adapters, or wireless chargers are used.[54]

SoftwareSee also:

iOS version history

iOS 11

, and

iOS 12

Due to its different screen layout, iOS developers are required to update their apps to make full use of the additional screen real estate. Such changes include rounded corners, sensor "notch" at the top of the screen, and an indicator area at the bottom for accessing the home screen. Apple published a "Human Interface Guidelines" document to explain areas of focus, and discouraged developers from attempting to mask or call special attention to any of the new changes. Additionally, text within the app needs to be configured to properly reference Face ID rather than Touch ID where the authentication technology is used on iPhone X.[55] In anticipation of the release of the phone, most major apps were quickly updated to support the new changes brought by iPhone X,[56] though the required changes did cause delayed app updates for some major apps.[57][58][59]

The traditional home button, found on all previous devices in the iPhone lineup, has been removed entirely, replaced by touch-based gestures. To wake up the device, users can tap the display or use the side button; to access the home screen, users must swipe up from the bottom of the display; and to access the multitasking window, users must swipe up similarly to the method of accessing the home screen, but stop while the finger is in the middle of the screen, causing an app carousel to appear.[60][61]

Reception

General reviews

iPhone X's rear camera received an overall rating of 97 from DxOMark, a camera testing company, short of the highest score of 99, awarded to Samsung's Galaxy S9+ smartphone. Google's Pixel 2 received a rating of 98.[62][63] Consumer Reports, a non-profit, independent organization aiming to write impartial reviews of consumer products, ranked iPhone X below iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, as well as below Samsung's Galaxy S8, S8+ and Note 8, due to less durability and shorter battery life, although it praised the X's camera as "the highest-rated smartphone camera" it had ever tested.[64][65]

Nilay Patel of The Verge praised the display, calling it "polished and tight and clean" and "bright and colorful". He criticized the repeated lack of a headphone jack, the device's fragility despite Apple's claims of durability, and the sensor notch, calling it "ugly". Patel highlighted the fact that apps required updates to fit the new screen, writing that not all popular apps had received updates by the time of the review, resulting in some apps with "huge black borders" resembling iPhone 8. He especially criticized the positioning of the sensor notch while holding the phone in landscape mode, causing the notch to go "from being a somewhat forgettable element in the top status bar to a giant interruption on the side of the screen". The cameras were given positive feedback for maintaining detail in low-light. Patel particularly praised Animoji, calling it "probably the single best feature on the iPhone X", writing that "they just work, and they work incredibly well". Finally, he wrote that Face ID was the whole foundation of iPhone X, and stated that it "generally works great", though acknowledging the occasional misstep, in which users must "actively move the phone closer to your face to compensate". He specifically criticized the limited range of Face ID, with authentication only working when holding the phone 25–50 centimeters away from the face.[66]

Chris Velazco of Engadget also praised the display, writing that, in his experience, the sensor "notch" goes from being "weird at first" to not being noticeable due to action in videos usually happening in the center. The build quality was given particular acclaim, being called "a beautifully made device" with a construction that "seamlessly" connects the front and back glass with the stainless-steel frame. Velazco noted that the new gesture-based interaction takes time getting used to, particularly the Control Center being moved from the bottom to the top right of the display. The camera, processor performance, and battery life were also given positive thoughts.[67]

In a heavily negative review, Dennis Green of Business Insider significantly criticized the impossible one-handed use of iPhone X, writing that the new gestures to use the phone, such as swiping from the top down to access notifications and the Control Center, did not work when using the phone with only one hand due to not being able to reach the top.[68] His review sparked outrage among Twitter users, many of whom used condescending tones, which Green reasoned as "I don't know whether the anger was directed toward me out of loyalty to Apple or to justify their own choice to spend $1,000 on a phone. It was obvious that much of the criticism came from people who had never used the phone".[69]

Macworld's Roman Loyola praised the Face ID authentication system, writing that the setup process was "easy" and that its system integration was "more seamless" than the Touch ID fingerprint authentication of the past. That said, Loyola did note the "half-second" slower unlocking time than Touch ID as well as needing to look directly at the screen, making it impossible to unlock with the phone next to the user on a desk.[70]

Face ID security and privacy concerns

Face ID has raised concerns regarding the possibility of law enforcement accessing an individual's phone by pointing the device at the user's face.[71] United States Senator Al Franken asked Apple to provide more information on the security and privacy of Face ID a day after the announcement,[72] with Apple responding by highlighting the recent publication of a security white paper and knowledge base detailing answers.[73][74]

Inconsistent results have been shown when testing Face ID on identical twins, with some tests showing the system managing to separate the two,[75] while other tests have failed.[76]

However, despite Apple's promise of increased security of Face ID compared to the Touch ID fingerprint authentication system,[77] there have been multiple media reports indicating otherwise. The Verge noted that courts in the United States have granted different Fifth Amendment rights in the United States Constitution to biometric unlocking systems as opposed to keycodes. Keycodes are considered "testimonial" evidence based on the contents of users' thoughts, whereas fingerprints are considered physical evidence, with some suspects having been ordered to unlock their phones via fingerprint.[78] Many attempts to break through Face ID with sophisticated masks have been attempted, though most have failed.[79] A week after iPhone X was released, Vietnamese security firm Bkav announced in a blog post that it had successfully created a $150 mask that tricked Face ID, though WIRED noted that Bkav's technique was more of a "proof-of-concept" rather than active exploitation risk, with the technique requiring a detailed measurement or digital scan of the iPhone owner's face, putting the real risk of danger only to targets of espionage and world leaders.[80][81]

Additionally, Reuters reported in early November 2017 that Apple would share certain facial data on users with third-party app developers for more precise selfie filters and for fictional game characters to mirror real-world user facial expressions. Although developers are required to seek customer permission, are not allowed to sell the data to others nor create profiles on users nor use the data for advertising, and are limited to a more "rough map" rather than full capabilities, they still get access to over 50 kinds of facial expressions. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Center for Democracy and Technology raised privacy questions about Apple's enforcement of the privacy restrictions connected to third-party access, with Apple maintaining that its App Store review processes were effective safeguards. The "rough map" of facial data third-parties can access is also not enough to unlock the device, according to Reuters. However, the overall idea of letting developers access sensitive facial information was still not satisfactorily handled, according to Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU, with Stanley telling Reuters that "the privacy issues around of the use of very sophisticated facial recognition technology for unlocking the phone have been overblown. … The real privacy issues have to do with the access by third-party developers".[82][83]

Sensor housing controversy

Much of the debate about the iPhone X has revolved around the design of the sensor housing, dubbed "notch" by the media, at the top of the display. The Outline described it as "a visually disgusting element",[84] and The Verge posted a report focusing on public criticism and people mocking Apple's "odd design choice",[85] but not every reviewer was equally negative in their opinions. Third-party iOS developers interviewed by Ars Technica said that, despite the work of restructuring design elements in their apps, the notch did not cause any problems, with some even arguing that the notch was a good push to simplify their designs.[86] Just two weeks after iPhone X's release, Apple approved a "notch remover" app through the App Store, that places black bars across the top of the home screen to make the notch visually disappear. The approval was done despite the company's user interface guidelines discouraging developers from specifically masking the design.[87] It should be noted however that iPhone X was not the first device with a notch - both the Essential Phone and Sharp Aquos S2 were announced before it and had a display notch - but iPhone X arguably popularized it.[88][89]

Issues

Early activation issues

In November 2017, early adopters of the new phone reported that they were experiencing activation issues on certain cellular carriers, most notably AT&T. AT&T announced within hours that the issue had been fixed on their end, and a spokesperson for the Verizon carrier told the media none of its customers were affected despite some reports of problems.[90][91]

Cold weather issues

In November 2017, iPhone X users reported on Reddit that the device's screen would become unresponsive after experiencing rapid temperature drops.[92][93] Apple released the iOS 11.1.2 update on November 16, 2017, fixing the issue.[94][95]

Forbes contributor Gordon Kelly reported in March 2018 that over 1,000 users experienced problems using camera flash in cold weather, with the problem still persisting as of iOS 11.3 beta 1.[96]

Cellular modem differences

Apple has been engaged in a legal battle with Qualcomm over allegedly anti-competitive practices and has been dual-sourcing cellular modem chips to reduce reliance on the semiconductor manufacturer. Starting with iPhone 7 in 2016, Apple has used about half Qualcomm modem chips and half Intel.[97][98] Professional measurement tests performed by wireless signal testing firm Cellular Insights indicated that, as in the previous-gen iPhone 7, Qualcomm's chips outperform Intel's in LTE download speeds, up to 67% faster in very weak signal conditions,[99][100]resulting in some sources recommending the purchase of an unlocked iPhone X or one bought through cellular carrier Verizon, in order to get the models featuring the faster Qualcomm modem.[98] Additionally, CNET reported in September 2017 that the new iPhone models, including X, 8 and 8 Plus, do not have the ability to connect to the next-generation of wireless LTE data connection, despite 10 new Android devices, including flagships from main smartphone competitor Samsung, all having the capability to do so. While Apple's new smartphones have support for "LTE Advanced", with a theoretical peak speed of 500 megabits per second, the Android models have the ability to connect to "Gigabit LTE", allowing theoretical speeds up to 1 gigabit per second, doubling Apple's speed.[101]

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megadarkbouquettidalwavethings · 6 years

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Fauda: The drama lifting the lid on Israeli snatch squads

Image caption The drama, co-created by Avi Issacharoff (above), has become a global hit

A jeep roars up to the farmhouse in the Negev desert in southern Israel and Doron – a tough-looking man with a shaved head – jumps out, his gun blazing. The camera pans back as the director shouts “Cut!”

I am on the set of Fauda, the Israeli television thriller that portrays the murky world of Israeli undercover army units and Palestinian militants during the Second Intifada (Palestinian uprising against Israeli occupation).

It shows not just the violence but the moral dilemmas too and has been a hit not only in Israel but surprisingly in Arab countries as well, and globally on Netflix.

Lior Raz, the actor who plays Doron, and journalist Avi Issacharoff, an Arab affairs specialist, created Fauda, or “chaos” in Arabic.

Image caption Lior Raz tells Jane Corbin: “We want people to see how the other side live”

The two friends served together in an undercover unit whose soldiers, disguised as Arabs, infiltrate Palestinian areas to capture wanted men.

“We wanted to show how they [militants and their families] live, their experiences, the price they’re paying for their actions,” says Lior. “For the Israeli audience we open a window for them to see how people live over there.”

From the heart

Avi drove me through the streets of Hebron in the occupied West Bank, where he still reports from. His own experiences and contacts shaped the Palestinian characters in Fauda.

“We wanted to bring the complexity of this conflict to audiences, not only the undercover units and what they do, but also what it looks like on the other side, the Palestinian side,” says Avi.

Image copyright EPA

Image caption Israelis and Palestinians live in adjoining neighbourhoods in the city of Hebron

Hamas, the Islamist group which is Israel’s sworn enemy, claims Fauda is “Zionist propaganda”, but according to Avi the group still puts a link to the show on its website.

The main Palestinian character in the first series of Fauda was Abu Ahmed, a Hamas militant played by Arab Israeli actor Hisham Suliman.

“Fauda tells people the truth and because of that it speaks to people from the heart, not just from the head,” says Hisham.

Hisham gets mobbed by Israelis on the street begging for selfies and receives fan mail from all over the Arab world. He believes both sides can relate to Abu Ahmed’s story.

“The Palestinian issue is very complicated – it’s not black and white,” Hisham explains, “but Fauda managed to deconstruct some of the symbols of the conflict and produced a new viewpoint and explanation.”

Good and bad

Lior and Avi deliberately set out to portray the brutal conflict in a new way, depicting common characteristics between both sides.

“[In Fauda] they are all-rounded characters – even if he’s an evil terrorist he’s got to love his wife and you have to show it and he has kids and you have to show it,” says Lior, “and also the good guys are doing bad things sometimes,” he adds, alluding to his compatriots.

Image caption French Lebanese actress Laetitia Edo on the set of Fauda

On the set in a real Israeli hospital made to look like a Palestinian one, I talk to Laetitia Edo, the French Lebanese actress who plays Dr Shirin.

This strong Arab woman is an unusual lead character in a television drama in this region. The character faced a moral crisis when militants in her own family used her to surgically implant a bomb inside a wounded Israeli undercover soldier.

“Both sides are bad – and good,” says Laetitia, “and that’s why people are saying for the first time, ‘I have compassion for the other side’.

“So this for me is a small, but still a, victory.”

“Shirin, for us, is representative of the innocent people in the conflict, who are not into killing other people,” says Avi. “She just wants to live her life, and this is what’s so sad about this character.”

‘Fighting and resisting’

We wanted to find out how close Fauda was to the world it claims to mirror – what do the real-life counterparts on both sides make of the television show?

Image caption Militants and snatch-squads try to outwit one another

After our own game of cat and mouse to find Palestinian militants willing to talk, we met two heavily armed masked men in a house in Shuafat refugee camp, on the outskirts of occupied East Jerusalem. They carry out attacks on Israelis and try to outwit the undercover units hunting them down.

“We’re covered up not because we’re afraid but because we’re fighting and resisting for our cause – for our homeland to be liberated from the occupation,” the first man says, fingering his gun.

His companion was scornful about Fauda, but admitted watching it: “In this trivial series, Israel showed a lot of the Palestinian side – not because they love the Palestinians but to weaken and terrorise them,” he says.

‘In and out’

The Israeli border police have an undercover unit called Yamas which has been operating for 25 years but had never been filmed before we gained exclusive access to them.

“The best arrests – like Muhammad Ali said ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’ – are in and out as quickly as possible, leaving no trace,” the Yamas commander tells me.

“Fauda is very close to the real thing – the standard of the fighting is very, very high,” he adds.

Image caption Jane Corbin was given exclusive access to the Yamas unit

On a training exercise, late at night, two men from Yamas, looking like Palestinians and speaking fluent Arabic, seize their target from a store.

But they’ve been rumbled and shots ring out. A back-up team jumps out of a parked van and a battle erupts on the street before the Israelis manage to escape with their target.

“You have to train for years, study them well until you have the experience to blend into their society,” one of the unit tells me. “You need a sixth sense – even the smallest mistake can cost you your life.

“Our ability to surprise them by making war through trickery – this is the element that strikes fear into the other side,” says the Yamas commander. “It puts them on edge all the time.”

On the shooting range I ask the Yamas snipers about Fauda. “It’s an excellent series,” one tells me, “but the reality exceeds the imagination of anything you see there.”

The real Fauda will be broadcast on BBC World at the following times (GMT):

Saturday 6 January 09:10, repeated 2010

Sunday 7 January 02:10, repeated 15:10

The post Fauda: The drama lifting the lid on Israeli snatch squads appeared first on dailygate.

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trendingnewsb · 6 years

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Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: ‘Trump is where he is because of his appeal to racism’

The basketball legend and social activist who counted Ali and King among his contemporaries discusses Colin Kaepernick, LaVar Ball and Trumps America

Like all people my age I find the passage of time so startling, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar says with a quiet smile. The 70-year-old remains the highest points-scorer in the history of the NBA and, having won six championships and been picked for a record 19 All-Star Games, he is often compared with Michael Jordan when the greatest basketball players of all time are listed. Yet no one in American sport today can match Kareems political and cultural impact over 50 years.

In the 90 minutes since he knocked on my hotel room door in Los Angeles, Abdul-Jabbar has recounted a dizzying personal history which stretches from conducting his first-ever interview with Martin Luther King in Harlem, when he was just 17, to receiving a hand-written insult from Donald Trump in 2015. We move from Colin Kaepernick calling him last week to the moment when, aged 20, Kareem was the youngest man invited to the Cleveland Summit as the leading black athletes in 1967 gathered to meet Muhammad Ali to decide whether they would support him after he had been stripped of his world title and banned from boxing for rejecting the draft during the Vietnam War.

Kaepernick, the former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who has been shut out of the NFL for his refusal to stand for the US national anthem, is engaged in a different struggle. But, after being banished unofficially from football for going down on a bended knee in protest against racism and police brutality, Kaepernick has one of his staunchest allies in Abdul-Jabbar.

At the Cleveland Summit Abdul-Jabbar was called Lew Alcindor, for he had not converted to Islam then, and he became one of Alis ardent supporters. When Ali convinced his fellow athletes he was right to stand against the US government, the young basketball star knew he needed to make his more reticent voice heard. He has stayed true to that conviction ever since.

Were talking about 50 years since the Cleveland Summit, wow, Abdul-Jabbar exclaims. We were tense about what we were going to do and Ali was the opposite. He said: Weve got to fight this in court and Im going to start a speaking tour. Ali had figured out what he had to do in order to make the dollars while fighting the case was essential to his identity. Bill Russell [the great Boston Celtics player] said: Ive got no concerns about Ali. Its the rest of us Im worried about. Ali had such conviction but he was cracking jokes and asking us if we were going to be as dumb as Wilt Chamberlain [another basketball great who played for the Philadelphia 76ers]. Wilt wanted to box Ali. Oh my God.

Abdul-Jabbars face creases with laughter before he becomes more serious again. Black Americans wanted to protect Ali because he spoke for us when we had no voice. When he said: Aint no Viet Cong ever called me the N-word, we figured that one out real quick. Ali was a winner and people supported him because of his class as a human being. But some of the things we fought against then are still happening. Each generation faces these same old problems.

The previous evening, when I had sat next to Abdul-Jabbar at the Los Angeles Press Club awards, the past echoed again. Abdul-Jabbar received two prizes the Legend Award and Columnist of the Year for his work in the Hollywood Reporter. Other award winners included Tippi Hedren, who starred in Alfred Hitchcocks thriller, The Birds, and the New York Times reporters Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey who broke the Harvey Weinstein story two months ago. As if to prove that the past can be played over and over again in a contemporary loop, we saw footage of Hedren saying how she would not accept the sexual bullying of Hitchcock in the 1960s just before Kantor and Twohey described how they earned the trust of women who had been abused by Weinstein.

Abdul-Jabbar explained quietly to me how much of an ordeal he found such occasions. He was happiest talking about John Coltrane or Sherlock Holmes, James Baldwin or Bruce Lee, but people kept coming over to ask for a selfie or a book to be signed while, all evening, comic references were made to his height. Abdul-Jabbar is 7ft 2in and he looked two feet taller than Hedren on the red carpet.

The following morning, as he stretches out his long legs, I tell Kareem how I winced each time another wise-crack was made about his height. I can tell you I was six-foot-two, aged 12, when the questions started, Abdul-Jabbar says. Hows the weather up there? I should write down all the things people said when affected by my height. One of the funniest was at an airport and this little boy of five looked at my feet in amazement. I said: Hey, how youre doing? He just said: You must be very old because youve got very big shoes. For him the older you were, the bigger your shoes. Thats the best Ive heard.

In his simple but often beautiful and profound new book, Becoming Kareem, Abdul-Jabbar writes poignantly: My skin made me a symbol, my height made me a target.

A group of top black athletes gather to give support to Muhammad Ali give his reasons for rejecting the draft during the Vietnam War at a meeting of the Negro Industrial and Economic Union, held in Cleveland in June 1967. Seated in the front row, from left to right: Bill Russell, Ali, Jim Brown and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Standing behind them are: Carl Stokes, Walter Beach, Bobby Mitchell, Sid Williams, Curtis McClinton, Willie Davis, Jim Shorter and John Wooten. Photograph: Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images

Race has been the primary issue which Abdul-Jabbar has confronted every day. In another absorbing Abdul-Jabbar book published this year, Coach Wooden and Me, he celebrates his friendship with the man who helped him win an unprecedented three NCAA championship titles with UCLA. They lost only two games in his three years on campus as UCLA established themselves as the greatest team in the history of college basketball and Wooden, a white midwesterner, and Kareem, a black kid from New York, forged a bond that lasted a half-century. Yet, amid their shared morality and decency, race remained an unresolved issue between them.

Wooden was mortified when a little old lady stared up at the teenage Kareem and said: Ive never seen a nigger that tall. Even though he would later say that he learnt more about mans inhumanity to man by witnessing all his protg endured over the years, Woodens memory of that encounter softened the womans racial insult by saying that she had called Kareem a big black freak.

Abdul-Jabbar nods. He would never see a little grey-haired lady using such language. When it doesnt affect your life its hard for you to see. Men dont understand what attractive women go through. We dont get on a bus and have somebody squeeze our breast. We have no idea how bad it can be. For people to understand your predicament youve got to figure out how to convey that reality. It takes time.

Abdul-Jabbar made his first high-profile statement against the predicament of all African Americans when, in 1968, he boycotted the Olympic Games in Mexico. After race riots in Newark and Detroit, and the assassination of King in April 1968, he knew he could not represent his country. Dr Harry Edwards [the civil rights activist] helped me realise how much power I had. The Olympics are a great event but what happened overwhelmed any patriotism. I had to make a stand. I wanted the country to live up to the words of the founding fathers and make sure they applied to people of colour and to women. I was trying to hold America to that standard.

The athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos took another path of protest. They competed in the Olympic 200m in Mexico and, after they had won gold and bronze, raised their gloved fists in a black power salute on the podium. I was glad somebody with some political consciousness had gone to Mexico, Abdul-Jabbar says, so I was very supportive of them.

Does Kaepernicks situation mirror those same issues? Yeah. The whole issue of equal treatment under the law is still being worked out here because for so long our political and legal culture has denied black Americans equal treatment. But I was surprised Kaepernick had that awareness. It made me think: I wonder how many other NFL athletes are also aware? From there it has bloomed. This generation has a very good idea on how to confront racism. I talked to Colin a couple of days ago on the phone and Im really proud of him. Hes filed an issue with the Players Association about the owners colluding to keep him from working. Thats the best legal approach to it. I hope he prevails.

Over dinner the night before, he intimated that Kaepernick knew he would never play in the NFL again. We didnt get that deep into it, he says now, but he has an idea that is whats going down. But hes moved on. He hadnt prepared for this but he coped with different twists and turns. Some of the owners in the NFL are sympathetic, some arent. Its gone back and forth. But he appreciates the fact that kids in high school have taken an interest. So he got something done and this generations athletes are now more aware of civil rights.

Abdul-Jabbar is proud of Colin Kaepernicks stand. Photograph: Michael Zagaris/Getty Images

Kaepernick has been voted GQs Citizen of the Year, the runner-up in Time magazines Person of the Year and this week he received Sports Illustrateds Muhammad Ali Legacy Award. Considering the way Kaepernick has never wavered in his commitment, Abdul-Jabbar writes in Sports Illustrated that: I have never been prouder to be an American On November 30, it was reported that 40 NFL players and league officials had reached an agreement for the league to provide approximately $90m between now and 2023 for activism endeavors important to African American communities. Clearly, this is the result of Colins one-knee revolution and of the many players and coaches he inspired to join him. That is some serious impact Were my old friend [Ali] still alive, I know he would be proud that Colin is continuing this tradition of being a selfless warrior for social justice.

In my hotel room, Abdul-Jabbar is more specific in linking tragedy and a deepening social conscience. I dont know how anybody could not be moved by some of the things weve seen. Remember the footage of [12-year-old] Tamir Rice getting killed [in Cleveland [in 2014]. The car stops and the cop stands up and executes Tamir Rice. It took two seconds. Its so unbelievably brutal you have to do something about it.

LeBron James and other guys in the NBA all had something to say about such crimes [James and leading players wore I Cant Breathe T-shirts in December 2014 to protest against the police killing of Eric Garner, another black man]. They werent talking as athletes. They were talking as parents because that could have been their kid.

If the NFL appears to have actively ended Kaepernicks career, what does Abdul-Jabbar feel about the NBAs politics? The NBA has been wonderful. I came into the NBA and went to Milwaukee [where he won his first championship before winning five more with the LA Lakers]. Milwaukee had the first black general manager in professional sports [Wayne Embry in 1972]. And the NBAs outreach for coaches, general managers and women has been exemplary. The NBA has been on the edge of change. I was hoping the NFL might do the same because some of the owners were taking the knee. But theyre making an example of Colin. Its not right. Let him go out there and succeed or fail on the field like any other great athlete.

Abdul-Jabbar smiles shyly when I ask him about his first interview with Martin Luther King 53 years ago. As a journalist I started out interviewing Dr King. Whoa! By that point [1964], Dr King was a serious icon and I was thrilled he gave me a really good earnest answer. Moments like that affect your life. But my first real experience of being drawn into the civil rights movement came when I read James Baldwins The Fire Next Time.

Muhammad Ali, then Cassius Clay, with Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, then Lew Alcindor. Photograph: Bettmann/Bettmann Archive

Has he seen I Am Not Your Negro Raoul Pecks 2016 documentary of Baldwin? Its wonderful. I saw it two weeks after the Trump election. It was medicine for my soul. It made me think of how bad things were for James Baldwin. But remember him speaking at Cambridge [University] and the reception he got? Oh man, amazing! I kept telling people: Trump is an asshole but go and see this film. Trump doesnt matter because weve got work to do.

In 2015, after Abdul-Jabbar wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post, condemning Trumps attempts to bully the press, the future president sent him a scrawled note: Kareem now I know why the press always treated you so badly. They couldnt stand you. The fact is you dont have a clue about life and what has to be done to make America great again.

Abdul-Jabbar smiles when I say that schoolyard taunt is a long way from the oratory of King or Malcolm X. If you judge yourself by your enemies Im doing great. Trumps not going to change. He knows he is where he is because of his appeal to racism and xenophobia. The people that want to divide the country are in his camp. They want to go back to the 18th century.

Trump wants to move us back to 1952 but hes not Eisenhower who was the type of Republican that cared about the whole nation. Even George Bush Sr and George W Bushs idea of fellow citizens did not exclude people of colour. George Ws cabinet looked like America. It had Condoleezza Rice and the Mexican American gentleman who was the attorney general [Alberto Gonzales] and Colin Powell. Women had important positions in his administration. Even though I did not like his policies, he wasnt exclusionary.

Look whats going on with Trump in Alabama [where the president supports Roy Moore in the state senate election despite his favoured candidate being accused of multiple sexual assaults of under-age girls]. You have a guy like him but hes going to vote the way you want politically. Thats more important than what hes accused of? People with that frightening viewpoint are still fighting a civil war. They have to be contained.

Does he fear that Trump might win a second term? I dont think he can, but the rest of us had better organise and vote in 2020. I hope people stop him ruining our nation.

Abdul-Jabbar also worries that college sport remains as exploitative as ever. Its a business and the coaches, the NCAA and universities make a lot of money and the athletes get exploited. They make billions of dollars for the whole system and dont get any. Im not saying they have to be wealthy but I think they should get a share of the incredible amount they generate.

In Coach Wooden and Me, he writes of how, in the 1960s, he was famous at UCLA but dead broke. Yeah. No cash. Its ridiculous. Basketball and football fund everything. College sports do not function on the revenue from water polo or track and field or gymnastics. Its all down to basketball and football. The athletes at Northwestern tried to organise a union and thats how college athletes have to think. They need to unionise. If they can organise they can get a piece of the pie because they are the show.

The legendary Michael Jordan never showed the social conscience of Abdul-Jabbar and other rare NBA activists like Craig Hodges. But Abdul-Jabbar is conciliatory towards Jordan and his commercially-driven contemporaries. I was glad they became interested in being successful businessmen because their financial power makes a difference. I just felt they should leave a little room to help the causes they knew needed their help. But Jordan has come around. He gave some money to the NAACP for legal funds, thank goodness.

President Barack Obama awards the Medal of Freedom to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at the White House in November 2016. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Abdul-Jabbar defines himself as a writer now. As he reflects on his LA Press Club awards he says: To be honoured by other writers is incredible. Im a neophyte. Im a rookie.

He grins when I say hes not doing not too badly for a rookie who has written 13 books, including novels about Mycoft Holmes brother of Sherlock. Yeah, but I still feel new to it and to get that recognition was wonderful. I was very flattered that the BBC came to interview me about Mycroft because the British are very protective of their culture. Arthur Conan Doyle is beyond an icon. So I was like, Wow, maybe I am doing OK. When I was [an NBA] rookie somebody gave me a complete compilation of Doyles stories. I went from there.

People were amazed because I always used to be reading before a game whether it was Sherlock Holmes or Malcolm X, John Le Carr or James Baldwin. But that was one of the luxuries of being a professional athlete. You get lots of time to read. My team-mates did not read to the same extent but Im a historian and some of the guys had big holes in their knowledge of black history. So I was the librarian for the team.

I tell Abdul-Jabbar about my upcoming interview with Jaylen Brown of the Boston Celtics and how the 21-year-old has the same thirst for reading and knowledge. While enthusiastic about the possibility of meeting Brown when the Celtics next visit LA, Abdul-Jabbar makes a wistful observation of a young sportsmans intellectual curiosity. Hes going to be lonely. Most of the guys are like: Where are we going to party in this town? Where are the babes? So the fact that he has such broader interests is remarkable and wonderful.

Abdul-Jabbar acknowledges that his own bookish nature and self-consciousness about his height, combined with a fierce sense of injustice, made him appear surly and aloof as a player. It also meant he was never offered the head-coach job he desired. They didnt think I could communicate and they didnt take the time to get to know me. But I didnt make it easy for them so some of that falls in my lap absolutely. But its different now. People stop me in the street and want to talk about my articles. Its amazing.

Most of all, in his eighth decade, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar loves to lose myself in my imagination. Its a wonderful place to go when youre old and creaky like me. I see myself working at this pace [writing at least a book a year] but its not like I have the hounds at my heels. Since my career ended Ive been able to have friends and family. My new granddaughter will be three this month. Shes my very first [grandchild]. So my life has expanded in wonderful ways. But, still, we all have so much work to do. The work is a long way from being done.

Main photograph by Austin Hargrave/AUGUST