What went before can come again.

[tim]

Is dialogue working if Trump’s policies all seem to contradict Silicon Valley’s values? “I think it’s early — I can’t sit on this stage and predict (and predict) what will happen,” Sandberg said, seeming flustered. “I have to remain hopeful. I have to remain hopeful. I have to remain [hopeful], looking at this audience of women.”
Sandberg answered the question as though Trump hadn’t yet taken office and issued 18 executive orders. The public, and certainly the audience at the women’s conference, already knew that she opposed Trump’s anti-immigration and anti-abortion policies.
Tech workers, activists, and the tech press are clinging to every line from tech executives, however strategic or meaningless or misleading, because despite its impassioned “public statements” on the immigration order, Silicon Valley has chosen to negotiate with Trump behind the scenes. Two of the largest corporations in the world, Facebook and Google, and two of the most revered CEOs in the world, Elon Musk and Travis Kalanick, are still working with Trump."

-- Nitasha Tiku [Note: After this piece was published, Kalanick announced he was leaving Tr*mp's business advisory council.]

"The fact that Hitler’s appointment meant that a fanatical anti-Semite had come to power should have made Germany’s Jews, above all, nervous. But that was not the case at all. In a statement given on Jan. 30, the chair of the Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith said, "In general, today more than ever we must follow the directive: wait calmly." He said that although one watches the new government "of course with deep suspicion," President Hindenburg represents the "calming influence." He said there was no reason to doubt his "sense of justice" and "loyalty to the constitution." As a result, he said, one should be convinced that "nobody would dare" to "touch our constitutional rights." In an editorial in the Jüdische Rundschau, a Jewish newspaper,published on Jan. 31, the author argued that "there are powers that are still awake in the German people that will rear up against barbarian anti-Jewish policies." It would only be a few weeks before all these expectations would prove to be illusory.

-- Volker Ullrich