European Commission investigators raided Twenty-First Century Fox's London office on Tuesday, The Daily Telegraph reported.

Sources at the location told the newspaper that authorities were trying to be discreet and had been told to keep details of their mission confidential. The Telegraph reported that investigators will be on site through Wednesday and maybe Thursday.

Shares of Fox fell more than 1 percent in extended trading.

The raid comes amid Fox's drawn out takeover of Sky, which has fallen under intense scrutiny by regulators at the U.K.'s Competition and Markets Authority.

Earlier this year, the agency provisionally found Fox's bid would not be in the public interest. It said there are concerns that the deal may lead to the Murdoch Family Trust wielding too much influence over public opinion and the political agenda.

Fox Networks Group said in a statement to CNBC that it is "cooperating fully with the EC inspection."

A new name to pay attention to: Palantir.

Palantir’s clients include the CIA, DHS, NSA, the FBI and more.

Founded by Peter Thiel and very friendly with Facebook.

Here’s what the UK’s Guardian says about the company:

“It is all-powerful, yet no one knows it even exists. Palantir does not have an office, it has a ‘SCIF’ on a back street in Palo Alto, California. SCIF stands for ‘sensitive compartmentalised information facility’. Palantir says its building ‘must be built to be resistant to attempts to access the information within. The network must be ‘airgapped’ from the public internet to prevent information leakage.”

If you thought Russia interfering in America’s elections was a big deal, you might want to hear the Washington Examiner’s Michael Rubin’s plan for interfering in Syria’s affairs.

Apparently we have been doing our job too well recently, and somebody REALLY doesn’t appreciate it!

Traffic on the site has exploded over the past few days, and is about 3X its usual level - until about an hour ago.

Our site was down for about 2.5 hours yesterday evening EST, and has been intermittent this afternoon, due to a sustained and relatively sophisticated DDoS (denial of service) attack.

It took me about an hour of trying to publish this article, and I still can't load an image with it. I've sent out this same message via our email newsletter list. If you haven't signed up for that yet, please do, it may be the only reliable way to stay in touch with you if they keep disrupting the site.
I've heard that other sites, Fort Russ, and Southfront have also been under attack.

Mark Zuckerberg notably failed to mention the recent revelations about the Obama 2012 campaign’s exploitation of the platform’s weak pre-2014 data protections toharvest masses of data from non-consenting users. But when looking deeper at the number of former Obama staffers and former Hillary staffers in senior positions at the social media giant, it becomes a lot easier to see the “why” behind the obvious and glaring question.

It isn’t a secret that Facebook has been censoring anyone with a non-left political ideology. Even Diamond and Silk have had a run-in with censorship.

As the United States continues to experience sensational mass shootings and many Americans call for gun control, the London is dealing with its own rash of violent crime, mostly in the form of knife attacks.

Countless memes circulating on the internet have pointed out that despite the British government’s harsh gun laws, criminals have still found ways to commit violence and murder. Despite this, the government is clamping down further, attempting to restrict knife possession even more than it already has in its fruitless attempts to stop the wave of crime (in 2014, for example, a teenager was restricted from buying spoons, a measure that has apparently failed to reduce crime).

But there is more to the story, and what’s missing from the mainstream conversation further discredits the actions of the British government.

Last night Tucker Carlson questioned whether the Assad regime was actually responsible for the recent Syria chemical attack, stunning a lot of people, but Carlson stood by it tonight and told viewers people want them to just “shut up.”

“All the geniuses tell us that Assad killed those children,” Carlson said last night. “But do they really know that? Of course, they don’t really know that, they’re making it up. They have no real idea what happened. Actually, both sides in the Syrian Civil War possess chemical weapons. How would it benefit Assad, from using chlorine gas last weekend?”

Tonight Carlson again questioned the wisdom of striking Syria before bringing up his commentary and the reaction it received.

He said no one wants to ask the questions he’s asking, bringing up the people who “denounced us,” including New York Post editor Seth Mandel‘s simple “Stfu”:

Laura Ingraham responded to the ongoing silencing and demeaning of conservative voices in America over the past several decades.

She said that "bullies on the left" are continuing to "aim to silence conservatives."

Ingraham said educators first tried to indoctrinate 1980s students into believing Reaganism and conservative Constitutional principles were "racist" because the founders and other key icons of the movement were apparently "racist white men."

"Their ultimate goal was to bully them into silence," she said. "It failed."

But, she said that the left's "propaganda" did get through to some of the students and "shaped a new generation of young adults" who came up with new jargon like "safe spaces," "microaggression" and "white privilege" as rhetorical tools to silence opposing views.

The easily-verifiable false claim by Voice of America journalist that Russian tanks were filmed entering Ukraine was shared thousands of times before being debunked. The journalist, however, refused to issue a retraction.

Watching Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg answer questions yesterday by a congressional inquiry and saying he is open to regulations on his company is like watching my long-time suspicions play out in real-time, on live T.V.

Facebook may just become the de facto Real I.D. of a Satanic Beast System. No Joke. How you may ask, well let’s look at that.

Google, Youtube, Facebook, Amazon, etc. have not only become the online gateways to accessing the internet, they have actually become the internet itself.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz just asked Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg what millions of Americans have been begging to ask: Does Facebook censor conservatives?

During Zuckerberg’s congressional testimony, Cruz brought up reported conservative censorship on Facebook. First Cruz laid the trap, asking Zuckerberg if he thought Facebook was a neutral public forum:

In a day full of bizarre twist and turns, and not long after the FBI raided the office and home of Trump's personal lawyer Michael Cohen, moments ago the UK's Telegraph reported that the British headquarters of the Murdoch entertainment empire 21st Century Fox have been raided by investigators from the European Commission.

According to the British press, competition watchdogs gained access to the company’s offices in Hammersmith, west London, early Tuesday to seize documents and computer records. Still, the precise nature of the confidential raid - and investigation - which is believed to be in its early stages, is unclear.

Update: After the listing saw public news coverage, DHS spokesman Tyler Q. Houlton quickly tweeted to calm fears of government over-reach and the creation of a real 'Ministry of Truth'...

Despite what some reporters may suggest, this is nothing more than the standard practice of monitoring current events in the media. Any suggestion otherwise is fit for tin foil hat wearing, black helicopter conspiracy theorists.

Phew - thanks for clarifying. And don't forget America, it's for your own good.

At this writing, President Trump is considering “the possibility of retaliation in Syria in response to a suspected chemical attack on young children and families in the Syrian city of Douma,” reported CBS News. “If it’s the Russians, if it’s Syria, if it’s Iran, if it’s all of them together, we’ll figure it out,” Trump said. “Nothing’s off the table,” including a military attack by the United States.

Whether that possibility involves a cruise missile strike, drone attacks or conventional bombing raids by fighter jets, this is deadly serious business. People, mostly innocent civilians and Syrian grunts who had nothing to do with the “suspected” chemical attack, will die. People will be injured. Survivors will be traumatized. An attack could escalate and expand the current conflict, leading to more death and destruction.

I was watching Amy Goodman's much admired 'Democracy Now' over bacon this morning, looking forward to Glenn Greenwald setting the nation straight, as he can usually be relied upon to do, and he explained to the credulous masses, that in fact, it seems to him that Assad had used chemical weapons, and that the evidence was 'overwhelming'. Goodman didn't blink, and then of all things, cut to video of Ben Cardin, the senator from the great state of AIPAC, saying the same thing and demanding war, to reinforce the point, in case some of the sheeple out there weren't getting her drift.

Please don't ask me why I was watching this uber-liberal show whose views on many things I find reprehensible. It is a tedious story of no importance. Goodman is good on some things, but terrible on most. She has been pushing the Russiagate lie, which is telling, but I suppose you could argue that if she didn't her whacko liberal base would drop her.

The chief executive officer of Twitter, one of the big social media titans, has declared on his own Twitter account that a long, grotesque screed about driving Republicans from public life and turning the whole political configuration of the U.S. into California is a "great read." One of his board members thought so, too, tweeting it first and calling it "interesting."

Allegations about the use of chemical agents by the Syrian government forces are aimed at justifying external military strikes, the ministry said

The dominant propaganda meme of the day, as already noted by Colonel Lang, is that Bashar al Assad unleashed chemical weapons on "innocent women and children" in rebel held territory and that Russia and Iran, along with Syria, are responsible. We MUST take action (or so we are told emphatically by morons pretending to be news anchors on the various cable outlets). Few media outlets are willing to report that this information is not only uncorroborated but originates with established liars and rebel partisans--i.e., the White Helmets. Oh, and did you know that the White Helmets are funded largely by the Governments of the UK and the United States?

“Epstein discussed his work surrounding the power of tech companies on elections and their influence on voters saying, “I have been studying for more than five years with controlled experiments around the world, four national elections, tens of thousands of people. I’ve been studying exactly how many votes or opinions Google can change, Google can shift, just by them manipulating those search results when we type in a search term and they give us a list.”

“Diamond And Silk have been corresponding since September 7, 2017, with Facebook (owned by Mark Zuckerberg), about their bias censorship and discrimination against D&S brand page,” they wrote.

“Finally after several emails, chats, phone calls, appeals, beating around the bush, lies, and giving us the run around, Facebook gave us another bogus reason why Millions of people who have liked and/or followed our page no longer receives notification and why our page, post and video reach was reduced by a very large percentage,” echoing the complaints of many conservative and pro-Trump pages.

Here is the reply from Facebook. Thu, Apr 5, 2018 at 3:40 PM: “The Policy team has came to the conclusion that your content and your brand has been determined unsafe to the community.”

The pair say it took “6 Months, 29 days, 5 hrs, 40 minutes and 43 seconds” to get a response, which they add the network said is “final and it is not appeal-able in any way.”

It is impossible to find out what type of nerve agent was used to poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter within a short period of time, the first head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons told RT.

“You can’t decide in 24 hours what type of poison was used and where it comes from,” Jose Bustani, a Brazilian diplomat and first director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), said in an interview with RT.

Did you know that Facebook gave the Obama campaign millions of dollars worth of free data services…and didn’t report it?

That and other criminal acts by the world’s top surveillance company revealed in this hard hitting interview with Karl Denninger.

We’re not fans of Robert Mercer, Cambridge Analytica, and the money laundering scheme that allowed Mercer to pour millions of dollars into political campaigns around the world surreptitiously, but at least he made a halfhearted to cover his tracks.

Facebook just flat out disregarded the law.

Just as a major studio film based on Sen. Ted Kennedy’s murder of Mary Jo Kopechne is set to hit theaters, various other Hollywood projects based on Democrat scandals have been canceled, according to a series of reports.

Wallace said, “Well look, I think there are two things that are going on here, and I think they can both be true. I think that the president has been engaged in — and I’ve said this before — in an unprecedented attack on the media. As a member of the media, maybe not a member of the mainstream media, but a member of the media, and I’ve been doing this for almost half a century, it bothers me. I was particularly distressed, I have to say, when the president held that joint news conference with the three presidents of the Baltic nations, and — you know, it’s one thing when we fight amongst ourselves, it’s a different thing when it’s on the international stage — talked about the fake media. You know, I’ve never heard a president bash the media when it’s on — when he’s dealing with foreign leaders.”

Media coverage of Israel's massacre of Palestinian protesters during the first weekend of multiweek demonstrations in Gaza offered textbook examples of how syntax and word choice shape, and even distort, representations of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Even if the facts are accurately stated, the ways in which sentences are constructed, and the extent to which details are contextualized, can subtly lead readers astray.

Consider for instance the enormous consequence of choosing passive rather than active language to convey what happened. "At least 15 Palestinians die as Israel responds to protest," wrote the Guardian in one early headline. "15 dead in Gaza demonstrations" read the front page of this newspaper, and the New York Times led with a similar formulation: "Confrontations at Gaza Fence Leave 15 Dead."

At first glance, today’s New York Times article on Israel’s massacre in Gaza looks like an improvement from its first efforts at whitewash. The piece actually reports that the respected Israeli human rights organization, B’Tselem, has taken out newspaper ads asking Israeli soldiers to disobey future orders to shoot at the Gazan demonstrators.

But on closer inspection, the article turns out to be just as biased as the Times’s previous reports. It reads more like a theoretical discussion about when lethal force is justified, instead of a genuine effort to find out what actually happened on March 30 inside the Gazan border.

First, the Times does give the Gazan death toll, which is now up to 19 after four more of the injured died. But it nowhere reports the number of Palestinians who were injured by Israeli live ammunition, which ranges somewhere from 700 on up to 1000. Surely an honest report on the use of force should have included such a figure.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) today welcomed progress announced by Google and YouTube in blocking and removing extremist content on YouTube. Google recently started using machine learning technology, which has allowed it to remove more than 75 percent of violent extremism videos during the past month.

ADL is a select contributing member of YouTube’s Trusted Flagger program, created in 2012 to enable organizations to notify the platform of content that violates their community guidelines. Google is a longstanding member of ADL’s Silicon Valley Anti-Cyberhate Working Group.

While it took a while to pick up steam, the Skripal Salisbury poisoning incident has lately dominated Western media headlines. Daily we are treated to the smug and self-righteous faces who, in one breath, compare Putin to Hitler, Stalin, and Czar Nicholas II, before proceeding to compare Russia to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the Russian Empire simultaneously. This would surely be the height of all evil, assuming it were true!

And of course we are supposed to assume it is true because this latest fake news is built on an edifice of an entire history of fake news. Simon Tisdall recently wrote in one of the largest purveyors of fake news, The Guardian:

Members of the House and Senate committees that will question Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg about user privacy protection next week are also some of the biggest recipients of campaign contributions from Facebook employees directly and the political action committee funded by employees.

The congressional panel that got the most Facebook contributions is the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which announced Wednesday morning it would question Zuckerberg on April 11.

Members of the committee, whose jurisdiction gives it regulatory power over Internet companies, received nearly $381,000 in contributions tied to Facebook since 2007, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The center is a non-partisan, non-profit group that compiles and analyzes disclosures made to the Federal Election Commission.

You state that you “are independent of all lobbies and of all political and economic influence.” This might be true regarding the government that pays for your operations and wages but we regret to say it is definitely NOT true with the pro-Israeli lobby. Once again you were influenced by their lobbying and succumbed to their dictates, propaganda and falsehoods, even in regards to the use of specific language.

Comedian and progressive talk show host Bill Maher defended Fox News anchor Laura Ingraham on Friday, arguing with guests on his HBO show that a boycott led by Parkland, Fla., school shooting survivor David Hogg was un-American.

Maher sparred with "Real Time" panel guests including author Max Boot over whether Hogg's boycott of Ingraham, who Maher admitted is a "deliberately terrible person," should be celebrated.

Hogg called for his Twitter followers to contact Ingraham's top advertisers following her criticism of him last month. Ingraham's Fox News show has since been dropped by multiple companies.

“I want to defend Laura Ingraham,” Maher told the audience. "I know it sounds ridiculous, but it has to do with the Parkland kids and guns and free speech."

Amazon has since issued a statement, saying it took action against 'bad actors' on the site.

'Amazon has taken action against bad actors and those who have violated our community rules,' an Amazon spokesperson told Mail Online.

'If any customers believe their account has been closed in error, we encourage them to contact us directly so we can review their account and take appropriate action'.

On Thursday, Amazon sent an email to affected customers explaining why their accounts had been shuttered.

In it, the firm explained the accounts had violated Amazon's policies around posting reviews for 'commercial purposes'.

Amazon bans users from publishing reviews in exchange for things like discounts or gift cards, a process called 'review swaps', Business Insider said.

AggregateIQ, which played a pivotal role in the Brexit campaign, suspended after reports it may have improperly obtained user data

Facebook revealed Wednesday that 87 million users were affected by the scandal which saw a quiz app scrape the data from profiles on the social network and pass them over to political consultancy Cambridge Analytica.

Buttarelli criticized social media firms' data collection practices.

"There are days when you have the impression people are treated as battery animals or experimental rats. We are treated as a farm for data. We are in within a walled garden and every single action is monitored," Buttarelli said.

Facebook and political groups associated with it have reportedly donated to 46 of the 55 members on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which will question Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg next week.

According to a USA Today analysis, members on this year’s House Energy and Commerce Committee have received roughly $381,000 in Facebook-related contributions since 2007 with the average Republican getting $6,800 and the average Democrat getting $6,750. The report was based on data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

Committee Chair Greg Walden (R-OR) reportedly received $27,000 while Ranking Member Frank Pallone (D-NY) got $7,000 in Facebook-related contributions. Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), the Bay Area Democrat whose district is reportedly home to many Facebook executives and employees, got the most contributions, receiving $51,050 in the last decade.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller reportedly is using a convicted pedophile, George Nader, as his star witness in his unending witch hunt against President Trump.

Mike Cernovich tweeted last week that dirty cop Mueller’s star witness in the Trump – Russia witch hunt is a child molester

Now here’s a heavyweight match-up I’d love to see in person.

Earlier today, Fox News host Sean Hannity took late-night TV show host and walking Democrat talking point Jimmy Kimmel to the woodshed for his past misogynistic behavior. If you forgot about Kimmel’s lurid past, make sure you take a look at these clips from his days on “The Man Show.”

For decades, consumer advocates and media watchdogs have warned about the dangers of media consolidation and the nation’s obsession with often-mindless merger mania. And for just as long, many consumers and tech analysts ignored those warnings, clearly bored by concerns that such consolidation harms quality local reporting, competition, and quality discourse.

They’re paying attention now.

Sinclair’s planned $3.9 billion acquisition of Tribune would give it ownership of more than 230 broadcast stations, reaching 72 percent of the American public. Given that the broadcaster has been widely criticized for “news” that tends to be facts-optional on a good day, the company’s expansion efforts have seen renewed criticism in light of America’s disinformation problem.