President Donald Trump violates the First Amendment when he blocks critics on Twitter for political speech, a judge ruled Wednesday.

On the 70th anniversary of Israel’s so-called “declaration of independence,” the United States opened its new embassy in Jerusalem—a city Israel claims as its own, despite what international law says on the matter—and Palestinians undertook unarmed protests in reaction to the move and as part of the Great Return March. Although to this point, the only Israeli casualty during the entire cycle of demonstrations has been one “lightly wounded” soldier, considerable space in coverage of the massacres is devoted to blaming Palestinians for their own slaughter.

Two of the first three paragraphs in an NBC report (5/14/18) provided Israel’s rationalizations for its killing spree. The second sentence in the article says that the Israeli military accused Hamas of “leading a terrorist operation under the cover of masses of people,” adding that “firebombs and explosive devices” as well as rocks were being thrown towards the barrier.

Rosner fully justifies the massacre, with no apologies, regret, or second thoughts. He believes the killing of these Palestinians was correct, and that they deserved to die. Now you might, as I do, think this attitude is so self-evidently barbaric that even to debate it is to surrender a little bit of one’s humanity. But Rosner’s position is not a fringe one, and the good liberals at the New York Times consider it within the boundaries of reasonable discourse, so unfortunately we have not yet achieved the kind of world in which such thinking is “self-evidently” immoral. (This reflects very badly on all of us.) I’d like, then, to go through Rosner’s argument paragraph by paragraph, to show how he constructs his defense of murder, why it might be persuasive to people, and why it fails and should horrify everyone.

The testimony of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg before the European Parliament was insufficient, as the social network founder was able to avoid uncomfortable questions, several members of the parliament pointed out.

Zuckerberg's hour-long interview took place on Tuesday. The format of the hearing allowed the Facebook CEO only several minutes at the end of the session to answer questions. However, he promised to provide written answers to all inquiries.

"Today's pre-cooked format was inappropriate & ensured #Zuckerberg could avoid our questions. I trust that written answers from Facebook will be forthcoming. If these are not accurately answered in detail, the EU competition authorities must be activated & legislation sharpened," Guy Verhofstadt, the president of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE), wrote on his Twitter.

FACEBOOK’s Mark Zuckerberg was accused by the EU’s Guy Verhofstadt of creating a "digital monster that is destroying our democracies" after he was questioned by EU Parliament over data mining and dealing with meddling in elections.

We have all gotten used to it – the media hate Trump and the president returns the favor in kind. How has this mutually charged hate fest changed media and journalism? Does the liberal corporate media report the news anymore? Is journalism today a fake profession in the service of partisanship?

The best evidence that Russia-gate is sinking beneath the waves is the way those pushing the pseudo-scandal are now busily covering their tracks.

We have investigative journalist Wayne Madsen to thank for checking the facts on the most well-known of “fact-checking” websites and confirming what many had suspected for years since the 1995 founding of Snopes.com. According to Madsen, Snopes was formed by the Central Intelligence Agency for the express purpose of stifling subversive outlets and spreading disinformation and propaganda on the Internet. Until 2013, the CIA had to do this on the down-low because propaganda wasn’t legal yet.

Facebook has engaged a think tank funded by weapons manufacturers, branches of the US military and Middle-Eastern monarchies to safeguard the democratic process. It's akin to hiring arsonists to run the fire brigade.

If Facebook truly wanted to “protect democracy and elections worldwide,” it would build a broad coalition of experts and activists from a wide and disparate range of the countries it serves. Instead, the American social media giant has outsourced the task to NATO’s propaganda wing.

The Syrian Army has issued a statement today declaring victory in the fight over metro Damascus, saying that effective Monday Damascus and all of its surroundings are “completely secure” and under military and government control.

Expelling rebels and jihadists from suburbs of Damascus has been a priority for awhile. The defeat of rebels in Eastern Ghouta was a major step in that direction, but it was only this weekend, with the evacuation of the last few ISIS fighters, that the whole area was secure.

ISIS forces managed to infiltrate the Yarmouk refugee camp and surrounding area, south of Damascus. The refugee camp, which once housed a large number of Palestinians, has been contested repeatedly since the Syrian War began.

Facebook banned an advert paid for by The Electronic Intifada a day after it was approved and was running successfully.

The ban lasted for almost three days before the ad was restored without explanation.

This apparent act of censorship comes as Facebook is deepening its collaboration with Israel lobby groups and a pro-war Washington think tank to impose tighter controls on what people are allowed to see online, especially about Israel’s violations of Palestinian rights.

Who says Hillary Clinton dislikes the media?

Speaking to Yale graduates over the weekend, the former candidate for president urged the class to stop the spread of fake news and help support journalism by paying for it.

"It means calling out actual fake news when we see it and supporting brave journalists and their reporting maybe even by subscribing to a newspaper," she said.

As Michelle Wolf, the comedian who attended the White House correspondents dinner, noted, President Donald Trump's election has been a boon to most of the media business. The New York Times revenue topped $1 billion in 2017. In the final quarter of last year, it signed up 157,000 new subscribers, taking full-year subscriptions to 2.6 million.

In 2008, the New York Times revealed a secret Pentagon programme which trained and briefed former military generals to push pro-Pentagon talking points to a compliant news media. Today, former military personnel are still regular contributors on every major cable news network despite some of them being the very same figures who pushed for the Iraq war.

"Being one of these former military official TV pundits means never having to say you're sorry," says Jeff Cohen, founding director of the Park Center for Independent Media and associate professor of journalism at Ithaca College. "These people have gotten it wrong repeatedly and they're on the air forever."

Did you know that the government recruits, trains and employs “trolls” to disrupt intelligent conversation on the Internet?

Yes, they do.

You can see the whole video at TruthStreamMedia.com. It’s called “Yes, There is a Government Troll Training Program.”

We ran the end of the video which asks the big question:

If independent news outlets aren’t reliable, why are hundreds (if not thousands) of people are employed full time “trolling” web sites and why does YouTube actively interfere with the statistics of popular videos?

A private Tunisian TV channel has gone ahead with the broadcast of a controversial hidden camera exposé programme. “Shalom” tackles the issue of normalisation with the Israeli occupation, Quds Press has reported.

Tunisna Channel explained that the programme shows a scenario whereby a politician or public figure is supposedly invited for an interview with CNN. It turns out, though, that the “interviewer” is actually an Israeli official offering the guest the opportunity to deal with Israel in exchange for financial and political support.

According to producer Walid Zribi, the “guests” have been putting pressure on Tunisna not to broadcast “Shalom”. The media expert explained that the programme “aims to expose Tunisian political figures who are willing to deal with Israel.”

The Washington Post has been forced into making several corrections to a story claiming that the number of people killed in US schools this year was double that of those killed serving in the military.

Google has removed longtime motto “Don’t Be Evil” from its corporate code of conduct leading some to wonder if shareholder value alone has won the day.

During the embassy opening, a taunting event all but designed to inflame tensions, Israeli forces brutally massacred at least 58 Palestinians protesting along the Gaza border—including women and children. Many were killed by sniper fire hundreds of yards away. Weiss, however, saw no connection between the protests and the embassy launch.

“Bill, I love you, but the riots were not caused by the embassy move,” said Weiss. “They’re not linked. When Hamas attacked Israel in 2008, when Hamas attacked Israel in 2012, when it attacked Israel in 2014, the embassy was in Tel Aviv all of those times… They intentionally moved up the day so that it would coincide with the day of the embassy move so that we would all be disgusted and heartbroken when we saw this horrible split-screen of Ivanka Trump, looking like she was at a country club, next to poor, desperate people dying in Gaza.”

“I agree with you,” Maher replied. “They planned that. Absolutely.”

Speaking on the US Today programme, journalist Megyn Kelly outlined the macabre chain of events which would see Ms Markle become the Monarch.

She said: “The question is whether we could have an American Queen someday.

“The truth is, in order for her to become queen, a lot of hideous and tragic things have to happen.”

Co-host Al Roker interrupted, shouting: “Thanks for bringing that up. Oh, what a happy day it is.

This is what CNN gets for putting this lying hack on the air.

Will Sean Hannity leave Fox News?

There’s a rumor afoot that Hannity may depart from his long-time network to join the burgeoning conservative network, Sinclair. If any kind of deal goes through, Fox may be in big trouble.

The story, however, took a bizarre twist on Thursday, when Rogan said on Twitter that Ukraine’s foreign minister had contacted him to express the support of his people and offer protection from Russian law enforcement.

Had a great conversation with @MFA_Ukraine minister Pavlo Klimkin just now. He said the Ukrainian people supported my piece and that Ukraine would help me if Russia tries to send me to the Black Dolphin. Some good banter.

— Tom Rogan (@TomRtweets) May 17, 2018
The minister, Pavlo Klimkin, then responded by saying he never spoke to Rogan, adding that his article “isn’t worth commenting” on and that the entire story may be “another Russia-led provocation.” The bold effort to amplify a new fictional Putin threat was utterly wasted, it seems.

Would you like a think tank advocating acts of terrorism, war and suppression of the media working with Facebook to protect democracy and elections worldwide? If so, great news!

Facebook is “excited to launch a new partnership with the Atlantic Council, which has a stellar reputation looking at innovative solutions to hard problems,” Katie Harbath, Facebook’s director for global politics and government outreach, announced on Thursday.

“Experts” from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRL) will work closely with Facebook’s “security, policy and product teams” to offer “real-time insights and updates on emerging threats and disinformation campaigns from around the world,” Harbath added.

As Israel slaughtered dozens of unarmed Palestinians in Gaza this week, prominent media outlets employed innocuous headlines to obscure the horrific reality.

In the video above, RT correspondent Anya Parampil points to some examples of what she calls “an almost across the board obfuscation of Israel’s responsibility for the violence.”

A BBC headline read for instance, “Gaza’s deadliest day of violence in years,” while The Guardian ran with “Fatal clashes in Gaza after opening of US embassy.”

The word “clashes,” Parampil observes, “would lead you to believe there are casualties or injuries on the Israeli side.”

In fact after seven weeks in which Israel has killed some 100 Palestinians and injured 12,600 others, Israel has reported one minor injury to a soldier.

The government has been defeated in the House of Lords as peers backed a new Leveson inquiry into the behaviour of the press by 252 votes to 213.

The outcome puts the unelected chamber on course for a constitutional clash with the Commons, which had previously rejected a demand for a further investigation into the relationship between the media and police.

The amendment would force the government to establish a new inquiry into allegations of data protection breaches by national news publishers.

Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg has agreed to travel to Brussels to meet with senior European Parliament politicians behind closed doors to address their concerns about his company’s handling of personal data.

MEPs have long wanted to question the Silicon Valley CEO about Facebook’s data practices, with a particular interest in how the social network’s advert targeting might be affecting elections.

Mr Zuckerberg is expected to visit the EU capital as early as next week, though no specific date for his trip has yet been announced. He will meet with the leaders of the Parliament’s political groups, the so-called conference of presidents.

The BBC has annoyed the hell out of the Royal wedding weary public with a late-night push notification to alert the world that the bride’s father might/might not attend. For many, it was one too far.

Exasperated by the corporation’s perennial effort to keep them updated on all things Megs-and-Harry, Britons have taken to Reddit to air their grievances.

“It is not acceptable to ping the entire nation (who have it installed) at 9:30pm to tell them that someones (sic) father might not attend a wedding,” Reddit user Purpose2 complained. “This is an abuse of the trust that we place in you.”

After their ads were rejected, CPH contacted Google and was told “remarketing ads based on religious beliefs was not allowed.” CPH then requested a manager review this decision, which was denied, and were told the only way to bring the ads “into compliance” was to remove all “faith-based content.”

Soon after, a Google AdWords representative explained, “the disapproval resulted from the fact that the items in the ad and on the CPH website refer to Jesus and/or the Bible.” If CPH removed all references to Jesus or the Bible, their ads would be reinstated.

Kintz wasn’t amused.

Nicholas Kristof, a prominent columnist for the New York Times, has warned that the media’s obsessive focus on President Donald Trump means they are failing to cover other important stories.

Kristof lamented the “all Trump, all the time” nature of the US media since Trump took office. "We have to acknowledge that there is so much more happening in the world than Donald Trump,” he told CNN host Brian Stelter.

As the World Cup looms, the UK media is ready with an axe to grind. No matter how insignificant an issue with anything remotely linked to Russia, it will be reported as if it’s the end of the world, just like the Sochi Olympics.

Journalists are already cherry picking the grimmest things they can find (no matter how small or tenuously-linked) to cast the Russian World Cup in a negative light. The same tactic was used during the Sochi winter games. Anyone remember the double-toileted stall of 2014? Or that time a journalist had no hot water in his hotel room? Oh, the horror. That Russian bogeyman is at it again.

Twitter will now use thousands of behavioral signals when filtering search, replies, and algorithmic recommendations. If it believes you are trying to game its system, or simply acting like a jerk, it will push your tweets lower down. It’s the biggest update so far in the company’s push to create healthier conversations, an initiative announced by its CEO Jack Dorsey in March.

Among the signals Twitter will use: whether you tweet at large numbers of accounts you don’t follow, how often you’re blocked by people you interact with, whether you created many accounts from a single IP address, and whether your account is closely related to others that have violated its terms of service. -BuzzFeed

“A lot of our past action has been content-based, and we have been shifting more and more toward conduct and behaviors on the system,” Dorsey said in a Monday briefing at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.

Two giant vaccine scandals are in progress at the moment.

The mainstream press is mentioning them, here and there, but without any intent to raise alarms, dig in, investigate, and get down to the core of the problem.

So I’ll get to the core.

The first scandal revolves around the flu vaccine for the current year. The CDC and other “experts” have admitted the vaccine has a very low effectiveness rate.

Why is it a dud?

Because the vaccine is produced using chicken eggs, and in that medium, the flu virus—which is intentionally placed in the eggs—mutates. Therefore, it isn’t the same virus which is causing flu this year. Therefore, no protection against the flu.

Typical of the mindset of corporate media reporting on what happened in Gaza on Monday as Israeli soldiers killed more than 50 protesting Palestinians, is this tweet from CNN. It says: “Death toll rises to at least 52 people during clashes along the border fence between Israel and Gaza, Palestinian officials say. More than 2,400 people have been injured.” CNN’s new slogan is “#FactsFirst.”

Adam Johnson, who writes for the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, responded to CNN with a tweet of his own:

“This one’s got it all:

‘death toll rises’ — no one was killed and no one specific party did the killing, the death toll just mysteriously ‘rises’
‘clashes’ — launders all power asymmetry
‘2,400 people have been injured’ — all 2,400 are Palestinian but lets go with ‘people’.”

A mystery online figure called Philip Cross is targeting anti-war and non-mainstream UK figures by prolifically editing their Wikipedia pages – to the point that George Galloway is offering a reward to see him unmasked.

Active on Wikipedia since 2004, Philip Cross has been editing wiki entries for nearly 15 years. Recently, trouble has been brewing online, with Cross accused of paying special attention to a cluster of Wikipedia accounts, editing them or deleting chunks of information.

Pundits like Galloway, academic Tim Hayward, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, and ex-UK ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray have fallen in the crosshairs of the editorial mystery man (or perhaps woman) who goes by the name of Philip Cross – and many of them are growing frustrated with the lack of action from Wikipedia to prevent malicious editing.

I write a lot about how, in a political environment that is saturated in disinformation and propaganda, it’s important to ignore people’s words and watch their actions instead to get a clear picture of what’s really happening. You could not ask for a better illustration of this than the recent behavior of the mass media with regard to Syria.

The always excellent Moon of Alabama put out a piece yesterday detailing the immense deluge of attack editorials disguised as information that have been churned out recently about anyone who questions the establishment Syria narrative, including a single day in which no less than seven smear pieces were issued by prominent publications. Seven. In one day.

For some reason this video struck a nerve with someone who didn’t want you to see it.

Who filed the complaint on this one?

Believe it or not, we are NOT allowed to see who it is.

I’ve never seen this YouTube before. Normally, they tell you who is making the complaint.

This time we received this statement from YouTube (in red):

You don’t have permission to view copyright information for that video

UK tabloids have been working hard to scare football fans from going to the World Cup, because every Russian is a brutal ultra out for blood. Now The Sun has hit a new low, blatantly taking a photographer’s work out of context.
A headline in The Sun on Saturday thunders: “ULTRA VIOLENCE” in capital letters. The article itself is mostly a collection of photos, which it says “reveal life inside Moscow’s gritty underworld, where hardcore football fans and bare knuckle boxers rule the streets.” Some incredibly insightful captions cooked up by the tabloid are attached.

Unluckily for The Sun, the person who took the photos decided not to stay silent and shared his disappointment with RT. He says the photos have been “clearly taken out of context.”