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• Clusterf*ck: Theresa May left red-faced as Brexit deal between UK, Ireland and EU is scuppered by DUP
• Theresa May and the Tories strike a deal with the DUP
• Brexit underscores the case for a united Ireland
• The Great Famine of Ireland: Western governments have already used food as a weapon of genocide

• Behind the Headlines: 'Quitaly' Highlights EU's Democratic Crisis
• Behind the Headlines: British State secrets, interview with Robin Ramsay
• Behind the Headlines: British Terror in Ireland - Interview with Anne Cadwallader
• Behind the Headlines: Ireland's Holocaust - Interview with Chris Fogarty

"Part crackpot social theory and part elementary school insult, the NPC meme originated from a deeply comical medley of bogus physics and stupid religion found on the messaging board 4Chan. Originally posted in 2016, it resurfaced last month."

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• Gaming community creates NPC meme to troll SJWs
• 4Chan's NPC meme sparks mass triggering among liberals, Twitter responds with Ban Hammer

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• The new racism: How sociology justifies racism through language
• Feminism, gender pronouns and the fight to change reality through language
• The emergence of Orwellian newspeak and the death of free speech

• The Murder of Jamal Khashoggi: Oil, Sanctions And The Anti-Trump Establishment
• Past presidents kowtowed to Saudi Arabia - Trump is just honest about it
• NewsReal: West Discovers Saudi Arabia Has Human Rights Issues & The Real Reason People Hate Trump
• Saudi Arabia's dark history of abductions

• Ukraine government manipulates Orthodox church to break its thousand year old ties with Russia
• Ukrainian president Poroshenko calls Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine a 'national security threat'
• Faith, power, money: How Western meddling is corrupting Ukraine's Orthodox Church
• Constantinople 'attempts to destroy orthodox order' by promoting schism in Ukrainian church and "unfit" clerics
• World's senior Orthodox Bishop won't back Ukraine's breakaway extremist church - And neither will believers
• Church politics: Russian Orthodox promises to cut ties with Constantinople if they grant independence to Ukrainian Church

• Facebook, Twitter Purge More Dissident Media Pages In Latest Escalation - UPDATE
• Threats to freedom: Facebook's Atlantic Council censors are more interested in tanks than thinking
• Censorship crackdown: Meet the top alt-media pages newly banned by Facebook & Twitter
• Ben Swann: Facebook purge of dissenting voices could lead to its demise?
• Chilling Precedent? InfoWars Purge Exposes Big Tech as no Friend of Free Speech
• Purge continues: Twitter suspends over 70 million accounts in two months 'for your safety'

• Facebook, Google & Microsoft team up with the ADL as self-appointed internet censors to 'curb hate speech and abuse'
• Silencing conservative voices: James Woods' Twitter account suspended over satirical meme
• Meanwhile on Twitter: Libertarian accounts suspended, including Ron Paul Institute Director
• The great purge: Twitter suspended 58 million accounts in last quarter of 2017, 70 million in May and June
• Careful what you wish for: Facebook 'fact-checkers' censor left-wing site ThinkProgress
• Social media execs meet to plan "strategy" for 2018 election

Alternative voices online are incensed after Facebook and Twitter closed down hundreds of political media pages ahead of November's crucial midterm elections. Facebook says they broke its spam rules, they say it's censorship.

Some 800 pages spanning the political spectrum, from left-leaning organizations like The Anti Media, to flag-waving opinion sites like Right Wing News and Nation in Distress, were shut down. Other pages banned include those belonging to police brutality watchdog groups Filming Cops and Policing the Police. Even RT America's Rachel Blevins found her own page banned for posts that were allegedly "misleading users."

Journalist Glenn Greenwald hit out at those on the left who cheered Facebook and Twitter's coordinated 'deplatforming' of right-wing conspiracy theorist Alex Jones in August. "Those who demanded Facebook & other Silicon Valley giants censor political content...are finding that content that they themselves support & like end up being repressed," he wrote. "That's what has happened to every censorship advocate in history."

Facebook claims that the accounts were shut down for "coordinated inauthentic behavior," and, disturbingly, the company said in a blog post that it is working hard to root out pages, groups and accounts "created to stir up political debate."

In America, Conservatives were the first to complain about unfair treatment by left-leaning Silicon Valley tech giants. However, leftist sites have increasingly become targets in what Blumenthal calls "a wider war on dissident narratives in online media." In identifying enemies in this "war," Facebook has partnered up with the Digital Forensics Lab, an offshoot of NATO-sponsored think tank the Atlantic Council. The DFL has promised to be Facebook's "eyes and ears" in the fight against disinformation (read: alternative viewpoints).

With the Atlantic Council funded by a plethora of private donors, state institutions, and arms manufacturers, it is little wonder that some commenters on Twitter saw the group's fingerprints all over the latest round of bans.

For now, Facebook and Twitter have been free to censor with impunity. This places alternative journalists and news outlets at the companies' mercy: no viable competitors to Facebook and Twitter exist, save for twitter-clone Gab.ai, which has been slammed by mainstream media as a breeding ground for far-right extremism.

Citizen journalist Lee Stranahan called for a stockholder lawsuit against Facebook, arguing that repeated terms-of-service changes are killing the company's business. However, until that happens, users will have to accept censorship as just another one of these terms.

A man and a child were killed when trees fell on their homes on Wednesday, as Hurricane Michael plowed into Alabama and Georgia, leaving behind a path of destruction in the Panhandle.

Hurricane Michael, which made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida as a category-4 storm on Wednesday afternoon, has ravaged the Florida Panhandle with gusting winds of up to 155mph (250kph).

A man was killed when a tree fell on his home in Gadsden County, Florida, and a child died in a similar accident in Seminole County, Georgia, local officials confirmed.

Photos and videos show homes in the town of some 2,000 residents shredded to pieces.

Panama City, some 20 miles (32km) from Mexico Beach, has borne the brunt of the storm, as it downed trees, knocked power lines, tore off roofs, and splintered homes, some of which have collapsed.

The storm, the most severe to hit the Florida Panhandle in a century, brought flash floods, inundating roads and homes.

More than 300,000 homes and businesses have been affected by power outages in Florida.

At least one person was killed in the storm. The man was trapped by a fallen tree at his home in Greensboro, Gladsden County, police reported. Rescue crews that were responding to the emergency failed to arrive in time to pull him out alive due to roads being blocked by fallen power lines.

As the hurricane, downgraded to a category-3 storm, moved into Alabama and Georgia on Wednesday evening, Florida Governor Rick Scott urged locals to stay inside and off the roads, as rescuers were on their way to the most heavy-hit areas. The state authorities are still assessing the damage.

Residents of Georgia and Alabama have been hit with power blackouts after the hurricane crossed into the southeastern part of the states. Some 125,000 homes were left without power in Georgia and over 52,000 homes in Alabama as of Wednesday evening.

The storm continued on its destructive path, bringing heavy rains and tearing down trees. As it moved further inland, its crushing force subsided.

By 8pm, Michael was weakened to category-1 storm, with wind gusts reaching 90mph (144kph), the National Hurricane Center reported.

Earlier in the day, US President Donald Trump stirred some controversy by refusing to cancel his MAGA rally in Erie, Pennsylvania due to the storm.

"I cannot disappoint the thousands of people that are there - and the thousands that are going," he tweeted.

At least six people have been killed by Hurricane Michael and more can be expected after Hurricane Michael ripped through the US southeast, devastating communities in the Florida panhandle in a tempest that authorities say is the worst the region has seen since records began in 1851.

An 11-year-old girl from Georgia is among those who died in the storm, which levelled neighbourhoods in Mexico Beach and Panama Beach in Florida.

Michael has caused widespread damage, leaving more than 700,000 homes and businesses without power across three states and even blowing a train off its tracks in Florida with winds up to 155mph, according to reports. It has been estimated that more than 300,000 homes and businesses have been destroyed or badly damaged in Florida alone.

© Eric Thayer for The New York TimesA search-and-rescue worker walked down Main Street in Mexico Beach, Florida.

"So many lives have been changed forever. So many families have lost everything. Homes are gone. Businesses are gone," Florida Governor Rick Scott said shortly before a planned tour of the devastation on Thursday. "Roads and infrastructure along the storm's path have been destroyed. This hurricane was an absolute monster, and the damage left in its wake has yet to be fully understood".

Michael, which made landfall as a Category 4 storm, was downgraded into a tropical storm on Thursday, according to the National Hurricane Centre (NHC). The storm still carries with it the potential for major damage and loss of life, with the NHC saying that ongoing flash floods and dangerous winds should be watched for in the Carolinas and southern Virginia.

After daylight on Thursday residents of north Florida would just be beginning to take stock of the enormity of the disaster.

Damage in Panama City near where Michael came ashore on Wednesday afternoon was so extensive that broken and uprooted trees and downed power lines lay nearly everywhere.

The storm was due to began to pass over the Carolinas on Thursday, just weeks after the states were battered by Hurricane Florence's torrential rain. The storm is projected to begin moving eastward on Friday and then make its way out to sea in the Atlantic.

During a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, Donald Trump promised to visit Florida soon. He said that "we will always pull through" and offered his "thoughts and prayers" to those affected by thew storm. On Thursday, he described the hurricane as one of the worst the US had encountered.

"This one went very quickly, but its tremendous destruction in the areas and the path that it chose is incredible for destruction," Mr Trump said on Thursday at the White House. "We have not seen destruction like that in a long time".

© Reuters / Jonathan BachmanAn aircraft hangar damaged by Hurricane Michael is seen at Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida, U.S. October 11, 2018.

Hurricane Michael has wreaked havoc at Tyndall Air Force Base near Panama City, Florida, uprooting trees, tearing off roofs, and wiping out the flight line and marina. It's still unknown how long repairs will take.

The base, located just 19km (12 miles) east of Panama City, suffered a "direct hit" from the hurricane, which made its landfall on Florida's Panhandle on Wednesday, shredding nearby Mexico Beach and bringing devastation to Panama City.

Tyndall has not been spared the full force of the hurricane either. Aerial footage of the base shows snapped trees, dozens of trailers scattered across parking lots and severe damage to homes, with gaping holes where roof shingles used to be.

Wind gusts have ripped siding from aircraft hangars. "Widespread catastrophic damage" was caused to almost every structure, the base commandment said on Facebook.

"The flight line is devastated. Every building has severe damage. Many buildings are a complete loss. The hurricane completely destroyed the Tyndall marina. The structures and docks are gone."

The base "took a beating" from the hurricane and will need extensive clean-up and repairs, Colonel Brian S. Laidlaw said. The storm left the base without basic utilities, and fallen trees and power lines blocked the roads.
© Reuters / Jonathan Bachman

No casualties or injuries have been reported at the base, which was empty at the time the storm smashed into Florida. The majority of the aircraft waited out the storm in Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio and Carswell Field in Texas.

It is unclear when servicemen and families that were driven from the base can return, the commandment admitted.

"I know that you are eager to return. I ask you to be patient and try to focus on taking care of your families and each other. We can rebuild our base, but we can't rebuild any of you," Laidlaw said.

Tropical Storm Michael is located 30 miles west of Augusta, Georgia and is moving to the northeast at 21 mph (33 km/h).

NHC forecasters say that this motion is expected to continue with an increase in forward speed through tonight.

A turn toward the east-northeast and an even faster forward speed are expected on Friday.

On the NHC forecast track, the center of Michael will move through eastern Georgia into central South Carolina this morning, then moves across portions of central and eastern North Carolina and southeastern Virginia into the Atlantic Ocean by late tonight or early Friday.

© NOAA

© NOAATropical storm Michael projected windspeed