Members of the notorious internet forum 4chan have proposed a new troll campaign aimed at converting the hashtag into a white supremacist symbol.

In a post, on the /pol/ or "politically incorrect" message board, an anonymous user calls on his fellow forum frequenters to begin creating propaganda that incorporates the commonly used pound sign.

"We must start using # to represent the swastika on memes and social media," the user states.

The far-right campaign, dubbed "Bash the Hash," a play on the anti-fascist term "Bash the Fash," aims to remove the ability of sites like Twitter to use the popular symbol.

"It will be a perfect win-win situation," the user adds. "Either Twitter will have to accept blatant Nazism on its forums or it will effectively have to find a way to get rid of the site's core mechanics."

Bash the Hash "will also force corporations to stop putting hashtags on every fucking ad ever," according to the campaign leader.

Although the idea was met with mixed reviews, a slew of campaign posters and memes began circulating on Twitter. The posts were purported to originate from sources such as antifa-a far-left collective known for using direct action or violence against far-right groups.

Taylor Swift just proved my point. My last post was about feminism's harmful influence on millennials; and less than 24 hours later, a friend sent me this USA Today article that highlights an interview Taylor Swift gave on a promotional tour in which a German reporter asks Swift if she has children or family on her mind since she turns 30 this year.

A quick caveat: I feel compelled to write that this question shouldn't be asked of any woman, as it's no one's business but hers. However, such probing questions by the media are inevitable at that level of fame. Swift is entitled to dodge the question, which she did. But her reason for not answering it speaks volumes: "I really do not think men are asked that question when they turn 30, so I'm not going to answer that now."

Here's a newsflash for Swift and other young women who didn't get the memo: No one asks men that same question because men don't have a biological clock. Women do.

Throughout her 17 days lost in a dense Hawaiian forest, yoga instructor Amanda Eller said a "voice" guided her throughout the area, leading her further and further away from her vehicle.

During a press conference on Tuesday, Eller called the more than two weeks she spent lost in the Makawao Forest Reserve a learning experience that brought her closer to nature - even if it almost ended her life.

"This whole journey was extremely spiritual for me, and I never felt alone, and I never felt fearful. It was an opportunity to overcome fear of everything," said Eller, 35, according to CNN. "There was so much beauty in that."

France's Senate has approved a bill to restore Paris' iconic Notre Dame cathedral, but stipulated that it must be restored to the state it was in before it was gutted by fire.

The bill had already passed France's lower house of Parliament, but the Senate added a clause that the cathedral must be restored to its original Gothic glory, ending weeks of speculation as to whether the landmark could get a modernist re-imagining.

"This project must become a showcase: A showcase of our heritage protection regime, a showcase of our know-how in this area, in short, a showcase that lives up to our reputation!" said Yvelines senator Alain Schmitz.

The rebuilding of the cathedral - which had its spire and much of its roof damaged by fire last month - has been the subject of intense debate. Suggestions tabled by architects and designers included replacing the spire with a glass pyramid or a towering beam of light, a solar-powered urban garden, or even an Islamic minaret, though the latter suggestion may have been an elaborate trolling attempt.

In the past, whenever I went to (or more precisely, 'through') Israel, it was for some antagonistic purpose: to write about the brutal suppression of the intifada in Gaza or Hebron, to comment on the insanity of the land grab around Bethlehem, or to report from the eerie and de-populated Golan Heights, which Israel occupies against all international rules and the UN resolutions. You name it and I worked there: Shifa Hospital or Rafah Camp in Gaza, 'Golans', border with Jordan, Bethlehem.

I used to arrive at Ben Gurion Airport, sleep one night in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem or Haifa, meet my contacts (my left-wing friends), hastily, and in the morning, dash towards the 'front', or towards one of the 'fronts' that the so-called 'Jewish State' sustains for decades at its 'peripheries'.

But this time I decided to do exactly the opposite.

As it became evident that Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has lost all his restraint and shame, as it has got clear that the United States will take full advantage of his madness, and as I was convinced that Europe as well as most of the Arab countries will do absolutely nothing to defend Palestine, Syria or Iran, being 'in the neighborhood' (Egypt), I bought my tickets to Tel Aviv, for just a 48 hour 'visit' and for one simple purpose: to observe Israeli citizens, talk to them, and to try to figure out how and what they think and want; how they see the world, and particularly how they perceive the region where they live, fight and kill.

And so, I flew to Israel, from Cairo and via Amman. Once there, for two days I commuted between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem in a brand new, fast and elegant double-decker train. I talked to many people, provoking them to describe the conditions in which they have been existing; to describe their political system, and the apartheid which most of them keep upholding through (as they constantly point out - 'democratic') elections.

Western Europe is home to a cluster of developed economies that boost some of the highest standards of living in the world. But that could soon change. Because as Evan Horowitz writes on NBC News's new "Think" vertical, IQ scores in France, Scandinavia, Britain, Germany and even Australia are beginning to decline.

The trend has been well-documented across Western Europe, and could soon carry over to the US as well. Which means the data have confirmed what millions of Americans who have watched cable news or logged on to twitter over the past three years probably already suspected: The world is getting dumber.


And just like that, another sign of the 'Idiocracy' apocalypse has emerged. Though, unlike the movie, which posits that the population of Earth will become steadily dumber as stupid people outbreed their more intelligent compatriots, the cause of the trend in Europe has yet to be determined, because even the children of relatively intelligent Europeans are getting dumber.

The United States is no longer supplying its enemies only with conventional weapons - that list now also includes cyberweapons. While Baltimore has been struggling with an aggressive cyber-attack over the last three weeks, previously profiled here , it has now been revealed that a key component of the malware used by cyber-criminals was actually developed just a short drive from Baltimore - at the NSA, according to the New York Times.

The tool used - called EternalBlue - has been used by hackers in North Korea, Russia and China to "cut a path of destruction around the world", and resulted in billions of dollars in damages.

Now, it has come full circle and is back in the US, wreaking havoc just miles from Washington. In fact, security experts say that attacks using EternalBlue have soared and cyber-criminals are honing in on vulnerable towns and cities, using it to paralyze governments. The NSA's connection to the attacks had previously not been reported and the NSA hasn't commented about it since an unidentified group leaked the weapon online in April 2017.

The NSA and the FBI still don't know whether or not it was leaked by foreign spies or US insiders.

Criticism of identity politics as merely "divisive" misses the point of what is actually a coherent political movement with a radical agenda to destroy Western society as it exists.

A cookie-cutter version of this complaint - which is often heard from "sensible" centrists and "old-fashioned" left-wingers - came at the weekend from David Isaac, chair of Britain's Equality and Human Rights Commission.

"We are living in a world that is more divided, there's more individualist thinking in relation to what is happening and less empathy, less hope," Isaac told the Guardian, urging Britons to look beyond "what works for me and my narrow group."

In controversial "implicit bias" training, New York City's public-school educators have been told to focus on black children over white ones - and one Jewish superintendent who described her family's Holocaust tragedies was scolded and humiliated, according to firsthand accounts.

A consultant hired by the city Department of Education told administrators at a workshop that "racial equity" means favoring black children regardless of their socio-economic status, sources said.

"If I had a poor white male student and I had a middle-class black boy, I would actually put my equitable strategies and interventions into that middle class black boy because over the course of his lifetime he will have less access and less opportunities than that poor white boy," the consultant, Darnisa Amante, is quoted as saying by those in the room.

Two people including a schoolgirl were stabbed to death and more than a dozen injured in Japan on Tuesday in a rampage that targeted children as they waited for a bus.

The attacker, a man in his 50s who has not yet been identified, crept silently up behind a group of children at the bus stop and slashed randomly at them before fatally stabbing himself in the neck.

Police said an 11-year-old schoolgirl named Hanako Kuribayashi and a 39-year-old parent, identified as government official Satoshi Oyama, died in the attack, which shocked a country where violent crime is rare.

Seventeen more people, mainly young children, were injured, according to authorities who had previously given the schoolgirl's age as 12.

Koji Shimazu of the St. Marianna University School of Medicine, told AFP that one woman in her 40s and three schoolgirls had to undergo surgery for knife wounds to the head and neck.

"It is a very harrowing case. I feel strong anger," Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in televised remarks.