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Fake news 'fact-checkers' abandoning Facebook after 'losing trust' in the platform

Sam Levin
The Guardian
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 11:26 UTC
Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook
Journalists working as factcheckers for Facebook have pushed to end a controversial media partnership with the social network, saying the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation.

Current and former Facebook factcheckers told the Guardian that the tech platform's collaboration with outside reporters has produced minimal results and that they've lost trust in Facebook, which has repeatedly refused to release meaningful data about the impacts of their work. Some said Facebook's hiring of a PR firm that used an antisemitic narrative to discredit critics - fueling the same kind of propaganda factcheckers regularly debunk - should be a deal-breaker.

"They've essentially used us for crisis PR," said Brooke Binkowski, former managing editor of Snopes, a factchecking site that has partnered with Facebook for two years. "They're not taking anything seriously. They are more interested in making themselves look good and passing the buck ... They clearly don't care."

Comment: See also: Fake News 'fact checkers' are the new snake oil salesmen

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Star of David

Four Palestinians & two Israeli soldiers dead after day of violence in the West Bank

Yumna Patel
Mondoweiss
Fri, 14 Dec 2018 11:26 UTC
Palestinian house IDF Israel attack
© Shadi Jarar'ah/APA Images
Palestinians inspect the damage to a house following an Israeli attack that killed Palestinian Ashraf Na'alouh, in Askar camp east of the West Bank city of Nablus, on December 13, 2018.
Four Palestinians and two Israelis were killed between Wednesday night and Thursday afternoon in a series of attacks and search and arrest operations in the central occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.

In the late hours of Wednesday night, Israeli special forces raided the Ramallah-area town of Surda to detain 29-year-old Saleh Omar Barghouthi, who the Israelis claim was responsible for a shooting attack on Sunday near the Ofra settlement that left seven Israelis injured.

Barghouthi was reportedly injured while attempting to flee, and later succumbed to his wounds. His body has yet to be returned to his family.
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HAL9000

Robert Epstein: Google bias against conservative news is 'much more dangerous' than China's attempts to control its citizens

Tyler O'Neil
PJ Media
Fri, 30 Nov 2018 09:03 UTC
Google logo
© Sipa France via AP Images
Google logo
On Thursday, the Daily Caller's Peter Hasson reported leaked emails showing Google executives scheming to isolate conservative news sites in the wake of the 2016 election. Dr. Robert Epstein, a Ph.D. psychologist who focuses on search engine manipulation, warned that Google's attempts to manipulate public opinion are more terrifying than the Chinese government's attempts to control its citizens.

China's government seems intent to implement George Orwell's "1984" with facial recognition, data mining, a social credit system, and roving electronic "doves" to watch over citizens. Yet Epstein finds Google more terrifying, partially due to the recent leak.

"To me. [China's manipulation] is scary, but people are aware of it. It's done openly by the government. I think what is happening elsewhere in the world that's being driven mostly by Google I think is much more dangerous, because it's mostly invisible," Epstein, whose research features prominently in the recent film "The Creepy Line," told PJ Media Friday.

"There's no transparency, there's no accountability," he added. "It's a more ambitious kind of surveillance than that of the Chinese government."

On Thursday, Hasson revealed a very damning post from Google engineer Scott Byer dated November 9, 2016. "This was an election of false equivalencies, and Google, sadly, had a hand in it," Byer wrote. "How many times did you see the Election now card with items from opinion blogs (Breitbart, Daily Caller) elevated next to legitimate news organizations? That's something that can and should be fixed."

Comment: While China has their systems of surveillance, the US is just as pervasive if not more. All happening right under our noses as the public remain blissfully apathetic. See also:

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Rainbow

Church of England guidance instructs clergy how to hold sex change 'celebration' ceremonies to mark their 'transition'

Virginia Hale
Breitbart
Wed, 12 Dec 2018 08:24 UTC
lgbt church
© Wiki Commons
New Church of England (CofE) guidance instructs parishes on how they should hold "celebratory" ceremonies to mark a person's "transition" to the opposite sex.

Approved by the House of Bishops on Monday night, the pastoral guidance advises clergy to be "sensitive and creative" in incorporating the Affirmation of Baptismal Faith into church services which celebrate individuals embracing a new sexual identity.

"The Church of England welcomes and encourages the unconditional affirmation of trans people, equally with all people, within the body of Christ, and rejoices in the diversity of that body into which all Christians have been baptized by one Spirit," asserts a statement published by the church Tuesday.

Transgender vicar Dr Rev Tina Beardsley hailed the move as a positive step, claiming that "many families are affected nowadays; a family member, a friend or a work colleague has undergone a transition."

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Down

Social media firms slammed for baby ads after stillbirth


Digital Journal/AFP
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 03:09 UTC
Social Media
© Manan VATSYAYANA, AFP/File
A woman whose child was stillborn has slammed the targeted advertising of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram after she returned home from the hospital and kept getting baby-related sales pitches.

Gillian Brockell, a journalist with The Washington Post, said that if those social media giants were clever enough to know she was pregnant they should also have figured out she'd lost the baby.

She shared the bad news last month in a tweet.

"I know you knew I was pregnant," Brockell wrote to the companies in a letter posted Wednesday on The Washington Post and Twitter.

"It's my fault, I just couldn't resist those Instagram hashtags - #30weekspregnant, #babybump. And, silly me! I even clicked once or twice on the maternity wear ads Facebook served up."

"But didn't you also see me googling 'braxton hicks vs. pre-term labor' and 'baby not moving'?", Brockell added.

"Did you not see my three days of social media silence, uncommon for a high-frequency user like me?

"And then the announcement post with keywords like 'heartbroken' and 'problem' and 'stillborn' and the 200 teardrop emoticons from my friends?

"Is that not something you could track?"
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Handcuffs

Police snag thieves using Amazon packages as bait

Jon Porter
The Verge
Wed, 12 Dec 2018 01:01 UTC
amazon box
Police in Jersey City have been placing fake Amazon packages outside people's homes to catch thieves, reports the Associated Press. Using GPS trackers and doorbells cameras provided by Amazon, police are able to track and apprehend would-be thieves. The sting operation targets the most at-risk areas in the city identified from a combination of crime data and Amazon's own theft reports.

The operation appears to have found some success. One package spent just three minutes on someone's front porch Tuesday before it was swiped and the suspect caught by police. It's unclear, however, what crime the person was charged with. Nevertheless, the mere existence of the program might be deterrent enough once word gets out.
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X

Middle school student named Joshua Trump forced to change last name after being bullied relentlessly

Victor Skinner
EAG News
Wed, 12 Dec 2018 16:10 UTC
Joshua Trump bullied

Joshua's father Robert Berto is pictured walking him to middle school since he returned recently. He spent a year home-schooling the boy after removing him from elementary school because of the bullying
The daily torment of an 11-year-old boy at Delaware's Talley Middle School has gotten so bad the child's parents changed his last name to thwart his bullies.

"He said he hates himself, and he hates his last name, and he feels sad all the time, and he doesn't want to live feeling like that anymore, and as a parent that's scary," the boy's mother, Megan Trump, told WPVI.

Joshua Trump's problems started in elementary school, when the 45th president announced his candidacy, but the boy's parents thought things might be different in middle school.

"He was being ridiculed and bullied for the fact that his last name was Trump," said Bobby Berto, Joshua's father. "I pulled him out of school and homeschooled him for a year."

Comment: In this day and age there are certain forms of bullying that have become acceptable, namely anything associated with conservatism or Trump.

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V

William Blum, anti-imperial advocate, dies at age 85

Sam Roberts
The New York Times
Tue, 11 Dec 2018 15:18 UTC
William Blum
© J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press
William Blum, a longtime critic of United States foreign policy, with his book “Rogue State.” Sales of the book surged in 2006 when a recording emerged on which Osama bin Laden said all Americans should read it.

Comment: The New York Times just can't bear to pay their respects to William Blum, which is no surprise considering they have no journalistic integrity and he did. He called out the machinations of covert intelligence and hammered repeatedly on the long history of US sponsored coups all around the world and their disastrous effects. Since the NYT is a propaganda outlet, his efforts were in direct conflict with their work, which is likely why they chose to smear him by tenuously connecting him with bin Laden. Yes, really.


William Blum, who raged against United States foreign policy in relative obscurity for decades until one of his published anti-imperialist broadsides received a surge in sales thanks to a surprise public tribute from Osama bin Laden, died on Sunday in Arlington, Va. He was 85.

His son, Alexander, said the cause was kidney failure. Mr. Blum had been hospitalized after being injured in a fall in his apartment in October.

Mr. Blum (pronounced "bloom") was a computer programmer for the State Department who aspired to become a career Foreign Service officer and "take part in the great anti-Communist crusade," he once recalled. But he became disillusioned over the Vietnam War.
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Pistol

Strasbourg Christmas market shooter killed by police


RT
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 00:06 UTC
Strasbourg market shooting
© Reuters / Vincent Kessler
French special forces secure an area during a police operation in Strasbourg.
French police have killed the main suspect in the Strasbourg Christmas market shooting, Cherif Chekat, following a dramatic, helicopter-assisted police raid in a city-center district, the country's Interior Minister confirmed.

The French police mounted a massive operation in Strasbourg on Thursday, involving armed officers from the elite RAID police unit and the helicopter. Interior Minister Christophe Castaner confirmed that the suspect was "neutralized" in the raid.

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Bullseye

Natalie Portman says it like it is: Israel nation-state law is 'racist'


Middle East Monitor
Thu, 13 Dec 2018 14:27 UTC
Natalie Portman
© Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Natalie Portman attends premiere of Neon's 'Vox Lux' at ArcLight Hollywood on 5 December 2018 in Hollywood, California.
Hollywood actress Natalie Portman has called Israel's nation state law "racist" in an interview with London-based newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi.

"The Nation-State law is racist," the Israeli-American actress said in the interview published in Arabic yesterday. "It is a mistake and I don't agree with it."

In July, Israel adopted the so-called Nation State Law, declaring that "Israel is the historic homeland of the Jewish people and they have an exclusive right to national self-determination in it." The controversial law also stripped Arabic of its designation as an official language alongside Hebrew, downgrading it to "special status" despite its use by almost two million Palestinian citizens of Israel who live in the country, one-fifth of the population.

The law was lambasted by many inside Israel, with Israel's minority Druze community calling the law a "betrayal" and several Palestinian MKs resigning. Prominent Israeli figures also condemned the law, with best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari refusing an honour by the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles in protest. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin was also critical of the law, reportedly saying he would sign the document in Arabic.
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