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Pentagon reports 2000% increase in Russian trolls since Syria strike

Dana White
The Pentagon reported Saturday a massive spike in online Russian propaganda efforts in the hours before and after the U.S. missile strike on Syria the night before.

"The Russian disinformation campaign has already begun. There has been a 2,000 percent increase in Russian trolls in the last 24 hours," chief Pentagon spokeswoman Dana White said in a briefing on Saturday.

U.S. forces launched targeted missile strikes on Friday at key military outposts in Syria, where the government is thought to have stored chemical weapons used in a strike that killed over 40 civilians last weekend.

Syria, along with its allies Russia and Iran, has denied the use of chemical weapons and Russia has suggested the entire attack was a fabrication by western forces.

Comment: Nice try. The Internet Research Agency is really just a social media spam agency, not a troll farm. As for the 2000% increase in 'propaganda efforts', maybe it's because Russia is the only one keeping a cool head in the game and people are actually not happy with the US government's actions in Syria.


Arrow Down

GM plant will lay off half of its workforce due to falling demand for small cars

GM logo
© Bill Pugliano/Getty Images
A GM plant in Ohio is cutting half their workforce in the coming months.
A General Motors plant in Lordstown, Ohio is scaling down operations - cutting as many as 1,500 jobs and reducing operations to just one shift per day. The move means half the employees at the factory will lose their positions.

The plant is dedicated to making the Chevrolet Cruze, but falling demand for smaller vehicles is forcing the manufacturer to adjust operations.

GM spokeswoman Dayna Hart did insist that the plant would remain open, saying in a statement that "Lordstown is among the few remaining builders of small cars in the US, and it is our plan to keep it that way. GM recently stated our commitment to sedans and the role Cruze plays in that commitment."

In a statement, GM added: "As we look at the market for compact cars in 2018 and beyond, we believe a more stable operating approach to match market demand is a one-shift schedule."

Sheriff

No charges against officer who killed innocent dad during 'swatting' prank

SWAT raid
In December, police responded to a prank call, also known as a "swatting," at the home of Andrew Finch. When the entirely innocent and unarmed Finch answered the door during the raid, an unnamed officer was recorded on video killing him in cold blood. Now, as the coverage has died down in the press, and as TFTP accurately predicted in January, the Wichita District Attorney announced that there will be no charges.

According to Kansascity.com, on Thursday, District Attorney Marc Bennett said he had to make a determination based on Kansas law and law handed down by the Supreme Court, which says that when determining if an officer acted reasonably, evidence has to be reviewed based on what the officer knew at the time of the shooting, not 20/20 hindsight, he said.

The DA's office also stated that they will keep the officer's name a secret because he will not be charged. During a press conference on Thursday, the Wichita police department released multiple other body cameras showing the summary execution of Finch. Those videos are below.

Cheeseburger

'New Yorker' columnist: Chick-Fil-A restaurant must be banned from city cause owner is religious Christian

Chick-Fil-A restaurant
On Friday, The New Yorker honed in on a serious threat to the lives of all New Yorkers: the arrival of Chick-Fil-A in their homey little corner of the universe. In a 1400-word diatribe titled "Chick-Fil-A's Creepy Infiltration of New York City," one Dan Piepenring wrote that New Yorkers should not accept the intrusion of a popular restaurant serving chicken because the owner happens to be a religious Christian. "The air smelled fried," Piepenring wrote, ominously.

"New York has taken to Chick-fil-A...And yet the brand's arrival here feels like an infiltration, in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism." What signs are there of this incipient theocracy? Its Atlanta corporate headquarters - not its New York store or any of its other stores - has Bible verses and a statue of Jesus, and its stores close on Sundays. That's it.

But the mere whiff of Jesus means that New York must cast out Chick-fil-A like a leper, and that those who refuse to do so have succumbed to the blasphemous entreaties of the Midianites. "When a location opened in a Queens mall, in 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a boycott. No such controversy greeted the opening of this newest outpost. Chick-fil-A's success here is a marketing coup. Its expansion raises questions about what we expect from our fast food, and to what extent a corporation can join a community," Piepenring rants.

Comment: Western countries are risking a serious war in the Middle East, and a New Yorker columnist decides that the real danger is a chicken sandwich restaurant because there are Christians working there. Talk about losing touch with reality!


Megaphone

Andre Vltchek: Voices of the Syrian people

Syrian children
The attack against Syria - this proud and independent country - has just taken place.

Three countries with zero moral mandate to judge or punish anybody; three countries already responsible for hundreds of millions of human lives lost on all continents for centuries, showered Syria with their missiles.

They tried to scare to death Syria, and to break its determination, but they failed. Most of the Syrian people stood proudly by their government.

Airplane

Fountain pen wielding passenger forces emergency landing on Air China jet

Air China passenger jets.
© Kim Kyung-Hoon / Reuters
Air China passenger jets.
An Air China jet travelling from Changsha to Beijing was forced into an unscheduled landing when a passenger threatened crew members with a fountain pen.

It's not clear what sparked the mid-flight scare. However, online air traffic tracker Flight Radar 24 reveals the original path of the passenger jet was interrupted approximately half-way through Sunday's journey to the Chinese capital.

According to the Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC), a man carrying a fountain pen threatened to harm Air China staff members on board the plane, forcing the aircraft's pilots to take action. The incident on board flight CA1350 occurred just after 1pm local time on Sunday.

Mail

Patrick Henningsen's Letter to 21Wire Readers

Propaganda poster for the UK-funded White Helmets, the Free Syrian Police and Aleppo Councils
© Patrick Henningsen, May 2017, East Aleppo, Syria
Propaganda poster for the UK-funded White Helmets, the Free Syrian Police and Aleppo Councils
Dear Readers,

Glad to have you back. Firstly, we would like to apologies for being offline most of last week. We've been working hard behind the scenes to get back online.

On Tuesday April 10th, 2018 at approximately 2pm EST, 21stCenturyWire.com has been under a sustained a heavy Denial of Service (DDoS) cyber attack and were only able to restore our systems yesterday afternoon. We were not the only ones.

Comment:


Star of David

When Zionism collides with reality

bombed gaza school
© Jordi Bernabeu Farrús
A Gaza school in shambles after Operation Protective Edge in 2014
"The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant, and so devastating, that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored, because it cannot survive their being repeated."
With these commanding words, Robert H. Jackson, Chief Counsel for the United States, opened the War Crimes Tribunals at Nuremberg, Germany not long after the conclusion of World War II.

Empanelled to hold accountable military, political and judicial leaders for violations of international law... including war crimes, crimes against humanity and the law of war... the tribunals imposed personal accountability for genocide directed at Jews and others marked by the German state as a challenge to its declared racial, religious and political supremacy.

Although these offenses took many forms, at their core, each derived their evil from a common intersect that those targeted by the state for eradication were not just inferior, but unworthy of life itself... men, women and children, young and old, reduced to little more than objects of surreal derision whose mere existence contaminated the state's supremacist lens.

Star of David

Can't take the heat: 'NY Times' coverage of Gaza turns biased again, pressure from Israeli Hasbara Central

new york times
After a hopeful improvement, the New York Times coverage of the Gaza protests is unfortunately back to its normal one-sided reporting - and intense pressure from Hasbara Central is surely a major reason. Take a look at this tweet yesterday, as the paper's main reporter, David Halbfinger, jumps to respond to a pro-Israel critic:
NYT twitter hasbara
© Sean Murray/Twitter
Hasbara-ists on the case, with the New York Times, April 13, 2018.
Sure enough, Halbfinger promptly added the following sentence to his article: "At another point, an explosive was hung from a kite, but fell on the Palestinian side."

Stop

California State Senator Richard Pan seeks to criminalize 'fake news' about medicine, politics & government

Mercury Joker
In the latest stunning assault on the freedom to think, California state senator Richard Pan - known as the "Mercury Joker" super villain for pushing mandatory vaccines into law via SB 277 - now wants to criminalize all bloggers and independent journalists who dare question the official narratives on vaccines, medicine, politics and government.

The quest for absolute authoritarian control never seems to end with these left-wing zealots. And California looks more and more like North Korea with each new law. (Is Richard Pan the long-lost cousin of Kim Jong-Un?)

Ever seeking to limit public debate, crush independent journalism and control all speech, Richard Pan has a new thought control bill entitled, "SB1424 Internet: social media: false information: strategic plan." While the title seems to target social media websites, the language of the bill clearly applies the law to all blogs, news websites, video sites and podcasts. From the proposed law itself:
As used in this section, "social media" means an electronic service or account, or electronic content, including, but not limited to, videos, still photographs, blogs, video blogs, podcasts, instant and text messages, email, online services or accounts, or Internet Web site profiles or locations.

Comment: Senator Pan's political shenanigans and undue influence:
The Sacramento Bee is reporting that State lawmakers behind bill SB277 have ties to the makers of vaccines. Pharmaceutical companies and their trade groups gave current members of the Legislature more than $2 million. Nine of the top 20 recipients of these funds are either members of the Senate health committee, or leaders who could influence the outcome of the bill, as well as push it through to law.

One senator, in particular, is also a doctor, Richard Pan, who received more than $95,000 in campaign cash. He also just happens to be the man who wrote the bill.