As I write this, demonstrations around the world are taking place in protest of WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange's arbitrary detention and silencing by the US-centralized power establishment that has been actively pursuing his destruction for over a decade. The demonstrations will be well-attended, but not a fraction as well-attended as they should be. They will receive international attention, but not a fraction as much attention as they should.

This is because the manipulators and smear merchants who have made their careers paving the way for oligarchic agendas have been successful in killing off sympathy for the plight of Assange. As we discussed yesterday, sympathy is key for getting narratives to take hold in public consciousness. This is why western corporate media will circulate pictures of dead children all day long when it's in the interests of advancing longstanding imperialist agendas, but never when those children were killed by western weapons. If you can tug at someone's heart strings while telling them a story, the story you tell them will slide right in with minimal scrutiny. And it works the other way, too: if you can prevent someone's heart strings from being plucked while hearing about a legitimately heartbreaking story, you can prevent that story from taking hold. Kill all sympathy for a dissident journalist and you kill all belief in his side of the story.

And Assange's side of the story is indeed devastating to the preferred narrative of the US-centralized empire. A journalist (yes, journalist, per definition) who publishes 100 percent authentic documents exposing the inner mechanics of power structures all over the world, who was forced to seek political asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy in London in order to avoid extradition by the same government which brutalized Chelsea Manning, is on its face a highly sympathetic story. And it does tremendous damage to the narrative that America and its close network of allies are freedom-loving democracies whose systems of government are nothing like those naughty, oppressive regimes they seek to topple.


So they smear him. As often as possible, using whatever they can, they smear his reputation. Because if they can kill all sympathy for him and his outlet, it's as good for their agendas as actually killing him.

MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow broke down in tears over a piece on children of illegal migrants. While some expressed sympathy, others accused her of hypocrisy and staged emotions.

"This is incredible," the host of The Rachel Maddow Show uttered live on air on Tuesday when she began reading the recent scoop by the AP on children of detained illegal migrants. The story detailed how babies and youngsters, forcibly separated from their parents by border control, reportedly get transferred to the so-called "tender-age" shelters.

As Maddow read the report, she appeared to become distressed. The Emmy-winning political commentator clearly couldn't hold her composure, bursting into tears. "I think I'm going to have to hand this off," she said sobbingly after a few attempts to pull herself together.

Authorities in Kansas City are investigating an incident in which a cat was violently kicked into the air by man on a high-school football field.

Video of the cruel stunt was shared on Snapchat last month, according to local government officials in Kansas City. Missouri police are now hoping to identify the kicker, with the state ready to file charges against him.

"Please help us identify the people involved in this video showing a man kicking a poor cat. We plan to file animal cruelty charges," the Kansas City government tweeted.

WARNING: Video contains animal cruelty

A Canadian evangelical Christian university will not be permitted to gain accreditation for its law school because it championed a code of conduct that included abstinence from sex outside of heterosexual marriage.

The Supreme Court in Canada, in two 7-2 rulings, found that the law societies of British Columbia and Ontario could deny Trinity Western University accreditation for its law school because of the university's community covenant that included the code of conduct.

The justices ruled that the covenant would impede LGBT students from attending the proposed law school and those who attended would be at risk of significant harm.

Breaking up with Facebook is apparently as difficult as breaking up with a bad boyfriend or girlfriend who won't accept your decision. That's the experience Henry Grabar of Slate had when he stopped signing on. He stopped logging in on June 6 and stayed off Facebook for ten days. He had been a member for over ten years and this was the longest period he had remained off the social network. But Facebook didn't leave him alone. He received 17 email messages in a span of nine days urging him to return.

Grabar is not alone in trying to wean himself off Facebook for various reasons. Some do it because they realize it can be a waste of time, while others do it because of the company's inability to protect (or lack of interest in protecting) its members' personal data. The company has mistakenly released data of nearly 100 million of its members and friends of members to third parties, and many of them have used the data for illicit purposes. While Facebook says they are not losing members, some recent statistics paint a different story. According to a Pew study, only 51 percent of U.S. teenagers use the service now, down from 71 percent in 2015. This was the first time the numbers have fallen.

Grabar found that the messages he received actually reinforced his decision to stay off the platform. On one day he received two emails telling him a distant friend had posted a new photo. On another day he received a message telling him that 88 people liked a post in a group he belonged to. And on another day he received an email telling him there was a post to his college alumni group.

A family has finally won a settlement in the tragic death of their mother, but the only people held liable for the cop who tried to kill a dog and killed an innocent mother instead - are the taxpayers.

On Monday, the taxpayers of Burlington, Iowa were told that they will be hit with a $2 million bill to pay for a police officer who shot and killed an innocent mother. The tragic scenario was captured on video and the fact that most of that video remains a secret was part of the reason the family received the settlement in the wrongful death suit.

The settlement was announced on June 6, but the amount had not been made public until Monday.

Last month, during a federal court hearing in Davenport, Iowa, officials revealed that the confidential police video - a key piece of evidence in exonerating a cop who killed the innocent mom - does not corroborate the cop's claims that he was bitten by a dog before firing the fatal shots that accidentally killed the mother of two.

As TFTP previously reported, the Burlington police department released a 12-second clip from a Burlington Police officer's body cam showing him shooting and killing Autumn Steele.

Don't get me wrong. Not every conservative has a winning personality and not every liberal is a toothache in search of a mouth to inhabit. In fact, one of the single nicest people I know is a liberal (Hi, Julie Joyce!) Yet and still, it's not a reach to say that most liberals, especially the ones that are politically active, are just generally difficult to get along with.

It's not just me saying that either. I've interviewed more than one big name conservative who has told me that they moved over to the right in large part because the other liberals they were around were such insufferable human beings.

John Hawkins: ...I always find the stories of people who ideologically move from the left to the right to be fascinating and I noticed that you used to be a liberal who even worked for Ron Dellums...

Michael Medved: Ron Dellums helped to make me a conservative.

John Hawkins: How so? What caused you to move to the right?

Michael Medved: First of all, even at the time I went to work for Dellums, I knew better. Because I was never that far out. I mean I supported Robert Kennedy, not Eugene McCarthy.

John Hawkins: Dellums was even a Communist, wasn't he?

Michael Medved: Yeah, he basically was. I worked for Dellums for 6 weeks and then I couldn't stand it anymore. Because I think he so clearly demonstrated some of the most malign and malevolent tendencies of the American Left. Corruption, drug use, Communist sympathies if not Communist party membership.

European Union leaders appear to believe they're about to spell the end of the "meme" by passing a series of copyright protections for intellectual property holders known as the Copyright Directive.

The new laws aim to curb any use of copyrighted material, even if that material is made into a derivative work, or an internet meme - and the new protections would allow companies like Google and Facebook, who operate social media sites and can control content, to pull "questionable" material that could be subject to a copyright claim.

That means, critics say, that the European Union will force Google and Facebook to end the meme as we know it. And any speech that anyone in the European Union finds objectionable (or might find objectionable).

A former Welsh Tory mayor is facing a jail sentence after being convicted of raping a young girl.

David Boswell, who was the Conservative mayor of Pembroke, West Wales, was found guilty of raping a young girl.

The 56-year-old, who is still a Pembrokeshire county councillor, was also found guilty of three indecent assaults against her and another girl by a jury at Swansea Crown Court.

David Boswell, pictured outside Swansea Crown Court, was found guilty of raping a young girl

The court heard Boswell raped a nine-year-old girl and indecently assaulted another youngster aged under 13 between 1990 and 1994.

A "minor explosion," likely caused by a battery short circuit, triggered an evacuation at London's Southgate tube station on Tuesday evening, police said, adding that a number of people received minor injuries.

Police said a small number of people were treated at the scene. Emergency services arrived at the station just after 7pm following reports of a small explosion. Local reports suggest that one person was taken out of the station on a stretcher.