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Propaganda

Sloppy? UK Times' lead article questioning govt's 'alliance against Russia' scrubbed, but URL link remains with different story


RT
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 15:48 UTC
london times newspapers
© Lisa-Blue / Getty Images
The Times' lead article from Wednesday, suggesting Theresa May is struggling to hold together an alliance against Russia, has disappeared from its website, with a completely new story under the same URL replacing it.

So, what could have motivated the paper to shelve the story?

The original article, headlined 'May battles to preserve alliance against Russia', looked at Prime Minister May's handling of the Skripal case after chief executive of the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory at Porton Down, Gary Aitkenhead, gave an explosive interview that revealed that the lab had not concluded where the chemical weapon had come from - despite May's government insisting it was engineered in Russia.

Comment: Who would have approved (or demanded) the change?

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MIB

Best of the Web: Knobs, knockers and Russian 'secret spycraft manuals'

Craig Murray
craigmurray.org.uk
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 15:30 UTC
Gary Aitkenhead Porton down skripal
© Daily MailGary Aitkenhead, Porton Down's chief executive
What is left of the government's definitive identification of Russia as the culprit in the Salisbury attack? It is a simple truth that Russia is not the only state that could have made the nerve agent: dozens of them could. It could also have been made by many non-state actors.

Motorola sales agent Gary Aitkenhead - inexplicably since January, Chief Executive of Porton Down chemical weapons establishment - said in his Sky interview that "probably" only a state actor could create the nerve agent. That is to admit the possibility that a non state actor could. David Collum, Professor of Organo-Chemistry at Cornell University, infinitely more qualified than a Motorola salesman, has stated that his senior students could do it. Professor Collum tweeted me this morning.

The key point in his tweet is, of course "if asked". The state and corporate media has not asked Prof. Collum nor any of the Professors of Organic Chemistry in the UK. There simply is no basic investigative journalism happening around this case.
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Vader

Craig Murray on Skirpal affair: UK and NATO tried to step up Cold War with Russia


RT
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 14:57 UTC
skripal home
© Reuters/ Hannah McKayOfficers guard the home of Sergei Skripal
The UK and its NATO friends have attempted to "step up the Cold War" with Russia and have failed, according to Craig Murray, blogger and the UK's ex-ambassador to Uzbekistan.

Theresa May's Government seems to have been delivered a huge blow today, as Porton Down scientists revealed it cannot confirm Russia was behind the attack on ex-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia.

The broadcaster and human rights activist said it is an "extremely important" statement from Porton Down - the secretive military base where testing was carried out.

Murray said "a fortnight ago sources inside the Foreign and Commonwealth Office told him they were 'under pressure' to say it was made in Russia" but they knew they were unable to do so.

He said: "What we have seen today is news management because the Government had to get over the hurdle the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons will shortly be telling people there is no evidence this came from Russia.
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No Entry

Nearly 2,000 people were stopped in 9 days under Trump's travel ban - and almost all of them were legal US residents

Michal Kranz
Business Insider
Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00 UTC
Donald Trump
© Leah Millis/ReutersPresident Donald Trump
The travel ban put forward by President Donald Trump at the beginning of last year via executive order led to 1,903 people being stopped by customs agents.
  • The majority of them were legal residents of the US.
  • While a federal judge quickly blocked that travel ban, Trump later issued two other travel bans, the second of which has been allowed to go forward by the Supreme Court.

Comment: State Department now 'fully implementing' Trump's expanded travel ban

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Blackbox

Yulia Skripal call to cousin and statement to police released - "everyone's health fine, will be discharged soon"

Vladimir Rodzianko
The Duran
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 14:43 UTC
yulia skripal
© julia.skripal / Facebook / Global Look Press
After being hospitalized in a poisoning in Salisbury, UK in early March, Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, have been upgraded to a stable condition.

The poisoning has set off an unprecedented diplomatic row the last few weeks between Russia and the UK - with Prime Minister Theresa May and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson accusing Russia unequivocally of orchestrating the attack, all without providing a shred of evidence pointing to Russia's guilt. In fact, there has been increasingly more evidence coming out that Russia was NOT the culprit of this poisoning.

Boris Johnson and Theresa May are increasingly coming under public scrutiny for the handling of the Skripal case, turning the UK's leadership into a laughing stock.

The most recent development in the Skripal affair is a recorded phone call aired by Russian broadcaster Rossiya 1, purportedly between Yulia Skripal and her cousin, Victoria Skripal Thursday morning.

The hosts of the "60 Minute" show on Rossiya 1 - Evgeny Popov and Olga Skabeyeva - said they were unable to confirm the authenticity of the phone call.


Comment: The UK police also released a statement on behalf of Yulia:
"I woke up over a week ago now and am glad to say my strength is growing daily. I am grateful for the interest in me and for the many messages of goodwill that I have received.

"I have many people to thank for my recovery and would especially like to mention the people of Salisbury that came to my aid when my father and I were incapacitated. Further than that, I would like to thank the staff at Salisbury District Hospital for their care and professionalism.

"I am sure you appreciate that the entire episode is somewhat disorientating, and I hope that you'll respect my privacy and that of my family during the period of my convalescence."


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2 + 2 = 4

The ideological perversion of scholarship

Rod Dreher
American Conservative
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 14:39 UTC
graduate
© Aaron Amat/Shutterstock
I heard from an academic friend yesterday who is extremely discouraged. I invited him to write about his experience for this blog, and I imagine he will. For now, I can tell you this. He is a young scholar working in a highly specialized branch of the humanities, one that requires an immense amount of learning. He proposed a paper for two separate forums within his discipline, and was turned down. He's very, very good in his field, and is used to having his papers accepted, and winning accolades. This was unusual, but it is of course quite possible that his papers weren't as good as the others.

What set him off, though, was his recognition that he probably wasn't going to get accepted anyway, whatever the quality of his work, because the gatekeepers aren't interested in the old-fashioned kind of scholarship that he does. Last year, the papers accepted in these two different forums were not about seriously scholarly topics, but about the kind of shallow takes on politically approved topics. My friend writes that this was "the final nail in the coffin" for him, the one that reveals that he has no place in the academy. He said he is glad to have learned this before becoming dependent on a university paycheck, but it grieves him to have devoted so much of his life to mastering his subject only to arrive at the end of his studies to find that his field has become as politicized as other humanities fields. He writes:

Comment: Academic authoritarians: The perversion of scholarship

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Pistol

Central American MS-13 gang spreading violence across US

Maximus
Halsey News
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 11:00 UTC
migrants crossing
A pattern of violence is spreading across the US, with MS-13 gang related murders directly tied to an illegal immigrant pool of recruits.

MS-13 is a transnational gang from Central America which operates in multiple US cities and engages in list of violent crimes, including drug trafficking, murder, rape, prostitution, robbery, home invasions and kidnapping - with their highest level of concentration in the Northeast and West Coast, according to an FBI report.

Horrendous Crimes

In September 2016, the bodies of two teenage girls - Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens - were found in Brentwood, NY.

According to CBS News, the heads and faces of the girls were mutilated in an "almost unmatched" fashion by 13 gang members - 10 of whom were illegal immigrants.

In late January, Nassau County police found the remains of Julio Cesar Gonzales-Espantzay, a 19-year-old immigrant was found hacked to death by gang members with knives and machetes.

Comment: But the democrats need their votes - whatever the cost.

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Cell Phone

Facebook confirms spying on private messages to moderate them for 'violations'

Tom Ciccotta
Breitbart
Thu, 05 Apr 2018 06:39 UTC
facebook eye
© AFP
Facebook Messenger scans photos and links sent by users on the messaging platform, according to a recent statement by the company itself.

Facebook released the statement for a report by Bloomberg, which states that messages on Facebook's Messenger platform are analyzed for violation of Facebook's conduct policies. If they are flagged by the automated system, they are then read by moderators. If the content is deemed in violation of Facebook policy, the moderator is then permitted to taken action.

CEO Mark Zuckerberg himself has admitted to monitoring Messenger conversations. "In that case, our systems detect what's going on," Zuckerberg said in an interview with Vox. "We stop those messages from going through."

Unlike WhatsApp, the popular messaging platform Facebook acquired in 2014 for approximately $19.4 billion, Facebook Messenger does not automatically provide end-to-end encryption. Users must activate "secret conversations" on the Messenger platform in order to take advantage of encryption. Through end-to-end encryption, only participants in a conversation are able to read the messages that are exchanged.
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Star of David

SOTT Focus: Israeli Terrorism Against Palestinians Will Never End if Western Hypocrisy in Middle East Continues

Eva Bartlett
RT
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 03:50 UTC
palestinian house destroyed
© Suhaib Salem / ReutersA Palestinian stands inside the remains of a house, that witnesses said was destroyed by Israeli shelling during a 50-day war in 2014 summer, during a sandstorm in Gaza September 8, 2015
The US is fine with "rebels" like Al-Qaeda "protesting" in Syria, but when genuinely unarmed Palestinians protest the occupiers who violently expelled them from their homes and land, they are "inciting violence."

During peaceful protests on March 30 in eastern Gaza, an unarmed Palestinian man walked on farmland towards the fence built by his occupiers. Within minutes, he was shot by one of the 100 Israeli special forces snipers deployed along the fence precisely to quash dissent-by any means necessary-under the old pretext of "self-defense."

On the same day, a Palestinian woman, armed solely with a flag, walked towards the fence which has imprisoned her for so many years. She, too, was targeted by one of the snipers.

Among the 17 killed that day was a 16-year-old girl and a 27-year-old farmer, the latter killed by Israeli tank fire.
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Heart - Black

French TV show featuring transgender man as baby's mother leads to mass confusion


RT
Wed, 04 Apr 2018 21:56 UTC
LGBT flag
© Gleb Garanich / Reuters
The French Twittersphere is abuzz over a TV show that invited on a couple of transgender men and their child, calling the one who gave birth "a mother." Some have slammed the show as intolerant.

The now hotly-discussed show called 'Hello, earthlings!' was aired on Saturday. It featured an American transgender couple, Biff Chaplow and Trystan Reese, who were both born women. The latter chose to keep his uterus to bear their child, who was also present on the show.


During the show a banner reading "Mom is on the left" appeared on the screen, referring to the 34-year-old, causing an uproar on social media and splitting it into two camps.

Comment: So, according to this post-modern thinking... a woman who 'transitions' to a man, can be both a man and a mother... and a man who transitions to a woman can also be a mother. Eh, is that about it?

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