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.”
Three bullets from behind: why did police kill a black man in a mall? | US news | The Guardian
A private autopsy, commissioned by Bradford’s family, indicates he was shot three times, once in the head, once in the neck, and once in the back. All the shots entered from behind.
Source: Three bullets from behind: why did police kill a black man in a mall? | US news | The Guardian
The French far right is hijacking the Strasbourg shooting to sow division | Cécile Guerin

France needs unity more than ever – but those who seek to divide us are again harnessing a tragedy to propagate fake news
Terrorism struck France again on Tuesday evening, when a 29-year-old attacker, since identified as Chérif Chekatt, killed three people and injured a dozen at a busy Christmas market in Strasbourg. With ongoing social unrest and polarisation laid bare by the gilets jaunes movement, France is now facing a new potential source of division. The attack has already proved a boon to far-right groups and conspiracy theorists who have seized on the event to disseminate their ideas and sow division.
Related: Strasbourg attack: ‘It lasted for minutes, but felt like hours’
Closing Thought–13Dec18
On this day in 1945 the Hyena of Auschwitz was executed…..one Irma…….

On December 13, 1945, Irma Ida Ilse Grese, age 22, was executed in accordance with her sentence of death for the crime of committing War Crimes (Crimes Against Humanity) for her service as a concentration camp guard at Ravensbruck and Auschwitz Nazi death camps during World War II.
The apparently attractive young lady thus became the youngest female executed by British authorities during the 20th Century.
Irma was born in 1923 to a dairy working family in Germany, but her mother committed suicide by drinking acid in 1936, after finding out her husband was having an affair. Irma’s father remarried and probably joined the Nazi Party. A somewhat troubled girl, Irma quit school at age 14 and was deeply involved (obsessed) with a Nazi program for girls called the League of German Girls. She attempted to…
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State Inquiry Into Parkland Shooting Reveals Broader Security Failure
A state commission investigating the massacre at Stoneman Douglas High found that several sheriff’s deputies who raced to the school and heard gunshots stayed outside the building.
New Zealand courts banned naming Grace Millane’s accused killer. Google just emailed it out | Toby Manhire | World news | The Guardian
this is next-level. You didn’t have to go searching to find the name on the internet. Google put it right in your inbox. You didn’t even need to click to open the email. His name was in the subject field. Shouldn’t Google then be hauled before the courts? What did they have to say for themselves – was this defensible, and what processes did they have in place to stop this sort of thing happening? A spokesperson for Google in New Zealand (based in Australia) responded to those questions by saying, “we wouldn’t comment on specifics”. That’s a no-comment on the specific fact that they dispatched an email with the name of the accused – information unequivocally suppressed by NZ courts – in the headline.
The many costs Palestinian women pay to fight oppression
As if defying gender norms in their own communities isn’t enough, Palestinian women are forced to fight prejudices and racism masking themselves as feminism in Israel and the West.
By Anwar Mhajne
A Palestinian protester takes part in a mass rally against government inaction toward gender violence, Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, December 4, 2018. (Oren Ziv/Activestills.org)
Tens of thousands of women protested against gender violence in Israel earlier this month, demanding the allocation of more resources to combat it. The protests came a week after the murders of two girls, 16-year-old Yara Ayoub from the village of Jish, and 13-year-old Silvana Tsegai from Tel Aviv. This week, another woman, Eman Ahmad Awad, was found stabbed to death in her home in Acre. She was the 25th victim of gender violence in Israel this year.
I am a Palestinian citizen of Israel, from a Muslim family, and I have experienced first-hand the social restrictions women in our society face. But I also regularly witness how violence against women is used by Israelis to legitimize racism against the Palestinian community and to discredit our politicians, who are criticized for prioritizing Palestinian issues over domestic ones, as if the two are disconnected. In reality, we, Palestinian women, experience violence and are being silenced on all levels — locally, nationally, and internationally.
As a graduate student and now teaching fellow in the United States, I have learned that talking about gender in the Middle East with non-Arabs, or writing about it in English, is often used to affirm the prejudices that Westerners hold about Arab and Muslim men. In conversations on gender, people are suddenly comfortable revealing their misconceptions and criticizing those “backwards Arabs” and Muslims. (The two are often conflated.)
In the West, everything I do as an individual from the Middle East is considered to be a representation of my entire culture. Whether I want to or not, I have become the spokesperson of not only my community but also my wider ethnic and religious groups.
I switched from pursuing an education in the sciences to a focus on gender studies in order to discuss and promote women’s rights in my community. Instead, I find myself constantly answering questions that assume Western superiority, particularly when it comes to women’s issues. I’ve been asked whether I have to cover my hair or dress differently when I am back home in Umm al-Fahm, for example. I’ve had to tackle comments like, “Arabs hate science” and “they don’t utilize the talent of their women.” I am forced to defend my mother’s decision to wear a veil.
These challenges are not necessarily unique to us Palestinians; we share them with many Muslim women and women of color in the West. However, Palestinian women are stuck between a rock and a hard place. Critiques of our community are often weaponized by pro-Israel and conservative groups. As a result, meaningful gender-related criticisms are silenced inside the community, prompting accusations of airing out our dirty laundry, lest it be used against us.
The unique position as Palestinians living in Israel is an added complication. Last year, a Palestinian woman from Israel who runs an organization working to eliminate violence against women in the Arab community asked me to connect her with an international NGO that focuses on similar issues. The international organization refused to work with her because they don’t work with any organization “operating in Israel” — even though the local NGO was focused on the Palestinian community, it was disqualified because it was based in Israel.
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These questions and comments vilify Muslims and Arabs, and justify oppressive policies toward communities of color. They disregard the fact that violence against women is a global issue, and that patriarchy is not limited to one geographical location, religion, or ethnicity.
Dr. Anwar Mhajne is a Palestinian citizen of Israel. She is an Umm Al Fahem native, but moved to the United States in 2011 to pursue her M.A. and later her Ph.D. Anwar is currently a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in the Department of Political Science at Stonehill College, MA. Twitter: @mhajneam.
The post The many costs Palestinian women pay to fight oppression appeared first on +972 Magazine.
IOF break into Al Quds University in East Jerusalem
PNN/ Jerusalem/
Israeli occupation forces stormed a number of student headquarters on Wednesday on the main campus of Al-Quds University in Abu Dis, East Jerusalem.
Local sources said that the occupation forces confiscated the recordings of surveillance cameras and raided a number of the headquarters of the student blocs inside the campus of Al-Quds University in East Jerusalem.
The incursions are believed to be part of the increasingly violent searches carried out by the IOF following the incident on Sunday night where seven settlers were injured.
Al-Quds University was founded two decades ago as the only Palestinian University in Jerusalem. It currently accommodates over 13,000 students. AQU provides higher education and community services within the Jerusalem area as well as the neighboring towns, villages and refugee camps in Palestine.


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