Month: May 2018

The liberal Twitterverse has been having another meltdown over the U.S. embassy moving to Jerusalem. Now many of them are continuing their narrative of Trump as head of a mob family, whose political ties to Israel, another totalitarian regime, are putting the poor Palestinian people at risk.

Here’s another list of progressive celebs freaking out over the deaths of Palestinians at the Israel/Gaza border. Because the best way to be belligerent towards conservatives and Israel supporters, is to scream injustice on behalf of terrorist-backed militants on a suicide mission to get across a sovereign nation’s border.

Geez, do we really have to side with the terrorists on this one?

Daily Show co-creator Lizz Winstead, while not an active member of Hamas, seemed to be doing an excellent job of embracing the terror group’s propaganda. The impassioned humanitarian tweeted: “Fuck what is happening in Gaza. It is horrifying. It is a massacre. It should be tolerated by no one.” Now, many would agree that it is a tragedy what is going on, but not only at the hands of the Israelis, which is what she is implying. She retweeted MSNBC’s Chris Hayes, who implied that maybe it’s US and Israel policy to allow the killing of innocent protesters.

That would be problematic if not for the fact that these “unarmed” protesters are causing violence and chaos at the behest of Hamas, despite the multiple non-lethal warnings of Israeli guards at the border. Still, will no one look into the fact that Hamas has been quite open about its tactics on this one?

Well Judd Apatow certainly didn’t seem to get it. He tweeted: “Our country is part of the dehumanization of the Palestinian people and we must not lose our humanity. Remember when Trump always talked about Isis chopping heads. But there are no tears for these people and these children.”

And the always well-spoken and not crazy Bette Midler showed her balanced opinion on the subject, tweeting, “Fifty-two people die in protest over moving American Embassy to Jerusalem. Thanks, asshole! Your uninformed and demented actions have consequences!” Yes, you’re right. Thousands of these people attacked armed border patrols with slingshots and burning tires as directed by an extremist group. How dare anyone say they deserved consequences of their own!

Of course, Rosie O’Donnell couldn’t go two seconds without a gleeful barrage at the Trump family. She asserted that there was “US-sanctioned murder” afoot in Gaza on Monday, “as dumbshit barbie and ken [Kushner and Ivanka] smiled for the cameras — horror — pure horror — What has the US become under this lunatic #TrumpCrimeFamily.”

Jeffrey Wright, one of the stars of HBO’s violent, murder-happy staples, Westworld, also complained about Netanyahu’s claim that the embassy unveiling marked a “glorious day.” He stated that “Regardless of your position, that’s a heavy devaluation of Palestinian life.”

Honestly though, what kind of raving liberal wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to blame any bloodshed on Donald Trump? Still, it’s crazy to think that they would go so far as to condemn a US president instead of the openly bloodthirsty Hamas who is inspiring this chaos, especially when he’s just acting on a promise made 60 years ago.

What’s happened to The Onion? The satirical news site on Monday and Tuesday descended into the muck of anti-Israel hatred. The Onion published three vile articles sliming the country as blood-thirsty killers of women and babies. Here are the headlines in the last 24 hours. See if you can spot the “funny” in this satire: “IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child.” 

Another: “Trump Fascinated By Israeli Cultural Tradition Of Mass Slaughter Of Protesters.” And another: “Netanyahu Announces Day Of Mourning For Fence Damaged In Yesterday’s Conflict.” 

Here’s some of the faux Israel Defense Forces (IDF) story: 

Describing the terrifying yet valiant experience to his fellow battalion members, Israel Defense Forces soldier Yossi Saadon recounted Tuesday his harrowing, heroic war story of killing an 8-month-old Palestinian child during a violent attack against protesters.

…

At press time, Saadon’s battalion commander informed him that he was submitting his name for the Medal of Valor, the IDF’s highest honor.

Gleefully slaughtering children gets into the worst kind of blood libel attacks.  

Here’s another Onion piece on Donald Trump being “fascinated” by the Jewish “custom” of murdering innocents: 

“It’s very beautiful, such a beautiful custom,” said Trump of the cherished Israeli pastime of mowing down unarmed Palestinians with rifle fire. 

…

Trump added he was “particularly moved” by the portion of the festivities that celebrated a 13-year-old Palestinian boy becoming a dead man.

In a story on Benjamin Netanyahu, The Onion reiterated the smear that Jews are gleeful murderers: “Sources confirmed Netanyahu concluded the solemn ceremony with a 21-gun salute fired directly into a group of Palestinian protesters.” 

In fact, many of the “protesters” threw rocks, set fires and, as even The Washington Post admitted, had weapons including an AK-47.         

So-called “fact checkers” have taken to “debunking” conservative Babylon Bee’s satire. Snopes told readers that, in fact, Planned Parenthood did not defend Bill Cosby. It obliviously informed that CNN hasn’t purchased an industrial-sized washing machine. Politifact breathlessly related that ISIS didn’t lay down its arms after Katy Perry encouraged world peace. 

Given this, will these fact checkers explain that Israel doesn’t, in fact, give medals for murdering infants? Will they tell readers that Donald Trump isn’t planning on slaughtering people like the Jews do (according to The Onion, anyway)? 

Given the rabidly anti-Israel tone that’s taken over The Onion, one wonders if Helen Thomas has returned from the grave and is now a staff writer at the “humor” site. 

Twitter announced on Tuesday it will institute a new policy to crackdown on how visible allegedly bad tweets are on the site. Users who are believed to be engaging in “troll-like” behavior will be corralled into a “[s]how more replies” section while users deemed to be contributing to “healthy” conversations will be unaffected.

In a statement, Twitter’s VP of Trust and Safety Del Harvey and Twitter’s Director of Product Management, Health David Gasca wrote about the problem of addressing so-called “trolls” on the site. According to the statement, while some trolling can be good-natured, others “distort and detract from the public conversation on Twitter, particularly in communal areas like conversations and search.”

CEO Jack Dorsey (pictured here) said the “ultimate goal is to encourage more free and open conversation.” He said Twitter will be “[l]ooking at behavior, not content” in order to reduce trolling. He vowed to discuss the issue more in-depth on Periscope.

In his tweet, Dorsey shared a BuzzFeed article with the headline, “Twitter Is Going To Limit The Visibility Of Tweets From People Behaving Badly.” The subhead visible on Twitter read, “Act like a jerk, and Twitter will start limiting how often your tweets show up.”

The statement also claims that less than 1 percent of Twitter users are the majority of accounts that are reported to the site, but most of their content does not violate the rules. Therefore, in order to limit people’s interaction with those accounts, Twitter is implementing algorithms behind the scenes. Project Veritas released undercover videos in early January had raised the issue of “shadow banning” with a hidden-camera interview of a former Twitter engineer.

As the statement explains, the site will use “many new signals” that are “not visible externally” to rank tweets and hide from view tweets from users who are seemingly trolls:

There are many new signals we’re taking in, most of which are not visible externally. Just a few examples include if an account has not confirmed their email address, if the same person signs up for multiple accounts simultaneously, accounts that repeatedly Tweet and mention accounts that don’t follow them, or behavior that might indicate a coordinated attack. We’re also looking at how accounts are connected to those that violate our rules and how they interact with each other.

In order to see tweets from offending users, you will have to manually click the “[s]how more replies” feature and opt to see everything in your feed in your settings.

Speaking to Slate, Harvey elaborated that the site will allegedly decide who is negatively impacting a conversation by surveying how many complaints a user receives and if they are blocked or muted.

When questions about whether the policy will impact bots or real people, Harvey told Slate it will impact “accounts that are having the maximum negative impact on the conversation.”

Alarmingly, Harvey confirmed to Slate that the site will not allow users to know whether their accounts have been impacted by this new policy, leading them to apparently tweet into a void.

This method raises questions about who will be considered a troll. Considering Project Veritas videos showed Twitter employees discussing how to keep conservative personalities out of people’s feeds, and the Media Research Center’s “Censored!” report noted that 12 out of the 25 American Trust and Safety Council members are liberal organizations, the definition of a troll seems very subjective and ripe for the same kind of abuse it allegedly tries to stop.