An airstrike launched by the Israeli military has hit a boat that was moored in Gaza City. The vessel was preparing to meet other boats that were trying to sail through Israel's naval blockade of Gaza, locals say.

The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said they hit "military targets belonging to the Hamas terror organization's naval force," as well as "underground terror infrastructure." On its official Twitter account, the IDF said it was done in response to a group of people breaking through the Israel-Gaza border and setting a military post on fire.

Gaza residents cited by Reuters said the boat that was set on fire by the Israeli attack was due to sail to meet a flotilla on its way to Gaza. A number of aid flotillas have attempted to breach the Israeli naval blockade of Gaza in recent years, but the vessels have been stopped, seized or turned back. In the most notorious case in 2010, Israeli commandos killed nine activists on board the Turkish ship Mavi Marmara.

The latest wave of protests along the Israel-Gaza border, which started on May 30, has already left at least 110 Palestinians dead and thousands injured, according to Gaza medics. Around 60 of the fatalities were the result of the crackdown on May 14, the day of the opening of the new US Embassy in Jerusalem, which Israel claims as its capital in defiance of international condemnation. The IDF regularly launches airstrikes into Gaza, each time saying the targets are "terrorists."

https://www.rt.com/news/427484-israel-gaza-airstrike-boat/

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg apologized to the EU Parliament for not doing more to protect Facebook users from evil-doers – but only offered vague answers to questions about the social media giant's privacy and data policies.

In his opening remarks before leaders of the European Parliament’s political parties, Zuckerberg said it was clear that Facebook needs to do more to protect its users from those who wish to do them harm.

"Whether it's fake news, foreign interference in elections or developers misusing people’s information, we didn’t take a broad enough view of our responsibilities. That was a mistake, and I’m sorry," he said.

MEP Nigel Farage of the UK had questions about what he said was Facebook's throttling of right-of-center ideas, prompting Zuckerberg to promise the service won't discriminate on the basis of politics in much stronger terms than he did last month in the US Congress.

The biggest frustration of EU parliamentarians was the format of the questioning. The MEPs spent more than two-thirds of the 90-minute meeting grilling Zuckerberg on everything from terrorism to fake news to online bullying, allowing the Facebook CEO to get away with offering vague responses in the interest of time.

"I asked you six 'yes and no' questions, I got not a single answer," said MEP Philippe Lamberts of Belgium. "You asked for this format, well, for a reason."

As the meeting wrapped up, angry MEPs began to shout out their unanswered questions – including whether Facebook would commit to separating its data from WhatsApp, and if Zuckerberg will promise to allow users to opt out of targeted advertising.

Zuckerberg declined to answer the questions – promising instead to respond to the inquiries in writing. Antonio Tajani, president of the European Parliament, also reassured the MEPs that their questions would be properly addressed.

“Unfortunately the format of questioning allowed Mr. Zuckerberg to cherry-pick his responses and not respond to each individual point," said Damian Collins, who chairs the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee in the British House of Commons.

Zuckerberg’s statement of regret echoed a similar apology he made last month to US lawmakers. His visit to Brussels comes three days before tough new EU rules on data protection take effect. Companies will be subject to hefty fines for breaching them.

https://www.rt.com/news/427470-mark-zuckerberg-eu-parliament-apology/

If there's no evidence Russia interfered in 2016 US election, then the FBI was not protecting the Trump campaign from interference but spying on the campaign in order to hurt it, independent journalist Joe Lauria told RT.

Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into his own investigators.  

The Department of Justice's Inspector General will look into whether the FBI's 2016 probe into alleged Russia collusion was legal.

"The Department has asked the Inspector General to expand the ongoing review of the FISA application process to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election," spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Sarah Isgur Flores, said in a statement.

Joe Lauria: They are all politicized, it seems. And the two parties are ripping themselves apart. For people who disagree with both parties in one way, it is almost enjoyable to see them destroying each other. On the other hand, for the good of running a country, this is not a good thing to see. There is the Senate investigation, intelligence investigation, that is still going on. The House wrapped up theirs. Then there is the FBI investigating, and now there is the Inspector General saying that he would go ahead and investigate this new allegation that the FBI put an informant in there maybe at a sting operation. And there is the Mueller investigation as well.

So, there are about five going on. But I think this latest one of the Inspector General is quite interesting because we have discovered that the FBI had an informant that was talking to two members of the Trump campaign. And the same informant, his name is Stefan Halper, he worked in 1980 for the CIA and infiltrated the President Carter's campaign and spied on the campaign for the Reagan campaign, Carter was the president at the time. So, the opposition party, that of power, sent a spy into the political party in charge, the Democrats, to get dirt on President Carter that helped the Reagan campaign and they won. And that came out only a few years after that.

One of the things they did was steal a briefing book of President Carter before the debate. So, that same man 30 years later, now 73 years old has been the FBI's informant in the Trump campaign. We know from other text messages, that have been released, that there were very high-level members at the FBI who did not want Trump to become president and talked about getting an insurance policy against him.

They said they also had some very nasty things to say about. I am talking about Peter Strzok who was one of the heads of counterintelligence. These were the guys directing at that time this FBI investigation which James Comey, the former FBI director, said only began at the end of July 2017 and we now know Stefan Halper was already helping the two members of the campaign – George Papadopoulos and Carter Page - that this began at the beginning of July 2017.

They want truth about when they started to investigate and in the end of the day this all depends on whether there is any evidence that Russia had some nefarious effect on the 2016 election. Because if there is no evidence that Russia interfered in this election, then the FBI was not protecting the campaign in the US from interference by a foreign power as you have been hearing.

In fact, they were spying to try to hurt Trump's campaign, because people at high levels of FBI didn't want Trump to be elected. And I am not a supporter of either party but I do not want to see intelligence operatives inserting the cells in the political process. That is not what is supposed to happen in the US. And this is what we are perhaps seeing right now… People at the National Security Agency say that "administrations come and go, but we are always here."

So, all the intelligence agencies are always there with enormous power and governments come and go as they are elected. And we are hoping this is not a revelation that the FBI was trying to undermine the Trump campaign the way the same man undermined the Carter campaign in 1980 to the benefit of Ronald Reagan. 

RT: Is this a new norm, where political conflicts are settled through legal means?

JL: It is becoming the norm here right now in the current situation that we are in. These political disputes should be, of course, decided by the voters, by the people of the country. Both campaigns should lay out honestly what they think they are going to do and the people decide…But what we are seeing now is quite a mess from the 2016 campaign…

We saw it going back to 2000 - George W. Bush against Al Gore - that it was not decided by the voters but the Supreme Court, ultimately. And there were lawyers, there was a legal process that decided who the president was. Because they couldn't get their act together in Florida and count the votes properly. Al Gore didn't demand an entire state-wide recount and there was enormous and vicious legal fights over that, obviously, because so much was at stake – who was going to be in the White House.

Now we are seeing more and more legal battles. And the decision by the people to elect Trump which upset a lot of other people is being challenged in a sense because the Russian government has been somehow blamed for putting Trump in the White House and we have not seen almost three years later any real strong evidence to support that.

But we are seeing evidence now, and the Republicans are fighting back, that maybe the FBI was trying to influence, in fact, the elections instead of the Russians. This is where we are at right now. And yes, it is a legal battle. It has nothing to do with the political process, i.e., elections.

RT: What does that say about the state of the US politics at this moment?

JL: We have another election coming up. And the Democrats are trying very hard to win back the House of Representatives. They have been using these Russiagate allegations as a way to try and get support - but it is not working. Polls show that Americans don't care about this issue. They care about healthcare, they care about jobs, they care about maintaining, not losing or getting back a middle-class lifestyle that so many people are falling out of. They are not interested in these kinds of legal battles.

This is two elite groups fighting one another in this kind of legal war and that has nothing to do really with the American people. It is a great distraction actually from the issues that are important to the American people. But it is consuming the White House, it is now consuming the FBI, it is consuming the Democratic Party… There is enormous tension between the both sides… The things are pretty ugly right now between the sides and I think it is going to get worse.

https://www.rt.com/usa/427440-trump-doj-fbi-investigation/

"This is two elite groups fighting one another in this kind of legal war and that has nothing to do really with the American people. It is a great distraction actually from the issues that are important to the American people. But it is consuming the White House, it is now consuming the FBI, it is consuming the Democratic Party… There is enormous tension between the both sides… The things are pretty ugly right now between the sides and I think it is going to get worse."

Two sides of the SAME coin.

>>1514202

Thanks for reposting this. :)

Florida residents received a very worrying warning on Sunday when they were told in an official alert the area had “extreme zombie activity.”

Lake Worth residents received the message during a power cut on Sunday. The alert warned of both a power outage and zombies, and came through at about 1:41am, meaning some residents would have woken up to a very scary message.

Power outage and zombie alert for residents of Lake Worth and Terminus,” the alert said. “There are now far less than seven thousand three hundred and eighty customers involved due to extreme zombie activity.”

‘Terminus’ is actually a fictional town from the hit zombie TV show, ‘The Walking Dead.’

The city hasn’t revealed how a zombie warning went out along with the power outage message. The Lake Worth Live Facebook page cited the city’s public information officer, Ben Kerr, who said 7,800 customers were affected by the outage and the city is “looking into the reports that the system mentioned zombies.”

“I want to reiterate that Lake Worth does not have any zombie activity currently and apologize for the system message,” Kerr said.

Officials told WPBF the alert did come from the city, but that it had been altered.

The mysterious error comes after residents in Hawaii received an alert that a ballistic missile threat was headed their way in January. This turned out to be the result of an employee pressing the wrong button.

https://www.rt.com/usa/427430-zombie-alert-lake-worth-florida/

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has blamed Iran for “perpetuating” the 7-year Syrian war, causing a refugee crisis and provoking terrorist attacks in Europe, by supporting the “murderous Assad regime.” Is he correct?

The accusations came as part of Pompeo's 12-point ultimatum to the Islamic Republic delivered on Monday, in which the newly-appointed official slammed its “financing of terror” and “destabilizing activities.” But does Washington have the moral authority to accuse Tehran of malign meddling, and has its own influence brought more peace? Syria is a good test case.

Who has a better excuse to be in Syria?

Iran has been a long-time ally of Damascus and is in Syria legally at the behest of President Bashar Assad, who – whatever the opinion of his time in office – is the internationally recognized leader of his country. By itself, Tehran's involvement in Syria is on the right side of international law.

The US, on the other hand, has been described as an “illegal invader” by Assad himself. Washington has funded efforts to topple the government since 2011, and has stationed troops in Syria since 2015. The US is not a neighboring country directly affected by the conflict and does not have an international mandate, other than as a leader of an intervention coalition it has assembled itself.

“Those who entered Syria without the permission of the Syrian government are the ones that must leave the country,” Iran said pointedly on Monday evening.

Which factions have they been supporting?

Washington has defended its intervention on humanitarian and moral grounds, saying that it has been helping the “good guys” and those facing persecution. Unfortunately, Americans have found it difficult to attach themselves to a respectable faction. The initial pro-democracy protests were short-lived, the "moderate" rebels of the Free Syrian Army were always a relatively paltry proportion of the anti-Assad coalition, and in any case appear to have been hijacked by religious hardliners.

In the recent stand-off in Eastern Ghouta, the rebels the US was endorsing reportedly included Tahrir al-Sham, the local branch of Al-Qaeda, and the Salafist jihadis of Nour al-Din al-Zenki Movement. This is neither a secret nor an isolated case, with many instances of US backing or protecting Al Nusra branches from Russian or Syrian forces. Perhaps America's most honorable partners were the Kurds, but they have their own self-interest in Syria, and in any case were swiftly “let go” by the US once they served their purpose of defeating Islamic State.

In contrast, Iran has consistently supported one side in the conflict. While the Syrian War has undoubtedly been brutal, few even in the Pentagon would argue that the treatment of civilians in government-controlled areas is comparable to the Shariah-dominated mini-theocracies or anarchic free-for-alls that many rebel areas became. Perhaps systematic use of chemical weapons could level the score, but this remains a highly contested charge against government forces, and definitely no Iranian initiative.

Which side is more responsible for 'foreign fighters' in Europe?

This is the flimsiest of Pompeo's claims. The Syria-hardened terrorists who "have crossed into Europe and threatened terrorist attacks" in the past years are not Iran-loving Shias, but their Sunni rivals, inspired by the religious side of the struggle in the country fanned by the Pentagon.

The US secretary of state said that this may have been the result of them becoming refugees, but surely it is untenable to blame just one side for creating refugees in this conflict. Nor would Pompeo have praised Iran and Syria for killing more fleeing radical Islamists, just to prevent them from committing acts of terror in Europe later. Possibly a glance in the direction of Iran's regional rival Saudi Arabia would be more apt here, if any specific party is to be blamed.

So which side actually did “help make that country 71,000 square miles of kill zone” and “displaced more than six million Syrians inside the country and caused over five million to seek refuge outside of its borders,” in Pompeo’s words?

No one even knows how many people have been killed in Syria since 2011, with the UN merely referring to “hundreds of thousands” after it admitted it could no longer verifiably estimate the death toll in 2014. Thus it is impossible to speak of an exact kill count on different sides, or the circumstances that made each turn to violence.

But once it became clear, a couple of years into the conflict, that the US was supporting primarily radical forces who were unlikely to ever establish peace, once Washington said that it would never accept any circumstance for Assad to stay on, and once the balance of power tipped irrevocably to government forces, it is the US that bears ever-greater responsibility for the continuing bloodbath.

Backing uncompromising forces, setting a priori impossible conditions (something it has arguably done again with Iran) and chasing lost causes, the US has painfully stretched out the war, without any clear objectives – unlike Iran, which is fighting towards a clear resolution.

https://www.rt.com/usa/427366-pompeo-iran-us-syria/

>>1514313

Lol! RUN!! Or hide. Whatever.

>>1514388

Beautiful. Ty for sharing.

>>1514332 you missed some. Continued here.

>>1514438

>>1514388

You may or may not enjoy this.

>>1514532

>>1514544

:D

>>1514587

Yes.

>>1514589