New York Times Slams GOP Senator For 'Parroting Disinformation' About Its Staff And Hamas

The New York Times sent a letter to Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) on Friday condemning him for suggesting that its employees were involved in Hamas’ attack on Israel last month, calling him out for “parroting disinformation.”

The message came in response to a letter that Cotton sent to Times leadership Thursday citing “reports” that the newspaper’s journalists were “embedded with Hamas, knew about the attack, and ... accompanied members of Hamas as they carried out the attack.”

Israel Falsely Claimed Footage Showed Doll, Not Dead Child, Palestinian Journalist Says

The Israeli government and many of its high-profile supporters have falsely claimed that Hamas published footage of a doll and suggested it was a child killed by Israel’s military, according to a Palestinian journalist who published the video.

“Hamas accidentally posted a video of a doll (yes a doll) suggesting that it was a part of casualties caused by an IDF attack,” Israel’s main Instagram page claimed Friday. That post received more than 52,000 “likes,” and a similar post from the country’s page on X, the site formerly known as Twitter, received more than 1.3 million views, according to both sites’ public-facing metrics.

What Europe Can Teach America About Russian Disinformation

In 2014, United States officials encountered a new form of Kremlin disinformation in Ukraine. As “little green men” streamed into the country’s south, blatant falsehoods over anything from the history of World War II to weapon-system deployments spread across the internet and the airwaves. Propagandists disguised as professors, activists, and journalists sowed confusion about what was actually happening on the ground: soldiers bearing no flag had occupied strategic territory in eastern Ukraine. Intelligence collectors supplied propagandists with tapped calls and hacked emails containing compromising language, and the Kremlin leaked all of this to the media at key moments.

Study: How Breitbart Media's Disinformation Created the Paranoid, Fact-Averse Nation That Elected Trump

Right-wing media evolved into a hall of mirrors in 2016, when Breitbart displaced Fox News as the key agenda-setting and attack-leading epicenter of a disinformation-filled, paranoid ecosystem promoting Donald Trump and his pro-white America agenda.

Breitbart not only led the right’s obsessive, hostile focus on immigrants, it was also the first to attack professional reporting such as the New York Times and Washington Post. Breitbart's disruptive template fueled the political and information universe we now inhabit, where the right dismisses facts and embraces fantasies.

The EU Is Fighting A Lopsided Battle Against Russian Disinformation

Hundreds of people demonstrated in Germany in January last year, after media outlets reported that migrants had abducted and raped a 13-year-old Russian-German girl.

But while the protests were real, the story was fake.

The girl, identified as “Lisa F,” later retracted her claims, but the story spread across Europe after a Russian state owned TV station heavily featured the allegations while German authorities were still trying to verify what happened. Several other outlets in Russia and Germany then quickly picked up the story, sometimes adding the claim that the case was not being investigated because it put German immigration policy in a bad light. Even Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the case was being “hushed up.”

Information commissioner taking PMO to court over withholding Senate documents

TORONTO - The information commissioner is taking the Prime Minister's Office to court, accusing it of refusing to release documents about four senators embroiled in scandal.

The Canadian Press filed an access-to-information request to the Privy Council Office, the central bureaucracy serving the prime minister and cabinet, in August of 2013 asking for any records created since March relating to senators Mike Duffy, Mac Harb, Patrick Brazeau or Pamela Wallin.

The refugee crisis and Harper's politics of fear

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a prime minister seeking re-election must be in want of a plausible alibi.

Or a halfway decent lie.

Both options have deserted the prime minister and the microphone into which he recites, with numbing repetition, the canned “media lines” concocted to distract everyone from the panicked chaos of a campaign so badly off the rails that it's been outsourced to a temporary foreign worker.

For Stephen Harper, there’s nothing to fear but not enough fear. So fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.

How Harper Sows Fear of Muslims in Pursuit of Votes

The past year has been a very active one for the anti-Islam industry in Canada. Leading the charge is none other than Prime Minister Stephen Harper who -- in gearing up to the elections in October 2015 -- has been stoking Islamophobia by pandering to public unease about Muslims. In addition to going after Muslimcharities organizations (allegedly defaming NCCM, for instance) and even religious symbols, his jihad against "radical Islam" and search for terrorists under every Muslim bed has profoundly altered the Canadian legal landscape.

An Open Letter to Kim Davis

Dear Kim,

In light of all of the attention being focused on you and your family at the moment, there are three things I would like to say to you.

The first is that I am impressed by your ability to stand by your own beliefs and convictions. I absolutely do believe you when you say that this matter is not about holding ill will against anyone but that it is about God and God's Word. And I can identify with the reassurance you have felt and received when you joined your church four years ago. That kind of forgiveness is no small thing and I'm glad that you have found such peace.

This Is Why Americans Have No Idea What Really Happens In Prisons

WASHINGTON -- When Kalief Browder killed himself last month after being held for three years without trial at Rikers Island, Americans took notice. His death focused more attention on the appalling treatment of youthful inmates at the New York City jail complex. But Browder, who entered the system at 16, was only one of thousands of teenagers held in adult lockups across the United States. We have very little idea what happens to the rest of them.

Canada's 2016 Census To Mirror Controversial Version From 2011

OTTAWA - The Conservative government has not added any new questions to the 2016 mandatory short-form census, leaving the process identical to the controversial system it introduced for 2011.

Statistics Canada and other groups had raised the possibility of adding questions to the short-form in order to raise the quality of information in the most critical areas.

Harper Government Ignoring Key Concerns In War On ISIL: Report

OTTAWA - An independent report on Canada's war against the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant says the extremist threat is real, but perhaps exaggerated, while the Harper government ignores other important political concerns.

An analysis by the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute released Monday says the violence being meted out by extremists is just the latest expression of Sunni alienation in Iraq and is rooted in a philosophy to which few Canadians can relate.

"The threat to homeland security, first, is real, but it should not be overstated," said Thomas Juneau, an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa.

'Balanced budget' bill a political move, says former PBO Kevin Page

Former budget watchdog Kevin Page says a Conservative move to force future governments to keep balanced budgets is a "political" move that isn't necessary.

"Do we need the legislation? We didn't need the legislation from the mid-1990s to 2007-2008, when we had 11 years of surpluses," Page told Power & Politics host Evan Solomon Wednesday evening.

"I think the government feels somehow it needs to constrain itself."

Feds stifle media questions around oil sands' toxic effects, FOIs reveal

Documents obtained by DeSmog Canada reveal that Canada’s Ministry of Environment vetoed an interview request on toxins in fur-bearing animals in the oilsands, even though the federal scientist was “media trained and interested in doing the interview.”

The Environment Canada scientist in question, Philippe Thomas, had asked members of the Alberta Trappers Association to send him samples of fur-bearing animals caught across Alberta in 2012. Thomas needed a broad range of samples to gain deeper insight into the contaminant load in animals living near the oilsands.

Atlantic Salmon Federation Concerned Government Didn't Notify Public Of Virus

A conservation group is criticizing federal and provincial agencies for not publicizing a preliminary test showing the presence of a potentially deadly salmon virus at a New Brunswick aquaculture operation.

The Atlantic Salmon Federation says it heard on Monday that a strain of infectious salmon anemia was reported by an aquaculture company located along the Bay of Fundy.

The virus can be fatal to fish but doesn't cause harm to human health.

It's Almost Impossible To Find Data On Oil And Gas Spills In Most States

WASHINGTON -- A new report from the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council has analyzed the data on spills and other violations at oil and gas wells across the country. But perhaps the most interesting aspect of the report is how little data the group was able to turn up.

Based on NRDC's evaluation of dozens of state databases, only three states -- West Virginia, Pennsylvania and Colorado -- have easily accessible, publicly available data on spills and other violations. That's three states out of 36 that have active oil and gas development.

Kochs Say No To Dems' Probe Into Climate Research Funding

WASHINGTON (AP) — The industrial conglomerate run by the billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch is refusing to provide Democratic lawmakers with information on whether it has paid for climate change research.

Last month, three Democratic senators sent 100 letters to an assortment of fossil-fuel companies and organizations seeking information on whether they have backed research into global warming and other environmental topics.

Circumstances of Canadian soldier's death in Iraq strongly suggest Harper government is lying

The circumstances surrounding the death of a Canadian special-forces soldier in Iraq are important because they strongly suggest the Harper Government has been lying to Canadians about what our troops are doing in that country.

Whether Canadian soldiers should be in Iraq is a policyquestion Canadians are entitled to argue about, but there is nothing improper about the Canadian Forces serving abroad -- even in dangerous and potentially lethal fights -- if the Canadian government has determined their presence is appropriate and in the country's interest.

Likewise, whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his Conservatives are making the right choices about the security and interests of Canada is a political question we are also entitled to argue about, but since his party has a majority in Parliament it is impossible to claim it does not have the right to make such decisions, at least if it brings them before the House of Commons.

Soldiers had passed Kurdish checkpoints at time of 'friendly fire' incident: source

The Canadian soldiers who were involved in a deadly incident of friendly fire on Friday had cleared two Kurdish checkpoints when they were fired upon, CTV News has learned.

A senior military source tells CTV’s Mercedes Stephenson that members of the Canadian Special Forces had communicated with Iraqi Kurdish fighters earlier on Friday, and arranged to return to the area later in the evening. A signal, notifying the Kurdish fighters of the Canadians approach, was established ahead of time so that they could be seen and heard from a distance, the source said.

At the time of the incident, the Canadians had already successfully passed by two groups of Iraqi Kurdish soldiers. When they approached a third unit, one fighter opened fire on them, followed by others.

Mounties Stonewalled Request for Improperly Collected Data

Last fall, Daniel Therrien, the government's newly appointed privacy commissioner of Canada, released the annual report on the Privacy Act, the legislation that governs how the government collects, uses and discloses personal information. The lead story from the report was the result of an audit of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police practices regarding warrantless requests for telecom subscriber information.

The audit had been expected to shed new light into RCMP information requests. Auditors were forced to terminate the investigation, however, when they realized that Canada's national police force simply did not compile the requested information. When asked why the information was not collected, RCMP officials responded that its information management system was never designed to capture access requests.