Search Results for: gun

Crime scene tape with red and blue lights in the background.

Was the Thousand Oaks Shooter Identified as a Man of Middle Eastern Descent?

Disinformation, Fact Checks, Mass Shootings / By /

Mere hours after a gunman entered a nightclub in Thousand Oaks, California, murdering at least twelve people before shooting himself, the social media disinformation machine and its usual array of bots and paid trolls began to peddle unverified information about the suspect’s identity: This was quickly picked up and disseminated by the usual disreputable sites …

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Connecticut GOP Sends Mailer Showing Jewish Candidate Grinning at Fistful of Money

News / By /

In late October 2018, just days after a gunman — reportedly encouraged by racist political  rhetoric — slaughtered eleven people during a service at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, Connecticut’s Republican candidate for a state senate seat sent out a flyer that showed his Democratic opponent Rep. Matthew Lesser (who is Jewish) grinning over a fistful …

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Donald Trump.

Is the United States the Only Country that Offers Birthright Citizenship?

Disinformation, Fact Checks, Politics / By /

On October 30th, 2018, three days after a Pennsylvania white supremacist stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue with guns and murdered eleven people during a service and four days after a Florida man was arrested for mailing a series of glass-packed pipe bombs to public figures, United States President Donald Trump spoke out at length not against …

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Suspect in Attempted Bomb Attacks Had History of Crime, Conspiracy Theories

News / By /

An unsettling week of threats and bombs sent to various high-profile political figures and pundits culminated in the arrest of a suspect in south Florida, a reckoning online, and a whole slew of conspiracy theories around the bombs and the culprit. Cesar Sayoc, Jr. already had a long list of convictions by the time he …

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Donald Trump's face painted on a wall with a man's arm waving an American flag in front of it.

Did United States President Donald Trump Praise an Elected Official Who Body Slammed Reporter?

Fact Checks, Politics / By /

In late October 2018, as the hideous story of journalist and United States resident Jamal Khashoggi‘s disappearance and suspected brutal murder at the behest of Saudi Arabia’s crown prince continued to unfold, the Trump administration and its allies appeared to brush off any sense of urgency about ongoing investigations. “My assessment from these meetings is that …

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Jamal Khashoggi.

Is the Media Covering Up ‘the Real Story’ About Jamal Khashoggi?

Disinformation, Fact Checks / By /

A hideous story unspooled before the international media in October 2018, when Saudi Arabian journalist and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi — who had been living in Washington, D.C. after fleeing his home country a year before due to persistent death threats in response to his criticism of its government — abruptly vanished. On Monday, sources told CNN …

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Foreign Influence Operations Infiltrated, Polarized Online Communities

Analysis / By /

The ongoing scandals over data privacy, in which social media giants were found to be (among other things) flooding selected readers with hypertargeted and corrosive political advertising, is still unfolding — and it will continue to evolve for some time as new pieces of evidence and data are unearthed and put together to get a …

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The Canada-United States Relationship, According to a Florida Judge

Fact Checks, Politics, Viral Content / By /

Much of the United States’ economic policy agenda in 2018 has revolved around instituting higher tariffs, protectionism, and mitigating perceived or real trade deficits. This has extended to the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA for short, which U.S. president Donald Trump has called “the worst trade deal ever.” We are in the NAFTA (worst …

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