Emmanuel Macron, who was comfortably elected to the presidency with the support of almost the entire French media, has demanded that his parliamentary majority provide him with a law against ‘fake news’ during election campaigns. Perhaps he’s preparing for the next one.

The draft legislation reveals both the blindness of those who govern when challenged and their inclination to invent new coercive countermeasures. You would have to be myopic indeed to believe that the victory of ‘anti-establishment’ candidates, parties and causes (Donald Trump, Brexit, the Catalan referendum, Italy’s Five Star Movement) could, even marginally, be the consequence of authoritarian regimes spreading fake news. The US press has been trying to demonstrate for a year, as yet without conclusive evidence, that Trump owes his election to fake news manufactured by Vladimir Putin.

Macron has a similar obsession, to the point of hoping to make fake news vanish with a law that is both useless and dangerous. Useless because France’s Council of State pointed out on 19 April that ‘French law already contains several measures intended to combat the dissemination of false information’: in particular the law of 29 July 1881 on the freedom of the press, which permits curbs on the dissemination of false information and the expression of views that are defamatory or abusive or incite hatred.

And dangerous because the bill about to go before parliament would require a judge to act within 48 hours to ‘stop the artificial and large-scale dissemination of news constituting false information.’ But, the Council of State’s response continued, ‘these are hard to determine legally, especially when the judge must give a judgement within a very short time.’ Macron’s law would also strengthen Internet service providers’ and hosts’ duty of cooperation with the authorities, since it extends to all false information restraints that were initially aimed at preventing ‘apologism for crimes against humanity, incitement to hatred and child pornography.’

Media ownership by the president’s billionaire friends, toxic advertising claims, and suppressing public television channels’ funding are not the subject of any draft law. And why limit this judicial apparatus to the campaign season? In the past few decades, in almost every war — in the Gulf, Kosovo, Iraq and Libya — there has been a proliferation of lies and news manipulation. Not by Russia, Facebook or social media, but by our beacons of democracy and journalism: the major western daily newspapers, with the New York Times in the vanguard, the White House and European capitals. Not to mention the Ukrainian government, which deliberately announced the false death of a journalist last month. If a judge needs to order the arrest of the people responsible for spreading this fake news, at least they’ll be easy to find...

Wiping away a tear as he confirmed the public’s worst fears, Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu officially declared a nationwide day of mourning Tuesday for a section of security fence damaged in yesterday’s conflict at the Gaza border. “We must all come together and take the time to grieve for this poor, innocent length of fence,” said Netanyahu, who throughout his reportedly stirring eulogy shared several images of the youthful barrier, which was first erected between Israel and the Gaza Strip in 1994. “Let us never forget what happened to this beautiful razor wire–topped barricade, which still had so much life ahead of it. As we lower our flags to half-mast, I encourage all Israelis to take a few moments to consider the great sacrifices made by our many brave fabricated enclosures.” Sources confirmed Netanyahu concluded the solemn ceremony with a 21-gun salute fired directly into a group of Palestinian protesters.

JERUSALEM — Declaring that it was long past time for his people to live once again on their ancestral soil, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly began calling Thursday for the Israeli return to their ancient homeland of Iran. “The land of Iran has long been part of our heritage, and we implore the international community to work with us to ensure its return to the independent Jewish state,” said Netanyahu, adding that Israel was willing to use military force if necessary to reoccupy all 636,400 square miles of present-day Iran that were historically included in the promised land bestowed upon the Jewish people by biblical mandate. “The so-called Islamic cities of Tehran, Mashhad, Isfahan, and dozens of others were founded on what were once ancient Jewish kingdoms, not to mention how many of our most sacred sites Iran currently occupies, including the Imam Reza Holy Shrine, the Jamkaran Mosque, and the Zoroastrian Fire Temple of Chak-Chak. In fact, Iran is home to the highest concentration of Judaic ancient holy sites anywhere in the world outside of Mecca, Lumbini, and Vatican City. (...)

REGINA – Frustrated online commentator Keith Cook doesn’t understand why the cucks he is currently dealing with on facebook won’t engage in a meaningful and healthy dialogue with him. (...)

(...) The first debate is about inductive knowledge, what we take to be true based on our repeated experience of things, and it’s where any pretension of making artificial life ends. For if a machine could think, we might be the last to know that it was thinking about us. Thinking independently is proven not merely by the capacity to create a new set of relations not otherwise obvious, to use the patent attorney’s criterion for invention, or to complete a task better than a human can. Independent thought is also demonstrated by a living being’s ability to suspend and extend its contemplation and its judgments, and to withhold information, even openly deceive others, especially those who are not alert and vigilant.

The second debate is over the perceived modernity of the problem of fake news and what was learned or not from the first experiment that applied artificial intelligence techniques to a social problem in real time. That experiment had nothing to do with persuading people to spend money by intermediating their social relations (Facebook); it did not involve profiling people to sway their votes by feeding them selected information (Cambridge Analytica). It was about sensitising Americans to the dangers of nuclear war.

This first big experiment began in New York in March 1946, when the Josiah Macy Jr Foundation began convening a group of key figures from across scientific fields to discuss ‘Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems’. To the credit of the foundation, it was among the first ever to bring together diverse thinkers around emerging problems with significant health and wellbeing impacts on broad sectors of society. And it was because of this bold initiative that anthropologists Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson came to work with the father of cybernetics, MIT professor and genius Norbert Wiener, and to meet Claude Shannon, the information and communication theorist who really should be thought of as the father of the information age. (...)

Millions of Americans were stunned and incredulous on Monday after learning of a possible incident of bias at Fox News Channel.

At a time when so many American institutions have been under attack, the possibility that Fox, one of the nation’s most respected news organizations, might be susceptible to hidden agendas was too much for many to take.

In interviews across the country, Fox viewers expressed disappointment, confusion, and shock that a news network known for its exacting standards had imperilled its hard-earned reputation for fairness.

“I’m devastated by this,” Carol Foyler, a viewer from Scottsdale, Arizona, said. “If we can’t trust Fox News, who can we trust?”

Tracy Klugian, a viewer from Akron, Ohio, said that he had been “walking around in a state of disbelief” since he learned of possible bias at the network. “I’m trying to be strong, but it’s tough,” he said. “I know I speak for a lot of people when I say that today was the day that America lost its innocence.”

But some Fox viewers, like Harland Dorrinson, of Topeka, Kansas, warned of a “rush to judgment” against Fox, urging people to remember the network’s stellar record of journalistic accomplishments.

“Whenever there was a national emergency, whether it was Benghazi, Hillary’s e-mails, or Obama’s birth certificate, Fox News was there,” he said. “One little mistake doesn’t wash all that away.”

“This behaviour is unacceptable,” said local Sheriff Daniel Boyd. “Police officers go through extensive training and experience when it comes to shooting at unarmed black teens. Civilians simply don’t know what they are doing.”

ADULT film star Stormy Daniels has been reportedly killed last night in a US led airstrike in Syria, WWN can confirm.

The controversial porn actress had apparently travelled to the middle eastern country on Thursday in what friends and family members are saying was an unusual move by the dead 39-year-old.

“We have no idea how she got there,” a close friend said last night, “it’s just not a country Stormy would ever visit on a whim, so we’re all very upset and confused as to why she would go to such a dangerous place, considering the predicted missile strikes”.

Investigators on the ground believe Ms. Daniels was apparently filming a documentary when over 50 tomahawk missiles accidentally hit the location she was at, obliterating her and a number of other American women who just happened to be there at the time.

“Coincidentally, several other women who have accused the US President of sexual misconduct in the past have also been killed in the airstrike,” a US military commander confirmed, “what they were doing there, we don’t know, but it seems they are all dead now and that’s all we can say on the matter”.

President Trump ordered a strike on Syria on Friday in response to last weekend’s alleged chemical weapons attack, despite having no evidence.

BLUE EYE, MO—Squashing accusations that President Trump had a sexual encounter with porn star “Stormy Daniels” while he was married to Melania, televangelist Jim Bakker explained to his audience Friday that he had confirmed that Trump was merely scheduling private time with the woman in a hotel suite in order to share with her the good news of Jesus Christ, as he had become acquainted with her and was very concerned that she was not a Christian.

“It is preposterous to assert that a virtuous believer like Mr. Trump would cheat on his beautiful wife so callously, and while their child was only months old,” a solemn Bakker said into the camera as colorful balloons provided a backdrop for some reason. “He was so concerned with the eternal state of Miss Daniels’ soul that he scheduled some alone time with just the two of them, so he could share with her how Jesus Christ had changed his life and how He could also save her from her sins.”

Nearly choking up with tears, Bakker went on to explain how much he loves and looks up to Trump as a model saint.

“Our president even arranged through his attorney to give this woman $130,000 in an attempt to help rescue her from the destructive adult film industry and get her life back on track. What a man of God!”

The televangelist ended his broadcast by wagering that there were probably “many, many more” sex-industry workers like Daniels who could tell a similarly inspiring story about President Trump.