Free Republic

British supporters of Israel reacted with outrage this week after Amnesty International’s general secretary said that anyone who criticizes its report accusing Israel of “apartheid” is “weaponizing antisemitism.” The UK government’s antisemitism adviser, Lord Mann, blasted Amnesty for “looking obsessional” and “undermining all its other work.” “Amnesty International is losing its influence by ruining its credibility,” Man told the Jewish Chronicle. At the meeting, Callamard allegedly said that critics of the report were attempting to manufacture claims of antisemitism in order to silence free speech. “They are calling names and refusing to engage,” she said. “[This is] a form of...

Dispatches How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations A page from a GCHQ top secret document prepared by its secretive JTRIG unit "One of the many pressing stories that remains to be told from the Snowden archive is how western intelligence agencies are attempting to manipulate and control online discourse with extreme tactics of deception and reputation-destruction. It’s time to tell a chunk of that story, complete with the relevant documents. Over the last several weeks, I worked with NBC News to publish a series of articles about “dirty trick” tactics used by GCHQ’s previously...

The Lincoln Memorial was shut down Friday morning after vandals splashed the statue of the nation’s 16th president and the marble floor around it with green paint, U.S. Park Police said. Police are reviewing surveillance footage from the popular tourist attraction on the west end of the Mall, but so far they have released no information about who may have been responsible. Authorities believe the vandalism happened around 1:30 a.m. The National Park Service will work to clean up the paint, police said, and the memorial will be closed to the public until cleanup is complete. Police said no words...