Starbucks is installing needle-disposal boxes in its US bathrooms after getting fined over its lack of response to a spike in needle-stick injuries among employees under its addict-friendly “open-door” bathroom policy.
The coffee behemoth has installed the boxes in 25 cities after the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) slapped the company with a $3,100 fine for endangering workers. Starbucks was penalized for failing to provide sharps-disposal containers “in or near bathrooms where contaminated sharps were commonly found,” failing to make the Hepatitis B vaccine available to employees who could be exposed to the disease through contaminated needles, and failing to provide proper training and “exposure-control programs.”
By summer 2019, Starbucks plans to have the boxes everywhere “deemed necessary” – which, considering that Americans are now more likely to accidentally die from an opioid overdose than a car crash, may be most of the country. Store managers can request a box for their location if they don’t want to wait for the rollout.
“We have had zero toilet clogs and zero needles found in an unsafe place since we had them installed last month,” an employee told Business Insider. “It’s been really wonderful.”
Thousands of employees signed a petition last year demanding the boxes be installed, tired of worrying about needle-sticks and other dangers and complaining that “the frequency of needles being left in the bathrooms…increased significantly in recent months”after Starbucks began an official policy of allowing non-customers to use the bathroom.
Employees’ gratitude stands in sharp contrast with what until very recently was corporate denial. The OSHA probe was sparked in October by a complaint from an employee who was stuck by a needle while cleaning the bathroom. Investigators soon found these injuries so common that a second employee filed a similar complaint while they were investigating the first, according to the agency’s report. Neither employee was contacted by Starbucks’ corporate office, yielding another demerit from OSHA. Starbucks claims employees who feel unsafe performing a task (such as disposing of stray hypodermics) can speak to their managers, but needles are often concealed in trash bags or other hard-to-see places and employees who get stuck may end up saddled with huge hospital bills for emergency room visits and antiviral medication.
Many Starbucks employees say drug use in their bathrooms spiked last year after the coffee chain changed its bathroom policies to allow open access following the controversial arrest of two black men in Philadelphia who asked to use the bathroom without buying anything.
One of the alleged suicide bombers responsible for the terror in Sri Lanka previously made a video in which he stated “anyone who disagrees with Muslims should be killed.”
Imam Mohamad Tawhidi posted a video of Islamic extremist Zahran Hashim uttering the statement, which was made in front of a backdrop showing a knife and blood.
We spend hours exposing extremists every day. This video & its background went unnoticed due to language barriers. If he was exposed & brought to the attention of the authorities, he could’ve been stopped.#SriLanka terrorist: “Anyone who disagrees with Muslims should be killed” pic.twitter.com/CVyybRPd3Y
“We spend hours exposing extremists every day. This video & its background went unnoticed due to language barriers. If he was exposed & brought to the attention of the authorities, he could’ve been stopped,” tweeted Tawhidi, who in a separate tweet criticized YouTube for hosting Hashim’s radical content.
According to reports, Hashim was responsible for the suicide bombing at the Shangri La hotel.
As we previously reported, journalist Saif Khalid claimed that reporting the name of Hashim was “Islamophobic”.
This tweet was vulgar but not surprising given that Khalid works for Al-Jazeera, which is owned by the Islamist Qatari government.
The globalist Koch political network headed by billionaire Charles Koch is waging a war to silence independent journalists on the Internet.
The nonsense Koch group Americans For Prosperity is lobbying Judiciary Committee members to “oppose any effort to use antitrust laws to break up America’s innovative tech companies,” circulating a petition under the disingenuous header “Government Shouldn’t Pick Winners and Losers on the Internet.”
Government already picks winners and losers on the Internet by allowing Silicon Valley to ban independent truth-tellers like Alex Jones, Milo, Laura Loomer, and Roger Stone and shadowban many good American patriots who simply want to share information about Deep State corruption that won’t get picked up by the mainstream media. Just ask Gab about how hard it is to build a competitor social media platform in this current monopolized landscape.
Big League Politics links were banned from Reddit after my investigative reporting series exposing how a recent employee of the George Soros-funded Atlantic Council, now a top Reddit executive, was leading a “Ban Out” effort to suppress the free speech of President Donald Trump’s supporters. In protest, some Reddit users now post screenshots of Big League Politics articles onto the Reddit platform.
Now, the Koch-funded Daily Caller is actually partnering with Facebook to censor its competitors on Mark Zuckerberg’s platform. The outlet, which received nearly a million dollars from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2017 through their “Daily Caller News Foundation” content machine, is one of the “fact checker”organs for Zuckerberg to determine whether news sites get their reach throttled down. That gives the Caller an opportunity to shadowban their competitor sites on the Right and wage censorship war against the America First writers who are openly despised by Caller management (Tucker Carlson is no longer affiliated with the Daily Caller in any way).
To give you a sense of the kind of people who are tasked with “fact checking”competitors, look at Daily Caller editor-in-chief Geoff Ingersoll’s disgusting rant against populist nationalist reporter Cassandra Fairbanks, whom Ingersoll accused of being a Russian puppet.
“Still better than eating Putin’s cock bacon for breakfast, you hapless harlot,” Ingersoll ranted at Fairbanks. “By the way, maybe cut down. You’re blowing up.”
With many of the New Right accounts from the 2016 election — including the loud and proud Pepe the Frog shitposters — now virtually banned from the Internet, the Kochs are clearly hoping that they can suppress anyone who strays from the 2-D Narrative and control the conservative movement with their establishment “Blue Check” aggregators, many of whom sprang to force-fed prominence after Trump’s election to disparage America First people and constantly virtue-signal to the mainstream media mob.
Fortunately, independent journalists are not taking this laying down.
Investigative journalist Laura Loomer filed a lawsuit Thursday against Twitter following her ban from the platform for comments about Muslim congresswoman Ilhan Omar of Minnesota.
Loomer is also suing the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), which reportedly“complained to Twitter” about Loomer’s work on the platform prior to her ban. Loomer, renowned for ambush video interviews of Democrat politicians, amassed more than 250,000 followers on Twitter. She was first suspended without clear explanation in the days leading up to the 2018 midterm election, and later banned outright from the social media platform after the election in November during her efforts to expose voter fraud in Florida.
“Ilhan is pro Sharia Ilhan is pro- FGM Under Sharia homosexuals are oppressed & killed. Women are abused & forced to wear the hijab. Ilhan is anti Jewish,” Loomer tweeted, referring to forced genital mutilation (FGM). That tweet was cited as the reason for her ban.
Loomer and her company Illoominate Media are being represented by attorney Ronald Coleman of the New Jersey-based law firm Mandelbaum Salsburg. Loomer’s legal defense fund can be found at FreeLoomer.com.
This is an action for breach of contract, tortious interference with an advantageous business relationship, restraint of trade in violation of Fla. Stat. § 542.18, civil conspiracy and violation of the Florida Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, Fla. Stat. § 501.201, et seq. for which plaintiff seeks and is entitled to damages in excess of Fifteen Thousand Dollars ($15,000) exclusive of interest, special damages, costs or attorney fees.
Plaintiff is a journalist and activist. In order to suppress plaintiff’s views regarding certain controversial political topics – in particular, the role of radical Islam and its proponents American public life and policy – defendants CAIR Florida, Inc. and CAIR Foundation, which have been established by the U.S. government and adjudicated as essentially American branches of the Mideast terrorist group Hamas, have acted in concert and conspired with defendant Twitter, Inc. (“Twitter”) to cause her to be banned, and prevented her from making a living through the use of, the majority of social media platforms.
These include not only Twitter and the blog platform Medium.com, but also major payment processors PayPal.com and Venmo, ride-sharing systems Uber (including Uber Eats) and Lyft, crowdfunding website GoFundMe, online custom merchandise platform Teespring.
Twitter claims that Ms. Loomer was banned because she violated Twitter’s Terms of Service (“TOS”). But, as set forth below, this claim is implausible, because the TOS provide essentially no substantive guidance to all but the most extreme users regarding whether they will or will not be censored on Twitter.
The reason for this is that the TOS are not only vague but are applied with so selectively and in such bad faith that they are meaningless except for purposes of providing Twitter with a pretext for wrongful, bad faith conduct such as is alleged here.
Moreover, innumerable Twitter users, ranging from little-known or anonymous users with a handful of followers to major media organizations, non-governmental human rights and social activist organizations and popular commentators and celebrities, have made the same statements as Ms. Loomer at various times – and in many cases, repeatedly – without adverse action by Twitter.
This conduct by Twitter demonstrates that its pretext for banning Ms. Loomer – because her tweets violated the TOS – is false, and that Twitter’s ban on her as well as Twitter’s explanation of it were made in bad faith.
In fact, there is little serious debate that the Twitter TOS are mere window-dressing, pretexts for employing censorship policies that are either arbitrary and capricious or, far more frequently, and in the facts set forth here, driven by ideology or in coordination with favored or commercially influential advocacy groups, or both.
Rather than being the result of a TOS violation, Ms. Loomer’s ban from Twitter was, upon information and belief, proximately caused by defendants CAIR Florida, organization the Federal Bureau of Investigation has identified as the U.S. “face” of the Mideast terrorist group Hamas, and CAIR National (collectively, “CAIR” or “CAIR / Hamas”), which on information and belief acted in concert with Twitter to procure her elimination as a voice in opposition to them and their favored politicians and causes.
As alleged further herein, the TOS are merely a pretext to place a “progressive” and positive gloss on Twitter’s bad faith, unjustified and unprivileged elimination of plaintiffs’ predominant publishing and fundraising platform, in concert with and at the behest of CAIR Florida and CAIR National, acting with or on behalf of their affiliate Hamas and their financial sponsor the Kingdom of Qatar and, on information, other parties not presently known to plaintiff, thereby effectively silencing Ms. Loomer, eliminating a vigorous and courageous journalistic and investigatory adversary from the public square, enabling defendants to benefit unfairly thereby and causing Ms. Loomer and Illoominate the harm set forth herein”….
Loomer’s February protest at Twitter’s New York City headquarters, where she handcuffed herself to the front door, resulted in Loomer trending #1 on Twitter despite being banned.
A radical group linked to the Islamic State has threatened an attack on the damaged cathedral of Notre Dame, or possibly another historic Christian building.
Al-Munatsir, a radical group linked to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s erstwhile caliphate, disseminated an image showing Notre Dame’s iconic bell towers engulfed in flames, with the caption “wait for the next”.
The SITE Intelligence Group Enterprise counter-extremism organisation, which reported on the threat, appears to believe it was targetted at the Parisian cathedral — although it is possible “wait for the next” could refer to an attack on another Christian building.
The French authorities do not believe the Notre Dame fire resulted from arson or terrorism at present, saying it was likely an accident.
Islamic extremists were quick to celebrate it, however — including al-Munatsir, which published an earlier image of the burning cathedral with the caption “Have a nice day”.
The threats come as France honours the Paris fire brigade, the Pompiers de Paris, who were able to save much of the cathedral from the flames, despite the destruction of its spire and ancient roof timbers.
“The country and the entire world were watching us and you were exemplary,” French president Emmanuel Macron told hundreds of firefighters at the Elysée Palace, where they were gathered so he could pay tribute to them on behalf of the nation.
“You were the perfect example of what we should be,” he added, saying they would be awarded medals of honour for their “courage and devotion”.
Anne Hidalgo, the left-wing Paris mayor, also praised the firefighters’ “boundless courage”, saying they had “saved part of ourselves” by preventing the historic cathedral from being entirely consumed.
Over 90 illegal immigrants were caught entering The United States near Sunland Park, New Mexico Wednesday night and an American patriot livestreamed the entire encounter.
Facebook user Conservative Anthony filmed as he chased down a large group of mostly men who ran across the border into America.
This comes just one day after a group of 300 illegals was turned over to Border Patrol by a group of New Mexico patriots known as “United Constitutional Patriots” patrolling the exact same area.
The group has reportedly been apprehending 1,000 border crossers each day over the last 65 days.
The massive surge of illegal immigrants crossing the border is part of a United Nations operation meant to destabilize America by opening up large migration routes from the third-world into the country.
The UN has already been caught assisting migrant caravans heading toward America.
Liberal billionaire George Soros is also largely involved in the globalist plot to flood The United States with illegal immigrants as exposed in the video below:
Infowars reporter Greg Reese exposed the UN’s plan for replacement migration in the following report:
The Mueller report’s finally dropped and instead of being relieved to discover, once and for all, that the president didn’t collude with a foreign power to steal an election, Democrats and media pundits are absolutely devastated.
This is America in the era of Russiagate.
The partly-redacted, nearly 400-page report, delivered to Congress on Thursday afternoon, offered no new evidence or indication that Donald Trump or his 2016 campaign were in cahoots with Moscow to prevent Hillary Clinton from ascending to what Democrats believed was her rightful presidential throne.
Of course, their high expectations for the report had already come crashing down when Mueller wrapped up his investigation mid-March and Attorney General Bob Barr sent a four-page letter summarizing its anti-climactic findings to Congress. No evidence of collusion, it said.
The opposition party and the media’s most ardent Russiagate pushers had been moving the goalposts on “collusion” for months. In the earliest days of the two-year investigation, Special Counsel Robert Mueller was given savior status; he would be the one, they said, who would deliver them from the evil of the Trump presidency. “Wait for the Mueller report!”they had screamed, as the weeks and months dragged on with “bombshell” after “bombshell” evaporating into thin air.
“Wait for the Mueller report!” quickly morphed into “Barr must be lying — wait for the full Mueller report!”
But Barr hammered the final nail into the Russiagate coffin on Thursday as he emphatically reiterated during a pre-release press conference that evidence to support theories of collusion did not exist and that all Americans should be “grateful” to hear that news. They were not grateful, though. In fact, they were acutely distressed by the news that Trump had been telling the truth about “no collusion” all along.
On the question of whether Trump had obstructed the investigation, Mueller’s report offered Russiagaters slightly more hope, in that it did not make a final determination and suggested that congress has the authority to take action in that regard.
But Barr enraged reporters by arguing it was necessary to take “context” into consideration when assessing potential obstruction. He said Trump faced an “unprecedented situation,”“relentless” media speculation and held a “sincere belief”that the investigation was “undermining his presidency.”
He also noted that Trump “took no act” that deprived Mueller of documents necessary to conduct the investigation and said he believed there had been no “corrupt intent” to hamper it. Not only that, but Barr also told shell-shocked reporters that Trump had not exerted executive privilege over parts of the report (as he legally could have done), “in the interests of transparency.”
Russiagaters masked their disappointment by trying, in endless formations, to spin the situation into a vindication of their theories; ‘Barr is lying for Trump!’ ‘Maybe Mueller was in on it?’ ‘He didn’t investigate the right things!’ ‘It wasn’t about collusion, it was about obstruction!’ – and the most pathetic of all attempts: ‘It doesn’t matter anyway, we know in our hearts collusion is real!’
The fact that the report was partly redacted (“standard for prosecutors handling sensitive information,” as the New York Times put it), triggered yet another meltdown from Democrats and Russiagate media stalwarts in advance of its publication. Casual observers of this seemingly never-ending saga might have been led to believe the report would be redacted beyond all comprehension. Indeed, it appears as though that’s what Russiagate truthers would have preferred. The more redactions, the bigger the scope for new conspiracy theories to emerge. Sadly for them, Barr also said an almost completely unredacted version would soon be made available to a bipartisan group in congress.
In a sign of just how desperate they had become, Democrats also spiralled into a total frenzy on Wednesday upon hearing that the aforementioned press conference would be held before the report was handed over to Congress. They genuinely seemed to believe that Barr might stand in front of the entire news media and lie about the contents of a document he was about to post publicly online a couple of hours later.
Why did it matter that he held a press conference summarizing its findings before the release? It didn’t matter, of course, but it was something to cling to. Remember, the Democrats and the media spent two years convincing Americans that Trump and members of his family were going to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the White House in handcuffs – so, at this point, they’ll latch on to anything.
On the eve of the long-awaited Mueller report about an already discredited conspiracy theory, the conspiracy theory's top proponent dubs the Mueller report the "Barr Report" & tries to make an issue out of Barr holding a news conference a few hours before the report is released: pic.twitter.com/JyAOeLSbhZ
Focus will now shift to Mueller’s expected testimony before Congress, which is due to happen no later than May 23 – and some are still holding out hope that the investigator will pull through at the last minute and say or do something to rehabilitate the entire narrative.
Journalist Aaron Mate, who has painstakingly covered the Russiagate drama, noted on Twitter that Mueller at times used “suggestive wording” in his report while simultaneously acknowledging that no evidence of collusion actually exists. This is likely what Democrats will be watching for during his testimony; any shred of doubt or uncertainty from Mueller on even the tiniest of details.
At the end of the day, however, the fact will remain that Mueller overturned every Russiagate rock and did not charge or arrest even one American for conspiring or colluding with Moscow, despite issuing more than 2,800 subpoenas, 500-plus search warrants and interviewing about 500 witnesses in excruciating detail.
But Russiagate was really always about Democrats and their inability to accept two basic truths: Hillary Clinton lost the election because she ran a terrible campaign – and because of the abject failure of the US political system to deliver basic changes that Americans want and need. Trump offered them hope, however false, of something new – and he won. There is no bigger mystery.
But the cries of “collusion!” will continue for months, if not years, and the media will meticulously pick apart the pages of the Mueller report for weeks, hoping to land on something that can credibly carry the conspiracy forward – and as they do so, they will be handing Trump a great gift going into the 2020 election.
Years from now, when Trump is hosting some post-presidency reality TV show or living out the rest of his days at Mar-a-Lago (rather than in a prison cell), Rachel Maddowwill probably still be ruminating over the finer details of the investigation and inviting the most discredited analysts onto her nutty show to help figure out how it all went wrong. Luke Harding is likely gearing up to write a sequel to his “COLLUSION” best-seller as we speak. Maybe he can call the next one“COVERUP” and profit off Russiagate for another two years.
The elaborate and demented conspiracies of Russiagate could fill a library, but the strangest thing of all about this saga might just be how much they fiercely wanted it to be true.
A leading member of South Africa’s ruling party has stirred controversy as he called on the country’s black population not to vote for white candidates. RT has asked a local politician and activist to weigh in.
With even members of his own party condemning the decision to “campaign along race lines,” the pressure is mounting against African National Congress secretary-general Ace Magashule. He has already found himself at the wrong end of a number of corruption scandals and has now been slammed for his “racist” remark.
A few weeks shy of the 25th anniversary of the end of apartheid, racial tensions remain an undeniable part of life in modern South Africa. And some in South Africa support Magashule’s sentiment.
“White people are the beneficiaries of racism, all of them,” Andile Mngxitama of the pan-Africanist Black First Land First party told RT. He believes that the disproportionate amount of resources that remain in the hands of the country’s white minority is an indication that they “still maintain an apartheid hold on the economy.” Given the circumstances, Mngxitama asks “why any black person would vote for a white person?”
Self-described “disillusioned left wing South African” Helen Heldenmuth sees this outlook is destructive, and not the opinion of the majority. Having been arrested for raising black children during apartheid, she believes that the solution has to move beyond black and white. According to her, comments like Magashule’s don’t help to “mend” the damage from the past, and only serve to further divide society along racial lines.
Facebook has banned 12 high-profile, anti-immigrant British organizations and individuals including the English Defence League, the British National Party, Britain First and Jayda Fransen.
The silicon valley company said it took the decision because it bans users who “proclaim a violent or hateful mission or are engaged in acts of hate or violence.”
“Individuals and organisations who spread hate, or attack or call for the exclusion of others on the basis of who they are, have no place on Facebook,” it said in a statement.
The following organizations and people are now prohibited from the site: The British National Party and Nick Griffin, Britain First and Paul Golding and Jayda Fransen, English Defence League and Paul Ray, Knights Templar International and Jim Dowson, National Front and Tony Martin, and Jack Renshaw.
ALSO ON RT.COMTommy Robinson banned from Facebook, Instagram over ‘hate speech’They were all outlawed under Facebook’s ‘Dangerous Individuals & Organisations policy’. They will no longer be allowed a presence on Facebook or Instagram and posts and other content which expresses praise or support for them will also be banned.
“Our work against organised hate is ongoing and we will continue to review individuals, organisations, pages, groups and content against our Community Standards,”the statement added.
The Knights Templar International said it was “horrified” by the ban, and that it was investigating legal options. “Facebook has deemed our Christian organisation as dangerous and de-platformed us despite never being charged, let alone found guilty of any crime whatsoever,” itsaid in a statement.“This is a development that would have made the Soviets blush.”
In February the social media giant banned EDL founder Tommy Robinson from its platforms saying the prominent anti-immigration activist repeatedly breached its policies on Hate speech.
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