Starbucks rolls out drug needle disposal bins to follow up addict-friendly open bathroom policy

Screen Shot 2019-04-23 at 10.18.59 AM

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.

ALLEGED SRI LANKA SUICIDE BOMBER: “ANYONE WHO DISAGREES WITH MUSLIMS SHOULD BE KILLED”

Alleged Sri Lanka Suicide Bomber: "Anyone Who Disagrees With Muslims Should be Killed"

Extremist statement went unnoticed

 | Infowars.com – APRIL 21, 2019

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,” 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.

Nolte: Top 51 Fake News ‘Bombshells’ the Media Spread About RussiaGate Collusion Hoax Hall of Shame

An audience member holds a fake news sign during a President Donald Trump campaign rally in Washington Township, Mich., Saturday, April 28, 2018. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya)

By John Nolte

Here are the top 51 pieces of fake news the establishment media spread about the Russia Collusion Hoax over the past two years, and I describe this list as the Top 51 because there is a behemoth of an iceberg lurking below.

Since the release of the Mueller Report last week, which — despite two years, $30 million, and a team of rabidly partisan left-wing investigators — found exactly zero crimes of Russia collusion or obstruction associated with President Trump and his campaign, one of the most bizarre results has been watching the media pat themselves on the back for the stories they believe they got correct.

Imagine that. Imagine your industry is so broken and corrupt that all you have left is to point to what you believe you did right. This is like watching an airline pilot brag about the times he didn’t crash, a district attorney point to the people he prosecuted who were not innocent — or in the words of comedian Chris Rock, a parent boast about taking care of his kids.

You’re supposed to take care of your kids!

And the media are supposed to get stories correct.

But here is the media forced to brag on when they didn’t crash the plane, when they did take care of the kids, which tells you something is horribly, terribly, ridiculously wrong.

Hey, here are some examples of when we didn’t mislead the country with disinformation!

CAP

Check out this one below. Here you have a reporter forced to focus on the “highlights” of her outlet’s reporting because the Washington Post got so much wrong she was able to quickly cobble together a list of those times the Post did not mislead its readers:

CAP

While a list of what the media might have gotten correct is fairly easy to put together, no one will ever be able to grasp the tsunami of fake news Americans were buried under for over two years.

The list below of 51 might sound like a lot, but it is a drop in the ocean when you recall the thousands and thousands of hours CNN, MSNBC, Meet the Press, This Week, PBS NewsHour, State of the Union, Good Morning AmericaReliable Sources, and the Today Show devoted to anchors and pundits pushing the hoax that Trump colluded with Russia.

Not to mention, millions and millions of establishment media tweets and Facebook posts.

Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O’Donnell, Shepard Smith, Andrew Napolitano, Joe Scarborough, Chris Hayes, Chuck Todd, Joy Reid, Chris Matthews, Jake Tapper, Don Lemon, Chris Cuomo, Brian Stelter, Erin Burnett, et al.,  are alone responsible for thousands and thousands and thousands of hours of lies and conspiracy-mongering.

This list of 51 doesn’t count the half-million — half-MILLION — Russia collusion stories published over the past two years, almost all of which were premised on the idea that Trump did, indeed, collude with a foreign power to steal the 2016 presidential election.

This list cannot begin to count the countless times these 51 fake stories were repeated as fact throughout other news outlets, social media, and thousands upon thousands of cumulative broadcast hours.

What’s more, this list of 51 can’t begin to count the countless examples of fake news launched against Trump that have nothing to do with Russia — desperate and deliberate lies involving fish food and ice cream scoops…

Before we begin, credit where it’s due. This list would not have been possible without the lists already compiled by Sharyl AttkissonGlenn Greenwald, and Sohrab Ahmari.

  1. New York magazine, McClatchy:

Michael Cohen went to  Prague.

  1. BuzzFeed:

Trump directed Michael Cohen to lie, and Mueller has emails proving it.

  1. The New York Times:

Paul Manafort passed polling information to Kremlin.

  1. Axios:

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein forced out.

  1. NBC News:

Federal investigators wiretapped Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen, have recordings of Trump.

  1. Associated Press:

Phony Russia dossier was initially funded by Republican group.

  1. ABC News:

Donald Trump directed Flynn to make contact with Russian officials during the 2016 presidential campaign

  1. Talking Points Memo:

Russian social media company provided documents to Senate about communications with Trump official.

  1. CNN:

Donald Trump Jr. conspired with WikiLeaks.

  1. Bloomberg and the Wall Street Journal:

Robert Mueller subpoenaed Trump’s Deutsche Bank records.

  1. ABC News:

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort worked with Russia intelligence-connected official as late as December 2017.

  1. The New York Times:

Trump Deputy National Security adviser K.T. McFarland lied about another official’s contacts with Russians.

  1. CNN:

Trump’s campaign was never wiretapped.

  1. NBC News:

Manafort notes from Russian meeting refer to political contributions.

  1. The New York Times:

Seventeen intelligence agencies concur Russia hacked the 2016 presidential race.

  1. CNN:

Congress investigating Russian investment fund with ties to Trump officials.

  1. The New York Times:

Former FBI Director James Comey says Attorney General Jeff Sessions told him not to call Russia probe an investigation but “a matter.”

  1. CNN:

James Comey will testify he never told Trump he was not under investigation.

  1. NBC News:

Putin admits he has compromising information about Trump.

  1. Politico, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, AP, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal:

Trump fired Comey after Comey asked for additional resources for the Russia investigation.

  1. The New York Times:

Numerous contacts between Trump campaign staff and “senior Russian intelligence officials.”

  1. MSNBC:

Among others, a Trump family member will be indicted on February 8.

  1. The Guardian:

Paul Manafort visited WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange on three occasions.

  1. The Washington Post:

Trump campaign changed GOP platform on Ukraine.

  1. The Atlantic:

Then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions lied about meeting with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

  1. McClatchy:

Michael Cohen really did visit Prague.

  1. CNN:

Trump is lying when he calls Russia dossier “phony.”

  1. Fortune:

RT had hacked into and taken over C-SPAN and C-SPAN “confirmed” it had been hacked.

  1. USA Today, MSNBC, Associated Press:

Russia’s hacked the election systems of 21 American states.

  1. The Washington Post, ABC News, CNN:

Russian hackers penetrated U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont.

  1. The Washington Post:

“More than 200 websites” were “routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season.”

  1. NBC News, MSNBC:

Russia is the main suspect in the sonic attacks that sickened 26 U.S. diplomats.

  1. Slate:

Trump created a secret Internet server to covertly communicate with a Russian bank.

  1. CNN:

Donald Trump knew in advance of the Trump Tower meeting.

  1. CNN:

Mueller Report will show Trump “has helped” Putin “destabilize” the United States.

  1. NBC:

Russia supports Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI).

    1. CNN:

Sessions failed to disclose meetings he had with the Russian ambassador.

  1. Vox:

“There’s actually lots of evidence of Trump-Russia collusion.”

  1. The Washington Post, The New York Times, NPRReutersthe Guardian, USA Today, CNN, BuzzFeed:

Trump revealed classified information to Russians.

  1. The Washington Post:

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said Russia paid Trump.

  1. Fox News:

Mueller can show Trump campaign “had a connection to Russian intelligence.”

  1. MSNBC:

“Rudy Giuliani just told America that Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia.”

  1. The Washington Post:

Evidence suggests Trump could be a Russian “asset.”

  1. NBC:

Russians began hacking Hillary Clinton’s emails on the day Donald Trump joked about it in July 2016.

  1. Mic.com:

Russia spy visited Trump’s Oval Office.

  1. CNN:

Phony Russia dossier has been “corroborated.”

  1. NPR:

Donald Trump Jr. lied under oath about Trump Tower deal in Moscow.

  1. NBC, The Hill, New York Daily News:

Russia successfully hacked voting systems in a number of states.

  1. CNN:

Trump is “bonkers” for claiming Hillary Clinton behind Russia dossier.

  1. CNN:

“Every intelligence expert, both under the Obama administration and under the Trump administration,” agrees with the assessment that Russia attempted to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.

  1. BBC:

Ukrainian president “authorized” an illegal payment of $400,000 to Michael Cohen for additional face time during a June 2017 meeting with President Trump.

‘They are Christians’: Obama & Clinton lambasted for calling bombed Sri Lankans ‘Easter worshipers’

Screen Shot 2019-04-22 at 11.15.53 AM.png

Some people believe prominent Democrats deliberately avoided using the word “Christian” when condemning bombings of churches and hotels in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday as part of a policy to undermine Christian faith in the US.

The eight bomb attacks in Sri Lanka, which killed almost 300 people on Easter Sunday, sparked worldwide condemnation. But the way some US politicians expressed their condolences sparked a minor outcry among conservative Americans. Former President Barack Obama and the former secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, were blasted for using the term “Easter worshipers” instead of “Christians” when referring to the victims of the attacks.

Screen Shot 2019-04-22 at 11.16.43 AM

Three Sri Lankan Christian churches were targeted by the perpetrators, implying that the Christian minority was in the crosshairs. Some commentators in the US said Obama and Clinton were in the wrong when they failed to name the religion.

Screen Shot 2019-04-22 at 11.17.43 AM

Screen Shot 2019-04-22 at 11.18.25 AM

Particular ire was sparked by the fact that both US politicians didn’t hesitate to use the word “Muslim” when expressing condolences to the victims of last month’s massacre at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand.

Screen Shot 2019-04-22 at 11.19.23 AM

Notably, Obama and Clinton were not the only US figures, who used the term in remarks about the bloodshed in Sri Lanka. So did Adam Schiff, the Democrat chair of the House Intelligence Committee.

Screen Shot 2019-04-22 at 11.20.31 AM

And the same goes for US Attorney Trent Shores.

Screen Shot 2019-04-22 at 11.21.22 AM

The criticism is based on the perception that the Democratic Party is bent on downplaying America’s Christian roots for the sake of sensibilities of people adhering to other religions. The sentiment is probably best reflected in Fox News’ coverage of the supposed “war on Christmas” in the US.

In this particular case, however, the notion may be misplaced, one commenter pointed out. Christian churches are not exclusively Christian places of worship there, quite the contrary.

Screen Shot 2019-04-22 at 11.22.33 AM

In Sri Lanka, Christianity plays a unique role of serving as a bridge between people by welcoming both the Sinhalese and Tamil ethnic groups. Considering that Tamil separatism was behind a bloody 25-year-long civil war on the South Asian island, which ended just a decade ago, one can understand why this role is highly appreciated.

CENSORSHIP WAR: The Koch Brothers Fight To Silence Independent Voices

By Patrick Howley

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.

I broke the news:

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.

Loomer’s lawsuit can be READ HERE.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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.
  7. 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.
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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.

Screen Shot 2019-04-22 at 10.43.46 AM

‘Wait for the Next’ – Islamic State-linked Group Issue Notre Dame Threat

notre

By Jack Montgomery

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”.

CAP

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.

CAP

Blog at WordPress.com.

Up ↑