Hollywood exploded with unhinged hot takes Wednesday as President Donald Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen spoke at a congressional hearing about his work for Trump.
During the hearing, Michael Cohen produced copies of checks from the president to him, purported to be reimbursement for hush money payment to Stormy Daniels.
Cohen also admitted that he has no actual evidence of the 2016 campaign colluding with Russia, but that he has “suspicions” about it.
Nonetheless, Hollywood treated Cohen’s hearing like a blockbuster event.
“It’s good for America to see how gop is complete deathkkkult” actor John Cusack exclaimed.
“THERIGHTWINGERSON THE COMMITTEE SEEM DETERMINED TO DISCREDIT MICHAEL COHEN; THAT’S ALL THEY HAVE,” Bette Midler roared.
“THEY DON’T GIVE A DAMN ABOUT THE TRUTH…CIRCLING THE WAGONS, AND IT LOOKS LIKE THEY WANT TO THROW THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE UNDER THE BUS AGAIN.”
“oh the gop is pissed and we haven’t even started… this is gonna be good – trump is going down – OH HAPPY DAY !!! #CohenGonnaTestify” Rosie O’Donnell celebrated.
Debra Messing focused on Cohen’s claim that Trump knew about Wikileaks dumping stolen emails before they were released.
Celebrity activist Alyssa Milano decided to focus on Cohen’s claim that Trump was a “racist” and “conman.”
Westworld actor Jeffrey Wright chimed in, “Mark Meadows really rolled out a black woman…like a prop…to bolster his racism angle. Ok, Tex.”
Chelsea Handler, meanwhile, used to event to poke fun at “rich white men.”
“This Cohen testimony has shown me a lot of things, but mostly that these rich white men could benefit from a nightly moisturizing routin,” the Netflix host said.
TBS host Samantha Bee hoped for Michael Cohen to cry during the hearing:
Video showed starving Venezuelans picking food out of trash
Infowars.com – FEBRUARY 27, 2019
Univision reporter Jorge Ramos was detained Monday at the Venezuelan presidential palace after reportedly showing dictator Nicolas Maduro a video of his people eating from a garbage truck.
The footage was released by one of Ramos’ associates Monday, and shows three Venezuelan men picking food out of the back of the truck before it drives off.
Estas son las imágenes que @jorgeramosnews le mostró a Nicolás Maduro y que provocaron que Maduro se levantara de la entrevista, que retuvieran al equipo de Univision y que confiscaran su trabajo. Esto es lo que Maduro no quiere que vea el mundo. pic.twitter.com/UfSZ3lr5Jm
“These are the images that Jorge Ramos showed to Nicolás Maduro and provoked him to get up from the interview,” Ramos’ peer Enrique Acevedo tweeted in Spanish. “This is what Maduro doesn’t want the world to see.”
Ramos says he had been questioning Maduro for roughly 17 minutes about the current state of affairs in the country where hyperinflation and failed socialist policies have driven its people to starvation.
“He didn’t like the things we were asking him about the lack of democracy in Venezuela, about torture, political prisoners, the humanitarian crisis that they were living,” Ramos later told Univision after being released.
Ramos says he next presented Maduro the startling footage, at which point a man walked in and stopped the interview.
“Immediately after, one of his ministers, Jorge Rodríguez, came to tell us that the interview was not authorized,” Ramos said.
Ramos’ equipment was allegedly confiscated and his team detained and questioned for over two hours.
A Mexican government official called on Venezuela to release the journalists and return their equipment, saying, “Our country calls for respect for freedom of expression.”
White House Assistant Secretary Kimberly Breier also condemned Maduro’s actions and called for the Univision team to be released.
Ramos and his associates were released later Monday, according to a tweet from Univision.
Maduro has struggled to maintain power in the wake of the United States’ and other countries’ declaration they recognize Juan Guaido as the nation’s true president.
(San Francisco) Project Veritas has obtained and published documentsand presentation materials from a former Facebook insider. This information describes how Facebook engineers plan and go about policing political speech. Screenshots from a Facebook workstation show the specific technical actions taken against political figures, as well as “[e]xisting strategies” taken to combat political speech.
For a civilization that considers freedom of speech one of its fundamental principles and universal human rights, the West sure does a lot of censorship – and no, farming it out to ‘private companies’ does not change what it is.
It happened again on Tuesday: British activist Tommy Robinson was erased from Facebook and Instagram. The social media behemoth said it has to act “when ideas and opinions cross the line and amount to hate speech that may create an environment of intimidation and exclusion for certain groups in society.”
As online polemicists are fond of saying, “citation needed!” Yet Facebook offers none: no evidence of specific violations, not even a definition of “hate speech,” just an arbitrary standard – and a threat of further bans for people who “support… hate figures.”Whatever that means.
How did journalists – those paladins of free speech, the fabled Fourth Estate, the valiant protectors of values that would die in darkness without their intrepid efforts – greet this news? Did they object to a British citizen being muzzled and wax about the dangers to digital democracy? Oh no, they rejoiced: Finally, what took so long?!
The same process repeated itself later in the day, when Twitter banned Jacob Wohl. The self-described supporter of US President Donald Trump had reportedly boasted about setting up fake accounts to influence the 2020 election. That is regarded as the sin-above-all-sins by social media executives, terrified of Congress blaming them for Hillary Clinton losing the White House to Trump in 2016, even though 99 percent of US media considered it rightfully hers.
Here’s the thing, though: Twitter still hasn’t banned Jonathon Morgan, CEO of New Knowledge, a company that was proven to have set up thousands of fake accounts to swing the Senate race in Alabama to the Democrats, and later paid by the Senate to blame Russia for its tactics.
Let’s also remember the suspension of several Facebook pages belonging to Maffick Media, an outfit that partners with Ruptly, a RT subsidiary. After the “Twitter police” at the German Marshall Fund and CNN raised a fuss about these pages having “Kremlin ties,” Facebook blocked them until they agreed to put up a notice about being “funded by Russia.”So they did, even though there is no such rule that would be universally applied.
Surely it is entirely a coincidence that a CNN reporter went around actively badgering social media outlets to ban Alex Jones, way back in August 2018, and would not stop until they all did?
But wait, there is more! It was confirmed on Tuesday that retired Navy SEAL Don Shipley, known as a crusader against “stolen valor,” got his YouTube channel deleted earlier this month. There were no details as to why, but this was right after Shipley had exposed Nathan Phillips – the Native American activist who claimed he was victimized by Kentucky high school students, in what turned out to be fake news – as falsely claiming he served in Vietnam.
Columbia University researcher Richard Hanania offered an interesting analysis a couple of weeks ago, showing that of the 22 prominent figures suspended by Twitter in recent years, 21 were supporters of President Donald Trump, and only one – Rose McGowan – was a Democrat. McGowan had clearly violated the platform’s rule against doxxing, and was reinstated after she deleted the post. Many of those 21 Trump supporters were not so lucky, getting permanent bans from the platform. So he asked:
What are the odds? Astronomical, actually – Hanania showed that conservatives would have to be four times as likely to violate Twitter rules for even a 5 percent chance of producing the 21-1 ratio. Yet those who routinely cite statistical “disparate impact” to cry racism are perfectly fine claiming there is no bias here? Really?
But [insert social media giant here] is a private company! They can do what they want! So cry the sudden champions of capitalism and deregulation, who in their previous breath claimed Trump abolishing Net Neutrality rules would break the internet. Make up your mind, folks!
In the McCarthyite atmosphere whipped up after the 2016 US presidential election, the social media that once promised unprecedented freedom of expression have turned into the tools of censorship – and not on behalf of a governing party, either, but the bipartisan political establishment united in opposition to an outsider president and anyone who dares support him, or criticize their conduct.
By the way, the “terrible dictator”Trump hasn’t lifted a finger to stop this persecution, let alone sic the IRS or the FBI on his critics.
The idea behind free speech is not that all opinions are valid, but that they ought to be debated rather than imposed by force. Another fundamental principle of western civilization is that the law ought to apply equally to everyone.
One does not have to agree with Robinson, Wohl, Shipley, Maffick, Jones – or Trump, for that matter – to realize that a world in which there is one set of rules for “us” and another for “them,” in which it doesn’t matter what is done but Who is doing it to Whom, is not a land of liberty but something quite different.
Cameras facing passengers are embedded in inflight entertainment (IFE) screens, three major airlines are confirming.
However, United, American, and Singapore Airlines also claim they have no plans to use the camera that is reportedly a standard feature of the IFE manufacturer, but a privacy watchdog says it shouldn’t be there.
“If airlines aren’t using the cameras, they shouldn’t be there,”said the director of Big Brother Watch. “Passengers shouldn’t have to worry about whether secret cameras are on or off, whether they’re being recorded, or whether the cameras could be hacked.”
“It appears that these airlines haven’t considered the privacy and security risks to their customers, or justified the presence of these cameras.”
The outcry began a week ago after a Singapore Airlines passenger noticed the eye-level lens and asked the carrier what it was doing there.
Responding to the tweet, the airline said the camera is part of a new system provided by the manufacturer and there are “no plans to enable or develop any features using the cameras.”
Correspondingly, American and United Airlines issued separate but similar statements on the matter.
“This is a standard feature that manufacturers of the system have included for possible future purposes such as video conferencing,” said a United spokesperson. “However, our cameras have never been activated on United aircraft and we have no plans to use them in the future.”
The maker of the IFE system, Panasonic Avionics, acknowledged the outrage by saying they were in compliance with the EU’s data protection law called General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
“Prior to the use of any camera on a Panasonic Avionics system that would affect passenger privacy, Panasonic Avionics would work closely with its airline customer to educate passengers about how the system works and to certify compliance with all appropriate privacy laws and regulations, such as GDPR,” said a spokesperson.
Interestingly, Panasonic is tied to the creation of a floor lamp that sparked privacy concerns due to the security camera it possesses.
International logistics giant UPS has suspended all home deliveries in Rosengård, Sweden, citing attacks on drivers, according tolocal media.
After a Rosengård photographer did not receive a package he had ordered, he contacted the seller to find out why and was reportedly told UPS could not deliver to his house, “because of the risk of being subjected to robbery or other crimes.”
A UPS Sweden spokesperson confirmed the policy in response to an inquiry by Fria Tider, saying, “Our drivers have been attacked and therefore we have decided not to hand out packages in Rosengård.”
Sweden’s postal service, PostNord, has reportedly been forced to suspend deliveries in Rosengård on multiple occasions in recent years, as well.
“The postmen can go there without being threatened, but if we drive there with the package car they will be threatened,” a PostNord spokesman told Aftonbladet. “It has to do with the value, what is in the packages.”
“We must think of our staff first.”
In 2017, electrical maintenance company Högs EL announced it could no longer serve customers in Malmö, citing a “prevailing security risk” posed by “violence and shootings” in the area.
A top-ranked runner in NCAA women’s track is dominating the competition and setting records one year after competing as a man at the same level.
Franklin Pierce University senior CeCe Telfer leads the NCAA’s Division II women’s division in the 55 meter dash and 55 meter hurdle events. Telfer led Franklin Pierce’s women’s track team into the top 25 rankings for the first time in program’s history, local newspaper The Keene Sentinel reported in December. The New Hampshire college is ranked 14th in DII.
“Senior CeCe Telfer (Lebanon, N.H.) won three Northeast-10 Conference titles on Sunday, to lead the Franklin Pierce University women’s track & field team and earn Most Outstanding Track Athlete honors at the NE10 Championships, hosted by American International College, on the campus of Smith College,” reads a Feb. 17 article the school’s athletic department posted.
Telfer broke the conference finals record at the meet and qualified for three different events at March’s NCAA championships, the article noted.
Telfer is one of the fastest runners in NCAA women’s track and field at any division — not just at the DII level. Telfer’s best time in the 55 meter dash is tied with the third-fastest runner at the women’s DI level.
Telfer previously ran a variety of events for Franklin Pierce’s men’s team, during most of which time he went by the first name Craig, according to school records.
Telfer competed on Franklin Pierce’s men’s team as recently as January 2018, according to published meet results from the Middlebury Winter Classic in Vermont. By that point Telfer had started using the name CeCe, while still competing on the men’s team.
NCAA policy is that male athletes who identify as transgender can compete on women’s teams if they suppress their testosterone levels for a full calendar year. Otherwise, so-called mixed teams — which have both males and females — can compete in the men’s division, but not in the women’s division, according to NCAA rules.
The NCAA in 2011 published an explainer calling it “not well founded” to assume “that being born with a male body automatically gives a transgender woman an unfair advantage when competing against non-transgender women.”
“Transgender women display a great deal of physical variation, just as there is a great deal of natural variation in physical size and ability among non-transgender women and men. Many people may have a stereotype that all transgender women are unusually tall and have large bones and muscles. But that is not true,” the explainer states.
“A male-to-female transgender woman may be small and slight, even if she is not on hormone blockers or taking estrogen. It is important not to overgeneralize. The assumption that all male-bodied people are taller, stronger, and more highly skilled in a sport than all female-bodied people is not accurate,” it continues.
Telfer’s success in the women’s division, which was first highlighted by sports blog Turtleboy Sports, is the latest example of biological males who identify as transgender women piling upvictoriesin women’s sports.
Two biologically male high schoolers in Connecticut, Terry Miller and Andraya Yearwood, are dominating girls’ track in the state. The two teens are among the fastest high school sprinters in the country — though only in the girl’s division.
One of Miller’s and Yearwood’s female competitors, fellow junior Selina Soule, told the Associated Press that it was unfair to force female high schoolers to compete against male athletes.
“We all know the outcome of the race before it even starts; it’s demoralizing,” Soule said. “I fully support and am happy for these athletes for being true to themselves. They should have the right to express themselves in school, but athletics have always had extra rules to keep the competition fair,” she added.
One of the top scorers for Australia’s women’s handball team is Hannah Mouncey, who played for the Australian men’s handball team before transitioning. Mouncey played women’s Australian rules football between transitioning and switching to women’s handball.
Mouncey was banned from the women’s division of the Australian Football League’s women’s division in October 2017 before receiving approval to play in February 2018.
Mouncey abandoned the sport for women’s handball in September 2018, a month after the football league announced tighter restrictions on testosterone levels.
Rachel McKinnon, a biologically male college professor who identifies as a transgender woman, won a women’s cycling world championship in October. McKinnon won the women’s sprint 35-39 age bracket at the 2018 UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Los Angeles.
McKinnon in January 2018 was quoted in USA Today arguing against requiring biological males to suppress testosterone as a requirement for competing against women.
“We cannot have a woman legally recognized as a trans woman in society, and not be recognized that way in sports,” McKinnon told USA Today. “Focusing on performance advantage is largely irrelevant because this is a rights issue. We shouldn’t be worried about trans people taking over the Olympics. We should be worried about their fairness and human rights instead.”
Democratic Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar called for an investigation into USA Powerlifting in January after the athletic association announced that male lifters who identify as transgender women aren’t allowed to compete as women.
Omar called it a “myth” that men who identify as transgender women have a “direct competitive advantage” in a Jan. 31 letter she sent to USA Powerlifting on behalf of Jaycee Cooper, a male powerlifter in Omar’s district who identifies as a transgender woman.
Omar copied Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison on the letter, “with a recommendation that he investigate this discriminatory behavior.”
Ellison said his office didn’t have the jurisdiction to investigate USA Powerlifting, but recommended that Cooper “file a complaint with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.”
Another video has emerged showing a young Trump supporter being harassed, attacked, and intimidated — this time by a bigger student at a high school.
The attack reportedly occurred at the Edmond Santa Fe High School in Edmond, Oklahoma, wherein an older student knocked a Make America Great Again off the younger student and tried to rip away his Trump banner.
“You gotta take it off,” the bully told him. “Take it off now.”
As the younger student tried to walk past him, the bully said: “Hey where you think you’re going? You goin’ to take it off or you want me to rip it off? You want me to rip it off?”
“I can rip it off or I can burn it. Which one you want?” the bully continued.
The younger student didn’t retaliate, while other students tried to intervene and calm the unhinged bully, who only continued to try to tear the Trump flag from the boy’s grasp.
As we reported, attacks against Trump supporters wearing MAGA hats has reached a point of occurring almost daily while the mainstream media blacks them out, and instead covers hate crime hoaxes to demonize Trump supporters.
At least four attacks against Trump supporters took place in the last two weeks alone.
Last week, a woman assaulted a man for simply wearing a MAGA hat.
In one of the most notorious cases against young Trump supporters, a grown man stole the MAGA hat from a teenager inside a Whataburger, then tossed a drink in his face saying, “You ain’t supporting shit, nigga.”
Thanks to the frothing media, unprovoked attacks against Trump supporters have become commonplace in America, but you wouldn’t know that by watching the news.
The UK Conservative government is set to announce plans for the introduction of lessons on homosexuality and transgenderism for primary school students, despite an official petition against the move, signed by over 100,000, RT.comwrites.
The Sunday Times reports that the new curriculum has been finalized after a six-month consultation with the Department of Education, and will be rolled out across UK schools starting from the 2020-21 educational year.
It will be taught to pupils from the age of five, and it will be illegal for parents to take their children out of the classroom for the lessons in secondary school, meaning that at least a term’s worth of sex education classes – and likely far more – will be attended by each student.
A popular petition to parliament demanding that the opt-out be retained for the length of the child’s school education will be debated in the House of Commons on Monday, though it is not expected to affect the schedule for the implementation of the legislation.
The proposal has encountered resistance from conservative communities, including some Muslims and Jews. In a letter expressing opposition, prominent rabbis expressed fears that some parents would rather take their children out of the education system altogether – which they are allowed to do – rather than subject them to the new curriculum.
Questions discussed during the non-assessed lessons, as listed in the current proposals for the curriculum, will include: “When is it OK to let someone touch me?” for 3-year-olds, and “Why are we all different? Is it OK to be different?” at age seven. At 11, children will discuss “What is the difference between transvestite and trans-sexual?” and by 16, they will be told “how to disclose positive HIV status to a sexual partner, family and friends.”
Among the teaching materials for primary school children who are currently being trialed at a predominantly-Muslim school in Birmingham are ‘Tango Makes Three’, a book about two gay penguins who nurture an egg taken from another family, and ‘My Princess Boy,’ which celebrates a dark-skinned child who loves to cross-dress.
The other aims of the curriculum include educating students on issues that have become more prevalent in Britain over last two decades, such as female genital mutilation, sexting, revenge porn, and potential imbalance of power between the sexes in relationships.
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