An Islamic State-supporting group shared a chilling photoshopped image to social media on Friday which appears to threaten a terrorist attack on a skyscraper in downtown Los Angeles.
In the foreground of the photoshopped picture, a camo-clad masked figure appears to be holding a furled Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) flag in one hand, while the explosion emanates from a high-rise behind them. They also appear to be wearing something akin to a suicide attack vest.
The SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks the social media and online activities of extremist groups, says that the image was shared to threaten attacks in the US“and the west.”
The LAPD tweeted that although it takes the social media post seriously, “at this point we have not been able to find any credible threat against buildings in our city.”The police force urged city residents to“heighten their awareness”and report any suspicious activity to an anti-terrorism hotline.
The key building depicted in the doctored image appears to be the Aon Building, a striking 62-story fixture in downtown LA. In a statement to Fox 11, Aon said that its security team “has confirmed with the Department of Homeland Security that this is a non-credible threat.”
In an interview that aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday night, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe revealed details of the alleged 25th Amendment push to remove President Donald Trump from office.
According to McCabe, current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was the thrust of the push.
“Discussion of the 25th Amendment was simply — Rod raised the issue and discussed it with me in the context of thinking about how many other cabinet officials might support such an effort,” McCabe said. “I didn’t have much to contribute, to be perfectly honest, in that conversation. So, I listened to what he had to say. But, to be fair, it was an unbelievably stressful time. I can’t even describe for you how many things must have been coursing through the deputy attorney general’s mind at that point. So, it was really something that he kind of threw out in a very frenzied, chaotic conversation about where we were and what we needed to do next.”
“The deputy attorney general was definitely very concerned about the president, about his capacity and about his intent at that point in time,” he added.
McCabe went on to describe Rosenstein’s effort as “counting votes, or counting possible votes.”
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) deleted a Tweet from several days ago in which she said the “attack on Jussie Smollett is an affront to our humanity.”
First noted on Twitter by Nick Monroe, the Tweet is no longer live on Pelosi’s account.
In full, it read:
“The racist, homophobic attack on@JussieSmollettis an affront to our humanity. No one should be attacked for who they are or whom they love. I pray that Jussie has a speedy recovery & that justice is served. May we all commit to ending this hate once & for all.”
Pelosi did not publicly apologize for piling on after the media blamed supporters of President Donald J. Trump for the attack. She has not publicly commented on the event since the now-deleted Tweet.
Per Pelosi’s request, it looks like justice will be served – against Smollett, who fabricated the entire event.
Smollett allegedly paid two Nigerian friends and cast members on “Empire” to stage stunt. The pair bought the rope that was found hanging around Smollett’s neck.
The actor claimed that he was beaten, a rope was tied around his neck, and bleach was poured on him while he fought for his life. He claimed that his “attackers” yelled homophobic and racial slurs. as well as “this is MAGA country” during the “attack.”
Sunday morning, Smollett’s lawyers doubled down, insisting that Smollett is still a victim, despite what police said. Their move signals that Smollett is not ready ready to give up on the hoax just yet. Chicago Police warned that Smollett will be “held accountable” for the hoax.
Lara Logan, foreign correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes, said Breitbart News offers “the other side” of news media relative to what she described as a mostly left-wing and partisan Democrat news landscape in the U.S. and abroad.
She offered her remarks in an interview published last Friday with the Mike Drop podcast, hosted by retired Navy SEAL Mike Ritland.
Ritland characterized U.S. news media as “absurdly left-leaning” and supportive of Democrats, further describing the status quo of American news media’s left-wing and partisan Democrat biases as a “huge fucking problem” and “disaster for this country.”
Logan concurred, “I agree with that. That’s true.” She described U.S. and international news media as “mostly liberal,” adding, “most” journalists are left.
“The media everywhere is mostly liberal, not just the U.S.,” assessed Logan.
Logan grouped Breitbart News and Fox News as dissident outlets relative to the “mostly liberal” news media landscape. She said:
Visually, anyone who’s ever been to Israel and been to the Wailing Wall has seen that the women have this tiny little spot in front of the wall to pray, and the rest of the wall is for the men. To me, that’s a great representation of the American media, is that in this tiny little corner where the women pray you’ve got Breitbart and Fox News and a few others, and from there on, you have CBS, ABC, NBC, Huffington Post, Politico, whatever, right? All of them. And that’s a problem for me, because even if it was reversed, if it was vastly mostly on the right, that would also be a problem for me.
My experience has been that the more opinions you have, the more ways that you look at everything in life — everything in life is complicated, everything is gray, right? Nothing is black and white.
News media homogeneity cripples many people’s desire for getting to the truth about political goings on, determined Logan:
How do you know you’re being lied to? How do you know you’re being manipulated? How do you know there’s something not right with the coverage? When they simplify it all [and] there’s no grey. It’s all one way. Well, life isn’t like that. If it doesn’t match real life, it’s probably not. Something’s wrong. For example, all the coverage on Trump all the time is negative. … That’s a distortion of the way things go in real life.
Logan warned:
One ideological perspective on everything never leads to an open free diverse tolerant society. The more opinions and views … of everything that you have, the better off we all are. So creating one ideological position on everything throughout your universities, throughout academia, in school and college, in media, and everywhere else, that’s what concerns me. I don’t have to agree with everybody.
Logan added, “Although the media has historically always been left-leaning, we’ve abandoned our pretense — or at least the effort — to be objective, today. … We’ve become political activists, and some could argue propagandists, and there’s some merit to that.”
Logan cast Breitbart News as a useful barometer of “the other side” of news media:
This is the problem that I have. There’s one Fox, and there’s many, many, many more organizations on the left. … The problem is the weight of all these organizations on one side of the political spectrum. When you turn on your computer, or you walk past the TV, or you see a newspaper headline in the grocery store If they’re all saying the same thing, the weight of that convinces you that it’s true. You don’t question it, because everyone is saying it. Unless you seek out Breitbart on your computer, you’re probably not even going to know what the other side is saying.
Most news media outlets ignore the origins of ostensibly grassroots political activism, stated Logan. She pondered the geneses of such campaigns, speculating on technology firms’ roles in amplifying such campaigns:
We don’t even question if what we see on social media is real or not. We don’t even question if a grassroots movement is really grassroots. You know, there’s a way to start a grassroots movement. You write an algorithm, and you create all this outrage, and you’re basically throwing out all the sparks that light the fire, so then it becomes a grassroots movement because it takes nothing to set that in motion. But did it really begin as one? And if it didn’t begin that way, but was manipulated and paid for by someone and serves someone’s political purpose, is it really what we believe it is?
…
People were manipulated into doing that. … Who’s behind it? Who’s doing it, and why are they doing it? And what else are they doing? Those things are profoundly significant, and we’re not even trying to find out who it is. That really bothers me.
Logan dismissed news media claims allegedly rooted in singular anonymous government sources as unreliable. “That’s not journalism, it’s horseshit,” she said.
“Responsibility for fake news begins with us,” said Logan, referring to journalists and reporters.
Logan recalled for Media Matters for America (MMFA) targeted her following a 60 Minutes report she filed related to the September 11, 2012 Islamic terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya. “I made one comment about Benghazi,” remarked Logan, ” [then] I was targeted by Media Matters for America, which was an organization established by David Brock, who has dedicated himself to the Clintons. It was their known propaganda organization.”
In February of 2011, Logan was sexually assaulted — and nearly murdered — by numerous men in Cairo, Egypt, while reporting on the ousting of then-Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. She shared some details of the attack’s nature, including
“Piece by piece, they tore all my clothing off, and just tore my body almost to pieces, and tore my insides apart,” recounted Logan. “I saw people taking pictures. … I remember fighting, being raped, and being able to sometimes push people away, and then I remember just realizing that there were too many of them — and it was over and over and over again — and that there was always someone else when you could fight one person.”
Towards the end of the interview, Logan quipped, “This interview is professional suicide for me.”
‘Now people are like “Wait a second, we’ve seen what’s happened in other places”‘
By Grabien Staff
EXCERPT:
ALI: “The activists. Bring them to the conversation. Also, people are learning from, well, Amazon is coming. Tech has come to my hometown. Oh, look, income inequality. Can’t afford housing. So what’s going to happen to our neck of the woods here in queens? We need the jobs. But what type of jobs, right, and is this going to phase out different communities. These are the conversations people are having. The sheen of an Amazon or Facebook, 5, 10 years ago, people were like, yes, come, savvy us. Now people are like “Wait a second, we’ve seen what’s happened in other places”. Talk to us. Because our interests are at stake. You can’t just go beyond the mayor and the government.”
The Jussie Smollett hate hoax officially blew up, but the ‘Empire’ actor refuses to admit he staged the MAGA attack that took place two weeks ago.
Fox reported Saturday afternoon that Chicago police sources confirmed detectives were able to show that the Nigerian brothers who were “persons of interest” and questioned by police, bought the rope found around Jussie Smollett’s neck at Crafty Beaver Hardware the weekend of January 25th.
Jussie Smollett paid for the rope — The Nigerian brothers were paid $3,500 before leaving for Nigeria and were promised another $500 as soon as they returned back to the US.
It gets better…
According to sources, Jussie Smollett and the two Nigerian brothers rehearsed the MAGA attack.
Sources said one of the brothers held the rope and poured bleach while the other wore a plain red hat and yelled racist and homophobic slurs at Smollett,reported CBS Chicago.
Smollett also had the Nigerian brothers purchase two red ball caps from Uptown Beauty Supply to wear during the attack so they would appear to be Trump supporters.
It was reported Saturday night that the Chicago Police Department is no longer looking at ‘Empire’ star Jussie Smollett as a victim in his alleged assault — but rather an “active participant.”
Despite all of the reports from police sources that Jussie Smollett staged the hate crime, his lawyers pushed back in a statement late Saturday night calling the Chicago cops liars.
Jussie Smollett’s attorneys, Todd S. Pugh and Victor P. Henderson, released a statement late Saturday night insisting the alleged MAGA attack that took place on January 29th in the subfreezing temps in Chicago was real.
According to reports, high-profile attorney Michael Monico is no longer representing Jussie Smollett after a disagreement about the decision to release Saturday night’s statement.
Jussie Smollett could get up to three years in prison for filing a false police report in the state of Illinois.
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