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Botched vandalism of British Treasury leaves climate-change protesters red-faced — literally

A beetroot-infused palate cleanser that comes with an important lesson:

If you absolutely must have a fire truck for your protest stunt, don’t try to save a buck by buying it it off eBay, for cripes sake. These people are lucky the tank didn’t explode, or that the dancing hose didn’t whip around at a bystander. Someone could have been hurt.

Or, worse, they would have all been stained crimson from head to toe and I would have had to make a pitiful joke about how “the Greens really are Reds after all.”

I suppose the protesters’ metaphor still works, though, no? The Treasury was supposed to be “blood-stained” because of the government’s climate policies; instead, “blood is running in the streets” because of them. Something something blood, something something climate change. Close enough.

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Antifa Calls for Black Bloc Protest at Minneapolis Trump Rally: ‘America is Cancelled’

Antifa has put out a call for a black bloc protest at the Minneapolis Trump rally on October 10, declaring that “America is cancelled.”

Black bloc is a tactic in which the far-left protesters dress in black from head to toe and cover their faces with black masks. The tactic is meant to make it more difficult for police to identify those who break the law during a riot.

“Trump is having a campaign rally in downtown Minneapolis. He wants to keep America great, but… AMERICA IS CANCELED,” the call to action posted on a popular Antifa website declared.

The website continues on to say, “join us to celebrate with an anti-capitalist bloc. Bring yourself, bring your friends, bring your crew and come prepared to disrupt the nightmare that is Trump.”

The Trump rally is scheduled to take place on October 10 at the Target Center. Antifa is urging other activists to “meet at the ‘America is Canceled’ banner.”

Antifa has a long history of violence and harassment of those who support the president. Just last week, they harassed an elderly couple who was attempting to attend a free speech event in Canada featuring classical liberal Dave Rubin.

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DNC Demands Facebook ‘Fact Check’ Trump Ads

The DNC believes Facebook is not being anti-Trump enough, and wants the social network to “fact check” ads from the president’s campaign.

CNN reported that DNC Chief Executive Seema Nanda said that she was “deeply disappointed in Facebook’s decision to exempt statements from political candidates from its fact-checking policy” after the social network announced it would not fact-check politicians.

“We know that Trump has an utter disregard for the truth,” Nanda told CNN.

“Social media platforms have a responsibility to protect our democracy and counter disinformation online. This is a serious missed opportunity by Facebook.”

This came after Facebook said it is not the job of a tech company to “referee political debate.”

The comments, from former British Liberal Democrat leader and arch-Europhile Nick Clegg, now a VP at Facebook, were a rare moment of self-restraint for the company. They were published in full on Facebook’s official blog.

“We don’t believe, however, that it’s an appropriate role for us to referee political debates and prevent a politician’s speech from reaching its audience and being subject to public debate and scrutiny,” said Clegg. “That’s why Facebook exempts politicians from our third-party fact-checking program. We have had this policy on the books for over a year now, posted publicly on our site under our eligibility guidelines. This means that we will not send organic content or ads from politicians to our third-party fact-checking partners for review.”

However, Clegg added that even this voluntary policy of restraint has its limits, stating that the company would suppress posts from politicians in some circumstances.

“When a politician shares previously debunked content including links, videos and photos, we plan to demote that content, display related information from fact-checkers, and reject its inclusion in advertisements,” said Clegg.

Are you an insider at Google, Facebook, Twitter or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com. 

Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.

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Demi Lovato Apologizes Amid Backlash for Visiting Israel: ‘I Realize It Hurt People’

Pop superstar Demi Lovato has apologized after facing backlash for visiting Israel, and insisted that “no one told” her that there would be any issue with her visiting the country.

Lovato uploaded several pictures from Israel to her Instagram account on Wednesday, including photos of her being baptized in the Jordan River, visiting the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and touring the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial and museum.

In a post to her over 70 million followers, Lovato explained how she had Jewish ancestry and felt that Israel was a “magical country.”

I am an American singer. I was raised Christian and have Jewish ancestors. When I was offered an amazing opportunity to visit the places I’d read about in the Bible growing up, I said yes.

There is something absolutely magical about Israel.  I’ve never felt such a sense of spirituality or connection to God…something I’ve been missing for a few years now.  Spirituality is so important to me…to be baptized in the Jordan river – the same place Jesus was baptized – I’ve never felt more renewed in my life.

This trip has been so important for my well-being, my heart, and my soul.  I’m grateful for the memories made and the opportunity to be able to fill the God-sized hole in my heart. Thank you for having me, Israel.

However, the 27-year-old singer faced an immediate backlash from anti-Israel campaigners, who accused her of undermining the Palestinian cause in the ongoing conflict.

Instagram/@ddlovato

“I’m extremely frustrated. I accepted a free trip to Israel in exchange for a few posts. No one told me there would be anything wrong with going or that I could possibly be offending anyone,” she complained. “With that being said, I’m sorry if I’ve hurt or offended anyone.”

“Sometimes people present you with opportunities and no one tells you the potential backlash you could face in return,” she continued. “This was meant to be a spiritual experience for me, NOT A POLITICAL STATEMENT and now I realize it hurt people and for that I’m sorry.”

Lovato, who nearly died last year of a heroin overdose, has occasionally waded into political debates with regard to LGBT rights, mental health, and the imposition of stricter gun laws.

In 2016, she spoke at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia about raising awareness for mental health, while she also performed at the anti-Second Amendment March for Our Lives rally in Washington, D.C. in March last year.

Follow Ben Kew on Facebook, Twitter at @ben_kew, or email him at bkew@breitbart.com.

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‘South Park’ Roasts Hollywood for Appeasing Communist China

Wednesday night’s episode of South Park took Hollywood to task for meekly allowing China to censor its movies and TV shows in exchange for reaching that huge Asian audience and their money.

In the episode, Stan Marsh is approached by a Chinese film company when his heavy metal rock band begins turning heads. The Chinese filmmakers say that they think his group is the next big thing in music, and they want to make a biopic about the band’s beginning.

Stan agrees and soon the band is filming its story with the help of a Chinese film company. But at nearly every turn, Stan and his band find the Chinese censors telling them what they can and can’t say, especially when it comes to describing the United States as a land of freedom.

Video via Newsbusters

“You got to lower your ideals of freedom if you want to suck on the warm teat of China,” the American director working for the Chinese film company tells Stan and his crew.

When Stan complains about being forced to rewrite the story the kids are trying to tell, the director takes aim at Hollywood for allowing China to censor everything without complaints.

“Come on, guys,” the film producer says to the boys. “Everyone else is fine with China approving our entertainment. Even the PC Babies don’t seem to mind. And PC Babies cry about everything!”

Eventually, Stan quits the film and goes back to the same farm he lives on that he hated so much that it goaded him to write his angry music in the first place.

“I want to get away from that farm. More than anything. But it’s not worth living in a world where China controls my country’s art,” a disgruntled Stan says.

The episode sharply highlights Hollywood’s meekness in the face of constant censorship that takes an ax to Hollywood’s vaunted “artistic integrity.”

A few years ago, for instance, the James Bond flick Skyfall was heavily edited to take out the Chinese bad guys for its debut in the communist nation. In another case, Hollywood stood by silent as Chinese censors took out all positive references to Taiwan in a historical epic. Last year, the communist bosses set out on a massive censorship campaign to eliminate the portrayal of fantasy elements — such as magic and demons — frim TV shows aired in China.

These instances are not isolated examples. China meddles with just about every Hollywood film it allows in Chinese theaters. They also outright ban films. A few years ago, the communist nation refused to allow productions based on WInnie the Pooh into China, and last year pop singer Justin Bieber’s music was banned.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.

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NEW: Encrypted Text Messages Show US Ambassador Defending President Trump Over Ukraine Call, ‘No Quid Pro Quo’s of Any Kind’

Former Ukrainian envoy Kurt Volker testified Thursday morning before the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs, and Oversight committees.

Volker resigned from his post last week.

Kurt Volker’s name appeared in the partisan CIA “whistleblower’s” complaint against President Donald Trump’s dealings with the Ukraine.

On Thursday Republicans told reporters that Volker said nothing that comports with the Democrat Party’s latest impeachment accusations during his closed-door session on Capitol Hill.

Fox News obtained encrypted text messages sent between Kurt Volker and other US officials such US Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland and Chargé d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine Bill Taylor.

The text messages show US Ambassador to the EU defending Trump and making it clear there was no quid pro quo in the President’s communications with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Via Fox News:

Meanwhile, new encrypted text messages obtained by Fox News show Volker and other U.S. officials battling internally last month over whether Trump was engaged in a “quid pro quo” with Ukraine as he pressed for the country to look into the Biden family, while holding back U.S. aid. The texts with Volker, U.S. Ambassador to the EU Gordon Sondland and Chargé d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine Bill Taylor indicate that the nature of a potential arrangement between the U.S. and Ukraine was a matter of dispute.

“As I said on the phone, I think it’s crazy to withhold security assistance for help with a political campaign,” Taylor said in a text exchange.

Sondland responded by saying that was not what was happening. “Bill, I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind. The President is trying to evaluate whether Ukraine is truly going to adopt the transparency and reforms that President Zelensky promised during his campaign.”

Both men then agreed to cease discussing the matter over text, noting that phone calls with the appropriate officials would be preferable.

The transcript of the July 25 phone call between President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was declassified and released last week.

The exchange between Trump and Zelensky was very pleasant. There were no threats, no quid pro quo and Zelensky said many times that he was never threatened by Trump.

Joe Biden previously threatened to withhold over $1 billion in aid from Ukraine if Ukraine didn’t fire Viktor Shokin, the prosecutor investigating Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings with Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian natural gas company.

Shokin was fired and Biden bragged about it during a 2018 speech to the Council on Foreign Relations and now the Democrat-media complex is pinning the scandal on Trump.

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SHOCK: Rare, Unequivocal Pro-Life Message at…Univision?

Univision’s coverage of an abusive Tennessee mother featured a stunning departure from the corporate line due to its powerful and unequivocal pro-life message, proof positive that miracles can come from anywhere. Watch below as the hosts at Univision’s afternoon news program Primer Impacto are so outraged by the story that feel compelled to speak out:

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China’s TikTok Video App Censors Posts about Trump, Chistianity, LGBT

One of the news social media apps is copying the strategies of big name sites — censorship. TikTok, a wildly popular app that is managed by a sinister moderation system, is censoring posts about President Donald Trump, Christianity and the LGBT community, according to leaks sent to The Guardian.

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HAMMER: Who Will Stand For The Forgotten American?

The forgotten American is the blue-collar taxpayer who attends church on Sundays. He toils diligently so that he can put bread on the table for his family and children, but he lives paycheck-to-paycheck on a tight budget. He is frustrated that neither major political party seems attuned to the quotidian trials and tribulations that necessarily come, in today’s society, with raising numerous children while fiscally constrained. Who will stand not with the cronyist interests of Silicon Valley or the corporatist interests of Wall Street, but for the economic interests of the forgotten American family man?

The forgotten American is the law-abiding patriot who has never had a skirmish with law enforcement more dire than a speeding ticket. He proudly exercises his Second Amendment right and owns firearms to protect home and hearth. But he also believes it is a core function of government to ensure law and order by locking up murderers, rapists, sex offenders, drug traffickers, burglars, and other appalling criminals. He is frustrated that neither major political party seems attuned to the fact that deterring crime and removing the worst of the worst from the streets is an indispensable tenet of the American social contract. Who will stand against the leftist/libertarian jailbreak alliance, and will stand athwart the under-incarceration epidemic that wreaks havoc on the safety of the forgotten, law-abiding American?

The forgotten American believes in sovereignty and the integrity of the nation-state. He accepts the truism that to lack borders is to lack a nation itself and, as such, he opposes illegal immigration. He believes that the federal government’s response has been woefully inadequate to the phenomenon of augmented transnational criminal cartels trafficking economically motivated faux-asylee human migrants for profit. He is frustrated that neither major political party seems committed to deploying the resources necessary to protect the republic’s territorial and narcotics-related integrity against the siege of military-style, Hezbollah-intertwined cartels. He is distressed that neither major political party seems attuned to those who oppose the social transformation without representation that is imposed via the diktats of judicial amnesty. Who will stand not with the open-borders lobby, but with the forgotten American who values the nation-state and wants to see criminal aliens deported en masse?

The forgotten American keeps his copy of the U.S. Constitution in his bedside nightstand. He has read this simple, straightforward document and he cherishes the unbounded political wisdom embedded therein. He is a big proponent of the Tenth Amendment and believes that politicians and lawless judges alike have been complicit in fundamentally distorting the original relationship between the states and federal government that James Madison once described in The Federalist No. 45. But he has also read the Supremacy Clause of Article VI of the Constitution, and he therefore understands that sanctuary state and sanctuary city jurisdictions across the nation operate today in subversive, neo-Confederate fashion. Who will stand against the modern-day analogue of John C. Calhoun-style thought and will instead stand for the uncountable forgotten American victims of sanctuary jurisdiction-abetted violent crime?

The forgotten American is both pro-science and pro-common sense. He knows from rudimentary biology, the Book of Genesis, and observable human nature alike that there are two distinct genders: Male and female. He has immense compassion and sympathy for those suffering from gender dysphoria, but he believes in neither bestowing social affirmation upon mental illnesses nor in incentivizing doctors to violate the Hippocratic Oath via genital mutilation “surgery.” Furthermore, he worries greatly about the fact that biological males may well soon be permitted to enter his daughter’s high school girls’ locker room with impunity. Who will stand not with the de-civilization agenda of those would seek to redefine and ultimately eviscerate God’s man/female biological complementarity, but with the forgotten American who believes in biological and biblical truth?

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Iraq: Internet switched off and at least 33 killed as protests break out

Iraq is suddenly looking a bit like Hong Kong. But in Baghdad police were quick to open fire on protesters with live ammunition as the government shut down the internet to stop the flow of information:

Anti-government demonstrators defied an around-the-clock curfew in Baghdad and other cities Thursday as Iraqi security forces used live ammunition and tear gas during a third day of unrest that has left 33 people dead, most of them protesters.

Authorities cut internet access in much of Iraq since late Wednesday in a desperate move to curb the rallies. By Thursday afternoon, the curfew was extended to three other southern provinces…

Middle East expert Jennifer Cafarella, with the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, said the immediate and widespread use of force against protesters in multiple provinces demonstrates “that the security forces are overwhelmed by the volume and rate of spread” of the rallies.

The protests began Tuesday and appear to spread very quickly. The source of the protester’s anger is economic more than political, though protesters are calling for the ouster of the current government:

The latest violence began as sporadic protests earlier in the week with demonstrators demanding an end to government corruption, nationwide unemployment and a crippling lack of basic services such as electricity and clean water…

Some of the protesters’ demands include the “fall of the regime” and demonstrators have set government and political party buildings ablaze in two southern provinces.

In addition, Al-Monitor reports there is a strain of anti-Iranian influence to the protests, pointing to several incidents in recent weeks which fueled public anger:

Many protesters called for a homeland, or watan, in Arabic, and some also shouted slogans against Iran for interfering in Iraqi matters and supporting failed parties in Iraq…

Last week, the prime minister dismissed the deputy commander of Iraq’s counterterrorism bureau, Abdul-Wahab al-Saadi, provoking anger and discontent among Iraqis. Many protesters carried photos of Saadi at the protests.

Saadi’s dismissal caused discontent in several political parties, including the National Wisdom Movement, the Sadrist movement and Osama al-Nujaifi’s Iraqi Decision Coalition, raising suspicions over Iranian interference in his dismissal, as he was independent of Iranian proxies in Iraq, whether in the Iraqi army or the PMU.

In another incident, the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad, Iraj Masjedi, said in a TV interview with Dijlah channel last week that Iran would target the United States in Iraq if the United States threatened Iran. Iraqis took this as clear Iranian interference in Iraqi matters.

Because the internet is down today, video of what is happening is limited. In this clip from yesterday you can hear gunshots which cause a large mass of protesters to turn and run:

In this more recent video, protesters burn a police vehicle:

This Al Jazeera report contains some good interviews. One man says Iraqis are begging on the streets and when they come out to protest they are being shot at by security forces from Iran.

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