Filmmaker Oliver Stone, who heavily promoted the JFK assassination conspiracy theory with his 1991 Oscar-winning movie “JFK,” now claims that his four-hour documentary on the same subject is being blocked from release in America due to fact-checks. Speaking with filmmaker Spike Lee for Variety’s “Directors on Directors” series, the Academy Award-winning director said he “can’t […]
..and then they came for the rest of us one by one…
I was in Washington D.C. on January 6th, 2021. In fact, having never received any memo or advanced notification of an insurrection, I brought my family. I was ill-prepared, not just for what “happened” there involving .0009% of the actual attendees, but for the fallout from it all.
As I said, I brought my family. A husband who had never even sought out a Trump rally or caravan and 3 young teens ages 17, 15, and 12. We live in New York and had about a 5-hour ride home- Terrified. We had just left what was supposed to be a historical moment and experience for our kids. On the way home, we were able to gather what happened afterward from what we could listen to live-streamed from my iPhone. What we left was not what was being described on any of the live-streams. We reached Maryland, and I finally had cell service (there was NO cell service in D.C. since that morning and the restaurants were all closed). I finally had a moment to get a quick video out on Facebook to let our friends and family know we had gotten out of D.C. and were safe. Looking back, I was visually shell-shocked in that video. The portrayal right away and demonization that this was a “white supremacist” event calling all Trump supporters domestic terrorists and treasonous was shocking. Us? My God. I love this Country. No one could really believe all of this, could they? When I got home that evening, I decided to recount what I saw and had experienced on a live feed on my Facebook page. This would be the first of many suspensions I would receive off of Facebook.
The next day my daughters (17, 15) returned to in-home remote learning as the schools in New York were still closed from the “holiday rise in COVID levels”. My 15-year-old was in class and a conversation was started about “What happened in D.C.”. I received a text from them in our family group chat about what a great conversation they had and how they were able to express the point of view of actually being there and what they experienced that was in such contrast to what the media focus was.
Not even an hour later, I received a call from the school nurse. My children would need to quarantine for being out of state. I explained the rule for out of state travel was 24+ hours, and I was only there 22 hours. I saved the parking receipt to prove it. I even recall mentioning to her what a messed up society we now live in, that I even had the forethought to think to do that. By that evening, all hell had broken loose on social media. My kids and I were depicted as the local “domestic terrorist white supremacist people we know who went to D.C.” We were targeted fully. The head of the local PTA was encouraging people to call the FBI. A local high school alumni of just 2 years who was politically involved in the previous Parkland Kids National Walkout Movement in our school posted on Facebook and other social media sites how she had “just found out that this person [ME] had brought her children to D.C.” and conveyed that I was literally so evil that I shouldn’t even bake cookies for the school children. I am adding the screenshot to show the complete ridiculousness of it all. But it was still far-reaching and hyper-local in a somewhat small New York town. The damage was done. And, of course, it spread on social media for my daughters.
It dragged on about 2 weeks, my daughters both refusing to return to the their school buildings. Why would they? They are racist Nazis now and everywhere they turn they are scorned and shunned. For going to D.C.- just for being there. For the crime of just being there, they need to be completely ostracized from society in its entirety. It is the only way this town can be cleansed of the evil we are now considered to be.
I had disputed my banning on Facebook and somehow got a mystery reduction in sentence. After 7 days of not expressing the abuse we were experiencing, I was let loose. I posted the phone calls we got, the screenshots, the postings and accusations and threats of FBI being called, and everything I could to express the onslaught we had experienced. I did end up filing a police report and a report at the school level for the bullying resulting from that in-class discussion.
I lasted about 4 more days on Facebook. I posted an article from a dot-gov website telling people to “load the cannons” and am currently still serving my 3rd Facebook banning/jail sentence for making threats for loading a cannon with a dot-gov website.
So, let’s not lose sight of “being in the middle of a pandemic.” Regardless of where your beliefs lie, the reality is young teenage girls need to be social. Kids in general need to be social with other kids their own ages. We are almost 1 year into these extended lock-downs, and most people, let alone young people, use social media as a primary means of communication. To stop the abuse and bullying my kids were receiving, I had to remove the mechanism. Facebook had already done it for me, but my daughters needed to be unplugged. And so we did; cutting off their last lifeline with anything in the “real world” of what was left in their new world almost 1 year into this pandemic. The isolation deepens.
There really are no words to describe what this experience has done, not just to us but more so to the people –the people who have allowed themselves to become monsters who would do this to other human beings. How can they dehumanize people they know in real life whom they used to sit next to at their kid’s marching band competitions and school performances? How can they demand that volunteerism and even baking skills be disallowed because they don’t have the same politics? Why are they so willing to destroy someone because they support a political candidate they disapprove of, or were taught to hate? Hate now cast onto my children and me so they can finally feel some satisfaction of destroying Trump by destroying anyone who supported him.
I really don’t understand what is happening to this country. We “lost”. Why are we the ones being attacked? Whatever happened to good sportsmanship? When one team loses on the field and shake hands and say, “good game, try again next time,”? No, the losing team now must be destroyed and eliminated from society. Scorched earth.
Who are the enemy and aggressors again? First, they came for Trump, and then they came for the rest of us. One by one.
Iranian-backed Houthi militants in Yemen bombed an airport in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday, just days after the Biden administration lifted the group’s terrorist designation.
The drone strike targeted Abha International Airport in Saudi Arabia, an airport just 75 miles from the Yemeni border that is frequently targeted by the militant rebel group. The attack set one civilian plane on fire, according to the Saudis, who say they intercepted and destroyed two armed drones launched by the Houthis from across its southern border in Yemen.
Last Friday, the Biden administration removed the terror designation placed on the Houthis by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier this year. The Houthis, who control significant territory along Saudi Arabia’s border with Yemen, have called for cooperation with terrorist group Hezbollah in future wars against Israel, and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in 2019 that Iran has sought ways to launch missiles at Israel from Houthi-controlled territory.
Biden’s State Department said it removed the designation because it undermined humanitarian efforts in Yemen. In a press briefing Wednesday, spokesman Ned Price said Wednesday’s bombing would not change the administration’s course on lifting the terror designation.
"We can ensure that we are not adding to the already substantial suffering of the Yemeni people," Price said, "while we continue to hold the Houthis to account."
Price did not say what actions would be taken to hold them accountable. The attack came as the Biden administration’s special envoy to Yemen, Timothy Lenderking, arrived in Riyadh to conduct several meetings with Yemeni and Saudi officials.
The Biden administration last week ended United States military support for Saudi Arabia’s fight against the Houthis. "There is no military solution when it comes to the conflict in Yemen," Price said.
On the night of Nov. 7, 1983, the U.S. Capitol switchboard received an ominous call warning authorities to evacuate the building. Roughly five minutes later, at 10:58 p.m., a bomb detonated in the Capitol’s north wing, hurting no one but creating a 15-foot hole in the wall and causing upward of $1 million in damage.…
It’s not every day that someone shares something that is both so wholesome and so challenging that it starts a wave of positivity, but one man on Twitter got pretty close last week. On Feb. 7, a user with the handle YungNLeveraged shared his personal story about addiction, rehabilitation, fatherhood and love. “When I found…
President Biden recently proposed a gradual increase of the federal minimum wage from $7.25 per hour to $15 per hour over a period of four years. Thus the federal minimum wage would approximately double. The proposal by Biden came as part of his coronavirus relief package. The Congressional Budget Office has done a study of…
The Dallas Mavericks have not played the national anthem all season long, but they’ll start playing it again right away.
Despite an order from Mavs Owner Mark Cuban to not play the anthem reportedly because “many feel it does not represent them,” the league has stepped-in and mandated that “all teams” will play the anthem before games.
“With NBA teams now in the process of welcoming fans back into their arenas, all teams will play the national anthem in keeping with longstanding league policy,” the league’s Chief Communications Officer Mike Bass said in a statement.
The Mavericks have not played the anthem in any of their 13 home preseason and regular-season games. Cuban had not publicly given a reason why the anthem was being nixed until Tuesday night when he confirmed to ESPN that the team was not playing the Star-Spangled Banner and had no plans to resume playing it.
A report from the Athletic’s Shams Charania cited a source claiming that Cuban’s decision to not play the song stemmed from a belief that “many feel the anthem doesn’t represent them.
Cuban has supported the desire of NBA players to kneel during the anthem as a form of protest.
“Whether it’s holding their arm up in the air, whether it’s taking a knee, whatever it is, I don’t think this is an issue of respect or disrespect to the flag or to the anthem or to our country,” Cuban told ESPN’s Outside the Lines in June. “I think this is more a reflection of our players’ commitment to this country and the fact that it’s so important to them that they’re willing to say what’s in their heart and do what they think is right.
“I’ll defer to [Silver] on any final judgments and [players’ union executive director] Michele Roberts. But the reality is, my hope is we’ll let the players do exactly what they think is the right thing to do.”
The NBA’s move comes as somewhat of a surprise given that the initial ESPN report claimed that Cuban had arrived at his decision to ban the anthem after consulting with NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
At the direction of owner Mark Cuban, the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks have stopped playing the national anthem before home games this season and do not intend to play it for home games moving forward. As noted by Tim Cato, who broke the story at The Athletic on Monday evening, the anthem-snub by the Mavericks is […]
Rapper and songwriter Pitbull (real name Armando Christian Pérez) warned during an appearance on RevoltTV how quickly freedom can be taken away, especially amid a crisis like the one sparked by the novel coronavirus. Pitbull is a first-generation Cuban-American whose family escaped Communism under the rule of Fidel Castro. “The reason I can have this […]
