What a way to pay homage to their sports heroes. Rioters in Atlanta took their frustrations out on the College Football Hall Of Fame, smashing out the windows, vandalizing the place, and looting priceless memorabilia. Because somehow it’s racist symbol of white supremacy. Somehow.
Protesters smashed windows at the College Football Hall of Fame in downtown Atlanta and damaged a Chick-fil-A restaurant next door to the museum.
Some protesters were seen looting the building before several officers arrived to try to maintain order at the $68 million facility, which opened in 2014 to great fanfare after relocating from South Bend, Ind.
Several hurled garbage cans and other objects through the glass exterior of the building, which hosts football watch parties and other major events. Some then rushed inside to grab anything they could.
11Alive’s journalists on the ground saw the building’s front lobby had been broken into and raided. There were broken glass and display cases inside and outside of the building. The hall of fame is just one building damaged Friday.
The Atlanta Police Department said they’re working to disperse the crowd and restore order. The McCormick and Schmitz restaurant and the CNN Center both sustained damage. Atlanta Police said people are both destroying and threatening officers.Video from the protests also show vehicle fires.
“Officers continue to endure nearly constant assault, including protestors shooting BB guns at them, throwing bricks, bottles, rocks and knives at them as they continue their efforts to protect property and lives. At the moment, at least three officers have been injured in the confrontation,” Public Information Officer Carlos Campos said.
The Hall Of Fame is sponsored by Chick-fil-A, so you can help but wonder if the left’s hatred for the growing fast food chain had anything to do with this. The shrine has been closed during the Covid 19 freak out.
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz summed-up the current chaos erupting nationwide perfectly:
"This is absolutely no longer about George Floyd or addressing inequities anymore. This is an organized attack designed to destabilize civil society."
Protests raged overnight in dozens of U.S. cities, including Minneapolis, Washington, D.C., New York City, Atlanta, Houston, and several large metro areas on the West Coast.
Protests or social unrest was seen in these major metros on Friday night:
Houston & Fort Worth, TX
NYC
Chicago, IL
Atlanta, GA
Washington D.C.
Detroit, MI
Fort Wayne, IN
Kansas City, MO
Des Moines, IA
Vegas, NV
Charlotte, NC
San Jose, CA
Boston, MA
Memphis, TN
Columbus, OH
Denver, CO
Cincinnati, OH
Portland, ME
Louisville, KY
Starting in Minneapolis, where unrest continued into the fourth night following the death of George Floyd, a man who was killed by Minneapolis Police on Monday, had Minnesota National Guard Adjutant General Jon Jensen and Governor Tim Walz announce the request for 1,000 more soldiers from the National Guard as widespread rioting and looting continued.
"This is the largest civilian deployment in Minnesota history that we have out there today, and quite candidly right now, we do not have the numbers," Walz said Saturday morning." We cannot arrest people when we are trying to hold ground because of the sheer size, the dynamics, and wanton violence."
Jensen expects by Saturday evening, up to 1,700 soldiers will be "ready to go." On Friday night, assault rifle-wielding soldiers were spotted on the streets within the ranks of local police.
A fleet of armored Humvees lined the street "on Chicago Ave in between Lake St. and 31st as firefighters battle raging fires 8 blocks from where George Floyd was killed," tweeted Unicorn Riot.
Scenes last night from Interstate 35W, a major highway system in the U.S. that passes through downtown Minneapolis, where protesters broke into a moving UPS truck and stole packages.
In response to Washington, D.C. protests on Friday evening, President Trump thanked the Secret Service on Saturday morning for protecting the White house.
"Many Secret Service agents just waiting for action," President Trump tweeted.
Meanwhile, the Treasury Department in DC was breached by rioters, who spray-painted the building. According to CNN, some of the protesters were stopped by US Secret Service but eventually let go.
From Houston to Phoenix to Portland, police forces have reported widespread social unrest.
Our officers made nearly 200 arrests of those who participated in unlawful assemblies throughout the day & night. Most will be charged with obstructing a roadway.
4 of our officers suffered minor injuries & 8 police vehicles were damaged.
Property throughout the downtown Phoenix area has been vandalized as some demonstrators engage in criminal behavior, breaking windows and doors to municipal and private business and destroy cars parked along the street.
Two arrests have been made related to this evenings riot. Another arrest was made around 3:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon related to the demonstration near the Justice Center. Details will be provided in a press release when more information becomes available.
Several years ago, US Northern Command "rehearsed non-lethal riot control tactics" at Davis-Monthan AFB in Arizona. Perhaps preparation for widespread social unrest across the country. The government has known this day was coming…
President Trump signed an executive order in late March that allows the Pentagon to mobilize up to a million troops to combat the coronavirus outbreak in the country. The order could now be directed at social unrest. It’s only a matter of time before more state governors activate National Guard troops like Minnesota did early this week.
A perfect storm develops: 40 million unemployed, economy crashed, record polarization and wealth inequality at extremes, the country is quickly descending into chaos into the summer months. So what happens when the government stops unleashing helicopter money for people who recently lost their jobs?
Chief Justice Roberts joined the the liberal bloc of the Supreme Court in deciding Governor Newsom has the right to deny churchgoers the right to assemble during this pandemic.
Once again, Roberts’ logic is muddled as he this time sided with the far left against the First Amendment of the United States.
The Supreme Court issued a rare late-night ruling on Friday against a California church challenging their state’s stay-at-home order.
In a 5-4 vote, Chief Justice John Roberts broke from other conservative justices to rule in favor of the state. The case was brought by the South Bay United Pentecostal Church in Chula Vista, Calif., which said Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) stay-at-home order ignored religious freedoms.
Roberts noted in an opinion concurring in the unsigned ruling that the restrictions in place are applied to non-religious gatherings and therefore don’t pose a threat to religious liberties.
“Although California’s guidelines place restrictions on places of worship, those restrictions appear consistent with the free exercise clause of the First Amendment,” Roberts wrote.
“…Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports, and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time,” he wrote.
Atlanta Mayor Keisha Bottoms (D) excoriated those causing violence in Georgia’s capital city as protests turned to riots, stating that rioters are “disgracing” their city and “the life of George Floyd and every other person who has been killed in this country.”
Angry demonstrators flocked to cities all around the country — from New York City to Louisville to Atlanta — in protest of the death of George Floyd. However, many of the protests have descended into violent chaos as protesters loot and vandalize buildings and businesses, set fires, assault police officers, and attempt to storm buildings – including the CNN headquarters in Atlanta.
Bottoms addressed the city’s descent into “chaos” on Friday, bluntly telling rioters that they are not acting in the spirit of the Civil Rights movement and are “disgracing the life of George Floyd and every other person who has been killed in this country.”
“What I see happening on the street of Atlanta is not Atlanta,” Bottoms said, declaring that “this is not a protest.”
“This is not in the spirit of Martin Luther King Jr. This is chaos. A protest has purpose. When Dr. King was assassinated, we didn’t do this to our city,” she said, noting Atlanta’s legacy of minority leaders and business owners:
So if you love this city — this city that has had a legacy of black mayors and black police chiefs and people who care about this city, where more than 50 percent of the business owners in metro Atlanta are minority business owners — if you care about this city, then go home.
“You’re not protesting anything running out with brown liquor in your hand breaking windows in this city. T.I., and Killer Mike own half the west side, so when you burn down this city, you’re burning down our community,” she said of the entertainers, who accompanied her during the presser.
“If you want change in America, go and register to vote. Show up at the polls on June 9. Do it in November. That is the change we need in this country,” she continued.
“You are disgracing our city. You are disgracing the life of George Floyd and every other person who has been killed in this country,” she added. “We are better than this. We are better than this as a city, and we are better than this as a country.”
Bottoms emphasized that the rioters’ actions are “not the legacy of civil rights in America.”
“This is chaos, and we’re buying into it. This won’t change anything,” she stated:
— City of Atlanta, GA (@CityofAtlanta) May 30, 2020
Violence continued to erupt in Atlanta Friday night as protesters swarmed CNN’s headquarters, burning flags, destroying police vehicles, and spray-painting graffiti messages including “fuck Trump,” as Breitbart News detailed.
The pastor of First Pentecostal Church of Holly Springs in Mississippi said his church was burned to the ground because his congregants wanted to worship in-person despite the coronavirus restrictions on houses of worship.
Jerry Waldrop, who has led his congregation for over 30 years, described the “nightmare” he has experienced during the last several weeks in a USA Today Op-Ed.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think that in America, in our church — the First Pentecostal Church of Holly Springs, Mississippi — I would see armed police standing in our aisles, ordering us to shut down our worship services,” he wrote Wednesday.
“Even worse, I never thought that in America I’d experience what it was like for those armed policemen to hand me an official government document, ordering our community of faithful to cease and desist worshiping on Easter Sunday and to depart the House of God.”
Police had also allegedly shut down a Bible study in which the pastor said they were following social distancing guidelines.
Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves responded to the fire on Twitter, saying that he was “heartbroken and furious.”
I am heartbroken and furious. In Mississippi, a church was just burned to the ground. They had been trying to open services. There was graffiti on the lot which read “Bet you stay home now you hypocrites.”
A graffiti message was spray-painted in the pavement next to the debris that read, “BET YOU STAY HOME NOW YOU HYPOKRITS.”
“Who would do such a thing? Why would anyone want to destroy a sacred place where the faithful venerate God in their own way, in a way that does not intrude on others’ rights or disrupt their lives?” Waldrop wrote.
“But critics tell us that we are selfish, and that by gathering we are endangering other people who might believe differently.”
The pastor added that his congregation was practicing social distancing rules by keeping some rows of pews empty.
“Does the Constitution guarantee shoppers greater rights to assemble than people of faith?” he asked.
The cause of the fire still is under investigation, with some fire investigators believing it may be arson-related due to the graffiti left at the site, the DeSoto Times-Tribune reported.
As for Waldrop, he said the fire won’t stop the congregation from worshiping together.
“We truly believe that liberty is a blessing from God. Just as the United States of America is a blessing from God. Those two blessings are meant to reinforce one another, and to deny the freedom to enjoy one of the blessings is to destroy the other,” he wrote. “Based on these premises, we will continue to worship together and to fight together for our and every American’s right to partake in the blessings of freedom.”
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The coronavirus pandemic may have closed church doors around the globe, but that doesn’t mean believers have abandoned Christ’s mission.
One such organization that has provided for the poor during the crisis is Calvary Temple Church in Hyderabad, India.
The megachurch, which according to its website boasts over 300,000 members, donated more than 800 tons of food in the form of grocery kits that each provides enough food to feed a family for a month.
The church has also provided some 20 needy families with funeral services and supplied free medicines for roughly 1,000 senior citizens.
“We came forward to donate food, grocery and medicine to poor and helpless families in two Telugu states,” Calvary Temple Pastor Dr. P. Satish Kumar told Asia News International.
“So far 30,000 families received help in the form of grocery kits, each kit weighing 30 kilograms [about 66 pounds] with 17 items in it,” he said.
Meanwhile, governments have decided Christian churches in the United States were “nonessential,” attempting to closing them down and even arresting clergy who did not comply.
But again, their God-given mission was thwarted by neither modern-day principalities nor the pandemic as Christians rose to the challenge.
Samaritan’s Purse, a humanitarian organization run by evangelist Billy Graham’s son Franklin Graham, set up a field hospital in New York City’s Central Park in the face of opposition for its stance on traditional marriage.
“As our teams work in disaster sites around the world, we are often asked, ‘Why did you come?’ Each time, we are able to say we have come to serve in Jesus’ Name,” the organization tweeted Thursday.
As our teams work in disaster sites around the world, we are often asked, “Why did you come?” Each time, we are able to say we have come to serve in Jesus’ Name. https://t.co/HoKuS7mWJw
— Samaritan’s Purse (@SamaritansPurse) May 28, 2020
Another Christian non-profit organization, the Los Angeles Dream Center, and its partners helped feed an astounding number of those left jobless and hungry by the pandemic.
“Thank you @krogerco @RalphsGrocery @myfood4less for helping us make an impact in #LosAngeles,” The Dream Center tweeted Thursday.
“Your partnership has contributed to providing over 700,000 meals in the last 73 days of our COVID-19 relief and has helped to lift our city up during these times.”
Churches in Arizona partnered with every state hospital to help during COVID-19, helping with errands for busy doctors and nurses, assembling care packages, providing child care and of course ministering to the afflicted.
While government help is funded through resources forcibly taken from individuals, Christian charity is freely given in an answer to Jesus’ call to service to their fellow man.
Do you think Christians are better at helping the needy than government is?
0% (0 Votes)
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Nonbelieving leftists foolishly put their faith in the almighty government and scoff when Christians protest the governments that close their houses of worship when they need them the most.
The good news is that Christians answer to a higher power, and even if they cannot worship in their churches, they are compelled through their abiding faith to do what’s necessary wherever they are.
Governments can close Christian churches, but they can’t close Christian hearts to the needs of their brothers and sisters.
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Even as the criticism of Wikipedia’s left-wing political bias intensifies, including from the site’s co-founder Larry Sanger, the major tech platforms continue to use the online encyclopedia in their services and rely on it as a model for addressing “fake news” concerns. Rather than improving their services, the integration of Wikipedia into Big Tech platforms has, instead, made them disseminate false or biased information.
Big Tech has deepened its effort to integrate Wikipedia into its services at every opportunity. As the tech overlords of Silicon Valley such as Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey claim they are not the “arbiters of truth,” they are increasingly using Wikipedia to fill that role despite its extreme left-wing bias.
As the focus remains on the bias at the Silicon Valley Masters of the Universe themselves, and their ability to control and influence everyday political conversations, the role of Wikipedia in informing these conversations has largely been portrayed positively by left-wing media outlets. Criticism from conservative commentators and media outlets has been dismissed by its community. This has included recent criticism from Sanger, who co-founded the site with Jimmy Wales, despite him having listed numerous examples of how articles on several political topics exhibited a left-wing bias. Such problems have often had a similarly negative effect on major tech sites adopting Wikipedia as part of their services.
Internet giants have built Wikipedia into their system in different ways:
Google
Like most search engines, Google gives a significant advantage to Wikipedia and has even adjusted its algorithms to the detriment of Wikipedia alternatives. The primary way its search engine utilizes Wikipedia is its Knowledge Panel accompanying most search results. Used to display basic information on the subject of the search, it commonly pulls that information from the online encyclopedia. This once caused Google to label the California Republican Party’s ideology as “Nazism” due to Wikipedia vandalism. It also propagates political bias such as branding conservative outlet Gateway Pundit a “fake news site” for months until the label was removed from the outlet’s Wikipedia intro. More recent editing now places a similar claim in the Knowledge Panel.
Another point of exposure for Google is its Home virtual assistants. When people ask questions of Home devices, the artificial intelligence service often relays an answer taken from Wikipedia. The potential vulnerabilities of this system were made starkly clear after fast food chain Burger King created an ad where the person in the ad asks “Google” about the company’s Whopper Burger. Vandals subsequently altered the entry on the burger, causing it to claim the chain’s iconic product contained “medium-sized child” and other disgusting or even lethal ingredients.
YouTube
Google-owned video platform YouTube is one of several Big Tech sites to make use of Wikipedia through its efforts against “fake news” and “misinformation” online. Since 2018, YouTube has been using the site to display information on “conspiracy theories” under relevant videos. The list of conspiracy theories used by YouTube to determine when to display the information is reportedly itself taken from Wikipedia.
Facebook
Under pressure from left-wing media to deal with “fake news” online, Facebook began using Wikipedia as a resource to provide “information” on links people post to the social media site in 2018. This meant conservative news outlets’ posts would often be accompanied by the smears left-wing editors added to their Wikipedia pages. Included among these outlets is Breitbart News itself, which Wikipedia has for years characterized as publishing “misogynistic, xenophobic, and racist content” along with “falsehoods, conspiracy theories, and intentionally misleading stories.”
Amazon and Apple
Just as Google Home devices utilize Wikipedia to answer questions from users, Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri also rely on the online encyclopedia to provide information. In addition, virtual assistants increasingly rely on Wikidata, a sister project of Wikipedia particularly suited to the machine language of virtual assistants. Even worse than the online encyclopedia, Wikidata has been found to leave up vandalism for weeks, months, and even years, in extreme cases. This has included content about people as notable as Aquaman star Jason Momoa and even First Lady Melania Trump, who was labeled a “sex worker” on Wikidata for over a week.
In the case of Siri, Apple’s reliance on Wikidata has previously been found to have caused the program to, in one case, relay false information about the death of Marvel comics legend Stan Lee long before his actual death. Though virtual assistants usually note their information is from Wikipedia, Amazon Alexa was previously found by Wikipedia criticism site Wikipediocracy to use information from the site uncredited, a violation of Wikipedia’s license as it only allows free use of its content when given proper attribution.
Twitter
While not yet taking the same steps to integrate Wikipedia into its services as other Big Tech companies, Twitter has reportedly touted a Wikipedia model for use in its fact-checking procedures to also deal with the “fake news” menace. This community-supported fact-checking process was reported earlier this year, though the exact details are not yet clear. Recent “fact-checking” of President Trump by Twitter relied on CNN and other establishment media sources, but in the future this feature could include a Wikipedia-style process, using the same crowd-sourcing that got Trump listed as an advocate of a “Neo-nazi conspiracy theory” alongside other prominent conservatives.
Wikipedia’s wider influence
Big Tech’s use of Wikipedia in its services is merely one way in which the online encyclopedia impacts the global information environment. Scientific studies have found that Wikipedia has often shaped scientific papers and influenced economic patterns. A previous Breitbart investigation also uncovered that dozens of media outlets and several academic textbooks copied, sometimes in large portions, material from Wikipedia’s heavily-slanted page on the GamerGate anti-corruption movement in gaming without crediting the online encyclopedia.
Previously such widespread influence of Wikipedia was seen by the media as dangerous to advancing truthful information online. Comedian and left-wing nighttime host Stephen Colbert once lampooned the site’s reliability and coined the term “Wikiality” to describe a world where society’s perception of reality was determined by what anonymous Wikipedia users decided was true and false. However, following Trump’s election and hysteria over “fake news” and “Russian bots” the left-wing media and Big Tech have increasingly treated that world as their last hope with the welcome reception of the site’s Foundation, which has received substantial donations from those same Big Tech companies.
T. D. Adler edited Wikipedia as The Devil’s Advocate. He was banned after privately reporting conflict of interest editing by one of the site’s administrators. Due to previous witch-hunts led by mainstream Wikipedians against their critics, Adler writes under an alias.
Twitter on Tuesday began “fact-checking” President Trump’s tweets but let elected representatives of the U.S. Congress claim that the president’s campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 elections for three years.
Jack Dorsey, the founder and CEO of Twitter, said Wednesday evening that the company’s intention is to “connect the dots of conflicting statements and show the information in dispute so people can judge for themselves.”
However, for three years — throughout 2017, 2018, and 2019 — Democrat members of Congress stated as fact on Twitter that they had evidence that Trump colluded with Russia, which fueled the leftist narrative that the election was illegitimate.
Their claims were “in dispute” by other members of Congress, as well as members of the Trump administration and the president, but Twitter never flagged them as such, as it did with Trump’s recent tweets.
On April 21, 2019, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-CA) tweeted that special counsel Robert Mueller “did find evidence of collusion.”
In fact, Mueller’s report — released three days before — said that since collusion was not a legal term, his team looked for any conspiracy or coordination with Russia and did not find any.
It said, “The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
However, there was no Twitter “fact check” for Schiff.
I went on Fox News Sunday because I want to make sure every American hears the facts:
While Mueller did not charge the president with criminal conspiracy, he did find evidence of collusion.
He found ample evidence of obstruction, but left it to Congress to pursue.
Similarly, almost a month after Mueller released his report, Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) tweeted there was “some collusion.” He previously tweeted that he used the word “collusion” as “shorthand for conspiracy” — which Mueller explicitly did not find.
Lieu was not “fact-checked,” although Mueller’s report disputed his tweet.
I’m about to read the Mueller Report on @cspan 3 in a few minutes. Here’s a shorthand version:
Some collusion Lots of Obstruction A few swear words
I use collusion as shorthand for conspiracy. One reason Mueller indicted a lot of Russian operatives is to show they violated federal law. And if Trump or any of his associates conspired with Russian operatives, then they also violated federal law.
Collusion is another way of saying conspiracy. And conspiracy is a felony.
What’s remarkable is @realDonaldTrump now has to resort to this desperate defense, that it’s okay to conspire with Russia to interfere in US elections. It’s not okay because it’s a crime. #TuesdayThoughtshttps://t.co/F4Fd9DnW2x
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) on January 17, 2019, claimed that a BuzzFeed report was “MORE evidence of collusion.” No “fact-check” from Twitter. His tweet was retweeted more than 3,000 times and liked more than 12,500 times.
He also claimed seven days earlier, “I saw collusion from the very beginning.”
“I saw collusion from the very beginning when they were so eager to work with the Russians.” The Trump campaign was connected to the Russians; each new piece of information confirms that. We will uncover what happened and we must stop it in 2020. #Manafort#DonaldTrumpJrpic.twitter.com/HYiJUgLFZb
In 2018, Schiff claimed that there was “evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia” in “plain sight.”
Throughout the investigation, Committee Republicans chose not to seriously investigate — or even see, when in plain sight — evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. pic.twitter.com/1aa1tmX9Zb
Swalwell claimed that the House Intelligence Committee had “unearthed evidence of collusion.” His tweet has not been “fact-checked” even though the committee recently released more than 50 interview transcripts with former Obama and Trump campaign officials who presented no evidence of collusion.
On March 17, 2018, Schiff stated as fact, “We did find evidence of collusion.”
Mr. President, the Committee reached no such conclusion — only Republicans. In fact, we did find evidence of collusion, despite GOP members being more interested in protecting you than learning the truth. When accusing others of lying, best not to misrepresent facts yourself. https://t.co/fIuKPGyEN1
On February 28, 2018, Lieu stated, “Issue is not whether there was collusion. Issue is how high up the campaign did the collusion go.”
Russians previewed hacked emails of Hillary to @realDonaldTrump campaign officials. Question now is who knew about it? Did Flynn know? Kushner? @DonaldJTrumpJr? Or @POTUS himself?
Issue is not whether there was collusion. Issue is how high up the campaign did the collusion go. https://t.co/WxpdgY16A8
Lieu on January 10, 2018, tweeted, “The evidence shows not just collusion, but also Obstruction of Justice” by Trump “on multiple occasions.”
I am a Dem. The evidence shows not just collusion, but also Obstruction of Justice by @POTUS on multiple occasions. The below tweet by @realDonaldTrump again screams CONSCIOUSNESS OF GUILT. https://t.co/PjAHau97T6
LinkedIn Co-Founder Reid Hoffman, who notoriously backed a group that “spread disinformation during the 2017 Alabama special election for U.S. Senate,” is now being joined by other Big Tech billionaires in a plot to boost presumptive Democratic nominee for president Joe Biden in 2020.
What a way to pay homage to their sports heroes. Rioters in Atlanta took their frustrations out on the College Football Hall Of Fame, smashing out the windows, vandalizing the place, and looting priceless memorabilia. Because somehow it’s racist symbol of white supremacy. Somehow.
