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Prosecutors seek 5-year term for ex-leader of neo-Nazi group

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John Cameron Denton, founder and former leader of a neo-Nazi group called Atomwaffen Division. (Alexandria Sheriff's Office via AP, File)

(AP) Federal prosecutors in Virginia are seeking a five-year prison sentence for a former neo-Nazi group leader who pleaded guilty to conspiring with other far-right extremists to threaten dozens of targets, including a predominantly African American church, a sitting U.S. Cabinet member and journalists.

John Cameron Denton, of Montgomery, Texas, and others involved in the plot made at least 134 threats to injure people and institutions, often for racist reasons, Justice Department prosecutors wrote in a court filing last Wednesday. They said Denton participated in “the most far-reaching swatting conspiracy in our nation to date,” referring to hoax calls made to fool emergency dispatchers into sending police to the addresses of unsuspecting victims.

U.S. District Judge Liam O’Grady is scheduled to sentence Denton on Tuesday. Denton was 26 when he pleaded guilty in July 2020 to conspiring to transmit threats.

Prosecutors say Denton was a leader of a group called Atomwaffen Division. More than a dozen people linked to Atomwaffen Division or an offshoot called Feuerkrieg Division have been charged with federal crimes since the group’s formation in 2016. Many have pleaded guilty and been sentenced already.

Atomwaffen has been linked to several killings, including the May 2017 shooting deaths of two men at an apartment in Tampa, Florida, and the January 2018 killing of a University of Pennsylvania student in California.

The charges against Denton and other Atomaffen members and associates centered on hoax “swatting” calls that they made to targets in 2018 and 2019, including the Alfred Street Baptist Church in Alexandria, then-Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen and Old Dominion University in Norfolk, where one of Denton’s associates attended college.

In court, a judge has noted that the U.S. Secret Service waved local police away from mobilizing to Nielsen’s home in Alexandria in January 2019 after a member of the conspiracy called, claiming hostages were being taken there.

Denton also placed swatting calls to the New York City offices of news outlet ProPublica and to a ProPublica reporter in Richmond, California. Prosecutors say Denton had a vendetta against the ProPublica journalist for reporting on his activities in Atomwaffen, including for a PBS Frontline documentary.

Prosecutors’ filing says the reporter’s young son has nightmares about neo-Nazis kidnapping his family and murdering his father, and the experience has prompted the Mexican American boy to ask, “Why do Nazis hate brown people like me?”

“It is simply heartbreaking that a young child is asking such questions and has been forced to flee his home with his parents because of fear of being violently attacked,” they wrote.

Denton admitted that he used the monikers “Rape” and “Tormentor” in an online forum that they used to coordinate the swatting calls.

“The conspirators also targeted individuals streaming live videos because the conspirators hoped to observe law enforcement responding to their calls,” prosecutors wrote.

Another member of the swatting conspiracy, former ODU student John William Kirby Kelley, was sentenced in March to 33 months in prison for his role in making the swatting calls.

When Denton was arrested in February 2020, prosecutors in Seattle also announced charges against Denton’s roommate, Kaleb Cole, and others in a separate plot to harass journalists and Jewish activists in three states. Cole has pleaded not guilty and is due to face trial in September.

Prosecutors say they agree with the probation office’s calculation that federal sentencing guidelines for Denton’s case call for a prison term ranging from 51 to 60 months. The judge isn’t bound by those recommendations.

“When Americans target other Americans based on race, religious beliefs, or other individual characteristics, we are all harmed,” prosecutors wrote. “Such actions, if left unpunished, signal an acceptance that such malevolent conduct is the norm and not the exception.”

Shut up about Iran, says Israeli cabinet minister frustrated with leaks

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A weekly cabinet meeting (Flash90/Marc Israel Sellem)

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

A senior cabinet minister involved in Israel’s security activities slammed leaks to the press that claimed Israel was behind recent attacks on Iranian targets, saying they damaged Israel’s security.

“The leaks about the actions attributed to Israel in Iran are wrong and harm Israeli interests,” the unnamed minister told the Israel Hayom newspaper.

The minister, a member of the Security Cabinet, said he did not know whether the leaks were Israeli or foreign in origin, but stressed that “in these situations the right policy is ambiguity. It was like that in the past and it should be today. The leaks are harmful.”

On Sunday the New York Times quoted unnamed Israeli and American intelligence officials who said an explosion over the weekend at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility had “completely destroyed the independent — and heavily protected — internal power system that supplies the underground centrifuges that enrich uranium…. the explosion had dealt a severe blow to Iran’s ability to enrich uranium and that it could take at least nine months to restore Natanz’s production.”

The officials told the Times that the Natanz incident was “a classified Israeli operation.”  The same nuclear facility suffered an explosion last year in one of a series of mishaps at Iranian military sites that were blamed on Israel.

Earlier Monday, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif blamed Israel for the Natanz explosion.

“The Zionists want to take revenge because of our progress on the way to lifting sanctions… they have publicly said that they will not allow this. But we will take our revenge from the Zionists,” Zarif said on Iranian television.

A spokesman for the Iranian Atomic Energy Agency, Bahruz al-Malibandi, said Sunday that “a malfunction had affected the power supply to the Natanz nuclear facility” and that there were no casualties or radiation leak as a result of the incident, Israel Hayom reported.

The “malfunction” occurred just one day after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani boasted that Tehran had improved its nuclear capabilities, and that it intended to increase heavy water production – a further violation of the Iranian nuclear deal.

The Natanz incident occurred as Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin arrived in Israel Sunday and held talks with Defense Minister Benny Gantz.

“During our conversation I emphasized to Secretary Austin that Israel views the United States as a full partner on all operational threats, not the least [of which] is Iran,” Gantz said. “The Tehran of today poses a strategic threat to international security, to the entire Middle East and to the State of Israel.”

“We will work closely with our American allies to ensure that any new [nuclear] agreement with Iran will secure the vital interests of the world, of the United States, prevent a dangerous arms race in our region and protect the State of Israel,” Gantz said.

Iranian foreign minister vows, ‘We will take our revenge on the Zionists’

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Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. (AP/Ebrahim Noroozi)
By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

One day after Iranian government officials reported that the electrical grid at the Natanz nuclear facility had been downed by a mysterious “accident,” Tehran has changed its tune and is now stating the incident was a result of “nuclear terrorism.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif had harsh words for Israel, giving a statement to state-controlled media outlet Press TV which said that the Jewish State was responsible for the outage and that Iran would be seeking to avenge the alleged act of sabotage.

“The Zionists want to take revenge because of our progress in the way to lift sanctions … they have publicly said that they will not allow this. But we will take our revenge on the Zionists,” Zarif said.

Calling the act “nuclear terrorism,” head of the nuclear program Ali Akbar Salehi also insinuated that Israel was behind the outage.

He told Press TV that “opponents of the country’s industrial and political progress, who aim to prevent the development of a thriving nuclear industry,” were responsible for the attack.

The statements come on the heels of increasing covert clashes between Iran and Israel. Last week, Israeli commandos were reportedly responsible for an explosion that caused serious damage to an Iranian ship in the Red Sea.

The alleged explosion came weeks after an Israeli ship in the Gulf of Oman was said to be damaged by an Iranian missile.

Israel has openly expressed its concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear program and is widely believed to have been behind several operations aimed at stemming the program’s progress.

In November 2020, Mossad operatives were reportedly behind the assassination of top Iranian nuclear physicist Mohsen Fakrizadeh, who was allegedly killed via a satellite-controlled machine gun.

In July 2020, a series of unexplained explosions at the Natanz nuclear facility and other nuclear sites in Iran destroyed critical equipment for uranium enrichment.

Gal Gadot threatened by film director for refusing to cooperate, source says

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Gal Gadot as Wonder Woman (Courtesy Warner Bros.)

By David Isaac, World Israel News

Justice League director Joss Whedon reportedly threatened to harm Wonder Woman star Gal Gadot’s career, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The industry paper reported on April 6 that director Whedon pressured Gadot to say lines she didn’t like.

According to a witness cited by The Hollywood Reporter, “Joss was bragging that he’s had it out with Gal. He told her he’s the writer and she’s going to shut up and say the lines and he can make her look incredibly stupid in this movie.”

Gadot disapproved of how the character had been written in Justice League; there were “issues about her character being more aggressive than her character in Wonder Woman. She wanted to make the character flow from one movie to the next,” a source told the Reporter.

Gadot also refused to do a sexual scene with another actor. Whedon provided a body double.

The problems between the two weren’t resolved until Gadot and Wonder Woman director Patty Jenkins reportedly met with Warner Bros., the studio behind the film.

The incident with Gadot was only a small part of an article focusing on another actor’s allegations about Whedon. Ray Fisher, who played the character Cyborg, accused Whedon of “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” behavior.

Whedon has already been under fire artistically, at least indirectly. The original director for the film, Zach Snyder, who left during its production after his daughter’s suicide has since made a new cut of the film which has been well received by viewers and critics. Whedon’s was poorly received and considered a failure by audiences and the studio.

Police Chief: Minnesota Officer Meant to Draw Taser, Not Handgun- Watch Bodycam Video

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(AP Photo/Christian Monterrosa)

(AP)The police officer who fatally shot a Black man during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb apparently intended to fire a Taser, not a handgun, the city’s police chief said Monday.

Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Gannon described the shooting as “an accidental discharge.” The state Bureau of Criminal Apprehension was investigating.

“Taser! Taser! Taser!” the officer is heard shouting on her bodycam footage released at a news conference. After firing a single shot from her handgun, the car speeds away and the officer is heard saying, “Holy [expletive]! I shot him.”

Daunte Wright, 20, died Sunday in a metropolitan area that was already on edge because of the trial of the first of four police officers charged in George Floyd’s death.

Gannon said at a news conference that the officer made a mistake, and he released the body camera footage less than 24 hours after the shooting. The footage showed three officers around a stopped car. When another officer attempts to handcuff Wright, a struggle ensues.

Gannon would not name the officer but described her as “very senior.” He would not say whether she would be fired following the investigation.

“I think we can watch the video and ascertain whether she will be returning,” the chief said.

Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott called the shooting “deeply tragic.”

“We’re going to do everything we can to ensure that justice is done and our communities are made whole,” he said.

Speaking before the unrest, Wright’s mother, Katie Wright, urged protesters to stay peaceful and focused on the loss of her son.

“All the violence, if it keeps going, it’s only going to be about the violence. We need it to be about why my son got shot for no reason,” she said to a crowd near the shooting scene in Brooklyn Center, a city of about 30,000 people on the northwest border of Minneapolis. “We need to make sure it’s about him and not about smashing police cars, because that’s not going to bring my son back.”

Protesters who gathered near the scene waved flags and signs reading “Black Lives Matter.” Others walked peacefully with their hands held up. On one street, someone wrote in multi-colored chalk: “Justice for Daunte Wright.”

Katie Wright said her son called her as he was getting pulled over.

“All he did was have air fresheners in the car, and they told him to get out of the car,” Wright said. During the call, she said she heard scuffling and then someone saying “Daunte, don’t run” before the call ended. When she called back, her son’s girlfriend answered and said he had been shot.

Authorities said the car was pulled over for having an expired registration and after determining the driver had an outstanding warrant, police said they tried to arrest him. Then the driver re-entered the vehicle, and an officer fired, striking him, police said. The vehicle traveled several blocks before striking another vehicle.

A female passenger sustained non-life-threatening injuries during the crash, authorities said. Katie Wright said that passenger was her son’s girlfriend.

Court records show Wright was being sought after failing to appear in court on charges that he fled from officers and possessed a gun without a permit during an encounter with Minneapolis police in June. In that case, a statement of probable cause said police got a call about a man waving a gun who was later identified as Wright.

Florida Reports Single-Digit CCP Virus Deaths for First Time Since September

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(AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

BY LORENZ DUCHAMPS(EPOCH TIMES) 

Deaths related to COVID-19 dropped to the single digits in the state of Florida for the first time in months, health officials confirmed Sunday.

The Florida Department of Health (FDOH) said seven Floridians, as well as two non-residential citizens, died as a result of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the Palm Beach Post reported.

COVID-19 is caused by the CCP virus, commonly referred to as the novel coronavirus, which originated in China in late 2019.

The last time the Sunshine State saw COVID-19 deaths drop to the single digits was on Sept. 28, when just five people died after contracting the virus.

Though deaths from the virus remained low, positive cases in the state increased by 5,520—at a positivity rate of 7.65 percent, according to data by the FDOH.

Florida has now gone more than two weeks with fewer than 100 daily deaths from the CCP virus, with numbers ranging between 22 and 98, the Post reported.

According to the latest data provided by the FDOH, the state has verified more than 2.1 million positive COVID-19 cases since the start of the pandemic and 34,021 deaths. Another 664 non-residents have died in the state as a result of the CCP virus.

California—the most populous state in the United States—was the only state nationwide reporting a triple-digit increase in COVID-19 deaths on Sunday.

The state reported an increase of 105 deaths and 4,954 people who tested positive for the virus, according to the California Department of Public Health.

Florida has no statewide restrictions and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis has prohibited municipalities from fining people who refuse to wear masks.

By contrast, California Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered the nation’s first statewide shutdown because of the CCP virus; implementing masks mandates, banning indoor dining, and significantly limiting many other activities.

Despite their differing approaches, the two states have experienced almost identical outcomes in CCP virus case rates.

According to a March report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), California and Florida both have a COVID-19 case rate of around 8,900 per 100,000 residents since the start of the pandemic.

Though research has suggested that mask mandates and limits on group activities such as indoor dining can help slow the spread of the CCP virus, states with greater government-imposed restrictions have not always fared better than those without them.

Although Florida has apparently made headway in combating the pandemic, the state is reportedly leading nationwide in cases of a variant of the CCP virus first found in the United Kingdom, with more than 3,500 cases identified so far.

The CDC said in an updated report on April 9 that B.1.1.7, also known as the UK variant, is now the most common in the United States with a total of 20,915 cases.

Why Young Adults Are the Most Frightened of COVID, Even Though They Are the Least at Risk

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.(LightField Studios/Shutterstock)

BY JONATHAN MILTIMORE(EPOCH TIMES) 

Nearly 3 million Americans are being vaccinated against COVID-19 each day, but the “return to normal” may not be as close as many hope.

A new survey shows many Americans have concerns about interacting with others once the pandemic is over.

“A YouGov poll of more than 4,000 people finds that two in five (39%) Americans say they are very or fairly nervous about the idea of interacting with people socially again,” wrote YouGov data journalist Jamie Ballard.

While the high percentage of Americans expressing angst about socializing after the pandemic comes as a surprise, the breakdown along age groups is even more surprising.

“Among 18-to 24-year-olds, 50 percent say they are nervous about it. A similar number of 25-to 34-year-olds (47 percent) feel the same way,” Ballard wrote.

In other words, nearly half of Americans between 18 and 34 are concerned about returning to a normal social life after the pandemic. In contrast, just 31 percent of those over 55 responded that they are nervous about interacting with people again.

The contrast is noteworthy because it’s widely understood that young people are far less likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19. But how less likely?

Our World in Data has a chart breaking down the case fatality rates in South Korea, China, Italy, and Spain. The data show the case fatality rate is about 0.2 percent for people in their 20s and 30s, a tiny fraction compared to people over 60.

Data from the United States tells a similar story.

“The death rate in New York City for adults aged 75 years and older was around 2,344 per 100,000 people as of March 28, 2021,” researcher John Elflein notes at Statista.

That is about 500 times higher than the death rate (5 per 100,000) for people in the 18-to-24 age range.

Nationwide, research from the Heritage Foundation shows that adults aged 25 to 34 account for less than 3,000 of the official 565,000 COVID-related deaths in the United States. Many of these deaths, it should be noted, are linked to comorbidities.

This data should come as no surprise. Nearly a year ago, Stanford University’s Dr. John Ioannidis noted the COVID-19 infection fatality rate is “almost zero” for people under 45.

All the official data point in the same direction: Young people have the least to fear from COVID-19. Yet the YouGov poll also shows they are the most afraid.

This is odd. As influencers noted on Twitter, the level of comfort people feel in returning to normal life is inversely correlated to their level of actual risk.

This invites an important question: Why are young people more afraid? One obvious answer is young adults might simply be unaware their risk of serious illness is low.

As I recently noted, Americans in general are wildly misinformed about the risk of hospitalization from COVID-19, with roughly a third of Americans believing the chances of being hospitalized with the virus are 50 percent. In actuality, it’s closer to 1 percent.

The reasons for this aren’t hard to find. Studies have shown that U.S. media essentially created a climate of fear by publishing a flood of negative news in 2020. Indeed, an Ivy League-led study concluded that 91 percent of U.S. articles in major media were negative in tone, nearly double when compared to non-U.S. media. The negative news, the researchers noted, continued even when the pandemic was ebbing and when positive medical breakthroughs were being achieved.

“Stories of increasing COVID-19 cases outnumber stories of decreasing cases by a factor of 5.5 even during periods when new cases are declining,” researchers noted.

Media may only be one part of the equation, however. Digital technology may be another.

While writing this article, I had to find statistics on the risks of COVID-19 for young adults. To find the information, I did what I normally do: I went to Google and typed in keywords for what I was looking to find—young people less likely to die from Covid.”

I was expecting to find on top a bunch of articles and research showing that young people have relatively little to fear from the coronavirus. That’s not what happened. Here are the top results I got:

Coronavirus and COVID-19: Younger Adults Are at Risk, Too | Johns Hopkins Medicine

What Young, Healthy People Have to Fear From COVID-19 | The Atlantic

Data reveal deadliness of COVID-19, even in young adults | University of Minnesota CIDRAP

Young people are at risk of severe Covid-19 illness | NBC

Dying Young: The Health Care Workers in Their 20s Killed by COVID-19 | KHN

This is a big deal. We live in a digital world, and Google is the biggest search engine on the planet, processing more than 3.5 billion searches every day.

Millions of people probably use Google every day to find information about this coronavirus. But instead of finding articles that point out COVID-19 is hundreds of times more deadly for people over 60 than people under 40, anyone who Googled about young people and risks would find a bunch of super-scary headlines.

Again, this isn’t to say young people face no risk from COVID-19. But the medical reality is that children and young adults are more likely to die from the seasonal flu, pneumonia, or a car crash than COVID-19.

Clearly, most Americans aren’t aware of this.

The YouGov poll results show there is a disconnect between perception and reality when it comes to COVID-19. Unfortunately, this disconnect has real-world consequences.

“Those who overestimate risks to young people or hold an exaggerated sense of risk upon infection are more likely to favor closing schools, restaurants, and other businesses,” the authors of a recent Franklin Templeton/Gallup study concluded.

This is important because these restrictions are quite serious. Closing parts of the economy is no small matter. These actions are associated with numerous unintended consequences—job losses, mental health deterioration, increased global poverty, surging loneliness, health procedures deferred, and more. Meanwhile, the documented benefits of these restrictions remain elusive.

In 2020, we witnessed unprecedented infringements on fundamental civil liberties. And it all stemmed from fear.

Worse, despite the presence of numerous successful vaccines and crashing case numbers, the alarm bells keep sounding.

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky is warning of “impending doom,” while others warn we must begin planning for a “permanent pandemic.” The New York Times is using Florida, which lifted all pandemic restrictions last summer, as a cautionary tale by using rather tortured analysis.

Considering all this, it’s no surprise that many young people are terrified of the virus. But we’d do well to remember that fear is the pathway to subservience.

“If you want to control someone, all you have to do is to make them feel afraid,” the author Paulo Coelho wrote in “The Devil and Miss Prym.”

It’s time to stop being afraid. And the first step comes through understanding.

Harvey Weinstein Secretly Indicted on 11 Counts of Rape & Sexual Battery by an LA Jury; Extradition Expected

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Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who is currently serving a 23-year sentence in New York for rape and sexual assault, was secretly indicted on 11 counts of rape and sexual battery in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. Photo Credit: AP

Edited by: TJVNews.com

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, who is currently serving a 23-year sentence in New York for rape and sexual assault, was secretly indicted on 11 counts of rape and sexual battery in Los Angeles a few weeks ago, according to a Fox News report.

The report indicated that the move for indictment by LA District Attorney George Gascon will make the extradition of the Miramax CEO easier from New York so that he can be tried.

Weinstein is currently serving time at a maximum security prison near Buffalo, New York known as the Wende Correctional Facility. On Monday afternoon at his extradition hearing in Erie County, New York, the indictment is expected to be publicly revealed. Currently, it is still under seal, according to the Fox News report as is his arrest warrant.

In January of 2020, former DA Jackie Lacey filed a criminal complaint against Weinstein and according to the Fox News report, the current indictment is pretty much identical to the complaint. The 11-count indictment involves five incidents that allegedly took place between 2004 and 2013, according to the Fox News report. The report also stated that if convicted, Weinstein could face up to 140 years in prison.

Until this juncture, the case in Los Angeles against Weinstein had not proceeded due to the Covid-19 pandemic, however, the Fox News report indicated that the DA’s office wants to forge ahead with the indictment and future trial.

The New York Post reported that movie mogul was found guilty by a Manhattan jury in February 2020 of the 2013 rape of hairstylist Jessica Mann as well as forcibly performing oral sex in 2006 on Miriam “Mimi” Hayeli, a former “Project Runway” TV staffer.  Earlier this month, Weinstein appealed the conviction, saying that he was “deprived of a fair trial.”

Lawyers for the movie producer are expected to ask for another delay of the extradition on Monday, citing his “poor” health conditions, according to the report.

Fox News reported that the chances of a postponement are slim as their next shot would be with Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is currently battling sexual harassment allegations.

Legal experts have speculated that by getting an indictment, LA prosecutors can streamline the proceedings and will be able to go straight to trial, rather than doing it under a criminal complaint that would then require a preliminary hearing, according to the Fox News report.

“This process will eliminate the need for a preliminary hearing which is kind of a minitrial like we saw in the OJ case: there was the trial before the trial,” criminal defense attorney Troy Slaten explained, according to the Fox News report. He added that in LA County, the use of grand jury is limited to very few cases. With this move and under the law that allows the borrowed custody,  California can get custody of New York’s inmate and must the trial must commence within 120 days, as was reported by Fox News.

Famed attorney Gloria Allred is representing two of the five accusers in the Los Angeles case, according to the Fox News report.  Allred told Fox News that, “It appears to me that Mr. Weinstein does not wish to be removed to Los Angeles to face charges, but justice delayed is justice denied.”

As a long-time women’s rights advocate and attorney, Allred represents Mimi Haleyi, one of the women whose sex assault accusations Weinstein was found guilty of in New York, according to the Fox News report. In the LA case, Allred is defending one unnamed woman and Lauren Young, who has come forward publicly as she was a witness in the New York criminal trial over a year ago, as was reported by Fox News, Young, a model and actress, testified then that Weinstein sexually assaulted her in a Beverly Hills hotel in February 2013 after being trapped inside a bathroom with him. He allegedly groped her while masturbating before she was able to flee, according to the Fox News report.

The report also indicated that LA prosecutors allege that Weinstein raped an Italian model at another Beverly Hills hotel on Feb. 18, 2013, just a day before the attack against Young. The alleged assaults of the other three women all took place at Beverly Hills hotels.

 

 

Anti-cop’ police reform bill is public safety risk, says Maryland governor

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(AP/Matt York)

By Lauren Marcus, World Israel News

A Maryland bill passed on Saturday, which repeals the so-called police officers’ bill of rights, will endanger police morale and public safety, Republican lawmakers warned.

The new Maryland Police Accountability Act removes protections for police in cases of alleged misconduct. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed the bill, but the state’s Democrat-controlled General Assembly was able to overturn the veto.

Hogan wrote in the explanation for his veto that the bill “would further erode police morale, community relationships, and public confidence.

“[The bill] will result in great damage to police recruitment and retention, posing significant risks to public safety throughout our state,” he wrote.

Republican state Sen. Robert Cassilly echoed Hogan’s concerns.

 

According to the Baltimore Sun, he referred to the bill as “anti-cop” and said it places the opinions of bureaucrats over the real-word experiences of police officers.

It “allows for hindsight review of folks sitting in the easy chairs to judge people who made split-second decisions in volatile situations,” he said.

The MPAA bill rolls back nearly all of the protections for officers included in the police bill of rights, such as protection from lawsuits and caps on civil damages individual officers would need to pay in a civil judgement.

The new bill increases civil liability for police officers found guilty of misconduct from $400,000 to $800,000 and sets a new standard for what is considered “necessary force.”

Under the new MPAA policy, officers found guilty of using excessive force can now be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. It also “gives civilians a role” in the investigation process of officers accused of misconduct.

Additionally, it restricts the use of no-knock raids to daytime hours only and mandates that by 2025, all officers use body cameras whenever they are on duty.

Democratic Del. Vanessa Atterbeary slammed Hogan for vetoing the bill.

“[He] does not stand with Black & Brown people in the state of MD! He has missed the NATL MOVEMENT calling for #PoliceReform & #PoliceAccountability. SHAME ON HIM,” she tweeted.

In 1974, Maryland became the first state to introduce a police officers’ bill of rights, setting the stage for 20 other states to implement similar laws.

Maryland is now the first state to revoke these protections for law enforcement officers.

Minnesota on Edge: Brooklyn Center Riots After Traffic Stop Results in Daunte Wright’s Death

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AP

(AP) — Crowds of mourners and protesters gathered in a Minneapolis suburb where the family of a 20-year-old man said he died after being shot by police before getting back into his car and driving away, then crashing several blocks away. The family of Daunte Wright said he was later pronounced dead.

The death sparked protests in Brooklyn Center into the early hours of Monday morning, and stores were broken into, as Minneapolis was already on edge and midway through the trial of the first of four police officers in George Floyd’s death. Brooklyn Center is a city of about 30,000 people located on the northwest border of Minneapolis.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz tweeted he was praying for Wright’s family “as our state mourns another life of a Black man taken by law enforcement.”

Police didn’t immediately identify Wright or disclose his race, but some protesters who gathered near the scene waved flags and signs reading “Black Lives Matter.” Others walked peacefully with their hands held up. On one street, written in multi-colored chalk: “Justice for Daunte Wright.”

Demonstrators gathered shortly after the shooting and crash, with some jumping on top of police cars and confronting officers. Marchers also descended upon the Brooklyn Center police department building, where rocks and other objects were thrown at officers, Minnesota Department of Public Safety commissioner John Harrington said at a news conference. The protesters had largely dispersed by 1:15 a.m. Monday, he said.

Harrington added that about 20 businesses had been broken into at the city’s Shingle Creek shopping center. He said law enforcement agencies were coordinating to tame the unrest, and the National Guard was activated.

 

Brooklyn Center police said in a statement that officers had stopped a motorist shortly before 2 p.m. Sunday. After determining the driver had an outstanding warrant, police tried to arrest the driver. The driver reentered the vehicle and an officer fired at the vehicle, striking the driver, police said. The vehicle traveled several blocks before striking another vehicle.

Police said the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office will release the person’s name following a preliminary autopsy and family notification. A female passenger sustained non-life-threatening injuries during the crash.

Katie Wright, Daunte’s mother, huddled with loved ones near the scene and pleaded for her son’s body to be removed from the street, the Star Tribune reported. She said her son had called her when he was getting pulled over, and she heard scuffling before the call ended. When she called back, she said his girlfriend told her that her son had been shot.

Carolyn Hanson lives near the crash scene and told the newspaper that she saw officers pull the man out of the car and perform CPR. Hanson said a passenger who got out was covered in blood.

Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott announced a curfew in the city until 6 a.m. Monday. In a tweet he said, “We want to make sure everyone is safe. Please be safe and please go home.”

Police said Brooklyn Center officers wear body-worn cameras and they also believe dash cameras were activated during the incident. The department said it has asked the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension to investigate.

The trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis officer charged in Floyd’s death, was slated to continue Monday. Floyd, a Black man, died May 25 after Chauvin, who is white, pressed his knee against Floyd’s neck. Prosecutors say Floyd was pinned for 9 minutes, 29 seconds.

Harrington said more National Guard members would be deployed around the city and in Brooklyn Center.

First Female Astronaut Joins UAE Space Program

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Noura Al-Matroushi. Source: MBR Space Centre via Twitter

(Israel Hayom) — The United Arab Emirates is set to train its first female astronaut, UAE Prime Minister and Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum announced on Saturday.

Noura Al-Matroushi is to join fellow recruit Mohammed Al-Mulla at the UAE’s Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Centre program, Al Maktoum said on Twitter, noting that the two would train with NASA.

Al-Matroushi tweeted: “The nation gave me unforgettable moments today. I aim to work hard to script historical moments and achievements that will be etched forever in the memory of our people. I thank our wise leadership and the team of the UAE Astronaut Program. Preparations and work begin now.”

According to a video posted by the space center, Al-Matroushi earned her bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering at the United Arab Emirates University and currently serves as an engineer at the country’s National Petroleum Construction Company.

Meanwhile, German state-owned international news broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported that the UAE’s first mission to Mars was set to become the fifth to reach the planet and enter its orbit on Tuesday. According to the report, the mission would also be the first by an Arab state.

Al Maktoum said that even if the mission failed to enter the red planet’s orbit, “We’ve already made history. This is the farthest point in the universe to be reached by Arabs throughout their history. … Our goal is to give hope to all Arabs that we are capable of competing with the rest of the world.”

UAE Space Agency head and Advanced Sciences Minister Sarah Al-Amiri told DW, “Our science team is 80 percent women. They are there based on merit and based on what they contribute towards the design and development of the mission.

“I myself have not faced any adversity throughout my career, be it working at the space center from almost 12 years ago, all the way to becoming a minister within the Cabinet.

Chinese ‘militia vessels’ menace Philippines coast, says Manila

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Chinese vessels are moored at Whitsun Reef, South China Sea on March 27, 2021. (National Task Force-West Philippine Sea via AP)

By Associated Press

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Saturday discussed with his Philippine counterpart China’s recent positioning of “militia vessels” near the Philippines in the South China Sea.

Austin spoke by phone with Philippine Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana while Austin was flying from Washington to Israel to begin an international trip.

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Austin and Lorenzana discussed the situation in the South China Sea and the recent massing of Chinese vessels at Whitsun Reef, which has drawn criticism from Manila.

China has said its vessels are there for fishing.

In their phone call, Austin proposed to Lorenzana several measures to deepen defense cooperation, including by “enhancing situational awareness of threats in the South China Sea,” Kirby said. He did not elaborate.

Kirby said earlier this week that the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt and its strike group, as well as the amphibious ship USS Makin Island, are operating in the South China Sea.

The U.S. has no military forces based permanently in the Philippines but sometimes rotates forces to the country under the U.S.-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement.

The recent gathering of Chinese vessels near the Philippines is among moves the United States has criticized as efforts by Beijing to intimidate smaller nations in the region.

Press Corps was doing ‘pretty bad job,’ says online gamer who infiltrated White House briefings

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White House press secretary Jen Psaki (AP/Andrew Harnik)
By Josh Plank, World Israel News

An online gamer known as Kacey Montagu persuaded members of the White House press corps to relay her surprisingly good questions to Press Secretary Jen Psaki at least four times in recent weeks, Politico reported Friday.

Montagu claimed to be a reporter for White House News, a fictional news outlet and asked reporters to pass along her questions because she couldn’t be at press briefings due to Covid restrictions.

“I love journalism, and I think the Press Corps is doing a pretty bad job at the moment, so I decided I would ensure some transparency and ask some questions me and some friends wanted the answer to,” Montagu told Politico in an email.

Montagu’s online acquaintances said that they believe her White House moonlighting began as something to boast about in the nUSA group of the online gaming platform ROBLOX, where users play the roles of government officials and jokingly call themselves “Legos.”

Montagu had even set up two political news accounts on Twitter, @WHschedule and @WHpoolreport, which were followed by several actual White House correspondents, Jill Biden’s press secretary, and a senior advisor for Vice President Kamala Harris.

 

She successfully asked questions through reporters at The Plain Dealer and CQ Roll Call, among others, asking about Covid-19 travel bans, upcoming ambassadorships, and Biden’s reaction to Microsoft being hacked.

“I often have the unique opportunity of asking Press Sec. Jen Psaki questions at the White House Press Briefing – if you have questions you want me to ask let me know,” Montagu tweeted on March 4.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly until Thursday when Montagu asked a question that was perhaps a bit too intriguing, prompting Mediaite to investigate its source.

A reporter from Washington Blade told Psaki that he had a question from “one of my colleagues who can’t be here because of Covid restrictions.”

“How involved is former President Obama and First Lady Obama in the Biden-Harris administration?” the reporter asked.

Psaki said that Biden and Obama “remain close friends, and they talk regularly about a range of issues, from policy issues, to bouncing ideas off of each other, to their families. So they are in close touch, but we just don’t read out those specific calls; we keep them private.”

CBS News correspondent followed up later in the press conference, asking what Psaki meant by “regularly.”

“I’m not going to define it more, other than to say that they engage not just about fre- — important moments in our country, but also about their own families. They have a connection on a personal level, so they discuss a range of issues when they connect,” Psaki said.

Mediate reported on Thursday that the exchange was “started by fictional reporter made of Lego.”

Montagu then issued a tongue-in-cheek statement on Twitter calling the report “very rude.”

No accident: Israel behind Iran nuclear incident, intel sources say

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu clinks glasses with Mossad Director Yossi Cohen (GPO)
By David Isaac, World Israel News

Israel was behind the incident at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran on Sunday, unnamed intelligence sources in the country say.

The cyberattack on Iran’s Natanz facility caused as-yet-unknown damage. It came a day after Iran inaugurated new IR-9 uranium enrichment centrifuges at the site. Those centrifuges separate uranium isotopes 50 times faster than Iran’s current centrifuges.

Israeli intelligence sources also said Sunday that the damage to Natanz is significant and affected more than the IR-9s.

The head of Iran’s nuclear agency dubbed it a “terrorist act” and said Iran reserves the right to respond against those responsible. He did not name Israel, however.

Neither has Israel officially taken responsibility. However, pundits say there have been hints by Israeli officials.

 

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a pre-Independence Day event on Sunday with defense officials, raised his glass and said, “The fight against Iran and its metastases is a huge task, the situation that exists today does not mean that it will exist tomorrow.”

Similarly, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kochavi may have been referring obliquely to the Natanz incident when he said on Sunday at another event: “The Israel Defense Forces’ actions throughout the Middle East are not hidden from our enemies’ eyes. They are watching us, seeing our capabilities and carefully considering their next steps.”

Israel has been linked to previous cyberattacks on Iran’s nuclear weapons program, most famously the 2011 Stuxnet computer worm, which also targeted the Natanz facility. The worm is widely believed to have been developed jointly by Israel and the U.S.

Israel’s Security Cabinet will meet next Sunday for the first time in months to discuss the Iranian issue.

Defense Minister Benny Ganz referred to Iran on Sunday while meeting with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, who was in the country on his first official visit.

Gantz said, “The regime in Tehran today poses a strategic threat to world security, the Middle East and the State of Israel. We will continue to work with our American partners to ensure that any agreement with Iran safeguards the vital interests of the world and the United States, and prevents nuclear arms in the region.”

Ted Cruz blasts John Boehner for ‘drunken, bloviated scorn’ after former House Speaker called him a ‘political terrorist’

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Twitter

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) exchanged a war of words with former House Speaker John Boehner. Cruz attacked the fellow Republican after a teaser video clip from an upcoming “CBS Sunday Morning” interview featured Boehner calling Cruz a “jerk” and a “political terrorist.”

While out promoting his new book “On the House: A Washington Memoir” that is set for release on Tuesday, Boehner lambasted Trump allies Cruz and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) by calling them “political terrorists.” Boehner hammered Jordan, criticizing the fellow Ohioan, “I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart and never building anything, never putting anything together.”

In the interview with CBS News journalist John Dickerson, Boehner called Cruz the “ultimate false prophet,” according to the Daily Caller.

“I don’t beat anybody up, it’s not really my style, except for that jerk,” Boehner said of Cruz. “Perfect symbol, you know, of getting elected, making a lot of noise, draw a lot of attention to yourself, raise a lot of money, which means you’re gonna go make more noise, raise more money.”

Cruz fired back at Boehner on Twitter.

“The Swamp is unhappy,” Cruz tweeted. “I wear with pride his drunken, bloviated scorn.”

“Please don’t cry,” Cruz added, referring to several occasions when Boehner got emotional in public.

While recording the audiobook of his upcoming memoir, Boehner reportedly went off script and cursed at Cruz. Boehner allegedly told Cruz to “go f*** yourself.”

Cruz responded to the report during his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February.

“You know yesterday, John Boehner made some news,” Cruz said at CPAC. “He suggested that I do something that was anatomically impossible. To which my response was, who’s John Boehner?”

Boehner tweeted, “Poured myself a glass of something nice to read my audiobook. You can blame the wine for the expletives.”

 

Paul Sacca- The Blaze

BLM Goes Hollywood

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Daniel Greenfield

A few years ago, CAA announced that it had signed on to represent Patrisse Cullors. The powerful Hollywood talent agency is considered the biggest firm of its kind and doesn’t usually represent activists. But the Black Lives Matter co-founder isn’t a typical activist either.

By the time that Cullors was being represented by the talent agency, the self-proclaimed “trained Marxist” was going from award dinners to studio events. Most speaking fees aren’t made public, but last year, Cullors, along with the other two co-founders of the racist BLM hate group, charged the University of Florida $10,000 each to address students online.

When she isn’t charging thousands to video chat, Cullors curated ComplexCon, a BLM global art show, and worked on an ad campaign for Adidas with Pharell Williams, claims to be a “dancer, choreographer, designer, stylist, producer, and director.”

Cullors got to consult for Good Trouble, a lefty Disney TV series, about two girls, one white and one Latino, who move to Los Angeles and fight racial injustice. Another way of saying that is she gave a show run by a white lady who used to act on The Bold and the Beautiful street cred.

“You only have to spend about five minutes with Patrisse to be blown away by her as an activist, artist, intellectual and force of life energy, love, joy and humanity,” said Good Trouble showrunner Joanna Johnson raved. “She has such a wealth of knowledge and life experience. I’m always looking for that in writers because truth is not only stranger but more nuanced and rich than fiction can ever be.”

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction. Just ask the Black Lives Matter founder who went from a year in which the hate group’s race rioters burned buildings and terrorized communities to buying a $1.4 million home in the mostly white Topanga Canyon through a corporate entity.

Like every proper trained Marxist should. As an amateur Marxist, Cullors had to settle for the San Fernando Valley, but as a fully trained Marxist she got “vaulted ceilings clad in knotty pine” and “whitewashed hearth fireplaces”.

Whiteness and whitewashing isn’t all bad. Especially when white studios are paying for it.

The Topanga Canyon home has “soaring ceilings”, “skylights”, and is ideal for “quietly contemplating cross-canyon vistas framed by mature trees” or the next town your hate group is going to burn. There’s even an art studio and politically incorrect “maids quarters”.

The house is down the road from one of the homes involved in the Manson murders which seems only appropriate since Manson wanted to start a race war.

And Black Lives Matter is carrying on Manson’s work.

This was reportedly Cullors’ fourth home purchase after buying a ranch on three acres in Atlanta with a private airplane hangar and shopping around for a luxury home in the Bahamas.

Last year, Cullors signed a deal with Warner Brothers to “develop scripted dramas and comedies, docuseries and animated programming for children, young adults and families”.

Cullors also has her own anti-police organization, Dignity and Power Now, run by Lamia Al-Sadek, the former county director of Islamic Relief Worldwide, and two white people, near USC. And she also has her own consulting firm with her lover, Janaya, And Patrisse Consulting.

It’s unclear if either of these were the entities that Cullors used to buy her $1.4 million home, or if she has other organizations in her portfolio that have yet to be exposed and revealed.

While Cullors went with CAA, Alicia Garza, the second BLM co-founder, went with ICM, and her book, Purpose Of Power, came out last year. Garza is also due to appear in the HBO adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ racist rant, Between The World and Me.

ICM’s previous coup was boasting about the role of “client Josh Hartnett” in the HBO “documentary” Exterminate All the Brutes which “shifts perspectives by highlighting America’s founding as inherently genocidal”. It’s no wonder that the entire roster of BLM’s founders have found a comfortable home in an entertainment industry that hates America as much as they do.

Opal Tometi, the third BLM co-founder, got on board with WME, the rival CAA Hollywood talent agency, which Hollywood Reporter noted had signed stars like,“Elton John, Eva Longoria, Shakira, Tessa Thompson, Sarah Cooper, and Opal Tometi.”

You can read about all this in Opal’s official press releases, in between telling a newspaper, “I do this because we deserve to live.”

And deserve to live very well too.

WME used Opal Tometi to launch its Social Justice Now Film Festival through Film Life Foundation, a non-profit founded by Opal and Marvel star, Michael B. Jordan. Sponsored by Sony, Amazon, Heineken, J.P. Morgan, and other great outposts of social justice, the festival’s message is “translate art into change” and features movies like, “Who Will Survive America”.

It’s hard surviving America while being sponsored by a Japanese electronics firm, a Dutch beer conglomerate, and a banking firm whose predecessors had used slaves as collateral.

Opal also has her own production company, Blue Opal Productions.

Unlike Cullors and Garza, both of whom came out of Los Angeles, Opal came from Arizona, but Hollywood is the common denominator of the founders of Black Lives Matter.

The founders of BLM have gone to work acting, writing, consulting, and promoting for Hollywood because their racist hate movement was always an entertainment industry production. BLM’s race riots destroyed communities and small businesses, but its brands and buzzwords were a corporate marketing campaign backed by industry talent. Like Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds radio broadcast, it was a production, even if the physical destruction of the riots was all too real.

Why shouldn’t Cullors get a house in the area where Quentin Tarantino filmed a scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and where movie stars house their pets at the Topanga Pet Resort?

It’s all made in Hollywood anyway.

Truth is stranger than fiction. But Hollywood also specializes in turning fiction into truth. Why not set the country on fire, elect some Democrats, and get some new content in the pipeline?

Hollywood had been stagnating. Every piece of IP or intellectual property had been locked down by giants like Disney, and the staggering cost of Silicon Valley streamers like Netflix and Amazon Prime sinking billions into developing original content to keep subscription viewers on their plantation had made it impossible for much of the old industry to compete on its own turf.

Now there are books to adapt into movies, TV series to launch, and countless entertainment industry products to sell to guilty liberal suburban moms who joyfully grapple with the depths of their own racism by binge watching black pain. And there are the BLM co-founders to help Hollywood get all the political cred that it needs to make a killing out of racism on a budget.

Forget Hearst’s “You furnish the pictures. I’ll furnish the war.” The war is easy to furnish. It’s the pictures that are expensive.

The damage from the BLM race riots surpassed $2 billion. That sounds like a lot of money, and individually it wiped out countless businesses, crushed neighborhoods and communities, and took more lives and dreams than will ever be accounted for, but that’s nothing compared to the $17 billion that Netflix blew on programming in just one year. And the best part is that $2 billion was entirely paid for by ordinary Americans, insurance companies, and non-industry types.

Peasants.

Think of the Kenosha riots as the Atlanta burning scene in Gone With the Wind. But no Hollywood studio had to sacrifice its own sets to produce all that footage. Race rioters were happy to burn down American cities as publicity for Hollywood social justice projects.

Some consulting and acting gigs for the marketable founders of the racist hate group is a small price to pay for Warner Brothers to use HBO Max to compete with Netflix. It’s been a long time since Warner Brothers meant the conservative Warner brothers, Jewish immigrants and Republicans who appeared before HUAC, and declared, “We are willing to establish such a fund to ship to Russia the people who don’t like our American system of government.”

Warner Brothers and HBO Max, like CNN, are cultural death rays of the AT&T death star. Or, as a CNN reporter described the riots, “fiery, but mostly peaceful” death rays.

If only there were a fund to ship AT&T, Netflix, and Disney to Russia.

After BLM fades, there will be new productions, spectacles, and extravaganzas to excite, humiliate, and distract the attention of Americans from the havoc being wreaked on their country as a handful of entangled companies fight for supreme dominance in the oligarchy.

And BLM’s co-founders have found a good exit strategy with production companies, organizations, and homes in an industry that knows the value of a good show.

Somewhere, Captain David Dorn’s widow is mourning her husband. And the other victims of BLM are immersed in their own private griefs for lost children, spouses, and parents.

But in Hollywood, the mansions only get bigger and the party never ends.