‘Sadly, the people of this city will soon experience what New York City was like in the 1980s….’
Photo by Giacomo Barbaro (CC)
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) More than 270 uniformed New York Police Department officers have filed for early retirement since the police-involved death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25.
Anti-police protests, riots, looting, arson and violent acts against law enforcement have ensued while Democrat city leaders have sided with radical protestors rather than confront lawless left-wing mobs.
Now, as many predicted, cops in the nation’s largest city are walking away in droves.
“We are worried about a surge in attrition reducing our headcount beyond what we can sustain without new recruits, and we’re afraid the City Council has not taken the surge into account,” an alarmed NYPD official told the New York Post.
When combined with ultra-leftist New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $1 billion “defund the police” budget cut, the NYPD is, by all accounts, facing a major crisis.
Police Benevolent Association president Patrick Lynch recently said that police officers are “at their breaking point, whether they have 20 years on the job or only two.”
Lynch also explained how protestors, the news media and elected Democrats have backed honest policemen into a corner.
“We are all asking the same question: ‘How can we keep doing our job in this environment?’ And that is exactly what the anti-cop crowd wants. If we have no cops because no one wants to be a cop, they will have achieved their ultimate goal.”
Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeants Benevolent Association, said the “exodus” has only just begun.
“People have had enough and no longer feel it’s worth risking their personal well-being for a thankless position,” he said.
“Department brass is paralyzed [and] too afraid to uphold their sworn oath in fear of losing their jobs,” Mullins added. “Sadly, the people of this city will soon experience what New York City was like in the 1980s.”
The departing officers aren’t just rank-and-file patrolmen. Bronx NYPD precinct commander Richard Brea recently quit because he no longer believes he has the ability to get guns and drugs off the street and protect his officers.
Brea was an outspoken critic of the city’s failed approach to looting and rioting. But the last straw was when Mayor de Blasio disbanded a 600-man Bronx anti-crime unit that made huge public safety gains in New York City’s most dangerous borough.
“I’m doing this, and others may be following in my footsteps,” said Brea, according to famed Guardian Angel leader Curtis Sliwa.
‘I don’t feel comfortable publicly discussing the death threats against me or the level of security I currently have protecting me from those threats…’
Minneapolis Police / IMAGE: KARE 11 via YouTube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) After voting to disband the city’s police department, the Minneapolis City Council, fearing death threats, spent $63,000 of taxpayer dollars to hire a private security detail.
The city council is currently spending $4,500 per day on security for council members Andrea Jenkins, Phillipe Cunningham and Alondra Cano, according to Fox 9.
All three are members of the state’s far-left Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, which nearly dominates local politics. The three members have reportedly faced threats due to their vocal support for defunding and disbanding the Minneapolis Police Department.
When asked why the council had gone to such lengths to hire a private security detail when they could have just asked law enforcement for help, Cunningham said he doesn’t “feel comfortable publicly discussing the death threats against me or the level of security I currently have protecting me from those threats.”
A spokesperson for the police department said police have not received a single report of threats against city council members.
Jenkins blamed the cost, without evidence, on the “large number of white nationalists in our city and other threatening communications I’ve been receiving.”
She claimed she hasn’t reported death threats to the police because she’s been preoccupied with the “global pandemic and global uprising” over the killing of George Floyd.
The council passed a measure earlier this month to defund the police department and replace it with a Department of Community Safety and Violence Prevention, “which will have responsibility for public safety services prioritizing a holistic, public health-oriented approach,” according to a draft of the council’s amendment.
One Minneapolis neighborhood, however, is proof that ridding the city of proactive policing is not a solution at all. Residents in Powderhorn Park vowed to do away with law enforcement earlier this month, and just a few weeks later, the neighborhood was overrun by homelessness, prostitution, and crime. Several residents admitted to the New York Times that they no longer feel safe in their own homes.
“I am afraid,” resident Shari Albers said. “I know my neighbors are around, but I’m not feeling grounded in my city at all. Anything could happen.”
‘I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding…’
Michael Shellenberger / IMAGE: TEDx Talks via YouTube
(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) After an opinion piece it published Sunday drew the wrath of militant eco-warriors, Forbes appeared to have doubled back on it only a day later, pulling from its online platform the shocking apology by reformed climate-alarmist Michael Shellenberger.
Shellenberger is a devout environmentalist and political progressive, and he’s blowing the whistle on the climate change movement starting with a simple message: Sorry.
“On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologize for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years,” he wrote in a Sunday Forbes op-ed.
As of Monday, however, only a faint trace of the original article was visible on the site.
A tersely-worded editor’s note opaquely explained to the unobservant: “This page is no longer active. We regret any inconvenience.”
However, a version of the original page was archived prior to its removal.
Now, the shocking admissions in the piece carry the weight of even more intrigue. A noted climate-change skeptic group, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow, asked the burning question: “Who pressured Forbes to kill the story and why did they cave?”
According to the original article, Shellenberger believes climate change is real but not nearly the problem his political and environmental colleagues have been threatening.
“Climate change is happening. It’s just not the end of the world. It’s not even our most serious environmental problem,” he said.
Climate skeptics—and those weary of political charlatans who use the issue to profit and amass power—may have long since arrived at the same conclusion. But for Shellenberger to undermine climate alarmism from within is a potential game-changer.
Few people on the environmental left can match his credentials.
Shellenberger has been a climate activist for two decades, and his roots in the modern environmental movement date back to the 1980s.
He was once named Time magazine’s “Hero of the Environment” and has written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, and other major publications.
He is a “Green Book” award winner, and his TED talks have been viewed over 5 million times. He founded the influential group Environmental Progress.
Shellenberger even ran for governor of California in 2018 but lost in the Democrat primary to the state’s progressive incumbent, Gov. Gavin Newsom.
If anyone had an incentive to capitalize on the climate change status quo, it’s Shellenberger. But he’s coming clean instead.
“I feel an obligation to apologize for how badly we environmentalists have misled the public,” he said.
“Some people will, when they read this imagine that I’m some right-wing anti-environmentalist. I’m not,” he added, noting that an honest rendering of facts obtained from even the most pro-climate change organizations like the United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change proves that climate-change alarmism—as presented by the mainstream media and left-leaning politicians—is fraudulent.
Shellenberger listed a dozen facts that debunk the global climate-change lobby’s most dire assertions.
All of the evidence he cites is pulled from leading pro-climate change scientific organizations, such as the IPCC, the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.
Humans are not causing a “sixth mass extinction,” he explained. The Amazon is not “the lungs of the world,” he continued.
He further noted: Climate change is not making natural disasters worse; fires have declined 25 percent around the world since 2003; the amount of land we use for meat—humankind’s biggest use of land—has declined by an area nearly as large as Alaska; air pollution and carbon emissions have been declining in rich nations for 50 years.
“I know that the above facts will sound like ‘climate denialism’ to many people. But that just shows the power of climate alarmism,” he said.
Why would someone of Shellenberger’s stature turn on everything he’d worked for, including the high-powered connections and lucrative opportunities that come with exploiting the issue?
By his own admission, Shellenberger helped persuade the Obama administration to spend $90 billion of taxpayer money on wasteful renewable energy initiatives, much of it going to progressive allies in California.
“Until last year, I mostly avoided speaking out against the climate scare. Partly that’s because I was embarrassed. After all, I am as guilty of alarmism as any other environmentalist. For years, I referred to climate change as an ‘existential’ threat to human civilization, and called it a ‘crisis,’” he said.
“But mostly I was scared. I remained quiet about the climate disinformation campaign because I was afraid of losing friends and funding,” he continued.
The first few times he defended scientific data that contradicted the politically engineered climate movement, Shellenberger said he was met with swift consequences.
Then, he stood by while the Obama White House and the news media destroyed honest scientists, some of whom were his friends.
“But then, last year, things spiraled out of control,” he said.“Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez said, ‘The world is going to end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change.’ Britain’s most high-profile environmental group claimed, ‘Climate Change Kills Children,’” he added.
Not only did the radically false statements signify the cravenness of the left-wing climate-change movement, but the claims were purposely meant to scare people into supporting socialist takeovers of sovereign economies. And none of it can be openly challenged without being labeled a climate denier.
In past articles, Shellengberger challenged Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and the socialist Green New Deal, saying the plan “would raise energy prices, slow economic growth, and reduce wages.”
“Why did anyone ever imagine it to be ‘progressive’?” he wrote.
“Nuclear energy and natural gas have reduced carbon emissions far more than solar and wind,” he wrote. “Why, then, are the people so apocalyptic about climate change so opposed to them?”
An article from December explains why climate scaremongering is so harmful, especially for children, and points to perhaps the most ironic consequence of the entire climate fraud: that it hurts the environment.
Shellenberger closed his Sunday op-ed with a final mea culpa.
“If you’ve made it this far, I hope you’ll agree that it’s perhaps not as strange as it seems that a lifelong environmentalist, progressive, and climate activist felt the need to speak out against the alarmism.”
“I further hope that you’ll accept my apology,” he said.
‘Hunter Biden’s extensive international travel during the Obama–Biden presidency, including at least 5 trips to China, will raise additional questions…’
Hunter and Joe Biden / IMAGE: Donald J Trump via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) In the days after the US Senate voted to acquit President Donald Trump of the “abuse of power” and “contempt of Congress” charges brought by House Democrats, Republicans determined it was time for the truth to come out about Hunter Biden‘s dubious business dealings.
The troubled, scandal-prone, 49-year-old son of former Vice President Joe Biden—who is now the presumptive Democrat nominee—had been a focal point of the underlying corruption investigation that Trump was accused of coercing the Ukrainian president to reopen after several years of “dormancy.”
But in a masterfully-played parry by the Deep State, the Left was able simultaneously to deflect from the Bidens’ corruption and redivert the attack back on the Republican president.
With a carefully orchestrated smear involving an activist “whistleblower” and the inspector general for the intelligence community, resistance operatives turned the very same charges against Trump for wanting to renew the probe into Ukrainian energy company Burisma that the Obama administration had forcibly silenced.
Now, Judicial Watch is leading the counter-investigative effort with new revelations about abuse of power involving Hunter Biden, who exploited not only his father’s status, but also his taxpayer-funded benefits to conduct global business deals that likely compromised U.S. national security and diplomacy.
The records obtained by Judicial Watch’s Feb. 7 open-records request to the Secret Service, using the Freedom of Information Act, show that Hunter, who received a Secret Service detail of his own, took 411 separate domestic and international flights—including to 29 different foreign countries—during a period between June 2009 and May 2014.
“Given the Burisma–Ukraine–China influence peddling scandals, Hunter Biden’s extensive international travel during the Obama–Biden presidency, including at least 5 trips to China, will raise additional questions,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a press release.
Notable Inclusions—and Omissions
Although Hunter joined the board of Burisma around April 2014—shortly before he was dishonorably discharged from the military for cocaine use—the records provided did not show any trips to the country prior to his hiring.
Hunter Biden / IMAGE: ABC News via Youtube
Among the many criticisms surrounding Hunter’s five years of “consulting” for the corrupt company is that he never so much as set foot in Ukraine, despite receiving a million-dollar-a-year stipend for his “consulting” efforts.
The FOIA records provided to Judicial Watch inexplicably end five and a half years into Joe Biden’s term as vice president, although the request from Judicial Watch asked for all records between 2001 and present.
The remaining records, covering the final 30 months of the Obama administration, have yet to be furnished.
In its press release, Judicial Watch also noted that the Secret Service had ignored its request for information on which government aircraft Hunter Biden had used and who had traveled with him, as well as omitting details about the cost of the trips.
Investigative journalist John Solomon, writing for Just the News, noted that five of the trips listed flew to China, as the Bidens’ deep financial ties to the communist Asian superpower face increasing scrutiny.
Significantly, Hunter accompanied his father on an official state visit to China in December 2013, where he just so happened to have met with key power-brokers who likely helped him to secure a $1.5 billion financing deal for BHR Equity Investment Fund, a joint venture between China’s state-backed bank and Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca investment firm.
China has been criticized repeatedly for a litany of troublesome issues including unfair trade practices, espionage, human-rights abuses, election medding, and questions over its role in engineering or covering up the spread of the deadly coronavirus, resulting in a global pandemic and corresponding economic crash.
Apart from the China questions, Solomon also noted that Hunter Biden’s use of official perks seemed to have gone far and above what might be reasonable for the middle-age, adult son of a high-ranking government official who had no formal role within the administration.
“While it is normal for the Secret Service to provide family members of a president and vice president with security details, Hunter Biden’s security logs stand out for the sheer volume of travel,” Solomon said.
That amounted to a trip roughly every five days during the period for which the records were provided, he noted.
Ironically, Joe Biden has since hinted on the campaign trail that he would plan to embrace the Green New Deal, which would likely place severe restrictions on air travel in its effort to attain zero-balance carbon-dioxide emissions.
Biden also has promised he would reform White House policies related to conflicts of interest involving family members of top officials—despite his having spent the past four decades reaping the benefits of those ethical gray areas.
Congressional Wranglings
The timing of the Judicial Watch release seemed fitting given the leak last week of a supposed tell-all memoir from former national security adviser John Bolton.
Much of the partisan impeachment wranglings during January and February hinged on whether to call witnesses, including the Bidens, the so-called whistleblower (presumed to be CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella) and, on the Left’s side, Bolton.
However, Bolton’s book created nary a ripple, with even Democrats declaring the claims against Trump amounted to a nothingburger.
Nancy Pelosi / CSPAN via Youtube
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Eric Swalwell, both California Democrats, criticized Bolton for trying to protract his own relevance following his dismissal, even though he had refused to cooperate previously with Democrats unless they forced a subpoena.
Meanwhile, the Senate investigation of the Bidens is moving forward, despite some setbacks.
The FOIA materials provided to Judicial Watch noted that prominent GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin had also received copies of the records in connection with a parallel Feb. 5 request they made
Any classified information that was omitted from the Judicial Watch request likely was included in the records provided to the Senate Finance and Homeland Security committees, which the two senators chair, respectively.
But the letter addressed to the senators, provided to Judicial Watch, also indicated that due to the labor-intensive nature of their request, the records could not be provided within the two-week deadline they had been given.
Johnson’s efforts within the Senate Homeland Security Committee to compel testimony from other players in the Burisma scandal has also faced resistance from his Democratic colleagues, leaving the deciding vote to be cast by Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, who was the only Republican official in either chamber of Congress to cast a vote in favor of Trump’s impeachment.
‘Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society…’
Twitter and Facebook logos / IMAGE: file photo
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Virtue-signaling companies Facebook and Twitter got a taste of their own medicine Friday after household goods company Unilever pulled all its advertising for the remainder of the year.
The company said in a statement that the purpose was to avoid taking sides in an increasingly acrimonious fray over how much license the sites have to regulate political speech on their platforms.
“Given our Responsibility Framework and the polarized atmosphere in the U.S., we have decided that starting now through at least the end of the year, we will not run brand advertising in social media newsfeed platforms Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in the U.S.,” Unilever said in a statement.
“Continuing to advertise on these platforms at this time would not add value to people and society,” it continued. “We will be monitoring ongoing and will revisit our current position if necessary.”
Tensions escalated after Twitter, facing a leftist pressure campaign, began contextualizing President Donald Trump’s tweets with “fact checks,” some of which have been criticized for themselves spreading misleading information.
Regardless, most of the fact-checks promote a discernibly leftist agenda—something the companies have long been criticized for.
In response, Trump issued an executive order that reaffirmed Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, saying content aggregators like the two social media platforms were only protected from liability if they refrained from excessive moderation of political speech.
In one of the first tests of the policy, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., advanced a libel lawsuit that named Twitter in several offensive satire accounts under his name. However, a Virginia judge refused to support Nunes’s argument.
Despite a difficult week, which included the release of two watchdog videos from whistleblowers disclosing systemic bias in its content-moderation practices, Facebook announced on Friday that it, too, would be starting to label the posts of Trump and others that violated its arbitrary community guidelines.
Meanwhile, Twitter took a hit as it faced direct competition from an emerging conservative alternative, Parler, which rocketed to the No. 1 spot in app downloads late this week after prominent figures including Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas expressed their support.
Although Unilever’s withdrawal of advertising might appear to be yet another minor victory, however, in the politically-correct mob assault on conservative speech and ideas, it may be a pyrrhic one.
Rather than advocating for a greater support of First Amendment expression, the London-based company—with brands including Dove soap and Axe body spray—criticized the social media sites for allowing too much “hate speech” to seep through.
“Based on the current polarization and the election that we are having in the US, there needs to be much more enforcement in the area of hate speech,” Luis Di Como, Unilever’s executive vice president of global media, told the Journal in an interview.
Because there is no legal standard for what constitutes “hate speech” under US law, which historically has opted to err on the side of allowing rather than constraining controversial opinions, demands for greater censorship pose a slippery slope when left to the discretion of the already unreliable Silicon Valley arbiters.
Ironically, Facebook had come under fire a week ago for refusing to run an ad submitted and paid for by the Trump Campaign that it claimed promoted hate speech for using an upside-down, red triangle.
Although it is not included in a frequently cited database of hate symbols compiled by the Anti-Defamation League, Facebook said that the symbol had been used by Nazi Germany concentration camps during World War II to represent political dissidents.
The Trump campaign said the ad, which criticized far-left domestic terrorism group Antifa, had used it because the group—short for “anti-fascist”—had itself appropriated the symbol previously.
‘Long prison terms for these lawless acts against our Great Country…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After pledging a day earlier to dispatch US marshals to protect public statues and monuments from vandalism amid ongoing left-wing race riots, President Donald Trump announced late Friday that he was issuing an executive order.
Those implicated in the destruction may now face “long prison terms” he said via Twitter.
I just had the privilege of signing a very strong Executive Order protecting American Monuments, Memorials, and Statues – and combatting recent Criminal Violence. Long prison terms for these lawless acts against our Great Country!
He elaborated that the order could result in prison sentences of up to 10 years.
I have authorized the Federal Government to arrest anyone who vandalizes or destroys any monument, statue or other such Federal property in the U.S. with up to 10 years in prison, per the Veteran’s Memorial Preservation Act, or such other laws that may be pertinent…..
Trump has continually advocated for a strong response but has been undermined in those efforts by leftist local and state leaders who preside in many of the major cities where the monuments have come under attack.
At a rally in Tulsa last Saturday, however, he had said that one of the most egregious example—the takeover of six blocks in downtown Seattle by anarchist protesters—would be left to the city’s far left mayor and governor.
“I may be wrong, but it’s probably better for us to just watch that disaster,” he said.
A day later, following a series of shootings—including fatalities—in the notorious CHOP zone, Mayor Jenny Durkan announced she would be seeking to peacefully reclaim it.
As of Friday, only a few dozen stragglers remained as bulldozers entered into the barricaded area.
The outrage over monuments has continued to grow, however, as the rioters target not only controversial figures, such as allegedly pro-slavery Confederate leaders, but also have attacked noted abolitionists and others with no discernible motive except destruction.
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) If Joe Biden wins the election, he’ll have no choice but to finish the construction of the southern border wall, according to President Donald Trump.
Biden has said that he won’t continue the construction of Trump’s border wall, but Trump argued this week that there would be a “revolution” if Biden refused to secure the border.
“What he wants open borders, he wants people pouring into our country, and he wants, you know, drugs and all the other problems,” Trump said. “You’ll never solve it without this. He’ll complete it. You’d have a revolution if they didn’t do it.”
Biden himself has supported additional border fencing in the past.
In 2006, Biden—then a U.S. senator—warned that the drugs coming into the country from Mexico were a huge problem. He vowed to vote for the Securer Fence Act, which authorized the construction of 700 miles of fencing between the U.S. and Mexico.
“I voted for a fence, I voted, unlike most Democrats—and some of you won’t like it—I voted for 700 miles of fence,” Biden said at the time.
“But, let me tell you, we can build a fence 40 stories high,” he continued. “Unless you change the dynamic in Mexico and—and you will not like this, and—punish American employers who knowingly violate the law when, in fact, they hire illegals—unless you do those two things, all the rest is window-dressing.”
Biden went on to argue that “the fence is needed,” because “people are driving across that border with tons, tons, hear me, tons of everything from byproducts for methamphetamine to cocaine to heroin.”
“Now, I know I’m not supposed to say it that bluntly, but they’re the facts,” Biden continued.
Biden’s campaign defended his past remarks by shifting the attention back to Trump, whose approach to illegal immigration is “repugnant,” according to Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign.
‘It is time we shift to the next phase of our organizing and move from direct action to virtual activism…’
Seattle’s Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone / IMAGE: screenshot via Twitter
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Seattle’s autonomous zone leaders are finally encouraging protesters to “go home” after several nights of violence.
The Capitol Hill Occupied Protest (CHOP), formerly known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), is beginning to dissolve as protesters leave the area.
Fewer than two dozen protesters were near the East Precinct, the CHOP Twitter account stated—a number “we expect to continue to drop.”
“It is time we shift to the next phase of our organizing and move from direct action to virtual activism,” the account said.
“The CHOP project is now concluded,” it continued. “While we expect a very small handful of holdouts may try to remain in the CHOP, no further organizing will be occurring to support this presence.”
The group encouraged its protesters to vote for presidential candidate Joe Biden. It also lent its endorsement to the reelection efforts of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee and Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan, both of whom refused to shut down the anarchists after they overtook the Seattle Police Department’s East Precinct station.
Durkan finally spoke out against the CHOP after a 17-year-old boy was shot in the arm within the zone’s vicinity.
“It’s time for people to go home,” Durkan said.
But residents within the zone had been warning Durkan and Seattle’s authorities that crime was running rampant within the zone.
“People come down here and they push the envelope,” said Rick Hearns, who joined the protests within the CHOP zone, according to K-5.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used my mace,” he said.
At least four shootings have occurred in the CHOP over the past week. Lorenzo Anderson, 19, was shot and killed last Saturday. A second man was also shot on Saturday. A third man was shot on Sunday, and a fourth on Tuesday.
‘I know my neighbors are around, but I’m not feeling grounded in my city at all. Anything could happen…’
Powderhorn Park in south Minneapolis / IMAGE: Alpha News MN via YouTube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) A Minneapolis neighborhood decided to “check its privilege” after the death of George Floyd and and vowed not to call or rely on law enforcement again.
Now, the neighborhood has become a haven for crime and homelessness.
Residents in Powderhorn Park vowed to become the “transformative new model” of public safety and stop calling the police so as not to “endanger” their black neighbors and friends.
Since then, hundreds of homeless residents have taken over the neighborhood, and crime is running rampant, according to the New York Times.
Drug dealers regularly deal in the neighborhood, and at least one person has overdosed in its park. Prostitution has also been reported in the area.
One resident, Shari Albers, said she has trouble sleeping at night. Another resident, Linnea Borden, said she has stopped walking her dog through the area because she’s sick of being catcalled. And Carrie Nightshade, who also lives in the neighborhood, stopped letting her kids play in the park because of how dangerous it has become.
“I am afraid,” Albers said. “I know my neighbors are around, but I’m not feeling grounded in my city at all. Anything could happen.”
A few of the residents have had to break their pledge and call the police. Joseph Menkevich said he had to call 911 because he found a black man passed out in the elevator of his apartment building.
He tried to call a community activist, but she didn’t answer. So he called 911 instead, which he claims made the situation worse.
“It didn’t resolve in a way that I had hoped,” he said. “All they did was offer to bring him back to the hospital. He refused, so they kicked him out on a rainy night.”
Another resident, Mitchell Erickson, called the police after being cornered outside his home by two black teenagers. One stuck a gun to Erickson’s chest and demanded his car keys.
Eventually the two teenagers ran off, at which point Erickson decided to call the police. He now “regrets” doing so.
“Been thinking more about it,” Erickson said. “I regret calling the police. It was my instinct but I wish it hadn’t been. I put those boys in danger of death by calling the cops.”
When he was reminded that the two teenagers had put his life in danger, Erickson responded: “Yeah I know and yeah it was scary but the cops didn’t really have much to add after I called them. I haven’t been forced to think like this before. So I would have lost my car. So what? At least no one would have been killed.”
‘Well, Twitter crossed the line hard. Anyone here?’
Update: After receiving considerable buzz and several key endorsements from conservative figures, downloads of the Parler app surpassed those of Twitter and reached the top spot in Apple’s download store, reported RedState.com.
Threatened and insecure leftist media outlets continued to tip their hands, revealing the astounding bias that contributed to the recent conservative migration, by attempting to smear the site with baseless claims that it was a safe-harbor for extremist viewpoints and conspiracies.
However, several such conspiracies and hoaxes being reported on by the mainstream media with impunity have belied their purported concerns about the spread of disinformation and hate speech, both of which the Left has fully embraced in its own rhetoric.
Meanwhile, despite a recent executive order by President Donald Trump that would hold biased sites accountable for censoring reasonable viewpoints, an activist Virginia judge rejected a libel lawsuit against Twitter from Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., which cited the social-media company’s violation of Section 230 in the 1996 Communications Decency Act.
Facebook also continued to get hit after conservative journalism watchdog Project Veritas published the accounts of two whistleblowers that outlined the culture of left-wing bias within the company’s third-party content-moderation warehouses.
Original story below:
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Conservative media figures (including this one) supporting a movement to leave the increasingly authoritarian confines of Twitter for the more right-oriented Parler, encouraged followers to join in a Twitter boycott on Friday.
Some sought to use the attention to wage a boycott against Twitter on Friday. However, others made a point of emphasizing that gravitating to the new platform did not mean they were planning to scuttle their old accounts entirely.
Love how people are using creating a Parler account as a failed attempt to “leave Twitter.”
90% of us never said we were leaving. We are just using an alternative platform because there is a very real threat of being banned here for no reason other than being conservative
The move comes in response to increasingly brazen attacks from social-media and other online platforms to censor and suppress right-wing voices in the lead-up to the November election.
In one of his early Parler posts, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams, who occasionally appears of Fox News, wrote: “Well, Twitter crossed the line hard. Anyone here?”
The site operates much like Twitter but with some key interface differences. There is no character constraint, for one. It also does not currently add an easy embed code, making it less media-friendly, which could be considered an asset to many users.
Most significantly, though, it rejects the oppressive community guidelines that have been the source of much criticism as Twitter, Facebook, Google and others willingly kowtow to the outrage mobs they helped create to impose increasingly hypocritical standards rooted in political correctness and other leftist dogma.
Parler / IMAGE: screenshot via Parler.com
According to Parler’s mission statement, its “goal is to offer the world a platform that protects user’s rights, supports publishers and builds online communities.”
The site notes that it does have guidelines, but it seeks to “empower users to control their social experience [and] to engage content as they see fit,” it continued. “We are not regulators. We are not governors. We are a community.”
The Nevada-based site began in 2018, initially gaining traction as a sort of pariah colony for deplatformed right-wing voices whose influence compelled liberal media to label them as “dangerous.”
It also hosts figures from conservative media including Zero Hedge and The Federalist, both of which Google and NBC News attempted to “cancel” recently via an activist campaign to demonetize them.
But the real growth comes as it gains acceptance from a growing number of prominent politicians, including Sen. Rand Paul.
It’s about time y’all joined me on @parler_app . What’s taking the rest of you so long?!
Other marquee members include presidential son Eric Trump, attorney Rudy Giuliani, Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, former national security adviser Michael Flynn, GOP Reps. Devin Nunes of California, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Gaetz of Florida, Louie Gohmert and Jodey Arrington of Texas, Sens. Mike Lee of Utah and Ted Cruz of Texas.
I’m proud to join @parler_app — a platform gets what free speech is all about — and I’m excited to be a part of it. Let’s speak. Let’s speak freely. And let’s end the Silicon Valley censorship. Follow me there @tedcruz! pic.twitter.com/pzUFvhipBZ
The growing list of influencers means it likely will soon become an inevitable presence in the cacophonous clamor of online opinion-spouting punditry.
Already the site has come under attack from partisan echo-chamber radicals and mainstream media outlets, whose leftist frailty precludes the possibility of enduring any meaningful dissent that could threaten or challenge the hive mind.
But with undercover reports recently exposing the extreme biases in Facebook’s content-moderation process; Google attempting to impose new, arbitrary restrictions; Twitter continuing to re-frame the president’s comments using outrageous (and inaccurate) fact checks; and the growing influence of teen-friendly TikTok—a sight being used by Chinese communists for espionage and election-meddling—the appetite for a conservative safe-haven has finally reached critical mass.
The burning question that remained on the minds of many was if and when President Donald Trump might, himself, make the switch, a double-edged sword that would lend even greater clout to Parler’s entree in the social-media scene while also compelling toxic Trump-bashers to sign up for accounts.
This is a great move, Ted! Take President Trump and all your other TRUE PATRIOT friends with you, and then REALLY take a stand by deleting your Twitter accounts! That’s the best way to fight back against their oppressive censorship! ??
— Rob Sheridan #BLM #ArtIsResistance (@rob_sheridan) June 25, 2020
