Questions about self-defense have been raised after the British government kidnapped and starved a couple"s son to death and a case in America shows things could"ve played out different had Brits been armed.
The post Dad in America Told His Son Had To Die Like Alfie—But He Resisted With Guns and His Son LIVED appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Two super fans jumped the gate to the home of Keanu Reeves and instead of calling 911 to report them, he invited them in to hang out and drink beer.
The post Fans Jump Keanu Reeves Gate, But He Refused to Call the Cops, Invites Them in for Beer Instead appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Recognizing the rights of the homeless population a Senate candidate has started a fundraising campaign to raise money to purchase guns for the homeless so they can defend themselves.
The post Senate Candidate Raising Money To Buy Guns For the Homeless So They Can Defend Themselves appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Anything and everything you have ever done or seen or liked—even blocked—on Facebook is stored by the social media company....FOREVER.
The post Facebook Tracks Ominously Specific Details About Your Life—FOREVER—Here’s How to See It appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
Keanu Reeves lives up the heroic role he played in the Matrix series by being a genuinely good person in real life.
The post 10 Times People Caught Keanu Reeves Being a Hero in Real Life appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
A recent study found that psychedelic mushrooms tend to make people more resistant to authority and more connected with nature.
The post Why Shrooms Are Illegal: Study Shows Psychedelic Experiences Make You Resist Authoritarians appeared first on The Free Thought Project.
A Florida couple has spent almost $200,000 trying to keep their $30,000 treehouse from being torn down, now the state plans to crush them.
The city of Chicago would seemingly rather watch homeless people die than allow a good Samaritan to offer up his home that doesn"t meet their specs.
The U.S. Attorney General is reportedly rescinding a policy that keeps federal prosecutors from interfering with states that have legalized cannabis.
As the federal government continues to fleece Americans to give that money to their corporate masters, the wealth gap is expanding, rapidly, according to a new report.
Police descended on an elementary school after an innocent little boy who is mute and has Down Syndrome was accused of being a terrorist.
Reese Witherspoon has joined a long list of A-list actors who are telling their stories of sexual abuse and harassment following allegations Hollywood film mogul Harvey Weinstein had pressured an untold number of women for sex. However, Witherspoon’s story is quite different. She says she was sexually assaulted by her director when she was 16 and was told to stay quiet about it or else. If her allegations are proven true, it signals that pedophilia, as TFTP has long contended, is thriving in Hollywood to the detriment of child actors and their families.
"I felt less alone this week than I’ve ever felt in my entire career." https://t.co/hJaSQ4Vyu3
— ELLE Magazine (US) (@ELLEmagazine) October 17, 2017
Witherspoon was a guest speaker at Elle’s “Women in Hollywood” event in Beverly Hills on Monday night. She admitted she has been struggling emotionally over the past week as more and more Hollywood elite come forward sharing their stories of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment. She admitted having feelings of guilt and shame in not coming forward sooner:
I have my own experiences that have come back to me very vividly and I find it really hard to sleep, hard to think, hard to communicate a lot of the feelings that I’ve been having about anxiety, honest, the guilt for not speaking up earlier.
Witherspoon described how her film’s director assaulted her and his staff took measures to makes sure the alleged criminal act stayed silent, hidden from public knowledge, and far from any law enforcement involvement. In some ways, the Academy Award-winning actress revealed the playbook whereby Hollywood’s pedophiles continue to operate with impunity. She said:
[I feel] true disgust at the director who assaulted me when I was 16 years old and anger at the agents and the producers who made me feel that silence was a condition of my employment.
Not only does she claim she was sexually assaulted as a teenager (which could include rape), she says she was forced to be silent to be able to continue making money as a child actor in Hollywood.
READ MORE: Julian Assange Just Destroyed the FBI, CIA & Fake News in an Epic Tweetstorm
As what often happens with victims of child sexual abuse, Witherspoon said the abuse and sexual assaults continued, although she did not offer any details about her attackers, abusers, or their identities.
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And I wish that I could tell you that was an isolated incident in my career, but sadly it wasn’t. I’ve had multiple experiences of harassment and sexual assault and I don’t speak about them very often.
She says she felt empowered to come forward at this time in her life (age 41) after so many other colleagues have spoken out about their abuse and abusers.
But after hearing all the stories these past few days and hearing these brave women speak up tonight about things that we’re kind of told to sweep under the rug and not to talk about, it’s made me want to speak up and speak up loudly because I actually felt less alone this week than I have ever felt in my entire career.
Sexual abuse survivors often describe the feeling of relief they experience after they tell someone, anyone, about what happened to them. Using a simple hashtag #metoo, millions of women around the world have come forward publicly to acknowledge they, too, have been abused.
We at TFTP want Witherspoon and others to go one step forward. We want them to publicly name their abusers, realizing those individuals, statistically, have abused dozens, hundreds, if not thousands of other boys, girls, women as well as men. It’s simply not enough to say “it happened to me”. In order for those abusers to be held accountable, they have to be ousted. The shame must not stay trapped, hidden, and experienced only by the victim. Let the shame be on the heads of the abusers.
Our research team here at TFTP dug a little deeper into Witherspoon’s work history to precisely identify the directors Witherspoon may have been working with when she was just 16 years old, the age she claims she was assaulted. Surely internet sleuths will be combing through her film credits to determine the identity of her abuser. Witherspoon was 16 in the year 1992 until her birthday in March of 1993.
READ MORE: Julian Assange Just Destroyed the FBI, CIA & Fake News in an Epic Tweetstorm
Because filming of movies and television shows takes place months before they are released or aired, and some shows never make it into full production (pilots), it’s difficult to determine who, allegedly, Witherspoon’s abuser is. But here’s what we know.
In 1992, Witherspoon played “Cassie Robbins” in “Desparate Choices to Save My Daughter” a made for TV movie directed by Andy Tennant. And in 1993, she had several roles, staring in “A Far Off Place” directed by Mikael Salomon, “Jack the Bear” directed by Marshall Herskovitz, and in the mini-series “Return to Lonesome Dove” directed by Mike Robe. Witherspoon’s only film from 1994 was “S.F.W.”, directed by Jefery Levy.
It must be stated that none of the directors mentioned in this article have been implicated by Witherspoon’s comments, other than being her director around the time she claims she was sexually assaulted. Also, there may have been other directors who were not listed on IMDB’s list.
Before anyone attempts to discredit the Academy Award-winning actress or deny her claims she was sexually assaulted as a teenager while making millions as a child actress in Hollywood, many have attempted to sound the alarm about pedophilia in film-making. In 2014, director Amy Berg made a documentary titled “An Open Secret”. In the film, she detailed numerous cases of child sex abuse by Hollywood’s elite actors, directors, and talent managers.
Even though the Oscar-nominated documentarian had uncovered wide-spread sex abuse in the Catholic Church for her Oscar-nominated 2006 documentary “Deliver Us From Evil”, she was unsurprisingly unsuccessful in getting anyone in Hollywood to distribute her film.
READ MORE: Julian Assange Just Destroyed the FBI, CIA & Fake News in an Epic Tweetstorm
To Witherspoon, we say, we applaud you for coming forward, for sharing your story, and for helping others to do the same. Now, all you have to do is call out the perpetrator. Pedophiles do not change their predatory behavior. As Berg stated, they “work their way into your life…[as a predator they know]…they’re not going to catch every rabbit, just the weak ones.” And they must be stopped.
Here’s Entertainment Tonight’s coverage of the event courtesy of the company’s channel on Youtube.
As TFTP has reported, actor Corey Feldman was one of the first A-list child actors to come forward and allege rampant and widespread pedophilia in Hollywood. He said, “I can tell you that the number one problem in Hollywood was and is and always will be pedophilia. There was a circle of older men and they all had either their own power or connections to power that surrounded themselves around this group of kids. I was surrounded by them. They were everywhere like vultures.” Elijah Wood also backed up Feldman’s claims.
As the LA Times recently reported, just within the past few days, Actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Rose McGowan and Ashley Judd have accused producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual misconduct. The wall of silence appears to be cracking, with the promise of taking down the pedophilia/sexual assault and harassment ring of Hollywood elitists, but more actors/actresses need to come forward and not stop at naming names.
On Tuesday Witherspoon tweeted, indicating how free she felt in her decision to go public. She also tweeted a list of other female actresses who have all come forward alleging sexual harassment and abuse by powerful media moguls.
— Reese Witherspoon (@RWitherspoon) October 17, 2017
My heroes 👑💖👑 #ELLEWIH pic.twitter.com/LEq7v0bfzw
— Reese Witherspoon (@RWitherspoon) October 18, 2017
Below is the documentary on Hollywood’s most depraved secret.
Nine years ago, Christopher Mirasolo, 27, raped a woman. She got pregnant as a result of the alleged crime. Now, Mirasolo—a convicted rapist—has been awarded joint legal custody of the child by Detroit Judge Gregory S. Ross following a DNA paternity test which showed him to be the child’s father.
Yes, you read that correctly. The man who made a child through rape, was convicted of rape, and served time for rape, will now be granted joint custody of the child born from rape.
The victim’s attorney, Rebecca Kiessling, is now asking for special protection afforded to her client under the federal Rape Survivor Child Custody Act. The Act, which President Obama signed the Rape Survivor Child Custody Act into law on May 29, 2015, terminates the parental rights of any parent who raped the opposite sex. The decision to terminate the parental rights must be based on clear and convincing evidence that the resulting child was conceived through rape.
Kiessling filed objections last Friday against Ross’ decision to award custody to the parent who’s believed to have raped the lady whose identity must be kept confidential because of the nature of the crime. Kiessling remarked:
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This is insane…Nothing has been right about this since it was originally investigated. He was never properly charged and should still be sitting behind bars somewhere, but the system is victimizing my client, who was a child herself when this all happened.
So apparently angered by Ross’ decision, the rape victim’s attorney continued by accusing the court of implementing deception to make the ruling.
An assistant prosecutor on this, Eric Scott, told me she had granted her consent, which was a lie — she has never been asked to do this and certainly never signed anything
In granting parental rights to Mirasolo, Ross has prevented the woman from fleeing the presence of her alleged attacker. In other words, the rape victim now has to be within driving distance of her rapist at all times. And in a bizarre and some would say ironic turn of events, the rape victim may, in fact, go to jail if she does not comply with the court’s demands.
READ MORE: Army General & Fmr VP of Company at the Heart of Child Sex Trafficking Scandal Arrested for Child Rape
Kiessling remarked that her client is, “not allowed to move 100 miles from where she had been living when the case was filed, without court consent.” If she does not comply with the order, she can be locked up. “So the prosecutor told her she had to come home immediately or she would be held in contempt of court,” the rape victim’s lawyer said.
For anyone who may be wondering about the details of the alleged rape, the lawyer provided a glimpse into the kind of horrific and violent torture the rape victim allegedly endured. She said Mirasolo raped her client when her client was just 12 and the man was 18. She described the incident in detail.
She, her 13-year-old sister and a friend all slipped out of their house one night to meet a boy and the boy’s older friend, Mirasolo, showed up and asked if they wanted to go for a ride…They thought they were going to McDonald’s or somewhere…Instead, he tossed their cellphones away, drove to Detroit where he stole gas from a station and then drove back to Sanilac County, where he kept them captive for two days in a vacant house near a relative, finally releasing the older sister in a park. He threatened to kill them if they told anyone what happened.
Instead of prosecuting Mirasolo to the fullest extent of the law, he was offered a plea deal for being a first-time offender and was back on the streets after less than 7 months in jail. He went on to commit another rape on a young teenager in 2010 and served only four years for the second rape. Now, Judge Ross has given him parental rights to his first victim.
READ MORE: Lawsuit Exposes Fmr Speaker of the House for the Rape of a 10yo Boy in a Bathroom
Barbara Yockey, Mirasolo’s attorney did not indicate her client had any intention of being a parent to the child who happens to be the product of a reportedly brutal rape. Yockey said the paternity test and subsequent custody proceedings were initiated after the other applied for state services.
Chris was notified of the paternity matter and an order of filiation was issued last month by the court saying he had joint legal custody and reasonable visitation privileges…He never initiated this. It was something routinely done by the prosecutor’s office when a party makes application for state assistance.
The Detroit News also spoke with the mother. She, too, was unaware of the court’s proceedings. She said;
I think this is all crazy…They (officials) never explained anything to me. I was receiving about $260 a month in food stamps for me and my son and health insurance for him. I guess they were trying to see how to get some of the money back.
Following the horrific rape, the victim dropped out of school and moved in with relatives in Florida. She went to a government office to change her address and was notified she had a court order demanding her return to Detroit.
Part of me didn’t want to come back home because I was scared…I would’ve got contempt of court if I hadn’t shown. I would’ve been thrown in jail.
With respect to the rape itself, she said:
I didn’t talk about it, I tried to put it behind me, but that’s never possible. You never forget what happens.
Tiffany, the name she gave to the hosts, which is not her real name, gave her opinion about Ross’ decision to put her rapist’s name on her son’s birth certificate.
(I’d been told), he’d have to fight for any kind of rights…Then this judge just hands him these rights, like he deserves them.
She’s not alone in her belief that Mirasolo should be denied parental rights. The convicted rapist’s second victim shares her sentiments. She told reporters:
When I read the (Detroit News) article, I was disgusted…I guess there is no way they can do anything to him, because he has already served sentences in both cases. But there is no way he should have custody…And I don’t think he should even be allowed around any children without supervision.
Yes, America, this is the judicial state of affairs in which many of our residents currently endure. A convicted rapist is given parental rights he didn’t want, to a woman who didn’t want him to have any association with her or her child, and who’d even relocated out of state. The woman was ordered to return to the state where she was
READ MORE: Parents Disagree With School Over ADHD Diagnosis — So CPS Kidnapped Their Son
The woman was ordered to return to the state where she was raped and forced to live within two hours drive of the perpetrator (100 miles). Worse still, she may actually be forced to confront her attacker when and if he ever wants to spend time with his biological child.
The Ashley Borough Police Department received a call for help in finding a missing child. But instead of locating the missing child, when they smelled marijuana at a nearby residence, they abandoned their search and confiscated a cannabis user’s bongs and smoking devices. That was their first mistake, according to some. Their second mistake, arguably, was bragging about their bust on Facebook
Here’s the photo they posted on their Facebook page and the accompanying caption.
The stash was undeniably a prized possession to someone who unwittingly had drawn the attention of Ashley Borough police. Now it’s in the hands of law enforcement. But if the department was looking to be praised by the local community, they were sadly mistaken. Instead of lauding the accomplishments of the boys in blue, the public ripped them a new one.
Spencer Holt was seemingly perplexed when he wrote, “You must be so proud of yourselves. How about the kid? A lost child is a time-sensitive issue, how did that situation develop while you were rounding up the giggle weed?” Holt’s sentiments echoed the overall feelings of the public who viewed abandoning the search for a missing child to committing a cardinal sin.
Chad Mummert blasted the department as well. He wrote, “This basically states that you’ve abandoned a lost child investigation…let’s repeat that…a lost child investigation because you smelled marijuana and went for some low hanging fruit to eventually exploit on social media. You deserve every bit of the roast (pun intended) that you are getting with this foolish post.
Approaching with a more lighthearted statement Connor Cormier asked police if he could buy the bong. He said he’d pay, “$45 for the Zong,” and promised to, “meet you wherever is most convenient.”
The cynicism was not lost in the seriousness of what police had admitted to doing. They openly confessed to devoting at least a portion of their department to potentially charging an individual for treating his/her ailments with cannabis.
As TFTP has reported, cannabis has been decriminalized and made available as medical marijuana in at least 29 states with eight states allowing for recreational use. The states of Alaska, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington now allow for full recreational use of cannabis.
Some of the Ashley Borough Police Department’s critics understand there are many sick people who use cannabis to deal with their illnesses and are not afraid of committing a misdemeanor crime to do so. Alex Hardy didn’t hold anything back when he criticized the department’s seizure. Hardy asked, “Lemme get this straight. You dickless little shits get sidetracked from looking for a missing child to hassle someone for their pot gear. And then you actually brag about it on fb?”
Dallas Shaefer attempted to shame the PD into repentance. “You should be ashamed of yourselves. This is a waste of public resources and damaging to the record of someone who was likely hurting no one,” he wrote.
Whatever their motivations, the Ashley Borough Police Department understandably opened up the proverbial can of worms with their post. The ongoing criticism serves to illustrate how attitudes toward cannabis are changing at the what seems to be the speed of light. People are waking up to the fact that pharmaceutical companies have used their lobbying power for years to convince the federal government, the FDA, and the DEA to keep cannabis categorized as a Schedule I narcotic.
All the while they’ve quietly been addicting millions of Americans to their synthetic opiates which killed more Americans in 2016 than in the entire Vietnam War. Maybe what Ashley Borough Police should do is begin to arrest pharmacists for dispensing addicting and life-ending opiates. Only then can they rightfully claim they’re protecting the public.
Wesley Chapel, FL — Patriotism, in the ostensible land of the free, is no longer measured by how much freedom you fight for or corruption you expose, it is now measured by how hard you praise the state and how much loyalty you show to your rulers. Those who challenge the state and stand up for their rights are now cast out as un-American and treasonous. Now, the argument over when these personal choices of expression should and shouldn’t take place has spread to children.
The mother of a six-year-old boy in Florida is furious after she says her son was admonished for silently and respectfully taking a knee during the morning pledge of allegiance at Wiregrass Elementary School in Wesley Chapel.
Eugenia McDowell said she had no idea her son was going to kneel for the pledge and that she only learned about it when the school sent her a text message Monday evening explaining how out of line his actions were.
The message read: “I knew where he had seen it [going down on one knee], but I did tell him that in the classroom, we are learning what it means to be a good citizen, we’re learning about respecting the United States of America and our country symbols and showing loyalty and patriotism and that we stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.”
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As ABC reports, McDowell said her son was publicly admonished for his gesture of silent protest, a move she said stifles his voice and freedom of speech. But according to Pasco County School District Spokesperson Linda Cobbe, the boy’s teacher does not believe any other students saw her admonishment. Cobbe said the teacher mouthed the words, “We stand for the pledge” in response to the boy’s decision to take a knee.
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Whether or not the other students saw the teacher reprimand a six-year-old for peacefully choosing to abstain from pledging his allegiance to a flag is irrelevant. The fact that a six-year-old boy was reprimanded at all for this decision is the issue.
“What he did was have a difference of opinion. He was not being disrespectful. He was silently protesting and exercising his constitutional right,” McDowell said. “My concern is she infringed upon his constitutional right to express himself, to protest peacefully, and she also made him feel like his decision to come up with his own opinion about things was the wrong thing to do.”
Being brave and going against the status quo to challenge what you perceive as an injustice is the very fabric of a free society. Mandated worship of symbolism and pledges of loyalty are what empires do on the way to despotism and eventually their fall.
But fret not, the school says they respect everyone’s free speech and there would have been no problem with the boy’s choice to kneel—had he simply filled out a permission slip to practice his free speech.
“Our policy — and state law, for that matter — requires that a parent submit a request in writing that their student be exempted from participating in the pledge,” Cobbe told ABC News.
“If he had that exemption, nothing would have been said. Students could stand, students could kneel, they don’t have to put their hand on their heart. They just have to be respectful of the students who are participating,” Cobbe said.
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In the land of the free, one must first obtain written permission to express views that differ from the status quo. Seems legit.
“We are no longer going be silenced, our voices will be heard and our little black boys that sit in classrooms today, not just my son but every other child that looks like him, they are not going to be silenced,” McDowell said.
Whether or not you agree with people kneeling or standing for the pledge, the anthem or any other form of practiced loyalty to the state is not the issue as it is your right and duty to peacefully express your views. However, when children are reprimanded for not getting a permission slip or exemption form for practicing their free speech, it is high time to put America in check.
A free society is not fostered by forcing state loyalty.
Do you think August Landmesser, who became famous after an image surfaced of him refusing to be caught up in the nationalistic Nazi fervor, as he stands with his arms crossed, stone-faced, as the rest of the crowd engages in the mandatory “Seig heil” salute—obtained a permission slip to do so?
Please share this article with your friends and family to let others know that regardless of how you feel about millionaire football players alienating their fanbase by kneeling during the anthem—this little boy’s story is a warning sign that America is going down the wrong path.
Richmond, VA — Richmond resident Chy-Niece Thacker didn’t know what to expect when she was pulled over Friday for having two tail lights out on her car. As she was looking for her required paperwork, Officer Jenkins reassured her, “Don’t worry about pulling anything out. I just want you to know that your brake lights are out.”
Thacker says she was on her way to an interview when the stop happened. After explaining to Officer Jenkins she’d been having a problem with her brake lights, she told the officer of the peace the mechanic wanted to collect $600 to test the wiring of her vehicle.
He looked at me like 😨 and told me to pop the trunk. He checked the lights in the trunk and tapped them, but they didn’t come on. So he told me to pop the hood to check the relay box then asked me to get out to check the other one.
Looking surprised, Jenkins switched gears from being a code enforcer to that of a Good Samaritan. Having a background in mechanics, he quickly checked the connections on the tail lights, and then looked under the bonnet at the relay box, where he found the problem. In just a few moments, Jenkins had Thacker safely back on the road, on her way to her job interview.
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Thacker seemed impressed having nothing but praise for Jenkins who refused to ticket the young lady, fixing her car instead. She wrote:
He could’ve easily given me a ticket, but Officer Jenkins stepped out of officer role and into mechanic role to make sure I was straight. #hesablessing
Officers who have a propensity to kindness and empathy wmay see Jenkins’ actions as routine, something police officers do every day. But other law enforcement officials may be quick to criticize Jenkins for not doing his job and ticketing the young lady.
READ MORE: Can Technology and Prisons Get Along? Inmates Raise $100,000 to Purchase Educational Computers
Such daily encounters with the public can and do have very different outcomes. As TFTP has reported, a broken tail light can be a death sentence for some motorists who quickly find themselves staring down the barrel of a loaded weapon pointed in their direction by the very people who are paid to protect them.
Philando Castile was shot and killed by a Minneapolis police officer, Jeronimo Yanez, as he was reaching into his pockets to take out his concealed carry license. Yanez was the only adult anywhere near the car that day who believed Castile was reaching for a weapon. As a result, Yanez opened fire, killing Castile instantly in front of his girlfriend and her child.
Body cavity searches are other ways routine traffic stops can end for motorists who get pulled over for having a burned out brake light. A Baltimore woman had her body cavity searched, presumably for drugs, after an officer pulled her over for having a burned out tail light. The incident and others were all documented in a 163-page Department of Justice report which criticized the city’s policing practices.
We applaud Officer Jenkins for helping Thacker in her time of need and we hope your act of kindness serves as a model for the rest of the nation’s law enforcement officers. It’s time to end the practice of pulling people over for broken tail lights and using the infraction as an excuse to “toss” a vehicle and see how many other misdemeanor and felony charges can be filed against a citizen motorist—all designed for one thing—to separate the citizen from his or her money.
READ MORE: Rape Kit Study Reveals that Serial Rapists are an Epidemic -- But Cops Do Nothing to Stop It
Houston, TX — It is time to strike while the iron is hot. Media coverage of the devastation in Texas is at a peak right now and history shows us that people will help when they see it on TV. However, when coverage stops, so does most of the support. Knowing this, it is time to make your move and show your support to your fellow humans who are suffering dearly right now after being hit by one of the worst storms in US history. But, before you simply click the link and donate to the Red Cross, you should know their history and know there are far better ways to help.
The Red Cross is no stranger to scandal. Putting them on the corruption map was their reaction to the catastrophic earthquake in Haiti. In 2010, hundreds of thousands of Haitians lost their lives in a tragic earthquake. Gail McGovern, the Red Cross’ CEO, and her staff quickly responded with a massive marketing push to raise funds. They received countless celebrity endorsements and even President Obama jumped on the train. In just a few days, they raised a half a billion dollars.
However, of that half billion, the Red Cross kept $125 million for themselves and didn’t disclose it until they were investigated. An investigation later revealed that the rest of the money the Red Cross spent in Haiti resulted in just six permanent homes, NPR and ProPublica found.
But that’s not all. The Red Cross’ response to Katrina was so horrific that some observers noted they were on the verge of criminal wrongdoing. Years later in 2012, it failed again for Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Isaac.
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The response was “worse than the storm,” one Red Cross driver told ProPublica during its jaw-dropping investigation. The Red Cross was more concerned with their public image than helping the storm victims so much so that they ordered employees to drive around empty trucks to make it appear like they were responding. “We were sent way down on the Gulf with nothing to give,” the driver said.
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But that’s not all. Fast forward to 2016 and the Red Cross was responding to the 1000-year flood in Louisiana. Despite Nancy Malone, a spokeswoman for the Red Cross, saying that it was misinformation, there were countless reports of Red Cross stations turning down donations of supplies. Wheel chairs, crutches, canes, diabetic supplies and other goods like clothes and water, were just some of the supplies refused by the Red Cross.
What’s more, when they did take donations during the flood, many of them were reported for throwing them away.
As Justin Elliott notes, writing for Pro Publica, the Red Cross stopped helping people once it was taken over by a team of former AT&T executives who tried to turn it into a profit machine instead of a charity.
As part of her effort to run the Red Cross more like a business, McGovern recruited more than 10 former AT&T executives to top positions. The move stirred resentment inside the organization, with some longtime Red Cross hands referring to the charity as the “AT&T retirement program.’’
McGovern laid out a vision to increase revenue through “consolidated, powerful, breathtaking marketing.”
“This is a brand to die for,” she often said.
The bottom line is that the Red Cross has become a massively centralized bureaucracy that is seemingly more concerned with self-preservation and corporate salaries than they are helping victims of natural disasters.
READ MORE: 25 Ways that the Police Foster Tyranny by Just Doing their Jobs
So, where can you go to help? Well, the answer is not simply donating to a single company who may or may not use that money to help victims. Luckily, there are smaller organizations—far more transparent than the Red Cross—who specialize in certain areas that you can choose to fund.
Below is a list of 10 ways you can help the victims of Harvey.
If you want to help the those who can’t help themselves, Portlight Strategies is working to help to help older adults and those with disabilities. Donate here.
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals of Texas is helping displaced animals. You can donate at www.spca.org/give or sign up to adopt a displaced animal at www.spca.org/foster. Austin Pets Alive, which transferred more than 200 pets to its shelter as of Saturday morning, is also seeking help, as are the Animal Defense League of Texas and the Houston Humane Society. If you see a stranded marine animal, call the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southeast Regional Office at 1-877-942-5343.
Because these aid efforts will be prolonged for months or even years, it is best to give cash so it can be determined how to be spent in the future, which is unknown. However, if you only have supplies, donate food or cash to food banks in your area. Or you can donate to Feeding Texas, a network of food banks across the state. Find your local food bank here.
The Salvation Army says it is providing food and water to first responders and preparing for massive feeding efforts for residents. Unlike their competition, the Salvation Army has a history of giving back as much as possible. Donate here.
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You can give blood. Outside of the Red Cross blood drives, there are also local organizations accepting blood donations, such as Carter BloodCare and the South Texas Blood & Tissue Center.
The Texas Diaper Bank, based in San Antonio, works to meet the basic needs of vulnerable babies, children with disabilities, and seniors. It focuses on providing partner agencies with diapers and goods. Donate here.
Have no cash and no supplies, but lots of time? Volunteer. Volunteer Houston has launched a VIRTUAL Volunteer Reception Center to aid nonprofits and agencies in finding and deploying people to hard-site areas.
The Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund set up by Houston’s mayor, Sylvester Turner, and administered by the Greater Houston Community Foundation is also helping victims. Donate here.
If you want to help children with complex medical needs you can give to the organization Little Lobbyists. Donate here.
If none of the above fit your donation fancy, then perhaps you can try GoFundMe. The crowd sourced group has compiled a list of Harvey Relief Efforts that allow you to pick individual cities, families or homes. You can view the list here.
Please share this article with your friends and family to show how they can really make their donations count—instead of padding executive salaries and massive marketing budgets.
Los Angeles, CA – Cutting edge research reveals that occasionally adopting a diet that mimics the effects of fasting may provide dramatic health benefits.
“Fasting flips a regenerative switch essentially regenerating the entire immune system. It gives the OK for stem cells to go begin proliferating and rebuild the entire system,” said Prof Valter Longo, Professor of Gerontology and the Biological Sciences at the University of California.
A study, led by USC’s Dr. Valter, revealed that a “cycles of a four-day low-calorie diet that mimics fasting (FMD) cut visceral belly fat and elevated the number of progenitor and stem cells in several organs of old mice — including the brain, where it boosted neural regeneration and improved learning and memory,” according to USC News.
The initial tests on mice were part of a three-tiered study on the effects of periodic fasting — testing yeast, mice and humans — which was published in Cell Metabolism on June 18, 2015.
According to a report from USC News:
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Mice, which have relatively short life spans, provided details about fasting’s lifelong effects. Yeast, which are simpler organisms, allowed Longo to uncover the biological mechanisms that fasting triggers at a cellular level. And a pilot study in humans found evidence that the mouse and yeast studies were, indeed, applicable to humans.
Bimonthly cycles that lasted four days of an FMD which started at middle age extended life span, reduced the incidence of cancer, boosted the immune system, reduced inflammatory diseases, slowed bone mineral density loss and improved the cognitive abilities of older mice tracked in the study. The total monthly calorie intake was the same for the FMD and control diet groups, indicating that the effects were not the result of an overall dietary restriction.
In a pilot human trial, three cycles of a similar diet were given to 19 subjects once a month for five days and decreased risk factors and biomarkers for aging, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer with no major adverse side effects, according to Longo.
Dr. Longo notes that strict fasting can be difficult for people to adhere to, and also has the potential to be dangerous, while pointing out that a fasting mimicking diet is much safer and easier.
“Strict fasting is hard for people to stick to, and it can also be dangerous, so we developed a complex diet that triggers the same effects in the body,” said Longo, Edna M. Jones Professor of Biogerontology at the USC Davis School of Gerontology and director of the USC Longevity Institute. “I’ve personally tried both, and the fasting mimicking diet is a lot easier and also a lot safer.”
The fasting mimicking diet cuts a person’s daily caloric intake over the fasting period down to 34 to 54 percent of their daily average, with a specific balance of micronutrients, fats, carbohydrates, and proteins.
In previous groundbreaking research, Longo has shown how fasting can protect immune and other cells from chemotherapy toxicity, while simultaneously starving out cancer cells. Fasting for seventy-two hours protected cancer patients against the toxic impact of chemotherapy:
“Chemotherapy causes significant collateral damage to the immune system. The results of this study suggest fasting may mitigate the harmful effects of chemotherapy,” said co-author Tanya Dorff, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center and Hospital.
“We are investigating the possibility that these effects are applicable to different systems and organs, not just the immune system”, Longo said.
“The good news is the body got rid of the parts in the system which might be damaged or old and inefficient parts, during the fasting. If you start with a system heavily damaged by chemotherapy or aging, fasting cycles can generate, literally, a new immune system,” he said.
USC News reports that:
For 25 days a month, study participants went back to their regular eating habits — good or bad — once they finished the treatment. They were not asked to change their diet and still saw positive changes.
Longo believes that for most normal people, the FMD can be done every three to six months, depending on the abdominal circumference and health status. For obese subjects or those with elevated disease risk factors, the FMD could be recommended by the physician as often as once every two weeks. His group is testing its effect in a randomized clinical trial, which will be completed soon, with more than 70 subjects.
“It’s about reprogramming the body so it enters a slower aging mode, but also rejuvenating it through stem cell-based regeneration,” Longo said. “It’s not a typical diet because it isn’t something you need to stay on.”
“If the results remain as positive as the current ones, I believe this FMD will represent the first safe and effective intervention to promote positive changes associated with longevity and health span, which can be recommended by a physician,” Longo told USC News. “We will soon meet with FDA officers to pursue several FDA claims for disease prevention and treatment.”
Despite the plethora of health benefits associated with fasting, Longo warned against water-only fasting or attempting the fasting mimicking diet without seeking the consultation and supervision of a doctor.
Despite its positive effects, Longo cautioned against water-only fasting – noting that they should only be done in specialized clinics – and warned even about attempting the fasting mimicking diet without first consulting a doctor and seeking their supervision throughout the process.
“Not everyone is healthy enough to fast for five days, and the health consequences can be severe for a few who do it improperly,” he said. “Water-only fasting should only be done in a specialized clinic. Also, certain types of very low-calorie diets, and particularly those with high protein content, can increase the incidence of gallstones in women at risk.”
“In contrast,” Longo added, “the fasting mimicking diet tested in the trial can be done anywhere under the supervision of a physician and carefully following the guidelines established in the clinical trials.”
Longo warned that diabetics should not attempt to undergo a fast or the fasting mimicking diet while receiving insulin, metformin or similar drugs and that subjects with a body mass index of less than 18 should not try the FMD diet.
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Courageous investigative journalist and ex-BBC News correspondent Liz MacKean, 52, who exposed infamous pedophile Jimmy Saville – and ultimately resigned in 2013 over the BBC’s decision to refuse to air her investigation into Saville – has died after suffering a stroke.
Only in 2016 did her investigative work exposing Saville’s rampant molestation of children see the light of day on the BBC, featured as Abused: The Untold Story.
While it was an open secret within the UK corridors of power, it was not yet public knowledge that Saville was a serial child molester, thus MacKean’s investigative work on Saville’s abuse of children would have blown the doors off the UK’s power elite’s dirty secret.
Sadly, the power players in British media worked diligently to cover up the obscene sexually predatory behavior of Saville by not airing MacKean’s expose until after his death. The public only became fully aware of Saville’s rampant pedophilia a year later, after a Panorama documentary on ITV.
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Current BBC director of news, James Harding, paid tribute to MacKean saying she had earned a reputation as a “remarkably tenacious and resourceful reporter”.
“In Northern Ireland, she won the trust of all sides and produced some of the most insightful and hard-hitting reporting of the conflict,” he said.
“It was as an investigative reporter that she really shone, shining a light on issues from the dumping of toxic waste off the African coast to Jimmy Savile, the story for which she is probably best known.”
Rather than tempering the growing public awareness of Saville’s crimes against children, the BBC’s decision to attempt to cover-up his crimes by shelving the story only served to make headlines around the world – with the investigation ultimately being recognized by the London Press Club with a scoop of the year award.
According to a report in UK’s Mirror:
In a Panorma special about its handling of the Jimmy Savile scandal in 2012 MacKean explained how former Newsnight editor Peter Rippon was initially excited.
But she adds: “It was an abrupt change in tone from one day ‘excellent, let’s prepare to get this thing on air’ to ‘hold on’.”MacKean says she was left with the clear impression that Mr Rippon was feeling under pressure.
She wrote to a friend documenting a conversation she had with her boss on November 30 – a month after Savile’s death: “PR [Peter Rippon] says if the bosses aren’t happy [he] can’t go to the wall on this one.”
She tells the programme: “I was very unhappy the story didn’t run because I felt we’d spoken to people who collectively deserved to be heard and they weren’t heard… I felt very much that I’d let them down.”
Interestingly, Mark Thompson, the current CEO of the New York Times, which has often taken to attempting to normalize pedophilia, was Director-General of the BCC at the time, which is considered the most powerful position in the U.K. television industry. Thompson was implicated in attempting to cover-up the open secret of Saville’s rampant molestation of children – a charge which he denies.
READ MORE: International War & Peace Journalist Found Hanged in Airport Bathroom -- Friends Allege Murder
A report from the Telegraph succinctly noted the investigative work MacLean undertook to expose Saville’s crimes against children, and the BBC’s attempt to cover-up his crimes:
The Newsnight reporter must have worked so hard to get Karin Ward to talk openly on camera. Karin was one of several girls from Duncroft Approved School who were groomed by Jimmy Savile, with the promise of trips to Top of the Pops. Karin, now 54, had not spoken about her ordeal for 40 years. When MacKean and producer Meirion Jones tracked her down last November, she was suffering from cancer. How the poor woman must have recoiled from the prospect of a gruelling interview in which she would have to reveal shameful acts she had long suppressed. Somehow, MacKean convinced her.
A tenacious and compassionate reporter, MacKean will have done all she could to reassure her fragile witness. Jimmy “Ow’s‑About-That-Then?” Savile was dead and buried. Ward could trust the BBC flagship news programme to bring the truth about his disgusting behaviour into the open. Here, at long last, was her chance to be heard and believed.
As an interviewer myself, I can imagine the relief, even satisfaction, MacKean felt as the camera rolled, and Karin – the girl she once was still visible in that gaunt, sweet face – told of jaunts in Savile’s Rolls, and the sordid fare for those rides. There was one, yet more monstrous memory: 14-year-old Karin was in Savile’s dressing room at the BBC, which was “full of people”, when she saw a second notorious pop pervert having sex with another Duncroft girl.
Shocking hardly begins to cover it. MacKean must have returned to the office feeling confident she had her story. This was not only a scoop, it was a chance to smash the halo of St Jimmy of Television Centre.
So imagine how MacKean felt when she read an email from her Newsnight boss, Peter Rippon: “I think the key is whether we can establish the CPS did drop the case for the reasons the women say. That makes it a better story – our sources so far are just the women and a second-hand briefing.”
Just the women? That is how a senior news executive chose to describe Karin Ward and the other victims who had overcome fear and self-loathing to speak to the BBC. Four decades before, their protests had gone unheard because they were “only girls” from an approved school. Now they were “just the women”. Just the women who, as vulnerable teenagers, had been molested by a peroxide pied piper using the BBC as both cover story and brothel.
Revealing the breadth of the cover up, in a leaked email, MacKean alleged that Newsnight’s editor had implied the witnesses were not really victims:
READ MORE: Assange Exposes the Truth About Corporate Media: "You Are Reading Weaponized Text’
Essentially, the BBC turned a blind eye as young girls were seduced by the lure of fame and fortune and groomed into participating in orgies in Saville’s dressing room – yet a senior BBC News executive thinks Saville’s offenses weren’t the “worst kind of sexual offenses, etc.”.
As the Telegraph reported:
After Savile died, a year ago on Monday, a commemorative page was put up on the BBC website. As requested, viewers shared their memories of “Ow’s-About-That-Then” Jimmy – only, instead of a light-entertainment legend, they recalled a dark, devious pervert. The Savile tribute page was hastily removed. Shouldn’t that have been the first sign that celebrations needed to be put on hold?
On Tuesday morning on Radio 4, a spokesman for the Association of People Abused in Childhood said something that cut through the week’s lies and obfuscation to pierce your heart: “Children seldom speak out, and when they do they are rarely believed.”
Liz MacKean did believe. Acting in the very best tradition of BBC journalism, she did her research and found out that Jim had fixed it to escape prosecution. She put together a powerful story that vindicated Savile’s victims and damned their doubters. The fact that the story was not broadcast, as Karin Ward was promised, is a scar on the face of the world’s most trusted broadcaster.
Make no mistake that the power-elite cover for their own, and only through the efforts of diligent investigative journalism are the lies of these power players ever exposed. Sadly, the powers that be continue to sweep the scourge of organized pedophilia under the rug as the UK inquiry, which implicated hundreds of politicians and celebrities, fell apart after the public began to understand the scope and breadth of the UK’s organized pedophilia rings.
READ MORE: Death Rattle of Mainstream Media: Multiple Corporate Outlets Now Labeling Each Other "Fake News"
Liz MacKean was a true hero for choosing to go up against a system that routinely attempts to hide the crimes of the rich and famous, while marginalizing the child victims into obscurity. Rather than allowing her work to be summarily dismissed as part of a larger cover-up, MacKean took a principled stand and resigned from the organization she had worked for her entire professional life. The world could certainly learn something from the MacKean’s righteous actions.
On Monday, protesters — reacting to the violence in Charlottesville over the weekend — brought a ladder and some rope to North Carolina and tore down a near century old statue of a Confederate soldier. Unsurprisingly, nothing changed. However, the Durham Police Department and the Durham County Sheriff’s Office announced that they will be seeking criminal charges for those involved in the destruction of the statue.
Watching people wage violence against their fellow human in the name of protecting or tearing down some arbitrary government artifact is as disheartening as it is frustrating. The future cannot be changed by attempting to erase the past.
A statue holds no magical power to make people racists. If anything, the monuments to former racists serve as reminders that the state can and always will be open to the influence of bigotry — and only the state has the power to enforce racism.
An ignorant racist is exactly that — however, if society grants that ignorant racist a political position or a badge and a gun, this ignorant racist now has power over you. Removing or keeping a piece of concrete will never change this.
Racist government laws were brought to an end because people refused to obey them. Had Rosa Parks used her time and energy lobbying to take down a statue instead of disobeying a racist law, rest assured Browder v. Gayle, which ruled that segregated buses were unconstitutional, would’ve never happened.
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Had the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s not organized the Montgomery Bus Boycott, rest assured, desegregation would’ve taken much longer.
Society has the amazing ability to force positive change through nonviolent and nondestructive means. However, all too often, we let emotions rule our thoughts and take to yelling and fighting in the streets and destroying property. This only serves to create more divide and empower the ranks of the racists.
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If we really want to put the brakes on a racist system, fighting with other citizens (even if they are devout racists) will never work.
Boycotts, refusal of service, shaming, exposing — these are the tools we as citizens have against other citizens who are spreading hate and racism.
One amazing private solution to racism actually just happened on Tuesday in Washington. Richard Spencer, the ostensible leader of the white supremacists, was forced to hold his press conference in his own house because businesses refused to allow him to rent their hotels. This campaign of public shaming and refusal of service is far more effective than tearing down a statue or attempting to use the government to ban hate speech.
But what do we do when the state is perpetuating a racist system and prolonging the suffering of minorities? Again, the answer to that question is not to tear down a statue, but to realize where the power of this racism rests.
In America, the area of government that is most responsible for maintaining a racist system, allowing racist actors to oppress their targets with impunity, and perpetuating the suffering and plight of millions through the persecution of morally innocent individuals — is the war on drugs.
Without a doubt, the war on drugs fuels the racist system by targeting minorities and the poor. It serves to increase interactions between police—who are often caught joining the force to act out their racist desires—and the citizens.
The drug war, from the police departments to the court systems, unequivocally targets and punishes minorities harder for the same victimless crimes for which their white counterparts receive slaps on the wrist.
READ MORE: Mainstream Media Exposed Pushing Fake Story on "Mysterious Illness" in States With Legal Weed
As TFTP reported last year, a scathing report in Harper’s Magazine, written by Dan Baum set the record straight and relieved all doubt over the intentions of the drug war. John Daniel Ehrlichman, counsel and domestic policy chief to President Richard Nixon, came clean on the real reason behind the war on drugs — to criminalize blacks and hippies.
According to Baum, he tracked down Ehrlichman in 1994 at his engineering firm in Atlanta, Georgia.
“You want to know what this was really all about?” Ehrlichman bluntly asked Baum of the war on drugs. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
To this day, the racist intentions behind the war on drugs serve to further oppress black communities. The war on drugs is still creating criminals out of otherwise innocent individuals who’re caught in possession of arbitrary substances, removing their opportunity for employment by giving them criminal records, and guaranteeing a difficult future within the working class.
It is no coincidence that the ACLU refers to the drug war as the new Jim Crow.
READ MORE: After Massive Falsified Evidence Exposed, 21,000 Drug Convictions To Be Thrown Out
As Graham Boyd wrote in 2001, in a report in NACLA:
The war on drugs subjects the United States to much of the same harm, with much of the same economic and ideological underpinnings, as slavery itself. Just as Jim Crow responded to emancipation by rolling back many of the newly gained rights of African-Americans, the drug war is again replicating the institutions and repressions of the plantation. And like slavery and Jim Crow, the drug war garners appalling levels of support. Each has its own rhetoric, each its own claims to unassailable legitimacy. The brutality of slavery was justified on economic and paternalistic grounds. Jim Crow pretended that separate but equal treatment sufficed, even as blacks faced daily lynchings and every form of overt discrimination. The drug war claims morality and protection of children as its goals, while turning a blind eye to the racial injustice it promotes. And with all three systems of oppression, much of society sits idly by, accepting the rhetoric that later will seem so unbelievably corrupt. We will one day understand that the war on drugs was a war on people and communities.
If we really want to deal a blow to this racist system we must strike the root. The drug war is one such root. Until we eliminate the cause of this strife, tearing down all the statues in the world will do nothing. Until we realize that we are financing our own oppression and refuse to support the government programs that keep us in the days of Jim Crow, the tyranny will remain.
It is high time we realize this real solution to this real problem before the entire country is so divided that we enter a new American civil war.
