Despite losing the 2016 election largely because the Democrat Party refused to move away from divisive identity based politics they have apparently not learned their lesson, with at least one powerful female Democrat deciding to piggyback off the wave of sexual assault allegations sweeping the country by openly telling Michigan voters to vote for her because she is a women.
Democratic candidate for Michigan’s Attorney General, Dana Nessel, has released an ad for her campaign that directly implies that voters should choose her simply because she does not have a penis and therefore cannot sexually assault someone she works with like many male politicians (on both sides of the aisle) have been accused of over the past month.
“Who can you trust most not to show you their penis in a professional setting? That would be the candidate who doesn’t have one,” Nessel says with a straight face as headlines of male sexual harassment play across the screen.
Nessel attempted to explain the fact that she is now attempting to guilt voters into voting for her as a way to show that they are against sexual harassment in an interview with a local news outlet.
“If you get more women in office, if you get more women in positions of authority, you’re less likely to have issues where someone is pulling out their penis at an inappropriate time in the the workplace,” she told WWJ’s Charlie Langton.
“I’m not saying that all men harass and I’m certainly not saying that women are incapable of sexually harassing, but I know from many years serving as an assistant prosecutor prosecuting sex crimes, honestly, the vast, vast majority of those cases do involve men. So I thought that point needed to be made.”
So there you have it.
The Democrats apparently plan to run on a platform that uses guilt to force Americans to vote for them or risk making it look as if they do not care about the issue of sexual harassment.
In perhaps the most intrusive move of social media platforms" efforts signal as much virtue as possible and appease their potentially-regulating government overlords, Twitter has announced that it is cracking down on what it defines at hate-speech and not just by looking at its own site.
In what amounts to a major shift in Twitter policy, Mashable"s Kerry Flynn reports that the company announced on Friday that it will be monitoring user"s behavior "on and off the platform" and will suspend a user"s account if they affiliate with violent organizations, according to an update to Twitter"s Help Center on Friday.
Abusive Behavior
We believe in freedom of expression and open dialogue, but that means little as an underlying philosophy if voices are silenced because people are afraid to speak up. In order to ensure that people feel safe expressing diverse opinions and beliefs, we prohibit behavior that crosses the line into abuse, including behavior that harasses, intimidates, or uses fear to silence another user’s voice.
Context matters when evaluating for abusive behavior and determining appropriate enforcement actions. Factors we may take into consideration include, but are not limited to whether:
the behavior is targeted at an individual or group of people;
the report has been filed by the target of the abuse or a bystander;
the behavior is newsworthy and in the legitimate public interest.
Violence: You may not make specific threats of violence or wish for the serious physical harm, death, or disease of an individual or group of people. This includes, but is not limited to, threatening or promoting terrorism.
You also may not affiliate with organizations that - whether by their own statements or activity both on and off the platform - use or promote violence against civilians to further their causes.
Abuse: You may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so. We consider abusive behavior an attempt to harass, intimidate, or silence someone else’s voice.
Hateful conduct: You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.
Hateful imagery and display names: You may not use hateful images or symbols in your profile image or profile header. You also may not use your username, display name, or profile bio to engage in abusive behavior, such as targeted harassment or expressing hate towards a person, group, or protected category.
Furthermore, Twitter says it will control the stream of information more broadly...
At times, we may prevent certain content from trending.
As Kerry Flynn notes, these changes comes amid aggressive moves by Twitter to curb abuse and harassment on the site after more than a decade of essentially letting the abusers operate freely.
Over the last week, Twitter has taken action against the accounts of white supremacists. Twitter permanently banned Tim "Treadstone" Gionet, a prominent alt-right troll more widely known as Baked Alaska, earlier this week. It also removed the verification badges of Jason Kessler, one of the organizers of the racist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and of alt-right activist Richard Spencer.
Twitter"s decision to monitor users off site sparked concern from free speech advocates such as Andrew Torba, founder of social network Gab.
"This is a scary precedent to set," he wrote in an email to Mashable.
"Rules like this will only force dissidents and those who are speaking truth to power to silence themselves or risk being silenced by Twitter."
Twitter"s new rules will not be enforced until December 18th...
We’ve updated our rules around abuse and hateful conduct as well as violence and physical harm. These changes will be enforced starting December 18. Read our updated rules here: https://t.co/NGVT3qGFvg
And of course, "if you"re doing nothing wrong, then why would this be an issue for you" will be instant reposte of those defending yet more intrusion within America"s surveillance state.
Looks like Congress needs a visit from the sexual harassment Panda...
Joking aside, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced Tuesday that there will be a new mandatory anti-harassment and discrimination training for all House members and staff. Ryan’s announcement followed the revelation, made by Rep. Jackie Speier, that the House has paid out $15 million in harassment settlements over more than a decade, though a spokesperson later clarified that figure accounted for payouts related to all types of complaints between 1997 and 2016, the Hill reported.
Ryan said in a statement that the goal is "not only to raise awareness, but also make abundantly clear that harassment in any form has no place in this institution.” His announcement also followed a morning-long House hearing on sexual harassment where some members of Congress brought up concerns about sexual harassment in the legislative branch and reviewed the institutions in place for reporting and addressing such behavior, according to CNN.
Ryan called the hearing an "important step" in efforts to combat sexual harassment and added, "As we work with the Administration, Ethics, and Rules committees to implement mandatory training, we will continue our review to make sure the right policies and resources are in place to prevent and report harassment."
The renewed focus on sexual harassment in Congress is part of a broader national conversation about sexual harassment in the workplace that has enmeshed many powerful figures in the media and entertainment industries.
Speier also revealed that there were two active sexual harassers still serving in the House, one a Republican and one a Democrat.
The Office of Compliance (OOC) is responsible for handling sexual harassment complaints and settlements and making payments, which come from a special Treasury fund rather than House office funds. One lawmaker even said one unnamed colleague exposed his penis to her.
Speier and three colleagues shared stories of harassment in an interview published a few weeks ago by the AP.
Rep. Bradley Byrne, who practiced employment law before serving in the House, recommended in testimony before the House Administration Committee on Tuesday that lawmakers accused of harassment should personally repay the Treasury for settlements.
Last week, the Senate passed a bill mandating sexual harassment training for lawmakers and their staff.
Let’s see if the House, where the majority of sexual-harassment-related coverage has focused, follows suit.
Even though 2017 is already the worst year for mass shootings in modern U.S. history, Americans are more worried about cybercrime than violent crime.
That"s according to a new Gallup poll which found that 67 percent of U.S. adults frequently or occasionally fret about having personal, credit card or financial information stolen by hackers. 66 percent also worry about the threat presented by identity theft.
In comparison with cybercrime, Statista"s Niall McCarthy notes that anxiety about conventional crime forms is less prevalent with a large gap to the third-biggest worry - having a car stolen or broken into. That"s a frequent concern for 38 percent of people while 36 percent tend to worry about burglary when they are away from home.
More serious crimes such as muggings, murders and sexual assault are much further down the list, but why?
The reason cybercrime comes first is more than likely due to far higher levels of victimization, along with substantial coverage in the media. Gallup also found that a quarter of households have experienced hackers stealing their personal information while a mere three percent have experienced a burglary.
A new survey published by The Brookings Institution finds that about one-in-five undergraduate students approve of using violence to shut down controversial speakers.
A majority of undergraduate students at U.S. four-year colleges and universities also agreed with a hypothetical protest in which a group “opposed to the speaker disrupts the speech by loudly and repeatedly shouting so that the audience cannot hear the speaker.”
According to the survey, 51 percent of students agreed that such a demonstration would be acceptable, while 49 percent disagreed. Not surprisingly, the response to the hypothetical scenario was also largely partisan, with 62 percent of Democrats approving of the protest, compared to just 39 percent of Republicans .
“I find the numbers in the above table to be highly concerning, because they show that a very significant fraction of students, across all categories, believe it is acceptable to silence (by shouting) a speaker they find offensive,” wrote John Villasenor, the author of the survey and a Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow.
The study further found that 19 percent of responders said that they approved of using violence “to prevent the speaker from speaking.” An 81 percent majority, on the other hand, did not approve of the violent approach.
“A surprisingly large fraction of students believe it is acceptable to act—including resorting to violence—to shut down expression they consider offensive,” Villasenor wrote.
While 39 percent of responders indicated that hate speech is protected by the First Amendment, 44 percent said that it is not protected by the document. Another 16 percent remained undecided.
In one survey question, the students were also asked if they prefered a learning environment where certain views are prohibited versus an open learning environment “where students are exposed to all types of speech and viewpoints.”
According to the study, 53 percent of responders said that they prefer the former while only 47 percent chose the latter.
“The survey results establish with data what has been clear anecdotally to anyone who has been observing campus dynamics in recent years: Freedom of expression is deeply imperiled on U.S. campuses,” Villasenor wrote.
“In fact, despite protestations to the contrary (often with statements like ‘we fully support the First Amendment, but…’),” he asserted that “freedom of expression is clearly not, in practice, available on many campuses, including many public campuses that have First Amendment obligations.”
Villasenor surveyed a pool of 1,500 undergraduate students at U.S. four-year colleges and universities between August 17 - 31. The margin of error is between 2-6 percent.
Grand Praire, TX — Rashaun A. Barnes had committed no crime and had harmed no one on the afternoon of July 31 when he was harassed and then attacked by police for no reason. The subsequent assault Barnes allegedly received from the officer has now left him permanently disfigured.
On that fateful afternoon, Barnes, 39, was standing on a public sidewalk outside of a neighborhood convenience store. That’s when, according to Barnes, he was approached by an officer who made him sit on the curb for absolutely no reason.
Even though he disagreed with the officer’s choice to harass him, Barnes complied with the officer’s orders. However, after Barnes says he sat there for 30 minutes in the brutal Texas heat — and never given a reason for the stop — he had enough and decided to walk home.
At this point, according to Barnes, the officer deployed his taser and everything went black.
Barnes woke up in an ambulance in severe pain with massive tissue damage to his face and arms. He was not accompanied by the officer who did this to him and he was never charged with a crime.
The cop simply assaulted him and moved on. However, Barnes is not standing for the abuse and he wants justice to be served.
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As the Root reports, Civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who represents the family of Jordan Edwards, the 15-year-old boy shot and killed by Balch Springs, Texas, Police Officer Roy Oliver in April, is also representing Barnes.
According to Merrit, the police department broke policy by failing to fill out an incident report. He is now calling for a full investigation into Barnes’ assault.
READ MORE:Cops Use Informant to Frame a Business Owner by Planting Crack in His Store
“This is a clear case of racial profiling and excessive force,” Merritt said. “The officer responsible must be immediately suspended and appropriately prosecuted. A full investigation into the incident must be conducted to determine what role other officers may have played in a cover up and/or violating departmental procedures concerning reporting the incident.”
Below are some of the graphic photos showing the injuries sustained by Barnes after the officer allegedly assaulted him.
Rashaun Barnes (Credit: Lee Merritt) Rashaun Barnes (Credit: Lee Merritt)
In the video below Barnes explains the abuse he sustained that day. It is truly despicable.
When a police officer can walk up to a man on the street — who has done nothing wrong — detain, assault, and leave him permanently disfigured, something is terribly wrong. When this officer can do all these things and face no consequences and even make no record of it, the time for radical reform is now.
As the Free Thought Project has reported on numerous occasions, minorities and poor people are the hardest hit when it comes to rampant police harassment. Time and time again, otherwise innocent people are targeted by police for revenue collection or to fish for crimes only to end up in the hospital or worse.
Police, we are told, are here to keep us safe and protect us from the bad guys. However, public safety all too often takes a back seat to revenue collection. Time and time again, the Free Thought Project has exposed quota schemes in which officers were punished for not writing enough tickets.
All too often we hear the ridiculous statement from the apologist crowd saying, “If you don’t break the law, you have nothing to worry about.”
READ MORE:Having Cash While Black -- Rapper Attacked by Police After He Withdrew $200K to Buy Car
However, that statement couldn’t be further from the truth. Just ask Barnes.
Former NSA official William Binney sums this myth up quite accurately, “The problem is, if they think they’re not doing anything that’s wrong, they don’t get to define that. The central government does.”
While most everyone in America commits the same infractions designed for revenue collection, most of the people targeted by police for these crimes are the poor, minorities, and the mentally ill.
As the death of Mike Brown in Ferguson exposed, in 2013, African-Americans accounted for 86 percent of traffic stops, while making up only 63 percent of Ferguson’s population.
For those too poor to pay their tickets, routine traffic stops in Ferguson ended up in repeated imprisonment due to mounting fines. Ferguson was running a de facto debtors’ prison.
Revenue collection, persecution of the poor, and debtor’s prisons take place in every county, in every city, across every state. This institutionalized cruelty is little more than a day’s work for the millions of bureaucrats involved in the racket. Barnes just so happened to find himself right in the middle of it.
New York, NY — Former NYPD sergeant Michael Iscenko is facing charges of third-degree sex abuse, after he was accused of flinging his semen at a female co-worker. Not only has the victim come forward to testify against Iscenko, but there is also video and DNA evidence against him, proving that he is guilty of the crime.
The footage that has surfaced since the event shows the former officer sneaking up behind an office worker in the NYPD building, and launching some type of liquid substance onto her leg before running out of the office.
On the stand, the victim told the jury that, “I turned back because I felt someone behind me and when I turned back, Michael, he was behind me.”
“I saw Mike behind me and told him, ‘Ewww! Why did you do that?’ in disgust, and he just looked at me and walked to his office,” she said.
The victim also reported that Iscenko had sexually harassed her on multiple other occasions.
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Assistant District Attorney Emily Ching said in court that the victim reported ongoing sexual advances and comments from Iscenko throughout their work relationship.
Ching told jurors that the officer “demonstrated that he was gratifying his own sexual desire” when he forced his bodily fluids onto her.
The harassment was corroborated by another NYPD employee who told NY Daily News that he “was apparently so enamored by her that he threw semen on her.”
According to the woman’s attorneys, the substance was tested in a lab, which showed that it did, in fact, belong to Iscenko. However, Iscenko’s attorney has contested the results of the tests, and is insisting that the substance was in fact saliva, and not semen. The defense has argued that the tests only prove that some type of substance came from Iscenko, but not what type of bodily fluid it actually was.
READ MORE:Cop Forgets About the 1st Amendment and YouTube, Claims "It"s Against the Law" to Film Him
“You will hear the experts disagree about whether the material was semen or saliva,” defense attorney Michael Horn argued.
“Something landed on [the victim’s] leg. To put it in New York terms, was it schmutz or was it semen?” he said.
Defense attorney Ching argued that “there is no other substance this can be other than seminal fluid.”
Horn was also extremely aggressive in his cross-examination of the victim, accusing her of fabricating the charges against the officer so she could gain a financial settlement.
Matthew Weinick, another lawyer for the defense also went on the attack, blaming the victim and making accusations of ulterior motives.
“The allegations are just so outrageous and extreme and the department deviated so much from typical police procedures that it didn’t appear they were operating in good faith and there was an ulterior motive,” Weinick said.
After Iscenko was fired, he sued the police department for discrimination, claiming that he was fired because he was white, not because of his sexual assault charges. However, the lawsuit was quickly dismissed by Manhattan Federal Judge Lorna Schofield, who said that Iscenko’s claims did not “plausibly” suggest discrimination.
The police decided to quiet the story down by paying the victim a $147,250 settlement.
Iscenko is hoping that a new DNA test of the substance will exonerate him, but even if the tests do show that the substance was semen, he is only facing a maximum of three months in jail.
If this is the way that some officers will treat their co-workers, it is scary to imagine the lack of respect that they will have for people that they encounter on the street.
Smyrna, GA — Sherman Jackson is an Army veteran who served four years, fighting for his country in Iraq in 2011. But Jackson, like so many other veterans, got a rude awakening when he came home.
Sherman said one of his most traumatic times was when he had to gather the remains of his fellow soldier and friend, David Hickman, who was killed when an IED exploded. Watching his brothers in arms perish on the battlefield was devastating, but not as upsetting as his recent arrest for obstruction of justice — for sitting in his car.
Sherman, who receives complete disability from the Army, having suffered from PTSD, now spends his time hosting an AirB&B property and serving as a volunteer with Atlanta’s Meals on Wheels program.
He was visiting his brother in Smyrna, Georgia, whom he was helping move to Atlanta to live with him. Damond Jackson, Sherman’s brother, had been experiencing numerous instances of what he considered harassment by police, and Sherman was going to take him to Atlanta, where the two thought they’d be safer.
Damond’s experiences with police have left him scarred and suffering from PTSD.
After the two packed up, they started their trip from Smyrna to Atlanta but were hungry, so they planned to eat at a local Zaxby’s. But, first, they decided to fill up the tank in Sherman’s 2006 BMW 325i.
The first gas pump they tried wasn’t working, so a BP employee told them to use another one which was functioning. They circled the pumps and went to the one the employee recommended.
Sherman says his pricey car may have attracted someone’s attention, along with the fact the two men had gone to two different pumps — but, whomever it was, stopped an officer and told him the two Black men in the White BMW were “acting suspiciously.”
READ MORE:WATCH: "He doesn"t belong here!": Cops Almost Kill Man for Being from Out of Town
After leaving the BP, they drove across the street to Zaxby’s. They parked and were getting ready to go inside. Sherman had been letting his brother drive his car, and said it was only the second time he’d ever done so. Damond was in the driver’s seat when police swooped in and blocked their egress from the parking spot.
Because they ‘fit the description’ of another group of black males, they had just been stopped for ‘pumping gas while black.’
Damond started recording right away because he knew photography is not a crime, and he wanted to document the encounter. Officer Michael Brooks approached the car and told them someone at the gas station said there were some “girls in the car.”
Damond asked why he was being blocked in by the police cruiser.
“Brooks, I haven’t done anything. Nothing!” he said. “I ain’t gotta say nothin’ bro,” he explained. “You got the wrong information from that guy. False report!”
“What have I done wrong,” Damond asked.
“I haven’t said you’ve done anything wrong,” Brooks answered.
“Am I being detained?” he questioned.
Brooks said he was being detained for his behavior. “If anybody else did this I’d be acting the same way,” he said.
Understandably, Damond got angry, but Sherman tried to calm down his brother.
“This is White people area, bro. We ain’t supposed to be here,” the former soldier explained.
“This shit happens to me all the time, bro!” Damond said.
“This is the first time I’ve seen it,” Sherman told his brother.
After backup officers arrived to investigate why the two Black men were parking while being Black, Damond attempted, once again, to explain himself to a Smyrna Police Department Sergeant.
READ MORE:"Your Son"s Life was Only Worth $100K" Cop uses Facebook, Taunts Family of Unarmed Man He Killed
“I need a supervisor here. You have to come here. I’m asking you to come here. That is not obstruction. I have done nothing to get arrested for,” he implored.
Sergeant Cason approached the car and explained that someone called the police because the complainant said the men were engaged in “some type of suspicious activity.”
Damond asked, “What is this investigation about, for pumping gas?”
“Pumping gas is suspcious activity?” he asked again.
Sherman was arrested, first for “obstruction of justice,” for failing to show his ID. The former soldier and war veteran explained to the officer that he was aware of his rights and knew that the only reason why he had to show his ID was if he had purchased or was in possession of a firearm, was drinking, or was driving.
“At this point, he was just trying to intimidate me,” Sherman said, calling it a “donkey show.”
Damond was arrested for “obstruction of justice” and “possession” of less than two grams of marijuana, a misdemeanor.
Sherman, the former soldier who’s on full medical disability, did explain to the officer that he was a disabled veteran, as exhibited on his license plate; but, “he didn’t care.”
“Race had everything to do with it,” he said, adding, “I’m pretty sure if I had been a White man or White woman, I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have happened at all.”
Damond, who’s been arrested on many occasions but has never been convicted of any felonies, says most of his charges were for “obstruction” or “disorderly conduct” — and his run-ins with the law have left him traumatized:
READ MORE:WATCH: "He doesn"t belong here!": Cops Almost Kill Man for Being from Out of Town
“I’ve been harassed since I turned 18. Most of the time I’m so scared that I’m going to get shot, I don’t even reach for my cell phone to record.”
While in jail in 2008 — where he spent 3 months, even though later all charges were dropped against him — he says he was tortured for giving out an extra Kool-aid to a fellow inmate.
“The cop put me in a choke-hold. Other cops came and handcuffed me behind my back, shackled me, and beat me when I was in Cobb County jail,” he said describing why he’s now receiving disability benefits for PTSD.
In the video, one can clearly see Damond was upset, as the footage is shaky from the cell phone being held in his hands. Sherman and Damond are both planning to sue.
“I want people to know police harassment is real,” he said. “It’s out there. If it doesn’t happen to them, they might not think so…but it’s happening to Black males with dreadlocks.”
“I’m never going back to Cobb County, Georgia,” Sherman said, thankful he and his brother eventually made it to Atlanta. Sherman got out of jail a few days ago, after spending 30 hours behind bars for not presenting his identification. Damond spent three days in jail — where he caught the flu and had to be hospitalized.
Rashaun Barnes (Credit: Lee Merritt) 
Rashaun Barnes (Credit: Lee Merritt)
