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How do you know woke 'Star Wars' is a failure? When social justice warriors start blaming 'Russian bots'

Nebojsa Malic
RT
Thu, 26 Dec 2019 17:23 UTC
Rise of Skywalker
© REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
Partisan hacks in both media and entertainment have forced even the Force to become political. But after the new and woke 'Star Wars' films underperformed with American moviegoers, the activists blamed - who else - Russia!

The latest - and perhaps the last - installment in the saga, 'The Rise of Skywalker,' premiered the weekend before Christmas. While the box office receipts have reportedly been anemic, Rotten Tomatoes review averages show that the audience liked it as much as 2015's 'The Force Awakens.' By contrast, critics hated it - almost as much as moviegoers hated 2017's 'The Last Jedi,' which was beloved by critics and activists alike.

That clearly cannot stand, according to one Annalee Newitz, whose tirade about 'Star Wars' was published in the New York Times on Christmas eve. The best she can say about 'Skywalker' is that it's the Joe Biden of 'Star Wars' movies, managing to "deliver a few liberal-sounding messages," while the previous two movies were like Barack Obama, and "gave fans truly diverse casts and grappled in a relatively nuanced way with the class and race conflicts that have hovered at the margins of every 'Star Wars' story."
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Christmas Tree

Hiker killed by toppled giant redwood tree in Northern California's Muir Woods National Monument Park

Bill Hutchinson
ABC News
Sat, 28 Dec 2019 04:50 UTC
Muir Woods National Park
© Eric Risberg/AP, FILE
Visitors walk along a pathway near the entrance to the Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, Calif., March 25, 2008.Visitors walk along a pathway near the entrance to the Muir Woods National Monument in Marin County, Calif., March 25, 2008.
A 28-year-old tourist from Minnesota was killed on Christmas Eve when a giant redwood tree toppled over on him while he was hiking in Northern California's Muir Woods National Monument Park, authorities said on Thursday.

Subhradeep Dutta of Edina, Minnesota, was hiking on the marked Hillside trail with other people when the 200-foot tall tree, measuring 4-foot in diameter, came crashing down, according to the Marin County Corner's Office.

The freak incident occurred about 4:30 p.m. in the national park about 16 miles north of San Francisco, the coroner's office said in a statement.

"Upon the arrival of first responders to the scene, a male subject was discovered unconscious and lifeless beneath a large redwood tree, which had unexpectedly fallen to the ground," the statement reads.
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Airplane

Another executive departs as Boeing tries to correct course


ABC News
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 08:28 UTC
Mike Luttig
A close adviser to Boeing's ousted CEO will also leave the company.

Mike Luttig was Boeing's general counsel from 2006 until this spring.

Shortly after the crash of a second Boeing 737 Max, the companies premiere aircraft, he was assigned to head the company's legal strategy and to advise the board.

Luttig, who will retire next week, is the latest executive to leave the beleaguered company. In addition to CEO Dennis Muilenburg who was pushed out this week, Kevin McAllister, the head of Boeing Commercial Airplanes, was forced out in October. Anne Toulouse, senior vice president of communications, will leave at the end of the year.

Comment: See also:

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Newspaper

India: PM Modi reminds the "Rights and Responsibilities" of the Protesters and Citizens


NDTV
Fri, 27 Dec 2019 04:50 UTC
PM Modi's comments came amid protests in several parts of the country against the Citizenship Amendment Act, which many have termed as "unconstitutional".
Narendra Modi
© Suhaimi Abdullah/Getty Images
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Wednesday condemned the destruction of public property during violent agitations against the Citizenship Amendment Act over the last few weeks, asking protesters to introspect if their actions have been "good or not".

"I want to ask people who resorted to violence in Uttar Pradesh to sit at home and ask themselves whether what they did is good or not. They destroyed buses and public property that belongs to the future generation," he said at the foundation stone-laying ceremony of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee Medical University in Lucknow.
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Newspaper

How 'Woke' tore through 2019 to become word of the year

Martyn Andrews
RT
Tue, 24 Dec 2019 14:03 UTC
Annual Stockholm Pride Parade
© Reuters/TT News Agency/Stina Stjernkvist
Annual Stockholm Pride Parade
2019 will be memorable for many reasons: Boris Johnson got elected, Green Book won best picture Oscar, Trump got impeached and Global Language Monitor announced 'Woke' as Word of the Year.

According to Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst at the Global Language Monitor, the word 'Woke' and society's new identitarian outlook on life has been gathering steam for a decade and "sins of the past are now viewed in the context of the present as subjects to be rectified, awakened to the call of social justice."

The electrifying buzzword has set cultural, social and political platforms alight in 2019, and it's been an eventful year in the land of Woke, as passionate social justice warriors battled it out against anti-PC crusaders. To prove the literary zeitgeist of the word, British comedian Andrew Doyle (aka Titania McGrath) even fooled a UK publication by pretending to be a horrified author appalled at revolting jokes purely because it pushes the "woke" media agenda. The fake author called for "hate speech" investigations into popular comedians who are "offensive" and just "not funny." Doyle, 1 - The brainwashing mainstream media, 0.

Comment: See also,

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Stop

City tells church it will lose religious designation because it shelters homeless people

John Vibes
The Mind Unleashed
Thu, 26 Dec 2019 16:53 UTC
Denison Avenue United Church of Christ
The order from the city of Cleveland was posted on the door of the church on Christmas Eve.

Earlier this week, on Christmas Eve, an order from the city of Cleveland was posted on the door of the Denison Avenue United Church of Christ, demanding that they kick out the homeless people that they had been allowing to sleep on their property or face losing their status with the city as a religious organization.

The order came from the Cleveland Division of Fire, citing code violations that they claim are dangerous for the inhabitants. The city is following the letter of the law, in this case, suggesting that it is illegal to change the official use of the building without first filling out the required paperwork and making significant changes to the property.

According to the city's building department, for the church to give shelter to homeless people, they would need to go through a costly process of not only updating the building but also getting the required permits and licenses that would designate the building as a homeless shelter.

Comment: You'd think the city's administration would at least attempt to materially help the church so that homeless people could continue to have a roof over their heads, and the church can continue being a church.

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Eye 2

Boy, 10, is forced to take his shirt off before boarding a flight because it had a picture of a snake on it

Nic White
Daily Mail
Wed, 25 Dec 2019 23:47 UTC
boy snake shirt

Stevie Lucas was on a family trip from New Zealand to South Africa to visit his grandparents when security officers said he couldn't board with this t-shirt on
A family claims their 10-year-old son was forced to change his t-shirt before boarding a flight because it had a snake on it.

Stevie Lucas was on a family trip from New Zealand to South Africa to visit his grandparents on December 17.

His parents Steve and Marga said security officers at Johannesburg airport told them snake toys and printed clothing was not allowed on board.

The stated reason was that it could, in their determination, harm passengers or crew by causing anxiety, according to local media.

Ms Lucas told her son to turn his black t-shirt, which has a large green snake coming from over the shoulder, inside out to avoid any further drama.

Airport security footage showed Stevie taking off his shirt at security and putting it back on after turning it inside out.

Comment: See also:

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HAL9000

It seemed like a popular chat app. It's secretly a spy tool

Mark Mazzetti, Nicole Perlroth and Ronen Bergman
The New York Times
Mon, 23 Dec 2019 12:58 UTC
Aldar Properties
© Aldar-Sorough/Reuters
People walk past the headquarters of Aldar Properties at Al Raha Beach in Abu Dhabi, January 28, 2013.
It is billed as an easy and secure way to chat by video or text message with friends and family, even in a country that has restricted popular messaging services like WhatsApp and Skype.

But the service, ToTok, is actually a spying tool, according to U.S. officials familiar with a classified intelligence assessment and a New York Times investigation into the app and its developers. It is used by the government of the United Arab Emirates to try to track every conversation, movement, relationship, appointment, sound and image of those who install it on their phones.

ToTok, introduced only months ago, was downloaded millions of times from the Apple and Google app stores by users throughout the Middle East, Europe, Asia, Africa and North America. While the majority of its users are in the Emirates, ToTok surged to become one of the most downloaded social apps in the U.S. last week, according to app rankings and App Annie, a research firm.

ToTok amounts to the latest escalation in a digital arms race among wealthy authoritarian governments, interviews with current and former U.S. foreign officials and a forensic investigation showed. The governments are pursuing more effective and convenient methods to spy on foreign adversaries, criminal and terrorist networks, journalists and critics — efforts that have ensnared people all over the world in their surveillance nets.

Comment: See also:

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No Entry

Constitutional Court ruling: Turkey's Wikipedia ban violates freedom of speech


Sputnik
Thu, 26 Dec 2019 18:25 UTC
Wikipedia office
© AP/Eric Risberg
Wikipedia Foundation, San Francisco
According to the Turkish newspaper Daily Sabah, six out of ten adjudicators who reviewed the case stated the ban on Wikipedia, initially imposed on 29 April 2017, violated citizens' rights to freedom of expression. Wikipedia's parent organisation, the Wikimedia Foundation, brought the case to the Constitutional Court.

Turkey's government-imposed ban on access to online encyclopedia Wikipedia violates citizens' right to freedom of expression, the Constitutional Court ruled on Thursday, as reported by media.

In May, Wikimedia brought their case against the Turkish ban to the European Court of Human Rights. According to Wikimedia, the encyclopedia's refusal to remove two articles - about the Syrian war and state-sponsored terrorism - prompted Ankara to block all access to Wikipedia.
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Attention

French pension strikers march into fourth week of protests, nearly shutting down railway travel


RT
Thu, 26 Dec 2019 19:32 UTC
France protest pension reform
© AFP / STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN
A demonstration in front of Gare de l'Est train station in Paris on December 26, 2019.
French workers objecting to President Macron's pension reforms are marching in Paris again. The strike that disrupted Christmas travel plans and cost hundreds of millions has now reached its fourth week.

Thousands of people flooded the streets of Paris on Thursday in their latest march against the proposed reform that seeks to merge the current 42 pension schemes into one. The proposal was rejected by unions and workers in many professions as it strips early retirement options for doing physically demanding or hazardous jobs.

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