02/9/16

Beyonce Goes All In On RACISM: Honors Black Panthers… Hates On Cops

By: Terresa Monroe-Hamilton

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Several of the backing dancers posted this image online following their performance demanding ‘Justice 4 Mario Woods’ a black man shot dead by police in San Francisco in December of last year.

Racism sells. Beyonce is proof of that at the Super Bowl this last weekend. Rudy Giuliani is right… her performance was disgraceful and a slap in the face to every cop out there. This is real life, not black Hollywood. The performance promoted militant violence and was dangerous just as Giuliani said. Beyonce and her dancers dressed in militant black leather with bandoliers and Black Panther-style berets. They utilized the Black Power salute and performed Beyonce’s Formation, which is a black pride, Black Lives Matter, uber racist anthem if I’ve ever heard one. It also accuses cops of killing blacks and is just vile and raunchy beyond belief. The singers formed an X in deference to Malcolm X, who was a black radical revolutionary involved with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and was also a member of the Nation of Islam. Nice. You know who I’m disappointed in? Bruno Mars. He dressed in the same garb as Beyonce and a majority of the performers were of course black… except for Coldplay. This was the most racist, cop-hating atrocity yet.

All this Black Lives Matter crap where the dancers hold up a sign saying ‘Justice 4 Mario Woods’ is just deplorable. He was a black man shot by police in San Francisco when he would not drop the knife he was brandishing. He was a gang member and had just stabbed someone. Still armed with the kitchen knife allegedly used in the stabbing, Woods was reportedly pepper-sprayed and shot with less-lethal beanbag ammunition, but was still standing and refusing to surrender, according to police. Officers demanded he drop the knife, but Woods moved towards an officer who was approaching him and was subsequently shot 15 times. Gee, another thug in the midst of a crime who gets shot and killed and the activists screamed it was unnecessary. In whose world? He threatened cops after committing a violent crime. In my book, no big loss there.

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This was militant racism on show. It obviously took aim at police officers who turned it off during the halftime show and other officers literally turned their backs on the show. I don’t want to see this crap much less have my kids see it. Former Illinois congressman turned radio host Joe Walsh also lashed out after Beyonce’s performance, writing; ‘Beyonce sings anti-police song at halftime after receiving police escort to the Super Bowl. Liberal hypocrite.’ He then added; ‘Halftime at the Super Bowl – an embrace of the Black Panthers & Black Lives Matter and an attack on our Police. Welcome to today’s America.’ Anticipation had been building for her performance after she unexpectedly dropped the music video for the song on Saturday. The video, the most political Beyonce has released, showed scenes of white police lining up against a black teenager and graffiti that reads ‘stop shooting us’. It’s obvious this was done for marketing, but I also believe she backs black militants and a potential racial uprising. It’s despicable. There is a reason that the Black Panthers were named ‘the greatest threat to the internal security of the country’ by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. And this is paying homage to the Nation of Islam and uber hatemonger Louis Farrakhan as well. Beyonce has gone all the way to the bottom and is scraping evil here. On Friday, Beyonce’s husband, Jay-Z, pledged $1.5 million to the Black Lives Matter movement.

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Giuliani was simply incensed over the whole display and I don’t blame him one little bit. ‘This is football, not Hollywood, and I thought it was really outrageous that she used it as a platform to attack police officers who are the people who protect her and protect us, and keep us alive,’ Giuliani said during an appearance on FOX & Friends Monday morning. ‘And what we should be doing, in the African-American community and in all communities, is build up respect for police officers and focus on the fact that when something does go wrong, OK, we’ll work on that.’

The Super Bowl is supposed to be all American and I hate to break it to the likes of Beyonce, but that includes all races. How would everyone like it if someone did a song honoring the KKK at halftime? That’s akin to what Beyonce accomplished when honoring the Black Panthers and Malcolm X the way she did. Sheriff Clarke expressed his disgust with her as well.

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Police were outraged over Beyonce’s performance and I’m not surprised by that. Michelle Obama dressed to salute the same racist theme and sought Beyonce’s approval on her outfit. Shameful. This performance should never have been approved and surely it was the blackest football team in history, the Carolina Panthers, who saw that it was sanctioned. Because Beyonce is black, she got a pass. That’s unjust in the extreme. Those same cops gave her an escort to that game and protected her while she was there. For their efforts, she insinuated they were killers. That arrogant hatred is despicable. She’s definitely aligned with Jay-Z and Kanye West on these issues. Many people boycotted the halftime celebration, if not the whole game over this. I can relate. Beyonce won’t apologize for this – like I said, racism sells.

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From the Daily Mail:

The Black Panthers were an infamous armed group that was founded in Oakland in 1966, close to where the Super Bowl is being played this evening, and operated during the Sixties and Seventies.

The group, once dubbed ‘the greatest threat to the internal security of the country’ by FBI director J Edgar Hoover, was formed in 1966 to combat oppression of black people in the U.S.

While previous civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King had advocated a policy of non-violence, the Panthers supported the use of force in order to hit at authorities and protect members.

Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, was sent to prison in 1946 for larceny and breaking and entering after a life of petty crime and trouble with the law.

But once in prison he discovered Islam and joined the Lost-Found Nation of Islam, dropping his ‘slave’ last name and adopting the letter ‘X’, symbolic of a stolen identity, in its place.

After he was paroled from prison in 1952 Malcolm X went on to challenge the mainstream non-violent civil rights movement of Martin Luther King Jr.

Instead he called on his followers to defend themselves from white aggression ‘by any means necessary’, and advocated black rifle clubs.

His fundamental belief, taken from the teachings of Elijah Muhammad, was that the white man was the devil, and that blacks could never live in harmony with whites.

His autobiography, and numerous public speeches, formed the basis for the black power movement which gained popularity in the 1960s and 1970s.

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From KeyWiki.org on the Black Panthers:

The Black Panther Party was a militant African-American organization that “advocated guerrilla warfare as taught by Mao Tsetung and Che Guevara for achieving revolution in the United States.” On April 25th, 1967, the first issue of The Black Panther, the party’s official news organ, went into distribution. In the following month, the party marched on the California state capital, fully armed, in protest of the state’s attempt to outlaw carrying loaded weapons in public. Bobby Seale read a statement of protest; while the police responded by immediately arresting him and all 30 armed Panthers. This early act kindled the fires of the burning resistance movement in the United States; soon initiating minority workers to take up arms and form new Panther chapters outside the state.

And if you were curious what the Black Panthers wanted, here is their 10 Point Program – tell me if this doesn’t sound strangely familiar:

We Want Freedom. We Want Power To Determine The Destiny Of Our Black Community.

We believe that Black people will not be free until we are able to determine our destiny.

We Want Full Employment For Our People.

We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American businessmen will not give full employment, then the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.

We Want An End To The Robbery By The Capitalists Of Our Black Community.

We believe that this racist government has robbed us, and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules.

Forty acres and two mules were promised 100 years ago as restitution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities. The Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for the genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered six million Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over fifty million Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.

We Want Decent Housing Fit For The Shelter Of Human Beings.

We believe that if the White Landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

We Want Education For Our People That Exposes The True Nature Of This Decadent American Society.

We Want Education That Teaches Us Our True History And Our Role In The Present-Day Society.

We believe in an educational system that will give to our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.

We Want All Black Men To Be Exempt From Military Service.

We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.

We Want An Immediate End To Police Brutality And Murder Of Black People.

We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States gives a right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self- defense.

We Want Freedom For All Black Men Held In Federal, State, County And City Prisons And Jails.

We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.

We Want All Black People When Brought To Trial To Be Tried In Court By A Jury Of Their Peer Group Or People From Their Black Communities, As Defined By The Constitution Of The United States.

We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peer group. A peer is a person from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and are being, tried by all-White juries that have no understanding of the “average reasoning man” of the Black community.

We Want Land, Bread, Housing, Education, Clothing, Justice And Peace.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect of the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute a new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.

Along with militant black power, the Black Panthers wanted communism, by any means necessary. The BPP was credited with coining one of the most offensive slogans of the era: “Off the pig,” which was a crude invitation to kill police officers. Another BPP slogan was “The Revolution has come, it’s time to pick up the gun!” It was out of this culture of militant violence, especially towards the police, that radicals like Eldrige Cleaver gained influence and that the Black Liberation Army eventually grew.

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The practices of the late Malcolm X were deeply rooted in the theoretical foundations of the Black Panther Party. Malcolm X was both a militant revolutionary and a role model. The Panthers followed Malcolm X’s belief of international working class unity across the spectrum of color and gender, and thus united with various minority and white revolutionary groups. From the tenets of Maoism they set the role of their Party as the vanguard of the revolution and worked to establish a united front, while from Marxism they addressed the capitalist economic system, embraced the theory of dialectical materialism and represented the need for all workers to forcefully take over the means of production.

While the BPP only flirted with the concept of fully cooperating with white radical groups in order to achieve their goals, several white radicals and leftist groups offered assistance to the BPP due to their shared anti-American worldview. For example, the eighth national convention of the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) in December of 1968 met in Chicago and featured Black Panther Party speakers. The YSA fully supported armed black guerrilla warfare. “Both Hillary Clinton and Bill Lanh Lee began their political careers as law students at Yale by organizing demonstrations in 1970 to shut down the university and stop the trial of seven Panther leaders accused of ordering the torture and execution of a black youth named Alex Rackley.”

Eldrige Cleaver believed that the success of the struggle ultimately depended on replicating the communist revolutions that had already taken place in other parts of the world. “If you look around the world,” he wrote, “you will see that the only countries which have liberated themselves and managed to withstand the tide of counter-revolution are precisely those countries that have strongly Marxist-Leninist parties.”

Author Paul Berman said, “The scary nature of the Panther movement was easy enough to detect. The paramilitary leather uniforms, the titles like ‘Minister of Information’ and ‘Minister of Defense,’ the jailhouse tone, the apology for rape in Cleaver’s writings, the lapses into anti-Semitism, the assassination campaigns against the police – everything advertised the terror and dictatorship that were bound to spring from Panther power, if the party ever had the bad luck to acquire any.”

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Beyonce had the opportunity to reach millions and bring people together. Instead, she deliberately stirred racial animosity and pushed militant black pride above patriotism and love of country. Cops are not indiscriminately killing black people. They have one of the world’s toughest jobs and they put their lives on the line every day for all us… even Beyonce. She brought black liberation politics to the Super Bowl and it was a disgrace.

The choreography wasn’t restricted to the football field; the halftime show was part of a marketing plan that put out messaging across multiple platforms, from social media to mainstream media. Our kids are seeing this and many will be swayed by hate because of it. They will learn to hate cops and love revolution, racial division and militancy. That’s not who we are. It’s ironic that Beyoncd Knowles and Jay-Z owe their success to the capitalist system the leftist Black Lives Matter movement is intent on destroying. Jay-Z’s story of going from rags to riches is well-known, as he went from being a drug dealer in the projects of New York to becoming an entertainment star and entrepreneur. Beyonce is the child of a small business owner and a sales manager for Xerox. Both biographies fly in the face of the Black Lives Matter narrative that black people somehow need to be “liberated” from the free market. Beyonce is making a ton of money from racism and promoting and glorifying black revolutionary movements. Not only does racism sell, hate is pretty profitable as well. This is definitely the cultural rot and decay that Rush Limbaugh referred to.

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The Black Panthers, once dubbed 'the greatest threat to the internal security of the country' by FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, was a rights group that operated in the Sixties and Seventies.

The Black Panthers, once dubbed ‘the greatest threat to the internal security of the country’ by FBI Director J Edgar Hoover, was a rights group that operated in the Sixties and Seventies.

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The Panthers followed the teachings of Malcolm X, who believed that blacks and whites could not co-exist peacefully and advocated violence in order to protect his followers.

The Panthers followed the teachings of Malcolm X, who believed that blacks and whites could not co-exist peacefully and advocated violence in order to protect his followers.

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12/25/15

Progressive scrooges almost squashed the holiday classic: ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

By: Renee Nal
New Zeal

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The beloved holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released in 1946. Despite it’s popularity today, it did not fare well at the box office, and it was given poor reviews by cynical movie critics at the time.

Jimmy Stewart said that out of all the movies he had made, “It’s a Wonderful Life” was his favorite. The Director, Frank Capra described the film’s theme as “the individual’s belief in himself” and explained further that he made it “to combat a modern trend toward atheism.”

But in the case of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” something magical happened almost 30 years after the movie was released. Because of a “clerical error” in 1974, the film’s copyright was mistakenly not renewed. Television stations were able to air the film at no cost.

So they did, and Americans fell in love.

The mainstream media’s disdain for anything wholesome and family oriented is not a new phenomenon. One critic decried the “sentimentality” of the movie.

Bosley Crowther from the New York Times concluded,

“the weakness of this picture, from this reviewer’s point of view, is the sentimentality of  its illusory concept of life. Mr. Capra’s nice people are charming, his small town is a quite beguiling place and his pattern for solving problems is most optimistic and facile. But somehow they all resemble theatrical attitudes rather than average realities.”

In 1947, film critic Manny Farber wrote,

“To make his points [Capra] always takes an easy, simple-minded path that doesn’t give much credit to the intelligence of the audience”, and adds that there are only a “few unsentimental moments here and there.”

In a 2010 ”Salon.com” piece, Richard Cohen described ”It’s a Wonderful Life” as “the most terrifying Hollywood film ever made“; in the “Pottersville” sequence, he wrote, George is not “seeing the world that would exist had he never been born“, but rather “the world as it does exist, in his time and also in our own.

Ah, the cynical critics have not changed. How many other potential classics were squashed?

Of the newfound success of the film, Frank Capra said,

“It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

This article has been re-posted from Liberty Unyielding.

06/10/15

Sick Minds in the Media Getting Sicker

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

Remember the wholesome programs “Touched by an Angel” and “Highway to Heaven?” How things have changed. Fox is preparing a new show simply called “Lucifer,” starring Satan as a good guy.

Broadcaster Jerry Kenney suggests a new title, “I Love Lucifer,” which more accurately captures the trends in the media these days.

A popular network show, ABC’s “The Bachelorette,” took a surprising turn when two men competing for the same attractive woman suddenly took a sexual interest in each other.

But showering praise on the gay lifestyle is getting to be old hat.

Our media are indeed consumed with the most extreme of the sexual minorities available, and they can’t wait to seize on another oddball behavior to promote on national television. Hence, the “rights” of so-called transgenders are the big new thing. Thanks to Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner, they have taken center stage.

Here’s the promo for the latest ABC show, “Becoming Us,” which aired on Monday night on the ABC Family network: “Ben, from Evanston, Ill. is your typical 17-year-old. He goes to school, hangs out with his girlfriend, and enjoys spending time with his family. But there’s something unique about Ben’s situation: His father is becoming a woman.”

ABC Family is owned by Disney, once known for pro-family programming. It is the parent company of ABC News. It was the ABC Family show “The Fosters” which featured a gay kiss a couple of months ago between two of the family drama’s 13-year-old male characters.

This is how the wholesome term “family” is being twisted into something it is not.

You can’t even switch channels without getting hit in the face with the endless promotion of “alternative” lifestyles and sexual perversion.

CNN’s lesbian commentator Sally Kohn was offended by Republican GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee joking about transgenders, about how a boy, or even a man, could claim to be a girl just to go into the girls’ dressing rooms. “For those who do not think that we are under threat,” Huckabee said, “simply recognize that the fact that we are now in city after city watching ordinances say that your 7-year-old daughter, if she goes into the restroom, cannot be offended and you can’t be offended if she’s greeted there by a 42-year-old man who feels more like a woman than he does a man.”

“Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school, that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE [physical education],” said Huckabee. “I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’”

Turning to his audience, he said, “You’re laughing because it sounds so ridiculous, doesn’t it?

When WorldNetDaily posted the joke, its entire YouTube channel was suspended. Kohn determined that Huckabee, not the behavior he was describing, was creepy.

In another indication of current trends, when Catholic Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone of San Francisco commented on the Bruce Jenner problem by noting that the “clear biological fact is that a human being is born either male or female,” The Huffington Post ran a story about his “sad but predictable” comments.

That’s right: it’s now “sad” to point out the biological facts of life.

Cordileone added, “Yet now we have the idea gaining acceptance that biological sex and one’s personal gender identity can be at variance with each other, with more and more gender identities being invented.”

If present trends continue, he warned of “a reversion to the paganism of old, but with unique, postmodern variations on its themes, such as the practice of child sacrifice, the worship of feminine deities, or the cult of priestesses.”

But the media, it seems, just can’t do enough for this particular sexual minority group, inevitably paving the way for recognition of the next stage in the sexual revolution—pedophile rights.

The New York Times ran a front-page story headlined, “Transgender Children’s Books Fill a Void and Break a Taboo.” The paper reported, “This year, children’s publishers are releasing around half a dozen novels in a spectrum of genres, including science fiction and young adult romance, that star transgender children and teenagers.”

In competition with The New York Times in “breaking news” coverage of the transgenders, The Washington Post has run such titles as:

  • Embracing transgender equality, high schools move to one graduation robe
  • Learning how to be a lady? For the transgender market, coaches help
  • Court overturns transfer of transgender teen to prison
  • 8 critical facts about the state of transgender America?

It’s almost as if the state of “transgender America” is at a crisis point and that the American people are demanding coverage of this urgent national issue. But I doubt it.

Meanwhile, in Washington, D.C. on Saturday, June 13, the gay Pride Parade gets underway, presented by Marriott, with a Parade Family Fun Zone, face painting, balloon art, snacks, and more!

To be sure, there are stories about other alarming developments in America, such as the Post’s account of “pot-smoking” parents, desperate to hide their addiction from their children.

Against this trend of one perversity after another, we see a few conservative personalities in the media giving in, while claiming that their adoption of what used to be radical liberal standards of morality now constitutes the new conservative position.

Hence, Greg Gutfeld of Fox News has declared that “gay marriage, in my opinion, is a conservative idea.”

Professor Paul Kengor, author of Takedown: From Communists to Progressives, How the Left Has Sabotaged Family and Marriage, obliterates Gutfeld’s alleged conservative rationale, noting in The American Spectator that “Conservatism aims to conserve the time-tested values, ideas, and principles that have been sustained over time by previous generations and traditions.”

On that basis, he goes on, “Gay marriage, merely by its total newness alone, fails that rudimentary definition. Gay marriage has never been done before. One would never expect a conservative to rush into something as utterly unprecedented—and that directly repudiates the laws of nature and nature’s God…”

The Gutfeld commentary is truly “sad,” to use the term from The Huffington Post.

It is really sad because Gutfeld was one of the young conservatives who went through the National Journalism Center of the late M. Stanton Evans. Evans understood what conservatism really was, and warned that acceptance of gay rights constituted a return to pagan practices.

It is probably the case that Gutfeld is trying to appear “hip” and cool,” in order to appeal to the libertarians and progressives, and hype the ratings for his new show on the Fox News Channel.

Ironically, however, in his new book, Not Cool, Gutfeld tries to come across as politically incorrect, saying, “The cool fawn over terrorists, mock the military, and denigrate employers.”

But he’s fawning over one of the latest progressive causes, that of gay marriage. Can his endorsement of transgenderism be far behind?  After all, doesn’t Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner claim to be a Republican?

This trend caught the sympathetic eye of the Media Matters group, run by a homosexual and former conservative by the name of David Brock. Media Matters ran the item, “Has Fox News Evolved On Marriage Equality, Too?”

It turns out Gutfeld is not alone at Fox. During the January 21 edition of Fox’s program “The Five,” co-hosts Dana Perino and Eric Bolling, according to Media Matters, “admitted that they agreed with the President on same-sex marriage, opting instead to half-heartedly criticize Obama for changing his position on the issue.”

The far-left “media watchdog” noted that the program returned to the topic the next night and that Gutfeld declared, “I was for gay marriage before Obama!,” while Perino “denied that the Republican Party was opposed to marriage equality” and asked, “who talks about gay marriage anymore?”

It appears that those who are talking about gay marriage in a negative manner are not going to be getting much attention from Fox News.

This is how the so-called herd mentality of the media operates, and how views that used to be conservative are marginalized and even transformed into something they are not.

This is what in fact has happened in Britain, where the Conservative Party has enthusiastically embraced gay marriage and Christians are losing their jobs—and even being arrested for objecting to the new politically correct view.

There is, however, some good news from Britain, where a woman named Sarah Mbuyi has won her case for wrongful dismissal. She had been fired for a conversation with a colleague about homosexuality and gay marriage.

The group Christian Concern reports that the 31-year-old Mbuyi was fired from her job at a nursery in West London after having a conversation with a homosexual colleague in which she explained the biblical position on homosexuality and marriage. An employment tribunal found that Mbuyi had been discriminated against because of her beliefs.

It is this dangerous anti-Christian trend that traditional conservatives are trying to resist. It would be nice if they could find some support from the “conservative” Fox News Channel.

06/9/15

The important message sent by the depraved crimes depicted in Game of Thrones and Outlander

Doug Ross @ Journal

The last couple of weeks on cable television’s most popular shows have featured a smorgasbord of stunning violence.

Heiress to Winterfell Lady Sansa Stark is brutally raped on her wedding night by the psycopathic Ramsay Bolton.

Preteen Princess Shireen is lashed to a stake and burned alive — by her father, Stannis Baratheon.

Highlander Jamie Fraser is viciously tortured and then raped by Captain “Black” Jack Randall.

The outcry from each fictionalized incident was as predictable as it was pathetic.

Not because the depictions weren’t shocking and cruel: they were.

Because true outrage should be reserved for the very real, very depraved actions that are occurring not in some mythical setting but on our planet, now.

In today’s Middle East, crimes against humanity are occurring on a daily basis with nary a murmur from Hollywood, the Democrat establishment, the feminists or the progressive movement.

In the ongoing Muslim civil war, children are crucified on a regular basis.

Girls as young as eight years old are routinely raped and sold as sex slaves in open markets.

Other children are buried alive or beheaded.

An estimated 30 million human beings around the world are currently living in slavery.

In its ongoing civil war, Syria employs chemical weapons on a routine basis. The death toll from the Syrian conflict alone is approaching a quarter of a million. Another four million Syrians have fled the warzone and are living as refugees.

The left may be capable of marshalling a Twitter campaign in a show of short-lived, faux outrage (remember last year’s #BringBackOurGirls?), but when it comes to real action they are AWOL.

So the faux outrage over Hollywood’s treatment of Sansa Stark and company rings hollow.

Truth is indeed stranger than fiction.

And for the left, fiction is more real than truth.

Related: Ameritopia.

02/9/15

The Arrogance of the ‘Kanye Klan’

By: Frank Salvato

I didn’t watch the Grammy Awards and I haven’t for years. Long ago it ceased being about rewarding talent with recognition, instead serving as a platform for industry politics and the anointment of the chosen few. That said, the level of arrogance displayed by rapper Kanye West (Mr. Kim Kardashian) should garner him expulsion from the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences and a complete shunning from the industry.

For the second year in a row Mr. West stormed the stage in protest when his preferred artist failed to win in their nominated category. In each instance he encroached on the winning artists’ moment in the spotlight; their moment to be celebrated by their peers in recognition for being selected by the majority as outstanding (this is what democracy looks like, Kanye). Last year he brutishly encroached on Taylor Swift, a gifted country music talent. This year he usurped Beck’s moment after he was named recipient of the Album of the Year Award. To the latter, West was upset that his preferred nominee, Beyoncé, failed to win in that category, even though she walked away at the end of the evening with three trophies in other categories.

Mr. West is quoted as saying:

“I just know that the Grammys, if they want real artists to keep coming back, they need to stop playing with us. We ain’t gonna play with them no more. And Beck needs to respect artistry and he should’ve given his award to Beyoncé.

“Because when you keep on diminishing art and not respecting the craft and smacking people in their face after they deliver monumental feats of music, you’re disrespectful to inspiration…And we as musicians have to inspire people who go to work every day, and they listen to that Beyoncé album and they feel like it takes them to another place.”

Mr. West’s actions – as well as his statement – conjure up some concerns.

Mr. West denigrated Beck’s talents and art form in what can only be seen as a personal attack. Examining West’s protest, he alludes to the idea that Beck is not a “real artist,” and that his talent is somehow inferior to that of Beyoncé’s. Truthfully, I am not an ardent fan of Beck, although I have nothing against his music. It’s just not my preferred genre. Neither is Rap (and I especially dislike Gangsta Rap, which I find harmful to society on almost every level). Nevertheless, I recognize that each of these genres is seen by those who enjoy them as art forms, none “superior” to another, just different. Evidently, Mr. West is a “musical supremacist”; someone who finds no worth in diversity of genre, voice, taste or preference.

Additionally, one has to be concerned about Mr. West’s inability to control his emotions. It is one thing to be of a creative opinion; to emote displeasure and disappointment when one’s preferred tastes are not validated. It is quite another to be uncontrollable in your anger to the point where you infringe upon another’s moment, time and space. By storming the awards stage – not once, but two years in a row – Mr. West has proved himself incapable of controlling his emotions. He has also proved himself to be a spoiled brat; an embarrassing product of the arrogant entitlement class.

Lastly, Mr. West – and all who agree with his actions and the onus of his statement – has exposed himself as not believing in the very systems he so vehemently declares to support: diversity and democracy. Every member of the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences votes on the nominees presented to them. To wit, the Grammy Awards are chosen through a purely democratic process. Additionally, every member – from all genres – is afforded the ability to vote in every category (although they are encouraged to vote only in the genres they have expertise in), thus, assuring diversity. Evidently, for Mr. West, democracy and diversity are only important when he and his “Klan” are the beneficiaries, when the shoe is on the other foot, democracy and diversity…not so much.

Mr. West’s protestations have quite a bit more to do with entitlement and arrogance than they do with legitimate protest. He has gotten incredibly wealthy and influential through his “talents,” yet he believes he is entitled to more; to have everything go his way, all the time. Evidently West believes that because a gaggle of sycophants hang on his every word that the rest of the world’s population must exalt his as well. This must be a debilitating moment for Mr. West.

Here’s a news flash, Kanye. Not everyone likes Beyoncé. To that end not everyone likes Beck. But enough people liked Beck’s album more than they liked Beyoncé’s and that garnered him the award for Album of the Year. Deal with it.

And, Mr. West, not everyone cares for you, your music, your lifestyle or your arrogance. Many of us find it childish and ignorant. Now, what stage are you going to storm to exhibit your adolescent behavior in protest to that reality?

Oh, and as far as your threat to boycott the Grammy’s if you don’t get your way? Well, don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. I think the Grammy’s will survive.

Frank Salvato is the Executive Director of BasicsProject.org a grassroots, non-partisan, research and education initiative focusing on Constitutional Literacy, and internal and external threats facing Western Civilization; a division of The Archangel Organization, LLC, His writing has been recognized by the US House International Relations Committee and the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention. His opinion and analysis have been published by The American Enterprise Institute, The Washington Times, The Jewish World Review, Accuracy in Media, Human Events, Townhall.com and are syndicated nationally. Mr. Salvato has appeared on The O’Reilly Factor on FOX News Channel, and is the author of six books examining Islamofascism and Progressivism, including “Understanding the Threat of Radical Islam”. Mr. Salvato’s personal writing can be found at FrankJSalvato.com.

12/25/14

The amazing story behind the Christmas classic, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’

By: Renee Nal
New Zeal

Wikimedia Commons

Wikimedia Commons

The beloved holiday classic “It’s a Wonderful Life” was released in 1946. Despite it’s popularity today, it did not fare well at the box office, and it was given poor reviews by cynical movie critics at the time.

Jimmy Stewart said that out of all the movies he had made, “It’s a Wonderful Life” was his favorite. The Director, Frank Capra described the film’s theme as “the individual’s belief in himself” and that he made it “to combat a modern trend toward atheism.”

But in the case of “It’s a Wonderful Life,” something magical happened almost 30 years after the movie was released. Because of a “clerical error” in 1974, the film’s copyright was mistakenly not renewed. Television stations were able to air the film at no cost.

So they did, and Americans fell in love.

The mainstream media’s disdain for anything wholesome and family oriented is not a new phenomenon. One critic decried the “sentimentality” of the movie.

Bosley Crowther from the New York Times concluded,

“the weakness of this picture, from this reviewer’s point of view, is the sentimentality of its illusory concept of life. Mr. Capra’s nice people are charming, his small town is a quite beguiling place and his pattern for solving problems is most optimistic and facile. But somehow they all resemble theatrical attitudes rather than average realities.”

In 1947, film critic Manny Farber wrote,

“To make his points [Capra] always takes an easy, simple-minded path that doesn’t give much credit to the intelligence of the audience”, and adds that there are only a “few unsentimental moments here and there.”

In a 2010 ”Salon.com” piece, Richard Cohen described ”It’s a Wonderful Life” as “the most terrifying Hollywood film ever made“; in the “Pottersville” sequence, he wrote, George is not “seeing the world that would exist had he never been born“, but rather “the world as it does exist, in his time and also in our own.

Ah, the cynical critics have not changed. How many other potential classics were squashed?

Of the newfound success of the film, Frank Capra said,

“It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen.”

This article has been cross-posted from Liberty Unyielding.