Mediaboss Marketing

UPDATE: 1:43 PM, The article has been updated to include a statement from an NYU spokesperson

Almost a dozen people were arrested and scuffles took place at New York University on Thursday night, as a large crowd of anti-fascist protesters confronted police and white supremacists outside a short-lived event featuring a prominent member of the neo-fascist alt-right movement.

The event, hosted by NYUs College Republicans, played host to Gavin McInnis, an ousted co-founder of Vice Media and leader of the Proud Boys, a misogynist clique of internet trolls aligned with the racist identity movement known as the alt-right. The speech was cut short amid continued interruptions from protesters, who snuck into the event while dozens more confronted police and McInnis supporters outside.

McInnis is known for racist and misogynist rhetoric calling for the targeted harassment of marginalized groups. Among other things, he has compared black actress Jada Pinkett Smith to a monkey, suggested that Jewish people were ostracized for a good reason, and wrote an article titled Transphobia Is Perfectly Natural, which attempts to rationalize a false stereotype that transgender people suffer from untreated mental disorders.

McInnis was pepper-sprayed by one of the protesters while entering NYUs Kimmel Center, as the group outside blocked the sidewalk chanting Fuck White Supremacy and FTP, Fuck The Police. Shortly after, masked protesters set fire to a Make America Great Again hat that was snatched from one of McInnis supporters during a brief scuffle. Police rushed into the crowd to extinguish the flames, then unexpectedly charged into the group, grabbing and pinning protesters to the ground as the rest dispersed around the building toward a side entrance.

McInnis speech lasted less than 15 minutes before he began lashing out at NYU administrators amid constant interruptions from protesters, several people who were present told Vocativ. A student reporter for NYU Local said that McInnis called an NYU spokesperson a dumb, liberal asshole and left after the staff refused to eject the protesters.

He held the floor for some 20 mins, although he was interrupted repeatedly, said NYU spokesman John Beckman, in a statement emailed to Vocativ. The decision to end the event when he did was his own.

Beckman noted that there was no violence or arrests inside the Kimmel Center, where only students with IDs were admitted. He also claimed that the crowds of protesters outside were largely composed of non-NYU protesters.

In a tense stand-off, a small group of McInnis supporters stood near the side entrance arguing with and taunting protesters while under the protection of a large contingent of police. One of the Proud Boys, later identified as Salvador Cipolla, crossed the street and attacked a reporter from DNAinfo, aggressively posturing and yanking at the reporters press badge before being arrested by the NYPD. Another Proud Boy wearing a MAGA hat was splashed in the face with water while giving an interview to an NYU student reporter.

Many of the protesters were aligned with the anti-fascist resistance movement, or Antifa, which seeks to combat rising fascism and bigotry by directly (and sometimes violently) confronting its adherents. The movement has seen a major resurgence of activity following the rise of racist far-right groups newly emboldened by the election of Donald Trump, who has embraced racist and anti-immigrant policies during his campaign and in his two weeks as president.

The protest against McInnis comes just one day after another protest at the University of California Berkeley shut down a speech from former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos, another prominent alt-right leader. Yiannopoulos has been banned from Twitter and recently encouraged the harassment of a transgender student during a speech at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

See the article here:
Anti-Fascist Protesters Shut Down 'Alt-Right' Speaker At NYU - Vocativ

Fake news may have played a role in the 2016 US presidential election, experts say.

If open collaboration worked for Wikipedia, it could work for combating fake news.

This is the suggestion of Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales in a guest column Friday in The Guardian. He suggests the human element is crucial to discerning false from factual stories -- enhanced formulas for social networks and other aggregator sites to weed out fake news aren't enough.

And the way to get there, said Wales, requires people committed to sharing facts in open dialog and in open online spaces.

Sound familiar? It should. It's a similar structure to Wikipedia's free online, open-source encyclopedia.

Google, Facebook, Twitter and other networks have been cracking down on fake news after coming under fire for helping spread it. Fake news became such a hot topic in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election that then-President Barack Obama warned of fake news' power to destroy democracy.

"Social media feeds, doctored videos and instant messaging" are the biggest culprits in spreading deliberately incorrect and misleading information, Wales wrote about the rash of stories posing as legitimate news that don't actually meet journalistic fact-checking standards.

"We need this visibility," Wales added, "Because it sheds light on the process and origins of information and creates a structure for accountability." You can find Wales' column here.

Read next: Here's how to avoid falling into the fake news trap

CNET Magazine: Check out a sample of the stories you'll find in CNET's newsstand edition.

Go here to see the original:
How do you beat fake news? Transparency, says Wikipedia co-founder - CNET

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

SiriusXM host Alex Marlow contended that the mainstream medias irresponsible use of terms like fascist and white nationalist for speakers who are not of the Left has laid the groundwork for violence against them.

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

It is the rise of a genuinely violent fascist movement, Coulter said of these left-wing gangs. It would be as if the Nazis went around complaining about how the Jews were attacking them and oppressing them. Thats basically what we have going on now.

She recalled how violent protesters shut down a Trump rally in Chicago during the 2016 presidential campaign. It was amazing to me how many families with kids, and wives, and daughters, they continued to go out to see Trump. It is like my college speeches, something Ive been doing for a long time. You know, youll have 20 speeches that are fine, and then suddenly, BAM! the violent mobs show up. You never know when its going to happen, so you have to be prepared all the time, she said.

But Americans still did come out. I think that was intended to reduce Trumps crowds, and make it look like he was the one creating the violence. All of this, just for someone who says, We have to take care of Americans first. Thats what theyre so upset about, Alex, Coulter declared, returning to an earlier point about how the U.S. Congress is attempting to cut back on the cost of major programs for Americans, such as Social Security and Medicare, at the same time open-borders advocates insist on importing even more dependents.

We cant afford that. We cant afford this. We have to raise the retirement age. No, stop! We gave at the office! she exclaimed.

Coulter agreed wholeheartedly with President Trumps threat to withdraw all federal funding from Berkeley if the college administration refuses to deal with violence.

This is a genuine threat to democracy when people cant engage in the first of the Bill of Rights, the very first one thats mentioned: freedom of speech, she warned. This has been a burgeoning movement, particularly on our college campuses, for a long time.

In a calm, reflective moment, I think he should do the same thing with any colleges that have speech codes or need special free speech zones where students and/or professors are disciplined for engaging in First Amendment speech, she advised.

This has absolutely been done before, she noted. The IRS has been used to say, Sorry. If youre collecting student aid, you cant attend these colleges. Were not sending any student aid to these colleges who dont abide by and those were often kind of silly principles being enforced, like Bob Jones University, thats sort of a very hardcore fundamentalist Christian college. Im a Christian. It has some beliefs or it used to; I dont know if they still do but one was from the Tower of Babel. They wouldnt allow interracial dating.

They had blacks, they had whites, and it was mostly a black-and-white country back then in fact, scholarships for black students but whites couldnt date black students. Blacks couldnt date white students, she explained. And I ought to add, because I looked this up at the time, there was very little dating of any sort. If you went on a date at Bob Jones, you had to have a chaperone with you. Anyway, there was no racial animus to this; it hit both races equally.

But for that, the IRS came down like a ton of bricks on Bob Jones University. No federal aid through student scholarships, as I recall. A student who had student aid could not attend that college. And now, we have a genuine fascist, violent fascist, movement rising up, and theres not only no punishment, but taxpayers are paying for this? Oh, no, no, no. Second to immigration, the next biggest problem in this country is the universities and public schools, she said.

Coulter said this climate of hatred and violent repression of dissent comes from the university administrations.

These are not spontaneous movements, she scoffed. I described in my book Demonic on groupthink and mob behavior, that these are particularly lickspittle students that want to please the professor. And they know damned well their professors are opposed to everything Ann Coulter says and everything Milo says. Its just like presenting a polished apple to the teacher. Oh, teacher, here: I brought you a gift today! I went and protested Ann Coulter!

At the risk of being snobbish, but telling you what the truth is, it doesnt tend to happen at the Ivy League schools, she observed. Berkeley is weird. The worst ones are the Jesuit colleges and the community colleges. I mean, at Harvard and Yale and Ive spoken at both places many times Wellesley, Smith, my own alma mater Cornell, the kids are too they want to challenge you intellectually. Theyd be embarrassed to throw something.

Though I do think there is a new movement kind of sweeping through here, she added, at some of these schools, wed be organized. Wed be ready to go. Id give the speech. They could stand up at the mics.Id take questions until they had collapsed from exhaustion. And usually at the tougher schools to get into, thats how they want to be. They want to ask you a question and outsmart you. Its when it is a three-year-old, who doesnt have the power of speech or logic, and just throws food so it would tend to be the lesser colleges.

The other thing is, when we would be prepared and have college Republicans and large men prepared to throw out any hecklers, sometimes the members of the administration would stop people our people, who had rented the room had paid for me to come speak. Someone comes to disrupt and start heckling, they try to remove the heckler, and an administrator this happened at Syracuse University some dean of students stepped forward and said, You cant remove the heckler because youre interfering with his free speech rights! Coulter said with astonishment.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m.to 9:00 a.m.Eastern.

LISTEN:

More here:
Ann Coulter: Trump Should Withdraw Funding from Any School with Speech Codes - Breitbart News

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

The New York Times wore out its thesaurus denouncing the order: cruelty injury suffering bigoted, cowardly, self-defeating breathtaking inflammatory callousness and indifference and thats from a single editorial!

SIGN UP FOR OUR NEWSLETTER

Amid the hysteria over this prudent pause in refugee admissions from seven countries whose principal export is dynamite vests, it has been indignantly claimed that its illegal for our immigration policies to discriminate on the basis of religion.

This is often said by journalists who are only in America because of immigration policies that discriminated on the basis of religion.

For much of the last half-century, Soviet Jews were given nearly automatic entry to the U.S. as refugees. Entering as a refugee confers all sorts of benefits unavailable to other immigrants, including loads of welfare programs, health insurance, job placement services, English language classes, and the opportunity to apply for U.S. citizenship after only five years.

Most important, though, Soviet Jews were not required to satisfy the United Nations definition of a refugee, to wit: someone fleeing persecution based on race, religion or national origin. They just had to prove they were Jewish.

This may have been good policy, but lets not pretend the Jewish exception was not based on religion.

If a temporary pause on refugee admissions from seven majority-Muslim countries constitutes targeting Muslims, then our immigration policy targeted Christians for discrimination for about 30 years.

Never heard a peep from the ACLU about religious discrimination back then!

According to the considered opinion of the Cato Institutes David J. Bier, writing in the New York Times, Trumps executive order is illegal because the 1965 immigration act banned all discrimination against immigrants on the basis of national origin.

In 1966, one year after the 1965 immigration act, immigrants from Cuba suddenly got special immigration privileges. In 1986, immigrants from Ireland did. People from Vietnam and Indochina got special immigration rights for 20 years after the end of the Vietnam War.

The 1965 law, quite obviously, did not prohibit discrimination based on national origin. (I was wondering why the Times would sully its pages with the legal opinion of a Grove City College B.A., like Bier! Any expert in a storm, I guess.)

In fact, ethnic discrimination is practically the hallmark of Americas immigration policy in addition to our perverse obsession with admitting the entire Third World.

Commenting on these ethnic boondoggles back in 1996, Sen. Orrin Hatch said: We have made a mockery of refugee law, because of politics and pressure. We let in one ethnic group out of compassion, then they form an ethnic power bloc to demand that all their fellow countrymen be let in, too.

As the former Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, described diversity in Der Spiegel: In multiracial societies, you dont vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.

Thats our immigration policy plus a healthy dose of Emma Lazarus insane idea that all countries of the world should send their losers to us. (Thanks, Emma!)

Americans are weary of taking in these pricey Third World immigrants, who show their gratitude by periodically erupting in maniacal violence in, for example, San Bernardino, Orlando, New York City, Fort Hood, Boston, Chattanooga, Bowling Green and St. Cloud.

The Muslim immigrants currently being showcased by the left are not likely to change any minds. The Times could produce only 11 cases of temporarily blocked immigrants that the newspaper would even dare mention. (Imagine what the others are like!)

For purposes of argument, I will accept the Times glowing descriptions of these Muslim immigrants as brilliant scientists on the verge of curing cancer. (Two of the Times 11 cases actually involved cancer researchers.)

Point one: If the Times thinks that brilliance is a desirable characteristic in an immigrant, why cant we demand that of all our immigrants?

To the contrary! Our immigration policy is more likely to turn away the brilliant scientist in order to make room for an Afghani goat herder, whose kid runs a coffee stand until deciding to bomb the New York City subway one day. (That was Najibullah Zazi, my featured Immigrant of the Week, on May 1, 2012.)

Point two: I happened to notice that even the stellar Muslim immigrants dug up by the Times seem to bring a lot of elderly and sickly relatives with them. Guess who gets to support them?

House Speaker Paul Ryans driving obsession (besides being the Koch brothers lickspittle) is entitlement reform, i.e., cutting benefits or raising the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare.

I have another idea. How about we stop bringing in immigrants who immediately access government programs, who bring in elderly parents who immediately access government programs, or who run vast criminal enterprises, stealing millions of dollars from government programs? (I illustrated the popularity of government scams with immigrants in Adios, America! by culling all the news stories about these crimes over a one-month period and listing the perps names.)

Point three: Contrary to emotional blather about the horrors refugees are fleeing, a lot are just coming to visit their kids or to get free health care. One of the Times baby seals an Iraqi with diabetes and a respiratory ailment was returning from performing his responsibilities as an elected official in Kirkuk.

Thats not exactly fleeing the Holocaust.

While its fantastic news that most Muslim refugees arent terrorists, the downside is: Theyre not refugees, theyre not brilliant, they dont have a constitutional right to come here, and theyre very, very expensive. Until politicians can give us more government services for less money, they need to stop bringing in the poor of the world on our dime.

View original post here:
Ann Coulter: Give Me Your Tired Arguments - Breitbart News

The European Union has been weathering plenty of disunity in recent months. But as they gathered Friday, the blocs leaders seemed to have found common ground in growing concerns over President Trumps unexpected new policies and unconventional mode of governance.

Mainstream European political figures already worried about populist challenges and the specter of Russian interference in their own upcoming elections have been rattled by a rapid-fire series of controversial presidential directives and combative behavior, including a getting-to-know-you call with Australias prime minister that reportedly ended abruptly when Trump became irritated over a refugee agreement.

In Valletta, the ancient fortress-capital of the Mediterranean island nation of Malta, leaders arriving for the EUs first gathering since Trumps inauguration had some sharp words for the 2-week-old U.S. administration some centering on policy disagreements, and some on the presidents unorthodox style.

Both before and after he took office, Trump has been vocal in his support of Britains vote last June to exit the European Union, and has made repeated and almost offhand references to the likelihood of the bloc breaking up. He has also called NATO obsolete, but in recent days has signaled at least a degree of support for the transatlantic alliance that most European nations regard as vital to their security.

Trumps remarks have been read by many in Europe as a sign that the new U.S. president has little regard for international institutions widely credited with underpinning decades of peace and economic progress. French President Francois Hollande, who spoke with Trump last weekend, was perhaps the most openly combative in his view of the U.S. leader.

It is unacceptable that there should be through a certain number of statements by the President of the United States pressure on what Europe should or should not be, the French news agency AFP quoted Hollande as saying as he arrived at the informal summit.

More criticism came from Austrian Chancellor Christian Kern, who said tangible aspects of Trumps policies were setting off alarm bells in Europe, and from the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who suggested that the Trump administration had not shown itself to be very detail-oriented.

In the European Union, details matter, Juncker said.

One reported contender for the post of Trumps envoy to the EU, businessman Ted Malloch, has already stirred controversy. In a BBC interview last month, Malloch appeared to liken the EU to the former Soviet Union, suggesting that maybe theres another union that needs a little taming. He later said the comment had been tongue-in-cheek.

In Malta, even some who said they were willing to take a wait-and-see attitude about the new U.S. administration were hardly positive in their assessments. The prime minister of Luxembourg, Xavier Bettel, said the U.S. presidents values were not the values Im fighting for.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel took a characteristically cooler and more pragmatic tone, telling reporters as she arrived: I have already said that Europe has its destiny in its own hands. Merkel had voiced that view after Trump seemed to waver in his backing of NATO.

Germany has been unhappy, however, with a senior Trump advisers talk of the European common currency, the euro, being artificially undervalued, and his suggestions that Merkels government was to blame. And Merkel has expressed reservations about the presidents suspension of the U.S. refugee program and his temporary ban on travel from seven Muslim-majority countries.

At their gathering, the EU leaders held closed-door talks in which they hoped to forge a strategy for individual and collective dealings with Trump. Analysts said that would be no easy task.

Its a policy sea change for an American president to openly state that he supports additional countries leaving the European Union, said Heather Conley, director of the Europe program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

We just never had an approach to foreign policy like this no one has a playbook, no one has a manual, she said.

Heading into the Malta meeting, EU President Donald Tusk had taken the unprecedented step of warning in a letter to European leaders that Trumps policies posed a potential threat to the bloc, listing that alongside other menaces including Russian aggression, jihadist attacks and a wave of populism.

The meeting was a somewhat awkward one for British Prime Minister Theresa May, who is moving to implement the so-called Brexit. May met with Trump in Washington last week andpressed European concernsabout American support for NATO, but suffered intense blow-back at home, particularly after the travel ban was announced, less than 24 hours after her departure.

Mays offer to serve as a bridge between Trump and the EU drew a tart response from one of the leaders attending the Malta talks the president of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaite, who also took a swipe at the U.S. presidents penchant for making foreign policy declarations by tweet.

I dont think there is a necessity for a bridge, the Lithuanian leader, whose Baltic states proximity to Russia renders it heavily dependent on the NATO security umbrella, told the BBC. We communicate with the Americans on Twitter.

The main goal of the gathering in Malta, on the front lines of the Mediterranean migrant crisis, was to try to find ways to stem seaborne arrivals from North Africa. The leaders endorsed a plan to provide Libyas coast guard with equipment, training and other support, and to cooperate with Libyas neighbors, including Tunisia and Egypt.

But rights groups expressed reservations about the plan, saying would-be asylum seekers could be either trapped in lawless Libya or sent back home and exposed to the same perils that caused them to flee.

Follow this link:
A divided European Union has one thing in common: Mistrust of Trump - Los Angeles Times