She Is Right That YouTube Are A Bunch Of Damn Communist Dictators.
Nasim Najafi Aghdam, the 39-year-old woman who committed Wednesday’s shooting at YouTube’s headquarters, had a history of posting bizarre and radical videos.
Aghdam reportedly had her own website with links to multiple YouTube channels and an Instagram account that expressed a devotion to veganism and a personal grudge against YouTube for allegedly censoring leftist content.
In one video, Aghdam accuses the video sharing site of discriminating against her content and unfairly demonetizing her videos.
“I am being filtered,” she said in the video. “They age restricted my ab workout video — a video that has nothing bad in it, nothing sensual. Why do that? Because it got famous.”
“This is what they are doing to vegan activists and many others who try to promote healthy, humane, and smart living,” she continued. “People like me are not good for big businesses… that’s why they are discriminating and censoring us.”
In another disturbing video, Aghdam sings about being vegan in front of various green screen backgrounds. In one scene, she pretends to smash a rabbit trap with a metal shovel.
“They’re our nightmare everywhere. Don’t know when this madness is gonna be over,” she sings. “They only want meat, egg, milk, skin, even if it’s torture, murder. Don’t say I didn’t, say I didn’t, warn you.”
“They’ll tell you I’m insane ’cause you know I hate the meat,” it continues.
In other videos, such as a Nicki Minaj parody, she rants against “unhealthy” lifestyles involving alcohol and casual sex.
YouTube Shooting Fails To Conform To Gun Control Narrative
A mass shooting happened Tuesday at YouTube’s headquarters in California, and it might be impervious to politicization.
An animal rights activist named Nasim Aghdam allegedly wounded three people before she apparently turned the gun on herself, marking the only confirmed fatality of the day.
It’s not exactly clear at the moment why Aghdam shot up YouTube. Early reports suggested she was targeting an ex-boyfriend, but police ruled out specific targeting on Wednesday. Her father said she was upset with YouTube and one of her last videos — she made dozens of bizarre videos on the platform — complained that the tech company was demonetizing her content for being too “left-wing.”
She Was A Vegan And Animal Activist Also. What About The NRA Now Liberals?
Aghdam used a handgun in her attack, a weapon that is not in the crosshairs of gun control proponents. She’s also a woman of Iranian descent, an identity that doesn’t lend itself to left-wing narratives about the threat of angry white men.
The shooting appears to be the case of just one deranged woman taking out her anger over a perceived wrong. There’s no larger political connection here — whether it be terrorism or gun control.
However, liberals were very eager to politicize the shooting when it was first reported. Leading the pack, actor Michael Ian Black immediately blamed the shooting on the “terrorists” over at the National Rifle Association.
“Another shooting. I’m going to politicize the fuck out of it, and so should you,” Black said in one of his tweets. “The NRA is a terrorist organization.”
Black and others doubled down on their assertion that the NRA was at fault when challenged by critics who pointed to the lack of information available on the shooting.
“No, I don’t know who the shooter is. It doesn’t matter if they are an NRA member. Yes, I know how they got the gun: the NRA and its blood-soaked lackeys made it possible for that person to get it,” the washed up comedian explained.
Other verified Twitter users claimed the NRA directly motivated the shooter by making videos critical of YouTube. In a very civil manner, these gun control advocates asserted the gun rights group made terroristic threats to YouTube and should be responsible for all violence against the tech company.
“The NRA called for its members to ‘fire back’ at sites like YouTube and ‘overwhelm these leftists in California.’ The NRA is a terrorist organization,” tech entrepreneur Fred Benenson argued.
It’s highly unlikely that a left-wing vegan was motivated by NRATV videos. But don’t expect an apology from the journalists and celebrities who tried to make the connection anyway.
Every mass shooting in America is bound to be politicized by the Left before the blood has even dried. Regardless of circumstances, a crazed gunman is always in league with the NRA.
But when faced with facts that counter the narrative, journalists prefer to let the story die.
Aghdam’s background and motivation are too off-script to keep her rampage in the news. It’s hard to make a case for taking AR-15s away from rednecks when your perp used a handgun and makes trippy pro-vegan music videos.
In an ideal world, Americans would wait until basic facts emerge to politicize shootings. In reality, we will likely see this kind of behavior for every shooting going forward.
At least we can expect the YouTube shooting to not figure in any future left-wing narratives, unlike the Gabby Giffords shooting. The New York Times was still falsely blaming Sarah Palin in 2017 for that 2011 attack, even though the gunman was proven not to be politically motivated. That bit of fake news was just too appetizing for liberal narratives to warrant a cursory fact check. (RELATED: NYT Has Been Pushing Palin-Giffords Falsehood For Years)
While we can’t expect an apology from the people who blamed the NRA for the YouTube shooting, no major media outlet will advance their fake news.
Gun control advocates believe an assault weapons ban and a gun registry will prevent future tragedies. Tuesday’s shooting disproves that theory, so don’t be surprised when the story suddenly disappears from the front pages.
The shooter who took her own life after wounding four YouTube employees at the video hosting website’s San Bruno, California, offices on Tuesday has been identified as Nasim Aghdam in multiple reports, after being described as a “white woman in a headscarf” earlier in the day.
ABC News quotes law enforcement sources with the identification:
JUST IN: Two law enforcement sources say authorities have preliminarily identified the YouTube shooter as Nasim Aghdam, a woman with previous addresses in the Southern California cities of Riverside and San Diego.
Aghdam, said to reside in Southern California, had a long history of animal rights activism, and was quoted by the Los Angeles Times at a protest of the U.S. Marine Corps’ use of pigs to demonstrate battlefield wounds in 2009. She ran a series of very similar websites espousing vegan views.
In one video post on video hosting service Dailymotion, she claims to be from Iran in an introduction to a mock appearance on America’s Got Talent.
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“There is no equal growth opportunity on YOUTUBE or any other video sharing site, your channel will grow if they want to!!!!!” she declared on one of her websites, among one of many statements criticizing the company across her other websites and extensive social media presence, sometimes using the name Nasime Sabz Yeşil Nasim.
In a February Facebook post, for instance, she decried YouTube’s “hidden policy” of “discrimination” and “suppression of truth.”
Aghdam herself had several YouTube accounts, posting dozens of videos espousing a pro-animal rights viewpoint as well as videos of herself dancing or demonstrating exercise moves in front of green screen backgrounds. Her accounts began to be locked shortly after her identification as the shooter, but screen grabs like the one below show content typical of the animal rights-focused videos.
Her websites contain statements like, “Youtube filtered my channels to keep them from getting views!” and images complaining about her revenue from her YouTube videos, implying YouTube had been diminishing her earnings:
Aghdam also appears to have maintained at least two Instagram accounts, frequently captioning her posts in her — presumably native — Persian language. She makes frequent reference to Iran and the Azeri ethnic group that resides primarily in Iran and neighboring Azerbaijan.
A post on the website of the “Interfaith Vegan Alliance” refers to her by the name Nasime Sabz, and claims she is an adherent of the Baha’i faith, which is persecuted in Iran, seeming to claim she once ran a “TV show on Persian Satellite.”
Gun Control Fail: Nasim Aghdam Used Legally Purchased, Registered Handgun in YouTube Attack
byAWR HAWKINS4 Apr 20183,219
Nasim Aghdam, 39, used a legally purchased, registered handgun to shoot innocents at YouTube headquarters on Tuesday.
She also reportedly visited a shooting range on Tuesday, prior to targeting YouTube headquarters.
That means Aghdam obtained her gun via a background check, then registered it with the state, as required by California law.
It also means that background checks and a registration requirement once again proved impotent to stop a determined attacker.
Despite the state’s tough gun control laws, Elliot Roger shot and killed three near Santa Barbara on March 23, 2014; Syed Farook and Tashfeen Malik shot and killed 14 at a San Bernardino County Building on December 2, 2015; and Albert Wong shot and killed three innocents at the Yountville Veterans Home on March 9, 2018.
Moreover, as Breitbart News has reported, California gun control goes far beyond background checks and registration requirements. The state has an “assault weapons” ban, a 10-day waiting period of firearm purchases, a requirement that would-be gun purchasers first obtain a firearm safety certificate from the state, and a “good cause” threshold for concealed carry permit issuance.
The state also pioneered the gun violence restraining orders (GVROs) that have been pushed as a solution to high profile shootings in the wake of the February 14 high school shooting in Parkland, Florida.
Despite such stringent gun control, Aghdam carried a gun onto the YouTube campus; shot and wounded three innocents; then killed herself.
In some of the Mexican towns playing host to a “caravan” of more than 1,200 Central American migrants heading to the U.S. border, the welcome mat has been rolled out despite President Donald Trump’s call for Mexican authorities to stop them.
Local officials have offered lodging in town squares and empty warehouses or arranged transport for the migrants, participants in a journey organized by the immigrant advocacy group Pueblo Sin Fronteras. The officials have conscripted buses, cars, ambulances and police trucks. But the help may not be entirely altruistic.
“The authorities want us to leave their cities,” said Rodrigo Abeja, an organizer from Pueblo Sin Fronteras. “They’ve been helping us, in part to speed the massive group out of their jurisdictions.”
At some point this spring, the caravan’s 2,000-mile (3,200-km) journey that began at Tapachula near the Guatemalan border on March 25 will end at the U.S. border, where some of its members will apply for asylum, while others will attempt to sneak into the United States.
Abeja said there was a lot of pressure from authorities to stop the caravan “because of Donald Trump’s reaction.” The Mexican government issued a statement late on Monday saying it was committed to “legal and orderly” migration.
The government said the caravan had been taking place since 2010 and was largely made up of Central Americans entering Mexico who had not met the necessary legal requirements.
“For this reason, participants in this (caravan) are subject to an administrative migratory procedure, while 400 have already been repatriated to their countries of origin, in strict accordance with the law and respecting their human rights,” it said.
Those without permission to stay in Mexico or who had failed to request it through the proper channels could expect to be returned to their homelands, a government official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
‘DOING LITTLE’
Trump railed on Twitter against the caravan on Monday, accusing Mexico of “doing very little, if not NOTHING” to stop the flow of immigrants crossing the U.S. border illegally. “They must stop the big drug and people flows, or I will stop their cash cow, NAFTA,” he concluded.
Mexico’s interior minister Alfonso Navarrete did not directly address the caravan, but he wrote on Twitter that he spoke to the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen on Monday, and that the two had “agreed to analyze the best ways to attend to the flows of migrants in accordance with the laws of each country.”
Mexico must walk a delicate line with the United States because the countries are in the midst of renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) along with Canada.
At the same time, Mexican left-wing presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has an 18-point lead ahead of the July 1 election, according to a poll published on Monday.
A Lopez Obrador victory could usher in a Mexican government less accommodating toward the United States on both trade and immigration issues.
Mexican Senator Angelica de la Pena, who presides over the Senate’s human rights commission, told Reuters that Mexico should protect migrants’ rights despite the pressure from Trump.
Former President Vicente Fox called for Mexican officials to take a stand against Trump’s attacks. Trump keeps “blackmailing, offending and denigrating Mexico and Mexicans,” he wrote on Twitter on Monday.
Under Mexican law, Central Americans who enter Mexico legally are generally allowed to move freely through the country, even if their goal is to cross illegally into the United States.
‘WE’RE SUFFERING’
Migrants in the caravan cite a variety of reasons for joining it. Its members are disproportionately from Honduras, which has high levels of violence and has been rocked by political upheaval in recent months following the re-election of U.S.-backed president, Juan Orlando Hernández, in an intensely disputed election.
Maria Elena Colindres Ortega, a member of the caravan and, until January, a member of Congress in Honduras, said she is fleeing the political upheaval at home. “We’ve had to live through a fraudulent electoral process,” she said. “We’re suffering a progressive militarization and lack of institutions, and … they’re criminalizing those who protested.”
Colindres Ortega, who opposed the ruling party in Honduras, said she spiraled into debt after serving without pay for the last 18 months of her four-year term. She decided to head north after a fellow congressman from her party put out word on Facebook that a caravan of migrants was gathering in southern Mexico, leaving home with a small bag with necessities and photos of her children.
Pueblo Sin Fronteras has helped coordinate migrant caravans for the past several years, although previously they had a maximum of several hundred participants. During the journey members of the organization instruct the migrants about their rights.
“We accompany at least those who want to request asylum,” said Alex Mensing, Pueblo Sin Fronteras’ program director. “We help prepare them for the detention process and asylum process before they cross the border, because it’s so difficult for people to have success if they don’t have the information.”
Typically, Central Americans have not fared well with U.S. asylum claims, particularly those from Honduras. A Reuters analysis of immigration court data found that Hondurans who come before the court receive deportation orders in more than 83 percent of cases, the highest rate of any nationality. Hondurans also face deportation in Mexico, where immigration data shows that 5,000 Hondurans were deported from Mexico in February alone, the highest number since May 2016.
Manuel Padilla, chief of the border patrol’s Rio Grande Valley sector, one of the busiest crossing points on the U.S. Mexico border, said in an interview with Reuters that he worries the caravan could “generate interest for other groups to do the same thing,” but he was not terribly nervous about coping with the group currently traveling.
“Not to be flippant,” Padilla said, “but it’s similar numbers to what we are seeing every day pretty much.”
(This version of the story corrects spelling to Manuel from Maunel in penultimate paragraph
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What About All The Killings By Gang Members And Homies In The Hood.
A group of Chicago youth staged a “die-in’ at City Hall to demand that the city defund police and fund marginalized communities instead. The youth, all members of #NoCopAcademy, also announced that the organization is suing Mayor Rahm Emanuel for withholding critical emails regarding construction of the proposed $95 million building for a Police and Fire training center in West Garfield Park.
They Are On Their Way To College I’m Sure.
“Rahm supports schools and resources for cops, not for Black and Brown kids,” their mission reads. “We demand a redirecting of this $95 million into Chicago’s most marginalized communities instead. Real community safety comes from fully-funded schools and mental health centers, robust after-school and job-training programs, and social and economic justice. We want investment in our communities, not expanded resources for police.”
Today, members of the #NoCopAcademy — a movement led by Black youth in Chicago but fueled and organized by a group of multiracial youth— took over Chicago’s City Hall, 121 N. LaSalle Dr., to demand that the mayor invests in black and brown communities and resources for the youth.
The young protestors first disrupted the Chicago City Council meeting and then staged a “die-in” in the City Hall lobby. The group set up cardboard tombstones with the names of people killed in police shootings, like Laquan McDonald, an unarmed Black teen fatallyshot by Chicago cop Jason Van Dyke. The tombstones also had the names of schools, mental health facilities, and social service institutions that have been shut down by the city due to lack of funding.
“16 shots and a cover-up!” the group chanted as police arrived at the lobby, a twitter video shows.
The youth argue that Chicago already spends $1.5 billion on police every year, an approximately $4 million every day.
“We spend 300% more on the CPD as a city than we do on the Departments of Public Health, Family and Support Services, Transportation, and Planning and Development (which handles affordable housing). This plan is being praised as a development opportunity to help local residents around the proposed site, but when Rahm closed 50 schools in 2013, six were in this neighborhood,” their mission reads.
West Garfield Park is a predominantly Black neighborhood and it was in September 2017 that community leaders decided to take matters into their own hands by creating the #NoCopAcademy Movement, wrote Juanita Tennyson for Teen Vogue. The group of teens met with City Council members, held press conferences, canvassed and door knocked on the West Side to raise awareness of the project.
Maria Mora, described as a lead organizer and canvasser with #NoCopAcademy spoke before City Council and said that the group had surveyed 500 residents of West Garfield Park and communities nearby about the project.
“88% are opposed,” she said. Mora added that the majority agreed that building a police academy was not the “best deal for a $95 million investment” in the neighborhood, and 7% need more information.
Listen. Listen listen listen! Maria has been leading canvassing on the west side asking neighbors of proposed cop academy what they think. She breaks down the results of the 500 people surveyed so far here and it’s
She added that most people agreed that the investment in the West Side should be in community safety, schools, community spaces, mental health clinics, substance abuse clinics, homelessness and to reclaiming abandoned spaces.
During a Council meeting in November 2017, Chance the Rapper spoke out against Rahm’s plan and shortly after took it to social media, making #NoCopAcademy a trending topic.
Today, the Grammy-winning South Side rap artist sent his support to the youth at City Hall through a tweet.
“Students in Chicago are staging a SIT IN at City Hall right now. I ask that you stop by and show them that you are in SUPPORT of their REVOLUTION. Bring food if you can, these children are fighting for our future kids as well as themselves #NoCopAcademy121 N LASALLE ST,” he tweeted.
Students in Chicago are staging a SIT IN at City Hall right now. I ask that you stop by and show them that you are in SUPPORT of their REVOLUTION. Bring food if you can, these children are fighting for our future kids as well as themselves #NoCopAcademy
121 N LASALLE ST
“All the aldermen on the West Side voted for this because they understand — they have felt forgotten from the type of public investments that can spur economic growth,” Emanuel said. “It will have its own value of safety for the entire city. It will have its own value of safety… to the West Side. And it will be an investment in the kind of economic activity we want to see.”
Ald. Emma Mitts (37th) in charge of the West Garfield Park area said that the academy would provide a way for the department to try to fix some of the training inadequacies and, that way, address the pattern of constitutional violations by police against residents. She added that the training center could be an anchor for economic development and give residents a sense of safety in a part of the city that has been beset by poverty and violence for decades, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The only aldermen to vote no was Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th) who in the midst of today’s action in City Hall tweeted a series of photos of an introduction of an ordinance for a “Chicago Civilian Oversight Commission.”
“#LaquanMcDonald, #RekiaBoyd, the victims of police violence deserve TRUE civilian oversight & accountability. This ordinance from Mayor’s Public Safety Committee Chair is a joke and an insult to the victims of police violence and every Chicagoan fighting for justice in policing.”
I got off work early for spring break and headed directly to City Hall where #NoCopAcademy organizers and supporters have taken over the lobby since around noon.
Bringing A Rock To A Gun Fight Is Like Fighting This Creature With A Plastic Fork.
The superintendent of Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania’s Blue Mountain School District says his students avail themselves of rocks with which to defend against mass shooters.
WNEP reports that superintendent Dr. David Helsel told a Pennsylvania House Education Committee, “Every classroom has been equipped with a five-gallon bucket of river stone. If an armed intruder attempts to gain entrance into any of our classrooms, they will face a classroom full students armed with rocks and they will be stoned.”
Bringing A Rock To A Gun Fight Will Get You Put In Boothill Graveyard In Tombstone City.
Helsel explained how the plan to throw rocks came about: “At one time I just had the idea of river stone, they`re the right size for hands, you can throw them very hard and they will create or cause pain, which can distract.”
He stressed that doors have been re-enforced, making them difficult to break through, and students have also been trained in “barricading the doors” to make breaching them even more difficult. But the students are armed with rocks in the event that a shooter does get through.
And I Said Yes We Will Put American First You Dumb Jackasses.
The GOP’s business-first leadership has expanded the H-2B visa-worker program, so reducing marketplace pressure on companies to offer higher wages to Americans just months before the November election.
The pre-election giveaway is buried on page 1760 of the 2232-page 2018 omnibus bill, where language allows the Department of Homeland Security to greatly expand the size of the H-2B visa-worker program up to roughly 100,000 imported workers:
SEC. 205. Notwithstanding the [66,000] numerical limitation set forth in section 214(g)(1)(B) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1184(g)(1)(B)), the Secretary of Homeland Security, after consultation with the Secretary of Labor, and upon the determination that the needs of American businesses cannot be satisfied in fiscal year 2018 with United States workers who are willing, qualified, and able to perform temporary nonagricultural labor, may increase the total number of aliens who may receive a visa under section 101(a)(15)(H)(ii)(b) of such Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(ii)(b)) in such fiscal year above such limitation by not more than the highest number of H–2B nonimmigrants who participated in the H–2B returning worker program in any fiscal year in which returning workers were exempt from such numerical limitation.
The jargon gives the green light to Senators and Representatives to pressure DHS leaders until unless they agree to hand out more H-2B visas to the politicians’ local employers.
Many thanks, @timkaine & @MarkWarner for signing the letter to our Senate leaders urging them to include language in the FY18 omnibus package requiring caps to be increased for temporary worker visas. #SaveH2B. Time is running out for many small businesses.
“This shows that Congress uses the budget process to grant special access to insider lobbyists,” said lawyer John Miano, who opposes visa-worker programs. “By granting the ability to slip special interest provisions into a bill that must pass Congress, it rewards those who supply donations,” he added.
(Mitch Says) “get your hand out of my ass” Paul
The H-2B visa-workers are imported by landscapers, forestry companies, seafood processors, construction firms, resorts, hotels and restaurants to import foreign workers for seasonal work. The imported workers are not cheap — see the data here — but their arrival means that employers do not have to raise their wages to persuade Americans to take seasonal jobs.
Moreover, if they raised their wages high enough to attract Americans to the seasonal jobs, then the companies would also have to raise wages for their year-round and supervisory workers.
Those extra wages would reduce company profits, raise costs and reduce the number of customers, and shrink the number of companies. But the extra wages would also leave hundreds of thousands of American voters working in higher-wage jobs, and would also nudge many additional employers to raise wages.
That free-market outcome is anathema to many GOP leaders, including House Majority Leader Paul Ryan. He has repeatedly said that immigration rules should be tuned to help employers — not employees — and that CEOs should be allowed to hire “any willing worker,” even if those workers live far outside the United States.
In 2015, Ryan sharply increased the size of the H-2B program, but after Donald Trump’s shocking victory in 2016, he let the program return to the 66,000 level.
In 2017, Ryan against pushed to expand the program with a 2018-style rule that encouraged legislators to pressure DHS officials for additional visas. Under then-DHS chief John Kelly, the agency reluctantly granted some additional visas, but far fewer than sought by business groups.
In 2018, the Department of Homeland Security has started distributing the 66,000 regular H-2B visas via a lottery because so many companies asked for a share of the H-2B visas.
The H-2B program is dwarfed by the size of the white-collar guest worker programs, via the H-1B, L-1, J-1, H-4, TN, and OPT programs. Collectively, these white-collar outsourcing visas keep more than 1 million foreign university graduates in healthcare, computer, business, and design jobs sought by American graduates.
The existence of the H-2B visa program creates a “crony-capitalist” economy. Companies which win the government-provided workers get to reduce their payroll costs, win more customers and generate more profits. Companies which do not get H-2B workers shrink and lose business. This dynamic forces many companies and labor-brokers to compete for the H-2Bs and to lobby for even more H-2Bs, so generating business donations and endorsements for politicians — at the cost of cutting wages for many Americans.
The program also distorts local economies. For example, in forest towns, the program allows out-of-state forestry contractors to ignore local job-applicants in favor of foreign H-2B workers.
