Free Republic

NEW YORK (AP) — The Weinstein Co. filed for bankruptcy protection on Monday with a buyout offer in hand from a private equity firm, the latest twist in its efforts to survive the sexual misconduct scandal that brought down co-founder Harvey Weinstein, shook Hollywood and triggered a movement that spread out to convulse other industries. The company also announced it was releasing any victims of or witnesses to Weinstein’s alleged misconduct from non-disclosure agreements preventing them from speaking out.

Time’s 2017 Person of the Year was “The Silence Breakers,” a growing contingent of women who have been speaking out about sexual harassment by men in positions of power. But the sexual exploitation of women is hardly something new. As Time observed, the #MeToo movement “has actually been simmering for years, decades, centuries.” In order to prepare for a course I’ll be teaching next fall about working women in 1920s and 1930s films, I’ve been watching a lot of movies from the period. And I’ve been repeatedly surprised by how much casual sexual harassment – a term that wouldn’t exist...

Juanita Broaddrick had almost given up by the time she called her grandson from her house in Van Buren, Arkansas, on January 6, 2016. She had been trying, since seeing a video in late November, to send a single tweet, with no success. Her grandson, Ridge, then 13, diagnosed the problem immediately. “Nana, are there red numbers at the bottom?” Broaddrick remembers him asking. When Broaddrick said yes, he explained this meant that the message was over the maximum 140 characters then allowed by Twitter. Broaddrick didn’t tell Ridge what she was trying to tweet when he gave her the...

Stunning Audacity – Clinton Tweets Support For Iranian Protests She Previously Helped Destroy…

The admission revealed the identity behind a big data breach. Nghia Hoang Pho, 67. Nghia, Carted home, “Top Secret” and “Sensitive Compartmented”, Information for over five years. These files were downloaded onto Pho’s personal computer and then routinely harvested by Russian intelligence. Pho took a mix of digital and physical info home between 2010 and 2015. he was using it to rewrite his resume -- this was intentional, but not spiteful. Pho may face prison time when he's sentenced on April 6th, but prosecutors “are open to calls for a lighter sentence” given the non-malicious nature of the case. It...

DETROIT — “We’re waging our own war against rape and sexual harassment,” said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA). “We’re waging a war against the perverts who believe we can be misused or exploited in the interests of a job, or recognition, or even so-called love.” Waters was delivering the keynote speech of the Women’s Convention on Saturday, at a luncheon held in her honor. She mentioned equal pay, paid parental leave, and other issues important to many of the women (and men) in attendance. But much of her speech was devoted to an issue that had captured a great deal of...

<p>WHAT’S the most powerful country in the world? There’s a good case to be made that it’s China. There are many kinds of power – diplomatic, cultural, military and economic. So an easier question to ask is: What’s the world’s largest economy? Almost certainly China. Many might protest. After all, the US still produces the most when measured at market exchange rates. But this comparison is misleading, because things cost different amounts in different countries. Gross domestic product (GDP) is supposed to measure the amount of real stuff – cars, phones, financial services, back massages, etc – that a country produces. If the same phone costs $400 in the US but only $200 in China, China’s GDP is getting undercounted by 50pc when we measure at market exchange rates. In general, less developed countries have lower prices, which means their GDP gets systematically undercounted.</p>

The Supreme Court is leaving in place a decision that the alleged mastermind of the 2000 attack on the USS Cole that killed 17 U.S. sailors should face a trial by a military commission. The court on Monday declined to take up the case of Saudi national Abd al Rahim al-Nashiri. Al-Nashiri had sought to challenge the authority of a military commission in Guantánamo Bay hearing his case. But an appeals court ruled last year that al-Nashiri’s challenge would have to wait until after his trial. …

Two decades ago, the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein invited Ashley Judd to the Peninsula Beverly Hills hotel for what the young actress expected to be a business breakfast meeting. Instead, he had her sent up to his room, where he appeared in a bathrobe and asked if he could give her a massage or she could watch him shower, she recalled in an interview.

The records show Officer Mohamed Noor was hired as a cadet in March 2015. In September of that year, he received a letter saying he passed his Peace Officer Licensing Examination and was eligible to become a licensed, sworn officer. Noor is on paid leave after he killed Justine Damond, a 40-year-old spiritual teacher who was engaged to be married, on July 15 after she called 911 twice to report a possible rape. Noor, who was in the passenger seat of a squad car, shot across his partner in the driver's seat and hit Damond. His partner told authorities that...

A group of teenagers were arrested after Fourth of July celebrations seemed to have gotten out of hand at a beach in Dennis, Massachusetts. Julianna Murphy, Stephen Cerrone, all 19, Molly Hines, 18, and an unidentified 17-year-old were allegedly engaged in unspecified sexual activity in the water, with a crowd of onlookers cheering them on. The incident was reported to police, and Detective Matthew Turner showed up to see what was going on. Detective Turner found the teens about 100 feet from shore. “Each embraced couple were at a minimum kissing and stumbling about in the waves,” he wrote, acknowledging...

Sarajevo, 06.24.2017: How can Israel ever have peace with her Muslim neighbors when experience shows that in any instance in which a non-Muslim state is bordering on a Muslim state, the likelihood of war is high — because Muslim aggression cannot be contained by agreements? Israel, Armenia, Serbia, Greece, Ethiopia all have learned the truth the hard way. Whoever believes in peace with Muslim neighbors has another thing coming for him. In the Balkans, there are these Muslim majority mini-states and provinces from the scrapheap of failed states of former Yugoslavia that are swarming the crowded neighborhood. And this is...

New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito (D-East Harlem) said "ultra right-wing forces" in Puerto Rico are trying to undermine this year's Puerto Rican Day Parade. The city's parade made national headlines with its decision to designate Oscar Lopez Rivera, a convicted terrorist, as its "National Freedom Hero." Lopez Rivera led the FALN, a left-wing liberation movement in Puerto Rico, which bombed several sites across the United States - including NYPD barracks. "A lot of the campaign putting pressure on the sponsors to withdraw... is being manipulated and organized and orchestrated from an ultra-right wing element on the island [of...

Scores of former workers at the company that owns popular jewelry stores such as Zales, Kay Jewelers and Jared’s Galleria, say managers promoted a culture of sexual harassment and discrimination, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. About 250 women and men who worked for Sterling complained in sworn statements that female employees were groped and encouraged to have sex with their bosses to keep their jobs throughout the 1990s and 2000s, the newspaper reported.

Nearly 24 years after the Branch Davidian standoff began near Waco, some federal agents are opening up about their experiences that resulted in the worst day in the history of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and ultimately the deaths of some 70 people inside the compound more than seven weeks later. "I've decided I'm never going to forget, and I owe it to the guys who were killed to tell their story," ATF Agent Gary Orchowski told the Houston Chronicle in a story published Sunday. Four agents were killed Feb. 28, 1993, when more than 130 ATF...

Honorable mentions: Samantha Bee, CAIR, Ta-Nesi Coates, Dixie Chicks, Bill Clinton, Ghostbusters 2016, Melissa Harris-Perry, Van Jones, John Kerry, Paul Krugman, Loretta Lynch, Rachel Maddow, Bill Maher, Chris Matthews, Harry Reid, Michael Moore, Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, John Podesta, Harry Reid, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Chuck Schumer, Cora Segal, Martin Sheen, Jill Stein, George Takei, The View, Vox, Elizabeth Warren, Shannon Watts, The Southern Poverty Law Center, Brian Williams, Juan Williams10) Salon.com: Singling out one liberal rag from legions of contemptuous, dishonest and nasty publications is difficult, but Salon deserves consideration because its website is a walking hate crime against white...

The state-of-the-art J-20 fifth-generation jet fighter is a key part of the Chinese air force. According to Chinese military expert, Li Li, the J-20 could possibly break the US monopoly on fifth-generation fighters. During an interview with CCTV, the military expert said that the Chinese jet fighter may exert an even bigger influence than the American F-22 Raptor. Li Li further said that although the American F-22 Raptor is the first fifth-generation fighter commissioned in an air force, its performance is not satisfactory. She said that the J-20 and Russia’s T-50 will possibly manage to break the Western monopoly and...

The Clinton Legacy from the ‘90s, Russian Reset, China, Clinton Foundatiion, Corruption, Libya and Benghazi, October Surprises, Duplicity, Media Collaboration, Clinton, Obama October certainly lived up to its reputation as being a month for surprises in this year’s presidential election, especially for Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. The media have done as much as they could to help minimize the damage, but a massive amount of new information came out that has confirmed and revealed a pattern of deceit, duplicity and corruption, unmatched in any presidential candidacy in modern times. October SurprisesUntil this recent information made its way into the public...

As has become typical in an election marked by its often unpleasant surprises, I awoke to a storm of outrage on Twitter on Wednesday morning. Newt Gingrich had told Fox’s Megyn Kelly that she was “fascinated with sex” and didn’t “care about public policy.” Mr. Gingrich unleashed this boorish attack after Ms. Kelly tried to pin him down on whether the many accusations of sexual assault against Donald J. Trump, and his own words on the matter, should disqualify him from the presidency. That Mr. Gingrich (with whom I once hosted a television show) thought the best way to deflect...

In a 1998 press interview, Steinem weighed in on the Clinton impeachment hearings when asked whether President Bill Clinton should be impeached for lying under oath, she was quoted as saying, "Clinton should be censured for lying under oath about Lewinsky in the Paula Jones deposition, perhaps also for stupidity in answering at all." In a March 22, 1998 Op/Ed piece in the New York Times, she effectively gave support to the notion that a man may: (1) uninvited, open-mouth kiss a woman; (2) uninvited, fondle a woman's breast; and (3) uninvited, take a woman's hand and place it on...