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The Venice Film Festival just wrapped up in Palazzo del Cinema, Lido, Italy, and the big winners were all smiles. This is apparently considered something of a big deal because winners of this festival frequently go on to win at the Oscars, as was the case with The Shape of Water. The top prize (the Golden Lion award) went to a Joaquin Phoenix film called Joker. (This one sounds pretty good and I might even go see it.)That wasn’t the big news for me, however. The second-place winner, given the Grand Jury Prize, was a film called An Officer...

Depriving a transgender inmate with severe gender dysphoria of sex reassignment surgery is a form of “cruel and unusual punishment,” a federal appeals court ruled Friday, affirming a lower court ruling. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the state of Idaho to provide the surgery for trans inmate Adree Edmo. The ruling is the first time an appeals court has ordered a state to provide gender-affirming surgery to a prisoner, and the decision is at odds with a ruling issued earlier this year by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Idaho's Republican governor, Brad Little, vowed to...

An attorney for Hollywood director Bryan Singer announced Wednesday that the filmmaker will pay $150,000 to resolve allegations that he raped a 17-year-old boy while partying on a yacht in 2003. The "X-Men" director was accused of sexually assaulting then-underage Cesar Sanchez-Guzman during a Seattle yacht party. Singer allegedly lured him into a secluded area and forced the teen to perform oral sex. Sanchez-Guzman's lawsuit filed in December 2017 also alleges that Singer performed oral sex on the 17-year-old against his will and anally penetrated him, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David J. Garrow, an authority on Martin Luther King Jr., offered his explosive story on King to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and reportedly to other U.S. publications before it was published in Great Britain. The AJC turned down Garrow’s offer. The piece, which reveals new sexual allegations against the civil rights icon, was published in Standpoint, a United Kingdom-based cultural and political magazine.It was also offered to The Atlantic and The Washington Post, according to Standpoint.The AJC declined to run the piece because it was based on information that would in some cases be impossible to independently verify,...

A blending of bits and pieces from Standpoint magazine and Newspunch - both British sources as the USA media has been eerily silent. Martin Luther King Jr. was the ‘Harvey Weinstein of the civil rights movement’ who had ’40 affairs,' Michael Mosbacher, the acting editor of Standpoint magazine, which is publishing Mr Garrow’s article about the files, says the tapes reveal MLK as “the Harvey Weinstein of the civil rights movement”. [Newspunch Mag 9-28-19] Mosbacher continues, “If public figures are now all – rightly – subject to scrutiny, there should be no exception for Martin Luther King, however worthy his...

BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KBAK/KBFX) — The renaming of a street may be the road to change. Cottonwood Road in southeast Bakersfield will now be named South Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. "There's a lot of energy and a lot of excitement," community leader and ShePower organizer, Arleana Waller said. Waller grew up on Cottonwood Road. She believes the new name will change the areas negative reputation.

Historians have known for many years that civil rights icon Martin Luther King had been unfaithful to his wife. But now, David Garrow, who won a Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for his biography of King, has unearthed previously classified FBI documents showing that King was genuinely sexually depraved. From the Times of London (behind subscriber paywall): A huge archive of documents recently released from Federal Bureau of Investigation files exposes in detail King’s sexual activities with dozens of women as he travelled the country campaigning against racial inequality...

The FBI tried to destroy the reputation of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr as controversial unearthed files reveal. Shocking details of the FBI’s smear campaign against MLK Jr have been found on secret tapes, it is claimed. Its is alleged the agency accused the celebrated civil-rights campaigner of having up to 40 affairs. ~[snip} J Edgar Hoover, who believed he had Communist Party ties. Details of the covert tapes have been revealed by biographer David Garrow, ... MLks secret heartache and the white woman he could never marry.... Hoover feared [King's] popular movement could destabilise the country. Agents...

Former child star Corey Feldman has long contended that he and his one-time best friend, the late Corey Haim, were molested by Hollywood insiders as children. Now, Rolling Stone reports in a lengthy, fascinating profile that Feldman has made a documentary about he and Haim’s experiences, one in which he apparently shines a light on “the two industry men who allegedly molested him at the age of 14" and “the A-lister and others who allegedly raped or molested his best friend.” This project is separate from his previous efforts to produce his story, which fell apart in the midst of...

<p>RICHMOND, Va. (AP) - Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is blasting his own political party for not letting him sponsor a table at major fundraising event.</p> <p>The Democratic Party of Virginia recently rejected Fairfax's bid to donate $2,500 to pay for a table at the party's annual Blue Commonwealth dinner.</p>

Film director Roman Polanski is suing the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, demanding reinstatement to the storied organization after he was expelled last May. The suit, filed in the state of California, says AMPAS did not follow proper protocol in dismissing him nearly a year ago. The Academy did so “in accordance with the organization’s Standards of Conduct,” they said at the time, adding their leadership expected members to “uphold the Academy’s values of respect for human dignity.” Polanski’s suit says the Academy’s expulsion decision “is not supported by findings, and the Academy’s findings are not supported by...

A robber sexually assaulted a 69-year-old man along a normally quiet Center City street last week. The man was walking along Manning Street, near South 12th and Spruce streets, around 5 pm. Friday when two men appearing to be in their late 20s approached him, Philadelphia police said in a Tuesday news release. One of the younger men sexually assaulted the 69-year-old and forced him to the ground, police said. The attacker then took his victim’s wallet when the man screamed. The robbers took about $300 out of the wallet before throwing it down on the ground and running off...

Following an allegation that former Vice President Joe Biden inappropriately touched and kissed a former candidate in Nevada during a 2014 campaign event, Whoopi Goldberg is coming to his defense. During "The View" on Monday, the daytime talk show panel addressed the recent allegations Lucy Flores made against Biden, 76, with Goldberg saying that some would say the potential 2020 Democratic candidate is "overly familiar" with people he interacts with and explaining that he’s just “a hands-on kind of guy." Co-host Meghan McCain then went on to discuss how Flores "does not claim this is a MeToo moment" and the...

European Court upholds conviction of woman who condemned Muhammad’s marriage to 6-year-old March 25, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — The Austrian courts were right to condemn Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff for having sharply criticized the prophet Muhammad’s marriage with a six-year-old girl, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has implicitly decided. On Tuesday, the jurisdiction in charge of implementing the European Convention on Human Rights, ratified by the 47 member-states of the Council of Europe, refused to refer Sabaditsch-Wolff’s appeal against a Chamber judgment approving the Austrian decision last fall to the Grand Chamber of the Court. The ECHR did not trouble to...

“It’s not rape in Islam”: ISIS Muslima says jihadis’ rape of non-Muslim women is “allowed in the Quran” The Daily Mail, the worst paper in the Western world, undertakes here to defend Islam and the Qur’an from charges that they condone the sexual enslavement of Infidel women, citing Qur’an 24:33, “Force not your slave-girls to whoredom.” However, this refers to forcing slave girls to become prostitutes. The Qur’an is quite clear that slave girls, “the captives of the right hand,” can be used sexually: “Prohibited to you are your mothers, your daughters, your sisters, your father’s sisters, your mother’s sisters,...

Virginia House Democrats are deferring to law enforcement officials to carry out their investigation into accusations that Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax sexually assaulted two women. This comes after a delegate in the Virginia legislature backed down from calls he made to impeach Fairfax. Democrat Patrick Hope had threatened to introduce articles of impeachment against Fairfax, telling reporters that there is "no question that violent sexual assault qualifies as an impeachable high crime." Hope said that he had drafted language for his colleagues as a first step to take action against the Lt. Governor. ... But the Virginia House Democrats said...

Nearly 70 percent of black kids are born to unwed mothers - but let's talk about 35-year-old blackface pictures. The "blackface scandal" proved beneficial for two things. It displaced the frenzy over Democratic Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam's support for a law lifting many restrictions on late-term abortion. It also took away headlines and news print space from the commonwealth's Democratic lieutenant governor, who faces two sexual assault allegations. But the blackface controversy has legs. Northam's 1984 medical school yearbook page depicted a photograph of someone in blackface and someone in a KKK outfit, both apparently holding cans of beer. At...

A woman said Friday that Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who was recently accused of sexual assault, had raped her nearly two decades earlier. A lawyer for the woman, Meredith Watson, made the accusation in a statement that also called upon Fairfax to resign from office. This is breaking news. Please check back for updates.

Vanessa Tyson, the woman accusing Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault, is a political — and perhaps legal — wrecking ball for the Democratic rising star who until this week was positioned to take over as governor. Fairfax risks not only his political career but also criminal charges, with Tyson alleging an assault at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, where a 15-year statute of limitations allows five more months for Tyson to pursue the case.

Virginia politics descended further into chaos on Wednesday, and Democrats in the capital grew more dismayed by the possibility that a trio of scandals involving their top three statewide officials had laid waste to years of work building up the Democratic Party in the commonwealth. The controversies have created a pseudo-standoff between scandal-plagued Gov. Ralph Northam, Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax and Attorney General Mark Herring, all of whom are fighting to hang on to their jobs as public outrage grows around each of them. None of them wants to resign first, creating a scenario where all of them could hold...