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UPDATE: Street Preacher Arrested for Defining Biblical Marriage Says ‘I Was Doing What My Job Description Says’

UPDATED May 3, 2021: Pastor John Sherwood was arrested last week for preaching from the end of Genesis as he explained the biblical definition of marriage in an open area near Uxbridge Underground Station. Sherwood was forcefully removed by police from his platform for being accused of making “homophobic statements” and arrested under the Public Order Act because they said he used ‘abusive or insulting words.’

Sherwood was released within 24 hours without any charges, and UK’s Daily Mail reports testimony he gave since the arrest saying, “I wasn’t making any homophobic comments. I was just defining marriage as a relationship between a man and a woman. I was only saying what the Bible says. I wasn’t wanting to hurt anyone or cause offense.”

Sherwood affirmed, “I was doing what my job description says which is to preach the gospel in open air as well as in a church building.”

He explained to the police that he was “exercising my religious liberty and my conscience.” He then confirmed the reports of being roughed up and said he has some injuries to his wrist and elbow after police forcefully removed the 71-year-old pastor from the area. “I do believe I was treated shamefully. It should never have happened,” he said.

The incident has been sent to the Crown Prosecution Service for further review.

CIA recruitment video slammed as ‘woke propaganda’

A gag-worthy CIA recruitment video, featuring an “intersectional” and “cisgender” Latina mom, has been panned by critics — who say it is “woke propaganda” gone too far.

The promotional video, posted on Twitter Wednesday, features a 36-year-old officer who ticked off a series of left-wing buzzwords before boasting that she can “wax eloquent on complex legal issues” while staying true to her Latina roots.

“I am a woman of color, I am a mom, I am a cisgender millennial who’s been diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder,” she says, while dramatic string music plays in the background. “I am intersectional, but my existence is not a box-checking exercise.”

“I did not sneak into the CIA,” the agent, who says she has suffered from “impostor syndrome,” goes on.

“My employment was not and is not of a fluke or a slip through the cracks. … I am educated, qualified and competent.”    

The two-minute video was widely mocked on social media.

“China and Russia Love this,” snarked Donald Trump Jr.

“The CIA just released a recruitment video full of woke propaganda and America’s enemies are laughing their heads off,” conservative author and podcaster Dinesh D’Souza said.

“That our universities teach people to talk like this is a national embarrassment,” tweeted author J.D. Vance.

Meanwhile, another critic claimed he was repulsed.

“i literally almost threw up,” he wrote.

Here’s another take from National Review:

Progressives seem upset that the CIA has “co-opted” their language in a new recruitment video that features a “cisgender millennial” woman who says she is “intersectional,” that she is “unapologetically me,” and that she refuses to “internalize misguided patriarchal ideas.”

Personally, I think the move makes perfect sense. The sort of people who talk like this are already experts in manipulating, infiltrating, surveilling, and extracting dubious confessions from the rest of us — and, as a result, they already possess most of the skills for which the CIA is looking.

Biden Admin Wants to Outsource Spying on Americans to Private Firms, Bypass 4th Amendment

The Biden administration is considering using private firms to track the online activity of American citizens in order to get around the Fourth Amendment and other laws that protect Americans from unreasonable searches and seizures and surveillance. The report says that the Biden administration wants to monitor “extremist chatter by Americans online” but can’t do so without a warrant, and thinks private firms can get around the legal restrictions.

Federal authorities “can only browse through unprotected information on social media sites like Twitter and Facebook and other open online platforms,” according to CNN.

The plan being discussed inside DHS, according to multiple sources, would, in effect, allow the department to circumvent” restrictions the U.S. government has to surveil American citizens. “A source familiar with the effort said it is not about decrypting data but rather using outside entities who can legally access these private groups to gather large amounts of information that could help DHS identify key narratives as they emerge.

“By partnering with research firms who have more visibility in this space, the DHS could produce information that would likely be beneficial to both it and the FBI, which can’t monitor US citizens in this way without first getting a warrant or having the pretext of an ongoing investigation,” explains CNN. “The CIA and NSA are also limited on collecting intelligence domestically.”


Crypto & Gold Jump As Dollar Dumps, Stocks & Bonds Rise

Aside from a disappointing stagflationary miss on ISM Manufacturing (and Buffett and Munger musings on inflation), the big headlines of today are in crypto where altcoins are screaming higher…

It’s really escalating…

Ethereum has literally exploded to record-er and record-er highs in the last few days, surpassing $3,000 yesterday for the first time and above $3,300 today…

Bitcoin is also on the rise but less so, hovering around $56k…

Huge Victory for Kids: Court Orders EPA to Ban Use of Toxic Pesticide on Foods

In a “huge victory” for children and farmworkers, a U.S. court ordered the EPA to revoke all food uses of chlorpyrifos, a neurotoxin linked to developmental harms, especially in children.

The environmental law organization Earthjustice celebrated a “huge victory” for farmworkers and children on Thursday after the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to ban all food uses of a toxic pesticide linked to memory loss and developmental harms.

The EPA was given 60 days to revoke all food uses of chlorpyrifos and retain only those that are found to have no effects on people’s health.

“This ruling is a huge victory for children and communities across the country who will finally be spared by needless poisonings and lifelong learning disabilities,” said Earthjustice in a statement.

Representing labor groups including United Farm Workers and public health organizations including the Learning Disability Association of America, Earthjustice filed a lawsuit against the EPA after the agency refused to ban chlorpyrifos in 2019 and in 2016 under the Trump administration.

The Obama administration had been working to ban the pesticide before former president Donald Trump took office in 2016, and environmental groups have been calling for an end to all food uses for the chemical for decades.

“We have been working for years to make this happen,” Earthjustice tweeted Thursday.

Facebook ‘Supreme Court’ Will Announce Decision on Trump Blacklisting Wednesday

The Facebook “Supreme Court” will announce its final decision on former President Trump’s Facebook account on Wednesday morning, according to a recent announcement.

CNN reports that the Facebook Oversight Board, an independent body packed with anti-Trump leftists that have the power to reverse Mark Zuckerberg’s content decisions, will make a public ruling on the fate of former President Trump’s Facebook account on Wednesday morning.

The Board stated last month that it had received over 9,000 public responses in relation to the suspension of former President Trump’s Facebook and Instagram accounts. The Masters of the Universe suspended Trump’s account following the January 6 Capitol riots and then referred the decision to the Oversight Board for review.

‘Cops Off Campus Coalition’ kicks off ‘Abolition May’ as professors across the country vow to cancel classes in support of movement

Professors across the country have vowed to cancel class and enable students, teachers, and other school personnel to strike in protest against campus police presence, according to Campus Reform.

The outlet on Friday reported that a grassroots organization dubbed the Cops Off Campus Coalition organized the “National Day of Refusal” and has asked “students, professors, and faculty members to pledge to be absent; from work, class, teaching, and more’ on that day.”

The organization, which states that it is “committed to abolishing police on campus” planned the strike for Monday.

Several hundred students, professors, and supporters have pledged to participate and signed a petition calling for area campuses across the country to remove any and all police presence.

Someone Needs to Tell Texas to Wake Up After This in Austin

Giuliani Says FBI Is Trying to ‘Frame’ Him After Apartment Search

Days after federal investigators searched his apartment and confiscated several devices, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani claimed that the FBI is “trying to frame him.”

“At about 6 a.m., there was a banging on my door—a very loud banging, and outside there was a group of an endless number of FBI agents,” Giuliani told Fox News on Monday. “Usually a person who has been a former assistant U.S. attorney, a U.S. attorney, a mayor, the associate attorney general, usually they receive a subpoena—not have their home raided,” he added.

Federal prosecutors executed a search warrant at the former mayor’s Manhattan apartment reportedly as part of an investigation into whether he violated Foreign Agents Registration Act related to his work in Ukraine.

The FBI agents “showed me a warrant that sought the electronics in my apartment and purported to be about an alleged violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, FARA, for failure to file as a foreign agent on behalf of an unnamed Ukrainian official,” Giuliani added, saying he “never did this” and claimed he was offering to discuss the allegations with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

“My contracts have clauses that I will not act as a foreign agent, and I wanted to show these things to the government so that they would stop their consistent illegal leaking of an investigation,” Giuliani added.

‘Dark Moment in History’ as GMO Mosquitoes Released in Florida

Environmentalists said the release of up to a billion GMO mosquitoes over a two-year period is about maximizing profits for biotech giant Oxitec, not about the pressing need to address mosquito-borne diseases.

Environmentalists and Florida residents voiced concern and outrage last week as state government officials and the biotechnology giant Oxitec moved ahead with a pilot project that involves releasing up to a billion genetically engineered mosquitoes in Monroe County over a two-year period.

Presented by local authorities as an effort to control the population of Aedes aegypti — a mosquito species that can carry both the dengue and yellow fever virus — critics warn that the effort’s supposed benefits and its potential negative consequences have not been sufficiently studied.

Responding to news that the first boxes of genetically modified mosquitoes were placed in six locations in Monroe County last week, Friends of the Earth noted in a press release that “scientists have raised concerns that GE mosquitoes could create hybrid wild mosquitoes which could worsen the spread of mosquito-borne diseases and could be more resistant to insecticides than the original wild mosquitoes.”

Dana Perls, food and technology program manager at Friends of the Earth, called on the Environmental Protection Agency — which approved the project last May — to “halt this live experiment immediately.”