Tag: Israeli Genocide

Central Park Pride Concert Cancelled Over “Security Concerns” About Singer Accused Of Being Anti-Israel

Central Park Pride Concert Cancelled Over “Security Concerns” About Singer Accused Of Being Anti-Israel

Pride events are very expensive to put on.   Most of the cost is security and insurance.  The more threats from haters, normally fundamentalist religious people, the more security needed and the more costly insurance is.  It is another weapon the haters of the LGBTQ+ community have learned to use to shut down events for people they hate.  So much for freedoms these people keep demanding for themselves but want to deny to others.   Hugs

 

May 7, 2025

New York City’s NBC affiliate reports:

Kehlani ‘s planned concert in Central Park next month has been canceled after New York City’s mayor raised security concerns about the R&B star’s performance during Pride month, organizers announced Monday.

The “After Hours” singer had been set to headline a June 26 concert billed as “Pride with Kehlani” at the Manhattan park as part of SummerStage, an annual slate of free concerts at parks across the city.

But organizers, in their announcement, cited concerns from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration about the “controversy surrounding Cornell University’s decision to cancel Kehlani’s concert at the University, as well as security demands in Central Park and throughout the City for other Pride events during that same period.”

The Cornell Sun reports:

Following the April 10 announcement of Kehlani as the original Slope Day headliner, some students and parents criticized the artist’s anti-Israel rhetoric and social media presence. Cornellians for Israel also launched a petition against the selection of Kehlani as the Slope Day headliner that accumulated over 5,000 signatures.

Cornell revoked Kehlani’s invitation to headline Slope Day over what President Michael Kotlikoff labeled “antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments.”

But the cancellation sparked criticism from student groups about freedom of speech and institutional neutrality. The Community Slope Day Instagram account urged students to “boycott Slope Day,” writing that Kehlani’s “opposition to the genocide in Palestine isn’t hateful” and that the decision was made “without representative input of the student body.”

It doesn’t appear that Kehlani has any affiliation with NYC Pride itself. The cult is celebrating the cancellation. The recent single below has 32 million views on YouTube.

Some more news items I want to share. These are only small quotes there is much more to each story if you follow the links

Trump’s Attack on ActBlue’s “Dark Money” Was Backed by Elon Musk’s Dark Money

Trump’s Attack on ActBlue’s “Dark Money” Was Backed by Elon Musk’s Dark Money

The billionaire helped fund an effort to gin up fraud claims against the Democratic donation platform.

Trump’s claim that he can order the Justice Department to investigate a fundraising platform used by his political foes based on vague allegations is part of his ongoing effort to use the government’s powers to target political enemies. It’s not a particularly realistic accusation—the fact sheet claims it’s targeting “straw donor” schemes, in which one person donates on behalf of another. Given the fairly strict limitations on campaign contributions, any straw donor scheme that wants to inject any noticeable amount of money into an electoral system that had $15.5 billion run through it is a great deal of tedious, high-risk work for a scammer.

On the other hand, in the post-Citizens United era, there are plenty of ways to inject unaccounted-for money—even, theoretically, foreign money—into the election. Super-PACs can accept unlimited donations from fairly easy-to-obscure sources, for instance, which makes the idea of anyone using a small-dollar conduit like ActBlue (or the GOP equivalent WinRed) fairly silly.

And notably, the funding for some of Trump’s “data” on an alleged ActBlue “fraud” seems to have come from just such a source: a super-PAC bankrolled by Elon Musk.

Last year, an opaque group called the Fair Election Fund began promising to pay “whistleblowers” who cited election fraud “with payment from our $5 million fund.” That never panned out, but the same organization found more success with a claim that 60,000 people who were named as small-dollar donors in the Biden-Harris campaign’s July Federal Election Commission report did not recall making the contribution when contacted by the Fair Election Fund.

As Mother Jones reported last year, the Fair Election Fund appears to have generated this finding by blasting out ominous-sounding texts and emails telling ActBlue donors that their donations had been “flagged,” then tallying people who responded—accurately or not—by checking a box saying they did not recall making the contribution.

More at the link above

Israel carrying out ‘live-streamed genocide’ in Gaza, Amnesty says

Amnesty accuses US President Donald Trump of committing a ‘multiplicity of assaults’ on human rights.

Israel is perpetrating a “live-streamed genocide” in Gaza, committing illegal acts with the “specific intent” of wiping out Palestinians, Amnesty International has said.

Israeli forces in Gaza have violated the United Nations Genocide Convention with acts that include “causing serious bodily or mental harm to civilians” and “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction”, the human rights organisation said in its annual report released on Monday.

Israeli air strikes have also frequently hit civilians who were following evacuation orders, while its forces continued to “arbitrarily detain and, in some cases, forcibly disappear Palestinians”, the rights group said.

DOGE has made a big impact on Washington. But government spending is up.

Elon Musk and his shadowy “tech support” team have ripped through Washington, reshaping the government and culling the federal workforce with astonishing speed and scope.

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/04/29/doge-impact-washington-spending-100days-00316587

Nearly a quarter of a million workers have or are expected to leave their federal jobs. That includes more than 112,000 federal workers who have opted into the deferred resignation program, according to a POLITICO analysis of previous reporting and conversations with administration officials. It also includes some 121,000 workers across agencies who have been fired, according to a CNN analysis.

DOGE has hollowed out or shut down 11 federal agencies and says it has terminated more than 8,500 contracts and 10,000 grants. It has wiped out foreign aid and volunteerism in the U.S., slashed education spending and made sweeping changes to the way the government makes procurements, hires contractors and shares data.

DOGE, after promising $2 trillion in savings, now says it has saved the government $160 billion. But even these reported savings, so far, have not led to any meaningful decline in total government spending this year, according to the nonpartisan Penn Wharton Budget Model, which tracks weekly Treasury data.

In fact, the government has actually been spending more compared to this time last year, the model found.

Total spending rose by 6.3 percent, or $156 billion since Trump took office, compared to the first four months of 2024, said Kent Smetters, a Wharton professor who directs the model. Even when accounting for inflation, the federal government has still added $81.2 billion more spending to its books compared to the same period last year, he added.