The Guardian is hosting it’s yearly short story competition for only black, Asian, and minority ethnic writers.

No whites allowed.

Showcased on the Guardian‘s website, the third competition of its kind, the winner for best short story will win £1000 ($1421) and an exclusive one-day publishing workshop.

But only if you aren’t white.

Last year’s winner Lisa Smith says: “To get some recognition as a new writer has made an unbelievable difference to me. Writing is exposing.”

But only if you aren’t white.

The website states the “prize is open to all black, Asian, minority ethnic writers aged 18 or over who are living in the UK or Ireland” reminiscent of when the BBC made headlines this year by excluding white people from a job for a Trainee Multi-Media Journalist.

Remember folks, it’s not discrimination if it’s against white people.

On the first day of his book tour disgraced former FBI Director James Comey was confronted by investigative reporter and conservative activist Laura Loomer at a Barnes and Noble store in New York City.

On Wednesday evening Comey spoke to the audience for 20 minutes about what he called “ethical leadership” before transitioning into a Q and A of questions that were written on paper by the event attendees and screened by Comey and his staff before the talk.

But before delving into the scripted questions, Loomer shouted from the audience, “Hey Mr. Comey, how is it ethical to brief the President of the United States on an unverifiable and salacious dossier? And how is it ethical leadership to not tell him that his political opposition, Hillary Clinton, paid for it?”

Before Loomer could finish asking her question, the liberal New York City crowd began to meltdown, shouting obscenities at Loomer and booing her until security escorted her out.

Comey, who was caught off-guard by Loomer’s question, stood on stage in silence, staring at Loomer as she continued telling Comey, “You are not an ethical leader. Today 11 lawmakers filed a criminal referral against you! You’re going to get prosecuted Comey! You’re going to get locked up.”

The statement was in reference to 11 Congressional lawmakers making a criminal referral to the Department of Justice and delivered it to the desk of Attorney General Jeff Sessions against former senior-level Obama administration officials, including James Comey, Andrew McCabe, and Hillary Clinton for their connection with the unverified Steele dossier that alleged the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

Loomer was quickly swarmed by several security officers who told her she needed to leave and escorted her out of the building.

Facebook has completely removed a private shitposting and memes group with over 80,000 members after a Huffington Post writer was the subject of a crude ‘Smash or Pass’ debate, despite the group’s admin reportedly going to great lengths to correct the matter.

HuffPo journo Jesselyn Cook discovered that her image had been posted in ‘Emperor Trumps Dank Meme Stash’ in February by a member, along with the question, “This is going to be a hard one guys. Huffington Post reporter, smash or pass?”



User comments, while decidedly vulgar in many cases, were standard fare for the annals of Internet debauchery commonly found in places like 4Chan and meme threads – or the daily barrage of bloodthirsty hatred leveled at Trump supporters, Christians and conservative-libertarians of all stripes – with members attempting to outdo each other in magnifying the perceived paradox of attempting to ‘engage’ with an attractive leftist woman.According to Cook, she and her colleagues and friends reported the group to Facebook, hoping to have it eradicated – or at least the post itself, with little luck.

However, Hamish Drummond, the creator of the group, asserts that as soon as he was notified of the offending content, he personally reached out to Cook to apologize and let her know that the post had been deleted – effectively picking up the slack of Facebook content monitors and even assuming a reasonable modicum of responsibility for his group.



Two months later, Cook says she reached out to Facebook for comment on the bygone episode to include in her forthcoming Huffington Post article, prompting the social media giant to abruptly delete the entire group without warning and with “no evidence provided.”

Given that the incident had been resolved long before, Drummond believes that Mark Zuckerberg’s ravenous censorship machine has eagerly taken the opportunity to silence yet another massive faction of ‘thought criminals’ without due process.

“Facebook seems to bend its knee to the beck and call of leftist media,” Drummond said. “Shutting down pages and groups reduces the connections of ideas and acts as a form of unique censorship, where not only is the person censored, but rather their ability to tell others is dissolved.”“As admin, I did Facebook’s job and more. If Facebook actually cared about the issue and resolving it, they would have investigated the steps I made to solve the issue. I was given a 30-day ‘post-block’ – Facebook did not provide any reason why. I guess this was a way for me to be silenced and not tell my followers.”

In a public statement, Drummond contradicts the content of Cook’s article, slamming it as “fake news.”“Facebook IS Censoring Opinions/Groups/Accounts and Pages that are right-leaning,” he contends. “It does not matter what Mark Zuckerberg has said in the past few days. He is lying.”

“Honestly, i ain’t even that upset. But i am concerned about the wider-implications Facebook’s actions have as a whole. To me, Facebook’s relaxed attitude to limiting/severing connections between people with the exchanging of ideas or its stance on silencing people who disagree with attitudes and conventions held by Facebook is dangerous. Facebook should not be acting as an arbiter of discussion and conversation, Especially when the ideas are of a large-matter in regards to how society progresses itself.”

Markus Meechan, the Scottish comedian better known as Count Dankula, braced for a stretch of prison time today following his sentencing last month over a “grossly offensive” joke that landed him in trouble with the law.

On Monday, the YouTuber who trained his girlfriend’s pet pug to perform the **** salute has been fined £800 ($1,117 USD) for the crime of making a “grossly offensive” joke.

The high-profile trial, which began last March, has been subject to extensive, if mostly biased media coverage painting the comedian and now-free speech activist as a member of the so-called “Alt-Right”—a movement Meechan has explicitly denounced. Meechan was forced to put his life on hold for two years over the charge.

Meechan was charged with committing a hate crime under a British communications act after he recorded the pug, Buddha, responding to statements like “gas the Jews” and “sieg heil” by raising its paw. Offended members of the public soon reported the comedy skit to the police, alleging that the video, which had been viewed fewer than a hundred times, was an incitement to violence against the Jewish community.

It has been viewed over 3 million times since the case blew up. Meechan has become a cause célèbre of British comedians, including The Office star Ricky Gervais and Jewish comedian David Baddiel, both of whom defended his right to free speech; and The IT Crowd creator Graham Linehan, who cheered on his arrest.

Dozens of free speech activists, including British firebrand Tommy Robinson, gathered outside the Airdrie Sheriff Court today to await his sentencing for Meechan’s violation of laws against “grossly offensive” speech, which “contained menacing, anti-Semitic, and racist material.”

“You deliberately chose the Holocaust as the theme of the video,” the sentencing judge told the court.

“You purposely used the command ‘gas the Jews’ as the centerpiece of what you called the entire joke, surrounding the ‘gas the Jews’ centerpiece with **** imagery and the ‘sieg heil’ command so there could be no doubt what historical events you were referring to.”

Meechan says he intends to appeal against his conviction over concerns that it sets a legal precedent prohibiting freedom of expression in the United Kingdom and Scotland.

“A really dangerous precedent has been set for people to say things, their context to be completely ignored and then they can be convicted for it,” said Meechan to the press. “You don’t get to decide the context of what you said, other people don’t get to, the court gets to – that’s dangerous.”

A woman has astoundingly been convicted of being “grossly offensive” over a lyric on an Instagram tribute post.

Chelsea Russell, 19, from Liverpool, U.K., posted a lyric from Snap Dogg’s “I’m Trippin’” on Instagram. The lyric contained racist language, but the post was meant to pay tribute to a boy who had died in a road crash in 2017.

The lyrics were “kill a snitch n**** and rob a rich n****”.

Though Russell argued it was not offensive, she was handed a community order as “it was a hate crime” according to prosecutors. Her sentence had originally been a fine, yet was increased. Russell’s defense argued that the ‘word’ had been used by Jay-Z “in front of thousands of people at the Glastonbury Festival” to no avail.

Hate crime unit PC Dominque Walker told the Liverpool Justice Centre, sitting at Sefton Magistrates’ Court, that the racial term used was “grossly offensive” to the general community and to her as a black woman. PC Walker said “As a black woman I found the words offensive and upsetting. The words are offensive to both black and white people.” PC Walker also asked the defense to not use the ‘word’ in court as she found it too offensive.

Russell had been charged after the Merseyside Police were sent a screenshot of her post, anonymously.

Incredibly, though Russell’s defense argued that her profile “wasn’t public,” prosecutor Angela Conlan rebutted that anyone could access her profile and “see the offensive language.” The prosecutor further argued that “posting the profile on her account constituted sending it and making it public.” Though Russell thought the words would only be seen by her Instagram followers, Conlan said that as Russell used Instagram regularly and had over 100 followers she must “have known how it worked.”

Russell has been found guilty of “sending a grossly offensive message by a public communication” and has been given an eight-week community order, placed on an eight-week curfew, and has been told to pay costs of £500 and an £85 victim surcharge. Russell has also been ordered to wear an electronic tag on her ankle during this time period.

All over a tribute to a boy who died.

A suspect is under arrest after a white van jumped a curb in Toronto and struck several pedestrians Monday afternoon.

The suspected terror attack happened on Yonge Street south of Finch Avenue and police estimate eight to ten people were struck, according to CTV News.

Witness Alex Shaker told CTV News the van was traveling at high speed on the sidewalk heading south.
“He started going down on the sidewalk and crumbling down people one by one,” Shaker said.

“He just destroyed so many people’s lives,” he said. “Every single thing that got in his way.”

Speaking to CTV News witness Carol Roberts said she saw “a lot of people lying lifeless on the ground.”

“It was just so many bodies,” she said.

Witness Phil Zullo, who was driving northbound, says he first noticed the commotion when he saw police taking down a male suspect.

Zullo says he continued north, where he saw “shoes and hats flown everywhere.”

The suspect was arrested beside the van which was marked as being from rental company Ryder.

Video shared with CTV News shows the suspect pointing a small, dark object at police, with his back to the van. Police can be seen taking cover and shouting at the suspect.

Subway service has been suspended in parts of Toronto.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed the situation, saying,

“Our hearts go out to anyone affected…We’re obviously going to have more to learn and more to say in the coming hours.”

Users on Twitter are noticing that their accounts are being limited by the service after they tweet expressions of gratitude to shadowbanned accounts.


Although Twitter refuses to acknowledge its practice of “shadowbanning,” or limiting user accounts from having a wider reach without informing them, some users have accidentally triggered Twitter’s automated algorithms that caused their accounts to be restricted.

Users across both Twitter and Reddit documented the instances where their accounts were locked for exhibiting “automated behavior that violates the Twitter Rules.”

Posting on Reddit’s r/technology community, a user named ShokTherapy claims that tweeting your gratitude (i.e. “thanks” or “thank you”) at a shadowbanned user can cause your account to be locked or shadowbanned.

Users on Twitter have been posting examples of their own locks, as shared by @mlickles, causing a huge chain of accounts to be restricted in turn as users posted “thanks” to test the algorithm.

“Please do not actually attempt this, it happened to me by accident and I am attempting to share it here so that it can possibly get some attention. I have been sending ticket after ticket to twitter support trying to explain the exploit and they will not respond,” the user wrote.

It’s no secret that Twitter has been experimenting with automated systems to moderate its platform, and the best way for the company to maintain user activity is to give them the false impression that their accounts are getting proper public engagement—just as the platform was designed for—without letting them know that their accounts are limited when they break the rules.

More insidiously, the system allows Twitter to perform censorship without the knowledge of its users, dictating and molding public opinion in a seemingly organic manner. If people know they are banned, they’d just find another platform to spread their opinions.

After all, no one is going to complain about censorship if they don’t know they’re being censored.

Now they do. Thanks, Twitter.

...

I noticed that word—community—scattered everywhere in the Fulton Street restaurant. A shelf of children’s books bears a plaque testifying to “our love for this local community.” The tables are made of reclaimed wood, which creates, according to a Chick-fil-A press release, “an inviting space to build community.” A blackboard with the header “Our Community” displays a chalk drawing of the city skyline. Outside, you can glimpse an earlier iteration of that skyline on the building’s façade, which, with two tall, imperious rectangles jutting out, “gives a subtle impression of the Twin Towers.”

This emphasis on community, especially in the misguided nod to 9/11, suggests an ulterior motive. The restaurant’s corporate purpose still begins with the words “to glorify God,” and that proselytism thrums below the surface of the Fulton Street restaurant, which has the ersatz homespun ambiance of a megachurch. David Farmer, Chick-fil-A’s vice-president of restaurant experience, told BuzzFeed that he strives for a “pit crew efficiency, but where you feel like you just got hugged in the process.” That contradiction, industrial but claustral, is at the heart of the new restaurant—and of Chick-fil-A’s entire brand. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Cows.

...

Chick-fil-A's average sales per restaurant in 2014 were $3.1 million. Its fried-chicken competitor KFC sold $960,000 per restaurant that year. The sub chain Jason's Deli ranked a distant second with $2.7 million in per-restaurant sales, followed by Panera and McDonald's, each with $2.5 million in per-restaurant sales.

Despite its relatively small size, Chick-fil-A also ranks highly in terms of its total sales.

The chain generated nearly $5.8 billion in revenue in 2014, making it the eighth-largest fast-food chain in the US, according to QSR.

Chick-fil-A has only 1,950 restaurants, and none of its restaurants are open on Sundays. For comparison, McDonald's has more than 14,000 locations in the US, Taco Bell has nearly 6,000, and KFC has more than 4,300 — most of which are open seven days a week.

The New Yorker has been taking it on the chin lately for its essay about Chick-fil-A’s “infiltration” of New York City. Although most of the piece is about the evils of fast food and the chain’s ubiquitous "Eat Mor Chikin" advertising campaign, the essay has been excoriated for its anti-Christian tone. “The brand’s arrival here feels like an infiltration, in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism,” we’re told. Not just that: “Its headquarters, in Atlanta, are adorned with Bible verses and a statue of Jesus washing a disciple’s feet. Its stores close on Sundays.” 1 And lest we forget: “The restaurant’s corporate purpose still begins with the words ‘to glorify God.’”


What the author really seems angry about is that the company’s CEO opposes same-sex marriage. But the framing of the piece made Christianity the villain, and the headline -- “Chick-fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York City” -- was sufficiently troubling that Nate Silver quickly tweeted “This is why Trump won.” Fair point. Religious bigotry is always dangerous. But there’s a deeper problem here, a difficulty endemic to today’s secular left: an all-too-frequent weird refusal to acknowledge the demographics of Christianity. When you mock Christians, you’re not mocking who you think you are.

A 2015 Pew Research Center study of race and ethnicity among U.S. religions provides some basic facts. In the first place, if you’re mocking Christians, you’re mostly mocking women, because women are more likely than men to be Christians. The greatest disproportion is found among black Christians, of whom only 41 percent are male. So you’re mocking black women in particular.