>Pfizer building in Rocky Mount heavily damaged during tornado.
>Hunter Biden was paying this woman through his law firm and then writing it off as business to tax exemptions.
sportsman
>https://www.npr.org/2023/07/19/1188405402/qanon-supporters-are-promoting-sound-of-freedom-heres-why
QAnon supporters are promoting 'Sound of Freedom.' Here's why
Sound of Freedom, a Christian thriller about a former federal agent rescuing children from exploitation, is this summer's surprise box office hit. Made for about $15 million, it earned almost as much on its release day as the final installment of Indiana Jones and has raked in more than $85 million since opening earlier this month.
But the movie is also being criticized as a vehicle for conspiracy theories and misleading depictions of human trafficking — landing it in the middle of the country's politically polarized culture wars.
The film, based on a real-life, controversial anti-trafficking activist, is being heavily promoted in conservative media. Former President Donald Trump is hosting a screening on Wednesday at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J .
A big part of its success is an appeal from its star, Jim Caviezel, who comes on screen at the end urging viewers to buy more tickets so other people can see it and help end child trafficking. It's a model distributor Angel Studios calls "pay it forward."
Caviezel, who previously played Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ, is also drawing attention to the film in other ways. For years, he's been a prominent promoter of the false, violent QAnon conspiracy theory — specifically, the baseless claim that an international cabal of elites is abusing and killing children to extract a substance called adrenochrome.
These wild claims have become deeply enmeshed with narratives about child trafficking in recent years, from the QAnon predecessor Pizzagate conspiracy theory, which falsely alleged a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C., was home to a child sex ring, to false claims that online retailer Wayfair was selling children in the guise of furniture.
In press appearances promoting Sound of Freedom, Caviezel continues to spout QAnon falsehoods. On a recent episode of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon's podcast, Caviezel claimed "the whole adrenochrome empire" is driving demand for trafficked children. "It's an elite drug that they've used for many years," he asserted, falsely claiming it is "10 times more potent than heroin" and "has some mystical qualities as far as making you look younger."
Despite Caviezel's comments, Sound of Freedom itself doesn't contain any references to adrenochrome or other conspiracy theories. It was actually filmed before QAnon conspiracy theories became a widespread phenomenon.
Executives at Angel Studios, the film's distributor, have publicly rejected any association with conspiracies. So have Tim Ballard, the former federal agent Caviezel plays in the movie, and his organization, Operation Underground Railroad. (Angel Studios declined NPR's interview request. Operation Underground Railroad did not respond to NPR's questions.)
But Ballard recently told right-wing podcadster Jordan Peterson that claimed adrenochrome harvesting is real. His statements, and Caviezel's, have an impact on how Sound of Freedom is being received, said Mike Rothschild, author of The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything.
"It's being marketed to QAnon believers, it's being embraced by this community and its leading actor is a huge part of the QAnon community," he said.
Indeed, QAnon adherents have eagerly anticipated its release and greeted the film as a way to bring new believers into the fold. "New to Q? With the 'Sound of Freedom' movie dominating the box office and giving Hollywood seizures, we have a lot of new eyes on us!" read the title of one popular thread on a QAnon website last week.
In addition to the controversies around QAnon, the rescue story told in Sound of Freedom has also become a lightning rod.
Many of the missions Operation Underground Railroad describes are hard to verify or contain significant misrepresentations, according to extensive reporting by Tim Marchman and Anna Merlan of Vice News.
"They're not whole cloth falsehoods, but they reassemble things that are true or close to being true into stories that are just wildly and completely different from what actually happened," Marchman said.
Operation Underground Railroad has denied Vice's findings. (Ballard recently left the group.)
On screen, Sound of Freedom goes even further in fictionalizing Ballard's story, showing him single-handedly taking on a crime syndicate in Colombia.
These popular depictions raise concerns among anti-trafficking experts, who say they offer an incomplete portrait of a real and urgent problem.
"Because trafficking is so varied and does span so many populations, it really tests our brain to not, not distill it down to some sort of 'this is what a common victim of human trafficking looks like,'" said Elizabeth Campbell, co-director of the University of Michigan's Human Trafficking Clinic. "By doing that, I think we make actual victims of human trafficking more invisible and more vulnerable to exploitation."
She said trafficking takes many forms, including forced labor, which is often under-reported, and affects victims of a wide range of ages. Some trafficking involves kidnapping by strangers, as depicted in Sound of Freedom, but often it's committed by people close to the victim who exploit trust, she said.
In a long blog post about the film, Angel Studios acknowledged some elements are fictionalized and said the film takes "creative liberties in depicting the different methods of child trafficking."
Campbell worries the picture of trafficking and how to address it presented by Operation Underground Railroad and, by extension, Sound of Freedom, diverts people's attention, resources and policy proposals away from where they're most needed.
"It becomes easy for people to say, 'Well, if I just spread a message that we need to support law enforcement in freeing these child victims,' they don't have to do the hard work of asking what role they play in the purchasing of goods for forced labor, or they don't have to play the hard role of figuring out how do we reduce poverty and the sort of inherent vulnerability that comes with poverty that leads to this kind of exploitation," she said.
"Those difficult questions are never asked because we're just sort of saying, 'Well, the best thing you can do is support this particular group in this one particular action against these particular bad guys.'"
Posobiec has it all
>They've been right
Q&A
adjacent
During World War II, the islands were utilized in joint training exercises between Mexico and the United States, but gained notoriety when future founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, shelled the inhabited island, earning the ire of the Mexican government.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Ninian%27s_Isle_Treasure
The hoard was discovered on 4 July 1958 by a schoolboy, Douglas Coutts, during an excavation of a medieval chapel on St Ninian's Isle. Coutts found the treasure in a wooden box, which had been buried under a cross-marked slab.
chipping children
that hair is amazing
>this entire thing is one great big larp
https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/jewish-woman-welcomed-as-transgender-states-new-physician-general/
Jewish woman welcomed as transgender, state’s new physician general
A Jewish woman is the first openly transgender person to hold the position of physician general in Pennsylvania.
Five months ago, and at the nomination of Gov. Tom Wolf, Dr. Rachel Levine left her post as a physician specializing in pediatrics and young adult medicine at Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, to serve as the Commonwealth’s Physician General. In that post, Levine said she will advise the governor’s administration on medical and public health issues.
Being tapped for the role “was very exciting,” said Levine, who has since relocated with her family to Harrisburg. While being transgender is an important part of Levine’s identity, she said, there is much more to her life than gender.
She said Wolf nominated her because of her medical credentials, which include serving as the vice chair for clinical affairs in the department of pediatrics and chief of the division of adolescent medicine and eating disorders at the Penn State Hershey Children’s Hospital-Milton S. Hershey Medical Center; founding the Penn State Hershey Eating Disorders Program, which offers multidisciplinary treatment for children, adolescents and adults with eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa; and serving as the liaison for the LGBTQ community for the office of diversity at the Penn State College of Medicine.
But, Wolf “didn’t shy away from nominating me [for being the first transgender person holding the position],” Levine also said.
Her transition to Rachel was slow, she said, and after 14 years at the Hershey Medical Center, Levine fully transitioned five years ago. Her colleagues, she said, were “wonderful, welcoming.”
Her identity, she said, served as the catalyst for change at Penn State, where the medical center expanded its nondiscriminating policy to include gender identity.
As an advocate for young people in particular, she wants to send out a plea to those who have doubts about revealing their gender expression and who may feel alone.
“Our society, including our culture in Pennsylvania, has made progress — [creating an] accepting but actually [also] welcoming environment,” Levine said. “This is my plea to young people to not despair — to not take their lives; things are getting better.”
As a Jewish youth growing up in a Jewish household in Wakefield, Mass., having a bar mitzvah, attending Hebrew school and attending a conservative shul, Levine said the rabbi did not talk about LGBTQ issues. It was the late 1960s, early 1970s, she said, and things are only now getting better.
“Overall, our society is open to different gender norms, not just in Jewish culture,” she said, adding that Reform Judaism is a space where acceptance is happening, even if not in more Orthodox spaces, where constituents may be “less open to variation of gender.”
Her mom’s shul in Harrisburg, Temple Ohev Sholom, is headed by Rabbi Peter Kessler, who identifies as gay and who is greatly respected in the community and by Levine and her family.
“Change takes time,” she said, “and it’s happening in my lifetime.”
For now, Levine is tackling what she said is the biggest public health issue in Pennsylvania: opiates, specifically heroin and prescription drug overdoses.
Similar to her advocacy around identity and eating disorders — mostly as it relates to young people — the abuse of opiates is a concern that she segments into both the body and the mind.
“[I’m] interested in the interface of medical and mental health,” she said, calling out the need to execute a handful of campaign tactics to lower the opiate overdoses.
One tactic is to sharpen the guidelines around prescribing medicines that are currently over-prescribed and abused. She would also like to continue educating physicians and providers on how to best follow up with their patients and work with the ABC-MAP — Achieving Better Care by Monitoring All Prescriptions — program, a prescription drug monitoring system that keeps track of all controlled substances in the state. She also plans to continue to facilitate state-of-the-art treatment and work to distribute a new drug that serves as an overdose antidote, which can be used by first responders such as paramedics and prescribed to family members who have addicts in their family.
The subject of overdose is somewhat new terrain for Levine, and she looks forward to broadening her advocacy in ways that affect the most amount of people.
probably has a kid