‘The lunacy is getting more intense’: how Birds Aren’t Real took on the conspiracy theorists

In early 2017, Peter McIndoe, now 23, was studying psychology at the University of Arkansas, and visiting friends in Memphis, Tennessee. He tells me this over Zoom from the US west coast, and has the most arresting face – wide-eyed, curious and intense, like the lead singer of an indie band, or a young monk. “This was right after the Donald Trump election, and things were really tense. I remember people walking around saying they felt as if they were in a movie. Things felt so unstable.”

It was the weekend of simultaneous Women’s Marches across the US (indeed, the world), and McIndoe looked out of the window and noticed “counterprotesters, who were older, bigger white men. They were clear aggravators. They were encroaching on something that was not their event, they had no business being there.” Added to that, “it felt like chaos, because the world felt like chaos”.

McIndoe made a placard, and went out to join the march. “It’s not like I sat down and thought I’m going to make a satire. I just thought: ‘I should write a sign that has nothing to do with what is going on.’ An absurdist statement to bring to the equation.”

That statement was “birds aren’t real”. As he stood with the counterprotesters, and they asked what his sign meant, he improvised. He said he was part of a movement that had been around for 50 years, and was originally started to save American birds, but had failed. The “deep state” had destroyed them all, and replaced them with surveillance drones. Every bird you see is actually a tiny feathered robot watching you.

Someone was filming him and put it on Facebook; it went viral, and Memphis is still the centre of the Birds Aren’t Real movement. Or is it a movement? You could call it a situationist spectacle, a piece of rolling performance art or a collective satire. MSNBC called it a “mass coping mechanism” for generation Z, and as it has hundreds of thousands of followers on social media, “mass”, at least, is on the money.

It’s the most perfect, playful distillation of where we are in relation to the media landscape we’ve built but can’t control, and which only half of us can find our way around. It’s a made-up conspiracy theory that is just realistic enough, as conspiracies go, to convince QAnon supporters that birds aren’t real, but has just enough satirical flags that generation Z recognises immediately what is going on. It’s a conspiracy-within-a-conspiracy, a little aneurysm of reality and mockery in the bloodstream of the mad pizzagate-style theories that animate the “alt-right”.

Birds Aren’t Real didn’t stay in Memphis – in a sequence reminiscent of the Winklevoss scene in The Social Network, when they realise just how big Facebook has become, McIndoe recalls being back at college, five hours away from Memphis. “I remember seeing videos of people chanting: ‘Birds aren’t real,’ at high-school football games; and seeing graffiti of birds aren’t real. At first, I thought: ‘This is crazy,’ but then I wondered: ‘What is making this resonate with people?’”

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Cori Bush surpasses $300K spent on private security as she continues calls to defund the police

Rep. Cori Bush poured tens of thousands of dollars more into private security during the first quarter of 2022, pushing her security bills to more than $300,000 as she continues calls to defund the police. 

The Missouri Democrat’s campaign reported spending $70,489 on security services between Jan. 1 and March 31, Federal Election Commission filings show. The payments include $50,489 to Peace Security, $15,000 to Cortney Merrits and $5,000 to Nathaniel Davis.

Bush’s newest security checks follow the $233,663 her committee spent on the services in 2021, FEC records show. She has now paid out $304,152 for security this election cycle. 

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Democrats are “working with” Big Tech on new censorship calls

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has officially pushed for more online censorship. The DNC’s stand could compromise bipartisan Big Tech bills, according to critics.

The DNC has published a document titled “Recommendations for Combating Online Misinformation.” Notably, the document contains a plan that calls for more censorship on online platforms.

Among other things, the DNC recommended that tech companies should “enforce rules on hate speech consistently and comprehensively,” “promote authoritative news over highly engaging news in content algorithms, and “enforce a comprehensive political misinformation policy.”

Perhaps the most alarming recommendation was for companies to “establish a policy against the distribution of hacked materials.” In the weeks leading up to 2020 presidential election, Big Tech platforms like Twitter suppressed a story involving Joe Biden’s son Hunter, which, according to some, could have swayed the election. At the time, Twitter claimed the story was based on “hacked” material.

In the document, the DNC admits that it partnered with tech companies.

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Professor says minors can be ‘enthusiastically involved’ in ‘initiating sexual activities with adults’

Professor David Finkelhor of the University of New Hampshire participated in a March 23 talk discussing the “elements of voluntary participation” by juveniles involved in sex crimes, saying that when trying to prevent sex crimes against children, it’s key to realize that in some cases, it is the children themselves that are “initiating sexual activities with adults.” Finkelhor is the Director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at UNH.

“If young people are initiating sexual activities with adults, or enthusiastically involved,” he said, “we can’t be effective in working with them if we assume that all such relationships start with a predatory or criminally inclined adult. As we’ve seen in the discussion, young people bridle at being forced into this box of being seen as being the victim of a predator.”

These remarks were made during a Haruv USA lecture about the “Implications for Prevention and Response” for sex crimes wherein there are “elements of voluntary participation” by the minors involved in those crimes.

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FDA Takes Only Months to Approve Pfizer Jab Yet Cannabis Remains Schedule 1 Despite Centuries of Data

Since Dec. 11, 2020, the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has been available under the Food and Drug Administration’s Emergency Use Authorization in individuals 16 years of age and older, and the authorization was expanded to include those 12 through 15 years of age on May 10, 2021. On August 23, 2021, it was granted full approval by the FDA.

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine now become the fastest created, deployed, and subsequently approved vaccination in history. Previously, the fastest vaccine to go from development to deployment was the mumps vaccine in the 1960s, which took about four years.

The swift approval of the vaccine illustrates just how fast the government can react if it wants to do so. On the contrary, however, there have been hundreds if not thousands of studies on the benefits of cannabis to safely treat multiple ailments and diseases, spanning the course of centuries, yet the FDA has failed to approve its use for anything.

To be clear, the FDA has approved patentable pharmaceutical synthetic compounds such as dronabinol. The pharmaceutical patented drugs Marinol and Syndros both use dronabinol which is nothing more than a chemical synthetic equivalent to delta-9- tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — but the plant-based version you can grow in your own home remains off the list.

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Innocent Elderly Woman Pulled Over for No Reason as Cops Steal Her Life Savings, Prescription Medicine and Mock Her

In December 2021, Jeanetta Jones, 62, had harmed no one, committed no crime, and was simply driving home when she was targeted by officers with the the notoriously corrupt Brookside Police Department in Jefferson County, Alabama. By the end of the hour-long stop, Jones would be robbed of her life savings, her medicine stolen, and she would be publicly humiliated by the people who claim to protect society.

For decades now, federal government and their cronies in law enforcement have been carrying out theft of the citizenry on a massive scale using Civil Asset Forfeiture (CAF).

The 1980’s-era laws were designed to drain resources from powerful criminal organizations, but CAF has become a tool for law enforcement agencies across the U.S. to steal money and property from countless innocent people.

As Jones’ case illustrates, insidious police departments will use this “tool” as a means of preying on elderly innocent women to “legally” rob them on the side of the road. All the while, these agents of the state think they are the good guys.

On the day she was stopped, Jones was driving home just after 2 p.m. when, according to her recent lawsuit, officers pulled her over for no reason. When Jones asked the officers why they pulled her over, they responded by telling her that they could pull over anyone they wanted.

For the next hour, police would launch a fishing expedition in an attempt to rob Jones of any and all of her valuables. Using an unauthorized search, police would find $5,000 in cash in Jones’ vehicle — which she told them was her life savings. They would also find her prescription medicine.

By the end of the illegal search and seizure, Jones would be robbed of her life savings and her prescription medicine she needed for pain. When she begged the officers to return her property, they responded by mocking the elderly woman.

“She requested the return of her money and medication,” the lawsuit says. “They refused to return either and laughed at her, telling the plaintiff they could do whatever they wanted.”

When looking through the history of the Brookside police department, Jones lawsuit is one of many and their attitudes during her stop reflect exactly why that is.

As AL.com reports:

The lawsuit is the 13th filed against Brookside and its police department – or one for every 96 residents in the tiny north Jefferson County town. It claims Jones was falsely arrested and imprisoned, and that her rights under the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments were violated. It seeks damages.

After she was robbed on the roadside, the perpetrators let her go and she was not charged with a crime.

“They didn’t give her a receipt for it. They didn’t arrest her for it. They just took it,” Roger Appell, Jones’ attorney said. “When they were leaving with her money and her prescription medicine, she asked them why are you doing this to us? Why are you doing this to me? And they looked at her and said because we can.”

“That seemed like to be nothing but a shakedown,” Jones said describing the traffic stop.

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Illinois Offers Free Healthcare to Qualified Illegal Immigrants

Illinois is now offering free health care to some illegal immigrants after state lawmakers approved the program last year. The new program will provide free healthcare to illegal immigrants between the ages of 55 and 64, FOX32 Chicago reported. Migrants over the age of 64 are already entitled to healthcare coverage in the state.

Covered services include doctor and hospital visits, lab tests, physical and occupational therapy, mental health, substance abuse disorder services, dental and vision services, and prescription drugs. In order to qualify, the recipient must be an “undocumented immigrant”, be between the ages of 55 through 64 and have a household income is at or below $18,754 for one person, or $25,268 for two people.

The plan will soon expand further in order to grant free healthcare to illegal immigrants between the ages of 42 through 55.

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Woke Ariz. diversity activists falsely accuse black DJ of wearing blackface

Two local diversity advocates in Arizona are taking heat after calling a school district racist for hiring a DJ to perform in blackface — but it turns out the DJ was black. 

Stuart Rhoden and Jill Lassen — who specialize in diversity, equity and inclusion — lambasted the Scottsdale Unified School District’s Hopi Elementary PTA for its decision to hire Kim Koko Hunter, 56, a local black DJ, at a charity event.

Both Rhoden and Lassen, who are involved in diversity work in the school district, slammed the school after seeing a picture of Hunter, only to later learn his race, according to the Arizona Daily Independent. 

“The DJ that the Hopi PTA hire[d] was, in fact a Black man,” Hopi PTA president Megan Livengood wrote in response to Lassen in a message obtained by the outlet. “It is insulting that you feel myself or PTA condone racist behavior or encourage it by posting on social media.”

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Confessions of a Disney writer

For many years, I made my living writing TV shows for Disney. I was proud of my work, considering it a privilege to make kids laugh all over the world. But in light of Disney’s disastrous embrace of pro-pedophilia policies, I’m glad that I grew disillusioned with kids’ TV and walked away from the field.

Every kids’ TV writer knows that, when crafting a story, you have to be careful about “modeling behavior.” Whatever kids see, they imitate, so you should “model” positive traits in your scripts, particularly when writing for preschoolers. Imagine inserting a pint-size Larry David character in your story who is obnoxious, argumentative, and sneaky. Inevitably, you’d get back notes from the story editor telling you to revamp the script to avoid modeling negative behavior.

So Disney’s recent commitment to “add queerness” wherever possible can’t be explained as just trying to teach tolerance and inclusivity. The executives know that by showing “queerness,” they are modeling queerness and encouraging kids to imitate that behavior.

In fact, Disney has had issues with sexualizing children for a long time. Cole Sprouse, a former Disney Channel star, recently noted that he and his co-star brother both suffered trauma from their acting career. He added, “The young women on [Disney Channel] were so heavily sexualized from an earlier age than my brother and I that there’s absolutely no way we could compare our experiences.”

You only need to witness the spectacular flameouts of Disney child stars Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan to wonder what traumas changed them from adorable ingenues into hypersexual vixens. Tracking the endless legal troubles, destructive addictions, and mental breakdowns of former Disney stars has become almost a parlor game, as in this depressing article, “20 Child Stars Ruined By Disney.” What on Earth happened to those beautiful kids that destroyed their sanity?

We do know that Disney has a history of exposing its young actors to convicted child molesters. Brian Peck served 16 months in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of molesting a Nickelodeon child actor. One year after his release, Disney hired him to work on the children’s series Yay, Me! Starring London Tipton and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. Victor Salva served 15 months in jail for raping and videotaping a boy who was acting in a film he directed. Nevertheless, Disney hired him to direct the film Powder.

And then there’s the case of James Gunn, the hugely successful writer-director of the first two Guardians of the Galaxy films. Disney fired Gunn in 2018 after his disgusting sexual tweets about young boys prompted an outcry. Disney’s honcho publicly proclaimed that Gunn’s tweets were “inconsistent with our studio’s values, and we have severed our business relationship with him.” But that didn’t last long. A few months later, Disney quietly rehired Gunn to direct Guardians of the Galaxy 3, after various stars of the series wrote an open letter begging for Gunn to come back. So much for studio values.

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