5: Right-Wing Commentators Don’t Even Believe Their Own Bullshit
Alex Jones is the latest extremist to claim what he does is “satire.”
On Monday night’s episode of the Late Show, Stephen Colbert donned a varsity-style USA jacket, lowered his voice about three octaves, and told the audience he was a skeleton wrapped in angry meat. His performance as “Tuck Bedford”––the fictional host of “Brain Fight”––killed on two levels. First, it was a timely and obvious dig at Alex Jones, whose lawyer had just claimed the Infowars host was actually a performance artist. Then there was the obvious nod to the fact that Colbert himself became famous by portraying a right-wing pundit who at one point blurred the lines between fiction and reality.
It’s sometimes difficult to remember that when The Colbert Report first came out, its host was so convincing, and the concept was so novel, that some interviewees didn’t know what they were signing up for. While Sasha Baren Cohen benefitted from ambushing unsuspecting subjects as Ali G, his successor Colbert was able to famously own some early guests who didn’t think that he would ask serious questions.
Vice News
4: Syria evacuations resume after deadly bomb attack
The evacuation and transfer of thousands of Syrians from four besieged areas resumed on Wednesday, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
The reciprocal evacuations from the two pro-government villages of Foua and Kefraya and the two opposition-held towns of Zabadani and Madaya was disrupted by a bombing on Saturday that killed more than 120 people.
A large convoy of buses from Foua and Kefraya reached the edge of the rebel-held transit point of Rashidin outside the city of Aleppo.
“The process has resumed with 3,000 people leaving Foua and Kefraya at dawn and nearly 300 leaving Zabadani and two other rebel-held areas,” the head of the SOHR, Rami Abdel Rahman, told the AFP news agency.
Aljazeera
3: Meet the Lawyer Who Is Going After Bill O’Reilly & Donald Trump for Sexual Harassment
President Donald Trump is lending his support to Bill O’Reilly, as the number of advertisers boycotting the Fox News host’s program has increased to at least 52, following revelations that he and the network Fox News paid out $13 million to settle lawsuits by five women who accuse O’Reilly of sexual harassment and inappropriate sexual behavior. Other women have made similar accusations. In an Oval Office interview with The New York Times Wednesday, Trump said, “I think he’s a person I know well. He is a good person. … I think he shouldn’t have settled. Personally, I think he shouldn’t have settled. Because you should have taken it all the way. I don’t think Bill did anything wrong.” We speak to attorney Lisa Bloom, who represents Dr. Wendy Walsh, one of the women who has publicly accused Bill O’Reilly of unwanted sexual advances. She also represented Jill Harth, a Florida business associate of Trump who sued him for sexual harassment after he allegedly groped her at a business dinner and later attempted to sexually assault her in the empty bedroom of his daughter Ivanka.
Democracy Now
2: Deaths and injuries reported amid ‘mother of all marches’ in Venezuela
At least two people have been killed and dozens injured in Venezuela as street battles erupted alongside a mass anti-government demonstration that the opposition billed “the mother of all marches”.
A 17-year old boy was fatally shot in the head in a neighbourhood of Caracas, while several hours later a woman was killed in gunfire during a rally in the Andean state of Tachira near the Colombian border.
At least one legislator had to be hospitalised, and images posted online showed opposition leader and former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles choking on tear gas.
The Guardian
WIKILEAKS FOUNDER JULIAN ASSANGE is hitting back at Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo following a speech last week in which Pompeo accused WikiLeaks of being a “hostile nonstate intelligence agency” operating outside of the protections of the First Amendment. “We can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for,” Pompeo declared, adding an ominous assertion: “It ends now.”
Speaking from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been living since June 2012, Assange said Pompeo appeared to be issuing a threat. “So how does he propose to conduct this ending? He didn’t say. But the CIA is only in the business of collecting information, kidnapping people, and assassinating people. So, it’s quite a menacing statement that he does need to clarify,” said Assange.
The Intercept
