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The Washington Post announced in October that it was welcoming a new communications chief. The paper’s official announcement lauded Kathy Baird, a veteran of Nike and the public relations giant Ogilvy, as a “key strategic partner” positioned to “realize our ambitious vision for the publication.” 

It also noted her membership in the “Rosebud Sioux Tribe” and service on the board of IllumiNative, which it described as “a nonprofit working for accurate and authentic portrayal of Native people.”

That’s one way to put it. IllumiNative is a self-described “racial justice organization” funded by a dark money behemoth that encourages elementary school students to fight for Democratic Party initiatives like universal health care. Its purpose is similar to various far-left activist groups, focusing on “breaking through systems of white supremacy” and “grassroots organizing,” according to IllumiNative’s website.

IllumiNative is funded in part by New Venture Fund, which is itself funded by the left-wing dark money behemoth Arabella Advisors. New Venture Fund recorded nearly $1 billion in donations in 2021 and was called “a leading vehicle for [dark money] on the left” by the New York Times. It is unclear how much money the New Venture Fund has given IllumiNative since its 2018 founding, and federal financial disclosure laws do not require the organization to reveal it. Other left-wing charities such as the MacArthur Foundation and the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation have given IllumiNative millions of dollars over the years.

Baird’s role at IllumiNative raises questions about the place of political activism in the newsrooms—and the extent to which it undercuts a news product that is supposed to be nonpartisan. It is unclear whether Baird will recuse herself from issues surrounding the coverage of Democratic dark-money groups, including Arabella.

The Washington Post declined to comment on Baird’s affiliations. Asked whether she would recuse herself from participating in issues related to Arabella, a spokeswoman said Baird “is a member of the executive team, overseeing Communications, Events and Brand Marketing and is not a part of the editorial staff.”

The Post has almost entirely avoided coverage of Arabella Advisors, a curious editorial decision given the group’s central role as a dark money hub for the Democratic Party. The Free Beacon could only find two instances where Arabella Advisors is mentioned by the paper. Both were pieces by fact-checker Glenn Kessler targeting Republicans. In one of them, Kessler describes the dark money group as a “back-office processor.”

Educational materials distributed by IllumiNative obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show the group working to influence school children, in part through classroom posters depicting American Indians demanding “tribal sovereignty” and “pre-constitutional rights” and advocating Democratic Party policies like universal health care. IllumiNative did not respond to a request for comment or for a clarification of how the group defines “pre-constitutional rights.”

IllumiNative president Crystal Echo Hawk—who publicly congratulated Baird on her new gig—is routinely quoted in news outlets including the Washington Post, which included a comment from the “longtime activist” in a February report about the Washington Commanders’ name change. 

Echo Hawk has advocated the “land back” movement on her personal Twitter account. That movement supports “the reclamation of everything stolen from the original peoples,” including “land … food … housing … [and] governance,” according to Landback.org.

The concept of “tribal sovereignty” is closely related to the “land back movement” as well and would entail transferring large swaths of federal lands to American Indians. Many “land back” proponents also say American capitalism and white supremacy must be dismantled in order to achieve full tribal sovereignty, which also includes liberating American Indians from most federal and state control. It is part of a broader effort to end “white supremacy and uplift BIPOC groups,” according to an NPR affiliate. 

Baird’s new post may also provide an opportunity for some synergistic tag-teaming. IllumiNative’s goal is to use “digital organizing, media relations, [and] rapid response communications … to advance power-building and narrative and culture change goals,” according to its website. 

And Echo Hawk, the IllumiNative leader, also runs a private consulting firm focused in part on “reclaiming native truth,” according to a powerpoint obtained by the Free Beacon. The goals include the creation of “new narratives in pop culture and media” to supplant coverage of “poverty, alcoholism and crime” in American Indian communities. Allies of this effort, according to Echo Hawk, include “Democrats,” “liberals,” and those in the “Northeast,” among others. 

The post New Washington Post Communications Chief Moonlights as Board Member of Far-Left Activist Group appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

Trigger Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions of cyberbullying and online harassment that some may find disturbing. It also includes several references to soccer, a fundamentally evil and anti-American enterprise. Please proceed with caution. 

Taylor Lorenz and other journalist influencers often complain about the challenges of “being a woman online,” but they have never had to endure the trauma of being a soccer skeptic during the World Cup.

I am an innocent victim of cyberbullying and harassment. I was targeted for the “crime” of refusing to celebrate soccer, a tedious sport that incentivizes faking, flopping, and fraud.

Soccer fans, as it turns out, are even more deranged than the snowflake libs who typically clog the Washington Free Beacon‘s inbox with heinous filth. Who would have thought that a sport so boring and effeminate was teeming with such anger and toxic masculinity?

Below are a few of the many hateful messages I have received in the past two weeks.

Sam writes:

Really? That’s what you got to say about the biggest event on the planet? You are a moron. How they let you in the building is incomprehensible. You must have nobody in your life.

Mark writes:

Not sure why you need to denigrate soccer. Perhaps it is because you are not athletic. And please don’t say soccer is boring if you watch baseball. Soccer players can’t play while chewing tobacco and scratching themselves. Perhaps you are jealous.

Jeff writes:

Hey Doucheface,

Straight up, you’re a giant fucking chode. Go eat a bag of dicks assclown. Absolute joke of a reporter go find a real job.

Kevin writes:

Footie players have six packs and bulging calf muscles. What do you have? A brain full of shit!

Owen writes:

You suck, retard. Were you molested or something? Number one sport in the world. Maybe this is why you have no friends. Fucking loser.

Steven writes:

You are truly a shallow, moronic, horse’s ass. Did writing that story make you feel like a big man? I have had the pleasure of firing people like you, who don’t have a clue and refused to learn how to treat others.

I’ll bet you grew up without a Father.

Rick writes:

Hey, dickwad! Your wife is begging me to come over. LOL.

Editor’s note: If you or someone you know is experiencing online harassment, remember that you are not powerless. Please contact Free Beacon ombudsman Biff Diddle at biffdiddle@gmail.com.

The post Analysis: Soccer Rife With Toxic Masculinity Despite Being Such an Effeminate Sport appeared first on Washington Free Beacon.

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Lieutenant General Serhiy Nayev, Commander of the Joint Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, has stated that the enemy troops are building up in Belarus.

“To date, the situation in the Northern Operational Zone is under control. But the allied [Russia-Belarus] group of troops continue building up in the territory of Belarus. Therefore, we are constantly monitoring the situation and preparing our forces for an adequate response. Currently, there is no threat from Belarus. We make efforts to increase the stability of our defense and the adequacy of our response to the growth of this threat,” Nayev said, the press service of the Joint Forces Command posted on Facebook.

According to him, if the military threat rises, depending on its quantitative and qualitative composition, assistance with additional forces and means is foreseen.

As reported, in the north of Ukraine, the military leadership led by Nayev is checking the readiness of air defense units, in particular those that protect the sky over critical infrastructure facilities in Kyiv city and the region.

The post Nayev: Enemy Troops Building up in Belarus appeared first on Kyiv Post.

The Jordanian film “Farha,” released this week on Netflix, tells the story of an individual tragedy that took place during the 1948 war to create the state of Israel — where Palestinians, who remember the event as the Nakba, or catastrophe, were expelled from their homes by the hundreds of thousands.

A 14-year-old Palestinian girl, nursing dreams of breaking out of the traditional gender expectations of her village to attend school at a nearby city, is forced into hiding by her father after their quiet settlement is attacked by soldiers of the newly created Israeli Defense Forces. Hiding inside a locked pantry while waiting for her father to return, she watches through a small opening in the wall as Israeli soldiers execute a Palestinian family — including two young children and a baby.

Filmmaker Darin Sallam’s debut, “Farha” is also the Jordanian entry for the 2023 Academy Awards. Sallam has said that the movie is based on the true story of a friend of her mother, who, living years later as a refugee in Syria, recalled her experience as a young girl during the Nakba. Sallam describes the film as a means of helping process a painful memory of that time.

“I’m not afraid to tell the truth. We need to do this because films live and we die,” Sallam said in an interview last winter following the film’s premiere at the Red Sea International Film Festival. “This is why I decided to make this film. Not because I’m political, but because I’m loyal to the story that I heard.”

Cancel Campaigns

Predictably, the film — and the attention that it is now getting on a major platform like Netflix — has angered Israeli officials, who have denounced “Farha” and even threatened consequences for its airing.

“It’s crazy that Netflix decided to stream a movie whose whole purpose is to create a false pretense and incite against Israeli soldiers,” outgoing Israeli Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman said in a recent statement. Lieberman also took steps to revoke state funding to a theatre in the Tel Aviv suburb of Jaffa that screened the film, with the “goal of preventing the screening of this shocking film or other similar ones in the future.”

Various other Israeli officials have denounced the production of “Farha” in public statements. In response to its screening on Netflix, there has been coordinated downvoting of its ratings online, as well as a social media campaign calling on people to cancel their Netflix subscriptions.

Many people do not want “Farha” to be seen under any circumstance. Yet this attempt to shut down screenings of the film seems to reflect an unfair denial of yet another basic human right to Palestinians: the ability to process their trauma through art. Rather than gratuitously attack Israelis, the creator of “Farha” has said that this personal impulse was at the core of why the film was created.

“The story traveled over the years to reach me. It stayed with me. When I was a child, I had this fear of closed, dark places, and I kept thinking of this girl and what happened to her,” Sallam said following the film’s release. “So when I grew up and became a filmmaker, I decided that this would be my debut feature.”

The desire to use art as a means of dealing with pain — including historical traumas passed down through generations — should be familiar to Israelis, many of whom are descendants of genocide survivors from Europe, about which there is a voluminous history of cultural production continuing into the present day.

Despite the documented fact of the Palestinian refugee exodus, the individual accounts of those who suffered these events have often been suppressed, only recently receiving halting recognition from the broader public, decades after the fact. The Palestinian film industry, which has achieved popular success in recent years, has emerged as a vital tool for capturing the historical memory not just of the Nakba, but of the continued traumas suffered by millions of Palestinians living as occupied subjects of the Israeli military.

Acknowledging the Other Side

The pivotal scene in “Farha” showing the murder of a Palestinian family depicts the wartime Israeli military in a poor light. Yet far from being unthinkable, such incidents have been documented by Israeli historians as common during the Nakba.

“The Jewish soldiers who took part in the massacre also reported horrific scenes: babies whose skulls were cracked open, women raped or burned alive in houses, and men stabbed to death,” the historian Ilan Pappe wrote in his book, “The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine,” describing accounts of a massacre that took place in the Palestinian village of Dawaymeh.

Despite attempts to shut down its production, there is a strong case to make that “Farha” should be seen.

The massacre in Dawaymeh was just one of countless incidents of ethnic cleansing during this period, many of which have survived in the memory of Palestinians but are only now being recognized by others.

That the people who suffered through the Nakba and their children have a right to memorialize their experience through art should not be denied, even if, as is likely, the stories they tell make some people uncomfortable in the present day.

“Farha” is now available to millions of people to watch on Netflix. Despite attempts to shut down its production, there is a strong case to make that it should be seen — though not to deepen hatred over terrible events that cannot be reversed. Rather, the film should stand as an acknowledgement of the other side of a historic story about the creation of the state of Israel that has too long been ignored or denied: the story of its victims.

The post Netflix’s “Farha” and the Palestinian Right to Process Pain Through Art appeared first on The Intercept.

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