UN says it is «concerned» about Defense taking control of Mexico’s National Guard

Daniel Stewart - Yesterday 

The United Nations Acting High Commissioner for Human Rights, Nada al Nashif, expressed her concern on Friday over the decision of the Mexican Congress to cede control of the National Guard to the Ministry of National Defense, that is, to integrate it into the army.


Archive - Mexican National Guard Agents - 

SECRETARÍA DE SEGURIDAD DE MÉXICO© Provided by News 360

According to Al Nashif, the Mexican Constitution states that this body is of a civilian nature. However, the Senate has approved a legislative reform whereby the operational, budgetary and administrative control of the National Guard passes into the hands of military officials.

"The reforms effectively leave Mexico without a civilian police force at the federal level, further consolidating the already prominent role of the Armed Forces in public security in Mexico," he denounced.

"Human Rights mechanisms have clearly stated that the Armed Forces should only intervene in public security on a temporary basis, in exceptional circumstances, as a last resort, and always under the effective supervision of independent civilian bodies," said Al Nashif.

The High Commissioner pointed out that the militarization of the security forces "has been steadily increasing" since 2006, but this has not translated into a drop in crime. Instead, she denounced, there has been an increase in reports of "serious human rights violations" by the security forces.

She also called on the Mexican authorities to strengthen civilian oversight in the security sector and expressed concern about the reform of the Constitution that is being proposed to allow the use of the Armed Forces for public security until 2028.

Mexico's President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has celebrated the approval of this law this Friday. "It is the most important thing", he assured, and highlighted the fact that the control will be in the hands of the Secretariat of National Defense (Sedena).

'Morbius' was a box-office dud but now it's topping Netflix's charts, as the streamer's deal with Sony continues to pay off

tclark@insider.com (Travis Clark) - Yesterday 

Jared Leto as Michael Morbius in "Morbius." Courtesy of Sony Pictures© Courtesy of Sony Pictures

Sony's "Morbius" is the No. 1 movie on Netflix right now, after landing on the service on Wednesday.
Starting this year, Sony movies stream on Netflix after their theatrical and home-entertainment runs.
The deal is already proving to be one of Netflix's best bets.

"Morbius," Sony's Marvel movie starring Jared Leto as a vampiric antihero, disappointed in theaters after it debuted in April with $163 million globally, including just $74 million in the US.

Five months later, it's the No. 1 movie on Netflix in the US.

The movie landed on the streamer Wednesday, and has been the top movie on the service since (Netflix measures its daily top 10 lists by hours viewed the previous 24 hours).

"Morbius" is part of a five-year deal with Netflix reached in 2021 that kicked in this year, in which Netflix landed domestic streaming rights to Sony's movies after their theatrical and home-entertainment runs.

Sony, which doesn't have its own streaming platform, owns the film rights to Spider-Man and hundreds of related Marvel characters — meaning Netflix will be the first streaming home for any future Marvel movies Sony releases to theaters. The streamer also is licensing select older movies from Sony's library, such as its past Spider-Man movies.

As part of the agreement, Netflix has a first-look option for movies Sony is making directly for streaming or planning to license for streaming.

Related video: Morbius arrives on Netflix
Duration 1:17  View on Watch

The deal is already proving to be one of Netflix's best bets.


VIDEO 

‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ dominates the box office despite releasing last year

Mark Wahlberg and Tom Holland in "Uncharted." 

Clay Enos/Columbia Pictures

"Uncharted," Sony's video-game adaptation that hit theaters in March and later landed on Netflix, topped Nielsen's latest movie streaming chart, which measured the week of August 8-14.

During that week, "Uncharted" was the most-watched movie across the platforms Nielsen measures — including Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, and Hulu — with 1.18 billion minutes viewed in the US.

It was the No. 2 most-watched title overall, second to Netflix's series "The Sandman."

Sony movies have dominated consumer engagement on Netflix. According to Julia Alexander, director of strategy at the data firm Parrot Analytics, half of the top 10 most in-demand movies on Netflix in the US over the last 90 days were licensed from or produced by Sony (Parrot Analytics' audience demand reflects the interest in a given movie or series based on viewership, online engagement, and more).

Those movies included:
"Spider-Man 2" (No 1)
"Uncharted" (No. 2)
"Spider-Man 3" (No. 5)
"The Amazing Spider-Man" (No. 8)
"The Mitchells vs. the Machines" (No. 9)

The chart below illustrates the top 10 most in-demand movies on Netflix over the last 90 days:

Parrot Analytics© Parrot Analytics
Read the original article on Business Insider

Tucker Carlson's childish bullying backfires spectacularly and it's music to our ears

Queerty - Yesterday 

A country music singer has spun an insult from patron saint of furrowed brows Tucker Carlson into gold, all for the benefit of transgender charities.

The Fox News host targeted Grammy Award-winning singer Maren Morris after she spoke up for trans youth on Twitter.

Morris was responding to Brittany Aldean, wife of country singer Jason Aldean, who shared a makeup-transformation video with the caption: “I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase. I love this girly life.”

Aldean later took to Instagram to falsely claim kids were being forced to undergo “genital mutilation.”

Related: Tucker Carlson suggests giving monkeypox this new, gay-related name

Medical guidelines do not recommend gender confirmation surgery for minors.

Dr. Jason Klein, a pediatric endocrinologist and medical director of the Transgender Youth Health Program at Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone, told CBS earlier this year: “It’s important to recognize that there is absolutely no surgical intervention that is being done for young individuals who are transgender or nonbinary. The only scissors that are being taken to children is to cut their hair.”

Aldean’s comments sparked immediate backlash.

Singer Cassadee Pope tweeted: “You’d think celebs with beauty brands would see the positives in including LGBTQ+ people in their messaging. But instead here we are, hearing someone compare their ‘tomboy phase’ to someone wanting to transition. Real nice.”

Aldean sells products ranging from clip-in hair extensions to t-shirts with slogans like “unapologetically conservative.”

Morris commented on Pope’s criticism, adding: “It’s so easy to, like, not be a scumbag human? Sell your clip-ins and zip it, Insurrection Barbie.”



Carlson addressed Aldean’s comments on his Fox News program, praising her “fight to protect kids” and “her work to fight child exploitation.”

“No sane society would have a problem with or even notice words like that, but in 2022, this is a time when you are led to believe that minors should be castrated by their parents,” he said.

Then he called Morris “a lunatic” and “a fake country singer.”

Related: Tucker Carlson’s documentary about “testicle tanning” is gay AF

Morris reclaimed the insult and turned it into a t-shirt reading: “Maren Morris / Lunatic Country Music Person.”

The shirts went on sale on September 2, with all proceeds going to TransLifeline and the GLAAD Transgender Media Program. 

Over $100K has been raised for the deserving organizations.

Maren Morris raised over $150,000 for transgender youth after Tucker Carlson insult

Zoe Sottile - Yesterday 

Fox’s Tucker Carlson called country star Maren Morris a “lunatic” after she defended transgender kids – so she used the insult to raise over $150,000 for organizations supporting transgender youth.

Morris partnered with GLAAD, the world’s largest LGBTQ media advocacy organization, and Trans Lifeline to release a shirt emblazoned with the words “Lunatic Country Music Person.”

Proceeds from the shirt will go toward GLAAD’s Transgender Media Program and Trans Lifeline, which runs a hotline for transgender youth in crisis and provides micro grants and support for transgender people in need, according to a statement shared with CNN.

Carlson called Morris a “lunatic country music person” after she responded to comments referencing transgender youth made by country singer Jason Aldean’s wife, Brittany Kerr Aldean.

“I’d really like to thank my parents for not changing my gender when I went through my tomboy phase. I love this girly life,” wrote Aldean in the caption of a makeup video posted to Instagram.

“Im glad they didn’t too, cause you and I wouldn’t have worked out,” replied her Grammy-winning husband in a comment.


Soon, fellow country singer Cassadee Pope tweeted criticism of Brittany Kerr Aldean, writing, “You’d think celebs with beauty brands would see the positives in including LGBTQ+ people in their messaging.”

Morris jumped in to support Pope, writing, “This isn’t political. We’re calling someone out for being transphobic and thinking it’s hilarious. It isn’t.”

Aldean said her words were taken out of context and appeared to respond to the backlash with a sweatshirt of her own with the text, “Don’t tread on our kids.” Proceeds go to Operation Light Shine, which fights human trafficking and child sexual exploitation.

The exchange was an apparent reference to ongoing battles over transgender youth’s ability to access gender-affirming care. In August, Boston Children’s Hospital reported that it had received violent threats because of misinformation that it performed genital surgeries on young children. Gender-affirming care – an umbrella term for treatments that help transgender people align their physical traits with their personal gender identity – has been approved by major medical associations, including the American Medical Association and the Children’s Hospital Association.

“By publicly speaking out to support trans youth, country music superstar, Maren Morris is connecting with an audience who may be less familiar with the transgender community and the current wave of attacks on their rights,” said Anthony Allen Ramos, GLAAD’s vice president of communications and talent, in the organization’s statement.

“Not only is she using her platform and influence to help further the conversation and likely change hearts and minds, she is raising crucial funds which will go directly into GLAAD and Trans Lifeline’s work to support the trans community at a time when it’s needed more than ever.”

'Nobody knows where their village is': 

New inland sea swamps Pakistan

Agence France-Presse
September 10, 2022

Floods have affected nearly a third of Pakistan Aamir QURESHI AFP

From a hastily erected embankment protecting Mehar city, mosque minarets and the price board of a gas station poke above a vast lake that has emerged, growing to tens of kilometers wide.

Beyond this shoreline in southern Sindh, hundreds of villages and swathes of farmland are lost beneath the water -- destroyed by floods that have affected nearly a third of Pakistan.

"Nobody knows where their village is anymore, the common man can no longer recognize his own home," Ayaz Ali, whose village is submerged under nearly seven metres (23 feet) of water, told AFP.

The Sindh government says more than 100,000 people have been displaced by this new body of water, brought by record rains and the Indus River overflowing its banks.

Across the country, about 33 million people have been affected by the flooding, nearly two million homes and businesses destroyed, 7,000 kilometers (4,350 miles) of roads washed away and 256 bridges knocked out.

A bus conductor with a sharp memory, Ali acts as a navigator for the navy, identifying each submerged village by the pattern of electricity pylons and distinct tree lines.

Navy volunteers cruise the waters on two lifeboats delivering aid donated by locals, ferrying people in need of medical care back to the city.

With Ali's help, they search out patches of high ground where families still shelter, refusing to evacuate despite a desperate situation worsened by the scorching heat.

"Their homes and belongings are so precious to them," said one serviceman, who asked not to be named, looking out at the expanse of water.

"When I joined the navy, I could never have imagined doing this," he added.

Engine cut, the boat navigates slowly through the tops of trees, and heads duck under power lines ahead of a hamlet of crumbling houses encircled by water.

'How can we leave?'

This time, dozens of people are waiting.

Many still refuse to leave their homes, concerned their livestock -- all that they have left -- will be stolen or will die, and fearing a worse situation at the makeshift relief camps that have sprung up all over the country.

"Our life and death is linked with our village, how can we leave?" said Aseer Ali, kneedeep in water, refusing to let his wife, who is eight months pregnant, evacuate.

Some relent -– men with fever, toddlers with diarrhea, and an elderly woman silent in her anguish -- are among those helped onto the boat that carries double its capacity on a weighed-down journey back to the city.

Among them is a young mother who had only recently lost her newborn when the water rose around her home last week.

She sways dizzily from the effects of heat stroke, her two-year-old child also distressed by the burning midday sun -– both repeatedly drenched in water by a navy serviceman.

'Immense need'

A new 10-kilometer mud embankment has so far held back the flood from Mehar city, with a population of hundreds of thousands.

But the city has swelled with displaced victims who over the past three weeks have fled to makeshift camps in car parks, schools and on motorways.

"More families keep arriving at the camp. They are in a terrible condition," Muhammad Iqbal, from the Alkhidmat Foundation -- a Pakistan-based humanitarian organization that is the only welfare presence at the city's largest camp, which hosts about 400 people.


"There is an immense need for drinking water and toilet facilities," he added, but they may have to wait longer -- the government's priority is to drain the flooded areas.

Pressure has heaped on swollen dams and reservoirs, forcing engineers to make intentional breaches to save densely populated areas at the cost of worsening the situation in the countryside.

"They all have gone all out to protect the city but not the poor people of the rural areas," said Umaida Solangi, a 30-year-old perched with her children on a wooden bed at a city camp.


© 2022 AFP

Doug Mastriano prayed for Trump to ‘seize the power’ before Capitol attack

Martin Pengelly in New York - 

A week before the Capitol attack, on a video call organised by a member of a Christian nationalist group, a Pennsylvania state senator who is the Republican candidate for governor in the battleground state prayed that supporters of Donald Trump would “seize the power” on 6 January 2021.


Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP© Provided by The Guardian

Doug Mastriano attended the pro-Trump rally in Washington that day, after which supporters, told by Trump to “fight like hell” to overturn his election defeat, stormed Congress in an attempt to stop certification of Joe Biden’s victory.

The riot was linked to nine deaths, including suicides in the aftermath of the attack among law enforcement.

Related: ‘You have to run’: Romney urged Biden to take down Trump, book says

Mastriano denies crossing police lines at the Capitol and affiliations with Christian nationalist groups. He is now one of a number of Republican candidates for state positions with sway over elections who support Trump’s lie that his 2020 defeat was the result of voter fraud.

Two months from election day, the polling website fivethirtyeight.com puts Mastriano just shy of seven points behind his Democratic opponent.

Mastriano’s 6 January prayer, first reported by Rolling Stone on Friday, was delivered during a Zoom call, titled Global Prayer for Election Integrity, organised by what the magazine called “a prominent figure in the far-right New Apostolic Restoration movement”.

As defined by Rolling Stone, “Christian nationalism is a central tenet of … NAR [which] emerge[ed] from charismatic Christianity (think: Pentecostalism) and is anchored in the belief that we are living in an age of new apostles and prophets, who receive direct revelations from the holy spirit.

“NAR adherents hold that the end times are fast approaching and their calling is to hasten the second coming of Christ by re-fashioning the modern world in a biblical manner.”

Mastriano is a US army veteran who once dressed up as a Confederate soldier. In his prayer, he listed historical events including the battle of Gettysburg in 1863 and the crash of United Airlines Flight 93, the plane which came down in a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11, after passengers attacked their hijackers.

He said: “In 2001, while our nation was attacked by terrorists, a strong Christian man from Paramus, New Jersey, Todd Beamer, said, ‘Let’s roll.’

“God I ask you that you help us roll in these dark times, that we fear not the darkness, that we will seize our Esther and Gideon moments. That … when you say, ‘Who shall I send?’ we will say, ‘Send me and not him or her’, we will take responsibility for our republic and not waver in these days that try our souls.

“We’re surrounded by wickedness and fear and dithering and inaction. But that’s not our problem. Our problem is following your lead.”

In the weeks before the Capitol attack, Mastriano was involved in failed attempts to overturn Trump’s defeat in Pennsylvania, the announcement of which confirmed Biden’s electoral college win.

On the Zoom call, Mastriano displayed what he said were “letters that President Trump asked me this morning to send to [Senate Republican leader] Mitch McConnell and [House leader] Kevin McCarthy, outlining the fraud in Pennsylvania, and this will embolden them to stand firm and disregard what has happened in Pennsylvania until they have an investigation”.

He also said: “We think about our elected officials in Pennsylvania who’ve been weak and feckless and we’ve handed over our power to a governor” – Tom Wolf, a Democrat – “who disregards the freedoms of this republic.

“I pray that we’ll take responsibility, we’ll seize the power that we had given to us by the constitution, and as well by you providentially. I pray for the leaders and also in the federal government, God, on the sixth of January that they will rise up with boldness.”

After the Capitol riot, when Congress reconvened, McCarthy was one of 138 Republican congressmen and nine senators who voted to object to results in Pennsylvania or Arizona or both.

Mastriano touts endorsement from rabbi who promoted Qanon conspiracy, ‘reptilian’ Hitler theory

2022/09/01

Doug Mastriano, Republican nominee for governor, 

speaks to supporters inside Gatsby's Bar& Grill in Aston.

 - HEATHER KHALIFA/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

The headline looked promising for Doug Mastriano’s gubernatorial campaign, and the Republican state senator promptly shared it Thursday morning with his nearly 200,000 followers on Twitter and Facebook.

“Rabbi Endorses Mastriano as Shapiro Calls Him Antisemitic in Pennsylvania Gov. Race,” the far-rightEpoch Times proclaimed, referring to the Democratic nominee, Josh Shapiro.

Mastriano, a retired Army colonel from south central Pennsylvania, has been dogged by accusations of antisemitism this summer after he paid $5,000 to Gab, a social media site frequented by extremists and antisemites, in an effort to reach new voters. The site’s founder, Andrew Torba, has described Mastriano’s campaign as part of an “explicitly Christian” nationalist movement that should exclude followers of other faiths.

Jewish groups, both Democratic and Republican, reacted angrily to news reports about the GOP candidate’s strategy and Mastriano eventually cut ties with Torba and Gab. He said he “rejects antisemitism in any form.”

More recently, however, Mastriano has been repeating old tropes about George Soros on the campaign trail, claiming that Soros, who contributed to Shapiro in 2016 and 2020, had worked for the Nazis during World War II.

“Disgusting,” Mastriano said at a Delaware County bar and restaurant last week — although the crowd fell silent and seemed mostly confused.

On Thursday, Mastriano touted the endorsement of Rabbi Joseph Kolakowsi by sharing the article from the Epoch Times, a conservative publication affiliated with members of the controversial Chinese spiritual movement Falun Gong.

In it, the ultraorthodox rabbi defended Mastriano.

“While the Democrats have the chutzpah to claim that those of us from the Party of Lincoln are somehow racist, they do not look at the racist tenants of their own party, including abortion and gun control, both of which cause undue and disproportionate harm to people of color, and are historically rooted in openly racist ideologies,” the rabbi said.

Kolakowski identified himself to the publication as the leader of a Hasidic Jewish ministry in northeast Pennsylvania.

What the Epoch Times story did not mention is hundreds of internet posts and videos in which the 38-year-old rabbi shares unfounded claims of fraud in the 2020 election, expresses sympathy for Jan. 6 insurrectionists, and speaks favorably of the Qanon movement — a conspiracy theory that holds that President Donald Trump and his allies are engaged in a secret war with pedophilic, blood-drinking satanists.

“Whether they are right or wrong about their theories, the whole point of Qanon is to fight child abuse,” Kolakowski wrote earlier this year. “Why does the left hate a group that fights child abuse?”

On YouTube, Kolakowski has espoused more outlandish ideas, including a theory that Adolf Hitler and other malevolent world leaders are part lizard.

“There’s a reason why he never took off his boots,” the rabbi says in one video of the Nazi dictator. “(It) was to hide the fact that his feet were reptilian in nature because he came from this nonhuman race, demonic race. He was a hybrid.”

Kolakowski has previously courted controversy, appearing in a 2011 viral video filmed inside his home in which Orthodox worshipers are seen passing around an AK-47 assault rifle during prayers. Later, Kolakowski rose to the defense of conservative, far-right cartoonist Ben Garrison after the Anti-Defamation League criticized some of his cartoons as antisemitic.

“There was no reference to the Torah faith or religion in Mr. Garrison’s cartoon,” Kolakowski wrote. “I believe that George Soros is an enemy to the basic fundamental ideas of America and he is a very dangerous individual.”

Kolakowski repeatedly asserts that tropes about prominent Jews endeavoring to secretly dominate global finance, politics or the media are not antisemitic because secular Jews should not be considered Jewish — or, sometimes, even fully human. The rabbi says certain Jewish mystical texts support ideas espoused by conspiracy theorists like David Icke, who holds that the world is controlled by reptilian shape-shifters.

In a phone interview Thursday, Kolakowski said he felt Mastriano was being “unfairly maligned” as antisemitic. He said he reached out to Mastriano’s campaign, and “the campaign manager asked me to write something” — the statements that later appeared in the Epoch Times.

“I heard the slander that was made against him claiming he was antisemitic and I wanted to speak up personally,” Kolakowski said. He said he stood by his online statements about QAnon, the Jan. 6 riot, and other issues.

“I certainly don’t believe it was an insurrection,” he said. “I think a lot of people share that view.”

Mastriano’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. It has generally ignored such requests from mainstream media outlets.

Mastriano rose to prominence by railing against coronavirus safety measures in 2020, and later, promoting unfounded claims of fraud in that November’s presidential election. He was present in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021 and rented buses so that others could attend.

Although Mastriano now says he rejects the Qanon movement, in 2018 he repeatedly shared tweets featuring pro-Qanon hashtags. Earlier this year, he spoke at an event promoting Qanon and 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Recently, Mastriano has sought to publicly moderate some of his beliefs. He has recently spoken less about his support for a ban on abortion, which this spring he described as his “number one issue.”

Supporters like Kolakowski, meanwhile, have shown little moderation.

This year, the rabbi asserted that the capitol insurrection was caused by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordering Capitol Police to “push innocent people into that building in order to make the President’s supporters look bad.”

On Twitter, the rabbi celebrated the overturning of Roe v. Wade, which he described as “an excuse to lynch blacks in the womb.”

Prophets, 'Pizzagaters' and an Oath Keeper: A field guide to Doug Mastriano World
2022/09/02

HEATHER KHALIFA/The Philadelphia Inquirer/TNS

It’s now September — that time of year when political candidates start changing their colors weeks ahead of the autumn leaves. None more so than Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial nominee, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, who in his right-wing media hits — the Christian nationalist continues to shun mainstream outlets, with the help of his goon squad — has tried to pooh-pooh the notion that he’s a dangerous extremist. This despite the fact that new evidence of his extremism — his fetish for the Confederacy, for example — keeps popping up.

Rather than relying Mastriano’s words, maybe it’s time to judge the retired Army colonel by the company he keeps. Let’s take stock of the rogues’ gallery of self-styled prophets, election deniers and militia types that Mastriano chooses to associate with, and ask yourself if the founding state of American democracy has ever seen a campaign quite like this.

Here (in alphabetical order) is a brief field guide to a few of the key players in Mastriano World:

Abby Abildness: The state director of the Pennsylvania Congressional Prayer Caucus and director of the Global Apostolic Prayer Network, Abildness is a key state leader in the Christian nationalist movement that loosely affiliates under the banner of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) a group that seeks extremist Christian domination over government. She’s also a lobbyist in Harrisburg, where she’s forged ties with key 2020 election deniers like State Sen. Cris Dush and Mastriano. Mastriano also was filmed hugging Abildness at a July event built around a revisionist Christian history of William Penn and Pennsylvania’s founding.

Grant Clarkson: A past congressional intern and GOP legislative assistant in Harrisburg, Clarkson was identified by NBC News’ Ryan J. Reilly as part of the phalanx of campaign bodyguards that kept journalists away from Mastriano’s pre-primary rally in Bucks County in May. NBC also reported that Clarkson was photographed on the U.S. Capitol grounds at the height of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection, when “he appeared to smile and laugh as rioters smashed media equipment on Capitol grounds.”

Jenna Ellis: The senior legal adviser to the Mastriano campaign and fierce defender of the candidate on Twitter, Ellis was a key attorney for Donald Trump as he sought to overturn President Biden’s 2020 election victory. A former traffic court lawyer and the author of a self-published book that claims that the U.S. Constitution can only be interpreted through the Bible, Ellis drafted two memos insisting that Vice President Mike Pence had the power to overturn Biden’s election victory. Her 2020 efforts are under scrutiny in several ongoing investigations, including a Georgia probe of election tampering where she has been ordered to testify.

James Emery: Another cog in Mastriano’s team of bodyguards from the May Bucks County rally, Emery is a member of the Elizabethtown Area School Board in central Pennsylvania and a licensed minister affiliated with that community’s LifeGate church, a congregation that has advocated for Christians to play a greater role in government. Investigative journalist Carter Walker of Lancaster’s LNP news organization has identified the LifeGate congregation as the nexus for several members of Mastriano’s security team.

Sean Feucht:The musical entertainment at Mastriano’s primary victory party in Chambersburg in May, the pro-Trump, anti-vaccine Christian rock star has emerged as the musical voice of the Ultra-MAGA movement in 2022. A growing political force who prayed in D.C. with Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert upon learning the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, Feucht has become a multimillionaire in the post-COVID era, according to Rolling Stone, which reported on his glitzy mansions in Southern California and Montana.

Michael Flynn: Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser — who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI but was pardoned by the 45th president shortly before the Jan. 6 insurrection — hails from the same military intelligence world as Mastriano and has beena critical backer of his campaign. Flynn — who has been tied to the QAnon conspiracy theory movement — is slated to return to Pennsylvania next month for his controversial “ReAwaken America” tour. Like Mastriano himself, Flynn refused to answer investigators’ questions about his involvement in the run-up to Jan. 6.

Francine and Allen Fosdick: Self-described prophets and promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, the Fosdicks were the organizers of the two-day far-right Christian event called “Patriots Arise for God and Country” in Gettysburg this April. Mastriano, whose state senatorial district includes the historic Civil War battlefield, was a speaker at the event, where the couple presented him with a “Sword of David.” That confab also featured 9/11 conspiracy theories and a video claiming the world is experiencing a “great awakening” that will expose “ritual child sacrifice” and a “global satanic blood cult.”

Julie Green: Another self-anointed prophet, Green — the head of Julie Green Ministries — has claimed she has “a special relationship” with Mastriano and has foreseen that a GOP victory in November will cleanse Pennsylvania of corruption. Mastriano has invited Green to give the opening prayer at a campaign event and shared her prophecies on social media. According to a report by the left-leaning watchdog group Media Matters, Green has said “that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ‘loves to drink the little children’s blood’; the government is conducting ‘human sacrifices’ to stay in power; and President Joe Biden is secretly dead and an ‘actor’ is playing him.”

Vishal Jetnarayan:Mastriano’s campaign manager — utterly unknown to veterans of Pennsylvania Republican politics — describes himself as (stop me if you’ve heard this one before) a prophet, active in two Chambersburg churches. He claims that he speaks directly with God and,according to a new report by WHYY’s Katie Meyer that dropped Thursday, has self-published books advising others on how they can do the same. She reported that Jetnarayan often emcees Mastriano’s events and is a booster of Green, his fellow prophet.

Sam Lazar:A 37-year-old right-wing political agitator from Lancaster County, Lazar appeared at Mastriano rallies and was photographed with the candidate even as Justice Department investigators and online sleuths honed in on Lazar’s participation in the Jan. 6 insurrection. (He’d posted about his involvement on Facebook, writing: “There’s a time for war. Our constitution allows us to abolish our [government] and install a new one in [its] place” and bragging of clashing with police while wearing face paint.) He was arrested and jailed in 2021 on charges of assaulting officers.

Mike Lindell: The notorious “My Pillow” mogul who re-invented himself during the latter portion of the Trump era as an obsessive backer of the former president’s Big Lie about rigged voting machines and 2020 election fraud, Lindell has also been a major booster of the Mastriano campaign, offering an early endorsement of the Pennsylvanian.

Scott Nagle: Nagle has been identified by LNP’s Walker, through interviews and a photograph posted to Facebook, as a member of Mastriano’s team of bodyguards. He was also, according to Walker’s report, listed as the Lancaster County leader of the radical group the Oath Keepers until January of this year. The leaders of the Oath Keepers, including its founder Stewart Rhodes, are currently facing federal sedition charges for their role in Jan. 6. Nagle has reportedly been photographed with Mastriano on several occasions.

Jeremy Oliver: WHYY’s Meyer reports that the Mastriano campaign has paid $82,500 to Oliver’s California-based Onslaught Media Group, and that Oliver — a former producer with the far-right One America News Network — has been appearing at Mastriano campaign events as a videographer. Meyer writes that Oliver has boosted the QAnon conspiracy theory on the site Gab — under fire for its links to antisemitism — and also posts frequently on Trump’s Truth Social site about theories such as Chinese hacking of U.S. voting machines.

Ivan Raiklin:A veteran Army intelligence officer, former Green Beret, and lawyer from Virginia, Raiklin emerged in late 2020 as a leader of Trump’s election-denial effort — writing the “Operation Pence Card” memo urging the then-vice president to undo Biden’s victory — and continues to lobby for Biden’s electors to be retroactively decertified. He showed up at Mastriano’s Chambersburg victory party in May, where he filmed a congratulatory video with the candidate and blurted out “20 electoral votes,” an apparent reference to decertifying the 2020 Pennsylvania result.

Toni Shuppe: The co-founder and CEO of Audit The Vote PA — a group dedicated to overturning the 2020 election results based on Trump’s Big Lie — Shuppe has emerged as a key supporter of Mastriano, filming an early endorsement video and appearing with the candidate at rallies. There has been speculation that Mastriano is considering appointing Shuppe as secretary of state to oversee Pennsylvania’s elections. According to a report this week by Media Matters, Shuppe has claimed the Pizzagate hoax “is 100% real” and praised QAnon as “a very valuable resource.”

Andrew Torba: Mastriano’s connection with the founder of the right-wing social media platform Gab erupted in controversy this summer when it was revealed his campaign had paid $5,000 to the site to boost Mastriano’s profile there. The candidate also sat down for an interview with Torba and said, “Thank God for what you’ve done.” Torba’s history of anti-Jewish remarks on Gab were made public in 2018 after the gunman who murdered 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue posted his manifesto there.

Steve Turley: A Delaware resident, Turley produced and screened the recent documentary called “Return of the American Patriot: The Rise of Pennsylvania” that cast a positive light on the Mastriano campaign as a revolution building on the Trumpist political movement. A Christian nationalist podcaster, Turley rails for the destruction of multiculturalism and insists the future of America is “evangelical, Mormon, and Amish.”

Amid campaign, Mastriano's disputed dissertation made public






 Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano speaks ahead of former President Donald Trump at a rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., Saturday, Sept. 3, 2022. A Canadian university is making public Mastriano's 2013 doctoral thesis about World War I hero Sgt. Alvin York. The online posting includes six pages of corrections Mastriano added a year ago that in some cases don't appear to correct anything. Rival researchers have long criticized Mastriano's investigation into York as plagued by factual errors, amateurish archaeology and sloppy writing. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

ASSOCIATED PRESS
MARK SCOLFORO
Fri, September 9, 2022 

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Canadian university has quietly made public Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano's 2013 doctoral thesis about a legendary World War I hero, including six pages of recently added corrections that, in some cases, do not appear to fix anything.

Researchers who have long criticized Mastriano's investigation into U.S. Army Sgt. Alvin C. York as plagued by factual errors, amateurish archaeology and sloppy writing say the dissertation, released last month by the University of New Brunswick, echoes the problems in his 2014 book based on the same research.

Mastriano won the Republican primary in May thanks, in part, to a late endorsement by former President Donald Trump. He came to political prominence by leading protests against pandemic mitigation efforts, energetically supporting the movement to overturn Trump’s 2020 reelection defeat and appearing outside the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The far-right state senator, a retired Army colonel, regularly brings up his Ph.D. status in public remarks and on the campaign trail as evidence of his knowledgeability. When a photo of Mastriano wearing a Confederate uniform surfaced last month, he brandished his academic credentials as a defense of his credibility.

Mastriano’s 480-page thesis includes a retelling of York’s life story and the results of Mastriano’s own research. The version now online has Mastriano’s June 2021 corrections, appended after a complaint from another researcher prompted the university to review the work.

A University of New Brunswick history professor, Jeff Brown, provided documents to The Associated Press that recorded his own misgivings about the dissertation nearly a decade ago when he was on Mastriano's doctoral committee. He says he was “appalled” by the dissertation and “disturbed by the fact that no one on the committee was qualified to evaluate the huge part of it that was archaeological.”

Brown said he flagged glaring issues to other faculty members and administrators and was dismissed from Mastriano's committee by the lead adviser — yet the published dissertation still listed Brown on the title page, giving the impression that he endorsed the material.

Brown said in an email that Mastriano’s main adviser, now-retired history professor Marc Milner, told him “that as it turns out, I never really needed to be on the examining committee after all, so there was no need to worry about evaluating Mastriano’s dissertation (despite the fact that I had already done so).”

“This was presented to me as a favour, to relieve me of the necessity of having to decide whether to sign off on it or not,” Brown added. “I never understood how I suddenly became superfluous.”

Neither Milner nor Mastriano responded to multiple requests for comment.

The 21 revisions made last year, numbered in a list that skips from No. 9 to No. 11, include altered footnote references along with several changes that do not actually appear to correct anything but instead add descriptive text or defend aspects of the dissertation.

The most significant correction involves his longstanding claim that a photo of an American soldier leading German prisoners was misdated and mislabeled by the military photographer in 1918, and that it in fact shows York with three officers he would force to surrender two weeks after the date.

Mastriano's certainty about the American soldier's identity has evolved over the years: He wrote in 2007 that the photo “is now believed to show” York, then was “fairly sure” in 2011, described York as “clearly identified” in the 2013 dissertation and declared in the 2014 book that the photo “is confirmed to be" York. But his new explanatory footnote backtracks, saying it “seems to show Corporal York marching his prisoners into the American lines, with what is likely the German officers.”

“He didn’t ‘fix’ that — he just doubled down on his ridiculous assessment,” said University of Oklahoma history graduate student and instructor James Gregory, the complainant who triggered New Brunswick's review.

He said Mastriano’s revisions ignored more than a dozen of the problems Gregory found in the book and argued Mastriano “has no evidence other than this guy has a mustache and looks like Alvin York.” Gregory is preparing a similar list for the Canadian university with what he has identified as the dissertation’s errors.

A spokesperson for the University of New Brunswick, Heather Campbell, said Mastriano's “credentials are not impacted” as a result of the corrections and the school’s review. And retired history professor Steve Turner, another committee member, wrote in an email last week he stands by the decision to accept Mastriano’s thesis and grant him a doctorate.

“There was no reason to question the authenticity or accuracy of the sources cited in footnotes,” Turner said.

Turner said he did not recall that Brown raised concerns about the work but remembered Mastriano as “respectful and polite” during a meeting in which Turner urged him to engage more directly with critics of his research.

“I believe the truth is nonexistent in Mastriano’s vocabulary, but the word ‘detractors’ is and he applies it to anyone who is in disagreement with him,” said one of those critics, British author Michael Kelly. Kelly's 2018 book, “Hero on the Western Front,” includes a section on the controversy over Mastriano’s findings.

Mastriano claims to have pinpointed where York engaged in the gun battle with German troops for which he received the Medal of Honor. But critics like Kelly call his work shoddy and substandard, built on falsified evidence and bald assertions.

Penn State history professor Dan Letwin, asked to evaluate the dissertation’s quality, said it does not appear to meet current academic standards for doctoral-level historical research, describing it as “very lacking.”

“There’s nothing interpretive here about big historical questions,” Letwin said.

Last year, after Mastriano's book was questioned, New Brunswick officials declined to comment on the dissertation without Mastriano's permission.

But earlier this summer, the dean of New Brunswick’s school of graduate studies, Drew Rendall, came back from a yearlong sabbatical to learn Mastriano's dissertation was still under embargo. Embargoes of a few years are not uncommon in academia, particularly when there are plans to turn the work into a book, but it's unclear why the embargo on Mastriano's dissertation more than doubled the school's usual four-year limit.

Rendall said he notified Mastriano the thesis was being made public but never received a reply.

The 2014 book 's publisher, the University Press of Kentucky, is also planning corrections if it does another printing. Mastriano was sent a list of about 30 questions, some regarding minor typos and others seeking “additional sources to confirm specific information in the book,” press director Ashley Runyon said in an email.

The publisher plans to use his responses and its own review of primary sources “for future printings of the book to correct any errors,” Runyon wrote. Mastriano was informed of the proposed changes but has not responded, and the press has the final say in the revisions, Runyon added.

The book, which features the photo of a soldier leading German prisoners inside and on its dust jacket, is going to be changed to add information about the dispute in a preface, she said.

Trump is a 'deeply wounded narcissist' who is 'incapable of acting other than for revenge' — according to his former White House lawyer

Raw Story - Yesterday 11:04 a.m.
By Sky Palma

Shutterstock© provided by RawStory

A former White House lawyer during Donald Trump's administration says he thinks the Justice Department's investigation into whether Donald Trump improperly removed classified documents from the White House is actually related to Jan. 6, CBS News reports.

"It is about the bigger picture, the Jan. 6 issues, the fake electors, the whole scam with regard to the 'big lie' and the attempts to…cling to the presidency in a desperate fashion," Ty Cobb said on the The Takeout podcast.

"The search warrant is unusually large and broad," Cobb said. "It's very, very comprehensive in terms of the types of documents that the government could take."

"For example, you can take any box that has a document. You can take any box adjacent to a box that has it," he said. "Those are pretty broad parameters."

Related video: How Trump-linked lawyers shared sensitive data with conspiracy theorists    Duration 6:06   View on Watch

As CBS News points out, Cobb represented the White House during Robert Mueller's investigation into the Trump's campaign's alleged "collusion" with Russia -- an investigation that yielded no charges.

During his time in the White House, Cobb says Trump "was cautioned many times about not tearing up documents."

"In my own experience, I have to say, there wasn't really anything quite as consequential as the press reports that I've read," Cobb said. "I saw him tear up newspaper articles which sadly, some staffer would have to tape back together at the end of the day. I saw him tear up inconsequential documents, but I never saw him tear up a classified document or something that was important."

Cobb went to say that he does not believe the DOJ's investigation is the biggest threat to Trump

"I think the president is in serious legal water, not so much because of the search, but because of the obstructive activity he took in connection with the Jan. 6 proceeding," Cobb said. "I think that and the attempts to interfere in the election count in Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania and perhaps Michigan. That was the first time in American history that a president unconstitutionally attempted to remain in power illegally."

"I believe former President Trump to be a deeply wounded narcissist, and he is often incapable of acting other than in his perceived self-interest or for revenge," Cobb added. "I think those are the two compelling instincts that guide his actions."

Trump racketeering lawsuit against Hillary Clinton dismissed as 'political manifesto'

Ella Lee, USA TODAY - Yesterday 


WASHINGTON — A lawsuit filed by former President Donald Trump against 2016 Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton was tossed out Thursday by a federal judge in Florida who dismissed the former president's legal complaint as a "200-page political manifesto."

VIDEO
Duration 2:37
View on Watch

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and Democratic 

presidential candidate Hillary Clinton debate in St. Louis, Mo., on Oct. 9, 2016

.© PAUL J. RICHARDS, AFP via Getty Images

In a scathing rebuke of Trump's claims, U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks wrote that the lawsuit contained “glaring structural deficiencies” and that many of the “characterizations of events are implausible.”

Middlebrooks also suggested that the lawsuit served as an outlet for Trump to air grievances with his opponents, not a legitimate legal effort.

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"This Court is not the appropriate forum," the federal judge wrote.

Trump v. Clinton: Donald Trump sues Hillary Clinton and the DNC over Russian interference allegations

The 108-page lawsuit, filed in March, claimed that Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey and other top Clinton and FBI officials schemed together to accuse Trump of colluding with Russia to win the 2016 election. It alleged that Clinton and the DNC "worked together with a single self-serving purpose: to vilify Donald J. Trump."

Special counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that Trump’s campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election, but he noted in his report that the campaign was an eager beneficiary of Russia's interference.

The special counsel did not reach a conclusion on whether Trump had obstructed the investigation, but prosecutors found "multiple acts by the President that were capable of exerting undue influence over law enforcement investigations."

Efforts to obstruct the inquiry, Mueller said, "were mostly unsuccessful...largely because the persons who surrounded the president declined to carry out orders or accede to his requests."

Trump lawyer Alina Habba said in a statement that the former president’s legal team “vehemently disagrees” with the Court’s opinion, claiming it’s “rife with erroneous applications of the law.”

“We will immediately move to appeal this decision,” Habba said.

Read the judge's order to dismiss

Trump's legal woes: The lawsuits, investigations and legal troubles a 2024 Trump candidacy faces, explained

Mar-a-Lago search: Judge cites 'reputational harm' to Trump in ordering a Mar-a-Lago special master and pause in investigation

Contributing: Mabinty Quarshie, Kevin Johnson, Associated Press

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump racketeering lawsuit against Hillary Clinton dismissed as 'political manifesto'

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M
Kris Kobach resigns from We Build the Wall board after nonprofit indicted on money laundering

Jonathan Shorman, McClatchy Washington Bureau - Yesterday 

Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, the Republican candidate for state attorney general, resigned Friday from the board of directors of We Build the Wall after the nonprofit organization was indicted on allegations of money laundering, conspiracy and fraud.


On Oct. 6, 2018, as Republican candidate for governor of Kansas, Kris Kobach, right, speaks at a rally with President Donald Trump at the Kansas Expocenter in Topeka, Kansas.© Scott Olson/Getty Images North America/TNS

New York state prosecutors unsealed an indictment against former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on Thursday, alleging he defrauded donors to We Build the Wall, which fundraised to construct privately-funded strips of wall along the southern border. We Build the Wall was also indicted and accused of the same crimes. Both Bannon and We Build the Wall have pleaded not guilty.

The indictment put Kobach in the potentially politically precarious position of helping lead an organization under indictment while running to become Kansas’ top law enforcement officer. Kobach’s campaign told The Star he had resigned from the board after the newspaper asked about his continuing involvement with We Build the Wall.

Kobach had been the organization’s general counsel, in addition to serving on the board. He resigned both positions, according to state Sen. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican and Kobach’s campaign spokesperson.

If Kobach had remained on the board, he would have been part of a small team of corporate directors in charge of the organization as it faces allegations of criminal conduct. Kobach was on the board during at least part of the time period in which prosecutors allege Bannon and We Build the Wall engaged in money laundering and conspiracy.

Kobach has been on We Build the Wall’s board since at least July 2019, according to business filings in Florida, where the nonprofit was incorporated. The indictment alleges the money laundering, conspiracy and fraud took place between January or February 2019 and October or December 2019 – depending on the count.

We Build the Wall is no longer trying to build a private border wall, but at the height of its popularity in 2019 it had the support of a roster of right-wing figures, including businessman Erik Prince, the founder of the private military company Blackwater, and Kobach. Federal prosecutors charged Bannon and three others with defrauding donors in August 2020.

Florida business records currently list two other directors in addition to Kobach, Brian Kolfage and Amanda Shea. Kolfage pleaded guilty in connection to defrauding donors earlier this year. Shea is the wife of Timothy Shea, whose trial on federal charges ended in a mistrial earlier this year. Prosecutors plan to try him again.

Former President Donald Trump pardoned Bannon in his final hours in office, but the pardon doesn’t shield Bannon from state-level prosecution.

On Wednesday evening, before the indictment was unsealed, Kobach told reporters that he had remained affiliated with We Build the Wall because he is in the process of shutting it down. Kobach, an attorney, said a lawyer needs to be involved for an “orderly shutdown.”

Claeys said Friday that a nonprofit corporation could be shut down even if a case was proceeding against it.

Kobach said he doesn’t believe he is in legal jeopardy. Kobach hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing by either federal or New York prosecutors.

“An orderly shut down of WBTW is essential to the nation’s border security,” Kobach said in a statement Friday.

Kobach said that last week ownership of the New Mexico portion of wall constructed by We Build the Wall was transferred to the federal government. He said the U.S. Border Patrol now has full control of that section of wall. The wall includes an observation post that he said is “essential to stopping the Mexican cartels from smuggling fentanyl and other drugs.”

“This is one of the most important objectives that I wanted to achieve in assisting in the shut down,” Kobach said.

The indictment came as the race for attorney general heats up ahead of the Nov. 8 election. Kobach, who won the Aug. 2 Republican primary with 42% of the vote, is facing off against Democrat Chris Mann, a former Lawrence police officer and prosecutor in Wyandotte County.

“The attorney general is the chief law enforcement officer of the state. His character, reputation and moral judgment should be beyond reproach,” said state Rep. John Carmichael, a Wichita Democrat and an attorney.

We Build the Wall formed in late 2018 after Kolfage, a U.S. Air Force veteran of Iraq, initially raised money for a wall through a GoFundMe page. Kolfage was charged federally with conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering. Kolfage pleaded guilty in April.

Federal prosecutors alleged Kolfage covertly used more than $350,000 in donations for his personal use. Bannon was also accused of using We Build the Wall funds to cover personal expenses. The two men, along with Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea, were accused of concealing payments to Kolfage by routing them through a nonprofit and shell company controlled by Shea.

Badolato also pleaded guilty in April. Shea’s trial ended in a mistrial in June but prosecutors plan to try him again.

Kobach said he was on the witness list for both the prosecution and defense in Shea’s mistrial. It’s not clear whether Kobach would be a potential witness in the state-level case against Bannon and We Build the Wall.

“I’m sort of a person who kind of knows what the task of the company was,” Kobach said, explaining why he was a potential witness.

Court records indicate at one point Kobach was owed at least $75,000 in back pay from We Build the Wall, but much of its funds were frozen following the federal indictment. We Build the Wall went as far as asking the U.S. Supreme Court to take up its effort to gain access to the funds.

We Build the Wall’s petition to the Supreme Court was voluntarily dismissed in May by agreement of both the organization and the U.S. Department of Justice. No explanation was given at the time.

Kobach said Wednesday that he wasn’t paid at all for two years but that recently a federal court had freed up funds to allow We Build the Wall to pay its debts. He said he had been paid but didn’t disclose the amount.

©2022 McClatchy Washington Bureau. Visit at mcclatchydc.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Marsha Hunt, Actress Blacklisted in Hollywood, Dies at 104

Marsha Hunt, a veteran actress of the Golden Age of film, radio and Broadway who later saw her career wither over her protests against the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), died of natural causes on Sept. 7 in Los Angeles.

Maureen Lee Lenker - Yesterday -The Hollywood Reporter

Marsha Hunt, the bright-eyed starlet who stood out in such films as These Glamour Girls, Pride and Prejudice and Raw Deal before her career came unraveled by the communist witch hunt that hit Hollywood, has died. She was 104.

She died from natural causes on Tuesday evening at her Sherman Oaks home, where she had lived since 1946, Roger C. Memos — writer-director of the documentary Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity — told The Hollywood Reporter.

Hunt also appeared opposite Mickey Rooney in the best picture Oscar nominee The Human Comedy (1943) during a period in which she was known as “Hollywood’s Youngest Character Actress.”

A former model who signed with Paramount Pictures at age 17, the Chicago native made her first big splash as a suicidal co-ed opposite Lana Turner in MGM’s These Glamour Girls (1939).

Playing Walter Brennan’s sweetheart in Joe and Ethel Turp Call on the President (1939), Hunt aged from age 16 to 65 onscreen. She portrayed the dowdy sister Mary Bennet in Pride and Prejudice (1940), and in Anthony Mann’s film noir classic Raw Deal (1948), she was the good girl opposite Claire Trevor and Dennis O’Keefe.

Years later, in Johnny Got His Gun (1971) — penned by blacklisted writer Dalton Trumbo — Hunt played the mother of Timothy Bottoms’ quadruple-amputee character.

Though she never achieved the stardom of some of her co-stars, Hunt was proud of her career, especially early on. “Before I was 30, I had played four aging roles, and I was Hollywood’s youngest character actress … no two roles alike,” she told the website Ms. in the Biz in 2015.

In 1947, Hunt and her second husband, screenwriter Robert Presnell Jr., joined the Committee for the First Amendment, which questioned the legality of the House Un-American Activities Committee that was seeking to flush communists out of the entertainment industry.

The committee, which also included Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Danny Kaye, John Huston and other Hollywood liberals, chartered a plane to Washington to sit in on the HUAC hearings and support 19 creatives who had been under scrutiny.

However, Bogart and others quickly backpedaled, saying they were duped by communists and their trip to Washington was ill-advised. While that helped save their careers, Hunt did not repent. In June 1950, she was listed in Red Channels, the right-wing pamphlet that fingered scores of actors, directors, screenwriters and others for being sympathetic to “subversive” causes.

“You know, I was never interested in communism,” she said in a 2004 interview. “I was very much interested in my industry, my country and my government. But I was shocked at the behavior of my government and its mistreatment of my industry. And so I spoke out and protested like everyone else on that flight. But then I was told, once I was blacklisted, you see, I was an articulate liberal, and that was bad. I was told that in fact it wasn’t really about communism — that was the thing that frightened everybody — it was about control and about power.

“The way you get control is to get everyone to agree with whatever is proper at the time, whatever is accepted. Don’t question anything, don’t speak out, don’t have your own ideas, don’t be articulate about it, don’t ever be eloquent, and if you ever be one of those things, you’re controversial. And that’s just as bad, maybe worse, than being a communist. Which was still quite legal to be, you know: the Communist Party was still legal in America, running candidates for public office. But you lost your career, your good name, your savings, probably your marriage, your friends, if you had been a communist. It was appalling, just appalling.”

Her story was told in Marsha Hunt’s Sweet Adversity, released in 2015.

She was born Marcia Virginia Hunt in Chicago on Oct. 17, 1917. Her father, Earl, was an insurance executive and her mother, Minabel, a vocal coach. She and her family moved to New York City, and she graduated from the Horace Mann School for Girls at age 16.

Hunt fell into a career as a model when her high school yearbook photographer used her image as an advertising sample. She was signed by the Powers Agency, becoming a sought-after “Powers Girl” and learning how to pose and behave in front of a lens.

Friends with photographers-turned-publicists Robert and Sarah Mack, Hunt moved to Hollywood at 17, signed with Paramount when her agent, Zeppo Marx, got her $250 a week and landed the female lead in her first movie, The Virginia Judge (1935). She appeared as an ingenue and love interest in several films — John Wayne romanced her in Born to the West (1937) — but the studio declined to renew her contract in 1938.

She landed at MGM in The Hardys Ride High (1939) and went on to appear for the studio in The Trial of Mary Dugan (1941) as a Brooklyn chorus girl; in Kid Glove Killer (1942), director Fred Zinnemann’s first U.S. feature; in the World War II drama Cry ‘Havoc’ (1943); and as the top-billed title character in the Jules Dassin romantic comedy A Letter for Evie (1946).

An exhibitors poll had placed her among the “Top 10 Stars of Tomorrow” — others on the list included Roddy McDowall, Gloria DeHaven, Sidney Greenstreet, June Allyson and Barry Fitzgerald — and when she wasn’t acting, she was serving as a hostess at the famed Hollywood Canteen for American servicemen.

In 1948, Hunt made her stage debut in the Hollywood-set Joy to the World, directed by Jules Dassin; two years later, she was back on Broadway in George Bernard Shaw’s The Devil’s Disciple and graced the cover of Life magazine.

After Devil’s Disciple closed, Hunt departed for Europe, but when she returned, Red Channels had been published, and her career — she had made more than 50 films by then — would never be the same.

She went on to guest-star on such shows as The Ford Television Theatre, Climax! and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, was a regular on the short-lived 1959 series Peck’s Bad Girl and later appeared on Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, Ben Casey, My Three Sons, Ironside, Murder, She Wrote and Star Trek: The Next Generation.



Marsha Hunt with Franchot Tone (left) and Gene Kelly,

 her co-stars in 1943’s ‘Pilot #5.’

Hunt was a member of the SAG board and worked on various progressive committees; one counseled actress Olivia de Havilland in her groundbreaking legal case against the studio system and Warner Bros., and another petitioned studios to hire minority actors outside of stereotyped roles.

In 1955, a trip around the world opened her eyes to the plight of Third World nations, and she threw herself into humanitarian efforts, making appearances on behalf of the United Nations and becoming what she called a “planet patriot.”

In April 2015, she was named the inaugural recipient of the Marsha Hunt for Humanity Award, created by Kat Kramer, the daughter of the famed liberal director-producer Stanley Kramer.

Hunt was “one of the first major actresses in Hollywood to dedicate her life to causes,” Kat Kramer noted, “and she paved the way for Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, Patricia Arquette, Sharon Stone, George Clooney, Matt Damon, Don Cheadle, Tippi Hedren, Ed Begley Jr., Ed Asner and Martin Sheen — celebrities who use their fame as a voice for change.”

Hunt can be seen in all her glamour in the 1993 book The Way We Wore: Styles of the 1930s and ’40s and Our World Since Then, which features photos of her in many of her own clothes from the era.

Hunt moved to Sherman Oaks in 1946 and served as its honorary mayor for more than two decades. She and Presnell were married for 40 years until his death in 1986 at age 71. They had no children.

She is survived by a nephew, actor-director Allan Hunt, and other nieces and nephews. Donations in her memory may be made to L.A. Family Housing.

In 2008, Hunt starred in the 22-minute film The Grand Inquisitor, written and directed by Eddie Muller.

“To work with her was the most rewarding collaboration of my life. I suspect it always will be,” the host of TCM’s Noir Alley said after Raw Deal and The Grand Inquisitor played back-to-back on the cable channel last month. “She is simply the most exceptional human being I’ve ever known.”