Anderson Cooper and his crew were attacked by supporters of embattled Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo early Wednesday, according to the Huffington Post.
CNN Coverage Manager Steve Brusktweeted that Cooper was “was punched 10 times in the head as pro-Mubarak mob surrounded him and his crew trying to cover demonstration.”
Cooper was covering dueling demonstrations between pro-Mubarak supporters and those calling for the president to be removed from office when he and his crew came under attack.
No major injuries were reported, and the anchor spoke to CNN’s ‘American Morning’ early Wednesday about the attack. “My team were set upon by the crowd,” Cooper said via telephone from a Cairo hotel.
“There was no rhyme or reason to it — it was just people looking for a fight, looking to make a point and punching us.”
“They at first started going for the cameras; they didn’t want any pictures taken,” Cooper said. “The crowd kept growing, kept throwing punches, kicks … suddenly a young man would look at you and punch you in the face.”
CNN issued an update this morning indicating there were no serious injuries sustained during the attack.
Cooper and his crew had been trying to steer clear of the protesters by remaining in a neutral zone between the two groups. But as the size of the crowd increased, the situation became less stable, resulting in violence between the two factions in the increasingly unstable country.
GodHatesFags is one of, if not, the most tackiest and disgusting websites I have ever come across and now they have decided that the big man upstairs hates Lady Gaga.
They have a new press release announcing that on January 7, 2010, they will be picketing outside of the Fox Theater in St.Louis, MO, the same night that GaGa is performing for The Monster Ball Tour she is currently on.
Part of the press release says….
“Thou hadst a whore’s forehead, thou refusedst to be ashamed…Will He reserve His anger for ever? Will He keep it to the end? Behold, thou hast spoken and done evil things as thou couldest.†Jer. 3:3,5.
They also go on to call her a hussy, slut and claim that she hates God and is encouraging others to hate him through her music and shows. You can read the whole press release below.
This whole thing is beyond ridiculous but their wording is absolutely hilarious. Do you think God would hate Lady GaGa? I can’t even write that without laughing.
Blind people quarantined in a mental asylum, attacking each other, soiling themselves, trading sex for food. For Marc Maurer, who’s blind, such a scenario _ as shown in the movie “Blindness” _ is not a clever allegory for a breakdown in society.
Instead, it’s an offensive and chilling depiction that Maurer fears could undermine efforts to integrate blind people into the mainstream.
“The movie portrays blind people as monsters, and I believe it to be a lie,” said Maurer, president of the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind. “Blindness doesn’t turn decent people into monsters.”
The organization plans to protest the movie, released by Miramax Films, at 75 theaters around the country when it’s released Friday. Blind people and their allies will hand out fliers and carry signs. Among the slogans: “I’m not an actor. But I play a blind person in real life.”
The movie reinforces inaccurate stereotypes, including that the blind cannot care for themselves and are perpetually disoriented, according to the NFB.
“We face a 70 percent unemployment rate and other social problems because people don’t think we can do anything, and this movie is not going to help _ at all,” said Christopher Danielsen, a spokesman for the organization.
“Blindness” director Fernando Meirelles, an Academy Award nominee for “City of God,” was shooting on location Thursday and unavailable for comment, according to Miramax. The studio released a statement that read, in part, “We are saddened to learn that the National Federation of the Blind plans to protest the film `Blindness.’”
The NFB began planning the protests after seven staffers, including Danielsen, attended a screening of the movie in Baltimore last week. The group included three sighted employees.
Based on the 1995 novel by Nobel Prize winner Jose Saramago, “Blindness” imagines a mysterious epidemic that causes people to see nothing but fuzzy white light _ resulting in a collapse of the social order in an unnamed city. Julianne Moore stars as the wife of an eye doctor (Mark Ruffalo) who loses his sight; she feigns blindness to stay with her husband and eventually leads a revolt of the quarantined patients.
The book was praised for its use of blindness as a metaphor for the lack of clear communication and respect for human dignity in modern society.
Miramax said in its statement that Meirelles had “worked diligently to preserve the intent and resonance of the acclaimed book,” which it described as “a courageous parable about the triumph of the human spirit when civilization breaks down.”
Maurer will have none of it.
“I think that failing to understand each other is a significant problem,” he said. “I think that portraying it as associated with blindness is just incorrect.”
Utterly ridiculous. Unless the movie credits include, “based on a true story” — the movie is fiction. It’s a story, nothing more.
