Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for September 21, 2020OT/LE

submitted by rwkastenBring on the dancing horses from self.CultureWarRoundup

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for September 21, 2020

Post small CW threads and off-topic posts here. The rules still apply.

What belongs here? Most things that don't belong in their own text posts:

"I saw this article, but I don't think it deserves its own thread, or I don't want to do a big summary and discussion of my own, or save it for a weekly round-up dump of my own. I just thought it was neat and wanted to share it."

"This is barely CW related (or maybe not CW at all), but I think people here would be very interested to see it, and it doesn't deserve its own thread."

"I want to ask the rest of you something, get your feedback, whatever. This doesn't need its own thread."

Please keep in mind werttrew's old guidelines for CW posts:

“Culture war” is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people change their minds regardless of the quality of opposing arguments.

Posting of a link does not necessarily indicate endorsement, nor does it necessarily indicate censure. You are encouraged to post your own links as well. Not all links are necessarily strongly “culture war” and may only be tangentially related to the culture war—I select more for how interesting a link is to me than for how incendiary it might be.

The selection of these links is unquestionably inadequate and inevitably biased. Reply with things that help give a more complete picture of the culture wars than what’s been posted.

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[–]rwkastenBring on the dancing horses[S,M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Per user suggestion, until traffic on this sub picks up a bit, I'm going to create a single thread that may correlate to several weeks' worth of threads in the subreddit. We have this option because saidit's automoderator doesn't appear to have the "auto-post new threads" feature. There is no cutoff that will generate a new OT/LE thread, but practically-speaking, it will probably be somewhere in the 2-3 weeks/100 comments range to start. We have flexibility at the expense of a small amount of convenience.

That said, here is the cross-link to the current OT/LE on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/CultureWarRoundup/comments/ji8u27/offtopic_and_loweffort_cw_thread_for_the_week_of/

New OT/LE available

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I Signed Up to Study Sexual Health. What I Got Was Gender Ideology, Fetishism, and Porn

The doubts started to creep in early, though—on day one, to be exact. Our first classroom module was titled “Sexual Attitude Reassessment.” I amused myself with the thought that this sounded like an unsettling euphemism for a brainwashing session. Sadly, that’s what it was.

It quickly became clear that the issue of sexuality—the ostensible subject—often would serve merely as a pretext for more general harangues about society, and the urgent need to remake it according to AASECT’s ideological blueprint. In a keynote lecture entitled “Why Fetishism Matters,” the speaker argued that the world we inhabit is socially constructed, and told us (with what now seems like admirable candor), “I’m not neutral. I’m here to recruit you to a particular point of view about how kink should be valued.” The same speaker said that he’d been accused of teaching students that any form of sexual behavior is acceptable as long as there is consent from all parties. “Yes, that’s exactly right,” he said. Clearly, our attitude “reassessment” was well underway.

From the get-go, the scientific content was mostly superficial, and was often undercut by claims that the very idea of truth is a harmful (and even oppressive) construct. The teaching was not so much impartial and informative as it was evangelistic. Yet it was also self-contradictory: Declarations that there are no real “correct” moral values were uttered (without irony) alongside absolutist proclamations about the correct way to understand sex—and morality.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

This is who the state is letting "educate" your children: Smith is a social studies teacher at Youthbuild Charter School and activist in the Philadelphia community and his lawyer tells CBS3 he is facing arson and other federal charges related to the burning of a Philadelphia police car during the riots that erupted near City Hall on May 30.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Is the Culture War Lost?

In an ongoing public letter exchange on Letter, two of the most important advocates of universal liberal humanism—Sarah Haider and Ayaan Hirsi Ali—are currently discussing woke culture. Drawing on their extensive work fighting for the rights and freedoms of ex-Muslims, one of the most persecuted but fastest growing groups in the world, and against censorship, totalitarianism, religious bigotry and sexual oppression, especially when inspired by Islam, these two exceptionally courageous, outspoken women talk about the new cultural and social orthodoxy that is Critical Social Justice, commonly known as wokeism, with its censorious opposition to freedom of expression, its moral grandstanding, its identity hierarchies and the turgid gobbledygook of its constantly mutating terminology. Ayaan argues that this is a temporary phenomenon, rejected by most, and that its own patent absurdity, together with the staunch opposition of true liberals, will soon lead it to be debunked. Sarah, by contrast, points to the way in which the main cultural institutions of the west have already been captured by this illiberal ideology and advocates a radical approach to combating this, since, she writes, “we are not meeting the barbarians at the gate; we are rebelling against the empire.”

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Narcissism of The New York Times’ Foreign Coverage

On Oct. 29, three more people were killed in France, their throats slit while they prayed inside a church in the southern city of Nice, by an attacker who continued to shout “Allahu akbar” even after he was detained and administered sedatives.

Shortly after the attack, Thomas Chatterton Williams, an American writer living in France, noted that the political leaders of Turkey and Pakistan “have been stoking anger at French society in general.” That context, he wrote, “has been largely unchallenged and even buttressed by Anglophone media imposing their own ideas of intersectionality where they don't fit.” Williams linked to an article in which the writer, Liam Duffy, describes how, in France, “a growing number of people, both in and out of government, feel that their country is being badly misread and misrepresented in the Anglosphere.” Duffy quotes from an article in the left-wing French daily Le Monde, in which the author, Hugo Micheron, a political scientist studying jihadist terror networks in France, calls the American media’s coverage of France “hallucinatory” and observes that: “The progressive media appear uncomfortable with the facts. In The New York Times and The Washington Post, the two most influential newspapers on the left, the term ‘jihadism’ never appears.”

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf: Twitter’s Censorship ‘Endangers National Security’

“As the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies continue to rely on Twitter to share important information with the U.S. public, your censorship poses a threat to our security,” he wrote.

The Twitter by Morgan on Oct. 28 had a video of the progress of the wall along with the message: “CBP & U.S. Army Corps of Engineers continue to build new wall every day. Every mile helps us stop gang members, murderers, sexual predators, and drugs from entering our country. It’s a fact, walls work.”

Twitter’s moderators removed the tweet from public view and emailed Morgan, saying, “You may not promote violence against, threaten, or harass other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or serious disease.”

“The acting commissioner’s tweet did none of these things. Read it. Watch the video,” Wolf told Dorsey in the letter. He also called Twitter’s action “unjustified,” adding that “the tweet is supported by data.”

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Biden will bring woke to the White House

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Austria’s Kurz vows to tackle ‘political Islam’ after Turkish teens storm Vienna church

Austria’s right-wing leader Sebastian Kurz on Friday vowed to fight “political Islam” after dozens of Turkish youths stormed a Vienna church, kicking the furniture but dispersing after police arrived on the scene.

A group of 30 to 50 youths gathered at St. Anton church in Vienna's Favoriten district earlier this week, after organising on social media, AP reported, citing local reports.

The incident arrives at a time ofheightened tensions in France following a move by the country’s president to defend the right to display cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which has sparked international protests. Emmanuel Macron has for years been calling for an “Islam of France,” and plans to integrate Muslims into French society.

“All Christians must be able to exercise their belief in Austria freely and safely!” Kurz said on Twitter. “We will continue the fight against political Islam with determination and will show no false tolerance.”

And it seems to be a thing that's going around: Lyon shooting: Orthodox priest seriously wounded

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Not to be shut out of the censorship game by Twitter and Facebook, Instagram suppresses “recent” hashtags during the election to combat “misinformation”.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan was locked out of his Twitter account for a tweet celebrating the success of the U.S. southern border wall.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Wisconsin Students Unanimously Vote To Remove Lincoln Statue As Racist

We previously discussed the effort at the University of Wisconsin-Madison to have the famous statue of Abraham Lincoln removed as racist. The student government has now voted unanimously in favor of a resolution that calls for the removal of the Abraham Lincoln statue on campus. The students declared that the president who signed the Emancipation Proclamation, advocated for the 13th Amendment, and led the war against the South and slavery was “not pro-Black” and a “remnant of White Supremacy.” That would likely have come as something of a surprise to John Wilkes Booth.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Mailchimp makes its censorship rules official, outlines right to ban users for “inaccurate” content

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Artistic freedom is at death’s door

Tate Modern, along with three American galleries, recently announced the postponement by four years of a long-planned exhibition of Philip Guston’s paintings because of concerns over a series of images depicting hooded Klansmen. Rather than open in spring 2021, the galleries have chosen to delay “until a time at which we think that the powerful message of social and racial justice that is at the center of Philip Guston’s work can be more clearly interpreted”.

But there have been no protests — not even a petition. The postponement is entirely pre-emptive and driven by Tate Modern and its three US partner galleries in Washington DC, Boston and Houston.

The policing of artistic free expression has traditionally been carried out by external actors; self-styled morality campaigners, politicians and religious organisations. But today it is just as likely to be arts professionals themselves who self-censor, and, what is worse, attempt to censor or silence each other.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Twitter is running a blackmail operation — cooperate or no traffic for you

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey sounded like every mob enforcer and shakedown artist in history: Nice paper you got there, New York Post. Shame, should something happen to it. He knows full well media outlets depend on social media, and Google search algorithms, to help readers access our reporting.

Sen. Ted Cruz wasn’t fooled: “Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report, and what the American people are allowed to hear?” he thundered. “Why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic super PAC, silencing views to the contrary of your political beliefs?”

Dorsey tried to claim it was all a mistake that had been fixed, but The Post account remained locked, even as he spoke.

“Can the New York Post post on their Twitter account?” Cruz asked.

“If they go into their account . . . ” squirmed Dorsey, before Cruz cut him off.

“No, is your answer to that,” fumed Cruz, “unless they genuflect and agree with your dictates.”

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

гатевай пундит is claiming that Hunter Biden uploaded his sextapes to PornHub.

[–]rwkastenBring on the dancing horses[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

I think you can say it here :D

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Haha true, but I write all my comments on reddit first so I can use the RES editor and then copy/paste.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

(Former PM of Malaysia) Mahathir Mohamad: Muslims have right to ‘kill millions of French people’

The former prime minister of Malaysia said Muslims have “a right to be angry and kill millions of French people” just hours after an attacker yelling “Allahu akbar!” beheaded one woman and killed two others in a church in France.

The incendiary comments were part of a tweetstorm from Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, who railed against Western culture and French President Emmanuel Macron for refusing to denounce the caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad that have sparked three attacks in two months in France.

Macron has also vowed to fight “Islamist separatism” in the wake of the beheading of school teacher Samuel Paty in a Paris suburb on Oct. 16.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Oi mate, you got a loicense for that Christmas?

David Jamieson, the West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), said his force would investigate reports of rule-breaking over Christmas if the region remained under Tier 2 restrictions and officers would, if necessary, enter homes and separate households.

"If we think there's large groups of people gathering where they shouldn't be, then police will have to intervene," Mr Jamieson told The Telegraph. "If, again, there's flagrant breaking of the rules, then the police would have to enforce.

[...]

Jane Kennedy, the PCC for the Merseyside region, currently under Tier 3 restrictions, also confirmed that police would investigate reports of illegal gatherings in people's homes over the Christmas period.

She said: "If that's reported, the police will investigate, yes. If the restrictions remain in place there won't be the usual family gatherings, and therefore if a family breaks those rules and has a family gathering they will stand out because the majority of people are complying."

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Fuck it, mask off: Scotland's justice secretary demands people report their family members for thought crime.

Conversations over the dinner table that incite hatred must be prosecuted under Scotland’s hate crime law, the justice secretary has said.

Journalists and theatre directors should also face the courts if their work is deemed to deliberately stoke up prejudice, Humza Yousaf said.

[...]

Mr Yousaf said that there should be no “dwelling defence” in his bill. He told the Scottish parliament’s justice committee that children, family and house guests must be protected from hate speech. He told MSPs: “Are we comfortable giving a defence to somebody whose behaviour is threatening or abusive which is intentionally stirring up hatred against, for example, Muslims? Are we saying that that is justified because that is in the home? . . . If your intention was to stir up hatred against Jews . . . then I think that deserves criminal sanction.”

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

Hoist upon their own petard: Mother Jones says Facebook censorship has cost it $400,000, asks for donations

[–]rwkastenBring on the dancing horses[S] 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

But Mother Jones doesn't run ads; they get by on subscription dollars. So how the hell is FB censorship costing them anything? Projected subscriptions lost due to non-exposure?

This smacks of another old media outlet circling the drain and desperately trying to lay blame while it's still around to do so. I look forward to them going 900% woke over the next six months and then folding.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Projected subscriptions lost due to non-exposure?

That's my guess.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

County to spend $1 million to shame schools for complying with new DeVos Title IX rules

Santa Clara County – home to Stanford University, the University of California-Santa Cruz and more than dozen other colleges – wants to know how its K-12 and postsecondary schools responded to the new regulation, which is legally binding.

Not because the Board of Supervisors wants colleges to comply. No, the elected officials want to shame colleges for complying.

[...]

While the article doesn’t say how the board justified a program that could endanger federal funding for “countywide schools,” it notes the effort was led by Stanford Law Prof. Michele Dauber, perhaps the leading opponent of due process for accused students in America.

She led the successful recall campaign against a local judge, Aaron Persky, for following sentencing guidelines in his six-month sentence for convicted Stanford rapist Brock Turner. Even Turner’s victim opposed jail time for him.

“Students are returning to campus now, and when they do, the epidemic of sexual violence will return with them,” Dauber told the conference call that served as the board meeting. The audit is “urgent.”

The county’s response follows the refusal of three courts to halt or enjoin the regulation shepherded by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos*. The most recent slapped down an ACLU lawsuit on behalf of accusers’ rights groups, saying none had demonstrated they even have standing to challenge the regulation

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Soylent Founder: Why I am voting for Kanye West

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

National Guard deployed to Philadelphia

Several hundred guardsmen will assist local agencies in "protecting life, property and the right to peacefully assemble and protest," Lt. Col. Keith Hickox said in a statement Tuesday. "We are able to conduct operations in support of civil authorities to enhance local law enforcement’s ability to provide continued public safety and critical infrastructure security."

The move by Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, to activate the guard is a stark difference from other Democratic governors who have been hesitant or slow to mobilize troops in response to unfolding unrest.

The Philadelphia Police Department will also beef up its presence across the city in anticipation of possible unrest over the death of Walter Wallace Jr., 27, city leaders said.

"For today and this evening, we anticipate the chance of additional incidents of civil unrest and, as such, we will be taking additional steps to ensure order," Philadelphia Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said during a news conference along with Mayor Jim Kenney and city leaders.

Who was Walter Wallace Jr., the man shot by Philadelphia police?

We are learning more about Walter Wallace Jr., the man who was shot by Philadelphia police on Monday, and protesters who clashed with officers in the wake of the shooting.

Wallace was an aspiring rapper with social media accounts filled with videos.

Guns are a central theme as he rhymes about shooting people, including police.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

How Criminal Law Lost Its Mind

If legal rhetoric were an accurate gauge of legislative reality, our criminal justice system’s treatment of mens rea would be pristine. But this is simply not the case. Criminal statutes, the primary source of liability and punishment in this country, often fail to live up to this commitment to moral guilt. In a surprisingly large number of situations, our nation’s lawmakers have disregarded traditional mens rea principles in favor of a tough-on-crime approach that sacrifices our intuitive sense of fairness in pursuit of an amorphous idea of “public safety.”

The drug arena is a case in point, in part because it is where some of the most aggressive tough-on-crime campaigns have been waged. U.S. drug policies often focus on behavior to the near total exclusion of mental state considerations. Many drug possession statutes apply a “strict liability” approach, in which—as Markus Dubber explains—“you can be convicted . . . if you don’t know that you are ‘possessing’ a drug of any kind, what drug you are ‘possessing,’ how much of it you’ve got, or—in some states—even that you are possessing anything at all, drug or no drug.”

Just as strict is the ruthlessly quantitative approach to drug sentencing employed in most jurisdictions that bases punishment on what Doug Berman calls “fairly arbitrary questions about how the drugs involved in an offense are to be classified or quantified instead of on a defendant’s actual culpability.” What this means, in practice, is that small-time dealers can be punished just as severely as big-time traffickers (think decades, not years) based upon their tangential connection to massive quantities of narcotics they had no idea existed and had no intent to sell.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Banned conspiracy channels are suing YouTube over its anti-QAnon moderation push

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Newspeak update: MSU 'eliminates' the terms 'foreign' and 'alien', will replace them with "non-domestic" and "international." Let's hope no one has to have an international object removed from their body after being abducted by non-domestics.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Beyond Postmodern: The Neoliberal Roots of Woke Cancel Culture

Sensing an opportunity, a coterie of 1980-90s faculty used postmodernist posturing to help them acquire positions in a dwindling academic marketplace. Sociologist Michèle Lamont argues that Jacques Derrida, for example, achieved prominence “by targeting his work to a large cultural public rather than to a shrinking group of academic philosophers,” while “in America, professional institutions and journals played a central role” in the diffusion of postmodernism. Christopher Lord has recently shown how Derrida’s signature incomprehensibility allowed nascent area studies departments to camouflage bold, unchallengeable assertions in “poetic nonsense,” thus obviating the need for traditional scholarship. As Lord reminds us, the primary enthusiasm for postmodernism was not found within philosophy departments, but in the safe spaces of Women’s Studies and Comparative Literature, freed from the confines of classical disciplines and exempted from dead white male standards. This gambit was called out at the time by Camille Paglia, who saw the importation of obscure French postmodernist thought as mere pretentious gloss to mark out people’s resumes. Noam Chomsky later criticized the cult-like insularity of the postmodernists, their irrelevance to lived experience and their abandonment of the oppressed to demagogues, even while they are, according to Chomsky, “quick to tell us that they are far more radical than thou.” Meanwhile, the careerism that Paglia and Chomsky derided had become a necessity, especially within the humanities and social sciences, due to prevailing economic realities.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yaniv targets beauty pageant in new discrimination complaint

Yaniv has male genitals and was born a biological male, but now self-identifies as female. In May 2019, Yaniv applied to be a contestant in the Pageant, and was tentatively accepted. Yaniv did not mention being transgender prior to applying. At the time, Canada Galaxy Pageants had a formal policy of accepting genetic females as contestants, but would still accept transgender females who had fully transitioned and no longer had male genitals. This policy was noted in all paperwork and on the website. The pageant’s policy has since been revised to include “genetic females and fully transitioned.”

All of the contestants, including girls as young as six, change their clothing and undress in common areas. No males, including contestants’ fathers, are allowed in that space, to protect the privacy and comfort of the contestants. Contestants from teens and up also compete in a swimwear category.

Once reminded of the pageant’s policy, Yaniv filed a human rights complaint against Canada Galaxy Pageants, alleging discrimination based on gender identity, gender expression and sex, in violation of the Ontario Human Rights Code. Yaniv is seeking damages in the amount of $10,000 for “injury to dignity and feelings,” and requests that the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario rule that an organization cannot refuse a service to someone just because that person has male genitalia.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Update: Court reinstates student government leader removed for Catholic beliefs: ‘unconstitutional retaliation’

Earlier this month, a federal judge ordered Florida State University to pay Jack Denton his salary as student senate president after the student government removed him for privately stating Catholic beliefs. But the judge refused to reinstate Denton to his position, finding that he was so loathed by his colleagues for his religious views that he couldn’t effectively serve as president.

The Student Supreme Court at FSU had other ideas. In a ruling Monday, the five justices overturned the June 5 vote of no-confidence and ordered Denton’s reinstatement as senate president, finding him the victim of “unconstitutional retaliation.”

The “long-term interest in protecting the values of the First Amendment” is “undeniable,” the court said: If it didn’t reinstate Denton (above), “the message this sends on behalf of our Student Government Association, as well as our University, is that some views are okay to share, and some are not.”

Without mentioning U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor’s order, the Student Supreme Court explicitly rejected Winsor’s reasoning that Denton’s reinstatement could produce “tumult and chaos” in the student government.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Victims of Childhood Transgenderism Have Spoken Out; It's Time for Joe Biden To Listen

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Hunter Biden story continues to develop. Text messages alleged to be between Hunter and various persons discuss an inappropriate sexual relationship he had with a younger family member (supposedly his niece).

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Murkowski says she will vote to confirm Barrett to SCOTUS on Monday

Murkowski said in September she "would not support taking up a potential supreme court vacancy this close to the election."

Murkowski said she lost the "procedural fight" of "moving forward on a nominee just over a week removed from a pitched presidential election when partisan tensions are running about as high as they could."

Senator Susan Collins is now the only Republican expected to vote against Barrett.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Transgender Child Sex Offender Too “Vulnerable and Easily Exploited” for Prison, Judge Rules

Mr Smith pleaded guilty to breaching the sexual harm prevention order, and was sentenced to a three-year community order.

Explaining the sentence, Judge Robert Spragg said the transgender-identifying pedophile would be “vulnerable and easily exploited” if placed in prison.

The judge claimed that the public will be best protected by Mr Smith having added intervention from the authorities, rather than a prison sentence, as there was “nothing overtly sexual in the chats.”

The pedophile, who is male and identifies as a woman, also escaped a prison sentence in 2018 when he was convicted of making indecent photographs of children. At the time, a judge handed Mr Smith a six-month sentence suspended for two years and subjected him to a 10-year sexual harm prevention order forbidding him from having unsupervised or online contact with children under 16.

Amongst Mr Smith’s 50 prior convictions is a 1994 count of indecent assault.

Members of the public were disturbed to find that the middle-aged pedophile uploads to his Facebook account photos of himself dressed as a schoolgirl, the preferred age range of his female victims.

🤡🌏

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

President Donald Trump just made it easier to weed out certain unelected federal employees working in policy-related jobs by cutting back some of their workplace protections.

The president issued an executive order that was the product of nearly four years of effort, making it easier to hire – and fire – federal bureaucrats in a move meant to “increase accountability for Federal employees who make substantive contributions to executive branch policy.” The order, issued earlier this week, gives federal agencies “more flexibility” in holding employees accountable but is being denounced by critics who fear it is politicizing civil servants.

Supporters of the president have frequently pointed to the existence of some career officials referred to as the “deep state,” who continue to be employed in the long-running jobs even as administrations turn over. The White House noted that Trump’s order will allow federal agencies to remove “poor performers” from roles in an easier process while introducing a new classification within the federal workforce called “Schedule F” employees. “To empower our civil servants to best help others, the government must always operate more efficiently and more securely,” Trump said in a White House statement.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Denmark plans to make criticizing troons a crime

The Social Democratic minority government plans to add the terms gender identity (kønsidentitet), gender expression (kønsudtryk) and sex characteristics (kønskarakteristika) to section 266b of the criminal law code – commonly known as the ‘Racism Paragraph’.

Newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad, which was first to report the proposed law change, writes that it would be made with the intention of preventing hate speech against trans people.

The law change would mean that hate speech against trans and intersexual people would be treated as a crime on the same basis as all homophobic and racist speech.

The proposal is supported by left wing parties the Red Green Alliance and Socialist People’s Party, with the Social Liberal party also in support in principle. As such, it has a theoretical parliamentary majority in support.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

School Threatens 12-Year-Old With Arrest for Allegedly Missing 90 Minutes of Zoom Class

Mastrov assumed the school had been sent in error, so he called the school. He was shocked to learn that the authorities meant business: The law says any kid who misses three full days of school or is tardy for a 30-minute class period on three separate occasions can face jail time.

The policy was obviously intended to cover unexcused absences for in-person education, but the district apparently intends to apply it to virtual education as well.

Mastrov contends that his son didn't miss his classes but simply logged on after his teacher had already taken attendance.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

After Students for Life rejected as ‘hate group,’ members appeal decision

The decisions by student government and the student court “demonstrates that they put their ideological affiliations above fellow students and at the cost of productive dialogue on campus,” Sarah Minnich, the Students for Life regional coordinator for Iowa, said in an emailed statement to The Fix.

“Their decision is unacceptable and should be overturned by the university’s president,” Minnich said.

Minnich said the judicial branch “purposely misrepresented the main goal of the group which is to advocate for the most vulnerable of humans.” She said its members “used their biases to twist the rules against a group that would enhance diversity on campus and bring resources to parents in need.”

“Viewpoint discrimination is a growing threat to free speech on campuses across this country” and “this intolerance will only continue if we do not fight for our rights,” Minnich said.

“Students for Life met all requirements for being approved,” according to UNI Students for Life leader Sophia Schuster.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Twitter bans user for saying “only females get cervical cancer”

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Teaching white privilege as uncontested fact is illegal, minister says

Schools which teach pupils that “white privilege” is an uncontested fact are breaking the law, the women and equalities minister has said.

Addressing MPs during a Commons debate on Black History Month, Kemi Badenoch said the government does not want children being taught about “white privilege and their inherited racial guilt”.

“Any school which teaches these elements of political race theory as fact, or which promotes partisan political views such as defunding the police without offering a balanced treatment of opposing views, is breaking the law,” she said.

She added that schools have a statutory duty to remain politically impartial and should not openly support “the anti-capitalist Black Lives Matter group”.

Good to see pushback against this garbage spreading.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

What the Woke Terror shares with the French Revolution

Contemporary America is about as far from Catholic France as it is possible to get. Religious longings, apparently a permanent part of our human makeup, have long been frustrated in our secularised society. But for just that reason, revolutionary piety may hold special appeal. This bears on a question that has long hovered over the phenomenon of “political correctness”: how sincere is it? And is the quotient of sincerity changing?

Writing in The Atlantic in 2018, which now seems a long time ago, Reihan Salam parsed the utility of “white bashing” as part of the verbal repertoire of success in elite institutions. In this setting it was generally ironic, even while doing important work to signal that one is competent in the codes of the ruling class. “The people I’ve heard archly denounce whites have for the most part been upwardly-mobile people who’ve proven pretty adept at navigating elite, predominantly white spaces.” Salam, a child of Bangladeshi Muslims and first-generation college student (Harvard, 2001), came to view white-bashing as a form of “intra-white status jockeying,” a device by which the demarcation between “upper whites” and “lower whites” is made clear.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

If president, Joe Biden wants to create a task force to crack down on online “harassment”

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

How hysterical punditry failed America

“This is not a drill. The Reichstag is burning,” blared a five-alarm-fire warning in the Washington Post by Dana Milbank, who may want to consider a title change from “columnist” to “in-house hysteric”. Not to be outdone, establishment weather-vane Thomas Friedman joined the fray in the New York Times with an equally shocking exhortation: “I can’t say this any more clearly,” he hyperventilated. “Our democracy is in terrible danger — more danger than it has been since the Civil War, more danger than after Pearl Harbor, more danger than during the Cuban missile crisis […]”.

If these fevered prognostications even bore the faintest resemblance to political conditions in the United States, it might seem a bit odd that the pundits in question have since moved on to other subjects. Or to put it this way: if they really believed their own fantastical rhetoric, shouldn’t they have spent the past few weeks taking action more tangible than rattling off a few throwaway columns and browsing Twitter? Not that any “resistance” brigade composed of pallid middle-aged journalists would be especially formidable on the battlefield, but the point is that their conduct doesn’t come anywhere close to matching the incredible alarmism of their words.

More destruction could be in store next month than was wrought in World War II, the most devastating global military conflict in human history? All of civilisation was nearly wiped out in the Cuban Missile Crisis, but we’re supposed to believe that whatever harm is brought about by the election aftermath will exceed that? If so, why aren’t these people stockpiling canned food and training for hand-to-hand combat?

They’re not doing anything of the sort because this latest round of histrionics is just a continuation of a theme that has characterised the Trump era: political and cultural elites, whose psyches have been profoundly damaged, will churn out nonstop waves of hysteria rarely noting afterwards if their frenzied forecasts ever panned out. As a largely accountability-free profession, there is no penalty in the opinion-making world if the catastrophising ultimately proves to be just a bizarre projection of their own angst.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

White Women Need Not Apply: The cancellation of Amy Roost

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Biden wants to end online sale of firearms, ammo, and gun parts if President

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The Encroachment of the Unsayable

The upshot of these controversies has been a kind of default to a middle position that goes roughly as follows: Fanatics shouldn’t kill people, and writers and artists shouldn’t needlessly offend fanatics. It’s a compromise that is fatal to liberalism. It reintroduces a concept of blasphemy into the liberal social order. It gives the prospectively insulted a de facto veto over what other people might say. It accustoms the public to an ever-narrower range of permissible speech and acceptable thought.

And, as Packer notes, it slowly but surely turns writers, editors and publishers into cowards. Notice, for instance, that I have just described the suspect in Paty’s murder as a “Chechen.” Why? Because it’s accurate enough, and it’s not worth dealing with the choice and precision of a single adjective.

It isn’t entirely clear whether there’s a causal connection between the way so many Western liberals have tried to dance around the subject of religious fanaticism and other encroachments on socially acceptable speech. But the two have moved in tandem, with equally destructive results. Our compromised liberalism has left a generation of writers weighing their every word for fear that a wrong one could wreck their professional lives. The result is safer, but also more timid; more correct, but also less interesting. It is simultaneously bad for those who write, and boring for those who read. It is as deadly an enemy of writing as has ever been devised.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Judiciary Committee sets vote on Barrett confirmation for October 22

The October 22 vote by the Judiciary Committee tees up a vote by the full Senate the week before the election. With Republicans' three-seat majority, her confirmation is all but assured — a fate that was acknowledged by Democrats as they made a last-ditch, and unsuccessful, appeal to their Republican colleagues not to proceed with Barrett's nomination.

"This goose is pretty much cooked," Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey said. However, Ranking Member Dianne Feinstein at the end of Thursday's panel thanked Chairman Lindsey Graham for holding hearings where both parties were given equal time and treated with respect.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

71% of tech professionals say there’s anti-conservative bias in tech

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Research Shows Critical Race Theory Is Actually Making People More Racist

To capture the effects of critical rhetoric, I used an excerpt from Macy Sto. Domingo’s “18 Things White People Seem To Not Understand (Because, White Privilege).” Among white conservatives, this “critical prime” predicted 8 percent increased support (weighted mean) for whites “work[ing] together to improve the position of their group,” in comparison to the “control group.”

To further probe the effects of critical themes on identity, I asked respondents to rate the importance of certain factors to being “truly American.” Here, critical prime exposure appears to have narrowed the boundaries of the “in-group.”

For example, conservative whites expressed 12 percent greater agreement that only those with “American ancestry” are truly American. High white-identifiers expressed 20 percent greater agreement with this same claim and 8 percent greater support for restricting American identity to those “born in the U.S.” Critical prime exposure also increased conservative “ethnocentrism,” or net “feeling thermometer” preference for whites over minorities by 5 percent.

Disclaimer: Like any other "priming" study this should be taken with a hypertension-inducing amount of salt.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Factional warfare erupts in New York Times over the 1619 Project

Sulzberger’s statement claimed that Stephens’ op-ed does not signify “an institutional shift” away from the Project. But in the memo’s second paragraph, Sulzberger rejected the demands of the Project’s backers that Stephens be censored and even fired. “I believe strongly in the right of Opinion to produce a piece, even when—maybe even especially when—we don’t agree with it as an institution,” Sulzberger wrote.

The factional warfare within the Times included a Twitter attack improperly issued in the name of the Times Guild, a reporters’ union affiliated with the Communications Workers of America (CWA). The Guild tweeted, “It says a lot about an organization when it breaks it’s [sic] own rules and goes after one of it’s [sic] own. The act, like the article, reeks.”

The Guild later deleted the tweet after a “furor” erupted among Times staff against this transparent demand for managerial censorship of a fellow journalist—to say nothing of its mangling of the English language. The Guild declared that whoever issued the attack on Stephens had done so without permission.

It has not yet been revealed who authored the since-deleted tweet. One likely suspect is Hannah-Jones herself, who has become notorious for Twitter tirades against anyone who dares challenge her. The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Hannah-Jones was “livid” when she learned that Stephens’ article would appear and sent emails to Stephens and Times opinion page editor Kathleen Kingsbury “prior to publication,” apparently in a bid to block it.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

/pol watch: There appears to be multiple vulnerabilities in state's vote-by-mail systems that can be easily exploited by bored ne'er-do-wells.

Ok I just logged into the washington state system for my ex wife, not only can i submit a ballot for her, but by even STARTING the process it cancels her other ballots. So if she orders a ballot, fills it out and sends it in THEN i start the online process even if I stop it and never file it CANCELS her ballot she thinks counts. THIS IS MASSIVE.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Paris Beheading Victim is Teacher Who Showed Mohammed Cartoon in Freedom of Speech Lesson

One man was found beheaded in the north-western Paris suburb of Éragny, Val-d’Oise on Friday afternoon, after a police patrol came upon a man carrying a knife. Major French newspaper Le Figaro reports the officers ordered the man to drop his weapons and when he didn’t and acted aggressively towards them they opened fire, killing him.

Shortly afterwards, the decapitated body was discovered by officers, the paper reported. Because the suspect was wearing an explosive vest the officers could not approach the body immediately and bomb disposal officers were called onto the scene.

Various reports in French media claim the suspect was carrying, in addition to the explosive belt, a knife, gun, or both. It is not clear at what time the original killing took place, but it appears — according to reports — that enough time elapsed for the killer to upload an image of the killing to his Twitter account. While the account was immediately deleted by Twitter, screenshots of the original post have been posted elsewhere and have been reported on by French media.

One quoted the alleged killer’s Twitter comments as: “o Macron, the leader of the infidels, I executed one of your hellhounds who dared to belittle Muhammad.”

The investigation of the attack has been taken on by France’s national counter-terrorism police, who are considering a case of “assassination in connection with a terrorist enterprise”.

Actu17, a news site with links to French law enforcement and Europe-wide radio network Europe1 both report the victim in the beheading was a teacher who had shown cartoons of the Islamic prophet Mohammed during a class, and that this may have been the motivation for the killing. Paris newspaper Le Parisien goes further with the claim, noting sources who claimed the victim was a history teacher who had shown the cartoons as part of a lesson on freedom of expression.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Student government impeaches pro-Trump Latina student senator who opposes illegal immigration

Senator Stephanie Martinez, a self-described conservative, was impeached by her peers on the Associated Students of Loyola Marymount University on Sunday night after a three-hour trial.

As previously reported by The College Fix, the attempt to remove her began late last spring after a progressive student news organization uncovered past tweets in which she voiced opposition to illegal immigration.

“The same people advocating for rights, equality, and better conditions for illegal aliens are the same one censoring freedom of speech (a right), defaming and initiating hostility for those Americans with divergent views! Sad!” Martinez wrote in one tweet from July 2019.

Last week, the senate started the impeachment process after her fellow Diversity and Inclusion student Senator Camille Orozco filed an official motion, claiming Martinez had violated Article 8 in the student body bylaws, which states “conduct that severely damages the integrity or authority of ASLMU or the office held by the individual in question.”

"Sad!" indeed. Many such cases, even.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Trump Attack on Diversity Training Has a Quick and Chilling Effect

The response to the executive order has been swift. The Justice Department suspended all diversity and inclusion training last week, and the agency has indefinitely postponed implicit bias training for federal prosecutors that was planned for September.

The University of Iowa, fearing a loss of federal research grants, paused programs across the university, including training for university employees on race or sex stereotyping and scapegoating. In a statement, a spokeswoman said the university’s general counsel suspected that the executive order may apply to all employees, not simply those who receive money from the federal government.

[...]

The reaction has been driven, in part, by the severity of the penalties. Violation of the executive order by contractors carries the risk of debarment or blacklisting from government contracts, which could put some companies out of business.

The Labor Department has already rolled out a hotline for tips about noncompliance. The department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs will also require that federal contractors and subcontractors send in for review the content of diversity and inclusion training programs as well as their duration and expense.

[...]

Mr. Rufo, who said he provided his research to the White House for the executive order, defended the language and said the companies now altering their diversity training are “tacitly admitting to institutional discrimination and, if you will, institutional racism.” He called the programs “race-based harassment of employees.”

“The executive order is really the first shot in a long war against critical race theory,” he said.

If only this had been done 2 or 3 years ago.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Yale under federal investigation for discrimination against men in several programs

Just a day after Justice filed suit against Yale for discriminating against white and Asian applicants, Education notified the professor who filed a complaint against Yale that it had opened an investigation.

University of Michigan-Flint economist Mark Perry forwarded The College Fix the letter he received from the department’s Office for Civil Rights in Boston Tuesday. He had cited four programs in the School of Management that only accept women, three of which have “Women’s Leadership” in the name (the fourth is titled “Women on Boards”).

The department will investigate whether these programs discriminate against men by excluding them from applying, it told Perry, who regularly files Title IX complaints against education programs across the country.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Kenosha Kyle won't face charges in Illinois

A 17-year-old accused of killing two protesters days after Jacob Blake was shot by police in Kenosha, Wisconsin, will not face charges in his home state of Illinois, prosecutors said Tuesday.

An investigation revealed the gun used in the Kenosha shooting was purchased, stored and used in Wisconsin, the Lake County State's Attorney's Office said. There is no evidence the gun was ever physically possessed by Kyle Rittenhouse in Illinois, it said.

Rittenhouse of Antioch remains held in a juvenile detention center in Lake County without bond due to pending criminal charges in Kenosha. Rittenhouse is due back in Lake County court on Oct. 30 for an extradition hearing.

So much for that theory that certain portions of Reddit were pushing.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The New York Times Guild Once Again Demands Censorship Of Colleagues

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

UK court hears children cannot consent to puberty blockers

Keira Bell, a 23-year-old woman who began taking puberty blockers when she was 16 before “detransitioning” in her early 20s, and the mother of a 16-year-old girl with autism who is waiting for treatment are bringing a case against the Tavistock and Portman NHS trust, which runs the UK’s only gender identity development service (GIDS) for children.

On Wednesday, lawyers for the pair argued that children who had not yet gone through puberty were not able to properly understand the “lifelong medical, psychological and emotional implications” of taking puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.

Lawyers for the trust argue that the use of puberty blockers is rarely used in children under the age of 13 and is a “safe and reversible treatment with a well-established history”.

At a hearing in London, the pair’s barrister, Jeremy Hyam QC, argued that in 97% of cases the use of puberty blockers in children led to further treatment, and argued that the use of hormone blockers to address gender dysphoria did “not have any adequate base to support it”.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Court refuses to reinstate student government leader removed for Catholic beliefs

A federal court refused to reinstate the Florida State University student to the position he was removed from because of his Catholic beliefs, saying it “could produce tumult and chaos.”

U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor essentially ratified the heckler’s veto issued by the student government when it removed Denton (above) and refused to let him appeal his removal.

“Some might say this only rewards the senate for its discriminatory and retaliatory action—that it allows students to ‘get away’ with violating Denton’s First Amendment rights,” Winsor wrote Thursday. “There is something to this point, to be sure. But the public interest considerations involve more than simply righting a wrong.”

Because so many of Denton’s colleagues loathe him for stating Catholic beliefs in a private Catholic group chat, it’s unlikely the senate “could function well enough to deliver” on its duty to allocate student activity fees to student groups.

Can't do the right thing, it fee-fees might get hurt. Those black robes must be great at hiding the cuck-cage the judge is wearing underneath.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Twitter Locks Account of Ric Grenell over Voter Fraud Warning

Twitter locked the account of former acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell after he shared an image of ballots sent to him by a friend living in California, who says they were addressed to his parents — who he claims have been dead for ten years.

“He’s my friend in California, a very close friend of mine. It’s his parents who were sent these ballots, and he gave me the photo, and he gave me permission.”

“This is my position. If Twitter is going to employ someone who is going to be so concerned about community action, and me posting a photo that they’re concerned about — their community action focus should be at the Los Angeles County register of voters, who are sending dead people ballots, [people] who have been dead for ten years.”

“Twitter has now responded back to me to say that you can delete the photo and the tweet and repost it after you black out their address. Well, I’m not doing that because I have permission, and they have no right to ask me to do that.”

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Saddle up boys, we're taking on diversity hires now.

A U.S. inquiry into whether Microsoft and Wells Fargo broke workplace civil rights laws by seeking to double their ranks of Black leaders is at odds with normal Department of Labor (DOL) practice, including the enforcement of a decades-old executive order on affirmative action, legal experts said.

The executive order, issued the year after the 1964 Civil Rights Act, requires that federal contractors maintain affirmative action outreach efforts while barring discrimination in hiring, and contrasts with a recent order by President Donald Trump against “divisive” discussions of race in corporate training.

The DOL’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) cited the 1965 order in a letter to Microsoft asking how the software maker would meet its commitment to beef up Black leadership “without discriminating on the basis of race.”

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Coinbase sheds 60 activist employees after refusing to bring politics into the company

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The DoJ is going after Yale for discriminating against Whites and Asians

The Justice Department today filed suit against Yale University for race and national origin discrimination. The complaint alleges that Yale discriminated against applicants to Yale College on the grounds of race and national origin, and that Yale’s discrimination imposes undue and unlawful penalties on racially-disfavored applicants, including in particular most Asian and White applicants.

The complaint also alleges that Yale injures applicants and students because Yale’s race discrimination relies upon and reinforces damaging race-based stereotypes, including in particular such stereotypes against Yale’s racially-favored applicants. And, the complaint alleges that Yale engages in racial balancing by, among other things, keeping the annual percentage of African-American admitted applicants to within one percentage point of the previous year’s admitted class as reflected in U.S. Department of Education data. The complaint alleges similar racial balancing about Asian-American applicants.

The department’s complaint alleges that Yale’s race and national origin discrimination violate Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The lawsuit is the result of a multi-year investigation into allegations of illegal discrimination contained in a complaint filed by Asian American groups concerning Yale’s conduct.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Professor found guilty of harassment for asking students if global trade has been good overall

For helping his students think critically about the tradeoffs in the “Columbian Exchange,” Richard Taylor has been deemed to violate St. John’s University’s “Bias, Discrimination, and Harassment” policy. The adjunct professor of history, a Marine Corps reserveman and former New York City cop, will learn his fate in a meeting with interim Dean Gina Florio on Friday, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education.

The civil liberties group demanded Taylor’s exoneration and return to the classroom “immediately,” in a letter to President Conrado Gempesaw Thursday.

Also a Ph.D. history candidate at St. John’s, Taylor (above) made seven references to slavery and five to “abuse of indigenous populations” in his 46-slide PowerPoint presentation on “trade and biodiversity” Sept. 7. According to FIRE:

The penultimate slide is titled “Negatives to Globalization,” and the enslavement of millions is listed as one of those negatives. The next, and final, slide is the discussion prompt: “Do the positives justify the negatives?”

When a “lively discussion ensued” and a student said “slavery could never be justified,” the professor clarified he wasn’t justifying slavery, just asking students to “consider global trade as a whole.”

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

California governor's office tells diners to wear masks 'in between bites'

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Looting Begins as Violent Protest Continues in Wisconsin

The march from Milwaukee to Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, descended from peaceful protest to vandalism to looting on Wednesday night. Under the cover of darkness, dozens of protesters began smashing windows of homes and businesses and moved on to loot a convenience store.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

NBA Will Leave Social Justice Messages To Be ‘Delivered Off The Floor’ Amid Ratings Dive

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Netflix indicted in Texas over 'lewd' depiction of children in 'Cuties'

A grand jury indictment for promotion of lewd visual material depicting a child was filed on September 23 in Tyler County, Texas, according to Texas Rep. Matt Schaefer.NBC News obtained a copy of the indictment Tuesday, confirming Schaefer's tweet.

The indictment states that Netflix promoted, distributed and exhibited material which “depicts the lewd exhibition of the genitals or pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 years of age” for the “prurient interest in sex.” It also states that the material held no serious "literary, artistic, political, or scientific value."

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Pinterest bans “cultural appropriation” Halloween costumes

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I regret to inform you that the Jesuits are at it again:

The Catholic college in Milwaukee announced an update in early September on a number of demands from the Black Student Council at Marquette, including a pledge to explore a “Black Living Learning Community” and ways to punish “hate speech.”

The student activist group had asked the university for a number of demands in a July Change.org petition that garnered 1,500 signatures.

“Marquette will work toward creating a Black Living Learning Community in a residence hall,” campus administrators said in their September 3 update to the community. Learning communities “bring together students with common majors or common interests” and are offered to freshmen and sophomore students, according to the school’s residence life office website. There is currently a Latino learning community.

The school will also “review and revise, as needed, current policies regarding hate speech and racist behaviors to better allow for effective enforcement,” according to the statement from university President Michael Lovell and Provost Kimo Ah Yun. The review and revision is geared toward improving “the campus environment for all students and employees.”

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Public school district looks to punish teachers for criticizing critical race theory

Per the policy, LCPS employees would have a “duty to report” their colleagues alleged free speech violations to the school administration.

The policy acknowledges that employees have a “First Amendment right to engage in protected speech” but says it “may be outweighed” by LCPS interest in “promoting internal..and external community harmony and peace” and achieving [Superintendent Eric] Williams’ “directives, including protected class equity, racial equity, and the goal to root out systemic racism.”

LCPS employees accused falsely of “violations” of the speech policy are prohibited from “retaliating” against their accuser. Also, the policy would accommodate “false complaints” and not discipline those making them so long as they were found to have been made in “good faith.”

[–]rwkastenBring on the dancing horses[S] 1 insightful - 2 fun1 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 2 fun -  (0 children)

Fuckin' do it. Enshrine wokeness as the religion that tax dollars fund.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Newspeak marches forward:AP recommends reporters stop using the term “riot”.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Babylon Bee CEO's Christian alma mater disinvites him from speaking in chapel

The university had scheduled Dillon to participate in an interview at its chapel on the morning of September 30. However, PBA community members reached out to the university with concerns about Dillon speaking in chapel, explaining that it represents a “sacred space.”

Quoting his assertion that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization, a PBA student said that “this should be enough to not welcome @SethDillon to our campus. Not to mention that every LGBTQ student has been disrespected and degraded by his content.”

Social media users did not provide specific examples of Dillon demeaning LGBTQ individuals.

“Cancel culture has come for me,” said Dillon, who posted screenshots of people contacting PBA to speak out against him. “I'm just too dangerous and divisive to be permitted to speak on the campus of my alma mater. Since when do you have to support terrorist organizations that use violence and intimidation to advance their agenda to be welcome on a Christian campus?”

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

After ECU admins shut down campus due to COVID, photos appear to show them at BLM protest. I'm sure you're all as shocked by this blatant hypocrisy as I am.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

American cyclist suspended over pro-Trump tweet

His suspension came after a Dutch journalist was critical of Trump on Twitter.

"If you follow me and support Trump, you can go,” the journalist Jose Been wrote in a now-deleted tweet.

“Bye,” Simmons replied, accompanied by Black hand waving emoji.

In a subsequent reply, another Twitter user suggested Simmons supported Trump. “That’s right,” Simmons wrote, alongside an American flag emoji.

Twitter users took issue with Simmons’s use of a Black hand emoji. In a statement, Trek Segafredo said it had suspended Simmons not for his political views, but for “engaging in conversation on Twitter in a way that we felt was conduct unbefitting a Trek athlete.”

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Bar owners in France arrested for not tracking users when offering free WiFI

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

UK citizens are being refused entry to businesses unless they download contact tracing app

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The culture war is not a right-wing myth

News stories that only five years ago would have been dismissed as asinine aberrations now recur with a quotidian certainty. Recent notable examples include: Princeton University confessing to ‘systemic racism’, leading to an investigation by the Department of Education on the grounds that racism is a violation of civil-rights law; the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts making a similar admission, thereby emboldening some of its students to produce a 100-page document full of demands so entitled that it would make Veruca Salt blush; and an academic and novelist stating that debate is ‘an imperialist capitalist white supremacist cis-heteropatriarchal technique that transforms a potential exchange of knowledge into a tool of exclusion and oppression’. Yes, the culture war is the ‘New Normal’.

Yet with all the evidence before our eyes, certain commentators persist with their view that the culture war is a right-wing myth advanced by those who are resistant to change. ‘There’s no actual “culture war”, is there?’, writes LBC’s James O’Brien: ‘It’s just a new way of describing disagreements between people who hate racism and discrimination and people who love it.’ Then there is the Guardian’s Owen Jones, who maintains that ‘a lot of what’s called “the culture war” is just younger people trying to assert their different social and moral values over older generations who run most of the media’. Nesrine Malik has argued that the culture war has been manufactured by the right, although it will not have escaped most people’s attention that the majority of salvos come from the left side of the battlefield.

It’s this kind of gaslighting – to borrow the language of social-justice activists – that we have already seen from writers who insist that ‘cancel culture’ doesn’t exist, in spite of abundant and incontrovertible evidence that it does.

Links from original not preserved.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

How we bend the knee to our HR overlords

When we hear the righteous indignation of middle-class young women, lecturing soldiers for cleaning graffiti off the Cenotaph that they are furthering a system of structural racism or whatever, we hear the nasal tones of the future managerial class asserting itself, drunk with its own power. Imagine the sound of a passive-aggressive email from HR plinking into your inbox, forever: that is the sound of ideology taking the helm of the state.

What can be done about the problem of elite overproduction?

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Student Told He’d Be Kicked Out Of Virtual High School Class Unless He Removed Trump Flag Behind Him

Tiffany, the mother of the 16-year-old student who goes to Colusa High School, said the teacher gave her son 15-seconds to take down the pro-Trump flag or move to another place where it couldn’t be seen in the background. A video taken from another student shows the teacher counted to 15, ABC10 reported.

Tiffany’s son left the virtual class before the teacher got the opportunity to remove him. She said she doesn’t blame the teacher but the school for not outlining a set of rules for online classes.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

World’s oldest student debate club disinvites Richard Dawkins to protect the ‘comfort’ of its members

Student newspaper University Times reports that the society’s auditor, Brid O’Donnell, announced on her personal Instagram page that “The Hist” was disinviting the militant atheist and famed author of “The Selfish Gene” because “we value our members comfort [sic] above all else.”

She did not know about his “opinions on Islam and sexual assault until this evening,” O’Donnell reportedly wrote Sunday, though the post is not visible on her public page. It’s not clear whether she deleted it or just hid it. The longtime University of Oxford “professor for public understanding of science,” who once said that pigs are more “human” than human fetuses, has become loathsome to the progressive left in recent years for his critical comments on Islam.

Heaven forbid university students be exposed to ideas they find uncomfortable.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

UK’s NHS COVID app falsely tells people to self-isolate because it won’t accept negative results

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Google forced to remove virtual climb after backlash

Parks Australia asked the tech giant to remove the images following last year’s ban on visitors scaling the monolith, which is deeply sacred to its traditional owners, the Anangu people.

Until now the Street View function still allowed people to virtually experience the controversial climb through 360-degree user-generated images taken at the top of the rock, which included images of climbers celebrating at the summit.

Waiting for pro-lifers to demand removal of listings and street view of abortion clinics, surely Google will show equal deference to their wishes regarding what is sacred.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Barrett Signaled Willingness to Go Farther on Guns Than Scalia

Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett argued against blanket bans on convicted felons possessing firearms in a federal appeals court dissent that has won plaudits from gun rights supporters and raised concerns among gun control advocates.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit majority last year upheld the ban in Kanter v. Barr. Barrett’s dissent argued that such blanket bans run afoul of the Second Amendment because there’s no evidence those who commit nonviolent felonies are particularly dangerous.

“There’s much to be said for that argument,” said Adam Winkler of the University of California, Los Angeles, who studies the Second Amendment. But it “clearly puts her well outside the mainstream of judges on this issue,” he said prior to Barrett’s nomination.

It also puts her in the good graces of gun rights supporters.

“From a Second Amendment perspective, Judge Amy Coney Barrett appears to be a strong choice,” Gun Owners of America Senior Vice President Erich Pratt said in an email Friday.

Is the 2nd Amendment as a first-class right in sight?

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

UK to look at whether “misogyny” should invoke harsher criminal sentences

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Only nationalism can stop climate change

The threat is such that both liberals and conservatives must abandon their political hobbyhorses just to survive: “if the Greens and the left continue their blind ideological commitment to open borders,” Lieven argues, “they will feed white chauvinism, tear their societies apart, and make effective action to limit climate change impossible. If Right-wing parties allow aversion to Left-wing ideologies to blind them to the existential dangers of climate change, they will betray the vital national interests of their countries and doom them to eventual extinction.”

After all, he reminds us, if temperatures rise by 5 or 6%, “all existing states will be overwhelmed and by far the greater part of the human race will be doomed”. But even if temperatures rise by a mere 2 or 3 degrees, he argues, Western societies will be overwhelmed not primarily by the changing climate here at home, but instead by the desperate waves of migration unleashed from the worst-affected regions of the Global South. Lieven, an accomplished journalist in the former Soviet Union and Pakistan before turning to academia, argues with no equivocation that the political products of mass migration on such a vast scale will be “political radicalization, polarization, and state paralysis in Western democracies”.

Indeed, gliding briskly beyond any fear of cancellation, he argues that just such an outcome has already taken place in America, which he presents as a model of dysfunctional political order, “becoming reminiscent of the endless squabbles over names and statues that characterised the Habsburg Empire and Yugoslavia in their last decades”.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Senate bill would ban biological males from competing in girls’ sports under Title IX

The Senate bill is two pages long. It would amend Title IX so that any recipient of federal funds who “operates, sponsors, or facilitates athletic programs or activities” may not “permit a person whose sex is male to participate in an athletic program or activity that is designated for women or girls.”

Sex is to be recognized “solely” on reproductive biology and genetics at birth, it says.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Pushing election “misinformation” online is about to be a criminal offense in California

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Standing for Women founder arrested

Despite the current draconian regulations prohibiting public gatherings, there is an exemption for political events. Thanks to this, protests such as Black Lives Matter have been allowed to go ahead unimpeded. But according to West Yorkshire Police, women’s rights are not a political cause. A police officer told Kelly-Jay Keen that Standing for Women “failed to meet the legal definition of a political organisation”, though he himself seemed unable to explain what the legal definition of a political organisation was. The socially distanced crowd then divided into smaller groups of six to comply with Covid-19 regulations, but nonetheless officers began to take the names and addresses of attendees and the planned speeches were left unspoken.

On the same day as women were arrested because their protest was not deemed political, Caroline Wheeler, Deputy Political Editor of The Times reported on the very issue that had brought most of them together; the proposed amendment to the GRA. Standing for Women’s campaign against the reform of the GRA has centred upon the definition of “woman” as meaning “adult human female.” The proposed legislative reform would have in effect changed “woman” to mean “any person who identifies as a woman” effectively making women-only refuges, changing rooms and hospital wards mixed sex. It now seems likely these proposals will be ditched.

Stonewall, the UK’s largest LGBT organisation, opposed women’s groups by lobbying for the introduction of gender self-identification. They also campaigned to lower the age to access legal gender change from 18 to 16 and for recognition of so-called “non-binary” identities. Interestingly, despite the duty to uphold the law free from “fear or favour” West Yorkshire Police pay a subscription to Stonewall as members of the “Stonewall Diversity Champions” scheme.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The CCP is just begging for a smiting now:

Catholics in mainland China are upset about the distortion of a Bible story in a school textbook, which claims Jesus Christ stoned to death a sinner woman in order to respect the law of the time.

The textbook, published by the government-run University of Electronic Science and Technology Press, aims to teach "professional ethics and law" to the students of secondary vocational schools.

The book quotes the story of Jesus forgiving the sins of a woman who committed adultery from the Gospel of John. But it has a changed ending. The crowd wanted to stone the woman to death as per their law. But Jesus said, 'Let the one who has never sinned throw the first stone.' Hearing this, they slipped away one by one.

When the crowd disappeared, Jesus stoned the sinner to death saying, "I too am a sinner. But if the law could only be executed by men without blemish, the law would be dead," the textbook said.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

School backs down, prof who refused diversity training still employed

Poelvoorde refused to take the mandatory training because the materials were “pernicious, an assault to the dignity and intelligence of the professoriate, in fact, an insult to anyone’s intelligence and dignity.”

“The industry that produces these materials is a fraud, and no serious studies indicate the efficacy or worth of such training. Enforced or otherwise, these materials have made the world we live in worse, for they substitute indoctrination and cartoonish 'training' for genuine education and thoughtfulness,” Poelvoorde said in a recent interview with Campus Reform.

Poelvoorde said that he actually offered to take the training “if the College would reverse the mandate and apologize to the faculty for its imposition,” but that Newkirk did not accept this offer.

When asked how he believes Converse College should have responded to the death of George Floyd, Poelvoorde said that he was “not certain that [his] college, or any institution of higher learning, was obligated to respond.”

Dude doesn't even have tenure, just cajones.

[–]mo-ming-qi-miao 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Jake Gardner, whose defense GoFundMe was shut down, found dead by apparent suicide after manslaughter charges.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The left has no one to blame but themselves for this

Inasmuch as I find myself liberated by Christ from that manmade misery, I wish there was some polite method, some dignified manner, some gracious way to say to my dissatisfied fellow countrymen that they currently find themselves laying in a bed of their own making.

I know that sounds haughty and insensitive. I just don't know how else to say it.

Because it was the left that chose to exaggerate the role of the federal judiciary well beyond its intended constitutional scope. Theirs is the ideology that has sewn into the courts a legislative power that was never intended. Discontent to wait on the natural evolution of the culture towards their way of thinking, impatient and unwilling to invest the time and effort into the hard work of persuading the public to align with their perspective, the left made the calculated decision two generations ago to use the courts to accomplish their legislative ends.

Beginning with the Warren Court, progressive activists in black robes reinterpreted laws, ignored precedent, and imposed leftist orthodoxy through judicial legislation. Abortion was imposed on 50/50 states through unconstitutional judicial policymaking, Obamacare was inflicted upon 50/50 states through unconstitutional judicial policymaking, same-sex marriage was foisted upon 50/50 states through unconstitutional judicial policymaking.

The reason the left is in such utter agony over the prospect of another conservative jurist being appointed is because the left's calculated decision to impose its will on the majority without its consent endowed those jurists with far more power and responsibility than they ever should have wielded.

Lindsey Graham claims Senate GOP has enough votes to confirm new SCOTUS justice before Election Day.

[–]WickedWitchOfTheWest 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Wokies are the establishment

It is time that society catches up and realises that wokeism is not the movement for the disadvantaged and oppressed. Wokeism is the establishment. It is inextricably linked to corporate politics and capitalism. Woke activists have disproportionate social power in today’s fraught world. They are the establishment in the culture wars. Consider this:

If you can get an ‘I Love JK Rowling’ billboard pulled down in less than 24 hours after just one complaint or an ‘I Love JK Rowling’ train station advertisement pulled after zero official complaints, you have significant social power.

If you can have people you disagree with permanently banned from social media sites for stating basic facts, you are the oppressor, not the oppressed.

If you can have Wikipedia pages deleted simply because the factual information does not suit your ideological position or hurts your feelings, you are powerful.

If you can threaten people with rape, assault, murder, and all manner of other violence and have these actions justified because your political beliefs are deemed more compliant than the person you are attacking, you are the establishment.

If you have managed to convince massive corporations that they should re-educate themselves and their staff, paint themselves rainbow, and cancel any dissenters when these same companies refuse to even pay their factory workers a living wage, you are not the oppressed one. I doubt very much if Marx would consider the validation of the identities of wealthy, university-educated, bourgeois brats a priority over the struggle of the proletariat.

I'm sure this won't be news to anyone who frequents this sub, but it's nice to see awareness of it spreading beyond the ratsphere.