Links - 27th February 2021 (2)

Joseph Lofthouse - "Years ago, I felt super embarrassed about buying a sex toy to use for buzz pollination of tomatoes. It cost a tenth of the price of an electric toothbrush, so I couldn't stand the thought of paying ten times the price for the same tool.Then I was even more embarrassed, the first few times I used it to pollinate tomatoes. My field is on the main highway through downtown Paradise, Mormonville. I'm not embarrassed this year. It's become just a really effective gardening tool."

Smart People Are More Likely to Stereotype - The Atlantic - "A second study showed similar results, but for measures of implicit bias... while smart people learn and apply stereotypes more eagerly, they also unlearn those stereotypes quickly in the face of new information."
Since liberals say the fact that more educated people tending to be liberal shows that liberalism is right... See also Mensa supposedly being overrun by the alt-right: Jamie Loftus, the Comedian Who Infiltrated Mensa | The New Yorker
Amazingly the article frames accurate pattern recognition as a bad thing

Meme - "When I Grow Up I Want to Be Pinochet
Me: *helicopter*
Bodies falling through the air: *communist swine*"

Meme - "Does communism support free speech?"
"You have been permanently banned from participating in r/communism101."

Caso Cerrado: Transgender woman sues over 'broken penis' - "Jennifer, who is transgender and still has her male genitalia, claimed defendant Sylvia hired her to sleep with her husband, Miguel, on his 60th birthday
But while she was having sex with him, Miguel had a heart attack and died Jennifer sued Sylvia for £16,000, claiming Miguel broke her penis when he died She said that she was still inside of Miguel when he collapsed and died"

Vogue Slammed for Hiring Annie Leibovitz for Simone Biles Cover Instead of Black Photographer - "Fashion magazine Vogue has come under fire over the cover of its August issue. The magazine featured world-renowned gymnast Simone Biles, and critics are upset at both the style of the images and the fact that Biles was photographed by Annie Leibovitz and not a Black photographer... Some photographers joined in the criticism, even posting re-edits of some of the photos. Others, however, came to Leibovitz defense. Supporters of the shoot pointed out that the article attached to these photos—a somber profile that covers the impact that the Larry Nassar trial had on Biles, her family, and her career—called for muted images.They also defended Leibovitz by pointing out what may have been her artistic inspiration for these shots, and saying that it’s absurd to claim that Annie Leibovitz somehow “doesn’t know what she’s doing” when it comes to lighting any sort of skin tone.“Annie has shot Kendrick Lemar for Vanity Fair, President Obama for Vanity Fair, Michelle Obama for Vogue, Chris Rock, Denzel, Viola Davis, etc,” wrote one photographer on Reddit, “but yea get a black photographer because she has no clue what she’s doing. /s”"

Mark Hughes - "Eminem circa 2000: *raps about wanting to kill his mother and his wife* Eminem circa 2020: "Eminem criticises non-mask wearers on new rap track""

bruh on Twitter - "My brothers ex had been stealing our Netflix for the past two months now by disguising her account as “settings” and honestly I ain’t even mad. I’m just really disappointed in myself for actually believing that an account named “settings” would legitimately be Netflix settings"

Cops's Killers Get Paroled In Under 4 Years, Promptly Go Back To Committing Crimes - "Teenage brothers convicted of murdering a 25-year-old Utah police officer got early release from prison and then promptly went out and incited a riot that led to a shooting."

Five Guys employees fired, suspended after refusing service to Alabama police officers - "Officers told the news outlet six or seven individuals were involved in the incident. One officer claims an employee said, “I’m not serving them.”"

Mass Effect Andromeda: Motion Capture Session - YouTube

Matt Walsh on Twitter - "If you think this country was stolen and we have no right to be here, please explain why you haven’t donated your stolen property and assets to an Indian reservation and returned to your land of origin. Not a rhetorical question. I really want to see how you rationalize this."

Why the Asian Food in Paris Is So Bad - Bloomberg - "International culinary offerings in Paris, especially Asian cuisine, often pale in comparison to the options available in other global cities. “Parisians love Asian food, but the Asian food here is really mediocre compared to London and New York, as far as I’m concerned,” says Alexander Lobrano, current food and travel contributor to the New York Times and recent author of Hungry for Paris: The Ultimate Guide to the City’s 102 Best Restaurants. “Really aside from North African cuisine, which is a very special case for demographic reasons, Paris hasn’t embraced the sort of gastric internationalism that reigns in almost every big city.” The lack of good Asian restaurants invokes a sense that Paris is a city in denial about how international its population actually is, especially considering Asian migration patterns to the city over the last century... Part of the issue stems from the difficulties Asian restaurateurs encounter accessing the proper produce and ingredients... The French republican ideology also encourages integration processes that undoubtedly further dilutes a migrant group’s presence in the city. “The French nation confuses its principles with a political project to abstract ethnic or religious distinctions”... This approach to integration in lieu of multiculturalism seems to have translated into a dumbed-down approach to Asian cuisine in Paris over time; In order to suit the quieter, subtler French palate, Asian migrants toned down the spicy, vibrant, and loud tastes so ingrained in their cuisine, transmitting the French abstraction of ethnic distinction to their kitchens... For centuries, the gastro scene in Paris remained static, with French cuisine assuming a de facto dominance that yielded little to no room for foreign kitchens to gain credibility. “This very confident sense of superiority, which was not unjustified most of the time, sort of blindsided the French in terms of their ability to be receptive to or honestly curious about food from other countries,” says Lobrano, who served as the European Correspondent for Gourmet Magazine for 10 years, until it folded in 2009... “I think Paris is on the cusp of change. All of the concierge kitchens—Italian, Spanish and Portuguese—no one ever used to take them seriously, but that’s changed. The Lebanese food is good now, and North African cooking is much better here than it is in any other major European city. But in terms of anything Asian, I think Paris still has a long way to go.”"

Hozefa Aziz Singapore Wala - "Ryanair to close base after pilots reject pay cut"
""It is bizarre that the union canvassed against the deal knowing full well that the result would be base closures and job losses."
Unions are not necessarily a good thing for workers. Union leaders are after all politicians in a different outfit."

Memes - "When you tell your man its cheat day so you start eating cake and he starts fucking your sister @Supersaw"

Imam of Peace on Twitter - "First they said “ISIS has nothing to do with Islam.” Then, when I criticize ISIS, they accuse me of insulting Islam. One of us is crazy, and it’s not me."

Imam Tawhidi - Posts - "Muslim governments kill thousands of Muslims each year, then they tell you “Poland is Islamophobic.”Polish government has not killed or oppressed a single Muslim. They are (mostly) Christians who want to live in peace, without any illegal immigrants or terrorism. Good on them.Not to mention that I have close friends in the Polish government who have nothing but positive things to say. Walk in Warsaw and you’ll find Middle Eastern (HALAL) food, Arabic Music, Mosques, Friday Prayers, the full package. There’s no bigotry. Loving your country doesn’t make you a racist.Poland’s Muslims (especially their leaders) are integrated and their loyalty is for Poland. That’s how it should be."

Imam Tawhidi - Posts - "Huma Younus, a Christian girl who was kidnapped from her home in Karachi on October 10 last year, has become pregnant due to the incessant sexual violence perpetrated by her abductor Abdul Jabbar.Where are the feminist organizations and human rights activists?"

Economists on the Run - "Krugman branded just about everybody who questioned the rapid pace of globalization a fool who didn’t understand economics very well. “Silly” was a word Krugman used a lot to describe pundits who raised fears of economic competition from other nations, especially China. Don’t worry about it, he said: Free trade will have only minor impact on your prosperity.Now Krugman has come out and admitted, offhandedly, that his own understanding of economics has been seriously deficient as well. In a recent essay titled “What Economists (Including Me) Got Wrong About Globalization,” adapted from a forthcoming book on inequality, Krugman writes that he and other mainstream economists “missed a crucial part of the story” in failing to realize that globalization would lead to “hyperglobalization” and huge economic and social upheaval, particularly of the industrial middle class in America. And many of these working-class communities have been hit hard by Chinese competition, which economists made a “major mistake” in underestimating... It was quite a “whoops” moment, considering all the ruined American communities and displaced millions of workers we’ve seen in the interim. And a newly humbled Krugman must consider an even more disturbing idea: Did he and other mainstream economists help put a protectionist populist, Donald Trump, in the White House with a lot of bad advice about free markets?... He even had some kind things to say about proto-progressives such as Robert Reich, the former Clinton administration labor secretary who worried about global competition and sought better protections and retraining for American workers, and whom Krugman had once dismissed to me—back in his lacerating days in the ’90s—as an “offensive figure, a brilliant coiner of one-liners but not a serious thinker.”... it has taken an awful long time for economists to admit that their profession has been far too sure of itself—or, as a penitent Krugman put it himself in a 2009 article in the New York Times Magazine, that “economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth.” As the journalist Binyamin Appelbaum writes in his book, The Economists’ Hour: False Prophets, Free Markets, and the Fracture of Society, economists came to dominate policymaking in Washington in a way they never had before and, starting in the late 1960s, seriously misled the nation, helping to disrupt and divide it socially with a false sense of scientific certainty about the wonders of free markets. The economists pushed efficiency at all costs at the expense of social welfare and “subsumed the interests of Americans as producers to the interests of Americans as consumers, trading well-paid jobs for low-cost electronics.”... [it] was ironic considering that [Krugman's] Nobel-winning work in economics was far more nuanced than his books and columns (and actually helped lay the intellectual foundations for smart strategic trade policy)... Another Nobel-winning economist, Joseph Stiglitz, who like Rodrik warned back in the ’90s of the disruptive effects of too rapid lowering of trade and capital barriers, told me that the problem with “standard neoclassical analysis” was that it “never paid any attention to adjustment. Labor market adjustment miraculously happened costlessly.”... there were plenty who did pay attention to how the old verities about open trade and comparative advantage were no longer as telling, displaced by new trends such as global supply chains, which shifted huge numbers of jobs overseas and took out whole communities. Krugman himself eventually concluded in a 2008 academic paper that because of these supercomplex supply chains, “the changing nature of world trade has outpaced economists’ ability to engage in secure quantitative analysis.”... Economists once believed that low unemployment led to inflation, but today that relationship, called the standard Phillips curve, has broken down... The main loser, again, is the American worker. Whereas economists used to believe that workers, during boom times, could drive up their compensation (thus leading to inflation), the emerging economic wisdom now suggests something different: After a quarter century in which multinationals have turned the whole globe into their economic turf (while workers usually have to stay in their home countries), globalized capital—manifesting itself as multinational supply chains—has the upper hand over domestic labor. Hence, economists themselves are surprised at how quickly the mainstream of their profession has moved leftward" Of course, the libertarians will cling on to their Economics 101

Meme - "Fantastic idea for the girls who love to masturbate in cinema"

Coke vs. Pepsi: The Difference Is One Simple Ingredient - "Coca-Cola, nutritionally, has a touch more sodium than Pepsi, which reminds us of Topo Chico or a club soda and results in a less blatantly sweet taste. Pepsi packs more calories, sugar, and caffeine than Coke... "Pepsi is sweeter than Coke, so right away it had a big advantage in a sip test. Pepsi is also characterized by a citrusy flavor burst, unlike the more raisiny-vanilla taste of Coke. But that burst tends to dissipate over the course of an entire can. Pepsi, in short, is a drink built to shine in a sip test"... people tended to prefer Pepsi in a single sip test because naturally, we're drawn to sweeter sips. It's proven by Pepsi's nutritional content that it has slightly more sugar than Coke, and therefore Pepsi tends to take home a sip test easily with a big advantage. However, it's when it comes down to the full can where Coca-Cola shines. Then, the bright citrus flavor of Pepsi doesn't hold up well to the smooth flavor of Coca-Cola."

The Food Lab, Drinks Edition: Is Mexican Coke Better? - "People prefer American Coke to Mexican Coke from a pure flavor and aroma standpoint.
People prefer glass bottles to aluminum cans from a purely tactile standpoint... Those folks who prefer Mexican Coke (like myself), really just like the idea of Mexican Coke—whether it's because they think real sugar is tastier/healthier than corn syrup, whether it's because Mexican Coke is more expensive and harder to find, thus more valuable, whether it's because of its exoticism, whatever the reason—strip away the Mexicanness of it, and suddenly it's a lot less appealing."

Say goodbye to the traditional buffet, at least for now - "Buffets still aren’t allowed, so Gulati is reformatting the restaurant. It will be a test run for the other two restaurants in Ontario... He says management came up with two possibilities: one being cafeteria service, in which diners are handed a plate and go up to one of the 12 food stations, where an attendant serves them food. The drawback to that is how to ensure guests will be able to stand two metres apart without intruding on others in the dining room.The other, more likely, scenario is to have diners order unlimited food from their table, a format most diners would already be familiar with at all-you-can-eat sushi spots. Guests order from a pared down menu, likely between 50-70 items, from their table and a server brings the food to them on platters. Gulati says they’re also working to enable diners to get the menu as well as pay from their phones to minimize contact.Still, the common sentiment from restaurant owners is that reopening a dining room at half capacity won’t generate enough revenue. That’s especially true for buffets that occupy massive spaces (and with that, have massive operating costs). Tandoori Flame’s locations are around 10,000 square feet. The buffet stations occupy a fifth of that. Since a buffet charges a flat rate, it relies on having a full room and a high customer turnover. For every voracious diner that tries to game the system by only eating high-cost items such as seafood, there needs to be people that don’t eat as much or fill up on bread and pasta... “I always liked the model at dim sum and sushi restaurants because it helps control waste,” he says. “Serving as you go helps lower the costs, which helps considering everything else is going up. It’s the only way I can see it working.”... “You’ll be shocked at how much goes uneaten,” says Ling Lee’s Chinese Cuisine owner Norina Karschti, whose parents opened the restaurant atop a curling club in Thunder Bay in 1973. “You’ll see someone take five egg rolls but only eat two, or know that the price of pork loin went up but you can’t charge people more for it. It’s sad to see, because we make things from scratch.”She estimates about a third of the food at the buffet goes uneaten and with the ingredients costing 38 per cent of what she charges, she doesn’t see it as a money-maker... It’s hard to shake the gluttonous image of the modern buffet considering its origins.The Las Vegas Sun credits the late publicist Herb McDonald with coming up with the idea of the all-you-can-eat buffet back in 1946 when he was working for the El Rancho Vegas hotel. McDonald brought out cheese and meats from the kitchen and laid them out on the bar to make a sandwich, catching the attention of hungry gamblers who wanted in on the spread.Other casinos followed. At first, it was a way to lure gamblers with unlimited cheap food (hello, $1-Salisbury steaks!) but as Vegas became more family-friendly, the buffets became attractions themselves. The 600-seat, aptly named Bacchanal Buffet at Caesar’s Palace opened in 2012 with a budget of $100 million and served a million people within its first year.A few buffets tried to curb the “all-you-can-eat” mantra in recent years. An executive chef of the American buffet chain Sizzlers told the defunct food magazine Lucky Peach in 2014 that they prefer to call it “all-you-care-to-eat” so that diners don’t see it as a challenge to overeat.But the buffet represents more than flashy excess. In her 2019 book Chop Suey Nation, journalist Ann Hui writes about the Chinese restaurant-turned-buffet her parents owned in Abbotsford as well as places such as Ling Lee’s Chinese Cuisine in Thunder Bay.“For a lot of Canadians, the buffet was the introduction of Chinese food,” says Hui, adding that in Canada, it was Montreal restaurateur Bill Wong who popularized the all-you-can-eat concept with his namesake restaurant in 1963. “At that time, going out to eat was a special occasion and restaurants offered an experience. That’s why Chinese restaurants were popular: it was a new experience that people couldn’t have at home.”The buffet in particular was an extra novelty, says Hui. Just as my first time trying Indian food was at a buffet, diners unfamiliar with Chinese food first got their taste at these restaurants. “You approach the buffet and pick what looked good,” she says. “You didn’t have to ask questions or know what it was on the menu. It was a perfect entry point for people and made the food more approachable.”"

The Northumbrians: From Bede To Geordie Shore | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "The Great Northern coal field which was characterized by, by death and danger constantly, in fact, there’s mass grave of all those men and boys in *something* churchyard, just has the inscription on the top of it: in the midst of life, we are in death. And that was a fact of life in the coal fields. And like I said, I grew up in a pit village. My grandfather was a coal miner at a colliery called Bates in Blythe in Northumberland, which was a wet pit. It was known as a wet pit because it went out six or seven miles under the North Sea and the sea water used to come in, which used to strike me as absolutely terrifying. And I think a lot of miners had a sort of odd love hate relationship with coal mining, because it was so hard and dangerous on the one hand, but on the other hand, it could be absolutely spectacular and rewarding, and it was the ultimate skilled work in many respects. So periodically, you hear people say, you know, my, my grandfather would never let his son go down the pit and that sort of thing. Or we should be careful not to romanticize coal mining. And I entirely agree because I mean, between 1850 and 1950, I think the stats are for Britain about 100,000 coal miners were killed at work. Many thousands more horribly injured and disabled and so on. So we definitely shouldn't romanticize it. But the problem is the miners themselves romanticized coal mining. Because they wrote ballads about it. They wrote poetry about it. My own grandfather was a painter, a Pitman painter, although not part of the Ashing [sp?] group. But he painted coal mining scenes in his spare time, he was obsessed with it, he loved being a coal miner"

The Life & Legend Of Florence Nightingale | HistoryExtra Podcast - HistoryExtra - "She was always fascinated by statistics and said she'd much rather read a book of statistics than a novel. I mean, it was her idea of relaxation to sit down and write statistics. I suppose the way into the subject is to look at the statistical work she did when she came back from the Crimean War, exposing the mortality rates of the British soldier during the war. Many more British soldiers had died from disease at Scutari and in the Crimea than from battle wounds, and she exposed this by creating this brilliant visual diagram what, which is known as the rose diagram or the Coxcomb, because she wanted to present it in as an attractive a light as possible and communicate it to as large a number of people as possible this terrible disaster, the destruction of the British Army from disease. And she did that with this brilliant rose diagram. And then of course, she went on to become the first woman Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. And for the rest of her life, right up to the time she's working on Indian Affairs where she's looking at the subject of irrigation and the problem that the lack of irrigation and the problem that poses for the Indian Riot or Penn's peasant, she's taking statistical material and analyzing its data and then looking for solutions that can be taken from it."

The Gender Gap in Real Estate Sales: Negotiation Skill or Agent Selection? - " Regardless of the buyer’s agent gender, net selling price results for female listing agents are 6.5% higher than their male counterparts... Females seem to be involved in transactions with larger, more expensive, newer homes. Female listing and buyers’ agent transactions involve homes that are approximately 600 square feet larger than the homes for the average male transactions... The homes listed by females were, on average, 10 years newer than those listed by males... Female transactions, both for listing and buyer’s agents, tend to be in wealthier neighborhoods with median household income approximately $20,000 higher for female agents... Fixer-upper homes, those presumably in a poor state of repair, are nearly three times as likely to be listed by males at 11% than females at 4%. Foreclosure differences are the most dramatic of the special circumstance homes with 7% of the female listings and 31% of the male listings. The male focus on foreclosures is also clear among the buyer’s agents with 11% of female transactions and 26% of the male transactions. It is clear that these special-circumstance transactions are more prominent among the male agents... Consistent with the prior descriptive results for the agent/gender groups, the dyadic results point to female association with larger, more expensive homes, particularly when compared to the male/male dyads. The all-female transactions are $480,881 on average, while the male/male transactions average approximately $243,610. This large difference may be partially explained by the concentration of males in the “special circumstance” transactions and poorer neighborhoods as described in the prior section." I saw someone claiming that "the 2008 mortgage sinkhole is a result of women real estate agents creating overvalued sales... women real estate agents are slightly less in numbers, but sell higher value properties... The proof is all there. The banks were dupped as well as the purchaser." Then when I presented the above he claimed he'd already read it and his statement still stood

Canada goose found with explosive duct taped to its body - "A Long Island, N.Y. man has saved a Canada goose after finding the bird with an explosive device duct taped to its chest... LION said the firecracker appeared to have been lit but was soaked in water. DiLeonardo speculates that when the perpetrator lit the fuse, it scared the goose, causing it to run into the water"

Taiwan police return lost Nintendo Switch with the help of Animal Crossing: New Horizons - "One way for players to interact with each other is to send letters. This can be done by heading to the island’s airport, where you can pick a postcard, craft a message, and mail it to friends who have previously visited you... While Animal Crossing takes place in a virtual world, it has previously crossed over with the real world in many ways. In Hong Kong, companies hired players to advertise their brands in the game, while protesters decorated their islands with anti-government slogans and held vigils for the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown."

Amazon Dating

I was asking to explain what the joke behind Amazon Dating: The Future of Dating is: 

This isn't a site by Amazon actually, though it's made to look like it is

In general this seems to be a commentary on how online dating has commodified love and made it like shopping online (Amazon specifically). Love isn't supposed to be like online shopping but there're parallels between dating sites and online shopping. Actually this could also be a commentary on modern love

Search bar:
"hot singles near me" - this is used to advertise online dating/s3x sites to pull you in

Navbar:
- Deal of the Day - Some dating sites give you one or more daily picks, just like online shopping sites do
- Prime Video - Perhaps a commentary on video chatting, or snapchat. This also leads to Chat Roulette, a site where you can chat with random people
- Your Last Relationship - Online shopping sites let you see your last order(s) to review it/them. This links to Britney Spears's "Toxic" music video. So it says your last relationship was "toxic". This might be a commentary on how people always blame their exes, since it's easier than blaming themselves
- Don't see what you're looking for? - Usually for online shopping this is a way to give feedback. Here it goes to Netflix. So presumably if you don't find a promising potential partner you'll watch Netflix at home
- Help - This goes to WikiHow's "How to Unhook a Bra". So this is saying nowadays men don't know how to do this and need to look it up online. This might be a commentary on how even the most basic of life skills are now taught online if you need it
- FAQ - This tells you this is a joke site. Apparently the pictures of singles are of real people who want to be on the site
- Legal - This goes to a non-ghosting agreement. This is a commentary on how ghosting (ignoring someone - typically someone you're chatting with on an online dating site) is not nice. And how nowadays people date multiple people at once (the non-official relationship clause)

Delivery address:

90069 is indeed a real ZIP code in LA. But 69 is also a sexual position.

Listings:
The available singles are listed with their first names, ages, star ratings and the number of reviews, kind of like you'd see on an online shopping site.

Some are marked as best sellers just like items on online shopping sites, presumably to get your attention. Some are marked down in price (possibly artificially as a technique to fool you into thinking you're getting a good deal). "Amazon's Choice" may be a sponsored listing, or what someone at Amazon really thinks is a good match (buy).

Occasionally an item (person) is "currently unavailable", presumably so you get a feeling of scarcity (so you need to buy what is available before it disappears). This scarcity is also emphasised with "Only 13 left in stock - order soon" - which may or may not be true.

"Meet Today" is a commentary on instant gratification - quick shipping for online shopping parallels the instant gratification people get on Tinder and similar platforms.

Individual reviews:
The descriptions of the listings seem to be making fun of bios in online dating. Each is available in various heights, just like you can choose sizes or other characteristics of stuff you buy online.

"Fit" is what you see on Wish (knockoff cheap shit online shopping) since you can't try before you buy - so it's other users saying how accurate the measurements were.

Not sure why love languages are mentioned, why "words of affirmation" is selected for everyone, or why you can change the selection (but that doesn't do anything). This seems to parallel how you can choose different colour for online shopping.

The texts of the reviews seem to be cribbed from real items and are not relevant to the site's aim to satirise online dating/shopping.

Links - 27th February 2021 (1) (China's 'peaceful' rise)

Zhifan Liu 刘之凡 on Twitter - "This Chinese singer has seen his tiktok account suspended after being reported by netizens for looking like... President Xi Jinping"

Hong Kong history exam question sparks China rebuke - "A history exam question asking Hong Kong students to assess colonial Japan's occupation of China sparked a rebuke by Beijing on Friday (May 15) and reignited a row over academic freedoms in the semi-autonomous city. The criticism comes as Hong Kong's schools and universities – some of the best in Asia – become the latest ideological battleground in a city convulsed by political unrest. China's foreign ministry and state media rounded on a university entrance exam question that asked students to decide whether Japan's invasion of China from 1900 to 1945 "did more good than harm"."Hong Kong's education sector must not become a chicken coop without a roof," the foreign ministry wrote on the Facebook page of its Hong Kong office."Hong Kong's (university exam) question leads students to be traitors," wrote the pugnaciously nationalist Global Times newspaper on Friday... Mainland China's schools and universities are strictly controlled, with little deviation from communist party lines tolerated.Semi-autonomous Hong Kong has a much freer system that encourages debate and analysis... Hong Kong's education bureau criticised the city's exam board, saying it was "hurting the feelings and dignity of the Chinese people".It described the question as "a leading one" and demanded a response from the exam board... Ip Kin-yuen, a lawmaker who represents the education sector, said students would be expected to know and write about Japan's violent excesses in any exam question assessing the country's legacy within China."Students ... can use what they know to discuss against a statement, this is very common in a history exam""

Don’t blame liberal studies for Hong Kong’s political crisis – taught well, the subject could actually help defuse extremism - "former Hong Kong chief executive Tung Chee-hwa describedliberal studies as a failure, even though the reform that paved the way for the compulsory teaching of the subject in secondary schools came during his tenure.The scapegoating of liberal studies for a political meltdowncreated by the ruling elite is simply barking up the wrong tree. If liberal studies can indoctrinate students into extremism, should we remove the subject of Chinese history, which covers much more political content, such as the Boxer rebellionand the 1911 revolution,which may inspire revolutionary fervour?"

Taste the protest: Hong Kong shop unveils ‘tear gas’ ice cream flavour - "The main ingredient is black peppercorns, a reminder of the pungent, peppery rounds fired by police on the streets of the semi-autonomous Chinese city during months of demonstrations last year.“It tastes like tear gas. It feels difficult to breathe at first, and it’s really pungent and irritating. It makes me want to drink a lot of water immediately,” said customer Anita Wong, who experienced tear gas at a protest. “I think it’s a flashback that reminds me of how painful I felt in the movement, and that I shouldn’t forget.”... “We would like to make a flavour that reminds people that they still have to persist in the protest movement and don’t lose their passion,” he said.He tried different ingredients, including wasabi and mustard, in an effort to replicate the taste of tear gas. Black pepper, he said, came closest to tear gas with its throat-irritating effects... At about $5 a serving, tear gas ice cream has been a hit. Prior to social distancing regulations over the coronavirus outbreak, the shop’s owner said he was selling 20-30 scoops per day... police have been out in force to deter large gatherings and the government is pressing ahead with legislation that would make it a crime to mock the Chinese national anthem."

China Uncensored - Posts - "*Preschoolers all looking at Xi Jinping* Education with Chinese Characteristics. #china #school #brainwashed #xijinping #xijinpingthoughtsonsocialismwithchinesecharacteristicsakaxijinpingthought"

Center Party: The millions to China should rather be used to build Norway - "Party leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum (Sp) has asked Development Minister Dag-Inge Ulstein (KrF) to explain how much Norway has given in aid to the economic superpower China from 2014 to now.
- China is becoming one of the world's largest economies and is a very offensive, global superpower. Should we then spend Norwegian aid money on China? says party leader Trygve Slagsvold Vedum (Sp) to Nettavisen... Norway has provided NOK 581 million in assistance to China from 2014 through 2019. 178 million of these aid crowns have been provided in direct assistance to the public sector in China...
The Minister of Development has previously defended Norwegian assistance to China in that it can help reduce climate emissions and achieve the sustainability goals of eradicating extreme poverty by 2030."
Amazing. When Western pathological altruism reaches new heights (depths). But of course China will still shit on Norway

Consider the Possibility That Trump Is Right On China - The Atlantic - "When a new coronavirus emerged in China and began spreading around the world, including in the United States, President Donald Trump’s many critics in the American foreign-policy establishment were quick to identify him as part of the problem... Far from discrediting Trump’s point of view, the COVID-19 crisis reveals what his strategy asserted: that the world is a competitive arena in which great power rivals like China seek advantage, that the state remains the irreplaceable agent of international power and effective action, that international institutions have limited capacity to transform the behavior and preferences of states... his irresponsible behavior and lack of transparency revealed what Trump’s National Security Strategy had identified early on: that “contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of others.” Instead of becoming a “responsible stakeholder”—a term George W. Bush’s administration used to describe the role it hoped Beijing would play following China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001—the Chinese Communist Party used the advantages of WTO membership to advance a political and economic system at odds with America’s free and open society. Previous National Security Strategy documents had tiptoed around China’s adversarial conduct, as if calling out that country as a competitor—as the 2017 document unequivocally did—was somehow impolite. But at some point, an American administration needed to shift the conversation away from hopes for an imagined future China to the realities of the Communist Party’s conduct—which is hardly a secret... Trump’s emphasis on protecting U.S. sovereignty brought to a boil a simmering national debate about the overlooked costs of globalization. A blind adherence to what the economist Dani Rodrik has called “hyper-globalization”—the idea that the interests of big corporations and the principle of market integration took precedence over widely shared prosperity and economic security—had come at the expense of domestic industries. For years, people who complained about these consequences were dismissed as isolationists or as being on “the wrong side of history.”... Many of President Trump’s critics in the foreign-policy community put great stock in the ability of multilateral and international organizations to constrain the misbehavior of China and other states. These organizations, at their best, promote concerted action against commonly recognized problems. But Trump’s critics tend to view them mainly in their idealized form and as the central instruments to solve global problems and advance values shared by all. In practice, though, how international organizations perform is profoundly influenced by power relationships among member states.China’s leaders have become quite skillful at using these bodies to pursue their own interests... Despite its record of stealing patented technologies, China tried to lead the World Intellectual Property Organization, an effort thwarted by Washington. Chinese tech companies have also sought to induce the United Nations to adopt their facial-recognition and surveillance standards, to clear the way for the deployment of their technologies around the world... The United States remains the largest contributor to the WHO, paying about 15 percent of the organization’s budget—compared with China’s 0.21 percent. In early March, Trump signed a supplemental appropriations act that included $1.3 billion in additional U.S. foreign assistance for pandemic response. Most recently, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced an additional $274 million in emergency funding for at-risk countries. This aid does not come with the strings that China attaches to its aid.Contrary to what critics argue, “America first” does not mean “America alone.”... only one organization in the entire world has as its sole responsibility the American people’s safety. That institution is the U.S. government. Whether led by Republicans or Democrats—or by Donald Trump or anyone else—it should always put the American people first."

China to impose sweeping national security law in Hong Kong, bypassing city's legislature - The Washington Post - "China's Communist Party will impose a sweeping national security law in Hong Kong by fiat during the annual meeting of its top political body, officials said Thursday, criminalizing "foreign interference" along with secessionist activities and subversion of state power. The move is the boldest yet from Beijing to undercut Hong Kong’s autonomy and bring the global financial hub under its full control, as it works to rewrite the “one country, two systems” framework that has allowed the territory to enjoy a level of autonomy for the past 23 years. After steadily eroding Hong Kong’s political freedoms, Beijing signaled that the national security law will be a new tool that allows it to directly tackle the political dissent that erupted on Hong Kong’s streets last year... The new tactic marks an escalation in Beijing’s crackdown in the former British colony and the clearest indication that it views Hong Kong as a restive region to be brought to heel after last year’s protests... “Beijing has opted for the most risky route,” said Ho-Fung Hung, a professor of international relations at Johns Hopkins University. “It will show the world that ‘one country, two systems’ is, if not already over, almost over.”... The Hong Kong dollar weakened sharply against the U.S. dollar as the reports emerged... For the United States to treat Hong Kong as a separate entity, mostly for commercial purposes, the State Department must certify that the city retains “a high degree of autonomy” from China"

China's military says it is prepared to protect security in Hong Kong, as protests grow - "Under the proposed anthem law, a person would commit an offence if they take various actions with “intent to insult” the anthem, such as changing lyrics or music or singing in a “disrespectful way”. Recent booing of the Chinese anthem, March of the Volunteers, at Hong Kong football marches has embarrassed Beijing.The law carries financial penalties and jail time of up to three years.Opponents say the legislation could be weaponised against pro-democracy activists and legislators. It has already led to physical confrontations in LegCo.“If you show any disrespect, which is a loosely defined concept legally, they’ll use it against you,” says Dennis Kwok, pro-democracy lawmaker.“This kind of law is the hallmark of an authoritarian government, whenever they see something they don’t like, they try to criminalise it. They are clamping down on freedom.” The Hong Kong government rejected claims it suppresses freedom of speech, saying the spirit of the bill was about “respect”, and an offence only occurs if someone expresses their views by publicly and intentionally insulting the anthem.Prominent democrat legislator Claudia Mo said the current political climate has driven opposition.“Things have changed in the last two decades in Hong Kong,” she says. “We have reached a point of no return in not trusting this government.”The government says it has a constitutional responsibility to enact the anthem law quickly, and has declared it a priority."
One country, one system

International experts quit Hong Kong police protest probe - "An international panel of experts hired to advise Hong Kong's police watchdog over its handling of huge anti-government protests announced Wednesday (Dec 11) they were quitting, in a major setback for the government.Hong Kong's government has insisted its Independent Police Complaints Commission is capable of holding the force to account over snowballing claims of brutality.But critics have charged the body lacks adequate powers, is stacked with pro-establishment figures and has been toothless when it comes to keeping the police in line."We ultimately concluded that a crucial shortfall was evident in the powers, capacity and independent investigative capability of IPCC," the experts said... a leaked statement from the group revealed they felt the police watchdog was not equipped to carry out a proper investigation, and suggested a fully independent inquiry would be better suited. But their frank assessment was not welcomed by Anthony Neoh, the IPCC's head.He gave an interview to a mainland Chinese media outlet rebuking the panel, saying they "do not understand Hong Kong's situation"."

U.S. condemns latest Hong Kong violence, urges both sides to de-escalate - "The United States on Monday condemned “unjustified use of deadly force” in the latest Hong Kong violence and urged police and civilians alike to de-escalate the situation"
From November 2019. It's quite funny - China shills pretend the US has never condemned Hong Kong protester violence, and pretend that there are only riots in Hong Kong and that there's only peaceful protests in the US, in order to level their favourite charges - "hypocrisy"

China drops word 'peaceful' in latest push for Taiwan 'reunification' - "Taiwan has complained of increased Chinese military harassment since the coronavirus pandemic began, with fighter jets and naval vessels regularly approaching the island on drills China has described as routine... there was no mention of the word “peaceful” in front of “reunification”, departing from the standard expression Chinese leaders have used for at least four decades when addressing parliament and mentioning Taiwan... China wants Taiwan to accept the “one country, two systems” model, which is supposed to guarantee a high degree of autonomy and which Beijing uses to run the former British colony of Hong Kong.However, all major Taiwanese parties have rejected it."

The Ocean Planet - Posts - "China’s exploitation of the world’s fish stocks is far greater than previously thought, with research showing the country has more than 12,000 vessels fishing beyond its waters, three times more than previous estimates.The Chinese fleet is the biggest contributor to the “global fisheries crisis”, which has resulted in two thirds of the world’s commercial stocks being overfished or fished to the limit, according to a report by the Overseas Development Institute, a think tank.China consumes more than a third of fish caught globally and is targeting the high seas or waters belonging to other countries after depleting its own stocks, the report says. At least 183 of the Chinese “distant water” vessels — those that fish outside national waters — have been found to be involved in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, it adds.The study identified 1,821 of the Chinese vessels as trawlers, many of which are suspected of carrying out bottom trawling, a particularly destructive fishing technique.Almost 1,000 of the vessels were found to be registered overseas, with 518 flying the flags of African nations. The report suggests that China is taking advantage of poor governance in developing countries by getting them to sign fisheries agreements that allow unsustainable levels of fishing in their waters"

Melissa Chen - "Racist plaques depicting Winnie the Pooh holding a bat with chopsticks have begun to pop up around Atlanta, and police have no leads as to who is responsible."
"How happy is Xi Jinping that this plaque of Winnie the Pooh eating bat soup is called “racist?”It’s like, he might as well fire his entire propaganda department and just rely on useful idiots like Vice.

China is not strong enough to pull off its bid for world dominance - "Xi was courting trouble when he told Party cadres  in 2013 to prepare for a long-term “conflict” with the West, and vowed to defeat liberal free-market systems. He upped the ante two years later with calls for an all-out struggle against “dangerous Western views and theories.”... The White House document states that there will be no more kid-glove treatment of global rivals (read Putin’s Russia too, or the Chavistas) in the forlorn hope that “their inclusion in international institutions and global commerce would turn them into benign actors and trustworthy partners. For the most part, this premise turned out to be false. Rival actors use propaganda and other means to try to discredit democracy.”... The US will now go on the counter-offensive and take it to the foe. This reminds me of the Reagan Doctrine in the early 1980s, which I covered as a foreign correspondent in Central America - a proxy war that Washington won, nota bene, contrary to widespread claims at the time that the US was enfeebled and prosecuting a lost cause... “We do not cater to Beijing’s demands to create a proper ‘atmosphere’ or ‘conditions’ for dialogue. Likewise, the United States sees no value in engaging with Beijing for symbolism and pageantry; we instead demand tangible results and constructive outcomes. We acknowledge and respond in kind to Beijing’s transactional approach with timely incentives and costs, or credible threats thereof.”... The document is the collective voice of Washington. It reflects the thinking of both parties on Capitol Hill and much of the military-diplomatic establishment. Trump is almost a China dove at this juncture, swept along by political forces that are getting ahead of him... Trump’s decision to revoke Hong Kong’s special status under US law will - when fleshed out - matter more than meets the eye. It puts the hub on the wrong side of the world’s financial superpower, deprived of implicit support from the Fed and the US Treasury, and treated like any other city in China. The 1,400 US companies on the enclave - and 96,000 US nationals - will start to drift away, some to Singapore. Capital is already leaving.It is not so much the loss of tariff-free access that hurts, but everything else. Iris Pang from ING says the killer is the coming curb on technology transfers. A whole industry of service companies revolves around US digital and hi-tech components... Great financial entrepots are famously sticky. They have incumbency advantages. But they invariably go into structural decline once their unique geopolitical advantage is disrupted.What Xi has just done to Hong Kong is akin to the Habsburg asphyxiation of Antwerp in the 16th Century. It also had a special status as a free-thinking hub until Philip II - a fanatical control-freak, like Xi - suppressed their liberties in the pursuit of the Counter-Reformation. Persecuted Jews fled North to Amsterdam. The great Buerse faded away. Xi Jinping has clearly concluded that Hong Kong’s economic value as Asia’s premier hub - and as China’s gateway to world finance - is less than the political cost of letting the enclave’s democracy movement continue to defy him and reproach his totalitarian model. Hong Kong’s role as a conduit for foreign capital flows and investment is no longer quite so crucial in any case under Beijing’s new policy of “self-reliance”... Xi Jinping has taken a fateful step in walking away from the Sino-British Declaration and so brazenly flouting an international treaty law lodged at the UN."

Links - 25th February 2021 (2) (George Floyd Unrest)

Incel Riot Studios - Posts | Facebook - "NPC: "No amount of property is worth a human life"
"Don't risk our life looting, then"
NPC: *angry*"
In comments: ‎"THE RIOTERS WERE ACTUALLY UNDERCOVER WHITE SUPREMACISTS"
"THEN WHY WERE YOU ALL OUTRAGED WHENEVER THEY WERE TEAR GASSED OR ARRESTED?"

BLM organizer who called looting ‘reparations’ doubles down - "The Chicago Black Lives Matter organizer who justified looting as “reparation” has doubled down — insisting this week that even calling someone a criminal is “based on racism.”Ariel Atkins told WBEZ that her group “100 percent” supports the violent looters who trashed chunks of the Windy City on Monday, again repeating her claim that it is “reparations.”"

Pressley calls for 'unrest' - and no Dem will call her out - "Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat from Massachusetts, went on national TV to declare “Communities from Boston to Portland are rising up.” She then brazenly called for “unrest in the streets.”As if on cue, anarchist thugs in Portland, Ore., did just that... Last month, Democrats referred to the rioters who burned and looted cities as peaceful protesters. The month before that they simply ignored them... What is glaring, if not reprehensible, is that no one in the Bay State’s Congressional Delegation — all Democrats — will utter a peep to call her out. Then again, why would they when their boss, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, remains mute to the pillaging of major West Coast cities?"

Dem Senator Deletes Tweet Saying Rioting Is Bad: ‘Too Controversial’ - "Sen. Chris Murphy, a Connecticut Democrat, on Thursday tweeted and then deleted a statement denouncing acts of violence by lawbreaking civilians as well as by law enforcement... Zaid Jilani, a left-wing journalist who is critical of social justice ideology, said Murphy’s rapid backdown was “emblematic of the Democrats,” who have been accused of enabling looting and rioting amid nationwide protests against racism and policing."

Jeff B., who on earth is this guy?? on Twitter - Dan Arel: "All liberal arguments against looting are racist. Full stop."
"First, I have to LOL at the bluechecks who block you despite never once interacting with you (what, I like Genesis too much?). Second, congrats, this is the new woke orthodoxy and you will be force-fed it until you are blankmindedly parroting it bc ostracism comes when you don't"
"If criticizing looting is racist, doesn’t it imply that only one race is doing the looting??????????"

Kelley Paul: Our harrowing, dystopian night - "Thursday night felt like being in a terrifying dystopian novel. The mob swarmed me and my husband, Sen. Rand Paul, in a tight circle, screaming expletives, threats, and shouting, "Say her name." We rushed up to two police officers, and I believe that is the only thing that kept us from being knocked to the ground. Even pressed against the officers, we were greatly outnumbered.As the mob grew and became more threatening, we literally could not move, and neither could the two officers for several minutes. The rioters were inches from us, screaming in our faces. That was the worst part. At first, I attempted to meet the eyes of one of the protesters and tried to explain that Rand authored the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act, but it seemed to just infuriate them more, as they called me a "bitch" and "racist wh---" alongside an endless torrent of "f--- yous." Mobs are terrifying. They looked at us with no humanity — just a vicious and righteous zeal. After that, I just kept my eyes down and prayed. All I could think of was the driver who was pulled from his car, viciously kicked in the head and left lying in his own blood in Portland, Oregon, last week. Now the Associated Press is reporting that Rand used the word “attack” to describe our ordeal “without evidence.” This is disgusting and utter proof of their bias.When you are surrounded by throngs of people screaming in your face and preventing you from getting away, that is an attack... The mob screaming in our faces seemed ignorant of the fact that Rand had authored the Justice for Breonna Taylor Act, calling for a ban on no-knock raids. Either that or they just didn’t care because their hatred of President Trump makes them feel righteous and justified as they terrorize people and burn cities. Several of our friends were also attacked trying to make it to their hotels last night, including one who had his glasses slapped off his face, another who was pepper-sprayed by a rioter, and a woman who was punched in the back.In the last three years, my husband was shot at by the Bernie Sanders supporter who nearly killed Rep. Steve Scalise, had six ribs broken and his lung damaged by a vocal internet hater of President Trump, and endured numerous death threats against him and our family. An MSNBC reporter literally said on air, laughing, that Rand’s assault was her favorite news story of the week. She was hardly criticized or made to apologize, let alone fired. People such as Bette Midler and Nancy Pelosi’s daughter regularly tweet out encouragement of the man who nearly killed Rand, which is amplified by thousands of their followers. My message to all of them is this: You have become exactly what you say you hate — violent, close-minded, authoritarian, and utterly lacking in empathy."

The Black Lives Matter Movement Must Solve Its Violence Problem - "the use of force by some demonstrators has received support from a significant segment of the public. A recent CNN poll found that one out of four (27 percent) Americans believe that violent protests are justified. This is a considerable increase from the 14 percent who felt this way in 2016. Almost half of the Democrats hold that violent protests are justified; the same is true of 23 percent of White respondents. A troublingly large line-up of public intellectuals are again providing justifications for violent protest. Wellesley College assistant professor of African studies Kellie Carter Jackson recently wrote, “Violence disrupts the status quo and the possibility of returning to business as usual. . . . The American Revolution was won with violence. The French Revolution was won with violence. The Haitian Revolution was won with violence. The Civil War was won with violence. A revolution in today’s terms would mean that these nationwide rebellions lead to black people being able to access and exercise the fullness of their freedom and humanity.” Northeastern University associate professor of sociology Gordana Rabrenovic argues that the violence that African American people experience in their interactions with state-sponsored individuals and systems leads them to ask, “If they use violence, why shouldn’t we use violence?” American University provost Daniel J. Myers offers another justification: “Violent protest . . . advertise[s] the cause in a uniquely powerful way.” University of Pennsylvania professor, historian, and author of The Loud Minority Daniel Q. Gillion reports, “Nonviolent protest brings awareness to an issue; violent protest brings urgency to an issue. It forces individuals to pay attention to these important discussions of race relations.” Finally, New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote: “Some of the people now breaking things and burning things and looting things are ironically participating in a storied American tradition. There has long been a penchant for destruction in this country, an insatiable bloodlust, that the country conveniently likes to forget. American violence is learned violence. It is the American way. . . . White riots have often, historically, targeted black people, while black people have rioted to protest injustice. On either side, racism is the root. And we have refused to sufficiently address it. Now, that chicken is coming home to roost.” As I see it, revolutions are very rare, very hard to bring about, involve large bloodshed, and often are followed by new tyrannies. Moreover, there are prudent reasons to urge protestors not to resort to violence. According to Georgetown Professor Michael Kazin, “[N]on-leftists often see [the left] as a disruptive, lawless force. Violence tends to confirm that view.” Research shows that violent campaigns are less likely to succeed than nonviolent ones, and, conversely, those nonviolent movements have a higher success rate than violent ones... Princeton University professor Omar Wasow’s study of presidential politics in the 1960s. He discovered that “proximity to black-led nonviolent protests increased white Democratic vote-share whereas proximity to black-led violent protests caused substantively important declines and likely tipped the 1968 election from Hubert Humphrey to Richard Nixon.” More recently, instead of scaring the elites into yielding, violence has contributed to the growth of increasingly large and heavily-armed police forces... Moral deliberations point in the same direction. Violence is not merely a poor strategy, but it also raises major ethical concerns. The key moral value that the Black Lives Matter movement taps into is the sanctity of life"
Strange how it's only white supremacists and police infiltrators who are violent, when so many Democrats support violence

Does Violent Protest Backfire? Testing a Theory of Public Reactions to Activist Violence - "the use of violence leads the general public to view a protest group as less reasonable, a perception that reduces identification with the group. This reduced identification in turn reduces public support for the violent group. Furthermore, the authors argue that violence also leads to more support for groups that are perceived as opposing the violent group"

Harvard Kennedy School director says 'riot porn' from 'right-wing' media is responsible for violence - "Research Director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy and adjunct lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School Joan Donovan published an op-Ed in the MIT Technology Review titled “How an overload of riot porn is driving conflict in the streets.” In the piece, Donovan blames left-wing riots in America on "right-wing media makers" and "ring-wing reactionaries.”... Donovan neglected to highlight the destruction that left-wing rioters have inflicted on America’s cities and instead refers to them as “left-wing social justice advocates.”
Of course it's nothing to do with leftists cheering violence

Sargon of Akkad - Posts | Facebook - ""Antifa is an idea, not an organization." -Joe Biden, full of shit"
"Why is Biden able to get away with denying the existence of Antifa after they caused billions in property damage, the death of 30 people, and the secession of two "autonomous zones"?"

PragerU on Twitter - "If #Antifa is just an idea, who exactly are the people burning down cities, assaulting police officers, and bullying innocent bystanders all over the country?"
4D chess: police infiltrators are assaulting police officers in order to frame antifa

Sargon of Akkad - Posts | Facebook - "Racism has no place here. We support the Black community." *smashed doors and windows*
"Your protection money didn't stop the mob"

How To Identify A Peaceful Protester | The Babylon Bee - "You're out and about and you see someone lobbing a brick at you.What do you do? How do you know if this is a violent attack on your person or a peaceful protest?Tell the peaceful protester/violent angry individual to hold on for a second. Then, pull out your phone and look up this infographic from The Babylon Bee. If the perpetrator matches at least a few of these characteristics, then he or she is probably just a peaceful protester. You should apologize for assuming he was a criminal as he bashes your brains in with a brick."

Soros-Backed District Attorney Signals Willingness To Arrest Feds, Appears To Compare Them To Nazis - "George Soros-backed Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner said in an interview published on Wednesday that he is prepared to arrest federal law enforcement officers sent by the Trump administration to quell violence in inner cities, and appeared to compare those officers to Nazis. Under Krasner, Philadelphia reportedly had already seen a sharp uptick in violent crime before the coronavirus pandemic and race riots that broke out in response to the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Statistics from June of this year showed that gun violence in Philadelphia had already skyrocketed by 24% compared to last year... Other top Democrats have also sought to demonize the officers as Nazis, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC)."

Los Angeles Officers in Critical Condition After 'A Cowardly' Point-Blank Ambush Through Patrol Car Window - "Two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies are fighting for their lives after they were shot multiple times at point-blank range in an ambush
LA County Sheriffs on Twitter - "To the protesters blocking the entrance & exit of the HOSPITAL EMERGENCY ROOM yelling "We hope they die" referring to 2 LA Sheriff's ambushed today in #Compton: DO NOT BLOCK EMERGENCY ENTRIES & EXITS TO THE HOSPITAL. People's lives are at stake when ambulances can't get through."
Are they still peaceful protesters when they try to block life-saving medical care and explicitly say they want people to die?

BBC Radio 4 - Best of Today, 'Far too many of our kids are the sacrificial lambs for this system of racism and it doesn't stop' - "‘Jim Carafano is a republican strategist. He's a member of Donald Trump's transition team. I put it to him that Senator Johnson's view that the chaos and rioting in Wisconsin was understandable was something that people around the nation might accept.’
‘Well, first of all, I don't think we have the facts of what happened on the ground, the situation. Second of all, what we've seen in many of these things are not spontaneous riots, but the product of organized criminal activity in many cities. Public Safety is a prerequisite. It's a prerequisite for peaceful demonstrations, for dealing with the public health issues of COVID, for getting people back to work, and that only comes from when local, state and federal law enforcement work together. We have a very decentralized system of law enforcement in the United States. And I think what they realized in Wisconsin was the governor, the mayor were very quick, quick to acknowledge that they needed to bring in outside assistance to first of all, calm the situation, establish public safety, that has to be the priority. I think that's the right decision. I think places like Portland, Seattle where they've been reluctant to do that, we have had multiple multiple days, upwards of three months of violence in places like Portland, and it's really devastated the economy and the communities’
‘Isn't the priority that the police stop shooting black men? And it's interesting that Mike Pence, the Vice President mentioned in his speech, the rioting in Wisconsin, but actually didn't mention Jacob Blake.’
‘Well, I think the important thing in any situation in which deadly force is involved is, first of all, you get the facts, and you provide your equal protection under the law and justice for everybody, including the law enforcement. I mean, I think this is incredibly dangerous when we have snap judgments like you just made that shouldn't the police stop killing people when we don't even know the facts on the ground, I think it's very, very dangerous to the rule of law. It's virtually impossible in 24 hours, in an incident of deadly force to give conclusive assessments of everything that happened, even when there were videos there’re different perspectives. There's information that you may not see on the videos, there's context. Lots of things we may or may not know. And to make snap judgments on the performance of police, and then simply say, we're going to respond to how we feel about the incident, and, and disregard law and really destroy communities’...
‘When you have this kind of mob violence in the streets, there are radicals who think it's not radical enough. And they think, no, no, no, that you guys aren't being violent enough. And they will look for even more extreme violent solutions. And then you'll have counter radicals who think that they have to go to the street. And this is their time, and this is a green light for them to do back. So the far extremes of radical activity in the US could be-. And it only takes a very few of those people to do really, really devastating things. And I don't think we want to create a permissive environment for that kind of activity’…
‘Isn't that the environment that Donald Trump has created in his first term by being so one sided, by being so aggressive in what he's *something* community relations?’
‘No, I don't think that's true at all. I mean, look, we had nothing like this for four years, we've, this has blown up in the last couple of months and we could debate what's the confluence that brought it together. Is it you know, COVID? Is it the economy? Is that the hyper partisan political atmosphere? Is it these organized groups which have really been waiting for an opportunity to do this, but I think to blame it on the president is just to myopically pick somebody you don't like, and just say, well, it's his fault.’
Given what we've learned about Jacob Blake, it just proves the Republican's point...

University of Massachusetts Nursing Dean Fired After Saying “Everyone’s Life Matters” [Updated] - "We have been discussing the growing fear of professors and students over the loss of free speech on campuses for years, but recently those concerns have been greatly magnified with the investigation or termination of professors for expressing opposing views about police abuse, Black Lives Matter movement or aspects of the protests following the killing of George Floyd.  There is a sense of a new orthodoxy that does not allow for dissenting voices as campaigns are launched to fire faculty who are denounced as insensitive or even racist for such criticism.  The most recent controversy involves the recently installed University of Massachusetts-Lowell Dean of Nursing Leslie Neal-Boylan. Dr. Neal-Boylan had only been in her position for a few months when she was fired... Dr. Neal-Boylan was heralded last September as a “visionary leader” by the university in taking over the deanship.  Her writings include strong advocacy for those with disabilities in the nursing field. Those writings show tremendous empathy and concern for inclusivity in the profession.This controversy began when Dr. Neal-Boylan wrote the email which started with the following words: “Dear SSON Community,” the email provided to Campus Reform begins. “I am writing to express my concern and condemnation of the recent (and past) acts of violence against people of color. Recent events recall a tragic history of racism and bias that continue to thrive in this country. I despair for our future as a nation if we do not stand up against violence against anyone. BLACK LIVES MATTER, but also, EVERYONE’S LIFE MATTERS. No one should have to live in fear that they will be targeted for how they look or what they believe.”... In 30 years of teaching, I have never seen the level of fear among faculty over speaking or writing about current events, particularly if they do not agree with aspects of the protests.  Not only is there a sense of forced silence but universities have been conspicuously silent in the face of the destruction of their own public art and statues. Even New York Times editors can be forced out for simply publishing opposing views."
The list of "dog whistles" grows ever longer. Any departure from the approved slogans is wrongthink.
Strange how we are told that "Black Lives Matter" doesn't mean "Only Black Lives Matter", yet you cannot say that Not Only Black Lives Matter. And somehow saying "It's ok to be white" is supposed to mean "it's not ok to be anything other than white"

Harvard Grad Says She Lost Job over TikTok Stabbing Threat Video - "A Harvard University graduate was reportedly fired from her job recently because she threatened to stab anyone who told her “All Lives Matter” in a video she posted on the China-owned social media platform TikTok. “I know this is what Trump supporters wanted because standing up for Black Lives Matter put me in a place online to be seen by millions of people,” Claira Janover said"
Threatening violence is good if you're promoting liberal causes and if you are sanctioned, that's anti-blackness

Cosby citing systemic racism as he fights assault conviction - "Camille Cosby said the #MeToo movement ignores “the history of particular white women” who have “accused Black males of sexual assault without any proof.”"
By progressive logic, it's white men's fault

Kaepernick on July Fourth: 'We reject your celebration of white supremacy'
We are still told that liberals don't hate their countries

BLM Los Angeles Co-Founder: 'We Live in A City that Is Largely Liberal White Supremacists' - "“So it’s important as we say things — like I see your sign ‘fuck Donald Trump,’ yeah ‘fuck Donald Trump’ —  that we remember that we live in a city that is largely liberal white supremacists,” Dr. Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter LA told an enthusiastic crowd in a video posted by the People’s City Council"
No matter what white people do, it will never be enough for grievance mongers

WATCH: Sports Commentator Rips NBA Painting ‘Black Lives Matter’ On Courts: ‘The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Intentions’ - "former NFL defensive end Marcellus Wiley, who attended Columbia University and now co-hosts Fox Sports’ “Speak for Yourself,” slammed the idea that the NBA will paint “Black Lives Matter” on courts where their games are played, asserting, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”... “We know what identity politics does; it divides and it polarizes. No matter how you want to look at it, that’s just the effect of it, no matter how great the intentions are. And we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  So, it’s an interesting play right here.”Wiley then turned to the mission statement of Black Lives Matter:
I don’t know how many people really look into the mission statement of Black Lives Matter. But I did, and when you look into it, there’s a couple things that jump out at me. And I’m a black man who’s been black and my life has mattered since 1974, and this organization was founded in 2013... this mission statement that says, “We dismantle the patriarchal practice, we disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement... When I also see their mission is to eradicate white supremacy, in 2020 white supremacy is the mission?  Woo, that’s a lot of digging through minutiae right there.” He concluded, “I am on a show that I am hosting along with another black guy who is hosting with me who replaced another black guy.  And that’s just one example of it.  So I understand; I respect your space; I respect what you’re protesting for.  But will you respect others who don’t support that same protest?”"

Black Lives Matter protesters harass Pittsburgh diners - "A raucous contingent of Black Lives Matter protesters harassed white diners over the weekend in Pittsburgh, hurling insults before one demonstrator stole a drink off one pair’s table... “F–k the white people that built the system,” one demonstrator could be heard yelling at the patrons, some of whom grabbed their belongings and walked away. The group approached an older man and woman who stayed put, with a female protester clad in a shirt reading “Nazi Lives Don’t Matter” reaching onto their table, grabbing a drink, downing it and walking away as the patrons look on in disbelief.A second video shows demonstrators smacking a white bicyclist. The protesters then faced off against police outside the home of Mayor Bill Peduto... The tactic of browbeating outdoor diners has also been used in other cities across the country, including Washington, DC."
Of course, a Nazi is anyone to the right of Stalin

The Only Good “White Ally” Is a Dead White Ally - "It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that it’s getting harder and harder to be a “white ally” in the service of racial justice... Berry was sitting in Seattle’s Ravenna Park minding his own business when a large, “muscular” black man started beating the living crap out of him. No provocation, no reason at all. White man sitting quietly in park = “that ofay devil be needin’ a beatdown.” Berry had to be rushed to the ER... When news of the assault crept onto Twitter, Berry felt the need to stress that he just knows the attack couldn’t possibly have been racially motivated. I mean, he doesn’t “know” in the way that a scientist knows something, but he knows…in the way a psychic or tarot reader does. He told his Twitter friends: “I was attacked by a random person (probably mental illness or drugs). I’m pretty sure the quantity of pigment he has in his skin is orthogonal to the reason for the attack.” For their part, his friends lamented that the attack might be used to unfairly tar BLM and “fan the fires” of racism. One friend went so far as to say that the story should be kept out of the news, because “it was just a mugging” and “not newsworthy.”A white scientist battling cancer gets beaten half to death in a public park, and his first reaction (and the first reaction of his friends) is to be a black “ally.” We’ve reached the point where “allyship” has become the No. 1 priority of the average white American. A higher priority than family, employment, or even physical safety and well-being. The problem is, blacks don’t seem to be very interested in white allyship at the moment.Author, university lecturer, and activist “Feminista Jones” (Michelle Taylor), one of the most influential and loony-tuniest voices in the BLM cult, went on a Twitter tirade last week against white allies... Amy Biehl was the privileged blond California bimbo who traveled to South Africa in the early 1990s to help that nation’s poor oppressed blacks, who repaid the favor by brutally stabbing and stoning her to death while yelling antiwhite slogans, laughing at her agonized moans, and toyi-toying to her death rattle. Biehl’s wealthy parents traveled to Cape Town to defend their daughter’s killers, who were spared punishment as part of the postapartheid “truth and reconciliation” con game. The parents practically adopted the killers, giving them jobs and money, and kissing their asses at every turn. It was a “loving relationship,” according to Biehl’s mother, who walked one of the killers down the aisle in traditional unga-bunga garb at his wedding.Although the Biehls had no connection to South Africa prior to Amy’s murder, the parents still felt “responsible” for the plight of blacks in that country, because all whites owe all blacks everywhere and for perpetuity. The Biehls decided that the killers were owed the “right” to puree their daughter, and they’ve spent every year since doing everything they can to compensate the murderers for the pain they suffered when their knuckles were tragically bruised against Amy Biehl’s skull."

LGBTQ Activist Demands Reparations for All ‘Fat, Black’ Women - "Ashleigh Shackelford says she's owed everything from housing to free Beyoncé tickets.According to a piece on an “intersectional feminist media” website, “fat, black” women are owed reparations due to the “trauma” that comes with being one... Shackelford insists that these reparations are well-deserved, because “[t]he intellectual, emotional and actual physical labor fat Black b****** provide is actually invaluable to the entire world.”... It’s important to note that Shackleford is not just some random basement blogger. She is also the creator of an organization called Free Figure Revolution, and a respected feminist activist who speaks at a whole host of progressive conferences and events"
"Labor" = self-entitlement and bitching about everyone else

Eric July on Twitter - "Guilty white leftists are free to donate all of their wealth to me. I mean, you’re still not my ally. You’re still a fuckin loser. But I’ll take the funds."

Liberty, Free Markets, and Peace - Posts | Facebook - "Scotland votes to suspend tear gas, rubber bullet and riot shield exports to US"
"So you're reducing less lethal devices leaving guns as the only option. Brilliance"

Beverly Hills tells BLM protesters to scram; gatherings limited to 10 at night for 'tranquility' - "The wealthy stars in Beverly Hills support large Black Lives Matter protests — provided they’re held elsewhere.The city issued an ban on any gatherings over 10 people after 9 p.m. until further notice to “preserve peace and tranquility.”"

CJ Pearson on Twitter - "People are burning Atlanta to the ground - while chanting f**k Donald Trump - in a city with a Democrat mayor, a Democrat city council, and a Democrat police chief. Atlanta hasn’t had a Republican mayor since 1879. Tell me again, what Donald Trump has to do with this?"

Shaun King: 'Democrats, from top to bottom, are running the cities with the worst police brutality' - "Long-time Black Lives Matter activist Shaun King has had an epiphany of sorts: “Democrats, from top to bottom, are running the cities with the worst police brutality in America right now.”The podcaster told his 1.1 million Twitter followers on Friday that outrage over the death of George Floyd cannot be quelled by telling black Americans to vote for change."

Some protesters take issue with police kneeling, calling it 'PR stunt' - "When a high-ranking Los Angeles Police Department commander kneeled with protesters outside of Mayor Eric Garcetti's house earlier this week, it appeared to be a moment of solidarity. However, many protesters and organizers say they don't want police officers to kneel, with some calling it a "PR stunt" that doesn't contribute to the movement... "We don't want anybody to take a knee, a knee doesn't help me heal the wounds. They shot me seven times on Saturday"... The specific act of kneeling also carries a different connotation at this particular point in time, as Paula Minor, a Black Lives Matter Los Angeles organizer, pointed out. Given Floyd died with an officer's kneeling on his neck, Minor told ABC News she's "highly uncomfortable" with officers taking a knee... "What would give me hope is if they decide to give us the money, the inflated budget of the police department, and actually put it into systems that were meant to care and stop continuing the legacy of slave catching""
Of course, other activists claim if they don't kneel they're racist, so they're damned regardless
Stopping black people from being murdered = slave catching
Comments elsewhere: "Police in uniform should not be protesting for or against anything... All police departments that I know of prohibit police officers from protesting in uniform regardless of the cause or whether they are on duty. There is good reason for this. To allow police officers to protest in uniform undermines the notion of the police being neutral. If you accept the idea that society should be governed by the rule of law, then the personal opinions of police officers should not matter. People’s conduct should be governed by that which the law dictates rather than the personal preferences of law enforcement officers.You are probably correct that in this instance, the police deescalated tensions by joining in the protests. But once you allow police to protest in uniform, it is hard to draw a line of when police officer protest in union and when not."
"Military personnel can’t attend such events in uniform either.The police absolutely should make known when they think other police officers engage in illegal actions. It helps keep the system accountable. But there are a variety of ways to do that."

“Black Lives Matter Most,” Says Lauded Medical Doctor - "Dr. Brian Richardson is a urologist and chief of robotic and minimally invasive surgery at Jackson Hospital in Montgomery, Ala. He took his residency at Tulane, and he’s a member of the American Urological Association. Along with colleague Dr. Jeff Nix (a Birmingham urologic oncologist), Richardson (who is white) hatched a brilliant idea: Doctors should start wearing black scrubs because apparently blacks are such tiny-minded creatures, the mere sight of a white person wearing a black piece of clothing makes them exclaim with joy, “That look like me! Him wear me color! Him friend, him cares. Me feel proud and happy.”In normal times, such arrogant condescension would be considered racist. In 2020, it’s called “allyship.”Dr. Richardson has called on all medical professionals in America to wear black scrubs in a “show of unity” on Aug. 28, the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. Because, if I’m not mistaken, King stressed the importance of judging people by the color of their clothing. On Aug. 15, CBS News ran a breathlessly supportive piece on Dr. Richardson’s campaign, with beaming “reporter” Jessi Mitchell damn near gettin’ the vapors in her swooning endorsement of #BlackScrubsForBlackLives. Indeed, on her Instagram and Facebook pages, Mitchell straight-out bragged that she was not just a reporter but a collaborator on the campaign (but of course “reporters don’t take sides”)... Richardson used his CBS platform to proclaim that “black lives matter most.” Speaking of the “healthcare disparity” between black and white Americans, Dr. Richardson boldly declared, “Yes, black lives matter most right now” (emphasis his)... It’s ironic that Richardson’s “wear black for blacks” event is on the MLK speech anniversary. Dr. King’s friend, civil rights activist Michael Aaron Robinson (a North Carolina rabbi), would always tell the story of how his father, an Asheville physician, incurred the wrath of his fellow doctors because he refused to prioritize white patients over black ones. That’s the way it was in the Old South—white lives mattered most. And here we are in the “New South,” where an Alabama doctor trying to appropriate King’s message goes on national TV to say “black lives matter most.”... I’ll end with more words from Dr. Richardson. Older words, from before he hatched his “black scrubs” campaign. Before he discovered that prioritizing black lives could land you a fawning puff piece on a national network. Before all that, he wrote a lengthy post on his Facebook page detailing the real reason for the healthcare disparities in his state.Is it racism? Nope."
Strange, we are told that Black Lives Matter doesn't mean other lives don't matter as much

VIDEO: Leftist militants harass DC restaurant patrons who refuse to raise their fists - "a crowd of militants descend upon a lone woman seated on a sidewalk in front of what appears to be an eatery of some sort, lean across her table, and scream just inches from her face, "White silence is violence! White silence is violence!" Later they chant, "No justice, no peace!"  Fists are raised skyward all around her; but she does not comply."

David Cole on Twitter - "Rioters destroyed the Dilophosaurus statue outside the #Kenosha Dinosaur Discovery Museum last night. While not a slave-owning dinosaur, the Dilophosaurus, with a brain the size of a walnut, DOES routinely score higher on SATs than the average BLM thug. So I get the resentment."

ZUBY: on Twitter - "As far as I can tell, the 'Black Lives Matter' movement has resulted in more black deaths, increased crime in minority communities, and loss of livelihoods in places affected by riots and looting.It's also made race relations worse.Tell me what positives justify this damage. I can see how it's benefited white liberals, lefty politicians, celebrities, and massive corporations... But I'm asking how it's helped black people. I don't care about emotions and feelings of 'righteousness' either. What are the tangibles? Where is all that money going?"

Here's why police don't shoot to wound in the case of deadly force - "Why not “shoot to wound” instead?For a couple of reasons: First, shooting to wound someone may not stop the threat. If a person is shot in the leg, the threat may still exist as a suspect could still use his or her hands to fire a gun or stab with a knife.Second, and most importantly, it takes a skilled marksman to hit someone exactly in the arm or leg, and, most officers are not skilled marskmen. In fact, outside of an old-fashioned TV Western, few people can make that shot, no matter the training.Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Institute, explained in a position paper for the Institute the physics involved in the notion of training officers – who are often running after suspects – to "shoot to wound.""Hands and arms can be the fastest-moving body parts,” Lewinski said. “For example, an average suspect can move his hand and forearm across his body to a 90-degree angle in 12/100 of a second. He can move his hand from his hip to shoulder height in 18/100 of a second."The average officer pulling the trigger as fast as he can on a Glock, one of the fastest- cycling semi-autos, requires 1/4 second to discharge each round."There is no way an officer can react, track, shoot and reliably hit a threatening suspect's forearm or a weapon in a suspect's hand in the time spans involved.”David Klinger, a professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, put it another way speaking to ABC News -- with officers trying to stop a threat to their life or the lives of others, "Why would we want to injure or maim people?" he said. "It doesn't stop them.""

Adam Kotsko on Twitter - "The Constitution is racist. This is not to say that every aspect of the Constitution was motivated by racism or that aspects of it could not operate in non-racist ways in a non-racist system. But the design and effect of the Constitution, in all its iterations, has been racist."
"A, for years: "the Constitution is racist!"
A, a week ago: "help! muh constitution provides me rights!"" - Jul 22 2020 post by someone else

Occupy Democrats Logic - Posts | Facebook - "Communists a week ago: "The last capitalist we hang shall be the one that sold us the rope!"
Communists now: "The capitalists arent protecting us from the feds!!!""

A Bird Named for a Confederate General Sparks Calls for Change - "McCown’s longspur, a bird that lives in the Great Plains and looks a bit like a sparrow. It was named after John Porter McCown, who was involved in forcible relocations of Native Americans during the 1840s, and who left the United States Army to serve as a Confederate general during the Civil War. By memorializing someone who fought to defend slavery, the longspur’s name, some birders and scientists say, adds further barriers to inclusion in the world of bird researchers and enthusiasts — an overwhelmingly White community where people of color have repeatedly reported feeling ignored, excluded, and even deeply unsafe."
Time to start renaming every species. How many grievance mongers - or even bird researchers and enthusiasts - knew about this before it was dug up?
"every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered"

Meme - "A BLM LEADERSHIP MEETING WHERE THE GIRLS ARE GUYS AND THE GUYS ARE GIRLS AND NOOOOO BLACK PEOPLE!"

DOMINIC SANDBROOK: Baying mobs and vandals no better than Chairman Mao's 'cultural' wreckers - "Everywhere you turn, there are relics of the past, symbols of the ancient wickedness. All must be brought down, if society is to be re-made.So began the Cultural Revolution, the terrible, blood-stained period in the late 1960s, when mobs of self-appointed ‘Red Guards’ rampaged across China.For ten years, Chairman Mao’s followers burned books, tore down statues and murdered millions loyal to the ‘Four Olds’ — old ideas, culture, customs and habits. It was so traumatic that even now Chinese news outlets are banned from discussing it.The thought of such scenes erupting here in Britain would have seemed utterly fantastical — until this weekend.But this is what happened in Bristol on Sunday, when a screaming mob toppled a statue of the slave trader and philanthropist Edward Colston. That was merely the beginning... As a historian, I have always been opposed to the campaigns to tear down our statues, which stand as everyday reminders of the layered complexity of our national past.I have written on these pages about Cecil Rhodes, and how none of the men and women memorialised in stone was morally perfect. And in any case, moral perfection is an ideal, not a reality... We inherited our statues from our predecessors. And one of the reasons to study history, to me, is to understand that people in the past were different from us. Not better. Not worse.   Just different, with attitudes and values that often challenge our lovingly polished principles.  So instead of arrogantly smashing our historical inheritance, we could perhaps show a bit of humility, and use it as an opportunity to learn. I realise, of course, in today’s climate of feverish intolerance, any talk of learning from the past is tantamount to pulling on a Ku Klux Klan hood and venturing out to burn crosses. Yesterday, for example, the high priest of self-satisfied sanctimony, the LBC radio presenter James O’Brien, issued a stern ruling.‘How you feel about that [Colston] statue is how you feel about slavery,’ he declared on Twitter. ‘Don’t let anyone pretend otherwise.’... I loathe the idea of the likes of O’Brien roaming our town centres to tear down images of people whose views they consider ‘inappropriate’, to use one of the cant words of our age.Who are they to decide what statues can and can’t remain? Is every mob with a grievance allowed to tear down images it finds objectionable?Would it be all right for a crowd to demolish the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Parliament Square, on the grounds that he once said the typical African was ‘only one degree removed from the animal’?... At the root of this campaign is a colossal fantasy about human nature, an infantile belief in pristine moral innocence. Most sane adults know that all great men and women had flaws, just as all nations have their guilty secrets.Yet these hard-Left campaigners believe that by tearing down the relics of the past, they can wipe the slate clean and start again. They are like medieval fanatics who thought if they banished every trace of worldly sin, they would be able to build heaven on earth. In this respect, the activists stand in a long, strident, blood-soaked tradition. They are heirs to the Jacobins in the French Revolution, who tore down all symbols of their monarchy, renamed their months, introduced decimal weeks and rebooted the entire calendar, with 1792 becoming Year I.We all know how that experiment ended: with the guillotine, the Reign of Terror, the rise of Napoleon and slaughter of millions. Yet the urge to smash and burn, to demolish the corrupt past so a perfect future can rise from the ruins, has never gone away.This was the rationale behind the cruelties of the Russian Revolution and the hysteria of China’s Cultural Revolution. And in its most extreme example in the 1970s, it was the justification for the horrors of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge... I don’t want to live in a country where mobs rampage through the streets, tearing down anything that ‘offends’ them. I don’t want to live in a country where the police stand idly by while crowds hurl statues into the river.I don’t want to live in a country where vandalism and violence are perfectly justifiable, as long as they’re in the service of the latest fashionable cause.And I don’t want to live in a country that treats its history as an opportunity for juvenile, narcissistic posturing, and turns its ancestors into caricatured villains.And I’m prepared to bet that you don’t, either."

DOMINIC SANDBROOK: Oriel college scholars who died to defeat Hitler would be appalled by today's mob - "Most of the young men who went off to fight in 1939 were deeply, quietly patriotic. They knew Britain was not perfect. But they loved it nonetheless, and were intensely proud of its history and culture.They would have been horrified at the thought that 81 years later, mobs of their successors would be touring the country, intent on demolishing the statues of Britain’s greatest — if, of course, flawed — heroes.They would have been appalled by the idea that in the future, students and academics would try to silence alternative opinions.They would have laughed in disbelief at the idea that young activists would demand the toppling of Churchill, the cancellation of William Gladstone, the demolition of Sir Francis Drake, Sir Robert Peel and Admiral Lord Nelson. And what they would surely find most unimaginable would be the idea that in the face of this infantile, hysterical nonsense, the Oxford authorities would limply roll over, promising to tear down the statue of Oriel’s greatest benefactor merely to appease the mob outside.In the past few days, the contrast between the generations has been almost too excruciating to contemplate.Today’s young activists never miss an opportunity to congratulate themselves on their unprecedented moral self-righteousness.But there is nothing brave about posturing in the street during a pandemic. Nor is there anything idealistic about haranguing journalists — a mob of activists tried to intimidate the columnist Peter Hitchens in Oxford earlier this week — who might happen to disagree with their cause.By contrast, the wartime generation were genuinely brave. They were stoical and resilient, modest and self-effacing.Contrary to myth, they were not afraid to show their feelings. But they never believed their feelings were paramount, and refused to luxuriate in victimhood and self-pity. How many times have you heard a World War II veteran insist he was not especially heroic and was just ‘doing his bit’?... What a contrast with other news from Oxford this week! For it turns out dozens of students are suffering ‘traumatic effects’ after the killing of George Floyd, a black man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis this month...  they never miss an opportunity to dismiss white, working-class Britons as unenlightened racists, and to sneer at people they regard as their moral inferiors.Nothing captures that better than the story of Ntokozo Qwabe, the South African-born Rhodes Scholar who founded Oxford’s Rhodes Must Fall movement five years ago.On his Facebook page, he bragged that when he was served by a white waitress, he took pleasure in telling her he would only give her a tip ‘when you return the land’. The waitress, he wrote, started shaking and burst ‘into typical white tears’. In other words, a hugely privileged Rhodes Scholar took great delight in taunting and humiliating a poorly paid young woman so he could flaunt his supposedly progressive principles. How’s that for snobbery? And then, perhaps most depressingly of all, there is the issue of free speech. The young men on that Oriel memorial were fighting for freedom... According to The Guardian, a newspaper that once gave full-throated support to the slave-owning Confederacy and bitterly opposed the anti-slavery president Abraham Lincoln, the attack on free speech in our universities is merely a ‘Right-wing myth’.But this is simply not true.In the past few weeks alone, three academics have told me that they no longer teach Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad or Philip Larkin — three of the greatest writers who ever lived — for fear of being accused of racism. Is this really what the young men of Oxford fought for, all those years ago?... Thanks to the corrosive effects of social media, the culture of narcissism seems unlikely to disappear. Young people are told, again and again, that they are special, they are different and they are victims.They live in a world in which free speech is routinely dismissed by the supposedly progressive Left, and in which they are insulated from challenging views or competing values.And depressingly, nobody has the courage to stand up to them.Oxford, my own alma mater, has a truly shameful record of pandering to its most radical students, from the toppling of Cecil Rhodes to this week’s pathetic promise to ‘decolonise’ its maths and science degrees to make them more ‘inclusive and diverse’.If even senior professors are too spineless to stand up for scholarship, standards and our own history, then what hope do we have?"

Black Lives Matter Chicago Organizer Defends Looting: 'That's Reparations' - "Lightfoot called for those arrested amid the unrest to be held accountable and said resources were being deployed and measures taken to protect Chicago's neighborhoods. In a statement, Black Lives Matter Chicago condemned Lightfoot for reserving her criticism for looters and not for the officers who shot a Black man."The mayor clearly has not learned anything since May, and she would be wise to understand that the people will keep rising up until the CPD is abolished and our Black communities are fully invested in," it said, referring to the unrest in the city that broke out in the wake of George Floyd's death in Minneapolis."
BLM justifying/encouraging/excusing/threatening looting

Black Lives Matter Linked to 91% of Riots Over Three Months - "Some Black Lives Matter leaders have declined to condemn rioting and looting... Black Lives Matter New York leader Hawk Newsome downplayed rioting in an April interview with Fox News. “I think that it is a tool of white supremacy to say if you want freedom, then you get it by protesting peacefully,” he said."

thebradfordfile™ on Twitter - "Name one black neighborhood in America that BLM has cleaned up, built new housing, or funded a new school for disadvantaged black children. You can't."

Rant: This ABE LINCOLN statue outside SF City Hall was vandalized with blood red paint. Why? Because the modern left won't be satisfied until America's foundations are destroyed completely. - "Why would a lefty prance onto the property of the San Francisco City Hall to desecrate a statue of the president who freed the slaves and got murdered for it?Because of "role in the genocide of Native American peoples""

Statue of Lincoln freeing slave taken down in Boston after pressure from 'anti-racism' activists - "A Boston statue of a freed slave kneeling before Abraham Lincoln, who signed the Emancipation Proclamation officially ending slavery in most of the United States, has been removed... Others have opposed tearing down the statue, arguing that those who see it as depicting a servile black man before Abraham Lincoln are misinterpreting it."I understand there's a big campaign trying to raise money to either take it down or mend it, and I say 'no,'" said Marcia Cole, who works for an auxiliary organization of the African American Civil War Museum. "People tend to think of that figure as being servile but on second look you will see something different, perhaps. That man is not kneeling on two knees with his head bowed. He is in the act of getting up. And his head is up, not bowed, because he's looking forward to a future of freedom."The Emancipation Group, the name of the statue, was a replica of a statue depicting the same scene in Washington DC, which was paid for by freed slaves... The decision to remove the statue was made through a unanimous vote by the Boston Art Commission. Its removal was also endorsed by Boston Mayor Marty Walsh... The statue is one of many historical monuments in the United States to be torn down in the past six months.It is also not the first statue of Lincoln to come down either, with activists Portland, Oregon having torn down a statue dedicated to the emancipator. A statue of Abraham Lincoln was also defaced in San Francisco as a local school named after him is being considered for renaming."
First, they came for the Confederate Generals...

NYC branded an 'anarchist jurisdiction,' targeted for defunding: DOJ - "New York City was among three cities labeled “anarchist jurisdictions” by the Justice Department on Sunday and targeted to lose federal money for failing to control protesters and defunding cops...   “When state and local leaders impede their own law enforcement officers and agencies from doing their jobs, it endangers innocent citizens who deserve to be protected, including those who are trying to peacefully assemble and protest”... The “anarchist’’ designations come after President Trump earlier this month issued a memo ordering financial retribution against cities that have been slashing their police budgets during crime waves, or tolerating violent protests sparked by the May killing of George Floyd by Minnesota police. At the time, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo infamously reacted by warning Trump he should watch his step in the state.  “He better have an army if he thinks he’s gonna walk down the street in New York,” the Democratic governor said. “He can’t have enough bodyguards to walk through New York City, people don’t want to have anything to do with him.” New York City made the Justice Department’s list in part because its city council approved a budget in July that cut $1 billion from the NYPD’s $6 billion annual budget — even as murders and shootings in Gotham soared.In July, the number of shootings in New York City skyrocketed 177 percent over the same period last year, and there was a 59 percent rise in murders. In August, city shootings soared 165 percent, while murders jumped about 50 percent.The Justice Department said it also considered the fact that at least some of the city’s district attorneys have declined to prosecute people arrested for disorderly conduct and unlawful assembly during recent protests...   White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said at a recent press briefing that the federal defunding of cities is legal, pointing to a 1987 US Supreme Court decision, South Dakota v. Dole, involving the establishment of a national drinking age of 21.  Trump has said he is making “law and order” a centerpiece of his re-election campaign.  “My Administration will not allow Federal tax dollars to fund cities that allow themselves to deteriorate into lawless zones”"
Of course this doesn't count as inciting violence, according to liberals

It’s now a crime to share an offensive meme - "The latest victim of our censorious state is a police officer who shared a meme about the death of George Floyd in a WhatsApp group. Sergeant Geraint Jones of Devon and Cornwall Police is alleged to have sent a photoshopped image of Floyd’s arrest to coworkers. A member of the WhatsApp group reported the meme to the Independent Office for Police Conduct, and the case was then referred to the Crown Prosecution Service. The CPS has now charged Jones under the 2003 Communications Act, which makes it illegal to send a message of a ‘grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character’. In essence, the Communications Act criminalises offensive jokes sent via direct messages or posted on social media.The police have been cracking down hard on offensive humour in recent years. Last year, two British teenagers were arrested for posting an image on Snapchat, in which they jokingly re-enacted Floyd’s death. In Scotland, a man was convicted in 2018 of being ‘grossly offensive’ over a joke video in which he taught his pet pug to do a Nazi salute."

Black Lives Matter Chapter Co-Founder Called White People 'Defects' - "A Black Lives Matter chapter co-founder once referred to white people as “recessive genetic defects” and mulled over how they could be “wiped out” in Facebook post written in 2015.Yusra Khogali, who once dubbed Liberal Justin Trudeau “a white supremacist terrorist,” has been repeatedly scrutinized for her anti-white views as her Toronto Black Lives Matter chapter gained increasing popularity... In 2016, she wrote a now-deleted anti-white tweet that sparked a social media firestorm. She wrote: “Plz Allah give me strength to not cuss/kill these men and white folks out here today.”"

‘Golden Girls’ episode pulled from Hulu over blackface concerns - "Golden Girls had one episode in 1988 where lead actors Betty White and the late Rue McClanahan can be seen wearing mud masks... The result? Widespread criticism towards Hulu from angered fans — some of whom claimed the move was “insulting” towards Black people, as they “know the difference” between blackface and mud masks... “Perfect example of white guilt knee-jerking into reactionary performative allyship,” wrote one Twitter user in response to the news. “This isn’t even blackface.“No Black person in America is offended by the joke in this episode.”"

This has become a neo-Maoist war on the past - "Even Abraham Lincoln, who fought a war to end slavery, did not escape the mob’s grafitti. Well, he’s a white man, thus evil. In Leeds, the statue of Queen Victoria was defaced, including with the spraying of pink paint on her breasts and crotch, bringing to mind the extra element of sexual humiliation – hair-cutting, the confiscation of clothes – that China’s Red Guards would visit upon women who dared to possess incorrect thoughts.The fervour for erasure is not limited to statues. Incorrect art and entertainment is expunged, too. Yesterday the BBC and Netflix cast into the memory hole old episodes of Little Britain because they feature white actors occasionally dressing up as black people. Leigh Francis (aka Keith Lemon) tried to placate the Woke Guards by issuing an emotional apology for his past mimicking of famous black people. Aussie comic Chris Lilley, who has also played non-white characters, will be next. His ‘massively outdated comedies’ must be razed too, says one compliant cheerleader of the new Cultural Revolution. They won’t stop there. History is full of film, literature and entertainment with questionable depictions. Light the matches. Indeed, Gone with the Wind has already been taken down by HBO Max because of its depiction of black people. What will be next? Of course, it is never only artifacts and art. Cultural Revolutions are fundamentally crusades against living people and their foul, incorrect thoughts. It is hard to keep up with the list (black list) of people cancelled by the Woke Guards over the past week’s orgy of moralism masquerading as anti-racism. In the UK, a radio presenter was suspended for daring to question the orthodoxy of ‘white privilege’. A Welsh journalist was dumped as a judge from a literary competition for criticising Black Lives Matter. In the US, the list of the cancelled grows longer every day. It includes senior editors at the New York Times and the Philadelphia Inquirer, found guilty in the new Cultural Revolution’s kangaroo court of publishing incorrect thoughts. The British wing of this deranged crusade against wrongthink has blood in its nostrils now. It will likewise seek to cleanse the media of thoughtcriminals. Already it is going after Melanie Phillips and Nick Ferrari, fine journalists whose only offence is to have made utterances that displeased the cancel-hungry mob of neo-Maoists. The similarities with the Cultural Revolution are striking... Wrong ideas were the main target in the first Cultural Revolution. Books were burned, overly ‘Westernised’ teachers were humiliated, mass re-education took place. It was a frenzied war against the ‘Four Olds’ – old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits. Today’s intolerant crusade pursues the same quarry. Although it also rages against the Not-So-Old – even TV shows from a few years ago can be erased by the new moral cleansers of public life. And as in the original Cultural Revolution, in Britain there is already fear among the political elites who for the past week have flattered and fawned over the neo-Maoist crusaders that perhaps they are starting to go too far. Liverpool University, in response to a group of students, has agreed to erase the name of William Gladstone, the 19th-century Liberal prime minister, from its halls of residence on the basis that his father was involved in slavery. The sins of the father… Gladstone, of course, was one of Britain’s most important historical leaders. He left a lasting legacy, including via the Third Reform Act (1884) that expanded the vote to more men. By promoting the idea of Home Rule for Ireland, he helped to set in motion the journey towards Irish independence... This is why London mayor Sadiq Khan is making such a colossal error by cynically trying to institutionalise the intolerant war on the past and on offensive artifacts. He has set up a commission to review London’s statues, street names, building names and plaques, with an eye for erasing those linked to slavery or racism. This Stalinist commission aspires to nothing less than the overhaul of London’s streets and monuments to the satisfaction of noisy woke crusaders. And already some are asking if Khan will topple the newly erected statue of Millicent Fawcett in Parliament Square on the basis that she held some questionable views. Everyone in history did. In institutionalising the middle-class mob’s appetite for destroying all things ‘problematic’, Khan is cultivating a climate of historical and political intolerance that could have far-reaching destructive consequences.How did this happen so fast? How did protests over the police killing of a black man in Minneapolis become a PC war on statues, street names, art and people judged to be suffering from wrongthink? Partly, it speaks to the colonisation of public life by the narrow, eccentric concerns of the over-educated middle classes and ostensibly progressive bourgeoisie. That millions of people, white and black, are losing their jobs as a result of the lockdown and yet left-wing debate is dominated by the question of which 200-year-old statue to tear down next is testament to the left’s replacement of class and economic questions by virtue-signalling and an obsession with woke propriety.More fundamentally, this is all a continuation of what had already been happening. We live in an era of intolerance and unreason. From higher education to the political sphere, from the new media to activist circles, PC censoriousness is rampant. New orthodoxies emerge with extraordinary speed and are enforced with rigour. Say the wrong thing on gender or race and you’re out. Question the gospel of genderfluidity, wonder out loud if ‘white privilege’ is really a thing, deny the truth of the End of Days foretold by climate change – you do all these things at your peril. What we are witnessing right now is something that is actually disgustingly cynical: the exploitation of the anger over George Floyd’s death to bolster the zealous crusade to institutionalise PC orthodoxies that would have been as alien to Floyd as they are to most normal people.Let’s call it what it is. It’s re-education"

The New York Times - Posts | Facebook - "The police in Martinez, California, said that they were seeking 2 white people who were seen vandalizing a Black Lives Matter mural less than an hour after it was painted in front of a courthouse."
Comments: "I think if BLM can pull down statues, vandalize and graffiti on private and public property other people have the right rip down and paint over all of it."
"Police? It’s dangerous to call the police. This looks like a job for some social workers, right? It’s a non violent crime. Plus, I thought vandalizing was encouraged nowadays."

Black Lives Matter's Silence on a Champion of Racial Equality - "Today’s racial-grievance opportunists portray blacks as impotent victims, unable to move forward or upward under the weight of a legacy of slavery and the all-purpose villain of institutional racism.  In their agenda, equality of opportunity makes no difference. Instead, their proclaimed goal is to demand equality of outcome by monetizing the suffering of their ancestors as reparations—checks that would be handed to them... In contrast with today’s racial justice vigilantes, King did not advocate lowering the bar for standards of behavior and ethical values among those he represented. The most aspirational element of his famous Dream was that his children would one day be judged by the content of their character. The history of the black community is replete with evidence that, even against the greatest odds and oppression, moral qualities of personal responsibility, determination, integrity, and mutual assistance were sufficient to empower men and women to achieve success... In the first 50 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, black Americans had accumulated a personal wealth of $700 million... In an era of legalized discrimination, the marriage rate in the black community was higher than it was in the white community despite times of economic deprivation and racism. In 1925 in New York City, 85% of black families had a man and woman raising children. In stark contrast, the current rate of births to unwed mothers is above 75%.  Today, young black men who take responsibility to raise and nurture their children significantly increase those children’s chances for academic success and educational attainment and decrease the likelihood that they will drop out of school, spend time in prison, or engage in destructive or self-destructive behavior"

James Lindsay - Posts | Facebook - "Police officers in Missouri now required to take de-escalation, implicit bias training."
"Now mandatory for Missouri police, a one-hour training in a known pseudoscientific and fraudulent concept used to make an ideological indoctrination easier."

LMPD officers say they’re being told to stand down during protests - "Louisville Metro Police Officers say they are being given orders to stand down during protests by Mayor Greg Fischer, endangering lives and allowing for the destruction of property... One ranking officer who spoke anonymously, and some members of Metro Council, said Fischer’s office is more concerned about how the police response to violent protesters is going to look in the media than he is about people’s safety... Monday afternoon saw bricks being thrown at protesters, a cinder block thrown at a WLKY news crew’s vehicle, a truck driver stopped by protesters who attempted to pull him out of his vehicle, a confrontation between protesters and a pregnant woman trying to drive downtown and another confrontation between a sheriff’s deputy and protesters who surrounded his vehicle.Since the protests began, there have been numerous gunshots fired at officers as well."The evil-doers are continuing to do what they want because they know there are no repercussions," Rodman said. "Citizens of Louisville, you should not live in fear. But unfortunately, that's the condition our city is in.""
Of course, with the election over the police can be told to do their job again

Facebook - "I didn't vote in 2016. By that point, I had long been disenchanted with the Democratic Party mainly because I realized that they were betraying their own alleged values, particularly around issues of race. But I could not see myself voting for Donald Trump, either, so I didn't.The Democrats, however, are not very friendly toward the Jewish state and, thus, toward the Jewish people. They honestly tend to believe that Israel is a racist, imperialist, militaristic, apartheid, colonialist, very bad, racist state. They even believe, following Barack Obama, that they get to tell Jewish people where we may, or may not, be allowed to live on the very land of Jewish heritage... I was filled with foreboding. I was afraid for the country. I was not, however, afraid of Donald Trump. I was afraid at how my friends here in the San Francisco Bay Area might react and many of them did not disappoint. The hatred toward our new President was absolutely palpable! I never saw such political hatred. Even Richard Nixon, despite the Vietnam War, did not receive this much raw public malice.As the weeks progressed I kept expecting the hatred to ease, but it didn't. Months of hatred turned into years of hatred. Friends broke up and families divided, even as the economy thrived and black unemployment reached an all-time low.And, now, here we are again and the hatred has done nothing but increase as the progressive-left BLM/Antifa thugs - with the tacit support of the Democratic Party and the progressive-left -- terrorize the streets of Portland and Seattle and Minneapolis and Chicago and New York... defacing synagogues and attacking cops."

A Black man shot by West Sacramento police was a former employee
Comment (elsewhere): "They mention that he's a black man 3 times in the first 5 paragraphs (including the headline). Its the most prominent detail in the article. Clearly the author felt is was the most important fact of the story.It's not until the 2nd to last paragraph that they disclose that he got out of his car armed with a handgun and a "shooting ensued".Just a clear case of stirring shit up. Who knows if the shooting was justified, but a far more legitimate headline would be "armed man with a history of mental illness fatally shot by officers, investigation pending"."

CNN on Twitter - "Police have charged a 25-year-old man with first-degree murder after they say he shot and killed a 5-year-old boy last week in Wilson, North Carolina"
Reply: "Odd how they don't mention race when its black on white crime"
Race is only relevant when it supports the narrative

captain autism | sadposting on Twitter - "Anyone saying "25-year-old black man" is a racist. The colour of the accused murderer's skin is irrelevant. I condemn this cowardly crime but how dare you use it to inflame racial tensions?
"You're right, it doesn't matter, but CNN seems to think it does."
CNN: "Amy Cooper, the White woman who was caught on video accusing a Black bird watcher in New York's Central Park of threatening her & her dog, now faces a charge of falsely reporting an incident in the third degree, according to the Manhattan district attorney"
CNN: "CNN reporter Omar Jimenez, who is black and Latino, and his team were arrested by officers early this morning in Minneapolis. Not far away, CNN journalist Josh Campbell, who is white, says he was "treated much differently.""
CNN: "A White hotel employee called the police on a guest, a Black woman and her children, who were using the hotel's swimming pool"
CNN: "Police are looking for two White people who painted over a Black Lives Matter mural"

Meme - "When it's more illegal to go to school and church than it is to loot and riot"

BET Founder says 'black people laugh at white people' toppling statues - "BET founder Robert Johnson during a Wednesday interview with Fox News described people toppling statues as "borderline anarchists" and pushed back against the idea that black people support such behavior, suggesting instead that they "laugh" at those who knock down the statues."You know black people, in my opinion, black people laugh at white people who do this, the same way we laugh at white people who say we got to take off the TV shows," he said mentioning the "Dukes of Hazard," a decades-old television program that has come under fire for featuring a car emblazoned with a Confederate flag graphic.He pointed out that knocking over a statue will not "close the wealth gap," "give a kid whose parent's can't afford a college money to go to college," "close the labor gap between what white workers are paid and what black workers are paid" or "take people off welfare or food stamps."Johnson said that whites who seek to "assuage guilt by doing things that make them feel good" would be much more reluctant to support payments for blacks. Referring to actions such as "changing names, toppling statues, [and] firing professors because they said all lives matter," Johnson explained that "it just shows to me that white America is continually ... incapable of recognizing that black people have their own ideas and thought about what's in their best interests."He suggested that black people should be consulted before people take actions like tearing down statues or firing someone for a comment they have made."Give us the belief that you respect our opinion. You go out and do something and destroy something, fire somebody because you think it hurts us. Why don't you ask us first if it hurts us before you go and say 'Oh, I gotta do something for the negroes to make them feel better.' Well ask us if we want you to do that to make us feel better," he said. Johnson likened white people's actions attempting to make black people "feel good" to "rearranging the deck chairs on a racial Titanic. It absolutely means nothing""

Young white workers earn LESS money per hour than any other ethnicity of the same age - "The analysis shows that the ethnicity pay gap has vanished for those who began their careers over the past 15 years.The gap had been a major target for activists during a summer dominated by Black Lives Matter campaigning. Yet ethnic minority workers under the age of 30 now earn on average 5.5 per cent more than workers classed as white British. The findings from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) – based on large-scale surveys collected since 2012 – also show that women from ethnic minority groups typically earn more than white British women."
Damn racism!

Proud Mayor Lets His Entire City Burn To The Ground Just To Make Trump Look Bad | The Babylon Bee

Projection 100 - "If black people feel tense around white people, that is proof white people are racist and we need to riot. If white people feel tense around black people, that is proof white people are racist and we need to riot."

Skyrocketing demolition costs for riot-damaged Minneapolis, St. Paul properties delay rebuilding - "One day after rioters destroyed the Sports Dome retail complex in St. Paul, a construction crew hired by the city knocked the building down because it was dangerously unstable.Then the city presented the property owners with a $140,000 bill for what it would cost to haul away the debris.“We were really upset about that,” said property owner Jay Kim, whose insurance policy covers a maximum of $25,000 in demolition costs. “We thought that was high. But we didn’t know how much demolition would cost at the time.”Like dozens of other investors whose properties were severely damaged in the May riots, the Kim family was stunned to discover that the money it would collect from its insurance company for demolition won’t come close to the actual costs of doing the job. Most policies limit reimbursement to $25,000 to $50,000, but contractors have been submitting bids of $200,000 to $300,000. In many cases, the price of the work is not much lower than the actual value of the property... Contractors acknowledge that prices for riot-related work are far higher than usual, but they said that is because government regulations require them to treat all debris from a burned-out building as hazardous. Industry veteran Don Rachel said those rules can double demolition costs.“We aren’t taking advantage of anybody,” said Rachel, CEO of Rachel Contracting, one of the largest demolition contractors in the state. “Some people might have sticker shock, but how do they know? Most of these folks have never had to wreck a building.”Demolition costs are so high that many rebuilding projects remain stuck in neutral, leaving large sections of Minneapolis and St. Paul with scorched buildings and piles of rubble that will linger for months."
Damn racism!
"Mostly peaceful" protests cost $500 million. Hate to see what violent ones would

Rioter freed twice by Kamala Harris-supported bail fund arrested again - "Thomas Moseley, 29, is facing three new charges related to drug possession, weapon possession in a courthouse, and rioting with a weapon... The MFF has been heavily criticized for bailing out criminals from jail, including an alleged murderer, alleged attempted murderer, alleged child rapist, six alleged domestic abusers, and a twice-convicted sex offender."

Former Home Secretary DAVID BLUNKETT: Why I am so uneasy about police 'taking the knee' - "I am concerned that the gesture of kneeling, though prompted by the best instincts, might give the perception of undermining the role of the police in such situations.They are there to ensure a safe demonstration, not to make political statements.Though many have commended the officers’ actions, many others, of all creeds and colours, may have been left deeply uneasy at the sight of police kneeling before a protesting crowd.If they attend rallies in their own time, I would have no problem with police making symbolic gestures of solidarity with anti-racists.But it is a different matter when they don their uniform... It is, I believe, dangerous for British police officers to appear to take sides on such a divisive issue.It would be more dangerous still if a British officer felt obliged to kneel in front of a baying crowd, when to do so might not be physically safe.And it would be deeply unjust if any police officer were pilloried and condemned as ‘racist’ for refusing to kneel, whatever the reason... The minority of British protesters who engaged in violence this week can have done nothing but exacerbate the very forces the anti-racists oppose...  I was disturbed to hear an angry black comedian talking on the radio this week about ‘my people’.I won’t name him, because I don’t want to stir up personal arguments — and I have no doubt he was earnest in his intention.But what a provocative and divisive phrase.We should not ignore it, let alone endorse it — because imagine what damage could be done by a white extremist rabble-rouser using the same phrase. Whatever your skin colour happens to be (and I must say, as a blind man, that it seems particularly irrelevant to me) you help no one by talking about ‘my people’.Most of all, the police must be above all these divisions, protecting minorities, yet favouring no one.That is why, above all, their training today emphasises their professional role.Their only loyalty should be to justice itself."

CANADABALL - Posts | Facebook - "Far-left people be like “Looting is the voice of the unheard”
That’s a funny way to say “Storefront-owning immigrant families have become the new face of success in America and I resent them so much that I think I’m entitled to their hard-earned money”"

Watch: MSNBC News Crew Attacked By Protesters with Roman Candles - "MSNBC reporter Jo Ling Kent and her camera crew were attacked by rioters with Roman candles in Seattle.This woman works at the same network who said, "This is mostly a protest. It is not, generally speaking, unruly.""

Ngozi Fulani: 'Black women don't want to risk their abusers being murdered' - "“Women want the abuse to stop but we know what happens to black men in police custody,” she says. “These women do not want to risk their abusers being hurt or murdered.”In the Rastafarian community, in particular, to which Fulani belongs in east London, law enforcers have a mountain to climb to win respect and confidence, she claims.“It is a dishonour to go to ‘Babylon’ [the police] and report your partner to a system that is destroying us. We cannot say every police officer is bad but history shows our experiences are mainly negative and dangerous.” A recent poll found eight out of 10 of all black Britons – not just black men – fear the police are biased against them. Black women fear they too will face racial stereotypes, their complaints may be dismissed and ultimately they will be failed as victims."
The real harms that come from propagating a false narrative
Is it racist if someone finds that black men are more likely to be domestic abusers than white men?

2Pac – Only God Can Judge Me Lyrics - "I've been trapped since birth, cautious ‘cause I'm cursed
And fantasies of my family in a hearse
And they say it's the White man I should fear
But it's my own kind doin' all the killin' here"

The Reverse Racism Effect: Are Cops More Hesitant to Shoot Black Than White Suspects? - "despite clear evidence of implicit bias against Black suspects, officers were slower to shoot armed Black suspects than armed White suspects, and they were less likely to shoot unarmed Black suspects than unarmed White suspects. These findings challenge the assumption that implicit racial bias affects police behavior in deadly encounters with Black suspects."
Once again the implicit association test is crap. And once again the claim that police are racist againt blacks is contradicted (indeed here the reverse is found)

Is There Evidence of Racial Disparity in Police Use of Deadly Force? Analyses of Officer-Involved Fatal Shootings in 2015–2016 - "When adjusting for crime, we find no systematic evidence of anti-Black disparities in fatal shootings, fatal shootings of unarmed citizens, or fatal shootings involving misidentification of harmless objects. Multiverse analyses showed only one significant anti-Black disparity of 144 possible tests. Exposure to police given crime rate differences likely accounts for the higher per capita rate of fatal police shootings for Blacks, at least when analyzing all shootings"

An Empirical Analysis of Racial Differences in Police Use of Force | Roland G. Fryer, Jr. - "On non-lethal uses of force, blacks and Hispanics are more than fifty percent more likely to experience some form of force in interactions with police. Adding controls that account for important context and civilian behavior reduces, but cannot fully explain, these disparities. On the most extreme use of force –officer-involved shootings – we find no racial differences in either the raw data or when contextual factors are taken into account. We argue that the patterns in the data are consistent with a model in which police officers are utility maximizers, a fraction of which have a preference for discrimination, who incur relatively high expected costs of officer-involved shootings."

Is this the maddest target of woke censorship yet? - "Woke censorship has now come for rugby. The Rugby Football Union (RFU) is reviewing the use of the song ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’ by fans in an apparent concession to the Black Lives Matter movement... What a bizarre world we live in when banning a song steeped in black culture is deemed to be an act of anti-racism. Indeed, as Trevor Phillips points out, the last attempt to ban the song was in Nazi Germany in 1939... Anyone who thought the current campaign of woke censorship would be limited to the statues of slave traders must have been incredibly naive. Nothing is safe from the ever-growing woke blob."

Why football fans are fed up with ‘taking the knee’ - "efforts to combat racism took a somewhat sinister turn in June when the FA and the Premier League took the opportunity to impose a new form of messaging in the name of anti-racism. In the wake of George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter protests that followed, the words ‘Black Lives Matter’ were emblazoned on every player’s shirt and players also started to ‘take the knee’ before games. These moves had the fervent backing of the progressive broadcast media. Quite what Floyd’s death and police brutality in America (a country that produces very few elite ‘soccer’ stars) have to do with Premier League footballers, the majority of whom earn millions of pounds a year, remains a mystery.Anyone who looks into the symbolism of taking the knee knows full well that it is a signal of support for the BLM movement. And, of course, anyone who consequently looks into the aims of BLM must be aware that it goes far beyond eradicating racism at sports events. The organisation’s radical leadership believes in the overthrow of capitalism, the destruction of the nuclear family, and the racialisation of society. According to the BLM worldview, black people, no matter how successful, are the permanent victims of a white-based hegemony. One might ask how the Premier League managed to get away with having its ultra-privileged stars participate in such an obviously hypocritical and political act. The answer is simple. With no fans in the stadiums as a result of the government’s draconian lockdown measures, there was no opportunity for them to vent their disapproval, other than through social media. Instead, the sports media – primarily Sky and the BBC – had complete control over the narrative.That all changed on Saturday. When Millwall fans booed players taking the knee for the umpteenth time, the media reacted with dismay. ‘What the hell is wrong with these people?’, asked the Athletic’s Oliver Kay. ‘Those people at Millwall booing the players for taking the knee are an embarrassment to the club, south London, football and the rest of the modern world’, declared Guardian chief sports writer Barney Ronay. Meanwhile, Piers Morgan, ever the political bellwether, condemned the ‘bigoted morons’ who dared express opposition to BLM. The reality is that millions of people do not support BLM; many actually oppose it. If football is truly to remain as inclusive as it needs to be, then brazenly partisan acts like taking the knee are going to be counterproductive. Now that there have even been applications to use the name ‘Black Lives Matter’ for a UK political party, these gestures are simply unsustainable.Football fans don’t spend huge amounts of money supporting their clubs to be subjected to partisan political messaging. As more fans are allowed to enter stadiums in the coming months, the onus is on all of them to make their displeasure heard"

Sweden: Calls to replace King Charles XII with statue of Greta Thunberg - "After statues having been vandalized across the world by far-left extremists, there are now calls for statues to be removed in Sweden as well.Statues of Thomas Jefferson, Winston Churchill and Christopher Columbus have all been vandalized in recent protests around the world.In an opinion piece for Aftonbladet, former Mayor of Umeå municipality Jan Björinge, says that we shouldn’t have memorials for “oppressors”... The Swedish King is not the only statue that the far-left wants to remove. Now a petition has been started to remove statue of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Von Linné because of racism.He is known as the father of modern taxonomy, inventing the modern system of naming organisms. He wrote the famous Systema Naturae."

Wauwatosa police: Protesters assaulted Officer Joseph Mensah at home - "protesters began to vandalize Mensah's home around 8:05 p.m., according to a news release from Wauwatosa police. Mensah "attempted to establish a dialog but was ultimately physically assaulted," the release said.As Mensah went inside, "armed protesters approached the rear door and a single shotgun round was discharged by a member of the group into Officer Mensah’s backdoor"... “The irony in all of this is that they chanted Black Lives Matter the entire time, but had zero regard for any of the Black children that live there or me, a Black man”... Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Sunday tweeted that "this is domestic terrorism" and officials must take action."
Silly Walker. Doesn't he know that only "far right" terrorism exists and that opposing BLM is racist?

Sufferer of Mental Lillness on Twitter - "Reminder that the point of a protest is not to persuade. Protests begin where persuasion has failed; the point of a protest is to force concessions by making the status quo untenable. It does that with means such as disrupting traffic, seizing spaces, and yes, looting."
So, the Capitol riot...

Trinh on Twitter - "CNN’s highest-rated anchor — who once compared Antifa to allied troops storming Normandy on D-Day — now saying “show me where it says protesters are supposed to be polite and peaceful.” The very worst of “journalism” on display that will result in injury or worse of innocents..."
"🏻 "Single mother owned, please show mercy. This is all I have.""
Naturally, Chris Cuomo condemned the Capitol riot

Facebook - "Looks like lefties have woken up to the fact that police unions are a bad idea. Will they go the extra step and apply it universally?
Same principle, right? It makes it hard to fire bad, incompetent employees. Not going to hold my breath."

John Stone on Twitter - "Can you post a photo, any photo, of a Chinese policeman, any policeman, kneeling over a suspected criminal over the suspected criminal's neck?"
*photo*
"You're blocked. You can't follow or see @soonsoon6545's Tweets"
Liberal solution to cognitive dissonance!

Thomas Sowell on Twitter - "Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?"
Minorities are like children

‘It pains me to say this’: Shaun King has epiphany in thread about how LITTLE Democrats have actually done to help minority victims - ""Guess who made the single strongest statement on the ludicrous no-knock warrant used to murder Breonna Taylor from a national politician?It was RAND PAUL.The Republican Senator from Kentucky. Not a Democrat.He said they should be banned altogether. Nationwide.Painful." Painful? Not if you’re a Republican. Painful is watching uninformed harpies screech about how racist Republicans are because that’s what the do-nothing Democrats are telling them...
"Until people like Shaun stop voting for and supporting Democrats, they’re not going to do anything differently. Democrats believe they own the black vote, the woman vote, the gay vote … so they don’t really try. Sorry, not sorry.""

OccupyDemocratsLogic on Twitter - "There are people in this country more concerned about a Walmart being looted than about an innocent man being killed. Many of them tout the Bible, but “Thou shall not loot” is not in there. “Thou shalt not kill” sure is."
"“Thou shall not steal” is a commandment, as well as not coveting your neighbors goods....."

Facebook - "20 years from now our children are going to see these pictures in their history textbooks and honestly I won't have a good explanation for them"
*Elmo headed black man with raised fist in front of flaming dumpster*
*Black guy going down street in blue kids' train*
Comment: "I'll have you know though that the train is actually from the Ferguson riots many years ago"

Meme - "Copsbeingcops: hey guys update: seattle protestors stormed city hall, its pretty cringe tho. there is not much real discussion? theyre talking about how the chief of police is a black women and thus forgiven, then whoever had the mic said "please anyone whos male dont take the mic" and then a black person (unclear gender) took the mic and the room bood, and then they said "IM LGBT AND NOT A MAN" and everyone cheered. but then a woman came on and said "why did the mostly white audience of this city hall boo a black man at a black lives matter protest?" and everyone cheered again. then the black person took the mic and said they werent a man again. reading this back it sounds like im making it up or its satire but I am watching it live on Joey Weisers facebook stream, or badbunny TTV"
When identity is more important than content

Facebook - "Let's get a racist fired today Capitol Hill, Seattle: the owner of Canterbury Ale House, Ryan Lewis, openly called for the murder of George Floyd protesters who are advocating for Black lives. He may not care about your feelings but I have a funny feeling he cares about his company’s Yelp reviews. And before anyone says “But he said “looters” not protesters!”.... giving someone the death penalty over a misdemeanor crime is exactly why we have a NATIONWIDE uprising in the first place. This man deserves to face the consequences of his words."
Clear evidence of the sneaky conflation of protesters, rioters and/or looters

Meme - "Western debates: 'Our nation's history is one of conquest, plunder and slaughter. How ashamed should we be of it?" Mongolian debates: 'Our nation's history is one of conquest, plunder and slaughter. How tall should our badass gigantic statue be to honor it?'"
On Genghis Khan

Facebook - "I can’t remember a time when the political climate was as chilling as it is right now. The conformism of it all is staggering. People are being sacked from their jobs for criticising Black Lives Matter. People are being pressured to genuflect in public and swear unquestioning allegiance to the new politics of identity. An unholy alliance of mobs and bishops are demanding that we publicly repent our alleged sins of racial prejudice. The elected mayor of Minneapolis is forced to do a walk of shame through a jeering crowd after he gave the “wrong” answer to his identitarian inquisitor. Virtually every institution in the West has drafted a modern-day oath of loyalty to BLM and woe betide any of their members — white or black — who refuse to get on board. We’ve seen people on their knees begging for forgiveness for historical crimes they had nothing to do with. Statues are being torn down, Taliban-style, by people who want to rewrite the past to their own liking. Universities are changing their mottos and the names of some of their buildings to try to keep the woke inquisitors at bay. What will be attacked next? Books? Libraries? People?I’m sorry, but anyone who thinks this has anything to do with George Floyd, or racism, is mistaken. This has become an intolerant political crusade."

Gary Varvel's Editorial Cartoons - Democrat: "Shame on President Trump for using the Bible as a prop..."
Democrat: "... for a photo op"
While wearing Kente cloth

Congressional Democrats criticized for wearing Kente cloth at event honoring George Floyd - "Congressional Democrats wore stoles made of Kente cloth during a moment of silence for George Floyd, drawing criticism from observers who felt they made the traditional African textile into a political prop.About two dozen Democratic lawmakers, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds at the Capitol's Emancipation Hall as a tribute to Floyd on Monday. Most of them were seen wearing Kente cloths during the moment of silence as well as during a subsequent news conference.The wearing of the Kente cloths drew criticism from a University of Oxford researcher who saw the move as performative."My ancestors did not invent Kente cloth for them to be worn by publicity (obsessed) politicians as 'activism' in 2020," Jade Bentil, a Ghanaian-Nigerian researcher at University of Oxford, tweeted."

Obianuju Ekeocha on Twitter - "There is more Kente fabric in this picture than at a Ghanaian traditional wedding. The DC African-fabric shop is probably now sold out in order to meet the demand of this ridiculous tokenism by Democrat politicians. Dear Africans step aside! #CulturalAppropriation at its worst. I’m sure someone told them that fabric represents black people but in truth a Nigerian like me cannot lay claim to this significant fabric which is very much a part of Ghanaian identity.Dear democrats,these colors & patterns belong to ancient tribes and mean something to us."

George Floyd death: Al-Qaeda tries to exploit US unrest - "Al-Qaeda is actively trying to exploit the current unrest in the US by reaching out to both Muslims and non-Muslims to present themselves as "champions of the oppressed""
Shh better not mention how Arabs treat blacks

Meme - "WHITE GUILT is Liberals telling those who never were Slaves, They deserve payback from those who never were Masters."

Chicago Mayor Now Pleading With Walmart And Other Companies Not To Leave The City - "Not only do these companies make it possible for residents to get the things they need, they pay tons of taxes which the city relies on."
So much for insurance fixing everything

Gad Saad on Twitter - "Earlier today, I received a private message from a black friend who is utterly befuddled that his/her own family members are turning against him/her for not being pure enough in his/her support of the cause. The person in question is utterly confused. This is what happens when a tsunami of ideological frenzy takes over. Your own parents, your own siblings, your own children are subservient to the cause. Burn the heretics if they are insufficiently pure. Is this the world that you wish to live in? I escaped such a world in 1975. Believe me, not good."
Extremist ideology seeks to sever family ties, because someone who's alienated his family needs to turn to fellow extremists, which cements the hold the ideology has over him

Meme/a> - Shaun King: "Barack Obama is the master of calmly, cooly, smoothly looking you in your face, right in your eyes, and telling you he feels your pain, hopes for an investigation, then oversees a system that doesn't prosecute a single police officer in 8 years. He crushed so many families."

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Behind 'Anti-Racist' Math Push - "A radical new push to purge math curricula of allegedly racist practices like showing your work and finding the correct answer is bankrolled by one of the nation's most prominent nonprofits: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.The Gates Foundation is the only donor mentioned on the homepage of A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, a group of 25 education organizations whose curriculum states that asking students to show their work and find the right answer is an inherently racist practice... The Gates Foundation has given smaller sums to other groups behind the Pathway, the latest attempt to bring critical race theory—the idea that American political and economic institutions are inherently racist—into schools... School districts and state education departments across the country have taken steps to weave critical race theory into K-12 curricula in the wake of last summer's racial justice protests.The North Carolina Board of Education earlier this month approved an updated history curriculum that would teach second graders "how various indigenous, religious, gender, and racial groups advocate for freedom and equality." Fourth-grade students will learn how "revolution, reform, and resistance" shaped North Carolina."
First, they came for the Confederate Statues

Mathematicians urge cutting ties with police - " The letter has 1,500 verified signatures from mathematicians... The letter writers take particular aim at "predictive policing," which involves using data and mathematics to predict where crime will happen... PredPol, a major predictive policing company, says that its technology is being used to protect one out of every 33 people in the United States.Opposition to predictive policing is not new. Academics have raised concerns in recent years about the mathematical theory underlying the technology and its tendency to create self-reinforcing feedback loops ("It is predicting future policing, not future crime," said a 2017 paper on the subject).Although the group has gotten some pushback for not having personally worked with predictive policing mathematics, Aougab said that for them, opposition to the technology isn't based on finding errors in equations or formulas."It's not about our mathematical knowledge," he said. "We're using our mathematical knowledge and connections to further a goal that we inherently believe in politically."Aougab said he personally feels police as an institution should be abolished, an opinion that is moving more into mainstream conversation."
When you're pro-crime

Mathematics association declares math is racist - "The Mathematical Association of America released a statement Friday claiming both that mathematicians should engage in “uncomfortable conversations” about race, and that policies of from the Trump administration, like the lack of a mask mandate in the United States, are somehow an affront to mathematics. The group concludes with a call for a “pursuit of justice” within math."

Revisiting “Measuring the Problem”: Separate Examination of Police Contact in Serious and Nonserious Offenders - "In their 2012 article, Pollock, Oliver, and Menard found that race was not a significant predictor of being arrested or questioned by police... For this examination, separate analyses were run on respondents with and without serious offending reported to determine whether predictors of police contact are different for individuals with whom the police presumably have more discretion (individuals who are not serious offenders). In addition, path models with logistic regression were created to examine potential indirect effects of all variables, including race. Results indicate that race does have an indirect effect on police contact, but it is White individuals who are more likely to be questioned and arrested. In addition, other factors including low parental socioeconomic status (which is associated with ethnicity), previous police contact, and gender are more likely, than even involvement in crime, to determine if a person will be questioned or arrested
Even more evidence that blacks are not victimised by the police

BLM gets a lesson in how ‘trained Marxism’ really works, as leader rakes in millions while chapters get nothing - "While the Black Lives Matter Global Network, led by ‘trained Marxist’ Patrisse Cullors, embraced the windfall of donations following the George Floyd protests across America, local chapters say they were left holding the bag. It was through the hard work of “radical black organizers” engaging in a “protracted struggle for our lives against police terrorism” that Black Lives Matter attracted millions of dollars in contributions this year, yet the BLMGN only recently invited selected chapters to apply for a $500,000 grant, ten chapters from across the US said in a statement this week.“This is not the equity and financial accountability we deserve,” they declared. The Global Network is “not accountable to local communities” and chapters, and due to its lack of support their work “continues to be erased,” Black Lives Matter DC said in a twitter thread. The newly announced BLM political action committee (PAC) and Grassroots entities were set up without the chapter approval – or even knowledge. “[All] of these events occurred without democracy”"

Teacher Assigns Students To List Names Of Black People Killed By Police - "A Maryland special education English teacher recently gave his students an assignment requiring them to list the names of “black people killed by police.”Henry E. Lackey High School teacher John Folse issued the assignment through the Charles County Public Schools’ (CCPS) online learning platform... "For extra credit, write a sentence or two about the circumstances of their deaths""
No wonder American students can't read or write

Killer of Westland teens causes stir at sentencing - "Fredrick Young, 26, of Detroit and Felando Hunter, 24, of Jackson were sentenced to spend the rest of their lives behind bars Wednesday for the killings of Jacob Kudla and Jourdan Bobbish, who had gone into Detroit to buy drugs... "I'd like to say sorry to the family of Aiyana Jones, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and I want to apologize for them for not being able to get justice for their loved ones who were murdered in cold blood and in respect for the peaceful protest I want to say hands up, don't shoot, black lives matter""

Charles Dickens museum defaced with graffiti calling the author 'racist' - "The Charles Dickens museum in Kent has become the latest target of this year’s anti-racism movement after a former local councillor daubed the building with graffiti calling the author a racist.Ian Driver targeted the museum in Broadstairs, Kent, late on Saturday night, scrawling the words 'Dickens Racist, Dickens Racist' on the Victorian cottage that now welcomes hundreds of visitors a year to celebrate the author's life and works.Mr Driver also defaced a nearby street sign, spraying black paint over the lettering of ‘Dickens Road’.Remarkably, the former Green Party councillor publicly admitted he was behind the vandalism this afternoon on his personal blog, where he published photos of himself carrying out the act.  Describing Dickens as “an extreme racist”, Mr Driver said he does not mind being arrested for the incident because he believes he has a defence under equality legislation... Mr Driver, who is aged in his 50s, claims he has a defence under the 1971 Criminal Damage Act which permits such behaviour if “the force used” or “the damage caused was reasonable”.“I tried to use the political system and it didn’t work,” Mr Driver said. “I also believe the local authority has failed to carry out their public sector equality duty which they are bound to under the 2010 Equality Act and I think I can put forward a very strong defence for what I did.”"

Watch – 'Black Lives Matter Is a Joke': Black D.C. Resident Tells Far-Left Group 'Go to Chicago' - "A D.C. resident confronted Black Lives Matter (BLM) protesters at a demonstration over the death of George Floyd in Washington, DC, on Sunday, calling them “hypocrites.”“Black Lives Matter is a joke. You are the racists,” said Nestride Yumga, an American citizen originally from Africa."

Antifa riot in Tacoma declared unlawful assembly, after vandalism to downtown businesses, vehicles and courthouse - "Following the original incident, Antifa and Black Lives Matter protesters showed up at the scene and Antifa members were seen lighting fires in intersections and worked to prevent people from taking video of their activites... Along the way the rioters began looking for the various reporters and citizen journalists who were documenting the riot, and put out calls over social media to find the "chuds" and stop them... As of publishing, there had been no arrests for vandalism... A significant amount of damage was done to buildings, stores and vehicles by Antifa, the group that President Joe Biden had previously referred to as "just an idea" in an October presidential debate with then President Donald Trump"

BREAKING: Antifa and BLM celebrate Inauguration Day by marching through downtown Seattle vandalizing buildings and setting fires

Antifa Arsonist Arrested Near Tacoma, WA After Live-streaming Himself. | PROTESTER PRIVILEGE

Rifle-carrying trans Muslim Antifa arrested at riot in Phoenix - "A transsexual Muslim militant Antifa was arrested again at a violent far-left protest in Phoenix last Saturday.35-year-old Britney Erica Austin, formerly Eric Austin, was among 18 individuals arrested in downtown Phoenix at a violent anti-police protest. Austin was covered head-to-toe at the time in a black abaya, or women’s Islamic robe, and a burka... In July, she put out a call on social media for people to attend a Phoenix direct action organized in “solidarity” with Portland antifa group, the Youth Liberation Front... in 2015 she tried to sue the Phoenix Police Department on an allegation of religious discrimination when she was photographed without her burqa for a booking photo. She was initially represented by the local chapter of the fundamentalist Muslim legal organization, the Council on American and Islamic Relations, or CAIR, but it dropped her after finding out she is transsexual. Also in 2015, Austin made the news again after she was kicked out of the women’s section of the Islamic Community Center of Tempe following complaints from Muslim women. She was allegedly told by the mosque that she would only be allowed back if she dressed and prayed as a man if she could not prove she was biologically female"

Antifa Mob Threatens to 'Burn' Washington, D.C. - "a Black Lives Matter march through the streets of Washington, D.C., involved protesters dressed in antifa black bloc and threatening to burn down the nation’s capital if their demands were not met... Protesters gathered at 2 p.m. for a “DC Queer and Trans Black History Month March and Rally” organized by the Total Liberation Collective and the Palm Collective."

'The problem was never Parler. It's Twitter': Seattle journalist describes how Antifa threatens journalists on social media - ""The problem was never Parler. It's Twitter." said Jason Rantz, a Seattle area radio personality and journalist who was able to successfully infiltrate Antifa... "Activists monitor Twitter to see if anyone is in or around the Antifa marches, then relay intel to the mob via hashtags. The communication is not sophisticated. Nevertheless, it puts media members in danger and Twitter does virtually nothing to intervene," he added."About an hour into the march in Tacoma, Antifa knew I was present because I tweeted from the scene."... "March with the mob and you’re bound to see someone recording Antifa destroying businesses or tagging property. They are immediately swarmed by two or three Antifa who threaten and demand the footage be deleted. If you talk back, you risk being pushed and punched or having your equipment stolen or destroyed.""

Antifa group openly hopes that Biden is the last U.S. president EVER and promotes inauguration-day violence, but is still allowed on Twitter. - "The Antifa group Pacific Northwest Youth Liberation Front is publicly calling for the end of the United States and promoting violent events on Inauguration Day through Twitter. But it seems Jack Dorsey is too busy shadow-banning conservative moms with MAGA hats to care... we see a reference to "J20," a nod to the organization Disrupt J20 that organized the mass protest of Donald Trump's inauguration in 2017. Oh, you didn't hear much from the media about the riots in D.C. on that day four years ago?... The picture also has the U.S. Capitol in flames as it eloquently calls for Biden and America itself to go flowerbed itself... The second status encourages Antifa members in Portland it get ready and to "watch out for specifics" as they plan violent riots for next week... Herein we see the standard at play. The sitting, duly-elected President of the United States must be cut off from all modes of online communication (assuming he is a Republican, that is) if anyone that supports him riots. Massive online gun forums and chat rooms must be shut down immediately. An entire social platform should have its servers pulled and its billion-dollar business flushed down the toilet because of what a few people might say.But Antifa can openly call for the violent end of the United States and communicate with openly violent people to organize openly violent events.Makes sense, right?"
Violent riot in Washington DC are only good if liberals approve of and/or condone them

Antifa Knocks Out Black Man’s Teeth for Holding Free Speech Rally While Calling Him 'N' Word - "An Antifa counter-protester in San Francisco knocked out the front teeth of a black man who organized the Free Speech Rally and Protest on Saturday. People in the crowd can be heard yelling racial slurs at the man.Shortly before a Free Speech Rally and Protest in San Francisco, event organizer Philip Anderson can be seen in a video tweeted by Chester Belloc helping a white man walk through an angry counter-protest filled with Antifa anarchists. As they walk through the crowd, a man wearing all black (black bloc) comes up from behind Anderson and punches him in the face... The predominantly white Antifa crowd can be heard screaming the “N” word multiple times. “Back up ‘N,’ back up ‘N,’ someone in the crowd yells as Anderson tries to escape the attack. Anderson and the white man he was protecting eventually climb over the police barricade and move to safety behind the police... Later, from a hospital bed, Anderson tweeted a message to former Vice President Joe Biden who famously said “Antifa is an idea” during the presidential debate with President Donald Trump on September 29.“I have a question for you, Joe Biden,” Anderson said in a tweeted video. “Do you still think Antifa is just an idea? This is what the ‘idea’ you’re talking about, Antifa, this is what they did to me.” He held up his knocked out tooth while a second tooth hangs by a thread."
We all know that only Nazis support free speech and that we need to punch Nazis

Miracle Boyd, Attorney Respond After Group Said Chicago Activist Provoked Police At Friday Protest - "Miracle Boyd, 18, claimed an officer swatted a cell phone from her hand. The phone, she said, struck her face, knocking out some of her teeth... a series of videos, released by a pro-police group, appears to show Boyd trying to provoke police, just as some come under attack. Surrounded by her supporters, Boyd responded tearfully saying, “I will not allow the public to tear me down and humiliate me. I am not a menace, a hood rat nor a rebel … but a dedicated freedom fighter.”"
The truth is humiliating if you're a liar

CAA calls out bigoted claim by Black Lives Matter UK that “Zionism” has “gagged” Britain - "Campaign Against Antisemitism has called out the UK chapter of Black Lives Matter (BLM) today after it claimed that “Zionism” has “gagged” Britain... “Zionism is the movement for the self-determination of Jews. The right to the ‘self-determination of peoples’ is universal and enshrined in Article 1 of the UN charter. So-called ‘anti-Zionism’ exclusively denies Jews that universal right and is therefore antisemitic... BLM is treading a well-worn path walked by many extremists and abhorred by real civil rights leaders like Dr Martin Luther King Jr, who once told a student in Boston who had made a comment attacking ‘Zionists’: “When people criticise ‘Zionists’, they mean ‘Jews’. You’re talking antisemitism!” This is not the first time that Campaign Against Antisemitism has had to contend with prejudice from supposed anti-racists"
Too bad Jews are privileged, so CAA is racist

UC Berkeley History Professor's Open Letter Against BLM, Police Brutality and Cultural Orthodoxy - "I am worried that writing this email publicly might lead to me losing my job, and likely all future jobs in my field.In your recent departmental emails you mentioned our pledge to diversity, but I am increasingly alarmed by the absence of diversity of opinion on the topic of the recent protests and our community response to them. In the extended links and resources you provided, I could not find a single instance of substantial counter-argument or alternative narrative to explain the under-representation of black individuals in academia or their over-representation in the criminal justice system. The explanation provided in your documentation, to the near exclusion of all others, is univariate: the problems of the black community are caused by whites, or, when whites are not physically present, by the infiltration of white supremacy and white systemic racism into American brains, souls, and institutions. Many cogent objections to this thesis have been raised by sober voices, including from within the black community itself, such as Thomas Sowell and Wilfred Reilly. These people are not racists or ‘Uncle Toms’. They are intelligent scholars who reject a narrative that strips black people of agency and systematically externalizes the problems of the black community onto outsiders. Their view is entirely absent from the departmental and UCB-wide communiques.The claim that the difficulties that the black community faces are entirely causally explained by exogenous factors in the form of white systemic racism, white supremacy, and other forms of white discrimination remains a problematic hypothesis that should be vigorously challenged by historians. Instead, it is being treated as an axiomatic and actionable truth without serious consideration of its profound flaws, or its worrying implication of total black impotence. This hypothesis is transforming our institution and our culture, without any space for dissent outside of a tightly policed, narrow discourse... Overwhelmingly, the reasoning provided by BLM and allies is either primarily anecdotal (as in the case with the bulk of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ undeniably moving article) or it is transparently motivated. As an example of the latter problem, consider the proportion of black incarcerated Americans. This proportion is often used to characterize the criminal justice system as anti-black. However, if we use the precise same methodology, we would have to conclude that the criminal justice system is even more anti-male than it is anti-black... I see my department uncritically reproducing a narrative that diminishes black agency in favor of a white-centric explanation that appeals to the department’s apparent desire to shoulder the ‘white man’s burden’ and to promote a narrative of white guilt.If we claim that the criminal justice system is white-supremacist, why is it that Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and Nigerian Americans are incarcerated at vastly lower rates than white Americans? This is a funny sort of white supremacy. Even Jewish Americans are incarcerated less than gentile whites. I think it’s fair to say that your average white supremacist disapproves of Jews. And yet, these alleged white supremacists incarcerate gentiles at vastly higher rates than Jews. None of this is addressed in your literature. None of this is explained, beyond hand-waving and ad hominems. “Those are racist dogwhistles”. “The model minority myth is white supremacist”. “Only fascists talk about black-on-black crime”, ad nauseam. These types of statements do not amount to counterarguments: they are simply arbitrary offensive classifications, intended to silence and oppress discourse. Any serious historian will recognize these for the silencing orthodoxy tactics they are, common to suppressive regimes, doctrines, and religions throughout time and space. They are intended to crush real diversity and permanently exile the culture of robust criticism from our department. Increasingly, we are being called upon to comply and subscribe to BLM’s problematic view of history, and the department is being presented as unified on the matter. In particular, ethnic minorities are being aggressively marshaled into a single position. Any apparent unity is surely a function of the fact that dissent could almost certainly lead to expulsion or cancellation for those of us in a precarious position, which is no small number. I personally don’t dare speak out against the BLM narrative, and with this barrage of alleged unity being mass-produced by the administration, tenured professoriat, the UC administration, corporate America, and the media, the punishment for dissent is a clear danger at a time of widespread economic vulnerability... The vast majority of violence visited on the black community is committed by black people. There are virtually no marches for these invisible victims... The message is clear: Black lives only matter when whites take them. Black violence is expected and insoluble, while white violence requires explanation and demands solution.Please look into your hearts and see how monstrously bigoted this formulation truly is. No discussion is permitted for non-black victims of black violence, who proportionally outnumber black victims of non-black violence. This is especially bitter in the Bay Area, where Asian victimization by black assailants has reached epidemic proportions, to the point that the SF police chief has advised Asians to stop hanging good-luck charms on their doors, as this attracts the attention of (overwhelmingly black) home invaders. Home invaders like George Floyd. For this actual, lived, physically experienced reality of violence in the USA, there are no marches, no tearful emails from departmental heads, no support from McDonald’s and Wal-Mart. For the History department, our silence is not a mere abrogation of our duty to shed light on the truth: it is a rejection of it.The claim that black interracial violence is the product of redlining, slavery, and other injustices is a largely historical claim. It is for historians, therefore, to explain why Japanese internment or the massacre of European Jewry hasn’t led to equivalent rates of dysfunction and low SES performance among Japanese and Jewish Americans respectively. Arab Americans have been viciously demonized since 9/11, as have Chinese Americans more recently. However, both groups outperform white Americans on nearly all SES indices – as do Nigerian Americans, who incidentally have black skin. It is for historians to point out and discuss these anomalies. However, no real discussion is possible in the current climate at our department. The explanation is provided to us, disagreement with it is racist, and the job of historians is to further explore additional ways in which the explanation is additionally correct. This is a mockery of the historical profession. Most troublingly, our department appears to have been entirely captured by the interests of the Democratic National Convention, and the Democratic Party more broadly... Donating to BLM today is to indirectly donate to Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign. This is grotesque given the fact that the American cities with the worst rates of black-on-black violence and police-on-black violence are overwhelmingly Democrat-run... the ‘systemic racism’ there was built by successive Democrat administrations. The patronizing and condescending attitudes of Democrat leaders towards the black community, exemplified by nearly every Biden statement on the black race, all but guarantee a perpetual state of misery, resentment, poverty, and the attendant grievance politics which are simultaneously annihilating American political discourse and black lives... This is a grotesque capture of a good-faith movement for necessary police reform, and of our department, by a political party. Even worse, there are virtually no avenues for dissent in academic circles... The total alliance of major corporations involved in human exploitation with BLM should be a warning flag to us, and yet this damning evidence goes unnoticed, purposefully ignored, or perversely celebrated. We are the useful idiots of the wealthiest classes, carrying water for Jeff Bezos and other actual, real, modern-day slavers. Starbucks, an organisation using literal black slaves in its coffee plantation suppliers, is in favor of BLM... The absence of counter-narrative enables this obscenity. Fiat lux, indeed.There also exists a large constituency of what can only be called ‘race hustlers’: hucksters of all colors who benefit from stoking the fires of racial conflict to secure administrative jobs, charity management positions, academic jobs and advancement, or personal political entrepreneurship...Many of their voices are unironically segregationist.MLK would likely be called an Uncle Tom if he spoke on our campus today. We are training leaders who intend, explicitly, to destroy one of the only truly successful ethnically diverse societies in modern history. As the PRC, an ethnonationalist and aggressively racially chauvinist national polity with null immigration and no concept of jus solis increasingly presents itself as the global political alternative to the US, I ask you: Is this wise?... our university and department has made multiple statements celebrating and eulogizing George Floyd. Floyd was a multiple felon who once held a pregnant black woman at gunpoint... Americans are being socially pressured into kneeling for this violent, abusive misogynist. A generation of black men are being coerced into identifying with George Floyd, the absolute worst specimen of our race and species. I’m ashamed of my department. I would say that I’m ashamed of both of you, but perhaps you agree with me, and are simply afraid, as I am, of the backlash of speaking the truth. It’s hard to know what kneeling means, when you have to kneel to keep your job. It shouldn’t affect the strength of my argument above, but for the record, I write as a person of color. My family have been personally victimized by men like Floyd. We are aware of the condescending depredations of the Democrat party against our race. The humiliating assumption that we are too stupid to do STEM, that we need special help and lower requirements to get ahead in life, is richly familiar to us. I sometimes wonder if it wouldn’t be easier to deal with open fascists, who at least would be straightforward in calling me a subhuman, and who are unlikely to share my race. The ever-present soft bigotry of low expectations and the permanent claim that the solutions to the plight of my people rest exclusively on the goodwill of whites rather than on our own hard work is psychologically devastating. No other group in America is systematically demoralized in this way by its alleged allies. A whole generation of black children are being taught that only by begging and weeping and screaming will they get handouts from guilt-ridden whites.No message will more surely devastate their futures, especially if whites run out of guilt, or indeed if America runs out of whites. If this had been done to Japanese Americans, or Jewish Americans, or Chinese Americans, then Chinatown and Japantown would surely be no different to the roughest parts of Baltimore and East St. Louis today. The History department of UCB is now an integral institutional promulgator of a destructive and denigrating fallacy about the black race."

NYC educator fired for refusing 'Black Panther' salute: suit - "Pledge your allegiance to “Wakanda Forever” — or else... At official gatherings of high-level Department of Education bosses, then-Bronx superintendent Meisha Ross Porter often asked the group to do the arms-across-the-chest gesture of solidarity from the mythical African nation of Wakanda. The salute is considered a symbol of empowerment.When Rafaela Espinal — a Dominican-American who describes herself as Afro-Latina — declined to join in, she “was admonished and told that it was inappropriate for her not to participate”... Espinal was one year shy of earning a lifetime DOE pension when she was abruptly fired from her role as head of Community School District 12 in Bronx without explanation, after repeatedly refusing to do the “Wakanda Forever” salute... Desperate to keep her retirement benefits and health insurance, the single mom — who recently earned a doctorate — eventually accepted a humiliating demotion to school investigator, a role which requires only a high school diploma and which left her with no permanent desk or phone.Porter, who was later elevated by Carranza to the post of “executive superintendent,” a promotion she celebrated with a lavish gala, has a Twitter timeline packed with group shots of DOE staff doing the “Wakanda Forever” salute. One shot features Carranza — who couldn’t manage to perform the gesture correctly in the pose — and Espinal... when repeatedly asked to salute “Wakanda” at other professional meetings, Espinal felt the gesture “introduced a racial divide where there should be none,” said her lawyers, Israel Goldberg, Helen Setton and Domenic Recchia.Porter would often talk about the militant civil rights group the Black Panthers when asking superintendents to do the “Wakanda” salute, noting her father was a member... The DOE insists the famous cross-arm gesture doesn’t refer to “Black power,” but is instead “a symbol used to represent the Bronx.”Fellow DOE administrators also allegedly told Espinal she wasn’t “Black enough” and she should “just learn to be quiet and look pretty,” she claims in the $40 million suit.Espinal, 50, claims racial fissures began to emerge in superintendent meetings in the fall of 2017, when some Black administrators would meet separately after the larger group’s monthly gatherings.Soon, only the birthdays of Black superintendents were recognized at official meetings... The racial tensions bubbled up just as the controversial Carranza was appointed chancellor of city schools in April 2018, and began pushing a platform of racial “equity” that critics have blasted as divisive and educationally problematic... She was forced to clean out her office on a Sunday and district staffers were forbidden to communicate with her"
Like with pronouns, this sort of virtue signalling soon becomes compulsory

NYC educator claims she was fired after sharing Holocaust story - "Karen Ames, a 30-year Department of Education employee, says she was targeted by Carranza’s “Disrupt and Dismantle” campaign to oust or marginalize longtime employees because she is over 40, and Jewish. “The agenda of Chancellor Carranza and his senior leadership team was euphemistically touted as an ‘equity platform’ but in reality, it was a platform used to create gender, age, racial and ethnic divisions in the NYC School system”... Ames was grilled about her “ethnic background,” chastised by a colleague at a training session when she shared her grandparents’ experience during the Holocaust in Poland, and “admonished” when she declined requests at superintendents meetings to take part in the comic book movie-inspired “Wakanda Forever” salute to “black power”... In August 2018, Ames was summoned to DOE headquarters, where Watson-Harris handed her a termination letter, telling her the department “was moving in a new direction,” she says in the lawsuit. Colleagues were prohibited from communicating with her, and Watson-Harris ordered staff to “eradicate” any reference to Ames, down to the district’s purple color scheme she had designed"

Refusal to salute – The Holocaust Explained: Designed for schools - "By 1934, special courts had been established to punish those who refused to perform the salute. The punishments ranged from imprisonment in concentration camps to intimidation or fines."

Black Lives Matter: Oxford will ‘decolonise’ degrees | News | The Times - "Oxford University has revealed plans to “decolonise” its maths and science degrees and will allow students of any subject who have been affected by the Black Lives Matter furore to seek lenient marking... The National Education Union wrote to Boris Johnson yesterday saying that the school curriculum should be reviewed to ensure that it was “rooted in black and global history”. The biggest teaching union said trainee teachers should be equipped with anti-racist strategies and the curriculum should cover Windrush and migration."

Brooklyn College announces 'anti-racist agenda' for professors - "In what one professor calls “affirmative action” grading, Brooklyn College wants to “re-educate” instructors whose minority students have lousy grades... the school had “recently raised funds to offer professional development to faculty in classes with the highest racial disparities in outcomes” and the most grades of D or F or withdrawals... one Brooklyn College professor said the plan sounded like “grade affirmative action,” where students would be tracked by race, and the profs of failing students chastened by “the threat of a re-education camp and the accompanying stigma.”The professor wondered if some faculty members would inflate grades “in order to avoid the stigma of being subtly labeled a racist.”"
Good way to ensure that minorities with good grades aren't taken seriously since grades will no longer be an accurate signal if you're brown or black

Wholesome Memes for At-Risk Teens - Posts | Facebook - ""We actually do have an ideological frame. Myself and Alicia [Garza] in particular, we're trained organizers. We are trained Marxists. We are super versed on ideological theories." — BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors, July 22, 2015.
"We are living in political moment where for the first time in a long time we are talking about alternatives to capitalism." — Alicia Garza, BLM co-founder, March 2015.
"Anti-racism is anti-capitalist, and vice versa. There are no two ways around it. To be an anti-racist must demand a complete rejection of business as usual. An end to racism demands transformation of the global political-economic setup." — Joshua Virasami, BLM UK, June 8, 2020.
Black Lives Matter's parent organization is M4BL, which describes themselves as anti-capitalist:  https://m4bl.org/about-us/"