Angela Davis, Women’s March Honoree And Champion Of Terror, Prisons, And Tyranny - "You can tell a lot about people by looking at their heroes. When the Women’s March honored the Stalinist cheerleader Angela Davis in 2017, there was almost no pushback from Jewish or liberal groups... the progressive left will tolerate the most odious characters as long as they seek “justice” for a favored cause — in this case Palestinians... There could be an entire book written detailing Davis’s loathsome views and actions (Cathy Young has a good article here.) Still, it’s quite striking to see folks like TED talker Sally Kohn taking to Twitter to let her followers know that she stands with Davis because of her fight against the “prison industrial complex.” In the real world, Davis was an enthusiast supporter of the largest and most lethal prison system the world has ever known. It was “human rights activist Angela Davis,” as NPR astonishingly described the woman in an article this week, who bought the shotgun that was used in a 1970 Marin County court room kidnapping and shootout that ended up killing a superior court judge and three others. The subsequent manhunt and trial of Davis, a proud lifelong communist, would be a very big deal in Soviet nations. In 1971, in fact, the CIA noted that Davis’s case had become “a Soviet manipulated international anti-US campaign reminiscent of the orchestrated by Communist propaganda efforts made on behalf of atomic spies, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg.” The CIA estimated that at least 5 percent of the entire Soviet Russian propaganda budget had been aimed at propping up Davis. To put that in context, that’s more than was being spent on propaganda directly about the Vietnam War. All schoolchildren in East Germany were ordered to collect flowers and stamps for Davis. Davis soon traveled to many of these nations to stand with leaders who, collectively, had jailed hundreds of thousands of political dissidents. She visited East Germany, and effusively praised Erich Honecker while the Stasi were torturing political prisoners and his border police were summarily executing those who tried to escape. Honaker, one of architects of “anti-fascist protection barrier” known as the Berlin Wall, would one day be served a 783-page indictment by the German government that accused him of being personally responsible for the death of 68 people as they attempted to flee East Germany. In 2015, it was estimated that more than 1,000 deaths could be attributed to East German authorities — and that says nothing about the tyranny of the regime in other matters. Davis not only ignored these crimes, she seemed to approve of them, never once expressing any regret. When human rights activist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who knew a thing or two about the “prison industrial complex,” gave his Voice of Freedom speech in 1975, he relayed a story about manufactured heroism and hypocrisy that surrounded Davis.
There’s a certain woman here named Angela Davis. I don’t know if you are familiar with her in this country, but in our country, literally for one whole year, we heard of nothing at all except about Angela Davis. There was only Angela Davis in the whole world and she was suffering. We had our ears stuffed with Angela Davis. Little children in school were told to sign petitions in defense of Angela Davis. Little boys and girls, 8 and 9 years old in schools, were asked to do this. Well, they set her free. Although she didn’t have a rough time in this country, she came to recuperate in Soviet resorts. Some Soviet dissidents — but more important, a group of Czech dissidents— addressed an appeal to her: ”Comrade Davis, you were in prison. You know how unpleasant it is to sit in prison, especially when you consider yourself innocent. You now have such authority. Could you help our Czech prisoners? Could you stand up for those persons in Czechoslovakia who are being persecuted by the state?” Angela Davis answered: ‘They deserve what they get. Let them remain in prison.’ That is the face of communism...
Alan Dershowitz, in his 1992 “Chutzpah” book, relays a similar incident in which Davis, a woman who went on to be a professor in the “History of Consciousness” at the University of California, not only refused to stand up for prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union but argued that their imprisonment was justified.
I also worked as an unpaid consultant on an aspect of the Angela Davis case in California. Davis, who was one of the leaders of the American Communist party, was charged with murder in connection with a 1970 shoot-out at a Marin County courthouse. She claimed that as a black, a woman, and a Communist, she could not receive a fair trial in any American court. She was acquitted, so maybe she was right! After her acquittal, she announced that she would be devoting the remainder of her life to defending political prisoners like herself. A short time later, I read that she was going to Moscow to receive some human rights prize from the Soviet Union. I called her office and gave them a list of Jewish prisoners of conscience in the Soviet Union – Jews who had been imprisoned because they wanted to emigrate to Israel or to learn about their heritage. I asked if she would be willing to speak up on behalf of these political prisoners. Several days later, I received a call back from Ms. Davis’s secretary informing me that Davis had looking into the people on my list and none of them were political prisoners ‘They are all Zionist fascists and opponents of Socialism.’ Davis would urge that they be kept in prison where they belonged.
In 1979, Davis went back to Moscow and was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize, where she praised “the glorious name” of mass murderer Vladimir Lenin and the “great October Revolution,” as the KGB was in the midst of one of its last large-scale political crackdowns. Watching those who seem to believe Russian-purchased Facebook ads are a threat to the republic shower Davis with hosannas is somewhat surreal. Then again, so many progressive activists are starting to sound just like her. Let’s not forget, Davis was also a fan of Jim Jones. She had personally assured the people of Jonestown that they would be safe, only two months before their massacre. This is the person whom Elle magazine and feminists believe is worth celebrating"
Of course liberals love her
The Real Angela Davis - "The National Museum of African-American History and Culture in our nation’s capital fills a void, providing us with an in depth look at the unique African-American experience in America since the days of slavery. It is disheartening, therefore, to hear that this coming September the museum is featuring an old documentary on Angela Davis titled, Free Angela Davis and All Political Prisoners. After the screening there will be a discussion moderated by Rhea Combs who will interview and question Ms. Davis. In announcing the event, the museum’s press release notes that “we all recognize that Prof. Davis is a figure for the ages, as fascinating to us now as she was at the height of her incarceration and trial” (which took place in 1972). The release added that Davis’s life “is a quintessential American story of activism,” and that “because of her activism in support of social justice, she was criminalized and named on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list.” This description is demonstrably false. And it elides the most important parts of Davis’s biography... Rather than working for civil rights in the manner of Martin Luther King Jr., James Farmer, or A. Philip Randolph, Davis was a leader of the American Communist Party, and a member of the violent and armed Marxist group, the Black Panther Party. After her arrest, the international Communist movement declared her a martyr and Moscow orchestrated an international group of gullible Europeans who proclaimed her innocence and demanded her freedom. In Communist East Germany, school children were told to write postcards to her expressing their support and solidarity. At her trial, the jury surprisingly found her innocent even though 20 witnesses had testified against her. Careful investigation later revealed how compromised the jury was. One of the jurors, Mary Timothy, would go on to have an affair with Communist Party member (and head of the official Committee to Free Angela) Bettina Aptheker. Immediately after Davis was acquitted, another jury member faced the reporters and TV networks and gave them the clenched-fist salute regularly used by revolutionaries. That juror, Ralph Delange, explained “I did it because I wanted to show I felt an identity with the oppressed people in the crowd . . . and to express my sympathy with their struggle.”... Why would one of America’s most important museums applaud the life of a militant revolutionary who hates her own country and has never repudiated her support of totalitarian regimes? And, if the National Museum of African-American History and Culture truly does believe that Davis is a worthy subject of discussion, why would they present an air-brushed caricature instead of grappling with who she really is and what she really did?"
The Land Where Angela Davis Is Queen - "The Rittenhouse trial coverage had been the final piece of evidence that I could no longer trust the media outlets I’d come to respect. As a life-long liberal, and later, self-described “progressive,” and now, I guess, “classical liberal,” my concerns had been building for several years as I saw online movements like #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter develop from tools for social solidarity into mobs. Exposing lecherous Hollywood producers and instances of police brutality had struck me as positive at first. But as mob justice became indiscriminate, I was distressed and chilled to see journalists and academics cowering in the crosshairs... I experienced another flashback to my time at UC Santa Cruz as I watched the coverage of what came to be known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ), established in Seattle by Black Lives Matter protesters. The iconography that appeared throughout the encampment also reminded me of the fundamentalist religion in which I was raised. Black victims of police brutality like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor were being portrayed as martyrs, while intersectional feminist activists like the late bell hooks (a UCSC alumna) were elevated to sainthood. Front and center was the patron saint of them all, Angela Davis... When I first arrived on campus in the mid-'90s, I was immediately struck by how white it was... It quickly became a joke among us in the dorms that every course title ended with the words “…and race, gender, and sexuality.” This was especially true for those of us in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. I found it intriguing and somewhat amusing that the richest, whitest place I had ever been was also what would today be described as the most “woke,” but in those days would have been called “politically correct.” I had grown up around religious and secular working- and middle-class people of many races and ethnicities and I knew them to be more conservative than my ex-hippie, second-wave feminist mother, and certainly more conservative than these academics who struck me as a little nutty and out of touch. Once I concentrated my studies in the arts and humanities, the graduate assistants who led my discussion groups and graded my papers were largely students of Angela Davis in the History of Consciousness department. They were mostly white and had lots of tattoos, piercings, and Manic Panic hair colors. They were also largely gay or lesbian or identified as “queer.”... I also discovered that “queer theory,” championed by occasional visiting professor Judith Butler, wasn’t really about GLBT people gaining the same rights and protections as heterosexual people, it was about destroying “the patriarchy” and gender norms entirely. That last part never sat well with me. While I was (and remain) broadly supportive of diversity and tolerance, the destruction of all norms seemed a bit, well ... destructive. I liked the idea of marrying a man someday and having children... But according to this “queer” worldview, my desires seemed downright regressive. But I kept this to myself, wondering if I had been brainwashed by the patriarchy.
“It’s not my fault! It’s not my fault! It’s not my fault! It’s not my fault! IT’S NOT MY FAULT!” I gazed around the lecture hall as hundreds of women rose to their feet, whipped into a frenzy, screaming this refrain with their hands in the air. I felt compelled to get to my feet too, much as I had stood out of respect while others saluted the flag when I was a young Jehovah’s Witness. But I didn’t join the chanting because I didn’t know what “it” referred to. We had been in the middle of a lecture when our professor, Bettina Aptheker, suddenly started to repeat these words calmly and slowly, gradually building in intensity, until the crowd began to join in. Young women wept and embraced one another, continuing to scream, fists in the air, while I looked around in awe and confusion. This was “Intro to Feminism,” which I took in the fall of my senior year...
I decided to re-watch Free Angela and All Political Prisoners. Nearly a decade ago, its unapologetic presentation of Angela Davis as a hero and political prisoner had unsettled me. But now I saw a more complicated narrative, not altogether dissimilar to the complicated narrative I pieced together about the Rittenhouse incident once I had cleared a path through all the polemics. I saw in Angela Davis a brilliant young woman born of considerable privilege in the context of her community. I also understood her righteous rage at the horrible conditions of segregated Birmingham. I saw a young woman who allowed herself to be seduced by a dangerous ideology. I saw someone too young for the pressure to lead her people and blinded by her love for an incarcerated revolutionary. When confronted with this part of her story, I could see regret in the contemporary Davis’s eyes. I believe she knows she made a terrible mistake that ended in the death of four innocent people, including her beloved’s kid brother. And yet, the film ignores the injustice of those deaths, and the pain of their families. And though Angela Davis ultimately left the Communist Party, she remains the ideological root of the Defund the Police movement, and the rhetorical assault on law enforcement that is allowing the cities of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, and Minneapolis to implode. This is the culmination of her life’s work"
AI predicts crime a week before it happens - "Researchers at the University of Chicago created the model using historical crime data to predict future events within 1,000-square-foot areas. The technology was demonstrated in eight major US cities, including Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia... Different variations of the technology have proved controversial, with a Crime and Victimisation Risk Model implemented by the Chicago Police Department in 2012 found to be flawed due to the use of historically biased data."
AI fails to predict crime. But researchers won't stop trying to. - The Washington Post - "“The past does not tell you anything about the future,” said Ishanu Chattopadhyay, a professor from the University of Chicago and lead researcher of the algorithm... the main point of the study, he said, was to use the algorithm to interrogate how police are biased. His team compared arrest data from neighborhoods of varying socioeconomic levels. They found crime that happened in wealthier areas led to more arrests, whereas in poorer neighborhoods, crime didn’t always have the same effect, showing a discrepancy in enforcement... Andrew Papachristos, a sociology professor at Northwestern University, said that when law enforcement uses algorithms to map and analyze crime, it often subjects people of color and low-income communities to more policing. When criticized for over-policing in certain neighborhoods, they often use data to justify the tactics"
If the past doesn't tell you anything about the future, how did they come up with their algorithm?
I'm sure certain cultures refusing to report crime to the police and killing "snitches" who do has nothing to do with why there is a discrepancy in enforcement
Most blacks want more policing, but we should ignore minority voices when they say things liberals don't want to hear
I was wondering how long it was going to be before this was proclaimed to be racist, but it had already happened
Father of two was shot dead after soft-touch judge set teen 'gang member' free AGAIN - "A 34-year-old father of two was shot dead last month after a soft-touch judge set a suspected teen gang member free again after his third gun arrest in four months, it has been revealed. Alberto Ramirez, 16, is accused of fatally shooting Eric Velasquez in Fordham, the Bronx, back on May 16, after he allegedly opened fire indiscriminately into a crowd. It has now emerged that a series of failings by a New York City judge allowed Ramirez to be out on the streets the day he allegedly murdered the 34-year-old. Supreme Court Justice Denis Boyle helped set the teen free on two recent occasions involving gun charges - once freeing him without bail and once slashing the bail from $75,000 to $10,000 cash or $25,000 bond. He also ignored prosecutors' pleas to charge Ramirez as an adult on two occasions, instead referring the cases to family court... Velasquez was just feet from his apartment when a bullet struck him in the stomach. He died in hospital hours later, after police said he refused to hand over any information about his killer... Fears are growing that the city is harking back to the dark days of the 70s and 80s when murders and shootings were rife and it earned the nickname 'Fear City.' Governor Andrew Cuomo has admitted New York City is now in the throes of a 'major crime problem' which - if not tackled soon - could cause irreparable damage to the Big Apple"
If you refuse to "snitch" about who killed you, is it "victim blaming" to point out that you contributed to your death? Is "structural racism" to blame for minorities dying because everyone refuses to give the police information that will stop murders?
"I Killed Him Because He Was Snitching" - "Bland claims he killed Chris Poole because he believed Poole was working as a confidential informant for Lafayette County Metro Narcotics, a small, four-person unit based in Oxford. As an April BuzzFeed News investigation detailed, Metro Narcotics relies heavily on the use of college-age confidential informants. Each year, the squad recruits an average of 30 CIs, many of them first-time offenders arrested for possessing a few grams of weed. To get these young men and women to turn informant — an extremely dangerous task — agents often coerce them by threatening them with hard time or the shame and lifelong burden of a drug record... Was Poole an informant? “I believe in my heart that that’s not true,” said Lafayette County Sheriff’s Deputy Scott Mills, who added that Metro Narcotics told him it has no record of Poole being an informant. Bland has no doubt: “I killed him because he was snitching.”... This atmosphere of suspicion collides with the code of silence that's common in so many neighborhoods across America. “Around here the number-one thing is you don’t snitch”"
Why Life for ‘Snitches’ Has Never Been More Dangerous - WSJ - "Across the country, close to 700 witnesses and informants believed to have cooperated with the government have been threatened, wounded or killed over a recent three-year period, including 61 murdered, according to estimates from a recent survey by the federal judiciary’s research arm. Some judges suspect those numbers may be low... At the criminal rules committee in April, a judge said he was stunned by the estimates of the level of violence against cooperating defendants, according to the minutes. “While this is not Colombia, it is really, really, bad”"
Penang mufti wants authorities to introduce guidelines for comedy clubs
Moderate Islam strikes again
Thomas Sowell: Cultures differ and there is no economic determinism - "The prevailing social dogma of our time — that economic and other disparities among groups are strange, if not sinister — has set off bitter disputes between those who blame genetic differences and those who blame discrimination. Both sides ignore the possibility that groups themselves may differ in their orientations, priorities and in what they are prepared to sacrifice. Back in the early 19th century, an official of the Russian empire reported that even the poorest Jews saw to it that their daughters could read, and their homes had at least 10 books. This was at a time when the vast majority of the population of the Russian empire were illiterate. During that same era, Thomas Jefferson complained that there was not a single bookstore where he lived. In Frederick Law Olmsted’s travels through the antebellum South, he noted that even plantation owners seldom had many books. But in mid-18th century Scotland, even people of modest means had books, and those too poor to buy them could rent books from lending libraries... Those who are celebrating the ghetto culture might consider what the cost is to those being raised in that culture. And they might reconsider what they are hearing from charlatans parading statistical disparities."
'Sensitivity Readers' Are the New Thought Police, And They Threaten More Than Novelists - "Welcome to the 21st century and "sensitivity readers," people hired by writers and publishers, especially of young-adult titles, to vet manuscripts to make sure things are, well, politically correct, "authentic," and, especially, inoffensive... sensitivity readers don't just weigh in on matters of historical accuracy. They also have a say in speculative fiction, sometimes even after a book has been published. That's what happened to Keira Drake, when advanced copies of her fantasy novel The Continent received a hostile response from readers... major publishers are not trying to crank YA or literary versions of The Turner Diaries. They are trying to engage readers who are seeking to either experience something different than what they know or to see their experience reflected back at them. These two aims aren't mutually exclusive by any means, but something the right-wing and left-wing cultural commissars have long believed in what scholar Joli Jensen calls "instrumental culture." In this view, books and other forms of art are essentially like medicine that's injected into people and forces them to think or behave a certain way; bad books (and movies, music, TV shows, etc.) create bad citizens. But that's the wrong way to think about the art we produce and consume... They are part of the apparatus that is producing more members of the fragile generation, the term that Lenore Skenazy and Jonathan Haidt have coined to describe a world in which children especially are seen as incapable of processing even the smallest problem without suffering long-term, major damage. There's something else to think about, too, which is that sensitivity readers won't save authors and publishers from hostility. Protesters hell-bent on being offended will always find a grievance, a megaphone, and a Quisling. Consider the case of Laura Moriarity, whose forthcoming novel American Heart "unfolds in a dystopian America where Muslims are rounded up and sent to detainment camps." The narrator is a white girl and even though the publisher and Moriarity worked with sensitivity readers and the book received a coveted and rare starred review from Kirkus, an intense, immediate online uproar about the book's basic premise erupted. The original review, written by a Muslim women, called it "suspenseful, thought-provoking and touching." An online mob, which presumably had not yet read the unpublished book, saw it differently, as an intolerable "white savior narrative" and worse...
'Critics of the book, who saw the story as offensive and dehumanizing to Muslims, bombarded Kirkus with complaints, demanding the review be retracted. Kirkus took down the review and replaced it with a contrite statement from its editor in chief, Claiborne Smith, who noted that the review, which was written by a Muslim woman, was being re-evaluated. When a revised version of the review was posted, it was more critical, and had been stripped of its star.'
"I do wonder, in this environment, what books aren't being released""
They exist to mitigate the threat of the real thought police - the online mob
The liberal monkey see monkey do theory of human behavior - if people see something in art, they will do it. Therefore art needs to be censored
When Strong Emotions are Mistaken for Sexual Attraction
I've a friend who was in a running group who said it was good to pick up girls at after the run
And yet liberals mock this as an alternative explanation for the study that "proves" that "homophobes" are secretly gay (Is homophobia associated with homosexual arousal? by Adams)
Romance and Retribution - ""Well. I saw that someone who's been YEARS in the publishing (not writing) business liked a highly problematic tweet and when I checked if that was an accident, their timeline was full of likes of hateful, racist tweets. Sorry, but blocked."... There was a Trump tweet in which the president thanked the people of El Paso and Dayton; three Charlie Kirk tweets, one of which praised the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency; there was a Diamond and Silk tweet which included a video of their appearance on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News show; and there were a few tweets of prayers and Biblical verse from Christian accounts... Both publishers now found themselves besieged by angry tweets and emails demanding to know why they were employing a notorious racist. Grimshaw began deleting her likes and unfollowing accounts in an attempt to escape harassment, before giving up and deleting her account. As far as Drake was concerned, this constituted an admission of guilt. The problem, she explained, was not just Grimshaw’s “white supremacist leanings”; it was that someone with those leanings had previously worked as an acquisition editor at Random House and as a buyer for Borders Group. Grimshaw was one of the gatekeepers in an industry that had long marginalized authors of color. “If keeping romance white is what Jack’s House is all about,” Drake concluded, “then I guess she’ll fit right in.”... In March 2018, Alyssa Cole’s inter-racial civil war romance An Extraordinary Union was not nominated for that year’s RITAs, even though it had already received multiple awards and been favorably reviewed. “The books that had beat Cole as finalists in the best short historical romance category were all by white women,” wrote Beckett, “all but one set in nineteenth century Britain, featuring white women who fall in love with aristocrats. The heroes were, respectively, one ‘rogue,’ two dukes, two lords, and an earl.” Beckett didn’t venture an opinion on the quality of the finalists. Nor did she say which of the nominated books ought to have been replaced by Cole’s or on what grounds... Brockmann went on to call the 53 percent of white American women who had voted for Donald Trump racists and challenged them to prove her wrong by voting the “hateful racist traitors” out of office. It was an inflammatory and divisive address marinated in bromides of love and tolerance, and it was rewarded with whoops, cheers, and a standing ovation. As 2018 drew to a close, sides were being chosen within RWA. Are you with us or are you with white supremacy? For a white supremacist organization, RWA responded to Brockmann’s indictment with remarkable contrition... The race row that was about to consume RWA would lead to the cancellation of the following year’s RITA awards for the first time in the organization’s 40-year history, and almost finish off the organization itself... In 2017, former RWA board member Linda Howard posted in a private RWA forum to register her unhappiness with the organization’s new direction... RWA was hemorrhaging members, she warned, “because an organization more focused on social issues than publishing ones doesn’t meet their career needs.”...
'I’ve seen a drastic reduction in my local chapter. Members have just walked away, not because of where they are in their careers but because of the way some sensitive issues were handled. Diversity for the sake of diversity is discrimination'...
Needless to say, when these remarks (reproduced here, along with some deeply unsympathetic commentary) were leaked onto Twitter, they did not go down well at all. So brutal was the blowback that Howard left the organization of which she had been a member since the year it was established. “We collectively kicked her ass,” Milan would later crow... Milan gave an interview to Sarah Weddell’s Smart Bitches, Trashy Books podcast. Invited by her ceaselessly ingratiating host to close out the discussion in her own words, Milan delivered a familiar rebuke to those she accused of “tone policing” women of color:... If you find my accusations of racism offensive, that’s just confirmation of your racism. In 2010, the blogger Eric S. Raymond described this mode of argument as “so fallacious and manipulative that those subjected to it are entitled to reject it based entirely on the form of the argument, without reference to whatever particular sin or thoughtcrime is being alleged.” He called it “kafkatrapping” because, like the protagonist of Franz Kafka’s novel The Trial, the accused is offered no avenue of exoneration... Milan and her allies applied this technique with such pitiless efficiency that RWA was left unable to enforce the most basic standards of member conduct... RWA had welcomed Milan into its club; its members had voted her onto the board twice and appointed her chair of the ethics committee; its judges had nominated her for three RITAs and awarded her one; its board had embraced many of her diversity initiatives and recognized her dedication with an official service award; Carolyn Jewel and Damon Suede had even cravenly endorsed her unprovoked attacks on Sue Grimshaw. And yet, Milan and her supporters managed to convince almost everyone of the preposterous idea that she had been punished for speaking out about racism... an organization founded to advance the shared interests of romance authors had allowed itself to be convinced that its diversity record was the true measure of its legitimacy... But RWA’s most serious mistake was to empower those within its ranks who most bitterly despised it—members like Courtney Milan and Suzanne Brockmann, who saw the organization as just another fortress of homophobic white supremacy to be conquered or destroyed. As institutions grow and evolve, they inevitably require reform, but that task can only be entrusted to those who love the institution—because only they will have its best interests at heart."
The bar for being a "bigot" steadily gets lowered
Wokeness destroys everything (e.g. Boston's Pride Parade)
Romance Writers Of America Causes Fresh Outrage With Vivian Award Choice
Grievance mongers will never be satisfied
Meme - Ludwig von yeezus @NEOCONREMOVER: "it could be Christmas day and the Google Doodle will be like "Happy Birthday to Idkaliali Moachim, the first Indigenous woman to have an abortion""
Charles Murray on Twitter - "I know for a fact top consulting and investment banking firms are diversifying their hiring out of the Ivies more than they ever have."
"I have personally heard at least 4 CEOs say that they’re sick of the fragile, self-important products of the Ivies and don’t interview them any more."
Replies: "My experience with recent Ivy grads leads me to think they've substituted social competition skills (in zero sum games for positional status, where the game is mediated by performative emoting) for academic rigor."
"As an Ivy graduate who runs his own business, I’d say the quality really started going down around 2009, unsurprisingly coinciding with The Kenyan’s presidency. I can’t interview current grads, they are mediocre now."
Texas school shooting suspect's family launches GoFundMe because he's 'traumatized'—fundraiser quickly removed from platform - ""Many of you have seen the video of the brutal beating Timothy Simpkins received. He never even returned a blow. He simply balled up and covered his head trying to protect himself." "What you don't know is that Timothy was robbed at gunpoint and stripped of his possessions a couple of weeks ago. And the unfortunate backstory is that Timothy's father was brutally beaten to death. This fact definitely heightened Timothy's fear for his life," the message continued. "Not to mention that the young man responsible for beating and harassing him made had recently made threats to kill him so you see, my son was terrified and believed he would be murdered just like his father. I believe my son’s entire story should be heard and I am asking that you help me share it in an effort to balance the one-sided narrative that the media is broadcasting"... Keeping with the theme of family unity, it was reported yesterday that the Simpkins family threw a welcome home party for the school shooting suspect after he posted his $75,000 bail"
Meme - Succubus Cherish: "I may have BPD, I may be fat but at least I'm not white... at least I'm not a mayo monkey, colonizer, slave owner, discharge dog, salt shaker, unseasoned, skinned potato, boiled chicken, raw chicken, useless crashing, mayo packet, bleach Zenon, chalk child ass BITCH."
Germany Won′t Seek EU-Wide Ban on Swastikas - "Following protests by Hindu groups who say they've used the swastika as a religious symbol for millennia, Germany announced Monday that it has dropped plans to outlaw the sign throughout the European Union."
Muis | Clarification on MUIS - Malays Underrepresented in Singapore Facebook Page - "This posting is by a page - MUIS - Malays Underrepresented in Singapore - which regularly attempts to discredit Muis. This post, like many others, contains allegations which are passed of as statements of fact, but which are not and often cannot be verified. The page also has a sister page which is even older, named MUIS - Muslims Underrepresented in Singapore, which echoes this and other irresponsible posts, with the same intent."
The page disappeared. I always thought Muslims Underrepresented in Singapore was a joke
Southern Poverty Law Center - Posts | Facebook - "We've joined the ACLU and the Florida Immigrant Coalition advising immigrants and people of color not to visit Florida. The state's legislature is poised to vote on 2 bills—SB 168 and HB 527—that would make it easier for law enforcement to racially profile, detain and deport immigrants."
From 2019. Ironically, it's xenophobic and anti-immigrant to claim that all immigrants are illegal immigrants - which is the precept behind the left's condemnation of all anti-illegal immigration measures
It’s a golden age for Chinese archaeology — and the West is ignoring it - The Washington Post - "Why do we pay so much more attention in the West to Egyptian archaeology than to Chinese archaeology — even though each is important to our understanding of human history? Egypt strikes a chord partly because of a kind of romanticism that is a legacy of colonialism... Roughly 6 percent of Americans identify as ethnically Asian; that population is part of the American story and so, therefore, is the history of civilization in East Asia... Chinese archaeology has a very different history from Egyptian archaeology. It has largely been done by local, Chinese archaeologists, for one thing; it was not an imperialist project. It was also tied, early on, to nationalist claims of identity... While it would be going considerably too far to say that the recent violence against Asian Americans has been caused by the media’s neglect of Chinese archaeology, the subtly pernicious assumption that the Chinese story is not “our” story contributes to the notion that Asian Americans are “others.”"
I'm sure Xi's closing of China to the outside world has nothing to do with this
Isn't it racist to say Asians are all Chinese (especially since Asian doesn't just mean East Asian)? Since the US has people whose roots come from all over the world, does that mean all parts of the world must be equally important to it?
Ironically, the Chinese are very uninterested in the rest of the world, while American museums have Chinese collections
