Links - 14th March 2022 (1 - General Wokeness)

Who gets to define what’s ‘racist?’ - "In the past, racism primarily denoted overt discrimination, bigotry, or racial animus... in contemporary U.S. society, one of the very worst charges that can be leveled against someone – especially a white person – is to accuse them of being racist... as a function of the increased social capital at stake when accusations of racism are made, and the diminishing opportunities to leverage that capital by “calling out” obvious cases of racism – the sphere of what counts as “racist” has been ever-expanding – to the point where it is now possible to qualify as “racist” on the basis of things like microaggressions and implicit attitudes. One particularly unfortunate aspect of this concept creep – justified under the auspices of empowering people of color – is that relatively well-off, highly-educated, liberal whites tend to be among the most zealous in identifying and prosecuting these new forms of “racism.”... a recent Cato study presented Americans with a series of canonical microaggressions and asked whether or not they were offensive. Hispanic and black respondents overwhelmingly said they were not. Yet, white college students and graduates were significantly more likely than the average black or Hispanic respondent to brand these statements as “offensive.” This effect was especially pronounced among white highly-educated respondents who identified with the left... More in Common found that highly-educated, upper-SES white urbanites were far more supportive of “political correctness” and political revolution than minorities tend to be. Looking at GSS and ANES data, highly-educated whites tend to be more ‘woke’ on racial issuesthan the average black or Hispanic; they tend to perceive much more racism against minorities than most minorities, themselves, report experiencing; they express greater support for diversity than most blacks or Hispanics; they report more favorable attitudes towards people of racial/ ethnic ‘outgroups’ over their ‘ingroup’ – and are the only ethnic or racial group to exhibit such tendencies. How can this phenomenon be explained? One approach might be to argue that relatively well-off and highly-educated liberal whites — by virtue of their college education and higher rates of consumption of ‘woke’ content in the media, online, etc. — simply understand the reality and dynamics of racism better than the average black or Hispanic. I would strongly advise against anyone taking a stand on that hill. What is more plausible is that many whites, in their eagerness to present themselves as advocates for people of color and the cause of antiracism, neglect to actually listen to ordinary black or brown folk about what they find offensive, or what their racial priorities are. White elites —who play an outsized role in defining racism in academia, the media, and the broader culture — instead seem to define ‘racism’ in ways that are congenial to their own preferences and priorities. Rather than actually dismantling white supremacy or meaningfully empowering people of color, efforts often seem to be oriented towards consolidating social and cultural capital in the hands of the ‘good’ whites.  Charges of “racism,” for instance, are primarily deployed against the political opponents of upwardly-mobile, highly-educated progressive white people. Even to the point of branding prominent black or brown dissenters as race-traitors. The politicized nature of these accusations is not lost on their intended targets. The blowback against a perceived overuse of “racism” charges seems to have significantly contributed to the rise of Donald Trump and other demagogic figures in the U.S. and Western Europe. It is primarily marginalized and vulnerable populations who tend to suffer when such figures come into power (upwardly mobile highly-educated whites, regardless of their political leanings, are still doing just fine). Indeed, evidence is growing that many fashionable formulations of “racism” (and antiracist activism) may be directly pernicious for people of color. For instance, a recent metanalysis on microaggressions found little empirical substantiation for the harm claims advanced in the literature. Yet there is abundant research demonstrating harm caused by heightened perceptions of racism, discrimination, racialized violence, and racial inequality. There are very well-established and highly-adverse impacts on the psychological (and even physical) well-being of people of color when they perceive more racism, racial inequality, and discrimination. That is, we have not (yet) been able to empirically verify that microaggressions are typically harmful, nor have we been able to effectively measure the extent of that harm. (Again, the vast majority of blacks and Hispanics find even the paradigm cases to be inoffensive). However, we have ample reason to believe that sensitizing people to better perceive and to take greater offense at these “slights” actually would cause harm. Similar problems emerge with respect to other popular approaches: training on ‘multiculturalism’ seems to reinforce race-essentialism among those who go through it; teaching whites about racial privilege seems to do little to change attitudes or behaviors towards African Americans — it merely increases resentment against lower-SES whites. Metanalysis after metanalysis fails to find strong empirical links between “implicitly racist” attitudes and actual racist behaviors “in the world.” It seems as though the primary effect of such training, among those who go through it, is higher levels of racial resentment. Yet entire industries have cropped up to help people understand and fight their implicit racial biases... these approaches — despite being demonstrably ineffective (or even counter-productive) — are relatively easy to execute. They allow institutions, and social elites, to gesture that they are “on board” with antiracism and “doing something” about racialized inequality without actually making major changes to the way they do business."
This is also related to the 'myth' of the slippery slope
Being obsessed by the "harm" of "racism" is a self-fulfilling prophecy

Christian barista allegedly axed by Starbucks for not wearing LGBT shirt - "One thing they absolutely cannot stand in this journey toward iNcLuSiViTy, however, is anyone with a slightly different worldview or religious beliefs on marriage, sexual behavior, and the nature of humanity that have been held by the majority of humanity for most of history.  That seems to be the case with Christian ex-employee Betsy Fresse, who says she was fired after refusing to wear a Gay Pride shirt... If Fresse's litigation is successful, she would receive back pay for being wrongfully terminated and set a precedent to make sure Starbucks – and others like them – do not fail "to accommodate the sincerely held religious beliefs" of employees in future cases."

Farewell to Cambridge’s disastrous Vice-Chancellor | The Spectator - "So farewell then, Stephen Toope. The undistinguished Canadian lawyer who has spent recent years trying to run Cambridge University into the ground has just sent an announcement to all faculty, alumni and students... his brief tenure at Cambridge has been an unmitigated disaster, a fact that has become increasingly clear. Among the highlights of his career at Cambridge have been:
Overseeing the trashing of academic freedom. During Toope’s tenure a mob of ill-informed students succeeded in getting a junior research fellow, Noah Carl, pushed out of his position because of an uninformed campaign claiming his research was ‘racist’. Later Toope defended the humiliating treatment of Prof. Jordan Peterson, who had a non-paying fellowship withdrawn based on an equally ill-informed campaign against him.
Next the university put forward a new set of standards to be imposed on all academics and students at the university. This included the demand that all students and staff should ‘respect’ the opinions of others. A group of sharp-eyed academics noted where this would lead and ran a campaign to change the wording to an expectation that people should ‘tolerate’ other people’s opinions. When this went to a vote last December the university voted overwhelmingly, and humiliatingly, against the proposal.
Yet Cambridge then introduced a new initiative that would encourage students and faculty to anonymously inform on each other if they felt that they had suffered a ‘micro-aggression’. The advice published online noted that an example of a micro-aggression would be any member of the university raising an eyebrow while any member of a minority was speaking. After I and others brought some negative publicity to this, Toope claimed that the advice had not been read to him before going out, that it had gone out early or that the dog had eaten it.
A small number of academics (namely Profs John Dennis, Tim Harper, Patrick Maxwell, Nigel Peake, Anna Philpott and Chris Young) tried to rally to Toope’s defence, arguing that these attacks on free speech were no such thing. As I wrote here in The Spectator at the time, they got nearly all of their facts wrong in the process of defending someone who had got his own idea of academic freedom wrong.
All the while there was not a woke cause that Toope did not try to import from his native Canada. For instance, in 2019 it was announced that Toope had appointed a committee to examine the university’s historical links to the slave trade. During the height of this ahistorical pandering exercise a bell was removed from one of Cambridge’s colleges because it was suspected of having possibly once been on a plantation.
Strangely, as The Spectator also revealed in a recent cover piece, while all this was going on Toope led Cambridge deeper and deeper into a highly compromising relationship with the authorities in China...
this is why Toope – and his fall from grace – matter. His rise seemed to demonstrate that there is only a benefit to be gained from trying to get ahead of the new authoritarianism. His fall demonstrates that there can be a cost to it as well."

Watch: College students LOVE the idea of diversity quotas... until it ruins their football team - "Students at the University of Florida are strong believers in the importance of diversity quotas but... not for everything... If the Gators' starting lineup consisted of individuals that reflected their school's demographic it would comprise of six White players, two Latino players, two Asian players, and one Black player. (While currently, most of the players are Black)"

University quotas will undermine education - "the influential education think-tank EDSK, rather surprisingly, called on UK universities to go at least partly down the American path. Indeed, in one respect it went further, saying the whole admissions process should be government-imposed from the top down, with all funding withdrawn from any institution that does not sign up... A good university is a place to read a subject you are interested in, not simply to be taught it to get a diploma. It is a place to study spontaneously and at times quirkily and without direction. It is not about clocking in for the student contact hours you have bought to achieve the learning outcomes in the course description. Unfortunately, regarding university education as a kind of prize to be distributed on equitable or social-justice grounds is likely to attract and promote exactly the latter kind of student."

Statistics Indicate an Ivy League Asian Quota - NYTimes.com - "Each year, American universities provide their racial enrollment data to the National Center for Education Statistics, which makes this information available online. After the Justice Department closed an investigation in the early 1990s into charges that Harvard University discriminated against Asian-American applicants, Harvard’s reported enrollment of Asian-Americans began gradually declining, falling from 20.6 percent in 1993 to about 16.5 percent over most of the last decade... the percentage of Asian-Americans enrolled at Harvard fell by more than 50 percent over the last two decades, while the percentage of whites changed little. This decline in relative Asian-American enrollment was actually larger than the impact of Harvard’s 1925 Jewish quota, which reduced Jewish freshmen from 27.6 percent to 15 percent.   The percentages of college-age Asian-Americans enrolled at most of the other Ivy League schools also fell during this same period, and over the last few years Asian enrollments across these different universities have converged to a very similar level and remained static over time. This raises suspicions of a joint Ivy League policy to restrict Asian-American numbers to a particular percentage.  Meanwhile, the California Institute of Technology follows a highly selective but strictly race-neutral admissions policy, and its enrollment of Asian-Americans has grown almost exactly in line with the growth of the Asian-American population. The last 20 years have brought a huge rise in the number of Asians winning top academic awards in our high schools or being named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists. It seems quite suspicious that none of trends have been reflected in their increased enrollment at Harvard and other top Ivy League universities.  Some individuals have suggested that Asian-Americans no longer apply to the Ivy League in large numbers and this explains their reduced presence. The prestigious University of California system routinely releases the racial totals for its college applicants, which allows the public to examine admission rates by race. During the 1980s, Ivy League colleges sometimes did so as well, but more recently have begun keeping these figures secret. If Harvard and the other Ivy League schools simply released their racial application totals for the last 20 years, we might easily resolve the disturbing suspicion that they have quietly implemented a system of “Asian-American quotas.”"

Nobel Academy Chief Rules Out Quotas For Women, Minorities Says Prize Will Go To ‘Most Worthy’ - "the Nobel committee faced criticism due to the lack of diversity among this year’s laureates and the historic underrepresentation of women and minorities among the list of awardees... Hansson said laureates will be chosen for making the most important discoveries instead of their gender or ethnicity as that is in line “with the spirit of Alfred Nobel’s last will.”  The Swedish scientist said the issue of gender quotas was discussed by the academy three weeks ago but was ultimately dismissed over concerns that it might detract from a laureate’s legitimacy... New Zealand physicist Laurie Winkless dismissed the academy’s claim about all deserving women getting a fair chance"
How long can they withstand the leftist tide?

Gwyneth Paltrow and “Niggas in Paris”: Is it ever OK for white people to use the word? - "Jay-Z, Gwyneth Paltrow, and when white people can say the word." - Slate, 2012
Slate Podcast Host Mike Pesca Suspended Following Internal Discussion About Use Of Racial Slur - 2021
The "myth" of the slippery slope!

Physicists Need to Be More Careful with How They Name Things - Scientific American - "The popular term “quantum supremacy,” which refers to quantum computers outperforming classical ones, is uncomfortably reminiscent of “white supremacy”...   The word supremacy—having “more power, authority or status than anyone else”—is closely linked to “white supremacy.” This isn’t supposition; it’s fact. The Corpus of Contemporary American English finds “white supremacy” is 15 times more frequent than the next most commonly used two-word phrase, “judicial supremacy.”...   In 2019, a short correspondence to Nature argued that the quantum computing community should adopt different terminology to avoid “overtones of violence, neocolonialism and racism.”... The linguist Steven Pinker weighed in to argue that “the prissy banning of words by academics should be resisted. It dumbs down understanding of language: word meanings are conventions, not spells with magical powers, and all words have multiple senses, which are distinguished in context. Also, it makes academia a laughingstock, tars the innocent, and does nothing to combat actual racism & sexism.”   It is true that “supremacy” is not a magic word, that its meaning comes from convention, not conjurers. But the context of “quantum supremacy,” which Pinker neglects, is that of a historically white, male-dominated discipline. Acknowledging this by seeking better language is a basic effort to be polite, not prissy."
Liberals getting upset after making up stuff to trigger themselves

Meme - "fellow white dietitians: please stop saying the mediterranean diet is the "healthiest" way to eat. this upholds white supremacy. #rdchat #rd2be"
"I don't drink olive oil for the anti-inflammatory properties or the taste. I drink it because I'm racist."

UN Deletes Tweet About 'Love' After Left Complains About Microaggression - "A United Nations organization deleted a Valentine’s Day tweet celebrating different forms of love after the left complained that a depiction of a black woman hugging herself was racist."

I tried ‘unconscious bias training’. Shockingly, it proved a woke fraud - "The whole thing started 20 years ago thanks to an exercise carried out by three academics at Harvard. The academics tried to see whether we could track or quantify unconscious biases that people may carry around with them. In the last two decades the rudimentary test has been taken online by millions of people. In time it became the basis of an industry, propelled by people pushing divisive ideas about identity politics. These people either believed or professed to believe that the exercise was scientific and could actually correct the brains and behaviour of anyone who had beliefs they disagreed with.  So far and fast did this run that soon the inventors of the monster realised what they’d created and tried to kill it. Two of the three Harvard academics responsible said publicly that the exercise was not capable of being used in the way it was being used. There are too many variables in peoples’ behaviour over any day, never mind over time, to quantify, pin down - let alone ‘correct’ anyone’s ‘biases’.   But that is where the opportunists came in. For in recent years another group decided to claim that these ‘tests’ had some laser-like precision. They began to charge hundreds of pounds to people to tell them that they were biased. A very nice racket to get into. For if anyone objected then this was simply yet more evidence of unconscious bias. Comrade Stalin would have admired the move. But for the racket to work, the dim and opportunistic needed customers: and found many among the cowardly. For across this country corporate bosses and civil servants, cowed by their junior employees, started to decide that giving everyone unconscious bias training was a way of showing that they were ‘doing something’. Insincere and ignorant activists got away with rolling out a programme that presumes not just to identify human biases but to rewire everyone’s brains. The presumption is quite amazing."

Debate emerges over racism and white supremacy in Oregon math instruction - "The Oregon Department of Education (ODE) recently sent a newsletter to math educators in the state. The newsletter contained information about a virtual micro-course in math equity instruction that teachers could sign up for. It was titled "Pathway to Math Equity Micro Course 2.0: Valuing and elevating student discourse in the math classroom." The course was provided by A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction, an entity focused on dismantling racism in mathematics instruction... The group claims white supremacy culture can show up in the classroom in various ways, including when "the focus is on getting the 'right' answer," and when "students are required to 'show their work.'""

Meme - sara @dumpstrxrfire: "reminder to move away from using the word "marijuana" as it is xenophobic and rooted in racism
before you ask me if I'm joking or try to justify using this word consider these alternatives
using google (free)
using one of the other zillion words for marijuana (also free)
Also stop acting like I invented this for fun. There have been several BIPOC speaking on this topic, it's not my fault you have read about it or seen someone talking about it."

Meme - Altrey @aubviouslynot: "someone has now stolen my car battery lol I'm so tired, can I please catch a break"
Addison Angel **Wear a mask**: "Please do not call the police. You could put a BIPOC's life at risk by causing a police interaction. Just buy a new battery" Brado @Truth_ssbm: "No one said anything about race???"
Addison Angel **Wear a mask**: "Well we all know it wasn't a white person who took it. Whoever took it was in need, it's not like they're stealing diamonds"
Liberals think minorities are criminals

The Negro Rulers of Scotland and the British Isles - "Dr. Johnson's work has become vital for readers who seek an understanding of the origin of man, and Africa’s contribution to the Bible and Natural History. His research has polarized Africa as the birthplace of mankind, whom throughout the ages migrated to the remote regions on the earth. The author makes emphasis that during the great African migration, the concept of the wheel, mathematics, the alphabet, reading, writing, philosophy, science, astrology , astronomy, Fine Arts, family hierarchy, bureaucracy parentheses (government), king, queen, dynastic rule, huge universities, great cities and churches, were rudiments brought out of Africa and spread throughout the world; a marvelous accomplishment that led to the Ultra- structure of Western Civilization.This text highlights the earliest African rulers of Scotland, Southern Ireland and United Kingdom; a chronicle that focuses upon the Alpin Dynasty from Kenneth MacAlpin and his great-great-grandson Kenneth Dubh (Dub) or Kenneth the Niger (Black, Duff or Duffy ), whose descendants of different appearances continued to rule Scotland, England, Ireland and other nations of Europe, even until this day."
So much for those who care about "misinformation"

The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "This meme comes from a confused comment by one director of curriculum, in one school district, from one private meeting that was amplified by an NBC article. The district has since clarified this won’t be happening, but memes couldn’t resist the Texas angle, and piled on... In no way are teachers being told to “teach both sides of the Holocaust.” Even the district acknowledges this isn’t what the law says, it pertains to giving other points of view on current events and widely debated topics, not accepted history. ▪️Additionally, NBC quoted the spokesman for the Texas State Teachers Association, a Republican state Senator and 3 other Texas Educational policy experts who all agreed that this was a misinterpretation of the law. ▪️This was a simply statement that got blown out of proportion because there was confusion over what this bill means for approved books in the classroom, and one director made a poor off-the-cuff example in a private meeting. No teacher will be teaching “both sides” of the Holocaust."

Meme - "Not being transgender makes me privileged says Rep. Ocasio- Cortez"
"What's next? Being able to walk makes us privileged compared to those in wheelchairs?"

YouGov on Twitter - "73% of Britons see illegal entry to the UK via the Channel as a serious issue. This is the case for 97% of Conservative voters"
Nigel Farage on Twitter - "These figures show how out of touch our politicians are. Mainstream media even more clueless. People care about this issue."
Nadia Whittome MP on Twitter - "There is no “migrant crisis”. There is a crisis of exploitation: bosses of workers, landlords of tenants, the 1% of the 99%. And there is a government that lets them get away with it."
Meme - Kate Osamor MP for Edmonto...: "Sending solidarity to @benandjerrysUK Once again putting humanity before pure wickedness We see you #RefugeesWelcome"
Bin The Labour Party: LABOUR BACK THE MIGRANTS - "The migrant invasion via the English Channel is being welcomed by many in the Labour Party and any attempts to stem the flow is predictably being met with criticism.  Once again Labour shows its true colours and provides a timely reminder that however unable and/or unwilling this Tory government is to stop the boats - if Starmer was in Number Ten he would probably be offering to collect the migrants directly from Calais.  After all, in the eyes of the left these are the Labour voters of tomorrow.  On the Twittersphere many Labour MPs and activists are signalling their support for the illegals.  While Starmer himself has said little about the situation, his Shadow Home Secretary has written to Priti Patel denouncing the government's 'lack of compassion' for the migrants.  Nick Thomas-Symonds' letter can be seen below (click to enlarge).  It was retweeted by Starmer... The final destination for migrants will not be the communities where Labour MPs live.  The metropolitan elites who dominate today's Labour Party will not suffer the consequences of the actions they support.  It's the working classes who will compete for hospital beds, school places and jobs.  These are the people who are outraged at what is happening in the Channel and if the Tories don't get hold of this problem then Nigel Farage will fill a political vacuum - again.  Last weekend the Labour Party in Bath found out just how strongly people really feel about the situation.  They decided to take up the old communist standard of whipping up hatred against the rich, but their Twitter poll backfired spectacularly - yes, even on the predominantly left-wing platform of Twitter...  The final result of their poll is not available, because they deleted it.  Needless to say, overwhelmingly white and affluent Bath is not going to be a recipient of most of the so-called 'refugees' landing in Dover.  Make no mistake, a Labour government would open the floodgates - again."
Meme - Claudia Webbe MP: "Its ludicrous to suggest vulnerable migrants pose a threat to our security, economy or social life This is classic Tory divide & rule Attacks on working class come from the billionaire class who stash their wealth in tax havens, not refugees fleeing persecution, death & famine"
Sargon of Akkad - Posts | Facebook - "Public opinion vs Labour MP's."
How out of touch Labour is. No wonder they are unelectable

Gad Saad - Posts | Facebook - "Let me get this straight. A professor at University of Cambridge proclaims that white lives do not matter & she gets promoted to full professor. @NoahCarl90 is fired from the same university because "bruh intelligence research is Nazism." And @jordanbpeterson has a fellowship rescinded because Jordan is literally Hitler. If only I knew why this grotesque double standard exists. Oh wait I know. The genocidal hatred toward white people was expressed by a "professor of color" whereas Noah and Jordan are "disgusting white males." OK, move along. Nothing to see. Apparently, @Cambridge_Uni is really into protecting freedom of speech and academic freedom but only as a function of one's skin color and the target of the genocidal hate. Imagine if a white professor had uttered something similar but about a group other than white people. By the way, I SUPPORT the right of all of the latter parties involved to their views including the right of @PriyamvadaGopal to express her grotesquely racist views. Such is the messiness of a free society. I also support the right of Holocaust deniers (I'm Jewish)."
<Addendum: This is about Priyamvada Gopal
Keywords: racist against white people, racist against whites, gupta

Burnley fan behind 'White Lives Matter' banner sacked from job - reports
Sargon of Akkad - Posts | Facebook - "Say "White Lives Don't Matter" get promoted.  Say "White Lives Matter" get investigated by the police and lose your job. This sort of double standard is not only obviously wrong but irresponsible."

Facebook - "One of the problems with "silence = violence" is that we're no longer allowed to be reserved in judgement whenever a story about a heinous hate crime explodes into the national consciousness. Instead, we must rush to condemn, rush to publicly display rituals of solidarity, brandish a hashtag here and there, because we are simply too afraid of the passing mob's wrath, their call-outs eager to paint you as the next racist dismissive of injustice, of oppression. But if anything, it's what we need more than ever. Slow news. Time to gather facts.  So here we are with yet another Boy Who Cried Noose story, and worse, barely a reckoning from the media that fanned its flames and called it wrong. Some blue-checked journalists have even insisted on denying the FBI's investigation and doubling down (*cough cough* Jemele Hill). Whose interest is it to see racism animating every aspect of American life? To see nooses everywhere?  What will it take to acknowledge racial progress? What will it take to debunk their fundamental hypothesis? These are tough but important questions. Silence is ok, in fact, it's necessary, now more than ever. Anyone insisting you take a position is not allowing you to make up your own mind."

My favourite teen band lyrics now make me feel sick - "Where I once enjoyed indulging in some much-needed nostalgia (often in the form of revisiting mine and my then-boyfriend’s Taking Back Sunday ‘song’ when I was 14) it now seems to me that our guilty pleasures are in fact guilty of being sexist, and in some cases extremely derogatory towards women."

Doritos made this ad for the Mexican market where a dead guy's ghost comes back to tell his family he has a gay lover in heaven 😐 - "A company that took Mexican tortilla chips and turned them into hyper-American junk food is now trying to convince said Mexicans with an ad about how their dead uncle is gay. If you don't know, most Mexicans – and Latinos in general – aren't into this woke stuff. They're kinda into masculine men, feminine women, big families, and faith in God (and a whole lot of soccer)."

Calling female colleagues ‘love’ is not the same as calling men ‘mate’, tribunal told - "Calling female work colleagues “love” or “honey” is demeaning and is not the same as calling male co-workers “mate”, a tribunal has ruled.  Mike Hartley, a funeral home manager, was sacked after being accused of making inappropriate remarks to young women at work, including calling female colleagues “sweet”, “love”, “chick” and “honey”.   After he lost his job, Mr Hartley tried to argue that he was the victim of sex discrimination because he also gave men pet names such as “mate” or “pal”."

Facebook - "You’ve been called racist, now what? – Advice from a South African... As a white South African, I am more familiar than I’d like to be with the notion of collective guilt. For as long as I’ve been alive, the default assumption has been that whites are oppressors and blacks are victims, despite the fact that for close to 30 years now, almost all positions of significant political and institutional power have been held by a black elite.  Nonetheless, South Africa’s various social ills are still laid at the door of the white minority. In fact, due to the structure of public education, until early adulthood, I honestly believed that white South Africans had no culture of our own, except for what we stole from others. Now I see this same rhetoric taking hold in the West and it troubles me deeply, for as the West goes, so go us all. In consequence, I’d like to offer some observations and advice on what to do if you find yourself unjustly branded a racist. First and foremost, do not get angry. People who wish to publicly shame you with an accusation of racism often do so precisely because they want to provoke an angry reaction, thereby appearing more just and sensible themselves. If you know in your heart that you don’t carry hatred toward those different from you, then you have no reason to give these people a win. Don’t get tripped up by word games. Many budding activists will try to claim that racism isn’t identified via the common definition (bigotry or distrust based on physical differences) but instead by an equation. Racism = Power + Prejudice. This definition comes from the pseudo-academic field of critical race theory and its purpose is to reframe conversations and allow the user to overlook or ignore any hateful acts engaged in by non-whites, on the basis that they do not hold institutional power. Not only is this demonstrably false, it belies a kind of creeping supremacist attitude, under which white people are the only ones capable of individual agency. If you are ever confronted with this P+P=R nonsense, understand that the person saying it is no longer speaking to you, but the abstract negative concept of “whiteness” that you represent in their mind. Contemporary anti-racism is a cult and just like any other religious fanatic, nothing less than your complete and total submission will be acceptable to its followers. It’s no longer enough that you simply treat all people with an equal amount of courtesy, you will now be expected to make a public spectacle of your “anti-racist” efforts. Understand that once you give ground in this regard, it will NEVER be enough. Racism in white people is the anti-racism movement’s secular alternative to the Christian concept of Original Sin, without the possibility of redemption. There is no way for you to win this twisted game, no method to adequately prove your moral purity. Do not bend the knee to this destructive dogma or allow yourself to be beaten into serfdom. Never apologise for things you don’t believe in or did not do. Those who have fallen prey to this hivemind of madness deserve your pity, not your hatred. Remember that as you go about your business."

Scarlett Johansson's Lawyer Slams Disney's Misogynistic Response To Lawsuit - "Scarlett Johansson's lawyer has criticized Disney's "misogynistic" response to the ongoing Black Widow lawsuit"
Misogyny is anything that disadvantages a woman

D.Va's Thot Patrol - Posts | Facebook - "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Atari 2600): User Score 3.5"
"The Last of Us Part II (PS4): User Score 3.4"
"Imagine being worst than a game that's been considered the worst game of all time for nearly 4 decades and almost destroyed the video game industry."

Ridiculous Zuccs: smuggly puff

"Aw, she reminds me of smuggly puff from uoft"

You can't say that someone (without even tagging the person) reminds you of someone else.

Context:

Smugglypuff | Know Your Meme

"Smugglypuff is the nickname given to a University of Toronto student and activist who became a target of online ridicule after he was filmed on camera denying having witnessed the assault of Canadian conservative and libertarian vlogger Lauren Southern during a LGBT rights protest held on campus in mid-October 2016. The moniker, which is a portmanteau of the Pokémon character Jigglypuff and the word “smug,” is derived from Trigglypuff, a nickname given to a Hampshire College student and social justice activist in April 2016."

Links - 12th March 2022 (Covid-19)

Opinion: There’s nothing ‘incidental’ about hospital patients with COVID-19 - The Globe and Mail - "Practically, it doesn’t matter if COVID-19 infections are incidental or not. Hospitals are full to bursting. Many have “ANB status,” meaning patients can be admitted but there are no beds. They lie in ER corridors... Often, it is assumed that the “with” patients are less sick, or less affected, and that’s not necessarily true. We have systematically played down the deaths of people with underlying health conditions, failing to acknowledge how the virus hastened their demise."
I remember when people were mocking when I pointed out that not everyone in hospital with covid was in hospital for covid - even after public health officials had pointed out the importance of the distinction
Practically, given that full hospitals are used to justify lockdowns, it absolutely matters if people are in hospital for covid or with it
Of course we are supposed to assume that many people are in hospital because covid worsened their health in some other way

EDITORIAL: Getting better COVID-19 data | Toronto Sun - " Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s top doctor, announced last Tuesday the number of COVID-19 deaths in the province. “This includes the death of a 14-year-old who had complex, pre-existing medical medical conditions that played a significant role in their death,” Hinshaw said, adding: “I extend my deepest condolences to the loved ones of all of these individuals.”... not every person listed in Canada as a COVID-19 death died exclusively from the virus. When it comes to kids, there have been cases where medical officers have clarified that COVID-19 was not in fact the cause of death.  This brings us back to Hinshaw: This would have been the first death of a minor of COVID-19 in the province and Albertans were rightly saddened by this news.  The only problem was it didn’t tell the full story. The family was upset that the teen had been mentioned this way in the news because, as they told media, the boy in fact died after a months long battle with a brain tumour. He only tested positive for COVID-19 two days before his death. On Thursday, Hinshaw apologized to the family for making the announcement the way she had done. She also announced that, moving forward, they will not publicly report any COVID-19 deaths in anyone under 18 until a proper review of the death has been completed."

VEZINA: Think about what denying health care to the unvaccinated means | Toronto Sun - "1. Deny health care to the unvaccinated...
Risks: Potential for widespread civil unrest; long-term effects on medical ethics with a precedent having been set; disproportionate impact on workers and industries required to keep critical infrastructures operational...
2. Deny ICU health care to all COVID-only patients, regardless of vaccine status...
Risks: Easy to abuse in terms of preferential treatment on an individual basis; difficult to implement in terms of practicality; potential staffing shortages, with some frontline health-care workers viewing this as the “last straw” ethically and quitting...
  3. Reach endemic status rapidly, to decrease hospital load over the long term...
Risks: Over the short term, a scenario from hell with increased deaths, the hospital system strained beyond maximum capacity during this period; increased chances of a new Canadian variant developing; it will appear to the public as if governments are abandoning frontline health care."
Given that we know lockdowns don't reduce deaths, going to endemic might've been the best approach. Pity about politics

It’s a Terrible Idea to Deny Medical Care to Unvaccinated People - The Atlantic - "I ran this argument past several ethicists, clinicians, and public-health practitioners. Many of them sympathized with the exasperation and fear behind the sentiment. But all of them said that it was an awful idea—unethical, impractical, and founded on a shallow understanding of why some people remain unvaccinated... “We don’t use the medical-care system as a way of meting out justice. We don’t use it to punish people for their social choices.” The matter “is pretty cut-and-dry,” Sara Murray, a hospitalist at UC San Francisco, added. “We have an ethical obligation to provide care for people regardless of the choices they made, and that stands true for our unvaccinated patients.”... People whose actions endangered themselves, like smokers with lung cancer or drivers who crash while not wearing a seatbelt, still get treated. Those whose actions endangered others, like drunk drivers or terrorists, also get treated. “We are all sinners,” Carla Keirns, a professor of medical ethics and palliative medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center, told me. “No one has made all the perfect decisions, and any of us could find ourselves in a situation where we are sick.” It is a fundamental principle of modern medicine that “everyone has an equal claim to relief from suffering, no matter what they’ve done or haven’t done,” Daniel Goldberg, a medical historian and public-health ethicist at the University of Colorado, told me. As historical examples show, the most privileged people usually benefit when care is allocated. In the 1960s, when dialysis machines were still rare, a group of seven laypeople were tasked with deciding which patients should receive the lifesaving treatment. Among factors such as age, sex, marital status, wealth, and education, the so-called God Committee also considered which people had “the highest potential of service to society” and were “active in church work.” Unsurprisingly, as later analyses showed, the committee favored middle-aged, middle-class white men. “When it became public, Americans were outraged,” Keirns told me. “They recognized that when you try to make moral distinctions, you end up holding against people circumstances beyond their control.” A person’s choices are always constrained by their circumstances. Even now, unvaccinated people are not all refusers. Using recent survey data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the health-policy researcher Julia Raifman and the economist Aaron Sojourner have shown that unvaccinated Americans are disproportionately poor—and within the lowest income brackets, people who want or would consider a vaccine outnumber those who would never get one. That they still haven’t gotten the shots might seem inexplicable to people who can just pop into their local CVS. But people who live in poor neighborhoods might not have a local pharmacy, or public transport that would take them to one, or internet access that would allow them to book an appointment. People who earn hourly wages might not have time for a vaccination appointment, or paid sick leave for weathering any side effects... Unvaccinated people are twice as likely to lack health insurance as their vaccinated counterparts, so to a degree, the U.S. is already denying them care. To lean into that denial “would compound the unjust disparities that they already face”... Moral arguments aside, withholding care from unvaccinated people is also logistically unfeasible. No one I talked with could imagine a patient arriving in need and having to wait while a health-care worker checks their vaccine card. But if the hospital crisis gets worse, the urge to conserve resources may force health-care workers to make tough choices. Vaccinated patients are more likely to survive a coronavirus infection than unvaccinated ones, and health-care workers might give them more attention as a medical judgment rather than a moral one. (But such calculus is tricky: “You should preferentially give monoclonal antibodies to unvaccinated people,” Wynia told me, because each dose will be more likely to keep someone out of the hospital.)... “Stigma and discrimination as a prism for allocating health-care services is already embedded in our society,” Goldberg told me. “The last thing we should do is to celebrate it.”... Most important, unvaccinated people are not the only ones transmitting the coronavirus. They’re more likely to do so than vaccinated people, but the latter are still contributing to the virus’s spread—and perhaps substantially so, given Omicron’s ability to partially evade immune defenses. Vaccinated people might have low personal risk of severe illness, but they can still slingshot the virus to vulnerable people who then end up in hospitals. They might not be occupying emergency rooms with their bodies, but they can still help fill those rooms through their actions."
Vaxholes just want to punish the unvaccinated,. Some have already admitted it

Report: German Government Considering Shutting Down Telegram - "A report in the German newspaper Die Welt suggests that the government there is considering taking action to shut down messaging app Telegram because people opposed to COVID restrictions and lockdowns are using it to organise protests and share information...   Telegram founder Pavel Durov warned that people are “being held hostage by tech monopolies.” In addition to being independent from big tech, Telegram promises robust end-to-end encryption, ensuring messages remain private.  This has made Telegram a target for authoritarians and big tech monopolists.  In the U.S. lobbyist group The Coalition for a Safer Web even filed a lawsuit against Apple in an effort to get Telegram removed from the app store, claiming that it allows ‘extremists’ to spread ‘hate speech’."

War memorial defaced with graffiti: ‘The real heroes are the vaccinated’ - "A war memorial in Cranbrook, British Columbia was defaced before the town celebrated its veterans for Remembrance Day on Thursday with a pro-vaccine message in green spray paint.   "The real heroes are the vaccinated," the graffiti read."

As ‘stealth omicron’ advances, scientists are learning more - The Globe and Mail - "Does BA.2 make you sicker?  A Japanese lab study suggests that it could, based on experiments with hamsters. Researchers concluded that the risk for global health “is potentially higher” from BA.2 and proposed that it be given its own Greek letter — a designation for globally significant “variants of concern.” WHO’s technical group said BA.2 should remain under the omicron umbrella.  Though the severity experiments were conducted in animals, the study is “not something to discount,” said Dr. Eric Topol of Scripps Research Translational Institute. “We should keep an open mind and keep assessing this.”  But scientists are finding something different when they look at people. An initial analysis in Denmark showed no differences in hospitalizations for BA.2 compared with the original omicron, which tends to generally cause milder disease than the delta variant. More recently, researchers in South Africa found much the same: a similar risk of hospitalization and severe disease with the original omicron variant and BA.2.  “We always have to interpret studies in animals with caution,” Long said. “I place more weight in studies of actual patients and what they’re experiencing.”"

Non-mRNA vaccines can be as good as Pfizer and Moderna in some scenarios - ""a single vaccine dose was sufficient to confer benefit [in the Israeli study]," Moore says, which suggests that among people who have already been infected, the standard two-dose regime is not necessary. Halving the two-shot regimen for previously infected people "would save a lot of doses and hence needs to be seriously considered""

Israel Finds Fourth COVID Booster Is Only 'Partially Effective,' Vast Majority Of Hospitalised Omicron Patients Are Unvaccinated - "A fourth COVID-19 booster mRNA vaccine has proven ineffective against Omicron infection, according to preliminary research from Israel...   “Despite a significant increase in antibodies after the fourth vaccine, this protection is only partially effective against the Omicron strain, which is relatively resistant to the vaccine,” lead researcher Prof Gili Regev-Yochay, told a media briefing... there had been a five-fold increase in antibodies in people who took the fourth dose, but she later told a radio station that “the amount of antibodies returns to the level it was after the third vaccine, not more. It’s nice, but it’s not what we expect from a booster.”   In addition, around the same percentage of hospital workers who received the fourth dose caught the virus as those who didn’t get the fourth booster... About half the proportion of NYC hospitalized patients required intensive care during the Omicron wave compared to the peak of the winter 2020-2021 wave – about 11% versus about 20%, according to a NYC health department report released late last week.   “In NYC, those most likely to be hospitalized are people who are not vaccinated, and a higher proportion of Black New Yorkers and people age 75 and older were hospitalized,” according to the report.  “New Yorkers who were not vaccinated were more than eight times more likely to be hospitalized compared to New Yorkers who were fully vaccinated, early in the Omicron wave. Differences in health outcomes among racial and ethnic groups are due to long-term structural racism, not biological or personal traits”... a pre-print study of COVID-19 cases in southern California compiled by Kaiser Permanente of over 52,000 Omicron infections and almost 17,000 Delta infections, found 0.5% of hospital admissions for Omicron patients and  1.3% for those infected with the Delta variant.  Rates of ICU admission from Omicron patients were 0.26 fold those of Delta, while mortality for Omicron patients was 0.09 fold that of Delta patients.   No Omicron patients received mechanical ventilation in comparison to 11 Delta patients, and Omicron patients stayed in hospital on average 3.4 days less than Delta patients."
Clearly they need to force people to get a fifth shot or be fired
Weird how obesity, vaccine hesitancy and genes are not why some racial and ethnic groups do worse with covid than others. Then again, if you can blame obesity and vaccine hesitancy on "long-term structural racism", I'm sure you can find a way to do the same for genes

What multiple vaccinations really do to your body - "“I would get a fourth jab if it meant supporting the vulnerable people in our community, but the introduction of fourth vaccines also makes me nervous,” says 37-year-old Tania Taylor. “I’m getting married at the end of July, and I’ve already had some people drop out due to France’s strict vaccine requirements. If the UK starts with fourth jabs, does that mean other European countries will too? And will that mean travel is impacted even more?”  This hesitance has already been seen in Israel where the country’s vaccine advisory panel recommended a fourth Covid vaccine dose to all adults at the end of January. However, so far, uptake has been limited, with Israeli scientists attributing this to increasing public scepticism about the necessity of a fourth dose. Some have dubbed this ‘vaccine fatigue.’  “People aren’t sure that it’s really needed,” says Gideon Schreiber, a virologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. “They feel, ‘OK, I’ll take another booster and it will be good for a few months but then the antibodies will go down, and I’ll start all over again.’” Some new studies have suggested that this attitude might well be justified as for most healthy adults, three doses appear to be sufficient to protect them from serious illness for a long time. This is because antibodies are not the only tool that vaccines use to fend off the virus.  The Pfizer and Moderna jabs are also designed to stimulate specialised immune cells called T-cells, which can detect many more parts of the spike protein than antibodies, enabling them to still detect highly mutated forms of the Covid virus. The vaccines also encode a memory of the virus in B cells, which can activate and rapidly produce new antibodies on demand in cases of a new infection.  Unlike antibodies, the B and T-cells generated as a result of three jabs appear to be capable of providing active protection for many years. Virologists believe this is one of the main reasons why people who are still reinfected with Covid following vaccination are much less likely to be hospitalised. As a result, Werbel believes that governments should focus their attention primarily on providing repeat vaccinations to people who are most at risk rather than targeting the general population with further boosters."

Got a Covid Booster? You Probably Won’t Need Another for a Long Time - The New York Times - "How soon before they need yet another shot?  Not for many months, and perhaps not for years, according to a flurry of new studies.  Three doses of a Covid vaccine — or even just two — are enough to protect most people from serious illness and death for a long time, the studies suggest. “We’re starting to see now diminishing returns on the number of additional doses,” said John Wherry, director of the Institute for immunology at the University of Pennsylvania. Although people over 65 or at high risk of illness may benefit from a fourth vaccine dose, it may be unnecessary for most people, he added... other parts of the immune system can remember and destroy the virus over many months if not years, according to at least four studies published in top-tier journals over the past month. Specialized immune cells called T cells produced after immunization by four brands of Covid vaccine — Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna, Johnson & Johnson and Novavax — are about 80 percent as powerful against Omicron as other variants, the research found. Given how different Omicron’s mutations are from previous variants, it’s very likely that T cells would mount a similarly robust attack on any future variant as well, researchers said.  This matches what scientists have found for the SARS coronavirus, which killed nearly 800 people in a 2003 epidemic in Asia. In people exposed to that virus, T cells have lasted more than 17 years... Throughout the pandemic, a disproportionate amount of research attention has gone to antibodies, the body’s first line of defense against a virus. That’s partly because these molecules are relatively easy to study: They can be measured from a drop of blood.  Analyzing immune cells, by contrast, requires milliliters of blood, skill, specialized equipment — and a lot of time. “It’s orders of magnitude slower and more laborious,” Dr. Burgers said.  Few labs have the wherewithal to study these cells, and their findings lag weeks behind those on antibodies. Perhaps as a result, scientists have frequently overlooked the importance of other parts of the immune system, experts said.  “Most people don’t even know what they are — a lot of doctors and scientists are not completely clear what a T cell is,” said Dr. Dan Barouch, a virologist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston who led one of the T-cell studies... Antibodies spike after every shot of vaccine — or after each exposure to the virus — and inevitably decline within a few weeks to months. Waning antibody levels after two vaccine doses prompted federal officials to recommend boosters for everyone older than 12. The extra shots fortified antibody levels and helped to contain Omicron’s spread, but they too appear to lose some of their ability to prevent infections within four months... the recent studies suggest that in most people, the immunity gained from infection or vaccination will hold up for a long while"
Covid hystericists will be demanding 3 boosters a year
This won't make governments recognise natural immunity, since there's no money in that

What do we know about covid vaccines and preventing transmission? - "Vaccine effectiveness against infection, hospital admission, and mortality have all taken a hit when pitted against the omicron variant, and it seems only logical that the impact against transmission would likewise drop."
A vaxhole claimed that I was making un unwarranted assumption that just because the vaccines were less useful against omicron infection than the original covid strain, they would also be less useful against omicron transmission, so I threw this BMJ article at her. Apparently covid infection has nothing to do with covid transmission. It's amazing how dumb people become when they beg the question and have a narrative they can't bear to be challenged.
Apparently there's nothing wrong with assuming that there're no long term side effects from covid vaccines. But vaxholes are very happy to make that assumption

ZUBY: on Twitter - "An 'emergency' does not last for 2+ years."

25 US states want to 'prioritize' non-whites for vaccines | The Post Millennial - ""According to our analysis, 25 states have committed to a focus on racial and ethnic communities as they decided which groups should be prioritized in receiving a coronavirus vaccine dose," tweeted Jon Levine... Twelve of the 25 states which have specifically targeted communities of color for receiving the vaccine on a priority bases have gone as far as working with healthcare companies which are based in areas with large minority populations"
From 2020

Political Legitimacy, Authoritarianism, and Climate Change - "Is authoritarian power ever legitimate? The contemporary political theory literature—which largely conceptualizes legitimacy in terms of democracy or basic rights—would seem to suggest not. I argue, however, that there exists another, overlooked aspect of legitimacy concerning a government’s ability to ensure safety and security. While, under normal conditions, maintaining democracy and rights is typically compatible with guaranteeing safety, in emergency situations, conflicts between these two aspects of legitimacy can and often do arise. A salient example of this is the COVID-19 pandemic, during which severe limitations on free movement and association have become legitimate techniques of government. Climate change poses an even graver threat to public safety. Consequently, I argue, legitimacy may require a similarly authoritarian approach. While unsettling, this suggests the political importance of climate action. For if we wish to avoid legitimating authoritarian power, we must act to prevent crises from arising that can only be resolved by such means."
So much for the "myth" of the slippery slope; we have already seen Malaysia and New Zealand push through tobacco bans for people born after a certain year

One eye on midterms, Dems ease up on approach to virus - "“People are tired,” Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock says in the opening ad for his reelection campaign.  There’s not a face mask to be seen in the Democrat’s video montage of scenes across Georgia, as he goes on to say people that are “wondering when things will get back to normal, and at the same time not knowing what normal even means anymore.”  The ad reflects a shifting narrative on COVID-19 restrictions across the country: Democrats are now increasingly supportive of easing mandates as they struggle to address voter frustration with the lingering pandemic... More than a year after he was sworn into office pledging to bring about an end to the pandemic, the virus’ persistence has taken a toll on Biden’s approval in the midterm election year as COVID-19 restrictions and mask-wearing requirements move to the forefront of the nation’s culture wars. After months of sparring with Republican governors for standing in the way of public health measures like face-coverings and social distancing, the sudden shift on the part of Democrats in recent days has caught White House officials off guard and left them seemingly out of sync with their own party. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention continues to recommend indoor masking in more than 99% of the country, even Democratic states from New York to California began easing mandates for the public, and New Jersey announced plans to roll back its face-covering requirement in schools... According to an AP-NORC last month, just 45% say they approve of Biden’s handling of COVID-19, down from 57% in December and from 66% in July 2021... White House officials noted that the Democratic mask roll-backs coincided with sharply declining cases as a two-month nationwide surge in cases from the omicron variant was showing signs of ebbing.  Even as Biden has shown reluctance, top Democrats are applauding the shift... Warnock’s ad stood in stark contrast to a photo from Democratic gubernatorial hopeful Stacey Abrams days earlier, which featured the candidate mask-less in front of a room of school-children with their faces covered. Abrams’ campaign insisted she had followed safety protocols, but later deleted the photo amid near-universal backlash."

Republicans call on Biden to end COVID's public health emergency designation - "Republicans in Congress have asked President Biden to end the designation of COVID-19 as a public health emergency (PHE), citing the accessibility of vaccines and effective treatments as well as the harms of long-term isolation on public health.  Their request for the president to undo the designation comes as calls grow — including from former Biden advisers — for the federal government to chart a course for the next stage of the pandemic. Coronavirus cases and hospitalizations have plunged after the dramatic omicron-driven surge, and deaths have begun falling"

Subtle shift in China's Covid-19 approach but full reopening unlikely soon - "With sporadic Covid-19 clusters popping up across China, local governments have turned to a tried-and-tested playbook of lockdowns and movement controls.  But two years into the pandemic, with economic growth starting to slow and consumer demand still sluggish, policymakers are subtly softening their stance, moving from a strict "zero-Covid-19" approach towards what they call "dynamic zero".  In the latest iteration, officials are further finessing preventive and containment measures to ensure the least possible disruption to economic and social activity. The approach does not mean there will be "zero infections", Dr Liang Wannian, head of the Covid-19 response expert panel under the National Health Commission (NHC), told the official Xinhua news agency. It simply means outbreaks are quickly contained, he said.  One of the biggest signals of a shift came from China's top economic planning body that last week ordered local governments to stop excessive control measures, which it said was hurting small and medium-sized businesses... "People in low-risk areas shall not be prohibited from returning to their home towns; the scope of medium and high-risk areas shall not be arbitrarily expanded," the paper said, adding that centralised quarantine cannot be arbitrarily implemented nor should the local authorities expand lockdown areas without prior approval... During the Chinese New Year holidays earlier this month, several local governments including in Shandong province had initially barred Beijing residents from returning to their home towns after an outbreak in the capital city, subjecting some to 14-day quarantine.  After an outcry, the NHC issued a statement warning local governments against capriciously implementing policy. The shift was subtle but the message was clear: Gone are the days of enforcing lockdowns at all cost.  China's services sectors, particularly small and medium-sized businesses in tourism, catering, entertainment and retail, have been hit particularly hard by excessive control measures.  Despite better than expected overall economic growth, consumer demand has continued to lag...   According to a McKinsey survey in October last year, after a spate of outbreaks following the National Day holiday, only 2 per cent of respondents planned to travel within the next two months."

Meme - Nikki Fried @NikkiFried: "I'll say this until blue in the face - our prosperity depends on public health. If businesses, especially those relying on group events, want to protect customers by requiring COVID vaccines, @GovRonDeSantis & the legislature shouldn't be stopping them."
Nikki Fried: "Never been a supporter of vaccine mandates or bans. have said that publicly"

Thread by @JohnnyABottom on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "It's tough to capture how completely Covid has broken Canadian brains.
2 weeks ago at my gmother's funeral, the home roped off her casket. We removed the rope so ppl could pray. The attendant ran over huffing, "That rope protects her!" We were stunned. "But...she's dead."
The focus has been on (valid) Canadian anger against the mandates. But it doesn't capture the day-to-day paranoia, psychological derangement, and utter nonsense ppl there have been dealing with re fellow Canadians. It's genuinely difficult to capture how insane people have been. Not to mention the actual restrictions.
The viewing allowed 20 ppl in the room. The burial allowed 10. The immediate family is more than double that.
2 years into this & Canada is still insisting families can't bury loved ones. That ppl die alone. Absolutely unforgivable.
Also, as a clarification, I don't think the attendant literally thought we needed to protect my deceased gmother from Covid. I think ppl's brains have been so captured by propaganda & safety rationalizations they will repeat literal nonsense & agree to anything w/out thinking."

Excess deaths, increased mental health disorders and substance use: new CMA report highlights pandemic’s broader impact - "A new report commissioned by the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) provides a stark overview of the broader impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on Canadians. From delayed or missed treatments to a significant increase in the incidence of mental health and substance use disorders, the report highlights the dire consequences beyond the immediate loss of life and illness caused by the COVID-19 virus. The report, A Struggling System: Understanding the Health Care Impacts of the Pandemic, conducted by Deloitte, shows that delayed or missed health care services may have contributed to more than 4,000 excess deaths not related to COVID-19 infections between August and December 2020."
Meanwhile, between August and December 2020, only 6,696 people in Canada died due to covid - lockdowns were madness, especially since they don't reduce covid deaths

NP View: An Alberta court's wrongheaded order to compel anti-vaxxers to refute their own opinions - "Judge Adam Germain was ruling on punishments for three notorious anti-vaxxers: brothers Artur and Dawid Pawlowski, who lead a church in Calgary, and Christopher Scott, owner of a cafe in the central Alberta hamlet of Mirror... the judge seemed to be dissatisfied with his own leniency, and he unexpectedly waxed creative, issuing an order that the men, in lecturing or preaching from now on, must include a disclaimer stating that their ideas about vaccines are in conflict with the scientific consensus and majority medical opinion.   As severalcharterexperts observed after hearing of the decision, this sounds an awful lot like compelled speech, something that Canadian law has correctly treated as equal to the suppression of speech, and is tantamount to the improvised creation of an official scientific credo."

Experts: When you might need a second Covid vaccine booster shot - "The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is reviewing early data that could point to the authorization of a new booster dose this coming fall — potentially as the first in a series of annual Covid vaccinations, much like flu shots"
"The vaccines work. But you still need endless boosters"

Omicron-specific booster may not be needed, US monkey study finds

Meme - "Scientific Method
Ask a Question
Do Background Research
Construct a Hypothesis
Test with an experiment
Procedure working?
No -> Troubleshoot procedure, Carefully check all steps and set-up -> Test with an experiment
Yes -> Analyse Data and Draw Conclusions
Results Align with Hypothesis -> Communicate Results
Results Align Partially or Not at all with hypothesis -> Experimental data becomes background research for new/future project. Ask new question, form new hypothesis, experiment again -> Construct a Hypothesis
Science Worshiper's Method
Formulate or plagiarize a Hypothesis
Construct a Model Based on Preconceived ideas
Find Data that agrees with model
Discard Data that does not align with model
Shout "TRUST THE EXPERTS""

Opinion: Science doesn’t justify Imperial College of London’s claim of 5,000 deaths a day - "The Covid modellers at Imperial College have begun to back down. About time, too. Over the past few weeks, they have made extreme claims about the omicron variant that cannot be fully justified by fundamental science, let alone by clinical observation. Academic etiquette restrains direct criticism, but immunologists say privately that Professor Neil Ferguson and his team breached a cardinal rule by inferring rates of hospitalisation, severe disease, and death from waning antibodies, and by extrapolating from infections that break through the first line of vaccine defence. The rest are entitled to question whether they can legitimately do this. And we may certainly question whether they should be putting out terrifying claims of up to 5,000 deaths a day based on antibody counts. “It is bad science and I think they’re being irresponsible. They have a duty to reflect the true risks but this is just headline grabbing,” says Dr Clive Dix, former chairman of the UK Vaccine Task Force. Needless to say, these headlines have spread as fast as omicron itself... Governments are so alarmed by the possibility that healthcare systems might collapse under pressure that they have neglected the opposite risk – and much more probable outcome – that omicron will largely bounce off a population where almost everybody has cell immunity from vaccines or past infection, and in the case of Britain where most vulnerable people have been triple jabbed for good measure. “To talk of 5,000 deaths a day is a very high number. It is risky to push apocalyptic scenarios that are highly unlikely to happen,” said Professor Francois Balloux, director of the UCL Genetics Institute. “What I am more worried about is a loss of trust in governments and public institutions for crying wolf. The mood is changing everywhere.” Balloux, who used to work with the Imperial team, said he understood why they had focused on neutralising antibodies: they are easy to measure and tell you how well the front-line fighters are doing against infection. But this has led to great confusion. The second line of defence, what really matters for serious illness, comes from B and T cell memory – either from jabs or prior illness. This carries on long after antibodies are no longer circulating in the blood. Cell memory is much harder to measure but is known to last much longer. “Cellular memory is still there for omicron and remains intact,” Balloux said. The first studies from around the world have begun validating the potency of cell memory against omicron, more or less as theoretical science would predict. A team at the University of Cape Town found that double-jabbed patients still had 70 per cent of the CD4 T cell response against the new variant, and full CD8 protection, despite the mutations. “T cells are holding out against omicron, and the data is very consistent across vaccines,” they told the US magazine Science. “From everything we know about T cells, this is what they do – control a virus once you’ve been infected. So this is their time to shine.” You would not know this from the series of claims in the past few weeks by Ferguson and his team that omicron “largely evades immunity”... Their assertion that vaccine efficacy for double-jabbers ranges from zero to 20 per cent was misleading. Nor can they legitimately assert that there is “no evidence of omicron having lower severity than delta” since their sample was vanishingly small, the timeline was too short, and they did not know the denominator of actual omicron infections since so many asymptomatic cases passed undetected. The clinical pattern worldwide suggests otherwise. That is “evidence”... There is an interesting twist to this. The AstraZeneca adenovirus vaccine scores well on cell memory and may ultimately protect better than messenger RNA jabs such as Pfizer-BioNTech, now that we are relying more on this second line of defence. He believes the UK should have stuck with AstraZeneca for mix-and-match boosters. Dix said the political class in the UK – and more broadly in Europe – does not understand the difference between front-line antibodies and lasting cell memory, and is therefore succumbing to unnecessary alarmism. He assumes that Professor Chris Whitty and his close colleagues do understand but went along with Imperial’s claims as a tool of public policy, hoping to cajole more people into getting booster jabs. Anthony Fauci in the US is apparently thinking along the same lines. But it is a double-edged strategy. It risks a loss of faith in vaccines altogether... “If you have to pick between bronchitis and pneumonia, I can tell you, take bronchitis any day”... the case fatality rate of omicron for populations with broad immunity is 25 to 30 times lower than the earlier pre-vaccinated waves. There is a 90 per cent drop in hospitalisation rates, and a further two-thirds drop in death rates after admission. This takes it down to the levels of seasonal flu. He said data from Australia is the most “elegant” yet, showing two simultaneous outbreaks of Covid in a well-vaccinated population; one delta, the other omicron. The hospitalisation rate of omicron is roughly half... The high probability is that omicron will disappoint the alarmists and frustrate those of a hairshirt puritan character who almost seem to want lockdowns as a form of self-flagellation. The rest of us can get on with our lives and leave the antibody modellers to build castles in the air."
You can only be irresponsible if you paint a rosy picture about covid, not if you doom monger

Links - 11th March 2022 (2 - George Floyd Unrest: Kyle Rittenhouse)

The Post Millennial on Twitter - "Gaige Grosskreutz goes on CNN and claims his arms were raised when he was shot by Kyle Rittenhouse, contradicting his sworn testimony."

Steven Crowder on Twitter - "If you accuse Kyle Rittenhouse of “faking tears” from being forced to relive the trauma of having to shoot violent, armed child-rapists and arsonists, but claim PTSD from being called the wrong pronouns … you might be an asshole."

Meme - "Kyle shouldn't have been there that night, but protesters could..."
"He went looking for trouble. Despite no evidence of him doing so, we know his intentions were to provoke others..."
"Protestors had the right to commit arson (illegal), but Kyle didn't have the right to put out the fires (not against the law)..."
"He is a terrorist for shooting his "mostly peaceful" attackers!"

The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "The anti-Rittenhouse memes are legion and continue to spread disinformation, getting basic facts of the case wrong. It was one thing to get it wrong right after the fact when there was lots of confusion, but to make some of these claims now is willful deception.
Rittenhouse did NOT carry his rifle across state lines. The rifle was purchased and stored by a friend in Wisconsin, it never left the state and it wasn’t illegal. This has been known at least since Oct. 13 of last year, when the Antioch Police Dept and Illinois state’s attorney completed their investigation and declined to prosecute.
Still, in almost every social media comment section about the case you’ll see this claim made. It’s stunning how widespread it is, yet FB and other social media outlets seem to have no interest in dispelling it. At this point, it’s clearly defamation.
This meme’s claim that Rittenhouse didn’t know who owned the property he was protecting is also false. First, his father, grandmother, aunt, uncle and cousins all lived in Kenosha. It wasn’t some random place he decided to “cross state lines” to visit.
He met the owners of Car Source early in the day, a business that was a victim of the prior day’s riots. They had 3 lots they were concerned about protecting. They exchanged phone numbers with Rittenhouse.
Later, he met up with the owners. They thanked him for coming out to help and asked Rittenhouse to hop in their car. Which he did, and they drove him to one of their lots they wanted protected.
While there, the owners even gave Rittenhouse’s group the keys to the business, along with showing them where the power washers, hoses and fire extinguishers were in case they needed to put out any fires, along with the ladders to get on the roof. They left grateful and returned to another lot. This is all known to anyone who actually watched the trial. As is the overall context, which this meme and so many others completely omit."

Jury instruction may clear Kyle Rittenhouse on gun possession charge - "The judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse trial on Friday said he'll instruct the jury that unless the state proved the teen's AR-15-style rifle had an unlawfully short barrel, he can't be convicted of being a minor in possession of a firearm.  No such evidence was introduced, so it seems likely Rittenhouse will be acquitted on the one charge that seemed obvious to everyone but his lawyers who challenged it from the very start. It might not even get to the jury."

Meme - "Kyle is literally a Saint
Guys I'm not even religious, but how can this be anything other than divine intervention?
>Shoots a pedo in the dick
>Shoots a burgler in the arm
>Shoots a wife strangler in the lungs
Also: The guy who tries to kill him is named Grosskreutz, literally "big cross". Kyle literally defeated the cross, like Jesus did.
Kyle is from Antioch, which was part of the holy land in the crusades.
If you google "St. Kyle" there is a catholic saint which is also named Kyle that is called Saint Kennocha of Fife.
>Kennocha
>Kenosha
Also he cleared a malfunction in his gun and shot the bungler in the arm in under 2 seconds literally 1 second before being executed, all while on the ground and whilest turning around. Kyle is a good shot but that was a literal impossible shot.
Furthermore, after defending himself he gets up and walks away with his back turned towards the evil mob and noone dares to harm him. Someone was protecting him from above.
This can't all be a coincidence..."

Tim Pool on Twitter - "It wasn't military grade and it was legal
He works in Kenosha, his family lives there
Just some corrections. Hope it helps"
"Lol Dude blocked me for this"
How the left persists in their delusions - by blocking out facts and corrections

Tim Pool on Twitter - "Hollywood covered for Weinstein
Media covered for Epstein
And you're surprised celebrities are celebrating Rosenbaum?
Stop believing you share the same values"

Coleman Hughes - Posts | Facebook - "Everyone who is saying that Kyle Rittenhouse would have been found guilty if he were black should recall that Kenneth Walker (Breonna Taylor's bf) shot a cop (!) in self-defense and was cleared of all charges (and rightly so).  It's amazing how selective people's memories are."

Meme - Authoritarian left: Killed a pedophile and a sex offender
Authoritarian right: I Wanted to "Back the Blue"
Libertarian left: Crossed borders, only shot white people
Libertarian right: Defended private property with an AR-15"

Meme - "The State Lines Crooser
Thinks work is a valid reason to CROOS state lines
Doesnt even stay his home every day
"OH GOD NOT AGAIN OH YES FUCK I'M CROOOOSING"
No fear or guilt violating the Geneva convention's ban on CROOSING state lines
Has literally been to more than one state
Knows he's committing a war crime. Doesnt care
"bro the state line is just an invisible line we need to lower the state line"
His family haven't spoken to him since they found out he CROOSES
Illinois - Wisconsin"

Meme - "That kid can probably be killed. I mean, I'm not suggesting it by any means, but I'd wager he could be easily tortured and killed. The judge too"

Meme - "BLM PROTESTING FOR 3 WHITES GUYS AND JUST LIKE THAT... ALL LIVES MATTER"

Meme - "Went To Protect A Business Owned By These Guys *Indians*
Shoots These Guys *White guys*
Worst White Supremacist EVER!"

Campus Reform | UPDATE: Rittenhouse no longer enrolled in ASU Online ahead of protest demanding the 'violent blood-thirsty murderer' be removed - "Arizona State University students are pressuring the administration to “withdraw” Kyle Rittenhouse from the school’s online program, calling him a “violent blood-thirsty murderer”... Despite the not-guilty verdict, leftist students at ASU continue to slander Rittenhouse as a “racist murderer”. A Change.org petition started by ASU students to remove Rittenhouse from the school refers to his attackers as "victims" and calls for him to "pay for his crimes".  Echoing this sentiment, Students for Socialism at ASU announced an upcoming protest against Rittenhouse on Twitter, with demands attached."
Of course, if you're against a minority murderer (who actually murdered someone) being in the same online program, you're a white supremacist

太一 (Taichi) on Twitter - "#kenosha shooting - #fact check, if Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum did not intervene, 17yo far right Kyle Rittenhouse would have killed more people, taking an assault rifle heading to a crowd of antifascists and black ppl is not to be taken lightly. They saved people. #BLM"
"Are you serious?"
Liberal "facts"

You have a right to defend your life, only if your politics are right! - "IF YOU BELIEVE KYLE RITTENHOUSE SHOULD HAVE BEEN MURDERED ON THE STREET BECAUSE HE MIGHT HAVE COMMITTED A CRIME; SAY THE SAME THING ABOUT GEORGE FLOYD!"

License To Smirk - Posts | Facebook - "They encouraged violent mobs to riot.
They have defunded the police.
They want to ban guns.
They'll put you on trial for defending yourself.
They have made their intentions towards us very clear."

Rohan Criticized For Crossing State Lines To Defend Minas Tirith | The Babylon Bee - ""They crossed state lines to get here—and do they even have a permit for those spears?" asked one stunned Orc, Garflob Magobblegon. "They're basically just coming down here hunting innocent Orcs."  Indeed, Magobblegon produced reliable witnesses who claim Rohan had been collaborating with a Dúnedain ranger who uttered the slur, "Let's hunt some Orc," though others claim this account is apocryphal and is not reflected in the earliest accounts of the ranger's exploits... "Rohan shouldn't have been there in the first place," said GNN reporter Borin Storrter. "King Theoden had no business being across state lines armed with a spear. If he had only minded his own business, as our GNN analyst Wormtongue advised, all those innocent Orcs would still be alive.""

THE FALL OF IDEALS 15 YEAR CELEBRATION TOUR! on Twitter - "500 Wisconsin National Guard troops activated ahead of Kyle Rittenhouse verdict"
"Had they done this in the first place this trial wouldn’t be happening."
How terrible. Why would you deploy troops when there're only peaceful protests?

Meme - "The fact is, if you are right wing, you can kill whoever you want in this country. Right wingers are murderers, full stop, none of them are even remotely decent people. As soon as the left finally realizes this and starts retaliating, they'll whine about vigilantism and political killing, but for now, they're just happy they get to kill us. I hope someone takes Rittenhouse out on public television as soon as he walks free from this fake ass mock trial. You cannot be right wing and be a good person. You have had a fucking decade ish to care enough about other people existing to figure out what I mean, so I'm not even going to explain it to you. If Rittenhouse walks, I hope that city burns."
Imagine being this deluded and violent. I bet this person bitches a lot about "gaslighting"

Donut Operator 🍩 on Twitter - "KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — Judge at Kyle Rittenhouse trial dismisses charge of possession of dangerous weapon."
"If Kyle Rittenhouse were Black, he would’ve been killed for holding that weapon. What’s a justice system without justice?!?!"
"Nice try *pictures of black people carrying guns in public*"

'That Boy Was Fake-Crying!' Says Man Who Bursts Into Tears Whenever Someone Lightly Brushes His Elbow | The Babylon Bee - "After seeing Kyle Rittenhouse take the stand and weep as he recounted having to shoot at bloodthirsty Antifa savages in self-defense, sportsball player LeBron James was quick to criticize Rittenhouse's tears as fake."

Rittenhouse ‘Should Be Acquitted,’ Sue Media For ‘Deliberate And Willful Lies,’ Harvard Professor Says - "Harvard Law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz claimed that Kyle Rittenhouse should be acquitted in his murder trial this week, then sue media organizations for smearing him... The prosecution has ran afoul of the judge in the case, Bruce Schroeder, multiple times throughout the trial. On several occasions, Schroeder stopped the trial and sent the jury out of the courtroom to reprimand Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger during Rittenhouse’s testimony"

Gregory McKelvey on Twitter - "Employers, consider giving your Black employees a day or two off after the Rittenhouse verdict. Regardless of the outcome, it’s going to be hard for Black people to work and it isn’t fair to expect them to."
I'm sure he goes on about "white fragility"

Stephen L. Miller on Twitter - "So we're on the same page today, the media lost their shit at a Wisconsin judge saying "asian food" and wrote off the President saying "Negro""

Kyle Rittenhouse judge Bruce Schroeder faces backlash for ‘Asian food’ joke in murder trial - The Washington Post
The artificial controversy over Biden and ‘Negro,’ explained - The Washington Post
Of course, let's pretend that you can't lose your job for quoting someone else using "Negro"

PolitiFact slammed for fact-check on Rittenhouse legally owning gun - "PolitiFact has been slammed for a “fact-check” that claimed to readers that Kyle Rittenhouse’s possession of a firearm was illegal — after the judge presiding over his murder trial in Kenosha, Wisconsin, threw out the weapons charge against him...   “This fact check was always wrong, but now that the weapons charge has been dropped it’s officially PANTS ON FIRE,” RealClearInvestigations senior writer Mark Hemingway wrote on Twitter.   “Who fact checks the fact checkers?” Babylon Bee writer Frank J. Fleming added.  However, following the court decision, PolitiFact updated the post with an editor’s note that doubled down on its stance."
The Meme Policeman - Posts | Facebook - "Keep in mind, this was used as part of Facebook’s efforts to “combat misinformation” at the time, and was used as justification for flagging the original claim as misinformation on social media. There’s far more than just differences of opinion at play here."

Tim Pool on Twitter - "The Rittenhouse case is now a legal gun owner defending himself from a man who threatened to kill him twice and a mob who attacked him as he sought police assistance"

YouTube Cuts Off the Best Real-Time, Legal Coverage of Rittenhouse Trial and Immediately Regrets It - "Right after Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger began his closing statement in the Kyle Rittenhouse Trial, YouTube cut off channels that were beating legacy media channels. Coincidence? The Rekieta Law channel, which features multiple lawyers doing real-time analysis of the trial, often beat the number of people watching the PBS stream. The PBS stream is one of the more reliable ones available to YouTube users and was being used by several outlets.  After getting cut off, Nick Rekieta reminded YouTube that ten lawyers considered it a breach of contract... Ticking off channels featuring dozens of lawyers seemed like a bad business plan."

D a r t h C r y p t o (Kyle is FREE) on Twitter - "I’m going to do the #KyleRittenhouse defense’s job again and hand them their appear should it be necessary. Remember the judges “house of cards” comment?  The Amped FIVE video software used, itself, says not to use it for evidence, only investigation."

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 on Twitter - "Two jurors holding decision up, outright citing backlash, per US Marshal in Kenosha
More: Worried about media leaking their names, what will happen to their families, jobs, etc
Including doxxing threats from ‘anarchist groups’"

Lomez on Twitter - "Taking your guns hasn't been a very effective political strategy, so the goal now is to make using them, for any reason, illegal"

Meme - "Last year the Vice President publicly raised money to bail out people who set our cities on fire. This year a boy who tried to protect his community can't raise a cent on major platforms for his legal fees. But yeah, bleating about free enterprise & socialism will save us."

They released HD drone footage of Kyle Rittenhouse shooting Joseph Rosenbaum and it couldn't be more clear what happened - "It couldn't be more clear. Rittenhouse was fleeing and Rosenbaum was persistently and aggressively pursuing him. He chased him across the screen!"

Kimberly Klacik on Twitter - "For years, I’ve asked why #BlackLivesMatter constantly ignores the violence perpetrated against black people in Baltimore? I was told, they only show up for police involved shootings. Now, I need someone to explain why #BlackLivesMatter is outside the courthouse in #Kenosha 🤔"

BLM protesters arrested outside Kenosha courthouse charged with felony, misdemeanors | The Post Millennial - "One of those arrested was Anthony Chacon, who was filmed assaulting a Rittenhouse supporter along with a journalist... Chacon has been charged numerous times before. In September of 2019, Chacon was charged with making terrorist threats, a felony, and disorderly conduct (use of a dangerous weapon... The second protestor arrested outside the courthouse was Shaquita Cornelious, who was filmed arguing with a police officer and resisting arrest. She is the co-chair of Black Lives Matter of Lake County, Ill. Cornelious, of Zion, Ill., and traveled across state lines to attend the protest outside the courthouse."

Hakeem Jeffries on Twitter - "Lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key."
Hakeem Jeffries on Twitter - "The same people who rabidly scream Lock Her Up and worship insurrectionists at cult rallies now pretend to be defenders of due process and the rule of law? Get Lost."

Top House Democrat: ‘Lock up Kyle Rittenhouse and throw away the key’ - "Some commentators noted that Jeffries’s call to lock Rittenhouse up stood in contrast with his own long history of calling for criminal justice reform and an end to mass incarceration. In a June 2020 tweet, Jeffries called to "Defund The Prison Industrial Complex.""

Andrew Coffee IV cleared of murder charge in 2017 Alteria Woods death - "A Gifford man who claimed he was defending himself and his girlfriend when he fired shots at deputies during an early-morning raid in 2017 was acquitted Friday of charges that carried a life prison term.  A jury found Andrew “A.J.” Coffee IV, 27, not guilty of second-degree felony murder, three counts of attempted first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer by discharging a firearm and one count of shooting or throwing a deadly missile.  In a separate proceeding Friday, the same jury convicted Coffee IV of one count of possession of a firearm by a felon."
So much for black people never having the right to self defence
Of course the liberal cope is that since he was convicted of illegal possession of a gun, it shows the racism of the system

Billy Gribbin on Twitter - "Incredible that we’re waiting to see if riots break out because of media lies about a case from a riot that happened because of media lies."

Ben Shapiro on Twitter - "Young white man goes to city to defend private property against rioters, shoots three white people trying to kill him. Wrongfully prosecuted, correctly acquitted. Media: This is evidence that America hates black people."

Ben Shapiro on Twitter - "If a black guy walked into Kenosha from out of town with an assault rifle and killed two people while severely wounding another we would have had a very different verdict."
"If a black person had walked into a city being set on fire by rioters and then been forced to shoot two people of his own race in self-defense, this case never would have been brought to trial."

Tomi Lahren on Twitter - "The Rittenhouse trial has taught us that it is NOT OK to defend yourself or protect businesses & property, but if you loot Target and Walmart in the name of a thug who resisted arrest, you are the left’s equivalent of Mother Freakin Teresa!"

Facebook - "The jury got it right—finding Rittenhouse not guilty on all charges. The fact that charges were brought before any serious investigation is evidence that the government was motivated by politics, which itself should be considered criminal."

Rittenhouse protest in Portland, Oregon, declared a riot

Joy Villa on Twitter - "Joseph Rosenbaum died doing what he loved, touching minors without consent."

BREAKING: 'Jump Kick Man' who attacked Kyle Rittenhouse identified as violent career criminal | The Post Millennial - "Jump Kick Man was given the name during the second incident on August 25, 2020 that led to Rittenhouse fatally shooting Anthony Huber and wounding Gaige Grosskreutz. While running from a crowd of people, Rittenhouse tripped and fell. During this moment, Jump Kick Man allegedly ran up and stomped on the then 17-year-old's head... Jump Kick Man is a 40-year-old black male from Kenosha, Wisconsin. His name has been withheld "as he has not been criminally charged in connection with the Rittenhouse case"... The man has a criminal record that dates back decades, including felony convictions for car theft, drug possession, ID theft, and escaping custody."
Amazing how all the participants of the "peaceful protest" were criminals

Kenosha Protesters Call the Men Who Attacked Kyle Rittenhouse 'Selfless Heroes' - "Protesters standing outside the county courthouse on Monday held signs calling Joseph Rosenbaum, Anthony Huber, and Gaige Grosskreutz "selfless heroes" because, according to them, they helped prevent Kyle Rittenhouse from killing dozens of people."

Author faces backlash for book claiming Rittenhouse killed 'two Black men' while waging 'race war' - "University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) professor and author Kara Cooney faced backlash Wednesday over a passage of her newly released book, "The Good Kings," that falsely claims Kyle Rittenhouse shot two Black men.   In her book, Cooney asks readers to "consider 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who used his semi-automatic weapon to kill two Black men in Kenosha, Wisconsin, while waging a glorious race war on behalf of his inherited White power... Cooney received heavy backlash from social media users, who questioned her fact-checking and research for the book, leading her to acknowledge the error.   "On p. 341 of THE GOOD KINGS I state that Kyle Rittenhouse shot two Black men when instead he shot two white men," Cooney wrote on Twitter Wednesday. "That was my mistake, and I apologize. The response has been a hateful stew of ridicule and denial that America has a race problem at all."  Cooney said in her response that the aggressive and nasty feedback she's received over the factual errors was a symptom of White supremacy and misogyny, calling the Rittenhouse passage a "tiny detail of the book.""

Kyle Rittenhouse can't use his own name for online gaming because it may "harm others" - "Kyle Rittenhouse has apparently been canceled for using his own name as his gaming account username.  Rittenhouse posted a screenshot of what appears to be an email from Electronic Arts (EA) informing him that his username "breaks [their] Positive Play Charter because [he] may have used words or phrases that harm others or negatively disrupt the game.""
Meanwhile you can be a "p3dolover", "MaoZedong" or "KillTrump"

Rittenhouse Judge Under Police Protection After Receiving Hundreds Of Threatening Messages - "The judge has a reputation for being so stern on sentencing that many defendants request a different jurist at the outset.  But he also has a reputation for staunchly defending the rights of the defendants throughout the trial."
Threats made against judge in Rittenhouse trial in emails, letters to court - ""You have people from outside the trial, and throughout the litigation leading up to the trial, who as a layperson interprets certain rulings and certain court orders in a way, that they believe to be incendiary, that they believe to have certain implications, that are inaccurate"... She said his main focus, as it's always been, is to ensure a fair trial for the defendant."

The exploitation of Kyle Rittenhouse is bad for everyone - "All the peripheral questions, concerns, and debates – things like, "should he have been there," or "why does a 17-year-old have a weapon like that," or "those are fake tears he's crying," or "what did he think was going to happen," or the weirdest of them all, "why did he cross state lines" – were ultimately irrelevant to the question of whether he murdered those two men on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin. I should hasten to add that the charge from the Rittenhouse defenders that the two men he killed were violent criminals, one a child rapist, was also immaterial to the core question of whether the young man committed murder that night. In a world without cell phone cameras, drone video, and social media, perhaps some could be left to wonder whether the impartial jury had all the facts. But we don't live in such a world, and every piece of presented evidence, including the testimony of the third man shot by Rittenhouse that night, bore down heavily on the side of legal, permissible, justifiable self-defense.  For all its faults, the American legal system worked as it should in finding Rittenhouse not guilty... This is a now 18-year-old young man who undoubtedly has some serious psychological scarring to work through. Anyone who believes that his tears were real should recognize that the taking of another human life, no matter how justified it may have been, is not something that just blends in to the minutia of a person's daily existence. Someone who has experienced that kind of trauma doesn't need celebration, they need counseling... Why Howard, who markets himself as a preacher and campaigner against spiritual abuse, would abuse the truth in such a galling and flagrant way is curious if only because video evidence lays waste to his bizarre description of the two men killed. Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum were not "marching in a Black Lives Matter protest." They were participating in a street riot, before pursuing and attempting to murder Kyle Rittenhouse.  This is the type of divisive rhetoric powered by a racial tribalism that is exceedingly unhealthy for our society. It isn't advocating healing, it's fueling hatred. It's not promoting justice, it's profiting off division.  Which is the other reason why the exaltation and idolizing of Rittenhouse is such a bad idea. Beyond the callous message it sends and the damage it does to what will be a lifelong struggle for Kyle's own pursuit of a normal life, it provides unnecessary fodder for race-baiters and merchants of discord"

Meme - "Ya, Kenosha, WI will burn if he is acquitted. And rightly so."
"and It's all good we'll just send Kyle back out"

Aaron Pyne on Twitter - "This might be the most ridiculous reaction to the #KyleRittenhouse verdict yet.""Leave it to MSNBC to correlate this to slavery somehow"

The Independent Falsely Stated Rittenhouse Shot 3 Black Men
It's only fake news when it's right wing media