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Saturday, September 05, 2020

Links - 5th September 2020 (2) (George Floyd Unrest: Statues)

Statue of Mahatma Gandhi, Parliament Square - Wikipedia - "In July 2014, Chancellor of the Exchequer of the United Kingdom, George Osborne, announced while on a visit to India that a statue of Mahatma Gandhi would be placed in Parliament Square, Westminster"
It is claimed that statues of Confederate generals should be taken down because they were traitors and the statues weren't contemporaneous. So since this went up 67 years after Gandhi died and he was a traitor to the Raj...

35 cops injured in further London violence as Gandhi statue defaced - "A statue of former UK PM Winston Churchill was also sprayed with the word "Racist"... The Indian high commission told TOI it would be raising the vandalism of the nine-foot bronze Gandhi statue, unveiled in 2015 by Arun Jaitley when he was finance minister, with the UK authorities."
First they came for the Confederate generals. Then they came for the slave traders...

Calls to remove 'racist' Gandhi statue in Leicester - "Prof Devji said Gandhi's "record is actually very mixed", and he was known to sympathise with Africans during the Boer and Zulu wars."Gandhi too was an imperfect human being, [but] imperfect Gandhi was more radical and progressive than most contemporary compatriots," he said.Former MP Keith Vaz, who was at the unveiling of the Leicester statue in 2009, called the Indian leader "one of the greatest peacemakers in history", and said he would "defend [the statue] personally"."

Equating Gandhi's imperfect anti-colonialism with imperialism and slavery is absurd - "Gandhi has probably done more than any other leader in the last century to dismantle the idea of White racial supremacy. There is, of course, no doubt that Gandhi was a flawed man with some ideas that seem questionable in contemporary times. But for some of this statements to overtake the work he did in discrediting the racism of the British Empire is self defeating. This absurd standard of perfection in progressive movements is only suited to people who do not want progressive movements at all...
Mahatma Gandhi statue in Washington D.C vandalized over George Floyd protest...
“King’s ability to unify – far from perfect – owed much to his ability to inhabit Gandhi’s legacy,” writes Nico Slate. “King’s connection to Gandhi strengthened his appeal to both Blacks and Whites. Gandhi represented courage, civil disobedience, and the rising colored world to many Blacks while symbolising non-threatening nonviolence to Whites.”... To say that oppressed people can only have perfect leaders and movements – is to argue that oppressed people should have no leaders and movements at all."
I doubt the author has such a holistic view of white "problematic" figures though

The monumental madness of toppling Gandhi - "We should judge people from the standards of the time they lived in, not by how we might feel today. Indeed, that means there will be many monuments to people we now think of as despicable. Public sculpture is a dialogue between the past and the present... A free society is not maintained by the brute force of easy answers, but with sometimes incredibly difficult compromises. Tyranny offers the easy answer – eliminating all the statues that displease us. But if we embrace the easy answer, soon there won’t be any statues left... While other social movements sought to win people over, this destruction in the name of tolerance creates an endless civil war that pits groups against each other. It stirs up division and hatred under the false facade of justice. Its only possible outcome is to force everyone to accept one myopic version of history while prohibiting everyone from having their own versions. Gandhi, like any human being, was fallible... In fact, that is what makes him more human and more inspirational... According to Mandela, ‘we are looking at the young Gandhi yet to become the Mahatma, when he would be without any human prejudice save in favour of truth and justice.’ If Gandhi goes, could Mandela and King’s statues and monuments soon face the same fate?"
Virtue signalling means championing uncontroversial propositions is useless. So Mandela and King will be next

Douglas Murray onTwitter - "Congratulations to everyone who guessed which founder of a major world religion was also a slave-owner. True there aren't any statues to him. Or many drawings. But perhaps the Woke mob can insist that anybody named after him just changes their name? That should do it."

Sadiq Khan will review all monuments in London to ensure they reflect city’s diversity - "Sadiq Khan has announced a commission to review statues, plaques and street names in London to ensure landmarks in the capital “suitably reflect London’s achievements and diversity”. The announcement comes after a statue of 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston was pulled down by Black Lives Matter protesters in Bristol at the weekend. The bronze monument was then pushed into the Bristol Harbour... When asked if he would consider taking down a statue of Winston Churchill which had the word “racist” sprayed on it during protests last weekend, Mr Khan said: “No – nobody’s perfect, whether it’s Churchill, whether it’s Gandhi, whether it’s Malcolm X."
So if you want to protect your history, never let your city/country become "diverse"?
In 10 years time it won't just be 'slavers' who get torn down. In 100 years time all the meat eaters might be non-kosher

Christopher Columbus statue torn down, thrown in lake by protesters - "At the height of the destruction, agitators attacked an NBC12 photographer, demanding he leave the scene. A small crowd of people waved boards in the photographer’s face, grabbed him and attacked his camera."
Must have been white supremacists who tore down the statue as a false flag, since they attacked the photographer!

VIDEO: UK #BLM Protester Calls for Removal of Statue of Person They Don't Know - "A short clip from a presenter interviewing Black Lives Matter protesters, reportedly in Oxford, asking two men why they were calling for the removal of a Cecil Rhodes statue went viral as the protesters did not know who he was... “Exactly the idiots protesting have know idea who the statues represent. Over 50% of young people think it’s Nelson Mandela on top of Nelsons column. The other half don’t even know who Nelson Mandela is”... King Leopold II, Queen Victoria, Winston Churchill, and Edward Colston all had their statues either torn down or defaced as protesters took a stand against what these historical figures purportedly represented."

Park Volunteer Outraged over Vandalism of Monument to Philadelphia Abolitionist: 'He Was BLM Before There Was A Slogan' - "Protesters have defaced a statue of Philadelphia abolitionist Matthias Baldwin, dousing the statue with paint and spray-painting the word “colonizer” on the pedestal... Baldwin argued for the right of African Americans to vote in Pennsylvania during the state’s 1837 Constitutional Convention, and helped establish a school for African American children where he paid teachers’ salaries for years.“He hired blacks in his shops when that was not the norm,” Walsh said. “He was BLM [Black Lives Matter] before there was a slogan.”Protesters also defaced Philadelphia’s Civil War Soldiers and Sailors monument with graffiti reading “BLM.” That monument’s inscription reads, “All who have labored today in behalf of the Union have wrought for the best interests of the country and the world not only for the present but for all future ages.”“The irony of vandalizing a monument to those who died to end slavery is lost on the morons who don’t know their history,” Walsh said."
Of course, since what they really hate is white people and not slavers...

The historical illiteracy of Black Lives Matter - "Activists have tried to rewrite the past by defacing the Cenotaph and the statue of Winston Churchill that stands by Parliament Square. In doing so, they have condemned those who did infinitely more than they ever will to combat fascism, all the while claiming to be anti-fascists.Of all the instances of historical vandalism, one of the most striking has been the attack on a statue of Abraham Lincoln. This is the same Lincoln who freed the slaves. To freedmen and women, he was a hero. Shortly after his death, he was depicted as a Moses-like figure, defiantly leading his people from bondage, or even as Jesus Christ. Yet today, he seems to have been dismissed as just another racist ‘white saviour’... Perhaps the problem is that Lincoln’s example challenges the racial myopia of Black Lives Matter. He demonstrates that white people can, in fact, be and do good (what a radical idea!), and that defining all white people as inherently damned by the original sin of whiteness is itself a bigoted generalisation... The focus on white people as being to blame for historic slavery is one such case. Slavery has been a feature of many societies throughout history. And yet, it is only Western countries’ names that come up when people talk about who is to blame... Societies have lived without the police before, so the argument goes. But do these people really want to return to the pre-police age? Do they know what it actually looked like?In the days before modern policing, ‘justice’ was enacted by vigilante crowds, local militias or by the army. Sometimes there was a fair trial. Often there was not. Those accused of witchcraft and heresy were burned. Might meant right. Does this sound like the peaceful, progressive society activists claim to be pursuing?"
Of course, we knew they would go for Abraham Lincoln eventually. Luckily soldiers were sent to protect the memorial in DC

Boston To Remove Statue Depicting Abraham Lincoln With Freed Black Man At His Feet - "Members of the Boston Art Commission voted unanimously Tuesday evening to remove Boston's copy of Thomas Ball's sculpture Emancipation Memorial from Park Square. The work depicting a formerly enslaved man at the feet of Abraham Lincoln has stood there since 1879... "This is a frozen picture. This man is kneeling, he will never stand up," Bullock said. "This image is problematic because it feeds into a narrative that Black people need to be led and freed. A narrative that seems very specific to us for some reason. Why is our trauma so glorified?"A Howard University student and Massachusetts resident named Hannah Bessette called the statue demeaning. "Regardless of what the intentions were," she said, "It is important to note the intentions were white based intentions. As it was a white created statue." A handful of people who spoke at the meeting were in favor of keeping the sculpture where it is and adding context. But, commission member Robert Freeman said he had changed his mind after listening to two mothers in another recent virtual meeting. They spoke of bringing their sons to see the sculpture. The boys immediately noticed the shirtless Black man with broken shackles on his wrists and ankles."And their son said, 'that statue looks like dad. And the other said it looks like me'""
It's all Abraham Lincoln's fault for being a slave owner!
The former slaves who funded would be happy

UW-Madison students call for removal of Lincoln statue, 'Just because he was anti-slavery doesn’t mean he was pro-Black' - "After protesters tore down two statues at the state capitol, attention is now turning to the statue of President Abraham Lincoln at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.The statue has overlooked Bascom Hill for more than a hundred years and is a staple of graduate photos, but what he symbolizes for marginalized students isn’t land-grant universities or even emancipating slaves.“He was also very publicly anti-Black,” said Nalah McWhorter, the president of the Wisconsin Black Student Union. “Just because he was anti-slavery doesn’t mean he was pro-Black. He said a lot in his presidential campaigns. His fourth presidential campaign speech, he said that he believes there should be an inferior and superior, and he believes white people should be the superior race"... “For them to want to protect a breathless, lifeless statue more than they care about the experiences of their black students that have been crying out for help for the past 50, 60 years, it’s just a horrible feeling as a student, as a black and brown student on campus””

Black Community Elders Shutdown And Shame Anti-Statue Protest - "While Black Lives Matters activists tried to chant them down, reenactors dressed as freed slaves of Capitol Hill and Frederick Douglass gave an abridged version of the dedication speech. When the organizer told the crowd that the older generation had failed them and had nothing to teach them, a black man in a “New York City” shirt followed, raising his voice to tell the crowd his great-great-grandfather is that slave (depicted in the memorial), and “this young upstarts” better show some respect for the suffering of their people."

Anita's Hall of Social Justice & Intersectional Feminism - Posts - "Doesn't matter if slaves built the pyramids or not, they were built by SLAVE OWNERS.Statues gone! Next? Egyptian & Roman monuments of slavery!http://chng.it/wrFjPwQ7Sign my petition, let's do away with the Pyramids Of Giza.Egyptian Pharaohs were some of the busiest slave traders in history. Some racists who have spoken out against the Pyramids being demolished are saying that the pyramids were not built by slaves, they were built by low paid workers.What typical white privilege these historians are showing because Pharaoh's were STILL SLAVE OWNERS. Statues have already been removed for that reason, so why should the Pyramids be given any kind of free pass on the hate they represent?I've even had an archaeologist tell me that they are valuable, and I replied:"To who are they valuable? Straight white males like you?"I'm sick and tired of racist and transphobic history being discovered, just last week more fossils was discovered, again they were described as being "male", and "female", presenting problematic heteronormative transphobia and toxic whiteism. How about they just rebury them again along with their bigotry until they discover them to be on a spectrum of sex?It's time to address Egypt's slavery and tear down the pyramids of Egypt. Is it time to melt down the gold masks and give that money back to the ancestors of people of color who were enslaved in Egypt.The Pharaohs of Egypt enslaved black Nubian people and Jewish people and both of those groups are still doing terribly financially today because of Egyptian slavery. They are either living in ebola ravaged central Africa or coronavirus ravaged New York central park west apartments. Of course money raised from the melting down of Egyptian burial masks will help them.I asked demi-grey gendered non-binary BLM representative Monixi'que Tyroneberg from New York's Upper East Side:  "Well Anita, this is really quite simple. All statues that propagate racism and slavery have to go. You simply cannot keep something like pyramids, or the Sphinx, or even the Parthenon in Greece standing, because they are a testament to hate, slavery, racism and transphobia"."The Parthenon in Greece was build by slaves over 2000 years ago and Egypt was a slave economy until the 19th century and we have information coming in on the Aztec culture as well from AOC's office.""

Calls for redesign of royal honour over 'offensive' image - "Campaigners are calling for the redesign of one of Britain’s highest honours personally bestowed by the Queen because they say its badge resembles a depiction of a white angel standing on the neck of a chained black man.The Order of St Michael and St George is traditionally awarded to ambassadors and diplomats and senior Foreign Office officials who have served abroad... The imagery on the award’s badge portrays St Michael trampling on Satan, but campaigners say the image is reminiscent of the killing of George Floyd by white police officers in the US that led to worldwide protests... “This is a highly offensive image, it is also reminiscent of the recent murder of George Floyd by the white policeman in the same manner presented here in this medal. We the undersigned are calling for this medal to completely redesigned in a more appropriate way and for an official apology to be given for the offence it has given.” Bumi Thomas, a Nigerian British singer, activist and specialist in visual communications, said the imagery on the badge was clear. “It is not a demon; it is a black man in chains with a white, blue-eyed figure standing on his neck. It is literally what happened to George Floyd and what has been happening to black people for centuries under the guise of diplomatic missions: active, subliminal messaging that reinforces the conquest, subjugation and dehumanisation of people of colour... “For most black and brown people, there is nothing good about the empire. Most people will see this as an image of George Floyd on a global scale and a symbol of white supremacy.”The Order was founded in 1818 under King George III. It was originally created to honour service in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic wars. The motto that surrounds the image is Auspicium melioris ævi, Latin for “Omen of a better age”."

Portland protesters topple statue of Thomas Jefferson, father of the Declaration of Independence, as culture war heats up (VIDEO) - "Although Jefferson was a slave owner, he is revered for his advocacy of religious tolerance and individual liberty – values which became foundational principles of the United States. For many, the act of vandalism was beyond the pale... demonstrators in Portland pulled down two statues honoring pioneers who settled in Oregon. It’s not clear what their motive was, but local media said that the landmarks had been targeted in the past for their alleged glorification of “white conquest.”"

Black Lives Matter protesters who toppled a statue on their own heads have created the perfect culture war metaphor - "Protesters in Virginia seriously injured one of their own when they pulled down a stone statue onto his head. This unintended tragedy sums up the irresponsible thoughtlessness of their actions.In summary, an excited crowd mounted a Confederate monument as part of the current wave of statue-felling and pushed a large stone figure onto a man who was standing underneath it, seriously injuring him and reportedly leaving him in a coma... in the minds of the activists their actions are consequence free, because all they are doing is pulling down the symbols of oppression and racism. It seems likely that a large part of the crowd had only very recently become aware that statues are to blame for, well, everything, but ultimately you don’t want the foot soldiers of revolution thinking too deeply when you’ve given them a sledgehammer and a target.This is just a smaller version of what’s happening on a larger scale. The calls to abolish police forces, cancel cultural icons and pick apart the historical myths that knot society together seem like a great idea in the fervour of an uprising, but at some point you have to deal with what comes after. For example, there are rumours those anarchists camped out in their own autonomous zone in Seattle are already running out of food, apart from some $6 hot dogs some nasty capitalists are selling. Which takes us to the unfortunate guy standing underneath the statue as it fell in the next part of the Virginia video. He could very easily be a symbol of what happens next; a victim of the good intentions of the mob.History shows that pulling down cultural icons can escalate into something very nasty.  Once you’ve pulled down all the statues, and cancelled all the TV shows that have upset someone, what comes next? What if everything isn’t perfect once you’ve purged society of all the elements that have been labelled problematic?Then you have to go after the real people who aren’t fitting in to the new world order, and where does that end? Well, it could end in someone deciding that YOU have questionable views and suddenly you’re the guy (or gal, or other) who one minute was trying to pull down the statue of hate, and the next minute being crushed underneath it. My metaphor doesn’t end there though, because keep watching the video and what do you see? The cheering of the wider crowd doesn’t stop immediately, because they are ignorant of what actually just happened. But look at those on the statue, the few that took it upon themselves to climb the edifice and bring it crashing down.They look down in disbelief at the stricken man, clutching their hammer to their chests, shocked at what they’ve just done. They didn’t see this outcome. They shout and gesture for him to be helped, but there’s nothing they can do now. They acted hastily and feverishly, they didn’t consider the consequences and now it’s too late."

Rioters Attack Police Officers In Chicago While Trying To Destroy Statue - "Far-left rioters attacked law enforcement officials in Chicago on Friday night who rushed in to protect a statue of Christopher Columbus that the rioters were trying to destroy... the extremists throwing all sorts of objects at the police officers, who were not wearing helmets or other riot protective gear. The extremists threw artillery shell fireworks at the officers, which can cause serious injury."... The attempt to destroy the statue comes as far-left rioters have destroyed numerous historical statues and monuments in recent weeks, including “statues of former Presidents George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Ulysses S. Grant,” as well as the attempted destruction of a “statue of former President Andrew Jackson before being stopped by law enforcement,” The Daily Wire reported. “Statues of the man who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner,” a notable person from the Catholic church, and a Holocaust memorial have also been destroyed in recent days.”"

Wisconsin crowd pulls down statue of abolitionist who died fighting slavery - "Crowds outside the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison tore down two statues and attacked a state senator amid protests following the arrest of a Black man who shouted at restaurant customers through a megaphone while carrying a baseball bat... Statues of Wisconsin’s motto “Forward” and of Col. Hans Christian Heg were dragged away from the statehouse. The statue of Heg, an anti-slavery activist who fought and died for the Union during the U.S. Civil War, was decapitated and thrown into a Madison lake by protesters... “Slavery was abhorrent to him, and the sincerity of his views was later to be proved by the supreme sacrifice,” a biographer wrote in 1920."
It's clear that many protesters want immunity from prosecution for black people, and just hate whites - and fighting injustice is just an excuse
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped."

Edward Colston statue replaced by sculpture of Black Lives Matter protester Jen Reid - "The statue of slave trader Edward Colston was replaced in Bristol on Wednesday morning – with a sculpture of one of the protesters whose anger brought him down.The figure of Jen Reid, who was photographed standing on the plinth with her fist raised after the 17th-century merchant was toppled by Black Lives Matter demonstrators last month, was erected at dawn by a team directed by the artist Marc Quinn... On whether there was an issue with a white artist being behind the work, Reid said: “It’s not even a question. If we have allies, it doesn’t matter what colour they are. He has done something to represent BLM, and to keep the conversation going.”A placard was briefly placed on the plinth reading “Marc Quinn loves money, not blacks” before it was removed by another member of the public to applause."
This is a great demonstration of the desire of SJWs to uncritically destroy the past due to narcissism (not least judging the past by their present standards)
It's only a matter of time before the leftist firing squad comes for this

Violence shows we haven’t moved on, says ANN WIDDECOMBE - "A hundred years before the birth of Colston Henry VIII was boiling traitors in oil. Hanging, drawing and quartering was still going on for many years after Colston's death. That was the society in which he lived and the values upheld by its law. Yet he was miles ahead of his time in philanthropy, spending his vast fortune on schools, almshouses, hospitals and churches. He had a social conscience. His association with the slave trade was through the Royal African Company, set up by Charles II and James II, which traded in gold, silver and ivory as well as slaves so it is not possible to estimate how much of Colston's wealth came from the slave trade itself. Not only was the company founded by Kings but investors included Samuel Pepys and John Locke, often called the father of English liberalism. In short it was highly respectable in the Britain of its day.It is about as logical to tear down Colston's statue as it would be to hold ceremonial burnings of Pepys's diaries"

Police line-up to guard Captain Cook statue in Sydney - "Australian Police have put big numbers out to stop a statue of Captain James Cook being vandalised in Sydney.A heavy police presence has turned out in Hyde Park, Sydney in response to a Black Lives Matter protest.What a contrast to the pathetic response seen in London and Bristol where far-left mobs were seemingly given free rein to vandalise memorials."

Hundreds gather to 'protect statues' at Glasgow's George Square as Black Lives Matter activists demand removal - "Hundreds of counter-protesters have gathered to 'protect statues' at Glasgow's George Square as Black Lives Matter activists demand the removal of a memorial to former PM Robert Peel."

Sean Davis on Twitter - "New York City, which was colonized by slave traders, is named after James Duke of York, who founded and ran a slave-trading monopoly that “shipped more African slaves to the Americas than any other institution in the history of the Atlantic slave trade.” #CancelNewYork""

Opinion | George and Martha Washington enslaved 300 people. Let’s start with their names. - The Washington Post
Cancel the Washington Post!

The Guardian facing calls to 'shut down' over founder's use of slaves and siding against Lincoln in US Civil War - "Originally called the Manchester Guardian, the paper was founded in 1821 by John Edward Taylor using profits from a cotton plantation that used slaves. After his death in 1844, the paper is said to have then demanded Manchester’s cotton workers be forced back into work.Now with a growing backlash against statues linked to slavery and racism, hundreds have signed a petition taking aim at the Guardian's history.This petition to shut the paper down has been organised by novelist Tony Parsons, who tweeted: “Shameful links to slave-owning Confederate south. Built on the profits of cotton fields. Shut down The Guardian Newspaper.”During the US Civil War the paper had sided with the southern Confederates against President Lincoln who wanted to abolish slavery.A leader piece said: “It was an evil day both for America and the world when he was chosen President of the United States.”On January 2, 1863, it accused Lincoln of having “no desire to abolish slavery except as a means of extrication from the difficulties of government”.A year and a half later it claimed: “Nor is Mr Lincoln's re-election by fraud, violence, and intimidation rendered a matter of comparatively small importance solely by the fact that it reveals nothing with respect to the real wishes and thoughts of the majority of his fellow countrymen.” The left-wing paper then responded to Mr Lincoln’s assassination by laying into his presidency... The newspaper has tried to address its past, with associate editor and columnist Martin Kettle trying to explain it in 2011... His piece suggests some things should not be judged by today’s standards."

A 2020 Presidential Candidate Once Used ‘Fine People’ in 1993 To Describe Supporters Of Confederate Statues. It Wasn’t Trump. - "a newly-unearthed clip of former Vice President Joe Biden from 1993 when he was a senator and serving as the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman shows him using the words “fine people” to refer to a group that also supported preserving Confederate statues — the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC)... When Biden launched his 2020 campaign, he stated of Trump’s 2017 remarks about Charlottesville, “And that’s when we heard the words of the President of the United States, that stunned the world and shocked the conscience of this nation. He said there were ‘some very fine people on both sides.’ Very fine people on both sides?”"

Texas Ranger Statue at Love Field Removed Over Concerns About Racist History - "Airport officials decided to remove the iconic statue of a Texas Ranger after a recently published excerpt from an upcoming book and image of the Ranger depicted in the sculpture came to light... “Jay Banks was involved in efforts in 1957 to keep black children out of a white school,” said author Doug J. Swanson. “Ranger Banks was only following orders but he was the face of resistance to integration in Mansfield in 1957.”"

Museum world rallies behind curator investigated for tweets on how to damage bronze statues - "UK arts professionals are voicing support for Madeline Odent, a curator at the Royston and District Museum and Art Gallery in Hertfordshire, who sparked controversy after discussing on social media substances that could be used to damage bronze statues. Odent posted a series of tweets to her personal account after Black Lives Matter demonstrators toppled a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol and historic statues worldwide come under scrutiny."
She better not complain if someone damage artefacts she treasures

Chief Seattle Owned Slaves.....Guess Seattle Must Be Renamed, Destroyed or Removed Like All Monuments Deemed Racist.

Roman Symposium - "Statue Julius Caesar in Velzeke, Belgium damaged ... Fingers right hand completely broken off by ripping off the spear (see further pictures)"

York Minster's Roman Emperor statue being 'looked at' following complaints - "The future of a Roman Emperor statue outside York Minster is being "looked at" following complaints and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s call for a review of controversial monuments... York Minster is understood to be reviewing the statue of Emperor Constantine, after it received complaints that the Roman Emperor supported slavery.The statue of Emperor Constantine is situated in the south piazza of the Minster, and is testament to the leader who declared an end to the persecution of Christians."

Antifa Member Arrested After Attempting to Topple Jackson Statue Also Reportedly Attacked Jack Posobiec - "An Antifa member known online for assaulting and harassing conservative personalities was arrested by federal law enforcement for his role in the attempted destruction of an Andrew Jackson monument near the White House; the accused has reportedly been identified as a “ringleader” in the attempt to destroy the monument. Jason Charter was arrested on Thursday morning by federal officials and charged with destruction of federal property... Charter self-identifies as a member of the Antifa movement which was recently designated a terrorist group by President Donald Trump... Charter, despite his involvement with the far-left group Antifa, was allowed to attend CPAC while several notable conservative media figures were banned due to accusations of being too far-right."
Strange. Liberals claim antifa doesn't exist

Junipero Serra Statues Fall as Protesters Question California Missions - "California protesters this week toppled several statues of Spanish priest Junipero Serra... While many Native Americans view the dismantling of Serra statues as progress toward dismantling the legacy of racism in the U.S., some Native Americans believe there are better ways to encourage change.“The proper way is to learn and teach rather than put a rope around the side [of the statue],” Cuevas said.Several California pastors have removed statues of Serra in order to protect them from vandalism.“The Church cannot support such violence imposed on any group, nor can it support the violent destruction of sacred symbols of any faith community,” Bishop Daniel E. Garcia wrote in a letter to the Monterey Diocese he oversees. “After exhaustive investigation it is clear St. Serra made heroic sacrifices to protect the indigenous people of California from their Spanish conquerors and soldiers.”"

Damage to Whittier statue causes ripples on both coasts - "Recent civil unrest appears to have led to the vandalism of a statue of the 19th century abolitionist poet John Greenleaf Whittier in Whittier, California... a vandal apparently sympathetic to the Black Lives Matter movement, tagged the statue of Whittier – a famous author and abolitionist – over the weekend in the California city named after him.Whittier is an eastern suburb of Los Angeles. The Whittier Daily News reported on Tuesday the Whittier statue had been tagged and had "BLM" written on it as well as "(expletive ) Slave Owners."... "People are posting a lot about how sad and disappointed that they are that someone would be willing to do this," Edmeier said. "They must have assumed, because he is an elderly, white person from that era, that he must have been racist. Someone at the Whittier Police Department also posted that they don't think this was someone from the Black Lives Matter movement. They think this may have been someone in some other group trying to start some trouble.""

Shaun King on Twitter - "Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been. In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down."
So much for the "myth" of the slippery slope

Michael Tracey on Twitter - "Supposedly we live in this nightmarish fascist hell-state, but roaming bands of left-wing activists can just topple whatever historical statues they want seemingly without consequence"

'If Jews took down symbols of their oppression, no flag would remain in the West' - "Former MK Dr. Einat Wilf warned against defacing and removing monuments and statues of historical figures due to associations with oppression or racism following the vandalism of statues of Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill in England."If Jews took down the symbols of the discrimination, oppression, persecution, ethnic cleansing and genocide against them, not a stone or a flag would remain across the Western and Islamic worlds. Human history is mostly one of brutality and exploitation. To move forward we remember, not erase... "Swastikas are too easy [to spot], but the systemic oppression and persecution of Jews was made in the name of crosses and crescents and empires. Leaders across the Western, Slavic and Islamic worlds expelled Jews and closed their doors to us. The symbols are woven into those civilizations.""No monument is conceived by those who place it at that moment as overtly and explicitly celebrating persecution. It is from our historic and social [present] moment that these monuments are viewed as celebrating persecution. Some of our current heroes will also be so judged in the future""

Memorial to Holocaust Survivors Toppled - "A Holocaust memorial fountain in Santa Rosa, Calif., was vandalized this week"

VIDEO: Young Venezuelan Woman Warns America Where Destroying Statues Leads - "In Dallas, an unelected board decided on one day to remove a generic Texas Rangers statue from a local airport, and on the very next day, they removed it. No debate. No public comment period. Nothing. The little dictators removed it to who knows where. The media dutifully and uncritically reported it.The Natural Museum of History in New York, following no public debate or input, is removing the statue of Teddy Roosevelt. Cities are allowing mobs to pull down, vandalize, and destroy statues depicting all manner of historic figures. Yes, cities are allowing this. They could stop it if they choose to. No one in the mainstream media is asking any of them a simple question: Why? TV networks have canceled two shows that show police officers in action, COPS and Live PD... Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben’s Rice, and the Land O Lakes butter maiden have all been removed, despite the fact that the families connected to Aunt Jemima and Land O Lakes do not see them as racist at all.This young Venezuelan woman says she has seen all of this before and is warning Americans where it leads.Her name is Elizabeth Rogliani. She points to several steps Venezuela went through on its way from being one of the most prosperous countries in the Americas to a socialist police state and economic disaster:
Statues came down because socialist dictator Hugo Chavez wanted the history erased.
He changed street names for the same reason.
He changed the educational curriculum to erase history and substitute his version.
Some movies were banned, presumably for the same reason.
We’ve seen all of these happen in America just in the past few weeks... Cuban exiles tried to warn Venezuelans that they were seeing similar patterns and events they had suffered, but Venezuelans brushed them off saying they knew what freedom is and they would never surrender it."

Protesters Attacked a State Senator and Tore Down a Statue of an Abolitionist in Wisconsin - "Sen. Tim Carpenter, a Democrat, tweeted on Wednesday morning that he was observing the protests near the Capitol building on Tuesday night and was capturing a video of the incidents when he was attacked... The violent actions came after Black protester Devonere Johnson was arrested earlier in the day. Police say Johnson was captured on cellphone footage in a restaurant across the road from the Capitol, holding a bullhorn and a baseball bat, and calling customers “racist.”... Johnson resisted arrest, according to the incident report, before he was placed in a squad car. But he escaped and was eventually tackled by police.In response to Johnson’s arrest, a large group of protesters gathered in downtown Madison chanting demands for his release. The protesters tore down two statues in front of the Capitol building, one of which was of Col. Hans Christian Heg, an anti-slavery activist who fought and died for the Union during the U.S. Civil War. the protesters decapitated the nearly 100-year-old sculpture and threw it into nearby Lake Monona. The group also pulled down the Forward statue, which the Wisconsin Historical Society says symbolizes devotion and progress... Protesters also smashed lights and windows at the Capitol, and set a small fire at the Dane County jail... The Republican leader of the state Assembly, Rep. Robin Vos, called the protesters who knocked down the statues "thugs" and questioned why Gov. Tony Evers hadn’t taken more action.“This is absolutely despicable,” Vos tweeted. “I am saddened at the cowardice of Madison officials to deal with these thugs. Gov. Evers, are you going to finally do something about these protestors committing crimes on state property?”"

Statue Destroyed Of Famed Black Abolitionist Frederick Douglass On Anniversary Of Notable Speech - "A statue of famed black abolitionist Frederick Douglass was destroyed at Maplewood Park in Rochester, New York, over the weekend, which comes on the anniversary of a notable speech that Douglass delivered at an Independence Day event in the city in 1852."

France won’t ‘erase’ history by removing colonial-era statues, Macron says - "Amid calls for taking down statues tied to France’s slave trade or colonial wrongs, Macron said “the republic will not erase any trace, or any name, from its history ... it will not take down any statue”.“We should look at all of our history together” including relations with Africa, with a goal of “truth” instead of “denying who we are”, Macron said.Macron also said that the fight against racism became distorted when it became exploited by what he described as “separatists”.“It is necessary to unite around Republican patriotism. We are a nation where everyone—whatever their origin and religion—can find their place,” he said... the culture minister denounced the decision to cancel a Paris showing of “Gone With the Wind” — a film long criticized as romanticizing slavery — as contrary to freedom of expression. And he firmly condemned activists who tried to take a piece of African art from a Paris museum dedicated to artwork from former colonies."

Protesters tear down statues of Union general Ulysses S. Grant, national anthem lyricist Francis Scott Key - "Grant is widely celebrated as being one of the leading forces who helped the Union win the Civil War, bringing an end to slavery in the U.S... 'Grant did briefly own one slave he freed years before the war; but as a general he smashed the Confederacy, and as president he crushed the Klan. He presided over the ratification of the 15th Amendment. People going after Grant probably just want to break things.'... Feels like this is the slippery slope overreach —> https://t.co/wovX2GkD0s — Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) June 20, 2020" Yglesias deleted the tweet. I guess he didn't want to acknowledge that the "myth" of the slippery slope wan't one

Cities Protecting Statues By Disguising Them As Karl Marx | The Babylon Bee - "The move has proven extremely effective at deterring Antifa and other extremist groups, who are only looking for statues of old hateful white guys to destroy and not statues of communists. "As soon as enraged rioters see the statue isn't of a dangerous, murderous madman whose ideas killed hundreds of millions but is just of Karl Marx, they move on," said one city council member in Illinois as he put a Karl Marx wig and beard on a statue of Abraham Lincoln. "Well, first, they bow respectfully to their hero and then move on."Plaques on the statues with controversial quotes from the Founding Fathers are also being covered up with Marx quotes like "Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution!" and "Workers of the world, unite!"Some towns are reporting that Che Guevara chin stubble and a beret also work wonders at saving the monuments."

Who’s behind the war on statues? - "At first, media reports stressed that vandals were concentrating on Confederate monuments. They presented the vandals as valiant avengers who were righting historical wrongs and ridding the US of symbols of its racist past. But it has quickly become clear that Confederate figures are not the only focus of these activists’ wrath. In Portland, Oregon, protesters recently tore down statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Back in 2017, Donald Trump predicted that the people protesting against Confederate monuments would set their sights on Washington and Jefferson next. His critics scoffed, called him paranoid, and blamed him for stirring up division. But he was right... they also toppled a statue commemorating women’s suffrage and beat up a 60-year-old Democratic state senator. It seems that, in the battle against white supremacy, attacking any white person will do. After the attacks in Wisconsin and elsewhere, it is clear to see that these ‘activists’ across the country are irrational. Toppling statues simply offers them a nihilistic thrill. This is not a principled statement about racism in America.Watching all this, many people are asking: why is no one in authority stopping them? There are laws against such vandalism. Why aren’t city mayors and state governors enforcing those laws? The short answer is: because the political and cultural elite sympathise with the vandals. Indeed, some political leaders seem to be actively supporting the activists. In Philadelphia, Mayor Jim Kenney and district attorney Larry Krasner, after doing little to stop nights of looting and arson, pre-emptively removed a statue of former mayor Frank Rizzo. When rumors spread that they were about to do the same with a Christopher Columbus statue, people in the neighborhood formed an armed militia to protect it. Only then did Kenney and Krasner start evoking the law, and had the police disperse the Columbus defenders. Meanwhile, they looked the other way when a mob defaced a statue of Matthias Baldwin, a white abolitionist. The message from these politicos was clear: not only will we do nothing to prevent mobs from tearing down and damaging statues, but we will also crack down on anyone who tries to stop this from happening. It is wrong to view the extremists as isolated hotheads, or radicals bent on challenging the establishment. No, their outlook is shared with those in the highest echelons of society... The vandals are not just on the street, they can also be found in the boardrooms of our cultural institutions.And where did our street activists get the idea that all of American history, including statues of its leaders and heroes, is ‘problematic’ and needs to be eradicated from our sight? Most likely, from our elite universities and most prominent media institutions. When protesters in Portland toppled George Washington this week, they spraypainted ‘1619’ on it. That was apt, because the toppling of statues embodies the outlook of the New York Times’ 1619 Project – an initiative that claims that the US was founded for the purpose of entrenching slavery, and will never escape that legacy. The ideology of ‘1619’ is one that says burn it all down and start over.There is a parallel between the fervour and indiscriminate destruction we’re seeing applied to inanimate objects in city squares and a different kind of force being used on people in social life. The rapid spread of ‘cancel culture’ – where individuals are accused of racism and shunned from public life – is destroying careers, livelihoods and reputations. At the same time that mobs are raging on our streets, another type of mob is, with the same ferocity and recklessness, tearing apart people’s lives... those who say ‘they’re just statues, not real people’ are misguided. Our public monuments do matter, because they embody our cultural values and historical memory. They are part of what we call our civilisation... There will always be those who want to destroy rather than build. What’s unusual about the situation we find ourselves in today is that that outlook is widespread among people in positions of power. Those who are supposed to be leading society are instead tearing it down from within. As much as a street mob is a problem, our self-loathing and destructive elites in politics and culture are a far bigger problem."

WATCH: John Oliver mocked Trump in 2017 for suggesting Washington and Jefferson statues would fall - "Oliver then scoffs at Trump's "slippery slope" prediction: "I'll tell you where it stops. Somewhere! Any time someone asks, where does it stop, the answers' always f*cking somewhere. You might let your kid have Twizzlers, but not inject black tar heroin. You don't just go, 'Well, after the Twizzlers, where does it stop?'""

After Columbus Statue Destroyed, Pelosi Says ‘People Will Do What They Do.’ McCarthy Responds. - "Several days after vandals toppled a Christopher Columbus statue and then tossed it into Baltimore’s inner harbor near Little Italy, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) seemingly tried to present the act of destruction as a fact of life... House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) responded to Pelosi’s comments about the Columbus statue on Twitter, saying her “job is to write laws. Instead, she encourages mobs to break them.” He also accused her of being “complicit with criminal activity.”"

‘A Sign Of The Times’: Black Pastor Laments ‘BLM’ Vandalism Of Escaped Slave Statue - "A small-town Indiana church is reeling after their statue of Lucy Higgs Nichols, an escaped slave and Civil War nurse, was defaced with “BLM” graffiti"

Who would Black Lives Matter erect a statue to? - "these activists are unsure of what or who they prefer. This is partly because the criterion is ever moving, and partly because a lot of the culture cops are culturally and historically subliterate... Allowing monuments to stand isn’t legitimising anything. They are merely part of the fabric of the past woven into today... History cannot harm us, but if we turn our backs on it, it has a habit of sneaking up on us, and then we run the risk of going through it all again."

Move to replace Civil War statue for one of Mount Laurel’s Alice Paul is causing controversy in NJ - "Santos, a Democrat, said he’s concerned that the public has not been consulted about the proposed change. He also said he worries about the implications of state lawmakers appearing to favor one historical figure over another.“Is someone who fought for the Union and preserving the Union less important than someone who fought for women’s rights?” Santos said. “That kind of pitting one kind of historical figure against one another winds up pitting groups against one another. And I don’t think that’s the way history should be treated.”"

Iconoclasm And Violence - "More NFL players are taking a knee instead of standing for the National Anthem, because racism. At USC, some black students and woke fellow, um, travelers are damning the name of the school’s mascot, a white horse named Traveler, because it shares a name as Gen. Robert E. Lee’s mount. For that matter, according to an op-ed contributor for The New York Times, enjoying college football at all is probably racist... And our disease is spreading to England. The Guardian — of course — published someone calling for Nelson’s Column to come down from Trafalgar Square, because he was a defender of slavery.Lord Nelson, one of England’s greatest heroes. My God... Whether religious or political (e.g., French revolutionaries, militants in China’s Cultural Revolution), real iconoclasts are violent. The damage Reformation-era iconoclasm did to religious art in Europe was incalculable... That’s often what iconoclasm tries to do: erase cultural memory. The zealotry with which iconoclasts go after their targets has to do with their conviction that the image, and what it stands for, is so offensive that it cannot be tolerated, nor can its defenders be reasoned with. They can only be conquered by force.In the case of our present iconoclasts, what they are attacking are aspects of what leftist academic critics “whiteness”... The argument in favor of eliminating Confederate statues but not those of the slaveholding Founders is that we honor the latter in spite of their owning slaves, but the former have monuments built to them because they fought to preserve slavery. That’s a reasonable position to take, but it assumes that reason is driving this iconoclasm. Why is Columbus under siege, both in his monuments and in his holiday (e.g., the Oberlin, Ohio, city council just voted to replace Columbus Day with Indigenous People’s Day)? Why are vandals going after St. Junipero Serra and St. Joan of Arc?Because they represent European culture and civilization, which entails Christianity. Because, in the minds of the iconoclasts, they represent whiteness. This morning I picked up a book from my shelves that I haven’t looked at since it came out in 2004: the late political scientist Samuel Huntington’s Who Are We? The Challenges To America’s National Identity. It was startling to read Huntington in light of recent events, including most of all the Trump election. It was even more startling — and deeply dismaying — to read Huntington and consider that the odious white nationalists might have a clearer understanding of what’s going on now than respectable people. Let me explain.Huntington, who taught at Harvard, writes that the country has been losing a sense of coherent identity for some time now. It’s not that Americans were a homogeneous people, but rather that its Anglo-Protestant founding culture was able to assimilate immigrants. This has partly to do with strong belief in the “American Creed,” a commonly held set of assumptions about what the nation stood for: liberty, equality under the law, equality of opportunity (if not of result), individualism, populism, limited government, and free-market economics. These ideas, Huntington said, came out of Protestant England and its reception of the Enlightenment.On assimilation, the glaring exception, of course, were the descendants of the unwilling immigrants among us: those of African slaves, for whom the American Creed did not apply. Nevertheless: American national identity peaked politically with the rallying of Americans to their country and its cause in World War II. It peaked symbolically with President Kennedy’s 1961 summons: ‘Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.’ Starting in the 1960s, writes Huntington, “deconstructionists” of national identity encouraged “individuals were defined by their group membership, not common nationality.” Pushing identity politics was a time-tested strategy for colonialist regimes, for the sake of dividing and conquering subject peoples. But the governments of nation-states instead focused on uniting their disparate peoples. (Indeed, the Civil Rights Movement was about compelling the white majority to extend the promises of the Constitution and the Creed to black Americans — in other words, to fully unite them to the whole.)Huntington says that this did not start from below, but was imposed from the top, by American political, legal, and cultural elites. He writes, “These efforts by a nation’s leaders to deconstruct the nation they governed were, quite possibly, without precedent in human history.” By 1992, the liberal historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. warned that all this had become “a cult, and today it treatens to become a counter-revolution against the original theory of American as ‘one people,’ a common culture, a single nation.” Huntington continues, talking about how the promises of the Civil Rights movement were turned on their head by racial preferences... If you want to talk about racializing American society, it didn’t start with Richard Spencer and his crew. Led by elites, America has been balkanizing along racial and ethnic lines since the late 1960s. Multiculturalism, that 1990s buzzword, led to colleges emphasizing ethnic studies and non-Western courses, and devaluing those in Western civilization... He who controls a culture’s memory controls the culture. Huntington says that if a nation “is a remembered as well as an imagined community, people who are losing that memory are becoming something less than a nation.”... “the new white nationalists” (the term is political scientist Carol Swain’s) will not be like the fringe extremists. They don’t advocate white supremacy, but rather “racial self-determination and self-preservation.” They will reject national identity, and locate culture in race. They don’t want white culture replaced by black or brown culture.Furthermore, whites attracted to these ideas will be those sick and tired of preferential treatment policies that violate the American Creed and disadvantage them. They will, Huntington predicts (remember, he wrote this in 2004), be stirred up by the loss of jobs and widening income inequality due to globalization. And they will hate the media for using what they consider to be bias against them. Finally, immigration may make them feel that they have their backs against the wall. Because of several sociological factors, Huntington says that middle class and lower middle class whites have come to see themselves as victims. He quotes another political scientist who says these whites feel that they have no real culture or identity, so they are embracing victimization.Whites, in sum, will start to act like any other ethnic or racial group in America... historically, American identity has involved four key components: Race, Ethnicity, Culture (especially language and religion), and Ideology. Race and ethnicity as a defining core of nation is long gone. Culture is “under siege” (even more so today than when Huntington wrote his book). All that’s left is ideology — that is, the Creed. Writes Huntington: “For the Creed to become the sole source of national identity would be a sharp break from the past.”He points out that the only other examples we have of creedal nations are the communist countries. This is not an encouraging thought. After the ideology failed and the coercive power of the state collapsed, those countries more or less came apart along ethnic lines. China is the great exception, but it held together, he says, because of the widely shared Han Chinese identity.Huntington concludes that because the American Creed emerged from Anglo-Protestant culture, it probably won’t survive its demise... the data Huntington cites would lead one to predict that the decline of Christianity in the US will also hasten the unraveling of the social and cultural fabric.If Christianity, with its universalist values, is declining, then something will take its place. Something will fill the vacuum it leaves. We should not at all be surprised if this turns out to be a heightened, even militant, racial consciousness. This is the logical outcome of identity politics. This is what I mean by constantly saying that Social Justice Warriors of the Left have no idea what kind of demons they are summoning from the Right. And American elites of all kinds have no idea what they are doing by pushing the “diversity is our strength” lie. We are seeing from this side of the Atlantic how the resolute refusal of the European political and cultural establishments to take the radical challenge from mass immigration seriously is opening up a big space for the radical right to flourish. It’s going to happen here too, for somewhat different reasons... an overwhelming majority of Americans reject white supremacy. The PBS/Marist poll from last week showed that only 27 percent of all Americans believe that Confederate monuments should be taken down. The racial breakdown is: whites 25%; blacks 40%; Latinos 24%.It is reasonable to assume that a nation in which over 80 percent of the people believe white supremacy is unacceptable, but only 27 percent believe the Confederate statues should come down, is not a nation that sees those statues as symbols of white supremacy... The disassembling of the American Creed has been a 50-year project of American elites, but we are all going to reap the whirlwind. You cannot destroy symbols of people’s identity without calling forth rage."

Houston man charged with trying to plant bomb at Confederate statue in Hermann Park - "The park ranger spotted him kneeling in the bushes by the 112-year-old Confederate statue, explosives in hand... The late-night confrontation at the statue of Confederate Lt. Dick Dowling — detailed in court records by a federal agent — led to the arrest of 25-year-old Andrew Schneck... After being confronted, he tried to drink some of the liquid explosives but "immediately spit the liquid on the ground ... then proceeded to pour the contents of the bottle on the ground next to him""

As Statues Fall, What's the Best Way to Evaluate History's Heroes - "The United States is in the midst of an orgy of literal iconoclasm... Are these long-overdue corrections in the name of social justice, or simply ideologically driven acts of anti-historical vandalism? The answer depends on how we judge the moral actions of figures from the past, a question that in turn requires us to consider the nature of morality itself... Newton wrote to Robert Hooke that if he saw further than others it was because he stood on the shoulders of giants. That was a medieval metaphor that went back to before the 12th century, when John of Salisbury wrote in his Metalogicon, “Bernard of Chartres used to compare us to dwarfs perched on the shoulders of giants. He pointed out that we see more and farther than our predecessors, not because we have keener vision or greater height, but because we are lifted up and borne aloft on their gigantic stature.”Medieval humility has been inverted in the modern era with the hubris that we are moral giants on the shoulders of the dwarfs of the past, wicked dwarfs who deserve our eternal scorn. As we tear down more monuments to former heroes and erase their names from our buildings, we ought to think about their blameworthiness by the standards and expectations of their own era. Those supposed moral dwarfs we now decry may have been giants of their time. And you don’t have to be a scientist to know that even the largest persons look small when seen from a distance."

America Has Problems. Tearing Down Statues Won't Solve Them - "Nelson Mandela himself wrote an essay for Time magazine about how much he admired Gandhi’s tactics and values... in the current environment, any claim or posture that’s seen as emanating from the Black Lives Matter movement, however indirectly, is taken as morally unassailable... In San Francisco, a school will spend $600,000 removing a mural depicting George Washington’s brutality toward Native Americans and American slaves—an especially odd move given that the Depression-era artwork had originally been lauded for showing the cruel and aggressive elements of early American history... it isn’t clear how any of the above-listed campaigns would materially improve the lives of African Americans, Native Americans or other disadvantaged groups... A 2017 poll conducted in the state where I live today, Virginia, found that 57 percent of registered-voter respondents supported leaving Confederate monuments in place. I doubt this means that nearly 60 percent of my neighbors believe in the cause of the Confederacy. They simply place more value than I do in these historical markers of the state’s history, tragically flawed as it is. A few miles north, at the National Mall in Washington, D.C., you can visit a memorial to the nearly 60,000 American service members who perished in the Vietnam War. The memorial lists the names of every one of them. What it doesn’t list are the names of the millions of Vietnamese and other Indochinese victims killed during the war. Many of those lives were smothered out by napalm, cut down by chopper fire, or massacred at My Lai. The war is simply described as “controversial” on the government website for the memorial... Whenever these controversies erupt, our first thought should be to add, not subtract... When I found out that US Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s former chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, has a t-shirt emblazoned with the face of Subhas Chandra Bose, I was perturbed. Bose was an Indian nationalist who allied with the Axis powers during the war, even going so far as to meet with Hitler and organize an army of Indians who fought under the Imperial Japanese flag. Did Chakrabarti don a Bose t-shirt because he believed that the world would have been better off if the Axis won the Second World War? I’m very much guessing no—even if that would be the natural starting point of anyone who’d sought to get Chakrabarti “canceled.” The unfortunate fact is that Bose is today honored by some in India who view him more as an anti-British nationalist than an Axis quisling. (An airport in Kolkata is even named after him.)... To the extent we all care about the important underlying issues, such as fighting racial discrimination and promoting opportunity to all, we shouldn’t allow our culture wars over statues and symbols to dominate our discourse. To quote Mike Chase, a criminal defense lawyer who has written for years about the litany of absurd and unjust federal laws on the books, “Stop tearing down statues. Start tearing down statutes.”"

Graffiti vandals attack Robert the Bruce statue in Scotland branding him a 'racist king' - "Graffiti vandals have attacked a statue of Robert the Bruce in Scotland and branded him a 'racist king'.The monument at the Battle of Bannockburn site near Stirling was today found daubed with white paint which also read 'BLM', standing for Black Lives Matter.Another message defacing the statue's rotunda read 'Robert was a racist bring down the statue'... A campaign has sought to topple 100-plus 'racist' statues, with councils, schools and museums pulling some down without consultation to public fury."

BLM rioters destroy statue of anti-slavery immigrant who led Union troops in the Civil War - "Black Lives Matter rioters in Wisconsin decapitated and destroyed a statue of Colonel Hans Christian Heg, a Norwegian immigrant who spent his life fighting slavery before dying in battle while leading Union soldiers in the American Civil War."

Copenhagen's Little Mermaid branded 'racist fish'
Addendum: This was literally vandalised with those words

Lucas vs Disney Star Wars

"So I've been thinking on what does Star Wars miss with George Lucas gone? And it's this, I'm going to use Jar Jar as the cornerstone of my argument

Jar Jar is a derpy, goofball character right? And the thing is, Lucas instead of presenting Jar Jar first as derpy and then actually making him super heroic (and going, oh look you were wrong for looking at him derpy he was was heroic all along), basically keeps him derpy. Yes he becomes a senator and all, but he's still a goofball at the end of the day who makes possibly irritating decisions. But the thing Lucas was getting at is, even derpy characters in life have their place in the balance of hings, even if they keep making mistakes. In Clone Wars Mace Windu, while has many good reasons (again other filmmakers would in the end show those reasons to be bogus, but Lucas actually never does that) for finding Jar Jar annoying, but by spending time with him, learns despite his flaws, even this derpy creature has his benefits.

The point being Lucas, didn't signpost his audience or come to absolute moral judgements. Good guys had flaws, made terrible mistakes, and bad guys did good things, had good points, etc. It was all about the balance. It was upto you as the audience to interpret these things. He didn't signpost it.

Like in the prequels, it has only become apparent years later that the Jedi actually had become corrupt and bureaucratic. But instead of signposting it, George Lucas added layers and even had bad guys, like Dooku tell the truth.

Now this brings me to Disney star Wars and I feel like this nuance is gone. Let me use, the best of new Star Wars, Dave Filoni to demonstrate this point.

Don't get me wrong, I think Filoni is great, having made some of the best Star Wars there is, particularly with the Clone Wars. But without George Lucas there, I feel there is this nuance, that I have spoken about, missing.

There's obvious moral signposting going on, for example, I think it's pretty obvious that Filoni likes to use Ashoka as a moral signpost to the Jedi, in the siege of Mandalore, Obi Wan may make a point, and Ashoka has a reaction to it, which I feel is being used to tell the audience how to feel in that situation. Lucas tended not to do that, the closest thing I can find is Dooku in the prequels, who is as corrupt if not more so, so that flips everything on it's head and makes the signposting ambigious.

Likewise in Rebels, I'm not too sure how much of this is Filoni or Disney (I really wish Disney would give Filoni his own show, film, give him creative control), but Ezra comes off like a Gary Stu with any moral situations signposted, unambigious (Holocron tells him its going to destroy things, well easy to know what to do there), and well you're expected to like him cuz he's doing the right thing.

But the genius of George was to make us empathise with flawed, even ambigious characters that were left to our intepretations. For example, Obi Wan is both great because he sticks to the Jedi Code (which I like) but also flawed because he sticks to the Jedi Code (which is also a totally reasonable argument to make).

Anyway in ending, I definetly amn't dumping on Filoni here, he's great. It's just George Lucas was such a genius, it's hard to follow, and hard to do this level of nuance well. In fact, it's hard to verbalise it, I hope I have here, but please feel free to add input. In the future, I do feel this nuanced element of Star Wars isn't really going to be there anymore, particularly in these polarising times. Everyone's looking for moral certainty, when in a lot respects Lucas is about moral uncertainty and ambiguity.

Basically George Lucas made Jar Jar derpy and kept him that way, cuz as an audience we were supposed to find him derpy but learn to understand even with flaws he had a use in the balance of things. In Disney, Jar Jar would be signposted in the end to be amazing."

It’s Never Too Late to Start a Brilliant Career

It’s Never Too Late to Start a Brilliant Career - WSJ "Today we are madly obsessed with early achievement. We celebrate those who explode out of the gates, who scorch the SAT, get straight A’s in AP courses, win a spot at Harvard or Stanford, get a first job at Google or Goldman Sachs, and headline those ubiquitous 30-under-30 lists. In 2014, Time magazine started an annual list of “Most Influential Teens.” Yes, teens. But precocious achievement is the exception, not the norm. The fact is, we mature and develop at different rates. All of us will have multiple cognitive peaks throughout our lives, and the talents and passions that we have to offer can emerge across a range of personal circumstances, not just in formal educational settings focused on a few narrow criteria of achievement. Late bloomers are everywhere once you know to look for them... “At any given age, you’re getting better at some things, you’re getting worse at some other things, and you’re at a plateau at some other things,” said Dr. Hartshorne in summing up their conclusions. “There’s probably not one age at which you’re peak on most things, much less all of them.” In their study, the speed of information processing appeared to peak early, around 18 or 19. Short-term memory continued to improve until around 25 and then leveled off for another decade. The ability to evaluate complex patterns, including other people’s emotional states, on the other hand, peaked much later, when participants were in their 40s or 50s. These findings validate what previous cognitive research has revealed: Each of us has two types of intelligence, known as fluid and crystallized. Fluid intelligence is our capacity to reason and solve novel problems, independent of knowledge from the past, and it peaks earlier in life. Crystallized intelligence is the ability to use skills, knowledge and experience; it shows rising levels of performance well into middle age and beyond. According to Georgia Tech psychology professor Phillip Ackerman, the best way for older adults to compensate for declines in youthful “fluid” intelligence is to select jobs and goals that optimize their “crystallized” knowledge and skills. For instance, while the field of software coding favors the young and fluid, managing projects and the business can shift the needed skills to an older profile... The average age of scientists when they are doing work that eventually leads to a Nobel Prize is 39, according to a 2008 Northwestern University study. The average age of U.S. patent applicants is 47. Our creative yield increases with age, says Elkhonon Goldberg, a clinical professor of neurology at New York University. Dr. Goldberg thinks that the brain’s right and left hemispheres are connected by a “salience network” that helps us to evaluate novel perceptions from the right side by comparing them to the stored images and patterns on our left side. Thus a child will have greater novel perceptions than a middle-aged adult but will lack the context to turn them into creative insights... Record-setting astronaut Scott Kelly, who has spent more than five hundred days in space, the most of any American, said he was so bored in high school that “I finished in the half of the class that made the top half possible.” Billionaire Diane Hendricks, daughter of dairy farmers, sold houses in Wisconsin, married, divorced, then 10 years later met her next husband, Ken, a roofer. The two maxed out their credit cards to start ABC Supply, a source for windows, gutters, and roofing material. Today Ms. Hendricks presides over a company worth $5 billion. International star Andrea Bocelli began singing opera when he was 34. Martha Stewart was 35 when she started her catering business in a friend’s basement, and 42 when her first book of recipes was published. Toni Morrison published her first novel, “The Bluest Eye,” at 39 and won a Pulitzer Prize for “Beloved” at 56 and the Nobel Prize in Literature five years later. J.K. Rowling was a divorced mother on public assistance before she created Harry Potter at age 35. Tom Siebel founded his first big tech company, Siebel Systems, at 41, and his second, C3, at 57. Famous movie villain Alan Rickman owned a graphic design studio for years before he got his first taste of fame at 42 for his role as Hans Gruber in “Die Hard.” “There are no second acts in American lives,” wrongly observed “The Great Gatsby” author F. Scott Fitzgerald. But Fitzgerald was an early blooming snob: He attended Princeton and was already a famous literary success in his mid-20s. But that was his peak. By his 30s, Fitzgerald was spiraling downward. He must have met all kinds of late bloomers and second acts who were on their way up. He died a bitter man at 44, the same age that Raymond Chandler began to write detective stories... Most late bloomers will discover that they have greater opportunities to succeed on alternative paths, far from the madness and pressure of early achievement. Today’s obsessive drive for early achievement—and the taint of failure for those who do not attain it—has squandered our national talent and stunted our creativity"

Links - 5th September 2020 (1) (George Floyd Unrest)

Julie on Twitter - "I will literally have sex with any of the Black Kings that have been fighting for Racial Justice during the past few days. It's the only way to truly say I'm sorry for being white, for racism, slavery and police brutality. Just DM me if you're interested. #BlackLivesMatter"
Of all the ways to indulge your fetish for black men...

Mayor Blames Trump For Murder Of 8-Year-Old Girl, Violence In Atlanta - "Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms took no responsibility for the mayhem that has plagued her city and blamed everything, including the recent murder of an eight-year-old girl by armed protesters, on a lack of leadership from President Donald Trump... CNN’s Brooke Baldwin asked Bottoms about eight-year-old Secoriea Turner, who was gunned down on July 4 when the car she was riding in crossed through an illegal barricade manned by armed protesters... Georgia Governor Brian Kemp declared a state of emergency on Monday afternoon and called out the Georgia National Guard to help protect monuments and government buildings after the bloody July 4th weekend in Atlanta.More than 31 people were shot, and five died, eight-year-old Secoriea.Early Sunday morning, violent protesters vandalized and burned the Georgia State Police’s headquarters in Atlanta... the mayor announced that it was time for the protesters around the Wendy’s to disperse after weeks of violence around the memorial to Rayshard Brooks, who was fatally shot on June 12 when he stole an officer’s Taser and fired it at another cop... “We’re doing each other more harm than any police officer on this force,” the mayor said. “We’ve had over 75 shootings in the city over the past several weeks. You can’t blame that on APD.”""
We are told it's the deployment of federal agents who cause the violence, but none got deployed to Georgia.

Amiri King on Twitter - "If Rayshard Brooks had left Wendy’s as drunk as he was and killed a family of 5, then what? Would you all have burned down a liquor store? I didn’t think so. People are really starting to blur the lines between ‘innocent victim’ and ‘reckless asshole.’"

Matt Walsh on Twitter - "“The man who drove drunk, assaulted a cop, stole his weapon and fired it at him, was shot because of racism” is an actual argument that people are making right now, because we live in the dumbest era in human history"
Reply: "Give it a minute...it will also be 'unarmed black man' because he was technically unarmed until he stole the cops taser."
If a criminal shoots a stun gun at a police officer, takes his gun and shoots him... No one would care or notice

Dan Bongino on Twitter - "I am no lawyer, but I do know that a DUI is not a capital offense. Neither is theft.I am no combat expert, but I do know that someone who is running away from you is not a threat."
"When they turn & point a taser in your face & discharge it, after punching you in the face & assaulting your partner, then they are an SPI threat. Until you’ve actually been in a foot pursuit w/a combative subject, who turns towards you w/a weapon, I’d refrain from categoricals."
"What if he had rendered the officer incapacitated with the taser, then walked over and shot the officer with his own gun?"

Extremists Injure Nearly 2 Dozen Seattle Police, Attack Police Station, ‘Explosives’ Used - "The violence against police officers in Seattle followed the violent rioters torching a construction site at a justice center and attacking a Starbucks store that was at the bottom of an apartment complex."

SF Mayor London Breed shreds white progressives for projecting beliefs onto city's Black residents - "Polling from the Pew Research Center has shown that just 22% of African-Americans want police funding "decreased a lot," with the overwhelming majority favoring small decreases, no change, or even increases. Breed's proposal to reallocate some funding was met with pushback from some white progressives who accused her of not going far enough. This prompted protests at Breed's home, protests she was not happy about."The people who came out to my home last time, they were all white and wearing masks and walking with these 'firework sticks' down the street chanting 'Black Lives Matter!'" she said. "But then they get to my house and start shooting these fireworks off and aiming them at my window and banging on the gate and calling me names to come outside... Breed went on to accuse white progressives of projecting beliefs onto African-Americans, and stated that many "progressive policies" historically backed by whites in San Francisco have not worked for the city's Black residents... "half the policies pushed in San Francisco are 'progressive policies' that don’t work for Black people. Because, if they did, why are things far worse for Black people here? In San Francisco, a city where less than 5 to 6% of the population is African American and yet we are disproportionately overrepresented in everything that’s bad: high school dropouts, arrests, homelessness. You name it." Across the Bay, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf found herself accused of white projection after her response to finding ropes that looked like nooses on a tree at Lake Merritt. Schaaf announced that the city was working with the FBI on a hate crime investigation into the nooses, despite a black resident stating he put the ropes up months ago as exercise equipment... Schaaf faced criticism for continuing the investigation, and was accused of virtue signaling by HBO's Bill Maher in a larger monologue about white progressives projecting beliefs onto minorities and taking it upon themselves to "cancel" those they deem insufficiently woke on racial issues."

Killings of Police Officers Are Up 28% This Year: Reports - "Seven of those 32 officers were “ambushed,” the report says.Accompanying the cries for police reform in the wake of Floyd’s death “was a rise in an anti-police sentiment that, experts say, manifested itself in attacks on officers, patrol vehicles and precinct stationhouses, leaving cops around the country feeling under siege”... “Any time the anti-police rhetoric heats up, it sends a message that it’s open season on law enforcement,” he told ABC.  “We saw it in 2016 and we’re seeing it now.”"

VIDEO: Mob Calls In Fake Shooting Then Attack Responding Officers In 'Ambush' - "Two Tampa police officers were surrounded and attacked by hundreds of rioters after they responded to a report of shots fired in the Ybor City neighborhood on Saturday"

CNN’s Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon Mock Rising Crime Rates In Democrat-Controlled Cities - "CNN opinion hosts Don Lemon and Chris Cuomo on Tuesday night mocked rising crime rates in major Democrat-controlled cities as President Donald Trump hammers the issue on the campaign trail... The two hosts’ dismissive response comes after Chicago, Philadelphia, Atlanta, and New York City have all seen sharp increases in shootings in recent weeks, a surge that has occurred as law enforcement officials have been demonized by the political Left in response to the death of George Floyd."

WATCH: Black Lives Matter Activists Call For Boycott Of Non-Black-Owned Businesses - "Black Lives Matter activists have called for black people, people of color, and allies to abstain from spending any money on non-black-owned businesses, especially on July 7, as well as other days after that date, to send a message about the far-left movement."

Seattle Rioting Leaves 12 Officers Injured, Numerous Businesses Vandalized - "At least 12 police officers were injured by shrapnel after rioters launched fireworks at them inside the police precincts and one officer had to be hospitalized."

Florida sheriff warns protesters he will make 'special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county' if violence becomes overwhelming - "“If we can’t handle you ... I’ll exercise the power and authority as the sheriff, and I’ll make special deputies of every lawful gun owner in this county, and I’ll deputize them for this one purpose: to stand in the gap between lawlessness and civility," Clay County Sheriff Darryl Daniels, the county’s first black sheriff, said... Another Florida sheriff, Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, warned rioters planning on spreading destruction in his county in June that residents will “blow you back out of the house with their guns.""

a href="https://www.facebook.com/153080620724/posts/10165001899830725/?sfnsn=mo">Donald J. Trump - Posts

- "NYC is cutting Police $’s by ONE BILLION DOLLARS, and yet the NYC Mayor is going to paint a big, expensive, yellow Black Lives Matter sign on Fifth Avenue, denigrating this luxury Avenue. This will further antagonize New York’s Finest, who LOVE New York & vividly remember the horrible BLM chant, “Pigs In A Blanket, Fry ‘Em Like Bacon”. Maybe our GREAT Police, who have been neutralized and scorned by a mayor who hates & disrespects them, won’t let this symbol of hate be affixed to New York’s greatest street. Spend this money fighting crime instead!"

Louisville Officers Are Calling In 'Sick' After Agency Prohibits Use Of Riot Gear - "Dozens of Louisville police officers called in sick for their scheduled shifts on Tuesday and Wednesday after being ordered over the weekend to remove their protective riot gear while dealing with violent “protesters” at the scene of a deadly shooting at Jefferson Square Park. Officers who voiced concerns that doing so would threaten their own safety were warned that they would be immediately suspended if they refused to comply"

Nearly 3/4 Of DC Police Considering Quitting After City Council Passes Anti-Police Bill - ""It makes it exceedingly more difficult to charge a suspect with assaulting a police officer, it changes body worn camera policy in such a way that [it] can no longer be used as an evidence collection tool, and it changes the language in use of force policy in the most utterly confusing way"... "The allegation that, somehow, police officers should not be entitled to the same employment rights as firefighters or nurses is preposterous"... The independent office tasked with investigation allegations of police misconduct will also be revamped, to include adding civilians to the board, The Washington Post reported.At least one of those civilian members will have to have “personally experienced the use of force by a law enforcement officer.”"

Atlanta PD Day Shift Officers Largely Absent As 'Blue Flu' Spreads - "more than 500 of Atlanta’s 911 calls went unanswered overnight... Howard charged the former police officer with seven felonies, including murder, for fatally shooting 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks who was firing a Taser at him... The police department tried to deny the walkout was happening, but admitted that an unusually high number of officers had called out sick"

Atlanta Residents Complain Armed Activists Are Creating Roadblocks, Threatening Them - "People who live near the burned-out Wendy’s that has become a makeshift memorial for 27-year-old Rayshard Brooks have asked the police to help them because they’re unable to get to their homes safely and have been threatened and harassed... At least one protester was shot during an exchange of gunfire in that area last Friday night, but then violent protesters physically assaulted police who responded to clear the area for paramedics to get in. Residents have reported that armed protesters have blocked them from getting to their homes, WXIA reported. Several have had their homes and vehicles vandalized... Atlanta police officers and International Brotherhood of Police Southeast Regional Director Vince Champion told The Police Tribune that rumors of the walkout were all true.Tens of thousands of people tuned into the police department’s scanner frequency to listen to hours of silence... a roll call assignment sheet leaked out indicating the extent of the “Blue Flu.”"

VIDEO: Man With 103 Arrests Randomly Assaults 92-Year-Old Woman - "A career criminal who has been arrested more than 100 times was locked up on after he knocked a 92-year-old Manhattan woman to the pavement on Friday, leaving her injured and afraid to leave her home... Surveillance video filmed by an exterior security camera nearby captured the moment that a man – later identified as 31-year-old Rashid Brimmage – reached out and hit an elderly woman in the head... Court records showed that the suspect already had three open criminal cases in New York City when he attacked Geraldine unprovoked... So far this year, Brimmage was arrested on Feb. 17 and charged with misdemeanor assault and harassment for an incident that occurred a week earlier in the Bronx.He was released without bail"

VIDEO: Man Arrested After Shooting 'Protester' Hitting Him In Head With Skateboard - "A former Albuquerque city council candidate who was assaulted by an angry mob of rioters and beaten with a skateboard was arrested on Monday night after he shot one of his attackers... Despite his clear retreat, the mob “maliciously” pursued him and yanked him to the ground, police said.Several members of the group began punching and kicking him while he was down on the pavement... The longboard-wielding attacker, later identified as 39-year-old Scott Williams, then slammed the board into Baca’s head yet again.

VIDEO: Teens Allegedly Yelled 'Black Lives Matter, Bi-h' As They Beat Gas Station Customer - "A group of teens viciously assaulted a man as he was leaving a convenience store on Sunday evening... “Black lives matter, b—h!” they allegedly yelled at the victim as they punched and kicked him in the face, the victim’s girlfriend, Kelli Tarwater, said... [Mason] Hatton, 24, who is white, walked over to the store to pick up snacks and cigarettes and was completing his transaction with the clerk when a “group of young black men and women” approached the counter “and demanded to be first”... A suspect in a white tank top suddenly punched Hatton in the face before the group shoved him into the side of a nearby parked car.Hatton slid to the ground as the suspects repeatedly punched and kicked him, the video showed.As the attackers ran off, another suspect emerged from the store and kicked the victim in his face."

VIDEO: Detroit Cop Drives Into Protesters Attacking His Vehicle - "the officer had his lights and siren on, and blasted his horn several times.But the protesters in the video appeared to become more agitated and began jumping violently onto the hood of the police SUV.That was when the video showed the police vehicle began moving forward, pushing its way through the protesters blocking its path.As the SUV began to move, more protesters jumped on the hood and the windshield, obstructing the driver’s view of the road... Detroit Police Sergeant Nicole Kirkwood said officers were attempting to redirect traffic because of the protest when the marchers became agitated and began jumping on vehicles... When their rear window was shattered, the chief said the officers thought they were getting shot at and that’s when they accelerated through the protesters blocking their way"

VIDEO: Protesters Occupy DC Target Store, Demand They Stop Calling 911 On Black People - "Black Lives Matter protesters stormed a Target store in the nation’s capital last Saturday and threatened they would shut them down completely if any of the employees ever called the police on a black person again"
If you are against black people committing crimes, you're racist

Black Lives Matter Leader Says They Want To “Burn The System Down” - "“The president of Greater New York Black Lives Matter said that if the movement fails to achieve meaningful change during nationwide protests over George Floyd’s killing by Minneapolis police officers, it will ‘burn down this system.’‘If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn down this system and replace it. All right? And I could be speaking figuratively. I could be speaking literally. It’s a matter of interpretation,’ Hawk Newsome said during an interview Wednesday evening on “The Story” with Martha MacCallum... This BLM leader just confirms what many of us have been saying for weeks: This isn’t about justice for George Floyd, or racism generally. It is about “burning down” the system that is the United States. In order to do so, the BLM mob must destroy America’s history root and branch. Then, they must label those who oppose their utopian ideals as racist and being “part of the problem” if those people don’t cosign their BS agenda... Even George Washington, the father of the nation, hasn’t been spared from the anti-American hordes. In Portland, Oregon, a statue to George Washington was torn down and an American flag was draped over his head and set on fire."

Protest Growing To Demand 'Justice' After Detroit Cops Shoot Man Who Was Shooting At Them - "Protesters have started to gather to demand “justice” for a man who was fatally shot by Detroit police officers Friday afternoon while he was shooting at police."

Melissa Chen - "President Trump's executive order on police reform includes:
- Ban on chokeholds (except if an officer’s life is at risk)
- Co-responders to help police with calls involving drugs, alcohol, homelessness
- Federal grants for training
- Nationwide database to track bad actors
He says Congress can and should go further.
It's a start, and I'm sure some people will say he could've gone further. I personally think curtailing police unions and qualified immunity should be the top priorities, but that's not best achieved with an EO.
He also said during the press conference, "I strongly oppose the radical and dangerous efforts to...dismantle and dissolve our police departments... Reducing crime and raising standards are not opposite goals"
AND
"They ran right into the twin towers on 9/11 - many never returned. New York's finest, never returned."
^My hunch is, this is exactly where most Americans are at."
Damn white supremacist!

Nader Issa on Twitter - "The Chicago Sun-Times will capitalize the "B" in Black when referring to people who are part of the African diaspora, newsroom management just announced.The same will be done for the "B" in Brown, so Sun-Times style will now read "Black and Brown communities."
Another part of @FuscoChris's note to the newsroom: "We will continue to lowercase the 'w' in white, which is a wider descriptor of people of numerous origins.""
Comment (elsewhere): "This makes absolutely no sense. Not all brown people are even from the same heritage. There are brown people in Central/South America and in Asia."

Tim Pool on Twitter - "Trump needs to get the fuck off his ass and do something about all this fucking chaos around the country Cops just got poisoned Leftists are destroying public property and now armed groups are rising up to stop them"

Mayor celebrates BLM protests, then calls them 'domestic terrorism' when her home is vandalized - "Mayor of Olympia, Washington, Cheryl Selby, has been a vocal proponent of Black Lives Matter and backer of the protests that have spread across the country amid the death of George Floyd, but when these same people vandalized her home, she called it "domestic terrorism.""

Mods on JusticeServed: "Any users criticizing the BLM movement, Antifa, or the current protests against police brutality will be immediately and permanently banned." : SubredditDrama
In turn, u/JusticeServedBot got suspended
Comment (elsewhere): "Then be prepared for more and more violence. If we can’t discuss our opinions, they don’t magically go away. You don’t win by default."

This is truly amazing. : PoliticalCompassMemes - "JusticeServedBot:
"No, we are just letting people know they cannot have the wrong opinions"
"Only racists want free speech"
"Yes, exactly. Free speech is only something nazis want so they can be racists.""

Dozens of newspapers stop publishing mug shot galleries, saying they 'reinforced negative stereotypes' - "Several outlets argue the galleries 'disproportionately feature black and brown people'"
Basically a stereotype is something you don't like that is true

More businesses fearing property damage hire private security guards in wake of protests - "“People understand that all of the police resources are geared towards the protests,” he said. “It leaves all of these buildings vulnerable to break-ins and causing problems.”... While Seattle police statistics show they take about six minutes to respond to top priority emergency calls, they’ve conceded their response to lower priority cases — including burglary and property theft — could be better. The median response time for Priority 2 calls — including in-progress property crimes or those that have just happened — was 18 minutes last year, compared with 13 minutes in 2014.For lower Priority 3 and 4 calls — including break-ins that didn’t just occur — the median response time last year was 49 minutes, compared with 35 minutes five years ago. Police have largely attributed the decline to declines in staffing amid increased crime in a growing city."
"Step 1: Liberal elites tell you to #DefundThePolice
Step 2: Liberal elites hire private security contractors
Step 3: Liberal elites tell you to #SocializeSecurity
Step 4: Liberal elites make you #FundThePolice
Step 5: Liberal elites profit?"
No wonder so many Americans are upset over paying taxes. They don't even have a functioning state

The Yaboiposting - Posts - "The fed is upset we burned down buildings and assaulted random people, even though the Mayor, Police Chief and state prosecutor gave us their blessing. we truly live in a fascist country"

Lucas Lynch - "Is it too much to ask that synagogues and Jewish institutions in LA consider it an honor that their buildings have been used as canvasses for the voices of the oppressed?"

<CBS News on Twitter - "Biden to George Floyd's daughter Gianna via video message: “You are so brave... I know you have a lot of questions, honey. No child should have to ask questions that too many black children have had to ask for generations — why, why is Daddy gone?”"
When you try to be woke but end up being racist

GarbageHuman - Posts - "You anonymously reported The Only Good Cops Are Dead Cops for promoting violence."
"Thanks for your report - you did the right thing by letting us know about this. The Page you reported was reviewed, and though it doesn't go against one of our specific Community Standards..."
It's only violence when it harms "minorities"

We all deserve a chance at life irrespective of our colours! Also spotted during the BLM protest. : pics - "We all deserve a chance at life irrespective of our colours! Also spotted during the BLM protest."
"Sorry, this post has been removed by the moderators of r/pics."

Karine Covfefe - NPR: "Right-wing extremist are turning cars into weapons, with reports of 50 vehicle-ramming incidents since protests erupted nationwide in late May."
"People are being attacked in their cars trying to go home and if they try to defend themselves, they are called "Right-wing extremists". What a complete shitshow. 🤡"

Rita Panahi on Twitter - "Hey @NPR did you accidentally delete this tweet after getting dragged for spreading verifiably false BS? The driver stopped, was attacked (repeatedly) & then fled. She won’t be charged but 2 of the ‘peaceful protesters’ have been charged. #FactsAreOurFriends"
Protesters arrested following altercation with driver in downtown Louisville - "Police said protesters had blocked the intersection, standing in front of the woman’s car with a megaphone.During a verbal altercation between the driver and the protesters, someone ripped out one of the driver’s dreadlocks.When someone pulled a gun, the driver sped off and struck a protester.When she stopped at a red light a block later, someone pointed a gun at her. Police said that man was 21-year-old Darius Anderson, who allegedly passed the gun off to 19-year-old Brioanna Richards.Both are charged with rioting, disorderly conduct and obstructing a highway.Anderson faces additional charges of first-degree wanton endangerment."

• People shot to death by U.S. police, by gender 2020 - "As of July 29, the U.S. police shot 536 men and 22 women to death in 2020."
Clear evidence of structural sexism!

Korean Beauty Store Employee Attacked for Asking Customer to Wear a Face Mask - "the employee, Younglae Kim, is a recent Albany graduate who was following the New York State’s social distancing guidelines for COVID-19 spread prevention... Kim told WNYT that the situation escalated into one of violent racism when he asked him to “please go out.”... He then spat on Kim’s face, which made him spit back in retaliation. Enraged, he started to punch and kick the employee in the abdomen, knocking him into the metal rods, before Kim fell, bleeding, to the floor.“The doctor said my nose looked broken,” he said.According to CBS 6 News, he told Kim to “go back to your country,” as well as adding a slew of racist comments while he was assaulting him. As a South Korean native, Kim expressed that he wanted to live in the U.S., but after the attack, he’s unsure."
Damn anti-blackness!

Lucas Lynch - "A friend of mine, who happens to be a black woman, and has two black sons, told me an amusing story. Protest swept through her neighborhood, and a “progressive“ thought it was good to slash her tires, which happened to be on a BMW, which she worked like hell to earn. 
She saw this happening in real time, and went out and confronted the white protester. Because her neighborhood tends to be white, the white protester said “I’m sorry, I just assumed you were white.” This friend thought it was interesting that this white anarchist was somehow assuming that BMW could not be owned by a black person. 
Time and again, my black friends have a diversity of opinion, while it is my progressive white friends who insist that a uniformity of opinion on looting, and “defund the police“ is required. 
In reality, they continue to know nothing about the black community on whose behalf they claim to speak."
This psychologist complained about an article that compared white college educated people with people of colour which pointed out that the latter are less woke than the former and claimed that it was comparing apples with oranges (and that the correct comparison should be with college educated people of colour). When I pointed out that the point was to show that the white college educated people were not really speaking for people of colour (as they pretended to), he blocked me

Bill Mitchell on Twitter - "I'm sorry, but if you are still "struggling with slavery," I'm still struggling with when the Vikings invaded England in the 8th Century and enslaved my relatives. They stole our lands, burned our fields and assaulted our women. I blame all my current failures on Vikings."

Being Classically Liberal - Posts - "I don't understand how "liberals" can recognize that it's wrong to malign Muslims as a group of people, but can't be bothered to apply that logic to police officers."

Peter Barrett - "Imagine living in a country that had been torn apart by a terrible war -- one of the most brutal wars the modern world had ever seen up to that point -- but had reunited and knit itself together so strongly that each side honored the other's heroes and respected the other's dead. I was born in a country like that. I'm sad my kids won't get to experience it."

Lucas Lynch - "Even a website as innocuous as babynames.com must put lambs' blood over its doorway."

Paul on Twitter - "The fact that celebrities have raised $20,000,000 for rioters bail and $0 for looting victims speaks volumes about the elite."

Voter Apathy Party - Posts - "George Floyd's childhood dream was to become a Supreme Court justice"
"Impressive teacher, keeping that paper all these years, in perfect condition even."
"Not one faded stroke of graphite on thirty year old paper. No yellowing of the paper, either."

The Project condones BLM looting with anti-feminist point on Network 10 - "They deserve to be looted for flaunting nice things to poor people,” the hosts of Network 10’s The Project said, condoning looting.The hosts of Australia’s trashy entertainment gossip show The Project have taken it one step further than just supporting the Black Lives Matter protests (BLM) in the USA, they have now condoned the violence and the looting as well. Peter Van Onselen, Lisa Wilkinson, Tommy Little and Susie Youssef were discussing the Black Lives Matter protests... not only did the hosts blame the current U.S. president and all white Americans, they also condoned the violence and looting. The Project is known for it’s far-left takes and they’ve espoused very many divisive political opinions before like ‘all men are rapists’, etc... The show has an abysmal 2.1 star rating on Google with an overwhelming majority of the reviews been 1 star... Before fully condoning the violence and rioting carried forth by the BLM activists and domestic communist terrorist group Antifa, The Project brought on Bejamin Crump, a Black Lives Matter activist that falsely stated that Donald J. Trump had told police to “shoot thugs”.What makes this take incredible hypocritical is that the hosts of The Project have previously used the universally agreed statement, “the way a woman dresses does not give you the right to assault her,” on their ‘all men are rapists’ episode. However, now they are condoning violence and looting alleging that shop owners deserve to be looted because they are ‘flaunting nice things to poor people’."

Louisville Cuban community to rally in support of La Bodeguita de Mima - "Members of Louisville's Cuban community plan to gather Sunday in support of a NuLu restaurant owner who says he was threatened by Black Lives Matter protesters during a recent demonstration.Fernando Martinez, a partner of the Olé Restaurant Group, was one of dozens of business owners in the downtown Louisville district who recently received a letter from protesters laying out demands that aim to improve diversity in the area, which is known for its locally-owned shops and restaurants.Martinez has publicly denounced the demands on Facebook, calling them "mafia tactics" used to intimidate business owners. And on Thursday, a small group of protesters confronted him outside his newest restaurant, La Bodeguita de Mima, on East Market Street. "There comes a time in life that you have to make a stand and you have to really prove your convictions and what you believe in," Martinez wrote in his Facebook post. "... All good people need to denounce this. How can you justified (sic) injustice with more injustice?"... members of the city's Cuban community will meet outside the NuLu restaurant at 4 p.m. Sunday to support the immigrant-owned business, which "has been subject to vandalism and extortion in recent days.""
Sadly for them, blacks rank above latinos in the progressive stack, so their "anti-blackness" will be condemned

ZUBY: on Twitter - "City mayors be like
Homelessness: Neutral face
Knife crime: Neutral face
Gun crime: Neutral face
Terrorism: Neutral face
Robbery: Neutral face
Assault: Neutral face
Rape: Neutral face
Looting: Slightly smiling face
Riots: Slightly smiling face
Anarchist run autonomous zones: Smiling face with open mouth
Opening your business: Pouting face
Man police officer
Not wearing a mask: Pouting face
Man police officer
Going to church: Pouting face
Man police officer"

The Yaboiposting - Posts - "Al Sharpton, Spike Lee, Ave Duvaney, Jordan Peele, Colin Keapernik, black MSNBC/CNN commentators, and that one lawyer that represents all the families of people killed by cops, all got wealthy thanks to "racism". What incentive would they have to ending it?"

Federalist Perspectives - Posts - "Body Cam footage was released from the Floyd Arrest. Things just got even more confusing. TL:DR? The narrative that he was intentionally murdered is now doubtful (which means that I was likely wrong to view this whole thing as a murder). We'll see. The Officers approach Floyd in his car, is slow to cooperate. They draw their guns. He is terrified. He reluctantly begins to cooperate. They holster their guns. He begs them not to shoot him. Floyd is... off (that's the best word I can use to describe it). The Officer asks bystanders why Floyd is being so strange. They say that's the way he is. As they guide him to the cruiser, he complains that he is in pain, claims his mother just died, claims he cannot breathe, claims he is going to die. They ask him if he is on something - he says no. When they put him in the car he says he is claustrophobic... despite being approached in his own car. They spend a long time trying to convince him to get into the car. They give him time to catch his breath. The Officers offer to roll down the windows. He **asks** to be put on the ground several times. During this whole process no racial comments are made. The Officers are professional, if not occassionally using tones expressing frustration. Floyd does appear terrified and scatterbrained. Very very scatterbrained."

How the Media Led the Great Racial Awakening - "In the wake of the protests, riots, and general upheaval sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the United States is experiencing a racial reckoning. The response from America’s elite liberal institutions suggests that many have embraced the ideology of the protesters... The last entry on the list, a lengthy feature on America’s “caste system” in The New York Times Magazine, explicitly compares the United States to Nazi Germany.Countless articles have been published in recent weeks, often under the guise of straight news reporting, in which journalists take for granted the legitimacy of novel theories about race and identity. Such articles illustrate a prevailing new political morality on questions of race and justice that has taken power at the Times and Post—a worldview sometimes abbreviated as “wokeness” that combines the sensibilities of highly educated and hyperliberal white professionals with elements of Black nationalism and academic critical race theory. But the media’s embrace of “wokeness” did not begin in response to the death of George Floyd. This racial ideology first began to take hold at leading liberal media institutions years before the arrival of Donald Trump and, in fact, heavily influenced the journalistic response to the protest movements of recent years and their critique of American society... Starting well before Donald Trump’s rise to power, while President Obama was still in office, terms like “microaggression” and “white privilege” were picked up by liberal journalists. These terms went from being obscure fragments of academic jargon to commonplace journalistic language in only a few years... universally recognizable words like “racism” were being radically redefined. Along with the new language came ideas and beliefs animating a new moral-political framework to apply to public life and American society... What we see over the past decade is a continual dramatic increase in usages of “racism” and its variations. Moreover, the graph shows that this increase occurred a half decade before the arrival of Donald Trump... Over the period in question, starting in the mid ’90s, the Times and Post had always featured these terms more frequently than the Journal but, until recently, the difference was minor. Today, the gap is enormous, which suggests that the explosion in the usage of racialized terminology and ideological constructs isn’t simply a neutral reflection of an increase in racial incidents... the more aspects of social life the media racializes, the more “racism” there is for the media to report on.In 2011, just 35% of white liberals thought racism in the United States was “a big problem,” according to national polling. By 2015, this figure had ballooned to 61% and further still to 77% in 2017. In December of 2006, 45% of white Democrats and 41% of white Republicans reported that they knew someone they considered racist. By June of 2015, this figure increased to 64% among white Democrats, while remaining at a steady 41% among white Republicans. No increases were observed for any of the nonwhite Democrat groups. In fact, what (statistically insignificant) change occurred among Black (52.7% to 47.2%) and Hispanic (41.1% to 33.8%) Democrats were actually in the opposite direction... ascendant progressive notions about race reflected in a steady drumbeat of reporting and editorializing on the subject from leading national media outlets, encouraged white liberals to label a larger number of behaviors and people as racist. In other words, while the world may have stayed more or less the same, elite liberal media and its readership—especially its white liberal readership—underwent a profound change... even the most powerful traditional media outlets—whether that’s The New York Times or cable news—exist within a larger ecosystem that is increasingly shaped by digital actors. The agenda-setting and issue-framing powers that social media platforms like Twitter have provided to progressive activists appears to be a central driver of both the shifts in white liberals’ racial attitudes and the transformations within traditional media. Even the most powerful and storied names in newspaper publishing are increasingly responsive to and influenced by political sentiments percolating on social media, where all manner of racialist ideology thrives... roughly 50% of those reporting single Russian ancestry have bachelor’s degrees or more, while this is true of only 27% of those of French and 18% of those of Portuguese ancestry, respectively. To put this into perspective, these gaps are double and nearly triple the size, respectively, of the degree-attainment gap between aggregate Blacks (16.2%) and whites (27.2%). Would Kendi insist that this, too, is dispositive proof of discrimination?The truth is that unless or until one is able to determine the “baseline disparities” between populations—i.e., disparities that would obtain even in the absence of racism and discrimination—there is no way to quantify or determine with certainty the extent that disparities can be attributed to discrimination and bias... Research shows that how members of advantaged or “privileged” social groups react to group inequality is informed by his/her views of its legitimacy. Those who are inclined or habituated to see it as illegitimate (such as white liberals) are likely to experience feelings of shame, guilt, and/or in-group-directed anger. These aversive feelings, in turn, correspond to needs for moral acceptance and validation vis-à-vis members of disadvantaged out-groups. These needs then motivate the adoption of pro-out-group (or “woke”) attitudes and behaviors that both signal one’s moral solidarity with the unjustly disadvantaged out-group while also distinguishing oneself from the undeservingly privileged in-group. In the other direction, group members that don’t perceive that such inequalities are entirely or at all illegitimate are likely to resent being unjustly blamed for them and to consider the maligning of their moral status unfair... What the evidence suggests, is that leading publications have not only vastly expanded the definition of racism and actively promoted a more racialized view of American society—in a period beginning under a Black president and during which many indicators showed slow and frustrating, but consistent, racial progress—but have done so, in part, by normalizing and popularizing the notion of “white people’s” collective guilt... Until just a few years ago, such reductive and Manichaean racial narratives were largely confined to overtly white nationalist and Black nationalist groups and the pages of little-read academic critical theory and sociology journals... The spikes for “white supremacy” and variant terms are remarkable given that they are by no means novel and so started from a higher baseline. Until a few years ago, their usage was likely limited to references to actual card-carrying white supremacists. But as with “racism,” these terms have since been radically expanded by a rapid and ideologically driven concept creep. White supremacy is now a vague and all-encompassing label. Instead of describing the demonstrably discriminatory ideas and actions of particular institutions or individuals, white supremacy is now understood by many progressives to be the fundamental ethos of the American system as a whole. Whatever it used to mean, “white supremacy” is now everywhere and applicable to any context... For decades, the term “racial equality” was the ubiquitous framework for understanding and evaluating racial justice. This is now changing as "equality" gives way to newer concepts such as “racial equity,” which refers to the redistribution of resources from the supposedly privileged to the supposedly disadvantaged as a means to redress claimed discrimination. As Ibram Kendi puts it: "If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist ... The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." Thus the goal is no longer 'racial equality' or equal treatment under the law. It is, rather, the attainment of a state of the world in which all groups have equal outcomes—even if some are deliberately disadvantaged in the process... For some Americans all of this is surely good news. For them, the rapid proliferation of articles employing the tropes of critical race theory to ascribe racial guilt in the American system represents a reckoning with white supremacy and inequality that is long overdue. There are many possible objections to this line of argument: To start, there’s the fact that dividing a diverse, multiethnic society into oppressed and oppressor categories on the basis of skin color has, as a matter of historical precedent, more often led to sectarian bloodshed than enhanced justice and equity. What’s more, the narratives promoting this new system of racial division are both factually fraudulent—built on false or misleading premises and assumptions—and deeply hostile to any attempts at factual correction. If one points out, for instance, that accounts of white supremacy as an all-powerful force in American society tend to discount that some nonwhite groups like Nigerian Americans, Indian Americans, and East Asian Americans all have more income equity than the average white person, this itself is invalidated as a racist microaggression. The media has actively promoted a theory of racism that misrepresents facts about the world while stigmatizing any effort to criticize those facts as racist... Which brings us to the media’s selective and race-driven reporting on deadly police shootings. If the ultimate goal of such media coverage and the protests they generate is to effect police reform—greater transparency, accountability, etc.—the fetishization of Black victims of police shooting is hard to understand. Indeed, if this objective is paramount, then it would be best served by saturating the newswire whenever a person of any race is unjustly killed by law enforcement. Indeed, the more radical the goal of the movement, the more important it would appear to be that it attempt to appeal to the largest possible segment of the populace. That there is no dispositive evidence of racial bias in police use of deadly force would make this approach even more advisable. However, a recent analysis of mine shows that the opposite is happening... unarmed Black police-shooting victims generated nine times the number of news search results as white victims. What is more, roughly 32% of white victims generated zero search results as compared to just 12% of Black victims... What the data presented here suggests is that editorial decisions made over the past decade at some of the most powerful media outlets in the world about what kind of language to use and what kind of stories merited coverage when it came to race—whatever the intention and level of forethought behind such decisions—has stoked a revival of racial consciousness among their readers. Intentionally or not, by introducing and then constantly repeating a set of key words and concepts, publications like The New York Times have helped normalize among their readership the belief that “color” is the defining attribute of other human beings. For those who adopt this singular focus on race, a racialized view of the world becomes baseline test of political loyalty. It requires adherents to overlook the immense diversity among so-called “People of Color” and “People Not-of-Color” (i.e., whoever is being lumped together as “white” according to the prevailing ideological fashion). In doing so, it has made stereotypes socially acceptable, if not laudable. The same media institutions that have promoted revanchist identitarianism and the radical transformation of American society along racial lines, could instead have focused their attention and influence on improving the quality of life for all. Working to ensure that Americans of any background aren’t unjustly victimized by the police and have access to quality health care, schools, and affordable housing doesn’t require the promotion of a “race-consciousness” that divides society into “oppressed” and “privileged” color categories. To the contrary, it requires that we de-emphasize these categories and unite in pursuit of common interests. This may not suit the media’s prerogatives, and it may not appeal to activists whose desire for cultural “recognition” trumps their devotion to material progress, but it does offer the potential benefit of improving the lives of ordinary Americans."
"Guess who benefits when there is racial conflict? Race conflict destroys class solidarity. It's not a coincidence that the global elite's wealth have accelerated in the past 10 years, the time-frame in this study."
So much for (((journalists))) being responsible for all the race baiting. Tablet has a lot of good stuff on the current madness
More good data on the radicalisation of liberals in recent years - led by the media

Addendum: Also published as "Woke Terms & Media Racism Statistics"

CNN on Twitter - "Hundreds of people gathered and marched on Saturday in Portland, Oregon, marking the 66th night of Black Lives Matter protests in the city, according to the Portland Police Bureau"
CNN on Twitter - "A large crowd of far-right groups gathered for a "sit-in" at Berlin's iconic Brandenburg Gate to protest against the German government's coronavirus restrictions. The march included anti-vaccine groups and some far-right and neo-Nazi organizations."
When the media wants to push an agenda...

Bret Weinstein on Twitter - "Google has enabled a system for identifying “black owned” businesses. This can not be morally or rationally defended. It is obviously a response to a credible threat."
Melissa Chen - "Next up, symbols will be used to mark businesses on Google maps - a black heart for black-owned, a yellow star for Jewish--Uh oh.Yet another step back to a world hyper-focused on race. When the same outcome would delight a white supremacist, it’s time to reflect."

I,Hypocrite - Posts - "*Mugshots of the 3 cops who were unfortunate enough to witness the George Floyd arrest* I know, I'm trying to stay away for a minute, but this is just too glorious not to share. I hope they rot in prison for the rest of their pathetic lives. (But also, we need to abolish prisons and completely reconsider our approach to punitive justice.)"
We're hitting levels of doublethink that should not be possible

James Lindsay - Posts - Authors of study on race and police killings ask for its retraction, citing “continued misuse” in the media
"Referring back to my thread on how under mythologies, all data from the world has to serve the myth, here we have the retraction of all academic papers, no matter how rigorous, that contradict the Critical Race Theory distortions on race and police killing."
When science clashes with the liberal narrative

I Cited Their Study, So They Disavowed It - WSJ - "The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is a peer-reviewed journal that claims to publish “only the highest quality scientific research.” Now, the authors of a 2019 PNAS article are disowning their research simply because I cited it.Psychologists Joseph Cesario of Michigan State and David Johnson of the University of Maryland analyzed 917 fatal police shootings of civilians from 2015 to test whether the race of the officer or the civilian predicted fatal police shootings. Neither did. Once “race specific rates of violent crime” are taken into account, the authors found, there are no disparities among those fatally shot by the police. These findings accord with decades of research showing that civilian behavior is the greatest influence on police behavior.In September 2019, I cited the article’s finding in congressional testimony. I also referred to it in a City Journal article, in which I noted that two Princeton political scientists, Dean Knox and Jonathan Mummolo, had challenged the study design. Messrs. Cesario and Johnson stood by their findings. Even under the study design proposed by Messrs. Knox and Mummolo, they wrote, there is again “no significant evidence of anti-black disparity in the likelihood of being fatally shot by the police.”My June 3 Journal op-ed quoted the PNAS article’s conclusion verbatim. It set off a firestorm at Michigan State. The university’s Graduate Employees Union pressured the MSU press office to apologize for the “harm it caused” by mentioning my article in a newsletter. The union targeted physicist Steve Hsu, who had approved funding for Mr. Cesario’s research. MSU sacked Mr. Hsu from his administrative position. PNAS editorialized that Messrs. Cesario and Johnson had “poorly framed” their article—the one that got through the journal’s three levels of editorial and peer review... The authors don’t say how I misused their work. Instead, they attribute to me a position I have never taken: that the “probability of being shot by police did not differ between Black and White Americans.” To the contrary, I have, like them, stressed that racial disparities in policing reflect differences in violent crime rates. The only thing wrong with their article, and my citation of it, is that its conclusion is unacceptable in our current political climate. This retraction bodes ill for the development of knowledge... The consequences for the policing debate are particularly dire. Researchers will suppress any results that contravene the narrative about endemic police racism. That narrative is now producing a shocking rise in shootings in American cities. The victims, including toddlers, are almost exclusively black."

Chicago-Area Leaders Call for Illinois to Eliminate History Classes - "State Rep. LaShawn K. Ford said current history teachings lead to a racist society and overlook the contributions of women and minorities.Ford and other leaders have asked the ISBOE and school districts to immediately remove history books that "unfairly communicate" history."
So much for promoting education and critical thinking. It's been replaced by indoctrination and critical (theory) thinking

The Oscars Will Add a Diversity Requirement for Eligibility - The New York Times - "the academy could take a page from its brethren in Britain: In 2019, the British Film Institute became the first major awards body to introduce diversity and inclusion criteria into its eligibility requirements"
So much for ars gratia artis

Rutgers English Department to deemphasize traditional grammar ‘in solidarity with Black Lives Matter’ - "Also pledges to decolonize the writing center"
There goes the value of a Rutgers English degree

Escape The Echo Chamber - Posts - "A moment of sanity. Trader Joe’s is refusing to rename their international foods because they show an appreciation for other cultures."“A few weeks ago, an online petition was launched calling on us to “remove racist packaging from [our] products.” Following were inaccurate reports that the petition prompted us to take action. We want to be clear: we disagree that any of these labels are racist. We do not make decisions based on petitions... Recently we have heard from many customers reaffirming that these name variations are largely viewed in exactly the way they were intended—as an attempt to have fun with our product marketing”

Catholic churches across U.S. suffer week of vandalism and arson

Black Lives Matter fundraising handled by group with convicted terrorist on its board - "The co-founder of Black Lives Matter names a convicted cop killer as one of her heroes, and the BLM national organization is fiscally sponsored through a leftist group whose board of directors includes a convicted terrorist.Alicia Garza, one of three co-founders of the Black Lives Matter national organization, has repeatedly talked about how convicted cop killer and wanted domestic terrorist Joanne Chesimard, also known as Assata Shakur, is one of her main inspirations. Susan Rosenberg, a member of the board of directors for the left-wing Thousand Currents group, which handles the intake of donations made to Black Lives Matter, is a convicted terrorist who, among other things, was suspected of helping Shakur escape from prison... She was convicted on weapons and explosives charges and sentenced to 58 years in prison, serving 16 years before being pardoned by President Bill Clinton in January 2001... The website for Black Lives Matter is operated under an umbrella group known as the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, chaired by BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors, a self-described Marxist. Black Lives Matter uses ActBlue to raise money... The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation has pulled in huge amounts of cash since Floyd’s death, telling the Associated Press it received more than 1.1 million individual donations as of mid-June, with each donation averaging $33 — meaning the group has brought in more than $33 million in less than a month.A 2017 report from Black Lives Matter describes its founders — Garza, Cullors, and Opal Tometi — as “three radical Black organizers.”... The “Hands Up! Don’t Shoot!” slogan that features prominently at most Black Lives Matter protests is based on a myth also debunked by the Obama-Holder Justice Department, which concluded the shooting of Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson was justified."

GitHub to replace "master" with alternative term to avoid slavery references - "This includes dropping terms like "master" and "slave" for alternatives like "main/default/primary" and "secondary;" but also terms like "blacklist" and "whitelist" for "allow list" and "deny/exclude list."The concern is that continued use of these racially-loaded terms could prolong racial stereotypes... Most detractors and the explanation that often resurfaces in these discussions is that terms like master/slave are now more broadly used to describe technical scenarios than actual slavery and that the word "blacklist" has nothing to do with black people, but the practice of using black books in medieval England to write down the names of problematic workers to avoid hiring in the future."

Why Gina Carano is Being Targeted By Trolls on Twitter - "MMA champion and actress Gina Carano has had a tumultuous few days on twitter due to controversy over her recent tweets as the hashtag #Ginacaranoisoverparty began trending... The 38-year-old Haywire and The Mandalorian star has been called "racist" and a "bootlicker" and it seemingly began when she posted the famous black and white photo showing a collective Nazi Salute, where one man isn't saluting... "In my experience, screaming at someone that they are a racist when they are indeed NOT a racist & any post and/or research you do will show you those exact facts. Then I'm sorry, these people are not 'educators'... they are cowards and bullies."... One Twitter user, defending Carano wrote: "Gina Carano is being bullied & harassed by SJW trolls. They're calling her a 'racist bootlicker' & demanding she 'Say ACAB/BLM' to prove she's not racist. Gina is having none of it, calling them cowards for trying to bully her off social media." They added, sharing screenshots of tweets targeting Carano: "Bot accounts harassing Gina Carano will post the same message within 1 minute of each other. Matching profiles with: 'She/Her - BLM/ACAB' bios that change name & layout. Actual proof of someone using bots to bully a female Star Wars actress."... Others are claiming they are trying to "educate" Carano, with one person tweeting: "These aren't trolls, these are people trying to educate you so you can get on the right side of history."Carano responded to say that those tweeting her are not "educators" but "bullies and cowards."However, Carano appears to be unfazed by the attention and address the "trolls" in a tweet yesterday, sharing a photo saying "the trash took itself out" and writing: "Dear trolls.. pssst..(oh but make sure you keep checking in from all of your other 12 fake accounts). Cowards.""

Gina Carano’s formidable stand against BLM bullies is a much-wanted victory over cancel culture - "MMA fighter and ‘Deadpool’ star Gina Carano has been accused by social justice warriors on Twitter of being “racist” for not showing enough support to Black Lives Matter and daring to express herself... In a world beset by actual racism and real problems, we’ve reached a point where thousands discuss ‘canceling’ someone because they express an opinion they don’t understand. And that’s what it comes down to. Not understanding. This hungry mob scouring social media for people to target feeds off soundbite slogans and trendy, digestible issues. So, Carano making a larger point – or even opening up a discussion – about standing against racism is completely lost on them. Because her point doesn’t fit into the binary politics the US so greedily feasts on, critics push her to a side without her having any say at all in the matter.And of all the people who could be targeted by BLM trolls, Carano is a strange choice. A movement that’s supposed to be about equality targeting a woman who has progressed female standing in culture, both through her fighting and acting career, and worked against sex trafficking to boot, is not the best look. The positive to takeaway here is that Carano didn’t back down. Celebrities and politicians often begin sweating when they see their names trending and connected to controversy. We’re then usually served up a swift public apology, with the person in question reassuring liberal critics that they are, in fact, on their side. This happens for sins as minuscule as asking whether Kanye West would make a good president.Carano’s right to avoid such temptation and to blast her critics as “cowards.” That’s what they are. Anyone who targets a woman over an opinion they’re too small-minded to understand or accept and who veils their attacks in the guise of “education” is indeed a coward.The most extreme arm of the BLM movement and the woke mob is not about education or politics or even progress. It has become about servitude. Say what they want you to say or they’ll find a way to threaten you or our career. Do what they want you to do or you’re ‘canceled.’ But, as Carano showed, if you just stand your ground, you take away the perceived power these leftist authoritarians have been gifted through years of appeasement accomplished through fear-mongering."

The Mandalorian Star Gina Carano Accused of Racism for Sharing Historical Anti-Nazi Photo - "Carano came under fire after sharing the famous photo that many believe is German laborer August Landmesser refusing to give the Nazi salute to Adolf Hitler during a 1936 rally celebrating the launch of the Horst Wessel, a German sail training ship... Despite the outpouring of troll attacks against her, Carano refused to step away from the public sphere... Carano would share a quote from Braveheart, which reads, “Aye, fight and you may die. Run, and you’ll live…at least a while. And dying in your beds, many years from now, would you be willing to trade all the days, from this day to that, for one chance, just one chance, to come back here and tell our enemies that they may take our lives, but they’ll never take…OUR FREEDOM?!”"
Bizarro world where praising people who stand up to Nazis is seen as supporting them

Most Americans think ‘All Lives Matter’ is a positive message. Yet why are we being told it’s as good as a hate crime? - "Despite pushback from activists against the phrase “all lives matter” amidst George Floyd protests, a poll suggests the majority of people are not offended by the words and only a small, vocal minority are behind the outrage... Questioning nearly 1,500 people, a YouGov/Economist poll shows that across races, regions, and ages, the majority of people find no comeuppance with the three words.In total, 56 percent of respondents said they saw the phrase as positive. That number remains above 50 for males and females and barely dips below that halfway mark for black people polled... those that think “all lives matter” carries a negative connotation are in the minority almost entirely across the board. Only 23 percent of those polled said it pushed a negative message. For black respondents, only 28 percent saw a negative stance in the words. The highest the outrage goes, according to the poll, is among college grads, adults below the age of 29, and people with incomes of over $100,000 a year. Even in these categories though it was still only 37 percent, 40 percent, and 35 percent who thought “all lives matter” is negative. These numbers don’t quite match up to the outrage we have seen over the phrase, suggesting a vocal minority is pushing the divisive narrative through social media and volatile protests... Anyone who says “all lives matter” to their iPhone Siri feature will get a response encouraging them to read more into the Black Lives Matter movement.Amazon founder Jeff Bezos recently went into a rant against an email from an angry customer using the phrase, affirming his alliance with BLM and ensuring people he won’t change his “stance.” While one would think a billionaire businessman wouldn’t need to waste his time answering angry emails from customers, Bezos’ obvious virtue signaling shows how frightened people are to be attached to a phrase we are told is offensive to the current movement... it becomes clear that there is a serious disconnect with reality... A vocal minority has hijacked a cultural moment and is now using it to simply spread divisiveness by labeling everything from television shows to phrases they don’t like as racist. This progresses no serious conversation and merely opens the door for easy villainization, a favorite hobby of virtue signalers looking to ‘belong’ and ‘be part of’ what they see as a definitive movement in history."

'Perpetuate this inequality': Ilhan Omar says US must begin 'dismantling' economy and 'the whole system of oppression' - "A member of "the Squad," Omar has aligned herself politically with fellow Democrats such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, who have railed against capitalism as a system of oppression used by the rich against the poor.Similarly, Black Lives Matter organizers, who are upset with the continued mistreatment of minorities by police and a lack of meaningful action on the part of the government to rectify unequal justice, have threatened to "burn down" the current system of government if elected leaders do not comply with their demands... President Trump has labeled Black Lives Matter as a group with a "hateful" message and threatened to crack down on demonstrations he says unfairly target American ideals and symbols."Make no mistake: This left-wing cultural revolution is designed to overthrow the American Revolution. In so doing, they would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence, and hunger and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery, and progress," Trump said during a speech over the July 4 weekend. "To make this possible, they are determined to tear down every statue, symbol, and memory of our national heritage.""

Dave Rubin on Twitter - "“Black lives matter, you faggot.” Here’s a video you won’t see on CNN or any mainstream media..."

Peace-loving black Trump super-supporter shot dead hours after giving pro-Trump interview - "Marxist Black Lives Matter activists are curiously silent after black Trump supporter Bernell Trammell was murdered in Milwaukee hours after he reportedly gave an interview explaining why he supports President Trump... Last month, a black Trump supporter was bombarded with racist slurs by a black leftist outside President Trump’s Tulsa rally. The leftist slammed the black Trump supporter as a “house n***er” and a “f**got.”The Trump supporter replied: “I’m too educated to be a house n***er. I’ve never been on a plantation, brother. Have you?”The black leftist then told the Trump supporter to shut up and called him a “f*ggot” before driving off."

Sargon of Akkad - Posts - "A terribly sad story. Two young and idealistic lawyers, get wrapped up in the BLM protest movement. In a moment of madness they throw a Molotov cocktail into an abandoned police car and burn it. Now they face a minimum 35 years in a federal prison."
"A moment of madness?As if people walk around with readily prepared Molotov cocktails."

Minneapolis: Solemn by Day, Violent by Night - The New York Times - "At night, though, the space is increasingly a battleground, with shootings and drug overdoses. The area has had an uptick in gun violence similar to what other cities have seen in the wake of protests."
Finally, an admission of the violence

YouTuber Trolls White New Yorkers Who Feel Guilt-Ridden about Race - "During the height of the George Floyd protests, a YouTuber known as Smooth Sanchez released a livestream of himself strutting through the streets of New York City and interacting with random pedestrians... Sanchez approaches a white woman (why he seems to have singled out females is unclear) and falsely identifies himself as a representative of Black Lives Matter. Next, he claims that his BLM manager has instructed him to find white people on the street for his livestream and to bring them to their knees in a show of solidarity with George Floyd. Once the subject is kneeling — an easy thing for Sanchez to bring about in many consecutive encounters— the YouTuber asks her to apologize for her white privilege (an action secured five times) or even to admit to being complicit in crimes against minorities by virtue of being white (secured twice). Finally, Sanchez thanks his unwitting dupe and goes on his way. If, at any point, a white target refuses to follow Sanchez’s directions, he shames her by calling her a bigoted racist or a white supremacist... Sanchez calls George Floyd “George Foreman” throughout the video just for fun. Many subjects daren’t correct him... he had made the video to troll people.Indeed, the unquestioning faith displayed by some in the video is astonishing. Almost no one wonders whether the unknown camera-wielder can be trusted. No one questions Sanchez’s allegiance to Black Lives Matter, nor does anyone find the premise of kneeling and begging pardon for her race on a livestream unsettling. (Incidentally, though Sanchez intends the kneelers in his video to be met with mockery, some white people have been kneeling and apologizing for their white privilege unprompted in an albeit well-intentioned attempt at racial solidarity.) Finally, the notion that whiteness — rather than the action of individuals — is responsible for the death of George Floyd goes largely unchecked among Sanchez’s Caucasian targets. It feels as though many of those whom Sanchez films have transcended the material plane and reached a level of mystical elevation in their political fervor. To them, the woke genuflection of repentance is like unto a kneeling prayer, the renunciation of one’s identity unto devout asceticism, the obeisance of the supposed minister of Black Lives Matter unto humility before divine authority. But this fervor is nothing new; it is astutely captured in Aurel Kolnai’s essay “The Humanitarian Versus the Religious Attitude,” appended at the end of Daniel Mahoney’s exceptionally written The Idol of Our Age. The 20th-century philosopher thus characterizes the phenomenon: “The modern civilization of Western mankind . . . has revealed a trend of evolution towards a society in which, practically speaking, religion as a determining factor of private and public life is to yield its place to a nonreligious, immanentistic, secular moral orientation which may best be described succinctly as “humanitarian.”62Kolnai’s remarks make a great deal of sense; perceiving the abnegation with which Sanchez’s targets launch themselves into the flames of political correctness, one is hard pressed to conceive of any motivating factor but this sort of “immanentistic, secular moral orientation”— a “civil religion,” as Rousseau envisioned... those in Sanchez’s video seem to have taken important virtues — pity for the oppressed and righteous anger toward their oppressors — and to have committed to exercising them as essential even at the expense of dignity and truth."

Meme - "Remember in the Robocop movies when corporate America aids criminals helps incite riots so they can lower property values buy up the city while privatizing that city's police force haha science fiction is crazy"

Radio host mocked Trump by claiming Seattle is peaceful, then rioters torched his apartment building - "Seattle radio host and Twitter-based criminal defense advocate Paul Gallant "dunked" on President Donald Trump last month by denying that the riots are violent, then the radio host was scored on by rioters who trashed his apartment... "Walked through it last night out of curiosity and saw no burning, pillaging, or deaths," Gallant responded in June to Trump's tweet calling out the violent leftists who continue to terrorize Seattle. "Chill dawg," Gallant added sarcastically.Last night, Gallant had a sudden change of heart towards the "peaceful protestors" when he came home to his apartment complex vandalized. He found the Starbucks underneath broken into with graffiti plastered on the storefront. Cops told residents to stay away in case of explosives inside. He was defending criminals before but he's "[r]eally angry right now.'"... "I feel like I need to buy a firearm, because clearly this is going to keep happening. Enough is enough""

How one of Colorado’s smallest protests became its most violent - "A video of the scene shows protesters lurch out of the way. It also shows one protester, a white man dressed in black, pull a gun from his waistband and shoot the driver in the head... James Edward Marshall IV, the 27-year-old shooter, is facing a slew of charges, including attempted murder. He knows a thing or two about what he’s up against because he is a defense lawyer... “We’d run into each other and talk about news, politics, whatever. The conversation would often be around the current political state. He’d say ‘I f—ing hate Trump,’ or something like that,” he said.“James is pretty tightly wound. There’s an intensity you don’t always see around here.” Danny Pruitt, the 49-year-old gunshot victim, spent most of the past three weeks in a coma, the bullet still lodged in his brain...  A source advising the probe says detectives have been looking into whether the traffic light was red or green when Pruitt accelerated toward the protesters, and whether any were hit. None of those we interviewed said they were.Tom Metier, Pruitt’s personal injury lawyer, says his client remembers coming to a stop at the intersection and getting shot"
Doubtless another "white supremacist" making the "peaceful protestors" look bad

Looters descend on downtown Chicago; more than 100 arrested - "Hundreds of looters and vandals descended on downtown Chicago early Monday following a police shooting on the city's South Side, smashing the windows of dozens of businesses and making off with merchandise, cash machines and anything else they could carry... Hours earlier, police shot a man after he opened fire on officers Sunday afternoon — an incident that apparently prompted a social media post urging looters to converge on the business district... Brown dismissed any suggestion that the chaos was part of an organized protest of the shooting, instead calling it “pure criminality" that included occupants of a vehicle opening fire on police who were arresting a man they spotted carrying a cash register... Witnesses to the looting described a scene that bore a striking resemblance to the unrest that unfolded when protests over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis devolved into chaos. Brown suggested that the lenient treatment of people arrested then played a role in what happened Monday."

Trump-Supporting Grandma Outs Grandson as Alleged Portland Bomber - "A 69-year-old Trumper grandma turned her grandson in after watching someone throw a bomb into the Portland federal courthouse, recognizing him and then outing him to authorities... "I bought the vest for him after he found one online after getting hit with rubber bullets the night before at the protest."She even posted a glowing review of the item on Hibbett, saying, "I got this for my grandson who's a protester downtown, he uses it every night and says it does the job." Now, get this ... she ID'd her grandson as the alleged bomber on social media, under the handle @trumpsgirl2020.Her grandson, 18-year-old Gabriel "Rico" Agard-Berryhill, was arrested by Federal marshals and charged with felony arson. He faces years in prison if convicted."
Another "white supremacist"!

BBC Radio 4 - From Our Own Correspondent Podcast, Black lives in Minnesota - "The fire department and most institutions and corporations in the Twin Cities have diversity and inclusion initiatives. But they remain overwhelmingly white and feel hostile for some African Americans. Companies hire black professionals but struggle to retain them. Felicia *something* is one of many who fled the Twin Cities. She left 10 years ago for Atlanta. She told me through tears that she still suffers from PTSD, from the microaggressions and isolation she experienced working at a large Minnesota Corporation. You can't be your authentically black self and work there. You have to conform to make them comfortable. If you don't, they'll make your work life miserable and push you out...
How conveniently vague (what is being an "authentically black self"?).
Maybe they just want to be around more other black people (ergo Atlanta). If so, presumably it would still be white people's fault

Seattle BLM protesters demand white people ‘give up' their homes - "A second clip purportedly shows BLM demonstrators and Antifa members calling for white people to “get the f–k out” as others in the crowd call for reparations.“Give us our s–t back!” one man yells. Yet another clip apparently shot in the aftermath of the protest also shows demonstrators threatening a business owner who allegedly called cops to report that a window had been shattered at his business.“You’re being racist, you’re being racist,” a protester tells the unidentified white business owner. “Check your privilege, check your privilege.”The protester then tells the man to “go back to his gentrification business” while yelling profanities at him, the clip shows."

Geoffrey Miller on Twitter - "If your 'Revolution' is endorsed & sponsored by America's most powerful corporations, and any dissent against it is censored by Big Tech, it's not a revolution. It's the triumphant lock-in of an ideology that controls citizens' hearts & minds for vested interests."

Sargon of Akkad - Posts - "I wish y’all hated the KKK the way y’all hate BLM"
"Bro, when was the last time you saw a person IRL who supports the freaking Klan? The difference is just one of scale, not principle. If the Klan were burning down cities, then I'd demand the cops stop that, too."

Mirage Brewery Starts Printing Anti-Police 'ACAB' Message On Their Cans - "A Seattle-based brewery expressed its hatred for law enforcement officers by printing “ACAB” on the bottom of its beer cans this summer.ACAB stands for “All Cops Are Bastards”... “I used the markings because I stand against institutional racism, of which modern policing is a militarized arm,” Mirage’s owner Michael Dempster told KIRO in a text message."
Of course, if his brewery is burned down by thugs, he'll be blaming the cops for not responding

Pog on Twitter - "De Blasio admits city skipped permit process to paint Black Lives Matter murals"
9/11 'Tribute in Light' memorial canceled amid COVID-19 concerns

Facebook - "Logic, Empathy, Honesty: "Society should be restructured to take power away from [whites], who currently hold all the wealth and power, and who use it to control the government, corporations and the media for their benefit, unfairly oppressing those who would otherwise succeed"
- Black Lives Matter
"Society should be restructured to take power away from [Jews], who currently hold all the wealth and power, and who use it to control the government, corporations and the media for their benefit, unfairly oppressing those who would otherwise succeed"
The National Socialist German Workers Party."

McDonald's on Twitter - "They were one of us: Trayvon Martin. Michael Brown. Alton Sterling. Botham Jean. Atatiana Jefferson. Ahmaud Arbery. George Floyd."
Facebook - "Logic, Empathy, Honesty Have you noticed that the radical leftists, now they have a real example of an unjustified killing of a black man by a white cop, are desperate to put it alongside past justified killings in order to conflate them?
Notice how there is no consideration to circumstance. It's simply black = good and white=bad
There is nothing in the world that will do a better job of making people racist than this sort of propaganda that forces people to choose between stupidity and reality."

Family-Owned Vietnamese Restaurant Looted Again During Wednesday Riots - "A Vietnamese restaurant, which has been owned by the same family for two generations and in business for more than 30 years was looted Wednesday night.“To be honest this hurts a lot,” Toom Nguyen stated to CBS Minnesota... Toom’s brother, Yoom came to check on the restaurant around 9 pm Wednesday night. He tried talking to the crowd of angry protestors and explained they were a family-owned restaurant and didn’t have anything inside of value. The crowd didn’t care and began smashing his storefront windows. Witnesses heard parts of the crowd chant “Black Lives Matter! Black Lives Matter!” “You know we work hard, we’re all minorities, just don’t do that stuff and thought he could have lost his life or someone could have gotten really hurt—it made me question a lot of things,” co-owner Yoom Nguyen said. The owners of Lotus restaurant said the rioting and looting after the death of George Floyd’s death caused around $30,000 worth of damage to the business. Now, they are unsure how much longer Lotus will be able to stay in downtown Minneapolis... The brothers did acknowledge and showed gratitude the police actually responded quickly this time around and blocked off the business from more damage. "What did we do as a business?” Toom asked. “We didn’t do anything to deserve this.”"

Facebook - "Yoom Nguyen is at Lotus Restaurant
Watching looters bust down our family restaurant is so heartbreaking. Senseless, they’re doing it while laughing and smirking. Not gonna lie, I damn near shot a man tonight. He threw that fucking rock at my family photo and looked right at me. I said “ you motherfucker....” tears immediately rolled down my face. I just can’t no more. I’m thankful I walked away but Fuck y’all."
It's all their fault for their "anti-blackness"!

Kenosha store owner in tears as she sees business burnt to ground - "“It’s all gone … we didn’t do nothing to nobody,” Linda Carpenter said while comforted by her son, Scott, as they surveyed their completely destroyed B & L Office Furniture, which had been in business for 40 years and was “still burning,” she said.“I don’t think it’s justifiable for anyone to destroy anybody else’s property,” she told Town Hall reporter Julio Rosas Tuesday.Her son said that although they were covered by insurance, it “isn’t there so somebody can destroy your things.”“It’s basically theft. Whoever did this stole from us,” he said... Stores were also looted — forcing a local gaming business to announce it was having to close up for good because of it."

Meme - "when I say kill ALL men I really mean ALL"
"even george floyd?"
"literally wtf is wrong with you?"

Facebook - "Escape The Echo Chamber: Rioting and looting kicked off yesterday in Minneapolis when a false story spread that police had shot a black man.It wasn’t true.The man shot himself. He was wanted for the murder of another man.We have approached lynch mob territory when it comes to police involved shootings. Violence is occurring before the facts come in."

PragerU on Twitter - "There are an estimated 375 million annual US police interactions with citizens. In 2019, 999 ended in shooting fatalities by police (0.0003%). 14 of those were unarmed blacks (0.000004%). 1 of those was not attempting to resist or evade arrest (0.0000003%) Cities burn for this?"

Phillip Nieto on Twitter - "Protesters in front of St Johns Church chanting if “we don’t get it (justice) burn it down!”"

Remember When a Democratic Polling Firm Fired the Guy Who Thought Violent Protests Could Backfire Politically? - "Back in June, the sudden firing of data scientist David Shor from the progressive consulting firm Civis Analytics raised eyebrows.Shor had publicized research from the social scientist Omar Wasow showing that violent protests tend to backfire on progressive goals—tipping the 1968 election in favor of the law-and-order candidate, Richard Nixon, for instance—whereas peaceful protests often succeed. In response, Shor was widely derided by the left. On Twitter, the progressive activist Ari Trujillo Wesler accused him of using his "anxiety and 'intellect' as a vehicle for anti-blackness." Employees and clients of Civis Analytics said Shor's statement—which, to be clear, was merely an endorsement of well-grounded social science research that says nonviolent protest is strategically superior—had threatened their very safety... As a result, Shor was terminated. The exact reason for the firing was never specified, but it spoke to concerns among many liberal thinkers—Chait, Vox's Matt Yglesias, and others—that certain sects of the left are unwilling to have difficult conversations about tactics. This is a concern shared by many libertarians, and supporters of free speech culture more broadly. On Wednesday, polling by Marquette Law School showed that support for Black Lives Matter has plummeted among white Wisconsinites. (The poll was conducted before the recent police shooting in Kenosha, and thus does not reflect attitudes toward that event.) "A substantial majority approved of protests in June, but this fell to an even split, 48-48 in August," wrote polling director Charles Franklin. Black and Hispanic attitudes toward Black Lives Matter changed little over the summer, but white approval had fallen and "become net negative."... Joe Biden's lead in Minnesota—whose governor has dispatched the National Guard to quell continuing protest-related violence in Minneapolis—continues to shrink"

'Weimar America' Is Not Just A Slogan - "I mentioned in my earlier post the incident from early summer in which an email list of Democratic party data professionals had driven David Shor, an Obama administration data whiz, out of the group because of his “racist tweet” (Shor had simply linked to an academic paper showing that violent protest helps Republicans but peaceful protest helps Democrats). I brought it up as an example of this bizarre attitude many on the left have of resenting information that doesn’t confirm their preferred narrative about the protests"

RE-EDUCATION on Twitter - "I heard a good question today... Why is murder an appropriate response to property damage But property damage isn't an appropriate response to murder?"
Leftists being obtuse as usual. They claim destroying third party property to "protest" "murder" is good, but defending your property by shooting looters and rioters (even ignoring the self defence angle) is wrong

Associated Press issues erroneous 'fact check' saying there is 'no evidence' of Antifa, BLM violence - "An estimated 32 people have died during the "mostly peaceful" protests following the death of George Floyd. Protests quickly go from marches to riots that see looting, arson, and massive damage to public property, including black-owned businesses.Meanwhile, members of Antifa group Riot Kitchen 206, "a no-charge kitchen serving protestors, activists, movements and those in need in Seattle WA" were arrested by authorities in Kenosha, Wisconsin after police suspected that they were "…preparing for criminal activity related to the civil unrest.""

The Trap The Democrats Walked Right Into - "The truth is: even a few minutes of chaos and violence can contain a universe of confusing events, motives and dynamics that are extremely hard to parse immediately. And yet it is the imperative of our current culture that we defend one side as blameless and the other as the source of all evil.In the current chaos, I’ve come to appreciate Marcus Aurelius’s maxim that “The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.”... Rioting and lawlessness is evil. And any civil authority that permits, condones or dismisses violence, looting and mayhem in the streets disqualifies itself from any legitimacy. This comes first. If one party supports everything I believe in but doesn’t believe in maintaining law and order all the time and everywhere, I’ll back a party that does. In that sense, I’m a one-issue voter, because without order, there is no room for any other issue. Disorder always and everywhere begets more disorder; the minute the authorities appear to permit such violence, it is destined to grow. And if liberals do not defend order, fascists will... This is how violence metastasizes. And as I’ve watched protests devolve over the summer into a series of riots, arson expeditions, and lawless occupations of city blocks, along with disgusting and often racist profanity, I’ve begun to feel similarly. And when I watched the Democratic Convention and heard close to nothing about ending this lawlessness, I noted the silence.I don’t think I’m the only one, as even the Democrats seem now to realize. And this massive blindspot is not hard to understand. When a political party finds itself so wedded to a new and potent ideology it cannot call out violence when it sees it, then it is walking straight into a trap. When the discourse on the left has become one in which scholars and editors and Tweeters vie with one another to up the ante on how inherently evil America has always been, redescribe it as a slaveocracy, and endorse racist books that foment the most egregious stereotypes about “whiteness”, most ordinary people, who love their country and are mostly proud of its past, will rightly balk. One of the most devastating lines in president Trump’s convention speech last night was this: “Tonight, I ask you a very simple question: How can the Democrat Party ask to lead our country when it spends so much time tearing down our country?” A cheap shot, yes. But in the current context, a political bullseye. The key theme of the RNC was reminding people of the American narrative that once was... All this reassurance played out against a backdrop of Kenosha, which was burning, and Minneapolis, where a suicide led to a bout of opportunistic looting, and Washington DC, where mobs of wokesters went through the city chanting obscenities, invading others’ spaces, demanding bystanders raise fists in solidarity, with occasional spasms of violence. These despicable fanatics, like it or not, are now in part the face of the Democrats: a snarling bunch of self-righteous, entitled bigots, chanting slogans rooted in pseudo-Marxist claptrap, erecting guillotines — guillotines! — in the streets as emblems of their agenda. They are not arguing; they are attempting to coerce. And liberals, from the Biden campaign to the New York Times, are too cowardly and intimidated to call out these bullies and expel them from the ranks. Remember the pivotal moment earlier this summer when the New York Times caved to its activist staff and fired James Bennet? It’s no accident this was over an op-ed that argued that if New York City would not stop the rioting in the streets, the feds should step in to restore order. For the far left activists who now control that paper, the imposition of order was seen not as an indispensable baseline for restoring democratic debate, but as a potential physical attack on black staffers. They saw restoring order within the prism of their own critical race ideology, which stipulates that the police are enforcers of white supremacy, and not enforcers of the rule of law in a liberal society. It was a sign that the establishment left were willing to tolerate disorder and chaos if they were directed toward the ideologically correct ends — which is how Democratic establishments in Minneapolis and Seattle and Portland responded. The NYT, CNN and the rest tried to ignore the inexcusable, and find increasingly pathetic ways to dismiss it. This week, their staggering bias was exposed as absurd... As the far left has indiscriminately smeared the police, and promised to abolish or defund them, they have helped Trump co-opt them in a terrifying dynamic. As Trump was eulogizing a murdered policeman, the leftist mob outside was in the midst of a “Fuck The Police” demonstration. If the Dems want to fight an election on that choice — and some do — they’re engaged on a suicide mission. And let’s be frank about this and call this by its name: this is very Weimar. The center has collapsed. Armed street gangs of far right and far left are at war on the streets. Tribalism is intensifying in every nook and cranny of the culture. The establishment right and mainstream left tolerate their respective extremes because they hate each other so much. The pattern is textbook, if you learn anything from history... Biden, let’s face it, is weak and a party man to his core, and has surrendered to the far left at almost every single turn — from abortion to immigration to race. You’d be a fool I think, to believe he could resist their fanaticism in office, or that if he does, he won’t be toast in a struggle to succeed him... He has indeed condemned the riots, with caveats. But at some point, the caveats have to go. And the sooner the better... [The left has] No real power to institute these changes? The 1619 Project is being taught to high school kids as objective truth. Almost every single corporation has adopted critical race theory in its employment practices, and Americans are being forced to read neo-Marxist texts as a condition of employment; all traditional academic disciplines — even math — are now in the process of being “de-colonized”; every Facebook page has a BLM poster on it, along with slogans rooted in critical theory. Every major cultural institution is being re-made along these “social justice” principles, including vast swathes of philanthropy; the best-selling books in the country argue that all inequality between groups is entirely a function of “systemic oppression”; this fall, California voters will decide whether to allow open discrimination on the basis of race... Pointing out the illiberalism on both sides is partly why I am no longer ensconced in the MSM. But I think the job of a writer is not to back one side or the other reflexively, but to analyze the dangers to liberal democracy wherever they come from."

Obama's Ferguson Sellout - "On November 24, 2014, President Obama betrayed the nation. Even as he went on national television to respond to the grand jury’s decision not to indict Officer Darren Wilson for fatally shooting 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the looting and arson that had followed Brown’s shooting in August were being reprised, destroying businesses and livelihoods over the next several hours. Obama had one job and one job only in his address that day: to defend the workings of the criminal-justice system and the rule of law. Instead, he turned his talk into a primer on police racism and criminal-justice bias. In so doing, he perverted his role as the leader of all Americans and as the country’s most visible symbol of the primacy of the law... Obama couldn’t have stopped November’s violence in Ferguson with his address to the nation. But in casting his lot with those who speciously impugn our criminal-justice system, he increased the likelihood of more such violence in the future."
Prescient.

NPR promotes insane book celebrating looting and riots - "Vicky Osterweil's new book, In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action, is a social justice justification for property damage and theft. This book promoting riots is a number one new release on Amazon, a mega-corporation that benefits every time a local shop gets torched. Osterweil's book is a celebration of looting in the name of anti-racist action directed at dismantling whiteness and property ownership. Speaking to NPR's Natalie Escobar, Osterweil made the point that looting during the course of riots is a redistribution of wealth, not theft, and that property damage, too, is simply a way to reapportion assets which she deems necessary in an unequal society... This is nonviolent, she claims, no one gets hurt, "it's not a home invasion…"The gaslighting Osterweil wants us to believe is that the "mass shoplifting" events we have seen in Seattle, Minneapolis, Philadelphia, New York, Portland, Kenosha, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, DC, and so many other American cities were not undertaken by force... she believes that the term "looting" is racially based because the word comes from a Hindi root. To those who are in the streets committing mass theft, Osterweil attributes the lofty goals of socialist property redistribution towards a more equitable society. And she has no concern, even remotely, for the people who were hurt during the riots and looting.David Dorn died at the hands of looters and his death was live streamed to Facebook. For Osterweil, Dorn’s death was merely collateral damage in service to a greater cause. His family are suffering a deep loss because criminal thieves believed that their right to property was more important than Dorn's right to life. Osterweil says looting attack on white supremacy, because that’s how the social justice left gives authority and credence to all criminal activity in service to their cause. She claims that "Looting strikes at the heart of property, of whiteness and of the police. It gets to the very root of the way those three things are interconnected."She not only justifies the riots and looting, but lauds them for giving people "an imaginative sense of freedom and pleasure." This mass destruction of "riots and looting are experienced as sort of joyous and liberatory." We have lived with a basis of morality in the US, one in which parents, black and white, teach their children not to take joy in the misfortune of others. But that is gone. While mainstream media demanded that the public differentiate between protestors and rioters, Osterweil said that this distinction is only made to make the protestors "appear respectable" to white people, to show their movement as "politically viable." It is looting, which she calls "basically nonviolent," however, that "immediately provides" the ability for "poor people who want to live a better life."In part, she claims that this is the case because "Most stores are insured; it's just hurting insurance companies on some level. It's just money. It's just property. It's not actually hurting any people."... This entire sordid story is a perfect encapsulation of what's wrong in American society today. The author is a privileged member of the chattering class. She advocates for the destruction of hard-working Americans’ businesses. Her book is then sold on Amazon, the mega corporation that benefits the most from the destruction of small, independently owned businesses. Right now, the book is a number one new release on Amazon. The people are frustrated and appalled and it has a rating of one star. But it doesn't seem to matter what regular people want. Amazon gets richer and the author gets to continue feeling superior and she smugly advocates for more destruction.Meanwhile, America burns."

Chicago looting proves Black America deserves reparations — here's why - "“When protesters attack high-end retail stores that are owned by the wealthy and service the wealthy, that is not ‘our’ city and has never been meant for us,” Black Lives Matter Chicago said in a statement after the looting. “These protests can only end when the safety and wellbeing of our communities is finally prioritized.”... Chicago’s Black neighborhoods have also been plundered for decades. An analysis of home loans from 2012 through 2018 by NPR affiliate WBEZ and City Bureau, a local journalism nonprofit, found that for every $1 banks loaned in Chicago’s white neighborhoods, they invested 12 cents in the city’s Black neighborhoods. The Chicago Reporter found that in 2005, Black homeowners earning $100,000 or more a year were more likely to get saddled with expensive mortgages than white homeowners earning less than $35,000... According to a 2017 report by nonprofit Prosperity Now, the average white-owned business in Chicago is worth 12 times more than the average Black-owned business; the median yearly income for a Black household in Chicago is less than half that of the median white household; and a third of Black households have a net worth of $0, compared to 15 percent of white households.All of this amounts to a historic pattern of perpetual, systematic looting of Chicago’s Black community. As of Aug. 13, at least 42 people had been charged with felonies in the alleged looting three weeks ago. How many bankers have been charged for stealing from Black families?... In 2020, the operating budget for the Chicago Police Department hit $1.65 billion, the largest police budget in the city’s history. Most of that money is earmarked for salaries and overtime pay for the 13,000 or so sworn Chicago police officers, giving the city more cops per capita than New York or L.A.Yet despite those record numbers, murder rate spiked again this year to levels unseen since the 1990s"
This doesn't even bother with accuations of "redlining" but moves outright to wild accusations of theft
It's amazing gaslighting to attack and undermine the police and then to use the subsequent spike in murders to claim that the police are useless
One example of liberal doublethink and twisted liberal logic is to, when confronted with explicit statements/actions by Black Lives Matter/BLM leaders, to claim that these are only a "minority", which proves the point that the movement is good (ditto for public intellectuals). But of course, just one example of a "Nazi" is enough to condemn everyone to the right of Stalin as deplorable

This Is How Biden Loses - The Atlantic - "Here is a prediction about the November election: If Donald Trump wins, in a trustworthy vote, what’s happening this week in Kenosha, Wisconsin, will be one reason. Maybe the reason... The authorities are overwhelmed and ineffectual, offering little in the way of information or protection. Within a couple of days, much of the small city is a ruined landscape... [Blake's mother] says that her son would not be happy with the damage to his community... Kenosha has placed Democrats in a trap. They’ve embraced the protests and the causes that drive them. The third night of the Democratic convention was consumed with the language and imagery of protest—as if all Americans watching were activists... voters know that the Democrat means it when he denounces police brutality, but less so when he denounces riots... Harris, a Black former prosecutor and now an advocate for police reform, seems uniquely positioned to speak to the crisis. But she has said little all week, which suggests that there might be things she doesn’t want to say... (Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut deleted a tweet saying that both the Blake shooting and the riots were wrong after commenters accused him of equating the two). So Democrats continue to mute their response to the violence and hope it will subside, even though it has persisted straight through the summer... With some exceptions, the media have been reluctant to shine a bright light on the summer’s violence—both the riots and the concurrent spike in violence. The New York Times ignored or downplayed the subject for weeks... After the 2016 election, the Times admitted that it had somehow missed the story, and it earnestly set about at self-correction. Like many other outlets, the paper sent reporters to talk to Americans who had put Trump in the White House. It was a new beat, almost a foreign bureau—heartland reporting—but that focus soon faded as the president’s daily depredations consumed the media’s attention. This election year, news organizations grown more activist might miss the story again, this time on principle—as they avoid stories that don’t support their preferred narrative. Trump supporters are hoping for it."

BLM mob shows up at suspended officers' home, tries to kill him - "If you want an example of how off the rails the war on police has gone, look no further than Wauwatosa, Wisconsin.“Last night, protesters came to my girlfriend’s house while I was there and tried to kill me. I was unarmed and tried to defend m property and the property of my girlfriend. We were both assaulted, punched and ultimately shot at several times.”... Despite the fact that Anderson’s death has already been investigated four times by different entities, that doesn’t seem to be enough for the detractors. Jonathan Cermele, who is representing Mensah said that the Milwaukee Police Department, the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the Wauwatosa Police Department had all investigated the shooting and found Mensah’s actions to be justified... "The irony in all of this is that they chanted Black Lives Matter the entire time but had zero regard for any of the black children that liver there or me, a black man.”... This is an attempt by Marxist revolutionaries to take control of the narrative and use the so-called “systemic police racism” as a means to emasculate the police.It has gotten to the point where even justified police shootings are no longer an acceptable response for police officers."

America’s ‘mostly peaceful’ riots - "In a remarkable act of woke doublethink, a CNN report has described Black Lives Matter protests in Wisconsin as ‘fiery, but mostly peaceful’, while burnt-out cars and a building in flames were visible in the background. This is not the first time mainstream media outlets have sought to downplay the violence and rioting that has often followed or gone hand in hand with BLM protests. Over the past few months, the US has experienced its worst riots in decades, but this has been largely glossed over. In May, an MSNBC reporter commented on what was apparently ‘mostly a protest’ and ‘not generally speaking unruly’, while standing in front of a burning building.In June, in the UK, the BBC ran an astonishing headline: ‘27 police officers injured during largely peaceful anti-racism protests in London.’These absurd and transparent attempts to downplay the chaos the BLM movement has unleashed show just how devoted to woke identity politics much of the media have become. That journalists are prepared to openly deny obvious truths in this way is a worrying indication of the collapse of impartial reporting. If the violence was committed by right-wing thugs, would they report it in the same way? Thankfully, viewers can see with their own eyes what is really going on"
Charlottesville was a "mostly peaceful" protest. But if anyone dares call it that, liberals will explode

Gavin Newsom Assures Californians Wildfires Are 'Mostly Peaceful' | The Babylon Bee - "Newsom also pointed out that fires were here before humans, and so in a way, we stole the land from fires, and the indigenous infernos are just taking the reparations they are due. "If a peaceful fire approaches your home, do not fight back. That would be racist. Allow it to consume your home -- peacefully, of course -- if you are a true ally of indigenous blazes everywhere.""Just remember -- this is fine.""

Facebook - "Your Privilege Is Showing: “The history of Nazis holding rallies in left-wing areas of Weimar Germany, instigating street fights, and then telling the press that only they could save Germany from the "violent communists" seems like an important thing for people to be studying right now.”"
Amazing gaslighting. Strange how there have been riots for months in multiple cities in multiple states before that one "rally"...

FactCheck: did Israeli secret service teach Floyd police to kneel on neck? - "Amnesty International told the New Statesman: “the precise nature of the training offered to US police forces by Israeli officials is not something we’ve documented”.They added: “Allegations that US police were taught tactics of ‘neck kneeling’ by Israeli secret services is not something we’ve ever reported”... Micky Rosenfield, the national spokesman for Israeli police, tweeted on 9 June: “There is no procedure that allows an officer of the Israel police dept to carry out an arrest by placing a knee on the neck of a suspect.”... The conference hosted by the Israeli consulate for US police officers took place in July 2012. We’ve seen evidence that “neck restraints” involving an officer’s leg were permitted by Minneapolis Police in 2010, and perhaps even as early as 2002... In the Independent interview, Ms Peake says the training was conducted by “Israeli secret services”.According to Minnesota Public Radio, the 2012 conference was led by “top-notch professionals from the Israeli police”, including a “police chief” and a “bomb tech specialist”. There is no mention of “secret services” in their report... Israeli forces are not unique in offering training sessions to American officers.In 2015, a delegation of US law enforcement officials travelled to Scotland for classes on nonviolent policing... other countries, including the UK and Germany, have also run training and exchange schemes with American officers."
Jews are "white" anyway, so anti-white racism becomes anti-Semitism easily

Media Shamelessly Advances 'Trump's America' Lie From Biden Campaign - "For months, the national media has largely ignored the sustained violent activism plaguing Democrat-run cities. When they do cover these events, it's portrayed the same way Democratic lawmakers—and the Biden campaign—have chosen to describe them: as "peaceful protests."But after four effective days of coverage from the Republican National Convention (RNC), shining a spotlight on what's actually happening, suddenly Democrats are striking a different tone.Now, the Biden-Harris ticket, along with their surrogates, claim the violence in Portland, Kenosha, Seattle, Chicago and the nation's capital are President Donald Trump's fault. This is happening, they argue, in "Trump's America."... Literally all of the sustained rioting and other violence has occured in Democrat-run cities. The federal government does not have jurisdiction to always send in the feds to wander rioting streets and quell the civil unrest. If Trump did always have such authority and if he acted upon it, he'd be called a fascist. Indeed, Democrats already call him just that. Trump has offered help many times to cities and states that are dealing with these issues.In Portland, feckless Mayor Ted Wheeler bragged about smugly rejecting Trump's assistance in an August 28 letter that he posted to Twitter. He told the president, "We don't need your politics of division and demagoguery." That night, activists gained entry into Wheeler's condo, where they occupied the lobby. The next night, after trying to forcibly stop Trump supporters from protesting, a man in a conservative Patriot Front hat was shot to death.This is Trump's fault?After the president's RNC speech, mobs of far-left activists harassed and assaulted cops and conservatives leaving the White House. Other mobs spent Saturday night harassing D.C. diners who are supporting restaurants struggling to stay open amidst a pandemic... His offers of help have been met with insidious claims that Trump is really just practicing a dry-run for martial law, in the event he were to lose the election. And the media has been there to dutifully forward that dangerous claim. To be fair to national outlets, not everyone got the memo that Biden-Harris is shifting from "peaceful protests" to "Trump's America." Naturally, there will be some lag and confusion... When Trump has gotten involved, there have been results. That is Trump's America. After a deadly night in Kenosha, Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers finally accepted Trump's offer of help. The result? Peaceful protests and a mayor who credited federal law enforcement for its help. But it's not just about federal law enforcement. It's about prosecutions.Many areas, including Portland and Seattle, have local prosecutors who seldom prosecute crimes associated with anarchist criminal activism. Under the Department of Justice (DOJ), U.S. attorneys have stepped up. In Seattle alone, there have been five recent federal charges (two in the last week) brought against criminal rioters in a county and city that almost never prosecutes activist crimes... Voters are smart enough to realize that Trump and Republicans were virtually the only ones decrying the rioting, looting, property destruction and murder. Biden-Harris and almost every Democratic politician completely ignored it. The few who didn't—like Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA)—encouraged more unrest. As for the media? It pretended it wasn't happening even as the American people saw endless footage on social media"

Facebook - "Steve Horwitz: Destroying a small business is akin to destroying an artist's studio, a scholar's library, or a chef's kitchen. It is not just a matter of the loss of material goods, and insurance isn't the point. It's a loss of the space in which they make meaning in their lives and for others, and in which their life projects are pursued. It is primarily the critics, and not the defenders, of markets who can only see economic activity in material terms, and that is one of their great failings." When you consider that the Communists want private enterprise destroyed so the government can take over everything, you understand why they cheer the destruction of small buinesses

Jason Howerton on Twitter - "The left has created a monster that they have lost complete control of... I never thought I'd see people chanting "death to America" in the streets of America."
Of course, we are still told that liberals don't hate their countries

Police helicopter hit with LASERS by rioters is forced to make emergency landing with crew member hospitalized - "The helicopter had been circling in Washington D.C. on Saturday evening when the chopper was hit by a laser, leading one of the crew to be admitted to hospital due to vision loss in one eye. Washington DC was just one city which saw unrest on Saturday.A video released yesterday showed a demonstrator encouraging crowds to "burn down the White House"... He said he wants to "take the fight" to senators and members of Congress – and if they "don't hear us," they will "burn them the f**k down."The organizer said he "f**ks cops up" in different cities where demonstrations are held."

Facebook - "Sargon of Akkad:
"Trump's efforts to label what is happening in major cities as "riots" speaks at least somewhat to his desperation, politically speaking, at the moment"
"There is literally a burning building in your post CNN.""

Police investigate White Lives Matter banner flown over Burnley game as thug ‘behind idiotic stunt’ is unmasked - "POLICE today announced they would investigate after a  "White Lives Matter" banner was flown over their clash against Manchester City - as a thug claiming to be behind the stunt was today unmasked... Lancashire Police Chief Supt Russ Procter confirmed they were investigating if a criminal offence had taken place.He said: "We recognise that this banner will have caused offence to many people in Lancashire and beyond"... He could face a racially-aggravated public order offence related to the message. Such offence carries a maximum of two years in prison."
Equality is discrimination

Burnley fan Jake Hepple SACKED by engineering firm over ‘White Lives Matter’ banner flown over Etihad - "Jake Hepple, 24, has had his employment at engineering firm Paradigm Precision terminated after police said "no criminal offences" were committed by his stunt... "The police told me that I haven't committed any crime and haven't done anything wrong."In fact, they asked me if I was OK and wanted any protection, just in case people try to target me.""

Bids to demolish riot-damaged buildings stun property owners - "Like dozens of other investors whose properties were severely damaged in the May riots, the Kim family was stunned to discover that the money it would collect from its insurance company for demolition won’t come close to the actual costs of doing the job. Most policies limit reimbursement to $25,000 to $50,000, but contractors have been submitting bids of $200,000 to $300,000. In many cases, the price of the work is not much lower than the actual value of the property, records show... Contractors acknowledge that prices for riot-related work are far higher than usual, but they said that is because government regulations require them to treat all debris from a burned-out building as hazardous. Industry veteran Don Rachel said those rules can double demolition costs... Demolition costs are so high that many rebuilding projects remain stuck in neutral, leaving large sections of Minneapolis and St. Paul with scorched buildings and piles of rubble that will linger for months.“It’s been a big barrier to getting the street cleaned up,” said Allison Sharkey, executive director of the Lake Street Council. “I am becoming really concerned that people who want to reinvest won’t be able to.”... Islam decided to move forward on a $125,000 bid; insurance will cover just $50,000 of those costs.“Our neighborhood looks like a war zone,” Islam said. “As a property owner, it is my moral responsibility to somehow get it done.”The move will leave him with almost no money for rebuilding. Most of the money he got from his policy went to pay off his mortgage.Other immigrant property owners are facing the same situation"
Damn racism preventing rebuilding! Insurance covers everything!

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