Archive for June, 2021
30th June 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
30th June 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
30th June 2021
Biden wants to pay farmers to grow carbon-capturing crops. It’s complicated. (Politico) ‘It’s complicated’ is what people say when they’re trying to pull a fast one.
DHS Mayorkas Invites Deported Migrants Back to US
Inflation’s The Nail In the Coffin Of Biden’s Spending Plans Reality is what sticks around even after you quite believing in it.
State Department Says Passports Can Include Any Gender Including ‘alien abductee’?
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
30th June 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
30th June 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
30th June 2021
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If, of course, that’s what you want to do.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on “Game Changer” Drug for Treating Obesity Cuts Body Weight by 20%
30th June 2021
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One of the things I noticed throughout the past year has been that a lot of my friends who had grown up in authoritarian or poor countries had a much easier time adjusting to our new pandemic reality. My childhood was intermittently full of shortages of various things. We developed a corresponding reflex for stocking up on things when they were available, anticipating what might be gone soon. That was quite useful for the pandemic. So was trying to read between the lines of official statements—what was said and what was not, who was sitting with whom on the TV, and evaluating what the rumor networks brought in. It turns out those are really useful skills when authorities are lying at all levels.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Critical Thinking isn’t Just a Process
30th June 2021
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Ten years or so ago, when I was covering the cultural enrichment news from Sweden, I learned about a strange practice that Swedish TV news engaged in to protect the privacy of suspects in incidents of violent crime: not only did they pixelate out the faces of the alleged perps, but they lightened the skin tone, to make it seem like the thugs were ordinary Swedes. And this was done when police were actually seeking help from witnesses in finding the suspects. It made no sense whatsoever; it was completely insane. But that’s Sweden for you.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on From Pinkwashing to Blackout
30th June 2021
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In 2015, under a Communist party mayor, the colors of the rainbow illuminated Madrid’s city hall in a tribute to the LGBTQ community. In 2021, under a conservative mayor, the same rainbow shone over city hall. ‘The left proposes new ideas, the center adopts them, and the so-called right administers them,’ tweeted VOX with pictures of the two scenes. It’s hard to think of a better description of what the Republican party does in the United States.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Infrastructure Trojan Horse
30th June 2021
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This notion that someone could not show up to their job and work for a separate, self-interested entity while collecting a paycheck for the work they did not do is an anathema to most Americans. For public-sector employees, it’s simply “official time.”
Originally created within the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, “official time” is a process in which public-sector employees are “released” from their official duties—the equivalent of receiving paid leave—so that they can work for their unions. The activities they do include negotiating collective bargaining agreements; filing and litigating superfluous grievance complaints; participating in labor-management discussions; and lobbying Congress.
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on A Commonsense Bill That Will Ensure IRS Agents Do Their Jobs
30th June 2021
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I think it is Glenn Reynolds who came up with the observation that the demand for racism exceeds the supply, which explains the proliferation of Jussie Smollett-style racism hoaxes.
And Hollywood is happy to do its part to reinforce this narrative.
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on How Low Can Hollywood Sink?
30th June 2021
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School is, well, mostly bad. It teaches things slowly, it mostly trains obedience, and it’s a social horror show. When we say social dynamics are like high school, we never mean anything good, and there are dozens of movies about how awfully students treat each other.
And most of what is taught in school and university is quickly forgotten. I used to amuse myself by asking recent university grads what they had learned, most of them could barely remember anything. Since I was widely read, often I knew enough to ask basic questions about their discipline, and they wouldn’t know the answers.
This is primarily a result of the defective German/American university system, in which students go through courses the way a gamer goes through levels – once you level up, you can forget where you’ve been (unless you’re heading to grad school, in which case you might need to remember some of it).
The British system, in which you spend three years studying a subject under the guidance of an individual tutor and your degree depends on a single comprehensive examination at the end, is much superior–if knowledge is what you’re after, rather than just a credential that will get you a good job.
Parents want their children to go back to school because it’s a babysitting service, and since we’re not paying parents to stay home, they need someone to take care of their kids. And yes, some may be falling behind or finding distance learning hard, but a decent system could make that up well enough.
But the idea that the kids themselves miss school, except in the sense that they can’t see their friends (which is pandemic related, and if it’s not safe to see them outside of school it isn’t safe to see them in school) is laughable.
Amen to that. Public schools are explicitly babysitting services that have long since given up the pretense of actually educating their pupils. (Look up ‘social promotion’.)
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Do Adults Really Not Remember School Sucked?
30th June 2021
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Hint: Eat protein first.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Food Order Has Significant Impact on Glucose and Insulin Levels
30th June 2021
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Under other circumstances I wouldn’t mind living in the American empire here in Britain. The tithes are reasonable and the legal structures hardly onerous. If Washington were content to simply dispatch its governors, collect its money and crush the occasional revolt in the Celtic provinces, I don’t think I’d have any complaints to make. The missionaries, though, I could do without.
It says something about the pace of change that I barely raised an eyebrow at Sadiq Khan’s Pride tweet choosing to reference the Stonewall riots — a series of demonstrations in New York — rather than select an episode from British history. How assimilated by another country are you when its history is better known to you than your own?
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on The UN’s American Obsession
30th June 2021
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Milloy published a letter to EPA Administrator Michael Regan headlined “Milloy to EPA Administrator: Pick a new [Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (CASAC)] or see you in court.” CASAC is supposed to provide “independent advice to the EPA Administrator on the technical bases for EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards.”
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on JunkScience.com Founder Steve Milloy Promises to Sue Biden EPA
30th June 2021
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Amazon is pushing back against the Biden Administration’s effort to impose new anti-trust strictures on Big Tech by filing a complaint with the FTC asking that Lina Khan, recently confirmed as head of the commission, recuse herself from all dealings involving Amazon.
In its request, filed with the agency on Wednesday, the company argued that Khan should be barred from handling enforcement decisions involving Amazon because Khan “on numerous occasions argued that Amazon is guilty of antitrust violations and should be broken up.” Amazon added that “these statements convey to any reasonable observer the clear impression that she has already made up her mind about many material facts relevant to Amazon’s antitrust culpability as well as about the ultimate issue of culpability itself.”
Bias? What bias?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Amazon Seeks Recusal of FTC Head Lina Khan as Antitrust Probe Ramps Up
30th June 2021
Severian turns it up to 11.
As you can probably tell from the title (“stoyak” means “boner” in Russian), those of us who actually kinda enjoyed the Cold War are getting that lovin’ feelin’ all over again these days. Everyone on this side of the aisle has compared CNN, MSDNC, Fox News, et al to Pravda, but that’s actually a real slander on the Bolshies’ professionalism. Even at its worst, Pravda wouldn’t put out the kind of ham-handed shit our “news” organizations do. Not even a drunken junior sub-editor in the ass end of Siberia would make up stuff that bad. It’s the kind of thing a sixth grader would crank out the day it’s due on the ride to school. On the short bus.
Which is why it doesn’t matter what the alleged shooter in the alleged false flag allegedly did. Is it true? Did it happen the way they say it did? Did it even happen at all? None of it matters. Yeah, I’m sure there are some idiots out there who believe it actually happened the way the papers say it did, but — crucially — they “believe” it because they want it to be true. NOT because they trust “the news,” because they ostentatiously don’t trust the news — the same people who are certain that this kid snapped because of White Privilege are the ones who are certain that the Mainstream Media was in the tank for Donald Trump. They’re sure they are a persecuted minority, under siege from evil badwhite gremlins and their chieftain, the Bad Orange Man, so all this stuff is of a piece.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Stoyak: Racist Rampage Edition
30th June 2021
ZMan pulls back the curtain.
The world in which we live today is one where everyone is spying on everyone, except the rulers, all the time. The local business installs cameras outside the warehouse to prevent vandals from defacing the walls with graffiti. Those cameras record everything and store it on the cloud. The owner is told the video stays on the cloud for seven days, but in reality, it is there forever. It just gets moved to a different database, accessible by the security state whenever they think to use it.
All around us, the vast network of recording devises uploads data to various databases that are harvested by the secret police and stored in their systems. Americans don’t think we have secret police, but Americans also think their votes count. The main feature of liberal democracy is it keeps the people living in a fog of self-delusion about who is really in charge of society. That is what we see with the secret police. They have no name and no location, so they do not exist for most people.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on The Secret Police
30th June 2021
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It may be the most astonishing story of the year that no one is paying much attention to. As the Wall Street Journal recently reported on their front page, “Chinese officials are drawing up plans to further loosen birth restrictions and transition toward policies that explicitly encourage childbirth,” (emphasis added). According to Chinese insiders, China, the most populous nation on the planet, is replacing its brutish childbirth restrictions with a program allowing, and even rewarding, couples for having kids. Beijing has announced that its demographic problem today is too few young people, not too many.
The New York Times put the point even more emphatically in its coverage of this amazing twist of fate, by acknowledging in a headline that the dreaded “population bomb” of the 1960s and ’70s has turned into a global “population bust.”
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on The Population Bomb Doomsday Scam
30th June 2021
Posted in Think about it. | 1 Comment »
30th June 2021
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Don’t ever say we never have useful stuff here.
REMINDER: WD-40 IS NOT A LUBRICANT.
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on 20 Ingenious Uses for WD-40
30th June 2021
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A New York City Democrat is calling out “voter irregularities” in the controversial mayoral primary run through ranked-choice voting.
“The vote total just released by the Board of Elections is 100,000-plus more than the total announced on election night, raising serious questions,” NYC mayoral Democrat primary leader Eric Adams’s campaign wrote in a statement Tuesday. “We have asked the Board of Elections to explain such a massive increase and other irregularities before we comment on the Ranked Choice Voting projection.
UPDATE: NYC Board of Elections Pulls Back Preliminary Mayor’s Race Results
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on NYC Dem Mayoral Primary Leader Adams Cries ‘Voter Irregularities’
30th June 2021
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When it rains, it pours. And when it comes to ratings at the Jeffrey Zucker-led clown show known as CNN, it’s a monsoon. The second quarter’s ratings came out on Tuesday and the immature, noxious, and repugnant network suffered its worst month in total viewers and the 25-54 demo since June 2019. And that’s not to mention that primetime ratings have tumbled 71 percent in total viewers and 78 percent in the demo since January.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on CNN Continues to Circle the Drain, Hemorrhaging Viewers in Ugly 2nd Quarter
29th June 2021
The Other McCain does some sociology.
The liberal considers himself to be inherently superior to others, and thus endowed with greater knowledge and moral virtue about everything, including race relations. The fact that you disagree with the liberal is, to him, proof of your inferiority.
The subject of your disagreement is irrelevant, and it doesn’t matter why you’re disagreeing with the liberal, or what facts or logic you might be able to muster in defense of your position. what you have done, by your disagreement, is to deny the liberal’s superiority. His entire identity — his sense of his own worthiness — is invested in the belief that his political opinion proves him to be a better person than you.
Liberal superiority is tautological in this way, a circular argument in which the conclusion is a restatement of the first premise.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on ‘White Supremacy’ Ju-Jitsu
29th June 2021
Biden Assures Israeli President He Won’t Tolerate A Nuclear-Armed Iran And if you believe that one, he’ll tell you another one.
As Biden bumbles, the question is: Who’s really running the country?
WH Press Secretary Blames Republicans For Defunding Police Lies, damned lies, and Democrat politicians.
Panama Warns US: Terrorists Blending With Migrants
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
29th June 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture
29th June 2021
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
29th June 2021
The Delta variant will cause ‘very dense outbreaks’ in these five states, expert says
Israel Sees Explosion Of Cases In Vaccinated Patients Caused By “Delta” Variant Good to know that the vaccine is so very effective.
New Study Finds COVID-19 ‘Very Well Adapted’ To Specifically Infect Humans
The Pandemic Is Over According To 57% Of Republicans… And 4% Of Democrats
The Latest Pandemic: Coronophobia
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Pandemic Panic – It’s Titanic
29th June 2021
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Today in Global Warming Hysteria
29th June 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
29th June 2021
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Ordinary Americans are fortunate to have a champion like Rubin, who has consistently exerted herself as a unique voice in a profession that too often encourages banality, unleashing her extraordinary insights in “reported opinion” columns such as: “Republicans’ big lie about the filibuster,” “Republicans’ blunder on voting rights,” “Why so many Republicans talk about nonsense,” and “Republicans might just be clueless.”
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on 6 Times Jennifer Rubin Had Her Finger on the Pulse of ‘Ordinary’ America
29th June 2021
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I have taken up the issue of Joe Biden’s declining mental faculties by reference to the tale of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Everyone can see that the guy is naked. In his New York Post column this morning, Kyle Smith takes up the issue in a way that recalls the old Buddy Miles number “Them Changes” (“My mind is going through them changes…”).
Referring to Biden’s bizarre performance at last week, Smith observes that Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin must be giggling uncontrollably at their good fortune: “Suddenly the world’s greatest power is in the hands of a slightly dazed-looking fellow who seems like he is always just waking up from heavy anesthesia.”
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Them Changes
29th June 2021
Vox finds an acorn … almost.
There’s no one simple reason for this. Experts are clamoring for the government to collect more data, but the complexity of the problem lends itself to complex solutions.
So they know acorns exist, they just can’t be bothered to do the work to find some.
In an interview in early June, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg acknowledged the problem, but he offered no solutions except the need to study it further.
Hey, he didn’t join the cabinet to do any actual work, after all.
Posted in Axis of Drivel -- Adventures in Narrative Media | Comments Off on Why Does It Cost So Much to Build Things in America?
29th June 2021
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The leftist bull is finally spilling over into the real world and normal Americans are not okay with it. One woman in a viral Twitter video, found herself fighting for her basic rights while at a spa trying to relax. The unnamed woman was at Wi Spa in Los Angeles, California, when a naked biological male entered the women’s section. She then recorded her reaction and conversation with the employees on her phone.
Posted in You can't make this stuff up. | Comments Off on Woke Spa Gets Owned For Allowing Naked Man in Women’s Section
29th June 2021
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The Turkish Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief (IHH) has established a commendable record of providing aid in Muslim-majority countries. Most notably, it provides support to orphaned children – both Muslim and non-Muslim – and provided aid to war-torn Darfur.
But IHH also has a darker side, much of which has come to light during the ongoing trial of terrorists involved in the 2015 bombing of a peace rally in Ankara. Allegations linking IHH to the Islamic State are only the latest in a long history of accusations detailing the charity’s links to extremist and terrorist groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and al-Qaida. Moreover, IHH has long engaged in and encouraged anti-Western (especially anti-American) activities and propaganda, particularly during the Iraq war. And most famously, the organization played a central role in coordinating the 2010 flotilla to Gaza, which was purportedly sent to provide humanitarian and medical aid to Palestinians, but which, in fact, had a quite different purpose: to launch an attack on Israeli commandos. According to the International Institute for Counterterrorism, videos of activists aboard the Mavi Marmara, reveal “statements from IHH members calling for jihad, martyrdom, and violence.”
My, what a surprise. Aren’t you surprised? I’m sure surprised.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on Ex ISIS Brides Further Link IHH Aid Organization to Terrorists
29th June 2021
ZMan deconstructs the culture.
It is a popular joke among the worst people that the best people need to find a minority to endorse their preferences before they can express them. In this context, the “best people” are the poohbahs of Conservative Inc. No matter how obvious or justified their position, so-called conservatives need to prove they are the best people by searching high and low for a “person of color” who agrees with them. Candace Owens has gotten rich by blessing the positions of conservatives.
It is the slave mentality, of course. The master is always projecting pride and power, as those are the things he values. He is the master, the man in charge, so he places the most value on the things that are useful to him as the master. The slave, on the other hand, is obsequious and submissive. The slave tries to express his will through quiet subversion, always conscious of the master. In American politics, conservatives are the slave, always displaying their submissiveness.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Words Are Keys
29th June 2021
Steve Sailer.
While this may sound like a new low in public disorder in the northern Bay Area, robbing news crews while they are on the air has been a Thing for at least a decade.
Since news crews are almost always white and robbers are almost always black, this ought to surprise nobody.
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Robbing News Crews with a Six-Gun
29th June 2021
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Thought for the Day
29th June 2021
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It all started when outdoor dining resumed after initial waves of mandated closures last spring. Wary of wayward coronaviruses lingering on physical menus, restaurants taped QR codes to their tables and outsourced the act of menu delivery to the diner and her smartphone. This might have made sense when it still seemed possible that the coronavirus was largely spreading through surface transmission. But we now know that the risk of infection via a contaminated surface is low. In tons of communities across the U.S., vaccination rates are high and COVID-19 case rates are low. People are attending indoor concerts, grinding at dance clubs, and heading back to the office. And yet, even as we eat and slobber and sneeze in restaurants seated at full capacity, in many of those establishments, we’re still obliged to use our own smartphones to figure out what we want to eat. Why? Why should we be scared to go back to touching a communal piece of paper when we’re already breathing one another’s theoretically more dangerous air?
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Bring Back Menus!
29th June 2021
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As college students, John and I both subscribed to the philosophical doctrine of determinism. We differed, though, on what implications, if any, the doctrine had for the issue of income distribution.
I believed that because the traits that result in wealth are determined by causes beyond our control — the genetics lottery, for example — wealth is undeserved. Therefore, inequality is unjust and should be abolished
John understood that my conclusion didn’t follow from our premise. Even if high incomes are undeserved in some philosophical sense, there might be, and indeed are, utilitarian-type reasons to eschew radical income redistribution policies and accept income inequality. Rewarding excellence with income produces benefits for society at large, while government-imposed income leveling is a recipe for mediocrity and possibly repression.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on A Sophomoric Argument Resurfaces
29th June 2021
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Put plainly, an increasing cohort of successful women are chasing a shrinking number of high-value, commitment-averse men.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Mate Selection for Modernity
29th June 2021
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One of the most elementary lessons of economics is that incentives matter. You’d hardly think this needs demonstrating, but apparently even the Wall Street Journal‘s news pages struggle with basic economics. Today the Journal reports that—lo and behold!—job growth is rising faster in states that have ended lavish unemployment bonus payments. I love the “gee whiz” language of this story.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Econ 101 Vindicated Again
29th June 2021
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Sätra is a culturally enriched suburb south of Stockholm. In the following video you’ll see a mob hit take place on the outdoor terrace of a café in Sätra. But it wasn’t the Sicilian or Irish mafia that whacked the vic — it was a “criminal gang”. In Sweden that’s a euphemism for violent, feral immigrants, usually from Somalia or Afghanistan, or occasionally Kosovo.
Posted in Living with Islam. | Comments Off on A Culture-Enriching Mob Hit in Sätra
29th June 2021
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Of course. It’s like living in California without having to pay California taxes or put up with California bullshit.
Posted in Think about it. | Comments Off on Californians Are Fueling Austin’s Housing Frenzy: ‘We’ve Never Seen Migration Like This’
29th June 2021
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he face of nuclear energy is changing, and one of the companies working to redefine what nuclear energy looks like is Oklo. The 22-person Silicon Valley start-up has a plan to build mini-nuclear reactors, powered by the waste of conventional nuclear reactors and housed in aesthetically pleasing A-frame structures.
“Microreactors are an exciting innovation that completely flips the technology story for nuclear energy,” Alex Gilbert, a project manager for nuclear power think tank the Nuclear Innovation Alliance, told CNBC.
But, of course, not everyone is happy about that: Nuclear energy isn’t a safe bet in a warming world – here’s why
Posted in News You Can Use. | Comments Off on Oklo Has a Plan to Make Tiny Nuclear Reactors That Run Off Nuclear Waste
29th June 2021
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On Monday’s “Tucker Carlson Today,” former Smith College employee Jodi Shaw discussed the dangerous rise of wokeness and how the left’s intent to divide people makes it “impossible to have a healthy community” in many places.
In 2018, student Oumou Kanoute, who is Black, was approached by a janitor and a police officer at the Northampton, Mass., women’s liberal-arts college, while eating in a closed dorm lounge, and was asked what she was doing there.
At the time, the local ACLU characterized the encounter as Kanoute being questioned for the crime of “eating while Black.” Kanoute accused the pair of campus employees of racially profiling her and posted pictures on social media accusing them of being racist. The janitor she named wasn’t working that day.
Smith College, however, went on to force the pair to undergo anti-bias training and apologize to Kanoute. Further investigation found them to be wrongly accused and that Kanoute was indeed dining in a closed area.
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Jodi Shaw Speaks Out on Smith College Resignation After White Staff Dubbed Bigots in ‘Eating While Black’ Case
28th June 2021
Posted in Whose turn is it to be the victim? | Comments Off on Today in Black Privilege
28th June 2021
Posted in Your tax dollars at work - and play. | Comments Off on Today in the Biden-Harris Slow-Motion Train Wreck
28th June 2021
Rapinoe No Victim: US Women’s Soccer Team Earned More Than Men’s Team
China’s Secrecy Affects US
Just Do It For China! Nike Declares Its Brand ‘Of And For China’
Hong Kong Police Arrest Former Apple Daily Journalist at Airport
Chicago Data Appears to Contradict Lightfoot’s Claim of Decline in Crime BRAAAAAAAINS!
Oakland ‘Defunds’ $17 Million From Police Budget Prediction: Crime will increase. Preduction: That increase will be predominantly black people. Prediction: Politicians will blame lack of gun control laws.
Facebook Soars Past $1 Trillion Market Cap After District Judge Dismisses FTC’s Anti-Trust Case
Experts SLAM Facebook for Allowing China’s Uyghur Genocide Propaganda
JUSTICE: Facebook Can Be Held Liable for Human Trafficking Cases, Court Rules
Over 500 Election Fraud Cases Are Pending In Texas Courts: Attorney General
CUNY Professor Resigns From Teachers’ Union That Condemned Israel
Posted in Dystopia Watch | Comments Off on Today in Progressive Totalitarianism
28th June 2021
Posted in The Hunt for Heretics and Sinners | Comments Off on Today in Witch-Hunt Culture