NYTimes | Anna Ruch had
never met Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo before encountering him at a crowded New
York City wedding reception in September 2019. Her first impression was
positive enough.
The governor was
working the room after toasting the newlyweds, and when he came upon Ms.
Ruch, now 33, she thanked him for his kind words about her friends. But
what happened next instantly unsettled her: Mr. Cuomo put his hand on
Ms. Ruch’s bare lower back, she said in an interview on Monday.
When
she removed his hand with her own, Ms. Ruch recalled, the governor
remarked that she seemed “aggressive” and placed his hands on her
cheeks. He asked if he could kiss her, loudly enough for a friend
standing nearby to hear. Ms. Ruch was bewildered by the entreaty, she
said, and pulled away as the governor drew closer.
“I
was so confused and shocked and embarrassed,” said Ms. Ruch, whose
recollection was corroborated by the friend, contemporaneous text
messages and photographs from the event. “I turned my head away and
didn’t have words in that moment.”
Ms. Ruch’s account comes after two former aides accused Mr. Cuomo of sexual harassment in the workplace, plunging his third term into turmoil as the governor’s defenders and Mr. Cuomo himself strain to explain his behavior.
A spokesman for the governor did not directly address Ms. Ruch’s account, referring to a general statement that Mr. Cuomo released on Sunday night in which he acknowledged that some things he had said “have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation.”
“To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that,” the statement said.
Ms. Ruch’s example is distinct from those of the former aides: A former member of the Obama administration and the 2020 Biden campaign, Ms. Ruch has never been employed by the governor or the state. But her experience reinforces the escalating concerns and accusations about Mr. Cuomo’s personal conduct — a pattern of words and actions that have, at minimum, made three women who are decades his junior feel deeply uncomfortable, in their collective telling.
washingtonexaminer | Former CIA Director John Brennan said he is "increasingly embarrassed to be a white male" while discussing supporters of former President Donald Trump.
He made the comment during an MSNBC panel on Monday that set its focus on whether Republicans are lying
about the circumstances surrounding the U.S. Capitol siege, when
rioters disrupted lawmakers certifying President Biden's 2020 electoral
victory.
Former Sen. Claire McCaskill,
a Democrat from Missouri, remarked how she saw "whiny white men calling
themselves victims ... over the weekend at CPAC," which she attributed
to how they believe they have "a huge grievance from a position of
significant privilege," before asserting that the Republican Party has
embraced lies about who the rioters were and in claiming House Speaker
Nancy Pelosi denied a request for National Guard support.
Host Nicolle Wallace,
who was a White House communications director under President George W.
Bush, then teed up Brennan by casting doubt on the "notion" that
Republicans care about the lives and safety of law enforcement.
"Well, I must say, to Claire's point, I’m increasingly embarrassed to
be a white male these days," Brennan began, prompting a laugh from
Wallace, who was visible on the split screen, "with what I see other
white males saying."
Noting "very few exceptions" in the GOP, naming Sen. Mitt Romney and Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Brennan said that "there are so few Republicans in Congress who value truth, honesty, and integrity."
americanthinker |The
headlines were about the fact that, when Megyn Kelly appeared on Bill
Maher’s HBO show on Friday, she complained about the way her children’s
pricey private schools in New York were indoctrinating them with
pro-transgender values and anti-white animus. Bill Maher to his credit,
agreed with Kelly that matters are getting seriously out of hand, at
least when it comes to the anti-white hatred that’s becoming the norm in
education. Maher’s always been a bit of maverick, though. The real
surprise was the enthusiasm his audience showed for that sentiment.
For
conservatives, nothing that Kelly said about her children’s experiences
in New York’s toniest private elementary schools came as a surprise.
Kelly said that, while she and her husband identify as “center-right,”
she was okay with the fact that the schools were on the left side of the
political aisle. That changed, though, when “they went hard left, and
then they started to take a really hard turn toward social justice
stuff.”
One
of the hot-button issues was the schools’ efforts to normalize
transgenderism, a form of body dysphoria that’s recognized as a mental
illness when the subject is anorexia, not sex. Kelly told Maher that,
when one of her sons was in third grade – that is, 8 years old, the
school “unleashed a three-week experimental trans-education program.”
You
talked about this letter the school put out. … Can I read some of the
things that are from this letter, lest people think I’m losing my mind?
“There’s
a killer cop sitting in every school where white children learn. White
children are left unchecked and unbothered in their homes,” one sentence
starts. Well, how old do you have to be before you can just be
unchecked and unbothered. You know, what age to you get bothered?
“I’m
tired of white people reveling in their state-sanctioned depravities,
snuffing out black lives with no consequences.” You know, “go reform
white kids.”
You
know, it bothers me so much that I have to be on this side [Kelly’s
side] of this issue. Because I’ve always been a civil rights advocate.
You know, don’t make me Tucker Carlson. You’re the f***ing nuts. This is
insane.
“As
black bodies drop like flies around us by violent white hands.” There
is racist problems in this country. But this is hyperbole, and this is
making people crazy.
It
was with those words that the amazing thing happened: Maher’s audience
applauded. Over the years, Maher’s audiences have always been trained
seals, reliably clapping at every hard left, anti-George Bush,
anti-Trump, pro-Obama statement the host utters. But this time, he said
that the BLM rap pushing Critical Race Theory (“CRT”) on American
society is dangerous insanity – and the audience clapped.
According to the social justice creed, being “woke” is
the political awakening that stems from the emergence of consciousness
and conscientiousness regarding social and political injustice. Wokeness
is the indelible inscription of the awareness of social injustice on
the conscious mind, eliciting the sting of conscience, which compels the
newly woke to change their beliefs and behaviors.4
This is as close to a definition of wokeness as I can manage,
gleaning it as I have from the assertions of those who embrace it. Of
course, the etymology of the word “woke,” and how it became an adjective
describing those who are thus awakened into consciousness of social and
political injustice, is another matter. I discuss the etymology in Google Archipelago:
“Woke” began in English as a past tense and past
participle of “wake.” It suggested “having become awake.” But, by the
1960s, woke began to function as an adjective as well, gaining the
figurative meaning in the African American community of “well-informed”
or “up-to-date.” By 1972, the once modest verbal past tense began to
describe an elevated political consciousness. In 2017, the Oxford English Dictionary (OED)
recognized the social-conscious awareness of woke and added the
definition: “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice.”5
Yet there are as many definitions of wokeness as people who’ve heard
of it, as is the case with most anything the least bit controversial.
I’m sure that others can and will add to the definition or suggest that
wokeness should be defined altogether differently. But the above
definition and historical-semantical renderings are sufficient for our
purposes. According to adherents, then, wokeness is enhanced awareness
of social and political injustice and the determination to eradicate it.
But what could wokeness have to do with the Great Reset? As a
corrective, wokeness is not aimed at the sufferers whose complaints, or
imagined complaints, it means to redress. Wokeness works on the
majority, the supposed beneficiaries of injustice. It does so by making
the majority understand that it has benefited from “privilege” and
preference—based on skin color (whiteness), gender (patriarchy), sexual
proclivity (heteronormativity), birthplace (colonialism, imperialism,
and first worldism), gender identity (cis gender privilege), and the
domination of nature (speciesism)—to name some of the major culprits.
The list could go on and is emended, seemingly by the day. This majority
must be rehabilitated, as it were. The masses must understand that they
have gained whatever advantages they have hitherto enjoyed on the basis
of the unfair treatment of others, either directly or indirectly, and
this unfair treatment is predicated on the circumstances of birth. The
“privilege” of the majority has come at the expense of those minorities
designated as the beneficiaries of wokeness, and wokeness is the means
for rectifying these many injustices.
And what are the effects of being repeatedly reprimanded as such, of
being told that one has been the beneficiary of unmerited “privilege,”
that one’s relative wealth and well-being have come at the expense of
oppressed, marginalized, and misused Others? Shame, guilt, remorse,
unworthiness. And what are the expected attitudinal and behavioral
adjustments to be taken by the majority? They are to expect less. Under
woke ideology, one will be expected to forfeit one’s rights, because
even these rights, nay, especially these rights, have come at the
expense of others.
Thus, wokeness works by habituating the majority to the reduced expectations that I introduced in my first installment
on the Great Reset. It does this by instilling a belief in the
unworthiness of the majority to thrive, prosper, and enjoy their lives.
Wokeness indoctrinates the majority into the propertyless future (for
them, at least) of the Great Reset, while gratifying the Left, its main
ideological propagators, with a sense of moral superiority, even as they
too are scheduled to become bereft of prospects.
One question remains. Why is wokeness more suited to the objectives of the Great Reset than socialist-communist ideology?
NYPost | The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently launched a new division known as Gates Ag One.
It aims to help poor farmers, especially in Africa and South Asia, get
the “tools, technologies, and resources they need to lift themselves out
of poverty.” If each acre can produce more food, that’s good news for
farmers. But it also means we can devote less of the planet’s surface to
farmland, which is good news for forests and ecosystems.
Meanwhile, American agriculture today is being transformed as farmers
employ new technologies and Big Data to help them manage their crops.
That can mean better yields with decreased use of fertilizers and
pesticides. Which in turn means less impact on the environment.
Farms also have a role in fighting climate change. With proper
techniques, the carbon from decaying plant matter can be kept safely in
the soil, rather than entering the atmosphere in the form of carbon
dioxide.
A new coalition of farmland owners, operators and environmental
groups is working to come up with verifiable standards for sustainable
farming. The group is called Leading Harvest, and the Gates-linked
Cottonwood Ag is one of its founding members.
Leading Harvest envisions a kind of sustainability seal of approval
certifying that a given farm meets environmental standards. The program
could be an economic boon for farmers.
“In the future, farmers will be paid for sustainability,” says
Sherrick, who sits on the group’s board. There will be incentives for
things like using less water, fewer chemicals, and storing more carbon.
The group’s founding members are expected to spearhead the rollout of the new standards on their own lands.
Whether or not Gates personally directed Cottonwood Ag to get
involved in the Leading Harvest project, the move makes both
environmental and business sense.
“The new green economy will mean new opportunities for land owners,” O’Keefe believes.
“Farming is all of a sudden part of the solution and not just part of
the problem,” Sherrick adds. He sees Gates’ involvement — even if
indirect — as crucial in encouraging the industry to embrace the new
sustainability standard.
If the nation’s largest farmland owner can show that farming can be
both sustainable and profitable, that will make a big difference.
“People are going to pay attention to what Bill is doing,” Sherrick says.
apnews | Capitol Police
leadership had plenty of intelligence warning that armed extremists were
planning to target the Capitol over President Donald Trump’s election
loss, according to new testimony Thursday. But their rank-and-file
officers were still left exposed against armed rioters who came within
steps of lawmakers.
In
an appearance before a House subcommittee, acting Chief Yogananda
Pittman said none of the warnings forecast the mass attack that actually
took place.
Both Democrats and Republicans took issue with that, saying the intelligence sounded both specific and credible.
“I
cannot get past a glaring discrepancy between intelligence received and
preparation,” Rep. Katherine Clark, D-Mass., said during Thursday’s
hearing before the House Appropriations Committee.
Pittman became
acting chief when her predecessor, Steven Sund, resigned in the wake of
the insurrection. At the time of the attack, she was serving as
assistant chief for protective and intelligence services.
Here’s some of what was learned from Pittman’s testimony:
WHAT INTELLIGENCE DID POLICE HAVE BEFORE THE JAN. 6 ATTACK?
Three
days before the attack, the Capitol Police department’s own security
assessment warned that militia members, white supremacists, and other
extremists were planning to come to Washington and target Congress in
what they saw as a “last stand” to support Trump.
Pittman
says the details of that assessment were shared throughout the
department, with sergeants and lieutenants told to spread the word to
rank-and-file officers.
It’s
not clear how effective that messaging was, however. Four officers
interviewed by The Associated Press last month say they had little or no
warning of what would happen and felt they were left unprepared for the
attack.
Pittman
also faced questions about an FBI memo, received the night before the
attack, that warned extremists planned to wage “war” to prevent Joe
Biden’s election victory from being certified. She said that memo never
reached her, but that it would not have changed the department’s
preparations anyway.
mises | These days, it sure looks like they have them right where they want
them. Using the storming of the Capitol Building as a pretext, the
media-government alliance has targeted Trump, his supporters, and their
fellow travelers harder than ever before. Many on the right consider the
January 6 storming to have been a dream come true for the leftist
elite—giving them the ability to impeach Trump again, deplatform
right-wingers, and weaponize
the Justice Department against the establishment’s foes. Everything,
though, may not be as it first seems. There’s no reason to be despondent
or worry that the Left has sealed its ultimate victory—it has done no
such thing. Rather, the storming, for what it's worth, proved the power
of ragtag populists and exposed the elite’s shaky foundations. There’s a
reason they’re so terrified.
When the rioters began their push to breach the Capitol Building,
lawmakers were forced to shelter in place, before then evacuating to a
secure location. For some of them, the day's events were evidently
traumatic. That can be seen in the hyperbolic language that’s been used
to describe the storming, like Chuck Schumer likening it
to Pearl Harbor. The stormers crossed the threshold of the
establishment's cushy elitism and exposed lawmakers to the real-world
ire their actions create. As described in a passage from Cato’s Letters,
“The only secret … in forming a free government is to make the
interests of the governors and of the governed the same.” Angry
populists, who’ve watched federal decrees wreak havoc on their lives,
turned around and gave lawmakers a taste of their own medicine.
In the wake of this, the media-government alliance has clamped down
against the populist right harder than ever before. Yet, in this vicious
pushback, one can sense a prescient hint of panic within establishment
ranks that the threads of their dominance may finally be unraveling. Far
from playing a domineering role, the establishment politicos find
themselves on the defensive in a politically unstable position.
Someday—whether it be in one week or thirty years—the US could face a
serious period of mass antiestablishment demonstrations; if that day
comes, it’ll signal the Washington elite’s ultimate failure.
With no cards left to play, they may be forced to tread lightly on
the right-wing populists and avoid violent confrontation as much as
possible, for fear of repercussions like those of January 6. This may
force their hand into granting the Right some concessions—perhaps some
very big ones, like a return to more states’ rights or, better yet, the
right of unilateral secession. This would short-circuit the federal
order and help restore to America’s overtaxed and overburdened some of
their long-withheld freedoms. With everything in view, it looks like the
journey down this path may have already begun.
As the Daily Mailnoted on Thursday, CNN, ABC, CNN and MSNBChave
devoted little to no time discussing Cuomo's nursing home scandal, or
explosive new sexual harassment claims levied against the New York
governor.
WATCH: CNN’s Jim Acosta confronted at CPAC over his network’s failure to cover Cuomo’s multiple scandals. pic.twitter.com/5AWGIeZ55F
ABC, CBS, CNN and MSNBC on Wednesday avoided discussing the explosive new sexual harassment claims against New York Gov Andrew Cuomo during their evening news broadcasts.
Earlier on Wednesday, Lindsey Boylan, shared on Medium that
during her more than three years in the Democrat's administration,
Cuomo 'would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and
legs,' compared her to one of his rumored ex-girlfriends and once
remarked they should play strip poker.
And according to Fox News,
which cited Grabien transcripts, ABC's World News Tonight, CBS' Evening
News, and NBC's Nightly News made no mention of Cuomo or the
allegations against him.
CNN and MSNBC also skipped over the allegations
against the governor whose spokesperson Caitlin Girouard said that all
Boylan's 'claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false'.
During
CNN host Chris Cuomo's segment Wednesday night, he discussed why
Democrats can't get a deal on pandemic relief, the January 6 Capitol
riot and the Boeing 777 incident from last weekend.
Maybe Marcus learned to interrupt people from Acosta?
vice | Dr. Salvatore Cezar Pais is the man behind the patents and The War Zone
has proven the man exists, at least on paper. Pais has worked for a
number of different departments in the Navy, including the Naval Air
Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAVAIR/NAWCAD) and the Strategic
Systems Programs. (SSP) The SSP mission, according to its website, is to
“provide credible and affordable strategic solutions to the
warfighter.” It’s responsible for developing the technology behind the
Trident class nuclear missiles launched from Submarines.
The patents all build on each other, but at their core is something Pais called the “Pais Effect.” This is the idea that,
“controlled motion of electrically charged matter via accelerated
vibration and/or accelerated spin subjected to smooth yet rapid
acceleration transients, in order to generate extremely high energy/high
intensity electromagnetic fields.”
Essentially,
Pais is claiming to use properly spun electromagnetic fields to contain
a fusion reaction. That plasma fusion reaction he claims to have
invented will revolutionize power consumption. Experts theorize that a functioning fusion reactor would lead to cheap and ubiquitous energy.
One of Pais and the Navy’s patents described what the propulsion system
and fusion drive would be used for—a “hybrid aerospace-underwater
craft.” According to the patent, the craft could travel land, sea, and
outer space at incredible speeds. Other patents invented by Pais and
filed by the Navy include a “high temperature superconductor,” a
“electromagnetic field generator,” and a “high frequency gravitational
wave generator.”
It
all sounds like science fiction, and the Navy has been skeptical too.
Navy authorities called bullshit on Pais’ inventions and his patents
went through a lengthy internal review at NAVAIR. The War Zone
obtained emails about the bureaucratic fight between Pais and the Navy
through a Freedom of Information Act Request and revealed that the mad scientist won. According to the patents, some of the technology is “operable.” That means the Navy is claiming some of Pais’ wild tech works and has been demonstrated to Navy officials.
The
physics of what Pais is claiming are beyond theoretical and beyond the
ken of the layman or lowly science reporter. But a paper about his
compaction fusion reactor was accepted by the peer reviewed Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Transactions on Plasma Science and published in its November 2019 issue.
“The fact that my work on the design of a Compact Fusion Reactor was
accepted for publication in such a prestigious journal as IEEE TPS,
should speak volumes as to its importance and credibility - and should
eliminate (or at least alleviate) all misconceptions you (or any other
person) may have in regard to the veracity (or possibility) of my
advanced physics concepts,” Pais told The War Zone in an email.
Pais
continued to toot his own plasma horn. “Do realize that my work
culminates in the enablement of the Pais Effect (original physical
concept),” he said. “Such high energy [electromagnetic] radiation can
locally interact with the Vacuum Energy State (VES) - the VES being the
Fifth State of Matter (Fifth Essence - Quintessence), in other words the
fundamental structure (foundational framework), from which Everything
else (Spacetime included) in our Quantum Reality, emerges. The
Engineering of the Pais Effect can give rise to the Enablement of
Macroscopic Quantum Coherence, which if you have closely been following
my work, you understand the importance of.”
rhythmodynamics |What will, or
what should be the energy of the future? What natural phenomena and processes
will be at its bottom line? At what level of matter organization should one
look for these phenomena and processes? These questions increasingly trouble
the scientists engaged in exploring the new sources of energy, new means of its
production.
Traditional means of energy production, for
example, electricity, are known for their use of kinetic energy obtained
from the wind, heated steam or pressure of falling water. In the first and
second cases, it’s pressure difference which causes propulsion force, in the
third case – it’s the force of gravitation. To obtain pressure difference
artificially one has to use energy, burn fossil or nuclear fuel at power
plants. Hydroelectric power stations require no fuel of course, as they are
using a natural force of propulsion. Let’s examine the origin of this force and
assess a possibility of designing its artificial analogy.
Little is known of the nature of the force
of gravitation applied to experimental bodies. Lots of hypotheses exist, but
the question remains: what mechanism creates propulsion force causing bodies to
fall? What exactly causes the body to react by its free fall?
Note: experimental
body, a body whose potential is too small to disturb the outside field.
If it’s the field which ‘catches’ body
m
and then ‘drags’ it toward the earth’s surface, what’s the mechanism
of this?
Could the field be exerting its influence
on body m if the body stayed unaffected by the field’s presence? If
body m is to react, then why?
Is the cause of free fall entirely
external, or there are some changes taking place inside the body?
What is to change inside the body so as
make it move?
Rhythmodynamics
views bodies as systems of interacting synchronous elements (oscillating
experimental bodies) situated in a wave medium, the medium which has a
propensity to carry periodic disturbances and propagate them with constant
speed.
All principles
are examined in the case of the least possible elementary system (fig.1) made
up of two oscillating elements linked together by the standing wave.
Fig.1. The system has no reason to move in the wave
medium because positions of the sources-oscillators and potential holes (nodes)
coincide. The system is internally balanced.
The standing
wave, being a disturbed state of the medium, plays the role of a common
platform for the elements. Although this platform is floating in the wave
medium, it’s also rigid, because the system’s elements, engaged in exchange of
the wave energy, create potential holes and thereby fix each other there at a
set distance.
The elementary
system coming under pressure of internal or external factors may develop phase
or frequency displacements which break wave synchronism and upset the existing
balance.
Balance [equilibrium], a
state created by the forces of a different vector cancelled out so that the
system’s properties remain unaffected.
Dynamic
balance [dynamic equilibrium], a process in which the controlled system
develops in such a way which prevents significant deviation of the system from
the set trajectory caused by the medium disturbances.
NASA |
ABSTRACT - A new propulsion concept has been developed based on a
proposed resonance between coherent, pulsed electromagnetic wave forms
and gravitational wave forms (or space-time metrics). Using this
concept, a spacecraft "propulsion" system potentially capable of
galactic and inter-galactic travel without prohibitive "travel times"
has been designed. The "propulsion" system utilizes recent research
associated with magnetic field line merging, hydromagnetic wave effects,
free-electron lasers, laser generation of megagauss fields, and special
structural and containment metals. Research required to determine
potential, field resonance characteristics and to evaluate various
aspects of the spacecraft "propulsion" design is described.
ASSUMPTIONS The
field resonance "propulsion" concept has been developed utilizing
recent research into causes of solar flares, magnetic substorms, black
holes, quasars, and UFOs. The concept is based on two assumptions:
(1) Space-time is a "projection" of a higher dimensional space in
much the same way that a hologram is a projection or a subset of our
space-time reality, (2) A relationship exists between
electromagnetic / hydromagnetic fields and gravitational fields - that
is, Einstein's long sought for unified field theory can be developed.
Mathematical relationships have been developed and theoretical concepts
have been proposed to describe the causes and effects associated with
the assumptions, but experimental data is required to develop the
correct theoretical basis for the assumptions (Rachman and Dutheil,
1979). Specific research in a number of areas is needed and will be
described later.
ASTROPHYSICAL RESEARCH There does exist, however, some astrophysical data which tends to support these assumptions.
For
example, astronomers have speculated that a relationship may exist
between black holes and quasars (white holes). The energy and matter
which leaves space-time in a black hole may reappear at a white hole at
some distant space-time point. For this transfer of energy from one
space-time point to another to occur, some type of hyperspace or higher
dimensional space (4th & 5th) is required. Assumption 2 may be the
cause of the large amount of energy released in solar flairs. In
sunspot regions where solar flairs occur, the 2-3 thousand gauss
magnetic fields are configured such that the positive and negative
polarities are in close proximity with each other. Where the positive
and negative magnetic field lines are nearly anti-parallel a process
called magnetic field line merging can take place.
In this
process the oppositely directed field lines break and re-connect
expelling fields and plasma out from the sides. As a result magnetic
energy is converted into kinetic energy.
The magnetic field line
merging process has been proposed as the most likely explanation for
solar flare eruptions. However, some flares can release energy which
equals 10% of the suns' total output in a second. This large amount of
energy is difficult to achieve with the magnetic field line merging
concept.
Thus it may be that the configuration of the magnetic
fields and associated hydromagnetic waves (oscillation of field lines)
may induce a "resonance" with gravitational fields resulting in a
release of gravitational as well as magnetic energy.
It is well
known that the geometrical relationships of the magnetic fields (and
thus the field gradients) are more important to the production of solar
flairs than the magnitude of the field strength.
A strongly
convoluted boundary between magnetic polarities results in a high
probability for large and frequent flares. Another fact of interest is
that hydromagnetic waves generated by solar flare have been observed to
propagate across the chromospheric surface and trigger flares in other
sun spot regions.
Alfven waves, which appear to be the dominant
wave form involved, change only the geometry of the field lines. This
effect also indicates that the initiation of solar flares definitely
depends on geometrical relationships as do the properties of space-time
and gravitational fields.
Magnetic field line merging has also
been used to explain the interaction of the solar wind (and associated
fields) with the Earth's magnetic fields at the magnetopause and the
generation of magnetic substorms which often are triggered by solar
flairs.
The magnetic fields line merging process is also an essential part of the field resonance "propulsion" concept.
...., high on power and feeling their full Cartman, "respeck my author-i-teh!!!" these SUNY assclowns forgot they're a public university and that by extension, their censorship and censure of this kid is an explicit violation of his 1st Amendment rights.
jonathanturley | There could be a significant First Amendment case brewing in New York
after the School of Education at the State University of New
York-Geneseo suspended student Owen Stevens
for posting his view that gender is limited to biologically males and
females. As a state institution, SUNY is subject to the limitations of
the First Amendment and Stevens could challenge the action based on his
statements on Instagram.
I have not been able to find the letter sent to Stevens by the school but it is quoted on a conservative website, The Daily Wire. According to that report, Owen posted on Instagram that there are only two genders. This may be that posting:
The school reportedly maintains that such statements made on social
media are grounds for suspension and other disciplinary action. While
she did not refer to him by name, SUNY-Geneseo President Denise Battles
sent out a message stating that “[y]esterday, I was made aware of a
current student’s Instagram posts pertaining to transgender people.”
Battles acknowledges that “There are clear legal limitations to what a
public university can do in response to objectionable speech. As a
result, there are few tools at our disposal to reduce the pain that such
speech may cause.” However, the school then suspended Stevens.
A spokesperson is quoted by the Daily Wire declaring
students must follow the “professional standards” of their chosen field
by acting and behaving in ways that “may differ from their personal
predilections.”
That does not sound like an accommodation of the First Amendment,
which protects your right to express your “personal predilections.” Many
object to his view of transgender persons, but it is a view that often
expresses a myriad of religious, political, social, and biological
beliefs.
NYTimes | On Oct. 28, 2018, Ms. McCartney released a 35-page report from
a law firm with a specialty in discrimination investigations. The
report cleared Ms. Blair altogether and found no sufficient evidence of
discrimination by anyone else involved, including the janitor who called
campus police.
Still, Ms.
McCartney said the report validated Ms. Kanoute’s lived experience,
notably the fear she felt at the sight of the police officer. “I suspect
many of you will conclude, as did I,” she wrote, “it is impossible to
rule out the potential role of implicit racial bias.”
The
report said Ms. Kanoute could not point to anything that supported the
claim she made on Facebook of a yearlong “pattern of discrimination.”
Ms.
McCartney offered no public apology to the employees after the report
was released. “We were gobsmacked — four people’s lives wrecked, two
were employees of more than 35 years and no apology,” said Tracey Putnam
Culver, a Smith graduate who recently retired from the college’s
facilities management department. “How do you rationalize that?”
Rahsaan
Hall, racial justice director for the A.C.L.U. of Massachusetts and Ms.
Kanoute’s lawyer, cautioned against drawing too much from the
investigative report, as subconscious bias is difficult to prove. Nor
was he particularly sympathetic to the accused workers.
“It’s
troubling that people are more offended by being called racist than by
the actual racism in our society,” he said. “Allegations of being
racist, even getting direct mailers in their mailbox, is not on par with
the consequences of actual racism.”
Ms. Blair was reassigned to a different
dormitory, as Ms. Kanoute lived in the one where she had labored for
many years. Her first week in her new job, she said, a female student
whispered to another: There goes the racist.
Anti-bias
training began in earnest in the fall. Ms. Blair and other cafeteria
and grounds workers found themselves being asked by consultants hired by
Smith about their childhood and family assumptions about race, which
many viewed as psychologically intrusive. Ms. Blair recalled growing
silent and wanting to crawl inside herself.
The
faculty are not required to undergo such training. Professor Lendler
said in an interview that such training for working-class employees
risks becoming a kind of psychological bullying. “My response would be,
‘Unless it relates to conditions of employment, it’s none of your
business what I was like growing up or what I should be thinking of,’”
he said.
nationalreview | Here’s the real story. What Senator Paul asked and what Levine refused
to answer was this: “Do you believe that minors are capable of making
such a life-changing decision as changing one’s sex?” And this, “Do you
support the government’s intervening to override the parent’s consent to
give a child puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and/or amputation
surgery of breasts and genitalia?”
As Senator Paul referenced, these are the very same questions that
appeared before the High Court in England and Wales last year. In his
questioning of Levine, Senator Paul cited the plaintiff in that case,
Keira Bell:
I would hope that you would have compassion for Keira
Bell, who’s a 23-year-old girl who was confused with her identity. At
14, she read on the internet about something about transsexuals and she
thought, “Well, maybe that’s what I am.” She ended up getting these
puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, she had her breasts amputated.
But here’s what ultimately she says now, and this is a very
insightful decision from someone who made a mistake, but was led to
believe this was a good thing by the medical community.
“I made a brash decision as a teenager, as a lot of teenagers do,
trying to find confidence and happiness, except now the rest of my life
will be negatively affected,” she said, adding that the medicalized
gender transitioning was a very temporary superficial fix for a very
complex identity issue.
Having reviewed the evidence from all sides, the judges in Bell’s
case concluded that it was “highly unlikely that a child aged 13 or
under would be competent to give consent to the administration of
puberty blockers,” adding that it was also “doubtful that a child aged
14 or 15 could understand and weigh the long-term risks and consequences
of the administration of puberty blockers.”
Accordingly, the court ordered a National Health Service moratorium
on the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for
gender-dysphoric young people.
Got that New York Times, et al.? The Keira Bell decision
happened in Enlightened, secular Britain — and at the behest of
impartial and liberal-minded judges. Unfortunately, in the absence of a
similar judicial intervention — or indeed of a centralized health-care
system — the situation in the United States is far more out of control.
There are currently 40+ transgender-youth clinics (and counting) in
the United States, according to the Human Rights Campaign. The largest
transgender-youth clinic in Los Angeles saw more than 1,000 patients in
2019; the youngest patient was four years old. And the director of that
clinic has admitted to personally recommending double mastectomies for
“probably about 200” adolescent females, a decision she has justified by
the argument that “they don’t identify as girls,” thus breast removal
is actually “chest reconstruction.” Similarly, a study entitled “Age Is
Just a Number,” published in 2017 in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, reveals
that eleven out of the 20 surgeons interviewed admitted to having
performed vaginoplasty — that is, castration followed by the inversion
of the penis to form a pseudo-vaginal canal — “1 to 20” times on males
under the age of 18.
If the British judges think that minors can’t consent to taking drugs
and hormones to halt puberty, how likely is it that a minor can consent
to having his or her sexual organs removed or mutilated?
conandaily |Jessica Marie Watkins is a white transgender woman from Ohio, United States. Here are 13 more things about her:
She lives in Woodstock, Champaign County, Ohio. (a)
In 2001, she graduated from high school and joined the U.S. Army.
She completed airborne training before being deployed to Afghanistan. (a)
From 2010 to 2014, she worked for the Stoney Point Fire Department
in Fayetteville, Cumberland County, North Carolina, USA. She started as
a volunteer before becoming a full-time firefighter and emergency
medical technician. (a)
She met her longtime boyfriend Montana Siniff playing
“Magic: The Gathering” in a card shop in Hilliard, Franklin County,
Ohio. In 2018, they bought a bar in Woodstock and moved into the
apartment upstairs. (a)
She is a member of the Oath Keepers. She is also the commanding officer of the Ohio State Regular Militia,
which she formed in 2019 after a string of tornadoes ripped through
Dayton, Montgomery County, Ohio. In the same year, she and Siniff
started running their newly purchased bar in Woodstock. (a) (b)
In 2020, she renamed her bar in Woodstock as the Jolly Roger and regularly watched videos on Infowars, the far-right conspiracy-driven website run by Alex Jones, according to Siniff. In the same year, answering a nationwide call from Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, Ohio State Regular Militia members patrolled Louisville, Kentucky, USA amid protests over the police killing of Breonna Taylor. (a)
Days after Donald Trumplost to Joe Biden
in November 2020, Siniff accompanied her as they answered a call from
the Oath Keepers to go to Washington, D.C. to attend Trump’s Million
MAGA March. She and Siniff stayed at the farm of Oath Keepers member Thomas Edward Caldwell in Virginia, USA. (a)
On January 4, 2021, she left Ohio with Ohio State Regular Militia members. (b)
Wearing goggles, a bulletproof vest and fatigues bearing Oath Keeper
insignias, she went to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C.,
USA on January 6, 2021 with eight other Oath Keepers members including Donovan Crowl.
usatoday | On his first day in office last month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order which
threatened to pull federal funding from schools unless they allow
transgender women to compete on girls’ sports teams. On Thursday, the
House passed a bill that would write this policy permanently into law.
Like
many Americans with common sense, we strongly oppose these radical and
unfair measures. And like many parents, our opposition is rooted in the
care and concern we have for our daughters.
Participation
in sports has had a positive impact on countless young women, helping
them to develop leadership skills and learn to work together as a team.
Striving to be the best is the goal, and valuable opportunities can stem
from the competition. However, these lessons and opportunities would
be seriously endangered if transgender women are allowed to compete in
girls' sports.Indeed, the entirety of women's athletics would be deeply imperiled.
This reality cannot be ignored. It could even be dangerous.
For
example, consider the implications of a young woman competing in boxing
or another physical sport being matched up with a biological male
opponent. Besides likely being at a fundamental disadvantage, she might
also be at increased risk of severe injury based on physical
differences. Unfortunately, this hypothetical has already played out in a 2013 incident, and it could have major consequences on the whole of women’s sports should such situations become more normal.
CNN |Caster Semenya,
the South African Olympic champion runner, has appealed to the European
Court of Human Rights to end "discriminatory" testosterone limits
imposed on female athletes.
Semenya
is hyperandrogenous -- meaning she has naturally high levels of the
male sex hormone -- and is fighting against new rules introduced in 2019
by track and field's governing body World Athletics (previously known
as the IAAF) that regulate levels of the hormone in female athletes.
This fight is not just about me, it's about taking a stand and fighting for dignity, equality and the human rights of women in sport. All we ask is to be able to run free as the strong and fearless women we are!! Thank you to all of those who have stood behind me✊🏽 pic.twitter.com/0PdBiujH8b
World Athletics said the rules were about "leveling the playing field" because, it said, testosterone "provides significant performance advantages in female athletes."
Semenya
took the 800 meters gold at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics but the rules
mean she will now need to take testosterone-reducing medication in order
to compete internationally over distances between 400
She is now training to qualify for the 200 meters at the postponed Tokyo Olympics, which will take place later this year.
In
April 2019, Semenya lost an appeal to the Court of Arbitration for
Sport. In September 2020, she lost an appeal made to Switzerland's
Federal Supreme Court but vowed to continue to "fight for the human
rights of female athletes."
The
latest appeal, to the European Court of Human Rights, was announced
Thursday in a press release from Semenya's lawyers, Norton Rose
Fulbright.
The
press release calls on the court to find that, in its dismissal of
Semenya's appeal, Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court "failed" in its
obligations to uphold her human rights.
NYTimes | It’s often counterproductive to engage directly with content from an
unknown source, and people can be led astray by false information. Influenced by the research
of Sam Wineburg, a professor at Stanford, and Sarah McGrew, an
assistant professor at the University of Maryland, Mr. Caulfield argued
that the best way to learn about a source of information is to leave it and look elsewhere, a concept called lateral reading.
For instance, imagine you were to visit Stormfront, a white supremacist
message board, to try to understand racist claims in order to debunk
them. “Even if you see through the horrible rhetoric, at the end of the
day you gave that place however many minutes of your time,” Mr.
Caulfield said. “Even with good intentions, you run the risk of
misunderstanding something, because Stormfront users are way better at
propaganda than you. You won’t get less racist reading Stormfront
critically, but you might be overloaded by information and overwhelmed.”
One way to combat this dynamic is to change how we teach media literacy:
Internet users need to learn
In 2016, Mr. Caulfield met Mr. Wineburg,
who suggested modeling the process after the way professional fact
checkers assess information. Mr. Caulfield refined the practice into
four simple principles:
1. Stop.
2. Investigate the source.
3. Find better coverage.
4. Trace claims, quotes and media to the original context.
Otherwise known as SIFT.
Mr.
Caulfield walked me through the process using an Instagram post from
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent anti-vaccine activist, falsely
alleging a link between the human papillomavirus vaccine and cancer. “If
this is not a claim where I have a depth of understanding, then I want
to stop for a second and, before going further, just investigate the
source,” Mr. Caulfield said. He copied Mr. Kennedy’s name in the
Instagram post and popped it into Google. “Look how fast this is,” he
told me as he counted the seconds out loud. In 15 seconds, he navigated
to Wikipedia and scrolled through the introductory section of the page,
highlighting with his cursor the last sentence, which reads that Mr.
Kennedy is an anti-vaccine activist and a conspiracy theorist.
“Is
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the best, unbiased source on information about a
vaccine? I’d argue no. And that’s good enough to know we should probably
just move on,” he said.
that our attention is a scarce commodity
that is to be spent wisely.
tabletmag | Of
course there are real inequities in America, some of which are grounded
in the legacies of racial discrimination. But visions to transform the
country must reflect as complete and accurate a picture of social
reality as can possibly be achieved. Steamrolling or suppressing
inconvenient facts leaves us with a picture of reality that’s likely to
be incomplete, erroneous, and consequently, harmful to progress.
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.
Using data from TheWashington Post Police Shootings database
(2015-2020), I tallied and compared the number of search results for
unarmed white versus Black police-shooting victims in a large data
archive (ProQuest). In the end, and as depicted in the graph below,
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. None of
these differences are explained by the elapsed time since the shooting
nor any of the contextual, victim, or incident-related variables
included in The Washington Post dataset (e.g., whether the
victim fled from the responding officer, whether the victim attacked the
responding officer, or whether the responding officer wore a body cam).
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.
aier | The Overestimated Dangers of Covid and Underestimated Dangers of Lockdowns
Covid-19 is disproportionately lethal to the very old and ill, and heavily so. In the United States as of February 17th, 2021, nearly a third (31.8%) of “All Deaths Involving Covid-19” – as defined and reported by the CDC
– were of persons 85 years old and older. Nearly 60 percent (59.6%) of
these deaths were of persons 75 years of age and older. More than 81
percent (81.3%) were of people 65 years of age and older. Despite
media-trumpeted exceptions, serious suffering from Covid-19 is largely
an experience for very old people.
Covid’s overall lethality compared to that of the seasonal flu is no more than 10 times greater. (Some estimates have Covid’s lethality, compared to that of the flu, to be as low as 3.5 times greater.)
Of course, because Covid’s lethality undeniably rises significantly
with age, for the elderly Covid is far more than 10 times as deadly than
is the flu, and for young people Covid is much less than ten times as
deadly. (Keep in mind that the numbers in this and the previous two
paragraphs come chiefly from before any vaccines were administered.)
Lockdowns
themselves have negative health consequences. How could they not, even
if the only such effect arises because of people’s increased difficulty
of visiting physicians for non-Covid-related illnesses and injuries? But there is evidence that negative health consequences of lockdowns extend beyond those that arise from delayed or foregone medical treatments.
Lockdowns
have negative personal and social consequences. Avoiding contact with
family and friends, even during holidays. Inability to fraternize at
your favorite gym, coffee shop, bar, or restaurant. Restrictions on
travel. Even if you believe that these costs are worth paying, you
cannot deny that these costs are serious.
Lockdowns have a
severe negative impact on economic activity. How could they not, given
that people are prevented from going to work and from engaging in much
ordinary commercial activity? There’s debate about how much of the
decline in economic activity is caused by voluntary action and how much
is caused by the forcible lockdowns. Even in light of the likelihood
that people’s fear of Covid is further stoked by the very fact that
governments’ resort to the dramatic action of locking us down, evidence exists that a great deal of economic damage was caused by the lockdowns themselves.
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That’s t...
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Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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SeeNew
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Man, ...
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