Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Texas mother who blamed son's life-threatening injuries on 'white couple' arrested for lying to police

A Texas mother was arrested on Saturday for allegedly making false statements to police about her two-year-old son's life-threatening injuries sustained in February, in which he had suffered internal injuries, burns, and a lacerated liver.

Shelby Martinez, 30, was arrested on Saturday at her apartment complex where her son was injured and has been charged with making false statements to police, according to KFDX Wichita Falls.

Authorities say Martinez and the boy's father, Thomas Gates, tried to cover up how their child received life-threatening injuries.

Their two-year-old son was allegedly run over by Gates when he was backing out with his vehicle, but the couple blamed it on an "unknown white couple," according to police. Martinez and Gates are both black.

Gates was arrested in February, several days after the incident, for the same charge after coming clean to the police about how the incident played out.

Demand continues to exceed supply.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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9-year-old schoolgirl scolded for intolerance after complaining about having to change in front of biological boy in girls’ changing room: The girl’s parents were accused of “undermining the school’s gender inclusivity policy” when they told the principal their daughter was afraid to go to gym class

Jessica Kakiay-Yavuz, the mother of a 9-year-old student at the Roman Catholic primary school De Tweemaster in Huizen, told the De Telegraaf newspaper how her daughter no longer feels comfortable attending gym class because she is forced to change in the presence of a boy.

“My daughter came to me because she thought it was strange that a boy came into the dressing room,” Kakiay-Yavuz told the newspaper. “I have requested a meeting with the school to find a solution. The director was initially open to that.”

She explained that after informing the school of her daughter’s concerns, she received a “very humiliating” response in which she was asked to accept the situation and was accused of “undermining the school’s gender inclusivity policy.”

“If I wanted, I could receive information so that I could understand the ‘difficult situation that gender and sex diverse people face,'” the mother was told.

“She doesn’t feel comfortable having to change in front of a boy. This is of course not a situation you want to be in as parents. We have been upset for weeks, I cannot let go of the issue,” she said of her daughter’s predicament.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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California Community Colleges system sued for imposing DEI standards on profs

Represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), six Fresno-area community college professors are challenging the legality of newly implemented teaching guidelines by the California Community Colleges (CCC) system that require its more than 54,000 faculty members to profess anti-racist and DEIA (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) ideologies in their classrooms.

FIRE filed the lawsuit on Aug. 17 on behalf of James Druley, Linda de Morales, Loren Palsgaard, and David Richardson of Madera Community College, Bill Blanken of Reedley College, and Michael Stannard of Clovis Community College. The plaintiffs argue that the community college system forcing them to teach questionable views they do not agree with is a violation of their First Amendment rights, such as mandating professors inform students that “cultural and social identities are diverse, fluid, and intersectional.”

“These regulations are a totalitarian triple-whammy,” lead attorney Daniel Ortner said in a FIRE press release. “The government is forcing professors to teach and preach a politicized viewpoint they do not share, imposing incomprehensible guidelines, and threatening to punish professors when they cross an arbitrary, indiscernible line.”

The CCC first formally proposed implementing mandatory DEI classroom standards in March 2022. The following month, FIRE notified the community college system that implementing such required teaching regulations in public institutions would be contrary to the First Amendment and academic freedom.

The new regulations include DEIA standards by which faculty will be evaluated and reviewed for tenure. Schools will be required to “include DEIA competencies and criteria as a minimum standard for evaluating the performance of all employees” in an effort to “advance DEIA principles in community college employment.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Teachers union to teachers: Destroy evidence of student gender identity surveys

CBS Colorado notes that while the JeffCo Public Schools district says it is “unclear” whether surveys about “preferred pronouns” are in violation of state law, it advised teachers against using them as lawsuits are ongoing.

Federal and state law forbid mandatory surveys that ask about kids’ “protected information,” and voluntary surveys must include a parent opt-out.

But an email from the Jefferson County Education Association told teachers that if they give such surveys, to make sure to they are pencil and paper … because “any digital records are more permanent and may be requested under federal law.”

The email also “encouraged” teachers to “make […] notations about students and not hold on to the documents.”

[...]

JeffCo parents claim that since the union’s guidance, “dozens” of district teachers have made use of gender identity surveys. Parents say they’re not opposed to students using preferred pronouns and respect transgender students’ right not to be “outed,” just to the union telling teachers “to break the law and hide the evidence.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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UK politician arrested for hate crimes after retweeting posts defending free speech: Cllr Anthony Stevens is out on bail after being arrested for retweeting a post criticizing the police’s wrongful arrest of a Christian preacher

A Conservative local politician in the U.K. has revealed he was arrested at his home earlier this month on suspicion of distributing written material to stir up racial hatred after retweeting a social media post that criticized the police’s treatment of a Christian street preacher.

Cllr Anthony Stevens, a member of Wellingborough Town Council in the English county of Northamptonshire, was questioned by officers at his local police station over allegations of hate crimes and presented with three social media posts published on his personal Twitter account.

Stevens retweeted to a grand total of 76 followers a post that compared the treatment of two religious preachers, a Christian named Oluwole Ilisanmi who was arrested by police in Southgate, London, back in 2019 for suspected Islamophobia, and an unknown Muslim preacher who was allowed to walk free despite shouting expletives and displaying considerable provocation in a confrontation with officers.

[...]

Lastly, police questioned the Conservative politician about a retweet of a video showing a man burning a copy of the Quran, a post that Stevens insists is aligned with his view that such an act remains a citizen’s right “in a free society.”

It is Stevens’ understanding he was reported to the police by a local member of the opposition Labour Party. He is currently out on bail as authorities conduct further investigations.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Activist behind US affirmative action cases sues major law firms

The American Alliance for Equal Rights sued Perkins Coie in Dallas and Morrison & Foerster in Miami two months after the Supreme Court sided with another group founded by activist Edward Blum and rejected affirmative action policies used by many colleges to increase enrollment of racial minorities.

The lawsuits, brought in federal courts, accused both law firms of unlawfully discriminating against white candidates by limiting which law students could be considered for paid fellowships geared toward promoting greater diversity within the legal sector.

[...]

Perkins Coie, founded in Seattle, offers "diversity fellowships" that provide stipends of $15,000 to $25,000 and paid positions as summer associates, a position that at major law firms can lead to full-time jobs upon graduation.

Applicants must belong to "a group historically underrepresented in the legal profession, including students of color, students who identify as LGBTQ+, and students with disabilities," according to Perkins Coie, which employs more than 1,200 lawyers in the United States and Asia.

Morrison & Foerster, a corporate law firm founded in San Francisco that has more than 1,000 lawyers worldwide, has a similar program that is open to applicants who are Black, Hispanic, Native American or members of the LGBT community.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Trigger warning added to EM Forster’s A Passage to India by US publisher: Disclaimer cautions that the 1924 novel contains ‘offensive’ language and ‘attitudes of this time’

Readers opening A Passage to India are confronted with a note warning them of the “offensive“ language and “cultural representations” contained in the book.

The disclaimer adds that publishing Forster’s work in an unedited form does not constitute “an endorsement” of the writer, who is often regarded as one of the greats of the 20th century.

The warning printed in the book has raised concerns that canonical works by British writers are being dragged into “febrile” American cultural conflicts, and unfairly deemed offensive by publishers swayed by “United States sensibilities”.

The warning printed in the opening pages of the 2021 US edition of A Passage to India states: “This book was published in 1924 and reflects the attitudes of its time. The publisher’s decision to present it as it was originally published is not an endorsement of any offensive cultural representations or language.”

The novel concerns a school mistress visiting the fictional city of Chandrapore and the nearby Marabar Caves, where she is allegedly sexually assaulted by an Indian doctor, bringing about a reckoning with racial tensions.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Feds: Woman who said her landlord was racist made it all up

A woman who publicly accused her landlord of racism to fight an eviction is now facing federal charges. Investigators say she made it all up.

Dermisha Pickett was going through the eviction process in February when she went public with a voicemail and text messages, supposedly from her landlord, stating she was being evicted due to her race.

Pickett claimed her landlord, Sergey Briskman, told her he would "not rent to African Americans" and that he would "rather put a white family in the unit."

Pickett and her attorney, Fanon Rucker, filed a counterclaim of discrimination, then investigators from Housing and Urban Development launched an investigation.

According to court documents, Pickett faked the text messages using a separate phone and made false statements to investigators.

Demand continues to exceed supply.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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UCSF professor: Trans kids who ID as ‘Minotaurs’ merely part of ‘gender revolution’

In a recently unearthed presentation, a professor from the University of California San Francisco claimed that children can identify as “gender hybrids” such a Minotaur — the half-man, half bull creature from Greek mythology.

So said Diane Ehrensaft, because a seven-year-old child once told her that he was a “Prius” — a “boy in the front [and] a girl in the back.”

Ehrensaft (pictured), the mental health director of the Child and Adolescent Gender Center at UCSF’s Benioff Children’s Hospitals, also claimed in the 2018 San Francisco Public Library discussion that kids “can change their genders by season and can have different identities depending on their location.”

“I totally agree we are in the midst of a gender revolution and the children are leading it,” Ehresaft said according to Fox News. “And it’s a wonderful thing to see. And it’s also humbling to know [children] know more than we do about this topic of being gender expansive.”

Ehrensaft believes transgenderism is the “next phase of the 60s feminist movement,” the report notes. She also introduced terminology such “genderfluid,” “non-binary” and “gender expansive.”

📯🤡

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Taxpayer-funded ‘inclusive science’ fellowship excludes white faculty

White faculty are excluded from a National Science Foundation-funded “inclusive science” fellowship, in what one legal group calls a “blatant violation” of federal law.

The “Inclusive Science Communication Fellowship” is “supported by a $2.8 million collaborative National Science Foundation grant” and run by the University of Rhode Island Metcalf Institute, Michigan State University’s Knight Center for Environmental Journalism and the University of Rhode Island Science and Story Lab.

The fellowship “will address a significant gap in science communication research and training by centering the motivations, experiences, and priorities of racial and ethnic minority scientists,” according to its description.

A requirement is that applicants “[s]elf-identify as Black or African American, Indigenous or Native American, Hispanic or Latina/e/o/x, Asian or Asian American, Middle Eastern or North African.”

This raises legal issues according to the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Skittles' new packaging has some calling to boycott candy company

Skittles candy, which has the slogan, "Taste the rainbow," is the latest company to take heat from consumers because of new packaging that has the phrase, "Black Trans Lives Matter."

Some consumers are now calling to boycott the candy company for its "woke" approach to support the LGBTQ community.

[...]

One of the new package designs has the sun and the moon walking on a rainbow while holding hands, and another has the word "PRIDE" in multiple colors, a mouth with the rainbow pouring out of it, and the words, "bi, ace, lesbian, queer, trans and gay."

But the packaging raising the biggest concern has a few kids on skateboards riding on a halfpipe with the phrases "skate & live," "joy is resistance," and "black trans lives matter" written on it.

"@Skittles is trying to turn your kids into BLM & LGBTQ+ activists," one online user wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Libs of TikTok. "Their packaging also features a drag queen."

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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California bill would make questioning school board members a crime

Senate Bill 596, introduced by Democratic State Senator Anthony Portantino in February and dubbed the “School Employees: Protection” act, expands an existing law “which makes it a misdemeanor for any ‘person’ to threaten or harass a school employee during the ‘course of [their] duties,'” according to the California Globe.

This expansion adds a penalty for creating a “substantial disorder” at any meeting of a public school board, charter school board, county board of education, and the California State Board of Education.

Although “substantial disorder” is not precisely defined, the bill notes that “course of conduct” is “a pattern of conduct composed of two or more acts over a period of time, however short … evidencing a continuity of purpose.”

Gone from the definition of “harassment” is “unlawful violence” and “credible threat of violence,” and in its place is “torments, or terrorizes.”

It’s not difficult to figure out what’s happening here. A concerned parent at a school board meeting asks a board member a question and reiterates it (thereby establishing a “course of conduct”) … and if the board member feels “tormented” the parent can be arrested and charged with a fine between $500 and $1,000 and face up to a year in jail.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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[Christopher F. Rufo] The Arc of Reform: New College of Florida votes to abolish its gender studies program.

Tonight, the New College of Florida board of trustees voted to direct the administration to abolish the university’s gender studies program, becoming the first public university in America to begin rolling back the encroachment of gender ideology and queer theory on its academic offerings.

The decision, sure to elicit a fierce response from left-wing critics, is part of a broader transformation. In January, Florida governor Ron DeSantis appointed me and a number of other reformers to the New College board of trustees. He tasked us with a challenging mission: to revive classical liberal education and restore the founding mission of the college, which had been established with an appeal to New College at the University of Oxford.

From the beginning, we knew that this assignment would involve more than a “rebranding” campaign; it would require an overhaul of the structure of the college and its programs. In our first months as a board, we initiated significant changes to the central administration, firing the president, replacing the provost, abolishing the DEI department, and hiring political veteran Richard Corcoran as our interim president. We got pushback—student protests, media condemnation, a disapproving visit from California governor Gavin Newsom—but we patiently continued the work, deliberating over questions of governance and making hard choices about the college’s future.

These changes have already borne fruit. Interim President Corcoran has secured millions in new funding from the state legislature, launched an ambitious campus-renovation plan, and recruited the largest incoming class in the college’s history, putting the school on its strongest financial footing in decades. Simultaneously, Corcoran has recruited a new team that is busy rebuilding the institutional capacity of the college, which had atrophied significantly under previous administrations, and designing a new core curriculum, which will begin with an immersive first-year study of Homer’s Odyssey and continue to provide a foundation based in logos (the cultivation of human reason) and techne (the cultivation of the applied arts).

The faculty has changed, too. Through a combination of cultural incentives and good fortune, many of the most ideological, left-wing faculty members, who presided over the old orthodoxy and expressed strong opposition to the classical liberal arts, have left the university. Aaron Hillegass, a professor who said that he would “burn the college’s buildings to the ground” if he were “more patriotic,” resigned. Nicolas Delon, a professor who justified a violent protest against the new administration, left the college. Liz Leininger, a professor who spread baseless accusations of “McCarthyism” at New College, departed on her own accord.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Illegal migrants should “f**k off back to France,” says deputy chair of UK governing party

If illegal migrants aren’t content with the conditions on Britain’s new migrant barges, they can “f**k off back to France,” the deputy chairman of the U.K.’s governing Conservative party has claimed.

Lee Anderson, the Conservative MP for Ashfield, made the incendiary remark to the Express newspaper, in which he added: “I think people have just had enough.

“These people come across the Channel in small boats, if they don’t like the conditions they are housed in here then they should go back to France, or better, not come at all in the first place.”

Anderson, who has been a deputy chairman of the governing party since February 2023, was commenting on the ongoing migration crisis on England’s southern border, which resulted in a record 45,755 migrant crossings last year, the majority of whom subsequently claim asylum.

His blunt remark was defended by Justice Secretary Alex Chalk, who admitted that Anderson’s language was “salty” but his point “not unreasonable.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Ninth Circuit rules Calif. community college suppressed conservative students’ protected speech

In what is being billed as a win for free speech, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday ruled in favor of a group of Clovis Community College conservative students suing the school over what they contend is an unconstitutional speech policy that bans inappropriate or offensive content.

The students, members of the Young American’s for Freedom group, had sued the school in August 2022 after campus leaders removed their posters criticizing socialism and highlighting its death toll.

The appeals court this week sided with a district judge’s ruling from October 2022 that administrators cannot prevent students from posting flyers with themes some find objectionable.

“The district court did not abuse its discretion when it concluded that [the students] were likely to succeed on the merits of their claim that the ‘inappropriate or offens[ive] language or themes’ provision was facially overbroad,” the appeals court ruling states.

Leading up to Thursday’s ruling, Clovis Community College rescinded its vague flyer policy.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Inside the online world of people who think they can change their race: Practitioners of “race change to another,” or RCTA, purport to be able to manifest physical changes in their appearance and even their genetics to truly become a different race.

Since before she hit double digits, Alisa, 15, said she has felt a special connection with Japan. The high school student, who asked to be anonymous for fear of being doxxed online, was born in Ukraine and lives in Maryland, but she now goes by the Japanese name Miyuki and listens to “subliminals” that promise she will wake up and be Japanese. So far, she believes that by listening to YouTube videos with lo-fi music and photos of East Asian facial features while she sleeps, her vision has cleared, her eyelids have become smaller and her hair is just a bit darker.

Practitioners of what they call “race change to another,” or RCTA, purport to be able to manifest physical changes in their appearance and even their genetics to become a different race. They tune in to subliminal videos that claim can give them an “East Asian appearance” or “Korean DNA.”

But experts underscore that it is simply impossible to change your race.

“It’s just belief,” said Jamie Cohen, an assistant professor of cultural and media studies at Queens College, City University of New York. “It doesn’t ever really work, because it’s not doing anything, but they have convinced themselves that it works because there’s other people who have convinced themselves, as well.”

Though they do not constitute a full-blown trend, a number of racial subliminal creators have popped up on YouTube in recent years, with videos racking up on average over a half-million views apiece. On TikTok, dozens of accounts have emerged in recent weeks sharing similar goals and aesthetics and documenting what people describe as their race-change journeys.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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End of the Encampments? Americans have lost patience with homeless advocates’ arguments that letting vulnerable people sleep on sidewalks and in parks is an acceptable part of urban life.

The West Coast has seen the worst of the encampment crisis, thanks to the 2018 Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Martin v. City of Boise, which said that cities under its jurisdiction could not enforce camping bans unless sufficient shelter space was available. Though many cities made the ruling another excuse for inaction, especially during Covid, other local governments have found alternatives. Las Vegas passed a law aimed, in the city’s phrasing, “at helping to connect the city’s homeless population with services” by making it a misdemeanor to camp or sleep downtown or in residential districts’ sidewalks and streets. In 2022, to ensure that enough shelter was available to enforce the law under terms set by Boise, the city expanded its open-air Courtyard Homeless Resource Center, which now provides space for 800 people to sleep. Las Vegas keeps a constant count to ensure that open spaces are at hand in the courtyard or at other shelters, making it possible to enforce the camping law.

Portland, Oregon, which has become an international symbol of America’s homeless crisis, voted last November to ban camping in the city by 2024. Mayor Ted Wheeler has begun creating sanctioned camping sites to provide alternatives to those removed from illegal encampments. Last year, Sacramento implemented new laws to limit camps and increase enforcement. Even Los Angeles, despite fevered protests from activists, voted to ban camps within 500 feet of schools or day-care centers.

Some citizens are using the courts to fight back against Boise and its results. In Phoenix, citizens filed a lawsuit against the city’s decision to crowd the homeless into a notorious area known as “the Zone.” In March of this year, a state judge declared the Zone a public nuisance and ordered it cleaned up. Disabled plaintiffs in Portland and Sacramento have sued to demand that the cities clean up their illegal camps. They argue, justifiably, that the camps make it impossible for those in wheelchairs to use sidewalks. Portland settled with the plaintiffs and promised to start removing tents.

Neither these disabled individuals nor the many residents of America’s cities are willing to wait indefinitely for some utopian future in which every homeless individual gets a free house. They know the costs of waiting are too high, especially for the homeless themselves. Last year, Phoenix and its surrounding county saw more than 700 homeless deaths, and Los Angeles County more than 2,000. One reason for these high (and rising) numbers is drug abuse inside the encampments; in some cities, overdoses make up the majority of all homeless deaths. Another reason is violence. Recent statistics show that 15 percent of the violent crime in Los Angeles involves the 1 percent of the population who are homeless, and that 24 percent of the city’s murder victims are homeless. The idea that L.A. or other cities should do nothing to remove these deadly camps until sufficient subsidized housing is available is absurd.

Americans understand that the homeless deserve compassion and dignity, but they also know that nothing is less compassionate or dignified than letting people die slowly in illegal encampments. They refuse to accept that these camps, almost unknown to American cities as recently as two decades ago, are an inevitable part of urban life—and they are pushing back.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Civil rights complaint filed against med school programs that gave preferential admissions to non-whites

The complaint was filed July 25 by the Legal Insurrection Foundation’s Equal Protection Project. It argues the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences offered two programs that gave unlawful admissions preferences to students who are either “economically disadvantaged or historically underrepresented,” citing screenshots the program’s website.

“The discrimination is apparent: if applicants are black, African American, American Indian, Alaskan Native or Hispanic, they are automatically eligible for the program. Applicants who do not fall into one of those racial and ethnic categories are automatically excluded from consideration unless they can show that they meet the guidelines for being ‘economically disadvantaged.’ The ‘historically underrepresented minorities’ are not required to prove any economic need,” alleges the complaint, filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

At issue is a year-round Medical Science Technology Entry Program, or STEP, for high school students, and another summer program for middle school students.

The programs’ website states it is specifically designed to “increase the number of historically underrepresented and economically disadvantaged students prepared to enter college, and improve their participation rate in mathematics, science, technology, health-related fields, and the licensed professions.”

The complaint argues “UB makes clear that students who are ‘Asian,’ ‘Caucasian/White’ or ‘Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander’ are excluded from consideration for STEP unless they meet the low-income criteria – something that students who are ‘African American/Black,’ ‘Hispanic/Latino’ or ‘Native American/Alaskan Native’ never have to demonstrate.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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‘Anger and radicalization’: rising number of Americans say political violence is justified

The university’s Chicago Project on Security & Threats (CPost) research center has been conducting Dangers to Democracy surveys of American adults on political violence and attitudes towards democracy since shortly after the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.

The most recent report marks the first increase in radical, violent support for Trump since April 2022, according to Pape, who directs CPost.

“The public is more radicalized than it was in April and it’s really quite significant,” he said. “We’ve been tracking this quite a while, and this is a really big bump.”

Still, a radicalized public isn’t enough for actual violence to occur, Pape said. He compared the support to kindling, but said Trump would have to give a speech or rally inciting people to act at a certain time to light the fire, as he did in Washington DC on 6 January 2021.

Democrats, however, expressed support for political violence for a different purpose. The survey found support for the use of force to coerce members of Congress to “do the right thing” grew from 9% in January to 17% – an estimated 44 million Americans – at the end of June, with the sharpest rise among Democrats. Support for violence to restore the federal right to an abortion also increased during this time.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Kentucky requires nurses to take training on 'structural racism' and 'white-splaining'

The Kentucky Board of Nursing mandated nurses to take an " implicit bias " course to "recognize the history of racism in healthcare" and threatened "discipline" for failure to do so.

The ultimatum to complete the "mandatory continuing education" training, which was developed by the Kentucky Nurses Association , forced nurses to complete the training by July 1.

"They pretty much said we're all guilty of being racist, and we need to examine the way that we take care of patients and change our behaviors because we are giving substandard care," Rebecca Wall, a Kentucky certified registered nurse anesthetist with 40 years experience, told the Washington Examiner.

The training , presented by KNA Board of Directors Treasurer Arica Brandford and KNA CEO Delanor Manson, told nurses that "best intentions will not solve implicit bias in healthcare."

[...]

Laura Morgan, a nurse of 39 years and program manager at the medical advocacy group Do No Harm, told the Washington Examiner that "discipline" could mean the non-renewal of a license.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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DC United: US sports trainer fired for 'discriminatory' hand gesture

An athletic trainer for DC United, the MLS football club in Washington DC, has been fired for making a gesture that is considered by some to be a hate symbol.

The decision comes after the discovery of the "discriminatory hand gesture" in a post published on social media on Thursday, the team said in a statement.

The team did not identify the trainer.

The now-deleted post showed the staff posing on the National Mall. One man is seen making the "OK" symbol, which has sometimes been used as a racist sign.

The trainer's termination is "effective immediately" and following an internal review, the team said in a short statement on Friday.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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French riots show that decades of mass ‘colonizing immigration’ could lead to ‘collapse,’ says former head of French counter-intelligence agency: After mass riots during the past week shocked France and the world, the former head of France’s powerful DGSE intelligence agency says the root cause of his country’s tragic situation is above all “the dominant ideology, which has justified and even glorified the massive colonizing immigration that has been taking place over the last half-century.”

Together with the immigration of workers, France began to experience what increasingly became an immigration of settlers (Brochand uses the French term “immigration de peuplement”, which can also be translated as “colonizing immigration”). The transition to a society of individuals has created what he calls a scissor effect. Hence, in Brochand’s eyes, internal partition is the natural inclination of the multicultural societies of Western Europe.

This is not new, as Pierre Brochand said that he remembers when he was the French ambassador to Hungary in the years 1989-93, just after the fall of communism in that part of Europe, he would often hear from his Hungarian interlocutors: “We are lucky we can see first-hand the damage that non-European immigration is causing in your country, and we certainly don’t want to imitate you.”

“In everyone’s eyes, we are now the ‘sick man’ of the continent, the Security Council, the G7, and the G20,” laments the former head of France’s counter-intelligence, as France is indeed the country with the highest proportion of inhabitants with a non-European immigrant background, and immigration figures have been beating new historic records under President Emmanuel Macron.

[...]

Meanwhile, a large majority of French people are strongly opposed to what increasingly appears to be a dangerous social engineering experiment by the liberal elites, something Éric Zemmour has called a Ribbentrop-Molotov pact between Western liberals and Islam against the White, heterosexual, Catholic French man. Indeed, 74 percent of French people now think there are too many immigrants in their country and 62 percent would want France to disobey EU treaties and EU law to stop immigration.

The latter is an important point, in particular in light of the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against Switzerland that was delivered just a few days ago, which extends the right to family reunification even to refugees who have only obtained a temporary residence permit and not asylum. Let us not forget that EU member states have the obligation, as per the EU treaties, to abide by the rulings of the ECHR.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Parents slam woke Massachusetts school district for axing advanced math classes to boost 'equity', after they attracted too many white and Asian students - with families now forced to hire private tutors instead

Cambridge Public Schools began phasing out advanced math courses in grades six through eight around 2017, when district officials noticed sharp racial disparities in the program.

Students who were being placed in the advanced math track were overwhelmingly white and Asian, while the lower-level courses were filled primarily with black and Latino students, the Boston Globe reported on Friday.

As a result of the change, and following further complications from the pandemic, none of the district's four middle schools offer Algebra I, which some parents say is actually exacerbating inequality by limiting advanced math to those who can afford private tutors.

'The students who are able to jump into a higher level math class [in high school] are students from better-resourced backgrounds,' Jacob Barandes, a district parent and a Harvard physicist, told the Globe.

'They're shortchanging a significant number of students, overwhelmingly students from less-resourced backgrounds, which is deeply inequitable.'

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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In NYC, companies will have to prove their AI hiring software isn't sexist or racist: AI-infused hiring programs have drawn scrutiny, most notably over whether they end up exhibiting biases based on the data they’re trained on.

A new law, which takes effect Wednesday, is believed to be the first of its kind in the world. Under New York’s new rule, hiring software that relies on machine learning or artificial intelligence to help employers choose preferred candidates or weed out bad ones — called an automatic employment decision tool, or AEDT — must pass an audit by a third-party company to show it’s free of racist or sexist bias.

Companies that run AI hiring software must also publish those results. Businesses that use third-party AEDT software can no longer legally use such programs if they haven’t been audited.

Companies are increasingly using automated tools in their hiring processes. Cathy O’Neil, the CEO of Orcaa, a consulting firm that has been running audits of hiring tools for companies that want to be in good standing with New York’s new law, said the rise in tools that automatically judge job candidates has become necessary because job seekers are also using tools that send out huge numbers of applications.

[...]

Jake Metcalf, a researcher specializing in AI for Data & Society, a nonprofit group that studies the effects of technology on society, said the wording of the law — it defines AEDT as technology that will “substantially assist or replace discretionary decision making” — has led lawyers that advise large companies not to take it seriously.

“There are quite a few employment law firms in New York that are advising their clients that they don’t have to comply, given the letter of the law, even though the spirit of the law would seem to apply to them,” Metcalf said.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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A Battle for Cultural Survival: In the face of the Left’s hyper-aggressive transgender ideology, conservatives must reassert the legitimacy of bourgeois norms.

Anyone with even a glancing exposure to the media over the past several years knows that conservatives are waging a “culture war.” Republicans have been advocating and all too often implementing hurtful changes to settled social arrangements, proclaim the New York Times, Washington Post, and other outlets on a near-daily basis. This culture war arises primarily out of “hate and fear,” according to President Joe Biden, but pecuniary motives play a role as well, as GOP operatives try to stir up the base and shake it down for donations.

Coverage of this alleged culture war demonstrates the Left’s most important power: the ability to set the default. The Left engineers disruption after disruption to longstanding social practices, each more sweeping than the last. And as soon as those changes are in place, they become the norm, treated as having existed from time immemorial. Questioning that new default is painted as churlish and radical. The Left never has to meet a burden of proof to implement its changes; the burden falls exclusively on conservatives seeking to restore a once-uncontroversial tradition. Though conservatives are portrayed as the aggressors, in reality they are always on the defensive, fighting a rearguard action.

Default-setting shows up across the cultural landscape, whether regarding the requirement that college faculty swear fealty to racial preferences (a.k.a. “diversity”) as a condition of employment, or regarding the introduction of politicized concepts such as “intersectionality” and white privilege into the K-12 curriculum. Its most stunning instantiation, however, is transgender ideology.

The trans revolution has unfolded in a micro percentage of a nanosecond in the context of millions of years of human development. It has introduced ideas that would have been incomprehensible to every previous generation of humanity, whether they found themselves on the African, Asian, American, or European continents. As recently as the 1980s, “trans issues” had not surfaced even among gender theorists themselves, according to the field’s progenitor, Judith Butler.

But now that academic gender theorists have managed to infiltrate their startling creed into virtually every mainstream American institution, contradicting millennia of human experience and centuries of scientific confirmation of that experience, any dissent from the new default is portrayed as a war against the natural order of things, branding the dissenters as hateful and even homicidal. In the 2000s, some feminists—at least those not cowed by the charge of Islamophobia—were expressing opposition to clitorectomies. Now, medical procedures that make genital cutting look therapeutic have been rebranded as “health care,” and opposition to the disembowelment of a youth’s reproductive apparatus is branded as barbaric.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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New York State’s Directive to Schools: Lie to Parents - Secret gender transition is now the default policy for the state’s public schools.

Earlier this week, the New York State Department of Education (NYSED) published a “legal update and best practice” document for how schools should serve “transgender and gender expansive” students. The key takeaway: if your child decides that he or she wants to socially transition to the opposite gender, it is now a “best practice” for the school to lie to you about it.

“Only the student,” the NYSED declares, “knows whether it is safe to share their identity with a caregiver.” The baseline assumption, then, is that “unaffirming” parents are dangerous to their children. If Kevin wants to go by “Kimi” but doesn’t want his parents to know, the best practice, according to NYSED, is as follows: “The teachers call her Kimi and use she/her pronouns at school. When calling home for any reason, teachers use the name Kevin and he/him pronouns.”

Leading experts like Hilary Cass, a medical doctor who documented rampant malpractice in England’s Tavistock child gender clinic, have explained that social transition is not a neutral act but rather an active psychosocial and arguably even medical intervention. Finnish medical authorities have discouraged gender self-identification for children, recognizing its potential to disrupt healthy development and result in unnecessary medicalization. While activists believe that transition is beneficial to mental health, a new study in the U.K. finds no improvement for socially transitioned kids relative to control groups. Evidence suggests that treating children as if they are the opposite sex can cause their feelings of gender dysphoria to persist and increase the likelihood that they will seek experimental hormonal intervention.

If the NYSED has its way, schools will also effectively market experimental hormonal interventions. Its new policy recommends that all schools, at a minimum, adhere to the guidelines of the National Sex Education Standards, which state that children should learn about puberty blockers by fifth grade. It may be doubted whether schools would provide the full medical picture concerning the use of puberty blockers, including the lack of evidence for their benefits, the serious long-term side effects, and the near-certain progression to cross-sex hormones that can cause permanent sexual dysfunction and sterility.

The National Sex Education Standards also recommend introducing children to the concept of “gender identity” starting in kindergarten. As a next step, NYSED recommends that staff actively solicit sexual and gender information by “ask[ing] students which terms they use and generally us[ing] the term the student uses to describe themselves.” (This includes terms such as “agender,” which “refers to a person who does not identify with or experience any gender, [and] is different from nonbinary because many nonbinary people do experience gender.”) In New York, schools now apparently stand ready to tell five-year-olds that they might have been born in the wrong body, socially transition them behind their parents’ backs, and steer them toward experimental hormonal interventions.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Black county staff claim ‘harm’ over woke Juneteenth email

A group of black King County Metro employees says they’re livid over a woke email celebrating Juneteenth. They’re now demanding race-based hiring and reeducation around diversity issues.

[...]

O’Claire said that staff must “recognize” that “racism is still at the forefront of our nation.” She asked that Juneteenth be an “opportunity to recognize the injustices still being waged against Black and Indigenous people and reflect on how we can disrupt business as usual and replace it with something better.” She did not offer any specific examples of injustices or what to do about it but offered a link to Equity and Social Justice training, paid for by the county.

It’s the kind of pandering email you’d expect from a white “ally” hoping to make black friends. And it didn’t go over so well with some black employees.

[...]

The open letter, which was signed “The Black staff that you lead,” calls O’Claire’s woke Juneteenth newsletter “disrespectful and offensive” because it “furthers the anti-Black culture here in the County.” The employees take issue with O’Claire, including Indigenous people in referencing Juneteenth.

“It supports the erasure of Black Americans, the descendants of those enslaved during chattel slavery, by showing that Black American struggles, efforts, and contributions can only be acknowledged when paired with other people of color,” the letter states. “It also highlights the lack of Black American representation in the Director’s office, your office, and the danger of using the acronym BIPOC. Our struggles continue to be conflated with one another.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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No whammy, no whammy, no whammy...

Major medical group declares Body Mass Index ‘racist’

A national medical group declared that the Body Mass Index is “racist” and medical professionals should be educated on its dark history.

“Delegates at the Annual Meeting of the American Medical Association (AMA) House of Delegates adopted [a] policy aimed at clarifying how body mass index (BMI) can be used as a measure in medicine,” the group announced. A council within the AMA researched the “problematic history with BMI.”

“The report also outlined the harms and benefits of using BMI and pointed to BMI as an imperfect way to measure body fat in multiple groups given that it does not account for differences across race/ethnic groups, sexes, genders, and age-span, the AMA stated. It did not link to a copy of the report. “Given the report’s findings, the new policy supports AMA in educating physicians on the issues with BMI and alternative measures for diagnosing obesity.”

The group announced:

Under the newly adopted policy, the AMA recognizes issues with using BMI as a measurement due to its historical harm, its use for racist exclusion, and because BMI is based primarily on data collected from previous generations of non-Hispanic white populations. Due to significant limitations associated with the widespread use of BMI in clinical settings, the AMA suggests that it be used in conjunction with other valid measures of risk such as, but not limited to, measurements of visceral fat, body adiposity index, body composition, relative fat mass, waist circumference and genetic/metabolic factors.

[...]

Some medical professionals have previously called BMI “racist” and linked it to “body terrorism.”

Ironically if fatties spent as much time doing actual gymnastics as they do mental gymnastics they wouldn't be fat any more.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Stop Defending Yourselves, New Yorkers! The city prosecutes another case of subway self-defense.

Last week, while riding a northbound J train through once-posh Williamsburg, Brooklyn, 20-year-old Jordan Williams and his girlfriend were accosted by Devictor Ouedraogo, a 36-year-old ex-con who had served three and a half years in prison for an attempted robbery. After completing his term, Ouedraogo was released to the custody of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), suggesting that he is or was an illegal immigrant.

According to eyewitnesses, Ouedraogo was verbally and physically harassing other passengers in the subway car before approaching Williams and his girlfriend, who remains unnamed and has not commented on the incident. After Ouedraogo propositioned his girlfriend, Williams verbally warned him to back off. Ouedraogo allegedly responded by punching both Williams and his girlfriend in the face.

In what sounds like a legal exercise of the right to self-defense under New York law, Williams then reportedly rose to protect himself, his girlfriend, and others from Ouedraogo, who fought back. During the altercation, Williams pulled out a pocketknife and stabbed Ouedraogo, who stumbled out of the subway at the next stop. He received medical attention but later died at a hospital. As with Jordan Neely, the homeless drug addict with a criminal record who died after being restrained in a chokehold by Daniel Penny last month, no autopsy of Ouedraogo has been released, fanning speculation that the results could indicate serious drug abuse.

Williams and his girlfriend continued their subway ride, but NYPD officers apprehended them at a station down the line shortly afterward. Williams was arrested and charged with manslaughter and “criminal possession of a weapon.” (Knives are forbidden on city transit, though this has not stopped knife incidents from increasing 126 percent over last year.)

The Brooklyn district attorney’s office wanted Williams held at Riker’s Island on $100,000 bail, an impossible sum for him and his family to pay, but last Thursday a judge released him from custody without bail, in part because his employment record at FedEx suggested that he was neither a career criminal nor a flight risk. Unfortunately, FedEx fired Williams the next day, showing little interest in the facts of the case or in now-quaint notions about the presumption of innocence.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Auckland surgeons must now consider ethnicity in prioritising patients for operations - some are not happy

Auckland surgeons are now being required to consider a patient’s ethnicity alongside other factors when deciding who should get an operation first.

Several surgeons say they are upset by the policy, which was introduced in Auckland in February and gave priority to Māori and Pacific Island patients - on the grounds that they have historically had unequal access to healthcare.

Health officials stress that ethnicity is just one of five factors considered in deciding when a person gets surgery, and that it is an important step in addressing poor health outcomes within Māori and Pacific populations.

Te Whatu Ora - Health New Zealand has introduced an Equity Adjustor Score, which aims to reduce inequity in the system by using an algorithm to prioritise patients according to clinical priority, time spent on the waitlist, geographic location (isolated areas), ethnicity, and deprivation level.

In the ethnicity category, Māori and Pasifika are top of the list, while European New Zealanders and other ethnicities, like Indian and Chinese, are lower-ranked.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Johns Hopkins pulls definition of lesbian as ‘non-man attracted to non-men’ after backlash

“Upon becoming aware of the language in question, we have begun working to determine the origin and context of the glossary’s definitions. We have removed the page from our website while we gather more information,” Jill Rosen, director of media relations at the school, told The Messenger in an emailed statement.

As of Wednesday, the glossary page appears removed from the website and campus leaders distanced themselves from the controversial definition, leaving a short explanation on the scrubbed page that “the definitions were not reviewed or approved by ODI leadership and the language in question has been removed pending review.”

Previously, under “lesbian,” the school stated as a definition: “A non-man attracted to non-men.”

“While past definitions refer to ‘lesbian’ as a woman who is emotionally, romantically, and/or sexually attracted to other women, this updated definition includes non-binary people who may also identify with the label,” the definition continued.

A gay man, however, was still defined as “a man who is . . . attracted to other men, or who identifies as a member of the gay community,” National Review reported yesterday.

🤡🌎🚂

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Anatomy of a Scientific Scandal: Under pressure, a journal once notable for its courage retracts a major paper on the social roots of gender-related distress—all over a minor, inconsistently applied technicality.

On April 18, only weeks after the paper was published, Bailey received a list of questions from the executive committee of the International Academy of Sex Research (IASR) about the Institutional Review Board (IRB) ethics-approval process at Northwestern University, where Bailey works. The following day, a message from IASR’s Executive Committee began circulating on its listserv notifying recipients of “significant concerns about the ethical conduct and integrity of the editorial process” at ASB. Members were told that IASR was consulting with the journal’s editor and its publisher, Springer Nature, to address these concerns.

Springer Nature reached out to Bailey on April 28. “Some questions have been raised about the article,” the publisher wrote, “and we are investigating them together with our Research Integrity Group.” The email’s focus was entirely on the IRB ethics approval process obtained before publication, which is a formal procedure that applies to all proposed research on human subjects to ensure it is conducted ethically and that participants are properly safeguarded. Springer asked Bailey to “provide details regarding the protocol you submitted to your IRB for evaluation and any relevant documentation regarding the evaluation process.”

Two weeks later, on May 5, an open letter addressed to both the IASR and Springer Nature was published. The letter called for the removal of Kenneth Zucker from his position as editor-in-chief at ASB in response to his decision to publish Diaz and Bailey’s study. The letter had 100 main signatories, including Marci Bowers, president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, and a slew of other academics and medical professionals. All threatened that they would “no longer submit to the journal, act as peer reviewers, or serve in an editorial capacity until Dr Zucker is replaced with an editor who has a demonstrated record of integrity on LGBTQ+ matters and, especially, trans matters.” Specifically, the letter asserted that Zucker’s decision to publish the study “threatens the foundations of research ethics” because the paper’s authors had not obtained IRB ethics approval before data collection and publication.

Bailey promptly addressed the concerns regarding IRB ethics approval. The initial survey data used in the study, he explained, was gathered by the paper’s lead author, the pseudonymous Diaz, who is not affiliated with an institution that requires IRB approval for such a project. Moreover, Northwestern’s IRB representative informed Bailey that, though the IRB could not retrospectively approve the pre-collected data, it would permit him to coauthor a paper on those data provided they were expunged of all personal identifiable information. Significantly, Springer’s own policy explicitly states that in situations where “a study has not been granted ethics committee approval prior to commencing. . . . The decision on whether to proceed to peer review in such cases is at the Editor’s discretion.” Thus, all efforts to undermine the study or discredit Zucker’s decision to review and publish it on the grounds of IRB considerations appeared futile.

[...]

The activist playbook here was simple: get the Diaz and Bailey paper retracted over a technicality, then spin the retraction as an invalidation of the study’s main findings. Such a tactic was successfully used on Littman’s 2018 ROGD paper; the journal’s decision to re-review the paper and issue a “correction” has been repeatedly and disingenuously leveraged by proponents of “gender-affirming” care to declare the study “debunked.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Kids subjected to bizarre nude performance at 'all ages' Oregon State drag event

The drag performance—called “Illegal Drag Show”—openly encouraged LGBTQ members to “Be Gay. Do Crime." An Instagram post advertised the event to "all ages," alongside a note that it would contain "adult themes."

Rebecca Lang, Students for Life President at Oregon State, told Campus Reform on June 6 that “The show consisted of extremely explicit sexual content including sexually provocative performances by men and women in drag and costumes.” She also noted that minors were present at the show.

Multiple eyewitness sources confirmed to Campus Reform that at least four small children were present during the entire show. “Two who were so small two adults had to sit them on their laps so they could see,” Lang said.

In exclusive footage, one performer—who appears to be a biological woman—fully exposes her breasts for the audience by stripping off all upper body clothing. The performer then tries to hold various objects under them, such as a wooden sword and "five pound" weights. Footage shows the individual eventually bringing out a ladder, as a "trans-masc" associate joins her to assist with the "titty weight lifting" feat.

Footage also shows one of the drag queens leading a child on stage to be interviewed in front of the cheering audience. As the performer interviews, the child responds to a question with, "He's a full grown man.".

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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‘Mass immigration and poor integration does not work!’ – Swedish PM calls for strictest migration policy in the EU: Reforms to Sweden’s migration policy will see a stronger focus on language proficiency and an appreciation of the country’s cultural heritage and customs

Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has called for a radical shift in the country’s migration policy, insisting it is too easy for foreign nationals to acquire Swedish citizenship and claiming many newcomers to the country do not understand the Swedish language or its laws.

Writing in the Aftonbladet newspaper on Tuesday to mark the National Day of Sweden, the leader of the center-right Moderate Party said that his government would ensure new arrivals have not committed crimes in their home countries, and appreciate and respect Sweden’s cultural heritage.

“Let me be clear: Massive immigration and poor integration just doesn’t work. That is why we are now changing Sweden’s migration policy and making it the strictest in the EU,” Kristersson wrote.

“A ‘no’ to asylum means ‘no’ and you have to leave the country. That should be obvious, but it’s not,” Kristersson noted. “Equally important, a ‘yes’ should mean that you really get involved in Swedish society,” he added.

The Swedish prime minister outlined several aspects of the country’s current migration policy he intends to reform, and said it is “high time for us to build Sweden together and bridge the exclusion.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Parched Earth: ANC introduces Race Quotas for water use

Hot on the heels of newly-gazetted draft Race Quotas designed to ban entire groups of South Africans from employment in certain sectors and provinces, the ANC government has now also gazetted race quotas that will determine access to water on the basis of skin colour.

The draft regulations, published by Minister of Water Senzo Mchunu on 19 May, introduce race quotas for the allocation of water use licences, which are vital to the survival of businesses in sectors such as agriculture, forestry and mining.

Under the ANC’s new water race quotas, applicants that use more than 250 000 m3 or withdraw more than a set minimum amount from streams need to meet strict racial quotas in order to get access to water – the single most critical resource required for life, livestock, agriculture and industry. Depending on the size of their water need, farmers or companies that have not “allocated” between 25% and 75% of its shares to what the regulations call “blacks,” will be denied access to water.

The consequences will be particularly devastating for the farmers who feed us all. 60% of South Africa’s water resources are currently used by agriculture to grow the food we all eat.

Under these water race quotas, livestock will be left to die from thirst because a farmer has the “wrong” skin colour. Fields will go fallow because those who till it are “undesirable.” Hundreds of thousands of workers, from all backgrounds, will lose their jobs as the parched agriculture and mining industries wither and die.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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TikTok teen 'Mizzy' claims 'uproar' over his 'pranks' is because he is a 'black male': A teenage TikTok 'content-creator' who shared videos of himself apparently snatching a dog from a woman, entering strangers' homes and tearing up books in a library reportedly said the "uproar" over his activities is because he is a "black male doing these things."

Bacari Ogarro, 18, made the claim in an interview that was published just hours after it was reported that police had visited his family home in London. Ogarro is believed to go by the name of ‘Mizzy’ on TikTok.

Mizzy's videos have sparked outrage this week - with MPs and ministers among those calling for police action. In one video, 'Mizzy' was seen startling a young family, the mother of whom had been in the front patio sweeping and left their front door open.

The video opened with 'Mizzy' and two friends saying: “Walking into random houses, let’s go”. He then entered the house, attracting the attention of a woman in the front garden, before brazenly entering the hallway while young children were heard shouting: “Daddy”.

Another video uploaded to the Mizzy TikTok account shows him approaching an elderly woman on a park bench. He then picks up dog and runs off with it. And, in another video, 'Mizzy' approaches random young women at Stoke Newington overground station and asks them if they want to die.

Ogarro has previously been arrested over a 'prank' which involved 'leapfrogging' orthodox Jews at a bus stop. He claimed he was held by police for 36 hours over the incident.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Republicans Advance Bill to Defund House Office of Diversity and Inclusion

The House Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee held its markup for the Fiscal Year 2024 bill, which would defund the House Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

The House Office of Diversity and Inclusion was established in the 116th Congress when then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Democrats took over Congress’s lower chamber.

The office seeks to:

… foster diversity among House employing offices, so that the House workforce reflects the diversity of America.

Additionally, the office will develop and conduct a survey to evaluate diversity in House employing offices.

The 116th Congress is the most diverse class of members in the history of Congress. More than one-in-five voting members, 22%, of the House and Senate are racial or ethnic minorities. A key component to ensuring the House celebrates and retains diversity is to promote policies which assist member offices in hiring and retaining a diverse workforce. Congressional staffers make a direct impact on the lives and wellbeing of millions of Americans, these staffers should reflect our rich diversity.

“DEI offices have no place in Congress or the rest of the federal government,” Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) said in a written statement. “I’m glad that Republicans on the Legislative Branch Subcommittee agreed with our letter and defunded House Office of Diversity and Inclusion. It is a good start, and the Anti-Woke Caucus is calling on all Republicans appropriators to follow their lead and defund DEI programs in every federal agency.”

“Congress should not be funding racist and divisive programs that further split our nation only to advance woke, left-wing propaganda,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) said in a written statement.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Student banned from wearing ‘There are only two genders’ T-shirt sues school

A 12-year-old honor roll student filed a First Amendment lawsuit on Wednesday against his middle school for its officials’ refusal to allow him to wear a T-Shirt that states: “There are only two genders.”

Seventh-grader Liam Morrison, in his lawsuit against those who oversee Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Mass., argues that its speech policy is unconstitutional because it’s overly broad, infringes on his First Amendment rights, and allows campus leaders to enforce viewpoint discrimination.

The federal lawsuit repeatedly points out how the school celebrates LGBTQ themes, including during “Pride Month,” when students are encouraged to express themselves, yet Morrison’s belief there are only two sexes, male and female, is deemed a violation of the school’s speech policy.

“This isn’t about a T-shirt; this is about a public school telling a seventh grader that he isn’t allowed to hold a view that differs from the school’s preferred orthodoxy,” said Tyson Langhofer, an attorney with Alliance Defending Freedom, which represents Morrison along with the Massachusetts Family Institute.

Langhofer, in a news release, added: “Public school officials can’t censor Liam’s speech by forcing him to remove a shirt that states a scientific fact. Doing so is a gross violation of the First Amendment.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Muslim students attack LGBTQ sensitivity training in Belgium, spit on LGBT flag, chant ‘Allah Akbar’

A large group of Muslim students attacked an LGBTQIA+ association’s stand promoting diversity in society during the International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia (IDAHOT), with the incident taking place outside the Atlas College of Science and Innovation in the city of Genk in Belgium

During the incident, the two city municipal organizers and one volunteer from the LGBTQIA+ association OGWA (Ook Genks Wel Anders) had to flee, leaving their LGBT flag behind. One of the organizers said that more and more students arrived, and at one point, there were 100 students there.

“They kept yelling, throwing bottles and spitting on the rainbow hearts. We were helped by the teachers on the playground, who supported us until the bell rang. At that point, most of the kids went back to class and calm was restored,” said the unnamed organizer, according to French newspaper Le Figaro.

A video of the incident went viral on social media, which showed the students chanting, “Allah Akbar,” as they crowded the stand.

[...]

Belgium’s Muslim population has propagated extreme violence against gay and lesbian people for years. In 2020, a gang called “Criminal Justice” released numerous videos of their members beating LGBT people and releasing them on Telegram. Participants in the gang called for homosexuals to be slaughtered.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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[Christopher F. Rufo] DEI Swallows Texas A&M: The university has adopted radical politics in order to “dismantle systemic racism.”

The new DEI orthodoxy has been replicated throughout the system, with administrators placing heavy-handed “diversity accountability” requirements on all departments—not only in the humanities but also in hard sciences such as agriculture, engineering, and medicine.

The priorities are both ideological and administrative. A&M’s departments aggressively promote DEI ideology through trainings, programs, lectures, reports, committees, and multimedia, involving hundreds of faculty and staff.

The content of these programs is unadulterated left-wing activism. The School of Dentistry, for example, hosted a guest lecture by University of Texas professor emeritus Robert Jensen, who told the audience that the United States is “appropriately called a white supremacist society.” The School of Veterinary Medicine promoted a “21-Day Anti-Racism Challenge” so that white students could address their “white privilege” and “white fragility.” The College of Geosciences promised to “embed discussion of DEI and anti-racism throughout the undergraduate curriculum.” And within the College of Arts and Science, the sociology department was tasked with implementing a “land acknowledgement statement,” the history department received funding to develop “anti-racist and inclusive pedagogies,” and the English department was asked to develop a “Black Lives Matter special topics course.”

Administratively, the new DEI orthodoxy has resulted in a policy of widespread racial discrimination and segregation. The leadership has made it clear that administrators should pursue “structural diversity,” in which the demographics of the university become “representative of the demographic diversity of the State of Texas.”

To achieve this objective at the faculty level, A&M has created a hiring process that effectively discriminates on the basis of race and sexuality. In its official Handbook for Faculty Search Committee Members, the university has stated that “all members of a search committee should be advocates for diversity” and instructs committees to “take steps that are likely to increase the number of semi-finalists and finalists from groups that are underrepresented in your department,” such as including DEI activists in the hiring process and soliciting DEI statements from potential faculty.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Ex-England athletics chief banned after saying black athletes are good runners ‘because they have to escape burglaries’

Starkey, 62, was accused of making the comment last November at a Sporting Equals Leadership event.

The subsequent investigation found that he had made the alleged comments after being asked about the drop off in participation rates among ethnically diverse athletes.

He is claimed to have responded: "Usually when athletes start to be more specific in events, most black athletes tend to edge towards sprinting and hurdling … the blacks are all good at running because they have to get away from their burglaries."

The case was brought to a disciplinary panel, who found Starkey to have admitted making the comments - albeit "subject to the caveat that there was a gap between the first sentence and the second sentence".

Starkey claimed to have been facing "mental issues challenges" when he made the comments.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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A CRT Mandate? How the University of California could enshrine critical race theory in the state’s public and private high schools

Every high school student in California is familiar with the “A-G requirements” for admission to the University of California. These requirements codify what almost anyone would list if asked to describe the contents of an academically oriented high school curriculum: two years of history or civics, four years of English, three or four years of math, two or three years of science, two or three years of foreign language, a year of art, and a year of an elective. Or at least that’s the current standard. Depending on how a faculty committee of the University of California rules, beginning in 2030, students applying to the University of California as freshmen would also have to have completed a semester of ethnic studies, taught from a theoretically and politically radical perspective.

Since October 2020, the University of California faculty senate Board of Admissions and Relations with Schools (UC BOARS) has been considering a proposal for modifying the entrance requirements from A-G to A-H. The “H” requirement would be one semester of ethnic studies taught concurrently with existing requirements. While that sounds as though high schools could fulfill the requirement by allocating one semester of English to reading the works of, say, Zora Neale Hurston and Amy Tan—or, even more mischievously, by having a semester of social studies based on reading Wesley Yang and John McWhorter—these approaches would not count as ethnic studies, since the proposed requirement mandates not only a substantive focus on ethnically diverse populations but also a specific theoretical and political approach.

The November 5, 2021, UC BOARS memo has to be read in full to appreciate it fully, but its essence is to require a highly contentious approach often referred to as critical race theory (a term that does not appear in the memo, though two of the memos’ authors have “critical race” in their job titles). The memo requires that qualifying high school courses would have to emphasize antiracism and antiracist solidarity. “Claims of objectivity” are to be critically examined and indigenous epistemologies cultivated.

Other requirements mandate more mainstream social-scientific concepts, such as understanding how race is socially constructed, but it is debatable whether that concept is important enough to be a prerequisite for college education, and it is extremely dubious to expect that the perspective implied by the rest of the memo would give this question the nuance that it deserves. The guidelines also require that courses include land acknowledgments, “honor anti-colonial and liberatory movements” locally and globally, associate “present-day ideologies” with imperialism and genocide, and engage in antiracist practice. That is, in order to enter the University of California (where I am a professor), high school students would had to have taken the kind of polemical course or courses that just a few years ago most faculty would have been embarrassed to see offered at the university level as an elective.

The University of California proposal would, in effect, set the curriculum for every high school in California. The California state legislature already mandates ethnic studies for public high schools, but the UC BOARS proposal goes beyond that. (The original version of the state legislature bill had CRT language, as well as support for the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement against Israel, but Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed it on those grounds.) The UC BOARS proposal would effectively mandate this curriculum for private schools as well as public ones. Organizations generally follow the imperatives and hints offered by their cultural and professional environment, and the most relevant actors for private schools are colleges—in particular, college-admissions departments. A California private high school would no sooner offer a curriculum that violated the University of California’s admissions requirements than an aerospace company would manufacture fighter jets that violate federal procurement guidelines or a stockyard would grow beef contrary to McDonald’s standards. If a California parent in the next decade is dissatisfied with the woke curriculum offered in public schools, he would no longer have the option to exit to a private school, unless he finds the rare one willing to forgo sending graduates to colleges in the state university system.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Schools Are Ditching Homework, Deadlines in Favor of ‘Equitable Grading’

In Las Vegas, some teachers and students say the changes have led to gaming the system and a lack of accountability.

“If you go to a job in real life, you can’t pick and choose what tasks you want to do and only do the quote big ones,” said Alyson Henderson, a high-school English teacher there. Lessons drag on now, she said, because students can turn in work until right before grades are due.

“We’re really setting students up for a false sense of reality,” Ms. Henderson said.

Equitable grading still typically awards As through Fs, but the criteria are overhauled. Homework, in-class discussions and other practice work, called formative assessments, are weighted at between 10% and 30%. The bulk of a grade is earned through what are known as summative assessments, such as tests or essays.

Extra credit is banned—no more points for bringing in school supplies—as is grading for behavior, which includes habits such as attendance.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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HBCUs overwhelmingly lack DEI departments, research shows

Amid the push by prominent Democrats and many in academia for the expansion of diversity, equity and inclusion departments in colleges and universities, research shows that the vast majority of historically black colleges and universities do not have them.

Of the 80 HBCUs that The College Fix researched, just 16 have an official DEI department. While many more of those HBCUs have put out statements endorsing DEI initiatives, the vast majority have not established such departments, unlike other prominent universities in their respective states.

It’s “a curious feature of America’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) that they rarely have any diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) administrators or policies on their campuses, beyond what federal law requires,” Boise State University professor and Claremont Institute fellow Scott Yenor argued in an April 12 piece in City Journal.

“Given the importance of diversity to excellence (as we are told), it would seem like HBCUs are suffering badly from a critical lack of it. But HBCUs do not act like they lack diversity, equity, or inclusion, or that they need to act rapidly to make their campuses ‘look like America.’ Quite the contrary,” Yenor wrote.

The Fix’s research found Florida A&M University, a historically black university in Tallahassee, has a statement touting “diversity and inclusion” on its website, but no DEI department. However, mainstream institutions such as Florida State University and Florida International University have offices devoted to DEI on campus.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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School Board cuts music class over ‘white supremacy,’ ‘institutional violence’

School Board Director Scott Clifthorne told concerned parents that music courses aren’t offered equitably across the district. He said some schools provide the courses at times that would require some students to miss “core instruction,” whereas others don’t. Rather than address this reasonable concern, he launched into a monologue to claim music classes are examples of “white supremacy” culture.

“We also know that there are other folks in the community that experience things like a tradition of excellence as exclusionary. And I don’t think that there are just one or two or 10 or 20 people that think that. But that’s not unique to elementary instrumental music. We’re a school district that lives in … is entrenched in … is surrounded by white supremacy culture. And that’s a real thing,” Clifthorne said.

Clifthorne explained that string and wind instrumental music isn’t “intrinsically white supremacist.” But in the next sentence, he said it is, in fact, “white supremacist.”

“There’s nothing about strings or wind instrumental music that is intrinsically white supremacist. However, the ways in which it is and the ways in which all of our institutions, not just schools — local government, state government, churches, or neighborhoods — inculcate and allow white supremacy culture to continue to be propagated and cause significant institutional violence are things that we have to think about carefully as a community. And I think that we have to do that interrogation. And we have to address the ways in which it creates challenges for administering the educational day for our elementary learners while we retain the program,” he said.

What does any of this mean beyond stringing together progressive buzzwords and phrases? Clifthorne did not respond to two requests for comment.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Germany’s green energy delusion has an enormous environmental and economic price tag

For a long time, nuclear energy has been one of the most divisive areas of energy policy in the EU’s supply. The technology offers stable energy supplies and has positive environmental and economic indicators, but the radical Green parties of Europe have worked hard to convince many that these plants should be closed.

This has been achieved mainly in Germany and Austria. Downsizing has begun and further investment has become impossible. Reality, however, has shown that this ideology-driven energy policy comes at a heavy price. It was not by chance that energy policy expert Oliver Hortay recently recalled an estimate by a Berkeley University researcher that the social cost of German nuclear plant closures had already reached $12 billion a year.

The threat of energy shortages in Europe has led to a change in the perception of nuclear power among EU citizens. In Germany, for example, the percentage of people who oppose nuclear power has fallen from 65 to 20 percent. But it seems that the will of the electorate does not matter.

[...]

It is hard to talk about a green transition when carbon emissions are rising. The huge expansion of solar and wind capacity in Germany is no guarantee of security of supply. The country is increasingly using coal instead of Russian gas. In fact, mines that had previously been closed down have had to be reopened, and a German energy company has even started to dismantle a wind farm to allow for the expansion of a neighboring coal mine.

[...]

The Greens went after gas boilers, too. They will now be banned in German homes from 2024. Greens say they cannot meet their climate commitments otherwise. However, it is coal-fired power stations, not residential gas boilers, that threaten climate targets.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Netflix Sued for Depicting Cleopatra as Black

An Egyptian lawyer on Sunday filed a lawsuit over Netflix's upcoming Queen Cleopatra, accusing the streaming service of "erasing the Egyptian identity" for depicting the ruler as a Black woman.

Mahmoud al-Semary submitted the legal complaint with Egypt's public prosecutor following the recent release of a trailer for the docudrama series, which premieres May 10. His filing not only requested legal action be taken against the makers of the show but for Netflix to be shut down in Egypt.

"Most of what Netflix platform displays do not conform to Islamic and societal values and principles, especially Egyptian ones," Mahmoud al-Semary said in his complaint, according to the Egypt Independent.

Adele James, a British actress who is of mixed race, stars as the queen in the upcoming Netflix production. Jada Pinkett Smith serves as executive producer of the series, and she is quoted in promotional material from Netflix as saying, "We don't often get to see or hear stories about Black queens, and that was really important for me, as well as for my daughter, and just for my community to be able to know those stories because there are tons of them!"

However, many historians and experts on ancient Egypt disagree with Pinkett Smith, instead saying Cleopatra was of Macedonian heritage and likely fair-skinned. But not everyone shares this view. Other scholars have argued that the monarch may have had additional ancestries, and her complexion may have not been fair.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Illinois state senator defends Chicago teens' rioting, looting: 'It's a mass protest'

An Illinois state senator defended the Chicago "Teen Takeover" that unfolded Saturday night and left multiple boys shot, claiming it was simply "a mass protest against poverty and segregation."

Robert Peters, who represents parts of Chicago, responded to the chaotic scene that saw hundreds of local youth smashing car windows, jumping on surrounding vehicles, and firing guns in the streets.

Rather than condemn the chaos that left tourists running in fear, Peters suggested it was a "mass protest."

"Since I’m a glutton for punishment and I’m sure I’m gonna get the most unhinged, crime weirdo replies but: I would look at the behavior of young people as a political act and statement," Peters wrote in a Twitter post Sunday. "It’s a mass protest against poverty and segregation. Rest in peace to my mentions."

Hundreds of police officers were called to the scene, arresting nine adults and six juveniles in connection to the riot.

According to Fox 32, a man was taken to the hospital after being beaten by a group of teenagers after they jumped on and smashed his windshield while he and his wife sat inside.

All discussion of it on the local subreddit was quickly jannied, naturally.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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*rolls dice*

Is Bitcoin racist? SEC claims ‘unsophisticated’ minority investors losing large amounts of money: Critics say the SEC is actually racist for labeling minorities as “unsophisticated investors”

United States regulators such as the Securities Exchange Commission have long warned against Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but now there is another reason to crack down on the investments. According to a new letter sent to SEC chairman Gary Gensler, cryptocurrencies have led “unsophisticated investors,” including “many minorities,” to lose significant amounts of money.

“As a result of targeted marketing, a significant amount of these losses have been borne by unsophisticated investors, including many minority investors seeking rapid investment growth without the knowledge or information to assess the risks associated with such investments,” read a letter from the SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee (IAC) to Gensler.

The letter attacks Bitcoin and crypto assets, arguing: “Many investors recently have suffered significant losses as a result of their investments in crypto assets. It is estimated that these losses have been more than $2 trillion In addition to unilaterally appropriating jurisdiction over digital assets.”

[...]

The letter further argues for enhanced oversight of crypto markets, stating the SEC should “aggressively continue to assert authority over crypto assets that are securities and over trading platforms that list or transact in such crypto asset securities.” In addition, the agency should “seek appropriate additional appropriations from Congress where needed to adequately oversee the crypto securities industry.”

Recent reporting has shown that the SEC is launching a crackdown on cryptocurrencies. Politico writes: “The SEC’s campaign for compliance could cement the regulator’s authority over crypto — ushering in a new age of policing in a market that Gensler has called the ‘Wild West.’ It would also assuage concerns from progressive advocates and lawmakers who want the agency to move faster and more aggressively to protect consumers and investors.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Medical Reparations Have Arrived: Changes designed to increase black patients’ access to kidney transplants pervert good medicine and punish white patients to right nonexistent wrongs.

If racism doesn’t explain the discrepancy, what does? The list of reasons is extensive, reflecting disheartening, stubborn problems that physicians and policymakers have long tried to address. One is the advanced age and complex medical conditions of many black patients with diabetes-related kidney failure; many of these patients are also relatively satisfied with dialysis treatments and unwilling to undergo extensive evaluation for transplant suitability. Others include insufficient health literacy, concern about the surgical procedures associated with transplantation, and lack of a support system for post-operative patients—an especially important factor in transplant suitability. Black families are also less likely to supply kidney donors from relatives.

UNOS and OPTN ignore these facts to advance a race-based agenda. They are forcing transplant centers to rework the waitlist for cadaveric kidneys in such a way that favors black patients. The rationale is that the longstanding formula used to estimate kidney function, which was race-conscious and required a second calculation for black patients, was racist.

Yet this second calculation was necessary to produce an accurate value for kidney function in black patients. Without it, the measure would be highly inaccurate, dramatically underestimating kidney function. (Research shows that people of African-American descent tend to have higher levels of muscle mass compared with other population groups, which can affect the levels of creatinine, a waste product produced by muscles, in their blood. Creatinine is used as a marker to estimate kidney function in GFR equations, including the MDRD equation; however, African Americans may have higher creatinine levels even if their kidney function is normal.)

Validated in multiple studies involving hundreds of patients, the old approach was long criticized yet never shown to be inaccurate. Nonetheless, activists demanded a new formula, officially rolled out in 2021. Less accurate than the previous method, the new one lowers kidney-function assessment for black patients to the point that some who did not qualify for placement on the transplant list now meet the requirement. It is a case study in politicized manipulation of data to achieve a predetermined goal.

OPTN isn’t just using this new assessment going forward. It is retroactively applying the new formula—potentially tracing back decades—to previous assessments of kidney function in black patients. Many black patients previously regarded as ineligible for the transplantation waitlist will now be listed, and some will even be moved ahead of others already on the waiting list. How many patients waiting for years for a transplant will be forced to wait still longer? Some estimates say that roughly 70,000 black patients could potentially benefit. That’s a huge number, considering that the current kidney waiting list stands at about 90,000 patients.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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[Ted Cruz] Southern Poverty Law Center’s Self-Serving Double Standard

Two lawyers with the notorious Southern Poverty Law Center have been in the news in recent weeks. One is facing domestic terrorism charges; the other is votes away from a lifetime appointment to the federal bench.

The SPLC fully supports both lawyers: Thomas Webb Jurgens, a suspected Antifa terrorist arrested and charged for his involvement in a violent riot against the police in Atlanta, Ga., and Nancy Abudu, the SPLC’s director for strategic litigation, whose job involves overseeing all of the SPLC’s legal work – including its special litigation related to “hate groups.” Abudu is currently a nominee for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit awaiting a confirmation vote by the U.S. Senate.

Most organizations would, at a minimum, suspend an employee engaged in potentially criminal behavior, as Jurgens was during the violent attack in Atlanta in early March. But not only has the SPLC allowed him to retain his position, it has failed to condemn the horrific violence.

Within hours of Jurgens’ arrest, the SPLC released a joint statement with another radical group, the National Lawyers Guild. Instead of condemning the violence against police officers that took place, the SPLC denounced Jurgens’ arrest as “part of ongoing state repression and violence” and urged the “de-escalation of violence … against Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities.” The statement is ironic, given that Jurgens was engaged in terroristic and violent behavior toward those who risk their lives daily for public safety, including those from black, brown, and indigenous communities.

Unfortunately, such egregious and violence-inducing actions are par for the course when it comes to the SPLC, which has a long track record of smearing its political opponents and putting them in harm’s way. In 2012, a gunman entered the Washington, D.C., headquarters of the conservative Family Research Council looking to kill as many FRC employees as possible, and shot a security guard. The gunman later told the FBI that he had targeted the Family Research Council because the SPLC had labeled it a “hate group.” Similarly, the gunman who opened fire on Republican lawmakers and nearly killed now-House Majority Leader Steve Scalise in 2017 also followed the SPLC’s work.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Furious viewers complain en masse about new UK TV show with adult men stripping naked for children

A British television show aiming to promote body positivity showed adult men stripping naked in front of children. The program has been the subject of hundreds of complaints to the U.K.’s communications watchdog following the airing of its first episode last Tuesday.

“Naked Education,” which is broadcast on Channel 4, features adults who take their clothes off in front of underage teenagers who are then required to give feedback on the body parts they see in front of them.

“I’ve never seen, like, a full, naked man before,” one teenager told producers during the first episode.

“It’s just a lot to process. Naked men in real life. We’ve never really seen it,” added another young girl after four adult men stood in front of the group of children and dropped their bathrobes to bare all.

Its host, Anna Richardson, said ahead of the first episode last week, “If you’re curious about your body, and your life’s journey (whatever that may be), then tune in.” She described the program as “educational, emotional, joyous.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Feds create race, gender speech codes for scientists to direct report language

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal and science technology office, has made race and gender speech codes for its scientists a top priority.

The guidance, for example, tells federal employees not to use the words "blacklist" or "whitelist" because of the racial connotations and also cautions against "using terms that assign a gender to inanimate objects, such as male/female connectors."

The NIST is a little-known government agency tasked with helping the U.S., among other things, stay technologically ahead of rivals like China. Congress appropriated about $1.65 billion for the group for 2023.

Lawmakers recently hammered the Pentagon for investing heavily in critical race theory and gender ideology. The National Institutes of Health has done so as well, along with other agencies.

The NIST is one of many federal agencies putting its attention and taxpayer funds into these efforts as it struggles to keep pace with its key mission. The NIST sparked controversy for its "Inclusive Language Guidance," which tells scientists which words or phrases they can or cannot use in reports.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Conservative Social Media Influencer Douglass Mackey Convicted of Election Interference

Conservative social media influencer Douglass Mackey, also known as Ricky Vaughn, was convicted of election interference in the 2016 presidential race after posting a satirical meme on Twitter.

Mackey, who is being accused of trying to “deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote,” was convicted on Friday by a federal jury in Brooklyn of the charge of “Conspiracy Against Rights,” the federal government announced.

The conservative meme maker is now facing a maximum of 10 years in prison.

“Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election,” United States Attorney Breon Peace said on Friday.

“Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote,” Peace added.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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First Arabic street sign in Germany vandalized within days of installation

The sign, which had recently been praised by local Islamic associations and the Green Party as a symbol of diversity, was covered up by stickers renaming it Karl-Martell-Straße, a nod to the Frankish leader often portrayed as the savior of Christian Europe from a full-scale Islamic invasion by the Umayyad Caliphate back in the eighth century.

A sticker depicting a horsed knight driving people away with a lance was also used to cover up the Arabic-language sign.

Revolte Rheinland, a right-wing group has claimed responsibility for the vandalism. In a social media post on Telegram, they wrote: “So that this distortion of history and gesture of submission does not go unanswered, activists not only covered the sign of shame last night, but also renamed the entire street after a great European who, almost 1,300 years ago stopped the Islamic land grab.”

In addition to the stickers, the activist group attached a poster to the street sign which read: “Remigration over submission.”

After its praise for Charles Martel, the group wrote: “But unlike then, this time there is no need for an armed invasion. Our politicians have willingly given up our cities. This street sign is symbolic of this process of submission, which is why we renamed it after a great European who we need more than ever today. Then the lance, today the deportation aircraft.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Theologian fired, called ‘terrorist’ by Bible college for tweet against homosexuality

Aaron Edwards, a theologian at Cliff College in England, was removed from his position after sending the tweet, Fox News reported.

“Homosexuality is invading the church. Evangelicals no longer see the severity of this [because] they’re busy apologizing for their apparently barbaric homophobia, whether or not it’s true,” Edwards posted to Twitter in February.

“…If sin is no longer sin, we no longer need a Saviour,” he added in the post.

According to Edwards, he was told to take down the tweet by Cliff College, but refused, he said in an interview with CBN News on March 21.

Instead, Edwards said he doubled down, noting that he’s been “speaking about” the issue “for the past few years.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Long Island University suspends American Club for declaring men are not women

On March 13, the American Club at Long Island University (LIU) was notified via email that it had been suspended pending the outcome of an investigation being conducted by the university.

Campus Reform obtained access to this notice, which was addressed to LIU American Club President Matthew Cairo, who is also a Campus Reform Correspondent.

The notice begins, “It has come to our [the University’s] attention that at least four Instagram stories connected to International Women’s Day were shared from the liu_americanclub account on or around March 8, 2023," claiming that the stories constitute "potential violations of the LIU Student Code of Conduct and LIU Internet and Social Media Policy." The notice goes on to cite the school's "verbal or physical harassment" policy.

As a result, the notice states that "all American Club operations and activities are suspended on and off-campus pending the outcome of an investigation. Members of your organization may not represent the American Club as a recognized organization in any way, including on social media platforms, until otherwise directed.”

The American Club is a joint university organization composed of the Turning Point USA, Young America’s Foundation, Young Americans for Liberty, and Students for Life chapters at LIU.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Polish pro-life activist sentenced and fined for report that tied homosexuality to pedophilia and HIV: Mariusz Dzierżawski lamented the fact that a court in Gdansk had ruled to be slander what he considers to be medical warnings about homosexuality

Mariusz Dzierżąwski, a member of the board of the Right to Life foundation, was sentenced on Wednesday by a court in Gdańsk to one year of community service and a fine of 15,000 Polish złoty (€3,204).

The case involved a publicity campaign by the foundation against the WHO guidelines on LGBT sex education. The publicity included details concerning HIV infections and scientific research on the relationship between homosexuality and pedophilia. According to the court judgment, public information on these matters represented slander against LGBT activists.

The indictment, which covers three issues, was the product of accusations against the Right to Life foundation by the Tolerado association. First, the Right To Life foundation was accused of publishing scientific data alleging that homosexuals were more likely to commit acts of pedophilia. Second, the foundation allegedly published information that homosexuals were more likely to be infected with HIV. Third, the foundation accused LGBT campaigners of engaging in pro-LGBT sex education that encouraged children to engage in homosexual practices.

The court accepted the assertion of the LGBT activists that the foundation’s publications were in effect defamation against people of a homosexual orientation, lowering their reputation and thereby affecting their educational activities. The court sentenced Mariusz Dzierżawski, the board member responsible for the campaign, to one year’s community service and a fine of 15,000 Polish złoty (€3,204).

Commenting on the outcome of the court case, Dzierżawski said that “today’s verdict is reminiscent of mechanisms in totalitarian times” and represents nothing less than preemptive censorship with the assistance of fines and constraints on the freedom to publish facts. He said the foundation would not allow itself to be cowed by such “judicial persecution,” that it would appeal against this verdict and would continue its information campaigns against pedophilia. The information the foundation had put into the public domain was scientific data about the consequences of homosexual practices and the LGBT lobby’s designs with regard to sex education of children, he added.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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‘Woke’ DOD official Kelisa Wing reassigned after GOP highlights anti-white tweets

Self-described “woke” Defense Department schools official Kelisa Wing, whose anti-white social media comments garnered national attention last fall, has been reassigned to an unrelated role, The Post has learned.

The Defense Department in October launched a 30-day review of Wing — the now-former education activity chief diversity equity and inclusion officer — after her Twitter posts with disparaging comments about white people resurfaced.

“I’m so exhausted at these white folx in these [professional development] sessions this lady actually had the CAUdacity to say black people can be racist too,” she wrote in one post from June 2020, using a portmanteau for “Caucasian audacity.”

While Wing’s job change came after the DoD completed its review, Undersecretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness Gilbert Cisneros Jr. said it took place not as a “disciplinary action” but rather “as part of a headquarters restructuring.”

But at a House Military Personnel Subcommittee hearing on the impacts of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” in the DoD and military, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said she was skeptical that the job change was made purely for reorganizational reasons.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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French mayor in support of new asylum center in seaside town has his house burned down: Initial findings suggest a Molotov cocktail could have started the blaze that left the mayor’s house and cars in ruins

The house of a left-wing mayor in France, who supports a controversial plan to establish an asylum center in the small seaside town of Saint-Brevin-les-Pins, has been burned down in a suspected arson attack.

Police were called to the residence of Yannick Morez early on Wednesday morning after his home and two vehicles were destroyed in the blaze.

The left-wing mayor, who described the attack as “cowardly and unacceptable,” expressed his gratitude to neighbors for alerting him to the fire, which he said could have had “more dramatic consequences.”

An initial investigation suggested the fire was not accidental, and Sylvie Canovas-Lagarde, the prosecutor for Saint-Nazaire, confirmed a criminal inquiry was now underway after fire experts ruled the attack to be subject to the “intervention of third parties.”

Investigative sources cited by the Ouest France news outlet suggested the fire could have been started by a Molotov cocktail.

Insert Sam Hyde quote here.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Kent Police is slammed for poster classifying rapes as non-emergency crimes that should be reported online

Kent Police is facing an outcry after Internet users shared images of a poster displayed in its station window in Maidstone that classed rape and sexual assault as 'non-emergency' crimes.

The poster - a black-and-white A4 printout - told passers-by how 'non-emergency enquiries' can be shared with the police force via an online form, and listed rape and sexual assault in the same category as anti-social behaviour, fraud and road traffic incidents.

A snap of the poster has been circulated on social media, with one user writing a message to Kent Police which read: 'This just goes to show how done out this country is getting!

'How can you downplay such a horrific and violent crime?

'I get it's hard to prove but going about it like this ain't the way. Absolute tools.'

TFW you can't report being raped because the website is down.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Praying HS football coach awarded almost $2 million, job back in settlement

Remember the Washington State high school assistant football coach who was fired for praying at midfield at the end of his team’s games?

As a result of the U.S. Supreme Court siding with coach Joe Kennedy in August (via a 6-3 vote), the Bremerton School District has agreed to pay him $1.75 million … and give him his job back.

In a March 17 announcement, the district’s board announced it had agreed to the settlement, all the while claiming in a not-so roundabout way that it had acted legally appropriately all along.

[...]

The board’s announcement notwithstanding, the SCOTUS had said in its ruling that students “were not required to participate in Kennedy’s prayer sessions, and the prayers were not publicly broadcast.”

As noted by The College Fix back in August of 2016, Coach Kennedy “saw no reason” to comply with Bremerton High School’s demands that he stop praying. He never had a complaint about his post-game 30-second prayer at the 50-yard line in seven years, and students were joining him of their own free will.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Student denied mental health access for being White

University of South Florida (USF) student Andrew Davis was denied access to the mental health help he sought because he was not part of the black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) community, exclusive emails and documentation obtained by Campus Reform show.

After noticing that none of the "Understanding Self and Others" (USO) group therapy meetings worked with his schedule, Davis asked USF’s counseling center on Oct. 3 of 2022 if he could instead attend the BIPOC meeting since this worked with his schedule.

In the email sent to the counseling center, Davis inquired, “I am interested in attending a USO group meeting after completing the pre-group appointment but the only day/time that works for me is Wednesdays during the BIPOC students-only group. I am not a BIPOC student but was wondering if I would still be able to attend?”

“Unfortunately, we do need to keep this space specific to BIPOC folks ... Hopefully you’ll be able to catch another one either during Winter break and/or next semester," the USF Counseling Center responded to Davis.

After receiving this response, Davis filed a complaint with USF'S Office of Compliance & Ethics on Oct. 5. It was not until Feb. 8 of this year, however, that Davis received a response.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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[Christopher F. Rufo] Shut Down Activist Academic Departments: Lawmakers have every right to defund ideologically captured disciplines in public universities.

For conservatives, the first step in reforming the universities is to expose the abuse of “academic freedom,” which has been used as a defense of intellectual license, and to propose a clear policy that any academic departments that pursue activism instead of scholarship will lose their taxpayer funding. Administrators, faculty, and students can advance left-wing ideology in their private capacity, but the First Amendment is not an entitlement to state support and taxpayer subsidies. Lawmakers are well within their rights to demand that public universities focus on rigorous academic work over partisan polemics with a scholarly veneer. Any program that violates this compact will be abolished.

What would shutting down activist academic departments look like in practice? Here, we don’t need to speculate; we can look to the past as a guide. Some of America’s most prestigious universities have shut down academic departments that strayed too far from their mission. Two case studies are particularly notable: the decision by the University of California, Berkeley, to shut down its criminology department in 1974 and the University of Chicago’s decision to close its education department in 1998.

At Berkeley, the story is familiar. In the late 1960s, university officials capitulated to activist faculty associated with the Black Panther Party and left-wing revolutionary movements. They assented to the transformation of the criminology school, which had previously trained law-enforcement officials in the latest management techniques, into a hub for “radical criminology,” which advocated defunding traditional police departments and fomenting left-wing “prison action.”

As the department grew more radical, Berkeley administrators pushed back. First, they fired four activist assistant professors who had undermined the university’s mission. Then, in 1974, Chancellor Albert Bowker shut down the entire School of Criminology, ignoring large-scale student demonstrations, which supporters described as “militant and spirited.”

Bowker justified the closure by citing the need to make budget cuts due to an economic recession, but the political subtext was clear: the radical criminologists had degraded the university’s scholarly mission. After the chancellor’s announcement, students occupied an administrative building, but Bowker sent in law enforcement, armed with shotguns and grenade launchers, and the students were removed.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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‘A Bankrupt Concept of Math’: Some Educators Argue Calculus Should Be Dethroned

Successful completion of high school calculus has long been an unofficial must-have for those seeking admission to the nation’s top colleges: The course has, for decades, served as a signal to admissions officers that a student’s coursework has been robust.

But some in education say it’s time to reconsider this de facto requirement: Many schools — particularly those serving large numbers of Black, Hispanic or low-income students — don’t offer the course. And even when they do, it’s of dubious value, they say.

High school calculus is a complete waste of time and a form of torture,” said Alan Garfinkel, professor of integrative biology and physiology and medicine at UCLA. “The view … that math is a bunch of symbolic expressions, and you bang on them with tricks to get other symbolic expressions, is a bankrupt concept of math, dating from the 19th century.”

The course, as it’s often taught at the high school level, is inaccessible and often perceived as irrelevant to students’ interests, critics say. Just 16% of high school graduates earned credit for calculus in 2019, according to data culled by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a statistic no doubt shaped by its unavailability.

Only 52% of schools with high student of color enrollment offered the course in 2017-18 compared to 76% of schools with low student of color enrollment, according to a 2021 report from the Learning Policy Institute.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Science on Stolen Land

The White House’s latest executive order “on Further Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through The Federal Government” opened with a healthy dose of self-congratulation: “My administration,” the order beamed, “has embedded a focus on equity into the fabric of Federal policymaking.” For once, the Biden administration has good reason to boast. While it may have come at the expense of skyrocketing costs of living, an open border, rising crime, and an across-the-board acceleration of national decline, the president’s maniacal obsession with boutique campus ideological causes — often at the expense of quality and competence — has yielded its own results.

Take one little-noticed reform at the National Science Foundation (NSF): Pursuant to Biden’s first-ever executive order, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government,” the NSF dutifully published an “Equity Action Plan Summary,” detailing its eagerness “to encourage the full participation of all Americans and to remove barriers to their success.” What that meant, among other things, was mandating “Indigenous community acknowledgments” — also known as “land acknowledgments” — “as part of its programmatic agreements (PA) for some of its astronomical facilities,” requiring scientists who use specific sites to include said acknowledgments in their published research. In addition, NSF has apparently begun “developing a land acknowledgment statement that could be used at the outset of NSF meetings and conferences” in general. The plan assures readers that “NSF’s Tribal Consultation and Engagement Working Group (TCE) will track progress” by ensuring that “the land acknowledgment statement is increasingly used in NSF meetings and conferences.”

If you’re not familiar with Indigenous land acknowledgments, they’re one of the latest and most absurd iterations of the kinds of self-flagellation rituals that Americans are now expected to subject themselves to on a routine basis. The most innocuous description is simply that events, conferences, meetings and so on are expected to begin their proceedings with an acknowledgment of the history and cultural heritage of the Native American people who are indigenous to the region. But in practice, it’s much more of an accusation than a celebration. The Native Governance Center’s “Guide to Indigenous Land Acknowledgment” picks an apt quote from Northwestern University to describe the ritual’s premise: “It is important to understand the longstanding history that has brought you to reside on the land, and to seek to understand your place within that history. Land acknowledgements do not exist in a past tense, or historical context: colonialism is a current ongoing process, and we need to build our mindfulness of our present participation.” (“Use appropriate language,” the Native Governance Center guide urges readers. “Don’t sugarcoat the past. Use terms like genocide, ethnic cleansing, stolen land, and forced removal to reflect actions taken by colonizers”).

Unsurprisingly, given the painfully obvious purpose of the whole affair, land acknowledgments often include radical challenges to the basic legitimacy of the American nation itself — it’s typical to hear compliant proceedings begin with reference to the fact that “we are standing on stolen land,” with appropriately conciliatory noises about “genocide,” “white supremacy,” “settler-colonialism,” and so on. One of NSF’s graduate research fellows even compiled a handy list of “telescopes on stolen land,” informing readers that “it is abundantly clear that modern astronomy is the product of settler colonialism.”

NSF itself, in keeping with its new equity agenda, now mandates land acknowledgments for researchers publishing work “on data collected in whole or in part” from a set of telescopes located on Native Hawaiian land. (Although it’s not clear if the specific “stolen land” clause has made its way into the official program agreement yet.) One of those, the Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope — the largest solar telescope in the world — apparently kicked off its inauguration with “an opening pule (prayer) in accordance with Hawaiian cultural protocol.” Another, NSF’s NOIRLab, trumpets its “critical and proactive work in serving as stewards of the aina (land) and lani (sky),” and “deeply recognizes [the] reverence” of the land’s “native Hawaiian community.” In addition, the NSF outpost adds, “a strong emphasis on the attentiveness of the aina and preserving the dark lani is of paramount importance to NOIRLab.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Another claim of racist slurs from fans falls apart

The latest allegation that college sports fans used racist language fell apart after Pennsylvania State University officials investigated the claims.

Penn State officials recently announced that allegations that its fans had directed racist language at Rutgers University basketball players were without merit.

Some fans did use vulgar language, but none used racist slurs, an investigation revealed. The claims were made against the “Legion of Blue,” which is the fan student section for men’s basketball games at PSU.

The university announced:

Further investigation into reported fan behavior at the Penn State versus Rutgers basketball game on [Feb. 26] has found that no apparent racial slurs were used by Penn State fans. A deeper look into the matter today included conversations with Rutgers athletic director and staff, reports from University police officers at the event, and other game staff. Information was inaccurately conveyed to the Legion of Blue student group, which supports Penn State men’s basketball, and has not been found to be true.

“[Intercollegiate Athletes] is aware that some fans were using vulgar language directed toward Rutgers players and fans, and we are disappointed as it does not represent Penn State values, appropriate fan conduct, or the Happy Valley,” the university further stated. “Hospitality for which we are known. Fan behavior is important to the experience of all teams and visitors to Penn State and our goal is to create an environment that is competitive, but welcoming.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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R.L. Stine Accuses Publisher of Censoring Goosebumps Books without Permission

Certain titles from the Goosebumps anthology, second only to the Harry Potter books in terms of popularity, have been re-released as sanitized e-books by Scholastic, a new report from The Times has revealed. The move comes after huge controversy enveloped the British publisher of Roald Dahl’s books for hundreds of similar changes, leading the publisher to agree to continue printing the original versions alongside the new bowdlerized editions.

While The Times originally claimed Stine, 79, had agreed to the changes, the author denied he had ever approved them on Monday afternoon.

“I’ve never changed a word in Goosebumps. Any changes were never shown to me,” Stine explained on Twitter.

One Goosebumps character is now “cheerful” instead of “plump.” Elsewhere the word “crazy” has been changed to “silly.” And a character who dressed as a “dark and stormy night” for Halloween now no longer wears black face paint.

More than a hundred edits have been made to the books, which were first published in the 1990s and sold four million copies a month at the height of their success.

Not what he meant by "you choose the scare", I imagine.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Texas A&M system bans DEI statements

Amidst the nationwide chorus to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in education, the Texas A&M University System (TAMUS) announced on Mar. 2 that it will ban diversity statements from admissions and hiring.

The announcement from TAMUS Chancellor John Sharp follows a Feb. 6 directive from Gov. Greg Abbott. A memo from Abbott’s chief of staff, obtained by The Texas Tribune, told the state’s public colleges and universities to use merit, not DEI, in its considerations.

“We believe serving Texas can be accomplished best by recruiting the brightest and most qualified students, faculty and staff,” Sharp states in the TAMUS announcement.

Sharp also states, "No university or agency in the A&M System will admit any student, nor hire any employee based on any factor other than merit."

TAMUS reviewed its admissions and hiring procedures in response to Abbott’s directive. Job applications, according to the announcement, should only include “a cover letter, curriculum vitae, statements about research and teaching philosophies, and professional references.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Sweden increases money offered to migrants to voluntarily go home: Sweden is now looking to follow in the footsteps of Denmark, which has enticed hundreds of migrants home with financial incentives

Once seen as the most accepting country in the world for refugees, the right-wing Swedish government, elected on a promise to curb immigration, is now enacting reforms to encourage migrants to return to their country of origin.

To accomplish this, the government in Stockholm, together with the Swedish Democrats who support the coalition but are not formally part of the government, is increasing the financial support migrants can receive if they return home voluntarily.

“We are targeting the large number of groups that arrived in the past decades and failed to integrate,” said the migration minister of the Moderate Party, Maria Malmer, to Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter.

Malmer said that they will make sure that everyone who wants support to leave Sweden permanently will get the financial means to make this possible.

In the Scandinavian country, it was already possible for migrants to apply for repatriation support if they decided to return to their home country. However, the program was not popular. In the last 10 years, a total of only 46 immigrants asked the immigration office for money to return to their country of origin, and eight of them have since returned to Sweden.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Cat ears-wearing ‘neurodivergent’ school board member: Hiring Christian teachers is ‘not safe’

According to a Fox News report, Tamillia Valenzuela of the Washington Elementary School District Governing Board allegedly “blasted” the district’s now-dissolved years-long relationship with Arizona Christian University in part due to the institution’s belief in Jesus Christ and how such could affect the LGBTQ community.

“While I full-heartedly believe in the religious freedom and people being able to practice whatever faith that they have, I had some concerns regarding looking at this particular institution,” Valenzuela (pictured) said. “My concerns […] when I go to Arizona Christian University’s website, [they are] ‘committed to Jesus Christ, accomplishing his will and advancements on earth as in Heaven.’”

These include things such as “the centrality of family, traditional sexual morality, and lifelong marriage between one man and one woman.”

Washington Elementary’s Governing Board late last month voted unanimously to break off its relationship with ACU. Over 100 ACU student teachers had been placed in district schools in the last five years, AZFamily reports.

Valenzuela believes ACU student teachers might “influence” students and others to become “Biblically-minded.” She asked “How does that hold space for our members of the LGBT community? How does that space for people who think differently and do not have the same beliefs?”

🤡🌎

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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[Matthew Yglesias] Why are young liberals so depressed? There's a neglected dimension beyond gender in America's troubled youth

Social media is good at generating polarization, and some of the left-inflected pushback has essentially argued that maybe teens aren’t depressed because of phones but because, in Taylor Lorenz’s words, “we’re living in a late stage capitalist hellscape during an ongoing deadly pandemic w record wealth inequality, 0 social safety net/job security, as climate change cooks the world.” Noah Smith and Eric Levitz both wrote good articles questioning the veracity of that doomer narrative, and Michelle Goldberg did an excellent piece trying to reframe the issue, arguing correctly that “the idea that unaccountable corporate behemoths are harming kids with their products shouldn’t be a hard one for liberals to accept, even if figures like Hawley believe it as well.”

But I want to talk about something Goldberg mentions but doesn’t focus on: a 2021 paper by Catherine Gimbrone, Lisa Bates, Seth Prins, and Katherine Keyes titled “The politics of depression: Diverging trends in internalizing symptoms among US adolescents by political beliefs.” The CDC survey doesn’t ask teens about their political beliefs, but Gimbrone et. al. find not only divergence by gender, but divergence by political ideology. Breaking things down by gender and ideology, they find that liberal girls have the highest increase in depressive affect and conservative boys have the least. But liberal boys are more depressed than conservative girls, suggesting an important independent role for political ideology.

I think the discussion around gender and the role of social media is an important one. But I also don’t believe that liberal boys are experiencing more depression than conservative girls because they are disproportionately hung up on Instagram-induced body image issues — I think there’s also something specific to politics going on.

Some of it might be selection effect, with progressive politics becoming a more congenial home for people who are miserable. But I think some of it is poor behavior by adult progressives, many of whom now valorize depressive affect as a sign of political commitment. The thing about depression, though, is that it’s bad. Separate from the Smith/Levitz project of arguing about recent political trends, I think we need some kind of society-level cognitive behavioral therapy to convince people that whatever it is they are worried about, depression is not the answer. Because it never is.

Three of the politics of depression paper’s authors are also co-authors on a newer paper arguing that “as efforts to increase policing and roll back criminal legal system reforms in major U.S. cities rise, the collateral consequences of increased criminalization remain critical to document” and looking at the idea that “criminalization may contribute to racial disparities in mental health.” Like most academics, they seem to be quite left-wing. If there were more Republicans working as professors, we’d probably balance out this line of inquiry with papers asking whether rising levels of shootings and homicides also contribute to racial disparities in mental health.2 But there aren't. So even when all the research being done is good, we primarily see research looking at the questions that progressives think are interesting.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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BDSM advocate pairs LGBT teens with older ‘mentor’ through University of Regina

A new program at the University of Regina aims to ensure that teens and young adults struggling with gender dysphoria have an older, transgender mentor to assist them in exploring their sexuality.

The program at the public university is being run by a male named Cat Haines who presents himself as a woman. Haines graduated from the university.

[...]

“Cat Haines says she did not see many trans people when she was growing up in Regina,” CBC reported. “Now she is starting Into the Streets, a mentorship program for trans feminine youth, to help the next generation.”

“Local activists are facilitating this peer mentorship program with administrative and fiscal support from Ivy+ Dean Consulting and UR Pride Centre for Sexuality and Gender Diversity,” the publication reported. “It will pair up to five youth aged 15 to 25 with experienced mentors.”

[...]

“I am a genderqueer trans girl, dyke, and academic/artist weirdo,” Haines explains on his website. “My academic research focuses on transmisogyny, and my Master’s thesis Transmisogyny and the Abjection of Girlcock looks at how trans women are cast as dangerous and disgusting intruders in (cissexist) feminist and lesbian spaces, theory, and media.”

I could swear there was a word this kind of thing, where you take vulnerable and impressionable children and put them in the care of deranged perverts... gluing? Rooming? Pruning? Someone help me out here, it's on the tip of my tongue.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Bill that could let Buckhead split from Atlanta advances

Despite the step forward, prospects remain uncertain for the measures, which are bitterly opposed by Atlanta’s business community and the city’s overwhelmingly Democratic lawmakers. If they succeed, residents would vote on forming a new city in a referendum.

In a statement, city spokesperson Michael Smith said Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens “is disappointed by the committee’s vote to advance this short-sighted legislation,” saying it would have “disastrous consequences” and that the city is making progress on reducing crime and improving services.

Some residents of the city’s whitest, most affluent area are trying to pull out of Atlanta and form Buckhead City, saying Atlanta isn’t doing enough to control crime and that affluent Buckhead residents aren’t getting their money’s worth from municipal services.

Kelly Rodts, a Buckhead City supporter, told the committee last week that “Atlanta taxes us to the nines” but that city police have failed to stop both petty and violent crime.

“This violence has reached a tipping point, and that is why we are all here today,” Rodts said. “Buckhead is a target. We’re a target for criminals in the city, and Atlanta has not been able to protect us.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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VMI alumni work to disrupt alumni donations to force school to end DEI programs

The activists in recent months upped their efforts by seeking to redirect the institute’s alumni fundraising in an effort to persuade campus leaders to pull back on critical race theory policies and programs.

“The only way you can influence them is by hurting their pocketbook,” alumnus Gene Rice told The College Fix in an interview.

In a Jan. 23 letter to their fellow “Brother Rats of the great VMI Class of ’74,” concerned alumni requested that for their 50th reunion class gift, they do not donate to VMI Alumni Agencies but instead to the Cadet Foundation.

“All contributions directed to the Cadet Foundation would be used to fund programs and projects that directly benefit cadets but not those that would impose divisive changes derived from political agendas and policies on the Corps, Ratline and Honor System,” the letter stated.

“…We desire to take a stand and save what is left of the VMI experience,” the letter added. “… DO NOT fund programs and policies that force changes on the Corps, Ratline, and Honor system, resulting from political agendas and ideologies such as CRT, a divisive DEI Program, and others.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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When a Wakefield boy brought a Koran to school: A British schoolboy has been suspended and threatened for committing blasphemy. What century is this?

Here’s what happened, according to a local imam, a Wakefield councillor, the school’s headteacher and a policeman. All of whom addressed a meeting at the local mosque on Friday night, and all of whom should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves. Last Wednesday, a student (who happens to be autistic) reportedly brought a copy of the Koran into school on a dare – his forfeit for losing a game of Call of Duty with his mates. On the school tennis court, they read aloud from it then walked back inside the school, where another kid knocked it out of their hands and on to the floor. For this, the four students were suspended, following a quick investigation. The police – naturally – were then called in. At the meeting on Friday, a policeman, introduced as chief inspector Andy Thornton, confirmed that the students’ treatment of the book has been recorded as a ‘hate incident’. This is despite the fact that the school has ruled that the students had ‘no malicious intent’. ‘[I]f more consequences have to be followed, that will be the case’, Tudor Griffiths, the school’s headteacher, told those gathered at the mosque – keen to reassure them that he took the issue seriously.

Unbelievably, it gets worse. While rumours swirled that the book had been burnt and spat on – in truth, it was barely damaged – the autistic boy at the centre of it all began to receive death threats. Yes, death threats – which, unlike disrespecting holy books, are actually (and legitimately) a criminal matter in the United Kingdom. But the students who issued these threats are off the hook. Akef Akbar, a councillor for Wakefield East, made this clear at the Friday meeting, sat next to the mother of the autistic student. ‘To her credit’, Akbar said, ‘she understands the situation and has advised the police that she does not want any of these children [who sent threats to her son] to be prosecuted, and she only asks that her son is not harmed’. ‘He’s absolutely petrified’, the mother, who is unnamed, told the meeting later on: ‘But I don’t want anybody to be prosecuted because of the stupidity of my son and his friends.’

This is chilling. This mother was effectively begging for her son’s safety, while the school and police were apparently more concerned about protecting religious bigots’ hurt feelings. Indeed, the response of the school and police runs the risk of contributing to the threat posed to these boys. By suspending those students and logging their behaviour as a ‘hate incident’, the school and police are effectively saying that the mob has a point – that the boys should be punished for ‘disrespecting’ Islam’s holy book. You’d be forgiven for thinking that Wakefield had become an Islamic theocracy overnight. This is blasphemy law by the backdoor – and by caving in to mob intolerance the authorities have done nothing to remove the target from these boys’ backs.

[...]

Here’s the thing. The more we capitulate to religious bigotry the more we inflame it. If Britain wants to be a liberal, democratic and harmonious country we cannot have a situation where a religion – any religion – is forcefielded from criticism, where teachers or students or anyone else is intimidated and punished for defying religious diktat. Giving in to this intolerance will only sustain, not defuse, the threat of reprisals in the long-term. And even where this intolerance doesn’t spill over into threats and violence, it will still curtail free speech for everyone, including liberal Muslims and those from minority Muslim sects. Remember the cancellation of The Lady of Heaven – the supposedly blasphemous film shut down last summer by mobs of protesters? That was a Shia-made film, pulled from UK cinemas at the behest of Sunnis. Sticking up for the right to blaspheme protects everyone – including believers.

This shameful episode in Wakefield should be a wake-up call. We must face down the religious intolerance that has been curdling in our midst. Right now, we are enabling it, due to a mix of cowardice and a bizarre new conviction that it is racist to offend religious conservatives. First a teacher was hounded out of his school over blasphemous cartoons, now children are being threatened for scuffing a holy book. Now would be a great time for our supposedly liberal elites to rediscover their principles. But I fear it will take something much worse to pry their eyes open.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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America’s Shadow Self: Ruinous policies have transformed California from a symbol of progress to a cautionary tale for the nation.

But such sensible reforms face fierce opposition from the ideologically extreme nonprofit organizations and public-sector unions that dominate California politics. Homeless-services providers make political donations to the same politicians who give them billions in contracts to help the homeless, creating a homeless-industrial complex that discourages real change. And the reason that California’s children had to stay home when other children went back to school during the pandemic, for instance, is the outsize influence of the teachers’ union. After former state senate president Gloria Romero passed a “parent trigger” law, giving parents the right to take over underperforming schools, in 2010, the California Teachers Association spent millions on ads to tank her bid for schools superintendent, derailing her political career in the process. Democratic state legislators, she recalled later, “always wanted to know where’s CTA” because that’s “their sugar daddy.”

Conflicts of interest aside, the leaders of these organizations tend to be motivated more by power than by money. Teachers’ union officials “walk around [in Sacramento] like they’re God,” observed Romero. A nonprofit activist named Jennifer Friedenbach, who runs the Coalition on Homelessness, has accumulated so much power in San Francisco through sheer ideological influence, manipulation of language, and bullying that she effectively controls hundreds of millions of the city’s budget spent on homelessness. L.A. County’s advocate-dominated Board of Supervisors controls both the city’s and the county’s spending on mental health and education and is thus more powerful than state legislators.

Or consider environmental nonprofits. Groups like the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council, and Climate Works often dictate what infrastructure can get built and combine pro-scarcity environmentalism with woke identity politics. For half a century, these neo-Malthusians have blocked new housing, power plants, and water storage and desalination in the state.

Many of the advocacy groups support policies that license self-destructive behavior, the true driver of crime and homelessness. No city needs to have any unsheltered homeless. Shelters can be built; people can be required to sleep in them. California cities don’t do this because progressive politicians have, for decades, demanded that taxpayer resources flow to expensive apartment units rather than to low-cost shelter beds. Groups like Friedenbach’s Coalition on Homelessness protest, lobby, and sue to prevent the city from requiring that people sleep indoors. California’s progressive leaders, judges, and voters have disempowered the police, reduced the state’s jail and prison populations by nearly one-third, and allowed the spread of public camping, drug use, and prostitution.

The progressive defense of urban chaos is that it is cruel, racist, and immoral to insist that criminals, addicts, and the mentally ill obey the law. When a homeless man shot and killed an Oakland postal worker in January 2023, a local politician came to the aid of the criminal’s family, not the victim’s. Such behavior is typical. In California, addicts and the mentally ill are treated as sacred victims and permitted to take over large parts of cities. To victims, everything should be given, and from them, nothing required. Once labeled victims, they become blameless; if they harm others, it is the system’s fault. These ideas, once radical, are today the conventional views of the people who run California, from its legislature to its governor’s office to the myriad organizations that influence them.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Segregation Forever: The Biden Administration is urging states to impose race-based practices in the schools.

In Madison, Wisconsin, the school district employs an “equity strategy” for teaching kids reading and math based on “demographic categories, including race.” Elementary school teachers are ordered to “prioritize your African American students meeting with you first and more often.” Other students, including other minorities and English language learners, are to be instructed “second.” The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, where we work, sued over this policy.

Madison is no outlier. Denver Public Schools has resolved to “prioritize and target the[ ] academic achievement” of “Black and African-American students.” Based purely on skin color, Denver schools provide “more rigorous coursework,” “a plan of action to increase their success,” and “progress toward these goals and increasing black student achievement.” Non-black students? No special coursework, plans, or monitoring.

Seattle Public Schools has taken the equity pathway in mathematics by changing curriculum and lowering standards with something called “Math Ethnic Studies Framework.” Seattle students must consider “who holds power in a mathematical classroom,” “who gets to say if an answer is right,” and whether they can “recognize and name oppressive mathematical practices in your experience.”

Other pathways to equity include requiring all students to take the same remedial course regardless of ability, canceling Advanced Placement courses, and even changing the way teachers grade to eliminate low scores, which the San Diego Unified School District recently did explicitly to combat racism. Other schools similarly embrace an initiative called Grading for Equity which, for instance, directs teachers not to grade homework because doing so replicates racial disparities. In a telling gaffe, one public high school teacher in Wisconsin admitted to parents that “slowing down the class is equity!”

But the equity push goes beyond instructional changes. It requires treating non-white students differently in other areas. Centennial Elementary in Olympia, Washington offers a “BIPOC-only” student lunch group for fourth graders. Public schools in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin offer an annual, all-expenses paid trip for black students to visit colleges. Sun Prairie also holds an award ceremony exclusively for “Black Excellence Achievement Makers” (BEAM) and is one of several Wisconsin school districts that hosts a “Dear Diary” mentoring program open only to black girls.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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You must be having a laugh! Yes Minister and The Thick of It were among the satire programmes flagged by beleaguered counter-terror Prevent scheme for 'encouraging far-right sympathies'

Some of Britain’s most popular sitcoms and greatest works of literature were flagged as potential signs of far-Right extremism by a counter-terror programme.

[...]

The taxpayer-funded document included references to The Lord Of The Rings by JRR Tolkien, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, 1984 by George Orwell and the poems of GK Chesterton. It also referenced films including The Bridge On The River Kwai, The Great Escape and Zulu.

[...]

Works by some of the world’s greatest writers were included as examples of warning signs of potential extremism, including Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Tennyson, Kipling and Edmund Burke.

The report even highlighted the BBC’s 1990s political thriller House Of Cards, John le Carre’s seminal spy trilogy Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and Sharpe, the ITV drama set in the Napoleonic wars.

Inexplicably, it said the BBC’s Great British Railway Journeys, presented by former Conservative minister Michael Portillo, was of interest to the far-Right.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Irish police tell family of sexual assault victim to delete social media post accusing migrants: Police have confirmed reports of a sexual assault attack in an Irish town but have reportedly urged members of the public not to repeat claims that migrants were involved

As reported by the Irish news outlet, Gript, a request was made to close friends and family of the alleged victim not to share information about the attack that identifies the attackers as foreign nationals.

One such post published on Facebook by someone close to the victim claimed a woman was walking home from the local pub when she was allegedly dragged into an alleyway by four foreign adult men.

[...]

One of the victim’s family members told Gript they had been asked to take down the social media post, which identified the attackers as foreign nationals. They say they only made the post because the authorities had not made any arrests and they believe women need to know about the incident for their own safety.

“We were asked by the Gardai why we said it was foreign men and then asked to take the post down. Then we were asked not to talk about what had happened to anyone,” one family member told the news site.

“It seems all wrong, who is being protected here? (The victim) can’t sleep or eat, she is totally traumatized. Normally if there’s a serious crime anywhere it’s on the radio and descriptions are given and there’s an appeal for witnesses. But we’re being told to say nothing,” they added.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Kavanaugh Accuser Admits To Lying, Faces Criminal Charges

Judy Monro-Leighton, one of three women who accused now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, was found to have lied during a congressional investigation and is now being charged with making materially false statements and obstruction.

According to The Beltway Report, a letter written by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, made a criminal referral against Monro-Leighton, who admitted that she “just wanted to get attention.”

She also admitted that an anonymous letter she sent to then-Sen. Kamala Harris describing a graphic sexual assault by Kavanaugh and a friend was not written by her, despite her original claim of being “Jane Doe from Oceanside, California.”

“No, no, no. I did that as a way to grab attention,” Munro-Leighton explained when questioned by investigators of the Committee on the Judiciary. “I am not Jane Doe… but I did read Jane Doe’s letter. I read the transcript of the call to your committee… I saw it online. It was news.”

In her statements, she also clarified that she never met Judge Kavanaugh.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Harvard law journal requires applicants’ race, sexual orientation to submit articles

Harvard Law School’s journal Civil Rights and Civil Liberties requires that applicants submit their sexual orientation, gender identity and race for their article submissions to be considered, a relatively new requirement for the publication.

Also required are the applicant’s pronouns, whether they have a disability, and whether they are a first-generation professional or student, according to the “Author Submission Form” Google document for the journal.

Civil Rights and Civil Liberties is a specialty journal published in addition to and separate from Harvard’s main law journal, the Harvard Law Review.

“CR-CL is committed to uplifting authors from a diversity of identities, backgrounds, and experiences,” the editors state atop the form. “The journal is dedicated not only to providing equal opportunities for advancement, but affirmatively promoting voices often sidelined in legal academia.”

“This form is mandatory. CR-CL will not review submissions from authors who have not completed this form,” it added, with the bold lettering in the original.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Police investigating racial incident involving students at Springfield elementary school

Police were informed by the school’s principal that “a group of Black students had gathered several white students on a specific spot of the playground and forced them to state ‘Black Lives Matter’ against their will,”, the police report states.

Students who tried to avoid the situation were “chased down and escorted, dragged, or carried to the playground,” the report alleges. The group of students also allegedly filmed the students who were forced to make the statement.

[...]

Ryan Springer and Ashley Henthorne said their 12-year-old son was one of the students forced on the playground.

“I mean I’m angry as a parent but I understand they are children. It’s not okay to hate anybody because of their skin color, or their gender or sexual orientation, or anything like that. Nobody should be hating anybody,” Springer said.

He said there are things that he doesn’t believe children should have to worry about.

Terminal quokka-brain.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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FBI retracts leaked document orchestrating investigation of Catholics

The document, which was published on the website UncoverDC and is titled “Interest of Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists in Radical-Traditionalist Catholic Ideology Almost Certainly Presents New Mitigation Opportunities,” the document singles out Catholics who are interested in the Traditional Latin Mass as potentially linked to violent extremist groups.

Kyle Seraphin, who is listed by UncoverDC as the author of the document, told CNA that he received the leaked document from an FBI agent. Seraphin himself is a former FBI special agent who was reportedly suspended last year. According to an NBC News report he went on to join Truth Social, the social media platform started by former President Donald Trump.

[...]

Marked “UNCLASSIFIED/FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY,” the document includes a list of organizations with Catholic ties that are listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) list of hate groups.

The SPLC has faced questions about its credibility from conservative and Christian organizations that have accused the group of a left-wing bias. Among the groups that made the SPLC’s 2021 list of supposed “hate groups” are the conservative and pro-family groups Alliance Defending Freedom, the Family Research Council, ACT for America, the Center for Security Policy, and the American Freedom Law Center.

The organizations identified in the document as adhering to “radical-traditionalist Catholic ideology” include Tradition in Action, The Remnant, Culture Wars Magazine, and the Fatima Crusader. A “warning” added to the document noted that “potential criminality exhibited by certain members of a group referenced herein does not negate [the group’s or the members’] rights under the First Amendment to the Constitution.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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[Christopher F. Rufo] DEI Cult: The University of South Florida turns left-wing racialism into a psychological conditioning program.

I have obtained a trove of public documents exposing the university’s DEI programming, much of which, according to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, the university tried to delete from its website following Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s recent request for information on DEI in the state’s public universities.

Taken together, these materials paint a troubling picture. USF’s sprawling diversity bureaucracy has turned left-wing racialism into a new orthodoxy and implemented an administrative policy of racial preferences and discrimination. It divides individuals into categories of oppressor and oppressed, presents “anti-racism” as the solution, and proposes “racial identity development”—which, in practice, resembles a form of cult programming—as the necessary method of atonement.

The first step in this programming is the condemnation of American society. Following the 2020 death of George Floyd, nearly every appendage of USF condemned the United States as fundamentally racist. Then-president Steven Currall published a statement denouncing the “systemic racism that continues to plague our nation.” The English department attacked the United States for “centuries of normalized violence, structural oppression, and dehumanizing rhetorics that target Black, Brown, and Indigenous people.” The School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies blasted America for its “institutionalized, structural racism and white supremacy.” The anthropology department assailed its own discipline for being “rooted in racism.” The department of sociology pronounced on the “interlocking systems of oppression found throughout the institutions of our country.” Literacy studies, women’s and gender studies, engineering, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and other departments released similar statements.

[...]

Meantime, the university’s DEI officers reinforced the narrative and offered a battery of resources for racial reconditioning. The Office of Multicultural Affairs published an official guidebook, “Anti-Racist Resources: The Unlearning of Racism and White Supremacy,” that promoted psychological approaches to “white identity development.” The premise of these programs is simple: whites suffer from “white privilege,” “white guilt,” and “white fragility.” And the solution is clear: whites must atone for their oppression through the process of “racial identity development” and “becoming an active anti-racist.”

According to one of these programs, called “Scaffolding Anti-Racist Resources,” whites must first admit their complicity in racism, which includes “being confronted with active racism of real-world experiences that highlight their whiteness.” Whites will then enter the process of “disintegration,” experiencing “white guilt” and thinking, “I feel bad for being white.” Next, after their racial identity is broken down, they will enter a phase of “reintegration,” thinking, “it’s not my fault I’m white” and beginning to engage in left-wing political activism.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Oregon university faces civil rights complaint for excluding whites from campus events

The complaint was filed Jan. 25 and cites six separate examples of the alleged discriminatory practices, primarily events held exclusively for students and faculty of color.

“The university’s multiple cases of illegal race-based discrimination suggests that they are either unacceptably unaware that this type of racial discrimination is illegal or they are instead inexcusably unconcerned about unlawfully violating the civil rights of certain groups of students (whites/non-BIPOCs),” Mark Perry, who filed the complaint, said in an email to The College Fix.

Perry is a University of Michigan Flint emeritus economics professor who has filed dozens of similar complaints over the last several years against many universities.

Perry told The Fix his latest complaint against PUO cites “six different BIPOC-only, no whites allowed programs, social events, forums and graduation ceremonies for faculty, staff and students.”

The complaint against Pacific University Oregon alleges the campus events violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal funds or other federal financial assistance,” according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Perry’s complaint cites various events, including an informal “get-to-know-you” event, a staff open house, a weekly club meeting, an alumni forum, an exclusive graduation ceremony, and an informal cocktail outing.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Democrats demand removal of Lincoln Emancipation Memorial in DC

House Democrats proposed legislation Wednesday to remove the Emancipation Memorial from Lincoln Park in Washington, D.C., which they said portrays a racially insensitive image of President Abraham Lincoln freeing an enslaved man.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., reintroduced legislation to remove the statue Wednesday – the first day of Black History Month. She first announced her plan to propose the bill in the House in 2020. The delegate noted that the statue was initially paid for by freed slaves, but said the design was not representative of their struggles.

"Although formerly enslaved Americans paid for this statue, the design and sculpting process was done without their input or participation, and it shows," Norton said in a statement announcing the legislation.

"The statue fails to depict how enslaved African Americans pressed for their own emancipation. At the time, they had only recently been liberated from slavery and were grateful for any recognition of their freedom. However, in his keynote address at the unveiling of the statue, Frederick Douglass pointedly did not praise the statue, and, indeed, in private remarks, went as far as to say, it ‘showed the Negro on his knee when a more manly attitude would have been indicative of freedom.’"

Six Democratic representatives backed Norton's legislation as cosponsors. The bill was referred Wednesday to the House Committee on Natural Resources. The previous version of the bill did not receive a vote in the House.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Berlin university says students shouldn’t call police on migrant sex offender: Left-wing ideology may behind the university student committee’s calls to cover-up for a sexual offender with a migration background

A sex offender has been harassing women for weeks at Berlins’s Free University (FU) women for weeks, but victims are being urged not to alert the police over fears of racism. This is the advice of the university’s left-wing-dominated General Students’ Committee (AStA), which urges women not to take matters further in an e-mail sent to all student initiatives and university groups, as reported by the Morgenpost newspaper.

The AStA’s concern, however, seems to be less for the well-being of the women, but rather that of the perpetrator who is reportedly of a migration background.

“We would like to point out that police operations for people affected by racism are generally associated with an increased risk of experiencing police violence,” the Morgenpost quoted from the AStA letter, arguing that most officers are “not sufficiently trained in dealing with psychologically exceptional situations.”

Further, the letter says “Therefore such engagements often ‘by unnecessary use of force are escalated.'” The paper concludes that, “The concern here is obviously less for the potential victim than for the perpetrator.”

For several weeks now, the man in Dahlem near Free University has repeatedly sexually harassed women, threatening them and stalking them. In such a case, the victims should alert the security service of the university or the social psychiatric service, advises the AStA. However, the latter can only apprehend an individual with their consent and thus is an unhelpful suggestion. Despite intervention, the sex offender appears to be resistant to any attempts to change his ways. Apparently there was at least one conversation between students and the alleged sex offender but has shown no willingness to stop harassing women.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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[Christopher F. Rufo] The Highest Principle: Left-wing DEI bureaucracy has captured Florida State University and installed radical politics as the governing value.

I have obtained documents through public searches and Sunshine Law requests that reveal a sprawling bureaucracy, dedicated to promoting left-wing racial narratives, including a seemingly endless array of programs, departments, trainings, certificates, committees, statements, grants, groups, clubs, reports, and initiatives.

One representative program is “Social Justice Ally Training,” hosted by Student Equity & Inclusion Director Sierra Turner and the Center for Leadership & Social Change. The program provides a basic recapitulation of the critical-race-theory narrative: white, patriarchal Western societies have created a “Cycle of Socialization” that has resulted in “racism, classism, religious oppression, sexism, heterosexism, gender oppression, ableism, ageism & adultism, and xenophobia.”

The trainers make the case that, in the United States, “whites” are the racial group responsible for the “systematic subordination of members of targeted racial groups who have relatively little power.” Whites are also guilty of “cultural racism,” or the creation and maintenance of social structures that “overtly and covertly attribute normality to white people and Whiteness.” By definition, no other group can be racist—“institutional racism” can only “create advantages and benefits for Whites.”

Christians, too, represent an oppressor class. They have created “Christian hegemony,” which “normalizes Christian values as intrinsic to an explicitly American identity,” and have instituted a regime of “religious oppression” and the “systematic subordination of minority religions.” Consequently, Christians must atone for their “Christian privilege,” the training suggests, because of, for example, their “close-minded hatred, fear, or prejudice towards Islam and Muslims.”

The training divides participants into “dominant groups” and “subordinate groups.” Dominant groups—whites, men, Christians, heterosexuals—are told that they are at the apex of the “matrix of oppression,” but if they submit to social-justice ideology, they can seek redemption through “identity development.” They are told that they begin their journey as “selfish,” unable to “see privilege,” “not interested in the system,” and hoping to “maintain the status quo.” But the oppressor class can eventually overcome its nature and work to “consciously [use] unearned privilege against self” and “destroy the system.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Christian mother sues 4-year-old son’s school for refusing to excuse child from LGBT march despite her religious beliefs: The case is the first time a U.K. court has been required to assess the legality of imposing LGBT ideology on primary schools

During the court hearing, Mrs. Montague expressed her concerns not only about the pride march, but also about the educational content being shown to her 4-year-old son during lessons. In one book the children had been reading, there had been references to a same-sex family.

When questioned by the school’s lawyer on the content of the letter detailing the pride event, the mother said she felt it was an attempt “to indoctrinate it onto us by passing it off that it was part of law or part of British values, or it was part of the national curriculum; it was trying to sell something no one wanted to buy.”

“It felt like it was lecturing me about something to do with British values and somehow we weren’t adhering to British values,” she added.

She told the court she acknowledged the importance of promoting diversity and equality, but believes this can be done without infringing on individuals’ religious beliefs. She dismissed the notion that the letter was sent out during pride month, insisting, “A month that celebrates sexual lifestyles is a problem in any month.”

Mrs. Montague is being supported during the hearing by the Christian Legal Center.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Ron DeSantis Plans To Defund Diversity Programs In Florida Universities

The governor and potential 2024 presidential hopeful laid out a list of higher education “reforms” his administration aims to carry out, including banning DEI programs that help universities create a more supportive and inclusive space for staff and students from marginalized backgrounds. The state legislature will need to approve the plans before they go into effect.

“We are also going to eliminate all DEI and [critical race theory] bureaucracies in the state of Florida. No funding, and that will wither on the vine,” DeSantis said. “And I think that that’s very important because it really serves as an ideological filter, a political filter.”

The governor equated mandatory DEI trainings as “imposing an agenda” that constitutes “a drain on resources,” and claimed that having universities include diversity statements is no different than “making people take a political oath.”

The announcement is DeSantis’ latest attempt at turning Florida’s higher education spaces into incubators for far-right ideas. The governor has already unsuccessfully tried to ban workplace diversity initiatives. He also pushed right-wing higher education officials to ban discussions of “critical race theory” and prides himself on the state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” law, which prohibits public school teachers from discussing sexual orientation or gender identity.

Last week, the Florida Board of Education approved a training for public schools that focuses on preventing children from reading books about racial justice and books with LGBTQ themes. DeSantis also recently announced a statewide ban on a new Advanced Placement course on African American history ― a move that led some high school students to accuse the governor of censoring public education.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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[Matt Taibbi] Move Over, Jayson Blair: Meet Hamilton 68, the New King of Media Fraud: The Twitter Files reveal that one of the most common news sources of the Trump era was a scam, making ordinary American political conversations look like Russian spywork

Ambitious media frauds Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair crippled the reputations of the New Republic and New York Times, respectively, by slipping years of invented news stories into their pages. Thanks to the Twitter Files, we can welcome a new member to their infamous club: Hamilton 68.

If one goes by volume alone, this oft-cited neoliberal think-tank that spawned hundreds of fraudulent headlines and TV news segments may go down as the single greatest case of media fabulism in American history. Virtually every major news organization in America is implicated, including NBC, CBS, ABC, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times and the Washington Post. Mother Jones alone did at least 14 stories pegged to the group’s “research.” Even fact-checking sites like Politifact and Snopes cited Hamilton 68 as a source.

Hamilton 68 was and is a computerized “dashboard” designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure “Russian disinformation.” It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC “disinformation expert”) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank. The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and onetime Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.

[...]

The two founders of Hamilton 68, the blue-and-red team of former counselor to Marco Rubio Jamie Fly and Hillary for America Foreign Policy Advisor Laura Rosenberger, told Politico they couldn’t reveal the names of the accounts because “the Russians will simply shut them down.” Tchya, right. One look at the list reveals the real reason they couldn’t make it public.

This was not faulty science. It was a scam. Instead of tracking how “Russia” influenced American attitudes, Hamilton 68 simply collected a handful of mostly real, mostly American accounts, and described their organic conversations as Russian scheming. As Roth put it, “Virtually any conclusion drawn from [the dashboard] will take conversations in conservative circles on Twitter and accuse them of being Russian.”

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Penalty Box: Progressive sports media and LGBT advocates condemn Ivan Provorov for declining participation in the NHL’s Pride Night.

On Tuesday, Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov declined to signify support for the National Hockey League’s “Pride Night” in support of LGBGT activism, citing his Russian Orthodox faith. Pride Night is part of the NHL’s “Hockey for Everyone” initiative, intended to use “the game of hockey—and the League’s global influence—to drive positive social change and foster more inclusive communities.”

When asked why he did not participate in Pride Night activities, in which players wore special LGBT-themed warmup jerseys and used rainbow tape on sticks that were later auctioned to raise money for the cause, Provorov emphasized that his was a strictly personal choice: “I respect everyone. I respect everybody’s choices. My choice is to stay true to myself and my religion.”

The response from LGBT advocates and progressive sports media figures was swift. “Stop letting bigots hide behind their cherry-picked religion,” tweeted Rachael Millanta, lead hockey writer for the sports gambling site BetMGM. “We are incredibly disappointed to see an athlete with a powerful platform choosing to exclude the LGBTQI+ community,” announced Athlete Ally founder and executive director Hudson Taylor. E.J. Hradek, a prominent Canadian analyst on the NHL network, advised Provorov to leave America, return to Russia, and get involved in the Ukraine conflict if he did not wish to “assimilate.”

“The concept of ‘team’ can mean a lot of things. . . . I would hope that, behind the scenes, there’s some more direct conversations around what it means to be a teammate,” declared Kurt Weaver, COO of You Can Play, the NHL’s contracted partner in LGBT advocacy. Weaver suggested that a single player’s non-participation in the promotion had “negatively impacted” Pride Night and proposed that his organization “work with” the Flyers and Provorov by providing “additional information and better understanding.”

Successful sports teams invariably integrate teammates with vastly different personalities, politics, and temperaments. The concept of “teamwork” implies an ability to put aside differences and focus on specific, collective goals. But Havel might agree that Weaver’s concept of “team” requires conformity and uniformity. Progressive ideology increasingly demands that people express support for causes regardless of their true feelings. The woke journalists expressing outrage that Provorov was even allowed to play that night may have missed the news that Virginia Tech recently paid $100,000 to settle a lawsuit by Kiersten Hening, a soccer player whose coach refused to play her after she declined to kneel during the national anthem in support of Black Lives Matter. Notwithstanding the settlement in favor of Hening, the case highlights the evolution of progressive activism from a form of dissent to something from which one may not dissent, from an appeal for tolerance to a demand for conformity.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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New feminist chemistry class teaches that science is racist

A recent article published in the Journal of Chemical Education describes the development of a Feminism and Science course at East Carolina University (ECU) that was offered at the university. The course, the authors argue, should serve as a "model" for other educators to learn from, "present[ing] this work as an example of a transformative pedagogical model to dismantle White supremacy in Chemistry."

The article, titled “A Special Topic Class in Chemistry on Feminism and Science as a Tool to Disrupt the Dysconcious Racism in STEM," argues for a pedagogical framework based on “Critical Race Theory and intersectional feminism."

One of their goals “was to shine light, through this process, [on] how scientific epistemology and culture have strong links with capitalism, enslavement, colonization, and exploitation of female-bodied folks.”

[...]

"Unfortunately, these major foundations have a great deal of influence on scholarship," Goad told Campus Reform. "If, for example, and this is a real example, the Department of Energy says that grant applicants have to write diversity statements, nuclear physicists have practically no other funding body to turn to if they wish to escape DOE's politicization of their field."

He continued to describe DEI in STEM as an "existential threat" that undermines the pursuit of scientific knowledge. "The postmodernists (and critical theorists) see science not as an investigatory process, but as a cultural institution," Goad said.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Art professor sues Minnesota university that fired her over complaints about Prophet Muhammad images

In her lawsuit, Erika López Prater, the professor, alleges that Hamline University — a small, private school in St. Paul — subjected her to religious discrimination and defamation, and damaged her professional and personal reputation.

"Among other things, Hamline, through its administration, has referred to Dr. López Prater's actions as 'undeniably Islamophobic,''' her attorneys said in a statement. "Comments like these, which have now been published in news stories around the globe, will follow Dr. López Prater throughout her career, potentially resulting in her inability to obtain a tenure track position at any institution of higher education."

In Minnesota, a lawsuit can be started by serving a summons and a complaint to the party being sued. Attorneys for López Prater said the lawsuit was served to Hamline University on Tuesday and will soon be filed in court.

Hamline University President Fayneese Miller and Ellen Watters, the Board of Trustees chair, released a joint statement Tuesday saying recent "communications, articles and opinion pieces" have led the school to "review and re-examine our actions."

"Like all organizations, sometimes we misstep," the statement said. "In the interest of hearing from and supporting our Muslim students, language was used that does not reflect our sentiments on academic freedom. Based on all that we have learned, we have determined that our usage of the term 'Islamophobic' was therefore flawed."

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Providence Public Schools accused of discriminating against White teachers in radical equity agenda

A non-profit called Legal Insurrection Foundation (LIF) on Tuesday sent a letter to the Nelson Event Center, located in Cranston, Rhode Island, to put them on notice for hosting a "racially discriminatory" event that was planned by the PPSD.

[...]

"PPSD is so obsessed with its Equity agenda that it has crossed legal lines, engaging in open discrimination against white teachers. We saw open discrimination in the new teacher loan forgiveness program, open only to non-whites. Even though we filed a federal civil rights complaint against the loan program discrimination, PPSD is undeterred. Now PPSD is organizing and promoting segregationist teacher affinity programming," Jacobson said.

"PPSD appears to think it is immune to the anti-discrimination laws that apply to everyone else," he added.

[...]

Legal Insurrection claimed that NEC’s hosting of the event violates Rhode Island and federal law due to the fact that it is "unlawful for a place of public accommodation" to discriminate on the basis of race and ethnicity.

"The anti-discrimination laws apply regardless of which race or ethnicity is victimized. Events that discriminate against whites are just as unlawful as events that discriminate against non-whites. Because the Event was promoted as a segregated event, the discriminatory taint cannot be wiped away," the letter states.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Nearly 30 Florida colleges announce ban on anything that ‘compels belief in critical race theory’

The presidents, in their memo, stated they “will ensure that all initiatives, instruction, and activities do not promote any ideology that suppresses intellectual and academic freedom, freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, and the pursuit of truth in teaching and learning.”

“As such, our institutions will not fund or support any institutional practice, policy, or academic requirement that compels belief in critical race theory or related concepts such as intersectionality, or the idea that systems of oppression should be the primary lens through which teaching and learning are analyzed and/or improved upon,” the announcement stated.

“Further, if critical race theory or related concepts are taught as part of an appropriate postsecondary subject’s curriculum, our institutions will only deliver instruction that includes critical race theory as one of several theories and in an objective manner.”

Inside Higher Ed reported that the presidents represent the 28 colleges that make up the Florida College System, which includes community and four-year state colleges.

“The presidents plan to review trainings, instruction and policies on their campuses and remove any that counter the values expressed in the statement by Feb. 1,” IHE reported.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Canada’s Death Option: Using euthanasia to backstop your spotty universal health care system.

It is easy to sympathize with Hatch’s desire to end her painful life on her own terms. And her bespoke ritual attempts to recapture elements of what used to be normative before atomized modernity—dying well-loved in the embrace one’s family and community. Anyone’s sincere effort to grapple with suffering and achieve meaning deserves sympathy. But what Simons sells as autonomy’s final victory over debilitating illness was really a concession to bureaucratic apathy. The National Post reports, “Hatch’s case fits into an ever-expanding constellation of Canadians who want to live, but applied for medically assisted death out of desperation after failed attempts to seek appropriate care.” British Columbia’s healthcare system would not even provide her with palliative care once her disease became terminal. It promptly approved her request for MAID, however.

Three weeks before Simons released its slick propaganda piece, the Canadian House of Commons entertained the question of whether it should be permissible to euthanize infants up to the age of one. On October 7, Dr. Louis Roy testified on behalf of the Quebec College of Physicians that death by lethal injection is suitable for children “with severe deformations and…very grave and severe syndromes…whose life expectancy and level of suffering are such that it would make sense to ensure that they do not suffer.”

The College’s position represents a further radicalization of Canada’s MAID movement, whose most recent victory ensures that, beginning next spring, even depression will qualify one for euthanasia. Dr. Roy’s comments echoed the College’s previous suggestion that Canada should adopt the Netherlands’ Groningen Protocol, which established legal guidelines for medical infanticide. The Protocol emphasizes the presence of “hopeless and unbearable suffering” alongside the informed consent of the parents. The child, of course, is as incapable of giving consent as she is of confirming her hopelessness or her ability to endure suffering, so these must be determined by others.

The sophistication of the human brain notwithstanding, we simply cannot know the subjective experiences of other people. We can imagine our way into experiences not our own, but the irreducibility of subjective consciousness ensures that our imaginings are at best educated guesswork. At worst, however, our assessment of another’s suffering is really an expression of our own: I cannot tolerate watching you suffer, therefore your suffering must be intolerable. It is the broken logic of psychological projection.

The idea of parents “consenting” to their child’s killing is no less incoherent. Can a mother and father “consent” to selling their daughter as a sex slave? Whatever moral meaning the term possesses in the case of slavery, it possesses even less with respect to euthanasia. We may permit or will something to be done to a person in our care, and we may do so in accordance with that person’s expressed wishes, but we cannot perform or determine an act of subjective consciousness for (as) anyone but ourselves.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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Victory against Cohen family’s Great Replacement scheme in rural French village of Callac

A plan to settle up to 70 refugee families in the rural French town of Callac has been withdrawn after mass protests from residents.

The local government’s decision to cancel the project, which was backed by the wealthy Cohen family and the Macron government, is being hailed as a victory for native French people opposed to their own dispossession.

[...]

Remix News, which previously broke the story in the English-language press, described how the Cohen family is the major financial backer and ideological driver of the project. The family, led by Marie-France Cohen, made most of its fortune in the high-end children’s clothing retailer Bonpoint, which the family sold for millions. The family’s lavish lifestyle, replete with mansions, is detailed in our investigative piece. Since then, through the family’s Medici fund, the Cohens have embarked on a range of progressive projects, with perhaps their most ambitious one being the Horizon project, which would see refugees settled across the French countryside, starting with 20 different towns.

The project was supposed to begin with dozens of refugee families for Callac, which features an aging population and a high unemployment rate.

As Remix News previously reported, the protests against the project were attended by various conservative activists and the Reconquest party. However, spearheading the effort is a citizens’ initiative made up of residents of Callac who rejected the transfer of migrants to their town. These citizens pointed to the already-high unemployment rate in Callac, at 17.6 percent, and asked why jobs were planned to be found for the new arrivals before the people already living in the area. In addition, they pointed to potential overcrowding in schools and daycare, and the millions of taxpayer euros that will be needed to integrate the newcomers.

Off-Topic and Low-Effort CW Thread for October 24, 2022 by rwkasten in CultureWarRoundup

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San Francisco Reparations Committee Recommends Paying $5 Million to Black Residents, Supplementing Income for 250 Years

The city’s African American Reparations Advisory Committee released a draft report last month claiming that San Francisco’s “international reputation as a shining progressive gem in the west is undermined by its legacy of mistreatment, violence towards, and targeted racism against Black Americans.”

“While neither San Francisco, nor California, formally adopted the institution of chattel slavery, the values of segregation, white supremacy and systematic repression and exclusion of Black people were legally codified and enforced,” the group wrote.

As such, the committee proposed the city make a lump sum payment of $5 million to black residents who are at least 18 and have identified as black or African American on public documents for at least ten years. Residents must also meet at least two of eight other requirements. Among those requirements is that the resident is “personally, or the direct descendant of someone, incarcerated by the failed War on Drugs” or is a “Descendant of someone enslaved through US chattel slavery before 1865.”

“A lump sum payment would compensate the affected population for the decades of harms that they have experienced, and will redress the economic and opportunity losses that Black San Franciscans have endured, collectively, as the result of both intentional decisions and unintended harms perpetuated by City policy,” the committee said.

The group also suggested that the city supplement lower-income recipients’ incomes to meet the Area Median Income (AMI) of about $97,000, for at least 250 years.