Society's ChildS


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J.K. Rowling, Noam Chomsky among dozens to call for end to 'cancel culture'

Tamar Lapin
New York Post
Tue, 07 Jul 2020 16:25 UTC
JK Rowling Noam Chomsky
© Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images; Photo by HEULER ANDREY/AFP via Getty ImagesJ.K. Rowling and Noam Chomsky
More than 100 writers and scholars — including Noam Chomsky, J.K. Rowling and Malcolm Gladwell — have signed a public letter decrying cancel culture and the rising "intolerance of opposing views."

Published in Harper's Magazine on Tuesday, the letter argued that the recent "needed reckoning" on racial and social justice has also "intensified a new set of moral attitudes and political commitments" that tend to stifle the norms of public debate and tolerating differences.

"The free exchange of information and ideas, the lifeblood of a liberal society, is daily becoming more constricted," the letter states.

Comment: See also:

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X

Hate is in the eye of the beholder: Facebook extends olive branch to boycott leaders, but middle ground is elusive in polarized US


RT
Tue, 07 Jul 2020 21:20 UTC
facebook
© REUTERS/Dado Ruvic
Seeking to appease hundreds of companies that have halted advertising, Facebook is pledging to do a better job policing 'hateful' content - a tall order in a nation where warring political parties can't even agree on basic facts.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg met on Tuesday with organizers of the boycott campaign, led by the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League. They also announced plans to meet with other activist groups and consult with their own civil rights auditor.

The #StopHateForProfit boycott movement has seen more than 900 businesses suspending their advertising on the platform until the company curbs content that they find "toxic and hateful," although many big advertisers didn't join it. Stock investors were not impressed with Facebook's shares rising this week, and even CNN and the New York Times continued to run ads on the platform despite the criticism.

Facebook's talks with boycott organizers come amid "the largest social movement in US history and our nation's best and latest chance to act against the racism that has pervaded our country," Sandberg said. Changes will be made not because of advertiser pressure, but "because it's the right thing to do," she added.

Comment: See also:

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NPC

'Redress for systemic racism'? California State University faculty demand free tuition for non-white students and segregation


RT
Wed, 08 Jul 2020 03:37 UTC
university
© Reuters / Mike Blake
Lamenting declining minority enrollment, California State University's faculty union has called for tuition-free education for nonwhite students, nixing a ban on affirmative action, and... segregating students and faculty by color?

The California Faculty Association has published a list of demands aimed at "redress for systemic anti-Black racism in the CSU," insisting that black faculty, students and staff are "criminalized both on CSU campuses and in our communities." Its orders begin with a directive that "everyone needs to recognize: black lives are precious" and "take serious, tangible and public steps to protect Black lives, Black futures, and Black joy," and spiral off into calls for revisiting racial segregation.

In addition to abolishing tuition for "Black, Native and Indigenous students," the union has demanded the university system join its efforts to overturn a statewide ban on affirmative action, a controversial program that gives preference to minority students in admissions (or minority faculty in hiring). The professors have also demanded the university prioritize and expand its Ethnic Studies curriculum, forcing each student to take at least one Ethnic Studies course lest they participate in the "'spirit murdering' and violent deaths of Black communities."
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Bizarro Earth

'I went 13 times begging for a scan': UK's lockdown delays cut cancer patients chance for survival


RT
Tue, 07 Jul 2020 15:03 UTC
lockdown cancer
© (R) Facebook / Romir Hall
A British man has told RT that he now has a higher chance of dying from cancer due to delays in NHS treatment amid the Covid-19 pandemic. He had to wait three months for a scan that revealed life-threatening tumors in his body.

Sherwin Hall, 27, told RT that he began suffering from pain in the groin area in March, just when the number of coronavirus infections in Britain was surging. The father-of-two quickly went to a hospital in Leeds asking for a scan, but the staff refused.

"They told me 'No, due to Covid-19 we're not giving scans'," Hall recalled, adding that doctors put him on a waiting list, and prescribed anti-inflammatory drugs and painkillers instead.

Comment: See also: UK's lockdown could cause extra 35,000 extra cancer deaths due to delayed diagnosis and treatment

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Bizarro Earth

Georgia declares state of emergency, calls up National Guard following months of rioting and crimewave


WRDW
Tue, 07 Jul 2020 12:02 UTC
Georgia
Governor of the US Georgia State Brian Kemp has declared a state of emergency following an uptick in shootings over the July Fourth weekend that injured 31 people and killed five after weeks of violent crime and property destruction in Atlanta.
Georgia is under a state of emergency this morning after a violent holiday weekend, with Gov. Brian Kemp activating 1,000 National Guard troops under a new executive order signed Monday.

Although the order followed a spike in violent crime over the Fourth of July weekend, recent protests calling for police reform and racial justice played a large part in the executive order.

Here's a look at what's in the order:

Where will the troops be?
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Snakes in Suits

Robert De Niro's high-end restaurants and hotels took 14 coronavirus relief program loans worth $28million while he bashed Trump

Alana Mastrangelo
Breitbart
Mon, 06 Jul 2020 23:09 UTC
robert de niro
© BERTRAND LANGLOIS/AFP via Getty Images
Nobu, the posh, high-end restaurant and hotel chain — backed by left-wing actor and raging Trump-basher Robert De Niro — took more than a dozen loans from the Trump administration's Paycheck Protection Program (PPP).

In DeNiro's eyes, President Trump is a "mean-spirited, soulless, amoral, abusive con-artist son of a bitch." But that didn't stop one of the actor's prime investments from using the Trump administration's loan program for cash, a loan program meant to help keep small business wrecked by the Chinese coronavirus financially afloat.

The Nobu chain of luxury restaurants and hotels took 14 loans from the U.S. small business relief program for as much as $28 million, which went toward properties across the country, from California, to Texas, to New York, according to a report by CNBC. Nobuyuki "Nobu" Matsuhisa — the celebrity chef and owner of the restaurant chain — has a net worth of $200 million. Meanwhile, Robert De Niro — who co-founded it — is worth an estimated $500 million.

Comment: News outlet Media Matters also raked in as much as $2 million in coronavirus relief loans as the left-wing blog slammed the Trump administration's coronavirus response.

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Binoculars

From everyday language to the worlds of Shakespeare and Austin, MSM finds racism everywhere


RT
Mon, 06 Jul 2020 22:46 UTC
everything is racist
CNN has taken cancel culture to a new level, pushing to police everyday language, some of which has nothing to do with racism, and they are not the only mainstream media outlet raising alarms with critics of political correctness.

Some of the terms called into question by one of the network's latest 'thinkpieces' are acknowledged as having origins rooted in racism like "sold down the river," but others have no connection to it.

For example, "master bedrooms/bathrooms," terms some realtors have retired in light of protests against racism across the world, are phrases that were first used in 1926, decades after slavery was abolished in the US, a fact the piece waves off.

"It's unclear whether the term is rooted in American slavery on plantations, it evokes that history," the CNN story reads.

Comment:

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Arrow Down

City of Toronto bans Holy Communion in churches, but rioting is fine!

Seraphim Hanisch
The Duran
Tue, 07 Jul 2020 00:00 UTC
Communion forbidden Toronto Covid
Greek Orthodox Church in Toronto as priest explains to his people that Communion is forbidden by the city authorities.
There are two things that the priest in this video said that were correct. One was, "we are not worthy to receive Holy Communion." That is a statement every single Orthodox Christian can agree with. But it is different when we say it and hopefully mean what we say, that we may be grateful to the Lord for allowing us to receive it anyway. But not so in this church in Toronto. Here, by order of the city, the church had to not give Holy Communion. The presiding priest is clearly heartbroken:


The second thing was what we hear earlier in the video clip. "The persecution of the Church continues." And, in liberal Toronto this appears to be exactly the case. The Church shown here is a Greek Orthodox community, but the video appears to be unlisted so there is no information about exactly which parish it is or who the priest is.

What is maddening about this is that the priest did not decide to obey God rather than men and do it anyway. This would have been the right action. What is nevertheless good is that the priest is humble, not arrogant, and simply ascribes this horrific order to the state of the believers themselves, including himself, that "we have so little faith, we do not deserve this miracle." And he would be right in that.

Comment:

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NPC

Halle Berry forced to apologize after going for the 'Oscar bait' with transgender role, misgendering character


RT
Tue, 07 Jul 2020 18:55 UTC
halle berry
© REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
Oscar-winning actress Halle Berry has been forced to issue a Twitter apology amid ferocious backlash after she revealed she was considering an upcoming film role as a transgender man.

In a Friday Instagram Live interview with hair stylist Christin Brown, in which the pair discussed whether Berry would ever wear her hair short again, the Oscar-winner revealed she might do so for one particular role.

"I'm thinking of a character where this woman is transgender," Berry said. "She's a woman that transitioned into a man."

However, the 53-year-old actress neglected to use the correct pronouns when discussing the role, which irked the trans activist community even more.
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USA

Where are the protests? Firearms overtake fireworks as shootings over July 4th weekend leave scores dead in big US cities

Tony Cox
RT
Mon, 06 Jul 2020 19:04 UTC
ferguson fireworks
© REUTERS/Lawrence BryantFireworks explodes over a protestor with his hands up during a protest in Ferguson, Missouri, May 30, 2020.
The Independence Day weekend turned deadly across the US as 77 people were shot in Chicago alone, continuing a spate of violence that has plagued largely black neighborhoods amid anti-racism protests focused on police brutality.

Between July 3 and July 5, 13 people were fatally shot in Chicago. The latest violence wasn't out of character in a city that earned the nickname "Chiraq" - likening the bloodshed to that in war-torn Iraq - and where around 80 percent of homicide victims each year are black, according to police data.

Father's Day weekend last month saw 104 shootings and 14 dead.

The city suffered its deadliest day in at least six decades on May 31, when 18 people were killed. Chicago had 1,384 shootings in the first six months of 2020, a 45 percent increase from the same point in 2019, according to police figures.

New York City, Atlanta, Milwaukee and other large US cities also registered a spike in violence in recent weeks. The Big Apple had 30 shootings, including 10 fatalities, on July 5 alone. NYPD responded to a 20-year high of 205 shooting incidents in June, compared with 89 a year earlier.

The carnage is taking place at the same time that activist group Black Lives Matter is leading anti-racism protests across the US, after 46-year-old black man George Floyd was killed in Minneapolis police custody on May 25.
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