Society's Child

UC Berkeley settles lawsuit for discriminating against conservative speakers; agrees to stop charging 'security fees'

Jonathan Stempel
WSAU.com
Mon, 03 Dec 2018 20:12 UTC

Conservative counterprotesters at UC-Berkeley

The University of California at Berkeley on Monday settled a free speech lawsuit accusing the school of discriminating against speakers with conservative views.

Under the settlement filed with the federal court in San Francisco, the university will modify its procedures for handling "major events," which typically draw hundreds of people, and agreed not to charge "security" fees for a variety of activities, including lectures and speeches.

It will also pay $70,000 to cover legal costs of the Berkeley College Republicans and the Tennessee-based Young America's Foundation, which filed the lawsuit in April 2017.

The settlement followed an April 27 decision by U.S. District Judge Maxine Chesney letting the plaintiffs challenge what they called the university's "secret" or unfairly restrictive policies toward conservative speakers.

Comment: Judge rules UC Berkeley must face lawsuit alleging bias against conservative speakers

Comment: See also:

Chinese creator of first gene-edited babies now missing, reportedly under campus house arrest

Brendan Cole
Newsweek
Mon, 03 Dec 2018 13:58 UTC

© Anthony Wallace / Getty
He Jiankui at the Second International Summit on Human Genome Editing in Hong Kong, on November 28. His whereabouts are unknown since the summit took place.

Mystery surrounds the whereabouts of a Chinese scientist who claimed to have produced the world's first gene-edited babies.

He Jiankui appeared in Hong Kong last week at the second International Summit on Human Genome Editing and has not been seen since.

He was called "China's Frankenstein" after he released a video on YouTube in which he claimed that his team had modified the embryos of two sisters to switch off an HIV-related gene because their father had the virus.

The claim sparked controversy and criticism among the medical community. Scientists said implanting such an embryo was a boundary that should not be crossed until the associated risks were known and eliminated.

Comment: The University has denied reports the scientist is under house arrest but has refused to elaborate.

Stanford University thinks the American flag might offend you - because it definitely offends them

Antigone Xenopoulos
The Stanford University
Tue, 27 Nov 2018 00:00 UTC

An administrator encouraged Sigma Chi to take down the American flag flown in front of its house in order to improve its image on campus.

Let me explain. We all know the fate of Sigma Chi: it no longer exists. As is the experience of many Stanford Greek organizations past, while on probation last year, Sigma Chi sought to improve its image with the university so as to ensure its survival and the eventual lifting of its probation. Obviously, this aim was not realized. Sigma Chi is gone. Nevertheless, some administrative advice extended to Sigma Chi during this effort is worth noting, even after the fact, for its anti-Americanism.

Pablo Lozano '18 is the primary source for the following account. Other individuals, who asked not to be named, have corroborated it.

Lozano told that while on probation, Sigma Chi sought to make itself "an ally of the university." An administrator assigned to serve as a liaison between Residential Education and Sigma Chi - let's call him Mr. Z - was, in Lozano's words, "supportive" in trying to help Sigma Chi outlast probation and "transparent" in explaining often obscure bureaucratic processes. The Sigma Chi brothers appreciated the candid and genuine guidance that Mr. Z offered them throughout their fight for survival.

Comment: See: The Real Problem with Nationalism, Without the Virtue Signaling

Apple CEO Tim Cook suggests it's 'a sin' not to ban certain people from social media

Alyssa Newcomb
NBC News
Tue, 04 Dec 2018 08:15 UTC

© Brendan McDermid / Reuters
Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks at the Anti-Defamation League's "Never is Now" summit in New York City on Dec. 3, 2018.

Technology companies must take a moral stand against hate speech, said Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday during a speech at the Anti-Defamation League.

"I sometimes say that I worry less about computers that think like people and more about people that think like computers, without values or compassion, without concern for consequences," Cook said, as he accepted the Anti-Defamation League's first-ever "Courage Against Hate" award on Monday night, an honor that will be given each year to a business leader who champions equality.

The Apple CEO had a message for anyone trying to push hate, division or violence: "You have no place on our platforms. You have no home," he said.

Comment: It's funny how the question of who has the right to determine what constitutes 'hate speech' never seems to occur to these tech giants. They assume their own 'solid moral compass' is enough to set the standard for policing the rest of us, free speech be damned.

See also:

Here's why identity politics threaten America

Jarrett Stepman
The Daily Signal
Wed, 28 Nov 2018 00:01 UTC

© John Rudoff/Sipa USA/Newscom
Identity politics uniquely threaten America, said a group of panelists at The Heritage Foundation.

Is there an answer to the problem of identity politics in America? For some, the "solution" is direct.

"We need to take on the oppression narrative," conservative commentator Heather Mac Donald said at a Heritage Foundation gathering on Capitol Hill.

Americans need to "rebut" the idea "that every difference in American society today is the result by definition of discrimination," Mac Donald said during the event Monday, called "Identity Politics Is a Threat to Society. Is There Anything We Can Do About It at This Point?"

Without challenging this overarching narrative, the Manhattan Institute fellow said, "there is going to be no end to identity politics."

Comment: We're already seeing some push-back against the 'Oppression Olympics' in some instances, but the meteoric rise of identity politics seems to be climbing still, unabated. It's unclear whether Mac Donald is correct in her assessment, that fighting against it is going to make a difference. It's important to try, yet it seems more likely that the pressure will continue to grow until there an explosive confrontation, and the best advice at that point would be to stay out of the way.

See also:

The psychological reasons for Russophobia in the US

Dr. Paul Kindion
Russia Insider
Mon, 03 Dec 2018 00:00 UTC

Russophobic propaganda is just psychological manipulation used on the American public

The main reason so many Americans buy into the anti-Russian craze is not only due to what people are told by the government and media, but by how they think and process information. For if Americans were taught how to analyze and think properly they would not fall for the blatant propaganda.

For example, we are told that the Nazis discovered the secret of repetition as a means of programming people into believing something to be true, but we are not taught why this practice is so effective.

The psychological reason behind this trick has to do with "pattern recognition". Human beings - through evolution - have learned to identify a phenomenon as real and true because it repeats again and again and again. After a while, the mind interprets this consistent pattern as proof of truth value. In psychological terms, "schemata" are created by a layering of memories similar in nature over time so that all events associated with the phenomenon are perceived through a prism of previous repetitions. In other words, even if a certain type of behavior is different from the norm it will still be identified as belonging to the typical pattern regardless. It is literally a trick of the mind.

Comment: If there was ever a time for Americans (and the Brits too!) to realize that their Russophobia has been manipulated into their thinking - it is right now. See:

192 schools in South Australia close as teachers protest against budget cuts and working conditions

abc.net.au
Thu, 29 Nov 2018 01:21 UTC

The teachers - dressed in red - are protesting over a breakdown in negotiations with the South Australian Government over their new enterprise bargaining agreement.

Flinders Street has been blocked off to all traffic, with protesters making their way to the rally from all corners of the city.

Signs stating "Try Harder Gardner" and "More Funding For Our Kids" were being waved to loud music.

Police are monitoring traffic conditions and pedestrian movements.

School is set to resume at 12:15pm at the 192 schools that are closed.

Australian Education Union (AEU) SA president Howard Spreadbury said he was very happy with the number of teachers who joined the rally.

"I'm very pleased with the massive turnout of our members and community supports sending a very clear and definite message to the Marshall Government that they need to take us seriously and start listening to what we're putting [to] them in relation to our members' conditions and the learning environments of our students," Mr Spreadbury said.

Salisbury High School teacher Adrian Mann said the State Government was focused on putting money into school infrastructure rather than programs for vulnerable students.

Comment: It's the same story all over the Western world and people are beginning to get angry:

New Jersey had a system to detect and stop dangerous cops for 17 years but completely failed to do it

Craig McCarthy and S.P. Sullivan
nj.com
Thu, 29 Nov 2018 21:14 UTC

Behind every baton blow and broken bone, every compliance hold and gunshot wound, there are piles and piles of paper.

Somebody had to be keeping tabs, right?

Almost two decades ago, the state Attorney General's Office ordered police officers in New Jersey to document every single time they used force against another person. The goal was to make sure nobody with a badge abused the greatest authority granted them.

The timing was no accident: The state was reeling from one embarrassing episode after another of racial profiling and controversial shootings. The public was losing faith.

In response, state authorities could show they were keeping watch, creating an encyclopedia of the most mundane and most violent arrests. The documents would be reviewed by superior officers, and annual reports would be sent to county prosecutors and the attorney general.

Wall Street rule for the #MeToo era: Avoid women at all cost

Gillian Tan and Katia Porzecanski
Bloomberg
Mon, 03 Dec 2018 20:49 UTC

No more dinners with female colleagues. Don't sit next to them on flights. Book hotel rooms on different floors. Avoid one-on-one meetings.

In fact, as a wealth adviser put it, just hiring a woman these days is "an unknown risk." What if she took something he said the wrong way?

Across Wall Street, men are adopting controversial strategies for the #MeToo era and, in the process, making life even harder for women.

Comment: This is a natural result of the feminist ideology that currently is spreading throughout Western culture. By making men into your enemy, they responded by protecting themselves. Feminism has turned women into a risk in the business world. If feminism wanted to increase equality at the workplace, it's going about it the wrong way.

Call it the Pence Effect, after U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who has said he avoids dining alone with any woman other than his wife. In finance, the overarching impact can be, in essence, gender segregation.

Australian gov't orders royal commission into police misconduct scandal

Calla Wahlquist
The Guardian
Mon, 03 Dec 2018 20:34 UTC

The Victorian government has called a royal commission into a police misconduct scandal that has potentially jeopardised at least 22 convictions including that of underworld figure Tony Mokbel.

Some of the most notorious criminals in Australia received letters on Monday telling them that their lawyer had acted as a police informant in what the high court has described as an "atrocious" case of police misconduct that undermined the integrity of the justice system.

Mokbel, who was jailed for 22 years in 2012 for drug trafficking, is among those who could be making a bid for freedom following revelations their lawyer was passing information on to Victoria police between 2005 and 2009, in breach of client confidentiality.

Victoria police and the lawyer involved have been trying for three years to prevent the disclosure of the informant's identity to their underworld clients, with police arguing in court that if the information were disclosed "the risk of death [to the lawyer] would become 'almost certain'".

Great interview with Professor Petrovsky, a very brave soul ! He is clear and concise from a Vaccine researcher /producer point of view and calls...

Gator

There's no mileage in anything the Smith's have to say, their well versed in interfering with things. So we can all sleep safely in our bed...

Winternights3

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Buffalo_Ken

Forensic pathologists performed a postmortem and concluded that the man had probably died mid-flight Let me see ... he walked onto the plane,...

HashAttack2

This ain't no fucking real emergency. It is an effing emergency in the mind of a few....who thought they were gonna put the rest of us into...

Buffalo_Ken

Society's Child

UC Berkeley settles lawsuit for discriminating against conservative speakers; agrees to stop charging 'security fees'

Chinese creator of first gene-edited babies now missing, reportedly under campus house arrest

Stanford University thinks the American flag might offend you - because it definitely offends them

Apple CEO Tim Cook suggests it's 'a sin' not to ban certain people from social media

Here's why identity politics threaten America

The psychological reasons for Russophobia in the US

192 schools in South Australia close as teachers protest against budget cuts and working conditions

New Jersey had a system to detect and stop dangerous cops for 17 years but completely failed to do it

Wall Street rule for the #MeToo era: Avoid women at all cost

Australian gov't orders royal commission into police misconduct scandal

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