Society's ChildS


Arrow Down

How a 124-year-old statue, reviled by Native Americans, came down

Early Days Statue
© American Renaissance/Jeff Chiu/AP"Early Days" Statue depicts a Native American at the feet of a Spanish cowboy and Catholic missionary in San Francisco.
In the middle of the night and with dozens of Native Americans watching, San Francisco city workers tied safety ropes around a 124-year-old bronze statue and pulled. Carefully, they dislodged the piece from a granite platform and laid it on top of a flatbed truck. It was a moment stoked with meaning. After decades of effort, the Early Days statue, a symbol of colonization and oppression to many, was gone.

Those who gathered at the removal last week didn't celebrate with fire torches. They only prayed, sang hymns, and looked on morosely at the empty platform. That's what happens when civic institutions, in this case the city arts commissions, finally see a people as worthy of protection.

"I feel like it is a win. I feel good about it. [But] there is still a lot of work to be done," Desirae Harp, a Mishewal Ona*tsáTis (Wappo) and Diné (Navajo) tribe member told me.

Erected in the aftermath of the California mission era, the Early Days statue depicts a Native American on his back, defeated, a Catholic priest above him pointing to the heavens, and an anglicized vaquero bestriding the scene in triumph. The statue is part of the Pioneer Monument celebrating the state's origins. Native Americans saw it as dehumanizing art but no one had managed to convince politicians to take it down. It wasn't until gender- and racially-diverse city boards, as well as backlash against Eurocentric depictions of dominance, that change came.

Arrow Up

Railway link confirmed to connect Russia's St. Petersburg with Germany's Berlin

Railway
© Wolfgang Rattay / Reuters
Russia and Germany have agreed to connect Germany's capital Berlin with St. Petersburg, which is often branded Russia's northern capital.

The news, first published in the Russian media, was confirmed by Germany's Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure. The train will go from Germany to the Russian exclave city of Kaliningrad and then onwards to St. Petersburg, the ministry has confirmed in a letter to RT.

Fire

Harrowing scene: Deadly car explosion shakes Pennsylvania town

Explosion
© Twitter / ThouzandFloyd
At least one person died after a car explosion struck a neighborhood in Allentown, Pennsylvania. Witnesses of the harrowing scene say the fire was "crazy" and that "streaks of blood" were seen around the explosion.

Debris from the car, which reportedly was split in half after the blast, was reportedly strewn around the whole block on Sunday. The explosion was felt far beyond the area and was heard throughout the town, local newspaper the Morning Call reported.

"The fire was crazy," resident Carlos Perodin, who lives not far from the scene, told local media. Others revealed that they "saw body parts, streaks of blood around the explosion."

Hammer

Life in a gynocracy: Distorting language and statistics to advance an agenda

metoo sign
The performance of women this week - from Senator Dianne Feinstein to Christine Blasey Ford to the howling mobs on Capitol Hill - made me seriously consider surgically altering my sex. They are demanding special treatment because of their sex and in the process placing all of us - male and female alike - at peril of witch hunts against men and then, in time, against all who will not bow to their rule.

My Facebook friend Alex Bensky reminded me of the advantage to me of transgendering:
Ah, then we'd be unable to criticize your politics, your social viewpoints, your choice of teams to root for, and anything else you say because we'd be transphobic.

‪As a footnote, I've seen an estimate that the transgender population is about 0.05% of the population. This is hardly a warrant for beating up people but it is not clear to me why unless we substantially alter social arrangements that have existed in almost every known human society and celebrate...not just accept but celebrate...transgenderism, we are mean, hateful people.

X

Booth at a Brighton University event offered new students tips on how to be prostitutes

University students
© AlamyAn advice service with a stand at Brighton University fresher’s fair says that one in six students either does sex work or is thinking about doing so.
A university has been accused of encouraging its students into prostitution after hosting a stand at its freshers' fair advising new undergraduates how to be sex workers.

Alongside the hockey team and Amnesty International, the freshers' fair at Brighton University last week also included a stand run by the Sex Workers' Outreach Project (Swop) Sussex, which calls itself an "advocacy" and advice service "representing student sex workers".

Swop tweeted last week: "1 in 6 students does sex work or thinks about turning to sex work. We can help."

Comment: This is pretty gross. One has to wonder if the value of a University education is worth the price prostitution inevitably has on your soul.

See also:


Black Cat

ThinkProgress editor Ian Millhiser under fire after call to confront Republicans 'where they sleep'

Jeff Flake protester
© J.D. Durkin/Cheddar / ReutersA protester confronts Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator. Still image obtained from a social media video
The justice editor for left-wing opinion site ThinkProgress tweeted out a call to confront GOP lawmakers everywhere, including, apparently, in their homes. Commenters have pointed out all sorts of problems with that.

"Tell me again why we shouldn't confront Republicans where they eat, where they sleep, and where they work until they stop being complicit in the destruction of our democracy," Ian Millhiser wrote on September 28, retweeting a CNN report on Senator Jeff Flake (R-Arizona). Flake was cornered by protesters in an elevator before the Senate Judicial Committee was to vote on Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination.

The opposition was hoping that Flake, who is not running for reelection, would side with the Committee Democrats in turning Kavanaugh down. While the Arizona Senator voted for Kavanaugh's nomination to proceed to the Senate floor, he requested a limited FBI probe into sexual misconduct allegations against the judge.

Comment: More irresponsible incitement from the loony Left. What will they do if/when the tables turn?


Bizarro Earth

Ukraine still refusing to hand over stolen Dutch masterpieces

museum art holland
January 9th, 2005, became a "black Sunday" for the Dutch city of Hoorn. On that day the local museum was stripped of 24 rare paintings. Ten years later, some of the stolen masterpieces resurfaced in Kiev, and Dutch investigators believe that the rest are still in the hands of Petro Poroshenko's corrupt elite.

Westfries Museum hostess Marjam Faber said that the 2005 robbery was a shock to locals. She said that one of the museum's artifacts - the coffin of Hoorn's 17th-century vice-admiral Peter Floris - was turned by criminals into a "Trojan horse."

The whereabouts of a stolen art collection, which includes paintings from the Dutch Golden Age by Jan van Goyen, Jan Linsen and Jacob Waben remained unknown for a decade. And its reappearance has made the story even more complicated, turning a plain old-fashioned burglary into a political thriller with "fake news" on the side.

Comment: Following the US-backed coup in Ukraine, lawlessness is clearly running rampant:


Briefcase

Elon Musk to step down as chairman, must get pre-approval before saying anything about Tesla as part of SEC fraud settlement

Elon Musk SEC settlement
Since the whole affair started over a tweet, Musk is required to receive pre-approval for anything he says or posts about Tesla.
Elon Musk has settled with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which had sued him for fraud over his tweets about taking Tesla private. Musk will have to step down as chairman, but gets to keep his CEO status.

According to the settlement filing, Musk has 45 days to step down as chairman of the board of directors of Tesla, and is banned from holding the position for three years. He will also have to pay a $20 million fine.

And since the whole affair started over a tweet, either careless or intentionally misleading, Musk is required to receive pre-approval for anything he says or posts about Tesla, "in any format, including, but not limited to, posts on social media (e.g., Twitter), the Company's website (e.g., the Company's blog), press releases, and investor calls."

Another $20mn will be paid by Tesla to settle claims it had failed to vet Musk's initial tweet.

The SEC complaint accused Musk of misleading investors with his August 7 tweet which said he had secured funding to take Tesla private at $420 a share, boosting the company's stock by more than 10 percent. Musk soon recanted, saying he would keep Tesla private and triggering investors' fury. The SEC ruled Musk's initial words "were false and misleading because they lacked any basis in fact."

Comment: Elon Musk gets sued by the SEC for misleading investors


Light Saber

Flashback Israeli attorney files FOIA request to determine Israeli govt's role in anti-Corbyn campaign

corbyn antisemitism smears
© Reuters/Getty ImagesThe Labour Party has been plagued with antisemitism accusations due to Corbyn's support of the Palestinian cause.
Years of media scrutiny surrounding UK Labour and its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, over accusations of alleged anti-semitism have boiled to a frenzy in recent months.

The left-wing politician and his support for the Palestinian cause has made him the target of the international pro-Israel lobby, who have accused him of participating in and tolerating what has been dubbed the "new anti-Semitism": criticism of the Israeli state for its human rights abuses and war crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory.

After the Labour party adopted in July a new version of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism that specifically excludes portions conflating anti-Israel activism with anti-Semitism, criticism of Corbyn is at an all-time high.

Broom

Following the trend: Anti-immigration party presents serious challenge to Quebec's incumbent liberals

Francois Legault Coalition Avenir Quebec party
Francois Legault, leader of the Coalition Avenir Quebec party, speaks during a news conference following a debate in Montreal on Sept. 13, 2018.
Days before a provincial election in Quebec, a center-right party promising to slash immigration and to kick out all immigrants who fail tests of "values" and the French language is in a dead heat with the incumbent Liberals who have governed the province for most of the past 15 years.

The Coalition Avenir Quebec, a party led by businessman Francois Legault, is tied with premier Philippe Couillard's Liberals, with each party supported by 30 percent of decided voters, according to a poll by Ipsos for La Presse and Global News. That makes it likely the Oct. 1 election will produce a minority government.

This year's contest will be the first in nearly six decades where the "national question" - whether French-speaking Quebec should separate from the rest of Canada - is not a campaign issue. But those bitter independence battles have morphed into acrimonious fights over immigration and perceived threats to Quebec's francophone identity.

"Young Quebecers are less attuned to independence, so the old nationalist discourse on sovereignty is not as strong," said Chedly Belkhodja, a professor at Concordia University's School of Community and Public Affairs in Montreal. "The big questions now are about identity and what Quebec will look like."

The hot-button topic of immigration emerged as a significant issue two weeks into the election campaign when Legault - then the clear front-runner - detailed his immigration platform.

Comment: If recent events in Europe can be viewed as a marker, the ruling liberals may be quite surprised by the outcome of the election - people are fed-up with politicians who aren't listening..