Society's ChildS


Yellow Vest

Youths hurl Molotovs at riot police in Athens as Greece debates controversial education reforms


RT
Thu, 11 Feb 2021 09:05 UTC
athens education reform protest
© RuptlyScreenshot
Anger over proposed legislation that would ramp up security at Greek universities spilled over into the streets of Athens, as activists tossed Molotov cocktails during pitched battles with police.

Thousands of protesters faced off with law enforcement near the Hellenic Parliament building in Syntagma Square on Wednesday, as lawmakers debated a bill that would place uniformed, unarmed security personnel on university campuses. Currently, police are prohibited from entering the grounds of higher-education institutions, due to a law adopted after the country's right-wing dictatorship violently crushed a student uprising at Athens Polytechnic in 1973.


Comment: Those who don't learn from history...


Proponents of the new reforms say they are necessary to crackdown on the lawlessness that has become commonplace on university campuses, especially in Athens. But others see the reforms as a rollback of hard-fought freedoms that have become central to Greek academic life and want the government to understand their displeasure over the proposed bill.

Comment: This push for more police and state powers is occurring throughout Europe. In France a 'global security law' that included a law against the filming of police was dropped (at least for the time being) following large and continuous protests. Demonstators drew attention to the fact that, were it not for video evidence of police brutality, the numerous crimes committed during protests, such as those under the banner of the Yellow Vests, would not have been investigated: French parliament drops ominous draft 'global security' law following massive protests

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Propaganda

Caitlin Johnstone: Biden continues Trump's war on the press

Caitlin Johnstone
RT
Wed, 10 Feb 2021 16:12 UTC
trump biden assange
© Reuters (L) Carlos Barria; (M) Tom Brenner; (R) Peter Nicholls / File Photo
It is no surprise that the US government under President Biden is following Trump's policy on Julian Assange. But we must continue to fight - not just for his freedom, but for the freedom of journalists to report the truth.

Just one day after a coalition of prominent civil rights groups made headlines with a letter urging the Biden administration to drop efforts to extradite WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States on espionage charges, Washington has announced its intention to continue those efforts.

"Justice Department spokesman Marc Raimondi on Tuesday said the U.S. government will continue to challenge a British judge's ruling last month that Assange should not be extradited to the United States because of the risk he would commit suicide," Reuters reports.

Comment: See also:

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Mr. Potato

New York Times' Taylor Lorenz says she regrets 'error' of claiming entrepreneur used 'r-slur'

Joseph A. Wulfsohn
Fox News
Wed, 10 Feb 2021 00:01 UTC
new york times offices nyt
© JOHANNES EISELE via Getty Images
New York Times tech and internet culture reporter Taylor Lorenz has fully walked back her erroneous claim that business tech entrepeneur Marc Andreessen used incendiary language over the weekend.

Lorenz alleged on Twitter that the Silicon Valley investor used what she called the "r-slur" during a conversation on the audio-driven social media app Clubhouse about Redditors' recent splash on Wall Street that promped the surge of GameStop's stock price.


Comment: See: Greenwald: The journalistic tattletale and censorship industry suffers several well-deserved blows


"@pmarca just used openly using the r-slur on Clubhouse tonight and not one othe person in the room called him on it or saying anything," Lorenz tweeted on Saturday.

Comment: Saagar Enjeti on the issue:



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NPC

Racism over? Aunt Jemima is now 'Pearl Milling Company'

Paul Joseph Watson
Summit News
Wed, 10 Feb 2021 00:01 UTC
aunt jemima syrup
© picture alliance via Getty Images
PepsiCo erases an African-American icon to satiate the woke mob.

PepsiCo has officially renamed its Aunt Jemima line of products to 'Pearl Milling Company', prompting many to ridicule the move as a hollow gesture to satiate the woke mob.

The corporation's Quaker Oats subsidiary announced that the Aunt Jemima pancake and syrup line would soon be retired in June and re-branded despite having already been changed years ago to "remove racial stereotypes."

"Throughout the effort that led to the new Pearl Milling Company name, Quaker worked with consumers, employees, external cultural and subject-matter experts, and diverse agency partners to gather broad perspectives and ensure the new brand was developed with inclusivity in mind," the company said in a statement.

Comment: More from RT:
"Good luck with the new branding after succumbing to the woke mob. Let's see how that works for you," one user wrote, while another quipped"Racism is over folks. Aunt Jemima will no longer exist in this cruel world. We can all sleep better at night now."



Critics proposed some alternative brand names for PepsiCo to focus-group, among them the bland - if not honest - "Artificial Flavoured Corn Syrup," as well as "Now Woke Syrup" to underscore the company's newfound inclusivity. Another user, meanwhile, insisted the 'Pearl Milling Company' designation would never stick, arguing most consumers will keep on using the now-verboten name.

"Nobody will call it 'Pearl Milling Company' anyway! It will always be 'Aunt Jemima,'"wrote the commenter.



Aunt Jemima's retirement comes as a series of major corporate mascots have been shelved in recent months, joining Nestle's 'RedSkins' and 'Chicos' candy, the 'Eskimo Pie' brand, 'Uncle Ben's' rice, 'Mrs. Butterworth' syrup and 'Cream of Wheat' porridge, among others - all cancelled over concerns they featured offensive racial caricatures.


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People

Best of the Web: Will American 'woke' ideas tear France apart? Some of its leaders think so

Norimitsu Onishi
The New York Times
Tue, 09 Feb 2021 00:01 UTC
french protest #metoo
© Francois Mori/Associated PressWomen’s rights activists protesting last year against Mr. Macron’s appointment of an interior minister who has been accused of rape and a justice minister who has criticized the #MeToo movement.
Politicians and prominent intellectuals say social theories from the United States on race, gender and post-colonialism are a threat to French identity and the French republic.

The threat is said to be existential. It fuels secessionism. Gnaws at national unity. Abets Islamism. Attacks France's intellectual and cultural heritage.

The threat? "Certain social science theories entirely imported from the United States,'' said President Emmanuel Macron.

French politicians, high-profile intellectuals and journalists are warning that progressive American ideas — specifically on race, gender, post-colonialism — are undermining their society. "There's a battle to wage against an intellectual matrix from American universities,'' warned Mr. Macron's education minister.

Comment: Much of this article reads as a defense of 'wokism,' hardly surprising given that it's from the New York Times. But what's notable is the number and rank of those French politicians decrying the ideology. The Times can brush it off as 'pandering to the right,' but even that is notable - they wouldn't need to pander if the number of voters against regressive leftism didn't out-number those who support it.

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Stock Down

Best of the Web: Study: Lockdowns had largest impact in destroying economic activity

Jon Miltimore
Foundation for Economic Education
Thu, 04 Feb 2021 07:29 UTC
business closed lockdown
The world may be nearing the end of the coronavirus pandemic (at least we can hope), but the post mortems are just beginning.

A new paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research found important correlations between sales losses and lockdowns across counties in California.

Economists Robert W. Fairlie and Frank M. Fossen used state data from all taxable sales in California during the first two quarters of 2020, finding a drop of $152 billion in the second quarter alone, a 17.5 percent decline from the previous quarter.

Not all businesses experienced losses, of course. Some businesses deemed "essential" saw gains, such as pharmacies, liquor stores, supermarkets, agriculture, and building material & garden equipment stores.

Many economic sectors were not so lucky, the authors found.

Comment: See also:

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Passport

'Health passports' to enter music venues are being trialled in the UK

Patrick Hinton
Mixmag
Thu, 04 Feb 2021 07:08 UTC
long queue
Music venues in the UK are set to trial a 'health passport' system, as the live music sector plans towards safely reopening.

The health passport has been designed by the You Check app, which originally launched in mid-2019 as a ticket/ID system as a means to circumvent touts, as well as help link promoters directly to their audiences.

Since the pandemic halted music events, You Check has adapted its notification system to help with track and track by linking attendees and integrating test results. Now it can be used to alert event attendees to possible infections, direct them to testing facilities with PHE approved kits, and keep track of the outcomes on the app.

The trial events are being organised by the Music Venue Trust and are approved by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport.

London's 100 Club and Bristol's Exchange are the venues planned to host initial test events in March, with 25 per cent capacity and two sets of tests with the same people, before testing branches out to more venues across the UK.

Comment: See also:

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Attention

Andy Ngo's editor fired by major publisher over conservative views: report

Noah David Alter
The Post Millenial
Wed, 10 Feb 2021 03:56 UTC
andy ngo hartson
Hachette Book Group, a large publisher based in New York City, has fired their editorial director after publishing a new book by The Post Millennial journalist Andy Ngo, The New York Times reports.


The editorial director, Kate Hartson, was fired by Hatchet after publishing the book Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy by Ngo. The book details the Antifa's organizational efforts and patterns of violence, most notably in Portland and Seattle.

Hartson, who has a history of supporting Republicans, says that while she was given other reasons for her firing, the real reason was because of her politics. Hachette has said that they would be prohibiting "false narratives" from being published by them.

The firing also comes a month after 10 Hachette employees signed a petition calling upon major publishers to ban the publishing of books written by former Trump administration officials.

Comment: See also:

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Cow Skull

Best of the Web: Greenwald: The journalistic tattletale and censorship industry suffers several well-deserved blows

Glenn Greenwald
greenwald.substack.com
Sun, 07 Feb 2021 00:00 UTC
Taylor Lorenz and Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen
New York Times reporter Taylor Lorenz and Silicon Valley investor Marc Andreessen
The NYT's Taylor Lorenz falsely accuses a tech investor of using a slur after spending months trying to infiltrate and monitor a new app that allows free conversation.

A new and rapidly growing journalistic "beat" has arisen over the last several years that can best be described as an unholy mix of junior high hall-monitor tattling and Stasi-like citizen surveillance. It is half adolescent and half malevolent. Its primary objectives are control, censorship, and the destruction of reputations for fun and power. Though its epicenter is the largest corporate media outlets, it is the very antithesis of journalism.

I've written before about one particularly toxic strain of this authoritarian "reporting." Teams of journalists at three of the most influential corporate media outlets — CNN's "media reporters" (Brian Stelter and Oliver Darcy), NBC's "disinformation space unit" (Ben Collins and Brandy Zadrozny), and the tech reporters of The New York Times (Mike Isaac, Kevin Roose, Sheera Frenkel) — devote the bulk of their "journalism" to searching for online spaces where they believe speech and conduct rules are being violated, flagging them, and then pleading that punitive action be taken (banning, censorship, content regulation, after-school detention). These hall-monitor reporters are a major factor explaining why tech monopolies, which (for reasons of self-interest and ideology) never wanted the responsibility to censor, now do so with abandon and seemingly arbitrary blunt force: they are shamed by the world's loudest media companies when they do not.

Comment: And scorn them we do - and will - to the very best of our ability. They should be called out every time they spew their pathological (and sometimes very damaging) nonsense - because they create nothing - and seek to tear down everyone and everything that doesn't fall into their very narrow and skewed parameters of acceptable thought and behavior.

But this won't last forever. These things never do. And these empowered pathologicals will no doubt be learning this the very hard way. If at all.

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Airplane

Delta CEO calls negative COVID test requirement for domestic flights 'horrible idea'

Brianna Kraemer
Just the News
Wed, 10 Feb 2021 23:07 UTC
Delta airline airport
John F. Kennedy International Airport
The CEO of Delta Air Lines says the federal government's potential plan to require domestic passengers to have a negative COVID-19 test before travel is a 'horrible idea."

CEO Ed Bastian made the comment Tuesday to CNN, arguing that such testing could take "10% of testing resources" away from sick people.

He said domestic travel in the air transportation system is "the safest form of transportation and that the testing would be a "logistical nightmare."

"Incidents of spread aboard any of our planes is absolutely minimal," Ed Bastian said.

Comment: It is a horrible idea, but why listen to an industry leader when you have a failed mayor calling the shots? He's gay afterall, so he will obviously do what's right.

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