Society's ChildS


USA

US Republicans support culture war - poll


RT
Fri, 21 Apr 2023 21:06 UTC
Luna Tic, PrideFest, pride, drag, Scranton
© Aimee Dilger/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty ImagesFile photo: Drag Queen Luna Tic takes to the stage at a PrideFest event in President Joe Biden's hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania, June 2022.
Likely voters in the Republican presidential primaries believe that fighting the culture war is more important than preserving social entitlements by a two-to-one margin, according to a new survey by the Wall Street Journal. The question arose amid speculation that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis might challenge former president Donald Trump for the 2024 nomination.

The survey, conducted last week and published on Friday, showed that 55% of Republican respondents think opposing the "woke ideology in our schools and businesses" is more important than protecting Social Security and Medicare from cuts. Only 27% prioritized preserving the entitlement programs.

Asked if they would support a candidate who pledged to preserve the entitlements as they are, 49% of all voters - Republicans and Democrats alike - said yes.

Pollsters asked the question because Trump criticized DeSantis for supporting cuts to entitlement programs when he was in Congress. The 45th president is seeking the Republican nomination for the 2024 election, while the Florida governor has not officially declared his candidacy. Even so, their supporters have engaged in an online war of words over the past several weeks, which has often taken nasty turns.

Comment: The onslaught of the Woke deals with issues more fundamental than social entitlements. Thus, the benefits take a back seat in order of importance.

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Megaphone

French cops confiscate cookware


RT
Fri, 21 Apr 2023 20:59 UTC
French protesters, protesters, France
© AFP / Sylvain Thomas
French police in the village of Ganges confiscated saucepans and other metallic cookware from protesters on Thursday after hurriedly adopting a regulation banning "portable sound devices" ahead of a visit from President Emmanuel Macron.

The French leader is currently touring the nation to defend his unpopular pension reforms.

Video posted to social media shows police officers opening backpacks and ordering protesters to ditch their cookware. When one complains such restrictions are illegal, the officer retrieves a piece of paper from his car, presumably bearing the brand-new edict forbidding "entertainment devices." Demonstrators were also reportedly forbidden from bringing small flutes anywhere near the school where Macron was to speak.

The Herault prefecture rushed to impose the ban on "any sound device that is portable or emanating from a vehicle that has not been duly authorized" within the security perimeter of the areas to be visited by Macron just hours before his visit on Thursday, hoping to protect the head of state from the chorus of metallic banging he faced during his first event in Alsace.

Comment: Macron is preparing to make an omelette and he's ready to crack some skulls to do it.

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Better Earth

Russia to deliver free fertilizer to Africa - Foreign Ministry


RT
Fri, 21 Apr 2023 20:52 UTC
fertilizer
© Getty Images / Bloomberg Creative Photos
Moscow is preparing two batches of fertilizers to be shipped to Kenya and Nigeria free of charge, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Vershinin has revealed. The announcement comes amid uncertainty over the prospects for an extension of the Black Sea grain deal.

"So far, one shipment [of Russian fertilizers] of 20,000 tons, has been transported to Malawi, and it took six months. More [deliveries of fertilizers] to Kenya and Nigeria are being prepared, but they have not yet been implemented," Vershinin told Russia 24 TV on Friday.

The deputy foreign minister noted that he was speaking about supplies of Russian fertilizers which fell under Western sanctions and were delivered at the expense of Moscow. "This is the real picture of what's happening today, which, unfortunately, many are trying to conceal," Vershinin said, expressing confidence that "they won't succeed."

The Western sanctions do not directly target Russian agricultural goods, but affect payments, insurance, and shipping. With many Russian banks disconnected from SWIFT, direct settlements for exports have been made difficult.
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Stock Down

Go woke, go broke: DePaul University faces a $56,000,000 budget deficit, huge cuts

Matt Lamb
The College Fix
Fri, 21 Apr 2023 20:13 UTC
DePaul university campus sign
© southie3 via Flickr
The university is not really Catholic so the fewer people that go there, the better

Yet another woke Catholic university is going down in flames as DePaul University faces a $56 million budget deficit. This follows the enrollment drop and corresponding revenue decrease at the University of Portland, a leftist, pro-LGBT university that is only nominally Catholic.

The campus newspaper reports that the university has begun not renewing or filling professor positions, cutting staff and looking into other ways to slash the budget because "projections indicated DePaul's expenses will outweigh revenue by $56.5 million in the 2023-24 academic year."

The Strategic Resource Allocation Committee detailed the cuts that will likely be made - "Cost-saving measures were broken down between faculty, who will need to cut $11.3 million; staff, who are tasked with cutting $28.3 million; and departmental expenses of which $16.9 million will need to be cut," The DePaulia reported, based on an email from the Faculty Council president.
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Footprints

Even the Oakland A's are leaving California

Tim Meads
Daily Wire
Thu, 20 Apr 2023 00:00 UTC
Gavin/A's
© Mario Tama/Jane Tyska/Digital First Media/East Bay Times/Getty ImagesOakland Athletics • California Governor Gavin Newsom
It looks like even the Oakland Athletics are joining the mass exodus of Californians fleeing for a better life.

On Thursday, one of the MLB's most iconic franchises announced that it has purchased land in Las Vegas, Nevada, after searching and failing to find land for a new stadium in Oakland. Now, the A's will be building a gigantic $1.5 billion, 35,000-seat stadium in Sin City for the ball club, according to ESPN.

"For a while, we were on parallel paths [with Oakland], but we have turned our attention to Las Vegas to get a deal here for the A's and find a long-term home," team president Dave Kaval told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
"Oakland has been a great home for us for over 50 years, but we really need this 20-year saga completed and we feel there's a path here in Southern Nevada to do that."
The move has the full support of MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, but Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao isn't too pleased about it. The city has now officially ended talks with the team to keep them in the city. In a statement given to ESPN, Thao said:
"I am deeply disappointed that the A's have chosen not to negotiate with the City of Oakland as a true partner, in a way that respects the long relationship between the fans, the City and the team. Yet, it is clear to me that the A's have no intention of staying in Oakland and have simply been using this process to try to extract a better deal out of Las Vegas. I am not interested in continuing to play that game — the fans and our residents deserve better."

Comment: Oakland Athletics is a major league baseball franchise.

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Megaphone

Number of scholars punished for their speech skyrocketed over last three years


FIRE News
Thu, 20 Apr 2023 19:32 UTC
Free speech graphic
© FIRE
A professor at Concordia University in Wisconsin was suspended for criticizing his school's "woke" policies. A professor at the University of Washington lost an endowed chair for signing a letter criticizing Israel. A professor at Emporia State University was fired after criticizing a plan to suspend tenure.

These are only a few of the cases included in "Scholars Under Fire 2000-2022," a new report from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression finding that attacks on speech remain a major problem on college campuses, with an alarming increase in targeted scholars in the past three years.

The report analyzes more than two decades of trends in FIRE's database of successful and attempted sanctions of professors, lecturers, and other scholars for controversial speech. It recounts the experiences of scholars at both public and private universities whose targeted speech is — or would be — protected under First Amendment standards.

Comment: :

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Bullseye

RFK Jr. speaks about Ukraine losses: 'We're killing a lot of Ukrainians' in US-led proxy war against Russia


RT
Fri, 21 Apr 2023 19:30 UTC
Ukrainian soldier
© Emre Caylak / AFP
Many Ukrainians are dying for the sake of a US proxy war against Russia, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said, shortly after announcing he would challenge President Joe Biden for the presidential nomination as a Democrat.

"We're killing a lot of Ukrainians as pawns in a proxy war between two great powers," Kennedy told Fox News' Tucker Carlson Tonight on Thursday evening. "Nobody talks about this. There's 14,000 Ukrainian civilians that died, but 300,000 troops. Russians are killing Ukrainians at a 7:1 to 8:1 ratio. They cannot sustain this. What we're being told about this war is just not true."

Kennedy did not cite a source for his casualty figures. He did, however, say that his own son had fought in Ukraine as a machine-gunner in the special forces, and took part in the Ukrainian offensive in Kharkov last year.
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Cell Phone

Why WhatsApp could quit the UK over the online safety bill

Matthew Lesh
The Spectator
Fri, 21 Apr 2023 19:18 UTC
whatsapp
WhatsApp, Signal and five other messaging services have joined forces to attack the government's Online Safety Bill. They fear the bill will kill end-to-end encryption and say, in an open letter, that this could open the door to 'routine, general and indiscriminate surveillance of personal messages'. The stakes are high: WhatsApp and Signal are threatening to leave the UK market if encryption is undermined. This intervention comes as the Lords begins their line-by-line committee stage scrutiny of the Bill today.

Encryption provides a defence against fraud and scams; it allows us to communicate with friends and family safely; it enables human rights activists to send incriminating information to journalists. Governments and politicians even use it to keep their secrets from malicious foreign actors (and their colleagues). Encryption should not be thrown away in a panic.

The government has responded to these concerns by declaring that the bill 'in no way represents a ban on end-to-end encryption'. This is technically true but deceptive. The bill gives Ofcom the power to require services to install tools (called 'accredited technology') that could require surveillance of encrypted communications for child exploitation and terrorism content.

Comment:

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Syringe

Psychologist's death due to AstraZeneca Covid vaccine reaction - inquest

Harry Low
BBC
Thu, 20 Apr 2023 12:04 UTC
stephen wright
© Graham Baker PhotographyStephen Wright worked as a senior psychologist in Bexley in south-east London.
The death of a psychologist after his Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab was due to "unintended complications of the vaccine", an inquest has ruled.

Stephen Wright, an NHS employee in south-east London, died 10 days after his first dose in January 2021, senior coroner Andrew Harris found.

Dr Wright, 32, suffered a blood clot to the brain after receiving the vaccine.

His wife Charlotte has been trying to get the "natural causes" wording on her husband's death certificate changed.

Comment: See also:

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Cow

NYC will track carbon footprint of residents' food purchases


RT
Fri, 21 Apr 2023 11:55 UTC
mayor eric adams
© Getty Images / Lev Radin
Mayor Eric Adams admitted New Yorkers were probably not "ready for this conversation".

New York City will track the carbon footprint of residents' food consumption as part of a sweeping initiative to decrease the city's carbon emissions from food by a third this year, Mayor Eric Adams revealed on Monday at an event for the Mayor's Office of Climate and Environmental Justice.

About a fifth of New York's greenhouse gas emissions come from household food consumption, Adams told reporters, blaming much of that total on meat and dairy. Household food consumption is supposedly the third largest contributor to city emissions totals, trailing only buildings and transportation.

Comment: NYC is heading for wasteland status. Who the hell is going to stick around with this level of government meddling in the lives of citizens. Run while you can, New Yorkers!

See also:

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