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NYPD says 'no criminality' after officers fall ill after drinking milkshakes at Shake Shack in Manhattan

Jessica Flores
USA TODAY
Tue, 16 Jun 2020 04:30 UTC
Shake Shack
© LA Times
Shake Shack tweeted that it was "horrified" by reports of an alleged contamination in New York. The restaurant chain said it was working with police in the investigation.
The New York Police Department said "no criminality" had occurred after investigating whether three of its officers were poisoned after drinking milkshakes on Monday night at a Shake Shack restaurant in Manhattan.

The officers complained of "not feeling well" before being hospitalized and later released, the NYPD said in a statement to USA TODAY, and Shake Shack said via Twitter that it was "horrified" and working with police.

Chief Rodney Harrison, NYPD's chief of detectives, tweeted early Tuesday: "After a thorough investigation by the NYPD's Manhattan South investigators, it has been determined that there was no criminality by shake shack's employees."

Comment: It would be nice to know how the NYPD came to the conclusion that the poisoning was unintentional. It's better to think of the incident as an accident, and it may well be, but tensions are such at the moment that nothing seems out of the realm of possibility. Perhaps the cops thought it better to quash rather than pursue it.

See also:

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Chalkboard

The modelers thought of everything except reality


American Institute for Economic Research
Sun, 14 Jun 2020 07:54 UTC
artificial intelligence
The archives of AIER dating back to 1933 show that we had no comments on the polio epidemic (1948-1951), the Asian Flu (1957-59), the Hong Kong flu (1968-69), the Avian bird flu (2006), or the Swine flu pandemic of 2009, which was a strain most like 1918 and therefore, one might suppose, would have caused panic but did not.

We had nothing to say because disease mitigation is a job for medical professionals, not economists and certainly not politicians.

The problem is that this time, the disease mitigators (some of them, the ones in power and with the ear of politicians) didn't stay out of economics. Indeed, their plans for mitigation trampled all over commerce, life, and the freedoms that are necessary to make it function. For a few months in 2020, the presumptuous model-building disease mitigators became central planners, overriding the wisdom of not only medical professionals but also economists, philosophers, political scientists, historians, and everyone else including legislatures and voters.

Our first piece on the topic ran January 27. The focus was on the quarantine power and the argument was simple: because people are not ridiculous and know how to deal with disease in consultation with medical professionals, this state power should not be deployed. At the time, people said we were being alarmist even for saying this. Nothing like this could ever happen in the U.S. because we have a Constitution and courts and a tradition of trusting the people.

Comment: See also:

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Arrow Down

'The left is taking us backward': Dave Rubin talks to Brendan O'Neill about the 'mind virus' of wokeness


Spiked
Thu, 11 Jun 2020 00:01 UTC
dave rubin
Wokeness has taken over the West. Even the largest crisis since the Second World War has not been enough to disturb the woke consensus in elite circles. The left, which once bravely fought for freedom, is now the driving force of an intolerant and regressive politics. This is the subject of Dave Rubin's Don't Burn This Book: Thinking for Yourself in the Age of Unreason. Rubin joined spiked editor Brendan O'Neill for the latest episode of The Brendan O'Neill Show. What follows is an edited extract. Listen to the full conversation here.

Brendan O'Neill: Much of the world is under lockdown. Some of us cannot even leave our homes without good reason. Humankind faces a pretty serious crisis. But all these regressive trends that we have been talking about are still there and burst through every now and then. Do you think that it is not that the virus itself will do away with this stuff, but that there is an opportunity for those of us who believe in a more liberal-minded politics to push further for our ideals?

Comment: See also:

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Brick Wall

Class, not race, divides America

Victor Davis Hanson
American Greatness
Sun, 14 Jun 2020 07:25 UTC
class warfare
Nothing is stranger in these tense days than the monotony of the inexact and non-descriptive mantra of "white privilege" and "white solidarity" — as if there is some monolithic white bloc, or as if class matters not at all.

In truth, the clingers, the deplorables, the irredeemables, and Joe Biden's "dregs" have very little in common with those who so libel them, but superficially share supposedly omnipotent and similar skin color.

In the past, we saw such tensions among so-called whites in CNN's reporting of the allegedly toothless rubes at Trump rallies, in the Strzok-Page text trove about Walmart's smelly patrons, in the callous coastal disregard for the five-decade wasting away of the American industrial heartland, in the permissible elite collective disparagement of Christian evangelicals, and in the anthropological curiosity about and condescension toward such exotic, but presumably backward, Duck Dynasty and NASCAR peoples.

As a result, we have reached the surreal point at which the nation's privileged whites on campuses such as Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, in the top echelon of politics, and the corporate and entertainment worlds, all deplore in the abstract something they call "white privilege" in others who have never really experienced it.
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Info

European Court upholds right to boycott Israel

Ali Abunimah
The Electronic Infitada
Thu, 11 Jun 2020 00:01 UTC
boycott israel
© Konrad K. / SIPA
Calls to boycott Israel are protected free speech, says European Court of Human Rights.
The European Court of Human Rights struck a major blow to Israel's efforts to silence its critics on Thursday when it overturned the criminal convictions against 11 Palestinian rights activists in France.

The court ruled unanimously that the convictions against the activists for calling on shoppers to boycott Israeli goods violated the European Convention on Human Rights' guarantee of freedom of expression.

The court has ordered the French government to pay each of the activists about $8,000 in damages and awarded them their legal costs.

Comment: See also:

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Che Guevara

Woke wave: Julius Caesar statue in Belgium vandalized with 'crook' graffiti

Jules Johnston
The Brussels Times
Mon, 15 Jun 2020 00:00 UTC
Caesar statue graffitti
The vandalism of several statues in Flanders has left locals questioning the motivations of the damage, after a statue of Julius Caesar - not Leopold II - was defaced over the weekend.

The statue of Caesar in Velzeke, in Zottegem (East Flanders), was damaged during the night of Saturday to Sunday, with the word 'krapuul' (crook) scrawled on the base of the statue. The spear that Caesar held in one hand was also torn off.

An investigation has been opened into the vandals. "We will estimate more precisely on Monday the extent of the damage and the repairs to be carried out. These will be at the expense of the perpetrators," said Mayor Jenne De Potter (CD&V).

A kilometre further on, marble statues in the garden of the cloister of Saint-Antoine were also damaged, potentially by the same individuals.

Comment: In their "all or nothing," "ends justify the means" ideologically-possessed insanity, many in the West are seeking to deface and destroy the symbols and the very history that statues represent - as if these acts of vandalism will have any bearing on the present. The social justice contagion cannot re-write the acts of past leaders try as it may.

And a note to the goons who defaced the statue of Julius Caesar: for goodness sake, open a book or three and learn something about the man. He was, in fact, one of the good guys!

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NPC

Local UK police constabulary tells officers to take the knee, lest they become focus of protester attention

Ian Gallagher and Martin Beckford
Daily Mail
Mon, 15 Jun 2020 17:39 UTC
uk police kneel

Hertfordshire Constabulary said officers who chose not to make the solidarity gesture ‘may become the focus of the protesters’ attention’
A police force has angered officers by warning that they may face consequences if they decline to 'take the knee' at anti-racism protests.

Hertfordshire Constabulary said those who chose not to make the solidarity gesture 'may become the focus of the protesters' attention'.

The advice was issued during a recent operational briefing and points out that, when officers kneel down - joining in the symbolic stance of the Black Lives Matter movement - it 'has a very positive reaction on the protest groups'.

But one senior detective told The Mail on Sunday: 'It's absurd. Will officers be expected to make similarly appeasing gestures at political events - far-Right protests, for instance?'

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett is among politicians who have warned that the action risks drawing police into politics and could lead to false accusations of racism being levelled at any who refuse to join in.

'I am concerned that the gesture of kneeling, though prompted by the best instincts, might give the perception of undermining the role of the police in such situations,' he said last week.


Comment: "The best instincts"? That's debateable.


Comment: It will never be enough:

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Dollars

Republic Of CHAZ begins reparations; white participants pressured to give blacks $10 each

Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge
Sun, 14 Jun 2020 06:34 UTC
flag upside down
© Reuters/Goran Tomasevic
An upside down US flag affixed to the Seattle Police Department East Precinct building at the self-proclaimed Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ).
Seattle's so-called Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHAZ) has begun reparations, as white members of the fledgling sovereignty were asked on Friday night to give at least one black person $10 before leaving the area.
"I want you to find, by the time you leave this autonomous zone, I want you to give ten dollars to one African American person from this autonomous zone. And if you find that's difficult - if you find it's hard for you to give ten dollars to people of color, to black people expecially [sic], you have to think really critically about - in the future, are you going to actually give up power and land and capital when you have it?

If you have a hard time giving up ten dollars, you have to think about: are you really down with this struggle? Are you really down with the movement? Because if that is a challenge for you, I'm not sure if you're in the right place.

So find an African American person. White people, I see you. I see every one of you, and I remember your faces. You find that African American person and you give them ten dollars. Cash up, venmo, ten dollars in your pocket. That's my challenge to you. Do it."

Comment: See also:

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X

85% of independent restaurants could go out of biz by the end of 2020 says Independent Restaurant Coalition

Irene Jiang
Business Insider
Sun, 14 Jun 2020 12:13 UTC
Small restaurant
© Irene Jiang/Business Insider
As many as 85% of independent restaurants may be forced out of business by the end of the year, according to a new report commissioned by the Independent Restaurant Coalition.

The report, which was conducted by consulting company Compass Lexecon, outlines the threats facing independent restaurants as the pandemic continues to affect business. Although the restaurant industry as a whole has suffered major losses, independent restaurants like mom-and-pop diners, neighborhood Thai joints, and fine dining staples, are much more at risk than fast-food chains like McDonald's and Starbucks. Independents, which comprise 70% of all restaurants, rely much more heavily on dine-in revenue and don't have the corporate resources that make some chains so resilient in the face of disaster.

Dan Wu, owner of Atomic Ramen in Lexington, Kentucky, said on an IRC press call:
"What I'm afraid of is the people that are the least likely to survive are going to be these small, single-location, immigrant-run, women-run, people-of-color-run operations. That we're the ones that don't have the infrastructure like the chain restaurants to survive this,"
Wu is an immigrant, like many other independent restaurant owners and workers.
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Attention

Molotov-tossing Brooklyn lawyer was an intern for Soros-funded anti-Israel group

Joshua Klein
Breitbart
Fri, 12 Jun 2020 00:00 UTC
Urooj Rahman
© Daily Mail
Lawyer Urooj Rahman
One of the two lawyers accused of trying to torch an NYPD cruiser during protests that engulfed Brooklyn over the weekend spent a summer in the West Bank as a fellow and intern with radical Palestinian activist organizations.

Two attorneys, Colinford Mattis, 32, and Urooj Rahman, 31, reportedly were caught attempting to distribute homemade molotov cocktail devices to protesters who were clashing with police near the 88th Precinct in Fort Greene. "Rahman attempted to distribute Molotov cocktails to the witness and others so that those individuals could likewise use the incendiary devices in furtherance of more destruction and violence," a witness was quoted as saying to authorities in a detention memo from federal prosecutors for the Eastern District of New York.

Rahman was captured in a photo obtained by the New York Daily News wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh on her face and holding a makeshift Molotov cocktail. The keffiyeh, a chequered black and white scarf, has become a symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

Comment:


See also:

Two New York attorneys caught tossing Molotov cocktails into police car, handing them out to protesters

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