[NEWS.YAHOO] As "The View" co-hosts continued to discuss responses to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry ’s Oprah interview, Meghan McCain made her stance on American vs. UK culture clear by declaring "monarchies are stupid" and "the American experience is the way to go."
While the other co-hosts of "The View" gave their opinions on Piers Morgan and his "maimed ego" after storming off a morning show where a co-host asked him about Markle, McCain gave a long spiel centered around her identity as an American. She talked about how playtime with her siblings growing up included pretending to be George Washington and the Continental Army crossing the Delaware River and drove home her love of visiting Mount Vernon, claiming that she named her daughter Liberty because of her intense dedication to American history. Better to have a hereditary oligarchy. Trust her on that.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/12/2021 00:00 ||
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#1
We got rid of our official ones back in 1776, but too many seem to swoon over them these days.
#5
Seems like bad news for the Duchess when she's on the wrong side of McCain and Tucker Carlson. I never read People Magazine, but there is so little else in the news that doesn't depress me.
Prince and Duchess stories just ignite my schadenfreude!
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/12/2021 14:51 Comments ||
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#6
Mark Twain had some choice comments on how Americans would drool over visiting royalty.
Oh, yeah, Meghan McCain....I think I've heard the name somewhere before.
[ToloNews] Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC) in a statement on Thursday said that "the right to education, freedom of expression and access to artistic skills are fundamental rights of all children, without discrimination based on age or gender," reacting to a decision by the Ministry of Education to ban public singing for schoolgirls.
"All boys and girls can exercise their rights equally and freely within the law," the statement said, adding that "any restriction on the rights and freedoms of children is against the general principles of human rights One man's rights are another man's existential threat. , the Convention on the rights of the children and the national laws of Afghanistan, in particular the Constitution and the law on the protection of the rights of the children."
"It is expected that any decision of the Ministry of Education to refuse to allow children to participate in public meetings and programs, to celebrate and welcoming in order to support the principles of freedom, equality and protection of the highest interests of children and not to promote gender discrimination," it added.
On Wednesday, a decision by the Afghan Ministry of Education to ban girls 12 years old and up from singing the national anthem--or other group songs--in mixed company has been met with a strong backlash from social media users and other critics. The ban would apply to all government and private schools.
Najiba Arian, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Education, confirmed the ban.
Arian said the decision was made following complaints by families over the high burden of studies on the shoulders of the students in high school and middle school.
Based on the decision, girls who are over the age of 12 are only allowed to sing the anthem and other cultural songs at gatherings of women, not in mixed company.
However, a woman is only as old as she admits... critics have described the move as imposing limitations on the civil liberties of women and girls.
[AlAhram] Through the $10 billion fund the UAE 'will invest in and alongside Israel, across sectors including energy manufacturing, water, space, healthcare and agri-tech,' it said.
The decision, the UAE official news agency WAM said, was taken following a "constructive" phone call between Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
[DiarioDeCuba] On February 24 the Ordinary Official Gazette No. 20 published Agreement 8999/2021 of the Council of Ministers, which set down a new and comprehensive expansion of the "Zones and Roads of Interest for the Security and Internal Order in Havana." The document, in short, guarantees draconian security in the area where Cuba's powerful elite usually lives, works and moves about. It also creates a legal justification to quash any type of protest in front of ministries or state institutions.
The text mentions several districts and some specific roads in the capital that will become a sort of "special" or "secure" zones, controlled in an absolute manner by the Ministry of the Interior (MININT). These areas are: Siboney-Atabey, Cubanacán, La Coronela, Plaza, Vedado, Príncipe, Colón-Nuevo Vedado, Ceiba-Kholy, Vedado-Malecón, Sevillano, Tallapiedra and very specific roads in the municipalities of Marianao, La Lisa and Boyeros.
The Agreement does not offer any explanation as to why, overnight, so many places have become areas of special interest with reference to security and internal order. Official media remained mum on the decision, and limited themselves to reproducing the text in its entirety. The story, except for in some independent Cuban media, went relatively overlooked.
WHAT DOES THE AGREEMENT 8999/2021 SHOW?
First, that Prime Minister Manuel Marrero Cruz has been very active in recent months, reaching agreements left and right, perhaps like in no other year. In 2020, for example, the Council of Ministers published its last agreement on December 10, number 8959 of the year.
Second, that the political elite of the regime has created a kind of city within a city, with very precise and restrictive laws for their exclusive well-being and security. Agreement 8999/2021 does not clarify this, but it explicitly refers to MININT Resolution 13/2015, which indicates the characteristics that define the areas and roads of interest for security and internal order.
Resolution 13/2015 states that any activity carried out in these areas and on these routes must be previously agreed to by the MININT, and be authorized by means of a permit that will be granted or denied within 20 business days. These activities can range from political, to athletic, to religious (held in public spaces), to the changing of buildings, homes or properties; the opening of businesses; and any type of technical installation, construction, maintenance or repair actions at individual or state properties.
WHAT DOES AGREEMENT 8999/2021 NOT SAY?
In general, the laws imposed by the regime conceal more than what they reveal, sometimes because they are convoluted and ambiguous, and sometimes because they are so succinct. To interpret the intention behind them, a second reading is almost always advisable to shed light on the issues at hand. In the case of this Agreement, doing so is a must.
On August 10, 2019, about 200 users of the Havana Street Network spontaneously gathered, catching State Security off guard, in front of the Ministry of Communications to demand the maintenance of the wireless network. A second protest was scheduled at the same site, but the police acted efficiently to prevent it.
On November 27, 2020, a group of artists and intellectuals stood outside the Ministry of Culture to protest the violent eviction to which the activists who had been staying at the headquarters of the San Isidro Movement were subjected. In a matter of hours, the small demonstration had grown into one backed by hundreds of people, many of them representatives of Cuban culture. The use of pepper spray, the deliberate cutting off of certain Internet services, and the repression to which the organizers of that event were subsequently subjected, did not prevent another protest on January 27, 2021 in the same place.
On February 19, a group of animal rights activists held a protest in front of the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAGRI) to demand the immediate approval of the promised Decree Law on Animal Welfare. Although at first things seemed to be getting out of control, MINAGRI authorities acted prudently and chose dialogue over another media event that would highlight the repressive nature of the regime.
The above timeline is no accident. Rather, it illustrates how demonstrations in front of ministries are taking root in Cuban civil society as a method of protest. Thus, putting an end to precisely this is one of the objectives that Agreement 8999/2021 seems to pursue by placing the areas where all the country's ministries are located under the MININT's authority.
Other areas and roads declared of interest with regards to security and internal order are, at first glance, less clear. But, following the logic of Cuban laws, it suffices to take a good look at what these places are to understand what the Government is up to by turning them into special high-security zones.
The homes of the country's political and military elite are located in districts like Siboney-Atabey, Kholy and Nuevo Vedado. If there were any doubt as to whether the pattern was well calculated, the fact that Agreement 8999/2021 includes specific avenues in municipalities like Marianao and Lisa confirms that the regime’s aim is, in fact, to protect leaders and their relatives from any popular protests.
If we were to locate the aforementioned areas on a map of Havana, and connect them to those where the ministries and main state institutions are located, there would be certain blank spaces, but the Marianao, La Lisa and Boyeros roads mentioned in the Agreement round out this daily route of the regime's elite, tracing a path from their homes to their usual workplaces, including the José Martí International Airport.
Other avenues covered in this Agreement stand out for their marked tourism-related interest for the Government. One of them is the coastal strip of Vedado, where the Government has undertaken a series of construction projects to fill the area with luxury hotels. With a stroke of a pen, the regime has moved to protect itself by banning all kinds of citizen demonstrations in the capital.
There is simply no longer any room for anything that could endanger the political and military elite, and the image of the tropical paradise that it seeks to sell to tourists and foreign visitors. With a simple text, in addition, the limitation of an endless number of citizen rights has become law, creating an exclusive thoroughfare on which Sandro Castro, perhaps, can drive her Mercedes Benz without being disturbed.
[DAILYTIMES.PK] Police on Thursday arrested PML-N women leader Tanveer Chaudhry (Tanveer Bibi) for allegedly thrashing a woman police constable after the latter tried to stop Tanveer from entering the premises of an Accountability Court.
According to a local media outlet, the police nominated PML-N leader Tanvir Chaudhry in the first information report on the complaint of anti-riot force constable Anam Fatima.
She alleged the suspect tried to enter the premises of the accountability court along with five unknown women without seeking permission. As she and her colleague Sonia Ashraf tried to stop them, Tanvir Chaudhry got furious and slapped her.
He and the unidentified women then thrashed her publicly, Anam alleged adding the attackers also hurled threats at her.
Posted by: Fred ||
03/12/2021 00:00 ||
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[Breitbart via Bongino] Chinese Communist Party "experts" urged the World Health Organization (W.H.O.) on Tuesday to let China build and run a global database for "vaccine passports" documenting if every person on earth has received a Chinese coronavirus vaccine. To coin a phrase, "What could possibly go wrong"?
[RT] Journalists, academics and even a Google executive have joined in to attack the independent publishing platform Substack, as the battle over ’harassment’ of a New York Times
...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... news hound quickly escalated into a censorship war.
What began on Tuesday as an online campaign against Fox News host Tucker Carlson — for "harassing" the Times internet news hound Taylor Lorenz by questioning her claims of victimhood — turned into an attack on Substack by Wednesday evening, as former BuzzFeed news hound Ryan Broderick penned a piece accusing the platform of enabling "harassers" like Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Glenn Greenwald.
While noting that Substack does actually have a policy against any sort of harassment and that Greenwald didn’t technically harass Lorenz, Broderick argued that "online harassment is a constantly evolving process of boundary testing."
Among those who endorsed his view were UCLA Professor of Information Studies Sarah Roberts — best known for last month’s Twitter tirade denouncing Substack as "dangerous" to journalists — but also Rob Leathern, currently Google’s vice president of Privacy Product Management and a former Facebook official.
Responding to Broderick’s broadside on Thursday, Greenwald noted that journalists have "bizarrely transformed from their traditional role as leading free expression defenders into the most vocal censorship advocates, using their platforms to demand that tech monopolies ban and silence others."
Broderick was fired from BuzzFeed for "serial plagiarism" but now wants to reinvent himself as "the Guardian and Defender of Real Journalism" with a straight face, Greenwald pointed out. He also blasted mainstream journalists as having a "bottomless sense of entitlement and self-regard and fragility" and seeking to create a wo
Posted by: Fred ||
03/12/2021 00:00 ||
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#1
Journalists have "bizarrely transformed from their traditional role as leading free expression defenders into the most vocal censorship advocates, using their platforms to demand that tech monopolies ban and silence others."
Yes and the 'journalists' are very affective at censoring, ask to see the building they work in and you will most likely receive the following graphic:
[NYPOST] A white Georgetown Law professor belittled black students during a Zoom call with a colleague, saying they “usually” perform “just plain at the bottom” of her classes, according to video posted online this week. Oh, you can't say that! You be rayciss!
The brief clip, posted to Twitter Wednesday, shows an adjunct professor of law identified by the Georgetown Black Law Students Association as Sandra Sellers and another faculty member, David Batson, having what they believed was a private discussion about a class they jointly taught.
“I end up having this angst every semester that a lot of my lower ones are blacks,” Sellers said. “Happens almost every semester. And it’s like, oh come on. It’s some really good ones, but there are usually some that are just plain at the bottom. It drives me crazy.” But yer not supposed to notice that sort of thing. To do so risks yer job!
Sellers made the comments after saying “they were a bit jumbled,” prompting Batson to apparently nod in agreement, the footage shows. OH! He nodded in agreement. He's toast too!
Sandra Sellers, according to the Georgetown Black Law Students Association, was referencing the only black student in her class. I thought she was talking about the pattern she was seeing, rather than her sole current dummy.
“That’s the best way I can put it,” Sellers said with a laugh on the call. “It’s like OK, let me reason through that, what you just said.”
Sellers, according to the BLSA, was referencing the only black student in her class. The organization is now calling for her immediate resignation, and a petition demanding her ouster has garnered hundreds of signatures from students, alumni and several Georgetown faculty members. Decided to lynch her, did they?
“We demand nothing short of the immediate termination of Sandra Sellers as adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center,” the group said in a statement. “Not suspension. Not an investigation. The university must take swift and definitive action in the face of blatant and shameless racism.”
#3
Know what will solve this? Half dozen movies starring black actors as brave and stunning lawyers. Maybe a Cuba Gooding, Jr. marathon in the meantime.
Posted by: Chris ||
03/12/2021 12:53 Comments ||
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Years ago, in an agency focused on Criminal Justice policy and resourcing in California, I had long conversations with senior leadership about the assertion of the criminal justice system being inherently racist against "people of color". Their disproportionate incarceration rates were used as proof for the assertion, coupled with some levels of under-representation in the ranks of sworn law enforcement. When I explained that if you dismissed the racial categorizations and instead viewed the offender base by matriarchy, single family households lacking a father, low education levels, unemployment/low-skilled employment, and urban density with gang proximity, you got exactly the proportional representation that existed at the time. But since that answer placed responsibility on the individuals and family choices, it was unacceptable. SO the reasoning had to be racism, because any other answer held other factors accountable and that didn't advance political objects.
[NYPOST] A Manhattan private school aiming to use more “inclusive language” is encouraging its students to stop using the terms “mom,” “dad” and “parents” because the words make “assumptions” about kids’ home lives. Can we still make the assumption that children are produced by "moms" who were impregnated by "dads." There ain't no other way to make kiddies, regardless of whether they live with mom and dad or not.
The Grace Church School in Noho — which offers academic courses for junior kindergarten through 12th grade — issued a 12-page guide to students and staff explaining the school’s mission of inclusivity. Do we really have to be "inclusive" of every odd arrangement people can think up? "Give this note to yer parents, Johnny!"
"I ain't got no parents. I'm being raised by cows!"
"Then give it to the herd bull."
The detailed guide recommends using the terms “grown-ups,” “folks,” “family” or “guardians” as alternatives to “mom,” “dad” and “parents.” It also suggests using “caregiver” instead of “nanny/babysitter.” "Mary Poppins! Mary Poppins!"
"Yes, child?"
"Are you a nanny, a babysitter, or a caregiver?"
"What's the difference?"
"A babysitter is a teenager who puts us to bed early and then sits on the sofa texting her friends. A nanny is an adult who's raising kids while the parents..."
"Family!..."
"... family does other things, like investment banking, or day trading, or ruling Denmark."
"Excellent! And what's a 'caregiver?'"
"It's the new word for 'nurse' or 'nurse's aide,' or the bit of tomato you find in a word salad."
"Thank you for clarifying."
“Families are formed and structured in many ways. At Grace Church School, we use inclusive language that reflects this diversity. It’s important to refrain from making assumptions about who kids live with, who cares for them, whether they sleep in the same place every night, whether they see their parents, etc.,” the guide reads. Why? If they don't live with the 'rents they'll likely let you know. Turning the whole herd for one person doesn't sound logical.
The document also states how to use appropriate terms relating to gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity. Instead of asking a person, “What are you? Where are you from?,” the query should be, “What is your cultural/ethnic background? Where are your ancestors/is your family from?,” according to Grace’s guide. Ofewgawdsake! Spit the meal outta yer mouth!
The school defended the guide, telling City Journal that its goal is to “promote a sense of belonging for all of our students.” Private school in Noo Yawk... Hmmm... It's probably rayciss of me, but I'd suspect the majority of their students are white red diaper babies.
“Grace is an Episcopal school. As part of our Episcopal identity, we recognize the dignity and worth common to humanity,” the Rev. Robert Pennoyer, assistant head of school, said in a statement to the outlet. "I knew you were some kind of kneeler."
--Mattie Ross
#6
Instead of asking a person, “What are you? Where are you from?,” the query should be, “What is your cultural/ethnic background? Where are your ancestors/is your family from?,” according to Grace’s guide.
PU1 & PU2 said we are Homo Sapiens from the other side of hill teacher inquisitor.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
03/12/2021 9:42 Comments ||
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Seems to me doing away with the words mom and dad is excluding kids who actually have moms and dads. But me being a Martian, it says so on my census form, I'm not certain about my own parentage.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/12/2021 10:24 Comments ||
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#15
90s entertainment was not meant to be an instruction manual.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.