HEAVEN IS HIGH AND THE EMPEROR IS FAR AWAY: Hong Kong marks Tiananmen anniversary, defying a police ban.
Archive for 2020
June 5, 2020
Why, exactly, would major retailers choose to rebuild and re-open stores that were burned to the ground or otherwise destroyed by rioters? What is there in the current response to riots by big city politicians that provides any assurance that the same thing won’t happen again? If you owned a store in an area that was destroyed by rioters, would you invest more money in the same location? Why?
Read the whole thing.
And speaking of “Please Don’t Go:” ‘Frantic’ New Yorkers snatch up unwanted homes in the suburbs.
Astonishingly, the riots and looting aren’t even mentioned in the above NY Post article. They will only accelerate this trend.
Both of these trends are discussed in my latest, over at Ed Driscoll.com: American Cities Take Double-Barreled Hit; How Will They Look in the Future?
JEFFREY SINGER: Coronavirus lockdowns have obvious costs and unseen costs too.
WAIT, ALL THE SMARTEST PEOPLE INFORMED ME THAT THIS WAS LAUGHABLY IMPOSSIBLE: Russia Developing Coronavirus Treatment That Disinfects the Body With UV Light From Inside.
NEW YORK STATE OF MIND: NYC Councilman pushing de Blasio ‘no confidence’ vote, calling on state to assume control.
AT AMAZON, Face Mask, Pack of 50.
I’VE BEEN CALLING FOR THIS FOR DECADES, BUT NO REASON TO LIMIT IT TO LAW ENFORCEMENT. ABOLISH IT FOR ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS. Left-Libertarian Alliance Introduces House Bill to End Qualified Immunity for Police Officers.
Qualified immunity didn’t exist at the time of the Framing, when it was assumed that everyone was equal before the law. It was an invention of judges, without warrant in the Constitution or laws.
NOBODYS’ GOING TO LISTEN TO THEM AGAIN, ARE THEY? Suddenly, Public Health Officials Say Social Justice Matters More Than Social Distance: For months, health experts told Americans to stay home. Now, many are encouraging the public to join mass protests.
The Social Justice Virus is more destructive than Covid. Any field it infects is ruined.
COVERING UP VIOLENCE: NBC Reporter: Historic Church Set Aflame Experienced ‘Some Vandalism’.
June 4, 2020
THE NEW YORK TIMES AND THE VANGUARD OF THE INCOGNIZANT:
“One thing above all else will restore order to our streets,” wrote Sen. Tom Cotton, “an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain, and ultimately deter lawbreakers.” The senator has advocated extraordinary measures involving the domestic deployment of uniformed soldiers for several days—as we’ve witnessed mass protests in American cities during the day and wanton violence, rioting, and looting by night. This exhortation is not new for him, but the venue in which it was placed—the New York Times opinion page—inspired a frenzied revolt from within the journalistic institution that published him. More remarkable, the aggrieved staffers and writers at the Times generally declined to issue a counterargument. They simply declared Cotton’s arguments anathema and sought to wield whatever power they could muster to see them banished.
One by one, New York Times staffers added their voices to a coordinated campaign of shame directed squarely at the paper’s management. “Running this puts Black [New York Times] staff in danger,” wrote technology reporter Taylor Lorenz, writers Caity Weaver and Jacey Fortin, climate reporter Hiroko Tabuchi, book critic Parul Sehgal, graphics assistant Simone Landon, reporter Katherine Rosman, styles desk editor Lindsey Underwood, culture writer Jenna Wortham, contributor Taffy Brodesser-Akner, and columnists Kara Swisher and Charlie Warzel. The News Guild of New York soon chimed in with a statement: “[Cotton’s] message undermines the journalistic work of our members, puts our black staff members in danger, promotes hate, and is likely to encourage further violence,” the Guild affirmed in what was billed as a “response to a clear threat to the health and safety of the journalists we represent.”
As a result of their staff’s meltdown over the Cotton op-ed, the New York Times, already drowning in a fantasy-land of alternately running pro-Soviet Union apologia and their anti-American founding “1619 Project” series, promises to narrow what they view as acceptable opinion even more. Or as Tina Lowe writes at the Washington Examiner, “New York Times employees can bully their bosses into submission — just don’t criticize a celebrity:”
A newspaper, beyond its moral purpose to tell the truth, is functionally a business. To turn a profit, it must balance journalistic integrity with revenue from subscribers and advertisers. Thus, it came as absolutely no surprise when the New York Times fired Alison Roman, the up-and-coming chef who irked professional celebrity Chrissy Teigen with a rude remark in an interview that was falsely smeared as racist and subsequently piled onto by Teigen.
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As you may recall from a long day ago, after the opinion page published a fairly straightforward op-ed from Sen. Tom Cotton, arguing to utilize the military in quelling protests — a position shared by the majority of Americans and 46% of people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, mind you — several staff members instigated a civil war, all sharing the same copypasta bullying their bosses: “Running this puts Black @NYTimes staff in danger.”
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Publishing the opinions of the Taliban wasn’t a bridge too far for the staff, and employees claiming that destroying property isn’t violence on national television isn’t a bridge too far for the management. But a sitting United States senator’s opinion that’s shared by the majority of the electorate is, and as a result, journalism will suffer in the future.
The bitter babies at the New York Times wanted less speech, and they got it. They’ll now publish fewer op-eds overall. There is a wholly illiberal war on the free press, and its primary aggressors aren’t in the White House or corrupt police stations. It’s being waged from within the inside.
Bari Weiss, one of the saner voices at the Times, responded to her colleagues’ collective primal scream in a Twitter thread earlier today:
Naturally, as this Mediaite headline notes: NY Times ‘Civil War’: Opinion Writer Bari Weiss Gets Buried By Colleagues for Tweeting Her Takes on Newsroom Friction After Cotton Op-Ed.
In 2015, Ashe Schow, then with the Washington Examiner wrote, “With all the attention being paid to college-aged social justice warriors and microagressions, one has to ask: What happens when all these delicate snowflakes enter the workforce?”
The Gray Lady is finding out, good and hard.
UPDATE: Daily Beast editor-at-large Goldie Taylor threatens violence against Weiss, in a since-deleted tweet:
As William F. Buckley famously said, “Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
(Updated and bumped.)
VANDALISM: George Floyd rioters deface 16 Boston statues, including memorial honoring black Civil War regiment.
Poor George Floyd. First the cops kill him, then the protesters kill his memory.
DEBLASIO REPEATS HIS MESSAGE TO THE “JEWISH COMMUNITY”: As Rioters Destroy New York, Cops Kick Jewish Families Out of a Playground.
Translated, no doubt, from the original German.
OPEN THREAD: What will you wear to the party tonight?
WHEN BLACK LIVES DON’T MATTER: ‘Killed by looter:’ St. Louis police mourn loss of Capt. David Dorn in overnight violence.
U.C. BERKELEY TO FOLLOW SUIT SOON: Hong Kong Passes Law Criminalizing Insults to Chinese Anthem.
DISPATCHES FROM THE MEMORY HOLE: Six officers have died in the last 10 days. The media has barely said a word.
THE NEW HOTNESS: Celebrity elite demand defunding of police departments.
If celebrities want police reform, great, but let’s be clear what that means. For one, it should mean repealing some laws that require more intrusive policing, where biases can play out in the ambiguity. That’s not just drug laws either, but all sorts of intrusive issues relating to domestic issues and family law. Since their suggestion is not to have police at all available, that shouldn’t be a problem, right?
Second, let’s be sure we direct demands for police reform where they belong — at the state and local level. Police operate on authority from their cities and counties, almost all of which have been run by one party for decades — and it ain’t the GOP.
Read the whole thing.
Given that Biden would serve as the elderly figurehead of an uber-woke administration*, I hope everybody has been enjoying their free 90-day trial of his presidency.
* Or, as Victor Davis Hanson writes, “It is now conventional punditry that should Joe Biden win in November, his vice president, in 1944-style, will sooner rather than later become president.”
THE VIOLENCE INHERENT IN THE SYSTEM: Coronavirus Gave America ‘a Small Foretaste’ of the Poverty and Tyranny of Socialism, Dinesh D’Souza Warns
DOING THE JOURNALISM THAT OUR ALLEGED JOURNALISTS WON’T DO: “Consider destroying your enemy”: Project Veritas infiltrates Antifa, insanity ensues. “This time, Project Veritas really has infiltrated Antifa, or at least one of its cells in Oregon. Their undercover operative managed to get some video and audio of training sessions in which extremists were urged to gouge people’s eyes, assault them and to ‘consider like destroying your enemy.'”
This seems like Antifa is a criminal conspiracy to deprive people of their civil rights through violence to me.
Plus: “For the past couple of weeks, there have been plenty of people trying to deny any real organization behind Antifa and even their involvement in rioting, despite a long history of violent street action across the country. In the Twin Cities, our leadership tried pinning it on ‘white supremacists’ from outside of the state, only to end up with egg on their faces when the data from arrests started coming to light. Even the SPLC ended up calling shenanigans on that claim. The DoJ’s focus on anarchists and Antifa will likely have a lot more success than attempts to shift the blame away from the extreme-leftist orgs that routinely conduct such operations, only not to this level of success.”
SOCIAL MEDIA AND SOFT TOTALITARIANISM:
“This is absolutely chilling Have there been racist and offensive tweets by A&M students? No doubt, and shame on them. But what counts as ‘racist’ and ‘offensive’?”, Rod Dreher asks:
Do you trust an American university in this current climate to fairly sort out unambiguously racist tweets and social media posts from ones that simply state an opinion on matters pertaining to protests, riots, and the like, that do not conform to progressive dogma? I do not. I absolutely do not.
How far back do these searches by A&M go? A week? A year? What if an incoming student posted something racist or otherwise offensive in high school, but repented? Is A&M going to deny them a college education now? What if they posted something that was perfectly acceptable six months ago, but which is now considered racist? Drew Brees simply reaffirmed his previous stance on not kneeling during the National Anthem, and he was widely trashed as racist (he apologized). Nobody can know
Nor do I want universities policing the private speech of any student, however offensive. Unless the student is calling for specific acts of violence, or unlawfully abusing (slandering, etc.) someone else at the university, why is it the university’s business to hunt for heresy?
Read the whole thing. As Iowahawk once said:
A lot of academicians apparently view The Lives of Others as a how-to guide for better education:
And note that Stasi-like spying is likely only getting started:
