Category Archives: Culture

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Is Penn President Liz Magill as dumb as a box of rocks?

We reported, on Tuesday, how University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill not just toast, but toast which has fallen on the floor, buttered side down, after The Philadelphia Inquirer noted her terrible performance before a congressional committee:

When given the chance, though, the presidents — Dr Magill, Harvard president Claudine Gay and Massachusetts Institute of Technology president Sally Kornbluth — at times didn’t directly answer, struggling to explain the point at which hate speech rises to the level of incitement of violence — or, when students or faculty should be disciplined for it.

“It is a context-dependent decision, congresswoman,” Magill said when asked repeatedly if calling for the genocide of Jews violates Penn’s rules or code of conduct.

What? If the question had been about calling for the killing of blacks or Hispanics or homosexuals, is there any doubt, any doubt at all, that Dr Magill’s answer would not have been that it was a “context-dependent decision”?

At least as of this writing, Dr Magill still has her job, but I wonder just for how much longer that will be: Continue reading →

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Liz Magill is not just toast, but toast which has fallen on the floor, buttered side down

We have previously reported how University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill has completely fouled up the school’s response to the antiSemitism on campus, costing the Ivy League university the good will of its many deep-pocket alumni donors.

Well, she may have just fired herself! From The Philadelphia Inquirer: Continue reading →

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If using rape to terrorize Jewish women helps achieve a ‘Palestinian’ nation, Pramila Jayapal Williamson is not ready to allow “hierarchies of oppressions” to stand in the way!

One would think that women, conservative, moderate, liberal, and even whacko hard left, would all be united on one question, namely that rape is a bad thing, a horrible thing, an assault on everyone’s dignity. But that’s apparently not the case when it comes to at least some women, namely those who support the ‘Palestinian’ cause.

CNN host clashes with progressive Democrat over Hamas’ use of sexual violence: ‘You turned it back to Israel’

Jayapal claimed she had specifically condemned Hamas’ attacks against Israeli women

By Hanna Panreck, Fox News | First Sunday of Advent, December 3, 2023 | 2:27 PM EST

CNN host Dana Bash clashed with progressive Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., over the lack of widespread condemnation of Hamas’ use of sexual violence against Israeli women during their Oct. 7 attacks.

I’m putting the rest of this below the fold, because it includes the video of the interview. Continue reading →

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Killadelphia

According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Crime Maps and Stats page, there have been 383 homicides in the City of Brotherly Love as of 11:59 PM EST on November 30, 2023.

With November 30th being the 334th day of the year, that works out to an average of 1.1467 homicides per day in Philly, which, multiplied by 365 yields a projected 418.5479 murders for the year. That’s a heck of an improvement, even if it’s still ridiculously high, but anything under 422 killings will give Mayor Jim Kenney, District Attorney Larry Krasner, and most-of-the-year Police Commissioner Danielle Outlaw a four-year average slightly under 500 per year.

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The Journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer

No, that’s not a typographical error in the headline: The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias. We have previously written about the journolism of The Philadelphia Inquirer, often enough that this is the fifth article with that title. The newspaper reported:

Haverford College holds vigil for Palestinian student shot in Vermont

Haverford students, alumni, and staff gathered in Founders Hall to light candles and offer support for Kinnan Abdalhamid, the West Bank-born biology major and member of the school’s track team.

by Max Marin and Ximena Conde | Tuesday, November 28, 2023 | 7:21 PM EST

Jason J Eaton, mugshot by Burlington Police Department and is a pubic record.

Haverford College held a vigil on Tuesday in support of a Palestinian student who was shot in what authorities are investigating as a potential hate crime in Vermont on Saturday.About 200 Haverford students, alumni, and staff gathered in Founders Hall around 4:30 p.m. to light candles and offer support for Kinnan Abdalhamid, the West Bank-born biology major and member of the school’s track team, who was one of three victims of Saturday’s shooting.

Abdalhamid remains hospitalized in Burlington along with his two friends, Hisham Awartani and Tahseen Ahmed. The three college students, all 20, were visiting Burlington for the holiday weekend when a man opened fire on them without warning.

Note the publication date of the newspaper’s article: Tuesday, November 28th, at 7:21 PM EST. The reporters let readers know that this is being investigated to see if it was a hate crime, referencing an article published the previous day at 8:58 AM, and updated at 6:56 PM, in which it was reported:

Given the unprovoked nature of the attack and soaring tension around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Murad said it was understandable to suspect hate-based motivations at play in the case, but urged the public to withhold speculation as the investigation continues among local, state, and federal authorities. “We still do not know as much as we want to know.”

Returning to the originally cited article in the Inquirer:

Haverford’s vigil was structured in the Quaker tradition where students held long moments of silence broken only when someone was motivated to speak. One Palestinian student broke down in tears as she addressed the room. As two friends flanked her for support, she said there was no doubt in her mind the shooting was a hate crime.

“Palestinians’ suffering has to be recognized,” she said. “We’re humans.”

Authorities said the men were walking to a relative’s house in Burlington after a family gathering when Jason J. Eaton stepped up onto a nearby porch and, without a word, fired four shots from a Ruger .380 pistol, injuring all three.

While the motive remains unclear, authorities noted the victims were speaking in a mixture of English and Arabic, and two of them were wearing keffiyehs. The U.S. Department of Justice is assisting with an investigation into whether the unprovoked attack was a hate crime. Eaton, 48, was arrested Sunday and pleaded not guilty to three counts of attempted murder on Monday.

OK, fine. But there is absolutely nothing in the Inky’s reporting to tell you that the suspect, Jason Eaton, was off his rocker, suffering from depression, coocoo for Cocoa Puffs, and mostly a political whacko:

Also see: Robert Stacy McCain, Suspect in Shooting of Palestin-ian Students ‘Strug-gled With Depression’

According to NBC, Eaton appears to have a YouTube account that has playlists with videos that include “Expose Fauci,” long COVID, economics, and how to use brain crystals for “psychic powers.” An Instagram account that appears to belong to him also shows him on a farm and cooking.

In an X account that appeared to belong to Eaton, he describes himself as a “radical citizen…patrolling demockracy and crapitalism for oathcreepers.” A 2022 archived version of that same account, which contains the same photo, has a more subdued bio that describes him as a Vermont dad and part-time farmer. The archived X account also provides a link to a Substack, with the “wandering ramblings of a reformed broker on the ADHD/ASD spectrum.” The Substack only has one post, which is an essay on how restaurants can retain dishwashers.

I guess that part wouldn’t fit Teh Narrative, but actual journalists, rather than journolists, would have included it. It should be noted that the published reports about Mr Eaton and his mental health issues are dated on the morning of the 27th, and updated at 7:07 PM the same day, fully a day prior to the Inky’s story.

The mugshot of Mr Eaton? The newspaper doesn’t usually publish them, despite mugshots being easily available from the Philadelphia Police Department, but when it comes to a blue-eyed, blond-haired white guy? While the photo credit notes that it came from the Burlington Police Department, I found it in this article in the Inquirer.

Did the Inquirer actually lie to its readers? Nope, there’s nothing that I spotted which was demonstrably untrue. But the newspaper omitted a lot of facts, enough to be called lies of omission by some, facts which would change the impression that the article was intended to give.

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You go, girl! Go ahead and hurt your own cause! Climate activist Greta Thunberg goes all out anti-Semitism

We have previously noted the definition of “intersectionality,” and how the perhaps less than genius thinkers on the left misuse it to tell us that all leftist causes are related, mixing together things which would curdle new milk. An interesting example is the mixing of feminism and transgenderism, hich leads to the amusing fact that, at least in some things, the best woman for the job is a man male.

Now, William Teach’s sort of favorite whipping girl, Greta “How dare you!” Thunberg, has hurt her own cause by mixing it with today’s oh-so-popular anti-Semitism. From The Times of Israel:

Climate activist Thunberg flogged for ‘crush Zionism’ chant

by Canaan Lidor | Tuesday, Kislev 15, 5784 | 6:23 PM Jerusalem Time

Footage showing climate activist Greta Thunberg chanting “crush Zionism” at a recent pro-Palestinian rally in Sweden is provoking harsh-worded criticism of her by prominent Jewish environmentalists.

If you can’t access the Times website, you can find the story here as well. You can see the original of the tweet here, which shows you the video, not just thye still in the screen capture I took ands used.

The actions by Thunberg, whom many regard as a symbol of the environmentalist movement, reflect how “large parts of ‘the left’ or ‘progressives’ have been intellectually captured by a naive, distorted and frankly bigoted anti-Zionism,” Nigel Savage, a UK-born environmental activist and founder of Jewish environmental nonprofit organization Hazon, tells The Times of Israel Tuesday.

Savage, whose Jerusalem-based group was established in 2000 and holds environmentally oriented bike rides in New York, adds: “It is a microcosm of a far larger and far greater challenge. It’s sad and disturbing.”

Now I will admit it: I can kind of see Miss Thunberg’s reasoning. In saying that Israel should be crushed, she is taking the side of poverty and savagery over prosperity and Western civilization, and if there’s one thing the global warming climate change activists hate, it’s prosperity and Western civilization, despite the fact that they are living with the benefits of prosperity and Western civilization.

I will admit to wondering how Miss Thunberg got from her native Sweden to Amsterdam without the use of fossil fuels, or from where the puffy coat and its insulation came without the use of petroleum, but I’m hardly the first person to point out her climapocrisy.

Miss Thunberg, of course, has the freedom of speech, and can say any fool thing she wishes, but I am amuse by the fact that she is hurting her own cause by siding against Israel and Jews, Jews who just might be the voters who put the Democrats over the top to control Congress and get the climate policies she wants enacted into law.

So, you go, girl! Go ahead and hurt your own cause.

 

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Run her out of town on a rail! Rather than the $425,000 to which her $75,000 raise boosted her, Leslie Richards needs a $425,000 pay cut, and a SEPTA train ticket out of town.

If you were apprehended after shooting at a crowd of people in a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority station, would you expect to simply be let go, even if you had missed everyone? I wouldn’t, but, then again, I’m not a 16-year-old girl.

A 16-year-old girl is facing arrest for a SEPTA subway shooting at the 15th and Market station

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office issued a warrant in the Nov. 19 shooting at the 15th and Market Street station.

by Rodrigo Torrejón | Monday, November 27, 2023 | 1:00 PM EST

A 16-year-old girl who police say shot at a group of juveniles inside the SEPTA station at 15th and Market Street earlier this month — but struck no one — will be arrested for that crime, authorities said Monday.

The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office said an arrest warrant had been issued for the teen in connection with the Nov. 19 shooting on the station concourse. The girl, whom authorities did not identify because she is a juvenile, is expected to face charges of aggravated assault and firearms violations.

The teen had been detained at the 11th Street station on the day of the shooting because she was wanted on a family court bench warrant for theft, the district attorney’s office said.

She is expected to be arrested for the shooting by the end of the week, authorities said.

The language on this story is unclear, to say no more. Was she already locked up on the bench warrant? Will she be arrested while already behind bars, or is she out on the streets? Normally, one would expect an apprehended shooter to have been arrested on the assault and firearms charges right away. Were the police waiting to see if uber-permissive District Attorney Larry Krasner would want to take any action since the shooter was a 16-year-old girl?

The teen girl opened fire on a group of juveniles who were following her out of the station and up the exit stairs, the district attorney’s office said in a statement. Video obtained by investigators shows the teen shooting from the steps, fleeing, and then throwing a backpack into a trash can in the concourse, the statement said.

A handgun was recovered from the trash can and matched the live rounds and shell casings found at the scene of the shooting, the district attorney’s office said. When the teen was detained on the bench warrant, authorities said, she was wearing clothing that matched what the shooter was seen wearing on surveillance footage.

There’s more at the original, but it’s about SEPTA’s negotiations with the Fraternal Order of Transit Police Lodge 109, who have been working without a contract since March 31st. The union postponed a strike date of November 20th, until a decision on December 13th:

The transit police officers are asking for a pay increase amid a staffing shortage and a rise in antisocial behaviors — like smoking and turnstile jumping — but not violent crimes.

Is shooting up a subway station not a violent crime if the shooter never hit anyone?

But I have to laugh at that last quoted paragraph for other reasons: reporter Rodrigo Torrejón listed “smoking and turnstile jumping” as the antisocial behaviors, but for some reason declined to mention the biggest “antisocial behavior” plaguing not just SEPTA stations but the city itself: drug addicts littering the stations and the tracks with used needles, and junkies passed out on the streets and in the stations and even the train cars.

The (supposed) marathon bargaining session scheduled to begin on October 23rd obviously didn’t solve anything, and SEPTA has only been surviving on federal deficit spending aid due to the COVID-19 panicdemic.[1]No, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus. Now CEO Leslie Richards, who has presided over worsening service yet got a $75,000 raise earlier in the year, a plethora of bus and trolley accidents, and train stations littered with the homeless and drug needles, with the transit service plagued by delayed service and accidents, with chronic shortfalls in essential staff wants more money from the taxpayers to subsidize SEPTA passengers. Just yesterday, a day in which SEPTA had a whopping forty routes cancelled or delayed due to ‘operator shortages,’ a man on the system stabbed three people at the Walnut Locust station before being shot by a SEPTA police officer.

But, things have improved today: only 21 routes cancelled or delayed due to ‘operator unavailability.’

The Philadelphia Inquirer, not exactly an evil reich-wing site, described the SEPTA trains:

The Market-Frankford Line has its own incense: a combination of cigarette, weed, or K2 smoke. People in the throes of opioid addiction are sometimes frozen in a forward lean in train cars and on platforms. People experiencing homelessness might use a couple of seats or a station to seek rest away from the cold and the heat.

To me, that’s a bit more serious than “smoking and turnstile jumping,” but yeah, I’m an evil reich-wing Republican! I’m the kind of man who would have used the word “junkies” rather than “people in the throes of opioid addiction,” and “vagrants” rather than “people experiencing homelessness.”

Miss Richards will have to somehow hammer out a contract with the SEPTA police officers, and will have to do it in the face of reduced revenues, from a lower number of riders and the loss of Federal dollars as the Covidiocy spending ends.

At a time when the left want to push people out of their cars and onto public transportation, Miss Richards has overseen a real decrease in the quality and service of one of our nations larger public transportation systems. Rather than the $425,000 to which her $75,000 raise boosted her, she needs to get a $425,000 pay cut, and a SEPTA train ticket out of town.

References

References
↑1 No, that’s not a typographical error, but exactly how I see the government response to the virus.
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When it’s time to put up or shut up, the left do neither

Will the ACLU of Texas put their money where their keyboards are? They tweeted:

Indigenous people have lived here long before Texas was even called Texas, and still do today.

We will always work to uphold Indigenous peoples’ rights and sovereignty.

They will? Will they give up their office space? Will the employees of the Texas ACLU surrender up their homes and property to the Indians? Will they at the very least pay rent to “Indigenous people” for their homes, including back rent for as long as they have lived there?

Let’s face it, the left are really, really good at running their mouths and keyboards, but when it comes time to put up or shut up, they do neither. It’s not too dissimilar from all of the leftist pro-Palestinian protesters; how many have actually picked up a rifle and headed to Gaza to fight the colonizer Israelis?

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Did you know that wanting to protect your country’s borders makes you ‘far right’? Some people think that it makes you sensible!

If there’s one thing the left and the credentialed media just love to do is to try to minimize conservatives by labeling them as ‘far right’. Apparently just another tweak, and we’d all be neo-Nazis!

As Robert Stacy McCain reported, a knife attack, allegedly by an Arab immigrant, outraged the people of Dublin:

Ireland’s police chief (Drew Harris) has warned that far-right radicalisation will continue to disrupt the country after a night of arson, rioting and looting left parts of Dublin resembling a war zone.

The capital was tense on Friday as significant numbers of police remained on the streets and Dublin counted the cost of an anti-immigrant protest that turned into anarchy, leaving the political establishment shocked.

Gardai said they made a number of arrests on O’Connell Street in Dublin city centre on Friday night.

The cleanup began as fresh details emerged of the stabbing attack outside a school that left three children and a carer injured, two of them critically, and the suspect, reportedly a naturalised Irish citizen in his 50s, in custody and requiring medical treatment.

Claims that the suspect was a foreigner spread online soon after the attack, which happened at about 1.30pm on Thursday, and drew a crowd to the scene at Parnell Square in the north inner city, leading to a riot in which 13 shops were looted, a tram and two buses torched, 11 police vehicles damaged, several officers injured – one seriously – and 34 people arrested.

Drew Harris, the Irish police commissioner, said people radicalised by far-right ideology and social media exploited a “terrible crime” to unleash mayhem.

Good heavens, “13 shops were looted, a tram and two buses torched, 11 police vehicles damaged, (and) several officers injured”? These “far-right” ideologues are amateurs, and need to go to Philadelphia to learn how to riot properly!

The Republic of Ireland is 94.1% white; it’s not as though someone who doesn’t look almost pasty-white Irish isn’t going to be easily noticed.

The European Union have decreed that EU member nations have to take the ‘migrants.’ Time for an Éirexit?

That, of course, is the result of a single incident. This, on the other hand, was a free election!

In a shock for Europe, anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders records a massive win in Dutch elections

By Mike Corder and Raf Casert | Friday, November 23, 2023 | 3:25 AM EST

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Anti-Islam populist Geert Wilders won a huge victory in Dutch elections, according to a near complete count of the vote early Thursday, in a stunning lurch to the far right for a nation once famed as a beacon of tolerance.

The result will send shockwaves through Europe, where far-right ideology is on the rise, and puts Wilders in line to lead talks to form the next governing coalition and possibly become the first far-right prime minister of the Netherlands.

Laughing out loud! The Associated Press writers managed to include “far right” thrice in two one-sentence long paragraphs.  🙂 Mike Corder’s latest article on the subject is entitled “The Netherlands’ longtime ruling party says it won’t join a new government following far-right’s win“.

With nearly all votes counted, Wilders’ Party for Freedom was forecast to win 37 seats in the 150-seat lower house of parliament, two more than predicted by an exit poll when voting finished Wednesday night and more than double the 17 he won at the last election.

Political parties were set to hold separate meetings Thursday to discuss the outcome before what is likely to be an arduous process of forming a new governing coalition begins Friday.

Despite his harsh rhetoric, Wilders has already begun courting other right and center parties by saying in a victory speech that whatever policies he pushes will be “within the law and constitution.”

Wilders’ election program included calls for a referendum on the Netherlands leaving the European Union, a total halt to accepting asylum-seekers and migrant pushbacks at Dutch borders.

It also advocates the “de-Islamization” of the Netherlands. He says he wants no mosques or Islamic schools in the country, although he has been milder about Islam during this election campaign than in the past.

There follow several paragraphs noting how Mr Wilders could have a tough time forming a governing coalition, and then this:

The historic victory came one year after the win of Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni, whose Brothers of Italy’s roots were steeped in nostalgia for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Meloni has since mellowed her stance on several issues and has become the acceptable face of the hard right in the EU.

“(H)ard right”? “(S)teeped in nostalgia for fascist dictator Benito Mussolini”? Dear Messrs Corder and Casert: tell us that you are leftists without saying that you are leftists! 🙂

London’s The Guardian, a far-left newspaper, published an article entitled, “Offensive, hostile and unrepentant: Geert Wilders in his own words“, just so you would know why the hard left in Europe hate Mr Wilders, and how appalled they are that the Dutch voters are less than appalled.

The normally more-liberal-than-Americans Europeans are finding learning, firsthand, what decades of liberal-to-leftist policies have brought to their homelands. Like the liberals in American ‘sanctuary cities,’ they’re finding out that unrestricted immigration of people who do not share their, or even Western civilization, culture isn’t quite as nice when it happens in their own back yards, rather than in some high-minded philosophy when the effects are visited on Other People.

The migrant crisis in Europe is different from that in the United States in a way few consider. Our illegal immigrants are primarily Hispanic, and if their background isn’t white, middle-American, it is still primarily Christian, mostly Catholic, with a Catholic sense of what is right and wrong. They are not, for the most part, demanding and getting mosques built, but helping to fill too empty Catholic churches in the US.

In Europe, the ‘migrants’ are coming not from Catholic countries, but primarily Islamic ones. Rather than filling emptying Catholic churches, they are demanding, and getting, Islamic mosques, and that’s one thing Mr Wilders has promised to stop. Their culture is not only not Western, but they come from lands in which Western culture is seriously despised.

Except for Western prosperity, that is. The ‘migrants’ do love Western euros!

The Netherlands is not Hungary or Poland, not a nation in which liberal democratic traditions are a new overlay over a recent authoritarian past. The Dutch resisted the Nazis as best they could, and, neutral during World War I, they allowed Kaiser Wilhelm II to live out the remained of his life in exile in Doorn. When the Dutch move in a conservative direction, it means something.

The left have had control of the democratic European governments for a long time, as the stigma of Naziism retains revulsion among European voters. But that wariness of conservative principles, along with economies subsidized by American defense spending might just be coming to an end, as the results of decades of liberal politics keep pouring into their countries, and their neighborhoods.
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Also posted on American Free News Network. Check out American Free News Network for more well written and well-reasoned conservative commentary.

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