Tag Archives: #woke

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The #woke destroy more history Will they go after the Jefferson Davis historical marker in Lexington?

Site of the old Jefferson Davis Inn. From Google Maps streetview. Click to enlarge.

As I saw the stories about the removal of statues of Confederate Generals Robert E Lee and “Stonewall” Jackson in Charlottesville, Virginia, I thought back to when I lived in Lexington previously, from 1971 through 1984. When I lived there, last century, the building in the photograph to the right was painted white, and the ground floor housed the Jefferson Davis Inn.

Why was it called the Jefferson Davis Inn? For three years, 1821-1824, then a student at Transylvania College, boarded on the second floor of the building with Joseph Ficklin, then the United States Postmaster in Lexington.

Historical marker attached to 102 West High Street, Lexington, Kentucky.

I’ve never been much of a beer drinker; two is about my limit, because I don’t care what any beer says about being “less filling,” two twelve ounce bottles of beer is more than enough for me.[1]And I really don’t like the feeling of getting drunk. But I have eaten, and had a few beers, at the Jefferson Davis Inn before. As I recall, it was pretty decent.

Alas! The original Jefferson Davis Inn closed in 1996. A second JDI opened, at a different location, in 2013, but closed at the very end of 2016.

Joe Stearns, proprietor of the bar High on Rose in June of 1981. High on Rose was a popular downtown watering hole situated at the corner of East High Street and Rose Street. Stearns opened the business in June of 1975. Photo by Christy Porter

Returning to the Bluegrass State in 2017, I did want to see some of the places I had frequented previously, and the closure of the Clubhouse, more frequently referred to as High on Rose, at the intersection of East High and Rose Streets, saddened me. Creaky old wooden floors, greasy hand cut French fries, general beer bar fare, and beer by the mug or the pitcher.

But, I digress. Reading about the removal of the statues made me wonder: will the #woke[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading in Lexington demand the removal of the historic market on 102 West High Street? In 2017, the Democrat-controlled city government removed the statues of Confederate General John Hunt Morgan and John C Breckinridge, a former U.S. Vice President and the last Confederate Secretary of War from the lawn of the former Fayette County courthouse. The statues were taken to the Lexington Cemetery, where both men are buried.

Drinking a couple of beers and eating some food at the old Jefferson Davis Inn did not make me want to run out and join some Confederate memorial society, or become a Civil War re-enactor in a grey uniform, or somehow celebrate the Confederacy. It was a decent place, in an historic building, and it was well done.

Our history is our history, and trying to erase it won’t erase it. But today, the left want to look at everything through the prism of race. Given the way things are going, in twenty years students will be taught that Jefferson Davis had horns and cloven hoofs.

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References
↑1 And I really don’t like the feeling of getting drunk.
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.
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What could possibly go wrong?

As we have previously noted, while we might forgive His Majesty King Henry VIII for believing that Catherine of Aragon or Anne Boleyn were somehow responsible for his first two children being daughters, the role of the X and Y chromosomes in determining the sex of mammals, including humans, has been known for over a century. Sex is not somehow “assigned” at birth; sex is determined at conception, depending upon whether the sperm which fertilized the egg carries the X or Y chromosome. We recognize the sex of a newborn child by visual examination of the child, but the characteristics which indicate sex developed long before birth, during gestation, as programmed in by the developing child’s DNA.

When you read or hear someone talking about sex being assigned at birth, you know automatically the pure bovine feces is about to follow. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

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This is what happens when the #woke try to think. It usually isn’t pretty. How can anyone apologize for someone else, for people long gone?

I will admit it: I have not always been kind in my coverage and criticism of the Lexington Herald-Leader. But sometimes an editorial just takes the cake!

The Herald and Leader got it wrong. Our apology to the woman who integrated Lexington schools.

By the Herald-Leader Editorial Board | June 25, 2021 | 8:33 AM EDT | Updated: 12:28 PM EDT

In 2004, the Herald-Leader wrote a series of stories about how Lexington’s newspapers had not covered the city’s civil rights movement. The stories described the historic practice of numerous Southern papers that ignored protest in their own backyards because their leaders thought that by doing so, they could minimize the protesters’ impact or make them disappear altogether.

There was much material never before described in these pages that led to many other stories, such as the integration of Rupp Arena, Keeneland’s segregated bleachers, numerous Black students whose achievements were ignored, or the teenage Calvert McCann, whose many previously unpublished photographs documented so many important moments of the struggle here.

1976-77 University of Kentucky mens basketball team.

“The integration of Rupp Arena”? Rupp Arena opened in 1976, many years after integration. If the editors are referring to the integration of UK’s basketball teams, there were several black players on the 1976-77 UK team, including Jack Givens, James Lee, Larry Johnson, Truman Claytor, Lavon Williams, Dwane Casey, and Merion Haskins. This was not the first integrated UK team.[1]It is certainly true that long time Coach Adolph Rupp did not like to recruit black players, but Coach Rupp retired following the 1971-72 season. In June of 1969, he signed his first black player, … Continue reading

But naturally, there is always more to this story, and a reader recently pointed out an entry in the University of Kentucky’s Notable Kentucky African Americans database on Helen Caise Wade, the brave 16-year-old who integrated the Fayette County Public Schools when she attended summer school at Lafayette High School in 1955. The entry notes that the Lexington Herald, the morning paper, reported Caise’s entry, her parents and her home address.

Emphasis in the original.

Newspapers today do not normally report specific addresses, but tend to put them down as block numbers. The editorial makes it sound as though the Herald was trying to get young Miss Caise and her family targeted.

But the obvious question is: what was the Herald’s stylebook at the time? Was this exceptional, or did it follow standard procedure at the time?

Oh, wait, we already have our answer, from the story itself:

Database founder and UK librarian Reinette Jones said newspapers frequently printed people’s addresses back then.

So, the criticism of the Herald’s, and Leader’s, coverage is to judge journalism in 1955 by the standards of 2021. Of course, the Editorial Board apologized, but they were apologizing for treating the Caise family just the same as they treated other families.

The Herald-Leader wishes to apologize to Mrs. Wade. Although hardly anyone who worked at the papers in 1955 is still alive, we think it’s important to recognize the harmful ways that the white power structure as represented in a newspaper did and still can harm marginalized communities.

What, are the Editorial Board apologizing for the people working there 66 years ago not being 21st century #woke?[2]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading

“So, the thing that bothers me is not only the published home address, but the articles gave a minor’s name and other personal information about her, along with her parents’ names and occupations,” Jones said. “There was a disregard and lack of caring on the part of the newspapers for the safety of this African American teenager and her family, regardless of whether that act was intentional or unintentional. It was left to the devices of the Caise family members to ensure that Helen would get to the school and back without being harmed.”

Did the newspapers not do that all the time, regardless of the race of the subject of the story?

UK historian Gerald Smith, whose 2002 book on Black Lexington and research into Lexington’s civil rights protests in the 1960s guided the 2004 series, was more critical of the Herald and the Leader, which consolidated under corporate ownership in 1983.

“Yes, it was that malicious,” he said. “It was another form of intimidation.”

This is poor scholarship. Dr Smith is assuming a malicious mindset on the part of someone who apparently followed then-current journalistic standards, someone he did not ask, because he is judging it by the standards of the 21st century.

The Board complained, in their first paragraph, that “The stories described the historic practice of numerous Southern papers that ignored protest in their own backyards because their leaders thought that by doing so, they could minimize the protesters’ impact or make them disappear altogether.” But they later wrote:

After she went to Lafayette, her father’s business was destroyed, with one client asking John Caise if he was related to Helen, then firing him.

Reading those two together — and this is part of the reason I prefer news in print, because I can go back and take these connections — it would seem as though it would have been better for the Herald and the Leader not to have covered the story at all. Mr Caise, a plastering contractor, would probably not have been fired, nor seen his business fail, had the newspapers not covered the story at all.

The Lexington Herald and the Lexington Leader were part of the community in the 1950s, and it is probable that the writers and editors who worked there then reasonably reflected the norms of the community. They probably did their jobs as they had been trained to do their jobs. The notion that today’s Editorial Board can judge them by today’s standards is as laughable as the #woke trying to change the names of schools names after American Presidents who used to own slaves.

Oh, wait, that’s happening, isn’t it?

Even more laughable is the idea that the Board can apologize for people at least long retired or, more probably, having gone to their eternal rewards.[3]Anyone 20 years old on June 7, 1955 would be 86 years old today. If we assume that the editors, being senior employees, were at least 34, they’d be 100 or older. No one, other than an attorney, I suppose, can speak for someone else, at least not someone else long gone.

References

References
↑1 It is certainly true that long time Coach Adolph Rupp did not like to recruit black players, but Coach Rupp retired following the 1971-72 season. In June of 1969, he signed his first black player, Tom Payne of Louisville, but Mr Payne had a lot of problems, and spent most of his adult life in prison.
↑2 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term, and I am certainly doing that here. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑3 Anyone 20 years old on June 7, 1955 would be 86 years old today. If we assume that the editors, being senior employees, were at least 34, they’d be 100 or older.
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The racism of The Philadelphia Inquirer The Publisher of the Inquirer says the paper is "an anti-racist news organization," but there's no actual evidence of that

I am not from Missouri, not from the “Show Me” State, and, to the best of my recollection, I’ve only passed through the place once, way back in August of 1972. Nevertheless, I am one of the people who likes to see something really radical, like actual evidence, of something before I accept it as true.

Thus, when I came to this OpEd piece by Elizabeth H. Hughes, the Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of The Philadelphia Inquirer, my truth detector sounded, loudly.

Inquirer publisher: One year later, reflection and a look ahead

A year after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the printing of a racist headline in The Inquirer, work remains left to achieve an equitable future for all.

By Elizabeth Hughes | May 26, 2021

June 2 will mark a year since The Philadelphia Inquirer published this racist headline: “Buildings Matter, Too.”

If printing those words in 72-point type had occurred in a vacuum, it would have been a grievous and unpardonable offense. That it was published at a moment of national reckoning over social justice — prompted by the vicious murder of George Floyd at the hands of the police a year ago yesterday — amplified the outrage and brought us well-deserved scorn and scrutiny.

There is somewhat of a playbook whenever a self-inflicted crisis like this threatens to define any institution and the people who work for it. And so it played out here. Apologies were issued, a change in newsroom leadership was announced, earnest promises of reform and redress were made.

Translation: Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski was forced to resign.

But what, exactly, was “racist” about the headline, “Buildings Matter, Too”? Philadelphia is an old city, founded in 1682 by William Penn, to serve as the capital for the Province of Pennsylvania, on a land grant from King Charles II. Boelson Cottage, built sometime between 1678 and 1684, is the oldest still standing house in Fairmont Park. Independence Hall was built in 1753, and is where both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States were debated and adopted. The city has an Historical Commission, dedicated to preserving Philadelphia’s rich history. Why, in a place like Philadelphia, would anyone think that buildings don’t matter?

Even buildings with far fewer, or even any, historic connection, serve important purposes, being places where people live and eat and work, things necessary to survival.

What did the “Buildings Matter, Too” article say?

Does the destruction of buildings matter when black Americans are being brazenly murdered in cold blood by police and vigilantes?

That’s the question that has been raging on the streets of Philadelphia, and across my architecture-centric social media feeds, over the last two days as a dark cloud of smoke spiraled up from Center City. What started as a poignant and peaceful protest in Dilworth Park on Saturday morning ended up in a frenzy of destruction by evening. Hardly any building on Walnut and Chestnut Streets was left unscathed, and two mid-19th century structures just east of Rittenhouse Square were gutted by fire.

Their chances of survival are slim, which means there could soon be a gaping hole in the heart of Philadelphia, in one of its most iconic and historic neighborhoods. And protesters moved on to West Philadelphia’s fragile 52nd Street shopping corridor, an important center of black life, where yet more property has been battered.

The very first line by Inquirer architecture writer Inga Saffron asked whether the destruction of buildings in the riots in the city after the killing of George Floyd mattered. She claimed that the anger of the protesters was justified, but also noted that yes, those buildings did matter, too.

“People over property” is great as a rhetorical slogan. But as a practical matter, the destruction of downtown buildings in Philadelphia — and in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and a dozen other American cities — is devastating for the future of cities. We know from the civil rights uprisings of the 1960s that the damage will ultimately end up hurting the very people the protests are meant to uplift. Just look at the black neighborhoods surrounding Ridge Avenue in Sharswood or along the western end of Cecil B. Moore Avenue. An incredible 56 years have passed since the Columbia Avenue riots swept through North Philadelphia, and yet those former shopping streets are graveyards of abandoned buildings. Residents still can’t get a supermarket to take a chance on their neighborhood.

The headline that Mr Wischnowski wrote was entirely appropriate for Miss Saffron’s column, because it expressed, succinctly, what was in the article. It noted that the destruction of these buildings was going to hurt Philadelphians, black and white alike, because damage and destruction was going to cost people their jobs.

More, it was catchy, in a way that editors are supposed to write headlines, to attract people actually to read the articles. That, however, was lost on the young #woke who populate the Inquirer’s newsroom.[1]A newsroom, I would note, that moved out of its own historic building almost a decade earlier, as the then Philadelphia Media Holdings sold the old building because the company was in poor financial … Continue reading

Back to Miss Hughes’ original:

But what has happened since? If our call then was to become an anti-racist news organization, what has been done? Has the passage of a year yielded anything concrete? Is there anything that adds real meaning to the lofty and ambitious goals announced over a few tense days when we faced the deserved public criticism?

The reader can follow the link to the Publisher’s original to see what she believes has been accomplished, but what I see is far, far different. According to the Philadelphia Police Department’s Current Crime Statistics page, as of the end of Monday, May 25th, 208 people had been murdered in the City of Brotherly Love. That works out to 1.434 people being murdered every single day, and, if that figure is maintained throughout 2021, 524 homicides for the year, leaving last year’s 499, and 1990’s record of 500, well back in the rear view mirror.

Two of those 208 deaths were reported as having occurred on May 25th, the anniversary of Mr Floyd’s death. Yet, at least at 10:42 AM on the following day, there was not a single story on the Inquirer’s website main page concerning those deaths. The seven killings the Police Department reported as having occurred over the weekend[2]The Philadelphia Police Department only updates that page Monday through Friday, so the previous update, showing 199 homicides, was for 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, May 20th. did not rate a single story on the newspaper’s website main page. A site search for homicide turned up nothing, though searching for reporter Robert Moran, who usually covers these stories, turned up two very short news articles, covering one murder on the 24th and two separate murders on the 25th.

If I have to know which reporter to search to find these stories, how am I supposed to believe that #BlackLivesMatter, at least to the news staff of The Philadelphia Inquirer?

I am not the only person who has noticed this:

On Friday, December 11, 2020, Helen Ubiñas published an article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled “What do you know about the Philadelphians killed by guns this year? At least know their names.”

The last time we published the names of those lost to gun violence, in early July, nearly 200 people had been fatally shot in the city.

Just weeks before the end of 2020, that number doubled. More than 400 people gunned down.

By the time you read this, there will only be more.

Even in a “normal” year, most of their stories would never be told.

At best they’d be reduced to a handful of lines in a media alert:

“A 21-year-old Black male was shot one time in the head. He was transported to Temple University Hospital and was pronounced at 8:12 p.m. The scene is being held, no weapon recovered and no arrest.”

That’s it. An entire life ending in a paragraph that may never make the daily newspaper.

Of course, Miss Ubiñas followed the Inquirer’s stylebook in claiming that these Philadelphians were “killed by guns.” No, they were killed by bad people, people who used guns as their tools. But the Inquirer doesn’t want to ever say that part.

I’ve told the truth previously: unless the murder victim is someone already of note, or a cute little white girl, the editors of the Inquirer don’t care, because, to be bluntly honest about it, the murder of a young black man in Philadelphia is not news. Unless the victim was a Somebody, the Inquirer didn’t care. If the victim is a white male, not even in the city, and the shooting was probably accidental, yeah, that merits not just one but two stories.

If the Publisher of the Inquirer really wants the paper to be, as she put it, “an anti-racist news organization,” then she needs to see to it that the newspaper, and its website,[3]I am a digital subscriber to the Inquirer. There is no getting a paper copy out in the wilds of eastern Kentucky. actually covers the news, covers the killings, follows up on the murders, and tells the truth to its readers.

References

References
↑1 A newsroom, I would note, that moved out of its own historic building almost a decade earlier, as the then Philadelphia Media Holdings sold the old building because the company was in poor financial shape. Perhaps now working in the old Strawbridge’s building was less inspiring to the staff as far as architecture was concerned.
↑2 The Philadelphia Police Department only updates that page Monday through Friday, so the previous update, showing 199 homicides, was for 11:59 PM EDT on Thursday, May 20th.
↑3 I am a digital subscriber to the Inquirer. There is no getting a paper copy out in the wilds of eastern Kentucky.
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LOL! Journolism strikes again at the Lexington Herald-Leader!

And here I wondered if the Lexington Herald-Leader ever paid any attention to my articles!

I noted, on April 23rd, that the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like posting photographs of accused criminals, even when those suspects are still at large and publishing the photo might help the police capture him. But the paper surprised me when they did publish such a photograph:

Kentucky man allegedly tried to kidnap 3-year-old boy, offered $1,000 to buy him

By Bill Estep | April 23, 2021 | 9:41 AM EDT

Ronnie L. Helton was charged in April 2021 with attempting to kidnap a child. Whitley County Detention Center. Photo copied to my site from the Herald-Leader.

A Kentucky man who allegedly tried to kidnap a 3-year-old boy as he played in the yard has been charged in federal court.

A grand jury indicted Ronnie L. Helton, of Corbin, Thursday on one charged of attempted kidnapping.

Helton, 73, was arrested on state charges hours after an April 7 incident in Corbin in which a woman named Kristy Baker told police a man had tried to take her grandchild.

Baker said the boy was playing on a trailer sitting next to a fence around her yard when a man parked across the street and walked over to the child, according to the citation in the case.

The photo of the suspect was posted on the Herald-Leader’s website in the original article; I saved that photo to my computer and my website. I notified, via Twitter, the Herald-Leader of my article, and my point:

Peter Baniak, notified in the tweet as @pbaniak, is the Editor of the newspaper.

Well, I had reason to check on the newspaper’s original article again today, and shazamm!, at least as of 5:36 PM EDT on Sunday, May 16, 2021, the mugshot of the suspect has disappeared. I did a Google search, to see if perhaps the charges had been dropped against Mr Helton, but found nothing to indicate that. Many other media outlets still had the suspect’s mugshot on their websites, but the Herald-Leader took it off of their site, and had done so rather recently.

This leads to a few obvious questions:

  • Why did the Herald-Leader post the suspect’s mugshot in the first place, when they had been previously declining to post police mugshots, including one of a suspect at large, one which the publication just might have aided the Lexington Police Department in his apprehension?
  • Who took the decision to publish this one suspect’s mugshot, despite the fact that the paper apparently did not do so normally?
  • Is the Herald-Leader’s apparent policy the newspaper’s own, or was this dictated by McClatchy?
  • Why did the paper wait at least several days to remove the mugshot after being notified of the departure from normal procedure?
  • Why, since the mugshot was available for several days, did the paper decide lately to remove it?

We have previously noted the newspaper’s editorial positions, and just how out-of-touch the editors are with their readership in central and eastern Kentucky.

The Herald-Leader is not the only media source in central and eastern Kentucky. In my previous articles on the newspaper’s declining to publish mugshots, I was usually able to get the photos from the websites of other Lexington media outlets. Those outlets, normally television stations, which are visually oriented, more complete information to their viewers than the newspaper is to its readers.[1]My subscription is digital only; I live so far out in the sticks that physical delivery of the print newspaper is not available.

Perhaps the editors of the newspaper have no choice; perhaps this was dictated to them by McClatchy. But the newspaper has transformed journalism into journolism, withholding information from its readers, for whatever reasons it has. This is not a good look.

References

References
↑1 My subscription is digital only; I live so far out in the sticks that physical delivery of the print newspaper is not available.
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The #woke really do hate them some Israelis! The left love the people who would kill them first

The Israelis made a huge mistake in 1967-68. When they conquered Gaza, the Sinai, Judea and Samaria, they should have decided, right then, that if they wanted to keep that territory, that they needed to round up and expel every last Arab living in those lands. It would have been harsh, it would have been brutal, and it would have been too reminiscent of the Nazis’ roundup of the Jews, but it would have settled things over fifty years ago. Israel would have the land they want, along with shortened, more defensible borders, while the Palestinians would be problems for Jordan and Syria, not Israel.

The world might not have liked it, the world might have shaken its collective finger in disapproval, but the world would have gotten used to it.

That they didn’t do. Rather, Israel decided to just make life tough on the Arabs living there, thinking that they’d all emigrate to Syria and Jordan and Egypt. That didn’t happen, and now hundreds of thousands of Arabs have turned into millions of Arabs. The Israelis are strong, tough, and smart, but they have proven to be piss poor conquerors.

So, now they are stuck with millions of Arabs who hate their guts, and don’t know what to do about them. The Israelis want the land in Judea and Samaria, and are slowly trying to colonize it, but that isn’t really going to work.

Arial Sharon ordered the Israeli evacuation of Gaza in 2005, turning the land over to the ‘Palestinians’ to do with what they would. The hope was that the Arabs would actually be responsible, and turn Gaza into a peaceful, self-governed Palestinian enclave. Gaza is on the resource-poor side, but it does have the best beaches in the Mediterranean. The Arabs could have built a tourist Mecca serving all of Europe, but, instead, they let their hatred of the Jews fester and flourish, and simply built a stronghold for Hamas.

So, every so often, Hamas shoot rockets into Israel, and Israel returns the favor, in kind and in spades. The majority of the Palestinian population are too f(ornicating) stupid to realize that all they are doing is setting up getting their own homes destroyed, and keeping themselves poor, by providing cover and support for Hamas. The Palestinians couldn’t turn Gaza into a peaceful, self-governed area because they are too stupid to do so, and have proven that for the past 15½ years.

You think the NYT isn’t liberal? This is a screen capture from today’s NYT webpage.

William Teach noted how the Grey Lady, The New York Times, believe we can control the Israelis through our tax dollars. In the land of the left, the Palestinians are the poor, down-trodden good guys while the Israelis are the big, bad bullies of the Middle East. If the Israelis were truly the big, bad bullies, they’d have done what I said they should have done in 1967.

The Biden administration has been timid and restrained, slowing the U.N. Security Council’s engagement on the issue, and it has yet to name an ambassador to Israel. But the stakes are too high for evasions, and President Biden should stand with others on the Security Council to demand a cease-fire before this escalates further.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken helpfully said “it’s vital now to de-escalate.” The administration should also express strong concern about the planned evictions of Palestinians that provoked the crisis. Dithering and vacillation help no one.

Nicholas Kristof, the column author, admitted that the United States have little influence on Hamas, but that our aid to Israel gives us more leverage, and he believes we should pressure the Israelis to back off. The notion that the US should be pressuring Hamas to stop shooting is regarded as silly.

Mr Teach pointed to another article:

Why won’t Israelis let themselves be killed?

The global woke loathing for Israel is taking an even darker turn.

by Brendan O’Neill | May 12, 2021

Two weeks ago Turkish forces launched a military assault in the Duhok region of Iraqi Kurdistan. Villagers were forced to ‘flee in terror’ from raining bombs. It was only the latest bombardment of the beleaguered Kurds by Turkey, NATO member and Western ally. It did not trend online. There were no noisy protests in London or New York. The Turks weren’t talked about in woke circles as crazed, bloodthirsty killers. Tweeters didn’t dream out loud about Turks burning in hell. The Onion didn’t do any close-to-the-bone satire about how Turkish soldiers just love killing children. No, the Duhok attack passed pretty much without comment.

But when Israel engages in military action, that’s a different story. Always. Every time. Anti-Israel fury in the West has intensified to an extraordinary degree following an escalation of violence in the Middle East in recent days. Protests were instant and inflammatory. Israeli flags were burned on the streets of London. Social media was awash with condemnation. ‘IDF Soldier Recounts Harrowing, Heroic War Story Of Killing 8-Month-Old Child’, tweeted The Onion, to tens of thousands of likes. Israel must be boycotted, isolated, cast out of the international community, leftists cried. Western politicians, including Keir Starmer, rushed to pass judgement. ‘What’s the difference?’, said a placard at a march in Washington, DC showing the Israeli flag next to the Nazi flag. The Jews are the Nazis now, you see. Ironic, isn’t it?

This is the question anti-Israel campaigners have never been able to answer: why do they treat Israel so differently to every other nation on Earth? Why is it child-killing bloodlust when Israel takes military action but not when Turkey or India do? Why must we rush to the streets to set light to the Israel flag but never the Saudi flag, despite Saudi Arabia’s unconscionable war on Yemen? Why is it only ‘wrong’ or at worst ‘horrific’ when Britain or America drop bombs in the Middle East but Nazism when Israel fires missiles into Gaza? Why do you merely oppose the military action of some states but you hate Israel, viscerally, publicly, loudly?

The judgement and treatment of Israel by a double standard is one of the most disturbing facets of global politics in the 21st century. That double standard has been glaringly evident over the past few days. Israel is now the only country on Earth that is expected to allow itself to be attacked. To sit back and do nothing as its citizens are pelted with rocks or rockets. How else do we explain so many people’s unwillingness to place the current events in any kind of context, including the context of an avowedly anti-Semitic Islamist movement – Hamas – firing hundreds of missiles into civilian areas in Israel? In this context, to rage solely against Israel, to curse its people and burn its flag because it has sent missiles to destroy Hamas’s firing positions in Gaza, is essentially to say: ‘Why won’t Israelis let themselves be killed?’

No other nation would be expected not to respond either to internal disarray – Hamas supporters have rioted in parts of Jerusalem and around Al-Aqsa Mosque – or to foreign attack. Imagine if the Isle of Wight was home to a movement whose founding constitution expressed loathing for all ethnic Britons and which regularly fired hundreds of missiles into Sussex, Kent, Hampshire. Wouldn’t the British military respond? Of course it would. But the woke demonisation of Israel is now so acute that Israel is expected to take the military assaults of the radical Islamists to its south. To Western activists who find the very existence of Israel abhorrent, any effort Israel makes to protect its borders or its citizens is an affront to global peace and decency. They cannot understand why Israel doesn’t hate itself as much as they hate it, and therefore will not allow itself to be punished by its righteous enemies. How dare you live?

The article is so good that I’d like to reprint the whole thing, but that would be plagiarism. But it doesn’t take much awareness at all to see how der Führer was able to get millions, tens of millions of Germans, and of Frenchmen and Ukrainians and Poles and Belgians and Czechs and others in lands they occupied to cooperate in the Shoah — the Israeli name for the Holocaust — in turning in Jews, in exposing Jews in hiding, in helping to put Jews into the railcars, in helping the Einsatzgruppen and the rest of the Schutzstaffel to guard and herd the Jews right into the gas chambers and the mass graves.[1]Three different Dutch have been suspected as being the informants who turned Anne Frank and her family over to the Nazis, but this has never been proven. The Jews are not allowed to defend themselves, don’t you know?

More, it explains how the British, one of the victors against the Third Reich, one of the countries which saw Dachau and Bergen-Belsen and Sobibor first hand, could have erected their own prison camps and set up their blockades, trying to keep the dispossessed Jewish survivors of the from leaving a blasted Europe, a Europe in which they had no homes, to immigrate back to their ancestral homelands in the Levant. The British Foreign Office, eager to retain what was left of their Empire after World War II, were friendly with the Arabs, and the oil under the Arab lands.

Max Boot, from his Twit pic.

As Mr O’Neill noted, the #woke hate them some Israelis, so much so that #NeverTrumper Max Boot, of Jewish descent himself, tries to blame the whole thing on, you guessed it, President Donald Trump, who helped get the ‘Abrahamic Accords’ between Israel and several Muslim nations signed, and who has been out of office for 3¾ months. But, then again, I never expect anything sensible from Mr Boot.

The silliness of the left when it comes to the Palestinians, to the Arabs in general, and to Muslims, is obvious. Israel is the only functioning democracy on the Middle East. Human rights? The left almost unanimously support homosexual and transgender rights, but try being homosexual in the Muslim-ruled nations: if you get caught, Da’ish will throw you to your death off a tall building, Iran will hang you, and other Islamic countries have their own punishments. Six countries, all majority Muslim, impose the death penalty for consensual same-sex sexual acts: Iran, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Sudan, and Somalia.

Women’s rights? Women are, to varying degrees, second-class citizens throughout the Middle East . . . except in Israel. Virtually nothing for which the American and Western left stand is supported in any Middle Eastern country except Israel.

Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev once said that the capitalists would sell the communists the rope by which the communists would hang them; in today’s left, “LGBT” groups support the Islamic groups which would, were they living under Islamic rule, throw them in jail, at the very least.

References

References
↑1 Three different Dutch have been suspected as being the informants who turned Anne Frank and her family over to the Nazis, but this has never been proven.
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The Lexington Herald-Leader finally publishes a photo of a criminal suspect Could it be that because, this time, the accused is white rather than black?

We have previously noted that the Lexington Herald-Leader does not like posting photographs of accused criminals, even when those suspects are still at large and publishing the photo might help the police capture him.

So, we were somewhat surprised when the newspaper did publish such a photograph:

Kentucky man allegedly tried to kidnap 3-year-old boy, offered $1,000 to buy him

By Bill Estep | April 23, 2021 | 9:41 AM EDT

Ronnie L. Helton was charged in April 2021 with attempting to kidnap a child. Whitley County Detention Center

A Kentucky man who allegedly tried to kidnap a 3-year-old boy as he played in the yard has been charged in federal court.

A grand jury indicted Ronnie L. Helton, of Corbin, Thursday on one charged of attempted kidnapping.

Helton, 73, was arrested on state charges hours after an April 7 incident in Corbin in which a woman named Kristy Baker told police a man had tried to take her grandchild.

Baker said the boy was playing on a trailer sitting next to a fence around her yard when a man parked across the street and walked over to the child, according to the citation in the case.

There are more details of the case and the arrest at the Herald-Leader original.

This is one of the times I miss my late best friend, who grew up in Corbin. He would have turned 67 years old a month and a half ago, and, Corbin being the small town it is, might even have known the accused. He used to refer to the paper as the Lexington Herald-Liberal, and if it was true in the past, it is even more true today.

Mr Helton is, of course, presumed to be innocent until proven guilty, and perhaps the presumption of innocence could explain the Herald-Leader’s reluctance to publish photos of other suspects; after all, suspects’ photos will almost certainly lead to negative consequences for them locally in the event that some of them are acquitted or the charges are dropped! But such a consideration must not have been applied to Mr Helton, and in a much smaller town like Corbin, 2019 guesstimated population 7,202, he is likely to be far more widely known than in a city like Lexington, 2019 guesstimate population 323,152.

Mr Helton’s photograph was provided by the Whitley County Detention Center, and thus was freely available. But, as we noted in a previous story, the photo of then at-large suspect Juanyah Clay was published by all of the other Lexington media, and was available from both the Lexington city government and on the Lexington Police Department’s Facebook page. The Herald-Leader would not have had to pay for it, nor was bandwidth a problem, given that the newspaper’s website included stock photos of the police stringing up crime scene tape.

There was a stock photo in the story on the charges against Mr Helton as well, of two hands sticking through jail cell bars.

So, why not publish the photos of other suspects when they are freely available? As I speculated previously, I am guessing that it is because Juanyah Clay is black. The published photo of Mr Helton, who is obviously white, might not be proof that my speculation was correct, but it certainly provides evidence of it.

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More #woke reporting from The Philadelphia Inquirer

We noted last week that the Lexington Herald-Leader declined to post the freely available mug shot of a suspected murderer on its website, even though all of the other media sources in that fair city did so, and I speculated — and yes, that is the correct word — that the editorial decision not to do so was because the suspect is black.

Justin Smith, named a ‘person of interest’ in the murder of Dianna Brice, as pictured in the New York Post.

Now comes The Philadelphia Enquirer Inquirer doing the same thing. The New York Post ran a story on Dianna Brice, 21, a missing and pregnant Delaware County woman, whose body was found in:

a wooded area in southwest Philadelphia, about one mile from where the car of her boyfriend, Justin Smith, 23, was found engulfed in flames hours after she vanished on March 30, WPVI reported.

CBS Philadelphia, citing police, said she had been shot. Smith is a person of interest in her slaying, the station reported.

One would think that the Inquirer would, as a public service to its readers, include the photo of Mr Smith, whom the Philadelphia Police Department have named as a ‘person of interest’ in the investigation of Miss Brice’s murder, in case one of the readers happened to spot Mr Smith, so that he could call the police. But if you thought that, you would be wrong.

Body of missing Upper Darby woman found in Southwest Philadelphia; boyfriend still missing

Dianna Brice had been reported missing March 30. Police tracked her cellphone and found her body in a wooded area in Southwest Philadelphia. Her boyfriend remains missing.

by Vinny Vella | Updated April 6, 2021

A pregnant woman reported missing from her home in Upper Darby was found dead late Monday, nearly one week after she disappeared, police said. Meanwhile, detectives continued their search for Justin Smith, the woman’s boyfriend and the last person seen with her.

Philadelphia police recovered the body of Dianna Brice, 21, in a wooded area near 58th Street and Eastwick Avenue in Southwest Philadelphia, according to Kevin Ryan, a private investigator working with Brice’s family. Officers found the body about 11 p.m. Monday, and forensic investigators later identified it as Brice’s, he said.

Upper Darby Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt on Tuesday said the investigation into her death is being handled by Philadelphia police and is being treated as a murder case.

It remained unclear how Brice died. Sources familiar with the investigation said officers found the body by tracking the young mother’s cellphone.

The Inquirer story was updated the day before the Post story was published, so while the Inquirer might not have known, at the time of publication, that the Philadelphia Police Department said that Miss Brice had been shot, they did know, as they published, that it was being treated as a murder case.

So, why not post a photo of the ‘person of interest’ on the Inquirer’s story? Yes, the Inquirer is a non-profit business now, and yes, bandwidth costs money, but the Inquirer had enough bandwidth available to include a photo by staff photographer José F Moreno of the site in which Miss Brice’s body was found. That means, among other things, that the Inquirer spent the money to send Mr Moreno out to the site to take the picture.

Now, to be fair, in an earlier story, the Inquirer did embed a tweet from the Upper Darby Police, in a story on the search for Miss Brice when she was missing, and that included a photo of Mr Smith:

But the newspaper couldn’t manage to include it in the story in which Miss Brice’s death was noted and in which Mr Smith was named as someone whom the police sought in the case. [1]This story was last checked by me at 11:49 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 7th, and this statement was accurate at that time. The photo might be added in a subsequent update, but I have no way of knowing … Continue reading

So, why wouldn’t a credentialed media source I have mockingly called The Philadelphia Enquirer not have published Mr Smith’s photo? [2]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt. The paper had the photo, and the paper had enough bandwidth available to include a photo of the street near where Miss Brice’s body was found. I can think of four possible reasons:

  1. Vinny Vella, the author of both stories on Miss Brice, forgot that he had included that tweet, with the photo, just the day before. If that is the case, Mr Vella isn’t particularly bright.
  2. Mr Vella’s editor — and yes, I am presuming here that an editor actually reviewed the story, as has been a journalistic tradition for, oh, more than a hundred years — didn’t remember the included tweet from the previous day, and never asked a question as to whether Mr Smith’s photograph was available, in which case that editor wasn’t doing a very good job;
  3. The Inquirer has taken an editorial decision not to publish very many photographs of suspects in criminal cases; or.
  4. The Inquirer has taken an editorial decision not to publish very many photographs of suspects in criminal cases, if those suspects are black.

Reasons 1 and 2 are evidence of incompetence. Could it be the third reason, that the Inquirer doesn’t print photos of suspects, period, for whatever reasons? That, I suppose, is possible, though if they are going to print the suspects’ names, that would seem more damaging, as those names could be much more easily found in future Google searches by prospective employers or whomever.

How about the fourth reason? That, I believe, is the more probable one, and given the #woke nature of the Inquirer staff, the ones who forced the firing resignation of Executive Editor and Senior Vice President Stan Wischnowski over the headline Buildings Matter, Too, I think it is a reasonable suspicion.

References

References
↑1 This story was last checked by me at 11:49 AM EDT on Wednesday, April 7th, and this statement was accurate at that time. The photo might be added in a subsequent update, but I have no way of knowing that at publication of this article.
↑2 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
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No media bias there, huh?

I have previously referred to The City of Brotherly Love’s venerable newspaper as The Philadelphia Enquirer, in mocking reference to the National Enquirer, and it seems as though every day brings more justification of that.[1]RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.

Had an experience with extremists or conspiracy theories? Tell us about it.

Have you experienced extremism in your community, or seen family or friends divided by conspiracy theories? Tell us about it and a reporter may reach out to you.

by David Gambacorta | April 7, 2021

We are living in a paranoid time.

Communities of conspiracy theorists have sprouted online in recent years in response to school shootings, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the 2020 presidential election — distorting reality, amplifying divisions, and fueling real-world harm.

» READ MORE: From Philly to the Capitol, conspiracy adherents have fractured families and harmed communities

A recent Quinnipiac University poll found that 73% of Americans believe that conspiracy theories are out of control. The Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, which left five people dead, illustrated the risks of allowing extremism, and conspiracy theories like QAnon, to spread unchecked.

Have you experienced extremism in your community, or seen family or friends divided by conspiracy theories? Tell us about it in the form below and a reporter may reach out to you.

That’s all of the text. Mr Gambacorta’s end of article bio blurb is a short one:

I work on the investigative team, and narrative-driven projects.

I guess that the older style, something along the lines of “Mr Gambacorta is part of the Inquirer — to use the newspaper’s real name — investigative team,” isn’t young or #woke enough, and has to be more personalized.

But I digress. The article then gives four options in a response form:

Which extremist groups or conspiracy movements have you had an experience with?

  • QAnon
  • Proud Boys
  • Covid-19 Truthers
  • Other

Did you notice? All of the “extremist groups or conspiracy movements” given as options are those attributed to conservatives. There is no option to choose Antifa or #BlackLivesMatter as an extremist group with which one has had experience, even though Philadelphia experienced plenty of damage and violence in the protests over the killing of George Floyd and Walter Wallace.[2]Walter Wallace Jr was a mentally disturbed man who charged police with a knife, when officers responded to the fourth call from his family over his erratic behavior; the officers, who did not have … Continue reading

The Proud Boys, huh? A site search of the Inquirer’s website turned up this:

Far-right Proud Boys march through Center City

The alt-right Proud Boys marched through Center City Saturday with nearly 60 participants, many wearing body armor and helmets.

by Staff Reports | September 26, 2020

The alt-right Proud Boys conducted a march through Center City Saturday with nearly 60 participants, many wearing body armor and helmets, some waving American flags, and occasionally engaging in sharp verbal exchanges with onlookers.

They stopped in front of Independence Hall to sing The Star-Spangled Banner and then proceeded to City Hall, where they posed for a group photo, some displaying a white power sign with their fingers.

On the way there, they crossed paths without incident with the March to End Rape Culture, a protest to raise awareness about rape and express solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Later, the Proud Boys chanted “Back the blue” as they made their way to a parking garage at Penn’s Landing, where police closed off access until members of the group drove off.

The action came a week after the Proud Boys were expected to rally in Clark Park, when instead about 500 counterprotesters showed up to the popular West Philadelphia site in a progressive, racially diverse neighborhood.

Social media posts claimed Proud Boys were present, but were disguised as journalists to gather information about leftist activists.

If you open that article, you will see several photographs of the Proud Boys march in Philly, none of them showing any violence, none of them showing the buildings they burned or the stores they looted, because none of that happened! Not one story concerning the Proud Boys indicates any violence, any violence at all, by them in Philadelphia.

There was plenty, though, concerning the arrest of Zach Rehl, a Philadelphia man whom federal prosecutors say was a Proud Boys leader and participant in the January 6th Capitol Kerfuffle. The Feds want to keep Mr Rehl locked up before his trial begins, even though they have conceded that Mr Rehl did not participate in any violence himself:

Assistant U.S. Attorney Luke Jones conceded in court Friday that the government had no evidence that Rehl had directly participated in any property destruction or violence against police once he was inside Capitol grounds. But he balked at the suggestion from Rehl’s lawyer that the man was being jailed pretrial solely for expressing controversial political views.

“He is not before the court because of his opinions,” he said. “He’s before the court because of his actions and the people he led.”

Yet it was the Proud Boys, not Antifa and not Black Lives Matter, who organized and committed actual violence and vandalism, whom Mr Gambacorta listed as an extremist group!

Even though I am no longer a Pennsylvania resident, I do pay attention to foul, fetid, fuming, foggy, filthy Philadelphia, enough so that I broke down and subscribed to the Inquirer — after my wife told me to do so, seeing the conniptions through which I was going to get their stories without paying for them — but it doesn’t take much to see the leftward bias of that newspaper.

The editors, writers and reporters of The Philadelphia Enquirer Inquirer have, of course, their absolute First Amendment rights to think and say and print whatever they want, but I have the same rights to point out their utter stupidity.

References

References
↑1 RedState writer Mike Miller called it the Enquirer, probably by mistake, so I didn’t originate it, but I thought it very apt.
↑2 Walter Wallace Jr was a mentally disturbed man who charged police with a knife, when officers responded to the fourth call from his family over his erratic behavior; the officers, who did not have tasers available to them, defended themselves.