Obama administration whistleblower reportedly kills self The Tribune Papers- Breaking News & Top Local Stories – Thetribunepapers

By World Tribune- A former Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official, who had said that one or more terror attacks in the U.S. could have been prevented if not for the Obama administrations prioritizing political correctness over safety, was found dead Friday from a gunshot wound, reports say.

Philip Haney, as a whistleblower, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2016 that DHS ordered him to delete hundreds of files of people with ties to Islamist terrorist groups, arguing terrorist attacks against people in the United States could have been prevented if certain files had not been scrubbed, the Washington Examiner noted in a Feb. 22 report.

It is very plausible that one or more of the subsequent terror attacks on the homeland could have been prevented if more subject matter experts in the Department of Homeland Security had been allowed to do our jobs back in late 2009, Haney wrote in an opinion piece for The Hill in February 2016.

It is demoralizing and infuriating that today, those elusive dots are even harder to find, and harder to connect, than they were during the winter of 2009.

The Amador County Sheriffs office said that deputies and detectives responded to reports Friday morning at 10:12 a.m. of a male subject with a gunshot wound on the ground in the area of Highway 124 and Highway 16 in Plymouth, California.

Upon their arrival, they located and identified 66-year-old Philip Haney, who was deceased and appeared to have suffered a single, self-inflicted gunshot wound. A firearm was located next to Haney and his vehicle. This investigation is active and ongoing. No further details will be released at this time, the sheriffs office said in a statement.

Red State and Heavy reported that Haney had been missing since Wednesday, and that the gunshot wound was found in his chest.

Several reports cited friends of Haney as saying they found it difficult to believe that Haney had taken his own life.

The Examiner, citing sources close to Haney as saying he was recently in contact with top officials about returning to work for the DHS. Additionally, Haney was engaged to be married.

Speaking anonymously for fear of retribution, a friend whos known Haney for 40 years told CCN.com: Knowing his strong Christian faith, his dogged pursuit of truth and his love for America, and his upcoming marriage, it seems highly unlikely that he committed suicide. He was on a mission to wake up America, and I strongly doubt he took his own life.

In a 2016 interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity, Haney explained that on two occasions his carefully prepared files had been purged. He also believed that, if the Obama administration had maintained this database, several mass shootings, including the December 2015 Orlando, Florida nightclub massacre and the June 2016 San Bernardino, California mass shooting could have been prevented.

In an interview with then-Fox News host Megyn Kelly, Haney said that about a year into an investigation that had led his team to one of the mosques that San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook had attended, officials from the State Department and the Homeland Security Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties showed up at his office to pull the plug.

In his 2016 article for The Hill, Haney claimed President Barack Obama had thrown the U.S. intelligence community under the bus for failing to connect the dots after a Nigerian Muslim terror suspect was linked to a failed terror plot on Christmas Day in 2009.

Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused, Haney wrote, referring to Obama. His words infuriated many of us because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material the actual intelligence we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.

Haney also called out the Obama administration for prioritizing political correctness over safety.

I can no longer be silent about the dangerous state of Americas counter-terror strategy, our leaders willingness to compromise the security of citizens for the ideological rigidity of political correctness and, consequently, our vulnerability to devastating, mass-casualty attack.

The Washington Examiner received a text message from Haney on Nov. 11 which mentioned plans to write a sequel to his first book, See Something Say Nothing: A Homeland Security Officer Exposes the Governments Submission to Jihad, which described his experience at DHS.

Odd (surreal reality) that I was a highly visible whistleblower that virtually no one listened to, while this guy remains invisible, but is treated like an anointed oracle from above, Haney said in the Nov. 11 text, referring to alleged Ukraine whistleblower Eric Ciaramella. However, my story is still live, i.e., theres still more to come. Itll be called National Security Meltdown.

Haney added, I have a severely hyper-organized archive of everything thats happened since See Something, Say Nothing (SSSN) was published in May of 2016. The National Security Meltdown sequel will pick up right where SSSN left off. My intention is to have it ready by early-to mid-Spring of 2020 (just before the political sound wave hits), then ride that wave all the way to the Nov. elections.

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Obama administration whistleblower reportedly kills self The Tribune Papers- Breaking News & Top Local Stories - Thetribunepapers

The university free speech crisis has been a rightwing myth for 50 years – The Guardian

The idea that there is a free speech crisis at British universities has gained considerable currency over the last decade. No platforming, safe spaces and trigger warnings have been held up by conservatives, libertarians and classic liberals as the holy trinity of campus censorship methods supposed threats to free speech and academic freedom.

There is plenty of sympathy for this view in the Conservative party. During the 2019 election campaign, it pledged to strengthen academic freedom and free speech in universities. Now that the Tories have been re-elected, they are starting to make noises: in the Times earlier this month, the education secretary Gavin Williamson declared that if universities didnt take action to protect freedom of speech on campus, the government would do so itself.

The myth of the 'free speech crisis' cannot be divorced from the wider rise of the global far right

As Nesrine Malik and William Davies have both described, the myth of a free speech crisis has been spread by the right as part of a broader culture war against political correctness, wokeness and identity politics. In an era when conservatives and the populist right have been in the ascendancy, the culture war has descended on universities, because they are a significant battleground against racism, misogyny, homophobia and transphobia (as well as traditional class hierarchies).

But the calls for government intervention to protect freedom of speech on campus have a much longer history. As the student movement raged in Britain in the late 1960s, there were protests against several controversial speakers, such as Enoch Powell and the rightwing MP Patrick Wall, which led to disruptions at a number of universities. There were calls from the conservative media and politicians to censure students for their protests. An editorial in the Times in May 1968 decried the silencing of opponents by mob action and lamented the university for becoming the breeding ground for mindless opposition.

In 1974, the National Union of Students implemented the policy of no platform for racists and fascists. By the mid-1980s, some rightwing students were seeking to overturn it and some on the left to extend it within individual student unions to oppose sexists, homophobes and rightwing politicians (especially those with hardline positions on immigration and support for apartheid South Africa). When these politicians went on speaking tours to universities, they were met with fierce opposition from students. John Carlisle was physically assaulted at Bradford University in February 1986; later that year, Enoch Powell had a ham sandwich thrown at him at Bristol University, as students stormed the stage.

Intense media attention and statements from politicians gave the impression that free speech was under attack at universities. Education secretary Sir Keith Joseph called protesting students the new barbarians. In response to these protests, the Thatcher government inserted clauses to protect free speech on campus into the Education (No 2) Act 1986, calling for reasonable steps to be taken to ensure freedom of speech by university administrations.

The effects of this were soon seen when, after the University of Liverpool prevented two South African diplomats from speaking in 1988 and again in 1989, conservative students took the university to court for violating the 1986 act. The high court eventually found the university was technically flawed in taking into account public order issues when banning the diplomats from speaking.

Since this decision, there has been an ever-present contest over the right of student unions to no platform controversial speakers, such as the British National party or the Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, and the legal obligations of the university to allow free expression and debate. Throughout the 2000s, the BNP portrayed themselves as defenders of free speech against political correctness and used this to gain a presence at several universities, as well as generate publicity through university debates.

In the last few years, the push by some student unions to no platform speakers deemed to be transphobic has helped thrust the topic back into the media spotlight. Media and political attention has focused on snowflake students allegedly shutting down debate even though parliaments 2018 Joint Committee on Human Rights report on the topic stated it did not find the wholesale censorship of debate which media coverage has suggested. The right has taken a decades-old trope of the overzealous student and used it to great effect, while adapting it for the 21st century: where there were once warnings about the threat of the violent student radical, now there are fears about online mobs using social media to pressure universities to cancel events or disinvite speakers.

The myth of the free speech crisis cannot be divorced from the wider rise of the global far right. So we should be wary of calls by Boris Johnson, or any other leaders, for government intervention to protect free speech at universities and colleges. This is really just posturing a way to further the culture war and demonise woke students.

The last half-century has shown that when it expresses concerns over free speech, the right is trying to weaponise it to its own advantage, especially when it feels it is being challenged such as during the radicalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s or the turbulent mid-1980s under Margaret Thatcher. Freedom of speech on campus in these instances, as Guardian columnist Dawn Foster has written, often masquerades a desire for freedom from criticism.

But the university cannot be a place where racism and fascism as well as sexism, homophobia and transphobia are allowed to be expressed. Tactics such as no platforming and the creation of safe spaces are necessary for students and activists because the threats that led to no platforming in the 1970s remain. Government action that waters down the ability to combat these threats must be resisted.

Evan Smith is a research fellow in history at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia. He is the author of No Platform: A History of Anti-Fascism, Universities and the Limits of Free Speech

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The university free speech crisis has been a rightwing myth for 50 years - The Guardian

This Historic Poll Holds The Key To Donald Trump’s Second Term – The Federalist

Polls have always been a troublesome thing, but as landline-use decreases and publicly professed political correctness increases, they have become even more difficult.

The night before Barack Obamas reelection, Mitt Romney believed his pollsters and didnt even prepare a concession speech for his supporters in Bostons Convention Center. Four years later, The New York Times exemplified poll findings on Election Day, pegging Hillary Clintons victory chances at 85 percent a modest decline from the 93-percent chance they gave her two weeks before the big day. Clinton also believed her pollsters, and didnt even deliver a concession speech, or show up for her fans in New Yorks Javits Center.

Constrained resource, quick turnarounds, and hungry reporters and impatient campaigns all lead to polls suffering from poor sample sizes, inaccurate party distribution, counts of registered versus likely voters, and the Shy Tory Factor, or respondents who dont want to share their support for the conservative.

There is one public poll, however, that is still generally trustworthy for the moment: the direction of the country poll. Its not a partisan question: It doesnt ask if youre a liberal, a conservative, or a moderate, or if you like Donald Trumps Twitter habits or Barack Obamas health care law. Its a gauge of the general feel of the country. Are things working for you and your family? A majority of Americans have felt the country is going in the wrong direction since the question was first asked in 1972, but the question for the politicians is: how bad are we doing?

On Feb. 23, 2012, while Republicans were battling for the nomination, President Obamas approval rating was 48.6 percent. At the same time, only 34.2 percent of the country thought things were going in the right direction while 59.6 percent believed we were on the wrong track. Romney, we know, lost the nomination and then lost the election. People, it seems, really need to think its all going to hell before they replace a sitting president.

In the winter of 1992, George H.W. Bush, the last man to lose reelection, watched from the Oval Office as his polls tanked. And the country? They really thought it was going to hell. According to an ABC poll, just 18 percent thought things were going well while a whopping 79 percent disagreed the kind of numbers we wouldnt see again until the 2008 recession.

Theyre also the kind of numbers we had not previously experienced since February 1980, when a year into the Iranian hostage crisis and the accompanying second oil crisis a mere 20 percent of the country was feeling peachy. The president, Jimmy Carter, was the one-termer who most recently preceded H.W.

Elected presidents dont generally enter office under that cloud, and Carter was no different, flying to D.C. on a rainbow of American optimism. Promising to restore honor and morality to the White House, he defeated half-term President Gerald Ford, who suffered from right-track numbers in the teens, a fiery primary challenge from Ronald Reagan, and, after pardoning his old boss, plummeting public approval.

So how is the country under President Trump faring? Despite unending negative-media attack, a level of polarization not seen since the 1960s or maybe 1860s, and a literal impeachment vote, America thinks were going the right direction. While youd have to go back to Harry Truman to find a two-term president, Trump is leading in public approval numbers, the percent of Americans who think were going the right way is 39.5, while 54.8 think otherwise, according to the Real Clear poll average. Rasmussen, the most bullish of the pollsters, clocked that number for February 2020 at 46 percent right-track, 50 percent wrong-track.

At more than five points above Obamas February 2012 polling, thats a good number for the country and the president. At nearly 15 points above the February 2016 numbers Obama left under, its phenomenal for the president.

Polls are tricky business. They dont predict the future. Theyre simply a tool that helps us make more educated guesses. But history sets a heck of a record, and by that record, things are looking bright for Donald J. Trump, two-term president.

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This Historic Poll Holds The Key To Donald Trump's Second Term - The Federalist

About Stop-and-Frisk – National Review

Mike Bloomberg speaking with supporters at a campaign rally in Phoenix, Ariz., February 1, 2020. (Gage Skidmore)

In a previous post, I highlighted a poll showing disparate reactions among racial groups to Mike Bloombergs stop-and-frisk policy in New York City. The Data for Progress poll surveyed voters in Texas, Virginia, Colorado, North Carolina, and California, and found that white voters were significantly more likely than black voters to take an unfavorable view of Bloomberg after being reminded of the stop-and-frisk policies he enacted as mayor of New York City.

The post was intended to highlight a broader political phenomenon vicarious aggrievement, I called it of white liberals taking offense on behalf of a minority group which is less offended, collectively, than the white liberals aggrieved on their behalf. The Data for Progress poll mirrored other data we have suggesting that white liberals, as a group, are more attuned and receptive to the mores of political correctness than are their non-white counterparts.

In any case, the post was not a defense of stop-and-frisk as such. Kyle Smith argues here that the policy was wrong-headed and heightened tensions between racial minorities and law enforcement. I am inclined to agree with his conclusion. Even as legal censure and policy changes have stunted the use of the tactic the number of people stopped and frisked fell from 686,000 to 12,000 between 2011 and 2016 crime has continued to fall in New York City. The constitutionality of the practice is dubious.

The merits of the policy notwithstanding, the Data for Progress poll is demonstrative of the white liberals tendency to champion the causes of people whom he purports to understand, even as the data suggest otherwise.

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About Stop-and-Frisk - National Review

Movie review: This Call of the Wild is just too mild – The Patriot Ledger

"The Call of the Wild" is an adaptation of the Jack London novel.

Yep, its time for yet another new film adaptation of Jack Londons 1903 novel The Call of the Wild. There was a silent version in 1923, which focused on the life of Buck, the pet dog-turned-sled puller. Then came a 1935 version, with Clark Gable and Loretta Young, that was more concerned with the star actors than the dog. And there followed two more films, both forgettable, but at least concentrating on the dog, in 1972 and, made for TV, in 1997.

But lets take a trivia break. The 1935 Call of the Wild was the last film to be released under the banner of 20th Century Pictures, before it became 20th Century Fox. The 2020 edition is the first film to be released under 20th Century Studios, after the word Fox was dropped from the name. Armed with that information, you will be a hit at your next cocktail party.

But unless youre planning to chaperone a young child to see the new film which is a decent kid-centric adventure movie theres no need to check it out on your own, especially if youre a discerning viewer who recalls the London book.

Yes, the film remains focused on the dog, even though no dog is actually seen in the film, as big Buck is a 100 percent digital creation with a very expressive face who might as well be wearing a big F for Fake sign on its forehead. In fact, all of the dogs, and all of the other animals in the film dont really exist. And, surprisingly, the folks at Disney, the parent company of 20th Century, have not used the same creative flourishes and believability that was on display in the all-digital The Lion King.

But the visual glitches are small potatoes when considering the problems with this film. Screenwriter Michael Green (Logan and Blade Runner 2049) comes up short here, and his use of the celebrated London novel as merely a jumping off point rather than a blueprint for the film is an egregious error.

Yes, its still about Buck, enjoying a happy, relaxed life of comfort in a California household in the 1890s. And its still about his travails after hes dognapped and sold off in the Yukon territory where, during the Gold Rush days, a dog of his size and strength is just what was needed to pull sleds across long, snow-covered distances. And it even has another main but secondary to the dog character named John Thornton (Harrison Ford) who helps turn things around for Buck.

But Green has taken absurd liberties with Londons often rugged story. Hes cleaned things up, taken the edge off. Hes even and this is the worst part removed a large, important group of characters there are no Canadian Indians to be seen all in the name of what weak-minded people are passing off as political correctness. The mayhem thats now done in the story is committed by a fancy-dressing, money-hungry, hot-tempered white fellow named Hal (Dan Stevens, overacting). The character does appear in the book, and hes not a good man, but there he was Bruce Banner, and now hes a raging Hulk.

That Green has also imbued the film with some effective comedy is a good thing, even though most of it is of the cheap laugh variety and is based on big Bucks ineptitude and clumsiness. Green also inserts a couple of scenes of great peril, though everything is settled before too much concern can be spent on them. One of the scripts biggest annoyances is the overuse of narration, all of it by Ford, none of which makes any sense when you think about his characters circumstances at the end of the film. The most mystifying component here is that right after John Thornton tries to warn Hal of the dangers hes facing, the film jumps forward in time, with no explanation, as if a reel has been skipped.

At least theres still a romantic side story for Buck, but its accompanied by a poorly written (cleaned up) ending that will leave young viewers asking their parents what happened.

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Movie review: This Call of the Wild is just too mild - The Patriot Ledger

Giants tell Aubrey Huff he will not be invited to 2010 reunion due to tweets – San Francisco Chronicle

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. Retired first baseman Aubrey Huff, a key force behind the Giants drought-breaking World Series championship in 2010, has been told he will not be invited to a 10-year reunion at Oracle Park this season because of a series of social-media posts the Giants considered vulgar.

Earlier this month, we reached out to Aubrey Huff to let him know that he will not be included in the upcoming 2010 World Series Championship reunion, the Giants said Monday night in a statement.

Aubrey has made multiple comments on social media that are unacceptable and run counter to the values of our organization. While we appreciate the many contributions that Aubrey made to the 2010 championship season, we stand by our decision.

The Giants sent the statement to The Chronicle after they gave it to the Athletic, which first reported the Giants decision.

Huff has not been shy about tweeting his conservative political views, but several recent posts drew widespread criticism and even outrage.

In one, he smiled as he held up a paper shooting-range target full of bullet holes and said, Getting my boys trained up on how to use a gun in the unlikely event @BernieSanders beats @realDonaldTrump in 2020. In which case knowing how to effectively use a gun under socialism will be a must. By the way, most of the head shots were theirs. @NRA @WatchChad #2ndAmendment.

In an even more decried tweet, responding to another that suggested the United States should invade Iran and bring some of their attractive women here, Huff said, Lets get a flight over and kidnap about 10 each. We can bring them back here as they fan us and feed us grapes, amongst other things. He later deleted the tweet, which he said was intended as a joke.

Huff last month tweeted criticism of the Giants for hiring a woman to coach, Alyssa Nakken, terming it political correctness, but the team said it decided not to invite Huff to the reunion before the Nakken tweet.

Huff did not immediately return a request for comment but told the Athletic he was shocked and disappointed.

If it wasn't for me, they wouldnt be having a reunion, he said. But if they want to stick with their politically correct, progressive (b.s.), thats fine.

Henry Schulman is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.

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Giants tell Aubrey Huff he will not be invited to 2010 reunion due to tweets - San Francisco Chronicle

2 The Movies: Call of the Wild Delivers – WGRZ.com

BUFFALO, N.Y. Jack Londons novel, The Call of the Wild is considered to be a Great American Novel and it truly deserves that consideration. So, it is incumbent on filmmakers when they adapt this story to at least attempt to make it a Great American Film. Director Chris Sanders (The Croods) tries in this, his first live-action feature. He almost succeeds, but is waylaid by plot modifications that seem to bow to political correctness, and some CGI that ends up being a bit distracting.

If youve read the novel (who hasnt? Its almost required reading in our various school systems.) then you know the story is about Buck (Terry Notary, Avengers: Engame, War for the Planet of the Apes), a large, spoiled, rambunctious St. Bernard/Scotch Collie mix.

Terry Notary (Motion Capture) as Buck in The Call of the Wild

2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. Photo Credit Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

Hes kidnapped from his Santa Clara, California home, and transported to Alaska, where hes dragooned into the life of a sled dog.

(L to R) Terry Notary (Motion Capture) as Buck, Cara Gee as Franoise and Omar Sy as Perrault in The Call of the Wild

Photo Credit Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

He ends up on a sled team, and eventually becomes a leader. After an adventure or two, he ends up with John Thornton (Ford, Blade Runner 2049, Cowboys & Aliens) and the two head off into the Yukon. If you need more of a plot synopsis than that, dear reader, consult the novel.

Omar Sy as Perrault in The Call of the Wild

2019 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved. Photo Credit Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox

So, this films source material is truly outstanding. Its a great yarn, even if it is a bit diluted by some plot sanitation that completely removes the First People from any villainous role, and glosses over some of the more violent scenes. Still, the most important aspects of the events that happen to Buck and serve to develop his character are there.

Terry Notary (Motion Capture) as Buck in The Call of the Wild

Courtesy of 20th Century Fox

Make no mistake, Buck is the star of this movie. Notary provided the motion capture that Bucks movements were based on. The technology is nothing short of miraculous, but the filmmakers went a bit overboard in grafting human expression onto Bucks canine face. Still, the scenes with Buck where those pesky humans arent involved are some of the best in the movie. Buck and Thornton dominate this film to the point that one wishes some of the other cinematic worthies like Bradley Whitford (Get Out, The Last Full Measure) and Karen Gillian (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Occulus) arent given more to do. Omar Sy (Jurassic World, Inferno) and Cara Gee (Birdland, Red Rover) are utilized a bit more and to good effect. Most of the outdoor scenes are compelling enough that viewers might not notice that, with the exception of some shot in Santa Clara, the entire film consists of set pieces.

Merie Wallace

Most of the above is quibbling. The fact of the matter is that The Call of the Wild is a family friendly film that tells a thrilling, compelling and emotionally evocative story, in spite of the fact that the 1907 story has been cleaned up so as not to offend 2020 audiences. Perhaps the late 19th and early 20th century realities would have detracted from the family friendly nature of this film, or perhaps not. In any event, The Call of the Wild calls up 4 and a half out of 5 boxes of popcorn.

While the Call of the Wild has a great cast with the likes of Ford, our next film has, well, Katie Holmes (Thank You For Smoking, Dear Dictator).

Katie Holmes stars in BRAHMS: The Boy II

Courtesy of STXfilms

Brahms, the Boy II is a sequel to 2016s The Boy. Its Rated PG-13 for terror, violence, disturbing images and thematic elements.

Owain Yeoman, Katie Holmes and Christopher Convery star in BRAHMS: The Boy II

Courtesy of STXfilms

Critical attention seems scarce. I havent seen it yet, so I cant really weigh in, and its not on my docket for this weekend

Im Larry Haneberg, and Im taking you 2 the Movies

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2 The Movies: Call of the Wild Delivers - WGRZ.com

Why Wont They Let Professor Funke In? – Bacon’s Rebellion

Hajo Funk. Photo credit: Main-Echo

By Peter Galuszka

Theres a very curious case involving the University of Virginia that involves freedom of speech and free education, but it doesnt involve the usual complaints of Mr. Jeffersons University being a hotbed of Bolshevism.

Rather, it involves a renowned German professor who has had a rough time getting a U.S. visa after he was invited to teach in Charlottesville, according to the Cavalier Daily. Political scientist Hajo Funke had been invited to lead two courses as The Max Kade Distinguished Visiting Professor. On Thursday, he finally got his visa after a months-long wait.

Funkes specialty is the study of right-wing politics, notably the re-emergence of the trends in Europe which has seen the rise of white supremacism, anti-immigration and anti-Semitism. Some examples include Hungary, Poland, Russia, France and other countries.

He had been slated to teach two courses, Right-Wing Populism and the Far Right and Historical Political Memory but had had to do them via teleconferencing from Berlin.

The university invited him to teach in November and he went to the U.S. Consulate in Germany to apply for the appropriate visa. Surprisingly, he was told that approval was being delayed with no reason given. According to the media, one possible reason is that he had visited Iran to see his wifes family and to do some research.

If so, that suggests that Donald Trumps xenophobic policies may be to blame. Its a true shame that if a scholar visits certain countries to do some research, he or she is put on a black list.

This conjures up the days of Joe McCarthy. I used to deal with visa issues all the time when I was a U.S. news correspondent in Moscow during the Cold War.

One of Funkes studies involves comparing the 2017 uprising by white supremacists in Charlottesville with a 2018 uprising of a similar type in 2018 in Chemnitz, Germany.

Its a true shame that Charlottesville has become the unwanted symbol of hate and violence that started over the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. Its been spreading throughout Europe as well, in part because the Arab Spring and the Syrian war have created great crowds of immigrants looking for safe haven.

On this blog, one reads regular critiques of U.Va. for being some kind of haven for political correctness and anti-thought. But consider Funkes case.

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Why Wont They Let Professor Funke In? - Bacon's Rebellion

No, a list described as rules for children they won’t find in school did not come from Bill Gates – AFP Factcheck

A claim that Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates penned a list of real-life rules for children and delivered them during a speech at a high school continues to circulate on social media at least 20 years after it first appeared online. Gates, however, was in no way involved in creating the list.

It is a claim that refuses to die, as this Facebook post here from 2013 with at least 59,000 shares attests.

A list of 10 to 14 rules billed as an antidote to unchecked political correctness in schools, it is widely credited to Gates in multiple posts here, here and here.

Gates, the claim says, delivered a speech at a high school where he used the occasion to bash contemporary education for its politically-correct teachings that were setting children up for failure.

The first rule? Life is unfair. Get used to it.

Most posts like those above (and these recent oneshere and here) end at number 11 on the list with the advice to be kind to nerds because chances are youll end up working for one.

The claim conferring ownership of the list on Gates has been around for at least 20 years and one of the very first debunks was this one by Snopes in 2000, containing details of other misattributions at the time, including to American writer Kurt Vonnegut.

Other fact-checking organisations here and here have similarly dispelled the idea of authorship by Gates.

The man behind the list is US author Charles J. Sykes, whose 1995 book Dumbing Down Our Kids was described as a searing indictment of Americas secondary schools.

But it was on his radio show in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that he first introduced the public to his rules for children as a criticism of outcomes-based education. His list began with 10 rules and grew to 14.

Sykes expanded even further in his 2007 book 50 Rules Kids Wont Learn in School and included his original list, although the order was rearranged.

In the preface, he dedicated space to addressing the claims of authorship, stating that, while he was flattered to be associated with the billionaire philanthropist, Gates was not the author of his list.

A comment was requested from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and will be added if and when AFP receives a response.

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No, a list described as rules for children they won't find in school did not come from Bill Gates - AFP Factcheck

BOOK REVIEW: The Age of Entitlement is a fascinating read – Wicked Local

"The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties," Simon & Schuster, by Christopher Caldwell

This is a sweeping but insightful examination into every social, political and legal decision, movement and trend that leaves us where we are today in a polarized nation.

Author Christopher Caldwell traces the origins of today's deep discords to President John F. Kennedy's assassination in 1963. Grief that shrouded the nation after Kennedy's assassination, Caldwell writes, "gave a tremendous impetus to changes already under way." Lyndon B. Johnson, who was sworn into office after Kennedy's death, was able to push through far more ambitious civil rights legislation in 1964 than Kennedy would have been able to do. Most significantly, in the author's telling, the Civil Rights Act, and social movements that followed, were accelerated and empowered more through court decisions and government agencies than decisions by elected officials.

Although the Civil Rights Act was designed principally to ban employment discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex or national origin, Caldwell presents a persuasive case that it provided the legal, social and cultural guidepost for advancing almost every movement since gay rights, immigration, affirmative action, fundamentalist Christianity, leveraged buyouts, political correctness, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday and much more.

The citizen's band radio craze, leveraged buyouts and political correctness Caldwell fits all these topics and more into an engaging, questioning book that proceeds at almost dizzying speed. A reader feels like he has but a moment to think when Caldwell writes that "to establish new liberties is to extinguish others" before speeding off to the next topic. "Entitlement" is a fascinating read that could ignite 1,000 conversations.

Ironically, it's hard to imagine Congress passing anything today remotely as revolutionary as the Civil Rights Act. Given our sharpening political, social and economic divisions, Congress has trouble reaching a consensus on anything. The transformational legislation that was finally to give us all an equal chance at everything ended up herding us into warring tribes agreeing on nothing.

Caldwell's analysis of our Vietnam legacy is particularly masterful but the book brims with brisk evaluations of how a confident nation became an argumentative, fragmented one.

Civil rights divided the country by region, Caldwell writes; Vietnam did the same by class.

Perhaps because he was writing as his book's natural finale crashed into the arena Donald Trump's election Caldwell is less sure-footed in a grand conclusion. What does all this mean? Where are we? Where do we go to reconnect with our better angels?

Those answers await us still.

No question though that this is a significant rendering of how America evolved since the "me generation" asserted itself in the 1960s. Caldwell offers the best analysis and theory yet as to how we perhaps unwittingly arrived at a place where we would elect a president bent on unraveling our institutions, assumptions and beliefs about ourselves and where we no longer even start with a set of accepted facts about anything.

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BOOK REVIEW: The Age of Entitlement is a fascinating read - Wicked Local

Soft Jihad in America – Arutz Sheva

Amil Imani The writer is an Iranian-American writer, poet, satirist, novelist, essayist, literary translator, public speaker and political analyst who has been writing and speaking out about the danger of radical Islam internationally. He has become a formidable voice in the USA against the danger of global jihad and Islamization of America. He maintains a website at http://www.amilimani.com. and wrote the book Obama Meets Ahmadinejad and a new thriller Operation Persian Gulf

Dr. Tariq Ramadan is a known Islamic scholar and the grandson of Hassan al-Banna who in 1928 founded the Muslim Brotherhood Organization. On July 27, 2011, I covertly attended an Islamic fund raising at the Hyatt Regency Hotel , in Richardson, Texas, that was arranged by the Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA), and their key speaker was Tariq Ramadan.

Never mind how I managed to enter this highly guarded Islamic venue, but I witnessed their fund-raising methods and their goal to make America an Islamic land and eventually make Sharia Law accepted by elected officials without a single bullet to be fired. Yes, Tariq Ramadan encouraged Muslim attendees not to assimilate to American culture, but stealthily engage in political institutions, universities and run for political office. Then they will be in a position of power to drastically alter our way of life through what we know as Cultural or Stealth Jihad.

Tariq Ramadan was banned from coming to the US, but the Obama Administration and the Sec. of State, Hillary Clinton, had signed an order to lift the ban which allowed Ramadan to enter the countryin order to preach to his Muslim followers.

Just because violent jihad has diminished recently, especially after the demise of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and founder of the Islamiccaliphate, we should not be complacent. There is a more serious scheme in progress called stealth jihad. It is in full motion in every corner of the United States with the help ofinvaluable allies, the Democrat Party. The formula is working. America the land of the free, is under assault by the deadly ideology of Islamic subversion.

Muslim organizations have been busy and working stealthily changing America in what is called Soft Jihad, or Cultural Jihad, or Stealth Jihad in the United States. Soft Jihad is practiced where the sword of jihad is not advisable, where Muslims are not strong enough to unsheaththeir sword, where if the true nature of Islam is exposed the public would likely stamp them out.

A critical tool of soft jihad, involves penetration of the American educational system, by use of means such as Dawa-a religious duty of each Muslim to convert non-Muslims in order to strengthen the Islamic Ummah.

Many of our elected officials dont even have the courage to challenge Islam and its barbaric rules. They normally avoid any questions about the nature of Islam when speaking with their constituents or just deceive them by telling them not to worry about the horrific things that are happening on the other side of the world. If Muslims act heinously toward non-Muslims, it is just the way things are in those countries and it is hardly any of our business.

This is the same attitude that set the Islamization of Europe on a seemingly irreversible track. One European country after another is rapidly buckling under the weight of Islamic ideology.But Islam is already in America and has no intention leaving or stopping thecultural jihad. It is unbelievable that America, the greatest superpower on the planet, is gradually losing its own power topolitical correctness.

This is alarming. But regrettably, too few Americans are aware of all this, and organizations such as the Council on AmericanIslamic Relations (CAIR) and other Muslim Brotherhood-linked organizations are taking full advantage of our navet. CAIR is only one of many Islamic organizations that provides refuge to stealth jihad.

Moreover, Islam stands in stark contrast to the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution and what the Bill of Rights was designed to protect: our God-given inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Understand that Sharia is very complex, and its derived from multiple Islamic sources.

As Anti-CAIR.net put it, CAIRis not in the United States to promote the civil rights for Muslims CAIR is here to make Islam the dominant religion in the United States and convert our country into an Islamic theocracy.Moreover, CAIR receives direct fundingfrom Islamic terrorist-supporting countries.

CAIRs true intention was revealed during the largest terrorism financing trial in the nations history: the 20072008Holy Land Foundationtrial.

Notice that Muslims are the only minority in the world who will never submit to the Western laws or assimilate into the culture! In fact, they are the only migrants who actively work around the clock to impose Sharia Law on everyone else. To most Muslims, the highest US authority and documents is considered a heresy. In a parallel attack, Legal Islam exploits every provision of the law in free societies to promote Islam and silence its critics through expensive legal shenanigans.

Mild Islamists may indeed be a minority in America. Yet this deadly cancer has metastasized throughout all fifty states and is attempting to devour Michigan, with Dearborn as its capital. Urgent confrontation of this advancing disease is imperative to stave it off. We must resist the intrusion of this seventh-century mentality into our country and our way of life.

Even if most Muslims seek to adopt an American lifestyle, a great many Muslims are dead-set on using violence to make America conform to their barbaric way of life. Islam is like cancer. Cancer cells are always few at the beginning, and if they are left unchecked, they keep on multiplying, eventually devouring the non-cancerous.

It is beyond the call of duty for all of us to find a pragmatic solution to stop Islam from expanding its reach to every institution, cultural and governmental agencies before its too late. We have no choice. Islam must be defeated politically and swiftly in our era, otherwise, our children and grandchildren could be engaged in a religious and ideological bloody war the likes of which has never been seen on American soil.

Islam is not really a religion, it hides behind the mask of religion to accomplish its mission of worldwide domination. We must treat Islam as a totalitarian doctrine based on the Quran, Sira and the Hadith in what Dr. Bill Warner of the Center for the Study of Political Islam aptly calls theTrilogy of Islam.

Here is the truth, as bitter as it may be. Islam is the culprit. Islam is anything but a religion of peace. Violence is at the core of Islam. Violence is institutionalized in the Muslim's holy book, the Qur'an, in many verses.

Islam has mandates for every facet of life, and those mandates are enforced and regulated by the barbaric criminal and civil code known as Sharia. The precise definition of a Muslim becomes clear when you read the trilogy of Islam. Bottom line: you are to be an Allah-fearing, Quran-believing and Muhammad-following zealot who forces people to submit, convert, and comply with Islam and Sharia or be killed. Those are the facts.

We must stop lying about Islam. Political correctness in the face of evil is equivalent to death and decay of our Western society. One thing for sure, Islam and Muslims will never coexist with the infidels.

It is past time that we confront Islams advancement in America. But we still must try. We need to remove this scourge of humanity from this land, move away from an exclusionary, primitive, and tribal mentality to a vision of all humanity being one, with justice and liberty for all.

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Soft Jihad in America - Arutz Sheva

Identity politics in the Democratic Party isnt hurting liberalism. Its saving it. – Vox.com

American liberalism is in desperate need of renewal. Its ideas too often feel stale, its nostrums unsuited to beating back the authoritarian populist tide.

Yet there is an opportunity for revival if liberals are willing to more forthrightly embrace the politics of identity.

To many liberals, such a suggestion will sound like blasphemy. Since mere days after Donald Trumps 2016 victory, an unending stream of op-eds and books have accused identity politics defined loosely as a left-wing political style that centers the interests and concerns of oppressed groups of driving the country off a moral and political cliff.

These critics accuse identity politics of being a cancer on the very idea of liberalism, pulling the mainstream American left away from a politics of equal citizenship and shared civic responsibility. It is, moreover, political suicide, a woke purism that makes it impossible to form winning political coalitions evidenced, in critics minds, by the backlash to Sen. Bernie Sanderss embrace of the popular podcast host Joe Rogan.

The idea that identity politics is at odds with liberalism has become conventional wisdom in parts of the American political and intellectual elite. Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker has condemned contemporary identity politics as an enemy of reason and Enlightenment values. New York Times columnist Bari Weiss argues that the corrupt identity politics of the left amounts to a dangerously intolerant worldview. And New York magazines Andrew Sullivan claims the woke left seems not to genuinely believe in liberalism, liberal democracy, or persuasion. This line of thinking is practically the founding credo of the school of internet thought known as the Intellectual Dark Web.

It is also deeply, profoundly wrong.

What these critics lambaste as an attack on liberalism is actually its best form: the logical extension of liberalisms core commitment to social equality and democracy, adapted to address modern sources of inequality. A liberalism that rejects identity politics is a liberalism for the powerful, one that relegates the interests of marginalized groups to second-class status.

But identity politics is not only important as a matter of liberal principle. In the face of an existential threat from right-wing populists in Europe and the United States, liberals need to harness new sources of political energy to fight back. This is not a matter of short-term politics, of whether being too woke will help or hurt Democrats in 2020, but a deeper and more fundamental question: what types of organizations and activist movements are required to make liberalism sustainable in the 21st century. And there is good reason to believe the passions stirred by identity politics can renew a liberalism gone haggard.

To say that liberalism and identity politics are at odds is to misunderstand our political situation. Identity politics isnt merely compatible with liberalism; it is, in fact, liberalisms truest face. If liberalism wishes to succeed in 21st-century America, it shouldnt reject identity politics it should embrace it.

All politics is, in a certain sense, identity politics. Every kind of political approach appeals to particular aspects of voters identities; some are just more explicit than others.

But critics of identity politics have a very particular politics in mind a mode of rhetoric and organizing that prioritizes the concerns and experiences of historically marginalized groups, emphasizing the groups particularity.

To understand why this kind of identity politics is so controversial and what its critics often get wrong about it we need to turn to the work of the late University of Chicago philosopher Iris Marion Young.

In 1990, Young published a classic book titled Justice and the Politics of Difference. At the time, political philosophy was dominated by internal debates among liberals who focused heavily on the question of wealth distribution. Young, both a philosopher and a left activist, found this narrow discourse unsatisfying.

In her view, mainstream American liberalism had assumed a particular account of what social equality means: that equal social status for all persons requires treating everyone according to the same principles, rules, and standards. Securing equality on this view means things like desegregation and passing nondiscrimination laws, efforts to end overt discrimination against marginalized groups.

This is an important start, Young argues, but not nearly enough. The push for formally equal treatment cant eliminate all sources of structural inequality; in fact, it can serve to mask and even deepen them. Judging a poor black kid and a rich white one by the same allegedly meritocratic college admissions standards, for example, will likely lead to the rich white ones admission perpetuating a punishing form of inequality that started at birth.

Young sees an antidote in a political vision she developed out of experiences in social movements, which she calls the politics of difference. Sometimes, Young argues, achieving true equality demands treating groups differently rather than the same. The specificity of each group requires a specific set of rights for each, and for some a more comprehensive system than for others, Young writes. The goal is identity consciousness rather than identity blindness: Black Lives Matter over All Lives Matter.

She did not like using the term identity politics for this approach, arguing in her 2000 book Inclusion and Democracy that it was misleadingly narrow. But two decades later, what she sketched out is what we understand identity politics to mean.

Youngs philosophical precision allows us to understand whats distinctive about contemporary identity politics. It also helps us understand why critics see it as such a threat.

Identity politics dissatisfaction with formal equal treatment is, in their view, fundamentally illiberal. Its emphasis on correcting structural discrimination can morph into a kind of authoritarianism, an obsession with the policing of speech and behaviors (especially from white, straight, cisgender men) at odds with liberalisms core commitments to individual rights, so the critics fret. They see college students disinviting conservative speakers for being problematic, or canceling celebrities who violate the rules of acceptable discourse on race or gender identity, as evidence that identity politics fundamental aim is overturning liberalism in the name of equality.

This approach is not only illiberal, the critics argue, but self-defeating. The more emphasis that is placed on the separateness of American social groups, the less space there is for a politically effective and wide-ranging liberalism.

The only way to [win power] is to have a message that appeals to as many people as possible and pulls them together, Columbia professor Mark Lilla writes in his recent book The Once and Future Liberal. Identity liberalism does just the opposite.

Many of these critics see themselves as coming from a relatively progressive and firmly liberal starting point. They tend to profess support for the ideals of racial or gender equality. What they cant abide is a political approach that emphasizes difference, shaping its policy proposals around specific oppressions rather than universal ideals.

It is a philosophical argument with political implications: a claim that the essence of identity politics is illiberal, and for that reason its continued influence on the American left augurs both moral and electoral doom.

Its hardly absurd for someone like Lilla to see tension between liberalism and identity politics. Young herself described the politics of difference as not a species of liberalism but a challenge to it.

But her stance notwithstanding, political philosophers have come to see the politics of identity as part of a vibrant liberalism. In 1998, Canadian scholar Will Kymlicka identified an emerging consensus among political philosophers on what he calls liberal multiculturalism, the idea that groups have a valid claim, not only to tolerance and non-discrimination, but also to explicit accommodation, recognition and representation within the institutions of the larger society.

If we examine liberalisms core moral commitments, Kymlickas consensus shouldnt be a surprise.

The quintessential liberal value is freedom. Liberalisms core political ambition is to create a society where citizens are free to participate as equals, cooperating on mutually agreeable terms in political life and pursuing whatever vision of private life they find meaningful and fulfilling. Freedom in this sense cannot be achieved in political systems defined by identity-based oppression. When members of some social groups face barriers to living the life they choose, purely as a result of their membership in that group, then the society they live in is failing on liberal terms.

Identity politics seeks to draw attention to and combat such sources of unfreedom. Consider the following facts about American life:

There is no law saying black people cant own houses, that women married to men must do the cooking and cleaning, or that LGBTQ teens must harm themselves. These problems have more subtle causes, including legacies of historical discrimination, deeply embedded social norms, and inadequate legislative attention to the particular circumstances of marginalized groups.

Identity politics focus on the need to go beyond anti-discrimination works to open new avenues for dealing with the insidious nature of modern group-based inequality. Once you understand that this is the actual aim of identity politics, it becomes clear that critiques of its alleged authoritarianism miss the forest for the trees.

It is of course true that one can point to illiberal behavior by activists in the name of identity politics: Think of the student group at the City University of New York that attempted to shout down a relatively mainstream conservative legal scholars lecture out of hostility to his views on immigration law. But instances of campus intolerance are actually quite uncommon, despite their omnipresence in the media, and the idea that a handful of student excesses represent the core of identity politics is a mistake.

One can say the same thing for social media outrages. Its certainly true that many practitioners of identity politics send over-the-top tweets or pen Facebook posts calling for people to be fired without good cause. Its also true that some practitioners of every kind of politics do these things. Holding up an outrageous-sounding tweet as representative of the allegedly authoritarian heart of identity politics is a basic analytical error: confusing a platform problem, the way social media highlights the most extreme versions of all ideologies, with a doctrinal defect in identity politics.

Merely because a liberal movement contains some illiberal components doesnt make it fundamentally illiberal; if it did, then slave-owning American founders and bigoted Enlightenment philosophers would have to be booted out of the liberal canon.

The key question is whether the agenda and aims of identity politics adherents advance liberal freedom compared to the status quo. On this point, its clear that the practitioners of identity politics are on the liberal side.

In recent years, we have seen champions of identity politics rack up impressive accomplishments victories like defeating prosecutors with troubling records on race at the ballot box, getting sexual assault allegations taken seriously in the workplace, and securing health care coverage for transition-related medical care.

These are hardly examples of woke Stalinism. They are instead victories of liberal reform and democratic activism, incremental changes aimed at addressing deep-rooted sources of unfreedom.

Time and again throughout American history, from abolitionism to the movement for same-sex marriage, members of marginalized groups have refused to abandon liberalisms promises. They put their lives on the line, risking death on Civil War battlefields and in the streets of Birmingham, in defense of liberal ideals. When they demanded change, they won it through the push-and-pull of democratic politics and political activism that constitute the heart of liberal praxis. In essayist Adam Serwers evocative phrasing: The American creed has no more devoted adherents than those who have been historically denied its promises.

Todays practitioners of identity politics are the proper heirs to this tradition. Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, one of the most prominent defenders of identity politics in American public life, has devoted her post-election career to an unimpeachably liberal cause fighting restrictions on the franchise, particularly those that disproportionately affect black voters.

In a recent Foreign Affairs essay, Abrams made the case that one of the central aims of identity politics is bolstering liberalism that it is activism that will strengthen democratic rule, not threaten it. In Abramss view, the persistence of structural oppression, and in particular the Trump-era backlash to social progress, requires careful attention to identity, and in particular what marginalized groups want from their political elites.

By embracing identity and its prickly, uncomfortable contours, Abrams wrote, Americans will become more likely to grow as one.

The critics of identity politics have another complaint: that its hold on the Democratic Party can only lead to electoral perdition. Abrams, as inspirational as many find her, did lose the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race. Maybe identity politics can be defended theoretically but in practice alienates too many people to be put in practice.

Its possible to challenge the specifics of these arguments. Abrams didnt win, but it was a very tight loss in a historically red state (in fact, 2018 was the closest Georgia gubernatorial election in the state in more than 50 years). And you can point to many examples that go in the other direction at the local, state, and national levels.

But it would be myopic to tie ourselves up in these near-term (and frankly inconclusive) tactical arguments. We have a broader crisis to worry about.

Debating the interests of the Democratic Party confines the imagination; rising illiberalism in the United States is a deeper problem than the Trump presidency. To reckon with it, we need to take a longer view, looking at the beliefs and sources of activist energy that define the contours of whats possible in American electoral politics.

Since World War II, liberalism and its core beliefs about rights and freedom have served as something like the operating system for democratic politics. But in recent years, this consensus has come under severe stress. Elite failures and global catastrophes particularly the one-two punch of the financial and refugee crises have caused Western publics to lose faith in the liberal orders guardians. Illiberal right-wing populism has emerged as a potent alternative model. The Wests fundamental commitment to liberalism is coming into question.

Liberals are in the midst of war and in it, giving up identity politics amounts to a kind of unilateral disarmament. Todays political contests, in both the United States and Europe, are increasingly defined by conflict surrounding demographic change and the erosion of traditional social hierarchies. These are the central issues in our politics, the ones that most powerfully motivate people to vote and join political organizations.

The anti-liberal side has pegged its vision almost entirely to backlash politics, to rolling back the gains made by ethnic and racial minorities, women, and the LGBTQ community. The challenge for liberals is not primarily winning over voters who find that regressive vision appealing; no modern liberal party can be as authentically bigoted as a far-right one. At the same time, liberals should not write off entire heterogeneous demographic blocs like the white working class as unpersuadable. Instead, the main task of liberal politics should be mobilizing those from all backgrounds who oppose the far-rights vision knitting together in common cause a staggeringly diverse array of people with very different experiences.

The 2017 Womens March is a concrete example of how identity politics can help in this struggle.

The march was billed, at the time, as both an expression of feminist rage and the major anti-Trump action the weekend of the inauguration. Some liberal identity skeptics fretted that these goals were antithetical; that the particularism of the events feminist rhetoric would end up dividing the anti-Trump coalition.

I think many men assume the Womens March is supposed to be women-only, which is why it was a bad name for the main anti-Trump march, New York magazines Jonathan Chait wrote. There are many grounds on which to object to Trump. Feminism is one. I think [the] goal should be to get all of them together.

Chaits concerns were clearly unfounded. The 2017 Womens March was by some estimates the largest single day of protest in US history, with somewhere in the range of 3 million to 5 million people attending the various marches nationwide. Feminism, far from being a divisive theme, served to mobilize large numbers of people to get out and demonstrate against Americas illiberal turn.

But what happened next is particularly interesting: The experience of attending Womens Marches seems to have galvanized a significant number of people overwhelmingly women to engage in sustained activism for both gender equality and the defense of liberalism more broadly.

In the years following the 2017 demonstrations, Harvard researchers Leah Gose and Theda Skocpol conducted extensive fieldwork among anti-Trump activists. They found that the march helped mobilize many new activists the bulk of whom were middle-class, educated white women in their 50s or older. Following the marches, they found, clusters of women in thousands of communities across America carried on with forming local groups to sustain anti-Trump activism.

The Womens March seems to have played a crucial role in turning these women into activists who not only opposed Trump but aimed to defend liberalisms promise of equal freedom. Activists interviewed by Gose and Skocpol frequently cited a concern for the health of American democracy as a reason for their engagement. Despite being heavily white, they also worked on issues that are of particular concern to racial minorities organizing against (for example) the white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and child separation.

As before throughout American history, Gose and Skocpol write, womens civic activism may revitalize democratic engagement and promote a new birth of responsive government in communities across the land.

In a recent working paper, political scientist Jonathan Pinckney took a close look at the impact of the Womens March on three metrics: increase of size in Democratic-aligned activist groups, ideology of Democratic members of Congress, and the share of the Democratic vote in 2018. He found that areas with larger attendance at the 2017 marches later saw significantly increased movement activity, left-ward shifts in congressional voting scores, and a greater swing to the Democrats in the 2018 midterm elections.

The Womens March itself seems to have largely petered out, succumbing to fatigue and leadership infighting. But its true legacy will be the activist networks it helped create, ones that contributed to sustained and impactful challenges to an illiberal presidency.

This kind of thing is what, in the long run, liberalism needs: a way to make its defense fresh and exciting, mobilizing specific groups toward the collective task of defeating the far right. Doing so will require meeting people where they are, engaging them on the identity issues that matter deeply and profoundly. Knitting this latent energy into a durable and electorally viable coalition will be the work of a generation, but its hard to see how American liberalism can get off its heels without trying.

Its true, of course, that the interests of members of marginalized groups are not always aligned, and that such groups also contain a lot of internal disagreements and diversity. There are always hard questions regarding building coalitions. Should Sanders have denounced Joe Rogans endorsement? Is former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigiegs dubious record on race and policing disqualifying? These are important questions, and there will be more like them. They will lead to more fights among liberals and the broader left.

But political factions of all ideologies have to make tough judgment calls when it comes time to engage in electoral politics, and theres nothing about identity politics that makes it uniquely poorly suited to the task.

While the politics of difference is attuned to the specific experiences of social groups, it also contains a universalizing impulse: a sense that all structural injustices stemming from racism, sexism, class structure, or whatever are to be opposed. Theres a core commitment to solidarity, to not only listening to the members of other groups but seeing their struggle as linked to your own.

Having to be accountable to people from diverse social positions with different needs, interests, and experience helps transform discourse from self-regard to appeals to justice, Young writes in Inclusion and Democracy.

An anti-oppression framework gives people a moral language for articulating their disagreements and perspectives, for constructing a sense of unity and shared purpose out of difference. That were having these conversations at all, and are agonizing over what exactly our liberalism should look like, is all to the good because rebuilding liberalism around anti-oppression values, no matter how difficult it might seem in the moment, is its best hope for an enduring revival.

If all of this is right, and liberalism needs identity politics not just to survive but to succeed, then an obvious question looms: How can it be adapted to take issues of identity more seriously? What might the ideals and aspirations of an identity-focused liberalism be, and how might it imagine making them possible?

One good place to start is the work of CUNY philosopher Charles Mills. Millss most famous book, The Racial Contract (1997), is a fundamental critique of the Enlightenment political tradition, arguing that racist attitudes expressed by philosophical giants like Immanuel Kant are not some alien parasite on their theories, but vital to their intellectual enterprises.

Its the kind of thoroughgoing dissection you might expect from a socialist or black nationalist, someone willing to scrap liberalism altogether. Yet at the end of his most recent book, Black Rights/White Wrongs, Mills explains that his project is not aimed at supplanting liberalism but rather rescuing it by developing what he calls black radical liberalism.

Central to black radical liberalism is the idea of corrective justice: the notion that liberalism as it has been practiced historically has fallen badly short of its highest ideals of guaranteeing equal freedom, and that the task of modern liberalism ought to be rectifying the racial inequalities of its past incarnations.

Millss approach is refreshing because it moves beyond the strange conservatism in so much liberal writing today. His work is not an uncritical valorization of the Enlightenment nor a paean to dead white thinkers; it does not aim to Make Liberalism Great Again. It is instead a harshly critical account of liberalisms history that nonetheless aims to advance liberalisms core values and secure its greatest accomplishments.

The animating force of identity politics, what gives it such extraordinary power to mobilize, is deep wells of outrage at structural injustice. Millions of people see the cruelties of the Trump administration its detention of migrant children in camps, the Muslim ban, the plan to define transgender people out of existence by executive fiat, the presidents description of Charlottesville neo-Nazis as very fine people and want to do something.

Todays liberals often focus their arguments on bloodless abstractions like democratic norms and the liberal international order. I dont deny that these things are important; Ive written in their defense myself.

But people arent angry about norm erosion in the way they are about, say, state-sanctioned mistreatment of migrant kids. By making identity politics something not outside of liberalism but at the center of it, liberals can enlist the energies of identity to the defense of liberalism itself.

Doing that successfully requires a level of Millsian radicalism. While this sort of identity liberalism would not reject the accomplishments of the past, it requires admitting their insufficiency. It means accepting that liberalism is a doctrine that has failed in key ways, and that repairing its errors requires centering the interests of the groups that have been most wronged. It means appealing to the specificity of group experiences, while also emphasizing their shared interests in the twinned fights against oppression and for liberal democracy.

This approach will require compromises from some mainstream liberals, who will need to start welcoming in people and ideas they might not like. Theyll need to get over squeamishness about student activists and their pain regarding political correctness, to recognize that their vision of balancing competing political interests wont always win out. Thats not to say they cant argue for their ideas; this type of liberal can and should be entitled to make the case for more cautious political approaches. But liberals need to stop trying to play gatekeeper, to banish ideas like intersectionality to the illiberal wilds.

Because the practitioners of identity politics are not illiberal. They are, in fact, some of the best friends liberalism has today. The sooner liberals acknowledge that, the closer we will be to a liberal revival.

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Identity politics in the Democratic Party isnt hurting liberalism. Its saving it. - Vox.com

Henry Louis Gates Jr. on What Really Happened at Obama’s ‘Beer Summit’ – The New York Times

Henry Louis Gates Jr. is one of a handful of academics who have crossed over into something approaching true celebrity. Which is apparently what happens when youve written and edited dozens of books of popular history; had a guiding hand in 18 major documentaries on black history, the most recent of which was Who Killed Malcom X?; and spent six seasons uncovering the genealogical mysteries of famous people as host of PBSs Finding Your Roots. Gatess desire to reach beyond the ivory tower in addition to writing landmark works of literary criticism like The Signifying Monkey, hes the director of Harvards Hutchins Center for African and African-American Research was motivated by some very personal feelings. My brother asked me once, says Gates, 69, recalling a time when he and his work were less well known, When are you going to write a book that Daddy and Mama can read?

Theres no arguing that popular storytelling and factual scholarship can be combined in useful ways. What Im curious about is your opinion on the limits, if there are any, of that combination. Its an excellent question. It took a long time for black scholars and filmmakers to feel comfortable representing black historical figures in three dimensions. Take Harriet Tubman. Students think Harriet Tubman was basically leading a train of slaves out of Grand Central Station. But I think the number she saved was closer to 70 which was a lot, by the way. Or: The myth that our ancestors were kidnapped by your ancestors, David, is just untrue. The fantasy is that my 10th-great-grandmother and -grandfather were out on a picnic and some white people jumped out of the bushes and they ended up on a plantation in Virginia. Thats not how it happened. But one of the things that Ive dedicated my career to is showing that black people are just as complex, positively and negatively, as anybody else. For years, the mythos that undergirded black history was that the slaves were the victims of European dominance. But really it was the Europeans who were selling guns to African kings, who engaged in wars against other Africans in order to defeat them and then sell the victims to Europeans. I remember once I was asked to consult on a project about Martin Luther King. I said, You cant do hagiography anymore. King was complicated. He had affairs and doubts. He was a flawed person but also a great man, and showing him in his full complexity would make for a better film than pretending he was a walking saint. But the historian who was involved in this project said: Too many racists. Theyre not ready for that.

Henry Louis Gates Jr. addressing a class at Harvard in 1996. John Blanding/The Boston Globe, via Getty Images

Was conciliatory thinking along the lines of racists arent ready for that in your head in 2009 when you were dealing with the incident with the Cambridge police? Oh, yeah. President Obama made an innocent comment that the arrest was stupid, which it was. Then all of a sudden all these racists are beating up on him. My whole attitude was channeled through the desire to protect our first black president. But there was another motivation. I thought that it would be hubristic and dishonest if I compared what happened to me to what happens to black people in the inner city. I thought, If I didnt have the protections of class and status

The outcome wouldve been very different. Right. When the policeman, Sgt. Crowley, and I met, I said, Why did you arrest me? He said, I was afraid that I wasnt going to be able to go home to my wife, because I was convinced that your partner was upstairs and he was going to come down and blow me away. He told me he had gotten a call: Two black guys are breaking into this house. One of them answers the door me when he rang the bell, and Im stepping over suitcases, because Id just come back from a trip. Unbeknown to me, one pattern of thievery is bringing empty suitcases to a house. So the officer saw a black face, he saw the suitcases: Thats part of a profile. I was what Barbara Johnson calls an already-read text. He couldnt hear me, couldnt see me. Well, that might be related to police excesses and abuses, but its a far end of the scale, and I was able to reverse what happened to me, unlike an Eric Garner. So my whole reaction to my arrest was determined by two things: The attacks on President Obama and my own determination not to claim too much for my own victimization.

Then when you actually had the beer summit, did President Obama say anything helpful, or was that whole thing pro forma? Oh, thats interesting. I was at Marthas Vineyard, and I had been getting instructions from the White House, through Glenn Hutchins. They told me not to wear a bespoke suit. We dont want it to be about class. All of the sudden I was the upper-class black person against the working class. I go, Im the victim! They go, No, dont wear one of those suits. I go: These are the only suits I have. Im not going out to Sears and Roebuck and buying a suit. Then they go, Do not fly down in a private plane. Glenn Hutchins owns a private plane. Glenns a billionaire. Hes one of my best friends. The only way we could get to Washington was on Glenns plane, because there was fog. Anyway, we got to the White House, and we and Sgt. Crowleys family all got to the library at the same time. I walked over to Sgt. Crowley. He had his kids there, and I said to them: Hi, Im Professor Gates. Hope you come to Harvard one day. Maybe youll take one of my classes. Then I said to him, Can I have a word with you? He and I went off and did the beer summit ourselves. I said, Look, I dont know about you, man, but I just want this to go away. He goes, This is a nightmare. I said to him: The president has come under attack. Racisms coming out of the floor. Im sure youre a decent person. I forgive you. Lets move on. He goes, That would be the best thing that could happen. I said, Maybe we could find a way to lecture about it. He laughed and said, Anything I can do to get off the beat. I realized he was funny. I think that gay people have a sense of whos homophobic. I think that Jewish people have a sense of whos anti-Semitic. I definitely think black people I could walk out there and tell you, That [expletive] is a racist.

The White House beer summit, held in the Rose Garden in 2009: from left, Vice President Joe Biden, Gates, Sgt. James Crowley and President Barack Obama. Joshua Roberts/Bloomberg, via Getty Images

And youre saying you didnt get that vibe from Sgt. Crowley? I didnt get that vibe from him. When we were called into the Oval Office, I said to the president, Mr. President, we had a great conversation in the library. He said, Oh, it sounds like its all settled. The actual beer summit was us doing small talk. And the reason Joe Biden was there is that the Cambridge police had insisted that because there were going to be two black guys at the table, they wanted two white guys at the table! They had sent somebody involved in the Cambridge police structure to be there. As we were walking out to the Rose Garden, somehow that guy got pushed to the side, and Joe Biden jumped in the line. Thats what nobody ever figured out: Why is Biden at the table? He was there to be the second white guy.

As far as you can tell, how much is Bidens appeal to black voters solely about his association with Obama? Biden, wisely, has wrapped his arms so tightly around Barack Obama that theyre inextricably intertwined, at least in his speeches. Hes polling so positively among black people because of the Obama residue. But that could change overnight. I havent endorsed any candidate, because I have too many friends. Elizabeth Warren was my colleague. I did Bernie Sanderss family tree. In 2018, I got an award in Delaware, along with Joe Biden and Ron Chernow. I spent a whole evening with Biden, and I liked him. All of this is to say that I have been sort of watching the field. But, I mean, Im going to vote for whatever Democrat emerges. I want to say this right, because I havent said this to anybody: Among all the candidates, the person who I believe could stand toe-to-toe, strongest and longest with Donald Trump is Mike Bloomberg.

Why? Who do you think his constituency is? I know Mike Bloomberg socially. Every summer I go to a dinner on Marthas Vineyard with Mike Bloomberg. Ive argued with him about policies that I didnt like. He is enormously intelligent and capable. When he was mayor, I watched him. He could wear it lightly. Its not like Jimmy Carter with the weight of the world on him. I think that hes tough, and I think he could take on the bully Donald Trump. Very few people can stand up to a bully. Mikes got some bully in him. I think hes good.

Stop and frisk isnt too much of a problem for him? He faces two problems that he has to overcome. He has already apologized for stop and frisk, but he has to put it behind him, and also the Central Park Five. What the city and the legal structure did to those five boys was shameful. The mayor has to put that behind him. If hes successful doing that, I think black people want him, because he is smart, sensitive, strong. I think he cares about health care. He understands the economic system. This is not an endorsement. But I would support him if he got the nomination.

Something I see your guests do on Finding Your Roots is framing their narratives as triumphant ones, and Id say a similar form of exceptionalism shapes how a lot of Americans think of the countrys past. In what way does our propensity for that kind of thinking inhibit our ability to fully reckon with subjects like racism and slavery that dont easily fit into a narrative of exceptionalism? Because that tension is obviously at the root of the conflict over, for example, the removal of Confederate monuments. I feel as if you and I are sitting here, were having coffee, and we hear this noise, and these zombies come out of the floor, and the zombie is white supremacy. We thought these [expletive] were dead. Im trying to use the popularity of Finding Your Roots to get these political messages in there without being a scold. I am trying to deconstruct notions of racial purity. There is no racial purity. We are all diverse. Showing diversity is important to me politically, and insofar as we can achieve that, our series has an educational value for the larger country, particularly at a time when were at Redemption redux.

Gates with Soledad OBrien on the set of Finding Your Roots. PBS/Ark Media, via Everett Collection

We understand the Redemption era now as a white response to the gains black people made during Reconstruction. Is it too simplistic to say that the energy driving the current moment is also a reaction to black progress and Obamas becoming president? Ive spent a lot of time thinking about your question, and I dont know the answer. If were sitting around in a bar with a bunch of black people, they could say, Barack and Michelle drove all the white people totally out of their minds. I think thats partly true. The other thing, though, is that between Martin Luther Kings death and now, the black middle class has doubled and the black upper-middle class has quadrupled. But simultaneously, if you look at the wages of white workers the chance of your kids doing better than you if you were in the white working class, thats over. So you might look at a black family in the White House, all these black people who joined the upper-middle class, and theres a kind of collective What the [expletive]?

Which youre saying resulted in resentment? Its the curve of rising expectations. When its interrupted, people go nuts. After World War II, G.I.s got mortgages so they could live in the suburbs and buy a house, buy a car, then a TV. Their kids could go to college. Their grandchildren could be doctors. That was the promise of America. That promise is over. That drives people crazy, and then they target, they objectify, they need a scapegoat. So its not just Michelle and Barack. They are part of the larger phenomenon. To go from them to Trump is a seismic revolution that is the result of a collapse of expectation.

You mentioned college: I went back and read Loose Canons, and theres a line in there in which you say that college students are too old to form but not too old to challenge. How does a line like that resonate today, when challenging students can seem like such a fraught proposition? Political correctness is heinous if it comes from a person on the left or the right or a person of color or a white person. Lets take a hot-button issue. I wrote the introduction to the 50th-anniversary edition of Albert Murrays The Omni-Americans, and there was this paragraph I wrote last summer that I saw when I was cleaning out my Word files on my iPad. In it I said, Only people not familiar with this history of slavery or Ta-Nehisi Coatess recent work would wonder if there was an economic disadvantage to African Americans subsequent to the Civil War because of slavery and then because of the rollbacks of Reconstruction. I said, However, reasonable people could disagree about reparations. But, I continued, there are few people today who have the courage to stand up within the community and say, I genuinely think reparations is a mistake. Now Im not saying thats my position. But Im saying you will find nobody black standing up and criticizing reparations its very rare because theyre afraid that students are going to boycott them or that theyll be called an Uncle Tom. Thats not right. We fall apart, particularly in the academy, when we succumb to or perpetuate that kind of intellectual bullying.

What is your position on reparations? I do believe that its impossible for any rational person not to understand the cost of 400 years of slavery and then another century of Jim Crow. We have to find ways to compensate for that cost. Affirmative action, to me, is a form of reparations. So is health care Obamacare or a variant. And theres reform of public education. One of the most radical things we could do to reform public-school education would be to equalize the amount of money spent per student in every school. That is never going to happen, but that would constitute a radical shift. Those are my three big principles of reparations, and two of the three affect poor people in general. But Im a scholar of African and African-American history. There were palpable costs to antiblack racism that have had profound effects on the state of black America. These effects are cumulative, and somebody has to do something about it.

In terms of your own writing, youre a long way from the guy who made his name with a dense academic book like The Signifying Monkey. Something like Stony the Road is written in much simpler language with much less jargon. How do you make sense of that evolution? The Signifying Monkey is my tenure book. I was just trying to get tenure. I was trying to be a bridge between the black tradition and poststructuralism and deconstruction. Then I got tenure, and as far as the evolution of my own prose, once you get tenure, you could write films, you could do anything. A crucial point came when I gave a lecture at Howard University. A friend of mine invited me down to deliver my essay called Binary Oppositions in Chapter 1 of Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. I thought I was introducing structuralism. When I was done, I expected a standing ovation. The first question I got was: Yeah, brother. All we want to know is, was Booker T. Washington an Uncle Tom or not? That had a profound effect on me. I have an ego. I want the audience to be with me. Thats what you see in my evolution.

David Marchese is a staff writer and the Talk columnist for the magazine.

This interview has been edited and condensed from two conversations.

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Henry Louis Gates Jr. on What Really Happened at Obama's 'Beer Summit' - The New York Times

Doctor Who: fan reaction to first black Time Lord exposes Britain’s deep divisions on race and gender – The Conversation UK

BBC audiences were recently introduced to their first black Doctor Who. In the episode which aired in the UK on January 26, Jo Martin previously best known for roles in Holby City and Blue Story played an ostensibly ordinary human who was, towards the end of the episode, revealed as a previously unknown (possibly past, future or parallel) incarnation of televisions most famous Time Lord.

A few weeks earlier the latest version of the shows recurring super-villain, The Master, had for the first time been portrayed by a person of colour, a role played with manic zeal by Sacha Dhawan in a performance dubbed by The Guardian as the Hot Camp Master.

Both events provoked strong responses on social media, from enthusiastic plaudits through to rants from fans ranging from the sincerely woke to the reactionary and even racist. The latter response might be considered out of character for the followers of a show whose liberal hero has for more than half a century renounced violence and struggled for peace, social justice and environmental sustainability.

This is a series whose very first episode had a female producer, Verity Lambert, and a British Asian director, Waris Hussein phenomena virtually unheard of back in 1963. (The latter was also played by Dhawan in the BBCs 2013 docudrama An Adventure in Space and Time.)

Its a programme which, in 1972, argued passionately (albeit symbolically) in favour of membership of the European Economic Community (or in its own terms the Galactic Federation), and a year later railed against the impacts of industrial pollution.

In recent years, it has foregrounded LGBT+ protagonists, issued dire warnings against climate change and even made reference to the fabrication of evidence to support the invasion of Iraq.

Yet since 2017, when Jodie Whittaker was cast as the first female Doctor Who, arguments have raged between those strange misogynists depicted by the Huffington Posts Graeme Demianyk as man babies and, in contrast, the likes of The Guardians Zoe Williams, who heralded Whittakers Doctor as representing the revolutionary feminist we need right now.

If, like mine, your social media bubble overwhelmingly favoured the Remain campaign and still cant get its head around the fact that the majority of people didnt, then your friends and followers may well have applauded Martins appearance. But you might then be surprised if you were to venture into some Doctor Who fan forums. Youd see quite a backlash against what some perceive as the politically correct direction their favourite show has taken. This show and all it used to offer has been destroyed by politically correct writing and casting, opined one fan. Another responded: Its not woke, unless your idea of woke is it has a black woman in it. Its the blandest form of mainstream liberalism but some internet talking heads treat it as if it was 50 minutes of Jodie Whittaker reciting the Communist Manifesto.

The outrage of the anti-PC brigade has simultaneously fuelled and been fuelled by coverage in the mainstream media. Echoing a populist press narrative that the series has become, in the words of the Daily Mail, a tiresome ordeal of political correctness since Whittaker assumed the role, The Sun reported this week that viewers baulked at the programmes unbearable political correctness as another female Doctor was revealed.

Also writing in The Sun, Jeremy Clarkson observed that angry fans say its littered with ham-fisted attempts to ram Lefty dogma down our throats.

This backlash has sparked an equal and opposite reaction one which, like the fan who described the series current ideological stance as the blandest form of mainstream liberalism is not simply aligned with that stance, but which is concerned that its stance is not radical or robust enough. Writing in the New Statesman, assistant editor Jonn Elledge has argued that the casting of the first female Doctor has been undermined by the fact that that she has been given no material as meaty as that written for the supporting male characters.

Despite having repeatedly argued for the importance of that casting decision in books and articles, both here and elsewhere, Ive since expressed concern at the series simultaneous weakening of the character.

Jack Hudson has recently argued in The Guardian that, beneath its guise of progressive politics, the show has in fact grown profoundly conservative in ways which may at once alienate both its progressive and its reactionary fans.

In December Lenny Henry (in the run-up to his recent appearance in the series) was quoted as suggesting that BBC bosses would rather cast a dog than a black actor in the title role. In this context, Martins casting as the first black, female Doctor seems particularly significant.

Yet Martins Doctor is not (as yet) the series lead. Progressive voices in fandom have sometimes suggested that, when Whittaker eventually leaves the series, her successor will most likely (and most appropriately) be a woman of colour. There may now be those who fear that Martins tangential Doctor (whoever and whenever in the Time Lords timeline she may turn out to be) has ticked both those boxes and that the production team may next time once more fall back on casting a white, male lead.

These arguments will doubtless continue to rage, along with much bigger ones. The polarisation of political perspectives among the British public since the Brexit referendum of course remains a matter of ongoing national concern. The current disagreements amongst Doctor Who fans once a group which unambiguously embodied the liberal consensus may appeal to the mainstream media precisely because they mirror those larger societal divisions, and may prove of greater significance as indicative of those broader ideological shifts and splits.

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Doctor Who: fan reaction to first black Time Lord exposes Britain's deep divisions on race and gender - The Conversation UK

Virginia poised to make ‘conversion therapy’ illegal for minors – The Winchester Star

WINCHESTER Both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly have passed legislation that would prohibit conversion therapy for people under age 18.

The House of Delegates on Monday voted 66-27 in support of HB 386, which would ban any health-care provider or person who performs counseling as licensed by the Department of Health Professions from engaging in conversion therapy with a minor. Doing so would constitute unprofessional conduct and would be grounds for disciplinary action. All House Democrats, including 10th District Del. Wendy Gooditis of Clarke County, and 11 Republicans voted in favor of the bills passage. Twenty-seven Republicans, including 29th District Del Chris Collins, R-Frederick County, and 33rd District Del. Dave LaRock, R-Hamilton, voted against the bill.

On Jan. 21, the Senate voted 21-18 in support of similar legislation, SB 245. Sen. Jill Vogel, R-Upperville, who represents the 27th District, was the only Republican to vote in favor of the bills passage.

Each chamber must now consider the others legislation.

Conversion therapy is defined in HB 386 as any practice or treatment that seeks to change an individuals sexual orientation or gender identity.

To date, 19 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico have passed laws banning conversion therapy for minors.

I have known people whose parents had forced them into conversion therapy, Gooditis said in a text. Not only did it have no effect whatsoever on their sexuality or identity, but the effects it did have were to drive them from their families and create huge, long-term mental distress. Some of the methods used which they described to me were appalling forms of physical and emotional abuse, and we must not permit these to be inflicted on people in the name of trying to force them to be something their families want them to be.

In a message to The Star, Vogel wrote: I do not support adolescent conversion therapy. Medical science does not support the benefits of such a practice and instead the evidence shows the severe harm [that] can be done to a child.

But LaRock countered in an email that HB 386 would rob parents and their teens of the right to make the best treatment decisions for the childs unwanted sexual desires or their choice of sexual identity, limiting the freedom of Virginias youth and their parents to select therapists that work for them. This bill also violates the special nature of the client-therapist relationship, threatens religious liberty, and quite possible free speech rights. Scientific studies have shown that sexual orientation can, and does, change, especially in youth. Public policy should be based on sound, evidence-based science, not ideologically-driven political correctness.

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) the nations largest LGBTQ civil rights organization has called conversion therapy dangerous, especially among minors. HRC says conversion therapy can lead to depression, anxiety, drug use, homelessness and suicide.

The American Psychiatric Association also strongly opposes conversion or reparative therapy. The APA says it does not believe that same-sex orientation should or needs to be changed, and efforts to do so represent a significant risk of harm by subjecting individuals to forms of treatment which have not been scientifically validated and by undermining self-esteem when sexual orientation fails to change. No credible evidence exists that any mental health intervention can reliably and safely change sexual orientation; nor, from a mental health perspective does sexual orientation need to be changed.

Collins could not be reached for comment.

Continued here:

Virginia poised to make 'conversion therapy' illegal for minors - The Winchester Star

Solvays mayor threatened to fire the villages lawyers. Instead, they quit – syracuse.com

SOLVAY, N.Y. -- Three days after the Solvay mayor berated a village attorney in front of a roomful of people, the villages law firm quit.

Costello, Cooney & Fearon has been Solvays legal counsel for 23 years. Friday, the firm sent Solvay a letter saying they were ending the relationship.

I am ethically precluded from discussing any of the reasons that led to this, said attorney Kevin Gilligan. But after 23 years were not going to be their attorneys.

Solvay Mayor Derek Baichi has been critical of the villages lawyers for months, complaining in vague terms about several investigations the board launched into its own members and the police chief. Hes threatened to get rid of the firm and tried at least once to withhold their payments.

He also tried to reappoint the firm to a full-year term earlier this year, but was blocked by the rest of the board.

At a meeting last Tuesday, Baichi told Nadine Bell, a partner at Costello, Cooney & Fearon, that she needed to earn their money. He was asking Bell to disapprove of a proposed resolution that would have forced Baichi to reimburse the village for an investigation into the police chief.

Nadine, you gotta give the right answers, dont give me this political correctness garbage," he shouted. "Do your job.

The resolution was eventually dropped, after which Baichi said he was given misinformation.

Baichi has also lambasted Kevin Gilligan, a Costello lawyer who has worked for the village since 1997.

In December, Baichi tried to block a resolution to pay the villages legal bills for the month. He told Gilligan he would pay the bills if Gilligan disclosed information about an investigation into another board member.

Ill make you a deal. I want you to read the email you sent to this board within the last 24 hours about one of those investigations, Baichi said. If you read the email Ill vote yes.

I wont read the email. Its a confidential attorney-client communication, Gilligan replied. It would be a violation of my legal ethics.

Baichi eventually relented and said that he would agree to pay the law firm for services theyd already provided, but noted he was unhappy with a pair of investigations that were ongoing.

Alright you know what Ill do? Ill vote yes, only because its Christmas and Kevin youve been a pretty decent lawyer these past two years," he said. "Ill vote yes because I dont want to ruin Christmas.

Baichi tried to reappoint Costello, Cooney & Fearon earlier this year -- an effort that was blocked by the majority of the board. The majority of the board instead recommended issuing a request for proposals to seek bids from other firms.

The board agreed to keep Costello, Cooney, Fearon on a month-to-month basis until the RFP was completed. That RFP is ongoing and one law firm has applied.

Solvays board has been beset by internal investigations for much of the last seven months. Those investigations (one into a pair of board members and another into the police chief) have been a source of constant friction and open hostility between the mayor and his opponents on the board. Theyve also been shrouded in secrecy. Baichi has said repeatedly he cant discuss the details because the village lawyers have advised him against it.

Costello, Cooney, Fearon has represented Solvay since 1997. Gilligan said he was first appointed by Mayor Anthony Modafferi 23 years ago. Since then, he said, hes made a lot of friends working with Solvay.

Well miss working with the village after 23 years, he said. I met a lot of the people and love them very much.

Gilligan sent the village a letter last week alerting officials that the law firms services would end on Feb. 14.

He also commended Bell for operating on a totally ethical basis" at last weeks contentious meeting.

The Solvay board will hold a special meeting Tuesday night to discuss the future of the villages legal representation.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said Baichi tried to appoint another law firm earlier this year. He tried to reappoint CCF, but the board voted against him and instead opted to issue a request for proposals for firms.

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Solvays mayor threatened to fire the villages lawyers. Instead, they quit - syracuse.com

Wendy McElroy: The Narrative and Philosophy of Cryptocurrency – Bitcoin News

The central banks of Britain, Japan, the euro zone, Sweden and Switzerland have grouped up to assess potential use cases for digital currencies. Talk of such currencies gained momentum after Facebook announced plans last year to introduce a cryptocurrency called libra, CNBC. In the light of such developments, it is evident that those who view crypto as an engine of freedom are losing control of the narrative.

Also read: Why User Experience Is Cryptos True Killer App

The narrative is an important concept because those who command the narrative are most likely to determine the outcome. Once closely associated with political correctness, the term has gone mainstream in recent years. The narrative is the story of somethingan issue, an ideabut it is more than merely relating the facts of a matter. In postmodern philosophy, from which political correctness draws heavily, the narrative creates reality; it creates the facts. The dominant story becomes the culture and the truth of a society. In other words, the narrative defines reality, not vice versa. This is one reason why the left is so preoccupied with the control of words and ideas; words and ideas control reality itself.

Most people use the narrative in a more casual way to mean a story that takes a specific approach or tone. Left-wing and right-wing narratives war with each other on issues, for example. Nevertheless, the term retains some of its original meaning. Giving context and interpretation to an issue does define what people view as true about it. In turn, the general publics perception does influence the events or facts that follow, especially in the absence of a competing narrative. This is why states censor: they want to eliminate competing truths.

This process applies to crypto, including the blockchain. The narrative of freedom can define the outcome. When it becomes effective at doing so, censorship is likely; at the moment, there is no need. Again, those to whom crypto is an engine of freedom are losing control of the narrative. Few things are as important to the future of crypto than to reclaim Bitcoins original vision of financial freedom from what is becoming the dominant context and interpretation: statism.

Happily, freedom enjoys a distinct advantage. The mechanics of crypto favor it strongly. Cryptos decentralization gives economic power to the average person who transfers wealth around the globe at will, requiring only the protection of solid encryption. And, yet, the state could win; some believe it already has.

Crypto needs a powerful competing narrative of freedom. It needs to remember its roots. Much more than financial freedom is at stake: every other freedom rests upon the ability of people to control their own wealth. Every time some aspect of free-market crypto is explored, such a narrative expands and users move closer to independence.

The first step in establishing a narrative of freedom is to reject the claim that crypto is simply another investment or money-making tool. Certainly, this is one function of crypto. And for some people, it may be the only function. But this is a comment upon their psychology or motives, not upon the inherent nature of crypto which exists as a thing apart. The claim is also dangerous; it opens the door to state control because the vast majority of financial institutions are now under its authority in one form or another and using them tends to legitimize their existence. This is a story that needs to change.

By far, the best freedom narrative for crypto is the truth because it withstands scrutiny and has the practical advantage of being backed by reality. The best approach to this narrative is to state the basics of crypto, simply and clearly. And then aggressively build upon them.

Crypto is usually discussed in economic, political, or technical terms. But Aristotle claimed that all things are philosophical. That is, the foundation of everything, including technology, is philosophical because philosophy asks the most fundamental questions about a thing.

Philosophy is not arcane or elite. Classical Greek philosophy used to serve the same function that psychology does today; it taught the principles of how to live a better life. Philosophy can be broken into three broad categories: metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. Metaphysics deals with the first principles or nature of reality and the relationship between what exists, including abstractions. Epistemology is the theory of human knowledge, especially its acquisition, validation, and scope. Ethics is the branch of knowledge that addresses the moral principles governing behavior. Three questions capture the relationship between these categories. What exists? How do I know it? So what?

The Philosophy of Crypto is a book-length project but a brief glimpse of it can be garnered by loosely applying the three categories of philosophy to crypto.

Metaphysics. Metaphysics arises every time someone accuses crypto of not being real because it is based on nothing. This is a metaphysical attack as much as an economic or political one.

These days, the accusation is not generally hurled at the blockchain which has been widely adopted by businesses and states. The blockchains elegant efficiency means that it will continue to spread into every corner of life. And useful things automatically acquire the status of real.

The second half of cryptothe coinsis a different matter. Crypto without physical backing, such as gold or a basket of fiat currencies, is often called unreal. Clearly, this claim is untrue. At its root, crypto is an algorithma string of computer commands that produce a result. In this case, the result is a coin that is accepted as a medium of exchange. Whether or not people credit it as valid money, crypto is definitely real. As with fiat, its value is based upon peoples acceptance of it. Unlike fiat, the acceptance does not have to be coerced.

In his essay Bitcoin Equals Freedom, Ross Ulbricht pointed to another value upon which the something of crypto is basedfreedom from financial authorities, especially from central banks.

It is like magic that Bitcoin could somehow come from nothing, and without prior value or authoritative decree, become money. But Bitcoin did not appear in a vacuum. It was a solution to a problem cryptographers had been struggling with for many years: How to create digital money with no central authority that couldnt be forged and could be trusted.

Epistemology. What does truth mean in crypto, and how do human beings know it? The truth of crypto and the blockchain is that they work. The better they function, the truer they become. Human beings know when crypto and the blockchain are true because they work. Every time the blockchain delivers and preserves information, it is akin to a proof of principle.

Ethics. The so what? of crypto is contained within its structure. Which is to say, the ethics of crypto is an extension of its reality (metaphysics) and how its truth works (epistemology). Crypto is inherently decentralized and entirely voluntary. More than this, the blockchain cannot be centralized and controlled by a single hand or authority, and no one can be forced to use it. Free-market crypto is controlled by individual users who agree to exchange and co-operate to mutual advantage. It is a pure expression of non-violence. This is its ethical basis.

The only way to introduce violence is through crime, such as hacking a wallet. Overwhelmingly, the crime introduced is state control; even then, however, the state cannot impose its will on the blockchain, only on the people who use it. These people need to understand the narrative of freedom.

Ulbrichts article concludes, The promise of freedom and the allure of destiny energized the early community. Bitcoin was consciously, yet spontaneously taken up as money while no one was watching, and our world will never be the same.

Bitcoin was created to fulfill a promise of freedom and the allure of destiny. It was forged by cryptographers who did not know it would become a popular currency and investment. Its worth as money should never be denigrated, but those who view crypto only as money are missing the point. The narrative of freedom must do a better job of explaining.

Op-ed disclaimer: This is an Op-ed article. The opinions expressed in this article are the authors own. Bitcoin.com is not responsible for or liable for any content, accuracy or quality within the Op-ed article. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the content. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any information in this Op-ed article.

Images courtesy of Shutterstock.

Did you know you can verify any unconfirmed Bitcoin transaction with our Bitcoin Block Explorer tool? Simply complete a Bitcoin address search to view it on the blockchain. Plus, visit our Bitcoin Charts to see whats happening in the industry.

Wendy McElroy is a Canadian individualist anarchist and individualist feminist. She was a co-founder of the Voluntaryist magazine and modern movement in 1982, and has authored over a dozen books, scripted dozens of documentaries, worked several years for FOX News and written hundreds of articles in periodicals ranging from scholarly journals to Penthouse. She has been a vocal defender of WikiLeaks and its head Julian Assange.

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Wendy McElroy: The Narrative and Philosophy of Cryptocurrency - Bitcoin News

How Dolce & Gabbana Clawed Its Way Back From Cancellation | Intelligence | BoF – The Business of Fashion

NEW YORK, United States Dolce & Gabbana is back.

The Italian luxury label is once again a fixture of the red carpet and the subject of gauzy magazine profiles. In the last few weeks, Greta Gerwig, Blake Lively, Lupita Nyongo and even the Duchess of Cambridge have worn the brand during public appearances. And on Tuesday, first lady Melania Trump, a longtime supporter, sported a dark Dolce & Gabbana suit to President Donald Trump's State of the Union address.

Dolce & Gabbanas many critics advocated to get the brand off the backs of A-listers in 2018, following a roughly six-month run where designers Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana managed to insult the Japanese fashion industry, Selena Gomez and the people of China in rapid succession.

The labels hourglass-making, richly ornate looks were largely absent from awards shows for about a year. Their sudden return marks a new chapter in one of fashions most enduring mysteries: why, no matter what Dolce & Gabbanas controversial founders say or do, does the brand always come roaring back, seemingly none the worse for wear?

This time around, some industry insiders credit Lucio Di Rosa, who joined the brand at the start of 2020 as head of worldwide celebrities and VIP relations, a position he held at Versace for 15 years and Armani before that.

Lucio is a beloved figure within the fashion industry, said fashion writer Evan Ross Katz. He has really strong connections with stylists and celebrities. Katz, a writer for Garage, Paper and other titles, has been following the brands moves for some time. He recently posted footage of celebrity stylist Karla Welch denouncing the brand at a panel for BoF West in 2018, pointing out that Welch had styled her own clients in the label last month.

Welch did not respond to a request for comment.

Kate Middleton wearing Dolce & Gabbana last month | Source: Getty Images

Others argue that Dolce & Gabbana never really went away. Revenue for the fiscal year ending in March 2019 was up 5 percent to 1.38 billion ($1.54 billion). That was despite being frozen out of China, the worlds second-biggest luxury market, for months after a November 2018 campaign video depicting a Chinese model struggling to eat Italian food with chopsticks sparked a boycott.

Those resilient sales are a sign that Dolce & Gabbanas antagonism toward critics and disdain for political correctness remains a viable strategy, even as other brands compete with marketing strategies, diversity committees and other efforts to stress to consumers they have a stance on political and social issues.

The brand did not respond to a request for comment.

If theres a lesson to be learned, its that consumer outrage and hashtags may temporarily hurt a brands image on social media, but those can still be counteracted by advertising spending and personal relationships with celebrities and editors.

At the end of the day fashion brands know that for everyone who is offended by the things they are designing or the things they may be doing there are hundreds of consumers ready to shell out their dollars, said Kimberly Jenkins, assistant professor of Fashion Studies at Ryerson University

Below, BoF provides a timeline of the brands controversies and resurgence.

Prelude

January 2007 The Advertising Standards Authority, the British advertising regulatory board, banned a Dolce & Gabbana campaigndepicting models brandishing knives and suffering from knife wounds after it draws over 160 complaints from the public.

September 2012 Dolce & Gabbana sent earrings with colonial-style imagery of black women down the catwalk at its Spring/Summer 2013 catwalk show.

There's no denying they're offensive, reported The Guardian.

March 2015 Dolce and Gabbana said in an interview with Italian magazine Panorama that they are against the idea of gay parents.

We oppose gay adoptions the only family is the traditional one, said Dolce. I am not convinced by those I call children of chemicals, synthetic children. Gabbana appeared to second these comments, stating that family is not a fad.

Protesters outside a Dolce & Gabbana store | Source: Getty Images

The comments sparked public uproar, with singer Elton John calling for a boycott. However, many key fashion figures stayed silent at the time. Anna Wintour, Cindi Leive, Roberta Myers, Ariel Foxman and Joanna Coles all declined interview requests by The New York Times. It was "a tacit acknowledgement of the power a major advertiser wields in the publishing world," The Times' Jacob Bernstein wrote at the time. Dolce apologised for his comments months later in an interview with American Vogue.

March 2016 The brand sells $2,395 pompom-embellished "slave sandals" online. The name sparked backlash online with social media users, while Teen Vogue, Fashionista and other outlets reported the controversy. BoFs own Imran Amed told The New York Times, Given this is not the first time theyve got into trouble, you would have thought they would have been a little more careful.

June 2017 On Instagram, the designers enthusiastically voiced their support of Melania Trump, a frequent wearer of their clothes. Dolce and Gabbana poked fun at the controversy, launching their own #BoycottDolceGabbana slogan T-shirts, which retailed for $245.

April 2018 Gabbana discussed the duos succession plans for the brand. I dont want a Japanese designer to design for Dolce & Gabbana, he told Reuters.

Downfall

June 2018 Gabbana commented on an Instagram post of singer Selena Gomez: proprio brutta!!! a phrase that roughly translates to Shes so ugly.

On stage at a BoF conference in Los Angeles, celebrity stylist Karla Welch said, I reacted poorly to it. I had Dolce on the rack for a fitting and said, 'No, those can go away.' Thats just mean. Fellow stylist Jason Bolden added, Not since the beginning of time have you seen Dolce on my rack. Those silhouettes are amazing and they get everyone. But my girls are like, 'What? Its a done deal.'

November 2018 Dolce & Gabbana posted an advertising campaign to its Weibo account featuring a Chinese model trying to eat Italian food using chopsticks.

The video was taken down within 24 hours following an outcry led by fashion watchdog Diet Prada. Soon after, screenshots of racist direct messages sent by Gabbana to an online critic went viral. Both the brand and Gabbana claimed their accounts were hacked.

Chinese consumers shared videos of them cutting and burning their Dolce & Gabbana clothes. The label cancelled a catwalk presentation in Shanghai after Chinese celebrities including Zhang Ziyi, Li Bingbing, Chen Kun, Wang Xiaoming and Donnie Yen said they wouldn't attend. Models including Lucky Blue Smith and Estelle Chen also pulled out of the show.

Tmall, JD.com and other Chinese retailers removed Dolce & Gabbana products from their sites. Sephora's Chinese stores, as well as Lane Crawford, also pulled products.

The designers subsequently post an apology video to social media.

January 2019 Kim Kardashian posted an Instagram story featuring Dolce & Gabbana product and tagging the brand. She swiftly deleted the post after it drew criticism from fans.

January - February 2019 Dolce & Gabbana gowns and suits were absent from the red carpet at the Golden Globes, the Oscars and other events.

Comeback

March-August 2019 A few celebrities continued to wear Dolce & Gabbana for public appearances, including Katy Perry on American Idol in May. Meanwhile, fashion magazines continued to feature the brand on covers, worn by high profile celebrities including Ashley Graham for UK Harper's Bazaar and Kris, Kylie and Stormi Jenner for Vogue Arabia.

Kim Kardashian posted a series of pictures to Instagram one of which featured Dolce himself captioned, Thank you Domenico! I hope North was a good assistant. This time she did not delete the post.

August 2019 Company filings reveal the brandsuffered a sales decline in the Asia-Pacific market, according to Reuters. However, global revenue grew as US sales rose.

October 2019 Olivia Coleman appeared on the cover of American Vogue's October issue, wearing a Dolce & Gabbana cape and trousers. The shoot was photographed by Annie Leibovitz and styled by Tonne Goodman.

December 2019 More celebrities were seen wearing the brand, including Evan Rachel Wood, Kris Jenner and Corey Gamble, Jennifer Hudson, Dwayne Johnson, the Jonas Brothers and Jennifer Lopez.

January 2020 Lucio Di Rosa joined Dolce & Gabbana as head of VIP relations. An industry veteran, he previously spent 15 years at Versace in a similar role; prior to that he worked at Giorgio Armani.

January - February 2020 Dolce & Gabbana is spotted on numerous celebrities at the Golden Globes, Grammys and other high profile events, marking the brands return to the red carpet.

Among the A-listers wearing the label: Blake Lively, Lupita Nyongo, Matthew McConaughey, Gwen Stefani and Jennifer Garner. Even Kate Middleton, Duchess of Cambridge, stepped out in a custom Dolce & Gabbana tweed suit for a charity outing.

Stylist Karla Welch, who spoke out against the designers 18 months earlier, dressed her clients Big Little Town in Dolce & Gabbana for the Grammys, tagging the brand in an Instagram post of the band pre-ceremony. The post drew criticism. Welch subsequently untagged the brand and removed the ability for users to post comments.

Meanwhile, Dolce & Gabbana continued to land prime real estate in top-tier magazines. For Harpers Bazaars Big Fashion Issue cover, Kylie Jenner was dressed in a Dolce & Gabbana Alta Moda dress.

Related Articles:

Dolce & Gabbana Court Controversy. Are Their Sales Better for It?

Dolce & Gabbana: Cultural Stupidity Can Be Costly

Why Dolce & Gabbana Is Still Frozen Out of China

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How Dolce & Gabbana Clawed Its Way Back From Cancellation | Intelligence | BoF - The Business of Fashion

White nationalist has long worked at conservative outlets under real name – The Guardian

A new report has revealed that a prominent white nationalist author, activist and podcaster known as Paul Kersey has in fact worked for more than a decade at mainstream conservative institutions and media outlets under his real name.

According to an investigation by the not-for-profit media outlet Right Wing Watch (RWW), the man who has worked under the Kersey pseudonym is in fact Michael J Thompson.

The Guardian has uncovered additional material that supports reporting by RWW, and further indicates Thompsons role in moulding rightwing activists from a position near the heart of Americas most influential conservative institutions.

The RWW investigation, published on Monday, reveals the work of Paul Kersey, whom it calls a barely underground member of the white nationalist movement and a fixture on the roster of racist media outlets and campaign groups.

But it also shows that Thompson worked under his own name at institutions like the Leadership Institute, its media arm Campus Reform, and WND, formerly World Net Daily, a once-popular conspiracy-minded conservative outlet, as late as November 2018.

It also shows how his WND position allowed him to move in professional circles that included white nationalists, writers from Breitbart and the Daily Caller and prominent Donald Trump supporters including Steve Bannon and Jack Posobiec.

RWW determined Thompsons identity partly through a forensic voice test on audio recordings and partly through emails and testimony provided by Katie McHugh, a former far-right insider and Breitbart writer.

Evidence from McHugh underpinned reporting by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) that showed how Trumps close aide Stephen Miller attempted to insert white nationalist themes into Breitbarts coverage of the 2016 presidential election.

Using the Paul Kersey pseudonym in online columns for outlets like VDare and American Renaissance, Thompson has for years whipped up racist fears about black crime; promoted racial paranoia about a demographic Great Replacement of white Americans; and spread falsehoods about the genetic inferiority of non-whites.

According to RWW, he has run an influential far-right blog, Stuff Black People Dont Like, since 2009. The blog is focused on promoting false white nationalist ideas about race and crime.

He has also regularly appeared as a guest on white nationalist podcasts including Red Ice, The Political Cesspool and Richard Spencers AltRight Radio and is currently the co-host of a podcast produced by a prominent SPLC-designated hate group, American Renaissance.

But in 2010, RWW reports, he was named in a press release from the Leadership Institute as working in their campus services program. The Guardian was able to confirm this by accessing an archived staff page for Campus Reform, the Leadership Institutes online vehicle for the prosecution of on-campus culture wars.

The Leadership Institute is one of the longest-standing institutions in the US conservative movement, focused on training young activists. It claims to have trained 200,000 such young conservatives over 40 years, in skills including public speaking, campaigning and fundraising.

In a series of archived snapshots from the Campus Reform staff page from September 2009 to July 2010, Thompson was listed as campus services coordinator for the western region. This suggests he began his pseudonymous white nationalist blog while employed by the Leadership Institute and its media arm.

Campus Reforms website was established at the beginning of 2009, according to Domain Name System records. It has typically targeted so-called political correctness and professors it deems to be leftists.

Using internet archiving services, the Guardian was able to access the full text of previously unreported Campus Reform articles by Thompson. In the bylines for those articles, written in 2009 and 2010, he is described as a Campus Reform reporter.

In the articles that were archived and accessible, Thompson does not openly use the vocabulary of white nationalism but does explore themes such as race and immigration.

One May 2010 article criticizes Colorado State students for staging a walkout in protest against a hardline immigration law passed in Arizona in 2010 and highlights the involvement of some students with an immigrant rights group, La Raza.

Another bemoans the decision of a Washington state public college, Evergreen State, to fund a visit by the academic and civil rights activist Angela Davis, calling her a Marxist agitator.

Many more articles offer instructions, guidance and assistance to conservative student activists.

Thompson leads with complaints about political correctness; news of anti-abortion, pro-gun and media activism by conservative students; and exhortations to run for student government.

In each case, he appeals to students to reach out to Campus Reform for information, training and organizing assistance.

The Guardian has discovered evidence that Thompson was able to make connections between students and members of the conservative movement.

A February 2011 guest post on the Campus Reform website by a senior at Utah State University describes that students experiences as a sponsored attendee at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), which remains the principal annual gathering of the conservative movement.

The author writes: Michael Thompson, my regional field coordinator worked diligently to put me in contact with individuals and organizations willing to help me with future activism efforts on my campus.

RWW reports that Thompson worked at WND from at least January 2012 to November 2018.

Thompson, American Renaissance leader Jared Taylor and Joseph Farah of WND did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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White nationalist has long worked at conservative outlets under real name - The Guardian

An ‘Evening of Mad Comedy’ coming to the CCAT – Paso Robles Daily News

An Evening of Mad Comedy with Mad Magazine Senior Editor Joe Raiola is coming to the Cambria Center for the Arts Theatre on Feb. 13. The show starts at 7 p.m. and tickets are $20 and availableonline at My805Tix.com or at the box office.

In An Evening of MAD Comedy, Joe Raiola reflects on his life in humor and his 33 years as a member of the legendary The Usual Gang of Idiots. (BIG DEAL!)

Sharing wild stories of renegade publisher William Gaines and the unprecedented challenges MAD faced in the aftermaths of 9/11, the Danish cartoon controversy, and the rise of political correctness, Raiola offers a rare peek behind the scenes at Americas dumbest magazine.

As one of the creative innovators behind MADs rare longevity and influence, Raiola churned out a steady stream of pure silliness and pointed political satire at the expense of six Presidents from Reagan to Trump. During that time, he also specialized in making funny noises in the hallway, which was never a problem, as he recalls, since I worked at the only place in America where if you matured, you got fired.

An Evening of MAD Comedy concludes with an outrageous visual presentation tracing MADs colorful history as a revolutionary satiric force and spotlighting many of the magazines classic features and controversial material, followed by a lively Q+A segment.

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About the author: News Staff

News staff of the Paso Robles Daily News wrote and edited this story from local contributors and press releases. Scott Brennan is the publisher of this newspaper and founder of Access Publishing. Connect with him on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, or follow his blog. He can be reached at scott@pasoroblesdailynews.com.

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An 'Evening of Mad Comedy' coming to the CCAT - Paso Robles Daily News