In regards to the mask virtue signaling, I do agree that on the Left and Right, they have different ways of how they should be used. The Left views mask wearing as some religious virtue signaling of "look at me, I'm caring about people." Whereas the Right doesn't take the mask wearing as seriously, due to mixed information about mask effectiveness, or a breach on their freedoms.
I'm on the right and I take it as seriously as necessary. I wear it indoors but never outdoors. I'm not totally convinced they are as effective as stated (and there is plenty of research to support this) since the COVID particles are so tiny they can easily penetrate the mask. I wear it nonetheless. I'm generally a rule follower. However, the absolute flip flopping from the "scientists", especially Fauci, plays a significant role in the formation of my opinion. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.....I won't be fooled twice.
Yeah, I agree. I'm generally a rule follower, but I don't take it as seriously as I should. Just with the flip flopping on mask stuff, I don't know what to believe. The masks I purchase are medical grade, so if I have to wear one, I'd rather wear the best ones possible.
The anecdotal evidence I've seen are majority women run school boards pushing CRT while at the same time LGBTQ is attempting to erase CIS women entirely. Crazy.
By the way, do men have any say in any of this? Or are they just supposed sit down and shut up.
At least you have not had your gender renamed testicle possessor or something else idiotic. Women are birthing people. Cause you know being identified by your reproductive capabilites is the woke thing to do.
And the women run school board thing is untrue. Just another way to divide us. Anyone, male or female, who looks at CRT can see that holistically it destroys everyone. It cripples the supposed victims by embedding them in their victim hood. It cripples the supposed oppressors by by creating hostility and division where there may be none. Overall, it cripples the country as the hostility blooms into inevitable violence.
Excellent newsletter Bari & strange times we are living here. Like aerosols all the worst ideas in the US are floating over the Atlantic and raining down on my tiny country( The Netherlands) and other European countries as well. On the fun subject of Covid; here a great article by Tufecki : https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/coronavirus-airborne-transmission.html
There is also a new study out of the University of Chicago showing that after the first month of the pandemic, organizations that adopted prevention protocols became safer places than being locked down at home.
Sarah Halimi's murderer was not "let off because he had smoked pot". In fact, it was the opposite: under French law, drug use is an aggravating factor in most cases.
The Court ruled that he was in the throes of a psychotic episode when he killed her, hence not criminally responsible for his act. It refused to consider his drug use as an aggravating factor, because the law re. criminal responsibility in cases of mental disorder does not spell that out. So, it was a horribly narrow ruling following the letter of the law.
At President Macron's request, a reform of the law is being drafted. It will be presented to the Cabinet in late May and then sent to Parliament.
Most people here in France, are horrified by Sarah Halimi's murder. I think it's a turning point in terms of public awareness of antisemitic violence and crimes.
Thanks Bari. Always great to hear from you. About the graphs on hate crimes, I notice a spike in March in 2019, 2020 and 2021 on both graphs and then a decline. In 2020, after March, it appears to flatten quite substantially for the remainder of the year on the anti-Asian crime graph. Not sure if there is something interesting that happens in March in New York every year, or if it has something to do with reporting phenomenon?
I find the video of Asra Nomani appearing before the school board horrifying. The actions of the Chair were the same as Communist judges in show trials, Nazi judges in Germany, McCarthy et al - including often, Chairs or their alternates in Senate and House Committees. This woman was a totalitarian poster "person". Her actions weren't just procedural.
I wish Asian parents would put more energy towards starting new private schools and allowing school vouchers. They need to realize that the US public education system in its current form will never measure up to their standards. This is a stereotype, but Asians try hard to assimilate. With public schools, fitting into the current system means giving up too much, and they should take more pride in having high expectations for education.
Critical Race Theory has snuck into our schools at an alarming rate. Equally alarming is the silence of parents for fear the schools will punish their children academically and/or not promote them for college acceptances.
Westminster in Atlanta GA is a nationally ranked school, top 10 year after year. Feeder school to Ivy Leagues and an endowment that makes most colleges jealous.
The content coming out is truly terrifying. It’s an indoctrination for the Democrat party and has been and is continuing more aggressively to preach, not teach, radical leftist, Marxist and socialist ideology.
I’m not apart of the school, my children attend a different school, but have many friends with children there. They had an IG page for a while called WOKE AT WESTMINSTER that would have blown your mind. They took it down, but the letters from who ever is running it continue to be circulated. More and more info being leaked ... I assume from faculty, teachers and parents. 5th graders having to select from 9 different identities, forced to state their pronouns and sign agreements, along with their parents, not to be racist. Duh.
I'm writing this from an Australian perspective. We have been effectively Covid19 free for almost a year but to achieve this we have also effectively closed our national borders and subjected those who do return, to forced quarantine in specially adapted hotel floors for 2 weeks, at the returnee's expense. Because we have just re-discovered that we are a Federation of States, we have also discovered that the Federal Government can control who enters / leaves the country and has to foot the bill for everything, but the States have emergency powers that control all aspects of life - with enormous policing power. We mistakenly copied the US Federal system back in 1901. We have suffered 7 different sets of lockdown / masking/ social behaviour regimes, more severe in "Labor" states, but really, almost blind to political allegiance. The largest factor has been first, the naked fear and latterly, the intoxication of power, of the State Premiers (House Leaders - Governors are titular). Vaccination is now proceeding at a pace and is sought by all of the population, regardless of politics. Masks and restrictions come on and off depending on the occassional (tiny) escape of the disease from the quarantine system. But chaos can occur in a moment at the whim of the "nastiest" State Premiers who can blacklist any part of the nation if there has been a quarantine leak, causing destruction of travel plans and scheduled functions. Half of our own family, live in Israel which is highly vaccinated but not disease free. We have been told by our Prime Minister not to expect totally free travel for possibly another 2 years and that will be in a world of abrupt, unexpected imposition of restrictions and self funded, weeks of quarantine. So our day to day life, at least in Sydney, New South Wales, has become almost normal (though last week the imposition of masks on public transport and in shops, and some restrictions were reimposed because one, just one person, with the disease could not be traced (we check in/out to a State system at all places). This week, masks are for public transport only. Schools have been back for 9 months - Politics blind, - State Governments controlled. Almost total freedom but with constant uncertainty.
Bari- As a long time resident of Savannah, I can tell you that our city is truly a hidden gem... and our Jewish community is one of a kind. Happy to give you some recommendations if you want!
Luckily for you I did not subscribe for your local weather reporting abilities. It was not that hot in Savannah today. Also I can recommend more “Teva” Coffee shops if the kids pretending to go to SCAD\SCAD kids are a problem.
Bari and fellow readers: I want to bring to your attention this essay I just read, not that long, in the Boston Review:
"The War on Critical Race Theory"
"Turning a blind eye to the realities of racial injustice, the highly orchestrated right-wing attacks cast a body of scholarship about race in the law as a great threat to American society."
I notice the current talking point for all the defenders of CRT is it’s about how laws have increased inequality. It’s just a theory of law, you know, nothing that mere worker bees should be alarmed about. Lawyer talk, boring, above the pay grade of mortals. You know the CRT industry-complex is getting worried if they start rebranding their program.
My short form translation of article. "People on the right know nothing about CRT(No evidence or ancedotes to back this up, you take it on faith.) The reader, accepting this faith based assertion as to the basis for Right not accepting the religious tenants of the faith known as Critical Race Theory are exhorted to believe that the sole and only reason for any disagreement is the desire to not engage in the discussion of racial inequality.
I hoped the article would dissect arguments against CRT. But it really does no such thing. In fact, it religiously ignores how the downstream version of CRT, those bilious and humiliating struggle sessions in corporate and academic America, multiply. (They also ignore how CRT fits hand-in-glove with capitalist business models, hence the way many of its talking points have been folded seamlessly into human resource departments throughout the US.)
Thought it was lazy to blame it on a right-wing cabal, a charge brought also against critics of the 1619 Project. Recall that the first major critics of 1619 were the un-reconstituted Marxists at the World Socialist Web Site...who quickly understood that race was displacing class. They recruited first rate historians do to the analysis.
Oh I understand. I have never really put a right or left label on myself. If pressed I will claim centrist. The thing that disturbs me, well one of them, is not just that the Right Wing Cabal, Boogeyman, whatever you want to call it is invoked. It is that so many are so very frightened of being identified as agreeing with the 'Right Wing', that they cannot work their way past that fear. They say, "Oh, I don't like what I am seeing in CRT but I proclaim loudly I disagree with the Right Wing." Stop letting that strawman keep us from agreement. We are people, fellow humans;not political labels.
Bari, since you like tiny doors. I couldn't find a photo of the fairy door in the herb garden by the small bridge at Scarborough Faire in Waxahatchie Texas, but I did find the one by the shop. Enjoy. https://www.flickr.com/photos/52869489@N08/14159126906/
Besides my hope that you don’t work too hard trying to service too many troubling issues, I’ll only add a couple of points about the COVID vaccination discussion and ask people to think about them with open minds.
I’ve suggested to my friends and family to hold off the exaggerated fears of the vaccines and get their vaccinations for COVID largely behind them, just like I faithfully get my flu shot annually.
BUT I don’t think that forcing mandatory vaccinations on segments of the population who are at minuscule risk (i.e. below age ~30 with no other relevant health challenges) is wise at all, especially when huge populations around the world are at real risk and are dying. The vaccines are approved under Emergency Use Authorizations, not fully evaluated for longer term effects. Forcing “near zero risk” individuals to take these could be viewed as a giant chemical experiment. It’d be a sad day if we forced this and in a couple of years found we’d forced serious problems onto many millions of people.
This is the common sense that many of the people who push back right now are trying to exercise. They’re not getting any help from the Government or Media, who are just pushing the only thing they can think of.
That said, I’ll offer a slightly qualified “Here, Here !” for your suggestions.
My other thought is about the Wuhan lab leak discussion. Although my education and career has been in Nuclear Physics and Engineering, I do understand a fair amount of fluid mechanics and aerosol movement (and have closely followed Dr. Lindsey Marr’s work). Just anecdotally, the COVID infections bursting out around the whole world in a couple of months simply doesn’t make sense for a locally generated illness with this kind of fatality rate. It was just way too acute. Way too rapid.
The Salk Institute just released research that determined COVID Sars 2 is a VASCULAR disease which may explain blood clotting issues, vein thrombosis, heart attacks, irregular/heavy menstrual cycles (even bleeding for those well into menopause) and eye blood vessel bleeds after getting the vaccine/shot. We need a lot more research, and a lot less politics, to make sure we aren't treating the problem with more problems. And to require a shot (mRNA are not vaccines in the pure definition of vaccine) that is still in EUA is unconscionable. https://www.salk.edu/news-release/the-novel-coronavirus-spike-protein-plays-additional-key-role-in-illness/
In regards to the mask virtue signaling, I do agree that on the Left and Right, they have different ways of how they should be used. The Left views mask wearing as some religious virtue signaling of "look at me, I'm caring about people." Whereas the Right doesn't take the mask wearing as seriously, due to mixed information about mask effectiveness, or a breach on their freedoms.
I'm on the right and I take it as seriously as necessary. I wear it indoors but never outdoors. I'm not totally convinced they are as effective as stated (and there is plenty of research to support this) since the COVID particles are so tiny they can easily penetrate the mask. I wear it nonetheless. I'm generally a rule follower. However, the absolute flip flopping from the "scientists", especially Fauci, plays a significant role in the formation of my opinion. Fool me once shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me.....I won't be fooled twice.
Yeah, I agree. I'm generally a rule follower, but I don't take it as seriously as I should. Just with the flip flopping on mask stuff, I don't know what to believe. The masks I purchase are medical grade, so if I have to wear one, I'd rather wear the best ones possible.
The anecdotal evidence I've seen are majority women run school boards pushing CRT while at the same time LGBTQ is attempting to erase CIS women entirely. Crazy.
By the way, do men have any say in any of this? Or are they just supposed sit down and shut up.
At least you have not had your gender renamed testicle possessor or something else idiotic. Women are birthing people. Cause you know being identified by your reproductive capabilites is the woke thing to do.
And the women run school board thing is untrue. Just another way to divide us. Anyone, male or female, who looks at CRT can see that holistically it destroys everyone. It cripples the supposed victims by embedding them in their victim hood. It cripples the supposed oppressors by by creating hostility and division where there may be none. Overall, it cripples the country as the hostility blooms into inevitable violence.
Our role, William, is to listen and learn.
Excellent newsletter Bari & strange times we are living here. Like aerosols all the worst ideas in the US are floating over the Atlantic and raining down on my tiny country( The Netherlands) and other European countries as well. On the fun subject of Covid; here a great article by Tufecki : https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/07/opinion/coronavirus-airborne-transmission.html
There is also a new study out of the University of Chicago showing that after the first month of the pandemic, organizations that adopted prevention protocols became safer places than being locked down at home.
https://bfi.uchicago.edu/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/BFI_WP_2021-51-1.pdf
Sarah Halimi's murderer was not "let off because he had smoked pot". In fact, it was the opposite: under French law, drug use is an aggravating factor in most cases.
The Court ruled that he was in the throes of a psychotic episode when he killed her, hence not criminally responsible for his act. It refused to consider his drug use as an aggravating factor, because the law re. criminal responsibility in cases of mental disorder does not spell that out. So, it was a horribly narrow ruling following the letter of the law.
At President Macron's request, a reform of the law is being drafted. It will be presented to the Cabinet in late May and then sent to Parliament.
Most people here in France, are horrified by Sarah Halimi's murder. I think it's a turning point in terms of public awareness of antisemitic violence and crimes.
Thanks Bari. Always great to hear from you. About the graphs on hate crimes, I notice a spike in March in 2019, 2020 and 2021 on both graphs and then a decline. In 2020, after March, it appears to flatten quite substantially for the remainder of the year on the anti-Asian crime graph. Not sure if there is something interesting that happens in March in New York every year, or if it has something to do with reporting phenomenon?
Spring weather?
I find the video of Asra Nomani appearing before the school board horrifying. The actions of the Chair were the same as Communist judges in show trials, Nazi judges in Germany, McCarthy et al - including often, Chairs or their alternates in Senate and House Committees. This woman was a totalitarian poster "person". Her actions weren't just procedural.
I wish Asian parents would put more energy towards starting new private schools and allowing school vouchers. They need to realize that the US public education system in its current form will never measure up to their standards. This is a stereotype, but Asians try hard to assimilate. With public schools, fitting into the current system means giving up too much, and they should take more pride in having high expectations for education.
Critical Race Theory has snuck into our schools at an alarming rate. Equally alarming is the silence of parents for fear the schools will punish their children academically and/or not promote them for college acceptances.
Westminster in Atlanta GA is a nationally ranked school, top 10 year after year. Feeder school to Ivy Leagues and an endowment that makes most colleges jealous.
The content coming out is truly terrifying. It’s an indoctrination for the Democrat party and has been and is continuing more aggressively to preach, not teach, radical leftist, Marxist and socialist ideology.
I’m not apart of the school, my children attend a different school, but have many friends with children there. They had an IG page for a while called WOKE AT WESTMINSTER that would have blown your mind. They took it down, but the letters from who ever is running it continue to be circulated. More and more info being leaked ... I assume from faculty, teachers and parents. 5th graders having to select from 9 different identities, forced to state their pronouns and sign agreements, along with their parents, not to be racist. Duh.
I'm writing this from an Australian perspective. We have been effectively Covid19 free for almost a year but to achieve this we have also effectively closed our national borders and subjected those who do return, to forced quarantine in specially adapted hotel floors for 2 weeks, at the returnee's expense. Because we have just re-discovered that we are a Federation of States, we have also discovered that the Federal Government can control who enters / leaves the country and has to foot the bill for everything, but the States have emergency powers that control all aspects of life - with enormous policing power. We mistakenly copied the US Federal system back in 1901. We have suffered 7 different sets of lockdown / masking/ social behaviour regimes, more severe in "Labor" states, but really, almost blind to political allegiance. The largest factor has been first, the naked fear and latterly, the intoxication of power, of the State Premiers (House Leaders - Governors are titular). Vaccination is now proceeding at a pace and is sought by all of the population, regardless of politics. Masks and restrictions come on and off depending on the occassional (tiny) escape of the disease from the quarantine system. But chaos can occur in a moment at the whim of the "nastiest" State Premiers who can blacklist any part of the nation if there has been a quarantine leak, causing destruction of travel plans and scheduled functions. Half of our own family, live in Israel which is highly vaccinated but not disease free. We have been told by our Prime Minister not to expect totally free travel for possibly another 2 years and that will be in a world of abrupt, unexpected imposition of restrictions and self funded, weeks of quarantine. So our day to day life, at least in Sydney, New South Wales, has become almost normal (though last week the imposition of masks on public transport and in shops, and some restrictions were reimposed because one, just one person, with the disease could not be traced (we check in/out to a State system at all places). This week, masks are for public transport only. Schools have been back for 9 months - Politics blind, - State Governments controlled. Almost total freedom but with constant uncertainty.
Bari- As a long time resident of Savannah, I can tell you that our city is truly a hidden gem... and our Jewish community is one of a kind. Happy to give you some recommendations if you want!
My FIL had a home on Skidaway and we just loved it. Was sad when he had to sell it. Savannah is definitely one of a kind.
That's where we live - The Landings on Skidaway... we have to pinch ourselves every day to make sure we are in fact living in paradise.
My FIL was on the south end of the island. He was on the most photographed for covers of golfing magazines hole. It was such a lovely, quiet spot.
I’ve got insight into CRT and medicine.
Luckily for you I did not subscribe for your local weather reporting abilities. It was not that hot in Savannah today. Also I can recommend more “Teva” Coffee shops if the kids pretending to go to SCAD\SCAD kids are a problem.
Right? I wore a jacket today! Hot soup is in August!
Bari and fellow readers: I want to bring to your attention this essay I just read, not that long, in the Boston Review:
"The War on Critical Race Theory"
"Turning a blind eye to the realities of racial injustice, the highly orchestrated right-wing attacks cast a body of scholarship about race in the law as a great threat to American society."
http://bostonreview.net/race-politics/david-theo-goldberg-war-critical-race-theory?fbclid=IwAR0B5BRAMYX9BYRVz-v6KWVQvBF-tfCLK0upft_rT214zuG7cWKAl3p4agI#.YJZ62vGuWKo.facebook
I notice the current talking point for all the defenders of CRT is it’s about how laws have increased inequality. It’s just a theory of law, you know, nothing that mere worker bees should be alarmed about. Lawyer talk, boring, above the pay grade of mortals. You know the CRT industry-complex is getting worried if they start rebranding their program.
My short form translation of article. "People on the right know nothing about CRT(No evidence or ancedotes to back this up, you take it on faith.) The reader, accepting this faith based assertion as to the basis for Right not accepting the religious tenants of the faith known as Critical Race Theory are exhorted to believe that the sole and only reason for any disagreement is the desire to not engage in the discussion of racial inequality.
I hoped the article would dissect arguments against CRT. But it really does no such thing. In fact, it religiously ignores how the downstream version of CRT, those bilious and humiliating struggle sessions in corporate and academic America, multiply. (They also ignore how CRT fits hand-in-glove with capitalist business models, hence the way many of its talking points have been folded seamlessly into human resource departments throughout the US.)
Thought it was lazy to blame it on a right-wing cabal, a charge brought also against critics of the 1619 Project. Recall that the first major critics of 1619 were the un-reconstituted Marxists at the World Socialist Web Site...who quickly understood that race was displacing class. They recruited first rate historians do to the analysis.
Oh I understand. I have never really put a right or left label on myself. If pressed I will claim centrist. The thing that disturbs me, well one of them, is not just that the Right Wing Cabal, Boogeyman, whatever you want to call it is invoked. It is that so many are so very frightened of being identified as agreeing with the 'Right Wing', that they cannot work their way past that fear. They say, "Oh, I don't like what I am seeing in CRT but I proclaim loudly I disagree with the Right Wing." Stop letting that strawman keep us from agreement. We are people, fellow humans;not political labels.
How come Alan Dershowitz is not on the JILV list? Has he been cancelled there as well?
Bari, since you like tiny doors. I couldn't find a photo of the fairy door in the herb garden by the small bridge at Scarborough Faire in Waxahatchie Texas, but I did find the one by the shop. Enjoy. https://www.flickr.com/photos/52869489@N08/14159126906/
Bari, THANK YOU for your great work.
Besides my hope that you don’t work too hard trying to service too many troubling issues, I’ll only add a couple of points about the COVID vaccination discussion and ask people to think about them with open minds.
I’ve suggested to my friends and family to hold off the exaggerated fears of the vaccines and get their vaccinations for COVID largely behind them, just like I faithfully get my flu shot annually.
BUT I don’t think that forcing mandatory vaccinations on segments of the population who are at minuscule risk (i.e. below age ~30 with no other relevant health challenges) is wise at all, especially when huge populations around the world are at real risk and are dying. The vaccines are approved under Emergency Use Authorizations, not fully evaluated for longer term effects. Forcing “near zero risk” individuals to take these could be viewed as a giant chemical experiment. It’d be a sad day if we forced this and in a couple of years found we’d forced serious problems onto many millions of people.
This is the common sense that many of the people who push back right now are trying to exercise. They’re not getting any help from the Government or Media, who are just pushing the only thing they can think of.
That said, I’ll offer a slightly qualified “Here, Here !” for your suggestions.
My other thought is about the Wuhan lab leak discussion. Although my education and career has been in Nuclear Physics and Engineering, I do understand a fair amount of fluid mechanics and aerosol movement (and have closely followed Dr. Lindsey Marr’s work). Just anecdotally, the COVID infections bursting out around the whole world in a couple of months simply doesn’t make sense for a locally generated illness with this kind of fatality rate. It was just way too acute. Way too rapid.
The Salk Institute just released research that determined COVID Sars 2 is a VASCULAR disease which may explain blood clotting issues, vein thrombosis, heart attacks, irregular/heavy menstrual cycles (even bleeding for those well into menopause) and eye blood vessel bleeds after getting the vaccine/shot. We need a lot more research, and a lot less politics, to make sure we aren't treating the problem with more problems. And to require a shot (mRNA are not vaccines in the pure definition of vaccine) that is still in EUA is unconscionable. https://www.salk.edu/news-release/the-novel-coronavirus-spike-protein-plays-additional-key-role-in-illness/
Agree with your comments about vaccinating the low risk.
Read a very good piece today on the origins of Covid by Nicholas Wade
I love my weekly dose of sanity! ;-)