Friday, April 30, 2021

King James Lebron

King james, king james 
Decorated officer the one he blames 
Protected a black woman from feeling the pains 
Of having her throat slit demanding the claims 
Of accountability, are you kidding me? 
Black Lives Matter what he showed quite literally
On the court, I don't doubt your ability 
But when it come truth man you lack the affinity 
To rationalize with all the facts 
Emotions got you assuming all us blacks 
Are petrified, with 5-0 on our backs 
Like we criminals born, don't know how to act 
Please, we don't need your tears 
Gaslight things just to please your peers 
Whitе privilege and extrеmists fears 
Bet that all goes away when you hear them cheers 
As you travel the world making millions just to put a ball in a basket 
Yet you don't talk about the conditions that keep putting babies in caskets 
All the thuggin' and violence, degenerates out in our streets wreaking havoc 
Hope you getting the message don't want to see another Jaslyn Adams 
Speak up, and teach us to respect 
Law, comply, and keep us from rejectin' 
Commands police say to detect 
If you will abide or be the threat 
Another suspect eliminated 
Short clips, big lies generated 
Lifetime menace venerated 
Race War, hatred you helped instigated 

King james, king james 
Have you ever heard about these three names
 Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Carol Swain 
Scholars that have broken down all these things 
Take a look at the numbers it doesn't make sense 
Every time there's a foul, you yelling flagrant 
White cop, black man doesn't mean racist 
O.J. said exercise more patience 
Took the tweet down cuz it stirred hate
Naw man, you just failed with the race bait 
One time for the cop out in L.A 
Other day, labeled you extreme and off base 
Don't be the new Shaun King 
Magnetize fear for exploiting 
Add context or say nothing Either way,
 I just need you to know one thing (You're next)

Tuesday, April 20, 2021

House Acts to Immediately Grab Police Powers at Local Level

Your New Local PD Overseers...

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act

This bill addresses a wide range of policies and issues regarding policing practices and law enforcement accountability. It includes measures to increase accountability for law enforcement misconduct, to enhance transparency and data collection, and to eliminate discriminatory policing practices.

The bill facilitates federal enforcement of constitutional violations (e.g., excessive use of force) by state and local law enforcement. Among other things, it does the following:

  • lowers the criminal intent standard—from willful to knowing or reckless—to convict a law enforcement officer for misconduct in a federal prosecution, 
  • limits qualified immunity as a defense to liability in a private civil action against a law enforcement officer or state correctional officer, and 
  • authorizes the Department of Justice to issue subpoenas in investigations of police departments for a pattern or practice of discrimination.

The bill also creates a national registry—the National Police Misconduct Registry—to compile data on complaints and records of police misconduct.

It establishes a framework to prohibit racial profiling at the federal, state, and local levels.

The bill establishes new requirements for law enforcement officers and agencies, including to report data on use-of-force incidents, to obtain training on implicit bias and racial profiling, and to wear body cameras.

Accountable to who?  DOJ and the Deep State, of course. 

(CNN) The House of Representatives on Wednesday approved legislation aimed at preventing police misconduct that Democrats named in honor of George Floyd, whose death in police custody sparked nationwide calls to overhaul policing and address racial injustice.

House Democrats originally introduced and passed the bill -- titled the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act -- last year in the wake of Floyd's death, but it never passed in the Senate, which was under Republican control at the time. Supporters of the bill say it would improve law enforcement accountability and work to root out racial bias in policing.

Two moderate Democrats -- Reps. Jared Golden of Maine and Ron Kind of Wisconsin -- opposed the measure, while GOP Rep. Lance Gooden of Texas said after the fact that he had voted for it by accident.

Democrats now control the Senate, which has a 50-50 partisan split with Vice President Kamala Harris acting as the tie breaker. But most legislation in that chamber still requires 60 votes to overcome a filibuster and it's not clear there would be enough Republican support to get the legislation across the finish line in the Senate.

Rep. Karen Bass, a California Democrat who is leading police overhaul efforts in the House, told reporters on Wednesday, "We are still trying to transform policing in the United States" and said that she is "confident that we will be able to have a bipartisan bill in the Senate that will reach President Biden's desk."

The legislation would set up a national registry of police misconduct to stop officers from evading consequences for their actions by moving to another jurisdiction. It would ban racial and religious profiling by law enforcement at the federal, state and local levels, and it would overhaul qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that critics say shields law enforcement from accountability.

According to a fact sheet on the legislation, the measure would allow "individuals to recover damages in civil court when law enforcement officers violate their constitutional rights by eliminating qualified immunity for law enforcement." The fact sheet also states that the legislation would "save lives by banning chokeholds and no-knock warrants" and would mandate "deadly force be used only as a last resort."

Discussing next steps for the legislation, Bass said ahead of the House vote, "We will begin those discussions with the Senate immediately after the bill is passed," adding, "Over the last several weeks, discussions especially with Sen. Tim Scott and Sen. Cory Booker have been under way."

Scott, a South Carolina Republican who led Senate GOP efforts to address policing in the wake of Floyd's death, said earlier in the week, "I'm talking to both sides and hopefully we'll come up with something that actually works."

Scott also said, "What I'm interested is in finding a path forward on areas where we agree. we have not gotten to a place where we agree on qualified immunity."

When the policing bill passed the House last year, it was approved largely along party lines amid Republican opposition with three Republicans crossing party lines to vote in favor: Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, Will Hurd of Texas, who has since retired from Congress, and Fred Upton of Michigan.

The House made plans to vote on the bill Wednesday night, but the vote had earlier been slated for Thursday.

A Democratic aide told CNN earlier Wednesday that there was discussion of the House staying late to avoid coming in Thursday in light of Capitol Police warning about security risks.

US officials have alerted lawmakers to a potential threat against the US Capitol on March 4, for which security has been enhanced as a precaution, less than two months after the Capitol complex was stormed and lawmakers' lives were threatened by rioters.

This story and headline have been updated with additional developments Wednesday.

CNN's Whitney Wild, Annie Grayer, Jim Sciutto, Manu Raju, Ali Zaslav and Jamie Ehrlich contributed to this report.

Merrick Garland wants your sheriff to answer to him.  Consent Decrees to follow.

Sunday, April 18, 2021

Manufactured Demand, Manufactured Consent...

...global warming, affirmative action, anti-racism, covid mask wearing... the list goes on.

Sunday, April 11, 2021

Is it Time to Throw Another Virgin into the Volcano?


Ann Coulter, "Derek Chauvin, human sacrifice"
In modern America, we periodically offer up white men as human sacrifices to the PC gods. Among our benefactions: Jake Gardner, Kyle Rittenhouse, Darren Wilson, the Duke lacrosse players, University of Virginia fraternity members, Stacey Koon and Mark Fuhrman.

The rest of us just keep our heads down and pray we won’t be next.

At least the Duke and UVA human offerings were sufficiently upper-crust to have a few journalists and lawyers defending them. But policemen, bar owners, military veterans and a Midwest teenager? Definitely not our crowd, darling.

Currently, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial for killing George Floyd by kneeling on his neck, as it appeared in cellphone videos. You may remember something about this: It’s why America had to burn in 2020.

But the chief medical examiner’s report establishes that, however else Floyd died, it wasn’t from Chauvin’s knee. Oopsie! I guess it wasn’t absolutely essential that our country go through eight months of looting, riots and mostly peaceful arsons.

In lieu of citing some B.S. media “fact check,” I shall quote directly from the autopsy report by the Hennepin County Chief Medical Examiner, Andrew Baker:
“No life-threatening injuries identified --

“A. No facial, oral mucosal, or conjunctival petechiae

“B. No injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngeal structures

“C. No scalp soft tissue, skull, or brain injuries

“D. No chest wall soft tissue injuries, rib fractures (other than a single rib fracture from CPR), vertebral column injuries, or visceral injuries

“E. Incision and subcutaneous dissection of posterior and lateral neck, shoulders, back, flanks, and buttocks negative for occult trauma”
In short: No bloodshot eyes and no trauma to any part of Floyd’s neck.

And yet, day after day, prosecutors, witnesses and the media tell us that Chauvin “squeezed the life out of” Floyd. The medical evidence establishes that whatever else caused his death, it was NOT asphyxiation.

That’s the entire case against Officer Chauvin! But the howling mob isn’t giving up its holy religious observance because of one dork in a lab coat. The sun might not rise! The city of Minneapolis could be wiped out! Wait -- that might actually happen.

The medical examiner also found that Floyd had enough fentanyl in his system -- I don’t want to say “to kill a horse,” because that would be a cliche. But it would be enough to bump off an entire team of Budweiser Clydesdales. In technical medical jargon:
“A. Blood drug and novel psychoactive substances screens:

1. Fentanyl 11 ng/mL
That’s just the first few words of the “Toxicology” section. Also listed are norfentanyl, 4-ANPP, methamphetamine, cannabinoids, amphetamines, morphine and so on.

But the 11 nanograms per milliliter of fentanyl is rather important, inasmuch as the chief medical examiner called this “a fatal level of fentanyl under normal circumstances,” saying, “deaths have been certified with levels of 3.”

Three. But George Floyd went up to 11.

Naturally, Baker was quick to add, “I am not saying this killed him.” Please don’t throw me to the woke gods! Leave me to my test tubes! (And you thought lawyers were craven.)

I have a feeling we’re about to see another example of the left not accepting science.

In addition to liberals refusing to accept the science of:
• DNA (the O.J. trial)

• AIDS (we’re still waiting for that big heterosexual outbreak!)

• Cancer clusters and breast implants (billions of dollars wasted and companies destroyed because of the left’s adherence to junk science)

• I.Q. (just watch the reaction to my mentioning this hate-science) ...
... we can now add “pharmacology”!

You mean to say that just by sticking a syringe in someone’s arm you can tell if he’s been taking drugs? That’s a lot of mumbo-jumbo, just like the moon landing.

This trial is a total sham, but the entire power of the state, the media, the left-wing shock troops and the country’s finest legal talent is being deployed against Derek Chauvin.

In addition to Minnesota’s top prosecutor, the state has hired Neal Katyal, former solicitor general of the United States -- an unheard-of maneuver in a case that doesn’t involve some highly technical specialty, like antitrust. A slew of lawyers are working pro bono for the prosecutor -- also unheard of. The state has unlimited resources to pursue Chauvin.

Against this, Chauvin has one lone defense attorney, Eric “Atticus Finch” Nelson. The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association’s legal defense fund will put up to $1 million toward his defense, and Nelson can talk to the other rotating attorneys whom the fund employs. But unless they’re working pro bono, too, $1 million runs out pretty fast.

The legal mismatch in the O.J. Simpson case wasn’t this one-sided.

In the middle of jury selection, the city of Minneapolis announced an eye-popping civil settlement of $27 million with the family of George Floyd. Liberals are still denouncing Richard Nixon for a 1970 speech in which he inadvertently described defendant Charles Manson as someone who was “guilty, directly or indirectly, of eight murders” -- leading to demands for a mistrial.

What does a $27 million settlement with the family of the alleged victim say?

Black residents of Minneapolis are threatening to burn the place down if Chauvin isn’t convicted -- and the only reason anyone thinks a jury could possibly return a guilty verdict is that they believe them.

In the darkest days of Jim Crow, the entire country never ganged up on a single individual like this.

Please, gods of wokeness, we ask that his human sacrifice be acceptable!

Throw another virgin into the volcano.

The Anti-Racist's Noble Lie - "But for White Racism, Blacks Would Do as Well Economically as Whites"

Ali Hossaini, "The Nasty Truth About the Noble Lie"

For twenty years essayists have ventured to ask if George Orwell's vision for Nineteen Eighty-four is coming true. The answers have been as varied as the writers and the features of Oceania, Orwell's fictional nation, they've chosen to consider.

Take a piece on surveillance by cyber novelist William Gibson for the New York Times (June 2003). Cameras are now cheap, miniaturised and, courtesy of local government, ubiquitous. Constant surveillance fits the classic definition of "Big Brother". Yet Gibson argues that the market has headed off dystopia. Cameras work both ways, as the Rodney King affair showed, and cheap electronics makes every citizen a watchdog.

I think Gibson is right about surveillance, but let's not dismiss the case for 1984. Two-way TVs are a nasty thought (unless you're a paid Nielsen family), but far more insidious forces were at work in Oceania's media, particularly in its portrayal of war.

All is fair in war

There was a time when war meant an armed conflict between two nations. War was an existential threat, and called for extraordinary actions that range from killing enemies to killing the truth. Even politicians remind us that "truth is the first casualty of war", harking back to Plato's doctrine of the "noble lie".

Noble lies run headlong into journalistic ethics, which are based on the opposite principle: that society works best when based on truth. How do we decide which of these principles is right? There's no magic formula for ethics, so I would argue that the answer depends on your political preferences. There are no givens in life, but by unpacking some of these issues, we can define the proper role of journalists, particularly in times of war. Orwell's famous novel is helpful here because war was a permanent condition of Oceania.

People suspend their habitual ethics during war. Mild-mannered liberals may kill, lie and follow absolute leaders when threatened. The question is: how far this should go? Plato despised democracy, and he expected leaders to weave noble lies for the greater good.

The contemporary political relevance of the idea of the "noble lie" is explored in relation to the powerful cadre of neo-conservatives influenced by Leo Strauss (for whom Plato's anti-democratic dictums are fundamental) by Danny Postel's conversation with Shadia Drury, elsewhere in this edition of openDemocracy.

Citizens of democracies have no such expectation, because we are, presumably, the leaders, and only an informed citizenry can make good decisions.

As Des Freedman points out in "Witnessing Whose Truth?", journalists have been willing to suspend their objectivity during times of war, essentially abandoning democratic values for a temporary aristocracy. Freedman notes that the "embedded" reporters of the recent Gulf war are nothing new; they are simply the most obvious examples of a media business that operates in a larger context of obligations, values and financial relationships.

Winning hearts and minds

Democratic polities have been willing to suspend individual rights during war, and war has been defined as a situation where the nation is under arms. For the past 200 years, wars have had distinct beginnings, and democratic nations had little question that things would return to "normal" when hostilities ceased. Wartime powers are temporary. What happens when a nation is in perpetual war?

Orwell gave a telling answer to this question. Big Brother, the Everyman of dictators, learned that security trumps rights. By creating a state of permanent insecurity and blaming it on shadowy enemies, Big Brother's government changed the terms of public discourse. In a chilling inversion of American values, the people of Oceania decided it was better to live "unfree" than die.

20th century nations never had to endure Oceania's fate because war is by nature public and self-limiting. They end, if only because propaganda wears thin and combatants run out of money. In contrast, Oceania's leader guarded the definition of war by taking control of language. My argument is that the control of language -  particularly on the concept of war - is the key to dictatorial power. From that perspective we can see some dangerous trends in the politics of my country, the United States.

Without objectivity there is no democracy

Many factors have contributed to decline of objective journalism over the past decades. Some of them are economic, caused by the self-censorship of journalists who don't want to offend their corporate employers, but another trend has been the rise of relativism.

Truth (capital 'T') seems a bit old-fashioned these days. Politicians have always lied - as Joseph Goebbels said, the bigger the better - but generally there has been someone around, whether it's the intelligentsia, the clergy or the political opposition, to call them on it. Every Nixon has his Woodward & Bernstein, eventually. Now the situation is different, and the reason stems from the current state of our intellectual culture, which shuns anything that sounds absolute. Facts are for the naïve.

David Loyn’s article "Witnessing the Truth" uses his experience as a BBC correspondent to argue against advocacy journalism, however well-intentioned. In contrast, Des Freedman, argues that the only antidote to journalistic bias is a rising market for alternative views. News outlets will take a critical stance if it enhances sales. The economic logic is sound, but philosophy might offer a more productive way of approaching the problem of bias.

The truth, relatively speaking

Two currents converged to create our current relativism. Postmodern philosophy has for decades made a concerted effort to eliminate the verities of life. For Jean-Francois Lyotard and his brethren the Truth is just another meta-narrative, with no privileged grip on things as they are. The other current, probably more powerful, derives from scientific progress. Today's facts are tomorrow's fiction. Under such conditions, it's easy to believe that everything you know is wrong.

I think it's a terrible mistake to apply these lessons to life, particularly politics. Like quantum physics, philosophy works beyond the range of perception. Arguments about the limits of knowledge may make sense, but the key word is limits. It is a mistake to import the lessons of philosophy into everyday life without careful consideration. Think of Samuel Johnson's response to Bishop Berkeley's arguments against the existence of matter. He kicked a rock and said, "Thus I refute you." Funny, definitely; but hardly an end to the philosophical argument.

Reality may not be as it seems, but even sceptics have not denied the importance of truth in human relations. Julian Baggini explains why objectivity is a critical factor in communication. In "The Philosophy of Journalism", he contrasts truth, which has a brittle absolutism, with the notion of "truthfulness", which is the best effort of a journalist to overcome her individual perspective.

Aiming for truthfulness, Baggini says, enables journalists to separate the social function of truth from its intellectual traps. The grand question of truth has not been answered. It probably won't be. But the ambiguity of reality only holds for the musings of philosophers. Outside the classroom, there are standards of truth, and they don't require formal proof. Instead they require common assent; they are what any reasonable person of sound faculties could verify. Philosophy can also justify this stance with another concept, intersubjectivity.

Collective reality is reality

Intersubjectivity refers to the fact that our minds function in a similar way. We are individuals, but our experience is shared. It accounts for the fact that we communicate, and it has a basis in evolution, which prepared us to live in coordinated groups. We share consciousness, and the medium of sharing is not a mysterious psychic faculty but ordinary language. Language forms the social environment, and it constitutes us as individuals. Not isolated individuals, but members of a group that entails roles, rights and responsibilities. Our psychology is intimately tied to society, and, without this complexity, we couldn't survive.

Truthfulness plays a central role within our environment. Its function has little to do with the absolute certainty sought by philosophers and scientists. Instead it serves to coordinate members of society. Honest reporting is not just facts. It is good intent, and it conveys a reasonable nature that considers the needs, thoughts and agendas of other people. Facts are established through the intersubjectivity, which demands that another reasonable being, one with equally good intentions, would make the same report. Only then do they become objective. An objective report is something that can be defined by a quorum of reasonable people.

What happens, then, when objectivity is replaced by a partisan attitude? The language is perverted, because, as David Loyn points out, journalism operates in the framework of objectivity. Loyn uses his own experience to describe the dangers of abandoning that framework. When journalists become participants instead of reporters, they cast standards to the wind. Judging right and wrong should be reserved to the citizenry, not the institutions that convey information.

Lies are the simplest example of perversion, and we condemn liars because they distort the fabric of good intent, what we also call "trust", for their own gain. Lies don't only bend the social fabric. They also twist the fabric of reality, because the liar creates a false world. We are physical bodies, but we are also mental beings, and the mental world is made up of words. Language is the medium of our awareness, and, like material substances, it is vital to our survival.

Word warfare

Americans started playing fast and loose with the word "war" in 1965, when Lyndon Johnson declared a "War on Poverty" (while fighting an undeclared war in Vietnam). It was a worthy cause, and it was also a noble lie because you can' literally fight poverty. Little harm was done because everyone understood the phrase as a metaphor.

Next came the "War on Drugs". Again you can't literally fight drugs, but this war brought low-intensity conflict at home and abroad that has lasted for decades. Like a traditional war, the War on Drugs includes military violence, but it is also combined with police action at home, an unusual precedent for war.

Finally, we have the "War on Terrorism". We've already been warned that the conflict will be conducted in secrecy over decades. The front is everywhere, although average citizens, leaders no more, may know little about its prosecution.

"War" and "enemy" have become arbitrary, even surreal, concepts in the 21st century. Along with "terrorist", they are words used by officials to stigmatise independent thought. As Seymour Hersh recently discovered, even button-pushing journalists can be branded as terrorists if the truths they publish embarrass the government.

Language is the ultimate ground of freedom. It serves us because it offers commonly agreed definitions that provide a foundation for debate. When rulers wrest control of words, they render discussion impossible. The newspeak envisioned by Orwell had a drab, North Korean-type feel. Today's newspeak is subtler. It doesn't limit discussion outright; instead it perverts the categories of thought, confusing issues for anyone who lacks the sophistication to recognise what's happened.

The ultimate warning in George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-four is about mind control. His fictional nation, Oceania, developed a sophisticated apparatus of punishment, surveillance and psychological conditioning. As totalitarian states go, it was far along, but its great, unfinished project was the revision of language. Dissent was possible as long it could be expressed, so the goal was to remove the means of expression, to shave disagreement to a single nub: "Big Brother is ungood."

Orwell saw the practical consequence of giving power to liars. Unassailable by debate, and possessing vast channels of public media, their assaults on the truthfulness would lead to assaults on language. They would privatise goodness and define it as they please.

Orwell also realised that the assault on truthfulness required a larger context. Like the citizens of Oceania, we who are Americans are always at war, despite living in one of the most secure nations in history. Whose purpose does war serve? "You are either for us or against us." Consider the psychological import of President Bush's statement, uttered as the royal we.

For the person who makes it, it conveys self-conviction and a pathological fear of difference; for the dissenter, outrage and the dawning understanding that their interlocutor will not play nice. For the team player, it signifies a shift in boundaries. Good intent is redefined as support for the leader, and truth is what the leader says. The leader's words are reality, and to contradict them with mere facts is treason. No argument is allowed, even if made in shared interest.

Keeping language in the hands of the people

Journalism plays a critical role in a global society that is connected by media. Most of us only know the world through reporters, so news is of vital importance: it conveys the world at large. Objectivity is essential to maintain a balance of power between leaders and citizens. And objective journalism is an area where theories of knowledge meet another branch of philosophy, ethics.

Humans exist in a web of mutual dependence, and survival calls from certain standards of behavior based on trust and good intent. Truthfulness forms a basis for trust. So, when we look for standards of truth, we don't just rely on the shaky ontology of formal logic postmodern theory. Refined ethical behaviour sets the standard, and this is where journalists should seek justification for their craft.

Journalists can't have an easy time of it. Picking the right words must be difficult in a multi-faceted world where partisans throw objectivity to the winds. The word "terrorist" is now so overused that it essentially means "very bad person who disagrees with President Bush." For a more complex take, look at the way media in different nations have reported the Iraq war. Each approach differs, if only slightly, from the others. Does this mean there is no truth?

Rather than debate metaphysics, let's say the representatives of the nations represented in openDemocracy's media monitor came together. They may bring different contexts to the discussion, but as long as they brought good intent, an attitude of truthfulness, we can imagine them establishing a common ground, probably one that synthesised their contrasting views.

Ethics is a practical science. As Aristotle said, virtue is something we cultivate and perfect through long efforts. It derives from experience not theory. There is no recipe for a good report, nor is there an argument that says a good report is impossible. Objectivity arises when journalists ask themselves the questions: How would a reasonable person remark on this situation? Am I leaving something out? Should I add some context, some relevant background that makes it comprehensible?

The choice of words is critical, and knowing what values to apply comes with practice. Narrowing the field of choices, or letting words take on strange, new meanings, doesn't just subvert the ethics of journalism and human decency. It creates a perverse world where power controls the wellspring of thought.

Saturday, April 10, 2021

Delusional Anti-Racism and Other Pursuits of 'Cosmic Justice'

The "Sovietization" of  the America's political establishment in the pursuit of "Social Justice".

To create social equity we merely need empower Earthly political gods to establish their concept of social justice here in our governing political institutions and establishments.  The DNC will pave the way... and with gold because only governments can help us achieve 'true' equity!

Now Crown Fauci my COVID19 Czar!  The market will NOT provide the 'equity' that cosmic vaccine distribution requires (in other words, "Give me mine, first!")

Trofim Lysenko, your carriage awaits!
 
Heredity is the 'Cosmic Justice' that incarnates and perpetuates the 'Ethnic Flaw' not Government... unless, like with institutionalized slavery, 'freedom' isn't a consideration.

How long before, in the revered name of Social Justice,  America's kulaks get sent to the gulag, too?  

Friday, April 9, 2021

America's Woke COVID-19 Lysenkoism


Lysenkoism (Russian: Лысе́нковщина, tr. Lysenkovshchina) was a political campaign led by  Lysenko against genetics and science-based agriculture in the mid-20th century, rejecting natural selection in favour of Lamarckism and exaggerated claims for the benefits of vernalization and grafting. In time, the term has come to be identified as any deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable.

More than 3,000 mainstream biologists were dismissed or imprisoned, and numerous scientists were executed in the campaign to suppress scientific opponents. The president of the Agriculture Academy, Nikolai Vavilov, who had encouraged Lysenko, was sent to prison and died there, while Soviet genetics research was effectively destroyed. Research and teaching in the fields of neurophysiology, cell biology, and many other biological disciplines were harmed or banned.

Other countries of the Eastern Bloc including the People's Republic of Poland, the Republic of Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic Republic accepted Lysenkoism as the official "new biology", to varying degrees, as did the People's Republic of China for some years.

The government of the USSR supported the campaign, and Joseph Stalin personally edited a speech by Lysenko in a way that reflected his support for what would come to be known as Lysenkoism, despite his skepticism toward Lysenko's assertion that all science is class-oriented in nature.[1] Lysenko served as the director of the Soviet Union's Lenin All-Union Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
---

The horror of Communism, Stalinism, is not that bad people do bad things — they always do. It’s that good people do horrible things thinking they are doing something great.
- "Six Questions for Slavoj Žižek, [Harper's Magazine, November 11, 2011]”

A Boston hospital released a new “Antiracist Agenda For Medicine” plan that it says will promote “racial equity” in health care.

According to an article published in the Boston Review, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital will offer “preferential care based on race” in order to ensure “race-explicit interventions.”

“Offering preferential care based on race or ethnicity may elicit legal challenges from our system of colorblind law,” Harvard Medical School professors Bram Wispelwey and Michelle Morse wrote in the piece. “But given the ample current evidence that our health, judicial, and other systems already unfairly preference people who are white, we believe — following the ethical framework of Zack and others — that our approach is corrective and therefore mandated. We encourage other institutions to proceed confidently on behalf of equity and racial justice, with backing provided by recent White House executive orders.”


The instructors linked to an executive order signed by President Joe Biden on his first day in office that called for “conducting an equity assessment in federal agencies” and revoked former President Donald Trump’s established 1776 Commission to teach foundational American civics in schools. The Biden administration removed the 1776 Report from the White House website, but you can read a copy obtained by The Federalist here.

In addition to claiming that data showing white people were more likely to be patients at its hospital demonstrates a “racial inequity,” the Harvard professors say “institutional racism” is at the root of America. The piece calls for “implicit bias training” as well as “checklists” for providers to verify they are not being racist to patients.

“Implicit bias training and checklists offer indirect solutions where more direct forms of race-explicit action are available; the objectivity aspired to in clinical criteria is also inevitably tainted by the pervasiveness of structural racism,” the piece states. “What we need instead, we have come to believe, is a proactively antiracist agenda for medicine.”

The doctors are spearheading this and other “equitable solutions” as part of a pilot initiative at Brigham and Women’s Hospital this spring. Wispelwey and Morse say that leftist economist William Darity Jr. provided a “reparations framework” that must be applied to the health profession to ensure “black and Latinx patients” are prioritized.

One of the programs proposed by the writers is something called “Redress.” The program is intended to discriminate against whites who require medical attention so other individuals can automatically be given treatment.

Redress could take multiple forms, from cash transfers and discounted or free care to taxes on nonprofit hospitals that exclude patients of color and race-explicit protocol changes (such as preferentially admitting patients historically denied access to certain forms of medical care),” the professors write.

According to GianCarlo Canaparo, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, the effort would violate a “number of federal and state laws,” in addition to Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which states, “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.”

“What’s more, Bringham and Women’s Hospital’s decision to discriminate in providing medical services makes it ineligible to receive federal funding and jeopardizes the federal funding of Harvard Medical School with which it is affiliated,” Canaparo noted. “For example, the Affordable Care Act (‘Obamacare’) bars any Health and Human Services funding from going to a medical provider that discriminates on the basis of race. Likewise, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 bars federal funds from going to any organization that engages in racial discrimination. The hospital also exposes itself and Harvard Medical School to court or federal agency enforcement of the law’s anti-discrimination requirements.”

The hospital will prioritize five neighborhoods in Boston with the highest black and Latino populations and provide outreach in these communities to apologize for supposed institutional racism.