Tag: bankruptcy

Today’s blacklisted American: Princeton considering blacklisting John Witherspoon, Founding Father and signer of the Declaration of Independence

1:41 pm

John Witherspoon: Target for cancellation
John Witherspoon: a target for cancellation

The modern dark age: Princeton University is now considering removing from its campus a statue of John Witherspoon, Founding Father, signer of the Declaration of Independence, and the college’s sixth president, because some students have whined about the fact that in his life he also at one time owned two slaves.

A petition, started by three graduate students in the Philosophy Department, states that the “prominent place on campus of the John Witherspoon statue is inappropriate” and calls on the university to “remove it from its pedestal in Firestone Plaza.”

The petition asks that officials replace the statue with an informational plaque that reflects both the “positive and negative aspects of Witherspoon’s legacy.”

» Read more

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Musk’s success vs Trump’s failure

1:34 pm

Elon Musk arrives at Twitter
Musk arrives at Twitter, ready to clean house

While the buzz about Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter has mostly focused on his effort to end censorship and the banning of conservatives, none of this constitutes his most important accomplishment there.

Yes, mandating freedom of speech at Twitter is a good thing. And yes, ending the banning of tens of thousands of conservative voices demonstrates Musk’s unwavering commitment to freedom and open debate.

However, it is his action to house-clean — to fearlessly remove from power the thugs and goons at Twitter who created these oppressive policies — that matters the most. By firing the Twitter apparatchiks who had installed that system of censorship and blacklisting, Musk has guaranteed that this censorship and blacklisting will not return easily to Twitter should his other business interests force him to pay less attention in the future.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Massachusetts hospital network to deny healthcare to those who say things it doesn’t like

12:33 pm

Mass General Brigham: hostile to free speech

They’re coming for you next: The Mass General Brigham (MGB) hospital network in Massachusetts has now established a policy that will deny healthcare to anyone who says something it doesn’t like.

The code covers not only “physical or verbal threats and assaults” and “sexual or vulgar words or actions,” but also “offensive comments about others’ race, accent, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or other personal traits” or refusal to see staff based on those traits. It frowns on “unwelcome words or actions” as well.

While patients can give their side when accused of violating the code, MGB warns that it may ask them to “make other plans for their care” in response to some violations. They might also be banned from “future non-emergency care … though we expect this to be rare.”

The code of conduct can be read here. Moreover, a scan of MGB’s website shows it to be totally invested in the agendas of critical race theory as well as diversity, equity, and inclusion. The top of its About page includes a link to a description of its “Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” which describes in careful terms the quota policies the hospital now follows, designed to choose minorities in hiring rather than those with better medical qualifications.

Apparently, if you go for treatment at MGB, you might not get the best or smartest care, but dammit! your doctors and nurses will be the right race or ethnicity!
» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Professor fired by University of Louisville for expressing his opinion

12:34 pm

Allen Josephson, fired for expressing an opinion
Allen Josephson, fired for expressing an opinion

They’re coming for you next: After publicly expressing his professional opinion at a 2017 Heritage Foundation conference, where he opposed the abuse of children by the queer movement that now dominates the medical community, Professor Allen Josephson was fired by University of Louisville, specifically because queer activists at the university demanded it.

From Josephson’s lawsuit [pdf], filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom:

[T]he officials at the University’s LGBT Center who became aware of and troubled at Dr. Josephson’s Heritage Foundation presentation included Ms. Stacie Steinbock (the director of the LGBT Center at the University’s Health Science Center) and Mr. Brian W. Buford (then the Executive Director of the LGBT Center). Ms. Steinbock and Mr. Buford opposed and objected to the viewpoints Dr. Josephson expressed at the Heritage Foundation.

…Ms. Steinbock and Mr. Buford (or other officials at the LGBT Center acting at their direction) contacted Dr. Christine Brady (an assistant professor in the Division) regarding Dr. Josephson’s Heritage Foundation presentation. Like Ms. Steinbock and Mr. Buford, Dr. Brady opposed and objected to the viewpoints Dr. Josephson expressed at the Heritage Foundation.

Upon information and belief, Ms. Steinbock and Mr. Buford (or other officials at the LGBT Center acting at their direction) discussed with Dr. Brady the need to ensure that some disciplinary or punitive actions were taken against Dr. Josephson due to the views he expressed at the Heritage Foundation. Ms. Steinbock and Mr. Buford (or other officials at the LGBT Center acting at their direction) repeatedly asked Dr. Brady what would be done about Dr. Josephson’s Heritage Foundation remarks. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words illustrate the storm-trooper attitude of these queer activists. » Read more

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Government lies versus COVID truths

3:05 pm

Dr. Ashish Jha, government liar
Dr. Ashish Jha, government liar.

On November 23, 2022, the very same day White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha stated unequivocally that “If folks get their updated vaccines and they get treated … we can prevent essentially every COVID death in America,” the Washington Post reported a CDC-financed study showing that by August 2022 more people were dying from COVID who had gotten the jab than those who had not.

For the first time, a majority of Americans dying from the coronavirus received at least the primary series of the vaccine.

Fifty-eight percent of coronavirus deaths in August were people who were vaccinated or boosted, according to an analysis conducted for The Health 202 by Cynthia Cox, vice president at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

It’s a continuation of a troubling trend that has emerged over the past year. As vaccination rates have increased and new variants appeared, the share of deaths of people who were vaccinated has been steadily rising. In September 2021, vaccinated people made up just 23 percent of coronavirus fatalities. In January and February this year, it was up to 42 percent, per our colleagues Fenit Nirappil and Dan Keating.

“We can no longer say this is a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” Cox told The Health 202.

In other words, Jha was lying, and he was doing so in plain defiance of the data that has been accumulating exponentially in the past year. » Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American includes anyone at a Vermont high school who dares say a boy is a boy

2:16 pm

Blake Allen, punished for being a normal high school girl
Blake Allen, punished for being a normal high school girl

We now return for the third time to the saga of Randolph Union High School in Vermont, a place where apparently you are not allowed to state the simple biological fact that a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl. Worse, you must allow boys to enter a girls’ dressing room and ogle them freely, and if you dare challenge this absurdity, you will be fired or suspended.

This craziness began in late September, when a boy claiming to be a girl (because he wanted to play on the girls volleyball team) entered the girls dressing room and watched the girls change, much to their discomfort. When the girls complained to school officials, the officials immediately banned those girls from using their own dressing room, reserving it now solely to this one boy.

The story became even more insane when the local television station, WCAX, decided to censor itself. It had covered this story with reasonable accuracy when the story broke. In mid-October however it decided that its job was publishing the agenda of the queer community, not reporting the news, and it censored its own story, removing it from the internet. (You can still watch it here however.)

Meanwhile, school officials have continued their track record of insanity. These officials not only locked the girls from their own locker room, they suspended one girl, Blake Allen, because she had been the most outspoken of all, appearing in that censored WCAX story. As part of her punishment, school officials demanded she admit 2+2=5 in a “reflective essay.”
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Pushback: Court rules against college’s attempt to censor students

1:33 pm

One poster that Clovis Community College tried to censor
One of the posters that Clovis Community College officials agreed to
“gladly” remove because it made some students “very uncomfortable.”

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A federal judge has issued a preliminary injunction against Clovis Community College in California, ruling that it violated the free speech rights of its students when college officials removed posters put up by students from the college’s Young Americans for Freedom chapter that condemned communism and socialism.

The lawsuit [pdf] was filed for the students by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

The college insists that it reserves the right to remove flyers over “inappropriate or [offensive] language or themes.” The lack of any definition for those vague terms would weigh heavily with the court in granting the preliminary injunction.

FIRE produced emails showing that a college administrator offered to “gladly take down” the flyers after “several people” said that they were “very uncomfortable” with the flyers, including a person who allegedly threatened a “harassment claim” if the posters were not taken down.

» Read more

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Pushback: Court orders school board to stop censoring and banning parents

1:26 pm

The Forsyth County School Board

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In a victory for free speech, a federal judge has ruled that the censorship and banning of some parents by the Forsyth County Board of Education in Georgia was unconstitutional, and must cease immediately.

This is a follow-up of a previous blacklist story from back in August, when those parents sued the board because it would not permit them to speak at board meetings during public comment about the pornography the board was allowing in schools.

Multiple district residents, including Mama Bears members and plaintiffs in the lawsuit Alison Hair and Cindy Martin, have used their time to read aloud from school library books they consider pornographic. Yet while these materials are available to kids in school, the Chair has cut off and banned speakers who read from them at Board meetings when he deems the language inappropriate or profane.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Anti-Semitic attacks skyrocket on college campuses

2:44 pm

The coming genocide
What American universities are aggressively working towards

They’re coming for you next: According to a recent study, anti-Semitic attacks against Jews have increased drastically on American college campuses in 2021 and 2022, rising in lock-step with the introduction of critical race theory and its anti-white, anti-American, and pro-Marxist agenda.

There were 254 attacks on 63 different college campuses with large Jewish populations, with Harvard University, the University of Chicago, Tufts University, UCLA, and Rutgers University having the highest number of incidents, according to a report by the AMCHA Initiative, a Jewish advocacy group that says its findings expose an “insidious,” never-before-revealed campus trend.
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Slowly the Ukrainians continue to regain their country

1:11 pm

The Ukraine War as of September 11, 2022
The Ukraine War as of September 11, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of November 16, 2022
The Ukraine War as of November 16, 2022. Click for full map.

In the two months since my last update on the Ukraine Way in September, the steady and continuing retreat of the Russians has continued, with the Ukrainians last week finally retaking all the territory north of the Dnipro River, including the city of Kherson.

The two maps to the right, created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and simplified, reduced, and annotated to post here, show these gains, with the top map from their September 11, 2022 analysis and the bottom from their November 16, 2022 update. Pink areas are regions controlled by the Russians. Blue areas are regions retaken by the Ukraine. Red-striped areas are regions captured by Russian in its 2014 invasion. Blue-striped areas are regions inside Russian-occupied territories that have seen strong partisan resistance. The green lines in the top map mark the locations of important rivers.

Overall, the military actions of the Russians have continued to be haphazard, poorly thought out, and inexplicable, as they have been from the start of this war. For example, even as the Ukrainians were continuing their steady gains in the north, the Russians seemed relatively uninterested. Instead, it continued its attempts to gain ground in the middle, near Donetsk, as indicated by the two green circles. The Russians have been attempting for months to make gains in this area. Though they have captured some territory, those captures have been tiny and very costly. Nor have these captures done anything to impact the Ukrainian gains elsewhere.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Half of today’s students support the death penalty for some speech

11:41 am

The poll numbers, across all demographics
The poll numbers, across all demographics

This is no longer a land of the free: According to a new poll, half of today’s college students now believe that the death penalty is justified for some people should they dare express an opinion that offends.

Specifically, the students were asked if they agreed or disagreed with the statement:

Violence in response to offensive speech is not a new phenomenon. In some cultures, some types of offensive speech even merit the death penalty. Some speech can be so offensive in certain cases that it merits such harsh punishment.

As shown in the graph to the right, across the board, 43% to 55% of students from private and public schools, from all types of majors, from all levels of income, and from across the political spectrum, all agreed with this statement. The results were remarkably consistent. Tolerance was not their watchword, but oppression and dictatorship. If you say something that offends, half of today’s students feel justified in calling for your death.
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Time to face some hard truths about America’s political future

2:04 pm

Doesn't exist any more
This document does not exist anymore. If you rely on its
words to defend your freedom you will lose.

This essay is not one I wish to write. In fact, I stalled for about an hour today before beginning. I am generally an optimistic person, but I also try to be an intellectually honest one. I do not shirk from bad news, but I also do not like reporting it.

Today’s news is so bad it almost makes me physically sick.

On January 4, 2021, shortly before Joe Biden was officially installed as president, I wrote an essay describing that event as the “ultimate [in] Republican Party failure theater.” Though that party controlled all the levels of government designed to control elections and prevent a steal, it had refused to use those tools and had allowed the very questionable election victory of Joe Biden to move forward. I concluded,

The problem will be that no future election will be trustworthy. If the Democrats had stolen the election with voter tampering, they will now know they can do it with impunity. Even if every American voted Republican, the Democrats will use this power to manipulate the totals to guarantee victory forever. They might allow some Republicans to win to create the illusion of a real election, but only for awhile. Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Given such power the Democrats will eventually move to eliminate elections entirely. Why bother with the charade when they know they’ll win anyway? [emphasis mine]

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Pushback: VMI alumnus cancels $1 million bequest because of the school’s support of critical race theory and its slandering of those who disagree

1:38 pm

VMI: adopting anti-American indoctrination
VMI: eager to push anti-American indoctrination

Today’s blacklist story is a perfect one for Veterans Day. In open letter published today in the Roanoke Star, Douglas Conte and an alumnus of the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), announced that he had changed his will to remove a $1 million bequest to the school because of its aggressive support of critical race theory — in defiance of orders by the state government — as well as its aggressive slandering anyone who disagreed with the school administrators.

In the brief span of just two years since the abrupt dismissal of General Peay as Superintendent, the Institute has traveled far down the path of political correctness. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), and the tenets of Critical Race Theory (CRT) ideology, have sunk their toxic roots into the fabric of VMI life.
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Today’s blacklisted American: Student mob shuts down Ann Coulter speech at Cornell

4:59 pm

The modern dark age: Despite Cornell University’s refusal to agree to their demands and cancel the lecture, a mob of students prevented her from speaking last night, forcing her in the end to cancel her lecture because she could not get a word out without being interrupted.

What appears to have happened, the Review added, is that protesters “seemed to be employing a chain tactic, beginning just as soon as the last heckler was removed, so as to continuously speak over Coulter.”

As The College Fix previously reported, Cornell University had denied a student petition to disinvite Coulter.

And at the beginning of Coulter’s talk Wednesday evening, the dean of students warned the audience that disruptors would be removed and referred to the Office of Student Conduct, the Review reported.

» Read more

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Time for another Wuhan panic update

2:48 pm

Democrats might soon enter the Truth booth
When it comes to the COVID lie, we are all being forced
to enter that door.

This update will be a relatively short one, but it will once again demonstrate, with data, that the claims by politicians and government health officials that COVID required draconian restrictions on the lives of Americans were utterly wrong, and they were so wrong it proved those politicians or officials were either filled with malice or were completely incompetent.

This report by the way merely supplements earlier reports, of which just a few can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. And these are only my reports since July. If you search Behind the Black going back to 2020 you will find many more stories backing up this new evidence.

All in all, the panic over COVID has simply provided more damning evidence that the so-called elites who run our society are generally bankrupt, have incredibly poor judgment, and should be fired as soon as possible.
» Read more

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Pushback: Doctors sue to kill California law making it illegal to disagree with government

1:18 pm

What the Democrats want to repeal
What the Democrats want to repeal.

I think today’s blacklist story about a lawsuit by five California doctors against a state law that was passed by the Democrat-controlled state legislature and signed by Democrat governor Gavin Newsom, is a perfect blacklist story for today, election day.

Two years ago, at the beginning of the Biden administration, I noticed an immediate change in the behavior of Democratic Party politicians and their supporters. No longer were they whispering about their desire to silence their opponents. Suddenly they were open and aggressive about it, calling for blacklists and commissions, as Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) enthused, “…to figure out how we rein in our media environment so you can’t just spew disinformation and misinformation.” Here is what I suggested they do:

Hey, Alexandria, I’ve got the perfect name for your congressional commission. Why not call it the House Un-American Activities Committee? You could subpoena right-wing writers and journalists to testify against their will in Congress, demanding to know their party affiliations. You could also set up lists of these proven conservatives so that businesses nationwide can blacklist them and keep them from working.

As it turned out, the Democrats did exactly this, though their commission was instead named the January 6th commission, supposedly focused on punishing anyone involved in the entirely legal demonstrations that occurred in DC that day. At no time in the past two years has that commission, or Biden’s Department of Justice, showed the slightest interest in investigating actual political violence. No, instead, the goal has been to persecute ordinary people and slander entirely innocent politicians.

Nor has the Democratic Party’s campaign against free speech and personal liberty been limited to this commission. I started my blacklist column at that time because the number of examples of blacklisting, censorship, and abuse of power by the left, both in and out of that party and among its supporters, had become so numerous I realized if I reported every case as it happened, my website would be swamped. Instead, I decided to cover one per day, to make it clear how much these thugs were normalizing this goonlike behavior. After two years, that column now lists more than four hundred examples of blacklists and abuse of power, almost all of which were done by the Democratic Party or its supporters on the left.

The law under dispute in California is a perfect example. Passed in September, 2022, it forbids any doctor from saying anything the government doesn’t like, or face the loss of their medical license for “unprofessional conduct.” Below is the bill’s specific but very vague wording, designed to allow the government to punish almost all medical professionals for anything they might say or publish, merely because someone in the government disagrees with it:
» Read more

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Pushback: “I do not consent to your attempt to blacklist me.”

1:00 pm

Victory
Image by freepik

Last night I discovered personally that every blacklisted person in America has a great deal of power. You need only exert that power to make the bullies who are trying to destroy you helpless and confounded.

First some background. In December 2021 I was blackballed by most of the Arizona caving community because I had disagreed with their decisions to discriminate against anyone who had not gotten a COVID shot. I and a number of other people had objected to the demands of these clubs that we be jabbed in order to come to a caving event. We considered such a rule discriminatory, even as it illegally demanded private medical information. We also tried to explain to the organizers that this policy made no sense because the evidence last year had already showed that the shots provided no protection against the virus.

Their answer: I along with two others were blacklisted from all further organized caving activities for the next two years.

Since then I have been mulling how I should react. I never accepted this vindictive action. Not only had it been done in violation of the actual bylaws of these organizations, it was especially vicious because it was done by people whom I had thought were close friends. I had now discovered they were not my friends, but responding in hate goes against my nature. The true oppose of hate is utter disinterest, and it has my goal over the last ten months to put aside my baser emotions and reach this more civilized state of mind.

Anyway, last night one of the Tucson cave clubs that had blacklisted us was having its monthly public meeting, in a pizza place. Since the president of that club had sent out a public invitation saying that all were welcome, I decided it was time to show up. Essentially, I had decided to follow the advice of journalist Matt Walsh, who when attacked for criticizing the purveyors of the queer agenda for their campaign to mutilate and castrate little kids, told them this:
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Today’s blacklisted American: Instagram bans pro-life student group at Auburn for being pro-life

4:45 pm

Orwell's 1984: Instagram's instruction manual
Instagram’s instruction manual.

The modern dark age: After the Students for Life at Auburn University posted an announcement on Instagram promoting the annual March for Life anti-abortion protest in Washington, DC, Instagram immediately banned the organization, claiming simply that “Your account, or activity on it, doesn’t follow our Community Guidelines on business integrity.”

When the students appealed this decision — noting that the accusation made no sense — Instagram responded with an even more bogus and absurd explanation.

Auburn SFL, in a statement provided to The College Fix on Tuesday, said that on Oct. 13, their social media director appealed Instagram’s decision and asked for further clarification. The next day, Instagram responded saying that a potential reason for the ban was that the group “pretended to be someone else,” student President Gwen Charles said via email. [emphasis mine]

Note the highlighted word. Apparently Instagram itself doesn’t know why its banned the Students for Life account. Or more probably, it does know (“We can’t allow these Republicans *yuch!* free to say anything they want!”) but recognized it couldn’t admit this publicly.
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Vermont news outlet blacklists its own story to protect the queer agenda at a local school

12:58 pm

WCAX: A modern news outlet, dedicated to censorship
WCAX: A modern news outlet, dedicated to censorship

Today’s blacklist story is a follow-up on an earlier blacklist story. In September officials running Randolph High School in Vermont banned all the girls from the school’s volley ball team from the girls locker room, so that a cross-dressing boy would have that girls dressing room all to himself.

At the time I noted how this action by the school was “so absurd that at first glance it is hard to believe.”

Well, the story has become even more absurd. The news outlet that first reported the story, WCAX-TV, decided in mid-October to blacklist its own story in order to protect and promote the queer agenda in the local schools.

But [on October 11th], links to the controversial story and a recording of the newscast from that night went instead to a page that read “404/Not Found.” When … asked about the missing content, WCAX news director Roger Garrity said the station took it down last week “to prevent others from using our reporting to attack people in the transgender community.

“We didn’t announce it then for fear it might further inflame the situation,” Garrity wrote in an email. “We are now working with LGBTQ advocates on a message to the community acknowledging the harm that was caused.” In response to follow-up questions, Garrity said the station was working with Outright Vermont and GLAAD to craft its message and would put it on the 6 p.m. newscast “as soon as we have it ready to go.”

» Read more

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Today’s blacklisted American: Amazon blacklists book because it says something someone at Amazon doesn’t like

12:04 pm

Book banned by Amazon
Banned by bookseller Amazon.

The modern dark age: Amazon has without explanation removed a book about Islam, The Islam in Islamic Terrorism: The Importance of Beliefs, Ideas, and Ideology and written by ex-Muslim Ibn Warraq, essentially blacklisting it from sale.

A search at Amazon confirms this fact. The book is no longer available there.

The publisher, New English Review, said this in its press release:

Amazon’s banning of the Warraq book follows on the heels of their earlier banning of another NER Press title, “Easy Meat: Inside Britain’s Grooming Gang Scandal” by Peter McLoughlin, which chronicles the actions, or rather the inaction, of the police, social services, justice system and government in the face of the widespread phenomenon of very young British girls being groomed and then pimped out and held in virtual sex slavery by gangs of grown men.

…As usual, no specific reason has been given for this latest book’s removal. NER Press appealed and that appeal was denied within two hours. “The Islam in Islamic Terrorism” had been on sale since May of 2017 and “Easy Meat” since March of 2016. Both had over 85% five-star ratings and both sold well. Mr. Warraq is the author of 17 books and “The Islam in Islamic Terrorism” was also translated into Korean.

Nor are these two books the only books Amazon has banned. » Read more

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Today’s blacklist victim: Distinguished scientist and long-time journal editor forced to resign due to threats

12:40 pm

Jose Domingo, blacklisted scientist
Dr. José Luis Domingo, blacklisted scientist

The modern dark age: Dr. José Luis Domingo, an often cited expert on toxicology and editor for the last seven years of the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology, has been forced to resign his position because of threats and slanders directed at him after he approved the publication of a peer-review paper that documented the potential harmful effects of the mRNA COVID shots.

About a month after the paper was published, Domingo said, he began receiving angry emails and messages. These included insults, calls to resign, demands to retract the paper, and even threats. One email asked him how he could sleep at night, knowing that the scientific paper that he had allowed to be published would lead to the death of millions of people.

The angry messages, he said, were filled with ad hominem attacks against him and against the paper’s co-authors, but did not specify their scientific objections to the contents of the paper.

…Since then, pro-vaccine factions have increased their personal campaign against him, going so far as to adding false information to the Wikipedia entry about him, as well as attacking the Wikipedia page of the journal itself. Both, he said, were negatively modified by pro-vaccination activists. Indeed, an Oct. 4 version of his page, accessed via internet archive, included a subheading entitled “Antivaccine controversy” that accused Domingo of “spreading disinformation during the pandemic.” That paragraph has since been removed.

Domingo even offered — in a gesture of open-mindedness and good will — to publish one of the more-detailed attack messages, if the writers would agree to peer review. They did agree, and then discovered that with peer-review you need to have some facts to back up your accusations. They did not, and their paper was rejected.

No matter. These individuals then found another journal, Stem Cell Reviews and Reports, to publish their attack essay, demanding once again that Domingo retract the paper while once again accusing him of causing the death of millions by its publication:
» Read more

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Paypal losing customers at an alarming rate, even as it blacklists Hong Kong pro-democracy group

12:47 pm

Paypal: hostile to freedom

In the past few days there have been some unconfirmed Twitter posts claiming Paypal has reinstated its proposed policy to confiscate $2,500 from any account that spreads “misinformation.”

These reports are not quite accurate. Paypal leaves itself the option to confiscate money from customers, but it has not directly reinstated its policy of doing so for spreading “misinformation.” Instead it makes that justification harder to find and difficult to pin down, though it apparently still exists.

While Paypal’s current Acceptable Use Policy contains no mention of “misinformation,” its user agreement essentially does—and has since at least February 12, 2022. The agreement reads that PayPal users may not “provide false, inaccurate or misleading information,” in connection with PayPal, its website, services, or “third parties.” Those who do so may see their accounts suspended, limited, or closed, and PayPal may take legal action.

In short, no surprise changes have been made to PayPal’s policy this week. While the company does levy punishments toward users for certain forms of “misleading statements” under its user agreement (and has for months), a $2,500 fine is not explicitly one of them.

And yet, should anyone trust Paypal with their savings? Its reputation for blacklisting conservatives and pro-liberty organizations says otherwise, and that reputation was confirmed last month when Paypal terminated without explanation the account of a pro-democracy group in Hong Kong.
» Read more

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Increasing push back against NYU’s firing of a chemistry teacher for demanding excellence from students

12:30 pm

NYU: proud to graduate substandard students!

Since early October, when the story broke about New York University firing organic chemistry teacher Maitland Jones because a student petition claimed his course was too hard, there has been a growing push back from the college’s faculty as well as at least one pro-free speech organization.

The petition itself was signed by 82 of Jones’ 350 students (less than a quarter of the class) and complained that “too many [students] were failing and that this was unacceptable” and that the course’s challenges caused “emotional and mental health” issues.

The course in question however is organic chemistry, traditionally designed as a very tough entry-level course in order to weed out students not capable of becoming doctors or doing the real work necessary in the hard sciences. Under normal circumstances one third to one half of all students who take the course fail, which means this petition was likely signed by those who were failing.

Rather than push themselves, these spoiled students wanted the course made easier. They might then have passed, but if they became doctors later in life their patients would certainly be under risk.

What made Jones’ firing more horrifying however is that the university instigated the action. The students themselves hadn’t asked for his firing, they only wanted his course made easier.
» Read more

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Russian government okays ISS partnership through ’27

9:08 am

The Russian government yesterday approved an order allowing Roscosmos to continue to send its astronauts and spacecraft to ISS through 2027.

“The expected results are as follows: transport and technical support for the Russian segment of the International Space Station in 2023-2027, including the delivery to the station and return to Earth of Russian crews, as well as the delivery to the ISS of fuel and cargo crucial to maintaining the ISS in flight and the implementation of a long-term program for authorized works,” the instruction says.

Putin’s government is essentially admitting that it will not be able to launch its own space station by ’27, so it has to stay on ISS because that’s all it has. Whether ISS can last that long, considering the somewhat delicate state of some of the oldest Russian modules, remains unclear.

The American private stations should all be coming on line in the years from 2024 to 2030, so it appears the U.S. is covered. What Russia will do however remains unknown. I suspect it will be far more difficult politically for it to buy time on the American private stations, compared to Europe. But if it doesn’t get its own station launched, buying time might be its only option, assuming of course the U.S. government allows it to do so. And considering that other Russian officials are threatening America’s private space assets, the likelihood that Russia will be allowed on future American space stations seems remote indeed.

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Today’s blacklisted American: School officials in Florida and Michigan retaliate against parents for being involved in their kids’ schooling

11:02 am

As I did last week on October 20 and 21, today’s blacklist column will cover two stories, both of which are similar and show a pattern of abuse by those in power.

The October 20th story focused on hospitals blacklisting nurses, either for being white or Christian. The October 21st story told the story of teachers being fired for opposing the introduction of the queer agenda in toddler daycare and in elementary schools.

Today’s story describes how school officials in two different states instigated investigations designed solely to destroy the livelihood of parents, simply because those parents questioned the way those officials were doing their job.

Note that in all three cases, the nurses, teachers, and parents were blacklisted simply because they had expressed in public a disagreement with the policies of those in charge. Apparently, to those now in charge, the first amendment has been suspended, so that any dissent against them can be punished harshly.
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Pushback: Nationwide group fights university blacklisting of those who refuse COVID shots

11:49 am

No College Mandates logo

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A new group, dubbed No College Mandates, is now campaigning nationwide against the effort of universities to blacklist anyone who has not gotten any COVID shots.

Formed in December 2021, the organization recently launched a protest letter campaign to colleges that still require the vaccine and boosters and have “forced these young adults into compliance,” according to a news release.

“We decided to target colleges because they were among the first educational institutions mandating vaccines,” Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of the group, told The College Fix via email. “Colleges have known since August 2021 that the virus can transmit equally between unvaccinated and vaccinated individuals yet they mandated boosters and some have begun to mandate the bivalent booster,” she said.

The organization has sent its protest letter to over 300 colleges. The letter to Yale is typical, noting in detail how the CDC has now admitted that the jab does not stop transmission and that the mandates were pointless. Yet the college still insists that teachers, students, and visitors all must get the jab, plus at least one booster. As the letter notes, these senseless rules do nothing to prevent the Wuhan flu, while normalizing blacklisting.
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NASA buys 3 Orion capsules from Lockheed Martin for $2 billion

10:02 am

Nice work if you can get it! Earlier this week NASA awarded Lockheed Martin a new contract worth $1.99 billion to build three more Orion capsules for its Artemis program.

This order marks the second three missions under the agency’s Orion Production and Operations Contract (OPOC), an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract for up to 12 vehicles. A breakout of these orders includes:

  • 2019: NASA initiates OPOC IDIQ and orders three Orion spacecraft for Artemis missions III-V.
  • 2022: NASA orders three additional Orion spacecraft missions for Artemis VI-VIII for $1.99 billion.
  • In the future: NASA can order an additional six Orion missions.

Under OPOC, Lockheed Martin and NASA have reduced the costs on Orion by 50% per vehicle on Artemis III through Artemis V, compared to vehicles built during the design and development phase. The vehicles built for Artemis VI, VII and VIII will see an additional 30% cost reduction.

Lawdy me! They’ve reduced the price! Lockheed Martin is only charging NASA three-quarters of a billion dollars per capsule on this new contract (after NASA spent about $18 billion for the development of the first six capsules– that’s $3 billion each). And Lockheed Martin will only charge about a half billion per capsule for future capsules! My heart be still.

Meanwhile, SpaceX is designing, testing, building, and will likely launch its reusable Starship manned spacecraft, which could launch about 10 Orion capsules on each launch, for about $10 billion total. Once flying the expected cost per launch will likely be much less than $100 million, with SpaceX claiming it could be as low as $2 million. Even if you add the development cost for these launches, Starship will cost less than Orion by many magnitudes, on its first launch.

I wonder, which is the better bargain? NASA clearly can’t figure it out, and NASA has the smartest, most brilliant people in the universe working for it.

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Teachers fired and blacklisted for opposing the queer agenda in childcare and elementary schools

1:01 pm

As I did yesterday, today’s blacklisting column will cover a number of individual stories, this time focusing on the blacklisting of teachers who oppose indoctrinating very young children to the queer agenda. I am reporting more than one story in order to make sure these stories do not fall by the wayside. The harm done to the individuals does not go away, even if the news cycle considers their story stale.

Bright Horizons commitment to Critical Race Theory and the queer agenda, for toddlers
Screen capture from Bright Horizons’ own webpage.
Very clearly, Bright Horizons is determined to teach
Critical Race Theory and the queer agenda to toddlers.

First we have California teacher Nelli Parisenkova, who was fired from her job with the nationwide childcare company Bright Horizons because she for religious reasons refused to read books promoting the queer agenda to 1 to 5-year-old toddlers.

What makes this story especially egregious is the vindictive manner in which Parisenkova was treated. From the lawsuit [pdf]:

The childcare room at Bright Horizons where Ms. Parisenkova works has children’s books on the shelf that promote and celebrate same-sex relationships and marriage. When Ms. Parisenkova first started working for Bright Horizons, her supervisor at the time provided her with an informal accommodation that she would not be required to read books to the children promoting same-sex marriage. However, on or around April 7, 2022, Katy Callas, the director of the location where Ms. Parisenkova worked, discovered Ms. Parisenkova’s religious beliefs in this regard. Ms. Callas, who is lesbian, apparently took personal offense at Ms. Parisenkova’s religious beliefs.
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Nurses fired and blacklisted for either being white or Christian

2:31 pm

In today’s blacklist story, I tell two different tales, both of long-time nurses of great experience were not only fired from their jobs because one was white and the other was Christian, but are now apparently blacklisted from getting new work for the same reasons.

I tell two stories today because I am finding I have so many blacklist stories in the queue that many are getting dropped because they are getting stale in terms of the news cycle. Since none of these stories are stale to the individuals being persecuted, I feel a need to tell more than one per day, for a few days, just to catch up.

Laura Morgan, blacklisted
Laura Morgan

First we have Laura Morgan, a nurse with 39 years experience. Morgan was fired by her employer, Baylor Scott & White Health, when she refused to take a new anti-racism course required by her employer that specifically accused her of being a racist, because she was white.

Morgan said her “ordeal” began in September 2021 when her company, Baylor, Scott & White Health, directed annual training for clinicians that this year included a course called “Overcoming Unconscious Bias.”

After reviewing the course, she requested a meeting with the nursing director and the human resources manager. Both blew her off.

“The idea of implicit bias is grounded in the belief that white people treat those who aren’t white worse than those who are. It’s part of the woke assumption that society, including healthcare, suffers from ‘systemic racism,’” she wrote. “Accordingly, my own supposed implicit bias, which is a euphemism for ingrained racism, must be rooted out. Not only that, it must be replaced with preferential treatment for the nonwhite.”

“I fail to see how real racial discrimination is justified by my nonexistent racism,” Morgan added.

Morgan also added in a Wall Street Journal op-ed,
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Moderna CEO admits to past lies: “COVID is simply the flu, harmless to the healthy.”

12:49 pm

The liar at Moderna
The liar in charge at Moderna

On October 17, 2022 during a news conference, Stéphane Bancel, the CEO of the drug company Moderna, made the following statement about COVID, the so-called plague that allowed his company (and others) to make billions pushing their jabs on a terrified public:

“I think it’s going to be like the flu. If you’re a 25-year-old, do you need an annual booster every year if you’re healthy?

“You might want to… but I think it’s going to be similar to flu where it’s going to be people at high-risk, people above 50 years of age, people with comorbidities, people with cancer and other conditions, people with transplants.”

Gee, where I have heard these exact words for the past two-plus years? Could it have been on this very same webpage, said by me as well as numerous other cool-headed experts who — rather than panicking — looked at the actual data? From my first detailed post about COVID in March 2020, using all the early real data:

The death rate is mostly confined to the older population with already existing health issues, like the flu.

This early conclusion was later confirmed again and again in the months that followed. From September 2020, for example, in citing CDC data I wrote:
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