Tag: oppression

Today’s blacklisted American: Churches vandalized by leftists for their beliefs

12:41 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
What the left really wants: To burn Christians at the stake.

Genocide is coming to America: Four churches in Olympia, Washington, were vandalized during the May 21st weekend by Puget Sound Anarchists, a pro-abortion group that makes believe it is anti-authoritarian but is willing to commit violence against anyone who dares to express an opinion it does not like.

From an anonymous post on May 22nd on their own website:

A Mormon church, Calvary church, Harbor Church, and St. Michael’s Catholic church all received facelifts in the early hours of Sunday morning. We dumped red paint over the entryways and left messages of “If abortions aren’t safe then neither are you,” “Abort the church,” and “God loves abortion.”

…While a little graffiti may be a small gesture in the war against patriarchal religious control, we wish to highlight that it’s easy and fun to attack. Our enemies are vulnerable and easy to find. [emphasis mine]

In another post from July 2021, this group proudly takes credit for destroying and damaging a garage full of police cars, adding

Be bold! Sabotage is fun!

» Read more

12 comments

Astronomers: Shut down satellite companies so we don’t have to adapt!

9:31 am

The Hubble Space Telescope
Space-based astronomy, a concept apparently alien to astronomers

In an article published today in Nature, the astronomy community continued its crybaby complaining of the last three years about the interference posed to their ground-based telescopes by the tens of thousands of small satellites scheduled for launch in the next few years.

These quotes typify the apparent attitude of astronomers:

“This is an unsustainable trajectory,” says Meredith Rawls, an astronomer at the University of Washington in Seattle. “At the moment, our science is fine. But at what point will we miss a discovery?”

…“It’s really quite horrifying,” says Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Canada.

…The growing threat of satellite constellations adds to other degradations of the night sky such as light pollution, says Karlie Noon, a PhD candidate in astronomy and an Indigeneous research associate at Australian National University in Canberra. “In the same way that our lands were colonized, our skies are now being colonized,” she says. “And this isn’t just Indigenous people.” She points out that companies have launched satellites without necessarily consulting the scientific community. [emphasis mine]

Oh the horror. Scientists weren’t consulted! The nerve of these companies!

In response, astronomers have decided their only solution is to enlist the UN to shut down these satellite companies.
» Read more

12 comments

Chinese expert calls for China to find ways to destroy Starlink constellation

11:27 am

A Chinese communications expert at its Beijing Institute of Tracking and Telecommunications has written a paper calling for China’s military to develop ways in which it can to destroy SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.

According to the South China Morning Post, lead author Ren Yuanzhen and colleagues advocated in Modern Defence Technology not only for China to develop anti-satellite capabilities, but also to have a surveillance system that could monitor and track all satellites in Starlink’s constellation.

“A combination of soft and hard kill methods should be adopted to make some Starlink satellites lose their functions and destroy the constellation’s operating system,” the Chinese boffins reportedly said, estimating that data transmission speeds of stealth fighter jets and US military drones could increase by a factor of 100 through a Musk machine connection.

I am sure China (as well as every other superpower — including the U.S. military) is already working on developing methods for either jamming or destroying Starlink. Doing either however is difficult because of the constellation’s nature: many small satellites all of which provide redundancy and are easily replaced. Even more depressing for these power-hungry government entities is the fact that Starlink is not the only constellation now in orbit, with many others soon to follow.

For example, consider the contracts that the NRO announced today with three different surveillance satellite companies, all of which have their own constellations. Getting rid of one is hard. All three is likely impossible.

18 comments

Pushback: Navy loses in attempt to fire officer who refused COVID shots

11:14 am

Total victory for Navy Lt Billy Moseley
Navy Lt Billy Moseley

Bring a gun to a knife fight: When faced with dismissal on a charge of misconduct because he refused to get a COVID shot, Navy Lieutenant Billy Moseley took his case before a Navy administrative separation board, and won a unanimous victory.

Anyone who has been in the Navy for at least six years is entitled to call for a separation board if threatened with dismissal. The board is made up of three Navy officers, and its decision is binding.

Younts [Moseley’s lawyer] argued at the board hearing that the mandate for the experimental COVID vaccines was not a lawful order since the military has not made fully FDA-approved versions of the vaccines available to military members.

The military defense attorney told Just the News that the attorneys for the Navy agreed with him that there are no FDA-approved vaccines available, only interchangeable vaccines. Younts added that if there are no FDA-approved vaccines available, then the president would have to authorize the experimental shots that are currently available, which hasn’t happened.

On Friday, the board voted 3-0 that Moseley’s failure to follow the COVID vaccine order did not count as misconduct and that he should remain in the Navy. Younts said that the board members weren’t convinced that the vaccine order was lawful.

According to the press release [pdf] from Younts,
» Read more

11 comments

Pushback: Total victory for The Federalist against attempt by Biden’s Labor Board to silence it

12:16 pm

Total victory for Ben Domenech and The Federalist
Ben Domenech at The Federalist

Another past blacklisted American has come away with a triumph for freedom! In April 2022 I reported how the National Labor Relations Board (NRLB) under the Biden administration and working with two leftist lawyers was attempting to silence the conservative news outlet The Federalist because of a very lame Twitter joke sent out by its publisher, Ben Domenech.

In his tweet, Domenech had joked that if any of his six employees dared considering unionizing “I swear I’ll send you back to the salt mine.” The NRLB claimed absurdly this was an example of “unfair labor practice.”

Domenech had hired the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA) to defend him. At first it worked out a settlement whereby all charges would be dropped if Domenech would simply delete his tweet.

Domenech refused. As he said in explaining this decision to fight:
» Read more

19 comments

Pushback: Professor fired for having opinions wins total victory

11:59 am

University of Central Florida: Hostile to free speech
University of Central Florida: Hostile to free speech

Bring a gun to a knife fight: In January 2021 (in one of my first blacklist columns and just after Biden assumed power), I described how professor Charles Negy was fired from the teaching job he had had at the University of Central Florida for 22 years, merely because he had stated some obvious facts about BLM and affirmative action on his twitter feed.

The school claimed it did not fire him for these tweets (an obvious lie based on the events), but because of a supposed pattern of inappropriate classroom behavior obtained through anonymous tips, tips instigated by Negy’s tweets that by the way did not match any of the school’s previous assessments of his teaching.

Negy fought back, demanding his case be reviewed by an independent arbitrator, and has now won his case.

In the ruling on Monday, the arbitrator, Ben Falcigno, found that the university had failed to show “just cause” when it fired Dr. Negy because it had not given him a chance to change his conduct in the classroom or, alternatively, to show that he was incapable of changing his behavior.
» Read more

6 comments

Pushback: Five bowling alleys sue Democrat Governor Gretchen Whitmer

12:12 pm

Gretchen Whitmer, Democrat and would-be dictator
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Democrat and would-be dictator

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A coalition of five Michigan bowling alleys has sued Democratic Party Governor Gretchen Whitmer as well as the state’s Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon for shutting down their businesses for more than a year during the Wuhan panic without providing them any just compensation.

You can read the complaint here [pdf].

Plaintiff’s chief counsel David Kallman told The Epoch Times after the appeals court hearing…
“Michigan is the only state in the nation where a governor’s public health emergency powers were overturned as unconstitutional. If we lose in the court of appeals, we will take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court.”

Scott Bennett, executive director of the Independent Bowling and Entertainment Centers Association, told The Epoch Times: “The governor’s actions were devastating to our industry. Things went from ‘two weeks to slow the spread’ to indefinite shutdowns.”
» Read more

19 comments

Pushback: Two Alaska Airlines flight attendants fired for asking questions file lawsuit

1:57 pm

Alaska Airlines: Opposed to free speech and religious freedom
Alaska Airlines: Opposed to free speech and religious freedom
Picture credit: Quintin Soloviev

Bring a gun to a knife fight: Today’s blacklist story is a follow-up on a September 2021 story about two flight attendants — Marli Brown and Lacey Smith — who were fired by Alaska Airlines because they had the nerve to question the airline’s public support of a gay rights bill, and asked those questions on a forum the airline had itself arranged for employees to comment.

At the time the attendants, represented by the First Liberty Institute, had filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which recently issued “right-to-sue” letters to both attendants.

First Liberty has now filed its lawsuit, which you can read here [pdf]. The suit is against both Alaska Airlines and the Association of Flight Attendants Association of the AFL-CIO that failed to defend both Brown and Smith. From the complaint:

On February 25, 2021, Alaska Airlines posted an article about its support for the Equality Act to an internal employee message board and solicited employee comments. The Equality Act is proposed legislation that would add “sexual orientation and gender identity” as protected classes to a variety of federal statutes and would curtail the applicability of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

In response, Marli and Lacey felt compelled by their Christian faith to post one comment each, asking about the impact of the Equality Act on civil rights for religion and women in the workplace.

Alaska Airlines responded to Marli and Lacey’s posts by immediately removing Marli and Lacey from their flight schedules, terminating their employment, and disparaging their religious expression and beliefs as “discriminatory,” “hateful,” and “offensive.”
» Read more

6 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Student expelled for not getting COVID booster, despite proof the booster for her was medically risky

1:06 pm

Diamond
Diamond “Ellie” Puentes, blacklisted because she believes
in “her body, her choice!”

They’re coming for you next: A student at Union College in New York, Diamond “Ellie” Puentes, was expelled from school because she refused to get a COVID booster because of the serious adverse effects she experienced after getting her second COVID shot.

More information here.

Worse, the school refused to accept her doctor’s note requesting she be exempt, or her hospital records describing the health issues she had experienced. From the first link above:

Union College’s Director of Health Services Angela Stefanatos asked her, “Are you here because you don’t want to get the booster or because you’re truly sick?”

Dr. Thomas Nelson, Puentes’ primary care physician, wrote a letter addressed to the college on April 11 regarding his patient’s concerns with the booster shot. He stated that Puentes was “in an unfavorable state of health, presumably caused by the vaccine itself.”
» Read more

13 comments

Pro-abortion advocates threaten to storm the Supreme Court, burn it down, and murder justices

12:33 pm

Real insurrection: According to a Homeland Security memo, pro-abortion protesters have been organizing to storm the Supreme Court, burn it down, and murder justices in protest should the court decide to overturn Roe v. Wade.

The threats also included attacking places of worship as well as anti-abortion clinics.

As is typical nowadays, Homeland Security tried to de-emphasize the seriousness of these threats of violence from the left by first hinting it was really a response to white supremacy and thus possibly justified, and then claiming such violence is really nothing more than constitutional protected speech. These two quotes from the memo from this Axios story illustrate this:

“Some racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists’ embrace of pro-life narratives may be linked to the perception of wanting to ‘save white children’ and ‘fight white genocide,'” the memo … says.

But the memo warns that this time, extremist acts could come from abortion-rights proponents as well. [However] “The mere advocacy of political or social positions, political activism, use of strong rhetoric, or generalized philosophic embrace of violent tactics does not constitute domestic violent extremism or illegal activity and is constitutionally protected.”

As always, our leftist government uses the premises of the left to excuse leftist violence. To them, the violence of the left is merely speech, while the speech of the right is violence, and must be silenced.

Should the Supreme Court overturn Roe v. Wade, we should all be prepared for riots as bad or worse as those that occurred after George Floyd’s death. This memo is merely stating the obvious. Since the election of Donald Trump in 2016 the left has decided that the only democracy and law it accepts is one in which it gets its way, every single time.

We should also be prepared for our government to do nothing to stop it, and if any rioters are captured to arrange their release as quickly as possible. These protests are certainly intended as a weapon to warp the results of November’s election, in favor of Democrats. Remember, the violent leftist protesters are merely the storm-troopers of the Democratic Party, used to promote violence in order to make possible the reelection of its politicians, by hook or by crook.

23 comments

Pushback: Parents & teachers sue to prevent California schools from teaching anti-Semitism

3:14 pm

What really needs to happen
The time has come to clean house, without mercy.

Bring a gun to a knife fight: A group of concerned parents and teachers in California filed a lawsuit on May 12, 2022 to prevent a bigoted and anti-Semitic ethnic studies program from being adopted “under the radar” in Los Angeles schools.

You can read the full complaint here [pdf]. From the link above:

Advocates, including teachers union officials, public-school teachers and other ideologues, have formed the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, through which they hope to influence the teaching of ethnic studies in the state. The consortium, which disseminates teaching materials lifted directly from radical anti-Israel websites, rejects the idea that all cultures should be studied. It asserts that ethnic studies is about only four groups: Native Americans, black Americans, Chicanos/Latinos, and Asian-Americans/Pacific Islanders. That last group includes Arabs from the Middle East, but not Jews, who’ve lived in that same region for millennia.

The consortium’s materials, many of which have been taken offline in recent months, are filled with attacks on Jews and the Jewish state. They deny that Jews are indigenous to the Middle East and teach that Israel is a “colonialist” and “settler state” founded through “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing” and “apartheid.” They falsely define Judaism, teaching that “Zionism is distinct from Judaism” and that Zionism isn’t a Jewish religious belief but an invention of the “late 19th century.”

Apparently, this “liberated” ethnic studies program — which is merely another example of leftist critical race theory — is an attempt to bypass state law, which rejected it and demanded by law that all schools teach students at least one ethnic studies class by 2030, but provide a wide balanced look at all issues. Because this “liberated” program violates this standard, instead considering the only valid ethnic groups who have been oppressed (by whites and Jews) to be Native Americans, black Americans, Chicanos/Latinos, and Asian-Americans/Pacific Islanders, it advises teachers to hide from parents the teaching of this material. From the complaint’s description of this program’s teaching materials:
» Read more

4 comments

Musk abandons the Democrats, will vote Republican in November

1:09 pm

In another example of the leftist Marxist Democratic Party losing long time supporters, Elon Musk revealed in a podcast today that he has switched his voter registration from Democrat to independent, and now plans to vote Republican in the upcoming election.

Elon Musk, admitting he had voted “overwhelmingly” for Democrats in the past, has changed his mind.

Musk is registered as an independent voter; he announced the switch over video link at a tech summit in Miami, Florida, hosted by the All-In podcast.

“I have voted overwhelmingly for Democrats, historically,” Musk acknowledged. “Like I’m not sure, I might never have voted for a Republican, just to be clear. Now this election I will,” Newsweek reported.

Musk however is not alone. Donald Trump is actually a much more famous example, having been a typical New York liberal Democrat for decades, only to reject that party in the mid-2010s for its increasingly radical communist agenda. Trump discovered to his surprise (as has Musk) that the conservative Republican Party better reflected his personal philosophy. Both men represent large numbers of ordinary people, who see themselves as moderate liberals and now find disgusting the bigoted, hateful, and anti-American agenda of the Democratic Party.

The meme below that Musk himself posted in a tweet on April 28, 2022 illustrates this process most clearly.
» Read more

14 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: School district investigates three children for using wrong pronouns

12:59 pm

Owned by government
What a Wisconsin school district apparently thinks of your kids.

They’re coming for you next: The Kiel school district in Wisconsin is now investigating three eighth grade children for daring to use the wrong pronouns. Worse, according to the evidence that the school itself presented, it appears the school and the investigating principal, Chad Ramminger, has been on a fishing expedition looking for any evidence it can find to punish the kids in question.

From the letter [pdf] sent to the school by the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty:

During the interviews with our clients on April 26–27, Mr. Ramminger asked various questions, many of which were unrelated to the incidents described in the subsequently provided statement from the music teacher, suggesting a fishing expedition to find evidence of sexual harassment. And when one family considered
halting the interview to get a lawyer, Mr. Ramminger responded with something to effect of, “you could, but how would that look”? All of this leaves the impression that the District is weaponizing its Title IX process to strong-arm minor students into compliance with its preferred mode of speech. This is wrong and illegal.

The incident itself, as described by the parent of one of the kids, Rosemary Rabidoux, illustrates the tyrannical nature of the school and the girl trying to impose speech on others.
» Read more

7 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: Professor’s suspension for having an opinion now more than 100 days long, with no end in sight

12:46 pm

Georgetown University: No free speech allowed

They’re coming for you next: The suspension by Georgetown University of Ilya Shapiro from his position as executive director for the Georgetown Center for the Constitution because he posted a tweet critical of Biden’s most recent Supreme Court nomination is now more than 100 days long, with no clear end date.

Shapiro’s tweet, now deleted, had noted the Biden administration’s decision to make race and gender more important than a judge’s legal qualifications in picking Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court was a bad mistake. For that crime, Georgetown University put him on administrative leave while it conducted “an investigation.”

It is now more than three months later, and the university not only has not completed this faux investigation, which really has nothing to investigate as all the facts are plainly visible for all to see, it apparently has no intention of telling anyone when the investigation will end:
» Read more

35 comments

Are the COVID vaccines killing people over time? The data suggests yes.

11:39 am

Excess mortality by age

While overall the risk of getting the COVID shots is quite small, the data is increasingly suggesting that these shots might have some very serious long term consequences. The graph to the right, taken from a January 2022 report [pdf] of the Society of Actuaries Research Institute and first spotted by Dr. Aaron Kheriaty, indicates a shocking and inexplicable increase in mortality among the nation’s young. As noted by Thomas Lifson at American Thinker:

Something is killing off large numbers of 25- to 54-year-olds in the United States, and the powers that be in government and the media are pretending it is not happening. There is no visible effort to study the alarming statistics gathered by actuaries for the life insurance industry, which keeps track of deaths because they directly impact their bottom line through claims from the insured. [emphasis in original]

These deaths are not Wuhan flu deaths. However, the sudden rise of mortality from many other causes among the young in the third quarter of 2021, only a short time after the majority of the population had been given the COVID shots, is significant and strongly suggests the shots have something to do with this.

That supposition is further strengthened by another story today:

AIDS-related Diseases & Cancers reported to VAERS increased between 1,145% and 33,715% in 2021

For clarity, these AIDS-related deaths are not related to the HIV virus. Acquired immunodeficiency (AIDS) can occur for many reasons, and when it does the victim then can die from many other diseases or cancers, because his or her body can no longer fight them off.

Below is the most pertinent graph from that story, created by The Exposé directly from publicly available CDC data.
» Read more

22 comments

NASA corrupt safety panel once again blathers on

9:41 am

The corrupt safety panel at NASA that spent years slowing down SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule development with sometimes absurd demands, including delays caused simply because of paperwork, is now demanding that NASA should slow its approval of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, even if its unmanned demo mission next week succeeds completely.

This quote from the article best illustrates this safety panel’s do-nothing bureaucratic view of the world:

A further concern is that Starliner uses the United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket to get to orbit, but Atlas Vs are being phased out. ULA is building a new rocket, Vulcan, that could see its first launch late this year, but must go through a “human-rating” certification process that [panel member David] West said “could take years” for Starliner. [emphasis mine]

Every demand of this panel for years has demanded years of delays, with many having nothing to do with technical safety — the panel’s original purpose — but with management questions and the panel’s own overblown opinion of itself. Worse, some of its demands never made sense, such as its objection to SpaceX’s launch procedures where it fueled the rocket after the astronauts got on board. This quote from an earlier post about the panel’s recent inappropriate attempt to insert itself into NASA’s policy decisions sums things up well, and provides links to previous failures of the panel:

This panel continues to demonstrate its corrupt and power-hungry attitude about how the U.S. should explore space. For years it did whatever it could to stymie NASA’s efforts to transfer ownership to the private sector, putting up false barriers to the launch of SpaceX’s manned Dragon capsule that made no sense and were really designed to keep all control within the government bureaucracy.

It is now targeting Boeing, though amazingly it is only doing it after many of Starliner’s technical problems have been uncovered. The safety panel was a complete failure in spotting the company’s problems early on, several years ago, when it might have saved everyone a lot of time and money. Instead, it now acts like an annoying back seat driver, only kibitzing about things that went wrong long after everyone else has done the work.

I have been saying for years that it is time to shut this panel down. It is now long past time to do so. The time and money saved might actually improve safety far more than the panel ever has.

9 comments

Scientists grow plants in lunar soil brought by from Apollo missions

3:29 pm

In their first attempt, scientists have successfully grown plants in a small lunar soil sample brought by astronauts during the Apollo missions.

Researchers at the University of Florida had spent 11 years requesting permission from Nasa to borrow some of the lunar dust brought back by astronauts on the first manned Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 missions in 1969 and the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Armstrong and Aldrin brought back 21.6kg of material including 50 rocks, samples of dust and two cores of rock after boring 13cm down into the Moon’s surface. They contained no water and no signs of life.

…The lunar samples are deemed to be of “incalculable historical and scientific significance”, so the scientists were given only 12 grams, just a few teaspoons’ full, to work with and had to design a miniature experiment.

The researchers used thimble-sized wells in a dish usually used for growing cells as miniature plant pots and filled each with about one gram of lunar soil. They moistened the soil with water and a solution of nutrients and added a small number of seeds from the Arabidopsis thaliana plant, a common flowering weed also known as mouse-ear or thale cress. [emphasis mine]

The plants grew, but were smaller and took longer to grow then plants on even the most extreme environments on Earth. The scientists also found that plants did better in buried lunar soil then the material on the surface that had been exposed to the harsh radiation of space, suggesting that plowing the soil before planting will enhance growth.

The highlighted words in the quote above illustrate the madness of NASA’s bureaucracy. These lunar samples were brought back so that scientists could study it, not so that it could be locked away in a vault forever never to be touched. To make this very intelligence experiment wait 11 years before getting permission is absurd.

12 comments

SpaceX CEO: Starship could launch as early as June

10:15 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s CEO and president Gwynne Shotwell revealed today that Starship could be ready for its orbital test flight from Boca Chica as early as June, though government regulatory obstacles make that launch more likely three to six months from now.

It appears that the delays in getting FAA approval for launch have not been the only issues that have delayed that first launch attempt. Though SpaceX would have likely tried a launch months ago with earlier prototypes had the approval arrived as originally promised, that launch would have likely failed based on ground tests the company has been doing during the delay.

When Musk tweeted his “hopefully May” estimate, SpaceX was nowhere close to finishing the Starship – Ship 24 – that is believed to have been assigned to the orbital launch debut. However, SpaceX finally accelerated Ship 24 assembly within the last few weeks and ultimately finished stacking the upgraded Starship on May 8th. A great deal of work remains to truly complete Ship 24, but SpaceX should be ready to send it to a test stand within a week or two. Even though the testing Ship 24 will need to complete has been done before by Ship 20, making its path forward less risky than Booster 7’s, Ship 24 will debut a number of major design changes and likely needs at least two months of testing to reach a basic level of flight readiness.

A more likely launch date is probably late July at the earliest, though of course that will also depend on the government’s approval, something that presently appears difficult to get.

5 comments

The evidence keeps pouring in showing the utter failure of all COVID mandates

2:38 pm

Since March 2020 I have repeatedly written that the response to the Wuhan flu was an utter mindless panic that had little to do with the facts. Right off the bat, the facts, not the models, suggested the virus would resemble the flu most of all, a possible mortal threat to the sick and elderly but generally nothing more than a short sickness to the general population, with it being almost utterly harmless to the young.

Nothing that has happened since has really changed these early conclusions. I have compiled below a collection of recent studies and reports that illustrate what we have learned following the epidemic and the panic that accompanied it. Sadly, that panic did little to stop the virus, but it left us with destroyed businesses, a crushed economy, many uneducated and damaged children, and a broken Bill of Rights.

The COVID jab

The failure of the jab in the United Kingdom
Study from November 2021showing the overall uselessness of the jab
in the United Kingdom last year.

The first set of stories show some recent studies analyzing the effectiveness and safety of the COVID shots, which are not vaccines because they simply do not prevent you from getting the virus. At best — though not yet proven — they might reduce the severity of the disease should you get it. The data however now suggests that though the overall risks are not large, the jab carries enough risk that in many cases, it makes no sense to get it. To require it, as many governments and businesses have done, is downright stupid and immoral. To fire nurses and doctors for refusing the shots is beyond stupid or immoral. It is evil.

Worse, these facts were known right from the initial tests, as the last story below shows. In the company’s initial trials they found that 1,223 people died within the first 28 days after taking the Pfizer shot. Such a result in past drug trials would have made impossible the approval of that drug.
» Read more

22 comments

Pushback: Arizona parents sue over school board’s attempt to silence and intimidate them

12:19 pm

Owned by government
What the Scottsdale school board apparently thinks of your kids.

Today’s pushback story is another follow-up of an earlier blacklist story that I posted in November 2021. At that time several parents with students in the Scottsdale Unified School District (SUSD) had discovered that the then school board president Jann-Michael Greenburg had, with the aid of his parents, compiled a secret Google drive containing personal information of 47 parents, including social security numbers, financial information, pictures of themselves and their children.

The discovery occurred because Greenburg had begun using this information to intimidate the parents — who had been protesting the school board’s mask mandates and the introduction of the racist critical race theory into the curriculum.

Three of those parents are now suing Greenburg, his parents Mark Alan and Dagmar Greenburg, and the Scottsdale school district.
» Read more

11 comments

The future factions in space become clearer

9:17 am

Based on two stories yesterday, it appears that the future alliances between nations in space are now beginning to sort themselves out.

First there was the signing ceremony announcement of Columbia becoming the nineteenth nation to sign the Artemis Accords with the U.S. and the third Latin American country to do so.

The Artemis Accords were created by the Trump administration as an international treaty to bypass the restrictions on private property imposed by the Outer Space Treaty. By signing bilateral agreements with as many nations as possible, the U.S. thus creates a strong alliance able to protect those rights in space.

The full list of signatories so far: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

In the second story, France and India — both of whom have so far resisted signing the Artemis Accords — announced their own bilateral agreement intended to strengthen their partnership across many fronts, from security to economic development to the Ukraine war. The agreement also included this paragraph on the subject of space:
» Read more

7 comments

Today’s blacklisted American: College in Illinois establishes black-men-only academy, no others need apply

1:01 pm

Academia: dedicated to segregation!
Oakton Community College: dedicated to segregation!

“Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” Oakton Community College, a small college in the Chicago area, has now established a special academy for black men only, dubbed the Emory Williams Academy for Black Men.

From the academy’s website:

As a member of the Academy, you will join a community designed for Black male-identifying students who are on a journey to advance their education and achieve their goals. Whether you want to earn your associate degree and transfer to a four-year school or kick-start a career with training, the Academy will meet you where you are and help you thrive.

The Academy is led by dedicated Black faculty and staff. You’ll be supported every day by a group of committed professors and student-success coaches—and your fellow scholars. [emphasis mine]

That website also describes its values like so:
» Read more

13 comments

Momentus gets final launch permits for its space tug

9:30 am

Capitalism in space: After a year delay due to government security concerns, Momentus has finally gotten all the launch permits required for a launch later this month on a Falcon 9 of its space tug, Vigoride, on its first orbital test flight.

In late April Momentus had gotten FCC approval. Now it has gotten clearance from the FAA. The FAA had blocked last year’s launch because of security concerns related to the foreign connections of several of the company’s founders/investors. Those individuals have now left the company, clearing the way for license approval.

The delay however caused Momentus to lose several customers while allowing another space tug competitor, Launcher, to catch up.

One comment

Yawn: Rogozin tweets threats to Musk, Musk shrugs

8:58 am

In yesterday’s non-news Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Roscosmos which runs Russia’s entire aerospace industry, issued a threat against Elon Musk for supplying the Ukraine Starlink service in its war against the Russian invasion, and Musk responded with an almost cheerful quip.

On Sunday (May 8), Musk posted on Twitter a note that he said Rogozin, the head of Russia’s federal space agency Roscosmos, had sent out to Russian media. The note claimed that equipment for SpaceX’s Starlink satellite-internet system had been delivered to Ukrainian marines and “militants of the Nazi Azov battalion” by the U.S. military. “Elon Musk, thus, is involved in supplying the fascist forces in Ukraine with military communication equipment,” Rogozin wrote, according to an English translation that Musk posted. (He also tweeted out a Russian version.) “And for this, Elon, you will be held accountable like an adult — no matter how much you’ll play the fool.”

This sounds very much like a threat, as Musk acknowledged in a follow-up tweet on Sunday. “If I die under mysterious circumstances, it’s been nice knowin ya,” he wrote. Musk’s mom, Maye, didn’t appreciate that glib response, tweeting, “That’s not funny” along with two angry-face emojis. The billionaire entrepreneur responded, “Sorry! I will do my best to stay alive.” (It was Mother’s Day, after all.)

Musk’s light-hearted response only stands to reason, considering Rogozin’s loud-mouthed track record. Nothing he says really matters, so why should Musk care that much. Musk probably posted Rogozin’s comments out of amusement more than anything else..

8 comments

Pushback: Lawsuit forces Rhode Island to let oral surgeon to reopen his practice

12:27 pm

Oral surgeon Stephen Skoly, blackballed by Rhode Island
Oral surgeon Stephen Skoly, blackballed by Rhode Island

Today’s blacklist story is an update from a story in February, where I outlined how the Rhode Island health department had irrationally shut down the practice of oral surgeon Stephen Skoly — denying 800 patients dental treatment and putting ten employees out of work — simply because Skoly had refused to get the COVID jab for valid medical reasons, including the fact that he had already gotten the Wuhan flu, had anti-bodies, and had other health issues that made getting the shot ill-advised.

Skoly had sued Rhode Island’s governor, Democrat Daniel McKee, as well as the head of the state’s health department, James McDonald. It now appears the lawsuit had some positive impact:

In March 2022, after over five months of suspension, and three days before a court hearing where medical experts were to testify to the irrationality of Rhode Island’s conduct, Rhode Island finally relented. It agreed to treat the N95 masked Dr. Skoly the same as other unvaccinated N95 masked workers. Dr. Skoly was permitted to re-assemble his ten-person dental team and return to practice.

The lawsuit, filed on behalf of Skolly by the New Civil Liberties Alliance, has not been abandoned, and instead has been expanded because of the state’s decision to deny Skoly unemployment benefits.
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The Ukraine War: Reassessing the situation after another month

1:33 pm

The Ukraine War as of April 9, 2022
The Ukraine War as of April 9, 2022. Click for full map.

The Ukraine War as of May 5, 2022
The Ukraine War as of May 5, 2022. Click for full map.

Since my last look at the state of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine on April 7, 2022, not much as happened, as indicated by the two maps to the right, both simplified versions of maps created by the Institute for the Study of War (ISW).

The red hatched areas are regions Russia captured in 2014. The red areas are regions the Russians have captured in this invasion and now fully control. The pink areas are regions they have occupied but do not fully control. The tan areas the Russians claim to control but the control remains unconfirmed. Blue regions are areas the Ukraine has recaptured. The blue hatched area is where local Ukrainians have had some success resisting Russian occupation.

Russia has now completely shifted its military resources from the north to the eastern parts of the Ukraine. As a result it has had some success firming up its control over the regions it had invaded to the north and east of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions it had grabbed in 2014. Yet, these gains were only in areas Russia had already occupied. In the past month it has almost entirely failed to invade or capture any additional territory.

Meanwhile, the Ukraine has begun to have some success in retaking territory around the city of Kharkiv. It also successfully pushed back an advance Russia attempted to the west of Donetsk. Moreover, despite repeated expectations that the full occupation of the city of Maripol would be completed a month ago, that occupation is still not complete, with resistant forces still fighting heavily in one area and thus tying up Russia forces for far longer than expected.

The May 5th assessment by ISW said this:

Russian forces continued ineffectual offensive operations in southern Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk Oblasts without securing any significant territorial gains in the past 24 hours. The Pentagon assessed that Russian forces have not been able to make further advances due to their inability to conduct offensive operations far from their ground lines of communication (GLOCs) along highways, as ISW previously assessed, and muddy terrain. … Russian forces are reportedly suffering losses in stalled attacks along the Izyum axis, with the Ukrainian General Staff reporting that elements of the 4th Tank Division and the 106th Airborne Division withdrew to Russia after sustaining heavy losses in the past several days.

Russian forces conducted unsuccessful attacks in Lyman, Severodonetsk, and Popasna, and maintained shelling along the line of contact in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts. Russian forces also used thermobaric munitions against Ukrainian positions in Lyman and are unsuccessfully attempting to leverage massed artillery fire to break through Ukrainian defenses.

The overall trend seems to favor the Russians. Whether it can gain more territory is unclear, but it seems that except for one area near Kharkiv it is firming up its control on the territories grabbed in early March. The question now remains: Can Russia expand its invasion, or can the Ukraine push back and force the Russians back?

Right now it looks like neither can do either, and the situation shall remain bogged down for the near future.

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Today’s blacklisted Americans: Conservative Supreme Court justices doxed and threatened by pro-abortion protesters

12:14 pm

The left goes after the conservatives on the Supreme Court
The left goes after the conservatives on the Supreme Court

Persecution is now cool! The leaked draft opinion by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito that suggested that Roe vs Wade will be overturned this year has resulted in another wave of persecution by pro-abortion activists, almost all of which are Democrats and leftists.

The first indication that the threats and hate were real was revealed two days after Alito’s draft was leaked when his office canceled a scheduled public appearance by him at judicial conference this week.

Though the office provided no explanation for the cancellation, the reasons soon became obvious when two different radical left organizations partnered to publish the home addresses of all six conservative Supreme Court justices, encouraging protesters to go there and use “a diversity of tactics” to “force accountability.”

In collaboration with Vigil for Democracy, Ruth Sent Us generated and posted a Google Maps graphic pinning what it claims are the home addresses of Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh, Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, and Roberts, where they presumably reside with their families. Vigil for Democracy titled the map, “Extremist Justices,” adding, “Where the six Christian fundamentalist Justices issue their shadow docket rulings.” The map has 3,185 views so far.

In Virginia, where three of the six justices live, protesting outside a private home is illegal.

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Pushback: Woman sues Antifa member for falsely saying she had criminal record

12:26 pm

Today's modern witch hunt
A witch hunt: What Antifa considers reasonable political discourse.

Fight back twice as hard: Because Robin Patch attended a protest where she reported accurately the violence of Antifa, Antifa member Chad Loder responded by falsely slandering Patch on Twitter, falsely claiming she had a criminal record for “burglary + vandalism.”

Patch is now suing Loder in small claims court for $5,000.

In Patch’s lawsuit, she explicitly denies Loder’s claims that she is a criminal convict and has been on probation. “This is 100% false,” Patch wrote in the small claims complaint. “I have never had any criminal convictions, nor have I ever been on probation.” Patch wrote in the complaint that Loder blocked her on Twitter so that she could not directly respond to his posts.

“Mr. Loder made two consecutive tweets about me on July 8, 2021, which included personal information such as my (former) place of employment, home city, Instagram posts, LinkedIn profile and results from an outdated background check.”

According to her complaint, Loder’s slanders on Twitter caused her to lose a job.

The evidence clearly shows who is the real criminal here.
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Pushback: Computer repairman who exposed Hunter Biden’s laptop sues media for slandering him

11:53 am

Adam Schiff, a pathological slanderer and liar
Any media that blindly repeats anything out of this guy’s mouth
risks getting sued for slander

Fight back twice as hard: The owner of the computer repair shop, who legally uncovered the laptop that belonged to President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden and exposed significant evidence of corruption by both, has now filed a multi-million dollar defamation lawsuit against CNN, Politico, the Daily Beast, and Congressman Adam Schiff (D-California).

John Paul Mac Isaac was highlighted in a blacklist column in March, noting how his entirely legal effort to expose extensive corruption by Joe Biden and his son prior to the election caused him to be harassed, threatened, and driven to bankruptcy. While he lived in hiding because of the physical threats against him, Isaac also found it impossible to get unemployment insurance because of stone-walling by the Delaware unemployment department, stone-walling that only ended when Isaac wrote of letter of complaint to the state’s junior senator.

Isaac’s nightmare began when Democrats like Schiff began spreading lies against him, suggesting without any evidence that he was a treasonous Russian agent and had even obtained the laptop illegally. Mainstream media outlets acting as Democratic Party operatives immediately republished those lies as if they were true, despite the reality that only a tiny amount of due diligence would have revealed them to be lies.

An earlier lawsuit by Isaac against Twitter was thrown out by the courts, leaving him with about $175K in legal bills. This new lawsuit however is now possible because of new sponsorship.
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Fish & Wildlife documents now reveal its objections to SpaceX Boca Chica facility

9:32 am

We’re here to help you! Documents obtained by CNBC under a Freedom of Information request have revealed the specific objections of Fish & Wildlife that has helped delay the approval of the FAA’s environment reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility for Starship launches.

SpaceX must take steps to track and mitigate its impact on endangered species and their habitat in order to gain approvals for testing and commercial launches of its Starship Super Heavy lift-launch vehicle in Boca Chica, Texas, according to documents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service obtained by CNBC.

The documents, released by the federal agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, show that recent declines in an endangered bird species, the piping plover, have already been correlated with SpaceX activity at the South Texas facility.

The documents also reveal that SpaceX is, for now at least, reducing the amount of energy it plans to generate at a utility-sized natural gas power plant on the 47.4-acre launch site there.

According to a lawyer from the radical environmentalist organization the Center for Biological Diversity who was interviewed for the article, Fish & Wildlife’s demands are not tremendously restrictive, and might actually allow the project to go forward, since they appear to only require SpaceX to “monitor affected animal populations carefully, limit construction and launch activity to specific seasons or times of day and night, and use shuttles to reduce vehicle traffic of workers on location.”

I see it differently. I think Fish & Wildlife bureaucrats are struggling to come up with reasons to block SpaceX. They know that decades of data in Florida prove that rocket launches have no negative impact on wildlife. To claim such a thing in Texas is thus not justified. They are trying to do it anyway.

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