Tag: oppression

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

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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

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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.

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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.
» Read more

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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.

» Read more

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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.
» Read more

9 comments

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.
» Read more

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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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Today’s blacklisted American: College fires director of its free speech institute for advocating free speech

1:32 pm

No free speech allowed at St. Olaf College
No free speech allowed at St. Olaf College.

The new dark age of silencing: David Anderson, the president of St. Olaf College in Minnesota, has removed the director of the school’s Institute for Freedom & Community, Edmund Santurri, because Santurri apparently encouraged too much free speech by inviting a wide range of speakers to lecture at the institute.

The lecture that appeared to draw the most objections was by Peter Singer, who has expressed controversial views about disabled people. An appearance by John McWhorter — who has argued some anti-racism initiatives go too far in stifling debate — was also reportedly controversial.

Singer has for decades often advocated in favor of abortion and even infanticide. McWorter meanwhile opposes the racist principles of critical race theory. To put it mildly, these speakers indicated the sincerity of Santurri’s effort to bring a wide range of political thought to St. Olaf.

When Anderson removed Santurri, he explained his reasons were because the lectures arranged by Santurri had “created a new enemies of the Institute.” Anderson also justified the action because he had received complaints from the college’s board of regents as well as others at the college.
» Read more

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Biden’s NASA administrator slams the cost-plus contracts he endorsed when he was a senator

12:48 pm

Bill Nelson, Biden’s NASA administrator and a former Democratic Party senator from Florida, made it clear during his testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations committee today that he condemns cost-plus contracts and no longer wants to use them for any NASA project, even though he demanded NASA use such contracts when he was a senator.

Nelson was asked what, in his opinion, was the biggest threat to NASA’s goal of landing humans on the Moon by 2025. Nelson responded that the agency needed competition in its program to develop a Human Landing System. In other words, he wanted Congress to support NASA’s request for funding to develop a second lander alongside SpaceX’s Starship vehicle.

But Nelson didn’t stop there. He said Congress needs to fund this lander contract with a fixed-price award, which only pays companies when they reach milestones. This contracting mechanism is relatively new for the space agency, which traditionally has used “cost-plus” contracts for large development programs. Such awards pay contractors their expenses, plus a fee. “I believe that that is the plan that can bring us all the value of competition,” Nelson said of fixed-price contracts. “You get it done with that competitive spirit. You get it done cheaper, and that allows us to move away from what has been a plague on us in the past, which is a cost-plus contract, and move to an existing contractual price.”

The significance of Nelson’s remarks is that it bluntly signals that the Biden administration has now wholly bought into the ideas I put forth in Capitalism in Space. Nelson wants NASA to be a customer that buys what it needs from the private sector, and to do it as inexpensively as possible. He also wants to encourage competition by allowing that private sector to own and control what it builds.

In the past, a new administration would have abandoned the policies of the past administration. Instead, the Biden administration is accelerating the Trump administration’s policy of encouraging private enterprise and eliminating cost-plus contracts.

The future of the American space industry appears bright indeed.

This statement by Nelson also indicates that the future of SLS is now very precarious, especially because it is being built almost entirely on cost-plus contracts. Any serious failure could kill it. And even if its next launch succeeds, further launches hang now by a very thin political thread. And the more success private space has, the thinner that thread will become.

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Viasat once again demands government block its competitor Starlink

9:50 am

In a letter to the FCC submitted on May 2, 2022, Viasat once again demanded the government block the deployment of SpaceX’s full 30,000 Starlink satellite constellation.

SpaceX shouldn’t be allowed to greatly expand its Starlink network while light pollution issues surrounding its deployed satellites remain unresolved, Jarrett Taubman, Viasat vice president and deputy chief of government affairs, said in a letter to the regulator.

While calls for a thorough environmental review that Viasat made for Starlink’s current generation of satellites in December 2020 were largely rejected, Taubman said SpaceX’s plan to grow the constellation by seven times “would have significant aesthetic, scientific, social and cultural, and health effects on the human environment on Earth.”

In other words, rather than try to compete with SpaceX, Viasat wants the government to squelch that competition. Though Viasat’s previous complaints have been rejected entirely, there is no guarantee that the Biden administration will continue to reject them. Recent evidence suggests instead that it will instead use this complaint as another opportunity to limit SpaceX’s operations, for political reasons.

Meanwhile, the only possible harm to Earth the full Starlink constellation might do is cause a limited interference in ground-based astronomy. Since astronomers have made so little effort to get their telescopes into orbit, above such interference, few should sympathize with them. If anything, Starlink should be the spur to get all of its telescopes off the ground and into space. Astronomers will not only avoid light interference from Starlink, they will get far better data without the atmosphere smearing their vision.

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Today’s blacklisted American: 15-year-old kills himself after school ignored cruel bullying based on false rumor he hadn’t gotten COVID shots.

1:39 pm

Nate Bronstein, dead because of lies
Nate Bronstein, now dead because of a mob’s lies, and the
willingness of The Latin School of Chicago to ignore them.

They’re coming for you next: A 15-year-old boy, Nate Bronstein, hung himself in January after months of cruel and ceaseless bullying at his private school — which the school, the Latin School of Chicago, apparently refused to stop — based on the false rumor that he had never gotten any COVID shots.

The boy’s parents, Robert and Rosellene Bronstein, are now suing both the school and the instigators of the bullying, demanding $100 million in compensatory damages. You can read their complaint in all its horror here [pdf].

This story illustrates two terrible but fundamental components of today’s blacklist culture. First, that mob is quite willing to oppress the weak and helpless based simply on lies. From the Chicago Tribune report of this story:

A student at the school, whose parents are named in the suit, spread a false rumor that the boy was unvaccinated, the suit alleges. Though he was vaccinated, the boy was harassed about his perceived vaccination status.

Even though the Bronstein’s met with this student’s parents in an attempt to end the bullying, nothing changed, and in fact it worsened, so that the boy even started receiving text messages saying he should kill himself.

Second, the mob’s emotion-driven and hateful conduct often means that those who could stand up to it and stop it are generally unwilling to challenge those lies, and will often instead team up with the mob to encourage the oppression.
» Read more

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Surprise! FAA delays SpaceX approval at Boca Chica another month

11:56 am

As I have been predicting now for months, the FAA today announced that it is once again delaying approval of its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility one more month, to May 31, 2022.

This is the fifth time since December that the FAA has delayed the release of the environmental assessment. When the first delay was announced in December 2021, I predicted that this stone-walling by the government will likely continue for many months, and delay the first orbital launch of Starship “until the latter half of ’22, if then.”

Since then it has become very clear that the other federal bureaucracies at NOAA and Fish & Wildlife which must sign off on the approval are hostile to Elon Musk, SpaceX, and Starship, and are acting to block this approval, with this stone-walling having the unstated support of the Biden administration. When the third delay was announced at the end of February, I predicted no approval would ever occur, that the Biden administration wants to reject the reassessment and force the issuance of a new environmental impact statement, a process that could take years. To do this before the November election however will cost votes, so the administration would instead delay the approval month by month until November.

This prediction has been dead on right, unfortunately. Expect more month-by-month delays until November, when the Biden administration will then announce — conveniently just after the election — the need for a new impact statement requiring years of study.

The one hope to stop this government intransigence will be a complete wipe-out of the Democratic Party in Congress in those November elections. A strong Republican Congress with large majorities in both houses could quickly force the Biden administration to back down on many issues, including this effort to shut SpaceX down in Texas.

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Launches of UK rocket company delayed by red tape in Iceland

10:11 am

Capitalism in space: Because the United Kingdom rocket company Skyrora has been unable to get Iceland to approve a suborbital test launch from that country, further test orbital launches from the new spaceport in Shetland in ’23 are threatened with delays.

The suborbital test launch had been scheduled to launch in September of last year, and has been delayed since because of this red tape.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Jewish professor fired for describing anti-Semitism at college

12:30 pm

Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, blacklisted for being Jewish
Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, blacklisted for being white, Jewish, and willing
to speak the truth.

They’re coming for you next: When a Jewish English professor at Linfield University in Oregon, Daniel Pollack-Pelzner, reported the sexual misconduct of four of the university’s ten trustees, he was first ignored, then subjected to anti-Semitic attacks, and then fired without any due process when he described those attacks on Twitter.

Pollack-Pelzner claimed that the Linfield University “President and Board Chair had religiously harassed me,” and that the school failed to act on alleged instances of sexual assault and hateful messages painted on campus. He also alleged that University President and Chair of the Board of Trustees Miles Davis had made anti-Semitic comments about Jewish noses, made jokes about sending Jews to gas chambers, and accused the Jewish professor of conspiring to grab power on the board.

The firing occurred in July 2021, during the first heavy wave of blacklisting that began right after Joe Biden took power as president. It is news now because of the release on April 22nd of an independent investigation that confirms entirely the improper firing of Pollack-Pelzner:
» Read more

3 comments

Pushback: Three Idaho University students sue school for punishing them for having opinions

12:26 pm

Idaho University bans religious speech
No free speech allowed at this college!

They’re coming for you next: Three students at the University of Idaho have sued the college’s administrators for punishing them simply because they publicly defended their religious belief.

Peter Perlot, Mark Miller, and Ryan Alexander are members of the Christian Legal Society [CLS] chapter at the University of Idaho. When Perlot and Miller joined most of the other members of CLS at a “moment of community” gathering to condemn a discriminatory slur written at another campus, a law student approached them to ask why CLS requires its officers to affirm the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman. Miller respectfully explained that the chapter requires this because it is the only view of marriage and sexuality affirmed in the Bible.

Soon after, Perlot left a handwritten note for the student and told her that he would be happy to discuss this further so that they could both be fully heard and better understand one another’s views. A few days later, the student and several others publicly denounced CLS’s actions at a panel with the American Bar Association. Alexander attended that meeting and explained that the characterizations were inaccurate, that the biggest discrimination he had seen on campus was the discrimination against CLS and its religious beliefs, and that he was concerned about the state of religious freedom on campus.

Three days later, the university’s Office of Civil Rights and Investigations issued Perlot, Miller, and Alexander no-contact orders against the student even though the CLS members did not receive notice that anyone had complained about them and were not given an opportunity to review the allegations against them or defend themselves.

» Read more

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