Students at Manchester University have demanded that the word “black” when used as a negative expression such as the word “blackmail” should be banned because it is “divisive.”
Yes, really.
The complaint was prompted by a university study surround issues affecting Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) staff and faculty.
Citing concerns of black people, the report noted that there were “linguistic concerns about Black being associated with negative expressions” such as “blackmail” and “black sheep.”
After the report labeled the use of words which included “black” as “divisive and not inclusive,” the university’s student union demanded that “any other use of the word ‘black’ as an adjective to express negative connotations” should be banned in research papers, lecture slides, and books published by professors.
Students claimed that such words were based on a “colonial history” and should be abolished in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.
However, Lexicographer Jonathon Green pointed out that such claims were completely erroneous given that the background environment of “identity politics” “simply wasn’t there at the moment of coinage.”
As in America, many students have been indoctrinated to believe that one of the primary purposes for going to university is to lobby for speech and words to be banned.
Back in September, Bristol University announced that it would crack down on “diet culture and fatphobia” language so as not to offend obese people and those with eating disorder.
* * *
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When Joseph Bennett noticed some Jeffersonville, Kentucky, police officers near a McDonald’s, he decided to stop and videotape them. Bennett was standing across the parking lot, well away from the officers, when some of them approached him and demanded ID. Bennett said he refused, and no sooner did the words leave his mouth than one officer punched him. Bennett was handcuffed and cited for menacing and resisting arrest. Jeffersonville Mayor Bill Dieruf claims a witness identified Bennett as someone possibly involved in the check fraud officers were investigating. A police spokesperson says he was not and that the department is investigating the matter.
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German Regulator Reportedly Has Evidence Ernst & Young Helped Conceal Wirecard Fraud Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/02/2020 – 04:15
German authorities have defended domestic regulators and politicians – including BaFin, the Germany equivalent of the SEC, along with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s finance minister Olaf Sccholz – past the point of public believability. It’s clear, as former CEO Markus Braun’s lawyers are arguing, that the German officials who were tasked with holding companies accountable instead protected Wirecard – until Ernst & Young refused to sign off on the company’s financial statements earlier this year after failing to track down more than $2 billion that the company claimed was stashed in the Philippines.
Wirecard’s sudden slide into insolvency, which made several short-seller’s rich, led to the arrest of Braun (whose formerly sterling reputation as an evangelist for the transformative power of data and technology has likely been forever blemished) while former COO Jans Marsalek managed to successfully evade authorities (it’s believed he is hiding out in Russia, possibly with the protection of Russian intelligence services). Public fury was directed initially at Braun, who was released on €5 million bail, a massive sum for somebody who had the vast bulk of their wealth tied up in shares of a now-worthless company, but has since migrated to German regulators who ignored numerous reports from shortsellers over the years, even going on the offensive and targeting an investigative reporter from the FT, alleging some fantastical scheme about the reporter cooperating with short sellers.
They claimed that top managers at EY’s German unit were likely aware of Wirecard’s fraud (at least, on some level), and likely enabled the company for years.
And on Tuesday, the FT – the paper that masterminded the investigation that brought Wirecard down – reported that German regulators purportedly have evidence that EY signed off on some of the company’s results, even though auditors new some of the statements were “factually inaccurate”. Apas, Germany’s regulator that oversees auditing firms, has obtained the evidence, and is turning it over to prosecutors to help further a criminal probe.
Some of the wrongdoing dates to 2017, when EY reportedly gave Wirecard a pass despite the fact that the “issues” highlighted in EY’s complaints to the company couldn’t be easily resolved. In reality, the stonewalling of the audit team by executives at Wirecard was clearly suspect.
However, in 2017 EY was just days away from denying Wirecard the crucial all-clear, according to documents reviewed by Apas. On March 29 of that year EY warned Wirecard that a qualified audit was imminent and shared a draft version of a qualified opinion with its client, people familiar with the documents told the FT. One of the sticking points raised by EY were protracted delays to a forensic audit by EY’s anti-fraud team into alleged accounting manipulations at a Wirecard subsidiary in India, which was being stonewalled by Wirecard executives. Just days later, the auditors changed their minds. On April 5, they signed an audit opinion that stated: “Our audit has not led to any reservations.” Apas found that it was unreasonable to believe that the issues could have been resolved within a few days, according to people familiar with the matter. The watchdog told prosecutors that therefore EY’s unqualified audit was “factually inaccurate”.
In terms of personnel, it looks like the two key players on the EY side are Andreas Loetscher and Martin Dahmen, who were the lead partners of the EY unit charged with auditing Wirecard. Dahmen eventually left EY in 2018 to become the head of accounting at Deutsche Bank.
Last week the EY auditing partners, Andreas Loetscher and Martin Dahmen told MPs that they were being probed by Apas over their work for Wirecard and declined to give testimony to the parliamentary inquiry commission into Wirecard. EY told the Financial Times on Monday that because of “the ongoing confidentiality obligation” the firm and Mr Dahmen were unable to discuss details of the audit procedures at Wirecard. Based on its current understanding of the facts, “our colleagues conducted their audit procedures professionally, to the best of their knowledge and in good faith”, the firm said. The auditing firm stressed that it was “actively working towards a legally effective release from the confidentiality obligation after which we will be able to provide details.” Mr Loetscher, who in 2018 left EY to become Deutsche Bank’s head of accounting, declined to comment. Apas previously said that it categorically does not comment about its work, pointing to strict legal confidentiality requirements. Munich prosecutors are evaluating the evidence sent by Apas and have not decided whether to open a criminal investigation of EY partners. Under German law, auditors found guilty of such misconduct can be punished with up to three years in jail.
Around the time Dahmen left, Wirecard infamously tried to cover up the massive fraud by engineering a buyout of Deutsche Bank. Though that deal apparently died on the vine.
Of course, DB had access to all the short-seller reports warning about potential fraud at Wirecard. But Dahmen’s previous “experience” working on Wirecard’s books could have of course been very relevant. And now Deutsche Bank is buying up some of the remnants of Wirecard’s loan book.
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When Joseph Bennett noticed some Jeffersonville, Kentucky, police officers near a McDonald’s, he decided to stop and videotape them. Bennett was standing across the parking lot, well away from the officers, when some of them approached him and demanded ID. Bennett said he refused, and no sooner did the words leave his mouth than one officer punched him. Bennett was handcuffed and cited for menacing and resisting arrest. Jeffersonville Mayor Bill Dieruf claims a witness identified Bennett as someone possibly involved in the check fraud officers were investigating. A police spokesperson says he was not and that the department is investigating the matter.
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Brits could be denied entry into bars, theaters, and sporting events if they can not prove they’ve received vaccination against COVID-19, according to the head of the United Kingdom’s vaccine rollout.
Nadhim Zahawi, the newly appointed minister to oversee the UK’s COVID-19 vaccine deployment, says the proof of vaccination could be held on a phone application already used in Britain as part of the government’s track and trace system.
“… I think you’d probably find that restaurants and bars and cinemas and other venues, sports venues, will probably also use that system as they’ve done with the app,” Zahawi told the BBC on Monday.
“The sort of pressure will come both ways: from service providers – who will say ‘look, demonstrate to us that you have been vaccinated’ – but also we will make the technology as easy and accessible as possible.”
Zahawi explained that while the vaccine should be voluntary, he believes Brits will find that most businesses will require proof of vaccination before providing service.
“I think people have to make a decision but I think you’ll probably find many service providers will want to engage in this in the way they did with the app,” he said.
In September, England’s National Health Service launched a smart phone app that alerts users if they have spent more than 15 minutes around or have been within six feet of another user who has tested positive for COVID-19. It also warns users if they have been in a pub, restaurant, or other kind of hospitality venue at the same time as someone who has symptoms.
Zahawi denied to provide any deadlines on when the vaccine would hit the UK market but did express hope that it would be available before Christmas.
The Ministers “new normal” outlook comes on the heels of Australia’s largest airline announcing that it is considering mandating a COVID-19 vaccinations for travelers who wish to fly with them internationally.
“We are looking at changing our terms and conditions to say, for international travelers, that we will ask people to have a vaccination before they can get on the aircraft,” CEO of Qantas airline, Alan Joyce said in an interview with Aussie news last week.
“I think that’s going to be a common thing talking to my colleagues in other airlines around the globe.” Joyce would add.
Perhaps coming as no surprise, both Nadhim Zahawi and Alan Joyce have ties to the World Economic forum, the organization behind the “Great Reset” agenda which has the stated goal of molding a post COVID world to its vision.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/39Anp6K Tyler Durden
British Army Deployed To Handle “Anti-Vaccine Propaganda” And Protests Tyler Durden
Wed, 12/02/2020 – 02:45
Today in “resistance is futile” news…
The British Army’s Information Warfare Unit is being deployed to deal with “anti-vaccine propaganda” heading into the rollout of the vaccine, The Daily Mail reports. The unit was launched in 2010 and is part of the Army’s 77th Brigade, which “often works with psychological operations”.
In fact, “solders are already monitoring cyberspace for Covid-19 content”, the report reveals. The move comes as a response to a growing number of both anti-lockdown and anti-vaccine protests. Late last week, for example, more than 155 anti-lockdown protesters organized in Central London, marching through Westminster and chanting “shame on you” and “freedom”.
Others waved signs reading “All I want for Christmas is my freedom back”, “Ditch the face masks” and “Stop controlling us”. The country is implementing similar fines and restrictions for businesses as the U.S. government. And, similarly, businesses are starting to take matters into their own hands and defy lockdown orders.
In the U.S., many business owners are now clinging to the constitution. In the U.K., many are “using the Magna Carta as a defense – quoting an article that allowed Barons to ignore unfair rules in the 13th Century.”
Some in the country have said they will refuse the vaccine and will do the same for the children. Others have called it a “mass sterilization program”. Other Brits simply “feel the Government is wielding too much power,” the Daily Mail notes.
The country is also launching a probe into “vaccine disinformation”, including an investigation into (of course) Russia.
A Cabinet Office spokesman said late last week: “As we edge closer to a vaccine we continue to work closely with social media companies and other organizations to anticipate and mitigate any emerging anti-vax narratives and promote authoritative sources of information.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/33wjrYQ Tyler Durden
A New survey has found that a majority of 55% of British people believe that the Black Lives Matter movement has enflamed racial tensions rather than improving the situation in the country.
The poll, conducted by Opinium, found that only 17% of respondents actually believe the movement has had a positive impact on race relations in the UK.
Even 44% of people from ethnic minority backgrounds agree that BLM has had a negative impact.
A whopping 70% of conservatives agree that the movement has stoked racial disharmony:
55% of all British adults and 44% of ethnic minorities think that Black Lives Matter (BLM) protests inflamed racial tensions pic.twitter.com/oHwygx3WIj
Commenting on the findings, the director of the Centre for Research in Race and Education based at the University of Birmingham, Professor Kalwant Bhopal told The Guardian that it shows white people “feel their privilege is being threatened and questioned”.
This is a bizarre comment to make, given that a sizeable portion of non-white people agree with the sentiment that BLM has worsened race relations.
“When they see something like BLM they do what they can to protect it [their white privilege] and there is a backlash,” Bhopal added, displaying severe cognitive dissonance.
The British government is, once again, out of step with the public on this issue, given that at the height of a national lockdown it allowed BLM protests to go ahead unimpeded, and even consented to statues of historical figures, including Winston Churchill, as well as war memorials being covered by boxes at the best of the BLM mob.
The findings in the UK mirror the backlash for BLM in the US, where opinion shifted massively against the movement after repeated violent clashes with police, mass looting and rioting resulted from many BLM gatherings.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/37uw6wq Tyler Durden
Many of us will give money to charity this month. Americans give more than any other people in the world.
Good for us.
56 years ago, because American charities hadn’t ended poverty, politicians said they would end it. They declared a “war on poverty.”
That “war,” so far, has cost $27 trillion.
Some people were helped. But the handouts also had a bad effect.
My new video shows a moving graph of America’s poverty rate. It reveals that before the War on Poverty began, Americans had been steadily lifting themselves out of poverty. Year by year, the number of families in poverty—defined as earning less than three times what they need to feed themselves—decreased.
Then welfare began, and for about seven years, progress continued.
But then progress largely stopped! That downward trending poverty line now rises and falls with economic conditions. America now has an “underclass,” generations of people who stay poor.
“Welfare taught them they didn’t have to work,” says Yaron Brook, of the Ayn Rand Institute. Handouts perpetuate poverty, he says, “because if you get a job… your checks get smaller.”
That’s why charity is better. Charities are free to help people who truly need help while giving a push to people who need “a kick in the butt.” Government’s one-size-fits-all rules discourage that.
I donate to a charity called The Doe Fund. It tries to “break the devastating cycle of homelessness” by teaching men to take pride in work. Many are helped.
But not all charity helps. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave $100 million to improve Newark’s public schools.
The money disappeared into the education bureaucracy.
Education consultants and friends of politicians got some. Teachers union contracts grew fatter.
“But the public schools didn’t get better,” Brook points out. “The performance of the students didn’t get better.”
This year’s booming stock prices increased America’s wealth gap. Billionaires got richer while store clerks lost jobs.
“Progressives” gathered outside Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s home and set up a guillotine. The message: “Behead the rich.” They think that when Bezos makes billions, the rest of us have less.
That’s ignorant, says Brook. “All of our lives are dramatically better because of somebody like Jeff Bezos. Things just appear at our doorstep. They hire hundreds of thousands of people. They make it possible for poor people to make a living by selling me something that I want!”
I push back. “But he has so much—when others have so little.”
“It’s his money!” Brook responds. “He created it. Once we start deciding what you can or can’t do with your property, what we will get is…extreme poverty for everybody. Only one system has brought people out of poverty, capitalism.”
That’s what I finally learned after years of consumer reporting.
Consider three ways to help people: government, charity, and capitalism.
Government is needed for some things, but it’s inefficient, and its handouts encourage dependency.
Charity is better because charities can make judgments about who really needs a handout versus who needs a push. But charities can be inefficient, too.
Oddly, what helps the most people in the most efficient way is greedy, self-interested capitalism.
“Two hundred fifty years ago,” recounts Brook, “almost all of us were earning what the United Nations today defines as extreme poverty, $2 a day or less. That was 94 percent of all people on planet Earth. Today, only about 8 percent are that poor. Why? Not because of charity, not because of foreign aid but by employing people….Businesses are the most efficient because they have the right incentives. They won’t survive if they’re not efficient. Government has no such incentives. And charities are mixed.”
So, why do billionaires and entrepreneurs now rush to donate, rather than doing what they’re best at: innovating?
“They want to be liked,” replies Brook. But “they’re buying into false ideas, both economically and morally. They are acting against their self-interest, and against all of our interests, including the interests of the poor.”
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
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via IFTTT
Many of us will give money to charity this month. Americans give more than any other people in the world.
Good for us.
56 years ago, because American charities hadn’t ended poverty, politicians said they would end it. They declared a “war on poverty.”
That “war,” so far, has cost $27 trillion.
Some people were helped. But the handouts also had a bad effect.
My new video shows a moving graph of America’s poverty rate. It reveals that before the War on Poverty began, Americans had been steadily lifting themselves out of poverty. Year by year, the number of families in poverty—defined as earning less than three times what they need to feed themselves—decreased.
Then welfare began, and for about seven years, progress continued.
But then progress largely stopped! That downward trending poverty line now rises and falls with economic conditions. America now has an “underclass,” generations of people who stay poor.
“Welfare taught them they didn’t have to work,” says Yaron Brook, of the Ayn Rand Institute. Handouts perpetuate poverty, he says, “because if you get a job… your checks get smaller.”
That’s why charity is better. Charities are free to help people who truly need help while giving a push to people who need “a kick in the butt.” Government’s one-size-fits-all rules discourage that.
I donate to a charity called The Doe Fund. It tries to “break the devastating cycle of homelessness” by teaching men to take pride in work. Many are helped.
But not all charity helps. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gave $100 million to improve Newark’s public schools.
The money disappeared into the education bureaucracy.
Education consultants and friends of politicians got some. Teachers union contracts grew fatter.
“But the public schools didn’t get better,” Brook points out. “The performance of the students didn’t get better.”
This year’s booming stock prices increased America’s wealth gap. Billionaires got richer while store clerks lost jobs.
“Progressives” gathered outside Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s home and set up a guillotine. The message: “Behead the rich.” They think that when Bezos makes billions, the rest of us have less.
That’s ignorant, says Brook. “All of our lives are dramatically better because of somebody like Jeff Bezos. Things just appear at our doorstep. They hire hundreds of thousands of people. They make it possible for poor people to make a living by selling me something that I want!”
I push back. “But he has so much—when others have so little.”
“It’s his money!” Brook responds. “He created it. Once we start deciding what you can or can’t do with your property, what we will get is…extreme poverty for everybody. Only one system has brought people out of poverty, capitalism.”
That’s what I finally learned after years of consumer reporting.
Consider three ways to help people: government, charity, and capitalism.
Government is needed for some things, but it’s inefficient, and its handouts encourage dependency.
Charity is better because charities can make judgments about who really needs a handout versus who needs a push. But charities can be inefficient, too.
Oddly, what helps the most people in the most efficient way is greedy, self-interested capitalism.
“Two hundred fifty years ago,” recounts Brook, “almost all of us were earning what the United Nations today defines as extreme poverty, $2 a day or less. That was 94 percent of all people on planet Earth. Today, only about 8 percent are that poor. Why? Not because of charity, not because of foreign aid but by employing people….Businesses are the most efficient because they have the right incentives. They won’t survive if they’re not efficient. Government has no such incentives. And charities are mixed.”
So, why do billionaires and entrepreneurs now rush to donate, rather than doing what they’re best at: innovating?
“They want to be liked,” replies Brook. But “they’re buying into false ideas, both economically and morally. They are acting against their self-interest, and against all of our interests, including the interests of the poor.”
COPYRIGHT 2020 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
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via IFTTT
For lying on her federal income tax returns, Lisa Folajtar got three years of probation and a lifetime of constitutional disability. Because her crime carried a maximum penalty of three years in prison, she was permanently stripped of her Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
In a case that could give the Supreme Court an opportunity to elucidate the Second Amendment’s restrictions on firearm laws for the first time in more than a decade, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit recently rejected Folojtar’s challenge to the federal ban on gun possession by people with felony records. The dissent echoed the position staked out by the Court’s newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, as a 7th Circuit judge, saying that disqualification is not just unfair but unconstitutional.
Folojtar, who also paid a $10,000 fine and $250,000 in back taxes, argued that she should not have lost her constitutional right to armed self-defense because there was no reason to think she posed a threat to public safety. Two members of a three-judge 3rd Circuit panel disagreed, saying the Second Amendment is limited to “virtuous” citizens, a category from which Folojtar was forever expelled when she cheated on her taxes.
Although that view has been endorsed by several federal appeals courts, Judge Stephanos Bibas said in his 27-page dissent, it is at odds with the original public understanding of the Second Amendment. He argued that “the historical touchstone” for disarming felons is “danger, not virtue.”
Barrett reached the same conclusion in a 2019 case involving a man named Rickey Kanter, who lost his Second Amendment rights after he was convicted of mail fraud. While history “demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns,” she wrote in a 37-page dissent, “that power extends only to people who are dangerous.”
Barrett emphasized that “founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons.” The number of crimes classified as felonies has expanded dramatically since then, making the connection between that category and an assumption of violent tendencies even more tenuous.
Barrett noted that modern-day felonies include “everything from Kanter’s offense, mail fraud, to selling pigs without a license in Massachusetts, redeeming large quantities of out-of-state bottle deposits in Michigan, and countless other state and federal offenses.” Bibas, who drew on Barrett’s historical research in his own dissent, made the same point.
“A radio talk show host can become a felon for uttering ‘any obscene, indecent, or profane language by means of radio communication,'” Bibas noted. “Opening a bottle of ketchup at the supermarket and putting it back on the shelf” is a felony in New Jersey, he added, and so is “reading another person’s email without permission” in Pennsylvania.
In Oklahoma, adultery is a felony; other states classify it as a misdemeanor or do not treat it as a crime at all. “The Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms should not hinge on such arbitrary, manipulable distinctions,” Bibas wrote.
In the landmark Second Amendment case District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court said “nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill.” But as Bibas pointed out, neither issue was before the Court, so Heller did not resolve them—a point the 7th Circuit conceded last year.
Furthermore, the prohibition to which Folojtar and Kanter objected is of relatively recent vintage. “The federal felon-in-possession ban,” Bibas noted, “did not begin to reach beyond violent crimes until 1961.”
Since 2010, when the Court ruled that the Second Amendment imposes limits on state and local as well as federal gun control laws, it has passed up many opportunities to clarify the extent of those limits, an abdication that has troubled five of the current justices, including Barrett. This case gives the Court a chance to rectify its neglect.
