Saturday 16 January 2021

US Racial Politics: Biden’s Disastrous Pick to Head DOJ Civil Rights Division

 

Biden’s Disastrous Pick to Head DOJ Civil Rights Division


Senate must reject Kristen Clarke’s nomination.


 
Joseph Klein, Front Page Magazine
Kristen Clarke

Kristen Clarke, President-elect Joe Biden’s nominee for Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division, is a disastrous choice. Clarke has a long record of making racially charged-comments, going back to her time in college and continuing to this day. She also has spoken out in favor of anti-Semites. Back in college, Clarke led a student group that provided an anti-Semitic professor a platform to spew his vile remarks. Much more recently, Clarke supported an advocate of the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. If Clarke’s name is not withdrawn from consideration, the Senate must reject her nomination.

Back in the day when Clarke served as the president of the Black Students Association (BSA) at Harvard, she co-authored a letter to the Harvard Crimson asserting that blacks are born with “superior physical and mental abilities.” It’s all due to the chemical melanin, Clarke claimed, which “endows [b]lacks with greater mental, physical and spiritual abilities -- something which cannot be measured based on Eurocentric standards." The Harvard Crimson editors at the time called for Clarke to resign her position at the BSA unless she was “prepared to retract her statements, and apologize publicly for making them.” The furthest that Clarke was willing to go at that time was stating that "The information [contained in the letter] is not necessarily something we believe.” [Emphasis added] There was no public retraction back then.

Clarke also invited the late Wellesley Professor of Africana Studies Anthony Martin to speak at a 1994 Black Students Association-sponsored event. Clarke’s guest used his time to slander Jews with the accusation that Jews had a “tradition” of persecuting blacks. "There was a Jewish monopoly over Blacks being cursed," Martin said during his address.

Clarke defended the choice of Martin to speak after receiving criticism from the Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel. "Professor Martin is an intelligent, well-versed Black intellectual who bases his information on indisputable fact," Clarke said. The real indisputable fact is that Jews have put their lives on the line in the cause of the black civil rights movement. For example, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman served in 1964 as voting-registration volunteers in Meridian, Mississippi and were murdered by Klansmen.

Now that Clarke is craving for the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights position in the Biden administration, she wants a do-over. In a recent interview, Clarke said that she realizes it was a mistake to invite Martin to speak at Harvard. “Giving someone like him a platform, it’s not something I would do again,” Clarke said, adding that “I unequivocally denounce antisemitism.”

Clarke’s recantation comes way too late. If Democrats had an ounce of intellectual honesty, which they do not, Clarke’s invitation to an anti-Semitic professor to speak at Harvard when she was a student would be reason enough for them to “cancel” Clarke now. After all, Democrats in the Senate were willing to throw Trump nominees’ alleged behavior in college and high school back at them when their nominations were being considered. The worst case involved the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. But there were others as well who were targeted by the cancel culture crowd.

In any case, we don’t even have to look back at Clarke’s college days to find proof of her support for radicals who espouse anti-Semitic views. In 2018, for example, Israel denied Vincent Warren, executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, entry to the country because of his organization’s support for the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. Clarke tweeted, “Incredibly disturbed to hear that @VinceWarren was detained and denied entry into Israel on a trip that was carefully and thoughtfully planned out over the course of several months. #CivilRights Lawyers should not be penalized for their work to promote justice.”

As for the letter to the Harvard Crimson Clarke co-authored, claiming that blacks have “superior physical and mental abilities,” Clarke is now saying that it was all a misunderstanding. She claims that the letter was intended as a satirical response to the book The Bell Curve, which posited genetic differences between whites and blacks. Clarke wants us to believe that her letter’s references to melanin as the cause of black superiority “was meant to express an equally absurd point of view — fighting one ridiculous absurd racist theory with another ridiculous absurd theory.” That’s disinformation. At the time when the letter was written, Clarke said that she was uncertain whether the melanin theory of black superiority was true or not. There wasn’t a hint of sarcasm in the letter.

Putting aside her comments about melanin back in college, Clarke certainly shows no uncertainty today in embracing critical race theory, which posits that America is inherently racist. In her capacity as president and executive director of Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Clarke condemned the Trump administration’s decision to remove critical race theory from federal government training programs. "Our nation stands at an inflection point as communities are grappling with the ongoing threat of racism, white supremacy and police violence," Clarke said in a statement. "President Trump's latest federal directive is an attempt to discredit, condemn and silence important conversations happening in communities and workplaces about anti-racism and about our nation's history of white supremacy. By banning government support for these discussions, he sends a dangerous message to the country that racism is a fallacy."

Last year, Clarke denounced what she claims is “systemic racism that pervades every aspect of our lives, especially when it comes to policing and the operation of the criminal justice system of our country.” She supports defunding of the police. “I advocate for defunding policing operations that have made African Americans more vulnerable to police violence and contributed to mass incarceration, while investing more in programs and policies that address critical community needs,” she wrote last June for Newsweek. She called the concerns regarding the violence that broke out last year in the wake of the George Floyd killing a “distraction.”

Clearly, if Clarke were to become Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and have her way, she would push to put the police on trial all over the country. She would also force-feed critical race theory to all federal employees and beyond. She would support the BDS movement as a civil right.

The Senate must reject Kristen Clarke’s nomination.

Sputnik One says:  The new norm in America is that the worse & most incompetent  Black racists will be appointed to positions of power by the incoming Democrat administration to stir up anti-White & in particular anti-Semitic feelings in the Black community by feeding them the lie that Whites & in particular Jews are oppressing & exploiting them.

This is in essence a core part of the  Soros / Obama platform  designed to inflame the gullible Black community into rioting & destroying whole cities and in doing so increasing the poverty & bitterness of its Black residents who are already fully exploited by the Democrat party for the sole purpose of keeping their wealthy elite & mostly White leaders in power in perpetuity.

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Researchers reveal pervasive health threats of unregulated battery recycling

JANUARY 14, 2021, by Rob Jordan, Stanford University
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-01-reveal-pervasive-health-threats-unregulated.html

Workers dig up contaminated soil and waste at the site of a former lead battery recycling operation in Kathgora, Bangladesh. 
Credit: Pure Earth

Decades after the industrialized world largely eliminated lead poisoning in children, the potent neurotoxin still lurks in one in three children globally. A new study in Bangladesh by researchers at Stanford University and other institutions finds that a relatively affordable remediation process can almost entirely remove lead left behind by unregulated battery recycling—an industry responsible for much of the lead soil contamination in poor and middle-income countries—and raises troubling questions about how to effectively eliminate the poison from children's bodies.

"Once the lead is in the environment, it stays there pretty much indefinitely without remediation," said study lead author Jenna Forsyth, a postdoctoral research fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment. "Ultimately, we want to work toward a world in which battery recycling is done safely, and lead never makes it into the soil or people's bodies in the first place."

Among toxins, lead is a supervillain. There is no safe level of exposure to lead, which damages nearly every system in the body. Early childhood exposure leads to irreversible brain damage and permanently lowered IQ, among other severe symptoms. Worldwide, one in three children suffers from lead poisoning, according to a recent report by Unicef and international NGO Pure Earth that describes the problem as "a much greater threat to the health of children than previously understood." The annual cost of resulting lost productivity is estimated to be nearly $1 trillion dollars globally and $16 billion in Bangladesh alone.

A dangerous industry's legacy

Lead acid batteries, such as those used in many cars and backup power storage systems, account for at least 80% of global lead use. In poor and middle-income countries, informal or "backyard" recycling of leaded batteries often uses highly polluting techniques, such as open-pit smelting, that put approximately 16 million people at risk of lead poisoning. An earlier assessment in Bangladesh found nearly 300 such recycling sites with elevated soil lead concentrations and estimated that nearly 700,000 people across the country are living within the contaminated sites.


Workers dig up contaminated soil and waste at the site of a former lead battery recycling operation in Kathgora, Bangladesh. 
Credit: Pure Earth



To better understand informal battery recycling's impact on children, study partners from the International Centre for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh, observed daily activities of people living adjacent to an abandoned battery recycling operation in rural Bangladesh and surveyed childcare givers. They noted, for instance, that women and children were regular visitors to the abandoned battery recycling site, spending hours a day there. The residents explored the area, scavenged battery scraps to use as household materials or toys, and even collected soil colored white by smelting ash to add visual appeal to their home exteriors, yards and earthen stoves. Children often played in the dirt, while women collected firewood and building materials or hung laundry out for drying in the area.

The researchers also tested children's blood before and after a multi-phased intervention that involved removing and burying contaminated soil, cleaning area households and educating residents about the dangers of soil lead exposure. Study partners from Dhaka University's Department of Geology and Pure Earth conducted the remediation work.

Challenges and solutions

Blood tests conducted prior to the remediation work showed many children had lead in their blood at levels up to 10 times higher than what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers elevated. And while the remediation effort led to a 96% reduction in lead soil concentrations over 14 months, the researchers were surprised to find child blood lead levels decreased only 35% on average during the same period.

The discrepancy may lie in the children's chronic soil lead exposure over a long enough time that lead stored in their bones continued to leach into their blood more than a year after the soil had been cleaned. A likely contributing reason, according to the researchers: other sources of lead exposure, such as turmeric adulterated with lead chromate and lead soldered cans used for food storage.

Children playing in waste at the site of a former lead battery recycling operation in Kathgora, Bangladesh. Credit: Pure Earth

Additionally, the research team's housecleaning efforts were unable to remove and wash mattresses and upholstered furniture, which could have continued to harbor lead-contaminated dust. Other potential ongoing sources of contamination could have been home foundations or earthen stoves that local women amended with soil from the site.

"We are gratified that focused efforts to clean up the environment can help," said study co-author Stephen Luby, a professor of infectious diseases at Stanford's School of Medicine. "But with the huge burden of lead toxicity on children globally, more radical efforts to remove lead from the economy are needed."

Since 2014, Forsyth, Luby and other Stanford researchers have worked in rural Bangladesh to assess lead exposure. With funding from the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment's Environmental Venture Projects program, they first conducted a population assessment that found more than 30% of pregnant women had elevated blood lead levels.

Although the total cost of supplies and labor to implement the intervention—$40,300—was relatively cheap by developed world standards, it's likely unfeasible in many regions of the developing world. The researchers suggest several ways to lower costs for such interventions, such as prioritizing house cleaning for children with the highest blood lead levels, but they emphasize the greater imperative to shift incentives away from informal battery recycling altogether.

Forsyth and Luby, together with researchers at Stanford's School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, Graduate School of Business, d.school and International Policy Studies Program; are part of an initiative aimed at eliminating lead from the value chain or otherwise find ways to ensure it does not contaminate the environment. The effort, funded by the Stanford King Center on Global Development, focuses on reducing lead exposure from batteries and turmeric in Bangladesh.


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Friday 15 January 2021

Holy bagel! It's National Bagel Day!

 

Holy bagel! It's National Bagel Day!

Those beloved, ringed bread products have their own national holiday, and it gives us a chance to show our appreciation.

By Jerusalem Post Staff, January 15, 2021

A HOMEMADE bagel with fresh gravlax from ‘Modern Jewish Baker.’  (photo credit: SHANNON SARNA)
A HOMEMADE bagel with fresh gravlax from ‘Modern Jewish Baker.’ (photo credit: SHANNON SARNA)

Friday, January 15 marks what is surely the most popular day of the year - National Bagel Day.

Yes, those beloved, ringed bread products have their own national holiday, and it gives us a chance to show our appreciation

A mainstay of Jewish cuisine for hundreds of years, the bagel is thought to have originated in Poland in the 17th century - Yiddish writings from the 1610s mentioned bagels - although ring-shaped bread dating back 3,000 years has been found in Austria.

 
A staple of the Eastern European diet, the bagel moved to America with the great waves of immigration of Ashkenazi Jews in the 19th century.

 
With thousands of Jewish immigrants settling in New York, particularly Manhattan's Lower East Side, the bagel soon became a common sight around the city, and hundreds of small bagel bakeries were set up, and it is the New York-style bagel that is most famous around the world.  They even had their own union until the 1960s - Bagel Bakers Local 338.

 
Traditionally enjoyed with cream cheese and smoked salmon (lox), tuna, or hot salt beef, bagels can come topped with poppy seeds, sesame seed, onion, garlic and even cinnamon.

Historically celebrated across the United States on February 9, recent years have seen the date move to January 15, but if one day isn't enough, you can always celebrate both. 

So celebrate the festivities, and get yourself a bagel! 

Jake Paul Does The Bagel Dance




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HUGE! CNN-NPR Photo-Journalist Jade Sacker was Embedded with Antifa Leader John Sullivan During Siege of US Capitol – Cheered “We Did It!” After Inciting Riot (VIDEO)

 https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/01/huge-cnn-npr-reporter-jade-sacker-embedded-antifa-leader-john-sullivan-siege-us-capitol-cheered-inciting-riot-video/



From our earlier report —  Footage obtained by the Gateway Pundit from militant Black Lives Matter and Antifa activist John Sullivan’s Discord server shows the so-called “civil rights activist” reveling inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan.6 as he damaged federal property.

Sullivan has maintained in multiple interviews that he regularly attends protests only to record what’s going on, but did not actively partake in the insurgence in Washington.

“It’s just recording, solely, and not being active in it,” he told Fox News last week.

After the Capitol was stormed John Sullivan appeared with CNN photojournalist Jade Sacker on CNN that night.  CNN did not identify Sullivan as an Antifa-BLM protest leader.  They mention Insurgence, USA but not that it is a radical leftist organization.  They do not mention that Sullivan was arrested in Utah during unrest in 2020.  CNN did not reveal that the two were working together inside the US Capitol.  Jade Sacker has done work for NPR, CNN, NBC and other liberal outlets.

00:4501:40

This Day in History


WARNING: Profanity in videos and dialogue – Identity of protestors storming Capitol are investigated | Valley News

Yet, in footage streamed to his followers on Discord, Sullivan, who uses the name “Jayden X” on the app, can be heard inciting violence from inside the U.S. Capitol and boasting about breaking a window.

“If we don’t get in, we’re going to burn this sh*t down,” he gloats. “Let’s go! This sh*t’s ours. F*ck yeah. I can’t believe this is reality. We accomplished this sh*t. We did this sh*t together.

“I didn’t know I hit [the window] that hard. No one got that on camera… F*ck the blue! F*ck the blue!”

This footage comes from a source who wishes to remain anonymous for security reasons.

Moments after Sullivan captured Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt getting shot and killed in the Capitol, a blonde woman accompanying Sullivan who appears to be his accomplice, Jade Sacker, gleefully exclaims, “We did it!”

“You were right! We did it,” she boasts.

“Dude, I was trying to tell you. I couldn’t say much,” Sullivan replies. “Is this not going to be the best film you’ve ever made in your life?”

While the FBI and the mainstream media insist there is no evidence Antifa or BLM played any role in the deadly mob that stormed the Capitol last Wednesday, Sullivan admits in the footage that he strategically wore a Trump hat and carried a “big ass camera” at the rally to guise himself as a journalist and mislead law enforcement and the media about his true motives.

Now there is more on the two radicals who stormed the US Capitol together during the riots.

CNN was embedded with Antifa during the rioting!

John Sullivan was arrested on Thursday in Utah for inciting the riots.

Thursday 14 January 2021

Escape from Egypt🐪🗻 moment on The Coconut Whisperer: Brexit: Driver's 'illegal' ham sandwiches seized at Dutch border under EU rules

 

Brexit: Driver's 'illegal' ham sandwiches seized at Dutch border under EU rules

The driver appeared shocked, but under EU rules meat and dairy from outside the bloc will be "confiscated and destroyed".


Sky News, Tuesday 12 January 2021

https://news.sky.com/story/brexit-drivers-illegal-ham-sandwiches-seized-at-dutch-border-under-eu-rules-12185744

'Illegal' ham sandwiches confiscated by Dutch Border Guards

A driver travelling from the UK had his ham sandwiches confiscated by Dutch border guards, who said they were now prohibited under post-Brexit rules.

Video shows an official handling one of the contraband snacks, neatly wrapped in foil, as he asks its owner: "Do you have meat on all the bread or not?"

When he replies he does, he's told: "Yeah, okay, then we take them all."

The driver asks if they can "take off the meat and leave me the bread?" - but is informed that "everything will be confiscated".

"Welcome to the Brexit sir, I'm sorry," says the smirking border official at the Hook of Holland.

Welcome to Brexit': Dutch police confiscate sandwiches at border, The Telegraph, Jan.12, 2021


The footage is believed to have been recorded last Wednesday, 6 January.

The UK and the EU finally negotiated a trade deal at the end of last year, meaning many rules have now changed.

People travelling from a non-EU country into the bloc are not allowed to bring meat or dairy products with them.

The rule is in place to guard against the potential spread of animal diseases, such as foot and mouth and swine fever.

Travellers carrying undeclared meat and dairy can be fined or be prosecuted under the rules, which warn that any such products "will be confiscated and destroyed".

A limited amount of fruit, vegetables, honey and fish is allowed.


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🐪🗻 This has been an Escape From Egypt  moment on The Coconut Whisperer blog in honor of the former Escape from Egypt channel on the Disqus channel  network 2018-2019 with 34K followers and was the absolute weirdest, wackiest and strangest news channel ever on Disqus !🐪🗻


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