Black Lives Matter Lauded Fidel Castro

We are behind the curve on this, but better late than never. From the Huffington Post:

Upon hearing of the passing of Fidel Castro, Cuba’s dictator-emeritus, leftist politicians and celebrities wasted no time taking to social media to sing their sweet elegies for the Western Hemisphere’s most notorious tyrant.

Yet these tribute tweets, brimming with unwarranted admiration, soon encountered fierce resistance. There were those who quite sensibly pointed out Castro’s litany of human rights abuses. To speak approvingly of Castro, to eulogize him through euphemism, is to sanitize the legacy of a man who, in addition to committing egregious human rights violations, also tanked one of Latin America’s most historically prosperous economies.

But the Castro enthusiasts were also rebuked by a different sort of argument: the eruption of pure, unbridled celebration on the streets of Miami, the place where many exiled Cubans now call home.

While headlines and hashtags seemed to center mostly on the remarks of Barack Obama, Enrique Peña Nieto, Narendra Modi, and Justin Trudeau, one of the most benighted responses came from the feed of Black Lives Matter.

On Sunday, the organization published an essay, “Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante,” in which the leaders of the movement encourage their own to “push back against the rhetoric of the right and come to the defense of El Comandante” as they “aspire to build a world rooted in a vision of freedom and the peace that only comes with justice.”

Lessons from Fidel: Black Lives Matter and the Transition of El Comandante https://t.co/CYTcy6ReIa

— Black Lives Matter (@Blklivesmatter) November 27, 2016

Of course, there is much else wrong with Black Lives Matter.

But this whole business raises a question: while conservative politicians are required to renounce white supremacist organizations, and when they do (as Donald Trump did) are hectored for not denouncing them in sufficient feverish language, it’s just fine for liberal politicians to cozy up to Black Lives Matter.

As Barack Obama did.

And of course, the same corporations that engaged in smarmy virtue signalling about the Charlottesville riots (placing all the blame on the white nationalists, and none on Antifa) have pandered to and funded Black Lives Matter.

Of course, the hatred of police that Black Lives Matter engenders among blacks is ultimately harmful to the black community. But the liberal politicians and the corporate panderers don’t care. They have gotten the protection they wanted.

Being Blunt About Being a Bigot

From (of course) The Huffington Post:

I don’t like white women.

Whenever I say that, white women look at me like I just decapitated Taylor Swift. If I’m being honest, their reaction is part of the reason I say it. But rest assured, it’s not the only reason.

I don’t like white women because I’m not particularly fond of the construct of whiteness or what it represents. I also don’t appreciate those who are complicit in my oppression and benefit from it. When I say I don’t like white women, it’s not in reference to any specific white woman (aside from maybe Taylor Swift). It’s a declaration that white women pose a very real threat to my existence, and I don’t have to embrace that threat with open arms. You have to earn my fondness. This goes for several other groups, obviously, but for some reason white women seem the most baffled by it. Whenever I meet a white woman who’s not baffled by it, we instantly become friends. Those are the white women I like.

We first were about to label this tirade “politically correct,” but it turns out it’s not.

It turns out the author rejects “intersectionality,” a term that means, roughly, you’ve got to make common cause with all the other politically correct victim groups.

That, of course, includes “women,” but not the women of the real world. In that real world, a majority of white women voted for Donald Trump in 2016. It only means feminists.

But even in the Trump-hating “Women’s March” this writer feels alienated.

There is a bit of wisdom here. The writer understands that the white feminists who claim to speak for all women don’t. But the wisdom is buried under a huge racial grudge.

Liberal “Diversity” at the Huffington Post

Notice anything about this @HuffingtonPost editors meeting? 💃💃💪🏼💪🏼 pic.twitter.com/7sg4SyraPa

— Liz Heron (@lheron) May 20, 2016

Marquette Again on Dishonor Roll: Among 10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech

From the (liberal) Huffington Post: In a year when a large number of colleges did things to stifle speech, Marquette made the top ten:

Marquette University makes this year’s list for the same reason it made last year’s list: its ongoing campaign to strip the tenure of longtime professor John McAdams based on the writings on his personal blog. McAdams criticized a graduate student instructor for suppressing a student’s opinions against same-sex marriage during a class discussion. After the instructor received criticism from readers of McAdams’ blog, Marquette suspended McAdams without due process and without a hint of regard for his free speech or academic freedom rights.

But that was only the beginning. In public statements the university repeatedly insinuated, without any evidence, that McAdams had violated Marquette’s harassment policy, labeled him a threat to safety, and effectively held him directly responsible for the comments and actions of his readers — a position wildly opposed to basic free speech principles.

Marquette announced it was seeking his termination last January, and McAdams is now in his third semester of being banned from teaching and being on campus as he appeals his case. Unless it wants to take up permanent residence in this feature, Marquette must resolve McAdams’ case and return him to the classroom without further delay.

This is the second year Marquette has received this dishonor.

Not only has the Huffington Post (and numerous other outlets) weighed in, Minding the Campus has awarded Marquette President Michael Lovell the “3rd Runner Up” position among the worse college presidents of 2015. Why only “3rd Runner Up?” Because there was a lot of competition in a year when left-wing students bullied faculty and administrators, and college presidents pandered mightily.

It is difficult to know exactly what Marquette administrators are thinking. The people most adamant that we should be fired are a few dozen leftist faculty, virtually all in the humanities and social sciences. Certainly not alumni. And not even mainstream media, who (in spite of their liberal politics) have by a lopsided margin favored free expression in our case and in the many similar cases across the nation.

One has to conclude that Marquette administrators are simply personally offended that any faculty member would have the temerity to criticize them, or bring bad publicity on the institution by outing misconduct at Marquette.

Marquette in Academic Freedom Hall of Shame

From the (liberal) Huffington Post, “Free Speech on Campus: The 10 Worst Offenders of 2014.”

Featured, of course, is Marquette, and its attempt to fire us for a blog post that the politically correct crowd did not like.

Marquette University

Marquette University’s chilling campaign to revoke the tenure of political science professor John McAdams due to writings on his private blog ensures its place on this year’s list. McAdams criticized a graduate instructor for what he viewed as her inappropriate suppression of certain viewpoints for in-class discussion (one student’s opposition to same-sex marriage in particular), and the instructor came in for heavy criticism. Marquette then suspended McAdams without due process and abruptly cancelled his classes for the next semester. It also publicly insinuated that McAdams violated its harassment policy and was a safety threat to the campus, despite a complete lack of proof for either charge. Marquette’s disregard of due process and its incredible denial that its campaign against McAdams’s tenure implicates free speech or academic freedom in any way should frighten anyone concerned about faculty rights. Indeed, if the university succeeds in removing McAdams, free speech and academic freedom will lose whatever meaning they had at Marquette.

The fact that a liberal website would post such an article underlines an important fact: among liberals, there is still a substantial number of old-style traditionalists who favor free speech and expression.

Unfortunately, they are becoming rarer, especially in universities, where the center of gravity increasingly shifts toward politically correct people who happily will shut up opinions of which the disapprove. Indeed, this whole business arose when one Philosophy instructor expressed the intention of doing just that.

Vocabulary of Suppression

Campus leftists have a whole verbal arsenal to use against speech they don’t like. They may call it “harassment.” Or “offensive.” Or “uncivil.” Or “hate speech.” Or “cyber bullying.” Or claim it creates a “hostile learning environment” or “hostile work environment.”

The simple message is “shut up.”

And the clear corollary is “we are going to punish you if you don’t shut up.”

Liberals and Science: Pesticides Hoax

From the (liberal) Huffington Post:

“Many of the ‘healthiest foods’ we eat may not be as healthy as we think” was the lede of a recent Channel 11 news story out of Pittsburgh. It was based on the Environmental Working Group’s just released 2013 “Dirty Dozen” report on pesticide residues on produce, which is trotted out every year by the NGO. These misleading pseudo-analyses frighten consumers and actually discourage them from buying healthy fruits and vegetables.

The news story continues, “Pesticides are meant to kill pests, but the residue isn’t meant to be eaten, and it could be harmful to your health.” Actually, the only truth in that statement is that “pesticides are meant to kill pests.” The rest of it is false, according to the United States Department of Agriculture, which unambiguously states that “U.S. food does not pose a safety concern based upon pesticide residues.”

The Channel 11 news story is typical of the insidious reporting that results from the EWG list. (We refuse to call it a study.) In fact, such news stories are the very reason EWG releases the report each year — to generate coverage that inhibits people from eating produce that isn’t organic. Unless of course, the produce is on the relatively new list, “The Clean Fifteen,” which contain the lowest level of pesticides, according to EWG.

EWG tries to make their “Shopper’s Guide” appear legitimate by relying on samples taken and tested by the USDA and FDA. According to an article in The Huffington Post, “The EWG looked at six measures of pesticide contamination, gave each measurement a score from one to 100 and compiled the results.

But what was their methodology, if you could call it that? “In government tests analyzed by the Environmental Working Group, detectable pesticide residues were found on 67 percent of food samples after they had been washed or peeled. We found striking differences between the number of pesticides and amount of residues detected on Dirty Dozen Plus™ and Clean Fifteen™ foods.” (Yes, they’ve trademarked the names.)

In essence their approach is (in our words), “Some produce had more residue and some had less. We put the ones with most on a list and called them ‘dirty’ and the ones with least and made a different list and called them ‘clean.’”

This type of gimmick should result in an “F” in a 4th grade science fair, not adoring coverage in major media.

Federal agencies agree that pesticide residues, even from those topping the dirty dozen list, are not in the least harmful at the levels they occur. If you think the government agencies are in cahoots with “big agriculture” and you shouldn’t believe them, consider that even the first lady in her “Let’s Move” campaign advocates consumption of more fruits and vegetables, and hasn’t insisted they be organic.

Yet the Dirty Dozen is resurrected each year, and each time — like Charlie Brown fooled by Lucy pulling away the football at the last second — the media buy into it.

The EWG’s crying “Wolf!” about this non-issue began in 1995, when, backed by such eminent scientific entities as the Barbra Streisand Foundation (we are not making this up), the organization published its first “Dirty Dozen” — a list of produce that supposedly contained the highest levels of chemical pesticides. The annual list, which this year includes some of the most nutritious and delicious components of our diet - such as apples, tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, peaches, strawberries and grapes - is accompanied by an admonition to limit consumption of those kinds of fresh produce and to avoid conventionally grown varieties in favor of the more costly organic options.

However, a study published in 2011 in the Journal of Toxicology by Dr. Carl Winter and Josh Katz of UC-Davis showed that 90% of the cases “exposed” in EWG’s 2010 list involved levels of pesticides 1,000 times lower than the chronic reference dose (the level of daily exposure likely to be without an appreciable risk of deleterious effects during a lifetime of chronic exposure). They concluded, “The potential consumer risks from exposure to the most frequently detected pesticides on the ‘Dirty Dozen’ list of foods are negligible and cast doubts as to how consumers avoiding conventional forms of such produce items are improving their health status.”

Moreover, as Dr. Winter wrote in a separate commentary for the International Food Information Council, “Three-quarters of the pesticide/commodity combinations [identified by the EWG] showed consumer exposure estimates more than one million times lower than doses given to laboratory animals continuously over their entire lifetimes that do not show adverse effects.”

These are critical observations because, as has been known from antiquity, “the dose makes the poison”; in other words, a substance is toxic only if the dose and length of exposure are sufficient to cause damage - a fundamental principle of toxicology seemingly alien to the EWG (which relies heavily on the percentage of samples with pesticide, rather than on potentially toxic levels). Moreover, the EWG’s main recommendation - to “buy organic” - is belied by the fact that many organically grown versions of the “dirty” products are also “contaminated.” As Winter and Katz pointed out, the same data from the Department of Agriculture Pesticide Data Program used by the EWG indicate that there are pesticide residues in nearly a quarter of organic food samples.

The “Dirty Dozen” list is always a headline grabber for EWG, so it is no wonder that the media-hungry activist group keeps updating the same worthless analysis each year. The report informs — or more aptly, misinforms — the public conversation about the alleged dangers of pesticides on food. EWG cleverly publishes the report in the spring, just as Americans are getting excited about the prospect of summer produce.

The media have failed dismally to do their homework. Reporters consistently fail to ask pertinent questions about dose, exposure, likelihood of actual harm or compliance with federal regulations. Had they done so, they would have discovered that the pesticide tolerances in food established by the EPA are extraordinarily conservative — that is, highly risk averse — and that even these stringent limits are exceeded less than one percent of the time. But reporters and editors regurgitate the same old story, touting the Dirty Dozen’s supposed dangers while ignoring the science that belies the warnings

Although the minuscule amounts of synthetic pesticides in our foods pose negligible health risks, some activists actually advise consumers not to eat fruits and vegetables at all if they can’t afford organic varieties — in spite of decades of evidence that those who eat the most conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have half the cancer rates for practically every type of cancer and live longer than those who eat less.

We might add, of course, that the extra expense of organic food is easily borne by the affluent yuppies that are the core constituency of places like Whole Foods, but not so available to people who have to eat on food stamps.

We will never convince the intransigent ideologues of the error of their ways, but the media can — and must — do better at presenting accurate and complete information.

Liberals like to claim that conservatives are “anti-science,” since a lot of Christian conservatives don’t believe in evolution, and a lot of conservatives (secular and religious) are skeptical about anthropogenic global warming.

But when an issue comes up that serves neither the social biases of liberals (as evolution does) nor their class interests (as global warming does) the situation is different.

Their dislike of business shows in their rejection of the science on fracking, and their faddish embrace of organic and locally-grown produce.

Their cultural biases against the sort of people who own guns causes them to ignore the social science evidence on the 1994-2004 assault weapons ban, and the evidence that concealed carry laws at worst do no harm, and there is much evidence that they deter crime.

And liberals, being much like likely than conservatives to be secular, are more attracted to flaky new-ageist things like astrology. So social and ideological biases can cause people all across the ideological spectrum to ignore sound science. The problem is that the ignorance of the liberals is much less likely to be challenged in schools, and in the media.