Arthur Camins offers sage advice: Don’t be silent in the face of injustice.
Our nation is controlled by bullies who are looting the wealth produced by others and using State power to instill fear and maintain control. Protest, march, write, call, email, strike.
Do whatever you can. Just do not be silent.
I have a visceral reaction to bullies. A few guys in my junior high school found self-worth in demeaning or hurting someone vulnerable. Occasionally, I was the victim. Some joyfully joined in the mocking. Other kids looked on. Some laughed uncomfortably, relieved that it was not them. Others, like me, kept their distance in silence.
We live in a country dominated by institutionalized bullying and too much silence. The police bully Black people, mostly with impunity. The NRA bullies legislators. The uber-wealthy, their legislative enablers, and their current presidential spokesperson intimidate the rest of us into compliance by instilling fear of unemployment, loss of income, discrimination, and even death.
Overwhelmingly, the recipients of the most vicious social, economic, and judicial bullying are people of color and usually poor.
Stand up to the bullies.
Do not be silent.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The biggest bully is the LIAR in the WH. Politely obey or be fired if you don’t comply with all of Bunker Boy’s demented ideas
LikeLike
This MARVELOUS law is being put out by Breaking Christian News [BCN]!! There is no link to the full article that is FULL of BS. [Let’s all pray for Trump!]
…………………………………………..
But Trump’s most important win over the deep state is getting no attention at all.It has the potential to save tens of millions of American lives… and it has nothing to do with the coronavirus.
However you feel about the president, once you see the full details on this story… I think you’ll agree: Trump’s single move is about to kick off a health revolution that marks the end of disease… and practically ensures a 2020 Trump electoral victory. In this fast-paced presentation I’ll share with you full details on the FDA ban, and exactly what Trump just did to end it… including the most potent cures now being unleashed… the groundbreaking science behind them… and real stories of Americans they’re saving.
Trump Triumphs Over the Deep StateTrump’s new law unleashes banned cures for Alzheimer’s, cancer, and diabetes.
Dear Reader,
It should have been available all along. But the FDA wouldn’t allow it.
I’m talking about an unusual cellular breakthrough. A discovery so powerful that University of California researchers say it has “recovered sight for people, restored locomotion to paralyzed patients and freed babies imprisoned by disease.”[3]Albert Einstein College of Medicine says it “slows and even reverses various aspects of aging throughout the body.”[4]
All without dangerous side effects.
Yet due to an FDA ban keeping this cellular breakthrough out of your hands…
Until now, patients couldn’t use it. Doctors simply weren’t allowed to allowed to prescribe it.
But that’s all changed.
Because President Trump has quietly made a stunning move that changed everything… opening the floodgates to this cure and thousands of others that were previously banned by the FDA bureaucracy.
Now, thanks to Trump’s new law, lives are being saved every day — lives that were on the verge of being lost because of government red tape…
LikeLike
Apparently, none of these “miracles” has worked on Trump. He is the same paranoid misanthrope he has always been. I wish there were a cure for Trumpism. The only antidote I can think of is large numbers of disgruntled citizens showing up to vote in November.
LikeLike
Diane, I know you care about the quality and truth of what is posted on your blog. You rightfully discern about the tone and topics you allow on it. Having devoted the past 22 years of my life to cancer patient advocacy and education, I hope you would consider deleting or at least moderating comments like this. The idea that cures are being “banned” is absurd, dangerous, and can dupe well-meaning, desperate people who are fighting or whose loved ones are dealing with disease and/or disability. The idea that anyone in a position of position of authority would do so is preposterous. No one person, company or agency can do this because of things like peer review, collaborative research, internal review boards, and medical societies. Ask any top researcher if they would be unhappy about finding a cure in their field of research and the answer you would get be something to the effect of, “Of course not, there are plenty of diseases out there left to tackle.” The idea that the doctor or researcher would allow a patient to suffer or die because of personal motivations, whatever they may be, is as offensive a charge as one could make against another. The measure of their commitment is their recognition that for most them, their life’s work will be not be recognized and proven wrong, but understanding what doesn’t work and might be hazardous is just as important as success. One can’t have success in medical research unless there is a lot of failure–which is the norm.
I tried, to no avail, a few weeks ago, to explain this as calmly and rationally as I could. I explained how the idea of “a cure for cancer” is the wrong mindset, because there are potentially hundreds of types of cancer, sometimes dozens within a particular category we identify with a body part or system. There are many problems with medical research, the most serious being the lack of political will to fund it adequately. NIH only funds about 10% of its peer review approved research submissions because of low funding. I was intimately involved in the advocacy for the doubling of NIH funding from 1998-2003 and have been dismayed by the bipartisan neglect to maintain that momentum since. It’s the major reason why I know focus almost exclusively on patient education. Public policy advocacy and policies to change this have been criminally negligent. Biden deserves respect for his efforts to create a “medical moonshot” initiative in has last year as vice president. That has now been replaced by a meaningless waste of money and resources to do a real moonshot, monies that should go to medical research right here on Earth.
But to claim that cures need to be “unleashed,” that there is some sinister motive to allow unnecessary suffering and death is not just kooky, it gives false hope and great frustration to people who need to focus on the real world, not some dangerous fantasy. It diminishes what this blog is all about: truth, progress, and a better future for the generations that will hopefully live better and freer lives than we do.
LikeLike
GregB: “I hope you would consider deleting or at least moderating comments like this.”
YOU are completely missing my point!!! This is pure crap that “Breaking Christian News” is sending out to make followers believe that Trump is truly the ‘chosen one’ who can ‘fix’ absolutely everything.
IT IS PURE NONSENSE. I do believe, however, that we must be informed about what these ‘Christians’ are sending out to their readership as ‘facts’.
This is a media that has a following. They send out partial truths and change the whole meaning. For example: one item said that Pelosi was, in a video, showing evidence of being mentally ill or on drugs. That video had been manipulated and had been proven to be technically changed from her original speech. The fact of the manipulation was missing. How many people read that garbage and now actually believe that Pelosi, who opposes Trump, is on drugs?
LikeLike
I apologize. This post lined up very closely to the discussion we had a while ago, so I missed the intended irony. I did look up BCN website and was tempted to wash my eyes out with Clorox after.
LikeLike
GregB: “I did look up BCN website and was tempted to wash my eyes out with Clorox after.”
Please don’t. DO NOT follow the advise of the Orange Virus that infects the WH OR Breaking Christian News.
LikeLike
Chan Zuckerberg-funded scientists urge Facebook to tamp down on more incendiary posts:
“More than 140 scientists funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative — a philanthropic organization founded by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan — sent Zuckerberg a letter Saturday calling the social media site’s lax policy enforcement around inaccurate information and incendiary language contrary to CZI’s mission to ‘build a healthier, just, and more inclusive future,’” Nitasha Tiku reports.
“The list of signatories includes professors from more than 60 leading research institutions, including Harvard University, Stanford University, and University of California San Francisco, as well as one Nobel laureate.”
LikeLike
Do we seriously want Fakebook/Zuckerberg to be the arbiter of what is or isn’t inaccurate or incendiary? If ever there was a perfect example of “be careful what you ask for”….
LikeLike
Do we really want Facebook/Zuckerberg to print outright lies without any consequences? Do we really want him to publish Nazi propaganda? Do we really want him to post anti-Semitic stereotypes? Do we really want him to publish racist lies? The reach of FB is enormous. Why should an organization so powerful and super-profitable be completely unaccountable? Shouldn’t FB live by the same standards as network television?
LikeLike
It’s not Fakebook that’s printing anything. It’s individual users.
What inevitably happens when left-wing groups demand that the powerful protect them from “hate” or “lies” or whatever, those demands end up getting used to silence left-wing dissent. For instance, if we demand that Fakebook remove “hateful” or “inaccurate” posts, everything in support of the Palestinians against the illegal and oppressive Israeli occupation is likely to be removed as “anti-Semitic”.
LikeLike
I’d like the Cyborg to do what’s right, but he won’t. He has no heart, no soul…only a CPU. The Cyborg will only do what is right for his own pocketbook and offshore bank accounts. We are all stuck in a whammy of a situation since all of these “movements” are all being conducted via social media while the same social media is allowing the promotion of lies. The tech G-ds have too much power and money.
LikeLike
This is good advice, if difficult to follow. People should stand up to bullies and protect vulnerable people when they can. They should call out ideas they disagree with, rather than remain silent, or just nodding their heads because that’s what the speaker expects of them. At a minimum, ask what evidence people have for the claims they make, and what they mean by the terms they use. Better to get it out in the open than let it fester. I haven’t always followed this advice in my own life. I’m getting better lately.
LikeLike
I love it when we agree. But we’ll continue to have our disagreements! Very well stated.
LikeLike
OK, I’m going to share a couple stories that I almost never tell.
I started first grade at the age of five. Then I was skipped from fifth to seventh grade. So, I was younger and smaller than my classmates. I was constantly bullied as a result. One young man regularly taunted and punched me up at my bus stop each morning. I spoke with my mother about this, and she said, “Well, you know what Jesus said. You are supposed to turn the other cheek.” The following morning, the bully started again. He hit me in the face, and I stood there, not moving, taking it, as he hit me again and again. I recoiled from each blow and stood my ground, just looking at him, staring him in the face. This startled him. He looked at me as though I were some sort of alien wonder and then stopped. This young man was arrested for murdering another young man with a knife in a fight in a local park during my last year in high school.
Several other young men on my bus also routinely taunted me and beat me up, calling me “shrimp” and various expletives referring to sexual orientation. One day, they held me on the bus for several stops past mine, on the way home, and then beat me extremely badly, leaving me with black eyes and bruises over much of my body. The leader of this group of boys was stabbed to death in a local bar, though he was underage at the time, the year after we graduated from high school.
In my last couple years of high-school, I came into my own. I started a rock band, and I was suddenly one of the cool kids, complete with an awesome girlfriend.
I am of normal height and build. I just happened, at the time, to be young. In my twenties, I became a long-distance runner and a swimmer. And all my life I hated bullies. Woe unto you, when I was teaching, if I caught you bullying another kid. But I’ve come to understand bullies better. These were ignorant small-town boys from families that others referred to as “white trash.” They needed, at the time, someone to feel superior to.
LikeLike
That morning of passive resistance at the bus stop taught me something really important. My fear of bullies was the thing I had to conquer and was worse, far worse, than what they might inflict on me. After that morning, the fellow, weirded out by my reaction–my arms to the side, taking it, but not backing down or running away–never bothered me again. I remember him, at the time, looking at me, saying, “Do something. Do something.” I just stood there until he gave up. What I did was not, emphatically not, what I would counsel kids to do–it’s downright dangerous. But the result is fascinating, isn’t it?
LikeLike
“The 27-year-old protester said the words of her white father, who died 16 years ago, ran through her head: “No matter who the threat is, no matter what the threat is, you look them in the eye so that they know you’re human.”
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/us/girl-black-lives-matter-montana-agitator-trnd/index.html
LikeLiked by 1 person
love love love this
LikeLike
Bullies want your fear. That’s what they feed upon. Don’t give it to them.
LikeLike
Or you could have done a “Ralphie” (if you don’t know, watch The Christmas Story)! I will only “turn the other cheek” for so long before I take immediate action. Either way works, I guess?
LikeLiked by 1 person
Although, up until 9th grade, I was always the smallest kid in class, including girls, and had longish hair and a fairly dark complexion, I was never bullied, something I understand now was very rare. I was lucky. I think it was because, except for 7th grade and starting with 10th, I always attended schools that were majority military brats. We were racially and geographically diverse and knew we’d be moving around a lot. Wasn’t until I attended an all boys Catholic school from 10-12 that I experienced ridicule for not being Catholic and was called a “sand nigger” by some that I felt something was really wrong. The behavior I witnessed had little to do with the message they were trying to send in compulsory religion classes.
LikeLike
Thanks for this remembrance. My brother, always a bit bigger than the other kids, always came to the aid of the bullied. I on the other hand, was small and timid, which makes me look back on the times I held back with some shame.
LikeLike
Bob Sheperd,
This is the kind of advice that works for VERBAL bullying. Don’t react when mean kids throw insults and walk away. Those bullies are just looking for a reaction and as long as they don’t do anything physically to impede your way (as the bullying white Trump supporting high school student did to the Native American musician), they can be ignored.
However, there is a second kind of bully which is empowered by people advising victims to walk away or avoid.
Those are the bullies that don’t just throw verbal insults, they impede the child from avoiding those insults. They get kicks out of punching and hurting people because they CAN. Because they are ENABLED.
And I will bet you dollars to donuts that the bully who hit and punched you and got surprised that you didn’t react simply found another child to bully. They don’t stop unless they are no longer enabled by those in power or their own power to keep bullying and victimizing at will.
It’s the reason “no excuses” charters keep bullying young children to leave. Because they can. Because no one calls them out. Because when they get caught on video bullying, they make the false claim that it is one bad apple as opposed to their system in which those actions are enabled and sometimes rewarded. Even if the victim does not react or complain.
LikeLike
Well, he certainly did find others to bully. He died when someone he was bullying stood up to him. However, what I did in this instance isn’t what you describe. I stood and took the beating without reacting OR running away. This totally freaked him out.
LikeLike
I learned from this that nonviolence and sheer will are very powerful. And in my way, that day, I refused to give him what he wanted.
LikeLike
I have an adopted daughter from Peru. Here’s an example of her dealing with verbal bullying. One day on the bus, a kid yelled at her, “Go back to Mexico!” She turned and said, for everyone to hear, “I’m not from Mexico. I’m from Peru. But I’m sure you wouldn’t be able to find that on a map.”
LikeLike
Your daughter made a brilliant response to verbal bullying! That’s what I mean — that kind of verbal bullying can be addressed by ignoring or reacting.
The thing is that non-violence isn’t enough if the institutions are not responding.
Rather than responding non-violently, your school should have been set up so that if anyone punched another child, it was made clear from the top that action was wrong and would not be condoned, ever.
I have always thought the solution is to send the cops from Minneapolis to police only the all white communities in the ‘burbs with their “necessary tactics”. If they treated white teenagers driving in a car the way African American teenagers are treated, their excuses would not be tolerated for one minute.
I think someone should make a video with the police and white people demonstrating that it is only racism that allows the public to justify the brutal policing of African Americans.
A white man is stopped for speeding. The policeman says “can I please see your driver’s license?” The white man reaches in his pocket for his drivers license and boom, a hail of bullets kills him. Everyone says it is the white man’s fault for reaching for his wallet when he was asked for his license, and he clearly deserved to die for that.
Four white preppy teens are driving in a car. A policeman stops them and asks to see the driver’s license. The teen reaches in his pocket for his wallet and boom, a hail of bullets kills him. The white teen’s parents are told it was all his fault because he shoud have been taught that the proper reaction to being asked for a license is not to reach into his pocket to get it and since he forgot to do that, he should be shoot dead. It’s the parents’ fault their child died.
A white boy is walking home from buying a packet of skittles on a dark lane. Suddenly an African American man with a gun is chasing him and he runs away. Later, the African American man with a gun finds him and the frightened white boy tries to fight back against this man who has been chasing him for no reason, but the African American man shoots the white teen dead. The police come and approve of the African American shooting the white teen and tell the white boy’s family that it was all his fault, while the man with a gun who chased him is a hero for “standing his ground”.
A white 30 year old man is standing on the sidewalk in the middle of the day looking at his phone, when he is tackled by a policeman and intentional thrown on the ground as hard as possible in a position to cause as much pain as possible. When that 30 year old white man squirms in reaction to the pain the policeman is intentionally causing, the policeman causes even more pain and says “stop struggling or I will shoot you” and then intentionally twists the arms even harder and when the 30 year old man can’t help but struggle against the pain, he is shot dead. Everyone says it is his fault.
Out the suburbs, a group of policemen bang in the door of a white affluent family and shoot the mother dead in her bed. The police say to the husband and children of the mother they have just shot dead “oops, our bad, wrong house” and continue on their way.
The police have started to treat peaceful white protesters the way they have treated peaceful African Americans in the past. With violence and aggression.
And if they want to use those police tactics, they should take them to the all white suburbs and use them on every white person they encounter.
It reminds me of the people who insist that “no excuses” charters are so great and don’t notice that those charters are not proliferating in white communities and the very young students in mostly white schools are not held to the same standard and then severely and aggressively punished if they do not meet them.
LikeLike
John Oliver was anything but silent last night on “how the **** we got to this point…”
“More police, even more police…Police union..Shoot ’em in the leg…”
Did he cross the line? Will he be charged with using right-wing talking points?
Calling out both cheeks of the same arse, is upsetting to some.
LikeLike
If you want to push right wing pro-Trump propaganda on blogs, you should be more coherent in your arguments. Maybe check with your handlers?
LikeLike
This originally came from Breitbart and then was “Breaking News from Patriotic Times”.
[Will we ever get rid of COVID-19 when such hate propaganda is believed? Lockdowns keep the virus from spreading but that isn’t the message this article gives.]
……………………………………………….
Nolte: Dr. Fauci Is Either a Liar or a Fraud
MONDAY 6.8.2020
BREAKING NEWS
Fauci is a stone-cold liar. And if he’s not a stone-cold liar, his only defense is that he’s a fraud. Either way, shame on him.
Mea culpa: I spent a lot of time on these here digital pages defending Dr. Anthony Fauci. Brother, was I wrong. Fauci is a stone-cold liar. And if he’s not a stone-cold liar, his only defense is that he is a fraud. Either way, shame on him … and me.
For months Fauci has been everywhere, all over TV, urging Americans to lock themselves down, to abandon their jobs, their sick and dying family members, the small businesses they spent their lives getting off the ground; he urged us to drive our economy into the dirt, pull children who desperately need structure out of school, forgo once-in-a-lifetime graduations and graduation parties, cancel weddings and vacations.
Fauci’s message was clear, militant, terrifying, and relentless: If you don’t do these things, if you don’t sacrifice these things, if you don’t give up your liberty and prosperity, you are no better than a serial killer. The coronavirus is a unique and deadly killer, a particularly infectious and fatal disease unlike anything we’ve seen in more than a century.
And because Fauci became America’s trusted scientific (and moral) authority, because he assured us he spoke only as a scientist and infectious disease expert, because he assured us he would always tell us like it is, and do so at any cost because public health was his only priority, look at what happened.
A woman was arrested for reopening the business that fed her family. Christians were persecuted for attending church in the safety of automobiles. Teens were held up to national ridicule for behaving like teens in Florida and the Ozarks. Countless Americans suffered untold anguish after hospital visits were forbidden and funerals canceled. Everyday Americans were relentlessly demonized for daring to speak out or even question the Holy Writ of Fauci…
And God help those who came out to protest the lockdowns, because bitter, power-hungry tyrants such as Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) and the hate-filled media that empower her, waved the Holy Writ of Fauci to justify smearing these Americans as racists and punishing them with lockdown extensions…
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/06/07/nolte-dr-fauci-either-liar-fraud/
LikeLike
A video timeline of the crackdown on protesters before Trump’s photo op
The Washington Post reconstructed who did what to clear protestors from the streets outside the White House on June 1. Watch how it unfolded.
…Although WH officials have denied that it was used, a WUSA9 television reporter at the intersection recovered a spent canister labeled “CS”, a substance commonly known as tear gas. He later posted a photograph of it on social media…
Trump gets a three minute photo op.
Five civilians were injured and several officers later reported minor injuries.
54 arrests were made within 2 hours in the vicinity of Lafayette Square.
Park Police said that they followed procedure in advancing on what they said were violent protesters. Two officers were placed on leave one the incident with Australian journalists.
Arlington County police said they were told the crowd was being moved to allow contractors to erect a new barrier.
https://wapo.st/37a2KTN
LikeLike
WaPo:
Large majority of Americans support protests of George Floyd’s killing and say police need to change, poll finds
Americans overwhelmingly support the nationwide protests that have taken place since the killing of Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis, and they also say police forces have not done enough to ensure blacks are treated equally to whites, according to a Washington Post-Schar School poll.
President Trump receives negative marks for his handling of the protests, with 61 percent saying they disapprove and 35 percent saying they approve. Much opposition to Trump is vehement, with 47 percent of Americans saying they strongly disapprove of the way the president has responded to the protests.
LikeLike