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Swastikas at School: Guess Who Gets Disciplined




Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


"One teacher had walked into her classroom, where a small group of students were speculating on what occurred. She decided to talk to the students and was punished. The other teacher talked about the situation with her colleagues, as well as one student during a private conversation."


Last November, a student at Stoughten High School (Massachusetts) was suspended for creating a swastika out of masking tape in school. However, the school has also disciplined three teachers who spoke out about the incident. One of them rescinded a letter of recommendation she had written to a  college on behalf of the student. Apparently, the school feels that the student was "targeted" by the teachers, based on complaints by his parents. The teachers are getting an outpouring of support and the school is getting a lot of criticism.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/teacher-suspended-swastika_us_5894b999e4b040613136a1af

http://stoughton.wickedlocal.com/news/20170201/fallout-continues-over-handling-of-stoughton-high-swastika

One of the teachers, Stella Martin, is also getting support from the Louis Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law.

http://brandeiscenter.com/news/news_full/ldb_urges_stoughton_public_schools_not_to_punish_teachers_for_speaking_out

To me, while I side with the teachers based on what I have read, there seems to be something missing in this story. Not only is the school superintendent, Marguerite Rizzi, seemingly putting the obvious issue of anti-semitism in the background, but I get the impression that there are legal considerations and political correctness going on here. I don't want to jump to conclusions or go out on a limb, but I think there is more to this story.

Berkeley Braces for Hurricane Free Speech




Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


This article first appeared in New English Review Review.



Conservative pundit Ben Shapiro was able to complete his speech at the University of California  last week thanks to the campus and Berkeley police shedding their potted plant costumes and ensuring that free speech was actually possible. Now comes the big storm. September 24-27 has been declared Free Speech Week as conservative speakers will be attempting to exercise their constitutional rights. Not surprisingly, the far-left is trying to shut it down-violently if necessary, while the university tries to shut it down with red tape and security fees.

Acting in the spirit of education, over 132 Berkeley professors signed a letter asking students to stay off campus during the above days and skip classes. Neat. I suggest students leave campus permanently since they are not getting an education anyway. They can be just as well indoctrinated sitting at home on their computers.

Judging from the announcement (linked above), it's pretty much an all star cast. One of the lesser-known speakers is a young lady to watch. Ariana Rowlands is a former president of the UC Irvine campus Republicans, a real burr under the saddle of UCI administrators. Here is what she says on Facebook about how college administrators are attempting to keep conservative speakers off campuses.

"The newest college administration trick to stop a conservative speaker from speaking at their campus is to pretend like they're going to be cooperative with the event and make empty promises to bring the student group's guard down. Then, just when event details need to be finalized, the administration completely flips the script by digging up arbitrary reasons as to why the previously agreed to contractual requirements cannot be fulfilled and gives new, completely unacceptable requirements that must be met by a fast-approaching deadline or else they say they'll be forced to cancel the event. Colleges across California are attempting this. Sad! They will lose!"

Ariana should know. She went through this with the UC Irvine administrators when she was bringing Milo Yiannapoulos to UCI. They attempted to suspend the College Republicans for a year over some security misunderstanding. They were forced to back down when a national furor arose. In the end, the College Republicans made the UCI administration look like a bunch of boobs.

For those who care about free speech, the eyes of the nation will be on Berkeley September 24-27. No doubt the forces of Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and a few Palestinian flags will show up and make their voices heard. If the cops elect to show a low profile (their preference) and once again assume the position of potted plants, there will be violence. It will not come from the organizers and supporters of the events.

How ironic that conservatives have to put up big security fees when it is the other side that poses the threat of violence. It reminds me of the old Mafia protection racket where store owners had to pay Vinnie and Sluggo money every month to be "protected"-from them.




Get Ready: It's Hillary Time-All the Time




Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.blogspot.com


Hat tip Gossip Cop


"Buy my book, Everybody !"


Hillary Clinton is back, refreshed and in full PR mode. Her latest book, "What Happened", full of excuses about all the people and forces that took the election from her. Today she was on The View. Typical Hillary stuff. Sympathetic audience and softball questions from the panel with the exception of  Jedediah Bila. Even Bila disappointed me. Easy questions with no followup to destroy Hillary's lying answers. And Hillary was in full lying mode. She even had the gonads to talk about the need to fully investigate all those Trump scandals blithely ignoring the obvious fact that her own greatly outnumber any scandals attributable to Trump.

Next up is the Big Interview with Anderson Cooper, which promises to be more obscene than Anderson's infamous duos with Kathy Griffin.

She is the woman who will never go away.

National Lawyers Guild: "We Are All Antifa"




Gary Fouse
fousesquawk
http://garyfouse.bogspot.com


The National Lawyers Guild was founded in the 1930s as a legal arm of the Communist Party USA. Whatever they call themselves now, the are still Marxist in nature. They will defend any far left cause that is dedicated to tearing down the US.

I have seen their LA director, Jim Lafferty, speak twice at UC Irvine, sponsored by the Muslim Student Union in their never-ending campaign to help destroy Israel. In the past two years, representatives of NLG-attached to the UCI Law School- have acted as "legal observers" for Students for Justice in Palestine as they disrupted pro-Israel events on the UCI campus on May 18, 2016 and May 19, 2017.

Now this despicable organization has come out in support of Antifa. Here is an op-ed by NLG's Nina Farnia, Rachel Lederman and Meredith Wallis.

http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/We-are-all-antifa-12174947.php

Contrary to the misleading photo that headlines the SF Chronicle article, the Antifa folks show up dressed in  black with masks and helmets, ready to do battle.

"Last month, thousands gathered in San Francisco and Berkeley to defeat the hatred of fascism and white supremacy. A united front of labor, clergy, students, socialists, anarchists and others successfully prevented the fascists from holding their rallies."

In contrast to the Charlottesville rally, which was organized by KKK and neo-Nazi types, the rallies in San Francisco and Berkeley that Antifa "prevented" from happening were organized by free speech advocates, Trump supporters and conservatives-not fascists or white supremacists. There is a difference. Even so, these so-called lawyers ought to know that they were blocking the exercise of others' freedom of speech rights. Who are the fascists here? 

In addition, the list of examples of "alt-right" violence given by the writers is weak, to say the least. "Death threats" while always wrong, are all too often manufactured and lacking in any corroboration. Claiming to be stalked by a guy with a swastika tattoo is pretty weak especially when you compare it to the actual violence that Antifa carries out when they show up. 

Fortunately for Antifa, their own violence in Charlottesville was overshadowed by the murder of a protester by a neo-Nazi as well as the fact that Antifa was opposing true white supremacists. That was not the case in San Francisco or Berkeley. Antifa is a despicable organization that traffics in violence and attempts to shut down those with whom they disagree. While that is clearly antithetical to what lawyers should stand for, it is hardly surprising that the National Lawyers Guild would defend them.