Tag: Protests

Small Acts of Heroism

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The Wages of Evil are Pretty Good

Some publicly minded hero just removed the moorings from Betsy DeVos’ $40 million yacht in an act of well-justified retribution for the evil that she is doing.

There wasn’t a whole bunch of damage, only $5-10,000.00, but I wholeheartedly approve:

A boat owned by the family of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos was vandalized over the weekend while moored at a Huron dock, according to the Huron Police Department.

The Seaquest was moored at the Huron Boat Basin, 330 Main St., according to a police report. The captain of the 163-foot yacht, worth a reported $40 million, called police at about 6 a.m. Sunday, telling them that he and the crew realized at sunrise that someone had untied Seaquest from the dock, setting it adrift.

The crew eventually got control of the yacht, but not before it struck the dock, causing an estimated $5,000 to $10,000 in damage from large scratches and scrapes, according to the police report.

Normally, I am opposed to acts of vandalism as political protest, but normally vandalism as an act of protest tends to hit innocent bystanders.

This didn’t.

Your Mouth to God’s Ears

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I will believe it when I see it, but I hope that this prediction that the United States will see a period or strikes and labor actions unseen since 1945-1946 is true:

In September 1945, a little-remembered frenzy erupted in the United States. Japan had surrendered, ending World War II, but American meat packers, steelworkers, telephone installers, telegraph operators, and auto assemblers had something different from partying in mind. In rolling actions, they went on strike. After years of patriotic silence on the home front, these workers, along with unhappy roughnecks, lumberjacks, railroad engineers, and elevator operators—some 6 million workers in all—shut down their industries and some entire cities. Mainly, they were seeking higher pay—and they got it, averaging 18% increases.

The era of raucous labor is long past, and worker chutzpah along with it. That is, it was—until now. Desperately needed to staff the basic economy while the rest of us remain secluded from COVID-19, ordinarily little-noticed workers are wielding unusual leverage. Across the country, cashiers, truckers, nurses, burger flippers, stock replenishers, meat plant workers, and warehouse hands are suddenly seen as heroic, and they are successfully protesting. For the previous generation of labor, the goal post was the 40-hour week. New labor’s immediate aims are much more prosaic: a sensible face mask, a bottle of sanitizer, and some sick days.

The question is what happens next. Are we watching a startling but fleeting moment for newly muscular labor? Or, once the coronavirus is beaten, do companies face a future of vocal workers aiming to rebuild lost decades of wage increases and regained influence in boardrooms and the halls of power? For now, at least, some of the country’s most powerful CEOs are clearly nervous. Late last month, Apple, faced with reporters asking about a company decision to furlough hundreds of contract workers without pay, did a quick about-face. Those employees, Apple now said, would receive their hourly wages. A few weeks earlier, after Amazon warehouse workers demanded better benefits during the virus pandemic, that company also reversed course, offering paid sick days and unlimited unpaid time off.

………

But if companies are responding to those who are protesting, they might also think ahead and preempt festering trouble down the road. “I like to believe people will say, ‘We treat these people as disposable, but they are pretty indispensable. Maybe we should do what we can to recognize their contribution,’” says David Autor, a labor economist at MIT and co-director of the school’s Work of the Future Task Force.

………

But in 1981, President Ronald Reagan changed all that. Some 12,000 air traffic controllers went on strike, demanding higher pay and a shorter workweek. In a breathtaking decision, Reagan fired all but a few hundred of them. The Federal Labor Relations Authority decertified the controllers’ union entirely. The era of strong labor was over.

In the subsequent age of the no-excuses layoff, the number of major strikes has plunged. Starting in 1947, when the government began keeping such data, there were almost always anywhere from 200 to more than 400 big strikes every year. But in 1982, the year after the air traffic controllers debacle, the number for the first time fell below 100. In 2017, there were just seven. “There was damage to self-esteem every time there was a layoff. It took the militancy out of organized labor, and I don’t think it ever recovered,” Uchitelle says.

………

The current revival of worker activism precedes COVID-19 in the unlikeliest of places. In 2018, West Virginia teachers, among the lowest paid in the nation and four years without a raise, went on strike for nine days in a demand for higher pay. That they won a 5% increase was one astonishing thing. But the walkout itself was stunning, specifically because of the state where it occurred—a former bedrock of ultra-militant coal miners who had repeatedly gone to actual war for better pay and safety but more recently were a bastion of worker passivity.

I hope that this is true, but if labor keeps supporting politicians who offer their full throated support for destructive labor arbitrage policies, (“Free Trade” deals) then we are going to continue competing with people who work for a dollar an hour in Bangladesh.

109th Anniversary

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Normally, there is a gathering commemorating the disaster, but the lock-down in New York City has meant that there will be no gathering to remember the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire this year:

“Today, we mark the 109th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, a catastrophic event in which 146 workers, mostly young immigrant women, were killed as a direct result of abhorrent working conditions and woefully insufficient workplace safety standards. The loss of life was both tragic and avoidable, and sent shockwaves through our city and nation. Outraged Americans demanded that these workers’ deaths not be in vain, and the public outcry that followed brought a renewed sense of urgency to the labor movement and to the fight for stronger workplace protections and fire safety laws,”

—Workers United Secretary-Treasurer Edgar Romney & New York City Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO President Vincent Alvarez, Mar 25, 2020

Normally, we gather at the site of the blaze to mark the anniversary of the Triangle Fire. We assemble at the corner of Washington and Greene Streets to watch the fire truck ladder rise to the 6th floor, which was as far as it could reach in 1911, as workers burned alive or leapt to their deaths from the factory floors above. This year, we express our solidarity by marking the occasion at home, each doing our part to flatten the wave of infections that threatens to overwhelm or city and our country. Even as we stand apart, we stand together.

146 people died, mostly young women working at the factory.

The doors were locked so they could not get out, and the fire truck ladders could not reach their floors, and many of them jumped to their deaths.

She is Off My “They Who Must Not Be Named” List?

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I have a list of people that I refuse to cover, They Who Must Not Be Named.  Basically, these are folks who occupy a significant role in popular culture, but I consider too trivial for me to write about. (Tabloid fodder)

I have applied this to actors, singers, the entire royal family, and celebrities for no reason at all, such as the the reality show family whose last name resembles an adversary race in later series in the Star Trek franchise.

My standard statement on this is:

Absent some sort of political activity, such as endorsements, running for office (PLEASE GOD NO!!), or their attempting to assassinate someone, they will not be mentioned here.

Well, the first person is coming off the list and it is Britney Spears, of all people, because she is calling for a general strike and a massive reorganization of society, which I think qualifies her for removal from the list.

Also, she is sounding Trotskyite, which means that referencing her will piss off my brother, Stephen, aka Bear who swims:

Britney Spears has called for us to strike.

On Instagram, Spears shared a graphic that included the words, “We will feed each other, redistribute wealth, strike.” Her comment on the graphic “Communion goes beyond walls 🌹🌹🌹” included three roses, the symbol associated with socialist movements in the United States, United Kingdom, and beyond. That, dear reader, is the main thing we needed to tell you.

A post shared by Britney Spears (@britneyspears) on



Spears is a surprising but very welcome ally in the struggle to ensure that our response to the global coronavirus pandemic is a just one. But her meming also points to the fact that this is a very rare and unusual time: a period in which draconian, repressive government measures could be introduced, but there is also an opening for people to demand a better society. Across the globe, quarantined people are increasingly reliant on low-paid workers. Governments are swiftly discovering that the actual backbone of society is the lowest paid and, in the case of the gig economy, those with few rights.

Traditional Values, Huh?

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At a Sanders Rally in Phoenix, a protester unveiled a Nazi flag and shouted, “Heil Hitler.”

Clearly, the problem is “Bernie Bros” saying nasty things on Twitter.

More seriously, why the hell aren’t Sanders and Biden getting Secret Service protection?

Moments after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took the stage at his campaign rally in Phoenix on Thursday night, the crowd was on its feet cheering madly for the Democratic presidential candidate.

But those cheers were swiftly replaced by deafening boos when Sanders’s supporters noticed that one man standing behind the senator in an upper section of the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum wasn’t waving a “Bernie” sign like many of those around him.

Instead, the man was holding a red flag above his head — and it was emblazoned with a swastika.

“It was absolutely wild,” Brianna Westbrook, a national surrogate for the Sanders campaign, told The Washington Post. “I never thought I would have seen a swastika at a political event. It’s gross.”

While people near the protester quickly ripped the offending item out of his hands and he was removed from the arena, the mere appearance of a Nazi flag at an event dedicated to a democratic socialist who could become the country’s first Jewish president sparked outcry. The moment, captured in videos and photos that circulated on social media Thursday night, was denounced as an act of anti-Semitism and prompted increased concerns about Sanders’s safety on the campaign trail.

………

“I was expecting Trump supporters to be protesting. I didn’t expect a swastika flag to be unfurled,” Orlando Garrido, a rally attendee, told The Post. “I never thought I would actually see something like that.”

On Twitter, the display was widely condemned as observers pointed out that Sanders’s Polish relatives were murdered in the Holocaust.

………

The Anti-Defamation League identified the protester Friday as Robert Sterkeson, a resident of Arizona. According to the ADL, Sterkeson is “a self-described ‘stunt activist’ who has harassed a range of Jewish and Muslim organizations and events.”

Our Friends In Riyadh ……… Again

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One assumes that they would be repatriated to Saudi Arabia, dismembered with a bone saw, and burnt to ashes in an oven:

A suspected agent of the Saudi government attempted to kidnap a regime critic on American soil, according to the critic and multiple U.S. and foreign sources familiar with the episode. The young Saudi man says the FBI saved him from becoming the next Jamal Khashoggi.

Abdulrahman Almutairi is a 27-year-old comedian and former student at the University of San Diego with a big social-media presence. After Almutairi used social media to criticize the powerful Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman over the October 2018 murder and dismemberment of Washington Post contributor Khashoggi, an unidentified Saudi man accompanied Almutairi’s father on a flight to collect Almutairi against his will and bring him back to Saudi Arabia, according to The Daily Beast’s sources.

“The Saudi government realized I was a threat,” Almutairi told The Daily Beast, revealing for the first time an ordeal that might have culminated in a whole new crisis: the kidnapping and rendition of a Saudi dissenter on American soil. Only timely intervention from the FBI broke up the plot, two sources say.

………

Then someone he describes only as a source in Saudi Arabia told him that his life was in danger—and that living in California did not mean he was safe. It prompted Almutairi to call the police during the week of Oct. 25, 2018.

What happened next he would only learn from an FBI official he said he spoke with: Without Almutairi’s knowledge, his father flew to Los Angeles, and he wasn’t alone. Accompanying his father was someone Almutairi does not know.

But they never arrived in San Diego. The FBI was waiting for them at LAX. According to two additional sources familiar with the incident, the FBI intercepted both the senior Almutairi and the unidentified Saudi man and sent them back on a subsequent flight. The FBI declined to comment for this story.

………

In July, Middle East Eye’s Dania Akkad first reported that in November 2018, a timeline consistent with Almutairi’s story, the FBI met with at least four Saudi dissidents in the U.S. to warn them of threats to their lives emanating from the kingdom. The dissidents were not named, but one of them, Akkad reported, “runs a popular YouTube channel critical of the Saudi government.” 

There is no such thing as a citizen of Saudi Arabia, there are only subjects of the Saudi king.

In some nations, the UK comes to mind, it is a distinction without a difference.

This is not the case for those living under the suzerainty of the House of Saud.

I Feel a Great Disturbance in the Force, as If Dozens of Ammosexuals Suddenly Cried out in Butt Hurt, and Were Suddenly Silenced

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The Ammosexual community has been planning a massive (probably not so massive) demonstration at the Virginia state capitol.

In response to what Governor Northam calls, “Credible Intelligence,” of violence at the rally,  guns will be banned at the demonstration:

A Circuit Court judge upheld Gov. Ralph Northam’s temporary ban on firearms in Capitol Square ahead of Monday’s gun rights rally, which is expected to draw thousands of armed activists from across the country.

From Friday night until Tuesday, weapons of any kind will be prohibited on the grounds of the Capitol under a state of emergency. Northam (D) said the precaution was necessary because of “credible intelligence” that militias and gun rights advocates are threatening violence at the rally.

“This is the right decision,” Northam said in a statement about Richmond Chief Judge Joi Jeter Taylor’s ruling Thursday afternoon. “These threats are real — as evidenced by reports of neo-Nazis arrested this morning after discussing plans to head to Richmond with firearms.”

Gun rights groups filed an appeal to the Virginia Supreme Court on Thursday evening.

Awww, they’ll have to leave their manhood at home, the poor babies.

Macron Caves

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Emmanuel Macron was elected in France because he was seen as a change from a system that delivered nothing for the the ordinary Frenchman while serving the transnational banks and corporations.

To the horror of the voters, Macron is even more the minion of a bloated and corrupt financial sector than were his predecessors.

So he has proposed increases in taxes on ordinary people, more austerity, tax cuts for the wealthy, and, finally, a roll-back of pension rights.

Now, following massive protests,  Macron has abandoned his plans to change pensions:

With tens of thousands of anti-government demonstrators once again coursing through the streets of Paris and other cities and clouds of tear gas and smashed store windows punctuating the urban landscape, the French government made a major concession on Saturday to unions protesting its pension reform plan.

It agreed to scrap, for now at least, a proposal to raise the full-benefits retirement age from 62 to 64. Unlike in the United States, the French government plays a huge role in the retirement plans of individuals in France, both as a source of funds and as overseer and guarantor of the pension system.

The raised age had infuriated moderate unions that the government of President Emmanuel Macron badly needs on its side. Mr. Macron has insisted the French need to work longer to strengthen a generous retirement system that is one of the world’s most generous but may be heading toward a $19 billion deficit.

On Saturday, with a crippling transport strike already in its sixth week, Mr. Macron’s government backed down, announcing that it would “withdraw” the new age limit, and put off decisions on financing the system until it gets a report on the money problem “between now and the end of April.”

Macron’s definition of meaningful reform is robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

The argument is that, in the long run, everyone benefits, but in the long term, as Keynes observed, “In the long run we are all dead.”

Europe does seem to dedicated to repeating the failures that led to the rise of Fascism and World War II.

Oh, Snap

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If you want a snapshot of public opinion in Hong Kong about the recent pro-democracy protests, the district council elections indicate widespread support:

Pro-democracy candidates buoyed by months of street protests in Hong Kong won a stunning victory in local elections on Sunday, as record numbers voted in a vivid expression of the city’s aspirations and its anger with the Chinese government.

It was a pointed rebuke of Beijing and its allies in Hong Kong, and the turnout — seven in 10 eligible voters — suggested that the public continues to back the democracy movement, even as the protests grow increasingly violent. Young Hong Kongers, a major force behind the demonstrations of the past six months, played a leading role in the voting surge.

With three million voters casting ballots, pro-democracy candidates captured 389 of 452 elected seats, up from only 124 and far more than they have ever won. With one race undecided, the government’s allies held just 57 seats, a remarkable collapse from 300.

………

The elections were for district councils, one of the lowest elected offices in Hong Kong, and they are typically a subdued affair focused on community issues. The job mostly entails pushing for neighborhood needs like bus stops and traffic lights.

But this election took on outsize significance, and was viewed as a referendum on the unrest that has created the city’s worst political crisis in decades. In a semiautonomous part of China where greater democracy is one of the protesters’ biggest demands, it gave residents a rare chance to vote.

The gains at the ballot box are likely to embolden a democracy movement that has struggled with how to balance peaceful and violent protests to achieve its goals.

Unfortunately, I think that Beijing will take exactly the wrong lesson from this, and pressure local authorities to crack down further.

In the long run, I tend to think that Hong Kong’s special status is doomed within the PRC.

I ♥ New York

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Also, I ♠️ my cats, but this is not about proper care of one’s pets, this is about how the good people of the Big Apple heckled the sh%$ out of Donald Trump yesterday:

President Trump returned to his hometown on Monday to kick off the 100th annual New York City Veterans Day Parade, his second visit to the city since he announced he was making Florida his primary home.

In an 18-minute speech, Mr. Trump expressed his gratitude to American veterans, but also used his remarks to pay tribute to the city, where he remains deeply unpopular.

“Since the earliest days of our nation, New York has exemplified the American spirit and has been at the heart of our nation’s story of daring and defiance,” Mr. Trump said.

Defiance, in particular, was on display throughout Mr. Trump’s speech, at Madison Square Park in Manhattan, just two miles down Fifth Avenue from Trump Tower, which had been Mr. Trump’s primary residence since 1983, until he filed to switch it to Florida in late September.

Even before the president arrived, protesters had gathered along the streets, a number of them from an anti-Trump group, Rise and Resist. They carried signs calling for Mr. Trump’s impeachment and repeatedly shouted, “Shame!”

In the windows of a nearby glass tower overlooking the dais where Mr. Trump spoke, large signs placed in the windows spelled the word “impeach.” A few floors higher, letters spelling “convict” were placed in another set of windows.

………

But raucous boos and chants jeering Mr. Trump could also be heard throughout the president’s remarks. A chorus of people shouted “lock him up!” and “traitor” and blew whistles as he spoke, causing some veterans to complain that the din was drowning out the president’s speech.

Drowning him out is kind of the point.

A Well Deserved Take-Down

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Following Blizzard banning a gamer and taking his prize money after he made pro-Hong King protests, they have been flooded by GDPR requests by customers who find their kowtowing to China unacceptable.

Complying with these demands are both extremely expensive and opens them up to massive fines:

Being a global multinational sure is hard! Yesterday, World of Warcraft maker Blizzard faced global criticism after it disqualified a high-stakes tournament winner over his statement of solidarity with the Hong Kong protests — Blizzard depends on mainland China for a massive share of its revenue and it can’t afford to offend the Chinese state.

Today, outraged games on Reddit’s /r/hearthstone forum are scheming a plan to flood Blizzard with punishing, expensive personal information requests under the EU’s expansive General Data Privacy Regulation — Blizzard depends on the EU for another massive share of its revenue and it can’t afford the enormous fines it would face if it failed to comply with these requests, which take a lot of money and resource to fulfill.

I really hope that this protest goes forward.

Blizzard is hoping that this will blow over in a few months, but if people put in requests now, they need to comply in the next 30 days or face massive fines, and that ain’t cheap.

Cue Nelson Muntz.

Live in Obedient Fear, Citizen

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The Oregon Titan Fusion Center, a federally funded anti-terrorism center, was used to track peaceful environmental protesters.

This is not a surprise.  Repurposing resources in this way is pretty much baked into the whole “Fusion Center” concept, and we already know that law enforcement in Oregon is pro white supremacist and anti-environmentalist:

A federally sponsored anti-terrorism fusion center in Oregon assisted a taskforce monitoring protest groups organizing against a fossil fuel infrastructure project in the state, according to documents obtained by the Guardian.

The Oregon Titan Fusion Center – part of a network set up to monitor terrorist activities – disseminated information gathered by that taskforce, and shared information provided by private security attached to the gas project with some of the task force members.

Observers, including the American Civil Liberties Union, argue these efforts break Oregon law.

………

The national network of fusion centers were created in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, as focal points for cooperation and information sharing between federal, state and local agencies in detecting and responding to terrorist and criminal activities. In 2018 the House homeland security committee counted 79 fusion centers around the country.

In its own materials, the Titan Fusion Center is described as “a collaborative effort of state and federal law enforcement agencies”, focused on “terrorism, organized crime and gang-related criminal activity”.

The center also says that it “may retain protected information that is based on a level of suspicion that is less than ‘reasonable suspicion’, such as tips and leads or suspicious activity report (SAR) information”.

National fusion center materials say that they “receive information from a variety of sources, including suspicious activity reporting (SAR) information from stakeholders within their jurisdictions, as well as federal information and intelligence”.

The center also says that it “will not seek or retain information about an individual or organization solely on the basis of their religious, political, racial, or social views or activities; their participation in a particular non-criminal organization or lawful event”.

The center states that its activities are governed by Oregon statutes that prevent the gathering of “information about the political, religious or social views, associations or activities of any individual, group, association, organization, corporation, business or partnership unless such information directly relates to an investigation of criminal activities”.

But it is precisely such statutes that observers like the ACLU of Oregon say that SWOJTF, and the fusion center, are breaking.

Kelly Simon, an ACLU of Oregon staff attorney, said: “These communications are just more evidence of the Coos county sheriff’s and Titan Fusion Center’s utter disregard for the bedrock principle of freedom of expression and of Oregon’s anti-profiling laws”.

It should be noted that the , “Titan Fusion Center’s utter disregard for the bedrock principle of freedom of expression and of Oregon’s anti-profiling laws,” is a feature, and not a bug of the program.

Whenever efforts like this are initiated, law enforcement uses them to avoid the legal and constitutional restrictions on how they do their jobs.

This is a fact that is frequently ignored when such programs are drawn up.

The Ghost of Judge Julius Hoffman

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It does not surprise me that whenever there are protests and there are two sides, the cops will be polite and solicitous to Klansmen, white supremacists, fascists, Nazis, and racist, and hostile and aggressive to their opponents.

I have literally never heard of a demonstration in the United States where the cops do not favor the forces of hate and bigotry.

It’s baked into their culture.

So the abusive police presence at the “straight pride” ralley in Boston is no surprise.

What I would not expect, however, is that we would also find a judge so over the top in favor of the bigots that he denied a request by prosecutors to dismiss charges against some of the people who were arrested, and he threw a defense attorney in jail for contempt of court .

Does it sound like the return of the judge from the Chicago 7 trial yet?

Update: Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins filed an emergency petition with the state Supreme Judicial Court on Wednesday regarding Boston Municipal Court Judge Richard Sinnott’s actions, The Boston Globe reports. In it, her office argues that Sinnott “ignored the clear and unambiguous constraints placed on the judiciary by the separation of powers” in not following through with prosecutors’ intent to drop the charges against the nonviolent protesters.

“The judge’s interference with the district attorney’s constitutional authority cannot stand,” the petition reads.

Rollins filed the petition on behalf of one of the nonviolent defendants, with the intention of it setting a precedent for the other similar cases, according to the newspaper.

“The actions of Judge Richard Sinnott are unprecedented and outrageous,” the district attorney wrote on Twitter, linking to the Globe story on her petition.

………

Original story below:

Following the clash between “Straight Pride Parade” protesters and police in downtown Boston over the weekend, an unusual clash is now unfolding between prosecutors and a local judge handling the cases of those arrested during the event.

Boston Municipal Court Judge Richard Sinnott refused to dismiss charges Tuesday against a number of nonviolent protesters arrested during the parade and ensuing counter-demonstration. Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins says Sinnott is “overstepping” his role.

“By compelling arraignment in every case, the judge punished the exercise of individuals’ First Amendment right to protest,” Rollins said in a statement posted on social media Tuesday night.

………

According to The Boston Globe, the Boston-bred judge, who was appointed by Gov. Charlie Baker in 2017, agreed to drop charges against just two of the nine people for whom prosecutors had asked for the dismissal of nonviolent charges in exchange for community service.

(emphasis mine)

This is why you don’t vote for “moderate” Republicans.

For all their protest that they are the good kind of moderate Republicans, they still have a goal of infesting the judiciary and bureaucracy with hard-line culture warriors.

Making a List and Checking it Twice

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I am not referring to Santa Claus, I am referring to Jeff Bezos and Amazon who have created an enemies list.

How charming:

When Amazon scrubbed plans to build a second headquarters in New York City earlier this year, the reason appeared rooted in a debate about unions, tax subsidies and housing costs.

Then there was the burn book.

In a private dossier kept at the time, whose existence has gone previously unreported, Amazon executives cataloged in minute detail the insults they saw coming from New York politicians and labor leaders, according to a copy viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

By late January, Amazon executives had been pummeled at two public hearings. The burn book, which was kept in a Microsoft Word document called “NY Negative Statements,” had separate sections for a half-dozen politicians and officials who had gone from thorns in the company’s side to formidable opponents of a deal that now looked to be in jeopardy.

The document recorded how opponents mocked the helipad Amazon planned to build, pushed the Twitter hashtag #scamazon, and brought up the company’s work for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a sore spot among some Amazon employees. It was an eight-page, bullet-pointed, Calibri font testimony to Amazon’s sensitivities.

………

After this article was published online, an Amazon spokeswoman said the document was compiled as preparation for city council hearings.

No, it wasn’t a prep for council meeting, it was the airing of grievances by and for a billionaire and a company that believe that they should be lauded as visionary prophets, and not the abusive and extortative sh%$-heels that they actually are.

Poster Child for Lack of Moral Standing

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I am referring to the organization generally known as the US Olympic Committee (It’s actually the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee).

They have gotten their panties in a bunch because athletes have used the medal awards ceremonies to protest issues of racism and law enforcement misconduct.

Some have kneeled, some have used an outstretched fist, and not the OSOC is threatening sanctions.

This is an organization that covered up the sexual abuse of Larry Nassar,  was complicit in corruption at the 2002 winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, and was the proximate or contributing cause of dozens of other scandals.

F%$# them.  They  have no moral standing whatsoever to claim to be guardians of the Olympics or of the Olympic ideal.