“Moral grandiosity seems to have infected the nomenklatura class of giant corporations. It is not enough for them to ensure that the corporations make a decent profit within the framework of the law; they must claim to also be morally improving, if not actually saving, the world.
So it was with Alison Rose, the first female chief executive of the National Westminster Bank, a large British bank 39 percent owned by the British government. When first appointed to the position, she said that she would put combatting climate change at the centre of the bank’s policies and activities. Whether shareholders were delighted to hear this is unknown.
But the bank, under her direction, went further. Its subsidiary, Coutts, founded in 1692 and long banker to the rich, compiled a Stasi-like dossier on one of its customers, Nigel Farage, before “exiting” him from the bank, to use the elegant term employed by Ms. Rose. (Defenestration will come later, perhaps.)
Farage is, of course, a prominent right-wing political figure in Britain, as much detested as he is admired. There was no allegation in the dossier that he had done anything illegal; indeed, in person, he had always acted correctly and courteously toward staff. What was alleged was that his “values” did not accord with those of the bank, which were self-proclaimed as “inclusive” (though not of people with less than $3.5 million to deposit or borrow). Farage was depicted as a xenophobe and racist, mainly because he was in favour of Brexit and against unlimited immigration. That anyone could support Brexit for any reason other than xenophobia, or oppose unlimited immigration other than because he was a racist, was inconceivable to the diverse, inclusive thinkers of Coutts Bank.
Ms. Rose saw fit to leak details to the BBC about Farage’s banking affairs, claiming to believe that they were public knowledge already. She did not mention the 40-page dossier that her staff had put together, about Farage’s publicly-stated views. The Stasi would have been proud of the bank’s work, which comprehensively proved him to have anti-woke views.
Whatever else might be said about Mr. Farage, no one would describe him as a pushover, the kind of person who would take mistreatment lying down. Even the Guardian newspaper, which cannot be suspected of partiality for him, suggested that the bank and its chief executive had questions to answer.
It was not long before Ms. Rose had to beat a retreat. She issued a statement in which she said:
I have apologised to Mr. Farage for the deeply inappropriate language contained in [the dossier].
The board of the bank said that “after careful reflection [it] has concluded that it retains full confidence in Ms. Rose as CEO of the bank.”
The following day, Rose resigned, admitting to “a serious error of judgment.”
The weasel words of Ms. Rose and the bank board are worth examination. They deflected, and I suspect were intended to deflect, the main criticism directed at Ms. Rose and the bank: namely, that the bank had been involved in a scandalous and sinister surveillance of Mr. Farage’s political views and attempted to use them as a reason to deny him banking services, all in the name of their own political views, which they assumed to be beyond criticism or even discussion. The humble role of keeping his money, lending him money, or perhaps giving him financial advice, was not enough for them: they saw themselves as the guardians of correct political policy.
It was not that the words used to describe Mr. Farage were “inappropriate,” or even that they were libelous. It is that the bank saw fit to investigate and describe him at all, at least in the absence of any suspicion of fraud, money laundering, and so forth. “The error of judgment” to which Ms. Rose referred was not that she spoke to the BBC about his banking affairs (it is not easy to believe that she did so without malice, incidentally), but that she compiled a dossier on Farage in the first place—and then “error of judgment” is hardly a sufficient term on what was a blatant and even wicked attempt at instituting a form of totalitarianism.
This raises the question of whether one can be wicked without intending to be so, for it is quite clear that Ms. Rose had no real understanding, even after her resignation, of the sheer dangerousness and depravity of what the bank, under her direction, had done.
As for the board’s somewhat convoluted declaration that “after careful consideration, it concluded that it retains full confidence,” etc., it suggests that it was involved in an exercise of psychoanalytical self-examination rather than of an objective state of affairs: absurd, in the light of Ms. Rose’s resignation within twenty-four hours. The board, no more than Ms. Rose herself, understood what the essence of the problem was. For them, if there had been no publicity, there would have been no problem: so when Mr. Farage called for the dismissal of the board en masse, I sympathised with his view.
There is, of course, the question of the competence of the bank’s management. Last year, the bank’s profits rose by 50 percent (I wish my income had risen by as much). I am not competent to comment on the solidity of this achievement: excellent profits one year followed by complete collapse the next seem not to be unknown in the banking world. But the rising profits under Ms. Rose for the four years of her direction seem to point to, at least on some level, of competence. How many equally competent persons there are who could replace her, I do not know.
Still, 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐲 𝐭𝐨 𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐠𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐛𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐚 𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐲 𝐬𝐜𝐫𝐮𝐩𝐥𝐞𝐬, as illustrated in this episode, is worrying. Would one trust such people if the political wind changed direction? Their views would change, but the iron moral certainty and self-belief would remain the same, like the grin of the Cheshire Cat. How many meetings have I sat through in which some apparatchik has claimed to be passionately committed to a policy, only to be just as passionately committed to the precise opposite when his own masters demand a change of direction?! The Coutts story is one of how totalitarianism can flourish.”
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Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough is overruling plans to ban the famous Times Square kiss photo marking the end of World War II from all department health care facilities, a move criticized as political correctness run amok.
The ban was announced internally at VA medical facilities late last month in a memo from RimaAnn Nelson, the Veterans Health Administration’s top operations official. Employees were instructed to “promptly” remove any depictions of the famous photo and replace it with imagery deemed more appropriate.
“The photograph, which depicts a non-consensual act, is inconsistent with the VA’s no-tolerance policy towards sexual harassment and assault,” the memo stated.
“To foster a more trauma-informed environment that promotes the psychological safety of our employees and the veterans we serve, photographs depicting the ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ should be removed from all Veterans Health Administration facilities.”
The memo garnered public scrutiny after it was posted online by the X account EndWokeness on Tuesday.
Just hours later, McDonough took to social media to reverse the memo.
“This image is not banned from VA facilities — and we will keep it in VA facilities,” said a post from his official X account. Department officials echoed in a separate statement that “VA will NOT be banning this photo from VA facilities.”
Officials said the memo should not have been sent out and was formally rescinded on Tuesday. They did not provide details of whether senior leaders were consulted on the matter ahead of Nelson’s memo.
The photograph was taken by journalist Alfred Eisenstaedt in New York City on Aug. 14, 1945, as Americans celebrated Japan’s surrender at the end of World War II. Other journalists, including military reporters, also captured the moment.
The shot shows a U.S. sailor grabbing and kissing a woman he did not know amid a joyous, party atmosphere in Times Square. The identities of the individuals in the photo have been disputed over the years.
In her memo, Nelson noted that use of the photo in VA facilities “was initially intended to celebrate and commemorate the end of World War II and the triumphant return of American soldiers. However, perspectives on historical events and their representations evolve.”
Nelson wrote that the non-consensual nature of the kiss and “debates on consent and the appropriateness of celebrating such images” led to the decision. Senior leaders did not provide an explanation for the reversal.
VA officials could not provide details on how many facilities are currently displaying the photo and whether veterans have complained about use of the image.
McDonough has made veterans outreach and inclusion key priorities for the department over the last three years, including rewriting the VA motto with gender-neutral language.
==
Activists always take it upon themselves to make themselves the center of any issue. If they feel offended, then everyone else must feel offended as well. Even - and usually especially - if the activist feels offended on someone else's behalf.
You don't get to pretend you're more offended than the people who were actually there and were actually involved.
Oleksandr Ranchukov, born in 1943 in Kyiv, was Ukrainian documentary photographer.
Oleksandr primarily saw himself as a chronicler of his times and hoped his images would "complement the story of the sad end of the U.S.S.R., the dull streets of the city showing its decay…". He wanted to capture for younger generations the faces of Soviet people - in a way very different from how they are presented on posters.
Oleksandr is an author of several books about Kyiv and numerous photographs of the city. He was active in the photographic movement: in the years of perestroika, Ranchukov initiated Погляд (‘Outlook’) association that had a lot of influence on the development of documentary photography in Ukraine. Погляд exhibitions were closed by the KGB and party authorities, and some patriots wrote in the comments book that the participants should be shot. One of their first exhibitions in Kyiv was shut down after just one day by scandalized KGB and Communist Party apparatchiks.
Although these images didn't go down well with Soviet bureaucrats, they obviously struck a chord with ordinary Kyiv residents, and crowds of people lined up to see them when the exhibition reopened at another location sometime later. One of those who visited the Ranchukov exhibition in 1989 was a Canadian exchange student named Chrystia Freeland, who later became a prominent journalist and politician and is now her country's deputy prime minister. Describing Ranchukov as a "brilliant and prolific documentary photographer," Freeland was instrumental in getting his images and those of some of his peers to the editors of The Independent newspaper in London, who "were hugely impressed by his work, and promptly published it."
Oleksandr shot at eye level — the passerby outlook — and didn’t acknowledge color photography: “Color provides the superficial look on the object. Today, a person may be wearing a red shirt, and tomorrow they may be wearing a green shirt. You can paint a building brown today, and green tomorrow… You can’t grasp the object in color. It is defined by volume and texture. Color distracts, and a black-and-white photograph helps reveal the essence of the object that I photograph.”
Colleagues didn’t always understand why Ranchukov documents ‘bland nothing.’ The photographer himself didn’t believe that the work will be valued and be in demand while he is alive. He deliberately took photographs ‘for himself’ — "photography is my way of communication with the world, with other people.”
Ranchukov believed in the bright future of the country and said that young people who will live in the satisfied, well-fed, and rich Ukraine will be able to see how things were there before with the help of his photographs.
You can listen to Okelsandr talking about documentary photography:
But I anticipate. It is for future scientists to make these maxims precise and discover exactly how much it costs per head to make children believe that snow is black, and how much less it would cost to make them believe it is dark gray.
Although this science will be diligently studied, 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐛𝐞 𝐫𝐢𝐠𝐢𝐝𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐧𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐬𝐬. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐩𝐨𝐩𝐮𝐥𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐥𝐥 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐛𝐞 𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐧𝐯𝐢𝐜𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝.
When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen…
Some of these effects depend upon the political and economic character of the country concerned; others are inevitable, whatever this character may be.”
Watching twitter chuds wring their hands over whether there will be enough marxist hall monitors to censor the platform after musk guts their bloated carcass has been delicious.
I’d also like to welcome this soon to be unemployed army of regime apparatchiks to the real economy.
I need to play an NCR run where I'm the most evil weasel. Straight up soviet-like apparatchik kissing bum to climb through ranks and start engaging in pure corruption maliciously taking advantage of bureaucracy. Taking brahmin baron bribes. Pretending to be a dumb bimbo but actually constantly scheming to get to the top. I'd wear a cute sharp gray suit with a tube skirt and also cool shades. I'd smell of cigarrettes and Gomorrah prostitutes. I would be a backstabbing bitch only to end up backstabbed by someone worse than me.
The blatant antisemitism on college campuses has shocked millions of Americans over the past week and a half.
But not me.
I saw antisemitism on a weekly basis in my two years as a faculty “diversity, equity and inclusion” director.
In fact, I can safely say that toxic DEI ideology deliberately stokes hatred toward Israel and the Jewish people.
I was hired to head the DEI department at Silicon Valley’s De Anza College in 2021.
As a black woman, I was the perfect person for the job — on paper.
Yet I made the mistake of trying to create an authentically inclusive learning environment for everyone, including Jewish students.
Turns out, a toxic form of DEI (which is more accurately called “critical social justice”) demanded I do the opposite.
Before I got to campus, Jewish students had endured a litany of hateful and hostile acts.
The school had hosted a Hanukkah party that featured no Hanukkah imagery but plenty of pro-Palestinian protesters.
The student body had passed resolutions on “divesting” from Israel — the first college of its kind to do so — and criticizing Israel’s “attacks against humanity.”
Multiple Jewish students told me the campus was essentially an antisemitic environment.
I tried to right this wrong. First, I hosted Jewish speakers on campus, with the goal of promoting diversity and inclusion by sharing different perspectives.
Critics called me a “dirty Zionist,” and the school refused to promote the events.
I then pushed the administration to issue a strong condemnation of antisemitism.
My request was refused. Some campus leaders and colleagues repeatedly told me I shouldn’t raise issues about Jewish inclusion or antisemitism.
I was told in no uncertain terms that Jews are “white oppressors” and our job as faculty and staff members was to “decenter whiteness.”
I was astounded, but I shouldn’t have been.
At its worst, DEI is built on the unshakable belief that the world is divided into two groups of people: the oppressors and the oppressed.
Jews are categorically placed in the oppressor category, while Israel is branded a “genocidal, settler, colonialist state.”
In this worldview, criticizing Israel and the Jewish people is not only acceptable but praiseworthy.
(Just as it’s OK to attack America and white people.)
If you don’t go after them — or worse, if you defend them — you’re actively abetting racist oppression.
I have never encountered a more hostile environment toward the members of any racial, ethnic or religious group.
I was ultimately fired by De Anza College, and I suspect my defense of Jewish students played a part.
Yet I’ve subsequently found that my experience isn’t unique.
Countless faculty and students on campuses nationwide have told me the DEI ideology encourages antisemitism.
One study found 96% of Israel-focused tweets by campus DEI staff criticized the Jewish state.
And that was before Hamas launched its brutal assault on Israel this month.
Now the colleges and universities beholden to DEI are hurting Jewish students with their silence, their moral equivocation about terrorism against Israel or their outright praise of the terrorists.
Many of the student groups most invested in DEI are actively siding with Hamas.
Look no further than “White Coats for Black Lives,” a national group of medical students with chapters in more than 100 public and private universities.
On Tuesday, just days after Hamas murdered Jewish families in their beds, the DEI-driven group proudly declared it has “long supported Palestine’s struggle for liberation.”
How could a Jewish patient ever trust a medical trainee or professional who subscribes to such blatant antisemitic hatred?
It’s tantamount to threatening their lives, and it raises questions about whether such hate-filled people should even be allowed to practice medicine.
This outpouring of antisemitic hatred is the direct result of DEI’s insistence that Jews are oppressors.
What started with rhetorical attacks has morphed into defending and calling for violent attacks.
It’s inevitable for an ideology that demeans an entire group of people while accusing them of perpetrating massive injustice.
When you stoke that kind of division and anger, you unleash fires you can’t control.
Sure enough, the fire of antisemitism is now burning bright on college campuses.
It needs to be extinguished immediately so it doesn’t spread and do more damage.
I know just the place to start.
Administrators and lawmakers need to get toxic DEI out of higher education.
If they don’t, there will be no true diversity and inclusion on campus, but there will be even more shocking hatred toward Jews.
no one has the energy to organize fundraisers for gaza, but somehow ppl still have it in them 2 make keychains w the palestinian flag and print the keffiyeh pattern on their hoodies. reminds of tgis anecdote my grandma used 2 tell abt this communist party apparatchik guy who wld hit on her & 1 time he told her taht hes "always been a friend of the jews" bc he was a communist during da war 2 szo she asked him tge names of the jews he saved & he cldnt give her a single 1. tjis is addressed 2 da 'organizers' ik irl btw i was supposed 2 say it 2 them but im posting instead bc tjey were 2 tired for todays meeting lmao...
It’s never too late to learn. Even mainstream media apparatchiks who have secured themselves snuggly within the bubble of bosh comprising the liberal narrative are sometimes capable of acquiring new information — though they may have a hard time processing it.
When a mob of illegal aliens brutally beat NYC police officers, were released by liberal authorities, saluted America by flipping us the bird, and then fled to California, even CNN was forced to acknowledge the story. BizPac Review reports on its reporting:
CNN’s Erica Hill and Phil Mattingly were covering the crime sprees in the Big Apple with reports of many offenses being committed by the illegal migrants who have poured into the Big Apple. In a discussion with CNN’s Chief Law Enforcement and Intelligence analyst John Miller, the attention turned to the recent attack on two New York Police officers in Times Square. …
“So what the detectives are telling me is, they have crews here that operate in New York, do all their stealing, then go to Florida to spend the money and then come back,” he told the CNN hosts.
“I’m like, ‘Why don’t they just stay and steal in Florida?’ They said, ‘Because there you go to jail,’” he said simply, leaving Hill momentarily without words.
“Oh,” she managed to say but was awkwardly silent as Mattingly jumped in to end the segment.
John Miller’s future with CNN may be in some jeopardy. Florida has been governed with remarkable effectiveness by Ron DeSantis on countermoonbat principles and is therefore never to be cast in a favorable light relative to places that have succumbed to the Democrat Death Spiral like New York.