seen from Germany
seen from China
seen from Israel
seen from India
seen from United States
seen from Israel
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United States
seen from Japan
seen from France
seen from Japan
seen from France
seen from Maldives
seen from United States
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Malaysia
seen from Sweden
seen from China
seen from Spain
Apparently a leaked message from a United Healthcare memo regarding a company loyalty pledge.
Please notice that only violence against executives needs to be denounced. If someone wants to go after lower management they can plot that sort of thing at work I guess.
Next time someone is planning an organized hit like the one we just saw, maybe they will stop and think “No, I can’t, the pledge….”
Why put all the American commanders in one room?
"... There is no practical reason to do this: he has easier and more secure ways to communicate with the commanders. And there are obvious risks: the entire armed forces of the United States, spread around the world, will be without its leaders. Given that the government could well shut down the next day, the separation of commanders from their command might be indefinite.
And if Hegseth has his way, those generals and admirals will all be in one site, announced in advance, which means that the entirety of the American command structure will be more vulnerable, physically, than in any conceivable military scenario, including nuclear war. There is no scenario other than this one in which they would all be in the same place at the same time...
So why might Secretary Hegseth do such an extraordinary thing? Only four solutions to the puzzle come to mind.
He has some trivial thing to say and does not understand the risks.
He wishes to endanger the lives of the generals and admirals.
He will stage a purge, perhaps involving a loyalty oath or something similar that requires personal presence.
He will tell the commanders that henceforth their assignment will be to oppress American citizens (“homeland defense”). This could be combined with the third scenario: those who refuse will be fired. Perhaps others can think of other possibilities, but I am afraid that I cannot...."
I swear by almighty God that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, her heirs and successors and that I will as in duty bound honestly and faithfully defend her Majesty, her heirs and successors in person, crown and dignity against all enemies and will observe and obey all orders of her Majesty, her heirs and successors and of the generals and officers set over me.
- My oath on being commissioned as an army officer in Her Majesty’s Armed Forces
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers, swore allegiance to you, Your Majesty. Yet you gave much more and swore allegiance to us all. 🇬🇧
RIP Ma’am
The tech company is struggling to retain workers after Musk demanded employees sign a pledge to work ‘long hours at high intensity’
The Elon Twitter chaos continues.
The crisis at Twitter reached new heights on Friday as hundreds of employees were reported to have rejected Elon Musk’s ultimatum to keep working for the business, threatening its ability to keep operating.
As the company temporarily closed its offices to staff, Twitter users began saying their goodbyes and linking to accounts on other platforms.
#RIPTwitter, #TwitterDown, Mastodon and Myspace were all trending on the platform after the deadline passed on Musk’s ultimatum for the remaining workforce to sign up for “long hours at high intensity”, or leave. It has been estimated that hundreds of the remaining staff opted to go.
Seriously, a type of loyalty oath? Trump-style management didn’t save Trump’s numerous failed businesses and it won’t help Elon Musk.
This is what a slow implosion looks like. We’re gonna need a lot of popcorn for this one.
The departures include many engineers responsible for fixing bugs and preventing service outages, raising questions about the stability of the platform amid the loss of employees and prompting hurried debates among managers over who should be asked to return, current and former employees said.
Those former Twitter workers need to start working on a replacement platform ASAP. It would be a foolish waste of talent and a missed opportunity if they let this go by.
Government-related Twitter accounts like that of the French Embassy in Fiji are already announcing to followers where they can be found elsewhere online. There is a gap that needs to be filled quickly.
Musk isn’t the only person to blame for Twitterpocalypse. The stupidity of Twitter’s former chair Jack Dorsey and the greed of Twitter’s former board of directors including CEO Parag Agrawal must share responsibility for this disaster. If you give a flamethrower to a known arsonist then you can’t claim you’re innocent of starting a wildfire.
Any successor to Twitter should preferably be a not for profit corporation to make it resistant to takeovers by the clueless billionaires of this world. Being nonprofit doesn’t mean you make no money. Strictly speaking, IKEA is part of a nonprofit group. A nonprofit New Twitter (or whatever you wanna call it) could still have enough income to attract talent and make investments in itself.
The internet has become too important to trust to egotistical oligarchs like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg.
What is baptism?
"And also corresponding to this, baptism now saves you, not removal of dirt from the flesh, but an appeal to God for a good conscience through the resurrection of Jesus Christ." (1 Pet 3:21)
The word "appeal" is understood as"pledge." Likewise the word "conscience" refers to the disposition of one's loyalties, a usage that is also found in other context and Greek literature.
Baptism, then, is not what produces salvation. It "saves" in that it reflects a heart decision: a pledge of loyalty to the risen Savior. In effect, baptism in New Testament theology is a loyalty oath, a public avowal of who is on the Lord's side in the cosmic war between good and evil. But in the addition to that it is also visceral reminder to the defeated fallen angels. Every baptism is a reiteration of their doom in the wake of the gospel and kingdom of God.
Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2015)
#MoscowMitch’s Russian Loyalty Oath
I, Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr., swear that, by taking the citizenship of the Russian Federation, I will observe the Constitution and laws of the Russian Federation, and the rights and freedoms of its citizens; that I shall fulfill my duties as a citizen of the Russian Federation for the welfare of the state and society; that I will protect the freedom and independence of the Russian Federation; and that I will be loyal to Russia and respect its culture, history and traditions.
— Russian Oath of Citizenship
“Mitch McConnell is a Russian asset“ — Washington Post
Recent Acquisition - Photograph Collection
Original caption: “His Jaw’s Set to Do Battle. Gov. John S. Battle of Virginia has a determined set to his jaw during voting at Democratic convention tonight on whether to seat the Virginia delegation despite refusal to sign the loyalty oath. Battle told the convention Virginia could not sign the pledge because it’s a matter of principle.” July 24, 1952
What happens in California usually doesn’t stay in California — and that’s bad news for higher education. [...]Read More...
By: John Sailer
Published: Sep 9, 2023
What happens in California usually doesn’t stay in California — and that’s bad news for higher education.
In his latest piece for the New York Times, Michael Powell catalogs just how extensively the Golden State’s universities have embraced mandatory diversity statements when hiring faculty. From junior college to prestigious research university, scientists and scholars throughout the state must demonstrate their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) to remain in good standing.
By now, this should come as no surprise, but it is striking to see some of the most egregious ways the policy plays out. In 2016, the piece notes, at least five University of California (UC) campuses decided to initially screen faculty job applicants based only on diversity statements. For one large hiring initiative at UC Berkeley — the Life Sciences Initiative — the faculty search committee eliminated three-fourths of the applicant pool on the basis of diversity statements alone. Berkeley’s rubric for assessing diversity statements, moreover, dictates a low score for candidates who speak positively about diversity but in vague terms. Even more remarkably, it gives a low score to candidates who say they prefer to “treat everyone the same.”
All of this is especially notable because of what California represents to American public higher education. Out of any state, California best embodies the American vision of universal higher education — its promises and perils.
In 1960, UC System President Clark Kerr spearheaded the “California Master Plan for Higher Education,” an attempt to modernise the state’s system of higher education. The Master Plan institutionalised a rigidly tiered system for California’s colleges and universities, reserving the UC system for the top 12.5% of the state’s graduating high school students, the California State system for the top 33.3%, and the California Community Colleges system for everyone else.
The plan captured the country’s strong faith in higher education, its aspiration to send virtually every young person to college. Kerr once jokingly quipped that the mission of the university is “to provide sex for the students, sports for the alumni, and parking for the faculty” — an amusing, and functionally accurate, description.
No doubt, California set the example. Today, it remains a powerhouse; according to the U.S. News and World Report rankings, the UC system includes six out of the top 10 American public universities.
California still sets the tone for American higher education. And for that reason, we might add one more item to Kerr’s tongue-in-cheek summary of the university’s mission: “DEI initiatives for the administrators.” The trend Powell describes — whereby enthusiasm for DEI, whatever that might mean in practice, has become a virtual job requirement for scientists and scholars —has trickled down.
Berkeley’s Life Sciences Initiative, for example, was designed to test whether universities could use a method known as “cluster hiring” to advance the goal of diversity. Basically, the approach involves hiring multiple faculty at once with a heavy emphasis on DEI. In a forthcoming National Association of Scholars report, I describe how DEI-focused cluster hiring has boomed since Berkeley undertook its Life Sciences Initiative.
In 2020, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center carried out a cluster hire — hiring researchers in cancer, infectious disease, and basic biology — which heavily weighed DEI contributions. In 2021, Vanderbilt University’s Department of Psychology undertook a cluster hire; it eliminated approximately 85% of its candidates based solely on diversity statements. And the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has allocated $241 million in grant money for cluster hires at universities around the country — with the condition that every search committee must require and heavily weigh diversity statements.
Berkeley’s rubric — the one that gives a low score to anyone who espouses race-neutrality — is likewise ubiquitous. Two of the universities receiving NIH money for cluster hires are the University of New Mexico and the University of South Carolina. Through a public records request, I acquired both universities’ rubric for assessing diversity statements, which was published earlier this year. Both universities use the Berkeley rubric verbatim.
As a consequence of these measures, trust in higher education will likely continue to fall, owing in part to a sense that some views are simply not tolerated. But DEI litmus tests do not merely diminish the public’s trust in higher education. They degrade higher education itself. Clark Kerr knew that the mission of the university isn’t sex, sports, or parking. It isn’t social justice, either. It’s the pursuit of truth, which, following California’s example, all too many universities seem to forget.
==
There are still some people who say stupid things like, "how can you be against equality and diversity?" Except, we all know at this point that these are ideologically-charged words. The rubrics themselves tell you that liberal principles of equality are unacceptable; rather, contested and ideological notions about the world. This makes "DIE statements" ideological loyalty oaths.
It would be like saying something stupid like, "what, are you not against people being bad and doing bad things?" when people object to making commitments and oaths against "sin."
