Part of Venice’s vast network of canals has run dry after unusually low tides and drought conditions. The floating city is built in the middle of the Venetian Lagoon at the head of the Adriatic Sea in Northern Italy. Dried-up smaller canals mean some gondolas and water taxis are stranded.

Venice is usually prone to flooding, but a combination of factors, including lack of rain, a high-pressure system, a full moon, and water currents, have led to dried-up canals, according to Reuters. 

Italian rivers and lakes are suffering from severe lack of water, the Legambiente environmental group said on Monday, with attention focused on the north of the country.

The Po, Italy’s longest river which runs from the Alps in the northwest to the Adriatic has 61% less water than normal at this time of year, it added in a statement. –Reuters 

Several pictures and videos have been published on Twitter, showing dried-up canals.  

🚨| NEW: Pictures show grounded gondolas and miserable tourists in Venice as canals run dry due to drought and low tide‼️ pic.twitter.com/by2K1lQwSJ

— Pubity (@PubityIG) February 21, 2023

Venice waterways dry up as Italy braces for another year of severe drought
The dry winter in Italy follows an exceptional drought last year that caused the country to declare a state of emergency for critical agricultural areas surrounding its longest river. pic.twitter.com/BW5ureV2xg

— news lense (@gazzettanews1) February 21, 2023

Reuters noted it’s impossible to traverse some of the city’s canals in gondolas and water taxis.  

😳😳😢Gondolas, water taxis and ambulances cannot freely move around the city due to the drying up of canals in Venice

The Guardian writes about it.

The reason for such anomalous drought in the city, experts cite, in particular, low tides, lack of rain, a decrease in… pic.twitter.com/Gczky8B1iF

— 🇺🇦 C.A. Tim Gravett 🇨🇦 🍁🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@TimGravett) February 21, 2023

Watch the water.
Venice. pic.twitter.com/Y2oAx9n0Wm

— Jabobfre likke (@541patriot) February 11, 2023

In smaller canals, there’s just mud. In larger canals, the water levels are shallow. Northern Italy desperately needs water following last year’s worst drought in 70 years:

“We are in a water deficit situation that has been building up since the winter of 2020-2021,” climate expert Massimiliano Pasqui from the Italian scientific research institute CNR was quoted as saying by the daily Corriere della Sera.

“We need to recover 500 millimeters in the north-western regions: we need 50 days of rain,” Pasqui added.

Surprisingly, Reuters didn’t point to man-made global warming for Venice’s water problems. Instead, they said:

An anticyclone has been dominating the weather in western Europe for 15 days, bringing mild temperatures more normally seen in late spring. Latest weather forecasts do however signal the arrival of much-needed precipitation and snow in the Alps in coming days.

Venice could use some of the water from melting Arctic ice that Greta Thunberg and her climate alarmist gang repeatedly warn about.  

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

• Saudi Arabia’s oil revenues hit $326 billion in 2022, the highest level since Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s reign began.

• While Saudi Arabia’s monthly oil revenues have been falling in recent months, a strong start to the year boosted its annual earnings.

• High oil and gas prices in 2022 led to Saudi Arabia booking its first annual budget surplus in nearly a decade.

Saudi Arabia received as much as $326 billion in oil revenues for 2022, its biggest oil sales haul in the era of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, although monthly revenues have been lower in recent months after oil prices slid to around $80 per barrel at the end of last year.

Saudi Arabia recorded its highest-ever oil revenues back in 2012.

The rise in oil prices last year, especially the spike in the first half to over $100 a barrel after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, raised the revenues for the world’s largest crude oil exporter. The value of oil exports accounted for more than 70% of all Saudi exports last year.

In December 2022, oil exports increased by 11.1% year over year to $22.8 billion (85.5 billion Saudi riyals), but fell compared to November, according to data released by Saudi Arabia’s General Authority for Statistics on Tuesday.

The share of oil exports in total exports increased from 71.9% in December 2021 to 79.0% in December 2022, the authority said.

China, Japan, and India were Saudi Arabia’s main trading partners for exports in December 2022, due to the oil sales.

While many economies floundered in 2022 due to inflationary pressures and soaring energy prices, Saudi Arabia’s economy grew by 8.7% last year, thanks to its oil industry and exports.

According to flash estimates, real GDP in the fourth quarter of 2022 grew by 5.4% compared to the same period of 2021, and the real GDP during the year 2022 rose by 8.7% compared to 2021, the General Authority for Statistics said last month. Saudi economic growth was the highest among the G20 group of countries.

Thanks to rising oil income, Saudi Arabia also booked its first annual budget surplus in nearly a decade. Analysts believe that the Kingdom needs oil prices at $75-80 per barrel to balance its budget.

There are no “Pablo Escobar” or “El Chapo Guzman” named buildings at the University of Oxford in Oxford, England, but the disgraced billionaire Sackler family, partially responsible for the deadly US opioid epidemic, still has naming rights plastered all over the university. 

Documents obtained by the Financial Times — including letters, bank statements, and event attendee lists between 2020-22 — show Oxford has yet to sever ties with the Sacklers despite their company, Purdue Pharma, reaching a deal with US states in bankruptcy court to funnel billions of dollars for addiction treatment programs. 

Recall Purdue was the maker of the prescription painkiller OxyContin. The pharmaceutical company downplayed the drug’s addictive qualities that enriched the Sackler family by billions of dollars. But the cost was at the expense of blue-collar workers who became addicted to the drug and helped spark the opioid epidemic. Estimates show more than half a million Americans have died from opioid overdoses since 1999.

Some of the documents reviewed by FT relate to departments across the university, including the Ashmolean Museum, the university’s museum of art and archaeology, and Worcester College.

In January 2020, a few months after Purdue filed for bankruptcy, Lord James Lupton, chair of the board of visitors at the Ashmolean, wrote to Dame Theresa Sackler, a former longstanding board member of Purdue, who is identified in several of the lawsuits.

“As the new face on the board, I am ‘all ears’ to the views of our most important patrons and supporters, and I very much hope that you will contribute your ideas over the next few weeks,” Lupton said. In his letter, he shared his telephone number at the House of Lords and his email at Greenhill investment bank, where he is a senior adviser. In what appears to be an inside joke, Lupton added in pencil: “PS: As you might imagine, I think I am going to love this rôle.”

In what appears to be an inside joke, Lupton added in pencil: “PS: As you might imagine, I think I am going to love this rôle.”

OxyContin heiress Dame Theresa Sackler is the third wife of the late Mortimer Sackler, the former CEO of Purdue. She is the chair of the Sackler Trust and a trustee of the Dr. Mortimer and Theresa Sackler Foundation and is very well known in philanthropic circles. 

While other universities and art galleries have stripped the name “Sackler” off their buildings and ceased communication, Oxford appears still to have a friendly relationship with the disgraced family. 

The Sacklers’ two UK-based charities have given more than £10mn to Oxford since 1991. Most notably, the family funded the building of the Sackler Library, part of the university’s renowned Bodleian Libraries.

In 2021 the Oxford Development Trust, which seeks to “secure the advancement of education” at the university, received £50,332 from the Sackler Trust to fund previously pledged research positions held by Worcester College and the Ashmolean. The university has not applied for any fresh donations since 2019.

In April 2022, Dame Theresa Sackler still had access to exclusive social networks at Oxford, highlighting what years of ‘philanthropy’ can buy. 

She was an “external attendee” at a private viewing of the annual Oxford and Cambridge boat race. The event was hosted onboard the Erasmus, by the chancellor and vice-chancellor of the university. The guest list for the event, compiled by the University of Oxford Development Office, noted that Sackler was invited as a member of the “Chancellor’s Court of Benefactors.”

In September, Sackler was also invited to the annual Ashmolean gala dinner. 

The Sackler name remains emblazoned on many buildings in Oxford. As well as the Sackler Library, there are two Sackler galleries in the Ashmolean, and Mortimer Sackler’s name is inscribed on the Clarendon Arch. 

The Sacklers also retain “naming rights” to multiple academic positions: the Sackler Keeper of Antiquities, the Sackler Education Officer, and the Sackler Research Fellow at the Ashmolean, as well as science fellowships.

Megan Kapler, an activist at Prescription Addiction Intervention Now, said the Sacklers are part of “toxic philanthropy.”

“We would call on Oxford to pay attention to the origin of the money of their benefactors and also the social and historical implications of keeping people like Theresa Sackler in this court,” Kapler said. 

Despite the fact that Sacklers are no different than cartels, both make money off highly addictive drugs that destroy communities. The names of Escobar and El Chapo don’t appear on any notable buildings. 

Oxford has an addiction to the Sacklers that it just can’t break. 

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Kyocera, one of the largest chip component manufacturers in the world, believes China can no longer play its role as the global factory amid heavy sanctions from the United States, and the company has begun shifting production to other places, including Japan.

“It works as long as [products are] made in China and sold in China, but the business model of producing in China and exporting abroad is no longer viable,” Hideo Tanimoto, president of Kyocera, said in an interview with the Financial Times. “Not only have wages gone up, but obviously, with all that’s happening between the United States and China, it’s difficult to export from China to some regions.”

Kyocera is building its first factory in Japan in almost 20 years.

On Oct. 7, 2022, the U.S. Department of Commerce announced new export restrictions on chip manufacturing and advanced semiconductors in a bid to prevent American technology from being used in the development of the Chinese military.

Tanimoto admitted that the U.S. export controls were a reason why the firm cut down its operating profit forecast for the year by 31 percent. Kyocera commands a 70 percent market share globally in ceramic components used in chip-manufacturing equipment.

“If chip equipment makers stop shipments to China, our orders will be somewhat affected … They are now even [being] asked not to ship their non-cutting-edge tools,” Tanimoto said.

Back in 2019, when the Trump administration had imposed tariffs on China, Kyocera had moved the manufacturing of copiers for the U.S. market from China to Vietnam.

Moving Production Out of China

Many companies have moved production out of China or plan to do so. In April last year, for example, Apple began manufacturing its iPhone 13 in India at a site owned by Foxconn, its Taiwanese contract manufacturer. In addition, Apple is sending the production of iPads and AirPods to Vietnam.

Samsung shifted production to Vietnam back in 2019. The company has also decided to manufacture its flagship Galaxy S23 smartphones in India for local sale. Amazon has shut down its Kindle facility in China and now produces FireTV devices in India.

Footwear brand Dr. Martens has been reducing its manufacturing dependence on China. Since 2018, the company has shifted 55 percent of total production out of the nation.

“The big message is reducing reliance on China,” Dr. Martens’ chief executive Kenny Wilson said in November, according to the Financial Times. “You don’t want all of your eggs in one basket.”

Declining Investment in China

An analysis by Investment Monitor, a network of B2B websites, shows that greenfield foreign direct investments (FDIs) in China have been falling over the past few years.

Greenfield investment is a type of FDI whereby a parent company sets up a subsidiary in a different nation and builds its business from the ground up, including setting up production facilities, offices, distribution hubs, and so on.

In 2022, greenfield FDI levels into China had halved compared to 2019, according to the analysis. Merger and acquisition deals also fell. Companies were said to be looking to diversify away from the Chinese mainland due to concerns regarding geopolitics and disruption to supply chains.

In China’s tourism sector, greenfield FDI fell by 78 percent between 2019 and 2022. The electronics sector saw greenfield FDI decline by 56.7 percent during this period, financial services by 62.5 percent, logistics 28.6 percent, software and IT services by 48.5 percent, and industrial machinery, equipment, and tools fell by 56.7 percent.]

Some experts foresee more production by American firms being moved to friendlier nations. Governments and corporations are expected to invest “substantially in on-shoring, near-shoring, and friend-shoring for value chains,” said Michael Zezas, head of U.S. public policy research and municipal strategy at Morgan Stanley Research, according to a July 25th post by the investment firm.

“Mexico, India, Vietnam, and Turkey stand out as countries that could benefit from U.S. and European Union companies diversifying value chains.”

Authored by Thomas Brooke via Remix News,

The three leaders of Italy’s coalition partners hold vastly differing views on how best to tackle the war in Ukraine. Do these views complement each other, or are cracks in the right-wing alliance starting to show?

Silvio Berlusconi may belong to Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing governing coalition, but on the issue of Ukraine, the two are gravely at odds, with their differing views on Ukraine’s leader and how involved Italy should be in the conflict spilling out into sharply critical public statements.

Sympathetic to Russia long before the conflict in Ukraine erupted last February, outspoken former Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi recently publicly criticized the Italian prime minister’s decision to side with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

“If I had been premier, I would never have gone to speak to Zelensky,” the leader of Meloni’s coalition partner Forza Italia told Italian media after voting in the regional elections won by the right-wing coalition. Instead of Russian President Vladimir Putin, he blamed the Ukrainian president for the continuing conflict across the country.

“It would have been enough if he had stopped attacking the two autonomous republics of Donbas, but this never would have happened, so I judge the behavior of this gentleman very, very, very negatively,” Berlusconi added.

The issue of Ukraine has long been a sticking point within the coalition, with political analysts stating that it was one of the most divisive issues facing the government when it first formed.

“You know you can count on our loyal support for the cause of freedom,” newly elected Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shortly after her electoral success in September last year.

Five months on, she repeated this pledge during a visit to the Polish capital of Warsaw on Monday ahead of her trip to Kyiv, insisting Italy’s humanitarian, financial, and military support for the country fighting back against Russian aggression for close to a year now will continue.

Meloni leads the Brothers of Italy (FdI) which is the largest party in the Italian coalition government. While she continues to toe the line expected of “mainstream” European leaders and pledges unwavering support for Zelensky, primarily in a bid to be accepted by Western counterparts initially dubious about her electoral victory, her coalition partners have shown considerably less enthusiasm for the Ukrainian question, as recent public remarks demonstrate.

When asked by a journalist off camera whether he supported his prime minister’s view that an appropriate peace agreement can only be reached in Ukraine if both sides are equally equipped militarily, Berlusconi replied, “No,” and called for U.S. President Joe Biden to create a Marshall Plan to rebuild Ukraine on the condition of an immediate cease-fire. The original Marshall Plan saw the U.S. provide European nations with long-term loans to rebuild their infrastructure and stimulate their economies in the aftermath of World War II.

“The American President should take Zelensky aside and say, ‘I am willing at the end of the war to create a Marshall Plan to rebuild Ukraine. A Marshall plan of 6, 7, 8, 9 billion dollars on one condition, that you order a cease-fire tomorrow, because as of tomorrow we will not give you any more dollars and we won’t give you any more arms.’ Only something like that will convince this gentleman to agree to a cease-fire,” Berlusconi added.

It is worth noting that Berlusconi is a long-time acquaintance of the Russian president. In October, the Forza Italia leader revealed the pair had exchanged “lovely letters” despite the ongoing war in Ukraine, and Putin had sent him 20 bottles of vodka for his birthday. He was reportedly told by Putin in one such letter that he was the Russian leader’s “number one among his five best friends.”

As Remix News reported yesterday, Berlusconi has just been acquitted for his role in the so-called “bunga-bunga” parties, with the trials dragging on for years. The Remix News article details that there is evidence that Italy’s judicial system was weaponized against the former prime minister to remove him from power, including under instructions from Western countries like the United States. These nations reportedly saw him as a threat to liberal Western interests due to his views on Putin, Libya’s Gaddafi, and Iran.

Where does Salvini stand?

While Meloni and Berlusconi appear to be, publicly at least, at opposite ends of the spectrum when it comes to Ukraine, the third major player in the right-wing coalition is somewhere in the middle. Matteo Salvini, the leader of the League party whose core voter support fled to Giorgia Meloni in the last election after an underwhelming stint in government, has frequently criticized the Western response to the war in Ukraine, and while the right-wing firebrand reportedly has ties to Russia, he has refrained from making any public statements as bold as Berlusconi’s.

Salvini has been skeptical of the anti-Russia sanctions imposed by Western allies. However, much of his criticism was offered prior to the electoral success of Italian conservatives in late September of last year.

“Do we have to defend Ukraine? Yes,” Salvini said. “But I would not want the sanctions to harm those who impose them more than those who are hit by them,” he had warned earlier that month.

“If we get into government, will we change alliances? No. We remain deeply, proudly and firmly rooted in a free and democratic West that opposes war and aggression,” Salvini maintained at the time. The League leader has been far more reserved since the right-wing coalition took office.

Salvini’s position could be considered to be in alignment with European leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has long been a public opponent of anti-Russian sanctions that impact negatively on the lives of Europeans.

“At first I thought we just shot ourselves in the foot, but now it seems that the European economy shot itself in the lung, and that’s why it is now gasping for air,” Orbán said of the Western approach to Russian sanctions in July last year, and he has not changed his viewpoint.

Despite the leaders of the three main coalition partners sharing considerably varied opinions on how to tackle the Ukrainian issue, the differences of opinion have not resulted in adverse electoral results. In fact, the right-wing alliance stormed to victory earlier this month in the Lombardy and Lazio regional elections, retaining control of the former and seizing control of the latter from the center-left.

However, with Berlusconi’s latest remarks, the cracks are beginning to show on the issue of Ukraine and there are two ways in which such a fracture could go. The first is a political breakdown of the right-wing alliance, which up until now has remained fairly cohesive and efficient. Alternatively, Berlusconi’s remarks, deemed unpalatable by the Western mainstream, could actually help to promote Giorgia Meloni’s image in the eyes of initially skeptical Western leaders.

The more Meloni distances herself from the remarks of her coalition partners and wholeheartedly doubles down on Italy’s support for Ukraine, the more she shores up her image as a moderate, as one of the gang, and the more leeway she may perhaps have with her European counterparts when it comes to her conservative domestic reforms, including on the issue of tackling illegal immigration.

Authored by Julie Kelly via American Greatness,

Tucker Carlson now has the equivalent of nearly five years of surveillance footage captured by U.S. Capitol Police security cameras on January 6, 2021. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) turned over the tapes to the Fox News host earlier this month, according to Axios. Carlson’s producers and researchers are already distilling the footage; the first round of clips is expected to air in a few weeks.

While some grumble that McCarthy did not fulfill his promise to publicly release the footage—arguably a valid complaint—Carlson’s team undoubtedly will give the massive trove much-needed context and maximum impact. Carlson released a three-part documentary, “Patriot Purge,” in November 2021 that explained how the events of January 6 helped launch a second “war on terror” against American citizens out of step with the Biden regime.

Since early 2021, Carlson has used his nightly show to expose the cruel treatment of Trump supporters suffering pretrial detention orders; raised questions about the use of undercover assets including FBI informants and the mysterious role of Ray Epps; asked why the case of the January 5 “pipe bomber” remains unsolved; and demanded the release of the surveillance video as late as last month.

Releasing the video never should have been a political fight; after all, the footage was recorded on a taxpayer-paid closed circuit television system installed on public property to monitor public employees. Contrary to arguments by Capitol Police and the Justice Department, the video belongs to the public, not federal agencies.

But both entities, with the help of D.C. District Court judges, have successfully kept the trove largely under wraps for more than two years. Even the FBI and D.C. Metropolitan Police departments signed agreements a few days after the Capitol protest to acknowledge that the tapes technically belonged to Capitol Police.

In a sworn statement filed in March 2021, Thomas DiBiase, general counsel for the Capitol Police, insisted the footage constituted “security information” that required very limited access. “Our concern is that providing unfettered access to hours of extremely sensitive information to defendants who already have shown a desire to interfere with the democratic process will . . . [be] passed on to those who might wish to attack the Capitol again,” DiBiase warned.

The Justice Department subsequently designated the tapes as “highly sensitive” government material subject to protective orders in January 6 prosecutions. It’s been a major battle for defendants and their attorneys to properly access all of the video tied to their cases; defendants cannot watch any clips without the presence of a legal authority and none of the footage can be shared or downloaded.

Of course, there have been some exceptions. Capitol Police shared cherry-picked clips with the House Democrats on the second impeachment committee as well as the January 6 select committee. For example, the brief clip of Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) running through a hallway that afternoon presumably after the breach was produced from surveillance video. HBO also accessed surveillance footage for its slanted documentary on January 6. “Security” concerns, my foot.

Imagine the universal outrage in any other situation had crucial video of what the government considered a terror attack been kept away from the public for more than two years. Influential opinion pages would have banged the drum incessantly for its release, insisting some sort of cover up was unfolding. Progressive activist groups and elected officials would demand a full accounting of what happened before, during, and after the “attack,” including all government-produced evidence. Influential lawyers and legal defense funds would lament the deprivation of due process for those involved in the allegedly heinous act.

Instead, the usual defenders of accountability, transparency, and constitutional rights have been completely AWOL. The fight has been waged by outmatched defense attorneys in the rigged legal and judicial system in the nation’s capital. And a handful of influencers like Carlson.

To be fair, a consortium called the Press Coalition forced a few federal judges to lift protective orders on a small amount of surveillance video. Representing more than a dozen major news companies, the coalition successfully won the release of limited security footage that, in some instances, contradicted the assertion that police did not allow protesters into the building that afternoon. Unsealed video also showed how police brutalized women inside the lower west terrace tunnel.

In a laughable “reality check” in his article, Axios reporter Mike Allen suggested the public has seen enough surveillance video since the “Jan. 6 committee played numerous excerpts of the footage at last year’s captivating hearings.” But not only were most of the evidentiary video clips sourced from protesters’ cell phones, the surveillance video clips offered by the committee represented an infinitesimal sliver of the total collection.

Which, notably, is much bigger than what the government has made available to January 6 defendants. Axios reported that Carlson’s team has 41,000 hours of raw footage—nearly three times the amount that the Justice Department allowed into evidence, which only covered the time period between noon and 8:00 p.m. on January 6. The tapes now in Carlson’s possession apparently covers the entire 24-hour period from “multiple camera angles from all over Capitol grounds.”

One can only guess what the videos will reveal. It’s possible, even likely, the never-before-seen footage will show the elements of a preplanned attack engineered by the same political and government forces that attempted to destroy Donald Trump for the better part of six years. Will the tapes finally answer the questions that top law enforcement officials such as FBI Director Christopher Wray refuse to answer and the January 6 select committee buried—not the least of which was the role of the FBI?

Withholding the video is only one part of the massive cover-up about January 6. Republicans should seek similar demands for records, emails, and communications from Capitol Police to expose the full scope of the cover-up. But like all good political scandals, the path to the truth begins with the tapes.

Archaeologists believe they have uncovered the first full-size Roman dildo. The 2,000-year-old six-inch piece of wood was recovered initially as a “darning tool” in 1992 in a ditch at the Roman Fort of Vindolanda, near Hadrian’s Wall in northern England, according to the study published in the journal Antiquity. 

“I have to confess, part of me thinks it’s kind of self-evident that it is a penis,” Dr. Rob Collins, an archaeologist at Newcastle University who co-authored the paper, told the Guardian. He said, “We know ancient Romans and Greeks used sexual implements. This object from Vindolanda could be an example of one.” 

Researchers initially unearthed the object as being a darning tool. This misidentification resulted from the tool being found alongside other tools, craft waste products, and dozens of shoes and dress accessories. 

However, researchers have reinterpreted the six-inch piece of wood, smoothed at both ends, as a wooden phallus from the Roman era. 

“What makes this a first is that it is not a small, miniature phallus,” Collins said, adding, “It’s lifesize. It’s also important because wood just doesn’t normally survive … we couldn’t find any parallels.”

Collins told CNN: 

“It very well could be a sex object and, if it is, it is the first example from the Roman world.

“We shouldn’t be surprised by this. We know from Roman art and Roman literature that they used dildos, that they existed. But we haven’t found any examples archaeologically yet.” 

Researchers concluded in the study that no specific use of the wooden phallus could be determined: “We hope to have prompted the search for similar objects elsewhere and encouraged their meaningful incorporation into narratives of the past.” 

Authored by Christopher Rufo via City-Journal.org,

The University of Central Florida has adopted radical Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programming that segregates students by race, condemns the United States as “white-supremacist culture,” and encourages active discrimination against the “oppressor” class, characterized as “male, White, heterosexual, able-bodied, and Christian.”

Officially, UCF reports that it has 14 separate DEI programs, costing in the aggregate more than $4 million per year. But this dramatically understates the reality, which is that the ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” has been entrenched everywhere. The university’s administration and academic departments have created a blizzard of programs, classes, trainings, reports, committees, certifications, events, documents, policies, clubs, groups, conferences, and statements pledging UCF to left-wing racialism.

These programs, long in the making, exploded into prominence following the death of George Floyd in 2020. As the administration signaled that it was endorsing the Black Lives Matter movement, the academic departments immediately fell into line. The sociology department pledged allegiance to BLM and blasted the “anti-Blackness at the heart of US white-supremacist culture.” The physics department released a statement promising to address “systemic anti-Black racism in policing” and its own “power and privilege.” The anthropology department published a statement denouncing white European “hegemonic systems” and vowed to “advocate for a more inclusive society based on the principles of cultural relativism.”

The ideology that underpins the university’s DEI programming follows the basic mantras of critical race theory: America is a racist nation divided between white oppressors and minority oppressed, and society, using the logic of “antiracism,” must actively discriminate against the oppressors in order to achieve social justice. The great oppressor who occupies the “mythical norm,” according to the university’s official glossary, is “male, white, heterosexual, financially stable, young-middle adult, able-bodied, Christian.” Other groups are “minoritized,” or condemned by the “systemic and structural realities in place that push people and communities to the margins.”

Following the George Floyd riots, the university’s administrators and faculty renewed their dedication to the DEI narrative. Ann Gleig, an associate professor of religion and cultural studies, instructed whites on campus to begin “waking up to whiteness and white privilege,” encouraging them to “educate [themselves] on systemic racism and white supremacy,” “participate in anti-racist training programs,” and “commit to having difficult conversations with white family and friends about systemic racism.” She also directed students to a set of resources, including one that encouraged whites to attend racially segregated “affinity groups” to develop their white racial consciousness and “unravel their feelings and ways of understanding without hurting people of color.”

At the same time, S. Kent Butler, a black professor of counselor education then serving as UCF’s chief diversity officer, pushed the argument that minorities live in a state of constant fear and exhaustion. “Leaving the house is an action that may seem ordinary for some, but for individuals who deal with regular hatred and judgment . . . we live with anxiety and fear about walking into unwelcoming spaces,” he said. The responsibility for reforming society, he explained in another interview, belongs to whites. “Racism comes from slavery, from when they used to have [Black] people swinging from trees,” he said. “White people have to come to the forefront and stop the systemic system that’s been put into play by white people.”

How do DEI bureaucracies recommend solving these problems? Through active racial discrimination, or, to use their euphemism, a policy of “racial equity.” The University of Central Florida has embedded such discriminatory practices in its programs, including faculty hiring, student activities, and scholarship opportunities.

Regarding faculty hiring, UCF has adopted the position that merit is a “myth” that advances racism and must be corrected through active discrimination on behalf of “minoritized groups.” In its official guidebook, “Inclusive Faculty Hiring,” the university recommends tilting the hiring process toward minorities by minimizing objective measures—dismissed as “problematic heuristics”—and peppering job announcements with left-wing buzzwords such as “racial equity,” “social justice,” “anti-racist,” and “mention of specific group identities,” with the exception of those of whites.

To reinforce this ideology, administrators also recommend that departments require potential faculty to submit an “Equity and Inclusion Statement,” which serves as a loyalty oath to left-wing ideology. At the end of the process, the university endorses explicit racial quotas. “University policy indicates that a successful search will result in a diverse pool of candidates for the final interview round that [includes at least one woman and one member of a minoritized group],” the guidebook reads (brackets in the original). “If at the time final candidates are identified and the specified parameters are not met, the search should either be restarted or the existing candidate pool should be revisited with more equitable strategies in mind.”

Students, too, must navigate a racial filter. The university has held minority-only graduation ceremonies, and its counseling center offers racially segregated “affinity groups” and psychological programs, such as “Exploring Vulnerability in POC Spaces,” restricted to “Black-identified, Afro-Latinx and students from African-descent,” as well as other racial-conditioning groups delineated for “Asian-identified students” and “Hispanic/Latinx students.”

UCF also advertises racially discriminatory and racially segregated scholarships that intentionally exclude European-Americans and sometimes Asian-Americans. The Professional Doctoral Diversity Fellowship, Harris Diversity Initiative Scholarship, and NSF/Florida Georgia Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation in Engineering & Science and National Action Council for Minorities in Engineering scholarships, for example, promise to discriminate on behalf of “underrepresented populations,” a euphemism for “African American, Hispanic, or Native American” students. Others, such as the Minority Teachers Scholarship, are explicitly segregated by race. Candidates “must be a member of one of the following racial groups: African American/Black, American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian American/Pacific Islander, or Hispanic/Latino.” In other words, anyone but whites.

All these racially discriminatory scholarship programs violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. But university administrators have been silently embedding “racial equity” principles into every academic process. They operate with impunity because, until recently, no one has attempted to stop them.

This could change. Along with my Manhattan Institute colleague Ilya Shapiro, I have proposed a model policy that would outlaw these practices and abolish the DEI bureaucracy. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has promised to address the problem in the coming legislative session. It seems that Florida lawmakers have seen the DEI scam for what it is: an attempt to push left-wing racialist ideology in the guise of academic justice. As they prepare for action, state legislators should consider a maximalist position: demolishing the DEI bureaucracy down to its foundations and restoring the principle of colorblind equality to the Sunshine State’s public institutions.

*  *  *

Christopher F. Rufo is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor of City Journal. Sign up for his newsletter here.

Post-Covid, firearm sales at the retail level soared to record levels. According to National Shooting Sports Foundation, the 2022 National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) totaled 16.4 million. While NICS checks aren’t related to actual firearms sales, it’s a proxy for gun demand. 

A new monthly report from GunGenius, which uses data from Gunbroker, reveals the top-selling firearms sold online in 2022:

1. SIG Sauer P320 semi-automatic pistol
2. Remington 700 bolt-action rifle
3. Sig Sauer P365 pistol

Here are the top-selling handguns from last year. 

Here are the top-selling rifles. 

And top top-selling shotguns. 

Also, the top gunmakers last year. 

We have covered soaring NICS checks in the last few years but have yet to shine a light on what Americans have been panic-buying. This report offers some insight into buying trends.