Remember, remember, this fifth of November, not to celebrate bonfire night in California. Here, a recent legal case should really set our political sirens going about the potentially dire impact of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) measures upon local fire safety standards. Back in 2022, a Chinese fireman, Gabriel Shin, was beaten up by a colleague with a hydrant wrench outside his home, breaking his arms. Only when a neighbour threatened the assailant with a gun did he back off.
Naturally, being so badly beaten, the San Francisco Fire Department (SFFD) gave Shin plenty of time off – namely, forever. Shin says the SFFD took away his workplace health insurance cover after he refused to let the matter lie and cease to press charges, even receiving a reported “direct order” to do so. Eventually, he was “let go” by his employers.
By contrast, said Shin’s attorney, his client’s alleged assailant never so much as missed a paycheque, nor faced any internal disciplinary procedures. Why not? Well, the wretch with the wrench was called Robert Muhammad, and he happened to be a black man (and presumably a Muslim too, given his surname?) Shin was ‘only’ Chinese, though, and therefore occupied a rung lower down upon the hierarchical DEI rescue-ladder of codified ethnic victimhood. This was Shin’s view, anyway, and he decided to sue the SFFD for “Race and Colour Discrimination” – although, according to this legal summary of his efforts, he wasn’t really very successful, with courts refusing to allow several of his complaints to proceed.
According to media summaries of the lawsuit’s original content, Muhammad had displayed “dangerous volatility” and “a history of threatening, bullying and aggressive behaviour” for over a decade, whilst “high-ranking SFFD officials knew of this history yet failed to take any corrective action”, supposedly even going “so far as to attempt to interfere with a criminal investigation to cover up the violent crime”. It is said Shin’s superiors even refused to supply police with a photo of Muhammad, thereby delaying his arrest. Not until this October did a judge finally announce the spanner-maniac’s ultimate punishment: no jail, just enrolment upon a “mental health diversion programme” instead.
Black, mad, violent, possibly Muslim… what an ideal employee Muhammad was in DEI terms! Was this why he was hired into the SFFD in the first place?
The PC Brigade
Certain San Francisco residents certainly feel less than well-disposed towards the traditionally white and male make-up of their city’s fire brigade, at least to go by a quite astonishing online essay, ‘Why I Hate Firemen’, by an SF resident named Molly Martin, which features inflammatory far-Left anti-fireman rhetoric like the following:
I hate firemen. Not firewomen, only the men. And not the firemen of colour. Only the white men. Whenever we have occasion to honour firefighters… I stand back and think to myself, I hate these mofos. When I tell anyone I hate firemen, the reaction is always shock… [But] I’m sticking with my prejudice, formed by years of interaction with woman-hating racists in the San Francisco Fire Department. I may never get over it… The idea that firefighters are heroes to be worshipped not only had an unfortunate effect on the culture at the firehouses, inflating already overinflated egos. It also made opposing the white men more difficult. They used the positive stereotype to their advantage, calling on the testimony of citizens whose lives and property had been saved.
The bastards! Just imagine that: saving people’s “lives and property” before accepting thanks and praise from those they had helped. Is there no limit to how low such sickos could possibly sink? Not in Molly’s estimation.
Formerly a closed shop for those with straight Anglo-Saxon penises, once women and non-whites were eventually allowed in too, alleges Molly, all the neo-Nazi firemen started persecuting their new colleagues, pooing in their boots before call-outs, drawing swastikas and, supposedly, trying to throw women and ethnics off roofs. They were also homophobic, spending their time between fires watching 100% non-gay, straight pornography (albeit no doubt some did involve the occasional lesbian guest-appearance) whilst drinking beer. Supposedly, the leading cause of such booze-addled firemen’s deaths was drunkenness – alcoholics tend not to be good on ladders.
The man who solved all this was Willie Brown, the black former San Francisco Mayor, down whose well-greased pole none other than Kamala Harris herself once slid, her youthful 1990s affair with the man helping launch her own DEI-fuelled career in politics. In 1996, Brown appointed a fellow named Bob Demmons, head of the San Francisco Black Firefighters Association (SFBFA), to be Chief of the SFFD, with a mission to clean the place up, diversity-wise.
Once Brown had switched on his intersectional hose and flooded the SFFD with DEI hires, the scene was set for Jeanine Nicholson later to be appointed as its Chief, the woman in charge at the time of Shin’s close encounter with a highly diverse hydrant wrench. Nicholson announced her sudden retirement from this position in July, a mere month after Shin gave his first public interview about the case, citing “unforeseen medical issues” (she did once have cancer).
Gay Firemen Polish Helmets
Despite having no hose of her own, Jeanine Nicholson was by all accounts a very good firefighter, who was appointed on merit. Yet this was not how she was marketed to the media when being made SFFD Fire Chief in 2019. In which publications would you expect to be able to read about this happy news? The San Francisco Chronicle? Naturally. American Firefighting Monthly? Of course! Leading U.S. gay magazine the Advocate? Um, no…
Ah, but, as a piece by the Advocate’s unacceptably named hack Jacob Ogles had it in its headline, ‘San Francisco Just Swore In First LGBTQ Fire-Chief: Jeanine Nicholson Has Made Herstory’. “Despite San Francisco’s long history of [being] a gay haven,” the outlet complained, “no out [queer] firefighter ever rose to the top post in the department,” just several secretly gay ones. But, thanks to the intervention of DEI-obsessed London Breed, the current marvellously melanated Mayor of SF who appointed Nicholson, that had all now changed.
Nicholson has a degree in Sociology and Anthropology from Colgate College, where, to judge by some of the minority-worshipping tweets the SFFD put out under her leadership, she had really brushed up on her knowledge of intersectionality:
You Can Do It When You BEQ It
As further evidence for their failed prosecution, Gabriel Shin’s lawyers should have produced a 2020 encomium to Nicholson in BEQPride Magazine, BEQ meaning ‘Business Equality’. Here, Nicholson tells us she was recruited (into firefighting, not lesbianism) by a female firefighter at a Gay Parade in 1991. This proves how, in order to achieve her current position in life, “I stood on the shoulders of people who came before me.” Is she a dwarf now, too?
“Diversity and inclusion are top of mind for Nicholson,” BEQPride tells us. As a result, “Nicholson places high importance on increasing recruitment and visibility within the city’s diverse neighbourhoods”. But why? Who sane cares whether their firefighter is a homosexual? How will one even know, unless he or she arrives on the scene dressed in bright pink latex, rather than the usual yellow dayglo? Because, the article continues:
The importance of having a diverse department cannot be overstated in Nicholson’s opinion. She remembered earlier in her career she was called to assist with the death of a Chinese woman… [Emergency services] draped a cloth over the woman’s body but her family insisted that the cloth not cover her head because it was part of their cultural practice. “They wanted her to be able to see her way to where she was going [i.e., the Chinese afterlife, not the nearest morgue], but that’s not something any of us knew,” Nicholson said. “Having people from different backgrounds in the department means they’re trusted in different ways that maybe we weren’t before because we represent the community. Diversity helps us serve the community better.”
Perhaps the best way to actually “serve the Chinese community better” would be not to continue employing mad people who enjoy attacking them with large metal implements, just because they happen to be black, though? That’s what Gabriel Shin might have been expected to say, anyway. I wonder how that Chinese woman Nicholson mentioned died in the first place? A large wrench-wound to the skull, perhaps?
Bonfire of the Vanities
This may all seem a distant concern, but sadly, just like with AIDS, what starts in San Francisco doesn’t stay in San Francisco. Here’s the edited highlights of a 2018 piece by a probable Russian homosexual named Corinne Bendersky, from Harvard Business Review, demonstrating how far the DEI rot has now spread (emphasis mine):
Picture a typical firefighter. Who comes to mind? If you imagined a white man, that’s understandable: 96% of U.S. career firefighters are men, and 82% are white… Many fire departments recognise that their lack of diversity is a problem and say they’re committed to increasing racial and gender diversity… Yes, they’re fighting fires, which requires climbing ladders, hauling hoses and carrying victims from burning buildings. But this is only a small subset of the job… To succeed as a firefighter, stereotypically masculine traits like brawn and courage are simply not enough… And yet, in my research on reducing gender bias and my work conducting training on general diversity and inclusion with fire departments, I find that… when the topic of female firefighters came up, the importance of physical strength was consistently and spontaneously invoked to justify the relative absence of women in the fire service, but the importance of compassion (a female-stereotyped trait) was rarely, if ever, brought up to argue for bringing more women into the profession.
In what sense is “compassion” more valuable in a firefighter than “physical strength”? So that grieving mothers can be told by an agreeably weepy all-female fire-crew just after the tragic event “So sorry we couldn’t save your baby, we were too weak to put the ladder up. Here’s a nice batch of home-made cookies to cheer you up instead! Sorry they’re all burned, by the way.”
Here is the sadly more realistic assessment of a (necessarily) anonymous male U.S. firefighter about the actual effects of such DEI hiring practices:
Outcome based hiring is nothing short of a joke and a disaster waiting to happen. The fire department I work for hired several female firefighters that are very short and they have trouble raising ladders… [They] struggle primarily due to a lack of upper body strength more so than being short. As the incident commander, I have to assign the crew with those females to a job other than ladder work. This is unacceptable to me due to the nature of firefighting where time is essential in most of what we do. Life safety/rescue is number one at every fire scene we respond to. Delaying a rescue because the female crew is incompetent is what my city’s management has made as its top priority.
I suppose, as this is anonymous, some could accuse the whistleblower of just making this up. Others would prefer to guess there’s no smoke without fire.
No Wonder London’s Burning
And this deadly woke bin-fire is now raging here in the U.K. too. In 2019, Lincolnshire Fire Brigade axed kids’ TV character Fireman Sam as their mascot because he wasn’t Firewoman Samantha, bemoaning “the subconscious image the term ‘fireman’ has created as an issue in our recruitment”. Another Fire Chief further complained that “most of the job is nothing like it is portrayed” in the animated show in question; no, and Postman Pat never has to deal with any letter-bombs, either.
Also in 2019, London Fire Brigade (LFB) sprayed out the following tweet after a fictional 2D talking animal in an episode of Peppa Pig dared refer to “firemen”, not “firefighters”:
They could always pop a helmet on her own head and enlist Peppa herself as a recruitment mascot, I suppose – although, from a DEI perspective, that may also have the unintended side-effect of discouraging any future Muslim applicants. Is #Firefightingsexism really now as important as #Firefightingfires?
On the LFB website’s “Workforce Diversity” section, they claim they need millions more women/blacks/Muslims/robots/vampires to join the workforce because, “Some of the most vulnerable people in society come from diverse backgrounds and we need to understand their lifestyles in order to safeguard them against risk of fire.” Otherwise London’s many Indian females might burn themselves alive when committing suttee or something.
As far back as 2005, the LFB had attempted to recruit lesbians by running adverts in gay magazines with the tagline “Fancy pulling an older woman… Out of a car, from a burning building or just out of danger?” Just imagine the LFB running an ad in Escort aimed at heterosexual males humorously implying one of the main benefits of the job was that it would get you free sexual favours from grateful non-incinerated housewives.
Supposedly, all these DEI measures will have no impact whatsoever on the subsequent quality of recruits. Not so. In 2019, it emerged that, in pursuit of a wholly arbitrary goal of having 60% female recruits and 35% non-white ones, the West Midlands Fire Service (WMFS) had allegedly doctored its in-house recruitment tests.
One may have thought the best way to ensure large numbers of black and brown applicants would have been simply to remain based in the West Midlands, but instead chiefs altered entry tests so that white males would need to score 70% to pass, but all others only 60%. How can this not lead to a lowering of recruitment standards? The wokery-ridden WMFS is reportedly not currently a happy ship; maybe it just made the wrong DEI hires?
Yet again, actual human lives are being put at potential risk here, and all for the sake of some stupid woke ideology. DEI makes people DIE!
Steven Tucker is a journalist and the author of over 10 books, the latest being Hitler’s & Stalin’s Misuse of Science: When Science Fiction Was Turned Into Science Fact by the Nazis and the Soviets (Pen & Sword/Frontline), which is out now.
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Once again the green blob is shown up as utterly incompetent, it’s either that or their loathing for humanity is causing the pursuit of planetary depopulation.
“the pursuit of planetary depopulation.”
Welcome aboard.
Could I (naively, probably) ask how the pursuit of net-zero assists with depopulation? What is the mechanism? Is it through people freezing to death as a result of fuel poverty? Or is it simply based on reducing life expectancies by increasing poverty?
Do you not know any history?
Why do you ask? Remind me, please. Are you one of these guys who answers a question with a question?
closing 3000 farms in the Netherlands. If you want to eat it will have to be insects and it won’t be unconditional. Use your imagination.
And using over 40 years of my car windscreen as a guage, insect numbers are considerably depleted as well. No meat, no insects, no crops because we’ve acheived net zero carbon dioxide (an important plant food I understand). I reckon that leaves all us plebs pretty much screwed.
“Net zero CO2” does not mean that there is no CO2 in the atmosphere, it means that CO2 is not increasing. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has increased over the last century.
I know this.I take it you’re not an an admirer of Chris Morrisons numerous features discussing this topic on this platform. I find them quite informative personally.
Sorry if I misinterpreted your post Ian (I too am vax-free, but that’s another story).
No, I’m not fan of Chris Morrison, I think he is tarnishing the Daily Sceptics’ brand. As I’ve said elsewhere here, this is a classic straw man argument – nobody is saying that batteries could or should replace gas power stations, yet CM has written a lengthy article as if they have.
The DS coverage of COVID and free speech has been fair, intelligent and well researched. This and other articles by CM do not meet their standards and he should be given the boot.
Cold, hungry people often die earlier than the warm and well fed. Death from cold causes up to 100x the deaths from high temperatures. Giving many people a toxic mRNA concoction also makes death more likely. There are quite a few very rich people who are behind these sorts of organisations including the green blob which has worked its way into governments and NGOs worldwide.
They do not have our welfare at heart.
I can give you one way it helps, and infact it is already occurring. Couples in the UK are increasingly deciding NOT to have children because of the energy and cost of living crisis.
The problem is that the Net Zero cabal lives in its own ‘maths is racist’ bubble, and that it now has the power and nothing to fear from the brainwashed plebs until the bills actually become due and unpayable.
Though I also think that many of them do know this. These people are not trying to stop it, but are instead working towards bringing about the total collapse of economies and currencies by other means, like plandemics, to fill up their and their sponsors own pockets a bit more along that way.
Don’t forget the depopulation element JayBee.
The people need to beg for the communist take over. To get to that stage things will have to be very bad, before they get even worse.
I can only presume since we’ve reached peak oil and realised we need fundamental change in how we go about energy generation, those who are in control of the levers are undoubtedly setting up a system to covet the remaining resources for themselves (is that stating the obvious?).
I suppose all is fair in love and war but what they’re fundamentally forgetting from their ivory towers is an ignorance for where the tech, breakthroughs and comforts they now enjoy and want to use in their dystopian future came from – bustling economies across the world reliant on fossil fuels. With their declaration of a [supposed] transition – a plan without a plan, they seem to think they’ve all the innovation they need to go further and beyond – a naive perspective if ever I realised one, because a few (even billions) of windmills and solar panels just ain’t gonna cut it.
If we were serious about net zero nuclear power would be top of a very short list – but it isn’t so I can only assume they’re manufacturing a collapse with the hope of some miraculous innovation coming along. But where will that breakthrough come from without the bustling economies and the next bright spark to create the innovation?
Journos looking for a crisis and the left who want to neuter the west have claimed we are running out of oil and gas for decades. Available oil is a function of price and technology as well as, ultimately, geology.
there are huge unexploited known reserves at todays prices. At the price of renewables today there is a vast additional reserve.
if only politicians would reverse their policy of closing down hydrocarbons and as a consequence, the economy.
Fair insight on the peak oil, or if we’re anywhere near that peak, but still even if we’re close I understand why the debate should shift.
Still, even if we are, who’s to say the current system isn’t our best bet to surpass any roadblocks. The purveying suggestion and the direction within the narrative looks to want to restrict everything, put a halt to life (slow it down). It’s a bite your nose to spite your face approach. What’s the system that’s got us to where we are, why would we want to hold that back, even when there are limited resources. We still need to innovate our way through it and for that you need the free exchange of ideas (not doing too well on that) and affordable power to function. Seems quite simple and those are the things in short supply (some of it manufactured).
Alternative theories on the origin of fossil fuels suggests that the earth replenishes its oil reserves through an abiotic process rather than the established theory that oil is the result of biodegraded plants and plankton. If this is true it pokes a hole in the sustainability argument.
and that abiotic approach replenishes quicker than the decomposition?
abiotic process* I meant
I believe this theory originated from Russia. The Western oil companies did not want any research that showed that oil was plentiful therefore cheap, and there is nobody with the financial incentive to carry it out. Which on its own is a good indicator that there is something in the abiotic theory.
So the Earth creates fossil fuels as fast as we use them. This is great news! Can you post a link so that I can explore this is more detail? Thanks.
‘I can only presume since we’ve reached peak oil…’
Have we? Again.
That would be the sixth time we’ve reached it in my lifetime so far.
So why is it necessary for Biden to ban further exploration and extraction in the USA, why moves to stop investment in future exploration and extraction elsewhere, why is fracking banned in UK and Europe?
Explain how it can be, if we have reached peak oil, that there is now far more oil available than ever before with estimates of enough known reserves for two to three centuries at projected increased use?
We are absoutely nowhere near peak oil.
I have no doubt that we all have a minimum of 100 years of “fossil” fuels that can be used affordably and efficiently. Plenty of time to construct enough nuclear at a much lower cost and infinitely less environmental damage than ruinables.
Peak Oil? Where do get that idea? There are 20 times more deposits of fossil fuels in the ground than we have actually used up until now.——- Remember that “deposits” are not the same thing as “reserves”
Looks like I need to do more research on the peak oil, or if we’re anywhere near it. Appreciate the responses.
Nettards all. They know that the true costs are beyond feasibility but want to keep this hidden from us.I am really thinking that the only action we can take collectively to stop this madness is a revolt . When this happens I think a few heads on spikes will be in order .I have a list of suitable candidates to hand ..lol
Who’d have thought it?
The idea that windmills and solar panels will ever create enough energy in the first place to warrant all this battery storage capacity is in itself laughable.
“In 2020 renewables accounted for more than 43.1% of the UK’s total of 312 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity generated. This outstripped fossil fuels over the course of a year”
– https://www.nationalgrid.com/stories/energy-explained/how-much-uks-energy-renewable
43.1% is laughable?
Check the latest definition of “renewables”.
The reason the batteries are needed is because wind and solar are not continuous and not dispatchable… thus unreliable.
Therefore there is no reliable way charge up these batteries so that they can supply electricity when wind/solar power fails, so power from them will be just as unreliable as the primary sources.
Storage falls foul of the very problem they are supposed to solve.
You have to be mentally subnormal not to see and understand this or if you do, just malicious.
Have no fear, sand batteries are here!
https://www.iflscience.com/gigantic-sand-battery-could-provide-a-cheap-solution-for-storing-renewable-energy-66243
Bunk
There is no shortage of magical thinking that yet another fancy scheme using sand or unicorn farts or whatever will save the day.
Let’s turn the clock back. Where was the properly conducted small scale trial WITH THOROUGH COST BENEFIT STUDY for closing coal mines, blowing up power stations and erecting giant whirligigs?
Answer – there never has been!
The parts of COVID which weren’t about imitating China were mostly huge government subsidies for hitherto unprofitable gene engineering technology. Likewise, the brains behind Nut Zero don’t want to save a planet or ever reach Net Zero. What they want is huge government subsidies for otherwise unviable alt tech like electric cars, solar installations on roof tops and giant wind mills on otherwise useless (ie, unprofitable) land.
How ridiculous. How many serfs would have access to private transport ?
Net Zero Promoters “Have No Idea What They Are Doing”……………….
Only they know EXACTLY what they are doing.
Do you know what they are doing? If so, what is it?
No wonder NET ZERO was simply waved through parliament with not a single question asked as to the cost/benefit of this absurdity. ———Blaming Tories for this is daft as all of the political class are in on this total scam. —–Who do these people really work for? It is isn’t you and it isn’t me . So who?——————-Or perhaps the idea is to head in the direction of NET ZERO knowing full well it can never happen, but achieve a lot of the wealth redistribution and lowering of living standards in the process but pull back ultimately from going all the way. Because going all the way is IMPOSSIBLE. The heating aspect of Net Zero alone is impossible as there are 22 million gas boilers in the UK and apart from building some wind turbines and looking a little into hydrogen, the government isn’t doing much to change that situation despite only having 29 years left. Successive governments have committed themselves to something that they have no idea how to achieve? ———Who in their right mind does this? Politics works best when politicians disagree and debate and discuss things, we should be very wary that something about this stinks since all politicians of all major parties all AGREE on Net Zero despite the cost and impossibility. ———-A cautionary tale
I have been getting and reading Francis Menton’s blog, the Manhattan Contrarion, for 2 years. It comes about 3 times a week and is always excellent in its content. I would recommend that all Daily Sceptic supporters read it.
He is one of the very few who has majored on the single biggest problem of the Net Zero policy, the storage of renewables. It has never been even looked at. I have been ‘educating’ my young Tory MP for the last 2 years – complete waste of time – thick as mince!
“Evidence grows by the day that the Net Zero fantasy is a societal and economic disaster waiting to happen.”
Chris, *nobody* could be that stupid and they’re not. They WANT you to die.
Who are “they” and why do they want us to die?
How are net zero policies going to make us die?
Is it possible they could have come up with a more efficient way to make us die?
Mineral oil (not ‘fossil fuels’) is the ‘greenest’ energy source. The whole net zero is all about control. It has zero to do with greeinie-ism
So you don’t believe that the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has any effect on the amount of the Sun’s energy that is retained by the Earth. Interesting.
‘Germany, fully replacing natural gas back-up with battery storage “is a multi-trillion dollar project, likely costing a multiple of the country’s GDP, and thus completely infeasible”’
Chris Morrison has fabricated a classic straw man argument. No-one who has authority in these matters is suggesting that batteries be used to replace gas power stations. The idea is ludicrous.
Batteries are used for very short term storage to avoid the use of expensive “peaker plants”. Their advantage over peaker plants is that they can respond to changes in supply/demand in milliseconds, thus making the grid more robust.
Before anyone’s blood pressure gets too high, the 200MWh battery being installed near Hull by Harmony Energy is not subsidised and is a purely commercial undertaking [https://www.harmonyenergy.co.uk/general/harmony-energy-income-trust-brings-europes-largest-battery-energy-storage-system-online/].
Perhaps we can all agree that the price of gas is currently very high, most of it is imported, and supply may become restricted even at any price.
Is it not therefore logical to replace as much gas as possible with home grown wind and solar, the price of which is low, constant, predictable and not subject to conflicts abroad?