Not OK, Karen! Court loses it when lawyer calls someone ‘Karen' in legal papers: ‘Borderline racist, sexist, and ageist'
You Karen't say that!
A British court tore into an attorney who called someone a 'Karen' in papers for a discrimination case — calling the term 'borderline racist, sexist, and ageist,' according to a report.
A British employment tribunal judge ruled that Karen is a 'borderline racist, sexist, and ageist,' slang term.
Witoon – stock.adobe.com
Sylvia Constance, a 74-year-old black woman, was suing for discrimination after she was axed from a charity company called Harpenden Mencap — but an employment tribunal took issue when the ousted worker's rep used the phrase in court papers, the Independent reported.
Attorney Christine Yates argued leadership at the charity — supports adults with learning disabilities — leadership 'acted like stereotypical Karens' — claiming they weaponized their privilege to suspend and fire Constance over 'fictitious claims, the report said.
Constance accused the organization of unfair dismissal, racial and age discrimination and of launching a campaign to oust her based on prejudice, the outlet said.
Yates alleged that a white, female management team had colluded with white male residents under their care to create a racist and misogynistic smear campaign, the outlet reported.
Tribunal judge George Alliot took issue with the use of the term 'Karen' in legal filings.
pxl.store – stock.adobe.com
Tribunal judge George Alliot took issue with Yates's use of the term 'Karen' in legal filings.
'We note Christine Yates uses the slang term 'Karen', which is a pejorative and borderline racist, sexist, and ageist term,' Alliot said.
The tribunal ultimately dismissed Constance's claims, siding with the charity for firing her in June 2023 over an 'irretrievable breakdown' of workplace relationships, the outlet reported.
Alliot also ruled that the complaints against Constance were 'legitimate,' the outlet said.
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Newsweek
2 hours ago
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Betting Market in Disarray Over Zelensky Suit That's Also Maybe Not a Suit
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Atlantic
5 hours ago
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How to Assess the Damage of the Iran Strikes
In August 1941, the British government received a very unwelcome piece of analysis from an economist named David Miles Bensusan-Butt. A careful analysis of photographs suggested that the Royal Air Force's Bomber Command was having trouble hitting targets in Germany and France; in fact, only one in three pilots that claimed to have attacked the targets seemed to have dropped its bombs within five miles of them. The Butt report is a landmark in the history of 'bomb damage assessment,' or, as we now call it, 'battle damage assessment.' This recondite term has come back into public usage because of the dispute over the effectiveness of the June 22 American bombing of three Iranian nuclear facilities. President Donald Trump said that American bombs had 'obliterated' the Iranian nuclear program. A leaked preliminary assessment from the Defense Intelligence Agency on June 24 said that the damage was minimal. Whom to believe? 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These weapons have improved considerably, and in the 35 years since, 'routine precision,' as some have called it, has enormously improved the ability of airplanes to hit hard, buried targets. Specially designed ordnance has also seen tremendous advances. In World War II, the British developed the six-ton Tallboy bomb to use against special targets, including the concrete submarine pens of occupied France in which German U-boats hid. The Tallboys cracked some of the concrete but did not destroy any, in part because these were 'dumb bombs' lacking precision guidance, and in part because the art of hardening warheads was in its infancy. In the first Gulf War, the United States hastily developed a deep-penetrating, bunker-busting bomb, the GBU-28, which weighed 5,000 pounds, but only two were used, to uncertain effect. 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In many cases, however, Vietnamese engineers countered by building 'underwater bridges' that allowed trucks to drive across a river while axle-deep in water. The effect was inconvenience, not interdiction. Conversely, in the first Gulf War, the U.S. and its allies spent a month pounding Iraqi forces dug in along the Kuwait border, chiefly with dumb bombs delivered by 'smart aircraft' such as the F-16. In theory, the accuracy of the bombing computer on the airplane would allow it to deliver unguided ordnance with accuracy comparable to that of a laser-guided bomb. In practice, ground fire and delivery from high altitudes often caused pilots to miss. When teams began looking at Iraqi tanks in the area overrun by U.S. forces, they found that many of the tanks were, in fact, undamaged. But that was only half of the story. 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Did the bomb go through the multiple layers of concrete and rock fill, or did it 'J-hook'back upward and possibly fail to explode? Was there something in the shelter when it hit, and what damage did it do? Did the Iraqis perhaps move airplanes into penetrated shelters on the theory that lightning would not strike twice? All hard (though not entirely impossible) to judge without being on the ground. To the present moment: BDA takes a long time, so the leaked DIA memo of June 24 was based on preliminary and incomplete data. The study I headed was still working on BDA a year after the war ended. Results may be quicker now, but all kinds of information need to be integrated—imagery analysis, intercepted communications, measurement and signature intelligence (e.g., subsidence of earth above a collapsed structure), and of course human intelligence, among others. Any expert (and any journalist who bothered to consult one) would know that two days was a radically inadequate time frame in which to form a considered judgment. The DIA report was, from a practical point of view, worthless. An educated guess, however, would suggest that in fact the U.S. military's judgment that the Iranian nuclear problem had suffered severe damage was correct. The American bombing was the culmination of a 12-day campaign launched by the Israelis, which hit many nuclear facilities and assassinated at least 14 nuclear scientists. The real issue is not the single American strike so much as the cumulative effect against the entire nuclear ecosystem, including machining, testing, and design facilities. The platforms delivering the munitions in the American attack had ideal conditions in which to operate—there was no Iranian air force to come up and attack the B-2s that they may not even have detected, nor was there ground fire to speak of. The planes were the most sophisticated platforms of the most sophisticated air force in the world. The bombs themselves, particularly the 14 GBU-57s, were gigantic—at 15 tons more than double the size of Tallboys—with exquisite guidance and hardened penetrating warheads. The targets were all fully understood from more than a decade of close scrutiny by Israeli and American intelligence, and probably that of other Western countries as well. In the absence of full information, cumulative expert judgment also deserves some consideration—and external experts such as David Albright, the founder of the Institute for Science and International Security, have concluded that the damage was indeed massive and lasting. Israeli analysts, in and out of government, appear to agree. They are more likely to know, and more likely to be cautious in declaring success about what is, after all, an existential threat to their country. For that matter, the Iranian foreign minister concedes that 'serious damage' was done. One has to set aside the sycophantic braggadocio of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, who seems to believe that one unopposed bombing raid is a military achievement on par with D-Day, or the exuberant use of the word obliteration by the president. A cooler, admittedly provisional judgment is that with all their faults, however, the president and his secretary of defense are likely a lot closer to the mark about what happened when the bombs fell than many of their hasty, and not always well-informed, critics. *Photo-illustration by Jonelle Afurong / The Atlantic. Source: Alberto Pizzoli / Sygma / Getty; MIKE NELSON / AFP / Getty; Greg Mathieson / Mai / Getty; Space Frontiers / Archive Photos / Hulton Archive / Getty; U.S. Department of Defense
New York Post
6 hours ago
- New York Post
Not OK, Karen! Court loses it when lawyer calls someone ‘Karen' in legal papers: ‘Borderline racist, sexist, and ageist'
You Karen't say that! A British court tore into an attorney who called someone a 'Karen' in papers for a discrimination case — calling the term 'borderline racist, sexist, and ageist,' according to a report. A British employment tribunal judge ruled that Karen is a 'borderline racist, sexist, and ageist,' slang term. Witoon – Sylvia Constance, a 74-year-old black woman, was suing for discrimination after she was axed from a charity company called Harpenden Mencap — but an employment tribunal took issue when the ousted worker's rep used the phrase in court papers, the Independent reported. Attorney Christine Yates argued leadership at the charity — supports adults with learning disabilities — leadership 'acted like stereotypical Karens' — claiming they weaponized their privilege to suspend and fire Constance over 'fictitious claims, the report said. Constance accused the organization of unfair dismissal, racial and age discrimination and of launching a campaign to oust her based on prejudice, the outlet said. Yates alleged that a white, female management team had colluded with white male residents under their care to create a racist and misogynistic smear campaign, the outlet reported. Tribunal judge George Alliot took issue with the use of the term 'Karen' in legal filings. – Tribunal judge George Alliot took issue with Yates's use of the term 'Karen' in legal filings. 'We note Christine Yates uses the slang term 'Karen', which is a pejorative and borderline racist, sexist, and ageist term,' Alliot said. The tribunal ultimately dismissed Constance's claims, siding with the charity for firing her in June 2023 over an 'irretrievable breakdown' of workplace relationships, the outlet reported. Alliot also ruled that the complaints against Constance were 'legitimate,' the outlet said.
