30 March, 2021

Losing the Language, Losing the Argument

There’s an old saying in a debate that those who define the terms usually win the argument. That truism has been playing out on the political stage now for at least half a century, as the Right consistently concedes the language to the Left. If it seems like we’re always losing the argument, perhaps that’s because we’re always playing on their home field.

Of course, it’s true that language evolves naturally over time. Think of the word “hood,” which once referred only to a head covering. Now it’s also applied to the front of a car—the part that covers the engine. That’s a natural and logical evolution.

It’s when such shifts in meaning don’t occur naturally and aren’t logical that problems arise—when words are manipulated intentionally to make them mean things they didn’t mean before or aren’t supposed to mean. And this manipulation of language, otherwise known as propaganda, is something the Left is quite good at. In fact, rhetorically speaking, it might be the only thing they’re really good at—their entire game plan—since their arguments are rarely based on logic or fact.

Indeed, most of their arguments, like those for abortion, gun control, and “systemic racism,” are demonstrably illogical and contrafactual. But if they can get us to agree to their terms upfront, which we often do without even realizing it, then they can probably win the argument, anyway. Heck, at this point, it sometimes seems like they’ve already won the argument and all that remains for our side is rear-guard action and damage control. (But that isn’t necessarily the case).

A classic example of what I’m talking about is the word “capitalism” as used to describe our economic system. We conservatives are fond of calling ourselves capitalists or saying that we support capitalism. But in doing so, are we even aware that we’re accepting the Left’s premise—using their word? It was actually Karl Marx’s term for our system, one that he did not coin but did use extensively in Das Kapital (see?). And he certainly did not mean it in a good way.

Adopting the term as our own allows the Left to brand us as “greedy capitalists.” They can then invent pithy if nonsensical bromides like, “Capitalism is only for people who have capital.” Of course, every one of us has capital of some sort, if only our own hard work, that we can trade for goods and services in a free market economy. But since most people associate “capital” with money, it makes for a good slogan. The implied message is that capitalism is just for people with money. Everybody else can go to hell.

That’s why the other term I just used is superior: “free markets.” Free markets are something everybody can get behind because the operative word is “free.” Marxists might be able to argue that capitalism is for capitalists—it really isn’t, but that sounds convincing—but free markets are for everyone. That’s why, instead of talking about capitalism and playing right into the Left’s hands, conservatives should constantly drive home the benefits of a free-market economy.

Another example involves the labels leftists apply to themselves: “liberals” and “progressives.” I can’t imagine anything more illiberal and regressive than modern-day leftism, which seeks to deprive us of as many civil liberties as possible—including those guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, like freedom of religion and speech—and re-create a system led by the elites in which the rest of us are, in Friedrich von Hayek’s memorable phrase, “on the road [back] to serfdom.”

That’s why I always cringe when I hear conservative commentators refer to today’s leftist radicals as “liberals.” They’re certainly not classical liberals—i.e., libertarians—nor are they even old-fashioned, Jimmy Carter, Sunday-school-type liberals. It is vitally important, and becoming more so each day, to call them what they really are: Marxists, Stalinists, and Maoists. Besides accurately describing their policy preferences, such terms offer the rhetorical advantage of associating those policy preferences with some of history’s worst people, and deservedly so.

Lately, the Left has become so audacious in their manipulation of language that they’ve begun calling things the exact opposite of what they really are. Take “anti-fascism,” for example, as represented by the group Antifa, whose tactics closely resemble those of Hitler’s Brownshirts. And “anti-racism,” which is itself nothing more than a form of blatant racism.

Speaking of which, there’s another great example of language manipulation. The word “racism” literally means discrimination on the basis of race. But for the Left, only one race, whites, can be guilty of racism, because they define the word purely in terms of power. And in their Marxist worldview, in which everyone is either a victim or an oppressor, only white people can have power.

That, of course, is ridiculous on its face. In today’s America, many black people hold positions of power, from local school boards all the way up to the White House. But beyond that, the bastardization of the term allows the Marxists to claim victimhood for people who are not victims and condemn as oppressors those who have never oppressed anyone.

Indeed, given such a narrow definition of “racism,” it’s not much of a leap to assert that ALL white people are racist—because, remember, only they have power in the Left’s warped universe. And of course, that is exactly what the Left is asserting today. It is the basis for “Critical Race Theory,” that vile, hateful, racist (in the true sense of the word), viral ideology now infecting our schools and other institutions.

But it all begins when we as conservatives accept the Left’s lexicon. That’s why the front line of the current culture war must be at the level of language. We cannot simply argue policy; we must also contest vocabulary and refuse to let the Marxists set the terms of the debate. Otherwise, we’ve already lost it.

https://townhall.com/columnists/robjenkins/2021/03/28/losing-the-language-losing-the-argument-n2586993

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When white supremacists are brown

There’s been a lot of chatter about the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes. Asian-Americans are being targeted, yes—but the narrative may not be reflective of what liberal media outlets are disseminating. They want us to believe that white supremacy and Donald Trump are to blame. Calling COVID the ‘Wuhan coronavirus’ is what led to this recent spate of attacks. No, the virus came from China. That is a fact. You see the ‘my ethnicity is not a virus’ signs, though that sentiment seems to stop within lefty circles when they want to bash white people. There’s always a boomerang, folks. Whatever liberals dole out, eventually it will come back to split their lip open like a fool with a boomerang. Always. These people have no principles, only feelings that can land you in a lot of trouble.

The recent NYPD presser on anti-Asian hate crimes shows pictures of the suspects who look rather…nonwhite. I mean when that slide of those who were arrested was shown, there was not a white face on that screen.

This all stems from the horrific mass shooting in Atlanta where Robert Aaron Long shot and killed eight people, many of them Asian women. Cue the white supremacy and hate crime talk, though we don’t know yet why he did this. That’s what Andrew Sullivan noted in his piece on Substack, which relates to the NYPD presser here. We once again see the woke narrative replacing what’s factual. He goes long into the recent spa shootings committed by Long, the infusion of ‘critical race theory,’ which is worth a read, but he also notes that a good chunk of hate crimes committed against Asians in New York City were done by nonwhites. That shreds the white supremacy angle. He does say that Trump’s “China virus” rhetoric fanned the flames. I disagree, but here’s a key passage:

This isn’t in any way to deny increasing bias against Asian-Americans. It’s real and it’s awful. Asians are targeted by elite leftists, who actively discriminate against them in higher education, and attempt to dismantle the merit-based schools where Asian-American students succeed — precisely and only because too many Asians are attending. And Asian-Americans are also often targeted by envious or opportunistic criminal non-whites in their neighborhoods. For Trump to give these forces a top-spin with the “China virus” made things even worse, of course. For a firsthand account of a Chinese family’s experience of violence and harassment, check out this piece.

The more Asian-Americans succeed, the deeper the envy and hostility that can be directed toward them. The National Crime Victimization Survey notes that “the rate of violent crime committed against Asians increased from 8.2 to 16.2 per 1000 persons age 12 or older from 2015 to 2018.” Hate crimes? “Hate crime incidents against Asian Americans had an annual rate of increase of approximately 12% from 2012 to 2014. Although there was a temporary decrease from 2014 to 2015, anti-Asian bias crimes had increased again from 2015 to 2018.”

Asians are different from other groups in this respect. “Comparing with Black and Hispanic victims, Asian Americans have relatively higher chance to be victimized by non-White offenders (25.5% vs. 1.0% for African Americans and 18.9% for Hispanics). … Asian Americans have higher risk to be persecuted by strangers … are less likely to be offended in their residence … and are more likely to be targeted at school/college.” Of those committing violence against Asians, you discover that 24 percent such attacks are committed by whites; 24 percent are committed by fellow Asians; 7 percent by Hispanics; and 27.5 percent by African-Americans. Do the Kendi math, and you can see why Kendi’s “White Supremacist domestic terror” is not that useful a term for describing anti-Asian violence.

But what about hate crimes specifically? In general, the group disproportionately most likely to commit hate crimes in the US are African-Americans. At 13 percent of the population, African Americans commit 23.9 percent of hate crimes. But hate specifically against Asian-Americans in the era of Trump and Covid? Solid numbers are not yet available for 2020, which is the year that matters here. There’s data, from 1994 to 2014, that finds little racial skew among those committing anti-Asian hate crimes. Hostility comes from every other community pretty equally.

The best data I’ve found for 2020, the salient period for this discussion, are provisional data on complaints and arrests for hate crimes against Asians in New York City, one of two cities which seem to have been most affected. They record 20 such arrests in 2020. Of those 20 offenders, 11 were African-American, two Black-Hispanic, two white, and five white Hispanics. Of the black offenders, a majority were women. The bulk happened last March, and they petered out soon after. If you drill down on some recent incidents in the news in California, and get past the media gloss to the actual mugshots, you also find as many black as white offenders.

This doesn’t prove much either, of course. Anti-Asian bias, like all biases, can infect anyone of any race, and the sample size is small and in one place. But it sure complicates the “white supremacy” case that the mainstream media simply assert as fact.

And that NYPD presser complicated that narrative pretty well.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/03/26/the-faces-of-white-supremacy-responsible-for-spike-in-asian-hate-crimes-in-ny-loo-n2586935

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Judge Takes Child From Mother Because She’s “Anti-Mask"

During a custody battle with her ex-husband, Melanie Joseph had her parental rights stripped after a court ruled she’s a “danger” to the child for being “anti-mask.”

Audio recording reveals Broward County Judge Dale C. Cohen telling the court he thinks the mother’s “credibility is very low.”

“I don’t believe a lot of what she testified to,” Judge Cohen said. “Um, she’s one of these anti-mask people and she’s got the audacity to post that on social media that she’s an anti-mask people.”

Joseph told Peters she isn’t “anti-mask” and had instead posted a pre-pandemic photo online.

https://dailyheadlines.com/judge-takes-child-from-mother-because-shes-anti-mask-thats-not-all/

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Under Joe Biden, Woke Banks Run Wild

During the final weeks of the Trump administration, the federal Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) issued an important regulation that would have required financial institutions to base their rules governing access to banking services on financial concerns, rather than political views.

According to the Trump-era OCC, "The rule codifies more than a decade of OCC guidance stating that banks should conduct risk assessment of individual customers, rather than make broad-based decisions affecting whole categories or classes of customers, when provisioning access to services, capital, and credit."

The Trump administration's rule would have provided an important safeguard against large banks—defined by the OCC as those "with more than $100 billion in assets that may exert significant pricing power or influence over sectors of the national economy"—using their vast wealth and financial power to impose their ideological views on Americans.

Although it seems like the rule ought to draw significant bipartisan support—do liberals really want big banks punishing people who don't agree with them?—soon after taking office, President Biden put the rule on a 60-day hold.

The Biden administration's move is a clear signal that it intends to kill the regulation before it goes into effect on April 1.

One might be tempted to think big banks would support the Trump-era rule because it would allow them to take politics completely out of their financial decision-making process. The regulation would have provided them an excuse when special-interest groups on the Left or Right demand they get involved in controversial debates. That, unfortunately, could not be further from reality.

Large banks are some of the rule's biggest opponents, and many financial institutions have already started to roll out plans for using this opportunity to promote liberal ideology—and to earn a profit while doing so.

In Congress, many Democrats have aligned themselves with large financial institutions seeking to eliminate the rule, because they want to allow banks to impose liberalism on the American people.

Many on the left want to allow banks to discriminate on the basis of political ideology, among other things, because large banks have already used their power to promote a variety of causes favored by Democrats.

For instance, in February, Bank of America announced, "Building on Bank of America's longstanding support for the Paris Climate Agreement, the company today outlined initial steps to achieve its goal of net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in its financing activities, operations and supply chain before 2050."

Pay careful attention to Bank of America's statement. The bank not only promised to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions, but to reduce emissions "in its financing activities." That means it plans to force businesses—and perhaps even individuals—who might otherwise choose to continue using fossil fuels to adopt "green" energy or else lose access to the bank's capital.

Bank of America isn't alone. Seemingly every large banking institution in the United States is now gearing up to use its vast financial resources to promote liberal causes. Earlier in March, Citibank announced commitments similar to those issued the month prior by Bank of America.

During the announcement, Citi CEO Jane Fraser said, "We believe that global financial institutions like Citi have the opportunity—and the responsibility—to play a leading role in helping drive the transition to a net zero global economy and make good on the promise of the Paris Agreement."

Institutions like Bank of America and Citi aren't stopping at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. "Our commitments to closing the gender pay gap, to advancing racial equity, and to pioneering the green agenda have demonstrated that this is good for business and not at odds with it," Fraser said in the same announcement. "And we will continue to be part of the solution to these challenges and enable others to do so as well."

Many Americans believe climate change, the gender pay gap and other causes now adopted by large banks are serious problems worthy of our attention, and thus might think the elimination of the Trump-era OCC rule is a positive step forward. Think carefully, though, before coming to such a reckless conclusion.

If massive banks and financial institutions can effectively shut down any industry or even class of nonprofit organizations because they disagree with those institutions' politics, then they have the authority to control society in ways that all Americans should be extremely uncomfortable with. There would be absolutely nothing stopping CEOs at major banks from waking up in six months and saying, "You know, maybe we were wrong about that whole climate change thing. I think we'll stop providing financial services to renewable energy companies instead."

The modern banking system cannot exist without government-created central bank currency. Many large banks have, at one time or another, received massive funding from the federal government in the form of taxpayer-funded bailouts or COVID-related financial support. The government is well within its rights to require those banks to make services available to all creditworthy groups in the United States and to prevent them from playing politics.

If instead banks are permitted to discriminate against businesses and individuals that do not share their political views, their power and influence will undoubtedly become a grave threat to the preservation of our free society.

https://www.newsweek.com/under-joe-biden-woke-banks-run-wild-opinion-1578191

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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29 March, 2021

The Unaccompanied Minors

While a heart-wrenching issue -- they are a distraction from a nightmarish threat.

Americans have finally gotten a glimpse of the horrible conditions under which the Biden administration is essentially warehousing alien children who show up on the southern border in response to Biden’s words and policies.

Biden tried to block the photos and has attempted to erect a wall of secrecy around his administration to avoid being made accountable.

This is a true humanitarian crisis, make no mistake, but these children are mere pawns in the political game being played by the Biden Administration.

For all of the breast-beating by the Democrats during the Trump administration who complained stridently about the “kids in cages” we now see that the Biden administration has resorted to the use of dangerously overcrowded pens that look more suitable for holding livestock than children; and this is happening during the COVID-19 Pandemic where we are constantly told to wear masks and maintain “social distancing.”

The media will now, undoubtedly focus their attention on the children while ignoring broader issues that emanate from the immigration crisis that the Biden administration refuses to describe as a crisis. It is becoming obvious that they won’t use that term because they are getting exactly what they want: to flood America with huge numbers of immigrants for political purposes.

Flooding America with huge numbers of aliens will cause many Americans to lose their jobs and/or suffer wage suppression, pushing more Americans into poverty and reliance on government programs that the Democrats are happy to provide, thus forcing millions of Americans to vote for the Democrats--the “Party of the hand-out.”

In May of last year I wrote, For Dems to Succeed, Americans Must Fail, Many believe that the leaders of the Democrat Party seek to import huge numbers of immigrants who would ultimately vote for the their candidates. What most don’t realize that the apparent plan of the Democrat Party is far worse than that. My dad used to say that you can turn capitalists into communists by taking away their money.

However, the huge numbers of aliens who have flooded the southern border of the United States, have overwhelmed the entire immigration system; this is the obvious goal of the Biden administration.

The current situation should surprise no one given the statements made by Mr. Biden even before he was sworn in and given his selection of Alejandro Mayorkas for Secretary of Homeland Security, as I noted in my article that was published on December 7, 2020, Biden's DHS: Department of Homeland Surrender: Alejandro Mayorkas, architect of DACA, picked by Biden to head DHS.

In reality, the immigration system has been overwhelmed for decades. The key to imbuing the immigration system involves much, much more than simply hiring more Border Patrol agents.

The immigration system desperately needs to have ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) agents to imbue the immigration system with meaningful integrity.

Back in May 2019, during the Trump administration, I wrote an article, Jihad At The Border that focused on how the border crisis back then facilitated the entry of terrorists.

My earlier article included this passage that is certainly even more relevant today than it was then:

Thus the ability of the already beleaguered U.S. Border Patrol to secure our porous and dangerous southern border has been diminished by 40%.

Those who study history, specifically World War II know that “D-Day,” also known as “Operation Overlord” was only successful because of a diversion created by the Allies known as the “Calais Deception” that was officially labeled “Operation Fortitude.”

General George Patton was put in charge of a phantom division that consisted of inflatable tanks and trucks that from the air, created the elaborate but false illusion of a large contingent of soldiers preparing to attack Germany at the Pas-de-Calais rather than at Normandy where the attack would actually be mounted.

The Germans were thus conned into splitting up their defensive forces, leaving Normandy vulnerable to the Allies on June 6, 1944.

Today our Border Patrol and, indeed, the entire immigration system, is being inundated by huge numbers of illegal aliens forcing the Border Patrol to deploy many of its agents to assignment that remove them from the primary mission of securing vast stretches of unsecured border.

This was why the border wall was so important, not to block people and commerce from entering the United States, after all, the wall did not block off ports of entry, but to funnel all commerce and people seeking entry into the United States to the ports of entry so that they could be vetted and a record of their entry created.

Today the Border Patrol is so overwhelmed that, on March 20 the National Review reported: CBP Asks to Fly Migrants to Canadian Border for Processing amid Surge: Report.

The very next day, on March 21, 2021 Fox News reported, Border Patrol in Rio Grande Valley releasing illegal crossers into US without court date.

What happens on the border does not stay on the border. Once past the border these aliens are free to travel across the United States and settle in towns and cities across the United States.

Sanctuary cities further entice aliens who have criminal backgrounds to set up shop in those towns where the can continue their “criminal careers.” This also applies to terrorists.

It is more than ironic that while Nancy Pelosi has demanded a “9/11-style commission” to investigate the riot at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, she and her political cohorts blatantly violate the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission where immigration is concerned.

The mainstream media is no better, ignoring the nexus between immigration failures and the ability of terrorists to enter the United States, embed themselves and go about their deadly preparations that were clearly laid out in The 9/11 Commission Report and the companion report, 9/11 and Terrorist Travel: Staff Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States.

The latter report addressed the importance of the enforcement of our immigration laws from within the interior of the United States:

Page 54 contained this excerpt under the title “3.2 Terrorist Travel Tactics by Plot.”

Although there is evidence that some land and sea border entries (of terrorists) without inspection occurred, these conspirators mainly subverted the legal entry system by entering at airports.

In doing so, they relied on a wide variety of fraudulent documents, on aliases, and on government corruption. Because terrorist operations were not suicide missions in the early to mid-1990s, once in the United States terrorists and their supporters tried to get legal immigration status that would permit them to remain here, primarily by committing serial, or repeated, immigration fraud, by claiming political asylum, and by marrying Americans. Many of these tactics would remain largely unchanged and undetected throughout the 1990s and up to the 9/11 attack.

Thus, abuse of the immigration system and a lack of interior immigration enforcement were unwittingly working together to support terrorist activity. It would remain largely unknown, since no agency of the United States government analyzed terrorist travel patterns until after 9/11. This lack of attention meant that critical opportunities to disrupt terrorist travel and, therefore, deadly terrorist operations were missed.

Page 61 contained this passage:

Exploring the Link between Human Smugglers and Terrorists

In July 2001, the CIA warned of a possible link between human smugglers and terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.149 Indeed, there is evidence to suggest that since 1999 human smugglers have facilitated the travel of terrorists associated with more than a dozen extremist groups.150 With their global reach and connections to fraudulent document vendors and corrupt government officials, human smugglers clearly have the “credentials” necessary to aid terrorist travel.

On February 11, 2021 The Epoch Times reported, Terror Threat Across Southern Border ‘Elevated and Escalating,’ Expert Says.

On February 4, 2021 The Epoch Times reported, Border Patrol Agents Arrest 11 Iranians in Arizona Who Illegally Entered US

Biden’s immigration policies have sparked uncontrolled immigration to an extent that it could be categorized as an invasion.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/unaccompanied-minors-while-heart-wrenching-are-michael-cutler/?utm_campaign=2151532&utm_content=2950826

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Baltimore Will No Longer Prosecute Drug Possession, Prostitution, and Other 'Low-Level' Crimes

Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby declared the “war on drug users” is over and her office will no longer prosecute low-level crimes like drug possession and prostitution.

The program has been in place for the last year and was designed to reduce the population in city jails during the pandemic. Yesterday, Mosby made the policy permanent.

“Today, America’s war on drug users is over in the city of Baltimore. We leave behind the era of tough-on-crime prosecution and zero tolerance policing and no longer default to the status quo to criminalize mostly people of color for addiction,” said Mosby in an official press release.

Mosby said her office will no longer prosecute drug and drug paraphernalia possession, prostitution, trespassing, minor traffic offense, open container violations, and urinating and defecating in public.

CNN:

Her decision was supported by Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott and Baltimore City Police Commissioner Michael Harrison. But Republican state Sen. Robert Cassilly told CNN affiliate WBFF that while he supports prosecutorial judgment, Mosby’s decision is closer to making the law rather than enforcing it.

“Prosecutors take an oath to uphold the constitution in the state of Maryland and the constitution says the general assembly sets the policy, not the prosecutors,” Cassilly told the station. “I respect the whole prosecutorial discretion. That’s not prosecutorial discretion, that’s an exercise in legislating. That’s what the legislature is supposed to do.”

Baltimore, already a very unpleasant place to live, is about to get worse. When mayors don’t care about the “quality of life” issues like public urination and prostitution, they invite behaviors that make the city unlivable.

Mosby said the state’s attorney’s office is also working with the Baltimore Police Department and Baltimore Crisis Response Inc. (BCRI), a crisis center dealing with mental health and substance abuse issue, to offer services instead of arresting individuals committing these lesser offenses.

“Rather than arrest and prosecution, BCRI will connect individuals with services in areas such as mental health, housing, and substance use,” according to the press release.

Decriminalizing certain behaviors and activities will only encourage those same activities. Just ask San Francisco residents what happened when the city stopped prosecuting people for public urination and defecation.

“This is not compassion for the homeless. It’s condemning people to the consequences of squalor,” wrote the editor of the police blog Law Officer.

I am a Southern Californian, but relocated to Texas upon retirement from law enforcement. I have family members who live in the Bay Area, so we’d frequently visit San Francisco. However, a few years ago I said I’d had enough after the overly aggressive panhandlers spoiled a sightseeing day at Fisherman’s Wharf. Yet the coup de grace for me was entering a public restroom near the BART station and witnessing a vagrant—high on heroin—taking a crap in the sink—when public stalls were available.

“I’m done with this city,” I declared when I returned to my waiting family.

As police forces shrink and crime grows, this policy will probably be forced on all major cities. It’s what the radicals want. And Baltimore will suffer the consequences.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/28/baltimore-will-no-longer-prosecute-drug-possession-prostitution-and-other-low-level-crimes-n1435502

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Cancel Culture Comes to Medicine

The Journal of the American Medical Association is one of the most prestigious medical journals in the world and is regularly cited as an authority on everything from cancer to erectile dysfunction.

Now JAMA is embroiled in controversy over a podcast on racism and medicine that didn’t include any black panelists. After hundreds of black doctors complained, the AMA fired the deputy editor of JAMA and suspended the editor-in-chief, Dr. Howard Bauchner, pending the outcome of an investigation.

The subject of the podcast was racism in healthcare which has been much in the news in recent months as racism has been blamed for the disparity in Covid deaths between blacks and whites.

Associated Press:

“The decision to place the editor-in-chief on administrative leave neither implicates nor exonerates individuals and is standard operating procedure for such investigations,” the committee said in a statement.

Dr. Phil Fontanarosa, JAMA’s executive editor, will serve as interim editor.

“It’s a reasonable first step but it should not be seen as mission accomplished,” Dr. Raymond Givens, a Black cardiologist in New York, said Friday. He has been a vocal online critic of a lack of diversity among editors of JAMA and other prominent medical journals.

There are several possible explanations for why more blacks died proportionately than whites and most of them have to do with income disparities, not racial animus. Poor people are generally less healthy. They tend toward obesity, which makes them more susceptible to heart disease and diabetes. Black people also smoke at a higher rate than whites, which is a known factor in lung diseases like COPD and emphysema.

It’s also a fact that whites spend more on healthcare in general than blacks. And clinics and hospitals are more accessible in rich suburbs than in the poor inner city.

All of the above conditions are prime contributors to serious illness and death from Covid-19 so it stands to reason more blacks would die of Covid as a proportion of the population than whites.

What makes this podcast issue so silly is that the recording was “a discussion for skeptics” of the idea that there is racism in healthcare. Apparently, even discussing the possibility that there were other factors involved in the disparities in outcomes in healthcare proved too much for some.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/27/cancel-culture-comes-to-medicine-n1435402

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A Christian Church Just CAVED To Leftists, Made MAJOR Change To BIBLE

The Swedish church hardly exists. It has very few communicants

Progressivism is infesting just about everything in Western society, and the latest casualty is the Christian Church.

The national Church of Sweden has capitulated to social justice warriors demanding everything be gender neutral as to not offend transgendered people or non-binary, gender fluid creatures of intermediate sexuality and made a massive change to the one thing that should remain sacred in Christianity – the Lord’s Prayer. In what can only be described as a totally insane move, the national Evangelical Lutheran Church has decided that God will no longer be referred to as “He,” but instead only the gender non-conforming term of “God.”

It gets worse, according to Yahoo! News.

When speaking of God, pastors are instructed to use phrases like “the Holy Trinity” rather than “the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,” and avoid other masculine terms when speaking about our Lord and Savior.

“We talk about Jesus Christ, but in a few places we have changed it to say ‘God’ instead of ‘he’,” Church of Sweden spokesperson Sofija Pedersen Videke told The Telegraph. “We have some prayer options that are more gender-neutral than others.”

“A wide majority of people decided on the book,” she said, adding that she had heard of no priests who objected to the new linguistic framework.

The Church of Sweden is headed by Archbishop Antje Jackelen, who was elected Sweden’s first female archbishop in 2013.

Archbishop Jackelen defended the decision, telling Sweden’s TT news agency: “Theologically, for instance, we know that God is beyond our gender determinations, God is not human.”

The defilement of God comes as the Church is attempting to “modernize” its handbook outlining how services should be conducted. However, not everyone in the Christian community is happy about the decision, and rightfully so.

All throughout the Bible, God is referred to as “He,” “Him,” and other masculine terms, so these progressive lunatics in Sweden are attempting to rewrite God’s doctrine. Christer Pahlmblad, an associate theology professor at Lund University in Sweden, agrees, telling the Danish newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad the decision was “undermining the doctrine of the Trinity and the community with the other Christian churches.”

“It really isn’t smart if the Church of Sweden becomes known as a church that does not respect the common theology heritage,” he said.

https://americasfreedomfighters.com/breaking-the-christian-church-just-caved-to-leftists-made-major-change-to-bible-this-is-sick/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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28 March, 2021

Biden cops some friendly fire

Meghan McCain has slammed the mainstream media for its fawning response to Joe Biden's first press conference, saying the new President is being treated far more lightly than his predecessor, Donald Trump.

Biden held his first press conference on Thursday - more than two months into his Presidency - where he answered questions on immigration, China, and gun control.

But while Biden made a series of factually incorrect statements and was seen referring to prepared notes, the media's response has been overwhelmingly positive.

Speaking on The View Friday, McCain said the reaction was evidence of media bias, and claimed that Biden only answered a series of softball questions.

'We're still in a pandemic, there are still a bunch of crises, and I don't think he answered nearly enough questions that I, for one, would have liked to see him answer and I think the coverage has been really disconcerting,' the conservative co-host stated.

'I was watching some shows this morning - there's no need to slobber all over Joe Biden right now. He's still the president of the United States. And I think our role in the fourth estate is to hold his feet to the fire and to ask serious questions and 'give him time, let him be president,' yes, but we didn't give this [leeway] to President Obama or to President Trump.'

McCain also added that Biden didn't take questions from journalists who may have been prepared to ask him harder questions. 'He didn't answer any questions from any media that didn't agree with him,' McCain explained. 'Peter Doocy, was not called on, Fox News wasn't called on, which I think is a huge miss for President Biden yesterday.'

She also stated that the press deliberately ignored Biden's recent stumble up the stairs of Air Force One and reports that a gun registered to Hunter Biden was disposed of in a trash can outside a Delaware supermarket in 2018.

'If President Trump had fallen down Air Force One or if his son was involved in some very serious reports involving the Secret Service and a handgun, I believe we would be having a very different [discussion] today,' McCain stated, trying to point out the perceived double standard.

McCain has been long been a family friend of Joe Biden's. Her father, the late John McCain, worked alongside Biden in the Senate for decades.

'I love President Biden as a person. I think he's a truly decent human person, and a wonderful family man and I have great love and admiration for him on a personal level,' McCain clarified on Friday.

'But I believe our role in the fourth estate as journalists and commentators is hold the president and the press's feet to the fire and I have to separate my emotions from calling balls and strikes on this.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9409373/Meghan-McCain-blasts-mainstream-media-fawning-response-Biden-press-conference.html

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For the Left, Bigotry Is a Tool

This week, a white man shot to death eight people in Atlanta-area spas, six of them Asian American. According to Atlanta police, the man said he was targeting brothels and blamed the women for his alleged sex addiction. The gunman stated that he had visited two of the spas before and had planned to drive to Florida and target the pornography industry. So far, there is no evidence that the shooter was motivated by anti-Asian animus, making hate-crime charges unlikely at this point.

Nonetheless, the establishment media and Democratic politicians quickly began reflecting the lie that the shooting was an anti-Asian hate crime, the latest outgrowth of a major uptick in anti-Asian hate crimes -- all driven supposedly by "white supremacy." White House press secretary Jen Psaki connected the alleged increase in anti-Asian sentiment to former President Trump, stating that his "calling COVID 'the Wuhan virus' ... led ... to perceptions of the Asian American community that are inaccurate, unfair." Racial grifter Ibram X. Kendi tweeted: "Locking arms with Asian Americans facing this lethal wave of anti-Asian terror. Their struggle is my struggle. Our struggle is against racism and White supremacist domestic terror." Nikole Hannah-Jones, pseudo-journalist and de facto editor-in-chief at The New York Times, tweeted in solidarity: "I stand with my Asian-American brothers and sisters, just as so many of you have stood with us. I grieve. We must own all of this history -- ALL OF IT -- and determine to fight for a truly multiracial democracy where we all can be free."

This is cynical politicking at best.

The same sources decrying anti-Asian sentiment have spent years expressing anti-Asian animus in the form of discriminatory college admissions standards: President Biden's administration dropped a discrimination case against Yale University just a month ago, clearly thanks to the administration's position that affirmative action for black students outweighs Asian American success in a pure meritocracy. The same people blaming "white supremacy" for anti-Asian hate crimes have militantly ignored the location of the crimes -- largely major metropolitan areas, with a large number of such crimes coming not from white Americans but from black Americans (a plurality of overall violent crimes targeting Asian Americans, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, were committed by black Americans in 2018). The same establishment media sources blaming Trump for anti-Asian hate cheer on the active closing of merit-based magnet schools in New York and San Francisco, thanks to those schools' disproportionate Asian American attendance: Hannah-Jones tweeted last year that it was "disingenuous" to talk about "specialized high schools being majority POC" (people of color) when referring to Asian Americans.

Here, then, is how the narrative works, according to the left: No matter the antecedent to any statement, the conclusion must be that America is systemically racist. When we are discussing Asian American economic success, Asian Americans must be treated as beneficiaries of a white supremacist system; when we are talking about hate crimes against Asian Americans, Asian Americans must be treated as people of color victimized by a white supremacist system. When a white person harms Asian Americans, as Trevor Noah explained, intent doesn't matter -- animus can be assumed. When a black person harms Asian Americans, as NBC News reported, "experts say it's important to evaluate each case individually."

All of this is morally base. Anti-Asian animus is anti-Asian animus, whether it comes from woke school administrators or street criminals. To treat such animus differently based solely on the identity of the offender is to make obvious that you simply don't care about anti-Asian animus. For the left, it's just the latest club to wield against the broader American system, facts be damned.

https://townhall.com/columnists/benshapiro/2021/03/24/for-the-left-bigotry-is-a-tool-n2586773

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Follow The ‘Science,’ They Said

Throughout the Trump years and in particular during the 2020 COVID pandemic crisis, the nation was lectured by the Left “to follow the data,” as the Democrats proclaimed themselves the “party of science.” As sober and judicious children of the enlightenment, they alone offered the necessary disinterested correctives to Trump’s supposed bluster and exaggeration—and to his anti-scientific deplorable following (often dismissed by Biden as dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals).

In truth, leftists and Democrats have become the purveyors of superstition. Their creation of a fantasy world is not because they do not believe in science per se, but because they believe more in the primacy of ideology that should shape and warp science in the proper fashion for the greater good. What prompted Paul Ehrlich, Al Gore, or Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) hysterically and wrongly to forecast widespread demographic or climatological catastrophe in just a few years was not ignorance of science per se, but a desire to massage science for our own good.

The Godheads of COVID-19

The medical pandemic godhead of the Left has been octogenarian Dr. Anthony Fauci. His twin chief public relations explainer has been liberal darling New York governor Andrew Cuomo. Both were always supposed to be on top of “the science.”

Dr. Fauci has not just been flat-out wrong on the science of COVID—in his assessments of the origins and possible dangers of COVID-19, of when we can get back to normal, of when the vaccinations would appear, and of which particular governors have been doing the most or least effective management of the disease. He has also, by his own admission, deliberately lied.

That is, Fauci has rejected science, as he knew it, to mislead the public. For our own interests, he adopted the Platonic “noble lie” on occasion. So, for example, he conceded that he had downplayed the value of masks (he now seems to approve of wearing one on top of another) in order to prevent too many wearing them, and thus the public shorting the supply available to more important health care workers.

Fauci also proverbially moved the goal posts on herd immunity, from the high 60s to the low 90s as a percent of the population, either vaccinated or with antibodies, necessary to achieve a de facto end of the pandemic. Again, Fauci defied the science on the theory he knew better, in assuming that the childish public would become too lax when and if it believed herd immunity was on the horizon.

Unspoken, is that Fauci usually errs on the side of what is deemed progressive orthodoxy. In contrast, Dr. Scott Atlas warned us that extended and complete lockdowns in any cost-benefit analyses might well inflict more human and economic damage than the virus. And he added that an opened-up Florida and Texas might do no worse virally than a locked-down California or New York, while avoiding the severe recessionary collateral damage.

Yet Atlas was damned for “not following the science” for the crime of working for Trump and for following the science: while targeted wearing of masks and social distancing and quarantining of vulnerable populations are necessary, complete quarantines of the entire population and extended closing schools are counterproductive.

Little need be said of Cuomo other than the applicable Roman dictum he created a desert and called it peace. When the federal government delivered a tent-hospital and a huge hospital ship, they went unused. When it sent ventilators, Cuomo raged that they were too little, too late.

When his own record in New York of COVID mismanagement became public (currently over 2,500 deaths per million population, the second highest state in the nation and about 35-40 percent higher than the open, but hated Texas and Florida), he lied about his own redirection of COVID patients into pristine long-term care facilities that resulted in a proverbial bloodbath.

In his adherence to science, Cuomo received an Emmy for his narcissistic press conferences and adeptness at blame-gaming. That he was brought low not by his lethal politicking, but by serial allegations of being rude and handsy with female staffers suggests that his unscientific approaches to the pandemic were of little concern to his “scientific” supporters.

The “Science” of Quarantines

Consider another scientific debacle. In the midst of the quarantine, when governors and mayors were threatening to jail any who violated social distancing, mask wearing, or assembling en mass outdoors, hundreds of thousands hit the nation’s streets in crowded phalanxes of screaming and saliva-projecting protestors—all supposedly in violation of “the science” of epidemiology and public health.

The reaction of our elected officials—not just silence but open approbation—is to be expected, given the political class is so often timid and simply genuflects to perceived voter pressure groups. But “the science” on spec also came to the rescue of the quarantine violators to offer pseudo-scientific support for violating government-mandated “data”-driven policies.

Over 1,200 healthcare officials weighed in with their “expertise” and postmodern gibberish to defend mass violations of quarantine rules: “Instead, we wanted to present a narrative that prioritizes opposition to racism as vital to the public health, including the epidemic response.”

And the experts added all sort of postmodern hedging to emphasize that their recalibrated woke “science” was now different than others’ less woke “science”:

However, as public-health advocates, we do not condemn these gatherings as risky for COVID-19 transmission. We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States.

So in Animal Farm terms, some protests “are more in violation than others.” In a more historical vein, we might imagine these “experts” at another time and place, joining the chorus of scientists praising the agronomic genius of Joseph Stalin, whose “brilliant” and “scientific” irrigation fantasies began the destruction of the Aral Sea. In any case, millions decided why stay indoors when millions of others hit the streets to protest, loot, burn, destroy, and injure—with the sanction of our experts.

Non Compos Mentis

The Left hammered the 74-year-old overweight Trump about his supposedly iffy health. They brought in a Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Bandy X. Lee, to testify about his incapacity to Congress. There and in op-eds, she offered a pseudo-scientific assessment of debility (e.g., “I and hundreds of mental health professionals are available and eager to assist with any or all these efforts”). Yes, and unethically so, without ever having examined the patient in question.

According to Lee, Trump was mentally impaired, a sociopath, and needed an “intervention,” a serious medical diagnosis that soon became a “scientific” grounding for the wild charges leveled at Trump of incompetence on network and cable news. Trump in his exasperation at “fake news,” took the Montreal Cognitive Assessment Test to prove his powers of recall and analysis. He aced the exam.

But where is Lee now in the era of a 78-year-old Joe Biden in the White House?

Or rather, where is the Left to use her “research” to question whether Joe Biden is compos mentis? In the last 30 days, he has claimed there were none vaccinated when he entered office (he was photographed receiving a shot on December 21, a month before his inauguration).

In truth, 1 million a day were receiving vaccinations when Biden assumed the presidency. He cannot at times remember the name of his own secretary of defense or of the Pentagon where Gen.(ret.) Lloyd Austin works, and increasingly needs a translator to make sense of his slurred words, raspy voice, off-topic wandering, truncated vocabulary, and fragmented syntax.

Trump was once said to be shaky and disguising an obvious illness because after a long day at West Point he walked slowly in his leather shoes on a smooth ramp. In contrast, this week Joe Biden staggered and fell three times climbing the stairs to Air Force One—without a commensurate media howl. Will Joe be subject to an outside medical assessment? Might Dr. Lee reappear to give him the Montreal test?

I think we know the answer. “Science” is used to denigrate a perceived enemy of the people, and ignored to enhance a guardian of the flock.

https://amgreatness.com/2021/03/21/follow-the-science-they-said/

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Arkansas Bans Transgender Athletes From Women’s Sports

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson signed into law on Thursday a bill banning transgender female-identifying athletes from participating in women’s sports.

The new law, meant to preserve the integrity of female sports and protect girls and women from competing against biological males, comes amid a push by state legislatures to enact similar protections.

“Today, I have signed into law SB354, called the ‘Fairness in Women’s Sports Act.’ I have studied the law and heard from hundreds of constituents on this issue. I signed the law as a fan of women’s sports from basketball to soccer and including many others in which women compete successfully,” Hutchinson said in a statement. “This law simply says that female athletes should not have to compete in a sport against a student of the male sex when the sport is designed for women’s competition. As I have stated previously, I agree with the intention of this law. This will help promote and maintain fairness in women’s sporting events.”

GOP lawmakers in at least 20 states have introduced similar legislation this year, according to The Associated Press. Such states are reportedly under pressure by activists and organizations such as the NCAA to avoid implementing such bans. South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem recently declined to sign a similar bill and sent it back to the legislature to exempt college sports.

Earlier this week, a group of state representatives introduced similar legislation into the North Carolina General Assembly. The bill cites the “inherent differences between men and women” for banning biological males from women’s sports.

The bill states in part:

Whereas, the benefits that natural testosterone provides to male athletes are not diminished through the use of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones. A recent study on the impact of such treatments found that policies like those of the International Olympic Committee that require biological males to undergo at least one year of testosterone suppression before competing in women’s sports do not create a level playing field. “[T]he reduction in testosterone levels required by many sports federation transgender policies is insufficient to remove or reduce the male advantage by any meaningful degree.”

For example, “the muscle mass advantage males possess over females, and potentially the performance implications thereof, are not removed by 12 months of testosterone suppression.” Instead, the study concluded that “The data presented here demonstrates that the male physical performance advantage over females, attributed to superior anthropometric and muscle mass/strength parameters achieved at puberty, is not removed by the current regimen of testosterone suppression permitting participation of transgender women in female sports categories. Rather, it appears that the male performance advantage is largely retained by transgender women and thus remains substantial.”

On March 11, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed a bill banning biological males from competing in women’s sports.

“I never imagined dealing with this, but POTUS left us no choice,” Reeves wrote on Twitter. “One of his first acts was to sign an EO encouraging transgenderism in children. So today, I proudly signed the Mississippi Fairness Act to ensure young girls are not forced to compete against biological males.”

https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-arkansas-bans-transgender-females-from-womens-sports

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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27 March, 2021

Minnesota theater cancels production of Cinderella because the cast is 'too white'

A local Minnesota theater has cancelled a production of Roger & Hammerstein's Cinderella because its cast was 'too white'.

Chanhassen Dinner Theatres was scheduled to stage the show later this year before its artistic director stepped in to slam its lack of diversity.

'It was 98 percent white, ' the artistic director, Michael Brindisi, told the Pioneer Press on Wednesday after looking at who had been cast.

However, Chanhassen - located southwest of Minneapolis - has a population that is overwhelming white, and the racial demographics of the cast were not strikingly different from the city as a whole.

According to the most recent census, 92.5 percent of people in Chanhassen are white. Less than 3 percent of residents are Hispanic, while 1.1 percent are black.

No photos of the Cinderella cast were officially released before the show was scrapped.

In a statement released on Monday, the theater stated: 'After careful consideration and with our ongoing commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, we have made the decision to cancel our upcoming production.

'In addition to changing future programming, we are establishing new pre-production protocols. We will be inviting (and paying) BIPOC artists to analyze the production with our creative teams through a new Diversity, Equity and Inclusion lens... This conversation will happen before the design and casting process has begun.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9403317/Minnesota-theater-cancels-production-Cinderella-cast-white.html

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For the People?

Democrats sure do have a way of twisting words to hide their true intent.

I’m so thankful for those in Washington, DC, who are concerned about us and want to take care of us. What would we do without them?

Nancy Pelosi is so concerned about us that she came up with HR 1, the “For the People Act.” The question is, just “who” are those people she’s worried about?

If you thought the last presidential election process was the smoothest ever, you’ll love this legislation. The rest of us? Well, not so much. I’ve talked about how words once had meaning. Bills passed by Congress, especially ones crafted by Democrats, are masterpieces of disinformation. Anyone remember Pelosi’s monstrous ObamaCare legislation? “We have to pass it,” Pelosi said, “to find out what’s in it.” How’s that working out?

HR 1 is another huge pile of legislative dung. It’s only 800 pages compared to ObamaCare’s 900-plus pages, which no one read. If any Republican senator votes for this bill, he or she needs to be voted out of office. I can’t go into all of the serious problems it will cause, but I’ll hit some highlights.

This bill will basically mean DC will control all voting law from here on out. It is designed, as I understand it, to override state legislation passed to ensure voting integrity. Democrats have to do this because, well, all you Red State residents are bigots and racists, so leftists will make the right laws for you. No worries!

No voter ID will be required. I could walk into a polling place and say “I’m Alfred E. Newman” (you have to be of a certain age to know who he is) and vote. Apparently anywhere.

The handling of absentee ballots will be so sloppy that there will be no chain of custody and no witnesses of signatures, all while states will make them available to anyone for any reason.

Voter rolls cannot be purged of people who have moved or died. We all know of states where dead people vote every election. Noncitizens would be able to vote with no problems. You don’t have to decide whether or not you want to register to vote — the government will do that for you. This will result in people with multiple registrations. But hey, you can never have too many ballots coming to you, right? Online registrations would be a blessing to hackers and cybercriminals.

HR 1 imposes onerous regulatory restrictions on political speech, including online and policy-related speech by candidates, citizens, civic groups, unions, corporations, and nonprofit organizations. It would authorize the IRS to investigate and consider the political and policy positions on nonprofit organizations when they apply for tax-exempt status. What could possibly go wrong?

It would set up a public funding program for candidates running for Congress. Your tax dollars could go to support candidates the Left chooses to fund. And we’re just barely scratching the surface.

The time of putting our heads in the sand is over. Every conservative Patriot needs to let their senators know what they think of this legislation. Don’t assume you know how they feel about this. It’s amazing how, when push comes to shove, the backbone completely disappears from some politicians.

Doing nothing will mean the Democrats won and we have surrendered our liberties! This legislation is NOT for “We the People.” It’s a leftist gift bag.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/78625-for-the-people-2021-03-24

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If Categories Like Women and Men No Longer Matter, Why Bother with Equal Pay Day?

Many progressives today insist that gender is fluid and that American law should abolish any distinctions between the sexes. Yet, ironically, many of these same people point to overly simplistic statistics derived from binary male-female categories to claim that women are the victims of wage discrimination and to demand more regulation, more government monitoring, and many, many more lawsuits.

Surely, such a binary approach to categorizing workers and comparing wages is woefully outdated in our new woke world!

According to progressive activists, sexism is the reason that the average woman earns only about 80 cents for every dollar earned by a man. This logic has never held up to scrutiny. Commonly used wage gap figures simply compare the average full-time working woman’s wages to the wages of the average full-time working man. Such raw statistics don’t account for occupation, specialty, years of experience, or even hours worked.

That last factor alone explains a large chunk of what’s often referred to as the wage gap. According to the Department of Labor, the average female full-time worker logs several fewer hours per week on the job than the average male. It’s hardly surprising—or evidence of discrimination—that someone who works ten percent less each week also earns less. When factors such as these are controlled for, the unexplained differences between male and female earnings shrink to just a few percentage points.

Progressives like to claim that the differences between men and women’s work-lives are the unsavory fruit of our innately sexist society that pushes women to sacrifice their careers and earnings to take on the lionshare of caregiving. To raise awareness of this alleged inequity and push policymakers to make it easier for workers to sue their employers, they created the pseudo holiday “Equal Pay Day” to mark the day that women will have earned enough to catch up with men’s earnings in 2020.

This year, Equal Pay Day fell on March 24. But it seems that in 2021, Equal Pay Day didn’t get the attention it once did. And not just because of COVID. The truth is, progressive groups that used to champion women’s interests just aren’t that interested in women anymore. In today’s woke world, women take a back seat to other “oppressed groups.”

This actually makes sense: Women aren’t a victim class at all. Women make up a majority of the population and a majority of registered and actual voters. Women are an increasingly educated and powerful segment of society. Women today dominate universities, earning 6 out of 10 bachelors degrees, and a solid majority of professional degrees. Women are a near majority of workers, and though they are still less likely than men to be CEOs, they are a growing share of business owners and making hiring and compensation decisions. Indeed, if employers are overwhelmingly discriminating against women, then women are doing a lot of the discriminating. Efforts to paint American women broadly as a victim class have long been a stretch.

It’s strange to witness the Left’s absolute reversal when it comes to their concerns about women. Those who just a few years ago insisted that sexual harassment and violence against women are ubiquitous, openly scoff at the notion that opportunistic male predators would claim a different gender identity to gain access to female-only prisons, locker rooms, domestic violence shelters, and women’s and girls’ bathrooms, in order to do them harm.

Watching Congress talk about “women” in recent weeks is enough to cause mental whiplash: After replacing the term “women” in the “Violence Against Women Act” (VAWA) with words like “people,” “adults,” or “youth; redefining “sex” in our nation’s civil rights laws to mean “gender identity;” and, trying to resurrect the misnamed “Equal Rights Amendment” to outlaw any legal protections or programs (like VAWA) aimed specifically at women (even when these protections make sense), the same body wants to pretend to care that women as a group make less than men as a group. Never mind that sex-based pay discrimination has been illegal in the United States since the 1960s. The logical fallacies, self-serving hypocrisy, and two-tongued virtue-signaling when it comes to women is too much to watch. Women should take note.

I had once hoped that we would stop fixating on the wage gap because it isn’t a helpful tool for measuring workplace discrimination. I had hoped that we would come to respect that women and men make different choices and recognize that it’s ok if these choices impact earnings. Sadly, that’s not why Equal Pay Day is irrelevant today. But I’d still take its elimination as a win.

https://townhall.com/columnists/carrielukas/2021/03/24/if-categories-like-women-and-men-no-longer-matter-why-bother-with-equal-pay-day-n2586799

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Court Rules Professor Can’t Be Forced to Endorse an Ideology Against His Beliefs

Dr. Nicholas Meriwether enjoys a spirited debate. As a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University, there is plenty of that to go around in his classroom. And he is not afraid to voice his disagreement or bring up an entirely different viewpoint.

That’s part of what makes him a great professor. In his class, students are exposed to new ideas and opposing viewpoints. They have the opportunity to grapple with what they believe and why they believe it.

Most people think that’s what universities—the “marketplace of ideas”—are supposed to be!

But not according to Shawnee State officials. Now, Dr. Meriwether finds himself involved in a very different kind of debate—on the opposite side of the courtroom from his university, after it tried to shut down the free exchange of ideas by forcing him to endorse an ideology that he does not believe.

And, today Dr. Meriwether got some great news from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit.

Let’s take a deeper look at his case and the freedoms at stake.

Who: Dr. Nicholas Meriwether

Dr. Meriwether has served as a philosophy professor at Shawnee State University for over 20 years with an unblemished record. He is serious about creating an atmosphere of mutual respect in his classroom.

Dr. Meriwether is also serious about his beliefs. As a Christian, he strives to live and work consistently with his faith. In fact, his core beliefs are why he’s devoted his career to education.

Many of Dr. Meriwether’s students appreciate how he challenged them in the classroom and brought ideas to the table that were different than their own. As one student wrote:

You and I saw eye-to-eye on very little and that made those arguments all the more valuable to me. If you had only made a half-hearted attempt at a counterpoint or (far worse) neglected to even mention an opposing position in order to spare my feelings, you would have been fundamentally undermining my education. I thank you for showing me enough respect to bring your "A-Game" to every in-class debate.

Unfortunately, not every student felt the same way about encountering differing viewpoints in Dr. Meriwether’s class.

What: Meriwether v. The Trustees of Shawnee State University

One day, a male student approached Dr. Meriwether after class, informed him that he identified as transgender, and demanded that Dr. Meriwether refer to him as a woman, with feminine titles and pronouns. When Dr. Meriwether did not immediately agree, the student became aggressive, physically circling him, getting in his face, using expletives, and even threatening to get Dr. Meriwether fired.

The student then filed a complaint with the university, which launched a formal investigation.

As a philosopher and as a Christian, Dr. Meriwether believes that God has created human beings as either male or female, and that a person’s sex cannot change. To call a man a woman or vice versa endorses an ideology that conflicts with his beliefs. So Dr. Meriwether offered a compromise: He would refer to this student by a first or last name only. That way, he would not call the student something the student did not like, but he would also not say anything that contradicts what he believes is real and true.

This compromise was not enough for university officials; they formally charged Dr. Meriwether—claiming he “created a hostile environment” and discriminated against the student. Later, they placed a written warning in his personnel file that threatened “further corrective actions” if he does not refer to students using pronouns that reflect their self-asserted gender identity.

That’s why Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on Dr. Meriwether’s behalf.

ADF filed a lawsuit on Dr. Meriwether’s behalf in November 2018. In February 2020, a federal judge dismissed the case, but we appealed that decision. In November, ADF attorneys argued Dr. Meriwether’s case before the 6th Circuit.

And today, we got some great news! The 6th Circuit issued its decision in favor of Dr. Meriwether, ruling that he shouldn’t be forced to speak a message that violates his beliefs.

Where: Portsmouth, Ohio. Shawnee State University is a public university in Portsmouth, Ohio.

https://adflegal.org/blog/court-rules-professor-cant-be-forced-endorse-ideology-against-his-beliefs

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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25 March, 2021

Obsessed Korean-origin psychiatrist loses her job over Trump

She herslf would appear to have OCD

A former Yale professor is suing the university after she was allegedly fired for tweeting about a 'shared psychosis' that 'just about all' of former president Donald Trump supporters suffered from.

Dr Bandy Lee, a former faculty member in the Department of Psychiatry in School of Medicine, filed a complaint against the Yale Monday claiming that she was unlawfully terminated 'due to her exercise of free speech about the dangers of Donald Trump's presidency.'

Dr Lee has been a vocal critic of Trump over the years, notably sending a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2019 claiming that President Trump is showing 'signs of delusion' amid his first impeachment inquiry.

The former professor said in her complaint that Yale fired her for a January 2020 tweet where she described how 'just about all' of Trump's supporters suffered from 'shared psychosis.'

She added that lawyer Alan Dershowitz, a member of Trump's legal team, had 'wholly taken on Trump's symptoms by contagion.'

Dr Lee had been responding to a tweet from University of Minnesota Law Professor and Yale Law School alumnus Richard Painter in relation to Dershowitz describing his sex life as 'perfect,' Hill Reporter reports.

Following her tweet, Dershowitz sent a letter to Yale administrators on Jan. 11, complaining that the professor's post constituted 'a serious violation of the ethics of the American Psychiatric Association' and calling for her to be disciplined. The Yale Daily News said that Dershowitz added in his letter that Lee 'publicly diagnosed [Dershowitz] as psychotic…without ever examining or even meeting' him.

In a statement to the News, Dr Lee expressed that she was not thrilled to have to seek legal action against her alma mater.

'I have done this with a heavy heart, only because Yale refused all my requests for a discussion, much as the American Psychiatric Association has done,' Lee said. 'I love Yale, my alma mater, as I love my country, but we are falling into a dangerous culture of self-censorship and compliance with authority at all cost.'

Court documents state that following Dershowitz's letter, chair of the Psychiatry Department John Krystal told Lee via email that the department 'would be compelled to 'terminate [her] teaching role' if she continued to make similar public statements.

She continued to tweet about the mental fitness of Trump even after Krystal's warning. Lee then met with Krystal and additional unnamed faculty members and was told that she 'breached psychiatric ethics.'

Dr Lee continued tweeting critically of Trump and his mental fitness, and was subjected to follow up meetings with Krystal and other faculty members, the court documents state.

Dr. Lee would learn she was terminated on May 17, 2020. Her numerous appeal attempts in the following months resulted in failure.

A letter Krystal sent to Lee stated that she repeatedly violated the American Psychiatric Association's Goldwater Rule - which states that it is unethical for psychiatrists to comment on a public figure's mental faculties in an official capacity unless granted permission or after a medical examination.

The former Yale faculty member feels that the Goldwater Rule is a 'gag order,' according to the court documents. Lee believes that the rule goes against her role as a psychiatrist 'in light of her belief that Donald Trump posed a dangerous threat to his country and the world,' the complaint reads.

Dr Lee has not been a member of the American Psychiatric Association since 2007.

In her complaint, Lee also claims that she did not diagnose Dershowitz, 'but [was] rather commenting on a widespread phenomenon of "shared psychosis."'

She is looking to be reinstated and is seeking compensation for damages, which include 'economic losses' and 'emotional distress.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9395841/Yale-psychiatry-professor-sues-university-firing-her.html

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Support for Illegal Immigrants Receiving a Pathway to Citizenship Craters Among Democrats

While Politico assures us that illegal immigrants receiving a pathway to citizenship is popular with the electorate, their newest poll could indicate that American’s patience with the never-ending flow over the southern border is ending. From today’s Politico Playbook:

Forty-three percent of voters overall believe that undocumented immigrants who are currently living in the U.S. should have a pathway to citizenship — down 14 points since January. Among Democrats, support for a pathway dropped from 72% to 57% over that period; just one in four Republicans backed the idea, down 10 percentage points.

Looking at the crosstabs, it appears the poll oversampled Democrats. Among respondents, 42% identified as Democrats, 27% as independents, and 31% said they were Republicans. By contrast, Gallup’s most recent poll on political affiliation has independents as the largest group at 41%, Democrats at 32%, and Republicans at 26%. Likewise, the self-reported ideological skew is significantly off from the general population. According to Gallup, conservatives are the largest group at 36%, 35% identify as moderates, and only 25% call themselves liberal. One-third in the Politico/Morning Consult poll identify as liberal.

This assessment is only worth mentioning because the poll may underestimate Americans’ current views on a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants. One consistent theme is that men, regardless of other factors, support a pathway to citizenship at lower rates than women. Millennials and Generation X also support it at rates lower than Baby Boomers. The only generation that approves at a rate higher than 50% is Generation Z, whose oldest members are 24 and only started to vote in 2015. This finding makes sense because those who identify their occupation as “student” have a similar approval rate for a pathway to citizenship, higher than any other occupation.

It often seems as if Democrats attempt to use their stance on immigration as a pander to Hispanic voters to cover for their “demographics is destiny” beliefs. Unfortunately for them, the poll confirms, as is often pointed out, that approving of illegal immigrants is not a majority view in that population. With the top line at 43%, Hispanic voters only support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants at 44%. Hispanic voters also prefer deportation for illegal immigrants at a rate of 24%, which is higher than that sentiment among black voters, where only 10% registered that preference.

Voters most concerned about the economy and security have the lowest appetite for a pathway to citizenship along with those without a college degree. Income does not seem to make as big a difference, with only 42-44% expressing a preference for a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants whether they report income of less than $50,000 or over $100,000. The notable political affiliations where deportation is preferred to legal residency are Republicans and ideological conservatives as well as ideological moderates and men whose party ID is independent. These groups may be driving the top-line results, where 27% prefer deportation of illegal immigrants to legal residency.

While Politico asserts that these results are a sign that Republican messaging about the crisis of illegal immigrants at the border is working, the evidence for that view is pretty thin. Only 50% of registered voters believe there is a crisis at the border, and the ideological split is stark. Among Democrats and those who lean Democrat, only 31% see the current border situation as a crisis. Republicans and those who lean to the right report this view 75% of the time. The message does not seem to be reaching across the aisle, despite the corporate media’s recent criticisms.

This poll is not the only one to show that Americans’ patience with a porous border is reaching its limit. Rasmussen polling reports that their Immigration Index has fallen 20 points on a scale of 100 since October 2020. Respondents answered the poll from February 28th to March 4th, and the result is the third consecutive survey establishing a new record low. A result above 100 indicates Americans want a more expansive immigration system. Results below indicate support for a more restrictive immigration system.

Rasmussen also found that 67% of likely voters view the situation at the border as a crisis. Likely voters in Rasmussen’s polls go through a set of screening questions to determine their propensity to vote in midterm elections. When asked about accountability for the border crisis, likely voters said:

If there is a border crisis, whose fault is it? Fifty-three percent (53%) of voters agree with the statement: “President Biden himself … has caused the [border] crisis with both his rhetoric and his policies.” That’s a quote from column last week by former Trump administration official Ken Cuccinelli. Thirty-eight percent (38%) of voters disagree and 10% are not sure.

Any way you cut these results, it is a problem for the Biden administration. It will be difficult for them to satisfy the radical left, which is driving the Democrats’ legislative priorities given the view of moderate and Republican voters on the border and illegal immigrant questions. Democrat politicians on the border are also nervous. Representative Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) released photos of the migrant facilities to Axios to highlight the crisis, and two more Democrats from border districts have announced their retirements ahead of 2022. President Trump flipped several border counties in November of 2020, and Republican candidates down-ticket may fare just as well in the area if this crisis persists.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/stacey-lennox/2021/03/24/support-for-illegal-immigrants-receiving-a-pathway-to-citizenship-craters-among-democrats-n1434611

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Hitting Woke Herd Immunity?

We have become an absurd society obsessed with race but without any mechanism to develop a logical category of victimization and reparation.

Two recent polls suggest wokism is beginning to recede on a variety of fronts, from less trust in Black Lives Matter and more confidence in the police, to suspicion that the Capitol “insurrection” account is being used to unfairly suppress political expression while Antifa, increasingly, is seen as a terrorist organization whose violence has been ignored improperly by authorities.

There are tens of millions of Americans who either have been stung, or turned off, by McCarthyite wokeness (and thus have anti-wokeness antibodies). More have been vaccinated from its latest virulent strains by their own values of judging people as individuals, not as racial or gender collectives. So lots of Americans have developed peremptory defenses against it. The result is that daily there are ever-fewer who are susceptible to the woke pandemic. And it will thus begin to fade out—even as the virus desperately seeks to mutate and go after more institutions.

Peak wokeness is nearing also because if it continued in its present incarnation, then the United States as we know would cease to exist—in the sense that 1692-93 Salem or 1793-94 Paris could not have continued apace without destroying society. Woke leftism exists to destroy and tear down, not to unite and build. It is not designed to play down and heal racial differences, but to accentuate and capitalize on them.

Scattershot Immunity

The methodology of cancel culture is utterly incoherent and unsustainable. The shark was jumped by the case of the Dr. Seuss books—banned by some local school districts, even as Dr. Seuss Enterprises, in terror, pulled some of the late Theodor Seuss Geisel’s publications of its own accord. If the author of The Cat in the Hat is now an enemy of the people, then anyone and all can be so designated.

That is, after 70 years and millions of books in the houses of millions of Americans, our generation’s new Soviet censors have now decided that Seuss’s books of the late 1940s and 1950s do not conform to our 2021 sensibilities and thus should be banned. The same kind of canceling of Disney films and cartoons, and of particular novelists and social critics is now a matter of record.

But what are to be the new standards of Trotskyization as we go forth? Can the Governor of New York be excused for months of policies that led to nearly 15,000 unnecessary deaths, but not for inappropriate kisses and touching of women? Or will he, as an Emmy-winning woke official, be exempt from punishment for both types of transgressions?

There are no logical standards that dictate who is and who is not canceled. For now, all we know about the rules of wokeness is that living leftists are mostly not canceled by the woke mob for the thought crimes that ruin both the non-Left or the generic dead.

The operating assumption is that the uncovered sins of the progressive are aberrations and not windows into their dark souls. Or perhaps woke leftism works on the same principle as carbon credits: the more you act progressively, the more pluses you have when minuses are summed up.

Most who have claims of being non-white are likely to find partial vaccination from the woke mob. Those who are independently wealthy or successfully self-employed likewise have some immunity. Then there are the defiant, the proverbial “Don’t Tread on Me” folks, who will fight, and thus encourage the zombie walkers to detour around them.

The only consistent pattern of woke punishment is the shared logic of the lions and water buffalos at the ford—devour the sacrificial, single, and vulnerable while avoiding the robust herd with retaliatory horns.

The Woke Tax

Wokeness eventually would put an unsustainable economic strain on the system. Wokeness is siphoning off billions of dollars from a productive economy through a sort of value-subtracted tax. We are spending a great deal of labor and capital for merit to be replaced in college admissions, in hiring, in grants, in publication, in the selections of awards, and in movies and videos, in everything—as racial, ethnic, and sexual identity considerations replace meritocratic, literary, artistic, and technological criteria, rather than just augment, them.

Americans also are investing lots of capital in preempting wokeness—writing/saying/acting in ways that are not productive, but simply defensive. Diversity oaths, and diversity applications, pledges, and statements take some time to read and digest. It will not be long before insurers will sell “woke insurance,” the premiums adjusted upward for those more conservative and of the wrong genealogy. It won’t be long before we all carry cards certifying that “At no time, did I say, hear, or think anything . . . .”

At a time of $1.7 trillion in student aggregate debt, and existential financial crises in universities during the zoom virtual campus, is higher education really so rich that it can add layers and layers of six-figure-income diversity and equity coordinators?

Most will not invent, create, teach, or produce. Instead, they are not merely monitoring but hindering those who do—either out of a need to justify their apparat or from self-importance. To believe otherwise is to suggest that on, say, May 1, 2020, the United States was an utterly racist society, without civil rights protections or any reparatory programs for those deemed unfairly victimized in the past.

The result is that billions of Americans’ hours are invested in woke reeducation and diversity training, in workshops and group confessionals, and in adjudicating and punishing those who do not comply. Ad hoc and personal cancel culture results in thousands of days of unproductive labor as functionaries scour the internet on the scent of a past misspoken word, or an ancient but now incorrect gesture that can return to ruin a rival or an enemy.

Our economy will soon mimic the totalitarian ones of old. Our commissars are like those of the old Red Army—ordering Soviet commanders’ counter-offensives during the Great Patriotic War to ensure that tank battalions were advancing ideologically correctly rather than just tactically or strategically soundly.

Melodramatic? Perhaps. But 280 former generals, admirals, and national security officials signed a letter warning that if Trump were to bring in any federal troops to keep the peace after the capital violence of late May and early June, riots that saw systematic attacks on police, vandalism, arson, injuries, and looting, and neared the White House grounds, he should be considered a dictatorial threat. “There is no role for the U.S. military in dealing with American citizens exercising their constitutional right to free speech, however uncomfortable that speech may be for some,” they insisted.

The same group remained mute when nearly 30,000 troops flooded the streets of the capital in the aftermath of the January 6 riot inside the Capitol building. They maintain their silence as barbed wire and fencing now cordon off the city, and thousands of troops remain without a terrorist or insurrectionist enemy in sight—a militarization of the capital not seen since the Civil War. Tolerable and intolerable violence is predicated on ideology, not its nature or magnitude.

Warring on the Past

No society can long exist if it believes that its own founding principles, its customs and traditions, its very origins are evil and must be erased. Tearing down statues of Abraham Lincoln, and redefining 1776 and 1787 as 1619, are many things, but one thing they are not is coherent. Trump was considered nutty when he warned that the statue topplers would go from Confederate monuments to Washington and Jefferson—and then when they did just that he was further ridiculed for being prescient.

Who were the long-dead men who devised a system whose natural and eventual fruition is what attracts indigenous people from Oaxaca, the destitute from Somalia, or the politically oppressed from Vietnam? If evil white people founded an evil system solely for their own evil purposes, why would anyone nonwhite dare risk his life to eat from the alluring fruit of the inherently long-ago poisoned tree?

If Americans are to accept that their Declaration of Independence and Constitution were frauds, abject falsifications of the real unspoken founding of 1619, then again what is to replace them? Whose statues are to rise, which books are we to be authorized to read, whose science are we to turn to?

Everyone has feet of some clay. For every cancellation, then must there be commensurate bowdlerizing? Is there no adultery, or unkind treatment of women or plagiarism in the past of Martin Luther King, Jr? No violence or criminality in the life of Malcolm X? Did Cesar Chavez never send his goons to the border to beat back illegal aliens? Was Margaret Sanger only a sometimes advocate of eugenic abortion? Are the written biographies of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson to be freed of anti-Semitism and petty corruption? Is Louis Farrakhan an ecumenical leader in the way FDR was not? Was JFK really our first feminist?

Are we to look to those who erased our supposedly awful past for guidance?

Is it to be the architect of the 1619 Project? Long ago the ecumenical Nikole Hannah-Jones wrote that “the white race is the biggest murderer, rapist, pillager, and thief of the modern world . . . The descendants of these savage people pump drugs and guns into the Black community, pack Black people into the squalor of segregated urban ghettos and continue to be bloodsuckers in our community.”

Is going back into one’s student days to find such an embarrassing rant, in the fashion of the accusers’ of Brett Kavanaugh’s desperate but false allegations, unfair? If so, this past summer Hannah-Jones bragged that, yes, it would be “an honor” if the summer rioting—700 police officers injured, 40 deaths, and billions in property damages and hundreds—be called henceforth “the 1619 riots.”

At the height of tensions, she advised, “Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.” And she added, “Any reasonable person would say we shouldn’t be destroying other people’s property, but these are not reasonable times.” Did the Times consider its essayist inflammatory?

Tribes

In our self-celebrated liberal society are we all to be reduced to identifying by race? But first, do we even have the ability to ascertain who is and is not white or black or brown?

Most illiberal societies in the past that tried such stigmatization of race, ethnicity, or religion did not end so well—from the Ottomans and the Third Reich to the former Yugoslavians, Rwandans, and Iraqis. One eighth, one fourth, or one half makes one a person of color—or not color? Shall we seek knowledge of one-drop of tell-tale bloodlines from the archived jurisprudence of the antebellum South?

If Peruvian George Zimmerman had only used his matronymic, and Latinized his first name, then would a Jorge Mesa have become a sympathetic character who lost a fair fight with Trayvon Martin rather than reduced by the New York Times to a strange category of “white Hispanic” hoodlum, with the additional odor of a Germanized patronymic.

Why does class bow to race, since the former seems to trump the latter. If we forget percentages for a moment, and also forget that we are individuals, not anonymous cogs of vast racial wheels, in absolute numbers, there are roughly (in some studies) more poor white people—both those earning incomes below the poverty level and those with no income at all—than all other commensurate poor minorities combined. Were these supposed to be the targets of Barack Obama’s “clingers” remarks, or Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables,” John McCain’s “crazies,” or Joe Biden’s “dregs,” “chumps,” and “Neanderthals”?

Apparently, the supposedly all-powerful, all-determining Oz-like role of racial supremacy and the unearned privilege that accompanies it, have aided those 26 million white impoverished very little. Or perhaps they did not get the message that they were recipients of unearned, all-determinative white privilege.

Or perhaps they were just people, like the poor of all other races, who suffer from lack of or access to education or vocational training, the stagnation of entry-level incomes, divorce, family dissolution, bad luck, poor health, substance abuse, economic ill-winds, cultural disadvantages, self-inflicted pathologies, or all the other criteria that can make every one of us of every race susceptible to ravages of poverty.

Given that, in absolute numbers alone, there are more minorities that are not poor than the number of white people who are, how is it that class considerations are forgotten? Or for that matter, does any child’s destiny rest on just race—or a two-parent household living in Menlo Park rather than Parlier, or growing up with college-educated parents or high-school dropouts? And does race really determine all the other criteria that foster wealth or poverty?

Note the artifact that those who are now classified as nonwhite are wisely not often seeking to rebrand themselves as “white” to share in intractable “white privilege ”—in the fashion of the past when white majority racism was undeniable. Why are Asian-Americans, on average, enjoying over $20,000 more in average household income than so-called whites?

Why more commonly would so-called white people create an entire industry of constructing pseudo-minority identities—from Elizabeth Warren to Rachel Dolezal to Ward Churchill to Alec Baldwin’s wife, Hilaria—if not for careerist or social advantage or wishing to be cool by claiming not to be “white”? Why has the new racist “passing for non-white” replaced the old racist “passing for white”?

These are admittedly absurd questions. But they are quite apt for an absurd society obsessed with race but without any mechanism to develop a logical category of victimization and reparation.

Predicating wokism on race is a tricky business, even if one could define and identify race, quantify its role in determining class status, and convince millions that it is moral to judge people by how they look.

Like the Salem witch trials and the McCarthyite hysteria, when wokism fades, we are likely to see its real catalysts revealed. And they will not be found to be misplaced idealism, nor heartfelt desire for a more ecumenical society, but mostly the age-old, narcissistic destructive road to career enhancement, fueled by customary ancient fears, envies, and hatreds.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13455&omhide=true

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Australia: Greens senator retracts rape claim against Home Affairs Minister, apologises

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ps_dcVR7rKs/YFuyQynakGI/AAAAAAAADpM/yuxyXhKwxtA1lYa7anRhKq4JckzcUJd8wCLcBGAsYHQ/s0/waters.png

This would normally be a matter of no general interest except for one thing: It is an example of the lie about rape that regularly sprouts from Leftist women: The lie that women do not lie about rape. "Believe the woman", they say.

Women in fact lie prolifically. There are many cases -- particularly in Britain -- where rape allegations have been found in court to be false. Britain has even jailed some of false accusers in the more egregious cases

It is just amazing how readily Leftists resort to psychopathic lies -- lies that are easily found out to be lies. If they wish something to be true, they act as if it were true. Their reality-contact is very poor It is a major mental defect in them

Greens senator Larissa Waters has issued an “unreserved” apology to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton after calling him a “rape apologist” last month.

The Courier-Mail revealed on Saturday Mr Dutton had sent a legal letter to the Queensland senator demanding the apology and removal of online posts containing the insult.

Senator Waters’ comments were made on social media site Twitter in February, in reaction to a news article in which Mr Dutton referred to not knowing the “he said, she said” in the Brittany Higgins rape allegations that have rocked Parliament.

“WOMEN DO NOT LIE ABOUT BEING RAPED (Peter Dutton) YOU INHUMANE, SEXIST RAPE APOLOGIST,” she posted, with similar comments made in a press release.

Tonight she posted an apology to both Twitter and her own website.

“On 25 February 2021 I published a media release on my website, posted on my Twitter account, and made in the course of a press conference false and defamatory statements that Peter Dutton is a rape apologist, that he has sought to conceal and dismiss reports of rape, and that he has no sympathy for victims of rape,” she said.

“I accept that there was no basis for those allegations and that they were false. I unreservedly apologise to Minister Dutton for the hurt, distress and damage to his reputation I have caused him.”

Senator Waters’ original tweet was no longer online last night.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/qld-politics/larissa-waters-retracts-tweet-against-peter-dutton-apologises/news-story/11d9476ee5c340db4d30e18b7b6437f1

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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24 March, 2021

Without the filibuster, H.R. 1 and immigration reform will virtually guarantee one-party rule in the U.S.

On March 16, President Joe Biden opened the door to changing Senate rules requiring 60 votes in order to advance legislation, telling ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos “democracy is having a hard time functioning.”

When asked if he had to choose between “preserving the filibuster, and advancing your agenda,” Biden’s answer was “Yes.”

Biden continued, “But here’s the choice: I don’t think that you have to eliminate the filibuster, you have to do it what it used to be when I first got to the Senate back in the old days…You had to stand up and command the floor, you had to keep talking.”

In 2020, Biden ran on a platform of enacting a public option for health insurance, raising taxes, moving to net-zero carbon emissions in energy production by 2035 and by 2050 for everything else including transportation, legalizing millions of illegal immigrants including a pathway to citizenship, passing his $1.9 trillion Covid stimulus relief legislation and election law reform.

Now, some of those things, like the stimulus and raising taxes, will be done under budget reconciliation that only requires a 50-vote threshold in the U.S. Senate, and carbon emissions regulation can be dealt with largely via regulation if Biden sets his sights lower.

But on the bigger ticket items on socialized medicine, a more expansive Green New Deal, granting citizenship to millions of illegal aliens and the H.R.1 election nationalization legislation, however, would need to go through Congress. And, under current Senate rules, need a 60-vote threshold to pass and make permanent changes to law.

Other items, like increasing the number justices on the Supreme Court or granting statehood to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, would similarly need to be passed legislatively, all with 60-vote thresholds.

So, with the Senate split 50 to 50, the Democratic agenda is more or less at a standstill — and there is a diminishing window of opportunity to get anything done.

And in midterm elections from 1906 to 2018, the party that occupies the White House usually loses on average 31 seats in the House, and about three seats in the Senate. And with just a 10-seat majority in the House and a 50-50 tie in the Senate, there is a very high likelihood Democrats will lose one or both chambers in 2022.

Meaning, it’s now or never on the filibuster.

So far, however, Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kirsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) appear opposed. “I will not vote in this Congress, that’s two years, right? I will not vote [to abolish the filibuster] And I hope with that guarantee in place he will work in a much more amicable way,” Manchin said in an interview in January. Sinema for her part through her office said she is “not open to changing her mind.”

But that was before Biden chimed in. Now, pressure will mount on Manchin, Sinema and other Senate Democrats to radically alter the way legislation is passed.

The upside for Democrats is significant long-term. If they focus their initial energies simply on the H.R. 1 election reform legislation and granting citizenship to millions of illegal immigrants, they will attempt to cement a generational electoral majority closely resembling the New Deal coalition that held from 1932 to 1952, where Democrats could pass anything they wanted.

It was one-party rule for close to two decades, except for a brief window in 1946 when Republicans reclaimed the House and the Senate, only to lose them promptly in 1948.

H.R. 1 would require states to automatically register residents to vote at Departments of Motor Vehicles, turn the Federal Election Commission into a partisan entity controlled by the White House party, dramatically change Congressional redistricting, require the use of absentee ballot drop boxes, eliminate state restrictions on mail-in voting, require same-day voter registration and gut state voter identification laws.

When automatic registration is combined with mailing out millions of ballots for mail-in voting, along with granting citizenship to a reported 12 million illegal aliens, who are predominantly Hispanic, and Democrats would have a virtual long-term lock on both houses of Congress and the presidency for a very long time. Democrats won Latinos 65 percent to 32 percent in 2020, according to the CNN exit polls. Republicans have no offset in legal immigration that compares, and so it’s just a numbers game.

Throw in four more Democratic senators for D.C. and Puerto Rico, plus reallocating six representatives to the new states, and GOP prospects in Congress drop somewhat.

Now, even then that might not even be enough for Democrats to win the 2022 midterms in the House, but long term, this will make 2024 and future national elections much, much harder for Republicans to win.

It would be one-party rule for a long, long time.

Now, such majorities would not last forever — they never do. But by the time the GOP gets fully back in power, the U.S. would look dramatically different from what it does today. A lot of damage will have been done by then: a packed Supreme Court, the Green New Deal, socialized medicine, universal income and so on.

How much of the Constitution and individual liberty will remain by the time a competitive two-party system is rebuilt? It’s up to Senators Manchin, Sinema and others to make sure we never find out.

https://dailytorch.com/2021/03/without-the-filibuster-h-r-1-and-immigration-reform-will-virtually-guarantee-one-party-rule-in-the-u-s/

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Top Health Insurance Provider Tells Employees Not To Hire White Men

Cigna, one of the nation’s largest health insurance providers, has allegedly told employees not to hire white men as part of the company’s broader critical race theory campaign.

According to an internal chat log obtained by the Washington Examiner, a hiring manager at Cigna dismissed a white candidate because he did not fulfill the company’s diversity standards. In the chat, an employee suggested the company interview a man with extensive experience for an open position. The hiring manager allegedly told the employee that the man could not be interviewed because he is white.

In a separate chat log, a hiring manager dismissed another candidate who he assumed to be white. The candidate was a racial minority. After learning of the candidate’s accurate skin color — and little else — the hiring manager allegedly reversed course and hired the candidate.

Employees were also forced to undergo training wherein they were taught that white people have “white privilege,” straight men have “gender privilege,” and Christians have “religious privilege.” The company defines religious privilege as “a set of advantages that benefits believers of a certain religion but not people who practice other religions or no religions at all.”

Included in the training was an “inclusive language” guide, which told employees the phrase “hip hip hooray!” was inappropriate language.

https://www.dailywire.com/news/report-top-health-insurance-provider-tells-employees-not-to-hire-white-men

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Jordan Petersen: Abandon Woke Now

“Truth is the handmaiden of love. Dialogue is the pathway to truth.”— Jordan Petersen

Nothing reveals desperation like the human need to reduce life to basic categories of blame. At times, it is necessary to condense complex subjects into simple ideas, but today’s wokeness is a phenomenon that we have already seen end in the horrific.

Jordan Petersen in a discussion of his new book, "Beyond Order, Twelve New Rules," advised “Allow yourself to think in more complex terms. It’s useful to reduce complex phenomena to their simpler elements. But is not useful to reduce it to the point of absurdity.”

Our modern struggle originates with two seminal thinkers, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud, who simplified complex reality. Both attempted to reduce nuanced subjects to simple material phenomena. Wokeness is a combination of the two of them, and a culmination of their influence.

Marx wanted to explain away hierarchical functions in economics that result from competence or intelligence and replace them with political power. Freud wanted to explain human dynamics and psychological phenomena in terms of sex.

They boil down human motivation to a single dimension. While that makes for a compelling story, it is leading to cultural suicide. Marx’s revolution via mental tyranny explains everything but, in the end, helps nothing. Freud precipitated mass sexualization.

See Cardi B during the Grammy Awards.

Most things are not simple and require multi-variant approaches to reach rational conclusions. Take, for instance, the wage gap between men and women. There are many reasons and causes, not one. So what is gained by blaming this only on gender and power?

Blame allows one to identify an enemy wholesale like “the patriarchy” or “white privilege.” Once you can identify the enemy it makes you a victim and places you on the side of the righteous.

Oversimplification based on moral justification gains an audience.

You don't have to test your theories against others or even the real world. Before being woke that was accomplished in the academy or through journalism. Now it offers a quick unearned sense of moral superiority.

What is the cause of poverty, for example? Is it only systemic corruption? What about alcoholism, drug abuse, broken families, variation in intelligence, or conscientiousness, immigration, bad luck or timing, drive, education, and on it goes?

Poverty is not the result of one thing, and will never be completely resolved with easy answers, as Marx and later Stalin and Mao promised. Even Jesus himself who some claim was a proto Communist says in Matthew 26:11, “the poor you will always have with you.”

Freud’s theory about the role of sex as the identifier of all neurosis or oppression is the woke’s sole indicator of identity. It makes things much easier than the idea of Martin Luther King Jr.’s character or the journey of personal meaning.

Life does not have homogenous categories of power or sex or pure conservative or all liberal. Ideology reveals crude and unsophisticated thinking. And most dangerous, it has no room for self-reflection.

Even more dangerous, cultish thinking allows the state to gain more control. Divide the people and unify the power. Then establish a moral woke tautology that claims those who doubt the justification of power lack moral integrity.

As Petersen suggests, “If you want to solve problems oversimplified solutions just get in the way.” Today, in the name of waking, there is blind spending, open borders, hiring for race and gender, and a growing menu of grievances.

As a result, in math class, we focus on anti-racism. Or in English literature, we teach gender inequality and often skip the readings of Petersen or Aldous Huxley’s "Brave New World," or take heed of George Orwell’s "1984" that offers us this stark warning of woke thinking: “Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.”

https://townhall.com/columnists/robertorlando/2021/03/23/jordan-petersen-abandon-woke-now-n2586695

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The Appalling Double-Standard of the Leftist Media’s Anti-Asian Hate Crime Coverage

In the Brave New Intersectional World our leftist overlords have created and rule over with an iron fist (with virtually all the power), white males, the ones they unironically claim have all the “power,” are the only group capable of committing a “hate” crime. So you’ll be forgiven for thinking, in the wake of the horrific Atlanta shootings by a white man who took the lives of six people of Asian descent, that white guys are committing all of the hate-motivated violence against Asian-Americans that the media has been all-of-a-sudden focusing on since the Atlanta shooting.

If this crime had been perpetrated by anyone but a white male, other than the predictable calls for gun control, would we still be hearing about it? Of course not, but he was, and we are - because, well, there’s a leftist narrative to drive. That narrative contends that since former President Donald Trump often pointed out the origins of the coronavirus and since Trump and his supporters (most of whom are white) are eeevil raaacists, it logically follows that they would be the ones attacking Asian people willy-nilly. You know, because they’re such uneducated, ignorant rubes that they think individual Asians they encounter in the street are somehow personally responsible for the goings-on in Wuhan and they must have their revenge.

Nevermind, of course, that the shooter has personally stated that his sex addiction drove him to his crimes, that two of the victims were white, or that all of the victims worked in an industry that fits what the attacker said was his motive. Oh no, apparently now the new narrative is that white defendants, especially this one, aren’t allowed to tell us what their motivations were, even though real hate criminals tend to not be shy about making their motivations crystal clear.

“African-Americans have to pay for what they've done,” Dylann Roof, the Charleston church murderer, wrote in a journal after his arrest. Robert Bowers, the Tree of Life Synagogue killer, made no bones about his antisemitism, accusing Jews of committing “genocide” against whites. El Paso shooter Patrick Wood Crusius openly said he wanted to “kill Mexicans” and wrote an entire manifesto about it. I could go on and on, but you get the picture.

Yet, in a staggering op-ed for The Hill titled “Asian Americans are the latest victims of white supremacy,” DePaul University professor Tom Mockaitis insists the Atlanta shootings “may have been racially motivated” because, well, “racism and misogyny are often linked.”

“The Atlanta murders fit an all-too familiar pattern. An individual unaffiliated with any group becomes radicalized and lashes out at marginalized people,” Mockaitis writes before going on to list several other white-perpetrated hate crimes ... against blacks, against Jews, against Mexicans, but none against Asians. His headline referred to Asian-Americans as “victims,” but only of white supremacy, not of the actual perpetrators, who in the majority of recent cases happen to be oh-so-inconveniently non-white.

Still, it’s hard to go wrong these days by just blaming racism anyway. MSNBC writer Hayes Brown, even after acknowledging investigators’ account of the defendant’s stated motivation, nevertheless insisted the crime was “still about race and power structures, even as his direct motivation was overwhelming misogyny.”

In a piece last month, before the Atlanta shooting, cautioning against the automatic labeling of crimes against Asians as hate-motivated, NBC’s Kimmy Yam wrote this astonishing paragraph: “While anti-Asian sentiment has risen markedly during the coronavirus pandemic, experts say it's important to evaluate each case individually. They said both defendants and victims deserve a fair, rather than a public, trial no matter what race they may be. They emphasize that that's particularly important if suspects are of color in the context of a justice system that hasn't been proven to be colorblind.”

Without directly pointing it out, because that would be politically incorrect and not fit the desired narrative at all, Yam tacitly acknowledges what anyone with half a brain who is capable of looking at a surveillance video can tell - most if not all of these crimes against Asians aren’t being perpetrated by white Trump supporters. Sure, this writer gave a nod to colorblindness, but the overarching leftist narrative is becoming clearer every day. When the perpetrator is a minority, we’ve got to have muted media, fair trials, no rushes to judgment, but when a white person commits a crime against someone of another race, it’s automatically labeled a hate crime and, presumably, that defendant must somehow now prove they were NOT motivated by hate. If this way of thinking isn’t the grim foundations of a dystopian, two-tiered justice system, I don’t know what is.

Until the media had a white perpetrator they could pigeon-hole into their narrative, even if strained, Asian-American activists were literally begging the media to pay attention to the rash of violence against their people brought on by suspects who didn’t fit the preferred talking points, like the 23-year-old man from Yemen who plunged a knife into the back of a Chinese man walking home near Manhattan.

Which brings up the real question: Is that Chinese man’s life less deserving of protection than those of the Atlanta salon workers? Because if the left’s hate-narrative holds up, his attacker, had he succeeded, would get a lighter sentence than the Atlanta shooter. Of course, that’s the whole problem with the absurdity that is hate crime law. Other than as it relates to obtaining a conviction or acquittal, why should it matter in the end what a criminal suspect was thinking when they committed a crime? Is the victim any less injured or dead?

https://townhall.com/columnists/scottmorefield/2021/03/22/the-appalling-doublestandard-of-the-leftist-medias-antiasian-hate-crime-coverage-n2586629

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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23 March, 2021

Why Tulsi Gabbard Is Right for an America First GOP

I don't agree with all the comments below but I do think Tulsi has a lot of potential as a conservative

The political realignment caused by President Donald Trump’s rise as the undeniable leader of the Republican Party is just beginning to be realized, and it may result in the emergence of a surprising superstar: former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii.

Gabbard first gained her following as a supporter of Sen. Bernie Sanders who refused to participate in a corrupt DNC process that disenfranchised the far-left presidential candidate. This made her a reviled figure among establishment Democrats, who hated her even more when she refused to buy into Russian xenophobia and opposed bombing campaigns in Syria. Her refreshing honesty has resulted in an unexpected cult following developing among pro-Trump conservatives.

While Gabbard’s economic policies vary considerably from the Republican orthodoxy, she brings a much-needed breath of fresh air on the issues of civil liberties and foreign wars. These are issues that appeal to young people who are often the ones thrown into the meat grinder of the war machine or are otherwise punished by the state for nonviolently enjoying their lives. Gabbard is an asset who should not be stubbornly rejected in Trump’s GOP. Making the Republican Party into a true MAGA coalition will require the building of bridges and the rejection of failed approaches tried in the past.

Gabbard is a politician that the Republican Party needs to rebuild its shattered credibility among the masses. She has built a brand as a maverick who will say what she believes is right on the issues, no matter the political consequences. Gabbard would also alienate all of the worst actors still festering within the Republican Party. The annoying free marketeers, who gave the cold shoulder to Trump for his economic nationalism, would naturally be up in arms, because of Gabbard’s lack of reverence for the sacred deity of GDP. The remnants of the neocon war party, including former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, would be the most triggered, and their anguish alone would be worth letting the Gabbardites into the fold.

Her entrance into the party would introduce some common sense into the fold. For instance, compare and contrast a Gabbard Republican to the Republicans of the past. A George W. Bush Republican would support lower taxes for the wealthy, paying lip service to some scribblings made by economist Milton Friedman in the 1960s, while increasing corporate subsidies and defense spending to grease his corporate buddies. A Tulsi Gabbard Republican, theoretically, would support more taxation and social spending but would end the corporate dominance of the markets and hamstring the military-industrial complex. This makes far more sense to anyone outside of the stifling Conservative Inc. bubble.

Gabbard’s full acceptance in the MAGA coalition would force the America Last forces within the GOP to expose themselves, as her coherent articulation of a noninterventionist foreign policy would put the neocons on the defense. While the neocons can easily plant a John Bolton or an H.R. McMaster into the Trump nexus (with horrible negative consequences to his America First agenda), this could never happen with Gabbard as she is unflappable on her core issues. She is emerging as a figure not seen since former Texas Congressman Ron Paul gained a quixotic following, being able to traverse chasms and divides that others cannot. The tremendous void of courage, decency and morality in the GOP has created the ability for unorthodox coalitions and strange new leaders. It is time to exploit these exciting circumstances to the fullest by fostering a strain of Tulsi Gabbard Republicanism.

Of course, for this to work, Gabbard needs to lean in and tailor her rhetoric to appeal to Republicans. There is already evidence that she is doing this, as evidenced by her appearances on Fox News since leaving congressional office. She appeared on the network to defend individuals who appeared at the controversial protest in Washington, D.C. on Jan. 6, calling out irresponsible Democratic propaganda meant to bring the war on terror into the homeland. She has also slammed “cancel culture” for creating the type of repression pushed by groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda. Gabbard is positioning herself to lead moderates and independents turned off by the excesses of the modern Left.

Before she left Congress, Gabbard’s defiant final act put focus on the absurd dogma of the social justice warriors. She introduced legislation that would keep biological men out of women’s sports, an issue that is radioactively unpopular with average voters. She also introduced a bill that would protect babies who survived the gruesome abortion procedure. Horror stories have emerged in recent years of babies surviving abortions and then being mangled alive for their organs to be trafficked in the medical industry. Gabbard’s awareness of these issues already beats many Republicans who only pay occasional lip service to them on the campaign trail. At the very least, it shows Gabbard has compassion that transcends the petty partisanship plaguing our civic life.

Recent news items under the Biden regime demonstrate the nature of the current political crackup and how it benefits Gabbard. Pentagon attacks on Fox News host Tucker Carlson, for having the incredulousness of suggesting that pregnant women should not be placed on the frontlines in combat zones, have been bizarre and surreal. Following that up with the National Guard mobbing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) at her own office, and we see an emerging trend of military personnel being used as cheap props to promote woke-ism for the Democrats. With no end in sight to the war on Afghanistan and the U.S. not being able to claim a decisive war victory in nearly 80 years, this is evidence that America is a non-serious country in serious decline, or perhaps free-fall collapse at this point.

With her sterling record of military service, Gabbard could gain traction as a Republican leader who will actually stand with the troops while maintaining the credibility to command their respect. While Trump certainly had the respect of the rank-and-file military, his avoidance of the Vietnam military draft and his trashing of individuals such as deceased former Sen. John McCain allowed Trump to be attacked on the issue of defense. Gabbard is unassailable in this regard, having been proven correct repeatedly despite the objections of so-called intelligence and national security experts. Gabbard has even shown the likes of Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris what a formidable foe she can be during public spats with Democrat leaders.

Republicans who pine for the great debate between capitalism and socialism, under the notion that Gen Z and millennials are just one PragerU video away from seeing the light, are effectively dooming the conservative cause despite their best efforts. The capitalism vs. socialism debate has already concluded and socialism has won, not because of ignorance or propaganda but because of the abject failure of conservatism. Republicans blew whatever credibility they may have had with young people by supporting bank bailouts, corporate subsidies, trade deals facilitating the outsourcing of jobs, forever wars, and countless other terrible policies. The youth is in turn tuning out conservatism and embracing socialism out of misguided self-interest.

Now, those of us in the Republican Party who are forward-thinking have to pick up the pieces and clean up the damage that has already been done. It is accomplished by taking the Republican Party in a populist, nationalist, America First direction. This is achieved not just by giving dedicated principled activists control over the party, permanently displacing the lobbyist-approved milquetoast class of Romney/Ryan losers, but also by forming non-traditional coalitions to build a populist Left-Right alliance that will devastate the status quo, making it wholly untenable. Gabbard could be the linchpin in creating a formidable lasting coalition if Republicans muster the courage to leave the reservation, as they did in voting for Trump as President in 2016, and manifest national greatness.

https://townhall.com/columnists/gavinwax/2021/03/21/why-tulsi-gabbard-is-right-for-an-america-first-gop-n2586610

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The Rise of the Politically Correct Language Censors

Today, we are faced with a new campaign of censorship, accompanied with the demand not just to ban the use of certain words or phrases but to insist that they be replaced with other words and phrases that must be accepted and used, if the potential “word-criminal” is not to be found guilty of racism, sexism or any other of a multitude of created groups and categories, and for which the “insensitive” individual may face serious life and career-affecting consequences.

On the surface, the appeal for a greater awareness and sensitivity to what and how we say things that, unintentionally, may be taken the wrong way by someone who personally has had “harmful” and “hurtful” experiences, or who comes from a family that in the past suffered from certain words and deeds in various ways, seems not unreasonable. Jews, in the past, were often called “kikes” or “Yids,” nor “Christ-killers.” It has generally become unacceptable to use such terms in reference to a person practicing the Jewish faith or having Jewish ancestors. And, similarly, certain words used in insulting or demeaning ways in reference to blacks in America have become unacceptable in virtually any and all social settings, both public and private. (See my article, “The Case for Liberty Through Thick and Thin”.)

However, languages, with their meanings, connotations, and acceptable uses of words, phrases, and terms, are always changing in every society. Sometimes a socially demeaning word can, over time, continue to be used without the negative implication. For instance, the word “slave:” a number of linguistic sources say that it originated from the word “Slav,” referring to certain groups of people living in Eastern Europe who were captured in the Middle Ages by other invading and conquering groups and forced into compulsory work; that is, made into “slaves.” Whether or not this long-held etymology is correct or not, to call someone, past or present, a “Slav” no longer implies an “inferior” or subservient status of those who live in that part of Europe.

It is also the case that a word that has an insulting connotation in one language may not have such a necessary negative meaning in another. For instance, it has become totally unacceptable for a white person to call a black American by what has become sanitized as the “N” word. Yet, the Russian version of this word, for instance, has not and for the most part still does not carry the offending sense that it does in English. It is merely the Russian word for a black person. If a Russian, who knows nothing about the historicity of that word in the American context, were to use it in the United States that person would have no idea that in using it any offense had been given.

Word Bans and Speech Commands in Manchester

Times change, and as attitudes, understandings, and “sensitivities” change through time, so do the uses and non-uses of words. But what happens when the determination of the use and meaning of words, phrases and forms of human interaction become hijacked by those who are determined to arrogate to themselves the lexicon of language? Who insist that they, above all others in society, know what should be said and should not be said, and what words shall be imposed on everyone else as near mandatory substitutes for the condemned and “forbidden” words?

This is the world in which we are presently existing, the “woke” world of political correctness, identity politics, and cancel culture. To demonstrate that this is not purely an American ideological phenomenon, just this past week, a British publication, The Spectator (March 11, 2021) reported that, “Manchester University Scraps the Word ‘Mother.” We are told that this respected British university has issued a “guide to inclusive language” that all those affiliated with that institution of higher learning are expected to follow and practice.

Some examples. It is no longer permissible to refer to the “elderly,” or a “pensioner” or those who are members of the “mature workforce.” These all imply inappropriate “ageisms.” No, instead, you will refer to those “over-65s, 75s, and so on,” we are told. The word, “diabetic,” is prohibited as it suggests a handicap. Now the focus must be on a person’s “abilities, rather than limitations.” A person, for instance, is not “suffering from cancer,” they are “living with cancer.”

Also, it is now necessary to use “gender-neutral” terms when referring to people. Thus, calling someone a “man” or a “woman” or a “father” or a “mother” is out. The preferred terms are to be “individuals” or “guardians.” The author of The Spectator article wonders if this means that Mother’s Day now is to be called “Guardian’s Day?” But, wait, does not “guardian” suggest a hierarchy of oppressor and oppressed? The Manchester “wokers” may have subliminally fallen into the very thing they say they want to eradicate. Cancel culture may have to come after some of the culture cancellers. (In an earlier time, this was said to be the revolution eating some of its own children.)

But nonetheless, following their own train of thought, at Manchester University you may no longer say that something is “man-made,” with, instead, “artificial” or “synthetic” as the required replacements. Mankind becomes humankind, and “manpower” is to be deleted and “workforce” is to be put in its place.

Training Enterprise Managers in the Ways of Identity Politics

At an American institution of higher learning with which I am acquainted, I have been told that a proposal has been made for the introduction of a diversity and inclusion management certificate. It seems that learning relevant management skills in selecting and overseeing a workforce (notice, I’m being politically correct, already!) for product and manufacturing and marketing efficiency, productivity, and profitability on the basis of individual employee’s education, skills, experience and other background qualifications to fill positions needed within the enterprise is no longer enough.

Nor is it simply a reasonable management tool to learn to treat those hired with courtesy and respect, both as a general rule of “good managerial conduct,” and to have employees who have a positive attitude about the place in which they are working and earning a living. And nor is it sufficient (regardless of regulatory requirements) to see the ethical rightness and practical advantages of evaluating and judging and rewarding employees in terms of their individual characteristics and merits and value-added to the private enterprise.

No, this is no longer enough. Instead, the student entering into a sequence of courses leading to such a diversity and inclusion management certificate will be informed that their tasks will be for, “creating inclusive cultures, enhancing organizational effectiveness and maximizing the sense of belonging among diverse stakeholders.” When completed, the certificate receiver will have demonstrated “the capability in planning, executing, and assessing a small-scale inclusion, diversity, and belonging-related intervention in an organization at either the intrapersonal, interpersonal, group, or organizational level.”

What will the student have learned along the way? He or she (or “it”) will have “an historical understanding and fluent usage of contemporary terms and language used in the field of diversity, inclusion, and belonging.” They will also know how to “conceive of, plan, conduct, and evaluate a diversity or inclusion initiative within an organization.” And they will know how to “facilitate effective dialogue within a diverse group of individuals holding widely divergent views.”

This will include the ability to analyze “various issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion;” critically “examine your background and self-assessment . . . on how you see the world,” and “reflect on the ways other people’s backgrounds . . . [affect] their perspectives on the world and their behavior in teams.”

The student taking these courses will learn how to “navigate the ambiguity and complexity that comes with multiple perspectives,” as well as “identifying the ways that power differentials operate, are experienced and reinforced” at different levels of workplace interactions. This will include knowing how to provide “services” to different groups, and especially “non-dominant populations.”

Identity Politics as the Child of Marxist Mind Manipulation

What stands out most noticeably is the repetition of words – “diversity,” “inclusiveness,” “belonging,” and “equity.” But what do these terms mean, and what do they imply about human relationships, starting with how the individual person views him- or herself? For the unreflective student, the prospectus for such a certificate, therefore, can easily seem innocuous, as simply being “fair” and respectful in a world in which people are different.

But it all depends upon what the words mean by both definition and context. In the world of identity politics and cancel culture, the lexicon of language is mostly the transference of Marxian concepts and categories to the “post-modern” race and gender arena. For Marxists and their practitioners in places such as the former Soviet Union, culture and language were viewed as tools used for capitalist class oppression of the working class through control and manipulation of what was written, said, and educationally learned and believed. The purpose of language and learning under capitalism was for the constructing of a societal “false consciousness” that succeeds in getting the majority of the population to accept their exploited status and to believe that there is no escape from it in this life.

Or as political scientist Tony Smith summarized it in, Thinking Like a Communist (1987):

“[Social] ‘Classes’ therefore are groups distinguished by the specialized positions they occupy in a common economic system and by their degree of control (or ownership) of the forces of production . . . Their ‘conflict’ comes from the fact that these positions are dependent upon one another but are not equal in power . . . The most advantaged class will seek to ensure its position through political means, through control, that is of the ‘state,’ whose primary function, in Marxist terms, is to serve the interests of the ruling class through a stratagem that combines force, mythmaking, and co-option.” (pp. 43-44)

Education and ideology were viewed as inseparable from each other in this Marxian world view, because the inherent nature of human relationships is dictated by who owns the means of production to oppress others for their benefit, and to assure active or passive acceptance of one’s class-determining status and place in society. The idea that education and knowledge can be unbiased, “factual,” and objectively logical is alien to this worldview. For the Marxist, education was “reeducation” to raise the ideological consciousness of those living under or threatened by capitalism; for them to know and see the “real” power relationships in society.

Or as one Soviet leader expressed it in the 1970s: “The Soviet school does not simply prepare educated people. It is responsible for the turning out of politically literate, ideologically convinced fighters for the communist cause. The school never stood, and it cannot stand, aside from politics, in the struggle of classes.” (Quoted in, N. N. Shneidman, Literature and Ideology in Soviet Education (1973, p. 2.)

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/welcome-to-word-tyranny-and-cultural-balkanization?vgo_ee=8hjBct8wxos7yZwE%2FDdWXL35hO7C%2FF3J%2FgQB9Uu3XAY%3D

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'Sneering' BBC presenters mock minister over Union flag

The Culture Secretary has criticised the BBC's "sneering" attitude after its breakfast television presenters appeared to mock Robert Jenrick for displaying the Union flag in his office.

Charlie Stayt and Naga Munchetty laughed as they pointed out that large flags have begun appearing regularly in the background of ministerial interviews.

Ms Munchetty later received a "reminder" from bosses about inappropriate social media use after she liked a tweet which praised their comments and said: "The flag shaggers will be up in arms."

The BBC said the on-air exchange was "light-hearted" and not meant to offend. But speaking to The Telegraph on Thursday night, Oliver Dowden said: "I'm concerned that what started as light-hearted banter became sneering which is not the BBC at its best.

"As I've said before, it is so important that the BBC reflects and respects the values of the whole of the UK."

Tim Davie, the BBC director-general, was said to be furious that the exchange happened on the day he announced plans to shift operations away from London in a bid to end accusations of liberal metropolitan bias.

Mr Stayt made his remarks at the end of an interview, pointing out that Mr Jenrick had a large Union flag on display behind him. "I think your flag is not up to standard size, Government interview measurements. I think it's just a little bit small, but that's your department really,” he said.

Ms Munchetty laughed and added: "There's always a flag. They had the picture of the Queen, though."

The presenters' comments triggered a swift backlash on social media, with the veteran former BBC journalist Andrew Neil writing: "Sometimes the BBC forgets what the first B stands for."

Robbie Gibb, a former head of the BBC's political programming and an ex-director of communications at Number 10, said: "On the day the BBC announces the welcome news it is moving more programmes out of London, this BBC Breakfast clip reveals a sneering and cynical attitude towards our monarchy and flag that shows it's not just about where people are based, the BBC has a wider cultural problem."

One Tory MP said: "The BBC hates Britain. That's exactly what is wrong with it."

Ms Munchetty "liked" a tweet that said: "What has Charlie done? The flag shaggers will be up in arms. Tell him we love him." She was later reminded of her responsibilities in relation to social media use.

On Thursday night, Mr Jenrick said the flag was a "symbol of liberty and freedom".

After a discussion with BBC management, Ms Munchetty issued a public apology. She said: "I 'liked' tweets today that were offensive in nature about the use of the British flag as a backdrop in a government interview this morning. I have since removed these 'likes'. This does not represent the views of me or the BBC. I apologise for any offence taken."

The breakfast programme is broadcast from Salford and the incident was badly timed for the BBC as it unveiled a grand plan to become more representative of the nation by moving operations away from London.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/18/outcry-sneering-bbc-presenters-mock-minister-union-flag/

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As a 'Person of Color,' I Received a COVID-19 Vaccine Easily and Quickly

And I don't think it's fair.

Given a recent experience, I think I understand better why almost thirty percent of blacks oppose Affirmative Action. Unseen hands gifted me with quick and easy access to a COVID-19 vaccine. Why? I believe I was incorrectly classified as a "person of color." This access bothered me, not least because a friend, "Rocky," needs the vaccine more than I do. I begged Rocky to take my slot, but he declined. He wanted me to get it.

By February 1, 2021, only 7.7 percent of the US population had been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Only 22.5% of especially vulnerable and needy people whom the CDC prioritized to receive the vaccine had been vaccinated. That means, as of February 1, 2021, 77.5% of those most likely to die from COVID-19 were yet to be fully vaccinated. This includes elderly people, the obese, those with cancer, Down syndrome, weak immune systems, diabetes, smokers, and pregnant women.

I assumed I'd be waiting my turn, while continuing to wear my mask, to wash my hands, and to isolate socially, as I had been doing since the pandemic began.

But it was a risk I didn't have to take. It was late January, 2021. While vulnerable populations were perched over their computers for days at a time, clicking "refresh" hundreds of times, while parents of Down Syndrome children were driving hundreds of miles in search of vaccines, and while grandparents were begging for help from tech-savvy grandchildren, a written invitation to receive a vaccine slid silently under my door. The highly effective Pfizer vaccine was available to me. No waiting, no line, no pressure. I just walked a few minutes from my front door, and rolled up my sleeve. For the second of this two-dose vaccine, I urged Rocky to take my place. He, manfully, refused. He wanted me to get it. I did. I felt like garbage. I was well aware that I was taking the place of someone who needed the vaccine more than I. I now have – yes, it's a thing – vaccine guilt.

I live in a majority-minority city in a majority-minority apartment complex. I estimate that about 90% of my neighbors are black or Hispanic. Governor Phil Murphy, along with all other public officials, has been under extraordinary pressure to prioritize vaccinating black and Hispanic people, and his administration is doing just that. In fact, even before any vaccines were authorized, news outlets reported that "Health experts want to prioritize people of color for a COVID-19 vaccine."

Many insisted that blacks did not want to get vaccines because the Tuskegee Experiment made blacks distrust mainstream medicine. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study took place between 1932 and 1972. It involved 399 black men with latent syphilis who were merely observed, and not treated, for the disease. Doctors could have treated the patients with penicillin, but they did not, because they wanted data on the course of untreated syphilis in black men. This study is monstrous. Those who carried it out were criminals. It stopped in 1972 after word of the study became public. Revelation of the study lead to the creation of strict standards for scientific experimentation on human beings. In 1997, President Bill Clinton issued a formal apology.

Those who attribute the discrepancy between black and non-black vaccination rates to trauma from the Tuskegee study insist that the entire US medical establishment is a white supremacist, criminal enterprise, comparable to the monsters who carried out that study, that black people risk their lives seeking medical care, and that their vaccine wariness is well-founded

The Woke, like Marxists before them, sniff around other people's pain the way rats sniff around garbage. The Woke are not looking for problems to solve; they are looking for pain to commodify. They want to overturn bad, corrupt, Western Civilization and replace it with their brave, new world. The Woke sneer at the pain of poor whites as an unworthy commodity for revolution building. The Woke focus on exacerbating division between whites and blacks.

Me? I've learned, through the school of hard knocks, that I hurt only myself when I avoid doctors. I've learned to educate myself, recruit allies, and develop a courteous and yet assertive stance. I'm still afraid when I go to the doctor; though I am otherwise a teetotaler when it comes to mind-altering drugs, I have a Klonopin prescription, an anti-anxiety drug, that I take when I go to the doctor.

Now, imagine if I were black. Teachers, politicians, ministers, NPR, the New York Times, MSNBC, would drum into me, not that my and my family's bad medical experiences were unfortunate but not part of any conspiracy. No. Powerful voices would not be telling me that I am responsible for my own care, that I need to inform myself, recruit an ally, and learn to be polite but assertive. No. I would be told, again and again, with the force of chanted, unquestionable dogma, that I was a victim of a thorough-going white supremacist society eager to use medicine to destroy me. Every white person I meet is my enemy and wields the tools of medicine only sadistically. If I heard that message from teachers, from NPR, from the New York Times, over and over, would I avail myself of a vaccine? Hell no.

Why do the Woke tell black people this story? Because it disempowers black people. In the case of vaccine avoidance, this false narrative might just kill black people. Nor is this the only Woke narrative that results in black death. Telling black people that police are all white supremacists out to get them is another death-dealer. Telling black people that standards in schools are "racist" destroys the academic lives of black students. Why do the Woke want to disempower and even kill black people, through false narratives like this and others? Because they hope that weakened people will submit more readily to the Woke narrative of salvation through Woke politics. False narratives of universal white evil and ultimate black powerlessness are the Woke's recruitment pamphlets.

And here's a kicker. Research shows that the Tuskegee study, a trope so beloved of the Woke that they mention it every chance they get, is not cited by African Americans as their reason not to get the COVID-19 vaccine. "No, the Tuskegee Study Is Not the Top Reason Some Black Americans Question the COVID-19 Vaccine," reports KQED. In fact, researchers have known for years that African Americans are not rejecting medical attention because of Tuskegee. "The conclusions were definitive … There was no association between knowledge of Tuskegee and willingness to participate" in medical procedures.

Why, then, do the Woke cite Tuskegee? Social work professor Karen Lincoln says, "If you say Tuskegee, then you don't have to acknowledge … poverty and unemployment." Well, isn't that convenient. Ignore the poverty that pushes both poor whites and poor blacks away from medical care. Why did I consent to being experimented on by a callous researcher? I was stricken with a vestibular disorder when I was a grad student, and I had no health insurance and no money. Rather than talking about poverty and health care, the Woke obsess on race. Race is more divisive, and division advances the divisive Woke narrative. Also, obsession on race exempts rich white liberals from attention to their own wealth. Every revolution needs someone to hate, and the Woke hate poor whites. Focus on skin color instead of poverty and unemployment allows the Woke their hatred-of-choice.

I am tormented by the fear that Rocky will soon die. My morbid obsession is a sign of how much he means to me. Most of my siblings have died, often young, of cancer. (Yes, even white people are subjected to the kind of environmental pollution that results in demographically atypical early cancer deaths.) After two other siblings died decades ago, both my only sister and yet another brother died of cancer in the past six years. Rocky is one of the few people I have left who remembers me from my childhood. He's a good man and he deserves a long life. I beg God to let me die before Rocky. I pray this prayer not because I'm like Father Byles on the Titanic. I pray this prayer because I'm alone and losing Rocky would gut me and I couldn't survive his loss.

Rocky was born in a high-crime, majority-minority city. His immigrant parents sent Rocky to the local bakery to beg for bread. Any meat his family saw were the cuts that butchers can't sell. Rocky was malnourished. He caught pneumonia. He was hospitalized for three months. His lungs never recovered.

Rocky experiences coughing fits. Sometimes he just puts his head back and struggles for breath. His struggle to breathe terrifies and saddens me.

Rocky, with his compromised lungs, can't get a COVID-19 vaccine. Rocky is a white male, an alleged monarch squatting atop a throne of unearned privilege. You won't hear about anyone like Rocky from the Woke peddling their divisive pamphlets.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/person-color-i-received-covid-19-vaccine-easily-danusha-goska/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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22 March, 2021

Lockdown protests turn violent in Britain

There have been violent scenes in the British city of Bristol where protesters stormed a police station and abused police officers, two of whom were taken to hospital with broken bones.

Footage shows protesters attacking police, setting fire to a police vehicle, setting off fireworks on the street and rocking a police van with officers in it.

Officers wearing riot protection gear and carrying protective shields used batons and pepper spray against the rioters.

Police said several hundred people gathered outside the Bridewall police station in Bristol, in England’s south-west, after an earlier protest against a proposed new law aimed at expanding police powers to restrict demonstrations.

The laws have been proposed by the government to better control protests and clamp down on the deliberately disruptive tactics used by groups such as Extinction Rebellion. One of the law’s measures would impose up to 10 years’ jail for damaging a memorial, which follows the toppling of a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol last year.

Some demonstrators carried placards with slogans such as “Kill the Bill”, “The Day Democracy Became Dictatorship” and “We Can’t Be Silenced That Easy”.

It follows an outcry in Britain over the heavy-handed police tactics used by the Metropolitan Police against women attending a vigil-turned-protest at Clapham Common in London’s south-west, in memory of Sarah Everard who was killed while walking home, allegedly by a serving police officer who will face trial charged with her kidnap and murder.

Gatherings are currently prohibited under restrictions imposed across the country for several months aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19.

Chief Superintendent Will White from Avon and Somerset Police said the peaceful protest against the law turned into a “violent disorder” because of the actions of a small minority who set fire to two police cars and damaged the building.

White said one officer suffered a broken arm and another broken ribs.

“These scenes are absolutely disgraceful ... officers have been subjected to considerable levels of abuse and violence,” White said.

“All those involved in this criminal behaviour will be identified and brought to justice.

There will be significant consequences for behaviour such as this,” he warned.

He said extra police from neighbouring forces were called in to help quell the riots.

Home Secretary Priti Patel who is ushering in the new law said the scenes in Bristol were “unacceptable.”

“Thuggery and disorder by a minority will never be tolerated,” Patel said in a tweet.

“Our police officers put themselves in harms way to protect us all. My thoughts this evening are with those police officers injured.”

The Labour opposition had planned to abstain on the bill when it is put before the Commons but following the backlash after the vigil for Sarah Everard said they would oppose the proposed law.

Labour figures rushed to condemn the violent scenes. Marvin Rees, the mayor of Bristol said while he also held “major concerns” about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, the “lawlessness on show will be used as evidence and promote the need for the bill.”

“Smashing buildings in our city centre, vandalising vehicles, attacking our police will do nothing to lessen the likelihood of the bill going through,” Rees said.

“On the contrary, the lawlessness on show will be used as evidence and promote the need for the bill.”

“It is totally wrong and counterproductive to respond to the government’s proposed draconian limits on protest through descending into violence against the police,” Lammy said.

The bill was proposed before the backlash over police’s tactics at Clapham and had been set to sail through the Commons with little attention, however has been under intense scrutiny since the events surrounding the Everard vigil.

https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/police-hospitalised-as-protest-in-bristol-turns-violent-20210322-p57cst.html

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In choosing their issues, Leftists choose those that offer the best opportunities to glorify themselves

An interview

The left today seems ever-more disconnected from voters. Its constant promotion of niche issues and identity politics is at odds with most people’s immediate priorities. How did a movement set up to represent working people become so distant from them? David Swift is a historian and the author of A Left for Itself: Left-Wing Hobbyists and Performative Radicalism. spiked caught up with him to discuss how the left lost its way.

spiked: What is the core thesis of your book?

David Swift: A lot of people on the left are not really involved in politics to advance the cause they care about. Instead, it is really about themselves. A lot of people’s politics isn’t so much about what they believe in or how they want the world to be. Instead, it reflects an element of themselves, in the same way that a football fan might appreciate their team or a drum-and-bass fan might appreciate that kind of music. It is actually more like a hobby, a pastime or a form of identity than politics as we normally understand it. And part of this is down to social media.

spiked: How has this manifested itself?

Swift: There has been a transition in the past 100 years away from trade unions, feminist groups, black and Asian groups and gay-rights groups all advancing their interests. Now, we have people who aren’t any of these things and aren’t fighting about these issues – instead, they are fighting about things that affect other people. Obviously, this can be a very good and honourable thing. But unfortunately it sometimes lends itself to performative radicalism.

For example, look at the Palestinian cause. That cause is very important. But a lot of British people who are not Muslims or Jews, and who have nothing to do with the Middle East, wonder why the left cares so much about it when there are so many other injustices all around the world.

Another example is trans rights. Obviously, trans people are subject to all kinds of bullying, hostility and violence, and that’s a very serious, important issue. But it’s something that affects so few people – and that is what makes it a perfect issue for this identity leftism.

You can absolutely support and do good work towards these issues, but you don’t need to base your entire social-media profile around the fact that you do.

spiked: How has this impacted on the left’s popularity?

Swift: There are all sorts of reasons for Labour’s malaise. And the 2019 General Election result was a long time coming for all kinds of different reasons. But look at the work of Deborah Mattinson, who does a lot of polling and focus groups. The sort of issues that came up among voters in her research about the Red Wall are revealing. There was a sense that the Labour Party didn’t really care about these people. It seemed to care more about people in distant countries and about niche issues. That really did cut through and it cost Labour a lot of votes.

It really relates to Brexit as well. Labour didn’t know what to do about it. In the end, it went for the new deal and second referendum pitch. That would have been tough to sell anyway. But it was made worse because, for so many Labour Leavers, the problem wasn’t just about Brexit. Brexit represented many other things, including the sense that there had been a shift among the activists and the senior Labour politicians towards niche political issues.

spiked: Why has this happened? Does it reflect changes in the makeup of the Labour Party itself?

Swift: There are plenty of working-class people who do care about Palestine and trans rights. But looking at the Labour Party now, there are far more people in it who are like me – though they may have working-class parents, they themselves have gone to university, live in big cities and work in particular sectors. And they have materially different concerns from the sort of people who were the base of the Labour Party a few decades ago. Because of that material difference – and also because of differences in education – these people are far more likely to be preoccupied with niche issues.

There has been a move away from the more purely material concerns, which traditionally dominated the Labour Party and the trade unions, towards identitarian concerns. But it’s not so much that people have become either more neoliberal or less socialist. It’s more that people don’t believe that the economic situation can ever really change. Because the limit of a lot of people’s economic ambition is piecemeal reform, they think they should aim for more achievable goals, such as ones relating to cultural issues.

spiked: Has the pandemic sparked any kind of shift?

Swift: When the pandemic started, some people argued it would kill identity politics and the culture wars, because the virus was so serious. Clearly, that didn’t happen. And to some extent, the fact that nearly everyone’s been locked down for so long, and that we haven’t been seeing friends and have been online more, has made people more and more angry and hardened pre-existing divides.

Hopefully – it’s far too early to say – Covid is the sort of issue that might spur on a belief in the possibility and desirability of important economic change. Polls and focus groups show people do not want to see a return to normal – they want to see this crisis count for something. Maybe it can actually make people think that another economy, even another world, is possible.

It’s helpful to think about the Marxist idea of the base and the superstructure. Marx argued that there is a socio-economic base formed by things like your job, whether you own property and how much you earn. And that feeds into the cultural, political superstructure – reflected in things like how you vote. I think there is something similar going on now. We are obsessing over the cultural side of things. People may claim they care about trans rights or Palestinians, but in a way they are using the material deprivation or vulnerability of those groups as ammunition for their political and cultural debates on Twitter.

The interesting thing about politics nowadays is that there is a disconnect between the reality of material deprivation and violence on the one hand, and the cultural debate on the other. It’ll be interesting to see whether this trend continues or if there is more of a focus on incomes, wealth and taxation in the wake of Covid. Maybe we can leave these other debates behind and focus more on what matters.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/12/todays-leftists-want-to-make-politics-all-about-themselves

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Violent inmates are MORE likely to reoffend after going through ‘rehabilitation’ programmes, reveals shock study kept secret by ministers for three years

Britain's most dangerous prisoners are more likely to reoffend when they leave jail if they are put on a high-profile rehabilitation programme, the Daily Mail can reveal.

A bombshell study reveals that offenders who went through the programme posed a greater risk than those who had not – and they went on to commit more crimes after their sentences ended.

Yet the Ministry of Justice, which commissioned the study, has still not published the report – nearly three years after it was finished.

And despite the findings, ministers have continued to use the programme with thousands of inmates.

Offenders put on the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) Pathway include killers and rapists.

The official criteria for admission says entrants must have been convicted of a serious violent or sexual offence, and ‘assessed as presenting a high likelihood of violent offence repetition and high or very high risk of serious harm to others’.

They will also have been diagnosed with ‘a severe form or personality disorder’ linked to their offending, such as psychopathy.

The OPD pathway budget in 2016, the last year for which figures are available, was £64 million. That year, there were 16,000 inmates undertaking it.

Violent crime by previously convicted offenders has been rising steadily. Repeat offenders still on probation murdered 155 people in England and Wales in 2019 – almost a quarter of the 623 total, and more than double the figure of 74 in 2015.

The ministry spent almost £1 million on the OPD study, which was completed in 2018. It was led by Paul Moran, professor of psychiatry at Bristol University.

The killer who made ‘excellent progress’

One of the OPD Pathway’s most notorious ‘graduates’ is serial sex offender Leroy Campbell.

He raped and murdered nurse Lisa Skidmore, 37, then tried to kill her mother Margaret Skidmore, 80, and burn down her Wolverhampton house in 2016 – just four months after being released from a life sentence imposed in 2000.

Campbell had previous convictions for rape, burglary and drugs.

In 1983, he broke into a home for nurses, and came close to strangling a woman to death while attempting to rape her.

Probation officer Laurence Watkins told the inquest into Miss Skidmore’s death that Campbell had made ‘excellent progress’ on the pathway, and he had concluded he was ‘clearly motivated to lead a law-abiding life in the community’.

Others who were on the OPD pathway include killers Jason Gomez and Paul Wadkin, who stabbed fellow inmate Darren Flynn 190 times after a group therapy session at Kent’s Swaleside prison in 2015.

According to ministry documents, the study’s ‘overarching objective’ was ‘to assess effectiveness of the Pathway on reducing reoffending and improving psychological health’.

The ministry initially promised to release the report in early 2019, and then, last summer, by October.

Ministry sources say a firm publication date is still months away, claiming the report has to undergo ‘standard publication processes’. Only then can its ‘key findings be interpreted’.

But friends of Professor Moran said the report was approved and ‘signed off’ months ago.

Penal experts and senior MPs from both main parties last night described the failure to publish the report while continuing to use the programme as a ‘scandal’ that was putting the public at risk.

John Podmore, a former prison governor, said of the OPD and other psychology programmes: ‘They are a financial scandal, and a scandal in terms of their failure to protect the public.’

Shadow justice secretary David Lammy added: ‘The Government’s approach to rehabilitation is failing miserably. This report may shed light on why. The Government must immediately publish the study in full, without any spin.’

The failure to publish the OPD report echoes the scandal over the Sex Offender Treatment Programme, taken by tens of thousands of rapists and paedophiles.

In 2017, it was revealed that a ministry study found those treated were 25 per cent more likely to commit further sex crimes.

The findings emerged in 2012, but were kept secret for five years, while the programme continued to be used.

Professor Moran and his team followed 28,000 prisoners for six years, comparing those treated under the OPD pathway with those who were not.

The programme has several elements, including prison ‘therapeutic communities’, where prisoners spend hours every week talking about their crimes and problems, and classroom-based cognitive-behavioural psychological courses.

Its supporters say it takes a ‘holistic approach’, with a ‘focus on relationship building’ and dealing with previous trauma.

Early last year, Professor Moran gave a series of closed presentations to officials and mental health experts.

His audiences were told they could not record them or photograph his slides. He refused to comment when approached, but the Mail has pieced together his findings from several sources who were present.

Others who were on the OPD pathway include killers Jason Gomez and Paul Wadkin, who stabbed fellow inmate Darren Flynn 190 times after a group therapy session at Kent’s Swaleside prison in 2015

The future risk posed by offenders is assessed by psychologists and probation officers using the Offender Assessment System (OASyS).

Professor Moran revealed that when he compared the OASyS risk scores of his treatment and control groups before they were released, ‘the difference between the treatment and control groups is statistically significant – in favour of the control group’.

In other words, the risk of future reoffending among those who got OPD treatment was assessed as higher.

A whistleblower with access to the data confirmed that the report shows those who went through the programme committed more ‘proven offences’ after release.

Professor Moran did not offer an explanation as to why offenders on the programme did worse.

A separate study of a prison psychological course known as Resolve, given to medium and high-risk violent inmates, has shown that it makes no impact on whether they commit further violent crimes after release.

The OPD and Resolve schemes are two of more than 30 psychological programmes used in prisons. Most have never been evaluated to discover whether they reduce offending or make criminals worse.

They are merely ‘accredited’ – rubber-stamped by a panel appointed by the ministry. The panel’s membership, the criteria it uses, and its minutes are all secret.

High-profile repeat offenders include Leroy Campbell, who raped and murdered nurse Lisa Skidmore in 2016, four months after being released from a life sentence. His record included multiple rape convictions.

His murder trial heard that he spent time in a psychologically informed prison environment, an integral part of the OPD Pathway.

Graham Towl, professor of psychology at Durham University, who spent eight years as head of psychology for both the Prison Service and the Ministry of Justice, told the Mail that prison psychology programmes had become an ‘industry’.

He added: ‘It seems to have acquired cult-like characteristics, whereby any evidence or questioning of its efficacy is viewed as an act of disloyalty – hence the culture of secrecy.’

John Podmore, now a professor of applied social sciences at the University of Durham, said: ‘The whole system needs auditing. The public needs to see whether these programmes are making offenders worse, and that their money is being spent effectively.’

Tory MP Bob Neill, chairman of the Commons justice committee, said he was ‘deeply concerned’ by the failure to publish Professor Moran’s report.

He added: ‘Just as over the sex offender study, they appear not to have been transparent about a scheme that deals with very serious offenders.’

Penelope Gibbs, of penal reform charity Transform Justice, added: ‘The whole way that the Government designs, signs off and implements rehabilitation programmes is shrouded in mystery, but it is crystal clear that we don’t know whether most of them work.

‘It’s not obvious why their impact has not been assessed, nor why the finished OPD evaluation has not seen the light of day. But the credibility of the justice system relies on greater transparency.’

A government spokesman said: ‘The report’s initial findings are expected to be inconclusive and it would be wrong to draw any conclusions at this stage.

‘We will respond once the study has been published – but would not hesitate to pull funding immediately if [the programme] was found to be unfit for purpose.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9382569/Violent-inmates-likely-reoffend-going-rehabilitation-programmes.html

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The Re-Opening in Texas Follows the Science: Economic Science

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s decision to eliminate the state’s mask mandate and capacity restrictions on businesses, effective March 10, was condemned by critics as reckless. But the governor’s rollback better aligns Texas policy with science: economic science that is.

Epidemiologists don’t have a monopoly on advice regarding how to handle the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, epidemiology has nothing to say about how humans should evaluate the trade-offs between various activities they value and the level of health risk they’re willing to accept to engage in those activities. Economic science is the discipline that studies these competing values.

Governor Abbott’s decision doesn’t eliminate the need for individuals to balance health risks against the pleasure of dining out, attending a sporting event, or breathing without the annoyance of a mask, it ends the state’s monopoly over such choices.

Responding to Abbott’s announcement, President Joe Biden said, “The last thing we need is Neanderthal thinking....It’s critical, critical, critical, critical that they follow the science.” The New York Times wrote that Abbott’s decision represented “a rushed return to normalcy, rather than a careful weighing of costs and benefits.” The reality is that costs and benefits will still be carefully weighed, but by individuals choosing for themselves rather than government forcing its choice on everyone.

According to Abbott, his decision was not meant to invalidate the “safe practices that Texans have mastered over the past year. Instead, it is a reminder that each person has a role to play in their own personal safety and the safety of others... [and] the freedom to determine their own destiny."

Economists have long appreciated that most tradeoffs are best left for individuals to make for themselves. Individuals know their personal preferences better than anyone else and usually bear the burden of bad choices and reap the reward of good choices. The presence of COVID-19 doesn’t alter this basic insight.

The economic case for government mask mandates and business-occupancy limitations hinges on virus transmission “externalities,” or spillover effects. Such externalities occur when people weigh their own health risks against the benefits of engaging in desirable, even risky, activities without accounting for how their actions might affect others—in this case, infecting them with COVID-19.

Writing in the Southern Economic Journal, economists Peter Leeson and Louis Rouanet of George Mason University found that the size of the COVID-19 transmission externality is much smaller than most people realize, largely due to the vigilance of business owners, who understand that increased transmission to customers and employees will cause further damage to their firms.

Like most others, over the past year I’ve been in businesses that made me feel safe and satisfied, others in which I felt unsafe, and some in which I felt safe, but was annoyed with the hassle they made me endure to make others feel safe. Everyone differs in their preferences across these margins and it effects where they choose to dine, shop, and even work. That means many businesses’ revenues are directly tied to how well they negotiate these tradeoffs for their customers.

Not surprisingly, numerous Texas businesses already have indicated that they don’t intend to abandon their mask requirements or return to full capacity. Immediate examples include Target, which announced that masks will still be required in its Texas stores, and the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, whose owner, Mark Cuban, said he has no plans to increase the 3,000-person capacity limit on attendance. As Bob Sambol, owner of Bob’s Steak & Chop House in Dallas, said, “I have a week, thank God” to decide. Trade-offs are never easy.

While businesses generally have been efficiently limiting the COVID-19 transmission spillover taking place on their premises, regulation of cross-site transmission remains the realm of governments. Unfortunately, as Peter Boettke (another George Mason University economist) and I recently argued in a symposium on the Political Economy of COVID-19, the type of command-and-control regulations most states have placed on businesses are an overly costly way to lessen spillover transmissions, since they indiscriminately curtail both highly valued activities and those of lesser value.

A better option is to follow Texas’s lead and let economic science, not politicians, guide us through the remainder of the pandemic.

https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=13456&omhide=true

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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21 March, 2021

Infidelity is natural for females too

I put up an essay last month under the heading, <a href="http://pcwatch.blogspot.com/2021/02/we-must-abandon-expectations-of-sexual.html">"We must abandon expectations of sexual fidelity"</a>. The point of the article was that instead of condemning a partner for infidelity we should concentrate on handling the matter constructively

Nadia Bokody below also has a way of coping with the instinct to infidelity. She highlights infidelity by agreement.

I did myself do the sort of thing she recommends. I told my partner that what she did when out of my sight was her business. And she did have a number of sexual relationships while we were an item.

The big risk with that, of course is that the partner might find someone else that she likes better. And that did happen. After 14 years my partner met a gem of a man who was miles better for her than I was. So she shacked up with him. All was not lost however as we have continued with the warm relationship between us but with much less time together

About a month ago, I met a woman I matched with on Tinder for drinks at a bar in the city.

A few cocktails down, she leaned across the table and whispered, “So, how shall we do this? Do you want to go back to your place or mine?”

It was the first time I’d had sex with someone who wasn’t my boyfriend, and it represented freedom from everything I grew up believing a relationship should look like.

My boyfriend and I discussed our thoughts on monogamy early on. Perhaps because I write about sex for a job, or maybe because I have a hard time filtering myself, I told him in the second week of dating I wasn’t interested in sleeping with one person for the rest of my life.

It wasn’t until three years into our relationship though, we decided to explore what that might look like.

As someone who’s never been exclusively attracted to men, but only recently come to terms with my bisexuality, we agreed I’d see other women from time to time.

And my boyfriend could do the same, under the proviso the arrangement would be purely sexual.

If this is all sounding familiar, it’s probably because I wrote about my first foray into ethical non-monogamy a few months ago.

Having spoken frankly about my sex life online for the better part of a decade, it didn’t occur to me I was doing anything particularly revolutionary by chronicling the experience.

But the response I received from women within moments of the column going live, was nothing short of jaw-dropping.

I want to go back and reiterate something here: it was women, not men, who wrote to me in overwhelming numbers – and it wasn’t to criticise my non-traditional relationship stance. It was to ask for advice on how to do it themselves.

This didn’t entirely surprise me. Research confirms most of what we’ve been led to believe about female sexuality – namely the idea women want sexual monogamy, while men want sexual variety – is wildly inaccurate. Like, it actually couldn’t be more wrong.

Take, for example, a paper published in peer-reviewed British medical journal BMJ, which found women are more than twice as likely as men to lose interest in sex after cohabiting with their partner for a year or longer.

Or a 2012 study of people in relationships of up to nine years, which determined women’s sexual desire – not men’s – “was significantly and negatively predicted by relationship duration”.

These findings are backed up by a seven-year longitudinal study of over 2100 Finnish women, which found a direct correlation between women’s level of interest in sex, and their relationship status – with those in long-term, live-in relationships reporting the least interest in sex.

Bizarrely, instead of recognising this biological fact, we’ve continued to push the narrative women simply don’t like sex very much.

In reality, women not only like sex, but crave it just as much as – if not more than – men. Studies show we outperform the guys in terms of the amount of porn we watch, are the largest consumers of sex toys, and that men consistently underestimate how much sex we want.

However, Google “low libido in women” and you’re sure to find hundreds of thousands of articles pathologising what is really just a need for greater sexual variety.

If we’re to take the low female libido argument seriously, we’re to assume roughly half the population suffers from a condition responsible for grinding our sex drives to a halt, which mysteriously only takes effect after our boyfriends move in.

Most of my coupled-up female friends are convinced their libidos are broken, when they’re actually sexually bored.

I know this because these same women masturbate, watch porn, and do double-takes at attractive men on the street.

Their sex drives are alive and kicking, they’re just not being stimulated by the monotony of predictable, partnered sex.

Nadia says women don’t lose their libido, they just get bored by predictable sex. Picture: Instagram/@nadiabokody.

Nadia says women don’t lose their libido, they just get bored by predictable sex. Picture: Instagram/@nadiabokody.Source:Instagram

The consequence of failing to recognise what drives female desire has been an epidemic of sex-starved relationships.

Research suggests up to 20 per cent of married couples are currently “sexless” – which means they have had sex less than 10 times in the last year.

This positively miserable scenario, we have determined as a society, is a far greater marker of relationship success than both partners agreeing to bonk someone else every so often.

And yet, despite the taboos still surrounding ethical non-monogamy (that is, dating or having sex with people outside of the relationship with the consent of your partner), thirst for information on it is sky high among women.

Because of its stigma, many of the female readers who wrote to me after I talked about my “monogamish” lifestyle expressed embarrassment around their sexual restlessness.

“What’s wrong with me?”, one woman asked. “I’m so scared to admit this to anyone,” confessed another.

Each message reflected back the shame and misinformation I’d been taught about my own sexuality growing up; mainly that I wasn’t allowed to express it in ways which weren’t performative for a male partner.

Though we regard sexual exclusivity as something women naturally covet, the truth is, monogamy is neither instinctive, nor something we’ve always done.

The institution of marriage didn’t even take off until the advent of agriculture, after farming practices tied humans to land, allowing us to accumulate wealth.

Thus, it was invented as an economic arrangement to ensure the maintenance of family property.

Interestingly, we’ve had a far easier time accepting male promiscuity throughout most of history.

The Old Testament of the Bible contains numerous references to men having more than one wife, and according to 1 Kings 11:3, Solomon had 700 of them (with 300 concubines to boot. Clearly a very busy guy!)

But instead of letting women in on the same sexual freedoms as men, at some point we decided it was a better idea to stop men from having them (which, if the infidelity rate among married men is anything to go by, wasn’t a great move. But more on that in another column).

What we need, is more of a flexible approach to relationships; one that recognises the fact the female libido is far more potent than we’ve been treating it.

Rather than attempting to box it in and risk diluting it, we could benefit from treating women’s sexual desire in much the same way we’ve treated men’s throughout most of history – as something that can’t be quenched by a single person, but via multiple concubines. Or, you know, Tinder matches.

https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/relationships/sex/nadia-bokody-secret-to-switching-on-the-female-libido-will-shock-you/news-story/9269df7b15ee709a2702ba0fd91f1ef8

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Denmark will limit the number of 'non-Western' residents in neighbourhoods to 30% to 'reduce the risk of religious and cultural parallel societies'

The Social Democratic government made the announcement on Wednesday, and scrapped the controversial term 'ghetto' in its proposed legislation when referring to the country's 'disadvantaged neighbourhoods'.

In the bill - a review of existing legislation on combating parallel societies - the interior ministry proposed that the share of residents of 'non-Western' origin in each neighbourhood be limited to a maximum of 30 percent within 10 years.

Denmark has for years had one of Europe's most restrictive immigration policies, which Social Democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has continued since coming to power in June 2019 amid growing opposition from the right.

Denmark has for years had one of Europe's most restrictive immigration policies, which Social Democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen (pictured on March 9) has continued since coming to power in June 2019 +2

According to Interior Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek, too many non-Western foreigners in one area 'increases the risk of an emergence of religious and cultural parallel societies,' he said in a statement.

He said however that the term 'ghetto', used to designate disadvantaged neighbourhoods, would be removed from the new legislation.

'The term ghetto is misleading... I think it contributes to eclipsing the large amount of work that needs doing in these neighbourhoods,' he said.

Until now, the term was used legally to designate any neighbourhood of more than 1,000 people where more than half were of 'non-Western' origin, and which met at least two of four criteria.

The four criteria are: more than 40 percent of residents are unemployed; more than 60 percent of 39-50 year-olds do not have an upper secondary education; crime rates three times higher than the national average; residents have a gross income 55 percent lower than the regional average.

Fifteen Danish neighbourhoods currently fall into this category, and 25 others are considered 'at risk'. The list is updated each December.

In these neighbourhoods, misdemeanours carry double the legal penalties in place elsewhere, and daycare is mandatory for all children over the age of one or family allowances are withdrawn.

The existing legislation also calls for council homes in these areas to be reduced to 40 percent of available housing by 2030.

The bill will be discussed by Danish political parties and is expected to pass, though no date has been set for the vote.

According to Statistics Denmark, 11 percent of Denmark's 5.8 million inhabitants are of foreign origin, of whom 58 percent are from a country considered 'non-Western'.

Earlier this month, Denmark became the first European nation to tell Syrian migrants they must return to their home country, saying it is now safe for them there.

The Scandinavian nation stripped 94 Syrian refugees of their residency permits after it determined Damascus and the surrounding area as being safe.

Migrants will be sent to deportation camps, but will not be forced to leave. But rights groups say the government is trying to give migrants no other option than to return to Syria on their own accord.

Mattias Tesfaye, Denmark's immigration minister, said last month that the country had been 'open and honest from the start' with refugees coming from Syria.

'We have made it clear to the Syrian refugees that their residence permit is temporary. It can be withdrawn if protection is no longer needed,' he said, according to The Daily Telegraph.

His comments came as Denmark extended the parts on Syria considered safe for people to return, to include the southern Rif Dimashq Governorate.

'We must give people protection for as long as it is needed. But when conditions in the home country improve, a former refugee should return home and re-establish a life there,' he said.

Denmark's ruling centre-Left Social Democratic Party has taken a fierce anti-immigration stance in an effort to fend off challenges from parties on the Right.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has promised to target 'zero' asylum seekers applying for residence in the country.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9372453/Denmark-limit-number-non-Western-residents-neighbourhoods-30.html

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Delegitimizing Our Military

Leftists have a long history of exploiting American troops for political gain.

My first trip home from Vietnam was uneventful. My brother and I arrived at LAX Airport late at night. A police officer told us we had just missed the anti-war protesters who greeted and harassed returning servicemen, sometimes throwing pig’s blood on them. If that had happened to us, we would have probably spent some time in jail! But I digress.

My last return home was on a medical evacuation flight. No drama this time. I received wonderful medical care at Great Lakes Naval Hospital. Many months later, after being medically retired, I returned to my hometown of Toledo, Ohio, where there were some folks who clearly harbored anti-war attitudes. There was the elderly lady at church who, as I was hobbling up the steps on my crutches, stopped to tell me I should have died in Vietnam. I skipped church that morning.

Fast forward to Desert Storm, Operation Iraqi Freedom, and Operation Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan). America learned from Vietnam. We would NEVER again send our warriors into harm’s way without our prayers and support.

After 9/11, I found myself traveling across the country sharing my story of God’s mercy in my life in Vietnam. I traveled through Atlanta as well as other flight hubs. There were always men and women in camouflage either going overseas or returning. My friend, Mark Alexander, provided me with hundreds (possibly thousands) of “Shields of Strength” (SOS) dog tags to give to our warriors. I had an opener: “I’m a Vietnam veteran and I am giving you this to remind you that others like me are praying for you until everyone comes home!”

I never had a warrior refuse to accept one. Many would thank me for my service. At times I would choke up when telling them we were proud of them and were praying for them every day! My favorite SOS has Joshua 1:9 on the back: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous! Do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go.”

Today, our military is once again being subjected to the whims of elected officials. Political correctness is in vogue once again. Our military has barely recovered from the damage inflicted by the Obama administration. Our new secretary of defense has locked down his entire department to root out racism and white supremacy in the ranks. Who knew?

The National Guard has been activated to fight the “Battle of Capitol Hill.” Nearly three divisions of troops, 26,000-plus, were activated to defend the Capitol and Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others who “nearly died” in the insurrection on January 6. I may have missed something, but the only person killed was a protester shot by a Capitol Police officer. Yes, she shouldn’t have been there, but she was unarmed!

After the inauguration, we’re now down to the troop level of Iraq and Afghanistan combined (5,200 troops). Pelosi is considering “participation ribbons” for our warriors. Using America’s warriors as political props is disgusting! Turning our nation’s capital into a political “Green Zone” is also disgusting!

America’s military’s mission is simple: Keep America safe and win wars. It’s not a petri dish for leftist social experimentation. Our warriors deserve better from our political leaders who, up until January 6, didn’t really value our warriors. What changed?

https://patriotpost.us/articles/78456-delegitimizing-our-military-2021-03-17

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A penalty of being good-looking

The story below is from Kate Jones (above), a former Australian politician. She is one of a number of women I have encountered or read about who say that their good looks are a curse in some ways, evoking inappropriate reactions from some men.

A lot depends on perception, however. What is harassment? I know well a self-confident and attractive lady who tells me that she deliberately wore short skirts while in her teens and early 20s. She enjoyed the whistles and other reactions that it evoked. She regarded them as compliments

Amid all the current furore about sexual harassment of women,the big question is whether the harassment is rare or common. Amid all the propaganda about the matter, it is hard to tell. I am inclined to think that it is common where the woman is good-looking -- which is deplorable but probably unalterable

To say that "education" can alter the way men interact with women is a bit of a laugh. Stalin thought that education could make a new Soviet man. It didn't

It may help to understand the teenage Kate Jones story if you know that she had well-developed breasts from an early age. That was bound to attract frequent male attention, not all of it sophisticated. She hersef diagnosed that problem by having her breasts reduced when she was 20 -- a most regrettable recourse

From when I was 15 years of age, I could not walk out my front door without men calling out at me, ogling me and even following me. It was a daily occurrence.

Just walking down the Queen Street Mall I was approached to work in strip clubs and pornography with promises of big money.

I was still at school.

I was groped by colleagues, taxi drivers, driving instructors, customers and strangers.

Once I had completed school and was a little older it just got worse and more brazen.

Having the operation gave me the opportunity to be seen and heard as a person for the first time. It was truly liberating.

That’s why when I started my first ministerial office job at 21, with my new-found confidence, I was gutted when an older and more senior advisor who worked for another Minister, started sexually harassing me.

I felt betrayed that this was happening even in government. That even in this professional environment which should be the benchmark that I couldn’t count on this behaviour being in my past.

I realised it would instead be very much a part of my future that I would have to continue to cope with like so many other women.

https://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/i-could-not-walk-out-my-front-door-kate-jones-shares-harassment-pain/news-story/13b698a8cef6948cacdf4addf92aea85

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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20 March, 2021

Restrictions on evidence in trial of Derek Chauvin

There is no way this guy will get a fair trial

A US judge says he won't delay or move the trial of a former Minneapolis police officer charged in the death of George Floyd, but he will allow limited evidence from a 2019 arrest.

But the allowing of evidence from Mr Floyd's 2019 arrest is seen as a win for the defence

Derek Chauvin's lead lawyer, Eric Nelson, complained to the court that publicity around the trial had tainted the jury pool in and around Minneapolis.

He cited the city's announcement last week that it would pay Mr Floyd's relatives $US27 million ($35 million) to settle their wrongful-death lawsuit, filing a 3,972-page document filled with thousands of different unflattering news articles about the 45-year-old, who is charged with murder and manslaughter.

Hennepin County District Judge Peter Cahill ruled against Mr Chauvin, saying that moving the trial or delaying it until next year would make it no easier to seat an impartial jury.

"I don't think there's any place in the state of Minnesota that has not been subjected to extreme amounts of publicity in this case," Mr Cahill said.

The judge, however, partially granted a separate request by Mr Chauvin to show the jury evidence of an earlier arrest of Mr Floyd.

That arrest, involving different officers, took place about a year before Floyd's death on May 25, 2020.

Mr Cahill and the lawyers in the case have questioned 61 potential jurors in court since last week to weigh their impartiality as Mr Chauvin, dressed in a suit and tie, took extensive notes on a yellow legal pad.

All of them said they were aware of the video showing Mr Chauvin, with his knee on Mr Floyd's neck as the 46-year-old black man begged for his life.

Almost all said they had seen at least some of the footage, which sparked global protests against police brutality and racism.

Twelve jurors and one alternate have been seated so far.

They are five white women, two white men, three black men, one black woman and two multiracial women, according to court records.

The judge said he would resume jury selection on Monday with the hope of finding two more alternates before opening arguments planned for March 29.

Two autopsy reports concluded that Mr Floyd's death was a homicide, caused in part by the way the arresting officers held him on the ground.

Both reports noted Mr Floyd had underlying health conditions, including hypertension, and the drugs fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system.

Mr Chauvin has pleaded not guilty to charges of second-degree murder, third-degree murder and manslaughter.

One of Mr Chauvin's main defences will be to dispute the cause of death, arguing that it was actually an overdose of fentanyl, an opioid, that killed Mr Floyd.

Prosecutors from the Minnesota attorney-general's office have complained the allegation is seeking to smear Mr Floyd's character and that his high blood pressure and drug use were irrelevant to the question of whether Mr Chauvin used excessive force.

Mr Nelson said a recent search he conducted of the police car where Mr Chauvin and other officers were trying to place Mr Floyd discovered a pill containing fentanyl and methamphetamine on the back seat that bore traces of Mr Floyd's saliva.

He argued that the new evidence meant the judge should reconsider an earlier decision not to allow Mr Nelson to show jurors evidence about a prior arrest on May 6, 2019.

A panicked Mr Floyd swallowed opioid pills as different police officers, including one with a drawn gun, approached the car he was in as part of a narcotics investigation.

Mr Floyd and the officers ended up speaking calmly and he was later taken to a hospital for treatment.

Prosecutors fought the defence effort, writing in a court filing on Thursday.

"Mr Floyd's 2019 arrest simply sheds no light on when or how he consumed drugs nearly a year later. The new discovery of a pill in the squad car does not change anything," the prosecutors said.

On Friday, Mr Cahill ruled that very limited evidence from the 2019 arrest could be shown, only as much as sheds light on the dispute over the cause of Mr Floyd's death a year later.

"The whole point there is we have medical evidence of what happens when Mr Floyd is faced with virtually the same situation: confrontation by police at gunpoint, followed by a rapid ingestion of some drugs," Mr Cahill said in his ruling.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-20/george-floyd-murder-trial-wont-be-moved-from-minneapolis/100019210

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Atlanta Attack Wrongly Blamed on Guns, Racism

It appears that the suspect's motive was tied to sex addiction, not race.

The trouble with political narratives is that they often ignore or outright contradict the actual facts surrounding an event in order to advance an ideological agenda. It’s easy to do, and leftists have become masters in this art of public manipulation. As Barack Obama’s former chief of staff infamously espoused, “You don’t ever want a good crisis to go to waste.”

Well, not only did Obama embrace that mindset while in office — he repeatedly asserted the false narrative of a nationwide problem of systemically racist police after the death of Michael Brown — but he has continued this practice of assigning motive and blame even before the facts are known.

Following Tuesday’s murderous attacks in Atlanta that left eight people dead, primarily Asian Americans working in massage parlors, Obama quickly sought to fuel the dubious narrative Democrats created last year in which they ridiculously claimed that Donald Trump was responsible for fueling a rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans because he highlighted the fact that the coronavirus originated in China. Furthermore, Obama also sought to weave in the Democrats’ long-running anti-gun agenda, asserting, “Even as we’ve battled the pandemic, we’ve continued to neglect the longer-lasting epidemic of gun violence in America. Although the shooter’s motive is not yet clear, the identity of the victims underscores an alarming rise in anti-Asian violence that must end.”

President-in-Waiting Kamala Harris also blatantly blamed racism. “I do want to say to our Asian American community that we stand with you and understand how this has frightened and shocked and outraged all people,” she said. “Knowing the increasing level of hate crimes against our Asian American brothers and sisters, we also want to speak out in solidarity with them and acknowledge that none of us should ever be silent in the face of any form of hate.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki piled on as well, saying there’s “no question” that Trump’s “damaging rhetoric” has led to “elevated threats against Asian Americans.” Numerous congressional Democrats followed suit.

Obama then brought it back to guns, which is where Harris and her “boss” will eventually take it: “[Tuesday’s] shootings are another tragic reminder that we have far more work to do to put in place commonsense gun safety laws and root out the pervasive patterns of hatred and violence in our society.” In other words, irrespective of the facts, the takeaway from this senseless violence is the need for more government redlining of Americans’ First and Second Amendment rights.

Was the murderous attack in Atlanta motivated by either “gun violence” or racism, as both Obama and the Leftmedia have asserted? That does not appear to be the case. The apprehended perpetrator, a 21-year-old white male, explained to law enforcement that his motive was “sex addiction.” Cherokee County Sheriff Captain Jay Baker stated, “He apparently has an issue, what he considers a sex addiction, and sees these locations as … a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.” It certainly doesn’t justify this horrific crime to note that there is sex-trafficking at these Asian brothels disguised as “massage parlors.” After all, the guy didn’t go after Asian restaurants.

In related news on the deaths of minorities, eight illegal immigrants were killed Monday when their human smugglers crashed while trying to evade police. Given that Joe Biden has encouraged and enabled the border crisis with his politicized and ill-conceived changes to immigration policy, does that mean their blood is on his hands?

As for these mass-shooting incidents, blindly assigning motive to an incident without investigating and learning all the facts is the epitome of foolishness. It’s a characterization of those who care little for the actual truth but who are obsessed with advancing their own self-importance and self-interests. Unfortunately, our government and the wider popular culture is plagued with these types of individuals. They both reflexively claim to identify the problems while at the same time offering the “only” solutions to these problems — solutions that inevitably require individuals to give up their freedom and self-reliance to a bunch of self-proclaimed “experts.”

https://patriotpost.us/articles/78493-atlanta-attack-wrongly-blamed-on-guns-racism-2021-03-18

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An Army of Social Justice Warriors

Lowering standards for the sake of "equity" for women will harm military readiness.

“Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation” was one of the 17 executive orders President Joe Biden’s handlers got him to sign on his first day in office. It states that “all persons should receive equal treatment under the law, no matter their gender identity or sexual orientation.” In short, wholly irrespective of biological and chromosomal reality, the Biden administration and its supporters now consider “man” and “woman” to be interchangeable concepts. Yet if that’s the case, then why is the United States Army considering a reversal of its new “gender-neutral physical test” and including different evaluation categories for men and women?

“Research showed that the Army Combat Fitness Test [ACFT], which is the same for male and female soldiers, was leading to lower results for women with a knock-on effect for promotions,” reports The Telegraph. “An early Pentagon study showed that women were failing the ACFT at a rate of 65 per cent, while only 10 percent of men did.”

A report issued late last fall showed a similar discrepancy with 54% of women failing to make the grade, compared to only 7% of men, during the second quarter of 2020. “In the ACFT there are six events — the maximum deadlift, a standing power throw, hand-release push-ups, a sprint, drag and carry, leg tuck, and a two-mile run,” the report explained. “To pass the test those taking it must score at least 360 points out of a possible 600, and those who achieve higher scores are more likely to be promoted. However, average scores for women so far are said to have been 100 points lower.”

Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper, who served as Army secretary until 2019, was unmoved. “If you can’t pass the Army Combat Fitness Test, then there’s probably not a spot for you in the Army,” he said in 2018, after planning for the test was revealed.

Not quite. It’s becoming more and more apparent that the military’s once-primary mission — fighting and winning wars — is no longer its top priority. As The Washington Post explains, the test in its current form “has yielded a dramatic gender gap, raising questions about whether the service might unintentionally compound barriers for women trying to move up the ranks … in an institution already struggling to shed historical gender and racial disparities.”

Such “disparities” have been brought to the attention of Congress, which has now put a stop to the test’s implementation. Meanwhile, the Army is conducting an independent review to determine whether or not the test is “fair.”

Fair to whom? The current ACFT was developed over seven years and specifically designed to simulate aspects of combat, such as dodging enemy fire or dragging a wounded comrade across a field. Officials explain that 20 years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan revealed inadequacies in the Army’s previous training regimen. Inadequacies that engendered frequent injuries.

Regardless, the political pressure is apparently on and the orchestrations to accommodate it will now include “gender-specific” evaluation categories aimed at ensuring the aforementioned equal levels of promotion between the sexes. These include separate percentile bands for men and women that would be gender-blind when soldiers go before a promotion board. “We are not going to artificially inflate the raw score for women, but we have to figure out a way to make it fair to both genders,” an unnamed Army official said.

Why? Didn’t Biden’s executive order eliminate “gender differences”? Weren’t those who complained that men identifying as women would dominate athletic events dismissed as bigoted or transphobic, while supporters insisted there should be no restrictions imposed on transgender athletes?

Isn’t ensuring the military maintains a single standard of lethality even more important than what happens in sports?

Apparently not. “The need to broaden the recruiting pool to meet the increasingly technical realities of war runs counter to the endless pursuit of fitness as a measure of readiness,” asserted Emma Moore, a Research Associate for the Military, Veterans, and Society program at the Center for a New American Security. Moore did acknowledge that physical fitness is important, but using such tests as a filter for retention and promotion “leads to repercussions that can arbitrarily hold women back.”

Captain Kristen Griest, the Army’s first female infantry officer, disagrees. “The drastically lower female standards of the old Army Physical Fitness Test (APFT) not only jeopardized mission readiness in combat units but also reinforced the false notion that women are categorically incapable of performing the same job as men,” she writes.

It’s a false notion the Army apparently endorses: One of the expected changes in the test will be how core body strength is measured. Rather than hanging from a bar and tucking their legs to their chests, soldiers will be given the option of doing a two-minute plank exercise. That alternative was “temporarily” introduced last year in response to a high failure rate by women.

Now it appears the change will become permanent. “What we’re really trying to figure out is how do you incentivize excellence in improving physical fitness without adversely impacting any demographic negatively within the Army,” explained Maj. Gen. Lonnie Hibbard, commanding general of the Army’s Center for Initial Military Training (CIMT), which designed the new test.

The military’s concern with “demographics” is quite revealing. It suggests that, much like other aspects of America culture, merit will be replaced by “equity.”

Hence, style becomes as important as substance. As President Biden explained, “We’re making good progress designing body armor that fits women properly; tailoring combat uniforms for women; creating maternity flight suits; updating — updating requirements for their hairstyles.” Biden also signed another executive order approving “sex reassignment” surgery for active-duty personnel.

Again, what does any of this have to do with military preparedness? For even asking the question, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson was excoriated by a cadre of military personnel who took him to task for daring to state that “the U.S. military exists to fight and win wars” and that it is “not an NGO, it is not a vehicle for achieving equity, it’s not a social experiment, it’s definitely not an employment agency.”

The military’s response? “I want to be very clear right up front, that the diversity of our military is one of our greatest strengths,” insisted Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby.

The DOD also posted a tweet, stating, “Women were limited to supporting roles in the military early on. Since then, women have made great strides to shatter glass ceilings within the military.”

Perhaps shattering glass ceilings — as opposed to shattering enemies — is the best we can expect going forward.

Along with rigid ideological conformity: Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin issued a February 5 memo directing commanders to institute a one-day stand-down within 60 days to address “extremism” within the ranks.

Make that some extremism. “The prevalence of extremist and white supremacist ties among service members and veterans was expected to be an urgent issue for President Biden and Austin, who is the first Black man to lead the Pentagon,” NPR reported.

Extremist and white supremacist ties as defined by whom? For a military intent on turning genuine warriors into social justice warriors, the answer is irrelevant.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/78489-an-army-of-social-justice-warriors-2021-03-18

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Germany’s authoritarian war on rising opposition party

Germany’s biggest opposition party, the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland), is due to be placed under state surveillance by the secret service. The Bundesverfassungsschutz (the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, or BfV) announced last week that it intends to collect data on party members, tap their phones and monitor their movements. The surveillance is supposed to establish whether the AfD should be classified as a right-wing extremist party.

For the AfD, this is a serious problem. There will be two important state elections later this month – in Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland Palatinate – and the General Election is in September. The party has filed a lawsuit against the decision – and for now the courts have suspended the surveillance until the legal challenge concludes.

But even the state’s intention to surveil the AfD is deeply troubling. Anyone who publicly supports the party could risk serious personal consequences. In Germany, members and sympathisers of extremist parties can be dismissed by their employer. Public-sector workers – civil servants, teachers, police officers and others – will be especially exposed. The message of last week’s announcement is clear: anyone who wants to join the party or actively support its election campaign should think twice. The same applies to anyone who might want to invite an AfD member for a public debate. The BfV’s announcement will have an extraordinarily chilling effect on German politics.

To understand how this is possible, we have to go back to the time after the Second World War, when the Federal Republic of Germany was conceived as a ‘wehrhafte Demokratie’ (defensive democracy). Democracy, it is argued, must be protected from those who aim to weaken it from within. The justification for this principle was of course the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s and Hitler’s seizure of power, which many commentators still erroneously claim happened through ‘democratic means’. (This interpretation ignores quite a few historical facts.)

From the beginning, the BfV – established in 1950 by the three American, British and French-allied High Commissioners – was an important pillar of Germany’s defensive democracy. Since 1955, the service has been under the control of Germany’s Ministry of the Interior.

The AfD is by no means the first political party or organisation to have been targeted by the BfV. In the early 1980s, the Green Party – which back then was a radical, anti-establishment party, unlike today – was observed by the BfV. Following German reunification, the PDS (Party of Democratic Socialism), and its successor, Die Linke (Left Party), attracted the BfV’s attention.

It was only in 2013 that Germany’s highest court banned the BfV from observing Bodo Ramelow. Ramolow – a leading Left Party politician, who has served as the mayor of Berlin and is currently the state premier of Thuringia – is now, ironically, seen as a bulwark against the AfD.

Until very recently, the BfV was widely regarded with suspicion – at least by all those committed to freedom and democracy. For instance, prominent civil-rights lawyer and Green Party politician Christian Ströbele has repeatedly called for its abolition.

But now much of the opposition to the BfD has become contradictory. When, for example, it was revealed last year that the BfV was observing Ende Gelände, a radical climate action group, the youth organisations of three parties – the Social Democrats (SPD), the Green Party and the Left Party – called for its abolition. But their argument was not a defence of political freedom. Instead, all three organisations complained that the BfV was concentrating on the wrong people. A secret service that could not distinguish between right-wing extremists and environmentalists was useless,l and unable truly to fight against nascent fascism, they argued.

As is so often the case these days, when political freedoms are at stake, it is apparently only the freedoms of those we like that count. The change in the perception of the BfV is striking: an organisation which was once widely despised has become the friend and protector of parts of the establishment, including the political left, which now huddles behind it against a common enemy: the AfD.

When it was announced that the AfD would be placed under surveillance, there was mainly silence from the left. Those who said anything actually applauded the move. A Green Party spokesman, for instance, said it was understandable, given Germany’s historical experience of right-wing extremism.

One reason for this change in attitudes is that the BfV has picked up some of the rhetoric that the old left has itself been using for years. For instance, the first line on its homepage declares ‘racism and xenophobia’ to be a security threat.

The BfV justifies its surveillance of the AfD on the grounds that the party has not managed to rid itself of the far-right elements within its structure. The AfD is a pretty right-wing party. Its leadership has done much to pander to historical revisionists, radical nativists and neo-fascists. From its founding days, it has sucked up to right-wing activists and voters who switched to it from other, smaller neo-Nazi parties.

In 2018, AfD parliamentary leader Alexander Gauland (a former member of Angela Merkel’s CDU) said that though Germany had to take responsibility for its past, the Nazi era was nothing but ‘a speck of bird shit’ in its long, ‘1,000-year history’.

In 2015, a right-wing AfD subgroup – der Flügel (the Wing) – was founded. It published a declaration which called the AfD a movement of ‘unser Volk’ (our people), struggling against the erosion of German identity. With the onset of the refugee crisis, this group gained in influence. An attempt by the AfD leadership in 2018 to expel its spokesperson, Bernd Höcke, failed. Höcke, whose speeches are peppered with right-wing innuendos (such as ‘the country should act like a wolf and not like a sheep’) is still a leading member of the AfD in Thuringia. Now the supporters of the Wing are said to number around 7,000 (out of a total of 32,000 party members).

But whatever AfD politicians and members have said, the BfV should not be monitoring an opposition party: this is a mechanism which allows those in power to try to control their opponents and preserve the status quo. The BfV isn’t a neutral institution, floating above social and political conflicts. Its current supervisor — interior minister Horst Seehofer — is a member of the CDU / CSU government, which has come under a lot of pressure from the AfD. In the 2017 General Election, his party lost over a million voters to the AfD – more than to any other party.

What’s more, the CDU leadership has been struggling to stem its decline and heal its divisions, which have come to the fore thanks to Angela Merkel’s imminent departure as German chancellor. In 2020, the party plunged into a deep crisis, after local CDU delegates in Thuringia teamed up with the AfD to vote for a new state premier. Many of the CDU’s more conservative party members wouldn’t mind cooperating with the AfD – a demand the leadership has fiercely rejected, for fear of losing its more pro-Merkel voters. Surely you don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to suspect that the observation of the AfD comes at a convenient moment for the ruling party?

It is not just the CDU which would like to send the AfD packing. Many in the establishment are hoping that the BfV will finally bring an end to what they see as the populist scourge in German politics. Once the BfV has declared the AfD an extremist party, this will deter a significant number of voters, it is argued. But really it should be the voters who decide whether a party is too extreme to merit a place in parliament, not the secret service. And it is not threats of surveillance that will ‘protect’ democracy, but free and open debate.

The surveillance of the AfD is dangerously authoritarian. It won’t solve the real problem the German elites are grappling with; it will do nothing to win back the trust of the many millions of voters who have turned their backs on the established parties.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/09/germanys-authoritarian-war-on-populism

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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18 March, 2021

The Human Need To Feel Important -- and How Government Squelches It

Dennis Prager

If one were to draw up a list of human needs, food and shelter would be at the top. With great respect to Freudians, sex would not be No. 2.

The need for meaning would be second only to the need for food.

That meaning is more important to happiness than sex is easily shown. A great many people go long periods without sex, and while many of them miss it, if they have meaning in their lives, they can lead quite happy and fulfilling lives. On the other hand, few people who have regular sex but lack meaning are happy or fulfilled.

Third on the list of human needs is the need to feel important. This need is much less often cited than the need for food, sex and meaning. But it is so important that a case could be made that it is tied for No. 2 with the need for meaning.

The infamous "midlife crisis" is a crisis of importance: "I thought I would be much more important at this stage in life than I am." That mostly afflicts men -- just as feeling less important after one's children have left home afflicts mothers more than fathers.

Among the many psycho-social crises afflicting Americans is a crisis of importance. Fewer Americans feel important than did Americans in the past.

Why? What has happened? What has happened is a steep decline in the number of institutions that gave people a feeling of importance.

Given that work is generally regarded as one of the most ubiquitous providers of purpose, and that, prior to the COVID-19 lockdown, more Americans were working than ever before, one would think that more Americans than ever before felt important.

It has not turned out that way. For many, work has not provided the sense of importance people expected it to, let alone fulfilled the other great need: for meaning. This is especially true for women, but first, we will address men.

Work used to provide many men with a sense of importance. It is simply a fact that being the breadwinner for a family means one is important. However, since the 1970s and the rise of feminism, women have not only become breadwinners, but they have increasingly become the primary breadwinner within a marriage and for a family. That has helped couples financially, but it has also deprived a great many men of their sense of importance. When regarded by a wife and children as important, husbands/fathers felt important. Progressive America mocks the 1950s TV series "Father Knows Best." But when wives and children believed that, men felt important because they were. The price for this, according to feminism, was paid by women, who didn't receive the accolades of breadwinning. And they set about changing it.

However, contrary to the expectations of the well-educated, women becoming breadwinners has not provided most women with a sense of importance, and certainly not meaning in life. Contrary to what feminism, colleges, high schools, progressive parents and the mass media have claimed for decades, men and women do not have the same natures. Just as sex with many partners does not provide most women with the same satisfaction it provides men, most work does not provide women with the same sense of importance or meaning it provides men. For many women, being the breadwinner is financially beneficial but not especially satisfying. Most women would still like their man to be the primary breadwinner. That's why very wealthy women so often marry even wealthier men. It is built into female nature.

Moreover, throughout history, work was rarely seen as a primary provider of importance or meaning -- for either sex. Work was little more than a necessity, and the vast majority of people would have happily abandoned their often back-breaking, drudgery-inducing work if they could afford to.

For the most part, people sought -- and found -- importance and meaning outside of work. This was especially true in America, where "associations" provided both importance and meaning.

Nongovernmental associations, as Alexis de Tocqueville noted in his brilliant analysis of American life in the early 19th century, was the key to Americans' success and happiness. These included, first and foremost, religious associations and religion in general. Most religious people feel important -- to God, to their community, to their family. My father was the president of our synagogue, and my mother was active in the synagogue's "sisterhood." Though both worked full time, those roles provided them with immense meaning and sense of importance.

Add to that: Rotary, Kiwanis and Lions clubs; book clubs; the Masons; bowling leagues; coaching Little League; volunteer charitable work; teaching Bible in Sunday school. These provided people with a sense of importance.

The key to all these associations was their being independent of government. As government has grown, nearly all these associations have shrunk. Therefore, we have a rule: The more government intrudes in people's lives, the less important most people feel -- unless they work for the government.

Yet, to progressives, government is, or should be, almost everything in people's lives. It should take care of as many people as possible. However, at a massive price: The more one relies on the government, the more one will inevitably lack a sense of importance.

This ideal was announced at the 2012 Democratic Party Convention, when the narrator of a specially-created Barack Obama campaign-theme video asserted, "Government is the only thing that we all belong to." The DNC also showed a fictional storybook ad titled "The Life of Julia." It portrayed a woman from childhood to old age, wholly dependent on the government. Despite her having a child, there was not a man anywhere in the story, nor, apparently, was there a man in her life. The result? More and more American women have come to rely on the government, not on a husband. The results have been calamitous.

President Joe Biden repeated this theme last week: "Put trust and faith in our government," he pleaded with Americans. One could accurately say that we are replacing America's motto, "In God We Trust," with, "In Government We Trust."

The bigger the government, the fewer the institutions in which people can feel important. Therefore, given the deep human need to feel important, people will look elsewhere for their importance -- like fighting systemic racism, heteronormativity, capitalism, patriarchy and transphobia. And, most of all, global warming -- because you cannot feel more important than when you believe you are saving the world.

https://townhall.com/columnists/dennisprager/2021/03/16/the-human-need-to-feel-important--and-how-government-squelches-it-n2586305

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Critical Race Theory’s Anti-Semitism Problem

Critical race theory is a popular left-wing ideology that purports to explain the societal inequalities that prevent racial and ethnic minority groups from achieving social and economic success. While it presents itself as fighting prejudice, a closer look reveals that it is the driving force behind much of today’s left-wing anti-Semitism.

The clearest example of this occurred last year at a Black Lives Matter protest in Washington, D.C. There were chants of “Israel, we know you murder children, too,” and a Harvard student read a poem that called Israel “puppet master of continents,” invoking the stereotype of evil Jews manipulating global politics.

The language used cannot be attributed to the folly of youth, as these stereotypes have also made their way into the halls of Congress.

In 2019, Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., paraphrased a popular rap lyric, “It’s all about the Benjamins, baby,” as she tweeted support for her anti-Israel politics. The tweet referred to money and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and made use of the anti-Semitic trope that Jews and their money wield an outsized influence on politics.

Omar, a duly-elected U.S. congresswoman, embraced the age-old anti-Semitic narrative that wealthy, powerful Jews manipulate our political system for their own gain and against the common good. Left-wing proponents of critical race theory may see themselves as fighting oppression, but their ideology’s logical conclusions are stereotypes and hatred that target the Jews.

It also suggests that race, gender, and other identities are social constructs that support larger systems of oppression. White men—by virtue of their male sex and light skin color—are oppressors twice over, while black women are twice oppressed, and white women are both oppressors of blacks and oppressed by men.

Within this system, success is possible, but only if one joins the system that critical race theorists believe oppresses people of color. Thus, if an oppressed individual achieves success, he or she becomes an oppressor regardless of their identity.

If this weren’t bad enough, critical race theorists generally make the mistake of assuming that all Jews are white and hence “privileged” because of their supposed economic power.

Thanks to the Jewish diaspora and to conversion, a great ethnic variety exists among Jews; there are Indian, Ethiopian, North African, and East Asian Jews, as well as those of Central European ancestry. Critical race theory, however, tends to neglect this nuance in favor of the old saw that Jews are white, wealthy, and therefore “privileged”—even more than other white people.

Moreover, because of this privilege, Jews—who endured a genocide in the 20th century—are unable to be victims of implicit bias. This is truly incredible, because according to the FBI, Jews make up 60% of all religious-based hate-crime victims.

By the theory’s perverse logic, Jews are first and foremost members of the oppressor class, bearing guilt for any wrong done to any nonwhite group by any white people. Simply put, critical race theory repeatedly casts Jews as having outsized economic success, even relative to other white people, and this supposed success makes them the worst of the capitalist oppressors.

Anti-Semitism has long depicted Jews as racially inferior and extremely clever puppet masters who surreptitiously control banks, politicians, and the media. The clearest example of this was in Nazi Germany, where Jews were targeted both for being an inferior race and having an outsized grip on German political, economic, and intellectual life. Modern-day critical race theory does much of the same.

This, coupled with anti-Semitism, both target the Jews and blame them for perceived societal ills. But the goal is not simply hatred of the Jewish people; it is to upend the civic order. Jews are just the scapegoat.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/03/12/critical-race-theorys-anti-semitism-problem

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The cancellation of Ian Murray

For defending the press against Harry and Meghan’s bilge, he has been forced out by his fellow journalists.

Harry and Meghan have claimed another scalp. To disagree with the claims in that Oprah interview, that they are the victims of a racist media and an unfeeling monarchy, is now tantamount to thoughtcrime – as Piers Morgan and now Ian Murray have found out.

Murray was, until yesterday, the executive director of the Society of Editors in the UK. He resigned this morning due to comments he and his organisation made that irked the more woke sections of the press. In response to the Sussexes’ claims that the British tabloids ‘incited so much racism’ against them, the Society of Editors put out a robust statement on Monday.

‘The UK media is not bigoted and will not be swayed from its vital role holding the rich and powerful to account following the attack on the press by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’, it read, nodding to the universally positive coverage the couple received when they first got together. ‘It is not acceptable for the Duke and Duchess to make such claims without providing any supporting evidence.’

That an industry body would stick up for the industry it represents is hardly surprising. Not least because the claims that the media treated Harry and Meghan unfairly rest on a handful of questionable examples, subjected to an absurd level of textual analysis. That people keep banging on about that Mail piece about avocados shows us how far down the rabbit hole we’ve tumbled.

But many high-profile journalists were furious. The editors of the Guardian, the Financial Times and the HuffPost broke ranks and criticised the statement. An open letter, signed by ethnic-minority journalists, said it ‘shows an institution and an industry in denial’. After journalists pulled out of an upcoming SoE event, the writing was on the wall. A ‘clarification’ to the statement was issued and Murray fell on his sword.

By all means let’s have a discussion about racial bias in the press and barriers to entry for particular groups. That Guardian cartoon last year depicting Priti Patel as a fat cow with a ring through her nose reminds us it still has some way to go. Critics say that it is absurd to suggest that no racists work in the British media, that there are never any biased stories, and of course they are right. But then Murray never said that.

What he said was that you should not demonise an entire media based on vague allegations alone, that you cannot just conflate negative coverage of the Sussexes with racism, and that doing so risks undermining the media’s ability to hold the powerful to account. This is an entirely legitimate position to hold. It is frankly hard to see how any journalist could disagree with it. That he has been forced out merely for expressing it bodes very ill indeed.

Of all the things for journalists to get upset about this week, the SoE isn’t it. How about the fact that two royals complained to ITV about its coverage of them? Or that Harry and Meghan issued instructions to the BBC about how best to cover their Oprah interview? Or, on another matter, that the US office of HuffPost, one of the brave dissenters from the SoE statement, just sacked 47 of its journalists in psychotically cruel fashion.

No, some journalists would rather go to the barricades for a duke and duchess who don’t like the media being mean to them. And these are the people who we rely on to hold the powerful to account.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/11/the-cancellation-of-ian-murray/

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House Duo Target 3 Books of ‘Poison’ on Navy’s Reading List for Sailors

Two members of Congress are asking the Navy to pull three books promoting identity politics and wokeness from its official reading list.

The books teach young sailors that they’re being asked to fight and possibly die for “a systemically racist country,” the lawmakers say.

The books—“How to Be an Antiracist” by Ibram X. Kendi; “The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander; and “Sexual Minorities and Politics” by Jason Pierceson—are listed as part of the Chief of Naval Operations Professional Reading Program.

All Navy personnel pledge to defend the Constitution, yet these books portray America as fundamentally bigoted, Reps. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., and Vicky Hartzler, R-Mo., write to Adm. Michael M. Gilday, who is chief of naval operations.

In the letter, dated March 11, Lamborn and Hartzler, both members of the House Armed Services Committee, write:

We can seek to improve upon the promise of the Declaration of Independence without teaching our young men and women in uniform that the country they defend is fundamentally racist and bigoted and that the only cure to this corporate deficiency is modern day discrimination.

The letter says they object to the three books on the admiral’s reading list for sailors because they promote the view that the United States is a “confederation of identity categories … rather than a common homeland of individual citizens.”

“These works fall under the rubric of critical race theory, a racial form of marxist philosophy which should not be allowed to poison our military,” the letter adds.

Cmdr. Nate Christensen, spokesman for the chief of naval operations, told The Daily Signal in an email that the Navy appreciates the two lawmakers’ concerns.

“The Navy has received the letter from Reps. Lamborn and Hartzler, and the chief of naval operations, Adm. Mike Gilday, will respond directly to them,” Christensen wrote. “We appreciate the representatives’ concerns regarding this issue.”

Fox News reported Tuesday that Gilday did respond to an earlier letter from Rep. Jim Banks, R-Ind., that asked him to remove only the Kendi book, “How to Be an Antiracist,” from the reading list.

“While I do not endorse every viewpoint of the books on this reading list, I believe exposure to varied ideas improves the critical thinking skills of our sailors,” Gilday wrote to Banks in the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Fox News. “My commitment to them is to continue to listen, make sure their voice is heard, and make the Navy a shining example of an organization centered on respect, inclusive of all.”

Gilday, referring only to the Kendi book, said it “evokes the author’s own personal journey in understanding barriers to true inclusion, the deep nuances of racism and racial inequalities.”

The admiral also said that he wants the Navy’s sailors to achieve the same level of “self-reflection.”

In their letter, Hartzler and Lamborn ask Gilday to pull the three books from the reading list; verify the books aren’t being promoted to Navy personnel; “confirm that it is not the Navy’s official position that America is a systemically racist country”; and confirm the Navy’s opposition to race-based discrimination.

“Why would we expect our nation’s young men and women to join the Navy to fight, and possibly die, on behalf of a systemically racist country?” Hartzler and Lamborn ask the admiral. “Why should they, if the books you have recommended are taken to heart?”

Not every viewpoint in the books on the reading list is endorsed by the chief of naval operation or the Navy, but exposure to varied viewpoints improves sailors’ critical thinking skills, according to one senior Navy official.

The two House members note in their letter to Gilday that Kendi’s book argues that “the entire American system is corrupted from top to bottom by racial prejudices which account for all the differences in outcomes in our society.”

Their letter includes this quote from Kendi’s “How to Be an Antiracist”:

The defining question is whether the discrimination is creating equity or inequity. If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist.

The letter also quotes Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” as saying that increased crime in the 1970s was “an opening to turn back the progress on racial progress in the United States.”

The two lawmakers assess Pierceson’s “Sexual Minorities and Politics: An Introduction” as taking a side in debates that are not scientifically settled.

One example: “whether biological men should be able to use the same bathroom as women and girls, and whether they should be able to compete in women’s sports, shattering female records and receiving scholarships instead of women.”

Gilday, 58, a four-star admiral and chief of naval operations since August 2019, was nominated for the post by then-President Donald Trump. He is a 1985 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.

Federal law requires the position to be held by an admiral who is a military adviser and deputy to the secretary of the Navy as well as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/03/16/house-duo-target-3-books-of-poison-on-navys-reading-list-for-sailors

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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16 March, 2021

Pope decrees that the Catholic Church cannot bless same-sex unions because God 'cannot bless sin'

Marvellous! The Pope has rediscovered Catholic doctrine

The Vatican decreed today that the Catholic Church cannot give its blessing to same-sex unions because God 'cannot bless sin'.

Pope Francis signed off the two-page ruling which was published in seven languages by the Vatican's orthodoxy office, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

It called on Catholic clergy to treat gay people with 'respect and sensitivity' but ruled that blessing their unions would 'approve and encourage a choice and a way of life that cannot be recognised as objectively ordered to the revealed plans of God'.

Francis last year caused controversy among Catholics by giving his backing to civil unions, but has never come out in favour of religious unions.

Pope John Paul II spoke out repeatedly against same-sex marriage during his tenure, calling it an attack on the fabric of society.

He approved the 2003 document which said Catholic lawmakers had a 'moral duty' to vote against the legal recognition of same-sex unions.

'Attacks on marriage and the family, from an ideological and legal aspect, are becoming stronger and more radical every day,' he said in 2004.

'Anyone who destroys this fundamental fabric causes a profound injury to society and provokes often irreparable damage.'

He also criticised a gay pride parade through Rome in 2000 as an 'offence to Christian values' and reaffirmed that the Church considered homosexuality 'objectively disordered'.

Benedict made the battle against secularism a central part of his papacy and called gay marriage a threat to 'human dignity and the future of humanity itself'.

'A century ago, anyone would have thought it absurd to talk about homosexual marriage,' Benedict once said in an interview.

As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict had led the Vatican's orthodoxy office when it issued the 2003 paper condemning same-sex unions.

As Pope, in a 2007 speech in Rome, he criticised efforts to give same-sex unions 'inappropriate legal recognition', saying they destabilised the 'legitimate family'.

On another occasion, Benedict said humanity needed to 'listen to the language of creation' to understand the intended roles of man and woman.

Monday's decree reiterated the Church's position that marriage between man and a woman is part of God's plan and is intended for the sake of creating new life.

It acknowledged that the wish to bless same-sex unions is 'not infrequently motivated by a sincere desire to welcome and accompany homosexual persons'.

But since their unions are not intended as part of God's plan, they cannot validly be blessed by the church, the document said.

'The presence in such relationships of positive elements, which are in themselves to be valued and appreciated, cannot justify these relationships and render them legitimate objects of an ecclesial blessing, since the positive elements exist within the context of a union not ordered to the Creator's plan,' the Vatican's ruling said.

God 'does not and cannot bless sin: He blesses sinful man, so that he may recognise that he is part of his plan of love and allow himself to be changed by him,' it said.

The document argued that the ruling is 'not intended to be a form of unjust discrimination, but rather a reminder of the truth of the liturgical rite and of the very nature of the sacramentals, as the Church understands them'.

The Vatican said Francis was 'informed and gave his assent' to the ruling, which gave a verdict of 'negative' to the question of whether such unions could be blessed.

Francis has always opposed gay marriage, but his 2019 comments that 'what we have to create is a civil union law' caused a sensation in the Catholic world.

The remarks emerged last year in a documentary in which he also said: 'Homosexual people have the right to be in a family... they are children of God'.

The Vatican played down Francis's remarks at the time, saying they were taken out of context and referred to his position while he was Archbishop of Buenos Aires.

But it did not confirm or deny reports that it had ordered the sensitive remarks to be cut from the Mexican TV interview in which they were initially made in 2019.

Francis's words were hailed by admirers at the time as a 'major step forward in the church's support for LGBT people'.

However, there was also a chorus of anger from conservative Catholics who said they 'clearly contradict what has been the long-standing teaching of the church'.

Catholic teaching holds that gay people should be treated with respect but that homosexual acts are 'intrinsically disordered'.

A 2003 document from the Vatican's doctrine office - bearing the stamp of Francis's two immediate predecessors - said legal approval would mean the 'approval of deviant behaviour'.

'The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions,' it said.

Francis has frequently said that gay people should be accepted in their parishes and urged parents not to reject their children.

On his first foreign trip as pope, to Brazil in 2013, he said of gay people trying to live a Christian life: 'Who am I to judge?'.

Since then, he has ministered to gay people and transgender prostitutes, and welcomed people in same-sex partnerships into his inner circle.

In 2014, the Vatican denied reports that Francis had endorsed civil unions, and he took a more conservative tone in a book called On Heaven And Earth.

'Every person needs a male father and a female mother that can help them shape their identity,' he said in criticism of adoption by gay couples.

He added that laws which equated same-sex relationships to marriages would be 'an anthropological regression'.

Francis has always voiced opposition to gay marriage, saying that marriage should only be between a man and woman.

'Marriage is a historic word,' he told French sociologist Dominique Wolton in a 2017 book of interviews. 'Always among human beings, and not only in the Church, it has been between a man and a woman. You can't just change that like that.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9363495/Pope-decrees-Catholic-Church-bless-sex-unions-God-bless-sin.html

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The Media's Assault on Young Men

America witnessed what was supposed to be an adorable conversation with Michelle Obama and Zaya, the son-turned-daughter of basketball star Dwayne Wade. Instead, many God-fearing Christians witnessed the peak of a gender-dysphoria agenda that has been pushed on our youth for the past few years. As the former first lady snapped her fingers, parents like myself woke up to the reality that our society has officially left our boys behind.

Many young people look to Hollywood stars to map out their lives. This is nothing new. What’s sad is that many of these celebrities are adopting a trend that permits “gender fluidity” in their own children. Girls wearing boys’ jerseys have gone beyond just being “tomboyish.” These famous parents claim that choosing a gender is their child’s choice. Unfortunately, people with great influence will convince others to do the same.

Today’s parents say to me, “My son is choosing to be a girl,” only to learn that a mother encouraged and enabled this frame of mind. I find it strange that children aren’t old enough to do things like vote, get married, rent a car, etc., because they aren’t wise enough to do any of these things without great risk. But by today’s progressive parent logic, a toddler understands what gender is and which one he or she wants to be. But where does this lead? What becomes of a life that starts with such profound confusion?

Disappointment comes first, and then hatred for a society that allowed these abominations to occur. Because once a child becomes a young adult and learns the truth about himself, he will only resent his parents while bringing chaos wherever he goes. Resentment will pour into his future relationships, just like I have seen in counseling young people raised in single-parent and abusive households. In fact, a house that doesn’t honor God’s template for humanity — male and female — is abusive, too. This will only lead to more “feminine males” with no one to be the heads of the women and children. If you want to know how to bring down a nation, this is how it’s done. Parents have the power to prevent a collapse such as this, if only they would turn their faces toward God’s perfect design, once known as science.

What does a future look like without masculine men at the helm? The Bible warned about past societies that allowed the inexperienced and the women to rule over them (Isaiah 3:12). The Lord had specific rules but instead wives were allowed to influence their ruler husbands only to open up their nation to despair and misdirection as we saw even with the fall of the Roman Empire. As for Americans today who accept and embrace the transgender cultural shift, they are about to find out why the Bible is called The Living Word

https://patriotpost.us/articles/78383-the-medias-assault-on-young-men-2021-03-13

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Rational debate killed in the sewer of social media

CHRIS KENNY

In a selfless and courageous act, researching this column on Thursday night, I typed my name into the search bar of Twitter and hit enter. In the first 20 mentions, the terms directed at me included: “predictable idiocy”; “c#nt”; “joke”; “professional f#ckwit”; “give a flying f#ck”; “propagandist”; “hard right”; “dog-shagging best”; and the only imaginative phrase, “ambidextrous nose-picker” (I did not realise they had been watching).

Still, there was not one entry that was supportive, and to be frank it was a pretty tame sample because I am often labelled a lying, racist, misogynist on that platform. We are talking about a social media world where knowledge, insights and manners are pre-Neanderthal — and defamation laws, in the main, are impotent.

Twitter digitises and broadcasts the public debate equivalent of a teenage graffiti and vandalism rampage. And yet it shapes debate; our mainstream media and politicians look to the digital world for instant opinion polling and guidance about where to take their narratives and policies (the ABC has audiences tweet responses to be broadcast immediately live to air).

In intellectual terms, this is the opposite of natural selection. It is amplifying and weaponising the crudest and most inane elements of society and inviting them to dumb down our public square.

There is no political issue in most countries where Twitter is not habitually wrong — so that whatever is popular on that medium will be rejected by most of the population.

The situation is different in the US because that is the one liberal democracy where, for now, it verges on acceptable for young people to identify as being right of centre; so social media is still ugly and brutal but at least it hosts a contest of ideas.

Imagine Tutankhamun’s wonder if we could bring him back to life (as the ancient Egyptians intended) and he could see the vast and instant online knowledge we can share through our digital hieroglyphics. Then ponder his confusion and dismay at seeing the junk we share on it.

Our battered and impoverished public debate will not improve unless we learn to talk to each other. For a civil society to exist and political debate to be useful, people need to be able to hear alternative arguments, avail themselves of all relevant facts, and learn to deal politely with people who do not agree with them.

In this century, we are blessed with instant access to infinite amounts of information, often from primary sources, as well as endless analysis and commentary from every corner of the globe. Far too many people waste their time shouting digital abuse at each other, or regurgitating views they agree with from accounts chosen by the faceless matchmakers of the Facebook algorithms, instead of reading, discussing or learning.

The digital revolution was going to democratise the media, personalise democracy and mobilise the truth, but instead it has polarised and emaciated the media, dragged politics into the mire of anonymous bullying, and fostered deceptive memes, fake news and pile-ons. And we wonder why young adults know more about Meghan Markle’s gratuitous gripes than they do about the separation of powers.

This is not a throwaway whinge. The digital degeneration of our public square and political processes is not just an easy target for columnists and conversationalists — it has serious consequences. Aggressive outsider Donald Trump took the Republican nomination and won the presidency in 2016 largely based on his use of social media to subvert the curation and homogenisation of the mainstream media.

Social media played an influential role in the ascension and demise of Kevin Rudd. It was at the vanguard of the asymmetric war against Tony Abbott. And it is the standard-bearer in the unconscionable media/political assault against Christian Porter.

For good or ill, social media played a role in the Arab Spring and the Brexit campaign. If you doubt its effectiveness, ask yourself why Beijing geo-blocks a wide variety of content, censors digital media and publicly punishes citizens for dissenting views published online.

To comprehend how insidious this policing of cyberspace infractions has become, just think of Zoe Lee Buhler, a 28-year-old pregnant woman who was arrested and handcuffed in her Ballarat home last September for posting about anti-lockdown protests on Facebook. This was not in some future dystopian state imagined by Aldous Huxley or George Orwell, it was in the town of Australia’s Eureka Stockade.

So, what is it that makes social media such a sewer? And how does this coarsen our discourse?

At its core is a lack of accountability. The enticement of being able to post widely and often about anything — without submitting to editors, curators, lawyers or peers — encourages bravado and aggression, and it fosters an impetuousness that values gut feelings over facts, and devalues the time and effort required to get across the facts.

The lure of virtue signalling, along with ever-present peer group pressure, are further forces for conformity. Emotionalism triumphs over rational thought.

In short, all the usual flaws of human conversation and debate are at play, but they are exacerbated by the instantaneous nature, wide audience, and lack of responsibility inherent in the platforms. Judgments are made and allegations thrown around, without regard for facts, by people ignorant of or untroubled by the laws of defamation and contempt.

This freedom could liberate debate; but instead of letting a thousand flowers bloom, it shares the scrawls of a thousand dunny doors. People are unthinking enough about what they post without the added shield of anonymity — requiring people to post under their real names, with proof of identity, would not eradicate the problems but it would improve the situation.

We live in an age where social media criticism and abuse will rage against an article and its author in this newspaper when most, if not all, of those joining the fray have not read the article. The headline or the topic is enough for these people to slur or condemn; often egged on by hysterical opinion leaders such as Kevin Rudd or Quentin Dempster, who at least might have sprung for a subscription in order to generate grist for their ideological mills.

Bill Leak was a target of this mentality. Thousands of ignorant onlookers, oblivious to deeper arguments running in these pages about how the sharp end of the juvenile justice system deals with the consequences of community and family dysfunction, piled on to him about a telling cartoon they saw completely out of context in their deliberately ignorant world. This past week, people have wondered on Twitter about how there could be any argument against an additional, extrajudicial inquiry into allegations against Christian Porter. Well, you will not find these rational arguments on Twitter or the ABC — so people stuck in those silos might never understand the rule of law.

Not only audiences, but facts, disappear into silos. ABC viewers are told Bill Shorten was “cleared” by police and Porter was not. And in social media, such misinformation, or fake news, is not interrogated or corrected; it is embedded and entrenched.

Two years ago, former ABC and Fairfax journalist Mike Carlton tweeted about Liberal MP Nicolle Flint when she appeared on Q&A. Carlton wondered why fellow panellist Jimmy Barnes did not “leap from his seat and strangle the Liberal shill”.

Fancy harbouring such a thought, let alone sharing it. Yet when this was recounted on another ABC program last month, Carlton showed his courage runs as deep as his chivalry, extracting an apology from the ABC which clarified that he did not say Flint “should” be strangled, only that he questioned how Barnes could restrain himself from doing so.

How pathetic. I guess he has the courage of his feeble convictions. Carlton still tweets profanities regularly, while Flint will leave politics at the next election, with Carlton’s old, white, hateful, male barbs just one minor memory in a long string of vandalism attacks and threats.

This is what happens more often, thanks to social media; more conservatives are forced underground. Like most of these factors, it existed before — the shy Tory factor was observed long before social media — but social media has weaponised the assault against anyone right of centre.

Taxpayer-funded media and other leftist journalists are led by the affirmation from this digital diatribe to deepen their own anti-conservative jaundice. The woke love the following and adulation of social media — it is performance art for them — until they cross a line, make the mistake of speaking sense or asking a salient question, then they experience the rule of the leftist lynch mob.

Public debate becomes coarser, more out of touch from the mainstream, and less tolerant of differing points of view. Soon the stage is vacated by all but the screaming green left, and those who will appease them.

The only outlet remaining for real, analogue people is the secret ballot. And there the media and the Twitter mob have met their match — so far.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/rational-debate-killed-in-the-sewer-of-social-media/news-story/bd066d99571f6d35b67d95ae1c494b4a

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World’s media reacts to Australia’s big protests about sexual abuse of women

Grace Tame, As a troubled teenager she was abused by a male teacher

The protests are very understandable. Attacks on women enrage me too and cause me to regard the men concerned as worthless excreta who should ideally be burned at the stake.

But what on earth can the government be expected to do about it? It is a justice issue but I cannot see that it is a political issue. Words are just about the only tool governments have to change attitudes but we all know how ineffective words can be.

By all means prosecute the guilty but what can be done in that connection that is not already being done? Changing the criteria for prosecuting rape would endanger the innocent. There have been all too many cases of women making false rape accusations. Heavily penalizing such women is probably the only thing one could do to make sure rape accusations are more believable

These protests undoubtedly make the women concerned feel good but it is highly unlikely that they do more than that

Time Magazine, Al Jazeera, The Washington Post and the BBC reacted to Australia’s “furious reckoning” and the brave women behind it.

Australian women and the allies who marched with them during a “furious reckoning” about sexism and rape culture on Monday have made headlines around the world.

Tens of thousands joined March For Justice rallies in cities around the country and outside Parliament House in Canberra demanding cultural change.

Former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins, who claimed she was raped inside a parliamentary office and sexual assault survivor and Australian of the Year Grace Tame delivered powerful speeches in Canberra and Hobart respectively.

It was a significant moment in Australian history that did not go unnoticed by the world’s media. Time Magazine, the BBC, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Irish Times and Al Jazeera each dedicated significant coverage to the events.

Time Magazine’s headline read:‘We’ve Had Enough.’ Furious Australian Women Force a Reckoning on Sexism After a Rape Allegation in the Government.

The publication’s story touched on how deeply ingrained the culture of sexism and sexual harassment has become.

“Furious women across Australia are now opening up with their own experiences of sexism, sexual harassment and sexual abuse,” it read. “And it’s begun conversations about inherent discrimination and mistreatment of women — both within the halls of Australian government, and across the wider society.”

Al Jazeera made note of the historic rape allegation against Attorney-General Christian Porter and the allegations of inappropriate behaviour against Craig Kelly’s political advisor, Frank Zumbo.

“Allegations have been laid by six women against a senior parliamentary aide Frank Zumbo, drawing attention to what many critics say is a toxic culture of masculinity within the nation’s federal parliament,” Al Jazeera wrote.

“Prime Minister Scott Morrison continues to refuse to hold an independent inquiry into the allegations against Porter, and on Monday also refused to meet protesters on the parliament’s lawn in Canberra.”

The New York Times made mention of the longstanding issues Australia has failed to address.

“Wearing black and holding signs reading; enough is enough’, thousands took to the streets across Australia on Monday to protest violence and discrimination against women, as a reckoning in the country’s halls of power sparked by multiple accusations of rape continued to grow,” the Times wrote.

“The marches in at least 40 cities represented an outpouring of anger from women about a problem that has gone unaddressed for too long, said the organisers, who estimated that 110,000 people attended the demonstrations nationwide.

“With the next national election potentially coming as early as August, experts say it is something that the conservative government, which has come under stinging criticism for the way it has handled the accusations, ignores at its own peril.

The Washington Post celebrated those who took to the streets with messages denouncing the ongoing poor treatment of women.

“(Protesters) carried placards decrying misogyny, victim-blaming, abuse and rape,” the newspaper wrote.

“In Melbourne, a banner listed 900 women who have lost their lives at the hands of men since 2008. The rallies follow a wave of allegations of sexual assault, abuse and misconduct in some of the highest offices of Australian politics.

“They come amid a growing global movement demanding officials do more to protect women and to hold perpetrators of harassment and assaults accountable.

“The reckoning over assault allegations has reached the highest ranks of government. On Monday, the country’s top law official filed a defamation suit against the state broadcaster over an article that reported a letter had been sent to the prime minister containing a historic rape allegation.”

The BBC wrote that Monday’s rallies “could be the biggest uprising of women that Australia’s seen. And the Irish Times wrote that “public anger over the government’s handling of the alleged incidents mirrors the sentiment on display at protests in London over the weekend following the killing of 33-year-old Sarah Everard, who disappeared while walking home at night-time”.

“Mr Morrison said Australia had made big strides toward gender equality over the years, though he acknowledged the job was ‘far from done’ and he shared the concerns of the protesters.

However, he raised some hackles by expressing pride in the right to peaceful protest when he said ‘Not far from here, such marches, even now, are being met with bullets, but not in this country.’”

https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/march-for-justice-worlds-media-reacts-to-australias-big-moment/news-story/2e8e5805a77b060a7d0f3198e5a919f0

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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14 March, 2021

Trivial complaints from very privileged people

How come Meghan and Harry have not been told to "check your privilege"?

Joe Hildebrand

Just imagine being so absurdly overprivileged and precious that you tallied up the favourable press mentions of you versus your sister-in-law, or felt that you had no choice but to move to a Malibu mansion after a relative wondered what your baby might look like.

And now just imagine being so bereft of genuine hardship that in the red raw wake of a global pandemic where almost a million of your countrymen and women are jobless and hundreds of thousands more have had their livelihoods shredded you think it’s the perfect time to start talking about replacing a titular head of state who does little more than wave at people and look vaguely displeased from time to time.

Little wonder the republican movement is so heavily populated with millionaires. The middle class are too busy shitting themselves over whether they’ll be living in their house in 12 months’ time and the working class are scratching around the back of the couch in the hope of finding some loose change or the Labor Party.

If someone put a gun to my head and said I had to choose between monarchy and republic I’d probably go with republic, but given the infinite rolodex of far more pressing problems I’d want to be sure that it was a real gun and after the stomach-churning sookfest that was vomited upon our screens this week I’d also want to check that it was loaded.

Because that is the sorry core of the whole molten shitshow we have seen over recent days: The chasmic disconnect between the new woke progressive left that views everything through the prism of grievance and identity – be it national identity, racial identity or gender identity and the invisible forces that apparently oppress them all – and the traditional idea that real progress is about helping those who are the worst off instead of those who whinge the most.

Even just a decade or two ago it would have been impossible to imagine a scenario in which two people with the title of Duke and Duchess could be flagbearers of progressive politics because their children would not be given princehoods or they had to Google the words to God Save The Queen. And yet here we are.

So much so that a tsunami of woke activist outrage led to the resignation of Piers Morgan – who made his name as editor of the UK’s left-wing Daily Mirror – for daring to suggest that he didn’t believe Meghan Markle’s innumerable dubious claims.

Now I don’t particularly like Piers Morgan nor do I particularly dislike him. But what I do dislike is the notion that he should have been forced to apologise for saying what I suspect most British – and indeed Australian – people were thinking.

And even if they weren’t thinking it, are we now at the point where people must repent or be disappeared if they hold the wrong opinions?

Clearly yes. The West, or at least the people who dominate it, has now become a culture in which what you do is less important than what you say. A gaffe is sackable while deadly incompetence is not. Anyone in any doubt of this need only check the Linked-in profiles of Eddie McGuire and Andrew Cuomo and see which one got the arse and which one got an Emmy.

I also remember the good old days when workers blamed the bosses for oppressing them. Now a pair of aristocrats blame the servants for oppressing them and get lauded by the new left for speaking their “truth”. You honestly couldn’t make this stuff up, although in fairness only the most dystopian sociopath would want to.

Fortunately there’s a pretty simple way to expose the difference between real progressivism and rudderless narcissism. Instead of talking about inequality – which millionaires use to complain about billionaires and secondary princesses use to complain about primary princesses – we could start talking about disadvantage.

In Nigeria, a nation of more than 200 million people, a 2019 report by its own bureau of statistics found 40 per cent of the population lived below the official poverty line of approximately one US dollar a day. It is one of 54 Commonwealth countries that Harry and Meghan have abandoned their duties to.

India, the most populous Commonwealth country, topped the World Hunger List in 2015, with the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation finding that almost 200 million people were “undernourished” – a polite word for starving. Australia’s own Walk Free foundation found in 2016 there were more than 18 million Indians living in slavery.

So tell me again, Duke and Duchess, about how much you have suffered. And tell me again, all you crusaders of outrage, about the conversations we really need to have.

https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/celebrity-life/royals/crusaders-of-outrage-were-wrong-about-harry-and-meghan-interview-with-oprah/news-story/82edf05963b44bf1df1075ec2002230a

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COVID Relief Bill Discriminates, Provides Aid for Farmers Based on Race

Another example of the blatant racism that now rules the American Left

As many people know, congressional Democrats got their $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill passed this week. However, some of the radical policies inside the bill have gone largely underreported.

One of those policies is a provision that farmers receive certain aid only if they are a racial minority.

According to the American Farm Bureau Foundation, about $4 billion of the bill will be used to pay off up to 120 percent debts of farmers.

However, the only farmers eligible for these benefits are those who are considered “socially disadvantaged,” which the law defines as a “group whose members have been subjected to racial or ethnic prejudice because of their identity as members of a group without regard to their individual qualities. “

The foundation said that includes “Black, Hispanic, Native American or Asian American” farmers.

Meanwhile, farmers who do not belong to those ethnic groups are rightly speaking out against the race-based policy.

“Just because you’re a certain color you don’t have to pay back money? I don’t care if you’re purple, black, yellow, white, gray, if you borrow money, you have to pay it back,” Tennessee farmer Kelly Griggs told Fox News. “My reaction is, where did common sense go?”

Massive debt forgiveness has been a key talking point for Democrats for years, but the pandemic has given them an excuse to push it even harder.

On his website, democratic socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders lists canceling student debt as one of his key issues.

“Cancel all student loan debt for the some 45 million Americans who owe about $1.6 trillion and place a cap on student loan interest rates going forward at 1.88 percent,” one of his goals reads.

Like Griggs, many Americans feel that forgiving debts for loans that someone chose to take out will greatly diminish the sense of responsibility in our country. If people can borrow money and then get out of ever paying it back, there is no accountability for those actions — at least not for the borrowers. Someone else is footing the bill when debt is “canceled.”

Yet the debt forgiveness is not even the worst part of this provision in the COVID-19 relief bill. The true ugliness is that this debt forgiveness is being doled out based on race.

If the Democrats wanted to forgive debts for all farmers, or all struggling farmers, there would still be questions, but at least it would be consistent across the board. Instead, they only want to forgive debt for minority farmers.

This promotes the idea that white farmers should be held responsible for their actions but minority farmers should not. That is a racist position, but it is one that many liberals have thrown support behind.

The subtle argument inside the liberal idea of “systemic racism” is that minorities should never be held responsible for their position in life. Rather, anything bad that ever happens to them must be a product of a racist American system.

Left-wing activist Ibram X. Kendi argues in his book “How to Be an Antiracist” that any disparity between groups of different races should automatically be attributed to racism.

“According to Kendi, any racial gap simply is racist by definition; any policy that maintains such a gap is a racist policy; and — most debatably — any intellectual explanation of its existence (sociological, cultural and so on) is also racist,” Matthew Yglesias wrote in an opinion article for The Washington Post.

For example, if you were to say that factors such as a lack of a father figure in the household could lead to black children performing worse in school than white children, that would be racist. The only thing that could lead to such an outcome is systemic racism, according to Kendi.

As you can see, this argument would lead to a diffusion of responsibility for minorities. Kendi is effectively arguing that their actions do not need to be examined, because only racism, not personal decisions, can cause them to have a worse life.

The idea of forgiving debts for only minority farmers is simply an extension of this logic. Since systemic racism has supposedly caused every disparity between minority farmers and white farmers, it would only be fair that we use government funds to fix that disparity.

This, of course, is a racist idea. The way to fix racism isn’t with further discrimination.

Republicans have criticized the policy.

“What happened to equal protection under the law?” Republican Missouri Rep. Sam Graves asked on Facebook.

“This is wrong and un-American,” he said. “I’m sure there are a lot of Americans out there that would love to have our tax dollars pay off all their debts. This is targeted to a very select few.”

Other farmers expressed similar sentiments to Fox News, including Georgia resident Benji Anderson.

“I think it should be distributed to everyone,” he said. “Because one thing we all have in common, it doesn’t matter about color or race or whatever, we’re all farmers, all working together to feed the United States.”

As Anderson said, we need to come together as Americans.

We have all been affected by this pandemic, and discriminating based on race in the relief efforts is not going to help us get through it.

https://www.westernjournal.com/covid-relief-bill-discriminates-provides-aid-farmers-based-race-arent-happy/

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Detransitioners Open up About How Transgender 'Medicine' Left Them Scarred for Life

People who formerly identified as transgender and took cross-sex hormones or underwent transgender surgery have later come to regret their transitions and the serious damage they did to their own bodies, urged on by the medical establishment. On March 12, the Detrans day of awareness, these detransitioners have come forward to tell their stories.

“I experienced transition regret. I had injected testosterone for four and a half years, I underwent a double mastectomy, only to very gradually realize over time that I had made a massive mistake and wanted to detransition,” Sinead Watson, one of the organizers of the Twitter campaign #DetransAwarenessDay, said in a YouTube video.

“The people who experience transition regret are subject to an utterly undeserved stigma. We’re very often bullied, and insulted, and silenced whenever we try to share our experiences online, and it’s because people who discuss transition regret are often accused of having our stories and our experiences weaponized to harm our trans brothers and sisters. That’s not what I want,” Watson added.

Watson clarified, “We don’t want to take health care away from trans people. We want the improvement of care for people with gender dysphoria.” She acknowledged that transition has helped many people, but she insisted that “there are also a growing number of people who went through medical transition who deeply regret it, who were harmed by it, physically and mentally, and we deserve the right to talk about our experiences, just as much as someone who doesn’t regret it has a right to talk about their experiences.”

She insisted that people who suffer from transition regret are terrified to speak out because “they will be insulted, they will be laughed at, they will be mocked… they will be told they’re hateful.”

She argued that the medical community pushes medical transition as a one-size-fits-all approach to gender dysphoria (the persistent and painful condition of identifying with the gender opposite one’s biological sex), but not everyone who suffers from gender dysphoria needs medical transition. She suggested there should be a broad array of different treatment options.

Watson partnered with Keira Bell, a 23-year-old woman who was put on experimental so-called “puberty blockers” after having been referred to a British transgender clinic at age 16. Late last year, Britain’s High Court ruled in Bell’s case that young teenagers could not consent to life-altering transgender treatments. The two detransitioners teamed up with Detrans Voices, Detrans Canada, and Post Trans, to support #DeTransAwarenessDay.

“Detrans day of awareness (12th March) was created to raise awareness and break down the stigma around detransition,” Watson, Bell, and the organizations said in a statement. “We want to let other people who have detransitioned know that they are not alone. There is a flourishing community of detransitioned people who are finding peace, healing and fulfillment as they are.”

The statement also urged the medical community to take detransitioners into account.

“Mental health care for people who have detransitioned is almost nonexistent,” Bell and Watson argued. “Alternative therapeutic treatment for gender dysphoria is not offered by the established medical community. Our unique medical needs are not well understood and medical professionals are often resistant to either provide medical care or accept that someone may need to detransition.”

Indeed, many legislative efforts treat medical care for detransitioners with disdain. Laws that seek to ban “conversion therapy” often frame any mental help for detransitioning as an oppressive effort to change someone’s gender identity against his or her will. Perversely, these laws would allow talk therapy to help someone reject his or her biological sex in favor of an opposite gender identity, but the laws would ban talk therapy for a person seeking to detransition.

Many detransitioners spoke out about their experiences.

Another woman named Arden came forward with her harrowing story. After nine years in gender clinics after transitioning female-to-male as a teen, Arden told her doctor that she wanted to detransition. “When I first went to my [Gender Identity Clinic] about my regret in early 2020, I didn’t receive support. Instead I was met with resistance, they acted dismissive and told me they thought my regret was somehow a result of my [Autism], and that I should try to ‘consolidate my male role,'” she wrote.

“I told them I had stopped Testosterone and requested Estrogen to maintain my health as I had [sex reassignment surgery] and could no longer produce hormones myself. They told me no,” Arden added. “I was made to go 8 months without hormones and suffered menopausal symptoms, low mood and low energy as a result.”

“I told them, ‘I am a woman and I regret my transition’ and they told me that I was not female anymore,” the woman recalled. “They said I could prove my ‘female identity’ by dressing femininely and wearing wigs. My gender non-conformity was used against me as some sort of ‘gotcha.'” Ultimately, Arden did receive Estrogen after eight months, but this story is horrifying.

“I was sold lie after lie by the trans community, by allies, & by medical professionals,” another detransitioner, Maggie, wrote on Twitter. “Each one told me that I could only have a fulfilling life if I transitioned. It was never, ‘do you want to,’ but ‘when are you going to?'”

These harrowing stories expose a serious medical scandal. As Jennifer Bilek has exposed, rich activists who made their fortunes in Big Pharma have pushed the medicalization of transgender identity, and the rush to transgender “treatments” for gender dysphoria has reaped big benefits for Big Pharma.

Doctors have pushed this movement despite the research showing that sex reassignment surgery carries significant risks, including potential heart conditions, increased cancer risk, and loss of bone density. Most “bottom surgery” procedures will take gender-confused males and females with healthy reproductive systems and make them sterile, replacing their organs with a simulacra of the opposite sex’s endowment. There is no evidence that transgender surgery improves the mental health outcomes of gender dysphoric people.

Some endocrinologists have warned about the negative effects of “puberty-blockers” and cross-sex hormones. “I call it a development blocker — it’s actually causing a disease,” Dr. Michael Laidlaw told PJ Media. The disease in question is hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. It occurs when the brain fails to send the right signal to the gonads to make the hormones necessary for development.

These detransitioners are not arguing against transgender identity or transgender medical “treatment,” merely insisting that they themselves made a mistake in pursuing medical transition.

However, I would argue that their harrowing stories demonstrate the lie of transgender identity. While “treatments” to affirm a gender identity opposite a person’s biological sex may appear to help that person’s mental health for a time, it is impossible to change a biological male into a biological female and vice versa. Males and females experience different hormonal chemistry from the womb onward, and that results in far more than just different sex organs. Medical transition can only ever paper over the fundamental truth of biological sex.

All people should treat those suffering from gender dysphoria with compassion, and the medical community should pursue gender dysphoria treatments other than medical transition. These detransitioners prove that encouraging transgender identity in opposition to the truth of biological sex can cause serious harm — and not just social harms like allowing biological males into women’s restrooms or males into women’s sports.

Whether or not medical transition truly is positive for some people suffering from gender dysphoria, the medical community’s rush to embrace transgenderism as the only solution to gender dysphoria is a harrowing scandal, and these brave detransitioners deserve praise for exposing it.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/03/12/detransitioners-open-up-transgender-identity-was-a-way-to-cope-with-my-trauma-and-body-hatred-n1432065

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Scotland’s controversial Hate Crime Bill WILL backfire and silence 'woke' advocates

Leo Kearse spoke to Express.co.uk after MSPs passed the bill through the Scottish Parliament this week. The legislation consolidates existing law and extends protection for vulnerable groups with a new offence of "stirring up hatred".

But its numerous critics, including the Scottish Police Federation, have branded it a step towards policing what “people think and feel”.

Mr Kearse, who was a criminal analyst before becoming a comedian, also slammed its wording as “anything but specific”.

He added: “Insulting behaviour, likely, stirring up, hatred - all of these terms are ill-defined in terms of their meaning and how they’d be proven in court. “(It could apply) to even the wokest comedy insults groups.

“These woke attitudes are received with rapturous applause by Guardian readers, but under Scotland’s Hate Crime Bill? Straight to gulag!

“The Law Society of Scotland also voiced reservations that the Bill would ‘threaten freedom of expression’.

“The Catholic Church is concerned that it could render the Bible illegal while the National Secular Society is concerned that it will make criticism of religion illegal."

Mr Kearse, a vocal critic of the SNP and its policies, said that there is a widely held view that the Bill will only affect comedians who “fall back on intolerance or outright bigotry as a punchline”.

But he says this is wrong, and claimed even people who stir up “hatred based on age - which is now a protected group” - could find themselves in the dock.

The 44-year-old, who grew up in southwest Scotland, continued: “Scotland has a rich history of iconoclastic, boundary-pushing comedians - Billy Connolly, Jerry Sadowitz, Frankie Boyle - who’ve gleefully redrawn the lines of comedic acceptability.

“Scotland's new Hate Crime Bill spits in the face of their heritage by criminalising comedians.

“With wokeism driving such a constant change in acceptable norms, doesn’t it make sense for public speech to be loosened rather than stifled, and isn’t there an obvious danger in wielding power over the speech and thought of others?”

He added: “When legislation is opposed by the people who would enforce it, those who would use it, religious groups and secularists, it’s possible that it might need to be reviewed.

“Surveys show that people are becoming more tolerant and open.

“Comedians aren’t spouting hate speech for the simple reason that audiences are generally nice people and wouldn’t accept hate speech.

“We don’t need to be legislated by autocratic wonks - let the audience be our jury.”

Justice Secretary Humza Yousaf argued the bill is needed to fight hate crime.

The bill was adapted numerous times before the vote in response to criticism, which meant “stirring up hatred” is only considered an offence if intentional.

Welcoming the new law Mr Yousaf said: “I am delighted Holyrood has backed this powerful legislation that is fitting for the Scotland we live in.

“Parliament has sent a strong and clear message to victims, perpetrators, communities and to wider society that offences motivated by prejudice will be treated seriously and will not be tolerated.”

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1409448/Scotland-news-hate-crime-bill-SNP-Nicola-Sturgeon-comedian-woke-latest

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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12 March, 2021

Historian Niall Ferguson replies to his critics

I was brought up to think of a university as a haven for free thought and free inquiry; a place where established scholars and students communicate ideas, in both directions; a place where old thoughts and new are subjected to rigorous examination.

I was therefore appalled by the accusations made against me at a live-streamed Stanford University Faculty Senate meeting on February 11th and published online by Joshua Landy, David Palumbo-Liu and two other faculty members. I was included in a group of some half-dozen Hoover fellows who were said to have “abused” the position of the Institution and “quite possibly, contributed to significant public harm.” Landy expressed astonishment that I am “still on the roster” and that Stanford somehow failed “to publicly censure” me.

Like Palumbo-Liu, Landy is a professor of comparative literature. He is the author of two books: Philosophy as Fiction (Oxford, 2004) and How To Do Things with Fictions (Oxford, 2012). In his presentation to the Faculty Senate, Landy chose to present his statements concerning me as fact. Once again, however, he was doing things with fiction.

Landy made no effort to contact me before making his accusations. He based his claims on a 2018 article in the student newspaper, the Stanford Daily, a piece that was not made any more true by its being replicated elsewhere, and he ignored my own published refutation. An elementary understanding of context, not to mention prudence, might have led someone levelling such an accusation to acknowledge that his target had publicly rebutted the allegations against him. To repeat a false allegation is bad enough. To repeat it as if it is unchallenged fact is unacceptable, whether as a matter of fairness to a colleague, or of good academic practice.

At the time of the events in question I was advised to say as little as possible, on the basis that the storm in the campus teacup would blow over. When false accusations continue to circulate three years later, and not only at Stanford, that assumption appears naïve. The time has come to set the record straight.

Free speech matters more to me, I suspect, than to a scholar of French fiction. It might even be said that my family came to Stanford in 2016 as free-speech refugees. My wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s public criticisms of her former religion are regarded by Islamists as blasphemy, punishable by death. Her name appeared on an Al Qaeda list of 11 targets which included the editor of Charlie Hebdo. Following the massacre in Paris that claimed his life in 2015, we were advised to relocate from Harvard because of the ease with which we could be tracked down. After 12 years of teaching some of the history department’s most popular courses, I was reluctant to leave—all the more so when I was informed that the Stanford history department had no interest in offering me even a courtesy appointment, much less a joint one. But we had to move, and Hoover’s offer was in many other ways attractive.

I have always kept an open door to students, whether I am teaching or not. So, in May 2017 I accepted an invitation to meet a group of students associated with the Stanford Review and the College Republicans. Out of interactions over lunch, in meetings and exchanges of emails, I heard these students express their dissatisfaction with a campus dominated by liberal and progressive thought. From this came the idea, formulated by the students, of a “Stanford Speaker Series” to address the lack of political diversity and debate on campus. One student suggested inviting the political scientist Charles Murray as part of a conservative speaker series. However, I wanted to build bridges between Hoover and Stanford, and so I proposed a bipartisan program to model free speech and civil debate.

That fall quarter of 2017, I discussed the speaker series idea with Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne and Provost Persis Drell as well as then Hoover Director Tom Gilligan. They liked the idea. It was decided to proceed without delay in the 2017/18 academic year. They suggested that Michael McFaul, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Relations and also a Hoover senior fellow, lead the initiative alongside me. A steering committee of students was put in place that included not only the originators of the program but also, at my suggestion, representatives of other student newspapers—the Daily and the newly founded Globe—for balance. The program was given a name: “Cardinal Conversations.” The steering committee approved the speakers to be invited. However, I did nearly all of the inviting as it required personal connections to persuade people to come at such short notice.

All participants were of the highest quality; some were controversial figures. In the first conversation, Reid Hoffman discussed politics and technology with Peter Thiel—perhaps the sole Donald Trump supporter in Silicon Valley. But to hear such voices was the whole idea of a free speech series. As the president and provost wrote in “Advancing Free Speech and Inclusion,” published on the “Notes from the Quad” website on November 7th, 2017:

…breakthroughs in understanding come not from considering a familiar, limited range of ideas, but from considering a broad range of ideas, including those we might find objectionable, and engaging in rigorous testing of them through analysis and debate… Our commitment to free expression means that we do not otherwise restrict speech in our community, including speech that some may find objectionable… It is imperative that as a university, we avoid a culture in which people feel pressured to conform to particular views. One way to encourage that is to ensure that diverse perspectives are actively discussed at Stanford.

So enthused was the leadership of the university with the concept that, when the story broke in the Stanford Daily on January 10th, 2018, the press office claimed the credit for it: “The provost and president were contemplating and discussing this for some time, and they asked Niall and Mike McFaul to co-lead,” Vice President for University Communications Lisa Lapin told the Daily.

The advertised and collectively approved speakers for February 22nd, 2018, included Charles Murray, in conversation with Stanford’s own Francis Fukuyama on the subject of populism. As the university leaders’ enthusiastic endorsements showed, Murray’s appearance was an entirely appropriate affirmation of what academic free speech must ultimately mean: the right to utter and hear views that in fact or perception run counter to the deeply held beliefs of the majority. Mike McFaul appeared to share this view, telling the Stanford Daily that he “look[ed] forward to helping to assemble an equally compelling set of conversations on international and foreign policy issues in the fall.”

However, Murray was also a target of left-wing opponents of free speech. At a notorious event in May 2017 at Middlebury College, his attempt to deliver a lecture had been terminated by a riot that had left the professor who was escorting him with whiplash. On January 30th, the Stanford Daily reported that a group of students had written to President Tessier-Lavigne to express their “disapproval” of Murray’s invitation, accusing him of using “pseudo-science to further racist ideas.” The vice-provost, Susie Brubaker-Cole, convened a meeting two weeks later with students opposed to Murray’s visit—not to Murray’s views (which they were perfectly entitled to oppose) but to his visit. Their leader—I shall call him Mr. O—said, as an accusation, that I was trying to “weaponize free speech.” Yet Brubaker-Cole and Mike McFaul conceded the demand of these opponents of free speech to be represented on the student steering committee for Cardinal Conversations.

The predictable consequence of this concession was an open letter to the university president and provost the next day, entitled “Take Back the Mic: Racists Are Not Welcome Here” and signed by eight student groups—the Chicano students, the Black Student Union, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Stanford Sanctuary Now, Who’s Teaching Us?, the Asian American Activist Committee, Students for the Liberation of All People, and the Stanford Democrats. The letter falsely accused Charles Murray of propagating an “oppressive, racist and meritless pseudo-science” and now explicitly demanded that his invitation be rescinded. At the meeting with the vice-provost, I had asked if any of those present had read any of Murray’s books. None had.

On February 15th, the president and provost, while defending their decision not to disinvite Murray, promised “more diverse speakers in the months ahead” and “even more ideologically diverse student representation on the organizing committee.” Then, on the day of the Murray-Fukuyama debate, Mike McFaul went to print in the Stanford Daily. Having approved all the invitations and given his public endorsement a month earlier, the co-leader of Cardinal Conversations now condemned Murray for ideas that “could inspire racist agendas and white nationalist movements.” To my consternation, he encouraged students either to protest or not to show up and stated that he would probably not be going himself if he were not involved in organizing Cardinal Conversations!

On the evening of the Murray-Fukuyama event, a noisy crowd chanted slogans outside the Hoover Institution. One likened Hoover to the Ku Klux Klan. Another featured the couplet “Fuck Steve Bannon / Fuck the Western canon!” Their leader Mr. O was quoted in the Daily the following day, again grossly defaming Charles Murray as a eugenicist responsible for “perpetuating white supremacy in the national discourse and in the local discourse.”

Unlike at Middlebury, the protesters did not succeed in derailing the event—thanks to tight security around Hoover. The two speakers delivered a stimulating discussion that made a nonsense of the wild allegations of racism. But the intentions of the opponents of Cardinal Conversations were by now perfectly clear, as was the reluctance on the part of the university administration to stand up to them. I felt a strong desire to help the students on the organizing committee who had originated the idea—and who had come to me for help in the first place—to resist the obvious plan to take over the committee and establish a veto over future programming.

Now for my own fault. As I have freely acknowledged, my desire to save Cardinal Conversation from a hostile takeover, combined with satisfaction that the Murray event had gone ahead, provoked me into some juvenile banter. When one of the student originators of the speaker series emailed me the following day in triumphant mode, I replied to him and others in the chain in the same vein. “A famous victory,” I wrote. “Now we turn to the more subtle game of grinding them down on the committee. The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” And I added: “Some opposition research on Mr O. might also be worthwhile.”

I should, as I admitted at the time, have maintained greater detachment in what I wrote to students even in a jocular exchange. It was wrong and in poor taste—even as a jest in a private message to students who knew me personally and were familiar with my sense of humor—to suggest “some opposition research on Mr O.” But jest it was (the topic was much in the news at that time). Had I seriously intended some research to be done, I would either have received it or repeated the request. Yet it was never mentioned again. Instead, as all subsequent emails make clear, the only thing we discussed was how procedurally to approach the impending contest for control of the steering committee. On April 7th—at a meeting in which only students were involved—the radicals’ proposal was rejected and a new system of recruiting committee members adopted.

As luck would have it, however, my exchange of emails in the aftermath of the debate became an overlooked part of a longer chain on an unrelated subject and found its way to a wider group of undergraduates—including a number who were working for me as research assistants—one of whom sent it to the provost. I immediately offered to resign from “Cardinal Conversations.” My language had been inappropriate; it was likely to become public. The series fizzled out soon after, having lasted all of four months. The university made no serious attempt to follow through on its stated plan to hold Cardinal Conversations in the next academic year. The “imperative” of January had ceased to exist by May.

In private, a week later, the president and provost of the University had an apparently amicable lunch with me and urged me “not to give up on Stanford.” As that made clear, contrary to Professor Landy’s allegations, there were not the slightest grounds for any form of disciplinary action. Later that same day, however, the Daily published their story: “Leaked emails show Hoover academic conspiring with College Republicans to conduct ‘opposition research’ on student.” In contravention of its own “Policies and Standards,” the Daily had made no attempt to contact me before publication. Within hours of the article’s appearance, I was warned by a university press officer and hastily drafted a statement, but only a part of that was published by the Daily.

And so was born the idea, inflated with each successive republication by the New York Times, Vox, the Guardian and others, that there had been “harassment” and “bullying” and “snooping”; that I had “plotted” and “conspired.” The Stanford historian of China, Tom Mullaney, took to Twitter and claimed my conduct was “repulsive… a gross abuse of power.” Mike McFaul also tweeted: “Of course, I condemn what Ferguson did. There is no way to defend that kind of behavior.” (He later deleted the tweet.) Later, the Stanford Daily accused me of “coordinating personal harassment” and “abusing [my] position of authority to encourage bullying.” The story grew with the telling. On February 8th, 2019, 15 professors published a “Statement on the Hoover Institution” in the Daily, in which they claimed that I had “urged… student allies to do ‘background checks’ on those holding differing views.”

The important point is not that I have been vitriolically criticized, with repeated omissions of my side of the story, in defiance of basic journalistic standards. The real significance of the Cardinal Conversations fiasco is broader. My efforts and motives in instigating Cardinal Conversations, in response to undergraduates’ requests, and in defending the program against the assault upon it were simply ignored. It is, of course, a basic principle of academic engagement that one must read sources critically, not rely on a single source, and put matters into context. No-one—not those who had collaborated in organizing Cardinal Conversations, and not a single one of the thousands of my academic colleagues and students over a career of three decades—came forward to put the few words of a private email into their appropriate context. With a single exception (a journalist who candidly conceded that Vox would not actually print a word of what I said), no-one spoke to me to obtain my side of the story before going into print with their allegations.

The ultimate casualty is, of course, not me but free speech. Once, universities represented the spaces of greatest intellectual freedom, openness, and diversity. Now, they are among the places in the Western world where the inhabitants—students and professors alike—are most inhibited about what they say aloud, as is clear from research by Heterodox Academy and Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. This is the result of fear—or of complicity in the imposition of a new and profoundly illiberal orthodoxy.

And so, an initiative that was supposed to model free speech, and had attracted stimulating speakers with varying viewpoints to one of America’s top educational institutions, was allowed to die. The students who opposed free speech were encouraged, deferred to, and never asked to respect the freedom of others. Charles Murray’s appearance at Stanford was a Pyrrhic victory. And, to cap it all, Stanford faculty members who are ideologically hostile to the Hoover Institution took—and continue to take—advantage of their academic privilege to repeat slanderous statements in a forum where I am not even represented.

I have worked hard for my students over the years, at Cambridge, Oxford, NYU, and Harvard, as well as at Stanford. On many occasions, I have gone beyond merely teaching them, grading their papers, and writing their reference letters. The idea that I would “conspire to conduct opposition research on an undergraduate” was absurd when it was first published in a student newspaper three years ago. It is high time this falsehood ceased to be reproduced in the Stanford Daily and repeated before the Faculty Senate.

If free speech at Stanford means only that a student newspaper and a minority of faculty members can libel Hoover fellows with impunity, it is a travesty. And if professors of comparative literature at Stanford regard this is an appropriate way to conduct themselves, small wonder public confidence in our universities is at such a low ebb.

https://quillette.com/2021/03/05/a-cardinal-sin/

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Oklahoma House Passes Bill to Grant Immunity to Drivers Who Hit Protesters

Last summer, there were several incidents of drivers caught in the middle of a protest who struck demonstrators with their vehicles while fleeing the scene. There were also a couple of incidents of a driver deliberately driving into a crowd of protesters with intent to injure them.

In Oklahoma, one of those scenarios will still be a crime under a new law that passed the House last night that would grant immunity to drivers who strike protesters while “fleeing from a riot.”

Oklahoman:

The bill came under fire from legislative Democrats who said the Republican majority was looking to lash out at protesters instead of taking steps to address systemic racism and police misconduct that have spurred widespread Black Lives Matter protests.

Rep. John Waldron, D-Tulsa, called the bill draconian and accused legislative Republicans of intentionally bringing the measure up for the vote around 12:30 a.m., after more than 14 hours of voting on legislation, in order to avoid public scrutiny.

Politically, the bill is a winner. We’ve all sympathized with a driver who had kids in the car and protesters screaming and banging on the car windows. How could the driver know whether these were just ordinary people exercising their free speech rights or rioters out for blood?

The immunity from vehicle assault for striking protesters who may or may not be trying to provoke a violent response is “draconian,” as the Democratic House member says. But why should protesters be protected by the law and not innocent drivers?

Republican Rep. Kevin McDugle introduced the bill, saying he supports the rights of Oklahomans to protest peacefully, but riots are unacceptable. “This bill simply says, ‘please stay to the peaceful protests,’” he said. “Don’t block roads. Don’t impede on the freedoms of others.”

In a heated floor debate, McDugle referenced an incident in Tulsa where a pickup pulling a horse trailer drove through a group of Black Lives Matter protesters demonstrating on a highway. Several protesters were seriously injured, including a man who was paralyzed from the waist down after falling from an overpass.

The driver acted out of fear, McDugle said.

Saying several protesters attacked the pickup in which a man was driving his children, the Tulsa County district attorney did not file charges against the driver.

How are authorities going to determine malice instead of self-defense? It’s one of the vague concepts that makes this bill problematic.

Republican legislators repeatedly emphasized they were trying to protect drivers from riots or violent protests. West praised Black Lives Matter protesters in Oklahoma City for largely demonstrating in a series of peaceful protests over the summer.

“A large part of our duty as legislators is to protect our citizens,” he said. “This is something that gives them protection.”

Forcing police and prosecutors to get into the mind of a driver who felt threatened by a crowd of protesters and determine intent is asking too much of both. The Oklahoma Senate should consider ways to amend this bill to clear up vague language and straighten out ambiguities.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/11/oklahoma-house-passes-bill-to-grant-immunity-to-drivers-who-hit-protesters-n1431753

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How the 'woke wing' of Fleet Street took over the Society of Editors and threw its boss under the bus for daring to defend the British press against Meghan's accusations of racism

The Society of Editors was facing the gravest crisis in its 24-year history this week after left-wing newspaper editors drove the society's executive director out of his job for standing up against Meghan Markle's claims that the British press is systematically racist.

Today, MPs cited the resignation of Ian Murray as yet another example of the growing 'cancel culture' that also claimed the job of Piers Morgan from Good Morning Britain this week because he said he did not believe a word Meghan said.

One of her most toxic allegations was that she and Prince Harry had had a hard time from some parts of Fleet Street because of racism – an assertion backed up allegedly racists headlines dug up by interviewer Oprah Winfrey's researchers.

It has since been proven that many the examples she gave were quoted either, selectively, out of context or plain distorted.

The day after the interview Mr Murray issued a robust statement defending all the Society's members against the accusations and underlining newspapers' duty to hold the rich and powerful to account.

He said the couple's claims were 'not acceptable' without supporting evidence, insisting that the UK Press was not racist.

But within hours a backlash emerged with over 236 BAME journalists signing a letter condemning the statement.

And then their bosses started weighing in including The Voice's head of news Vic Motune and i editor Oly Duff who labelled it 'ludicrous'.

Both men are SoE board members, while a third, Eleanor Mills, called for a diversity plan 'turbo boost'.

The editors of the Daily Mirror, Guardian, Financial Times, Evening Standard and HuffPost UK also publicly criticised the statement.

The Daily Mirror pulled out of two National Press Awards categories over the statement, with editor Alison Phillips saying her paper 'no longer feels able to participate' in the Driving Diversity category.

Three journalists from the newspaper have pulled out of the Reporting Diversity section.

Ms Phillips told Press Gazette: 'The Mirror is taking positive steps forward on improving diversity in our newsroom but we still have much more to do. We will be talking to the Society about what actions it will be taking to improve diversity across the industry.'

Regional journalists have threatened to pull out of the Society's forthcoming press awards, while ITV presenter Charlene White pulled out as the compere.

It is understood Mr Murray was also subject to intense personal abuse by telephone.

But Conservative MP Sir Desmond Swayne told MailOnline that Mr Murray's exit highlighted concerns about the growing 'cancel culture' in Britain and that the UK was in a situation which is 'very dangerous for free speech.

Among those on the Society of Editors board who have criticised the statement are (from left) i newspaper editor Oly Duff who labelled it 'ludicrous', The Voice head of news Vic Motune, and Eleanor Mills, called for a diversity plan 'turbo boost'

He pointed out that anyone who went against the 'orthodoxy' on the coronavirus lockdowns imposed since March last year had found themselves facing condemnation and demands they stay silent.

Headlines shown on screen during the Oprah interview to paint British media coverage as hostile and 'racist' were mocked up by the production company, often edited to remove context - and a third of them came from foreign media, new analysis has revealed today.

The two-hour programme, which aired on CBS This Morning, included cuttings of stories intended to confirm the Sussexes' claim that UK newspapers were guilty of peddling racist abuse against Meghan.

One segment showed a headline about how 'Meghan's seed will taint our Royal Family' - without noting that the story was actually exposing racist comments made by a model.

The mocked-up version, which used a similar page design, included the quote but cut the remaining headline away.

Another story that appeared during the tell-all interview referred to a BBC programme that had portrayed Meghan as a 'trailer trash American'.

The actual article included an interview with actress Gbemisola Ikunelo, who created the character, explaining she invented it to find 'humour in the ridiculous' because it is 'the opposite of how the Duchess really behaves'.

And another appeared to use a quote from the story as if it were a headline - without showing the context behind it.

Meanwhile, 11 of more than 30 headlines shown during the interview were from American and Australian publications, according research by the Telegraph

A senior tabloid executive said his newspaper would be having serious thoughts about whether to remain involved with the SoE.

He said: 'The British press has always been a very broad church with massive differences of opinion. But I thought the one thing we could all agree on was that free speech is sacred.

'But not anymore. Harry and Meghan are trying to shut down their press critics by smearing them as racist. And it seems some misguided left-wing editors agree with them. A racism accusation trumps free speech every time.

'That is truly frightening. If the Society of Editors won't even defend free speech, what is the point of it? Apart from some rather pointless awards which are just an ego-trip for editors and journalists anyway.'

Newspaper columnist Toby Young, who founded the Free Speech Union group last year, added: 'Ian Murray is the third person to be cancelled in 48 hours: first Piers Morgan, then Winston Marshall [from Mumford and Sons], now Ian Murray.'

He said those who are 'worried about losing your livelihood for wrongthink' should join his organisation

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9350815/How-woke-wing-Fleet-Street-took-Society-Editors.html

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Rule by Left-Wing Lunatics

Ann Coulter

A governing principle of the Democratic Party is to ask, “Who is in the dock?” before deciding whether to enforce the law.

As we have seen throughout the last year of antifa/BLM riots, in blue states, it’s now legal to commit arson, attempted murder, assault on a law enforcement officer and destruction of property — provided the perp is antifa or antifa-friendly. Andy Ngo’s smash bestseller “Unmasked” gives chapter and verse on antifa’s shocking violence untouched by criminal penalty.

On the other hand, if you’re a conservative, don’t commit a misdemeanor in a blue state. Proud Boys, Capitol Hill protesters, police and other presumed Trump supporters are getting more prison time than actual murderers for minor infractions. Even a couple of personal injury lawyers (liberals) are being criminally prosecuted in St. Louis for brandishing guns at violent looters coming toward their home. The rioters, you see, were BLM protesters.

In all these cases, local Democratic officials gleefully announce that they are locking up “white supremacists.”

Prepare yourself for a lot of witch-trial hysteria in the upcoming trials of Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis and the Capitol Hill trespassers in Washington, D.C. We’ve already seen it with the Proud Boys in New York City.

In a nation of laws, a crime is a crime, and it shouldn’t matter whether it’s committed by Mother Teresa or Charles Manson, but, as long as they brought it up, OF COURSE THE PROUD BOYS AREN’T “WHITE SUPREMACISTS”!

The organization is a tongue-in-cheek men’s group, promoting masculinity and Western civilization in humorous ways. Most of what they tell members is healthy: Get out of your apartment, work out, get a girlfriend and don’t masturbate. Further aside that it annoys me to have to make: There are African Americans, American Indians, immigrants and loads of Mexicans in the Proud Boys. Pretty crappy membership drive for a “hate group.”

At least in the witch trials of the Middle Ages, you could prove you weren’t a witch by drowning after being tied up and heaved into a nearby body of water. Today, the “white supremacist” hex is indelible. The accusation is the proof. And once accused, stay out of the blue states, or you might end up in prison.

In 2018, the night before Proud Boys founder, Gavin McInnes, was scheduled to give a speech at the Metropolitan Republican Club on the Upper East Side of New York, antifa smashed the windows of the historic club with a brick, glued the lock, and spray-painted the anarchist “A” on the front door of the club’s townhouse, along with a threat that this destruction was “merely a beginning.” All that’s legal, too — provided it’s done by antifa.

The day of the speech, 80 masked antifa goons showed up at the club to attack attendees — women and children, young and old. But unfortunately for antifa, the event was being protected by the Proud Boys. McInnes’ speech went off without a hitch, and no attendees were injured at the event.

When it was over, New York police officers directed the Proud Boys to Park Avenue, and sent antifa in the opposite direction to Lexington. The Proud Boys followed orders, but a gang of six masked antifa circled around from Lexington over to Park to confront them, including, in antifa’s manly way, throwing a bottle of urine at them.

Two Proud Boys proceeded to kick six antifa butt.

The same thing happened a few blocks south. Again disobeying the police, another group of antifa cut over to Park Avenue to fight with the Proud Boys. They, too, received a solid ass-kicking.

So who was arrested? Ten Proud Boys and not one antifa. Oh darn. We couldn’t catch them. (Hey, NYPD! Send the Proud Boys next time.)

The police did manage to arrest three antifa thugs who followed one speech attendee leaving the event, punched him and stole his backpack. But it turns out that’s also legal in New York. The antifa were arrested for the violent attack … then immediately released with no charges.

The governor and attorney general of New York, the New York City mayor and a slew of council members rushed to social media to denounce the Proud Boys for “hate” and vow to prosecute them — for protecting Upper East Side Republicans who went to a speech. McInnes is funny, and if there’s one thing leftists cannot abide, it’s a sense of humor.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted: “Hate cannot and will not be tolerated in New York,” along with a brain-dead article from Buzzfeed News titled, “Members of a Far-Right Men’s Group Violently Beat Up Protesters and Weren’t Arrested. New York Police Won’t Say Why.” They’re WHITE, aren’t they? No? Well, they’re REPUBLICANS. Arrest them!

The prosecution had no victims and no evidence of injury. But two Proud Boys, John Kinsman and Max Hare, now sit in a New York state prison, sentenced to four years, after being convicted of attempted assault and attempted gang assault — for defending themselves from antifa, who showed up at conservative event, then disobeyed the police and stalked the Proud Boys. It wasn’t the Proud Boys disrupting an antifa event, and it wasn’t the Proud Boys defying the police to confront antifa.

Yes, you are correct: This was the same district attorney, Cyrus Vance, who allowed Harvey Weinstein and Jeffrey Epstein to rape and molest young girls in his jurisdiction for years and years. But those guys were major Democratic donors, so no harm, no foul.

A third Proud Boy was headed to trial along with Kinsman and Hare — until the prosecution noticed he was East Indian and his presence would have hurt the narrative that Proud Boys are “white supremacists.”

Just no one mention Kinsman’s black wife and children. (And thus Democrats deprived three more black children of a father during their formative years.)

Much of the testimony elicited by the prosecutor, Joshua Steinglass, concerned the defendants’ non-PC beliefs, e.g.: Kinsman’s support for guns, his opposition to antifa, and his attendance at a “fake news” protest outside CNN. Steinglass actually presented evidence of McInnes’ jokes from his comedy show. Inappropriate laughter in a blue state will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law!

What on earth does any of that have to do with whether Kinsman and Hare committed a crime at Park Avenue and 82nd on Oct. 12, 2018?

Nothing. In the blue states, there is no rule of law, only rule by left-wing lunatics.

https://townhall.com/columnists/anncoulter/2021/03/10/rule-by-leftwing-lunatics-n2586064

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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10 March, 2021

Switzerland bans the burqa: Referendum proposed by far-Right group outlaws full-face coverings – following similar moves in the likes of France and Denmark

Switzerland is to become the latest European country to ban face coverings such as burqas, following the likes of France and Denmark.

Voters approved proposals to ban full facial coverings in a tight referendum, passing by a margin of 51.2-48.8 per cent.

The move, started before the Covid-19 pandemic, has been dubbed the burqa ban by local politicians and media while demonstrators opposed to the proposals marched this evening in protest.

The proposal, made by the far right Swiss People's Party, does not mention Islam directly but campaigners have called it an attack on the religion.

If outlaws anything covering faces, which also includes wearing ski masks and bandanas during protests.

Masks to protect against Covid-19 are allowed as coverings are permitted for health reasons, during particular weather patterns or at religious sites.

Walter Wobmann, chairman of the referendum committee and a member of parliament for the Swiss People's Party, said: ‘In Switzerland, our tradition is that you show your face. That is a sign of our basic freedoms.

‘Facial covering is a symbol for this extreme, political Islam which has become increasingly prominent in Europe and which has no place in Switzerland.’

The Swiss government had called on people to reject the move and made a counter-proposal requiring people to show their faces if required by authorities, which would take effect in the event of a 'no' vote.

One advert put up by the People's Party (SVP) has the slogan 'stop extremism!' above an image of someone wearing a headscarf and face veil.

Two Swiss cantons, St Gallen and Ticino, have already banned full face coverings in regional votes - but the new measure would apply across all of Switzerland.

Muslim groups condemned the vote and said they would challenge it.

The Central Council of Muslims in Switzerland promised legal challenges to laws implementing the ban and a fundraising drive to help women who are fined.

A spokesman said: ‘Today's decision opens old wounds, further expands the principle of legal inequality, and sends a clear signal of exclusion to the Muslim minority.’

The Federation of Islamic Organisations in Switzerland added: ‘Anchoring dress codes in the constitution is not a liberation struggle for women but a step back into the past.’

France banned wearing a full face veil in public in 2011 and Denmark, Austria, the Netherlands and Bulgaria have full or partial bans on wearing face coverings in public.

Muslims make up 5.2 per cent of the Swiss population of 8.6million people, with most having their roots in Turkey, Bosnia and Kosovo.

But the government says very few people in Switzerland wear full-face coverings and they are mostly seen on female visitors who only spend a brief time in the country.

Montreux and other destinations around Lake Geneva as well as Interlaken in central Switzerland typically attract Muslim tourists from the wealthy Gulf Arab states.

The University of Lucerne estimates that as few as 30 women in Switzerland regularly wear the niqab while none wear the burqa.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9335357/Swiss-look-set-approve-ban-facial-coverings-tight-referendum.html

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Supreme Court Sides With Christian Student in College Free Speech Case

The Supreme Court ruled in an 8-1 decision Monday that a Georgia college’s speech code policy violated the First Amendment and that a student who was harmed by the policy can seek damages.

Justice Clarence Thomas issued the opinion of the high court, siding with Chike Uzuegbunam, a former student at Georgia Gwinnett College, and affirming his right to share his Christian faith on campus.

The opinion reversed an 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision, which said Uzuegbunam didn’t have standing to sue the college over a policy that severely restricted his speech.

“The Supreme Court has rightly affirmed that government officials should be held accountable for the injuries they cause,” Kristen Waggoner, general counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, said in a statement Monday. “When public officials violate constitutional rights, it causes serious harm to the victims.”

In 2016, Uzuegbunam was told that he needed to use one of two “speech zones,” which made up less than 1% of the entire campus, if he wanted to continue sharing his Christian faith on campus, according to Alliance Defending Freedom. Uzuegbunam complied, but minutes after speaking in a reserved zone, campus police threatened him with discipline if he continued.

“School officials violated [Uzuegbunam’s] constitutional rights when they stopped him twice from speaking in an open area of campus,” Tyson Langhofer, the director of Alliance Defending Freedom’s Center for Academic Freedom, told The Daily Caller News Foundation in January. “The only permit students need to speak on campus is the First Amendment.”

School officials ultimately accused Uzuegbunam of violating a campus speech code, which prohibited offensive speech, Langhofer said. Georgia Gwinnett College initially defended its speech code in court after Alliance Defending Freedom sued on behalf of Uzuegbunam in 2016, but then reversed its speech policy and argued the case was moot as a result.

Thomas was joined in his opinion by seven justices from across the ideological spectrum. The justices agreed that because Uzuegbunam’s rights were violated, he can sue the school and receive nominal damages.

“It is undisputed that Uzuegbunam experienced a completed violation of his constitutional rights when respondents enforced their speech policies against him,” Thomas wrote.

Chief Justice John Roberts issued the lone dissent. Roberts agreed with the appeals court, which argued that because Georgia Gwinnett College changed its policy after Uzuegbunam sued, the case was moot.

“Today’s decision risks a major expansion of the judicial role,” Roberts wrote. “Until now, we have said that federal courts can review the legality of policies and actions only as a necessary incident to resolving real disputes.”

The American Civil Liberties Union, the American Humanist Association, the Frederick Douglass Foundation, and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops all filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of Uzuegbunam.

https://www.dailysignal.com/2021/03/08/supreme-court-sides-with-christian-student-in-college-free-speech-case

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Why shouldn’t a white writer translate a black person's poem?

Every schoolkid knows what translation is: the art of putting something into a different language. It allows people to understand and enjoy something they would not otherwise be able to. But apparently, this basic point is not obvious to all adults.

Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, 29, is the youngest person ever to win the International Booker Prize. She was commissioned to translate a poem by Amanda Gorman – ‘The Hill We Climb’ – into Dutch. The poem was famously performed by Gorman at Joe Biden’s inauguration.

But here’s the rub: Gorman is black, and Rijneveld is white. And for woke types, this is unacceptable. Janice Deul, a Dutch journalist and activist, started the debate in de Volksrant. ‘Not to take anything away from Rijneveld’s qualities, but why not choose a writer who is – just like Gorman – [a] spoken word artist, young, female and unapologetically black?’, she wrote.

According to Rijneveld’s publishers, Meulenhoff, Gorman herself was ‘immediately enthusiastic’ when Rijneveld was chosen. She even retweeted a tweet from Rijneveld, announcing the translation.

But Rijneveld has now pulled out, saying ‘I am shocked by the uproar around my involvement in the dissemination of Amanda Gorman’s message and I understand people who feel hurt’.

It’s a shame that Rijneveld gave so much ground. In Deul’s original complaint, she said Rijneveld was ‘an incomprehensible choice, in my view and that of many others who expressed their pain, frustration, anger and disappointment via social media’. In Reul’s view it was ‘a missed opportunity to [employ] Marieke Lucas Rijneveld for this job’. ‘They are white, non-binary, have no experience in this field, but according to Meulenhoff are still the “dream translator”?’

It’s true that Rijneveld doesn’t have much experience of translation. But the main bone of contention was really about identity. For Deul, it was ‘incomprehensible’ that a white translator was picked for the role. But what’s really incomprehensible is that anyone would get worked up about the skin colour or gender identity of the translator of the poem, or of another poem, or of anything. Particularly when that poem isn’t explicitly about race or gender anyway.

According to this logic, would it have been a sin, for example, for white Englishman William Tyndale to translate the Bible – written by Jews and Middle Eastern Christians – into English? More pressingly, is it wrong that black English students today translate Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales – both written by white people – into modern English? Obviously not. It is absurd to say that anyone should not be commissioned to translate something because of their ethnicity.

Today, literature is being stifled by a philistine campaign against ‘cultural appropriation’. In 2018, the Nation magazine had to apologise after publishing a poem by a white poet which was written in a so-called black vernacular. The poet, Anders Carlson-Wee, was accused of ‘donning blackface’. The poem was written from the perspective of a homeless beggar – but apparently people can’t write from others’ perspectives, even if those others are fictional.

Novelists are not immune from this kind of attack, either. Author Jeanine Cummins ran into trouble when she wrote American Dirt, the story of a Mexican immigrant mother and child fleeing to the US. Apparently, not being a Mexican immigrant herself meant Cummins had no place telling this story. Critics accused her of appropriation and stereotyping, and were so enraged that they ended up getting a tour for her book cancelled.

This bizarre desire to segregate culture is cloaked in the veneer of progressive politics. But it is extremely toxic. Let’s reject the idea that some things are only for certain ethnic groups, and not for others. We had this argument 60 years ago. We don’t need to have it again.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/01/segregation-of-the-mind/

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The Racism Industry's Biggest Lies

Nothing has been more common during the last years than accusations of “racism.” President Biden has said that he is going to lead a “great battle…to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country.” This great “anti-racism” crusade is not directed at anti-Semites who despise Jews and blame the ills of the world on them. Nor is it aimed at the Nation of Islam, the Black Muslims, who hate whites and especially Jews. Yet these cases would seem to qualify as racism. The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines “racism” as “Belief in superiority of a particular race; antagonism between different races.” The Random House Dictionary of the American Language defines “racism” as “a belief that human races have distinctive characteristics that determine their respective cultures, usually involving the idea that one’s own race is superior and has the right to rule others.”

But contrary to common usage as specified in dictionaries, racism has been redefined by sociologists as “prejudice plus power,” so that only white people, who are falsely claimed to exclusively hold all of the power, can be said to be racist. This is convenient for the anti-racism industry, because once racism is so defined and white people identified as power-holders, then all whites are automatically white supremacists. Now a definition cannot be said to be a lie, because it is always an arbitrary investing of meaning in a word or phrase, but it can be said to be a novel usage, deviant from common understanding, and it can be identified as tendentious, aimed at advancing a presumed conclusion prejudicial to some party.

As well as vilifying white people by arbitrary definition, the “anti-racism” industry has manufactured a series of blatant lies that fly in the face of all empirical evidence. These lies have whipped up such a hysteria, that foundationless accusations of racism appear daily. Let us examine one case, which, although it appears to be minor, unjustly damaged the lives of several individuals. This is the Smith College case of African American student Oumou Kanoute claiming to have been maltreated because of racism.

Here is the beginning of a detailed and balanced New York Times report of the incident:

In midsummer of 2018, Oumou Kanoute, a Black student at Smith College, recounted a distressing American tale: She was eating lunch in a dorm lounge when a janitor and a campus police officer walked over and asked her what she was doing there. The officer, who could have been carrying a “lethal weapon,” left her near “meltdown,” Ms. Kanoute wrote on Facebook, saying that this encounter continued a yearlong pattern of harassment at Smith. “All I did was be Black,” Ms. Kanoute wrote. “It’s outrageous that some people question my being at Smith College, and my existence overall as a woman of color.”

The American Civil Liberties Union helpfully chimed in, claiming that student Kanoute was racially profiled for “eating while black.” Other students came to Kanoute’s aid: “Students walked out of autumn convocation in solidarity with Ms. Kanoute. The Black Student Association wrote to the president saying they ‘do not feel heard or understood. We feel betrayed and tokenized.’”

What appears to have happened is this: Student Kanoute, working on campus during the summer, entered a closed building, which no one was authorized to enter, to eat her lunch. A janitor, seeing someone in a closed building, followed procedure and called the campus police. The unarmed campus policeman politely inquired of the student what she was doing there. According to the law firm hired by Smith College to investigate this incident, there was “no persuasive evidence of bias.”

Nonetheless, not bothered by the evidence, the Smith College administration, responding as do most college and university administrations, caved to the false claims of racism. The Smith president “said the report validated Ms. Kanoute’s lived experience, notably the fear she felt at the sight of the police officer. ‘I suspect many of you will conclude, as did I,’ she wrote, ‘it is impossible to rule out the potential role of implicit racial bias.’”

Smith College officials emphasized “reconciliation and healing” after the incident. They announced a raft of anti-bias training for all staff in the months to come, a revamped and more sensitive campus police force, and the creation of dormitories — as demanded by Ms. Kanoute and her A.C.L.U. lawyer — set aside for black students and other students of color.

Apparently, racial segregation is the new tool of anti-racism!

The true victims of this incident, along with Smith College’s integrity and the truth, were the working-class employees of Smith College. A cafeteria worker, who had worked at Smith for 35 years, who mentioned to student Kenoute that only children from the camp were supposed to use the cafeteria, but allowed her to take her lunch, was accused by Kenoute of being a “racist person,” and was moved by the Smith administration away from the dormitory where she had worked for decades. The janitor, also a 35-year employee of Smith, who followed security protocols, was put on leave for several weeks; another janitor, who was not working at the time of the incident, and was publicly accused by student Kenoute of “racist cowardly acts.” The campus security officer was accused of “implicit bias.” These employees, who had been thrown under the bus by the Smith administration, also experienced the distress of repeated accusations of racism.

Student Kenoute’s false accusations were validated by the Smith administration, and she suffered no punishment for her abuse of long-standing employees. Rather she was celebrated and feted for her “victimhood.” The lesson appears to be that false accusations of racism can be made with impunity, and that injuries to innocent parties go unpunished. And that privileged students at elite colleges and universities can lynch working-class employees at will.

This is but one case of lies about racism. But thousands of injustices have been perpetrated by the lies of the anti-racism industry. Let us begin with Black Lives Matter and its sponsor the Democrat Party. The basic argument of BLM is that all African Americans are at risk of being murdered by the police, who are racist. BLM states that its “mission is to … build local power to intervene in violence inflicted on Black communities by the state and vigilantes. … We are working for a world where Black lives are no longer systematically targeted for demise.” [emphasis added]

That African Americans are “systematically targeted for demise” by police and whites is a blatant lie, and the statistics prove it: According to Heather Mac Donald, see also here, “in 2016, 7881 African Americans were murdered. Of those 7881, the police fatally shot 233 blacks, the vast majority armed and dangerous, according to the Washington Post. The Post categorized only 16 black male victims of police shootings as ‘unarmed.’ That classification masks assaults against officers and violent resistance to arrest.” So who murdered the other 7,648 African Americans? Almost all, around 90%, were murdered by other African Americans, many during drive-by shootings.

African Americans who do not carry weapons, resist arrest, fight police, or point their weapons at police are highly unlikely, based on the statistical evidence, to suffer death at the hands of the police. In fact, it is the police who are at much greater risk of being murdered by an African American criminal. As Mac Donald points out, “In 2015, a police officer was 18.5 times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male was to be killed by a police officer. Black males have made up 42 percent of all cop-killers over the last decade, though they are only 6 percent of the population.”

Following logically from the BLM main lie about police “systematically” murdering African Americans is BLM’s recommended policy solution: disband or defund the police. A policy based on a false assertion is likely to be counter-productive, and so it has proven. In Democrat-run cities that have defunded and otherwise shackled the police, violence has skyrocketed, particularly among inner cities heavily African American. African Americans suffer by far the highest level of homicide victims, at least three times their percentage in the general population. African Americans know this, and are not blinded by BLM propaganda, which is why, according to the Gallup opinion poll, they oppose reducing the police presence in their neighborhoods. African Americans know that they are most at risk from African American criminals.

Also increasingly at risk are Asian Americans, especially Chinese Americans. A wide range of commentators, from Asian activists, to Democrat politicians, to woke professors have attributed the attacks to white supremacy as (allegedly) advanced by President Trump. For example, Tina Tchen, Michele Obama’s former chief of staff, said that “The increase in racist attacks against Asian Americans [is the result of] white supremacy [that] perpetuates this violence and has no place in our country.” Among the many other similar comments is that of a professor of Asian American studies at San Francisco State University, who says that there is “a clear correlation between President Trump’s incendiary comments, his insistence on using the term ‘Chinese virus’ and the subsequent hate speech spread on social media and the hate violence directed toward us.”

However, in most cases, attacks on Asian Americans have been perpetrated by young African American men. This was the case in 2010 as in 2020; the main difference is that reports in 2010 were franker about who the criminals were, as in this headline: “Dirty Secret of Black-on-Asian Violence is Out.” Furthermore, most of these attacks have not been in MAGA flyover country, or in the free states of Florida or Texas, but in closed Democrat states of California and New York, and especially in the far-leftist cities of San Francisco and New York. How exactly these young black attackers are expressing their “white supremacism” has gone unexplained. As Jeremy Carl puts it, “lying and racial scapegoating because the truth is politically inconvenient should have no place in our country.”

The biggest and most dangerous lie is that America is systemically racist. Many empirical indices of racism indicate that the country is not racist. Attitudes have changed: negative attitudes by whites about African Americans have just about disappeared. Behavior has changed: many whites vote for African Americans; and interracial mixed marriages have increased markedly. Government policies to support African Americans have ranged from the direction of vast funds, to fifty years of “affirmative action” giving special privileges; while universities and business enterprises give special preference to “diverse” and “marginalized minority” African Americans. With the attitudes and behavior of whites not showing racism, anti-racists have been forced to posit an invisible “implicit racism” to justify their claims. “Implicit racism” is the phlogiston of the anti-race industry, and, like phlogiston, is a failed theory.

The main evidence of racism offered by the anti-racist industry are the statistical disparities among the vast racial categories of whites, blacks, Asians, and Hispanics. Of particular concern is the “underrepresentation” of African Americans and Hispanics in education, prestigious fields of occupation, and income in relation to their percentages of the general population (12% and 18% respectively). For the anti-racist industry, there is only one possible explanation: prejudice, bigotry, and discrimination against African Americans and Hispanics suppressing their success. For the anti-racist industry, these statistical disparities prove that America is structurally racist.

In order to believe this theory, you not only have to ignore the lack of racist attitudes and behaviors, but you must deny the significance of other statistical disparities that are correlated with the disparities in education, occupation, and income. Of obvious importance is the educational achievement gap. Heather Mac Donald puts it this way:

But the expectation of proportional representation in every profession is groundless, thanks to the academic skills gap. The unequal distribution of skills, not bias, explains the lack of racial proportionality in employment.

The median black eighth-grader does not possess even basic math skills. “Basic” skills, as defined by the National Assessment of Education Progress exam, means partial mastery of grade-related knowledge. Fifty-three percent of black eighth-graders scored “below basic” on math in 2017. Only 11 percent of black eighth-graders were proficient in math, and 2 percent were advanced. By contrast, 20 percent of white eighth-graders were below basic in 2017, 31 percent were proficient, and 13 percent were advanced. Only 12 percent of Asian eighth-graders were below basic, 32 percent were proficient, and 32 percent were advanced.

The picture was not much better in reading. Forty percent of black eighth-graders were below basic in reading in 2017, 17 percent were proficient readers, and 1 percent were advanced readers. Sixteen percent of white eighth-graders were below basic in reading, 39 percent of white eighth-graders were proficient readers, and 6 percent were advanced readers. Thirteen percent of Asian eighth-graders were below basic, 45 percent were proficient, and 12 percent were advanced readers.

And, of course, these performances are reflected in standardized tests for college and graduate school admissions. On the 2015 math Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) out of a possible 800 points, blacks scored 428, whites 534, and Asians 598. There was a similar pattern of results by race in the Graduate Record Exam, the Law School Admissions Test (LSAT), the Business School Admissions Test (GSAT), and the Medical College Admissions Test (MCAT). As long as applicants are admitted on the basis of achievement and merit, African Americans would be underrepresented. This result follows from the application of a universalistic criterion of merit, not from any racial discrimination.

There are three other disparities among racial categories that contribute to the disparity in educational achievement. The first is the percentage of children raised by two-parent families, which is very high among Asians, next highest among whites, lower among Hispanics, and very low among African Americans. The second is community culture, particularly the emphasis in community culture on educational achievement. In this, Asian communities are particularly high, and African American communities not sufficiently high. The third disparity is criminality. African American neighborhoods are high crime zones. Asian neighborhoods low crime zones. Crime is disruptive and destructive, resulting in a drag on achievement.

Finally, the anti-racism industry, which increasingly appears to be an anti-white movement, has quite falsely stated that the virtues needed for success in society and in the world are characteristics of “whiteness,” rather than characteristics of success. The alleged characteristics of “whiteness” are a devotion to hard work as a means to success, rational, logical thinking, belief in science, postponement of gratification, speaking standard American English, searching for correct answers, politeness and courtesy, promptness, quantitative emphasis, two-parent families, respect for authority, and devotion to occupation. If these are characteristics of “whiteness,” everyone needs more of them, not less. And what, then, are the characteristics of “blackness”? Are we to believe that African Americans disdain these values and hold opposite ones: avoiding work, illogical thinking, immediate gratification, not searching for right answers, rejection of authority, rudeness, etc.? These claims of “whiteness” raise the question: How on earth did middle-class African Americans ever get there?

The anti-racism industry is not about justice, it is about power for the few: race activists who gain fame and fortune raced baiting, and the Democrat Party that secures the votes of African Americans and the fortunes that come with office. Whites get nothing but vilified, and African Americans get to think of themselves as helpless victims. What a legacy!

https://pjmedia.com/columns/philip-carl-salzman/2021/03/05/lies-of-the-racism-industry-n1430366

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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7 March, 2021

Rule No 1 for saving your marriage: have the fight

Jordan Peterson’s new book features a chapter on how much sex you should be having if you want your marriage to last.

During the one Zoom interview he has so far managed to do with The Times of London, he broke down.

So, for now, he has offered up his book for review and guess what? There is a chapter about romance. Also, how much sex you should be having if you want your marriage to last. Bet you didn’t expect that, did you?

But it makes sense because if there is one message Peterson would like to get across right now, it’s that none of us — not you, not him — can do this alone. Life is brutal, and it’s really only our relationships with other people — and the honest one with our own selves — that make our otherwise painful existence bearable.

Peterson dedicates the book — Beyond Order: 12 More Rules For Life — to his wife Tammy “whom I have loved deeply for fifty years”.

He gives a hat tip also to his children, his granddaughter, his physicians and his friends as he recounts some of the horror of the previous 18 months, including the difficulties imposed on people of this planet by COVID-19.

But this is not a book about coping with the pandemic.

It is a romp through the ages, and popular culture: you will find Harry Potter, the Gospel stories; Disney’s Pocahontas; the wolf pack, the elder gods of Mesopotamia; JRR Tolkien; Pinocchio; Dr Peterson’s father-in-law; Williams Blake and Wordsworth; wildebeests and the Kingdom of God

But it is rule No 10 — finding ways to keep your marriage alive — that Peterson cites as among the most important.

“Life is too difficult to negotiate alone,” he says. Yet it’s so difficult to get along with other people!

Rule No 1 for saving your marriage, perhaps paradoxically, is: have the fight.

To illustrate, Peterson recounts the tale of the wife who allows “so-called minor irritations” (which are not in fact minor if they happen day after day) to continue for years. One day she explodes.

“Do not pretend you are happy with something if you are not, and if a reasonable solution might, in principle, be negotiated,” Peterson writes. “Have the damn fight, unpleasant as that might be in the moment.”

If you don’t, “every little problem you have, every morning, afternoon, or evening with your spouse will be repeated … every trivial but chronic disagreement about cooking, dishes, housecleaning, responsibility for finances, or frequency of intimate contact will be duplicated, over and over.”

Then your marriage will end. You need to say what you want — and you need to listen to what your partner wants from you.

Which brings us to sex. “What do you owe each other sexually if you are entangled in a marriage?” Peterson writes. “The answer is not ‘no sex’.”

Nor — sorry here to all the ladies who love it — is the answer sex 15 times a day, and “it is probably not sex begrudgingly once a year. It is somewhere between extremes, and that is where you must begin to negotiate.”

Once, twice or three times a week seems reasonable to Peterson (he notes that three times a week might be a lofty goal for those who have been married a long time.) But once or twice, “if handled well, seems to work out acceptably for both partners. Twice is better than once, but once is much better than zero.

“Zero is bad. If you go to zero, then one of you is tyrannising the other, and the other is submitting. If you go to zero, then one of you is going to have an affair … I do not say that lightly.”

New lovers won’t find it difficult to have sex twice a week, but couples with two careers, two kids and two decades of matrimony behind them almost certainly will because “maybe there is a list of ten things you will do in a day, and sex is number eleven”.

But you still need to agree on what will keep each of you satisfied, meaning: seen and understood. Maybe you’re thinking no, it’s too late. I chose the wrong person and we just don’t get along.

Peterson says “there are seven billion people in the world. At least a hundred million, let us say, might have made good partners for you. You are not going to get along with any partner — not easily, unless you agree to be tyrannised and silent, and even then, you will take your revenge.

“You are different people. And not only are you different from your partner, but you are rife with inadequacies and so is he — or she.”

Now, it’s true, sometimes, a person will find themselves married to a psychopathic brute, “a congenital and incorrigible liar, a criminal, an alcoholic, a sadist, and maybe all five at once”.

“Then you must escape,” Peterson writes, as you might a hurricane. But if it’s simply the case that the marriage has become unbelievably tedious and frustrating, it may yet be salvageable.

“A marriage is a vow, and there is a reason for it,” Peterson writes. “You announce jointly, publicly: ‘I am not going to leave you, in sickness or health, in poverty or wealth — and you are not going to leave me’. It is actually a threat: ‘We are not getting rid of each other, no matter what’.”

Having “no escape hatch” creates a set of circumstances in which the couple must learn to negotiate. In so doing, they mature into less selfish people.

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/jordan-petersons-new-guide-to-negotiating-lifes-rocky-path/news-story/c505e3361f3dc5d2016e7bb5342182b9

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US protesters including young children burn face masks at Idaho Capitol rally against coronavirus measures

At least one hundred people have gathered at the front of the Idaho Capitol in the US to burn masks in a protest against measures taken to limit infections and deaths caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Some groups said mask mandates are a restriction of their freedoms. Health experts say they help slow the spread of the disease.

Videos posted on social media showed adults encouraging children to toss masks into a fire.

In a series of videos, people of all ages are seen walking up to a blue metal drum in which a fire is burning and throwing disposable masks inside.

Fellow protesters can be heard laughing and cheering after the masks are set alight. Some carried signs reading "we are free" and "no masks".

Darr Moon, who said he is one of the organisers of the event, said people had rallied against the direction their state government was taking. "We're standing here today to rein back government," he said.

Idaho's Republican Governor Brad Little has never issued a statewide mask mandate, but seven counties and 11 cities have such requirements in place.

Visitors to the Capitol are asked to wear masks, but they're not required and few Republican politicians wear them.

A Republican politician on Wednesday introduced legislation to prohibit mask mandates.

More than 170,000 Idaho residents have been infected with the virus, and nearly 1,900 have died.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-03-07/protesters-burn-masks-at-idaho-capitol-rally-against-rules-us/13224588

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The 'wrong' illustrations that got six Dr. Seuss books cancelled

Horrors! One featured an illustration of a "Chinese man who eats with sticks."

Two of the six permanently pulled from publication currently rank as the world's best-selling children's books

Dr. Seuss Enterprises, the official manager of books published under the moniker Dr. Seuss, announced Tuesday that it will no longer be publishing six Dr. Seuss titles because they “portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong.”

The most popular of the six titles are 1950’s If I Ran the Zoo and the 1937 book And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, which was the first children’s book published under the Dr. Seuss name by author Theodor Seuss Geisel. As of March 2, which also happens to be the author’s birthday, both books remained in the top 10 most popular children’s titles on Amazon.com.

The other titles no longer being published are McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super!, and The Cat’s Quizzer, which were all released between 1947 and 1976.

Dr. Seuss Enterprises did not specify which illustrations were offensive, but four of the titles contain cartoon depictions of Asian people, while three contain stereotypical portrayals of Inuit.

If I Ran the Zoo features a young boy imagining a hunting expedition to the fictional land of Zomba-ma-tant where locals “wear their eyes at a slant.” Other pages also show the “African island of Yerka,” featuring squat African tribesmen with large hoops through their noses.

And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street has its young protagonist imagining an increasingly fanciful street parade that includes “a Chinaman who eats with sticks,” a “Rajah, with rubies” and two fur-clad figures being pulled by a reindeer.

McElligot’s Pool follows a boy imagining the far-out things he’ll catch while fishing in a stagnant pond, including “Eskimo Fish from beyond Hudson Bay.”

Scrambled Eggs Super! has its young protagonist boasting about the increasingly rare eggs he would source for breakfast, including that of the Mt. Strookoo Cuckoo, for which he would enlist the help of a beturbaned helper named Ali. The people of the fictional Arctic nation of Fa-Zoal are also shown clad in furs and paddling skin boats in order to harvest eggs from a “Grice.”

The Cat’s Quizzer, the most recent (and least popular) of the six books appears to have gotten pulled because of a page 11 illustration of a yellow figure in a coolie hat with the caption, “how old do you have to be to be a Japanese?”

Of the six, the problematic imagery in On Beyond Zebra! is probably the least obvious. The book catalogues a whimsical set of new letters in the alphabet, and briefly features the “Nazzim of Bazzim,” a figure of unspecified nationality riding a camel-like creature called a “Spazzim.”

The six titles were selected after consultation with a “panel of experts,” according to Dr. Seuss Enterprises. The books will no longer be printed or licensed, meaning that the titles will also not be available for sale as e-books.

Thirty years after his death, Theodor Seuss Geisel remains the world’s top-selling children’s author. Of the 20 best-selling children’s books on Amazon right now, 15 of them are Dr. Seuss titles. The Publisher’s Weekly ranking of top-selling children’s show five Dr. Seuss books currently in the top 10.

In recent years, however, Geisel has been targeted for imagery deemed stereotypical or out-of-date, including a 2014 scholarly work asserting that The Cat in the Hat is an elaborate mockery of black people. In 2017, when then-First Lady Melania Trump gifted a collection of Dr. Seuss to a Massachusetts school, the books were returned by librarian Liz Phipps Soeiro with a note that the literature was “steeped in racist propaganda, caricatures, and harmful stereotypes.”

Of Geisel’s decades-long portfolio, it’s his advertising work and editorial cartoons — drawn in the 1930s and 1940s — that contain the heaviest use of derogatory racial caricatures. One of the more notorious is a series of ads for the insecticide company Flit that features big-lipped Africans riding elephants and living in grass huts.

After the Pearl Harbor attack in 1941, Geisel published a number of cartoons depicting Japanese people with stereotypically prominent front teeth. One 1942 cartoon even endorses Japanese-American internment by showing Japanese-Americans as disloyal citizens stockpiling explosives and “waiting for the signal from home.”

Despite this, Geisel could simultaneously take stances against racism and prejudice, even when those concepts were against the mainstream. While an editorial cartoonist for the liberal New York paper PM, Geisel was an early advocate for strong U.S. action against Nazi Germany, and in one cartoon said Americans needed a “good mental insecticide” to clear their minds of “racial prejudice.”

Waiting for the signal from home, published by Theodor Seuss Geisel just at the onset of Japanese-American internment in 1942.

Later in life, Geisel would pen several Dr. Seuss titles that would openly grapple with racism, most notably The Sneetches, which catalogues the travails of a bird-like species that enforces a rigid class structure based on which among them have stars on their bellies.

https://nationalpost.com/entertainment/books/here-are-the-wrong-illustrations-that-got-six-dr-seuss-books-cancelled

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You can now be cancelled for things you didn’t say

A PR boss has resigned after saying he does not hire people based on race, sexual orientation or religion.

A PR boss has had to resign from the firm he founded after saying ‘we don’t hire blacks, gays or Catholics’. Sounds bad, right? But Gordon Beattie was actually making a point against discrimination. In a LinkedIn post, Beattie wrote:

‘At Beattie Communications, we don’t hire blacks, gays or Catholics. We sign talented people and we don’t care about the colour of their skin, sexual orientation or religion. That’s the way it should be with every company – only hire people for their talent, experience, knowledge and wisdom. We hire people we like, trust and admire, and recruit people who have the potential to be better than us.’

The company’s chief executive said Beattie’s language was ‘out of touch’, while also making clear ‘he does not have a prejudiced bone in his body’. Sadly, not actually being racist is apparently not enough these days. According to Barrington Reeves, the founder of the Black Scottish Business Fund, Beattie’s words were ‘tone deaf, insensitive, racist, homophobic and utterly unacceptable’.

But he was clearly not being racist or homophobic. He was making the point that companies should not discriminate by race, religion or sexual orientation. To him, these characteristics are irrelevant – being good enough for the job is all that matters.

We have reached the point where you can be cancelled not for what you have actually said, but based on how your views might be distorted.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/03/05/you-can-now-be-cancelled-for-things-you-didnt-say

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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6 March, 2021

Charles Murray's Brave New Book

A new book by the libertarian scholar and author takes on the leftist brickbats of "white privilege" and "systemic racism."

Tuesday of this week marked the four-year anniversary of one of the most shameful episodes in the modern history of the American university. It happened at Middlebury College in Vermont, where political scientist, author, and American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray was, as The Wall Street Journal put it, “shouted down by an angry mob clearly unable to challenge him intellectually.”

Murray was ultimately taken to another location on campus, but not before Allison Stanger, a Middlebury professor who escorted him away, was injured and sent to the hospital. (And we’re told students need safe spaces?)

Murray, a libertarian, has been a favorite whipping boy of the Left since the 1994 publication of his book, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life. As Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, writes, “[The book] has very little to say about race. But it argues that a considerable portion of intelligence — 40 to 80 percent — is heritable; and it also argues that intelligence tests are generally reliable. Those ideas irritate people who have a deep investment in three beliefs: extreme human plasticity; the social origins of inequality; and the possibility of engineering our institutions to create complete social justice.”

No wonder the infantile little Maoists at Middlebury got so riled up. Their target, though, whom Power Line’s John Hinderaker dubbed “the bravest man in America,” has been undeterred.

Murray has a new book coming out on June 15 titled Facing Reality: Two Truths about Race in America. In it, he takes on the twin leftist cudgels of “white privilege” and “systemic racism,” and he does so by exploring what he calls “two known facts, long since documented beyond reasonable doubt” — namely, that our nation’s major racial and ethnic groups have different rates of violent crime and different means and distributions of cognitive ability.

Why would Murray want to explore such a sensitive topic? Perhaps, as George Mallory once replied when asked why he wanted to climb Everest, “Because it’s there.”

“America’s most precious ideal,” says the book’s description on Amazon, “is what used to be known as the American Creed: People are not to be judged by where they came from, what social class they come from, or by race, color, or creed. They must be judged as individuals. The prevailing Progressive ideology repudiates that ideal, demanding instead that the state should judge people by their race, social origins, religion, sex, and sexual orientation.”

The lie that must be repudiated, however, is that the U.S. is a nation irredeemably shot through with racism and white privilege. As Hinderaker points out, “As of 2018 Census Bureau data, whites are 17th among ethnic groups in median income, trailing not only just about every Asian minority, including Iranians and Pakistanis, but also African immigrant groups like Nigerian-Americans and Ghanian-Americans. The case for American ‘white supremacy’ is ludicrously weak, but it may be a capital offense to point that fact out.”

It’ll be interesting to see whether Jeff Bezos and his fellow book-banners at Amazon have the guts to keep Charles Murray’s book listed on their website.

https://patriotpost.us/articles/78188-charles-murrays-brave-new-book-2021-03-05

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Tucker Carlson Zeroes in on the Left's 'Biggest Fear'

During his opening monologue on Thursday, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson excoriated the ongoing military occupation of Washington, D.C. and explained why it's still there and what has liberals so fearful.

While the left is admittedly scared of pretty much everything, he acknowledged, fear of "the other" has them most wound up now.

"When you're a liberal, the world is a very scary place, but there is one fear that rises above all other fears in the liberal mind: The fear of "the other." Like all primitive cultures, modern liberalism is tribal," he said. "Liberals understand most of the American continent as a mysterious dark space, like a medieval map populated by drooling Trump voters and violent illiterates with extra chromosomes.

"Liberals despise people like this, of course, and on some level, they know they're hated right back," he continued. "They worry that someday there will be a backlash against the people in charge, which, of course, is them. That's their biggest fear, a peasant revolt."

And so, D.C. looks like Baghdad's Green Zone, he said.

The left and right were fully prepared for another "insurrection" on March 4, but like a child fearful of the monster in the closet, the threat wasn't real.

"A lot of liberals were certain that March 4 was the day the right-wing revolution would finally begin. March 4, they believed, with something called 'QAnon Inauguration Day,'" he said, adding that they have no idea what that means and can guarantee the vast majority of Trump supporters don't either.

"They'd heard about it from Nancy Pelosi, who told her bodyguards to write up a report on the threat of QAnon Inauguration Day. So that's what they did. We never really learned any details, but members of Congress were not taking chances," Carlson continued. "Many of them fled the Capitol Thursday. House leaders rescheduled votes so that the rank-and-file legislators could escape with their lives, if not with their dignity."

What happened was predictable: nothing. More media showed up than anyone else.

This "credible threat" was just the latest in a series of lies to keep D.C. militarized, he argued, because the National Guard is there for political reasons more than anything else.

"This is very strange behavior for a democracy," Carlson pointed out. "In a democracy, leaders are supposed to rule with the consent of the governed. You would think that might have occurred to some people on Capitol Hill. If we're this afraid of American voters, maybe something's wrong. Maybe we're not doing a very good job. Maybe we ought to shut up for a second and listen to the complaints of the people whose lives we control. Maybe then we wouldn't need razor wire around the Capitol.

"Apparently, no one in Washington has thought of this," he added. "Instead, they've convinced themselves that the only Americans who have a problem with the way things are currently going must have been brainwashed by QAnon."

Meanwhile, as the left prepares itself for battle against imaginary threats, Americans are facing real ones on the streets.

"For all the concern over the safety of our elected leaders, there doesn't seem to be any concern for the safety of the people who elected them," he said. "Capitol Hill looks like the Green Zone in Baghdad, but the rest of the city looks like the area outside the Green Zone. Residential neighborhoods in Washington and in cities around the country haven't been this dangerous in years. Americans are dying in huge numbers from street crime, but no one in Congress cares. They're too busy spending tax dollars to shield themselves from the QAnon Shaman and his 70-year-old accomplices."

Maybe Democratic leaders will start caring if Americans blame QAnon for the crimes, he quipped.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/leahbarkoukis/2021/03/05/tucker-carlson-zeroes-in-on-the-lefts-biggest-fear-n2585761

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DOJ Has Dropped Dozens of Cases Against Portland Rioters

The Department of Justice has been quietly dropping dozens of charges against violent rioters in Portland. Local KGW8 has the story:

Federal prosecutors have dismissed more than one-third of cases stemming from last summer’s violent protests in downtown Portland, when protesters clashed with federal agents. KGW reviewed federal court records and found 31 of the 90 protest cases have been dismissed by the U.S. Department of Justice, including a mix of misdemeanor and felony charges.

Some of the most serious charges dropped include four defendants charged with assaulting a federal officer, which is a felony. More than half of the dropped charges were "dismissed with prejudice," which several former federal prosecutors described as extremely rare. “Dismissed with prejudice” means the case can’t be brought back to court.

Why is this happening?

In a recent interview with KGW, [Billy] Williams [then-U.S. Attorney for Oregon] explained the cases were dismissed in instances where prosecutors didn’t believe they could prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Each case was analyzed for the evidence that we had at the time," said Williams. "Careful decisions were made on whether or not someone should be charged based on the evidence."

Williams explained decisions are made on a case-by-case basis.

As a reminder, the Portland federal courthouse was under heavy siege for weeks on end last summer. Rioters used industrial grade fireworks to attack federal agents. They attempted to cement doors of the courthouse shut in order to trap agents inside and burn them alive. Many have permanent vision damage from lasers used against them.

"The firework came whizzing over the fence so fast that the agent didn’t have time to move. It exploded with a boom, leaving his hearing deadened and bloody gashes on both forearms. Stunned, with help from his cohorts, he stripped to his boxer shorts and a black T-shirt so his wounds could be examined and photographed for evidence. He told his fellow agents he was more worried about his hearing than about the gouges and burns on his arms," the Associated Press reported about one night of chaos. "By the end of the night, five other federal agents would be injured, including another who got a concussion when he was hit in the head with a commercial-grade firework. One agent was hospitalized. Several agents have lingering vision problems from the lasers."

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/03/05/biden-doj-dropped-dozens-of-cases-against-portland-rioters-n2585762

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UK: Channel 4 is blasted for 'spineless surrender to the PC police' after sacking SAS Who Dares Wins star Ant Middleton for calling BLM protestors 'scum' and opposing Covid lockdown rules

Channel 4 has been blasted for a 'spineless surrender to the PC police,' over the sacking of SAS: Who Dares Wins star Ant Middleton after he shared controversial views on the Black Lives Matter protesters and Covid-19.

Channel 4 has said it will no longer work with the 40-year-old because 'our views and values are not aligned'.

Good Morning Britain presenter Piers Morgan later tweeted: 'Absurd that Channel 4 fired Ant Middleton for his opinions. He's an SBS special forces war hero, what did they think they were hiring - a shrinking violet choirboy?

'Such a spineless surrender to the PC Police.'

The ex-Special Boat Service commando branded BLM protesters 'absolute scum,' along with EDL protesters, after groups were seen clashing in London last June.

He later apologised for the comments, saying he was 'anti-racist and anti-violence'.

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, healso said he would ignore Covid-19 advice and told people to 'carry on as normal'.

The ex-special forces presenter said yesterday he had 'decided it's time to move on' from the hit show.

Following clashes between Black Lives Matter protesters and EDL members in London last summer, Ant Middleton tweeted: 'The extreme left against the extreme right. When did two wrongs make a right. It was only a matter of time. BLM and EDL are not welcome on our streets, absolute scum. What a great example you are to your future generation. Bravo.'

He later apologised for the comments, saying he was 'anti-racist and anti-violence'.

The tweet came after Middleton, 40, garnered controversy at the start of the pandemic.

In March last year he filmed himself saying: 'Am I still out travelling the world? Yes. Am I still shaking hands? Yes. Am I still cuddling fans at the airport? Yes. Am I washing my hands and keeping my hygiene to a high standard as always? Yes.

'Has my life changed? No. Am I going to let some disease, COVID-19, dictate my life? Absolutely not. Get out there, don't change, F**k COVID-19!'

He later admitted the comments were a 'mistake,' he made while filming in New Zealand. He said he had: 'probably been a bit insensitive towards the magnitude, the scale, of the crisis that's happening in the UK.'

Middleton's military career saw him serve in the Special Boat Service, the Royal Marines and 9 Parachute Squadron Royal.

He was jailed for 14 months after assaulting two police officers in his home town of Chelmsford, Essex, in 2013.

Last March he said his comments urging people to 'get out there,' during the Covid-19 pandemic was a 'mistake'.

Middleton said he had filmed himself in New Zealand and admitted he had 'probably been a bit insensitive towards the magnitude, the scale, of the crisis that's happening in the UK.'

A spokesperson for Channel 4 earlier told MailOnline: 'Ant Middleton will not be taking part in future series of SAS: Who Dares Wins.

'Following a number of discussions Channel 4 and Minnow Films have had with him in relation to his personal conduct it has become clear that our views and values are not aligned and we will not be working with him again.'

Celebrities including fellow presenter Ben Shepherd, ex-footballer John Terry and singer Olly Murrs have leant their support to Middleton, saying it 'won't be the same,' without him.

Middleton has been chief instructor on the Channel 4 show since 2015.

In a cryptic tweet sent earlier today, Colin MacLachlan, who was on the directing staff for the first series, responded to news of Middleton's sacking with the caption: 'Karma'.

His reaction is wildly different to many fans, who have slammed the 'PC brigade,' after Middleton told followers he had 'decided it's time to move on'.

Tweeting last night, Middleton said: 'After 5 incredible years I've decided it's time to move on from SAS: Who Dares Wins UK.

'Big respect to my fellow DS – it's been a journey I'll never forget. 'Thanks to everyone that took part and made the show what it is. Really excited about the future and what's coming this year.'

Good Morning Britain and Tipping Point host Ben Shephard replied today: 'Have loved every minute Ant Middleton, we’ll miss watching you on the show but will look forward to what’s coming next!'

Musician Olly Murs said he was 'gutted,' while former England captain John Terry said: 'It won't be the same without you mate'.

One follower replied: 'CH4 have made a massive mistake and I will be boycotting the programme in protest. You made that show and without you it will fail.

'Hopefully the other 2 quit after seeing the appalling way CH4 have treated you. Keep voicing your opinion & do not let these people silence you'

Another said: 'PC gone mad, great programme, will miss you in it. I hope to see you back on our screens soon.'

Fan Jacob Broughton wrote: 'Shock that woke channel 4 can’t stomach a veteran who may have differing opinions from them. Joke of a tv network.'

Another wrote: 'This was a good show. Wonder why he’s really left. Maybe his actions last summer haven’t helped but why now and not then?'

'Another person forced out because they dared to voice a different opinion,' wrote another supporter.

Middleton was reportedly forced to quit his role as the Royal Navy's Chief Cadet after just nine months, after his controversial 'scum' tweet about Black Lives Matter protesters last summer.

The TV tough guy, who took on the role in November, was said to have left his bosses furious after posting the since-deleted tweet, amid protests over racial injustice after the death of George Floyd in the US.

On June 14, Ant tweeted: 'The extreme left against the extreme right. When did two wrongs make a right. It was only a matter of time. BLM and EDL are not welcome on our streets, absolute scum. What a great example you are to your future generation. Bravo.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9316485/Channel-4-blasted-spineless-surrender-PC-police-sacking-Ant-Middleton.html

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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4 March, 2021

Attempt to cancel Texas song backfires

Confederate General Robert E. Lee was fond of telling his troops before they went into battle, ‘”The eyes of the South are upon you.” In 1903, a member of the University of Texas band wrote some lyrics and put them to the tune of “I’ve been working on the railroad.” “The Eyes of Texas Are Upon You” debuted at a school minstrel show — with white students appearing in blackface — and has been adopted as the UT alma mater.

It’s more than that, of course, It’s a Texas institution and now, cancel culture hysterics have come for it.

But it’s very hard to cancel an institution. Knock down a few statues, erase the history books — these are easy. But the history, tradition, and sheer emotion tied up into an institution — even the barbarians will have trouble canceling that.

The Texas Tribune obtained emails from donors to University President Jay Hartzell that show the depth of feeling against the idea of canceling the institution that is “The Eyes of Texas.”

“My wife and I have given an endowment in excess of $1 million to athletics. This could very easily be rescinded if things don’t drastically change around here,” wrote one donor in October. His name was redacted by UT-Austin. “Has everyone become oblivious of who supports athletics??”

Hartzell had already publicly stated the university would keep the song, but hundreds of emails obtained through public records requests show that decision didn’t quell the furor among some of the most ardent supporters of “The Eyes.”

From June to late October, over 70% of the nearly 300 people who emailed Hartzell’s office about “The Eyes” demanded the school keep playing it. Around 75 people in emails explicitly threatened to stop supporting the school financially, calling on the university to take a heavier hand with students and athletes they believed were disrespecting university tradition by protesting it.

The lyrics of the song are inoffensive and rather pedestrian.

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,

All the livelong day.

The Eyes of Texas are upon you,

You cannot get away.

Do not think you can escape them

At night or early in the morn —

The Eyes of Texas are upon you

‘Til Gabriel blows his horn.

The song has been sung at weddings. It was sung at former first lady Ladybird Johnson’s funeral. It has embedded itself in the fabric of people’s lives.

Now, on the 185th anniversary of Texas independence, controversy threatens it. But the song won’t be canceled without a fight.

“[Alumni] are pulling planned gifts, canceling donations, walking away from causes and programs that have been their passion for years, even decades and turning away in disgust. Last night one texted me at 1:00 am, trying to find a way to revoke a 7-figure donation,” President of the Longhorn Alumni Band Charitable Fund Board of Trustees Kent Kostka wrote to a group of administrators, including Hartzell. “This is not hyperbole or exaggeration. Real damage is being done every day by the ongoing silence.”

Indeed, most alumni want Hartzell to be more forceful in defending the tradition. Even though the lyrics themselves are inoffensive, the “racist undertones” and the history of the song are what matter to the culture destroyers.

KHOU:

The Texas Cowboys school spirit association was a key social group on the UT campus for decades. In the past, Gordan said members would put on blackface and perform a sort of a minstrel show each year for their schoolmates.

Gordan said the “The Eyes of Texas” is a satirical rendition of Confederate commander Robert E. Lee’s saying “the eyes of the south are upon you,” which was made popular on the UT campus by former university president William Lambdin Prather.

Do these children really believe they’re fighting racism by canceling a song? Tearing down a monument? Scrubbing a history text? Racism is a disease of the heart and soul and isn’t cured by inflaming passions against the fight against it by attacking symbols that have nothing to do with racism unless the meaning or context in which they appear is horribly twisted by those not seeking to heal but to hurt.

At bottom, cancel culture is cruelty writ large. Symbols that have deep personal meaning to perhaps millions of people are attacked with full knowledge that they are injuring their feelings. That’s cruel and unjust.

Right now, fear of being seen as “racist” is what’s driving this effort forward. Perhaps fear of suffering financially is the antidote. Neither solution is optimal and none will be found as long as the goal isn’t ending racism, as much as it is revenge against those who perpetrated historic injustices.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/03/02/the-eyes-of-texas-meets-cancel-culture-and-donors-are-fuming-n1429425

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There's nothing equal or fair about your transgender 'equality' order, President Biden - all it will do is destroy women's sports, damage women's rights, and turn people against the trans cause

President Joe Biden is big on equality and has spent much of his life fighting and campaigning for it.

Indeed, in his inauguration speech on January 20, he reminded us that the American dream is predicated on the belief 'that we are all created equal'.

But he did so with this sobering caveat: 'Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal, that we are all created equal, and the harsh, ugly reality that racism, nativism, and fear have torn us apart. The battle is perennial and victory is never secure. Through civil war, the Great Depression, world war, 9/11, through struggle, sacrifice, and setback, our better angels have always prevailed. In each of our moments enough of us have come together to carry all of us forward, and we can do that now.'

I was very moved when he said this, and I believed his commitment to equality for all was entirely sincere.

But now I wonder if President Biden even understands what the word means?

According to the dictionary, it is defined as 'the state of being equal, especially in status, rights, or opportunities'.

By that criteria, I believe in equality and I'm sure Joe Biden would say this is what he believes it to mean too.

But where we differ is over what to do when a campaign to achieve equality in any particular aspect of society where inequality and discrimination exists, creates a new inequality and discrimination.

That's the point we've reached in the battle for trans rights and in the process a new destructive inequality against women's rights is being directly fuelled by President Biden.

Let me be very clear for those already charging to have me summarily cancelled for my 'transphobia': I support the right of all trans people to be treated equally in every way and have loudly said so for many years.

But that long, hard-fought and very necessary battle cannot come at the expense of another long, hard-fought battle for equality waged by women.

Yet that is exactly what's happening.

One of the first things Biden did after taking office was sign Executive Order 13988 which demands that measures be taken to 'prevent and combat discrimination on the basis of gender identity or sexual orientation.'

This sounds perfectly reasonable until you get into the weeds of the order and discover that among various recommendations, it seeks to allow transgender athletes to compete according to their gender identity, as opposed to their biological sex.

Specifically, it says that transgender women who have gone through male puberty should be able to compete in women's sports.

This, I'm afraid, is utter madness.

The majority of trans women born to male biological bodies who've gone through puberty are self-evidently going to be bigger, stronger, faster and more powerful than women born to female biological bodies.

Again, this is not me being 'transphobic', it's me stating an obvious fact.

That's why we have gender-specific competition in almost every sport and events like the Olympics.

Put bluntly: Serena Williams is the greatest female tennis player ever but would be beaten by any of the Top 1000 men's players.

And if this new presidential endorsement of trans women's rights to compete in women's sport becomes the accepted norm, then women's sport as we know it in America will be destroyed.

The problem is so obvious, I can't believe it actually has to be spelled out again. But sadly, it does.

And it's vital that it is.

Tennis legend Martina Navratilova, a gay woman and one of the world's most vociferous LGBTQ campaigners, articulated all the issues perfectly in a newspaper op-ed two years ago.

She explained, respectfully, how trans women born to male biological bodies have a large physical advantage: 'Hundreds of athletes who have changed gender by declaration and limited hormone treatment have already achieved honours as women that were beyond their capabilities as men, especially in sports in which power rather than skill is paramount. But simply reducing hormone levels — the prescription most sports have adopted — does not solve the problem. A man builds up muscle and bone density, as well as a greater number of oxygen-carrying red blood cells, from childhood. Training increases the discrepancy. Indeed, if a male were to change gender in such a way as to eliminate any accumulated advantage, he would have to begin hormone treatment before puberty. For me, that is unthinkable.'

Then she warned of another more cynical potential consequence: 'A man can decide to be female, take hormones if required by whatever sporting organisation is concerned, win everything in sight and perhaps earn a fortune, and then reverse his decision and go back to making babies if he so desires. It's insane and it's cheating. I am happy to address a transgender woman in whatever form she prefers, but I would not be happy to compete against her. It would not be fair.'

Of course, Navratilova was absolutely right about all of this including the likelihood of the final grim scenario happening.

Cheating in sport for huge financial gain has never been more rampant.

But for pointing out the bleeding obvious, Navratilova was shamed, vilified, cancelled by various official bodies who accused her of 'perpetuating dangerous myths', and convicted of being 'transphobic' by the court of social media.

All of which just showed how dangerously deluded and absurd this debate has become.

Now, President Biden has poured a whole heap of fuel onto the already raging fires.

And once more, Martina Navratilova is courageously putting her neck on the line to safeguard women's sport.

She has formed a coalition, The Women's Sports Policy Working Group, designed to promote what it termed an ethical, science-based approach to address the 'vitriolic' public debate.

The group argues that trans girls and women who have never experienced male puberty or 'mitigated their sex-linked advantages' should be fully included in women's sport, but those trans women who've gone through puberty as males should be barred from competing against women who haven't.

This seems an entirely sensible and rational compromise to me.

Navratilova reaffirmed that she has a 'long history of advocating for women's and LGBTQ rights' but added: 'In sport, however, advocating for women's rights means talking sex and sex-linked biology. The performance gap between male athletes and female athletes emerges from the onset of male puberty, and from that point forward even second-tier males can beat the very best females.'

And there, surely, is the proverbial nail on the head of this debate?

What can possibly be 'equal' about a system that allows mediocre athletes in men's sport to switch genders, without any requirement for surgery to change sex, and instantly become world-beating athletes in women's sport - as we've been seeing more and more in things like sprinting, weight-lifting and cycling?

How does that do anything but create a new inequality and discrimination against women born to female biological bodies?

How does it not damage women's rights as it seeks to promote trans women's rights?

Yet that is what Joe Biden wants to let happen.

Yesterday, his administration announced it was rescinding support given under the Trump administration for a lawsuit aimed at preventing transgender athletes from competing in girls' high school sports.

It was filed by three young female athletes who believe their ability to compete has been unfairly damaged by trans women competing against them.

One of them, Alanna Smith, said: 'People should realize that a lot of biological females have missed out on making it to meets that really matter like states and regionals and the transgender athletes have taken spots on the podium that belong to biological females. We train for so many days a week, so many hours to be the best in our state and the best in our region and these biological males are just taking it away from us and we really deserve it.'

These girls deserve fairness and equality too, don't they?

The bottom line is this: trans women should be free to play competitive sport.

Whether that means they compete against each other or against men born to the same biological bodies is a matter for serious debate.

But allowing women born to physically superior male biological bodies who've gone through puberty to compete against women born to female biological bodies should be banned because all it does it create a new inequality and a new discrimination.

Everybody knows this, but very few people in authority seem prepared to say so for fear they will be the next for the trans lobby cancel culture chopping block.

That's why I salute Martina Navratilova who has fought so hard for equality all her life, including for trans people, and sees the inherent inequality that Biden's executive order represents.

She also knows that this furore will only serve to further alienate trans people rather than win much-needed support from non-trans people.

If Biden truly believes in the American dream that everyone is equal then he needs to stand up to the ultra-woke hard-left progressive elements of his party forcing through this obviously unfair agenda and defend the right of women not to see their sport demolished at the altar of political correctness.

It's time to show you know what equality really means, Mr President.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9299889/PIERS-MORGAN-Theres-equal-fair-transgender-equality-order-Biden.html

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Miss USA Can Reject Applicants Who Aren’t Biologically Female: Judge

The Miss United States of America competition is able to only accept biological females, a judge ruled last week.

U.S. District Judge Michael Mosman, a George W. Bush appointee, said the pageant organization can’t be forced to let transgender women participate in its pageants.

“Because I viewed it as an organization that does promote a message and seeks to maintain control of that message, I view it as an association that cannot under the Constitution be required to allow plaintiff to participate in what defendant says is a contradiction of that message,” Mosman ruled from the bench, referring to the organization’s stated mission of promoting “natural-born” females, The Oregonian reported.

The judge cited the Supreme Court’s ruling in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale, in which the nation’s top judges ruled the state of New Jersey could not force the Boy Scouts organization to accept gay scoutmasters.

Mosman also told the court that Miss USA is an expressive organization, as opposed to a commercial one.

That means it has a First Amendment Right to its “message” and cannot be required to alter it, Courthouse News reported.

The ruling came in Green v. Miss United States of America. Anita Noelle Green, a male who identifies as a woman, sued the pageant corporation in 2019, alleging it could not exclude people who identify as transgender women.

The original filing alleged gender-identity discrimination. Lawyers wrote that the plaintiff “was excluded from participating in defendant’s pageant program due to an express discriminatory eligibility policy requiring contestants to be ‘natural born female.’ This policy, intentionally designed to exclude the specific class to which plaintiff belongs—transgender females—is discriminatory because it denied plaintiff the full and equal advantages and privileges of defendant’s services in violation of Oregon’s public accommodations law.”

The defendant in a motion to dismiss said they were protected by their First Amendment rights to free speech and free association.

“In a society where women receive fewer opportunities than men, women deserve a platform to compete, to speak, and to be celebrated. Defendant provides this platform through its beauty pageant—a competition where women express themselves, build confidence, and vie for the crown of Miss United States of America before a live audience,” the organization said, adding that it selects contestants on criteria including character, age, biological sex, and residency.

In a statement in response to the ruling, Green expressed disappointment but said “we will be exploring ways to move forward.”

“I believe United States of America Miss is on the wrong side of history for choosing to actively discriminate against transgender people, but the road to creating a meaningful change has always been a long and bumpy one,” Green said.

John Kaempf, who represented Miss USA, told the Daily Caller that the ruling was a “great victory for supporters of the First Amendment.”

“My client has nothing against the LGBTQ community. But the federal court’s decision upholds the important First Amendment right not to have others force you to present a message you do not support,” he said. “My client believes that only biological, naturally born females are women. Others have the right to hold a different view.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/miss-usa-can-reject-applicants-who-arent-biologically-female-judge_3716244.html?utm_source=morningbriefnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-03-02

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Facebook BLOCKS baby bottle company Tommee Tippee's new breastfeeding advert for showing nudity

The Newcastle-based firm has launched a breastfeeding campaign called 'The Boob Life', which it described as an unapologetic celebration of mothers, their bodies and their choices.

Tommee Tippee has faced advertising restrictions due to the social media platform's policies, but has been allowed to show the clip as an organic post on its page.

The company says broadcasters are also prohibiting the video until after the watershed because of 'excessive visible skin'.

The advert was commissioned following research by Tommee Tippee that revealed 93 per cent of mothers felt their mental, physical and emotional struggles with feeding had gone unacknowledged.

Only one in 10 young mothers said they felt comfortable breastfeeding in public.

Featuring real-life mothers and their babies, the company says it aims to support parents through their feeding journey, whether they choose breastfeeding, pumps, bottles or a combination of the three.

Tommee Tippee UK's Nicola Wallace said: 'It's outrageous and hugely offensive to women - we should be normalising breastfeeding in society and what real women's bodies look like, not pandering to outdated societal views on what's appropriate.

'We are only just seeing real depictions of periods on TV for the first time, it's not good enough, and Tommee Tippee are taking a stand. This is not just about mums, it's about unobjectifying women's bodies.'

Facebook says it understands that nudity can be shared for a variety of reasons, including as a form of protest, to raise awareness about a cause or for educational or medical reasons.

Where such intent is clear, Facebook makes allowances for the content. For example, it may restrict some images of female breasts that include the nipple but it will allow other images, including those showing women actively engaged in breastfeeding and photos of post-mastectomy scarring.

It also allows uncovered female nipples in the context of birth giving and after-birth moments.

But its advertising policies are different and when advertisers place an order, each advert is reviewed against these policies.

Under these guidelines, some content is prohibited, including nudity or implied nudity, excessive visible skin or cleavage, even if not explicitly sexual in nature.

The platform says it aims to strike a balance between allowing businesses and organisations to show ads that are of interest and value to people, while also making sure its global community feels comfortable.

A Facebook spokesperson said: 'This campaign is important and we applaud the work Tommee Tippee is doing to support new mums in their breastfeeding journey. 'We allow all posts of breastfeeding on Facebook and Instagram, but we do not allow adverts showing visible nipples.

'Ads are governed by a stricter set of policies because they receive paid distribution to appear in people's feeds, and that's why these were removed.'

The video has been praised by many, with scores of people leaving comments online.

Justine Roberts, founder and CEO of Mumsnet, said: 'Feeding babies can arouse all sorts of emotions: bliss and sadness, pride and frustration, relaxation and exhaustion.

'This film captures all that and more. It doesn't show the sanitised version of feeding that we've come to expect from ads, TV and film. It shows feeding all in its unvarnished glory, from wet T-shirts, painful nipples and full-force toddler latches to midnight bottle-juggling and sleepy dads.

'It celebrates breastfeeding as it really is and dispels the frankly weird expectation that it should be done 'discreetly' and without any hiccups, which can leave many thinking that they must be "doing it wrong".

'Hats off to Tommee Tippee for bucking the trend and celebrating feeding babies for what it is.'

One social media user said on Tommee Tippee's Facebook page: 'What an absolute breath of fresh air. 'Showing real babies with real mums, with real situations. Normalise nipples and breasts being shown in breastfeeding advertising.'

Another wrote: 'This is such a beautifully made advert, 100 per cent kudos to the team, absolutely got it spot on.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9317469/Facebook-BLOCKS-baby-bottle-company-Tommee-Tippees-new-breastfeeding-advert-showing-nudity.html

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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4 March, 2021

Anti-racist zoom seminars, asked to reflect whether they are a white supremacist and their children told white heads are dangerous places for black people: Parents' fury at lessons in wokeness

A woke offensive has taken the nation's schools by storm in the aftermath of the George Floyd fallout, but instead of the intended purpose of solving racial inequities it's irritated parents of all persuasions.

In interviews with DailyMail.com, parents say they've been overwhelmed by education reformers seeking to impose anti-racist agendas on America's schools. They describe the efforts as well-intentioned but often rushed, condescending, insulting and poorly timed, coming during a global pandemic when most families are just trying to get by.

'It's a whole cottage industry right now, a whole lot really fast that even a good-hearted liberal like me has trouble digesting,' said a Manhattan mother who was recently mandated to sign on to a 90-minute, anti-racist Zoom seminar for her pre-teen daughter's school.

'The stuff is intense,' she said in an interview with DailyMail.com. 'They actually told us, ''The most dangerous place for a black person to live is in a white person's imagination.' And they told us that as a truth. They're presupposing uniform white aggression.' My thought was — ''Please don't say that to my child.'' My daughter's imagination is not dangerous.'

Joe Borelli, a New York City councilman who serves on the education committee, said he's been flooded with complaints from constituents about the woke movement in schools and noted many parents are seeing it for the first time because their children are taking classes from home.

'When parents are listening to the background noise of their son or daughter's education, they hear first hand what's happening in the classroom,' he told DailyMail.com. 'The public would be shocked at how little focus City Hall has on making schools better rather than making schools part of some woke utopia.'

Their mission is to right wrongs of an education system they decry as institutionally racist, a goal most parents support. More than 80 percent of Americans — including 59 percent of conservatives — agree education should teach children about the history of racism, according to a recent poll commissioned by The 74, an education news website.

How schools bring about those reforms topped the agenda last week when administrators across the country came together virtually for the School Superintendents Association's annual conference.

'How do you go about doing this (reform) so you don't do it in an antagonistic way where you're in essence making the situation worse because people get riled up?' Daniel Domenech, executive director of School Superintendents Association, asked DailyMail.com. 'It has to be done carefully.'

He conceded that hasn't always been the case. 'There's a tremendous backlash,' he said. 'It's a battle that is going to be fought district by district, school by school. There are unfortunately people who don't want to accept or see the reality and will fight everything.'

A Portland principal was branded a 'BLM Marxist' by angry parents after she claimed the education system is built on a 'system of oppression and white supremacy.'

In New York City, a high school principal sent parents a survey asking them to reflect where they land on an eight-point scale of 'whiteness' from 'white supremacists' to 'white abolitionist.'

The exclusive Dalton School in Manhattan is mired in controversy after an eight-page memo of staff's anti-racist 'demands' was leaked, proposing sweeping changes to staff training and the curriculum.

In San Francisco the school board voted to strike the names of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln and dozens of other historical figures from the district's institutions deemed to have ties to racism or have 'dishonorable legacies.'

'This whole woke movement is horrible for society,' argued public school parent Carrie Letke of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where a high school English department chair recently challenged the 'whiteness' of Shakespeare and supported efforts to replace him.

'Why are we constantly focused on race, race, race, color, color, color,' she said. 'Everyone's open to be receptive of things, but they're jamming it down our throats in the worst way.'

Letke was home last week when her son, a senior at Ann Arbor's Community High School, started complaining when his teacher turned a literature class into a lecture on social justice, racism and gender neutral bathrooms.

'My office is below his bedroom, and he was on this Zoom session on racism and inclusivity,' Letke told DailyMail.com. 'He didn't agree with some of the teacher's comments, but was like, ''If I were to raise my voice, it would change the way they treat me.''

This whole woke movement is horrible for society. Why are we constantly focused on race, race, race, color, color, color.

The woke movement in education has ignited passion on all sides, with some on the right denouncing diversity plans as Marxist and leftist indoctrination.

Last summer, a district in Southlake, Texas introduced a plan to require diversity and inclusion training after a video went viral showing some of its students laughing as they shouted the N-word, according to local press reports. Parents packed school board meetings to oppose the plan, arguing it would create diversity police and discriminate against white children. Some even pulled their kids out of the district, and one mother sued, halting the plan's implementation.

In San Antonio, one parent said her 15-year-old daughter's school, which is almost entirely white, doesn't even attempt reform because of the anticipated backlash.

'Black History Month is in February, but it hasn't even been brought up at any of our schools,' the mom told DailyMail.com. 'People wouldn't know it's Black History Month unless it popped up on their phone. Everything's just swept under the rug.'

In Pennsylvania, Elena Fishbein states that she pulled her children from a local public school after a 'Cultural Proficiency Committee' drew up a plan 'to offer explicit lessons on equity and race for our students.' She launched the grassroots group 'No Left Turn in Education' to fight 'indoctrination.'

'The fight for America begins in the classroom,' she says in a video on Facebook. 'It is D-day. Wake up right now!'

'They're telling your kids they are privileged and guilty if the color of their skin is white.'

Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a father-of-three from Bethesda, Maryland, said he's concerned about students being force-fed 'Critical Race Theory' programs that teach the effects of systemic racism on American life.

'Parents are afraid to speak out,' he told DailyMail.com. 'They don't feel like they can fight this. They're afraid of being canceled, being called a racist, of their children not being allowed to go to school. And this is happening in the land of the free.'

A student at Princeton University, where the school president declared that racism 'remains embedded in the structures of the university itself,' told DailyMail.com he's bothered by the rhetoric of conservatives who deny a need for reforms.

'They don't say they're against equality,' he said. 'They say they want to move preemptively into a post-racial society. But it takes work. We first have to acknowledge, deal and repair the historical damage before we move into a world without racism.'

'When I ask my daughter what she's studying in history or reading in English, it appears to be a very new and, I would say, slavery-specific theme. Everything seems to hover around this one topic of race.

Roberto German, who with his wife Lorena co-founded Multicultural Classroom, which works with schools to promote anti-racism efforts, said he and his wife have been threatened for their efforts and outspokenness.

During the height of the George Floyd protests in May, his wife tweeted: 'Educators: what are you burning? Your White-centered curriculum? The Amy Cooper next door? Your anti-Black behavior policies? The school's racist policies? Your racist ass principal….'

'We've received threats and been bombarded by hate mail, people calling us 'coons' and saying, 'Die n*****,' Roberto German told DailyMail.com. 'We're not in this to spread hate and we don't want to receive it.'

Alicia Williams, who founded Teach Woke, an organization that provides race and equity workshops for schools nationwide, told DailyMail.com that she's not surprised by all the hostility.

'There's always resistance when there's change, when black and brown people want equality, when white folks want to hold onto their power and their privilege.'

In Oregon, Sheila Warren, the black president of the Portland Parent Union, said she's been fighting with public school officials for years to make changes that could help fellow minorities, but said the district rarely consults with the black community.

'We're up against institutional racism, liberal, white astute parents who want things their way,' she told DailyMail.com. 'These liberals are worse than people who are racist up front.

'Their whole ''woke'' thing is offensive to us,' she added. 'That word came from our community. People are appropriating it now, the white folks. They talk about equity and anti-racism, without consulting the people who are most impacted, which in our case is the people of color.'

In Manhattan, the mother who was forced onto the Zoom session for her daughter's class said she wishes the school would consult parents before reworking the curriculum.

'When I ask my daughter what she's studying in history or reading in English, it appears to be a very new and, I would say, slavery-specific theme,' she said. 'Everything seems to hover around this one topic of race.'

'These schools, their hearts are in the right place, and we all hate racism,' she continued. 'But I'm not sure the school cares about how I feel or my kids feel about what they're doing.'

'And honestly, it's a crap year to focus on this given the pandemic sh*t-show of schools,' she said. 'It's hard for parents to have the necessary conversation when we're struggling to find work. What's happening here is a bunch of white, liberal progressive parents, in a pandemic, trying to grapple with very important action from schools that takes a lot of bandwidth that parents don't actually have this year.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9295325/Overwhelmed-parents-say-schools-bombarding-kids-anti-racist-agendas.html

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There’s no evidence of ‘white privilege’

The concept of ‘white privilege’ has become ubiquitous in certain circles. This deeply flawed idea is presented by politicians, academics and social commentators as an incontestable fact.

Though much of our progressive commentariat obsesses about racial equality, one of the most striking facts about modern-day Britain is that poor white teenagers in England’s former industrial and coastal towns are among the least likely to go to university. Chris Millward, director of fair access at the Office for Students, recently described how white working-class communities have missed out: ‘The expansion of educational opportunities, and the belief that equality of opportunity would flow from this, have not delivered for them… so, they are less likely to see education as the way to improve their lives.’

‘White privilege’ doesn’t amount to much when we consider figures for educational performance. For a range of outcomes, white working-class children trail behind their peers in a number of ethnic-minority groups: including those of Indian, Chinese, Bangladeshi and Black African origin. For 2018-2019, the average ‘Attainment 8’ score for Indian and Bangladeshi-origin pupils on free school meals (FSMs) in England was 48.2 and 46.4 respectively. The corresponding figure for white British pupils on FSMs was only 31.8.

The unfortunate reality is that many coastal and former industrial towns have had to deal not only with the decline of their local economies, but also with the collapse of the family unit and the atomisation of their communities. Research from the Centre for Social Justice found that children who experienced family breakdown were twice as likely to fail at school. Against a backdrop of substance misuse and alcohol dependency, responsible and inspiring adult role models are a relatively scarce commodity. And, starved of meaningful public investment for decades, chronically under-resourced schools are bursting at the seams.

This is the story of predominantly white working-class ‘left behind’ coastal towns across Britain – whether it is Blackpool in Lancashire or Great Yarmouth in Norfolk. Coastal areas like Thanet have also been identified as ‘divorce hotspots’, with material deprivation and economic decline cited as major factors.

But the same goes for white working-class neighbourhoods in Nottingham, Sheffield, Stoke-on-Trent and Hull. These parts of the country are not only materially deprived, but also socially disconnected and spiritually damaged. By falling down the rabbit hole of ‘white privilege’, we run the risk of trivialising the feelings of helplessness and abandonment in such communities.

The concept of ‘white privilege’ is an instrument predominantly used by white middle-class liberals to appear virtuous, while deflecting attention away from their own comfortable position of affluence. It also unhelpfully takes society’s attention away from meaningful sources of advantage, such as belonging to a stable family unit, aspirational parental attitudes or being part of a supportive local community. These have all been eroded in the white British mainstream but are firmly embedded in successful non-white groups, such as British people of Indian and Nigerian origin.

And for all the talk of ‘white privilege’, my new report for the Henry Jackson Society found that when controlling for a range of factors, non-white people were more likely to be satisfied with their life in the UK than white Brits.

The myth of white privilege puts race at the forefront of discussions about disadvantage when there are a range of other social factors – including family structure, community support and cultural attitudes towards education – which have a critical impact on one’s life chances. This flawed concept has no place in the setting of social policy in the UK. Its divisive implications are unhelpful for building community cohesion in our multi-racial democracy.

White privilege may be treated as a fact among a smallish but influential subset of culturally liberal ‘progressive’ activists, but the rest of us should repudiate it with vigour.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/26/theres-no-evidence-of-white-privilege

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Margaret Thatcher is removed from a list of inspirational women by woke students at Durham University

Students at one of the country’s most prestigious universities have removed Margaret Thatcher from a list of inspirational women and apologised for including her.

Members of the Durham University Art Society had been invited to take part in a portrait competition to mark International Women’s Day.

Among the suggested subjects were Florence Nightingale, Cleopatra, Marie Curie and Britain’s first female Prime Minister.

But Baroness Thatcher was removed from the list – along with French designer Coco Chanel – after complaints. Organisers issued an apology, saying: ‘Considering Durham’s history as a former mining town, the impact of Thatcher’s policies, as well as her homophobia, her inclusion was an error.

‘Coco Chanel also had links to Nazis... so her inclusion was also extremely erroneous. We can only apologise for any offence or insult to anyone in our community that this may have caused.’

Toby Young, general secretary of the Free Speech Union, accused the Art Society and their joint organisers, the History in Politics Society, of capitulating to ‘woke bullies’.

He added: ‘They’ve allowed themselves to be bullied by a small minority of political activists.

'Far from being sensitive to the feelings of the local community in Durham, these student societies have thumbed their noses at all those local people who voted Conservative at the last Election.’

A spokesman for the Art and History in Politics societies said: ‘After some of the history of certain names on the list was drawn to our attention, we decided amongst ourselves to remove them.’

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9307883/Margaret-Thatcher-removed-list-inspirational-women-woke-students-Durham.html

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Asian American Group Eviscerates Critical Race Theory: 'A Hateful, Divisive, Manipulative Fraud'

Backlash is rising against the Marxist critical race theory (CRT) behind The New York Times‘ “1619 Project” and other efforts to indoctrinate Americans with the idea that American society is fundamentally or “structurally” racist. This week, the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York (CACAGNY) issued a powerful statement condemning critical race theory and urging Chinese Americans to oppose it.

“Critical Race Theory (CRT) is a hateful, divisive, manipulative fraud,” CACAGNY declared. “One way or another, CRT wants to get rid of ?too many Asians? in good schools. Asians are over-represented.? CRT is today’s Chinese Exclusion Act. CRT is the real ?hate crime? against Asians” (emphasis original).

Critical race theory teaches that any racial disparities must ipso facto be proof of some hidden racial bias or discrimination, regardless of civil rights laws explicitly forbidding such discrimination. Since Americans of Asian ancestry are overrepresented in colleges, universities, and certain high-income professions, CRT effectively teaches that American society is structurally biased in favor of Asians.

“CRT appears in our workplaces under the cover of ?implicit bias/sensitivity? ?training?. It infiltrates our schools pretending to be ?culturally/ethnically responsive? ?pedagogy?, with curricula such as the New York Times’ ?1619 Project? and Seattle’s ?ethnomathematics?,” CACAGNY argued. “From its very roots, CRT is racist, repressive, discriminatory, and divisive.”

The Chinese American group laid out the main “dogmas” of critical race theory, including (emphasis original):

You are not a person. You are only your ?race,? and ?by your race alone you will be judged?.

Justice is about equal ?rights?, but ?Social? Justice, or ?equity,? is about equal ?outcomes?. Only Social? Justice matters; Justice does not. To achieve equal outcomes, ?forget equal rights?.

All unequal outcomes by race — ?inequity? for short — are the result of racial ?oppression?.

All Blacks are oppressed and all Whites are oppressors. This is ?systemic?:? never ask ?whether oppression occurred, only ?how it occurred. Everyone and everything White is ?complicit?.

If you are White and won’t admit you are racist, you are racist by ?implicit bias?. To reduce implicit bias, you must self-criticize, confess to ?privilege?, apologize to the oppressed race.

Whiteness? is belief in, among others: ?achievement?, ?delayed gratification?, ?progress,? schedules? and ?deadlines?, ?meritocracy?, ?race-blindness?, the ?written word?, ?facts? and ?objectivity (they deny? lived experience)? , ?logic? and ?reason (?they deny? empathy?), ?mathematics? and science ?(until they are ?de-colonized and ?humanized?).

CRT suppresses dissent with ?cancel culture?: publications withdrawn, college admissions rescinded, online presence wiped out, business relationships ended, jobs terminated.

The Chinese American group presented three instances of CRT at work. In June 2020, Seattle ran an “anti-racism” training that began with the claim that all White people have a natural sense of racial superiority. The session required participants to confess their complicity in “white supremacy” become “less white,” and become accountable to black people in their every thought.

In August 2017, Nevada high school senior William Clark took a mandatory class in which the curriculum told students that white people are racists who enjoy the privileges of oppression. Classmates, teachers, and administrators allegedly began harassing Clark merely because he was identified as white.

In January 2021, a teacher in Cupertino, Calif., told an elementary school math class that students lived in a dominant culture of white, cisgender, educated Christians, and that the culture was created to hoard power. As CACAGNY explained, “a Chinese parent found out about this and organized parents to stop it. It reminded them of Mao’s bloody Cultural Revolution.”

Although Chinese Americans “are people of color and therefore start from the oppressed side of CRT’s binary,” CACAGNY explained that “as we overcome discrimination and achieve upward mobility, we are now White by adjacency” (emphasis original). The Chinese American group claimed that Black Lives Matter rioters with CRT signs assaulted a CACAGNY rally supporting merit-based education.

CACAGNY condemned various forms of sleight-of-hand that allow universities like Harvard and top high schools to select “lower-qualified Blacks” over “better-qualified Asians.”

CACAGNY called on Asian Americans to loudly denounce critical race theory and to fight back.

“We need to recognize CRT through its fraudulent packaging, call it out, ?resist?. Parents need to watch for CRT in schools, talk to each other, and organize, like the Cupertino Chinese parents,” the group argued. “Regardless, parents need to speak with their kids to ?anti-indoctrinate? (or ?un-doctrinate?) them at home. This needs to start early, because CRT indoctrination also starts early. Don’t trust schools and teachers blindly.”

CACAGNY acknowledged former President Donald Trump’s executive order to ban CRT on the federal level, but noted that President Joe Biden rescinded that order upon taking office. That means state and local efforts provide the most promise.

Republicans in various states have filed legislation to ensure that schools do not indoctrinate kids with the 1619 Project. These efforts are likely to grow.

CACAGNY made powerful arguments against Marxist critical race theory without mentioning that this ideology inspired much of the destruction of the Black Lives Matter and antifa riots over the summer. While protesters rightly expressed outrage at the treatment of George Floyd, many of the protests devolved into looting, vandalism, and arson in which lawless thugs — acting in the name of fighting racism — destroyed black lives, black livelihoods, and black monuments.

When vandals toppled a statue of George Washington in Portland, they spray-painted “1619” on the statue. When Claremont’s Charles Kesler wrote in The New York Post, “Call them the 1619 riots,” Hannah-Jones responded (in a since-deleted tweet) that “it would be an honor” to claim responsibility for the destructive riots.

Parents of all races should oppose this dangerous and divisive ideology. Critical race theory pits Americans against one another on the basis of skin color, teaches children a basic distrust of the social elements that make America great, and inspired violent and deadly riots.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/02/27/critical-race-theory-is-the-real-hate-crime-against-asians-chinese-american-group-says-n1428828

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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3 March, 2021

Denmark becomes the first European nation to tell Syrian refugees they must return home, saying the country is now safe

The Scandinavian nation has stripped 94 Syrian refugees of their residency permits after it determined Damascus and the surrounding area as being safe.

Mattias Tesfaye, Denmark's immigration minister, said last month that the country had been 'open and honest from the start' with refugees coming from Syria.

'We have made it clear to the Syrian refugees that their residence permit is temporary. It can be withdrawn if protection is no longer needed,' he said, according to The Daily Telegraph.

His comments came as Denmark extended the parts on Syria considered safe for people to return, to include the southern Rif Dimashq Governorate.

'We must give people protection for as long as it is needed. But when conditions in the home country improve, a former refugee should return home and re-establish a life there,' he said.

Denmark's ruling centre-Left Social Democratic Party has taken a fierce anti-immigration stance in an effort to fend off challenges from parties on the Right.

Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has promised to target 'zero' asylum seekers applying for residence in the country.

While Germany had previously ruled that criminals can be deported to Syria, Denmark is the first country in Europe to say refugees can be returned.

The decision made by Denmark on the Rif Dimashq Governorate now means that a further 350 Syrian residents in the country will have their temporary protection permits reassessed.

This is on top of the roughly 900 refugees from Damascus who had their cases reopened last year.

By mid-January, The Telegraph reports that 94 Syrians from the Damascus area living in Denmark had seen their permits revoked.

This came after a December 2019 ruling by Denmark's Refugee Appeals Board that the conditions in Damascus were no longer sufficiently dangerous to give grounds for temporary protection, without any additional personal reason to give asylum.

But human rights groups have spoken out against Denmark's move to send people back to war-torn Syria.

Steve Valdez-Symonds, Refugee and Migrant Rights Director at Amnesty International UK, told the MailOnline: 'That the Danish government is seeking to force people back into the hands of this brutal regime is an appalling affront to refugee law and people's right to be safe from persecution.

'This reckless violation of Denmark's duty to provide asylum also risks increasing incentives for other countries to abandon their own obligations to Syrian refugees.

'Not only will this put the lives of even more women, men and children at risk. It will add to reasons that cause people to travel ever further afield in search of safety and security for themselves and their family.'

Michala Bendixen, from the rights group Refugees Welcome, said that Syrian refugees in Syria now faced a 'very, very tragic situation', and would be forced from their homes, jobs and studies and into Denmark's deportation camps.

Speaking to The Telegraph, Bendixen said the refugees face years of limbo, and while they will not be forced onto planes, she said Denmark is hoping that the refugees will have no other option other than to return to Syria.

'The government hopes that they will go voluntarily, that they will just give up and go on their own,' she told the newspaper.

Normally, refugees who do not leave Denmark voluntarily or if the country has no repatriation arrangement in place with their home country are accommodated at 'departure centres'.

This is the case for Syrian refugees in Denmark because the country does not cooperate with the Assad regime.

But Denmark's opposition Liberal party, a Right-wing organisation, called for the returns to be accelerated through an agreement with the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad, Syria's authoritarian ruler.

'I can imagine an agreement that will only extend to the framework for sending people back, with some guarantees that you can return without being persecuted,' Mads Fuglede, the foreign spokesperson for the opposition Liberal Party, told Denmark's Jyllands-Posten newspaper.

This, he said, would prevent Syrians from being stranded in deportation camps.

'If Denmark doesn't think that can be done, we should push for dialogue with the Assad regime at EU level,' Fuglede added.

However, he later took to Facebook to say that his proposed deal in no way suggested recognising the 'criminal dictatorship' of Assad.

'I want to stress that the Liberal party does not think Denmark should recognise the Assad regime,' he wrote, adding that the regime is a 'criminal dictatorship which we in no way wish to rubber-stamp'.

'But we should discuss what to do with all the Syrian refugees in Europe as Syria has become safer around Damascus, and how they can safely return to their country,' he explained.

'But it is clear that if this can only be done by recognising Assad, then it can't be done. Then we'll have to find other options.'

Denmark's ruling centre-Left Social Democratic Party has already rejected the prospect of discussing a repriatration agreement with Assad's regime.

'It would send the completely wrong signal that we consider Assad to be the victor in Syria,' the party's immigration spokesman Rasmus Stoklund told Jyllands-Posten.

Foreign Minister Jeppe Kofod has also said the government does not support the proposal.

'It is completely wrong to cooperate with one of history's worst dictators… just to look tough (on immigration). These are people we're talking about,' Social Liberal spokesperson for immigration Andreas Steenberg tweeted.

Denmark is a signatory to the European Convention on Human Rights, which prevents asylum seekers from being deported if they risk torture or persecution in their home countries.

The Syrian civil war, which began on March 15, 2011 as part of the wider 2011 Arab Spring protests and involved a number of different factions including Assad's Syrian Arab Republic, Hezbollah, ISIS and the U.S.-supported the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, displaced millions of Syrians.

Pre-war, the population of the Syrian Arab Republic was estimated at 22 million, with the UN identifying 13.5 million of that number as displaced persons, requiring humanitarian assistance.

The war, along with conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa - among others - contributed to the European Migrant Crisis said to have begun in 2014, which saw millions of migrants flee into Europe.

The majority - 46.7 percent - are believed to have been Syrian.

On Monday, the United Nations investigators said that thousands of civilians had been subjected to 'unimaginable suffering' including torture, sexual violence and death in detention during a decade of conflict in Syria.

The report said that men, women, boys and girls detained by government or pro-government forces had been subjected to inhuman treatment and torture, including rape.

'At least 20 different horrific methods of torture used by the government of Syria have been extensively documented,' the report said.

'These include administering electric shocks, the burning of body parts, pulling off nails and teeth, mock executions, folding detainees into a car tyre and crucifying or suspending individuals from one or two limbs for prolonged periods, often in combination with severe beating.'

Tens of thousands of civilians who were detained are unaccounted for, with no trace of their whereabouts, the UN Commission of Inquiry on Syria found.

The three-member panel's report was based upon more than 2,500 interviews conducted over 10 years and investigations into more than 100 detention facilities.

It found that almost every major party that has controlled territory in Syria since 2011 has committed detention-related violations and abuses.

'Hundreds of thousands of family members have a right to the truth about their loved ones' fate,' said commission chair Paulo Pinheiro.

'This is a national trauma that needs to be urgently addressed by action from the parties and the international community.'

The report stressed that detainees continued to be mistreated in notorious detention facilities even as the conflict approached its 11th year.

'These detainees have endured unimaginable suffering,' the commission said.

'This has been happening with the knowledge and acquiescence of the governments who have supported the different parties to the conflict.

'The fate of tens of thousands of civilians who were forcibly disappeared by Syrian government forces, many nearly a decade ago, remains unknown. Many are presumed to have died or been executed.'

Commissioner Karen Koning AbuZayd said parties to the conflict had, with few exceptions, failed to investigate their own forces, with the focus seemingly on concealing rather than probing crimes committed in detention facilities.

The authors called for all parties in the conflict to stop violations, immediately release certain categories of detainee and allow independent monitoring of detention facilities.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9316633/Denmark-European-country-Syrian-migrants-country.html

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SCOTUS Reiterates Its Open-Door Policy on Churches

It’s a battle, Pastor Mike McClure said, that he “never wanted to be in.” But it’s a battle that God called him to fight — and he knows it. Keeping his church open hasn’t been easy, but then being obedient in the face of controversy usually isn’t. Still, Pastor Mike pointed out, it’s amazing when you do what’s right how “the Lord just shows up.” And late Friday, He wasn’t the only one. The Supreme Court decided to weigh in too — and the Christians of Santa Clara County couldn’t be happier.

It’s been more than three weeks since the Supreme Court ripped up Governor Gavin Newsom’s (D-Calif.) worship ban. And even then, some liberal officials wouldn’t comply. Santa Clara County decided that “indoor gatherings of all kinds remain very risky” and took it upon themselves to keep the churches closed despite what the justices had ordered. If people wanted to visit their churches to pray or take confession, that was one thing — but actual worship services, the county argued, would have to wait.

Fortunately, that all changed this weekend, when six Supreme Court justices directed the last remaining holdout to fall in line. After the ruling in February, the attorneys at Pacific Justice Institute had argued, every house of worship from the Mexican border to Oregon were open at 25 percent capacity — except for Santa Clara County. There, they sit “as an island of tyranny with zero capacity for indoor worship services.” How is that fair, the churches asked? It isn’t, Justices John Roberts, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and rookie Amy Coney Barrett agreed. In their short, unsigned order, they granted the pastors’ requests and pointed out, not so subtly, that the issue should have already been settled. “This outcome is clearly dictated by this court’s decision in the South Bay United Pentecostal Church v. Newsom,” they wrote.

Local pastors celebrated. “My clients — the churches — are grateful to be able to open their doors again this Sunday after having been locked for most of the last 12 months,” the Institute’s Kevin Snider said with relief. “The Supreme Court has once again held that the right to freely exercise ones religion cannot be suppressed by government officials that care to stamp out religion during a pandemic,” FRC’s Legal Research Fellow Katherine Beck Johnson cheered.

At least for now, Pastor McClure and others in the county have seen their courageous stand pay off. As hard as things have been, Mike explained on last week’s “Pray, Vote, Stand,” by choosing to stay open and fight for others to do the same, he’s had the best opportunity ever to share the gospel. “Many people have been coming to Christ… We’ve even had some great conversations with the prosecuting attorneys,” he said. “We’ve just seen [God] at work in the midst of all that’s going on…”

Even in the midst of the churches’ persecution and millions of dollars in fines, he’s watched people’s lives undergo a miraculous transformation. He told the story of a county official, heading up suicide prevention, who was so depressed and discouraged that he was considering suicide. He wandered into Calvary Chapel San Jose one Sunday and not only received Christ — but brought another friend the following Sunday who became a Christian too! “He was actually a part of our court brief saying that this is the best thing that ever happened in his life. And so as much as the church is being [oppressed] this is exactly where God wants us to be — defining His love for a hopeless culture.”

“I just think everywhere we go, when we open the doors, I see people blessed every week. And I told [the court], ‘I can’t think of one person who’s died coming to church, but I can fill this courtroom 10 times over with personal testimonies of people who said they would be in a desperate place [without it]. The fruit of that, the blessing God has brought is evidence of that. Every pastor who’s opened up can… testify of these exact same things. So, I’m telling you: God’s at work — and… if you open your church like we have, you will see it.”

https://patriotpost.us/opinion/78096

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Asians are doing well? Let’s re-label them as white!

So, the woke folk finally figured out how to handle the success of those pesky Asians – just re-label them as white!

In my most recent piece for spiked, I pointed out a very significant problem for those arguing that constant and systemic – rather than sporadic and individual – racism is prevalent throughout modern US society: most of the most highly successful groups in the US are not white. Seven of the top 10 highest-earning American population groups – Indian, Taiwanese, Filipino, Indonesian, Pakistani, Iranian / Persian, and Arab Lebanese Americans – are not of European extraction, and another top 10 group (South Africans) is made up of both blacks and whites.

Even outside the top 10, East Asians in particular do very well in the United States, with Chinese ($85,424), Japanese ($85,007), Korean ($76,674), Hmong ($73,373), Vietnamese ($72,161), Cambodian ($72,038), Thai ($66,763) and Laotian Yanks all coming in ahead of the median white household income of $65,902.

Many such immigrant groups dominate academically as well as economically, with not only Asians but also Nigerians and other West Africans racking up honours across secondary and higher education.

A sizable Washington state school district recently figured out one way to minimise at least the Asian data just given. In its latest ‘equity report’, administrators working for North Thurston Public Schools, an urban district of almost 16,000 students serving much of Olympia (WA) and the Nesqually Indian reservation, simply grouped all Asian students in with whites and compared their academic results with those for ‘students of colour’.

This second category included not only blacks, but also all Hispanic, Pacific Islander, Native American and mixed-race students. As it happens, the gap between ‘whites and Asians’ and students ‘of colour’, in middle-class Washington, was fairly small and had apparently been shrinking over time: it likely would have been narrow or non-existent had Asians not been summarily made white. This positive finding, however, was disallowed by definition.

The North Thurston district’s decision does not seem to have been some one-off aberration. A simple Google search for ‘Asians not POC’ turns up 3,590,000 results, including not merely Reason, Asian Weekly and My Northwest articles on the NTPS case but also multiple unrelated articles with titles like ‘Are Asians Even People of Colour?’. In a serious piece for the Vermont Connection, Janelle Raymundo essentially answers that question ‘Yes’, but also notes that Asians are often stereotyped as not being ‘POC’ because of the ‘model minority myth’ and that issues such as Harvard’s recent affirmative-action battles illustrate separation between Asians and other minority groups ‘in society and higher education’. In a separate Atlantic article discussing ‘the whitening of Asian Americans’, author Iris Kuo points out in her header that recent reverse discrimination suits have ‘aligned the interests of whites and Asian Americans’, at the very least ‘raising complex questions about identity and privilege’.

Highly successful black immigrants – Ghanaians make roughly $5,000 per year more than whites and nearly $26,000 more than African Americans, at the household level – are now facing some of the same questions about racial authenticity. An in-depth 2018 piece in the Philadelphia Inquirer detailed the firestorm that erupted in 2018, after accomplished Nigerian actress Cynthia Erivo was selected to play the role of Harriet Tubman in a flattering biopic. Furious social-media users demanded that an ‘actual’ black American actress be hired for the part, and pointed out that Erivo had previously mocked alleged black American mannerisms, like a ‘ghetto… accent’.

An actual petition to remove Erivo circulated online and garnered well over 1,000 signatures – presumably mostly or entirely from black people living in America. Inquirer author Valerie Russ tied such behaviour to a deeper ‘diaspora war’, noting that many American blacks see African and West Indian immigrants as ‘respected more than black Americans’ while simultaneously benefitting from ‘reparations meant to right [the] evils of America’s past’. Such conflicts have consequences: a major 2013 law review article by Cedric Gordon argues that black immigrants should quite probably not receive affirmative-action benefits at all, thus being treated essentially as white for the purpose of college admissions.

Discomfort with the reality of minority immigrant success can sometimes extend to bizarre extremes. Over the past decade, the New York Times, Gray Lady of American journalism, has run literally dozens of articles describing the paucity of black students at NYC’s few truly selective schools. A typical example of this genre, from 2019, was headlined ‘Only Seven Black Students Got Into Stuyvesant… Out of 895 Spots’. The author, Eliza Shapiro, skillfully discusses how only ‘a tiny number’ of blacks were offered a chance at elite secondary education, the practical and ethical problems with this, and how the number of such fortunate outliers is actually dropping – from ‘10 black students’ in 2018, ‘13 the year before’, and so on.

Not until eight paragraphs in do we stumble upon a caveat that would seem important: no racism whatsoever is involved here, and fairly few whites got into Stuyvesant. The entire student body is selected via a series of high-stakes tests, and was ‘74 per cent’ South and East Asian as of two years ago. Whites, a 61 per cent majority in America if not NYC, had less than 200 slots in the entering class; there were 33 Hispanics.

If this even needs to be said, it is absurd, and rather offensive, to attribute this sort of achievement to ‘whiteness’. Asians, much less Nigerians, are not white. They are not, as a bigot might say of Arabs, ‘kind of white’. These populations are literally high-achieving representatives of the two largest non-white human races. Further, while most black immigrant groups are rather recent arrivals to the US, Asian Americans have hardly had an easy time of it here historically. The Chinese Exclusion Act harshly regulated immigration from the largest East Asian power beginning in 1882, and was not repealed until our alliance with China against Imperial Japan during the Second World War.

During that same war, President Roosevelt incarcerated the large majority of the country’s Japanese Americans in concentration camps, citing military necessity and fear of espionage. Many families lost all they owned. Even today, Americans of Asian descent report acts of racist hostility and aggression at roughly the same rate that blacks do, and East Asians in particular have been the primary targets of a vicious and diverse recent wave of hate attacks. Despite all of this, as I said earlier, both Chinese and Japanese Americans out-earn US whites by almost $20,000. Such success should be celebrated and inspired, not minimised as replica ‘whiteness’.

Interestingly, the reverse trend seems to be occurring, with quite serious people using nonsensical terms such as ‘multi-racial whiteness’ and defining being white as the possession of certain cultural attributes which can lead to success. The Smithsonian and associated National Museum of African American History and Culture recently took some heat for publishing official employee guidelines for talking about race which described ‘individualism’, ‘self-reliance’, ‘the nuclear family’, ‘objective rational thinking’, and ‘delayed gratification’ as white traits. While these seem to be less often mentioned in articles discussing the guidelines, other allegedly Caucasian traits included using ‘the King’s English’, ‘be(ing) polite’ and ‘following schedules’.

All of this, of course, provides would-be wits with almost unlimited opportunities for mockery and banter. Given the primarily pallid composition of Antifa and hard-right riots in the US, jokes about Asians and West Indians out-performing their Caucasian counterparts in the ‘white’ category seem almost inevitable. But there is a better and simpler alternative to absurdity here: stop indulging complete nonsense, and recognise minority success for what it is.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/25/asians-are-doing-well-lets-re-label-them-as-white

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Is being offensive an offence?

In 21st-century Britain, thoughtpolicing is a very real and terrifying thing.

Not for the first time of late, the British constabulary seem to be making up the law as they go along.

Their apparent failure to understand our labyrinthine lockdown laws has led to police officers fining two women for going on a perfectly legal walk, carrying out checks at retail parks for allegedly illicit Easter eggs, and scrambling drones over the Peak District to film miscreants taking their exercise in the open air.

The cops’ desire to go above and beyond actually enforcing the law – to enforcing what they apparently think the law should be – reached new heights in Merseyside this weekend. A group of officers showed up outside an Asda on the Wirral with a digital advan, proclaiming that ‘Being offensive is an offence’, accompanied by a rainbow flag. The stunt was also promoted by the Local Policing Team on social media, as part of an effort to urge LGBT people to come forward and report hate crimes.

Those posts have now been deleted, and after a huge backlash superintendent Martin Earl has had to put out a statement. ‘We would like to clarify that “being offensive” is not in itself an offence’, he said, which was not so much a clarification as the total opposite of what his officers had emblazoned in all-caps, foot-high lettering.

This is not the first time British police officers have given the phrase PC Police a whole new meaning. In 2016, Greater Glasgow Police tweeted: ‘Think before you post or you may receive a visit from us this weekend.’ Next to it was a little graphic, spelling out the word THINK, urging social-media users to ask themselves if their post was ‘true’, ‘hurtful’, ‘illegal’, ‘necessary’ or ‘kind’ before hitting send. In 2018, South Yorkshire police urged people to report ‘offensive or insulting comments’ as part of its ‘Hate Hurts’ campaign.

Perhaps the most bizarre case of this kind of thing was a Facebook post by Gwent Police in 2019. The force posted a mugshot on Facebook of a drug dealer – he had broken his license conditions and they were appealing for information on his whereabouts. After thousands of commenters piled in to mock said drug dealer’s rather unfortunate haircut, the cops warned they may be investigated if they ‘say something about someone which is grossly offensive’.

Why these forces didn’t themselves THINK before they made these sinister statements is worrying. It seems a desperation to mend years of (well-earned) distrust of the police among certain groups – including, apparently, the poorly groomed drug-dealer community – has led some forces to stumble into some almost comically authoritarian behaviour.

But the issue is also the law. Our hate-speech and hate-crime laws are now so expansive that one could almost forgive these coppers their confusion. For instance, ‘being offensive’ may not be a crime as yet, but being ‘grossly offensive’ online can be, under Section 127 of the Communications Act. Under this law, Scottish YouTuber ‘Count Dankula’ was fined £800 for a comedy skit in which he taught his pug to do a Nazi salute; a teenage girl was given a curfew and an ankle tag for quoting ‘grossly offensive’ rap lyrics on Instagram; two teenage boys were arrested for re-enacting the death of George Floyd on Snapchat; and more recently a Twitter troll was arrested for tweeting something nasty about the death of Captain Tom Moore. All were essentially victimless crimes, and these are just the tip of the iceberg.

Then there is the Orwellian phenomena of ‘non-crime hate incidents’. This is where, in the words of the College of Policing, a ‘criminal offence has not taken place, but the victim or any other person perceives that the incident was motivated wholly or partially by hostility’. These are automatically recorded, with no need for any proof or further investigation, and can show up on an advanced background check of the alleged ‘perpetrator’. Harry Miller, a businessman and former policeman, took the cops to court over this when he was investigated by police for retweeting a trans-sceptical limerick. Officers visited his workplace and one called him at home, saying ‘we need to check your thinking’.

Merseyside Police deserve all the flak and mockery they are currently receiving. But when they said ‘being offensive is an offence’ they weren’t as far off the mark as you might think.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/22/is-being-offensive-an-offence/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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2 March, 2021

Adolf Hitler's brutal father 'was a know-it-all who considered himself above others' and often beat his son, historian claims

Hitler was born to be like his father. Each was was ambitious, was obsessed with politics, enjoyed being a 'know-it-all' and thought of himself as above others. So he was simply his father's son. There is now plenty of evidence that <a href="http://jonjayray.com/leftborn.html">political orientation is genetically inherited</a>

Adolf Hitler's father was authoritarian, strongly political, thought of himself as above others and had a lasting impact on his son, a German historian has claimed.

Roman Sandgruber, professor emeritus at the University of Linz, says he made the discoveries after studying a never-before-seen trove of 31 letters written by Alois Hitler to the man who sold him a farm in 1895 - around Adolf Hitler's sixth birthday.

Sandgruber argues that while many historians think of Alois 'as a simple peasant who only sat in the tavern and raised bees', he was in fact a much more complicated and sinister character who enjoyed being a 'know-it-all'.

Alois raised bees because he had ambitions of becoming a 'gentleman farmer' to elevate himself above others, and spent time in the tavern because that was where he could conduct politics, Sandgruber says.

He adds that, while Alois was domineering to his family, he was wary of authority and opposed the power and influence of the church, particularly in politics.

Many of these traits were passed to his second son, Adolf, who - despite acts of teenage rebellion - was deeply affected by this upbringing, Sandgruber says.

Alois was born in 1837 with the surname Schicklgruber in Strones, lower Austria, as the illegitimate son of peasant woman Maria Schicklgruber.

His mother died when he was nine, leaving him to be raised by his step-father's brother Johann Hiedler - a farmer.

After a short career as a cobbler, Alois was recruited into the military as a customs official, where he worked for 40 years - eventually rising to the rank of inspector of customs, where his career stopped because he lacked qualifications to go further.

He had three wives - the first, Anna Glasl-H?rer, was the wealthy daughter of another customs official and 14 years older than him when they wed in 1873.

The pair split, and Alois remarried Franziska Matzelsberger who was 24 years his junior, and gave birth to his eldest son - Alois Jr, Adolf Hitler's older brother.

Franziska died of a lung condition just two years later, after which Alois married 24-year-old Klara Polzl, who was Adolf Hitler's mother and had been his household servant when she was aged 16.

Sandgruber claims that the content of the letters also made him reconsider the Klara, who had previously been caricatured as a submissive housewife.

In one of the letters, Alois Hitler said Klara had the 'necessary zeal and understanding for household economy'.

The family relocated a lot due to Alois's job, with Sandgruber saying that - during the first 18 years of Adolf's life - he lived at 18 different addresses.

Two of these homes were located in Urfahr, near the Austrian city of Linz, and Sandgruber says the family rented one of those properties off of 'probably the richest Jew in [the city].'

He theorises that this might be where young Adolf first experienced anti-Semitism, which other historians trace to his later life in Vienna.

Describing Alois's home life, Sandgruber told Der Speigel: 'He was a terribly authoritarian father and also beat his son Adolf.

'That was widespread at the time, but it is likely that Alois Hitler exceeded the usual limits.'

His punishments towards young Adolf appear to have become particularly intense after his eldest son ran away from home, and was later arrested for being a thief.

As a sign of Alois's influence over his son, Sandgruber notes that the handwriting of the two men are near-identical, suggesting the son copied his father.

Adolf's only significant revolt against his father was to refuse to become a civil servant, and instead to pursue a career as an artist, Sandgruber says.

After four decades in the customs service, Alois retired to Hafeld in upper Austria where, using Klara's money, he bought a 20-acre farm from a roadbuilder named Josef Radlegger - who he exchanged the letters with.

However, after just two years, Alois was forced to sell the property when he was denied a bank loan.

It was Josef's great-granddaughter who found the letters hidden in an attic five years ago, and then handed them over to Sandgruber.

Despite Alois's attempts to turn himself into a 'gentleman farmer', his venture was a failure with Sandgruber saying he greatly overestimated himself and his self-taught education. Just a few years later he dropped dead while visiting a tavern.

'The new finds give a completely different view of the childhood of Adolf Hitler and his father,' Sandgruber concluded

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9291347/Adolf-Hitlers-brutal-father-know-historian-claims.html

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Bill Maher Has Quite the Message for Social Justice Warriors

HBO's Bill Maher has become the voice of reason amongst those on the left. He frequently says what most Americans are thinking: that the Democratic Party and progressives have taken things too far.

According to Maher, "new world liberals" – those who are all about being "woke" – need a "stand your ground law for cancel culture."

"Stop apologizing because I can't keep track of who's on the sh*t list," he said during his monologue on Friday. "... cancel culture is real, it's insane, and it's growing exponentially and it's coming to a neighborhood near you."

The moderate Democrat warned Americans of one overarching reality: everyone is online and everyone faces the threat of being canceled for something they said in the past.

"If you think it's just for celebrities, no. In an era where everyone is online, everyone is a public figure," Maher explained.

He used the example of a Hispanic electric worker in San Diego. The man was fired because someone reported him for holding up a "white supremacy" symbol outside of his truck. According to Maher, he was doing something as simple as "flicking a booger."

"Is this really who we want to become, a society of phony, clenched a**hole avatars, walking on eggshells, always looking over your shoulder without getting ratted out for something that has nothing to do with your character or morals?" Maher asked rhetorically. "Think of everything you've ever texted, emailed, searched for, tweeted, blogged, or said in passing."

The HBO host went on to cite a study saying 80 percent of Americans are afraid to share their political views because of cancel culture.

"Everybody hates it and no one stands up to it," he said. "Because it's always safer to swallow what you really think and join the mob."

The problem with our society is everyone is so afraid of offending one another that no one shares how they really think or feel. Everyone has to walk on eggshells because someone could potentially be offended. But the worst part about the entire thing: some of the people who are the most offended are often white people claiming to stand up for minorities. They're offended on other people's behalf. It's like they're being "woke" so they themselves aren't accused of being on the wrong side of an issue.

Cancel culture has cost us the ability to sit down and have honest conversations, about race, ethnicity, religion and even public policies. Instead, we focus on our differences. And it has created the division we all feel.

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/bethbaumann/2021/02/27/watch-bill-maher-slams-new-world-liberals-for-their-cancel-culture-movement-n2585442

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UK: Book of Common Prayer finds new online audience seeking comfort during Covid crisis

The Book of Common Prayer has found a new audience among young people thanks to online services, with clergy saying congregants are looking for "traditional comfort" in times of uncertainty.

Many churches use the Common Worship service book, published in 2000, as services using the traditional liturgy – modified in 1662 – have been seen as less accessible.

But that has changed during lockdown, with hundreds of churchgoers tuning in to traditional services online. One church in London saw a five-fold increase in the number of congregants opting for a Book of Common Prayer service.

Bradley Smith, the chairman of the Prayer Book Society, said: "The Book of Common Prayer is really making a comeback among young people longing for a taste of something traditional, eternal, and that brings comfort and hope amidst this complete mess that we've lived through.

"The BCP speaks with fresh clarity and authority in these uncertain times, and many people – some new or returning to faith – are finding real peace and comfort in its time-honoured rhythms."

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/26/book-common-prayer-finds-new-online-audience-seeking-comfort/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com TONGUE-TIED)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://john-ray.blogspot.com (FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

https://heofen.blogspot.com/ (MY OTHER BLOGS)

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