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31 August, 2004

PC NOW MAINSTREAM IN BRITAIN

Tory leader Michael Howard's criticism of the 'frivolous faddism' of the 'politically correct brigade' was an attack on straw men.

Howard blustered about mad officials meddling in people's lives and undermining plain common sense and individual responsibility. He mentioned nursery teachers warned against playing musical chairs, school children told that lunchboxes are a safety risk, hot cross buns taken off the school menu lest they offend.

But taking on these extreme examples of 'plain barminess' leaves political correctness untouched. Political correctness isn't the preserve of loony outsiders. Instead, it has become institutionalised at the centre of British public life. PC is essentially an etiquette, a series of codes by which we are supposed to live our lives. We're told to avoid risks, respect difference, live a healthy lifestyle, and above all to avoid offending anyone. The assumption is that people cannot be trusted to make their own choices, and require rules to guide their every step.

The Tory Party is as politically correct as the rest of Britain. After all, it was the Conservative Party that twice sacked MP Ann Winterton for making 'unacceptable' jokes about race. Winterton wasn't being vilified for supporting racist policies, or for a racist speech she had made in the House of Commons. These were jokes at dinner parties. What is this but 'mind your language' censoriousness, policing individual behaviour to avoid causing offence?

Other Tory MPs have also been hauled up for their inappropriate language. Welsh Assembly member David Davies caused a furore when he described the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) as 'institutionally racist' - he claimed that the commission ignored accusations of racism against white people, which he said made it a 'recruiting sergeant' for the British National Party (BNP). The Tory Party swiftly released a statement saying that 'David Davies has apologised if his comments gave a misleading impression. The Conservative Party supports the work of the Commission for Racial Equality'

Howard complained about the ban on the Women's Institute from making cakes for hospitals. But even these 'mad' examples aren't just the preserve of the loony brigade. When earlier this year a school made the headlines for banning homemade cakes from its school fete, it turned out to be the result of guidelines issued by a Tory County Council, Wiltshire, which had advised schools against selling homemade products. At the time, a council spokesman said: 'Schools should avoid selling homemade products which carry a higher than normal risk of food-related illnesses, including cream or other dairy products, mayonnaise, eggs, fish and meat.' ......

Proliferating codes about how we ought to address other people, eat, play sport, or have sex, restrict individual liberty - our ability to decide how, and with whom, we want to live our lives. These codes demand that we suspend our judgement, and merely bow our heads at the suggestion that something is 'offensive'. Don't think, is the motto here.

Codes and etiquette are no way to deal with issues such as racism, sexism or homophobia. That can only happen through open political debate, where bigoted views are held up to scrutiny. PC is just a matter of tiptoeing around, taking care to use the correct phrases - rather than really treating other people as equals.

More here



30 August, 2004

THE CORRECTNESS OF EVIL

Andrew Bolt comments from Australia. Excerpts:

"In polite society today, no one -- not even terrorists or rapists -- is evil. Unless, of course, they're one of us and conservative. Like, say, John Howard. Or a priest. You want examples of this mad conceit of our cultural elite? Here are a few from just this week.....

Let's talk instead about Anu Singh, who served just four years in jail for a murder seven years ago. An Age profile of her this week told how Singh was helped by a "quiet and spiritual friend" -- spiritual? -- to buy the Rohypnol and a hot-shot of heroin she then used to kill her boyfriend.

Singh, now a criminology graduate, says she was mentally ill at the time, and is cross with novelist Helen Garner for having just written a book about the murder without talking to her first. She added, and The Age highlighted this quote: "The unfortunate thing about her book is that it seems to perpetuate this notion that people who commit crimes are bad, are evil."

If it does, it is a rarity -- and may explain why Garner's book is controversial. How hard we have pretended that crimes are not committed by evil people, but by people who have had evil done to them. Indeed, a good Samaritan today would rush to the bleeding man by the road and exclaim, "Heavens! The man who did this needs help."

That's why we read this week of a Queensland rapist who wants to be taken out of solitary confinement, and whose record, in part, is: Rapes a 14-year-old girl, and is jailed. Released, and imprisons a 14-year-old. Rapes two boys in a watchhouse, and escapes and rapes another boy. Released, and commits sex crimes. Released, and is accused of rape. Released, and rapes a girl and two women.

If we readily accepted some people are evil, would this man -- or Victoria's Mr Stinky, Raymond Edmunds -- have been freed so often to rape or to kill?

Another example: Bob Ellis is an author, popular in the Left, who writes speeches for New South Wales Premier Bob Carr. He is now oozing from one ABC studio to the next, selling his book, Night Thoughts in Time of War. Naturally, the far-Left Age ran a hunk of it without gagging, not even over this passage:

"In most war propaganda a bogyman kills or tortures children . . . It's all so vulgar and creepy. I mean I assume Saddam, a ruthless, ambitious fan of Stalin, did bad things and killed a lot of people in his time. But kill them pointlessly? I don't think so. He was too shrewd for that; to shrewd to make enemies needlessly."

This apologia for mass-murder -- "but kill them pointlessly? I don't think so" -- recalls how Age writer Ken Davidson opposed toppling Saddam, saying he might be "a monster", but "arguably . . . Iraq can only be held together by a monster."...

In the studio with him was Terry Lane, a former priest turned ABC star, who wrote during the Iraq war that he wanted "the army of my country . . . to be defeated". Here's how Lane described his comfy chat with Ellis in his Sunday Age column: "I like Ellis . . . Ellis has read that Saddam is fastidious, clean, genial, humorous, patient and 'ready to be contradicted'." [!!!!!]



29 August, 2004

THE "NEVER AGAIN" PROJECT

The postwar "antiracist" response to Hitler has gone off the rails. An email from RPC:

It is inherent in the nature of ALL organisms that they make a distinction between "us" and "them". Sure, there is diversity in where the line is drawn -- some people consider animals to have equal rights, while some others consider that just because a human challenges the dogmas about race and immigration they lose basic human rights of free speech, employability, right to vote for a party of their choice etc. I don't propose to adjudicate between these positions because they are just the attitudes that one or other person has, not some truth of falsehood that can be proved or disproved by anything I write here.

All that matters for the present account is that this universal 'us'-'them' discrimination exists, and that when the economy turns grim, so do the relations between groups who have chosen to live as separate cliques. Euphemistically referring to those cliques as "communities" might make reassuringly cosy reading in the Guardian but it won't save any lives if/when the crunch comes.

So, how is the anti-racist project faring after all these 60 years since 1945? Well, racial discrimination and hostility have not ~quite~ been eradicated yet. (Indeed they have been institutionalised in the Society of Black Lawyers, the Association of Black Housing Associations, and innumerable other instances of "good" institutional racism.). And we have had to redefine free speech as allowing just about ~sort-of~ anything as long as it does not challenge the race-cliquery system euphemised as "multiculturism", and does not say anything uncomplimentary about Islam, however true it may be, and does not tell the truth about IQ scores and etc, etc.

In fact we have had to do a huge amount of censoring of important facts, persecuting of truth-tellers, promoting of liars, and peddling of major misinformations, but of course it is all in the very worthy aim of "Never again!" to Hitler & Co., so of course the ends justify the means. Just too bad if honesty, integrity, democracy, and even impartiality have to be abolished for this purpose of proving the unprovable. And too bad that the whole project flies in the face of reality and is destined to fail anyway.

Wise rational analyses and wise policies rarely come from the extreme emotional desperation such as has characterised the "Never again!" movement. How much success have they shown in healing the 300-year old conflict caused by imposed immigration to Ulster? Or any other of the various unending running sores around the globe? If you don't have a cure, by what right can you insist on proliferating the incurable problem?

Among the immensely important facts which have been censored out by this dogmatic ideology is the comparison between Britain 2004 and Germany 1904. The six million Jews, gypsies, etc, did not just land on Germany from Mars, just at the time that Hitler was growing up. So how did they suddenly get there, into so many higher-class positions? The fact that is never revealed is that for more than a century before, Austria and Prussia (Germany) had had governments highly enthusiastic about encouraging immigration and multiculturism. Indeed, Beethoven's widely admired Choral Symphony strongly highlighted the words: "All men shall be brothers" [i.e. all people shall be siblings], "freedom's magic will unite that which earthly laws divide". And nearly a century later the Jewish Gustav Mahler held the top job of Director of the Vienna Opera and was treated as more than an equal of the Emperor (notwithstanding that of course he was more than an equal). So what is the great difference between Germany then and Britain/Europe now????

Certainly anyone who earns a fortune and buys up loads of property is recognised as a selfish parasitic greedy capitalist, unless they are an immigrant in which case they are evidently "making a huge contribution to the community" instead.

Well, one extremely obvious difference is that the cultural divide this time is VASTLY wider. Not to mention the greater divide of skin-colour. Is there anything positive to counter that? Well, we just happen to have a continuation of economic sunshine. How much longer before the clouds come?

And sure, blame the messenger who tells you the truth, rather than the untruth-teller "friend" whose "kind" words lead you into a deadly trap. If the immigration program had been pursued with openness, honesty, and balance, rather than with forked tongues and shifty agendas, and there had been a prioritisation of building personal relationships rather than imposing of group "rights", there might be something worth rescuing.

But as things stand in 2004, the matter has been very much poisoned by the decades of deceit and preoccupation with impersonal categorising. A measure of the extent of that poisoning is that the basic truths I have mentioned here you will not find published anywhere else, not by the "top 100 intellectuals", the next 100 "intellectuals", nor by any intellectuals or non-intellectuals for that matter. Why didn't those six million Jews see what was coming?



29 August, 2004

WACKY GREEN JUDGES

"In 1983, Dr. Fred Purcell and his brother purchased an interest in 216 acres in Travis County near Austin, Texas, which lie within 1,200 acres, which sit at the intersection of two major highways in a rapidly growing commercial and residential area. The Purcells' property, on which they installed water and wastewater gravity lines, force mains, lift stations, and other utilities, contains a number of caves. In 1988 and 1993, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) declared six invertebrate species that live in the caves "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). These cave bugs (arachnids, arachnids, and insects, some with eyes, some eyeless) range in length from 1.4 mm to 8 mm. Importantly, the cave bugs are found only in parts of Texas' Travis and Williamson Counties. Plus, there is no commercial market for them; nor do people travel to Texas to see them.

In 1989, the FWS told the Purcells that development of their property would violate the ESA because it would constitute a "take" of cave bugs. In 1990, in an effort to alleviate the FWS's concerns, the Purcells deeded six acres, containing caves and sinkholes in which the cave bugs were known to live, to a non-profit environmental organization. But then, in 1993, after Dr. Purcell cleared brush from his property, the FWS told him that he was under criminal investigation for "taking" endangered species. In 1998, after years of stonewalling, which drew a rebuke from a federal judge, the FWS barred the Purcells from using their property.

In 1999, the Purcells and their partners sued... In 2003, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the lower court's decision, ruling that, because "takes" of cave bugs threaten the "interdependent web" of all species, the cave bug's habitat may be regulated....

On May 27, 2004, the Purcells and their partners asked the Supreme Court to hear their case and to announce, whether, in interpreting the Commerce Clause consistent with the vision of the Founding Fathers in the Court's 1995 Lopez ruling, the Court really meant it. On August 6, the United States will respond. The Commerce Clause implications are quite serious given that half of all ESA-listed species exist only in one state and occur only on private land...."

More here

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Many people would like to be kind to others so Leftists exploit that with their nonsense about equality. Most people want a clean, green environment so Greenies exploit that by inventing all sorts of far-fetched threats to the environment. But for both, the real motive is to promote themselves as wiser and better than everyone else, truth regardless.

Comments? Email me or here. My Home Page is here or here. For times when blogger.com is playing up, there is a mirror of this site (viewable even in China!) here

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28 August, 2004

ALL COLLEGES ARE EQUAL TOO, APPARENTLY

"Just look at how some of the winners are responding to this year's U.S. News & World Report college rankings. No sooner did it emerge that Princeton was tied with Harvard for America's best college than the Princeton PR office issued a statement sniffing that rankings "cannot capture the distinctiveness of any institution."....

Others object to the whole idea of ranking. Take Mount Holyoke President Joanne V. Creighton, who wrote this for USA Today in 2001: "Not only should we refuse to give lip service to this specious and oversimplified labeling of our institutions, we should resist labeling our students with numbers, too. There are insidious parallels between the bogus ranking of colleges and universities by U.S. News and the ranking of students by their SAT scores. "

Insidious, indeed. The academy is increasingly reluctant to acknowledge distinctions in merit. This plague of indecision is yielding larger numbers of co-valedictorians and co-salutatorians and often puts students in the dark about how they really stack up against their peers. Grade inflation hasn't helped. "We're all different" has somehow morphed, within the protective confines of the ivory tower, into "we're all equally good." "

More here.



DIVERSITY AND FREEDOM OF ASSOCIATION SUPPRESSED AT UNIVERSITY OF N.C.

But only Christian groups get harassed, of course

Last fall, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill officially "derecognized" the Alpha Iota Omega Christian fraternity. Earlier this week, AIO filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court to get its recognition restored. If derecognition sounds like a dire fate, it is, in a way. The university froze the fraternity's university account, denied it meeting space and cut off its access to student-fees funding (which AIO didn't use in any case).....

Last fall, Jonathan Curtis, the university's assistant director for student activities and organizations, told Sergun Olagunju, AIO's then-president, that his group faced derecognition if it would not agree to the application form's nondiscrimination clause, which prohibits AIO or any other group from using religious affiliation as a criterion for membership. (The fraternity had signed the agreement in previous years, not having given its clauses a close reading.) Because AIO's stated mission is "to train Christian leaders . . . by upholding the Bible's true standard of righteousness"--indeed, it aims to evangelize other fraternities--AIO's members believed that the clause could interfere with the group's character and mission.

AIO took its complaint to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. In response to FIRE's inquiry, the university's chancellor, James Moeser, said that an officially recognized student group must "agree to abide by the university's nondiscrimination policy by allowing membership and participation without regard to age, race, color, national origin, religion, disability, sex, or sexual orientation." As Mr. Moeser explained: "Jewish student groups are open to Christian students; the Italian Club is open to Korean students; and the Black Student Movement is open to white students."

The logic of this policy, at a certain point, defies logic itself. It insists on internal diversity--possibly at the expense of a single group's whole purpose--instead of settling for a diversity of groups. Theoretically, the Black Student Movement must admit a phalanx of white supremacists, even if such whites decided to take the movement over and vote it in a completely different direction. To exist "officially," Muslim clubs must admit Jews and Jewish groups Muslims.....

But the Supreme Court has addressed conflicts very similar to this. In Rosenberger v. Rector (1995), the court ruled that university programs such as the one at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill--granting student fees and meeting space to a wide spectrum of student groups--don't violate government neutrality in the instance that one of those groups is Christian. In Boy Scouts of America v. Dale (2000), the court protected the rights of members of a group from the "forced inclusion of an unwanted person."

Why does University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill wish to make a federal issue out of what amounts to letting seven Christians keep their own money and meet freely on campus? This smacks of a squabble over principle, and it is. The university seeks to subjugate individual rights to diversity, badly construed. It apparently feels challenged when students join together out of interests held in common; therefore, the university forces them to ratify the diversity code or lose their club. Talk about being exclusionary.

More here.

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American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

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27 August, 2004

NURSING DEGRADED BY PC

"One of the first books I ever knew well was Evelyn Pearce's Anatomy and Physiology for Nurses. My mother's copy stood on the family bookshelves... My mother was a professional nurse, and Pearce was her Bible......

My mother regarded this technical knowledge as necessary to understanding the condition of her patients and communicating with doctors. It was, however, secondary to the main business of nursing, which she defined to be: "Keeping a patient clean and comfortable." How quaint! How old-fashioned! That attitude to nursing is now as dead as the dodo, and is in fact Politically Incorrect to boot, implying as it does that nurses (mostly female) were subservient to doctors (mostly male). Aaaargh - the Patriarchy!

The horrible consequences of this revolution in attitudes to nursing, at any rate in Britain, were vividly described in an article by Harriet Sergeant in the November 29 Daily Telegraph. Sample:

[A] staff nurse who had recently qualified complained to me that her training had not prepared her at all. In 18 months of study, she had spent only one and a half hours learning how to take blood pressure and a patient's temperature. On the other hand, a whole afternoon had been devoted to poverty in Russia.... [A]s an Irish sister of 17 years' experience put it: 'No, I have never felt the lack of studying sociology. Kindness and common sense go a long way.' ... The staff nurse had been astonished to discover how little anatomy or physiology her course contained.... For assignments, her tutors had set her work on social issues and ethics - including patient rights. That patients might have a right to a person qualified in how to look after them did not seem to have occurred to her teachers. She said: 'Theoretically, you could go through the whole three years without anyone asking you about bed sores.' She managed to qualify with only a vague knowledge of the bodies soon to be in her charge.

From my own recent hospital experiences (1996, 2002), I don't think matters have gone quite so far in the USA, but they are headed in the same direction. Given current attitudes on personal autonomy, and the current universal belief that any kind of work at a higher level than fruit-picking requires a four-year college degree, preferably one larded with sociological gibberish and PC pseudoscience, I see no prospect of any improvement here, until robotic nurses come online round about the middle of this century...."

Source



26 August, 2004

JUNK FOOD fan Ryan Bayley came from behind to win gold in the men's sprint to continue Australia's Olympic cycling bonanza in Athens

The food Fascists will hate that

The Perth flyer beat Dutch world champion Theo Bos 2-1 in the best of three final to take Australia's cycling gold medal tally to four with a day still to go. The 2002 world keirin winner at the age of 19, Bayley, a former BMX champion, went into today's semi-final in sensational form. He set the fastest time in qualifying and in the team sprint on Saturday recorded what was believed to be the fastest flying lap in history, all fuelled on a diet of KFC and Coca-Cola.

After winning the world keirin championship, Bayley said he lost the drive to compete, believing that he had already achieved everything. Until the Olympics came within sight. "I loved riding my bike but I didn't have the passion to go hard and to train hard," said the man, whose dietician girlfriend has given up trying to improve his diet.

More here



More on Bayley's diet here:

"SPRINT cyclist Ryan Bayley's diet of deep fried chicken and Coke is enough to freak any coach out. Athletes at the Olympic village in Athens have each been given a token for up to 500 bottles of the caffeine-laden soft drink, and although Bayley is yet to reach the limit, he's working on it.

His coach, Martin Barras, was horrified when he learnt of Bayley's eating habits when he signed up and unsuccessfully tried to make him eat greens. "When he first joined I looked at his diet and I just freaked out," Barras said. He immediately ordered a report from a nutritionist and feared the worst. Bayley would be dead by 20, he thought she'd say, but it wasn't that bad.

"The nutritionist came back, she said 'well you know, there's not much variety in there but essentially he's got all his bases covered'," Barras said. "Once in 2000 I tried to force him to eat a salad and that got him violently sick so now if you leave him to his own devices he takes care of himself," he said."



Obesity exaggerations: "Obesity is a genuine problem in America, but our national debate on the subject has become nothing short of hysterical. And around every corner is a hidden agenda. Some pharmaceutical interests, such as the American Obesity Association, are promoting an alarmist view of the problem in order to justify increased government support and promotion of new obesity drugs."



25 August, 2004

OFFICIAL RACISM BACKFIRES IN NUTTY BRITAIN

"Record numbers of white police officers are launching legal actions claiming they have been victimised because of the colour of their skin, The Observer can reveal today. This reflects an alarming backlash against the Metropolitan Police crusade to encourage ethnic minority recruits, with resentful whites now convinced they are the ones being overlooked for promotion.

Yesterday Ray Powell, the president of the National Black Police Association, warned that moves to end the culture of casual prejudice were backfiring. Attacking 'a ridiculous' pressure to hit strict targets for recruiting black officers, Powell told The Observer there was a risk of undeserving candidates being hired to boost the force's record on race.

Around half of the long-running race cases being taken to employment tribunals by Met officers now involve white complainants, according to evidence submitted to the Morris inquiry, which is examining the force's treatment of its staff. The inquiry has uncovered a bitter undercurrent of resistance to change in anonymous interviews with officers, one of whom complained that 'if you are from a [visible ethnic minority] whatever you want, you can have.'

The Met has been under intense pressure to hire more black officers since the Macpherson inquiry into the murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence, which concluded the force was 'institutionally racist'. It has a target for 25 per cent of the force to come from the ethnic minorities by 2009, so that it reflects London's population as a whole.

However, Powell said with current progress that would require up to 80 per cent of new recruits to be black and Asian, 'which is ridiculous'. He would rather see targets reduced and black recruits rising through the ranks on merit, than allowing substandard applicants to be taken on: 'There is a danger of black officers being set up to fail: human nature being as it is, there is a risk that the standards may be lowered.....

Anonymous interviews conducted on visits to London police stations exposed the hidden resentment among white officers. One complained: 'The perception is that black officers are only getting a promotion because they are black'. Others urged the Met to 'slow [its reforms] down a bit and look at white officers. They are forgotten.'

The problem is not confined to the Met, according to the Nottinghamshire branch of the Black Police Association, which told the inquiry that the promotion of one local Asian sergeant prompted six white rivals to sue for racial discrimination...."

More here



GARBAGE COLLEGE QUALIFICATIONS

A college would rather expose its degrees as meaningless than face the fact that there are important inequalities between people

"Two untenured science professors at Benedict College in South Carolina were fired for refusing to adhere to a grading policy that makes effort 60% of the course grade for freshmen. The policy applies only to the first two years of school (the sophomore year applies a 50/50 formula), and then the students are allowed only in the junior year to be "judged strictly on academic performance." The professors, Milwood Motley and Larry Williams, had gone along with it for awhile, but finally could not accept the consequences of the policy.

Motley, who came to Benedict five years ago from the Morehouse School of Medicine, said he was uncomfortable with the concept from the beginning. But he went along with it grudgingly until he was confronted with an academic dilemma: giving a passing grade to a student he believed had not learned the course material. Awarding a C to a student whose highest exam score was less than 40 percent was more than he could tolerate. There comes a time when you have to say this is wrong," he said. This spring, he defied the SEE policy, as did department colleague Williams. Neither has tenure. Williams would not comment for this story. "I did it (awarded grades) strictly on academic performance," Motley said. "They told us to go back and recalculate the grades, and I just refused to do it."

Despite a faculty grievance committee vote to recommend reinstatement, college president David Swinton refused".

More here



24 August, 2004

A BLACK BLOGGER COMMENTS ON HER EDUCATION

"High school was tough. I struggled to find my place in the political thinking sphere. Approximately 85% of my high school was unashamedly Liberal--teachers and administrators included. With the additional barrier of a curriculum steeped in Liberalism, needless to say, voices of dissent were neither appreciated nor accepted. During that time, I struggled with two issues: gay rights and abortion. Although I still held fast to my liberal persuasions, I could not reconcile the idea of abortion being "morally right" and homosexuality being equated to the civil rights movement. I often kept my feelings about certain issues private for fear of being labeled a homophobe, a Republican (a carnal sin) or even worse, being voted "most conservative" in the high school yearbook. It's a sad and petty thing to be concerned about, but this was something most people dreaded and for a black girl, president of the black student group on campus, and long-time crusader for racial justice, that would've been my social demise. Today, "most conservative" is a title I'd wear like a badge of honor. Ironically, I think I was instead voted "Most Outspoken" and "Most Likely to become Famous". They never said famous for what.

Spring semester of my senior year, I began to feel uncomfortable in many of my classes. Take for example "Global Village", a sociology class where on one occasion, we were asked to leave school to protest the WTO which was holding its meetings in Seattle at the time (I'm sure you remember the riots). In fact, my teacher came to school that day wearing a gas mask (these are the idiots my parents paid to educate me). On a different occasion, Planned Parenthood came and spoke to our class about global sterilization and offering free abortions to students. Around that same time, the student government on which I served rallied to get condom dispensers placed in student bathrooms. Since I seemed to be the only one on the council who disagreed with this, I said nothing. I struggled to find my political stance amidst a sea of hot issues with which I could not agree.

By graduation, I was fed up. Having had the privilege of delivering the valediction in front of my class, parents, alumni, the board of directors, and every major donor, I took the opportunity to "come out". I spared everyone the flowery "believe in yourself and follow your dreams" speech and used the platform to tear apart the surface and self-centered liberalistic ideals our generation was facing. It was gutsy but I pulled it off and left many in the audience writhing. I got mixed response. I didn't care. I knew I was never going to see most of those people again.

Things took a turn for the worse when I went to college; the microcosm of crazy philosophies. I'm not sure if it was being greeted on campus by detailed chalk drawings on the sidewalk of stick figures in varying positions of gay sex, along with the words, "Queer Alliance Welcomes All Freshmen", or the signs for the female masturbation club that did it, but Wesleyan University (and some good old-fashioned common sense) single-handedly drove me to have the conservative worldview I profess today"

More here

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American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of other countries. The only real difference, however, is how much power they have. In America, their power is limited by democracy. To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges. They show there the same respect for free-speech that Stalin did: None. So look to the colleges to see what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way. It would be a dictatorship.

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23 August, 2004

"ANTI-RACIST" OFFICIAL POLICIES MAKE RACISM WORSE: THE UK EXPERIENCE

"While everyone in the policy world is talking about the rising problem of racism, the reality is almost the opposite. While there are still serious cases of racial discrimination, on the whole the British Social Attitudes survey shows a dramatic decline in racist attitudes over the past two decades. Of people surveyed today, twice as many view racial discrimination by employers as wrong, as compared with gender discrimination. Indicators such as the rising numbers of interracial relationships suggest a high level of social integration.

But the more public authorities talk about racism and devise anti-racist policies, the more they racialise people's everyday experience. It seems that everyone today is seen as a potential racist who needs to be monitored and every member of an ethnic minority as a potential victim of racism.

Race relations policies are having a dramatic impact in the modern workplace, by encouraging the growth of diversity training throughout the private and public sector.

Participants are instructed in the 'correct' ways to engage with people of other cultural groups and how to tread carefully around their different values. Yet the little evaluation that has been done on diversity training schemes shows their spectacular failure. A recent in-depth study by the Commission for Racial Equality (CRE) on diversity training in the police force admitted that a large proportion of officers felt their training was patronising, and resented the implication that they were closet racists.

Where diversity schemes are introduced in an institution or community, the number of reported racial incidents often rises. The clearest example of this trend is in the USA, where diversity training is already a mature, multi-billion dollar industry populated by consultants and video and guidance literature. Its most notable achievement has been a year-on-year increase in complaints and racial harassment litigation.

Institutions are not the only targets of diversity management. Since the mid-1990s, whole communities have been subject to such policies and practices. The town of Oldham provides the clearest example of what can happen when public authorities take on the role of diversity managers.

In the 1990s, the Oldham police force began a deliberate strategy to raise awareness of racially motivated crimes in the area. Officers were so keen to demonstrate their commitment to dealing with racism that they treated crimes between whites and Asians as racially motivated, even when they were not reported as such.

Oldham was also unique in that the majority of victims of racial incidents were white - 116 out of 204. The local BNP was strongly vilified in the media for pointing to this figure as evidence of white victimisation by ethnic minorities, but it was the police who promoted such explosive statistics in the first place.

Indeed, much of the BNP's opportunistic strategy has piggybacked on the racial divisions flowering under official policy. Long before the BNP started to make an impact, Oldham council's multicultural policies had begun to racialise communities and make divisions seem like a natural fact of life. When white people in Oldham are constantly told in the classroom, the police station and the local library about how culturally different their Asian neighbours are, perhaps we should not be surprised if some of them start thinking that Asian people inhabit an alien world. In the wake of policing and other diversity policies, the perception of hatred between Asians and whites gathered pace. Part of the result was the explosion of racial tension in Oldham in the summer of 2001.

On the night of Oldham's local elections in 2001, all the elected candidates were banned from speaking on the grounds that they might fuel racial tensions. Implicit here is the notion that the people of Oldham cannot be trusted to listen to their elected representatives and debate with each other without descending into fanatical violence. Many residents felt that the decision was patronising and fuelled a sense of disenfranchisement. More importantly, it closed down debate on race issues in Oldham, perhaps where such debate is needed most.

While diversity policies are supposedly introduced in the name of protecting ordinary people they inevitably result in policing and managing them, making race relations worse. Left to their own devices, individuals today are more tolerant and willing to engage with each other than in the past. But as government and policy-makers implement diversity policies in institutions and communities, they risk storing up distrust and anxiety for the future"."

More here



22 August, 2004

RESISTING ATTACK IS A CRIME IN LOONY PC BRITAIN

"A man who admitted stabbing a suspected burglar with a bread knife to protect his wife and child is being investigated for assault. Antonio Caeiro, 33, who said he wounded a 19-year-old intruder at his home in Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, said yesterday that he would do the same again to defend his family.....

The suspected burglar in this case is being treated in hospital where he is described as being in a serious, but stable condition. Mr Caeiro, a pub manager, claimed he stabbed the intruder in the chest and leg with the 12-inch knife in self defence as they struggled in his kitchen before the teenager fled.....

Mr Caeiro claimed he was woken by his 28-year-old wife's screams at 2am on Saturday when the burglar came into their bedroom. He said the 6ft tall intruder had pulled away their 14-month-old daughter's cot from the side of their bed causing the child to fall on the floor and cry. Mr Caeiro said: "This man was kneeling at the side of my bed and started touching the legs of my wife. "My wife woke up screaming and then I woke up. The man then ran downstairs and went out through the kitchen door."

Mr Caeiro, who is 5ft 6ins, rang 999 to report the break-in and was told by police that because the intruder was no-longer believed to be in the house they would be there in 15 to 30 minutes.

He said: "I looked out into my yard and saw a shadow. I was frightened and I grabbed the bread knife from a rack because my first thought was that I had to stop my family being harmed. I opened the back door ... then this man attacked me with a metal bar.

"He hit me on the shoulder and I was knocked back into the kitchen. The door opened and the man tried to come inside. "I stabbed him in the leg and then we ended up fighting and I stabbed him in the chest. "We fought for about a minute outside ... then he managed to break away and run down the alley at the back of my house."

Mr Caeiro said he tried to call the police again, but got no reply. He then called a friend who alerted police officers who arrived three minutes later. The intruder was arrested near by on suspicion of burglary. Police also arrested Mr Caeiro on suspicion of assault, and later released him on bail pending further inquiries...."

More here



NO FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION IN BRITAIN

A post from Samizdata

"Some odious Jamaican singer rejoicing in the name of Beenie Man could be charged under British law with incitement to violence because of the anti-homosexual lyrics of his songs.

I am all for the annoying Peter Tatchell trying (with some success) to cause 'Beenie Man' and his ilk financial difficulties by getting sponsorship deals cancelled as a result of their hate-mongering: that is civil society in action and an altogether good thing... but unless 'Bennie Man' actually starts taking up his bazooka for real, the state has no business suppressing free speech by force.

The essential civil liberties called 'freedom of expression' are rather more important that the actual substance of some idiotic reggae song. Has the culture of liberty really decayed so far that this sort of overarching state control can be tolerated? Freedom of expression for the politically favoured or the mainstream are the easy bits... it is when some detestable half-wit homophobic prat like 'Beenie Man' opens his noisome trap that you discover what the real state of civil liberties in a country is.

Pathetic. It is just a song and the state has no business banning songs."



21 August, 2004

WHY IS ANY MENTION OF RACE SO INCORRECT?

Some observations from Geoffrey Sampson -- who has been a victim of PC attitudes about race. He had the temerity to mention the normal psychological finding that group-loyalty is innate in human beings

"Why should race in particular be a taboo subject? I do not recall anything in the classic philosophies of morality that implies a duty of special regard for other races or for recent immigrants. The injunctions of "political correctness" seem to be arbitrary expressions of passing social fashion, rather than principles recognized as valid throughout the ages.

The answer to the puzzle, I believe, is that what governments want above all - certainly what this New Labour government wants above all - is power. If the population can be made to feel guilty about having feelings which are innate and unchangeable, it will be a docile population. British governments used to be, and ought to be, organizations that are grudgingly allowed a strictly limited and necessary range of powers by voters who decide their morality and way of life for themselves. New Labour is turning instead into a kind of Church which preaches that we are all damned, but which offers chances of partial absolution provided we acknowledge our sinful state and obey the fathers of the Church implicitly. If the ethnic minorities were not so useful as a tool to help the government pull off this trick, I imagine New Labour would lose interest in them. At present it cherishes them, because they enable it to work this strategy against the rest of us with such success.

We have had bad governments in the past. Arguably, it is in the nature of politics that any government is to a greater or lesser extent a bad government - the most one can hope for is "less bad". But this New Labour government is more than just a bad government. Unprecedently in my experience, New Labour is an evil government."



How does displaying a Bible "establish" anything? "U.S. District Judge Sim Lake ruled today that a Bible displayed in a monument outside the Harris County [TX] Civil Courts Building must be removed within 10 days and that the county must pay $41,000 in court costs and attorney fees. Real estate broker and attorney Kay Staley sued the county in federal court to have the monument removed, contending the display violates the First Amendment ban on an establishment of religion."



20 August, 2004

AN ODE TO PLAIN SPEECH

"Once upon a time in America, there were public figures like Barry Goldwater. He was a rock-ribbed conservative Republican. I disagreed with almost all of his political positions and could never have voted for him....

Above all his other qualities, I miss Goldwater's extraordinary penchant for straight talk. He was one of those old-fashioned Americans who absolutely believed that our freedom of speech was there to be used. He understood that clear, declarative sentences, unencumbered by evasive qualifiers and legalese, were the sinewy muscles of our democracy, and like muscles, they grew flabby and weak if they were not used. In his long career (five terms in the U.S. Senate), Goldwater always said what he believed. He didn't submit to the slippery guidance of media consultants, who have turned so many of today's politicians into ciphers. He spoke his mind, even when his blunt opposition to the prevailing New Deal orthodoxies brought forth mockery.

In 1964, when accepting the Republican nomination for president, he spoke a few lines that doomed his candidacy: "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue." More than a few people noted that such words could have been uttered by Malcolm X, that other plain-spoken American. Goldwater lost the election in a landslide.

The result changed our politics. The motto became "safety first." Talking plainly became a kind of gaffe, and gaffes could cause defeat. Political discourse got tamer, slicker, more controlled. But Goldwater did not join in the blanding of America. When Richard Nixon, a fellow Republican, was dodging and dissembling during the Watergate scandal, Goldwater said: "Nixon should get his ass out of the White House today." When the country was addled by the debate over gays in the military, Goldwater said: "You don't need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight."....

Now we live in a country where the collective lack of courage has infected the language itself. We don't demand honesty and accountability from our leaders; not surprisingly, our leaders conclude that we can't handle the truth. Instead of Goldwater's blunt lucidity, we get weasel words.....

Throughout our society, courage is becoming all too rare � and the deficit is of our own making. Today, more than ever, we need people with the courage to tell the plain truth.... Telling the truth, of course, can carry heavy penalties: condemnation, ostracism, slander, the end of careers. Telling the truth often requires the courage of the foot soldier, the police officer, the firefighter.... No democracy can survive if it is wormy with lies and evasions...."

More here



19 August, 2004

RACE ATTACK

Man bashed for 'going out with our women'

By Peter Wex

THREE thugs yelled racial abuse while beating their defenceless victim in an unprovoked street attack, a Cairns court heard yesterday. One of the indigenous assailants later told police the assault on the Caucasian man was "in order to teach him a lesson for going out with our women", public prosecutor Michael Connolly told Cairns District Court. Robert Paul Demaine was set upon while he sat with his Aboriginal de facto wife at a McLeod St bus stop at lOpm on December 14 last year. The victim, who lived with his de facto at a Chinaman's Creek camp for homeless people, was punched to the ground then kicked repeatedly. He later required hospital treatment.

The first assailant punched him twice in the head, shouting "white motherf--ker", Mr Connolly told the court. The next joined in, saying: "Take that you f--king white c--t". Edward Philip Mimi, who faced court yesterday, was the last to join the fray, kicking Mr. Demaine about the head while he lay prone on the ground. He too shouted abuse at the complainant, he called him a 'white f--king p---k'," Mr. Connolly said. Mimi was jailed for nine months after pleading guilty yesterday to a charge of assault occasioning bodily harm in company.

The court heard the incident took place just two days after Mimi, 37, had absconded from an alcohol rehabilitation centre. He was also on probation at the time. Warrants were issued for the arrest of the two other offenders after they failed to front court yesterday.

Defence counsel Jeremy Darvall said Mimi had previously shared a room with Mr Demaine at the Quig]ey St night shelter and did so again after the attack, at which time he had apologised. "Alcohol does seem to have been the problem," Mr Darvall said.

In sentencing, Judge Sarah Bradley said it was an unprovoked, brutal and cowardly attack.

Mimi will be eligible for release in two and a half months because he has already spent 188 days in custody on remand.

The above article appeared in "The Cairns Post" of Friday, August 13, 2004, p.1 but I could not find in on the news.com.au site, where it should have appeared, so I have posted it in full above. If the racial roles had been reversed, the offender would no doubt have got nine years instead of nine moths



IS ISLAM BECOMING AN ESTABLISHED RELIGION IN THE USA?

If not quite established yet, it is certainly privileged

"We've been following a most intriguing story out of Orlando, Fla., where a woman says she was fired from her job because she ate a bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich at work, offending Muslim employees.

According to the Orlando Sentinel, Lina Morales has filed a religious-discrimination lawsuit against Rising Star Telecommunications, saying she lost her administrative position because she violated a policy banning pork and pork products from the workplace.

She says the rule "constitutes religious discrimination because it is based in Islamic law for the benefit of some Muslim employees who were offended by the presence of pork � and at the expense of non-Muslims such as Morales, who is Catholic," explains the newspaper. "I felt I was being discriminated against because I was not Muslim. I wasn't trying to make somebody else eat it," the woman reasons.



THE DESTRUCTION OF BRITISH EDUCATION

He led British sailors to a stunning victory over the powerful Spanish Armada in 1588. He is renowned for his naval cunning. He is a true British hero. He is Gandalf.

Well, not really. But in the minds of one out of every 20 British young adults, J.R.R. Tolkien's white-robed wizard has replaced Sir Francis Drake. This and other wildly wrong answers in a recent survey here about British history (half of 16- to 34-year-olds did not know that the Battle of Britain took place during World War II), point to a staggeringly poor grasp of cultural heritage.

The survey is prompting noisy accusations about the dumbing down of the nation that gave the world such luminaries as William Shakespeare, Charles Babbage, and Stephen Hawking.....

Educators point to failings in the school system. History courses, for example, focus too heavily on the 20th century, they say, neglecting earlier periods. Shakespeare students often do not have to read the full play - they just watch a video and read a few scenes that may come up in examination questions.

Exams are a pale imitation of the tests set 20 or 30 years ago, according to teacher Chris Brotherton. "Exams are getting easier," he says, anticipating another set of inflated results when marks are awarded for 16- and 18-year-olds later this month. "Because we have 45 percent going on to university now, compared to 15 percent a generation ago, it has to be easier to get an 'A' grade."....

A surge in university admissions suggests that youth see value in acquiring knowledge. But Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, says professors complain that the academic standard of incoming students "is nothing like what it was 10 or 15 years ago."... "Undoubtedly, traditional standards in this country have dropped markedly over the last 20 or 30 years and a lot of it we would put down to the cultural change in the education system where content has been thrown out in order to allow more young people to achieve success," Mr. Seaton says.

More here



18 August, 2004

"The Rape of the Masters: How Political Correctness Sabotages Art" by Roger Kimball

Book review excerpts:

"Colleges and universities used to teach art history to encourage connoisseurship and acquaint students with the riches of our artistic heritage. But now, as Roger Kimball shows in this witty and provocative book, the student is less likely to learn about the esthetics of master works than be told, for instance, that Peter Paul Rubens's great painting "Drunken Silenus" is an allegory about anal rape. Or that Courbet's famous hunting pictures are psycho-dramas about "castration anxiety." Or that Gauguin's "Manao tupapau" is an example of the way repression is "written on the bodies of women." Or that Jan van Eyck's masterful Arnolfini Portrait is about "middle-class deceptions . . . and the treatment of women." Or that Mark Rothko's abstract "White Band (Number 27)" "parallels the pictorial structure of a pieta." Or that Winslow Homer's "The Gulf Stream" is "a visual encoding of racism."

In The Rape of the Masters, Kimball, a noted art critic himself, show how academic art history is increasingly held hostage to radical cultural politics-feminism, cultural studies, post-colonial studies, the whole armory of academic anti-humanism. To make his point, Kimball shows how eight famous works of art (reprinted here as illustrations) have been made over to fit a radical ideological fantasy. Kimball then performs a series of intellectual rescue operations, showing how these great works should be understood through a series of illuminating readings in which art, not politics, guides the discussion.

The Rape of the Masters exposes the charlatanry the fuels much academic art history and leaks into the art world generally, affecting galleries, museums and catalogues. It also provides an engaging antidote to the tendentious, politically motivated assaults on our treasured sources of culture and civilization".

More here



HARE-BRAINED DANISH DIET DICTATORS

Danish health officials yesterday banned the cereal company Kellogg's from adding vitamins and minerals to its famous food brands, saying they could damage the health of children and pregnant women. The company, which expressed incredulity at the decision, had hoped to enrich 18 breakfast foods and cereal bars with iron, calcium, vitamin B6 and folic acid, just as they already do in many countries including Britain.

But the Danes said the manufacturer of Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies and Special K wanted to include "toxic" doses which, if eaten regularly, could damage children's livers and kidneys and harm foetuses in pregnant women....

Chris Wermann, director of corporate affairs for Kellogg's in Europe, said: "Most of us are a bit incredulous." The extra B6 and folic acid accounted for a quarter of a person's daily allowance, and the calcium and iron just 17%, he said. "It is quite clear from nutritionists that diets around the globe are deficient in vitamins and minerals. We are quite worried about the Danish authorities challenging this. We don't believe there is any danger at all. There is every reason for people to have these." He added that details of added ingredients were labelled clearly on products and were well within recognised international guidelines....

The Food Standards Agency in the UK said: "We are advising people to continue to eat breakfast cereals as part of a healthy balanced diet. Our dietary surveys show people's diets in the United Kingdom, which include fortified breakfast cereals and snacks, are well below the recommended maximum level of vitamins and minerals."

More here



17 August, 2004

BRAVERY INCORRECT

Rather than help someone in imminent danger of their lives, you are supposed to make a phone call! One only hopes that the bastard who said that gets beaten up himself one day so he can see how much good phone calls do. Excerpts:

"Two Vancouver men have thrown themselves in front of flailing fists or piercing bullets in recent weeks to save women being attacked, but psychiatrists fear their heroism could spark a dangerous copycat phenomenon that may get someone killed.

However, one man who hauled an injured woman into his car as her attacker fired bullets, blowing out a window, said it's a sad fact that people are afraid to help each other. In a very rare move, others on the scene drove into the storm of bullets trying to run the shooter down once they saw Don Miller intervene in the Monday morning drama....

Miller's act of bravery came just a week after a 20-year-old man stepped into a fight between a man and a woman outside a gas station. Kevin Venn was severely beaten about the head and face for helping the woman escape and is struggling through painful reconstructive surgeries.

One of the men at the scene with Miller said the Venn story flashed through his mind when he came upon the shoot-out in suburban Port Moody, B.C. "He said he thought of the reaction of that Good Samaritan and how his actions saved that young woman. He wouldn't have been able to live with himself if he didn't try to help," said Brian Soles, a spokesman for the Port Moody Police....

That worries Kulwant Riar, a forensic psychiatrist. "There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity. It's not a very good idea for civilians to intervene when dealing with criminals. We don't need the general public becoming vigilantes, somebody's going to get hurt," he said. Riar urged authorities to caution people to stand back and instead make a phone call right away.....

Miller could have been partially inspired by his frustration over the Brianne Voth case. The Port Coquitlam teen was murdered and neighbours ignored her cries for help. "I used to run in the area she was found and it astounds me that people at that time could not do what seemed so obvious, to examine what was wrong at the time," Miller said. "I come from a community where people stick their head out the door when house alarm goes off. It's who we are and what we do. It's who we all should be." "

More here



STOREFRONT CHURCHES INCORRECT

"Some leaders in this Bible Belt town are saying they've had enough of storefront churches popping up downtown and are pushing an ordinance to stop new churches from opening and keep others from expanding. The town manager here says the churches don't do much to help breathe life into the town six days a week. "Storefront churches only generate foot traffic for a few hours on Sunday," town manager Scott Moulder said. The intent isn't geared to restricting churches as much as it is to attracting a variety of businesses, Moulder said. "People are more likely to shop in a particular area where there's more variety."

Clover Town Council postponed making a decision on the issue earlier this week and will take the issue up later this year. The proposal may not get far. "The whole thing is unconstitutional," said Donald Aiesi, a Furman University political science professor who specializes in constitutional law. "It is not within the powers of a city or town to restrict the practice of religion for economic reasons."

"It seems that the church alone is being singled out," Jerry Hibberts, pastor of East Clover Church of God, said. "No other nonprofit or civic groups are being added as part of this proposed new amendment." Hibberts said the churches are good for business. His 60-member church has three weekly combined services that draw 200 people downtown and they use local florist, pizza parlor, bank and auto stores. "We are doing the merchants downtown just cause," Hibberts said".

Source



HARD WORK INCORRECT

In Britain, laziness is politically correct. One must admit that Australians have always seen the British as work-shy

"A businesswoman has been banned from asking for 'hard-working' staff in a job ad because it discriminates against the lazy. Beryl King was told by a Jobcentre that her advert for warehouse workers discriminated against people who were not industrious.

Beryl, 57, told the Daily Mirror: "I couldn't believe my ears. Has our world gone mad? "I've been running my business for 27 years and it's getting harder to find people who want to do a fair day's work for a fair day's pay. How long before someone says you can't pay people for working because it discriminates against those on benefit who are paid for not working?" Beryl, who owns two job agencies in Totton, Hants, offered 5.42 pounds an hour for "warehouse packers who must be hard-working and reliable".

The Southampton Jobcentre is investigating. A spokesman said: "Words such as 'hardworking' can be accepted if used with a clear job description.""

Said stunned Beryl King, the woman who filed the ad, "If I advertise for a typist am I discriminating against people who can't type?"

(See here and here)



16 August, 2004

EVEN CHILD-RAPE IS OK IN THE PC WORLD

The Bracks government in the Australian State of Victoria is Australia's most Leftist

"A drunken chef who broke into the home of a sleeping woman and raped her twice will remain free after the Victorian Office of Public Prosecutions dropped its fight to have him locked up.

And his 22-year-old victim feels she is being blamed because the rapist is free. The victim, who wishes to be identified only as Sigrid, was told late on Friday that the OPP would not be appealing to the High Court for a custodial sentence. She was told by an assistant to the Director there were many reasons for the OPP's decision. The assistant would not elaborate on the reasons except in person.

The OPP's decision not to appeal guarantees Sims his freedom and marks the end of the road for the victim and her sympathisers in their campaign for justice..... Despite being convicted of two counts of rape, indecent assault and aggravated burglary, in April Sims walked away from the County Court in Melbourne with a suspended sentence and the best wishes of presiding judge Tony Duckett....

This month the OPP decided not to appeal against a County Court decision to grant the rapist of a seven-year-old girl a suspended sentence. In that case the pedophile pleaded guilty after the victim's mother was wired up to record his confession...."

More here



HORRORS! PARENTS DON'T THINK ALL KIDS ARE EQUAL

And a Leftist State government (NSW) in Australia has had to come to terms with that

"Selective schools are public education's most effective weapon against the drift to the private sector. But the proliferation of these academic hothouses is sucking the lifeblood out of the greater public system, critics argue, by draining local comprehensive high schools of their best and brightest.

NSW has embraced the selective school system. In 1988 there were 12 selective high schools, including five with a specialist bent such as agriculture and music, out of a total 381 government high schools in the state. By 2002 there were 28 academically selective or partially selective high schools, two performing arts schools and 30 specialist schools that selected some students, the Vinson inquiry into public education found.

At the state's recent schools expo in Sydney, the principal of Riverside Girls High School, Judy King, spent two days manning the Department of Education's booth. "The only question I was asked ... was 'how can I get my kid into a selective school?' It drove me bats. When I said 'I'm here to talk about all types of the government system, comprehensives and so on', they weren't interested."....

This year, the State Government added three more schools to its growing list of comprehensives offering selective streams. And principals like Sydney Secondary College's Mark Anderson need no convincing that such programs are an effective weapon against the private school juggernaut. At his previous school, enrolments had dropped from 1145 to 484 in a decade....

But when Mr Anderson left in 2001 the school had grown to more than 600, simply through the introduction of a gifted and talented program."

More here



MORE ON BRITAIN'S "NAZI" HYMN

Oz Conservative has some good comments:

"I looked at the words of the hymn, but couldn't find much that might be considered objectionable. It's true that part of a line does mention vowing to your country a "love that asks no question". If the line simply means "My loyalty is so deep that it is never brought into question" then there's no problem. It's only if the line is read as meaning "My love for my country means I never question what it does" that it becomes an expression of a false, mindless loyalty.

The nationalism of the poem is also a little overwrought, but this is understandable given it was written at the end of World War One, when a generation of British men had indeed made tremendous sacrifices for their country.

Which brings us back to the Bishop of Hulme. He says that "it is dangerous for a nation to suggest that our culture is somehow superior to others." This comment reveals the influence over the bishop of a secular liberal philosophy.

For liberals, society is a collection of competing wills. Social dynamics are therefore understood in terms of a "will to power" of some groups over others. So, for the bishop, an expression of nationalism can only be understood as one group, the English, asserting a right to dominance, a right to superiority, over another group, the non-English.

But this liberal understanding entirely misses the point of the hymn. The hymn stresses very clearly that national feeling is not based on a will to power but on a love of country. In fact, the hymn makes no mention at all of English superiority, and could easily be adopted by any other national group. And far from urging national dominance, the hymn actually calls for gentleness and peace.

The problem is therefore not the nationalism of the hymn but the liberalism of the bishop. The bishop is conceiving things too much in bad faith; he needs to trust better the nationalism that is based on a genuine love of one's own country and people".



And PID points out that the full version of Australia's national anthem would have our Leftist Bishop frothing at the mouth!



15 August, 2004

PATRIOTIC HYMN INCORRECT

When a Church of England Bishop thinks patriotism is "Nazi", it shows how far that church has lapsed into intellectual and moral decreptitude

"A Church of England bishop has called on churches to ban the singing of I Vow to Thee, My Country, one of the best known hymns, because he says it is heretical and has racist overtones. The Bishop of Hulme, the Rt Rev Stephen Lowe, said the hymn's popularity was a symptom of a "dangerous" increase in English nationalism which had parallels with the rise of Nazism. Its associations with the British empire were also questionable in a multi-faith, multi-cultural society.

The patriotic hymn, which is set to music from Gustav Holst's The Planets, is a popular choice for Remembrance Day services and other national occasions. It was sung at the wedding of the Princess of Wales, who said it had been a favourite of hers since her schooldays. It was also sung at her funeral in 1997. A version was adapted as the anthem for the Rugby World Cup.

The bishop said the words, written by Sir Cecil Spring-Rice in 1918, were "totally heretical" because they suggested that people should pledge their allegiance to their country before God...

Bishop Lowe criticised the hymn in Crux, the Manchester diocesan newsletter. "I quoted it as one example of my concerns about growing nationalism," he told the Telegraph. "While I am proud to be English, it is dangerous for a nation to suggest that our culture is somehow superior to others.""

More here.



CONSERVATIVE PREACHING INCORRECT

But Leftist preaching in old-line churches OK

"A fight is erupting this election season between conservative churches and liberal watchdog groups that are going to the IRS and accusing ministers of violating the law if they speak out about political issues and candidates. 'Right now, it's very one-sided,' said Jay Sekulow, chief counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), a conservative legal-action group. He said the liberal Americans United for Separation of Church and State (AU) -- led by the Rev. Barry W. Lynn -- has been 'very aggressive' in going after churches 'that are conservative in their leanings.' But AU has 'looked the other way,' with a few exceptions, when it comes to more liberal-leaning churches, Sekulow said. The Rev. Jerry Falwell calls it a 'scare tactic' designed to prevent evangelical ministers from mobilizing millions of Christians behind President Bush."

More here. See here on the Leftist religion of the old mainstream churches.



SOME LONG-OVERDUE GOOD SENSE FROM THE LEADER OF BRITAIN'S CONSERVATIVE PARTY

"There are many factors that have contributed to the breakdown of law and order in Britain today. The police, the courts and the prison service are simply picking up the pieces of other people's failures. As a society, we are in danger of being overrun by values that eat away at people's respect for themselves, each other, their homes and their neighbourhood.

Most damaging of all has been the dramatic decline in personal responsibility. Many people now believe that they are no longer wholly responsible for their actions. It's someone else's, or something else's fault - the environment, society, the Government. And while responsibility has declined, rights have proliferated. "I've got my rights" is the verbal equivalent of two-fingers to authority.

There is now a palpable sense of outrage that a cult of human rights has tipped the balance of justice in favour of the criminal and the wrong-doer - rather than the victim and the law-abider. Conservatives will stand up for the silent, law-abiding majority who play by the rules and pay their dues. We will put their rights first.

Political correctness and paperwork are undermining our police. The police can do their job properly only if they are able to intervene, to confront and to take action against crime and anti-social behaviour. They cannot police our streets if they have one hand tied behind their back, or if paperwork keeps them chained to their desks. So great is the deluge of paperwork that, for every extra police officer Labour has recruited, almost one extra bureaucrat has had to be employed. So great is the number of pen-pushers that they will not fit into the new Home Office that Labour is building."

More here



14 August, 2004

ILLEGAL TO CONDEMN ISLAM IN UK?

"POLICE today launched an investigation into comments by a Norwich religious leader branding Islam "an evil religion".

The Rev Dr Alan Clifford, pastor of Norwich Reformed Church, yesterday told the Evening News he backed the views of BNP leader Nick Griffin, who was shown in a TV documentary telling party members Islam was a "vicious, wicked faith."

His comments sparked outrage among fellow religious leaders and anti-racist groups. The Evening News was today contacted by the Race Crime Unit of Norfolk police to provide further information about Dr Clifford's comments, after saying they were concerned his remarks could damage "community cohesiveness". Abraham Eshetu, diversity officer at Norfolk police, said: "We will be investigating the comments made by Mr Clifford."

Dr Clifford had told the Evening News: "The views about Islam made by Nick Griffin gained widespread publicity and I happen to believe what he said in this case was correct. The only antidote to this evil religion is the pure Gospel of Jesus Christ."

The pastor, whose church meets at Eaton Park Community Centre and is an associate member of Affinity, formerly the British Evangelical Council, was today unrepentant but insisted he was not racist. "I believe in free speech and free association of religion," he said. "I have no objections to Muslims worshipping and associating but I think a point does come when it's very difficult to tolerate people whose religious motivation in its pure form leads to your annihilation.""

More here



IMMIGRATION CORRECTNESS IN ARIZONA

"The only people saying what they really mean about immigration are the lunatics on the Internet. They say, as a Phoenix man wrote to me recently, "If we don't do something drastic the Spanish speakers to the south - Hispanics, Latinos or whatever is PC to call them this week - are going to overrun our country and take control."

That is exactly what Proposition 200, the so-called "Protect Arizona Now" initiative, is all about. That's not what everybody says it's about, but that's only because speaking your mind in a completely honest fashion is so politically risky these days that nobody does it.....

So, the Protect Arizona Now people say that their initiative is an effort to keep undocumented workers from voting (which rarely happens and is illegal) and from receiving government services that they aren't qualified to receive (which also is illegal). What they really mean is that if we don't do something drastic the Spanish speakers to the south are going to overrun our country and take control. Phrasing it that way would sound too paranoid and prejudicial, however....

Still, a recent poll found that roughly 75 percent of the people in the state supported Proposition 200. If asked, most would say that they want to protect the sanctity of the voting booth and to save tax dollars. When translated from politically correct English into honesty, it's the same as saying, "If we don't so something drastic the Spanish speakers to the south are going to overrun our country and take control."

Likewise, just about every major elected official in Arizona has come out against Proposition 200. Republicans and Democrats. From Gov. Janet Napolitano to Sen. John McCain. But while they have expressed their opposition, none of them currently is leading the charge against it.

They claim to be waiting to see if the initiative will gather the necessary signatures to get on November's ballot. What they mean is that they are trying really hard not offend that big group of people in favor of the proposition, while also trying to remain friendly with our Spanish-speaking friends from the south, just in case they actually do overrun the country, take control and boot them out of office......

People will vote for it because they're afraid and because the politicians in office haven't dealt seriously with border security or immigration...."

More here



13 August, 2004

BUREAUCRATIC BRITAIN

Paedophilia as a ludicrous excuse for dictating to people

Fairlands Valley Park in Stevenage, Herts, in the UK told a man that he could not take a photograph of his OWN SON at a public swimming pool without first getting permission from everyone who was at the pool at the time. "It's absolutely ludicrous - red tape gone mad. What bureaucratic numbskull trying to justify his fatcat wage thought that one up?" asked angry dad Barry Jackson after being told by a lifeguard that taking photos at the pool was banned. "What next? Will they ban cameras on beaches or in parks?"

The pools are owned by Stevenage Borough Council but run by Stevenage Leisure Ltd. The company defended the rules, designed to stop paedophiles. A spokesman said: "It is our duty to protect children using the paddling pool."

Photographing your own kid in public is paedophilia? If that is their idea of paedophilia you can be sure the real paedophiles are cruising free

UK Sun 3-Aug-04. (Via Jerry Lerman).



DISHONEST POLITICAL VOCABULARY

Just some excerpts from an excellent article on the way political jargon is being used to mislead:

"Investments in . . ."

Politicians are not known for candor. So it is not surprising that pork-barrel projects are often referred to as "investments." The terminology of investments -- with its suggestion of stock market-like returns -- eases the minds of taxpayers. Thus, elected officials trumpet "major new investments in . . . education, Medicare, health care, homeland security, energy independence, the environment, compassion, and the unemployed." It is a vain struggle to remember the last time you heard a politician say that the government should increase "spending." In our feel-good society, spending is continually targeted for cuts, while so-called investments enjoy funding increases -- even from that great mass of officeholders who describe themselves as "fiscally responsible."

"Undocumented Worker"

Often used to describe illegal immigrants, the term "undocumented worker" brings to mind the quip about the Holy Roman Empire: it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. Indeed, millions of supposedly undocumented workers do possess documents (albeit fraudulent or expired ones), and a significant proportion of these individuals are not workers, but rather criminals or scammers looking to game the system. Politicians use the term to avoid criticism and to dodge meaningful debate, while the media prefer this politically correct platitude over accuracy. As Edward Abbey has written:

The perfectly correct terms 'illegal alien' and 'illegal immigrant' can set off charges of xenophobia . . . [so] [t]he only acceptable euphemism, it now appears, is something called undocumented worker. Thus the pregnant Mexican woman who appears, in the final stages of labor, at the doors of the emergency ward of an El Paso or San Diego hospital, demanding care for herself and the child she's about to deliver, becomes an "undocumented worker."

"Nondiscrimination" . . . "Equal Opportunity" . . . "Affirmative Action"

Contractors and institutions that receive federal funds are required to include "equal opportunity" clauses in their contracts with the government. This sounds quite reasonable until one considers the government's Orwellian definition of equal opportunity. According to the Department of Labor, "equal opportunity . . . requires . . . affirmative action." Thus, businesses are responsible for developing a "utilization analysis" and hiring based upon "the presence of minorities and women having requisite skills in an area in which the contractor can reasonable [sic] recruit." The non-Orwellian term for such a policy is "quota."...

The government's "nondiscrimination" policies appear to be motivated by the same logic as the U.S. Supreme Court's Orwellian plurality opinion in the seminal Bakke case: "In order to get beyond racism, we must first take account of race . . . . And in order to treat some persons equally, we must treat them differently." Or, as Orwell put it in Animal Farm: "All animals are created equal, but some animals are more equal than others."



12 August, 2004

AUSTRALIANS ABANDON LEFT-DOMINATED GOVERNMENT SCHOOLS IN DROVES

The Leftist influence in Australia's public schools makes them a tolerant, accepting, pleasant, learning environment for kids, right? Australian parents are voting with their feet over that one. And escaping all the Leftist propaganda is only part of it. Parents know the importance of discipline and have this strange idea that their kids should not have their learning disrupted by having behaviour-problem kids thrust into their midst

"A demand for better discipline and a hankering for tradition, smart uniforms and moral values are driving parents out of public education and into private schools, exclusive research for the Herald reveals. School culture - not academic results - is the main reason parents select private schools, according to the study by the Australian Council for Educational Research, based on a national poll of parents of high school students.

"One factor stood out: the extent to which the school embraced traditional values to do with discipline, religious or moral values, the traditions of the school itself, and the requirement that a uniform be worn," the study says. Concern over discipline is the reason a third of the public school parents surveyed would switch their children to private schools if they could afford the fees. "This suggests that if private education was more affordable, the drift away from government schools would continue," concludes the study, Why Parents Choose Private or Public Schools.....

In the 10 years to 2003, enrolments in public schools increased nationally by 1.2 per cent, compared with a growth spurt of 22.3 per cent in private schools. Each year, the NSW public education system loses about 5000 existing or prospective students to private schools.

The fastest growth is in non-government high schools. Every capital city, except Darwin and Hobart, has at least 40 per cent of students in private secondary schools. In Sydney, the rate is 41.7 per cent.....

"Traditional values are probably the best predictor of the people wanting to select a non-government school. That's what they're after." Professor Masters said the mantra of discipline for choosing private schools was often a general comment about the "culture of the school being focused on the core business of learning". Parents do not want their children's study interrupted by disruptive students."

More here



MORE COMMENTS ON THE "HEDGE CRISIS"

Santa Monica, California, is at it again. The city council recently voted to continue the 42-inch height limit on hedges and fences in residential front yards. The regulations for the back and sides are subject to a more-relaxed eight-foot limit. The purpose of these landscaping regulations, according to Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown is "to maintain the feel of the community." He described his experience passing houses with tall hedges and fences as "driving by a series of compounds....

Why must the residents of Santa Monica be forced to be friendly anyway? Shouldn't people have the liberty to be unsociable or to live as hermits? The Santa Monica city council obviously believes that people have the right to 'friendliness' and 'neighborliness' and an obligation to provide these to others. While it would be nice if everybody were neighborly, violations of property rights are not necessary to achieve this."

More here







11 August, 2004

LEFTIST McCARTHYISM AMONG AMERICAN LAWYERS

Comment from Wayne Lusvardi, Pasadena, California USA:

The American Bar Association has issued an announcement that it is considering barring judges from belonging to any groups that oppose same sex marriage. Apparently, it smacked of MacCarthyism for the U.S. government to hound people after World War II for their communist affiliations (given the Gulags and mass starvations that resulted from communism), but it is not MacCarthyism to ban group affiliations for those who are against same sex marriage. This demonstrates the moral inversion of the Left. This also proves John O'Sullivan's First Law that groups not expressly conservative will over time gravitate to the far Left.



"HEDGE CORRECTNESS" (!) IN CALIFORNIA

What won't they regulate next?

"Santa Monica recently learned how deeply rooted people's passions for hedges can be after building officials cited some notable residents on a ritzy rue of multimillion-dollar homes overlooking a canyon and the Pacific Ocean. Their crime: towering vegetation. Their punishment: a potential fine of $25,000 a day. Their reaction: Outrage. Thus did Santa Monica come head to hedge with one of today's urban design conundrums: Should residential neighborhoods be more open to the outside world? Or do today's tense times give residents the right to fence themselves in?.....

Complaining that the city had gone too far, one of those cited - Bobby Shriver, a Yale-educated lawyer who is Maria Shriver's older brother (and, yes, that makes him Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's brother-in-law) - urged his neighbors to rise up. And rise up they did, converging on City Hall by phone, by e-mail and in person. As a result, the city attorney temporarily halted enforcing the citations, and the City Council decided to take a fresh look at the decades-old ordinance governing fence and hedge heights.

"It's a thorny issue," said Katie Spitz, a landscape architect with Katherine Spitz Associates in Marina del Rey. Indeed, urban designers say the issue strikes at the heart of the age-old conflict between property owners' rights and the public interest. At its most basic, it is a clash between America's libertarian and communitarian impulses. It also helps explain the boom in gated communities, urban designers say. As expressed in many a city's general plan, the aim is to achieve an "urban village as a place that's densely occupied but still has a high degree of social interaction," said John Chase, urban designer for the city of West Hollywood. "Part of that is facilitated by visibility. You can see the world going by, and the world going by can see you.".....

A local ordinance dictates that hedges and fences be no higher than 3 1/2 feet in front of houses and no more than 8 feet in sideyards and backyards. Over the decades it had been sporadically enforced. But the City Council, prompted by complaints, recently encouraged building officials to crack down on a variety of code violations, especially bootleg apartment units. This led to what some residents call the hedge police. In late April, the city sent Shriver a "compliance order," granting him 30 days to cut his front, side and rear hedges or to schedule a hearing. Although the hedge in front of his Monterey colonial house on Adelaide Drive, on the city's northern edge, is just inches over the limit, his rear plantings soar a good 30 feet into the telephone wires. Bordering an alley, they shield his backyard from the windows of tenants in a low-rise apartment building across the way.....

To William Fulton, senior scholar in USC's School of Policy, Planning and Development, squaring competing needs will require trade-offs to avoid communities that appear to consist of just walls and roads. "People do need to protect themselves from the outside world," he said. "You have to wall yourself off from the world without shutting yourself off. That's the trick in urban design today. It's a tough one.""

And read what the fines for violations are here



10 August, 2004

FASCIST SWEDEN

Quote The Bible: Go to Jail

"Question: When is a prisoner of conscience not a prisoner of conscience?

Answer: When he has been jailed for saying something politically incorrect.

Ake Green discovered this in 2003. The pastor of a Pentecostal congregation in Sweden, he preached a sermon during which he referred to homosexuality as "abnormal, a horrible cancerous tumour in the body of society." He also quoted some of the standard biblical injunctions against homosexuality.

He was denounced to the authorities and charged under a 2002 law which makes it a criminal offence to say rude things about any of the usual privileged groups - that is, women, non-whites, non-Christians, homosexuals and so forth. He stood trial in January this year, and was ... sentenced to imprisonment for one month.

So far as I can tell, his case went unreported in the British media. Certainly, neither Amnesty International nor any other of the human rights groups took up the case. Ironically, it reached the foreign media when it was taken up by the government of a former Soviet satellite. Vladimir Palko is the Slovak Minister of the Interior and Deputy Leader of the Slovak Christian Democrat Party (KDH).

On the 2nd August this year, he spoke up in favour of the right to freedom of speech. In the course of his speech, he referred to the Green case as "a political trial, a violation of the right to freedom of expression". He added: "When I read the report I understood that a crawling tyranny is looming". He later called in the Swedish Ambassador and gave her a lecture on the meaning of human rights.

She replied that "Swedish law states that public addresses cannot be used to instigate hatred towards certain group". She was supported by Kjell Yngvesson, the lawyer who handled the prosecution of Pastor Green: "One may have whatever religion one wishes, but this is an attack on all fronts against homosexuals. Collecting Bible citations on this topic as he does makes this hate speech".

"Hate speech", of course, means any statement that gives offence to the Establishment - that is, to the network of politicians, bureaucrats, educators, together with their friends and clients in the media and big business, who gain wealth, power and status from an enlarged, activist state.

Officially, Europe is an area within which the traditional freedoms of thought and belief and speech and association are solidly protected. The various human rights groups generally feel obliged to look to other parts of the world for gross abuses of right. Otherwise, they tend to complain about petty discrimination against non-whites.

Here is as gross an abuse of the right to free expression as can be imagined. A man is sent to prison for stating what is the orthodox position of all Christian churches, and for quoting from The Bible. And this happens in what amounts to a media blackout."



FREE SPEECH NOT SO PROTECTED IN THE USA EITHER

"Progressives, libertarians, and all who take the First Amendment to heart may be holding their noses these days -- and covering their ears. For the latest challenge to free speech targets a lowbrow radio personality who traffics in banal sexuality, physical oddities, racial stereotypes, and pathetic ignorance. He thinks such sideshow subject matter is fascinating. So do millions of his listeners. There is no accounting for taste. But Howard Stern has made several fortunes by keeping his mind -- and mouth -- in the electronic gutter. Last spring, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) levied a landmark obscenity fine against Stern's radio raunch -- almost $500,000 against Clear Channel Communications, which has dropped Stern's show in six markets -- and almost $30,000 against Stern's distributor, Infinity Broadcasting. These are awful, lamentable developments -- despite Stern's lack of charm or wit."

More here



9 August, 2004

BLATANT ANTI-WHITE RACISM THWARTED IN UK

"Leading Bristol art institution Arnolfini's controversial plan to exclude white candidates from a post of Curatorial Fellow has been successfully challenged by civil liberties pressure group Liberty and Law [L&L following an investigation by the Commission for Racial Equality [CRE].

L&L director Gerald Hartup had written to CRE chair Trevor Phillips on 8 April requesting him to ask Arnolfini to freeze its recruitment process while his legal department investigated the legality of the gallery's action and its impact on good race relations. Mr Hartup also made a direct request to Arnolfini to freeze the appointment process to allow it to think again about its duty to be an equal opportunities employer and to take into consideration the opinions of the community....

The gallery's recruitment policy had tried to make use of the provisions of the 1976 Race Relations Act that allows the use of a colour bar to address under-representation of racial minorities in any particular employment area by allowing employers to make special training facilities available to them to compete for such employment.

Liberty and Law argued that restricting the post to African, Asian and Caribbean curators was not justified under Section 37 of the Race Relations Act because the job, to curate an exhibition on Blaxploitation, the African-American film genre of the 1960s and 1970s, was clearly not a training post but a substantive one as its job description and salary grade [Grade 5 �18,889 - �21,408] made clear. Liberty and Law argued that far from being a training position it was the sort of job which ambitious curators would be delighted to undertake.....

Working with the CRE in 1994 Mr Hartup, then with the Freedom Association, successfully prevented the BBC from implementing a similar Section 37 scheme to recruit a Senior Radio Producer and a Television Producer that the Corporation had claimed were traineeships".

More here



BLATANT ANTI-WHITE RACISM THWARTED IN USA

The University of Colorado at Boulder announced yesterday that it no longer would restrict an education course to minority and first-generation college students after receiving complaints that the restrictions violated equal-protection laws. Educators had limited fall enrollment for the Friday section of 'School and Society' to 'students of color' and first-generation college students, saying the restriction offered 'a much safer and open environment' in which to discuss issues of race, class and the sexes."



8 August, 2004

WORDS MATTER

"A recent angry e-mail from a reader said that certain issues should not be determined by "the dictates of the market." With a mere turn of a phrase, he had turned reality upside down. Decisions by people free to make their mutual accommodations with other free people were called "dictates" while having third parties tell all of them what they could and couldn't do was not.

Verbal coups have long been a specialty of the left. Totalitarian countries on the left have called themselves "people's democracies" and used the egalitarian greeting "comrade" -- even though some comrades had the arbitrary power of life and death over other comrades.

In democratic countries, where public opinion matters, the left has used its verbal talents to change the whole meaning of words and to substitute new words, so that issues would be debated in terms of their redefined vocabulary, instead of the real substance of the issues. Words which have acquired connotations from the actual experiences of millions of human beings over generations, or even centuries, have been replaced by new words that wipe out those connotations and substitute more fashionable notions of the left.

The word "swamp," for example, has been all but erased from the language. Swamps were messy, sometimes smelly, places where mosquitoes bred and sometimes snakes lurked. The left has replaced the word "swamp" with "wetlands," a word spoken in pious tones usually reserved for sacred things. The point of this verbal sleight-of-hand is to impose the left's notions of how other people can use their own land. Restrictive laws about "wetlands" have imposed huge costs on farmers and other owners of land that happened to have a certain amount of water on it.

Another word that the left has virtually banished from the language is "bum." Centuries of experience with idlers who refused to work and who hung around on the streets making a nuisance -- and sometimes a menace -- of themselves were erased from our memories as the left verbally transformed those same people into a sacred icon, "the homeless." As with swamps, what was once messy and smelly was now turned into something we had a duty to protect. It was now our duty to support people who refused to support themselves. Crimes committed by bums are covered up by the media, by verbally transforming "the homeless" into "transients" or "drifters" whenever they commit crimes. Thus "the homeless" are the only group you never hear of committing any crimes.

The words games of the left -- from the mantra of "diversity" to the pieties of "compassion" -- are not just games. They are ways of imposing power by evading issues of substance through the use of seductive rhetoric.

At one time, educators tried to teach students to carefully define words and systematically analyze arguments. They said, "We are here to teach you how to think, not what to think." Today, they are teaching students what to think -- political correctness. Instead of knowledge, students are given "self-esteem," so that they can vent their ignorance with confidence."

More here.



7 August, 2004

THE JUSTICE OF THE MADHOUSE

Britain seems a good place to stay away from these days. Note that the story below refers to a judgement of the Court of Appeals, not some eccentric lower court. Only an appeal to the House of Lords could reverse it. In politically correct Britain, the criminals are the victims and the innocent are punished

Two UK men, wrongly jailed for the murder of a child 18 years ago, who endured extreme abuse from inmates who believed they victimized a child, and now freed when the blunder was discovered, have been ordered by the Court of Appeals to pay the UK government $450,000 and $231,129 respectively for 18 years of room and board while in jail.

BBC 29-Jul-04 (Via Jerry Lerman).



IF NUDE DANCING CAN BE PROTECTED AS FREE "SPEECH", WHY NOT?

Wesley Bono or Greenbrier, Arkansas, says that his right to dump 6,000 pounds of manure onto the streets to stop a gay rights parade is protected by the first amendment's protection of his right to free speech.

KATV (Little Rock, Arkansas) 2-Aug-04 (Via Jerry Lerman).

Some U.S. courts have in the past protected nude dancing as "speech"



6 August, 2004

THE MARXIST ORIGINS OF PC

"America as a nation is now dominated by an alien system of beliefs, attitudes and values that has become known as "political correctness." It seeks to impose a uniformity in thought and behaviour among all Americans and is therefore totalitarian in nature. It has its roots in the ideology of Marxism, which requires a radical inversion of the prevailing traditional culture by cultural Marxism in order to achieve a social revolution. Such a social revolution is the kind envisioned by Karl Marx as an inversion of the social order and a commensurate inversion of the structure of power......

Antonio Gramsci worked for the Communist International in the years 1923 to 1924 in Moscow and Vienna. He was later imprisoned in one of Mussolini's jails, where he wrote his famous "Prison Notebooks." Among Marxists, Gramsci is noted for his theory of cultural and ideological hegemony as the means of class dominance. His view that a new Communist man had to be made before any political revolution led to a focus on the efforts of the intellectuals in the fields of education and the culture to perform this task.

This was to be a long march through the society's institutions, meaning the government, the judiciary, the military, the schools and the media. He also concluded that so long as the workers had a Christian soul, they would not respond to revolutionary appeals. Multiculturalism can be seen as a means of breaking the grip of the traditional cultural hegemony on American society.

Georg Lukacs was the son of a wealthy Hungarian banker who began his political life as a key Soviet agent of the Communist International. His book, "History and Class Consciousness," gained him recognition as the leading Marxist theorist since Karl Marx. And like Marx his primary emotion was hatred. "I saw the revolutionary destruction of society as the one and only solution to the cultural contradictions of the epoch," was one of his expressed attitudes. In defending Bolshevism, Lukacs stated: "Such a worldwide overturning of values cannot take place without the annihilation of the old values and the creation of new ones by the revolutionaries."

In 1919, Lukacs became the Deputy Commissar for Culture in the Bolshevik Bela Kun regime in Hungary, where he instigated what became known as Culture Terrorism. He launched an explosive sex education program. Special lectures were organized in Hungarian schools and literature printed and distributed to instruct children about free love, about the nature of sexual intercourse, about the archaic nature of the bourgeois family codes, about the outdatedness of monogamy, and the irrelevance of religion, which the Marxists said deprives man of all pleasures.

Children urged thus to reject and deride paternal authority and the authority of the Church, and to ignore precepts of morality, easily and spontaneously turned into delinquents with whom only the police could cope. This call to rebellion addressed to Hungarian children was matched by a call to rebellion addressed to Hungarian women. This was a precursor to what Cultural Marxism would later bring into American schools."

More here.



5 August, 2004

THE GERMAN THOUGHT-POLICE RISE AGAIN

Hitler was a socialist too

"Political Correctness, originally a well-intentioned Code of Conduct, has rapidly turned into a morals terror in Germany. The self-appointed "politically correct" think of themselves as the sole possessors of the truth and refuse anyone the right to differ. As pointed out by Martin Walser, this applies particularly to the most notorious German taboos: Germany's National Socialist history, women and foreigners. When one attempts to deal with any of these themes even in the most open-minded way one is beat down unmercifully with the "fascism club", a concept named by political scientist Helmut Kn�tter. If one has been labelled racist or fascist or sexist by means of this deadly argument, one will become an outcast to whom no further opportunity to defend his outlook will be given.

The harmful thing about Political Correctness is that frequently disputations or discussions either do not take place at all or take place in the form of a campaign of defamation or a show trial. This prescribed thought control has led to the crushing of intellectual freedom in the former land of thinkers. Political Correctness shows itself as the instrument of intellectual channelling and represents an extraordinary precedent for censorial manipulation of political consensus.

We will illustrate this manipulation with some suitable examples: For some time now in Germany, presumably from grounds of anti-discrimination, it has no longer been thought correct to speak of Gypsies. In German now the politically correct terms are "Roma" and "Sinti", but these terms are actually not correct because these are merely the two main branches of the Gypsies. Closely looked at, the terms "Roma" and "Sinti" are themselves racist, inasmuch as they ignore and thereby discriminate against the smaller branches of Gypsies, such as the Lallers, the Manusch, the Joneschti, the Polatschia, the Sikligars, the Boschi or the Cal�.

In Spring 1996 in their journal Eine Welt, the authorities of the Lutheran Mission Society advocated human rights for apes! They based their demand on the fact that humans and chimpanzees are almost alike genetically. The theologian Martin Br�ckner claimed that there was an "unbelievable closeness" and stated in all earnestness that the withholding of human rights from apes was no different from racism or denigration of women. Today no idea seems too absurd to be introduced as a new and general rule of conduct. Absurdity and undermining of the feeling of self-worth are the price.......

Political Correctness sets up rigid barriers to thought that block an open discussion oriented at solving a problem and thus diverts progress toward further intellectual development. Freedom of research cannot be restricted in advance by any power that prescribes in advance what is allowed to be considered true. Otherwise research threatens to become the ideological instrument of an opinion cartel and thus of a power cartel, and in so doing to lose its place as a precondition of intellectually active and creative people. Political Correctness is a threat to a politically free state, because at the end it will produce the state of mass conformity, the Thought Supervision state."

More here.



4 August, 2004

Alcohol sharpens your brain, say researchers

Wowee! Won't THIS upset the health Fascists!

"It is news guaranteed to raise a cheer among those who enjoy a glass or two: drinking half a bottle of wine a day can make your brain work better, especially if you are a woman. Research to be published tomorrow by academics at University College London has found that those who even drink only one glass of wine a week have significantly sharper thought processes than teetotallers.

The benefits of alcohol, which are thought to be linked to its effect on the flow of blood to the brain, can be detected when a person drinks up to 30 units of alcohol - about four to five bottles of wine - per week. The researchers were unable to test the effect of higher levels of alcohol consumption, although drunkenness probably negates any positive effects on the brain.....

The latest findings on the benefits of alcohol are drawn from a study of the long-term health of 10,000 British civil servants. Known as the Whitehall Study, it was originally set up in 1967 to identify links between health and factors ranging from smoking and obesity to age and social status. In the latest research, a team led by Sir Michael Marmot, a professor of epidemiology and public health at University College London, gave psychometric tests to more than 6,000 civil servants. The questions ranged from verbal and mathematical reasoning problems to tests of short-term memory. The civil servants' performance was then matched against their drinking habits.

The study took into account all alcohol consumption and was not specific to wine. However, the results showed that those having even a single glass of wine a week scored significantly higher in the tests than more abstemious drinkers. Teetotallers were twice as likely as occasional drinkers to achieve the lowest scores. The benefits were most marked among women drinkers and, to the researchers' surprise, showed no sign of flattening out with increasing consumption. Those who downed the equivalent of half a bottle of wine or two pints of beer a day scored best of all. The effects were apparent even after the results had been adjusted to take into account factors such as physical and mental health.

"Our results appear to suggest some specificity in the association between alcohol consumption and cognitive ability," said the team. "Frequent drinking may be more beneficial than drinking only on special occasions." The team, whose findings are being reported in the American Journal of Epidemiology, suggests that the results may reflect the fact that alcohol can reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and increase blood flow to the brain - factors linked to improved mental function".



3 August, 2004

WHITENESS INCORRECT

"Patrick Herndon, a senior at Fremont's Irvington High School, has plans to start a cultural club next year. Like many of the other campus clubs, his would focus on his heritage and raise awareness about its roots. But Patrick, 16, is white -- and he knows that his idea for a Caucasian Cultures club is bound to receive some harsh criticism and maybe even allegations of racism. But he's prepared to argue his point.

"I think people will consider it to be racist and they won't let us do it because they think we will try to infringe on the rights of other races," Patrick said. "But by not allowing us to have a club, it infringes on our rights as Americans."

He's not the first with the idea for a club for white students. Last year, Lisa McClelland, a freshman at Freedom High School in Oakley, made headlines around the world when she tried the same thing and ended up transferring to another school because of the harassment she encountered.

It's a sign that the tables may be turning when it comes to racism, with whites on the receiving end this time. It's an especially sensitive issue in diverse Silicon Valley, where minorities make up about one-third of the population. In many Bay Area cities, they represent the majority....

For Roni Cohen, a Jewish 16-year-old who goes to Monta Vista High School in Cupertino, it isn't an issue of control. For her, it's more about being taken advantage of and being able to speak her mind, even if what she has to say isn't necessarily politically correct.

"African-American girls laugh at us when we dance because we're white, but we can't laugh back," she said. Even though white people represent the majority of the nation's population, it's almost as if "they don't have the right to speak, so they can never defend themselves."..."

More here



2 August, 2004

POLITICAL LIBERTIES CURTAILED IN BRITAIN

BNP membership outlawed for police

"Police chiefs have issued a warning to all their officers that they would be sacked for being members of the British National Party. The Association of Chief Police Officers outlawed joining the far right BNP for any officer or civilian member of police staff in England and Wales.

Acpo President Chris Fox said he was personally "extremely pleased" by the move. Mr Fox said: "Under this policy no member of the police service, whether police officer or police staff, may be a member of an organisation whose constitution, aims, objectives or pronouncements contradict the general duty to promote race equality. "This specifically includes the BNP and we anticipate that non-compliance will result in dismissal." Acpo introduced the policy through a change to regulations which govern the conduct of police and support staff and it was unanimously backed at a meeting of chief constables earlier this month.

BNP press officer Phil Edwards claimed it would lead to a "witch-hunt" and had been forced by political pressure from the Home Office. "I know a lot of coppers who support the BNP and quite a few who are in it," he said. "This is the sort of thing they used to do in the Soviet Union, removing peoples' democratic right to join a legal political party.""

Police have a "duty to promote race equality"? I though they were there to catch crooks. Silly me!

Report here



1 August, 2004

HEALTH CORRECTNESS ROUNDUP

Health has become just another excuse to tell other people what to do

The nastiness behind the food cops: "Trial lawyer ringleader John 'Sue the Bastards' Banzhaf was there. So were Kelly 'Big Brother' Brownell and top food cop Michael Jacobson. As usual, Marion Nestle -- infamous for saying America has too much food -- was also among the nutritional nags who played starring roles in a Los Angeles Times feature on obesity warriors yesterday... But most notable was the inclusion of Neal Barnard, described simply as 'an advocate of low-fat eating.' The Times reveals next to nothing about Barnard and his Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), so we thought it might be useful to offer a PCRM primer. What follows are seven things you should take into account when you hear about this so-called doctors organization."

Professor Michael Holick, author of The UV Advantage, tells Brendan O'Neill how he was turned into a pariah for suggesting that a little bit of sunlight can be good for you.

Obesity thugs: "Although obesity has not yet been criminalised in the USA, it is possible to have your three-year old child taken from you for the offence of 'allowing' her to become fat. That is the stark lesson of the Anamarie Regino saga, which continues to play out in Albuquerque, New Mexico. The story of what was done to a child and her parents by an assortment of doctors, social workers, and government bureaucrats is a chilling tale of what can happen when people of modest means and social status find themselves, through no fault of their own, facing the full brunt of the prejudice that fuels the war on fat."

Home cooking banned: "Members of the Women's Institute have been banned from making cakes for elderly hospital patients because health authorities fear the treats could pose a health risk. When a dietitian from Saffron Walden Community Hospital in Essex asked for help last year to provide cakes for afternoon tea, members of 11 WIs in the area started baking. But healthcare experts have now ruled that, because the kitchens where the cakes are cooked cannot be checked for hygiene, 'potential risks cannot be eliminated.' The patients' daily treats of jam tarts, sponges and fruit cakes have ended on the orders of Uttlesford Primary Care Trust, which says it's acting on advice from environmental health officers, reports The Times."

Overkill on smoking: "I repeat my long-standing charge that the worst aspect of the anti-smoking war is not the effect on smokers, nor the effect on personal liberty, nor the effect of bans on individual property rights, but the effect on the scientific community. Honest scientific inquiry is being supplanted by JUNK SCIENCE. Formerly honest people and organizations are being twisted into shills for the anti-smokers. Big money and media attention are perverting science, and that leaves us with nobody to trust."