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31 January, 2004

CHOSEN MINORITIES CAN DO NO WRONG

Why not ship back to their ancestral countries Muslim minority-members who hate the West? Why continue to inflict on them the pain of living among us?

"The swiftness of Kilroy's demise points to something more than a simple scrap over political correctness. It's a symptom of a new European reality: surging growth among Muslim populations and establishment nervousness over how to deal with them - a nervousness that threatens to stifle much-needed debate over events in the Middle East and Muslim integration at home.

Western Europe's 15 million-strong Muslim community is growing in power and size. The birthrate among Muslims in Europe is three times that of non-Muslims. While the Muslim population could double by 2015, the non-Muslim population is expected to shrink by 3.5 per cent.

As this community grows, it is also flexing its political muscle. As the columnist Mark Steyn, writing in defence of Kilroy in the right-leaning "The Daily Telegraph", put it: "When free speech, artistic expression, feminism and other totems of Western pluralism clash directly with the Islamic lobby, Islam more often than not wins."

This would not be a problem if it weren't for the distressing but unavoidable reality that small but significant sections of that growing Muslim community are either outright hostile to or at least ambivalent toward Western values.

A survey conducted by the ICM polling agency and published in December 2002 showed that more than 10 per cent of Britain's 1.5 million Muslims believed that further attacks by al-Qaeda on the United States would be legitimate, and 8 per cent supported such attacks against Britain...

Muslim groups have combined with and helped re-energise a European left that is to a significant degree defined these days by a complementary hostility to the US and to Israel - both of which the left sees as representative of the worst excesses of capitalism and imperialism. That hostility is shared by substantial sections of the Muslim community, more than 80 per cent of which voted for Labour in Britain's 1997 general elections. Both elements of this new partnership are highly sensitive to any criticism of Islam, seeing in it de facto justification for the policies of governments they implacably oppose.

Alongside this political alliance stands a powerful centre-left establishment - epitomised by the BBC itself - that is also unremitting in its hostility to Israel and broadly sympathetic to the Arab and Muslim cause, for reasons that some attribute to rising anti-Semitism, others to post-imperial guilt, and many more to an anti-Americanism that appears to grow stronger by the day.

Thus it is that Tom Paulin, a left-wing Oxford academic and poet and a regular contributor to the BBC, could, in 2002, say to an Egyptian newspaper about Brooklyn-born Jews living on the West Bank: "I think they should be shot dead. I think they are Nazis, racists. I feel nothing but hatred for them," and get away with it, suffering no sanctions of any kind from the same BBC that silenced Kilroy.

Paulin's outburst reveals how smoothly anti-Israeli prejudices slip into anti-American clothing - it is "Brooklyn-born" Jews who are marked for death. Anti-Americanism is the acceptable face of European bigotry in a way that anti-Semitism is not.

On a continent whose face is rapidly changing, and where memories of the Holocaust are fading fast, new rules of engagement are emerging: you upset the Muslim community at your peril, but the social and political consequences of alienating the much smaller and much more assimilated Jewish communities are negligible"

More here



30 January, 2004

HOW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WORKS

By Mike Adams (excerpts):

I think that it can be safely stated that segregation imposed by white racists is a problem of the past. However, segregation imposed by university liberals in the name of tolerance and diversity is a present reality, but it just isn't a problem, according to its proponents.

So why is the university devoting an entire semester to celebrations of desegregation and condemnations of white racism, when the university is a place where segregation is not just practiced but also celebrated?

It would seem to me that the university would do better to instead talk about the major problem that confronts black Americans here in the 21st century. That problem isn't segregation or white racism. It's black illegitimacy.

Presently, about 70% of black children born in America are illegitimate. The inverse relationship between illegitimacy and educational attainment is undeniable. The direct relationship between illegitimacy and criminal involvement is also undeniable.

Imagine what would happen if our university took all of the resources it is now directing towards the past problem of segregation and instead focused on the present problem of black illegitimacy. Imagine an entire course called "Black Illegitimacy and its Consequences" with a total of 39 courses devoted in part or in whole to the problem.

Of course, I can ask people to imagine that all day long, but it will never happen at a public university. And the reasons for that are simple.

Focusing on issues of white racism and segregation makes liberal professors look good. And it also makes them feel good about themselves, despite the fact that it does nothing to help minorities. By instead focusing on black illegitimacy, liberal professors would risk being stigmatized as racists by other university liberals, most of whom are white.



29 January, 2003

NEW TESTAMENT NOW INCORRECT

I really cannot believe the furore about the upcoming Mel Gibson film "The Passion of the Christ". It is being slammed because it portrays the Jews of Christ's day as his killers. But that is exactly what the New Testament has said for 2,000 years. Read chapters 22 and 23 of Luke's Gospel if you doubt it. The Roman governor said, "I find no fault in this man" (Luke 23:4). I am in general solidly sympathetic with the Anti-Defamation League but how can one more retelling of the basic Christian story do harm? It's a story that every kid who has ever been to Sunday School already knows. I think the ADL would have been much wiser to reserve its fire for the real enemy of Judaism -- Islam. Here is one view of what is going on:

"An arrogant gang of so-called scholars and journalists is conducting a very public crucifixion of Mel Gibson for daring to make his new film, "The Passion of the Christ," and it's about time that the motives behind their attempt to destroy him were examined.

To begin at the beginning, after being alerted to the film by Gibson's appearance on the Bill O'Reilly show and by a sleazy New York Times magazine smear of Gibson's father, a group falsely depicting itself as an official arm of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) got its hands on a shooting script of the film, then in the first stages of production in Italy, and charged that it was a historically flawed work that would promote anti-Semitism.

Unreported was the real motive behind the complaint: This group of Catholic and Jewish revisionists doesn't think very highly of the New Testament, which the Roman Catholic Church for 2,000 years has insisted was inspired by the Holy Spirit and is therefore, as other Christian churches agree, unerrant.

Based on these scholars' own historical research, which simply contradicts the most basic tenets of Christianity, they charge that the New Testament is based on the prejudices of the apostles and rigged by their successors. One of them even claimed that the Gospel accounts of Christ's passion and death were written to curry favor with the Romans – the same Romans who returned the favor by gleefully executing many of them.

After their first attacks on the film based on their perusal of a stolen, rough, shooting script were met by the rejoinder that the film, then simply titled "The Passion," is solidly based on the Four Gospels and is therefore factual, the critics charged that the Gospels themselves can be construed as anti-Semitic and therefore any script based on them can be expected to stir up anti-Semitism among viewers.

To put it simply, these revisionist scholars are telling the world that the Gospels can't be trusted and, by implication, that the biblical story of Christ's passion and death is at the very least partially fictional because it is slanted in favor of the Romans and, in their warped opinions, historically inaccurate."

28 January, 2004

HAIR SENSITIVITY

My father was a redhead and two of my four wives were redheads but I still find this complaint amusing:

"A group of red-headed New Zealand men have succeeded in their official complaints about a television commercial they said reinforced negative stereotypes, making life difficult for people with their hair colour....

Although an unspecified number of red-haired men complained, the board quoted only a 21-year-old man identified as C Irwin, who said the commercial "is mocking people like myself in a nasty fashion".

He said, "The advertisement will add to the atmosphere of denigration that currently exists in New Zealand towards red-headed males and I am sick of dealing with the repercussions of such ill-thought out humour."

Advertising agency Colenso BBDO, which made the ad for The Rum Company, said its client, "who is himself ginger-haired" approved the concept and thought the commercial was "funny and not derogatory or offensive".


A SMALL WIN FOR SANITY

Unbelievable but true: You can be sacked for being rude about Osama Bin Laden. Better not say anything nasty about Adolf Hitler!

"A prison officer, who was left "a broken man" after being sacked for being rude about Osama bin Laden following the September 11 attacks, won his claim for unfair dismissal yesterday. In a damning indictment of political correctness and incompetence within the Prison Service, an employment tribunal described a governor's conduct as "reprehensible". It was wholly disproportionate to the off-the-cuff remark made by Colin Rose, who was fired after 21 years' impeccable service.

The Norwich tribunal said Jerry Knight, then governor of Blundeston Prison, appeared to have been swayed by his keenness to "parade his racial awareness qualifications". Panel members questioned whether the governor lived in the real world.



27 January, 2004

PC WINS EVEN WHEN IT LOSES

Jeff Jacoby comments:

It doesn't take much to get slammed as a racist these days. Just ask Jennifer Cundiff.

Back in February 2001, the Southwest Airlines flight attendant was trying to coax passengers boarding a flight from Las Vegas to Kansas City to find their seats quickly so the plane could take off. "Eenie meenie minie moe," she said over the intercom, "pick a seat, we gotta go."

Cute and harmless, right? Not to two black passengers, it wasn't. Louise Sawyer and Grace Fuller, who are sisters, interpreted Cundiff's couplet as a racist insult and said they were sure it was intended to humiliate them. It was so upsetting, Fuller claimed, that it triggered a seizure and left her bedridden for days. Eventually the women sued, charging Southwest with violating their civil rights and inflicting physical and emotional distress.

If you're scratching your head in bewilderment at this point, you aren't alone. Unless you're old enough to remember flappers and speakeasies, you probably don't know that the words that originally followed "eenie, meenie, minie, moe" were "catch a nigger by the toe." Cundiff, who was 22, certainly didn't know. Like most of us, she grew up saying "catch a tiger by the toe" -- she had never heard the older, uglier version.

Ah, but innocence offers scant protection against contemporary racial victimology. Neither does common sense or the right to free speech. Any of those should have been reason enough for US District Judge Kathryn Vratil to summarily bounce the lawsuit as frivolous. Instead, she ruled that Cundiff's little rhyme "could be reasonably viewed as objectively racist and offensive," and said a jury would have to decide "whether Cundiff's remark was racist, or simply a benign and innocent attempt at humor."

The trial took place last week. A jury of eight deliberated for less than an hour before finding Cundiff and Southwest innocent of racism. Needless to say, the stewardess and the airline will not be reimbursed for the lost hours and legal fees this preposterous lawsuit has cost them. And that isn't all that they lost.

Every time a case like this occurs -- every time someone is sued or punished or forced to hire a lawyer just for expressing an opinion or making a comment that someone of a different color finds offensive -- all of us are left with a little less freedom of speech. Dismayingly, such cases seem be occurring more frequently than ever. Now and then one of these incidents draws national scorn. A few years ago, a vast wave of ridicule forced the mayor of Washington, DC, to rehire an aide who had been accused of racism and forced to resign for using the word "niggardly" -- a synonym for stingy -- in a conversation.

But most of the time, these cases end with racial correctness trumping fairness and free speech.....

The First Amendment says nothing about a right not to be offended. The risk of finding someone else's speech offensive is the price each of us pays for our own free speech. Free people don't run to court -- or to the principle -- when they encounter a message they don't like. They answer it with one of their own.



26 January, 2004

DECODING PC EDUCATION-SPEAK

Michael Duffy tells how parents decode what defenders of government schools say:

"Here is a list of the values which, according to the defenders of state schools, are taught in them. In brackets I suggest what it really means to lots of parents:

Public schools preach diversity and accept every child who comes to their door. (Troublemakers are churned through the system.)

They are inclusive and accept children from poor families. (Your child's fellow pupils will come from homes that don't value education.)

They teach egalitarianism. (You'll never be told exactly how your child compares with the rest of the class.)

They accept children of all races and levels of academic ability. (Your child will be dragged down by the presence in class of kids who don't want to be there.)

They advocate the good old Aussie fair go. (Pupils who misbehave won't be punished.)

They teach most physically and intellectually disabled children. (Your child's teacher will spend much of her time coping with problems for which she has been ill-prepared and resourced.)

They teach tolerance. (Bad teachers cannot be removed.)"

The above is an extract from an article in The Courier Mail newspaper of Brisbane, Australia -- published on January 24th, 2004 (p. 28) -- but which does not appear to be otherwise available online


DESTRUCTIVE PC EDUCATION

"Minnesota's Commissioner of Education, comprehensively relates the history of American middle schools, focusing on a reform movement dedicated to egalitarianism that took shape in the middle of the 20th century. As part of this movement, a body of research and literature grew around the ideas that 1) middle school students cannot learn challenging material, 2) treating students differently based on skill level is harmful, and 3) middle schools should be used to conduct social experiments. The National Middle School Association, founded in 1973, embraced these ideas and led a movement to make all students equal through the suppression of excellent students.

This, says Yecke, is unethical. "Public schools were never meant to be the vehicle for massive social experiments aimed at achieving the questionable utopian goals of an elite few," she says.

Clearly the most destructive and widely-practiced method to accomplish these ends is what Yecke calls "heterogeneous grouping." Here students within classes are broken into groups and given assignments. The groups intermingle talented students with students who, though capable, either do not apply themselves to the same degree or do not grasp concepts as quickly. The result is that gifted students who already understand the material are not challenged by the content, thereby preventing their advancement and attenuating their ability to perform. The students who do not grasp the material do not participate as much in the project at hand, convinced that the talented students can do the work quicker and more completely; these non-participants, who are in need of the practice, then fall further behind their peers. Yecke explains how this process also takes place through peer tutoring and cooperative learning (similar to heterogeneous grouping).

Thus, in an attempt to treat all students equally, proponents of egalitarianism and "heterogeneous grouping" successfully restrain talented students, preventing their success, and completely alienate the perfectly capable students who simply take longer to grasp the same concepts.

"Amazingly, their message is that high ability students should succumb to peer pressure and strive not to achieve, or they will risk making their classmates look bad--and their actions might even go so far as to force these non-motivated students to work harder!" Yecke says.

In her final chapter, "Implications for the 21st Century," a perceptive analysis of the implications of the middle school movement, Yecke argues that the movement's core values are un-American. "American values such as rewarding individual effort, honoring individual achievement, and promoting healthy competition have given way to a capricious smorgasbord of liberal ideas that undermine...traditional values in many of our schools." She goes on to say, "Beliefs driving radical equity include the leveling of achievement and the desire for equality of outcomes. This is in stark contrast with the premise underlying our nation's founding principles."

The middle school reform movement has sabotaged America's schools, and this intellectual genocide needs to be stopped. In one sense, while middle school reformers have not made all students equal, they have given all students subject to their poisonous methods something in common: none can achieve their full potential"

More here



25 January, 2004

DUTCH POLITICAL CORRECTNESS IS CRUMBLING

It looks like the late Pim Fortuyn was right. See here:

"The Netherlands' example as a successful, tolerant, multicultural community has taken a dent with the publication of a parliamentary report saying Dutch society is becoming increasingly polarised, with huge ethnic ghettos and subcultures tearing the country apart.... Although the Dutch report deals broadly with "immigrants" and their effect on Dutch society, there is no doubt that it is Muslim immigrants who are seen as posing the biggest problem"


THE PC VERSION OF EUROPE

EU constitution gobbledygook: "[The EU] presents itself as the only hope for the wretched peoples of Europe; were an alien to read this Preamble, he would never be able to guess that the peoples to whom it so patronisingly refers are free nation states, perfectly capable of looking after themselves... Apart from the one reference to 'ancient divisions', one could never guess from the Preamble that Europe's 3,000-year recorded history has been dominated by mutual antipathy, division and conflict... the falsification of Europe's past is in full swing. The nightmare of a future controlled by Eurocrats who think like that lurks in the rest of the 'constitution' "



24 January, 2004

INCORRECT TO CRITICIZE ISLAM

"Gimli" (Lord of the Rings actor John Rhys-Davies) has created a big stir by defending Western civilization against the encroachment of Islam. You are only allowed to say good things about Islam. Excerpts from his "offensive" and "ignorant" comments:

"There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we daren't bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially. And rightly we should be. But there is a cultural thing as well. "By 2020, 50 per cent of the children in Holland under the age of 18 will be of Muslim descent.

I am for dead, (traditional) white male culture," said Rhys-Davies, who divides his time between his homes in Los Angeles and the Isle of Man. "Many do not understand how precarious Western civilisation is and what a joy it is. "From it, we get real democracy. From it, we get the sort of intellectual tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you.

I believe in racial equality not racial discrimination. All I was commenting on was that there are cultural changes taking place in Europe that I consider to be unacceptable

I am really proud to be living in a society that accepts women as our equals, that accepts civilised discourse that allows people to hold different opinions without coming to any act of violence.

Here in America when that earthquake happened in Iran the reaction of everyone I knew was horror and dismay, the reaction of everyone when they heard that the old woman had been brought out alive long after they thought there was anyone there was absolute awe at the extraordinary capacity of the human spirit to survive. Contrast that with people jumping up and down and clapping at the 9/11 disaster in certain countries.

I don't think that Western society is opposed to Islamic society at all. I think a very important part of Islamic society is opposed to Western society."



23 January, 2004

CUSTOMARY SCOTTISH POLICE LANGUAGE INCORRECT

Via Interested Participant:

"According to a story at Scotsman.com, new guidelines prohibit certain words and phrases from being spoken by the Lothian and Borders police force. For example, Scottish officers are banned from referring to the elderly as "old" and from calling women "love", "pet" or "dear." Homosexuals cannot be called "homosexuals" and female colleagues shall not be referred to as "one of the boys."

Speaking of the changes, Deputy Chief Constable Tom Wood stated:

"We live in very sensitive and dangerous times in terms of language and attitudes and people are very quick to take offence.

"This is not about being PC, it is about common sense and making our members aware of the concerns so they think before they speak."

Constable Wood is a liar. The speech guidelines are nothing but political correctness in its most basic and ugliest form"

So if homosexuals cannot be called homosexuals, what do we call them? "Poofters", "Queers", "Gays"? I am often quite gay when I see the results of my sharemarket investments but I sure am no homosexual!


NOT BLACK ENOUGH

Leftists again saying that race is what matters: I gather that Trevor is of British ancestry but was born in South Africa

Four students at Omaha, Neb.'s Westside High School are in trouble for distributing a poster urging the school to give Trevor Richards its "Distinguished African American Student Award," the Omaha World Harold reports. Although the school refuses to say what punishments it meted out, Trevor's mother says he was suspended for two days for hanging the poster.

Trevor is in fact African-American; indeed, he's an immigrant from South Africa. But school officials say he's ineligible for the award--which is given out every Martin Luther King Day--because he's a person of pallor. One of the four students "was punished for circulating a petition Tuesday morning in support of the boys." So not only is the school "honoring" Dr. King by judging students on the color of their skin rather than the content of their character; they're punishing anyone who dares question their policies.

From Opinion Journal


SHOCKING: STUDENTS WHO CRITICIZE THEIR PROFESSORS!

But only Leftists are allowed to criticize of course. Freedom of thought is just not "appropriate" in an American university

"Republican students at the University of Colorado launched a Web site to gather complaints about left-leaning faculty members, saying they want to document discrimination against conservative students and indoctrination to the liberal viewpoint," the Associated Press reports from Boulder.

"I'm shocked the students would resort to this," says Barbara Bintliff, a law professor and chairman of the Boulder Faculty Assembly. "I'm concerned they may wind up with a blacklist." Is it really so shocking that young people would use their right to free speech and question authority?

From Opinion Journal



22 January, 2004

NO FREE SPEECH IN FRANCE

I would have called the comments quoted below moderate. I would sure be in big trouble if I lived in France

An 82-year-old French priest was fined 800 euros (990 dollars) Monday for uttering derogatory remarks about the Holy Quran.

Philippe Sulmont was found guilty of "provoking discrimination, hatred or violence" for comments he made in a letter to his parishioners in the northern town of Domqueur at the end of 2002.

"The Asiatics proliferate and invade our land, bringing with them an ideology that threatens the whole world," he wrote. "Indeed I would add there is no such thing as 'moderate' Islam


THE UNENDING PC OPPRESSION IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS

It seems that lots of America's Left-leaning teachers grab any opportunity to take it out on ordinary kids. I guess none of them were black or Hispanic. Just one day's notes from "Opinion Journal":

Sixteen-year-old Michael Todd of Magnolia, Texas, was jailed for four days in a "juvenile facility" for using an asthma inhaler at school, Houston's KTRK-TV reports:

A doctor-prescribed inhaler he uses for his asthma got him there. The Magnolia High School student exhaled a puff of the medicine close to a teacher. The teacher had a reaction and had to see a doctor. "I wasn't trying to harm the teacher or anything. It just happened kind of like accidental," said Todd. "I wasn't really trying to hurt anybody or nothing."

School officials called the cops, who charged Todd with "deadly contact."

The Davis (Calif.) Enterprise reports that Howard Liston, an 18-year-old student at Davis High School, was arrested last week "for possession of a firearm at school." The 12-gauge shotgun was in the cab of the young man's pickup truck:

Steven Sabbadini, a lawyer representing Liston, said the teenager had bought the shotgun for his 18th birthday. A member of a local shooting range, Liston has taken hunter safety classes and has hunted and engaged in target practice with family and friends for years, Sabbadini said. "On Wednesday, (Liston) completed his classes at noon, went home to change with the intent of taking his new shotgun to the range for target practice before going to work," Sabbadini said today. "He decided to have lunch with friends. After lunch, he dropped his friends off at the Davis High School parking lot. "He was only in the parking lot momentarily on the way to target practice," the attorney added. "His shotgun was in his gun rack, unloaded and being transported lawfully. The shells to the shotgun were locked in a utility box in the bed of his truck."

The next day, he absentmindedly left the gun in the truck. Though the firearm was unloaded and the truck was locked, the school called the cops, and Liston now faces expulsion and possibly a fine or imprisonment for violating the Golden State's kooky antigun laws.

The Belleville (Ill.) News-Democrat reports that James Lord, a 17-year-old senior at Dupo High School, "was kicked off a school broadcast program because he signed off with God bless.' " The paper says that "school Principal Jonathan Heerboth has said Lord's comment was inappropriate for public school." Remember this the next time you hear some civil libertarian complaining about the "stifling of dissent."



21 January, 2004

FOOD CORRECTNESS

The food police: "The more I hear about them the more I'm convinced going after cake and candy is just a new excuse for attacking corporations and capitalism. Like many radical environmentalists, the anti-food-itarians want to pick up where Karl Marx fell flat on his face. Either Karl or Groucho. These days we have presidential candidates worrying that snacks are being marketed to kids -- you know, the species of human that most enjoys snacks."


AUSTRALIAN PRIME MINISTER TAKES ON PC SCHOOLS

"Mr Howard said students were being moved out of public schools into the private system because there was too much political correctness in the government school system.

Figures released earlier this month show non-government schools will receive $4.7 billion in federal funding in 2004, beating universities which will receive $4.5 billion. Public schools, which are largely financed by state governments, will get $2.4 billion in federal assistance.

Earlier, Mr Howard accused teachers' unions of being "out of step'' with mainstream views, and backed the publication of national league tables ranking public schools by performance.

In an interview with The Australian, Mr Howard also called for consideration of an after-hours care program supervising homework, to provide parents with more quality time with their children. Parents now send almost 40 per cent of teenagers to private secondary schools, and one in three Australian children overall do not attend public schools.

"They feel that government schools have become too politically correct and too values-neutral," Mr Howard said.

"It's a reflection of the extent to which political correctness overtook this country. Particularly through the teachers' unions, which I think are a bit out of step. "Some schools think you offend people by having nativity plays. You know, the increasingly antiseptic view ... taken about a whole lot of things."

Mr Howard, who attended a public school in Sydney, said he did not want their enrolments to fall. "I don't want to see state schools decline, in fact I think it is important to maintain them," he said. "I'm a state-school boy myself. My wife and I both went to selective state schools. We sent our children to state schools at a primary level. It is fundamentally quite a good thing if every child at some stage can have an education at a state school. I'm not saying people have to ... particularly for Catholics."

He backed controversial calls to publish league tables ranking schools by performance. "The more information parents have about schools and their performance the better," he said. "My judgement is that the envy line that (the Australian Labor Party) ran at the last election fell on its face very badly."

Mr Howard said the present funding arrangements were "quite good", despite calls to introduce a voucher system giving parents a set amount they could spend at public or private schools. "One of the reasons why the voucher system was never adopted in Australia some years ago was that it doesn't sit easily with the funding of the Catholic system," he said"

More here

The private school system in Australia is so huge in part because all sorts of non-government schools already receive big Federal government funding. So a voucher system would not be a big improvement on that



20 January, 2004

AND PEOPLE PAY FOR THIS!

I noticed that the professor who had just finished giving a test in the same classroom had accidentally left a copy of his test behind. It was a true/false exam. It was loaded with questions like "True or false. The American criminal justice system is racist" and "True or false. The war on drugs is racist." I thought the professor's method was pretty direct. Just repeat my political views for points. Dissenters will repeat the course.

More here


THAT DANGEROUS INTERNET

Believe it or not, this is advice that the British Education Department gives to its teachers:

"Discuss what makes human beings suspicious or afraid of each other. Pupils could interrogate bookmarked - or otherwise preselected - websites to find out why medieval Christians were suspicious and sometimes afraid of Jews. It is not recommended that pupils should search the internet themselves for information for this topic"

There is of course a lot of rubbish on the internet but it is no worse than the Leftist and Greenie rubbish that the kids get taught by their own teachers so the idea of teaching critical thinking as a way of dealing with internet nonsense would be far too dangerous. The kids might start thinking about what their teachers say as well. So once again we have the tried-and-true Leftist solution: political censorship. Leftists cannot AFFORD free speech or free thought.

Another section on the same site, about the achievements of Islam, specifies learning how the Crusades failed to dislodge Islam but there seems to be no mention of centuries of Islamic jihad in Europe failing to dislodge Christianity!



19 January, 2004

PC AS ELITISM

Taki tells it like it is

Andrew Alexander got it right last week when he wrote in the Daily Mail that our legislators don't give a rat's arse about public opinion, just about that of the chattering classes. The public wants law and order, our leaders give us traffic wardens and speed cameras and leave the country virtually unpoliced. The public wants strict immigration curbs, our fuehrers call us racists and allow the numbers to swell. The proposed European Union constitution is one big con drawn by a conman and will do away with the nation state, but our chieftains say anyone opposing it is a Nazi pig. Arab and African people live in utter poverty and endemic disease, and the politically correct busybodies among us go after Kilroy instead of those responsible.

I guess it all has to do with PC and moolah. PC is humbug personified, while moolah illegally obtained by Afro-Arab chiefs has corrupted those we've elected to lead us. PC is a persistent form of untruthfulness, which suits most politicians trained to lie and obfuscate. It is about pretending that things are different from what they are. We the people are not racists any more than those who cry racism are. The whole thing stinks to high heaven, and my only wish is that some of those who cry wolf non-stop run into some young black thugs looking for cash late one rainy evening in beautiful London by-the-sea.



18 January, 2004

SEX NAUGHTY -- UNLESS IT IS HOMOSEXUAL

Heterosexual swingers - couples who like to swap partners - have announced that they are to challenge home secretary David Blunkett over recent changes to sexual offences legislation They claim that the law discriminates against them, by extending greater freedom to homosexuals to engage in group sex than is now legally available to heterosexuals. 'Contrary to its obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, the United Kingdom effectively criminalises swingers in contrast to the high degree of tolerance it rightly extends to gay men for precisely the same activities', argues a representative of the company Fever, which organises 'highly acclaimed parties for young swingers'

This gripe reflects the fact that while eliminating archaic prohibitions upon sexual activities from the law is no bad thing, attempting to use the law as a vehicle for ensuring diversity and recognising sexual identity will only come back to haunt the authorities, as it is impossible to cover every conceivable sexual interest. And if the government drafts legislation like the UK's recent Sexual Offences Act, where sexual activities are codified in such prurient detail that it ends up creating a vast bureaucracy of new sexual offences rather than eliminating old ones, then any number of people can criticise the legislation on its own pedantic terms, claiming that their human rights have been transgressed and their particular sexual pastimes have been discriminated against. In the wake of the Act, expect a lot more sexual adventurers to complain that they've been left out of the party.

From "Spiked"



17 January, 2004

AN UNMENTIONABLE OFFENCE

From "Opinion Journal":

"An elementary school principal who used a racial slur while lecturing students about name-calling has agreed to be reassigned," the Associated Press reports from Philadelphia. Mary Sheldon of the Overbrook Educational Center, "who is white, used a derogatory word for blacks during a November 5 meeting with students":

The incident became public when three parents complained at a School Reform Commission meeting last month. "She contended all along that she used it after children were using it, to say, simply, that this is not an appropriate word, this is a horrible word," district spokeswoman Cecilia Cummings said Tuesday.

We guess the discussion was supposed to go something like this:

Sheldon: Children, you mustn't use racial slurs.
Student: What's a racial slur?
Sheldon: I can't tell you."

At least Australia is not so insane. The High Court of Australia has recently ruled that the word "nigger" is not offensive in Australia -- and we DO have all sorts of blacks here in Australia. I hope it is OK to mention the rulings of Australia's highest judicial body on the net. Probably not.



16 January, 2004

A SMALL OUTBREAK OF SANITY

"The Supreme Court, in a case watched anxiously by law enforcement agencies across America, held Tuesday that police may set up roadblocks to collect tips about unsolved crimes. In a 6-3 decision, the justices found roadblocks seeking such information do not violate the privacy rights of motorists. The court overturned a decision by the Illinois Supreme Court, which ruled that officers may solicit information from motorists only in an emergency. The case involved a man arrested for drunken driving at a Lombard, IL, checkpoint set up to get information about an unrelated fatal hit-and- run accident."

More here


WHAT AN ALL-ROUND HEAP OF NONSENSE!

Toxic concerns over Free Willy burial: "Norwegian authorities are reviewing the burial of Free Willy star Keiko over fears the killer whale may be full of toxic substances. ... Keiko lived off fatty fish and marine mammals such as seals, which are known for carrying poisons known as PCBs. Now there are concerns over the decision to bury Keiko on land instead of towing his remains out to sea."



15 January, 2004

A PC NAVY?

This sounds like an urban myth but come from a good source so I fear that it is true. There have been big cutbacks in UK military spending recently under their Labour Party government

"British Royal Navy recruits at the gunnery school in Plymouth are being ordered not to fire live shells. Instead they have been instructed to check co-ordinates, line up a target, and then shout "Bang". This is allegedly part of a drive by the Ministry of Defence drive to save money."

Source


MORE ON THOSE INCORRECT GUNS

The billion dollar bungle of the Canadian gun registry is now well-known but it seems that Australia is having similar problems. See how you can rely on bureaucracy to keep you safe?

This article shows that it is only by playing fast and loose with the statistics that gun-control advocates can claim that Australia's recent restrictive laws have reduced the overall death-rate


INCORRECT SNOW USE

Snow criminalization: "As the snow blanketing the region turned to slush, police were considering arresting a sledding scofflaw on suspicion of reckless endangerment, and school officials were on the lookout for illicit snowball tossers. It brings up an interesting idea: snow criminalization."



14 January, 2004

THOSE INCORRECT GUNS

As in Britain, guns are exceedingly incorrect in Australia and there is a comprehensive article on the dishonesty of the Australian gun-control "industry" here

But here is the other side of the story:

Gun reality: "I don't have laser alarms, or window locks, or, indeed, a front-door key. Like most of my neighbours, I leave my home unlocked and, when I park the car, I leave the key in the ignition because then you always know where to find it. I'm able to do this because ... I live in a state with very high rates of gun ownership. In other words, if you're some teen punk and you want to steal my $70 television set, they're likely to be picking bits of your skull out of my wainscoting. But the beauty of this system is that I'm highly unlikely ever to have to blow your head off. The fact that most homeowners are believed to be armed reduces crime, in my neighbourhood, to statistically insignificant levels. Hence, my laconic approach to home security."

"Second Amendment supporters say strict gun control has made Chicago the most murderous city in the nation for the year just ended".



13 January, 2004

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE SMOKERS....

The success of the PC crowd against such a large group as smokers is rather alarming. The "cost" argument is bogus. Smokers die younger so are less of a burden on the welfare system than others. Considering that smokers are mostly working class, one also wonders where the much-claimed Leftist love of the workers has disappeared to. Whoops! That was a silly thing for me to say. The workers need to be "educated", of course -- and educated "for their own good". Liberty or free-choice is too much for the workers to handle. Liberty and choice is only for the Leftist elite who know best what is good for you. And I suppose it is just stupid and boring of me to note that Hitler had an active anti-smoking campaign too. I don't for one minute believe that smokers should be allowed to inflict their obnoxious habit on non-smokers -- as they once routinely did -- but surely what they do in their own space and in their own time is their business.

Riverside County wants to cut back their skyrocketing workers' compensation insurance costs, and is kicking off the effort by banning smoking for anyone who wears a badge. The sheriff's department has been ordered to no longer hire deputies who smoke and the ban could extend to all offices of county government.

Those in favor of the ban cite the numerous health risks associated with smoking and that the majority of workers complain come from public-safety personnel. "About 17 percent of the people in California smoke, so statistically about 17 percent of the deputies that we would hire without this ban would smoke, and we hope to see somewhere in that range a reduction in workman's compensation claims," Roy Wilson of the Riverside County Board of Supervisors.

Riverside County isn't the first locality to enact this type of hiring ban _ Florida and Massachusetts have passed similar non-smoking mandates. But these types of bans have civil libertarians fuming, saying what a person does in their own home is their business. More here


GUTLESS RESPONSE TO AUSTRALIA'S ISLAMIC PROBLEM

"The emergence of Middle Eastern crime groups was first observed in NSW in the mid 1990s. Before then, they had been known largely for individual acts of antisocial behaviour and for loose family structures involved in heroin importation and supply as well as motor vehicle theft and conversion.

The one crime that did appear organised before this period was insurance fraud, usually motor vehicle accidents and arson. Because these crimes were largely victimless, they were dealt with by insurance companies and police involvement was limited.

But from these insurance scams, a generation of young criminals emerged to engage in more sophisticated crimes – among them extortion, armed robbery, organised narcotics importation and supply, gun running, organised factory and warehouse break-ins, and car theft and conversion on a vast scale, including the exporting of stolen luxury vehicles to Lebanon and other Middle Eastern countries.

With no organised-crime experience, no gang unit other than the South-East Asian Strike Force, the NSW Police turned against every convention known to Western policing in dealing with organised crime groups. In effect, the Lebanese crime gangs were handed the keys to the city of Sydney.

The most influential of the Middle Eastern crime groups are the Muslim males of Telopea Street, Bankstown, in southwest Sydney. The Telopea Street Boys and their associates have been involved in numerous murders over the past five years – many of them unprovoked attacks on young Australian men for no other reason than the ethnicity of the victims.

They have been involved in all manner of crime on a scale we have never before seen or even contemplated. Ram raids on expensive brand stores in the city are endemic. The theft of expensive motor vehicles known as car-jacking is increasing at an alarming rate. This crime involves gangs of Lebanese or Pacific Islander males finding a luxury motor vehicle parked outside a restaurant or hotel and watching until the occupants return to drive home. The car is followed, the victims assaulted at gunpoint and the vehicle stolen. The vehicles are always worth about $100,000 or more, and it is believed they are taken to warehouses before being shipped interstate or overseas to the Middle East.

The extent to which Middle Eastern crime gangs have moved into the drug market is breathtaking. They are now the main suppliers of cocaine in Sydney and are developing markets in southeastern Queensland and Victoria. They are leading suppliers of heroin in and around the inner city, southwest Sydney and western Sydney.

But what sets the Middle Eastern gangs apart from all other gangs is their propensity to use violence at any time and for any reason. Unlike their Vietnamese counterparts, Middle Eastern crime gangs roam the city and are not confined to Cabramatta or Chinatown. And even more alarming is that the violence is directed mainly against young Australian men and women. It is plain that violent attacks on our young men and women are racial as well as criminal.

Quite often when taking statements from young men attacked by groups of Lebanese males around Darling Harbour, a common theme that emerges is that the violence is racially motivated: the victims are attacked simply because they are Australian.

That groups of Middle Eastern males can roam a city and assault, rob and intimidate at will can no longer be denied or excused.

More here. See also my post of 21 November last year.



12 January, 2004

How the PC brigade is destroying our orchestras

By Norman Lebrecht (Excerpts)

"I went along to be enlightened and came away consumed with despair at the political realities which oblige arts managers to give up a working day for a preach-in on multiculturalism. The symposium was called 'Cultural Diversity and the Classical Music Industry' and it yammered on all day yesterday in a dreary side-room at the Royal Festival Hall, overlooking the railway cuttings. There was a sell-out attendance from just about every classical body in Britain bigger than a string quartet. This might make you think that the theme was compulsive.

Compulsory is more like it. As things stand in British arts, only an autist would dare to profess disinterest in diversity. With 7.9 percent of the population derived from ethnic minorities and the government sloganising away about inclusion, it would have been a brave orchestral boss who stayed away from diversity day. One manager whispered to me that his absence would surely have been 'noted'.

Orchestras are increasingly expected to hire 'audience development managers' and work with 'grassroots communities' if they want to carry on playing the symphonies of Beethoven and Brahms.

Roger Wright, head of Radio 3 which is getting flak from classic lovers for its output of world music, confessed that everyone at the BBC now undergoes 'diversity training'. Roger Lewis, head of easy-listening Classic FM, exhorted us, perhaps ironically 'to get out of comfort zones'.

And so it went on, a daylong drizzle of ambiguities, hypocrisies and dissimulations that could not conceal a grim inevitability. Diversity, or the policy that speaks its name, is a means of diverting orchestras from what they ought to be doing, making music, to what the Government ought to be doing, creating social harmony.

Few rose to challenge its preposterousness. Diversity is, to most of us, a fact of life. One does not have to travel far these days to find a cafe serving braised ostrich, or look beyond the next street corner to realise that forced marriages, honour killings and female circumcision exist in our midst. There are bright and dark aspects to the mass immigration of the past 30 years.

Orchestras which struggle against an already inhospitable zeitgeist are being told to change their ways, while immigrant cultures are celebrated for their supposed purity. It is absurd, unfair and inherently disastrous.

Sitting amid the Blairite blather, I was transported back to the notorious Zhdanovitsa of 1948, when Soviet composers were summoned to Leningrad to be instructed by party hacks, on pain of exile, on how to write music for the new society. There was something of that fear on the South Bank yesterday".

More here


PC OVER-REACTION

The following report saddens me. I like Sikhs and respect Sikhism and am a great fan of Sikh (Punjabi) food. I am also pleased that I once lived within a short drive of TWO Sikh Gurdwaras (temples). I myself would have no hesitation in taking part in any Gurdwara activity if I were lucky enough to be invited but the important Sikh religious custom of sharing their food and the general Indian custom of eating with their hands do tend to go against Western ideas of hygeine so I can understand the remarks of the British police officer mentioned. I hope no disciplinary action is taken against her for expressing attitudes that would be perfectly normal in other British contexts.

"Scotland Yard has ordered an investigation into remarks by one of its officers that Sikh gurdwara s had poor hygiene.

During the briefing for a procession to be taken out on the birthday of Guru Nanak, a senior policewoman apparently ordered her officers to shun food prepared in gurdwaras on grounds of poor hygiene. "Their hygiene standards are not good as ours," the policewoman is reported to have said.

The police force has reacted following complaints internally and from representatives of some gurdwaras in west London. News of the alleged comments spread quickly.

Himmat Sohi, president of the Southall Gurdwara, the largest in Europe, said the issue must be cleared up quickly. "The commissioner, Sir John Stevens, has been to our gurdwara and eaten here and so have the local commanders. We have good connections with the police and they have all left very happy. If this is not sorted out people will be very hurt because they work hard into the early hours to prepare this food and get blessings for that," Sohi added.

Suresh Grover of the Southall-based The Monitoring Group said the allegation was profoundly disturbing. "It smacks of racism. The standard of cleanliness and hygiene in the gurdwaras is extremely high. This is very serious because issues of religious identity and respect for religion are crucial.""

More here

UPDATE

A reader of Indian origin writes:

Note that, at least by Western standards, the Gurudwaras (Sikh temples) are really unclean. I have been to many of them through my life, and they serve food in buckets that have been used for cleaning floors or washing clothes and the server serves food with their bare hands. That is the religious custom. When I once requested a spoon for serving food, in a gurudwara in North Carolina, they told me they did not have any, and religious custom demanded that I take food from the server's bare hands! So the police officer who made that remark was probably right!



11 January, 2004

TRUTH ABOUT ISLAM INCORRECT

An email received from a British reader yesterday:

Today the Kilroy TV program has been suspended and Robert Kilroy-Silk condemned by the BBC (British Broadcasting Censors?) following his asking (in Daily Express) what Arabs had given the world beyond suicide bombers, arm-chopping and oppression of women.

Naturally enough, the head of the Commission for Race-cliquery Enforcement Trevor Phillips could also be relied on to condemn such fraglant truthing.

Actually, Robert Kilroy-Silk may not be such a big truther anyway. Muslims have indeed given us something else, namely the oppression of honest criticism, as exemplified in this case no less than in the "prophet" Mohammed's sword-wielding against those who disagreed with him.

Yesterday, the BBCensors tried to demonise another truther, Nigel Farage, for explaining why the ongoing EU attack on UK sovereignty was leading to a reaction of violence as he had been forcasting. Many years after another forecast (by the also-sacked Enoch Powell), the alleged political time-bomb of race-cliquery ("multiculturism") still has to be precariously held together with a sticking-plaster of oppressive non-truthfulness"

More on the story here


MORE INSANE PC INTOLERANCE

Fun is now incorrect

In other zero-tolerance news, the Seattle Times reports that Alexander Graham Bell Elementary School in nearby Kirkland has expanded zero-tolerance madness to cover snowball fights:

"Julie Miles has two kids at A.G. Bell Elementary in Kirkland, a school with a zero tolerance for snowballs. Students there say they were told they can't even touch the snow, much less pack and hurl it".

And they're at it again in Rio Rancho, N.M. The Associated Press reports "a teenager has been suspended from Rio Rancho Mid-High School for five days for bringing an over-the-counter drug to school." The drug, Gas-X, "breaks up gas bubbles in the digestive tract."

More here



10 January, 2004

ANOTHER ELITIST TEACHER WHO HATES HER STUDENTS

"You must not do anything without my permission" seems to be the message. Maybe the fact that he was a boy was his real sin.

Fort Worth Star-Telegram columnist Dave Lieber reports that [student] Carl used the instant-messaging system on the schools obsolete DOS-based computer network to send the message "Hey!" to some 80 users. "At first, Principal Tommy Rollins didn't think much of it," Lieber reports. But Beverly Sweeney, "a computer teacher and campus computer liaison with the district," was outraged. She tracked Carl down, confronted him and demanded: "Do you know that this is serious?" Eventually the principal suspended the boy for three days.

More here


PRESSURE TOWARDS HOMOSEXUALITY

Joanne Jacobs has a post about how at least one American High School seems to be doing its best to encourage lesbianism among its students.



9 January, 2004

PC PROJECTION

The Modern Language Association is apparently the major professional body for American Professors of English. Note this report of their latest meeting:

"The MLA's deliberative body, the Delegate Assembly, adopted by a landslide margin of 122-8 a resolution supporting "the right of its members to conduct critical analysis of war talk" despite government efforts to "shape language to legitimate aggression, misrepresent policies, conceal aims, stigmatize dissent, and block critical thought." The Left normally accuse GWB of being a semi-illiterate who can't speak properly but this crowd think he is "shaping language ... to block critical thought". In one amazing bound he goes from being a stumble-tongue to being a maestro!

I think it's another example of projection (seeing your own faults in others). If anybody wants to shape language to block critical thought it is the PC crowd!


GOD INCORRECT

Diana West writes (Excerpts):

Everyone has a war story from the Yuletide front, where Christmas comes under such heavy fire that Americans wave the pre-emptive white flag of "Happy Holidays" to avoid giving what is known as "offense" and receiving what feels like censure. Not that "Christmas" is the ultimate unmentionable. A story recently made the rounds about a Virginia teacher who spoke the utterly non-denominational (in fact, traditionally superstitious) injunction "God bless you" over a sneezy student. Said student, sniveling wretch, proceeded to inform on the teacher for this act of New Blasphemy, for which the teacher was, incredibly, reprimanded.....

With four-letter-language -- and insults against Republicans -- you're on terra firma; when it comes to holiday greetings, you're on your own



8 January, 2004

THE U.S. JUDICIAL SYSTEM HAS BECOME A MOCKERY OF JUSTICE TOO

Under PC nobody is responsible for their own deeds -- unless they are "racists" or some such of course. Walter Williams gives some examples:

"The wife of a hockey fan who crashed his car after drinking too much at a Minnesota Wild game has sued the team, saying her husband who was paralyzed in the Feb. 8, 2002, auto crash shouldn't have been served so much alcohol.

According to the July 10, 2002, Akron Beacon Journal, "Two carpet installers who admit they read the label of an adhesive they used, admit they understood the adhesive was flammable and should not be used inside, used it inside anyway, caused an explosion, were burned badly, sued and won $8 million dollars."

According to the April 18, 2003, Indianapolis Star: "A convicted robber is suing the convenience store clerk who shot him as he fled after a holdup. Willie Brown, 44, claimed the clerk acted 'maliciously and sadistically' in firing five shots as Brown ran out of Zipps Deli with money from the store's cash register." Brown, who has earlier convictions for robbery and burglary, pleaded guilty to robbery and was sentenced to four years in prison.

In Galveston, Texas, a jury awarded $65 million to the parents and estate of a woman who drowned after her car rolled off a boat ramp. She couldn't disengage her seat belt. The jury found Honda of America Manufacturing Co. Inc. and Honda R & D Co. Ltd. 75 percent responsible for the death of Karen Norman, even though her blood-alcohol level measured at nearly twice the Texas legal limit (.17). Fortunately, an appeals court threw out the award, which a trial judge had previously reduced to $43 million."


So this guy is not as crazy as he sounds:

"A man in the US state of Wisconsin wants to sue a cable television provider for making him addicted to watching TV, a news report said today. Timothy Dumouchel claimed cable TV was also to blame for his wife's gaining more than 20 kilograms and his kids being "lazy channel surfers", according to the daily The Reporter. Dumouchel told the paper he would settle the suit for $US5,000 ($6,505) dollars, or three computers and lifetime free internet service"



7 January, 2004

HOW POLITICAL CORRECTNESS HAS MADE A MOCKERY OF THE AUSTRALIAN LEGAL SYSTEM:

Such nonsense would never have got anywhere in saner eras

"JAILED killers and armed robbers have hit taxpayers with a rush of compensation claims for falls, slips and prison bashings. At least 10 prisoners lodged civil claims in the County Court for hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation in September alone. Among the latest claims, four Port Phillip Prison inmates are suing because guards used restraints to move them from one unit to another".

And here are some of the cases that have been settled already:

A prisoner who was in prison for a vicious assault on a woman won a $100,000 damages claim against his jail because he fell out of bed.

An insane murderer won a $300,000 damages claim against a mental hospital because it released him.

A mass murderer has cost the taxpayer $250,000 because of all the legal claims he keeps filing.



6 January, 2004

APPEASING THE MUSLIMS

It didn't work with Hitler

Arlene Peck thinks history is repeating itself:

"We are so pitifully politically correct in this country that, night after night, the news is filled with nothing but the carnage that the Arabs are causing, yet nobody can actually mention the real root of the world's problems without being accused of being unkind and discriminating against the powerful Arab cartel. Somehow, in all this, while the Arab world is still bombing our American soldiers in ambushes that the Israelis have come to know so well, our press and president still speak of the "peaceful Arab nations". Oh really? Where? Why should I be surprised that the Arab world is still marching for Saddam when their fathers and grandfathers overwhelmingly supported the Nazis during World War II?"


BLACK MUSLIMS MOST CORRECT OF ALL

If political correctness protects both blacks and Muslims, imagine what you can get away with if you are BOTH black AND Muslim. It seems that California authorities, at least, turn a blind eye to multiple child rapes if you are in that lucky category.



5 January, 2004

A SMALL WIN

"Organizers of Boston's main St. Patrick's Day parade won a court victory Monday in a dispute over whether an anti-war group should have been allowed to march at the end of this year's parade. The South Boston Allied War Veterans Council, which hosts the event, sued the city in October after police allowed the anti-war group to walk behind the main procession. Federal Magistrate Robert B. Collings ruled that allowing such unauthorized groups to march so close to the actual parade was a violation of the organizers' free-speech rights. He said unauthorized groups now must march at least a mile behind the parade."


EVERYTHING IS CORRECT IF YOU ARE A MUSLIM

From Mark Steyn: "In California, Muslim community leaders have applauded the decision of the Catholic high school in San Juan Capistrano to change the name of its football team from the Crusaders to the less culturally insensitive Lions..... Meanwhile, 20 miles up the road in Irvine, the Muslim Football League's New Year tournament will bring together some of the most exciting Muslim football teams in Orange County: the Intifada, the Mujahideen, the Saracens and the Sword of Allah."



4 January, 2004, 2003

NO FREEDOM ON THE INTERNET?

I would have given her a medal: "Police in a Nebraska town have arrested a woman for posting nude pictures of herself on the web that were taken in a local bar. Melissa Harrington was charged with violating Lincoln's public nudity ordinance by posting pictures on her web site."


SURPRISE! PC LAW UNPOPULAR

How embarrassing! BBC listeners strongly support a homeowner's "right" to use "any means" to defend their homes. But the British elite do not agree of course. See here and here. Given Britain's huge increase in crime in recent years, it is no wonder the average Brit wants to be allowed to defend himself and his home -- which is very risky for him to do under the current loony laws of PC Britain. British law protects the criminal, not the victim.



3 January, 2004, 2003

FATHERS ARE IMPORTANT TOO

"Most fathers are, in some ways if not in others, assets to their children - or can become so. Not just through shared activities and communication, but through the time, money and skills they contribute to the household, the support they provide to their children's mother, through the networks (family, friends, workmates) attaching to them.

And in less tangible but no less meaningful ways, as a cornerstone of their children's identity and security, as the family representative of that powerful archetype "the father" and through their tendency (as one researcher put it) "to be irrationally emotionally connected to their children". That is, to love them madly and stay loyal to them for life.

As a society, we do almost nothing to support fathers in their multi-faceted roles: whether in the work/family arena (who talks about giving working fathers "choices"?), in maternity and children's services (where parent almost invariably means mother), in the child-care debate (where dads are never mentioned), in the criminal justice system or in education (where strategies to engage fathers are as rare as hens' teeth). Let alone in separation and divorce - where, because the quality of the father-child relationship is so powerfully affected by the mother-father relationship, relationships between men and their children are often on the rocks long before either parent walks out the door.

We have no targets, no aspirations for mainstreaming fathers' involvement in any sector. Hysteria over the alleged "epidemic of fatherlessness" erupts periodically - but who notices the one-in-three young adults from "intact" families whose relationships with their fathers rate as "very poor"?

Who looks out for the father-daughter relationship, among the gnashing of teeth about boys growing up without role models? Who challenges the "cult of motherhood" which places such heavy burdens on new mothers - and, later, on employed mothers? Who notices that while girls are encouraged to broaden their employment horizons, and the number of women going into child care dwindles yearly, there are no corresponding strategies to prepare boys for non-traditional occupations?"

More here.


PROPAGANDIZING LITTLE KIDS

Captain Arbyte seems to be a very bright lad. I guess "Arbyte" is a macaronic (bilingual pun): "Arbeit" is the German word for "work" -- and he does blog a lot on economics. I recommend his post of December 29th on how U.S. government schools have become Leftist indoctrination centres even at the early childhood level.



2 January, 2004

MORE "FREE SPEECH" AT SCHOOL

The teachers concerned deny being Leftist but prove the accusations themselves by their deeds

"Tim Bueler recently received some unusual advice: His principal and a campus police officer suggested that he stay home from his California high school for a few days.

They feared for his safety because Tim, the founder of Rancho Cotate High School's new Conservative Club, said he had received threats from other students after writing an article for the club newsletter calling for a crackdown on illegal immigration.

The 17-year-old junior says that stance inspired threats from which teachers have refused to protect him. Some faculty members even started a public campaign against his group, which seeks to promote "the pillars of the Bible, patriotism and conservative beliefs as balance to the mostly liberal viewpoints of teachers," according to its newsletter, "The Conservative Agenda."

In a telephone interview, Tim said he's been threatened at least three times by Hispanic students who call him "white boy" and "racist." One boy said he was going to "find someone" to beat up Tim.

In two of those instances, Tim said two faculty members stood by and did nothing to help him."

More here.


FRENCH CORRECTNESS: ANTI-AMERICANISM

Opinion Journal reports:

La Croix, a French newspaper, has fired reporter Alain Hertoghe for publishing a book critical of anti-American bias in the French press, the Associated Press reports:

The book, "La Guerre a Outrances" (The War of Outrages), criticizes the French reporting for continually predicting the war would end badly for the U.S.-led coalition.

"Readers can't understand why the Americans won the war," Hertoghe said in a telephone interview. "The French press wasn't neutral."

The book, published Oct. 15, charges French reporters were more patriotic than journalistic and what was written amounted to disinformation.

What's really pathetic is that in France, being "patriotic" means showing fealty to a fascist Arab dictator. The AP notes that while the book has received "rave reviews" in Hertoghe's native Belgium, French newspapers have refused to acknowledge it.



1 January, 2004

SODOMY GOOD, PRAYER BAD

The ACLU is targeting the voluntary lunchtime prayer that has been a tradition at the Naval Academy since its founding. In the ACLU's view, consenting adults have a right to do just about anything they want except say grace in a government cafeteria. Consensual sodomy, it believes, is a sacred right, while consensual public prayer is a sorry ritual to be crushed beneath the boot heel of big government

More here


OFFICIAL HATRED OF CHRISTMAS FALTERS

An English reader tells me that a few years ago Birmingham City Council decided to have "Winterval" instead of Christmas but it produced so much derision that in the 1993 season just past they actually got round to having the C-word in lights on the council house.