This is a backup copy of the original blog
With particular attention to religious, ethnic and sexual matters. By John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.)
31 March, 2022
The Defense Production Act won’t bring us supply-chain security
Emphasizing the importance of rare earth metals and minerals to America’s national security and economic well-being, two prominent members of Congress — Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), head of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), the committee’s ranking Republican — have urged President Biden to ramp up domestic mining operations immediately by invoking the Defense Production Act (DPA).
Title III of that 1950 law was dusted off by President Trump to jumpstart the production of ventilators for hospitalized COVID-19 patients. President Biden issued executive orders in February 2021 authorizing the act’s taxpayer-financed incentives — loans, loan guarantees, direct purchases and purchase commitments — to ensure that the U.S. economy has sufficient capacity to produce “critical items” like vaccines and personal protective equipment.
More than two years into the federal government’s demonstrably ineffective and costly response to the now-endemic SARS-CoV-2 virus, Washington seems to have awoken at long last to another policy-manufactured “crisis” that has been in the making for two decades: overreliance on imports from China and other hostile trading partners for supplies of essential inputs such as nickel, lithium, and manganese.
A year ago Murkowski called U.S. dependence on mineral imports our Achilles’ heel. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing chaos in global commodity markets seem to make it even more urgent to address the problem head-on.
It is true that U.S. manufacturers rely fully on mining operations located overseas for supplies of 17 essential minerals, including most of the metals required for electric-vehicle batteries. China is home to about 16 percent of the world’s capacity for mining and processing raw lithium. It also dominates global cobalt supplies from the mines it controls in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where much of that blue metal is found and is a major player in nickel. All told, China controls about 80 percent of the materials necessary for making batteries, and is the chief source of rare earth minerals, along with almost all manganese and graphite-refining capacity on the planet.
Russia and two former Soviet states, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, account for just under half of the fuel consumed by U.S. nuclear power plants, nuclear medicine facilities, and other industrial uses. As one response to the Ukraine invasion, the Senate is considering a ban on uranium imports from Russia, from which the United States obtains 16 percent of its total uranium supplies.
Depending on China and Russia for imports of critical materials would not be worrisome in a peaceful world of unfettered international commerce. But that is not the world now dancing to the tunes of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
The irony is that neither globalization nor supply-chain interruptions explain why the United States relies heavily on foreign suppliers of production-critical minerals. Such resources — worth an estimated $6.2 trillion — are available in the ground here. They remain unexploited, though, because of environmental and other regulations that hamstring domestic mining operations. A decade or more is required nowadays just to obtain the permits needed to open a new mine, assuming that the permits eventually are granted. Minerals production can be “re-shored” by lightening the regulatory burden on U.S. mining operations and speeding the permitting process.
Invoking the Korean War-era Defense Production Act is an ill-considered response to a supply-chain crisis for which Washington itself largely is responsible. It represents crony capitalism at its worst, empowering politicians and bureaucrats to shower financial incentives on some U.S. mining companies but not others.
President Biden is notorious for trying to shift blame to “Big Oil” and “Big Food” for inflation and other adverse consequences of his own policies. He has warned that the United States faces serious materials shortages that could derail efforts to deploy advanced clean-energy technologies and even to produce weapons essential for national defense.
While it may seem counterintuitive, the digital age and the brave new world of fossil-free energy will require more mining than ever. The demand for lithium, for example, is predicted to explode 42 times its current level by 2040. Getting Washington out of the way and allowing market price and profit signals to guide resources into the mining of “critical” minerals is a surer path to supply-chain security than channeling taxpayer-financed largesse to a few favored recipients.
Mobilizing one policy tool (the Defense Production Act) to offset the counterproductive effects of another (keeping minerals “in the ground”) is a fool’s errand, but it’s business as usual in our nation’s capital.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/599434-the-defense-production-act-wont-bring-us-supply-chain-security/
********************************************
MSNBC, CNN, ABC and more repeatedly pushed critical race theory ideology on TV while denying it exists
Liberal media outlets hosted guests that espoused CRT phrases like ‘systemic’ and ‘institutional racism’ while hosts claimed the educational theory was a myth created by Republicans.
Jon Stewart’s new episode of his Apple TV show saw the comedian host left-wing guests who took on the topic of race in America, arguing that all White people are on some level inherently racist and uphold the "systems" and "structures" of racism in U.S. law and culture.
It was yet another example of ideology crucial to critical race theory (CRT) receiving a prime media platform, which MSNBC, CNN, ABC, and other mainstream media outlets have pushed consistently while at times denying CRT exists.
The topic of CRT was reignited this month when Republican lawmakers fielded questions about it to Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson. Liberal media networks subsequently accused the GOP of racism, sexism, and more.
Back in January, when it was announced that President Biden would make good on his campaign promise to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court, "The View" co-host Sunny Hostin pushed back on the idea the president was playing "identity politics" and argued the candidate would likely be "overqualified" because she had overcome institutional and systemic racism.
"If a Black woman graduated from Harvard and graduated from Harvard Law School, even in spite of sort of the institutional racism, the systemic racism that occurs in this country, that is just part of the very fabric of this country, she’s probably overqualified for any of these positions and that is just the truth of it," Hostin said.
Multiple media outlets, including "The View," have frequently uttered phrases found in CRT definitions, books and educational papers despite claims that CRT is "lie" or "boogeyman" created by the GOP. Some pundits have even asserted that CRT simply "does not exist" despite a plethora of online resources, even resources found on their own websites, which indicate the contrary.
In April 2020 with the pandemic just beginning, contributor Eddie Glaude Jr. said on MSNBC that the increased rate of COVID morbidity for Black Americans was the result of "deep structural racism that has defined American society for generations."
Dr. Chris Pernell, a public health physician, also told CNN in January 2021 that "systemic racism" was to blame for the disproportionate number of COVID deaths among Black Americans.
As the 2020 presidential campaign season kicked off, MSNBC analyst Zerlina Maxwell speculated the Iowa Caucus was a "perfect example of systemic racism" because 91% of the state’s voters are White and the "kids in cages" at the Southern Border were not.
New York Times editorial board member and MSNBC analyst Mara Gay took it a step further when she claimed in June 2021 that it was "not a theory" but a "fact" that racism is "embedded in the structure" of American institutions.
ABC also jumped in on the action when liberal commentator Angela Rye said "systemic racism" was not something you could "cherry-pick" and decide when one wants it to apply. "It means the system at its core is rotten," she added.
Moments later she asserted that White Americans carry "White body supremacy" while Black Americans carry "Black body trauma."
MSNBC, ABC, CNN, and CBS made references to "systemic racism" and "institutional racism" as well as other points that indicated American government and laws were inherently racist on numerous other occasions, echoing an important facet of CRT.
Yet, many of these media networks also downplayed CRT or outright denied its existence despite engaging in its vernacular and themes.
Both MSNBC’s Joy Reid and then-CNN anchor Chris Cuomo referred to CRT as a "bogeyman" propped up by conservative politicians.
The day after the Virginia gubernatorial race, CBS late night host Stephen Colbert said it must be difficult to campaign against someone who’s "promising to eliminate things that don’t exist," referring to Youngkin's opposition to CRT.
Following Youngkin’s win, MSNBC anchor Nicolle Wallace declared that CRT "isn’t real."
"…Critical Race Theory, which isn’t real, turned the suburbs 15 points to the Trump insurrection-endorsed Republican," Wallace said.
In a separate segment she compared banning CRT to "banning ghosts."
"There are no ghosts," she added.
Many other pundits and guests, while not flat-out denying its existence, claimed that CRT was not taught in Virginia schools or virtually any K-12 schools in the country and instead could only be found at the college-level.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/msnbc-cnn-abc-critical-race-theory-republicans
*******************************************
British Leftist leader refuses to answer when asked whether a woman can have a penis
Sir Keir Starmer refused to answer the question of whether a woman can have a penis in the latest Labour Party confusion over the transgender debate.
The topic has been a point of division in the party for more than a year after Sir Keir said backbencher Rosie Duffield’s comment that “only women have a cervix” was “not right”.
Yvette Cooper and Anneliese Dodds, two of Labour’s frontbench MPs, both declined to give a definition of a woman on International Women’s Day earlier this month.
Speaking to LBC’s Nick Ferrari during a phone-in, Sir Keir, the Labour leader, was asked multiple times whether or not “a woman can have a penis”.
“I don’t think that discussing this issue in this way helps anyone in the long run,” he said.
“What I want to see is a reform of the law as it is, but I am also an advocate of safe spaces for women and I want to have a discussion that is... Anybody who genuinely wants to find a way through this, I want to discuss that with. I do find that too many people – in my view – retreat or hold a position of which is intolerant of others.
“And that’s not picking on any individual at all, but I don’t like intolerance, I like open discussion.”
Placeholder image for youtube video: r81aZGJHDeM
Asked by a caller whether it was fair that transgender women were allowed to compete in women’s sports, Sir Keir said it was a matter “for the sporting bodies to decide for themselves”, acknowledging that there were “difficult questions”.
Lia Thomas, a swimmer transitioning from male to female, this month became the first transgender person to win a title at the highest level of American collegiate sport.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2022/03/28/keir-starmer-refuses-answer-whether-woman-can-have-penis-latest/
*************************************************
How gender studies took over the world
Raquel Rosario Sánchez
Why are so many people in such a muddle over the word ‘woman’? Sadly, a share of the blame falls on women’s studies and gender studies. I should know: this has been my academic field for over a decade.
As a teaching assistant, I remember repeating the phrase ‘there is more difference among the sexes than between the sexes’ in front of a group of students, without properly thinking it through. A sociology of gender professor taught me that, and I absorbed it like a sponge. It was only upon reflection that I realised the consequences of denying sex differences. Most of my cohort never changed their minds.
During the confirmation hearings this week of Ketanji Brown Jackson, who could become the first black female Supreme Court judge in the United States, Jackson was asked to define the word woman. She refused, saying: ‘I am not a biologist.’
Just a few days earlier, a fierce debate opened up in the US regarding the inclusion of male athletes in female sports, following the high-profile victory of trans swimmer Lia Thomas over other women in the National Collegiate Athletic Association swimming championship.
In Britain, some politicians are at last seeing sense on the gender issue. At PMQs this week, Boris Johnson said: ‘When it comes to distinguishing between a man and a woman, the basic facts of biology remain overwhelmingly important.’ But plenty of his colleagues in Parliament don’t appear to agree.
The subject I have spent years studying carries a great deal of responsibility for the reason why progressive politicians like Labour’s Anneliese Dodds, the shadow minister for women and equalities, become unstuck when it comes to the word ‘woman’. During an appearance on International Women’s Day, of all days, Dodds was asked to define what the five-letter word meant: ‘I think it does depend what the context is surely,’ she said. While Dodds didn’t answer the question, her response was revealing.
Why? Because focusing on ‘context’ is the way academics in my field try to deal with difficult implications of their views on gender. In Women’s Realities, Women’s Choices, a foundational text in women’s studies published in 1983, the Hunter College Women’s Studies collective pondered:
‘Do biological characteristics give us a definition of ‘woman’? The answer is not as simple as we might expect it to be. Biological and physical attributes are frequently used in defining ‘woman.’ Scientists, who are primarily men, reflect the biases of the culture. Average differences between males and females in physical behavioural attributes, such as physical strength and height are frequently cited. An average, however, is a statistical concept. The range of differences within any one sex is greater than it is the average differences between the sexes.’
While this line of thinking – which blends the barriers between the sexes – started off as a campus pursuit, it has now oozed out into the mainstream – as Dodds’ confusion shows all too clearly. Women’s studies sought to transform and revolutionise academia by applying scientific rigour to the concept that ‘the personal is political.’ Given the hostile reception to the movement at the time, this could only be achieved by squashing the idea that female biology – the ability to carry and feed children – determined our destiny.
The idea was that if a patriarchal system treats women as inherently inferior to men then it made sense to ferociously advocate that both sexes are, in fact, equal in almost every respect. So biology became an enemy that would naturally come back to haunt us. In this pursuit for equality, what we all surely know to be true – that humans are differentiated by sex on a chromosomal level – was left out of the picture.
Yet while progressive politicians – and gender studies theorists – might like to imagine there is no downside to this approach, they are wrong. After all, pretending that male and female bodies are no different from each other risks causing no end of problems: women suffering from a heart attack might be dismissed as having anxiety and stress. Why? Because the medical establishment has long been dominated by men. It seems natural that male doctors are more likely to educate students on male bodies and ‘male symptoms’ for many ailments. If women and men are viewed as one and the same, these differences can get ignored.
More broadly, feminists have rightly raised concerns that blending the two sexes could represent a green light for a man to access women’s prisons, refuges and sport competitions. There is also a risk that statistical data needed to understand the scale of male violence against women is muddled up.
As for women’s studies, this gender confusion also poses an important conundrum: if there is no material difference between men and women, why do feminists need an academic field devoted solely to one sex? This argument, along with the parasitic emergence of postmodernism, saw women’s studies shape shift into the more encompassing gender studies, and lately into a cooler incarnation in the form of queer studies. The revolutionary project was torpedoed from within.
Now as these departments churn out ‘gender specialists’ and ‘gender consultants’ into the world, intent on erasing biological differences from policy and legislation, we are all paying the price. Mediocre male athletes take gold in women’s sports competitions; women feel uneasy about whether their locker rooms and safe spaces are indeed safe.
Although I was never a true believer of ‘gender identity’ theories, I realised I needed to change my mind about some of the most strident arguments I had accepted as received wisdom. Will Labour do the same and ever come back from this brink? Under Keir Starmer’s leadership, it seems unlikely.
If so, they are making a grave mistake. While blurring the lines between the sexes has a certain appeal to both the academic and the political fringes, there are life and death conversations to be had about women’s health, safety and privacy. None of us need a dictionary to define half the planet’s population. We just need common sense and a backbone.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/how-gender-studies-took-over-the-world/
************************************************
The Boris Johnson version of freedom
“I’ll tell you something. It is the invincible strength of this country that we believe by and large and within the law that people should be able to do whatever they want provided they don’t do any harm to anybody else. And that’s called freedom [and] we don’t need to be woke, we just want to be free.”
These are the spring conference words of the man who banned Christmas.
These are the words of a man whose government have banned TV stations that give a different view.
These are the words of the man who oversaw the greatest assault on your rights and your freedom in peacetime in the modern era.
These are the words of Lockdown Boris. The man who put millions of us under house arrest and decided that HE, rather than WE, decide which experimental medicines we have the right to refuse.
He made us so f*cking free that people were arrested for sitting on a park bench.
“By and large and within the law”. Which means, you are only free when you obey. You only have rights when they are bestowed by your government. There are no inalienable rights anymore, no firm boundaries on what your government can and cannot do.
There are still millions of people who don’t realise this. Who think that our freedom is ‘real’ when it can be taken away at will, and still ‘real’ because it is handed back like a tattered gift given by an abusive partner. I kicked the shit out of you darling, buy yourself a nice dress.
This is the context that makes the I Stand With Ukraine drones so grotesque. The sudden NATO lovers. The absurdity of digging up old Thatcher quotes as if western leadership and the West of today was the freedom loving West of the past.
That’s gone. That was thrown away and shit on. By the people the drones just keep obeying and keep trusting and keep taking seriously when they talk about freedom.
Boris locked you in your f*cking house and told you that you couldn’t visit your dying relative and that if some Marxist geek in a lab coat wanted to inject your little child with a toxic just invented cocktail of MRNA experiments by god you better just f*cking accept it and thank the State for being so generous with its expensive poison.
Boris. Not Putin. The ‘Free West’ has been riding down freedom protests with cavalry charges and happily allowing you to starve for the wrong opinion. How the f*ck can anyone still not see that? Just because, probably, they are themselves pretty comfortable financially and pretty happy to conform with whatever f*cking lie they are sold next.
“Freedom” in the mouth of ANY globalist is like “I love you” slobbered on you by your rapist.
https://libertarianism.uk/2022/03/23/your-rapist-loves-you/
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
30 March, 2022
The Real 'Reset' Is Coming
Victor Davis Hanson
President Joe Biden believes the Ukraine war will mark the start of a "new world order." In the middle of the COVID global pandemic, Klaus Schwab and global elites likewise announced a "great reset."
Accordingly, the nations of the world would have to surrender their sovereignty to an international body of experts. They would enlighten us on taxes, diversity, and green policies.
When former President Donald Trump got elected in 2016, marquee journalists announced partisan reporting would have to displace the old, supposedly disinterested approach to the news.
There is a common theme here.
In normal times progressives worry that they do not have public support for their policies. Only in crises do they feel that the political Left and media can merge to use apocalyptic times to ram through usually unpopular approaches to foreign and domestic problems.
We saw that last year: fleeing from Afghanistan, the embrace of critical race theory, trying to end the filibuster, pack the court, junk the Electoral College, and nationalize voting laws.
These "new orders" and "resets" always entail far bigger government and more unelected, powerful bureaucracies. Elites assume that their radical changes in energy use, media reporting, voting, sovereignty, and racial and ethnic quotas will never quite apply to themselves, the architects of such top-down changes.
So we common folk must quit fossil fuels, but not those who need to use corporate jets. Walls will not mar our borders but will protect the homes of Nancy Pelosi, Mark Zuckerberg, and Bill Gates.
Hunter Biden's lost laptop will be declared, by fiat, not news. In contrast, the fake Alfa Bank "collusion" narrative will be national headline news for weeks.
Middle-class lifestyles will be curbed as we are instructed to strive for sustainability and transition to apartment living and mass transit. But the Obamas will still keep their three mansions, and Silicon Valley futurists will insist on exemptions for their yachts.
In truth, we are about to see a radical reset - of the current reset. It will be a different sort of transformation than the elites are expecting and one that they should greatly fear.
The world and the United States are furious over hyperinflation that may soon exceed 10% per year. We will be lucky if it ends only in recession or stagflation, rather than a global depression.
The mess was created by the same apparat who bought into "modern monetary theory." That silly university idea claimed prosperity would follow vastly expanding the money supply, keeping interest rates at de facto zero levels, running huge annual deficits, piling up unsustainable national debt, and subsidizing workers to stay home.
Natural gas and oil costs are now soaring to unsustainable levels - and to the point where the middle class simply will not be able to travel, keep warm in winter, or cool in summer.
Both in Europe and the United States left-wing governments deliberately curbed drilling and non-Russian pipelines. They shut down nuclear power plants and subsidized costly, inefficient solar and wind projects. They ended up not with utopia, but with fuel shortages, high prices, and energy dependency on the world's most repressive regimes.
The woke revolution in the West was supposed to teach us that the "white male"-dominated Western world is toxic. Its origins, ascendence, and current leisure and affluence were supposedly due only to systemic exploitation, racism, and sexism.
Elites introduced cancel culture, doxxing, deplatforming, and social ostracism to shame these supposed exploiters and to destroy their lives and careers.
Few asked how a supposedly noxious West of some 2,500 years duration became the number one destination of millions of global non-Western migrants and offered the greatest degree of global prosperity and freedom for its citizens.
So a reset reckoning is coming - in reaction to the "new orders" championed by Biden and the Davos set.
In the November 2022 midterms, we are likely to see a historic "No!" to the orthodox left-wing agenda that has resulted in unsustainable inflation, unaffordable energy, war, and humiliation abroad, spiraling crime, racial hostility - as well as arrogant defiance from those who deliberately enacted these disastrous policies.
What will replace it is a return to what until recently had worked.
Closed and secure borders with only legal and measured immigration will return. Americans will demand tough police enforcement and deterrent sentencing, and a return to integration and the primacy of individual character rather than separatist fixations on the "color our skin."
The public will continue to tune out of the partisan and mediocre "mainstream" media. We will see greater increased production of oil and natural gas to transition us slowly to a wider variety of energy, strong national defense, and deterrent foreign policies.
The prophets of the new world order sowed the wind and they will soon reap the whirlwind of an angry public worn out by elite incompetence, arrogance, and ignorance.
https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2022/03/24/the-real-reset-is-coming-n2604976
****************************************************
The scriptural basis of American civilization
Victimization Of Children is Evil
“There are more important things to worry about in this world than giving eight-year-olds access to pornography in the school library. Far more important, wouldn’t you say? “
No, with all due respect, I would not. Sadly, eight year old’s in public school have seen more porn at that age than many of their grandparents. Desensitizing the children through porn and grooming them for sexual predators, PC; minor attracted persons. So, they grow up with no concept of right and wrong, believing murder as the answer to unwanted babies, murder as an answer to old people (Euthanasia) and murder as an answer to settle an argument over whatever they have been told is emotionally important and expedient to them. This is the problem with today’s conservatism. It has no morals. Is God’s priority Russia or China or the threat of a World War? What should conservatives really care about?
Matthew 18:1At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 2And Jesus called a little child unto him, and set him in the midst of them, 3And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven. 4Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5And whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me. 6But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.
1 Timothy 3:1This is a true saying, If a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good work. 2A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; 3Not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre; but patient, not a brawler, not covetous; 4One that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity; 5(For if a man know not how to rule his own house, how shall he take care of the church of God?) 6Not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride he fall into the condemnation of the devil. 7Moreover he must have a good report of them which are without; lest he fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.
It’s Time to Reveal a Secret
For America to lead the world her house needs to be in order. What made America great was the Christian heritage and America’s moral compass. Both Russia and China as well as Islam know that our immorality is what will destroy us from within. That’s why eliminating God, by entering the Seminaries in the 60’s was a top priority of the subversives that stayed behind during the Vietnam War. Removing prayer, the Bible and the pledge of allegiance are key components of the 45 Goals of the Communist Party. Infiltrating the schools, perverting the minds of our children, and traumatizing them so we have no next generation to lead. We are well down that road.
Kinsey’s influence on our education system is generations old. Hugh Hefner’s life was held up as some great examples of his contributions to our culture. That should tell you the condition of the soul of America. Are there more important things than to protect and defend the most vulnerable in our own nation so that there is a future generation? The liberal schools know the answer to that, and they know that a morally bankrupt conservative movement that has signed on to the mantra “those are social issues” is no threat to their agenda. If our rights come from God and not man, then shouldn’t we be paying attention to the things He says are important in order to preserve those rights?
Luke 6:39And he spake a parable unto them, Can the blind lead the blind? shall they not both fall into the ditch? 40The disciple is not above his master: but every one that is perfect shall be as his master. 41And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but perceivest not the beam that is in thine own eye? 42Either how canst thou say to thy brother, Brother, let me pull out the mote that is in thine eye, when thou thyself beholdest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye, and then shalt thou see clearly to pull out the mote that is in thy brother's eye.
A New Evil Axis Has Formed
In closing let me say that what we are witnessing is the rise of an evil axis, Russia, China and Iran, Putin, Xi and Raisi. All aspire to grow empires and advance their visions of dominance. All have empty, soulless ideologies of death and torture. They are all godless, yes Islam is a godless cult of death and destruction. In fact, they are so ruthless that even the Nazi SS abandoned them in Africa during WWII because their atrocities were too much even for them.
Here in the west, we can hardly conceive or even imagine this kind of evil, yet the atheism that spawns it has made its way into the minds of our children. This is the real battle. There is no power on earth that can repel this kind of evil with its resolve, save the goodness of God revealed in the sons of God, blood bought through Jesus Christ our King, and America was chosen for such a time as this.
The bible reminds us that the Word does not return void but prospers in everything that it is sent out to do. The seed of the Word of God is deep in the soil of America. Blood was spilt on this land to pay for the freedom the Benjamin Franklin spoke of. More blood was spilt in an attempt to obtain that more perfect union in our civil struggle. Still more American blood has been spilt across this globe in the pursuit of stopping despots like the ones we face today.
Excerpt from Pastor Greg Young
************************************************
Enraged Disney employees say their beliefs are 'coming under attack' in open letter calling for the company to be 'politically neutral'
A group of anonymous Disney employees with conservative beliefs are slamming their coworkers for creating an 'environment of fear' and calling on the entertainment company to remain 'politically neutral' in the face of protests against Florida's so-called 'Don't Say Gay' bill.
'The Walt Disney Company has come to be an increasingly uncomfortable place to work for those of us whose political and religious views are not explicitly progressive,' workers said in an unsigned letter published Monday.
'We watch quietly as our beliefs come under attack from our own employer, and we frequently see those who share our opinions condemned as villains by our own leadership.'
The statement comes as a number of the Disney's high-profile stars have criticized the company - with the actress Raven-Symoné and the staff of her show, 'Raven's Home,' joining an employee walkout Wednesday.
The longtime Disney star, 36, posted a video on Instagram showing the cast of her show walking out in support of the demonstrations.
'We don't like it. We're walking out. It's stupid,' she said.
Amid these protests, the group of anonymous employees also accused their liberal colleagues of calling them 'bigots' - and criticized CEO Bob Chapek's 'evolving response' after he walked back comments saying that corporate statements do nothing but divide a company and its customers.
The workers added that some of them were reluctant to respond to an internal poll that was circulated a few months ago out of fear that its results would be used to 'target' them for contradicting the 'progressive orthodoxy' at the company.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10648001/Conservative-workers-call-Disney-politically-neutral-Dont-Say-Gay-bill.html
************************************************
Affirmative action blows up in Korea
Seoul: The young man hangs his head in frustration. Overlooked for another job in favour of a woman, the university graduate leaves his interview angry at policies that he believes have put him in this position – unemployed and emasculated.
The scene played out across millions of TV screens in South Korea in February. “Fix this broken system of social equality and common sense,” the ad read.
This was not an abstract television commercial from a men’s rights group. It was an ad for South Korea’s new conservative President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol.
South Korea, the world’s 10th largest economy and the innovation centre of Asia, has spent the past 12 months in a gender war. A poll of 23,000 adults in 28 countries by the King’s College London and IPSOS last year found 80 per cent of Koreans thought there was a “great deal or fair amount” of tension between men and women – the highest rate of any country surveyed.
Anti-feminists have called young women miso or “kimchi girls” – slang that derisively suggests they get support from their boyfriends. Older women have been labelled “mum-roach” and accused of raiding their husband’s wallets.
Feminists have called the young men misogynists. They say they are intent on keeping their place in an economic order that has produced a gender pay gap in Korea that is twice the average of 38 other advanced economies.
“It is going to become much more intense,” said Koo Jeong-woo, professor of sociology at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul. “I think what has happened to South Korea is something that could also happen to other countries.”
The feminist and anti-feminist camps once represented passionate but small groups in a country where overall economic growth has surged over the past two decades.
But a divisive election campaign convinced enough Koreans on March 9 that one of the solutions to their woes was to elect Yoon, a 61-year-old political novice who promised to abolish the Gender Equality Ministry.
Yoon’s election victory was not built on a sudden surge in anti-feminist sentiment, it grew out of a slow, bubbling malaise – particularly among young men who would have historically voted for his more progressive Democratic Party opponent.
In the past two decades, these men had their advantage in the job market – hiring credit for compulsory military service – taken away from them, and watched apartment prices soar (including doubling in the last five years). Many of them have been stuck at home with their parents as #MeToo emboldened a generation of women already increasingly carving out their economic independence by choosing not to have children.
Kim Nae-hoon, the 29-year-old author of Radical 20s: K-Populism and the Political said older generations who had lived through the Korean War lived each day hoping for a better tomorrow.
“But such a luxury isn’t allowed for the current generation,” he said in an interview in Seoul.
Michael Sandel’s book The Tyranny of Merit won critical acclaim across Europe and the United States when it was released in 2020. But it found an even bigger fan base the following year in South Korea, where it became the second-best non-fiction seller at Kyobo, the nation’s largest book chain.
Sandel argues that meritocracy is a facade – undone by entrenched structural hurdles such as money and education. But because it persists as an ideal, it leaves those who don’t achieve their aspirations frustrated and blaming themselves.
When those workers look for answers, they find it in populist politicians like Donald Trump and Yoon, who tell them that immigrants or gender equality are the problem, and that they have the solution.
Park Ji-hae, 20 an account manager in Seoul said lots of Korean voters wanted presidential candidates to bring “straightforward, gratifying campaign promises on lingering social issues that have been bothering us”.
“There is a big, powerful and persuasive argument that the reason why young men got upset and engaged in collective action was because of the economic insecurity they felt. But I think that’s unfair and actually might be insulting. I think the reason why young men are upset is they have legitimate grievances about the very powerful framework that has existed in this country.”
Koo argues that gender equality has defined education curriculums and hiring practices over the past decade.“It is actually biased towards women,” he said. Koo said men, who are still expected to be able to buy a home for their wife before they get married, are disadvantaged after doing 18 months of military service, and then struggle to get into a tight job market that requires two or three degrees before full-time employment can be secured.
“They have masculine duties,” said Koo. “They should at least have the capacity to provide shelter.”
South Korea is ranked 102 out of 156 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Gender Gap Index. Decades of preferential treatment for men at the top of its big chaebol firms like Samsung and LG, in the National Assembly, and across its workforce have seen gender expectations entrenched among older generations.
Hwang Jung-min, a 29-year-old researcher said Yoon’s opponent, the Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung – who lost the presidency by less than 1 per cent – was the only candidate who wanted to protect women’s rights.
“He genuinely leaned toward listening to women’s voices. I don’t think Lee [could] resolve all gender issues; however, at the very least, among other candidates, Lee seems to be the only one who’s been wholeheartedly listening to women’s voices,” she said.
In a Seoul coffee shop last week, Hwang In-beom said he knew little about South Korea’ Gender Equality Ministry until dismissive posts started appearing on social media in 2018.
The Ministry was formed in 1998 but did not play a significant role until 2014 when it started setting gender quotas for government committees and targets for female managers and school principals. Its top goal is to promote awareness of gender equality, but females still make up less than 50 per cent of representatives across key areas and industries.
“Reading through negative comments about the ministry on an online news article makes me feel as if no one would get hurt even if the ministry gets abolished,” said Hwang.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/it-s-biased-towards-women-the-angry-young-men-on-the-front-line-of-korea-s-battle-of-the-sexes-20220323-p5a78u.html
*********************************************
Australia: Teaching sexual consent in high schools
Bettina Arndt makes a number of good points below. She is undoubtedy right to ascribe present policies to anti-male feminists.
She should have gone further, though. WOMEN also need education about consent. I doubt that any consent education will do much but I am sure that almost any experienced man will tell you that female consent can be an enigma wrapped in a mystery.
It used to be well-known that women play games with men. They may be open to having sex with a man but will at no stage utter a clear consent. It is essentially a "wait-and-see" strategy that is not inherently unreasonable but it sure can be confusing to the male concerned
I have always refused to be part of such games. I was willing to spend time talking with a woman but if the conversation seemed too flirtatious I would simply desist from further conversation, apparently to the confusion of the woman concerned on some occasions. I once left party rather early after having a rather involved conversation with an Eve but was told the day after by a friend who had also been present: "You could have got her into bed, you know". I think he was right. I felt that at the time. I just didn't like the complexity of the games.
So in my case I have confined myself to situations where an approach of some sort from me was met with clear agreement, but not necessarily verbal agreement. Behaviour can be more eloquent than words. So I have always acted with clear consent but am well aware that I have missed out in situations where consent was less clear. And I have no doubt that on some such occasions the woman concerned has felt frustrated by my "stupidity". I know that because the woman concerned has persisted with me and been much more direct on a second occasion.
And a big problem often is that a rather assertive approach by a male is required for the woman to give consent. The consent will be genuine but for various reasons the woman likes an assertive approach. And thererein lies a big problem. How is the male to work out when assertiveness is required as opposed to where consent is genuinely not given? It can be a guessing game and guessing games can go wrong. Neither party is at fault when it goes wrong. The fault lies with a culture in which female consent or the lack of it may not be clear
So can we "educate" women to be clearer in giving or refusing consent? I would like to think so but am not holding my breath
Last month it was announced all Australian high school students are to be taught about sexual consent and coercion. Mandatory education programs are being rolled out across the country teaching boys not to rape.
It’s mainly due to Sydney schoolgirl Chanel Contos, who burst into the limelight last year when she announced that a school sex education course had led her to discover she’d been raped two years earlier. As a 13-year-old she’d been ‘forced’ to go down on a boy at a party but it took a Year-10 school sex education course for her to realize what had happened to her. She started a website encouraging other girls to tell stories of similar sexual assaults and nearly 2,000 obliged. Ever since she’s been out there calling out male misbehaviour and lobbying for school sexual consent courses.
This is just the latest front in the mighty feminist battle to rein in male sexuality and punish more rapists. I wrote recently about how the NSW parliament was misled by false statistics which were used to assist the smooth passage of enthusiastic consent regulations into law. At much the same time over 1,500 school kids were signing a Contos petition calling for enthusiastic consent to be taught in schools.
Our compliant media dutifully pushed the fear-mongering as Contos met with members of parliament and other power brokers to make it all happen. We heard shocking stories of drunk girls waking up to discover males taking advantage of them, boys behaving badly, circulating photos of their mates having sex, etc. some truly unacceptable male behaviour.
But gradually questions started appearing in online comments about why so many girls were finding themselves in these risky situations, why were so many vulnerable youngsters attending these alcohol and drug-fuelled parties?
Naturally, any suggestion that girls needed to take care of themselves were howled down. A principal of a Sydney girls school dared to suggest that along with more sex education in schools, parents need to be ‘having conversations regarding consent, the impact of alcohol, risk-taking behaviours, and self-respect’. Her sensible suggestion was treated with disdain by journalists who lined up enlightened souls to put her straight. The problem is ‘not about girls’ pronounced an executive from the Alliance of Girls’ Schools, but rather about the ‘underbelly of disrespect, privilege, and callousness displayed by young men towards young women’.
‘This is a systemic, centuries-old societal problem,’ she explained. ‘Behaviour that endorses male sexual entitlement, lack of accountability, and a power imbalance.’
That’s it, you see. Feminism 101, all designed to tie in nicely with the ‘respect for women’ ideological claptrap already rolled out in the Respectful Relationships programs allegedly tackling domestic violence, which are currently indoctrinating children in schools – teaching them about toxic males and helpless females.
Now sexual consent education will reinforce that message. I’ve just been sent snapshots taken from the brand-new curriculum being introduced in one South Australian school. Apparently, there’s flexibility in how the educators choose to address the topic but it seems most schools will take a similar approach.
It’s fascinating seeing how the educators twist themselves into knots to avoid any hint of victim-blaming. They’ve come up with a new slogan: ‘Vulnerability is not the same as responsibility.’ Look at this little scenario featuring Kim. Be warned, it’s pretty confusing because we aren’t given the gender of Kim, who uses the pronoun ‘they’.
Kim is out drinking, and a man ‘they’ know offers ‘them’ a ride home but instead drives to a secluded spot, parks and wants to have sex. Our educators spell out the message very clearly: it’s the villain, the driver, who is 100 per cent responsible for his actions and whether or not Kim is safe. Kim is simply ‘vulnerable’ as a result of decisions ‘they’ have made to get into this situation.
Neat, eh? In this particular scenario we don’t know the gender of the potential victim, but the bulk of the responsibility/vulnerability examples given in the curriculum involve males taking advantage of girls who arguably signal sexual interest in various ways by: wearing low-cut dresses; or inviting a boy to ‘snuggle’ with them in a private room at a party. Here’s a classic example, featuring Jen and Luke. Note that it is taken from an American publication called Men Stopping Rape – which says it all…
The predominantly female teachers who will be guiding the students’ discussion of these scenes will no doubt work hard to convince the kids that the boy is inevitably 100 per cent ‘responsible’ while the innocent girl is simply ‘vulnerable’.
Very occasionally they do present a girl as the baddie. Like the sexually aggressive Mila who is all over her boyfriend Luke and gets very indignant when he says he wants to take his time. ‘I said it was time to be a real man and do the deed,’ responds Mila. A rare toxic woman but overwhelmed by large numbers of pushy blokes who don’t take no for an answer, have sex with sleeping girls and boast about having sex to their mates.
The curriculum does include one scenario, Ali and Josh, describing the situation of a girl who has sex because she fears her boyfriend might dump her if she doesn’t. That’s true to life – a very good example of a girl giving consent she may later regret. The great pity is there is so little in this curriculum about the many reasons girls might be ambivalent about consent. The central myth of the ‘enthusiastic consent’ dogma is the notion that girls/women know their own minds and clearly indicate their desires. The truth is males are forced to interpret the muddy waters of female sexual ambivalence, obfuscation, and confusion. The apparent ‘Yeses’ that are really ‘Maybes’ or secret ‘Nos’.
This week I had a live chat on Thinkspot with a famous YouTuber, Steve Bonnell – also known as ‘Destiny’. Bonnell has made big bucks as video game Twitch streamer. but this clever, articulate young man is also a political commentator, debating all manner of issues usually from a leftist perspective. Funnily enough, just after our conversation Bonnell was banned from Twitch for ‘hateful conduct’ which might just have included our chat about sexual consent, which certainly would have got up the nose of the woke folk running social media.
Bonnell regularly challenges the new dogma on this issue, throwing down the gauntlet by declaring that women no longer have bad sexual experiences – if was bad, it was rape and the man’s fault. His argument is that men are being forced into a parental role – treating women like infants with no agency of their own. Bonnell also declares that if you invite someone to your house, you must expect them to see that as a sexual invitation. And that when it comes to stealthing, women shouldn’t have sex with anyone whom they wouldn’t be comfortable telling not to remove a condom.
Naturally I agreed with him on these points, but amusingly Bonnell was very careful not to align too strongly with what he sees as my overly protective pro-male stance. I was intrigued to hear him talk about young women today, whom he claims enter every sexual encounter with some element of fear. As I pointed out, I’ve never felt like that and see this as a total failure of modern feminism. Whatever happened to feminism’s celebration of women’s female strength and independence? Remember Helen Reddy’s triumphant song – I am woman, hear me roar?
Many of you will know Camile Paglia’s famous story about being in college in the 1960s when girls were still chaperoned and locked safely away from boys at night. She describes their fight to rid themselves of this protectionism, the fight for the freedom to risk rape. ‘I think it is discouraging to see the surrender of young women of their personal autonomy,’ she says, amazed that women are welcoming ‘the intrusion and surveillance of authority figures over their private lives’.
That’s the bottom line here. The sexual consent courses being introduced in our schools are simply the latest effort to convince young women that they are all potential victims, needing protection from dangerous males. Another step to creating a divided society.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/teaching-sexual-consent-in-high-schools/
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
29 March, 2022
Young women are being scarred by botched DIY freckles after injecting henna or black ink across their cheeks in TikTok beauty trend
Amusing. Freckles are a fairly reliable indicator of some Celtic ancestry. I have them. Women used to be embarrassed to have them on their face -- as they detracted from a smooth image. And it is very hard to imitate the natural thing if a foolish attempt is made to do so.
The real thing:
This is a fairly extreme example of facial freckles. Most are lighter than that. They are most prominent during childhood and tend to fade with age. They are often associated with red hair. My father was a redhead
Experts have raised safety concerns about a TikTok beauty trend that has seen young women disfigured after creating DIY tattoo freckles.
Videos posted on the social-media platform show people using needles to inject dots of henna or black ink across their nose and cheeks, which is believed to have been inspired by the Duchess of Sussex’s natural freckles.
But clinics have reported an increase in the number of women needing expensive tattoo removal treatment after botched jobs that trigger allergic reactions and run the risk of permanent scarring.
Laura Kay, a London-based permanent make-up artist who specialises in applying eyebrows, eyeliner and lipstick, said: ‘I wouldn’t advise that you get tattoo freckles done. People who do tattoos at home without a licence are known as scratchers, and that’s not legal.
‘Tattoo artists must have a licence, and DIY tattoos pose a real risk of HIV or hepatitis.’
Bottles of black ink, advertised as ‘DIY Tattoo Fake Freckles’ sell for as little as £5.70 online, while plant-derived henna can irritate the skin.
Australian reality TV star Tilly Whitfield went viral last year after her DIY attempt at fake freckles, using lead-based ink copied from TikTok, left her with permanent scarring and temporary loss of vision in one eye. And one young British TikToker who attempted henna freckles said it took hours to rub the black stain off her face.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10655617/Women-scarred-botched-DIY-freckles-TikTok-beauty-trend.html
*************************************************
29 March, 2022
British Archives staff put trigger warning next to the U.S. Declaration of Independence flagging it 'outdated, biased and offensive'
Leftist hate has no limits
A famed British historian has hit out at 'moronic' National Archives staff who decided to erect a 'trigger warning' next to the Declaration of Independence for fears its 'outdated' content could cause offence.
Professor Andrew Roberts said that a rare copy of the 18th century document, which represents the founding papers of the United States, is now adorned with a trigger warning for 'outdated, biased and offensive' content at its home in the National Archives in Richmond, London.
The visiting professor at King's College London and critically-acclaimed author said: 'Anyone who thinks an 18th century document is not going to be outdated, biased and offensive is frankly a moron.
'When you go to see the declaration, you read what it says about Native Americans and so on, you won't be so offended that you can't stand up,' he said sarcastically of the trigger warning.
It comes just days after it was revealed that Bath Spa University had slapped offensive content caveats on the likes of celebrated English poets William Wordsworth and John Keats - though the addition of content warnings to historical texts suggests the 'moronic' practice is being taken one step further.
Trigger warnings have gained popularity in recent years in response to concerns that people could be adversely affected by any troubling content.
But there has significant pushback from historians on any mention of trigger warnings being applied to historical texts or documents for fear that the practice will lead to attempts to censor or erase important parts of history.
A spokeswoman for the National Archives said: 'We are aware that some of the terminology used at the time [of the declaration's writing] is not appropriate or may cause offence today.
'If we are using documents in a talk or webinar, for example, then we would endeavour to make people aware that the documents may contain terms that we would not use today.'
The US Constitution was written as part of a months-long process that included deliberations and compromise by the delegates to the Constitutional Convention of 1787.
The most notable delegates included some of the nation’s founding fathers, including James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin. The convention was presided over by George Washington, the country’s first president.
It was convened in order to remedy the deficiencies of the Articles of Confederation, which to that point was the country’s governing document.
Adopted after the 13 states won their independence from Great Britain, the Articles proved ineffectual in allowing a central government to perform basic tasks, like taxation, raising an army, and adjudicating interstate disputes.
But in recent years, as the nation has wrestled with its history that saw non-white communities like Native Americans and African slaves severely marginalized, some have proposed changes to the language of the founding documents.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10658193/National-Archives-staff-branded-morons-trigger-warning-Declaration-Independence.html
**********************************************
29 March, 2022
Inside the spectacular $200,000 wedding of bespoke spray tanner complete with a street full of supercars, Lebanese drummers and a designer bridal gown
Nobodies pretending to be somebody. The ostentatious Mediterranean taste involved looks rather repulsive from an Anglo perspective. And was that a good use of $200,000? I would have added it to my portfolio of blue-chip shares. The bride looks pretty attractive anyway so surely she would have been enough to adorn the occasion with minimal context
My last wedding was enjoyed by all -- particularly the children present -- even though the wedding breakfast was in my back yard with a couple of buckets of KFC. I thought my 5'11" bride by herself was spectacular enough. See her below.
A professional spray tanner and her husband have tied the knot in spectacular style at one of Sydney's most sought-after wedding venues after rescheduling their nuptials due to a Covid lockdown.
Justin and Justine, both 32, envisioned a super chic modern wedding with traditional elements to pay homage to their Lebanese and Greek background at Doltone House on Jones Bay Wharf.
The couple from Sans Souci, who have been together for seven years, spent $200,000 bringing their vision to life with supercars escorting them around the city for the day and a dress by Australian designer Steven Khalil.
'We had our traditional twist on entertainment which included many Lebanese drummers, in conjunction with the Greek bouzouki player and saxophone player, whom all intertwined to create one of the best atmospheres you could ever imagine,' she said.
'My bridal party and I had the perfect glam team with flawless makeup done by Melissa Sassine and hair by Sino Hairdressing. All our suppliers we worked with on the day and leading up were just simply amazing.'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10650687/Inside-spectacular-200-000-wedding-Justine-Sarkis.html
29 March, 2022
Scottish pupils will be taught the Loch Ness monster is anti-Scottish because its legend was a creation of the British class system that portrayed Scotland as 'primitive'
Some Scots clearly have a big chip on their shoulders
To many, it’s a fun fairytale to lure tourists; to others, it’s a genuine mystery – or just a silly hoax.
But to woke education chiefs, the Loch Ness Monster is a potent symbol of England’s domination of Scotland – a theory which will now be taught in schools.
Pupils north of the border are to be told how the mythical beast reinforces negative stereotypes and ingrains bias about the Scots.
Schoolchildren will be taught how the class structure had a role in the creation of the legend, and how stories surrounding the creature relate to debate on Scottish Independence and even the Cold War.
But campaigners last night criticised the classes as ‘nationalist, anti-British propaganda’ aimed at ‘brainwashing’ pupils.
The remarkable claims about Nessie come in a 17-page social studies lesson plan to help secondary school teachers teach what the monster’s portrayal in films says about Scotland’s image and how it affects ‘wider contemporary topics, such as the Independence Referendum’.
The material aims to help 11-to-14- year-olds ‘recognise persuasion and bias’ and asserts that the monster was ‘designed as a tourist attraction to appeal to the motoring middle classes’ during the Depression.
Though the earliest reports date from the 6th Century, the Nessie phenomenon exploded in the 1930s with a flurry of alleged sightings and photographs.
And the first film about Nessie was 1934’s low-budget horror romp The Secret Of The Loch.
The lesson plan says the movie monster ‘shows the somewhat ambivalent position that Scotland holds in the Union… the very idea of a prehistoric monster in a loch affirms the stereotypical idea that Scotland – by contrast to England – is a rural wilderness, perhaps one bypassed by progress.
‘The monster’s depiction suggests that although there was a “primitive” wilderness in Scotland before the state of Britain, the modern state has the ability to control it using advanced knowledge and technologies.’
The document goes on to describe how the Nessie legend was ‘indicative of the development of the modern state of Britain’, and that the creature’s depiction ‘reveals a lot about Scotland’s position within the Union… the supposedly unified national community to which people could “imagine a sense of belonging”.’
It adds that ‘cinematic depictions of Nessie enabled Britain to imagine itself as a modern and unified state’.
Also placed under scrutiny are the 1996 family drama Loch Ness, starring Ted Danson and Joely Richardson, and the 1983 short The Loch Ness Monster Movie, in which a cheaply animated claymation Nessie rampages through Edinburgh.
The teaching aid says: ‘This monstrous destruction of the nation’s capital questions whether Scotland may be dragged into the dangerous arena of the Cold War due to its relationship with England… and indeed, Britain’s “special relationship” with the USA.
In this movie, Nessie is a Scottish monster, questioning whether, in the circumstances it finds itself in, it should reconsider its position in Britain in order to find a different place in the world.’
Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education, slammed the material, saying: ‘There is no question about it presenting anti-British bias. It seeks to brainwash pupils into believing that Scotland is the victim of a wicked conspiracy to subvert and infantilise its identity.
‘The nationalist cause must be in desperate trouble if it has to resort to such propaganda tactics with young people. My advice to teachers is to use the Nessie Plan itself as an example of how “bias” is used by educators.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10655551/Scottish-pupils-taught-Loch-Ness-Monster-symbol-Englands-domination-Scotland.html
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
28 March, 2022
'Love-rat' boyfriend is dumped FIVE times after ex-girlfriend, 27, finds and befriends his FOUR other partners
The guy is a fool. I once had three girlfriends at once but I never lie to women so each lady knew she was not the only one. We all drifted apart eventually but there was no acrimony over it. All three relationships lasted years. It is amazing what women will put up with from men they like but one thing they will usually not put up with is being lied to
A serial cheater was dumped five times in quick succession after his ex-girlfriend found and befriended the four other women he was dating at the same time.
The woman, known as Michaela, said she was dating the man for six months when she discovered he was in relationships with four other women in London.
Michaela, 27, then decided to reach out to the women, who all quickly became friends and confronted the man. They all soon dumped the 'love-rat'.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-10654967/Love-rat-boyfriend-dumped-FIVE-times.html
28 March, 2022
Some oddities
There is a conservative site <a href="https://2020conservative.com/bill-gates-vaccines-are-best-way-to-depopulate-4/">here</a> that is a bit hysterical.
They start by dredging up an old story about Bill Gates. According to the story Gates said that vaccines reduce the population. He did say that but it was mainly the population of poor Africans he was aiming at. He said if they were healthier they might stop having so many children. He wanted MORE Caucasian babies.
The other lulu is a story about aluminium in vaccines. It is actually right in one way. Aluminium compounds WERE once routinely added to vaccines to make them more effective. There is no real evidence of harm from it but, in recent years, the practice has come under question. So NO aluminium is used in Covid vaccines
*********************************
28 March, 2022
Are we controlled by a hidden race of reptiles in human form?
We see that claim from time to time, paticularly in the messages of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Icke">David Icke</a>, who is a good publicist whatever else he is.
So where does that idea come from? I think I know. The key lies in the traits ascribed to the reptilians concerned. They deny what they really are, are emotionally cold and are aiming at our destruction. So where do we find people like that?
We really are ruled by them. They are the Leftist elite who exercise very extensive control over our society, do their best to undermine it and whose compasssion is only a shallow front. Leftists are the reptiles concerned
I don't think they are literally reptiles but they are close enough to it in character to have inspired the idea of reptilian control.
A good comment from a reader:
Yes, psychologically lefties are reptiles, due to their psychologically cold blooded hearts, which radiate no true love, so crave a sense of warmth from external sources, particularly admiration from others, and which strokes their egos, and gives them a sense of status and feelgood emotions.
When I observe certain lefties like Trudeau, Hanson-Young, and others I have met in person, their cold heartedness and insincerity is clear.
In person, their eye contact can give them away too. The only heartfelt sense of warmth they can self-generate is anger, which the smartest of them try to hide but it is easily triggered to show forth. They don’t know love, forgiveness, or thankfulness, in the true sense.
Of course I’m referring to the cunning ones, the teachers, preachers, manipulators and instigators of leftism. Not the ones who are deceived and led astray.
*****************************************
28 March, 2022
A good comment about the slave trade era in North and South America
There is a video below spoken by a black man which shows how far history differs from the usual narrative. There is a long apologetic prelude which lasts for about the first third of the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4mQ8NDX6eo
A good comment emailed by Bill Rowe:
As the Jews have not been the only people who suffered and died throughout the millennia, the blacks are not the only people who suffered under slavery. And since we can never own property because of property taxes, and our labor is taxed through Income Tax, we are all slaves now. And the best slave is the slave who does not know they are a slave
***************************************
28 March, 2022
Antisemitism in Australia
Antisemitism is not something one normally associates with Australia and antisemitic public utterances are very rare in Australia. Though "Anti-Zionism" does pop up among Leftists occasionally.
I am myself rather philosemitic. I even donate at times to Israeli charities. For the avoidance of doubt, however, I hasten to add that NONE of my best friends are Jews (!)
So it has always surprised me how often I encounter anti-Jewish utterances among people I meet here. Just about any mention of Jews that I hear is negative to some degree. I even hear it from otherwise kindly people and I even recently heard one person say that they would like to kill all Jews. My usual response to such utterances is to listen but keep my mouth shut. There are some ideas that it is pointless to argue with.
And I have been noting such utterances for a long time. <a href="http://jonjayray.com/antisem.html">In 1973</a> I had published (in a Jewish journal) a summary of the different antisemitic utterances I had heard at that stage.
So this note is essentially an update. Nothing has changed: For one reason or another, antisemitism is actually still quite common in Australia. It is mostly low-level but not entirely so.
So why is it so? At some risk of being misunderstood, I did at one stage put together <a href="http://jonjayray.com/semitism.html">an article</a> which attempted to trace the origin of one type of antisemitism but in the present era of greatly inflamed political correctness I suppose I take some risk of great opprobium in referring to it
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
27 March, 2022
BlackRock Chief Says Ukraine War Marks End to Globalization
This is a quick about-turn for Davos man Larry Fink, formerly a great supporter of globalization. It seems that he is quick to embrace whatever is fashionable. He is right this time, though. Both the economic war on Russia and global supply chain breakdowns have hit hard at globalization thinking. It has been thoroughly overtaken by reality.
It reminds me of a saying attributed to the aristocatic former British PM Harold Macmillan, who was known for his pragmatism, wit and unflappability. A journalist once asked him what could throw his government off-course in the next two weeks. He replied: "Events, dear boy, events"
Larry Fink, chief executive of BlackRock, the world’s biggest asset manager, said that the war in Ukraine will put an end to globalization as governments and businesses cut ties with Russia, while warning that a large-scale reorienting of supply chains will be inflationary.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine has put an end to the globalization we have experienced over the last three decades,” Fink wrote in a March 24 letter to shareholders, in which he noted that the Russian offensive in Ukraine had catalyzed nations to sever financial and business ties with Moscow.
“United in their steadfast commitment to support the Ukrainian people, they launched an ‘economic war’ against Russia,” Fink wrote.
Russia has been hit with crippling sanctions over what it calls a “special military operation” in Ukraine. The measures have targeted Russian banks and wealthy oligarchs, there’s been a closure of airspace to Russian planes, and the export of key technologies has been banned.
The sanctions also include a freeze on around $300 billion of Russia’s central bank hard currency reserves, an unprecedented move that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov denounced on March 23 as “theft.”
Fink noted in his letter that capital markets, financial institutions, and companies have gone beyond government-imposed sanctions, moving quickly to terminate longstanding business and investment relationships.
He predicted that Russia’s decoupling from the global economy will prompt governments and companies to re-evaluate their manufacturing and assembly footprints more generally and reconsider their dependency on other nations.
“This may lead companies to onshore or nearshore more of their operations, resulting in a faster pull back from some countries,” Fink wrote.
There will be challenges for firms as they seek to rejig supply chains, he said.
“This decoupling will inevitably create challenges for companies, including higher costs and margin pressures.”
“While companies’ and consumers’ balance sheets are strong today, giving them more of a cushion to weather these difficulties, a large-scale reorientation of supply chains will inherently be inflationary,” he added.
Fink said central banks find themselves in a challenging moment, weighing how fast to raise rates in a bid to curb surging inflation, which has been exacerbated by the conflict in Ukraine and the associated energy price shocks.
“Central banks must choose whether to live with higher inflation or slow economic activity and employment to lower inflation quickly,” he said.
The Federal Reserve last week hiked rates for the first time since 2018 and Fed chair Jerome Powell said on Monday that the U.S. central bank must move “expeditiously” to raise rates and possibly “more aggressively” to keep an upward price spiral from becoming entrenched.
Annual inflation in Russia accelerated to 14.5 percent as of March 18, the fastest pace since 2015, the economy ministry said on Wednesday, as the battered rouble sent prices soaring amid biting Western sanctions.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/blackrock-chief-says-ukraine-war-marks-end-to-globalization_4358958.html
***************************************
Utah bans transgender athletes from competing in girls sports despite governors veto
GOP lawmakers in Utah pushed through a ban on transgender youth athletes playing on girls teams Friday, overriding a veto and joining 11 other states with similar laws amid a nationwide culture war.
The ban previously received support from a majority of Utah lawmakers, but fell short of the two-thirds needed to override it.
Its sponsors on Friday flipped 10 Republicans in the House and five in the Senate who had previously voted against the proposal.
A dozen states now have some sort of ban on transgender kids in school sports. Utah's law takes effect July 1.
Republican sponsor Rep. Kera Birkeland, who is also a basketball coach, welcomed the decision and said conversations with female student athletes compelled her to act.
'When we say, `This isn´t a problem in our state,´ what we say to those girls is, `Sit down, be quiet and make nice,'' she said.
Lawmakers anticipate court challenges similar to blocked bans in Idaho and West Virginia, where athletes have said the policies violate their civil rights. They´ve argued the bans violate their privacy rights, due to tests required if an athlete´s gender is challenged. The ACLU of Utah said on Friday that a lawsuit was inevitable.
The bill overrides a veto letter from Gov. Spencer Cox, who stalled the bill after he argued it would target vulnerable transgender kids already at high suicide risk.
Cox was the second GOP governor this week to overrule lawmakers on a sports-participation ban, but the proposal won support from a vocal conservative base that has particular sway in Utah´s state primary season. Even with those contests looming, however, some Republicans stood with Cox to reject the ban.
'I cannot support this bill. I cannot support the veto override and if it costs me my seat so be it. I will do the right thing, as I always do,' said Republican Sen. Daniel Thatcher.
Business leaders also sounded the alarm that the ban could have a multimillion-dollar economic impact on Utah, including the possible loss of the NBA All-Star Game next year. The Utah Jazz called the ban 'discriminatory legislation' and opposed it.
Not long ago efforts to regulate transgender kids´ participation in sports failed to gain traction in statehouses, but in the past two years groups like the American Principles Project began a well-coordinated effort to promote the legislation throughout the country. Since last year, bans have been introduced in at least 25 states, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. This week, lawmakers in Arizona and Oklahoma passed bans.
'You start these fights and inject them into politics,' said Terry Schilling, president of the American Principles Project. 'You pass them in a few states and it starts to take on a life of its own and becomes organic. We helped start this fight and we´re helping carry it through, but a lot of this is coming from the local level.'
Leaders in the deeply conservative Utah say they need the law to protect women´s sports. The lawmakers argue that more transgender athletes with possible physical advantages could eventually dominate the field and change the nature of women´s sports without legal intervention
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10650745/Transgender-sports-ban-veto-likely-overridden-Utah.html
**************************************************
Mental illness and the Left
Emil O. W. Kirkegaard
Abstract
It has been claimed that left-wingers or liberals (US sense) tend to be more mentally ill than right-wingers or conservatives. This potential link was investigated using the General Social Survey. A search found 5 items measuring one's own mental illness in different ways (e.g."Do you have any emotional or mental disability?"). All of these items were associated with left-wing political ideology as measured by self-report. These results held up mostly in regressions that adjusted for age, sex, and race. For the variable with the most data, the difference in mental illness between "extremely liberal" and "extremely conservative" was 0.39 d. This finding is congruent with numerous findings based on related constructs.
Introduction
It has been claimed that left-wingers or liberals (US sense) tend to more often suffer from mental illness than right-wingers or conservatives. This potential link was investigated using the General Social Survey cumulative cross-sectional dataset (1972-2018). A search of the available variables resulted in 5 items measuring one's own mental illness (e.g., ”Do youhave any emotional or mental disability?”).
All of these items were weakly associated withleft-wing political ideology as measured by self-report, with especially high rates seen for the“extremely liberal” group. These results mostly held up in regressions that adjusted for age,sex, and race.
For the variable with the most data (n = 11,338), the difference in the mentalillness measure between “extremely liberal” and “extremely conservative” was 0.39 d.Temporal analysis showed that the relationship between mental illness, happiness, andpolitical ideology has existed in the GSS data since the 1970s and still existed in the 2010s.
Within-study meta-analysis of all the results found that extreme liberals had a 150%increased rate of mental illness compared to moderates.
The finding of increased mentalillness among left-wingers is congruent with numerous findings based on related constructs,such as positive relationships between conservatism, religiousness and health in general.
It has been reported that left-wingers or liberals (US sense) tend to more often suffer from mentalillness than right-wingers or conservatives (Bullenkamp & Voges, 2004; Duckworth et al., 1994;Guhname, 2007; Howard & Anthony, 1977; Kelly, 2014; Unorthodox Theory, 2020). This suggestion is consistent with other research showing that religiosity predicts both mental andphysical health (AbdAleati et al., 2016; Cotton et al., 2006; Dutton et al., 2018; Moreira-Almeida etal., 2006; Seeman et al., 2003; VanderWeele, 2017), given the known strong relationship betweenpolitical conservatism and religiousness (Koenig & Bouchard Jr., 2006; Ludeke et al., 2013).
Furthermore, political conservatism has been found to be associated with longevity (Kannan et al.,2019).In a recent series of tweets, Lemoine (2020) analyzed data from the Slate Star Codex (SSC)2020 reader survey2 (n = 8,043; Alexander, 2020), and showed that self-rated political ideologicalposition (1-10 scale) and self-rated far-left labels were related to mental health.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/339541044_Mental_illness_and_the_left
*******************************************
America’s most powerful, elite institutions now cooperate to misinform the public and suppress dissent
It’s hard to think otherwise during the arc of the Hunter Biden laptop story that turned out to be true.
Last week, The New York Times reporters wrote that they authenticated email “obtained by The New York Times from a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. [Hunter] Biden in a Delaware repair shop.”
This is in reference to a story the New York Post broke in 2020, shortly before the presidential election, about emails sent from the laptop of the president’s son, Hunter. The emails suggest that Hunter was using his father’s name and office to enrich himself. It raised serious questions about whether now-President Joe Biden was involved in any way.
Don’t go celebrating The New York Times’ sudden commitment to truth and accuracy. The paper buried the lede and put the acknowledgment that the emails were real on the 24th paragraph of its story.
No grand mea culpa here, just a little acknowledgment that it got things wrong a year late and a dollar short.
When the story initially broke, the Times and most of the legacy media dismissed it entirely. They called it a non-story and promoted the idea that it was likely Russian disinformation.
NPR explained that it just couldn’t cover the story because its “assertions don’t amount to much.”
This is the same publicly funded media network that found time to air a segment about “decolonizing fitness,” and how exercising is white supremacy or something.
It wasn’t just the legacy media that went radio silent about the story, refusing to even investigate the issue. Big Tech swung into action to ruthlessly suppress the Post exposé from being disseminated. Twitter outright prevented people from posting it on the website, and Facebook used its internal algorithm to prevent people from seeing it.
Jack Dorsey, who was the Twitter CEO when the Hunter laptop story was suppressed, said that blocking the story was a “total mistake,” but never explained how the mistake was made and was replaced shortly thereafter by a man who is even less enamored with free speech.
As my colleague Katrina Trinko pointed out, the Hunter Biden story certainly demonstrates the sham of Big Tech’s war on “misinformation.”
Is Big Tech conducting a genuine effort to stop misinformation, or is this really just a smoke screen to justify the suppression of information or ideas that interfere with the Democrat Party’s agenda?
To top this whole mess off, when the Post initially broke the Hunter laptop story, a group of former senior “intelligence experts” put their name to a statement saying that the Hunter Biden story has all the “classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”
They had no actual evidence besides their claims to expertise.
Trust the experts! Isn’t that what we are told all the time these days?
“If we are right, this is Russia trying to influence how Americans vote in this election, and we believe strongly that Americans need to be aware of this,” the former intelligence officials said.
Biden even used this letter in a debate with former President Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential campaign to prove it was all just Republican misinformation.
Well, they were wrong. It appears that it was actually politicized former senior intelligence operatives who were trying to influence our elections. Americans need to be aware of this.
Has there been any accountability for all these people and institutions that got this wrong? Not at all.
Of the 51 former senior officials, so far none have apologized or demonstrated any kind of accountability for what they did. Some even doubled down.
Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper only said that he stands by the statement they made “AT THE TIME.” No explanation for why it was bogus or contrition for misleading the American public.
Andy Liepman, former National Counterterrorism Center deputy director, said in his statement to the Post, “As far as I know I do [stand by the statement] but I’m kind of busy right now.”
It seems some in our intelligence services have forgotten that they serve us rather than the other way around.
The former intelligence officials didn’t just get the facts wrong, as the New York Post pointed out. They actively tried to turn a story about potential Biden family corruption into a story about how Russian election interference was victimizing the Bidens.
They used their positions, or former positions, as a pedestal of authority when they were engaging in what now appears to be political hackery.
When you put this all together, the Hunter Biden laptop story is about much more than media malpractice and political hackery in the intelligence services.
It’s about even more than just Big Tech censorship.
The bigger story is about how all the above, in unison, work together to suppress information that hurts an ideological and political cause that they value most and amplify favored narratives regardless of merit.
They are now in lockstep promoting the “narrative” over the truth.
Elite institutions once thought to be nonpartisan, bipartisan, or at least somewhat objective are becoming ruthlessly ideological and perfectly willing to use their power to crush dissent.
In the case of the Hunter Biden story, there were clear implications for what looked like a closely matched presidential election.
A Media Research Center poll of Biden voters in key 2020 election swing states found that not only were many of these voters unaware of the Hunter Biden story, but about 10% also said that its revelation would have changed their vote.
Think about this for a moment. For years, this same nexus of institutions promoted the Russia collusion story about Trump. The New York Times and Washington Post won the Pulitzer Prize for their coverage, which led indirectly to Trump’s impeachment.
As the Russia collusion story was winding down, the Biden laptop reporting broke and was ruthlessly suppressed on the eve of a presidential election. The story was dismissed as based on nothing but preposterous, pernicious Russian disinformation. It was also true.
If they got these things so wildly wrong and were willing to use all their power to project ultimately false information to the public, what else have they been wrong about and what other things are they willing to suppress to produce favorable political outcomes?
Again, there has been effectively no acknowledgment of failure from the institutions themselves, no explanation for what happened.
Wall Street Journal editor Gerard Baker called this America’s crisis of accountability. He wrote that the way people in power can be kept in check is through the ballot box.
“But how can that even work when the people we want to hold accountable decide what information the voters are allowed to see?” Baker asked.
That’s a fair and chilling question. That’s why the Hunter Biden story is a big deal.
The possibility that the president’s son used his father’s official position to enrich himself is bad enough. But it’s nowhere near as threatening to our free society than the institutional corruption that suppressed and manipulated the story to suit political ends from the beginning.
This story, at its heart, is about a willful distortion and suppression of truth and reality by those who believe they will never be held accountable.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/25/hunter-biden-laptop-revelations-uncover-depth-of-elite-institutional-corruption
**************************************************
The Left Strikes Again at Freedom of Speech in Akron, Ohio
Recently, the Akron Roundtable of Ohio invited me to give a presentation on the issue of election integrity as part of a recurring series it calls “Point/Counterpoint.”
As I told the audience, the sponsors of the Roundtable, which includes the Kiwanis Club, the Greater Akron Chamber, and the Akron Beacon Journal, were to be applauded for upholding the great American tradition of having civil, even vigorous discussions on important issues from individuals with differing points of view, a tradition that has virtually disappeared in our communities and college campuses.
The progressive, radical left, however, has no interest in upholding this tradition, protected by the First Amendment, which is vital to a functioning democracy.
I experienced a shameful example of this before arriving in Akron: the League of Women Voters lodged a protest with the Roundtable for allowing me to speak. The minions of the left want to silence anyone who disagrees with them or questions what they assert is the only acceptable “truth.”
The Akron Roundtable is one of the diminishing number of organizations that is still committed to open and civil discourse. As its website says, it is dedicated to promoting “community dialog and networking by presenting speakers who inform and educate listeners on diverse topics of importance to the region, the nation and the world.”
True to that mission, the organization has invited guests as disparate as Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio; Center for Immigration Studies Director Mark Krikorian; and Paul Helmke of the Brady Center. I was just the latest speaker to join this long list of more than 400 guests who have spoken to the Akron Roundtable, which is made up of a very diverse group of individuals, many of whom have different points of views on everything from politics to culture.
The League of Women Voters took issue with the Roundtable inviting me to speak. Its local chapter president, Rosanne Winter, sent the Roundtable a letter expressing the group’s “strong disappointment,” and protesting my choice as a speaker. The Roundtable should select “respected speakers,” said the League, by which it clearly means only those who don’t disagree with the League.
Winter was upset that I actually talk about examples of election fraud in our country, which, as the Supreme Court itself said, has “been documented throughout this Nation’s history by respected journalists and historians.” Apparently, they believe that speaking about that, or telling the public about The Heritage Foundation’s Election Fraud Database, which is now up to 1,349 proven cases of fraud, should not be allowed in a public forum.
What is particularly ironic about this letter is that the League of Women Voters had already spoken to the Roundtable about this issue. Remember, this is a “Point/Counterpoint” series. I spoke on March 17, but in February, the members of the Roundtable heard from Jessica Jones Capparell, the director of government affairs for the League of Women Voters of the United States.
The League’s shameful protest graphically illustrates how much the League of Women Voters and too many others no longer believe in the First Amendment, and want to chill the speech of anyone who disagrees with them.
There was also a letter to the editor from Sherry McMillen that was published in the Akron Beacon Journal (approvingly cited by the League) protesting my being allowed to speak, saying that giving me a “platform” would be a “disservice to our community and our nation.” Apparently, Ms. McMillen believes that allowing anyone to speak who disagrees with her view of the world is a “disservice.”
She would have fit in very well in the countries my mother and father grew up in before they immigrated to the U.S. to get away from governments, societies, and cultures that did not allow dissent or countering views on the accepted political orthodoxy.
According to the League and the letter writer, they are the sole and unequivocal arbiters of truth and morality, so any dissent must be silenced for the common good.
Fortunately, the Akron Roundtable doesn’t agree. And neither do other citizens in Akron, like Robert E. Williams II, a Vietnam veteran who wrote his own letter to the editor criticizing such censorship efforts and those individuals who apparently believe that free speech is only “for those you agree with.”
I have no doubt there were individuals in the room who disagreed with my views and opinions. But they allowed me to speak and everyone there was extremely cordial, polite, and civil—which is the same way they treated the speaker from the League of Women Voters.
I vehemently disagree with the League’s uninformed views on election integrity, its dishonest claims of “voter suppression,” and its unfair attacks on efforts to reform the election process to improve its fairness and honesty. But the difference is that it would never occur to me to send a letter to the Roundtable protesting its choice of a speaker from the League.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/24/the-left-strikes-again-at-freedom-of-speech-in-akron-ohio
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
25 March, 2022
Female athletes will be wiped out of the sporting books if biological males are allowed to continue competing against them
The results of college swimming titles in the US do not normally make international headlines.
This year, however, after transgender swimmer Lia Thomas won the 500-yard freestyle, a fierce debate has erupted internationally over fairness in female sports. So much attention has been generated by Thomas’s performance that Florida governor Ron DeSantis was moved to release an official proclamation declaring the Florida-born woman who won second place the “rightful winner” on Tuesday.
The college titles matter to Americans because the swimmers who win them often go on to win at the Olympics. The stakes are high. In fact, two of the women who were beaten in the pool by Thomas were silver medallists at last year’s Tokyo Games.
The backlash against Thomas has been as predictable as it has been intense, but it would be a mistake to chalk it all up to transphobia. Just as there was a swift public backlash against Australian cricketers after the ball tampering scandal in 2018, the backlash against Thomas is driven more by perceptions of unfairness and cheating than by discomfort with transgender identity.
There’s no public anxiety over trans men who compete in the men’s divisions, for example, because they’re not perceived as retaining unfair physical advantages; on the contrary, they’re perceived as entering tougher competitions. The anxiety is not about trans athletes in general but the specific problem of biological males competing against biological females.
Thomas was born a biological male and competed in the men’s division in swimming but began transitioning in 2019, a process that involves testosterone-suppressing medication.
Thomas’s rank in the men’s division was 554th in the 200-yard freestyle and 65th in the 500-yard freestyle. This year, after switching to the women’s division, Thomas now ranks fifth and first respectively.
“This shows, to me, that if she had been born female, she would not be succeeding the way she is succeeding now,” 18-time Grand Slam winner Martina Navratilova has said.
Female athletes have been sounding the alarm bell over muddled and misguided rules that have allowed athletes with XY chromosomes to compete with XX athletes for years.
Last year Navratilova, with professor of law and former professional track athlete Doriane Coleman, wrote in online journal Quillette that the International Olympic Committee had shirked its leadership responsibilities on this issue by releasing vague and non-binding guidance that avoided reference to biology. The IOC instead prescribed that athletes should be excluded from women’s competitions if they possessed a “disproportionate advantage” over others.
Navratilova and Coleman have argued that such vague terminology could lead to absurd interpretations that would allow middling male athletes to participate in women’s sports, while excluding exceptional females if they were determined to have “disproportionate advantage”. Imprecise guidelines not grounded in biology are clearly not fit for purpose.
The science is clear. Before puberty, boys and girls show no real difference in testosterone levels, or athletic performance. But during puberty, male testes ramp up the production of testosterone 30-fold, which leads post-pubescent males to have circulating testosterone that is 15 times higher than that of women at any age. Testosterone does not just help developing boys develop larger muscles. It helps them develop larger bones, skeletal structures, larger lungs and hearts, and more efficient circulatory systems, and it influences psychology and behaviour.
Sky News host Rita Panahi says female competitors and swim teams would send a "powerful message" by… refusing to compete against transgender swimmer Lia Thomas. Ms Panahi said Lia Thomas was a "mediocre swimmer in the men's team" but she is now "smashing records in the women's competition". More
The gap in male and female athletic performance sits around 8 per cent to 12 per cent for most Olympic sports such as swimming and athletics but increases in sports that require power, such as weightlifting, and decreases in sports that rely on hand-eye co-ordination, such as shooting.
The current Olympic champion in the women’s 100m sprint is Elaine Thompson-Herah who ran the 100m in Tokyo in a phenomenally fast time of 10.61 seconds. But although this is an astonishingly fast time for a woman, Thompson-Herah’s time is still beaten by schoolboys, Paralympians and masters (over-35) male athletes. Statistically speaking, the 12 per cent gap in performance will mean thousands of men will have a personal best time that is faster than the fastest woman in the world.
It should not be hard for leading sporting authorities to say biological sex is real, and it affects our physiology, and we separate athletic divisions according to physiology and biology, not identity. While our culture has come to accept that gender identity is a subjective experience that should be respected, legally and socially, sport retains – and should continue to retain – special status as a discipline in which objective biological criteria matter.
If biology did not matter, then we would not ban athletes for doping, or for taking testosterone exogenously to improve their performance. If biology didn’t matter then we would not distinguish heavyweight boxers from featherweights. If biology didn’t matter we wouldn’t have the Paralympic Games for athletes with physical impairments, nor would we separate children’s sports into age divisions. And if biology didn’t matter we would not have created separate divisions for male and female athletes in the first place.
When Ariarne Titmus won the gold medal at the 400m freestyle at the Tokyo Olympics last year, she did it in a time of 3:56.69. If Titmus were to have raced in the men’s division, she would not have placed in the top 30, let alone the final. Women should not have to apologise for wanting a fair go.
If we believe women and girls should have equal opportunities to compete in fair competitions, then international authorities such as the IOC need to get serious about protecting the integrity of female sports. And the most important step that needs to be made by those in leadership roles is recognising that in sport, like it or not, biology trumps identity.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/its-not-transphobia-but-fairness-at-stake/news-story/352c081f58eb7713c159e62fe80e468a
****************************************************
The Public-Health Hazards Posed by Public-Health Paternalists
In his pre-COVID book Killjoys: A Critique of Paternalism (2017), nanny-state nemesis Christopher Snowdon reports on the rise and pernicious influence of what he calls “public health paternalists.” These folk are not traditional public-health scholars and officials whose concern is to protect individuals from pathogens and other health-hazards that spread more intensely as people live, work, and play in closer and closer proximity to each other. Instead, public-health paternalists are busybodies who focus on statistical aggregates, such as the percentage of a country’s population that is obese, and propose using state coercion to improve the performance of these aggregates.
Each such statistical aggregate is merely the summation of the health status of each of many individuals who are reckoned to be members of some group, such as “Americans” or “seniors.” Importantly, nearly all of these measured aggregate health outcomes emerge from individual choices that each person in the group voluntarily undertakes and that affect only each decision-maker as an individual. That is, almost none of these measured aggregate health outcomes is the result of what economists call “negative externalities,” which occur when Smith suffers damage not because of his own choices but, instead, because of choices that Jones made without regard to the negative consequences of those choices on Smith.
Whereas classical liberals, for example, refuse to classify even widespread obesity as a public-health problem, public-health paternalists do classify widespread obesity as a public-health problem. The classical liberal understands that obesity isn’t contagious; each obese person ultimately chooses to lead a lifestyle that results in his or her obesity. The classical liberal therefore understands that obesity is a private problem of personal—of individual—health, rather than a problem of public health. In contrast, the public-health paternalist leaps from the (perhaps accurate) observation that a large portion of some public is obese to the conclusion that obesity is thus a problem of public health.
As Deirdre McCloskey rightly emphasizes, the ways that we talk—our “habits of the lip”—matter. If obesity is called a “public-health problem,” the path is more surely paved to impose on ‘the public’ the responsibility to ‘solve our obesity problem’—with, of course, ‘the public’ acting chiefly through government. And because any large group of people will have within it some number of individuals who behave in ways that result in self-harm, public-health paternalists will have an easy time finding amidst the statistics several “public-health problems.” Indeed, every choice that potentially has a negative impact on the health of each individual who makes that choice is a source of such “public-health problems” even when such choices have no negative impact on any other individuals in the group.
In the minds of public-health paternalists, the body politic becomes almost a literal body. The aggregate (as described by statistics) is treated akin to a sentient entity that suffers health problems, many of which can be cured by this entity’s team of physicians—namely, public-health paternalists. And in a country with a population as large as that of the United States, the number of different health problems suffered by absolutely large numbers of individuals will be enormous, thus ensuring no end of opportunities for public-health paternalists to use the power of the state to proscribe and prescribe individuals’ behaviors.
But as Snowdon notes, public-health paternalists sense that, to justify their interventions, they need more than to point to scary statistics drawn from a large population. At least in societies with a liberal tradition—in societies that historically accord some deference to individuals to freely make their own choices—public-health paternalists must bolster the case for their officiousness by convincing the public that seemingly private decisions are not really private. Public-health paternalists thus insist, for example, that obese people are innocent victims of predatory marketing by companies such as McDonald’s, while smokers have been trapped by the vile tactics of Big Tobacco as well as by the peer pressure of simply being surrounded by friends who smoke.
According to public-health paternalists, therefore, almost no decisions that affect individuals’ health are truly ‘individual.’ Nearly all such decisions are either heavily determined by the actions of third parties, or themselves affect the choices of unsuspecting third parties.
Nothing is personal and private; everything is political and public. Because, according to public-health paternalists, a vast array of seemingly ‘private’ decisions are both the results of “externalities” and themselves the causes of “externalities,” the work of public-health paternalists is plentiful, while the power these ‘experts’ require to protect the health of the body politic is vast.
This perversion of classic public health into public-health paternalism is alarming. As public-health paternalism comes to dominate the field, persons attracted to study and practice public health will be, in contrast to traditional public-health scholars and officials, far more insistent on expanding public-health’s domain. Public-health paternalists will excel at the dark art of portraying as ‘public’—and, hence, as appropriate targets of government regulation—many activities that traditionally and correctly are understood as private and, hence, as not appropriate targets of government regulation.
How much of the overreaction to COVID-19 is explained by the rise of public-health paternalism? I suspect an enormous amount. Public-health paternalists are not only already primed to misinterpret private choices as ones that impose ‘negative externalities’ on third parties, they are also especially skilled at peddling their misinterpretations to the general public. And so although the quite real contagiousness of the SARS-CoV-2 virus renders it a valid concern of classic public-health scholars and officials, the contagiousness and ‘publicness’ of other aspects of COVID were exaggerated in attempts to justify excessive government control over everyday affairs.
The most obvious example of an activity traditionally regarded as private and, thus, not properly subject to government control is speech and writing. Of course, no one has ever denied that speech and writing have effects on others; indeed, changing other people’s minds and hearts is the very purpose of much speech and writing. But in liberal civilization the strong presumption has been that individuals are to be trusted to judge for themselves the merit or demerit of whatever expressed thoughts they encounter. We’ve long recognized, and rightly feared, the danger of allowing government officials to superintend and suppress peaceful expression.
Yet with COVID, this presumption was significantly weakened, if not (yet) reversed. The US Congress held a hearing to investigate “the harm caused by the spread and monetisation of coronavirus misinformation online to try and identify the steps needed to stop the spread and promote accurate public health information,” while high-ranking US government public-health officials tried to orchestrate an effort to discredit the Great Barrington Declaration. A Cornell Medical School official, writing in the New York Times, openly called for suppressing the speech of physicians who dissent from the prevailing ‘expert’ consensus.
Peaceful expression and the exchange of ideas are now regarded by many elites as sources of potentially dangerous ‘externalities.’ And in the minds of public-health paternalists, the only way to protect the body politic from becoming lethally infected with what public-health paternalists themselves deem to be misinformation is for government to suppress the spread of viral ideas no less than it suppresses the spread of viral molecular structures. This ominous development during COVID surely was encouraged by the rise over the past few years of public-health paternalists.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14083&omhide=true&trk=rm
*******************************************
Florida Company Shows California How to Build a Railroad. Brightline, a private company, is proving that market-based rail travel is possible
When the Federal Government ordered the construction of the Interstate Highway System in the 1950s and 1960s (at a cost to taxpayers of roughly $580 billion in 2022 dollars), it all but killed America’s privately operated passenger railroads. Since then, rail travel in America has mostly consisted of government-subsidized Amtrak services of deteriorating quality that amble across the country, catering to a niche market of leisure travelers and those with no other options. On the busy Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington D.C. there is still enough demand to operate a busy, profitable service, but elsewhere Amtrak’s services are too slow, inconvenient, and infrequent to effectively compete with highways and airlines.
But with gas prices rising and traffic congestion strangling many American cities, passengers, investors, and government planners are all reconsidering railroads. Several new projects have sprung up across the country, aiming to link major cities a few hundred miles apart, where a train might provide a more convenient journey than a plane, car, or bus. Some of these projects are led by state governments, others by private companies. The contrast between the two is dramatic. To illuminate that difference, compare the government-run California High Speed Rail project with Brightline, a new private rail system in Florida.
Approved in 2008, California High Speed Rail (CHSR) was expected to deliver a 520-mile two-track, electrified high-speed railway on an all-new route between Los Angeles and San Francisco by 2029. Fourteen years later, CHSR is now only expected to have a 171-mile single-track section between Madera and Bakersfield will be operational by 2030. Meanwhile the project’s cost has ballooned to $80 billion from an original budget of $33 billion, and costs are expected to rise further to $100 billion, or triple the original budget.
Meanwhile in Florida, a very different kind of passenger railroad is already up and running. Brightline was launched in 2012 by the Florida East Coast Railway, a private freight railroad. Unlike CHSR, Brightline mostly uses existing routes, removing the need to acquire (or appropriate) large amounts of land. Instead of building the whole line before beginning any passenger services (as CHSR is doing), Brightline began construction on a 70-mile section from Miami to West Palm Beach in 2014 and opened it to passengers in 2018. This meant that Brightline already had an operational, revenue-producing service before embarking on the 170-mile northward extension to Orlando Airport. That extension is expected to open in 2023, and the entire project will cost about $1.75 billion, raised through private financing.
This equates to about $7.3 million per mile for Brightline, compared to $153.8 million per mile for CHSR (using the current $80 billion budget). Why will CHSR cost at least twenty times more per mile than Brightline? How has Brightline managed to deliver a high-speed intercity passenger rail system within ten years whereas CHSR needs twenty-two years to deliver an incomplete, scaled-down version of its original plan? Much of the answer comes down to the fundamental nature of public works projects such as CHSR.
In his Economics in One Lesson, economist Henry Hazlitt noted that many (if not most) public works projects do not even aim to address a clear need. Instead, said Hazlitt, they are justified in two ways: in terms of the jobs they create, and the end product they will produce. However, this overlooks the many alternative ways in which private individuals and businesses may have spent the money that the government instead appropriated through taxation and allocated to the project. When a private business spends money on a project, it expects a return on its investment. As such, it aims to provide a product it expects people to want or need.
However, a government agency advancing a public project doesn’t need to do this. The government can force people to pay for whatever undertaking it chooses, regardless of whether there is a real need, or whether the project is a wise solution for that need. The result of this, as Hazlitt notes, is that projects are created for their own sake, for the activity and job creation that follows, not to solve an actual need. Such a project does not deliver good value for money, as the motivation is not to produce the best product for the cheapest price, but to create a large project involving as much activity as possible.
The comparison between CHSR and Brightline is an excellent example of Hazlitt’s observation. Both projects will, if completed, provide a useful service that will benefit many people, but CHSR will do so using an astronomical amount of money that could have been put to myriad other uses. It will succeed in its goal of creating a project to generate activity, regardless of whether it ever delivers a viable or even operational railway.
A private company considering providing a new transport option must assess demand for that new service, determine the likely revenue, and therefore how much it can afford to spend creating it. Brightline did this, planning its project with a budget proportional to demand and raising that money from investors who expect a return.
Conversely, CHSR’s budget is completely divorced from the revenues it will produce, and there is no expectation for it ever to make a profit. As such, the project is massively over-engineered, with numerous large viaducts that pass over empty desert, and several grand landmark bridges and structures designed more to look impressive than to satisfy a need. This, combined with CHSR’s promotional materials, show that the project is designed to “create” jobs and give California an impressive megaproject. In a recent press release, CHSR proudly celebrated having created 6,000 jobs for local workers—but it’s not even close to finishing the much-reduced central section of the high speed railway it’s building.
Not only does Brightline have a system moving passengers and producing revenue, but it’s also provided Miami with a shining new retail and residential development above its station in the heart of downtown. This is because private railroads rely on more than just passenger revenues to pay the bills—they also get revenue from developing the property they own. This is commonplace in Japan, where private railways build and operate shopping malls around their city center stations, with the mall and the railway both driving up each other’s revenues.
We should let businesses identify demand and satisfy it accordingly. The resulting projects will do a better job of serving actual needs, will be more numerable, and will encourage more economic growth to fund further projects in the future. Private projects may not create as many jobs in the short term as public ones, but they create a far more prosperous economy in the long run. Brightline is now planning another railway to span the 270 miles between Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Let’s see how quickly it will deliver a completed project compared to CHSR, with the latter’s fourteen-year head start.
CHSR exemplifies what happens when the government manages a major project—delays, budget overruns, and needless expenditure. Brightline shows what is possible when a private business is in control. Sadly, America’s original railroads were driven out of business by government-funded roads and airports (many of which are now in dire need of repair). Let’s hope Brightline is the first of a new generation of private rail projects that will reintroduce some entrepreneurial spirit into the transportation industry in the United States.
https://catalyst.independent.org/2022/03/15/florida-company-california-brightline/?omhide=true
******************************************
The latest item on America’s culture wars menu is ... chocolate milk
Washington: Chocolate milk has become the latest American culture war battleground, as debate rages over the dairy drink’s place on school cafeteria menus.
After divisions over cancel culture in universities, book censorship in schools, and critical race theory in the classroom, students’ diets have become a political pressure point, pitting Democrats against Republicans, the dairy industry against vegans, and mums and dads against education authorities.
The epicentre of the food culture wars is New York City, where health-conscious mayor Eric Adams wants chocolate milk scrapped in schools because of its sugar content, and has previously posted instructional videos urging parents to give their children more water instead.
“Should we have chocolate, high-sugar milk in our schools?” Adams, a Democrat, mused in January after being elected to City Hall.
“Now, I’m not going to become nanny mayor. But we do need to have our children have options.”
Chocolate milk has been a bugbear for Adams, a self-declared “imperfect vegan” who sometimes eats fish but never dairy.
In an instructional video posted in 2019 when he was New York’s Brooklyn borough president, Adams backed a Department of Education proposal to ban the drink from schools, telling his community, “instead of serving our children beverages that set them up for a lifetime of health problems, we should be encouraging them to drink more water”.
Three years later – and now with the power to make the city’s policies – his office has not ruled out revisiting the idea of a chocolate milk ban, sparking concern among New York farmers.
Parental choice is a dominant theme in this year’s midterm elections, so some members of Congress have thrown their weight behind proposed new laws to stop school authorities from banning flavoured milk.
Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik, an ally of former president Donald Trump, has introduced a bill that would require all schools participating in the National School Lunch Program to offer students at least one flavoured milk option or risk losing federal funding.
“Instead of taking away milk choices from students, my bill will give them better access to essential dairy nutrients critical for their development,” Stefanik said in a statement. “Let our New York students drink chocolate milk!”
The lunch program provides low-cost or free lunches to about 30 million American children. Stefanik said her legislation, known as the Protecting School Milk Choices Act, would preserve the right of students to have chocolate milk while also protecting dairy farmers from future bans in New York, which is one of the largest dairy states in the nation.
Republicans don’t have the majority in the House of Representatives, and therefore any bill put forward by the party’s members would require Democrat support.
However, a bipartisan congressional group of New York politicians also wrote to Adams, urging the mayor to keep chocolate milk in New York school cafeterias and warning that “for many NYC families, the meals children receive in schools are their only source of many recommended nutrients”.
While the congressional group argues, alongside America’s dairy industry, that low-fat flavoured milk increases school meal participation and gives children important nutrients, vegans and health professionals strongly disagree about the claimed benefits.
“Cow’s milk is already high in natural sugar. In fact, it has 8½ times more sugar than soy milk. So adding further sugar to give to children is completely irresponsible, given the epidemics of obesity and type 2 diabetes,” said Josh Cullimore, the director of preventative medicine at the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which promotes a plant-based diet.
“Dairy products are also the No.1 source of saturated fat in the US diet, which is known to cause heart disease and Alzheimer’s disease.”
Racial inequality further animates the debate because far more African Americans are lactose intolerant than white children.
Former Olympic cyclist Dotsie Bausch, co-founder of the anti-dairy lobby group Switch4Good, presented this argument to members of Congress during a trip to Washington last week when she lobbied for subsidised soy milk in schools. At present, students who do not want a dairy milk product as part of their lunch must have a note from their doctor or a parent.
The chocolate milk debate is only one of the politically heated disputes about parental rights in the lead up to the midterms.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/the-latest-item-on-america-s-culture-wars-menu-is-chocolate-milk-20220324-p5a7g4.html
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
24 March, 2022
Drug Users Are Losing Their Fingers and Toes After Shooting ‘Tranq Dope’
Another ghastly example of the harm done by making recreational drugs illegal. The illegality is the problem. If the preferred drugs were legally availablr from pharmacies at pharmaceuitical levels of purity, none of this would happen.
People often have unsatisfying lives. It is perfectly reasonable in such cases to seek a pharmaceutial "high". I have never used any recreational drugs but I have never had any need of them to lead a good life. Not everyone is so lucky
Bill’s hands are so disfigured that he can no longer fit gloves over them.
About two months ago, his right ring finger was amputated. In a matter of weeks, he could lose the middle finger on his left hand, which was swollen with a large, maroon-colored sore covering the knuckle when VICE News met him on a recent morning in Philadelphia’s Kensington neighborhood.
The lesions are markers of a drug Bill said he never intended to consume. Xylazine, an animal tranquilizer known on the street as “tranq” or “tranq dope,” has infiltrated Philly’s illicit opioid supply. The 59-year-old, who did not share his last name with VICE News, shivered as he hunted for mittens at an outreach event for drug users in Kensington.
“Boy, this is angry,” said a nurse who volunteers with the harm reduction group Savage Sisters, while examining a wound on one of Bill’s fingers at a pop-up wound care clinic at Kensington’s McPherson Park, known locally as Needle Park because of its open-air drug use.
Bill said he hates the sedative effect of xylazine—which is most commonly mixed with fentanyl—because it knocks him out for hours at a time; he also believes it’s causing sores to break out all over his body.
“I never shoot up in my hands, but I get abscesses in my knuckles, in the tops of my fingers,” Bill said. “[They’re] caused by whatever they’re putting in the drugs.”
VICE News spent a week in Philadelphia, where the drug was detected in less than 2 percent of fatal opioid overdoses between 2010 and 2015—but jumped up to 31 percent in 2019.
Repeated tranq use is believed to be causing wounds on users’ bodies, and like Bill’s, they’re not limited to injection sites but are showing on people’s hands and legs, in some cases resulting in amputations. The problem is so bad that Philadelphia, ground zero for tranq in the U.S., is looking to hire a wound care specialist and a field nurse to deal specifically with tranq-related lesions. Drug users and harm reduction advocates said tranq is also creating a whole new kind of physical dependence—with people passing out for hours at a time and waking up craving more.
“Philly’s going under from tranq.”
While there are some strides being made to help people within the city, the issue has largely flown under the radar, even as tranq spreads to other parts of the U.S., including Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, and North Carolina.
“It’s killing us,” said Sam Brennan, 28, a tranq user who is living in a shelter in Kensington. She said conditions in the neighborhood, where residents contend with extreme poverty and drugs are sold openly (samples are sometimes given out for free), have deteriorated with the proliferation of tranq.
“It’s something I’ve never seen before anywhere else. People all over the place, sticking needles anywhere they possibly can, passed out. Philly’s going under from tranq.”
Tranq first showed up in medical examiners’ reports in Philadelphia in 2006, according to Jen Shinefeld, a field epidemiologist with the city who focuses on substance use. But in the past two years, its reach has exploded. Of the 200 samples of dope (primarily fentanyl) the city has tested since September 2020, all of them have come back with tranq in them, Shinefeld said. A study published recently in Drug and Alcohol Dependence found that in 10 jurisdictions, xylazine’s prevalence skyrocketed from 0.36 percent of overdose deaths in 2015 to 6.7 percent in 2020.
The dosing in the street supply varies wildly, Shinefeld said, with some batches containing barely any opioids and heavily skewed toward tranq.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvnbqd/xylazine-tranq-dope
**********************************************
24 March, 2022
Australia: Sharing power with people of colour
The good old Leftist racism again below. Why cannot we judge people's competence without referring to their race? If the agitators below were to come up with just one example of a minority person who missed out on a prominent job when a less competent mainstream person got it, then they might have made a case. But they did not.
And judging competence needs to be multidimensional. A person who is otherwise competent but who has a thick accent or an intrusive religion could quite rightly be judged as not ideal for a position involving a lot of contact with the public
And note that many people with a minority background in Australia were not born here. And it can take a lifetime to build up the social skills and competencies to succeed in the political sphere. You have to be perceived as "one of the boys" (or girls) to be politically successful -- and that can take very fine tuning indeed. Many try but few succeed
And note that, ever since the conservatives put the very Aboriginal Neville Bonner into the Australian parliament, there have been many others elected who have some Aboriginal background. There have been 52 Indigenous members of the ten Australian legislatures. The Minister for Indigenous Australians in the current Federal government -=- Ken Wyatt -- identifies as Aboriginal
So the claim that minorities are systematically kept out of power in Australia is blatant rubbish on several levels. It's just another Leftist whine and just another example of the Leftist obsession with race
The Diversity Council of Australia says racism is "when an individual or organisation discriminates, excludes, or disadvantages someone because of their race, colour, descent, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and/or immigrant status".
Other social scientists and academics also argue that racism requires both racial prejudice and institutional power. But it's a contentious definition because there are several levels of racism, such as internalised or interpersonal racism.
What one can't deny, though, is the fact that those who are in power, such as in governmental institutions and workplaces, are overwhelmingly white.
For example, the Australian Human Rights Commission, in a 2018 report, found that about 95 per cent of senior leaders in Australia came from an Anglo-Celtic or European background. Only 0.4 per cent are Indigenous Australians and under 5 per cent had a non-European and non-Indigenous Australian background.
"The people who make decisions about who can come into the elite are the people who are the current members. And they are very reluctant to recognise quality in people from backgrounds they don't understand," Mr Jakubowicz said.
What 'be a little less white' means
Anti-racism educator Robin DiAngelo says white people need to stop being defensive, and start talking about racism.
Peter Mousaferiadis, the founder and CEO of Cultural Infusion, said that as a result, the created system gives people who are connected to that cultural hegemony a privilege — or "white privilege" — while other people outside the group miss out.
The belief that white people have superior knowledge, opinions and capabilities is an obstacle for people of colour to gain similar power in society. Adding to that is an additional barrier for those whose native language isn't English.
That's why the focus should be shifted to having a wide representation of backgrounds, to help debunk that thinking.
"If we focus on representation, then we're going to create organisations and systems that mirror the environment," Mr Mousaferiadis said.
"Representation will iron out power for one particular group. The power will become more evenly [shared]."
But if we fail to do this, and if organisations don't mirror the reality of diversity, it can create tension.
Let's talk about racism, not cultural diversity
Racism is so "systemic" that it's "embedded" in workplaces, according to the Racism at Work report published by the Diversity Council Australia (DCA) on Monday.
Dr Virginia Mapedzahama, a co-author of the report, said those words focus on the "positive or celebratory things" and obscure a painful truth. "If we just concentrate on things like harmony, there's the side that we're not actually focusing [on]. There's another conversation that was silenced and we are not having," she said.
Like "harmony", words like "diversity" and the bureaucratic acronym "Culturally and Linguistically Diverse" (CALD) often miss the point.
Would we be better off without 'CALD'?
Our varied backgrounds and experiences are all classified as culturally and linguistically diverse by the government. But the term's limitations may outweigh its utility.
"CALD is a problematic term. It derives meaning from the supposition that within a given population there is a subset who can be aggregated into a separate category," Mr Mousaferiadis told the ABC.
He said the continuation of accepting the CALD concept perpetuates the problems that organisations are attempting to overcome because it "normalises and entrenches the binary" between CALD and the dominant cultural group.
Further, it's an unhelpfully blunt term for a wide array of experiences — it can include Australians whose ancestors arrived more than 150 years ago from China and speak fluent English, as well as the Afghan refugee family who arrived in Australia a month ago.
The term "has had its day", Mr Mousaferiadis said, adding the focus should not be on identity itself, but what communities actually need.
Dr Virginia Mapedzahama said while concepts of diversity and social cohesion are important, "if we use those conversations as entry points to discussing racism, we're not going to get to eradicating racism at work".
That's why many social scientists and anti-racism advocates keep reminding us to listen to the voices of people with lived experiences of racism.
But there are also barriers there — as Mr Jakubowicz points out, the linguistic aspect is often forgotten in discussions about racism, and we may unconsciously or consciously discriminate against people who have different accents.
When we don't hear accents in mainstream media, such as radio or television, it reinforces biases, Mr Jakubowicz said. "They're quite comfortable with people who look different, but very uncomfortable with those who sound different," he said.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-03-23/talking-about-racism-during-celebration-of-harmony-week/100925672
**************************************************
Gender ideology nearly covered up a sexual assault
A woman was raped on a single-sex ward at an unnamed hospital in Britain last year.
Compounding her trauma was the hospital and police’s refusal to believe her accusation because woke procedure demanded they say ‘there was no male in the hospital’.
This, of course, has turned out to be a lie perpetrated on behalf of LGBTQ+ politics.
After the cover-up, it took the hospital and police 12 months to admit that the woman was indeed raped and that the perpetrator was transgender ‘woman’.
British House of Lords parliamentarian Baroness Nicholson blew the whistle in a speech given at 1am last Wednesday, London time.
‘You cannot rape if you do not have the structure of a male,’ she helpfully pointed out to woke colleagues blinded by rainbow mist in their eyes.
She is calling for an amendment to the so-called Equality Act to bring ‘the rights of women to have their dignity, privacy and safety reaffirmed and brought back into the centre’.
She told the Parliament, ‘Those three things have disappeared.’
She was scathing of how laws had been changed without debate allowing men to appropriate women’s gender through ‘self-identification’.
‘Self-identification […] has deliberately been pushed through, almost surreptitiously, without debate in either Chamber. I think that that is scandalous. My gender – my sex– has been made less dignified in hospital.’
Heart-breaking was her description of what happened to the woman – now a friend of the Baroness.
The National Health Service and police cover-up eventually fell apart because of the existence of CCTV footage and ‘nurses and observers’.
‘During that year [of the cover up] she [the rape victim] has almost come to the edge of a nervous breakdown, because being disbelieved about being raped in hospital has been such an appalling shock,’ Baroness Nicholson told Parliament.
‘The hospital, with all its CCTV, has had to admit that the rape happened and that it was committed by a man. The police have therefore changed their tune and become enormously supportive and helpful, and the case is going ahead.
‘The result of annexe B (of the Equality Act) is that hospital trusts inform ward sisters and nurses that if there is a male, as a trans person, in a female ward, and a female patient or anyone complains, they must be told that it is not true – there is no male there.’
This is the big lie rainbow politics forces upon us where similar laws have been passed in the woke West, including Australia, whether it is in hospitals, school toilets or girls’ sports.
Baroness Nicholson went on.
‘I think it is completely wrong that the National Health Service should be instructing or allowing staff to mislead patients – to tell a straightforward lie. It is not acceptable.
‘The impact on my new friend is appalling.’
Anyone who thinks Baroness Nicholson is some anti-trans bigot should read her entire speech.
She touchingly relates how she once helped a constituent who had been marginalised and discriminated against after undergoing gender reassignment surgery and returning to her village.
‘It was not easy socially for her and I helped on that as well,’ Baroness Nicholson told Parliament.
Despite her tolerance and care, she has made it clear that women’s safety, privacy, and dignity must take precedence.
This tragic rape and scandalous cover-up must serve as a wake-up call to the blind acceptance of LGBTQ+ political demands.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/gender-ideology-nearly-covered-up-a-sexual-assault/
***********************************************
Putin and Biden have a lot in common
Vladimir Putin has given an address to the Russian nation that urged his country to be patient with the current pain. He said he is working to restructure economic life to deal with the ongoing disaster in employment, goods access, productivity, technology, and inflation. It’s transitory, he explained, a result of the war sanctions, and all the fault of the West.
He has this totally under control, he says. Just trust the government.
Many people do. People in cities are skeptical but he remains widely popular in rural areas. Meanwhile the government works to silence dissent, punish those who protest, and control the media.
This story sounds strangely familiar, doesn’t it?
Biden’s White House daily urges this country to be patient with the current pain. They are working on ways to address the ongoing mess with inflation, declining financials, goods shortages, supply-chain woes, mail that barely functions, and a medical system that is throttled, distorted, and wildly expensive. It’s all the fault of Putin for invading Ukraine, thus necessitating severe economic sanctions and driving up the cost of everything.
It’s the price we pay for freedom! All we are supposed to do is trust the government. Biden has this totally under control. People are skeptical but he remains popular in some circles, mostly in large blue-state cities. People are suffering but it’s another country’s fault. Meanwhile, the government works to silence dissent, punish those who protest, and control the media. All this control is getting worse.
It’s getting creepy how government policies are increasingly copying each other. It’s not unlike the final global equilibrium in Orwell’s “1984”: three large states that are indistinguishable in despotic ambitions, constantly trading places to demonize the other and urge their citizens to do the same. There’s always a scapegoat.
After the end of the Second World War, we had a sense that governments of the world were competing over economic and social systems. Which had the most freedom? Which nations were rich vs. poor? What kinds of policies do nations have and which policies are best at promoting economic growth, human rights, and peace?
There was of course the Cold War, which pitted the “free world” against captive nations and an evil empire. What an innocent time that was! It lasted 40 years, which in retrospect seemed like mostly pretty good years for the West. We had a sense of what we were and what we were not. We had a model of what we never wanted to become, and that was a tyrannical communist state.
The changes from 1989 and forward fundamentally altered that perception. Communism went away and even the remaining communist empire of China itself opened up its economy to trade, ownership, and enterprise. That binary world was blown apart. Our lizard brains that look for easy stories were challenged by new forms of what not to be. Terrorism fit the bill for some years but it couldn’t last.
As we now look at the large world alliances—dominated by Russia, China, and the United States and their respective allies—it is increasingly difficult to distinguish their policies in principle. There is a push in the U.S./NATO for a China-style social credit system. Russia uses brutal tactics for suppressing dissent that it copied from China. China copies the U.S. system of industrial subsidies and fiscal and monetary stimulus. The U.S. copies China in its lockdown strategy for virus mitigation.
Each government aspires to the same: total political and social control, while allowing just enough freedom to keep the wealth machine running to provide the revenue. Each country has its political elites and its administrative apparatus.
What burned this copycat system in place were the lockdowns of 2020. They began in China, expanded to Italy, and were quickly copied by the United States. That was a devastating moment because it told the world: this is good science! If the Bill of Rights and the Constitution in the U.S. was not enough to stop this from happening, surely this virus could kill us all! Very quickly after that, most states adopted that very system.
They also copied the wild spending, the monetary expansion, the police state tactics, the vaccine mandates, the surveillance, the travel restrictions, and the demonization of dissent. All governments in the world blew up in size and scope. They have stayed that way. Now we are left with the results of massive and ubiquitous authoritarianism plus rampant inflation and debt, along with slow economic growth and goods shortages.
All these nations too have kept media empires that reflect the prevailing line plus a small dissident press that is barely tolerated and often fighting for attention and even existence.
What states in the world resisted? There were only a few. Sweden. Tanzania. Nicaragua. Belarus. South Dakota. Later, the most open states in the world were in the United States: Georgia, Florida, Texas, South Carolina, Wyoming. These are now the outliers in the world, actual places of freedom. Other quasi-rational places are Denmark, Norway, and The Netherlands.
So far as I know, ten years ago, there were zero predictions out there that these would be the new free lands in the whole planet Earth.
In Orwell’s book, there are three superstates that forever rule the world: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. Is this our future? Maybe. I actually doubt it. What we actually see happening is a global awakening for freedom. It’s happening. Slowly, but it’s out there. A major factor here is just how poorly the elites have performed. Their plans have failed and they have only generated poverty and chaos. The orthodoxy of control has generated too many anomalies to maintain public credibility.
Biden, Putin, and the CCP all face the same problem: they preside over systems that are underperforming and generating enormous unrest at all levels. The leaders blame each other while the people in all countries are left to suffer. We are just at the beginning, but this strategy of deflection could end very badly for the arrogant political class that imagines no limit to their power.
The great hope that freedom lovers have is in the replacement of one set of political leaders with a different group. That is essential and will likely happen, but it is only the beginning of a solution. We’ve learned in the last two years that the real problem is much deeper.
The political leadership in these countries has become a veneer of a problem over which citizens have very little if any control: the administrative state that is unelected and deeply entrenched in its management of the well-funded bureaucratic state. This state mostly ignores the comings and goings of political leaders; in fact, it has disdain for them. It is this machinery that has taken full control in most countries of the world. Any political change worthy of focus needs to deal with this quickly and completely.
What’s more, this administrative state has figured out a fabulous trick for getting around the legal limits on state action: it has developed a close relationship with the biggest players in the private sector, which can justify any level of surveillance or censorship based on the technical truth that they are merely private actors and therefore not subject to the rules that restrict governments.
This new system is a dramatic challenge to the liberal cause, which is now surrounded by enemies on all sides. The key battle of our times is not only about limiting the power of government, which has metastasized in every direction all over the world, but also its allies in industry and media. The liberal cause has very little experience in this area. The solution likely rests with a dramatic change in public philosophy: the replacement of the lust for power with the love of liberty itself.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/politicians-of-the-world-unite_4353859.html
*********************************************
Leftist conspiracy theories fall aparts
For the last five years, the Left—defined as the fusion of the mainstream media, Silicon Valley, the radical new Democratic Party, and the vestigial Hillary Clinton machine—has crafted all sorts of conspiracies to destroy their perceived conservative enemies.
Their method has focused on one major projection: alleging conspiracy on the part of others, which is a kind of confirmation of their own conspiracies to destroy their opponents in general, and Donald Trump in particular.
Now they have been caught admitting to such nefariousness. Apparently, they still are exuberant about their slick shamelessness and simply can’t keep quiet. Or they believe radically changed conditions, such as the implosion of the Biden Administration, prompt necessary admissions.
Hillary’s the One
For nearly five years anyone who objected that the partisan Christopher Steele and his “dossier” were fraudulent, that Glenn Simpson’s Fusion GPS was a paid opposition hit team, and their joint birthing of “Trump-Russia collusion” was a myth, was smeared as a denialist or conspiracist.
But examine what has transpired since 2016. Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month investigation found nothing. Mueller in congressional testimony was either addled or disingenuous. He even claimed he knew nothing of Fusion GPS or the dossier, the twin catalysts for his own investigation.
The more Mueller meandered, the more it was clear that his henchman, partisan lawyer Andrew Weissmann, had hijacked the left-wing “All-Star” and “Dream Team” of lawyers and was running the charade. The more the Left boasted of the legal eagles set to tear apart Trump, the more glaring their failure to find any such evidence supporting their conspiracies.
Christopher Steele, once the object of left-wing adulation who sought to warp the 2016 election by leaking his smears, is now a pariah. Indeed, he is relegated to the clown-like status of a Michael Avenatti. Steele has testified to what we already knew: He has no notes or sources to substantiate his ludicrous file.
One of his two “Russian sources” turned out to be a left-wing minor researcher at the liberal Brookings Institution, Igor Danchenko. He is now under indictment for lying. The other is a former Clinton operative Charles Dolan. He now admits he has worked for the Russian government and its affiliates for years.
So ponder that creepy circular firing squad: Hillary Clinton paid for Christopher Steele to find dirt on Donald Trump. She hid her checks by using the firewalls of the Democratic National Committee, the Perkins Coie law firm, and Fusion GPS.
Steele, who had not been in Russia in years, simply concocted the story, in part from the fantasies of a Clinton employee! So in the end, Hillary sought to smear Trump with a phony charge of Russian collusion by colluding herself with the Russians, albeit through various firewalls!
When the investigators found nothing for their $40 million investment, serial leaking, and character assassination, when the author of the slanders cannot even point to a single source, and when his two informants are either under indictment or worked for both Hillary Clinton and the Russian government, then the accusers of conspiracy stand so accused.
Gasbags Gaslighting
When Donald Trump alleged that he had been wiretapped—apparently tipped off by a whistleblower—the country had a good belly laugh. Trump was deemed paranoid, a nut. Why would anyone in the lame-duck Obama Administration bureaucracy or the Clinton campaign have sought to monitor Trump’s communications? Who would even have had electronic access to such top-secret confidential communications, the very Domain Name System logs of candidate and then President Trump?
But now we know that one Michael Sussmann—working again for Perkins Coie, and being paid by the DNC, as a front for candidate Clinton—contacted “techies” who as contractors had access to Trump’s most confidential and private communications.
Sussmann then was told that a Russian bank, Alfa, had a back-channel line of direct communications with Trump. He then went to the FBI to substantiate to the media that his inventions were worthy of government investigation. Everyone from the ubiquitous Bruce Ohr to the Zelig-like Peter Strzok was somehow connected to the hoax. In truth, the bought techies searched Trump’s private logs for any and everything, and came up only with a Russian bank likely sending one-way spam to a Trump server.
In other words, Trump was a recipient of electronic noise. But it was useful pings that gave the media a second life to “collusion”—another “bombshell” disclosure planted roundabout by Hillary Clinton who was still slandering Trump as a Putin puppet.
Again, this sorry tale is not some allegation from the Right. We know the details from a writ of a federal prosecutor who had indicted Sussmann for purportedly lying. Soon he and his techie contractors will likely try to blame one another to avoid indictments, and we should expect even more conspiracies to emerge from those alleging conspiracy.
Conspiracy Cons
Most Americans concluded that January 6 was a buffoonish riot, in which hundreds of deluded protesters broke into the capitol, vandalized the premises, and disrupted the government. The public saw it as an embarrassment and believed the perpetrators deserved to be punished.
But not the Left. They saw “conspiracy” in this keystone bunch. Soon they were screaming about an “insurrection” aspiring to a “coup d’etat,” and demanding over 20,000 soldiers to prevent a second wave.
Very quickly, however, discrepancies in the left-wing narrative arose. “Five killed” proved to be one person “killed,” conservative protestor Ashli Babbitt, an unarmed military veteran lethally shot by a capitol officer with a checkered record, whose identity was mysteriously concealed from the public for months.
The other four died from either natural causes or the press of the crowd. Officer Brian Sicknick was not murdered by insurrectionists as alleged. In truth, he died the next day of natural causes. Anyone who complained that the government suppressed communications concerning its preparations for the demonstration, thousands of hours of videos, and widespread use of FBI informants among the protestors was dubbed a nut, or perhaps an alt-Right traitor himself.
Hundreds were arrested on trumped-up charges. Many sat in solitary confinement without charges filed for months. The Left cooed about a right-wing revolution foiled.
But do not believe just conservatives that January 6 was a riotous charade trumped up into a politically useful “insurrection.” Instead listen to a left-wing New York Times reporter, Matthew Rosenberg. As an “investigative journalist” he both whipped up public outrage at the riot and in private bragged on a hidden microphone to a female acquaintance that it was mostly a bad joke, a break-in by spontaneously rioting buffoons.
Or as Rosenberg put it of the supposedly violent insurrectionaries and the fear they instilled among reporters, “It was like, me and two other colleagues who were there [January 6] outside and we were just having fun! . . . I know I’m supposed to be traumatized, but like, all these colleagues who were in the [Capitol] building and are like ‘Oh my God it was so scary!’ I’m like, ‘f-ck off!’”
And what did the ace New York Times reporter conclude of the trauma from the “coup”?
I’m like come on, it’s not the kind place I can tell someone to man up but I kind of want to be like, ‘dude come on, you were not in any danger . . . These f-cking little dweebs who keep going on about their trauma. Shut the f-ck up. They’re f-cking bitches.
And was the riot preplanned and carefully orchestrated? Hardly: “They were making too big a deal. They were making this an organized thing that it wasn’t.”
How about the “conspiracists” who believed there were lots of FBI operatives and informants among the rioters? They too were on to something: “There were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the Capitol.”
Rosenberg is no conservative. He is not even a disinterested liberal observer. He is an activist New York Times reporter whose official “disclosures” helped to feed the false narrative of a right-wing coup—one that we now know he never even believed in himself.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14082&omhide=true&trk=title
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
23 March, 2022
This trigger warning may cause irritation
Prior warnings about content are OK in principle but they are often now greatly overdone. All sorts of content are unreasonably stigmatized
These days even trigger warnings are triggering. A university is discovered to be chaperoning a text with a warning to students that it may “trigger” the memory of past trauma. This triggers the socially conservative, who anxiously conclude that another institution has surrendered to the iron whim of a generation of snowflakes.
Even those of us who try to respect the ebb and flow of cultural mores surely winced when it transpired that the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland had alerted its charges to the news that Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea contained “graphic fishing scenes”.
Scotland lands more than 300,000 tonnes of fish every year. In the novel, after 84 days without a bite, the old man catches one marlin and knocks off a few sharks.
In recent months universities have issued trigger warnings (or, as most prefer, “content notes”) for Jane Eyre, Great Expectations, Nineteen Eighty-Four and, predictably, the entire oeuvre of the suddenly problematic JK Rowling.
It is not even an especially new phenomenon. Eight years ago students at the University of California in Santa Barbara demanded the sirens sound for F Scott Fitzgerald, Virginia Woolf and, obviously, Shakespeare.
Booktriggerwarnings.com announces cautions for 6701 books, these being listed alphabetically from A Bad Deal for the Whole Galaxy by Alex White (“cults, death, gore, murder, smoking, violence”) to Zone One by Colson Whitehead (“death, gore, gun violence, violence”).
Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize-winner has so far failed to make the site’s generous cut; much work clearly lies ahead for its compilers.
As it happens, trigger warnings may be counter-productive. The academic journal Clinical Psychological Science published a study in 2020 suggesting that trigger warnings “have little or no benefit in cushioning the blow of potentially disturbing content”, and sometimes make things worse by “increasing the extent to which people see trauma as central to their identity”. I have more fundamental queries, however. How commonly does a set text “trigger” anything in a student worse than sadness, disquiet, anger or whatever emotion its author intended? Could trigger warnings be a solution for a problem that barely exists?
Robert T. Muller is a therapist and academic at York University in Toronto, and the author of two books on trauma. He explains that the idea of “triggers” came out of 1990s trauma theory, which acknowledged that therapists had underestimated the amount of trauma in the population. Many who presented with, say, eating disorders or depression had, in fact, childhood histories of physical or sexual abuse, and were in reality suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Just as flashbacks could be triggered in Vietnam veterans by Fourth of July fireworks, “a word, an image, a smell, a sensation of some sort, a sound” could plunge abuse survivors into a “heightened awareness of the original trauma”. Sufferers experienced disassociation from their circumstances, or were rendered speechless. Some had the classic panic attack symptoms, such as sweating, hyperventilation and palpitations.
Triggering, Muller says, is a terribly important concept.
So how often, during a lecture, at a seminar or in a library, do students find their PTSD ignited? No one seems to know, and despite our appeals through social media and mental health charities, it is hard to find examples. Perhaps people keep quiet because there is shame attached, or because they fear reliving their attacks by reciting them. Maybe they distrust journalists. Students who have campaigned for trigger warnings at their universities have failed to get back to me. A young woman said she would be happy to talk but didn’t.
Carole Carter did. Now a practising therapist, she studied psychology at the University of Hull. She had been abused by men in her teens, and one was still manipulating her when she arrived in Hull. A lecture on sexual offenders proved particularly hard for her – although she forced herself to sit through it, refusing, as she says, to be defined by her abuse.
“When I get triggered, it’s not outwardly as dramatic as a panic attack. I get my heart racing. My ability to think clearly goes,” she says. The lecture in question was preceded by a warning. Her only complaint, 12 years on, is that the university’s counselling provision was inadequate.
Much more here:
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/do-classic-works-of-literature-need-trigger-warnings/news-story/9c21b8e33b1f5c20173663544439c23d
**************************************************
Petty Thieves Plague San Francisco. ‘These Last Two Years Have Been Insane.’
When you hobble the police, you should know what to expect
Terry Asten Bennett’s family has been running Cliff’s Variety Store since 1936. In all that time, they’ve never experienced the amount of burglaries and property damage that they have recently, Ms. Bennett said.
Thieves smashed a display window and broke down a door to steal items as small as spray paint, and people shattered glass doors on two occasions for no apparent reason.
“These last two years have been insane,” she said. “It used to be a rare occurrence.”
Although violent crime in San Francisco is lower than in many other major U.S. cities, business owners, residents and visitors here are dealing with a rash of thefts, burglaries and car break-ins.
Among the 25 largest U.S. cities, San Francisco has had the highest property-crime rate in four of the most recent six years for which data is available, bucking the long-term national decline in such crimes that began in the 1990s.
Property crimes declined in San Francisco during the first year of the pandemic, but rose 13% in 2021. Burglaries in the city are at their highest levels since the mid-1990s. There were 20,663 thefts from vehicles last year—almost 57 a day—a 39% increase from the prior year, although still below the record of 31,398 in 2017, according to the police.
Smashed storefronts are so common that the city launched a program to fix them with public money. Car owners leave notes declaring there is nothing of value in their vehicles, or leave their windows open to save themselves from broken glass.
Videos of shoplifters hauling goods out of drugstores such as Walgreens have gone viral, and a smash-and-grab robbery by 20 to 40 people at a Louis Vuitton store last November made the national news.
Owners of small businesses say the costs of security and repairs are eating into profits already diminished by the Covid-19 pandemic. In the Castro, the neighborhood where Cliff’s is located, shops have recorded nearly 100 instances of smashed windows and doors that cost $170,000 to repair since the beginning of 2020, according to the neighborhood’s merchant association.
Criminologists say San Francisco’s high density of retail stores and its mix of tourists, commuters and wealthy residents have made it an inviting target for thieves. Locals point to a host of other factors that may be exacerbating the problem, including the tactics of the police and prosecutors, statewide changes intended to reduce the number of people behind bars, and the city’s dual crises of drug use and homelessness. There has been no end of finger-pointing.
Despite the city’s long history of progressive politics, some business owners and residents are demanding that political leaders shift to a more law-and-order approach.
San Francisco’s mix of retail stores, tourists, commuters and wealthy residents have made it an inviting target. The Union Square retail district, top, and the Chinatown neighborhood.
District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who took office in 2020 as part of the national “progressive prosecutor” movement and has de-emphasized the prosecution of low-level offenses, will face a recall election in June.
“Nothing is more important than to make sure that people who live in this city, people who work in the city, people who visit San Francisco, feel safe,” Democratic Mayor London Breed said at a news conference last month. “The fact is, that does require police officers.”
Some former police officials and business owners blame Mr. Boudin’s focus on keeping people who commit small-scale crimes out of prison. His office, for example, discourages filing charges in cases where suspects are pulled over for traffic infractions and officers find small amounts of drugs. Others point the finger at the police, who cleared just 6% of the city’s property crimes in 2020, more than 8 percentage points lower than the national average. A case is considered cleared if a suspect is arrested, charged and turned over to a court for prosecution, or is identified with sufficient evidence for a charge but can’t be taken into custody for circumstances beyond police control.
Some business owners say the city’s large population of people living on the streets and using drugs such as fentanyl is a big factor in the small-scale thefts. Law-enforcement officials, though, say they suspect organized crews of petty criminals are carrying out a large portion of them.
Police Chief
Bill Scott has deployed more officers to tourist spots such as Fisherman’s Wharf to stop car break ins, and to retail shopping districts to stop thefts and burglaries. He has beefed up his retail theft investigations unit.
Businesses have been affected in every corner of San Francisco, even traditionally low-crime areas such as the Sunset District, where commercial and residential burglaries rose 80% in between 2019 and 2021.
Michael Hsu’s Footprint shoe store got broken into for the first time in February 2021. The thief used a blowtorch to crack the glass door without setting off the alarm and took tens of thousands of dollars worth of high-end North Face jackets. More people arrived soon after, taking whatever they could grab before they set off the alarm.
Mr. Hsu, who grew up in the Sunset, said he recalled thinking: “Oh, they finally got me.”
Mr. Hsu was the first recipient in the new grant program for small businesses to fix their storefronts. Three weeks later, his store was hit again, this time by a thief who climbed up scaffolding, broke in through a second-story window and made off with several boxes of shoes.
He now equips his employees with pepper spray and a key fob that calls the police directly. He upgraded his security system and is putting money aside for other antitheft measures.
The grant program has distributed more than $500,000 to nearly 400 businesses to fix their storefronts.
Sharky Laguana, who is president of the city’s small business commission and runs the van-rental company Bandago, said thieves frequently smash his vehicles’ windows and steal his customers’ belongings. “It gives customers a bad experience, it costs them a lot of money and it costs us a lot of money,” he said.
Police and prosecutors say the majority of car break-ins are committed by organized crews. Mr. Laguana grew so frustrated he launched a reward program for information that leads to busts of big fencing operations that buy merchandise from such thieves. He thought he would be able to raise tens of thousands of dollars at best; he got $250,000 in pledges from rental-car companies and other businesses.
The day after the Louis Vuitton smash-and-grab robbery, San Francisco police deployed a mobile command center that still sits across the street from the luxury-goods store. The department sent more foot patrols to the Union Square retail district, pulling officers from all over the city, said Captain Julian Ng who oversees the area.
“It’s a resource drain, but if I had my way, we’d do this forever because it’s such an important area for the city,” said Capt. Ng.
Five people were arrested in connection with the Louis Vuitton incident. Captain Ng said there are many reasons for the city’s overall low rate of clearing property-crime cases, including the department’s no-chase policy for misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, which aims to reduce unnecessary accidents. Car break-in crews can easily zip away in their own vehicles without police cars chasing them, he said.
https://archive.ph/CzNat
****************************************************
Raymond Ibrahim on Academic Myths About Islam
Raymond Ibrahim, the Judith Friedman Rosen Fellow at the Middle East Forum, Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, and author of Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, spoke to a February 11 Middle East Forum Webinar (video) hosted by Winfield Myers, director of the Middle East Forum's Campus Watch project, about the reasons for the academic myths that "proliferate in university life about Islam and the Middle East."
Ibrahim began with an overview of "the history of Islam, vis a vis the West" which was one of "continuous warfare from the seventh century on." According to Ibrahim, most people are unaware that "basically, three quarters of what was originally Christian territory was conquered and absorbed by Islam." Ibrahim focused on today's cultural atmosphere "where history isn't considered too important" in influencing the historical revisionism seen among academics. In an environment of "fake news," much of the media manipulates historical facts to suit their own agendas. Similarly, in academia, graduate students feel pressured to present Islam's history of warfare with the West in a "new interpretation ... that [goes] hand in hand with political culture since the sixties."
Ibrahim discussed the Palestinian Arab academic, Edward Said – a literary critic and "not a historian," – whose 1978 book Orientalism criticized "European academics who studied the Orient." Said claimed that Western scholars presented the "East as barbaric and ... primitive, especially Islam," and were therefore "not objective." At the time, the culture was ripe for Said's politicization of historical fact, including tarring the term "Orientalist" as a pejorative. Today, this trend has reached a zenith in the current climate among leftist academics and their fellow apologists. Western history is reframed largely as "racist ... imperialistic ... [and] xenophobic," while Islam's wars of conquest, which consisted of "nonstop violence," are minimized or justified. The culmination of the mythmaking has produced the "new" version of history in which Islam was "peaceful [and] progressive," while Western Europe was the "violent" aggressor.
Islamic conquests that began with "the Battle of Yarmuk in the year 636," and were halted temporarily in the Siege of Vienna in 1683, resumed their advance that included attacks by Barbary pirates against the "infidels" on American ships in 1785. It then hit a pause that was an "aberration," according to Ibrahim. "The Islamic world wane[d]" after Napoleon's entry into Egypt in 1799, an event marked "the [beginning of the] golden age for the Christian minorities of the colonial era." Ibrahim said that jihadists like ISIS bolster their anti-Western rhetoric with quotes hearkening back to Islamic leaders of the distant past who fought against the "Byzantine or Eastern Roman Empire" only a few years after the death of Muhammad, Islam's prophet and military leader. Ibrahim said, "So yes, to me, it's definitely a continuum ... even if [Islam] took one or two centuries" off.
Ibrahim experienced firsthand the consequences of questioning academia's mythmaking orthodoxy. After lecturing about his book on Islamic warfare at the U.S. Army War College, Ibrahim was attacked for disagreeing with those who charge that Islamic wars were entirely the fault of the West. Ibrahim said the excuse academics assign to "Western machinations" is used as a rationalization "other than radical Islam to explain ... what we're seeing today [that] is an identical duplication of ... [what] Islam was doing ... for over a millennium." Myers referred to the plethora of centers devoted to the "propaganda of Islamophobia ... tied to intersectionality ... [as] part of the ... leftist push to silence critics." Ibrahim noted how the opposition, unwilling and unable to debate, is silenced when they are challenged with "objective truth."
Mythmaking academics resort to "anything and everything but Islam," instead blaming the victim for the continuation of Islamic warfare against the West, charging that it is either "colonialism ... [or] Israel and Zionism" that is at fault. To shore up their position, academics in many Middle East Studies departments are "obsessed" with Israel, Palestine, and the boycott, sanction, and divestment (BDS) movement targeting Israel. Ibrahim questioned the preoccupation of "non-Muslim, non-Arab, regular academics" who handily avoid discussing the "pandemic of Christian persecution by Muslim nations." He said, a reported "380 million Christians around the world are being persecuted ... eighty percent of [them] ... in the Islamic world."
Middle Eastern Christians, already a "second class minority ... ostracized and disenfranchised," are loathe to express any support for Israel because of their own fears of being "on a thin line" in Muslim host nations where Israel is considered "the arch enemy." Ibrahim found that the paucity of Western Christians advocating for their oppressed co-religionists in the Middle East is a result of the "ignorance of the media," which avoids reporting on the plight of Christians so as not to portray Islam in a "negative light."
Despite the "ecumenical talk" of interfaith efforts between religions, Ibrahim said that the Quran "appropriate[s]" the biblical figures of the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament by "recast[ing]" them to "[give] credibility to Islam [while] denigrat[ing] Christianity and Judaism." Ultimately, the Quranic text "creates obstacles" and divisions with its narrative of Islamic superiority. Ibrahim also cited the "Red-Green Alliance" where "hardcore leftists ... [are] embedded with Islamist types" because of both groups' animosity and hatred for "the West's background [of] Judeo-Christian tradition [and] ethical system." By applying the adage "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," the alliance between leftists and Islamists is "ironic because the left is antithetical to Islam in many social mores." Leftists who advocate for homosexual rights ally with radical Muslims "who would behead them in a heartbeat." Ibrahim believes the "linchpin" uniting these diverse groups is "hatred for ... Western tradition."
Ibrahim remarked on the glaring irony that academics are "supposed to be the ones who believe in free thought [and] inquiry," but now act as self-appointed guardians of censorship. He bemoaned the mythmaking "spirit ... in the academic world ... shutting down critics of Islamism." Far from being an isolated case in academia, Ibrahim said, "you're seeing it in so many different ways ... in American culture today."
https://mailchi.mp/meforum.org/ak5tp9zezu?e=40cc1655ef
********************************************
Free Speech Throat-Punched by Leftists
Free speech prevents violence. Unfortunately, that is one reason that leftists hate it.
A currently used college textbook on media law lists the core values of free speech that US courts have historically considered while ruling on free speech related issues. One of these core values is free speech as a Safety Valve. Free speech allows people to express problems and grievances before they escalate into violence. Also, free speech is a mechanism for ‘letting off steam” and helping to balance “social stability and change, compromise and conflict, tolerance and hate” (Trager et al 61).
Further, free speech is a right that we are all supposed to have under the Constitution. Leftists accuse anyone who criticizes what they say as being against free speech (Flynn 8). Yet, they have shown over and over that leftists will go to any extremes to silence ideas that they don’t want you to hear. These are up to and including terrorism.
Leftists know that most reasonable people abhor violence.
Yet leftists need violence to enforce their preferred policies. You generally can’t get people to adopt actions that are against their own interests by using reason. Instead, you must use tactics like trickery or coercion. If that doesn’t work, leftists escalate to intimidation, backed by actual incidents of violence for reinforcement. That’s how the Democratic KKK operated in the Jim Crow era. In fact, it’s a strategy they have used effectively for a long time. If you live in a city where there have been riots, you know what I’m talking about. You or your friends and relatives have lived in an atmosphere of terrorism, subjected to being firebombed while eating out. Meanwhile, your historic landmarks are vandalized as your stores are burned or boarded up. People have been gunned down in the street for the crime of merely existing.
To further deceive, leftists then label counteractions that are peaceful as violent or potentially violent to justify suppressing them. This raises the level of frustration in people who would prefer to act reasonably. If leftists can provoke a few vulnerable individuals who are already stressed to the limit into committing actual violence, those individuals can be made examples. This helps sell the chosen narrative to the rest of the public.
Alternate Reality
The advantage of double standards to an abuser is that they get to live in a world created just for them. They can do anything they want while they place restrictions on you (Bancroft 157). Some people call this “liberal privilege”. Even though leftists talk a lot about equality, it really doesn’t work for them. Clearly, they only want you to have the impression that it’s one of their values. When the left gives something a label, it’s a smart idea to check and make sure that it really doesn’t mean the opposite of what they claim.
As an example of liberal privilege, pro-American displays and sentiments trigger violent thoughts and actions in many leftists. After 9/11, one college professor spoke out in favor of blowing up the Pentagon (Flynn 3). If you search for “Liberals advocating for violence” or something like that on a search engine that doesn’t censor, you will find numerous examples. It’s acceptable at many institutions of learning for teachers and professors to preach politically motivated violence. For example, recently the University Of North Carolina Wilmington retained a professor who advocated for terrorist bomb attacks against Republicans (Edgar).
Yet leftists are quick to advertise their moral superiority and accuse anyone who stands up for America or Freedom as being inherently violent. This is what domestic and other abusers do when they taunt a victim until they act out so they can accuse them of being “crazy” and therefore deserving of harsh treatment.
https://theblacksphere.net/2022/03/free-speech-throat-punched-by-leftists/
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
22 March, 2022
Most Men Lead Lives of Quiet Desperation
Do they? There is an article <a href="https://medium.com/wholistique/most-men-lead-lives-of-quiet-desperation-12d6bdd20748">here</a> by Julian Baši? that says so. He is of course quoting. The twiddly bits on his name suggest a Balkan origin, perhaps Serbia. There is a lot in Serbia and such places to explain depression. From at least the 19th century onward, they have lived through an incredible series of ghastly wars. I am a naturally buoyant person in mood but if I were a Serb I might not be
And depression is the key to the article. He quotes no real evidence for the sad conclusion that the title of his article embodies. He just thinks his conclusion is obvious and quotes a few other like-minded authors.
I have been taking an <a href="http://jonjayray.com/happines.html">interest in the happiness research</a> for many years and its conclusions are very different from those of Mr Baši?
For a start it would appear that happiness if a trait rather than a state. We are born happy or unhappy and not much changes it. Some influences do have some effect, however so it is possible that his Balkan origins do partly account for Mr Baši?'s sad artkicle.
The best comprehensive research article on happiness is probably <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20051126140309/http://www.strategy.gov.uk/downloads/seminars/ls/paper.pdf">this one</a>. Note from their chart 11 that around 80% of people were fairly or very satisfied with life, which is just about as opposite as you could get from Mr Baši?'s assumptions. In the circumstances I will not reproduce here any of his mournful article.
******************************************
Biden nominates a very Leftist judge to SCOTUS
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson once expressed concern about a “climate of fear, hatred, and revenge” surrounding sex offenders.
Jackson later opposed the confinement conditions of a Taliban leader suspected of running a terrorist cell.
The judge also routinely ruled against the Trump administration on immigration enforcement cases, as detailed here.
Now, as President Joe Biden’s Supreme Court nominee, Jackson faces questions about her legal career and record on crime when her Senate confirmation hearing convenes Monday.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., this week noted that during a crime wave, Jackson is a favorite among interest groups that are soft on crime.
“Amid all this, the soft-on-crime brigade is squarely in Judge Jackson’s corner,” McConnell said Tuesday in a Senate floor speech. “They wanted her above anyone else on the short list. And they specifically cite her experience defending criminals and her work on the Sentencing Commission as key qualifications.”
The liberal nonprofit group Demand Justice promoted Jackson as one of its top picks on a list of potential Supreme Court nominees for Biden. Arabella Advisors, a major bankroller of left-of-center causes, sponsored the launch of Demand Justice.
Since June, Jackson has been a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. From 2013 to 2021, she was a judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. From 2003 to 2005, she was an assistant special counsel for the Sentencing Commission, then a public defender until 2007.
President Barack Obama nominated Jackson, in private practice at the time, to serve on the Sentencing Commission itself starting in 2009. She became vice chairwoman.
‘Alarming Pattern’ on Sex Offenders
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, tweeted Wednesday that he sees “an alarming pattern when it comes to Judge Jackson’s treatment of sex offenders, especially those preying on children.”
While on the commission, Hawley noted, Jackson said a “less serious child pornography offender” is motivated by “the use of technology.” She also said that some of those who possess child porn “are in this for either the collection, or the people who are loners and find status in their participation in the community.”
Hawley’s tweets referred to seven separate cases in which Jackson ruled.
“On the federal bench, Judge Jackson put her troubling views into action. In every single child porn case for which we can find records, Judge Jackson deviated from the federal sentencing guidelines in favor of child porn offenders,” Hawley wrote on Twitter.
Jackson authored 585 rulings while on the D.C. District Court, but has written only two opinions as a D.C. Circuit judge.
The lower court cases Hawley highlighted include:
U.S. v. Hawkins, where sentencing guidelines called for up to 10 years in prison for a man convicted of possession of multiple images of child pornography. Jackson sentenced him to three months.
U.S. v. Stewart, where sentencing guidelines called for 97 to 121 months in prison for a man convicted of possessing thousands of images of child porn and attempting to travel across state lines to abuse a 9-year-old girl. Jackson sentenced him to 57 months.
U.S. v. Cooper, where the guidelines called for 151 to 188 months for a sex offender convicted of posting 600 images and videos online. Jackson sentenced him to 60 months, the lowest sentence allowed, according to Hawley.
U.S. v. Chazin, where the guidelines called for 78 to 97 months for possession of child porn. Jackson’s sentence was 28 months.
U.S. v. Downs, where the guidelines called for 70 to 87 months for someone convicted of posting sexual images of children, including at least one under age 5. Jackson handed down 60 months.
U.S. v. Sears, where the guidelines called for 97 to 121 months for a perpetrator convicted of distributing 102 child porn videos as well as photos of his 10-year-old daughter. Jackson gave him 60 months. (Jackson, however, later denied him compassionate release in 2020 when he said diabetes mellitus and asthma placed him at greater risk of serious complications from COVID-19, according to a Congressional Research Service report.)
U.S. v. Savage, where the guidelines called for 46 to 57 months for a man convicted of traveling with the intent to engage in illicit sexual conduct and also transporting child porn. Jackson sentenced him to 37 months.
White House spokesman Andrew Bates told a Washington Post reporter that Hawley used selective information. “This is toxic and weakly presented misinformation that relies on taking cherry-picked elements of her record out of context—and it buckles under the lightest scrutiny,” the Post quoted Bates as saying.
‘Advocating Lighter Sentencing’
Democrats support the Jackson nomination and technically control the 100-member Senate by holding 48 seats, enjoying the support of two independents, and having Vice President Kamala Harris available to cast a tie-breaking vote.
Shortly after Biden nominated Jackson, the watchdog group American Accountability Foundation first flagged her 1996 Harvard Law Review article arguing that the justice system was unfair to sex offenders.
For a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, Jackson’s lifetime of legal views should be evaluated by senators, said Matt Buckham, a founder of the group.
“Maybe the article was written in the past about how the law is unfair to sexual predators and sex offenders, but she has had a long legal career advocating for lighter sentencing for crimes across the board,” Buckham told The Daily Signal.
Jackson’s Harvard Law Review article is titled “Prevention Versus Punishment: Toward a Principled Distinction in the Restraint on Released Sex Offenders.”
“In the current climate of fear, hatred, and revenge associated with the release of convicted sex criminals, courts must be especially attentive to legislative enactments that ‘use … public health and safety rhetoric to justify procedures that are, in essence, punishment and detention,’” Jackson wrote.
Jackson went on to compare laws on sex offender registries to the precedent set by the Supreme Court in the case of Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, where it struck down laws denying national citizenship to draft dodgers as unconstitutionally punitive.
In her article, Jackson wrote:
Judges should abandon the prevention/punishment analyses that rely on legislative intent, that routinely apply the Kennedy factors, and that assess the ‘excessiveness’ of a sex offender statute’s punitive effects in favor of a more principled approach to characterization. Although ‘[a precise] analytical solution is almost impossible to construct,’ this note suggests that such a principled approach involves assessing the impact of sex offender statutes and deeming the laws ‘punitive’ to the extent that they operate to deprive sex criminals of a legal right in a manner that primarily has retributive or general deterrent effects.
The American Accountability Foundation’s Buckham said Jackson’s record on crime demonstrates that she isn’t qualified to serve on the high court.
“She has a record of being an activist for a social justice agenda, not an arbiter of justice,” Buckham said. “If more Americans were aware she wants the law to go lighter on sex offenders, they would be horrified. Biden had a lot of candidates to draw from and should go back to the drawing board.”
Jackson’s record on such crimes is a fair issue to raise, said Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal nonprofit.
“To minimize child pornography is certainly not a positive for a Supreme Court nominee,” Severino told The Daily Signal.
If the issue is limited to opposing a sex offender registry, as outlined in Jackson’s law review article, liberal judges have opposed this before, noted Curt Levey, president of the Committee for Justice, another conservative nonprofit.
In a 2003 case, Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Stephen Breyer—the justice whom Jackson hopes to replace—were in a 6-3 minority disputing the constitutionality of Alaska’s sex offender registry. The same year, the high court unanimously upheld a Connecticut sex offender registry.
Defending Terrorism Suspects
Jackson’s broader record on crime will be a significant issue in her Senate confirmation hearing as well, Severino said, including the judge’s time as a public defender.
Jackson was a lawyer for terrorism suspects held at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including a Taliban officer believed to be a leader of a terrorist cell. In defending the Taliban leader, Khiali-Gul, Jackson accused the U.S. government of engaging in torture tactics.
Objecting to Gul’s confinement conditions, Jackson wrote:
Many of the most egregious interrogation techniques used in the Abu Ghraib detention center and other detention facilities in Iraq—such as the use of aggressive dogs to intimidate detainees, sexual humiliation, stress positions, and sensory deprivation—were pioneered at Guantanamo.
In the D.C. Federal Public Defender’s Office, Jackson primarily represented clients in appeals in firearms, tax evasion, and fraud cases. Legal experts note that senior public defenders have discretion about cases they are assigned.
“Obviously, the duty of a public defender is to advocate on behalf of their client as best as possible, but you can’t make just any argument,” Severino said. “Arguments can’t go beyond what is fair and reasonable.”
Severino said Jackson made “nitpicky” arguments as a public defender in two 2007 cases, one involving illegal firearms possession and the other drug possession.
In the firearms case, Jackson argued on appeal that the defendant couldn’t be charged with two separate firearms charges at the same time.
In the drug case, police had pursued a driver who made an illegal turn, then found drugs in plain sight in his vehicle, Severino said. Jackson argued that the driver shouldn’t have been pulled over, saying the turn wasn’t illegal if the police were able to pursue him.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/17/soft-on-crime-heres-jacksons-record-on-sex-offenders-and-other-criminals
*******************************************
Pope Francis expands potential role of women in Vatican bureaucracy
A new Vatican constitution published at the weekend opens the way for women to run some offices at the Catholic Church’s universal headquarters that have always been run by men.
The change is the latest move by Pope Francis to expand the presence of women in the senior management of a church with an all-male clergy.
The new constitution of the Roman Curia, the Catholic Church’s central administration at the Vatican, stresses the need “for the involvement of laywomen and laymen, even in roles of government and responsibility”.
It also states “any member of the faithful can preside over” an office of the Curia, if compatible with the office’s specific function and area of authority.
The constitution doesn’t expand the role of laymen or women in worship, as opposed to management.
The constitution doesn’t specify which offices of the Curia, which include those that oversee bishops and priests around the world, must continue to be headed by cardinals, bishops or priests, who are always men. But it makes clear that certain officials, including the Vatican secretary of state and the head of the Vatican’s supreme court, will normally be cardinals.
By contrast, the previous constitution, promulgated by Saint John Paul II in 1988, stated that offices of the Curia were normally to be headed by a cardinal or an archbishop.
Pope Francis pledged early in his pontificate “to create still broader opportunities for a more incisive female presence in the church”, including “the possible role of women in decision-making in different areas of the church’s life”. He has named several women to Vatican leadership positions that were previously held only by men.
The Vatican’s communications office has been run by a layman, Italian journalist Paolo Ruffini, since 2018.
“Pope Francis has been working on a new organisational structure for the Vatican for nine years. It’s a major aspect of his legacy,” Joshua McElwee, from the National Catholic Reporter, said on Twitter.
The constitution released on Saturday, more than eight years in the making by a committee of cardinals including Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, is largely a codification of changes made by Francis since his election in 2013, such as the merger of offices for social justice, peace, healthcare, migration and charitable works.
New changes announced on Saturday include additional mergers, including that of the offices for education and culture. In a symbolic move, Francis will personally assume the portfolio of a new office for evangelisation, the product of a merger of two pre-existing offices.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/the-wall-street-journal/pope-francis-expands-potential-role-of-women-in-vatican-bureaucracy/news-story/c470c0bc99b530ef36dcde480acfc7f8
**********************************************
The Australian Labor party doesn't ‘walk the talk’ on women
Despite what the Labor Party – and the wacky Woke may think – Conservative and Liberal women have always been leaders in politics, the original breakers of the glass ceiling.
However, International Women’s Day last week brought on the usual bout of self-glorification by the Australian Labor Party about its female activism. Fanciful stuff, even on a good day.
When quotas provide the co-ordinates to the Cabinet room, it’s a telling tale about the truth.
Yet on that day to celebrate women, Federal Member for Lilley, Labor’s Anika Wells, was on radio waxing lyrical about former Labor MP, Ros Kelly. Ms Wells said Ms Kelly was Australia’s first female Minister.
She wasn’t.
That was Dame Enid Lyons in the Menzies Government – well before Ms Kelly, and before quotas, and certainly before International Women’s Day.
Ms Kelly was indeed Labor’s first female minister. And to be fair – such significant use of a whiteboard was probably a Labor first – so credit where it’s due.
The Labor Party continually stratifies the superlatives on Whitlam: the progressive, the Goliath of the mighty left. But for all the eternal worshipping, there was not one woman in Whitlam’s Cabinet. Zip all. I’d say that’s more boo-hoo than woo-hoo.
It’s Time the Labor Party delivered accuracy and honesty in reporting the true history of women in politics in Australia.
It’s also time they stopped pointing fingers, especially those complete with painted nails.
These are not glory days for Labor.
Just 24 hours after their International Women’s Day histrionics, Labor’s former Victorian Legislative Council MP, Kaushaliya Vaghela, was raising serious complaints in the Parliament about bullying of her by men and women from within the Labor Party. The Premier, Daniel Andrews, is on her list that has now gone to WorkSafe for investigation.
Bullying by the ‘Mean Girls’ and others within Labor has also been discussed in the death of Victorian Labor Senator, Kimberley Kitching. Those involved continue to deny the allegations.
In her passing, close friends and colleagues have further exposed Labor’s seeping factional sores – those who – when tested – cared little for a female MP who didn’t kowtow to lesser ideals. Aren’t these the women that Labor claims to champion? The strong? The fearless? The intelligent?
Kitching deserved better than political bastardry dressed up in heels. Our nation deserves better too. It is already the poorer for her absence.
So, while Labor talks about celebrating women, the Liberal Party walks it.
As the Member for Lilley sang Labor’s female song last week, I reached for my list on non-Labor firsts. It includes:
First female federal Cabinet Minister (without portfolio) – Hon Dame Enid Lyons in 1951 – Liberal
First female federal Minister with portfolio – Hon Dame Annabelle Rankin between 1966-68 – Liberal
First female in any Parliament – Edith Cowan OBE (WA State) 1921-24 – National
First female in Qld Parliament – Irene Longman 1929 – Country Party
First female in Vic Parliament – Lady (Millicent) Peacock 1933-35 – UAP
First female federal MP – Hon Dame Enid Lyons AD, 1943-51 – UAP/Liberal
First female Senator from Queensland – Hon Dame Annabelle Rankin 1947-71 – Liberal
First female Cabinet Minister in Australia (WA State) – Hon Dame Florence Cardell-Oliver 1949-53 – Liberal
First female Mayor in Qld – Nell Robinson OBE, Mayor of Toowoomba 1967-81 – Country/National
First federal female Cabinet Minister with portfolio – Hon Dame Margaret Guilfoyle AC, DBE 1975-82 – Liberal
First female Lord Mayor of Brisbane – Sallyanne Atkinson AO 1985-92 – Liberal
First female Lord Mayor of Sydney – Lucy Turnbull AO 2003-2004 – Liberal
First female party leader in SA – Isobel Redmond 2009-2012 – Liberal
First female Speaker of Tasmanian House of Assembly – Hon Elise Archer MLA 2014-17 – Liberal
First popularly elected female Premier of NSW – Hon Gladys Berejiklian (Liberal) 2019-2021 – Liberal
Labor doesn’t own women’s successes, it just peacocks the politics of it. Others treat women as equals and celebrate merit-based appointments.
The women I know neither need, nor want, a social or workplace artifice. False applause is not their thing.
When conservative women such as Dame Enid Lyons broke through that glass ceiling, they did so without much noise, but shouted their success through their outstanding work standards and quiet resolve.
If we are truly to be equals – assuming it is equality and not supremacy the mob are after – one wonders when International Men’s Day will land on the calendar?
Even then, it is more likely to be about quiet, smoky barbeques than cute juice breakfasts in fancy suits.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/labor-doesnt-walk-the-talk-on-women/
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
21 March, 2022
So who's the Fascist now?
Volodymyr Zelensky's government has suspended 11 Ukrainian political parties because of their alleged links with Russia.
The decision was taken by the Ukrainian national security and defence council, and although 10 of the 11 were small parties, one - the Opposition Platform for Life - holds 44 of the 450 seats in Ukraine's parliament, according to The Guardian.
At the same time, Zelensky signed a decree on Sunday to merge all national TV channels into a single government-run service - effectively ending the operation of private TV media.
The now outlawed Opposition Platform for Life party is led by Viktor Medvedchuk, who enjoys warms relations with the Kremlin - so much so that Vladimir Putin is the godfather of Medvedchuk's daughter.
Medvedchuk was charged with treason last year and put under house arrest, in a move which angered Moscow.
The pro-Kremlin oligarch escaped his house imprisonment three days after Russia invaded Ukraine, according to the Ukrainian government, and Medvedchuk's whereabouts are currently unknown.
President Zelensky accused the 11 blacklisted parties of 'colluding' with the Russian invaders, and said the suspension would last until martial law was lifted.
In a video address on Sunday, President Zelensky said: 'The activities of those politicians aimed at division or collusion will not succeed, but will receive a harsh response.
'Therefore, the national security and defence council decided, given the full-scale war unleashed by Russia, and the political ties that a number of political structures have with this state, to suspend any activity of a number of political parties for the period of martial law.'
Nashi (Ours) party, led by Yevhen Murayev, is the second biggest of the 11 political parties suspended in the crackdown on opposition parties.
Murayev was pinpointed as a potential candidate to lead a puppet government in Kyiv, installed by the Kremlin, according to a British intelligence report before the Russian invasion on February 24 - a claim that the Nashi party leader denied.
The heavy-handed move was criticised by the Kremlin, with ex-president and top security official Dmitry Medvedev writing sarcastically on his Telegram: 'The most democratic president of modern Ukraine has taken another step towards the western ideals of democracy.
'By decision of the Council for National Defence and Security, he completely banned any activity of opposition parties in Ukraine.
'They are not needed! Well done! Keep it up.'
The move comes on the tail of a decision by Zelensky to enact what he called a 'unified information policy' during the period of martial law, which will give his government a monopoly on the news.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10633237/President-Zelensky-suspends-11-political-parties-Ukraine-Kremlin-collusion-claims.html
**************************************************
This Mom Says Transgender Movement Took Her Daughter’s Life
When Yaeli was 6, Martinez had moved her children to her native El Savador. They went to school there for five years, but visited California during the summer.
In 2011, they moved back to California, but Martinez said she didn’t reconcile with Yaeli’s father. He had been in Yaeli’s life earlier and “she was Daddy’s little girl,” Martinez said.
Yaeli had struggled with depression since her early teens.
When she entered high school, her mother said, Yaeli befriended another girl who identified as a boy and suggested to Yaeli that the reason for her depression might be that she was actually a boy.
Yaeli attended an LGBTQ club at school that affirmed her questioning of her own gender. Her counselor at school also affirmed her decision to begin socially transitioning from female to male.
“I don’t know if the schools, they supposed to let us know what’s going on or not, but they never send me any note about telling me, ‘We need to talk about your daughter,’” Martinez, who is originally from El Salvador, said.
Martinez said she found out what was happening to Yaeli through one of her other children, who attended the same high school.
Martinez recalls taking her daughter out to eat and asking her to share what was really going on in her life. Yaeli told her mom: “I don’t want to talk about it because you guys are not going to be supportive.”
Martinez recalled responding to her daughter by saying, “Well, we don’t know. So, if you tell us what’s going on I’ll be more than happy to help you. I’d do anything to help you, Yaeli. The only thing that I need, and I wanted it for you, is to see the happy girl that used to be before.”
“She said, ‘I’m not a girl. I’m a boy.’”
When Yaeli was 16, she moved out of her mother’s home.
Because Martinez expressed concerns over her daughter’s “transitioning” to a boy, Yaeli’s school psychologist recommended that she would be better off living away from home.
Martinez lost custody of her daughter to the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services.
Martinez says she was allowed to visit her daughter for one hour a week. After six months, she got two hours.
The logic of the Department of Children and Family Services was that “if we keep [Yaeli] out of your home, she [will] have more chance to survive,” Martinez recalled. “She’s not going to try to commit suicide.”
For about three years, Yaeli lived away from her family. She legally changed her name to Andrew and started taking cross-sex hormones.
Martinez watched as her daughter struggled to find happiness and relief from her depression.
“She was taking the [cross-sex] hormones; she was not happy. She changed her name, [but] was not happy,” Martinez said. “She adopted a dog because that was going to make her happy. None of it, everything that they’ve done, didn’t work.”
After identifying as a male for about three years, changing her name, and taking cross-sex hormones, Yaeli took her own life about six months before her 20th birthday.
And Martinez got that phone call from the coroner’s office.
She learned that her daughter had knelt on railroad tracks and raised her hands toward the sky as a train approached.
“I don’t want any parent to go through this,” Martinez told The Daily Signal. “Because this pain never goes away. … You breathe and you can feel the pain.”
She says she questioned Children and Family Services after her daughter’s death, saying, “Where is my daughter? You took her away from me, my family. Now she’s gone. You told me that she was going to be better off.”
Martinez said the agency had no adequate response.
The Daily Signal asked the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services for comment. The agency replied March 16, saying in part:
We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Andrew M., as well as to the LGBTQIA community which advocates relentlessly to protect its youngest and most vulnerable members from such tragedies. State law protects the confidentiality of records for all children and families who may have come to the attention of child protective services, and prohibits confirming or commenting on whether a child or family has been involved with the department.
When Children and Family Services took her daughter from her, Martinez said, she was painted as “the bad guy.”
“Even though I talked to them about the depression, they didn’t care about [it], it didn’t matter,” Yaeli’s mother said.
“I wish one day, the system changes and [they] really help these kids” struggling with gender identity, Martinez said.
“I want them to explore what’s going on. Why [are children] acting the way that they are? Why [are they] feeling … the way that they feel? I want them to … be aware of the mental care.”
“They don’t talk about it,” Martinez said, referring to Children and Family Services and her daughter’s public school. “There is a lot of kids who are committing suicide. The system offers them that they will pay for anything, hormones, any surgery that they need.”
“I wish the system, instead of spending millions of dollars on these kids, having them in foster care, [would instead] support us as a parent and give us the tools that we need,” Yaeli’s mother said.
Instead, she said, what exists is a “broken system that is destroying our family.”
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/21/this-mom-says-transgender-movement-took-her-daughters-life
****************************************************
Make no mistake: Anti-Zionism is antisemitism
Jeff Jacoby
If Jewsplaining were an Olympic event, Paul O'Brien would be a contender for the gold.
O'Brien, the executive director of Amnesty International USA, was the guest speaker at a March 9 luncheon hosted by the Woman's National Democratic Club in Washington, D.C. His topic was Amnesty's recent report labeling — or rather, libeling — Israel as an "apartheid" state. In the course of defending the report, O'Brien told his audience that Israel "shouldn't exist as a Jewish state" and suggested that most American Jews share his view.
When a questioner cited a recent poll showing that lopsided majorities of American Jews identify as pro-Israel and feel an emotional attachment to the Jewish state, O'Brien replied: "I actually don't believe that to be true." What his "gut" told him, he said, was that "Jewish people in this country" don't think Israel needs to be a Jewish state — that it's enough for it to be "a safe Jewish space" that Jews can "call home."
It takes astonishing chutzpah — or remarkable tone-deafness — for a non-Jew born and raised in Ireland to declare that the Jews of America don't really want Israel to be what it has been for 74 years: the reborn nation-state of the Jewish people.
O'Brien's remarks were at times rambling and contradictory, and when they generated a backlash — condemnation came from sources as diverse as the New York Post editorial page and all 25 Jewish Democrats in the US House — he claimed that he had been quoted out of context. But there is no mistaking his bottom line: "We are opposed to the idea — and this, I think, is an existential part of the debate — that Israel should be preserved as a state for the Jewish people," he told his audience.
This is anti-Zionism: the belief that it is illegitimate for Israel to be an avowedly Jewish state and that Israel's explicitly Jewish identity must come to an end. And those who promote anti-Zionism are no less antisemitic than those who promote the claim that Jews were responsible for spreading COVID-19. Or the white supremacist vow that "Jews will not replace us." Or Louis Farrakhan's condemnation of Judaism as a "gutter religion." Or the chants of "Jews to the gas!" that have erupted at European soccer matches.
No doubt O'Brien would disagree. He would protest that one can be anti-Zionist — opposed to Israel's existence as a Jewish state — without being guilty of bigotry against Jews. In his remarks to the Woman's National Democratic Club, he described antisemitism as "a real, live threat" and insisted that he and his organization "firmly oppose antisemitism." Many anti-Zionists bristle at being charged with antisemitic bias, since their animus, they say, is not against Jewish people; it's against a Jewish country, one in which Jewish ethnic, religious, and national identity is linked to statehood.
But that argument doesn't withstand scrutiny.
If a group of activists asserted that the Republic of Ireland is an illegitimate country that should never have been created, would anyone believe their claim to not be anti-Irish? If they denied Ireland's right to exist and condemned it for fast-tracking citizenship for foreigners with an Irish ancestor, would anyone have trouble recognizing their stance as bigotry against Irish people?
The only difference between those who claim that the Irish are not entitled to a state of their own and the anti-Zionists who say there should be no Jewish state is that the former don't exist. No one denies that Ireland is the legitimate national state of the Irish people, just as no one denies that Poland is the national state of the Polish people and Japan is the national state of the Japanese people. It is only Jewish governance in a Jewish state that is singled out for obloquy. That is antisemitism.
Throughout history, hostility to Jews has, broadly speaking, taken three forms. One is religious antisemitism, which targets Jews for their faith. This is the antisemitism of the Crusades, in which Jews were forced to choose between baptism and death, and of the blood libel, in which Jews were accused of committing ritual murder as part of their religion.
Then there is the antisemitism that expresses itself physically, by seeking to exterminate as many Jews as possible. This was the antisemitism of Hitler and Nazi Germany — a genocidal campaign in which all Jews were targeted.
The third way in which antisemitism has manifested itself is as opposition not primarily to Jewish religion or Jewish life but to Jewish sovereignty — as hatred of a Jewish state in the Jewish homeland. In biblical times this was rampant, but during the long era of Jewish exile, when Jews had no state and no national political power, this type of anti-Jewish hostility became largely a dead letter.
To anti-Zionists, Jewish sovereignty is as intolerable today as it was in 1948, when five Arab armies invaded the newborn state of Israel, vowing "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre."
That changed with the birth of modern Zionism and the movement to reestablish a Jewish homeland. In the 20th century, campaigns of national liberation and self-determination changed the map of the world, bringing scores of new countries into existence in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Of all those countries, only Israel has had to face a decades-long campaign of demonization and delegitimization. At bottom, anti-Zionism has very little to do with criticism of Israel's policies or sympathy for Palestinian Arabs, both of which are perfectly in order. It has everything to do with denying to Jews a right that Slovaks, Chinese, Iranians, and Mexicans take for granted: a state of their own.
To anti-Zionists, Jewish sovereignty is as intolerable today as it was in 1948, when five Arab armies invaded the newborn state of Israel, vowing "a war of extermination and a momentous massacre." That war wasn't launched to achieve a two-state solution but to prevent one: The Arab world rejected the United Nations decision to partition Palestine into two countries, one Jewish and one Arab. What animates Israel's enemies is not the desire to establish a 22nd Arab state but to disestablish the world's lone Jewish state.
Anti-Zionism need not express itself in hateful or violent rhetoric to be antisemitic. It is antisemitic by definition. A relentless obsession with Israel's sins, real and imagined; the denial that Jews are entitled to Jewish sovereignty — these are not mere expressions of opinion, they are expressions of bigotry against the Jewish people. O'Brien's words are part of the rising tide of antisemitism in America and around the world. They deserved the condemnation they received, and then some.
https://jeffjacoby.com/26103/make-no-mistake-anti-zionism-is-antisemitism
***********************************************
Davos Man on life support
Judith Sloan
I attended the World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland just the once. It took me several years to recover.
Don’t get me wrong: it’s a picture-perfect location and the infrastructure that has sprung up to accommodate the many Davos men (and a few gals) and the sycophantic hangers-on is impressive. But if the stench of hypocrisy were at all toxic, I and the many other attendees would have died on those picturesque slopes.
There were just so many aspects of the conference that any rational, intelligent human being would baulk at. Like Russian oligarchs and US billionaires, having flown in on private jets, banging on about the dire problem of wealth and income inequality. Like evil African dictators and island dwellers screaming about climate change and the need for immediate compensation from the West.
Like the consistent propaganda about the benefits of unbound globalisation no matter how unsavoury some of the leaders of the countries involved in the group-hug.
From my point of view, probably the worst aspect of the whole event was the fawning and unquestioning approach taken by most of the assembled journalists and commentators. You have to understand, Davos is a gravy train and those who have been invited (and paid for by their employers) regard themselves as being privileged to be there.
No objections are raised about the colour-coded press passes that provide degrees of contact with the rich and famous – so much for fighting inequality. Some of them even involve themselves in the childish endeavour of spot the celebrity.
(I am the first to admit that popular culture is not my strong suit. I could have collided with Bono or Angelina Jolie and not realised. Who is Bono again?)
Most of the journalists and commentators, who are housed in a separate barn-like building away from the main conference centre, simply swallow the guff served up to them. They churn out puerile pieces about the wonderful ‘reform/reset’ initiatives being discussed by the hand-picked elites, headed by the indestructible Klaus Schwab who got the whole thing rolling.
I am pleased therefore to announce that Davos Man (and the whole edifice surrounding the World Economic Forum) is now on life support. Trapped by the despicable embrace of the worst dictators in the world and kowtowing to woeful world leaders/business types/celebrities/civil society apparatchiks, poor old Schwabby – who has become a very wealthy man on the basis of this long-running talkfest – and his pals need to realise their heyday is behind them.
Let us not forget here that Vladmir Putin gave a special address – by Zoom, it has to be admitted, because of Covid – to the Davos Agenda 2021. That’s right – 2021. Putin had been a fairly regular presence at the annual confab in that quaint village in the Swiss Alps over the years. There was only one year (post-Crimea) when there was a bit of a kerfuffle over whether or not he should be invited.
And who should be the opening keynote speaker at this year’s remote Davos conference? You guessed it, that other freedom-loving dictator, President Xi Jinping of China. The theme of his address is that we need to discard a Cold War mentality. This could be quite hilarious if it were not so serious.
Here are some of his other key points:
Amidst the raging torrents of a global crisis (Covid), countries are not riding separately in some 190 small boats, but are rather all in a giant ship on which our shared destiny hinges. Small boats may not survive a storm, but a giant ship is strong enough to brave a storm.
Economic globalisation is the trend of the times. Though the countercurrents are sure to exist in a river, none could stop from flowing to the sea. Despite the counter-currents and dangerous shoals, economic globalisation has never and will not veer off course.
We should never grow the economy at the cost of resource depletion and environmental degradation, which is like draining a pond to get fish; nor should we sacrifice growth to protect the environment, which is like climbing a tree to catch fish.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? That the person responsible for drafting this florid bilge should be sent to the same re-education camps that the Uighurs are sent to (which don’t exist, obviously). My particular favourite is the last quote: black is white and white is black.
But let’s be serious for a moment. The reality is that globalisation is now in full retreat given the West’s sanctions on Russia. In all likelihood, these sanctions, which harm the Russian economy but also those imposing the sanctions, are likely to remain in place for some time.
Three oil majors – Shell, BP and Exxon-Mobil – have already lost a cool $US30 billion-odd on their assets located in Russia. Having spent literally decades grovelling to various vile Russian presidents and powerful bureaucrats and oligarchs, these companies did their dough in a matter of days. Russia has been effectively gifted these energy assets, without a rouble/dollar exchange taking place. To be sure, the loss of their technical expertise and bespoke equipment will eventually take its toll, but it’s not such a bad deal for Putin.
And when you hear ‘rules-based order’ next time, pause to think what does this really mean? These are the Davos rules, the rules established by the elites seeking even more billions. That China was admitted as a member of the World Trade Organisation when it was – way before it met the criteria for admission – was just part of the push for a ‘rules-based order’ type of globalisation.
Mind you, adherence to the rules is very much in the eye of the beholder as well as a day-to-day proposition. Take the case of China imposing sanctions on Australian coal, barley and wine, among other goods. Was this within the rules? Is being pissed off at the mere suggestion of an inquiry into the sources of Covid-19 sufficient for China to flout the rules? By the way, international law is basically an ‘intellectual rort’, to use Helen Dale’s fine description.
Hopefully, it’s farewell Davos Man and hello to those who regard economic and personal freedom, as well as national and energy security, as the highest priorities of sovereign countries. But while he may be in intensive care, let’s just watch. There is a still a lot of money at stake – for instance, in relation to the decarbonisation panic. So the advocates of unbridled globalisation won’t give in easily.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/davos-man-on-life-support/
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
20 March, 2022
‘Incels’ are a rising threat in the US, Secret Service report finds
This rings true to me. With 4 marriages in my CV and another proposal recently, I obviously have little difficulty forming intimate relationships with women but I can see that being effectively blocked from doing so would provoke anger -- and anger is dangerous
And feminism is clearly part of the problem. It has generated high expectations in women and men unable to meet such expections will be stranded. I feel very sorry for them. I know what they are missing. But they should not take their anger out on random women. If they do so at all, targeting feminists would be deplorable but understandable
A new US Secret Service report details a rising threat from men who identify as “involuntary celibates” or “incels”, due to their inability to form intimate relationships with women.
The report released on Tuesday and prepared by the National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC) highlights behavioral threat assessment themes identified in years of research examining targeted violence.
Themes include concerning and threatening communications, concerning online content, chronic and acute stressors, elicited concern in others, interpersonal difficulties, history of being bullied, financial instability, failed life aspirations and lack of consequences.
As a case study, the Secret Service examined a 2018 shooting at a yoga class in Tallahassee, Florida, in which a man killed two women and wounded six.
“The attacker was motivated to carry out violence by his inability to develop or maintain relationships with women, along with his perception of women’s societal power over men,” the report said.
The gunman, 40-year-old Scott Paul Beierle, exhibited numerous warning signs including a history of inappropriate and criminal behavior toward women and girls.
Steve Driscoll, a lead research specialist at NTAC, said: “During his teen years, the attacker was accused of stalking his classmates and he wrote stories that centered around violent themes.
“One of those stories was 81 pages long and involved the protagonist murdering several girls before committing suicide. The female characters in the story that were killed represented the attacker’s actual classmates from his high school, but he slightly changed the names in his writing.”
Beierle was arrested three times for groping women and was called “Ted Bundy” by his roommates, in reference to a notorious serial killer who targeted women.
On the day of the shooting, Beierle left a note in his hotel room that said: “If I can’t find one decent female to live with, I will find many indecent females to die with. If they are intent on denying me life, I will have no choice, but to deny them life … Their arrogance, indifference and treachery will finally be exposed and punished.”
According to the report, although Beierle did not adopt any specific ideological labels such as “anti-feminist” or “incel”, his behavior and beliefs aligned with many who do.
Another incident examined in the report is the 2014 killings in Santa Barbara, California, in which 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14. Before the attacks, Rodger lamented his inability to find a girlfriend and documented his contempt for women and interracial couples.
The report also cites the 2020 murder of the son of a US district court judge, Esther Salas, who was killed by 72-year-old Roy Den Hollander, a self-described “anti-feminist lawyer” who believed “manhood is in serious jeopardy in America”.
According to the report, NTAC research has shown no specific profile of an individual who plans or executes an act of targeted violence. Attackers vary in age, race, sex, education level, employment history and other characteristics. However, a unifying factor among most attackers is a set of concerning behaviors displayed before acts of violence.
Although the Secret Service is best known for its protection of US presidents, it has also extensively examined and implemented behavioral threat assessment programs designed to “identify and intervene with those who pose a risk of engaging in targeted violence”.
The agency noted that misogynistic violence is not restricted to high-profile incidents of mass violence.
Rather, “misogyny frequently appears in more prevalent acts of violence, including stalking and domestic abuse”. As a result, the report said, responses to threats need to be collaborative between law enforcement, courts, mental health providers and domestic violence and hate crime advocacy groups.
“The risk of future tragedies can be reduced if the appropriate systems are in place to identify the warning signs,” the report said.
Dr Lina Alathari, director of NTAC, said: “Traditionally law enforcement and other public safety officials focus on crimes … and so, if there’s no ‘direct threat’ or a criminal statute violated, they often feel that they can’t do anything.
“But what we know from the research and what we know from communities doing this successfully is that if you have a trained professional in threat assessment, in identifying warning signs and knowing what the proper resources are available … that’s when you have success stories.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/mar/16/involuntary-celibates-incels-threat-us-secret-service
*****************************************************
America’s Ruling Class Wants to Reduce Us to Incompetence
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul blamed the recent shooting death of Jason Rivera, a New York City police officer, on “a shot from an illegal gun.”
In this strange passive voice, the Democratic governor didn’t mention the officer by name, but concluded that the true threat facing New York City was “the scourge of illegal guns on our streets.”
By refusing to state that an actual person acted viciously and illegally in killing a police officer, Hochul asked us to believe in a lie.
Obviously, that lie’s utility rests in its redefinition of violent crime as a problem stemming from lack of government regulation—in this case, insufficient gun control measures. She wants New Yorkers to ignore the violent crime rate spike in their city, aided and abetted by progressive crime policies.
This framework has undermined the nearly three-decadelong achievement in securing peaceful streets in New York City, a period that began under Mayor Rudy Giuliani, a Republican. Of course, Giuliani chose a law-and-order strategy in which authorities arrested and incarcerated those who chose lawlessness and violence.
Hochul’s logic, though, has deep roots, in our ruling class’ rationalist-scientistic-administrativist approach to the common problems we face as people. These experts disabuse us of the belief that we are free human beings, capable of answering the ethical questions of how we will live together.
Between this question and the confidence we have in ourselves to answer it, the ruling class intervenes, instilling doubt in our basic intuitions of free will and responsibility, and our capacity to live our own lives. They proceed to manage our cares and fears. They diagnose and prescribe cures for our neuroses and instill in us a resigned belief that we really aren’t free to govern our lives without their constant attention.
British cultural critic and psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple illuminated this approach well in two books of essays titled “Life at the Bottom” and “Our Culture, What’s Left of It” In a classic essay, “The Knife Went In,” Dalrymple describes how the ideas of an academic elite seeped into government institutions and created the conditions for the emergence of an underclass in Britain.
The chief trait of this underclass is a belief in their inability to govern their own lives, Dalrymple notes. They have imbibed what the therapeutic class tells them and become “marionettes of happenstance.” Curiously, this makes them more likely to commit crime and become permanent wards of the state.
This surrender of human freedom, Dalrymple writes, comes about in part because of the therapeutic class—“the legions of helpers and carers, social workers and therapists, whose incomes and careers depend crucially on the supposed incapacity of large numbers of people to fend for themselves.”
And the “psychotherapeutic concepts” of this class of workers have been thoroughly disseminated throughout the populace. This philosophical decomposition of freedom and virtue meets with the self-interest of therapeutic experts, who find their clients in the ghettos of democracy. They mean to make the underclass permanent clients.
Dalrymple, a former British government psychiatrist, frequently found himself treating prisoners. The words they used to describe their crimes evoked passivity and victimhood. They frequently blamed the victims for the crimes they had committed.
But the prisoners always attributed total responsibility to police for any wrongs the coppers had done them. Police officials, unlike criminals, had perfect control of their actions.
Three of Dalrymple’s patients used the phrase “the knife went in.” They saw themselves almost as third parties to their crimes, to which they had been led by poorly understood internal drives or past circumstances.
The will of the attacker was as nothing, Dalrymple wrote, compared to the power of “the inanimate knives themselves, which determined the unfortunate outcome.”
Hochul, New York’s governor, would understand such a self-serving justification.
One prisoner was behind bars for stealing from churches, a crime he nearly had perfected. Churches, he told Dalrymple, have much silver and poor security. And he blamed his crimes on the churches; their lack of security drew him to confiscate their goods.
Another criminal demanded that Dalrymple help him understand why he frequently broke into homes and stole electronic goods. It was his past, he thought.
No, Dalrymple informed him, he did it because he decided to put vice over virtue. But there’s much of that going around lately.
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a Democrat, similarly employed this blaming of victims regarding rampant mob theft at retail stores. Why, she inquisitively wondered, do these stores not employ security forces? They almost invite the mobs, otherwise known as thieves, incentivized in their lawlessness by the mayor’s progressive crime policies. Perhaps a youth jobs program, subsidized by taxpayers, would do the trick?
And this situation grows worse with the official explanation of “systemic racism” as the reason why inequality exists between certain minorities and an inherently racist white majority. Asian Americans’ academic and economic achievements go unexplained here.
Crime itself, in this view, is a liberation of the goods from the oppressors to the oppressed, as not a few Black Lives Matters figures have enunciated.
Politicians on the left also have attempted to induce a helpless mentality in the populace at large with COVID-19 restrictions. Rather than accept risk and liberty, large sectors of the government at all levels tried to lead us into impotence, dependent on “science” and the imprimatur of public health types regarding vaccines, vaccine cards, booster shots, and masks before we could leave our homes, go to work, or attend a sporting event.
The good news is that liberals’ COVID-19 regimes, their attempt to reduce us to subjects rather than citizens, seem to be failing. Something in the middle class in America resisted the narrative that they should become victim serfs, holding their breath for the government to relieve them from the stress of living.
Much work remains, though, if we are not to be reduced to incompetence. A key theme in the vast network of progressive policies is to remove us from voluntary life in civil society and ensconce us in their state-directed network of living.
Energy will be a government-created good, delivered to us at bureaucrats’ price. Education will become even more centralized with a curriculum devoted to regime goals of identity politics and sexual liberation.
Our speech and other activities in civil society will be under the thumb of a tech and administrative state consortium whose directives we will learn to obey or watch our access to this social media network be removed. A vast welfare, state that subsidizes those who don’t work will ensure that economic freedom diminishes and the soft despotism of dependency grows deep roots in our mores.
It doesn’t require a great work of imagination to see such a future take hold and define America.
The other route is to recover the ground of citizenship, which begins with our freedom and our virtue and their rootedness in an eternal order of right, or what John Adams referred to as the “revolution principles.”
Adams thought these principles were self-evident: “the principles of Aristotle and Plato, of Livy and Cicero, and Sidney, Harrington, and Locke; the principles of nature and eternal reason; the principles on which the whole government over us now stands.”
Some, apparently, need a refresher course. It’s our job to see that they get it.
https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/03/10/americas-ruling-class-wants-to-reduce-us-to-incompetence
**********************************************
A Chick-fil-A in California may be declared 'a public nuisance,' city council plans vote
A Chick-fil-A restaurant in California could soon be designated a "public nuisance," after members of the community have complained to the city council.
The Chick-fil-A restaurant, located in Santa Barbara, has been tremendously popular since it opened in 2013, but its success could be having a negative impact on the community. As desiring customers flock to the Chick-fil-A drive-thru, those who do not fit in the parking lot are forced onto the adjacent roadway, blocking traffic, residents have alleged, CBS News reported.
After the restaurant’s temporary fixes did not alleviate the traffic clog, the disgruntled residents took their complaints to the city council, who are considering a public designation to label the Chick-fil-A location a "public nuisance," a city council agenda document reads.
"Previous attempts to informally remedy the situation have been unsuccessful. It is unlawful to stop in the travel lane, and there are traffic control signs posted that advise motorists not to stop in the travel lane, but Chick-fil-A customers routinely ignore those signs," the document reads.
The alleged blockage of vehicles has impacted the surrounding area, including unsuspecting motorists and nearby businesses, the city claimed.
"Each time a queue forms on State Street, the eastbound number two traffic lane is blocked leaving only one lane available. The queuing increases the risk of collisions, particularly rear-end collisions and side-swipe collisions," the city document reads.
It added: "Queued vehicles persistently block the sidewalk and bike lanes, creating a danger to pedestrians and cyclists. The queuing of vehicles routinely blocks access to adjacent businesses, which affects customer and delivery access to these businesses."
"Chick-fil-A has a good problem here. They are so successful, they have outgrown their site. It's possible they were oversized for that site, to begin with," Santa Barbara City Council member Kristen Sneddon said during a hearing earlier this month, according to the report.
The city council then unanimously voted to advance a motion that would label the restaurant a "public nuisance," but Chick-fil-A requested a delay, so the restaurant could take action once more to rectify the situation, CBS News reported.
https://www.foxnews.com/us/a-chick-fil-a-california-public-nuisance-city-council
*******************************************
Bill Maher rips cancel culture 'lumping' Russians with Putin: If they weren't White, we'd call that 'racism'
Glad someone stated the obvious
"Real Time" host Bill Maher took aim at what he claimed was the canceling of Russian citizens who have nothing to do with Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
"Do you think we're, um, lumping the Russians too much with their government?" Maher asked the show's panelists during Friday night's "Overtime" segment. "I feel like in this country what we're doing now, everything Russian is bad and every Russian is bad.
"First of all, it's not fair," Maher said. "If they weren't White, I feel like we'd call that racism, you know. To lump everybody together -- not every, I mean, a lot of the Russian people don't know what's going on."
GOP pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson agreed, citing how Russian pianist Alexander Malofeev had his concerts in Canada canceled.
"Also strategically, it's unwise," author Max Brooks jumped in. "Because what we were very smart about doing in World War II is, we knew the war was going to come to an end. And we knew that if we punished all Germans the way we did after World War I, we would back them into a corner. So we crafted the narrative that ‘You Germans are led astray by Hitler,’ because we knew, even if in some cases it wasn't true, you know, we said to the average Nazi, you still got to run the post office.'
"So we have to think, we cannot back the Russians as an entire group into a corner. If we can separate Putin from the Russians in general, then we don't only have a victory, we have a post-war plan," added Brooks, 49, the son of comedic filmmaker Mel Brooks and the late actress Anne Bancroft.
Recent weeks have brought reports of seeming retaliation against Russians because of Putin's actions. Russian restaurants and churches being vandalized in North America, the Metropolitan Opera dropped famed Russian soprano Anna Netrebko after 20 years, a Russian Formula 1 driver was fired by his racing team, a U.K. tour of the Russian State Ballet of Siberia was canceled and Russian athletes were barred from competing at this year's Paralympic Games in Beijing.
https://www.foxnews.com/media/bill-maher-cancel-culture-russians-putin-racism
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
18 March, 2022
Classical Music People are Compelling Denunciations of Russia
I am a Russophile but, like most people inside and outside Russia, I think the war in Ukraine is horrible and wrong. So I was astonished and grieved to read below that two of my favorite Russian performers have been cancelled over it: Anna Netrebko and Dmitri Hvorostovsky. See them in a famous performance below
Compelled speech is becoming routine in academia. On campuses, faculty candidates for hiring and tenure increasingly must attest to their dedication to diversity to be considered for a job or a promotion. At least one university requires professors to post a “land acknowledgement”—a statement declaring that the space being used was originally the habitation of indigenous people—on their syllabus page.
Now the classical music establishment is adopting that same norm. Russian musicians are being asked to condemn President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to retain jobs and performing engagements in the West. Staying above the fray is not an option, and denouncing the war will not ward off cancellation. Russian musicians must criticize Putin by name or be blacklisted.
Classical music’s recent self-abasement for its “whiteness” laid the groundwork for this presumptive group guilt. Since the George Floyd race riots in May and June 2020, directors of orchestras, opera companies, and conservatories have lambasted their own field for its historical demographics, said to be inextricably linked to racism. Music critics have sneered at Beethoven and other composers for having allegedly leveraged their whiteness to achieve undeserved acclaim. Mea culpas and promises of fealty to Black Lives Matter have become de rigeuer in mission statements and fundraising pitches. Now these coerced confessions are demanded of a subset of musicians whose Russianness makes them as suspect as whiteness does the entire Caucasian population. Even Russian music itself faces a political litmus test.
The most recent casualty of the compelled-speech norm is 20-year-old pianist Alexander Malofeev. He is the latest in a long line of Russian keyboard masters, including Sviatoslav Richter, Emil Gilels, Lazar Berman, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Evgeny Kissin, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Anton Rubinstein, and many more. The cherubic-faced Malofeev has no known ties to Putin and has not defended Putin or the Ukrainian invasion. Nevertheless, the Vancouver Recital Society cancelled his contract for an August 2022 recital. Artistic director Leila Getz explained in a written statement that she could not “in good conscience present a concert by any Russian artist at this moment in time unless they are prepared to speak out publicly against this war.”
In a subsequent interview, Getz claimed to have been looking out for Malofeev’s well-being. “The first things that came to my mind were, why would I want to bring a 20-year-old Russian pianist to Vancouver and have him faced with protests and people misbehaving inside the concert hall and hooting and screaming and hollering?” she said. Such professions of paternalism have become standard among cancellers. Malofeev could have decided for himself whether he wanted to risk protest.
“Speaking out publicly against this war,” as Getz put it, does not, in fact, prevent cancellation. Malofeev explicitly criticized the Ukrainian invasion after the Vancouver termination: “Every Russian will feel guilty for decades because of the terrible and bloody decision that none of us could influence and predict,” he wrote on Facebook. Yet he was cancelled again. He had been scheduled to play Sergei Prokofiev’s fiery Piano Concerto No. 3 with the Orchestre symphonique de Montréal (OSM) on March 9, 10, and 13. The day before his first performance, OSM pulled the plug. “Considering the serious impact on the civilian population of Ukraine caused by the Russian invasion, the OSM must announce the withdrawal of pianist Alexander Malofeev,” the orchestra said. It wanted the public to know, however, that it was not biased against Russians: “We continue . . . to believe in the importance of maintaining relationships with artists of all nationalities who embrace messages of peace and hope.” Why Malofeev fell outside of that category was left unexplained.
Michael Tilson Thomas would have been conducting Malofeev for the Prokofiev performances. In his telling, “political situations” cancelled Malofeev, not his own agency: “I was very pleased to be working in Montreal for the first time with the extraordinary young pianist Alexander Malofeev,” he wrote. “It is regrettable that political situations have made it impossible.” Some OSM musicians had refused to play with Malofeev, CBC News reports. If Tilson Thomas and the orchestra management believe in “peace and hope,” they should have stood up to such closed-mindedness.
The Annapolis Symphony in Maryland also purported to be acting out of altruism in cancelling violinist Vadim Repin. “We don’t want to put [Repin] in an uncomfortable, even impossible position,” the press release explained. So “out of respect to Repin’s apolitical stance and concerns for the safety of himself and his family,” he would not be allowed to play the Shostakovich concerto with the orchestra.
The Dublin International Piano Competition seemed to be responding to unnamed forces outside its control when it revoked its acceptance of nine Russian pianists for its 2022 competition: “We are unable to include competitors from Russia,” it wrote, without disclosing what disabled it from including them. If any of those nine pianists has expressed support for the Ukraine invasion, the record does not reflect it. One of them, Arsenii Mun, stated the obvious on Facebook: “People should know, being from Russia does NOT mean that we are taking part in [invasion] decisions!”
These defenestrations pale, however, in comparison with the epic downfalls of superstar soprano Anna Netrebko and conductor Valery Gergiev, who have become international pariahs.
Since 1996, Gergiev has directed St. Petersburg’s Mariinsky Theatre, home of a government-subsidized theater, ballet, and opera company. He brought the storied organization, associated with Diaghilev, Nijinsky, Chaliapin, Petipa, Balanchine, and Nureyev, to new levels of excellence, while maintaining a frenzied international conducting career. The Davos elite, including the heads of British Petroleum, Nestlé, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, sought the charismatic maestro’s friendship and showered his far-flung musical enterprises with funds. Forty heads of state, including Jacques Chirac, Tony Blair, and Gerhard Schroeder, attended a 2003 gala at the Mariinsky hosted by Putin and conducted by Gergiev. The Wall Street Journal observed at the time that Gergiev was achieving humanistic ends unmatched by any other classical music impresario.
Gergiev’s partnerships with Western orchestras have introduced Russian masterpieces into belated circulation. In 2002, New Yorkers had their first opportunity to hear Prokofiev’s War and Peace at the Metropolitan Opera, thanks to Gergiev’s advocacy. His performance of that monumental work, with its magnificent, bittersweet waltzes and sinuous melodies, was unforgettable, not least because of another Metropolitan Opera debut—that of Gergiev’s protégé Netrebko, alongside the late, great Dmitri Hvorostovsky.
The classical music press has grumbled intermittently in recent years about Gergiev’s association with Putin. The Mariinsky is a quasi-governmental body, funded by Moscow, so that association is in part ministerial. But it is also personal. In 2012, Gergiev recorded a video during the Russian presidential campaign implicitly lauding Putin’s leadership. Putin in turn has lauded Gergiev: “I will serve my term and disappear,” Putin has written, “but Gergiev will last forever.” (The Russian president was wrong on both counts.) Putin’s stance on LGBTQ education has particularly exercised music journalists and gay advocates. Queer Nation disrupted a concert Gergiev was conducting in Carnegie Hall in 2013 because Putin had signed a law that banned schools from distributing to minors “propaganda on nontraditional sexual relationships” (not so different from grassroots efforts in the U.S. to preserve a zone of childhood innocence regarding sexuality). “Gergiev, your silence is killing Russian gays!” protesters shouted. In response, Gergiev has insisted that he has never discriminated against anyone; no one has disputed that claim.
In 2016, Gergiev conducted the Mariinsky Orchestra from a Roman theater in Palmyra, Syria. Syrian forces, with Russian air support, had retaken the historic site, which ISIS had used to execute prisoners. Gergiev characterized the concert, featuring the music of Bach, Prokofiev, and the twentieth-century Russian composer Rodion Shchedrin, as a protest against barbarism; Putin’s Western critics denounced it as a propaganda ploy. A Mariinsky concert of Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky in South Ossetia in 2008, following a bombing attack on the breakaway region by the Georgian government, was likewise dismissed.
Charlie Rose admiringly interviewed Gergiev numerous times over several decades. Rose invariably pressed the conductor to weigh in on Russia’s politics and political leaders, whether Yeltsin or Putin. Naively or not, Gergiev did not demur. His answers implicitly addressed tradeoffs that Americans have never had to make—between security, economic and political stability, liberty, national identity, and culture. To dictate how Russians should resolve those tradeoffs is arrogance.
Gergiev has not spoken publicly about the Ukrainian invasion. Because he has denounced neither it nor Putin, he has lost virtually every conducting engagement and leadership position he has held outside of Russia. The Munich Philharmonic, the Edinburgh International Festival, the Bayerische Staatsoper, the Teatro alla Scala, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, the Vienna Philharmonic, the Philharmonie de Paris, the Lucerne Festival, and the Verbier Festival have all severed their ties with him. Failing some future engagement with a Chinese orchestra, say, his conducting career outside of Russia is over.
Anna Netrebko has denounced the invasion, but she has been cancelled anyway. “I am opposed to this senseless war of aggression, and I am calling on Russia to end this war right now, to save all of us. We need peace right now,” she posted on Instagram. “I am Russian and I love my country, but I have many friends in Ukraine and the pain and suffering right now breaks my heart. I want this war to end and for people to be able to live in peace.”
Unambiguous, but insufficient. Metropolitan Opera general manager Peter Gelb said: “In the case of somebody who is so closely associated with Putin, denouncing the war is not enough.” Gelb, too, was apparently responding to forces outside of his control in cancelling Netrebko’s engagements: “With Putin killing innocent victims in Ukraine there was no [other] way forward.”
Gelb had not been so fastidious before. On the eve of the Ukrainian invasion, he was in Moscow for the premiere of a joint Met–Bolshoi Theater production of Wagner’s Lohengrin, one of three such co-productions initially announced in 2017. Putin had approved the collaborative project.
Netrebko is not “closely associated” with Putin, however. Her protestations that she is “not a political person” or “an expert in politics” are an understatement. An allegedly incriminating photograph from 2014 shows her holding one end of a flag used by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine. She had just donated $18,500 to an opera house in Donetsk that had been partially destroyed by fighting. She had wanted to “help and support” her fellow artists, she explained, because she believed in “the power of art in times of conflict and crisis.” At the donation ceremony in St. Petersburg, the theater director had handed her the large banner right before the picture was taken and before, she claimed, she understood what it was. In 2012, Die Presse reported that Netrebko was among a list of 499 arts and sports celebrities endorsing Putin’s reelection. Until recently, these actions had no effect on the opera company managers who made Netrebko the most sought-after soprano in the world.
Serge Dorny, director of the Bayerische Staatsoper, said that cancelling Netrebko and Gergiev was necessary out of “respect for each other and dialogue with each other.” Ironically, it may have been Netrebko’s protest against compelled speech that sealed her fate. After calling for an end to “this senseless war of aggression,” she wrote that “forcing artists, or any public figure, to voice their political opinions in public and to denounce their homeland is not right.” This outburst was too much for New York Times classical music editor Zachary Woolfe. “Ms. Netrebko’s caustic irritation at the notion that any statement might be expected from her” negated her war opposition “by making it all about her,” Woolfe claimed. But Netrebko had not made it all about her. She had offered principled opposition to the pressure being put on Russian artists to utter a specific set of words about Putin.
https://www.city-journal.org/classical-music-cancels-russians
***********************************************
Tech giant Amazon to temporarily close Seattle CBD office after crime surge
In a damning indictment of one of America’s largest cities, Amazon will follow McDonald’s in shuttering CBD locations due to a crime wave.
Tech giant Amazon will relocate 1800 staff from one of its flagship offices in a major US city due to soaring crime rates.
The second largest US-based firm, with a market capitalisation of $US1.49 trillion ($A2.07 trillion), has told workers at its Seattle CBD tower block not to return to the office after a teenage boy was shot dead on the street outside the building last week.
It comes just weeks after fast food chain McDonald’s shuttered its downtown Seattle branch also due to an uptick in crime in the city.
According to a report by the Seattle Police Department, violent crime has increased by 20 per cent with the city centre considered a “hot spot”.
Police have said they will step up patrols in the once thriving CBD, but critics have said it’s too little, too late.
https://www.news.com.au/technology/tech-giant-amazon-to-temporarily-close-seattle-cbd-office-after-crime-surge/news-story/96616efe1a001d95ddb0012505c7d620
***************************************************
WA: Crazy law hampering police
On Wednesday night, the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department was investigating a deadly shooting incident at the Puyallup department store.
Deputies were called to a report of a shooting in the 16900 block of Meridian Avenue East in Puyallup at 10:20 p.m. Wednesday. They found a dead man in the parking. Multiple witnesses have seen the suspect running from the crime scene
A K-9 police dog was brought to the scene, and officers should have been able to track down the man. But because of the new law, they couldn’t continue the investigation which would leave the community in great danger.
Authorities said they spoke to witnesses who only described the suspect as a man in dark clothing.
The incident serves as the latest criticism by a law enforcement agency of new police reform bills signed into law in May. Sgt. Darren Moss Jr. of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement: “It’s just unfortunate that in this specific incident we weren’t able to use every tool available to us at the time, where we might have been able to track down this person,”
“We did have a K-9 officer respond within a couple minutes, but unfortunately, because no probable cause was developed here for an individual, they decided not to track with a K-9, just in case if they did use force, it wouldn’t be outside of the policy, the new laws,”
“We have a couple witnesses that heard the gunshots and saw the two individuals over here, but we don’t know what took place prior to (the shooting), if there was an argument, or if they walked up, or if either of them showed up in a vehicle or anything like that.”
According to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department Facebook announcement, their search for the suspect was stopped before they could begin due to a recent “use-of-force” law that requires officers to have probable cause. They also said even they found the suspect they could still no longer force them to detain him since it is not permitted with the new law.
The Pierce County Sheriff’s Department added “Under the new law, police officers are required to have ‘probable cause’ before using ‘physical force’ to detain someone, as opposed to the previous standard of ‘reasonable suspicion,’”
The sheriff’s department also explained and warned that the new law would result in “significant changes” for the community. Unlike the previous cases, the department is no longer allowed to pursue a suspect for crimes such as “Domestic Violence Simple Assault, Violation of a No Contact or Protection Order, and Stalking” if they are fleeing in a vehicle.
“Law enforcement can no longer pursue after vehicles for any traffic offenses with the exception of Vehicular Assault, Vehicular Homicide, and Driving Under the Influence. Of note, ‘probable cause’ is a high standard of having enough facts, information, and/or evidence for a reasonable officer to believe that a person is more likely than not to have committed a crime. “
http://2020conservative.com/they-were-forced-to-let-a-suspected-murderer-go-free-for-a-totally-sickening-reason
*****************************************************
Do Australian renters need government help to cope with extreme temperature conditions?
For the sake of all tenants, one hopes dimwit Dignam below is ignored. Government mandates on landlords to improve their properties would further restrict the availability of affordable rental accomodation. A landlord who has undergone the costs of an upgrade would put his rents up to compensate. And rather than spend on upgrades, some landlords will simply take their property off the rental market and sell it -- thus worsening an already tight rental mrkdet. Lord preserve us from brainless do-gooders
There are warnings that eight million Aussie renters are facing “threatening” situations, that could even result in deaths.
The extreme heat in Meg Chatterton’s rental was so bad over summer that she was forced to sit inside in the dark all day, a situation that has severely impacted her mental health.
The university student lives in a share house with three others in the Melbourne suburb of Box Hill and said on hot summer days there is “nowhere to escape from the heat”.
“Our house is really badly insulated and there is no airconditioning so the first thing in the morning I shut the windows and curtains to keep the heat out as much as I can,” she told news.com.au.
Despite a milder summer with more rain and cooler temperatures overall, the Better Renting report called Hot Homes, disturbingly found that homes across Australia routinely exceeded the recommended safe maximum temperature of 25C.
Joel Dignam, founder of Better Renting, said the government needs to introduce minimum rental standards that are explicit about safe temperatures, which would make it easier for tenants to request modifications to a home.
“I think what struck me most is just how normalised it has become for people in rentals to just put up with temperatures and conditions that are quite frightful,” he told news.com.au. “The sheer amount of time that rental homes are in threatening temperatures and its affecting so many people – about eight million people rent in Australia – so it’s a big issue.
“In Perth, they had such a hot summer and were seeing three hours a day above 30 degree inside their homes and it’s a bit of warning of what’s to come. We need to be doing something about this now.”
“It’s really tough for renters to address this as they can’t change their homes … and instead they just put up with it,” Dignam said.
“But to make rentals liveable requires governments to take action and requires landlords to make homes decent to live in.”
https://www.news.com.au/finance/real-estate/renting/nowhere-to-escape-australian-renters-face-extreme-conditions/news-story/3c33ddab57b59ff9ab0d3d4c2892fb02
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
17 March, 2022
The Progressive Mindset is Evil
Derek Hunter
I try not to spend a lot of time focused on the enemies of America, but they are plentiful, and a growing percentage of them reside within the United States. Hell, a lot of them are in Congress, the courts, or the White House. But most of them live in academia, many times in between stints in government. They are actively working to make this country worse.
The progressive mindset is one of, quite honestly, evil. Think of all the progress our species has made throughout all of human history, and we’re watching these people do their damnedest to destroy it.
Nothing exemplifies this more than the modern left and Martin Luther King Jr. in his “I Have a Dream" speech. King lays out, in terms so basic even Joe Biden can understand them, his desire for the country to get past the color of a person’s skin.
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,” is one of the most influential lines ever spoken.
The left is voiding their bowels all over it on a daily basis.
For example, Donna Johnston was applying for a job at Bridgewater State University. She didn’t get it because she couldn’t justify her skin color, which is white.
The Boston Globe reports, “Johnston, a licensed social worker from Plainfield, Conn., said she was floored by the question while interviewing to teach sociology at Bridgewater State University last summer, when she was also asked to contemplate ‘your white privilege.’ Then in a follow-up, Johnston said she was told that ‘Black students may not be able to relate to you because of your white privilege.’”
This is the essence of the progressive philosophy – you are your skin color, sexual orientation, gender, or whatever else the left cooks up to divide people, and nothing more. Stray from what a progressive Democrat thinks you should believe based on any of those irrelevant characteristics and you are their enemy, and no holds are barred when it comes to destroying anyone the left deems an enemy.
The Globe, which then quoted a filing from the university, reported, “Any possibility of discriminatory motive is contradicted by the fact that the university ultimately hired two Caucasians," and that a third hire was a black woman.
Isn’t this the equivalent of saying you’re not a racist because you have black friends? Liberals always attack these statements, which is stupid because someone who actually is a racist would be very unlikely to have friends who are of the race they hate people over, aren’t they? I mean, that’s what being a racist means, or at least used to.
Now, racist means you are white. It’s really not any more complex than that. If you’re white, you’re a racist; a racist who benefits wildly from your skin color. No matter your life circumstances – parents, upbringing, schools, family, whatever – you had your life laid out for you because you’re white.
I had no idea I had it so good as I was burning up on rooftops across Detroit slopping down 500-degree tar roofing in 95-degree weather. I probably should’ve just sent my landlord my 23 & Me report and a picture of my forearm, rather than busting my ass like a sucker. Does my white privilege get me a refund on the sweat equity and actual financial outlays I’ve had to make? Where do I go to get the time I wasted working toward goals?
I honestly hope students avoid Bridgewater and any institution (educational or otherwise) that blatantly present themselves this way.
The progressive left has turned the country, especially academia, into a pit of racial obsession. It’s like a Coachella for the Klan, with people segregated in every way we can be differentiated and told to stay away from others, your skin color is your wristband. It’s evil.
Feel badly because of what your skin looks like, feel like a victim because of yours. The Democrat Party has turned from Martin Luther King’s dream to a racist dystopia. How do you do that and still live with yourself? I don’t know, and I don’t want to.
https://townhall.com/columnists/derekhunter/2022/03/15/the-progressive-mindset-is-evil-n2604540
*********************************************
Men can’t do anything right
Men can’t do anything right, and International Women’s Day proved it. The New Zealand All Blacks marked the day by honouring women, only to be criticised for honouring the wrong kind of women.
The world’s most famous rugby team must have felt like they were doing a good thing when they used their official Twitter account to acknowledge the day.
But if the burly footballers were expecting bouquets for being tender-hearted, New Age, sensitive types – they were badly mistaken.
Like a man who has completely misjudged a woman’s mood (by which I mean every man who has ever lived) the All Blacks found themselves in the doghouse, wondering what on earth had just happened.
If women are a Sudoku puzzle, inside a cryptic crossword, surrounded by Rubix cubes, strapped to a jihadist who is screaming in a foreign language, then International Women’s Day is even more confusing.
The All Blacks’ tweet, accompanied by a photo of the players with their wives and daughters, went like this:
‘Forever grateful to all the women in our lives that allow us to play the game we love. Partners, mothers, daughters, doctors, physios, referees, administrators, and fans. Appreciate you every day.’
Nice, right?
No, it’s not nice you sexist, misogynistic, Neanderthal pig! What’s wrong with you?
The All Blacks were immediately crash-tackled by feminists furious that the tweet had failed to mention New Zealand’s female team, the Black Ferns.
‘Tone deaf!’ they screamed.
Former English rugby player Kate Merchant insisted that the All Blacks shout out to women on women’s day only served to illustrate why International Women’s Day was necessary.
‘Black Ferns are current world champions, yet this post chose to ignore their existence and instead thank the women who “allow” men to play. #dobetter,’ she tweeted.
Of course, it’s possible that the All Blacks’ failure to mention the Black Ferns had nothing to do with toxic masculinity and everything to do with men wanting to appreciate the women actually in their lives.
But such a perspective provides no reason to claim you are being oppressed. And, in 2022, who are you if you are not being oppressed?
Indeed, when the theme of International Women’s Day 2022 is ‘break the bias’, you really must find some people to judge guilty of bias in order to be able to claim that you ‘broke’ something and so justified the day’s existence, not to mention your own part in it.
That the greatest example of bias against women in New Zealand is that a rugby team forgot to appreciate a scrum of women they didn’t know, while honouring the domesticity of women they did know, is proof of just how good women have it in the ‘Land of the Long White Karen’.
Women in Saudi Arabia would laugh at the whiny feminists screaming ‘misogyny’ over a tweet.
But on and on they screeched.
Some sarcastically complained that the All Blacks’ tribute ‘forgot to mention women in the kitchen’ and ‘read like an after-match speech from 30 years ago’.
Missing from the Woke sisterhood’s hissy fit was any allowance for the fact that not every woman wants to don footy boots, pack down in a scrum, and bash the living daylights out of other women while rushing an inflated pigskin across a white line.
Some women genuinely prefer to embrace traditional gender roles. And their families – including their husbands – genuinely appreciate it.
But caring for children, providing home-cooked meals, and providing nurture and support must be eschewed in order to encourage more women to find their true destiny as props, loose-heads, and hookers.
Predictably, the All Blacks immediately deleted the offending tweet and issued a grovelling apology; the kind of statement put out by hostages begging for mercy from tyrannical captors.
‘We are listening,’ they cried. ‘We didn’t get it right with our celebration of International Women’s Day and we apologise.’
The All Blacks went on to gush about how inspiring female players were to people right around the world, and how 2022 was a big year for women’s rugby because women would be playing rugby in lots of women’s rugby games inspiring women around the world, or something.
Proving that hell hath no fury like a woman unacknowledged on Twitter during International Women’s Day, the apology was met with ridicule.
They only apologised to limit the PR damage. They didn’t truly own their mistake. They always do this. They need to demonstrate real change, and with actions rather than words…
Hang on, that wasn’t women replying to the All Blacks tweet; that was my wife berating me last night for something she imagined six years ago. But I digress.
‘If Rugby is to be a major sport around the world our difference has to be our values and advocacy for all our communities in a leading and inclusive way. Go women’s rugby!’ wrote one woman.
Well actually Karen, no.
No one goes to an All Blacks game saying, ‘Gee I hope we see some values and a bit of on-field advocacy tonight.’
We go to the rugby to see men built like brick outhouses charge at each other with the force and ferocity of wild animals.
To expect these same men to be across the nauseating niceties and never-ending nuances of International Women’s Day is to expect the impossible.
For the first time in their lives the All Blacks would likely be thinking ‘we just can’t win’.
And they’d be right.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/men-cant-do-anything-right/
************************************************
All Housing Is Affordable Housing
All housing is affordable housing. If developers build cheap housing, the price of all housing except the very most luxurious will fall. Alternatively, and perhaps less obviously, if we build more luxury housing, then the price of all housing will fall, as there will be less pressure for gentrification or “teardowns.” This is hopeful: All we need to do to solve the housing crisis, and quickly, is to make it legal to build housing.
Generally, in functioning market settings, price signals convey information that is rapidly transmitted to three sorts of actors. If there is scarcity, prices rise rapidly (if they are allowed to do so). The result is:
Consumers buy or use less
Producers make more (if they are allowed to do so)
Entrepreneurs come up with substitutes (if they are allowed to do so)
In housing, this system is not working, because it is not being allowed to work. The regulatory agency Freddie Mac has estimated that the shortage approaches 4 million units nationally, and that undercounts the degree of the shortage in terms of people who would like to move to larger or “closer to work” locations. Why is the price mechanism not working?
The short answer is that it is effectively illegal to build housing, so #2 is blocked. And innovation—microunits, accessory dwelling units, etc.—is discouraged, so #3 is ruled out. The only “solution” offered by America’s city governments is scarcity, as far as the eye can see. In a growing consensus that crosses partisanship and ideological boundaries, including this remarkably candid Obama administration report, analysts have concluded we need to make it legal to build housing.
How could it be illegal?
The housing advocacy group “Up for Growth” estimates that between 2000 and 2015, 23 US states used intentional restrictions to block more than 7 million new dwellings that would have been built without the regulations. Even more importantly, perhaps, is the finding that even for the units that were built as much as 30 percent, and sometimes more, of the final cost was caused by regulatory uncertainty, waiting for approval, or the submission of repeated traffic reports, environmental impact statements, and jumping through other regulatory hoops.
What, specifically, makes building new housing illegal? The following categories of zoning, regulatory, and licensing restrictions all play a role:
Minimum unit size/maximum number of units in new development
Height restrictions on buildings
Setback and lot size minimums, or extorted greenspace concession
Off street, often underground, parking requirements, even in poor neighborhoods near mass transit
In my own neighborhood, Raleigh and Durham, North Carolina, an amalgam of these requirements would work out to something like this: New developments require an inefficiently large amount of land, much of which is required to be used as parking, in buildings no more than 4 or 5 stories tall. The housing units themselves generally must be 1,000 square feet or more. (Durham recently “allowed” a building of smaller “microunits,” starting at 387 square feet for $1,200 per month; all the units were immediately occupied).
You can just do the math, in city after city. A Brookings Institution study documents the problem, noting that all three major components of cost—land, labor, and materials—face substantial and in some cases unnecessary and unintentional cost bottlenecks. The result is that costs for almost any sort of new unit in areas with burdensome regulation and high land prices will exceed $250 per square foot.
For a 1,000 square foot apartment—smaller than many cities allow without expensive variance permit processes—a developer would need to charge at least $2,750 per month just to break even. Now, the usual definition of “affordable” is housing that costs 30 percent or less of the renter’s income. But let’s expand that, and call 40 percent of income affordable. A worker would still need a pretax annual salary of $75,000 to be able to afford our hypothetical minimally legal new apartment.
Worse, municipal restrictions are also the main driving force behind “gentrification,” where (relatively) rich people occupy parts of what little affordable housing does exist. Since cities allow wealthy neighborhoods to make it illegal to build market rate housing, it’s hardly surprising that newcomers, or current residents looking to expand their living space, look to poorer neighborhoods. A recent working paper by Dr. Kate Pennington of the US Census Bureau has an interesting finding: while what we might call “static” gentrification displaces low income housing, the more “dynamic” form of gentrification, or building new market-rate multifamily buildings in poor areas actually reduces the cost to renters in the area. The problem is that building new multifamily units is prohibitively expensive, and faces lengthy regulatory and legal delays for approval.
The entire system is oriented toward hypersensitivity to local concerns, with requests for “public comment” built into a system that requires prolonged and expensive petitions for the “right” to build new housing. On December 14, 2020, Russ Roberts did an Econtalk podcast with Katherine Levine Einstein, on her book Neighborhood Defenders. As Dr. Einstein put it:
We create a process where if I’m proposing a new housing development, I have literally no idea how many hearings it’s going to take and how expensive it will be, how I should think about my budget. Because, it could be one hearing, cut-and-dry, or I could end up with, like, five hearings and a year and a half of delay. And, that unpredictability is deeply problematic.
https://www.independent.org/news/article.asp?id=14073
************************************************
Groundbreaking Conference Reveals Health Risks of Seed Oils
Medical doctors, researchers, and other experts spoke on March 3 at the “Future of Fat” virtual summit, the first-ever meeting dedicated exclusively to the harmful effects of oils made from vegetables or seeds, including canola oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, soybean oil, and sunflower oil.
Such oils have been linked to heart disease, diabetes, weight gain, cancer, macular degeneration, and other chronic diseases.
“There are other conferences that focus on oils and fats broadly speaking. We don’t know of any other that have brought together MDs, Ph. Ds, doctors, and environmental scientists to discuss the impact of vegetable/seed oils specifically,” said Jeff Nobbs, co-founder, and CEO of Zero Acre Farms, in an email interview with The Epoch Times.
“Vegetable oils are ubiquitous in restaurants and fast-food and packaged food including bread, crackers, cereal, granola, chips, dried fruits, salad dressings, mayonnaise, sauces, fried foods, ice cream, baked goods, and other snacks,” he said. “Vegetable oils now account for 20 percent of our daily calories, which represents the greatest increase in sources of calories in the last 100 years, since the globalization era began.”
Zero Acre Farms organized the “Future of Fat” event. The startup, which just raised $37 million in venture funding from Coldplay, Robert Downey, Jr., and other investors, aims to replace seed oils with oils produced through fermentation.
Seed oils are rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), including an omega-6 PUFA known as linoleic acid. When cooked at a high heat—almost always part of the industrial process for producing commercial seed oils—linoleic acid oxidizes very rapidly.
Dr. Cate Shanahan, a family physician, and metabolic health expert, told The Epoch Times that high dietary intake of PUFAs can cause fat cells to malfunction.
According to Shanahan, who serves as an advisor for Zero Acre Farms and spoke at Future of Fat, the oxidative stress induced by PUFAs overwhelms the antioxidant system, driving the dysfunctional inflammation and elevated toxin levels that trigger many chronic diseases.
“This is not just theoretical,” she said. “No one who understands the science of it would argue with me.”
Dr. James DiNicolantonio, a cardiovascular research scientist at Saint Luke’s Mid American Heart Institute, and another Future of Fat speaker drew The Epoch Times’ attention to multiple papers by Dr. Christopher Ramsden of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
One 2013 meta-analysis by Ramsden and others found that men who replaced saturated fats obtained from animal fats or other sources, with omega-six linoleic acid obtained from vegetable oils, had higher rates of heart disease and even death.
Shanahan considers the American Heart Association (AHA) a prime culprit in the rise and dominance of seed oils.
In her own writings, she has highlighted the role of Dr. Ancel Keys, an influential cardiologist and founding member of the AHA’s Council on Epidemiology and Prevention.
“After [Dr. Ancel] Keys made the cover of Time Magazine on Jan 13, 1961, the American public was introduced to the idea that saturated fats were clogging their arteries.
“That idea ultimately led to a sea change in the foods we eat. Real fats would increasingly be replaced by factory-made seed oils, and the era of chronic disease would begin,” she wrote in that blog entry.
Shanahan and others have pointed out that the AHA first rose to public consciousness thanks to a multimillion-dollar donation from Procter & Gamble, the inventors of a vegetable oil-based alternative to animal fats, Crisco.
Thanks in part to the AHA, beef tallow and other animal fats, staples of the traditional American diet, were replaced by vegetable oils. That change ran in parallel with the rise of chronic disease.
The Epoch Times has reached out to the AHA for comment on Future of Fat.
In an email, The Epoch Times referenced AHA’s “Healthy Cooking Oils” webpage, which states that “replacing bad fats [saturated and trans] with healthier fats [monounsaturated and polyunsaturated] is good for your heart.”
The AHA’s webpage recommends that its readers choose “non-tropical vegetable oils like olive, corn, canola, peanut, and sunflower oil.”
AHA responded by directing The Epoch Times to language taken from that same webpage, including at least some text apparently aimed at alternative perspectives:
“When you hear about the latest ‘diet of the day’ or a new or odd-sounding theory about food, consider the source.
“The American Heart Association provides dietary recommendations based on the best available scientific evidence.
“As more research emerges, you can be sure that the American Heart Association will continue to update its science and bring you the facts,” their webpage continues.
“I’m a doctor, and I want people to get healthier—and the main barrier to that is the American Heart Association,” said Shanahan.
Twitter Phenomenon
Opposition to seed oils has also taken off on social media.
“Healthy Oil Respecter” and “Seed Oil Disrespecter,” a husband-and-wife novelty Twitter account act, have attracted thousands of followers.
In real life, “Seed Oil Disrespecter” is a physician. Like many social media users in the post-Woke era, he has chosen to remain anonymous to avoid reprisal.
He told The Epoch Times that he didn’t expect his account to gain this much traction. The memes he posts are meant to be over-the-top and funny—the better to capture what he sees as the genuinely outrageous dangers of seed oil consumption.
“I would say splitting the seed has had worse consequences than splitting the atom,” he said.
He too serves as an advisor for Zero Acre.
“I was skeptical at first, knowing nothing of their operation or details. Then I learned folks who have been public with their ancestral health work, including on seed oils, were advisers. It piqued my interest,” he said.
“Seed Oil Disrespecter” said quitting seed oils freed him from irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), lowered his blood pressure, and generally made him healthier.
He isn’t alone among the many anonymous Twitter users who have responded to anti-seed oil activism.
One told The Epoch Times about the benefits he and his girlfriend experienced when they removed seed oils from their diet roughly eight months ago.
“My skin improved significantly—brighter complexion, less redness, less irritation,” he said in a message.
“I used to have terrible heartburn all the time which improved dramatically. And both my girlfriend and myself experienced way higher energy levels.”
Because seed oils are so ubiquitous in restaurants, he and his girlfriend cook virtually all of their meals themselves from scratch.
Another anonymous Twitter user described similar effects when he and his wife cut their intake of seed oils: “For me, weight loss to some degree [though I was hardly overweight before], but definitely fewer digestive problems, more energy, and better skin.”
The Epoch Times has reached out to the Institute of Shortening and Edible Oils, a U.S. trade association for the refiners of seed oils and various other edible oils.
In addition, The Epoch Times has approached multiple medical experts known for ascribing health benefits to various seed oils.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/groundbreaking-conference-reveals-health-risks-of-seed-oils_4322236.html
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
16 March, 2022
Oceans of Grain — America, Russia and Ukraine’s breadbasket in flames
Australia has just had a bumper wheat harvest and is a big grain exporter anyway so it looks like Australian farmers will grow rich feeding the world
The world’s breadbasket is at war. Russia and Ukraine together account for about a quarter of the world’s wheat exports, and roughly 12 per cent of its total calories. Should the war interrupt the spring planting season — which it shows every indication of doing — poor countries and rich countries alike could face food shortages and steep inflation. That disruption of grain trade may in turn bring massive economic, political and social upheaval.
It was ever thus, according to an incredibly timely history of the global wheat trade by University of Georgia academic Scott Reynolds Nelson. The subtitle is a nod to fact that with the invention of explosives that enabled the building of the railways to the west, the US was able to transport its own heartland grain via rail and then by sea to Europe in the wake of the American civil war. It was a sort of wheat dumping that contributed to the toppling of the Russian empire, which had previously fed Europeans from the rich soil of Ukraine.
Certainly, it’s hard to imagine a book more relevant for our moment. The last time there was a major global food shortage, stemming in large part from a poor harvest in Ukraine and Russia, the Arab Spring was the result. We may be on the verge of a similar crisis.
Certainly, as China gobbles up the commodities that Russia can no longer sell to the west, we are reminded that grain and great power politics go hand-in-hand. As Nelson writes, “at its deepest level, an empire may be a monopoliser of food along ancient grain pathways that it never fully understands.” We are only beginning to understand what the latest shift in the grain trade may mean for today’s world.
https://blendle.com/i/ft-weekend/oceans-of-grain-america-russia-and-ukraines-breadbasket-in-flames/bnl-ftweekend-20220308-61c4032c
*************************************************
Liberal US cities change course, now clearing homeless camps
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Makeshift shelters abut busy roadways, tent cities line sidewalks, tarps cover broken-down cars, and sleeping bags are tucked in storefront doorways. The reality of the homelessness crisis in Oregon’s largest city can’t be denied.
“I would be an idiot to sit here and tell you that things are better today than they were five years ago with regard to homelessness,” Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler said recently. “People in this city aren’t stupid. They can open their eyes.”
As COVID-19 took root in the U.S., people on the street were largely left on their own — with many cities halting sweeps of homeless camps following guidance from federal health officials. The lack of remediation led to a situation that has spiraled out of control in many places, with frustrated residents calling for action as extreme forms of poverty play out on city streets.
Wheeler has now used emergency powers to ban camping along certain roadways and says homelessness is the “most important issue facing our community, bar none.”
In Seattle, new Mayor Bruce Harrell ran on a platform that called for action on encampments, focusing on highly visible tent cities in his first few months in office. Across from City Hall, two blocks worth of tents and belongings were removed Wednesday. The clearing marked the end of a two and a half week standoff between the mayor and activists who occupied the camp, working in shifts to keep homeless people from being moved.
In Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser launched a pilot program over the summer to permanently clear several homeless camps. In December, the initiative faced a critical test as lawmakers voted on a bill that would ban clearings until April. It failed 5-7.
In California, home to more than 160,000 homeless people, cities are reshaping how they address the crisis. The Los Angeles City Council used new laws to ban camping in 54 locations. LA Mayoral candidate Joe Buscaino has introduced plans for a ballot measure that would prohibit people from sleeping outdoors in public spaces if they have turned down offers of shelter.
San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in December in the crime-heavy Tenderloin neighborhood, which has been ground zero for drug dealing, overdose deaths and homelessness. She said it’s time to get aggressive and “less tolerant of all the bull—- that has destroyed our city.”
In Sacramento voters may decide on multiple proposed homeless-related ballot measures in November — including prohibiting people from storing “hazardous waste,” such as needles and feces, on public and private property, and requiring the city to create thousands of shelter beds. City officials in the area are feeling increasing pressure to break liberal conventions, including from an conservation group that is demanding that 750 people camping along a 23-mile (37-kilometer) natural corridor of the American River Parkway be removed from the area.
Advocates for the homeless have denounced aggressive measures, saying the problem is being treated as a blight or a chance for cheap political gains, instead of a humanitarian crisis.
Donald H. Whitehead Jr., executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, said at least 65 U.S. cities are criminalizing or sweeping encampments. “Everywhere that there is a high population of homeless people, we started to see this as their response.”
Portland’s homeless crisis has grown increasingly visible in recent years. During the area’s 2019 point-in-time count — a yearly census of sorts — an estimated 4,015 people were experiencing homelessness, with half of them “unsheltered” or sleeping outside. Advocates say the numbers have likely significantly increased.
Last month Wheeler used his emergency powers to ban camping on the sides of “high-crash” roadways — which encompass about 8% of the total area of the city. The decision followed a report showing 19 of 27 pedestrians killed by cars in Portland last year were homeless. People in at least 10 encampments were given 72 hours to leave.
“It’s been made very clear people are dying,” Wheeler said. “So I approach this from a sense of urgency.”
Wheeler’s top adviser — Sam Adams, a former Portland mayor — has also outlined a controversial plan that would force up to 3,000 homeless people into massive temporary shelters staffed by Oregon National Guard members. Advocates say the move, which marks a major shift in tone and policy, would ultimately criminalize homelessness.
“I understand my suggestions are big ideas,” Adams wrote. “Our work so far, mine included, has … failed to produce the sought-after results.”
Oregon’s Democratic governor rejected the idea. But Adams says if liberal cities don’t take drastic action, ballot measures that crack down on homelessness may emerge instead.
That’s what happened in left-leaning Austin, Texas. Last year voters there reinstated a ban that penalizes those who camp downtown and near the University of Texas, in addition to making it a crime to ask for money in certain areas and times.
People who work with the homeless urge mayors to find long-term solutions — such as permanent housing and addressing root causes like addiction and affordability — instead of temporary ones they say will further traumatize and villainize a vulnerable population.
The pandemic has added complications, with homeless-related complaints skyrocketing in places like Portland, where the number of campsites removed each week plummeted from 50 to five after COVID-19 hit.
The situation has affected businesses and events, with employers routinely asking officials to do more. Some are looking to move, while others already have — notably Oregon’s largest annual golf tournament, the LPGA Tour’s Portland Classic, relocated from Portland last year due to safety concerns related to a nearby homeless encampment.
James Darwin “Dar” Crammond, director at the Oregon Water Science Center building downtown, told the City Council about his experience working in an area populated with encampments.
Crammond said four years ago the biggest security concerns were vandalism and occasional car break-ins. Now employees often are confronted by “unhinged” people and forced to sidestep discarded needles, he said.
Despite spending $300,000 on security and implementing a buddy system for workers to safely be outdoors, the division of the U.S. Geological Survey is looking to move.
“I don’t blame the campers. There are a few other options for housing. There’s a plague of meth and opiates and a world that offers them no hope and little assistance,” Crammond said. “In my view, where the blame squarely lies is with the City of Portland.”
In New York City, where a homeless man is accused of pushing a woman to her death in front of a subway in January, Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to start barring people from sleeping on trains or riding the same lines all night.
Adams has likened homelessness to a “cancerous sore,” lending to what advocates describe as a negative and inaccurate narrative that villainizes the population.
“Talk to someone on the street and literally just hear a little bit about their stories — I mean, honestly, homelessness can happen to any one of us,” said Laura Recko, associate director of external communications for Central City Concern in Portland.
And some question whether the tougher approach is legal — citing the 2018 federal court decision known as Martin v. City of Boise, Idaho, that said cities cannot make it illegal for people to sleep or rest outside without providing sufficient indoor alternatives.
Whitehead, of the National Coalition for the Homeless, thought the landmark ruling would force elected officials to start developing long-term fixes and creating enough shelter beds for emergency needs. Instead, some areas are ignoring the decision or finding ways around it, he said.
“If cities become as creative about solutions as they are about criminalization, then we could end homelessness tomorrow,” he said.
https://apnews.com/article/covid-business-health-ted-wheeler-poverty-edb884d8bf98e45b16372c1c8b7182e7
*********************************************
New Yorkers confirm: High taxes are pushing them to flee the state in droves
A new poll could spell big trouble for New York: Nearly four of every 10 voters here are thinking of fleeing. Their No. 1 reason: high taxes.
The survey, released this month by Zogby, found that 38.9% of voters are “considering” or already have “made plans” to head out, up five points from a month earlier. If even just half do, New York could lose millions of residents and enormous political clout, not to mention the tax revenue these folks pay.
Most notably, a stunning 36.7% say their top reason for wanting out is that taxes are “too high,” a gripe more people cited than any other. Even a quarter of “progressives,” 32% of “liberals” and 38% of “moderates” cite high taxes as their strongest motivation to leave.
Never mind the druggies and crazies, disastrous schools or even surging crime (though 48% say crime’s Priority One for the next gov, vs. 43% who cite taxes). And so much for Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s blaming the weather; only 7.7% cited that as their chief reason.
Seems New Yorkers don’t really like giving up more of their hard-earned cash than their peers in other states, after all. And that’s true not just for high rollers but many low- and middle-income folks as well: 26% of those making less than $35,000 a year also listed too-high-taxes as their key motivation for eyeing the exits, as did 27% of those earning from $35,000 to $75,000, 41% of those at $75,000-$100,000 and 48% in the $100,000-$150,000 range.
They’re certainly right about New York’s tax burden: It’s long been among the nation’s highest, and the Democrat-dominated Legislature keeps pushing to make it worse. Last year, when Dems slapped another $4 billion tax on high-end earners, making the top combined city-and-state rate a whopping 14.8%, we asked if lawmakers were actively “trying to fuel a mass exodus.” Looks like that’s exactly what they’ve done.
Notably, the second-most cited reason — a desire to find a “better job or economic opportunities” — is linked to the first: High taxes spur not only people but companies to flee and take jobs with them, reducing opportunity. That helps explain why New York so often suffers more unemployment than elsewhere: In January, the national jobless rate was 4%, but 5.3% in the state (and 7.6% in the city).
Alas, the Democrats in Albany couldn’t care less: The billions the state got in federal “COVID aid” sparked historic budget surpluses, as Empire Center watchdog Peter Warren notes, yet Gov. Kathy Hochul’s budget, due by month’s end, makes no effort whatsoever to roll back last year’s absurd tax hit and offers only “cosmetic” adjustments to middle-class taxes.
With pro-tax Democrats like Hochul maintaining a lock on state government, no one should expect much relief soon. Last one out, please turn off the lights.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/12/new-yorkers-confirm-high-taxes-are-pushing-them-to-flee-the-state-in-droves/
***********************************************
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey on Thursday signed a constitutional carry bill into law that allows permitless concealed carry in the Yellowhammer State
Alabama House Bill 272, also known as the Constitutional Carry Bill, eliminates certain restrictions on concealed carry of pistols and transporting a handgun in a private vehicle.
The bill also established a $5 million fund to offset the revenue loss of local governments.
The bill was sponsored by state Rep. Shane Stringer and cosponsored by 36 other Republicans in the state House.
The new law will go into effect on Jan. 1 when Alabama will become the 22nd constitutional carry state.
Ivey regarded the signing of the law as an act to defend Second Amendment rights. “Unlike states who are doing everything in their power to make it harder for law abiding citizens, Alabama is reaffirming our commitment to defending our Second Amendment rights,” She said in a statement. “I have always stood up for the rights of law abiding gunowners, and I am proud to do that again today.”
Supporters of the bill said it will help citizens protect themselves.
“As law enforcement is being defunded and criminals aren’t being prosecuted, it is more important than ever that law-abiding Americans right to protect themselves, their loved ones, and their homes is fully recognized,” National Rifle Association (NRA) Alabama State Director Art Thomm said in a statement.
Law enforcement agencies hold differentiated views on the new law, Alabama Political Reporter reported.
During a February hearing about the bill, Leeds Police Department chief Paul Irwin warned that elimination of the permit requirement will allow more illegal guns on the streets.
However, Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry said he supports the bill because even a loaded AR-15 can be carried anywhere in Alabama without a permit.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/alabama-gov-kay-ivey-signs-bill-to-eliminate-permit-requirement-for-carrying-pistols_4333709.html
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
15 March, 2022
Let’s Talk About Why Female Divorcees Don’t Remarry
They don't? I have married two of them so I must have missed the message. The answer that the author gives is basically that men are bastards. But I have met men who think that women are bastards. What is the truth of the matter?
It seems clear to me that men do often mistreat women. I sometimes wonder why women put up with so much from their partners. Women have on occasions put up with rather more from me than I had any right to expect
But I think that the reason why men behave badly is also clear. Men were once indoctrinated to be chivalrous to women. The respect inherent to that was a very adaptive guide to a marriage. But the feminists threw that away. They stripped an important layer of protection from women. So now the natural incomprehension between the sexes rules with nothing to moderate it
Ossiana Tepfenhart
Marriage rates are going down across the board. While men often talk about how they don’t date, or how they feel like women are too stuck up, the truth is, women are starting to lose interest in marriage.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happily married and marriage was always a priority for me. However, it’d be foolish to ignore or discredit the statistics. More women than men choose to stay single after a divorce. Ever wonder why this is?
First off, let’s address the big reason why male divorcees may want to marry.
Whether it is due to a long string of cheaters or a relationship that was so abusive that they can’t trust again, most women who say no to remarriage do so because they’re fed up with how they were treated by the men they trusted.
Honestly, who can blame them? Our society creates a serious lose-lose situation for women who don’t marry and have kids and live happily ever after. It doesn’t make sense to play that game!
Most people blame the victim when it comes to abuse, rape, and sex assault. When I told people I was abused, most men (and a shocking amount of women) I met gave a smug shrug and said, “Well, you picked the wrong guy.”
Men don’t necessarily have this. They very rarely ever have to worry about being raped or killed by their partner. Most people would also never blame them for trusting a woman. That double standard is a major issue that contributes to the “once bitten, twice shy” vibe women have.
Eventually, women who deal with bad dates and being blamed for their dating choices tend to say they’ve had enough. It shreds their trust in men, and rightfully so. Everyone has a breaking point.
When they haven’t had enough good experiences and all they find are men who blame them for not being into them, they will eventually swear off dating. There’s no return on investment for them, so why bother?
Most divorces are initiated by women, often as a final decision after trying to get their husbands to do their share of housework or after giving up on being prioritized. I’m not making this up, either.
This is a known phenomenon. It’s called Walkaway Wife Syndrome, and it happens when a woman gives up on ever being treated well by a spouse.
Believe it or not, most women who walk away from their relationships end up feeling pretty badly duped by their exes. They also tend to feel like they don’t have as much chorework to do when they’re single — primarily because they statistically don’t.
Relationships are hard. Picking up after your partner is hard. Taking care of a kid and a husband who doesn’t do his share is hard. After being married once and being burnt out from overwork, many women don’t want to bother with it again.
Others may have just changed priorities.
A lot of women I know who divorced decided that they no longer want to build a relationship with a man simply because they have better things to do with their lives. This is often the case with single moms who prioritize their kids.
Divorce does some weird shit to people. More specifically, it often teaches people what they don’t want in a relationship. Divorced women are going to be pickier than they were the first time around, and are not going to put up with shit they just left.
As a result, the dating pool is smaller. And that means some women just won’t find someone they click with. It’s no one’s fault, really, but it still happens.
https://medium.com/hello-love/lets-talk-about-why-female-divorcees-don-t-remarry-febf58f7d04f
*************************************************
Conservative European countries facing pressure to turn woke
If you ever doubted that woke ideologues are heartless hypocrites, look at what the liberal European Union just did to Poland and Hungary, even while those conservative countries were doing their best to accommodate 1.7 million Ukrainian refugees streaming across their borders.
It is hard to believe in the middle of the biggest humanitarian crisis in Europe since World War II, but the European Parliament voted last week to slap millions of dollars in economic sanctions on the former Communist countries, including freezing pandemic loans, as punishment for refusing to go along with so-called EU “values.”
Their sin is to have conservative populist governments that rejected open border and LGBTQ policies imposed by Brussels. Like Florida and Texas, Poland and Hungary have passed laws banning schools from indoctrinating young children on gender ideology and sexual orientation. And the nations refused to allow illegal migrants from the Middle East overrun their borders after Germany’s Angela Merkel unilaterally ushered millions of mainly young Muslim men into Europe in 2015 during the Syrian crisis.
“Taxpayers’ money needs to be protected against those who undermine the EU’s values,” the European Parliament declared in a press release on Thursday.
Coming just three weeks before Hungary’s conservative nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban asks voters for a fifth term, the EU intervention is nothing less than election interference, says his chief political adviser, Bolasz Orban (no relation).
Bolasz Orban, 36, says Hungary’s government has been under “ridiculous pressure for years” from Brussels because of its conservative, family-first policies.
“Liberal policies became very popular in some of the Brussels institutions, especially in the European Parliament,” Bolasz Orban said on the phone from Budapest Sunday.
“Those politicians, the majority are leftists, liberal, green progressives. Politically, they are on a different side. The problem is they think about European cooperation from an ideological point of view when it never was originally about ideological homogeneity [but] economic prosperity.”
On border security, energy policy, education, and family values, he says, Brussels’ liberal overlords are trying to impose their will on Hungary’s democratically-elected government.
“We are warm-heartedly welcoming the Ukrainian refugees,” says Orban, pointing out that Hungary has accepted “about 400,000” refugees since the Russian invasion, a significant burden on a country of 10 million people.
But Hungary wants to retain the right to distinguish between illegal migrants from half a world away and refugees fleeing a war zone next door.
Brussels overreach
The EU is trying to “destroy all the legal mechanisms which are necessary to secure our borders, the structures we invented, the fence, the physical borders and legal mechanisms . . . They want to make it impossible [to stop] illegal migrants.”
Similarly, the EU is trying to force Hungary to overturn laws passed by its parliament which ban the indoctrination of children in the finer points of gender fluidity.
“They say it goes against homosexuality and sexual minorities. That’s a lie. Hungary is a free country. Everyone can do whatever he or she wants after the age of 18 but we are protecting our children and saving them from gender propaganda starting in kindergarten and they are attacking that.”
On energy, Hungary has come under pressure from Germany and Austria to close its nuclear power plants, which provide almost half its electricity and help keep Hungary’s greenhouse-gas emissions among the lowest in Europe. Without nuclear power, Hungary would be even more dependent on Russian gas, which provides 80% of household heating.
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who has branded EU climate plans as “utopian fantasy” and blamed them for Europe’s soaring energy prices, eventually agreed to the Brussels target of net zero emissions by 2050.
But Hungary capped utility prices in the country to protect families from rising energy costs. This also fell afoul of the EU, says Bolasz Orban.
“Right now, there is a price cap on utility costs and that’s why the Hungarian people pay the lowest utility bills in Europe. From a market liberalization point of view [the EU] keeps attacking this price cap.”
Hungary spends 6.2% of its gross domestic product on family support programs, twice as much as the OECD average, encouraging couples to have more kids. A staggeringly generous new Family Housing Allowance Program offers $130,000, plus a $220,000 loan, to families who promise to have at least three children, so they can build a new green home.
Married Hungarian women get a $30,000 low interest “baby loan” which becomes interest-free after the first child and doesn’t have to be repaid after the third.
Again, Brussels liberals disapprove. “Our problem is that on the one hand they are not supporting these ideas and on the other hand . . . always in the Brusselian documents it’s about giving the money to illegal migrants and not supporting Hungarian families.”
Authoritarian overreach by Brussels forced the UK’s “Brexit” out of the EU. But Orban says a “Hexit” is not on the cards.
“Hungarians are very much pro-European. . . It comes from medieval history when we were the last frontier, the defenders of Christian Europe. We want to be members of the club but grassroots voters can distinguish between being pro-Europe and critical toward Brussels.”
Europe’s lefty bloc
To understand Hungary’s plight, imagine Washington, DC, was Brussels and the Biden administration was in permanent rule. A horrible thought.
Currently, four of the five largest member state of the EU — Italy, Spain, France, Germany — are led by progressive, green or liberal governments. Only Poland is majority conservative.
Bolasz Orban asks the EU to imagine if the situation were reversed, and conservatives became the majority bloc, and decided to disrespect the national sovereignty of smaller countries. How would Sweden and Holland like it if they were pressured to cancel same-sex marriage, for example?
Smug leftists should remember that the worm always turns, so it is best to treat your opponents as you would wish to be treated.
https://nypost.com/2022/03/13/conservative-eu-countries-facing-pressure-to-turn-woke/
************************************************
U.S. Cities’ Surge in Shootings Rattles Once-Safe Seattle
Dr. Deepika Nehra knew the only way to save the man on her operating table dying of a gunshot wound was to slice open his abdomen.
Nights like this have become routine at Harborview Medical Center, where this once-peaceful city’s mounting toll of shootings has played out again and again during the past year.
When the 39-year-old trauma surgeon tried to cut into the man’s midsection to stanch the bleeding, a brick of scar tissue blocked her way. It was from a previous gunshot wound. Unable to break through it quickly enough, she couldn’t stop the bleeding.
Long one of America’s safest cities, Seattle had 612 shootings and shots-fired incidents last year, nearly double its average before the pandemic. The city has just experienced its two worst years for homicides since the 1990s, when murder rates were at all-time highs. Gunfire has erupted all across surrounding King County, not just in neighborhoods plagued by violence.
“I stood by his side as he died and reflected on how needless his death was,” Dr. Nehra said. “The increase in gun-related injuries that we are seeing at Harborview and in Seattle is both palpable and just simply tragic. It will not let up.”
Dan Satterberg, the top county prosecutor, recently filed murder charges against a 14-year-old alleged to have randomly gunned down one man in January and another in October. In 30 years as a prosecutor, he said, he couldn’t recall charging a person so young with two killings.
Seattle is one of many U.S. cities, from Los Angeles to Chicago to New York, that have seen shootings and killings jump since the onset of the pandemic. Several cities, including Albuquerque, Philadelphia and Portland, Ore., endured their deadliest year ever in 2021.
Officials around the country are struggling to understand why. They point to a range of factors such as the social and institutional chaos wrought by the pandemic, which stalled efforts by community groups that steer young people away from crime.
Officials also cite fallout from the sweeping protests over police killings, which led to a push to defund the police and a pullback by officers. Such protests were especially persistent in Seattle, where demonstrators took over a section of the Capitol Hill neighborhood for weeks in 2020.
While Seattle’s murder rate remains lower than other major cities, it leapt above the U.S. average in 2020 for the first time in more than a decade. The shootings are reshaping facets of life in the metro area, and kindling tensions over the best ways to reduce them.
A week ago, the owner of a bakery decided to shut her downtown location after a man was shot to death near the store entrance in broad daylight. On Wednesday night, a 15-year-old boy was shot and killed close by.
Voters in the traditionally liberal-leaning city elected a tough-on-crime Republican as city attorney in November, and for mayor, picked a moderate Democrat who vowed to bolster the police force and combat gun violence.
King County is dispatching what it calls peacekeepers to work with young people they have identified as prone to committing shootings, becoming shooting victims or both. Harborview hospital has hired a past shooting victim to counsel the crush of gunshot patients entering its doors, hoping to keep them from returning for the same reason.
Seattle Police Chief Adrian Diaz’ s phone buzzes with a text every time there is a shooting. It woke him just before 2 a.m. on July 25. A man had been shot in a fight outside a bar.
By the time the chief arrived at the chaotic scene, where officers were trying to hold the victim’s wailing mother behind the police tape, his phone had buzzed again. This alert was for multiple shootings a mile away, where people were spilling out of nightclubs. Mr. Diaz sped there to find five men shot.
An hour later, another text: A woman was shot in the stomach. And an hour after that, a message saying a man was shot at a pickup basketball game. In all, three people were killed and five wounded in three hours, in a city that had long averaged 25 homicides a year.
“When you have a night like that, you’re trying to figure out what’s generating that level of violence,” said Mr. Diaz, who joined the department in 1997.
Since the start of Covid-19, the chief said, there has been a noticeable spike in domestic disputes, bar fights and road rage. “People’s stress level is at an all-time high,” he said.
Nightly protests in the summer of 2020 after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer pulled Mr. Diaz’s officers away from their focus on gun violence, he said. The city council responded by cutting millions from the police department’s budget, including cutting the salary of then-chief Carmen Best, part of a national push to reallocate police funds to social programs. Mr. Diaz became interim police chief in 2020 after Ms. Best, Seattle’s first Black female police chief, resigned.
Demoralized officers have since left in droves, similar to other cities, said Travis Hill, a recently departed police sergeant who spent 14 years on the force. Letting protesters take over a precinct during the city’s unrest in 2020 was particularly disheartening, he said. “When you don’t feel the city has your back, your proactive work goes down,” Mr. Hill said.
About 360 officers left Seattle’s force in the past two years, leaving about 950 in the department to battle the rise in shootings. At the beginning of the pandemic, Seattle had 1,305 officers.
Stops and other activity initiated by officers dropped by 27% in 2021, and police response times reached historic highs, according to the department.
Mr. Diaz dealt with the loss of officers by shifting two-thirds of a unit devoted to gun violence back to patrol. He now is trying to rebuild that unit.
Police staffing and gun violence were a focus of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s winning election campaign last fall. He routed City Council President M. Lorena González, who supported the cuts to Seattle’s police department, by more than 17 points.
At a Feb. 4 news conference on gun violence, Mr. Harrell, who declined to be interviewed, said he was directing the police force to focus on the relatively few individuals authorities believe are behind most gun crimes, and on neighborhoods where violence is worst.
“I inherited a depleted and demoralized police department,” said the mayor, a former University of Washington football standout. Mr. Harrell opposes police budget cuts and backs funding for community intervention programs.
“When I see what I continue to see out there, I can’t sleep at night,” said the mayor, who has been personally affected. A few months ago, a friend’s son was shot and killed while trying to break up a fight.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-cities-surge-in-shootings-rattles-once-safe-seattle-11646589942?mod=hp_lead_pos5
*********************************************************
British orchestra defends move to cut Tchaikovsky from concert
Adirector of the Cardiff Philharmonic Orchestra says it has been taken aback by the backlash against its decision to remove the Russian composer Tchaikovsky from its forthcoming programme because of the conflict in Ukraine.
Members of the orchestra were also said to have been among those who had voiced reservations about playing Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture – which celebrates Russia’s defence against the invasion of Napoleon and is notable for featuring a volley of cannon fire – when the matter was discussed with them.
The 1812 Overture was due to be included in the orchestra’s Tchaikovsky concert at St David’s Hall on 18 March, but the entire programme has been abandoned because of events in Ukraine.
Japan’s Chubu Philharmonic Orchestra made a similar move this week, announcing it will replace a performance of the 1812 Overture with another piece.
Linda Robinson, a teacher who is one of the directors, said Cardiff’s decision was made in consultation with the venue, St David’s Hall, and rejected what she said had been a depiction by some critics of the decision as “anti-Russian”. In fact, three concerts this year will include work by Russian composers, including Sergei Prokofiev and Sergei Rachmaninoff.
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/uknews/cardiff-orchestra-defends-move-to-cut-tchaikovsky-from-concert/ar-AAUXLyD
********************************************
Let’s think twice before we exclude white male artists from our art galleries
Terms such as “social justice, equity and inclusion” can mean replacing one set of prejudices with a different but equally narrow variety.
By John McDonald
A change is always an opportunity and Sydney’s Museum of Contemporary Art is set to begin a new chapter with the departure of long-term director Elizabeth Ann Macgregor and senior curator Rachel Kent. Yet, the transition has been complicated by two years of pandemic, and the impending opening of the Art Gallery of NSW’s Sydney Modern – a new wing that will duplicate much that goes on at Circular Quay.
The pressure is on the new director Suzanne Cotter, an Australian who has worked in Luxembourg, Portugal, the Middle East and the UK, to quickly come to terms with the nature of the museum and its audience. In her first few weeks, Cotter has said all the positive things one might expect from a new incumbent and raised a few warning signs.
She has spoken of the need to implement “urgent reforms with respect to social justice, equity, inclusion, and now COVID which has had a particular impact on the financial models of museums.” In theory, nobody could object to such goals, but <font color="#ff0000">terms such as “social justice, equity and inclusion” can mean replacing one set of prejudices with a different but equally narrow variety.</font>
When we try to understand how this translates into attendance figures, sponsorships and patronage, there is a danger of principle outstripping practicality. It’s indisputable that public museums and galleries have historically favoured male artists over females, but does that mean today’s museums should deliberately reverse the trend? The same applies to Indigenous work, which was often treated as amateur or folk art. Should museum collections now give precedence to Indigenous art over more cosmopolitan expressions?
Move too far, too fast, in the direction of affirmative action and the museum runs the risk of alienating more people than it attracts. There’s no consolation in feeling virtuous when your paymasters are asking why attendances and revenues are down.
In countries such as France and Germany, the arts are taken seriously by a more cultured set of politicians. In Australia, with a few notable exceptions, our MPs are rank philistines who see the visual arts as part of the tourist industry. For the average politician, who would probably prefer arts funding to be handled by the private sector, the quality of a show is judged by its attendance numbers.
Corporate sponsors are equally keen on the big numbers when it comes to deciding how they distribute their largesse. When a museum has to reconcile a commitment to social justice with the need to raise revenue, the “financial models” are more complex to navigate.
Cotter dramatised this dilemma when she was quoted in The Australian as saying: “Today, if you are a white male artist, you are not so interesting... It doesn’t mean to say you’re not a great artist – I think it’s more that this isn’t what is relevant for people now. You have to think in a timely way.”
This sounds like bad news for white male artists, but it also raises the question of “relevance”. All contemporary institutions act as tastemakers, imposing their ideas about what’s relevant, fashionable, politically correct, etc, on their exhibition programs. But what a curator believes to be “relevant”, may be completely contrary to the views of the average gallery-goer.
The museum needs to strike a balance, avoiding populism without venturing too far into the realms of the esoteric. It needs to recognise minoritarian concerns, but pitch exhibitions to the broadest possible audience. In recent years the MCA has got its best results from projects with a touch of the wow factor. I’m thinking of solo shows by artists including Pipilotti Rist, Cornelia Parker and Sun Xun. Neither should we discount major retrospectives by David Goldblatt and John Mawurndjul that may not have been crowd-pullers but deserve the highest accolades.
At the time the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago opened in October 1967, Modern art was breaking down into Conceptual Art, performance, political activism, and a range of “anti-art” gestures.
With its militant attachment to “the New”, the museum was greeted with a mixture of enthusiasm and scepticism. In an essay titled Museum of the New, critic Harold Rosenberg pointed out the obvious contradictions of a museum devoted to the avant-garde project of dissolving the boundaries that separate art from life. Exhibit A was Allen Kaprow, the pioneer of “happenings”, who saw the museum as “a fuddy-duddy remnant from another era” and called for such institutions to be turned into swimming pools and nightclubs.
New gallery director aims to bring showstopping art to Sydney
Kaprow’s iconoclasm didn’t prevent the Chicago MCA from including his work – or at least documentation of his work – in its opening display. It’s a gesture that has been repeated countless times in the decades that followed: the artist who declares that art and its institutions are either dead or deserve to be killed, is celebrated and collected by those same institutions.
The logic is explained in Chicago’s mission statement of 1966: “A museum of contemporary art is different from the general art museum where the values of the past are enshrined. Instead, it is a place where new ideas are shown and tested.”
But if the “new idea” is that museums must be abolished, how can this be reconciled with a bricks-and-mortar institution caught up in the familiar round of exhibition and collection development, fund-raising, tourist initiatives and public education?
Perhaps the only option is to invoke Ralph Waldo Emerson, who once wrote: “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/small-art-for-narrow-minds-is-what-happens-when-identity-politics-take-precedence-20220225-p59znp.html
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Monday, March 14, 2022
Sorry Darwin, but it turns out promiscuity benefits females too
Yes. It has always appeared to me that women are pretty keen on sex. The risks they take when they have affairs are evidence enough of that. Female straying is not the sole cause of single motherhood but it is one of the causes -- and single motherhood can be a pretty deprived lifestyle
I ONCE stole a lion’s girlfriend. At the time, I was in the Masai Mara in Kenya experimenting with audio playback as a means of deciphering lion communication.
This involved blasting a recording of a male lion’s roar into another’s territory and waiting for a response. Three lions – one female and two males – raced over to our Land Rover to investigate. The males quickly got bored when they failed to find anything that resembled a rival. The female, however, pinned the vehicle to the spot, legs akimbo, for over 2 hours. She was in oestrus and, in addition to mating with her consorts, she also wanted to mate with us. Not that this was anything special for the lioness: fertile females are known to mate 100 times with multiple males in a matter of days.
I was shocked and quietly thrilled to discover her licentious nature. At university, I was taught that males, with their endless supply of sperm, are wired for promiscuity, whereas females, with their limited number of eggs, must be choosy and chaste. Didn’t the lioness understand this “universal law”?
My research since has exposed how sexist bias has been baked into evolutionary biology and warped our understanding of the female animal. We should remember that great scientists, even geniuses like Charles Darwin, are also people of their time. Darwin’s second great theoretical masterpiece – The Descent of Man, his book containing his theory of sexual selection – cast females in the role of the Victorian housewife: coy, submissive and invariant.
This theory of passivity was given an empirical lifeline in the 1940s by a British geneticist called Angus Bateman, whose legendary fruit fly mating experiment “proved” that females have little to gain from multiple mating, whereas males do. Bateman’s paradigm seared these deterministic sexual archetypes into evolutionary lore and crowned males as the dominant drivers of change.
The main trouble with this neat binomial classification is that it is wrong. Just ask the lioness. Her flagrant promiscuity is now understood to be a means of confusing paternity and protecting her offspring against the threat of infanticide by incoming males. This strategic sexuality was first discovered in langur monkeys by the primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy in the 1970s, and has now been documented in dozens of species.
Hrdy leads a growing army of scientists keen to look beyond such misogynistic myopia and recognise the female of the species as just as promiscuous, aggressive, competitive and varied as the male. But what is shocking is how stubborn the stain of Victorian sexism is proving to be, and how far it has spread.
When Patricia Gowaty began doing DNA paternity tests on songbird eggs in 1984, she discovered that each nest frequently contained multiple fathers, despite the apparent monogamy of their parents.
Members of the male ornithological establishment responded by insisting the females had been “raped”. But radio trackers subsequently revealed females actively seeking sex with neighbouring cocks. Since then, a polyandry revolution has revealed that multiple mating is the norm for females, from lions to lizards. The reason is quite obvious: don’t put all your eggs in one basket – greater genetic diversity means healthier offspring.
Gowaty, like me, has never tried to hide her politics. She believes in equal representation of both sexes. But, as Darwin’s Victorian values show us, science is always political. A feminist perspective is urgently needed to topple centuries of androcentrism and rebrand female sexual agency, in lionesses or songbirds, from unexpected to a winning maternal strategy.
************************************************
How a Hindu warrior priest is climbing India's political ranks
Northern India had a hard time under centuries of Muslim rule and that has not been forgotten. Islam remains deeply unpopular among Hindu Indians
A Hindu supremacist monk — who supports banning the hijab at colleges and has a history of making divisive comments about Muslim people — looks set to win another term as the head of India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh.
Yogi, as he's known in India, is the head of a Hindu temple known for its hardline traditions. He's also built a youth group aimed at getting revenge on "historic wrongs" by Muslim rulers.
He is the first holy man to gain so much power in India, rising through the ranks of the country's government while being personally supported by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Researchers have said his political rise represents a worrying trend of a new and assertive brand of Hindu nationalism leading to Muslim persecution in the world's largest democracy.
At a political rally in Uttar Pradesh where Modi was out campaigning for Yogi in the lead-up to the election, supporters said they appreciated the government's focus on "protecting" Hinduism.
"When Yogi and Modi come to power again, Islamic Sharia law will be collapsed, so we don't support Sharia law, we just support the constitution," said Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporter Madugiri Modi, who changed his last name to match the Prime Minister's.
"Yogi and Modi, they aren't human, they are rebirthed as Gods like Krishna and Rama. I worship them and respect them."
"This is the first time Hindus, they know where they stand, they want to come forward now, they have the strength because of Yogi," another supporter said.
Yogi often makes controversial and misleading comments, which his opposers say are polarising the Indian community while emboldening his supporters.
Last year, Yogi claimed Muslims who chose to stay in India after British independence were doing India "no favours".
During the pandemic, Twitter removed a tweet where Yogi compared an Indian opposition party to COVID-19 calling it a "green virus" — green is associated with Islam around the world.
Yogi has even taken aim at Mother Teresa.
"She was part of a conspiracy to convert Hindus to Christianity. Hindus were targeted in the name of doing service and then converted by her," he said in 2016.
"It's a very assertive brand of Hindu nationalism that definitely targets the Muslim minority in very explicit ways. That's his brand of political image," said Dr Manisha Priyam from India's National University for Educational Planning and Administration.
"It's not just the bringing together of religion and politics, it's the bringing together of an assertive and exclusionary view of Hinduism that is mixed with politics."
Eighty per cent of Yogi's state Uttar Pradesh is Hindu and about 20 per cent is Muslim, roughly resembling the makeup of the rest of India.
Despite that Hindu majority, India still has the second-largest Muslim population of any country in the world.
Legislation passed by the BJP has also had a Hindu nationalist focus.
Modi's government has locked down Kashmir, which is the only Indian state with a Muslim majority, and his party campaigned for Islamic religious sites to be replaced with Hindu temples.
In Uttar Pradesh, the BJP has introduced harsher penalties for people who kill the holy cow and longer jail terms for Muslim men accused of converting Hindu women to Islam.
"There were incidents where people had been targeted physically and violently, sometimes leading to the loss of life," Dr Priyam said.
****************************************
9 Things to Know About Florida Black Surgeon-General Joseph Ladapo, Who Rejects COVID-19 Shots for Healthy Children
Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo is drawing national attention after announcing Monday that his state will officially recommend that health officials not give COVID-19 vaccinations to healthy children.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki responded by criticizing Ladapo for going against Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, saying: “It’s deeply disturbing that there are politicians peddling conspiracy theories out there and casting doubt on vaccinations when it is our best tool against the virus and best tool to prevent even teenagers from being hospitalized.”
Ladapo, a physician and secretary of the Florida Department of Health, said that Florida would become the first state in the country to make such a recommendation against the COVID-19 mandates for children set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition to his vaccination guidance, Ladapo has stirred controversy for his stance on masks.
“These things are not saving lives,” the Florida surgeon general told reporters, holding a mask at a March 3 press conference.
“No high quality data says [masks] saved any lives,” Ladapo said. “And it’s a lie, and it needs to stop, and people need to unbelieve it.”
Here are nine things to know about Ladapo.
He was appointed in September as Florida’s surgeon general by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has praised him for a “superb background” and a career that places a “strong emphasis in health policy research.”
He was born in Nigeria and came to the U.S. with his family when he was 5 years old.
His father was a microbiologist and moved the family to the U.S. to continue his studies.
He has an extensive medical background: A graduate of Wake Forest University, he received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in health policy from Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
He has taught at the University of Florida and was an associate professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA.
He has come under fire for not supporting vaccine mandates in the past. He argues that health is a personal decision and has said that vaccines have “been treated almost like a religion.”
He has advocated that Florida pass a Free Speech of Health Care Practitioners Act to protect medical doctors from censorship by prohibiting medical boards from revoking licenses from or otherwise sanctioning doctors who express dissenting opinions.
He was a decathlete on Wake Forest University’s track and field team and served as team captain.
He and his wife have three young children.
********************************************
Elections Bill Passes Florida House, Heads to Governor’s Desk
The Florida House on March 9 approved a voting law package that, among other measures to ensure election integrity, would create a new state office dedicated to preventing, investigating, and solving election-related crimes.
The 76–41 House vote echoed the wishes of the Florida Senate, which voted in favor of the measure five days earlier. Now that 47-page bill, which has been inching its way through the Republican-controlled legislature, is one step closer to becoming law—as one of the first of its kind in the country.
The measure now moves to the desk of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is expected to sign it into law.
The legislation would create a 15-person Office of Election Crimes and Security that would be part of the Florida Department of State. The office would investigate allegations of fraud, initiate independent inquiries, and take over the management of the state’s voter fraud hotline. In addition, penalties for organizations violating rules for registering voters would be increased from $1,000 to up to $50,000 per year.
The measure also would require an annual clean-up of lists of active voters, instead of every other year, tighten security on areas where ballots can be dropped off, and boost criminal penalties for fraudulently completing a ballot to a felony from a misdemeanor.
Currently, 36 states are considering 128 bills related to election crimes. The proposals cover a wide range of topics, from harassment of elections officials to the collection of absentee ballots for payment. Those bills and their statuses can be viewed at an elections law database that’s maintained by the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In November, DeSantis publicly urged members of the legislature to make the creation of an Office of Election Crimes and Security a priority in their regular session that was still two months away. He also touted a need for the legislation when he presented his annual budget to lawmakers in December.
An analysis prepared for the Florida Senate by the staff of the Committee on Appropriations stated that “in consultation with the executive director of the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE),” the governor would appoint at least one sworn FDLE special officer “dedicated to the investigation of election laws” in each operational region of the state.
The main office would be based in Tallahassee, with a director appointed by the secretary of state, and employing “nonsworn investigators to conduct any investigations,” the Senate staff summary states.
The bill’s language specifies that it wouldn’t “limit the jurisdiction of any other office or agency of the state empowered by law to investigate, act upon, or dispose of alleged election law violations,” according to staff analysis.
The office would be required to report its findings annually to Florida’s governor, Senate president, and House speaker.
The Florida measure could be one of the first major election-related bills to be enacted this year, in a state where many voters say they believe fraud occurred during the 2020 election. Florida is considered a battleground state, where elections for president, the U.S. Senate, and the U.S. House of Representatives can be close. In 2021, voter registrations for Republicans surpassed Democrats for the first time in Florida. But the gap is narrow—less than 68,000 voters.
Opponents of Florida’s legislation have argued that creating a special office looking for voting crimes might make some would-be voters wary of participating in elections. Opponents also have insisted that cheating during elections is rare and doesn’t occur enough to warrant the creation of a new investigative office.
Across the country, election integrity has increasingly become a worry for people on both sides of the aisle. Texas officials revealed this week the discovery of 10,000 uncounted ballots from a primary election in Harris County, home to Houston. Texas is also considered a battleground state, where elections can be close.
In Florida, the Department of State received 262 election fraud complaints in 2020, “and referred 75 to law enforcement or prosecuting authorities,” the department says on its website.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Sunday, March 13, 2022
Inflation hits 40-year high
This is a huge and disgraceful tax on the savings of all Americans
US inflation reached a fresh 40 year high in February as soaring oil and food prices smashed earlier hopes of an ease in the cost of living after months of record price increases, all but guaranteeing US interest rates will rise next week.
American consumer prices rose 7.9 per cent over the year to February, including a 6.6 per cent increase in the price petrol in a single month, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered a surge in energy prices expected to supercharge inflation around the world for months.
“Americans’ budgets are being stretched by price increases and families are starting to feel the impacts of Putin’s price hike,” President Joe Biden said in a statement, seeking to deflect blame for a growing political headache for the White House and ruling Democrats.
US food prices rose 1 per cent over the month to February for a 7.9 per cent increase over the year, the largest 12 month rise since 1981, while rent, one of the largest components of the CPI, rose 0.6 per cent in February, the fastest monthly increase in 35 years.
“The Ukraine war will lead the Fed to start its tightening cycle with a conservative 25 bps rate hike in March,” said Kathy Bostjancic, chief US economist for Oxford Economics.
“The war adds further fuel to the blazing rate of inflation via higher energy, food, and core commodity prices that are turbo charged by a worsening in supply chain problems”.
Stripping out volatile food and energy items, the ‘core CPI’ rose 6.4 per cent over the year to February, the fastest pace for that index, since 1982.
The S&P500, the benchmark US stock index, fell in New York trading day on Thursday (Friday AEDT), while the yield on 10 year US government bonds briefly rose above 2 per cent for the first time since late February.
“There will be costs at home as we impose crippling sanctions in response to Putin’s unprovoked war, but Americans can know this: the costs we are imposing on Putin and his cronies are far more devastating than the costs we are facing,” Mr Biden said.
The February figures exclude the sharp rise in the global oil price in March to the highest level since 2008, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the consequent international sanctions on Russia triggered a global scramble to shore up energy supplies, which will all but ensure inflation bursts through 8 per cent next month.
“The most recent post-invasion surge in agricultural crop prices means food prices are headed even higher in the near term,” said Paul Ashworth, chief US economist for Capital Economics.
“There were also signs of a post-Omicron surge, with hotel room rates rebounding by 2.2 per cent, airfares up 5.2 per cent and personal care prices up 1.2 per cent, the latter being the biggest monthly gain in that category on record”.
Economists expect the Federal Reserve to lift its official interest rate by 1.75 percentage points this year in total or as many as seven times (in 0.25 increments), which would be the quickest series interest rate increases since the mid 2000s.
“I do think it’s going to be appropriate for us to proceed along the lines we had in mind before the Ukraine invasion happened,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told a congressional hearing last week, playing down expectations the Fed would increase by 0.5 percentage points.
“In this very sensitive time at the moment, it’s important for us to be careful in the way we conduct policy simply because things are so uncertain and we don’t want to add to that uncertainty”
Separately, the European Central Bank, battling inflation of 5.1 per cent in the euro area over the year to January, announced an end to its bond buying program in the third quarter of the year, which will follow an end to the Federal Reserve’s equivalent program expected this month.
Inflation has increased sharply through the developed world, rising 5.5 per cent in the UK over the 12 months to January and 3.5 per cent in Australia throughout 2021, for instance.
Annual inflation in Russia accelerated to 9 per cent in late February, ahead of an expected surge in coming months following the collapse in the value of the rouble, which will see import prices soar.
********************************************************
Ukraine’s ‘disposable’ men
Bettina Arndt
The tragic video of the Ukrainian father breaking down when saying goodbye to his family was heart-wrenching. But even as it attracted attention across the world, no one seemed to be asking the obvious question:
How come the life of this young father is considered expendable whilst most fit, capable Ukrainian women are being hastily shipped off, out of harm’s way?
Where is feminism’s demand for the equal treatment of women when every male aged 18 to 60 are being forced to stay and ‘defend his country’?
One lone male voice on TikTok dared to call out the feminist silence. He attracted a wave of criticism and his video was removed. TikTok user @notpoliticalspeaking had the temerity to point out that the reported 32,000 women in the Ukrainian military weren’t all that many given that – according to his estimation – the country has 17 million women of age.
Social media ran hot with dozens of articles claiming the TikTok-er was being ‘called out for his ignorance and misogyny’. People piled on with comments pointing out how many courageous women were now enlisting, showing photographs of women soldiers and grandmothers with machine guns.
None of this refuted the point the TikTok-er was making. It is revealing that there has been so little intelligent commentary on the way the Ukraine crisis is exposing the glaring hypocrisy of feminism today, where feminists talk about equality but happily exploit old-fashioned chivalry, which demands only men are disposable in war.
‘Women are too valuable to be in combat,’ said Caspar Weinberger, when he was the US Secretary of Defence. It was said back in the 1980s at a time when military leaders were allowed to say such things. Now, feminists muzzle these comments and demand women have access to front-line combat roles – yet they sit in silence as Ukraine forces their entire adult male population to defend their country while the valuable women are safeguarded.
Traditionally, this has been justified using the evolutionary argument – that is, the size of the next generation is constrained by the number of fertile females. A species can tolerate the loss of males more easily than the loss of females.
No one dares point out that this reasoning hardly applies to all those forty-something single women past childbearing age that we watched scrambling to get on crowded trains leaving Ukraine.
The other arguments for offering women special protection don’t hold water anymore. The active role played by women in the military puts paid to traditional arguments about women’s lack of strength. Gender-based strength for civilian fighters is irrelevant when facing most modern weaponry.
Let’s face it – whilst no one would quarrel with the need to protect children and arguably their mothers, the view of women as a protected class is simply a legacy of traditional, chivalrous thinking which is far too useful for feminists to discard. So they have their cake and eat it, taking every possible opportunity to pretend that this isn’t all about exploiting men by claiming women suffer too – perhaps even more than men.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/ukraines-disposable-men/
*************************************************DuckDuckGo Bows to Authoritarians, Begins Censoring Search Engine Results to ‘Fight Disinformation’
Arguably the world’s most popular private search engine, DuckDuckGo, has long been a haven for those who do not want to participate in Google’s censorship, manipulation, and tracking. In 2008, Gabriel Weinberg stared this mission with an emphasis on protecting searchers’ privacy and avoiding the filter bubble of personalized search results that comes with all things Google.
Since its inception, the pro-privacy and anti-tracking business model has propelled the company from just a couple hundred thousand searches a month to over 100,000,000 searches every day. Their growth has been nearly exponential. But that all may be changing now.
This week, Weinberg, took everything his organization had been working on for years, and flushed it down the toilet with a single tweet.
Like so many others I am sickened by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the gigantic humanitarian crisis it continues to create. We’ve been rolling out search updates that down-rank sites associated with Russian disinformation.
While this may seem like a noble gesture, as the Russian invasion of Ukraine is an unlawful and horrific invasion, the idea of a search engine which prides itself as anti-censorship and pro-privacy turning to the dark side and hiding information from its users, is not appealing to those who actually stand by these principles.
Moreover, who gets to decide what exactly constitutes “disinformation”? In his thread, in which he engaged with several users, Weinberg said nothing of transparency. Nor did he elaborate on what is and what isn’t disinformation or who would be telling DuckDuckGo what to censor.
If anything, the last two years, and especially the last three weeks, have shown us that today’s disinformation is the next days reality and vice versa. So many stories have been called disinformation only to be proven true months later while at the same time, overt disinformation has been presented as fact only to be proven false down the road.
Case in point: Snake Island and the Ghost of Kyiv. The Ghost of Kyiv story was an inspiring tale of a single Ukrainian fighter pilot who took out multiple Russian aircraft. It was pushed by the president and multiple officials from Ukraine. The only thing was, it was fake, or rather “disinformation” as Weinberg would say.
As the NY Times reported, while there are reports of some Russian planes that were destroyed in combat, there is no information linking them to a single Ukrainian pilot. One of the first videos that went viral, which was included in the montage shared by the official Ukraine Twitter account, was a computer rendering from a combat flight simulator originally uploaded by a YouTube user with just 3,000 subscribers. And a photo supposedly confirming the fighter’s existence, shared by a former president of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, was from a 2019 Twitter post by the Ukrainian defense ministry.
“Ukraine is involved in pretty classic propaganda,” said Laura Edelson, a computer scientist studying misinformation at New York University. “They are telling stories that support their narrative. Sometimes false information is making its way in there, too, and more of it is getting through because of the overall environment.”
Even Snopes, who loves to spin “fact checks” to paint their political enemies in a negative light, was forced to report on this incident. However, in true Snopes fashion, they refused to label it “false” and instead claimed that the video — that was a computer simulation and put out by the Ukrainian government to intentionally deceive — was merely “miscaptioned.”
There was also the story of Snake Island, in which President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine personally announced the deaths of soldiers allegedly killed by Russian troops, only to announce later that no such attack happened and all the men who were “killed,” were actually alive.
Make no mistake, Russia is also involved in a heavy propaganda campaign. They have been caught lying about Ukrainians bombing hospitals and indiscriminately killing civilians. They have also been caught stoking multiple fears of “false flags” which never happened and were used as a pretext to invade Ukraine.
Misinformation and disinformation have long been tools in both starting and during conflicts. Americans should know this the most as we’ve been led in to multiple wars based on lies started by politicians and echoed by mainstream media.
Remember Iraqi troops throwing babies on the ground — a premise to justify the beginning of the Gulf War — which never actually happened? What about weapons of mass destruction, the Gulf to Tonkin, or Bashar al-Assad gassing his own people? This disinformation led to the suffering and deaths of millions of innocent people and the folks who spread it are the main voices behind a new era of censorship.
Unfortunately, many folks don’t care that they are being lied to, in fact, they want it.
“Why can’t we just let people believe some things?” one Twitter user replied in the Ghost of Kyiv thread, receiving hundreds of likes. “If the Russians believe it, it brings fear. If the Ukrainians believe it, it gives them hope.”
Even the NY Times weighed in an said Ukraine needs these lies to “keep morale high among the fighters and marshal global support for their cause.”
While morale is certainly important to keeping troops engaged in the battle, what happens when the truth comes out? What happens to morale when thousands of “troops,” including yours truly, invade a country or carry out an act based on disinformation only to find out later you were lied to? It devastates you, that’s what happens.
So, while Weinberg may think he is on the righteous path by limiting search results which favor a particular side in this conflict, this will only lead to more ignorance, more close-mindedness, and more suffering.
Censorship never has and never will be used by anyone other than authoritarian regimes. It has never worked and never will work to create anything but ignorance and faith in tyrants. It reflects society’s lack of confidence in itself and is but a stepping stone on the path to totalitarianism.
As the famous German poet, Heinrich Heine reminds us, “Where they have burned books, they will end in burning human beings.”
****************************************************
Russia devises plan to seize firms abandoned in foreigner exodus
In the first explicit response to the exodus of foreign businesses from Ikea to McDonald’s Corp., the Economy Ministry has outlined new policies to take temporary control of departing companies where foreign ownership exceeds 25%.
Under the proposals, a Moscow court would consider requests from board members and others to bring in external managers. The court could then freeze shares of foreign-owned companies as part of an effort to preserve property and employees.
External management could include state development bank VEB.RF, according to a ministry statement. Owners would have five days to resume activity or resort to other options such as selling their stake.
“The Russian government is already working on measures that include bankruptcy and nationalization of the property” of foreign companies forced into exiting, former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said in a statement posted Thursday on the VKontakte social media site.
The list of global brands pulling out of Russia is growing by the day as some of the world’s biggest corporations, from energy to consumer goods and electronics, suspend operations in the country. While sanctions and capital controls are making it harder to conduct business, companies are also concerned about potential backlash over being seen as supporting President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Economy Ministry suggested that its measures would be aimed more at auctioning off assets rather than nationalization. “The project is aimed at encouraging organizations under foreign control not to abandon their activities on the territory of the Russian Federation,” it said.
Some major foreign firms have yet to signal their intentions. Renault SA, the French company that has majority control of AvtoVaz, has remained quiet. Danone SA has suspended investment in Russia but said it will maintain its production and distribution there.
Meanwhile, Citigroup Inc., which has about $9.8 billion of loans, assets and other exposure tied to Russia, has seen efforts to sell its local consumer-banking unit stall. The bank’s commodities-trading desk has also been one of the few to continue to finance existing deals involving natural gas coming from Russia.
The project is aimed at encouraging organizations under foreign control not to abandon their activities
Russia has promised to retaliate for sanctions imposed by the U.S. and other countries, but its response so far has been limited. As part of steps taken to quell capital flight, authorities have imposed a temporary ban on certain foreign-exchange transactions and payments to non-residents from states that joined the international penalties.
Putin also issued an order earlier this week saying Russia would restrict trade in some goods and raw materials in response to sanctions, and that details would follow as to which products would be affected.
Any move to take over foreign-owned firms risks an even bigger standoff. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Wednesday “there would be steps we would take” if Russia seized private assets in companies planning to pull back and exit the country.
‘Mutually Negative’
Tit-for-tat measures that may include the possible arrest of Russian assets abroad would have “mutually negative consequences,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters in Moscow.
Russia should remain an attractive destination for investors from countries that aren’t waging an “economic war” against it, Peskov said. “The market abhors a vacuum,” he said.
China is already in talks with its state-owned firms on any opportunities for potential investments in Russian companies or assets, Bloomberg News reported this week.
For Russia, the exodus of foreign firms threatens further disruptions in supplies of imported goods in an economy already suffering from one of its biggest inflation shocks in decades. Also at risk of losing employment are nearly 3 million Russians who work either for companies based abroad or domestic companies in joint ventures with counterparts overseas.
The Economy Ministry said its proposed measures would apply to businesses whose management, including shareholders, effectively terminated control of activity in violation of Russian laws. Companies whose management left Russia or shifted assets starting Feb. 24 may also be subject to the new rules.
Businesses undergoing external takeovers could be repackaged and then sold at auction after three months, the ministry said. New owners would have to preserve two-thirds of jobs and keep the companies going in Russia for a year. The measures have not yet been approved.
****************************************************
The anti-free speech politicians of Australia
Free speech is not just another one of our freedoms, it is the foundation of freedom that all our other freedoms come from. If we can’t speak freely, then we can’t think freely.
If you have never heard an idea before, then you will not think about it. Unless you read, hear, or see a new idea it will not permeate your thinking and you will not grow from experiencing it – even if you disagree. Such is the power of new information.
It is incredibly easy to police ‘wrongthink’, particularly within certain topics. All that is required is for example to made of a person who says the ‘wrong’ thing. If they experience public and painful consequences, other people quickly learn that they must not make the same mistake. Not only will the rest of society avoid saying the ‘wrong’ thing in public, they stop thinking the ‘wrong’ thing in private.
To ‘protect’ themselves and their friends, they will contribute to the persecution of strangers that say the ‘wrong’ thing – thereby perpetuating a general attack on free speech.
In the remnants of classical education at my British Boarding School, in History class, we were explicitly told by the master that he didn’t care what our opinion was, he wanted us to show him how we could argue between two opposing points of view with academic references to support each argument.
Today, kids are taught one side of an argument but not the other. They are marked down for arguing points of view that oppose the school-approved perspective.
If kids are taught what to say and not to question things or argue opposing points of view publicly, the result is that they stop thinking about opposing points of view privately. Schools are no longer teaching kids how to think, but what to think. This is the fulfilment of the ‘Outcome Based Learning’ philosophy that was introduced to replace classical learning in the Western World after the second world war.
Politics is full of examples where this type of controlled thinking plays out in the adult world. After becoming an Australian Citizen in 2020 and learning about the wonderful history of our country, I proudly became a member of what I thought was the major conservative party in Australia: The Liberal Party.
After time spent dabbling in local politics where I was involved in successfully tackling corruption, I decided to nominate for an internal Liberal Party committee position, as I had become concerned with the direction the party was taking. They had recently rejected the application of Christian groups in South Australia on the basis that Christian values ‘didn’t align’ with the modern Liberal Party’s move away from the values of its inception. I had recently raised my concerns about the party’s moral decline with a serving state Liberal MP in Victoria. When she told me that all the party wanted to do was ‘get back into power’ and they would do anything to achieve it, I was deeply concerned!
Having nominated for the internal committee position, I was contacted by the administrator for the currently serving federal Liberal MP in my electorate. The administrator specifically asked me what I thought of the federal MP’s service. It did not impress me that the MP engaged in self-seeking rather than seeking the best for their community. A brochure had been recently sent around with the MP parading her numerous successes and virtues, while the world lay in tatters around us. At that point, I thought nothing of freely expressing my miss-givings about her. I subsequently realised that this was a polling activity to gauge my level of support for the current Liberal Party leadership…
New committee members were to be elected by vote during a local branch meeting. After the meeting, based on the accepted analysis of ‘first count indicators’ in the Australian preferential voting system, I was guaranteed a place on the committee. The next day – to my shock – the meeting and the vote were both declared invalid. Apparently, there had been some infraction of the meeting rules based on the Party Constitution. I immediately smelled a rat and contacted the Head Office to validate which article of the Constitution had been breached. I received no response. The meeting and vote were rescheduled. Feeling disillusioned, I was persuaded to nominate again.
At the rescheduled meeting, there was a line of ‘new’ people that I had never seen before down one side of the room. They had all nominated for the position. The results of the vote this time were a resounding victory for the newcomers and I barely received a single vote. Clearly, there had been some coordination behind the scenes to make sure I didn’t get on and that these ‘friends’ of the party were successful.
Rather than allow free debate about ideas that might challenge the status quo, the Liberal Party leadership has shown itself to be committed to silencing discussion by penalising those that try to speak freely. Their aversion to free speech is antithetical to the conservative ethos that the Liberal Party was founded on, which is meant to put free speech at paramount importance.
Politicians are supposed to protect free speech at all costs, not tell people what to say.
They should trust that logic and truth are inherently powerful, therefore by simply protecting free speech in the marketplace of ideas, only the genuine truth will be logically consistent enough to survive.
As more young minds are exposed to the infallible logic of truth and allowed to debate, they will demolish any illogical or bad ideas. There is no risk that if we deregulate speech, the bad ideas will grow. History shows us that bad ideas will be displaced – like darkness is displaced by light.
We find ourselves living through trying times, and we need truthful ideas more than ever. If we are to overcome the major challenges that face us, we need more truth – not less – and the liberty to openly discuss our problems.
The last thing we should be doing is silencing people that question or try to articulate opposing arguments. We should be able to learn from these arguments without being threatened. The ability to speak freely with impunity must be protected at all costs. After all, the truth is not threatened by the lie, but the lie is threatened by the truth!
https://www.spectator.com.au/2022/03/the-anti-free-speech-politicians-of-australia/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Friday, March 11, 2022
How Politicized Is the Federal Reserve?
President Biden’s nomination of two progressive economists to key positions at the Federal Reserve has triggered accusations from conservatives and Republicans that the president is trying to politicize the Fed. But it’s too late; the central bank is already deeply politicized.
Congress mandates that the Federal Reserve promote price stability and full employment. Yet even as inflation rages, the Fed’s economists increasingly have been focused on issues such as climate change, race and sex discrimination, and economic inequality. Since 2020 the Fed’s regional banks and Board of Governors have conducted numerous seminars and conferences and published voluminous research papers on these politically charged topics.
Several regional banks have explicitly indicated their partisan commitments. The New York Fed announces on its homepage that it “stands in unity with all those who oppose racism, hate, and violence.” It wishes “to root out the intolerable inequities and injustice grounded in systemic racism that persist in our society” and believes this job won’t be done “until access to health, education, safety, and justice knows no racial or other boundaries.”
What is the source of this mission drift? The answer, I believe, is simple: Many of the key research and analysis positions in the Federal Reserve System are held by left-leaning Democrats.
I recently set out to determine the political affiliation of every Federal Reserve System economist using various state, county and city voter-registration databases. What I found was that in 2021 the overall Democrat-to-Republican ratio was 10.4 to 1. For every Republican economist at the Federal Reserve System, there are more than 10 Democrats. The lack of political diversity is especially pronounced among the economists of the Board of Governors, where the ratio is 48.5 to 1.
**********************************************
Biden’s HHS Pushes ‘Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, Accessibility’ Agenda to Racialize Government
President Joe Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services is creating a “strategic plan” to advance goals for “diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility” in the federal workforce, according to an internal document obtained by The Daily Signal.
The strategic plan at HHS, implemented in response to Biden’s executive order in June 2021, will build on existing diversity initiatives already in line with administration policy.
Because HHS is the largest grant-making agency in the federal government, awarding more dollars than all other agencies combined, its final strategic plan to increase diversity likely will influence who or what entities will be awarded grants in the future.
“We are a very multiethnic country. You cannot make decisions to apply the law differently because of skin color,” Mike Gonzalez, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal when asked to comment on the HHS project. (The Daily Signal is Heritage’s multimedia news organization.)
The HHS diversity plan, like those of other agencies, is supposed to be finalized by March 23. From that point forward, the Department of Health and Human Services must “establish quarterly goals and report annually on goal progress,” the document says.
In late November, the Biden administration followed up on the president’s executive order by giving HHS and other agencies a “road map” to help each craft a strategic plan, reported FCW, a digital publication for federal information technology officials.
Biden’s order included definitions of the terms diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility—as well as “underserved communities”—that are meant to serve as a guide for the entire federal workforce.
The definition of underserved communities is the most verbose, taking in “individuals who belong to communities of color, such as Black and African American, Hispanic and Latino, Native American, Alaska Native and Indigenous, Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, Middle Eastern and North American persons.”
The definition also “includes individuals who belong to communities that face discrimination based on sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity (including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, gender non-conforming, and non-binary (LGBTQ+) persons),” “individuals with limited English proficiency,” “immigrants,” and “individuals who belong to communities that may face employment barriers based on older age or former incarceration.”
Biden’s order says it is possible for individuals to belong to more than one underserved community.
‘A Racist Reorganization’
Xavier Becerra, the former attorney general for California who was tapped by Biden as secretary of health and human services, contributes an introductory message to the document.
In it, Becerra says team members “will work hand-in-hand with each operating division and each staff division engaging members of underserved communities to ensure tight collaboration, partnership, accountability, and ultimately, progress toward our DEIA-related ambitions.”
The goal, Becerra adds, is to “embed DEIA [diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility] into the fabric” of the work done not just at Health and Human Services, but throughout the entire administration.
An HHS spokesperson did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment on its draft strategic plan.
Mike Howell, a senior adviser on government relations at The Heritage Foundation, said he sees a Biden administration effort to reorganize the federal government along racial lines.
“The Biden administration is beholden to the woke agenda,” Howell said in an email to The Daily Signal. “This country has real problems to solve, and instead the Biden administration is focused on a racist reorganization of the federal government not seen since Democrat President Woodrow Wilson resegregated the government.”
“Nothing good comes of this,” he said.
*************************************************
Actor Jussie Smollett sentenced to probation, jail time for staging fake hate crime
Actor Jussie Smollett, one-time cast member of the TV drama Empire, was sentenced in a Chicago court to 30 months probation and 150 days in jail for staging a hate crime against himself.
Smollett, 39, was also ordered to pay $US120,000 ($163,000) in restitution and fined $US25,000 by Cook County Circuit Court Judge James Linn.
Smollett was found guilty by a jury in December of five of the six felony disorderly conduct counts he faced, one for each time he was accused of lying to police.
Prosecutors said Smollett, who is Black and gay, lied to police when he told them he was accosted on a dark Chicago street by two masked strangers in January 2019.
Smollett claimed the attackers threw a noose around his neck and poured chemicals on him while yelling racist and homophobic slurs and expressions of support for former US president Donald Trump.
Police arrested the actor a month later, saying he paid two brothers $US3,500 to stage the attack in an effort to raise his show-business profile.
He eventually pleaded not guilty to six counts of felony disorderly conduct.
His case took an unexpected turn in spring 2019 when the Cook County state's attorney's office dropped a 16-count indictment against him in exchange for Smollett forfeiting his $US10,000 bond without admitting wrongdoing.
The dismissal drew criticism from then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Chicago's police superintendent, who called the reversal a miscarriage of justice.
In 2019, a special prosecutor assigned to the case recommended charging Smollett again and a grand jury returned an indictment.
Smollett's acting career declined after the incident. He lost his role as a singer-songwriter in the final season of Empire, hip-hop drama that ended a five-year run in 2020.
********************************************
Australian police officer Zachary Rolfe found not guilty of murder over fatal shooting of aggressive Aborigine
Northern Territory police officer Zachary Rolfe has been cleared of all charges over the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Kumanjayi Walker during an attempted arrest in the remote community of Yuendumu.
The jury found Constable Rolfe not guilty of murder as well as the two alternative charges of manslaughter and engaging in a violent act causing death.
Constable Rolfe, 30, showed no emotion as the verdict was announced in the NT Supreme Court. Afterwards, he smiled and hugged his defence lawyer.
The jury returned following just under seven hours of deliberations.
Mr Walker was shot three times during a struggle with officers in a home in the community 300 kilometres north-west of Alice Springs in November 2019.
The first shot, which came after Mr Walker stabbed Constable Rolfe in the shoulder with a pair of scissors, was not the subject of any charges.
Constable Rolfe's legal team argued he was acting in defence of himself and his partner and in line with his training and duties.
Constable Rolfe addressed a media scrum outside the court shortly after the verdict was announced. "Obviously I think that was the right decision to make," he said.
"But a lot of people are hurting today — Kumanjayi's family and his community ... and I'm going to leave this space for them."
Constable Rolfe's defence lawyer David Edwardson QC told the waiting media "there are no winners in this case." "A young man died and that's tragic," he said.
"At the same time, Zachary Rolfe, in my view was wrongly charged in the first place. "It was an appalling investigation and very much regretted."
The jury heard almost five weeks of evidence and testimony from more than 40 witnesses before retiring to deliberate at lunchtime on Thursday.
Constable Rolfe had pleaded not guilty to all charges laid over the shooting, which happened just after 7:20pm on Saturday, November 9, 2019.
Police body-worn camera footage played throughout the trial captured the struggle that started less than a minute after Constable Rolfe and his policing partner, Constable Adam Eberl, entered a home in Yuendumu and identified Kumanjayi Walker.
The 19-year-old was wanted by police because of an incident that took place three days prior, when he had confronted two local officers with an axe as they tried to arrest him for breaching a suspended sentence.
Prosecutors agreed the first shot was legally justifiable because it came after Constable Rolfe was stabbed in the shoulder with a pair of scissors and while Mr Walker was on his feet and struggling with Constable Eberl.
But they argued that Mr Walker had been effectively restrained on the ground by Constable Eberl when Constable Rolfe fired his second shot 2.6 seconds after the first and a third shot 0.5 seconds after the second.
The prosecution case was that Constable Rolfe did not have an honest belief that the second and third shots were necessary and therefore was not acting reasonably and in good faith in the performance of his duties.
Constable Rolfe said Mr Walker was not restrained and that he feared for his fellow officer's life when the second and third shots were fired.
He said police training held that officers should fire as many rounds as necessary to "incapacitate" a threat involving an edged weapon.
He rejected the prosecution's suggestion that he lied in his evidence about having seen Mr Walker stabbing Constable Eberl in order to justify his actions.
Mr Walker died around an hour after the shooting, in the Yuendumu police station, where he was given first aid because health clinic staff had been evacuated earlier that day.
Constable Rolfe, who was bailed after he was charged and suspended on full pay, faced the NT's mandatory minimum non-parole period of 20 years if found guilty of murder.
Mr Walker's death and the charge against Constable Rolfe made global headlines and sparked protests against Aboriginal deaths in custody around Australia.
Constable Rolfe was the first NT police officer to face trial over an Aboriginal death in custody since the 1991 royal commission.
In his closing address, Constable Rolfe's defence lawyer said the murder charge, which was laid four days after the shooting, came before a proper investigation was carried out. He described the pursuit of the case by the NT Police executive as a disgrace.
Senior NT police officers, including an assistant commissioner, gave evidence as prosecution witnesses during the trial.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Thursday, March 10, 2022
As Russia Wages War, US Army Trains Officers on Gender Identity
While Russia wages a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. Army is putting its soldiers through training on gender pronouns and coaching officers on when to offer soldiers gender transition surgery, according to an official military presentation on the subject obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
The mandatory presentation, "Policy on the Military Service of Transgender Persons and Persons with Gender Dysphoria," was given to officers earlier this month along with instructions for them to train their subordinates on the material. Portions of the presentation were provided to the Free Beacon by a whistleblower who was ordered to undergo the training as a high-ranking officer in the Army Special Forces.
An Army spokesman confirmed to the Free Beacon that the slides in question are part of "mandatory training" and come from an official program "used to train Army personnel on the recent changes to the DoD and Army transgender service policy." All Army personnel, from soldiers to commanders and supervisors, are required to participate in the training by Sept. 30, 2022, according to the spokesman.
The transgender presentation follows on a June 2021 announcement by the Army altering its policies so that transgender soldiers can openly serve. The shift in policy is part of a larger push by the Biden administration to make the military more welcoming to transgender people. These efforts have prompted pushback from Republicans in Congress and some within the military who view the policy changes as an effort to promote "woke" propaganda within the service. As Russia's invasion of Ukraine threatens to spark a larger conflict, military experts and insiders say they are concerned America's fighting force is prioritizing woke culture over protecting the American people.
"The Army allows transgender soldiers to serve openly," states the presentation, which is tailored for Army commanders and leaders. "An otherwise qualified soldier shall not be involuntarily separated, discharged, or denied reenlistment or continuation of service on the basis of gender identity."
The presentation offers several hypothetical scenarios for how soldiers should be treated if they are transgender or in some stage of transitioning to another gender.
In one situation, a "soldier who was assigned male at birth says he identifies as a female," "lives as a female in his off-duty hours," and "is not requesting to be treated as a female while on duty." In that case, the soldier should be treated with dignity and respect and no further action is required.
If the transgender soldier, however, "later requests to be identified as a female during duty hours and/or experiences increased distress relating to his gender identity," the officer in charge must "inform [the] soldier of the Army's transgender policy and recommend that he sees a military medical provider."
"Gender transition in the Army," the presentation states, "begins when a soldier receives a diagnosis from a military medical provider indicating that gender transition is medically necessary.
********************************************
Biden’s inflation is raging at 7.5 percent because we borrowed and printed more than $6 trillion fighting Covid, not because of the semiconductor shortage
“With all the bright spots in our economy, record job growth, higher wages, too many families are struggling to keep up with their bills. Inflation is robbing them of the gains they thought otherwise they would be able to feel. I get it… One third of all the inflation was because of automobile sales. There were not enough semiconductors to make all the cars people wanted to buy. Prices of automobiles went way up.”
That was President Joe Biden in his first State of the Union Address on March 1, attempting at least to deflect some of the blame for inflation away from the federal government’s unprecedented peacetime spending, borrowing and printing avalanche of more than $6 trillion in response to the Covid pandemic.
That included the $2.2 trillion CARES Act and $900 billion phase four legislation under former President Donald Trump, and the $1.9 trillion stimulus and $550 billion of new infrastructure spending under President Biden.
As a result, the national debt has increased by $6.8 trillion to $30 trillion, of which the Fed monetized half, or $3.4 trillion, by increasing its share of U.S. treasuries to a record $5.7 trillion.
Overall, the M2 money supply has increased by $6.3 trillion to $21.6 trillion, a whopping 29 percent increase. Almost every new dollar of debt was paid for by printing it.
What more is needed to explain the current bout of inflation?
As for the semiconductor shortage, that appears to have also been caused by Covid. According to research by McKinsey & Company for the World Economic Forum, published Feb. 9, 2022: “automakers cut their chip orders in early 2020 as vehicle sales plummeted. When demand recovered faster than anticipated in the second half of 2020, the semiconductor industry had already shifted production lines to meet demand for other applications.” Since then, semiconductor producers have been struggling to catch up to demand as Biden touted Intel’s new semiconductor plant being built in Ohio.
Similar glut was caused in the petroleum supply chain in 2020, when prices collapsed to zero briefly — causing oil production to slow down significantly — only to rebound two years later to more than $100 per barrel as the global economy continues reopening from Covid. Now, war in Europe threatens to send the price even higher, but it’s already very high.
Even here, Biden only offered to release barrels from the strategic petroleum reserve. Let them eat cake, indeed. Nowhere did he call for unlocking America’s energy stores by increasing drilling for oil and gas with the same zeal as the semiconductor pitch.
Increased oil and gas production would not only help bring part of the inflation down, and it would help to shore up supplies in Europe, which is currently dominated by Russian energy dependence.
Yes, Covid locked down the global economy, causing supply disruptions of all kinds, and governments all over the world intervened financially — by far the most spending in history — so that there would be businesses left to return to when the worst was over.
Now, of the more than 25 million jobs that were lost to Covid by April 2020 in the U.S., 23.8 million have been recovered. More than 16 million of those were recovered in 2020, before President Biden had even been sworn into office. The economy was already rapidly recovering.
And now thanks to the trillions of dollars of spending, borrowing and printing, a year later, the economy is unsurprisingly overheating. It is literally Milton Friedman’s “too much money chasing too few goods”.
In just the past two months, nearly 1 million jobs have been created in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ establishment survey in Dec. and Jan. 2022 combined — and at 4 percent unemployment, labor markets are at or near peak employment.
2021 came in at 5.7 percent Gross Domestic Product growth in 2021, and that was with adjusting for inflation. Without adjusting for inflation, nominally, it grew at a little more than 10 percent. That is the greatest adjustment for inflation in the GDP since 1982, which was one of the most massive recessions in modern American history.
Almost on cue, the Atlanta Federal Reserve’s GDPNow is currently projecting 0 percent economic growth in the first quarter of 2022. Elsewhere, the spread between 10-year treasuries and 2-year treasuries is nearly inverted, a key recession predictor. Suffice to say, the warning lights for the economy are flashing red.
Finally, speaking to Americans’ pocket books, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Feb. 10, real average hourly earnings decreased 1.7 percent from Jan. 2021 to Jan. 2022.
But Biden doesn’t get it. Covid lockdowns caused the supply crisis by crushing demand and slowing production in 2020. Covid caused governments to respond with the torrent of spending, borrowing and money printing to offset the drop in output. Now, even after Covid, Biden still wants parts of his $3 trillion Build Back Better spending bill passed by Congress.
Biden’s State of the Union was an opportunity to level with the American people. If he had explained the situation honestly, and promised to slow down spending and increase American energy production, it could have been an historic pivot that might have saved his Congressional majorities in November.
Biden is right when says inflation is robbing the American people blind. And in 2022, they’re going to have something to say about it.
*******************************************
BP set for $35b hit as it exits Russia’s oil giant Rosneft over Ukraine invasion
BP said it plans to abandon its 19.75 per cent stake in oil giant Rosneft in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, marking an abrupt and costly end to its at times fraught 30 years operating in the oil-rich country.
The British oil and gas giant did not say how it planned to exit its stake, which it said would result in charges of up to $US25 billion ($35 billion) at the end of the first quarter. Rosneft accounts for around half of BP’s oil and gas reserves and a third of its production.
“I have been deeply shocked and saddened by the situation unfolding in Ukraine and my heart goes out to everyone affected. It has caused us to fundamentally rethink BP’s position with Rosneft,” BP Chief Executive Bernard Looney said.
The move represents the boldest step yet by a Western oil company with exposure to Russia amid an escalating crisis between the West and Moscow.
BP said the move and financial hit will not impact its short and long term financial targets as part of its strategy to shift away from oil and gas to low-carbon fuels and renewables energy.
Looney and his predecessor as CEO Bob Dudley will both step down from the board of Rosneft, which BP acquired a shareholding in as part of its $US12.5 billion TNK-BP stake sale in 2013.
British Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng, who on Friday expressed “concern” over BP’s stake in Rosneft in a call with Looney, said on Twitter that he welcomed the decision.
“Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine must be a wake up call for British businesses with commercial interests in (Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s Russia,” he said.
As a stake, BP received revenue from Rosneft in the form of dividends which totalled around $US640 million in 2021, roughly 3 per cent of BP’s cash flow from operations.
****************************************************
South Korea Elects Yoon as New President in Hawkish Turn
Former top prosecutor Yoon Suk-yeol won election as South Korea’s president, returning the conservative opposition to power after five years and signaling a hawkish turn in the country’s relations with China and North Korea.
Yoon, 61, who had never before sought elected office, defeated former Gyeonggi Governor Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party in one of the closest presidential races in the country’s history. Yoon will succeed Moon Jae-in, who had been Yoon’s boss until they had a falling out over investigations into close associates of the president.
“The race is over and now we need to be united as one for the sake of the people and the country,” Yoon told supporters and party officials Thursday morning. He planned to have a formal speech later in the day, his People Power Party said.
Lee earlier conceded defeat and congratulated Yoon on his win. “All responsibility rests solely with me” on the loss, Lee said.
Yoon had 48.6% of the votes, compared with Lee’s 47.8% with 99% of the votes counted. The new leader will take office May 10. He’ll face a parliament where Moon’s party retains a supermajority, virtually ensuring gridlock on many domestic issues.
Yoon is a former prosecutor general and a familiar face in South Korea politics, but a foreign-policy novice. He was handpicked by Moon in 2019 with a mandate to make good on the president’s pledges to go after the most powerful. But ties soured after Yoon’s probes included members of the current government and led to the resignations of two of Moon’s justice ministers.
Yoon’s win would return an advocate of a stronger defense to the presidential Blue House, likely leading to a closer embrace of South Korea’s military alliance with the U.S. and support for the Biden administration’s push to bring in allies to build supply chains for crucial materials such as semiconductors that aren’t dependent on China.
It could also mean a chill for relations with neighbors North Korea and China after Yoon said he backed the option of a preemptive strike if Pyongyang posed an immediate threat and called for a new deployment of a U.S.-made missile interceptor system known as THAAD. China banned sales of group tour packages and appearances of Korean celebrities on television shows in retaliation for Seoul’s deployment of the U.S.-led missile shield system about six years ago, despite Beijing’s objection.
With a conservative president, “the expectation is that we will see South Korea be more unequivocal toward the alliance,” said Soo Kim, a policy analyst at Rand Corp. who previously worked at the Central Intelligence Agency. “I don’t think this resetting of South Korean foreign policy is going to happen overnight,” she told Bloomberg Television.
*******************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Wednesday, March 09, 2022
The Biden disaster
James Allan (Allan is a Canadian lawyer living in Australia)
If you were asked to pick the political decision that has done the most to further Mr Putin’s strategic position, to make it easiest for him to launch an invasion of the Ukraine and put Western interests up against it, I think you’d be hard-pressed to come up with anything better than ‘stopping domestic gas and oil production, especially fracking’. When Donald Trump left office the US was energy self-sufficient. It was exporting oil and gas. This was keeping prices low and affecting for the worse the oil kleptocracies around the world. Joe Biden came in and effectively cancelled the Keystone pipeline by revoking a cross-border presidential permit. He ended various fracking licences. He reversed course on Mr Trump’s widespread permissions to explore for gas and oil on federal land. All up he ensured that the US went from energy self-sufficiency back to big time importer. Why? Woke ideology.
Who was the biggest winner of all that? Maybe the Saudis. But probably even more so the Russians, now the world’s third-biggest oil producing country. In fact the US now imports Russian oil. As strategic decisions go this one by Biden was one of the stupidest of all time; it dealt in form over substance since basically the same amount of oil and gas would be burned in the US, it would just be extracted elsewhere, in unpleasant regimes out of sight. The science writer Matt Ridley warned how stupid it was and how much it would benefit Mr Putin. But Joe and the radical Left of the Democratic party to whom he seems to be in thrall thought it was better not to dirty their own hands with American gas and oil. Presumably they figured it was alright if they extract the stuff somewhere outside the US because, well, someone else did it, not us. If that type of thinking isn’t the most superficial, steeped in virtue-signalling thinking going, what is?
Of course there’s plenty of that sort of ‘form over substance’ thinking here in Australia. Say, mining coal but not burning it here. Or take this other example, the cross-party acceptance that it’s OK to send Australian uranium abroad but not to use it for nuclear power at home. Since arriving here seventeen years ago I’ve been baffled by that one. My bafflement goes up a few orders of magnitude when this ‘not in my patch’ attitude comes from those (unlike me, I hasten to add) who think the planet is on course to fry and dry itself in the next few years. Given their first principles you might be tempted to think nuclear power was a no-brainer for them. Resist that temptation. I grew up in Toronto which back in the late 1960s had a big nuclear power plant just outside the city. It’s still there, still producing masses more electricity than your Don Quixote windmills and Chinese-made solar panels. Indeed, you can see that nuclear power plant as you drive on highway 401 east out of Toronto, a city larger than Sydney. That said, I suppose the idea of nuclear energy might be really, super scary to those who allowed themselves to become terrified out of their wits by a virus with an infection fatality rate of well under 0.3 per cent across the board (and for the fit and young, a chance of death down there with being hit by lightning). How are we going to fight wars involving real risks of death when we’ve made a zero-risk precautionary principle our society’s guiding light? Seriously, we’re screwed if we keep this up. Life involves risks and a well-lived life does not cower in the closet waiting for Big Government to make zero-risk everything the sine qua non of being a citizen. Down that path lies pathetic servitude.
Still, that sort of ‘form over substance’ decision-making seems to be the Joe Biden way. Last week’s poll by Harvard-Harris found that 62 per cent of Americans believed Putin would not have invaded the Ukraine had Donald Trump been President. Even 38 per cent of Democrats believed that. Mr Putin had four years to invade if he thought (and as the totally bogus and every day more illegal-looking Russian collusion allegations, pushed by the Hillary Clinton people and deep state types, tried to suggest) that Trump was a patsy in the Russians’ back pocket. In fact, the last time Putin invaded (Crimea) was when Obama was President.
Let’s be honest. The woke, quota-driven, obsessed-with-race policies of Team Biden have been disastrous. Joe Biden right now is on course to be the worst President anyone can name. Inflation is at 7.5 per cent per annum, the highest in almost half a century. Biden only won the last election because of Covid and his claim he’d handle it better (together with the über-loose voting rules brought in by state courts and governors to cater for those who might not want to go to the voting booth, which was fortuitous you might say for Joe).
Yet Biden’s year in office has a worse death rate from Covid than Trump’s year – and for most of the latter’s time there was no vaccine. Biden implemented the withdrawal from Afghanistan in the most incompetent way ever, leaving billions in military hardware behind and a fair few Americans too. Serious crime is way, way up. Sure, that’s largely a state matter but Biden genuflected at the altar of Black Lives Matter who want to defund the police and eliminate the nuclear family. Defunding the police, as one might suppose, has been a disaster. And I mean for poor blacks more than anyone it’s been disastrous.
Which takes us to the Ukraine. Team Biden said sanctions were a deterrent, then that they weren’t. He looked and was weak. And you know what? Three years of the Democrats’ Russian collusion scam made it near on impossible for former President Trump, and then Biden, to deal with the Russian leader. Putin’s invasion was brutal, stupid and counter-productive. But the Russians have some legitimate gripes in my view. After the Cold War, Americans promised Gorbachev they would not expand Nato if he’d let the Wall come down. They did anyway. President Obama helped bring down a democratically elected pro-Russia government in the Ukraine a decade ago. And from Putin’s point of view it’s hard to see why the Americans, without the sanction of international law, can bomb Serbia relentlessly to let part of the country (Kosovo) break away but Russia can’t act militarily to let part of the Ukraine break away.
None of this comes close to warranting what Putin did. And he may well lose simply because the Ukrainians are being such tenacious fighters. (Would we fight like them?) I’m with the Ukrainians. But hypocrisy matters in the game of international affairs. So does weakness.
And so does a woke, virtue-signalling incompetent. Joe Biden, the man whose first instinct when war broke out was to offer the Ukrainian leader a flight to safety.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/wokeness-in-action
******************************************Leftist pressure on Hungary from the EU
Budapest is racked with tension. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends a stream of refugees to Hungary’s eastern border, Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party has scrambled to respond to the humanitarian crisis while turning his back on his previous pragmatic relationship with Moscow.
Fidesz’s unequivocal condemnation of Vladimir Putin’s actions will have come as a relief to Brussels. But a bitter argument still rages over Hungary’s opposition to the bloc’s new ‘rule of law’ budget mechanism, which allows EU funds to be made dependent on adherence to legal and democratic norms.
When the European Court of Justice rejected a challenge to the mechanism from Hungary and Poland on February 16, Hungary’s struggle with the bloc ratcheted up a notch. The dispute is key to Fidesz’s stance for Hungarian national sovereignty within the EU, and it is almost certain that the government won’t back down with crunch elections approaching on April 3.
When I meet Hungarian Justice Minister Judit Varga – who has been leading the country’s rule of law struggle – in Budapest, while on a press trip organised by the Hungarian government, she’s quick to stress the significance of the latest ECJ ruling.
‘This was a political judgement, meaning the ECJ has become a political actor,’ she said. ‘We already knew the European Commission is political, and the European parliament is, by definition, a political body, always pressuring for funding to be linked to political requirements. Unfortunately, the Court has now approved these attempts.’
The EU says its rule of law mechanism is intended to prevent the misuse of EU funds by corrupt or undemocratic governments. This is something of an irony considering the warm reception given to Ukraine’s urgent request for EU membership – last year, Transparency International found Ukraine to be only marginally less corrupt than Russia itself.
Varga points out as well the subjectivity the EU has when distinguishing between the rule of law in different member states – a subtlety which Brussels seems happy to ignore.
‘The “rule of law” has no exact definition. Every country is different. As an example: in Hungary, the Justice Minister has no structural influence over the functioning of the judiciary. In other EU states, the Justice Minister stands above the judiciary. In some, like Germany, the Justice Minister can even instruct the public prosecutor. So which state is better for the rule of law: Germany, or Hungary? It’s impossible to say: “you are the good guy, you are the bad guy,” because there are so many elements in which we differ from each other.’
Varga notes that by doing away with the need for unanimity to sanction a member state under Article 7 of the Treaty on European Union, the rule of law mechanism is ‘a tool giving free rein to political pressure.’ But pressure against what? The European Commission insists its problems with Hungary relate to corruption, while Varga is unequivocal in describing the mechanism as a weapon in the culture wars.
She relates how the EU’s attitude on disbursing funds to Hungary changed when the Child Protection Act, a law widely characterised as homophobic, was introduced in June last year.
‘Until that time, we had very good negotiations on the pandemic recovery fund – Ursula von der Leyen was even about to ask for an appointment to come to Budapest to shake hands. Then we adopted the Child Protection Act – and she described it as a shameful act, without even asking me, the Justice Minister, to provide her with the text.’
‘We saw unprecedented outrage from people who had not even read the law, calling us a homophobic government. But there is no discrimination in the law. There is simply a statement that education must be free of any kind of lobbying, for any kind of sexuality. There is a progressive liberal trend to normalise LGBT lobbying in schools, already common in western Europe – we just don’t want this to happen here.’
Couldn’t it be argued that through such interventions Fidesz is equally guilty of trying to regulate Hungary’s culture? ‘Not regulate: preserve. Just preserve,’ says Varga. ‘Unfortunately, the world is so crazy now that you must declare self-evident things at a constitutional level and protect them. Like saying that a marriage is between a man and a woman. This has been our reality for many centuries, and we would like to preserve this. We are not against anyone; we would just like to keep ourselves and our culture as they were before. But this is now a sin in the eyes of the political mainstream in Europe.’
Indeed, Fidesz has been surprised at the readiness of the EU’s traditional conservative forces – notably the European People’s Party, of which Fidesz was a member until last year – to cave in when confronted with the liberal mainstream. ‘This is why we’re sad that the UK left the European Union, as it was a big ally in these sovereignty fights,’ says Varga. ‘The EU’s motto is “United in Diversity”, but it’s pushing only for unity and forgetting all about diversity. If we lose our own cultural identity, we’ll become a mass of unidentified individuals, and only profits and supranational interests will prevail.’
Varga argues the bloc’s true intentions with the rule of law mechanism were revealed when EU Commissioner for Equality Helena Dalli declared in November 2020 that it would be a way to ‘bring a member state in line’ on cultural issues. As such, Varga is sceptical about whether answering EU requests for a stronger anti-corruption framework would really make the problems go away.
‘To think so would be too naïve,’ she says with a rueful smile. ‘As long as we have a national conservative government which puts the Hungarian people first, there will always be a problem with us. This is political blackmail – it’s a witch hunt.’
Behind the scenes, she says, are international NGOs who hate the Orbán regime. ‘Brussels is outsourcing rule of law issues and political debates to international NGOs. In blackmailing a country, it refers to “rule of law reports” with distorted information mostly compiled by NGOs.’
‘But who elected these NGOs? If you want to determine, influence or answer people’s needs, you should form a political party. There are very strict rules to form a party; stricter rules than for forming an NGO. We shouldn’t mix up these two things.’
Budapest’s struggle with Brussels calls into question the institutional modus operandi underpinning the entire European project. Although the Ukraine crisis has resulted in temporary EU unity, could Hungary’s struggle for sovereignty eventually lead to a ‘Huxit’ from the bloc?
‘No. There’s no agenda from the Hungarian government to leave the EU. We are fighting for what we joined. The original concept was to have a cooperation where every member state can keep their own identity but share some competences so that we can be more successful together. Unfortunately, the notion of ever-closer union, which was the problem for Britain, is now interfering in domains which touch upon the very heart of the nation: cultural identify, the family concept, and migration.’
For Varga, it’s the relative weakness of governments in other EU countries – many of them unwieldy coalitions – which stops them standing up to this pernicious encroachment on national sovereignty. ‘For the sake of short-term political gains, they give up on their principles.’ They cannot ‘name things for what they are’ on cultural issues, for fear of angering domestic political partners. ‘They learned how to be politically correct, which is, I think, the biggest mistake of European politics.’
It’s this difference in attitudes which has made the Hungarian elections so significant on the international stage. Varga cites an emotional wave of support from conservatives across the EU for Fidesz’s stance.
‘It’s a patriotic fight. It’s defending your country. It unites us. It’s very misguided for EU institutions to think that such interventions help the Hungarian opposition. But liberals truly believe that what they are doing is good for humanity.’ Does their unshakeable faith mean Hungary and the EU could be engaged in a culture war without end? ‘Yes. These critics just cannot swallow the fact that the views of most Hungarian citizens are not in line with their dreams.’
A protracted ideological struggle and the risk of losing EU funds are risks which Fidesz is willing to take for the sake of traditional family culture and national sovereignty – which for Varga are inseparable concepts.
‘It’s in the interests of those who believe in a federalist union to demolish the nation. How do you demolish the nation? You destroy the bricks making up the nation; and these building bricks are families. If you relativise the concept of family – if you disperse, dissolve, make ridiculous, the traditional family concept – you are attacking the very heart of the nation. Growing up in a family, we know who we are, and where we belong. We will always protect this kind of national identity.’
********************************************
Controversial Cop NOT GUILTY – Protest Follows
One controversial cop, out of the three who kicked in Breonna Taylor’s door, was declared NOT GUILTY of felony wanton endangerment. It didn’t take long after the jury acquitted Officer Brett Hankison before Black Lives Matter protesters took to the streets in anger.
Cop doing his duty
The jury dared to side with former Louisville Metro Police Department detective Brett Hankison. On Thursday, March 3, they acquitted the veteran cop of the three wanton endangerment felony charges he faced after firing blindly through Ms. Taylor’s apartment.
By nightfall, “dozens of protesters took to the streets. A lot of us, honestly, were feeling certain when they came back so quick that we would have a guilty verdict,” said Cheyenne Osuala, a local protester. They were wrong.
That, local BLM supporters say, “wasn’t the verdict those at Jefferson Square wanted to hear.” Everyone agrees the raid was a botched mess. The cop, cleared by a jury, claimed, all along, that he “acted to defend his fellow officers.” Twelve of his peers agreed.
Nobody disputes he fired rounds “through Taylor’s window and sliding glass door that went into a neighboring apartment where three people were present.” That’s life in the big city.
Defense attorney Stewart Mathews continues to insist he was an ordinary cop doing his thankless job. “Justice was done. The verdict was proper and we are thrilled.”
They bypassed the press on the way out the door. Even the stunned prosecutors “said they respected the verdict.” Not like they have a choice. They lost and weren’t about to say another word about it.
https://patriotunitednews.com/controversial-cop-not-guilty-protest-follows/
********************************************This Russian metals giant might be too big to sanction
From its base at a former Arctic gulag, Russia’s MMC Norilsk Nickel digs up a large portion of two metals that are essential to greener transport and computer chips.
So far the US and its allies haven’t sanctioned the company, or its oligarch chief executive, underscoring the dilemma some analysts say governments face in seeking to punish Russia without hurting their own access to key commodities.
The mining company is responsible for about 5 per cent of the world’s annual production of nickel, a key component of electric-vehicle batteries, and some 40 per cent of its palladium, which goes into catalytic converters and semiconductors. Nornickel, as the company is known, also supplies energy transition metals such as cobalt and copper.
The price of those metals has jumped since Russia invaded Ukraine amid concerns that Western sanctions or logistical difficulties stemming from the conflict could choke supplies. On Friday, nickel traded at its highest level for a decade, and is up 37 per cent so far this year. Palladium is up around 57 per cent year to date.
Despite the rally in metals prices, Nornickel’s share price — like that of other Russian commodity companies — has dropped, and is down 17 per cent so far this year. The fall is likely to be more severe, given trading in Moscow-listed stocks was suspended several days ago as they began to plummet. On Saturday, Fitch Ratings downgraded Nornickel’s debt to junk, reflecting the tougher environment in Russia and weakened financial flexibility of its commodity companies.
Several Western companies say they are looking to diversify their supply away from Nornickel. That mirrors a trend across several commodities, including oil and steel, as Western buyers steer clear of Russian suppliers amid concerns they could be hit by sanctions or simply have problems getting products out of the country.
A spokesman for Nornickel said the miner is committed to fulfilling its obligations to customers, partners and employees. Chie Executive Vladimir Potanin, who also holds a 31 per cent stake in the company, declined to be interviewed.
Western sanctions in response to the current conflict have so far largely avoided companies that provide the West with oil, gas and other key commodities.
Few companies are as pivotal in large commodity markets as Nornickel, particularly for palladium.
“If we have sanctions and we can’t access that palladium, you have to expect disruption globally,” said Gabriele Randlshofer, managing director of the International Platinum Group Metals Association, a trade group whose members include buyers and suppliers of palladium.
“At the moment all companies are looking at [who supplies them], they have to,” she said.
Among the companies looking for alternative supplies of nickel is Outokumpu, one of the world’s largest stainless steel manufacturers. The Finnish company said around 6 per cent to 7 per cent of its nickel comes from Nornickel, with the rest coming from recycled steel. “Given the situation in Ukraine, we are looking for alternatives for Russian supply for nickel,” a spokeswoman said.
Germany’s BASF, meanwhile, said it would fulfil existing contracts with Nornickel but not pursue any new business with the Russian company. The chemicals giant described Nornickel as an important supplier of nickel and cobalt for its production of cathode materials as well as a source of palladium and platinum.
On Friday, British steel executive Peter Davies received an email from a Polish steel mill he is invested in, saying that they were unable to buy nickel amid problems related to the conflict in Ukraine.
“Expect an earthquake in [the] steel industry,” the mill said, according to a copy of that email.
Reverberations are being felt across industries that have typically relied on Russian commodities. Refiners have baulked at buying Russian oil, according to traders and oil executives. Swedish refiner Preem and Finland’s Neste, for instance, say they have halted purchases of Russian oil and plan to replace it with crude from Northern Europe.
Severstal, one of Russia’s largest steel companies, struggled to sell its steel as soon as Moscow’s forces crossed into Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the matter, who said would-be buyers were concerned about possible sanctions. In Severstal’s case they did come, with the European Union sanctioning its majority owner Alexey Mordashov on Monday.
The market prices for metals Nornickel produces reflect similar concerns, analysts say.
“It’s helping to make the markets twitchy, everyone is looking at it and saying if we are taking out (Nornickel’s) nickel from the market that is significant,” said Andrew Mitchell, director of nickel research at energy consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
Nornickel’s production is important, analysts say, because demand for nickel is forecast to grow strongly amid the growing popularity of electric vehicles. Nickel had the biggest supply deficit of any base metal last year relative to market size, at about 6 per cent, according to analysts at BMO.
Nornickel is run by CEO Mr Potanin, a former Russian deputy prime minister under Boris Yeltsin who helped forge the privatisation deals that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union and put much of the country’s vast commodity wealth in the hands of a group of businessmen now dubbed oligarchs. More recently, Mr Potanin was key to bringing the 2014 Winter Olympics to Russia, an idea which followed a ski trip to Austria with Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported.
Nornickel counts two other well-known oligarchs as investors. The company said that Roman Abramovich owns around 2 per cent of its shares. United Co. Rusal International, which is part-owned by Oleg Deripaska, holds a 26.25 per cent stake.
The company mines in one of the world’s most northern cities, Norilsk — a former penal colony.
Norilsk has also gained a reputation as being one of the planet’s dirtiest cities because of pollution related to mining and refineries. In 2020, almost 45 tons of jet fuel leaked into the ground from a pipeline owned by Nornickel. That followed a spill of 20,000 tons of diesel from a holding tank at one of its other installations the same year.
The area also provides the company with some of the world’s best mineral deposits, which are mined up to 5,000 feet below the permafrost.
“It is still probably the greatest ore body in the world,” said Mr. Mitchell.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Tuesday, March 08, 2022
Timnit Gebru helped expose how artificial intelligence replicates prejudice. She’s not waiting for Big Tech to fix it
Gebru is quick to detect bias in others but there is no sign in the long article below that she detects any bias in herself. Yet as a woman with some African ancestry she can be expected to show bias in favour of her own group. And that can mean bias against other groups, whites in particular. And, as she is a woman, bias against men can also be suspected.
But those are not mere suspicions. She repeatedly reveals an animus against white men. They are the demons in her theogony, the constant offenders against what is right: Her enemies. She could not be clearer about her attitude to white men
And that leads to a serious blindness, albeit a common blindness. She appears to have no idea about the way biases such as hers work. She may be aware that her biases are conventional Leftism but, if so, she no critique of that. She offers no critique of such biases and shows no awareness of how intergroup biases in general arise. Allport's old insight that there is a "kernel of truth" in stereotypes seems unknown to her. Or, if it is known, she allows it no influence on her thinking or advocacy. She shows no insight into how intergroup beliefs in general, "stereotypes", arise.
She can perhaps be forgiven for that great gap in her thinking, that lack of insight. There is no hint that she has ever studied psychology. But, as a much-published psychologist, I am well aware of the studies of belief formation. And I can put my conclusions from that research quite starkly: Racial prejudice to a major degree reflects racial reality. To be even more explicit, negative beliefs about blacks mostly arises from bad behavior by many blacks. What she detects as bias is in fact lsrgely realism.
So her finding that discourse about minorities presents them negatively is no fault of the data she has gathered. It is a feature, not a bug. So her whole enterprise is misconceived. She is tilting at widmills. The windmills are there but they are there for a good reason
Google hired Gebru in 2018 to help ensure that its AI products did not perpetuate racism or other societal inequalities. In her role, Gebru hired prominent researchers of color, published several papers that highlighted biases and ethical risks, and spoke at conferences. She also began raising her voice internally about her experiences of racism and sexism at work. But it was one of her research papers that led to her departure. “I had so many issues at Google,” Gebru tells TIME over a Zoom call. “But the censorship of my paper was the worst instance.”
In that fateful paper, Gebru and her co-authors questioned the ethics of large language AI models, which seek to understand and reproduce human language. Google is a world leader in AI research, an industry forecast to contribute $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, according to accounting firm Pwc. But Gebru’s paper suggested that, in their rush to build bigger, more powerful language models, companies including Google weren’t stopping to think about the kinds of biases being built into them—biases that could entrench existing inequalities, rather than help solve them. It also raised concerns about the environmental impact of the AIs, which use huge amounts of energy. In the battle for AI dominance, Big Tech companies were seemingly prioritizing profits over safety, the authors suggested, calling for the industry to slow down. “It was like, You built this thing, but mine is even bigger,” Gebru recalls of the atmosphere at the time. “When you have that attitude, you’re obviously not thinking about ethics.”
Gebru’s departure from Google set offa firestorm in the AI world. The company appeared to have forced out one of the world’s most respected ethical AI researchers after she criticized some of its most lucrative work. The backlash was fierce.
The dispute didn’t just raise concerns about whether corporate behemoths like Google’s parent Alphabet could be trusted to ensure this technology benefited humanity and not just their bottom lines. It also brought attention to important questions: If artificial intelligence is trained on data from the real world, who loses out when that data reflects systemic injustices? Were the companies at the forefront of AI really listening to the people they had hired to mitigate those harms? And, in the quest for AI dominance, who gets to decide what kind of collateral damage is acceptable?
For the past decade, AI has been quietly seeping into daily life, from facial recognition to digital assistants like Siri or Alexa. These largely unregulated uses of AI are highly lucrative for those who control them, but are already causing real-world harms to those who are subjected to them: false arrests; health care discrimination; and a rise in pervasive surveillance that, in the case of policing, can disproportionately affect Black people and disadvantaged socioeconomic groups
https://time.com/6132399/timnit-gebru-ai-google/
*********************************************Joe Rogan Slams Liberals Who Still Support Joe Biden: ‘Are You Guys Out of Your F***ing Mind?
Recently, Rogan slammed liberals who still support this total failure. On his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, Rogan went over Biden’s record with fellow podcaster, Coleman Hughes. Rogan lamented over how anyone could defend Biden’s performance.
Inflation is smashing 40-year-old records. Gas prices have skyrocketed. The U.S. southern border is a total fiasco. America looked like a cowardly fool when Biden cut tail and ran out of Afghanistan. Joe Biden has done absolutely nothing right.
Now, his ineptitude on foreign policy was a huge contributor to Russia’s launching an invasion against Ukraine. Biden has screwed up border policy, destroyed America’s energy independence, and put the country at risk. Rogan reminded everyone that we pretty much got what we paid for.
The outspoken podcaster refreshed everyone’s memory. Rogan reminded people of what Biden’s boss, Barack Obama, said about him. “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” When Biden announced he was thinking about running in 2020, Obama insisted, “You don’t have to do this, Joe, you really don’t.”
Coleman Hughes gravitated to all the lies Joe Biden has told over the years. Hughes talked about how he lied about college and about marching with Nelson Mandela. But both podcasters stressed that Biden is an even bigger buffoon than he is a liar.
They’re not sure if he has the cognitive capability to tell the difference now. Joe Biden screws up the teleprompter messages he’s scripted. He reads the instructions. Biden forgets who is president.
We think he forgets where he is. It’s not funny. Joe Biden’s declining condition is truly sad. No one should make fun of him. But Joe Biden has been thrust into the position as the leader of the free world, a job he is clearly incapable of handling.
His decisions have consequences on the daily lives of every American. He is not up to the job. While it’s unfair to target his aging decline, it’s flat out stupid to support his performance. In fact, anyone who does is “out of their f***ing mind”. Well put, Mr. Rogan.
**********************************
Were old children’s history books racist?
If Brighton and Hove Council has its way, children as young as seven are to be taught about the ‘white privilege’ supposedly derived from 500 years of colonialism. But is it true that the history we have been learning from childhood has been infused with the great isms of our day – colonialism, imperialism and racism? I thought I would test this on a small scale by going back to the first history books I read.
H.E. Marshall, who wrote Our Island Story, was also the author of the knockabout book Kings and Things. She knew all about trigger warnings: ‘The story of England,’ she proclaimed, ‘is thought to be a story too frightening or too difficult for the very young person’s understanding.’ She promised not to dwell ‘on horror or on the glory of bloodshed’. She did not keep her promise – nor, surely, did her readers want her to. There is plenty of boiling oil poured from the castle walls, and Wicked Uncle Richard has a starring role before Henry VIII cuts off piles of heads. As for Empire, she bypassed the native population to emphasise how the ‘bothersome’ French kept getting in the way in North America. In both Marshall’s books notable people are generally Good or Bad, a way of thinking that sparked the famous parody by Sellar and Yeatman, 1066 and All That. Their book has been seen as a pioneering post-modernist attempt to debunk jingoistic versions of British history. That is surely to take their silliness more seriously than it deserves.
Beneath the flag-waving there were thoughtful ideas, as I discovered on returning to my first proper history book, given to me as a birthday present: A Nursery History of England by Elizabeth O’Neill. It is filled with glossy colour illustrations which are still locked in my memory, influencing the way I imagine scores of events in history. The book first appeared in 1912 but kept selling and was constantly updated. O’Neill was for a time a fellow at Manchester University and was married to Herbert Charles O’Neill, who wrote a celebrated Spectator column during the second world war under the nom de guerre Strategicus.
O’Neill set out her aims in another of her books: ‘I have chosen the greatest men and women to tell you about, and in reading their stories I hope you will understand better something of what the times were like in which they lived, and what the other people too were like who were not so great and the kind of lives they led.’ O’Neill did not neglect what would nowadays be called the history of gender and class. We have the Countess of Buchan displayed in colour crowning Robert the Bruce. Queen Matilda and Queen Margaret of Anjou are shown escaping from capture. Further down the social scale Jenny Geddes is portrayed hurling her stool at the preacher when he started reciting from the English Book of Common Prayer in Edinburgh’s St Giles’ Cathedral.
O’Neill was indignant about the horrors of slavery. The hot conditions in America did not suit English settlers, ‘so black men, from a country called Africa, were stolen away from their homes and taken over to America. The white men bought them, and made them do the hardest work… They had to do just what their masters told them, and cruel masters often used to beat them’. The slaves ‘were bought and sold as though they were animals’. One of her heroes was Charles James Fox, for standing up for the slaves in parliament. She also condemned child labour during the Industrial Revolution, this time with an illustration of barefoot, ragged children on their way to the ‘big ugly workrooms’.
She was, admittedly, interested in people’s physical appearance, and delighted in describing early Britons or Saxons as golden-haired and blue-eyed. She relished the story of how in the 6th century Pope Gregory the Great had seen blond Anglo-Saxon children in the slave market in Rome and commented that they were non Angli sed Angeli, ‘not Angles but Angels’. We are now being assured by graduate students at the University of Leeds that the term Anglo-Saxon should be abolished because it developed ‘as a concept intrinsic to the emerging ideologies of colonialism, nationalism, and white racial superiority’. As an eminent medieval historian commented: ‘But theywere the victims of Norman colonisation in 1066.’
Looking at the British Empire, O’Neill was most interested in India, ‘a very hot country’ whose people ‘have dark skins and black hair. Some people from this country used to live in India to help to rule it’. That led to resistance from those who thought the British had been ‘unkind’, but ‘Indians are very brave fighters, and thousands of Indian soldiers helped to win both world wars’. Gandhi ‘was a very great and good man’.
Rather than delivering a jingoistic account of English history, O’Neill was generally careful to maintain a balance. She was keen on godliness and steered carefully between Protestants and Catholics, giving full marks to Thomas More and high marks to Thomas Cranmer, shown at the stake. There were genuinely good people like Thomas More and Florence Nightingale who would serve as an example to the young, and there were thoroughly bad ones like King John. But it is important to recognise that her book was not a paean in honour of national heroes. Even Nelson, who unusually earned two colour illustrations, is praised for his skill and bravery as a naval commander, but not made into an icon. She recognised Napoleon’s military genius and was inspired by England’s foe Joan of Arc.
Overall, the Nursery History is a humane attempt to tell what she hoped would be a balanced version of England’s story to young children. Would that this were the case with modern narratives of history that evoke injustices of long ago in order to cast blame on the citizens of 21st-century Britain.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/matter-of-time
***************************************Mixed-raced Florida police chief, 48, is fired after just six months on the job for ‘refusing to promote white people and choosing candidates by asking "which one is blacker?”’
Former Fort Lauderdale police chief Larry Scirotto, 48, was fired on Thursday after an inquiry found that he allegedly once said a conference room wall of photos was 'too white' and added, 'I'm gonna change that.'
Scirotto, a former assistant chief in Pittsburgh, was the first openly gay chief hired in Fort Lauderdale and also is from a mixed-race background.
An investigation into the bias complaints concluded that Scirotto was unfairly focused on minority candidates for jobs and noted that he once asked 'which one is blacker?' when considering a promotion.
He is also accused of working as a high school basketball referee while being on the clock as chief. 'The Chief was paid by the City for these unauthorized schedule adjustments, totaling an estimated 55.50 hours,' a memo by a since-fired city auditor read.
The complaints centered on allegations that Scirotto made hiring and promotion decisions with an improper minority-first approach.
At one time, when considering a promotion, the investigation found that Scirotto said 'which one is blacker?' The report quoted Scirotto as saying he intended to 'consider diversity at every opportunity.'
Scirotto has vehemently denied ever saying that, and has insisted he gave promotions to those who 'deserved them.'
From August to November, Scirotto promoted 15 people, six of whom were minorities, he told CNN.
In Fort Lauderdale, African Americans make up 31percent of the population, but 2020 reports showed the police force was only 15percent black.
'Those minority groups are now being treated as if they were less than deserving, and that's not the case, and it never was,' he told 7News Miami.
'The promotions that I made...were because they were exceptional candidates, and they excelled in every level of the organization,' he added.
'They deserved to be promoted, and by the way, they happened to be minority. It wasn't because they were minority.'
The acting police chief will be Luis Alvarez, who is currently an assistant chief. The department has about 530 officers and 179 civilian employees.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Monday, March 07, 2022
Nadia Bokody: Why married women stop having sex
As a Lesbian. Ms Bokody is not in the best position to talk about this and her comments are simplistic. She says that bearing a big load of housework suppresses the desire for sex in women.
It is true that libido drops off for both men and women in the course of a long relationship but I not aware that the effect is stronger for women. From many discussions I have had with women, I get the impression that women stay interested for longer.
And I think it is fair to say that all relationships are sui generis. They all involve an explicit or implicit "deal" between the partners. If the wife is satisfied with the relationship that is all that matters. To outsiders a particular set of arrangements may seem unfair but the outsiders are unlikely to know all details of how a couple relate to one-another. If the wife sees the arrangements as unfair there is a problem. But it is for the woman concerned to say that something is unsatisfactory, not outsiders.
Often the role of the male may not be immediately obvious. That the man is on standby to "fix" household devices when they go wrong may not always be immediately visible.
At the risk of lapsing into triviality, the classic situation where a jar with a tightly-fitting lid is handed to the man to open is very well known. And the service provide by the man does not have to be that trivial. In my own case I recently had to deal with two household devices that had ceased to function. My girlfriend identified the problems and promptly handed the devices to me. It took me quite a lot of thinking and fiddling to dismantle the two devices, remove the problem and then mantle them again. The mantling can be the hardest part.
And all the while my girlfriend concentrated on food preparation and cleaning. So was that unfair? Judging by the affection that she later lavished on me, she clearly did not think so. But our relationship is of course sui generis. What works for us may not work for all. All couples have their own explicit or implicit arrangements and understandings. It is not for outsiders to judge them. Matthew 7:1-3.
Every time I think I’ve written the last column I’m going to write about this, the bar for the men who partner with them sinks to an abysmal new low.
Take the TikTok trend captioned, “Things that turn me on as a mum”, in which montages of men performing painfully simple tasks like folding clothes, cooking dinner, and putting nappies on their own babies are synched to a sexy soundtrack and juxtaposed with footage of their eager-eyed wives watching on, barely able to contain their arousal.
The comments sections of these videos are almost as disturbing as the clips themselves – an orgy of women positively charged with erotic excitement collectively exclaim, “#DaddyGoals!” and “Where can I find myself a hubby like that?!!”, punctuating their enthusiasm with heart eye emojis.
You could be forgiven for thinking this was satire – that it mimics the same kind of hyperbolic praise you’d expect a child to receive from a parent after completing their homework – but poking fun of men’s limited participation in housework has become a depressing kind of signature for women on the internet in 2022.
Of course, we aren’t taught to be nonchalant about men’s scant contributions to domestic labour.
We’re conditioned to believe the mere act of being chosen by a man is in and of itself the highest form of acknowledgment of our existence. That, securing a man for marriage is so covetable, it nullifies any self-sacrifice or degradation a woman may have to endure as part of being able to call herself a wife.
Sure, your husband almost never puts the toilet seat down and still thinks it’s cute to leave a halo of his soiled undies on the floor around the laundry basket, however – YOU HAVE A HUSBAND! So what if you have to mother him every so often?
It’s not like he doesn’t care. He’d truly LOVE to help you out with the groceries. But he’s just a man … How is he supposed to know what brand of milk to get, or navigate the complex task of determining the appropriate Tupperware container to stow the couscous away in when he gets home with everything??
I mean, like, he COULD clean the bathroom, but he’s just not as well versed as you are on the sophisticated mechanics of swirling a brush around a toilet bowl and wiping Windex across reflective surfaces. You know you’ll just have to redo it anyway.
Never send a man to do a woman’s job! Amirite, ladies??!
This infantilisation of men isn’t by accident, and it’s certainly not because women get off on mothering their grown adult spouses. It’s the result of wilful, learned behaviour – something some psychologists are now referring to as “weaponised incompetence”.
Originally coined “strategic incompetence” in a 2007 Wall Street Journal article, weaponised incompetence is the act of feigning an inability to understand or complete a task (though it can also include doing the task but deliberately carrying it out poorly), so as never to be asked to do it again.
And it’s so prevalent, the most recent Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (Hilda) survey found that, on average, women do 21 hours additional unpaid labour each week than men.
This was true even when the woman was the breadwinner in the couple, so the old “but he works really hard to bring home the bacon” trope isn’t actually accurate. (This is not even to mention the emotionally, mentally, and physically intensive labour stay-at-home mums carry out in the home that’s still ignorantly deemed “not actual work”.)
The survey, which was conducted in 2019, revealed this gendered gap is most pronounced in heterosexual couples with dependent children, and that the biggest form of unpaid work was housework, closely followed by child-rearing.
EPILOGUE:
I can't resist the temptation to add another anecdote about the male role:
Many years ago, I was sharing an apartment with two lively ladies. They concluded that there was something wrong with the deadlock on their front door and decided to fix it themselves. They took it off the door and opened it up. It promptly went SPROINNGG, as devices using springs tend to do, and scattered its parts around. They just sat there in dismay looking at the disaster.
They did not even look at me. They assumed that as an academic I would be useless at practical things. So I gathered up the parts, mantled the lock correctly and handed it back to them for attachment to the door. They did so very quietly. I later married one of the ladies concerned so I think it can be assumed that my standby services were appreciated. They were not to know that locks have been a minor hobby of mine since childhood. I still fix them.
Years later, when I fixed the lock on another lady's door, she commented: "I didn't think you could do that". She and I ended up having a four-year relationship. She was pretty too.
**********************************************
Amy Schumer says son Gene, two, will 'most likely have autism'
Amy Schumer shared that she is 'not hoping either way' when it comes to her son Gene David Fischer, two, being diagnosed with autism like his father and her husband, Chris Fischer.
The stand-up comedian, 40, appeared on a new episode of Chelsea Handler's podcast Dear Chelsea, where she spoke candidly about her feelings, revealing she 'doesn't have a preference' when it comes to his diagnosis.
'I think the statistics are pretty strong toward he will most likely have autism,' she told Handler. 'Parents have different journeys with this. Having a child with severe autism is beyond my imagination difficult,' the Emmy-winning star said.
She went on, 'But if Gene does wind up having ASD, I'm not looking for the signs in a way that are upsetting, I'm not hoping either way.'
In her 2019 Netflix special Growing, the New York native revealed that her James Beard Award winning husband, 42, was diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder as an adult. 'Most of my favorite people are on the spectrum,' the Trainwreck actress added.
As for an official diagnosis, Schumer said that will have to wait until her son is older. 'He's two and a half and I think they don't diagnose children until maybe six at the earliest I think. You can see some signs but the diagnosis doesn't come until later and I can say honestly I don't have a preference either way,' she said. She then added that his happiness is all that matters. 'You just want your kids to be healthy and happy.'
After sharing Fischer's diagnosis in her documentary, an Instagram follower asked Schumer how she 'cope[d] with the possibility' that their child will be on the spectrum. 'How I cope? I don’t see being on the spectrum as a negative thing,' she replied.
Schumer continued: 'My husband is my favorite person I’ve ever met. He’s kind, hilarious, interesting and talented, and I admire him. Am I supposed to hope my son isn’t like that?' the star asked.
'I will pay attention and try to provide him with the tools he needs to overcome whatever challenges come up like all parents. I’d be disappointed if he liked the Big Bang Theory and NASCAR, not if he has ASD.' Schumer gave birth to her son in May 2019, one year after her wedding to the American chef.
**********************************************
Three BLM Hate Hoaxers Who Tried to Frame Proud Boys and Trump Supporters have Been Convicted of Arson and Vandalism
Three BLM members tried to frame the Proud Boys and Trump supporters in a three-day crime spree in which they left notes using the language of the Proud Boys.
The three broke out windows and otherwise vandalized, police vehicles, including attempting to torch them. The three men have been identified as John Wesley Wade, 35, Ellie Melvin Brett, 37, and Vida Jones, 19. They were originally arrested in Oct. 2020 following a three-day spree of vandalism.
Interestingly, one of the three men, John Wesley Wade, was out on bond at the time of the vandalism. He had helped torch the Wendy’d during the riots in Atlanta. Police were able to place him at the scenes of the vandalizing thanks to his ankle monitor.
Two of the defendants pleaded guilty and the third was convicted and was sentenced to five years in prison. The other two are awaiting sentencing.
The crime spree began on Sept. 30, 2020, at a Walmart on the west side of Atlanta. One of the men smashed the window of a police vehicle.
A note was left that claimed the election was stolen. The note was left in an effort to shift the blame to Trump supporters. They later damaged a second police vehicle.
The next night, the trio expanded their crimes to arson after they began with a Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) police car that was parked at a train station. They then vandalized five postal vehicles at a USPS location, including setting them on fire.
From PJ Media
In the south Atlanta suburb of East Point, the men set fire to two public works vehicles. Law enforcement found a note attached to a brick in one of the vehicles.
“The note stated ‘*STOP the FAITHLESS ELECTOR vote in the WHITE HOUSE…and the FAITHLESS CHRISTMAS in the WHITE HOUSE;’ cited several Bible verses, but misspelled Jeremiah as “Jerimiah;” and included the Instagram handle, ‘@NoFaithLessElector,’ associated with Brett,” reported Cathell.
The three men filmed each act of arson and posted them on social media. On Oct. 4, an Instagram account reportedly associated with Jones posted footage of fire and police response to the East Point fires with the caption, Where’s the media coverage?”
A Twitter post from a now-suspended account from The Base, an Antifa group out of New York City, referred to the three as “comrades.”
********************************************
How my career as an author was cancelled by the woke warriors who have taken over publishing
GILLIAN PHILIP
Once upon a time, in a halcyon era that now seems like a distant golden age, writing books was a creative endeavour; a job in which you let your imagination take flight.
Various points of view were allowed to flourish. Stories were peopled by both heroes and villains. The offensive, the reprehensible, even the downright evil, coexisted with the noble and good.
Fiction was as multi-faceted as the world we live in, and writing was a realm of free expression in which authors had licence to provoke thought, illuminate discussion, even — dare I say it — voice unfashionable opinions without fear of being pilloried and 'cancelled'.
White authors such as Alexander McCall Smith could invent black characters, as he did in his wildly successful, Botswana-based The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, without being accused of 'cultural appropriation'.
Thomas Harris could conjure from his fertile mind the grotesque Dr Hannibal Lecter in The Silence Of The Lambs without being accused of celebrating cannibalism. And he could invent the chilling serial killer Buffalo Bill — who murdered and skinned overweight females to make a 'woman suit' out of their skin — without being cancelled for transphobia.
In that not-so-distant past JK Rowling could have freely expressed a belief that a biological male, with a man's body and genitalia, could not become a woman simply because he felt like one.
Today all that has changed. Our freedom to think expansively and creatively, even to express our own views, is being undermined as surely as it would be in a totalitarian state. Books are literally being pulped if their authors refuse to toe the line. It is as if the Communist Red Guard has taken over.
And some of us, myself among them, who have challenged the prevailing orthodoxy on anything from transgender issues to race have been summarily dropped by our publishers.
Chilling isn't it? The change has crept up on us insidiously. Today we live in a dystopian world where writers are cowed, terrified of causing offence.
Before we even put fingers to keyboard we are thinking about the all-powerful lobby of censors who might construe something we have written as objectionable.
I know this because I am a writer — or, more specifically, was one — who fell prey to publishing's 'woke' agenda when, two years ago, I offered my support to JK Rowling on Twitter, for the stand she had taken against transgender people being allowed to identify as male or female at will.
I shared her concern that there should be checks on potential predators who might take advantage of the relaxed rules.
I added the hashtag #IStandWithJKRowling to my Twitter handle in response to the author's essay, in which she revealed that she was a domestic abuse survivor and argued that letting any self-identifying trans woman into single-sex spaces without appropriate checks could present a danger to females.
The hue and cry this provoked was unimaginable. I was subjected to a torrent of abuse on social media. Like Rowling, even though I am not remotely transphobic, I was called everything from a 'transphobe' to 'a piece of s***'.
I was labelled a 'Terf' (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist, the derogatory term used by transgender activists for the women they believe don't back their cause).
My successful career as an author — one of a team writing animal fantasy novels for children between eight and 12 under the name Erin Hunter — was obliterated overnight.
The company I worked for, Working Partners — a book packager that sells concepts and series to different publishers — issued a pious email to all those who had complained to the firm about me.
'The worlds created by Erin Hunter are meant to be inclusive for all readers and we want to let you know that Gillian Philip will no longer be writing any Erin Hunter novels,' they wrote to the anonymous trolls who had sent me death threats.
My career was literally cancelled. Although the job was one I loved — I had won awards and made eight promotional tours of America, where the Erin Hunter series is huge — I have felt too traumatised to begin writing another novel since.
My husband Ian had died a month before I was dropped by my publishers, in May 2020, leaving me a widow with two teenage children. The firm sent flowers and a note of condolence. Weeks later they were ruthlessly ending my job. The combination of grief and stress almost floored me.
Yet the 'woke' brigade who cancelled me often use the hashtag: 'Be kind'. It seems to me that their humanity is selective. Only those they consider deserving of it are offered compassion, which tells us just how morally bankrupt they really are.
I now work as an HGV driver, a job I find more congenial — actually more intellectually liberating —because my workmates do not mind what opinions I have and are happy to discuss them with me.
They are also much less misogynistic than I have found the publishing industry to be.
It is ironic, too, that the cadre of self-appointed censors in the book world, who feel it is their role to defend every minority group from the tiniest slight, is largely white, privileged and middle class.
These self-appointed ethical guardians have appropriated and warped a term, 'woke', that was originally coined by black African Americans to describe people who are awake to racism and prejudice.
But, of course, the publishing zealots are blind to such anomalies: 'cultural appropriation' is not a transgression that applies to them.
They take their order from bloggers, social media users — no matter how venomous and unhinged — and the growing army of 'sensitivity readers' who are employed to scrutinise every pre-publication text for even the most minor infractions.
So ludicrously inflated has the role of these scrutineers become that whole teams are employed to pore over proofs. The results can be farcical: what is praiseworthy to some readers offends others.
And it's not only professional readers that can derail your career. The critically acclaimed author and former teacher Kate Clanchy was forced to part company with her publisher Pan Macmillan earlier this year after her Orwell Prize-winning memoir Some Kids I Taught And What They Taught Me, was subjected to a trashing from Goodreads, a forum in which readers review and give star ratings to books.
Clanchy was criticised for using 'racist tropes' in her description of pupils as having 'chocolate-coloured skin' or 'almond eyes'.
One sensitive reader objected to Clanchy's use of 'disfigure' to describe the effects of spoil heaps on a landscape; another quibbled that she should not use 'handicap' in its ordinary sense of impede.
Despite Clanchy's former pupils springing to her defence, and endorsements on her book's dust jacket praising its 'inclusiveness' and 'humanity', she and her publisher parted 'by mutual consent'. Last month, she acquired a new publisher, Swift Press, which is to reissue her book, with amendments.
In a more benign era we authors used to joke about Goodreads. We'd urge each other not to look at it because it was damaging to the ego to read a one-star review.
There was even a Twitter account (@dontgoodreads) dedicated to the thought. But that is as far as our concerns reached. How extraordinary then that today Goodreads reviewers have such a stranglehold over publishers that they have the power to destroy established writers who do not conform to 'woke' views.
Many modern authors would mock the Victorians' attitude to children's literature, which decreed that stories should be morality tales encouraging good citizenship and reinforcing the accepted ethics of the day.
Yet the 'woke' lobbyists are doing just that — encouraging didactic preachiness at the expense of free imagination and empathy.
It is as if we can't trust children to have their own moral compass any more: their thoughts have to be directed and channelled in an approved way.
Publishing has become censorious, nannying, overbearing. Authors' consciences — or even those of their editors — are no longer trusted.
And the young adult side of the industry has capitulated to the tyranny completely.
The stifling outsourcing to sensitivity readers; the indignation of the fresh-faced, privileged and entitled juniors of the publishing world who insist that every email is signed off with their favoured personal pronouns: all of it is deeply concerning.
I try to make light of it by adopting 'hi/vis' as my personal pronouns on my Twitter page. It's my joke, because I now wear a luminous yellow jacket for work. I hope I infuriate the publishing interns, the bloggers and the Twitterati who take these matters so seriously.
But we have reason to be afraid for the publishing industry, because it's destroying itself. Many senior people know there's a problem, but they are too scared to address it.
I expect that the only way I will write again is if I self-publish — a route once derided as the last resort of amateurs, but is now quite possibly the only outlet for honest, direct and emotional writing.
I could list dozens of examples of privileged, white, middle-class writers who bully other writers into changing their work to suit their own prejudices.
Such a clique has driven my friend, the children's author Rachel Rooney, out of publishing.
Rachel is an autistic author who is devoted to child development and safeguarding, and her writing was critically celebrated.
Yet a bullying campaign by other children's writers forced her to stop writing.
Rachel's delightful picture book My Body Is Me was labelled 'transphobic', simply because it celebrated the fact that no child's body is 'wrong'.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Sunday, March 06, 2022
Is your social class holding you back in your career?
It can do but it is not destiny. Let me give an example and then explain it:
Britain is probably the most class-ridden society in the Western world. Yet when I spent a year there in 1977 as a mere Australian of humble background, I had great social entree. For instance:
* I acquired a girlfiend of aristocratic lineage. She traced her ancestry back a thousand years.
* And I was told I could be nominated to one of London's prestigious gentleman's clubs.
* I got to have a chat to Margaret Thatcher at a small private garden party in Kent
So how did I do it? How did a mere Australian have the social acceptance that many an Englishman would have given his right arm for?
The first part to note is that I did not seek such acceptance. That would have been self-defeating. I just acted as myself. So what is there in me that opened so many doors in the "best" circles of England?
Charles Murray answered that a couple of decades ago in his notorious book and Toby Young has expanded it. Obnoxious though it may sound, there is a strong correlation in most societies between social status and IQ. The habits, attitudes and practices that characterize high status people are the habits, attitudes and practices of high IQ people. High IQ people set upper class standards. And they are often rather subtle and very hard to fake. You have got it or you do not. I did.
So, No. Your social status will not hold you back. But your IQ might. As long as you are reasonably socially competent. most doors will open to very bright people
The importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace has been well established. But one factor of identity has largely been left out: socio-economic class.
Research has shown that moving up the socio-economic ladder is becoming more difficult, and class bias has been known to affect lifetime earnings. Studies on first-generation college students also suggest disparities may follow them into their post-college careers.
Few studies have investigated the workplace experience of those from different socio-economic backgrounds. To fill this knowledge gap, we conducted a study of first-generation professionals, or FGPs. Also known as class migrants, FGPs are those who move from working-class roots to white-collar careers. We included FGPs and non-FGPs in the study to produce comparative data. Here’s what we learned about FGPs and what company leaders can do to support them.
FGPs were likelier than others to report that structured programs were helpful to their careers. For example, we asked each survey respondent how they obtained their first professional job and found 23.7 per cent of FGPs acquired their jobs through a work-study program at college, compared with just 7.6 per cent of non-FGPs.
Likewise, FGPs were almost twice as likely as non-FGPs to report they found employee resource groups helpful during their first job (23 per cent and 12 per cent, respectively). In contrast, non-FGPs indicated they were likelier to lean on family and friends for support and advice.
FGPs were also significantly likelier to report that professional development and leadership training was useful for their careers, contributed to promotions and improved their skills. “Code switching” means adapting one’s communication, appearance and mannerisms to fit in. It’s widely documented that people of colour feel pressured to act differently at work to be accepted. We found people from working-class backgrounds often feel similarly. Many FGPs also reported being shocked and disappointed that their hard work and results were notably less important to their careers than knowing how to communicate in a certain way and build networks. As one respondent explained: “At first I thought, oh … just as long as I’m a great worker, right? You know, I do what I need to do, I’ll get promoted fast. That’s not the case. What it really is, is your contacts. Building that network.”
In our survey, considerable differences arose between FGPs and non-FGPs when participants were asked directly about how they felt in the workplace. They were asked to rank several statements on a five-point scale. FGPs rated almost every statement lower than non-FGPs, including: “My personality type is valued,” “I have access to decision-makers,” “I feel comfortable talking about my family and personal life”. This tells us overall feelings of inclusion and belonging are likely lower for FGPs.
*********************************************
Why This Woman Was Forced To Close Her Bakery Is Absolutely Sad…
Following a fatal shooting in downtown Seattle on Sunday afternoon, Piroshky Piroshky owner Olga Sagan announced the closure of their site at 3rd Ave and Pike St.
The bakery sent a series of tweets detailing problems with crime in the area.
“It’s normal to see that almost every single day,” said Piroshky Piroshky owner Olga Sagan.
According to the bakery, the gunfire on Sunday was the third in the vicinity in a month.
Shortly before 12:30 p.m., gunfire happened. In the 200 block of Pine Street, officers discovered a male with gunshot wounds. The Seattle police said the person died at the scene.
The Crime Scene Investigation Unit of the Seattle Police Department was dispatched to gather evidence and examine the scene.
Homicide detectives are also looking into the case.
For the protection of her employees and clients, Sagan claimed the most recent incidents, including Sunday’s gunshot, caused her to close the site.
“Today’s shooting was at 1 p.m. in the middle of Sunday, in the middle of downtown. There’s tourists and families, and it’s just becoming normalized. And it absolutely makes me very, very angry,” Sagan said.
Sagan is frustrated with her inability to find a solution, recalling a time when she requested police aid at the bakery and waited 30 minutes before leaving.
Just hours after the deadly shooting, Sagan told KOMO News she made the decision to close the location because the area is no longer safe for her employees. She says she will find a position for employees at one of the Russian bakery’s other locations in Seattle. She said she is also deciding if the closure will be permanent or temporary.
Sagan said:
“We have been patiently communicating with a city for the last six months, but things only getting worse. We feel that city has abandoned downtown and not treating this crisis (both humanitarian and criminal) as an emergency. All we hear is them talking and no action.”
“I came in here on Saturday to try to open up and there was a lot of illegal activity outside, a lot of people selling drugs, using drugs, I feel as if it’s a state of emergency. I think it’s humanitarian and criminal crisis and I feel it’s not being treated like an emergency.” She added.
Sagan told The Seattle Times she made her decision solely because of the crime in the area, and asked: “How many shootings do we need to have to realize this is an active emergency in downtown Seattle?”
“I really don’t want to wait until my employees get shot, or my customers get shot,” she told the Times. “I feel it’s not far-fetched right now.”
https://theinformedamerican.net/why-this-woman-was-forced-to-close-her-bakery-is-absolutely-sad/
******************************************Manchin helps defeat radical abortion bill
In a surprising turn of events, Senator Joe Manchin joined with Republicans to defeat the Democrats’ radical abortion bill.
On the evening of February 28th, the Senate defeated the Women’s Health Protection Act — which would have established the right to an abortion at the federal level — by a 48-46 margin.
The vote landed mostly along party lines, and came nowhere near close to reaching the 60-vote threshold to clear the filibuster. Manchin was the only defector from either party.
The Western Journal reports: “While the Democrats have kept the filibuster intact for now (thanks to Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who refused to go along with the 50 votes needed to invoke the so-called nuclear option in an evenly divided Senate), the attacks on the institution and the pressure on the two holdouts continue.”
The Women’s Health Protection Act passed in the House of Representatives by a narrow 218-211 vote back in September of 2021, once again mostly along party lines, with only one representative — Henry Cuellar (D-TX) — defecting from their party’s position.
As the Daily Caller’s Laurel Duggan noted, the legislation would have gone much further than just codifying Roe v. Wade as a federal law.
“The WHPA would have invalidated all state and local laws restricting what types of abortion procedures are permissible while banning requirements that doctors give women medical tests such as ultrasounds before administering abortions, unless such requirements also applied to ‘medically comparable procedures,’” Duggan reported.
“The bill proposed various deregulatory measures that would have loosened safety requirements nationwide for abortion providers, such as ending restrictions on doctors prescribing pills via ‘telemedicine’ for do-it-yourself chemical abortions at home,” she added.
The bill comes just as people have begun to speculate that the Supreme Court — which has a 6-3 conservative majority (depending on how Chief Justice John Roberts is feeling that day) — could overturn Roe v. Wade in June of this year when it rules on Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which is the biggest abortion case to hit the court in decades.
https://patriotunitednews.com/manchin-pours-cold-water-on-senate-democrats-radical-bill/
*******************************************The decay of liberalism
It never was very liberal. Now is is Fascist
To get into the elite in America today—and for the last few decades—you need good grades, high test scores, a bachelor’s degree from a top institution, and often a graduate degree as well. The advent of the Information Age rewarded people with a talent for handling words and numbers, and school and college is where you learned those talents and proved that you’d done so. The requirement has stuck, and it’s more binding than ever before.
In the past, the education one acquired in those select places gave you a set of abstract skills, the kinds of cognitive aptitudes that don’t have a politics or a religion or morality. Good people and bad people both possess them, atheists and believers, too, libertarians and leftists and conservatives. The pipelines of accreditation historically understood that. They didn’t ask aspirants for whom they voted, where they stood on matters of race and sex and marriage, to which religion they belong, and what they plan to do with their skills (apart from career goals) once they moved on. The gatekeepers were liberal in so far as they kept private matters private and left people’s consciences alone. They didn’t mix the ability to do the work—prepare a court case, set a broken arm, teach a class of intermediate French—with externals. That’s what made these institutions liberal in the broad sense of the word. They respected the difference between professional competence and other human traits and dispositions such as one’s faith.
But, of course, that circumspection is no more. Universities add to job openings the requirement that applicants submit a diversity-equity-inclusion statement, which amounts to a loyalty oath to progressivist values. Students undergo orientation programs that screen out resistance to identity politics. After the 2020 election, many Trump staffers now on the job market found themselves unemployable because of their association with the administration, even if there was no evidence of those individuals’ malfeasance or incompetence. People lose jobs if they donate to the wrong causes.
This is a sharp departure from the old way. Liberal judgment focused on competence defined in a narrow fashion, contained by the demands of the elite job. In the case of academia, which runs on peer reviews of people and scholarly work, one tried to focus the evaluations on apolitical and impersonal factors. You weren’t supposed to consider the Democrat or Republican leanings of the job candidate. No, you assessed the academic qualifications alone. Is his scholarly work cogent, well-researched, and effectively presented? Does she handle evidence adroitly and draw sound conclusions? Is her teaching effective? You had to accept his premises, then determine how well he followed them through. It would be wrong to say, “She’s a feminist, and I don’t like feminism.” Instead, you would say, “Is her feminism intelligently articulated? Is it consistently pursued?”
That kind of suspension of bias is no more. The elite police one another’s opinions closely, though those opinions be uttered far from the workplace. They know that to enter the elite, they must do more than demonstrate their high-level knack for words and numbers. A roster of social beliefs has been added to the professional qualifications, a peremptory one. The beliefs are so customary and mundane that I needn’t list them, the usual take on race, sex, gender, immigration, and Trump/Trumpists. To disagree with a single one of them is to transgress the entire elite machinery. Systemic racism, the gender pay gap, transphobia, etc., have the force of taboo. The mere whisper of dissent turns you into an untouchable.
This is to say that the liberal elite now operate on inconsistent, fraught, and irrational norms. They embrace and enforce those norms by skipping the old liberal ways of debate, due process, fair hearings, and blind justice. The apolitical criterion of competence now comes second to political correctness. The best teacher in the entire country would never get an academic post in the Ivy League if it came out that she voted for Trump in 2020.
Liberalism claimed to be the basis of an open society, a bustling marketplace of ideas, but you hear leading liberal figures in academia, media, and politics talking less and less about those values. They have shown that they’re willing to let politics infiltrate the running of the institution, the hiring/promotion of personnel and the evaluation of products, without blinking an eye. The objectivity for which they strove in the past, the neutrality they prized, had no staying power once identity politics gained a foothold. Or, perhaps, the reality was that liberals insisted on nonpartisan objectivity only when a conservative, traditionalist order of things prevailed. Liberals idolized dissent but for a time, when the powers that be leaned to the right. Now that institutions are in the hands of the left (in social and cultural affairs), it’s time to shift from dissent to conformity.
And so we are left with a meritocracy that adds to word and number talents an abject fealty to a socio-political hegemony. If you want to rise to the Big Time and stay there, you must bow to the idols of identity. The very thing liberals oppose on principle, namely, a coercive and dogmatic society, they now inhabit and uphold. Remember all that liberal talk in the Sixties about the System, the Establishment, the Man? Well, they now are the Establishment, and they like it. The elites have as much sympathy for people who’ve never earned a college degree as does the King in “History of the World, Part I” (played by Mel Brooks) for the French peasants. Today’s talk of diversity, justice, and equity is a mask, a screen, a dodge.
The political correctness of the elite serves a purifying function. It’s more about social belonging than political principle. The old screening mechanisms of SAT scores and the college you attended are no longer enough. The dogmas add a fresh hurdle to membership. That’s what really counts. Politics is a handy way to divide us from them, to keep the guest lists properly elite. In truth, most members of the elite are a lot less political than they sound. They care much more for their personal status than they do about the political direction of the country. And when that status is threatened, as it was in November 2016, they will fight back. Parents at school board meetings, Trump rallies, a convoy forming in the United States … they’re a challenge to the elite. In the coming months, those challenges shall be answered in one way or another.
https://www.theepochtimes.com/liberal-elites-are-a-taboo-society_4312449.html
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Friday, March 04, 2022
Young, Male and Infertile: The Men Struggling to Have Kids
Years ago, the doctors told me I was infertile but fortunately I wasn't. I have a very creditable 34 year old son to prove it. At that time they looked at sperm count but it turned out that sperm motility was the real issue. I was bad on one but good on the other -- JR
To many, infertility is still a women's issue. That couldn't be further from the truth.
In 2018, Kent resident Toby Trice took up go-kart racing in an effort to distract himself from recent bad news. The 31-year-old and his partner had experienced a second unsuccessful in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in their years-long attempt to start a family. The procedure was necessary due to his own infertility.
“I fell into a huge depression because I thought I was alone. I didn’t have anyone around to seek support through,” says Trice. “I was ashamed of the fact that I wasn’t able to have a child. Once a month go-karting at a local track was my escape from dealing with fertility.”
Trice, now a professional racing driver, was diagnosed with swollen veins in his testes that were inhibiting his sperm production, a condition known as a varicocele, one of the most common causes of infertility among cisgender men.
When people think of infertility, the common conception is that it is an issue affecting cis women. However, there has been a 50 percent decline in sperm production over the past 40 years, according to a 2017 study from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). Half of infertility cases include some form of male factor. In the UK, one in seven couples currently struggle to start a family.
“I spent 27 years in charge of a facility that did male fertility diagnoses. Over that time, every man that came through the door thought he was the first one,” says Allan Pacey, professor of andrology at the University of Sheffield. “There's a low level of education.”
While resources are readily available to cis women experiencing trouble conceiving children, a dearth of information available to their male counterparts contributes to stigma around infertility and a hesitancy to be vocal about the issue. This lack of conversation is detrimental to research that can improve or develop aid for patients.
“Male fertility is at the bottom of the heap for being funded, it's not seen as an important healthcare condition because nobody dies of male infertility,” Pacey says. “I am a dying breed of academics looking at male fertility – there's no one in my institution that's going to follow behind me, it's not seen as an attractive career path.”
The lack of interest in this research results in a scarcity of information on how infertility affects cis men of different ethnicities and sexual orientations. Trans men trying to conceive, as documented by VICE writer Freddy McConnell in his column Dad Bod, face a whole raft of challenges, too.
The only sizeable data around infertility comes from IVF patients – who are largely cis women – and as such, there is no real breakdown of demographics for cis men. According to Pacey, this lack of interest in male fertility among new medical professionals, who would rather focus on life-threatening conditions, will likely thin the ranks of specialists (urologists or andrologists) in the field. This leaves gynaecologists as the primary option available to most men looking to confirm or treat male fertility issues.
Trice, who initially discussed his semen analysis with a gynaecologist, believed that this was the only course of action at the time.
“In hindsight, I look back and think, ‘What a load of madness!’ Why [was] I not seeing someone that specialises in male fertility?” says Trice. “All the way through, even to the point where we went to an IVF round, it was all specialists [in female fertility]. It wasn't until I went to a private doctor that I then saw someone that was specifically trained in male fertility.”
According to Sheryl Homa, scientific director of Andrology Solutions in London, the NHS does not automatically offer tests for male fertility beyond semen analysis, while women might be offered blood tests for hormonal imbalance, for instance. This means men typically have to specifically request further tests from their GPs. Newer tests, like sperm DNA fragmentation or oxidative stress measurements (which test sperm quality), are only performed in private practice, requiring patients to pursue procedures that can result in financial burden.
Many men affected by infertility also suffer mental health side-effects.
“It was a tough pill to take,” says Kevin Button, a South Wales resident diagnosed with Sertoli cell-only syndrome, which results in no sperm being produced in the testicles, eight years ago.
Bronx man, 37, who 'smeared human feces in a woman's face' in sickening NYC subway attack last week sticks his tongue out as he's led out of court
A Bronx man accused of smearing feces on a woman's face in a vile subway attack last week stuck his tongue out as he was led out of his arraignment hearing Tuesday night.
Frank Abrokwa, 37, was arrested February 28 and charged with forcible touching, menacing, disorderly conduct and harassment, in connection with the stomach-churning attack.
Wearing a wearing brightly-colored 'Slam' magazine cover bomber jacket and NBA hat, Abrokwa cursed out Judge Wanda Licitra during his first court appearance at Bronx Criminal Court late Tuesday, the New York Daily News reported.
Abrokwa said he was tired of waiting and demanded the judge hurry things up so he could be handed over to Brooklyn detectives who were waiting to question him in a hate crime investigation.
The Bronx man, who had been freed without bail in three other cases, had to face the judge for the attack that took place just three days after New York City Mayor Eric Adams rolled out the Subway Safety Plan meant to crack down on violence in crime-ridden transport system.
Surveillance video from the station that was released by the New York City Police Department on Monday shows the victim, described as a 43-year-old woman, sitting on a bench waiting for a train.
A man walks along the platform carrying a plastic bag. Suddenly, he lunges at the woman and appears to shove the bag into her face.
Mayor Adams called the incident a 'horrific experience for anyone to go through' at an unrelated press conference on Monday.
'Human waste or someone spitting in your face, those are real signs of mental health issues … and we really must dig into how we're dealing with these mental health issues,' the mayor added.
The attack took place at 5:15pm on February 21 on the southbound platform at the East 241st Street station.
Assistant District Attorney Grace Phillips revealed Tuesday that just before the attack, Abrokwa hit on the victim, asking her, 'Hey, mami, hey, mami, why don't you talk to me?'
When she ignored him, he walked into a subway car and defecated into a bag.
Video then shows the Abrokwa walking back out of the idling subway car and lunging at the woman, smearing the excrement on her.
When the woman leans forward, he walks behind her and presses the waste against the back of her head and her back.
The video released by the police offers a clear image of the suspect, who is seen wearing black pants, an oversized blue sweater, and a ballcap over a durag, and carrying a large duffle bag slung over his shoulder.
********************************************
Working Folks and the Poodle of Congress
By Jon N. Hall
In the old days, America’s working folks, the once great and sprawling middle class, had a strategy for “getting ahead” and achieving the American Dream. At the center of that strategy was saving their hard-won wages in commercial banks. Sounds crazy, right? But depositing one’s money in a bank wasn’t just some way to preserve one’s wealth for the future because, back in the old days, commercial banks actually paid decent interest, and sometimes handsomely. For instance, in the 1980s banks were paying double-digit interest rates to their depositors. And as late as 2000, one could get close to 7.0 percent on a certificate of deposit. So, one’s money made money. Over the last couple of decades, that’s all been shot to hell.
Nowadays, the banks pay hardly any interest. Some are paying interest at the princely rate of 0.01 percent for savings accounts. Abysmal rates have been the norm since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. And just when rates started to inch up a bit, the 2008 financial crisis or the 2020 pandemic hit and interest rates for savers again took a nosedive.
But the situation for working folks is worse than the fact that their money isn’t making any money to speak of by way of interest. That’s because their deposits have been losing value, buying power, due to inflation.
Inflation has been called a “tax,” and an especially cruel one for working folks. But when inflation is engineered, and the direct result of deliberate government policy, inflation might just as well be regarded as theft. And at the center of this policy (of theft) is America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve.
One of the Federal Reserve’s mandates is to guarantee price stability and thereby preserve the value of the U.S. dollar. But the Fed tries to engineer an ongoing inflation rate of 2 percent. Why is the Fed’s 2 percent inflation rate policy acceptable? After all, doesn’t money lose value at any inflation rate?
The Fed’s targeted 2 percent inflation rate rests on the belief that economists can control the economy. We may soon get to see if that’s true because the inflation rate is now 7.5 percent. That means the money in your bank account is losing 7.5 percent of its value this year. The Fed’s main duty right now should be to get inflation down and to do it quickly. Unfortunately, that is complicated by the Fed having another mandate.
The Fed’s so-called “dual mandate” needs to be changed. In these pages, this writer has urged that the Fed’s other mandate of maximizing employment be stripped from the Fed. That mandate is at odds with the mandate to maintain price stability, (not to mention also being at odds with Congress paying people not to work during the pandemic).
The Fed actually has a third mandate. The third mandate may not have any statutory foundation nor get much press, but it is no less real. The Fed’s third mandate is to create whatever money Congress wants. Sometimes the Fed’s money creation is justified, such as during the 2008 financial crisis when the Fed provided urgently needed liquidity with TARP.
But the Fed didn’t stop with TARP. For long after the Great Recession ended in 2009, the Fed kept on creating additional trillions of dollars through QE, its quantitative easing programs. And during the pandemic, the Fed has been purchasing about half of the Treasury’s new securities. When the Fed does these things, it creates new money, and expands the money supply, creating actual textbook inflation.
To head off price inflation, the Fed has signaled a reversal of policy entailing “tapering” of its money creation and in March the hiking of its key interest rate. It was even rumored that the Fed’s first rate hike might be 50 basis points. But then Russia started a war with Ukraine. At Barron’s on Feb. 24, one reads:
The capital markets typically react more vigorously to a surprise than an anticipated development. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was telegraphed, and yet the market has reacted like it was a bolt from the blue. Russia’s initial preparations spurred little market reaction outside of Ukraine and Russian bonds. It wasn’t until two weeks ago, when the U.S. warned a Russian invasion could “begin at any time,” did it become much of a market force.
Until then, the dominant theme had been the anticipation of the Federal Reserve’s rate hike next month, and tighter monetary policy more broadly. As recently as Feb. 10, the fed-funds futures had discounted an 80% chance that the Fed would hike 50 basis points to kick off its monetary adjustment cycle. The odds now are less than 20%.
Perhaps the perception that the Fed won’t be quite as aggressive in hiking its federal funds rate as had been thought may be why the U.S. equity market rallied so smartly on Friday the 25th. The concern for inflation hawks is that sagging prices in stocks or real estate, or the advent of a recession, or a wider war, or something, could derail the Fed’s plans to start dealing with inflation.
Fighting inflation should be the Fed’s only war. The Fed should leave other problems, like full employment, to Congress. But the Fed is the poodle of Congress, and Congress wants the Fed to use its monetary policy of money creation and zero percent interest rates because raising taxes to pay for all their new spending programs will put them in bad odor with the taxpayers.
Congress and its poodle have destroyed the time-honored traditional means working folks have used to prosper and grab a bit of the American Dream, which is saving money in banks. Through their acceptance of absurdly low-interest rates, savers have paid for the recovery and pandemic response, while the Fed’s pumping up of the money supply has inflated the stock and real estate markets, which are now grossly overvalued. The Fed has been picking winners and losers. But now the Fed’s policies have finally resulted in inflation at a 40-year high.
Inflation is the destroyer of currencies, and it can be the destroyer of nations. The Fed needs to focus only on reducing inflation, and that may mean resisting Congress. The Fed is supposed to be independent, not some compliant obedient lapdog that gives Congress everything it wants.
Interest rates for depositors in the nation’s banks need to rise. If the Fed’s 2 percent inflation is really as healthy as the Fed seems to think it is, then commercial banks should be required to offer accounts that mirror that inflation rate. Any commercial bank that cannot pay the inflation rate on a one-year certificate of deposit probably shouldn’t exist.
Closing the border for two years in response to the pandemic cut off immigration to Australia -- and made all Australians richer
Amazing per capita growth rate
The December quarter GDP numbers delivered two big ‘truths’ – one maybe a little fatuous, the other seriously and challengingly profound and bitingly relevant for decisions that are being made, right now in 2022, both for 2022 and indeed for all of the 2020s.
The first is the old truth of how great it feels when you ‘stop banging your head against a brick wall’.
For most of the last September quarter NSW and Victoria were in – let’s hope they were the last, ever – lockdowns.
That’s nearly 60 per cent of the national economy. As a result GDP fell 1.9 per cent in that September quarter.
Bad enough as that was, it was way better than the 6.8 per cent plunge in the June quarter 2020 when all of Australia – in sync with pretty much all of the world – was in the initial Covid-hysteria lockdown.
So, when Victoria and NSW came out of lockdown in the December quarter, GDP growth rocketed up 3.4 per cent – or, 13.6 per cent on an annualised basis, as the Americans report their GDP numbers – and making it 4.2 per cent for the year.
For comparison, US December quarter GDP growth was 1.7 per cent, making 5.5 per cent through 2021.
This meant that we were up 3.4 per cent on the last pre-Covid, December 2019 quarter. The US was up slightly less, 3.1 per cent over the two years.
So the bounce-back is great when you stop ‘banging your head’, so to speak; and the worse the head-banging, the bigger the bounce-back.
True, after both of those big lockdown-caused GDP plunges, GDP leapt the same 3.4 per cent in the immediate recovery quarter.
However, the national GDP increase would have been more than 5 per cent in the September 2020 quarter, but for of course, Chairman Dan keeping Victoria and one quarter of the national economy in its own specially curated lockdown, as he set after the world’s lockdown record.
He of course finally ‘achieved’ the world record after lockdown #26 - or something, I’m still too locked-in and locked-out punch-drunk to remember exactly.
The second, bigger, more telling, truth is more than a little awkward for our ‘Big Australia’ elites to contemplate.
Simply, that bigger is not just not better, it is categorically worse.
Through 2021 overall GDP growth was 4.2 per cent. GDP growth per capita (per Australian) was only slightly lower at 4.0 per cent.
Contrast that with the last pre-Covid year, 2019. Overall GDP growth was 2.2 per cent and per capita growth just 0.7 per cent; with the previous year almost exactly the same at 2.3 per cent/0.7 per cent.
Indeed, over the two years of Covid, per capita GDP growth has been almost double that of the previous two years, when immigration was running at 250k a year.
The only growth that really matters; the only growth that really delivers rising prosperity – and that doesn’t just mean bigger flat-screen TVs, but more and better hospitals and social services etc etc – is per capita growth.
There’s no point – there is no increase in either average or indeed aggregate prosperity - in doubling the size of the economy if you also double the population. Everyone stands still; and indeed would really go backward.
But that is exactly what we have been doing pretty much all of the 21st century, until March 2020 when Covid brought that game to an abrupt – and, I would hope, permanent - stop,
Indeed, much of that earlier ‘growth’ was simply building more and more infrastructure, just to keep up with the population, not more and better infrastructure for people generally.
Do we have to get to 20-lane toll roads for a 12m population Melbourne before that penny drops? And Sydney?
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Young, Male and Infertile: The Men Struggling to Have Kids
Years ago, the doctors told me I was infertile but fortunately I wasn't. I have a very creditable 34 year old son to prove it. At that time they looked at sperm count but it turned out that sperm motility was the real issue. I was bad on one but good on the other -- JR
To many, infertility is still a women's issue. That couldn't be further from the truth.
In 2018, Kent resident Toby Trice took up go-kart racing in an effort to distract himself from recent bad news. The 31-year-old and his partner had experienced a second unsuccessful in vitro fertilisation (IVF) in their years-long attempt to start a family. The procedure was necessary due to his own infertility.
“I fell into a huge depression because I thought I was alone. I didn’t have anyone around to seek support through,” says Trice. “I was ashamed of the fact that I wasn’t able to have a child. Once a month go-karting at a local track was my escape from dealing with fertility.”
Trice, now a professional racing driver, was diagnosed with swollen veins in his testes that were inhibiting his sperm production, a condition known as a varicocele, one of the most common causes of infertility among cisgender men.
When people think of infertility, the common conception is that it is an issue affecting cis women. However, there has been a 50 percent decline in sperm production over the past 40 years, according to a 2017 study from the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology (ESHRE). Half of infertility cases include some form of male factor. In the UK, one in seven couples currently struggle to start a family.
“I spent 27 years in charge of a facility that did male fertility diagnoses. Over that time, every man that came through the door thought he was the first one,” says Allan Pacey, professor of andrology at the University of Sheffield. “There's a low level of education.”
While resources are readily available to cis women experiencing trouble conceiving children, a dearth of information available to their male counterparts contributes to stigma around infertility and a hesitancy to be vocal about the issue. This lack of conversation is detrimental to research that can improve or develop aid for patients.
“Male fertility is at the bottom of the heap for being funded, it's not seen as an important healthcare condition because nobody dies of male infertility,” Pacey says. “I am a dying breed of academics looking at male fertility – there's no one in my institution that's going to follow behind me, it's not seen as an attractive career path.”
The lack of interest in this research results in a scarcity of information on how infertility affects cis men of different ethnicities and sexual orientations. Trans men trying to conceive, as documented by VICE writer Freddy McConnell in his column Dad Bod, face a whole raft of challenges, too.
The only sizeable data around infertility comes from IVF patients – who are largely cis women – and as such, there is no real breakdown of demographics for cis men. According to Pacey, this lack of interest in male fertility among new medical professionals, who would rather focus on life-threatening conditions, will likely thin the ranks of specialists (urologists or andrologists) in the field. This leaves gynaecologists as the primary option available to most men looking to confirm or treat male fertility issues.
Trice, who initially discussed his semen analysis with a gynaecologist, believed that this was the only course of action at the time.
“In hindsight, I look back and think, ‘What a load of madness!’ Why [was] I not seeing someone that specialises in male fertility?” says Trice. “All the way through, even to the point where we went to an IVF round, it was all specialists [in female fertility]. It wasn't until I went to a private doctor that I then saw someone that was specifically trained in male fertility.”
According to Sheryl Homa, scientific director of Andrology Solutions in London, the NHS does not automatically offer tests for male fertility beyond semen analysis, while women might be offered blood tests for hormonal imbalance, for instance. This means men typically have to specifically request further tests from their GPs. Newer tests, like sperm DNA fragmentation or oxidative stress measurements (which test sperm quality), are only performed in private practice, requiring patients to pursue procedures that can result in financial burden.
Many men affected by infertility also suffer mental health side-effects.
“It was a tough pill to take,” says Kevin Button, a South Wales resident diagnosed with Sertoli cell-only syndrome, which results in no sperm being produced in the testicles, eight years ago.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/y3vxg5/male-infertility-causes-varicocele
***********************************************Bronx man, 37, who 'smeared human feces in a woman's face' in sickening NYC subway attack last week sticks his tongue out as he's led out of court
A Bronx man accused of smearing feces on a woman's face in a vile subway attack last week stuck his tongue out as he was led out of his arraignment hearing Tuesday night.
Frank Abrokwa, 37, was arrested February 28 and charged with forcible touching, menacing, disorderly conduct and harassment, in connection with the stomach-churning attack.
Wearing a wearing brightly-colored 'Slam' magazine cover bomber jacket and NBA hat, Abrokwa cursed out Judge Wanda Licitra during his first court appearance at Bronx Criminal Court late Tuesday, the New York Daily News reported.
Abrokwa said he was tired of waiting and demanded the judge hurry things up so he could be handed over to Brooklyn detectives who were waiting to question him in a hate crime investigation.
The Bronx man, who had been freed without bail in three other cases, had to face the judge for the attack that took place just three days after New York City Mayor Eric Adams rolled out the Subway Safety Plan meant to crack down on violence in crime-ridden transport system.
Surveillance video from the station that was released by the New York City Police Department on Monday shows the victim, described as a 43-year-old woman, sitting on a bench waiting for a train.
A man walks along the platform carrying a plastic bag. Suddenly, he lunges at the woman and appears to shove the bag into her face.
Mayor Adams called the incident a 'horrific experience for anyone to go through' at an unrelated press conference on Monday.
'Human waste or someone spitting in your face, those are real signs of mental health issues … and we really must dig into how we're dealing with these mental health issues,' the mayor added.
The attack took place at 5:15pm on February 21 on the southbound platform at the East 241st Street station.
Assistant District Attorney Grace Phillips revealed Tuesday that just before the attack, Abrokwa hit on the victim, asking her, 'Hey, mami, hey, mami, why don't you talk to me?'
When she ignored him, he walked into a subway car and defecated into a bag.
Video then shows the Abrokwa walking back out of the idling subway car and lunging at the woman, smearing the excrement on her.
When the woman leans forward, he walks behind her and presses the waste against the back of her head and her back.
The video released by the police offers a clear image of the suspect, who is seen wearing black pants, an oversized blue sweater, and a ballcap over a durag, and carrying a large duffle bag slung over his shoulder.
********************************************
Working Folks and the Poodle of Congress
By Jon N. Hall
In the old days, America’s working folks, the once great and sprawling middle class, had a strategy for “getting ahead” and achieving the American Dream. At the center of that strategy was saving their hard-won wages in commercial banks. Sounds crazy, right? But depositing one’s money in a bank wasn’t just some way to preserve one’s wealth for the future because, back in the old days, commercial banks actually paid decent interest, and sometimes handsomely. For instance, in the 1980s banks were paying double-digit interest rates to their depositors. And as late as 2000, one could get close to 7.0 percent on a certificate of deposit. So, one’s money made money. Over the last couple of decades, that’s all been shot to hell.
Nowadays, the banks pay hardly any interest. Some are paying interest at the princely rate of 0.01 percent for savings accounts. Abysmal rates have been the norm since the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001. And just when rates started to inch up a bit, the 2008 financial crisis or the 2020 pandemic hit and interest rates for savers again took a nosedive.
But the situation for working folks is worse than the fact that their money isn’t making any money to speak of by way of interest. That’s because their deposits have been losing value, buying power, due to inflation.
Inflation has been called a “tax,” and an especially cruel one for working folks. But when inflation is engineered, and the direct result of deliberate government policy, inflation might just as well be regarded as theft. And at the center of this policy (of theft) is America’s central bank, the Federal Reserve.
One of the Federal Reserve’s mandates is to guarantee price stability and thereby preserve the value of the U.S. dollar. But the Fed tries to engineer an ongoing inflation rate of 2 percent. Why is the Fed’s 2 percent inflation rate policy acceptable? After all, doesn’t money lose value at any inflation rate?
The Fed’s targeted 2 percent inflation rate rests on the belief that economists can control the economy. We may soon get to see if that’s true because the inflation rate is now 7.5 percent. That means the money in your bank account is losing 7.5 percent of its value this year. The Fed’s main duty right now should be to get inflation down and to do it quickly. Unfortunately, that is complicated by the Fed having another mandate.
The Fed’s so-called “dual mandate” needs to be changed. In these pages, this writer has urged that the Fed’s other mandate of maximizing employment be stripped from the Fed. That mandate is at odds with the mandate to maintain price stability, (not to mention also being at odds with Congress paying people not to work during the pandemic).
The Fed actually has a third mandate. The third mandate may not have any statutory foundation nor get much press, but it is no less real. The Fed’s third mandate is to create whatever money Congress wants. Sometimes the Fed’s money creation is justified, such as during the 2008 financial crisis when the Fed provided urgently needed liquidity with TARP.
But the Fed didn’t stop with TARP. For long after the Great Recession ended in 2009, the Fed kept on creating additional trillions of dollars through QE, its quantitative easing programs. And during the pandemic, the Fed has been purchasing about half of the Treasury’s new securities. When the Fed does these things, it creates new money, and expands the money supply, creating actual textbook inflation.
To head off price inflation, the Fed has signaled a reversal of policy entailing “tapering” of its money creation and in March the hiking of its key interest rate. It was even rumored that the Fed’s first rate hike might be 50 basis points. But then Russia started a war with Ukraine. At Barron’s on Feb. 24, one reads:
The capital markets typically react more vigorously to a surprise than an anticipated development. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was telegraphed, and yet the market has reacted like it was a bolt from the blue. Russia’s initial preparations spurred little market reaction outside of Ukraine and Russian bonds. It wasn’t until two weeks ago, when the U.S. warned a Russian invasion could “begin at any time,” did it become much of a market force.
Until then, the dominant theme had been the anticipation of the Federal Reserve’s rate hike next month, and tighter monetary policy more broadly. As recently as Feb. 10, the fed-funds futures had discounted an 80% chance that the Fed would hike 50 basis points to kick off its monetary adjustment cycle. The odds now are less than 20%.
Perhaps the perception that the Fed won’t be quite as aggressive in hiking its federal funds rate as had been thought may be why the U.S. equity market rallied so smartly on Friday the 25th. The concern for inflation hawks is that sagging prices in stocks or real estate, or the advent of a recession, or a wider war, or something, could derail the Fed’s plans to start dealing with inflation.
Fighting inflation should be the Fed’s only war. The Fed should leave other problems, like full employment, to Congress. But the Fed is the poodle of Congress, and Congress wants the Fed to use its monetary policy of money creation and zero percent interest rates because raising taxes to pay for all their new spending programs will put them in bad odor with the taxpayers.
Congress and its poodle have destroyed the time-honored traditional means working folks have used to prosper and grab a bit of the American Dream, which is saving money in banks. Through their acceptance of absurdly low-interest rates, savers have paid for the recovery and pandemic response, while the Fed’s pumping up of the money supply has inflated the stock and real estate markets, which are now grossly overvalued. The Fed has been picking winners and losers. But now the Fed’s policies have finally resulted in inflation at a 40-year high.
Inflation is the destroyer of currencies, and it can be the destroyer of nations. The Fed needs to focus only on reducing inflation, and that may mean resisting Congress. The Fed is supposed to be independent, not some compliant obedient lapdog that gives Congress everything it wants.
Interest rates for depositors in the nation’s banks need to rise. If the Fed’s 2 percent inflation is really as healthy as the Fed seems to think it is, then commercial banks should be required to offer accounts that mirror that inflation rate. Any commercial bank that cannot pay the inflation rate on a one-year certificate of deposit probably shouldn’t exist.
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2022/03/working_folks_and_the_poodle_of_congress.html
*************************************************Closing the border for two years in response to the pandemic cut off immigration to Australia -- and made all Australians richer
Amazing per capita growth rate
The December quarter GDP numbers delivered two big ‘truths’ – one maybe a little fatuous, the other seriously and challengingly profound and bitingly relevant for decisions that are being made, right now in 2022, both for 2022 and indeed for all of the 2020s.
The first is the old truth of how great it feels when you ‘stop banging your head against a brick wall’.
For most of the last September quarter NSW and Victoria were in – let’s hope they were the last, ever – lockdowns.
That’s nearly 60 per cent of the national economy. As a result GDP fell 1.9 per cent in that September quarter.
Bad enough as that was, it was way better than the 6.8 per cent plunge in the June quarter 2020 when all of Australia – in sync with pretty much all of the world – was in the initial Covid-hysteria lockdown.
So, when Victoria and NSW came out of lockdown in the December quarter, GDP growth rocketed up 3.4 per cent – or, 13.6 per cent on an annualised basis, as the Americans report their GDP numbers – and making it 4.2 per cent for the year.
For comparison, US December quarter GDP growth was 1.7 per cent, making 5.5 per cent through 2021.
This meant that we were up 3.4 per cent on the last pre-Covid, December 2019 quarter. The US was up slightly less, 3.1 per cent over the two years.
So the bounce-back is great when you stop ‘banging your head’, so to speak; and the worse the head-banging, the bigger the bounce-back.
True, after both of those big lockdown-caused GDP plunges, GDP leapt the same 3.4 per cent in the immediate recovery quarter.
However, the national GDP increase would have been more than 5 per cent in the September 2020 quarter, but for of course, Chairman Dan keeping Victoria and one quarter of the national economy in its own specially curated lockdown, as he set after the world’s lockdown record.
He of course finally ‘achieved’ the world record after lockdown #26 - or something, I’m still too locked-in and locked-out punch-drunk to remember exactly.
The second, bigger, more telling, truth is more than a little awkward for our ‘Big Australia’ elites to contemplate.
Simply, that bigger is not just not better, it is categorically worse.
Through 2021 overall GDP growth was 4.2 per cent. GDP growth per capita (per Australian) was only slightly lower at 4.0 per cent.
Contrast that with the last pre-Covid year, 2019. Overall GDP growth was 2.2 per cent and per capita growth just 0.7 per cent; with the previous year almost exactly the same at 2.3 per cent/0.7 per cent.
Indeed, over the two years of Covid, per capita GDP growth has been almost double that of the previous two years, when immigration was running at 250k a year.
The only growth that really matters; the only growth that really delivers rising prosperity – and that doesn’t just mean bigger flat-screen TVs, but more and better hospitals and social services etc etc – is per capita growth.
There’s no point – there is no increase in either average or indeed aggregate prosperity - in doubling the size of the economy if you also double the population. Everyone stands still; and indeed would really go backward.
But that is exactly what we have been doing pretty much all of the 21st century, until March 2020 when Covid brought that game to an abrupt – and, I would hope, permanent - stop,
Indeed, much of that earlier ‘growth’ was simply building more and more infrastructure, just to keep up with the population, not more and better infrastructure for people generally.
Do we have to get to 20-lane toll roads for a 12m population Melbourne before that penny drops? And Sydney?
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Thursday, March 03, 2022
Abbie Chatfield's open relationship hell: Bachelor star reveals her boyfriend Konrad Bie?-Stephen has slept with two other people while she remains on zero and admits 'I'm over it'
I was in that position too but with the difference that I did not mind sleeping with no-one while my partner had lovers. Ms Chatfield has missed the real peril of such relationships: Your partner might find someone she likes better than you and settle with him. That was my downfall eventually. My new lover is great fun however. She says she is "addicted" to me so losing her seems unlikely
Abbie Chatfield glumly admitted on Monday something had 'gone wrong' in her open relationship with boyfriend Konrad Bie?-Stephen.
The 26-year-old, who confirmed the pair were non-exclusive last month, said on her radio show Hot Nights with Abbie she was annoyed her boyfriend had slept with two other women while she hadn't been with anyone else.
'Everyone's going to be very happy, but something's gone wrong,' she confessed. 'Well, it's not gone wrong. Everyone's waiting for the demise [of my relationship].'
'So obviously being open means we can sleep with other people. [That's the] whole point. Unfortunately, I'm not doing the second part. So I'm being monogamous!' she said.
Abbie explained that while she wanted to have sex with other people, her hectic schedule and growing fame had made it difficult for her to find a suitable partner.
'I wanted to and I still want to, but the issue is Konrad is the only one that seems to be able to get laid around here,' she laughed with her co-host Rohan Edwards.
**********************************************
Is the West collapsing into nihilism?
Its most basic values have been replaced by insane ones
As Putin’s army continues its invasion of Ukraine, I am beginning to fear we are seeing Western society cannibalise itself from the inside out and it will put us at risk of being overcome by competing forces – à la China and Russia.
Instead of building on the tenets that have defined Western society since the ancient Greeks, we are deconstructing them. We seem to forget we have inherited the democratic society in which we live. We ought to remember that the age-old process of passing down traditions means we now enjoy the most egalitarian, free, inclusive, and economically prosperous society in human history.
One of the most clear-cut examples of this, as reported by World Vision, is ‘since 1990, more than 1.2 billion people have risen out of extreme poverty. Now, 9.2 per cent of the world survives on less than $1.90 a day, compared to nearly 36 per cent in 1990’. Despite the challenges Covid has caused, we are still on track to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030, which in just two hundred years has dropped from 94 per cent of the population living under those conditions.
This is just one of the many examples of capitalism and Western thought affecting changes that have transformed the quality of life for the majority of people on earth. However, this is not to say our current world is perfect – far from it. Believing such a thing would lead us blindly down a path of complacency and apathy.
Rather, in the spirit of those great men and women who walked before us, we should seek to continue the great democratic traditions of the past and develop them for the greater good of contemporary society and our children.
We are moving away from this approach and now a narrative has formed where a significant proportion of people propagate the notion that Western culture is flawed by greed, intolerance, and inequality. This is an easy story to believe but a lot of the objective data shows this notion is wrong on its face. I challenge people to name a time they would rather live in than right now.
This nihilistic sentiment has gained serious traction and is going to have dangerous repercussions if we continue to buy into it. It is anti-progressive because it is destroying the key pillars of a civilisation that have been built over two millennia and brought us to a point of unparalleled wealth and inclusion.
China must be watching us and licking their lips, because Western culture is doing to itself what the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) does to its citizens. Like those who question the CCP, people who go against the dominant left-wing orthodoxy are routinely shut down and de-platformed.
In the twenty-four-seven news cycle, we are repeatedly seeing scenes out of George Orwell’s dystopian nightmare, 1984. One of the most prevalent instances is the Two Minutes Hate, a daily, public period where members of the party must cravenly express their abhorrence for enemies of the state.
Today, this is a common occurrence, where people who offer alternative views face backlash from a ruthless mob calling for their head. The most recent example of this is Joe Rogan, who is receiving ferocious criticism for speaking with people viewed in the Orwellian terminology as ‘committing a thought-crime’.
The attacks accumulated to a public apology which was not so different from Otto Warmbier’s show trial, where he confessed his guilt and begged the North Korean people for forgiveness.
This, despite the fact Rogan hosts a wide range of people on his show offering different opinions on topics. We should all be striving to reach Rogan’s level of curiosity, openness, and willingness to grow through long, deep, and philosophical conversations. It is one of the best models for accelerating growth within society. One just needs to look at Plato’s Republic, which is proven to be one of the world’s most influential works of philosophy and political theory, to see the power of dialogue.
Even if the person is wrong, we are robbing ourselves of the opportunity to realise an idea should be avoided or to build it into something that can drive impact at scale. Overall, these are net positives for the world.
The most important innovators of humankind often faced rebuke when they first publicised their revolutionary thoughts. Instead of cowering, they bravely fought for their voices to be heard and were able to make the world a better place. Some of these include Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, the earth revolving around the sun, the civil rights movement, diseases being spread by germs, the light bulb, the automobile, and the aeroplane — the list goes on.
Instead of exploring opinions outside of the norm, we now write them off as misinformation, which has become one of the favourite weapons of cancel culture. Through this, we are entering pernicious territory. Who are we to decide one ought to adhere to a viewpoint because it is unquestionably true? If history has taught us anything, the only truism is that nothing is ever absolute and universal truths are constantly shifting.
Besides, things that would see people banned from social media for misinformation 12 months ago are now widely considered to be fact. Look at the Covid ‘Lab-Leak Theory’.
Throughout time, it has been well documented how easily we can get things wrong due to the flawed nature of human perception, which is why I am so perplexed by this emerging culture of dogmatism and censorship.
The phenomenon has gotten so powerful that people are scared to admit Leonardo DiCaprio’s last Netflix film, Don’t Look Up was a terrible movie. A recent article about the movie genuinely frightened me. Published by The Independent, a piece entitled Don’t Look Up: It’s OK to hate it, assures us that we can think ‘something’s rubbish, even if it is about the climate crisis’.
This is alarming behaviour. It is essentially saying ‘it’s okay if you do not like this tribute to the zeitgeist. If you confess your sins and state your support for the movement but did not enjoy the film from an entertainment perspective, then you are not – God forbid – a climate denier’.
Again, it is not so dissimilar from what you would see in communist China or when the Catholic Church was at the peak of its influence.
Moving forward, the solution is simple. We must end this monolithic approach and return to harnessing the collective genius of the past, present and future. The answer is always in the middle and that can only be arrived at through hard discussions that take everyone’s viewpoints into consideration.
If we are unable to do this, we risk weakening our position of strength and authority. China and Russia can already sense this, which is why we will continue to see them disrupt the world order and become more brazen in doing so.
Our security is not guaranteed. It is time we acknowledge this and unite because we have a lot to lose.
https://spectator.com.au/2022/03/is-the-west-cannibalising-itself/
*******************************************To avoid Ukraine's fate, Taiwan needs nuclear missiles — now
Jeff Jacoby is being unusally Hawkish below
WHEN UKRAINE regained its independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, it had the world's third-largest stockpile of nuclear warheads. Had it remained a member of the nuclear club, it would not have lost Crimea to a Russian invasion in 2014 and would not be fighting now for its life against a massive and illegal Russian onslaught.
But Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons. Yielding to pressure from the United States and Britain, it signed an agreement in 1994 to turn over its arsenal to Russia. In exchange, Russia pledged to respect Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, and existing borders. Russia also obligated itself "to refrain from the threat or use of force" against Ukraine and promised that no Russian weapons "will ever be used against Ukraine."
With nothing to enforce them, however, those promises were worthless.
Ukrainians have inspired and united the civilized world with their tenacious resistance to Vladimir Putin's unprovoked attack, a war of bloody aggression resembling the Soviet and German invasions of Poland in 1939. As of this writing, on Tuesday, Ukraine remains free. But a 40-mile-long convoy of Russian armored vehicles is heading toward the capital city of Kyiv, burning homes and buildings as it advances, and civilian areas of Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, are being shelled indiscriminately by Russian rockets. It is far from clear that Ukraine, fighting alone against a nuclear power, can win this war.
And if Ukraine falls, will Taiwan be next?
On the day Russia launched its invasion, nine Chinese fighter jets invaded Taiwan's air defense identification zone, forcing Taiwan's air force to scramble its own fighters in response. Two days later, China struck again, sending six fighter jets and two anti-submarine aircraft over the southwest corner of Taiwan's air-defense zone. China now does this routinely, deliberately acting to intimidate its small neighbor and keep it in a constant state of tension. On some occasions, it goes much further, firing missiles into the seas off Taiwan's coast or staging simulated invasions of the island.
Repeatedly, the communist regime in Beijing claims that Taiwan — a nation of 23 million people that has never been ruled by the People's Republic of China — has no right to an independent existence. It openly threatens to go to war to enforce its outrageous demand.
"We do not renounce the use of force" to prevent Taiwan from being recognized as a sovereign nation, President Xi Jinping of China has said. Under a sinister headline — "Time to warn Taiwan secessionists and their fomenters: War is real" — the Chinese Communist Party newspaper Global Times proclaimed last October that China's armed forces are making "preparations based on the possibility of combat . . . to use force against Taiwan." It vowed that there would be "military punishment" if Taiwan does not "reverse the current situation" and submit to China's control. "This warning is not just a verbal threat," the editorial ended.
With Russia engaged in a murderous assault on Ukraine, protecting Taiwan from a similar fate must be a top US priority. Under the terms of the Taiwan Relations Act, the United States is legally bound to provide Taiwan with all military equipment needed for its self-defense. But under the bizarre doctrine of "strategic ambiguity," Washington has never explicitly committed to fighting alongside Taiwan should it be attacked.
That ambiguity should have been abandoned long ago. A successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan would be an international catastrophe. Besides shattering global trade, it would endanger the whole Western Pacific and, as former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abecq said this week, directly endanger Japan as well.
Like Ukraine, Taiwan was once a member (or on the verge of membership) in the nuclear nations club. Like Ukraine, Taiwan was pressured by the United States into abandoning its nuclear ambitions. It is too late now to empower Ukraine with the nuclear deterrent that would have kept Russia at bay. But it's not too late to do so for Taiwan.
To safeguard the island from the invasion that Beijing keeps threatening to unleash, Taiwan needs a nuclear arsenal ASAP. Even a relative handful of missiles with nuclear warheads would suffice to change Beijing's calculus on Taiwan and deter an attack from the mainland. In much the way that the Reagan administration deployed nuclear-armed Pershing II and cruise missiles in Europe during the 1980s to deter a Soviet attack, the Biden administration should make nuclear missiles available to Taiwan now, making sure that China knows their purpose is to defend Taiwanese independence and sovereignty.
The regime in Beijing is evil but not irrational. It will not go to war to crush Taiwan's sovereign democracy if it will face nuclear-armed defenders. Proliferating nuclear weapons to another country is always a cause for concern, but a Chinese conquest of one of Asia's key democracies poses a far greater threat. Taiwan's fate is on the line, and there is no more time to waste.
https://jeffjacoby.com/26048/to-avoid-ukraine-fate-taiwan-needs-nuclear
*****************************************************Trump’s Linguistic “Kill Shot”: Is This His Most Powerful Line Yet?
Trump made lots of newsworthy points at CPAC. He all but said that he’s running again, got great news about his chances in 2024, blew the Democrats to smithereens, and gave a stirring speech on the importance of border security.
But beyond all those great things, he also said something that might be one of his most powerful lines yet, a quote that Wayne Dupree is calling a “linguistic kill shot.” It was:
“They indoctrinate your children to hate their parents while calling you a hateful racist,” he said, “They use big tech to censor you. They use the deep state to spy on you. They use the intelligence agencies to frame you. They use the media to slander you. They use the legal system to persecute you. It is a persecution. They use rigged elections to disenfranchise you and destroy you and ruin your lives.”
I’d bold the most important lines but, frankly, each and every word of it is important. That’s rare for Trump, who is normally far from laconic and a bit of a rambler, but it’s true here.
Trump, in a few brief sentences, summed up the left’s war on conservatives: they’re using every tool in their arsenal, from the indoctrination of your kids to pressuring the Big Tech platforms to censor you, to win the culture war.
That’s dangerous, particularly because of how effective it is. Yet worse, it’s something that few conservatives recognize; they think that each issue they hear about, whether it be Deep State corruption, leftism in the schools, or anything else, is an isolated issue.
Well, as Trump might say, “Wrong!” Each player might not be actively collaborating with the other players, but they’re all working collectively to win the culture war and crush people like you. That effort is as evil as it is powerful and effective.
Fortunately for us, Trump called it out, shaking apathetic conservatives into an awareness of what’s going on and how the left is trying to win the culture war.
That line was part of his larger message about how America’s most dangerous enemies are at home, a point he introduced by saying:
“As grave as the dangers are abroad, it’s the destruction within that spells our doom.
Our most dangerous people are people from within. These are people that must hate our country because they make us weak.”
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Wednesday, March 02, 2022
Ping, Pong, Pang: we went to enjoy the opera but found it perpetuating racism
By Cat-Thao Nguyen
On reading the story below, I do feel sorry for Ms Nguyen. But Puccini's "Turandot" is one of the greatest works of opera so should be sacrosanct in a way. Its first performance took place at the "Teatro alla Scala" in Milan in 1926, conducted by Arturo Toscanini, after which it rapidly became a classic. Who has not wondered at the power of its great aria "Nessun dorma"?
We should not meddle with the transcendent and it seems that the Sydney performance was true to the original, as it should have been.
So I think Ms Nguyen should simply see the opera as the fantasy that it is, without ascribing personal reference to it. That would seem to be the only constructive way forward, difficult though it might be. After all, works by Wagner are now performed in Israel, for their artistic merit, not their historical relevance
Growing up in poverty in Bankstown as a Vietnamese refugee, I was always on the outside looking in at the Sydney Opera House. My mother always warned us the city had a different temperature. Crossing train lines was like crossing countries.
So when my Canadian-Chinese husband suggested we go to a performance at the Opera House earlier this month, I wore the heavy coat imposed by mum. After showing our vaccination documents and checking in we ascended the steps of the Joan Sutherland Theatre to see Opera Australia’s performance of Puccini’s Turandot.
Our previous experience of a Puccini opera was by accident while on holiday in Italy. Inside an ancient church, there were two unassuming singers without any costumes, stage or surtitles. And it was transcendent. But what we saw in Sydney shocked us.
In 2019, a comedian withdrew her show, Aisha the Aussie Geisha, from the Melbourne Festival. It had featured a white person dressing up as a geisha with face paint, drawing complaints about its use of “yellowface”. Yet Opera Australia apparently feels comfortable having white performers dress up in face paint and exaggerated Asian features to play Chinese characters such as Ping, Pong and Pang.
Turandot is set in ancient China, even though Puccini never went to the country. Unsurprisingly, the play, which centres around a barbaric Chinese princess, contains outdated orientalist stereotypes of Chinese people. As an Asian woman, I have had to battle exotic fetishism and binary depictions that oscillate between submissive servant and dragon lady – the exact binary I was now watching on stage.
As I sat in the theatre, the horrible caricatures kept coming like a tidal assault. Ping, Pong and Pang pranced around the stage with their Fu Manchu-style moustaches and fake long ponytails flicking across their costumes. I felt utterly sick. I clutched my husband and clamped my hand over my mouth. As the scenes unfolded, I felt a violent wilting of dignity for myself and my Chinese husband.
We decided to leave after the first act. Most of the audience that night was white but the only thing white for me was my hot rage. I quoted the Jewish teacher Elie Wiesel to my husband. Wiesel said: “It is illegal to shout ‘Fire’ in a crowded theatre. But if there is a fire, it is immoral to remain silent ... One must raise an alarm in such a moment, even though it will be perceived as the act of a madman, even though it makes people uncomfortable.” It seemed no one else was alarmed.
No one else saw the fire of cultural appropriation and the use of Chinese music, traditional dress and perpetuating historical Western depictions as demeaning. Instead, on the Opera House balcony people chuckled, talked about property and holidays. It was achingly normal.
****************************************************
Jilted South Wales police officer, 24, made fake Crimestoppers calls accusing his innocent ex-girlfriend of 'drug dealing, storing a gun and murdering an Albanian gangster'
More Muslim garbage
A jilted police officer made fake calls to blame an innocent former girlfriend for a string of crimes - including murder and drug dealing, a court heard.
PC Abubakar Masum, 24, rang Crimestoppers to wrongly accuse old flame Mia Pitman, 23, of being linked to the criminal underworld.
A court heard Masum's calls led to armed police raiding her home looking for a Glock handgun - and questioning her over a planned murder.
Innocent Mia was arrested at her student job in a Tesco store in Swansea Marina while another 20 officers rifled through her home in the gun hunt.
Prosecutor William Hughes QC said Masum developed an 'obsession' with university student Mia after they met in a nightclub.
A jury was told Masum and Mia's brief relationship ended when she learned he had a girlfriend.
But he then allegedly began to make a series of 'false, untrue and malicious' claims against her and workmate Leon Croucher.
Mr Hughes said in one call Masum reported: 'Mia Pitman is storing is a handgun on behalf of Leon Croucher. He is a known Class A drug dealer.'
The anonymous call to Crimestoppers went on to say Mia and Mr Croucher 'planned to shoot' a man who allegedly owed them drug money.
Cardiff Crown Court heard Mia and Mr Croucher were arrested mid-shift by armed police while working at the Tesco store in Swansea Marina.
Another 20 armed officers raided her student home to look for a gun after the bogus anonymous tip-off.
************************************************
OH: Governor DeWine Signs CCV-Backed Bill Protecting Student Religious Expression in Athletics
Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed into law the Center for Christian Virtue-backed Senate Bill 181 to protect the religious freedom of Ohio students competing in state-sponsored sporting events.
Sponsored by Senator Theresa Gavarone, the law was introduced after an Ohio student was disqualified from a track event because of her religious garment, which gave her no competitive advantage, or endangered her or other students.
“Students shouldn’t be forced to check their First Amendment religious freedom at the starting line” said Nilani Jawahar, CCV’s Legislative Liaison. “That means they shouldn’t be penalized for their hijab, kippah, or cross. Students have a right to free speech, especially where their expression does not result in any issues of safety, unfair advantage, lewdness, or disruption to the academic process and mission.”
“We’re grateful for Sen. Gavarone’s leadership in sponsoring this bill to protect religious freedom for all Ohio students, and for Governor Mike DeWine’s signature on this essential bill,” Jawahar said.
The law goes into effect in 90 days
Center for Christian Virtue: contact@ccv.org
***********************************************
Australian police use sonic ‘torture weapons’ on vaccine protesters
It's long been admitted that the police do have and use LRADs and that they can be misused. So the time appears to have come when the police are misusing them. The shocking part is that the mainstream media seem to be largely ignoring it
SINISTER stories have emerged from the trucker convoy camp in Canberra. Nasty new devices seem now to be deployed against peaceful citizens. This is Australia in the 2020s.
Canberra is the insiders’ insider paradise. Woke on steroids does not begin to describe the place. A workers’ promised land. With fewer than half a million residents, it is run by a glorified local council. As the Australian Capital Territory’s Chief Minister, Andrew Barr, says in as many words, vaccinated to within an inch of its life. As I have noted elsewhere:
‘Australia’s two separate worlds were vividly on display on Saturday, 12 February. In Canberra, tens of thousands of protesters marched upon the national Parliament in the biggest display of controlled public anger at government since Vietnam. The numbers and the raw emotion involved make the pro-Gough rallies of 1975 look puny in comparison. People from all over the country rose up and marched on the capital. Across town, meanwhile, youngsters as young as five were being dressed up as superheroes as they were led off to be vaccinated against a minor illness that will not even touch most of them.’
Then came horrifying reports of the way the police had managed the crowd, the ‘weaponry’ they had deployed, of unexplained injuries at the convoy camp. Was something literally ‘cooking’ the protesters?
Your News reported: ‘Australian police have been deploying directed energy weapons (DEWs) against the peaceful Freedom Convoy protesters around the capital, according to reports.
‘Disturbing videos and photos circulating social media show Canberra protesters, including women and children, who appear to have been badly burned by directed microwave energy weapons, with blisters on their faces, arms, and torsos.
‘These particular DEWs reportedly used concentrated microwave radiation to inflict painful burns on the skin from far distances. ‘
The mainstream media has accepted that the Canberra cops were using sonic devices called long-range acoustic devices (LRADs) which the Australian Broadcasting Corporation tried to put a benign spin on. It said ‘sonic weapons’ were used by police in Canberra’s protests, but only to broadcast messages rather than do harm.
All ok, then.
Why the use of designer torture devices by the police? One hundred thousand and more protesters from all over Australia have presumably caused some serious political buttock-clenching. John Stapleton at A Sense of Place magazine called it ‘the day Australia changed’. Here we have the resistance to the resistance. Ottawa style. The concerted effort to portray protesters as liars as well as everything else of which they are regularly accused is the Covid State.
The use of harmful devices is utterly consistent with the tactics used by the State across Australia and in other Dominions to quell peaceful protests. And consistent with the overarching strategy of doing harm to citizens, and with the lies, spin, propaganda and misinformation.
The ACT’s Chief Minister doesn’t like protesters much. On Wednesday morning, Andrew Barr told ABC’s Radio National the protesters’ behaviour had been ‘over the top’ and they were ‘effectively stalking Canberrans, harassing business owners and residents, and aggressively flouting the law’.
Mr Barr said the protesters ‘couldn’t have a less receptive audience anywhere in the world’ with Canberra – if not the most vaccinated city on the planet – among the most vaccinated cities.
‘It is an eccentric and eclectic bunch, there’s no denying that,’ he said. ‘And it appears to have been infiltrated, or at least part of the protest movement has, by very extremist views.’
But some of its Canberra’s denizens are stirring. Craig Kelly MP has called for an inquiry into the claims about sonic weapons. Senator Malcolm Roberts of One Nation has asked questions in parliament. As has Liberal Party hero Alex Antic, detained by police at Adelaide Airport and placed forcibly in quarantine last year for entering his own state whileunvaccinated, when it was the norm that home isolation was all that was required.
A far more trustworthy news source than the mainstream media, the Canadian Rebel News reported both the sonic devices whose use in Canberra was admitted by police, but framed to appear innocent, and the deployment of other devices that caused a range of documented injuries and reactions.
The site said: ‘What started out at the beginning of the week as the “stuff of conspiracy theories” was eventually confirmed by police. Australian Capital Territory Policing admitted they did use a Long-Range Acoustic Device (also known as a LRAD) during the Canberra Convoy Freedom rallies outside Parliament House.
‘Reports are still coming in on various injuries at the protest – most relating to what looks like sunburn and heat stroke. There are also clear allergic reactions from what some speculate might be contact with chemicals.’
The LRAD is technically a sonic crowd control weapon. It has two settings and can project extremely loud sounds over long distances to cripple a crowd. This ‘alert setting’ on the device is particularly dangerous and has been known to cause permanent hearing damage, dizziness, disorientation and brain damage.
Ironically, as Rebel News points out, when the weapons arrived down under in 2016, the ABC was ‘concerned’: ‘They can break up protests with loud, piercing sound, but Long-Range Acoustic Devices can also cause permanent hearing damage. Australian law enforcement agencies are now investing in the technology, but sound and law experts say their potential use is extremely concerning.’
At the time Melbourne University expert James Parker told the ABC, ‘The secrecy of the state around the tools, the weapons that it has and is capable of using on its population is something to be really, really concerned about. It expands the nature of police/state/military authority in a certain kind of way. It makes sound itself part of the arsenal that police and military and state institutions use.’
Since then, the ABC has discovered deplorables and anti-vaxxers, those same folks routinely referred to by politicians, police commanders and journalists as ‘domestic terrorists’.
Whatever the murky tactics used by police, the message to we-the-people from the Canberra community was clear. One local rammed a protester’s vehicle with her car, then let loose with expletive-laden vitriol.
The Canberra Times editorial made its position clear, after a mere few days of extremely polite, heartfelt protest by the deplorables. ’You have made your point. Now go home’. The same Canberra Times accused Craig Kelly of ‘bringing a conspiracy [theory] into the House of Representatives’.
Taxpayer-funded Canberra seems not to have noticed that Australia has fallen apart, its citizens’ rights crushed. For two years. Lives have been ruined. The parking of the unvaccinated in the bad corner and the use of language to diminish their ‘grievances’ is a classic tactic of the Covid class. According to the police boss, the crowd had a ‘poor attitude’. Thought crime. Only three arrests, though.
As we know, names will never hurt us. It is the rather sophisticated and sinister sticks and stones of the politicised police that are doing the harm. Like the truckers in Ottawa, we have been used as punching bags. The legacy ‘journalists’ are useful idiots, with the Covid Kool-Aid dribbling down their chins.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
Tuesday, March 01, 2022
Fruitcake links Ukraine and Brexit
I live with a conspiracy theorist but that part of her conversation just washes over me unheeded. But it does tell me how deeply such theories can be embedded. No point of argument and evidence. I think the ideas of the lady below are similar and should be ignored too
‘We are part of the plan. We have always been part of the plan.’ This is the latest stark warning to the West from Observer journalist Carole Cadwalladr, following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Cadwalladr, as regular spiked readers are no doubt familiar, has spent the past several years tirelessly uncovering an elaborate hidden conspiracy that can apparently explain more or less every global development that liberal centrists see as unwelcome. Brexit, Trump and now the war in Ukraine are all part of the plot – and Russia, Facebook and Brexit-supporting businessman Arron Banks (who is currently suing Cadwalladr for libel) are always somehow connected.
In an extraordinary outburst last night, Cadwalladr claimed that the war in Ukraine is not all it seems. Rather, Russia’s invasion is merely one front in ‘the first Great Information War’. And we in the West have apparently been under sustained attack in this war since at least 2014. And if you haven’t noticed there’s a war going on, that’s because it is being carried out ‘invisibly’.
Social media may seem like a fun way to pass the time, or a good way to keep up with what’s going on in the world, but for Cadwalladr Facebook is a weapon – a ‘thermobaric bomb’, she says, only ‘online’. It has apparently allowed Russia to carry out ‘“hybrid warfare” on steroids’. It has given the likes of Vladimir Putin ‘a golden Willy Wonka ticket to manipulate hearts and minds. Almost completely invisibly.’ ‘We’ve been under attack for eight years now’, Cadwalladr claims. But we refuse to acknowledge this, because ‘in Britain, we’re a captured state’. Oh, and it’s somehow also the fault of her arch-nemesis, Arron Banks. Former Vote Leave mastermind Dominic Cummings gets a walk-on role, too. If this story doesn’t quite make sense to you, then perhaps the Russians have already got to you.
Such extraordinary claims are nothing new for Cadwalladr, of course. She has long tried to paint Brexit, in particular, as the handiwork of Facebook, of data-mining firm Cambridge Analytica, of Russian money, Russian bots, Russian disinformation and Russia Today – as part of a coordinated plot to ‘hijack’ democracy by a ‘shadowy global operation’. Now that Brexit is done, she tells us that Brexit is just a small plot point in a much bigger, more nefarious scheme.
Carole has essentially fashioned herself as a QAnon leader for centrist liberals – a kind of Alex Jones for embittered Remainers in the UK and anti-Trumpists in the US. Yet unlike the real Alex Jones, who is shunned from mainstream platforms, Cadwalladr’s crackpot theories have been indulged and encouraged by the liberal elites. She has been lavished with awards from the Orwell Prize, Reporters Without Borders, the Hay Festival and the Political Studies Association, and was nominated for a Pulitzer in the US. Yet so many of Carole’s big reveals are presented with quite major caveats, such as ‘Is it true? Who knows?’ and ‘we are in the dark about so much’, suggesting that she might not know the truth after all.
Cadwalladr and her fans see themselves as truth tellers crusading against the tide of foreign ‘disinformation’, or dezinformatsiya, in the Russian, as Carole insists on calling it. And as the West is gripped by war fever, there is no doubt a receptive audience for any claim against Russia and Putin, no matter how mad (the first tweet in Cadwalladr’s Ukraine thread has over 46,000 likes).
But if these incoherent ramblings are what passes for ‘truth’ these days, then we are in deep trouble.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/02/28/the-invasion-of-ukraine-has-nothing-to-do-with-brexit/
********************************************Top 3 Reasons Cancel Culture is Crumbling
Joe Rogan, Dave Chappelle, and Kanye West don’t have a lot in common. One thing that does come to mind is that they’re powerful men who the left has tried to cancel. The left failed at each attempt. While still a threat for now, cancel culture is crumbling.
For years, anyone with a public presence who has dared to contradict the leftist zeitgeist has been met with an angry Twitter mob demanding that individual to be fired, doxxed, de-platformed from social media, financially ruined, and publicly disgraced. Great men and women of history have been erased. Maybe a soft version of cancel culture, but the National Archives even labeled parts of the United States Constitution as “harmful content.”
Cancel culture stifles two of America’s most defining values, the ability to question authority and express ourselves through free speech. However, three major trends have emerged that will gradually destroy cancel culture.
Money Talks
Despite attempts by the left to cancel Rogan, Chappelle, West, and Aaron Rodgers, big business continues to invest hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars into these men.
Let’s start with Rogan. When several prominent artists, led by Neil Young took their music off Spotify to protest what they described as COVID vaccine misinformation on Rogan’s show, clips from old episodes caught fire online. Social activists and artists on the left launched a #DeleteSpotify social media campaign began calling for people to not only boycott Spotify but also deleting their content from the popular music and podcast platform.
Despite this, Rogan remains on Spotify. Even Spotify’s CEO said, “We’re not in the business of dictating the discourse that these creators want to have on their shows.” Rogan has an average of 11 million viewers per show. That’s more than Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, The Five, and Hannity combined. Rogan’s podcast show accounts for 60.5 percent of viewers across all nine of the primetime shows listed below. Rogan’s average viewer is a 24-year-old male.
Spotify seeks to produce its own original content and become the biggest podcasting network in the world. As Rogan leads not only in the U.S. market, but also 92 other countries, these viewership numbers signify BIG money. According to a recent article from New York Times, citing anonymous people familiar with the deal, Spotify actually paid Rogan more than $200 million in 2020 for exclusive rights to his podcast for three years. More viewership equals more ad revenue for Spotify.
CEOs and businesspeople care more about lining their pockets than placating people with blue checkmarks behind their names on Twitter.
This financial motive is why Netflix allowed comedy legend Dave Chappelle to say “gender is a fact” on his Netflix special “The Closer.” He was paid $20 million for the controversial standup. Since then, Netflix has offered to pay Chappelle to do more standup specials. Similarly, Rodgers’ 4-year, $134,000,000 contract was not cancelled after he stated that “The vaccines do offer some protection for sure, but there is a lot we don’t know about them.”
West, an eccentric African American man who wears MAGA hats and smokes joints, is the wealthiest rapper in the world with a net worth of $6.6 billion. He can’t be cancelled either. He understands the left’s game well.
“They’ll hit you with like accusations of somebody who you was with 10 years ago,” West said. “And also, there’s women who’ve been through very serious things, pulled in alleys against they will—that’s different than a hug, but it’s classified as the same thing. It’s power and politics. You know, power-hungry maniacs and just control. This is ‘1984’ mind-control we’re in.”
West sees through the smoke and mirrors and keeps selling records and selling out shows. These are but a few examples of how, at the end of the day, the power of money trump’s the hurt feelings of snowflakes. Cancel culture will continue to fail whenever it challenges big business.
Decentralization of Internet
Second, cancel culture will erode because of the inevitable decentralization of the internet along with the creation of parallel digital platforms.
The old saying “be careful what you wish for” applies to the left. The left wished for conservatives to be removed from their platforms, so conservatives, moderates, and other free speech advocates created and deployed their own platforms, based on their own infrastructure.
As banks start canceling accounts and freezing assets, like Canadian banks are currently doing with the truckers, the use of cryptocurrency and crypto wallets will surge. Although crypto will eventually be largely regulated, there will always be some blockchain-based coins that are untraceable and therefore not subject to cancellation. The social media site Gab is 100 percent funded by crypto as Visa, Stripe, Paypal, and other payment services refuse to do business with them. Gab’s CEO is a free speech absolutist who will not remove offensive content so long as minors aren’t exploited or harmed in any way.
When Twitter suspends people for saying they believe there are two genders, or that women should be feminine and men should be masculine, people will move to the free speech alternative Gettr. When YouTube removes videos for questioning the efficacy and/or safety of the COVID vaccine, people will move to Rumble. Neither Gab nor Rumble can be cancelled by Amazon because neither use Amazon Web Services. Unlike Parler, they were smart enough to build their own server hardware.
Speaking of Rumble, the company is experiencing tremendous growth. They only had 3 million active users in 2020. By late 2021, they had grown 10 times with over 30 million active users. Equally impressive, Rumble saw 19 percent growth on monthly active users from Dec. 2021 to Jan. 2022.
“On the heels of the decline in U.S. and Canadian users at Facebook, and with Rumble’s impressive January growth, it’s clear that we are witnessing a major shift on the internet. Users are sending a clear message that platforms supporting the free and open internet will be the future,” said Rumble CEO Chris Pavlovski.
With decentralized websites and payment gateways, independently owned server hardware, increased ease of web development, the digital future belongs to everyone- not just a few conglomerates. Cancel a man 100 times and he will still be able to find an online community.
Cultural Icons Push Back
Third, and perhaps the most potent antidote to cancel culture in the short-term, is cultural icons pushing back against cancel culture combined with the left canceling itself and feeling the nasty repercussions. Even someone as far left as Madonna, who joked about blowing up the White House during Trump’s Presidency, expresses legitimate fear of cancel culture.
“That’s something I want to disturb,” she said. “I want to disturb the fact that we’re not encouraged to discuss it. I believe that our job [as artists] is to disturb the status quo. The censoring that’s going on in the world right now, that’s pretty frightening. No one’s allowed to speak their mind right now. No one’s allowed to say what they really think about things for fear of being canceled, cancel culture. In cancel culture, disturbing the peace is probably an act of treason.”
A lot of people weren’t happy with Madonna over her comments. Aside from Madonna, many celebrities and cultural icons have faced backlash from the left for having independent thoughts. Elon Musk, Bill Burr, Chris Rock, Steve Harvey, JK Rawling, and Ricky Gervais have faced backlash for speaking opposite of the hive mind.
Perhaps the most recent example of the left nearly canceling itself involves Whoopi Goldberg and her comments about the Holocaust.
“The Holocaust isn’t about race. No, it’s not about race,” Goldberg said. “It’s about man’s inhumanity to man… But these are two groups of white people,” Goldberg added.
She was suspended for two weeks and allegedly was so embarrassed and angry that she had to take time off. Others on the left came to her defense. MSNBC news anchor Mika Brzezinski told viewers,
“Everyone knows Whoopi Goldberg. She’s been on TV for decades. She’s been putting herself out there for decades. If you don’t know her heart, then you haven’t been watching. And so that’s why the two-week suspension to me seems more about … this unbelievable need to punish and judge people when they’ve made a mistake.”
Brzezinski added, “If Whoopi Goldberg is canceled, that would be the end of this all. This cancel culture is getting so out of hand.”
Americans for Limited Government President Richard Manning said “Cancel culture will become futile as the decentralized internet continues to grow. As much as we disagree with the authoritarian precepts of the left, Americans for Limited Government believes that the First Amendment applies equally to everyone and that no one should be cancelled.”
It’s time to embrace free speech again. The First Amendment is the foundation of a free society.
https://dailytorch.com/2022/02/top-3-reasons-cancel-culture-is-crumbling/
**************************************************The Neoliberal War on Dissent in the West
Those who most flamboyantly proclaim that they are fighting fascists continue to embrace and wield the defining weapons of despotism.
Glenn Greenwald
When it comes to distant and adversarial countries, we are taught to recognize tyranny through the use of telltale tactics of repression. Dissent from orthodoxies is censored. Protests against the state are outlawed. Dissenters are harshly punished with no due process. Long prison terms are doled out for political transgressions rather than crimes of violence. Journalists are treated as criminals and spies. Opposition to the policies of political leaders are recast as crimes against the state.
When a government that is adverse to the West engages in such conduct, it is not just easy but obligatory to malign it as despotic. Thus can one find, on a virtually daily basis, articles in the Western press citing the government's use of those tactics in Russia, China, Iran, Venezuela and whatever other countries the West has an interest in disparaging (articles about identical tactics from regimes supported by the West — from Riyadh to Cairo — are much rarer). That the use of these repressive tactics render these countries and their populations subject to autocratic regimes is considered undebatable.
But when these weapons are wielded by Western governments, the precise opposite framework is imposed: describing them as despotic is no longer obligatory but virtually prohibited. That tyranny exists only in Western adversaries but never in the West itself is treated as a permanent axiom of international affairs, as if Western democracies are divinely shielded from the temptations of genuine repression. Indeed, to suggest that a Western democracy has descended to the same level of authoritarian repression as the West's official enemies is to assert a proposition deemed intrinsically absurd or even vaguely treasonous.
The implicit guarantor of this comforting framework is democracy. Western countries, according to this mythology, can never be as repressive as their enemies because Western governments are at least elected democratically. This assurance, superficially appealing though it may be, completely collapses with the slightest critical scrutiny. The premise of the U.S. Constitution and others like it is that majoritarian despotism is dangerous in the extreme; the Bill of Rights consists of little more than limitations imposed on the tyrannical measures majorities might seek to democratically enact (the expression of ideas cannot be criminalized even if majorities want them to be; religious freedom cannot be abolished even if large majorities demand it; life and liberty cannot be deprived without due process even if nine of out ten citizens favor doing so, etc.). More inconveniently still, many of the foreign leaders we are instructed to view as despots are popular or even every bit as democratically elected as our own beloved freedom-safeguarding officials.
As potent as this mythological framework is, reinforced by large media corporations over so many decades, it cannot withstand the increasingly glaring use of precisely these despotic tactics in the West. Watching Justin Trudeau — the sweet, well-mannered, well-raised good-boy prince of one of the West's nicest countries featuring such a pretty visage (even on the numerous occasions when marred by blackface) — invoke and then harshly impose dubious emergency, civil-liberties-denying powers is just the latest swing of the hammer causing this Western sculpture to crumble. In sum, you are required by Western propaganda to treat the two images below as fundamentally different; indeed, huge numbers of people in the West vehemently denounce the one on the left while enthusiastically applauding the one on the right. Such brittle mythology can be sustained only for so long:
The decade-long repression of Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, standing alone, demonstrates how grave neoliberal attacks on dissent have become. Many are aware of key parts of this repression — particularly the decade-long effective detention of Assange — but have forgotten or, due to media malfeasance, never knew several of the most extreme aspects.
While the Obama DOJ under Attorney General Eric Holder failed to find evidence of criminality after convening a years-long Grand Jury investigation, the then-Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), succeeded in pressuring financial services companies such as MasterCard, Visa, PayPal and Bank of America to terminate WikiLeaks’ accounts and thus banish them from the financial system, choking off their ability to receive funds from supporters or pay their bills. Lieberman and his neocon allies also pressured Amazon to remove WikiLeaks from its hosting services, causing the whistleblower group to be temporarily offline. All of that succeeded in crippling WikiLeaks’ ability to operate despite being charged with no crime: indeed, as the DOJ admitted, it could not prove that the group committed any crimes, yet this extra-legal punishment was nonetheless meted out.
Those tactics pioneered against WikiLeaks — excluding dissenters from the financial system and coercing tech companies to deny them internet access without a whiff of due process — have now become standard weapons. Trudeau's government seizes and freezes bank accounts with no judicial process. The "charity” fundraising site GoFundMe first blocked the millions of dollars raised for the truckers and announced it would redirect those funds to other charities, then refunded the donations when people pointed out, rightly, that their original plan amounted to a form of stealing. When an alternative fundraising site, GiveSendGo, raised millions more for the truckers, Canadian courts blocked its distribution. And it was just over a year ago when Democratic politicians such as Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) successfully pressured tech monopolies Google and Apple to remove Parler from its stores and then pressured Amazon to remove the social media site from its servers, at exactly the time the social media alternative became the single most-downloaded app in America. (This morning we published a new video report on Rumble that traces the emergence of this new anti-dissent tactic first pioneered on WikiLeaks and now widely used against dissent generally: “Banishment from the Financial System: the War on Dissent").
That the U.S. and UK Governments have kept Assange himself — one of the most effective dissidents in the West in decades — in a cage for years with no end in sight by itself highlights how repressive they are. But the precipitating cause of Assange's apprehension from the Ecuadorian Embassy has been forgotten by many and it, too, illustrates the same disturbing trend.
In 2017, mass protests erupted in Barcelona as part of a movement in Catalonia for more autonomy from the Madrid-based Spanish government, culminating in a referendum for autonomy on October 1. In 2019, even larger and more intense protests materialized. The methods used to crush the protests shocked many, as such domestic aggression had been rarely seen for years in western Europe. Spain treated the activists not as domestic protesters exercising their civic rights but as terrorists, seditionists and insurrectionists. Violence was used to sweep up Catalans in mass arrests, and their leaders were charged with terrorism and sedition and given lengthy prison sentences.
About the crackdown, a protest video proclaimed that Spain had just witnessed “a degree of force never seen before in a European member state.” While a fact-check by the BBC failed to affirm that maximalist claim, it documented multiple grave attacks by the police on protesters in Catalonia. Meanwhile, “Spanish police engaged in excessive force when confronting demonstrators in Catalonia during a disputed referendum, using batons to hit non-threatening protesters and causing multiple injuries,” Human Rights Watched concluded, adding that though the protesters were "largely peaceful,” some “hundreds were left injured, some seriously. Catalonia’s Health Department estimated on October 2 that 893 people had reported injuries to the authorities.”
From the Ecuadorian Embassy, Assange, in both 2017 and then again in 2019, used WikiLeaks’ platforms to vocally publicize and denounce the actions of the Spanish government — not to express support for Catalonian independence but to denounce the civil liberties assaults used to crush the protest movement. Assange made multiple media appearances to object to the use of violence by the state police, and WikiLeaks’ Twitter account, virtually on a daily basis, was publicizing videos and other testimonial evidence of the crackdown.
It was Assange's reporting on and denouncing of violence by the Spanish government against its own citizens that was the final cause of Ecuador's decision to rescind its asylum. The Spanish government made clear to Ecuador how indignant they were that Assange was publicizing their abuses. It was just several months after the first protest movement that Ecuador announced it was cutting off Assange’s internet access, claiming the WikiLeaks founder had been "interfer[ing] with other states” — meaning speaking out on the civil liberties abuses by Madrid. And it was the following year that Ecuador, pressured by the U.S., UK and Spain, withdrew its asylum protection and allowed the London police to enter its embassy, arrest Assange, and then put him in the high-security Belmarsh prison where he has remained ever since despite being convicted of no crime other than a misdemeanor count of bail-jumping. All of this reflects, and stems from, a clear and growing Western intolerance for dissent.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-neoliberal-war-on-dissent-in
*********************************************New Zealand High Court overturns police and defence forces vaccine mandate
A New Zealand High Court challenge questioning the legality of Covid vaccination mandates for Police and Defence Force employees has been upheld, with the court determining that the government mandate is an unjustified incursion on that country’s Bill of Rights, as well as being unreasonable under its Public Health Response Act.
In a decision handed down on February 25 in the matter of Yardley v Minister of Workplace Relations and Safety, Justice Francis Cooke held the mandates were not demonstrably justified.
As reported in the New Zealand Herald, the applicant police officers and defence force employees relied on two aspects of the NZ Bill of Rights – the right to decline a medical procedure (section 11) and the right to religious freedom (section 15).
‘The order limits the right to be free to refuse medical treatment recognised by the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act (including because of its limitation on people’s right to remain employed), and it limits the right to manifest religious beliefs for those who decline to be vaccinated because the vaccine has been tested on cells derived from a human foetus which is contrary to their religious beliefs,’ Justice Cooke said.
More specifically with regard to the right to decline a medical procedure, Justice Cooke stated that while it is clear the government isn’t forcing Police and NZDF employees to get vaccinated against their will and they still have the right to refuse vaccination, the mandate presents an element of pressure.
‘The associated pressure to surrender employment involves a limit on the right to retain that employment, which the above principles suggest can be thought of as an important right or interest recognised not only in domestic law, but in the international instruments,’ Justice Cooke declared.
On the religious freedom argument, a number of those who made submissions referred to their fundamental objection to taking the Covid vaccines, given that they were tested on the cells that were derived from a human foetus.
Justice Cooke agreed with the claim, saying that ‘an obligation to receive the vaccine which a person objects to because it has been tested on cells derived from a human foetus, potentially an aborted foetus, does involve a limitation on the manifestation of a religious belief.’
With regard to the arguments concerning the lawfulness of the mandates under the Public Health Response Act, the court accepted that vaccination has a significant beneficial effect in limiting serious illness, hospitalisation, and death, including with the Omicron variant. However, it was less effective in reducing infection and transmission of Omicron than had been the case with other variants of Covid.
‘In essence, the order mandating vaccinations for police and NZDF staff was imposed to ensure the continuity of the public services, and to promote public confidence in those services, rather than to stop the spread of Covid-19. Indeed health advice provided to the government was that further mandates were not required to restrict the spread of Covid-19. I am not satisfied that continuity of these services is materially advanced by the order,’ his Honour stated.
‘Covid-19 clearly involves a threat to the continuity of police and NZDF services. That is because the Omicron variant in particular is so transmissible. But that threat exists for both vaccinated and unvaccinated staff. I am not satisfied that the order makes a material difference, including because of the expert evidence before the court on the effects of vaccination on Covid-19 including the Delta and Omicron variants.’
Critically, as noted by RNZ, Justice Cooke observed that: ‘The order being set aside in the present case was not implemented for the purposes of limiting the spread of Covid-19. Health advice was that such a further mandate was not needed for this purpose.’
Matthew Hague, counsel for the applicants, said that the affected workers must be allowed to return to work immediately.
National Party leader Christopher Luxon said all police officers and defence personnel who lost their jobs over the Covid vaccine mandates should be re-employed.
He said the ruling also had implications for vaccine mandates more generally, saying the mandates did not make sense in the Omicron-era and should be phased out after the peak of the outbreak.
Workplace Relations and Safety Minister Michael Wood released a statement following the decision, saying the government will take time to consider the decision and seek advice.
‘The judgment is clear that it is not questioning the efficacy of vaccines nor the role of mandates per se, but whether they were justified specifically for Police and Defence business continuity,’ the Minister said, while adding: ‘No Defence and Police terminations will proceed at this time.’
While this decision is a positive step forward, the million-dollar question, as it were, is whether it will have any persuasive effect regarding are the Australian cases challenging vaccine mandates.
****************************************
My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
*****************************************
For the notes and pix appearing in the sidebar of the original blog see HERE
Most pictures that I use in the body of the blog should stay up throughout the year. But how long they stay up after that is uncertain. At the end of every year therefore I intend to put up a collection of all pictures used my blogs in that year. That should enable missing pictures to be replaced. The archive of last year's pictures on this blog is therefore now up. Note that the filename of the picture is clickable and clicking will bring the picture up. See here (2021). See also here (2020)
My Home Pages are here (Academic) or here (Personal); My Home page supplement; My Alternative Wikipedia; My Blogroll; Menu of my longer writings; My annual picture page is here; My Recipes;
Email me (John Ray) here.