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Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!

Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.

The picture below is worth more than a 1,000 words ...... Better than long speeches. It shows some Middle-Eastern people walking to reach their final objective,to live in a European country, or migrate to America.

In the photo, there are 7 men and 1 woman.up to this point – nothing special. But in observing a bit closer, you will notice that the woman has bare feet,accompanied by 3 children, and of the 3, she is carrying 2.There is the problem,none of the men are helping her,because in their culture the woman represents nothing.She is only good to be a slave to the men. Do you really believe that these particular individuals could integrate into our societies and countries and respect our customs and traditions ????



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30 April, 2018

Interracial sexual preferences

Just a few excerpts below from a large analysis of data from a dating site -- looking at preferences for interracial partnership and marriage. I have often observed the way small young East Asian ladies -- mostly Han Chinese -- go for tall Caucasian men in Australia.  They seem to go all-out to get themselves a tall white guy.  And they often succeed. You see a lot of young Asian women on the arm of tall white men in my town. So it interested me to see the same thing in the American data below

50% of women expressed interest in only one ethnicity. Like their male counterparts, Jewish women had the highest  single-ethnic preference percentage at 74%. So who did these ladies want?

Among women who only wanted one ethnicity, 100% of White women only wanted White men. Most Asian women only wanted Asian men, however, a full 34% of them (and 16% of South Asian women) also only wanted White men.   Looks like it’s good to be a white man…still.

Judging by what CMB members told us about their Bagel preferences, Jewish men liking Asian women seems to be an unfounded myth. Put that one up there with having an orgasm if you sneeze seven times. However, it does look like there’s a bit of a trend in the reverse: Asian women are fiends for White men, including Jewish men.

SOURCE






Philosophy of Race versus Population Genetics: Round 3 An online discussion paper

Abstract

For the last thirty years at least social constructionist and biologically realist views of human races have been presented as mutually exclusive alternatives. Surprisingly, this debate has its recent origins in work on blood group population genetics. A finding that the greater part of human genetic variation lies within populations rather than between races has led some to hold that this denies the reality of geographically limited biological clusters.

An extension of this view maintains that even those few differences that do exist are distributed in clinal fashion along ancient human migration routes and thus precludes reliable delineation of racial clusters.

In the account presented here I argue that the vast bulk of genetic data now available adequately demonstrates that biological races do exist.

I go on to point out that the analytical methods used to reconstruct the history of these human clusters are themselves, in part, social constructs. Therefore, these two contrasting philosophical viewpoints may be seen as capable of working together.

I conclude by stressing the importance of this debate as regards the collection of reliable census information, the formation of equitable social policies and better informed medical decisions, particularly those involving the prescription of pharmaceuticals.

SOURCE






Treating Kanye like an Uncle Tom

The reaction to his pro-Trump remarks has been deeply condescending

Even stranger than the sight of Kanye West cosying up to Donald Trump on Twitter, and having his pro-Trump tweets deemed ‘very cool’ by POTUS, has been the excessive outrage that greeted it. And which now greets any pop star who deviates from the narrow political mindset of the cultural establishment. Where once pop figures embodied rebellion, otherness and individuality, today they are expected to conform.

After an extended hiatus away from social media, West has been constantly tweeting for the past week-and-a-half. At first he shared inane inspirational aphorisms and pictures of his shoes. Then he raised some eyebrows by stating: ‘I love the way Candace Owens thinks.’ Owens is the controversial black conservative known for being pro-Trump and scathingly anti-Black Lives Matter. Note that he said he likes the way she thinks, rather than what she thinks.

When he was then quoted by a radio personality as saying that he loves Trump, he shared a picture of himself wearing a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat and calling Trump his ‘brother’, even though, he pointed out, he doesn’t agree with everything Trump does. This all echoes one of his trademark rants, at a concert in 2016, where he claimed that he didn’t vote in the election but if he had he would have voted for Trump. ‘That don’t mean that I don’t think that Black Lives Matter. That don’t mean I don’t think that I’m a believer in women’s rights. That don’t mean I don’t believe in gay marriage’, he said. His pro-Trump remarks came in spite of the fact that he had given thousands of dollars to Hillary Clinton’s election campaign.

In any case, the response to West’s recent comments has been swift and predictable. Even though it seems he appreciates Trump for his personality rather than his policies, the Washington Post nonetheless declared him an ‘alt-right darling’ who has found a ‘sense of purpose’ in the far right. Rolling Stone called his vague comments ‘a real threat’. He has gone ‘full-on alt-right’, it said, and is aligning himself with the Charlottesville white supremacists. Insultingly, some claim his rumoured mental-health problems are the only rational explanation for his appreciation of Trump.

Alongside all this inevitable outrage, delighted conservatives and online culture warriors, hardly known for their interest in rap music, took West’s rambling statements as a pledge of allegiance to their battle with the thoughtpolice. Alex Jones invited West to appear on InfoWars, which of course was held up as further proof that West is alt-right – guilt by association.

Many of the critics of Kanye have been deeply patronising. They’ve denied his agency, claiming he is being used by privileged white politicians. White journalists suggest that this Uncle Tom couldn’t possibly understand the plight of black America like they do, because he’s a rich celebrity ‘cloistered in a world of wealth, away from the realities of racism’. Of course, if you’re a multi-gazillionaire superstar who adheres to the correct ideology – like Jay-Z or Beyoncé – no one will question you for being detached from the average African-American.

What this all reveals is how obsessed political commentators are with the ramblings of entertainers. Just last month, Candace Owens made a video for PragerU entitled, ‘Dear Celebrities: No One Cares What You Think’. She talked about the insignificance of celebrities’ political opinions. And yet after a single shout-out from Kanye, she tweeted: ‘Please take a meeting with me. I tell every single person that everything that I have been inspired to do was written in your music. I am my own biggest fan, because you made it okay. I need you to help wake up the black community.’

It is deeply condescending to say an entire community needs to be ‘woken up’, and even worse to say that the best way to do this is through celebrity endorsement. People are perfectly capable of considering policies without the aid of some rapper’s tweets. After all, it was Trump who got elected even though it was Hillary who had the squadron of celebrity campaigners.

This hysteria over Kanye West’s comments doesn’t only point to the sorry state of politics – it also shows how pathetic pop culture in general has become. Being outrageous and provocative used to be part of the job description. Now, people in pop, rock and hip-hop are no longer expected to challenge conventional wisdom, but rather to align with the chattering classes they once despised.

SOURCE





Inside Australia's growing neo-Nazi youth movement

Leftist anti-white discrimination has bred its reply

Around the nation a secretive group of white supremacists who salute Hitler and call for a white revolution are plastering hate speech across cities and universities.

The Antipodean Resistance are a group of radicalised neo-Nazis who describe themselves as 'the Hitlers you've been waiting for'.

To join the men's chapter, you have to be white, straight, young, monogamous and only interested in dating other white people. 'Racial treason is not tolerated,' members told Daily Mail Australia.

The group, which began in Melbourne in 2016, is spreading to cities and towns across the country.  They recently opened a women's chapter to give women 'a  choice to live their lives in accordance to their natural roles'.

Over email an anonymous representative for the group told Daily Mail Australia that their 'activists come from all walks of life'. 'Our ranks are made up by men and women from every corner of the workforce. Our members have families. Some have wives and children that they seek to protect,' they said.  

'We are telling you that we are all around you. We build your houses, we cook your meals, and we keep your shelves stocked.'

The groups main targets are Jewish people, homosexuals and non-white immigrants. 'We oppose substance abuse, homosexuality, and all other rotten, irresponsible distractions laid before us by Jews and globalist elites.' 

They accuse homosexuals of being 'defined by their own hedonism, and by virtue of their own perversions deprived of the natural capacity to reproduce'.

They also refer to Jewish people as 'social parasites'.

'We recognise that there is a fundamental truth to all of reality and that reality is governed by this natural law, whether human beings acknowledge it or not,' the representative says.

The group, which claims to have 300 members, first emerged in 2016 when they put up posters in Melbourne showing the shooting of a gay man, and the text 'Get the Sodomite filth off our streets'.

Since then they've carried out over 40 'hits' as they call them, with their propaganda appearing across the country. Usually conducted in the dead of night they'll plaster streets and universities with hate speech. 'Stop the hordes,  N*****s, Ch***s, Dunec***s,' one poster reads. Others call for the murder of Jewish people.

Last year they put up flyers at Melbourne university which were written in simplified Chinese characters. They said Chinese people were not allowed into the building, otherwise they would be deported.

Posters bearing the name of a notorious neo-Nazi group which claim to be 'the Hitlers you've been waiting for' were plastered over the walls of Sydney University in 2017

'The policy of anonymity within the organisation is a pragmatic choice, as it is the most effective way to establish a political movement in the current climate,' their representative says.

'We also have no need to stroke our egos by putting our identities out on record for the world to see. We stand by our principles regardless of whether our identity is known or unknown.' 

Not much is known about the group but researchers and left activists have been monitoring their actions.

Julie Nathan, a researcher at the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, has been investigating the group since they first emerged.

'The typical profile of a member is male, of white European background, aged from late teens to late twenties,' she tells Daily Mail Australia. 'Members are secretive about their identities, concealing both names and face'

'Some of them are stereotypical Hitler-saluting neo-Nazi thick-heads. But a small number of them appear to be tertiary-educated and the dominant figures.'

The neo-Nazi's have also been monitored by ASIO, out of fear the extremist group could turn violent. 

'Members of these groups are diverse and have different agendas, including extreme right-wing and extreme left-wing ideologies,' ASIO said to a parliamentary review into the expenditure of security agencies.

'A few small subsets of these groups are willing to use violence to further their own interests.'

When asked if the group was was willing to use violence the group denied it.  

'Antipodean Resistance does not believe that violence is the correct path to achieving victory,' they said.

But authorities aren't convinced. Ms Nathan says her research has shown the group has a connection to overseas terrorists organisations.

'Antipodean Resistance was one of several neo-Nazi groups which were incubated via the Iron March website (a notorious far right website shut down in 2017). The groups have maintained contact with each other.'

She says they are inspired by National Action in the UK, a white supremacists group, which was listed as a terrorist organisation in December 2016.

The group denied any affiliation with terrorists. They say their fight is about creating a society based on 'natural law.'

'When we preach our ideal future, we speak not of some Utopian post-scarcity society. We strive for something far purer, and far more realistic.'

'We strive not for an equal society, but for a one that exists in harmony with natural law, rather than in conflict.'

Ms Nathan says their end game is total domination and their membership is growing. 'The group has been able to distribute its hate propaganda across cities and towns across Australia, and organise martial arts training in remote regional areas,' she said.

'The group’s leaders have no illusions about AR becoming a popular mass-based organisation. Their dream is to impose their own Nazi dictatorship on Australia.

'Even a small group of brainwashed fanatics who co-ordinate their actions and have no moral compass whatsoever can cause immense harm.' 

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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29 April, 2018

Police humor stupid Democrat woman

She is so stupid that she doesn't even know how to pull rank.  The last thing you do is to shout and abuse people. But abuse is all Leftists have got most of the time.  I rarely get pulled up by the police but I get excellent results when I do.  How?  Simply by being friendly and good humored.  But most Leftists would be too full of anger for that

A New Jersey police chief said Wednesday he's been fielding congratulatory emails and calls ever since a dashcam video was released that showed a Port Authority commissioner pulling rank and repeatedly insulting two officers who had pulled over a vehicle in which her daughter was a passenger.

The Tenafly police officers, Matthew Savitsky and Tom Casper, remained polite and professional throughout the March 31 incident, even after Port Authority Commissioner Caren Turner snapped at them for calling her "miss," demanding they call her "commissioner," and later told them to "shut the f--- up."

She also threatened to go their boss to complain about them.

"I'm very proud of the officers," Tenafly Police Chief Robert Chamberlain said, adding that their demeanor is representative of his entire department. "Messages are coming in from as far away as Texas, Michigan and South Carolina praising them and wanting them to be commended."

Turner was forced to resign last week, after Port Authority officials viewed the clip in which she boasted of her prestigious title, her friendship with Tenafly Mayor Peter Rustin and her three homes.

She was called to the traffic stop to pick up her daughter and her friends because the Toyota in which they were riding was being impounded by the police for having an expired registration since 2016.

As seen in the video, Turner arrives at the scene, shows the officers a card and says, "I'm a commissioner of the Port Authority and I'm heading up over 4,000 people. OK?"

Later, when officers tell her she can drive the young adults home, she says: "You may not tell me when to take my child. You may shut the f--- up and not tell me when I may take my kid and her friends, who are Ph.D. students from MIT and Yale."

At the end of the video, she informs the officers, "This isn't going to go down nicely."

Port Authority officials, in a written statement, said: “The video speaks for itself. The conduct was indefensible. The Board takes its recently adopted Code of Ethics for Commissioners extremely seriously and was preparing to form a special committee to review the findings of the Inspector General investigation and take action at this Thursday’s Board meeting. Commissioner Turner’s resignation was appropriate given her outrageous conduct.”

Chamberlain said sensitivity and verbal judo are emphasized during police training. "Police learn to stay calm and work through the incident, whatever it may be," he said.

The occupants of the car gave police no problem at all. "They were super polite. There were no issues with them. It was a minor vehicle violation but one that requires the vehicle to be impounded," Chamberlain said.

Rustin, the mayor, commended the police. He acknowledged that he is friendly with Turner but stopped short of saying they are good friends.

"Look, I'm friendly with her. I know her. Do we socialize? No. I've been mayor for 15 years. I know a lot of people, and I'm friendly with many of them. To be honest, three-quarters of the people who get stopped by the police probably say they're friends with the mayor."

Cresskill Police Chief Edward Wrixon said such incidents are growing more frequent and he constantly reminds his officers to be professional and remain calm.

"This is another reason why car cameras are a good thing. They show the truth, whether in favor of the police officer or not." In addition, cameras keep people on their best behavior, he said. "When you know you are being watched, you behave more professionally."

SOURCE






Tim Gill is using his $500 million fortune to advance the LGBT agenda, with particular focus on conservative-leaning states

Pennsylvania was founded by William Penn as a haven for political and religious diversity. Now, a Pennsylvania bill poses an existential threat to that history of freedom and tolerance by reinforcing a disturbing trend already happening at the local level.

Last year, the state Senate introduced Senate Bill 613, an act that would amend the Pennsylvania Human Relations Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as a protected class in anti-discrimination statutes.

At face value, the bill promises freedom from discrimination for all Pennsylvanians. But if the liberal activists promoting the bill have their way, SB 613 would punish Pennsylvanians for their religious and moral beliefs.

SB 613 is supported by none other than Tim Gill, the man dubbed “the megadonor behind the LGBTQ rights movement” by Rolling Stone magazine.

When Rolling Stone profiled Gill last June, he disclosed his strategy to use his $500 million fortune to agitate for state nondiscrimination laws that pit LGBT activists against religious Americans.

“We’re going into the hardest states in the country,” he told the magazine. “We’re going to punish the wicked.”

Pennsylvania is next on Gill’s list.

In 2015, a Gill front group, Pennsylvania for Economic Competitiveness, and Gill himself collectively donated $15,000 to the Reform PA PAC when the Fairness Act, a similar sexual orientation and gender identity law, made its debut.

Another Gill front group, Pennsylvania Competes, joined forces with the Human Rights Campaign in 2015 to the same end.

Then in 2017, SB 613 was introduced as a Senate counterpart to the Fairness Act, which was reintroduced in the House as HR 1410.

Gill’s plan to “punish” is already coming to pass in the Keystone State, even without a statewide law barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. Cities and towns have already passed 43 local ordinances that can be used to target residents for their beliefs.

Just last month, the city of Philadelphia halted the placements of two Christian foster care agencies—Catholic Social Services and Bethany Christian Services—because of their religious beliefs about the nature of the family. The agencies are now under investigation for discrimination under the city’s Fair Practices Ordinance, the city’s sexual orientation and gender identity policy.

Even the very possibility of such a law being implemented can be sufficient to drive regular residents out of the public square for fear of being accused of discrimination.

Take W.W. Bridal in Bloomsburg. The Christian owners of this business closed their doors at the end of March because the city is likely to pass such an ordinance.

The city had considered passing such an ordinance in 2014, but it failed to clear the city council. This earlier initiative may have been designed to target W.W. Bridal for its biblical view of marriage.

Even without an ordinance, the owners had no choice but to close: Activists attacked the store’s reputation by posting fake Yelp reviews and have made threats to burn the business down or shoot the owners in the head.

Forced to choose between their livelihood and their beliefs, the owners chose the latter. “We will not be forced by government, local ordinances, or bullies to participate in something that goes against our faith,” the business stated in a Facebook post.

Average Pennsylvanians are already vulnerable to losing their livelihoods not for holding “animus” against LGBT people, but for holding a long-established, reasonable belief about marriage. A state law could only make matters worse.

Sexual orientation and gender identity laws don’t have to be interpreted this way. Anti-discrimination laws are supposed to be used to protect people, not to attack them. They should be shields, not swords.

States that already have such laws on the books can and should interpret them in a nuanced way that respects different moral and religious beliefs about sexuality.

Ultimately, these policies will have a chilling effect on society. Even when not directly weaponized against people with traditional beliefs, these policies still stigmatize the traditional view of marriage, which has been upheld by reasonable people of good will for thousands of years.

In the long run, SB 613 would leave regular Pennsylvanians constantly vulnerable to be targeted by the government for their beliefs. This enduring threat to their livelihoods would only perpetuate animosity between both sides of the marriage debate.

Sexual orientation and gender identity laws are not the path forward for mutual tolerance. Pennsylvania should uphold its rich history of peace and diversity and abandon this dangerous initiative.

SOURCE






Democrats Try to Block Trump Court Nominee Who Opposed Boys Using Girls’ Bathrooms

Democrats in the U.S. Senate tried to block the confirmation of Stuart Kyle Duncan to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, arguing, among other things, that as a lawyer he had advocated preventing biological males from using female restrooms.

“In his asking courts to allow government- sanctioned discrimination in these cases, Mr. Duncan has completely ignored scientific evidence and medical expertise,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) said in a floor speech opposing Duncan’s confirmation.

“Instead, he has asserted that transgender individuals are mentally ill,” said Warren.

Despite the warning of Warren and others, the Senate voted on nearly party lines to confirm Duncan. The final vote was 50 to 47.

“He represented Gloucester County, Va., in an effort to deny a transgender student’s right to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D.-Ore.) said on the Senate floor on Tuesday.

“He also represented rightwing lawmakers in North Carolina, defending broadly discriminatory legislation that became known as the bathroom bill,” said Wyden.

“The list of concerning episodes and disqualifying work in Mr. Duncan’s career does take a fair amount of time to actually walk through,” said Wyden.

Sen. Maria Cantwell (D.-Wash.) was also outraged by this Trump nominee’s advocacy against the “bathroom bill.”

“In the landmark case of Obergefell v. Hodges, Mr. Duncan authored an amicus brief which argued against same-sex marriage, and he has represented North Carolina in their defense of the ‘bathroom bill,’ which discriminated against transgender individuals,” said Sen. Cantwell (D.-Wash.) “We need to expand the rights of the LGBT community, not nominate a judge who believes we should roll back these laws that are so important to the individuals in my State.”

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D.-Mass.) attacked the nominee for failing to recognize what she believes to be the lavatory rights of “gender-nonconforming individuals.”

“Mr. Duncan also represented the Gloucester County School Board in its effort to deny Gavin Grimm, who is a transgender high school boy, the ability to use the boys’ bathroom,” said Sen. Warren.

“He represented North Carolina’s General Assembly in a lawsuit that challenged the assembly’s bathroom bill banning transgender and gender-nonconforming individuals from using restrooms that are consistent with their gender identities,” she said.
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“In his asking courts to allow government- sanctioned discrimination in these cases, Mr. Duncan has completely ignored scientific evidence and medical expertise,” said Warren. “Instead, he has asserted that transgender individuals are mentally ill.

“In one case,” said Warren, “he argued that there was no sound scientific evidence proving that individuals who identify as transgender are not delusional. In case after case, Mr. Duncan has defended discrimination and injustice.”

Sen. Patty Murray (D.-Wash.) was similarly outraged by Duncan’s opposition to letting people use the other sex’s bathroom.

“When it comes to the rights of transgender people, he fought for the intolerant, harmful bathroom ban in North Carolina and against Gavin, a young boy in Virginia who simply wanted his school to allow him to use the men’s restroom,” said Murray.

“He did it by using bigoted remarks that were nothing short of appalling,” Murray said.

Murray also attacked Duncan for advancing what she called a “discredited conspiracy theory” about transgender athletes.

“In defending the outrageous ban in North Carolina, he relied on bogus testimony from a self-proclaimed expert who suggested that transgender people are delusional,” said Murray. “In his opposing Gavin in Virginia, Mr. Duncan advanced the offensive and discredited conspiracy theory that schools need to fear athletes who pretend to be transgender in order to gain a competitive advantage.”

SOURCE






Laughing at communism

Ronald Reagan once quipped that a communist is someone who reads Marx and Lenin, while an anti-communist is someone who understands Marx and Lenin.

Sadly, the truth is that many young people today neither read about nor understand communism — or its ignoble record of spawning brutal dictators like Joseph Stalin.

According to a recent US survey, Millennials have the least negative attitudes towards communism and even struggle to correctly define it. Younger people are also more likely to underestimate the number of victims of communist regimes.

And in a 2016 UK survey, 11% of young people failed to associate Joseph Stalin with crimes against humanity, while 28% had not even heard of him.

This ignorance reflects the lasting legacy of western apologists for communism. As Martin Amis notes in his book, Koba the Dread, western intellectuals used to blithely joke about communists — like using the term ‘comrade’ — indicating their reluctance to confront the truth of Soviet totalitarianism.

Is it too late to atone for this shameful legacy of denial? A recent viewing of Armando Iannucci’s film, The Death of Stalin, convinced me that, in fact, it is never too late. Popular entertainment can be a powerful educational tool.

The Death of Stalin is a black satire that recounts the internal power struggles in Soviet Russia following Stalin’s death in 1953. However, the film unfolds through a bizarre mix of slapstick comedy and highly crude humour.

Importantly, the film depicts Stalin’s regime as totalitarian and barbaric. But it also delightfully parodies Stalin’s cronies, who spout brainwashed and patently absurd platitudes about communism, while surreptitiously plotting their own rise to power.

Following in the footsteps of Roberto Benigni’s Life is Beautiful, the film suggests that we should condemn evil regimes by laughing at them — at least, from the safe distance of time.

Following release in 2017, The Death of Stalin has demonstrated remarkable staying power in cinemas. It has all the ingredients to appeal to a younger demographic — clever parody, witty one-liners and thoroughly offensive jokes.

And helpfully, Russia has provided free publicity by banning the film.

But if it succeeds in teaching Millennials some hard facts about communism — more effectively than a multi-volume history book — it shows that even crude humour can serve a worthy purpose.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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27 April, 2018

Hardly a Stir When Starbucks Denied a Cop

Kudos for Sheriff David Clarke for reminding us of the double standard practiced by the self-righteous guardians of social justice such as Starbucks, who flagellate themselves in public over the injustice of denying non-paying patrons use of their facilities – patrons who happen to be black:

    "Not too long ago a Philadelphia Starbucks refused to let a police officer use the restroom telling him it was for paying customers.  Don't remember Starbucks closing 8000 stores for sensitivity training toward police."

In 2015, an unnamed Philadelphia police sergeant entered a downtown Philadelphia Starbucks and asked to use the restroom.  He might have been the one who would have responded if that Starbucks were being robbed or its employees or customers were assaulted.  He was told in no uncertain terms that he could not and should find a restroom down the street.  The unnamed officer's story was posted on Facebook by Joe Leighthardt, another Philadelphia officer:

    So I walk into the Starbucks at 13th and Chestnut in full uniform and ask the young blonde liberal behind the counter if I could use their public bathroom for which you need a key code and she states, in a loud voice so all the other customers can hear that the bathroom is for paying customers only. I then ask in a very polite manner if I could please use it. She then states in the same loud manner and a smirk "Are you a paying customer?" It was at this point that I realized what she was doing. As I walked out with my hand up and while she continued loudly to tell me about the bathroom down the street, I was even more astonished that the many customers and other employees said nothing and seemed indifferent. This is the world cops live in anymore. It's hip for this generation to berate and totally disrespect cops in front of the public and praise cop killers as the heroes of they're [sic] time. I never post things but I hope my fellow brothers and sisters in blue see this and know that we have each other… and not to patronize that Starbucks.

Starbucks did somewhat apologize for the incident, but there was no national mea culpa by the executive officers of Starbucks or the shutting down of its 8,000 stores and turning them into temporary re-education camps for employees who for the most part probably don't have a biased bone in their bodies and who depend on police for their safety inside and outside their stores.

Officer Leighthardt noted as much:

    In the post, Leighthardt? wrote, "Thought you world like to know this happened at your 1301 Chestnut St in Philadelphia.  In a time when police are being made the enemy, Your clerk pulls this nonsense.  And might I point out, this store is a frequent caller to police for some sort of service." ...

    "No one is asking for special treatment, but when your 'office' is a police car and you're running from job to job in Philadelphia, I'd he supposed to hold in?  Pee on the sidewalk?  I'll bet your job has a bathroom within 100 yards," Leighthardt wrote.  "Cops don't.  And this particular Starbucks calls the police several times a week for things as simple as someone sitting on the bench outside their property."

We live in a world where black lives matter but blue lives matter not so much.  Just ask the families of the two Florida police officers gunned down while having lunch at a Chinese restaurant.

    Two Florida sheriff's deputies were shot and killed while eating in a restaurant Thursday afternoon by an attacker found dead outside shortly after, police said[.] ...

    "I don't have answers to why this happened," Gilchrist County Sheriff Robert Schultz said at a news briefing.Schultz identified the slain officers as Sgt. Noel Ramirez, 30, a seven-year law enforcement veteran, and Deputy Taylor Lindsey, 25, a three-year law law [sic] enforcement veteran.  Schultz said Ramirez had children and was married, while Lindsey was not married but had a girlfriend. ...

    "We're not going to make this a political issue, other than the fact: What do you expect happens when you demonize law enforcement to the extent that it's been demonized?" Schultz asked.  "Every type of hate, every type of putdown that you can think of.  The only thing these men were guilty of was wanting to protect you and me."

Closing 8,000 stores is a big financial hit, money that could have been spent to help inner-city kids get an education, or a meal, or clothes for school or to fight gang crime and drugs:

    The closures cost the company an estimated $6 million, according to Schultz's 2011 book "Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul."  However, Schultz maintained that it was worth the financial cost and the mockery the company endured to put Starbucks back on the road to recovery.

Self-survival and political correctness are prime motivators for Starbucks, but not the indignity and disrespect shown a Philadelphia officer in 2015.  No grandiose mea culpas, no mass closings, and no employee re-education.  Starbucks's social conscience did not extend to those who risk their lives for the safety of its employees and customers.

SOURCE






Bavaria Places Christian Crosses in State Buildings to Reflect 'Christian Values'

The government of Bavaria has ordered that Christian crosses be placed in the entrances of all its public buildings, a rule that goes into effect on June 1, reported BBC News.

Markus Soder, the minister president of Bavaria and member of the Christian Social Union political party, said the crosses are not to be viewed as state-sanctioned religious symbols but as a "clear avowal of our Bavarian identity and Christian values."

Crosses already are compulsory in Bavaria's public school classrooms and in courtrooms.

Bavaria is located in the southeast corner of Germany and its largest city is Munich.

"The cross is a fundamental symbol of our Bavarian identity and way of life," said President Soder in a statement, as reported by the BBC. "It stands for elemental values such as charity, human dignity and tolerance."

Jan Korte, the head of a left-wing group in the federal parliament, accoridng to the BBC, said, "Why can the CSU never think of anything that brings people together, instead of trying to divide the country at every level."

Bavaria's population is a little more than 12.6 million and about 52% of Bavarians are Catholic. About 20% of Bavarians are Protestant, 4% Muslim, and less than 1% Jewish. Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI (Joseph Ratzinger) was born in Bavaria.

SOURCE






Norway to consider banning 'annoying and inappropriate' Muslim call to prayer

A Norwegian politician says he 'doesn't give a toss' about human rights, mosques should be banned from broadcasting the call to prayer.

Jon Helgheim, immigration spokesman for Progress Party, part of Oslo's ruling two-party coalition, said the country's residents needed 'peace and quiet'.

He rejected arguments that banning the religious announcement being played over loudspeakers would violate the European Convention on Human Rights. 'I don't give a toss what human rights provisions say in this case,' he told Vårt Land.

'What I care about is that people get peace and quiet in their neighbourhoods, and that means not being disturbed by the call to prayer. 'If there are conflicting provisions in the Convention on Human Rights, I simply don't care, because it's completely stupid.'

Previous pushes, including by former Progress Party leader Carl Hagen, were scuttled by the Ministry of Justice citing the Convention. Article 9 enshrines the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion in all signatory countries including Norway.

The party's local branch in Buskerud county, west of Oslo, used the same argument but in reverse in its proposal to ban the call to prayer.

'In several places in the country have now established regulations under which mosques have permission to issue the call to prayer over loudspeakers,' it claimed, according to The Local Norway.

'A great many people perceive this as annoying and inappropriate. In Norway we have freedom of religion, which should also include the right not to be exposed to public calls to prayer.'

The Buskerud county proposal will be voted on at the anti-immigration party's national meeting this weekend, deciding whether to make it formal policy.

Despite allegations that mosques were planning to broadcast the call to prayer, neither newspaper could find any evidence of this.

Over the border, the Fittja mosque in southern Stockholm began issuing the call to prayer on Fridays, and last year a mosque in Karlskrona got permission to broadcast all five calls a day.

SOURCE





Australia: Hero dad or playground villain? Father who tried to CHOKE his step-daughter's 15-year-old bully reveals the final insult that pushed him over the edge

A father who tried to choke his daughter's 15-year-old bully has revealed the final taunt that pushed him over the edge.

Mark Bladen, 53, was giving the boy a 'good old fashioned talking to' when the boy smiled at him, making the father's blood boil.

'Dr Jekyll came out,' he said of the moment he snapped at The Gap skate park in Brisbane last month, recalling the event in a 60 Minutes preview ahead of Sunday's full episode.

His daughter claimed the child had relentlessly bullied her by calling her names and giving her insulting gifts.

'(He) called me names like gorilla and King Kong, he would buy me shaving cream for Christmas so that I would shave,' she told reporter Liz Hayes.

Bladen explained he intended on giving the boy a 'good old fashioned talking to' on the day he ended up physically assaulting him.

'(But) he smiled at me,' the man said, alluding to the moment that pushed him over the edge and into a violent rage.

Chilling footage showed the moment the grown man threw himself towards the boy, who was sitting on a bench at the time, as one of his friends yelled 'get the f*** off him'.

Friends of the father have since praised him for sticking up for his 'princess', with one saying he hoped he 'would do it again'.

'He's got to stand up for his family,' one member of Chermside Darts Club said, as another agreed, saying, 'I would hope that he would do it again, to be honest.'

A woman, believed to be the mother of the bullying victim, defended the father saying, 'he did what any parent would do'.

Mr Bladen pleaded guilty to one count of assault occasioning bodily harm and was sentenced on March 20 to pay $1000 with no conviction recorded, and ordered to pay $500 compensation.

His victim suffered bruising to his throat and scratches to his limbs in the fight, which was eventually broken up by his friends. 

Mr Bladen told police he was 'aghast' at his behaviour, and apologised outside court to the victim.

'I'm very sorry for what I did, very regretful and ashamed,' he said. 'Please don't do what I did, I just lost control. It's definitely not the way to handle things,' he said.

In his interview, Mr Bladen said he thought there was too much 'political correctness' evident in current society.

'When I was young you treated a lady like a lady and it should be the same way now,' he said.

'We live in a day of political correctness, and I hate it.'

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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26 April, 2018

Was the Starbucks Incident a Setup?

I think what happened at the Starbucks in Philly doesn't pass the sniff test.  Two black men went in, sat down, and apparently went unnoticed for a period of time until one got up and asked to use the restroom.  When told it was only for customers, he declined the opportunity to purchase something and returned to his associate at their table.  After another unspecified period of time elapsed, the manager, a woman named Holly, asked them to either purchase something or leave.  They said they were waiting for someone, did not want to buy anything, and wouldn't leave.  More time passed, the option was again proffered, and the double-refusal was again the response.  That's when Holly called "the man."

The "screws" arrived and made the same offer as Holly, three times.  And just as many times, it was refused.  As they were slipping on the cuffs to take them to the "big house," the ever-elusive "friend" magically appeared.  You get the picture: it was a setup.  Why wouldn't the "friend" just buy a cup of Joe so they could all sit down and chant, "No justice, no peace"?  How did he already know not to?  How did he know to soldier on for the cause?

It was a win-win for the unprivileged.  Getting arrested was the goal, but if they weren't arrested when the friend came in, it would validate the claim that white people are treated better than blacks.

The only things I would have done differently are, I would have put one in a suit and have the other dressed as a woman – but tastefully, you know, flats with perhaps a below-the-knee summer dress and some nice hoop earrings.  A little intersectionality would have created a bigger payout.

But hey, it worked out great anyway.  That million dollars each of them will get from the settlement will come in handy.  I would, however, watch the bank accounts of the friend.  I have a feeling his accounts will see a large deposit once the inevitable lawsuit is settled – and that would be the "smoking gun" the left is always seeking but can never seem to find.  I would wager that the left won't find it here, either.

Yet I can't get out of my mind all the times something like that really happened back when nobody cared.

Yet again, it's stunts like this, perpetrated by an immoral left with the purpose of keeping and widening the racial divide for all time – while getting rich in the process, of course.  They always get rich.

The saddest thing is what their stunt did to poor Holly.  So afraid that the world was going to deck the halls with boughs of Holly, she quit her job.

Those on the left willingly sacrificed one of the little people for their cause.  Remember when people sacrificed themselves for their cause?

Oh, the hypocrisy!

SOURCE







This Conservative Millennial Explains Why Trump’s Policies Are Better for Black Americans

Turning Point USA’s Candace Owens spoke to The Daily Signal’s Rob Bluey about why conservative policies are better for the African-American community. Owens appeared at the White House’s Generation Next forum for millennials Thursday. An edited transcript of her Daily Signal interview is below.

Rob Bluey: How did you become a conservative?

Candace Owens: I think for most people, watching Donald Trump run in 2016, something had to wake up inside of you. This is a man who was celebrated by the media. They could not get enough of Trump. You’re listening to rap and hip-hop music, they glorified him. Everyone wanted to end up at Mar-a-Lago. They said they were acting like Trump.

And then the second he won, he became a racist instantly. In that moment, I understood that racism was being used as a theme and a mechanism to control black Americans, and that the black community needed new leaders to sort of see them through that complete lie.

Bluey: You’ve made the case that Trump and his policies are better for the black community. Why is that?

Owens: Of course, our conservative policies are better for a black community. If you think of everything that we’ve gone through historically, it is because of Democratic policies that we are worse off today than we were 60 years ago.

For sure, no one would be foolish enough to say that America is a more racist country today than it was 60 years ago. So what happened? LBJ happened, the Great Society happened. Government dependency happened, welfare happened. All of this happened and came from the Democratic Party.

Bluey: When you’re talking to young people at Turning Point USA, what is your message to them?

Owens: My message to them is just that the time is now. President Trump represents the first opportunity for black Americans to get off of, what I refer to as, the ideological slave ship, to step outside of this line—this myth and this illusion—and to understand that we’ve had our power essentially stripped from us.

We continue to allow that by being afraid of racism, which is no longer an actual threat in this society for black Americans.

Bluey: You’re somebody who isn’t afraid to engage on Twitter or in the media. What gives you that courage to stand firm on these principles?

Owens: Honestly, I was born aggressive. I think I came out shouting orders at everyone.

I’ve been really strong-minded from the time I was a little girl, and I hate being told what to think. So propaganda just doesn’t really work on me. I’m not afraid. It takes fearlessness.

You can’t be afraid to be referred to as a “coon” or an “Uncle Tom,” which, by the way, Uncle Tom, for people that actually read the book, was the hero of the novel. That term does not work.

It’s going to take people with some courage to step up and say, “You can call me whatever you want, this movement is happening. You can get on board or you can watch it.”

Bluey: We’re approaching in the next couple of weeks the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination. How did MLK influence your life?

Owens: The most important thing to understand is that what he wanted was a society where people would not be judged by the color of their skin. Everything that the Democrats are advocating for is for us to only be judged by the color of our skin, by our sex, me as a black woman, they want me to constantly remember that.

You are black, you are a woman, and you cannot exist outside of that. So we need to understand that in many ways, we’ve gone backward from the themes that he was teaching when he gave his “I Have a Dream” speech.

His dream is being realized, but it’s not being realized by the Democratic Party right now.

SOURCE






End of Tradition: Cub Scouts Now Accepting Girls

As part of the ever-accelerating war against boys and masculinity, the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) surrendered to left-wing pressure in 2017 and decided to allow girls into their scouting programs, a step that since January 2018 has seen more than 3,000 girls join the Cub Scouts, the junior brach of the BSA.

The decision to allow girls to join the BSA programs is in addition to the Scouts allowing homosexuals to serve as troop and den leaders and permitting transgender kids "who identify as boys" to join the traditionally all-male organization founded in 1910. The Boy Scouts of America is now for boys and girls, for gays, and for transgenders.

The Scout Oath, ironically, says, "On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law; to help other people at all times; to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight." Given its complete compitulation to the radical feminist and LGBT agenda, it is unclear how the BSA can be "morally straight" anymore.

Under the new program, the Cub Scouts (ages 6-10), which operate in packs and dens, "may choose to establish a new girl pack, establish a pack that consists of girl dens and boy dens or remain an all-boy pack," states the BSA website.

"Cub Scout dens will be single-gender -- all boys or all girls," but "Cub Scout packs, meanwhile, can include any combination of all-boy or all-girl dens," states the website.

For the Boy Scouts (ages 11-17), "the organization will also deliver a program for older girls, which will be announced in 2018 and projected to be available in 2019, that will enable them to earn the Eagle Scout rank," said the BSA website.

This "hybrid model," according to the Scouts, will allow it to stay "true to our mission and core values, outlined in the Scout Oath and Law."

About 170 Cub Scout councils have signed onto the hybrid plan and this has brought "roughly 3,000 girls into the Cub Scouts so far," BSA spokeswoman Effie Delimarkos told the Associated Press.

"BSA officials have said the changes are aimed, in part, at making things more convenient for busy families, though that notion doesn't sit well with some leaders at the Girl Scouts of the USA," reported AP.

"To me, a daughter is not a matter of convenience," said Patricia Mellor, CEO of the Girl Scouts of the Green and White Mountains, which serves Vermont and New Hampshire, as the AP reported. "You've made the choice for your son based on what you thought was best for him, and the daughter should be getting a similar decision. We know facts prove that the Girl Scout program is the better program for the girls and young women we serve,"

"I welcome opportunity for girls, but for years, I've been reading the cases and the information coming out from Boy Scouts that their program was specifically designed for boys, only for boys," said Mellor. "I see that they're not changing their programming and wonder why they believe a program designed by men for boys is going to meet the needs of today's girls."

That seems like a very reasonable observation.

But it doesn't matter now because the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts have been politically and morally subverted. The organization that operated for a little over 100 years, training young men in the skills and virtues needed to produce honorable citizens and courageous leaders, is gone -- and it's never coming back.

SOURCE






A heartfelt day of remembrance in Australia



The Left do their best to mock ANZAC day but their influence is just a tiny rock being overflowed by a great stream of national remembrance -- as again happened this year

Australia has always subscribed to the great British tradition of always having allies -- so we never have to fight alone. For example, during WW2 millions of Russians died to help preserve British freedom.  

But as allies we have to join those allies in their confrontations.  So since 1899 (Yes. 1899. Not 1989) Australian troops have joined in just about all of Britain's and America's wars.  There are only short intervals where Australian troops are not fighting in a war or confrontation somewhere on the globe.  So despite its small population and out of the way location Australia has some of the worlds most seasoned troops.

No soldier likes war.  Wars kill soldiers. But when asked to serve they give of their best.  So ANZAC day is NOT a celebration of war or an outburst of militarism.  It is a commemoration of the grit and determination of the men who have fallen -- very often men of our own family.  We take this one day to honour them and hope that we are worthy of them.


A massive crowd has gathered in Sydney's CBD for this year's Anzac Day parade which, for the first time, is being led by hundreds of female veterans.

Rain has not deterred crowds from lining Elizabeth Street to watch more than 16,000 servicemen and women march to commemorate 103 years since troops landed on the Gallipoli peninsula in Turkey.

Among those at the head of the parade will be 100-year-old Molly Cummings, who is honouring her many family members who have served for Australia.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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25 April, 2018

It’s Time Everyone Realised Political Correctness Has No Place In Cartoons

Should you feel bad for watching The Simpsons in 2018?

This Sunday’s episode flashed a middle finger at concerns that Apu (a 7/11 store owner with an exaggerated Indian accent), is a racist caricature of South Asian people. It was only a matter of time until the topic came up, since the controversial documentary, The Problem With Apu came out late last year.

Towards the end Lisa—the show’s moral compass—breaks the fourth wall, turning to the viewer to say, ““Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?” The shot then pans to a picture of Apu with the phrase, “Don’t have a cow”, inscribed.

Predictably, fans are divided. The scene doesn’t deny Apu is a cruel caricature: it implies you shouldn’t get upset about it. As the show’s success is based on making fun of everyone and everything (particularly a white dude called Homer), some argue that this is all just a ridiculous display of faux-sensitivity.

Imagine being someone that get’s offended about a stereotypical character in a show comprised of stereotypical characters.

Now imagine being so offended by it you make a documentary about it and cry when the show’s creators tell you to GTFO.

Others say it’s easy not to be offended when you’ve never experienced being a minority in an (at least) occasionally racist environment—and when any jokes made at your own demographic’s expense you wrote yourself (the Simpsons’ writing team is virtually all white, middle-age men).

The question then becomes: should you only make fun of your lived experience? Surely not. Writers might fail, but saying they can’t try would be liberal-fascism. For most of The Simpsons’ history Apu was seen as funny, but now is being retroactively judged. Whether this is an ‘awakening’ of true empathy, or a virtue-signalling epidemic that will end in ever-blander sitcoms remains to be seen.

Although political correctness has no place in cartoons, contrary to popular belief, The Problem With Apu documentary doesn’t advocate political correctness. Hari Kondabolu (its creator) isn’t criticising the Simpsons’ right to ridicule a racial minority—he’s criticising their decision to do so (and how they did it). Whether you think this is patronising or progress is another matter entirely.

It’s also worth noting that although Carl (one of the show’s African American characters) is obviously a caricature, the depiction has never really been complained about. This doesn’t necessarily mean the creators were biased, but does indicate that they had a better (or at least, less wrong) understanding of African American culture than they did of Indian American.

Either that or they realised, given the country’s history, that middle class America (the show’s main audience) had more of an appetite for making light of South Asian immigrants than African Americans

SOURCE





‘Let them display their symbols’

Chris Kenny

In a fortuitous coincidence, The Australian today published comments from Australian soldiers a century apart in their origins and inspiration, yet surely linked by culture and relevance.

Former sergeant Justin Huggett reacted viscerally to new defence chief Angus Campbell’s ban on “death-style iconography” and other symbols used by army units to identify and motivate themselves. He says the new directive “denigrates morale” for soldiers and this can only diminish their combat power.

“There’s a lot of history with this. There’s the spirit and pride. I’ve had Vietnam veterans tell me about the emblems from Vietnam. This is a tradition that has been around for years. They are going to be lost to history,’’ Mr Huggett told The Australian.

It is difficult to disagree with the soldier’s point of view. We expect — nay demand — our military personnel are trained to kill, in order to protect our way of life, and we expect — nay demand — that they are prepared to risk their own lives in order to do so. There can be no greater expectation.

We send our military personnel into theatres of horror and uncertainty. We cannot imagine the pressures or the difficulties, not to mention the terror and grief they have confronted over recent decades in Afghanistan where Huggett was awarded a Medal of Gallantry and 41 Australian soldiers have been killed.

I have been lucky enough to meet soldiers on deployment in East Timor, Solomon Islands, Iraq and Afghanistan — their professionalism, dedication and refusal to ever complain is always immensely impressive. Yet, dug in on a mountain outpost in Afghanistan, or bunkered down against terrorist insurgencies in Iraq, we demand they don’t display symbols of death or camaraderie?! They are in a situation where the choice is to kill their enemies or be killed; yet from the offices of defence headquarters in Canberra our soldiers are constantly lectured on gender diversity and fluidity, inclusive employment targets and eschewing symbols of war.

They are paid to kill and risk their lives on behalf of all of us but, at all times, to watch their manners and be sure not to offend the sensibilities of self-righteous human resources professionals and human rights advocates back home.

The other quotes — dating from experiences exactly a century ago — come from our most celebrated soldier, General Sir John Monash. He is quoted in Paul Kelly’s article today from his own memoir, writing about the character of the Australian soldier. “His bravery was founded upon his sense of duty to his unit, comradeship to his fellows, emulation to uphold his traditions and a combative spirit to avenge his hardships and sufferings upon the enemy,” wrote Monash.

“Very much and very stupid comment has been made upon the discipline of the Australian soldier. That was because the very conception and purpose of discipline have been misunderstood. It is, after all, only a means to an end. It does not mean lip service, nor obsequious homage to superiors, nor servile observance of forms and customs, nor a suppression of individuality.

“The Australian is accustomed to teamwork. The teamwork which he developed in the war was of the highest order of efficiency. The truest test of battle discipline was the confidence which every leader in the field always felt that he could rely upon every man to perform the duty which had been prescribed for him, as long as breath lasted. A soldier, a platoon, a whole battalion would soon sacrifice themselves than ‘let down’ a comrade or another unit.”

Sir John Monash would know. Our current defence leaders might want to ponder this culture, this legacy.

Our men and women in the battlefield need to be accorded the freedom and encouragement to fight for their values and their comrades rather than have to worry about the equal opportunity goals of their superiors or contemplate how they can mete out the ultimate in violence without ever giving the impression that they might be motivated to employ actual aggression. Let them be. Let them proudly display their symbols of defiance, aggression and teamwork.

SOURCE 





Rodeo issue victory puts kids above political correctness

It never ceases to amaze me how far Washington wants to reach into our personal lives. I have always believed in a limited federal government, one that defers to the states and individuals to make the vast majority of decisions. But that isn’t the way Washington bureaucrats operate.

Most recently, the federal government attempted to micromanage how South Dakota 4-H formats its rodeo. All three of our kids competed in rodeo growing up, and I volunteered with the program for more than 16 years. When you’re part of rodeo, it’s clear the sport is heavily dependent on the skill of the contestants, but the inherent differences between sexes can have an impact on the winner in many cases. Nonetheless, the federal government sought to force “gender neutral” competition, putting political correctness above the rodeo experience for the kids involved.

After phone calls, texts, and letters to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Secretary Sonny Perdue, the agency finally listened to those actually involved, hit pause, and allowed South Dakota youth rodeo to continue to operate as it has for decades.

SOURCE





An interview with a most politically incorrect man.  Excerpts:

An awful roar rose up as the hundreds of angry protesters pounded on the locked panelled doors and stained-glass windows of the historic sandstone hall, yelling out a volley of obscenities designed to drown out the guest speaker about to step up to the podium. To Jordan Peterson, professor of psychology at the University of Toronto and fiery anti-PC warrior, the shadowy figures prowling up and down outside the soaring arched windows at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, looked like zombies. But if the steely professor was rattled, he didn't show a sliver of it in front of his 900 fresh-faced fans.

The raucous demonstration at Queen's University occurred only days before he arrived in Australia for a speaking tour (tickets sold out within days in Sydney and Melbourne and just seven hours in Brisbane, according to his promoter, True Arrow). A virtual cheer squad of conservative columnists from The Australian and Sydney's Daily Telegraph, including Miranda Devine and Janet Albrechtsen, turned out gushy pieces about their new hero. Meanwhile, such is his divisiveness, the mere mention of Jordan Peterson's name was turning some dinner party conversations into cage fights.

Why all this heat about a 55-year-old university professor, who, in his personal deportment, looks as plain and harmless as an aspirin? Because Peterson has the cojones to say a lot of bold, some would say bad, things. Political correctness has gone overboard. Men are in crisis. The gender gap isn't simply the result of sexism but of deep biological differences that no amount of social engineering will remove. Women tend to choose caring careers that pay less; men are more likely to opt for dangerous and dirty jobs that pay more. Motherhood has been devalued. Blaming inequality on capitalism or the patriarchy is a leftist delusion. The Western helicopter parent needs to back off: children are tough and resilient. The term "white privilege" is a racist insult, a self-loathing term used by shallow liberals.

Worse than all this, there's no room for even tepid dissent. Criticise the left and you're labelled a fascist, a toady of the alt-right. Dare to criticise the extremes of Islam and you're branded an Islamophobe. Question LGBT+ politics and you're a homophobe; refuse to use gender neutral pronouns and you're a transphobe.

Western society, he suggests, has turned against men. "We are playing very foolish games in the West," he warns in one YouTube video. "And we could bring the house down around us." When a young German interviewer informs Peterson one of her professors recommends not having a child to reduce her carbon footprint, Peterson cracks, "Tell him he can save the planet by jumping off a cliff." In another video, he fumes that "the radical left has never taken responsibility for being on the same side as the Stalinists, Maoists and Cambodian murderers. At least the Germans apologised: 'Sorry about the Nazis.'

In Peterson, conservatives have found a soul mate, a proudly politically incorrect firebrand with a bracing turn of phrase. Progressives, meanwhile, have been busy going into battle or priming themselves for a fight. In The New York Times, columnist David Brooks backed Peterson as the "most influential public intellectual in the Western world right now", while author and filmmaker Richard Poplak, writing in the Johannesburg Review of Books, dubbed him an "academic bullshit merchant", dismissing 12 Rules For Life as a "self-help book for assholes".

Peterson first attracted headlines back in September 2016 when, in a fit of pique, he recorded a video declaring he wouldn't abide by a new bill introduced by the Canadian Government, which he claimed would make it illegal not to address people by their preferred pronouns. In an extraordinary example of overreach, the university issued a warning to him to withdraw his comments – a threat they withdrew after he read their missives to his YouTube audience. Nearly 200 newspaper stories across North America reported on the incident.

But it was his interview – or rather showdown – on the UK's Channel 4 in January 2018 that became a viral phenomenon, attracting more than nine million YouTube views. Peterson's cool corrections ("I didn't say that", "That's not true", "You're not listening to me") to anchor Cathy Newman's floundering list of questions about the gender pay gap (and her clumsy repetition of "So what you're saying is …") turned into a 101 disaster tutorial for journalism students. Instead of being the avenging feminist anchor, Newman's simple projection on to Peterson of a toxic sexism led her straight into a "Gotcha" moment.

Amazingly, Channel 4 saw fit to upload the entire, unedited 30-minute train wreck on to YouTube (only five minutes of the pre-recorded interview went to air), which led to such an overflow of scalding abuse of Newman on social media that Channel 4 roped in "security specialists". Peterson told his Twitter followers, now numbering more than 600,000, not to threaten Newman and to be "civilised" in their criticism.

One moment, he is trading barbs in a podcast with comedian Russell Brand, or joking with openly gay comic Tom Ballard in ABC TV's Tonightly, the next he is standing beside former Nationals MP and deputy PM John Anderson in Sydney decrying identity politics. He describes himself as a classic liberal, but he's the darling of conservatives, hyper-conservatives and the alt-right. He's opposed to social justice warriors, but warns inequality in Western societies can endanger their stability, and supports aspects of social welfare.

How is he finding his new-found fame? "It's been a profound existential shock," he replies. "It began at the end of September 2016 when I made a couple of political protest videos, and it's been one scandal after another ever since, with the media attention accelerating."

This insurgent tell-it-like-it-is attitude has driven Peterson all his life. He grew up in the small town of Fairview, in Alberta, Canada, the eldest son of Walter, a schoolteacher, and Beverley, a librarian. Although the teenage Jordan was a party boy who loved sports and Led Zeppelin, he had a very serious, thoughtful side. He was involved with the social-democratic New Democratic Party but by 18 became disillusioned with their shallowness. "They didn't like or understand the poor at all; they just hated the rich," he says.

He went through a ghastly period, he says, when the university was issuing him with warnings over his opposition to Bill C-16, which banned discrimination on the grounds of gender expression in Canada. "It was very stressful to have my livelihood on the line, and I was also concerned I might lose my clinical licence."

Yet when he goes on to say that 80 per cent of funding for the humanities should be withdrawn to shut down what he claims is the untrammelled influence of "Marxist post-modern" academics, it's clear he doesn't so much want to challenge his opponents as annihilate them. And Peterson by no means has a monopoly on having his free speech or academic freedom threatened.

In fairness to Channel 4 broadcaster Cathy Newman, Peterson can be a hard man to pin down on many issues. I ask him whether he believes in God, a question he has repeatedly dodged in the past. As I happen to believe it's a reasonable line of enquiry of someone who spends so much of his time at the lectern quoting the Bible, I press the point.

Are you a believer?

"It depends on what you mean."

I mean, do you believe in the existence of a Supreme Being?

"I believe that you should carry your cross uphill with goodwill."

So you believe in the story of Jesus's crucifixion and resurrection?

"I tend not to answer that question, because I don't like to step outside my area of competence."

Which I take as a "no". Do you believe, then, that the lessons of the Bible still stand, regardless of whether we believe in God or not?

"Yes, definitely. I have a lot to say about the Biblical stories psychologically. There is an idea running through the Biblical corpus that you can transcend your suffering by accepting it. It's obvious that if frightened people voluntarily expose themselves to the things they are most afraid of, they get braver. That's one of the pillars of clinical practice."

In one particularly discursive section of 12 Rules, Peterson – who has been married for three decades – asks, "Was it really a good thing … to so dramatically liberalise divorce laws in the 1960s? It's not clear to me that children whose lives were destabilised by the hypothetical freedom this attempt at liberation introduced would say so."

In 12 Rules, Peterson makes a number of claims about hierarchical structures, beginning with lobsters and jumping to chimpanzees, suggesting male domination is at the heart of Mother Nature's pecking order. He suggests primatologist Jane Goodall, in discovering that chimps were capable of killing one another, for some time shied away from the truth of biological determinism. He wrote in 12 Rules: "Because of its shocking nature and great anthropological significance, she kept her observations secrets for years … even after she published her account [in 1974], many refused to believe it."

The social hierarchy of our closest living ancestor is indeed male-dominated, as Peterson suggests, but rank is also dynamic, with some females considered more or less the equals of some of the males. Peterson may be a psychologist with decades of clinical practice under his belt, but that doesn't make him an authority on the evolution of animal behaviour (he spends the first 10 pages of his book referring to the dominance hierarchies of lobsters, but his analysis has been dismissed as a misleading oversimplification by experts like neuroscientist Leonor Gonçalves, of the University College, London).

Nor is Peterson an expert on the gender pay gap. He argues that women are more agreeable than men – by which he means, more compassionate and polite – and uses this to help explain why they're less likely to bargain hard for a pay rise and more likely to be drawn to the caring professions, from child care to nursing. He points to the most gender-equal country on the planet, Sweden, where he claims male engineers still outnumber women 20 to 1. But according to the Swedish Association of Graduate Engineers, one in four engineers in Sweden is now a woman.

Ultimately, however, Peterson's primary red meat appeal to young men has little to do with his comments about the gender pay gap or his reflections on Nietzsche, the Bible and Darwinism, as I discover when I hear him speak. It's about something much more primal.

Jordan Peterson's somewhat feathery voice (one wit unkindly likened it to Kermit the Frog) suddenly turns bass flinty, as he strides the stage of Sydney's Chatswood Concourse. "Societies that betray motherhood," he declares, "invariably collapse." It's the kind of motherhood statement we all agree on, but Peterson makes it sound apocalyptic. Think Moses on high, tablets firmly in hand.

And indeed as, one by one, he runs through his broad-shouldered "12 tips for life", there's a strong echo of what mothers told their sons a generation or two ago: stand up straight, don't lie, speak clearly, be kind to animals and get your hair cut (okay, so Peterson left that last one out). Perhaps men under 40 haven't heard it before.

Following his talk – really, a run-through of the 12 tips outlined in his book – the floor is thrown open for questions, which range from the bizarre (the male insult of circumcision) to basic self-help advice. Afterwards, he sits outside the theatre signing books until after 1.30am.

The next day, Peterson tells me that the continuous careless pushing of people by left-wing radicals is dangerously waking up the right wing. He estimates that he's saved "thousands of young men from the attraction of the radical right". How can he be sure of that? "Because they've told me in person or written to me."

That indeed may be so. Peterson reminds us that Western societies, with our values of equality and freedom of speech, are far and away the best there is to offer in a world increasingly dominated by political despots and religious extremists. "We need tradition to unite us," he says. We also need to believe in ourselves again, and stop constantly engaging in cultural self-flagellation.

For polarising figures such as Peterson, there is an immediate perception that you're either for him or against him, but that's not necessarily the case. At the Queen's University protest in March, a lone LGBTI demonstrator, standing in the cold, waved a placard quoting Evelyn Beatrice Hall: "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

If his supporters see Peterson as a harbinger of an ultra-conservative uprising, they may be mistaken. In a video interview, I ask him what's the single thing that people get most wrong about him. "The basic proposition that I'm a right winger of some sort – and that's just not the case," he says firmly.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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24 April, 2018

Afghanistan war veteran pens scathing open letter blasting new Australian Army chief for 'farcical' ban on soldiers using 'offensive death symbols' like the skull mask

Another politically correct general alienates the troops -- and alienating the troops is a serious threat to discipline.  Unpopular leaders get bad results. David Morrison was a pain and now Campbell.  If it's any consolation Britain has just appointed  General Sir Nick Carter, who is even more politically correct.  Political correctness in the upper echelons of the armed forces even seems to survive conservative administrations

An Afghanistan War veteran has savaged the Chief of Army's directive that all 'death iconology' be banned from use in the Australian Army.

Lieutenant General Angus John Campbell said icons like the skull mask and Grim Reaper were 'arrogant and ill-considered' and 'eroded the ethos of the Army'.

However former 2RAR Platoon Sergeant Justin Huggett has written an open letter to General Campbell after learning about the new directive and ban.

Mr Huggett is a veteran of the Afghanistan War where he was awarded the Army's Medal of Gallantry. 

'As a soldier that served under you at the 2nd Battalion, it only disappointments me even further to read of this,' he wrote in the open letter.

'Going the next step, the fact you yourself are an Infantry Soldier...my head spins with confusion!'

Mr Huggett said he found the calls 'so left of field and farcical' that he thought it must have been a hoax.

'But now, I am just left wondering as to the levels of stupidity that this order can be interpreted or enforced he wrote.

Mr Huggett then goes on to list some of the more well known icons within the Army and how calls to ban them are in his opinion absurd.

'I ask you to consider the following. Have you seen the movie Jaws, based on a big nasty evil killer shark indiscriminately eating everyone in its path?' he wrote.

'Does the proud heritage of the Bravo Company Men and their Company logo of a Circling Shark disappear forever?'

He mentioned Charlie Company and its use of a dragon as their emblem and then gives examples that show why he feels the calls by General Campbell don't hold water.

'What about the 2/4RAR Delta Company Road Runner?', he continues.

'He without remorse affected the murdered (sic) of Wiley Coyote multiple times. Is this feathered beast from the depths of hell a concern to you and the public?

'Are you starting see the point here Sir?'

Mr Huggett then directly references his own mortar unit.

'The most senior platoon in the Battalion,' he wrote.

'Our emblem is the Grim Reaper, with the words 'Dealers in Death'.

'I can tell you this with great certainty...the 1000s MAGGOTS that served in that Platoon will hand over their Reaper Shirts the day the Devil snowboards down the slopes of hell.'

He wrote that to abolish 'years of pride and history' based on 'the minority' of people being offended was a reflection of how modern day society is going.

Then he goes on to point out how the most enduring and recognisable icon in the Australian Army was one based around violence and death.

'You wear it; I am very fortune along with 1000s of others to have the honour and privilege of wearing it, The Infantry Combat Badge (ICB),' he wrote.

'A badge based around the bayonet, the most feared and gruesome up close and personal weapon on the battlefield.'

The combat infantry badge has a bayonet as its centrepiece.

'An emblem or icon that is matched by no other and has no other purpose in its existence other than inflicting extreme pain, bone chilling physical and psychological fear in your enemy and of course horrific death,' he wrote.

'Yet as Infantrymen, not only do we wear it with pride, it's worn as the centre of importance above our medals on our ceremonial uniforms and suits!

'Men have it tattooed on them, flags of it fly in man caves and sheds, shirts and hats are emblazoned proudly with it.'

Mr Huggett asks General Campbell if he will go so far as to ban the ICB.

'This is the most violent emblem of death there is in our Military? Are you getting it yet, Sir?' he continues.

Mr Huggett then goes on to hammer the most obvious point home. 'The Army, in particular the Infantry (sic), are a fighting force designed to kill!' he states. 'We are not and never should be a reflection of society, we are trained and programmed that way.'

He said that he feels 'every effort' is being made by the 'top levels' to denigrate the combat effectiveness of the army.

'At present Sir, this decision is the most talked about thing in veteran forums at the moment...and in no way have I seen any remotely close to positive feedback, either on the decision itself or you personally,' he continued.

He said that any respect General Campbell was hoping to garner from the enlisted men and women of the army would collapse with this decision and he doubts General Campbell would 'ever get it back.'

SOURCE 






The real scandal of the Ulster Rugby rape trial

Punishing men who were found not guilty makes a mockery of justice

Ulster rugby players Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding were accused of rape and found not guilty, and yet they have been sacked by their club.

Their case is hugely controversial. They stood accused of raping a female student at a house party two years ago. Jackson was also accused of sexual assault. Two other men, Blane McIlroy and Rory Harrison, were accused of indecent exposure and of perverting the course of justice respectively. The jury came to its decision after three hours and 45 minutes: it delivered a unanimous not guilty verdict to all charges.

End of story, right? Wrong. After the verdict, the hashtag #IBelieveHer started trending on Twitter. Protests were staged outside the Ulster rugby ground. Activists insisted the verdict was wrong. The nine-week trial had gone into great detail about the men’s lives and personal behaviour. Explicit and degrading WhatsApp messages from members of the rugby team were read out in court. The two men accused of rape had previously boasted about ‘spit-roasting’ women and had referred to women as ‘sluts’.

As is the case in many rape trials, the relationship between the complainant and the accused was scrutinised. It was this that led many to claim the court had been unfair in its treatment of the complainant. ‘Why does it feel that in rape cases it is the alleged victim who is on trial?’, asked Irish Times columnist Una Mullally. ‘It is time now to lobby effectively for reform in trials of sexual assault’, she continued.

The Irish Rugby Football Union and Ulster Rugby both revoked the contracts of Patrick Jackson and Stuart Olding with immediate effect. This means Olding and Jackson have either been sacked for being accused of something they were subsequently found not guilty of or for sending each other a few gross messages on WhatsApp. Either one would be unjust.

We will never know for sure what happened on the night in question. But the point, the very serious point, is that these men were unanimously found not guilty by a jury of their peers. Yet today, it seems that believing in a fair trial and the delivery of justice by juries has gone out of fashion.

‘An act can fall short of criminal and still be a deep and awful wrong’, writes Sarah Ditum in the Guardian. Yes, Olding and Jackson may be unpleasant men. But where Ditum and other feminists cross the line is when they hint, or openly say, that the verdict should be ignored and the men punished in some way despite their acquittal. ‘The jury settled the legal formality of their guilt, but, as with myriad other men, the case to answer doesn’t end with an acquittal’, says Ditum. But if we believe in justice, then we must accept that after acquittal the accused person actually doesn’t have a ‘case to answer’ – otherwise we risk enforcing mob persecution and constant inferred guilt upon people we happen not to like.

What’s more, those tweeting #IBelieveHer should be very careful. Have they forgotten that all rape cases in England and Wales are now under review following serious miscarriages of justice against some men? Have they forgotten Danny Kay, who was wrongly imprisoned for two years? Or Oliver Mears, who spent two years on bail for something he didn’t do? These men suffered wrongful convictions or accusations, arguably exacerbated by this believe-the-victim culture. There is a very real danger that instant belief of so-called victims will undermine the presumption of innocence.

Jackson and Olding were found not guilty. And if we believe in justice, that means they must be entitled to live as freely as they did before they were accused. Are these men pigs? Maybe. Are they rapists? No. In their failure to recognise the difference between these two things, proponents of #IBelieveHer are playing a dangerous game. Their politicisation of rape trials will harm the ideal of justice and give rise to extra-legal, mob-like activity.

SOURCE






Newspoll: Voters back migration cut

A majority of Australians has backed moves for a lower annual immigration rate, in a result that will lend support to Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s push to reduce the intake through tougher vetting.

An exclusive Newspoll conducted for The Australian has revealed that 56 per cent of Australian voters believe the existing immigration cap of 190,000 a year is too high, 28 per cent think it is at the right level and 10 per cent consider it too low.

A similar number believe white South African farmers subjected to a campaign of violence and discrimination in their homeland should be afforded the same status by Australia as asylum-seekers from other parts of the world.

In a blunt message to both sides of politics, Labor and Coalition voters are overwhelmingly of the belief that a cap of 190,000 for the annual migration rate — a target set by the former Labor government — is too high.

The debate has even divided Greens voters, with more of the party’s supporters believing it is too high than those who say it is too low.

However, the poll results are also likely to be seized upon by Coalition MPs including Tony Abbott who have championed an even lower number in a debate that has divided government ranks.

Mr Dutton first raised the issue of white South African farmers in March following reports of extreme violence and intimidation.  He suggested they may warrant special attention on humanitarian grounds.

This sparked a storm of protest from activist groups and the Greens.

The nationwide poll of 2068 people, taken between April 19 and April 22, shows that 28 per cent of voters support a special immigration quota for the farmers — akin to the special program for persecuted Syrians — to come to Australia but 57 per cent agree that Australia should treat them no differently to asylum-seekers from other parts of the world.

This view was strongest among Greens voters — 77 per cent — followed by 66 per cent of Labor voters and 47 per cent of Coalition voters.

Support for a special quota was strongest among Coalition voters — 38 per cent — with almost universal support for equal treatment across all age groups.

On the broader issue of the annual permanent migration program, 60 per cent of Coalition and 49 per cent of Labor voters claim a target of 190,000 a year is too high, compared with 29 per cent and 33 per cent respectively believing it is about right.

Belief was strongest among voters over 55, with 66 per cent claiming it was too high compared with 46 per cent of 18 to 34-year-olds.

Supporters of the Greens — who have policies in support of large humanitarian immigration intakes but also support anti-development and environmental protection — appeared split with 32 per cent agreeing it was too high, 36 per cent claiming it was about right and 27 per cent claiming it was too low.

The issue last week opened up divisions in Coalition ranks over denials by Malcolm Turnbull that he overruled a plan by Mr Dutton to lower the 190,000 ceiling by 20,000.

The Australian confirmed that this drop will more than likely now be achieved through the normal vetting procedures put in place in 2015.

The debate also saw the release of a report last week that confirmed that the annual ­permanent intake was making Australians richer.

A report released by Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs made the case for a big Australia, claiming the intake was forecast to add up to one percentage point to GDP growth each year for 30 years, while making a combined lifetime tax contribution of almost $7 billion.

SOURCE 






Leftist hatred of Australia's remembrance day

At least as far back as the early 60s, the Left have been trying to ridicule Anzac day to death.  That it is basically a time for Australians to mourn relatives who died in war seems lost on them. From the French revolution onwards death has never bothered Leftists

In 1958, homosexual playwright Alan Seymour wrote the play "The one day of the year.  It portrayed Anzac day as nothing more than drunken debauchery. It became something of a hit, so much so that it was on the high school English curriculum when I was there a few years later.

The contempt  has not worked, however.  The celebration of the day has gone from strength to strength with young people stepping up to inclusion.

But the contempt rumbles on.  Below is what the far-Leftist webzine "New Matilda" has contributed for this year's occasion -- an article which disrespects Anzac day.

The curious thing about Leftist attitudes to Anzac day is that the day is actually a celebration of a big military defeat suffered by allied troops. With the assistance of incompetent British generals, the Turks gave the Anzacs a drubbing.

Leftists normally love any downfall in their own society so one would think that Leftists would feel somewhat kindly towards Anzac day.  But it is not so.

Why? Just the usual shallowness of Leftist thinking.  They think it is about military men so it must be bad.  Leftist guerillas shooting at others from behind cover is fine and honorable but brave soldiers who voluntarily put themselves in the line of fire are contemptible


NEARLY one year since a controversial Anzac Day Facebook post which sparked a major backlash, Muslim activist Yassmin Abdel-Magied has once again weighed in to the debate.

The author and TV host came under fire last April for writing, “Lest. We. Forget (Manus, Nauru, Syria, Palestine ...)”. Despite deleting the post and apologising for being “disrespectful”, the resulting media firestorm and ultimately led to her leaving Australia, which she later compared to an “abusive boyfriend”.

“Only seven more days before another unsuspecting Australian gets run out of town for some mild criticism of the diggers,” New Matilda journalist Ben Eltham tweeted on Tuesday.

Ms Abdel-Magied replied, “Hot tip — you don’t even need to mention the diggers. You just need to ask for people to extend their empathy to others.”

“We hate asylum seekers and people on welfare and animal rights activists and those who seek a more just society. My dad fought in Vietnam and he would agree with you, Yassmin — and I agree with you.”

Last week, Ms Abdel-Magied was denied entry to the US where she was scheduled to speak at a New York event titled “No Country for Young Muslim Women”. US immigration officials said she was put on a plane back to the UK because she did not have the correct visa.

She later told Channel Ten’s The Project she was subjected to “aggressive” treatment, with the officer at one point saying she would “shoot” her. “When the officer got aggressive, my gut instinct to use humour kicked in,” she said. “I jokingly asked if she was going to shoot me. She said, ‘I will’.”

Earlier this year, Ms Abdel-Magied revealed a racism complaint about her tweets had been dismissed by the Australian Human Rights Commission. She recently made her acting debut in the SBS digital series Homecoming Queens, and will host Hijabistas!, a six-part series on Islamic fashion, airing on ABC iView on May 1.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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23 April, 2018

Leftist bias and the Philadelphia Starbucks story

Foul Leftist bigot MICHAEL A. COHEN writes below.  He totally ignores the fact that the Philadelphia store has different rules from other Starbucks -- for good reasons.  So in the usual Leftist way, he leaves out half the story to feed his anti-white racism. The amusing thing about his self-righteous rant is that the woman he accuses of racism is in fact a far-Leftist. As a Leftist, Cohen "just knows" the truth without having to do any research.  He is a typical bigot


I’m a writer, which means I spend a lot of time in coffee shops. In fact, I’m writing this column in one right now. I’ve spent a good part of the past 20 years toiling away among other overly caffeinated workers, pecking away at my laptop.

More often than not, I buy a cup of coffee and something to eat. But that’s not always the case. Sometimes, particularly when I’m on the road, I sneak in to use the Wi-Fi. That’s especially true when it comes to Starbucks, which is a beacon of free and dependable Wi-Fi, comfortable seating, and a complete lack of scrutiny from its employees as to whether I’ve purchased anything.

My experience is not unusual. Never once have I been asked to leave and I’ve certainly never been arrested for trespassing in a coffee shop.

But then again, I’m a white person.

Last week’s arrest of two black men in a Starbucks in Philadelphia is a reminder not just of the endemic nature of racism in America, but also what the unstated yet sizable advantages of white privilege look like.

The two men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, were meeting a friend for an afternoon meeting. Nelson asked to use the bathroom but was told that it was for customers only. So he sat down, without purchasing anything, and waited.

What happened next could only happen to a black man in America. Two minutes after they arrived at the shop, the store manager, who is white, called 911. Six police officers arrived and asked Nelson and Robinson to leave. They refused and were immediately arrested for what the police called, and I’m not making this up, “defiant trespassing.”

This is such a perfect example of how racism works in America that it should be taught as a mandatory lesson in every school in America.

SOURCE







Prisoners to Be Housed According to Gender Identity: New York Mayor

Wow! Fun and games for all.  Women who think they are men will be raped 24/7 and men who claim to be women will be having one long sex party with the real women there. More destruction of civilized standards from the Left in the guise of righteousness

New York Mayor Bill De Blasio has announced that prisoners in the city will be housed according to the gender with which they identify instead of biological sex.

"In New York City, we believe transgender rights are human rights. And we'll fight to protect those rights in city jails as well," he tweeted Monday.

"It's the city's responsibility to protect the rights and safety of all New Yorkers, and that means protecting transgender individuals in city jails as well," the mayor said in a statement, according to AM NY. "New York City is one of the first major cities to commit to taking this step, and it's crucial to ensuring all our facilities are welcoming and safe for all New Yorkers, no matter their gender identity."

Anne Rettenberg, a New York City-based psychotherapist and feminist is concerned about the safety of female inmates in light of the policy change.

She explained in a Wednesday phone interview with The Christian Post that she is familiar with these prison and detention facilities in the city, having gone to see clients there, and recounted that they are often violent places.

"It's not a safe place to put biological males in with females, biological males who, at the very least have been charged with a crime serious enough not to allow them to be released on their own recognizance. We're talking about potentially violent criminals," Rettenberg said.

Doing this is "just asking for trouble, it's a disaster waiting to happen, I think," she observed, adding that although it is hard to predict how many people will take advantage of the new policy "someone is eventually going to get raped, statistically it's going to happen at some point."

Yet Carmelyn Malais, who heads the city's Commission on Human Rights said that "respecting someone's gender identity or gender expression is key in making sure that everyone in New York City is living with dignity and respect," according to the New York Post.

"The fact that somebody's incarcerated or not doesn't really change that. "No one should feel unsafe for being who they are," she said.

Allowing transgender individuals in prison to self-report their gender and be accommodated accordingly was also "an important recognition of the unique challenges and vulnerabilities transgender and gender nonconforming individuals face in corrections facilities nationwide."

The Department of Corrections now has six months to implement the new policy and a DOC representative said that as of Tuesday, 26 individuals are presently in custody who identify themselves as transgender, and one who self-identifies as "gender nonconforming."

In 2016 Mayor De Blasio signed an order instructing all public schools, recreation centers and other city buildings that have single-sex bathrooms and locker rooms to allow people to use the facilities of the gender with which they identify.

SOURCE





Is 'Old-Fashioned' Returning?
   
It’s a modern changing world
Everything is moving fast.
But when it comes to love I like
What they did in the past.

—The Everly Brothers, 1962

Call me old-fashioned — and I’ve been called worse — but do I sense the possible end to the sexual revolution, which exploded in the ‘60s and whose fallout continues today?

Women complain that men won’t commit, whether in a dating relationship or marriage. The #MeToo stories that have emerged since the exposure of Harvey Weinstein’s alleged sexual harassment of numerous women in Hollywood have also contributed to their frustration. Harassment victims feel used and abused by men who, apparently, were never taught that women are co-equals in the human race and thus deserving of respect, even honor. I know, that last sounds old-fashioned.

New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has written about a new book by Joanna Coles, chief content officer of Hearst magazines and the former editor of Cosmopolitan and Marie Claire, titled Love Rules. The book focuses on avoiding unhealthy relationships in the digital age.

Coles spoke to Dowd about the young women she knows who feel “obligated” to have sex with men they don’t particularly like and what appears to be a growing “disillusionment with the hookup culture” at Middlebury College, as expressed by Leah Fessler in an article for the website Quartz.

What especially intrigued me about Dowd’s column was this line from Coles: “No one wants to go back to sock hops and going steady, but to attempt to separate emotions from sex is not only illogical, given that emotion intensely augments pleasure, but also impossible for almost all women.”

As a product of the sock-hop and going-steady generation, I rise to its defense.

So “no one” wants to return to a system that largely prevented the emotional, relational and, yes, physical problems encountered by modern lifestyles? Isn’t it the very definition of “insanity” when one expects different results while repeating the same behavior?

There were certain “rules,” way back when, about how men should treat women (though Hugh Hefner would later blow them up). The rules mostly worked for people who conformed to them. Yes, I know women experienced other problems then.

The societal wreckage caused by the hookup culture, easy divorce and co-habitation without commitment doesn’t need studies, though there have been some, chiefly by the late Judith Wallerstein, who spent 25 years studying the effects of divorce on children. She ultimately found that the pain from their parents’ breakup continued to cause them distress well into adulthood.

Common sense and experience also reveal certain things about human relationships, which work best and which don’t, especially for women, who mostly bear the burden when men don’t “love, honor and cherish” them until death they do part. For those of a certain age, that’s what couples used to pledge to each other when they married.

Dowd quotes Coles as saying modern sex is “bleak.” It doesn’t have to be. Millennials would do well to consult their old-fashioned and long-married grandparents. Or they can put on a “Golden Oldies” radio station and hear Don and Phil Everly sing:

I’m the kind who loves only one.
So the boys say I’m old fashioned.
Let them laugh, honey I don’t mind.
I’ve made plans for a wedding day for you and me.
That’s old fashioned.
That’s the way love should be.

SOURCE






Social class in Australia

To advance economically in Australia, you are often told to get lots of education.  And it's true that the higher you go educationally, the better paid you will usually be.  But is it actually education at work?  The great predictor of educational success is IQ -- so those who go furthest through the educational system will be those with the highest IQ. So it is most probably your IQ that gets you that good job.  Education is just an IQ marker that anyone can read.

As a result of that, some thinkers say that the class system is  a series of IQ levels.  What we see as Upper class and what we see as lower class will be effects of IQ, and not much more.  That is why social mobility is so poor.  IQ is highly hereditary so if you are born into a poor family you are unlikely to have the IQ assets to rise above your parent's station.

A curious example of class characteristics in fact being IQ characteristics is from the findings about breast feeding. Affluent mothers make quite a point of breast feeding these days.  To put your baby on the bottle will get you scorned and seen as uncaring, ignorant and very low class. Yet We read, for instance, that "The mother's IQ was more highly predictive of breastfeeding status than were her race, education, age, poverty status, smoking, the home environment, or the child's birth weight or birth order". So it's all IQ.

So your eventual place on the socio-economic scale will be where your level of IQ places you, with education being a marker, not a cause.  And your IQ is essentially unalterable. So rising up socially will only happen if you are one of the unusual people who come from a humble background but are lucky enough to be born with a high IQ.  Your IQ will place you in the right social rank for your level of ability.

Toby Young sets out in more detail the case for society being invisibly ranked by IQ


Social class in Australia is a topic that often goes undiscussed — but if the response to our series on class is anything to go by, some of you are ready to start talking about it.

Some people got in touch to say they believe the archetype of Australia as the lucky country, where opportunity abounds, rings as true as ever.

But others told us the idea that hard work and application are the only barriers to social mobility is laughable.

What was constant is that everyone had an opinion.

The ABC's recent class quiz prompted a number of curious results.

More than a few people were surprised to find their tastes, according to data compiled as part of the detailed Australian Cultural Fields project, aligned them with middle or upper-class woman aged between 40-59.

Taste — whether you'd rather see a pub band than go to opera, for instance — only explains so much of course, and there are many other factors that help explain where we each sit within Australia's complex and confusing class structure.

Sue, a public servant from Darwin, describes herself as a "late baby boomer". She once lived in Sydney, but moved to the Northern Territory with her husband for his job in construction work. "I'm definitely a middle-class person," she said.

"Class in the NT looks much different to what it would in New South Wales. In terms of access to housing, education, employment, health outcomes — it keeps class very much at the forefront of your mind."

Julie wrote in to tell us about her family full of "shop-stewards, miners, railway workers, shipbuilders and plumbers".

"All politically aware, self-educated and proud of their working-class community solidarity," she said.

"My grandfather would say to explain wealth and class: 'Remember no-one is better than anyone else, it is just some people are better off'."

Education opens doors

A running theme through the conversations was the notion of education as being key to class mobility.

Greg, from Melbourne, comes from a working-class background.

"Education was the 'mobility enabler' for me. A beneficiary of Whitlam's education reforms in the 1970s, access to university was merit-based. It opened the door to me," he said.

Brisbane-based policy officer Chris believes his upbringing and education provided him with a platform that's not necessarily attainable for all Australians.

"I have relatively secure professional work and I'm paid reasonably well, I'm aware of my privileged position in the social hierarchy," he said.

"It was impressed on me that I should go to university, that I should improve myself intellectually, financially."

But education isn't always easily accessible.

Alice comes from a modest background and decided to go to university after achieving a UAI of 97.7.

Throughout her time at university, she has struggled to make ends meet, despite working multiple jobs.

"I'm safe for now. But should I choose to embark upon a Master's component, and my benefits are taken away … who knows where I'll end up. As an intelligent woman in her mid-thirties, I shudder to think that my future may very well lie in the streets as a homeless person, making me yet another uncomfortable statistic for everyone else to gawk at."

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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22 April, 2018

Men arrested at Starbucks were there for business meeting to change 'our lives'

Why on earth did these guys not spring a few bucks to buy a coffee? Nothing more would have happened if they had done that.  And they could have agreed to do that at any time during the confrontation. So why did they pointedly refuse? Why were they so obstinate?  Repeatedly disobeying a police command is begging for trouble.

Black ego was at work, I think.  The same big ego that lies behind the high rate of black crime. Psychologists have found repeatedly that blacks have unusually high levels of self esteem and that self esteem can clearly blind them to the rights and needs of others on many occasions -- as their crime-rate shows

And that particular Philadelphia Starbucks has apparently had a lot of trouble with people just "hanging out" there without buying anything. Hence their strict policy of promptly ordering such people out.  You buy first and then you sit down. So the policy was there for good reason and the manager -- who is a strong Leftist, not some racist bigot -- was just doing what she was supposed to do in calling them out.

There are claims that some whites were allowed to be seated without ordering but there appears to have been no videos or other evidence of that at the Philadelphia venue.

It is however true that many Starbucks venues are more  relaxed about that.  This Philadelphia venue was different because of past problems. In any case two wrongs don't make a right and it is clear that the black duo were deliberately un-co-operative.

If there were whites there who were seated without ordering they could well have been regular customers -- and regular customers everywhere are given more latitude in various ways. They can be given more time to order, for instance. Different treatment can come from many other things than race. Assuming racism is egregious.

So what is the big one-day break at Starbucks going to tell Starbucks managers?  Nobody knows that in detail yet but it has been claimed that the training will ensure that blacks are never again treated the way the two adventurers described below were treated.  So in future blacks will be allowed to sit around all they like without buying, one imagines.

That's corporate suicide of course.  Starbucks provides a nice environment so it is easy to see blacks taking over their nearest Starbucks as their new hangout. So all Starbucks venues will be so full of blacks that few whites will go there. So no revenue for the business and it will have to close down. Leftist idiocy at work.

One hopes that there is some remaining shred of reason among the Starbucks top brass but, if so, they will have to be changing very little of the policy that brought on this uproar.  One intelligent thing they could do would be to make the policy uniform across all Starbucks branches.  That would help to avoid any misunderstandings


The two black men who were arrested at a Starbucks in downtown Philadelphia last week and accused of trespassing say they were there for a business meeting that they had hoped would change their lives.

Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson came forward this morning on ABC News' "Good Morning America" to publicly share their story for the first time.

The 23-year-old entrepreneurs and longtime friends said they were waiting to meet a potential business partner at the Starbucks in Philadelphia's Rittenhouse Square neighborhood April 12 when a barista asked them whether they wanted to order anything. They declined and told her they were just there for a quick meeting, they said.

Nelson said he immediately asked to use the restroom when they walked in but was informed it was for paying customers only. So the pair sat at a table and waited for the person with whom they were scheduled to meet.

Then they saw police officers enter the store and speak with the manager, they said.

They didn't think anything of it until the officers approached their table and told them they needed to leave, they said.

"It was just, 'Get out, you have to leave. You're not buying anything, so you shouldn't be here,'" Nelson told "GMA."

They said they calmly told the officers they were there for a meeting, and Robinson said he even called the person for whom they were waiting. But the officers repeatedly insisted that they leave, they said.

"It's a real estate meeting. We've been working on this for months," Robinson said. "We're days away from changing our whole entire situation, our lives, and you about to sit here telling me I can't do that? You're not doing that."

The officers ultimately handcuffed Nelson and Robinson, and escorted them out of the Starbucks and into a squad car before taking them to the police station. Both men were later freed and the charges they were facing -- trespassing and disturbance -- were dropped that night.

An onlooker, Melissa DePino, captured the incident on video, which has been viewed more than 10 million times online and prompted protests outside the coffee giant's location on Spruce Street.

DePino, a 50-year-old writer and mother of two, told ABC News a Starbucks barista shouted from behind the counter at the two men to make a purchase or leave.

"They were sitting quietly minding their own business, and waiting for their friend to come," she said in an interview Sunday.

The Philadelphia Police Department did not immediately respond to ABC News' request for comment this morning. But Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Ross Jr. [who is black] said in a video testimonial released Saturday that his officers "did absolutely nothing wrong."

"I can tell you candidly these officers did a service they were called to do," Ross said.

The police commissioner also accused the men of being disrespectful to the officers and said that both were given several chances to leave, but they refused.

"On three different occasions the officers asked the two males politely to leave the location because they were being asked to leave by employees because they were trespassing," he said. "Instead the males continued to refuse as they had told the employees and they told the officers they were not leaving."

SOURCE





A perspective on Enoch Powell

The high rate of black knife crime in London these days is seen by many as making Powell a true prophet

An excerpt from Sean Gabb below

Fifty years ago this evening, Enoch Powell made what is easily the most memorable speech of the present age. Here, below this message, is my overview of his life and politics.

As I look ahead, I am filled with foreboding. Like the Roman, I seem to see “the River Tiber foaming with much blood.”

I may have fellow countrymen who cannot identify these words. If so, I have yet to meet them. The words are from the speech that Enoch Powell (1912-98) gave on the 20th April 1968 to the West Midlands Area Conservative Political Centre – a work best known as “The Rivers of Blood Speech.” It is, beyond any doubt, the most notable political speech given in England during my lifetime. It may be the most notable of the twentieth century. It made its author both the most loved and the most hated politician in the country. Shortly after the speech, dockworkers marched in his support through the centre of London. Thirty years later, at his memorial service in Westminster Abbey, the space outside was filled with a great crowd of those who had come to pay their respects.

If, on the other hand, you want to commit professional suicide in virtually any occupation, not excluding sport or driving a taxi, the surest and shortest mode of self-dispatch is to be overheard muttering that “Enoch was right.” He was never forgiven by those who now have power, and never has been or will be forgiven. And the more he is proved right, the louder and more grim grows the chorus of execration.

He never had time for rather American views of white superiority, or for the moral infirmity of the coloured races. You do not become fluent in Urdu, and a scholar of its poetry, when you believe its speakers are a lesser breed. He would probably have been indifferent to the opinions of Jared Taylor and Richard Spencer – not that I think it appropriate to denigrate either of these men thereby. His whole objection to mass-immigration was that the newcomers – regardless of their inherent quality as human beings – were  not our people. Small numbers of immigrants – perhaps a few hundred thousand, concentrated in a few well-marked districts – might be accommodated. But the millions who did come, and their children and grandchildren, were in the nation, but not of the nation. Their physical presence displaced and otherwise inconvenienced the natives. The moral effects of their presence were to make the country ungovernable according to its ancient ways.

We can agree that the second, and greater burst of mass-immigration to Britain that began in the 1990s was part of the Cultural Marxist assault on Western Civilisation. But the first wave, beginning in the late 1940s, was entirely an effect of the delusion I have explained. The British Empire had a common citizenship. If the pretence of the Commonwealth as a continuation of Empire was to be maintained, it too needed a common citizenship. For this reason, British Governments refused, until the partial, and unwilling, withdrawal from delusion in the Commonwealth Immigration Act 1961, to give up on insisting that every citizen of the Indian and Pakistani Republics, and of every other territory coloured red on the map in 1947, had the same right to settle and live in the United Kingdom as my own parents, and the same right to vote and to benefit from the various welfare services that, wisely or unwisely, had been made available to the British people.

I began by quoting two sentences from his Rivers of Blood Speech. I will approach my end with another: “It is like watching a nation busily engaged in heaping up its own funeral pyre” Powell said this of British immigration policy. But he could have said it of every other failure of the British ruling class to understand and act upon the logic of what happened in 1947.

Bearing in mind the nature and tone of what I have said, my closing may superfluous. Even so, I will give it. I met Enoch Powell and heard him speak less often than I wish I had. I wish I had known him better than I did. But I can say, with not the smallest doubt, that he was the greatest Englishman of my lifetime. I am proud to say that the Libertarian Alliance frequently invited him to speak at its meetings in the 1980s and 1990s, and that we published several articles by him. Of particular importance among these articles is the attack that he made in 1984 on the Drug Trafficking Offences Bill and the principle that it brought into English law of asset forfeiture without conviction.

I regret that I was unable to stand outside his memorial service. But my late friend, Chris R. Tame, made a point of being there. A hundred years from now, no one will remember the corrupt nonentities who fall over each other to denounce Enoch Powell. Equally, a hundred years from now, men will still be reading Enoch Powell for pleasure and instruction. And, by then, it may not be an informal crime to stand up and say “Enoch was right.”

SOURCE





People are dying, so to hell with political correctness

Not a day goes by at the moment without reports of more stabbings and death on the streets of London.

The problem is, no one seems to want to tackle the issue properly. I’ve seen police cuts blamed, rap music and even the knives themselves.

There’s too much pussyfooting around nowadays.

Unfortunately, the likes of Sadiq Khan, Diane Abbott and David Lammy are more concerned with someone getting upset than someone getting stabbed. I know what I find more offensive.

Apparently Stop and Search hurts people’s feelings though. A little bit of stabbing here, a shooting there, that’s just fine, but under no circumstances must anyone get upset. That simply wouldn’t do, would it?

Before taking his post as Mayor of London Sadiq Khan said: ‘I’d do everything in my power to cut stop and search.’ That worked out well didn’t it? Let’s make it easier to get about the city with deadly weapons. What could possibly go wrong? His job as mayor of our capital city becomes more untenable as the days go by.

And despite the body count going up Diane Abbott has said she wants Stop and Search removed completely. Wow! The fact she could be home secretary one day is frightening. If you haven’t got anything to hide, then what’s the problem?

I’m not sure of the stats, but to me it seems that stabbings are becoming more common in Portsmouth too. This will no doubt be linked to the increase of gangs from London coming to the city running ‘county lines’ drug operations.

To sort the problem out people need not be scared to talk about the elephant in the room. There’s an obvious problem with black gangs. But those in authority, with the power to actually do something about it, are too afraid to be called racist to deal with it.

Police need to increase Stop and Search and use racial profiling to do it. People are dying, to hell with political correctness.

During the height of the Troubles in Northern Ireland profiling was used to identify potential terrorists.

I don’t see the problem. If middle-aged white men were the ones going about stabbing I wouldn’t have a problem being searched.

SOURCE






End of multiculturalism? Swedes say immigration is top issue ahead of election

Immigration is the most pressing issue facing Sweden, according to a poll conducted ahead of September’s election. The poll’s findings suggest there is growing concern over Stockholm’s open-door migrant policy.

Some 20 percent of Swedes listed immigration as the main issue ahead of the country’s elections, followed by healthcare (19 percent), law and order (12 percent) and integration (10 percent).

Since refugees started pouring into Europe in 2015, Sweden has welcomed more asylum seekers than any other European country in relation to its population. Nearly 163,000 people sought asylum in Sweden at the height of the refugee crisis in Europe, according to the national migration agency. Sweden’s finance minister said in December that the influx of migrants had put a tremendous financial and social strain on the country.

“Integration is not working properly. It didn't work before the autumn of 2015 either, but for me it is obvious that we cannot have a larger asylum reception than we are able to integrate,” Magdalena Andersson told the Dagens Nyheter.

As a result of the country’s controversial open-door migrant policy, Swedish politicians have found themselves battling to win the support of a growing number of anti-immigration voters.

Sweden's ruling Social Democrats announced in January that it would court 350,000 undecided voters wavering between them and the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats with the slogan of "Better welfare, law and order, and faster integration.”

"There is a desire among voters for someone to take control over the way society is developing,” John Zanchi, the party's election chief, said after unveiling the new strategy.

Restrictions imposed after the initial wave of refugees in 2015 resulted in less than 30,000 people coming to Sweden the following year, with even smaller numbers in 2017.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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20 April, 2018

Here's Why You Shouldn't Necessarily Believe The Racism Claims Against Starbucks

Starbucks is in the process of being consumed by the liberal pitchfork mob it spent years placating. It's certainly tempting to sit back and enjoy the schadenfreude. But my disdain for pitchfork mobs is greater than my disdain for liberal corporations, so I will now do something I never thought I would do: defend Starbucks. Sort of.

Let's first take a look at the mess Starbucks has fallen into. The company is currently the subject of protests and boycotts and extremely bad press because of two "racist" incidents that occurred in two different locations over the span of a few days. It all started when a video surfaced of two black men being arrested at a store in Philadelphia. We were not given many details — and still we do not have many details — but the image of two black men being led out in cuffs was enough, in the minds of the mob, to prove bigotry. No other explanation has been entertained. No further evidence has been sought.

Then, on Monday, a video from a Starbucks in Los Angeles went viral. In this case, a black man was denied the code to the bathroom because he was not a paying customer. He then took out his phone and began filming. He discovered that a white man had been given access to the bathroom without buying anything, so he proceeded to berate the manager on duty (who was, by appearances, not white). Now that manager's face has been plastered everywhere online, and she has been labeled a bigot and a racist without anyone stopping to even consider what her side of the story might be.

Perhaps racism is really the culprit in both cases. Perhaps it is the culprit in one and not the other. But a rational and honest person would want to consider the entire context of these incidents before accusing anyone of something as serious as racism. It is just unfortunate that there aren't very many rational or honest people left in America. And there are none at all in a pitchfork mob.

The situation in Philadelphia obviously looks quite bad, but looks — especially the look of a viral video devoid of context — can be deceptive. Here is the missing context (or some of it, anyway): the two men were sitting in the store, taking up seats, without having actually purchased anything. That is, technically, loitering and trespassing. It just so happens that the Starbucks in Philadelphia has a policy against loitering. Loitering is apparently a significant problem at that location and the manager says that she has had some tense moments with loiterers in the past, including one incident where someone chased her around the store after refusing to leave.

The store employees tried to deal with the men peacefully. The men were informed that only customers can sit at the tables or use the restrooms — which is, again, a policy that this particular establishment has a history of enforcing — but the two refused to abide by the policy. When they were told that the police would have to be called, they responded, "Go ahead and call the police. We don't care."

The police arrived and negotiated with the men for several minutes. Still they would not leave. Finally the officers arrested them because there was literally no other option. A police officer cannot just allow someone to trespass on private property. If a trespasser will not clear off the premises, the police cannot say, "Well, okay, then. Never mind." They must uphold the law.

Of course it is claimed that white people loiter in Starbucks all the time without being asked to leave. This must prove that these men were singled out for their race. Perhaps it does. But if the men were arrested for "being black in Starbucks," you'd think there must be many similar stories from that same Starbucks location. Presumably, the Starbucks in Philadelphia has hundreds of black patrons come in and out every single week. If the manager is so uncontrollably racist that she actually called the cops on two black men simply because they are black, why didn't she do the same with any of the hundreds or thousands of other black customers she's seen in the store?

And here's another question: Has this manager ever done the same to white people? She says she has enforced the loitering rule plenty of times in the past. Were they always black people? If she has done exactly the same to people of her own race, wouldn't that disprove racism with absolute certainty? Are we sure that the loitering policy at the Starbucks in Philadelphia was enforced based on skin color? How are we sure? Does someone have proof?

The bathroom incident in Los Angeles is even murkier. It is standard policy in almost any urban restaurant or store of any kind to give bathroom privileges only to paying customers. Just last week I was refused the restroom at a cafe in D.C. because I hadn't purchased anything. So, I purchased something. It never occurred to me that my rights may have been infringed upon.

It is not necessarily significant that a white man had been able to use the restroom even as a black man was not. It could be evidence of racism, or it could simply be that the white man is a regular customer and the staff knew he would buy something. Regular customers often enjoy special privilege, regardless of their race. It could also be that he was given the restroom code by an employee who was more lax about the rules, and the black man was refused the code by an employee who was not so lax. Either of these explanations seem more plausible than the idea that a non-white woman working at a Starbucks in Los Angeles is racist against black people. Again, if that's the case, one must wonder how she has functioned at a store where an extremely high percentage of the customers are racial minorities. Was this her first day on the job? And her first day in Los Angeles?

Perhaps it was. Perhaps she's a filthy racist. Perhaps the manager in Philadelphia is a filthy racist. But I have seen no evidence to support those charges. And until someone can provide some, I won't be grabbing my pitchfork. And neither should you.

SOURCE





Sweden’s violent reality is undoing a peaceful self-image.  Shootings have become so common that they don’t make top headlines anymore

Sweden may be known for its popular music, IKEA and a generous welfare state. It is also increasingly associated with a rising number of Islamic State recruits, bombings and hand grenade attacks.

In a period of two weeks earlier this year, five explosions took place in the country. It’s not unusual these days — Swedes have grown accustomed to headlines of violent crime, witness intimidation and gangland executions. In a country long renowned for its safety, voters cite “law and order” as the most important issue ahead of the general election in September.

The topic of crime is sensitive, however, and debate about the issue in the consensus-oriented Scandinavian society is restricted by taboos.

To understand crime in Sweden, it’s important to note that Sweden has benefited from the West’s broad decline in deadly violence, particularly when it comes to spontaneous violence and alcohol-related killings. The overall drop in homicides has been, however, far smaller in Sweden than in neighboring countries.

Shootings in the country have become so common that they don’t make top headlines anymore, unless they are spectacular or lead to fatalities.

Gang-related gun murders, now mainly a phenomenon among men with immigrant backgrounds in the country’s parallel societies, increased from 4 per year in the early 1990s to around 40 last year. Because of this, Sweden has gone from being a low-crime country to having homicide rates significantly above the Western European average. Social unrest, with car torchings, attacks on first responders and even riots, is a recurring phenomenon.

Shootings in the country have become so common that they don’t make top headlines anymore, unless they are spectacular or lead to fatalities. News of attacks are quickly replaced with headlines about sports events and celebrities, as readers have become desensitized to the violence. A generation ago, bombings against the police and riots were extremely rare events. Today, reading about such incidents is considered part of daily life.

The rising levels of violence have not gone unnoticed by Sweden’s Scandinavian neighbors. Norwegians commonly use the phrase “Swedish conditions” to describe crime and social unrest. The view from Denmark was made clear when former President of NATO and Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in an interview on Swedish TV: “I often use Sweden as a deterring example.”

In response, the Swedish government has launched an international campaign for “the image of Sweden” playing down the rise in crime, both in its media strategy and through tax-funded PR campaigns. During a visit to the White House in March, Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Löfven admitted that his country has problems with crime and specifically shootings, but denied the existence of no-go zones. Sweden’s education minister, Gustav Fridolin, traveled to Hungary last week with the same message.

But the reality is different for those on the ground: The head of the paramedics’ union Ambulansförbundet, Gordon Grattidge, and his predecessor Henrik Johansson recently told me in an interview that some neighborhoods are definitely no-go for ambulance drivers — at least without police protection.

Swedes are not prone to grandiose manifestations of national pride, but the notion of a “Swedish Model” — that the country has much to teach the world — is a vital part of the national self image.

Since crime is intimately linked to the country’s failure to integrate its immigrants, the rise in violence is a sensitive subject. When the Swedish government and opposition refer to the country as a “humanitarian superpower” because it opened its doors to more immigrants per capita during the migrant crisis than any other EU country, they mean it. This has resulted in some impressive contortions.

In March, Labor Market Minister Ylva Johansson appeared on the BBC, where she claimed that the number of reported rapes and sexual harassment cases “is going down and going down and going down.” In fact, the opposite is true, which Johansson later admitted in an apology.

Similarly, in an op-ed for the Washington Post, former Prime Minister Carl Bildt described the country’s immigration policy as a success story. He did not elaborate on violent crime. After repeated attacks against Jewish institutions in December — including the firebombing of a synagogue in Gothenburg — Bildt took to the same paper to claim that anti-Semitism is not a major problem in Sweden.

“Historically, in Sweden it was the Catholics that were seen as the dangerous threat that had to be fought and restricted,” Bildt claimed, seemingly unaware that the laws he cited also applied to Jews. Intermarriage was illegal and hostility was based on ideas of Jews as racially inferior. Bildt’s attempt to relativize current anti-Semitism with odd and inaccurate historical arguments reflects how nervously Swedish elites react to negative headlines about their country.

Another spectacular example is an official government website on “Facts about migration, integration and crime in Sweden,” which alleges to debunk myths about the country. One “false claim” listed by the government is that “Not long ago, Sweden saw its first Islamic terrorist attack.”

This is surprising, since the Uzbek jihadist Rakhmat Akilov has pleaded guilty to the truck ramming that killed five people in Stockholm last April and swore allegiance to the Islamic State prior to the attack. Akilov, who is currently standing trial, has proudly repeated his support for ISIS and stated that his motive was to kill Swedish citizens. He also had documented contacts with international jihadis.

“They make it sound as if violence is out of control” — Stefan Sintéus, Malmö’s chief of police

The government’s excuse for denying the Islamic terrorist attack in Sweden is that no Islamic group has officially claimed responsibility. Given the importance these days of fighting fake news, the Swedish government’s tampering with politically inconvenient facts looks particularly irresponsible.

Sometimes it takes an outsider to put things in perspective. A recent piece by Bojan Pancevski in London’s Sunday Times put a spotlight on immigration and violent crime. The article caused a scandal in Sweden and was widely seen as part of the reason why the British and Canadian foreign ministries issued travel advice about the country, citing gang crime and explosions. “They make it sound as if violence is out of control,” said Stefan Sintéus, Malmö’s chief of police.

It didn’t seem to occur to the police chief that both the travel advice and the article could reflect the same underlying reality. After all, only a few days earlier, a police station in Malmö was rocked by a hand grenade attack. Earlier the same month, a police car in the city was destroyed in an explosion.

Officials may be resigned to the situation. But in a Western European country in peacetime, it is reasonable to view such levels of violence as out of control.

Paulina Neuding is the editor-in-chief of the online magazine Kvartal.

SOURCE






UK headhunter Josh Harrison blasts unemployed under-25s on LinkedIn

HEADHUNTER Josh Harrison made headlines after he branded unemployed young people “lazy little s**ts” online — but he’s standing by his controversial comments.

Mr Harrison, a headhunter from UK firm Harrison Allwood, made the comments in response to a LinkedIn post penned by entrepreneur Jack Parsons earlier this month.

Mr Parsons, 24, had shared his own story of unemployment and rejection, and said the UK’s job market was “broken” for young people.

But Mr Harrison, who is a millennial himself, responded by “calling bulls***” on Mr Parsons’ “poor us attitude”.

“I’ll tell you right now that it has never been easier for a young man/lady to find a reasonably well-paid job in this country and I’d go as far as to say regardless of qualifications, if you’re under the age of 25 and not in work without any good medical or mental health reason then you’re either a lazy little s*** or you’re setting your sights way too high,” he wrote.

“I’m not surprised us millennials are being called entitled. Kids these days measure their worth in the amount of followers they have on Instagram [and] they get upset if they’re not a CEO by 25.

“Everyone seems to want to start from the top, not work their way up. No one seems to want to get their hands dirty anymore.

“If you’re young and you’re not in work, it’s because you either don’t want to be or you’re not trying hard enough. Don’t blame society for keeping you out of a job when we’re living in the most open-minded, progressive, equality-focused period we’ve ever encountered.”

Mr Harrison’s extraordinary attack on members of his own generation was quickly picked up by the UK media — but the man who claims to be “one of the most viewed recruiters on LinkedIn in the UK” remains unrepentant.

In another post on LinkedIn, he has hit back at “biased” media reports about the stoush, and criticised Mr Parsons for labelling his comments as examples of “bullying”.

“Looking over my post numerous times, I just can’t comprehend how he comes to that conclusion. I do mention his name and call ‘bullshit’ on his opinion but the rest of the post itself is simply my opinion on our generation and how some of us could be labelled as being entitled,” he wrote.

“Jack himself says in the comments below my post that he is an advocate of freedom of speech, yet it seems like any opinion expressed that’s not aligned with his own is classed as ‘bullying’.”

He said Mr Parsons’ reaction to his opinion was “exactly the snowflake, entitled, sh*tty ‘poor me’ behaviour I was discussing in the original post”.

Opinion over the row is divided on social media, with some followers applauding Mr Harrison for his honesty while others insisted young people faced unique challenges when it came to finding a job in today’s market.

SOURCE






Bozell: Social Giants Perpetrating World’s ‘Greatest Censorship of Free Speech in History’

Facebook, Google, Twitter, and YouTube are all on a global “jihad against conservative thought,” Media Research Center (MRC) President Brent Bozell warned Monday.

Bozell, appearing on the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle” to discuss a new MRC/NewsBusters study documenting how the leftist social media giants are censoring and targeting conservatives, said the danger of the social media “jihad” cannot be overstated:

“It’s 50 pages documenting what conservatives have been suggesting has been happening. This is -- it sounds hyperbolic, but Laura, this is true.

“This is the emerging of the greatest censorship of free speech worldwide in the history of man. Now let me explain this. The left is on a jihad against conservative thought.”

“It's not just happening in the United States; it’s all over the world that the left is militant. Conservatives have to recognize this and conservatives have to start looking for new homes.”

The bias of the leftist social media giants is influencing billions of people worldwide, Bozell warned:

“These social media giants have audiences in the billions. And what we’ve shown in this massive report is whether it is Facebook, or Twitter, or Google, or YouTube, they are all employing different tactics to go against conservatives.”

Bozell was supportive of the suggestion that conservatives need “our own platforms” – but, noted that the founders of social media platforms like Facebook know that their businesses can’t survive if conservatives boycott them:

“I think we’re going to have to - but, Mark Zuckerberg knows, if conservatives leave, if they leave, the business model for these social media giants collapses.”

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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19 April, 2018

It’s not just Starbucks: White fear is an American problem

By Renée Graham, who is black and who writes in the Leftist Boston Globe. 

She is perfectly correct that white fear is an American problem and her essay below gives examples of the bad effects that white fear has on blacks.  But in typical leftist style she tells only half the story. She thinks it is sufficient to describe a problem only.  She makes no attempt to examine WHY that problem exists. 

I suppose it would be impossible for her to say so but the problem is created by blacks. The enormous incidence of violent crime among blacks is the cause of the fear.  For their own safety, American whites have to be wary of any black they do not know personally.  When one third of black males spend some time in jail during their lifetime, the probability that a random black is a criminal is high.  So white fear is a black problem.  They cause it.

I live in Australia and the few Africans we have here are also often very violent.  But is that a result of white oppression?  Hardly.  They came here as refugees.  They should be grateful for being given refuge from Africa's wars. Australia has been nothing but good to them.

Our big minority however is the Chinese.  They have a very low rate of criminality. They don't bother anyone and nobody bothers them.  It is no problem for them to be driving while Chinese, to be shopping while Chinese, to be out walking while Chinese or to be sitting in a coffee shop while Chinese.  As the Bible says:  "As ye sow, so shall ye reap" (Galatians 6:7)

The high incidence of black criminality is a sad fact for blacks who are not criminal. They get judged as likely to do things that they do not intend to do.  They are born unlucky.  But there are all sorts of people who are born unlucky.  They just have to learn to deal with it.  The writer below has learned to deal with it.  She just resents having to do so.  But she should turn her resentment towards the lawless blacks who originate the problem rather than being critical of whites.


DRIVING WHILE BLACK. Walking while black. Shopping while black. Selling CDs while black. Listening to music in a car while black.  Asking for directions while black. Sitting in Starbucks while black.

To be black is to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time because, in America, there is never a right place for black people.

Several recent events again drove home that point like a stake through the heart. Two black men in Philadelphia were arrested at a Starbucks for being two black men in Starbucks. They hadn’t ordered anything and were waiting for a friend. This was enough to make a Starbucks employee call the police.

Not long after several officers arrived, the men were perp-walked off the premises in handcuffs. Hours later, they were released without charges.

Three years ago, the coffeehouse chain launched its quickly aborted “Race Together” campaign to spark conversations about race. Now it’s in the piping-hot center of another debate about racial profiling. A video of the incident has been viewed more than 9 million times, and the story is now a national headline.

For black people, this video has been viral forever. This is what we live with every damn day.

This isn’t a Starbucks problem. It could have been a fast food restaurant, a mall — or a street in Cambridge. Last Friday police responded to a report of a naked man on Massachusetts Avenue. A video shows Selorm Ohene, a black 21-year-old Harvard student, being struck several times after he was already pinned to the ground by three Cambridge police officers and an MBTA transit cop. Cambridge Mayor Marc C. McGovern called the incident “disturbing.”

Everything black people do is weighted by irrational white fear. It’s mentally exhausting to always be on guard, even during mundane moments like waiting in a coffee shop – or asking for directions.

Last week, Brennan Walker, a 14-year-old African-American, had to walk to his Rochester Hills, Mich., school after missing the bus. When he got lost on his four-mile trek, Walker went to a house and knocked on the door, hoping to get directions. The woman who answered accused him of trying to break in — then it got worse. A white man, wielding a shotgun, ran at the teen. His shot missed Walker, who took off as soon as he saw the gun.

Jeffrey Craig Zeigler, 53, has been charged with assault with intent to murder and possession of a firearm in the commission of a felony. Walker said he chose that house because he saw a neighborhood-watch sticker and thought it would be safe.

Years ago when I was dating a white woman, I used to half-joke that being with her meant that if we got lost in a predominately white area, she could be the one to ask for directions. Before GPS, I would often opt for squinting at maps and driving miles out of my way rather than ask for help. Even with my lousy sense of direction, I wouldn’t run the risk of ending up in jail or dead because someone criminalized my blackness.

After Trayvon Martin was shot to death in 2012, the media became obsessed with “the talk” many black parents have with their sons about how to behave around white people, especially cops. I never got a version of that conversation. Still, I always knew not to reach into my bag in a store unless I’m in full view of the cashier or to leave the house without ID.

When you’re black, you just know. Just as the two men in Starbucks knew not to do anything that would further escalate an already ridiculous predicament.

On “Good Morning America,” Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson called what happened to those two black men “reprehensible” and plans to meet with them to apologize personally. GMA host Robin Roberts called this a “a teachable moment,” but I don’t believe that. This nation has had several centuries’ worth of teachable moments, and little is ever learned. Yes, there has been progress, but that’s slight solace when you can still be arrested simply for sitting in a coffee shop.

Nothing will ever change until a majority of white people in this nation stop perceiving black existence as sinister and suspicious. Talking about racism may hurt white people’s feelings, but their unchecked racism continues to endanger our black lives.

SOURCE






The Four Terrible Things That Are Destroying Boys In Our Culture

Our culture is very bad for boys. It's bad for girls, too. It's bad for everyone. But I think we fail to recognize and appreciate the unique struggles that boys face. Partly we fail to recognize it because we are too busy worrying about the Patriarchy's persecution of women. Partly we fail to recognize it because, collectively, we just don't care that much about boys. Partly we fail to recognize it because men are not as likely to talk about their own plight. And partly a man will not talk about it because everyone, even his fellow men, will only laugh at him and downplay the problem.

There are many factors at play, and they all lead to a pretty dire situation. Men are told about their privilege, but if you look at things honestly you will not see much evidence of this privilege. On the contrary, you will see several profound disadvantages suffered by men in general and boys in particular.

Here, I think, are the four biggest:

1) Our culture preys relentlessly on a boy's weaknesses.

Let's imagine the world the average 13-year-old boy inhabits. He has long since been exposed to hardcore pornography, and probably watches it regularly. Then puberty hits. His hormones are going haywire. His brain is hardwiring itself to focus obsessively on sex. He cannot really help it. He is now fertile, even as the girls his age, for the most part, are not. He feels the biological impulse to go out and find a sexual partner, though he does not understand this urge and his conception of human sexuality has been perverted and confused by the porn habit he developed in sixth grade.

The boy cannot escape sex. It is all over his computer. All over his phone. All over social media. All over the TV. All over the music he listens to. He goes to school and his female classmates are dressed like strippers. He goes anywhere and that's how the women are dressed. It seems that everyone is doing everything they can to make a degenerate and a creep out of him, even as they demand that he control himself. We ask for self-discipline and self-control from the boy while providing him with no tools to develop them. Rather than tools, we give him temptation. Non-stop temptation, everywhere he goes, all day, every day, right at the moment when his brain is least capable of overcoming it.

And even if the boy possesses the almost superhuman moral fortitude required to pursue chastity and purity in the midst of the sex-choked fog that engulfs him, he will only meet mockery and discouragement from our society. The very people who demand that he "respect women" and "control himself" will heap scorn on him if he tries to do exactly that. Again the boy will need to call upon his superhuman courage to ignore the jeers, just as he rejects the temptations, so that he can walk the path to virtue on his own, with no help from anyone.

Most boys do not have this courage. Most adults do not have it. Yet we expect of our boys a virtue that we do not possess and have never demonstrated.

2) There is a catastrophic lack of male role models.

17 million kids live in homes without fathers. In the black community, around 70 or 80% are fatherless.

Almost all kids have mothers. And they have mostly female teachers. They're even more likely to have grandmothers than grandfathers, as men die significantly earlier. A girl will have no shortage of female role models, which is a fact worth celebrating. It's also a profound advantage that many boys, with their "privilege," do not enjoy.

Even the boys who have dads may not have male role models. Very often, despite the father's physical presence, the mother is still the spiritual leader of the household. There are plenty of fathers who stick around but then refuse to take part in their children's moral formation. They are warm bodies taking up space, and perhaps bringing home a paycheck, but they neither lead their families nor provide a worthwhile example to their sons.

If a boy wants to know how to be a man, he will have to depend on his mother to show him the ropes, or else he will turn on the TV and imitate whatever he sees on the screen. He will learn about masculinity from musicians and movie stars and superheroes. He will develop a hollow, cartoonish idea of manhood and he will become a hollow, cartoon man.

What else can we expect? It's hard to be a good man nowadays. It's nearly impossible if nobody has ever shown you how.

3) The eduction system is designed for girls.

There is a reason why girls outperform boys in school. Girls are not smarter, on average, but they have an easier time because the classroom is set up to reward the calm and organized demeanor more natural to them. Boys are more rambunctious; they have more physical energy; they are less able to sit still and less able to focus attentively on one dull task for a prolonged period of time. The typical classroom environment is torture for a boy. It penalizes him for being himself. It penalizes him for being a boy.

As a result, boys get lower grades. Boys are more likely to drop out. Boys are more likely to be expelled. Perhaps worst of all, boys are twice as likely to be diagnosed with ADHD. By high school, 20% of boys — 20% — are diagnosed. Yet we never stop to ask ourselves why boys are more susceptible to this mysterious mental condition. We never stop to consider that perhaps we are not so much diagnosing boys as we are diagnosing boyhood.

If the school system were not predicated on sitting still and memorizing things (and it need not be), there would be no ADHD. We have arbitrarily decided that every child must be the sort of child who thrives in that environment, even if we have to stuff pills in his mouth to force the issue. Girls are not drugged nearly as often because most of them are already the sort of people the school system prefers. The system may not prefer girls, but it does prefer people who have characteristics more common in girls, which is the same thing.

4) Masculinity is denigrated.

You might think we've already done enough to these boys. We've made our point. We've shoved sex in their face, deprived them of role models, and forced them into an education system that treats their personality as a disease. But we are not satisfied. Finally, in case any have survived the gauntlet, we attempt to bury them in self-loathing.

Femininity is attacked in our culture as well, but not nearly so explicitly or directly. Nobody would ever call femininity itself "toxic" or "fragile." Nobody talks about female "privilege," even though, as I have demonstrated, females enjoy many unique privileges. Nobody would label all women "dangerous" or "potential monsters to be feared." These are the special denigrations reserved only for manhood.

This wouldn't be so bad if not for the fact that boys are emerging from childhood already broken. They are in no condition to endure the anti-male onslaught. So, they will stay broken, and we will not acknowledge that they are broken, and we will not face the fact that we are the ones who broke them.

SOURCE






Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., aggressively questioned CIA Director Mike Pompeo about his views on Islam, marriage, and sexual acts

“Do you believe that gay sex is a perversion?”

Believe it or not, that question was posed—repeatedly—in a Thursday Senate confirmation hearing to Mike Pompeo, the CIA director now nominated to be secretary of state. The graphic question was put to him by Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J.

He also wanted to know exactly what Pompeo thought about same-sex marriage.

Booker’s line of questioning is simply astounding—and inappropriate. He presumes, almost out of thin air, to set a new non-negotiable standard for anyone who wants to hold executive office: You must be completely on board with same-sex marriage, you must affirm gay sex, and you must espouse these convictions openly.

This kind of thought policing is becoming a trend for politicians on the left.

Last year, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., treated Russ Vought with similar hostility in his confirmation hearing to be deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Sanders asked Vought, a Christian, if he stood by his past statements about salvation and final judgment—then excoriated him when he refused to recant his orthodox Christian beliefs.

Booker treated Pompeo with the same inquisitorial attitude, perhaps confirming a sad new norm in the treatment of conservative nominees for executive office.

What is most striking is that Booker seems baffled by Pompeo’s refusal to accept the left’s views on sexuality. Yet, contra the attitude of the left that such views are normal, Pompeo’s views are the same as the ones countless Democrats and even President Barack Obama held until very recently.

Booker may be surprised to learn that opposition to same-sex marriage is still very much a mainstream view in America. According to a 2017 Gallup poll, about 1 in 3 Americans disagreed with same-sex marriage. That’s about 100 million people.

Perhaps Booker can be forgiven for his ignorance of this large segment of the nation, though, since so few social conservatives speak up about their views in public these days.

But more to the point of Thursday’s hearing, Pompeo’s views on marriage are completely irrelevant to the job that he seeks. At least, they should be irrelevant. Foreign policy should have nothing to do with promoting a vision of sexuality abroad, particularly one that is novel and offensive to many cultures.

Of course, this is quite separate from standing up for the basic human rights of those overseas who identify as LGBT. Some countries punish people simply because of their sexual orientation, and the United States must never condone such actions.

But unfortunately, the U.S. government has gone far beyond standing for basic human rights and has sought to advance a liberal LGBT agenda abroad.

A New Cultural Imperialism

In early 2015, the Obama State Department created a special envoy position to promote LGBT and intersex “rights” abroad. Keep in mind that at the time, same-sex marriage was not even federally recognized in the United States (Obergefell v. Hodges changed that a few months later).

This envoy’s impact abroad has not been negligible. Randy Berry, who held the post from 2015 to 2017, visited dozens of countries where he reported having “frank conversations” with leaders, pressing them to adopt more liberal laws on sexuality and marriage. He took credit for several changes in foreign countries, including Vietnam allowing a change of sex in official documents and Nepal’s new constitution adding sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes.

Astoundingly, the Trump administration has opted to keep this envoy position in place, even as the State Department is undergoing a massive restructuring. (Berry has, however, transitioned out of the position.)

This envoy is a most egregious form of cultural imperialism, made even more illegitimate by the fact that it misrepresents American values to the world. Same-sex marriage is an extremely recent phenomenon in American life.

It also remains an ongoing source of controversy as LGBT activists seek to wield it as a cudgel against the rights of religious Americans. We are just beginning to grapple with the consequences of same-sex marriage—so what is the State Department doing exporting it abroad?

The Purge at Home

Just as LGBT activists now seek to punish religious Americans in courts of law, liberal politicians like Booker seek to purge the remaining dissenters from polite society. In the world of Cory Booker, there is no place for Mike Pompeo—except perhaps, in a re-education class. Certainly not in the Cabinet.

This sort of social ostracization and occupational discrimination was coming, but liberals long denied it. They assured us that same-sex marriage would make the world more tolerant, that conservative holdouts would have nothing to fear, and that the progressive future would have a place for everyone.

Indeed, some liberals of yesteryear would have flinched hard at Booker’s rigid questioning of Pompeo over something as seemingly peripheral as gay sex. These liberals either failed to see just how coercive their movement would become, or they knew better and were just placating America while cultural changes gained steam—and then jumped on board the train.

Justice Samuel Alito was very prescient in his 2015 dissent to the Obergefell decision: “I assume that those who cling to old beliefs will be able to whisper their thoughts in the recesses of their homes, but if they repeat those views in public, they will risk being labeled as bigots and treated as such by governments, employers, and schools.” And, we should now add, senators.

Breaking the Public Monopoly

It is not Pompeo who went after Booker, and it is not conservatives who are going after liberals. Liberals are the aggressors in the culture war. They introduced the values of sexual libertinism that so many, like Pompeo, would prefer not to imbibe—yet somehow find the audacity to demand conformity to those values as the price of admission into mainstream institutions.

This form of coercion—and it is coercion, by public shaming—is only necessary when an idea is truly vulnerable to rational critique. The truth is, the left needs conservatives to stay silent on this issue. Booker needs Pompeo to keep his head down and at least feign approval of the left’s sexual orthodoxy. Because silence feeds the regime.

The left’s monopoly on this issue ends when conservatives, like Pompeo, begin refusing to hide their views and in fact speak up in the public square.

One-third of Americans still hold to traditional marriage. If one-third of Americans start speaking up about their views, we may find the winds of history don’t always blow in one direction.

SOURCE






How Treasury found that immigrants make Australia money

This is an old chestnut that in typical Leftist style ignores the main issue.  Immigration overall has always be known as a  positive.  The receiving country gets new workers without the expense of bringing them up from babyhood.

The big issue, however, is WHICH migrants do we take in.  Most countries have categories of migrants that they take or do not take.  Requiring at least a High School graduation in an intending migrant is a common stipulation.  So categorization of migrants is nothing new.

The problem arises when normal filters are bypassed for some reason -- usually for humanitarian reasons.  And what happens when those filters are bypassed strongly validates the wisdom of the filters.

Australia bypasses most of its filters to admit refugees.  And refugees are rarely like other migrants.  Where selected migrants soon get a job and put little strain on the social security system, refugees tend to be heavily welfare dependant. 

Additionally, black and Muslim refugees are more violoent.  Africans everywhere are very prone to crime and violence and Muslim refugees subscribe to a religion that both forbids  assimilation and encourages "jihad" against the host nation. 

So the article below is a red herring.  the issue is not WHETHER migration but WHICH migrants.  Readers are supposed to infer that ALL migrants are beneficial, which is not at all the case.


Immigrants consume less in government services than they pay in tax, making the federal government billions over their lifetimes, a landmark Treasury analysis has found, even when their expensive final years of life are taken into account

But the research, published by Treasury and the Department of Home Affairs, has come under fire from some population experts who believe it glosses over the link between migration and higher home prices, congestion, and strain on the environment.

The landmark study found in total, permanent skilled migrants deliver the federal government a profit of $6.9 billion over their lifetimes, temporary skilled migrants a profit of $3.9 billion, and family stream migrants $1.6 billion.
The analysis found a net economic benefit from immigration.

The analysis found a net economic benefit from immigration.

Treasurer Scott Morrison and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton have had the report for some time. Fairfax Media unsuccessfully tried to get a copy under freedom of information rules late last year.

Although the report was prepared by officials from Treasury and Home Affairs, it was Mr Morrison who decided to release it on Tuesday amid debate inside the Coalition over whether Australia's permanent and temporary migration program should be cut.

The government is expected to maintain migration of 190,000 per year in the May budget, despite the internal push for a reduction.

Australian National University demographer Liz Allen said the report makes it "very, very clear that migrants are not to blame" for infrastructure failures.

"Migrants make a net contribution to the Australian economy," she said. "If we are concerned about the failings of infrastructure such as those in the road network and rail network and housing, the issue is not migrants. The issue is the way that infrastructure funding and policy have failed to keep up with what is necessary, even to meet the population growth we would have had without migrants."

While concerns were often expressed about population-induced infrastructure pressure in cities where immigrants settled, the Treasury and Home Affairs study said there were benefits to population growth occurring in capital cities rather than regions. It said a higher population in the same geographical space increased the number of people that would benefit from a project, and could make a previously unprofitable infrastructure project viable.

University of Queensland emeritus professor Martin Bell said the report presented the “conventional conservative Treasury view,” focusing on the economic benefits of growth while paying less attention to the potentially negative effects.

“It’s important to give attention to the negative impacts as well, and the public perceptions of people in their 20s and 30s who are attempting to bid for houses,” he said.

“The report focuses on what Treasury thinks ‘might’ happen in the long term. The experience for a certain segment of the community right now is that there are negative redistributional effects as a result of high levels of migration.”

Scott Morrison has shut down suggestions from Tony Abbott, that the government should lower its immigration levels.

“There also seems to be faith in immigration as a solution to multiple issues. We are told that it generates the financial resources to meet the long-term demands for infrastructure and for the needs of an aging population. It's not going to do both.”

Mr Morrison on Tuesday said Australia’s natural population increase of around 150,000 a year had been falling as a proportion of the total. Permanent immigration was little changed. It was the rise in temporary migration that had fuelled population growth.

“You’ve got to understand what's driving the population pressures, but in addition to that you have to plan for the growth, which is what our budget is doing," he said.

The report found humanitarian migrants cost the budget $2.7 billion, with one third the result of resettlement in the first five years, including the cost of education, and the other two thirds the effect on the budget of earnings and tax too low to cover the cost of the services they consume.

Around 11 per cent of working age migrants earn no income, compared to just over 7 per cent of the working age population.

The Treasury said the higher figure most likely reflects the time it takes to acclimatise to a new country and labour market. The income of migrants grows after additional time in Australia, with substantial improvements over the first three years of roughly four times the average annual wage increase.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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18 April, 2018

Mass: Police officer repeatedly strikes a black Harvard University student while he was pinned to the ground

"Harvard University student" is a true description but is deliberately misleading.  That he was naked, aggressive and high on drugs would be a more relevant description. When police hit a man already on the ground it is usually  to subdue them and stop them from trying to escape.  With druggies, particularly, being put on the ground does not subdue them.  They still keep wriggling and giving the police a hard time trying to control them.  So the police keep hitting them as long as it takes to gain control of them.  That seems to have been the case here. I feel sorry for the police who have to deal with such dregs


Cambridge’s mayor called a video of a police officer repeatedly striking a black Harvard University student while he was pinned to the ground by fellow officers “disturbing” and promised that the findings of an internal probe would be made public.

“Cambridge affirms that Black Lives Matter, but it must be true in practice as well,” Mayor Marc C. McGovern said in a statement Sunday morning.

Later in the day, Cambridge police released a seven-minute video that showed the encounter between officers and Selorm Ohene, 21, of Cambridge, on Friday night.

Three Cambridge officers and an MBTA Transit Police officer pinned Ohene to the ground while arresting him near the corner of Massachusetts Avenue and Waterhouse Street, according to a police report. Ohene was naked and a woman who appeared to be Ohene’s acquaintance told officers he may have been on drugs, the report stated.

In the video, shot by a bystander and released by police, Ohene is standing on the median of Massachusetts Avenue, surrounded by three officers, then turns and approaches one of them.

Cambridge officers and a transit officer grabbed the legs of a 21-year-old Harvard student, who was naked on Massachusetts Avenue, police said.

An officer grabs Ohene’s legs from behind, knocking him forward into another officer. The three men fall to the pavement. The third officer helps pin Ohene to the ground.

Ohene can be heard on the video yelling, “Help me, Jesus! Help me, Jesus!” as he struggles with the officers. A fourth officer helps restrain Ohene, and one of the officers can be seen striking Ohene once, according to video released by police.

In a separate video of the incident, filmed from the opposite side of the street and obtained by the Globe Saturday night, an officer can be seen striking Ohene quickly four times while another officer grips the first officer’s belt.

Ohene was charged with indecent exposure, disorderly conduct, assault, resisting arrest, and assault and battery on ambulance personnel, police said.  An arraignment date hasn’t been scheduled, according to a spokeswoman for the Middlesex district attorney’s office.

The mayor viewed a video clip of Ohene’s arrest that was posted on social media, a spokesman for the mayor said.

“What is shown on the video is disturbing,” McGovern said. “When confrontations cannot be averted and include the use of physical force, we must be willing to review our actions to ensure that our police officers are providing the highest level of safety for all.”

City Councilor Sumbul Siddiqui also called the video disturbing and questioned whether punching is an acceptable use of force by officers.

“I think when you see the video and you see the officer punch the individual after he’s subdued, you think, ‘What kind of protocol was that?’ ” Siddiqui said during a telephone interview Sunday.

Police said they told Ohene they were “only there to help him and were concerned for his safety,” according to the police report. Police said Ohene became “aggressive, hostile, and intimidating” and approached officers with clenched fists, prompting them to take him to the ground.

During the arrest, an officer struck Ohene five times in the torso, according to the police report.

Cambridge Police Commissioner Branville G. Bard told city councilors in a statement Saturday that police used their discretion and struck Ohene to “gain his compliance and place him in handcuffs.”

Jeremy Warnick, a spokesman for Cambridge police, said in an e-mail Sunday that the department is committed to a “thorough and complete” review.

While Ohene was being transported to a local hospital for observation, he spat blood and saliva at an EMT, police said in a separate statement Saturday. Two Cambridge officers were also treated for minor injuries and unprotected exposure to bodily fluids, police said.

Ohene’s arrest occurred in view of about 30 people, according to police.

Members of the Harvard Black Law Students Association witnessed Ohene’s confrontation with police, and on Saturday, the group issued a statement calling it “a brutal instance of police violence” and demanded that officers involved “be investigated and held accountable.’

Daunasia Yancey, a Boston-based community activist in the Black Lives Matter movement, said in a phone interview that police generally use a greater level of force against African-Americans than against whites.

“It’s heartening for many people to hear the mayor say it’s ‘disturbing.’ But we also need to say it’s not okay,” said Yancey. “We need people and officials to just say it’s wrong.”

The Cambridge Police Department’s use of force policy, last updated in 2011, allows officers to “use only that degree of force which is reasonably necessary” to make an arrest, place someone in protective custody, bring an incident under control, or protect the lives of themselves or others.

SOURCE






New Report: How Social Media Giants Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Suppress Conservative Speech

A new report by the Media Research Center (MRC) documents how the major social media sites -- Facebook, Twitter, YouTube -- and the Google search engine suppress conservative speech in a "clear effort to censor the conservative worldview from the public conversation."

When asked about this censorship by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on April 10, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified that his company “and the tech industry are located in Silicon Valley, which is an extremely left-leaning place,” and added that he did not know whether content from liberal groups, such as Planned Parenthood and MoveOn.org, had ever been restricted on Facebook.

These multi-billion dollar online media companies, which reach more than 1.8 billion people worldwide, have declared war on the conservative movement, states the MRC report, and "conservatives are losing -- badly." If "the right doesn't fight," states the report, "it is doomed -- online and off. This is more than just a free speech battle. It is a struggle for the future of our nation and our world."

In the detailed, 50-page report, CENSORED! How Online Media Companies Are Suppressing Conservative Speech, authors Ashley Rae Goldenberg and Dan Gainor examine how Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google suppress conservative content online, provide numerous examples of the suppression (and censorship), and then provide recommendations for the tech companies.

Twitter "leads in censorship," according to the report. It "regularly suppresses conservative points-of-view."

The $21.60 billion company manages about 6,000 tweets every second from people all over the world, and it is the go-to site for journalists. Twitter's CEO is Jack Dorsey. He is extremely left-wing politically and he recently promoted an article from Medium to his 4.2 million Twitter followers that said America is in a "new civil war," liberal vs. conservative, and there is no compromise, only one side must win.

The CENSORED! report documents how Twitter staffers admitted on hidden camera that they censor conservatives through "shadow banning." With this technique, Twitter users "think their content is getting seen widely, but it's not," reads the report. "The site also restricts pro-life ads from Live Action and even Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), but allows Planned Parenthood advertisements."

Twitter hid some conservative-related hashtags during the 2016 election, such as #PodestaEmails and #DNCLeak, said the MRC. Twitter has also marked some tweets from the Drudge Report as "sensitive."

Twitter uses a "Trust and Safety Council" to provide policy input to the company. This council is comprised of 25 U.S.-based organizations, 12 of which are liberal and only one of which is conservative, according to the report. "[S]ome of its most liberal members include the Anti-Defamation League, GLAAD, and other organizations that have attacked conservatives and their opinions or values," said authors Goldenberg and Gainor.

“Voices are being silenced, opinions are being censored and conservative media are being suppressed," said MRC President Brent Bozell in a statement.  "These tech companies claim they provide platforms to connect people and share ideas. However, when the only ideas permitted are from one side, any prospect of intellectual discourse dies."

"If these platforms merely serve as an echo chamber of liberal talking points, everyone loses," he said. "Our country is divided and limiting free speech only makes matters worse."

Facebook has 1.4 billion daily users and has a corporate worth of $477.93 billion. It is the third most popular social media site in the United States and in the world. Facebook's CEO, Zuckerberg, is also politically left-wing. According to the report, Zuckerberg supports DACA, defended Black Lives Matter, and advocated for homosexual marriage.

Facebook employees "donated overwhelmingly to support Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign over Donald Trump's," reads the report. "Facebook employees even lobbied to remove Trump's posts for violating the site's 'hate speech' standards."

According to the report., former Facebook employees told Gizmodo that "topics such as the Conservative Political Action Conference, Mitt Romney and Ted Cruz were reportedly suppressed, along with links to sites including the Washington Examiner and Breitbart." The company also banned the private sale of guns on its site and reportedly has sought to "censor discussion of firearms." Former employees also stated that Facebook hid conservative content from its "trending" section.

Facebook removed a comical post by conservative Todd Starnes and only later restored it, apologizing for the alleged error.

Facebook, along with Twitter, YouTube, and Google, utilizes the work of the left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to identify "hate" groups and then suppress or remove them from its platform. According to the report, "Over time, Facebook deleted the pages of at least 57 groups at the behest of the SPLC."

The SPLC frequently targets conservative and Christian individuals or groups because they oppose, for instance, gay marriage or radical Islam. The Family Research Council, for instance, has been labeled a "hate" group by the SPLC because it defends the Biblical definition of marriage as being between one man and one woman.

Testifying before the Senate on April 10, Zuckerberg was asked by Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) to explain his company’s definition of “hate speech,” which Facebook uses to monitor and suppress certain content. Zuckerberg did not answer the question directly but said it was a “really hard question” and that “we struggle with it.”

YouTube, the most popular video-sharing platform in the world, "censors conservatives and conservative content," according to the report. YouTube apparently is always on the watch for "hate speech" and relies on the anti-conservative SPLC as a "Trusted Flagger" to tag videos that violate content standards. YouTube moderators, for instance, took down conservative gun channels, reported Bloomberg, and the site has banned "videos that provide links to sites where people can purchase guns and gun accessories," said the MRC's Goldenberg and Gainor.

PragerU, which posts myriad videos on conservative topics, saw its videos restricted by YouTube. PragerU is now suing YouTube. Back in 2006, YouTube removed a video of conservative Michelle Malkin criticizing radical Islam but then reposted it after the New York Times criticized the censorship.

In YouTube is a $75 billion company and it is owned by Google, which has a corporate worth of $715.65 billion.

The Google website, with its popular search engine, is ranked as the No. 1 website in the world. Millions of people use its search engine every day. They may assume that the search engine is non-partisan, says the MRC report, but "Google has suppressed conservative points-of-view within the company and in its own search results."

For instance, three separate studies have confirmed that search engine results on Google "favored liberal sites or liberal candidates during the 2016 presidential election," said the report. For awhile (since discontinued), Google "posted fact-checks of conservative sites but not their liberal counterparts," according to the MRC report, "making the conservative sites appear less reliable."

After Google engineer James Damore wrote an internal memo criticizing the company's "Ideological Echo Chamber," he was fired.

Numerous other examples of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Google suppressing (and censoring) content posted by conservatives are detailed in 35 pages of appendices in the CENSORED! report.

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Mansplaining is something men and women are both guilty of doing

Many years ago I was ordering family dinner at a pizza place in the NSW beach town of Forster, my toddler daughter in tow. I ordered the adult pizzas then said "and a small cheese, salami and olives for the little one, please."

The woman taking orders looked at my daughter. "Silly daddy!", she said, "little girls don't like salami and olives!"

"No, she does, that's correct," I said. Weird.

The woman still didn't order. Then the clincher, that still enrages me to this day: "Where's mummy?" she says, still addressing my daughter. "Silly daddy's got your order wrong!"

"Please," I say, with more than a little venom, over of the "silly daddy" business.  "Take the order. I know what she eats. I'm her father."

"Children hate olives and you don't seem to know that," she said, evenly.

I lost it. "Take the order! She eats olives! I'm her father! I feed her every day! For f***'s sake!"

Then a tiny high-pitched voice cuts through the noise. "My! Daddy! Right!" my daughter screams, bless her.

I get my olives, and, in an act of satisfying immaturity as we leave, stop at the door, yell, "You want to eat what?" and pop an olive ostentatiously into her mouth, which she chews theatrically.

My problem was I had been lectured by someone who, because of my sex, assumed I knew nothing about a subject that I could be called an expert on. It's absolutely infuriating.

Women call this "mansplaining" when a man condescendingly explains something to a woman, assuming she doesn't know something purely because she's a woman.

I know men have no business discussing women's issues, but this is different – mansplaining is a man's issue, too.

While social media has provided a perfect platform for discussion and thought to spread, it's also a malevolent shit-storm of fighting and trolling that never ends. There's no doubt the battle lines have been drawn like never before, between left and right, male and female.

But I venture that it's not solely men who can be the issue here. I respectfully submit that it's jerks.

Jerksplaining happens to all of us, men and women. I have been Jerksplained to by both men and women all my life. There are jerksplainers, jerk-authors, and jerk offs and they can be both male and female.

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UK: Now they want to ban conservative commentators Rod Liddle and Quentin Letts

Joking about the Welsh or criticising black actors is the new limit to free speech

Anybody who thinks we exaggerate the threat to freedom of speech and of the press in the UK has not been reading the papers. But then, there is a vociferous lobby to deny you the right to read the ‘wrong’ journalists anyway.

Two leading columnists have been threatened with prosecution and bans this week, for the crime of expressing their ‘offensive’ opinions in the newspapers that employ them to do so.

Rod Liddle of The Sunday Times, the Sun and the Spectator has been reported to police and press regulators for making a ‘morally repugnant’ joke about Wales and its native tongue, with Welsh officials demanding new laws to ‘stop these comments… and to prevent language hate’. Meanwhile, the moral guardians of theatreland want Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail banned from writing reviews for his ‘blatantly racist attitude’, after the critic criticised a black actor in a Royal Shakespeare Company play.

The Middlesbrough-raised, Millwall-supporting Liddle, a Labour Party member for 40 years before he was suspended and then quit in a row over anti-Semitism in Jeremy Corbyn’s party, might appear to have little in common with Letts, a Cotswolds-born, public-school-educated Tory. Both, however, are reviled by Britain’s supposedly liberal cultural elites (the feelings are mutual) for their repeated failures to tow the Supper Party line.

This week’s attacks on these very different columnists reveal the underlying truth about the campaign to curb press freedom further in Britain. Whatever those leading it may claim, that campaign is not about upholding the rule of law, protecting the public interest or any other apparently high-minded principle. It is about silencing dissenting voices and thought-policing an increasingly conformist intellectual climate.

What offences did these offensive writers commit? Rod Liddle’s Sunday Times column included a short item on Welsh opposition to plans to rename the second Severn crossing the Prince of Wales Bridge. Liddle wrote (sensitive readers, look away now) that, ‘The Welsh, or some of them, are moaning that a motorway bridge linking their rain-sodden valleys with the First World is to be renamed. They would prefer it to be called something indecipherable with no real vowels, such as Ysgythysgymlngwchgwch Bryggy. Let them have their way. So long as it allows people to get out of the place pronto, should we worry about what it is called?’

Not perhaps the entertaining Rod’s best joke, and surely not his worst, but just a joke either way – albeit with a punchline shaped by an opinion, like every gag on a PC BBC panel show. The trouble was that Liddle’s joke expressed a politically incorrect opinion. To judge by the furious reaction his Sunday aside provoked, you might imagine he had been caught plotting to blow up the Severn Bridge to insulate England from invasion by moaning Welshmen.

The political and cultural establishment of Wales drew itself up to its full height, effectively to accuse Liddle of the crime of ‘Cymrophobia’ – hatred or fear of all things Welsh.

Liz Saville Roberts, member of parliament for the Welsh nationalist party Plaid Cymru (PC), demanded to know not only ‘[why] we should put up with this’, but also ‘what legal defence we have in situations like this’. Legal defences were needed, the PC MP implied, because ‘whether you describe this as racist or not, it is prejudice and is being used against us as Welsh people’.

As well as being reported to the newspaper regulator IPSO, Liddle’s column was shopped to North Wales police – a notoriously nit-picking force sometimes known as the ‘Taffy Taliban’. After ‘reviewing the material to ascertain if the matter should be taken further’, even they reluctantly concluded that there were no legal grounds for publicly flogging the heretic Liddle. Never mind such niceties, thundered Plaid’s North Wales police and crime commissioner, Arfon Jones, the column was not just ‘offensive and irresponsible’, but ‘morally repugnant and an absolute disgrace’ and should not be allowed.

The Welsh language commissioner (who knew?) Meri Huws, apparently speaking for many in Welsh officialdom, concluded that ‘offensive comments about Wales, the Welsh language and its speakers’ are ‘totally unacceptable’, and that something must be done to ‘stop these comments’: ‘Legislation is needed to protect rights and to prevent language hate.’

‘Language hate’? What madness is this? It is bad enough that we are faced with demands for ever-tougher laws against ‘hate speech’, to restrict free speech by outlawing any words which some find offensive. Now the thoughtpolice want legislation to curb speech which somehow offends against the Welsh language. As I am told they say in Wales, ‘Cachau Bant’!

The worst accusation any of them can realistically level against Liddle’s joke is that, as the Plaid MP says, even if you don’t think it’s racist, ‘It is prejudice’. Guilty as charged, perhaps. But let she who is without prejudice cast the first legal stone.

Surely everybody has their prejudices, whether it be against the Welsh or the English, Muslims or the Daily Mail, Jeremy Corbyn or Rod Liddle. So what? So long as we are talking about ‘offensive’ opinions rather than violent actions, that should be none of the law’s business. If they really want to make expressing ‘prejudice’ into a crime, the authorities will need a camp the size of Wales to hold the offenders.

If the outburst against Liddle demonstrates the rising demand for formal state censorship, the reaction to Quentin Letts’ latest theatre review in the Mail shows another threat to free speech today: the fashion for informal censorship by non-state players.

In his generally warm review of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Stratford-Upon-Avon revival of a Restoration comedy, renamed The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich, Letts made some criticisms of the performances and casting. ‘Neither Solomon Israel nor Tam Williams’, he suggested, ‘is sexy enough as the male love interests… and poor Leo Wringer is miscast as the older Clerimont’.

‘Poor Leo Wringer’ is an established black actor, cast in a subplot to this play from 1700 as the elder Clerimont brother, ‘a scarcely house-trained [country] squire besotted by his hounds’. For Letts, ‘There is no way [Wringer] is a honking Hooray of the sort that has infested the muddier reaches of England’s shires for centuries. He is too cool, too mature, not chinless or daft or funny enough.’

Then came the ‘offensive’ question: ‘Was Mr Wringer cast because he is black? If so, the RSC’s clunking approach to politically correct casting has again weakened its stage product. I suppose its managers are under pressure from the Arts Council to tick inclusiveness boxes, but at some point they are going to have to decide if their core business is drama or social engineering.’

That might look like a professional critic doing his job: criticising the play and production by expressing an honest opinion, possibly ‘prejudice’ and all. As with all things in the theatre business, you pays your money and takes your choice. If you don’t like what a reviewer says you are free to disagree – or simply to agree with the actor Robert Lindsay (in response to an earlier row over a Letts’ review), that the critic in question is ‘not offering a sensible critique’ and so ‘should be ignored’.

Far from ignoring Letts’ short review this week, however, the keepers of theatrical correctness exploded. In what the Guardian called ‘unprecedented responses’, the artistic director and executive director of the RSC denounced the Mail man for expressing a ‘blatantly racist attitude to a member of the cast’ in his ‘ugly and prejudiced commentary’.

Actor Kobna Holdbrook-Smith of Act for Change – a lobby for diversity in the arts – not only condemned Letts’ ‘outrageous’ comments as ‘baldly racist’, but also suggested the Mail should have cut them out: ‘The fact that it goes unedited and uncontested is the real issue.’ Act for Change’s co-founder, the actor Danny Lee Wynter, even called on theatres to ban the likes of Letts: ‘They also need to come together collectively on who is allowed to write these reviews. It could be seen as censorship on one hand, but if somebody was racist to somebody else at work, the person who was the subject of the racism would be able to say “I want this person removed from their job or an appraisal carried out”.’

So the ‘free speech, but…’ lobby now even wants to colonise such areas of artistic expression as theatrical reviews. Accusing Letts of ‘blatant… bald… ugly’ racism simply for suggesting a black actor is ‘too cool, too mature, not chinless or daft or funny enough’ for a role seems a touch melodramatic. (Letts responded by accusing the RSC of throwing a ‘tantrum’ and affirming that he finds ‘colour-blind and gender-blind casting’ too often ‘counterproductive and patronising’.) It might seem even more far-fetched to equate a newspaper reviewer’s criticism of the RSC’s ‘clunking approach to politically correct casting’ with direct racist abuse in a workplace.

The potential consequences of this theatrical backlash, however, are serious. They are demanding that a critic should be censored or even sacked for writing a review that fails to meet with the artistic world’s official approval. Moreover, they suggest that theatres need collectively to rule ‘on who is allowed to write these reviews’ – effectively drawing up a blacklist of banned critics, with no prizes for guessing who would be at the top. Yes, it really ‘could be seen as censorship on one hand’. And on the other hand, too.

No matter what anybody’s opinion might be of any particular ‘controversial’ columnist, we must defend their right to express their opinions or abandon the fight for free speech. Nobody needs to pass a test set by the police commissioner of North Wales or the Royal Shakespeare Company to qualify for the right to be offensive. They might lack the good manners of the RSC or Rod Liddle, or the good taste of Plaid Cymru or Quentin Letts, but they still get the same liberties as the rest of us.

Censorship, whether formal or unofficial, is far more dangerous than any joke or jibe ever written. As the revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg reminded us a century ago, freedom is always for ‘the other fellow’. Even, shock-horror, if he happens to write for The Sunday Times, the Sun, or the Daily Mail.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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17 April, 2018

Dating app for people who went to private school slammed. A NEW app exclusively for people who attended a private school has been slammed as “elitist”, “classist” and “totally ridiculous”

It's anything but ridiculous.  Going to a private school makes you one of Britain's ruling class.  It's a warrant that you have worked hard and had a good education.  If you went to a government school you could be a know-nothing nobody. 

The 7% of the population who went to private schools in Britain basically run everything. They even dominate Britain's Olympic team.  Britain is lucky to have them.  Britain would be a real mess if it were run by the know-nothing, never-stretched graduates of the State schools. 

So you see why the system below touches on a real need for people to meet others with a common background and with common values. Private school graduates are actually different

And to be even more politically incorrect, private school graduates are also an intellectual elite.  So much so that doubts have arisen over whether the later-life success of private school graduates is due to their schooling or their higher IQs. 

There are two prerequisites for getting into a private school.  Your parents have to  be able to afford some pretty steep fees and you have to pass the Common Entrance Examination (CE), which is little more than an IQ test.  And the money requirement is also intellectually selective.  Going back at least as far as Terman & Oden in the 1920s it has been known that high IQ people tend to get rich.  Herrnstein & Murray wrote a well-known book a couple of decades ago which also showed that.

Not all rich people are smart but most are. The dim aristocrat is a well-known figure in British life but they tend to lose their money -- so once again the relationshp between money and IQ is established.

So it is pretty clear that private school kids are intellectually more gifted and we know that IQ is an important factor in assortative mating -- people's general tendency to marry  others with a similar background to themselves.  So the facility described below should be very helpful.  It pre-sorts your partners into a potentially useful category

For the sake of balance, I should add a few qualifying notes to what I have said below.  There are quite a lot of smart working class kids who will do as well as private school kids if they are offered schooling similar to what private schools students get. That happens in Britain's government-funded Grammar schools. And Grammar schools too require the student to pass an admission test -- the 11 plus -- which is also largely an IQ test.  And many Grammar School graduates have gone on to do well both economically and in other ways.

Sadly, however, the British Left are furiously opposed to Grammar Schools so there are not now many of them, thus entrenching  Britain's low social mobility.  What school you went to is overwhelmingly important to life-success in Britain.  And it is the British Left who stand in the way of broadening access to advantageous schools


THE world’s first dating app for the privately-educated has launched — but its founder insists it has nothing to do with snobbery or social division.

The app, Toffee, launched earlier this week and is the brainchild of Londoner Lydia Davis.

It is strictly off-limits to anyone who attended a state school thanks to a “hybrid checking process” that uses “automated social media cross checks” and a “manual screening process” to make sure the great unwashed don’t slip through the cracks.

But despite restricting membership to those from privileged backgrounds only, Ms Davis, 36, told The Mirror it was designed purely to help people find their soulmates.

“Toffee is just about helping people meet and fall in love. It’s not supposed to be snobby or divisive. I just want to help people do their thing,” she said.

“It’s just another niche dating app — there are lots of other dating apps for normal people.

“But there are also apps specifically targeted at smaller groups. There’s one for finding a sugar daddy, one for Jewish daters.”

She told the publication she expected the app to be controversial.  “Navigating the dating scene is really difficult, and it’s proven that people want to meet like-minded people who share the same interests and values,” Ms Davis said.

“I know it might bring about lots of feelings but it’s not meant to offend anyone. “Toffee is just a dating app for a group of people. We’re not trying to be snobby.”

But despite Ms Davis’ assurances, Toffee has been slammed as “elitist”, “classist” and “totally ridiculous” online, with one reviewer even labelling it a “classist hate crime”.

Ms Davis, a professional matchmaker, is now in a relationship with an unnamed man from a “similar background” who was also privately educated — but she insisted she would have been open to dating someone from any background.

She also told The Mirror she would be happy if her potential future children married a commoner. “I’m a total romantic and finding someone to fall in love with is so special. Everyone’s preferences are different and that’s what makes it exciting,” Ms Davis said.

Toffee has an Instagram account and a Facebook page, and its bio states: “Toffee is the world’s first dating app for people who were privately educated. We set it up because we know people from similar backgrounds are more likely to stick together.”

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Planned Parenthood Tells HIV-Infected Kids They Don't Have to Disclose Status to Partners

What kind of sex educators would tell kids with AIDS they don't have to disclose their health status to a sexual partner? Planned Parenthood, that's who! International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) has an information campaign they've put out for kids with HIV called "Healthy, Happy and Hot" that begins:

Young people living with HIV may feel that sex is just not an option, but don’t worry — many young people living with HIV live healthy, fun, happy and sexually fulfilling lives. You can too, if you want to! Things get easier (and sex can get even better) as you become more comfortable with your status.
A few pages later they drop the deadly and stupid claim that HIV-positive people have the right to NOT disclose their HIV status to their sexual partners.

"Young people living with HIV have the right to decide if, when, and how to disclose their HIV status," the booklet states. "Some countries have laws that say people living with HIV must tell their sexual partner(s) about their status before having sex, even if they use condoms or only engage in sexual activity with a low risk of giving HIV to someone else. These laws violate the rights of people living with HIV by forcing them to disclose or face the possibility of criminal charges."

This terrible advice flies in the face of facts revealing that HIV is killing African teens at alarming rates. UNICEF at a press conference in S. Africa noted, "Despite gains made among adults and babies with HIV, the number of 10-to-19-year-olds dying from AIDS-related diseases has tripled since 2000," reported Fox News. 

How does the IPPF justify telling HIV-positive kids it's okay not to tell your partner you have a deadly communicable disease? Rights of course. The left has an uncanny way of discovering rights most of us can't even imagine. In this case, they've decided that an orgasm is more of a right than knowing your girlfriend has a virus that will kill you. Planned Parenthood has chosen to value the sexual satisfaction of HIV-positive teens over the lives of their sexual conquests. Sex is more important than death—and it is morally acceptable to kill for it, because after all, "young people living with HIV have a right to sexual pleasure," says IPPF, elevating sex over the human right to life. This is no surprise, considering their main mode of doing business consists of dismembering human babies in the womb via abortions. They have now expanded their philosophy that some lives matter more than others to teenagers.

This is unconscionable.

Is nothing more important to the left than kids having sex with each other? Advising teens they do not have to disclose their HIV status to sexual partners is part of the Planned Parenthood-led "comprehensive sex education" program that is being implemented in American public schools and across the world through IPPF and other organizations partnered with them.

The message being sent to young people with HIV is that their sexual rights are more important than the rights of others not to die. They go so far as to encourage them to lobby their governments to decriminalize not disclosing HIV status. Gee, where did I hear about that happening again? Our very own land of fruits and nuts, California. The purposeful spreading of HIV is no longer a felony in California. Who do you think was behind pushing the bill SB 239, which allows people to spread a deadly disease with no consequence? (Three guesses.)

But one thing California can do immediately is remove the discrimination in the law against people with HIV.
That is what SB 239 is designed to do and that’s why over 100 organizations support the bill, including APLA Health, the Black AIDS Institute, Equality California, Positive Women’s Network-USA, ACLU of California, National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD), HIV Medicine Association, SF AIDS Foundation, Bienestar, Planned Parenthood of California, Transgender Law Center and Human Rights Watch.

Why is this rogue organization, responsible for the deaths of millions of human babies, allowed to spread the damaging and misleading propaganda around the world that all sex all the time is good no matter who dies? Join the parent-led SexEdSitOut on April 23 to tell educators and our representatives that we will not accept or pay for this blatant political indoctrination that will harm children by getting them pregnant or infecting them with an incurable disease. They're our kids and we have the right to teach them our morals and not subject them to the depraved psychosis of the left masquerading as "education."

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Ted Cruz Highlights Mark Zuckerberg's Liberal Bias

In yesterday’s joint session of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees the star of the show wasn’t Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, it was conservative Texas Senator Ted Cruz who drilled down on Facebook’s liberal bias.

The exchange stood out, noted NBC News, in large part because many of the other senators seemed reluctant  Ted Cruz Mark Zuckerbergto go after the Facebook founder.

Cruz said many Americans are “deeply concerned” that Facebook engaged in a “pattern of bias and political censorship” in recent years, Cruz said. He listed the Conservative Political Action Conference, a House Republican investigation into the IRS and Glenn Beck, a conservative media personality who was among Cruz’s most high-profile supporters, as victims of potential bias at Facebook.

Cruz, who has been known since his Princeton debate team days as a gleefully caustic interlocutor, clearly arrived in the meeting chamber in the Hart Senate Office Building with a plan of attack observed Time magazine’s Nash Jenkins.

Only before the first five-minute bathroom break of Zuckerberg’s lengthy hearing did he choose to execute it. And when he did, for a few moments, Zuckerberg appeared on edge.

“Does Facebook consider itself a neutral public forum?” Cruz asked Zuckerberg innocently.

“Senator, we consider ourselves to be a platform for ideas,” Zuckerberg replied.

It was a canned marketing point, and Cruz — with an air that suggested he knew Zuckerberg had walked into his trap — retorted with a more pointed query. “Are you a First Amendment speaker expressing your views or are you a neutral public forum allowing everyone to speak?” Cruz demanded according to Jenkin’s report.

It’s a worthwhile question in the second decade of the twenty-first century, as the internet continues to grow from a mere communications system to a plane on which we conduct our everyday lives, demanding new considerations of speech rights and the privatization of public space observed Jenkins.

Zuckerberg said there was no such effort to harm conservatives and also rebuffed Cruz’s suggestion that a Facebook employee might have been fired over political differences with the company’s leadership.

But Cruz was having none of it.

As Nash Jenkins reported, the Texas Senator proceeded to rattle off a laundry list of examples: A “Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day” page that was banned in 2012, around the time that homosexuals were organizing a boycott of the fast-food chain after its chief operating officer spoke in favor of traditional marriage. Diamond and Silk, the outspoken Trump fangirls who were reportedly told by Facebook this month that their “content and brand” were “unsafe to the community.” Palmer Luckey, the virtual reality prodigy who parted ways with Facebooks after it was reported that he backed a pro-Trump conservative group that trafficked in anti-Hillary Clinton content.

Senator Cruz’s question was related to what The Vege’s Adi Robertson called “a thorny political mini-scandal from 2016,” when The Daily Beast reported that Palmer Luckey was secretly funding a pro-Trump political activism group called Nimble America, which was dedicated to the idea that “shitposting is powerful and meme magic is real.”

Luckey withdrew from the public eye after the details came out, but it’s never been clear whether he was fired or left voluntarily. He was at Oculus for several months afterward, and “still working in an active capacity” during that time, according to Adi Robertson’s reporting of comments by CEO Brendan Iribe.

Zuckerberg tried to assure lawmakers that he didn’t fire Oculus co-founder Palmer Luckey for his political views.

Senator Cruz also asked Zuckerberg about 2016 reports that the company had removed conservative political news from its trending stories box and followed up with questions about its moderators’ political views.

When Zuckerberg said he didn’t ask employees for their political views, Cruz nailed him with the question “Why was Palmer Luckey fired?”

“That is a specific personnel matter that seems like it would be inappropriate to speak to here,” Zuckerberg told Cruz in response to his question. Cruz fired back, asking if it was accurate that Facebook “didn’t make decisions based on political views,” as Zuckerberg had said. “I can commit that it was not because of a political view,” said Zuckerberg.

This exchange seems to imply that Luckey was fired, but for reasons that weren’t political noted The Verge’s Robertson. This could still cover a pretty broad range of motivations, and Zuckerberg didn’t offer any details.

Adi Robertson says The Daily Beast described Luckey as “funding Trump’s meme machine” in 2016, which is an apparent overstatement since the donation was supposedly a fairly small $10,000, and Nimble America’s only clear action was putting up a “Too Big To Jail” billboard.

The group’s stated goal was to “get our most delicious memes in front of Americans whether they like it or not.” (Luckey later reportedly donated $100,000 to Trump’s inauguration fund through shell companies named after Chrono Trigger references.) However, Nimble America’s real offense was being associated with former Breitbart Digital Editor and online provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos.

Why Facebook and confirmed leftwinger Zuckerberg parted ways with Palmer Luckey, if it wasn’t about politics, remains one of Silicon Valley’s more interesting mysteries.

Luckey is the charismatic entrepreneur who once graced the cover of Time Magazine — the poster boy for the future of virtual reality, made real by his invention: The "Oculus Rift." Facebook liked the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset so much that it bought the company that Luckey co-founded, Oculus VR, in 2014 for $2 billion.

Luckey was in his early-20s at the time.

What’s more, Senator Cruz must know Palmer Luckey well enough to have some insight into what happened because Luckey hosted a fundraiser for Senator Cruz last April, and Cruz seemingly believes that Luckey's firing was politically motivated reports the Business Insider’s Ben Gilbert.

Zuckerberg conceded that Silicon Valley is “an extremely left-leaning place,” but denied Cruz’s underlying question that the bias had infiltrated the machinations of Facebook. When Cruz asked Zuckerberg if any members of the Facebook team tasked with monitoring users’ content had ever supported Republican political candidates, Zuckerberg said that he did not know.

Senator Cruz did a great job of squeezing some interesting admissions out of Zuckerberg, but perhaps a better, more revealing question would have been to ask Zuckerberg if any of the team monitoring users’ content even knows what conservatives think about issues such as same-sex “marriage,” open borders and amnesty for illegal aliens, and does opposing such liberal shibboleths constitute “hate speech” or the free expression of mainstream American opinion on such matters?

SOURCE





Boris is not the only Russia baiter

Too many today think Russia is to blame for everything.

The latest bout of Boris Johnson bashing, following the British foreign secretary’s overconfident assertion that Russia was to blame for the poisoning of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, makes for a perplexing spectacle.

Yes, Johnson overstated the case when he claimed on German TV that ‘the guy’ at Porton Down, the UK weapons lab, had ‘no doubt’ that the Russian state was responsible for the nerve agent that left the Skripals in hospital. And, yes, as one of his eager critics managed to say, amid her prattle about the ‘teflon-like qualities’ of privileged ‘rich white men’, Johnson has, on the basis of an untruth, effectively been stoking conflict with ‘a heavily armed superpower’.

But what sticks in the craw about the all-too-easy berating of Boris is that what he has done is little different to what so many in Western political and media circles have been doing for the best part of a decade (especially since the West-backed ‘revolution’ in Ukraine in 2013 prompted Russia to secure its borders through the annexation of Crimea). That is, like Boris, they have been seeing Russia’s hand in every world happening, blaming Vladimir Putin for what they perceive as the dark turn of world events, and conjuring up modern-day Russia as a sinister iteration of its imperial or Soviet past.

So, while many on the liberal left were gorging on Boris’s latest gaffe, the US was busy announcing new sanctions against Putin’s inner circle, including seven Russian oligarchs and 17 top government officials. Trump’s administration was not doing so on the basis of a misheard conversation with a weapons lab official, but in response to what treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin described rather vaguely as ‘malign activity’. ‘The Russian government operates for the disproportionate benefit of oligarchs and government elites’, said Mnuchin. ‘Russian oligarchs and elites who profit from this corrupt system will no longer be insulated from the consequences of their government’s destabilising activities.’

This move against Russia is longstanding. It derives its legitimacy less from hard evidence of Russian social-media trolling than the conviction that the Russian state is behind the struggles of the West’s political class. These struggles are of course nothing to do with stagnant economies, visionless, futureless technocracies, and the elites’ often open disdain for the plebs, be they the basket of deplorables, clinging to their guns and religion, or the low-information, migrant-bashing working classes of the UK. No, sirree: it is actually Russia that is to blame. It has been ‘meddling’ in Western democracies, as The Economist had it recently. It has discredited and disrupted the smooth working of Western democracy, backing Trump in the US, funnelling cash to Front National in France, and gifting ‘dark money’, as Labour’s Ben Bradshaw asserted, to the Leave campaign and UKIP backer Aaron Banks. And some think Johnson went over the top when blaming Russia for the botched murder of a Russian traitor.

Yet where are the voices calling for caution when the flagrantly absurd claim that Russia is responsible for the state of Western politics is given yet another airing? Where are those invoking the spectre of dodgy dossiers, still-to-be-found WMDs and the Iraq War when yet another claim of Russian involvement in Brexit is made? Where are those urging a period of self-reflection for the pundits and politicos who think nothing of blaming Putin for Hillary Clinton’s unpopularity, or likening Russia’s intervention in Syria to the Nazi bombing of Guernica?

They are nowhere to be seen, of course. Which is hardly a surprise, because while they enjoy Boris Johnson’s latest diplomatic calamity as proof of the Tories’ weakness, and, more to the point, of the buffoonery of leading Brexiteers, they have no real interest in a sober evaluation of Russia’s global role and intentions. Rather, they are as monomaniacally anti-Russian as Johnson and the Tories often seem to be, blaming Putin and his McMafia of oligarchs for everything that appears to them as wrong in the world, from the rise of Donald Trump to the British people’s decision to leave the EU.

Here is a prominent Observer columnist going far beyond Johnson in proofless conspiracy mongering, and deep into the world of dark powers behind thrones: ‘Liberals and socialists in the 19th century feared Russia as the world’s greatest reactionary power. So Putin wants it to be again. He is uniting the anti-immigrant, illiberal and, as often as not, misogynist and homophobic forces in Europe and the US into a far-right version of the old Soviet Comintern.’ Here is one-time presidential candidate Mitt Romney calling Russia America’s greatest geopolitical foe. And here is Jeremy Corbyn’s some-time cheerleader at the Guardian, going on a Russian dirty-money tour of London, to expose Russia’s sinister presence in our midst.

None of this is to excuse the authoritarian reality of Russia today. Nor is it to excuse Johnson and indeed the British state’s response to the Skripal poisoning. Too many have indeed eagerly used it as an opportunity to have another go at Russia, to puff themselves up as paragons of virtue beside the callous, murdering beasts of the East. It has been a rush not so much to judgement, as to posture, a willingness to play on fears of chemical weapons and the rogue Russian state, as a means to bolster the long flagging authority of Western elites. The Foreign Office may cite the expulsion of Russian diplomats by the UK’s allies as proof that others, and not just Johnson, believe all the evidence in the Skripal case points to Russia. Yet what that really shows is other Western political classes are as just as dependent on half-baked ideas of Russia’s nefarious intent for their authority as Johnson and his pals are.

But as overstated and unjustified as the response to the Skripals’ failed assassination is, it is not an aberration. It is a product of a deep-seated animus towards Russia that has been gaining traction for at least a decade. It seems that today it is simply too easy to blame Russia for everything, with few ever, if at all, batting an eyelid. And with Nato and the EU continuing to perform their respective military and political manoeuvres on Russia’s borders, BoJo’s latest cock-up is the least of our worries. Johnson may have added to the Cold War-mongering in the West, but he is certainly not its prime mover.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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16 April, 2018

Much life on earth evolved elsewhere

I have always thought that the theory of evolution provided a poor fit to what we see of life on earth.  That the whole universe was involved fits a lot better

The evolution of life on Earth was spurred on by the bombardment from space of comets carrying viral genes and frozen eggs of complete species such as the octopus, a new multi-author paper has claimed.

Published in Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, the paper looks at decades of ­research into cosmic biology.

It coincides with another peer-reviewed article by Russian scientists that found cosmic dust taken in swabs from the outside of the international space station contained DNA ­sequences typical of many terrestrial and ocean bacteria on Earth. The race is on to find out how it got there and was able to survive.

Lead authored by Australian molecular immunologist and evolutionist Edward J Steele, the international paper, Cause of the Cambrian Explosion — Terrestrial or Cosmic?, brings the pioneering work of Hoyle and Wickramasinghe on cosmic evolution firmly into the biomedical literature.

The Cambrian explosion is considered the most important evolutionary event in the history of life on Earth. Biology’s “big bang”, it happened 541 million years ago and is when most of the major groups of animals appear suddenly in the fossil record.

Professor Steele’s findings challenge the conventional view that evolution of life on Earth was wholly terrestrial. The bottom line, says the new paper, is “current evidence suggests we came from space, we are made of viral genes, and eventually our evolutionary legacy would in full measure return to space”.

The co-authors said: “In our considered opinion in confronting the wide range of scientific data, all the scientific and ­societal evidence seemingly points in one direction, an all-pervasive cosmic biology, mediated mainly by cometary transfers, being a driver for life on Earth. We believe the signs of this change are now so apparent that one of the biggest backflips in the history of science is now on our doorstep.”

The paper’s findings are so controversial some reviewers refused to consider it and called for publication to be withheld, journal editor Denis Noble said.

But he said when journals ­received way-out, speculative ­articles, they carried a heavy ­responsibility. “The first is to judge whether the theories proposed are empirical and testable,” he said, suggesting one day this would be possible.

He believed science was ­advanced by critical review of controversial theories. “There really is no agreed theory on how life arose on Earth. We simply don’t know. All theories therefore are currently ‘way-out’.”

Two reviewers were not convinced. Keith Baverstock of the Department of Environmental and Biological Sciences University of Eastern Finland, said the authors had put forward much evidence that would support an extraterrestrial origin of life, but not definitive evidence — evidence that could not be ­explained in any other terms.

Karin Moelling of the Max Planck Institute Berlin and Institute of Medical Microbiology, Zurich, said the article was worth thinking about, “yet the main statement about viruses, ­microbes and even animals coming to us from space, cannot be taken seriously,” she said.

SOURCE





Why the US Must Befriend Hungary’s Populist Leader

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban won a convincing majority in Sunday’s parliamentary election. Even the day before the election, The Guardian was all too pleased to showcase the left’s apoplexy by running the headline “Hungary’s war on democracy is a war on democracy everywhere.”

This has it exactly backward, of course. Liberals may have a thousand reasons not to like Orban, but their beef is with the Hungarian electorate, which keeps re-electing him democratically by ever-increasing numbers.

If global managerial elites believe the typical Hungarian voter cannot be trusted with his own fate, they should at least be up front about it.

Orban has delivered Hungarians economic growth the likes of which have not been seen in Western Europe in generations (4 percent growth last year and 3 percent in 2016). He’s also stood up to the unelected and distant European Union bureaucrats in Brussels, rejecting their demands that Hungary take in more immigrants.

And notably, Orban has led a campaign against the Hungarian-born American billionaire George Soros, who funds far-left causes around the world.

Hungarians on Sunday responded to this policy mix by giving Orban not just a third term in office, but a supermajority in parliament that he can use to ram through real constitutional changes. Orban’s Fidesz party won 49 percent of the vote—the nearest competitor was the far-right Jobbik, which won 20 percent.

Leftist critics have been left to grumble that the results were unfair because Orban has squeezed the opposition, but as former Margaret Thatcher aide John O’Sullivan explained on Monday, this doesn’t hold water:

It simply cannot be explained away as the result of gerrymandering, since a 49 percent share of the total vote would mean a landslide in seats under almost any multi-party electoral system. Nor can it be attributed to the right’s dominance of the media, which was anyway exaggerated—there were newspapers, magazines, television stations, websites, and hoardings putting across the slogans and arguments of both left and right opposition parties.

Orban is not perfect—not many politicians are, in any part of the world. We keep hearing reports that, for example, he uses corrupt and crony practices with businesses not only to distort the economy, but to expand influence and retain power.

However, the best way for the Trump administration to cultivate Orban’s potential and mitigate his downsides is by finally jettisoning the Obama-era policy of keeping him at arm’s length diplomatically.

This policy was championed by President Barack Obama’s last assistant secretary of state for Europe, Victoria Nuland.

Under Trump’s first secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, U.S. diplomacy began to move away from this aspect of Nulandism. We hope that current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, nominated by President Donald Trump to replace Tillerson, and the new national security adviser, John Bolton, will accelerate the process while retaining Nuland’s more forthright and no-nonsense approach to the Kremlin.

Only allies can speak as friends, and only friends can advise Orban, for example, not to interfere with the already-beleaguered government of Ukraine, as it did last year when Ukraine passed a language law that Budapest opposed.

Ditto for Orban’s “Stop Soros” bill. On Monday, fresh from its landslide victory, the newly elected government said it now had a mandate to pass it. The bill would require nongovernment organizations that work on migration issues to register with the government, and would empower the government to ban NGOs that pose a “national security risk.”

The Orban government is hardly alone in trying to stop Soros from destabilizing his society.

Soros uses his Open Society Foundations and his billions to undermine governments and societies around the world, in an attempt to weaken conservative values regarding the family, the church, and the nation-state. Just a few months ago, Ireland declared illegal Soros’ donation of 137,000 euros to the pro-abortion side in that country’s current, hard-fought referendum to legalize the practice.

So we wish Orban well in shoring up Hungary’s government institutions and civil society.

But a U.S. government that Orban perceives as a friend can also quietly counsel the prime minister against any attempt to use the law for a generalized crackdown against opposition forces and NGOs—lest Hungary really become what its critics charge it already is but isn’t. Becoming a Singapore-style democracy in name only—or worse yet, a Putin-style one—with a titular opposition is not the way of the future.

Orban’s government, like those of some of Hungary’s neighbors, especially Poland, have become anathema to the elites both here and in Europe because of their opposition to taking in large numbers of immigrants.

The redrawing of maps and ethnic cleansings that accompanied the two great wars of the 20th century left both Hungary and Poland almost ethnically homogenous. Their attempts to remain ethnically pure are no answer for France, Germany, and the United Kingdom—and much less for the U.S.

Having said that, it may be Orban’s very own European values that ultimately lead to a solution for ethnically diverse nations that want to heal their internal ethnic rifts.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki recalled that a former French president once said to Poland’s leaders, “You have values, we have funds.” Morawiecki added, “Well, I would love to help the West with proper values.”

The Western duty to be tolerant of others boils down to Matthew 22:39: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” But if you don’t love yourself—your own society—you cannot love others.

By constantly reminding their neighbors not to be embarrassed of Europe’s history—on the contrary, to stand up for Western values—Budapest, and also Warsaw, are pointing the way toward being truly inclusive by offering immigrants and their children a value system to which they can adhere.

For all these reasons above, the good, the bad, and the ugly, the pragmatic course of action will be for America to work with Orban, as he will be in charge for the foreseeable future.

SOURCE





'New Yorker' Columnist: Chick-Fil-A Is Evil And Must Be Banned From Our Holy City

On Friday, The New Yorker honed in on a serious threat to the lives of all New Yorkers: the arrival of Chick-Fil-A in their homey little corner of the universe. In a 1400-word diatribe titled “Chick-Fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York City,” one Dan Piepenring wrote that New Yorkers should not accept the intrusion of a popular restaurant serving chicken because the owner happens to be a religious Christian. “The air smelled fried,” Piepenring wrote, ominously. “New York has taken to Chick-fil-A…And yet the brand’s arrival here feels like an infiltration, in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism.” What signs are there of this incipient theocracy? Its Atlanta corporate headquarters – not its New York store or any of its other stores – has Bible verses and a statue of Jesus, and its stores close on Sundays. That’s it.

But the mere whiff of Jesus means that New York must cast out Chick-fil-A like a leper, and that those who refuse to do so have succumbed to the blasphemous entreaties of the Midianites. “When a location opened in a Queens mall, in 2016, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed a boycott. No such controversy greeted the opening of this newest outpost. Chick-fil-A’s success here is a marketing coup. Its expansion raises questions about what we expect from our fast food, and to what extent a corporation can join a community,” Piepenring rants.

And insultingly, Chick-fil-A seeks to build community, using the word in its marketing, he complains. “This emphasis on community, especially in the misguided nod to 9/11, suggests an ulterior motive. The restaurant’s corporate purpose still begins with the words ‘to glorify God,’ and that proselytism thrums below the surface of the Fulton Street restaurant, which has the ersatz homespun ambiance of a megachurch.”

Are workers forced to sing hymns as they work? Are they required to worship while they work? Not at all. No, the problem is that Chick-fil-A’s VP of restaurant experience told BuzzFeed that they want their employees to be efficient but “feel like you just got hugged in the process.”

The horror!

But the real gods of Chick-fil-A are – no joke – “The Cows.” According to Piepenring:

It’s impossible to overstate the role of the Cows—in official communiqués, they always take a capital “C”—who are displayed in framed portraits throughout the Fulton Street location. If the restaurant is a megachurch, the Cows are its ultimate evangelists. Since their introduction in the mid-nineties—when they began advising Atlanta motorists to “eat mor chikin”—they’ve remained one of the most popular, and most morbid, advertising campaigns in fast-food history, crucial to Chick-fil-A’s corporate culture. S. Truett Cathy, the chain’s founder and Dan Cathy’s late father, saw them as a tool to spread the gospel of chicken…It’s worth asking why Americans fell in love with an ad in which one farm animal begs us to kill another in its place.

Um, because it’s kind of funny, and acknowledges a basic truth? And because every company in America has some sort of slogan or marketing gimmick? Will Piepenring next go after the Hamburgler or Ronald MacDonald, or the lady from the Progressive commercials?

But no, it’s more sinister:

Most restaurants take pains to distance themselves from the brutalities of the slaughterhouse; Chick-fil-A invites us to go along with the Cows’ Schadenfreude. In the portraits at the Fulton Street restaurant, the Cows visit various New York landmarks. They’re in Central Park, where “eat mor chikin” has been mowed into the lawn. They’re glimpsing the Manhattan Bridge from Dumbo, where they’ve modified a stop sign: “stop eatin burgrz.” They’re on the subway, where the advertisements .?.?. you get the picture. The joke is that the Cows are out of place in New York—a winking acknowledgment that Chick-fil-A, too, does not quite belong here.

Yes, it doesn’t belong here because New York restaurants ought not be chain restaurants, either. The dirty sidewalk shops must never bear a corporate brand, serve fast food, or be cleaned regularly by staff:

No matter how well such restaurants integrate into the “community,” they still venerate a deadening uniformity. Homogeneous food is comfort food, and chains know that their primary appeal is palliative. With ad after ad, and storefront after storefront, they have the resources to show that they’ve always been here for us, and recent trends indicate that we prefer them over anything new or untested.

But what of the fact that Chick-fil-A donates literally tons of food to the New York Common Pantry and employs hundreds of people? That’s just because they’re trying to cover for their evil capitalism:

The more fatalistic will add that hypocrisy is baked, or fried, into every consumer experience—that unbridled corporate power makes it impossible to bring your wallet in line with your morals. Still, there’s something especially distasteful about Chick-fil-A, which has sought to portray itself as better than other fast food: cleaner, gentler, and more ethical, with its poultry slightly healthier than the mystery meat of burgers. Its politics, its décor, and its commercial-evangelical messaging are inflected with this suburban piety.

Want to know why Trump won? Because not only will he eat Chick-fil-A, but because he doesn’t scorn companies just because their owners happen to believe the crazy Biblical notions that undergird Western civilization.

SOURCE





Australia: 'The thought police have gone way too far this time': Critics slam proposed law that could allow children to identify as ‘intersex‘ and 'non-binary’ on birth certificates

Including the gender of a baby boy or girl on a birth certificate could become a thing of the past under a proposed law.

The Queensland government is discussing a law which will mean babies can be identified as 'intersex' or 'non-binary' on official documents, The Courier Mail reported.

The proposal has been fuelled by gender diversity conversations which could see the terms includes on documents in the sunshine state.

A paper commissioned by Attorney-General Yvette D'Ath outlined the changes could 'allow individuals to self-identify their sex or gender when registering a life event'.

'There are many people in the LGBTI community who feel current laws don't adequately reflect or capture the true fabric of all Queensland families,' Ms D'Ath told the publication.

However, Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington said the sunshine state cares about schools, jobs and hospitals, not the words on a birth certificate. 'These are official government records, you can only be born male or female,' she said. 'The thought police have gone way too far this time.'

In November last year a German court ruled parents could register their new borns as a third gender making it the first European country to do so.

Intersex people, who have a mix of male and female characteristics, make up less than two per cent of the world's population, BBC News reported.

Currently on Australian birth certificates, in some states, non-specific genders are included for the parents, where the labels mother and father can be referred to as 'parent one' and 'parent two'.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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15 April, 2018

The misplaced panic about London’s murder rate

The writer below goes very close to admitting where the problem lies: With young black males.  But his "solutions" are waffle.  Black populations are the same everywhere.  If there were any solution to the problem of black crime, it would have been seized on decades ago.  Isolating yourself from them is the only safety measure presently available

"London murder rate overtakes New York for first time ever after spate of fatal stabbings and shootings", declared the Evening Standard. It was a view monotonously echoed throughout the British media, with the BBC even adding the cheerless voice of Leroy Logan, an ex-Met police chief superintendent, who said it was proof that ‘London’s violent traits have become a virus’. No perspective was offered. No context.

And yet perspective and context are exactly what we need. Indeed, the striking story here is not London’s, but New York City’s. Yes, it is true that 46 people have been murdered (including 31 fatal stabbings) in London since the start of the year, a murder rate that, over the past two months, really has exceeded that of NYC’s for the first time ever. But this is as much a story of NYC’s success at reducing the number of murders as it is of London’s failure to do likewise. In fact, in 2017, NYC recorded its lowest number of homicides (just under 300) since the Second World War. As recently as the 1990s, NYC was recording on average over 2,000 murders a year, so this is a decline of nearly 90 per cent. So it is not so much a case of London’s murder rate catching up with NYC’s, but of NYC’s rapidly catching up with London’s.

Even in UK terms, reports of a murder ‘epidemic’ seem a little overcooked. According to the UN, the murder rate in the UK has been continuing to fall, as it has throughout the world over the past couple of decades. So in 2000, there were 1,002 recorded murders in the UK, which makes for a murder rate of 1.7 (per 100,000 people). By 2011, this had plummeted to 653, a murder rate of 1.0. Just for comparison, in the US in 2000, there were 15,586 recorded murders, which is a murder rate of 5.5. By 2012, this had fallen to 14,827, which makes for a murder rate of 4.7. (Recent estimates suggest that in 2016 there was a slight rise in the global homicide rate, but that seems to be due to the particular circumstances of Syria, El Salvador, Venezuela, Honduras and Afghanistan.)

And what of London? Since 1990, the murder rate has oscillated between a high of 2.7 (204 murders) in 2003 and a low of 1.1 (83 murders) in 2014, with a general downward trajectory since the mid-1990s. While this is hardly cause for celebration, there is certainly little to suggest that ‘London’s violent traits have become a virus’. No, London remains, by global standards, an incredibly safe city, and by historical standards an unprecedentedly safe city.

Where there has been a relatively marked recent rise is in the murder rate among young Londoners, all largely from minority-ethnic backgrounds. In 2017, 35 under-25s were murdered, an 84 per cent rise on 2016. And this year, that figure looks set to rise again, taking it up to the levels of the mid- to late 2000s. Youth homicide is still statistically incredibly rare, even with the recent increases, but it is undoubtedly this that has been generating the headlines, drawing on the associated fears of youth gangs, kitchen knives or worse tucked into their waistbands, fighting nihilistically over perceived slights and postcode infringements.

Because for all that the statistics tell us we’re more secure than ever before, our experience speaks of an unprecedented insecurity. It feels worse. It seems like there is something wrong, that within a certain youthful social strata something is disturbingly amiss. There are two related social elements informing this experience. On the one side, there has been a profound withering of authority, of moral conviction, among adults, who consequently see young people, Nike uniforms on, hoods up, not as teens to be engaged with but as threats to be avoided. And little wonder. Engagement in the absence of an almost unconscious sense of one’s authority, even the sense that it would be possible to tell a group of 14-year-olds to stop being obnoxious in a local McDonald’s, becomes difficult, fraught, and, if undertaken, an act of low-level heroism.

Instead, so-called anti-social behaviour is passively, resentfully tolerated before, safely after the fact, it is surreptitiously reported to a state agency: police, council or otherwise. And this palpable, informal disempowering of adults in turn empowers the youthfully delinquent, a dynamic writ large in the sinister carnivalesque of the London riots seven years ago, which were less an eruption of youthful rebellion than a spontaneous retreat of fearful adults.

And on the other side there are the pockets of youth, whose failure to identify – and that particular verb is important here – with the mores of adult, mainstream society, with the future it promises, has generated these almost counter-mainstream identities we none-too-helpfully call gangs. None-too helpfully because, as the academic literature attests, few can agree what exactly a gang is. Nevertheless, in these youthful associations, young, mainly minority-ethnic males do find, or at least want to find, what mainstream adult society seemingly refuses them: status, meaning and belonging, even if only to a postcode. In short, a sense of oneself as part of something, a sense of common purpose. And, in conflict with other youths, that sense of oneself, that sense of group purpose, is repeatedly, parodically and sometimes tragically affirmed. In all of this, one can see a dark echo of middle-class identity politics (itself a species of estrangement from the mainstream): from the obsession with searching out offence, or ‘disses’, to the omnipresent demand for respect.

The fear and rather more limited reality of youth violent crime is generated by the relationship between an adult society that has lost faith in itself and an admittedly very small, youthful subsection that finds adult society boring and pointless. They sense, mainly from the bottom looking up, that the life it promises, the employment it might offer, lacks meaning, not to mention sufficient remuneration. They feel that their identity, their sense of themselves, is better off found elsewhere. To the extent that there is a problem with youth violent crime, its source is as much social and cultural as it is economic. It derives its nihilistic, knife-carrying force from a society that is failing to convince some young people that it is a society worth being socialised into.

Too often, this cultural dimension is ignored, or displaced in talk about the need for male role models or community cohesion. More troubling still is the opportunism of the response to this momentary spike in young people’s murders. Some see it as an opportunity to make a party-political, anti-Tory point about state-funding cuts, conveniently ignoring the fact that the last spike and panic about youth gangs and knife crime came in 2008, when New Labour was in power, and austerity was just a twinkle in George Osborne’s eye. Meanwhile, those with a more authoritarian bent see the story as an opportunity to call for more investment in the police, and an expansion of their stop-and-search powers.

So there is both an overeagerness to hype the problem of London’s murder rate, exacerbating and playing upon many people’s understandable fears about their children’s safety, combined with an unwillingness to face up to the cultural crisis that underpins it. It is a situation that is helping neither estranged young people nor fearful adults.

SOURCE






Roseanne returns and snooty feminists should be scared

Feminists are now too often just unthinking middle-class bigots

Roseanne Barr is back. After 20 years, she’s back on the screen with her loud mouth, her blue-collar humour, the same couch, same sister, husband and kids.

They’re older, and ­Donald Trump is in the White House, but not much else has changed.

And Roseanne’s television resurrection couldn’t have come at a better time. Plenty are keen to hear more from the woman who mercilessly mocked the snooty sisterhood in her first iteration as “America’s bourgeois nightmare”.

Speaking to John Lahr for his profile of her in The New Yorker in July 1995, Barr aimed both barrels at Hollywood women such as Meryl Streep, Susan Sarandon and Jodie Foster, saying they were “talented but f..kin’ deluded”.

“They don’t have any subtext to anything they say. They’re all just upset about salaries, or something that feminism was 25 years ago,” she said. “They’re rewarded for making the women’s movement appear to be lost in time. And they don’t even know it.

“I want them to shut the f..k and get out of the way of real women that are doing something. “I’d like to see ’em go down to goddamn South Central and talk to those women.”

Her razor-sharp diagnosis of feminism applies today with even more force. Which may explain why much of red America watched her rebooted working-class dialogue with America when it debuted just over a fortnight ago.

Meghan McCain, daughter of Republican senator John McCain, tried to explain the appeal to the left-liberal hosts of ABC’s morning chat: “You can’t underestimate the fact that she’s a Trump supporter in the show,” said McCain.

“She’s talking about jobs and the economy and how her family almost lost her house and President Trump was actually talking about jobs. That’s something you don’t see on television. Most of the time we see how Trump supporters have horns and they’re horrible and they’re ruining the country.

“It’s interesting to see that ­Roseanne scored the highest in Tulsa, Oklahoma; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Kansas City, Missouri. That’s red America watching.”

Hollywood Reporter said New York, rated as the top TV market in the country, didn’t make the top 20 markets for Roseanne. Los Angeles, the second top market, didn’t rank in the top 30.

In the same week that ­Roseanne reappeared, Hollywood received another dressing down from a different quarter. In an open letter, hundreds of mostly ­female restaurant workers told a bunch of swanky Hollywood actresses to butt out of their lives.

This came in response to a previous letter, penned a week earlier, by 16 actresses including Sarah Jessica Parker, Jane Fonda, Reese Witherspoon and Ashley Judd, to New York governor Andrew Cuomo imploring him to abolish the state’s tipping culture and implement a higher minimum wage.

“Relying on tips creates a more permissive work environment where customers feel entitled to abuse women in exchange for ‘service’,” they wrote.

Four thousand kilometres from Hollywood, women who mostly work in New York restaurants fired back some advice. “To the celebrity women who recently criticised the full-service restaurant industry, from over 500 women and men who work in it: Thank you for your concern. But we don’t need your help, and we’re not asking to be saved,” they wrote.

“You’ve been misled that we earn less than minimum wage, and that we’re somehow helpless victims of sexual harassment.

“We get to offer our opinions on your movies; you get to offer opinions on the food we serve, and our service. What you don’t have the right to do is dictate how we are paid. Servers and bartenders have never been paid the ‘same’ as everyone else, and we are OK with that. We are paid based on our sales and service; we’re guaranteed minimum wage, and our tips let us earn much more than that.

“Bad behaviour happens in every industry — Hollywood celebrities should know better than most that sexual harassment happens everywhere. The people who are pushing for this change in the restaurant industry are exploiting the isolated stories of people that have suffered injustices, and making it out to be the industry’s or the tipping system’s fault. That is just not true.

“We’re servers and bartenders by choice, just like you chose to be actresses. The industry gives us flexibility, and the tipping system gives us opportunity to earn great money with less than full time hours. “We respect your profession, and now it’s time for you to respect ours.”

The letter is the latest exhibit in feminism’s snooty class war, the one Barr railed against two decades ago. And the sisterhood has ramped up that war, most recently using the #MeToo campaign to lay claim to saving poor, working-class women not just from lecherous men but from themselves, too. The unforgivable cost of this middle-class conceit has been to take jobs from working-class women.

Consider the jobs thrown on the pyre of impropriety in the #MeToo movement. Grid girls? Gone. Walk-on girls at darts competitions? Gone too.

More jobs were lost when a few journalists from the Financial Times went undercover to work as “hostesses” at a posh and un-PC charity dinner in London in January. Through the filter of their Victorian-era prudery, these intrepid journalists “exposed” a drunken and bawdy annual event that has been going for 33 years and raised more than $35 million for a children’s hospital.

A week later the event was cancelled permanently, extinguishing more than 100 jobs for young women more than happy to wear sexy black underwear to earn 250 quid for the night.

The failure to grasp the full gamut of women’s choices is the ideological stink bomb at the centre of modern feminism. It is a corruption of its history and those early feminists who put freedom at the core of the feminism cause.

Today, women’s rights have become about the right of bossy middle-class women to dictate to working-class women what kinds of jobs they should have and how they should be paid.

Long gone are lofty notions of women’s liberation.

Take the constant feminist grievance over pay gaps. How often does one of the many discrimination divas mention the fact many women choose to take time out of their career to raise children understanding the trade-off with career? That they do it because motherhood is one of life’s great privileges, in all its messy, wondrous, frustrating and exquisite ways? Alas, in the discrimination playbook, raising children is mentioned only in the context of being a dreadful drag on a career and pay trajectory.

Under the handy banner of “gender equity” The Sydney Morning Herald last week cited a recent report by the Australian Institute of Family Studies that found only a small rise in the number of fathers at home, from 4.2 per cent in 2011 to 4.6 per cent in 2016.

Sure enough, one academic, ­Elizabeth Hill, was featured telling us this was “a shocking reminder of how far Australia has to go in generating the conditions of an equitable work/care regime”. She complained about a “gender-segmented labour market, a stubborn gender pay gap, inflexible care infrastructure that together underwrite traditional ideas about who works and who cares”.

In the same report, another gender professor complains that we have “stalled completely on progressing gender equity in Australia”. Not one of these educated women, not the academics or the journalist, thought it relevant to explore whether women’s choices might even partly explain these figures. And this determined ­silence around recognising the reality of some women’s preference to care for their children points to an ideology more obsessed with utopian notions of equity than women’s freedom, let alone children.

Indeed, according to a growing number of snobby middle-class women who think they know what other women want, “equity” has become decidedly doctrinaire: everyone must be equal even when they don’t want to be.

In a similar vein, feminist ideologues get huffy when the BBC’s long-running University Challenge quiz show is full of nerdy male students. Diversity officers demand that all-male teams be forbidden. Quotas must be introduced, they say. None consider the bleeding obvious that, as host Jeremy Paxman suggested, maybe “like football or darts, more males than females care about quizzing”.

“All we’re asking for is 50-50,” said Nicole ­Kidman recently, citing a 2016 report for the Centre for the Study of Women in Television and Film at San Diego State University that found only 7 per cent of filmmakers in 2016 were women. The blind pursuit of 50-50 gender representation in all the fancy jobs has, as English commentator Brendan O’Neill pointed out recently, become a middle-class protection racket. None of the women demanding equality in movie-making, on quiz shows, in parliament or in boardrooms demand a 50-50 split when it comes to toilet cleaners or garbos.

A few weeks ago, Brazilian magazine EPOCA contacted feminist iconoclast Camille Paglia for comment about the rise of psychologist and cultural superstar Jordan Peterson. The questions, describing Peterson as right wing and citing a clueless New York Review of Books article about the Canadian psychologist, drew a sharp response from Paglia: “To reduce his work to simplistic political formulas shows exactly what is wrong with thought in the Western world today,’’ she wrote.

“Of course, postmodernists attack Peterson because he dares to speak of nature — as I do in my own work.

“The refusal to acknowledge the power of nature has become a mental illness among intellectuals and academics today. Biology exists — it cannot be erased by politically correct zealots. Our obligation is to seek the truth about sex and gender, no matter where our search leads.”

As for The New York Review of Books, it has ignored Paglia’s work for 28 years because her ideas are “far beyond the limited scope of pretentious Manhattan editors”. It was no surprise, said Paglia, that they “cannot understand a single thing about Jordan Peterson”.

The same intellectual constraints have turned feminism into a shallow exercise of confirmation bias rather than an exploration of truth about women’s choices and privilege. Western feminists who complain the most about discrimination in the workplace are usually the most fortunate women in the history of humanity. They are highly educated, have been indulged by gender quotas and special treatment — think Julia Gil­lard in politics and the plethora of complaining women at the Bar — yet they are likely to be fans of the silly white male privilege mantra.

The added joke of intersectional feminism confirms the perversion of feminism. Under a ridiculous term from academe that is meant to speak to diversity and inclusion, the sisterhood has shrunk into an even smaller and snootier clique.

Differences in colour and sexuality and class are all very welcome, so long as middle-class women get to tell other women what to do and what to think.

When the worst kind of historical patriarchy has been replaced with an equally belittling modern-day matriarchy, feminism is crying out for a rebellion. And, on that score, more women telling the snooty sisterhood to butt out is a fine start.

SOURCE





Blame Racism for Diminishing Black Voter Bloc

But Blacks are the ones committing the crimes, murdering their own people, and aborting their own babies

In a new piece for the factually illiterate Washington Post, four academics from Dartmouth College, Claremont Graduate University and the University of Florida attempt to dissect why “Nearly 4 million black voters are missing.” Unfortunately for gullible readers, the authors present an extremely shortsighted analysis that misses key points.

The quartet writes, “Black people, on average, die in higher proportions than whites at all ages before their age of life expectancy. Early deaths of blacks not only prevent many blacks from voting in the election immediately after death, but in subsequent elections as well. The point here is the effect of early mortality on political disadvantage is cumulative, increasingly diluting the political voice of blacks compared with whites.”

What the authors don’t mention is that there isn’t an ethnicity in America that has a higher abortion rate than that of blacks. Roughly 1,000 black babies are terminated daily. This has an extreme side effect on black culture that manifests itself in various forms of self-demeaning behavior. Yet there’s no mention of the word “abortion” anywhere in this piece. And abortion is the most prolific cause of early death. Which is a good segue into the section on incarceration.

According to the authors, “Blacks not only die at much younger ages than their white counterparts, but they are also incarcerated at much higher rates. For instance, research has shown that, despite similar rates of illicit drug usage, black people are more than 13 times more likely than white people to be jailed on drug charges. Overall, incarceration rates for blacks are six times higher than that of whites.”

As previously stated, the culture that abortion breeds — which is aggravated by a severe dependence on the state — means that blacks are often predisposed to engage in bad behavior. In some circles, this is a racist view, but why else do inner cities suffer so badly from black-on-black crime, for instance? It’s not white-on-black oppression or murder. Gang-related homicides are a blight on America that show no signs of abating. The authors pick just one form of illicit behavior — drug use — while wholly ignoring inner city murders, which naturally increases law enforcement suspicion and raises the odds of being flagged.

The authors conclude: “Excess mortality and incarceration could have shifted the outcome of 11 gubernatorial and seven Senate elections between 1970 and 2004, according to our research. That is because black people overwhelmingly vote Democratic; they do not split their tickets. The large numbers of missing black voters in congressional and state legislative districts influence state policies, the balance of power between political parties and local electoral representation — meaning, who gets elected.” In that one paragraph, the authors revealed their hand.

Columnist Walter Williams puts this whole charade in context: “The challenge for blacks is to better position themselves to take advantage of existing opportunities, and that involves addressing the anti-social, self-defeating behaviors and habits and attitudes endemic to the black underclass.” Moreover, Jason Riley says for Prager University, electing more blacks doesn’t empower blacks — for the aforementioned reasons.

SOURCE





The incorrectness of sugar

The UK’s recent implementation of a sugar tax has reignited the push for an Australian sugar tax, pointing to ‘science’. Often, our scientific and political elites really have no idea what they are doing. But in spite of this, they believe that they should do something.

Rising obesity is a real observable problem but the scientific community hasn’t conclusively identified what the main cause is. Is it too many carbohydrates, too much fatty food, not enough exercise or increased depression? A convenient villain is sugar, hence many in the health lobby have called for punitive taxes on sugar-based soft drinks.

Unfortunately the evidence does not support the case that soft drinks and sugar consumption are major contributors to rising obesity. A contributor, definitely, but not the main culprit.

If sugar is the primary villain shouldn’t its consumption be going up as obesity does? However, while the prevalence of obesity has increased three-fold in Australians since 1980, per capita consumption of refined sugar decreased by 23% from 1980 to 2003.

Further, over the last 15 years there has been a 26% decrease in the per-person sugar contribution from carbonated soft drinks as consumers have replaced regular sugar-based beverages in their shopping trolleys with diet and zero sugar alternatives.

Even if sugar is the right target, why confine the tax to soft drinks? As far as discretionary foods are concerned soft drinks (4%) are ranked seventh on top of the high calorie pops, well behind confectionery/ chocolate (18%), sweet biscuits (13%), alcoholic beverages (13%), burgers/pizzas/tacos (7%), pastries (6%) and fried potatoes/crisps (5%).

Obesity reduces longevity, quality of life, and — in a world of socialised healthcare — hurts taxpayers. A new soft drink tax might salve the conscious of the moral crusaders but it won’t fix this obesity problem. The medical lobby might cry that something must be done. But for a change, let’s have our politicians do nothing until we have a credible, evidence based solution.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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13 April, 2018

Australia's Discrimination Commissioner assumes discrimination rather than proving it

Frank Chung comments on a race-obsessed public servant.  If discrimination can be proved that is one thing but assuming it from statistics is very different. 

Why is it different?  Because different groups have different priorities.  Indians, for instance gravitate to small businesses where income can be hidden.  There's a tradition of that in India.  So, in case you haven't noticed, we have a LOT of Indian taxi-drivers -- a mostly cash business. I was a taxi-driver myself once so I know a bit about it.  And there are Indian restaurants all over as well.

So does the over-representation of Indians in taxi-driving prove discrimination against white and East Asian taxi-drivers?  It's all a nonsense. East Asians for instance have a strong bent towards the professions.  So you won't often find bright East Asians in big business.  They are more likely to be the big businessman's doctor or medical specialist.  Is that discrimination we have to worry about?

From his name, I am assuming that Frank Chung is partly of East Asian ancestry and he clearly doesn't feel discriminated against


AUSTRALIA’S Race Discrimination Commissioner is being paid $340,000 a year by taxpayers to peddle racist pseudoscience.

In fact, Dr Tim Soutphommasane’s title could be more accurately described as “Commissioner for Racist Discrimination”, given his obsession with skin colour and apparent distaste for anyone from an “Anglo-Celtic or European background”.

Or in other words, white people.

In a risible piece of research released by the Human Rights Commission and the University of Sydney Business School on Tuesday, the good doctor lamented the fact that only eight executives in ASX 200 companies have a “non-European background”.

Similarly, of the 30 members of the Federal Ministry, there is “no one who has a non-European background” and only “one who has an indigenous background”.

Amusingly, that means Aged Care Minister Ken Wyatt — who is indigenous with part English, Irish and Indian heritage — is at once part of the problem and part of the solution, according to Dr Soutphommasane.

He goes on to rattle off similar numbers for the state and federal public service and university administrations. “All up there are 11 of the 372 CEOs and equivalents who have a non-European or indigenous background,” he said.

“A mere cricket team’s worth of diversity. These are dismal statistics for a society that prides itself on its multiculturalism. They challenge our egalitarian self-image. And they challenge our future prosperity as a nation. If we aren’t making the most of our multicultural talents, we may be squandering opportunities.”

Like a modern-day Charles Darwin on the HMS Beagle, Dr Soutphommasane — magnifying glass and colour wheel in hand — has taken a meticulous taxonomic study on his voyage through corporate Australia.

“Of those who occupy 2490 of the most senior posts in Australia, 75.9 per cent have an Anglo-Celtic background, 19 per cent have a European background, 4.7 per cent have a non-European background and 0.4 per cent have an indigenous background,” he said.

“Described another way, about 95 per cent of senior leaders in Australia have an Anglo-Celtic or European background. Although those who have non-European and indigenous backgrounds make up an estimated 24 per cent of the Australian population, such backgrounds account for only 5 per cent of senior leaders.

“In a society where nearly one-quarter is estimated to have a non-European or indigenous background, the findings of our latest study challenge us to do better with our multiculturalism.”

Naturally, these findings have led Dr Soutphommasane to call for “cultural targets and quotas across the business, academic and political worlds”, according to Fairfax.

There are three pretty obvious problems with this.

Firstly, Dr Soutphommasane seems to be talking out both sides of his mouth. He says he wants “cultural targets”, but then admits his real problem is with “European and Anglo-Celtic” peoples. How similar are the cultures of Norway and Greece, or Ukraine and Portugal?

Secondly, Dr Soutphommasane does not seem to understand the meaning of “egalitarian”, which the Oxford Dictionary defines as “believing in or based on the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities”.

Equality of opportunity is not the same thing as equality of outcome. As US economist Milton Friedman said, a society that “puts equality of outcome ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom”.

“The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests,” he said.

Which leads to the third point. Proponents of race and gender quotas like Dr Soutphommasane believe equality of opportunity is impossible due to the pseudoscience of “unconscious bias” — a kind of modern-day phrenology which claims everyone is incredibly racist and sexist even if they don’t think they are.

Unconscious bias, also called implicit bias, first emerged in 1998 with the rollout of something called the implicit association test and immediately spread like wildfire through western institutions, spawning a multimillion-dollar industry of consultants who, Clockwork Orange style, reprogram the racism out of workers.

It seems to be one of Dr Soutphommasane’s most deeply held beliefs. In 2014, he blamed unconscious bias for the “bamboo ceiling”, recounting a traumatic incident in which a friend asked whether he worked “in the finance or IT section”.

“My new friend’s faux-pas was not that he had made certain assumptions about me,” he wrote. “His mistake was that he had revealed some assumptions that might have been better kept to himself.”

Unfortunately, the scientific basis of the IAT — and so the entire concept of unconscious bias and the associated obsession with mandatory quotas — has effectively collapsed.

Even the creators of the IAT, Harvard social psychologists Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji, have distanced themselves from its current usage, admitting that it does not predict “biased behaviour”.

In 2015, they wrote that the problems with the test make it “problematic to use to classify persons as likely to engage in discrimination”. As The Wall Street Journal put it last year, “the politics of the IAT had leapfrogged the science behind it”.

And yet people like Dr Soutphommasane soldier on undeterred, even in the face of mounting evidence. It was Dr Soutphommasane, for example, who hailed the Victorian government’s “blind recruiting” trial in 2016, in which applicants’ resumes are de-identified of name, gender, age and location.

But hilariously, a study last year by the behavioural economics team in the Prime Minister’s department, known as the “nudge unit”, actually found blind recruiting has the opposite intended effect.

According to the study, led by Harvard professor Michael Hiscox, Australian Public Service recruiters “generally discriminated in favour of female and minority candidates”.

“We anticipated this would have a positive impact on diversity — making it more likely that female candidates and those from ethnic minorities are selected for the shortlist,” he told the ABC. “We should hit pause and be very cautious about introducing this as a way of improving diversity, as it can have the opposite effect.”

There may be many reasons for the lack of one-to-one population representation at the very highest levels of business and politics — but for the Race Discrimination Commissioner, when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

For someone who is paid $340,000 a year to come up with this dross, it’s not surprising the concept of meritocracy is a foreign one. Or is that being racist?

SOURCE






Racial Disparities Don’t Simply Boil Down to Discrimination

Walter E. Williams

I don’t mind saying that this column represents a grossly understated review of “Discrimination and Disparities,” just published by my longtime friend and colleague Thomas Sowell. In less than 200 pages, Sowell lays waste to myth after myth not only in the United States but around the globe.

One of those myths is that but for the fact of discrimination, we’d all be proportionately represented in socio-economic characteristics, such as career, income, education, and incarceration. The fact of business is that there is no evidence anywhere on earth, at any time in human history, that demonstrates that but for discrimination, there would be proportionate representation in anything by race, sex, nationality, or any other human characteristic.

Sowell shows that socio-economic outcomes differ vastly among individuals, groups, and nations in ways that cannot be explained by any one factor, whether it’s genetics, discrimination, or some kind of exploitation.

A study of National Merit Scholarship finalists shows that firstborns are finalists more often than their multiple siblings combined. Data from the U.S., Germany, and Britain show that the average IQ of firstborns is higher than the average IQ of their later siblings.

Such outcomes challenge those who believe that heredity or one’s environment is the dominant factor in one’s academic performance. Moreover, the finding shows that if there is not equality among people born to the same parents and living under the same roof, why should equality of outcomes be expected under other conditions?

In Chapter 2, Sowell provides evidence that people won’t take racial discrimination at any cost. The higher its cost, the less it will be tolerated, and vice versa.

One example is segregated seating on municipal transit in the South. Many companies were privately owned, and their decision-makers understood that they could lose profits by offending their black customers by establishing segregated seating.

Transportation companies fought against laws mandating racially segregated seating, both politically and in the courts, but lost. Companies even chose to ignore the law. Faced with heavy fines, though, they began to comply with the law.

The point is that the difference between the white transportation owners and the white politicians and segregationists was the transportation company owners had to bear the cost of alienating black riders and the politicians and segregationists didn’t.

Sowell broadens his analysis to show that regulated companies and organizations—such as public utilities and nonprofit entities, including colleges and government agencies—will be at the forefront when it’s politically popular to discriminate against blacks but also will be at the forefront when it’s politically popular to discriminate in favor of blacks. Why? Because in either case, they don’t bear the burden of forgone profits.

In Sowell’s chapter titled “The World of Numbers,” he points out what I’m going to call out-and-out dishonesty. In 2000, a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights study pointed out that 44.6 percent of black applicants were turned down for mortgages, while only 22.3 percent of whites were turned down. These and similar statistics led to charges of lending industry discrimination and demands that government do something about it.

While the loan rejection rate for whites was 22.3 percent, that for Asians and Native Hawaiians was only 12.4 percent. Those statistics didn’t see the light of day. Why? They didn’t fit the racial discrimination narrative. It would have been difficult for the race hustlers to convince the nation that lending institutions were discriminating against not only black applicants but white applicants, as well, in favor of Asian and Native Hawaiian applicants.

At several points in the book, Sowell points to the tragedies created in the pursuit of social justice. He gives the example of the Gujaratis expelled from Uganda and the Cubans fleeing Cuba. Many of the Gujaratis arrived in Britain destitute but rose again to prosperity. It’s the same story with the Cubans who came to the U.S. and prospered. By losing their most productive people, both Uganda and Cuba became economic basket cases.

The general public, educators, and politicians would benefit immensely from reading “Discrimination and Disparities,” if only to avoid being unknowingly duped.

SOURCE





'The Simpsons' Is Racist?

The long-running show responds to the charge quite humorously. But leftists don't find it funny.

The Left has progressively lost its grasp on reality, as it incessantly propagates a culture of outrage based upon its own stilted stereotype of victims and oppressors. As a result of this dogma, leftists lack both the courage and the humility to laugh at comedy. Evidently, to a leftist, life is a funeral, so how dare anyone make a joke. Indeed, looking at much of what Hollywood trots out as comedy today, it seems more like political potshots passed off as jokes designed mostly to malign Donald Trump or his supporters rather than an aim at legitimate humor. Enter America’s longest-running scripted primetime show, “The Simpsons.”

To any who have ever watched the popular cartoon, it is no secret that the show leans to the Left on many social issues. That said, the show has a long history producing genuinely creative comedy with loveably stereotyped characters. But that’s exactly what makes it funny. Recently a comedian of Indian decent did a documentary entitled “The Problem With Apu,” where he suggested that “The Simpsons” was a racist show because of its longtime character Apu, an Indian immigrant that owns a convenient store known as Kwik-E-Mart. The comedian, Hari Kondabolu, asserted, “I don’t find Apu offensive; I find him annoying and insulting.” He added, “But for me, one: It’s inaccurate. Two: It’s insulting to my parents. And three: When that’s the only depiction you have, that’s how the world sees you.”

In response to the documentary, the creators of “The Simpsons” did what they do best — they played off the criticism in their Sunday episode. Using Lisa, the character most associated with liberal and social justice causes, the writers essentially brushed off Kondabolu’s criticism by having Lisa say, “Something that started decades ago and was applauded and inoffensive is now politically incorrect. What can you do?” Kondabolu responded to the episode by saying the bit was “sad.” Other leftists declared the show to be “dead.” Back here in reality, it appears that what maybe dead is the Left’s sense of humor.

SOURCE





Don't Blame Pain Pills for the Opioid Crisis

The politically correct explanation is wrong

Chris Christie, the outgoing governor of New Jersey, has repeatedly told the story of a law school classmate who died of an overdose after getting hooked on oxycodone prescribed for back pain. A recently released final report from the President's Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis, which Christie chaired, wrongly implies that such cases are typical.

"A widely held and supportable view is that the modern opioid crisis originated within the healthcare system," the report says; the problem began with "a growing compulsion to detect and treat pain."

According to this narrative, doctors in the late 1990s began to underestimate the risk of addiction and overdose among patients prescribed narcotics for pain. Responding to advocacy on behalf of pain patients and deceptive marketing by drug companies, they supposedly began prescribing opioids left and right, leading to a surge in "iatrogenic addiction" (addiction caused by treatment) and overdose deaths.

To correct that disastrous mistake, the Christie commission says, doctors need to worry less about the suffering caused by untreated pain and more about the dangers posed by painkillers. But that conclusion is fundamentally misguided, because the commission's explanation is wrong in several crucial ways.

Opioid addiction and opioid-related deaths typically involve multi-drug users with histories of substance abuse and psychological problems, not drug-naive patients who accidentally get hooked while being treated for pain. Attempts to prevent overdoses by closing off access to legally produced narcotics make matters worse for both groups, depriving pain patients of the analgesics they need to make their lives bearable while driving nonmedical users into a black market where the drugs are more variable and therefore more dangerous.

As Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, noted in a 2016 New England Journal of Medicine article, "addiction occurs in only a small percentage of persons who are exposed to opioids—even among those with preexisting vulnerabilities." A 2010 review found that less than 1 percent of patients taking opioids for chronic pain experienced addiction. A 2012 review likewise concluded that "opioid analgesics for chronic pain conditions are not associated with a major risk for developing dependence." Volkow found that "rates of carefully diagnosed addiction have averaged less than 8% in published studies."

The risk of fatal overdose is even lower. A 2015 study that had followed pain patients treated with narcotics for up to 13 years found that one in 550 died from an opioid-related overdose, which is a risk of less than 0.2 percent. A study of opioid-related deaths in North Carolina found 478 fatalities among 2.2 million residents who were prescribed opioids in 2010, making the annual rate 0.022 percent.

The risk of addiction and overdose is not random. A 2012 study of opioid-related fatalities in Utah found that 61 percent of the decedents had used illegal drugs, 80 percent had been hospitalized for substance abuse (including abuse of alcohol and illegal drugs as well as prescription medications), 56 percent had a history of mental illness, and 45 percent had been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons other than substance abuse.

The vast majority of opioid-related deaths—more than 90 percent, according to data from New York City—involve combinations of substances. For the most part, people are not dying simply by taking too many pain pills. Even Christie's friend washed down his Percocet with vodka.

If the aim is reducing deaths from drug poisoning, there is not much logic to making prescription analgesics even harder to obtain, as the Christie commission recommends. According to a 2016 analysis of opioid-related fatalities in Massachusetts, just 8 percent of the decedents "had an opioid prescription in the same months as their deaths." Prescription opioids were the deadliest drug in just 5 percent of the cases, while 85 percent involved heroin and/or fentanyl.

The crackdown on prescription opioids already has left many patients without the medication they need to keep agony at bay, driving some to suicide. "There are many pain clinics flooded with patients who have been treated previously by their primary care physician," says Jianguo Cheng, president-elect of the American Academy of Pain Medicine, who says the refugees include patients who have responded well to opioids for years.

"If they go through with those recommendations," one such patient tells me, "I may as well drive my car off a cliff."

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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12 April, 2018

WHITES NEED NOT APPLY: Brits of English Heritage Banned from Paid Training Posts… at English Heritage

Historic England, the public body tasked with preserving England’s heritage, is advertising paid training placements for itself, the National Trust, English Heritage and other bodies which are not open to white people.

“We’re excited to offer a number of training placements for undergraduates or recent graduates (graduated within the last 18 months),” begins the advert, which is illustrated with a picture of a hijabi Muslim — before the kicker:

“If you’re interested in gaining skills and experience for a career in heritage and identify as having Black, Asian or other Minority Ethnic Heritage or mixed heritage (jump to Background to find out why), please see how to apply below.”

The ‘background’ section of the advert explains how the Tory government published a Culture White Paper in March 2016 which “challenged Historic England and other nationally funded cultural organisations to develop and share strategies for improving workforce diversity.”

It explains how, “In response, Historic England developed a Workforce Diversity Strategy which has several strands of activity but one of the most significant is a new paid Heritage Training Placements scheme for undergraduates and recent graduates with Black, Asian or other Minority Ethnic Heritage.”

The result is that the paid training placements — which are being offered not only at Historic England but also other public bodies including the National Trust, the Heritage Alliance, and English Heritage — are not actually open to applicants of English heritage.

Social justice policies of this nature are extremely popular with Prime Minister Theresa May, who has also declared a crusade against the “burning injustice” of the arguably fictitious gender pay gap.

White Britons have also been banned from applying for lucrative paid internships at the BBC and ITV’s Peston on Sunday programme recently, and even prevented from attending recruitment workshops run by the British Transport Police.

This is despite the fact that the White British working-class actually have the poorest life outcomes of any ethnic group in the country by several measures, with Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner recently having to admit that the focus on “race and women’s agendas” has had a negative on white working-class boys, in particular.

SOURCE





London's Mayor Declares Intense New 'Knife Control' Policies To Stop Epidemic Of Stabbings

Pissing into the wind

An epidemic of stabbings and acid attacks in London has gotten so bad that London mayor Sadiq Khan is announcing broad new "knife control" policies designed to keep these weapons of war out of the hands of Londoners looking to cause others harm.

The "tough, immediate" measures involve an incredible police crackdown, a ban on home deliveries of knives and acid, and expanding law enforcement stop-and-search powers so that police may stop anyone they believe to be a threat, or planning a knife or acid attack.

Khan announced Friday that the city has created a "violent crime taskforce of 120 officers" tasked with rooting out knife-wielding individuals in public spaces, and is pumping nearly $50 million into the Metropolitan Police department so that they can better arm themselves against knife attacks. He's also empowering the Met Police to introduce "targeted patrols with extra stop and search powers for areas worst-affected," according to a statement.

The mayor took to Twitter to announce his new policies.

Strangely enough, Khan is responsible for decreasing the number of stop-and-searches, having previously declared the tactic racist and potentially Islamophobic. It's also not clear what local Londoners will now use to cut their food.

Parliament is also set to take up heavy "knife control" legislation when it resumes this week. The U.K. government is expected to introduce a ban on online knife sales and home knife deliveries, declare it "illegal to possess zombie knives and knuckledusters in private" — "zombie knives" are those defined as being manufactured for the purpose of being used as a person-to-person weapon — and ban sales of caustic materials to anyone under the age of 18, the Independent reports.

London has seen a dramatic uptick in murder rates, surpassing even New York City in the number of homicides every month since the beginning of 2018. It has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world, and, technically, knives carried "without good reason" are off limits to anyone under the age of 18.

SOURCE




  
Trump appointee at center of fight over religious freedom

Roger Severino is implementing strict rules at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) meant to protect religious rights — in part because of discrimination he says he has experienced firsthand.

The son of South American immigrants, Severino, the director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights (OCR), grew up in Los Angeles, where he says “people attempted to close doors in front of me, and I’ve had to fight to pry them open.”

In government, Severino says the discrimination he has faced has been focused more on his politics and religion.

While working at the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Office, he said a supervisor, commenting on Severino’s religious and conservative beliefs, told him, “I thought we were done hiring people like you.”

This background led the conservative advocate, who opposes abortion and same-sex marriage, to arrive at HHS with one goal: to make sure that health workers who have religious- or moral-based objections to abortions or other procedures aren’t forced by their employers to participate in them or have their jobs threatened for refusing to do so.

“Nurses and doctors who dedicate their careers to saving lives should not be coerced into helping take lives in abortion or assisted suicide,” he said in an interview with The Hill. “This is and shouldn’t be a controversial position.”

Severino has launched a new division in the Office for Civil Rights solely responsible for enforcing laws that let health professionals opt out of procedures that violate their religion or conscience.

It is also charged with investigating claims of discrimination from those who say their religious or moral rights have been violated.

An accompanying proposed rule, which hasn’t yet been finalized, would require entities that receive HHS funding to certify they are complying with the conscience statutes. Those that are not could lose funding.

The new focus at HHS on religious freedom has been applauded by conservative and anti-abortion rights groups, but has drawn an aggressive backlash from Democrats and LGBT advocates.

They argue the new rules could exacerbate discrimination against gay and transgender individuals by allowing people to do so based on their religious beliefs.

“This has been a problem for many years, but we’re profoundly concerned these proposed changes and change in focus will inevitably worsen an already bad situation,” said Jennifer Pizer, law and policy director of Lambda Legal, a civil rights organization and legal group that focuses on LGBT rights.

Overall, the changes at the OCR reflect a broader elevation of religious freedom within the administration.

Last year, for example, HHS released a rule offering broad exemptions to ObamaCare’s contraception mandate for organizations and businesses that have religious or moral objections to providing birth control to their employees. This, too, prompted backlash from Democrats and spurred lawsuits from liberal states, but was cheered by religious and anti-abortion rights groups who saw the change as long overdue.

“Coming in, I said a major priority would be protecting conscience and religious freedom, and we’ve done several things in respect to that. It’s a priority that’s shared by the president, the secretary, and I as well,” Severino said.

The controversial rule on HHS funding only specifically mentions abortion, sterilization and assisted suicide as procedures that could be opted out of on religious grounds, but questions have been raised on whether it would also allow groups and businesses to opt out of procedures for gay or transgender people as well.

While at the Heritage Foundation, however, Severino argued that health professionals shouldn’t have to provide services to transgender people if it violated their religious or moral beliefs.

 “Religious liberty is a fundamental American value, but religion should not permit a person to cause harm to others or subvert the rights of others,” Reps. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.) and Bobby Scott (D-Va.), ranking members of the House Energy and Commerce and the Education and the Workforce committees, respectively, wrote in their public comment letter on the regulation.

“Women, minorities, members of the LGBTQ community, and other marginalized groups already face widespread discrimination in our health care system and this policy would only make this worse by offering an extensive group of individuals and entities a license to discriminate.”

In Severino’s view, he’s simply righting the wrongs of the previous administration, which conservatives argue didn’t take religious discrimination in health care seriously.

“We’re moving from callousness, indifference and hostility to respect when it comes to religious freedom,” Severino said.

Asked whether workers could opt out of performing other procedures, like gender reassignment surgery, Severino replied, “We’re considering public comments on several of the issues you just raised. We can’t prejudge until we consider all the public comments and come to conclusions.”

But, he said, the proposed rule said nothing about using religion or conscience to deny care to LGBT individuals.

“The proposed regulation mentioned abortion or assisted suicide — I think it was nearly 200 times. It mentioned LGBT issues a grand total of zero times.”

That doesn’t soothe advocates, who argue the rule is written so vaguely and broadly that a health worker could deny care to someone who is transgender, arguing it would violate their religion or conscience.

Severino says religious freedom is an under-enforced and neglected civil right, just as important as protections from race and gender discrimination.

“For too long, we have not treated conscience and religious freedom on par with every other civil right,” Severino argues.

The changes are intended to “restore the balance and parity” between religious freedoms and other rights.

Despite the criticism from those who oppose the direction he has taken OCR in, he says he’s right where he should be.

“It feels like all the steps I’ve taken in my career, unbeknownst to me, were leading me to this position,” he said.

“All of those things came together in this moment where I feel I am exactly where I need to be, and that’s a very good feeling.”

SOURCE






‘Pay Gap’ Myth Ignores Women’s Intentional Job Choices

Tuesday is supposedly “Equal Pay Day,” but what does that mean?

Well, according to outdated, flawed, and incomplete statistics that say women make only 82 cents on the dollar, compared with men, Equal Pay Day signifies how long into the new year women have to work just to catch up to the earnings of their male counterparts from the previous year.

Equal-pay activists have declared April 10 as the approximate Equal Pay Day for 2018, but based on the 82-cent figure, the date should have been March 21.

Regardless of the actual “celebrated” date, if women actually had to work that much longer than men to make the same amount of money, women might as well pack their briefcases and go home. After all, who would really work an extra three months to earn the same pay for the same job as their male counterparts?

That level of pervasive pay gap simply doesn’t exist.

Statistics matter, and they can help households, businesses, and governments make informed decisions. But statistics—particularly selective and incomplete ones—can also be misleading, and even detrimental.

The pay gap is the perfect example of statistics gone awry.

For starters, the data cited in the gender pay gap looks only at the median earnings of full-time wage and salaried workers. It doesn’t differentiate really important factors, such as education, occupation, experience, and hours, which account for nearly all of the differential in earnings between men and women.

It turns out that accounting for all these factors eliminates all but an estimated 3 to 5 cents of the gender pay gap.

Data is also subject to human error. Comparisons between survey data and administrative records reveal substantially underreporting of income within some of the most widely used survey data.

Consequently, the data disregards substantial changes, such as large gains in women’s retirement incomes.

And finally, data isn’t the supreme indicator, because not everything comes with a price tag or pay stub. What is the value of a flexible work schedule; a job with huge upward-mobility potential; particular benefits packages; the ability to tap into flexible, sharing-economy labor platforms, such as Uber and Airbnb; or to access new business platforms, such as Etsy for additional income?

Workers who seek these job characteristics often do so despite lower pay. But those intentional choices don’t show up in the statistics.

If a woman has the exact same job title as a man, but works 30 hours a week instead of 40, and sets her own hours and telecommutes, her paycheck likely won’t match that of the man’s—nor should it.

One of the job qualities that women—particularly mothers—value most is flexibility. Flexibility is a difficult job feature to measure, but that’s exactly what a group of economists recently did using data from the Uber ride-hailing company.

After analyzing data from more than 1 million registered Uber drivers, the authors tagged the average value of being able to set one’s own work schedule on an hour-by-hour and minute-by-minute basis at $150 per week. That’s the equivalent of $7,800 per year, or almost 20 percent of the median earnings of women in the U.S.

In essence, this is the value of choice. It’s not the same value for everyone, but it shows that many workers are willing to sacrifice a lot in terms of pay for more flexibility and choice.

On the opposite side, some employers are willing to pay a high price for flexibility from their employees—to log long hours and to work day or night.

Economist Claudia Goldin has found evidence of “part-time penalties” in certain very high-income fields. This happens when certain companies—those in finance and law, for example—pay employees who work 80 hours a week more than twice as much as they pay those who work 40 hours per week.

This likely has to do with certain employers’ need for employees to respond at all hours or to log double or triple time when needed, coupled with employees’ demand for higher pay when sacrificing so much of their own time and flexibility.

Anecdotal evidence and the choices women and men make suggest that women value job choices more than men and that their preference for greater flexibility accounts for some—if not all—of the remaining pay gap between men and women.

But choice is what legislation such as the Paycheck Fairness Act would squelch. Equal pay for equal work is already the law of the land. Imposing further-reaching policies in an attempt to eliminate pay differences that have little or nothing to do with discrimination could actually backfire.

Pay regimes based on factors such as job titles or “equivalent work” would take away businesses’ freedom to determine the value of their work and undo decades of women’s progress by imposing one-size-fits-all jobs that take away women’s—and all workers’—freedom to negotiate pay in exchange for personal priorities.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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11 April, 2018

The American Cultural Revolution

Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution seems to have become the model for America's Left

Kevin Williamson has been fired by The Atlantic. Williamson is one of the great conservative intellectuals of our times. He has a keen wit and frequently engages in heterodox opinions that make his writing and thinking intriguing. For a decade he wrote at William F. Buckley’s National Review until hired away last week by Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of The Atlantic.

The Atlantic fancies itself a place of intellectual diversity where the best writers across ideologies can share their views. But Williamson’s hire drew burning rage from the Left. Williamson’s birth came from an unplanned pregnancy. Instead of aborting him, his birth mother gave him up for adoption. As you might imagine, Williamson has strongly held views on the matter of abortion. A week after hiring him, Jeffrey Goldberg bowed to the left-wing mob and fired Williamson for, in part, how he might make the pro-abortion women in the office feel.

Never mind Williamson’s feelings on abortion and that he could have been aborted himself; the editor took the brave stand of worrying about the hypothetical feelings of pro-abortion women in the office. The Left told us that the purges happening on college campuses were contained to the campus. Yet here we are today with one of the best voices of conservatism fired from a job for his conservative views.

It will only get worse. Just a few years ago, a liberal reporter walked into an Indiana pizza parlor to see if that parlor would cater a same-sex wedding. The owner said he was a Christian so he could not do that. The news set off a wave of antagonism against the pizza parlor, which had to close down for several days. It faced harassment online and in the store for the owner having the audacity to answer a reporter’s hypothetical question.

Elsewhere on the Left, there have been organized attempts to stop police from volunteering to manage traffic in front of large churches on Sunday. The Left has demanded bakers forcibly bake cakes for same-sex marriages or shut down. It has demanded businesses cease business with conservative organizations. It uses friends in the media to target banks and others who work with gun manufacturers and resellers. The peddlers of tolerance are especially good at intolerance, and the people with coexist bumper stickers really want the right to not exist in the public eye.

Just a few years ago in France, Islamic radicals sympathetic to ISIS stormed the offices of Charlie Hebdo, a French satire magazine, and murdered the employees. Thankfully, in this country, the left-wing mob has not made the leap to taking the lives of those they disagree with. For now, at least, they are content just to ruin lives and businesses.

What we are seeing is an American Culture Revolution, unleashed by a narrow-minded group of leftists who have more in common with Mao than Washington. They have become dominant in the American media and have systematically purged conservative voices from the air and print. Conservative thought is more and more relegated to a ghetto, and should any prominent conservative try to leave the ghetto, the left-wing mob will take action to destroy them. Liberals like Chris Cuomo can have a show on CNN attacking a variety of conjured conservative straw men under the veneer of objective news, while a conservative like Kevin Williamson cannot even write columns in The Atlantic.

The result will increasingly be that fringe ideas grab hold of people’s imagination. The Left has continually reduced the window of what topics are acceptable to those it agrees with. Those ideas, in turn, change constantly depending on what group wakes up feeling oppressed on a particular day. They have exiled credible conservative voices, claiming that the most mainstream and innocuous are as racist and bigoted as the alt-right fringe. And if there is no difference between the two, more and more will gravitate to the truly extreme through emotional appeal. The Left’s insistence on determining who is reasonable on the Right will only help bolster the most unreasonable voices on both sides.

SOURCE





For Yorkshire’s chuffin’ Nazis, ze war is over

It is more than 70 years late but in a remote corner of North Yorkshire the war is finally over.

Every autumn for a number of years a station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway has been transformed into a German-occupied town in wartime France. Re-enactment enthusiasts have strutted around in Nazi uniforms, guns on their shoulders and SS flashes on their helmets as if D-Day had never happened and Hitler’s dream of a Greater Reich was still alive today.

Now organisers of the Railway in Wartime event have decided that all those Nazis are not such a good idea after all. The transformation of the village of Levisham into “Le Visham” has been going on for 12 years as part of a larger Second World War re-enactment weekend attracting thousands of people to the railway, which runs between Pickering and Whitby.

Passengers on steam and diesel trains enjoy a number of different scenarios at stops along the line, including the recreation of a wartime street at Pickering and Home Guard demonstrations staged in Goathland. Grosmont, meanwhile, has had an RAF theme, with a replica Spitfire and plotting room.

In Levisham last year there was a Café du Bois and re-enactment displays, and rather more people in coal-scuttle helmets than would normally be considered healthy. Now the railway, which is a charity, has withdrawn its invitation to the German re-enactors after a spate of negative publicity.

The Yorkshire Post has called the annual event “a weekend of pure nostalgia”. However, it has begun to attract unwelcome headlines. One year a family complained after seeing men in SS uniforms act out the beating up of a civilian. Last year an article in The Northern Echo questioned the need to relive the war.

“We dwell too much, in a celebratory way, on the Second World War,” it said. An article on Mail Online highlighted the controversy of Nazi uniforms in wartime re-enactments.

In a statement, the railway cited its need to protect its family image, saying: “Expectations currently reflected in the recent Equalities Act mean that the charity must avoid causing offence to any section of the public.” It added: “With this in mind, as we plan for this year’s Railway In Wartime event, we had to consider last year’s national media articles.”

Lee Hayward, 44, a history enthusiast and past visitor to the event, said: “This is a disgrace. I have some photos of the ‘German occupied’ Levisham a few years back. My kids were fascinated and educated. It was tastefully done with dedicated, forward-thinking people taking part. To be asked for my papers, in German, when I got off the train was a real palpable shock. The German soldier shouted it at us.

“It immediately transported myself and whole family into what it must have been like living in occupied France and made us grateful of the sacrifice made for the freedoms we currently have.”

Janet Sanderson, a North Yorkshire county councillor whose ward includes Levisham, said: “It began as a bit of fun and now we have people attending who travel from war re-enactment to war re-enactment. To some people it could be offensive, though it wasn’t to begin with. You do get comments from some such as, ‘My father fought in the war, what right does he have to wear that uniform?’ ”

The German forces have not, it must be said, put up much resistance. The re-enactors said they were very saddened by the news that they were not wanted, but agreed to go away and wished everyone good luck for the future.

One re-enactor, Neil Robertson, made clear that they did not sympathise with any Nazi cause. He said: “The re-enactment community and the station volunteers are saddened by the board’s decision but respect it.”

SOURCE






Black citizen's Righteous Rant Defending 2nd Amendment Goes Viral

A North Carolina gun rights advocate gave an impassioned speech defending the Second Amendment earlier this week, and the video of his speech quickly went viral. His passion was especially impressive considering the Greensboro resident isn't even a gun owner.

Mark Robinson's unplanned and unscripted comments came during a city council meeting Tuesday evening, where residents were debating whether a gun show should be canceled in the wake of the Parkland high school massacre. Although he does not currently own a firearm, Robinson passionately supports the rights of others to bear arms.

"I've heard a whole lot of people in here talking tonight about this group and that group, domestic violence and blacks, this minority and that minority," Robinson began. "What I want to know is -- when are you all gonna start standing up for the majority? Here's who the majority is -- I'm the majority! I'm a law-abiding citizen who's never shot anybody. I've never committed a serious crime -- never committed a felony," he added.

"It seems every time we have one of these shootings, nobody wants to put the blame where it goes, which is at the shooter's feet. You want to put it at my feet! You want to turn around an restrict my right -- constitutional right that's spelled out in black and white -- you want to restrict my right to buy a firearm and protect myself from some of the very people you are talking about in here tonight,” Robinson continued.

"It's ridiculous! I don't think Rod Serling could come up with a better script!" he quipped, referring to the creator of the Twilight Zone, the science-fiction, psychological-supernatural horror anthology television series that ran in the early sixties. "It doesn't make any sense!" he exclaimed. “The law-abiding citizens of this community, of other communities, we are the first ones taxed and the last ones considered.”

Robinson's rant is a thing of beauty:



SOURCE






Australian Aboriginal singer trolled on Instagram and called a 'TERRORIST' - for appearing at a Eurovision promotion in the Israeli capital of Tel Aviv

Muslim hate never lets up

Indigenous popstar Jessica Mauboy has been trolled by anti-Israel activists on her Instagram page after announcing she will be performing in Tel Aviv.

The 28-year-old Darwin-raised singer copped a barrage of abuse on social media when she told fans she had just touched down in Israel for a Eurovision promotion.

The abuse was vile, with a Muslim man accusing her of being a 'f***ing terrorist supporter' following the shooting last week of a Palestinian cameraman by Israeli troops on the Gaza border.

Another critic targeted Mauboy over her indigenous heritage on her mother's side, accusing her of ignoring the plight of Palestinians.

'Have you forgotten the treatment of your ancestors? Because that is what you are promoting right there,' one woman wrote on Sunday night.

Mauboy, who first shot to fame as the 2006 Australian Idol runner-up, is representing Australia next month at the Eurovision Song Contest in the Portuguese capital of Lisbon with her song We Got Love.

Ahead of her second turn as Australia's Eurovision flag bearer, she will be performing at Tel Aviv's Rabin Square on Tuesday as part of 'Israel Calling', an annual event where Eurovision contestants gather in Israel for a promotional campaign.

Several critics said she should have followed the lead of New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde, who last year cancelled a concert in Israel following a campaign by Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions activists.

However, Mauboy's supporters urged her to 'ignore the anti-Israelis' who had been 'brainwashed' by pro-Palestinian activists. 

Anti-Israel activists have ramped up their campaigning after Israeli snipers last week gunned down protesters at the Gaza border, killing Yaser Murtaja, 30, a cameraman for Palestinian Ain Media.

Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman said that the journalist wearing a press vest, who died on Saturday, had been flying a drone.

'Anyone who operates drones over Israeli soldiers needs to understand he's putting himself at risk,' he told a forum in Israel covered by the Haaretz newspaper.   

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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10 April, 2018

New head of Britain's Armed Forces threatens to block promotions unless officers improve the 'inclusivity and diversity' of their units

Former Australian army chief David Morrison was also very politically correct.  It is just virtue signalling in men nearing retirement -- to ensure a comfortable retirement

The new head of the Armed Forces has threatened to block the promotions of thousands of officers unless they improve the ‘inclusiveness and diversity’ of their units.

An internal document leaked to The Mail on Sunday reveals that General Sir Nick Carter, who takes over as Chief of the Defence Staff in June, intends to punish commanders who fail to adopt politically correct measures designed to help troops of different genders, faiths and sexual orientations work together.

The controversial new scheme also applies to less senior personnel. Remarkably, any sergeants and corporals not seen to be making their barracks more caring and understanding places of work for troops from minority backgrounds will be reprimanded.

Even private soldiers, sailors and airmen and women will be overlooked for promotion unless they actively demonstrate their support for troops who may not naturally feel comfortable in a military environment.

The Compulsory Objectives Scheme is apparently driven by the need to recruit more troops from ethnic minority groups and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community.

But serving officers say the plan is ‘PC claptrap’. They say military units are not rife with prejudice, as some top brass have suggested. Last year, LGBT charity Stonewall named the Army in its Top 100 employers for equality.

One infantry officer said: ‘Though well meaning, the scheme is damn well patronising to men and women who have fought together on the front line and been to hell and back.

‘We don’t give a stuff whether someone is gay or straight, black or white, Muslim, Christian or atheist, so long as they can do the job.

‘The Army, Navy and RAF are not in the Dark Ages. Huge strides have been made since the suicides of recruits at Deepcut in the 1990s caused by bullying. We don’t need these draconian measures.’

As part of the scheme, commanders will also have to list all the diversity and inclusion initiatives taken by their troops in their annual reports. The quality of a soldier’s report determines whether he or she is promoted.

Sources also confirmed that every individual’s efforts to boost inclusiveness and diversity would be a key factor in any promotion bid. The scheme comes after this newspaper revealed other controversial plans by Gen Carter intended to make the Armed Forces appear less elitist, including the Army dropping its ‘Be the Best’ motto.

Last night an MoD spokesman said: ‘We added this objective because we are committed to promoting a modern, diverse and inclusive workplace. A key part of this is ensuring that everyone in defence takes the lead.’

 SOURCE





UK: Male voice choir is told it must let women join

The push for gender equality has forced many men to change their tune. Now it has gone beyond golf clubs and dinner societies to target a male voice choir.

Members of the Derbyshire Constabulary choir decried political correctness yesterday after the area’s chief constable severed all ties with them.

Peter Goodman, who took over the force last summer, had told the choir to accept women or face losing its 60-year association with the police service. After concluding that a mixed group would take years to establish, the choir said that it would change its name later this year to the Derbyshire Community Male Voice Choir.

Kevin Griffiths, its chairman, accused Mr Goodman of trying to deflect attention from the force’s gender pay gap

SOURCE





More of those lovely Somalis

Four siblings have been taken into care after they reported their parents for expressing anti-British, anti-Semitic and homophobic views.

They also allegedly forced their children - boys aged 10, 14 and 16, and a sister, 18 - to watch an ISIS beheading video.

One of the children, a 10-year-old-boy with learning difficulties, has been left so disturbed by his treatment he is unable to speak, reports The Times.

Police intervened after the 18-year-old daughter called Childline - the free counselling hotline for young people.

She said she and her siblings 'were kept at home, did not attend school and were kept socially isolated, only being allowed out once in every three weeks'.

The family, who are of Somali origin and from the Midlands, are now in foster care.

Details of the 'physical and emotional' abuse were revealed during a hearing in the family division of the High Court last week in which Ms Justice Russell ruled the youngest child should move to residential care.

Dame Esther Rantzen, Childline founder and president, called the case 'horrific'.

The High Court judgment says: 'The children have complained that their parents expressed support for extremist violence and have expressed anti-Semitic, anti-British, homophobic and anti-white views in the home, which the children reject.'

The parents, who cannot be named, deny the allegation

SOURCE





Why Palestinians Need an Israel Victory

By Daniel Pipes, who was recently in Australia

The moment is right for fresh thinking in order to dispatch the old and stale Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

With Arabs focused on other issues – the Iranian nuclear weapon build-up, civil wars in Libya, Yemen, Syria, and Iraq, Turkey going rogue, the Islamist surge, and the water drought – hoary anti-Zionist taboos have lost much of their pungency. A prosperous and strong Israel has lost hope in decades' worth of "peace process." The cowboy in the White House likes breaking with precedent. And the global Left's turn toward antisemitism, exemplified by Jeremy Corbyn of the British Labour Party, adds further reason for urgency; when it eventually holds power, the implications for Israel will be dire.

Conventional wisdom holds that the Arab-Israeli conflict will end only when the Palestinians' grievances are sufficiently satisfied so that they accept the Jewish state of Israel. This paradigm has reigned almost unchallenged since the Oslo Accords of September 1993; yet, that 25-year period has also made clear that Palestinians in overwhelming numbers (I estimate 80 percent based on scholarship and polling data going back a century) seek not peaceful co-existence with Israel but the brutal elimination of the "Zionist entity." With such attitudes, it comes as no surprise that every round of much-hyped negotiations has eventually failed.

I shall propose an entirely different approach to resolve the conflict, a reversion to the strategy of deterrence and victory associated with Zionism's great strategist, Vladimir Jabotinsky (1880-1940): Israel should aim not to please its enemies but to defeat them. Counterintuitively, I shall show why Palestinians need precisely such an Israel Victory to slough off their current oppression, extremism, and violence, and to become a successful people.

An understanding of today's situation requires going back to the aftermath of World War I and the emergence of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the first modern Palestinian leader. He initiated a policy of rejectionism, of absolute refusal to accept any aspect of Jewish presence in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine. A century later, that rejectionism remains the dominant strain of Palestinian life. Political differences tend to be tactical: Better to eliminate Israel by negotiating with the Israelis and winning benefits from them, or stick to the consistency of pure rejectionism? The Palestinian Authority (PA) deploys the first tactic, Hamas the second.

Over a 75-year period, 1918-93, the Jewish community in what is now Israel responded to rejectionism with deterrence, the policy of dissuading its enemies from aggression by threatening painful retaliation. However imperfectly applied, deterrence helped Israel evolve from the prospective prey of 1948 into the military powerhouse of 1993. Yes, even as Israel became a democratic, innovative, affluent, and mighty country, the basics stayed in place. Ideologies, tactics, strategies, and personnel changed, wars and treaties came and went, but Palestinian rejectionism stayed stagnantly constant.

By 1993, frustrated with the slow-moving and passive nature of deterrence, Israel's impatient citizenry opted for an immediate resolution with the Palestinians. In the Oslo Accords, each of the two parties promised the other what it most wanted: recognition and security for Israelis, dignity and autonomy for Palestinians.

In their haste to end the conflict, however, Israelis made three profound mistakes that summer morning on the White House lawn: (1) Granting Yasir Arafat, leader of an unofficial, dictatorial, and murderous organization, diplomatic parity with Yitzhak Rabin, prime minister of a democratic and sovereign state. (2) Believing Arafat when he claimed to recognize Israel, when in fact he (and his successors) still sought Israel's elimination, now enhanced by his controlling two adjoining pieces of territory, the West Bank and Gaza. (3) Making concessions under the illusion that wars conclude through goodwill, when concessions actually had the contrary effect of signaling weakness and thereby amplified Palestinian hostility. These mistakes, tragically, turned a would-be "peace process" into a counterproductive "war process."

The study of history shows that wars typically conclude not through negotiations but through defeat and victory. According to the military historian Victor Hanson, "Conflicts throughout history become serial when an enemy is not utterly defeated and is not forced to submit to the political conditions of the victor." Defeat means giving up war ambitions. Victory means successfully imposing one's will on the enemy.

It's a simple, universal truth that Palestinians well understand. In July 2017, Fatahdeclared that the "campaign for Jerusalem has effectively begun and will not stop until a Palestinian victory and the release of the holy sites from Israeli occupation." Nor are they alone; thinkers and warriors in all eras concur on victory as the goal of warfare. For example, the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote "Let your great object be victory." U.S. general Douglas MacArthur stated that "It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it." Victory is an intuitive human goal that only overly-sophisticated moderns could lose sight of.

Therefore, to gain Palestinian acceptance, Israel must return to its old policy of deterrence, of punishing Palestinians severely when they aggress. One example: When three family members were murdered in July 2017 while sitting down to Sabbath dinnerin the Israeli West Bank town of Halamish, the Israeli response should have been to construct new buildings in Halamish and extend its boundaries.

That's deterrence; it's more than tough tactics, which Israeli governments already pursue; it means developing consistent policies to break rejectionism and encourage Palestinian acceptance of Israel. It implies a strategy to crush irredentist Palestinian ambitions so as finally to end the demonizing of Jews and Israel, recognize historic Jewish ties to Jerusalem, "normalize" relations with Israelis, close the suicide factories, and shutter the entire machinery of warfare. This process will be neither easy nor quick: it requires Palestinians to suffer the bitter crucible of defeat, with its attendant deprivation, destruction, and despair. Unfortunately, there is no shortcut.

A change of heart implies, not just a permanent absence of violence against Israelis but shutting down completely, everywhere from the United Nations to the university campus, the Palestinian-driven campaign of delegitimizing Israel.

If Palestinian defeat is good for Israel, it is ironically even better for Palestinians, who will finally be liberated from ugly ambitions, revolutionary rhetoric, and genocidal fantasies. An educated and skilled people can then improve its life by building its polity, economy, society, and culture. Think of this as a miniature version of post-1945 Germany. And if diplomacy is now premature, issues such as Jerusalem, borders, and resources can be fruitfully discussed after a Palestinian defeat. The two-state solution, an absurdity at present (it means asking Israel to strengthen its mortal enemy) will make good sense after a Palestinian defeat.

Like all outsiders to the conflict, Australians face a stark choice: either to endorse the Palestinian goal (explicit in the case of Hamas, implicit in that of the PA) of eliminating Israel or to support Israel's goal of winning its neighbors' acceptance. To state this choice makes clear there is no real choice – the first is aggressive, the second defensive; one is barbaric, the other civilized. No decent person can sanction the Palestinian goal of destroying a flourishing country.

Every prime minister since Ben Chifley and every parliamentary resolution and vote since his time has confirmed that Australian governments stand with Israel's drive to win acceptance (even if they disagree how this is to be achieved).

Western powers should support an Israel acting within legal, moral, and practical boundaries to take the steps necessary to win. They should move their Israel embassies to Jerusalem, reject the Palestinians' claim of Jerusalem as their capital, stand by the Israel Defense Forces when it punishes savagery, and join U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley in denouncing the "Palestine refugee" farce whereby some children born today are deemed refugees.

Starting about a year ago, the organization I head, the Middle East Forum, has not only promoted the idea of Israel Victory but organized Israel Victory caucuses in both the Israeli parliament (26 members from 7 political parties) and the U.S. House of Representatives (a bipartisan group of 33 members). In both bodies, caucus members agree that Palestinian-Israeli negotiations are premature until Palestinians accept the permanent existence of the Jewish state; and that Israel Victory is the best way forward. Our goal is for Western leaders to urge Israel to seek victory.

Even opponents of this idea recognize its impact. Writing about Amb. Haley, Palestinian commentator Daoud Kuttab wrote that she "seems to repeat verbatim the Israeli and pro-Israeli lines of people like Daniel Pipes." The Guardian newspaper, among others, suggested that Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem under the influence of the Israel Victory Project.

Following a visit to Australia earlier this month, when I discussed this idea in private conversations, public talks, and in the media, I am now hoping for the start of an Australian movement and parliamentary caucus.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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9 April, 2018

Media silence about YouTube shooter

A vegan animal rights activist doesn't fit the agenda

For the first time in its history, gunshots rang out at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, on Tuesday. Three people had been hit and the shooter was dead, but the motive for the attack remained mysterious. Even so, gun-control barker Sen. Dianne Feinstein was quick to weigh in.

“Only in America is a shooter unleashing gunfire in an office building a common occurrence,” the California Democrat said in a statement. “Only in America are people evacuating the scene of a shooting with their hands on their heads is a familiar sight.”

Like fellow Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Jackie Speier, Feinstein mentioned nothing about the shooter. The old-line establishment media were expecting a Republican male, an NRA member with a MAGA hat out to take down Hillary voters. As it turned out, the shooter was a woman and not a right-wing conservative type at all. In fact, it wasn’t even close. 

Her name is Nasim Najafi Aghdam and according to news reports, the 39-year-old moved with her family from Iran to California in 1996, when she was 17. According to her website, Aghdam, also known as Nasim Sabz, had YouTube channels in Farsi, Turkish, English, and one channel dedicated to hand art.

With her dark hair and prominent brows, Aghdam bore strong resemblance to Mexican Communist painter Frida Kahlo, but with the rather stunned expression of the first person in a 1950s science-fiction movie to see the flying saucer. Like Kahlo, Aghdam was fond of self-portraits, and she tarted up in gooey gowns, black ninja outfits, and tight leopard-skin gear. In a 2009 protest outside of the Camp Pendleton Marine base, Aghdam donned a black wig that left her looking like a cross between horror-movie hostess Elvira and Cher on a bad-hair day.

The Iranian immigrant styled herself as a “vegan bodybuilder” but her videos might all be titled “How do I Love Me, Let Me Count the Ways.” Nasim the narcissist prances around ranting about the evils of meat, preening for the camera and parodying celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Nicki Minaj. Unlike Swift, Lady Nasim had little if any talent but her nightmarish videos may have been about more than self-parody.

Her site includes videos about the dangers of anal sex but Nasim didn’t say whether she had a bad experience with that activity, perhaps back in Iran. Likewise, she did not indicate what kind of sex she believed is healthy and clean. Other videos blast popular culture as decadent and tout the benefits of a vegan diet. Nasim believed “animal rights equal human rights,” not exactly a mainstream view.

In one video she reportedly appears in a hijab but from posts on the Interfaith Vegan Alliance site, where she appears as Nasim Sabz, she appears to be an adherent of the Bahai faith. That raises questions about her native Iran, an Islamic state that viciously persecutes the followers of Bah?’u’ll?h, who claimed to be the messenger of God long after Mohammed. If Nasim Najafi Aghdam disagreed with Iran’s Islamist regime in any way, or has a beef with Islam itself, it does not emerge in her videos or blog posts.

“BE AWARE!” she explained in one post. “Dictatorship exists in all countries but with different tactics! They only care for personal short term profits” and fool simple minded people by “destroying family values, promoting materialism and sexual degeneration in the name of freedom.” But Nasim believed “there is no free speech in the real world” and “you will be suppressed for telling the truth that is not supported by the system.” And Nasim Najafi Aghdam makes it clear that she is the one being suppressed because YouTube restricted her videos.

To all but the willfully blind, Nasim Najafi Aghdam was a certifiable nut job and how she managed to procure a handgun remains unclear at this writing. A family member warned that she might do something violent, but as in the Parkland shooting that warning went unheeded.

So Nasim Aghdam drove up to San Bruno, walked into YouTube headquarters, and there shot and wounded two women and one man she didn’t even know and who doubtless had no responsibility for the repression of her videos. Then she shot herself to death.

Women don’t normally do that and even in California nothing quite like this had ever happened. Even so, the familiar pattern emerged from Dianne Feinstein.

For the California Democrat, the fault was not with the shooter, a deranged woman she did not even name. The problem was not with the disregarding of a clear warning or possible violation of gun laws. The problem was with America because, as Feinstein said, “Only in America is a shooter unleashing gunfire in an office building a common occurrence.”

The San Francisco Democrats, as Jeane Kirkpatrick observed, “always blame America first.” That holds true for a terrorist attack in Lebanon, a Communist insurgency in Central America, and even a shooting at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno. 

 SOURCE






The Red Pill and Candace Owens
   
In the movie “The Matrix,” swallowing a red pill reveals the truth, while downing a blue pill leaves you trapped in illusion.

Today, in the parlance of some political activists, “taking the red pill” means seeing the lies of mainstream media — and learning the truth.

“People don’t care to watch CNN anymore: People pay attention to YouTubers,” says Candace Owens. Owens is a young black woman who created a YouTube site she calls Red Pill Black. “My second video went trending worldwide with 80 million views.”

My new Internet videos sometimes reach 10 million people; I consider that a lot. This woman’s video reached 80 million?

She released it shortly after a man at a Charlottesville, Virginia, white supremacist rally drove his car into a crowd of protesters, killing a woman.

At that time, media coverage of racism was everywhere. Cable news talked about “America’s lack of racial progress” and threats to minorities posed by white nationalists. “CNN was trying to sell to me, as a black person, that the KKK was alive and well,” Owens added. “That was ridiculous.”

In her video, she sarcastically shouts, “OMG, Charlottesville! White supremacy is alive and well!” Then she goes on to argue, “Black people have scarier things on the horizon than the almost-endangered species of white supremacy.”

Owens also objects to the way the media cover police brutality. It leads some people to believe that the biggest threat to young blacks is the police.

“Fact No. 1: Approximately 93 percent of black homicide victims are killed by other black people,” she says.

I pushed back, pointing out that there still is plenty of racism, and some innocent people have been tortured by police.

“That’s absolutely right. Some innocent people have also been struck by lightning. Sixteen unarmed black men were killed by police officers in 2016. If you are watching CNN you would’ve thought it happened every single day. OK? That’s a problem.”

Owens (correctly) said thousands of young black men were killed by other black men, whereas “sixteen represents .00004 percent of the black community.”

Media coverage of Black Lives Matter, she says, also creates a distorted picture of what’s going on.

“Black Lives Matter actually resulted in more black deaths across the country, because police officers don’t want to answer the call.” (Some authorities dispute that. Killings nationwide did rise after the shooting in Ferguson, but more recently they dropped.)

But Owen’s main argument is that the media mislead. The biggest issue facing blacks today is not racism or police shootings, she says, but dependence on government that began 50 years ago with Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” programs.

“They incentivized mothers not to marry fathers. That’s why single motherhood is up. The government would give you more if you didn’t marry him.”

That’s a fairly common view among conservatives, but among blacks, says Owens, it’s easier to tell your family you’re gay than to reveal that you’re a conservative.

“My entire family’s on welfare, save a couple people. What [welfare] does is essentially offer you some money and then say, ‘Whenever you work, you don’t make enough, so we’re gonna give you this much money on top of that.’” As a result, she says people think, “I don’t want to make more because the government is already giving me $500 that I don’t want to lose.”

Saying such things brings Owens criticism from social justice warriors of the Left.

“What people don’t understand” though, she says, “is how many black people are excited about what I’m doing … how many are very aware that they have been duped by the Left.”

Owens is far from the first black conservative. But, she says, others “have not been successful in the past because they cared too much about what people thought. … We’re doing it differently … talking a lot of trash.” Giving out red pills.

Having an edgy sense of humor is one way she does it. So is knowing history and literature better than her critics.

“You can feel free to call me an Uncle Tom. You can feel free to call me an Auntie Tom. It does not affect me,” she says. “Do you want to know why? Because I actually read the book. Uncle Tom was the hero.”

SOURCE





Amnesty International’s war on ‘Toxic Twitter’ is an insult to women

Amnesty International, best known for campaigning against human-rights abuses abroad, is turning its attention closer to home.

Alongside raising awareness of the plight of foreign prisoners of conscience, Amnesty now wants to draw the public’s attention to a new group of victims: women who use social media. With its Don’t Let #ToxicTwitter Silence Women initiative, the crusading non-governmental organisation beloved of letter-writing liberals moves from the torture of prisoners to nasty tweets in the click of a mouse.

The starting point for Amnesty’s latest campaign is the assumption that women experience ‘a toxic environment online’ and are ‘subdued to silence’ as a result. Their research explains:

‘Every day, women face violent threats, sexism, racism and more on Twitter. This abuse is flooding Twitter, forcing women out of public conversations – and at times driving them off the platform. The abuse can be more intense for women of colour, women with disabilities; lesbian, bisexual, transwomen, and non-binary people.’

Amnesty’s aim is to ‘make sure Twitter becomes a safe space for movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp, and not a place where women are silenced out of fear of violence and abuse’.

For an organisation that has traditionally campaigned around wrongful imprisonment and torture to use the word ‘violence’ to describe online comments – words – is astonishing. Elsewhere, Amnesty asks us to ‘imagine being beaten, electrocuted, having your face cut, having your fingernails pulled out’. Surely no worse than reading a sweary, critical tweet, right?

Words can indeed have a visceral impact; they can motivate and inspire, upset or humiliate people. But the distinction between physical violence and offensive language is important to maintain. And, in reality, most people know this. I suspect few members of Amnesty go around telling victims of police brutality, those who’ve lost family members in Yemen or children bombed out of their houses in Syria, that the violence they have experienced is just the same as hearing hateful words.

As well as redefining violence, Amnesty’s #ToxicTwitter campaign redefines free speech. Amnesty’s support for free speech has long been qualified by calls to restrict ‘hate speech’ and to ‘protect specific public interest or the rights and reputations of others’. But this new initiative goes further and argues that women’s free speech online is only possible with regulation of social media and restrictions on what can be said – in short, censorship. According to this twisted logic, free speech for some requires that others are silenced.

A problem with all campaigns against ‘hate speech’ and online ‘violence and abuse’ is that offence is subjective. One person’s abuse is another person’s criticism. What some might experience as violence, others consider a passionate, heated exchange of ideas. Amnesty’s research covers the abuse received by MSP Kezia Dugdale:

‘In Scotland the phrase would be “Daft wee lassie complex”. It means she doesn’t know what she’s talking about – she’s too young, too female to really understand what she’s going on about. So people will question your intelligence by referring to your gender. That’s probably the most common theme.’

Being called a ‘daft wee lassie’ might be patronising. But offensive? Abusive? Hardly. What’s really offensive is the idea that women need Amnesty International to protect them from such comments.

The blurring of criticism and abuse and the equation of words with violence depend upon women being seen as vulnerable and unable to cope with free speech. The #ToxicTwitter campaign portrays women as fragile rather than robust. But rather than challenging this condescending notion, today’s feminists are at the forefront of seeking out offence. Offence justifies the need for feminism when finding material inequalities between the sexes becomes harder. To be a feminist today means arguing for protection from offence.

In the US, the National Association of Scholars has brought together research showing women are far less favourable to free speech than men. Opinion polls of college students show that women see promoting diversity and inclusion as more important than free speech. Seventy-one per cent of women polled believe that ‘hate speech’ should not be protected by the First Amendment, compared to 56 per cent of men. Thirty-three per cent of women said it was important for colleges to create a positive environment by prohibiting speech that is offensive or biased against certain groups, and a similar proportion said colleges should be able to restrict political speech.

Arguing against free speech has become integral to feminism. Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism project, questions the need to ‘debate’ (her scare quotes) issues such as workplace sexual harassment. In her latest book, Misogynation, she characterises such debates as ‘dismissal, doubt and disbelief’. ‘Presenting something as “up for debate” leads listeners to think there are two equally valid sides to the story’, she argues: ‘Sometimes there aren’t.’ We see here how criticism becomes interpreted as a denial of the feminist’s worldview, an act of violence that must be prevented. Conversely, demanding censorship and the closing down of debate becomes a validation of the feminist cause.

What today’s censorious feminists have forgotten is that every major victory for women’s rights – the right of women to attend university, to vote, for equal pay, for access to abortion and contraception – was at one time considered grossly offensive by some. If causing offence had been prohibited, not one of these campaigns would have got off the ground. Women’s rights were won not by asking to be protected, but by offending. Rolling back free speech in the name of feminism is truly insulting to women.

SOURCE





Democrats Finally Find Some Media Bias They Dislike

Last month, news anchors at Sinclair Broadcast Group’s TV stations were required to read a script critical of “fake stories” and general bias in the major news networks. Because some of the phrasing mirrored President Donald Trump’s overcooked critique of liberal media outlets, the story triggered widespread and overwrought warnings about authoritarianism and the rise of state-run media.

It’s true that Sinclair, the largest owner of U.S. TV stations, would have been better off following the lead of the big outlets: hiring and working with people who subscribe to the same worldview and then simply letting them do their thing. But as long as we have a media market and inhibit government meddling in speech — thank you, Citizens United and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai — the idea that we are powerless to turning away from “propaganda” is nothing but alarmism. Every Sinclair market has an alternative local news station for viewers, not to mention other sources of information consumers can read and listen to if they desire.

Then again, having read the panicky coverage before watching the Sinclair videos, I was surprised by the innocuousness of the spots. The anchors were plainly reading a scripted public service announcement that claimed there is a “troubling trend of irresponsible, one-sided news stories” at major news outlets and then offering themselves as an alternative. They then cautioned viewers to avoid the “sharing of biased and false news” on social media, which is, I am often told, a plague on democracy. “But we are human and sometimes our reporting might fall short,” the script goes on to say. “If you believe our coverage is unfair please reach out to us.”

The rhetoric was a less sanctimonious version of CNN’s apples and bananas commercial from a few months ago — another finger wagging aimed at political foes and competitors. One peculiar complaint about the Sinclair spots is that local anchors were being “forced” — a word widely used by those reporting on the incident — to read opinions they do not share. “I felt like a POW recording a message,” one aggrieved newsreader told CNN. As a writer, I can sympathize with people being asked to say things that undermine their beliefs. In truth, though, no one can force you to say or write anything. If you find the words “fake” and “news” morally and professionally objectionable, quit.

The concept of free will has little part in any of our national conversations these days. You’d think that Russian bots, Facebook posts and local news anchors all have the preternatural ability to burrow into your brain and make your choices for you.

CNN senior media correspondent Brian Stelter went as far as to claim that viewers were being “force-fed” the Sinclair viewpoint, which would mean that every time an outlet is “leaning forward” or telling us that “Democracy Dies in Darkness” or lecturing us about “fake news,” it, too, is force-feeding consumers their partisan talking points.

It’s clear that the oversized reaction to the Sinclair script is occurring because it flaunted the wrong bias. And considering the often sycophantic treatment the previous administration received from major news outlets, it’s difficult to take those acting appalled very seriously. In fact, those who act most disturbed are in part responsible for the rise of openly partisan journalism. That’s because in many ways, politically motivated news is as much a market reaction as an ideological one.

Take CNN’s full-blown push for gun control over the past few weeks. Is the network any less culpable of the supposed manipulation of democracy when it features a virtually unchallenged — and often fact-challenged — opinion that runs in a loop for a week? CNN wasn’t alone. Surely, it’s not surprising that many Americans might seek out alternative coverage, especially in conservative areas, where Sinclair is strongest. If the wealthiest legacy networks — the ones the public relies on because they have the most access — keep treating one party with standards and an intensity they don’t apply to the other, then no one should be surprised by a pushback.

Maybe it’s for the best. After all, advocacy journalism isn’t necessarily propaganda. Politically motivated journalists tend to concentrate on specific targets, but their work can be worthwhile and factually sound. It’s likely that the news coverage of the Sinclair affiliates, most of which are run independently, are just as reliable as that of the majors. But in a broader sense, competing biases keep the other side challenged. Meanwhile, let’s continue reading all news with the appropriate skepticism and filters.

And it shouldn’t be forgotten that there are plenty of conscientious journalists. Most media bias, it seems to me, is an organic byproduct of journalists’ worldview, not some conspiracy to mislead the public. But everyone has a bias. There’s nothing wrong with pointing it out. Sinclair’s real sin, though, is that it was ham-fisted about the wrong kind.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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8 April, 2018

It's all in the genes

In their never ending quest to pooh-pooh the genetic influence on IQ (and everything else), a common Leftist suggestion has been that the genetic influence is "moderated" by environmental factors.  Socio-economic status has been nominated as such an environmental influence.  That has just had a big test and the answer found is that genes rule.  Their effect is not moderated by environmental influences.  Article below followed by journal Abstract

It's amusing that the authors don't want to believe their own results.  They seize on things that might rescue their hypothesis. They say, for instance, that "Among twins and siblings pairs who were close in age, standardized math and reading scores increased proportionally along with mothers' years of education beyond high school"

They attribute that to an environmental influence when it could better be explained by saying that smarter mothers undertake more education. And smarter mother have smarter kids of course.

They really are pathetic in their attempt to hang on to political correctness


Genes and environment have equal influence in learning for rich and poor kids, study finds

More than 40 years ago, psychologist Sandra Scarr put forth a provocative idea: that genetic influence on children's cognitive abilities is linked to their family's income. The wealthier the family, the more influence genes have on brain development, the thinking went.

Scarr turned the nature-nurture debate on its head, proposing that how much "nature" matters varies between environments. Scarr's research has since been roundly debated and thoroughly studied by other researchers with mixed results, including reaffirmation by another American psychologist, David Rowe, in 1999.

The line of research has come to be called the Scarr-Rowe hypothesis—that parents' socio-economic status moderates genetic contributions to variation in intelligence. The thinking was that, for people of lower socio-economic status, a person's intelligence is influenced more by his or her environment than by genetics, meaning whether a child reaches full potential depends on economic standing.

I have been studying the relationship of early health conditions to subsequent school performance for 25 years and been fascinated by the role that genetics and environment play in student achievement.

A group of us set out re-examine the question: Are genetic influences on cognitive abilities larger for children raised in more advantaged environment? To get that answer, I collaborated with colleagues at Northwestern University and Stanford University.

Studying twins, siblings gives insight

We analyzed birth and school records of 24,000 twins and nearly 275,000 siblings born in Florida between 1994 and 2002. As did previous researchers who examined genetic and environmental influences of cognitive development, we focused on a very large set of twins and siblings.

Twins and siblings close in age allowed us to disentangle the role of genes and environment in development of cognitive ability. We found no evidence that social class played more of a role in educational performance for poor kids than for rich ones.

While students in the higher income groups performed better than students in the lower income groups, the relative influence of genetic and environmental differences was the same across groups. The results were published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A complex gene-environment interaction

What is the significance of our findings? According to David Figlio, dean of the School of Education at Social Policy at Northwestern and lead author of the study, we did not confirm that environmental factors mitigate the effects of genetics on cognitive development. Environmental differences are just as important for students from affluent backgrounds as students from poorer backgrounds.

Recent research has found evidence of a difference in genetic influence on academic performance between rich and poor families in the United States, when compared with families in Australia or Western Europe.

However, our research did not replicate the U.S. findings, in part because our large data set from Florida represented a very socio-economically diverse set of families.

Our findings, however, do not contradict the overall pattern that parental socio-economic status is associated with children's cognitive development. Among twins and siblings pairs who were close in age, standardized math and reading scores increased proportionally along with mothers' years of education beyond high school.

SOURCE  

Socioeconomic status and genetic influences on cognitive development

David N. Figlio, Jeremy Freese, Krzysztof Karbownik and Jeffrey Roth

Abstract

Accurate understanding of environmental moderation of genetic influences is vital to advancing the science of cognitive development as well as for designing interventions. One widely reported idea is increasing genetic influence on cognition for children raised in higher socioeconomic status (SES) families, including recent proposals that the pattern is a particularly US phenomenon. We used matched birth and school records from Florida siblings and twins born in 1994–2002 to provide the largest, most population-diverse consideration of this hypothesis to date. We found no evidence of SES moderation of genetic influence on test scores, suggesting that articulating gene-environment interactions for cognition is more complex and elusive than previously supposed.

SOURCE  






BDS Urges Netflix to Boycott Israeli TV drama for 'Supporting the Occupation and Israeli Apartheid'

The international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement has called for Netflix to remove the hit Israeli show "Fauda" or face legal action due to what they claimed was the show's complicity in Israel's occupation of the Palestinians.

The Israeli series "Fauda" has enjoyed a success both domestically and internationally, and Netflix has announced the release of its widely anticipated second season this May 24.

Purporting to show how Israeli special units and secret services operate in the Palestinian territories, the popular series has attracted criticism by anti-occupation activists and critics who see the display of violence against Palestinians as distasteful.

Until Wednesday, however, no public challenge like the one potentially posed by the BDS movement has challenged the series' success. Calling “Fauda” a medium for “racist propaganda for the Israeli occupation” and an “ostentation of aggression” against the Palestinians and their struggle for liberation, the BDS movment accused Netflix of being a partner in crime of the occupation.

The letter sent to the video streaming site also mentions the series’ creators - Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff - and their former roles in Israel’s army elite units, such as the “Duvdevan” unit which served as one of the inspirations for the show. According to the BDS statement, Raz and  Issacharoff “support the machinery of the occupation, Israeli colonialism and apartheid.”

If Netflix failed to comply with its demands, BDS would consider legal action against a series it calls “racist against Arabs, supportive of violations of international laws and of human rights.”

Issacharoff told Haaretz he sees the campaign as good publicity for “Fauda”, adding that “if any Palestinians have not seen the series yet, they will find a way and watch it.” Issacharoff said he spoke to a friend in Gaza who “could not stop praising the first season of the series.”

SOURCE






UK: I’m not Jewish but whatever I talk about I receive antisemitic abuse

Antisemitism is huge on the British Left

by John Mann

I made my Question Time debut last week as a Labour MP. I was asked about Theresa May, about Brexit, about allegations of rape and how to deal with them and about statues of Margaret Thatcher. I talked about my work as a constituency MP, and as the longest-serving member of the Treasury Select Committee.

I discussed my work against child sexual exploitation and abuse and spoke about the economy and immigration. And yet, when I looked at my phone, I found I had received anti-Jewish abuse and an antisemitic death threat on social media. I am not Jewish, I didn’t talk about Jews and I didn’t discuss the Middle East.

This isn’t the first time. I can speak out about knife crime and drugs and the tweets come in – “who is paying you to do your work” “Why don’t you admit you’re in the pay of the Israeli government” and the like. It is not just tweets though. One Labour party member called me a “CIA *******” for dealing with the “antisemitism nonsense” following an appearance I made on the Daily Politics at Labour party conference talking about the Brexit. Not all, but the vast majority of these attacks have come from self-identified “left-wing” activists or Labour party supporters.

Anti-Jewish hate and invective is becoming so obsessive, so fervent that irrespective of what an anti-racist activist is discussing, antisemitism is the online reaction. Last week, Phillip Collins, in the Times, highlighted the problem of Left wing antisemitism and the obsessive hate of Israel. He pointed out that most of the statements people make are not actionable. The death threat I received will be, but much of the abuse fell into the other category. As he said: the “tone of voice, the severity, the passion, the elevation of an issue that should be one among many to a defining idea of political identity.” ”It connects to a loathing of America and of capitalism and of alleged western interference in the Middle East. For the uncomplicated racist, hatred of the undesirable people is the starting point. For the complicated, confused leftist, the denigration of a people is their conclusion.”

But now it’s one step further. There’s a group-focussed enmity. Anyone who calls out racism, or seeks to address anti-Jewish hatred is a target. It’s even now the case that allegations of antisemitism are being inferred or created and attributed to Jews in order to try and diminish the charge when one has not been made. This of course, undermines victims of antisemitism and their right to define such abuse and call out the abusers.

If you have had the misfortune of engaging these racist Twitter trolls, it won’t be long before you find some patterns emerging. It starts with talk of “Zionism” and quickly leads to allegations of the Holocaust being “rammed down our throats” and support for Holocaust revisionism. There is an antisemitic sickness, particularly afflicting the left, and it is spreading.

With the type-and-click ease and public platform that companies like Twitter provide, it is far easier than ever before to exist in a self-edifying bubble of conspiracy and hate. Despite promises and plans, the truth is that social media companies are ill equipped to deal with the problem. The initial response from Twitter to the death threat I reported, was to say it did not violate the company’s terms. The account was suspended, but clearly something went wrong. Most of the abusive, racist rubbish will however remain on line, easily discoverable by the young or any other people interested in searching about plans to address sexual abuse, Brexit or other matters. All the while, the obsessive racists fall further down the rabbit hole, convinced they will triumph over the fabricated “other” they define themselves against.

My political convictions are premised on action. I have acted, and I will continue to act, to deal with addressing these problems.

I expect Labour to call out the anti-Semites. When someone with a public platform in the party tweets a racist slur or alleges antisemitism is fabricated, they must be called out. Each and every Labour MP has a duty to speak. We cannot ask other party’s to deal with issues of antisemitism in their parties if we don’t call it out in our own.

As for social media, we need to change our framework for understanding how the online world operates. The Germans have done so, and the European Commission is on its way to doing so too. Social media platforms are publishers of content, not simply conduits. The more these companies manipulate and edit our feeds and timelines, the more apparent the case for them taking responsibility. Later this month, I will begin the process of seeking a change in the law to hold these companies to account for failing to take action against racism on their platforms.

We all have a responsibility to call out antisemitism. Any MP should be able to appear on a public show about the key policy issues of our time without being subjected to racist abuse. If we can’t defeat racism, then it’s not the politicians we need to be questioning but rather our future as a civilised society.

SOURCE






Air Force Throttles Back War on Faith
   
For combat pilot Leland Bohannon, it’s been a turbulent year. One promotion shy of his first general’s star, the Air Force colonel watched his 24-year career flash before his eyes last May when he was asked to sign a certificate of appreciation for a same-sex couple. When his religious accommodation wasn’t granted, Bohannon asked a higher-ranking officer to sign it instead. Now, months after wondering if he’d ever be able to return to the military he loved, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson gave him the answer he’d been waiting for: yes.

For Bohannon, who’d been grounded, suspended, and virtually guaranteed that he’d never be promoted for his beliefs on marriage, the news of his reinstatement was almost as shocking as his temporary dismissal. As most service members understand all too well, religious hostility in the military didn’t disappear when Barack Obama did. President Trump has had to walk a long and determined road to weed out the bureaucrats still loyal to the intolerance of the last administration. And thankfully, he has leaders like Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson to help him do it.

Wilson had been clear before she was confirmed: “Air Force policy must continue to ensure that all Airmen are able to choose to practice their particular religion.” This week, she proved it — vindicating Bohannon and creating an important precedent for other branch leaders to follow. As our own Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin points out, that was no easy task. An Equal Opportunity investigator had already determined Bohannon was guilty of discrimination, even after his request for a religious accommodation.

“When you overrule an inspector general or independent investigator, that’s a big deal,” Gen. Boykin insisted. “That takes a lot of time and a lot of nerve. It’s very rare.” Still, Wilson had plenty of motivation to try. Eight senators had called on the Air Force to stop punishing Bohannon’s beliefs, along with House Armed Services members like Reps. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) and Doug Lamborn (R-CO). In December, supporters of FRC and American Family Association piled on, giving Wilson 77,024 reasons to reconsider the attack on this airman’s faith. “We not only delivered 77,024 petitions,” Gen. Boykin said, “we delivered a message: We will not back down from defending the religious liberty of those in the military.”

Message received. “The Air Force places a high value on the rights of its members to observe the tenets of their respective religions or to observe no religion at all,” Wilson explained in a letter to House and Senate leaders, absolving the colonel of wrongdoing. “… Colonel Bohannon had the right to exercise his sincerely held religious beliefs and did not unlawfully discriminate when he declined to sign the certificate of appreciation for the same-sex spouse of an Airman in his command,” the secretary went on. “The Air Force has a duty to treat people fairly and without discrimination on the basis of race, color, sex, national origin, or sexual orientation and [Bohannon] met that duty by having a more senior officer sign the certificate,” she concluded.

For our friends at First Liberty Institute, which represented Bohannon, it was cause to celebrate — not just for this colonel but for the thousands of men and women who are witnessing this president’s commitment to religious liberty. “This is clear evidence that the Trump administration is helping to right the ship at the Pentagon,” attorney Hiram Sasser told Fox News’s Todd Starnes. No one should be forced to check their faith at the base’s gates.

So the next time you wonder if signing a petition or calling your congressman makes a difference, think of Col. Bohannon. You have the power to help shape the direction of this country — use it!

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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6 April, 2018

Far-right views now mainstream in Europe: Warning issued after Poland blames Jews for their own destruction, Hungary declares that Europeans should not 'mix' with Africans and Croatia thanks Argentina for welcoming Croatian Nazi sympathizers

After decades of being physically and mentally oppressed under the Soviet boot, virtually everyone in central Europe is patriotic -- pleased and proud to be who and what they are  -- pleased to be no longer part of a grey mass.  So they resist attacks on their identity. 

And they sometimes go to extremes in rejecting any pressures towards making them part of an international  cultural melting pot -- they go to the enemies of socialism on the grounds that the enemy of my enemy is my friend.  Internationalism there just provokes nationalism.  They had enough of internationalism under Communism so sometimes look to its oppposite for a model.

In America, by contrast, there are many patriots but they are largely neutered by another half of the population -- "liberals" -- who hate America and who do everything they can to harm America and its way of life.  Attempts by conservative Americans to preserve their American way of life are met with shrieks of "racism"

Far-right views are now mainstream in Europe, is the stark warning coming from a leading historian. 

Polish officials recently blamed Jewish people for their 'own destruction' while the Hungarian Prime Minster declared Europeans should not 'mix' with Africans.

The Croatian president on a trip to Argentina came under fire from a Holocaust survivors charity for thanking the country for taking in 'notorious' pro-Nazi criminals. 

Ton Junes, who works with the Human and Social Studies Foundation in Bulgaria, says the events all show a worrying trend for a rise in far-right views.

'There is something broader going on in the region which has produced a patriotic, nativist, conservative discourse through which far-right ideas managed to become mainstream,' the expert explained.

Ever since WWII, such views were taboo in Europe, confined to the far-right fringes. Today they are openly expressed by mainstream political leaders in parts of Central and Eastern Europe, part of a populist surge in the face of globalization and mass migration.

But Mr Junes said the shift to the right has included the rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators, often fighters or groups celebrated as anti-communists or defenders of national liberation. 

In Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban recently claimed Hungarians don't want their 'own color, traditions and national culture to be mixed by others.'

While the Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki listed 'Jewish perpetrators' as among those who were responsible for the Holocaust. 

His comments come just months after nationalists held a large Independence Day march in November, carrying banners calling for a 'White Europe'.  

In both countries, governments are also eroding the independence of courts and the media, prompting human rights groups to warn that democracy is threatened in parts of a region that threw off Moscow-backed dictatorships in 1989.

While that claim is difficult to prove with concrete evidence, it's clear that the growth of radical groups has pushed moderate conservative European parties to the right to hold onto votes.

That's the case in Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his Fidesz party - the front-runner in the country's April 8 parliamentary election - have drawn voters with an increasingly strident anti-migrant campaign.

Casting himself as the savior of a white Christian Europe being overrun by Muslims and Africans, Orban has insisted that Hungarians don't want their 'own color, traditions and national culture to be mixed by others.'

Orban, who is friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin, was also the first European leader to endorse Donald Trump in the 2016 U.S. presidential race. In 2015 he erected a razor-wire fence at Hungary's borders to stop migrants from crossing, and has since been warning in apocalyptic terms that the West faces racial and civilizational 'suicide' if the migration continues.

Orban has also been obsessed with demonizing financier and philanthropist George Soros, falsely portraying the Hungarian-born Holocaust survivor as an advocate of uncontrolled immigration into Europe.

In what critics denounce as a state-sponsored conspiracy theory with anti-Semitic overtones, the Hungarian government spent $48.5 million on anti-Soros ads in 2017, according to the investigative news site atlatszo.hu.

In a recent speech, Orban denounced Soros in language that echoed anti-Semitic clich?s of the 20th century. He said Hungary's foes 'do not believe in work, but speculate with money; they have no homeland, but feel that the whole world is theirs.'

In Poland, xenophobic language is also on the rise. When nationalists held a large Independence Day march in November and some carried banners calling for a 'White Europe' and 'Clean Blood,' the interior minister called it a 'beautiful sight.'

Poland's government has also been embroiled in a bitter dispute with Israel and Jewish organizations over a national law that would criminalize blaming Poland for Germany's Holocaust crimes. Critics say that could allow a whitewash of history.

With tensions running high, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki listed 'Jewish perpetrators' as among those who were responsible for the Holocaust. He also visited the Munich grave of an underground Polish resistance group that had collaborated with the Nazis.

In the same vein, an official tapped to create a major new history museum in Warsaw has condemned the postwar tribunals in Nuremberg, Germany - where top Nazis were judged - as 'the greatest judicial farce in the history of Europe.'

Arkadiusz Karbowiak said the Nuremberg trials were only 'possible because of the serious role of Jews' in their organization, and called them 'the place where the official religion of the Holocaust was created.'

Across the region, Roma, Muslims, Jews and other minorities have expressed anxiety about the future.

But nationalists insist they are not promoting hate. They argue they're defending their national sovereignty and their Christian way of life against globalization and the large-scale influx of migrants who don't assimilate.

The Balkans, bloodied by ethnic warfare in the 1990s, are also seeing a rise of nationalism, particularly in Serbia and Croatia. Political analysts there believe that Russian propaganda is spurring old ethnic resentments.

Croatia has steadily drifted to the right since joining the EU in 2013. Some officials there have denied the Holocaust or reappraised Croatia's ultranationalist, pro-Nazi Ustasha regime, which killed tens of thousands of Jews, Serbs, Roma and anti-fascist Croats in wartime prison camps.

On a recent visit to Argentina, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarovic thanked the country for providing post-war refuge to Croats who had belonged to the Ustasha regime.

The world's top Nazi hunter, Efraim Zuroff of the Wiesenthal center, called her statement 'a horrific insult to victims.' Grabar-Kitarovic later said she had not meant to glorify a totalitarian regime.

Meanwhile in Bulgaria, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, the government includes a far-right alliance, the United Patriots, whose members have given Nazi salutes and slurred minorities. Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Simeonov has called the country's Roma minority 'ferocious humanoids' whose women 'have the instincts of street dogs.'

Junes, the researcher, says even though hate crimes are on the rise in Bulgaria, the problem has raised little concern in the West because the country keeps its public debt in check and is not challenging the fundamental Western consensus, unlike Poland and Hungary.

'Bulgaria isn't rocking the boat,' Junes said. 'They play along with Europe.'

While populist and far-right groups are also growing in parts of Western Europe, countries like Poland and Hungary are proving more vulnerable to the same challenges, said Peter Kreko, director of Political Capital Institute, a Budapest-based think tank.

'In younger, weaker, more fragile democracies,' Kreko said, 'right-wing populism is more dangerous because it can weaken and even demolish the democratic institutions.'

SOURCE 






The British Labour leader knows who his friends are

Jeremy Corbyn has insisted he “learnt a lot” by attending an event hosted by a far-Left Jewish group which has called for the destruction of Israel.

The Labour leader was accused by some of his own MPs of acting "irresponsibly and dangerously" after he was photographed at a Passover Seder hosted by Jewdas, a satirical group which is highly critical of mainstream Jewish organisations and has dismissed the anti-Semitism row engulfing the Labour Party as “faux-outrage”.

The group has described Israel as a “steaming pile of sewage which needs to be properly disposed of” and last week attacked the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the Jewish Leadership Council’s response to the Labour anti-Semitism..

SOURCE





Leftmedia's Deliberate Mischaracterization of Christianity

From National Public Radio to NBC News to CNN, the mainstream media’s ignorant misrepresentation of basic and central Christian beliefs and doctrines would be understandable if it wasn’t for the fact that Christianity is the religion practiced by some 70% of Americans. On Good Friday, NPR published an article that addressed a report that Pope Francis had denied the existence of hell. NPR originally described Easter as “the day celebrating the idea that Jesus did not die and go to hell or purgatory or anywhere at all, but rather arose into heaven.” After receiving much deserved blowback, NPR corrected the piece to read, “Easter — the day Christians celebrate Jesus’ Resurrection.” How could NPR get one of the most foundational beliefs of Christianity so terribly wrong?

Far worse, NBC News marked the sacred occasion with a piece entitled, “On Easter Sunday, Christians must remember how easily and often our faith is used to defend white supremacy.” The article relays a story of a bunch of white southern racists who murdered several blacks and other defenders of Reconstruction one Easter Sunday in 1873 in Colfax County, Louisiana. It is indeed a horrific story, but it is far from emblematic of Christian beliefs or practices. And it was 145 years ago. Ironically, the article does exactly what it condemns — it seeks to co-opt the Christian message, ignoring its central teachings, so as to promote an anti-Donald Trump pro-leftist political cause. The question once again is how did the MSM get the Christian doctrine of Easter this wrong?

But then there was what may have been the worst understanding of Easter — this one from CNN. In an article titled, “How Easter became a #MeToo moment,” which was not listed as an opinion piece, author John Blake asserted that Jesus was a victim of sexual humiliation as a result of being hung naked on the cross, and therefore “if linking the Easter story with the #MeToo movement is offensive and bewildering to some, perhaps that is fitting.” Additionally, Mary Magdalene was a #MeToo victim of male authority. Blake continued, “The Easter stories in the Gospels have a jarring, unexpected quality about them as well. … The stories are enigmatic and elusive. They continue to yield surprises even 2,000 years later. They are, in some ways, much like the figure of Jesus himself.” While attempting to sound profound, Blake reveals once again a shocking amount of ignorance of what Easter is actually all about.

A journalist should be primarily concerned with accurately reporting the news, not promoting an agenda. However, the vast majority of MSM reporters have committed themselves to the promotion of the “progressive” cause. And in so doing, they have created simplistic and flawed caricatures of those they revile, like Christians. Then speaking as if they fully grasp the true motives and beliefs of those they oppose, they label them foolish and backwards. As the Apostle Paul astutely predicted, “The message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Cor. 1:18).

Christianity is not about promoting white supremacy, a political agenda or as a means of awakening Americans to some “social justice” cause. The message of Easter is that Christ accomplished what He came into the world to do — defeat sin and death and rescue sinners from hell. All who believe in Jesus can rest in certain hope that they like Him will one day rise from the grave and live with Him in Heaven forever, having been fully forgiven and cleansed from all their sins. This is what Christians celebrate at Easter.

SOURCE





British Prime Minister pledges to tackle 'burning injustice' of the gender pay gap

The woman is brainless.  There is no gap once you take into account the fact that men and women tend to do different things.  My respect for her was low after her unjustified insults to Russia but now I have no respect for her at all.  She is just a stupid old bag

Britain's gender pay gap is a "burning injustice" which must be tackled as the whole of society will remain "poorer" if outdated employment practices go unchallenged, the Prime Minister warned on Tuesday.

In an article for The Telegraph, Theresa May admits that the gender pay figures make "uncomfortable reading" for many businesses as she compares today's battle for workplace equality to the struggle for universal suffrage a century ago.

The Prime Minister's article comes ahead of Wednesday's deadline for larger firms to disclose the average pay gap between male and female workers.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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5 April, 2015

British Labour leader says Labour will use foreign aid billions to spread feminist ideals across the globe

Jeremy Corbyn will use billions of pounds of foreign aid to spread Left-wing and feminist ideals across the world, Labour said last night.

He would also abandon the Tory principle of spending the aid budget in the British national interest.

Labour has pledged to bring in the UK's first 'explicitly feminist' international development policy to 'challenge patriarchy' by tripling funding for women's groups. Mr Corbyn said he would challenge 'global elites' and 'redistribute power'.

The Department for International Development has been criticised in the past for supporting certain projects intended to empower women.

This included spending £9million on Ethiopia's version of the Spice Girls, Yegna, which the DfID has now stopped funding, admitting the money could be better spent elsewhere.

Mr Corbyn would oppose privatisation, push for a global wealth tax and 'tackle the root causes of inequality'. Labour said taxpayers' money would be spent on a new Social Justice Fund to support political activists in the developing world.

Funding for schemes involving fossil fuels would be scrapped to promote a climate change agenda. And DfID would be represented on the government body responsible for sanctioning arms sales.

Following abuses of power and sexual exploitation in the aid sector, Labour's new aid plan – A World For The Many Not The Few – promised to transfer power away from the aid industry and into the hands of people and communities. 'We must find ways to unite across borders in solidarity against elite control of our global economy,' it says.

Regarding its support of women, the party said it would ensure all foreign and trade policy had 'positive gender impacts'.

'A Labour government will implement the UK's first explicitly feminist international development policy,' it said. The report pledged a 'gender transformative approach' across all of DfID's work as well as 'gender budgeting'.

It called for an international commission to explore the possibility of a global wealth tax, as proposed by Left-wing economist Thomas Piketty.

Aid money would be channelled towards helping countries tackle tax avoidance, and low income countries would be given preferential trade access.

Labour would end British support for public-private partnerships overseas and privately-funded aid firms. There would be no more cash for fee-paying schools and private finance initiative healthcare schemes. The party accused the Conservatives of 'simplistic charity' rather than promoting social justice – and criticised Tories for 'shifting the focus of the aid budget from poverty reduction alone to what it called the national interest'.

Aligning the DfID's funding to the 'short-term' national interest would end and Labour would focus on the 'moral purpose of poverty reduction'.

The report also claimed Britain should be happy to continue giving financial support to India, even though it is now rich enough to afford its own space programme, because aid cash can help tackle inequality.

Mr Corbyn said in the foreword to Labour's report: 'The Conservatives won't challenge the rigged system that has created global crisis because they are at the heart of that system.

'They reduce aid to a matter of charity, rather than one of power and social justice. Worse, they seem ever too ready to abandon our development commitments to the world's poorest. We don't have to accept the world that global elites are building for us. Let's take on the root causes of poverty, inequality and climate change, and not just their symptoms.'

David Cameron enshrined in law the pledge that the UK spends 0.7 per cent of national income on foreign aid. British aid spending now far exceeds the average among other developed economies.

SOURCE





In the War Against Faith-Based Adoption Agencies, Children Lose

I’m a lawyer. I confess that math was never my strong suit, and I figured that law school would keep me safe from it. I did, however, pick up on some of the more basic concepts—like greater than or less than, and more versus less. Surely, we can all agree on the basic math supporting the following statements:

For the more than 100,000 children waiting to be adopted in America, more adoption agencies to help with placing them means a greater opportunity to find a forever home.

For the countless moms wrestling over whether to place their child up for adoption, more adoption agencies to choose from means greater opportunities to find one that will walk with her compassionately through that difficult decision, stick with her afterward, and align with her values, beliefs, and hopes for her child.

For the children who are most difficult to place—the severely abused, older children, and those with special needs—more adoption agencies to help place them means a greater opportunity to find a family.

Sadly, many on the far left don’t seem to agree with this basic math—or worse, if they do, they don’t seem to care.

One of their latest strategies is an attempt to shut down faith-based adoption agencies. The result is indeed a dangerous numbers game, but the victims ultimately will be the 100,000 children waiting to be adopted and the birth moms looking for a placement agency to meet their needs.

The left is targeting faith-based adoption agencies because they—no surprise—tend to operate their adoption ministries according to their faith. In fact, it is usually their faith that inspires them to serve children and moms in need, and to work for a private, faith-based agency, usually earning less than their state-employed counterparts, in the first place.

Faith-based agencies typically place children in homes where their faith teaches them that children will best thrive—homes with a married mother and father.

Moms usually select faith-based agencies to work with because they want their child placed in a home that aligns with their faith, or because the agency was the one that took the time to really listen and walk with them through a difficult time.

The left believes these agencies shouldn’t be permitted to operate according to their faith. Instead, they should place children with same-sex couples or even transgender individuals—regardless of what may be best for the child, the birth mother’s wishes, or the agency’s religious beliefs.

So, they are attempting to pass laws or regulations in the states that would force faith-based agencies to shut down or else violate their faith.

Several states have already worked to pass laws specifically protecting faith-based adoption agencies, including Alabama, Michigan, South Dakota, and Texas. Georgia and Kansas are considering similar bills this year.

One bill, the Child Welfare Provider Inclusion Act, has even been introduced at the federal level by Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyo., to protect faith-based agencies.

The Family Policy Alliance will continue to work toward each state protecting its faith-based adoption providers, and we hope you will join us.

With more than 100,000 children waiting to be adopted in America, each state averages 2,000 children waiting for a forever family.

If the left succeeds in its latest tactic, the results will be simple math:

Even more children on the waiting list to find forever homes.
Far fewer opportunities for birth moms to find an agency that will meet her needs.

Far fewer opportunities for difficult-to-place children to find families, especially since faith-based agencies often specialize in placing these children.

If the left succeeds in shutting down faith-based adoption centers, the reality is that men and women who have a heart for serving these children and moms in need will find another way to do so through their church or community.

In an attempt to “punish” faith-based providers for their beliefs, the left will ultimately end up punishing the many children and birth moms in need—in your state, and every state.

It’s a numbers game, but it literally comes at the cost of the orphans we’ve been tasked with caring for as believers.

SOURCE




One Christian baker has a win

The story is all too familiar by now: A same-sex couple asks a religious baker to custom create a wedding cake. The baker politely apologizes, but the resulting lawsuit shuts down the bakery.

But this time, the story has a different ending—for now.

Cathy Miller runs a bakery in Bakersfield, California, called Tastries Bakery. Because Miller’s religious convictions prevented her from using her creative expression to lend support to a same-sex wedding, she referred the couple to a competing bakery.

After the couple filed an administrative complaint, the state of California filed suit against Miller. The lawsuit sought to use the coercive power of government to compel her to create custom wedding cakes with messages that violate her religious convictions.

In other words, bake the cake or go out of business. But this is where the story takes a turn.

Earlier this month, a California state court ruled in favor of Miller. According to the court’s opinion, the law allows room for disagreement between people of goodwill. The state cannot compel Miller to create custom wedding cakes if she does not wish to convey a particular message.

The court concluded that it has an obligation to protect free speech for everyone. More directly, Judge David Lampe reasoned that, while everyone should be able to purchase ready-made goods regardless of what the customer plans to do with the goods, custom art is different.

Lampe concluded, “The state is not petitioning the court to order defendants to sell a cake.” Something more is at stake.

According to Lampe, the state of California was trying to “compel Miller to use her talents to design and create a cake she has not yet conceived with the knowledge that her work will be displayed in celebration of a marital union her religion forbids.”

In the modern context, the judge’s wisdom is remarkable. Just ask Jack Phillips, another baker who was fined by his state’s government for similar reasons, and whose appeal is currently before the United States Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

Yet, based on decades of Supreme Court precedent, it is nothing new.

Courts have long regarded the First Amendment as protecting Americans against a government that would force someone to express a government-approved message. The idea that the government should be able to use its power to force someone to express something against his or her conscience is anathema to the very purpose of the First Amendment.

This is why the ACLU is right when, in explaining the law on “Freedom of Expression in the Arts and Entertainment,” it says, “Freedom of expression for ourselves requires freedom of expression for others.”

Lampe’s reasoning, like the ACLU’s, draws from a well-established line of Supreme Court cases protecting everyone’s right to be free from the government telling you what to say—or believe.

For instance, in the landmark 1943 case West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, the Supreme Court ruled that the government could not compel a Jehovah’s Witness student to salute the flag or say the Pledge of Allegiance—and that was when such an act of peaceful protest was seen as dangerous to national unity.

Then as now, the point is the same: The First Amendment protects expression, artistic or otherwise. The state cannot force citizens to create a government-approved message.

The Supreme Court’s forthcoming decision in Masterpiece Cakeshop may affect cases like Miller’s throughout the country. For instance, my firm, First Liberty Institute, represents Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of Sweet Cakes by Melissa, a bakery in Oregon penalized $135,000 for declining to create a custom wedding cake because of their religious beliefs. Their case will soon be appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court. Cathy’s case will likely be appealed, too.

But the First Amendment is not designed to protect only popular speech. The true test of whether we actually believe in the promise of the First Amendment is speech we find socially controversial.

Popular ideas are not in great danger of being suppressed or silenced. The true test of our commitment to freedom is if we welcome that disagreement and live peaceably as neighbors anyway.

Lampe passed that test. We hope others will, too.

SOURCE





Australia: Counsellor Fired for posting factual but politically incorrect Domestic violence article on Facebook

An email from Bettina Arndt below

I have an amazing story for you. I have a good friend in Perth, a young relationship counsellor who I have worked with for many years, both by sending him referrals and working together in various media appearances. He’s extremely skilled but even more importantly when I send couples to him I know he will give both sides a proper hearing and that is rare. I hear from so many men complaining that female counsellors blatantly support the female client and refuse to acknowledge the male perspective.

After almost a decade working for one of our leading counselling organisations my friend has just been fired for posting my article about domestic violence on his Facebook page. For those of you who don’t know the article, see below.

I simply present the true facts about domestic violence, challenging the current orthodoxy that all perpetrators are male. According to the managers who fired my friend, my views contravened the domestic violence policy promoted by this government-funded organisation.

We now have lawyers helping him mount a discrimination and unlawful dismissal case. Depending on how that turns out I may well be introducing him to you via my YouTube videos at some later date.

But in the meantime he has very little income – they have refused to pass on his details to his current clients. So I am reaching out to all my supporters to ask you to spread the word about this wonderful counsellor. He’s happy to conduct skype or telephone counselling with clients across Australia but you can see him in person if you live in Perth. He’s very knowledgeable about sexual issues, and has previously run many male sexuality workshops. I also find he is particularly good at helping young people gain confidence about relationships – so he’s helpful to individuals, not just couples.      

Please contact me for his details if you know would like to use his services or refer him on to someone you know.

I’ll let you know how this whole ghastly business turns out. I must say I feel rather responsible for the plight he is in and would like to try to help him.





Domestic violence: data shows women are not the only victims

BETTINA ARNDT

Eva Solberg is a Swedish politician, a proud feminist who holds an important post as chairwoman of the party Moderate Women. Last year she was presented with her government’s latest strategy for combating domestic violence. Like similar reports across the world, this strategy assumes the only way to tackle domestic violence is through teaching misogynist men (and boys) to behave themselves.

The Swedish politician spat the dummy. Writing on the news site Nyheter24, Solberg took issue with her government’s “tired gendered analysis”, which argued that eradicating sexism was the solution to the problem of domestic violence. She explained her reasoning: “We know through extensive practice and experience that attempts to solve the issue through this kind of analysis have failed. And they failed precisely because violence is not and never has been a gender issue.”

Solberg challenged the government report’s assumption that there was a guilty sex and an innocent one. “Thanks to extensive research in the field, both at the national and international level, we now know with great certainty that this breakdown by sex is simply not true.”

She made reference to the world’s largest research database on intimate partner violence, the Partner Abuse State of Knowledge project, which summarises more than 1700 scientific papers on the topic.

She concluded that her government’s report was based on misinformation about family violence and that, contrary to the report’s one-sided view of men as the only perpetrators, many children were experiencing a very different reality: “We must recognise the fact that domestic violence, in at least half of its occurrence, is carried out by female perpetrators.”

One of the key patterns that emerged from PASK, Solberg said, was that violence in the family was an inherited problem and children learned from watching the violence of both their parents. “To know this and then continue to ignore the damage done to the children who are today subjected to violence is a huge social betrayal,” she concluded. “The road to a solution for this social problem is hardly to stubbornly continue to feed the patient with more of the same medicine that has already been tried for decades.”

There’s a certain irony that this happened in Sweden, the utopia for gender equality and the last place you would expect misogyny to be blamed for a major social evil. But despite Scandinavian countries being world leaders in gender equality (as shown by the 2014 World Economic Forum’s global gender gap index), Nordic women experience the worst physical or sexual violence in the EU. Given this inconvenient truth it seems extraordinary that for decades the gendered analysis of domestic violence has retained its grip on Sweden — as it has in other Western countries, including Australia.

No one would deny that it was a great achievement to have men’s violence against women fully acknowledged and to take critical steps to protect vulnerable women and ensure their safety.

But it has been shocking to watch this morph into a worldwide domestic violence industry determined to ignore evidence showing the complexities of violence in the home and avoid prevention strategies that would tackle the real risk factors underpinning this vital social issue.

Here, too, we are witnessing Solberg’s “huge social betrayal” by denying the reality of the violence being witnessed by many Australian children.

Just look at the bizarre $30 million television campaign the federal government ran a few months ago, which started with a little boy slamming a door in a little girl’s face. A series of vignettes followed, all about innocent females cowering from nasty males.

The whole thing is based on the erroneous notion that domestic violence is caused by disrespect for women, precisely the type of “tired gender analysis” that Solberg has so thoroughly discredited.

Yet our government spent at least $700,000 in funding for research and production of this campaign — just one example of the shocking misuse of the hundreds of millions of dollars that Malcolm Turnbull boasts our government is spending on domestic violence.

Our key organisations all sing from the same songbook, regularly distorting statistics to present only one part of this complex story.

There is a history of this in Australia. “Up to one quarter of young people in Australia have witnessed an incident of physical or domestic violence against their mother or stepmother,” Adam Graycar, a former director of the Australian Institute of Criminology, wrote in an introduction to a 2001 paper, Young Australians and Domestic Violence, a brief overview of the much larger Young People and Domestic Violence study.

Somehow Graycar failed to mention that while 23 per cent of young people were aware of domestic violence against their mothers or stepmothers, an almost identical proportion (22 per cent) of young people were aware of domestic violence against their fathers or stepfathers by their mothers or stepmothers — as shown in the same study.

This type of omission is everywhere today, with most of our bureaucracies downplaying statistics that demonstrate the role of women in family violence and beating up evidence of male aggression.

How often have we been told we face an epidemic of domestic violence? It’s simply not true. Most Australian women are lucky enough to live in a peaceful society where the men in their lives treat them well.

The official data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows violence against women has decreased across the 20-year period it has been studied, with the proportion of adult women experiencing physical violence from their male partner in the preceding year down from 2.6 per cent in 1996 to 0.8 per cent in 2012. (Violence from ex-partners dropped from 3.3 per cent to 0.7 per cent.)

“There’s no evidence that we’re in the middle of an epidemic of domestic violence,” says Don Weatherburn, the respected director of the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research, confirming that these figures from national surveys carried out by the ABS provide the best data on domestic violence in the country.

He adds that in NSW “serious forms of domestic assault, such as assault inflicting grievous bodily harm, have actually come down by 11 per cent over the last 10 years”.

The most recent statistics from the ABS Personal Safety Survey show 1.06 per cent of women are physically assaulted by their partner or ex-partner each year in Australia. This figure is derived from the 2012 PSS and published in its Horizons report by Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety, available at http://bit.ly/1ZYSyEj. The rate is obtained by dividing cell B9 in Table 19 (93,400) by the total female residential population aged 18 and older (8,735,400).

One in 100 women experiencing this physical violence from their partners is obviously a matter of great concern. But this percentage is very different from the usual figures being trotted out. You’ll never find the figure of 1.06 per cent mentioned by any of the domestic violence organisations in this country. Their goal is to fuel the flames, to promote an alarmist reaction with the hope of attracting ever greater funding for the cause.

What we hear from them is that one in three women are victims of violence. But that’s utterly misleading because it doesn’t just refer to domestic violence. These statistics are also taken from the Personal Safety Survey but refer to the proportion of adult women who have experienced any type of physical violence at all (or threat of violence.) So we’re not just talking about violence by a partner or violence in the home but any aggressive incident, even involving a perfect stranger — such as an altercation with an aggressive shopping trolley driver or an incident of road rage.

That’s partly how the figure inflates to one in three, but it also doesn’t even refer to what’s happening now because these figures include lifetime incidents for adult women — so with our 70-year-olds the violence could have taken place more than 50 years ago. And the equivalent figure for men is worse — one in two.

As for the most horrific crimes, where domestic violence ends in homicide, we are constantly told that domestic violence kills one woman every week. That’s roughly true.

According to AIC figures, one woman is killed by an intimate partner or ex-partner every nine days. One man is killed by his partner about every 30 days. So it is important to acknowledge that male violence is likelier to result in injury or death than female violence towards a partner.

The fact remains that almost a quarter (23.1 per cent) of victims of intimate partner homicide are male — and we hardly ever hear about these deaths.

It is not serving our society well to downplay the fact female violence can also be lethal, towards men and towards children: women account for more than half of all murders of children (52 per cent).

These are all still alarming statistics but here, too, there is good news. Domestic homicides are ­de­creasing. The number of victims of intimate partner homicide drop­ped by almost a third (28 per cent) between 1989-90 and 2010-12, according to data supplied by the AIC (http://bit.ly/2bxn1GO).

Chris Lloyd is one of a growing number of Australian academics concerned at the misrepresentation of domestic violence statistics in this country. An expert in statistics and data management at the Melbourne Business School, Lloyd confirms our best source of data, the ABS’s Personal Safety Survey, clearly demonstrates domestic violence is decreasing.

He, too, says it’s wrong to suggest there’s an epidemic of domestic violence in this country. “Many of the quoted statistics around domestic violence are exaggerated or incorrect,” says Lloyd. “Contrary to popular belief and commentary, rates of intimate partner violence are not increasing.” He adds that while he understands the emotional reaction people have to this crime, “emotion is no basis for public policy”.

He’s concerned that Australian media so often publishes misinformation — such as a recent editorial in The Age that repeated the falsehood that domestic violence was the leading cause of death or illness for adult women in Victoria.

As I explained in my Inquirer article “Silent victims” last year (http://bit.ly/29CV5zD), it doesn’t even make the list of the top 10 such causes. The Age ignored Lloyd’s efforts to correct its mistake, ditto his concern about erroneous media reports that inflated domestic violence figures by using police crime statistics — a notoriously unreliable source.

As Weatherburn points out, it’s very difficult to determine whether swelling numbers of incidents reported to police reflects an increase in actual crime. “It may simply be a tribute to the excellent job that has been done to raise awareness of DV, encouraging women to report, and efforts to get the police to respond properly,” he points out.

Weatherburn believes that the slight (5.7 per cent) increase in reports of domestic assault in NSW during the past 10 years could be due to an increase in victims’ willingness to report domestic assault; he points to the 11 per cent drop across that time in serious forms of domestic assault, such as assault inflicting grievous bodily harm, as a more reliable picture of the trend in domestic violence.

Weatherburn adds that valid comparisons of state police figures on assault are impossible because each police force has a different approach to recording assault. But in many states the goalposts have also shifted.

The explosion in police records is due in part to recent expansions in the definition of family violence to include not just physical abuse but also threats of violence, psychological, emotional, economic and social abuse. Look at Western Australia, where this changed definition was introduced in 2004. That year West Australian police recorded 17,000 incidents of violence, but by 2012 this had almost tripled to 45,000.

Other states report similar trends because of these expanded definitions.

“If a woman turns up to a police station claiming her man has yelled at her, the chances are that she’ll end up with a police report and well on her way to obtaining an apprehended violence order, which puts her in a very powerful position,” says Augusto Zimmermann, a commissioner with the Law Reform Commission of Western Australia, who explains that AVOs can be used to force men to leave their homes and deny them contact with their children.

Often men are caught in police proceedings and evicted from their homes by orders that are issued without any evidence of legal wrongdoing. “It is a frightening reality that here in Australia a perfectly innocent citizen stands to lose his home, his family, his reputation, as a result of unfounded allegations. This is happening to men every day (as a consequence) of domestic violence laws which fail to require the normal standards of proof and presumptions of innocence,” Zimmermann says, adding that he’s not talking about genuine cases of violent men who seriously abuse their wives and children but “law-abiding people who have lost their parental and property rights without the most basic requirements of the rule of law”.

The growing trend for AVOs to be used for tactical purposes in family law disputes is also pushing up police records of domestic violence. “Rather than being motivated by legitimate concerns about feeling safe, a woman can make an application to AVO simply because she was advised by lawyers to look for any reason to apply for such an order when facing a family law dispute,” says Zimmermann, who served on a recent government inquiry into legal issues and domestic violence.

A survey of NSW magistrates found 90 per cent agreed that AVOs were being used as a divorce tactic. Research by family law professor Patrick Parkinson and colleagues from the University of Sydney revealed that lawyers were suggesting that clients obtain AVOs, explaining to them that verbal and emotional abuse were enough to do the trick

The bottom line is that police reports tell us little and the ABS Personal Safety Survey remains our best source of data, showing the true picture of domestic violence. But there’s one more vital fact revealed by that survey that rarely surfaces: men account for one in three victims of partner violence.

You’ll never find this figure mentioned on Our Watch, one of our leading domestic violence organisations, annually attracting government grants of up to $2 million. In May, when Lucy Turnbull became an ambassador for Our Watch, she was welcomed by its chief executive, Mary Barry, who thanked the ambassadors for “engaging Australians to call out disrespect and violence towards women and advocating for gender equality”, which was “exactly what the evidence says is needed to end the epidemic”.

Our Watch staff spend their time writing policy documents and running conferences all firmly locked into the gender equity framework. The site’s facts-and-figures pages include lists of cherry-picked statistics about violence against women but male victims are dismissed by simply stating that the “overwhelming majority of acts of domestic violence are perpetrated by men against women”.

There’s an interesting parallel here. As it happens, this one-in-three ratio is similar to the proportions of suicides among men and women. Among males, 2.8 per cent of all deaths in 2014 were attributed to suicide, while the rate for females was 0.9 per cent. Imagine the public outcry if the smaller number of female suicides were used to justify committing the entire suicide prevention budget to men. So why is it that all our government organisations are getting away with doing just that with the hundreds of millions being spent on domestic violence?

According to one of Australia’s leading experts on couple relationships, Kim Halford, a professor of clinical psychology at the University of Queensland, most family violence does not fit the picture most of us have when we imagine domestic violence — a violent man severely beating up his partner to control her. Such violence makes up less than 1 per cent of family ­violence.

Most family violence is two-way aggression, with international research showing about a third of couples have a go at each other — pushing, slapping, shoving or worse. Given the shame and stigma associated with being a male victim of family violence it is not surprising that men downplay these experiences in victim surveys such as Australia’s Personal Safety Survey. It’s only when men and women are asked about perpetrating violence that the two-way violence emerges, with women readily admitting to researchers that they are very actively involved and often instigate this type of “couple violence”.

“Thirty years of international research consistently shows that women and men are violent towards each other at about the same rate,” Halford tells Inquirer.

As one example, two major meta-analysis studies conducted by psychology professor John Archer from Britain’s University of Central Lancashire in 2000 and 2002 found that women were likelier than men to report acts such as pushing, slapping or throwing something at their partner. Archer pointed out that women were likelier to be injured as a result of the couple violence, although there was still a substantial minority of injured male victims.

This two-way violence wasn’t what most researchers expected to find, admits a leading researcher in this area, Terrie Moffitt from Duke University in the US. “We asked the girls questions like, ‘Have you hit your partner?’ ‘Have you thrown your partner across the room?’ ‘Have you used a knife on your partner?’ I thought we were wasting our time asking these questions but they said yes, and they said yes in just the same numbers as the boys did.” Moffitt’s work with young people was part of the world-­renowned Dunedin longitudinal study back in the 1990s that ­recently featured on the SBS series Predict My Future (http://bit.ly/29NEDwQ).

It is telling that Australia has not conducted any of the large-scale surveys focusing on perpetrating violence likely to reveal the two-way pattern shown elsewhere. But gender symmetry did emerge in violence studies published in 2010-11 by Halford that focused on couples at the start of their relationships, newlywed couples and couples expecting a child together. Even with these early relationships, about a quarter of the women admit they have been violent towards their partners — just as many as the men.

Halford suggests that perhaps three-quarters of a million children every year in Australia are witnessing both parents engaged in domestic violence. Only small numbers see the severe violence we hear so much about, what the feminists call “intimate terrorism”, where a perpetrator uses violence in combination with a variety of other coercive tactics to take control over their partner, but as Halford points out, even less severe couple violence is not trivial.

“Children witnessing any form of family violence, including couple violence, suffer high rates of mental health problems and the children are more likely to be violent themselves. Couple violence is also a very strong predictor of relationship break-up, which has profound effects on adults and their children,” he says.

The 2001 Young People and Domestic Violence study mentioned earlier was based on national research involving 5000 young Australians aged 12 to 20. This found ample evidence that children were witnessing this two-way parental couple violence, with 14.4 per cent witnessing “couple violence”, 9 per cent witnessing male to female violence only and 7.8 per cent witnessing female to male violence only — which means about one in four young Australians have this detrimental start to their lives. The report found the most damage to children occurred when they witnessed both parents involved in violence.

It is often claimed that women hit only in self-defence, but Halford points out the evidence shows this is not true. “In fact, one of the strongest risk factors for a woman being hit by a male partner is her hitting that male partner. It’s absolutely critical that we tackle couple violence if we really want to stop this escalation into levels of violence which cause women serious injury,” he says. Of course, the impact on children is the other important reason to make couple violence a significant focus.

Naturally, none of this rates a mention in the section on “what drives violence against women” in the official government framework (http://bit.ly/2a3sVOQ) promoted by all our key domestic violence bodies. Nor is there any proper attention paid to other proven, evidence-based risk factors such as alcohol and drug abuse, poverty and mental illness.

The only officially sanctioned risk factor for domestic violence in this country is gender inequality. “Other factors interact with or reinforce gender inequality to contribute to increased frequency and severity of violence against women, but do not drive violence in and of themselves” is the only grudging acknowledgment in the framework that other factors may be at play.

At the recent hearings of Victoria’s Royal Commission into Family Violence, experts in alcohol abuse and mental illness spoke out about this blatant disregard of the 40 years of research that addresses these complexities. “It is simplistic and misleading to say that domestic violence is caused by patriarchal attitudes,” said James Ogloff, a world-renowned mental health expert.

“A sole focus on the gendered nature of family violence, which labels men as the perpetrators and women as the victims and which identifies gender inequity as the principal cause of family violence, is problematic on a number of levels,” said Peter Miller, principal research fellow and co-director of the violence prevention group at Deakin University.

Miller was involved in a comprehensive recent review of longitudinal studies involving pre­dictors of family violence that identified childhood experiences with abuse and violence, particularly in families with problem ­alcohol use, as key predictors of adult involvement in domestic ­violence. He has encountered obstruction in conducting and pub­lishing research into the role of drugs and alcohol in family ­violence.

The evidence is there about the complexities of domestic violence, but on an official level no one is listening. The reason is simple. The deliberate distortion of this important social issue is all about feminists refusing to give up hard-won turf. Ogloff spelled this out to the royal commission when he explained that the Victorian family violence sector feared that “recognising other potential causes of violence could cause a shift in funding away from programs directed at gender inequity”.

Forty years ago an important feminist figure was invited to Australia to visit our newly established women’s refuges. Erin Pizzey was the founder of Britain’s first refuge, a woman praised around the world for her pioneering work helping women escape from violence. On the way to Australia Pizzey travelled to New Zealand, where she spoke out about her changing views. She had learned through dealing with violent women in her refuge that violence was not a gender issue and that it was important to tackle the complexities of violence to properly address the issue.

Pizzey quickly attracted the wrath of the women’s movement in Britain, attracting death threats that forced her for a time to leave the country. She tells Inquirer from London: “The feminists seized upon domestic violence as the cause they needed to attract more money and supporters at a time when the first flush of enthusiasm for their movement was starting to wane. Domestic violence was perfect for them — the just cause that no one dared challenge. It led to a worldwide million-dollar industry, a huge cash cow supporting legions of bureaucrats and policymakers.”

In Pizzey’s New Zealand press interviews she challenged the gender inequality view of violence, suggesting tackling violence in the home required dealing with the real roots of violence, such as intergenerational exposure to male and female aggression.

News travelled fast. By the time Pizzey was set to leave for the Australian leg of the trip she was persona non grata with the feminists running our refuges. Her visit to this country was cancelled.

That was 1976. Since then the gendered view of domestic violence has held sway, dissenters are silenced and evidence about the true issues underlying this complex issue is ignored. And the huge cash cow supporting our blinkered domestic violence industry becomes ever more bloated.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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4 April, 2018

The old race theorists and modern DNA findings

Steve Sailer below mocks the politically correct discomfort a geneticist has with his own findings

Harvard geneticist David Reich has published a bombshell scientific book, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past

A close reader of his book can enjoy his prodigious research without taking terribly seriously Reich’s prejudices.

Reich learned the fascinating modern science of high-tech grave robbing from Svante P??bo. This Swedish biologist invented the techniques for extracting from ancient skeletons their DNA. (Interestingly, the 1990 Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act makes it hard to get hold of ancient American Indian skeletons, but other races’ ancestors appear to be fair game.)

Reich applied to P??bo’s breakthrough the traditional American knack for vast industrial scale. Assisted by English code-cracker Nick Patterson’s innovations in extracting meaning from bits and pieces of ancient genomes, Reich’s factory-like lab at the Broad Institute has been churning out a tsunami of papers on fascinating questions of prehistory.

For example, India played a large role in the development of European conceptions of race. In 1786 British judge William Jones delivered a lecture in Calcutta suggesting that Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin were all descended from the same lost language, a ghost tongue now called Proto-Indo-European.

Jones went on to hypothesize that an ancient invasion of Dravidian-speaking India by Proto-Indo-European-speaking Aryans from Iran could help explain the curious distribution of language, skin color, and caste within the Hindu world today.

Jones’ ideas had unfortunate influence. Reich writes:

To the Nazis and others, the distribution of the Indo-European language family, linking Europe to India…, spoke of an ancient conquest moving out of an ancestral homeland, displacing and subjugating the peoples of the conquered territories, an event they wished to emulate.

Hitler thus culturally appropriated the Hindu swastika.

Since 1945, the notion of Aryan invaders has been unsurprisingly unpopular.

In Europe, anthropologists have promoted the “pots not people” theory to argue that trade and changes in fashion must explain why Corded Ware pots suddenly showed up all over Europe about 4,900 years ago. (So did battle axes; indeed, early scientists called this the Battle Axe Culture. But that sounded too awesome. Hence, more recent academics renamed it after its pottery style to make these brutal barbarians sound dweebier and thus less interesting to boys.)

In India, the notion of Hindu culture as a giant conspiracy by Aryan invaders to enshrine their descendants at the top of the social order for the rest of eternity perhaps struck a little too close to home.

But Reich’s laboratory has found that the old Robert E. Howard version is actually pretty much what happened. Conan the Barbarian-like warriors with their horse-drawn wagons came charging off the Eurasian steppe and overran much of Europe and India. Reich laments:

The genetic data have provided what might seem like uncomfortable support for some of these ideas—suggesting that a single, genetically coherent group was responsible for spreading many Indo-European languages.

Much more acceptable to Indian intellectuals than the idea that ancient conquerors from the Russian or Kazakhstani steppe took over the upper reaches of Indian culture has been the theory of Nicholas B. Dirks, the Franz Boas Professor of History and Anthropology at Columbia, that the British malignantly transformed diverse local Indian customs into the suffocating system of caste that we know today.

Now, though, Reich’s genetic evidence shows that caste has controlled who married whom in India for thousands of years:

Rather than inventions of colonialism as Dirks suggested, long-term endogamy as embodied in India today in the institution of caste has been overwhelmingly important for millennia.

This is in harmony with economic historian Gregory Clark’s recent discovery in his book of surname analysis, The Son Also Rises (Clark loves Hemingway puns), that economic mobility across the generations is not only lower than expected in most of the world, but it is virtually nonexistent in India.

Just as you’d imagine, Reich found that the highly nationalist Chinese turn out to be genetically quite homogeneous, while the Indians are genetically diverse due to caste divvying them up into thousands of inbreeding groups:

The Han Chinese are truly a large population. They have been mixing freely for thousands of years. In contrast, there are few if any Indian groups that are demographically very large, and the degree of genetic differentiation among Indian jati groups living side by side in the same village is typically two to three times higher than the genetic differentiation between northern and southern Europeans. The truth is that India is composed of a large number of small populations.

Indians traditionally thought of India less as a nation than as a world. Modern Indian nationalism’s roots trace to Gandhi’s sojourn in South Africa, where his thinking was revolutionized by the simplistic racial politics of the African colony in which his countrymen were seen not as countless castes, but as, in contrast to Europeans, blacks, and Coloureds, simply Indians.

Reich worries that his genetic findings sound more like the racialist ideas of a century ago than what educated people are supposed to believe in the current year. So, he’s come up with a number of explanations for why the bad guys whom Tom Buchanan read were wrong after all:

But the data also reveal that these early discussions were misguided in supposing purity of ancestry….

You see, the Yamnaya steppe nomads who were the predecessors of the Aryans who invaded India were actually a hybrid of two even more ancient peoples: a northern steppe race and a southern race from Armenia or Iran.

Okay…

The Aryan-invasion-theory glass isn’t half full, Reich wants you to understand, it’s half empty.

Reich points out that genetic research proves that race is not just an arbitrary social construct (although he’d much prefer you call it “ancestry” rather than “race”). For instance, the Caucasian race, which was first named by German scientists in the late 18th century, turns out to be a real thing, genetically speaking:

Today, the peoples of West Eurasia—the vast region spanning Europe, the Near East, and much of central Asia—are genetically highly similar. The physical similarity of West Eurasian populations was recognized in the eighteenth century by scholars who classified the people of West Eurasia as “Caucasoids” to differentiate them from East Asian “Mongoloids,” sub-Saharan African “Negroids,” and “Australoids” of Australia and New Guinea…. [P]opulations within West Eurasia are typically around seven times more similar to one another than West Eurasians are to East Asians. When frequencies of mutations are plotted on a map, West Eurasia appears homogeneous, from the Atlantic fa?ade of Europe to the steppes of central Asia. There is a sharp gradient of change in central Asia before another region of homogeneity is reached in East Asia….

But, Reich hastens to point out, today’s vast Caucasian race has only existed in its current form for the 4,500 years since steppe herdsmen invaded.

Before the Bronze Age there were several quite distinct races in Europe. After the last Ice Age, Europe was inhabited by an ancient race of hunter-gatherers with blue eyes and dark skin. They were then largely overwhelmed by lighter-skinned, brown-haired farmers from the Middle East.

These farmers in turn were inundated, especially in northern Europe, by the blond beast pastoralists from the steppes.

Nietzsche would have found much of Reich’s book validating. And Tom Buchanan would have seen in Reich’s discovery that Europe, while relatively homogeneous, is mostly steppe ancestry in the north and more Levantine in the south with a transition zone in the middle a restating of the Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean categories of his era.

But, Reich wants us to comprehend, no race is wholly unmixed if you look enough millennia back into the past:

...the ancient DNA revolution has shown that today’s classifications do not reflect fundamental “pure” units of biology. Instead, today’s divisions are recent phenomena, with their origin in repeating mixtures and migrations.

Reich ends a chapter by sermonizing:

Mixture is fundamental to who we are, and we need to embrace it, not deny that it occurred.

So you should just lie back and think of England, like the girls in Rotherham and Telford.

But thinking of what “mixture” did to the inhabitants of England who were forced to embrace it 4,500 years ago is horrifying.

Before about 2500 BC, ancient Albion was inhabited largely by farmers tracing back to the Fertile Crescent. Suddenly, steppe barbarians, bearing the Bell Beaker culture, arrived, and almost immediately most of the old Britons died off.

Since then, 90 percent of subsequent skeletons in England reflect the DNA of the steppe invaders.

What happened to most of England’s earlier inhabitants? One of the less violent scenarios is that the steppe migrants introduced bubonic plague.

In general, “migration” and “mixture” tend in Reich’s book to serve as euphemisms for genocide of the native males and rape of the native females. Reich lists numerous examples from around the world where genetic data show that newcomers enslaved or murdered the local men and turned their women into concubines.

Fortunately, for the past 4,500 years, “ancient Britons harbored a blend of ancestries very similar to that of present-day Britons.” The Roman conquest didn’t leave much of a genetic mark, and the later Anglo-Saxon, Danish, and Norman invaders were genetically similar enough to earlier Britons that geneticists have only recently begun to disentangle them.

After 1066, the island race enjoyed a long halcyon era without new invaders raping and pillaging. But all good things evidently have to come to an end. As Benjamin Schwarz has pointed out, “In fact, Britain today receives more immigrants in a single year than it did in the entire period from 1066 to 1950.”

Reich is upset that his genetic discoveries have more or less upheld the old German archaeologist Gustaf Koussina’s theory that Germans were descended from Aryans:

…he argued that because the Corded Ware culture included the territories of Poland, Czechoslovakia, and western Russia of his day, it gave Germans the moral birthright to claim those regions as their own.

Reich asserts that his theory has different political implications from Koussina’s because the Yamnaya steppe barbarians didn’t start in Germany, they started in what are now Slavic lands.

SOURCE






Mike Rowe: Fatherlessness Is Making America Sick

Leave it to Mike Rowe to get it right. As the country continues to struggle with the aftermath of February’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, and liberals point the finger of blame at gun owners, “toxic masculinity,” and any other progressive straw man that leaps to mind, Rowe has some uncomfortable truths to share about one of the biggest problems the United States faces.

And it’s not at all what liberals think it is. In a Facbook post this week, the former host of the Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs” and CNN’s “Somebody’s Gotta Do It” introduced the subject of his latest web series “Returning the Favor.”

In it, he profiles a man named Carlos Flores of Yuma, Arizona, who takes a very hands-on approach to dealing with school bullies and helping victims of bullying.

But Rowe uses that as a springboard to discussing an even deeper issue in American society – one that will almost never appear in a Democrat campaign ad.

In a popular culture atmosphere currently saturated with the misguided feminism of the so-called #MeToo moment, the role of men in society – the vital importance of responsible fatherhood – is being all but forgotten.

In the post, Rowe wrote: “It occurred to me though, half way through filming, that bullying – like so many other social ills in today’s headlines – isn’t really a problem at all; it’s a symptom. In my view, a symptom of a society that seems to value fatherhood less and less.”

And there’s no doubt that’s true. Where the birth of a child outside marriage was once so frowned on that the Motown group The Supremes actually had a No. 1 song in 1968 about how tough life was for a “love child,” things are considerably different 50 years later.

Now, according to the Centers for Disease Control, about 40 percent of American births are to women who are not married. While no doubt some of the men who provided the sperm stuck around in the children’s lives, the numbers who actually perform the duty of a father are a good deal lower.

And Rowe cited some statistics that show the disturbing result:

63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes – 5 times the average. (US Dept. Of Health/Census)

90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes – 32 times the average.

85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes – 20 times the average. (Center for Disease Control)

80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes – 14 times the average. (Justice & Behavior, Vol 14, p. 403-26)

71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes – 9 times the average. (National Principals Association Report)

43% of US children live without their father (US Department of Census)

Then he got to the real point: “Is it really so surprising to learn that a majority of bullies also come from fatherless homes? As do a majority of school shooters? As do a majority of older male shooters?”

Basically, no one disputes the idea that violence is pretty much a male domain. According to the federal Bureau of Prisons, more than 90 percent of the U.S. prison population is male, and there’s a reason for that.

But what liberals dispute is the obvious: That a boy growing up in a home without a responsible man to teach him how to be a man is at much greater risk of never learning the lessons.

It’s not an epidemic of racism that’s really hurting the country, or sexism, or some phantom “anti-Semitism” liberals keep claiming to find among supporters of President Donald Trump.

It’s the rampant lack of responsible fathers that’s really making America sick. Mike Rowe knows that. Conservatives know it.

And in their hearts, liberals know it too. But leave it to Mike Rowe to get it right.

SOURCE





Disney Bigots Strip ‘Wrinkle in Time’ of Christianity and It Bombs

The trailer for director Ana Duvernay’s A Wrinkle In Time looks awful — empty and bloated. According to Rotten Tomatoes, most mainstream reviewers of the Disney flick, those predisposed to give a black, female director like DuVernay every benefit of the doubt, found the movie to be a diet of empty calories. Thanks to alternative media, the reason for this might come from Disney’s decision to strip Wrinkle of its central theme — Christianity.

Writing at Insider, Kim Renfro says the “movie really suffers” from the decision to “ditch the book’s explicit Christian references.” She found the movie “incomplete” and says that the “biblical inspirations could have (and should have) been replaced with a more cohesive plot that carried the film to its final climax.”

Even the left-wing Vox explains that the book was “deeply informed by its author’s [Madeleine L’Engle] Episcopal Christianity” which “the new Disney movie has excised.”

The film’s screenwriter, Jennifer Lee, laughably explained this removal as “progress.”

“I think there are a lot of elements of what she wrote that we have progressed as a society and we can move onto the other elements,” Lee told an interviewer last month, adding that making the film Christian would be exclusionary in a film that wanted to celebrate “diversity” and “inclusion.”

At Pajamas Media, Tyler O’Neil found the erasure of Christianity detrimental to the movie’s storytelling. What had been a book that delivered real depth became an empty act of New Age political correctness that says practically nothing.

“As it turns out, the New Age spirituality does not adequately replace L’Engle’s vision, and stories really do have more power when they are inspired by God,” O’Neill writes. “Without the Bible grounding of the deep themes … the fantasy novel becomes a coming-of-age tale about embracing yourself, rather than trusting a power greater than yourself. When Disney excises God from the equation, the spiritual elements give way to a worship of self.”

Despite the star casting of Oprah Winfrey and Reese Witherspoon, not to mention Disney’s second-to-none publicity machine, A Wrinkle In Time opened to a pretty dreadful $33 million. Moviegoers were not thrilled with the movie either, giving it a fairly week grade of “B,” according to CinemaScore.

Another bizarre element to the film’s marketing was the decision to champion the movie’s racially diverse casting, which makes no sense in a world where racial diversity has been happening in movies for decades. Besides, no one goes to the movies to look at skin color. We are looking to be transported, thrilled, and emotionally moved.

Generic “spirituality” in the form of New Age psychobabble adds up to nothing. Even secular moviegoers can enjoy Christian themes because those themes are universal, something that informs the human condition way beyond the practicing Christian.

By stripping Wrinkle of those themes, and by extension that emotional depth that comes with those themes, and focusing instead on something as shallow and silly as skin color, Disney not only produced a stinker of a movie but the rare box office flop.

Normal Americans do not care about skin color. We are over it and see no reason to celebrate something as middle-aged as “diverse casting.” Christianity, however, is timeless.

Moreover, to remove Christianity from the movie, most especially when it is so integral to the original story, is not an act of inclusiveness, but rather another bigoted and hostile act from an increasingly provincial and small-minded entertainment industry.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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3 April, 2018

An uncensored report from Africa

By: Richard Munrow, International Security Consultant at International Non Governmental Organizations

Nigeria, (tried to) work there for 3 years. My first and worst experience of Africa..and hopefully last.

Nothing works and no one seems to care, it's all ‘someone else's problem'.

Being objectified as a potential source of money, rather than a human being. As an obvious none Africa foreigner, every single person who approached me uninitiated, be it in the street, a bar, or hotel, (even inside a supermarket) would try to hussle you.
The smell - Reeking BO to make your eyes water. Once again no-one cares about personal hygiene whether their rich or poor.
The inedible food which gave me food poisoning all the time. Got so bad I ended up living on canned soup (when I could find it to buy) and multi-vitamins.

Total lack of customer service culture. Ordering food took hours even with no other customers, over half the things on menues were never available (I think they were just to there for show) and when you finally got your food, after complaining two times at least, it was either overcooked and/or stone cold/inedible/wrong order (all of the above) Complain…’so sorry sir’ or ‘no have, tomorrow sir' shrug shoulder and even laugh at you nervously. This was at the local equivalent of high end hotels and restaurants too.

It's a kleptocracy, he who steals the most has the most power. No shame and no self respect. The exception being government officials and rich business men (usually the same persons) who thought they were gods as they had already achieved the position to steal whatever they wanted unopposed, thus they had egos bigger than mountains! Wether you claim to be a Christian or a Muslim, money is the only God there.

Considering the obsession with money no one understands 'time is money', and they waste yours without a care. It take 5 times longer to do anything than it does in the West and that's if you can even get it done. Local saying 'Nigerians get paid to turn up to work, everything else at that point is extra'.

Insanity that is traffic. Someone told me ‘Nigerians don't Drive…they move vehicles'. No ryme or reason to driving as it is done either at insane speeds weaving all over roads in smoke belching car about to fall apart or brand new BMW/Mercedes covered in dents and scratch's. Or you're stuck in traffic jam for hours because no one will let anyone else through ahead of them, even an inch.

So traffic jams up everywhere and no one gets to where their going fast. People driving on pavements or even embankments to get a few yards ahead of others in jams and then forcing themselves back into the traffic stream, it's called playing chicken with your paintwork. Total disregard for safety of self or others and absent of restraint. Total chaos.

No responsibility for consequence of you own action to others. When there is an accidental it's either 'the Devil’s work' or ‘Allah's will' never their own fault. Oh and shouting, lotts of shouting!

Lack of any credible law and order. Can't remember the number of time I go pulled over for an attempted to extract a ‘dash'(bribe) from the white man driving himself (see traffic..I didn't trust my life to a locals driving skills). Worst as a MOPOL who was guard at my accomodation compound armed with an AK-47 and so drunk he swayed back & forth and had to lean on my car to standup. Last thing you do when your on trouble is call a police officer.

Constantly collapsing water & power infrastructure. 3–4 days a week no water in morning. Power off 8–12hrs a day, no fuel or spare parts for backup generator, etc. Thus was the Capital City in the high end suburb for embassies etc. Driving round the city at night was dicing with death as only 20–30% of streetlight work or have power to work and 90% of the few functional traffic lights (nearly always ignored) turned off…but still crazy drivers, this time with only 50% having 2 functioning headlights!
I could go on and on…i dont have a positive thing to say about the place. Basically if the 57 counties I've visited this is the worst hands down and I never want to go back

SOURCE







NYT Links Poverty to Racism  

I had some comments on this on 21st. March

Headlines — be careful how you allow them to frame a piece of news.

Last week, The New York Times published an analysis topped by the headline declaration, “Extensive Data Shows Punishing Reach of Racism for Black Boys.”

Based on this headline and the first few sentences of the piece, the March 19 article written by four contributors successfully posits that black males — even those raised in wealthy homes — are more likely to be poor as adults, largely because of racism.

But if you were to read the actual study, “Race and Economic Opportunity in the United States: An Intergenerational Perspective,” suddenly you see that, to serve its race narrative, the Times selectively plucked a few details from a very complex research document that made numerous observations.

Before we break this down, let’s make sure we all use the actual definition of racism. Merriam-Webster defines the term as “a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.” So, using this term but twisting the definition, the Times tells readers that the societal construct created by the oppression of a white majority is the cause of black men being most likely, among the demographics studied, to become poor as adults.

If the Times’ reporters had chosen to print all the findings of the 106-page study — a retrospective analysis covering 26 years conducted by Stanford University, Harvard and the U.S. Census Bureau — rather than isolate a few items in order to mislead, a bit more trust could exist in the dying profession of journalism.

Let’s compare a few statements by the Gray Lady’s quartet to the actual data from the study.

Both the NYT article and the research study record that the income mobility, or the ability of an individual to improve her economic status, is not very different between white females and black females. Simply, as adults, females of all races and ethnicity demonstrate the ability to increase their incomes and improve their economic status.

But, as hypothesized by the Times, black men become poor because of racism when looking back from 2015 to 1989: “Even when children grow up next to each other with parents who earn similar incomes, black boys fare worse than white boys in 99 percent of America. And the gaps only worsen in the kind of neighborhoods that promise low poverty and good schools.”

In several references within the actual research, the role or lack of a father figure is documented. For example, it states, “Less than 5% of black children currently grow up in areas with a poverty rate below 10% and more than half of black fathers present.”

How does that compare to whites? The actual study reports, “In contrast, 63% of white children live in areas with poverty rates below 10% and more than half of white fathers present.”

The study observes, “One mechanical explanation for black-white gaps in household income is that blacks marry at much lower rates than whites, leading to lower levels of household income simply because they tend to have one rather than two earners in their families.” It continues later in the introduction to note of the comparison between white and black males, “Among low-poverty neighborhoods (those with poverty rates below 10%), there are two factors that are strongly associated with better outcomes for black men and smaller black-white gaps: low levels of racial bias among whites and high rates of father presence among blacks.”

The academic research with maps, charts, appendices and a hefty bibliography makes this statement: “We conclude that neighborhoods with low poverty rates, high rates of father presence among blacks, and low levels of racial bias among whites have better outcomes for black boys and smaller racial gaps. But very few black children currently grow up in such environments.”

Does racism still exist? Sadly, yes. But does racism cause the low rate of marriage in the black community? Does racism create entire neighborhoods with few father figures? Just as racism has no causal impact on the number of marriages in the minority community, marriage is not a function of race.

Racism didn’t make marriage unnecessary. “Great Society” welfare did. In 2017, 77% of black children were born to mothers without a husband. Contrast that to 30% of births of white children to moms outside of marriage. And, no, it’s not just black children on welfare. But, regardless of race, a working father isn’t necessary when there’s SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) or WIC (Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants & Children), just to name a few of the 80-plus income-redistribution programs.

As Dr. Thomas Sowell, the economist and senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute, has written for decades, “A vastly expanded welfare state in the 1960s destroyed the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and generations of racial oppression.” In his 2016 analysis, “‘Favors’ to Blacks,” the black conservative wrote, “In 1960, before this expansion of the welfare state, 22 percent of black children were raised with only one parent. By 1985, 67 percent of black children were raised with either one parent or no parent.” Again, it’s far higher today.

Yes, racism contributed to the perverted role of government that ensnares individuals and destroys families with the lure of services that create a permanent underclass and generations of dependency. But it was Democrat racism like that of Lyndon B. Johnson, who said of his “Great Society” programs, “I’ll have those n—ers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”

There are many factors that contribute to the state of poverty, one of which is the composition of the family unit. Until Americans restore the value of marriage and an intact family, don’t expect much progress on poverty, sexual abuse, “gun violence” or a whole host of other societal ills — regardless of your race and gender.

 SOURCE





A day in the life of Lesbianism

With white "mothers" and black kids

The lesbian mothers who died on Monday along with at least three of their six adopted children after plunging 100ft over a coastal cliff in California had been reported to Child Protective Services days earlier for allegedly starving their kids.

On Friday, neighbors of Jennifer and Sarah Hart, both 39, called CPS to report that their son Devonte had come to their home asking for food every day for a week. 

They said Devonte - who made national headlines when he was pictured hugging a police officer during a 2014 protest - asked them to leave food out in a box for him and said his mothers were 'punishing' him by not feeding him.

In 2017, another of the children came to their home at 1.30am asking for their 'protection' and claiming the women did not treat her well.

They also said one of the daughters who was 12 looked about seven and had no front teeth.

On Friday, a CPS worker arrived at the home and knocked on the door, according to the neighbors Bruce and Dana DeKalb, but the Harts never answered.

Instead, they packed up in a hurry and fled with all six kids in their 2003 GMC Sierra truck, they said.

'The next morning when we saw that the vehicle was gone, and then Sunday morning when it still wasn’t there, we figured something was off because they never go anywhere.

'They go to the store and back but.. we figured that they saw the (CPS) business card and loaded up the kids as quick as they could and took off, ' Mr. DeKalb told KGW on Thursday.

On Monday, their bodies were found at the bottom of a cliff in Westport, California, off Highway 1 along with the bodies of three of their children, Markis, 19; Jeremiah 14; and Abigail, 14.

Hannah, 16; Devonte, 15; and Sierra, 12, have not been found.

It is not clear yet if they drove over the cliff purposefully or by accident but police said no brake marks were found at the scene. 

To reach the cliff edge at the lookout, the women would have had to have driven off the Pacific Highway and traversed 75ft of rugged dirt road.

It is not known yet if they came to a stop at the edge before falling over. 

'I can tell you it was a very confusing scene because there were no skid marks, there were no brake marks, there was no indication of why this vehicle traversed approximately over 75ft of a dirt pull out and went into the pacific ocean,' Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Allman said on Wednesday. 

'We have no reason to believe, we have no evidence, that this was an intentional act. Certainly people are wondering what caused this.

'If this was an intentional act, I truly believe we are going to come to that conclusion.

Police are appealing for anyone with information to come forward. They are asking for anyone who may have seen them in a restaurant or hotel in the days beforehand to contact them.

They are also still considering the three children who were not found as missing people and say in the best case scenario, they were not in the vehicle at the time of the crash. It is not clear what either woman did for a living.

SOURCE






Obamacare HHS Mandate Dealt a Lethal Blow in Court

The Obamacare Health and Human Services (HHS) mandate forcing Catholic non-profits to provide coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, contraception, and sterilization, was dealt a lethal blow by U.S. District Court Judge David Russell.

He issued a permanent injunction stopping the federal government from enforcing the mandate against the Catholic Benefits Association (CBA). He also issued a declaratory judgment, holding that the mandate was illegal; it violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The CBA represents over 1,000 Catholic employers, including 60 dioceses and archdioceses, as well as many religious orders, colleges and universities, hospitals, and other ministries. Baltimore Archbishop William Lori chairs the CBA; serving with him are six other archbishops. Douglas G. Wilson is the CEO of the organization.

Judge Russell's ruling not only binds the Trump administration (which was opposed to the HHS mandate anyway), but all future administrations. Catholic employers who belong to the CBA are now free from attempts by the federal government to coerce them into providing morally offensive healthcare coverage.

SOURCE






NFL Fumbles on National Anthem Again While Bowing to SJWs

Owners cater to social justice organizations while avoiding any rules aimed at anthem protests.   

National Football League team owners unanimously voted Monday to give $90 million to social justice causes, while they continued to punt on the issue of how to deal with player protests during the national anthem. “The NFL is committing $90 million to a new social justice initiative that supports efforts and programs to combat social inequality. In a memo sent to all 32 teams in early December, the league said it plans to work closely with players, teams and other groups in the new and expanded community improvement program,” a post from the NFL read.

The NFL plans to support three groups, one of which is Dream Corps, an outfit created by CNN commentator and former Barack Obama campaign organizer Van Jones. So much for the NFL’s claim of wanting to avoid politics. This move is explicitly an endorsement by the league of leftist politics. And this, of course, explains why the NFL still refuses to discipline any players who engage in protests during the national anthem.

The joke used to be that the reason soccer was so unpopular within the U.S. was because it was the “socialist sport.” Well, it looks like NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell and the majority of team owners are bound and determined to take that dubious moniker away from soccer. As if calling American football “football” wasn’t dumb enough… Even after staring at a ratings drop of 9.7% last year alone, the NFL is doubling down by committing itself to that socialist fantasy of absolute equality. The league is evidently unconcerned with alienating its fans all for the sake of placating those noisy “social justice” leftists. Well, we guess this is good news for baseball.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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2 April, 2018

UK: Hopeless rape prosecution driven by three women

The senior investigating officer in the case was Det Ch Insp Zoe McKee.  Her assistant was Det Ch Supt Paula Hillman.  The public prosecutor who decided on the trial was Marianne O'Kane.  To get a conviction, they had to disprove consent, an almost impossible task in the light of previous familiarity among the parties concerned.  When all the evidence was in the jury rapidly acquitted the accused of all charges. 

So there clearly was a biased (feminist?) perspective on the part of the investigators.  The charges should not have been brought. Had there been both male and female investigators they probably would not have been.  Hopefully there will be no repetition of such an unbalanced setup.  It was clearly a feminist setup designed to show how well women can do.  It showed how badly they can do


Ireland and Ulster rugby players Paddy Jackson and Stuart Olding have been cleared of rape. They both denied raping the same woman in Mr Jackson's house in the early hours of 28 June 2016.

Blane McIlroy, who was accused of exposure, and Rory Harrison, who was charged with perverting the course of justice and withholding information, were also found not guilty.

The verdicts came in the ninth week of the trial. The jury of eight men and three women deliberated for three hours and 45 minutes before delivering their unanimous verdicts.

The incident at the centre of the case was alleged to have happened after the four accused and four women went to Mr Jackson's home in south Belfast from a club in the city centre.

The woman told the court she was attacked after going upstairs to retrieve a clutch bag as she was preparing to leave the house.

The woman claimed Mr Jackson had followed her into the bedroom and pushed her onto the bed. She then claimed she was raped.

However, the accused said that all sexual activity was consensual.

Outside the courthouse, Mr Jackson thanked the judge and jury for "giving him a fair trial" as well as his family and legal team.

His solicitor, Joe McVeigh, hit out at the investigation into Mr Jackson.

"It's our belief that the investigation has been characterised by the turning of a blind eye to inadequacies in the evidence of the complainant combined with the very apparent investigative bias," he said.

He added: "The prosecution made much of a perceived privileged position provided by virtue of Paddy being an international rugby player.

"We say that it was this very status as a famous sportsman that drove the decision to prosecute in the first place."

In a statement read out by his solicitor, Mr Olding said: "I want to acknowledge publicly that though I committed no criminal offence on the evening of the 28th of June 2016, I regret deeply the events of that evening."

He said he was sorry for the hurt that was caused to the complainant. "It was never my intention to cause any upset to anyone on that night," he said.

"I don't agree with her perception of events and I maintain that everything that happened that evening was consensual.

"I have consistently told the truth to the police and the court when asked to account for my conduct."

SOURCE





Another Leftist resort to violence:  At an abortion clinic

Leftists are seriously dangerous people if they think they can get away with it.  They have no ethics or morality other than a profound conviction of their own rightness

Cleveland, OH – As the wail of approaching sirens grew louder, those on both sides of the abortion battle readied themselves for action.

Pro-life activists praying on the sidewalk on March 24, 2018, outside of Preterm, a high-volume abortion business in Cleveland, Ohio, readied their cameras and prepared to document yet another medical emergency at that facility – the twelfth such known incident since 2010. Meanwhile, clinic employees and escorts positioned themselves to disrupt attempts to document the incident.

As the gurney bearing the woman requiring emergency assistance emerged from the carport under the building, both sides shifted into action.

One clinic worker in blue scrubs bumped and blocked 83-year old pro-life activist Frank Kosmerl as he attempted to film the incident. Despite her attack on Kosmerl, he was able to capture creepy footage that showed a woman on the gurney in the seated position with an eerie black sheet draped over her head.

Once the woman was loaded into the ambulance, the clinic worker turned to Kosmerl and made two angry obscene gestures.

“Battering Mr. Kosmerl wasn’t done to protect the woman’s identity because she was covered in a black sheet. It was done to punish him for trying to record Preterm’s obvious abortion complication,” said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. “It’s pretty ironic that the clinic worker would make obscene gestures at the pro-life activist as if he was at fault, when it was actually Preterm that harmed a woman so seriously she had to be hospitalized.”

Despite is advancing age, Kosmerl was unfazed by his rough experience with the angry clinic worker. He hoped that others would see his dedication and realize the need to join him on the sidewalk at Preterm to pray and offer help to abortion-bound women.

“If I can do it, others can, too!” he said.

Cleveland activists also reported to Operation Rescue that a similar medical emergency had occurred at Preterm just days before, on March 17, 2018. However, no one had the ability to snap a picture as that Preterm patient was transported by ambulance.

In 2014, LaKisha Wilson died after a seriously botched abortion at Preterm. Despite a unified call for justice by state and national pro-life leaders, there were never any disciplinary consequences imposed on Preterm or its staff.

Last year, Preterm made headlines by posting 16 billboards around Cleveland with slogans like “Abortion is a Blessing.”

“I doubt if LaKisha Wilson’s young son, who was left motherless after her death, would agree that his mom’s abortion was a blessing. And I doubt if the women hospitalized over the past few days would think their abortions were blessings, either,” said Newman. “This Preterm has proved over and over it poses a danger to the community and should be permanently closed.”

SOURCE





The grim racialism of ‘light-skinned privilege’

Obsessing over skin tone is the opposite of progressive

Identity politics is becoming more depraved by the day. Now it seems even light-skinned black people must atone for their privilege. Amandla Stenberg, a 19-year-old black actress, recently revealed that she stopped pursuing a role in the recent Black Panther film because she felt it deserved a more ‘dark-skinned’ cast.

She told CBC Arts that ‘there are spaces that I should not take up, and when I do take up a space, it’s because I’ve thought really, really critically about it and I’ve consulted people I really trust and it feels right’. So, given the privilege endowed by her light skin tone, stepping aside was the only ‘woke’ thing to do.

This story comes after the actress Zoe Saldana caught a lot of flak in 2016 for taking on the role of Nina Simone in a biopic. Apparently, she wasn’t ‘black enough’, and her refusal to apologise and acknowledge she was taking the space of a supposedly underprivileged ‘dark-skinned’ black actress enraged the Twittersphere.

This is all incredibly grim, and an affront to anti-racism. In the past, racists argued that our biology – our skin colour, facial features and blood – divided us, and this was used as a pretext for discrimination. What’s more, within black communities it was thought that the lighter your skin tone, the better chance you had of surviving or succeeding within an extremely racist society.

Today, black and anti-racist activists are resurrecting those biological boundaries. Those who promote the notion of ‘white privilege’ have created a new kind of racial hierarchy. Only, today, dark-skinned black people are seen as the most deserving of pity, and in need of support and resources. This serves to make skin tone more rigid and meaningful than it need be.

What’s more, the obsession with ‘white privilege’ destroys any possibility for solidarity, even within black communities. Anti-racism is apparently no longer a fight to transcend racial divisions, to demand equal rights and equal treatment regardless of ethnicity or race. Instead, it is a fight to decide who is the most oppressed and thus most in need of help and resources.

It also blinds us to class. Apparently, the fact that somewhere a light-skinned black man is cleaning the toilets of a dark-skinned black businessman does not matter in the world of identity politics, so obsessed is it with ‘white privilege’. His lighter skin tone makes him more privileged, plain and simple.

This is not what building a world in which people are judged by the content of their character, rather than the colour of their skin, looks like. This obsession with white privilege, and even light-skinned privilege, is leading us backwards. Let’s reject it.

SOURCE








Women are going off sex because the modern man has lost that raw, masculine edge in this #MeToo world of ours...which doesn't make for much fun in the bedroom

As of yesterday, it is now possible to buy Viagra over the counter without the need for a prescription. Cue swinging from the chandeliers!

Or perhaps not. Because while men may now be able to perform at the popping of a pill, women are not quite on the same page.

As revealed in yesterday's Mail, the female of the species is more lukewarm about sex than the male. Around a third of pre-menopausal women and half of older women report sexual problems.

And a recent British Medical Journal study found more than a third of 5,000 women questioned had lost interest altogether.

No surprise, then, that the race is on to develop the female equivalent of that little blue pill, a magic wand that will transform us all into willing participants in the bedroom.

Enticing as this idea may seem, Viagra simply provides a mechanical solution to an age-related problem. In other words, men still want to have sex, it's simply that their bodies can't.

With women, it's different. We can almost always manage the physical side of things. It's re-igniting lost desire that is so much harder.

There are many theories as to what causes sex to fall so far down the list of a woman's priorities that it eventually plunges into the abyss.

Stress, antidepressants, young children, teenagers, caring for older parents, perimenopause, menopause, vitamin deficiency —you name it, someone will have come up with it.

But if you ask me, the answer is very simple: men.

Specifically, modern man and his increasing emasculation. Men are so hamstrung by complex notions of equality, so confused about what is and is not acceptable, that they have begun to lose that raw, masculine edge. And that is a big part of what turns women on.

It's one thing to demand equality in the boardroom; things are very different in the bedroom.
  
Sex is a fundamentally feral activity, a product of flesh and hormones engineered by nature in order to encourage the reproduction of the species. And nature is clever. Our bodies are designed to want things our feminist minds don't necessarily feel comfortable with. Such as men who look like they might be able to protect our children from passing predators; or men who can split logs; or, men who, you know, just exude a certain amount of old-fashioned male confidence.

Such men are becoming increasingly unacceptable in this #MeToo world of ours. So vehement is the backlash against anything resembling traditional masculinity, it's hard to see a future for them.

While this may make for a more egalitarian society, it doesn't make for much fun in the bedroom.

That is not to say that No does not mean No. There are no excuses for sexual assault. But we are creating a generation of downtrodden men who can't even tell a woman she looks nice without risking being branded a pervert.

I was stuck by something the writer Annabel Cole said in yesterday's Mail about how it felt to become invisible with age.

Recalling her youthful powers of attraction, she wrote: 'One of the most thrilling things I can remember happening to me was as a 21-year-old at the University Library in Cambridge, studying for my finals. I got up to fetch a book and returned to my place to find an anonymous note, which simply said: 'You look fantastic.'

Ultimately, that's what turns women on. The excitement of being thought irresistible. Not a quivering wimp in a Time's Up badge.

SOURCE






Final proof Australia's public broadcaster is completely out-of-touch? Taxpayer-funded broadcaster's CHILDREN'S video mocks 'male privilege' using a sick refugee to illustrate 'white Australians' UNEARNED advantages'

The ABC has been forced to remove the Facebook page for its children's 'ME' channel after a barrage of angry viewers took offence at a video explaining 'white male privilege'.

In the video, two young female presenters try to explain the concept of privilege to the channel's primary-school aged audience through rap and cartoons of two people trying to cross a stream.

Initially published to the channel's social media about five months ago, the clip was recently shared across a number of right-wing Facebook groups - with many outraged at the video's content and the fact it was aimed at such young children.

In the video, viewers are introduced to Ross, a straight male in his mid-40s who is 'rather wealthy', in good health and born in a peaceful country. Ross is able to teleport across the stream.

They then meet Stevie, a female refugee who doesn't speak much English and has little money. Rather than being travelling across the stream by teleportation, Stevie the refugee has to swim across the stream, despite developing a cough just before she jumps in.

The video ends by explaining Ross was able to cross the stream due to his privilege.  

'He was born with advantage, unearned gifts that his life was granted,' one host raps.

'He might not think about his in-built perks, but that's just the way that privilege works.'

While many chose to vent their anger on the various pages the video had been shared to, such as: Political Posting Mumma, The Bolt Supporter Group, Lessons in Liberty, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Supporter Group, Mark Latham's Outsiders Supporter Group, Stop Communism in America, and Marriage Matters, others began to comment on the ABC post.

A spokesman for ABC told Daily Mail Australia the page had been 'reluctantly removed' as a result.

'The ABC ME Facebook page was created for Australian school-aged children and their families,' they said. 'Due to the high level of inappropriate comments, we will consider other ways to engage with our intended audience.'

In groups where the video remains online, comments call the video 'mentally deranged and pathetic', and claim primary-aged children aren't equipped to deal with issues such as social injustice.

'These social justice warriors are really trying to find unhinged ways to explain 'White Privilege' to children. Not only is it utterly pathetic it's very stupid too,' one man wrote.

Another said the cheesiness of the rap and use of cartoons indicated the video was designed for children at the younger end of ABC ME's target audience, who would not be able to comprehend the issue.

'What the f*** are you doing trying to make little kids feel like s*** over stuff they can't control when that morning they were probably worrying about what best f****** crayon to use,' he wrote.

A woman denied the existence of white privilege and said only those born into wealth had the privilege described in the clip.

ABC declined to respond to questions as to whether the material was appropriate for its audience.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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IN BRIEF



HOME (Index page)

BIO for John Ray






(Isaiah 62:1)


A 19th century Democrat political poster below:








Leftist tolerance



Bloomberg



JFK knew Leftist dogmatism



-- Geert Wilders



The most beautiful woman in the world? I think she was. Yes: It's Agnetha Fältskog



A beautiful baby is king -- with blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. How incorrect can you get?


Kristina Pimenova, said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair



Enough said


Islamic terrorism isn’t a perversion of Islam. It’s the implementation of Islam. It is not a religion of the persecuted, but the persecutors. Its theology is violent supremacism.



There really is an actress named Donna Air. She seems a pleasant enough woman, though


What feminism has wrought:

There's actually some wisdom there. The dreamy lady says she is holding out for someone who meets her standards. The other lady reasonably replies "There's nobody there". Standards can be unrealistically high and feminists have laboured mightily to make them so


Some bright spark occasionally decides that Leftism is feminine and conservatism is masculine. That totally misses the point. If true, how come the vote in American presidential elections usually shows something close to a 50/50 split between men and women? And in the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won 53 percent of white women, despite allegations focused on his past treatment of some women.


Political correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners


Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist.


The problem with minorities is not race but culture. For instance, many American black males fit in well with the majority culture. They go to college, work legally for their living, marry and support the mother of their children, go to church, abstain from crime and are considerate towards others. Who could reasonably object to such people? It is people who subscribe to minority cultures -- black, Latino or Muslim -- who can give rise to concern. If antisocial attitudes and/or behaviour become pervasive among a group, however, policies may reasonably devised to deal with that group as a whole


Black lives DON'T matter -- to other blacks. The leading cause of death among young black males is attack by other young black males


Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves. Leftist motivations are fundamentally Fascist. They want to "fundamentally transform" the lives of their fellow citizens, which is as authoritarian as you can get. We saw where it led in Russia and China. The "compassion" that Leftists parade is just a cloak for their ghastly real motivations


Occasionally I put up on this blog complaints about the privileged position of homosexuals in today's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings back and homosexuals are treated as equals before the law. To a simple Leftist mind, that makes me "homophobic", even though I have no fear of any kind of homosexuals.

But I thought it might be useful for me to point out a few things. For a start, I am not unwise enough to say that some of my best friends are homosexual. None are, in fact. Though there are two homosexuals in my normal social circle whom I get on well with and whom I think well of.

Of possible relevance: My late sister was a homosexual; I loved Liberace's sense of humour and I thought that Robert Helpmann was marvellous as Don Quixote in the Nureyev ballet of that name.


I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible -- preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions -- particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling.


I also record on this blog much social worker evil -- particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school -- where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass


Racial differences in temperament: Chinese are more passive even as little babies


The genetics of crime: I have been pointing out for some time the evidence that there is a substantial genetic element in criminality. Some people are born bad. See here, here, here, here (DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12581) and here, for instance"


Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"


Postmodernism is fundamentally frivolous. Postmodernists routinely condemn racism and intolerance as wrong but then say that there is no such thing as right and wrong. They are clearly not being serious. Either they do not really believe in moral nihilism or they believe that racism cannot be condemned!


Postmodernism is in fact just a tantrum. Post-Soviet reality in particular suits Leftists so badly that their response is to deny that reality exists. That they can be so dishonest, however, simply shows how psychopathic they are.


So why do Leftists say "There is no such thing as right and wrong" when backed into a rhetorical corner? They say it because that is the predominant conclusion of analytic philosophers. And, as Keynes said: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”


Children are the best thing in life. See also here.


Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."


Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".


One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.


It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.


A modern feminist complains: "We are so far from “having it all” that “we barely even have a slice of the pie, which we probably baked ourselves while sobbing into the pastry at 4am”."


Patriotism does NOT in general go with hostilty towards others. See e.g. here and here and even here ("Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia: A Cross-Cultural Study" by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan. In Current Anthropology Vol. 42, No. 5, December 2001).


The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin


"An objection I hear frequently is: ‘Why should we tolerate intolerance?’ The assumption is that tolerating views that you don’t agree with is like a gift, an act of kindness. It suggests we’re doing people a favour by tolerating their view. My argument is that tolerance is vital to us, to you and I, because it’s actually the presupposition of all our freedoms. You cannot be free in any meaningful sense unless there is a recognition that we are free to act on our beliefs, we’re free to think what we want and express ourselves freely. Unless we have that freedom, all those other freedoms that we have on paper mean nothing" -- SOURCE


RELIGION:

Although it is a popular traditional chant, the "Kol Nidre" should be abandoned by modern Jewish congregations. It was totally understandable where it originated in the Middle Ages but is morally obnoxious in the modern world and vivid "proof" of all sorts of antisemitic stereotypes


What the Bible says about homosexuality:

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; It is abomination" -- Lev. 18:22

In his great diatribe against the pagan Romans, the apostle Paul included homosexuality among their sins:

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.... Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" -- Romans 1:26,27,32.

So churches that condone homosexuality are clearly post-Christian


Although I am an atheist, I have great respect for the wisdom of ancient times as collected in the Bible. And its condemnation of homosexuality makes considerable sense to me. In an era when family values are under constant assault, such a return to the basics could be helpful. Nonetheless, I approve of St. Paul's advice in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans that it is for God to punish them, not us. In secular terms, homosexuality between consenting adults in private should not be penalized but nor should it be promoted or praised. In Christian terms, "Gay pride" is of the Devil


The homosexuals of Gibeah (Judges 19 & 20) set in train a series of events which brought down great wrath and destruction on their tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out when it would not disown its homosexuals. Are we seeing a related process in the woes presently being experienced by the amoral Western world? Note that there was one Western country that was not affected by the global financial crisis and subsequently had no debt problems: Australia. In September 2012 the Australian federal parliament considered a bill to implement homosexual marriage. It was rejected by a large majority -- including members from both major political parties


Religion is deeply human. The recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that it was religion not farming that gave birth to civilization. Early civilizations were at any rate all very religious. Atheism is mainly a very modern development and is even now very much a minority opinion


"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)


I think it's not unreasonable to see Islam as the religion of the Devil. Any religion that loves death or leads to parents rejoicing when their children blow themselves up is surely of the Devil -- however you conceive of the Devil. Whether he is a man in a red suit with horns and a tail, a fallen spirit being, or simply the evil side of human nature hardly matters. In all cases Islam is clearly anti-life and only the Devil or his disciples could rejoice in that.

And there surely could be few lower forms of human behaviour than to give abuse and harm in return for help. The compassionate practices of countries with Christian traditions have led many such countries to give a new home to Muslim refugees and seekers after a better life. It's basic humanity that such kindness should attract gratitude and appreciation. But do Muslims appreciate it? They most commonly show contempt for the countries and societies concerned. That's another sign of Satanic influence.

And how's this for demonic thinking?: "Asian father whose daughter drowned in Dubai sea 'stopped lifeguards from saving her because he didn't want her touched and dishonoured by strange men'

And where Muslims tell us that they love death, the great Christian celebration is of the birth of a baby -- the monogenes theos (only begotten god) as John 1:18 describes it in the original Greek -- Christmas!


No wonder so many Muslims are hostile and angry. They have little companionship from women and not even any companionship from dogs -- which are emotionally important in most other cultures. Dogs are "unclean"


Some advice from Martin Luther: Esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in christo qui victor est peccati, mortis et mundi: peccandum est quam diu sic sumus. Vita haec non est habitatio justitiae


On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds


Even Mahatma Gandhi was profoundly unimpressed by Africans



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To be continued ....
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