This document is part of an archive of postings on Political Correctness Watch, a blog hosted by Blogspot who are in turn owned by Google. The index to the archive is available here or here. Indexes to my other blogs can be located here or here. Archives do accompany my original postings but, given the animus towards conservative writing on Google and other internet institutions, their permanence is uncertain. These alternative archives help ensure a more permanent record of what I have written. My Home Page. My Recipes. My alternative Wikipedia. My Blogroll. Email me (John Ray) here. NOTE: The short comments that I have in the side column of the primary site for this blog are now given at the foot of this document.



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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31 December, 2019

Good riddance 2019, the year of the woke police

DOUGLAS MURRAY asks if Boris Johnson's resounding triumph proves the tide is finally turning on extreme political correctness

This was the year of ‘woke’. Or at least the year that ‘woke’ made its biggest land grab. For anyone lucky enough not to have encountered the term, woke is essentially political correctness after a course of steroids. Its followers spend their lives punishing any wrong-think committed, which can include thinking something everyone thought until yesterday. And includes saying things that are true.

The main inspirations for the wokerati are anything to do with relations between the sexes, race, LGBT issues, and the last of these (Trans) in particular. In each case a legitimate rights debate is weaponised into a culture war.

This year started in the manner in which it meant to go on. In January, former policeman Harry Miller was contacted by Humberside Police after a member of the public reported him for allegedly ‘transphobic’ comments made on Twitter. His offence? The 53-year-old posted a limerick that questioned whether trans women are biological women. The police recorded it as a ‘hate incident’.

Meanwhile, Gillette, which had previously advertised razors under the slogan ‘The best a man can get’, decided men were the problem. In a fresh advertising campaign the company focused on ‘toxic masculinity’. They depicted men as bullying, boorish sexual abusers in the advert with a voice-over saying: ‘Bullying, the MeToo movement against sexual harassment, toxic masculinity, is this the best a man can get?’

Explaining their decision, the company said the advert was part of their broader initiative to promote ‘positive, attainable, inclusive and healthy versions of what it means to be a man’.

In other words, Gillette’s millions of customers had seemingly let Gillette down so far, and needed to do better.

In February, the world woke to the news that Hollywood actor Jussie Smollett, who is black and gay, had been the subject of a racist and homophobic attack in Chicago. The woke had a perfect new martyr.

Fellow celebrities blamed Donald Trump for the attack which turned out to have involved two men who were known to Smollett and appeared to have been paid by him to fake a ‘hate incident’. The culprits were Nigerian body-builders, making them the least likely white supremacists seen in Chicago or elsewhere.

In March, Cambridge University summarily stripped the Canadian academic and internationally best-selling author Jordan Peterson of a visiting lectureship. The reason given was that, at a post-show meet-and-greet, one of Peterson’s thousands of fans was photographed wearing an ‘Islamophobic’ T-shirt.

Elsewhere, the university fired a young researcher because a mob of student activists claimed the researcher’s work was ‘racist’ (it wasn’t). And one of the universities grandest colleges removed a bell when it was discovered it could once have been rung on a slave plantation. For it is 2019 and even the bells have to be in tune with the times.

Dame Edna Everage may be one of the most famous comic creations of our time, but in April the Melbourne International Comedy Festival announced the ‘Barry Humphries Award’ was being renamed. Dame Edna’s creator had recently described Trans issues as ‘a fashion’ and called Caitlyn (formerly Bruce) Jenner a ‘publicity seeking rat-bag’. So Australia tried to ‘erase’ its most famous comedian.

In May in Britain it was the turn of John Cleese to be a target of the wokerati after comments he made in 2011 resurfaced.

He had remarked in an interview eight years prior that he thought London was ‘no longer an English city’. He tweeted that such a view was now shared by his friends abroad and ‘so there must be some truth in it.’

In a strikingly unfunny intervention, Sadiq Khan got involved. ‘These comments make John Cleese sound like he’s in character as Basil Fawlty,’ the London Mayor said. ‘Londoners know that our diversity is our greatest strength.’

As every school child ought to know, June is compulsory Pride Month. In recent years the day has become a week, a month and perhaps at some point soon could become an all-year-round event. Banks and businesses fall over each other to join in.

Barclays, among other high-street banks, festooned its branches in rainbow flags for the month. While Marks & Spencer tried to go one better by creating an ‘LGBT sandwich’ (lettuce, guacamole, bacon and tomato) that was on sale for the month. Because it is very important to show your woke solidarity by eating a sandwich which, while horrible, at least signals all the correct opinions.

After all, holding the wrong opinions carries a cost.

In the same month, an ASDA worker was fired for sharing a video of Billy Connolly. While Scotland’s funniest comedian is allowed to make a joke about suicide bombers, it appeared that supermarket workers were not.

A primary obsession of woke ideology is ‘unconscious bias’ (we are all racist, sexist and homophobic whether we know it or not). Denying you are is merely more proof that you are. And in July, it was the Royal Family’s turn to tell us all about this bias when the Duchess of Sussex guest-edited Vogue magazine. Indeed, Prince Harry used the platform to talk about ‘unconscious bias’ and announced he and his wife would limit themselves to having only two children because of climate change. Though when it comes to the issue of privilege (another woke obsession), Harry and Meghan remained strangely quiet.

Come August and Goldsmiths University announced that it was banning beef. Because of climate change, none of the university’s cafes would serve it. Meanwhile, in America, there was a flurry of concern when the New York Metropolitan Opera house announced that it was planning a new staging of Porgy And Bess. While previous generations had praised Gershwin’s masterpiece, it was now accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ because Gershwin was writing about black characters while being guilty of being white.

In September, The Guardian newspaper decided to play the ‘privilege’ game in an editorial about David Cameron, whose memoirs had just come out. The former PM may have felt some pain in his life, the paper conceded, but this was only ‘privileged pain’. That is where woke ideology gets you. Weighing up the pros, cons, benefits and privileges of a father losing his severely disabled eldest child at the age of six.

The new term started as it meant to go on. The pop singer Sam Smith, who had previously come out as gay and ‘genderqueer’ announced he was now ‘non-binary’. He insisted that all future references to him should use the pronouns ‘they’ and ‘them’ instead of ‘he’. With an online mob trying to whip everyone into line, the BBC, among others, immediately obeyed. Presumably from now on Smith will be nominated in awards ceremonies for ‘Best Group’.

Naturally the pandering politicians wanted in on this. At the PinkNews Awards in October, the Labour Party’s leader announced himself on stage thus: ‘My name is Jeremy Corbyn, pronouns he/him.’ As though he was likely to say ‘she/her’ or ‘a/dolt’. The gay press oozed sycophantic admiration. Everybody else rolled their eyes in bemusement. But other politicians worried about getting behind the times. That same month the then-Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson criticised the six men she claimed were conspiring to carry out Brexit. Summoning up her most derogatory insults, she called them ‘Six white men stuck in the past, conspiring to wreck our future’.

The pop singer Sam Smith, who had previously come out as gay and ‘genderqueer’ announced he was now ‘non-binary’    +6
The pop singer Sam Smith, who had previously come out as gay and ‘genderqueer’ announced he was now ‘non-binary’

For, in 2019, both ‘men’ and ‘white’ had become acceptable terms of insult. A month later the electorate got a chance to express its opinion about what we used to call a ‘useless woman’.

By November Barack Obama had joined the voices starting to worry about where all this might be leading. ‘I get a sense among certain young people on social media that the way of making change is to be as judgemental as possible about other people,’ he said. He went on to explain why this wasn’t a good way to live. ‘The world is messy.’ The woke brigade were furious and America’s first black President was criticised for being a ‘boomer’ – that is, for getting old.

But interventions like his do achieve something. As did the Conservative win in our General Election earlier this month. It shows there is a backlash and that people are fed up with being ordered what to think.

That feeling is something Prime Minister Boris Johnson well understands. Not least because the would-be censors have come for him so many times, pretending he has said things he has not said and mercilessly misrepresenting things he has said. The fact the country gave him and his party such a resounding mandate on December 12 is some sign the tide might be turning, in this country at least. The Conservative Party has repeatedly suggested that it will take issues of academic freedom and police over-reach seriously.

But if there is a lot of work to do at the level of government, there is even more to do in the wider culture, to push back at these cultural Marxists.

Earlier this month Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling was the target of an international campaign after she defended a woman’s right to say that biological sex exists. And on Christmas Eve, after the new governor of the Bank of England was announced, the BBC ran the headline ‘Why didn’t the Bank of England appoint a woman?’

Madness like this is why, in 2020, alongside comedian Andrew Doyle, I am doing a tour of the UK called Resisting Wokeness. Our aim is to inject a bit of sanity, as well as fun, into an increasingly dark and divisive ideology.

This dementing game has to be undone. Men and women have to be allowed to get along. People of different races should be brought together, not driven apart. And gay people should be seen to be like everyone else, not as some mad, avenging, authoritarian furies.

Through May and June we’ll be in 11 cities up and down the country. Unless we all get cancelled beforehand, I look forward to seeing you there.

SOURCE 





An Agenda That Corrupts Our Social Norms

Walter E. Williams

Here are several questions for biologists and medical professionals:

At all levels, governments ignore biology and permit people to make their sex optional on a birth certificate, Social Security card, or driver’s license.

If a person is found to have XY chromosomes (heterogametic sex), does a designation as female on his birth certificate, driver’s license, or Social Security card override the chromosomal evidence?

Similarly, if a person is found to have XX chromosomes (homogametic), does a designation as male on her birth certificate, driver’s license, or Social Security card override the chromosomal evidence?

If you were a medical professional, would you consider it malpractice for an obstetrics/gynecology medical specialist not to order routine Pap smears to screen for cervical cancer for a patient who identifies as a female but has XY chromosomes?

If you were a judge, would you sentence a criminal, who identifies as a female but has XY chromosomes, to a women’s prison? One judge just might do so.

Judge William Pryor of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit focused on a Florida school district ruling that a transgender “boy,” a person with XX chromosomes, could not be barred from the boys’ restroom. Pryor suggested students shouldn’t be separated by gender at all.

Fear may explain why biologists in academia do not speak out to say that one’s sex is not optional. Since the LGBTQ community is a political force on many college campuses, biologists probably fear retaliation from diversity-blinded administrators.

It’s not just academics and judges who now see sex as optional.

Federal, state, and local governments are ignoring biology and permitting people to make their sex optional on a birth certificate, passport, Social Security card, and driver’s license. In New York City, intentional or repeated refusal to use an individual’s preferred name, pronoun, or title is a violation of the city’s human rights law.

If I said that my preferred title was “Your Majesty,” I wonder whether the New York City Commission on Human Rights would prosecute people who repeatedly refused to use my preferred title.

One transgender LGBTQ activist filed a total of 16 complaints against female estheticians with the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal after they refused to wax his male genitals. He sought financial restitution totaling at least $32,500. One woman was forced to close her shop.

Fortunately, the activist’s case was thrown out by the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal, and he was instructed to pay $2,000 each to three of the women he attacked. The LGBTQ activist is not giving up. He is now threatening to sue gynecologists who will not accept him as a patient.

In 2012, an evangelical Christian baker in Colorado was threatened with jail time for refusing to bake a custom wedding cake for a same-sex marriage ceremony. When Christian bakery owner Jack Phillips won a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case with a 7-2 decision in June 2018 over his refusal to make a wedding cake for a gay couple based on his religious convictions, he thought his legal battles with the state of Colorado were over.

But now Phillips, owner of Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado, faces a new court fight. This fight involves a lawyer who asked him to bake a cake to celebrate the anniversary of her gender transition. There are probably many bakery shops in and around Lakewood, Colorado, that would be happy to bake a cake for homosexuals; they are simply targeting Phillips.

For those in the LGBTQ community, and elsewhere, who support such attacks, we might ask them whether they would seek prosecution of the owner of a Jewish delicatessen who refused to provide catering services for a neo-Nazi affair.

Should a black catering company be forced to cater a Ku Klux Klan affair? Should the NAACP be forced to open its membership to racist skinheads and neo-Nazis? Should the Congressional Black Caucus be forced to open its membership to white members of Congress?

If you’re a liberty-minded American, your answers should be no.

SOURCE 





Australia's charming African refugees again

Their way of thanking us for giving them refuge

Beloved grandfather, 50, left brain-dead with just hours to live after being 'stomped on and beaten with baseball bats' by gang of 10-15 youths outside his home after Christmas Day with his family

Brother-in-law said gang of 10-15 'African guys' set upon the family in the street

A 50-year-old grandfather who was allegedly bashed with baseball bats outside his home in a Christmas Day dispute with neighbours will have his life support switched off.

Anthony Clark, 50, was allegedly 'thrown around like a rag doll', stomped on and hit with bats in the street outside his home at Moorolbark in Melbourne's outer eastern suburbs shortly before 11pm.

His wife was also knocked out in their driveway and Mr Clark's stepdaughter Jessikah Clark said he was 'pretty much gone'.

'My daughter's lost her everything now. She just wants her poppy to come home and he's never going to come home,' Ms Clark told Nine News.

'My mum is worried about everyone and is just lying there with him praying. But he's pretty much gone that's it.'

'We have lost the best man in our whole lives,' Ms Clarke told the Herald Sun.

'No-one should have to die on Christmas Day just for looking after his wife and kids.'

The man's family was scheduled to arrive from Ireland and Canada on Sunday after which Mr Clarke's life support will be switched off. 

The violence began as the family were saying their farewells on the street and fireworks were let off, causing a dog to bark and the owners to get angry, Jessikah Clark said.

The family said a gang of youths with weapons, including bats and metal bars, were involved in the attack.

Ms Clark also claimed there were about '15 men' that set up on them she and her mother were hit.

'They had bats...they smashed my car and they threw mum around like a rag doll.' 

Mr Clark was allegedly confronted by a large group of men during the massive brawl.

His wife and 25-year-old stepdaughter were also allegedly attacked, his brother-in-law Mark told 3AW. 

'He's a gentle giant, and he was brutally, and I mean, savagely, attacked,' he said.

'A whole gang of African guys, ranging from teenage to mid-20s, approximately 10-15 of them with cars and baseball bats, attacked him, knocked my sister out.'

Mark said he believed his brother-in-law was trying to shield his baby during the brutal attack.

'They knocked my sister out, and had my niece - from what I understand - by the hair,' he told 3AW.

The man was repeatedly bashed in the head and was taken to hospital in a critical condition and placed in intensive care.

The family said there was no hope of recovery and his life-support will be turned off.

His wife suffered minor injuries and has been by his side at the hospital ever since.

An 18-year-old man was arrested but was later released.

SOURCE  




A whole generation of women is being led to believe that parenting and having a career is doable when it patently is not

By Christine Armstrong

My friend had called at 7.40am to say she couldn’t cope. “I got up at 3.30am, my mind was on fire, I couldn’t stop ­worrying, so I got out of bed and cleared my email backlog for the first time in months. Then the kids got up and I chased and shouted to get them ready and now I’m charging into a long day of meetings that run into each other and I feel like I never see my kids and I never get through the work and when I get home tonight my email will be full of more stuff I need to do. I’m at full capacity. Beyond full capacity. I can’t do anything more than I do. And yet people keep telling me I should do yoga. Of course I should bloody do yoga. But when? Oh God, when will this end, what do I do?” She had just dropped her kids at childcare and was walking (“Got to get some steps in”) to the station to get the train to her sales job in town.

If history is told by the winning men, I worry that the story of equality at work is too often being told by the winning women, the ones with the board seats and big pay packets, most notably Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook, whose 2013 book advised ambitious women to Lean In. Sometimes they have a nanny or an at-home husband. Either way, they are the exceptions. I remember reading an interview with British ­politician and sporting executive Karren Brady in which she said she split her time between her kids in the country and her job in town, and that it worked really well for her. Which I’m sure it did; it just didn’t much help me — or my friend in sales, who has a full-time ­working husband and is currently confronting the bitter reality that ­modern working life doesn’t combine well at all with having a family.

This mother doesn’t have her sights on a board-level job and is just working to pay the bills. She says her children are “the love and light” of her life and yet sometimes she feels they don’t even respond to her because she’s away from them too much and is ready to cry with tiredness when she finally gets home.

When I was working full-time with two small children, I too tried hard to make it work, but couldn’t. There were some memorable lows. Like a work trip to America when my breast pump broke and, after seeking help from the concierge, I had to take a taxi in the middle of the night to buy a new one, before spending the dawn hours crying and pumping milk down the drain of the hotel shower. Feeling desolate, I started to seek advice. I read a lot and went to talks and events about what women need to do to “get ahead”. High-profile female business leaders spoke at many of these. They inspired. But very often I found that the advice boiled down to “you have to work really hard, get great childcare and be super-well-organised”. This all made sense, but didn’t seem to help.

‘It’s a story being told by the winning women, the ones with the board seats and big pay packets’

Some of these superwomen talked about ­“flexibility”. It took me a while to realise that what they often meant was the flexibility to leave at the end of their contracted hours to pick up, feed and bathe their kids before working online again later to catch up. One ­mum-of-three, describing this in practical terms, told me: “I start eating my dinner and catching up on work at 10pm, just as everyone else is going to bed. It’s completely normal for me to finish at 1am or later.” The underlying message seemed to be that modern jobs are fine — as long as you’re willing to work all the waking and non-waking hours of the day.

Which means that it mostly doesn’t work well. Not only does it not work, it’s getting worse. Twenty years ago, the average working day was about seven hours and many mothers didn’t have a job outside the home. In the years since, the working day has grown by an average of about two hours and a million more mums have jobs. This is partly because house prices have soared in that time. Most households now need to have two parents out of the house working for long periods of the day. But, in that time, the needs of our ­children and the structure of childcare and the school day haven’t changed at all — as every parent of a school-age child discovers when there are weeks of the summer holidays still left to go, their own leave is used up, their finances are spent and the kids are going bananas with the need for involvement and undivided attention.

We’ve all got so used to accepting that it has to be this way that we keep at it. But my mum and my mother-in-law seemed so perplexed by my experience that I started to ask their friends and women of previous generations about their ­experiences, so I could shed some light on how we got here, trying to be superhuman and feeling like we’re failing ourselves and our kids.

I found that women in their 50s and 60s are often highly conscious of how working life has changed for the worse. There was a time, they explain, when you left work — probably frantic — at about 5pm and went home to your kids. But then came the laptops, mobiles and BlackBerrys that mean you still leave work frantic at about the same time, but then are expected to answer a call later or edit a document. Now, even when we are home, we aren’t really able to be present with our children and partners. Now, all over the country, we have parents wrestling their kids away from TVs and iPads to get them into bed without for one second letting go of their own mobile phones as they continue to field messages from work or dial into a conference call hoping no one can hear the kids splashing in the bath.

I realised we needed better answers to these questions one night when I met a friend in a pub. Between us, we had four children under three and two full-time jobs and, as the wine flowed, we let rip about how hopeless we were. Our lives were shit. She was leaving work by the fire escape in the desperate hope of seeing her kids awake once a day without annoying her colleagues. I was crying before work because I didn’t want to go in. We felt remote from our kids and our partners. We both wondered how we’d screwed up so badly and become such disasters. But then we began to question whether the world of work was set up for both parents to be in it full-time. Maybe there was a different story to tell where, however hard you work, there are very tough choices along the way and just being well organised doesn’t fix it.

Hungry for better advice, I set out to find it myself. I began to interview women, and some men, who were managing to combine work and family life to see what they had found out. We had great conversations. As the interviews went on, though, I was increasingly niggled by gaps in the stories I was telling. I would, for example, interview a wonderful, witty, smart woman and she would tell me about her family’s life. She would describe some manageable challenges and how she was tackling them. But then there were the things they told me but begged me not to write up, like the woman who’d put on a vast amount of weight after giving birth and suffered terrible depression but didn’t want her colleagues to know. Other times, I was asked to tone down a light joke about their partner not doing their fair share of the household jobs, or an admission that sometimes they ended up screaming blue murder at their kids, or maybe to take out one too many references to needing a few glasses (or bottles) of wine to get through the week.

I would still finish the interviews thinking we had got somewhere. But then a week, a month, six months later, I might run into some of these women and something more complex might emerge. Perhaps she was no longer with “the rock” partner who made it all work. Or her boss was a bully. Or her daughter was anorexic. Or her son was struggling at school. Maybe she’d been signed off work with stress or depression. Or she expressed regret at not being around enough during her children’s early years. Others said they didn’t have time for many friends.

A psychologist explained to me that the couples who have spent years being in control of their decisions — living in a nice place, choosing everything they do — can find the shift to parenting especially hard. A nanny told me the mums she worries most about are those desperate to keep up appearances. It matters to them that they drive a decent car and that the house looks neat. But they are, she says, often also the parents who come through the door glued to their phones and wave hello before hiding somewhere to work more.

The airbrushing hit me hardest when I was asked to interview a senior woman onstage at a corporate event so she could inspire her colleagues with her progression. I called her in advance and we had a brilliant chat about some difficult “time vampire” bosses she’d had when her children were young and how she had to change jobs to escape them. We talked about the battle to find the right nanny in the early years — and the total crisis when the nanny left. We talked about the pressure her job put on her relationship. So far, so familiar. But on stage, fearful of being judged by the audience for being a bad or lazy mum or too negative, she said none of this. She sat up straight, smiled and told me a completely different story. All her bosses had been on side. She’d never had a nanny, let alone one upon whom she wholly depended to keep the household working. Her husband was her biggest supporter. I left the stage furious with myself for not cutting through it.

‘Many women think that if they can’t make it work, then they’re not trying hard enough. Or they are not good enough’

I started to wonder why this clean-up routine was happening. She, like many others, didn’t want to conceal these things one-to-one; she wanted the catharsis of talking about it. But in public she feared everyone would judge her harshly if she was honest. As my articles about work/life were published, I could see the judgment pouring in and realised her instincts were right. In response to one piece I wrote about a high-powered woman with four children who said that the nanny cooked the family dinner, someone commented: “She might be powerful, but she is no mother.” Ouch.

The limits on these public conversations create a big problem. Because if the only people heard talking about what it takes for women to rise to the top at work are extremely senior, and they feel constrained from telling the truth about the hard bits, then we end up with an airbrushed public story that suggests you simply have to put in the effort. A whole generation is being led to believe that all this is doable when it patently is not. The really negative effect of these big little lies is that so many other women conclude that if they can’t make it work, then they’re not trying hard enough. Or they are not good enough.

I realised that to tell the full story of working parents I would have to talk to people without identifying them so they didn’t have to hide the truth. So there was a chance we could share stories — of the winners, losers and everyone muddling through in between — and, through that, get some proper answers that might help the rest of us. Take a woman I interviewed. We’ll call her Jane because she lives in fear of you or anyone else finding out who she is. She has three children and works in marketing. She is someone who, by her own admission, built her career over the 15 years before kids by being “always on”. She would have appeared to be successful in an interview in which she was named, even if she admitted some challenges. But there is no way she would have told the real story.

The truth is that after her kids arrived, she just ploughed on as she had before, typing busily with a tiny baby on her lap. Her boss, she admitted, was a “bitch with no personal life” who bombarded her with messages 24/7, even on holiday. Every day, she churned with restless anxiety and was racked with guilt that she dedicated only a quarter of her waking hours to her kids and husband and her own needs, the rest of it being gobbled up by work. She wouldn’t have revealed that she self-medicated with three glasses of wine a night. Or that she and her husband rarely connected aside from worrying about paying for the house and kids. Or that she was hopelessly unfit. She definitely wouldn’t have revealed that one of her children was so badly bullied at school that she stopped turning up or that, even though she was the mother, Jane didn’t know there was a problem until the school called her in for a crisis meeting.

Jane’s working practices — which are seen as pretty normal in her business — eventually drove her to anxiety attacks and stress leave. On the advice of her doctor, she used an Out of Office email message for the first time in her life and spent weeks watching TV and reading to recover. Gradually she started to get help and connect with other women in similar situations. Initially shy of sharing her experiences, she was amazed to find so many others who related to what had ­happened to her. Now things are different. Jane would have liked to change roles, but felt under pressure to keep her salary, so instead she changed teams and works from home some of the time.

She is now very engaged with her kids’ lives. She has taken up triathlons to get fit and protect herself from the constant invasion of work. She’s happier, though still working on building a better connection with her husband, and admits that she slips back into her old ways and has to reset. She says she’s mostly fine because she has stopped conforming to what her working world expects of people. But she also says she won’t get promoted now, because she isn’t 100 per cent responsive as she puts her family before work some of the time.

She is far from alone. Another mother I spoke to, a PA to a CEO, had downshifted to working three days a week after having kids, but was still drawn back into being online the rest of the time. The stress of trying to serve her boss led her to shout at her kids and lose control because she was distracted even when she wasn’t officially at work. This culminated in a trip to the park with her sons where one ran off and hid in a tree and one insisted on doing a poo in the bushes. She chased them home raging and, mortified by her own behaviour, locked herself in the bathroom crying before realising changes had to be made.

Or take the various parents who tell me that they have taken their kids to childcare or school knowing full well that they are ill. One child had a broken finger, another mother knew her son had chickenpox. But because their workplaces were so rigid, they would take the kids to school, depending on the staff to call them at work later to insist they collect them. Despite the possible distress to the children, the ­contagion, the wrath of the childcare centre or school and the double journey, this is still often seen as preferable to not turning up for work at all “because the kids are ill” — which in far too many workplaces is seen as a lame excuse that diminishes the person who uttered it.

There are so many other stories. The mum who threw up before her daughter’s birthday party because she works full-time and doesn’t know the other parents, who make her really nervous. The mum who works in a demanding job while her partner is mostly at home, but finds he doesn’t clean up or cook dinner or ­manage the homework, so when she gets home she often ends up crying at the burden of ­getting it all done and the injustice of being responsible for everything.

Then there’s the mum who leaves work totally exhausted on a Friday night, and on the way home sees all the other mums in a wine bar ­having fun and has the sickening realisation that she has no friends. Or the woman in finance whose husband hands her their baby as she ­staggers through the door at the end of the day, not appreciating her commute, her stressful job or the fact that she brings in the money. Or the woman who doesn’t want to work because she longs to be a “proper mum”, but can’t afford it and cries every day as she leaves her kids. Or the mum whose friends are based around work, and who spent her maternity leave pushing the pram around in the hope of just seeing people because she was so lonely; she went back to work so soon, she later regretted not spending more time bonding with her baby.

Then there’s the young mum raging at the logistical difficulty of getting her kid to and from school and working an eight-hour day, who asks me to whom she should complain to get this sorted, her rage triggered by the realisation that everyone with kids who works has to find a ­solution for this. And the mum of a boy with ­special needs, pushed out of her old job, who asks: “What kind of a job will let me take him to all the appointments he needs during the week?” And the mum who pulled a wriggling live nit out of her hair during a client presentation and squashed it before continuing.

These accounts are not unusual. Yet the true nitty-gritty horror of making it work rarely features in debates about the pay gap, the number of women who leave work after having kids and the lack of women at board and CEO level. We never get to hear the stories that make people feel less alone and realise that the failure isn’t their own. It also means we don’t share solutions that might actually help. Whether that is about being more conscious about the hours we work, changing our relationship with work, turning off our phones, taking control of our finances or rebalancing roles with our partner. If anything is to shift, we have to start telling the truth.

LET’S TALK ABOUT THE DADS

Time issues have an impact on both parents, but there is a big difference. Critically, men largely escape the judgment mums seem to face. Which is not to suggest that many men feel any different in terms of wanting to spend more time at home. Many would like to work more sensible hours and resent feeling diminished if they say so in their professional environment. They feel under pressure to “provide”: some relish this and some resent it. Some feel their partners have more choices because it’s more socially acceptable for them to ask for part-time or flexible work or to change careers. Others feel trapped by responsibility for the family income. The point is, men don’t feel like winners in this either; they are just a bit more likely to escape the stressful judgments women face.

Research by cognitive scientist Dr Barbara W. Sarnecka and her colleagues at the University of California, reported in The New York Times, found that subjects in a study were much less judgmental of fathers who left their children briefly (say, in a car) while they did a task: “A father who is distracted by his interests and obligations in the adult world is being, well, a father; a mother who does the same is failing her children”. Expectations of fathers remain far lower than those of mothers. Partly because of that lack of judgment they also express less guilt.

It may also be partly down to how the different genders tend to behave at work. Dr Bill Mitchell, a London psychologist who has treated workplace stress disorder for three decades, says: “I tend to avoid gender generalisations, but, increasingly, my clinical work makes the difference between the sexes more obvious. Women are hard-wired to belong, to take responsibility for others, and men are more able to be self-protective.” Which means, he says, that when an unexpected family problem arises, men are more inclined to dodge it.

Whatever the differences between genders, the consequences for our children remain the same. We don’t have enough time for them. Why does this matter and what do we do? It matters because we have a lot of working parents who are struggling and feeling like failures and not enjoying their kids. We see the rise in children’s mental health issues, and more than one psychologist has told me that they really worry about the kids of professional parents who are always distracted.

To address that, we need to be more honest so we can take more control of our own working experiences. We need to be able to talk more about what does work and how to make it work within our own families. For some, the price of “always on” will be worth it, because they are driven and ambitious and have the systems in place to make it work. For others, stepping back a bit at key points will make all the difference to them and their families.

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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30 December, 2019

Can the Left overcome its patriotism problem?

The British Leftist below, Angus Colwell, recognizes that the Left is not patriotic and proposes that there is a third way between rejecting patriotism and accepting it

He has a point that the mainstream political Left in both the UK and the USA were once patriotic.  We all know of the advice by JFK about asking what you can do for your country but it was also true in Britain. As a Times writer put it:

"When the mourners sat in the pews at Clement Attlee’s funeral in Westminster Abbey in November 1967 they were played, at the request of the deceased, the musical setting of a poem by Cecil Spring Rice. "I Vow To Thee, My Country" is a fitting testament to Major Attlee, the Gallipoli veteran who was as patriotic, almost as stereotypical, an Englishman of the first half of the 20th century as one could imagine. The congregation went on to sing Hubert Parry’s setting of Blake’s Jerusalem and John Bunyan’s To Be A Pilgrim in a festival that commemorated a successful prime minister and a great patriot."

So why has that changed so drastically?  Colwell doesn't know.  Maybe he is too young. He just thinks it is unnecessary.  But it is clear what has happened.  And it is encapsulated in the campaign slogan of "Supermac":  "You never had it so good".

Attlee was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 26 July 1945 to 26 October 1951.  Harold Macmillan was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 10 January 1957 to 18 October 1963.  What lay between them was the great postwar expansion of prosperity that was seen in Britain and elsewhere. And it was an expansion of prosperity that poured down through all the social classes.  Macmillan was referring to the eradication of the dire poverty in which working class Britons had found themselves at the end of WWII compared to their state in his era in the 1960s.

And the spread of prosperity throughout Britain led to a gradual erosion of working class support for Leftist salvation.  When  McKenzie & Silver wrote their book on the British working class in 1968, a quarter of the working class was already voting Tory.

But that was a tragedy for the Left.  The chronic anger and unhappiness that is Leftism lost its customary focus and justification for existence.  For generations the Left had a clearly defined enemy:  "The bosses".  The entire program of the Left was to "save" the workers from their Tory oppressors.  But when a big segment of the workers started siding with the Tories, that entire program was called into question.  To hate the Tories was also to hate a large segment of the workers!  That was too contradictory even for the Left. 

A new focus for criticism had to be found.  And as the whole nation was becoming bourgeois and thus developing Tory instincts, habits and beliefs, there was only one possible target left:  The nation as a whole.  The whole nation was now essentially bourgeois so the whole nation had to be demonized.  And that has gradually developed into the recently seen major breakdown of working class loyalties at the hands of Boris Johnson. Boris has finally shattered the "red wall". Trump in the USA also gained massive working class support in 2016.

So the class basis of politics has changed markedly. The Left have lost a lot of the workers and gained educated elitists instead. And tertiary education is now widespread to the gain for the Left is not inconsiderable.

There are still poor people in Britain who hold to a traditional belief that the Labour party is on their side but that may be something of a last gasp of the old polarities. To the Leftist antipatriots of today, the workers are now no source of virtue so internationalism has become the Leftist dream, a dream with little working class support.

So, no, there will be no revival of Leftist patriotism

Notes:  "Windrush" refers to the opening of Britain's doors to  black immigrants from the Caribbean in 1948.  Colwell regards that as an achievement. Given the stratospheric rate of violent crime among people of African ancestry worldwide, others might regard it as a great mistake.  He also regards the legalization of homosexual marriage as a Leftist achievement, even though it was an initiative of the Conservative Cameron government


We hear someone identify as a “patriot”, and we suspect “racist”. If we see an English flag flying outside someone’s house, we suspect they harbour Ukip-sympathetic views. This judgement has been given an authoritative reinforcement too: a British Army leaflet leaked earlier this year was titled ‘Extreme Right Wing Indicators & Warnings’, and included people identifying as ‘patriots’ on the checklist for potential racists.

Billy Bragg wrote in The Progressive Patriot (2006): “Reluctant to make any concessions to reactionary nationalism, we have, by default, created a vacuum, leaving it [patriotism] to the likes of the BNP and the Daily Mail”. In 2006, the right had a complete monopoly on patriotism, and this has not changed. Yet, throughout our national stories, it has more often been the left that has invigorated the change that we now rejoice and revere.

In the case of Jeremy Corbyn, it is his characteristically immature misunderstanding of history that has led to his party, and ideology, being plunged into electoral oblivion. The right’s ownership of patriotism predates Corbyn’s leadership, and it is both the soft and hard left’s inability to connect the country’s past and present with its future, that has left the party in its current state.

***

The left-wing journalist Paul Mason views the idea that Brexit lost Corbyn the election as inaccurate. For him, Corbyn lost the working class in 2018, not 2019. The most damaging fiascos in this year were Corbyn’s handling of the Skripal poisonings, and Labour’s initial refusal to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism when drafting their code of conduct. Corbyn’s response to the Skripal poisonings (instinctively siding with Russia) was a vindication of the popular idea that Corbyn’s suspected antipathy towards Britain was tangible and influenced his policy. His refusal to sing the national anthem, his opposition to Trident, his meetings with the IRA — all of these were common knowledge at the 2017 general election, but the Skripal poisonings proved his discomfort with his country fully guided his national security response and his previous record was more than inconsequential left-wing quirks.

The IHRA debacle’s impact was twofold: it meant that the antisemitism crisis in the Labour Party exploded into the mainstream for over year, culminating in both the departure of nine Labour MPs earlier in 2019, and the Chief Rabbi’s intervention during the election campaign. It was deeply damaging for Labour in Jewish communities. But, at large, the antisemitism crisis was not necessarily a wider vote-loser in its own right, but supplemented other suspicions about Corbyn as menacing. For many who didn’t know where the antisemitism came from, it was ominous and perturbing. To those who understood where it came from, it was emblematic of Corbyn’s aversion to patriotism — aligning with Palestine, which was, in the minds of many, akin to aligning with Islam against the west. When election campaigns were interrupted by Islamist terrorism, Corbyn’s own links with militant groups appeared to some to be proof of sympathy with the enemy.

These two errors were completely avoidable. Had Corbyn condemned Russia like Theresa May did (which happened to be the finest hour of her premiership) and adopted the IHRA definition, his anti-monarchist views could have seemed like harmless quirks, and the antisemitism in the Labour Party kept in house. It is right and a relief that these two critical flaws of Corbyn were exposed — and yes, it is Corbyn himself, not Corbynism — otherwise his most dangerous instincts and tendencies could now be in Downing Street.

***

There is a deep irony at the heart of many on the left’s understanding of history. For many, there is no grey area between support and deplatforming, between reverence and eradication. Labour’s pledge for a formal inquiry into Britain’s colonial past is welcome, and a review of our empire is long overdue — Edward Said should be as recognisable a name as Edmund Burke. But this historical framework has slid into cancel culture, most emblematic in #RhodesMustFall movements. Removing statues, and thus removing figures from history, is to not revise and remember — it is to forget. The casual absorber of history may not be as familiar with Cecil Rhodes as with other tyrants, and tearing down statues is not going to improve that. Similarly, deplatforming and cancel culture suppresses the symptoms of an ill society, rather than addressing the causes.

Corbyn himself’s own view of history is riddled with irony. His hero, John Lilburne, was a strident patriot. Corbyn and McDonnell both revere Clement Attlee’s government (1945–1951), and the creation of the NHS, the nationalisation of 20% of the economy, and the establishment of the welfare state. Yet Attlee was the man who led the British development of the nuclear deterrent. Attlee had a clear vision of “collective security”, a concept Corbyn fundamentally misunderstands.

Attlee also exemplified a progressive, left-wing patriotism. His government advocated for the creation of a ‘New Jerusalem’ — a prosperous and egalitarian society. Are these not the two things Corbyn wants to reconcile most of all? Attlee had the benefit of a postwar climate — he was able to advocate for a patriotic unifying bond to replace the gloomy bonding activity that was World War II, building a new nation. But now there is a void that needs filling — a yearning for unity and common identity — that Labour must look to inhabit.

The Dutch writer Ian Buruma observes that in the comparatively peaceful twenty-first century, there is a “weird longing for the state of war, for the clarity it brings, and for the chance to divide one’s fellow citizens…neatly into friends and foes”. As society grows more secular, the unifying bonds that religious practise once maintained are replaced by various creeds. Often, it is nationalism that fills the gap. The Irish political scientist Benedict Anderson depicted the nation as a socially constructed “imagined community”, a home in the minds of people who perceive themselves as part of that group.

It is not hard to see how this idea of nationalism slides into racism. To borrow the terminology of the psychologist Henri Rajfel, our societies resemble an out-group which we do not feel comfortable identifying as part of, rather than an in-group. Those who do identify themselves in respect to a nation can stray away from the idea of loving their own country, to the more ugly idea of national, and often following that, racial superiority. Progressive patriotism is loving your country in its own right, not in comparison.

***

This “progressive patriotism” seems a blue-sky elusive concept. But it can exist, just in the same way that nations exist. Nations are not imagined communities as Anderson writes — they have material realities. Shared landmarks, shared food, shared cultural tastes, shared weather — as we know all too well from our small talk.

The best exemplifications of progressive patriotism are in sport. Eric Hobsbawm wrote that “the imagined community of millions seems more real as a team of 11 named people”. Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman, wrote a vital article in the summer of 2018 about England’s football team as the embodiment of a progressive idea of nation. He compares 1984, when a subset of England fans refused to accept England’s 2–0 win at the Maracanã because a goal had been scored by a black man (John Barnes), with the cultural (and sporting) success of the current England football team. When the 2018 World Cup came around, we saw a multiracial team, fully integrated with each other, happy to wrap themselves in the England flag — the picture of a history of immigration to England.

While that is England, Britain broadcasted its own progressive patriotism to the world at the London 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony. There are flaws with this fundamentally Whiggish view of history — while our history is not necessarily one of inexorable progress, the idea of progression and story is our “bridge between the future and the past” as Orwell put it, and helps us to celebrate the positive things that have bonded us as a nation.

At the Olympics Opening Ceremony, these were Britain’s industrial revolution, the NHS, and our literary and cultural heritage. It featured Paul McCartney, the Arctic Monkeys and Tinie Tempah. The ceremony celebrated the women’s suffrage movement, the Windrush generation and featured mixed-race families and grime artists. It was, as Forbes put it, a “love song to Britain”.

The reaction of the Conservative MP Adrian Burley was that the Opening Ceremony was “leftie multicultural crap”. But Burley inadvertently made a telling historical judgement — the association with a “love song to Britain” — patriotism — with “leftie[s]” — the left.

The things that we revere have been largely invigorated by the left throughout our history. The creation of the NHS, women’s suffrage, the legalisation of homosexuality — these are celebrated today by the right, but were enacted and pressured by the left. The Conservatives are proud of introducing same-sex marriage in 2012, but conveniently forget to mention that more Conservative MPs voted against it than for it. It was passed with Labour votes.

Inevitably, to embrace this kind of patriotism we need to accept a few myths — the Olympics Opening Ceremony did so when it championed the Industrial Revolution as an act occurring from within England’s “green and pleasant lands”, and not reliant on the colonial expansion like it was. Tom Holland, reviewing Margaret Macmillan’s The Uses and Abuses of History, highlighted the advantage of slight fabrications:

“Without the mythologisation of Magna Carta, the history of liberty in the English-speaking world…would have turned out very much for the worse; without Churchill’s romantic evocation of Britain’s island story in 1940, Hitler may never have been defeated”.

The culture war over Churchill’s legacy fought by the left is an example of their current disassociation with progressive patriotism. We need to acknowledge Churchill’s racially abhorrent views and remember and condemn them, not remove them and him from history. That Britain defeated Nazism in 1945 is an unequivocal good, possibly the most in history, and removing the spearhead of that from our memory can lead to a strange sense of relativism. This leads to what the philosopher John Gray observed — that “sections of the left relativise the Holocaust, treating it as only one among many crimes against humanity”. This relativism sparks a fierce conservative backlash, which tramples all over the middle ground, polarises our politics and drowns out the grey area of remembrance of Churchill’s triumphs with acknowledgement of his deep flaws.

This historical cancel culture is an acutely modern idea. Yet the left’s aversion to nationhood is not. Orwell identified the left’s disassociation with patriotism in England Your England (1941), an essay written during the Blitz. His observation at the time that “the English intelligentsia are Europeanised” rings true amidst the Brexit debate — many liberals prefer to identify as “European”, or more often, “Londoners”, and feel an aversion to identifying as “English” or “British”.

What has changed since when Orwell was writing in the 1940s is the expansion of disassociation from patriotism from the intellectual elite to the modern left at large. Colonial guilt — which is justified and vital — has mutated into a deeper cultural embarrassment and self-hatred, of everything Britain stands for.

It has led to a strange self-alienation amongst many, rendering themselves void of a place for identity. Worse, it feeds the worst impulses and backlashes of the nationalists, as the left attempt to proselytise this abandonment of nation for all (most of whom are comfortable identifying with nationhood). The middle way we need is through acknowledgment both of past glories and mistakes — for example, reconciling our colonial guilt with our positive history of immigration since the Second World War is how we make certain concessions to myths without mistreating history.

***

At the 2019 election, Labour did not lose due to a wholesale rejection of their economic policies (which remain popular). Labour fundamentally abandoned patriotism, and nation as identity. As did the Liberal Democrats. Labour’s catchphrase “for the many, not the few” was ironic when choosing to advocate negating the decision of the “many”. The “Liberal Democrats” is an ironic name for a party who back overturning democracy — an act more at home in Viktor Orbán’s Hungary than the British centre ground. Able to monopolise Farage’s grievances in respect to nationhood, Johnson was able to emerge as the only mainstream patriotic figure at this election, and is reaping the rewards.

The Leave vote was an inherently patriotic act. Unfortunately, some who voted Leave did so according to the comparative nationalist view of nation — a misplaced view of superiority. But many voted Leave in a more affirmative sense — as a vote of confidence in our nations and the institutions that govern us.

The Brexit vote was a vote of confidence for our parliament, our judiciary, our civil service, and an expression that we are happy to be governed by them. Standing up for these great institutions, slightly Whiggish though it may be, is an example of progressive patriotism in the political sense — it is not refined to culture and sport. The subsequent demonisation of each of those institutions has been ugly and has enhanced distrust of our own country, provoking Leavers and Remainers for different reasons.

If we didn’t trust the European bureaucrats who supposedly governed us, but do not then in turn have faith in our own institutions either, who do we trust? The Brexit vote has so far enhanced social dislocation, not addressed it.

***

The left must emerge as the progressive patriotic voice in Britain. It was the left who enacted legislation to bring the Windrush generation to the United Kingdom, the left who first endorsed women’s suffrage, and the left who legalised homosexuality. Our most successful black, female, and LGBT sportspeople, musicians, actors and public figures are not successful in an “imagined community” — nation exists, and their success is the consequence of history, of progressive legislation of past governments, and a progressive idea of our nation.

Forward-looking, innovative and progressive patriotism must not be confined to sporting events. It is the left who were the invigorators of it, yet it is the left who are currently exacerbating the backsliding of it. The left must acknowledge responsibility and pick the mantle back up.

SOURCE 






A Response to the Editor of "Christianity Today"

The magazine's amoral view says more about its editor than about Trump.

The editor-in-chief of Christianity Today, Mark Galli, wrote an editorial calling for the impeachment of President Donald Trump.

In my view, this editorial only serves to confirm one of the sadder realizations of my life: that religious conviction guarantees neither moral clarity nor common sense.

The gist of the editorial — and of most religious and conservative opposition to President Trump — is that any good the president has done is dwarfed by his character defects.

This is an amoral view that says more about Galli than it does about the president. He and the people who share his opinion are making the following statement: No matter how much good this president does, it is less important than his character flaws.

Why is this wrong?

First, because it devalues policies that benefit millions of people.

And second, because it is a simplistic view of character.

I do not know how to assess a person's character — including my own — outside of how one's actions affect others. Since I agree with almost all of President Trump's actions as president and believe they have positively affected millions of people, I have to conclude that as president, Trump thus far has been a man of particularly good character.

Of course, if you think his policies have harmed millions of people, you will assess his character negatively. But that is not what never-Trump conservatives or Christians such as the Christianity Today editor-in-chief argue. They argue that his policies have indeed helped America (and even the world), but this fact is far less significant than his character.

In the words of Galli: "(I)t's time to call a spade a spade, to say that no matter how many hands we win in this political poker game, we are playing with a stacked deck of gross immorality and ethical incompetence."

This rhetorical sleight of hand reflects poorly on Galli's intellectual and moral honesty.

Galli and every other Christian and conservative opponent of the president believe their concerns are moral, and that the president's Christian and other conservative supporters are political.

This is simply wrong.

I and every other supporter of the president I know support him for moral reasons, not to win a "political poker game." Galli's view is purely self-serving; he's saying, "We Christian and other conservative opponents of the president think in moral terms, while Christian and other conservative supporters of the president think in political terms."

So, permit me to inform Galli and all the other people who consider themselves conservative and/or Christian that our support for the president is entirely moral.

— To us, putting pressure on the Iranian regime — one of the most evil and dangerous regimes on Earth — by getting out of the Iran nuclear deal made by former President Barack Obama is a moral issue. Even New York Times columnist Bret Stephens, who loathes Trump, has written how important the president's rejection of the Obama-Iran agreement has been.

— To us, enabling millions of black Americans to find work — resulting in the lowest black unemployment rate ever recorded — is a moral issue.

— To us, more Americans than ever being employed and almost 4 million Americans freed from reliance on food stamps is a moral issue.

— To us, appointing more conservative judges than any president in history — over the same period of time — is a moral issue. That whether the courts, including the Supreme Court, are dominated by the left or by conservatives is dismissed by Galli as "political poker" makes one question not only Galli's moral thinking but also his moral theology.

— To us, moving the American embassy to Israel's capital city, Jerusalem — something promised by almost every presidential candidate — is a moral issue, not to mention profoundly courageous. And courage is a moral virtue.

— To us, increasing the U.S. military budget — after the severe cuts of the previous eight years — is a moral issue. As conservatives see it, the American military is the world's greatest guarantor of world peace.

Yet, none of these things matter to Galli and other misguided Christians and conservatives. What matters more to them is Trump's occasional crude language and intemperate tweets, what he said about women in a private conversation and his having committed adultery.

Regarding adultery, that sin is for spouses and God to judge. There is no connection between marital sexual fidelity and moral leadership. I wish there were. And as regards the "Access Hollywood" tape, every religious person, indeed every thinking person, should understand that there is no connection between what people say privately and their ability to be a moral leader. That's why I wrote a column for the Wall Street Journal 20 years ago defending Hillary Clinton when she was charged with having privately expressed anti-Semitic sentiments.

That the editor of Christianity Today thinks the president's personal flaws, whatever they might be, are more important than all the good he has done for conservatives, for Christians, for Jews, for blacks and for America tells us a lot ... about Galli and the decline of Christian moral thought.

SOURCE 






A Feminist Bothered by ‘Everything’

By Rachelle Peterson

Meghan Daum is a liberal feminist who, in her forties, finds herself out-lefted by the new left. The Problem with Everything: My Journey Through the New Culture Wars recounts her inability to fathom Fourth Wave Feminists who declare themselves afraid to attend college or seek “lean-in” type jobs (oh the rape culture!) and her schism with Social Justice Warriors whose “self-proclaimed utopian vision” sometimes sounds to Daum “a lot like authoritarianism.”

Daum grew up picketing for the Equal Rights Amendment and chokes at the thought of “heartbeat bills” limiting abortion. But she cringed at the crude, profanity-laden Women’s March and thought some of the accusations against Brett Kavanaugh, even if true (and she believed they were), didn’t amount to “a big deal.” She finds Betsy DeVos a “troubling, even repugnant, specimen” but cheered when DeVos rescinded the Obama Administration’s Title IX guidance that gutted due process. To her, the definition of a feminist means being tough. To today’s feminists, it means being “fair.” Worse still, Fourth Wave Feminism might just be “narcissism repackaged as revolution.”

A skilled, incisive writer (she spent eleven years as a columnist for the Los Angeles Times and now writes a biweekly column for Medium), Daum deftly unmasks the hypocrisies of the new left. Isn’t it sexist to decry toxic masculinity while denying toxic femininity? (Daum has a page-long list of examples.) If a woman can regret a sexual experience and retroactively categorize it as rape, shouldn’t a man be permitted to raise concerns about preying feminists who believe men should gratefully accept any sexual encounter a woman deigns to bestow? (Daum has stories of men not forced, but coaxed, into sex by their female dates, in a manner not altogether unlike some of the “rape” stories women tell.) Isn’t it only fair to acknowledge the many ways women wield incredible power over men—including by threatening to ruin them with #MeToo-type accusations?

In a chapter devoted to the college campus, Daum questions the vaunted statistic that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted while in college. She also wonders how much of the activism on campus is mere performance theater.

But here’s where her account begins to falter. Daum’s major critique of campus activists and the new leftists, in general, is their lack of nuance. They fit every incident into a prepared storyline of oppression. They see every event as a black-and-white matter of morality. They perceive nuance as “a dog whistle for centrist and right-leaning scolds whose privilege blinded them to the severity of the crisis before them.”

All true. But Daum treats the new left as simply too extreme in its zeal for good principles—she talks about the “excesses of feminism”—and never considers that it might actually be wrong about some premises. Partly this is because Daum herself is a leftist who shares some intellectual roots with today’s activists.

Mostly Daum professes to be simply uninterested in questions of existential truth or actual right and wrong. “It wasn’t just ‘truth’ I was after. It was that pesky nuance thing,” she explains. She wants greater personal freedom, including the freedom to hold complicated or contradictory opinions (she clings to “our basic human right to be conflicted”). She also wants the freedom to draw the lines where she thinks they should be drawn—namely, at “real” chauvinism—without bothering to explain why today’s leftists shouldn’t enjoy the same line-drawing privileges. She dislikes the new left’s purist approach not so much because she thinks it’s flat-out wrong, but because its lines are just a little too crisp. She wants murkiness. She declares that “in the end, to be human is to be confused.”

This “let life be messy” dogma buys Daum a lot of wiggle room. She can breathlessly praise the Intellectual Dark Web—Jordan Peterson and Bret Weinstein are particular favorites—for their willingness to “dispense” with the “anticipatory self-inoculations from criticism” (by prefacing a talk on sexual assault, for example, by endlessly repeating that that rape is real and terrible). But when George Will wrote a column characterizing victimhood as a “coveted status that confers privileges,” he was “essentially correct and yet incredibly stupid” for failing to offer those same obligatory concessions. (In The Problem with Everything, Daum herself burns many pages on the requisite liberal catechisms.)

She can concede that young feminists, leveraging their “thin skin as their most powerful weapon,” are performing a “brilliant move of jujitsu.” And yet sixty pages later, she declares these same fragile women “put those men on pedestals they might not have been on to begin with,” thereby “doing a jujitsu move against [themselves].” Daum’s love of contradiction and complication sits ill at ease with her complaint that the new left, too, can be self-contradictory.

If clarity versus murkiness is the main divide between Third and Fourth Wave Feminists (and along with them, leftists and new leftists), Daum attributes that divide almost entirely to technology and natural generational shifts: “The world has changed so much between my time and theirs that someone just ten years younger might as well belong to a different geological epoch.” She allows she might be particularly sensitive because just as the new left gained ascendancy, her marriage fell apart. But for the most part, she blames “aging and feeling obsolete,” being an “oldster,” becoming an “official” member of “Team Older Feminist.” She attends her 25-year college reunion and comes away mourning, “Oh, the irrelevance! The obsolescence! The creak of aging out before you even get old.”

This is either a brilliant rhetorical move or a fatal flaw. Does Daum intentionally veil her criticisms in her own personal story, knowing that young leftists credit “lived experiences” with far more weight than they do outright arguments? Does she call for moral murkiness because she calculates that articulating a counter-position is too aggressive for activists who plug their ears at naysayers?

Or is she really admitting that her older leftism—superior though she believes it—lacks the moral standing to mount a serious offense to today’s left? That once her generation embraced moral relativism and discarded “truth” as meaningless, they practically invited the next to see themselves as the personal arbiters of right and wrong?

Or perhaps it’s both. Daum tells the story of interviewing potential apartment-mates while a graduate student in New York.  One, a thirty-something man, suggested he buy the food if the female roommates do the cooking. Daum found it hilarious. Such a chauvinist did not merit outrage. He was outdated, “a human-shaped dust bunny being swept, before our very eyes, into the trash bin of history.”

The implication is that today’s fragile feminists have inadvertently rescued the chauvinist from those trash bins, rehabilitating him into an ever-present, even necessary, character to serve as the foil for their feminist narrative. Score one for older feminism. And yet, one can’t shake the sense that Daum fears she is now the one headed for the trash bins of history. She, along with the rest of her generation, leaned heavily on “outdated” and “old-fashioned” as synonyms for “bad.” Now she’s vulnerable to those same charges. That leaves her just one more problem in the vast web of the problem with everything.

SOURCE 






Activists hijack worthy groups like the AMA, RSPCA

By MAURICE NEWMAN, writing from Australia

It is understandable that, across the world, trusted organisations have become havens for left-wing activists. After all, the reputation of venerable institutions precedes them, making them ideal Trojan horses in the battle for ideas.

Take the Australian Medical Association. It is presumed to be the voice of the nation’s medical profession. Perhaps it is. But gone is the heyday of the 1960s when 95 per cent of medical practitioners were members. Today, a mere 20,215 doctors, or about 19 per cent of registered practitioners, belong. So it’s far from clear the AMA represents the views of most practising doctors.

Yet it remains influential in public health in a left-wing kind of way, and increasingly fancies ­itself more generally. But, then, health — like the environment — can be weaponised to bring pressure on legislators on a range of social and economic issues, and the AMA’s leadership knows this.

For example, it was a long-time campaigner for marriage equality, citing mental and physical health issues as reasons to vote for change. Yet, despite its advocacy and the publicity pushing for a Yes vote, last year, the first full year after legal recognition, when a surge in same sex-marriages would have been expected, only 6538 couples tied the knot. That’s only 5.5 per cent of all Australian marriages.

While the $100m spent on promotion, and the plebiscite itself, may have been well-intended, there is the matter of opportunity cost. With $100m, the AMA could have concentrated its time and resources arguing for less fashionable, all-embracing health priorities. ­Indeed, University of Sydney psychologists found that the increased exposure to negative messaging during the campaign added significantly to levels of ­depression, anxiety and other “psychological distress” for the gay, lesbian and bisexual community.

The AMA’s high-profile position on the Urgent Medical Treatment Bill, championed by then independent member for Wentworth and former AMA president Kerryn Phelps, seems to be ­another case of questionable judgment driven by politics. AMA president Tony Bartone argued: “There is compelling evidence that the asylum-seekers on Nauru, especially the children, are suffering from serious physical and mental health conditions, and they should be brought to Australia for appropriate quality care.” AMA federal executive member Paul Bauert compared offshore detainees to those ­interned under the Holocaust. Given the number of medical professionals on Nauru and the ­reality it is an open centre, that claim is obscene. Indeed, 40 of 300 refugees resettled in the US ­applied to return.

Twelve months after enactment, the medivac legislation was repealed. But not before 135 offshore detainees were transferred to the mainland for medical treatment. Only 13 were ­admitted to hospital. Five refused treatment altogether. One, ­despite allegedly being ­involved in 50 violent incidents, was admitted after botching a DIY penis ­enlargement.

It now seems clear the AMA’s primary motivation was political. By dramatising the health issues of offshore detainees, it sought to undermine Australia’s border ­security policies that had twice been endorsed by the electorate. Passing the bill may have been a momentary triumph for left-wing activism but, in so doing, the AMA nailed its true colours ­firmly to the mast.

On climate change, too, the AMA’s motives seem ideological. While Bartone says he relies on “empirical evidence”, he treads a well-worn alarmist path despite there being ample evidence to show some of his assertions are mistaken. He dwells on “significant linear associations between exposure to higher temperatures and greater mortality”, ignoring an international study published in The Lancet that finds cold weather kills 20 times as many people as hot weather. Of course, to embrace The Lancet’s findings also would mean acknowledging that climate change policies were causing many needless deaths for the frail and elderly through increasingly unaffordable energy costs. How does this reconcile with the Hippocratic oath’s “First, do no harm”?

Just as the AMA exploits health for political purposes, so the RSPCA weapon­ises animals. Along with the Greens, Animals Australia and the Animal Justice Party, it has supported the abolition of horse racing, zoos, farming, fishing and the eating of meat.

In 2011 it campaigned with ­Animals Australia for the Gillard government to ban live cattle ­exports to Indonesia. In 2014 it co-sponsored a full-page advertisement in The Age supporting a Greens candidate for the Victorian elections. In 2017 it collaborated with Animals Australia and the ABC in a sensationalised documentary that resulted in NSW temporarily banning greyhound racing. Yet, when there are mass cattle deaths on ­indigenous properties in Western Australia because of “catastrophic failures” of cattle management, the RSPCA is strangely silent. WA farmers claim different standards apply when animal neglect occurs on indigenous-owned pastoral leases.

The RSPCA also was slow to declare its position on vegan ­activists breaking into farms and abattoirs. This follows its sister ­organisation calling for animal-rights protesters to shut down Britain’s top meat market. British animal rights activists claim veganism is the best way to save the planet. In Australia, the RSPCA also supports the “scientific consensus that climate change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions from human activities, ­including electricity generation, agriculture (including livestock farming), industry, waste and land use”. It seems Australia’s RSPCA is preparing to follow its British counterpart’s lead.

By posing as wolves in sheep’s clothing, left-wing activists have been most effective in influencing political outcomes. And the AMA and RSPCA are just two of the many respected organisations captured. No longer should we ­assume trusted names are true to label.

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 December, 2019

Mummified Inuits living in Greenland 500 years ago suffered from clogged-up arteries despite feasting on a diet of fish rich in omega-3

Another blow to the great fish-oil myth

Scans of mummified Inuits from 16th-century Greenland revealed that the ancient hunters suffered from clogged-up arteries despite a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids.

Atherosclerosis — the build-up of plaques of fat, cholesterol and calcium in one's arteries — is a leading cause of death today in the world's wealthier countries.

While often seen as a product of modern lifestyles, evidence of the condition has been found in human remains dating back as far as around 4,000 BC.

However, none of these examples enjoyed a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which has been suggested can help protect against plaque build-up.

Researchers turned to four incredibly well-preserved Inuits, who would have eaten a marine-based, omega 3-rich diet, to see if the fatty acid improved arterial health.

The findings suggest that diets rich in omega-3 may not guarantee against plaque buildup — however, the researchers caution that it is unclear what other factors were at play.

Cardiologist L. Samuel Wann of Ascension Healthcare in Milwaukee and colleagues studied four Inuit mummies taken from the collections of the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in Cambridge.

Preserved largely by the cold, the mummified individuals were found on the island of Uunartaq, off of the coast of Greenland, in 1929.

Based on their clothing and surrounding grave goods, archaeologists have concluded that the mummies were buried in the 1500s.

During their lives, the group would have lived in huts made from stone, whale bone and seal skin and would have hunted from kayaks with spears, bows and arrows.

Their prey would have included fish, birds, marine mammals and caribou — with this marine-based diet likely to have been rich in omega-3 fatty acids.

Based on their skeletal and dental features, the experts determined that the mummies included two men and two women between the ages of 18–30.

The researchers used a CT scanner to take detailed images of the mummies' insides, which were then analysed by Dr Wann and his team of four other cardiologists and two radiologists with experience interpreting scans of mummified remains.

Three of the mummies were found to have so-called 'calcified atheroma' — an accumulation of plaques of fatty material in the arteries which appeared as high-density regions in the CT scans.

The buildups were seen to be similar to those in living humans with atherosclerosis — although in the mummy's case, it was unclear if this condition led to their demise.

'This [study] presents evidence for the presence of calcified plaques in the mummified remains of 3 young Inuit individuals living 500 years ago,' the researchers wrote in their paper.

This, they added, suggests 'the presence of atherosclerosis despite [the mummies'] vigorous lifestyle and marine-based diet.'

However, the researchers cautioned that the complex nature of atherosclerosis makes it difficult to determining the exact impact of particular factors, such as the preventative effect of an omega-3-rich diet.

Other factors — like environmental smoke produced by the use of indoor fires — could have helped produce atherosclerosis in this ancient Inuit population.

The full findings of the study were published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

SOURCE 






UK: Woke class hatred

The loathing of ordinary people is now plain for all to see.

This is a hard article to write, for legal rather than emotional reasons. You see, the main hook for this – an allegation from former Labour MP Caroline Flint that shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry told an MP in a Labour Leave seat she was ‘glad my constituents aren’t as stupid as yours’ – has now become the subject of a legal battle. (Thornberry strongly rejects the allegation and is suing Flint, who she has accused of ‘making up shit’ about her.) I leave readers to make up their own minds.

Luckily, as we’re talking about Labourites’ and Remainers’ brewing disdain for the masses, you don’t have to look far for other examples of it. Not least from Emily Thornberry herself. In 2014, after all, she had to resign from the front bench after tweeting a picture of a house in Rochester and Strood, draped in St George’s flags with a white van outside. It was widely interpreted as sneering. More recently, she was videoed bursting out laughing as Dawn Butler MP declared ‘I think if anyone doesn’t hate Brexit, even if you voted for it, there’s something wrong with you’.

Following last week’s remarkable election result, in which scores of working-class, Leave-backing Labour seats went Tory for the first time ever, anti-working-class bile was spewing from various prominent Labour supporters in the media. Labour activist and journalist Paul Mason wrote in the New Statesman that ‘at no point did Labour “desert” the working class. But a section of it deserted us last night, and I am not going to flinch from stating that in the places it did so there is now a toxic narrative of nativism and xenophobia’.

We would expect nothing less from Paul. As we would from pop star and Labour supporter Lily Allen, who has said Boris Johnson won the election due to ‘this country’s deep rooted racism and misogyny’. She has now quit Twitter because she says it ‘gives a voice to the far right’. In a similar vein, Scottish actor John Hannah – the one from Four Weddings and a Funeral – has said ‘we’re a country of racists and Brexit/EU scepticism is the cover’.

Now, Leave voters have been accused of racism and stupidity time and again since 2016. But up to now, Remainers would at least pretend, some of the time, that they were talking about middle-class Leavers in the Tory shires. But the defection of working-class Leavers to the Tories has brought to the surface the clear class-hatred element of all this. Months of left-Remainers spuriously suggesting that working-class people didn’t really back Brexit, or did so somewhat reticently, has now been blown out of the water. And Labourites’ and Remainers’ loathing of ordinary people is now on full show.

Most troubling in all this is the way in which anti-working-class bigotry is now laundered through apparent anti-racism. Despite the clear decline in racism in recent decades, the cultural and political elites have carved out a narrative that it is worse than ever before, particularly among Those People who drive white vans, support Brexit and dislike Jeremy Corbyn. In doing so, alleged left-wingers have made class hatred respectable and anti-racist politics look cut-off and vaguely ridiculous. Which is bad news for both class politics and anti-racist politics.

That the left needs to learn lessons from this historic defeat is obvious. What I’m wondering is if they are even capable of doing so. Many Labourites and liberals don’t only misunderstand working-class people — they genuinely despise them. It’s less that they don’t know how to win over the people of Blyth Valley or Wrexham, and more that they kind of don’t want to. That is at least part of the reason why Labour prioritised the votes of middle-class Remainers over working-class Leavers, and why so many of its prominent supporters have doubled down on the prole-bashing in the wake of the result.

SOURCE 






RSPCA calls for South Australian rodeo to be cancelled

Nonsense.  Rodeos have never been for powder puffs.  Many RSPCA branches have been infiltrated by animal rights warriors and this looks like another instance of that

Heatwaves are a hallmark of an Australian summer. But they're getting hotter, becoming more frequent, and lasting longer.
The RSPCA wants one of the biggest night rodeos in South Australia to be postponed due to heat but organisers say it’s going ahead.

The leading animal welfare organisation is shocked Carrieton Rodeo won’t reschedule its Saturday night event as the day’s top temperature soars to 40C before dipping to 36C for a 6.30pm start.

“In the forecast conditions, it’s likely some animals will suffer heat stress but it will be difficult to verify how many have suffered or to what extent,” RSPCA’s Rebekah Eyers said.

“To demonstrate that animal welfare is a priority, we had hoped Australian Professional Rodeo Association and event organisers would follow the lead of other organisations using animals for entertainment, and cancel or reschedule the event.”

Club president Daniel Williams said the 67th annual rodeo was “absolutely going ahead” with up to 3000 people to attend and pump money into the drought-stricken town.

“It is an absolutely beautiful day. We have a water sprayer on hand if necessary and have the option of delaying if the heat is extreme,” Mr Williams told AAP. “They (the horses) are kept in excellent conditions, treated like royalty, get to run around.

“The RSPCA is an activist group that no one actually cares about these days ... their stated objective is to shut down rodeos.” The temperature in the far north South Australian town is due to hit 36C when the rodeo kicks-off, before quickly cooling down, the Bureau of Meteorology said.

“36C is quite reasonable for that time of day, but it will cool down pretty quickly so by midnight a temperature of 24C is expected,” a spokeswoman said. “Once the sun goes down it’ll be OK and they will get help from the sea breeze.”

There is no legally enforceable top temperature to prevent the animals from performing in rodeos across the state, and rodeos are legal events.

Even if the temperature drops, the RSPCA still has concerns about the transport and handling of animals to and from the event, risk of heat stress and other physical stress.

SOURCE  





Why do women feel horrible about feminism?

How did this movement that has achieved so much for women become so absurd and so vicious?

By CAROLINE OVERINGTON

I am woman. Wax my balls.

Oh, I’m sorry to start so horribly, but horrible is how so many women feel about 21st-century feminism. How did this movement that has achieved so much for women become so vicious, and absurd?

What is a woman? Is your feminism sufficiently intersectional? How woke is your answer?

OK, fair enough, feminists have never agreed on anything. The women’s movement — remember that phrase? — has always had its cliques. You can’t be a feminist if you get married, if you wear heels, if you like porn … the list goes on, and that has always been fine ­because we were thinking and talking and, anyway, we had right on our side, and we knew it, and therefore made progress but now, as we come roaring into the 20s?

We’re eating our own. In the process, we’ve cancelled ourselves.

Let’s go back: during the past decade Australian women have celebrated several significant milestones. In June 2010, for ­example, Julia Gillard became the nation’s first female prime minister. No, you don’t have to like her. You don’t even have to admire her. You do have to acknowledge the achievement.

The gains kept coming. In 2011 the federal parliament introduced paid parental leave. In 2016 Linda Burney became the first indigenous woman to be elected into the House of Representatives. In 2017 Susan Kiefel became the first ­female chief justice of the High Court of Australia.

This year we learned that Australia’s highest paid chief executive would be a woman (Mac­quarie Group’s Shemara Wikramanayake) and so would Australia’s best performing chief executive based on shareholder returns (well done to Fortescue Metals’ ­Elizabeth Gaines).

At the time of writing, half of Australia’s 76 senators are women. Not all are white. Not all are straight, either.

There have been gains for women internationally, too.

In Iran we have seen the blossoming of the White Wednesday movement that sees women ­removing their hijabs and defying men to arrest them.

This past decade Saudi women gained permission to drive; women the world over are becoming more educated; they are more likely to own land; less likely to die in childbirth; more likely to be able to read; less likely to be ­circumcised.

This month Time magazine named a 16-year-old girl as its Person of the Year. Again, you don’t have to like her. You may think her misguided. But Greta Thunberg is captain of a movement that seeks to change the whole world. She did not, as many expected, receive the Nobel Peace Prize, but Malala Yousafzai did in 2014 for standing up for girls’ education; and Nadia Murad did last year for her campaign against sexual violence.

Some of these achievements come down to the attributes of the individual women and girls, to their courage and ability; to their showmanship, too, yet this decade won’t be remembered for any of that.

It will be remembered for the Reckoning. For the movement known as #MeToo. For the ­grassroots campaign to end workplace harassment that for one brief and shining moment held women ­together in a third wave of feminism.

Look back and try to find that movement now. You can’t. It’s gone, a victim of the woke wars or else this decade’s obsession with identity politics.

Divide and conquer? We’ve done that to ourselves.

Some history: we used to be a bit embarrassed, as women, by what happened to us in the workplace. The touching, the bottom-pinching, the put-downs. We endured being demeaned and ­assaulted. We ignored it or suppressed our feelings about it, even laughed along with it.

We thought it was personal. It was — has always been — political, and then came the Reckoning. #MeToo.

American writer, historian and activist Rebecca Solnit described the movement as “an attempt to ­address something old, and very deep and very destructive”. Jia ­Tolentino, in The New Yorker, went further: it was “jagged, brutal, contentious” recognition of the extent to which men have tended to abuse their power at work.

It began, lest we forget, with the election of Donald Trump. He took office in January 2017.

A women’s march was organised for Washington, DC, to protest the vulgarity of his remarks about women (“Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything”).

More than a half-million women, and some men, took to the streets to call out Trump’s misogyny. There were sister marches in Oslo, Berlin, Toronto and Sydney. Pink pussy hats were knitted and worn.

And then something else happened.

A door opened, and emboldened women began to run through it with their own stories of being abused by powerful men; and ­especially of being crushed, while their abusers continued to ascend, and soon we had #MeToo.

There was a hint as to the size of the problem in that hashtag: most women have experienced sexual harassment in the workplace and, oh, the ways in which they are over it. American writer-at-large for New York magazine Rebecca Traister put it this way: “I’m so tired. Tired of getting grabbed or pinched or demeaned, tired of having had to laugh. I’m tired of feeling paralysed, unable to confront friends and colleagues about what they just said or did.”

The movement gathered momentum and big names soon came tumbling down. Hollywood film producer Harvey Weinstein, once a fixture on the red carpet, now wears an ankle bracelet. Bill Cosby was arrested and ­imprisoned. Roger Ailes was fired from Fox News, and Matt Lauer from the Today show. Kevin Spacey was replaced as US president in House of Cards by his on-screen wife, Robin Wright. US gymnastics team coach Larry Nasser went to jail, and on it goes.

In Australia, the avuncular Don Burke was exposed as having made the lives of many women miserable with his crudity, and then what happened?

No, not the backlash, not yet anyway. There were some misfires.

“I’m not at all concerned about innocent men losing their jobs over false sexual assault/harassment allegations,” Emily Linden, from Teen Vogue, said in a now-notorious tweet.

“Sorry. If some innocent men’s reputations have to take a hit in the process of undoing the patriarchy, that is a price I am absolutely willing to pay.”

That can’t be right. That must be wrong. No one deserves to be unfairly accused, any more than they deserve to be belittled or ­assaulted.

Next came the decision by the website Babe to publish a young woman’s account of an evening with popular American comedian Aziz Ansari. It was meant to be explosive, an example of the horrors young women bear as they play the dating game.

It read like bad sex. Or as Caitlin Flanagan put it in The Atlantic: “She couldn’t call a cab?”

Now another door was open, and this time it was the #MeToo critics who came streaming through.

One hundred French women, among them film star Catherine Deneuve, signed an open letter published in Le Monde, offering an alternative view of the movement.

“As women, we do not recognise ourselves in this feminism,” the letter said. “It goes beyond ­denouncing the abuse of power, toward a hatred of men and of sexuality.”

Feminism had a split-second in which to respond. Workplace harassment was the issue that had galvanised women; it had widespread support, including from men. ­Fathers do not wish to see their daughters groped behind the ­cooler in the restaurant kitchen. Husbands do not want their wives coming home in tears.

We’re all agreed! But no, ­because women decided to embark instead on an argument with and about themselves, ­attacking, belittling, suing, deriding and cancelling each other over who can speak, and what we are.

In the process? We have lost the crowd.

If you’ve been wondering about the intro to this essay, it refers to transgender activist Jessica Yaniv, who this year filed a case with a Canadian human rights tribunal, complaining that she couldn’t get her testicles waxed.

Yaniv is a transgender woman who hasn’t had surgery. She quite deliberately tried to make her ­appointments with women of colour, many of them modest, hijab-wearers, who had set themselves up in small business while choosing not to work outside the home.

Yaniv sought an order that would have forced them to address her hairy genitalia, in their spare bedrooms, against their will.

It sounds like performance art. I keep thinking it must be satire. Yaniv insists that she is serious.

She lost the battle on a technicality. The tribunal ruled that many wax artists simply weren’t trained to deal with a cock and balls and, therefore, Yaniv had to find a suitably qualified professional. She is not daunted, having since launched a human rights campaign against gynaecologists for refusing to accept her as a ­patient.

“Are they allowed to do that, ­legally?” she asked, on Twitter.

Comedian Ricky Gervais took Yaniv on, saying: “It’s disgusting that a qualified gynaecologist can refuse to check a lady’s c..k for ovarian cancer. What if her bollocks are pregnant? She could lose the baby. I’m outraged.”

I was going to dress up as something weird and creepy for my Halloween party, but I’m bucking the trend this year and I’m going as brave female activist Jessica Yaniv. This also means I don’t have to wax my big old hairy balls — Ricky Gervais

He can mock her. No one else dares. This is the debate we are now in. What is a woman? Who is a feminist?

In Britain this year, Maya Forstater lost her job as a visiting fellow at the Centre for Global Development for tweeting: “It is unfair and unsafe for trans women to compete in women’s sport.”

You may or may not agree, but woe betide those who are sceptical of the new gender ideology that now infects the movement. Just repeating: she lost her job.

JK Rowling — a writer, mother and philanthropist — stepped up to support Forstater, saying: “Dress however you please. Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who’ll have you. Live your best life in peace and ­security. But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real?”

JK has now been “cancelled” — meaning her views on human rights and feminism and women and work will not be taken seri­ously by those who think they have the floor. She’s big enough to handle it, and she has her ­supporters.

“If we’re cancelling JK Rowling for saying biological sex is real, then WTF even is feminism?” one woman asked on Twitter.

And that’s quite right: we refuse now to acknowledge sex as a biological reality, we cancel same-sex attraction, and there goes lesbianism and all its grand literature, and philosophies.

Transgender women deserve respect and protection in law, no question, but do we honestly ­accept, as we all must now do in Victoria, that a woman is anyone who self-identifies as such?

That there is no special, indeed sacred, conversation to be had about the insecurity and leakage and glory and fear that comes with being born female?

That there are some things — pregnancy, birth and nursing — known only to adult human ­females?

There’s a satirist on Twitter, ­Titania McGrath, who takes this stuff on, and what’s amusing is how many people don’t get the joke.

“All men literally begin their lives inside the body of a woman without her consent.

“(Footpaths) were designed in order to enable men to invade the personal space of female strangers without their consent.”

The accelerated oscillation of my vertebra cervicalis signifies a ratification of my ideological concordance with this intersectional critique of white male hegemony and a simultaneous negation of the potentiality of its repudiation.

In other words, I’m nodding because I agree — Titania McGrath

Is this real? Is it satire? Who’s to say any more?

In real life, we’ve seen Germaine Greer ostracised for saying that her rape did not destroy her. She simply got on with things. Her own rape. You’d think she’d know. But that’s unacceptable, ­apparently.

The problem with the way women have rounded on each other is that it has made 21st-century feminism unpalatable, and we simply can’t afford that outcome.

There is still so much work to do.

Workplace harassment was never a problem on the scale of, say, forced female circumcision but it was something for Western women to get behind, as is the gendered workforce (female teachers and male principals; female nurses and male surgeons; female reporters and male editors); as is violence against women, especi­ally in their own homes.

Maybe we disagree now, as women, about the way forward, but do we really? Forward is the way forward. It has ­always been that way.

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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28 December, 2019

A brisk 20-minute walk could reduce the risk of seven types of cancer by a fifth, scientists claim

The usual bullshit.  The people who took more exercise were probably healthier to start with.  Sick people are not likely to be keen joggers

A study suggests that people who do just two-and-a-half hours of moderate exercise a week have lower odds of getting seven types of cancer.

That could be a brisk daily walk of just over 20 minutes or a non-strenuous bicycle ride.

This amount of exercise was found to reduce the risk of liver cancer by 18 per cent, or almost a fifth, in both sexes. That rose to 27 per cent for the equivalent of five hours a week of moderate exercise.

The breast cancer risk for women fell by 6 per cent for two-and-a-half hours of moderate exercise, or 10 per cent for five hours.

The risk of kidney cancer in both sexes fell by 11 per cent for two-and-a-half hours hours of moderate exercise, or 17 per cent for five hours.

The results suggest exercise partly cuts cancer risk because it helps weight loss. But active people, even when they do not lose weight, could gain protection against some cancers.

The researchers followed the 755,549 people in the study for a decade on average. Dr Alpa Patel, a co-author of the study from the American Cancer Society, said: ‘The exciting thing about these results is that they demonstrate engaging in a short amount of regular moderate-intensity activity, like a brisk walk, can provide tremendous benefits for the risk of getting various types of cancer.

‘That is good news for the many people who, when they hear they should exercise more for their health or cancer prevention, think that means something drastic like having to start training for a marathon.’

The NHS recommends people get at least two-and-a-half hours of moderate physical activity a week, or at least 75 minutes of vigorous exercise.

Researchers looked at whether people were active for seven-and-a-half to 15 ‘metabolic equivalent’ hours a week.

This works out at between two-and-a-half and five hours of moderate activity, such as walking or light cycling, or 75 and 150 minutes of vigorous exercise, such as tennis or jogging.

Women who did the recommended amount of activity were up to 18 per cent less likely to get womb cancer than those who were inactive.

They were also up to 18 per cent less likely to get non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, according to the study published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology.

Men who did the recommended amount of physical activity were up to 14 per cent less likely to get colon cancer.

Both sexes saw a reduced risk of up to 19 per cent for the blood cancer myeloma.

SOURCE 

Journal abstract follows

Amount and Intensity of Leisure-Time Physical Activity and Lower Cancer Risk

Charles E. Matthews et al

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE
To determine whether recommended amounts of leisure-time physical activity (ie, 7.5-15 metabolic equivalent task [MET] hours/week) are associated with lower cancer risk, describe the shape of the dose-response relationship, and explore associations with moderate- and vigorous-intensity physical activity.

METHODS
Data from 9 prospective cohorts with self-reported leisure-time physical activity and follow-up for cancer incidence were pooled. Multivariable Cox regression was used to estimate adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) and 95% CIs of the relationships between physical activity with incidence of 15 types of cancer. Dose-response relationships were modeled with restricted cubic spline functions that compared 7.5, 15.0, 22.5, and 30.0 MET hours/week to no leisure-time physical activity, and statistically significant associations were determined using tests for trend (P < .05) and 95% CIs (< 1.0).

RESULTS
A total of 755,459 participants (median age, 62 years [range, 32-91 years]; 53% female) were followed for 10.1 years, and 50,620 incident cancers accrued. Engagement in recommended amounts of activity (7.5-15 MET hours/week) was associated with a statistically significant lower risk of 7 of the 15 cancer types studied, including colon (8%-14% lower risk in men), breast (6%-10% lower risk), endometrial (10%-18% lower risk), kidney (11%-17% lower risk), myeloma (14%-19% lower risk), liver (18%-27% lower risk), and non-Hodgkin lymphoma (11%-18% lower risk in women). The dose response was linear in shape for half of the associations and nonlinear for the others. Results for moderate- and vigorous-intensity leisure-time physical activity were mixed. Adjustment for body mass index eliminated the association with endometrial cancer but had limited effect on other cancer types.

CONCLUSION
Health care providers, fitness professionals, and public health practitioners should encourage adults to adopt and maintain physical activity at recommended levels to lower risks of multiple cancers.

SOURCE 






Boxer Amir Khan 'shocked' by savage reaction to his family Christmas photo

Boxer Amir Khan has confessed to being "shocked" by the abuse aimed at him by trolls over an Instagram post wishing people a Merry Christmas.

The family snap has drawn the ire of some followers as it depicts the avowed Muslim celebrating what is largely seen as a Christian holiday.



Former world boxing champion Khan and his fiancee Faryal Makhdoom, 28, were joined by daughters Lamaisah, five, and Alanya, one, in the cute photo, The Sun reports.

Wearing matching pyjamas, each family member donned a shirt with antlers and a red nose stitched on the front – Khan's reading "Daddy Deer".

But sick trolls targeted the Brit, 33, and his family and claimed they should not be enjoying Christmas.

One comment on the original Instagram post decried Khan as a "bloody disgrace to our religion".

Such responses prompted Khan to tweet on Thursday: "So shocked by all the hate I’m getting on my Twitter & Instagram for wishing everyone Merry Christmas and posting a picture with my family in Christmas outfits.

"Just want to tell those people ‘I don’t give a f**k’."

However, Khan also had plenty of supporters defending his right to celebrate Christmas, even though he is Muslim.

One Twitter user commented: "I became Muslim 31 years ago, and always look forward to celebrating Christmas with my large Christian family at my parents' house just as they enjoy celebrating Eid with us. Sharing and celebrating together is what unites us and removes the divide/hate we see in society."

Born in England, Khan is of Pakistani origin and has spoken on several occasions about seeking greater acceptance for his faith in the UK.

Earlier in the year, he spoke in the aftermath of the New Zealand terrorist attack about how he wants there to be further "understanding" of his religion because "there is a lot of hatred in a lot of people towards Muslims"

SOURCE 

He seems to have missed the point. It is intolerance FROM  Muslims that he experienced






So you’re a vegan ... but are you, really?

The number of animals that die each and every day to produce vegan food is astonishing.

There’s a lot to be said for veganism. For the thinking eater, it gets around a whole bunch of ethical grey areas. If you care about what you put in your mouth, it is probably the most black and white way to approach the whole meat thing. There are no grey areas about so-called “ethical” meat, or questions over exactly how “free range” are the hens when there are 10,000 chickens to the ­hectare. Not eating meat, not buying products that come from animals — surely that means you’re doing better not only for those animals directly affected, but also the environment, and your health?

But while veganism is on the rise in Western nations, it’s still far from mainstream. Why, then, is it so hard to convince people of its worth if it really is a win all round? The vegan philosophy is, at its heart, quite often about ­reducing suffering. By not eating ­animals, you — by definition — reduce suffering. It’s a lovely idea. And I wish it were that simple.

Let’s start with peas. Collydean (not its real name, but a real farm) is a 2700ha mixed farm in northern Tasmania. They grow beef cattle, some sheep, do agroforestry, have barley and some years grow peas. A lot of peas: about 400 tonnes a season.

And to protect the peas, they have some wildlife fences, but also have to shoot a lot of ­animals. When I was there, they had a licence to kill about 150 deer. They routinely kill about 800-1000 ­possums and 500 wallabies every year, along with a few ducks. (To its credit, Collydean only invites hunters onto its farm who will use the animals they kill — for human food, or for pet food — and not leave them in the paddock, as most ­animals killed for crop protection are.)

So, more than 1500 animals die each year to grow about 75ha of peas for our freezers. That’s not 1500 rodents, which also die, and which some may see as collateral damage. That’s mostly warm-blooded animals of the cute kind, with a few birds thrown in.

Collydean’s owners assure me it wouldn’t be financially viable for them to grow peas without killing animals. Which means that every time we eat peas, farmers have controlled the “pest” species on our behalf, and animals have died in our name.

The number of animals that die to produce vegan food is astonishing. Consider wheat, a common crop in Australia. And let’s look at the nutrient density of the food in question, because not all foods are created equal. According to an article by Mike Archer, Professor in the Faculty of Science at the University of NSW, roughly 25 times more sentient beings die to produce a kilo of protein from wheat than a kilo of protein from beef. Thanks to monocultures, mice plagues and our modern farming systems, a hell of a lot of small animals die to produce wheat. Yes, most of them are rodents, but surely in the vegan world all warm-blooded life should be honoured equally?

On average, 1 billion mice are poisoned every year in Western Australia alone. According to a 2005 Senate report, if we didn’t kill mice the cost of food would rise drastically; even with heavy baiting programs, mice cost the Australian economy about a $36 million a year.

Let’s look at birds. Over a five-year period up to 2013, rice farmers in NSW killed nearly 200,000 native ducks to protect their fields. That’s right, to grow rice. That’s in addition to the animals indirectly affected, such as those that once thrived in the waterways drained by such a heavily irrigated crop on a dry continent.

That’s how farming works. To grow something, other things are affected. Sometimes it’s an animal, sometimes it’s a helluva lot of animals. The most animals that die on Fat Pig Farm, our property in the Huon Valley south of Hobart, are the snails and slugs that would destroy our garden if left unchecked. We kill close to 5000 moths, slugs and snails each year to grow vege­tables, and thousands and thousands of aphids.

Insects bear the brunt of all annual vegetable production. And the most exploited insect of all is the European honeybee. True vegans don’t eat honey because it’s the result of the domestication, and utilisation, of the European honeybee. They don’t eat it because eating honey is “stealing” honey from the hive, and because bees die in the process of beekeepers managing the hives and extracting the honey. And they’re right, bees do die in that process.

Problem is, honeybees are very, very good pollinators, and a whole heap of crops are pretty much reliant on these bees to produce fruit — and even more crops would suffer from far lower production due to poor fertility if we didn’t have bees. About one-third of all crops globally benefit from direct interaction with pollinators, of which ­European honeybees are by far the most efficient.

Whether we eat honey or not, we are the beneficiaries of the work of the domesticated European honeybee. In their absence, some crops would come close to failure, and others increase substantially in cost. Gobs of bees die every year doing the work of pollination for us. According to Scientific American, up to 80 billion domestic honeybees are estimated to have a hand in the Californian almond industry each year, up to half of which die during the management process and the long journeys to and from the large almond orchards. And that’s the carnage from just one crop.

What about vegan wine, you say? It doesn’t use fish bladders, or milk extracts, or egg as a fining agent (ingredients used to clarify many wines, beers and ciders). But don’t forget the harvest. Come with me to watch grapes being picked, watch as huge tubs of plump grapes are tipped into the crusher along with mice, spiders, lizards, snakes and frogs. Sadly, vegan wine is a furphy.

Let’s move on to peanut butter, that wonderful practical protein staple. Do you know how many parts of an insect are in each jar? According to ­Scientific American, each of us eats about 0.5-1kg of flies, maggots and other bugs a year, hidden in the chocolate we eat, the grains we consume, the peanut butter we spread on toast. According to US regulations (which are easier to access than ­Australian data), 125g of pasta (a ­single portion) may contain an average of 125 insect fragments or more, and a cup of raisins can have a maximum of 33 fruit fly eggs. A kilogram of flour probably has 15g of animal product in it, from rodent excreta to weevils to cockroach legs.

I don’t bring this up for the “ick” factor, but simply to show the true impact and cost of food production. When you eat, you’re never truly vegan. When humans grow and process food, any food, other things die — and often we eat them.

Vegans are welcome to voice their opinion that raising and eating meat has consequences. Indeed, some of those consequences, from the personal to the animal to the environment, are worth serious thinking about. It’s quite possible that eating less meat might mean less suffering. But don’t be fooled into thinking that being vegan hurts no animal.

More HERE 





Peloton ‘Scandal’ Shows How Mentally Unfit We’ve Become

We are fast approaching the end of 2019, and as we close the book on a turbulent decade, nothing summarizes the state of our culture and our unhealthy relationship with contrived outrage quite like the Peloton ad controversy and the wave of hysteria that has followed in its wake.

Imagine if we could channel that outrage instead into addressing our nation’s obesity crisis.

If you are not familiar with the ad or simply cannot believe that America—land of the free, home of the brave—is full of adults who are distressed over an exercise bike, a quick Google search will fill you in on the situation.

You will also find columnists in highly read publications and joyless hordes on social media claiming to be offended by Peloton’s latest ad, in which a husband dares to gift his already-slim wife a Peloton stationary bike for Christmas.

The commercial has been described as sexist, tone deaf, body-shaming, and reflective of outdated social norms—with every new critique against it more fantastical than the last. The backlash against the ad has been so severe that the exercise equipment company lost nearly a billion dollars in market value since the spot’s release.

This widespread hysteria is beyond absurd on many levels.

First, it serves as yet another shining example of one of our society’s worst qualities: the endless search for conflict in any and everything. It highlights our uncanny ability to turn a positive into a negative, a neutral into a catastrophe. What surely started as a creative and unassuming idea in Peloton’s marketing department has been stripped of its intention and extrapolated to fit the narratives and agendas of radical extremists.

Second, the people claiming the ad is sexist are actually doing their cause more harm than good. Making much ado about nothing and targeting a company in bad faith is not an effective way to move the needle on any agenda. It inserts offense into an otherwise harmless scenario and detracts from legitimate claims of sexism that surface.

Fake news falsely alleging prejudice only serves to create an air of skepticism around these types of accusations; it is akin to crying wolf.

Instead of manufacturing dissent about a milquetoast fitness ad, imagine if those screaming the loudest dedicated a fraction of the same energy to combating the country’s alarming and rising obesity epidemic. It is now estimated that 71% of Americans are overweight, with nearly 40% qualifying as obese.

Americans should be cheering for the growth of Peloton and its clear benefits rather than waging a search-and-destroy campaign against the company for a trivial commercial.

One positive aspect of this whole ordeal was Peloton’s early response to those claiming to be offended. Peloton did not grovel and capitulate and apologize to the mob like so many others before them. Instead, they issued a blanket sorry-you-feel-that-way statement.

In this age of overwrought indignation and attention-seeking fits of rage, too many brands and businesses immediately apologize and run for cover. Ironically, this rarely earns them forgiveness for whatever alleged offenses they have committed and only invites more finger-wagging and exaggerated claims of wrongdoing.

Ultimately, this Peloton saga is a tempest in a teapot, but it does signal where we are and the danger that lies ahead if we don’t make some healthier choices. Through constant needling and media-spurred mania, we have arrived at a place where we Americans are as flabby mentally as we are physically.

The age-old expression “a sound mind in a sound body” underscores the intrinsic connection between physical exercise and mental dexterity. Given the abysmal physical shape of our citizens, it is not surprising that we would have an equally abysmal mental state as well.

It is time to shake the dust off our gym shoes and get back to a healthy routine—if not for our physical benefit, then at least for our collective sanity.

If anything, Americans should get off Peloton’s case and instead get onto one of the company’s bikes.

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 December, 2019

The attack on police

Police officers around the nation are dealing with hate and disrespect like never before.

I’m going to take a break from the ongoing impeachment sitcom to focus on a real-life problem that is, for the most part, being ignored by the mainstream media. I’m referring to the assault on our law-enforcement officers across the country.

Last week alone, four police officers were killed in the line of duty. Two weeks before Christmas, these men were taken away from their families and the media seems to be indifferent. If you did not know this, I’m not surprised.

Under the past administration, law-enforcement officers trying to carry out their duties were portrayed as racists who are prone to violence. Police were not given the benefit of the doubt in questionable situations. They were usually deemed the problem and that attitude began to spread, resulting in growing disrespect for police.

So far this year, 49 officers have been killed in the line of duty by gunfire alone. If this continues, it will be much harder to recruit men and women who are willing to place themselves in harm’s way to protect those who have no respect for them.

Currently, there are between 750,000-850,000 law enforcement officers across the nation serving over 300 million citizens. Yet each year the disrespect for these men and women grows. Starbucks seems to be a frequent offender. On Thanksgiving Day, an officer bought coffee for the 911 operators on duty. The coffee cups had “PIG’ written on them. Starbucks said this did NOT reflect the company’s values. However, two days ago two officers at a Starbucks in California were refused service.

Remember this past summer when police officers in New York City were assaulted with buckets of water when they were simply trying to do their job. Remember the support they received from the mayor? Neither do I because there was none!

I know there will be those who say, "But there are bad police officers!” Really? Out of nearly 850,000 officers, you will find some bad actors! Deal with those officers as they are identified; but don’t paint all with such a broad brush.

Who wants a job where you never know if you are going to make it home at the end of your shift? You don’t know if you pull someone over for a broken taillight or an expired tag if they might pull out a gun and shoot you?

There are so many reasons for what we are seeing, but not enough time to cover them all. Regardless of the reasons, those of us who do care about law and order and respect for authority can make our voices heard.

When my wife and I see law-enforcement officers or first responders, we tell them we are grateful for their service and they are in our prayers. To law enforcement we say, “Be safe out there!” I have never had a negative response, only that of gratitude. It takes so little to communicate so much! Act as if it was someone close to you and you might see them differently.

From my family to yours, we want to wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

SOURCE 






'A Piece of Meat': How Some Muslim Men See White Women

A British girl was “passed around like a piece of meat” between Muslim men who abused and raped her between the ages of 12 and 14, a court heard earlier this month. Her problems began after she befriended a young Muslim man who, before long, was “forcing her to perform sex acts on other [and older] men,” and receiving money for it. When she resisted, he threatened her and her family with death and destruction. Speaking now as an adult, the woman explained how she eventually “lost count of how many men I was forced to have sex with” during two years of “hell” when she often considered suicide. Among other anecdotes, the court heard how the young “girl was raped on a dirty mattress above a takeaway and forced to perform [oral] sex acts in a churchyard,” and how one of her abusers “urinated on her in an act of humiliation” afterward.

Although her experiences are akin to those of many British girls, that she was “passed around like a piece of meat” is a reminder of the experiences of another British woman known by the pseudonym of Kate Elysia. The Muslim men she encountered “made me believe I was nothing more than a sl*t, a white wh*re,” she said. “They treated me like a leper, apart from when they wanted sex. I was less than human to them, I was rubbish.”

What explains this ongoing exploitation of European women by Muslim men—which exists well beyond the UK and has become epidemic in Germany, Sweden, and elsewhere? The answer begins by understanding that, although these sordid accounts are routinely dismissed as the activities of “criminals,” they are in fact reflective of nearly fourteen centuries of Muslim views on and treatment of European women.

For starters, Muslim men have long had an obsessive attraction to fair women of the European variety. This, as all things Islamic, traces back to their prophet, Muhammad. In order to entice his men to war on the Byzantines—who, as the Arabs’ nearest European neighbors represented “white” people—the prophet told them that they would be able to sexually enslave the “yellow” women (an apparent reference to their fair hair).

For over a millennium after Muhammad, jihadi leaders—Arabs, Berbers, Turks, Tatars et al.—also coaxed their men to jihad on Europe by citing (and later sexually enslaving) its women. As one example, prior to their invasion into Spain, Tariq bin Ziyad, a jihadi hero, enticed the Muslims by saying, “You must have heard numerous accounts of this island, you must know how the Grecian maidens, as beautiful as houris … are awaiting your arrival, reclining on soft couches in the sumptuous palaces of crowned lords and princes.”

Women's Rights Activist: Linda Sarsour Is 'Empowering' Radical Islamic 'Torture, Terror, Rape'
That the sexual enslavement of fair women was an aspect that always fueled the jihad is evident in other ways. Thus, for M.A. Khan, an author and former Muslim, it is “impossible to disconnect Islam from the Viking slave-trade, because the supply was absolutely meant for meeting [the] Islamic world’s unceasing demand for the prized white slaves” and for “white sex-slaves.”

Just as Muslim rapists see British and other European women as “pieces of meat,” “nothing more than sl*ts,” and “white wh*res,” so did Muslim luminaries always describe the nearest European women of Byzantium. Thus, for Abu Uthman al-Jahiz (b. 776), a prolific court scholar, the females of Constantinople were the “most shameless women in the whole world … [T]hey find sex more enjoyable” and “are prone to adultery.” Abd al-Jabbar (b. 935), another prominent scholar, claimed that “adultery is commonplace in the cities and markets of Byzantium”—so much so that even “the nuns from the convents went out to the fortresses to offer themselves to monks.”

But as the author of Byzantium Viewed by the Arabs, explains:

Our [Arab/Muslim] sources show not Byzantine women but writers’ images of these women, who served as symbols of the eternal female—constantly a potential threat, particularly due to blatant  exaggerations of their sexual promiscuity. In our texts [Arab/Muslim], Byzantine women are strongly associated with sexual immorality. ... While the one quality that our sources never deny is the beauty of Byzantine women, the image that they create in describing these women is anything but beautiful. Their depictions are, occasionally, excessive, virtually caricatures, overwhelmingly negative. … The behavior of most women in Byzantium was a far cry from the depictions that appear in Arabic sources.

The continuity in Muslim “dealings” with European women is evident even in the otherwise arcane details. For example, the aforementioned Kate “was trafficked to the North African country of Morocco where she was prostituted and repeatedly raped.” She was kept in an apartment in Marrakesh, where another girl no older than 15 was also kept for sexual purposes. “I can’t remember how many times I’m raped that [first] night, or by who,” Kate recounts.

This mirrors history. By 1541, the Muslim Barbary State of “Algiers teemed with Christian captives,” from Europe so that “it became a common saying that a Christian slave was scarce a fair barter for an onion.”

According to the conservative estimate of American professor Robert Davis, “between 1530 and 1780 [alone] there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast,” of which Morocco—where Kate was abducted to in the modern era—was one. Women slaves—and not a few men and boys—were always sexually abused. With countless European women selling for the price of an onion, little wonder by the late 1700s, European observers noted how “the inhabitants of Algiers have a rather white complexion.”

It was the same elsewhere. (The number of Europeans enslaved by Muslims throughout history is closer to 15 million.) The slave markets of the Ottoman sultanate were for centuries so inundated with European flesh that children sold for pennies, “a very beautiful slave woman was exchanged for a pair of boots, and four Serbian slaves were traded for a horse.” In Crimea—where some three million Slavs were enslaved by the Muslim Tatars—an eyewitness described how Christian men were castrated and savagely tortured (including by gouging their eyes out), whereas “The youngest women are kept for wanton pleasures.”

Such a long and unwavering history of sexually enslaving European women on the claim that, they are all “pieces of meat,” “nothing more than sl*ts,” and “white wh*res,” should place the ongoing sexual abuse of Western women in context—and offer a dim prognosis for the future.

SOURCE 







Australian mothers choosing kids over paid employment

MANY women with children choose to work part-time so they can be home with their kids, a new study has found. Researchers studied under-employment in a sample of nearly 5000 Australian women and found those with children under 15 are not likely to want to work more hours. Therefore they have lower underemployment levels than women with no children.

The study, published by the Life Course Centre from the University of Queensland, goes against an assumption that mothers would work more hours if they could balance it with caring for children.

Lead author Parvinder Kier found younger women, women without tertiary qualifications and those with no kids at home are 50 per cent more likely to want more hours of work. "Females prioritise their off-spring upbringing and hence choose to seek employment opportunities with limited hours so they can be more readily available during their children's vital formative years," Dr Kier, from Griffith University, said.

Women now make up 47 per cent of the overall work-force but 68 per cent of the part-time workforce. Mothers work on average 20 hours a week in paid employment

From the Brisbane "Courier Mail of 21 Dec. 2019





When Massachusetts was the battlefield in the war on Christmas

Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch had nothing on the 17th-century Puritans, who actually banned the public celebration of Christmas in the Massachusetts Bay Colony for an entire generation.



The pious Puritans who sailed from England in 1630 to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony brought with them something that might seem surprising for a group of devout Christians—contempt for Christmas. In a reversal of modern practices, the Puritans kept their shops and schools open and churches closed on Christmas, a holiday that some disparaged as “Foolstide.”


A Puritan governor disrupting Christmas celebrations.

After the Puritans in England overthrew King Charles I in 1647, among their first items of business after chopping off the monarch’s head was to ban Christmas. Parliament decreed that December 25 should instead be a day of “fasting and humiliation” for Englishmen to account for their sins. The Puritans of New England eventually followed the lead of those in old England, and in 1659 the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony made it a criminal offense to publicly celebrate the holiday and declared that “whosoever shall be found observing any such day as Christmas or the like, either by forbearing of labor, feasting, or any other way” was subject to a 5-shilling fine.

Why did the Puritans loathe Christmas? Stephen Nissenbaum, author of “The Battle for Christmas,” says it was partly because of theology and partly because of the rowdy celebrations that marked the holiday in the 1600s.

In their strict interpretation of the Bible, the Puritans noted that there was no scriptural basis for commemorating Christmas. “The Puritans tried to run a society in which legislation would not violate anything that the Bible said, and nowhere in the Bible is there a mention of celebrating the Nativity,” Nissenbaum says. The Puritans noted that scriptures did not mention a season, let alone a single day, that marked the birth of Jesus.


Increase Mather

Even worse for the Puritans were the pagan roots of Christmas. Not until the fourth century A.D. did the church in Rome ordain the celebration of the Nativity on December 25, and that was done by co-opting existing pagan celebrations such as Saturnalia, an ancient Roman holiday of lights marked with drinking and feasting that coincided with the winter solstice. The noted Puritan minister Increase Mather wrote that Christmas occurred on December 25 not because “Christ was born in that month, but because the heathens’ Saturnalia was at that time kept in Rome, and they were willing to have those pagan holidays metamorphosed into Christian [ones].”

According to Nissenbaum, “Puritans believed Christmas was basically just a pagan custom that the Catholics took over without any biblical basis for it. The holiday had everything to do with the time of year, the solstice and Saturnalia and nothing to do with Christianity.”

The pagan-like way in which Christmas was celebrated troubled the Puritans even more than the underlying theology. “Men dishonor Christ more in the 12 days of Christmas than in all the 12 months besides,” wrote 16th-century clergyman Hugh Latimer. Christmas in the 1600s was hardly a silent night, let alone a holy one. More befitting a rowdy spring break than a sacred occasion, Christmas revelers used the holiday as an excuse to feast, drink, gamble on dice and card games and engage in licentious behavior.

In a Yuletide twist on trick-or-treating, men dressed as women, and vice versa, and went door-to-door demanding food or money in return for carols or Christmas wishes. “Bands of mostly young people and apprentices would go house to house and demand that the doors of prosperous people be open to them,” Nissenbaum says. “They felt they had a right to enter the houses of the wealthy and demand their high-quality food and drink—not meager handouts, but the stuff prosperous people would serve to their own families.” Those who failed to comply could be greeted with vandalism or violence.

Even after public commemoration of Christmas was once again legal in England following the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, the Yuletide ban remained firmly on the books in Massachusetts for an entire generation. Although outlawed in public, the celebration of Christmas endured in private homes, particularly in the fishing towns further afield from the center of Puritan power in Boston that Nissenbaum writes were “notorious for irreligion, heavy drinking and loose sexual activity.”

In his research, Nissenbaum found no records of any prosecutions under the 1659 law. “This was not the secret police going after everybody,” he says. “It’s clear from the wording of the ban that the Puritans weren’t really concerned with celebrating the holiday in a quiet way privately. It was for preventing disorders.”

The prohibition of public Christmas celebrations was unique to Massachusetts, and under the reign of King Charles II political pressure from the motherland steadily increased for the colony’s Puritan leaders to relax their intolerant laws or risk losing their royal charter. In 1681, the Massachusetts Bay Colony reluctantly repealed its most odious laws, including the ban on Christmas.

Hostility toward the public celebration of Christmas, however, remained in Massachusetts for years to come. When newly appointed royal governor Sir Edmund Andros attended Christmas Day religious services at Boston’s Town House in 1686, he prayed and sang hymns while flanked by Redcoats guarding against possible violent protests. Until well into the 1800s, businesses and schools in Massachusetts remained open on December 25 while many churches stayed closed. Not until 1856 did Christmas—along with Washington’s Birthday and the Fourth of July—finally become a public holiday in Massachusetts.

This war on Christmas, to coin a phrase, lasted a remarkably long time in Massachusetts. More than 100 years after the Legislature repealed its ban on the holiday, the Puritan-infused hostility to Yuletide merriment remained palpable.

"When I was a school-boy I always went to school on Christmas Day, and I think all the other boys in town did," recalled Edward Everett Hale, the popular Boston author and preacher, in the December 1889 issue of New England Magazine. On Christmas Eve, Hale and his schoolmates might walk past King's Chapel — the city's first Anglican church, where Christmas services were held — and "see the men carrying hemlock for the decorations. But that was the only public indication that any holiday was approaching." When he lived in Worcester as a young man in the 1840s, Hale wrote, Christmas for many people was still a non-event. "The courts were in session on that day, the markets were open, and I doubt if there had ever been a religious service."

As late as 1856, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow could still describe New England as being "in a transition state about Christmas." There was enough of the old Puritan animus to keep it from being a "cheerful hearty holiday," he said. But "every year makes it more so."

Eventually, of course, popular culture came down unreservedly in favor of Christmas. Santa Claus and light-strewn trees, midnight masses and Handel's "Messiah," holiday eggnog and gift-wrapped presents — today they're as much a part of Christmas in Boston and New England as in any other part of the country. In countless ways, American life is still influenced by those devout English Christians who sailed to New England four centuries ago. But not when it comes to Christmas.

God rest them merry, but that's one war the Puritans lost.

See
https://www.history.com/news/when-massachusetts-banned-christmas

and
http://www.jeffjacoby.com/23614/when-massachusetts-was-the-battlefield-in-the-war

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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 December, 2019

Towards a working-class Tory Britain

Martin Hutchinson

Boris Johnson’s Conservative “Tory” party’s big victory in the British election December 12 was achieved by winning seats that had been Labour since 1987, 1935 and even 1922. His majority thus represents far more working-class voters from the North of England – and far fewer rich Londoners – than any previous Tory government. To survive the next election in 2024, he must pursue a working-class Toryism quite different from the party’s policies of the Cameron/May era, or those of Margaret Thatcher.

By definition, all substantial election victories involve winning seats that had not previously been held. However in this case, because of the interaction of the election with the Brexit decision, many industrial and mining constituencies in the north of England and north Wales, that had been Labour heartlands for generations, were taken by the Conservatives. By and large the big-city constituencies in the region remained Labour; it was the less concentrated urban areas, albeit still mining/industrial, that switched to the Conservatives. As one Labour leader said on the BBC’s Election Night program: “we haven’t lost the big city working classes, but we do seem to have lost the small-town working classes.”

Geographically, the new Conservative majority is far less concentrated in southern England than were previous Conservative majorities back to Thatcher’s day. It has very limited representation in London and its immediate suburbs, where the party lost seats in this election. Representing their new voters well may therefore give the Tories the chance to reverse the disgraceful London-centered economic orientation of the last 30 years, which has crammed excess population into the capital and pushed up its house prices to a level that only foreigners can afford.

This has left younger Londoners disgruntled and indulging in Corbynite anti-capitalist fantasies. Ultra-low interest rates, excessive immigration and a desire to deepen links with the EU have all played a role in this insanity; all three factors can now be reversed. In the case of interest rates, the quicker this is done the better, since the shrieking and wailing from the coming London house price collapse will persist for years and the Tories need to avoid it drowning out the next election. A massive house price decline making housing affordable, together with other new Conservative policies I will outline below, will rightly reduce the huge anti-Tory bias among younger voters that was apparent in the 2019 results.

The media and the center-left are unanimous that the Conservatives’ need to address working-class voters will require them to increase government spending, especially on the National Health Service. Many crocodile tears have been wept about the death of fiscal conservatism. However, the extra spending required to appease the Tories’ new supporters can be more than balanced by eliminating the massive subsidies to politically-correct metropolitan leftism that litter the British budget. By slaying leftist cows, sacred only to wealthy London voters who are unlikely to back the Conservatives, better economic performance and room for both tax cuts and further popular spending can result.

For good or bad, the British people have decided that the National Health Service, fully funded by the state, is not to be tampered with. They are not entirely irrational in having done so. The NHS costs the U.K. 7.7% of GDP in 2016, on top of which private spending was an additional 2% of GDP. In the same year, the U.S. government spent 8.5% of GDP on healthcare, and U.S. private spending on healthcare totaled an additional 8.8% of GDP. Thus the U.S. public sector spends more on healthcare than the British one, while total spending on health is 78% higher, yet health outcomes are no better, with birth life expectancy 78.6 years in the U.S. compared to 81.2 years in Britain. Let us, as free marketers, admit that healthcare is a devilishly hard sector to get right, that blue-collar British voters’ liking for the NHS is not pure Marxism, and that Johnson’s government will have to spend some more money here.

The new government will also have to spend more on northern infrastructure. For the past 30 years, new infrastructure has been concentrated around London and the south-east, often at staggering cost. This has added to the overdevelopment of these areas and their living costs. A classic example is the HS2 train, far more expensive than it needs to be, devastating rural Oxfordshire, and ending only at Manchester, just as the North begins. The North needs more infrastructure, Northern workers need the jobs that infrastructure will bring, and the country needs the economic rebalancing that Northern infrastructure will cause; that infrastructure’s cost will be lower than in the south-east because it will be carried out with lower-cost labor and will be covering lower-cost real estate. The Ulster-Galloway bridge, with projected cost less than a third of HS2, is the kind of economy-enhancing project needed.

Many of the sacred cows that must be slaughtered are environmental. The ban on fracking, for example, entirely without justification from legitimate science, must be reversed forthwith. Fracking’s potential is greatest within the U.K. in those areas which have abundant coal deposits and a past coal industry. Fracking provides well-paid blue-collar jobs, similar to those in coal mining but without the mortal danger and the slag-heaps. It has regenerated the economy of rural Pennsylvania and is an ideal activity for the new Tory areas and voters; the objections to it are all generated by metropolitan liberals, very few of whom vote Conservative.

Similarly but even more crucially for the national budget, Britain should withdraw from the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, abolish subsidies to “clean” energy technologies and embark on a program of natural gas-fired power stations that can replenish the nation’s dangerously stretched energy resources. When the 1931 National Government coalition was formed the Liberals were given the Foreign Office, which led to World War II. In the 2010 coalition, they were given Energy, with less potential for disaster, but the extra costs and power shortages their rule generated should now be eliminated. Through environmental zeal, Germany has energy costs more than twice those of the United States; after Brexit the U.S. road is the one for Britain to follow.

Another area where Britain spends twice the world average, to the joy of gentry liberals and the anger of the working classes, is foreign aid. This does little good to recipients, except to their governments’ Swiss bank accounts; it should be halved. Boris Johnson’s announcement that he is to fold the Department for International Development into the Foreign Office suggests that he may be considering this; it would greatly help pay for the extra expenditure needed in other areas.

A further gentry shibboleth, that has been imposed on the working classes since the Wireless Act of 1904, is the £154.50 annual BBC TV license fee. Again, Johnson has announced he is de-criminalizing non- payment of this; if so he will make it an essentially voluntary payment, made by the intellectuals, the dutiful and the very rich, and rightly ignored by the vast majority of the population. This would be a very popular move up North, where this flat “poll tax” is a severe burden on many family budgets.

The final intellectual icon of the upper-class left, that the new Tory voters do not share, is university education. John Major in 1992 arbitrarily re-designated all the British polytechnics as universities, thus doubling the number of “universities,” wrecking the international reputation of British university degrees and setting up innumerable pointless research operations of very low intellectual quality and no practical use at all. Then in 1999 Tony Blair promised that 50% of British youth would go to university, a foolish goal (recently more or less achieved) that has wrecked the lives of millions, burdened them with debt they cannot repay and made it impossible for employers to separate the intellectual gold from the dross.

With students now paying fees of up to £9,250 ($12,000) annually for college education, the new Tory voters are generally getting a very bad deal from it. Without university-educated family, and with a plethora of third-rate “universities” in the North of England, youths of moderate capacity from this background are least likely to get their money’s worth from the education system and most likely to be “sold” a degree course of poor quality that will never repay them its cost from future earnings.

The government could save a great deal of money by reversing Major’s 1992 disaster, converting the ex-polytechnics either into German “fachhochschulen,” specializing only in applied sciences and not awarding doctorates, or into U.S.-style community colleges, where students could take courses “a la carte” gaining in a year or so only the capabilities they need for a particular line of work. Both the government and students could save huge amounts of money by this means; it would be offensive only to those who looked forward to or already enjoyed a comfortable professorate at a third-rate “university” with no intellectual heavy lifting.

Several commentators have proclaimed that in its trade treaty with the EU, the government should focus on modern service industries and ignore traditional industries such as fishing. This is precisely the reverse of optimal. Services, being intangible, can be carried out at long distances, so markets in the U.S. and the Far East can replace any EU business lost. The government should look closely at joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, or at least at doing a trade deal with its members, all medium-sized and mostly long-term friends of Britain.

Conversely, fishing is highly geographically located, and its practitioners are from the new Tory areas, such as Great Grimsby (majority 7,331, won on a swing of 14.7%). To fulfil the needs of its new supporters, the government must expel foreign riff-raff from British territorial waters and allow British fisherman to take advantage of their bounty, on a sustainable basis that is designed by the domestic industry, not by foreign bureaucrats.

On immigration and policing, the views of new Tories are well-known, and Johnson must follow them. Political correctness is a disease, that affects mainly the over-educated, but whose strictures bear most heavily on ordinary people. In general, Johnson should follow the rule that anything strongly recommended at Samantha Cameron’s Notting Hill cocktail parties is likely to involve oppression of the working class and hence should be avoided or, if already implemented, repealed.

SOURCE 






'Cruel' chimpanzee greeting cards withdrawn from sale

A major greeting card company has stopped selling products featuring captive apes after animal rights activists said the "cruel" pictures fuel the exotic pet trade and inhibit conservation.

Great apes have been featured on television and on cards for decades, with tea company PG Tips famously advertising its wares using dressed-up chimpanzees.

Now, Moonpig, the online card retailer, has responded to backlash by dropping all great apes from its images after the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) complained.

The company confirmed it has removed all the cards from the website, and will no longer sell any card depicting captive chimpanzees.

Peta argued that great apes used as "actors" or kept as "pets" are usually taken from their mothers shortly after birth – a traumatic experience that typically results in neurotic and sometimes self-injurious behaviour that can persist into adulthood.

Many consumers are also unaware that the "smile" exhibited by chimpanzees on greetings cards is actually a fear grimace, a sign that a chimpanzee is deeply afraid.

Last year, The University of Edinburgh, backed by the charity Neotropical Primate Conservation, released a study that concluded that the use of primates in the entertainment industry is unethical because it "damages their welfare by fooling the public into thinking they are happy in human environments".

Leading figures in conservation have welcomed the change and asked other companies to follow suit.

Dr Jane Goodall DBE, the primatologist who discovered that chimpanzees have the ability to make tools, and that they are omnivorous rather than vegetarian, welcomed the change.

She told The Telegraph:  "For years chimpanzees have been abused by the entertainment trade and it is good news that Moonpig have made the decision to stop using them in inappropriate ways on their cards. "Let's hope that this inspires others to follow suit."

Dr Goodall is currently campaigning for social media videos showing "cute" chimpanzees exhibiting human behaviour to be taken down for the same reason. She has asked people not to "like" or "share" these videos online.

Her institute for primate care argues that "the internet and social media are perpetuating the illegal sale of primates and killing/poaching them from the wild" and that it "perpetuates the idea that chimpanzees are not endangered".

Will Travers, the president of the Born Free foundation, added: “What we need are positive images of wildlife, set with the in the context of their natural environment wherever possible or, of rescued animals in captivity with an appropriate explanation.

"So, for example, the primates (not great apes) at Born Free USA’s Primate Sanctuary or the big cats at Born Free’s Rescue centres in Ethiopia or South Africa, or even the rescued chimpanzees in Ngamba Island, Uganda. The days of chimps tea parties and boxing orangutans are well and truly over.

"Wildlife news is so often deeply depressing, brutal, negative, that is why I am so delighted to be a judge of the Comedy Wildlife Awards, which allow us to smile, along with nature, not at it.”

Yvonne Taylor, the Director of Corporate Projects at Peta, said: "By banning images of captive great apes in unnatural situations, Moonpig has made a huge difference for non-human primates, both in the wild and in captivity. "We hope other card manufacturers follow the company's compassionate lead."

SOURCE 





Black People Reprimanded for Leaving Democrat Party

The political lynch mob is out to get any black American who thinks for himself.

In a mad frenzy to round up black voters and drag them back to the Democrat plantation, MSNBC sent out a “search party” to identify what the network calls “disinformation campaigns.” Clearly, the hope is to shame black organizations for escaping ideological imprisonment.

The Left is printing and plastering its “Wanted” signs in high alert, with groups like BLEXIT, Black Voices for Trump, and the Walkaway movement at the top of the list.

What voters should be most concerned about is this: The Left would rather obsess over who isn’t voting for them than improve its platform for the people they claim to serve.

Here’s a concrete visual that I feel best illustrates this ordeal: A bakery shop receives negative reviews on Google/Yelp/BBB/Insert review website of choice. But instead of improving his recipes, the owner lambastes his reviewers, accusing them of having poor taste. In response, the bakery’s business deflates like a sunken sheet cake.

This example mirrors our democratic republic, one in which the people are its priority. This is Customer Service 101 — a rudimentary skill at the least. Democrats and the Leftmedia have failed to adopt this common sense when approaching disgruntled voters who aren’t happy with the services provided. Instead of baking a fresh new batch of doughnuts, we are served crusty stale ones from the deep freezer. Yet the bakers — these liberal and progressive representatives and senators — would tell you that these are the best around.

Meanwhile, competition is growing in the form of grassroots efforts that cater to black Americans seeking more than what the Democrat Party can offer. President Donald Trump’s administration serves up a platter of appealing menu options, including:

black unemployment achieving the lowest rate ever recorded

new funding to fight the opioid epidemic

nearly four million people no longer in need of food stamps

the First Step Act being signed into law to promote a fairer justice system and aid inmates in their transition into society

federal funding bans lifted on faith-based HBCUs

We are within weeks of 2020 and already black voters are showing more favor toward our Republican incumbent. Rasmussen, Emerson, and Marist polls all reflect black support for Trump at 30% or higher despite the Democrat House movement to pursue this impeachment hoax. Ultimately, black voters are faced with two options: a whole box of stale Democrat candidates, all the same flavor with nothing new to offer, or a fresh start toward making and keeping America great. It’s clear that the latter has something for everybody.

SOURCE 





A growing blight on U.S. culture is the number of children growing up in single-parent homes

A new study from the Pew Research Center found that the U.S. “has the world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households.” The study notes that “almost a quarter of U.S. children under the age of 18 live with one parent and no other adults (23%), more than three times the share of children around the world who do so (7%).” Interestingly, the study also found that this percentage did not differ between Christian households and those of other religious affiliations.

Another telling statistic showed that 20% of American households have adult children between the ages of 18 and 34 living with their parents, which is a number similar to Canada. The study observes that “North America has a higher share of young adults who live in this arrangement than any other region.” Delayed adulthood?

On the other hand, “older adults in the U.S. are more likely than those around the world to age alone” as “more than a quarter of Americans ages 60 and older live alone (27%), compared with a global average of 16%.” And the most common household arrangement in the U.S. is adult couples living without any children or relatives (46%), while the global average is 31%.

There are clearly several factors that contribute to these numbers, but one that allows for more children living in single-parent households is a nation or region’s economic level. Countries with less economic development tend toward a lower number of single-parent households. Conversely, prosperous countries with highly developed economies experience higher levels of single-parent households. That’s ironic in a way because one of the surest ways out of poverty in America is to get married and have children.

While Americans enjoy great economic benefits, one of the unintended consequences appears to be a higher percentage of broken families than the global average. Obviously, a good economy is not the cause of this problem, though it does make single-parent households more financially feasible. The question is, what will be the unintended result of high numbers of American children growing up in single-parent households? The answer isn’t pretty.

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 December, 2019

Cressida Dick is under investigation at long last

After a long record of incompetence.  The fact that she is an open lesbian has protected her so far but that may come to an end

In the Brazilian electrician affair she was nominally in charge but just wandered around while other people ran a chaotic show.  If she had exercized some leadership she could have pulled all the threads together and stopped the police killing of an innocent man

She seems to have been similarly detached during Operation Midland. In operation Midland it was again innocent people who were made to suffer -- all on the unsupported word of one man.  If she had a real police brain in her head she might have suspected that he was a fantasist.  Instead she let the whole process grind on to its sorry end.  She basically has nothing to contribute at a senior level. She should have been put out to grass long ago. 


Dame Cressida Dick has been referred to the police watchdog for alleged misconduct over her role in the disastrous Operation Midland investigation

The Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) has asked the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) to look at the matter after Harvey Proctor, the former Tory MP, lodged a formal complaint last month.

Mr Proctor, accused the Met Commissioner of dereliction of duty during the opening weeks of the inquiry in 2014.

The 72-year-old was investigated by Scotland Yard for more than a year when fantasist Carl Beech falsely told detectives he had been raped and abused by him and other high profile figures in the 1970s.

A senior officer declared Beech's comments to be "credible and true" and the homes of Mr Proctor, Lord Bramall and Lord Brittan were raided by detectives.

Dame Cressida, who had overall responsibility for the investigation in its opening weeks in November 2014, recently admitted that she knew the use of the phrase "credible and true" was a mistake, but she failed to correct it.

She has since admitted she should have taken action saying: "perhaps in retrospect I should have said something".

Mr Proctor claims the failure to correct her colleague's mistake amounted to misconduct in public office and he has asked Sadiq Khan - who deals with complaints about the Commissioner - to investigate.

In a statement the Mayor's office said they had made a voluntary referral about the complaint to the IOPC.

A spokesman said: "MOPAC considers that the exceptional circumstances of this case, together with the fact that the IOPC have recently conducted an independent investigation into closely related matters, justifies voluntary referral to the IOPC."

The statement went on: "In recording the complaint and subsequently deciding to voluntarily refer the complaint to the IOPC, MOPAC is making no judgment about the validity or otherwise of the complaint. Nor has an investigation into the complaint been conducted at this stage. 

"MOPAC is asking the IOPC to determine whether or not it is necessary for the complaint to be investigated." 

Last month Mr Proctor - who lost his home and his job as a result of the police investigation - accepted £500,000 in compensation from the Met plus £400,000 in legal costs.

But he has refused to go quietly and has also lodged a criminal complaint against five senior Met officers, accusing them of misleading a judge in order to obtain illegal search warrants.

SOURCE 







British sausages are safe!

Declared just in time for Christmas BBQs

Researchers from Queen's University Belfast have questioned the World Health Organisation’s blanket classification of processed meat as carcinogenic after finding significant evidence gaps between processed meat treated with nitrites and nitrite-free processed meat.

Dr Brian Green, Dr William Crowe and Professor Chris Elliott OBE, all from the Institute for Global Food Security (IGFS) at Queen’s, reviewed existing peer-reviewed literature on the relationship between processed meat and the development of bowel, colon and rectal cancers. The results of their meta-analysis have been published in the high-impact journal Nutrients.

They found that not all processed meats carry the same level of cancer risk. They initially reviewed all recent, English-language studies into consumption of processed meat and cancer risk and found the results inconclusive – around half the studies evidenced a link with colorectal cancer (CRC). This explains the appearance of contradictory claims in the media in recent years.

But when the researchers isolated research which only tested the consumption of processed meat containing sodium nitrite – a preservative used to extend shelf life and enhance colour – evidence of a link with CRC jumped from half to just under two-thirds – 65%.

“When we looked at nitrite-containing processed meat in isolation – which is the first time this has been done in a comprehensive study – the results were much clearer,” explained Research Fellow Dr William Crowe. “Almost two-thirds of studies found a link with cancer.”

The WHO classified all processed meat as a carcinogen in 2015 – including bacon, sausages and ham as well as continental European products like prosciutto and salami.

Not all processed meat, however, contains nitrites. British and Irish sausages, for example, are not processed with nitrites even though many of the Continental and US sausage equivalents – like frankfurters, pepperoni and chorizo – are. Some newer types of bacon and ham, processed without nitrites, are also appearing on the market.

In its 2015 statement, the WHO did not distinguish between processed meats containing nitrites and those without. Based on the results of their meta-study, the IGFS researchers now believe there is a need to define the health risk of both types of processed meat – separately.

Co-author Professor Chris Elliott OBE, who carried out the UK Government’s inquiry into food safety after the horsemeat scandal, said this latest research brought more clarity to what has been a confusing area for the food industry and the public.

He said: “Because there have been conflicting claims in the scientific community and the media about which types of meat may be carcinogenic, this study couldn’t have come at a better time. It brings much-needed rigour and clarity and points the way for further research in this area.”

So should the public immediately stop eating processed meat containing nitrites? “It’s important we eat a healthy, balanced diet in line with the government’s ‘Eatwell Guide’,” said study lead author, Dr Brian Green. “The current Department of Health guidance advises the public to consume no more than 70g of red or processed meat per day.

“That remains the guidance, but we hope that future research investigating the link between diet and CRC will consider each type of meat individually rather than grouping them together. Our findings clearly show that not all processed meats, for example, carry the same level of risk.

“There is more research to be done before we can definitively prove causality regarding processed meat and cancer – there are so many variables when it comes to people’s diets. But based on our study, which we believe provides the most thorough review of the evidence on nitrites to date, what we can confidently say is that a strong link exists between nitrite-containing processed meat, such as frankfurters, and CRC.”

The IGFS team intends following up its evidence review with a pre-clinical study probing the effects of nitrite-containing meat on CRC.

SOURCE 







Move Over Baby Jesus: The ‘Baby Muhammad’ Jihad Comes to America

Last year it was reported: “Mohammed most popular name for newborn boys in the Netherlands for second year in a row.” Muhammad is apparently also the most popular name in England. In fact, Muhammad is one of the most popular names throughout Northwest Europe.

And now, for the first time ever, Muhammad has made the list of top ten baby names in America. As the Baby Center explains: “Arabic names are on the rise this year, with Muhammad and Aaliyah entering the top 10 and nudging Mason and Layla off.”

While all this may seem innocuous enough—what’s in a name?—the fact is many Muslims see their offspring as contributions to the “struggle” to make Islam supreme, since more numbers equate more influence and power. Nor is the naming of “Muhammad” a coincidence but rather a cryptic reminder from the parents concerning whom they most revere and hope their sons emulate—namely, the founder of Islam/jihad.

Although the original, historic jihad was straightforward warfare on the infidel to make Islam supreme, the ulema articulated a variety of other jihads, all of which work to the same end: as with jihad al-lisan (literally tongue, meaning propaganda, apologias, polemics, etc.) and jihad al-mal (monetarily or materially supporting jihadis, including through zakat), so too jihad al-wilada (or childbearing) is seen as a way to contribute to the “struggle” to make Islam supreme.

This can be achieved with either infidel or Muslim women. As an example of the first, a Muslim imam was videotaped saying that, because European men lack virility, their women seek fertility among Muslim men. Accordingly, “We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we will conquer their countries! Whether you like it or not, you Germans, Americans, French, and Italians and all those akin to you [Western people]—take in the refugees. For soon we will call them [and their European born sons] in the name of the coming caliphate! And we will say to you, ‘These are our sons.’”

That some Muslim men operate along this logic is evident. The diary of Patrick Kabele, an African Muslim man who was living and arrested in Britain for trying to join the Islamic State—his primary motive being to purchase a nine-year-old sex slave—had references that only likeminded Muslims would understand: in an effort, as the aforementioned imam said, to use European women as incubators and “breed children with them,” Kabele noted that he had been “seeding some women over here, UK white,” adding, “I dont [sic] kiss anymore.” (Unlike straightforward mating, kissing is deemed an intimate act, and Muslims, in keeping with the doctrine of al-wala’ wa al-bara must never be intimate with, certainly not love, non-Muslims—even when married to them—though they can have carnal relations with them.)

Even so, Muslim women remain the primary incubators for the jihad—and many of them see it as their obligation. According to a 2008 report, "Muslim hate fanatics plan to take over Britain by having more babies and forcing a population explosion, it has been revealed. The swollen Muslim population would be enough to conquer Britain from inside, they claim.”

A Christian Eritrean volunteer and translator who worked in migrant centers in Germany and was often assumed to be Muslim by the migrants, confessed that “Muslim migrants often confide in her and tell her about their dislike towards Christians,” and that “a number of the Muslim migrants she has spoken to have revealed a hatred for Christians and are determined to destroy the religion.” As to how they plan on accomplishing this, “Some women told me, ‘We will multiply our numbers. We must have more children than the Christians because it’s the only way we can destroy them here.’”

The notion that more Muslim births mean more Muslim power is so ingrained among Muslims that recommendations of “family planning” in West Africa—which, despite its scarcity of resources, has the highest birthrate in the world—is regularly seen by Muslims as a Western conspiracy. “The West’s policy is about reducing our numbers,” said Hassane Seck, an imam from Senegal. “Because of their perverse promotion of contraception, women in Europe are no longer fertile, but ours are. There are going to be many more of us, and they’re afraid.” The report adds that he and other “imams cite a passage in the Koran imploring Muslims to ‘go forth and multiply,’ and family planning is seen by many in the region as a Western plot to curb the spread of Islam.”

“We have 50 million Muslims in Europe,” Muammar Gaddafi claimed back in 2006, more realistically adding, “There are signs that Allah will grant Islam victory in Europe—without swords, without guns, without conquest—will turn it into a Muslim continent within a few decades.” Ongoing polls and reports—including that one out of every three people on earth are expected to be Muslim by 2070—suggest this long-cherished Muslim dream may not be so farfetched.

One Pew report says that the Muslim population of Europe could triple by 2050—just when all those baby Muhammads are coming of age, and when the imams will “call” on them. In Germany alone, nearly 20 percent of the population could be Muslim by 2050; considering that the average Muslim man is more zealous over his way of and purpose in (Islamic) life than the average German male, 20 percent is not too little for an Islamic takeover of—or at least mass havoc in—Germany. Yet the report also finds that even “if all migration into Europe were to immediately and permanently stop” and due to significantly higher Muslim birthrates, Europe’s Muslim population will still grow significantly, to about 36 million, almost double the current population.

Not that many Western Europeans seem to care; some are even glad to see their own kind die off and be replaced by Muslims—such as Dr. Stefanie von Berg, who once exulted before the German parliament: “Mrs. President, ladies and gentlemen. Our society will change. Our city will change radically. I hold that in 20, 30 years there will no longer be a [German] majority in our city. …. And I want to make it very clear, especially towards those right-wingers: This is a good thing!”

These are some of the things to think on in light of the recent news that, for the first time ever, Muhammad has made the list of top ten baby names in the United States.

SOURCE 





Green left trashes votes by its contempt for the mainstream

Chris Kenny, writing from Australia

Almost 15 years ago I wrote about the accidental insight of Mark Latham’s diaries (which were a minor sensation at the time). My thesis was that the diaries revealed a disdain for mainstream people, the voters the former Labor leader was trying to win over.

Reincarnated first as a political commentator and now as NSW’s One Nation leader, Latham seems belatedly to have learned this lesson, becoming an unashamed and articulate champion for mainstream families and values. (To be fair, this is exactly what he threatened to become in the successful early days of his stint as federal opposition leader — the bitterness in his diaries might have been inflamed by subsequent events.)

The point is that you don’t win people over by demeaning them. Bob Hawke constantly praised mainstream Australians, flattering them and appealing to their intelligence. John Howard had a similar approach.

As I put it in reference to Latham’s diaries in 2005: “The left have developed a sneering attitude to the populace. Latham’s description of what he says is half the population is withering: ‘… the disengaged, self-interested middle class, who tend to delegate economic management to the Coali­tion in federal elections, but trust state Labor with the health and education services. Apathy Rules.’ ”

There were many other examples to support my conclusion: “This is a slippery slide — from not engaging with the public, to siding with the elites against an apparently unenlightened public. Eventually there is distrust and even disdain for the very people you are relying on for support.”

Clearly the trend has continued; through myriad turns and issues, it seems this divide has become the defining one in Western liberal democracies — those who hold voters in high regard, and those who look down at them.

Apart from turning off voters, it affects how the politicians behave; the more they sneer at voters, the more they think they can fool them and the more cynical their tactics become. And voters see through it.

Take what I think was the most telling moment in the 2016 US presidential campaign. It did not spring from anything Donald Trump said, it came from his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

“You know, to just be grossly generalistic,” she told Democratic donors in New York City in September 2016, “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic — you name it. And unfortunately, there are people like that. And he has lifted them up.”

It is not hard to see why this can be politically fatal. It has become a typically left-of-centre failing but it is a trap too for so-called moderates on the right of centre who shy from tough debates and look for the easy way out.

Take the 2012 US election when Mitt Romney notoriously was caught out lamenting that 47 per cent of voters were locked on to Barack Obama because they “are dependent upon government” and “believe that they are victims”. Romney tanked.

In Australia the left has fallen for this trap repeatedly. Sometimes voters are derided indirectly — think about how Labor and Greens politicians, along with many journalists and commentators, have accused the Coalition of “dog-whistling” on border protection policies. Such a charge, by extension, insults voters in three important ways: it accuses them of supporting foolish policies; it ­hinges on mainstream voters harbouring innate racism; and it tarnishes them as gullible enough to be fooled.

For a decade or two the green left in Australia has accused Coali­tion politicians and, by extension anyone thinking of voting for them, of being xenophobic or even racist when it comes to border security. They are deemed as selfish deniers on global warming, Islamophobes when it comes to countering terrorism, and greedy and heartless on taxes and welfare.

“But hey,” says the left, “haul your racist, sexist, selfish, denier, Islamophobic and heartless attitudes into the polling booth and vote for us.” It becomes tiresome, especially when the policy arguments lack substance.

And it hasn’t worked. Why do politicians demean voters? You can think of the scorn as the ugly but necessary hull that keeps afloat the colourful spinnakers of virtue signalling, or perhaps the invective is the foundation stone to the cathedral of sanctimony. It is only by demonising others that the green left can demonstrate its own moral superiority. So contempt directed at others becomes a necessary precondition of moral posturing.

The same scenario has been played out on steroids in Britain during the past three years of the Brexit debate, coming to its inevitable conclusion in last week’s election.

In the millions of words of analysis, nothing cut through like this pithy and personalised summary from journalist and bestselling author Douglas Murray.

“As it happens, I share the views of the majority of the country,” Murray wrote in the Mail on Sunday. “I have seen the Leftist robots up close for years. I have sat in halls and studios with them and been insulted by them just as the rest of the general public have. They have called me a ‘Little Englander’ because I happen to think that our country isn’t a good fit with the EU. They have called me a ‘racist’ and ‘scum’ because I’m concerned about too-high levels of immigration. They have called me a ‘bigot’ and a ‘transphobe’ because I refuse to pretend that biological sex does not exist.

“And amazingly, at the end of all that, I felt no more desire to vote for them than I had beforehand. I suspect the general public have the same view.”

Murray went on to conclude that the central political divide now is “between the ugly, intolerant, metropolitan Left and the rest of us”. He has summed it up, in a nutshell.

A defining characteristic of modern politics in Western liberal democracies is that the left is regressing to the discredited socialist goals of the 1970s. The young green left has forgotten the lessons of the collapse of the Soviet Union or, more likely, it never learned them.

Instead, the green left tackles a range of economic, environmental, foreign affairs and social goals, and does it with a sense of moral superiority that is misplaced, evangelical and ruthless. To oppose their goals is to be deemed unworthy as a human being and dismissed or attacked — the issues are not to be debated, the dissidents are to be de-platformed or destroyed.

The modern left is corrupted by the coarse manners and lack of persuasiveness in S11, Occupy Wall Street, antifa and Extinction Rebellion. These extremist activists pollute the movement, their memes are propagated through social media and find their way into mainstream journalism before being spat from the mouths of green-left politicians.

This is the reason the love media is such an ironic term. The hate preached by the green left and its media supporters is beyond the bounds of normal discourse. It scares voters away.

Former Howard government minister Amanda Vanstone got a taste of this during the week when she retweeted my climate change column from last weekend suggesting it was “spot on”. This seemingly harmless act invited an avalanche of vile and idiotic abuse from hundreds of people who clearly had not read the article and based their responses on the headline (the only words not written by the columnist and the least interesting aspect to those responding).

Twitter is not only full of insults and vitriol, its prime fault is that it is overwhelmingly obtuse. Whatever is most popular on Twitter is almost invariably wrong; yet, inexplicably, mainstream media take their cue from it. Because it is easy, I suppose.

In this way, the most ridiculous ideas on Twitter, such as blaming Scott Morrison for bushfires or deifying Greta Thunberg as bringing something new to the climate debate, can soon find their way into the news bulletins of our public broadcasters or the pages of Time magazine. All the while the intelligent life forms who ignore all this are never heard from, either drowned out or scared away.

They have their say on election day. And we are left to wonder why the green left hasn’t mended its ways.

The Trump election victory, Russiagate embarrassment and impeachment process, Brexit referendum, Morrison election win and Boris Johnson triumph — the media/political class keep misreading the public and embarrassing themselves. Will they ever learn?

There are only two possible explanations. Either they are too ideological to modify their behaviour — they really do believe their propaganda and despise mainstream voters — or their egos are so warped they forsake the goal of medium-term success for short-term social media gratification.

Either way, they are not offering much hope for working families. nd they won’t find success until they rediscover mainstream values and learn to identify with the people who hold them.

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 December, 2019

JK Rowling is branded a transphobe in Twitter row after the Harry Potter author posted message of support for tax expert sacked over 'men cannot become women' tweet

JK Rowling has been branded a transphobe and a 'TERF' over her support of a tax expert sacked for saying that 'men cannot become women' on Twitter. The Harry Potter author, 54, faced a huge online backlash after tweeting her support for Maya Forstater after an employment tribunal upheld her dismissal.

The 45-year-old was fired over 'offensive' tweets questioning government plans to allow people to self-identify as another gender.

Rowling has been accused of being a 'TERF' or trans exclusionary radical feminist after claiming Ms Forstater was 'forced out of her job for stating sex is real'.

Using the hashtag #IStandWithMaya, Rowling tweeted: 'Dress however you please. 'Call yourself whatever you like. Sleep with any consenting adult who'll have you. Live your best life in peace and security. 'But force women out of their jobs for stating that sex is real? #IStandWithMaya #ThisIsNotADrill'.   

Fans shared their disappointment over Rowling's controversial statement, with the mother of a young trans Harry Potter fan describing it as 'heartbreaking'.

She wrote: 'My daughter, who is trans, is a big fan of yours. It breaks my heart to see you post something indicating that discrimination against her is perfectly fine behaviour for an employee. 'The world's most credible medical orgs affirm trans people. Please catch up.'

Someone else tweeted: 'Woowwww JK Rowling gone full TERF'.

Another person commented: 'JK Rowling is a full-blown TERF and she's saying it with her chest.'

Others posted comment about 'Harry Potter and the transphobe stone' and 'Harry Potter and the Wrong Side of History'. 

The term trans exclusionary radical feminist (TERF) is used to refer to people who do not believe transgender women should be afforded the same rights as cisgender women.

So-called TERFs often cite women and children's safeguarding issues when claiming men who have transitioned to become women do not have the same life experiences as those who have been female from birth and are often slammed as transphobic.  

Yesterday, the Central London Employment Tribunal case upheld the dismissal of Ms Forstater.

Miss Forstater, who has raised £83,000 on a crowdfunding website to pay for her legal fees, and her legal team are now considering whether to challenge the judgement.

Miss Forstater, who worked for the Centre for Global Development, was let go by the think tank after sharing her views on reforms to Gender Recognition Certificates.

The case was viewed as a test of whether gender critical views - that there are only two biological sexes and it is not possible to change between them - could be protected philosophical beliefs under the 2010 Equality Act.

Employment Judge James Tayler rejected that view in his landmark judgment, which said Miss Forstater's views are 'incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others'. 

If the employment judge had sided with Miss Forstater, firms would have been barred from sacking staff if they expressed the belief that there are only two genders, even if some people found that offensive.

However Judge Tayler ruled that there is no legal right to ignore the rights of transgender people, especially as misgendering someone can cause 'enormous pain'.

In his judgement he said: 'If a person has transitioned from male to female and has a Gender Recognition Certificate (GRC), that person is legally a woman. That is not something [Miss Forstater] is entitled to ignore.

'[Miss Forstater's] position is that even if a trans woman has a GRC, she cannot honestly describe herself as a woman. That belief is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.

'Even paying due regard to the qualified right to freedom of expression, people cannot expect to be protected if their core belief involves violating others' dignity and creating an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating, or offensive environment for them.'

Miss Forstater, who wrote on Twitter in September last year that 'men cannot change into women', said after the ruling: 'I struggle to express the shock and disbelief I feel at reading this judgement, which I think will be shared by the vast majority of people who are familiar with my case.

'There are two sexes, male and female. Men and boys are male. Women and girls are female. It is impossible to change sex. These were until very recently understood as basic facts of life by almost everyone.

She adds that the judgement 'gives judicial licence for women and men who speak up for objective truth and clear debate to be subject to aggression, bullying, no platforming and economic punishment.'

Miss Forstater's solicitor Peter Daly told the Daily Telegraph the 'significance of this judgment should not be downplayed'.

He said: 'Had our client been successful, she would have established in law protection for people – on any side of this debate – to express their beliefs without fear of being discriminated against.'

Human rights lawyer Adam Wagner told BBC Radio 4's Today programme Miss Forstater lost because the judge said that wrapped up in her belief that biological sex is immutable is an expectation that she will not refer to someone who has transitioned in their new gender. 

He said that it was 'difficult to say' whether the ruling would be upheld, adding: 'The judge has gone very far in trying to resolve a number of very controversial issues and he's also potentially gone beyond the remit of this hearing -which was about just looking at the belief, rather than the manifestations of the belief.'

Speaking on what implications this could have more widely, Mr Wagner said: 'It's difficult to say because it's such a developing area but it's quite a wide-ranging judgement that effectively says if you have a belief which requires you to misgender somebody then that belief won't be protected, so you could potentially be disciplined for expressing that belief - even if expressing that belief does not lead to you in the workplace actually misgendering someone, it's just the risk of misgendering.

'What I don't think it does is prevent people having a debate about whether for excample changing the law to bring in a different kind of rule for how you transition under the Gender Recognition Act.' 

At the end of September 2018 Miss Forstater said on a conversation on Slack: 'If people find the basic biological truths that 'women are adult human females' or 'transwomen are male' offensive, then they will be offended.

'Of course in social situations I would treat any transwomen as an honourary female, and use whatever pronouns etc...

'I wouldn't try to hurt anyone's feelings but I don't think people should be compelled to play along with literal delusions like 'transwomen are women'.'

In the full judgment, Judge Tayler considers whether the Claimaint's core belief that sex is immutable 'lacks a level of cogency and cohesion'. 

He says Miss Forstater 'largely ignores intersex conditions' and the 'fact' that biological opinion is moving away from an 'absolutist' approach, and that there is 'significant scientific evidence' that her belief is 'wrong'.   

The judge continues: 'I consider that the Claimant's view, in its absolutist nature, is incompatible with human dignity and fundamental rights of others. She goes so far as to deny the right of a person with a Gender Recognition Certificate to be the sex to which they have transitioned.

'I do not accept the Claimant's contention that the Gender Recognition Act produces a mere legal fiction. It provides a right, based on the assessment of the various interrelated convention rights, for a person to transition, in certain circumstances, and thereafter to be treated for all purposes as the being of the sex to which they have transitioned.

'In Goodwin a fundamental aspect of the reasoning of the ECHR was that a person who has transitioned should not be forced to identify their gender assigned at birth.

'Such a person should be entitled to live as a person of the sex to which they have transitioned. That was recognised in the Gender Recognition Act which states that the change of sex applies for 'all purposes'.

'Therefore, if a person has transitioned from male to female and has a Gender Recognition Certificate that person is legally a woman. That is not something that the Claimant is entitled to ignore.'

SOURCE 





Non-Partisan Group Calls on Amazon to Drop Scandal-Plagued SPLC

Big tech and the media routinely cover for the scandal-plagued far-left smear factory the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), but a new non-partisan initiative has launched a campaign urging Amazon to drop its reliance on the corrupt liberal group.

Since its creation two months ago, the New Tolerance Campaign (NTC) has inspired more than 2,000 Americans to demand that universities and influential companies like Amazon hold themselves to "consistent standards of tolerance." NTC "promotes 'unbiased tolerance' by encouraging organizations, businesses, elected officials, and government agencies to maintain clear standards of acceptable conduct."

In that spirit, NTC has rallied Americans against Amazon's decision to rely on the SPLC's biased "hate group" accusations to exclude organizations from its AmazonSmile charity program. NTC reminded its followers that the SPLC faced a devastating scandal back in March involving claims of racial discrimination and sexual harassment. That scandal led to the firing of the SPLC's co-founder, and it broke open even further as employees came clean about being "part of the con," exaggerating hate by padding the "hate group" list and "bilking northern liberals" into cutting big checks. The SPLC has millions in offshore bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.

"New Tolerance Campaign is dedicated to calling out the unequal application of tolerance in mainstream American culture, which has become far too common in recent years. AmazonSmile’s use of the SPLC is a clear case of this ongoing problem," an NTC spokesperson told PJ Media on Wednesday.

"In addition to several very serious internal scandals related to sexual harassment, racial discrimination and the use of off-shore bank accounts that undermine the organization’s integrity and credibility, the SPLC has a well-documented ideological bias that is reflected in its 'hate map,'" the spokesperson explained. "By relying on the SPLC as the only non-government arbiter of who can participate, AmazonSmile is perpetuating that bias in a way that passes it on to their customers, some of whom may not realize that their options are being shaped by one particular ideological viewpoint, while also lending its own reputation to an organization with questionable ethics and practices."

NTC is new, but the organization is already making an impact. "In only two months since New Tolerance Campaign launched, we’ve empowered over 2,100 advocates to send over 4,000 messages to companies calling on them to apply their tolerance standards equally," the spokesperson said.

NTC does not just launch pressure campaigns against liberal bias. The organization has also targeted Truman State University for refusing to allow a student to start an animal rights group on campus, and it urged American companies to divest from companies that support the Chinese surveillance state and the oppression of Uyghur Muslims.

Liberals have long warned about the SPLC's deception and corruption, but in recent years conservatives have led the charge. In recent decades, the organization has become shameless about accusing its political opponents of being "hate groups" on par with the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC's "hate group" strategy began with lawsuits that bankrupted KKK groups, but its blacklist has expanded to include mainstream conservative and Christian organizations. Former SPLC spokesman Mark Potok declared that the SPLC's "aim in life is to destroy these groups, completely destroy them."

The SPLC's Scandalous History on Race

In 2012, a deranged man targeted the Family Research Council (FRC), which the SPLC accused of being an "anti-LGBT hate group." He intended to shoot everyone in the building and smear Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches in their faces. He failed thanks to the bravery of a security guard who sustained long-term injuries. The man was convicted of terrorism charges and told the FBI he targeted FRC because of the SPLC "hate group" list.

FRC and the American Family Association bought an ad in The Wall Street Journal warning Big Tech and the media not to trust the SPLC, specifically addressing Amazon with their concerns.

AmazonSmile lets shoppers direct 0.5 percent of their purchases to charity. Yet this admirable program relies on the SPLC's discredited "hate group" list to exclude conservative and Christian organizations. Amazon did not respond to PJ Media's request for comment.

The AmazonSmile blacklisting came to light in 2017, when D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM) filed a lawsuit against Amazon and the SPLC after getting booted from the program. While the suit was dismissed this year, DJKM filed an appeal in October.

The blacklisting extends far beyond Amazon. Payment processing companies have cut off organizations like the Ruth Institute; Mastercard and Discover banned JihadWatch; Chase Bank has suspended the personal accounts of conservative activists like Enrique Tarrio, the black leader of the supposedly white supremacist Proud Boys. Hyatt Hotels, Eventbrite, and PayPal have blacklisted ACT for America. Even Mar-a-Lago canceled an ACT for America event under pressure from the SPLC.

The far-left group accused Maajid Nawaz, an anti-terror Muslim reformer, of being an "anti-Muslim extremist." Nawaz sued and the SPLC settled, offering a very public apology and paying $3.375 million to his nonprofit.

In addition to DJKM and Nawaz, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes, Baltimore lawyer Glen Keith Allen, and former heroin addict Craig Nelsen have sued the SPLC for defamation and various other claims. The CIS lawsuit was struck down because it attempted to shoehorn a defamation claim into racketeering, but it will likely be re-filed.

In the Nelsen case, a judge allowed the plaintiff to enter the discovery process, giving the former heroin addict access to the organization's documents. The SPLC had falsely claimed that Nelsen "wasn't convincing anyone" that his drug recovery program was open to men of all races.

Mat Staver, founder and chairman of Liberty Counsel, a Christian nonprofit branded a "hate group" by the SPLC, told PJ Media that more than 60 organizations are considering their own lawsuits against the SPLC.

Shamefully, media outlets like CBS News, The New York Times, the Miami Herald, and the Palm Beach Post have buried the SPLC's scandals even while reporting on SPLC pressure campaigns in recent months. YouTube has also restricted videos exposing the SPLC's corruption.

Companies like Amazon should not be treating this scandal-plagued, politically-biased, and legally compromised organization as if it were a reliable arbiter of hate. Click here to read more about New Tolerance Campaign's initiative and consider signing this important petition.

SOURCE 





Christmas market with live reindeer is cancelled after animal rights activists complained it was CRUEL

A Christmas market featuring live reindeer has been called off after animal activists complained children would 'cause great distress' to the animals. 

Organisers at Canopy Market in London have abandoned plans to hold the children's event after receiving comments about alleged cruelty from Freedom for Animals.

Fabio Diu, who runs the market, said: 'We did get comments about concern over using reindeer and for us animal welfare is critically important and something we take very seriously.'

Canopy have featured live animals from 'an educational point of view' and decided reindeers were not in keeping with their values.

Freedom for Animals have forced seven more reindeer events to cancel, including Winter Funland in Manchester, Knutsford Christmas Weekend in Cheshire and the Christmas lights switch-on at Princes Risborough in Buckinghamshire.

Animal group Northern Unity protested outside Raby Castle in County Durham as families visited a reindeer display.

Protester Kathy Barley, 57, told The Times: 'Transporting these animals is very distressing. They are kept in bright lights with lots of noise. Kids will stick their hands through.'

They are calling for a boycott of live reindeer events as they claim the animals suffer anxiety, low fertility and high calf mortality.

Tor Bailey, campaign manager of Animal Aid, claimed the reindeer are 'not props to be paraded around and used for entertainment'.

This comes just days after the RSPCA warned reindeers should not be used at Santa's grottos because they get too stressed.

Dr Ros Clubb, senior scientific manager in wildlife, said the animals 'get stressed very easily and are very susceptible to many health and welfare problems'.

People attending the live reindeer events 'may not be able to spot the problems until it is too late'.

The semi-wild deer are not the same as deer native the UK which means it is more difficult to meet their needs.

SOURCE 





Party for workers now can’t stand them

In the process of making themselves supremely woke Labor in Australia and Labour in Britain also have made themselves unelectable.

Caroline Overington

I was listening to the car radio a few days back when a woman came on and said: “Politics should be like the underwire in your bra.” I can’t remember who was hosting but whoever it was kind of choked, then said: “OK.”

The caller went on: “You want to know the government’s there, doing its job, but you don’t want to be conscious of it. You don’t want it to be irritating.”

Probably this caller was not the first person to come up with this analogy — probably it will turn out to be somebody famous — but the lady had a point, I thought, so allow me to labour it.

Most of us, when we’re young, don’t need much support (Are we still talking about bras? No, but then again, maybe.) Anyway, most young people are perfectly capable of getting some kind of starter job. They date, they travel, they hopefully save some money, then it’s time to get married, and so begin the child-rearing years. You’ll be needing your bra, ladies.

You also will be tapping the government for extra support, things such as healthcare and the maternal child health nurse; or else paid parental leave, family tax benefit and the childcare rebate: the point being the underwire is there when people need it.

Problems begin when politicians decide that it’s not enough for them to take care of the basics — the economy, national security, the roads, the schools — but to interfere unnecessarily in people’s daily lives.

In the process, they offend, or irritate, almost everyone.

All parties are guilty of this, but in the process of making themselves supremely woke Labor here in Australia and Labour in Britain also have made themselves unelectable. Labour/Labor used to mean jobs and job security. They were for workplace safety and eight-hour days and holiday loading and flexible hours.

Now they’re for — well, they’re apparently into berating their own base about how stupid, sexist, homophobic and racist they are.

Where is the evidence?

Most families in Britain and here in Australia are probably a bit like your own: one of the kids is gay, or else it will be one of the cousins, or else you’ll have a couple of guncles in the wings. Who gives a hoot? Nobody.

Imagine the bloke scratching his armpit on a building site trying to make sense of the idea that he’s a homophobic pig and therefore he should vote for the party that says so.

You think he cares whether his brother’s daughter wants to marry her best friend in a ceremony where the french bulldog wears a tuxedo? Knock yourselves out, is his likely response.

Labour was likewise convinced of the stupidity of its own supporters. They wanted Brexit, so their party ran against Brexit. Where is the logic?

In a similar vein, why does Labour/Labor insist on running leaders that people hate?

Here in Australia, Bill Shorten was unpopular — actually, no, talk to people, and they’ll tell you “I can’t stand him”.

I can’t stand him! There’s not a lot of wriggle room there. I can’t stand him means: if you run him, I will not vote for you. And so they ran him.

Because of course they did. Because they’re also arrogant. You don’t like him? Well, you’re having him.

Shorten’s base also comprised many people who had worked hard for many years as teachers, nurses, librarians and truck drivers to build up a nest egg. They’re now retired, and they were making a few thousand dollars a year from franking credits, meaning they’ve got some nice, safe Commonwealth Bank shares.

Shorten proposed to take the benefit from them. But that’s the money they put in cards for the grandkids at Christmas. As policy goes, it was absolute madness.

They did it anyway.

The bit they seem to forget is, people can turn up at the voting booth and say: well, to hell with you. I’m not voting for you.

You’re not? Of course, you are! You always have, your parents did, their parents were coalminers, you think you’re going to vote Conservative?

I am.

You’re not.

I bloody well am.

There’s only one way for that argument to end, of course. People are now wondering if Labor/Labour can ever come back. They say that every time there’s a landslide: oh, it will take a generation. Not necessarily.

The circumstances that allowed for Boris Johnson’s victory, and indeed that of Scott Morrison, were as precise as they were unique. They could well lose next time around. Donald Trump, on the other hand, will win a second term, and then he will probably put up daughter Ivanka for 2024.

Their first female president! Just not the one they thought they were getting. Democrats will look for people to blame — the media, especially — but actually, it’s not the media biased against them. It’s the electorate biased against them.

Traditional supporters are never gone forever, however. They can swing back in behind the party, with barely a moment’s notice. All the party needs to do is listen to people’s concerns, and respond in a way that makes voters think it understands. Bring them back to the bosom, as it were.

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 December, 2019

Guns: More naive Leftist research

The authors quoted below enter the wise caveat that "The findings can’t prove that banning Large Capacity Magazines  reduces mass shootings and deaths".  Yet many people quoting the findings will ignore that caveat and write as if banning Large Capacity Magazines DOES reduce mass shootings and deaths.  So I think I should expand on what lies behind the caveat.

Basically, the study repeats an error that occurs with nauseous frequency in epidemiological research -- despite the fact that the report below appeared in a prestigious medical journal.

The failure was that the authors did not ask WHY people fell into the category being studied.  In this case they did not ask WHY some states ban LCGs and some don't.  America has frequent gun-based massacres so there is always vigorous agitation to restrict gun ownership and use in some way. And restricting magazine size is a popular policy of that ilk.

So the key question is WHY the anti-gun agitation gets results in some states and not in others.  To understand that we have to look at how gun restrictions are viewed.  And I don't think it is drawing too long a bow to suggest that a key variable in that is how dangerous it is perceived to be to be unarmed. If gun attacks are perceived as highly likely, gun use is going to be much more extensively protected than in places where the threat of violent incursions is seen as low. 

So in some states we expect to see a high threat to the citizen from illegal gun users and resultant loose gun laws to enable the citizen to defend himself.  And where the gun laws are loose, access to LCGs is unlikely to be restricted.  So LCGs are more likely to be found and used in high crime areas.  And that, roughly, is what the research found.

As a psychologist I feel a need to add that how dangerous an area is and how dangerous it is perceived to be may not be perfectly aligned.  A major factor is the politics of the area.  Leftists seem to walk around for most of their lives in a mental world that is well divorced from reality. So in areas where they predominate, areas may be seen as much safer than they are

So the causal arrow may point to the dangerous area as being the cause of the excess deaths rather than which magazine is used


Large-Capacity Magazine Bans Linked With Fewer Mass Shootings, Deaths

Jennifer Abbasi

In a recent study, US states without large-capacity magazine (LCM) bans had more high-fatality mass shootings and higher death rates during these assaults. The findings, recently detailed in the American Journal of Public Health, could support banning these efficient ammunition-feeding devices.

Military-style “assault weapons” get a lot of attention from policy makers and the public, but most high-fatality mass shootings are perpetrated with semiautomatic handguns. Large-capacity magazines arm all types of semiautomatic firearms, not just assault weapons, so banning the devices could have a greater effect on such incidents, the study authors said.

Proposals to restrict LCMs are being considered to combat gun violence. However, there isn’t a lot of evidence on the effects of LCM bans.

The Design

The researchers analyzed associations between high-fatality mass shootings and state and federal LCM bans starting in 1990—when the first state (New Jersey) began restricting LCM ownership—through 2017. During that time, 8 additional states and Washington, DC, enacted bans. The time frame also included the now-expired 1994 Federal Assault Weapons Ban that for a decade made it illegal to produce, sell, transfer, or own new LCMs.

The researchers looked at the state and federal bans both together and separately. Based on the federal rule, they defined LCMs as magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition. They considered high-fatality mass shootings those with 6 or more deaths not including the shooter. To account for other differences among states, they controlled for 10 variables, including population density, education, unemployment rate, and a proxy for percentage of households with firearms.

What We’ve Learned

There were 69 high-fatality mass shootings during the study period. Forty-four of them involved LCMs and 16 didn’t. The researchers couldn’t determine if LCMs were involved in the remaining 9 shootings.

The attacks were more common in states without LCM bans. Forty-nine occurred in such states, whereas just 20 happened in states with bans.

More people died in shootings that involved LCMs: 11.8 on average, compared with 7.3 in attacks without the magazines. Nonban states also saw more deaths on average per attack: 10.9, compared with 8.2 in states with bans.

The percentage of shooters who used LCMs was 81% in states without bans but only 55% in states with bans.

Only 12 of the shootings and 89 of the deaths occurred during the 10-year federal ban. But over the following 13 years, there were 48 such shootings and 527 deaths.

The first full year after the federal ban expired, 8 high-fatality mass shootings occurred in states with LCM bans, while 39 happened in those without them.

The Caveats

There wasn’t information about LCMs for 13% of the incidents.

The researchers acknowledged that the magnitude of the associations may have been overestimated because of the (relatively) small number of shootings that met the study’s criteria for high-fatality mass shootings.

Knowing which mass shootings with fewer than 6 deaths involved LCMs would have been valuable, but most of these data either are not documented or are not readily available, the researchers told JAMA.

What the Researchers Say

The findings can’t prove that banning LCMs reduces mass shootings and deaths, but the main conclusions didn’t change when other explanatory variables were factored in. This indicates that “differences across states in these dimensions were not the reason for the strong association between LCM bans and lower rates of high-fatality mass shooting deaths,” said the study’s senior author, David Hemenway, PhD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

According to Hemenway, LCMs allow the shooter to fire more shots without reloading—and reloading gives time for someone to intervene and for potential victims to get out of harm’s way. Possibly for this reason, states that have enacted LCM bans have had fewer high-fatality mass shooting incidents, fewer victims killed per incident, and far fewer high-fatality mass shooting fatalities per capita.

“Overall, the theory behind reducing the availability of LCMs to reduce the number of victims in mass shootings makes sense, and our empirical results suggest that LCM bans have saved lives,” he said.

However, the authors pointed out that the bans don’t immediately eliminate all LCMs. Some are grandfathered in, while others are illegally imported from places where they’re still legal.

JAMA. Published online December 18, 2019. doi:https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2019.20457






Great news!

The British bulldog is back


Boris opens the door to "broad sunlit uplands" (Churchill)

Boris Johnson insisted that Britain would not follow any EU rules after Brexit as he set up a showdown with Brussels over a trade deal.

The Prime Minister made clear that he would pursue a hard Brexit by saying there would be “no alignment” between the two sides, defying the EU’s claim that it was a “must” for any future relationship.

On a historic day for Britain’s relationship with the rest of Europe, the Brexit “divorce” Bill sailed through the Commons with a majority of 124 on Friday, and will become law on Jan 9, enabling a Jan 31 exit and for trade negotiations to begin in earnest.

SOURCE 





Donald Trump blasts Christianity Today magazine in tweet after it called for his removal

US President Donald Trump has blasted a prominent Christian magazine, a day after it published an editorial arguing that he should be removed from office because of his "blackened moral record".

Mr Trump tweeted that Christianity Today, an evangelical magazine founded by the late Reverend Billy Graham, "would rather have a Radical Left nonbeliever, who wants to take your religion & your guns, than Donald Trump as your President".

The magazine "has been doing poorly and hasn't been involved with the Billy Graham family for many years," Mr Trump wrote in the tweet.

In another tweet, he questioned whether the magazine would prefer a Democratic president "to guard their religion".

Some of the President's evangelical supporters, including Reverend Graham's son, rallied to his side and against the publication.

Reverend Franklin Graham, who now leads the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and prayed at Mr Trump's inauguration, tweeted that his father would be "disappointed" in the magazine.

Reverend Graham added that he "felt it necessary" following the editorial to share that his father, who died last year and had helped to counsel several past presidents during his lifetime, voted for Mr Trump.

The President thanked Reverend Graham for the disclosure.

Christianity Today "represents what I would call the leftist elite within the evangelical community. They certainly don't represent the Bible-believing segment of the evangelical community," Reverend Graham said.

He wrote on Facebook: "Is President Trump guilty of sin? Of course he is, as were all past presidents and as each one of us are, including myself".

I hadn’t shared who my father @BillyGraham voted for in 2016, but because of @CTMagazine ’s article, I felt it necessary to share now. My father knew @realDonaldTrump , believed in him & voted for him. He believed Donald J. Trump was the man for this hour in history for our nation.

In the editorial titled Trump Should Be Removed from Office, editor-in-chief Mark Galli wrote that Democrats "have had it out for" the president since he took office.

But Mr Galli asserted that the facts "are unambiguous" when it comes to the acts that led to the president's impeachment this week by the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives.

Mr Trump "attempted to use his political power to coerce a foreign leader to harass and discredit one of the President's political opponents," Mr Galli wrote, referring to former vice-president Joe Biden. "That is not only a violation of the constitution; more importantly, it is profoundly immoral."

The magazine's circulation is estimated at 130,000.

Evangelical support for Trump

Mr Trump is still popular among white evangelical Protestants, with roughly 8 in 10 saying they approve of the way he is handling his job, according to a December poll from The AP-NORC Center.

At the heart of that backing is what pro-Trump evangelicals view as the President's significant record of achievement on their highest priorities, such as his successful installation of more than 150 conservative federal judges and his support for anti-abortion policies.

"No President has done more for the evangelical community, and it's not even close," Mr Trump said in his tweets.

The editorial did not take a position on whether Mr Trump should be removed by the Senate or by popular vote in the 2020 election, calling it "a matter of prudential judgment", but Mr Galli wrote that the need for the President's removal "is not a matter of partisan loyalties but loyalty to the Creator of the Ten Commandments."

The editorial came one day after Mr Trump became the third president in American history to be impeached.

The House charged him with abuse of power in pressuring Ukraine to announce investigations of Mr Biden, and with obstructing Congress in the ensuing probe.

Asked in an interview with CNN about Mr Trump's critical tweets, Mr Galli said the President's characterisation of the magazine as far left was "far from accurate."

But Mr Galli, who is set to retire from his post next month, also said he is realistic about the impact of his words. "I don't have any imagination that my editorial is going to shift their views on this matter," he said of the President's supporters.

"The fact of the matter is Christianity Today is not read by the people — Christians on the far right, by evangelicals on the far right — so they're going to be as dismissive of the magazine as President Trump has shown to be."

Amid the furore over the editorial, the Trump campaign announced plans for a January event in Miami called Evangelicals for Trump.

SOURCE 






British mother died of cardiac arrest after waiting for ambulance for 6 hours in the street, say family

Socialist health care in Wales

Donna Gilby, 47, was left on the freezing pavement outside her home in Cwmaman, south Wales, after she had slipped and broke her foot on Tuesday morning.

After around six hours, during which time family and neighbours covered her with coats and blankets, the mum-of-one was taken to hospital where she later died of cardiac arrest.

Her father has spoken out, saying it is important people saw the photo and heard what happened to his daughter, who he said had struggled with ill-health for many years.

"It's just not right that she was waiting all those hours,” said Gareth Gilby, 74.

"There was nothing we could do because she had a bad break and we couldn't physically move her from the pavement.

"We kept ringing the ambulance and she was in and out of consciousness but they still didn't show up for hours.

"I still can't believe she's gone. I'm in shock. We've got an 11-year-old girl here now without a mother. It shouldn't have happened.

"She was as good as gold and always put others before herself - she'd do anything for anyone."

The Welsh ambulance service blamed pressures on the health service which meant they could not respond to a high number of priority call-outs.

In a statement chief executive Jason Killens said: “We were deeply saddened to hear about the death of Ms Gilby and would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to her family.

"We are sorry that our response took longer than we would have liked on this occasion.

"Our ambulance service exists to care for people, and our staff share the same upset and frustrations as patients and their loved ones at times like this.

"Lengthy waits for an ambulance are a sign of pressures across the whole unscheduled care system, not just in Wales but across the UK.

"An increase in high-priority ‘Red’ calls and significant hospital handover delays in particular are impacting on our ability to respond to 999 calls as quickly as we would like.

SOURCE 






Extraordinary push to stop bosses calling end-of-year celebrations 'Christmas parties' and instead hold 'holiday season drinks' so non-Christians aren't offended

Australian workplaces are being urged to hold culturally friendly end-of-year celebrations such as 'holiday season drinks' instead of 'Christmas parties' so non-Christians aren't offended. 

Diversity Council Australia wants businesses to be inclusive of all traditions and celebrate holidays including Jewish Hanukkah, Buddhist Bodhi Day, Islamic Ramadan and the Hindu Diwali.

The proposal would let staff work on Christian religious holidays such as Christmas to be able to keep time off for other more relevant celebrations of their own faith.

Lisa Annese from Diversity Council Australia told The Herald Sun one in ten of their 500 member businesses have implemented their approach.

'If you're having a Christmas celebration, try to make sure it's inclusive of other faiths as well because the office is for everybody,' Ms Annese said.

She recommends having a combined Christmas and New Year celebration so that 'everyone is on board with the ­company's vision for the new year.'

The council's recommendations included developing and maintaining a calendar of multicultural events and celebrating those that have the most relevance to your staff.

Different needs for people of different faiths should be accounted for, including dietary requirements, designating time for prayer and meditation and respecting cultural boundaries, the council says. 

The 2016 ABS census revealed that 52 per cent of Australians are Christian, leaving many Australians left out of the celebrations.

On Thursday the Diversity Council said they were not suggesting bosses should not mention Christmas. 'Lots of organisations celebrate the end of year holiday break with a Christmas party,' the Diversity Council said in a statement on Thursday.

'We are simply saying that it's worth remembering that many Australians do not celebrate Christmas religiously, either as followers of non-Christian religions, or as individuals with no religious affiliation.

'There is a lot organisations can do to make them feel included at this time of year.'

The council's push comes after City of Perth's Cultural Development Plan promised to water down Christmas celebrations in 2019 to deliver a holiday season that is 'representative and inclusive of city's multicultural community.'

Residents took to social media to express their outrage over the idea, with many claiming the council is going too far.

'This is just madness in my opinion. I'd love a Christmas as Christmassy as it can get,' one man wrote. 'PC gone mad,' wrote another.

'Absolutely what a great idea the world needs less joy throughout the year we have too much good news, community spirit love and happiness,' another wrote.  

Chief Commissioner Andrew Hammond said the council's current holiday-season celebrations did not acknowledge or create a sense of belonging for non-Christians.

'We're not about to change Christmas celebrations. We're just taking a common sense approach that about 50 per cent of people are Christians and about 50 per cent are not,' he told 9News.

The endeavour for political correctness has reached into some of Australia's top universities, who have been accused of slashing students grades for using banned 'gendered language.'

Terms such as 'man', 'she', 'wife', 'mother' and any other terminology that angers the PC brigade have been blacklisted.

Students claimed they have lost marks for referring to 'mankind' or 'workmanship' in assignments, as they are not deemed 'inclusive language.'

'Students are advised to avoid gender-biased language in the same way they are advised to avoid racist language, cliches, contractions, colloquialisms, and slang in their essays,' Professor Julie Duck from the University of Queensland told The Courier Mail.

Federal Education Minister Simon Birmingham openly disagrees with the policies, claiming that they were enforcing 'nanny state stuff' on students. 'Our universities should be better than this rubbish,' he said.

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 December, 2019  

Diet Coke linked to ’weight gain’, according to new Australian research

God! I get sick of reading this repeated stupidity.  Any Statistics 101 course will tell you that correlation is not causation.

So: Who are the fattest?

The poor

So who are least likely to be restrained eaters?

The poor

Who therefore are under most pressure to lose weight?

The poor

So who drink most lo-cal stuff?

The poor

So who are the people most likely to gain weight while drinking lo-cal stuff?

The poor

So the findings below are nothing mystical or surprising.  The findings simply reflect what the poor do.  All the high-flown theories they put forward below are completely superfluous as an explanation of the findings.  Drinking lo-cal drinks WON'T make you fat.  It's mostly fat people who drink lo-cal drinks


People who choose diet versions of their favourite soft drink over full-sugar varieties may end up gaining weight, say doctors.

The warning comes after researchers from the University of South Australia found that people who consumed low calorie sweeteners (LCS) didn’t reduce their overall sugar intake.

The study, published in the journal Current Atherosclerosis Reports, also found consuming the sweetners could be contributing to type 2 diabetes.

Professor Peter Clifton, who led the research, said: “There has been a 200 per cent increase in LCS usage among children and a 54 per cent increase among adults in the past 20 years.”

His team reviewed previous research and came across a US study of 5158 adults over a seven-year period.

It showed that those who consumed large quantities of artificial sweeteners gained more weight than the non-users.

Prof Clifton said: “Consumers of artificial sweeteners do not reduce their overall intake of sugar.

“They use both sugar and low-calorie sweeteners and may psychologically feel they can indulge in their favourite foods.

“Artificial sweeteners can also change the gut bacteria, which may lead to weight gain and risk of type 2 diabetes.”

Low calorie sweeteners are used in place of sucrose, glucose and fructose and have an intense sweet flavour without the calories.

Artificially sweetened beverages (ASB) are also linked with increased risks of death and cardiovascular disease and strokes and dementia among older people, but it is not clear why.

Prof Clifton cited 13 studies that investigated the effects of ASB intake on the risk of type 2 diabetes – all of which found either no link or a positive one.

One study found that substituting ASB for sugar-sweetened beverages or fruit juices was associated with a 5 to 7 per cent lower risk of type 2 diabetes.

He said: “A better option than low-calorie sweeteners is to stick to a healthy diet, which includes plenty of whole grains, dairy, seafood, legumes, vegetables and fruits and plain water.”

Previous studies have also found links between calorie-free drinks such as Diet Coke and weight gain.

Scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital have found the breakdown product in the drink’s sweetener – aspartame – disrupts the metabolic rate.

Dr Richard Hodin, the study’s senior author, said: “Sugar substitutes like aspartame are designed to promote weight loss and decrease the incidence of metabolic syndrome.

SOURCE 






Feminist policies backfire: Men invade their spaces

The problem the women are having below was created by women. It's quite the just deserts and a lesson in thinking ahead, rather than not. As was said to men when they protested: Suck it up!!! Deal with it!!! After feminists spent decades ruining mens' spaces

The Wing was supposed to be the ultimate sanctuary for women: decidedly feminine in design, with walls and furniture in shades of millennial pink and a thermometer set at a women’s-clothing-friendly 72 degrees. Conference rooms and telephone booths are named after feminist icons like Anita Hill and fictional literary heroines such as Hermione Granger of “Harry Potter” fame. It offers perks that other co-working spaces can’t match — showers stocked with high-end beauty products and events featuring big names such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Critics of the Wing were quick to point out the lack of diversity in the spaces, but the company’s expansion and popularity has brought up a completely different issue that was never expected to arise: straight men wanting to come in and hang out.

Sure, it’s not against the rules for men to be at the lady lair, which costs anywhere from $185 to $250 a month in the US to join. But that’s only because legally the company can’t ban men.

“There’s usually at least one [man] whenever I visit,” says Kaitlin Phillips, 29, a member in New York for the past two years. “It’s bizarre to choose to occupy a space women specifically wanted for themselves. Classic patriarchal entitlement complex.”

‘It’s getting worse. A guy even checked me out a few weeks ago.’
The problem, multiple members have told The Post, is that the men physically take up too much space with their bigger bodies and belongings. They hog the phone booths. And they aren’t respectful of some of the rules, ignoring the four-hour cap on guest visits and bringing in outside food. While they aren’t using the members-only changing rooms and showers (yet), they are in the guest bathrooms.

“At first it was jarring,” says a 30-year-old longtime New York member, who asked to not be named. “It started about a year ago and it’s getting worse. A guy even checked me out a few weeks ago. The whole purpose of the space is to not have to deal with anything like that.”

The Wing, which started with one location in New York in 2016 and has grown to nine locations in seven cities, including a new international outpost in London, never had a membership policy, because, reps say, they didn’t think they’d need one. Instead, they simply billed themselves as a women’s co-working space and social club.

This lack of official paperwork garnered the attention of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, which in 2018 opened an investigation into the company. The Wing’s large membership — more than 11,000 worldwide, according to reps — meant it couldn’t pass as a “social club,” and therefore can’t discriminate based on gender. This, coupled with a lawsuit brought by a 53-year-old man earlier this year claiming gender discrimination, led the Wing to formally adopt a membership policy: “The Wing is a space designed for women with a women’s-focused mission. Members and guests are welcome regardless of their perceived gender or gender identity. Recognizing that gender identity is not always consistent with someone’s sex assigned at birth, we do not ask members or guests to self-identify.”

Based on the new policy, the commission confirms to The Post that it dropped its investigation this past summer.

But all of the women The Post spoke to had the same questions: Why would a man want to go to the Wing, anyway? Just because he can? To hit on women? To be a troll? The company’s magazine is called No Man’s Land!

Phillips says she thinks the problem is new members — who may not be as familiar with the original purpose of the space — bringing in men as their guests.

“I think they’re just losers,” she says of the male plus-ones. “Or cucked boyfriends. It’s a legal fluke.”

Up until about a year or so ago, when the space was truly a women-only sanctuary, members said they could comfortably walk around braless in a robe after a shower. Now, they say, they’re constantly looking over their shoulders, wondering who the loud dude chewing his lunch is.

Numerous California members tell The Post that the phenomenon is getting out of hand.

“It’s just annoying,” says Caitlin White, a 31-year-old West Hollywood member who sees at least one man working in the space each day. “Why do men need to be there? Why can’t they respect the spirit of the place? Men have to have everything.”

The San Francisco location, numerous members tell The Post, “is really bad — like, filled with tech bros.”

“I usually see about five men coming in throughout the day,” says a 31-year-old San Francisco member who asked to remain anonymous. “I think it’s members bringing in men for investor meetings. Here, everyone is in [venture capital], and men still hold all the money and power. These women are trying to fund their businesses.”

When she first joined, she says, she made the mistake of bringing in her cis male boss for a meeting, something that she now regrets.

“I’ll never do that again,” she says. “He didn’t respect the space, acting like we were in a coffee shop or something. I was getting looks from other members.”

In New York, of course, the stares are no less subtle.

“I glare at the men and I glare at the members who bring them,” says the anonymous New York member.

White, meanwhile, says she hopes the company can work out some sort of happy medium.

“Maybe make it one day a week that men are allowed?” White says. “There has to be a legal way to work this out that still respects the space.”

SOURCE 






Leftist hostility to the police kills

Tessa Majors' father Inman doted on his beautiful daughter. On her 18th birthday in May, he posted the following on Facebook: '18 years ago today, my life got redefined in all the right way when this little bundle of fun came into the world. Happy Birthday to Tessa Rane Majors, a fantastic young lady. I can't wait to see what the next 18 years have in store.'

The answer is nothing. There won't be a 'next 18 years'. In fact, there won't be another day.

For Mr Majors, a professor at James Madison University and acclaimed novelist, there will only be a lifetime of pain and anguish, and he will never see his 'fantastic young lady' again because she is now dead.

Tessa Majors was as bright as she was beautiful. After graduating from high school in Charlottesville, Virginia, earlier this year, she enrolled at Barnard College, a private liberal arts college in Manhattan affiliated with nearby Columbia University.

The freshman, a keen musician, was excited to be in New York, and had recently played her first gig in the city with her band.

But on Wednesday evening, as she walked through Morningside Park, a few blocks north east of Central Park, she was murdered – stabbed to death by a group of young teens who police believe robbed her.

She was found lying on the ground, bloodied from vicious stab wounds to her face, neck and arms.

The horrific killing has stunned America and sparked an immediate blame-game furor.

Police union chief Ed Mullins, president of the Sergeant Benevolent Association, caused outrage when he appeared to partly blame Tessa for her own death by saying she had been in the park to buy weed.

'An 18-year-old college student at one of the most prestigious universities is murdered in a park, and what I'm understanding was in the park to buy marijuana,' he told radio host John Catsimatidis.

'And you think about that, we don't enforce marijuana laws anymore. We're basically hands-off on the enforcement of marijuana. So here, we have a student murdered by a 13-year-old and we have a common denominator of marijuana. You know, my question to the people of New York City is, 'Why is this happening?'

Tessa's family slammed his claims, which were made to police by one of her college friends but remain unconfirmed, as 'inappropriate', saying they 'intentionally or unintentionally direct blame onto Tessa, a young woman, for her own murder.'

And they're absolutely right to be outraged. Mullins should have known better than to spread unverified rumor, causing further distress to Tessa's loved ones. So, shame on him for doing that.

But there was a wider truth to what he said about New York's law enforcement that cannot be ignored.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has a 25-year-old daughter of his own, reacted emotionally to what happened. 'The idea that a college freshman was murdered in cold blood is absolutely not only painful to me as a parent, it's terrifying,' he said. 'It's unbelievable to me that that could happen here, next to one of our great college campuses. It's an unacceptable reality. We've lost a young woman full of potential in senseless act of violence.'

Strong words, yet I wonder how 'unbelievable' Tessa's slaying really is to De Blasio given that New York murder investigations have spiked nearly 10% this year under his watch, and violent crime in Morningside Park itself has more than doubled in the same period with 20 robberies in the past 12 months compared to just seven in 2018?

This sharp increase has been particularly worrying because the long-term violent crime trend for both the Park and New York has been falling for many years.

Many see it as indicative of a return to the bad old days when the Big Apple was awash with murders.

And they point the finger of blame firmly at De Blasio, his 'liberal' approach to policing, and the increase in anti-police rhetoric driven by a renunciation of controversial tactics like stop-and-frisk.

'I don't blame the NYPD,' said former New York City Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik. 'I blame the Mayor. I blame the City Council. I blame the people that promote this anti-cop rhetoric. They took stop-and-frisk away from the cops. They took enforcement out of law enforcement. We're going right back to where we were, this homicide is reminiscent of the things that went on back in the 1970s, '80s and '90s and people ignore it.'

Kerik praised previous mayors Rudy Guiliani and Michael Bloomberg for introducing aggressive policing that led to a dramatic reduction in violent crime, including the stop-and-frisk policy that was later found to have discriminated against black and Latino communities.

Bloomberg, since announcing his presidential run, has now apologized for his most divisive crime-fighting initiative, saying: 'I was wrong, and I am sorry.'

And Kerik also acknowledged it went too far, cautioning: 'There wasn't enough oversight. The (stops) can be abused.'

But he added: 'At the end of the day, the men and women in the NYPD have to have the tools to do the job they are here to do. And when you take the tools away to do that job, crime is going to rise.'

It's hard not to look at the new surge in New York's murder rate, despicable homicides like that of Tessa Majors, a massive reduction in both police search powers and their pursuit of minor crimes, and not conclude the pendulum has now swung too far from overly-aggressive policing in the city, to under-aggressive.

Kerik's absolutely right that New York cops barely enforce marijuana laws any longer, despite it still being an illegal substance in the city.

We don't yet know if this was a factor in Tessa's death.

But we do know that a park that was once lethally dangerous but became a safe sanctuary in recent years, has now descended back into being lethally dangerous again.

And we also know that Tessa's murderers were a bunch of young kids who felt confident enough to carry knives and rob people in a public park.

Where did they get their confidence? Do they fear the police any longer? Would a more carefully controlled stop-and-frisk policy have deterred them from committing their heinous crime?

Did their own drug abuse – police say at least some of them were regular marijuana users – play a factor in their behavior?

These are all important questions. But ultimately, the stats don't lie.

Murders in New York are accelerating again, minor crimes are increasingly ignored, the whole city has begun to whiff with the stench of illegal marijuana, and young criminals have begun acting with fresh impunity.

And this is all occurring under Mayor De Blasio, a man widely criticized for a far softer approach to policing than his predecessors.

For a look into the potential future, New Yorkers point scathingly at liberal-infested California where drug-related homelessness is hitting disturbingly high levels, creating horrific slum camps in places like Santa Rosa.

When De Blasio branded Ed Mullins 'heartless' for shaming Tessa Majors, Mullins' union retorted in an angry statement: 'Heartless is you allowing lawlessness to run the city of NY. You've weakened the NYPD. This young lady should still be alive. Tell the TRUTH, Bill. Tell New Yorkers what really happens on the streets of NYC. YOU have created chaos. NYC is a becoming a cesspool thanks to the Mayor. Shame on DeBlasio.'

There will be a lot of New Yorkers who agree.

One thing's indisputable: crime in New York never plunged by telling cops to go soft on crime.

Mayor De Blasio needs to stop trying to be a police-bashing liberal hero and instruct the NYPD to get tougher with criminals – fast.

SOURCE 





UK: Brighton councillors will discuss stopping Harry and Meghan using Sussex title tomorrow after thousands signed petition branding the honours 'morally wrong and disrespectful' to the county

Brighton and Hove City Council is very "Green"

Brighton councillors will debate stripping Harry and Meghan of their Sussex titles after thousands signed a petition branding them 'morally wrong' and 'disrespectful'.

The petition claims Sussex residents should not have to refer to the royal couple as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex as the titles are 'entirely non-democratic' and a 'symbol of oppression by the wealthy elite'.

Campaigner Charles Ross has accumulated more than 3,800 signatures, which means Brighton and Hove City councillors will have to discuss the motion on Thursday. 

But the council cannot strip the couple of their titles, which are given by the Queen, so the petition calls on officials to stop calling them the Sussexes in council documents.

The petition reads: 'We the undersigned petition Brighton & Hove Council to reject the usage of the titles 'Duke of Sussex' and 'Duchess of Sussex' by the individuals Henry ('Harry') Windsor and Rachel Meghan Markle as morally wrong and disrespectful to the county of East Sussex.

'As residents of Brighton and Hove we call on Brighton and Hove Council to not refer to these individuals by such titles which we believe to be entirely non democratic and symbolic of the oppression of the general public by the wealthy elite.

'Neither will Brighton Council invite or entertain these individuals nor afford them any hospitality or courtesies above and beyond that of an ordinary member of the public.'

The couple were well received on a visit to Sussex last October as they were greeted by huge crowds of well-wishers, with Hove MP Peter Kyle praising them at the time for reflecting Brighton's diversity and calling them 'a great example'.

The petition has been rubbished by royal commentator Robert Jobson, who told the Express: 'It's a bit unfair on them - they were there recently and massive crowds turned out.

The royal groom's dukedom is the highest rank in the British peerage and marked his marriage to the actress.

Meghan became the first ever Duchess of Sussex as her new husband was made the first Duke of the county in 175 years and the second in history.

Harry also received Scottish and Northern Irish titles, becoming the Earl of Dumbarton and Baron Kilkeel, making Meghan the Countess of Dumbarton and Baroness Kilkeel.

All royal titles are given by the Queen and it was up to the monarch to choose which one to bestow on her grandson and his wife in May 2018.

Harry's thoughts on the title would have been taken into account by the Queen in a private discussion between the Prince and his grandmother.

Tradition dictates that royal men receive a title on their wedding.

Prince Augustus Frederick was the first Duke of Sussex. He married twice, but both took place without the consent of the monarch, so neither of his wives could become a 'Duchess of Sussex'.

'The Cambridges don't live in Cambridge, Prince Charles doesn't live in Wales…

'The titles are just ancient titles that are dished out by the Queen at marriage.'

Thomas Mace-Archer-Mills, founder of the British Monarchists Society, slammed the campaigners' views, telling the Mirror: 'We are utterly dismayed that said petition has been signed by so many.

'This certainly highlights that Brighton and Hove is a hotbed of Republican dissidents and is now proven to be so.

'Such a petition shows utter disdain and contempt for The Crown, not to mention copious amounts of disrespect to, and for, the Royal family.'

When Mr Ross's petition campaign launched in September, some residents were not entirely convinced.

Hove resident Liv Seabrook called the petition 'a waste of council time' and said it was 'patently absurd' to suggest the council could remove royal titles.

Ms Seabrook said: 'Our city has serious social problems and the council is going to waste time on the sentiment of a disgruntled citizen with nothing better to do than come up with a useless petition.

'There are financial aspects of the monarchy that can usefully be discussed. I for one can confidently say I have never felt the slightest bit oppressed by the fact that we now have as part of our Royal Family, a Duke and Duchess of Sussex.'

Brighton and Hove City Council said it would not comment until the matter has been discussed by councillors. 

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 December, 2019

Why the Left Doesn't Like Christmas

Many on the left (as opposed to liberals) have been warring on Christmas for more than a generation. Leftists always deny there is a war on Christmas and mock those who claim there is.

There is a mind-blowing chutzpah or lack of self-awareness when people do something and yet deny that they are actually doing it. But the evidence is overwhelming. The left has stopped schools from calling Christmas vacations by that name -- the name schools called them throughout American history until the last couple of decades. Almost every non-Christian school in America now calls Christmas vacation "winter break." Fewer and fewer Americans, stores, companies or media wish people "merry Christmas," preferring the neutered "happy holidays" (despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans celebrate Christmas). And in but one generation, virtually every American business has gone from having a "Christmas party" to having a "holiday party."

Having written in the past about the falsehood of "merry Christmas," "Christmas vacation" and "Christmas party" not being "inclusive," I will not reiterate the point here. Suffice it to say that it takes a breathtaking level of narcissism for a non-Christian to be offended by mentions of Christmas and a breathtaking level of meanness to seek to deprive the vast majority of fellow Americans of the public mention of their holiday.

Rather, I want to try to explain why this has happened.

The "inclusive" argument is so absurd -- I am a religious Jew and cannot even fathom being offended or feeling "not included" by an invitation to a Christmas party -- that there have to be other, or at least additional, reasons for the left's neutering of Christmas.

There are.

One is that the left sees in Christianity its primary ideological and political enemy. And it is right to do so. The only large-scale organized opposition to the left comes from the traditional Christian community -- evangelical Protestants, traditional Catholics and faithful Mormons -- and Orthodox Jews. Leftism is a secular religion, and it deems all other religions immoral and false.

From Karl Marx to Vladimir Lenin to George Soros, the left has regarded religion in general and Christianity in particular as the "opiate of the masses" -- a drug that dulls the masses into accepting their oppressed condition and, thereby, keeps them from engaging in revolution.

The left understands that the more people believe in Christianity (and Judaism), the less chance the left has to gain power. The left doesn't concern itself with Islam, because it perceives Islam as an ally in its war against Western civilization, and because leftists do not have the courage to confront Islam. They know that confronting religious Muslims can be fatal, whereas confronting religious Christians entails no risks.

Second, the left regards Christianity in America as an intrinsic part of American national identity -- an identity it wishes to erode in favor of a "world citizen" identity. The left has not only warred against Christmas; it has sought to undermine other national identity holidays. For any number of reasons, not only including the left, Americans no longer celebrate George Washington's birthday (it has de facto been replaced by the utterly meaningless "Presidents Day") or Abraham Lincoln's birthday, as they did when I was a child, my father was a child and his father was a child. The only American celebrated in a national holiday is Martin Luther King Jr., which is acceptable to the left since he is not white. One proof of the left's desire to undermine specifically American national holidays is its war on the two remaining specifically American holidays: July Fourth and Thanksgiving.

The left deems Thanksgiving a historical fraud and an immoral celebration of "genocide" of the American Indians -- which is what American children are now taught in many American public schools. And "happy Thanksgiving" has been replaced by "happy holidays." As for July Fourth, The New York Times is leading the undermining of the celebration of America's birthday by declaring that the real founding of America was 1619, the year, The Times asserts, African slaves first arrived on the American continent.

Of course, there is still Veterans Day and Memorial Day, but they are not specifically American national holidays; just about every country has such holidays.

But Christmas is a problem for the left. It celebrates religion, and it does so in quintessentially American ways (take American Christmas music, for example).

The third and final reason is that the left is joyless. Whatever and whomever the left influences has less joy in life. I have met happy and unhappy liberals, and happy and unhappy conservatives, but I've never encountered a happy leftist. And the further left you go, the more angry and unhappy the people you will encounter. Happy women and happy blacks, for example, are far more likely to be conservative than on the left.

Christmas is just too happy for the left. "Holly, jolly" is not a left-wing term.

SOURCE 






Why today’s leftists are so pre-disposed to anti-Semitism

DANIEL BEN-AMI

How deep does anti-Semitism run in the Labour Party? One of the few points on which there is consensus – from the Labour leadership itself to its harshest critics – is that the party contains some anti-Semites. But the debate about the prevalence and significance of anti-Semitism within Labour still rages.

The evidence

The recent submission on the subject by the Jewish Labour Movement, an organisation established in 1903 and affiliated to the Labour Party since 1920, certainly makes for grim reading. The 53-page dossier submitted to the Equality and Human Rights Commission, an official government body, documents numerous types of anti-Semitism inside the Labour Party, including verbal and online abuse of Jewish members; the exclusion of Jewish members from participating in party activity; the failure to implement procedure to protect Jewish members from anti-Semitism; hostile responses to those calling out anti-Semitism; and the appointment of anti-Semites to positions of power.

The official Labour Party line is of course that it abhors all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism. It also insists it will take firm action against anyone propagating such views. Some Jewish members of the Labour Party support the leadership in its stance.

One line of defence for Labour is to suggest that anti-Semitism in the party reflects a broader trend across society. There is certainly evidence that lends credence to this view. For example, a recent survey conducted on behalf of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism by YouGov, and analysed by Daniel Allington, a lecturer at King’s College London, found that anti-Semitic views exist among a significant minority in British society. The pollsters asked a representative sample of adults how they would react to different anti-Semitic tropes. The results were worrying. For instance, five per cent of the British population said the statement that ‘British Jewish people chase money more than other British people’, was ‘definitely true’, while another 15 per cent said it was ‘probably true’. Similarly four per cent said it was ‘definitely true’ that Jewish people have too much power in the media while 10 per cent said it was ‘probably true’.

A parallel survey included in the same report showed striking levels of fear among Britain’s Jewish population. For example, 42 per cent of Jews have considered leaving the country, of which 85 per cent pointed to anti-Semitism in politics as a reason.

As with all surveys, such results have to be treated with caution. For instance, many religious Jewish men still seem comfortable walking the streets wearing kippot (skullcaps). Physical attacks on Jews do happen, such as the recent beating of a rabbi in London’s Stamford Hill district, but they are mercifully rare. The two teenagers reportedly responsible are said to have shouted ‘kill Jews’ and ‘fuck Jews’.

However, there are several reasons why the official Labour defence that anti-Semitism in its ranks merely reflects wider society is not convincing. For one thing, Labour makes great play of being an anti-racist party. It is all too quick to condemn what it sees as racism perpetrated by other organisations or individuals. Yet, to put it mildly, the prevalence of anti-Semitism in its ranks suggests a blind spot towards hatred of Jews.

There is also a strong case to be made that anti-Semitism in the Labour Party permeates from the leadership downwards. This was the claim made by Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis, who represents Britain’s orthodox Jewish congregations, in The Times. He argued that ‘a new poison – sanctioned from the very top – has taken root in the Labour Party’.

The Jewish Labour Movement report also includes the claim that the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has frequently signalled that anti-Semitic views are acceptable. For example, he infamously supported the artist Mear One, after he painted a mural in East London containing several anti-Semitic tropes. These included a depiction of hook-nosed bankers playing Monopoly on the backs of the world’s poor. Once publicly exposed, Corbyn took four days to apologise, claiming he did not look closely enough at the mural.

In another incident in August 2018, a video emerged showing Corbyn in Tunis in 2014, laying a wreath on the grave of the Black September terrorists responsible for murdering Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. At first Corbyn claimed he ‘was present, but not involved’. When video footage appeared to prove otherwise, he made no further comment. Several other instances are included in the report, and spiked has also commented on the same subject.

The explanations

However, to understand contemporary anti-Semitism it is necessary to go beyond pointing to its explicit instances, even among the Labour leadership. The problem today runs much deeper. Anti-Semitism has become central to the identity of many of today’s self-proclaimed radicals. In some cases, this echoes old themes, some of which would have been recognisable in the 19th century. But this anti-Semitism also expresses new developments in politics.

Clearly, the political situation today is very different to that of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. However, today’s anti-Semitism shares some common elements with its earlier form.

* A key development from the late 1980s onwards was the almost universal acceptance that there is no alternative to the market. Almost everyone, even those who define themselves as socialists, accepted that the only viable economy is based on production for profit. Under such circumstances, traditional socialism, in the sense of the abolition of the market economy and its replacement with a different social system, had lost credibility. The old-style socialist movement was no more.

However, since the 1990s a new form of ‘anti-capitalism’ has emerged, sometimes referring to itself as the ‘anti-globalisation’ movement or as a campaign for social justice. In important respects, it reproduces some of the old anti-Semitic tropes. As Tim Black has recently argued on spiked, the anti-capitalist perspective relies heavily on the idea that the world is controlled by conspiracies. It also lays great emphasis on the role of international bankers in manipulating the economy and society more generally. Many supporters of this outlook would recoil at the idea that they are hostile to Jews, but acceptance of this worldview predisposes its adherents to key anti-Semitic themes.

* Compounding this degraded form of anti-capitalism is the rise of identity politics. At a time when identity is politicised, it has become increasingly common to portray Jews ‘as powerful, privileged and the aggressor’. In this worldview Jews become not a group that has suffered oppression, but the embodiment of ‘white privilege’. So anti-Semitism comes to be seen, not as a form of discrimination, but as a radical act.

Echoes of this worldview were apparent in one of Labour’s election campaign videos celebrating diversity as the party’s strength. The clip featured virtually every group that could reasonably be seen as the victim of some form of discrimination – including LGBT+, gays, Travellers, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, blacks, Asians, the disabled, the elderly, the young, the working class and carers. But not Jews. For some reason Jews were not included in the list of those the video said would be worthy of equality, dignity and respect, and therefore valued by a Labour government. Evidently, Jews are not eligible to be, as Labour puts it, their ‘authentic selves’.

* Of course, no discussion of contemporary anti-Semitism can be complete without reference to Israel. Some of this debate is well-worn but it is easy to miss the new ground that is apparent here, too. Clearly, it is widely accepted, including among the vast majority of British Jews, that it is legitimate to criticise Israeli policies. There is much about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and treatment of Gaza that is worthy of criticism. But all too often criticism of Israel is used as a coded way of attacking Jews. Israel is subject to incredible double standards. It is criticised for actions for which other nations around the world get a free pass. For example, Israel is criticised for the separation wall that runs through the West Bank, yet few condemn ‘Fortress Europe’, the ring of defences around the European Union that restrict freedom of movement on a far greater scale.

Another way in which such double standards are expressed is through the notion of Israeli ‘apartheid’. It is important to recognise that this criticism is not based on an understanding of the old discriminatory regime in South Africa. Most proponents of this charge probably cannot even pronounce ‘apartheid’ properly. Rather, it is a moral category. It expresses the idea that Israel should be singled out for its actions. In this sense, the Israeli state is seen as uniquely evil.

From such a starting point, the proponents of BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) feel obliged to single out Israel for their campaigns. Criticising Israel above all other nations becomes a central element of this warped form of radical identity. Boycotts of Israeli products, or Israeli culture, provide them with a high-profile opportunity for virtue-signalling.

* There is also a new element to anti-Israel criticism that demands further attention. The existence of nation states is increasingly frowned on by elites. Instead, they see themselves as cosmopolitans who prefer trans-national organisations, such as the EU. Under such circumstances, Israel, as a Jewish nation state, runs into additional criticism. It is seen, at best, as an anachronism, and, more often, as a force destabilising the surrounding region.

So Jews have become the victims of today’s degraded form of radicalism. They are seen by many of today’s self-identified radicals as part of a conspiracy to control the world, with international bankers playing a particularly prominent role. They are alleged to be at the pinnacle of a hierarchy of privilege, with the bulk of the world’s population suffering beneath them. And they are attacked for supporting a uniquely malevolent nation state in a world in which nations are increasingly seen as problematic.

Anti-Semitism in the Labour Party goes way beyond a few errant individual matters. Today’s degraded form of anti-capitalism pre-disposes its adherents to a conspiratorial worldview. From this starting point it is all too easy to lapse into anti-Semitism.

However, there is one important point on which the defenders of the Labour Party are right. Anti-Semitism should not be singled out as a purely Labour phenomenon. Self-proclaimed radicals outside the Labour Party, like those within it, often share a similar worldview. These can include leftists who do not support Labour, as well as some of those who define themselves as greens.

* But perhaps the most striking parallels are with Islamism. Extreme forms of Islam may use a different idiom to that of Labour radicals – Islamists are religious rather than secular, after all. But there are significant overlaps in their worldviews. Both, for example, share a conspiratorial perspective on the world. Islamists, like many of today’s radicals, also tend to focus on what they see as the pernicious power of international finance. That is why the World Trade Center in New York was targeted by al-Qaeda in 2001 – because it symbolised international finance. Nor should it be forgotten that Usman Khan, the London Bridge terrorist, was previously convicted of a plan to bomb the London Stock Exchange.

The visceral hatred against Israel from Islamist radicals is clear. For them, the existence of the Jewish State is an affront to Islam. Less well understood is the hostility of many Islamists to the nation state in general. Their ultimate goal is the creation of a worldwide caliphate that will replace nation states. In their transnationalism, at least, Islamist radicals share an important element in common with many contemporary leftists.

Anti-Semitism is a complex form of discrimination which can, in principle, exist in different sections of society. However, a terrible paradox of contemporary society is that those who consider themselves the most radical are often most prone to anti-Semitism. It is a tragedy that the radicalism of fools is gaining ground.

SOURCE 





Indian girl in Britain gets highest possible IQ score in Mensa test

Indians outside India often do remarkably well in many ways.  A brown skin does not seem to hinder them.

A primary schoolgirl has achieved the highest possible score in a Mensa IQ test - beating Albert Einstein and the late Stephen Hawking.

Freya Mangotra, of Moseley, Birmingham, sat the test the when she was 10 and a half in October - the youngest allowed. Einstein is believed he have had an IQ of 160, the same as the late Hawking.

Proud dad Kuldeep Kumar said Freya's result of 162 in the Cattell III B test - which examines verbal reasoning - means his only child is officially 'a genius' according to officials at Mensa.  'They said it's the highest you can get under the age of 18,' said Dr Kumar, a psychiatrist.

'I don't want to put too much pressure on her but we knew from an early age, two or three, that she was gifted. 'She grasps things very fast. She can concentrate very quickly and remember things - she only needs to read or do something once to remember. We are blessed.'

Her proud dad says she is also a voracious reader just like he and his wife, Dr Gulshan Tajuriahe, who is currently studying for a PhD in child development.

The family is often to be found with their heads buried in books at home with the TV on in the background.

SOURCE 




Former US President Barack Obama says it’s time for men to hand over power to women

Says the man who prevented a woman (Hillary) from becoming President. He is a smiling smooth talking hateful trouble maker, just trying to stir further divisions and trouble between women and men, young and old, and everyone else versus white people

Former US President Barack Obama has a simple solution to the world’s problems: let women run the joint. Mr Obama said women would do an “indisputably better” job running the world than men, and blamed many of the problems around the globe on “old people”, mostly male leaders who don’t want to give up their power.

“Now women, I just want you to know, you are not perfect. But what I can say pretty indisputably is that you’re better than us [men],” he said at a private leadership conference in Singapore.

“I’m absolutely confident that for two years if every nation on earth was run by women, you would see a significant improvement across the board on just about everything... living standards and outcomes.

“If you look at the world and look at the problems it’s usually old people, usually old men, not getting out of the way. It is important for political leaders to try and remind themselves that you are there to do a job, but you are not there for life, you are not there in order to prop up your own sense of self importance or your own power.”

SOURCE 






Australia: Vegan activist group who wreaked havoc in Melbourne have their charity status REVOKED because 'veganism is not in the public interest'

A vegan activist group who caused traffic to come to a standstill in Melbourne in April has had its charity status revoked.

The Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission on Tuesday revoked Vegan Rising's charity tax concessions and registration, which it has held since September 2017.

The group had been registered with the purpose of preventing or relieving the suffering of animals.

ACNC Commissioner Dr Gary Johns said revocation of a charity's registration was reserved for the most serious of cases.

'Our approach to regulation focuses on education and guidance first. However, when charities are unwilling to comply with their obligations, or fail to demonstrate commitment to their governance, then we will take stronger action,' he said in a statement.

Although the revocation is displayed on the charity register, the ACNC is prevented from publishing the findings from the investigation.

They also cannot reveal the the nature of the concerns raised due to secrecy provisions in its governing laws.

Dozens of vegan activists obstructed the intersection of Swanston and Flinders streets in Melbourne during peak-hour on April 8, demanding an end to animal husbandry.

They used three rental vans as part of the blockade, chanting for 'animal liberation', with some also sitting on tram tracks and linking arms to stop police attempts to break them up.

Dozens of vegan activists obstructed the intersection of Swanston and Flinders streets in Melbourne on April 8    +6
Dozens of vegan activists obstructed the intersection of Swanston and Flinders streets in Melbourne on April 8

Tow trucks were fielded to move the stationery vehicles while other protesters chained themselves to cars and their counterparts waved placards that read, 'vegan rising' or 'this is a peaceful protest'.

Thirty-eight people were arrested for obstructing a roadway and resisting or obstructing police.

Similar protests were also staged at regional Victorian abattoirs, condemned by farmers and some politicians.

Vegan Rising's website describes the organisation as having one objective - 'to help create a vegan world'.

Last month the charity status was stripped from Aussie Farms, which has similar aims to Vegan Rising.

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 December, 2019  

German bishops declare homosexuality is 'normal' as the country's church begins controversial review of its teachings on sexual morality

In what sense is it "normal"?  In a statistical sense it is far from normal and in a theological sense it is an abomination to God.  There's no normality there that I can see

German bishops have said homosexuality is 'normal' as the country's Catholic Church begins a controversial review of its teachings on sexual morality.

They agreed being gay is a 'normal form' of human sexual identity, the chairman of the Marriage and Family Commission announced after discussions in Berlin last week.

It comes ahead of a two-year 'Synodal Process' by the Germans which will see a national reform consultation despite warnings from the Vatican.

Berlin's Archbishop Heiner Koch said in a statement seen by the Catholic News Agency: 'The sexual preference of man expresses itself in puberty and assumes a hetero or homosexual orientation.

'Both belong to the normal forms of sexual predisposition, which cannot or should be changed with the help of a specific socialization'.

He said the move had been made possible by Pope Francis's book on marriage and family called Amoris laetitia.

Bishops from four diocese met in Berlin on December 5 to formally talk about 'The Sexuality of Man – How should one discuss it scientifically-theologically and judge it ecclesiastically?'

Archbishop Koch was joined by Franz-Josef Bode of Osnabrück, Bishop Wolfgang Ipolt of Görlitz, Bishop Peter Kohlgraf of Mainz, as well as medical experts and canon lawyers.

Koch said the 'Synodal Process' has to start from an 'unbiased' position and consider the 'latest scientific insights'.

Everyone at the meeting reportedly agreed 'human sexuality encompasses a dimension of lust, of procreation and of relationships'.

Sexual orientation was still considered unchangeable, but 'any form of discrimination of persons with a homosexual orientation' was to be rejected, as was 'explicitly stressed by Pope Francis' in Amoris laetitia.

SOURCE 






Swedish Church Removes LGBT Altarpiece After Fears It Is 'Anti-Trans'

Stranger than fiction: A pro-LGBT Swedish church erected an altarpiece showing two homosexual couples in the Garden of Eden. Yet less than two weeks after unveiling the altarpiece, the church removed it following fears that another figure in the artwork could be seen as "anti-trans" or "transphobic." Liberal churches should take this as a sign that no capitulation to the LGBT agenda will ever be enough.

St. Paul's Church in Malmö unveiled a painting entitled "Paradise," which shows one lesbian couple and one gay couple in the Garden of Eden. Lesbian artist Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin painted it in 2012, aiming to donate the work to the Skara Cathedral in Sweden, which was preparing to conduct its first same-sex wedding. The cathedral rejected the painting, but St. Paul's unveiled it on Sunday, December 1 — the beginning of Advent — according to Out magazine.

"It is with pride and joy that we receive Paradise in St Paul’s Church. We need images that open up for greater inclusion and identification in the church," the church said in a statement. "We are grateful to Elisabeth’s artistry, which enables us to build a credible church that shows that we all, regardless of who we love and identify as, are accommodated in Paradise."

Helena Myrstener, a pastor at the church, celebrated the altarpiece toward the end of November. "On Sunday, history is written. Sweden’s only LGBT altarpiece (Elisabeth Ohlsson Wallin) is received by St Paul’s church in Malmö… We are so happy and proud!"

Yet less than two weeks later, the church had removed the altarpiece.

Wallin did not just include two homosexual couples in her painting; she also included a male dressing up as a woman — ostensibly transgender — in the form of a snake looking down on the festivities. Out's Serena Sonoma originally reported that the transgender snake had been celebrated as part of the LGBT artwork, but apparently some transgender advocates got a different impression.

While the Church of Sweden insisted the fact that there "are two gay couples in the artwork is completely uncontroversial," it feared that the transgender imagery might be perceived as an attack on people who identify with the opposite sex.

"[T]here is a snake, which traditionally stands for evil, and that it also turns into a trans person means it could be interpreted that a trans person is evil or the devil. The Church of Sweden certainly cannot stand for that," the church said in a statement.

Indeed, the snake in the Garden of Eden tempts Adam and Eve to break God's commandment and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The snake is traditionally associated with Satan. Yet many on the left see Satan as the archetypal symbol of rebellion, someone to be celebrated and emulated, not condemned. Perhaps the artist included the imagery of a transgender serpent for this reason.

A pastor with St. Paul's noted that the altarpiece had been removed from the sanctuary because "it has too many unanswered questions."

"I would like to emphasize that this has nothing to do with where Church of Sweden stands on the [LGBT] issues, which we work tirelessly on," the church leader claimed in a statement.

While Sweden was once a great champion of Bible-based church reform, defending the Protestant Reformation in the Thirty Years War, the country and its formerly state-run church have rushed to embrace LGBT activism. While the Bible firmly condemns homosexual activity and teaches that God made humans male and female, many Christians have rushed to alter their interpretation of scripture to fit the new sexual morality.

Yet no matter how far some churches go, it seems the capitulation will never be enough.

Meanwhile, many gays and lesbians have rightly noted that transgender activism undermines homosexuality. Many transgender activists demand that lesbians be open to relationships with biological men who identify as female, for instance. Some lesbians have warned — not unreasonably — that transgender activism encourages conversion therapy for lesbians — encouraging same-sex attracted women to think of themselves as straight men — and rape culture — allowing biological men to hook up with anyone they want, even lesbian women.

It seems unlikely Wallin intended the snake to be an anti-trans symbol, but the ambiguity of the artwork seems to have won out. Ironically, an altarpiece that was seen as too transgressive in 2012 is now considered backward by the same church that rejected it in the first place. Perhaps the Church of Sweden would be well-advised to return to a solid standard that does not change — the Word of God, perhaps?

SOURCE 






SCOTUS supports abortion awareness
  
When Governor Matt Bevin walked out of his office for the last time last night, it was somewhat fitting that the U.S. Supreme Court picked yesterday to uphold one of the most important laws he ever signed — the Kentucky ultrasound bill. The justices, who watched the ACLU appeal all the way to their doorstep, refused to even hear the case. Instead, they deferred to the Sixth Circuit, which didn’t see the harm in showing moms a picture of their babies before they abort. If it’s just “a clump of cells,” who cares? Liberals, that’s who.

The last thing the abortion industry wants is for moms to come face-to-face with the personhood of their child. It’s why they’ve poured millions of dollars into fighting heartbeat bills, sonograms, even basic medical disclaimers. When it comes to abortion, technology is — and always has been — the single biggest enemy of the Left. Nothing comes between women and their business more than the truth about these tiny humans in the womb — humans that yawn, smile, suck their thumbs. The imaging is so advanced these days that doctors can track something as small as a baby’s hiccup. It’s a game-changer. Which is exactly why groups like the ACLU and Planned Parenthood are trying to shut down laws like Kentucky’s. It’s hard enough to get moms to destroy their babies. But it’s near impossible once they see and hear how intensely human their children are.

For young moms like Lisa, who never wanted to be pregnant in the first place, it was a revelation. “I didn’t want to go through with having the baby," she explained. "I didn’t want to face all of the challenges that a single mom would.” And besides, she said, “My life was just beginning,” and this, “makes you feel like your life is over.” She made three appointments to abort her little girl. But every time, she found a reason not to go. Something just wasn’t right. She went back to the pregnancy care center and they offered her a free sonogram. “I heard the heartbeat,” Lisa remembers, “and it made it all real. There was a real life inside of me.” It made her realize that “no matter what I was feeling or thinking at the time, I had a little one to worry about.”

As hard as it was to tell her parents, Lisa was overcome when they found her note and called her crying. “Through tears they told me they would help — no matter what.” It hasn’t always been easy, but her daughter, Selah, has been the joy of her life. A few years later, while her daughter played at the park, Lisa struck up a conversation with a woman sitting by her on the bench. Laura was her name. She said she worked at Life Network. Stunned, Lisa pointed to the blonde little girl on the swings. “The pregnancy center saved her life!” she exclaimed.

It’s a miraculous story — one the folks at Planned Parenthood don’t want to see repeated. In its challenge, the ACLU even argued that giving women these options was somehow a violation of doctors’ free speech. But the Supreme Court didn’t buy it. Just like they haven’t bought other lies about “informed consent” laws. Under Kentucky’s, all doctors are required to do is describe the ultrasound while moms listen to the heartbeat. If the women choose, they can shut their eyes and cover their ears. Even still, the ACLU calls it “unconstitutional and unethical.”

No, what’s unethical is misleading women about the personhood of their baby and the life-long consequences of aborting her. Even now, Laura says, she’s met other young moms who “couldn’t see past their circumstances — a child they’re not ready for, a relationship they’d rather escape.” But then they see their baby’s “heartbeat, fingers, and toes.” She says they see the impact of their ultrasound machine every day. Thanks to the Supreme Court, let’s hope Kentucky can say the same thing about their informed consent law.

SOURCE 





Blue Lives Matter — Even in Democrat Cities

The holidays are a busy time for everyone, especially police officers. This time of year often experiences an uptick in crime in large cities, and urban police departments must be prepared to handle the situation. Unfortunately, several cities are having trouble addressing the need for more officers on the street.

Seattle is one such city with a police department that is woefully understaffed. The city government maintains that there are 722 officers on patrol, but it turns out the actual number of cops on the beat is 472.

“Seven hundred would be a start, but we would need to probably be 800 or 900 for a city of this size to provide the services that are needed throughout the city,” Seattle Police Officer’s Guild president Kevin Stuckey said.

This low number of officers seriously impedes the city’s ability to respond to 911 calls and cover the neighborhoods most in need of a police presence. A recent recruitment drive to boost numbers failed miserably, producing a net gain of only 16 new officers in 2019. Since 1970, Seattle has tripled in size, but has added only 300 officers to the department.

The reason for poor recruitment and retention is referred to as the “Seattle mentality.” The police department doesn’t have the support of the city government and many in the minority community.

The council has directed the department to ignore going after certain crimes, and it has discouraged officers from enforcing the law with the homeless population. Negative comments about police from the city council have also hurt morale in the department.

Seattle, New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and dozens of other Democrat-run cities across the country are experiencing rising crime rates. And all for the same reason — a systemic lack of support for law enforcement that flows directly from city hall and the media.

Democrats have declared war on the police, and we have Barack Obama to blame. Far from being the racial uniter he was marketed to be, Obama spent his eight years in office stoking the flames of racial division. He never missed an opportunity to degrade law enforcement, and the sycophantic Leftmedia ate up every word of it.

High-profile incidents like those of Eric Garner in New York, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and Michael Brown in Ferguson were all built on lies perpetuated by race hustlers like Al Sharpton and the national news media. In all three cases, the suspects were dangerous individuals committing crimes and they were resisting (or attacking) police. We were led to believe, though, that these men were arbitrarily singled out because of their race.

Brown’s death in Missouri led to two very troubling developments. The first was the establishment of Black Lives Matter, which is basically a hate group that stirs mistrust and hatred of law enforcement. Several cop killings across the country can be linked to people who have claimed to be part of this movement.

The second problem is the “Ferguson Effect,” the term given to reduced police activity in certain neighborhoods as cops aim to protect themselves from being charged as racists — or worse, being killed in the line of duty — in cities that do not support their work.

The losers in this battle are the very neighborhoods that Black Lives Matter claims don’t need cops. Black-on-black crime outnumbers white-on-black crime by many orders of magnitude. Black cops also shoot black suspects at a higher rate than white cops. Yet these facts are buried by the media because they don’t fit the narrative of a racist nation.

Unfortunately, there is no end in sight to this problem. Attorney General William Barr spoke last week about the tough work that cops perform and the respect they have earned from the public — while also warning about a distinct lack of respect in certain quarters. As night follows day, leftists immediately attacked his speech as racist.

Yet the core of Barr’s words ring true. “The American people have to focus on something else, which is the sacrifice and the service that is given by our law-enforcement officers. … And if communities don’t give that support and respect, they may find themselves without the police protection they need.” That’s not the “threat” leftists want you to think it is; it’s the reality of lower police recruitment and morale.

If you don’t believe this to be the case, just ask Seattle.

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 December, 2019  

The Men Who Walked Away

Mark Steyn reminds us that anti-feminist Marc Lepine was in fact a Middle-East Muslim. It does explain why no Westerners have done anything like his deeds.  His deeds are much in keeping with  Muslim contempt for women but at great variance with traditionally protective Western attitudes to women.  Western feminists don't realize how lucky they are

Friday December 6th marks the thirtieth anniversary of the "Montreal Massacre" - a grim day in 1989 when fourteen female students at the École Polytechnique were murdered by a man known to posterity as "Marc Lépine". Much followed from that terrible slaughter, including various useless "gun control" measures - and the formal annual commemorations that, three decades on, are attended by as many eminences as Remembrance Day or Dominion Day. The men present in that classroom are now in their mid-fifties; the women are not. I was far from home that December and was not back in Quebec until Christmas. And so I accepted the official narrative of events - until, that is, a few years later, when I looked into it myself.

At which point I marveled at how the Canadian state had succeeded in so thoroughly imposing a meaning on the slaughter that is more or less the precise opposite of what actually happened. I've written about it over the years, although my comrades in the Canadian media complain every time I do so, as if any questioning of the official fairy tale cannot be permitted. Here's what I said on the thirteenth anniversary, in The National Post of Canada on December 12th 2002:

I loathe the annual commemorations of the Montreal Massacre. I especially dislike the way it's become a state occasion, with lowered flags, like Remembrance Day. But, in this case, whatever honour we do the dead, we spend as much time dishonouring the living -- or at least the roughly 50 per cent of Canadians who happen to be male: For women's groups, the Montreal Massacre is an atrocity that taints all men, and for which all men must acknowledge their guilt. Marc Lépine symbolizes the murderous misogyny that lurks within us all.

M Lépine was born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, whose brutalized spouse told the court at their divorce hearing that her husband "had a total disdain for women and believed they were intended only to serve men." At eighteen, young Gamil took his mother's maiden name. The Gazette in Montreal mentioned this in its immediate reports of the massacre. The name "Gamil Gharbi" has not sullied its pages in the thirteen years since.

Ah, well, I would bring that up, wouldn't I? Just for the record, I'm not saying that M Lépine is representative of Algerian manhood or Muslim manhood. I'm saying he shouldn't be representative of anything -- least of all, the best efforts of women's groups and the convenient gloss of that pure laine name notwithstanding, Canadian manhood.

This spring, there was an attempted gun massacre at the Appalachian School of Law in West Virginia. But, alas for the Appalachians' M Lépine, there were two gun-totin' students present who were able to pin down the would-be mass murderer until the cops arrived. Allan Rock stepping forward to recite the relevant portions of the gun registry requirements would have been far less effective. Generally speaking, when the psycho shows up and opens fire, your best hope is that there's someone else around with a gun to hand -- a situation Canadian law has now rendered all but impossible.

Extreme cases make bad law, and just because it's a cliché doesn't mean the Liberal Party of Canada can't take it to hitherto undreamt of heights. Our disarmed Dominion will be the first jurisdiction on the planet with a one-billion dollar gun-registry. It was supposed to cost two million, but, as Dr. Evil learned in Austin Powers, these days that's just chump change, they'll laugh at you. No self-respecting government plan should cost less than ONE BILLION DOLLARS!!!!!

According to police, the gun registry is officially 25 per cent inaccurate. I'd figure that makes it unofficially 40 per cent inaccurate. But last week, while cynical Liberal bigwigs were openly boasting that this record-breaking government fraud would just be another one of those things you hear about for a couple of days that then mysteriously vaporizes somewhere over Shawinigan, the radio call-in shows were full of concerned, earnest, reasonable, moderate Canadians saying that, even if it did cost a billion, it still "sends the right message" on gun control. Which is just as well, as it'll still be sending the right message when it's up to two billion...The gun registry is symbolic not of Canada's predisposition to mass murder, but Canada's predisposition to mass suicide.

But the gun-registry boondoggle is just big-government business as usual. In a certain sense, the men present that day in Montreal were more profoundly disarmed. From my book After America:

To return to Gloria Steinem, when might a fish need a bicycle? The women of Montreal's École Polytechnique could have used one when Marc Lépine walked in with a gun and told all the men to leave the room. They meekly did as ordered. He then shot all the women.

Which is the more disturbing glimpse of Canadian manhood? The guy who shoots the women? Or his fellow men who abandon them to be shot? For me, the latter has always been the darkest element of the story. From my column in Maclean's, January 9th 2006:

Every December 6th, our own unmanned Dominion lowers its flags to half-mast and tries to saddle Canadian manhood in general with the blame for the Montreal massacre -- the fourteen women murdered by Marc Lépine, born Gamil Gharbi, the son of an Algerian Muslim wife-beater, though you wouldn't know that from the press coverage.

Yet the defining image of contemporary Canadian maleness is not M Lépine/Gharbi but the professors and the men in that classroom, who, ordered to leave by the lone gunman, obediently did so, and abandoned their female classmates to their fate -- an act of abdication that would have been unthinkable in almost any other culture throughout human history.

The "men" stood outside in the corridor and, even as they heard the first shots, they did nothing. And, when it was over and Gharbi walked out of the room and past them, they still did nothing. Whatever its other defects, Canadian manhood does not suffer from an excess of testosterone.

Your average Western feminist lobby group doesn't see it that way, naturally. "The feminism I think of is the one that embodies inclusivity, multiculturalism and the ability to change the world through the humanity that women do bring," says Stephanie Davis, executive director of Atlanta's Women's Foundation. "If there were women in power in representative numbers -- 52 per cent -- I think that the World Trade Center would still be standing."

That's a familiar line. If only your average Security Council meeting looked like a college graduating class, or that room at the École Polytechnique after the men had departed, there would be peace on earth.

I don't think so. Look at the current rape statistics under one of the most thoroughly feminized regimes on earth - the Government of Sweden. More from After America:

To those who succeeded in imposing the official narrative, Marc Lépine embodies the murderous misogynist rage that is inherent in all men, and which all must acknowledge.

For a smaller number of us, the story has quite the opposite meaning: whatever M Lépine embodies, it's certainly not (if you'll forgive the expression) Canadian manhood.

In 2009, the director Denis Villeneuve made a film of the story - Polytechnique. "I wanted to absolve the men," he said. "People were really tough on them. But they were 20 years old... It was as if an alien had landed."

But it's always as if an alien had landed. When another Canadian director, James Cameron, filmed Titanic, what most titillated him were the alleged betrayals of convention. It's supposed to be "women and children first", but he was obsessed with toffs cutting in line, cowardly men elbowing the womenfolk out of the way and scrambling for the lifeboats, etc.

In fact, all the historical evidence is that the evacuation was very orderly. In real life, First Officer William Murdoch threw deckchairs to passengers drowning in the water to give them something to cling to, and then he went down with the ship – the dull, decent thing, all very British, with no fuss.

In Cameron's movie, Murdoch takes a bribe and murders a third-class passenger. (The director subsequently apologized to the First Officer's home town in Scotland and offered £5,000 toward a memorial. Gee, thanks.) Mr Cameron notwithstanding, the male passengers gave their lives for the women, and would never have considered doing otherwise. "An alien landed" on the deck of a luxury liner – and men had barely an hour to kiss their wives goodbye, and watch them clamber into the lifeboats to sail off without them. The social norm of "women and children first" held up under pressure.

Today, in what Harvey Mansfield calls our "gender-neutral society", there are no social norms. Eight decades after the Titanic, a German-built ferry en route from Estonia to Sweden sank in the Baltic Sea. Of the 1,051 passengers, only 139 lived to tell the tale. But the distribution of the survivors was very different from that of the Titanic. Women and children first? No female under 15 or over 65 made it. Only five per cent of all women passengers lived. The bulk of the survivors were young men. Forty-three per cent of men aged 20-24 made it.

"There is no law that says women and children first," Roger Kohen of the International Maritime Organization told Time magazine. "That is something from the age of chivalry."

If, by "the age of chivalry", you mean the early 20th century.

As I said, no two maritime disasters are the same. But it's not unfair to conclude that, had the men of the Titanic been on the Estonia, the age and sex distribution of the survivors would have been very different. Nor was there a social norm at the École Polytechnique. So the men walked away, and the women died.

Whenever I've written about these issues, I get a lot of e-mails from guys scoffing, "Oh, right, Steyn. Like you'd be taking a bullet. You'd be pissing your little girlie panties," etc. Well, maybe I would. But as the Toronto blogger Kathy Shaidle put it:

When we say 'we don't know what we'd do under the same circumstances', we make cowardice the default position.

I prefer the word passivity – a terrible, corrosive passivity. Even if I'm wetting my panties, it's better to have the social norm of the Titanic and fail to live up to it than to have the social norm of the Polytechnique and sink with it.

SOURCE 





UK: Fury as primary school tells pupils to say 'Baby Boy Jesus' instead of 'Lord Jesus' while singing Away In A Manger so that pupils of all faiths can join in

Children at a primary school have been told not to sing the word 'Lord' in the Christmas carol Away In A Manger – so that pupils of all beliefs can join in.

The move has left Christian parents appalled, after the head teacher ruled that children should sing 'baby boy Jesus' rather than 'little Lord Jesus'.

The word 'Lord' features five times in the most common version of Away In A Manger and expresses the belief that Jesus is divine.

Youngsters at Whitehall Primary School in Chingford, Essex, have also been told to sing edited versions of two modern hymns when they attend a carol service and nativity play at a nearby church on Tuesday.

The words 'Jesus the saviour' in the carol Love Shone Down have been replaced with 'Jesus the baby', while the words 'new King born today' in the carol Come And Join The Celebration have been replaced with 'a baby born today'.

One furious mother, a former Metropolitan Police officer, said the changes were utterly unacceptable and likened it to taking 'Christ' out of Christmas.

The mother, 36, said: 'If he was just a baby boy named Jesus, there wouldn't be a celebration in the first place. He is our Lord and Saviour and King of all Kings – that's the whole point.

'It is also a tradition – it is taking away the traditions of the country.'

The mother said her two sons, aged nine and 11 and who go to church and Sunday school, were very upset when Whitehall head teacher Zakia Khatun announced that the words of the carols would be changed.

She said: 'My kids are being stopped from having the freedom to express their beliefs. They are shocked.'

The mother claimed that at a meeting on Friday, Ms Khatun defended her decision, insisting the school is inclusive of all children, and maintained that last year 60 children did not attend the carol service and nativity at St Peter and St Paul Church in Chingford because of their religious beliefs.

But the mother believes the school is now discriminating against Christian pupils and has been told other parents are unhappy too.

She said: 'We live in a multicultural society, so we should respect other beliefs but unfortunately Christianity is not getting respect.

'Ms Khatun doesn't want the people who don't have the same beliefs to feel excluded, yet it's OK to exclude Christians.'

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali, a former Bishop of Rochester, said: 'This is a carol known throughout the world. The words 'Lord Jesus' are about the central message of Christmas, which is that God is with us in Jesus. 'To put it very simply that's what Christmas is about.'

Andrea Williams, chief executive of campaign group Christian Concern, added: 'Removing the Lordship of Christ at Christmas guts the Christian message of its truth, around which the whole of Western civilisation once based its culture.'

Whitehall is a multicultural state school with 485 pupils and is rated good by Ofsted inspectors. The school says it promotes British values, including 'tolerance of those of different faiths and beliefs'.

A spokesman for the school said: 'We are a community school serving children from a range of faith backgrounds.

'In the past, not all were able to come together to celebrate Christmas, so we have worked hard with our local church to ensure the celebrations this year are accessible to all our children to participate in, together, as one.'

A spokesman for the Diocese of Chelmsford, which includes St Peter and St Paul Church, said: 'The service maintains the traditional Christian message of the joy of Christmas in a way that can be celebrated by everyone, including those of other faiths and none.'

SOURCE 







Trump Protects Jews. Therefore, He Must Be Hitler

On Tuesday night, The New York Times reported that President Donald Trump would sign an executive order directing federal agencies to apply the anti-discrimination provisions of Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to Jews. Federal agencies would protect Jews the same way they protect racial minorities from discrimination. Yet angry liberals read that Trump would make "Judaism" a nationality and jumped to the conclusion that this was the beginning of an American Holocaust.

The Times tweeted the story with a rather confusing message. "President Trump will sign an executive order defining Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion, thus bolstering the Education Department's efforts to stamp out 'Boycott Israel' movements on college campuses." The order would indeed combat some Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) activists, but less for their views and more for the horrific harassment and violence they direct at Jews on college campuses.

Anti-Trump partisans saw the "defining Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion," and ran with it.

Freelance climate-change journalist Erin Biba called the move "antisemitic as f**k and absolutely horrifying in every possible way. Sounds like a good way to start deporting Jews!" She went on to warn that Adolf Hitler did exactly the same thing...

"Anyway, Hitler kicked off the Holocaust with the Nuremberg Laws that, among other things, declared German Jews weren't of German nationality. So Trump signing an executive order declaring Judaism it's [sic] own nationality is....well not great for us descendants of Holocaust survivors," Biba tweeted.

Former New York Times journalist Kurt Eichenwald compared Trump's executive order protecting Jews to notorious anti-Semite and former KKK leader David Duke. "Here is David Duke, whose arguments Trump has just affirmed by executive order claiming that Judaism is, as Duke consistently claims, a nationality," he tweeted.

All the Trump-Is-Hitler outrage showed just how little of the actual article these partisans read.

Among those welcoming the order on Tuesday was Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, who said the group recorded its third-highest level of anti-Semitic episodes in the United States last year.
"Of course we hope it will be enforced in a fair manner," he said. "But the fact of the matter is we see Jewish students on college campuses and Jewish people all over being marginalized. The rise of anti-Semitic incidents is not theoretical; it's empirical."

Huh. So, if Trump is Hitler, then is the ADL also Hitler?

The Times article also noted that Trump's executive order will be "essentially replicating bipartisan legislation that has stalled on Capitol Hill for years. Prominent Democrats have joined Republicans in promoting such a policy change at a time of rising tension on campuses over anti-Semitism as well as the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions or B.D.S. movement against Israel."

Oh, and the executive order "stemmed from an effort spearheaded by Jared Kushner, [Trump's] son-in-law and senior adviser, who is the Jewish grandson of Holocaust survivors." Wait, so Holocaust survivors are also Hitler?

Buried in the Times report is the acknowledgment that if Trump wanted to protect Jews facing anti-Semitic harassment on college campuses, he would have to do something like this.

The order to be signed by Mr. Trump would empower the Education Department to go further. Under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the department can withhold funding from any college or educational program that discriminates “on the ground of race, color, or national origin.” Religion was not included among the protected categories, so Mr. Trump’s order will declare that Judaism may be considered a national origin.
In other words, this is a move to be celebrated, not condemned. Some have criticized the executive order because it may adopt too broad a definition of anti-Semitism, including statements attacking Israel as a racist state. Many liberal American Jews actually harshly criticize the State of Israel on those grounds, and they have the free speech to do so. Yet these very talking points arguably inspire anti-Semitic harassment at the hands of the BDS movement.

Americans can and should have policy debates about the best way to protect Jews on college campuses without stifling free speech. It is utterly absurd, however, to draw any connection to Trump's effort to protect Jews and the efforts of Adolf Hitler to exterminate them. Such statements are beyond the pale.

SOURCE 





Australian Press Council all in a twist over how to refer to sexual deviants and their bodily parts

Jennifer Oriel

Australia is sleepwalking into a state of political censorship. While major media organisations have united to defend the free press against government interference, the chilling effect of political correctness does not prompt such unified action.

Yet state-designated minority groups frequently target journalists who dissent from PC ideology. The Australian Press Council should make the unfettered pursuit of truth its core business. But it has handed down guidelines ­advising journalists how to write on sexual politics, including queer and transgender issues.

The APC guideline for reporting on people “with diverse sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics” is derived from the particular school of thought known as queer theory.

Queer politics is not the same as gay liberation or lesbian feminism. The notion that queer activists speak for a “community” of people who are homosexual, ­bisexual, transgender or intersex is a myth. Rather, lesbian feminists and high-profile gay liberals have opposed the radical queer fringe since it emerged.

Former professor of political science Sheila Jeffreys explained the basic difference between the schools of thought: “Sexual liberals are those who subscribe to the 1960s agenda of sexual tolerance, to the idea that sex is necessarily good and positive, and that censorship is a bad thing. Sexual libertarians … advocate the ‘outer fringes’ of sexuality, such as sadomasochism, with the belief that ‘sexual minorities’ are at the ­forefront of creating the sexual revolution.”

Queer activism arose from sexual libertarians who believed sexual minorities were the true revolutionaries. The more that a practice or behaviour deviated from the mainstream, the more queers celebrated it.

Under the banner of queer even pedophilia was regarded as defensible because it was considered ­immoral by the society. Yet ­heterosexuality and standard ­expressions of gender were rejected because they formed the basis of the traditional family — an ­object of radical queer contempt.

The new morality celebrated whatever was restrained by law and/or shunned by the majority. Queer was — and remains — the most reactionary movement in left-wing sexual politics.

The revolutionary aspect of queer politics attracts people ­inclined to fundamentalist thought. Many are deeply intolerant of tolerance and treat dissent as a grave offence rather than the cornerstone of democratic society.

The onus is placed on dissenters not to offend, rather than queer activists learning how to handle different opinions.

The APC has fallen afoul of reason by promoting queer ideology as good journalistic practice. Its stated aim is “to assist journalists and publications to improve standards of reporting so as not to ­exacerbate … particular concerns faced by (LGBTQI) persons”.

The APC does not explain how the pursuit and revelation of truth is assisted by its advice. Perhaps because truth has relatively little to do with it. It is more about politics and the suppression of unfashionable truths. The published advice extends from a list of language rules to advising journalists how to avoid giving offence while interacting with interview subjects. In the recommended literature, there is even advice on what might be called PC grammar.

My favourite is the guide where journalists are instructed to ask “what is your pronoun” and discouraged from assuming it ­because, “misgendering can have negative consequences for a person’s mental health”. Compelling journalists to lie about biological fact to appease PC activists makes them a party to deception.

It is hardly conducive to a journalist’s psychological wellbeing. Yet the APC’s list of recommended guidelines includes gender ­diversity literature that suggests physical organs should not be ­labelled male or female because it can lead to discrimination.

Questioned by The Australian, the APC was at pains to stress the guidelines were not mandatory. It is cold comfort. Those of us too old to be naive know that radical activists are content with conventional debate until they begin to lose. Then they compel dissenters to comply. In the final act, they ­enforce.

The APC guidelines on sexual diversity are an invitation to lie where the lie is considered noble and the truth cruel. But a journalist cannot change the biological fact of birth sex and should not feel compelled to do so.

Artists who endure life in totalitarian regimes have spoken of how parallel institutions and realities are created to suppress unfashionable truths. Ran Yufei, a Chinese public intellectual who was imprisoned for exercising freedom of speech, described the need to ­refuse becoming complicit with such lies.

In The New York Review of Books, he said: “You have to learn how to argue. Too few public intellectuals in China have learned how to argue logically … the (Chinese Communist Party) created a parallel language system (of ­untruth) that is on an equal basis with the language of truth.”

Political censorship is the refuge of cowards. The censor is unable to mount a compelling ­argument and unwilling to compete fairly in the contest of ideas. Freedom of thought leads naturally to the free expression of speech in the spoken and written word. Their suppression is ­obtained in reverse motion; the censor introduces a penalty for words he dislikes because they ­embody ideas that challenge him.

By attacking the words or ­images, he attacks dissenting thought. If the assault is suffici­ently punitive, the message is clear: use that word and you will suffer. As the words change, so too do the ideas that precede them. They lose clarity, sharpness and direction. If a certain word is not permitted, the idea has nowhere to go. The frustration of knowing truth that cannot be expressed makes the pursuit and revelation of knowledge unappealing.

When faced with the risks of telling the truth in a state of political censorship, writers and artists often retreat. They adapt to the new order where truth is partial or, in radical times, completely ­reversed. In a state of political censorship, liars control the truth and make truth a lie.

The APC guideline should be rejected for what it is; an exercise in PC sophistry that renders truth subordinate to fallacy. I will not submit.

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 December, 2019

Black Nationalist Hate Group Praised by Media Shot Up Kosher Market

The New York Times called them "sidewalk ministers" who practice "tough love." The paper quoted Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center who described them as victims of racism and claimed that they were non-violent.

The Washington Post, in its own puff piece on the Black Hebrew Israelites, also falsely described them as non-violent, and concluded that, "Israelite street preaching in parts of D.C., Philadelphia and New York is commonplace, a familiar if odd accent to city life."

The odd accent to city life in Jersey City came amid a hail of bullets as two members of the racist black nationalist hate group opened fire in the JC Supermarket. Despite initial claims by the media and the authorities that the Jewish market had not been targeted, David Anderson and Francine Graham ignored passerby on Martin Luther King Dr, to get to the store and kill as many Jewish people as they could.

When the shooting had ended, Moshe Hersh Deutsch, a yeshiva student who was known for helping distribute food packages to the needy, Mrs Leah Mindel Ferencz, a mother of 3 who helped her husband run the grocery store, and Miguel Jason Rodriguez, the father of an 11-year-old daughter and a parishioner at an Assemblies of God church, were all dead.

Anderson, who left behind anti-Semitic and anti-police writings, had also killed Detective Joseph Seals, a father of 5, and wounded Officer Ray Sanchez and Officer Ferenella Fernandez.

The black nationalist terrorist had hated cops and Jews. He managed to kill both.

The media whitewash of the racist Black Israelites had come during the Covington Catholic case when the Washington Post, among other papers, had falsely blamed the pro-life students for a confrontation that actually began when members of the nationalist hate group had begun calling them, “crackers,” “faggots,” and “pedophiles.” An African-American pro-life student was called the ‘n-word’.

Rep. Ilhan Omar, who has her own history of racism and anti-Semitism, falsely claimed that the Covington Catholic students were “taunting 5 black men.”

The New York Times equivocated that members of the hate group “use blunt and sometimes offensive language, and gamely engage in arguments”. The typical “offensive language” and argumentative style of the Times’ second favorite racist hate group involves shouting racist and anti-Semitic slurs at people.

David Anderson, the Kosher supermarket shooter, had a whole YouTube playlist of such ugly incidents. In one video, a Black Israelite preacher shouts, “Satan is in you” at a Jewish man. “You stole our history. You are pretending to be us. The messiah, who is a black man, is going to kill you.”

Gamely indeed.

In another video, a Black Israelite preacher calls a Jewish teen a member of the “Synagogue of Satan”. “We want our book back and we want our land back,” the preacher demands. “Go back to Russia.”

You can see why Rep. Ilhan Omar might have felt called to defend the racist hate group.

“They move you all over the earth, but we know who you are. You are part of the Zionist deception. You go among the earth to spread Zionism, which is really Catholicism,” he rants. “Witchcraft and sorcery.”

Such statements may seem deranged, but they’re typical of the supremacist theology of the hate group.

Previous incidents involving the hate group have been even uglier with a video that doesn’t appear on Anderson’s playlist showcasing a Black Israelite preacher shouting, "The Holocaust is a damn joke! Heil Hitler!" A documentary shows another preacher standing on a prone white man and declaiming, "We're coming for you, white boys. Negroes are the real Jews. Get ready for war.”

And yet, the New York Times concluded its whitewash of the hate group with a closing quote by Todd Boyd, a professor of race and culture at UCLA, which claimed that, "To many black people, Hebrew Israelites are a harmless part of their communities."

The Ferencz family, Moishe and Leah, opened a small market on Martin Luther King Dr. They filled the narrow aisles with bread, juice, candy, milk, and the household staples you need when time is short.

They worked late hours.

And then, while Moishe was praying next door, the black nationalist bigots whom the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rep. Ilhan Omar, and Rep. Karen Bass had defended, killed his wife.

That is the story that the media won’t tell. But it must be told.

SOURCE 







‘I hate feminists’: Inside the bloody Montreal massacre which left 14 female students dead

“You’re all a bunch of feminists, and I hate feminists!”

These were some of the last words spoken by college dropout Marc Lepine before he launched a bloody killing spree at École Polytechnique in Montreal in Canada on a chilly December day in 1989.

His hate-filled rampage left 14 women dead, and to this day it is still the worst mass shooting in Canada’s history.

But despite the gunman’s obvious motive – a loathing of women so intense he was compelled to butcher 14 of them before turning the gun on himself – it has never been officially acknowledged as a specific attack against females. Until now.

And while the shooting is still one of the most chilling and bloody the world has ever seen, it has all but been forgotten by most people outside of Canada.

The 25-year-old carried out his attack in the afternoon of December 6, exactly 30 years ago this month, by storming a mechanical engineering classroom, gun and knife in hand, and declaring he was “fighting feminism”.

He ordered the men and women of the group of 60-odd students into opposite sides of the room before telling the male students to leave.

One student, Nathalie Provost, tried to reason with him, famously arguing: “Listen, we are only women who are studying engineering. … We were only women in engineering who wanted to live a normal life”.

But Lepine opened fire anyway, killing six young women instantly and wounding three others including Ms Provost who “played dead” to survive.

But the bloodshed wasn’t over.

The gunman then moved through the campus’s corridors, a cafeteria and another classroom, killing another eight women along the way and injuring others in a 20-minute reign of terror before shooting himself.

In the end, 12 female engineering students were killed, including 20-year-old Annie Turcotte, 21-year-olds Anne-Marie Edward, Michèle Richard and Geneviève Bergeron, 22-year-olds Barbara Daigneault and Anne-Marie Lemay, 23-year-olds Hélène Colgan, Nathalie Croteau, Maryse Leclair and Annie St-Arneault, 28-year-old Sonia Pelletier and 29-year-old Maud Haviernick.

Staff member Maryse Laganière, 25, was also killed along with 31-year-old nursing student Barbara Klucznik-Widajewicz.

Another 10 women were injured in the attack, along with four men.

Authorities and reporters descended on the scene, and in a tragic twist, Montreal Police director of public relations Pierre Leclair conducted a media briefing outside the school before entering the building, and finding the body of his daughter Maryse – who had been shot and stabbed – inside.

The shooter had a suicide note in his pocket that day, but while police publicly revealed some details it contained, the full version was not released.

But a year later, a copy of his manifesto was leaked to prominent journalist Francine Pelletier, who worked at the newspaper La Presse.

It included a list of 19 women Lepine also planned to kill as he considered them to be feminists – including Ms Pelletier herself.

La Presse ended up publishing the letter in its original French, and it revealed Lepine blamed women for his own dissatisfaction.

“ … I have decided to send the feminists, who have always ruined my life, to their Maker,” he wrote.

“ … the feminists have always enraged me. They want to keep the advantages of women (eg cheaper insurance, extended maternity leave …) while seizing for themselves those of men.

“They are so opportunistic the (do not) neglect to profit from the knowledge accumulated by men through the ages.”

It later emerged Lepine was particularly enraged by women working in traditionally male careers – like engineering – as he feared they were taking jobs from men.

But despite the shooter’s obvious motive, it was downplayed by the authorities and most of the Canadian media for decades due to fears it could spark further hate crimes and attacks against women.

SOURCE 






A bigoted Pope

Pope Francis said that the 1945 bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki arose from a “desire for dominance and destruction” in his message for the 2020 World Day of Peace released Thursday.

“The Hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, are among those who currently keep alive the flame of collective conscience, bearing witness to succeeding generations to the horror of what happened in August 1945 and the unspeakable sufferings that have continued to the present time,” the pontiff said in his message.

In recent weeks, the pope has repeatedly denounced the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, labeling them “evil” and “catastrophic” while also calling for an end not only to the use of atomic weapons but also their possession.

Francis has chosen to single out nuclear weapons for his denunciations, never mentioning, for example, the biological and chemical weapons employed by the Imperial Japanese Army to disastrous effect during its invasion and occupation of China during World War II. He has also never referred to other Japanese atrocities and war crimes prior to and during that conflict, notably the Nanking Massacre of 1937 in which Japanese soldiers raped tens of thousands of women and murdered as many as 300,000 civilians and unarmed combatants.

The pope also neglects to mention the reason for America’s entry into the Second World War: namely the preemptive Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, whose anniversary was commemorated last week. The United States was a neutral country at the time, having sought to remain so, but after the Japanese aggression Congress declared war on Japan the following day, December 8, 1941.

In his message, the pope instead continues to focus exclusively on Japanese victims and what they suffered at American hands.

“Their testimony awakens and preserves the memory of the victims, so that the conscience of humanity may rise up in the face of every desire for dominance and destruction,” he writes. “We cannot allow present and future generations to lose the memory of what happened here. It is a memory that ensures and encourages the building of a more fair and fraternal future.”

“Like the Hibakusha, many people in today’s world are working to ensure that future generations will preserve the memory of past events, not only in order to prevent the same errors or illusions from recurring, but also to enable memory, as the fruit of experience, to serve as the basis and inspiration for present and future decisions to promote peace,” the pope states.

“War,” Francis contends, “often begins with the inability to accept the diversity of others, which then fosters attitudes of aggrandizement and domination born of selfishness and pride, hatred and the desire to caricature, exclude and even destroy the other.”

“War is fueled by a perversion of relationships, by hegemonic ambitions, by abuses of power, by fear of others and by seeing diversity as an obstacle. And these, in turn, are aggravated by the experience of war,” he declares.

While few would question the pope’s important role in calling the nations of the world to strive for peace, one wonders whether this witness would not be more effective if he were to make an effort to temper his pronounced anti-American animus and occasionally aim his barbs elsewhere.

SOURCE 





How a past tragedy saw anti-vaxxers help unleash a measles epidemic on Samoa

Samoa's measles epidemic grew slowly, then swelled suddenly. A few cases appeared in October. By November, the Samoan Government had declared a state of emergency. Schools were closed and vaccinations made mandatory. But it was not enough to halt the spread of the virus.

Measles infections had popped up around the Pacific, but the virus only took hold in Samoa, where the national immunisation rate had fallen to a low of 30 per cent.

The troublesomely low immunisation rate was borne of an earlier tragedy. In 2018, two babies died shortly after getting measles vaccinations. The nurses who administered the injections had incorrectly mixed an expired anaesthetic with the vaccine.

It prompted the Government to suspend the nation's vaccination program and though it was eventually restored, many Samoan mothers no longer trusted the vaccination process.

The Samoan Government took the drastic step of arranging a nation-wide shutdown to get people vaccinated. Businesses were ordered to close and all citizens placed under a curfew to allow mobile vaccination teams to go door-to-door. Residents were told to hang a red flag outside their house to indicate there was someone inside who needed vaccination.

Over the two days, around 120 medical teams traversed the roads of Samoa in vehicles commandeered from across government agencies and NGOs.

Fast and efficient, the teams vaccinated approximately 40,000 people, around 20 per cent of Samoa's entire population. Most of those getting a jab were welcoming, enthusiastic to contribute to a project akin to a national reparation.

But not everyone heeded the call. Some of the nurses reported seeing people run away as mobile vaccination teams neared. Others stayed but refused to be treated. Some parents turned to traditional healers first, only seeking help from the medical system when it was too late.

Medical experts warn Samoans against heeding anti-vax messages spread by social media influencers amid a deadly measles outbreak in the Pacific nation that has claimed dozens of lives — most of them children.

After the two deaths last year from incorrectly administered vaccines, there has been a new audience for anti-vaccination campaigners. Both local and foreign 'anti-vaxxers' peddled their messages on social media, a potent act in a country where Facebook is a key source of information.

It has prompted heated debate amongst Samoans about who is to blame for the scale of the measles crisis — parents who did not vaccinate their children, or the Government for not addressing their mistrust in the system sooner?

"Scepticism regarding the safety of the vaccine and the expanding atmosphere of doubt around vaccination — even in the most advanced countries — are among the underlying causes of the dramatic expansion of the disease," said Ms Marinescu.

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 December, 2019

Some forms of hormone replacement therapy can LOWER breast cancer risk, research indicates

This is not a new finding but it is encouraging to see it replicated. For women with an intact womb there is no doubt that estrogen-only pills do increse womb (endometrial) cancer -- which tends to counteract their benefit for breast cancer.  What you gain on the swings, you lose on the roundabouts.

Taking a combination pill containing progesterone plus estrogen does however reduce all risks greatly, though there still is an elevation of risks compared with women who take nothing.  The elevation of risk is now however known to be very small so there is little reason for women not to take the combined pill.

Rather perversely, women who have had a hysterectomy are the big winners.  They can get all the benefits of estrogen pills (reduced heart disease etc) without having to worry about womb cancer


Certain forms of HRT actually protect women against breast cancer, researchers have shown.

After years of back-and-forth debate on the risks of hormone replacement therapy, new analysis suggests the type of treatment women use has a huge impact on cancer risk.

Scientists have found that in women who took the combined oestrogen-progestogen form of HRT the risk was raised by about 26 per cent compared with those who took a dummy pill. The combined form is the type of HRT taken by most women.

But the oestrogen-only form reduces breast cancer incidence by 24 per cent.

The study, based on 27,300 women in the US who were tracked for about 19 years after they started taking the pills, alters scientists’ understanding of the link between HRT and cancer.

Crucially, however, women are not able to pick and choose which type of HRT they select.

Oestrogen HRT is only an option for those who have had a hysterectomy – an operation to remove the womb. That is because oestrogen is known to increase the risk of womb cancer, so only women without a womb can safely take it.

But 60,000 undergo a hysterectomy every year in Britain and by the age of 60 one in five women have had the procedure, so tens of thousands of women could benefit from taking the oestrogen only drug.

Researcher Dr Rowan Chlebowski, of the University of California Los Angeles: ‘In contrast to decades of observational study findings... oestrogen alone significantly reduced breast cancer incidence and significantly reduced deaths from breast cancer, with these favourable effects persisting over a decade after discontinuing use.’

The findings were presented yesterday at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium in Texas.

The menopause can cause depression, hot flushes, headaches and night sweats. HRT tackles these symptoms by providing hormones as the body stops producing them.

But many women go without the drugs because of fears it raises the risk of cancer of the breast, womb and ovaries.

The number taking HRT plummeted after studies published in the early 2000s raised fears of side effects, but in recent years research has suggested the risk may be overstated.

Dr Melanie Davies, consultant gynaecologist at University College London Hospitals, said: ‘This is high-quality research.’

But she added that the risk of taking the combined pill is now probably lower than that shown in the trial, because HRT has been improved to more closely match the hormones produced by the human body.

SOURCE 





British elections: The Left wanted a second People's Vote... and they got the one they deserved

DOMINIC SANDBROOK

To future generations, the names of toppled Labour strongholds will tell the story of Boris Johnson's tidal wave. It began in Blyth Valley, a former mining area in the North-East that had never before elected a Conservative.

It swept through Darlington, Sedgefield and Great Grimsby, Stoke Central and West Bromwich, culminating in that extraordinary moment when Dennis Skinner's seat of Bolsover — Bolsover! — was painted blue.

Even in Tory strategists' wildest dreams, they never expected this. The Conservatives' biggest majority since Margaret Thatcher's last victory in 1987, and their biggest share of the vote since 1979.

And for Labour's Jeremy Corbyn, a humiliation of truly earth-shattering proportions, with the party's worst showing since 1935.

Until now, two elections have defined Britain's history since World War II. One was Clement Attlee's Labour landslide in 1945, paving the way for the Welfare State and the NHS.

The other was Margaret Thatcher's 1979 victory, which turned the page on years of economic decline and inaugurated a free-market era upheld by Tony Blair.

Does Boris Johnson's victory belong in that category?

To some extent it depends on what happens in the next five years, but right now it certainly feels like it.

Watching people queue to vote in the rain, it was hard to banish the sense this was a genuine turning point, a decisive showdown for the future of the nation.

If Mr Johnson's gamble had failed, and if Jeremy Corbyn had walked into Downing Street yesterday, our country's future would now be utterly different.

A Labour victory would have been a victory for state control, nationalisation and the end of free enterprise.

It would have meant the probable death of Nato, as well as months and years of Brexit paralysis. And perhaps above all, it would have ushered in an era of bankruptcy, bigotry, envy and anti-Semitism — all alien to every atom of our national soul.

But you should never underestimate the good sense of the British people. They had the chance to put Mr Corbyn into No 10, but they preferred to give Mr Johnson the first really clear, unassailable mandate since 2005.

So to borrow a couple of familiar slogans, not only can we expect to get Brexit done, but at last we have a genuinely strong and stable government.

On that subject, I wonder what Theresa May is thinking. As several commentators pointed out, it was her supposedly disastrous campaign in 2017 that paved the way for this victory, even if the result was a bit different.

For it was Mrs May who first made inroads into Labour's working-class electorate, even if she did not turn her Northern votes into parliamentary seats. So it turns out that her strategists, much mocked at the time, were on to something after all.

There is no doubt, though, that this is a colossal personal victory for Boris Johnson. Long dismissed as a clown and a joker, he will go down in history not merely as the Conservative mayor who twice won Labour London, but as the Tory Prime Minister who turned Bolsover blue.

As I wrote at the outset of the campaign, Mr Johnson has a remarkably classless appeal, reminiscent of past Tory showmen such as Winston Churchill and Benjamin Disraeli. He cheers people up, makes them laugh, rouses their spirits and reflects their patriotism.

And although high-minded snobs sneer at him as a vulgar demagogue — just as their predecessors sneered at Disraeli and Churchill — he has been proved triumphantly right. All his life he has gambled, and time after time he has won.

And if his opponents insist on underrating him — as they underrated Margaret Thatcher, another modern Tory populist — there is every chance he will keep on winning.

But winning elections is not the same thing as governing wisely. This is his task now, and it could hardly be more urgent.

His first priority is to get Britain out of the EU. It seems certain we will leave on January 31 — and despite the fact that I voted Remain more than three years ago, I will be heartily relieved when we are out.

Yes, trade talks will drag on for months, perhaps years. But as Mr Johnson remarked yesterday, there is no doubt that Brexit is the 'irrefutable, irresistible, unarguable decision of the British people'.

The ultra-Remainers have lost. There will be no People's Vote, no second referendum, no revocation of Article 50. It is over.

Perhaps, in the future, some Remainers may have the humility to ask themselves why they failed so abjectly. All those marches, all those court cases, all that screaming, sobbing hysteria — and it was all for nothing.

As Mr Johnson's consigliere Dominic Cummings remarked, the self-styled intellectuals 'should have taken a deep breath and had a lot of self-reflection [on] why they misunderstood what was going on in the country. But, instead, a lot of people just doubled down on their own ideas and f****d it up even more.'

Will they learn? I doubt it. If they didn't learn after 2016, why would they now?

Thanks in part to Brexit, the landscape of British politics has fundamentally shifted.

The Conservative Party now represents the working-class North and Midlands as well as the middle-class South: a party of Bolsover, Bridgend, West Bromwich and Wrexham.

As the PM recognised in his victory speech, many working-class voters' hands 'will have quivered over the ballot paper' before they put their crosses in the Conservative box.

They cannot be taken for granted. The Government must listen to their concerns, reflect their values and rebuild their communities, which have been neglected for so long.

Mr Johnson was right, then, to emphasise his One-Nation credentials. He must reassure his new supporters that they belong inside the Conservative tent, and the only way to do that is to govern in their interests.

That might sound tricky, given that the Tories are often caricatured as a rich Southern party. But are working-class and middle-class interests really so different?

After all, history shows that from Disraeli to Thatcher, the Tory Party is most effective when it appeals to working-class families who want a patriotic, competent government, delivering safe streets, decent services and a chance to get on.

Mr Johnson is, I think, well placed to play that part again.

We sometimes forget that as London's mayor he cut a remarkably consensual, moderate, artfully classless figure, appealing to thousands of traditional Labour voters.

At last the years of squabbling and uncertainty are over. Britain has a sense of stability and direction, reflected in the surging pound and buoyant stock market. We have a Prime Minister who is not afraid to take decisions, and a Government that can and will govern.

Above all, the election has been a reminder of the most essential, enduring element in our political constitution: the fundamental decency and common sense of the British people.

Like many people, I turned on the television just before 10pm on Thursday with a terrible sense of dread. Was Britain really going to elect a man who sympathised with Hamas, Hezbollah, the Soviet Union and the IRA? Were voters really going to fall for the bribes and lies of the most cynical, fanatical and dishonest Labour leadership in history? And would the British people really reward a party in thrall to bigotry, Marxism and vicious anti-Semitism?

I need not have worried. The British people aren't fools.

This was Labour's most pitiful defeat since the 1930s, worse than Michael Foot's showing in 1983.

And so Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, their mad manifesto and their crazed cultists have ended up where they always belonged, in the dustbin of history.

In the weeks ahead, commentators will spill torrents of ink poring over the results. But if you want a very simple explanation of the election, it is this.

Deep down, we are a patriotic, small-c conservative nation. We are cautious, grumpy and suspicious of change, but we are also honest, pragmatic and tolerant of difference. We hate being patronised, nannied and told what to do.

We despise ideology, we don't like being bribed and we hate being taken for fools. We despise bigots and bullies, even when they dress up as high-minded martyrs.

And though we like to moan, nobody should doubt that we love our country.

Jeremy Corbyn never understood that. But Boris Johnson did. And that, above all, is why he won.

SOURCE  





The Left wanted a second People's Vote... and they got the one they deserved

By RICHARD LITTLEJOHN

This wasn't just a defiant reaffirmation of the EU referendum result, it was a damning repudiation of those who have spent the past three and a half years trying to Stop Brexit.

It also served as a timely reminder that there is life outside the Westminster bubble, that social media is not the real world.

As late as Thursday lunchtime, political commentators were confidently predicting a hung parliament on the evidence of a handful of photos on Twitter showing a few dozen young people queueing at polling stations in London.

Like children chasing a football round a school playground, they all rushed to follow the herd.

We were told that not only would the Conservatives fail to secure an overall majority, but there was a real chance Boris Johnson would lose his own West London seat.

In the event, Boris romped home, not just in Uxbridge, but across the country, in constituencies which had never previously returned a Conservative MP.

The Corbynistas were crushed. The self-deluding Remain Alliance, which thought it could bully the British people into reversing the referendum result, was routed.

That gurning gargoyle John Bercow, the ex-Speaker who has done more than most to frustrate the will of the people, turned up as a pundit on Sky News.

When the official exit poll predicting an 80-seat Tory majority dropped at 10pm, he looked as if he'd just heard through his earpiece that his wife was having an affair with his cousin Alan.

Bercow, nominally a Tory, appeared devastated by the scale of the projected Conservative victory. He wasn't alone. The outcome of this election was an even greater defeat for the forces of Remain than the original referendum in 2016.

They didn't see the Leave vote coming, but once the initial shock subsided they were able to regroup and move heaven and earth to overturn it, at little cost to themselves. After all, they argued, the result was merely advisory.

This time it was personal. This time they were on the ballot. They had everything to lose. And lose they did, on a spectacular scale. They didn't just lose a referendum, they lost their jobs. They had it coming.

Grieve, Gauke, Soubry Loo and the rest were all sent packing. Not a single one of the turncoat Tory MPs who rebelled against their own government over Brexit managed to retain their seats.

Nor did any of those who resigned the Labour whip to join Change UK or the Lib Dems, Chucky Umunna included. What an ignominious downfall for the man dubbed (by himself, probably) Britain's Barack Obama.

But if there was a Portillo moment, it had to be the defenestration of Liberal leader and self-proclaimed 'next Prime Minister' Jo Swinson. The woman who promised to abort Brexit without so much as a second referendum couldn't even hold on to her own constituency.

(I'm no fan of Wee Burney [Nicola Sturgeon], but the SNP leader's animated celebration when she heard Swinson was dead meat was a joy to behold.)

Did Swinson really think that the British people were going to take her threat to cancel the result of the biggest-ever popular vote in favour of anything lying down?

The most ludicrous argument put forward by Bercow and the Stop Brexit crowd as they paralysed Parliament to prevent Boris's withdrawal agreement being passed was that they were 'defending democracy'.

Democracy? They don't understand the meaning of the word.

Swinson was still at it yesterday, blaming the people for their stupidity in voting Tory.

For the past three and a half years, the mantra coming from the Remain camp at Westminster has been that Leave voters are thick racists, who didn't understand what they were voting for.

Now the People have taken their revenge.

Labour, in particular, has paid the price for prevaricating over Brexit and reneging on its repeated promises to honour the referendum result.

The Blyth spartans have spoken. So have millions of other former Labour voters across the party's traditional heartlands in the North-East, the North-West, North Wales and the Midlands.

Presumably, Labour didn't think the people of Sedgefield were all morons when they kept sending Tony Blair back to Westminster.

They can't all be thick racists. They are just sick and tired of being ignored, insulted and taken for granted.

In an election which we were told was about trust, voters have decided to put their trust in Boris Johnson and the Tories on everything from Brexit to the NHS.

They certainly didn't trust Corbyn and Labour further than they could throw them.

But Corbyn still doesn't seem to understand the calamity he has visited upon his party — or the reasons why. Yesterday he was grumbling that the problem was the election had become all about Brexit.

Eh?

Without the gridlock over Brexit, caused by Corbyn and Labour, there wouldn't have been an election. Since it was called, they've tried to make it about anything but.

Voters had other ideas, fortunately. They saw through Labour's Fantasy Island giveaway manifesto, and the lies about selling the NHS to Trump. Getting Brexit Done became an article of faith.

This was as much a vote for the sacred principle of democracy as it was for the Conservatives.

It helps that Corbyn himself was unelectable — although it is frightening to think that millions of people, particularly in London, were prepared to vote for a party led by a Seventies throwback, Marxoid, terrorist-loving, anti-Semite.

And if the post-mortem is anything to go by, the broadcast media still hasn't come to terms with what's happened.

Most of the analysis has concentrated not on the reasons why Boris won such a spectacular, historic victory, but on nauseating navel-gazing about how Labour can be saved for the nation. Who gives a monkey's?

Forget about Labour's troubles and concentrate on what this means for Britain.

The great news is that, yet again, the British people have resoundingly rejected Left-wing extremism. The ruinous notion that the citizens of this ancient democracy are gagging to live in a highly-regulated socialist utopia has been tested to destruction.

Thanks to the Tory landslide, we shall soon be free of the shackles of the sclerotic European superstate. And don't believe the naysayers who are already demanding an extension to our membership and trashing our chances of ever agreeing a free trade deal with Europe.

We've heard it all before. Under a united Tory government with a massive majority, we hold the trump cards in any upcoming negotiations with Brussels.

This was undoubtedly a personal triumph for Boris, but more importantly it was a glorious victory for freedom and democracy.

On the day after the referendum in 2016, I quoted G.K. Chesterton's line about the 'secret people of England who have not spoken yet'. We have now.

They wanted a second People's Vote. They got the one they deserved.

SOURCE 





Not every little thing needs to be about the nation

Bring back real federalism in Australia

When did everything become a national problem? Not a problem for individuals and families, not a problem for communities and organisations, not a problem for state governments or local coun-cils — but a national problem.

I was reminded of this with the release of the Program for International Student Assessment results revealing that Australia ranks 16th for reading, 17th for science and 29th for mathematics. Over a decade, our students have fallen behind close to a full year in these subjects.

Responding to the news, Labor's education spokeswoman, Tanya Plibersek, declared it "a national problem, it needs a national approach and we need to make sure that we're working together to teach the basics well, lift entry standards into teaching, give schools the support they need".

This national approach thinking infects all sorts of areas. We have a national strategy for obesity and a national strategy for suicide prevention. The government recently created the very dubious position of National Skills Commissioner. The second Gonski report recommended a national teacher workforce strategy.

A recent report by the supposedly learned Academy of Science, titled Sustainable Cities and Regions: 10-Year Strategy to Enable Urban Systems Transformation, calls for a national vision for cities. (And don't waste your time reading it.)

Apparently, "sustainable transformation of Australia's cities and regions is being hampered by the lack of a national vision, institutional silos and perennial underfunding, and our best innovations and research break-throughs are not being shared across cities".

Last time I looked, our cities were all located wholly within either states or territories. So much for having a national vision. In any case, whose national vision? The vision of the deeply woke Academy of Science?

Economists have a framework for thinking about when a national approach is warranted and when it is not. To use the jargon, when there are significant inter-jurisdictional spillovers — meaning that what is done in one state has clear effects in other states — there is a strong case for a national approach. Otherwise solutions should be developed as close as possible to the action.

In this way, competition between the states is fostered and each can learn from the approaches others adopt. And the existence of interjurisdictional spillovers is not sufficient to justify a national approach. There are often means of handling these without a national approach. Using mutual recognition of skills and qualifications between the states is an example of this.

For several decades there has been a marked shift in the division of roles and responsibility between the federal and state governments, with the federal government winning out.

There have been some moments of hesitation. The Victorian government under premier John Brumby sought a mature discussion about the division of roles and responsibilities between the levels of government. Similarly, the then premier of Western Australia, Colin Barnett, was prepared to accommodate some clean reallocation of tasks between the levels of government

For a brief time, the Rudd government sought to rationalise federal-state relations, particularly in relation to intergovernmental agreements.

Once an avowed centralist; Tony Abbott as prime minister discovered the virtues of the federation and established a process to renegotiate the roles and responsibilities between the levels of government and the associated funding reforms. This was killed off when Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister.

The recently released discussion paper of the NSW Review of Federal Financial Relations includes some useful information on this. In 2008, the federal and state governments signed the Intergovernmental Agreement on Federal Financial Relations.

This agreement was the acknowledgment that the states have the principal responsibility for service delivery — education and hospitals, in particular. As a result, the number of agreements between the federal and state governments was reduced from 90 to six national agreements and about 16 national partnership agreements.

The new arrangements did not last, however. By 2010, there were more than 300 intergovernmental agreements. The paper also notes: "In 2018-19, there were 30 national partnerships that provided NSW with less than $10 million in funding. 25 of these were less than $5 million in funding."

So effectively where we have ended up is the federal government interfering in many areas that were traditionally the states' preserve. The funding agreements bgtween the federal and state governments come with strict and onerous conditions on how the money can be spent while failing to provide any funding certainty.

A consequence of all this has been to enfeeble state governments, which have lost significant capacity to develop policy and delivery systems. Always keen to secure additional funding, they have been prepared to go along with the bossiness of Canberra while diluting their autonomy, notwithstanding their continuing responsibility to deliver the vast majority of government-funded human services. In the case of schools, for instance, the states own and run public schools and bear 80 per cent of their costs.

Apart from enjoying a sense of dominance and illusory control, it's not entirely clear why the federal government has sought to interfere so forcefully in the realm of state government activities. It almost goes without saying that unclear accountability leads to inferior results. And does anyone believe that the federal government — including thousands of
bureaucrats in the federal departments of education and health —really has any comparative advantage in devising effective and implementable policy approaches?

Education expert Ben Jensen has observed that for too long, education policy has been dominated by a series of highfalutin, worthy-sounding national reports without real attention being paid to what does and what does not work and adjusting the approaches used to the particular circumstances. One size does not fit all.

Underpinning these dysfunctional arrangements are the funding imbalances that exist between the levels of government. Economists use the arcane term vertical fiscal imbalance. With the states raising less than two-thirds of what they spend, there is a tendency of the fiscally dominant level of government to call the shots in some detail.

The way forward involves the states standing on their own feet to a greater extent when it comes to raising revenue and for the federal government to realise that more untied funding to the states is likely, on balance, to provide better outcomes than the plethora of detailed and unworkable commands.

The federal government may also come to appreciate that the appropriate absence of national approaches in many areas eliminates the blame game for outcomes it can't really control.

From "The Australian" of 9/12/19

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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 December, 2019

Utah Republican Chris Stewart's 'Fairness for All' bill tries to balance LGBT rights and religious liberty.  But neither side of politics is happy with it

Opposition from the ACLU is here and Ryan T. Anderson gives below a conservative view. The bill imposes a new sexual orthodoxy that must not be questioned

The "Fairness for All" legislation would treat reasonable disagreement as if it were discrimination, impose sexual and gender ideology, and penalize those who dissent.

Working to find legislative compromise can be a good thing. But not every bill that calls itself a compromise is a good compromise.

And that, sadly, is the case with the so-called “Fairness for All” legislation introduced Friday.

Over the past several years I’ve been in dialogue with the main scholars and civic leaders promoting and drafting this legislation (including participating in a conference on it at Yale Law School in 2017 and authoring a chapter on the approach—and suggesting a better approach—in a Cambridge University Press book published this year). I have reviewed the 69-page legislative draft over the past several weeks.

Despite the undoubted good will of those who drafted and introduced the legislation, and despite some meaningful though insufficient protections for religious liberty, the bill is not in fact fair for all. Its protections for religious liberty come at the high cost of enshrining a misguided sexual and gender ideology into federal law. This will allow the federal government to use our civil rights laws as a sword to punish citizens who dissent from the reigning sexual orthodoxy. This is certain to create significant harm to the common good, especially for the privacy, safety, and equality of women and girls.

The high costs of the Fairness for All compromise shouldn’t be surprising, because the compromise the bill sought was misframed from the beginning.

In a letter to fellow lawmakers asking them to co-sponsor the bill, Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, the lead sponsor, revealed why the compromise is flawed.

Stewart writes that his bill is meant to be “a balanced legislative solution for preserving religious freedom and protecting LGBT civil rights.” But these aren’t the only two values at stake in this legislative area, so a compromise that is framed only between these two values is certain to leave out important considerations.

Unsurprisingly, the bill introduced Friday does just that.

Stewart argues that his bill will deliver “greater freedom for everyone by creating robust protections for religious individuals and organizations and comprehensively amending the Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity.”

But elevating “sexual orientation and gender identity” to a protected class in the Civil Rights Act will cause serious harms. What Stewart fails to acknowledge, and what his bill fails to wrestle with, are the harms it would cause to people’s privacy, safety, equality, and other forms of liberty—not just for religious people, but for anyone who disagrees with contemporary sexual and gender ideology.

A bill that was truly fair for all would not allow the government to use civil rights law as a sword to punish citizens for disagreement on sexual ideology.

A bill that was truly fair would explicitly say that no institution could be forced by the government to allow boys who identify as girls to compete against girls in athletics; that no institution could be forced by the government to allow men who identify as women into women-only spaces, such as locker rooms and shelters; that no institution could be penalized because it lives out its creed that marriage unites a husband and wife.

A bill that was truly fair for all would explicitly say that no physician would have to engage in any “gender-affirming” care that they thought unethical, and that no child could be denied assistance to help them identify with their bodies.

And yet, to take just one example, Fairness for All says that an “entity unlawfully discriminates against a child by” treating a child “inconsistently with the child’s gender identity,” and by providing the child with “any practice or treatment that seeks to change the child’s … gender identity.”

So children must be affirmed in their gender confusion, and adults may not attempt to help them—all in the name of fairness. The bill limits these provisions to foster children and others in custody of the state.

But if this is what “fairness” requires for those children, why not for all children?

These outcomes are unsurprising given that the goal was to protect only religious liberty, not advance the totality of the common good.

Real fairness for all would protect people who identify as LGBT from truly unjust discrimination while explicitly stating that acting on the conviction that we are created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other, isn’t discriminatory. And so it would also protect people who hold those convictions and their freedom to act on them in the public square.

Not only does Fairness for All misframe the policy arena as one between “LGBT rights” and “religious liberty,” but it fails to precisely target the needs of LGBT-identifying people that require a policy solution.

In a press release supporting Fairness for All, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints argued that “No American should lose their home or job simply for being lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.” That’s true. But the Fairness for All legislation goes well beyond cases where people are fired or evicted simply for identifying as LGBT.

Fairness for All takes the existing Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was passed by Congress to, among other things, combat racism, and expands its reach while adding “sexual orientation and gender identity” as protected classes. The bill never defines what constitutes discrimination against such classes. So it takes a law meant to combat racism, broadens its reach, and fails to define a key term.

But properly defining unjust discrimination and targeting legislation at those actions is essential. Part of the problem with Fairness for All is that it leaves it entirely at the whim of hostile bureaucrats and judges to declare that commonsense actions may count as discrimination.

What exactly would the proposed ban on “discrimination” on the basis of “gender identity” entail? Can the bill’s drafters and sponsors tell us what elevating gender identity to a protected class in civil rights law will mean long term? Can they even tell us what it would legally require today?

It is irresponsible to rewrite our civil rights laws to make “gender identity” a protected class when we can’t even define what gender identity is, or how many there are.

According to the most up-to-date gender theory, gender identity exists along a spectrum and can be fluid. Possible gender identities include “boy/girl,” “gender-hybrid,” and “gender ambidextrous.”

How is it fair for all to pass a law saying it’s illegal to discriminate on the basis of these gender identities without even defining what constitutes discrimination? This is legislative malpractice and will lead to endless, costly litigation.

Activists currently claim that combating gender identity discrimination requires new bathroom, athletic, pronoun, and health care policies mandating “gender affirmation” care. But when you consider the fact that most Americans hadn’t even heard the phrase “gender identity” five years ago, it seems premature to suggest that elevating it to a protected class status is what “fairness for all” requires.

Now is not the time to rush to conclusions, but to think critically and prudently.

In the midst of the redefinitions of marriage, sex, and gender, all Americans—wherever they fall on the political spectrum and whether they are religious, secular, or agnostic—should join the effort to find ways to coexist peacefully.

Fairness for All would not achieve this goal. Instead, it would treat reasonable disagreement as if it were discrimination, impose sexual and gender ideology, and penalize those who dissent. But that doesn’t mean we need to succumb to an endless culture war.

While Fairness for All is an unsuccessful legislative compromise, we should still work to develop good legislation. A better approach would carefully consider the needs of people who identify as LGBT that require a policy response, and then target legislation at those needs.

Such legislation would specifically define what constitutes unlawful behavior, while explicitly protecting everyone’s freedom to engage in legitimate actions based on the conviction that we are created male and female, and that male and female are created for each other.

Such legislation must protect the privacy and safety of women and girls, the conscience rights of doctors and other medical professionals, parental rights, and the free speech and religious liberty rights of countless professionals.

This would leave all Americans free to act on those convictions. It would also protect diversity and promote tolerance. It would promote true fairness for all.

SOURCE  






Feminism's collateral damage is the breakdown of society

by Suzanne Venker

I'm convinced Tucker Carlson is the only television host who understands the fallout of feminism and is willing to discuss it on national TV. During a recent interview with me on his program, Carlson noted the following: “I don't think anything has changed our society more for the worse” than feminism.

Indeed, nothing has.

When I said something similar in 2011, I was called out by NPR's Meghna Chakrabarti in an interview about my book, The Flipside of Feminism. In it, I wrote that feminism is the "single worst thing to happen to women," that it didn't liberate them at all.

On the contrary, feminism has made women's lives (and by extension, men's and children's lives) immeasurably worse. According to a 2009 paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, “As women have gained more freedom, more education, and more power, they have become less happy."

When this study was released, countless articles and news reports inquired about the irony of it all. How is it possible that women can be less happy after having been "liberated"?

In fact, it isn't surprising at all when you consider that women have been lied to for decades about what constitutes a happy life. Academic and elite feminists, who reside in our universities, in the media, in politics, and in Hollywood, have told women all kinds of things that just aren't true. Things that make women (and by extension, men and children) very unhappy.

Such as the idea that women don't need a man and that children don't need fathers: "Women are realizing more and more that you don't have to settle, they don't have to fiddle with a man to have that child," noted Jennifer Aniston in this 2010 interview about an upcoming film.

Or that men and women must make the same life choices with respect to work and family to be deemed "equal": “An equal world will be one where women run half our countries and companies and men run half our homes. We will not rest until we reach that goal,” said Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in 2018.

Or that staying home to raise a family is less important, valuable, or satisfying than earning a living: "These women who act like staying at home, leeching off their husbands or boyfriends, and just cashing the checks is some sort of feminism because they're choosing to live that life. That's bullshit." now-Sen. Kyrsten Sinema said in 2006.

Or that there's no such thing as the biological clock: "Be cautious about metaphors like the 'biological clock'— don’t take them literally," writes Catherine Aponte Psy.D. at Psychology Today.

These are all lies. Unfortunately, women listened, and men followed. What choice did they have? And now here's what we have to show for it:

* The complete breakdown of marriage. Over the past 30 years, America has witnessed a meteoric rise in cohabitation, creating a bona fide "shack up" culture. Many women can't find "economically attractive" husbands with whom to settle down and start a family. And father-absent homes are rampant because of unilateral divorce initiated largely by women (around 70%) for no other reason that she isn't "happy."

* A persistent and relentless gender war. With gender roles thoroughly dismantled, men and women no longer know who's supposed to do what. They have no idea how the other sex thinks and behaves or even wants, and as a result, are locked in a battle about who works harder than whom. Moreover, sexual activity among unmarried men and women has become a minefield, as evidenced by the excesses of #MeToo and the so-called campus rape culture.

* An explosion of kids who are in full-time day care and who are home alone after school, resulting in an epidemic of childhood obesity, and of lonely, disconnected kids who have ample opportunity to get into all kinds of trouble, including devising ways to shoot up their schools.

* A full-scale war on men. The utterly absurd notion that male nature is toxic or even diseased, resulting in a made-up concept known as "mascupathy," has become the status quo. Ergo, half the U.S. population is now disenfranchised.

How dare Carlson say nothing has changed our society more for the worse than feminism! Where did he get such a crazy idea?

SOURCE 





Who is doing the child rapes in America?

Ann Coulter

With the impeachment nonsense making TV news unwatchable, I’ve been catching up on “Law & Order SVU” recently.

The scripts involve the sort of real-life crimes that are a lot more common since our country has become “diverse,” such as child rape and incest. But the child-rapists are never diverse, as they are in real life. No, the perps are always blond, blue-eyed American men.

In fact, the modern American white male is the least rapey, most gentle, protective, chivalrous creature God has ever created. Get ready for a gigantic I TOLD YOU SO when American women realize that, from 1620 to the day Ted Kennedy’s 1965 immigration act kicked in, they never had it so good.

I wouldn’t mention it, except for “Law & Order SVU.” It would be as if the writers portrayed New York City as a sleepy little burg and Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, as a fast-paced metropolis, jam-packed with skyscrapers.

In one episode titled “Zero Tolerance,” a white American male sells illegal alien girls to other white American men in a sex trafficking scheme that was somehow enabled by Trump ... SEPARATING CHILDREN FROM THEIR PARENTS AT THE BORDER!!!

(The theory of causation is a little vague, but it was definitely Trump’s fault.)

Also, according to “Law & Order SVU,” the main demographic with a sexual fetish for pre-pubescent Hispanic girls is: handsome, married American white men.

Thus, the john having sex with a 9-year-old illegal alien in this episode was a white businessman, married with two sons, who was in New York specifically to have sex with underage girls.

You have to admire television writers who have taken a vow to never leave their homes, have any human contact or read.

Reviewing my years of research on child sex crimes, I see that this has happened NEVER. It’s kind of the opposite. I ended up with so many immigrant child rape cases for “Adios, America!” that most of them had to be left on the cutting room floor -- or the book would have been twice as long.

Since 2013, an average of 34 illegal aliens have been charged in North Carolina with 151 counts of raping or sexually assaulting a child per month -- and that’s based on police data from less than a third of the counties in a single state.

Shocking child sex crimes that you’d expect to happen about once a century now come at a clip of “every few years.” Within a five-year timespan, for example, the same California judge presided over these two cases:

-- Guatemalan Willy Alejandro Jimenez grabbed a 4-year-old girl in a Palo Alto parking lot, raped her, beat her unconscious, then threw her naked body from a moving car.

-- Fifty-year-old immigrant Paul Narvios repeatedly raped his girlfriend’s 9-year-old daughter, getting her pregnant and making her one of only four girls under the age of 10 to give birth in the United States.

Since 1990, the media have reported on 53 specific girls aged 10 or younger who have given birth in Latin America. In the United States, with a population about 70 percent the size of the nine countries where those births occurred, there were four reported births to girls that young.

Three were to immigrants.

Two were fathered by Hispanic immigrants, one by a Haitian illegal immigrant and one by an American. But for William Edward Ronca, there would not be a single confirmed case of a white man in the Western Hemisphere impregnating a girl 10 years old or younger.

A report from the Inter-American Children’s Institute explained that Latin America is second only to Asia in the sexual exploitation of women and children because sex abuse is “ingrained into the minds of the people.” Women and children are “seen as objects instead of human beings with rights and freedoms.”

If the “Law & Order SVU” writers are worried that Trump is preventing these child-rape-happy cultures from coming to our country, I’ve got good news!

Just two months ago, at an illegal immigrant flophouse in Immokalee, Florida, a teenaged girl got up to use to the bathroom in the middle of the night and caught an adult man in the act of raping a toddler, with blood running down both their legs.

Although the victim’s age was redacted from the police report, the child was wearing a blood-soaked diaper when she arrived at the hospital. The infant was injured so badly that she’s been in the hospital since the attack, undergoing multiple reconstructive surgeries -- with more to come.

We know the child’s rapist was an illegal alien -- there was no one else in the trailer. At the moment, it appears that the primary suspect is her “father,” Hector Gabriel-Jimenez, 23, who has been arrested for child neglect.

He entered the country illegally back in February, was apprehended by border police and sent on his merry way -- by a president who launched his campaign talking about Mexican rapists.

But Mariska Hargitay (“Detective Olivia Benson”) blames Trump for his imaginary act of enforcing the border, not for what he’s actually done, which is allow the ACLU to fling our border open to child kidnappers and child molesters.

Promoting the idiotic episode, Hargitay tweeted: "The situation at the border has been unconscionable and cruel. As we speak there are still countless children who are separated from their families because of our government's actions. We can do better. We must do better."

In fact, Trump has been doing exactly what the geniuses of “Law & Order” want! And unlike the show’s incomprehensible chain of causation, our actual border policy -- which the “Law & Order” writers and Trump agree on! -- led directly to a diapered baby being taken away from her mother and brutally raped.

As the father explained to the police: The reason he took the toddler away from her mother in Guatemala was so that "he would be allowed to stay in the U.S.A. and not have any problems with immigration for entering the U.S.A. illegally."

Incest and child rape are not native American habits. Nor is child rape common in Spain. This isn’t genetic. Bestial behavior toward women and children is a hallmark of primitive, peasant cultures -- the cultures we are importing by the million.

The hallmark of civilized cultures is to arrest and imprison child rapists. But the brain-dead writers of “Law & Order SVU” invent little stories to demoralize the defenders of civilization, so we can let the incest and child rape flow!

SOURCE 






Australia: Trannies trump feminists

As Rodney King memorably asked: "Can't we all just get along?"

A feminist group has been banned from using free office facilities normally available to community organisations because Independent MP Andrew Wilkie said it holds 'trans-exlusionary' views.

Andrew Wilkie has banned Women Speak Tasmania from using taxpayer-funded photocopying facilities in Hobart.

The federal member for Clark said his sensitivity about the issue has been heightened because his ex-wife was transitioning to identify as a man.

Women Speak Tasmania (WST) had campaigned against the idea that men can become entitled to the same legal treatment and services by identifying as female.

Mr Wilkie told The Weekend Australian he found the group was 'discriminatory' and 'exclusionary' and decided to ban them from the office facilities as a result. 'They were using it but when I learned of their discriminatory views I then stopped them using it,' Mr Wilkie said.

'One of the explicit conditions of use of the photocopier is that it shouldn't be for any material that is exclusionary. They discriminate against transgender women; men who have become women.'

He said now that his ex-wife Kate has become Charlie, he now has an appreciation of transgender issues and was sensitive to discrimination against transgender people.

WST was disappointed by the ban and accused the federal MP of discriminating against them.

They are furious Mr Wilkie is letting a 'radical trans group' continue to use the facilities despite their discrimination on female-only services.

WST spokeswoman Isla MacGregor slammed the MP and said it was a 'direct attack' on women's sex-based rights. 'Australia is in the grip of a psychosis whipped up the by gender lobby that (says) "trans women are women and anybody who opposes that is a hate group",' she said.

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 December, 2019

If you get cancer in Australia you now have DOUBLE the chance of surviving compared to sufferers in Britain - Why?

Both Britain and Australia have systems of "free" government hospitals so why the difference?  They get vague below in answering that and fail to mention the elephant in the room: 40% of Australians have private health insurance versus only 7% in Britain.  So for nearly half of Australians, the scan is done and the diagnosis is in almost immediately.

I once got a referral for a CAT scan from my GP and when I went in immediately to the scanning service, they APOLOGIZED for not being able to do it that day -- but did fit me in the next day.  And my doctor had the report the day after that. 

It's nothing like that prompt in Britain.  It takes many weeks for a final diagnosis there.  And an NHS doctor is just as likely to tell you you have indigestion rather sending you promptly for a scan or specialist appointment. And the sooner you get a cancer diagnosis the better your chances of surviving it


Australians suffering from some of the deadliest forms of cancer will soon be twice as likely to survive as patients in Britain.

A recent study into 3.9 million patients with cancer from seven countries  - Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway, and the UK - found Aussie battlers had a better survival rate across the board in the first year of diagnosis.

It also topped the charts over a five-year period at all but lung (Canada) and ovarian cancer (Norway).

The better rate of survival has been put down to the willingness of Australians to see a doctor, get health checks and quick referrals to hospital for treatment.

The Cancer Survival in High-Income Countries project, compiled by UK's The Lancet Oncology, hopes to provide a guide for governments across the world to better understand and treat cancer patients.

But while Australians can take some solace from the study's results, those living in the UK have reason to be worried.

Former World Health Organisation's Cancer Program chief Professor Karol Sikora told Daily Mail Australia the situation in the UK was a disgrace. 'This is extraordinary. People in the UK seem to be afraid to reveal the truth of what we are facing,' he said.

'The five-year survival rate in Australia for pancreas is set to be as good as one in four patients by 2024. 'In the UK, that rate - currently eight percent - will be just over one in ten in the same year. This is a British national scandal and one being hushed up.'

The study delved into the survival rates of patients suffering oesophagus, stomach, colon, rectum, pancreas, lung, and ovary cancer. It revealed the UK is bottom of the league for five major cancers.

'What we are about to face in comparison to the Aussies is remarkable,' Professor Sikora said.

By sourcing back through decades of records, Prof Sikora believes forecast numbers look increasingly dire for UK residents and remarkably positive for Australians, particularly those with pancreatic or lung cancer.

Cancer survival rates over a five year period 
Oesophagus 23% in Australia, 16% in the UK

Stomach 32% in Australia, 20% in the UK

Lung 21% Australia, 14% UK

Ovarian 43% in Australia, 37% in the UK

The cancer research expert said Australians were surviving longer over the five year period due to better access to good basic surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy where appropriate.

But it's over the initial one-year period where Australians are ahead of the rest of the world.

'(The UK) has been consistently behind since the beginning of the study in 1995,' Professor Sikora said. 'If we're consistently behind on the one year statistics, that means we're not going to do well on the 5 year statistics.'

All of the seven countries analysed share roughly the same total spend on health care and enjoy national health schemes.

Professor Sikora said the UK provided many of the oncologists working in Australians, New Zealand and Canada. 'So it can't just be that, it must be that one year survival that's the problem (in the UK),' he said.

Professor Sikora said Australians could be surviving for a number of factors, including our willingness to go to the doctor and get health checks.

He also believes Australian GPs have better access to information that can ensure those with cancer are treated faster. 'Why not give GPs access to CT scans, to ultrasound, and to MRI?' he said. 'Now, some do have, and they do it very well. But some don't have access. They have to make a consultant referral.'

Professor Sikora believes Aussies are being referred to hospitals significantly faster than cancer patients in the UK.

'And you predict the obvious rise in cancer incidence as we go through an ageing population. It's not going to work unless we get more capacity in the system,' he said.

'Sixty-two days, which is the NHS England target, is simply not fast enough. 'In all these other countries, you'd get next day service with your GP. The day after that - the scan. The day after that you see the specialist, and that includes Saturdays.'

Professor Sikora said the UK needed to learn some fast lessons from countries such as Australia. 'Smarten up the front end of diagnosis of cancer; not worry about high cost therapies, that's not the cause of the problem,' he said. 'The reality is, the system doesn't work. It's letting down British cancer patients.'

SOURCE 




A court has ordered The Canadian Human Rights Commission to re-investigate a claim by a former CIBC worker that he was discriminated against because he WASN'T gay

The Canadian Human Rights Commission was ordered to properly assess a discrimination complaint by a former employee of a major bank who claims his boss told him he had “no hope” for promotion unless he joined their “group” of gay and bisexual men.

He was told only males who were gay or bisexual were promoted in the office, he claims.

The commission had improperly dismissed the employee’s discrimination complaint based on sexual orientation, in this case for being straight, the Federal Court of Canada ruled.

A new investigation and reassessment was ordered.

Aaren Jagadeesh worked as a financial services representative for the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce in Toronto. He was repeatedly turned down for promotions.

At a one-on-one meeting with his manager on Sept. 15, 2015, Jagadeesh said he was told that every male manager in the office was gay or bisexual, and, unless he joined this “group” there was “no hope” for him, court heard.

Jagadeesh claims the manager said this was why young male employees with little or no qualifications were promoted; told him to “be smart and learn”; and then allegedly asked Jagadeesh what he thought of him.

Jagadeesh said he replied that he thought of him as just his manager. He claims he told his boss he was willing to work with anyone but he was not gay or bisexual.

The incident negatively impacted his “mental stress and self-dignity,” he said, but it was not his only trouble at work.

His job, according to court records, required him to call 60 to 70 customers each day to sell products, which required him to read four to six pages of product information and legal disclosures.

The bank evaluated his performance by measuring two metrics: “wrap time,” meaning the time between calls must be less than 30 seconds, and “adherence targets,” meaning operators must be on calls 96 per cent or more of the time on their shift.

After several months of continuous calling, he developed severe throat and vocal cord pain. His family doctor recommended modified duties. He claims he was instead asked by the bank to go on short-term disability. CIBC referred him to another doctor, who in turn referred him to a specialist. The specialist concluded he suffered from muscle tension dysphonia and needed regular medical breaks to fully recover, court heard.

Jagadeesh said CIBC started discriminating against him soon after the diagnosis. His pay as well as bonuses and incentives were cut. He said he was threatened with discipline if he took his medical breaks. He said he was turned down for 17 alternate jobs.

The incident negatively impacted his 'mental stress and self-dignity,' he said

Jagadeesh believed “the encounter” with his manager about sexual orientation “was the primary reason for his discrimination and explained why, despite his qualifications, experience, and excellent performance, he was denied workplace accommodation for his disability, and not offered any alternative position,” Justice Janet M. Fuhrer said in a court ruling.

Jagadeesh was fired on May 10, 2016. He filed a human rights complaint the following April alleging discrimination by CIBC because of disability and sexual orientation. He alleged that young employees received promotions, awards, and favours because they were sexually exploited.

An investigator with the human rights commission was assigned to look into the complaint.

CIBC officials were interviewed — but not the manager who allegedly made the remarks about only gay and bisexual men being promoted. That manager, the investigator was told, was on “extended leave of absence.”

The investigator declined to proceed further on the complaint of sexual orientation discrimination, but did assess his disability complaint and found that CIBC had adequately accommodated him.

Last November, the commission dismissed the complaints.

Representing himself, Jagadeesh appealed to the Federal Court, seeking a review of the commission’s decision. He complained the investigator had selectively ignored evidence to avoid dealing with the sexual orientation complaint.

CIBC, however, agreed with the investigator’s conclusions. The bank argued it was a thorough probe and that nothing linked the negative treatment Jagadeesh allegedly experienced to his sexual orientation. CIBC argued he was simply unqualified.

Fuhrer, in a decision released in September, ruled that the commission’s investigation and decisions were not procedurally fair to Jagadeesh. Fuhrer said the lack of thoroughness in reviewing the grounds of the complaint meant the decision must be set aside.

She ordered the commission to try again with a different investigator.

Hanna Lange-Chenier, a spokeswoman for the commission, said she could not discuss the case or reveal its status. “The law prevents us from commenting on any complaint in our system,” she said.

Jagadeesh also clashed with CIBC over how much the bank should reimburse him for the cost of his successful court challenge and returned to court last month.

Jagadeesh had represented himself and said he spent $438.10 in expenses, while CIBC said it had spent significantly more than $5,000 to defend the case. Apparently then understanding he could claim for his time as well as expenses, he asked for $6,646.57 while CIBC said he should only get $500.

“Self-represented litigants are eligible for a moderate allowance above the costs of their direct disbursements to reflect the time and effort they devoted to preparing and presenting their case,” Fuhrer ruled on Nov. 19.

She ordered CIBC to pay him half of what he asked for: $3,332.30.

Crystal Jongeward, senior consultant, public affairs with CIBC said: “While we are unable to comment as the matter is still before the commission, no form of harassment or discrimination is acceptable at our bank.”

Jagadeesh could not be reached for comment.

SOURCE 






Christian doctor, 59, who risked losing his job for offering to pray with patients is cleared of any wrongdoing after anonymous complaint about his practice

Dr Richard Scott, 59, was investigated after the National Secular Society (NSS) claimed that a 'highly vulnerable' patient 'felt discomfort at the use of prayer'. The case was taken up by the General Medical Council, despite the NSS admitting it did not know who the complainant was and that they had received the allegations second hand.

The investigation followed a Radio 4 interview which Scott took part in regarding the freedom of religion in England.

In the interview, aired in January, Dr Scott spoke about how he sometimes used his faith to help patients with depression and anxiety. 'I always go through three elements: does somebody need tablets, would someone benefit from counselling, and as an option I offer the possibility of Christianity,' he said. 'Only last week a lady converted to Christianity in clinic as a result of that introduction.'

In June, the General Medical Council wrote to Scott informing him that it had received 'some information' from the NSS and would begin a fitness to practise investigation in to him.

The NSS claimed they had been contacted ’by a member of the public who was concerned because an acquaintance whom she describes as "highly vulnerable" is being treated at the practice and claimed that the patient "does not feel able to express discomfort at the use of prayer".'

The NSS letter also cited the BBC radio interview, The Battles That Won Our Freedoms: 3 Freedom of Religion, and claimed Dr Scott was ignoring GMC guidelines ’by preaching to patients'.

But the doctor, who practices at the Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate, Kent, has now been cleared of any wrongdoing.

He welcomed the ruling but slammed the GMC for taking on the 'extraordinary' case. 'The GMC should have seen this as a vexatious complaint, i.e. from someone with an axe to grind,' he said. 'It should never have escalated.

'They could have contacted me and I would have written back and it would have been over and done with - instead quite extraordinarily they took it to the very top level of fitness to practice. 'I'm glad they came up with the right answer.'

Dr Scott said the investigation had caused stress with his family, but said he won't change how he treats patients.

He said: 'My family don't like it when I have a complaint like this and I know for other doctors it's hard but it is part of my days work, I won't change my day to day workings.'

According to the Christian Legal Centre, the legal group who supported Dr Scott, the GMC concluded that 'there is no first-hand account or complaint from any patient about [his] practice'.

The GMC ruled: 'There is no convincing evidence that Dr Scott imposes his personal religious beliefs upon potentially vulnerable patients.’

Andrea Williams, chief executive of the Christian Legal Centre, said: 'The outcome of this case not only gives reassurance to Christian doctors and professionals across the UK that they can share their faith in the workplace, but also clear guidance on how they can share it without fear of losing their jobs.'

This is not the first time Dr Scott has had run-ins with the GMC, having been issued a warning in 2012 after a 24-year-old man filed a complaint against him for talking about Jesus at the end of an appointment.

The GMC said it does not comment on specific cases unless they are progressed to tribunals. But a spokesman said: 'What we can say in general terms however, is that our ethical guidance sets out how doctors can balance their own personal beliefs with those of their patients.

'No two cases are the same and we treat each issue on its own individual facts. 'The threshold at which we are required to open a case is prescribed in the legislation which governs the GMC's regulatory functions. Where a complaint meets that threshold we are obliged to investigate.

'We make every effort to conclude that work as quickly as possible to minimise what we know can be a stressful process for doctors and patients.'

SOURCE 






Federal executions delayed on a technicality

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court said Friday that it would not allow the Trump administration to resume executions in federal death penalty cases after a 16-year hiatus. The move, which left in place a preliminary injunction from a federal judge in Washington, effectively stayed the executions of four men scheduled to be put to death in the coming weeks. The court’s brief, unsigned order said it expected an appeals court to decide the inmates’ challenges “with appropriate dispatch.”

In a separate statement, Justice Samuel Alito, joined by Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, said that the inmates “were convicted in federal court more than 15 years ago for exceptionally heinous murders” and that “the government has shown that it is very likely to prevail” when the case moves forward.

“Nevertheless,” Alito wrote, “in light of what is at stake, it would be preferable for the district court’s decision to be reviewed on the merits by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit before the executions are carried out.” He wrote that he would have set a deadline for the appeals court to act.

“The court has expressed the hope that the court of appeals will proceed with ‘appropriate dispatch,’ and I see no reason why the court of appeals should not be able to decide this case, one way or the other, within the next 60 days,” Alito wrote. “The question, though important, is straightforward and has already been very ably briefed in considerable detail by both the solicitor general and by the prisoners’ 17-attorney legal team.”

“For these reasons,” he wrote, “I would state expressly in the order issued today that the denial of the application to vacate is without prejudice to the filing of a renewed application if the injunction is still in place 60 days from now.”

Kerri Kupec, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the department would continue to press for the executions. “While we are disappointed with the ruling,” she said in a statement, “we will argue the case on its merits in the D.C. Circuit and, if necessary, the Supreme Court. The Department of Justice is committed to upholding the rule of law and to carrying forward sentences imposed by our justice system.”

Attorney General William Barr set off the court fight when he announced in July that the federal government would end what had amounted to a moratorium on capital punishment. Last month, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, of the US District Court in Washington, blocked the executions, saying the protocol the government planned to use did not comply with the Federal Death Penalty Act of 1994, which requires executions to be carried out “in the manner prescribed by the law of the state in which the sentence is imposed.”

On Dec. 2, a unanimous three-judge panel of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refused to stay Chutkan’s preliminary injunction. That same day, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to step in.

The central legal question in the case is whether the word “manner” in the 1994 law refers to the methods of execution authorized by the relevant states (like hanging, firing squad, or lethal injection) or the protocols the states require (like the particular chemicals used in lethal injections or how a catheter is to be inserted).

In his July announcement, Barr said the federal government would replace the three-chemical cocktail it had used in earlier executions with a single chemical, pentobarbital.

Chutkan wrote that using a uniform nationwide protocol was not authorized by the 1994 law. All of the relevant states permit or require executions by lethal injections but the details of their protocols vary. That meant, Chutkan wrote, that the federal protocol was at odds with the 1994 law

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. 

************************************







11 December, 2019

Study shows motherhod is good for memory

Scientists have found that motherhood helps protect the brain against the ageing process - and the more kids a woman has the greater the impact. New research from Monash University has found mothers had a "younger pattern of brain activity" - particularly in the areas responsible for memory - which researchers say correlates to. a "more efficient brain".

Lead researcher Dr Sharna Jamadar, a senior research fellow at Monash's Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, said  research in mice suggesting motherhood produced a brain that was "more flexible, healthier and more resistant to age-related decline"

Their study was the first to look at the effects of parenthood on the human brain. -- "Our hypothesis was that being a parent increases the complexity of your life for a very long time. We know that when you engage in more complex behaviours you tend to have better neurological outcomes as you age," Dr Jamadar said.

They scanned the brains of 220 Victorian women aged in their 70s to find mothers had thicker brains compared to non-parents, particularly in regions associated with memory, and they had a "younger" pattern of communication across the brain. "We found that mothers with more children were less likely to show the changes in the patterns of brain function that are associated with ageing. Their brain looked younger," she said.

"Becoming a parent is generally considered to be a bad thing for your brain. And while yes, in the short term, becoming a parent is probably associated with changes in memory and concentration, these are not permanent. "Our new results suggest that in the long term these changes are good for your brain and we think it's related to having a more complex environment as you get older." The research was presented at the Australasian Neuroscience Society in Adelaide on Thursday.

From the Brisbane "Courier mail of 7 December, 2019





Islamist Cover-Up? Media Silent After Imam Fired Amid Sexual Assault Scandal

An Arizona imam has been accused of sexual assault, child abuse, misuse of funds, and falsely presenting himself as single in order to pursue female congregants while having two concealed marriages. One mosque quietly fired him after early accusations, but another has continued to employ him. An anti-Islamist Muslim reformer has condemned a media blackout on the story, suggesting that the local Muslim community is protecting a sexual predator due to radical interpretations of sharia.

"Here is the story on the imam ‘quietly’ fired from our mosque in Scottsdale," M. Zuhdi Jasser, founder of the American-Islamic Forum for Democracy (AIFD), tweeted. "Apparently he was also a sexual predator. So tell me again this has nothing to do with their shariah supremacism, radicalism and affinity for radical imams like [Siraj Wahhaj]?"

Jasser was referring to a Religion News Service (RNS) article about Moataz Moftah, an imam who teaches youth at the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix. The article cites an exhaustive report from the victims' advocacy group Facing Abuse in Community Environments (FACE) following an 11-month investigation into Moftah's alleged misconduct. FACE released the report on November 11.

The imam's "repetitive and egregious misconduct completely disqualifies him from serving as a religious leader, teacher or any professional employment within the Muslim community,” FACE founder Alia Salem declared in the report based on police reports from alleged victims and interviews with 34 people including Moftah.

The investigation began last year after a congregant of the Islamic Center of North East Valley in Scottsdale filed a complaint with FACE.

Moftah studied in Egypt before coming to the U.S. in 2012 to work as an imam in Indiana. He has been employed as a religious leader at five Islamic institutions and worked as a contractor for at least eight others.

According to FACE, he had been fired for misconduct from Ohio's Islamic Society of Greater Dayton, after he allegedly concealed a marriage to a congregant he had helped convert to Islam. In 2017, she divorced him and obtained an order of protection, accusing him of violence and claiming he had married her for immigration status.

While Moftah taught at the Scottsdale mosque, several youth and parents complained he was hitting, pinching, and throwing things at students during Quran lessons, the FACE report alleged.

One woman told FACE that when she went to the mosque seeking charitable funds, Moftah told her to clean his apartment in exchange for cash. While in the apartment, he allegedly removed her hijab, kissed her, and grabbed her tightly. He then promised to give her as much money as she wanted if she kept quiet.

According to the report, Moftah counseled one Scottsdale congregant through a divorce and then married her in a ceremony in his office. Since there were no witnesses and no public announcement of the marriage, many Muslim scholars would conclude the wedding was illegal.

A few months later, he married another woman in a ceremony conducted over the phone with no witnesses, according to FACE. Both women were unaware of the other's existence.

Meanwhile, the imam allegedly presented himself to the Muslim community as a single man in search of a wife. The report accused him of pursuing other marriage prospects, including with a woman who claimed he groped her on a date.

In March 2019, the Scottsdale mosque fired Moftah after multiple reports of misconduct. He was promptly hired by the Islamic Community Center of Phoenix.

The Moftah report is only the second one made public by FACE, which Salem founded in 2017, aiming to tackle issues of accountability and abuse in American Islamic institutions. The first report, published in October, revealed the results of a yearlong investigation into allegations of sexual exploitation, clergy malpractice, and grooming of a young woman by Texas imam Zia ul-Haque Sheikh. That investigation concluded in a $2.5 million judgment for the victor, who had been counseled as a minor.

Jasser accused local media outlets of being in "a protective coma."

"Apparently the fact that a leading Scottsdale mosque that’s a hub for the Arizona Muslim Alliance (coalition of Phoenix mosques/schools) that had an imam that exposed our vulnerable community to predatory behavior is not worth covering?" Jasser added, bitterly. "

So tell me again this has nothing to do with their shariah supremacism, radicalism and affinity for radical imams like @SirajWahhaj

Apparently the fact that a leading Scottsdale mosque that’s a hub for the Arizona Muslim Alliance (coalition of Phoenix mosques/schools) that had an imam that exposed our vulnerable community to predatory behavior is not worth covering? #Bigotry while protecting #Islamists?

Reformers like Jasser seek to emphasize the compatibility between Islam and Western norms, pushing against Islamist interpretations of Sharia (Islamic law) that support jihadist violence, state enforcement of Islamic law, and the abuse of women. To reformers like Jasser, the stories about Moftah echo medieval Islam, which sanctioned sex slavery and polygamy. He fights against the Islamism that fueled the Islamic State to carry out similar atrocities and worse.

FACE does important work, and the media should cover it. Islamic institutions should protect women, not cover for alleged abusers like Moftah.

SOURCE 





Revealed: The Plan Behind the Transgender Assault on Parental Rights

Last week, a British journalist unearthed a document laying out the transgender movement's secretive strategy to seize control of governments, undermine parental rights, and target children for dangerous experimental drugs that lead to sterilization and genital mutilation. The document lays out a three-pronged strategy to victimize children when they are far too young to understand the ramifications of any hormone "treatment" or surgery.

As the Spectator's James Kirkup revealed, transgender activists attack parental rights by getting ahead of the government agenda, tying their issue to more popular movements to create a "veil of protection," and working in secret to "keep press coverage to a minimum." In this way, they use their status as a minority to manipulate the government into enacting policies that would be opposed by the majority.

Dentons, which claims to be the world's biggest law firm, crafted the report, working with Thomson Reuters Foundation and the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Youth & Student Organization (IGLYO). Both Dentons and the Thomson Reuters Foundation claim the document does not necessarily represent their views, but they helped draft it, nonetheless.

"Only Adults? Good Practices in Legal Gender Recognition for Youth" warns that parental rights can damage children's self-expression. "It is recognised that the requirement for parental consent or the consent of a legal guardian can be restrictive and problematic for minors," the document argues.

In this foundational assumption, IGLYO reveals its aim: to circumvent parental consent when it comes to transgender identity. "Restricting" a child's capacity for self-harm is an essential part of good parenting, and parents should have the right to protect their children from decisions that will damage them for the rest of their lives. No good father will allow his anorexic daughter to get liposuction, and no good mother will allow her son to cut off his arm or leg because he has body integrity disorder or identifies as an amputee.

Medical Expert: Doctors Are Actually Giving Trans Kids a Disease, and It's Child Abuse

Yet when it comes to transgender identity — which can push children toward "treatments" that actually introduce a disease to healthy bodies — the document urges the government to subvert parental rights.

"For example, states should take action against parents who are obstructing the free development of a young trans person’s identity in refusing to give parental authorisation when required," the document reads. Yes, this activist handbook drafted by an international law firm and backed by one of the world's largest charitable foundations directly aims to subvert parental rights through the power of the state.

Interestingly, the handbook pays lip service to politics and culture but takes direct aim at government policies. "While cultural and political factors play a key role in the approach to be taken, there are certain techniques that emerge as being effective in progressing trans rights in the 'good practice' countries," it states.

Kirkup zeroed in on three of the handbook's pieces of advice.

"Get ahead of the government agenda," the document advises. "In many of the NGO advocacy campaigns that we studied, there were clear benefits where NGOs managed to get ahead of the government and publish progressive legislative proposals before the government had time to develop their own."

Activist groups should effectively direct any reform, the handbook encourages. "NGOs need to intervene early in the legislative process and ideally before it has even started. This will give them far greater ability to shape the government agenda and the ultimate proposal than if they intervene after the government has already started to develop its own proposals."

Powerful activist groups like the Human Rights Campaign draft model legislation and regulations, pushing them on political leaders and government agencies. When then-Gov. Pat McCrory signed House Bill 2, reserving public restrooms on the basis of biological sex, five LGBT groups sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch. Shortly thereafter, Lynch's deputy, Vanita Gupta, sent a letter threatening to revoke North Carolina's federal funding for education unless it ceased its "discrimination" immediately.

LGBT activist groups had circumvented the culture and politics, going straight for government policy — and the Obama administration leapt at the opportunity to condemn a Republican governor.

The handbook also encourages transgender activists to "tie your campaign to more popular reform." Activists suggest tying the subversion of parental rights to the campaign for same-sex marriage.

"In Ireland, Denmark and Norway, changes to the law on legal gender recognition were put through at the same time as other more popular reforms such as marriage equality legislation," the document notes. "This provided a veil of protection, particularly in Ireland, where marriage equality was strongly supported, but gender identity remained a more difficult issue to win public support for."

Kirkup highlighted the phrases "veil of protection" and "difficult to win public support for." Transgender activists know their advocacy is unpopular, so they tie it to same-sex marriage. Many feminists — especially lesbians — have rightly balked at this. Women who oppose opening up their bathrooms, changing rooms, sexual abuse shelters, and prisons to biological men have rightly argued that it is not possible to distinguish between a man who truly identifies as female and a man who masquerades as transgender in order to spy on, assault, or even rape women in sex-segregated spaces.

Real-Life Victims of the Transgender 'Cult'

While Kirkup did not emphasize these points, the handbook also encourages the use of "human rights arguments" to spin the narrative, and urges activists to "de-medicalise the campaign." What does "de-medicalising" entail? According to the document, it "involves separating the legal gender recognition process from the public association with medical treatment or diagnoses." In other words, activists want the legal recognition that males are "women" even if they do not undergo hormone therapy or genital mutilation.

While medical "treatments" are often scarring and usually irreversible, transgender activists are not trying to protect people from these procedures so much as trying to muddy the waters on definitions. They want legal recognition of transgender identity regardless of anatomy — the very thing lesbian feminists warn against.

Activists seem to think that public support for transgender identity will curb the devastating suicide rates among people who suffer from gender confusion. Yet by advocating legal recognition without requiring any medical changes, they are opening the doors for abuse by provocateurs like Jessica Yaniv, a biological male who tried — and failed — to weaponize human rights laws to force women to wax his genitals.

Perhaps for these reasons, the handbook also encourages activists to "avoid excessive press coverage and exposure."

"Another technique which has been used to great effect is the limitation of press coverage and exposure. In certain countries, like the UK, information on legal gender recognition reforms has been misinterpreted in the mainstream media, and opposition has arisen as a result," the document warns. "Against this background, many believe that public campaigning has been detrimental to progress, as much of the general public is not well informed about trans issues, and therefore misinterpretation can arise."

"In Ireland, activists have directly lobbied individual politicians and tried to keep press coverage to a minimum in order to avoid this issue."

As Kirkup noted, this secretiveness is extremely revealing. "Actually convincing people that this stuff is a good idea doesn't feature much in the report, which runs to 65 pages."

Sure, the handbook is a tool for activists who are already on board with the mission. Even so, a reasonable observer might expect Dentons and Thomson Reuters to be at least partially concerned with convincing people on the merits, rather than attempting to foist transgender activism on an unconvinced populace.

Tragically, these attempts to circumvent the political and cultural debate are a central facet of transgender activism. Endocrinologists like Dr. Michael Laidlaw witnessed the transgender takeover of medical establishments, resulting in the perverse situation of pumping kids with hormones that introduce disease into otherwise healthy bodies. The very same disease many endocrinologists treat — hypogonadotropic hypogonadism, which involves the brain failing to send the right signals for proper hormone development — is being fostered in children by experimental drugs.

These issues have come to a head in the case of James Younger, the 7-year-old Texas boy whose mother claims he is a girl. As the handbook warned, more coverage of the case has bolstered the argument against transgender experimentation, as the boy's father has warned that the mother would subject the boy to dangerous drugs — and eventually genital mutilation. States are considering legislation to protect children in these cases, and that effort is likely to expand next year.

The secretive strategies in this handbook are particularly revealing. If Americans want to stand up for parental rights and the protection of children, perhaps the best strategy is to shine a light on transgender activism and to note that it is separate from and more pernicious than same-sex marriage.

SOURCE 





Australia: Neutral toilet plan could be flushed

The Queensland Labor party has always been fairly conservative and seems to be getting more so after the losses of Federal Labor in Queensland in the recent national elections

PREMIER Annastasia Palaszczuk says she will raise the issue of shared toilets at a new Brisbane high school with the Education Department, declaring boys and girls should have their own facilities.

Ms PalaszcZuk said the first she had heard of a plan to install gender-neutral facilities at the $80 million new Fortitude Valley State Secondary College was when she read it in The Sunday Mail.

"Look, I am happy to talk to the department about that," she said. "I think in our high schools we should have facilities available for both boys and girls." Asked whether she had a problem with the plan, she said "I will be making it very clear that you should have toilets for boys and girls."

Ms Palaszczuk, Who established an anti-bullying task-force last year, was asked whether she had concerns over bullying or other problem behaviours that could flourish in shared bathrooms. "Like I said, there has to be toilets for girls and toilets for boys."

Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington said young, impressionable teens needed privacy and protection. "I'm a mum of three teenage girls and it's deeply concerning to think that a 12-year-old girl would be in the same bathroom as a 17-year-old (boy)", she said. "When it comes to fitting out the bathrooms at schools, we need to make sure that girls have their bathrooms and boys have their bathrooms."

From the Brisbane Courier mail of 9 December, 2019

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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. 

************************************




10 December, 2019

Father fed-up with Snow White's traditional  message rewrites the fairytale with a VERY woke twist - including women dwarfs and NO happily ever after

One can see his point to a degree but the traditional tale reflects basic realities which remain important:  Beauty is influential; step-parents CAN be hurtful; simple people can be kind and girls DO seek a strong protector to bind to themselves.  The only shame these days is that strong protectors are a bit hard to find.

A father has re-written Snow White after being concerned that the original taught his daughter her 'self-worth revolves around beauty'.

Author Stephan Kalinski, 38, of Berlin, took it upon himself to rework the classic tale after revisiting them at bedtime with his daughter Lena, now five.

With some clever tweaks to the plot, Mr Kalinski transformed Snow White from helpless princess to empowered heroine.

And there is no 'happily ever after' with a handsome prince, instead the pair end the book as friends with plans to travel the world. 

He said: 'While reading Snow White to my daughter, she was about three-and-a-half, at the time and loved this story.

'Something really struck me. Snow White is about good vs. evil but essentially, I am teaching her that it is important for you (as a girl) to be pretty and that your self-worth revolves around beauty, doing housework and that she should wait to be saved.

'That felt really wrong and I do not want her to grow up believing that what is important in her life is how she looks. I therefore started changing the word "fairest" to "brave" while reading.'

Mr Kalinski then started to change the print so that his daughter could follow the story with him.

He continued: 'Fairy tales are such a powerful messenger for the little ones.  'I see my kids sitting and staring at books and the images inside of them and you can feel them soaking up the information and believing every word written in them. That is so incredibly powerful, especially at such a young age.'

In Mr Kalinski's version, published this week, brave Snow White conquers her fear of heights to become the 'bravest of them all'.

The wicked Queen becomes jealous when Snow White outdoes her in bravery, and asks a hunter to kill her and to bring back her heart.

The hunter, a friend of Snow White, ties her to a tree, but the young girl escapes. When Snow White bites the apple and 'dies,' a Prince comes, and stumbles upon her see-through coffin in the forest.

He does not kiss the princess but instead trips against the coffin, disturbing Snow White and dislodging the piece of apple that had been stuck in her throat.

The heroine still meets the Seven Dwarfs - renamed Sabrina, Akashi, Shakti, Leila, Egbo, Li and Thiago - but each represent a different ethnicity and both men are women are represented.

It was a conscious choice from Kalinski to introduce diverse characters to the tale. 'Fairy tales give you the chance to teach kids about important values and I think diversity is simply not addressed nearly enough,' he said. 'It is such an important concept and I really want my children to grow up valuing it.

'These stories have become so well known around the world that it was time to make them more representative of the children reading them.'

At the end, the prince and Snow are not romantically involved, nor do they life 'happily ever after,' instead, they go travel the world, one of Snow White's dearest wishes.

The book comes with beautiful illustrations from Claudioa Piras. Kalinki added that all the images were vetted by his own daughter. 'She loves painting and all illustrations in the book have been officially approved by her and her brother,' he said.

SOURCE 





‘Powerful Interests on the Left Want to Shrink Freedom of Religion,’

Sen. Mitch McConnell  (Mitch McConnell is the Senate majority leader and the senior Republican senator from Kentucky)

I want to take a moment to help clarify why I and millions of other Americans care so much about having federal judges who believe in the radical notion that words matter and that a judge’s job is to follow the law and the Constitution.

Take, for one example, the subject of religious freedom.

The liberty of conscience and the freedom to live out our faiths has been a foundational principle from the Republic’s earliest days. Many of the first Europeans who arrived in the New World came here fleeing religious persecution.

James Madison wrote that religion “must be left to the conviction and conscience of every man, and it is the right of every man to exercise it as these may dictate.”

Samuel Adams said in the summer of 1776 that America would be “the last asylum” for “freedom of thought and the right of private judgment.”

Let me contrast the understanding of the Founders, with a couple of current events. Last month, New York State convinced a district judge to throw out the Trump administration’s conscience protection rule for health care providers.

This straightforward rule ensured health care workers could not be forced to perform or assist with medical procedures that profoundly violate their religious beliefs.

But the radical Democrats in New York could not abide this basic protection for people of faith. Instead, they want to force Christians and other people of faith who work in health care to either assist in procedures like abortion, or lose their jobs. So much for freedom of conscience.

New York’s behavior is part of a disturbing trend. Powerful interests on the left want to shrink freedom of religion until it means “freedom to go to church for an hour on Sundays as long as it doesn’t impact the rest of your life.”

That shrunken interpretation is nothing like what our Founders intended. And, candidly, I’m not sure how much longer the modern Democratic Party will even believe in that.

A few months ago, a Democrat running for president told CNN that government should take away the tax-exempt status of churches and religious institutions that disagree with left-wing positions. This was not some fringe candidate; it was a guy whom Democrats and the mainstream media had likened to John F. Kennedy. Openly suggesting the federal government should punish churches if liberals don’t like their social views.

That’s appalling. These disturbing signs have not been limited to the courts or the Democratic campaign trail. Absurd anti-religious arguments have appeared right here in the Senate.

In the last several years, some of our Democratic colleagues have tried literally to impose religious tests on nominees for federal office. Just take the No Religious Test Clause and the First Amendment and throw them right out the window.

Judge Brian Buescher, now a district judge in Nebraska, was attacked by two Democrats on the Judiciary Committee for being a faithful Catholic and a member of the mainstream, worldwide Catholic group the Knights of Columbus.

In written questions, one senator called standard Catholic teachings “extreme positions” and asked if he’d dial down his personal faith practice if confirmed.

As our colleague Sen. [Ben] Sasse observed at the time, Democrats were transparently implying that “Brian’s religious beliefs, and his affiliation with this Catholic, religious, fraternal organization, might make him unfit for service … [it’s] plainly unconstitutional.”

Judge Amy Coney Barrett, now a circuit judge on the 7th Circuit, was likewise subjected to a religious test during a confirmation hearing.

One Democrat senator literally asked: “Do you consider yourself an orthodox Catholic?” Another offered this bizarre and ominous remark: “The dogma lives loudly within you, and that’s a concern.”

So, look—these warning signs on religious freedom are popping up everywhere the modern political left rears its head.

Religious freedom in America has never meant, and will never mean, solely the freedom to worship privately. It has never meant, and will never mean, the ability to practice only a subset of faiths acceptable to some subset of politicians.

It means the right to live your life according to the dictates of your faith and conscience—free from government coercion.  

If those statements strike anybody in this chamber as remotely controversial, that is exactly why President Trump, Senate Republicans, and millions of Americans are focused on confirming federal judges who will apply our Constitution as it was originally understood.

SOURCE 






French parliament decides anti-Zionism is antisemitism

Anti-Zionism is a form of antisemitism, France’s National Assembly determined on Tuesday, voting on a resolution calling on the government to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism.The motion proposed by lawmaker Sylvain Maillard of LREM, President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist party passed 154-72 in the parliament’s lower house.

“For some years now, France, the whole of Europe, but also almost all Western democracies are facing a rise in antisemitism,” the resolution states. “Anti-Zionist acts can at times hide antisemitic realities. Hate toward Israel due to its perception as a Jewish collective is akin to hatred toward the entire Jewish community.”In France today, “dirty Zionist… means dirty Jew,” Maillard told La Croix.The IHRAdefinition says some forms of hatred against Israel are antisemitic, such as comparing Israel to Nazi Germany, claiming Israel’s existence is a racist endeavor, and using classic antisemitic claims and symbols to characterize Israel and Israelis.Maillard’s resolution was highly controversial and debated in the French media in recent weeks. A letter from 39 organizations penned in October said that antisemitism should not be defined separately from other forms of racism, and that the motion stifles freedom of expression for supporters of Palestinians and critics of Israel.Meyer Habib, a lawmaker from the Union of Democrats Party representing French expats in several countries, including Israel, spoke in support of the resolution in the National Assembly on Tuesday.

“The French policy to fight antisemitism is a failure,” Habib said. “There is an outbreak of antisemitic assaults. Twelve French citizens were murdered since 2003 because they were Jewish. Half of the racist incidents in France are against Jews, even though [Jews] are less than 1% of the population.“Israel is the Jewish people’s only assurance of safety,” he added.Anti-Zionists are not just critics of Israel, Habib explained, they are obsessed. They use anti-racist and anti-colonialist rhetoric to try to erase Jewish identity.“The new antisemitism is flourishing on the background of hatred of Israel, Islamism and conspiracy theories,” said Habib. “I am concerned for Jews but I am mainly worried about France… Do I need to remind you of the slogans of the yellow vest [protesters]? ‘Macron equals Rothschild equals Zion,’ ‘Macron is a whore of the Jews.’ Wake up!”

Earlier this year, Macron called anti-Zionism “one of the current forms of antisemitism,” following an attack on French Jewish philosopher Alain Finkelkraut by participants in the yellow vest anti-government protests. The demonstrators called him a “dirty Zionist” and told him to “go back to Tel Aviv.”

SOURCE 





Australia: Cuddle-a-koala charity event to raise money for farmers is cancelled after Animal Justice Party said animals shouldn't be used to raise money for industry that kills livestock

A charity event organised to raise funds for struggling farmers has been cancelled after outrage from animal rights activists. 

The Cuddle-a-koala event was organised by members of Shoalhaven Zoo, on the south coast of NSW, at Warrawong Plaza for Saturday, Tuesday and Thursday.

The fundraiser would allow people to cuddle koalas and pat them while donating a gold coin for farmers suffering in drought conditions.

The money would go to the 'buy a bale' campaign to assist farmers in purchasing food for their animals.

Animal Justice Party Illawarra regional group leader Julie Power said the event would 'traumatise' the animals. 'Koalas are wild animals,' she told The Illawarra Mercury.  'They should not be wheeled out in front of large crowds to be touched, poked and prodded for profit, no matter the cause.

'It must also be recognised that this event promotes traumatising animals to raise money for the cruel animal agriculture industry, who we know abuse and slaughter animals on a daily basis.

'Events such as this don't provide meaningful or natural interaction.' 

On Friday, the zoo announced the event was cancelled due to 'unforeseen circumstances'. 'Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances we have had to cancel our Koala experience,' they wrote on Facebook.

'We are still holding our Buy a Bale fundraiser to raise money for our drought stricken farmers. 'So if you would like to donate and put your hay bale sticker on the wall visit Concierge this weekend.'

A spokeswoman would not confirm to the publication that the cancellation was due to the criticism from the animal rights activists.

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 December, 2019

Are facts white nationalist?

Ann Coulter at her sarcastic best:

I gather it would be proof positive of “white nationalism” to point out that the only group discriminated against in college admissions is white people.

We’ve heard a lot about discrimination against Asians lately, which reminds me: Asians are SO lucky they’re not white! Otherwise, America’s leading hate group, the Southern Poverty Law Center, would be churning out reports on the worrying rise in Asian Supremacy.

In fact, however, a recent study by Georgetown University (probably White Nationalist), funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (presumed hate group), found that if colleges admitted students based solely on SAT scores, every single ethnic group would decline, except one: whites.

Yes, even fewer Asian students would be admitted on an SAT-only admission standard. (I presume this is because Asians have better GPAs than white students.)

Obviously, this was NOT the purpose of the study. I’m pretty sure it was supposed to ferret out some small pocket of racism that had somehow passed undenounced. But when the only race being discriminated against turned out to be whites, the study was locked in a lead casket and dropped to the bottom of the sea.

This isn’t a new phenomenon: The New York Times was writing about it 30 years ago. In the late 1980s, whites were about 62 percent of California’s high school graduates, but constituted only 45 percent of those admitted to its universities. As a university official told the Times, “Whites are the only group underrepresented.”

Today, the Times would be tracking down that official to make sure he was fired.

The lie of “white privilege” is treated as an implacable fact throughout our cultural institutions, no matter how manifestly absurd it is. Thus, in the discredited book “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh,” authors Robin Pogrebin and Kate Kelly act as if a half-Puerto Rican girl entering Yale in the 1980s deserves a place in the civil rights pantheon along with the Little Rock Nine.

[If it seems like that is the only New York Times article I’ve read this year, it practically is. Every counterfactual, hateful, lunatic impulse of the left was contained in that single book excerpt, so it’s all you need.]

The authors write: “Yale in the 1980s was in the early stages of integrating more minority students into its historically privileged white male population. The college had admitted its first black student in the 1850s, but by [Debbie] Ramirez’s time there, people of color comprised less than a fifth of the student body."

How many POCs do Pogrebin and Kelly think should have been at Yale? According to the U.S. Census, the country barely reached 20 percent minority by the end of the 1980s. By miraculous coincidence, the ethnic composition of the Yale student body matched the country exactly. It’s almost as if the university was basing admissions on strict ethnic quotas!

It’s said that every generation thinks it invented sex. I say, every generation thinks it invented race and gender consciousness. Pogrebin and Kelly claim that “college campuses of the 1980s had yet to be galvanized by the identity and sexual politics that course through today’s cultural debates.”

Were they both in a coma in the 1980s?

In 1987, the year Ramirez and Kavanaugh graduated from Yale, Jesse Jackson led hundreds of protesters in a march on Stanford University chanting “Hey hey ho ho! Western Civ has got to go!”

The following year, the Times reported on a decades-long assault on the accepted canon of great literature as merely the choices of “elitist” “white men.”

Throughout the period that the authors imagine Yale was wall-to-wall white privilege, our media produced daily “Racism Updates,” leading to Joe Sobran’s parody of a New York Times headline: Earthquake Destroys New York; Women and Minorities Hit Hardest.

If Ramirez had applied to Yale Law School after college, she would have had a five times better chance of being admitted than a white applicant like Kavanaugh -- simply because she had one Puerto Rican parent.

Talk about privilege!

This is based on a massive study of law school admissions in the 1990s conducted by Linda F. Wightman -- again, intended to prove the opposite of what it actually did prove. Her study fell into the hands of Stephan Thernstrom, who analyzed the data, and his results were published in the New York University Law Review in 1998. (WHITE SUPREMACISTS, ALL!)

With the same grades and scores, Puerto Ricans were 5.3 times more likely to be admitted to a top-tier law school like Yale than a white applicant. Every ethnic group except whites got a boost -- African Americans, Asians, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and “Other Hispanic.” The more prestigious the law school, the stronger the preferences.

To every color in the rainbow coalition: YOU’RE NOT BLACK! Affirmative action is supposed to be for the descendants of American slaves. See? We owe them something. Nobody else. Without the legacy of slavery, affirmative action is just institutionalized anti-white racism.

By now, race discrimination against whites is de rigueur. Forget being embarrassed, this is race discrimination with attitude. And it’s all justified by the nonsensical phrase: “white privilege.”

If you mention it -- citing such white nationalist front groups as Georgetown University, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, The New York Times and the New York University Law Review -- you, too, could be a white nationalist.

SOURCE 





The Disgraceful Campaign against the Salvation Army

Damaging photos of Pete Buttigieg have surfaced — ringing a bell for the Salvation Army.

The images of the South Bend, Ind., mayor and Democratic presidential candidate participating in the Red Kettle Ring Off, a friendly competition between officials from South Bend and nearby Mishawaka over who can raise more for the Salvation Army during a day of bell-ringing, date from 2017.

The gay publication Out reported them as if it had broken a major, or at least a noteworthy, story. “Pete Buttigieg Volunteered for the Homophobic Salvation Army,” read the headline. The piece noted, accusingly, that it’s “something he’s apparently been doing for years. He also held a mayoral event at a Salvation Army center in South Bend last year.”

If you think that volunteering for an organization that is raising funds to provide food and housing, among many other services, for the needy is an inherently praiseworthy act, you haven’t been following the woke left-wing activists cutting a swath through American culture.

Any institution, no matter how storied or how generous, is subject to a punitive campaign of social ostracism that is often highly effective. In today’s environment, what seems preposterous one moment is inevitable the next, and after one target is ground into submission, another is quickly found.

The Salvation Army would seem a bridge too far. Its red kettles are iconic, as much a part of Christmas as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or “Miracle on 34th Street.” During the heavily commercial Christmas season, the red kettles are a token of charity and fellow feeling. It takes a perverse worldview not to have fond feelings about this tradition, which is spectacularly successful on its own terms, raising almost $150 million a year.

But the commissars of political correctness aren’t amused, and don’t let sentimentality interfere with their dictates.

They’ve already accomplished what would a few years ago have been considered impossible — bullying the explicitly Christian restaurant chain Chick-fil-A out of its donations to the Salvation Army. The army is now so radioactive that the pop singer Ellie Goulding threatened to cancel a halftime performance at the Dallas Cowboys game on Thanksgiving, kicking off the red-kettle campaign, over the group’s alleged anti-gay bigotry.

The first thing to know about the Salvation Army is that it is a church, founded by the Methodist preacher William Booth. He started his Salvation Army, with military ranks for its clergy, to reach the hungry and the needy through service. With more than 1.5 million members and a presence in roughly 130 countries, it is a spectacular example of, as Billy Graham once put it, “Christianity in action.”

As such, it obviously reflects Christian morality. “Soldiers, the core group among members,” one religious writer explained, “take covenant vows that cover doctrine, loyalty, willingness to evangelize and help the needy, and clean living (no alcohol, drugs, gambling, pornography or profanity).” The army’s position that marriage should be between a man and a woman isn’t an exotic invention, but standard Christian teaching.

The idea that the Salvation Army has an anti-gay animus stems largely from its opposition to anti-discrimination laws that it worried would impinge on its conscience rights, and criticism over its policies regarding transgender people (especially the practice of some places of assigning people to male or female facilities depending on their gender at birth). The organization has made clear again and again, though, that its services are available to all.

Commenting on the scandalous Buttigieg bell-ringing images, the press secretary for the left-wing Alliance for Justice opined, “I know the photos are two years old, but still, I can’t help but wonder if Mayor Pete just looks at what LGBTQ activists have been working on for years and then chooses to spite it.” Or perhaps he was rational and broad-minded enough to appreciate the massive good done by one of the most admirable institutions in the country.

SOURCE 






Terror is stalking our streets but it has NOTHING to do with ISIS

An unusual viewpoint from Peter Hitchens:

A crazy man kills innocent people and within minutes everyone, from Scotland Yard to the BBC, is saying it is Islamist terror. But is this true?

Please explain to me, if you can, how the actions of Usman Khan could possibly have advanced any cause.

His victims were gentle academic people of the sort who tend to play down warnings that Islam is dangerous to our society.

By killing them he did not make Islamic rule more likely. On the contrary, by evoking the disgust and pity of millions, he made life harder for his fellow Muslims, not least the peaceful ones who do not share his anger.

I prefer to think about things rather than rush into judgment about them. I read very carefully all the accounts of Khan’s miserable life and death.

His original terror conviction was, in fact, based on some very stupid and nasty things he had said or discussed. He had not killed anyone or built a bomb.

It seems very clear he was deliberately seeking to be shot by police.

By killing them he did not make Islamic rule more likely. On the contrary, by evoking the disgust and pity of millions, he made life harder for his fellow Muslims, not least the peaceful ones who do not share his anger    +4
By killing them he did not make Islamic rule more likely. On the contrary, by evoking the disgust and pity of millions, he made life harder for his fellow Muslims, not least the peaceful ones who do not share his anger

Just before he went crazy with knives, he is alleged to have shouted he had a bomb, when he did not.

Two separate witnesses of his last moments, who watched the awful scene from buses on London Bridge, recounted that he pulled his coat back to reveal what looked like a suicide belt, so leaving police with no real choice but to kill him in case it was real.

But what had turned him from a fairly normal schoolboy into the bloodthirsty braggart who was sent to prison?

And then into an unhinged person who murdered benevolent strangers and contrived to get the police to shoot him dead?

I looked for the usual explanation, and found it. I found it in a throwaway line that the writer of the article had not thought especially important.

After dropping out of school, Khan ‘started hanging around with drug gangs’.

Somehow, I suspect this involved consuming the product. And I would be amazed if the product was not marijuana – whose use is increasingly associated with severe mental illness and violent crime.

As in so many of these stories, if you read a long way down, this was when his personality changed.

The previous wimp and bully’s victim was now a death-and-glory preacher. A former classmate ‘could not believe the change in Khan when he saw him preaching on the streets’.

I have looked into the background of almost every mass killer in the USA, Japan, France and Britain in recent years. It is astonishing how many of them turn out to be abusers of marijuana.

Quite a lot of crazy people – the Leytonstone knifeman, Muhaydin Mire, is an example of this – latch on to religious or political causes to make themselves feel more important and less lonely.

Mire was an undoubted marijuana user. He was so off his head that he genuinely believed that Anthony Blair was his guardian angel. His family had repeatedly begged the authorities to take him into some sort of care.

But those authorities did nothing, as they often do nothing about the severely mentally ill.

He had to stab someone, and shout some meaningless political slogan, before they acted. And then they ridiculously pretended he was a terrorist.

Alas, there are alarming numbers of people on the streets of this country now, out of their minds thanks to supposedly ‘soft’ marijuana, who will not be locked up until it is too late.

Most of these cases barely rate a mention, outside local papers.

But when they can be categorised as ‘Islamist terror’, they barge their way on to front pages and news bulletins. And we then totally miss the point of them.

The real terror in this country today is marijuana, an illegal drug the police have stopped even trying to control, with terrible effects on increasing numbers of its users.

This will become appallingly clear in the years to come.

The question is, will it become clear in time to prevent the legalisation of this drug, now sought by one of the greediest, richest and most cynical lobbies in human history?

SOURCE 





Activism and emotion pale beside science and reason

What Greg Sheridan writes below is pretty right -- with one exception. He writes as if "we" are involved in all the current chaotic events.  But that is precisely wrong. None of the current irrationality is the doing of conservatives.  It is entirely the doing of the Left. Conservatives just stand aside and watch in horror at it all.

The challenge for us all is to work out what has corroded the rational faculties of the left.  That will not be easy.  All we can certainly tell is that it is deeply emotional.  Is it despair at the abject failure of all their past initiatives to bring about a new Eden?


Here’s the punch line — political culture in the West has become so crazy that in the pursuit of love and justice people increasingly practise hate and violence.

In a sign of the deepening political crisis in Western culture, strikes and protests crippled most of France on Friday. The protesters were upset that the government might marginally raise the retirement age. These are successor mobilisations to the Yellow Vest protests a year ago in which hundreds of thousands of people paralysed and vandalised the French capital. Emmanuel Macron was going to implement a small fuel price increase as part of combating climate change.

The French protests illustrate the broader cultural crisis of Western politics in two specific ways. First, it is core religious dogma of all progressives that radical action must be taken to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Activists never level with people that this must mean drastically reduced living standards. So when inevitably climate action explicitly reduces living standards, the public rebels.

Second, the French protests ­illustrate a deeper element of the Western crisis: a new contempt for the processes of politics and reasoned decision-making. There is contempt especially for election results that progressives don’t like, and a deep belief that all such ­results are corrupt in themselves and, in any event, partake of an ­inferior morality to the overriding morality of the progressive cause.

There are plenty of anti-democratic tendencies on the right, ­especially among the deadly fringe of white supremacists, anti-Semites and racists generally on the far right. But it is the progressive world view that is promulgated in state education systems across the West — from preschool to university — and in state-owned broadcasters, and in the Hollywood-dominated entertainment industry and in most mass media (with honourable exceptions).

These progressive causes range from climate change through the gender politics agenda, the redress of past racial injustice, aggressive secularism intent on removing ­religion from the public square, ­intersectional identity crusades through income and wealth redistribution and ending inequality.

There is some measure of justice in all these causes. But their most ardent proponents take them to unreasonable, at times insane, extremes. And, most important, their champions see them as so morally transcendent as to justify breaking all the rules of democratic politics, as justifying physical direct action as well as the foulest abuse imaginable.

This is a deep crisis in Western political culture and Australia is experiencing it fully. Let me offer some examples. Conservative senator Cory Bernardi retired from the Senate this week and warmly thanked the Australian Federal Police for their help over the years. Bernardi is not an extremist. He also does not claim any victim status. But it turns out people have come to his home making threats, his wife has been subject to vicious texting abuse, people have threatened savage violence against him and the schools his kids attended. This sort of thing goes on across the board ideologically.

The three causes that excited the most abuse for Bernardi were his opposition to same-sex marriage, his opposition to strong ­action on climate change and his criticisms of Islamism, although the latter was by far the least of it.

Gerard Henderson is a distinguished columnist on this newspaper. Among many subjects he considers, he has written lucidly and at length, and in a vein similar to lawyers and scholars, about aspects of the legal judgments against George Pell, who was convicted of child sexual ­assault offences. Pell asserts his innocence and his appeal will be heard in the High Court next year.

Louise Milligan, an ABC journalist who wrote a book attacking Pell that has been criticised by Henderson, among others, for ­alleged factual problems, tweeted that Henderson was “a vile bully” and was involved in “pedophile protecting”. Not by the wildest ­interpretation could you construe anything Henderson has ever written as sympathetic to or protecting pedophiles. Yet if you didn’t read Henderson’s columns and only saw Milligan’s tweets, you would form a wildly inaccurate view of him. And yet Milligan is a mainstream journalist. Her ­offensive tweets are a minor example of the way a sense of righteous rage blinds activists to considerations of fairness, civility or keeping in touch with reality.

These examples are straws in the wind. There are thousands upon thousands of others. Sam Roggeveen of the Lowy Institute has written an interesting short book, Our Very Own Brexit. He diagnoses, correctly, a certain “hollowing out” of our political system, a loss of faith in it. Where he is seriously mistaken is in concluding this is likely to produce ­triumphant right-wing populism that would be expressed through one side of politics wanting to end immigration to Australia.

Right-wing and left-wing populism end up being very similar, but left-wing extremism is much more pervasive in Western societies than right-wing extremism. Jeremy Corbyn is, according to numerous polls, just a “regulation polling error” (as British journalist Liam Halligan puts it) from becoming prime minister next week, with all his decades of support for terrorists, anti-Semites, dictators and communists. There is nothing remotely equivalent on the right.

The movement most likely to produce extremism in our politics is green activism. We have seen in the Occupy Wall Street, farm ­invasion and Extinction Rebellion demonstrations a contempt for normal politics, a determination to take direct action and a settled conviction that mere democratic election confers no legitimacy on a government. And the accompanying conviction that anyone who opposes these movements justifies extreme rhetorical, and sometimes physical, attack.

John Anderson, former deputy prime minister and long-time cattle farmer, thinks there is every chance extremism on climate change will hurt Australia economically, blight the future of young people and polarise and coarsen our politics, without doing anything to help the planet.

One of Anderson’s great qualities is balance and restraint, qualities little esteemed in this moment of cultural derangement. He tells me: “On climate, we have to adopt a mixture of mitigation and adaptation. But the world is not going to end. Internationally, grain prices are low because production keeps rising ahead of demand.”

Feeding the world, he says, causes 30 per cent of global emissions. Should we stop feeding the world? Anderson surprises me with his priority policy prescription: “Reducing food waste would be our most important contribution. Australia wastes something like 40 per cent of the food it produces and uses.”

What a wonderfully unglamorous, unromantic, undramatic, practical thing it is we really need to do — stop wasting food.

“There is an effort to delegitimise our industry,” he says. “The problem is the debate has moved from science and reason to one of political activism and emotion. People are involved in these campaigns with very different agendas.

“It involves a lot of people who have come to loathe our culture and our history and think capitalism and profits are dirty words. This overlooks the enormous positive contribution of the West.

“Competition and innovation in business, combined with a lot of compassion, have contributed to reducing the proportion of malnourished people in the world from 40 to 50 per cent 50 years ago, to 15 per cent now. Life expectancy has doubled. Education has kept increasing.”

Farmers, he says, care passionately about the climate and the mix of policies he would like to see focuses on better farming, less ­dependency in farming on fossil fuels, greater carbon sequestration and a reduction in energy intensity in feeding the world. (Though he says we must recognise no carbon reduction policy of ours will have any effect on droughts or fires.)

These are gradual, ameliorative measures of the type Western ­societies have undertaken in confronting countless problems before, but they won’t fire a demon­stration, cause anyone to glue themselves to the road, invade a farm, threaten a politician’s family, so they stand against the perversities of the zeitgeist.

Ideology and emotion are everywhere destroying good policy options. Says Anderson: “Every scientist will tell you that one of the most valuable transition fuels we have is gas, but we’ve allowed the Greens to demonise even gas.

“Gas could save us from exporting our industries to places that use energy far less efficiently and will produce much greater greenhouse gas emissions. We could easily end up de-industrialising Australia without doing anything to lower emissions on the planet.”

Anderson draws deeper cultural lessons: “Our young people have been trained to rely on their emotions rather than facts.”

Modern education and culture, he thinks, tell young people that the world is divided between completely good people and completely bad people, and “climate change hysteria could be the tipping point for Western societies”.

How we got to this point is a huge intellectual debate. Many writers see the loss of religion, the loss of unifying transcendent ­belief, as key.

Os Guinness in Last Shout for Liberty argues the West is still ­adjudicating the conflict between the American Revolution, which was a conservative movement to allow citizens to pursue lives of virtue and tradition with minimum interference from the state, and the French Revolution, which empowered the state to do anything.

We need to break free of the syndrome that now grips the West, of ever greater protest, ever more vitriol, ever feebler politics held in ever greater contempt.

Oh, and ever greater competition from rising nations untroubled by these complexes.

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 December, 2019

Measles-stricken Samoa arrests vocal anti-vaxxer for telling officials to 'enjoy your killing spree' amid two-day shutdown to give islanders MMR jabs in outbreak that has killed 63 people

Samoan authorities have arrested an anti-vaxxer amid a measles crisis that has killed at least 63 people on the Pacific island.

Edwin Tamasese allegedly told health authorities – who have launched a mass immunisation drive – to ‘enjoy your killing spree’.

He has now been charged with incitement against a government order, as officials have warned fellow anti-vaxxers: ‘Don’t get in the way.’

Mr Tamasese’s arrest comes after the United Nations yesterday blamed anti-vaxx propaganda for the unprecedented measles epidemic.

Almost 4,400 cases – one in every 50 people – have been recorded since the outbreak of the killer infection began last month.

Samoa, home to just 200,000 people, has since declared a state of emergency as health bosses desperately try to contain the epidemic.

The island is currently on a two-day shutdown, with the usually bustling capital city transformed into an eerie ghost town.

Islanders have been told to stay indoors while emergency workers go door-to-door to give all unvaccinated residents the MMR jab.

Mr Tamasese, who wrongly claims quack remedies such as papaya leaf extracts can treat measles, was arrested after an unnamed member of the public complained.

Samoa’s Office of the Attorney General said the complaint alleged Mr Tamasese said: ‘I’ll be here to mop up your mess. Enjoy your killing spree.’

Officials said they acted after he ignored previous warnings to stop his campaign. Mr Tamasese has no medical training.

In a final post on Thursday before his arrest, he described the vaccination drive as ‘the greatest crime against our people’ and said vitamin C would save children.

He also shared a picture of what appears to be him in the back of a vehicle being driven by two men in blue uniforms.

It was posted with the caption: ‘Well its come to this. All the parents I have have helped sorry I couldn’t do more [sic].’

The post had more than 7,000 shares, comments or interactions. The Samoa Observer reports that Mr Tamasese could face two years in jail.

Stuff reports the charge comes under the 2013 Crimes Act, which makes it illegal to incite hostility against Samoan authorities that may spark protests.

Communications Minister Afamasaga Rico Tupai said anti-vaxxers spreading conspiracy theories were hindering the unprecedented public health mobilisation.

‘The anti-vaxxers unfortunately have been slowing us down,’ he told TVNZ. And he warned anti-vaxxers: ‘Don’t get in the way, don’t contribute to the deaths.

‘We've had children who have passed away after coming to the hospital as a last resort and then we find out the anti-vaccine message has got to their families.’

Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi said Thursday - the first day of the shutdown - was a success, with 17,500 people receiving their jabs.

SOURCE 





Kamala Harris and the Democrats’ identity crack-up

Why Harris’s woke posturing just didn’t wash with the public.

In theory, Kamala Harris was the perfect presidential candidate for today’s Democratic Party. She is black, female and popular in California, the deepest blue of the Democratic blue states. She would be ideally positioned, some said, to reunite the ‘Obama coalition’, which brought together African-Americans and college-educated whites.

The reality, however, was nothing like that. Harris, who was once among the top contenders to be the Democrats’ nominee for president, watched her support fall to a low of three per cent in the polls. Her campaign staff were bickering and telling-all to the New York Times, and her bank account was running out of money. Yesterday, she dropped out of the race.

A few weeks ago, Harris suggested that she was being penalised for her identity, questioning if ‘is America ready for a woman and a woman of colour to be president of the United States?’. Now, after her campaign has ended, identity-focused Democrats are worried about what Harris’s demise says about the party’s image. ‘You have to recognise that going from the most diverse field ever in January to a potentially all-white debate stage in December is catastrophic’, tweeted Leah Greenberg, co-executive director of Indivisible, a national progressive group.

But, if anything, Harris benefited from her identity, rather than being a victim of it. She was elevated and celebrated by Democrats and the media because of her skin colour and sex, well beyond what her political talents and track record justified. In a country that elected a black man (Barack Obama) twice, and gave the highest number of votes to a woman (Hillary Clinton) in the last presidential election, there are no grounds to say the American people are ‘not ready’ for a woman of colour.

Harris’s ‘not ready’ comment was really an attempt to blame the voters for her own failings. Implicitly, she was suggesting that the country is racist. Yet it was black voters who didn’t find her appealing. In particular, Harris was unable to wrest blacks from supporting Joe Biden in South Carolina and other states. Even in her base in Oakland, California, which has a significant black population who know her well, she was in fourth place. It seems that black voters don’t conform to Democratic strategists’ condescending view that they will vote with their skin colour.

The truth is that Harris was a dull and lacklustre candidate. Attractive and photogenic, yes, but the problems started as soon as she opened her mouth. She would speak in platitudes that would make your eyes glaze over, then laugh too hard and for too long at her own unfunny jokes. She was prone to bust out in cringe-inducing dance moves. She came across as artificial and stiff, in an era that prizes authenticity.

These personality flaws were outward reflections of a deeper problem. Harris simply did not appear to know what she stood for, or even why she was running. She sought to pander to all of the Democratic Party’s factions, and ended up unable to connect with any.

She established a trademark for vacillation. At a CNN town hall in January, in an off-the-cuff remark, she said she supported the complete elimination of private health insurance. But she then reversed her position, saying she no longer supported Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All legislation (even though she was an original co-sponsor), and later unveiled a plan that would provide some aspects of Medicare but maintain private insurance.

Similarly, she made a big splash at the June debate by attacking Biden on his record regarding race and school bussing in the 1970s. ‘I do not believe you are a racist’, she said to Biden, but of course she was accusing him of racism. But in the days after the debate, she waffled about her own views on bussing, and seemed to retreat. She eventually admitted she didn’t support the federal government mandating that black kids get bussed to schools in white districts – which just happened to be Biden’s position in the 1970s.

She also could never figure out how to present her record as a former prosecutor in California. At first, she claimed her history as prosecutor was an advantage, and meant she could ‘prosecute Trump’. But, as she came under criticism from Democrats, in April she apologised for anti-truancy policies and claimed she was a criminal-justice reformer.

But that didn’t put the issue to rest. In a July debate, Tulsi Gabbard devastatingly listed Harris’s draconian policies as prosecutor: ‘There are too many examples to cite but she put over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations and then laughed about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She blocked evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until the courts forced her to do so. She kept people in prison beyond their sentences to use them as cheap labour for the state of California, and she fought to keep a cash bail system in place that impacts poor people in the worst kind of way.’

Time and again, Harris would pander to the Twitter-based left of the party – embracing Medicare for All, calling out Biden for racism, claiming she was a criminal-justice reformer – without success. She didn’t have the track record to make her recent conversions sound convincing, especially to the woke, who demand purity. At the same time, she discovered that basing policies on Twitter likes did not translate into voting support with the bulk of the party, and her newfound wokeness was turning off the rest of her potential voters. So, she frantically sought to move back to her old positions — again, without success.

She clearly thought she could navigate the different factions within the Democratic Party and win each of them over. But that proved impossible for her.

There is an objective reason why that is difficult to do today: the generally moderate black voters and the ‘beer track’ white working-class voters remaining within the Democratic Party have little in common with the woke cultural left and the well-off upper-middle classes on the coasts. These divisions are surfacing in the Democratic presidential primary contest, and partially explain why support is spread across many candidates, with no strong frontrunner. As Ronald Brownstein has noted, ‘Only two months before the first voting begins in Iowa, the principal components of the Democratic coalition are fragmenting, with such key demographic groups as whites with and without college degrees, African-Americans and Hispanics all tilting towards different contenders.’

American politics has not seen the last of Kamala Harris. She will return to the Senate, where she is likely to grandstand in the coming Trump impeachment trial, just as she played to the gallery in the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Who knows, she may reappear as the Democrats’ vice-presidential candidate.

And while Harris has fallen, her brand of identity politics – despite being a vote-loser and flaming out so badly in her presidential campaign – is unfortunately still going strong and unchallenged within the Democratic Party.

SOURCE 





Couple 'told they couldn't adopt a white child because of their Indian heritage' win £120,000 in landmark discrimination case

 

British couple have won nearly £120,000 in damages following a landmark discrimination case after they were told they could not adopt a “white child” because of their Indian heritage.

Sandeep and Reena Mander, from Maidenhead, Berkshire, saw an application to join a register of approved adopters turned down because of their Indian ancestry.

As a result, they were unable to register with the Adopt Berkshire agency in 2016 and claimed they were told “not to bother applying” and that their chances would be improved if they looked to adopt in India or Pakistan.

The Sikh couple, aged in their 30s, sued Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead Council for discrimination with backing from the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

Judge Melissa Clarke ruled at Oxford County Court today that the couple were discriminated against and awarded them almost £120,000 in damages.

The judge made a declaration that the council "directly discriminated" against the couple in the provision of adoption services on the grounds of race.

Following the ruling Mr and Mrs Mander, who work as Vice President in charge of sales at an IT company and as a programme manager, respectively,  said: "This decision ensures that no matter what race, religion or colour you are, you should be treated equally and assessed for adoption in the same way as any other prospective adopter.

"We believe our experience with Adopt Berkshire was not just an isolated event. "When we went through the Intercountry adoption process we came across many couples who had similar experiences.

"Let us be clear, a child's welfare is the most important thing when looking for any prospective adopter.

"However matching cultural values and beliefs is just one of many areas that should be assessed when looking at the suitability of adopters to ensure that child's welfare.

"It should never be the overriding factor to stop you even being considered, which is what happened to us.

"And certainly, cultural values and beliefs should never be assumed based on an ethnic tick-box, as was our experience.

"We felt there needed to be a change. This is what this case has all been about for us, to ensure discrimination like this doesn't happen to others wishing to do this wonderful thing called adoption. "And today's landmark ruling will ensure this doesn't happen again."

The council had rejected claims its social workers were "racist" towards the couple. A council spokesperson said: "We are very disappointed by the judgement in this case, which we will now take time to consider in full. "We have reviewed our policies to ensure they are fit for purpose and are confident that we do not exclude prospective adopters on the grounds of ethnicity.

"Finally, we always put the best interests of the children at the heart of any adoption decisions and are committed to best practice in our provision of adoption services."

SOURCE 






‘You deserve to be honoured’: Pauline Hanson pays tribute to Australian men

A counterblast to the feminists

Pauline Hanson has paid tribute to “the everyday men of Australia”, thanking them for “working hard” and blasting feminists, saying they should “be ashamed of themselves”.

In an extraordinary five-minute speech yesterday, the One Nation leader addressed an almost empty Senate to “pay homage to the majority of men in Australia”.

“It’s not often that the dedicated and hardworking men of this country collectively get a pat on the back, as they deserve, so I’d like to do that now,” Senator Hanson said.

“Well done, men. You deserve to be honoured. I thank you.

“It is more often that we lift up women in this country. Men are widely regarded as toxic. That is wrong. The extreme majority of men are not toxic. They are good, they are caring.”

Senator Hanson said she was prompted to make the speech while Australia is in the grips of one of its worst bushfire seasons on record.

More than 680 homes have been destroyed in NSW this bushfire season, according to the Rural Fire Service while fires also rage in Queensland, South Australia and Victoria.

“While the firefighters, who are mostly male, were battling the blazes we had feminists telling us that after they fight the fires, no doubt exhausted, covered in sweat, ash and soot, and with their skin singed from the heat, they go home and beat their partners,” she said.

“What an idiotic suggestion.”

Senator Hanson was referring to a since-deleted tweet from journalist and Red Heart Campaign founder Sherele Moody, who claimed domestic violence spiked after “cataclysmic events”.

“I’ve also made it clear that I have had a gutful of hearing from man-hating feminists,” Senator Hanson told parliament.

“I believe in what is fair and just and I am sick and tired of this constant criticism of men in Australia, especially if they’re white.

“Why is there such an ongoing attack on the men of this country, especially those who show strength and masculinity.

“Well, I’m not going to man-bash. There is no reason to do it. The vast majority of men are not toxic. They are loving, caring, respectful and hardworking and it’s mostly men who step up and face the flames, extreme heat … to fight the bushfires.”

Senator Hanson went on to quote percentages from the Australian Bureau of Statistics about the number of women who were firefighters, truckies and coal miners.

“Feminists should be ashamed at themselves for letting themselves down in this field,” she said.

“I’ve never seen a feminist recruiting campaign to get more women behind the wheels of a truck.

“Maybe it’s too demanding, not glamorous enough, so they’re happy for the men to do it.

“I’d like to say thank you to men. You help make Australia the great nation it is today and to my colleagues in the chamber, thank you very much you make it very interesting.”

Senator Hanson’s video has received dozens of comments praising the One Nation leader.

“Great speech, Pauline. You’re one of the few politicians who recognise the work of ordinary men who struggle through life supporting their families and community,” Steve Smith said.

“Brilliant speech, it’s a pity not many of your fellow senators were there to listen to you; that is disgraceful in itself. Man bashing is just another weapon of the left that needs to be called out and you have done so, bravo,” Les Baxter added.

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 December, 2019

The Battle of Yarmuk: History’s Most Consequential Muslim/Western Clash

by Raymond Ibrahim

On this date, August 20, in 636, the first major military clash between Islam and the West was fought. The Battle of Yarmuk is now little remembered, but its outcome forever changed the face of the world, with ripples felt even today.

Four years earlier, in 632, the prophet of Islam had died. During his lifetime, he had managed to rally the Arabs under the banner of Islam. On his death, some tribes that sought to break away remained Muslim but refused to pay taxes, or zakat, to the caliph, Abu Bakr, Muhammad’s successor. Branding them all apostates, the caliph initiated the Ridda (“apostasy”) Wars, which saw tens of thousands of Arabs beheaded, crucified, or burned alive. In 633, these wars were over; in 634, so was the life of Abu Bakr. It would fall to the second caliph, Omar bin al-Khattab (r. 634–44), to direct the full might of the once feuding Arabs — now one tribe, one umma — against “the other.”

Almost instantly, thousands of Arabs flooded into Christian Syria, slaughtering and pillaging. According to Muslim historians, they did that in the name of jihad — to spread Allah’s rule on earth. Emperor Heraclius, who had just experienced a decade of war against the Persians, proceeded to muster his legions and direct them to Syria, to quash these latest upstarts. Roman forces engaged the invaders in at least two significant battles, Ajnadayn (in modern-day Israel, in 634) and Marj al-Saffar (south of Damascus, 635). But “by Allah’s help,” writes Muslim chronicler al-Baladhuri (d. 892), “the enemies of Allah were routed and shattered into pieces, a great many being slaughtered.”

On the eve of battle, writes historian A. I. Akram, “the Muslims spent the night in prayer and recitation of the Quran, and reminded each other of the two blessings that awaited them: either victory and life or martyrdom and paradise.”

No such titillation awaited the Christians. They were fighting for life, family, and faith. During his pre-battle speech, Vahan explained that “these Arabs who stand before you seek to . . . enslave your children and women.” Another general warned the men to fight hard or else the Arabs “shall conquer your lands and ravish your women.” Such fears were not unwarranted. Even as the Romans were kneeling in pre-battle prayer, Arab general Abu Sufyan was prancing on his war steed, waving his spear, and exhorting the Muslims to “jihad in the way of Allah,” so that they might seize the Christians’ “lands and cities, and enslave their children and women.”

The battle took place over the course of six days. (For a more detailed examination of Yarmuk, see my master’s thesis, 2002, The Battle of Yarmuk: An Assessment of the Immediate Factors behind the Islamic Conquests.) The Roman forces initially broke through the Muslim lines and, according to colorful Muslim sources, would have routed the Arabs if not for their women. Prior to battle, Abu Sufyan had told these female Arabs that, although “the prophet said women are lacking in brains and religion” (a reference to a hadith), they could still help by striking “in the face with stones and tent poles” any Arab men who retreated from the battle to camp. The women were urged to persist until the men returned to battle “in shame.”

Sure enough, whenever broken ranks of Muslims fell back, Arab women hurled stones at them, struck them, and their horses and camels, with poles, taunting them: “May Allah curse those who run from the enemy! Do you wish to give us to the Christians? . . . If you do not kill, then you are not our men.” Abu Sufyan’s wife, Hind, is said to have fought the advancing Romans while screaming “Cut the extremities [i.e., phalluses] of the uncircumcised ones!” On witnessing her boldness, the Arab men are said to have turned and driven back the advancing Romans to their original position.

On the fourth day, the Muslims managed to reverse the tables and advance against a broken line of retreating Christians. No women were present to chastise the retreating Romans, and a multitude of archers unleashed volley after volley on the rushing Arabs. “The arrows rained down on the Muslims. . . . All one could hear was ‘Ah! My eye!’ In heavy confusion, they grabbed hold of their reins and retreated.” Some 700 Muslims lost an eye on that day.

Concerning the sixth and final day of battle, Muslim sources make much of the heavy infantry of the Roman army’s right flank, referring to its soldiers as the “mightiest.” These warriors reportedly tied themselves together with chains, as a show of determination, and swore by “Christ and the Cross” to fight to the last man. (The Arabs may have mistaken the remarkably tight Roman phalanx for fetters.) Even Khalid expressed concern at their show of determination. He ordered the Muslims at the center and left of the Arab army to bog down the Christians, while he led thousands of horsemen and camel-fighters round to the Roman left faction, which had become separated from its cavalry (possibly during an attempt at one of the complicated “mixed formation” maneuvers recommended in the Strategikon, a Byzantine military manual).

To make matters worse, a dust storm — something Arabs were accustomed to, their opponents less so — erupted around this time and caused mass chaos. The Romans’ large numbers proved counterproductive under such crowded and chaotic conditions. Now the fiercest and most desperate fighting of the war ensued. Everywhere, steel clashed, men yelled, horses neighed, camels bellowed, and sand blew in the face of the confused mass. Unable to maneuver, most of the Roman cavalry, carrying along a protesting Vahan, broke off and withdrew to the north.

Realizing that they were alone, the Christian infantry, including the “chained men,” maintained formation and withdrew westward, to the only space open to them. They were soon trapped between an Islamic hammer and anvil: A crescent of Arabs spreading from north to south continued closing in on them from the east, while a semicircle of the Wadi Ruqqad’s precipitous ravines lay before the Christians to the west. (Khalid had already captured the only bridge across the wadi.)

As darkness descended on this volatile corner of the world, the final phase of war played out on the evening of August 20. The Arabs, whose night vision was honed by desert life, charged the trapped Romans, who, according to al-Waqidi and other Muslim historians, fought valiantly. The historian Antonio Santosuosso writes that

"soon the terrain echoed with the terrifying din of Muslim shouts and battle cries. Shadows suddenly changed into blades that penetrated flesh. The wind brought the cries of comrades as the enemy stealthily penetrated the ranks among the infernal noise of cymbals, drums, and battle cries. It must have been even more terrifying because they had not expected the Muslims to attack by dark."

Muslim cavalrymen continued pressing on the crowded and blinded Roman infantry, using the hooves and knees of their steeds to knock down the wearied fighters. Pushed finally to the edge of the ravine, rank after rank of the remaining forces of the imperial army, including all of the “chained men,” fell down the steep precipices to their death. Other soldiers knelt, uttered a prayer, made the sign of the cross, and waited for the onrushing Muslims to strike them down. No prisoners were taken on that day. “The Byzantine army, which Heraclius had spent a year of immense exertion to collect, had entirely ceased to exist,” writes British lieutenant-general and historian John Bagot Glubb. “There was no withdrawal, no rearguard action, no nucleus of survivors. There was nothing left.”

As the moon filled the night sky and the victors stripped the slain, cries of “Allahu akbar!” and “There is no god but Allah and Muhammad is his messenger” rang throughout the Yarmuk valley.

*****

Following this decisive Muslim victory, the way was left wide open for the domino-like Arab conquests of the seventh century. “Such a revolution had never been,” remarks historian Hilaire Belloc. “No earlier attack had been so sudden, so violent, or so permanently successful. Within a score of years from the first assault in 634 [at the Battle of Ajnadayn], the Christian Levant had gone: Syria, the cradle of the Faith, and Egypt with Alexandria, the mighty Christian See.”

It bears noting that if most Westerners today are ignorant of that encounter and its ramifications, they are even more oblivious as to how Yarmuk continues to serve as a model of inspiration for modern-day jihadis (who, we are regularly informed, are “psychotic criminals” who have “nothing to do with Islam”). As the alert reader may have noticed, the continuity between the words and deeds of the Islamic State (ISIS) and those of its predecessors from nearly 1,400 years ago are eerily similar. This of course is intentional. When ISIS proclaims that “American blood is best and we will taste it soon,” or “We love death as you love life,” or “We will break your crosses and enslave your women,” they are quoting verbatim — and thereby placing themselves in the footsteps of — Khalid bin al-Walid and his companions, the original Islamic conquerors of Syria.

Indeed, the cultivated parallels are many. ISIS’s black flag is intentionally patterned after Khalid’s black flag. Its invocation of the houris, Islam’s celestial sex-slaves promised to martyrs, is based on anecdotes of Muslims dying by the Yarmuk River and being welcomed into paradise by the houris. And the choreographed ritual slaughter of “infidels,” most infamously of 21 Coptic Christians on the shores of Libya, is patterned after the ritual slaughter of 1,000 captured Roman soldiers on the eve of the Battle of Yarmuk.

Here, then, is a reminder that, when it comes to the military history of Islam and the West, the lessons imparted are far from academic and have relevance to this day — at least for the jihadis.

SOURCE 





Reversing the Roles of Crusade and Jihad

A critique of some fake history

From beginning to end, Crusade and Jihad: The Thousand-Year War between the Muslim World and the Global North by William R. Polk is paradigmatic of all the misrepresentations and errors of history that have caused the West to become clueless of the sources behind its conflict with the Muslim worldview. Worse, such blatant distortions of the past leave the West unable to provide solutions for the present.

Title vs. Content

For starters,  the book’s title and ambitious subtitle present it as a comprehensive history.  The jacket cover claims that “Crusade and Jihad is the first book to encompass, in one volume, the entire history of the catastrophic encounter between the Global North … and Muslim societies.” The book reportedly “explain[s] the deep hostilities between the Muslim world and the Global North and show[s] how they grew over the centuries” (emphasis added).

Rather bizarrely, however, the first thousand years of history are allotted only some 30 (out of 550) pages of coverage; that is, only 5% of the book deals with the many centuries of conflict between the eighth and eighteenth centuries.

What explains this lopsided approach?  After all, that initial millennium contains all the seeds of conflict.  As historian Franco Cardini explains,

If we … ask ourselves how and when the modern notion of Europe and the European identity was born, we realize the extent to which Islam was a factor (albeit a negative one) in its creation.  Repeated Muslim aggression against Europe between the seventh to eighth centuries, then between the fourteenth and the eighteenth centuries … was a ‘violent midwife’ to Europe.

While these “violent midwives” are known today as Arabs, Moors, Turks, and Tatars, their invasions and subsequent atrocities were all conducted under the same jihadi logic used by contemporary groups such as the Islamic State: as “infidels” (or kuffar), Christian Europeans were always free game for rape, enslavement, or slaughter.

Or to quote Bernard Lewis:

We tend nowadays to forget that for approximately a thousand years, from the advent of Islam in the seventh century until the second siege of Vienna in 1683, Christian Europe was under constant threat from Islam, the double threat of conquest and conversion. Most of the new Muslim domains were wrested from Christendom. Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa were all Christian countries, no less, indeed rather more, than Spain and Sicily. All this left a deep sense of loss and a deep fear.[i]

A Twisted Vacuum

Not only are these formative centuries largely ignored, but what Polk does present is often distorted to Islam’s favor.  As the book’s succinct description explains, “Polk shows how Islam arose and spread across [euphemism for violently conquered] North Africa into Europe, climaxed in the vibrant and sophisticated caliphate of al-Andalus in Medieval Spain, and was the bright light in a European Dark Age.”[ii]

Similarly, after effusively praising Islamic Spain, Polk writes (rather disdainfully) that “The contrast to the rest of Europe was stunning.  Few in Europe could read, and those few were holed up in monasteries….  It is hard to find evidence of more than a few men or women of culture or even of a degree of social refinement.  In al-Andalus, in contrast, the arts flourished, new forms of poetry were invented, and musical tastes” advanced.[iii]

The problem here is not that these descriptions are false but that they are presented in a vacuum.  In fact, the prosperity of Islamic Spain, as with all premodern Islamic states, was built almost entirely on plundering its non-Muslim neighbors of their wealth and bodies (Córdoba was a slave emporium of white flesh for centuries).  As earlier and more sober historians, such as Louis Bertrand, explained:

To keep the Christians [of northern Spain] in their place it did not suffice to surround them with a zone of famine and destruction. It was necessary also to go and sow terror and massacre among them. Twice a year, in spring and autumn, an army sallied forth from Córdoba to go and raid the Christians, destroy their villages, their fortified posts, their monasteries and their churches….  If one bears in mind that this brigandage was almost continual, and that this fury of destruction and extermination was regarded as a work of piety — it was a holy war [jihad] against infidels — it is not surprising that whole regions of Spain should have been made irremediably sterile. This was one of the capital causes of the deforestation from which the Peninsula still suffers. With what savage satisfaction and in what pious accents do the Arab annalists tell us of those at least biennial raids. A typical phrase for praising the devotion of a Caliph is this: “He penetrated into Christian territory, where he wrought devastation, devoted himself to pillage, and took prisoners.”…  The prolonged presence of the Muslims, therefore, was a calamity for this unhappy country of Spain. By their system of continual raids they kept her for centuries in a condition of brigandage and devastation.[iv]

Likewise, Polk fails to mention that the “stunning” illiteracy of Europeans was itself a byproduct of the jihad.  After the Muslim conquest of Egypt (circa 641), papyrus ceased to be imported into Europe, causing literacy rates to drop back to pre-Roman levels. Indeed, Christian Europe’s “Dark Ages” came about largely “because Islam had destroyed the ancient unity of the Mediterranean,” as eminent medievalist/archaeologist Henri Pirenne showed.

“Victimhood”: The Blame-All to Islam’s Problems

About 520 of 550 pages (or 95%) of Polk’s book on The Thousand-Year War are confined to the last two or so centuries, when Europe ceased being on the defensive and went on the offensive against Islam.  Here Polk meticulously describes in vivid (and hyperbolic) detail every conceivable sin the West committed against Muslims:

Beginning at various times after Christopher Columbus led the way across the Atlantic and the Portuguese plunged down the West African coast, the actions of the North have been uniformly destructive and sometimes genocidal….  The first cause of the danger and insecurity [i.e., Islamic terrorism] we feel today is the long history of imperialism.  A century or more of invasion, occupation, humiliation, and genocide has left scars that are still not healed, and cannot heal if they are constantly reopened.[v]

Having whitewashed the first millennium of jihad on the West, it’s easy for Polk to make Europeans appear as unprovoked aggressors—greedy monsters come to destroy the glories of Islam.  Yet he fails to mention that Columbus sailed west precisely because the Mediterranean was an Islamic terror zone; and he presents Russian expansion into Tatar regions as a merciless enterprise without explaining that the Tatars—known as the “heathen giant who feeds on our blood”—terrorized and enslaved Russians for centuries earlier.

As more balanced historians, such as Bernard Lewis, have long known:

[T]he whole complex process of European expansion and empire … has its roots in the clash of Islam and Christendom.  It began with the long and bitter struggle of the conquered peoples of Europe, in east and west, to restore their homelands to Christendom and expel the Muslim peoples who had invaded and subjugated them.  It was hardly to be expected that the triumphant Spaniards and Portuguese would stop at the Straits of Gibraltar, or that the Russians would allow the Tatars to retire in peace and regroup in their bases on the upper and lower Volga—the more so since a new and deadly Muslim attack on Christendom was underway … threatening the heart of Europe.  The victorious liberators, having reconquered their own territories, pursued their former masters whence they had come.[vi]

Regardless, Polk habitually harps on how “Memories of [Western] imperialism are deep [among Muslims], and they helped create much of the world’s disorder and danger today….   [T]he humiliation and wholesale massacres of populations carried out by imperialists, though largely forgotten by the perpetrators, remain today vivid to the descendants of the victims.”[vii]   As such, every Islamic terror group—including the Islamic State—are products of “the anger and frustration of Muslims.”[viii]

Again, one need only look to real history to appreciate the folly of this deterministic reading which sees Muslims as perpetual victims of an imagined history.  After a millennium of actual European victimhood—a millennium of Muslim invasions that saw the conquest of three-quarters of Christendom’s original territory, the enslavement of five million Europeans (between just the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries), and the slaughter of untold millions—“backwards” Europe still managed to rise to the top of the world, and without any apologies or appeasements from Muslims.

Why can’t Islam?  Could it be that its problems are intrinsic and have nothing to do with the purported sins of Europe? 

For instance, in Polk’s chapter, “Somalia, the ‘Failed State,’” imperialism is again cited as the blame all.  Yet in 1855, decades before Europeans colonized it, adventurer Richard Burton described Somalia in decidedly unappealing terms, adding that Somalis “are extremely bigoted, especially against Christians … and are fond of Jihading.” Today Somalia remains a “failed state,” Al Shabaab (“the Youth”) is its jihadi vanguard, and any Somali outed as a Christian is beheaded.  Is European colonialism really necessary to explain such continuity?

“What Went Wrong?”

This is the crux of the issue: in order to exonerate the problems plaguing and emanating from the Muslim world—from socio-economic-political  difficulties, to rampant Islamic radicalization and terrorism—Islamophiles like Polk are committed to two premises: 1) that for centuries Islam was a beacon of light in a dark world (and thus something must have gone wrong since) and 2) that which went wrong begins and ends with Western meddling via colonization.

As should be evident by now, the reverse is true: Islam always did what Islam does, and was constrained only during that brief era of Western assertion.  The greater irony is that whereas jihads often culminated in slavery, depopulation, and devastation, European colonialists abolished slavery and introduced their Muslim subjects to the boons of modernity, from scientific and medicinal advances to the radical concepts of democracy and religious freedom.

“In a word,” writes a Copt around the turn of the twentieth century concerning British rule, “we say that the Egyptian State was at the highest degree of justice and good order and arrangement.  And it removed religious fanaticism, and almost established equality between its subjects, Christian and Muslim, and it eliminated most of the injustice, and it realized much in the way of beneficial works for the benefit of all the inhabitants.”

Or consider how North Africa was among the most prosperous and civilized regions of Christendom in the seventh century, but centuries of “jihading,” ransacking, and the enslavement of literally millions turned it into a desert.  Then, for some three centuries before the colonial era, its Muslim population subsisted entirely on enslaving Europeans.

In fact, the United States’ first war as a nation was with these “Barbary States.”  When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams asked Barbary’s ambassador why his countrymen were enslaving American sailors, he said nothing about “open scars” or the “anger and frustration of Muslims.” Rather the “ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that … it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners….”[ix]

Sticking to the “Narrative”

Sadly, Crusade and Jihad is reflective of both academic and popular opinion concerning the relationship between Islam and the West.  As is typical of the social sciences—and increasingly the hard sciences as well—reality, in this case history, has been recast in conformance to the accepted narrative, one which follows a familiar matrix: anything white and Christian = hypocrisy, intolerance, greed, exploitation; anything nonwhite and non-Christian = honesty, tolerance, fair-mindedness, dignity.

The double standards required to make this narrative work are often stark.  Thus and despite how Muslims persecuted Spain’s Christians for centuries, here is how Polk describes the indigenous liberators vis-à-vis the invading occupiers:  “Over the centuries … the warlike Christian states … pushed south until, in 1492, they drove away tens of thousands of Muslims … and put an end to one of the most advanced societies in Europe.”[x]

The lesson is clear: from a historical point of view, Islam can do no wrong—even when it invades, conquers, and persecutes; and the West can do no right—even when it defends, liberates, and civilizes.  While we are to exonerate contemporary Muslim terrorism as a product of “grievances” against (an imagined) history, only censure remains for those premodern Christians who set wrongs to rights (but to Islam’s disadvantage).

Such are the pseudo-histories that have long plagued the West’s understanding of its relationship to Islam.  It is in part to combat these false narratives that I wrote my new book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.  Not only does it document the politically incorrect facts of history, but every century gets its fair due.

SOURCE 






The Cult of Color

Is it okay for people of certain persuasions to discriminate? Not exactly.

Notorious for its hypocrisy, the woke community strikes again, this time excluding white girls from being involved in a music video. Beyoncé, heralded as a sort of goddess to the Woke “people of color,” had no issue openly discriminating for her music video casting call. Interestingly enough, she seeks diversity among brown and black people, but there are no people of European descent in her video — despite the video being recorded in London, which still has a white population of about 60%.

Responses to the casting call were mixed. White people were baffled at the attempt at segregation. After all, white westerners fought to include black and brown people into society. On the flip side, woke worshippers see Beyoncé’s “rule” as no big deal; that discrimination happens all the time anyway.

It’s strange that the same people who cry out against being left out of job opportunities have no problem with people of a white persuasion being left out of said opportunities. These individuals claim oppression at every instance yet slam down the iron fist of discrimination when the opportunity presents itself.

The Golden Rule (“Do unto others…” See Matthew 7:12) had become a widely accepted moral attitude in our society regardless of faith. But what does this mean to this woke generation that conceals supremacy under the cloak of compassion (for only select races, of course)?

And while this is just a casting call, how far will progressives go to push white people out of other areas — employment, lending opportunities, and so on?

Diversity is the raggedy crutch that Democrats and liberals lean on heavily. Their lies and special interests weigh down the definition of the very term, transforming it into something different entirely. This leaves white people scratching their heads, wondering what it was we fought for over the past century. Did the Civil Rights movement even have a point?

The answer: It did, and it still stands for something today. But diversity and acceptance are a two-way street. We meet in the middle when we acknowledge the following:

That diversity doesn’t exclude, no matter how you frame it.
That all peoples are capable of racism and unjust discrimination.
That a society that is truly moving forward must do away with “skin worship.”

People say that the parties and ideologies switched sides, but what they aren’t addressing is how racial supremacy has done the exact same. It’s time we do away with supremacist mentalities as a whole — that is, if we are to truly leave racism behind.

SOURCE 






Australia: Animal rights activists are ordered to tear down 'misleading' billboard calling for captive dolphin breeding at Sea World to be banned

I'll stop eating animals as soon as animals stop eating one-another

Days after launching a campaign against dolphin breeding at Sea World an animal rights group was told their 'misleading' billboards would be taken down.  

World Animal Protection launched the campaign on December 2 targeting Sea World's use of dolphins and allowing them to breed in captivity .

But just days after the billboards went up on the Gold Coast advertising company JCDecaux announced they were taking them down.

The decision to remove the billboards came after Sea World proprietor Village Roadshow slammed the signs as 'false and misleading'.

A Sea World spokesman told the Gold Coast Bulletin preventing dolphins from breeding in captivity would impact negatively on the animals.

'Reproduction is a natural process which enriches the lives of the animals and helps contribute to positive welfare of the animals, which is our utmost priority,' the spokesman said.

'All management strategies to stop breeding are against best practice and decreases the welfare of the dolphins.'

World Animal Protection Head of Campaigns Ben Pearson said he was disappointed by the move. 'It's disappointing our education billboards on the Gold Coast are being taken down after just two days, but our campaign will continue,' he said.

Mr Pearson said the group was fighting to make the current generation of dolphins at Sea World the last.

'With Dolphin Marine Conservation Park in Coffs Harbour having already made this commitment, Sea World is now on its own and out of step with the growing public awareness that keeping dolphins in captivity is cruel,' Mr Pearson said.

'There are currently around 30 dolphins at Sea World, most of which were born and bred there, with breeding to continue in future to provide entertainment for tourists.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted World Animal Protection, Village Roadshow and JCDecaux for further comment. 

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 December, 2019

A British police force spent £23,000 on gender-neutral caps - only to get rid of them 18 months later after public outcry

A police force spent £23,000 on gender-neutral 'Burger King' caps to replace traditional helmets only to get rid of them 18 months later following a public outcry.

Northamptonshire Police introduced the US-style 'bump hats' in May 2017 to attract more transgender officers, claiming that 'gender-based headgear' was acting as 'a barrier to the non-binary transgender community'.

But they were largely scrapped in November last year after critics said they made officers 'look like Jimmy Krankie' and replaced with the traditional helmets that have been a symbol of British policing for more than 150 years.

'No longer will male and female officers be issued different headgear with varying safety ratings simply on the basis of gender', a spokesman said after their launch    +3
Northamptonshire Police introduced the US-style 'bump hats' in May 2017 to attract more transgender officers

Announcing on Twitter that the controversial caps would be phased out, Chief Constable Nick Adderley accepted they 'did not portray the right image' and that 'the public supports this view'.

The failed experiment cost £23,417 over two years, according to a Freedom of Information request by MailOnline.

The caps were introduced after research suggested the new headwear would eradicate the issue of transgender officers having to decide between custodian helmets for males and bowler hats for females.

A spokesman for the force had said: 'Not only will the new bump caps offer a better level of protection, the new headgear means that no longer will male and female officers be issued different headgear with varying safety ratings simply on the basis of gender.

'Engagement has also shown that having to choose gender-based headgear is a barrier to the non-binary transgender community joining the police service.

'By introducing this new hat we provide a single protective hat to all police officers, Special Constables and PCSOs for general duties.'

The caps replaced the 'gender-based' helmets and bowler hats previously worn by officers    +3
The caps replaced the 'gender-based' helmets and bowler hats previously worn by officers

Bump hats, which have a reinforced frame, are more lightweight than the helmets and allow officers to clamber in and out of vehicles without removing them.

But they are regularly ridiculed by critics – who claim the caps make officers look more like Burger King workers.

After Mr Adderley announced the reversal on Twitter, officers took to social media to endorse the move, with one saying the 'bump cap' made her look like Jimmy Krankie.

One user said: 'Excellent decision. The standard of dress, uniform and appearance has plummeted over the last decade or so. It's about time we got back to basics and started looking professional.'

Another said: 'Absolutely fantastic decision. Have been the commander on many event and the image of a public order officer wearing a baseball cap has not been a good one. High uniform standards for our officers is a must.'

SOURCE 





More  money than sense

I remember the time not so long ago when NOBODY carried around bottles of water.  How did we survive?

Daniela Finlay had known for a while that water bottles had become a big deal.

But it wasn’t until she watched a fellow student break down after dropping and denting her stainless steel Hydro Flask earlier this fall that she understood just how big.

“Crying may be a little bit of an exaggeration,” says Finlay, a freshman at Wellesley College, recalling the moment. “But she was very visibly upset.”

And can you blame her?

Once an afterthought, the humble water bottle has emerged as a designer product — the “it” accessory of the moment.

The trendiest bottles retail for around the same as a car insurance payment, selling — in some cases — for more than $100. The popular brand BKR has taken to billing its water bottles as beauty products, selling them in store beauty departments.

Earlier this year, the water brand Evian held a New York City release party for its limited-edition glass water bottle — designed by Louis Vuitton’s men’s artistic director Virgil Abloh.

“We don’t just see water,” Abloh said in the marketing material for the bottle. “We see infinite possibilities and inspiration.”

American consumers have long been discerning about the water they drink, as evidenced by the rise of pricey brands like FIJI and Smartwater. But with disposable plastic bottles falling out of favor, perhaps it was only a matter of time before permanent containers became the focus.

In the last three years, Americans bought roughly 287 million water bottles, says Joe Derochowski, who serves as home industry adviser for the market research firm NPD Group.

And in just the past year, sales of bottles in the $30-$40 range have jumped a whopping 15 percent.

“It’s people saying, ‘If I’m going to buy a water bottle, I want it not to just be functionally good, I want it to look good,’?” says Derochowski. “And in a selfie world, that’s kind of what is happening.”

Indeed, on a recent afternoon inside Boston University’s George Sherman Union, atop nearly every table was some sort of colorful bottle. Pricey Hydro Flask bottles have become part of the official uniform of so-called VSCO girls — trendy cliques of middle- and high-school-age girls who favor baggy sweat shirts, Vans sneakers, scrunchies, and — apparently — high-priced water bottles.

Even those still in elementary school are suddenly jostling for fancy water bottles over toys.

When her 7-year-old son asked for a Hydro Flask for Christmas, Shalyn Sherman had to look up what, exactly, he was talking about.

“He’s all about the Hydro Flask,” says Sherman, of Lynn. “It’s on his Christmas list, it’s on his birthday list. That’s the main thing he wants right now.”

The ascent of water bottles to status symbol probably began with the vilification of the disposable kind. When Nalgene’s jewel-colored bottles exploded onto the scene in the 2000s, it was amid growing national concern over environmental sustainability of single-use plastic. In short order, they became fashion standards on college campuses across the country.

But those hard-plastic bottles, selling for about $10, were cheap compared to the market’s offerings now. S’well bottles — available in various sizes and designs — go for as much as $60. Hydro Flasks can range in price from $30 for a smaller 18-ounce bottle to $65 for a 64-ounce wide-mouth version.

Then there’s the Soji Black Obsidian Crystal Elixir Water Bottle — retail price, $94 — which, according to the company’s website, includes “a powerful grounding stone that quickly blocks all forms of negativity . . . [and] shields against psychic attacks, mental stress and tension.”

For acolytes of the craze, such high-brow bottles are worth the hefty price. The high-end bottles can keep water cold for extended periods, and many say it’s one thing they’ll have with them pretty much every minute of every day.

But even those happy to make such an investment admit that, all told, there isn’t much fundamental difference between the latest popular brands and cheaper varieties.

“I think the mass appeal effect is that you’re able to heat or cool something for 24 hours,” says Ramsha Arshad, a senior computer science major at BU who owns a high-end S’well water bottle. “But most water bottles these days can do that.”

Which is not to say, however, that everyone is sold.

As bottles have gotten increasingly high-tech and pricey, some have resisted the urge to upgrade.

Seated at a table inside BU’s student union on a recent afternoon, junior Jay Li defiantly pulled a massive blue Nalgene bottle from his backpack — a bottle that, among today’s flashier alternatives, appeared downright ancient.

Li purchased the bottle two years ago, for around $10, and it has served him well, he said, always holding enough water to get him through the day.

He’s aware that it’s not the trendiest of bottles, but he is comfortable with that.

“It does the job,” he says. “At the end of the day, it’s just water.”

SOURCE 







The Marine Corps’ annual birthday video included only six seconds of women in an eight-minute tribute

So what?  It's mostly a male organization

To celebrate the upcoming birthday of the U.S. Marines, the service’s top brass sent around a special video message—and drew a barrage of criticism. Women service members are visible in roughly six seconds of the eight-minute video.

Current and former Marines rebuked Marine Commandant General David H. Berger and Sergeant Major Troy E. Black, the top enlisted Marine, for the lack of inclusion and for a failure of leadership.

The backlash comes as the U.S. Marine Corps continues to wrestle with its internal culture in the wake of the Marines United scandal less than three years ago—when a male

Marines-only Facebook group shared nude photos and obscene comments about women service members—and amid continuing battles over whether women should be allowed to serve in ground combat units that historically have been all male.

“It is a self-indulgent ‘love me and my grunts and everyone else can pound sand in the corner’ video,” said former Marine Sergeant Erin Kirk-Cuomo, who co-founded “Not In My Marine Corps,” a group dedicated to fighting sexual assault and harassment in the U.S. military.

“It’s 10 steps back from where it should be and just an all-around boring birthday message with no motivation,” said Kirk-Cuomo. “But the lack of diversity regarding women is a deliberate hit at them and how they have been given more opportunities recently,” said Kirk-Cuomo. “The vitriol towards female Marines is at an all-time high right now and this video just shows it.”

Kirk-Cuomo said that many female Marines are not happy with the video and responses they are receiving from some of their male Marine counterparts has been disheartening.

One active-duty female Marine officer told Newsweek that she was “sick of this ‘oversight’ happening over and over again as in, how it always seems to be a ‘mistake’ or ‘accident,’” for not including women. “It’s not an accident to eliminate an entire demographic from a product intended for the force,” said the officer, who asked for anonymity due to fear of reprisal from her chain of command.

Kirk-Cuomo said she attributed the attitude toward women within the rank-and-file directly to top leadership. “If the Commandant can’t even bother to bring up the strides women have made in a birthday message or have a female voice in it even for a 20-second clip, what does that say to Marines? That leadership doesn’t care and doesn’t feel the need to be inclusive to women, so why should anyone else?”

Some current and former Marines speaking out online said the lack of women in the video is a non-issue and is being overblown, with many praising the video for its depiction of combat forces.

The Marine video begins with images of the heartland—moving the audience from the Rust and Bible Belts of the Midwest and southern United States to major metropolitan cities and suburbs. An American morning begins as a radio dial scans through the airwaves to find CNN’s Pentagon correspondent Barbara Starr telling Wolf Blitzer that the Marines will be ready to go if and when the order comes.

Hard cut to a naval aircraft carrier navigating the seas where Marines can be seen gearing up, while narration from General Berger plays over the picture.

“Every Marine trains, prepares, 24-7 to get the phone call in the middle of the night that your unit’s deploying,” Berger says in the video. “The phone call that you weren’t expecting, but you’re ready for.”

The video shows Marines running out onto the flight deck to board MV-22 Osprey helicopters: quick cuts in the video show Marines racking bullets into their rifles just before the music shifts from an inspiring melody to Michael Bay dramatic.

Tanks fire their main cannons offscreen as amphibious assault vehicles roll onto a beachhead with fighter jets flying high over land and water.

Sergeant Major Black’s narration focuses on the camaraderie between Marines and how their bond supports their ability to complete the mission. The overall theme of the video ties into Berger’s vision of how the U.S. can compete with adversaries such as China and Russia—a show of force on the world stage via naval strength and agility.

As in past birthday videos, this one, for the Corps’ 244th birthday on November 10th, pays homage to the Marines’ legacy with short interviews with veterans. “Once a Marine always a Marine is not just a slogan,” Berger reminds viewers. The veterans interviewed in the video are both male.

The video has been viewed more than 112,000 times since being published.

Asked for a reply to the controversy, a Marine spokesperson told Newsweek, “The USMC will not have a comment for you on this topic.”

SOURCE 






Australia: Police "strike" on going into Aboriginal settlements?

Just the charging of constable Rolfe has created tension. If the Rolfe trial leads to anything but complete exoneration, police may well in future refuse to go into Aboriginal communities.  Armchair judgments on police actions in the heat of the moment are intrinsically unfair and basing a prosecution on them tells police not to bother in future

One of Australia's longest-serving former police commissioners believes the shooting of Indigenous man Kumanjayi Walker in a remote Northern Territory community could have widespread consequences for the future of policing.

Western Australia's ex-police commissioner Karl O'Callaghan said officers felt unsupported after Constable Zachary Rolfe was charged with murder and many will be watching the outcome of the case "very closely".

Dr O'Callaghan also expressed sadness at the low number of Aboriginal people involved in law enforcement and the failed efforts to recruit them.

The comments come amid fresh scrutiny on policing strategies in isolated townships and the relationship between Indigenous people and the law.

Too risky for officers

As the state's highest-ranking officer for 13 years, Dr O'Callaghan has extensive experience in overseeing policing strategies in some of the most isolated places on earth.

He said the decision to charge Mr Rolfe with murder over the shooting sent ripples of dismay through the policing fraternity.

"I think [officers] feel they are not supported," he said. "[Officers] go out and do their job, something happens in a split second and they end up getting charged with a very serious offence.

"I think police in Western Australia and the Northern Territory will be very, very concerned about what this means for trying to support those Aboriginal communities."

He said the case had the potential to change the way officers approached policing in these places — and not necessarily for the better.

"The outcome of this will be watched very closely all over Australia," he said. "It will have an impact on the best of our police officers, on their decision to go to those communities.

"It will be a bad thing if police officers who are qualified and very skilled at their work decide that they don't want to go there because of this risk."

Policing in the far-flung regional centres of Western Australia and the Northern Territory has long presented a logistical and cultural challenge for officers.

A handful of staff are often responsible for between several hundred to 1,000 residents.

Small communities can be easily inundated by visitors who travel thousands of kilometres, many from interstate, to attend family commitments.

In addition to layers of complex social problems, there are language and cultural barriers to navigate, and support is usually hours away.

Law enforcement in these conditions requires a unique approach, according to Dr O'Callaghan, because officers, "are trying to deal with a lot of complex social issues".

"It can have an enormous impact on a police officer because of the complexity of what they're dealing with and I think even the best-prepared officers are not prepared or trained to deal with what they find in those communities," he said.

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. 

************************************




4 December, 2019

Tim Allen slams 'alarming' political correctness, saying comedians shouldn't have to censor their material for the 'thought police'

Actor and comedian Tim Allen has criticized political correctness, saying the 'thought police' holds him back during his routines.

The Last Man Standing star, 66, who has previously faced a backlash for advocating using the N-word in his standup, said it was 'alarming' that comedians have to censor their material so as not to offend their audiences.

He told ABC's The View: 'What I've got to do sometimes is explain, which I hate, in big arenas, and this is a thought police thing and I do not like it.

'When I use these words, this is my intent behind those words.'

The Toy Story actor added: 'As long as you understand my intent, I still get people: "Well, just don't say it", and I said, "I'm not going to do that".'

Co-host Joy Behar, who is also a comedian whose career started at a similar time to Allen, said that PC culture makes it 'really hard' for comedians, and that their jokes are often taken out of context and posted on social media.

She said: 'I think my act, if I ever brought that old act back, I'd be driven out of town.'

Later in their conversation, Allen indicated that political correctness was 'an alarming thing for comedians.'

Several standups have fallen victim to the trend of cancel culture, which sees them blacklisted or deplatformed for controversial remarks.

Kevin Hart stepped down from hosting the Oscars after previous jokes which were deemed homophobic were unearthed.

While Allen's fellow Republican comedian Roseanne Barr had her eponymous sitcom cancelled after facing a backlash for a tweet which was deemed racist.

Later on in the interview, Allen, who has previously voiced his support for President Trump, said a part of his act where his family mocks Democrats gets a different reception in different parts of the country.

In 2013, Allen, who spent two years in federal prison for drug trafficking in 1978, faced condemnation after saying in an interview that he uses the N-word in his standup routine and maintaining that white people should not be afraid of saying it - so long as it's not being used as a racist slur.

He used the word several times in an interview with the Tampa Bay Times and said he strongly disliked the phrase 'the N-word' - which is often used in its place.

'If I have no intent, if I show no intent, if I clearly am not a racist, then how can 'n*****' be bad coming out of my mouth?'

He also expressed support for Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign. He said the billionaire businessman 'might be able to do the stuff that really needs fixing'.

In an interview last year with Indiewire, Allen said it was fun to mock liberals. He said: 'Liberals have a very small window of sense of humor about themselves, so I love poking at it.

'If you don't agree with them, if you don’t agree with that position, then you hate women, and you hate gay people, and you hate pro-choice people, whatever.'

SOURCE 






The Victims of Race-Focused Liberals Are Blacks

Walter E. Williams

Former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke said that racism in America is “foundational” and that people of color were under “mortal threat” from the “white supremacist in the White House.” Pete Buttigieg chimed in to explain that “systemic racism” will “be with us” no matter who is in the White House. Sen. Cory Booker called for “attacking systemic racism” in the “racially biased” criminal justice system.

Let’s follow up by examining Booker’s concern about a “racially biased” criminal justice system. To do that, we can turn to a recent article by Heather Mac Donald, who is a senior fellow at the New York-based Manhattan Institute. She is a contributing editor of City Journal, and a New York Times bestselling author.

Her most recent article, “A Platform of Urban Decline,” which appeared in Manhattan Institute’s publication Eye On The News, addresses race and crime. She reveals government statistics you’ve never read before.

According to leftist rhetoric, whites pose a severe, if not mortal, threat to blacks. Mac Donald says that may have once been true, but it is no longer so today. To make her case, she uses the latest Bureau of Justice Statistics 2018 survey of criminal victimization.

Mac Donald writes:

According to the study, there were 593,598 interracial violent victimizations (excluding homicide) between blacks and whites last year, including white-on-black and black-on-white attacks. Blacks committed 537,204 of those interracial felonies, or 90 percent, and whites committed 56,394 of them, or less than 10 percent.

That ratio is becoming more skewed, despite the Democratic claim of Trump-inspired white violence. In 2012-13, blacks committed 85 percent of all interracial victimizations between blacks and whites; whites committed 15 percent. From 2015 to 2018, the total number of white victims and the incidence of white victimization have grown as well.

There are other stark figures not talked about often. According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting for 2018, of the homicide victims for whom race was known, 53.3% were black, 43.8% were white, and 2.8% were of other races. In cases where the race of the offender was known, 54.9% were black, 42.4% were white, and 2.7% were of other races.

White and black liberals, who claim that blacks face a “mortal threat” from the “white supremacist in the White House” are perpetuating a cruel hoax. The primary victims of that hoax are black people. We face the difficult, and sometimes embarrassing, task of confronting reality.

Mac Donald says that Barack Obama’s 2008 Father’s Day speech in Chicago would be seen today as an “unforgivable outburst of white supremacy.” Here’s what Obama told his predominantly black audience in a South Side church: “If we are honest with ourselves,” too many fathers are “missing—missing from too many lives and too many homes. They have abandoned their responsibilities, acting like boys instead of men.”

Then-Sen. Obama went on to say, “Children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools, and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.”

White liberals deem that any speaker’s references to personal responsibility brands the speaker as bigoted. Black people cannot afford to buy into the white liberal agenda. White liberals don’t pay the same price. They don’t live in neighborhoods where their children can get shot simply sitting on their porches. White liberals don’t go to bed with the sounds of gunshots. White liberals don’t live in neighborhoods that have become economic wastelands. Their children don’t attend violent schools where they have to enter through metal detectors.

White liberals help the Democratic Party maintain political control over cities, where many black residents live in despair, such as Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit, Chicago.

Black people cannot afford to remain fodder for the liberal agenda. With that in mind, we should not be a one-party people in a two-party system.

SOURCE 






We want freedom, not freebies

UK political parties want to give us 'free' stuff while undermining our fundamental rights.

The main UK political parties are competing with one another on how many ‘free’ (taxpayer-funded) things they will provide to the public if they win a majority in next month’s General Election. Free broadband, free university tuition, free childcare, and, no doubt, free cheese, too. Whether any of these ‘promises’ will actually be delivered remains to be seen. However, what is striking is the main parties’ deafening silence regarding freedom itself.

Over the past couple of decades, we’ve seen a significant erosion of our fundamental rights, including freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of expression. Yet few political parties seem to consider this erosion of freedom a problem. This is not surprising, as both main parties have long sought to drastically expand the scope and power of the state at the expense of individual liberty. In my opinion, a society that promises ‘freebies’ without defending our fundamental rights is one that has lost its way.

In recent years, it has become unfashionable to discuss civil liberties in the public domain. When the issue is raised, it is quickly met with concerns about terrorism and the threat of the far right. Yet there is no evidence to show that the curtailment of civil liberties, in and of itself, counters terrorism or militates against the rise of far-right extremism.

In fact, all the curtailment of our civil liberties achieves is the further erosion of the freedom of everyone. It does very little to tackle the root causes of threats and problems. In the case of neo-Nazis and Islamist extremists, for example, online censorship actually makes the problems worse. It pushes prejudiced views underground, where they persist and develop, unchallenged, in echo chambers. Censorship is the equivalent of a doctor attempting to treat the symptoms while leaving the underlying health condition unaddressed. Far-right and Islamist extremism are complex problems that require equally multifaceted solutions. Censorship has not meaningfully tackled either.

Take the police’s new crusade against hate crime. Never mind that ‘hate’ is a poorly defined and entirely subjective concept. What is more disturbing is how this crusade has been pursued. A whole host of people have been accused of committing a ‘hate crime’, such as the Christian preacher arrested for calling Islam an ‘aberration’, or the man investigated for retweeting a transgender limerick. These cases may be extreme, but they are also the logical result of giving the state the power to arrest people on the grounds that they have expressed hatred. Indeed, the Metropolitan Police’s £2million Online Hate Crime Hub has investigated 1,612 cases (and facilitated six convictions) in just two years.

We used to be told that ‘sticks and stones can break your bones, but words will never hurt you’. Now it seems words do hurt you. We are increasingly being told that disagreeable speech is akin to violence. This contention is absurd and dangerous. Offence is taken, not given. Freedom of speech is our most powerful tool for advocating for change and raising awareness of wrongdoing. We must end this baseless moral panic over hate speech and encourage resilience, passionate debate and the free exchange of ideas.

Both the Tories and Labour disagree with this, it seems. The Tory government’s Online Harms White Paper was published for consultation earlier this year. It wants to tackle ‘online content… that harms individual users…or threatens our way of life in the UK’. The definition of ‘harm’ is so vague and ambiguous that one can only imagine the chilling effect it would have if it actually becomes law. I consider state regulation of the online world to be a bigger threat to ‘our way of life’ than, er, Pornhub.

The government has made little secret of its intention to expand state powers. The Investigatory Powers Act (aka the Snoopers’ Charter) increased drastically the powers of the intelligence services. According to Liberty, ‘The Snoopers’ Charter allows the state to hack computers, phones and tablets on an industrial scale, and collect the content of people’s digital communications. It also allows the creation and linking of huge “bulk personal datasets”.’ Liberty added: ‘The government failed to provide evidence that this was “necessary to prevent or detect crime”.’ Article 19, a freedom-of-expression campaign group, concluded that the Snoopers’ Charter ‘offers a template for authoritarian regimes and seriously [undermines] the rights of its citizens to privacy and freedom of expression’. The Chinese Communist Party even pointed to the Snoopers’ Charter as a defence of its own surveillance tactics.

Labour is no better. Its proposal to introduce a ‘free’, state-controlled internet service will only bolster our existing Big Brother-style surveillance state. Labour has even announced that it plans to make misogyny a hate crime.

Defenders of proposals to increase the surveillance and regulation of our everyday lives will often say that if you have nothing to hide, then you have nothing to fear. But many good people do have something to hide, such as whistleblowers or people trying to discover what powerful institutions do not want them to know. More importantly, the UK government, especially under its Prevent counter-terrorism strategy, has wrongfully investigated numerous individuals on the basis of what they were reading online. People, that is, with nothing to hide but plenty to fear.

I am sympathetic to plans for the state to provide its citizens with basic necessities. But without promising to protect our fundamental rights, such ‘freebies’ threaten to be part and parcel of the broader assault on liberty.

SOURCE 





PIERS MORGAN: Most terrorists don't change their evil spots so it's time Britain stopped going soft on hate-filled jihadis to please the PC hand-wringing brigade and does what Americans do - lock them up forever

What does it take these days for a nihilistic terrorist to get locked up in prison for the rest of his life?

In America, that's a relatively simple question: if you're a convicted Al-Qaeda or ISIS operative, you're led to a small cold foreboding window-less cell and you don't come out again. Ever.

Well not back into society, anyway.

That's your punishment for deciding to align yourself with the worst terror groups in modern history - responsible for mass murder and carnage on a grotesque, heinous scale.

Americans take the view that if you're part of an organization that beheads aid workers, throws gay people off roofs, sets victims on fire in cages, or flies planes in to sky-scrapers, then you're unlikely to rehabilitate to an extent where you can be trusted not to carry on doing such diabolical things.

But in Britain, we take a rather different approach.

If you're a convicted Al-Qaeda terrorist in my country, then you get to walk free after just eight years, without anyone even bothering to check if you're still dangerous.

Sounds insane, right? Well that's because it IS insane.

And to illustrate just how insane it is, the Al-Qaeda terrorist I am referring to committed an appalling act of terror in London last Friday, murdering two brilliant young Cambridge-educated people in their 20s, and wounding three others, during a violent rampage that only ended when heroic members of the public stopped him with a fire extinguisher, whale tusk and their fists before police arrived to shoot him dead.

The horrifying attack came less than a year after the terrorist was released.

And by cruel irony, his victims were trying to help ex-prisoners like him at a rehabilitation conference when he mercilessly stabbed them to death.

The murderer was a man named Usman Khan. And it's worth examining exactly who he was and what he did prior to his deadly attack.

Khan was a British-born son of Pakistani immigrants.

When he was just 14, he used to walk around his school, Haywood High in Stoke-on-Trent with a photo of Osama Bin Laden attached to the front of his exercise book, and he was spotted laughing at videos of the 9/11 attacks in a café.

Later, he began preaching Islamic extremism on the streets, on behalf of infamous hate preacher Anjem Choudary's banned terror group al-Muhajiroun.

Khan, who called himself Abu Saif, was photographed waving an Al Qaeda flag as he ranted into a megaphone. He distributed disturbing extremist literature until it attracted the attention of anti-terror cops who raided his family's home when he was 17.  'I ain't no terrorist,' he insisted.

And the Crown Prosecution Service decided not to press criminal charges due to lack of hard evidence that he was.

An emboldened Khan vowed: 'We are going to carry on until the last breath, because we believe this to be true.'

He spoke at a conference about why Britain should adopt Sharia law and campaigned to stage a march through a military town where British soldiers who died in Iraq and Afghanistan were honored.

Khan became a member of Islam4UK, another of Choudary's banned extremist groups, which led to security services launching a second covert surveillance operation against him in 2010.

And that's when his real nefarious intent was uncovered.

Bugs installed in his home recorded Khan talking how to make a pipe bomb after seeing a 'recipe' in an Al Qaeda magazine. He was heard calling non-Muslims 'dogs' - and talking about buying weapons and attacking pubs and clubs with explosives.

He and two other jihadists from Stoke made contact with other extremists in London and Wales, and the nine of them met up to discuss how to train terrorists in a camp, embark on letter-bomb campaigns, blow up civilians, and attack targets including London's Stock Exchange, the US embassy in London and Britain's new Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

When they were arrested, Khan pled guilty to planning a terror camp, advised he would get a reduction in sentence by doing so.

At his trial, the judge singled Khan out from the others. Justice Wilkie, sentencing him to just 16 years in prison, wrote that Khan's 'ability to act on a strategic level' and to plan terror attacks meant he should only be released if and when a parole board was convinced he was no longer a threat.

Wilkie warned that the nine jihadis, including Khan, 'would remain, even after a lengthy term of imprisonment, of such a significant risk that the public could not be adequately protected by their being managed on license in the community.'

Yet just eight years later, Khan was released on license into the community.

How the hell did this happen? It started when the cunning terrorist began playing the deradicalized card immediately he was imprisoned.

'I don't carry the views before my arrest,' he said, 'and can prove at the time I was immature, and now want to live my life as a good Muslim and a good citizen of Britain.'

His strategy worked, and a year later, three Appeal Court judges led by Sir Brian Leveson inexplicably concluded it was wrong for him to have received such a 'tough' indeterminate sentence and gave him a determinate one instead that meant he would automatically be released after eight years.

So, last December, Khan was let out of prison without any formal assessment of his potential risk. He was just electronically tagged and ordered to report twice weekly to a parole officer.

He was able to hoodwink everyone into believing he was a changed man, even joining Learning Together, a program run by Cambridge University, that rehabilitates prisoners. And it was at their conference on Friday that he carried out his barbaric attack. Khan had been given a day-release to attend the event without any escort.

His victims, Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, were two young people working with the ex-cons that day who cared passionately about criminal justice.

'Jack was an intelligent, thoughtful and empathetic person (who) lived by his principles,' said his family.

'Saskia was a funny, kind, positive influence... and was generous to the point of always wanting to see the best in all people,' said her family.

My heart breaks for them both and their poor families.

I can't imagine anything worse than losing a child in such disgusting circumstances.

Although actually, I can. Imagine hearing your child had been stabbed to death by a convicted Al Qaeda terrorist who'd served just eight years in prison and not even seen a parole board before his release to properly assess his current danger levels?

The British justice system is a hot, shameful mess.

The prisons are over-crowded and woefully under-staffed.

The probation service is also creaking at the seams and totally incapable of keeping up with all the serious criminals they are charged with keeping an eye on.

Police numbers have been drastically and disastrously slashed in recent years.

And supine politicians who predictably raced to score cheap, petty and utterly insensitive points against each other after Friday's attack, have all conspired to substantially reduce our capacity to defend the country from murderous jihadists.

As I write this column, there are 73 other convicted terrorists who've been released early back onto the streets of Britain. One of them was re-arrested after the London Bridge attack because police found new evidence he may be planning a terror attack.

Another 400 battle-scarred Al Qaeda and ISIS fighters have returned from war zones like Iraq and Syria to also freely roam around.

And police estimate there may be a further 20,000 jihadists in Britain, brainwashed and radicalized.

Who are they?

Where are they?

What danger do they pose?

The most shocking and disturbing thing about those questions is that the authorities don't seem to really know.

What we do know is that releasing Usman Khan after just eight years proved to be a bloody fiasco.

And it was always going to be a bloody fiasco.

As Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit Party, said: 'Nobody apologizes for the fact the liberal elite have given us a ridiculous sentencing system. I don't care if you were in prison for six years or 12 years, if you have committed mass murder or planned to commit mass murder, you are not just an ordinary criminal, you have got the virus of jihadism. I don't think these people should ever be let out of prison unless we are absolutely convinced they do not have a jihadi virus. But political correctness stops us doing that.'

I agree with him.

It's not like we don't already do this for some violent offenders.

There are currently 74 prisoners in Britain who've been given 'whole life' sentences, meaning they will never come out.

They include serial killers like Peter 'Yorkshire Ripper' Sutcliffe, murderous pedophiles, and a far-right fanatic named Thomas Mair who assassinated female Member of Parliament Jo Cox in 2016.

Yet extraordinarily, Usman Khan and his Al Qaeda mates were not deemed to be in that category. They'd only plotted to commit mass murder, to train terrorists, to assassinate politicians, to kill and main civilians in pubs and clubs – and were caught before they got the chance to do any of it.

So Khan gets out after eight years, and of course, then gets the chance to do what he had craved for many years. It's an absolute disgrace that he was released.

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. 

************************************





3 December, 2019  

Starbucks FIRES barista who printed the word 'Pig' on the cups of five Oklahoma police officers working on Thanksgiving

On Thursday an officer with the Kiefer Police Department did a Starbucks run for emergency dispatchers working on the holiday and was shocked to find the word 'PIG' printed on the labels for all five drink orders.

The officer reported the labels to Police Chief Johnny O'Mara, who shared a picture of one of the offensive coffee cups on Facebook, where the incident went viral and led to public outrage. 

Following the incident the officer who did the Starbucks run says the barista behind the 'Pig' label contacted him and apologized, saying the label was meant to be a joke.

Starbucks issued a company wide apology as well condemning the label and announcing that the barista was fired.

'The Starbucks partner who wrote this offensive word on a cup used poor judgement and is no longer a partner after this violation of company policy,' the company said Friday.

'This is absolutely unacceptable and we are deeply sorry to the law enforcement officer who experienced this. We have also apologized directly to him and we are working to connect with the police chief as well as to express our remorse,' Starbucks said in a statement.

'This language is offensive to all law enforcement and is not representative of the deep appreciation we have for police officers who work tirelessly to keep our communities safe,' the statement added.

Police Chief O'Mara was on vacation when the officer called to flag the 'Pig' labels. O'Mara then called the Starbucks location to demand an apology and the Glenpool store manager offered to reprint the cups, but it wasn't enough for O'Mara.

He shared pictures of the cups on Facebook saying: 'So... one of my on-duty officers decides to do something nice for our dispatchers.

'It's Thanksgiving Day; our dispatchers are under appreciated as it is. My officer goes to Starbucks to get the dispatchers coffee as a thank you for all they do (especially when they're working a holiday.)'

'What irks me is the absolute and total disrespect for a police officer who, instead of being home with family and enjoying a meal and a football game, is patrolling his little town.'

'As a side note, I called the store and was told they'd be happy to 'replace the coffee with a correct label.' The proverb 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me' came to mind.

'Thank you, first responders, for risking it all this Thanksgiving away from your families.

As a result of the spat, Starbucks and the Kiefer Police Department plan to host a 'Coffee with a Cop' event where local law enforcement can meet with baristas and members of the community to discuss the role that dispatchers and officers play in keeping the city safe.

Kiefer is a small town with a population of less than 2,000 located about 20 miles south of Tulsa. 

SOURCE 






Congress warns E.U. against ‘Warning Labels’ for Jewish-made products
Nazism revived

Leading lawmakers in Congress are warning the European Union that issuing a mandate that Jewish products made in contested areas of Israel carry consumer warning labels could trigger American anti-boycott laws and jeopardize U.S. trade with Europe.

The European Court of Justice (CJEU) is expected to issue an opinion this week on a long-running case brought by an Israeli winery challenging a requirement that Israeli-made products be labeled as coming from "settlements" and "Israeli colonies."

The decision is expected to be issued early Tuesday and follows a recent opinion by the E.U. court's advocate general stipulating that European law requires these Jewish-made products to be labeled. Critics said the law is reminiscent of Nazi-era boycotts of Jewish products and have viewed such requirements as a win for the anti-Semitic Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, or BDS.

Ahead of the decision, Senator Bob Menendez (D., N.J.) petitioned E.U. ambassador to the United States Stavros Lambrinidis to raise concerns about a potential ruling in favor of the warning labels and said it could create policy tension with the United States.

Senators Benjamin Cardin (D., Md.) and Rob Portman (R., Ohio) sent a similar letter to U.S. trade representative Robert Lighthizer expressing concerns that the ruling holds Israel to a standard no other country is subjected to.

Rep. Juan Vargas (D., Calif.) sent a letter to U.S. ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland warning that the ruling would lead to discrimination against Israel.

The lawmakers also said such a ruling could trigger multiple U.S. anti-boycott laws and damage the nearly $1.3 trillion in trade between America and the E.U.

"The regulation in question is problematic for a number of reasons, including because it targets specific businesses based on the ethnicity and national origin of their owners," Menendez wrote in the letter he sent to Lambrinidis.

Menendez described the pro-BDS effort as an act of discrimination against Israel and Jews and said the ruling could open a "Pandora's Box" of labeling litigation.

"I am deeply concerned that if the CJEU decision empowers the EU to require or allow its Member States to label Israeli and Palestinian products in the manner proposed, it will allow and encourage the politicization of EU rules of origin labeling with potential adverse unintended consequences, including by opening the door to near-unlimited use of ‘ethical considerations' in food labeling which would enable Member State protectionism and nationalism, and be unhelpful for the EU single market," Menendez wrote.

"Additionally, it could facilitate Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) tactics and de facto boycotts and discrimination against Israel, and its products, and potentially lead to discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, religion and nationality, contrary to existing EU policies and laws against BDS campaigns, Israel boycotts and discrimination," the letter states.

The lawmakers warn that if American anti-boycott laws are triggered by the decision, it will elevate tensions between the United States and E.U.

"If these unfair requirements are mandated or allowed by the CJEU, European countries would be forced to choose whether to single out the world's only Jewish state for distinct, defamatory treatment, and thereby create policy tensions with the United States, or to continue to delay implementation while finding an appropriate approach," Menendez wrote in a letter that strikes a similar tone to the other congressional missives.

A decision mandating the labeling of Jewish goods also would be seen as an effort by the E.U. to interfere in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks.

"The U.S. Federal Government and many U.S. states have enacted strong anti-boycott provisions that impose severe penalties and restrictions on companies that participate in boycotts or other economic pressure campaigns against Israel," Menendez wrote. "If the CJEU decision empowers the EU to mandate or allow Member States to implement such labels which target Israeli businesses and exports there will be serious and far-reaching implications and unintended consequences."

SOURCE 






New York Law Forces Abortion Orthodoxy on Pro-Life Employers, Even Churches

A New York law would force abortion orthodoxy on pro-life employers, including crisis pregnancy centers and churches. The law would undermine the very reason many pro-life centers exist — to prevent abortion and protect the lives of the unborn. Two pregnancy center groups and a church have filed a federal lawsuit to prevent the law from going into effect.

Early this month, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) signed SB 660, the so-called "Boss Bill," which prohibits New York employers from firing, demoting, or taking other action against employees based on "reproductive health decision making." The law also bans any "waiver" or code of conduct preventing an employee from making "reproductive health care decisions" — code for getting an abortion. Finally, the bill requires employers to cite this law in any employee handbook and allows employees to sue if this "right" is infringed.

Curiously, Cuomo signed the bill with little fanfare. His office did not even put out a press release related to the bill on the date of the signing (November 8), despite many press releases on funding for an animal shelter, a vaping investigation, and a new engineering facility. In January, by contrast, Cuomo signed New York's radical abortion bill with great fanfare, including lighting up the One World Trade Center in pink.

Less than a week after Cuomo signed the bill, three pro-life organizations filed a lawsuit to prevent it from going into effect. CompassCare Pregnancy Services, a pro-life pregnancy care center in Rochester, teamed up with the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA), a pregnancy center membership organization with 41 member centers in New York, and First Bible Baptist Church located in Hilton.

According to the lawsuit, "SB 660 intentionally and by design sacrifices the associational, speech, and religious freedom of employers in New York State—including religious non-profits, churches, and schools— to the government’s desire to promote abortion rights by gutting the ability of pro-life employers to hire to their pro-life missions."

Denise Harle, legal counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which represents the plaintiffs, explained the dangers of the Boss Bill in a New York Post op-ed.

"The Boss Bill tells employers they have to be willing to employ people whose beliefs and behavior as to 'reproductive-health decisions' run counter to their own," she wrote. "That’s bad enough if you run a family-owned restaurant. It is intolerable if you run a church, a Catholic school or a pregnancy care center — and now are required by your own state government to hire people who have no ­respect for your faith and who ­oppose your pro-life convictions."

It would be bad enough if the government were merely requiring pro-life employers to hire women who had abortions or support abortion. Yet since the bill does not bother to define "reproductive health decision making," Harle argued that it may restrict employers' ability to set rules on a whole host of complex moral and sexual issues, such as "sexual conduct, procreation, pregnancy, contraception, surrogacy, in-vitro fertilization or sexually transmitted disease."

"Under SB 660, an employer can’t even require workers to sign a code of moral conduct. Adding insult to injury, employers are forced to ­include these reproductive-health rights in their employee handbooks — effectively compelling them to communicate the government’s ideological message," she lamented.

Indeed, the Boss Bill was first introduced to combat the religious freedom of employers like Hobby Lobby to refuse to pay for certain kinds of contraceptives for their employees. State Senator Jennifer Metzger drafted the bill after the Supreme Court struck down the Obamacare contraceptive mandate in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014). She condemned that decision as a "dangerous, slippery slope."

In remarks this past January, Metzger condemned the "over 100 lawsuits ... filed by employers determined to deny workers coverage of reproductive health services and products based on the employer's own personal and political beliefs." She explained that "the Boss Bill seeks to prevent this further encroachment by employers into the private decisions of employees."

Yet Hobby Lobby had good reason to oppose the specific kinds of contraception the company refused to pay for. Hobby Lobby did not refuse to provide any contraception, but only the forms of contraception that arguably constitute abortion.

"Further proof of SB 660’s stark animus toward, and its intentional targeting of, religion is provided by the complete absence of any religious exemptions, even for churches," the lawsuit claims.

Tragically, this is not the first case in which NIFLA fought a law forcing crisis pregnancy centers to support abortion. Last year, the Supreme Court struck down a California law mandating that these pro-life centers must advertise abortion. In NIFLA v. Becerra, the Court ruled that the law "imposes an unduly burdensome disclosure requirement that will chill [the centers'] protected speech."

In both California and New York, liberal states passed laws quashing dissent on abortion following Planned Parenthood's playbook.

Abortion advocates argue that crisis pregnancy centers are not real clinics, and therefore they must advertise for abortion clinics. They also claim that employers should never be able to fire employees for getting abortions or advocating for abortion, even if the employees work at companies that exist to save unborn babies from abortion. These amount to quasi-religious tests forcing pro-life centers to violate the very reason for their existence.

The Constitution protects free speech, religious freedom, and free association for all people, religious and secular alike. The Supreme Court rulings in the Hobby Lobby and NIFLA cases suggest the Boss Bill should lose in court, but abortion advocates will continue to push legislation like this. Both the LGBT and abortion movements are targeting religious freedom to force their views on those who disagree.

SOURCE 





From farms and coal mines to airports and water supplies: How China is buying up millions of acres of land, vital infrastructure and companies - as part of its 'disturbing' plan to exert greater influence and control over Australia

This is just racist paranoia. China is not particularly targeting Australia.  It is buying up assets wherever it can worldwide.  And what harm is there in it?  China can't just pick up Australian farms and take them back to China.  And if they don't manage their assets commercially, they will send them broke, which is hardly what they would want.  They are in the business of acquiring assets, not destroying them.

So why the worldwide buying frenzy?  It's simple.  They may be communists but they are following orthodox Western economics.  Most economists are freaked by the huge issue of new American dollars that began under Obama and is continuing under Trump.  Such actions normally lead to inflation and in a sense MUST lead to inflation.   The inflation has been inexplicably delayed but the longer the unfunded spending  goes on the more likely it becomes. And inflation means that any greenbhacks you possess become steadily worthless.

So what would you do if you owned a trillion of such unsafe greenbacks?  China sells so much to America that they have earned greenbacks by the billion.  But just saving it is out of the question.  Even the banks don't do that.  They lend it out. The bubble  in the value of the dollar could burst any time and leave China with nothing in return for all the stuff they have sent to Amerrica.  So they need to spend it NOW while they can get worthwhile things with it -- things that will tend to retain their value.

They have been doing it for years. They put their trust in real things, not bits of printed paper.  So they told their millions of keen businessmen to buy overseas and their government would give them the dollars.  And they really ramped that up in the Obama years.  And they mostly like what they have got: Assets with  both a future and a present that will be a reliable store of value.

So why is Trump continuing the Obama excess?  Because he can.  He has a distinguished economics degree so he can analyse the situation for himself.  And he obviously thinks he can use the bubble while it lasts.  Just printing money instead of raising it in taxes has a lot of appeal to any politician.  Conservative econmists are squawking but Trump is ahead of them.  Just look at how he has revitalized the economy


China is buying up Australian land, infrastructure and businesses at an alarming rate as it seeks to project power and influence beyond its shores.

The communist nation of 1.4billion people owns an airport in Western Australia, nine million hectares of Australian land, several Aussie coalmines and wind farms and even the Port of Darwin, a key strategic asset.

China is also the largest foreign owner of Australian water and has projected soft power Down Under by planting Communist Party-approved Mandarin teachers in schools and universities.

Last week 'disturbing' stories emerged that China tried to install a spy as a federal MP - and it is also suspected of carrying out major cyber attacks on Parliament.

In November 2015, the Northern Territory government decided to lease the Port of Darwin - now known as Darwin Port - to a Chinese company for 99 years.

Landbridge Australia, a subsidiary of Shandong Landbridge, won the lease with its bid of $506 million.

The territory's Country Liberal Party government decided to lease the port - a key strategic asset because of its location at the top of the country - because it was desperate for investment in the absence of federal funds.

Executive director of the Australia Defence Association (ADA), Neil James, called the leasing of the base a 'seriously dumb idea'. And Labor MP Nick Champion called for the lease to be scrapped so the port can be returned to Australian control.

Land

China is the second largest foreign owner of land in Australia with Chinese companies in control of 2.3 per cent of the nation's soil.

Investors from the the United Kingdom own more with 2.6 per cent and buyers from the US are third with 0.7 per cent, according to the 2018 Register Of Foreign Ownership.

Most of the foreign-owned land is in Western Australia and the Northern Territory and is used for cattle farming.  

When the land register report was released in December, federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg said that foreign investment was important for growth.

But he also warned: 'It is important to ensure that foreign investment is not contrary to the national interest'.

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. 

************************************





2 December, 2019

Cancel Culture Hypocrites on Left and Right

Michelle Malkin

Cancel culture is metastasizing. No one is safe anymore, including yours truly.

On Tuesday afternoon, I was informed that Bentley University in Waltham, Massachusetts, had pulled the plug on my book discussion of "Open Borders Inc." with the Center for Immigration Studies' Director of Policy Studies Jessica Vaughan. The event had been scheduled for this Friday and co-hosts from Bostonians Against Sanctuary Cities were expecting a crowd of about 300 people.

University officials gave pale excuses for the last-minute cancellation, citing local organizers' request for an audio box to accommodate media outlets. Anti-sanctuary activist Lou Murray condemned the decision as "malarkey," vowing that "the show must and will go on." The Bentley University administrators who squelched our open discussion of who's subsidizing and profiting on the mass migration agenda, Murray said, "are the new politically correct Puritans. I thought 'Banned in Boston' died long ago." Liberal opponents of book burning change their tune when the book topics don't fit their narratives.

This isn't the first time that immigration enforcement advocates have been targeted in the Bay State. In 2017, Vaughan's talk on sanctuary policies at the Veterans of Foreign Wars building in Franklin, Massachusetts, was canceled after a vehement protest by left-wing illegal immigration supporters recycled the Southern Poverty Law Center's smear that CIS is a "hate group." Vaughan is scheduled to speak next week at a community center in Sharon, Massachusetts. Protesters are already organizing online to disrupt the event.

Marginalizing all champions of secure borders and sovereignty as "haters" is SPLC's bread and butter. Even after its hate-manufacturing character assassins have been discredited as poverty palace scam artists by liberal journalists, the group succeeds in executing attacks on political opponents through willing and able media surrogates. The New York Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, CNN, PBS and MSNBC have all regurgitated SPLC's release of leaked emails between senior White House adviser Stephen Miller and a former editor for the conservative Breitbart website. Miller, who is Jewish, has been attacked repeatedly as a "white nationalist" for recommending immigration restrictionist books and websites that the powers that be don't want anyone to read. Miller's frank discussions of "demographic Armageddon" wrought by mass, uncontrolled migration have been deemed beyond the pale. Unhinged Sen. Mazie Hirono called on Miller to resign.

But math doesn't lie. The unrelenting numbers of amnestied illegal immigrants, guest workers, foreign students and green card holders on a path to citizenship—who vote overwhelmingly, stubbornly and immutably Democratic—do indeed spell doom. This week, both The New York Times and Los Angeles Times reported on the obvious electoral impact of open borders on Virginia and California and the rest of the country, which will be majority-minority by 2045.

No one called on the journalists reporting the facts to be fired or smeared them as "conspiracy theorists." When I delivered the same message on Fox News two months upon my book launch, however, globalist billionaire George Soros's lying henchmen at Media Matters compared me to the Tree of Life synagogue shooter and hurled "anti-Semite" epithets at me. More recently, when I defended conservative nationalist students who confronted establishment GOP representatives at campus events held by Turning Point USA and the Young America's Foundation with serious questions about the detrimental consequences of mass migration, the Keepers of the Gate called on me to be de-platformed and cast out of the conservative "mainstream."

After delivering two speeches at Lock Haven University and UCLA on the important battle between grassroots "America first" activists and big business , open borders Republicans, YAF issued a statement this weekend, asserting: "There is no room in mainstream conservatism or at YAF for holocaust deniers, white nationalists, street brawlers, or racists."

Yes, my friends, they were talking about me.

Both the open borders left and right don't want to address immigration-induced demographics. They just want to demagogue, while joining together in D.C. to push expanded guest-worker pipelines (S.B. 386), agribusiness amnesties (H.R. 4916), and massive "Dreamer" work permits (H.R. 6). Employing the very witch hunt tactics of the left that so many conservative pundits purport to abhor, YAF and others (including Jonah Goldberg, David French, various snot-nosed libertarians from the Washington Examiner and elsewhere) demand that I disavow the young nationalist disrupters who have captured social media attention over the past three weeks. Don't rely on slanted summaries of what they've said and done. Go to the original sources, as I have done in communicating with many of these earnest students who think for themselves.

Because I named their chief strategist and organizer, 21-year-old YouTube show host Nick Fuentes [Tweet him] I was accused of promoting "Holocaust denialism" and "white nationalism" based on brief clips of Fuentes accumulated by anonymous sources culled from 500 of his hours-long shows. I have done no such thing. The rabid reaction pearl-clutching Beltway elites are having to a kid in his basement exposes how desperate they are to protect the "America last" racket.

Several of the establishment conservatives now smearing America-firsters have themselves espoused identitarian ideas and ethnic nationalism of one flavor or another. But because they are controlled opposition, they are safe.

The only thing I disavow is the hypocritical disavowal mob on both sides of the aisle. I cancel you.

SOURCE 





Slavery? we were a footnote

Liberals are trying to rewrite American history, teaching our children that the only thing that ever happened here–until they came along a year or two ago!–was slavery. The New York Times’s 1619 Project, which is being enthusiastically adopted by the nation’s public schools, is the culmination of years of left-wing propaganda. The liberals’ task is made easier by the fact that world history is mostly terra incognita to America’s young people. Thus, there is little fear of anyone putting American slavery into a global, historical context. But let’s do it anyway.

Slavery has existed since time immemorial on every continent except Antarctica, as Thomas Sowell wrote years ago. An estimated one-third to one-half of the inhabitants of the Roman empire, for example, were slaves. For more than 1,000 years, slaves (few of them Africans) were one of the basic commodities of trade across most of the world. But let’s focus specifically on African slavery.

Sub-Saharan Africa had a slave economy long before Europeans came along. But the external African slave trade of the early modern era had two basic components: Eastern and Western. The Eastern slave trade went to Arab countries. For a long time, the Arabs bought or captured European slaves, but when that supply dried up, they turned to Africa. Numbers are hard to come by–weirdly, the Arab slave trade hasn’t been as widely studied as the Western trade–but this source estimates that 17 million East Africans were sold into slavery in Islamic countries. If that number is correct, the Eastern slave trade was considerably larger than the Western.

To my knowledge, the best data source on the Western, or trans-Atlantic, slave trade is the Trans-Atlantic and Intra-American slave trade database, which is a product of the Emory University Center for Digital Scholarship, the University of California at Irvine, the University of California at Santa Cruz, the Hutchins Center at Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Humanities. This chart, from that source, shows how many slaves disembarked at various locations between 1501 and 1875.

The database shows a total of 10,702,654 slaves transported in the Atlantic trade. Of those, only 388,747 arrived in mainland North America, what became the United States–3.6% of the total in the trans-Atlantic trade, and well under 2% of the total slaves exported from Africa. Trans-Atlantic slaves went primarily to Brazil and the Caribbean. Portuguese Brazil imported more than 12 times as many slaves as North America. Brazil abolished slavery in 1888. Meanwhile, importation of slaves into what became the U.S. declined dramatically beginning in 1776 and terminated in 1807, pursuant to the Constitution, although a few were imported illegally thereafter.

This graphic, from the same source, shows the magnitude of the Atlantic slave trade to various regions. You can easily see what a minor factor the North American colonies and, in the final stage, the United States were:

Does this mean that slavery, here or elsewhere, was A-OK? Of course not. Through all of human history, slavery has been a horror. But virtually no one seriously opposed slavery in principle (as opposed to hoping that his own group would not be enslaved) until the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when Christians in England and America, with a powerful assist from Jews, argued for the first time that slavery was wrong per se. Thereafter, the British Navy played the lead role in suppressing the slave trade. I am going from memory, but I believe the last time a British war ship chased an Arab slave trader off the coast of East Africa was in 1902. And the Arab slave trade, and slavery in Arab countries, continued long after that–in fact, to this day.

Here in the U.S., the Republican Party was founded principally to combat slavery, which the Democratic Party fought bitterly to preserve. After the loss of 600,000 lives–far more than the number of African slaves who were brought to the colonies, although of course others were born here–abolition was achieved. When I was growing up, the abolition of slavery was justly celebrated in America’s public schools. Teachers in those days had a better grasp of history. Today, American children are being force-fed an ahistorical narrative in which America is somehow responsible for the entire phenomenon of African slavery, which extends back into pre-history and in which we have played a minor role.

By such lies do leftists seek to undermine our country. We shouldn’t let them get away with it. When it comes to slavery, America, along with Great Britain, is on the side of the angels. As is manifested by the fact that most Africans have come to the U.S. not as slaves, but rather voluntarily as immigrants, seeking freedom and a more prosperous life.

SOURCE  (See the original for links and graphics)






Hallmark Channel Under Assault by Race Hustlers and LGBTQ Cult, 'Too White'

Every Christmas season, it appears we have to endure listening to the race hustlers and the gay patrol complain about the one channel left in America that does not partake in envelope-pushing. The Hallmark channel really is the last known entertainment that does not engage in the culture wars by pushing "diversity" for the sake of pleasing the agitators and instead focuses on its demographics; white moms and grandmas. But these days, being white and enjoying things white people like is a cause for concern and mockery. I'm white, and a mom, and Hallmark doesn't particularly appeal to me except in the sense that I know I can turn it on and not be concerned that my children will be exposed to clown world morality that is on every other channel. It's safe.

The Hollywood Reporter penned an article called "Hallmark Channel Struggles to Give Diversity a Home For the Holidays." In it, author Lesley Goldberg takes aim at white people liking to watch other white people as if it's some kind of mortal sin. "While other networks are viewing the holidays with an eye toward inclusion, Hallmark is delivering the dream of a white Christmas, just like the one's audiences used to know." I doubt Goldberg would ever complain about the lack of diversity on Black Entertainment Television (which, by the way, I happen to think is a great idea and caters to a specific audience that likes what they do. What a concept!)

As bad as the acting generally is on the Hallmark channel, the stories are blissfully devoid of any toxic cultural stew pushing politics with every line. There was a time in America where television censors would never allow any sex scenes as graphic as what you would see on Cinemax after dark but today it's old hat to have to watch people groaning and panting (and swearing) at 7 pm on NBC. It's gross. As a result, I've given up cable and only subscribe to online services with access to movies and shows the cultural elites now call "unwatchable." I've completely lost the desire to watch any new programming.

In an article from 2017 in the Walrus entitled "The Unwatchable Whiteness of Holiday Movies," Hallmark fans give reasonable explanations for why they like the channel.

“It’s clean and I just don’t enjoy cussing,” a Georgia grandma told E! News in October. The sentiment was echoed by a North Carolina senior who said, “There is no profanity nor any offensive sex acts in any movie I have ever seen.” A middle-aged Minnesotan added, “There are no politics, there is no crime, no hate, no war.”
But in a culture that values offensive sex acts, profanity, and violence overall, the Hallmark channel is doomed. The diversity activists will never be satisfied until everything white people like is canceled, including white people themselves. And they will eventually get their wish because white people in America will become a minority in the not-too-distant future. Meanwhile, however, whites are still the majority population. Even so, if that majority wants to watch entertainment that represents them or doesn't include a constant assault on morality and decency, they're relegated to one cheesy channel that plays nothing but sappy Christmas movies most of the year. But when the social justice soldiers get done with Hallmark, they won't even have that.

The sustained campaign against the Hallmark channel will work, as illustrated with the channel's CEO, Bill Abbot, signaling that they are open to gay stories. It's only a matter of time until the panting and groaning comes to Hallmark. "While the film and TV industries, among others, are embracing inclusion onscreen, in the executive ranks and among writers, producers and directors, Abbott says Hallmark is 'open' to doing any type of movie — including with gay leads (which it currently lacks, too)," says Goldberg.

This leads me to believe that Hallmark is not interested in pleasing its base of "moms and grandmas" and will instead try to please the outrage mob that doesn't watch their channel. That reminds me of the current Chick-fil-A controversy where after years of standing up to the agitating gay mob, it caved to please people who don't patronize their business. Get woke, go broke, the saying goes. It remains to be seen whether there will be a financial hit to the companies who go to the dark side capitulating to protesters instead of customers. Gillette didn't do so well but still seems to be sticking with their new corporate policy of bending over for clown culture, ranting against toxic masculinity. Perhaps these companies don't want profits. Perhaps the people directing these boards are more invested in shifting our culture leftward, profits be damned.

All I know is that I don't care if Hallmark gets woke. It's terrible writing anyway. I have an entire library of classic movies starring Cary Grant and Maureen O'Hara and Dorris Day to enjoy whenever I want. The censors can't stop the signal now that everything is digital. If nothing worthwhile ever gets made going forward, we will always have old Hollywood, and that's more than enough for me.

SOURCE 





Unchecked rise of democracy deniers

Comment from Australia

They simply will not learn. They refuse to admit error, concede defeat or offer the crucial loser’s consent on which democracy hinges. Political opposition and public protest are fundamental in democracy. But there is a balance to be struck between such rights and the will of the majority as exercised through the ballot box.

That balance is out of kilter now. There are phonies in parliament, on campuses, all over social media and spewing erroneous groupthink from our public broadcasters. When facts don’t suit or reality confounds them, they console each other in the carefully constructed safe zones of university seminars or public radio forums. This cohort, for all its errors and misjudgments, dominates the public discussion; largely because of the heft of the taxpayer-funded media, university and quango sectors. They dominate now just as they did before this year’s election, before Don­ald Trump won and before Brexit.

On the ABC’s Insiders last week all three panellists agreed with the assertion Malcolm Turnbull had put forward that he would have won the election. Could they make such assessments if they understood what had transpired at the polls?

Having misjudged the electoral dynamic, you would expect a recalibration of perspectives might be unavoidable. Perhaps there would be a realisation from the media/political class that they had over-estimated the public appetite for climate action, underestimated resistance to increased taxation or missed anxiety about a return to ambivalent border security.

But no. There are no lessons. The ideological and policy settings of the media/political class remain unadjusted. They wander right up to the cheese again, take another bite, and get jolted again by the electoral shock.

They are the democracy deniers. Their version of public debate is one of virtual reality; their views are constantly reaffirmed, it is only the voters who get it wrong. For VR goggles, they can blinker themselves by watching the ABC, perhaps SBS for variety, reading Guardian Australia and discussing events at the Wheeler Centre or on Q&A.

The real world is kept at bay. When elections confound them, as conservative victories invari­ably do, they can blame strangers from the suburbs and the regions, demonise the barbarians at the commercial end of the broadcast spectrum or invoke that hardy perennial of the defeated leftist, the Murdoch conspiracy theory (as we have heard from Turnbull, Kevin Rudd and others). Anything but confront the truth. Ultimately this is futile, as Winston Churchill suggested: “The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.”

So, at the May election the Coali­tion picked up an extra seat, won more than 41 per cent of the primary vote and generated a 1 per cent swing towards it on a two-party-preferred basis, crushing Labor’s 33 per cent primary vote and snaring another term of government. Given the damage the government had inflicted on itself over the term, and the fracturing of the right-of-centre vote by One Nation and Clive Palmer, this result is full of foreboding for Labor. It is understandable that this would disappoint and dismay many people. But it is fundamental that they accept it.

Denial started on day one. The Ten Network’s Lisa Wilkinson wrote a strained open letter to Scott Morrison, apparently not comprehending that many people, most in fact, felt the country had dodged a bullet.

“Prime Minister, you may have noticed we’re all feeling just a little broken right now — broken-hearted in fact, at how toxic the Australian body politic has become — and a return to basic civility in public discourse would be a great start to that healing,” she wrote, apparently not sensing that the Prime Minister’s mainstream views and the way he had weathered attacks based on his religion might have been seen as a repudiation of the green-left, Twitter-fuel­led politics of abuse.

After a fiercely contested “climate election” Wilkinson seemed to want the losing party’s policies to prevail: “We know, too, that the climate is sick and tired. And things are getting worse.”

The campaigning to ignore the election result and adopt the defeated green-left agenda has only escalated. Politicians, activists and journalists have exaggerated, embellished and fabricated climate hysteria to justify the kinds of extreme climate policies rejected at the election.

Extinction Rebellion protesters have superglued themselves to roadways in Brisbane, children have skipped school, and local and state government workers have been given time off to “strike” for the sorts of climate policies federal voters avoided.

The Senate has rejected union integrity measures taken to the election, and medivac laws, passed against the government’s wishes by a coalition of Greens, independents and Labor before the election, still may not be repealed despite the government’s renewed mandate and strong border security record. What would voters know?

Undeniably, Energy Minister Angus Taylor used grossly erron­eous figures in a charged letter to Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore. But given the letter was inconsequential and the figures were a misquote of the mayor’s own figures back to her, it is difficult to interpret the hysterical reaction from Labor and the media except as an exercise in retaliation: Taylor must be punished for winning a climate election.

Anthony Albanese, Greens leader Richard Di Natale, Turnbull and Australian Republic Movement chairman Peter FitzSimons pushed this week to rid our Constitution of the monarchy — as if voters had not just passed judgment on Labor, and its election promise of another republic referendum within three years.

Labor went to the election criticising the Coalition’s economic plans and promising remedies that included almost $400bn in additional tax revenue. Yet to abandon those tax grabs, it still critiques the Coalition’s economic management but proposes additional fiscal stimulus now.

It all smacks of an election result denied. It replicates the politics of the US and Britain, where not for a single moment have members of the media/political class accepted the will of the people as expressed through the election of Trump or the referendum vote for Brexit.

In this manifestation of democracy denial by the green left, elections are reduced to markers that deliver no lessons and in which the losers refuse to concede a point. Opposition merely morphs, through electoral rejection, into resistance.

Sure, we recognise the checks and balances. In Australia we have a bicameral system in which the government, typically, does not carry a majority in the Senate.

A narrow election win does not mean a government rules unencumbered. But for democracy to operate effectively, people such as Wilkinson and her fellow travellers must comprehend some sense of mandate. There must be some element of loser’s consent. Instead we see loser’s bitterness and loser’s revenge.

No party or individual should be expected to surrender their entire agenda because of electoral admonishment. But somewhere a lesson must be learned; the will of the voters must endorse or reject something.

Otherwise what is an election other than a well-funded and formulaic phase in a perpetual saga of toxic politicking? Besides, mainstream voters will not change their minds based on the bloody-mindedness of Senate crossbenchers or Extinction Rebellion stunt masters, the agendas run by media or tub-thumping of protest parties such as the Greens.

For Labor, a party of government, there is a crucial balance to be struck between causing mischief and learning lessons, between accepting democracy and standing on principle, between advocating an agenda and listening to constituents. Because if the will of the people is thwarted, disregarded and ignored between elections, voters might be more emphatic next time.

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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1 December, 2019

Harvey Proctor slams British police as he accepts £900,000 payout for disastrous Operation Midland sex abuse probe



It largely ruined his life.  Not only did he lose his job, home and reputation due to false accusations of paedophilia and murder, but the former Tory MP believes the authorities tried to tear apart his family. He was also left penniless. So this award is a minimum. 

He is certainly right to demand the resignation of dear Cressida.  She was in charge of the operation that resulted in the police killing of an entirely innocent Brazilian electrician.  Anybody else would have been demoted over that but she was instead put in charge of the entire London police.  Why? She is an open Lesbian.  That's a huge tick in politically correct Britain.  Will she be demoted now that she is responsible for two great miscarriages of justice?  Probably not

Harvey Proctor, the former Tory MP, has accepted a payout of almost £1 million from the Scotland Yard over its disastrous handling of Operation Midland, but has still demanded that the Commissioner, Dame Cressida Dick resigns.

The 72-year-old, who was investigated by the force for more than a year after being falsely accused of child murder by the fantasist, Carl Beech will receive £500,000 damages and £400,000 in legal costs.

It is believed to be the biggest ever payout by a police force over negligent behaviour which did not result in wrongful imprisonment and marks a humiliating end to the debacle for the Met.

But despite accepting the payout, Mr Proctor has refused to go quietly and has issued a withering statement blasting the Met over its numerous failings.

In the statement, Mr Proctor, who lost his home and his job as a result of the police investigation, said had refused to sign any non disclosure agreements as part of the deal and remained free to criticise Scotland Yard.

He said: "Cressida Dick failed abjectly in her duty and should resign, while Steve Rodhouse is a very stupid man who should not be the deputy in charge of the National Crime Agency."

Mr Proctor launched legal action against the Met and had been willing to take the case to trial at the High Court, where if he had won, he could have expected an even larger payout.

But he said: "I am heartily sick of these police and their mealy-mouthed apologies to me and I did not want to take a fortune from public funds. Just enough to put my innocence beyond doubt, and to warn the police not to make this same mistake with other people."

Operation Midland was launched in 2014 after Beech told detectives he had been raped and abused by politicians and high profile figures during the 1970s.

Scotland Yard declared the allegations as credible and true and launched a multi-million pound investigation which saw the homes of Mr Proctor, D-day veteran Lord Bramall and the late Lord Brittan raided and searched.

After traducing the reputations of number of highly respected figures, the investigation was eventually closed down without a single arrest being made.

Retired High Court judge, Sir Richard Henriques, published a damning report into the Met's handling of the case, highlighted 43 separate blunders by the police.

Beech, who is himself a convicted paedophile, was eventually charged with perverting the course of justice and was jailed for 18-years in July.

Earlier this month, Mr Proctor reported five former Met officers to Northumbria Police in a bid to spark a fresh criminal inquiry into the investigation.

Among the allegations he has made is that the police misled a district judge when applying for the search warrants to raid the homes of the suspects.

He is still waiting to hear if a criminal investigation will be launched. A spokesman for Scotland Yard said: "The MPS is assessing the complaint."

All of the officers involved in Operation Midland have been cleared of any wrongdoing by the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC).

SOURCE 





The Big Lie of Psychiatry: The Rosenhan experiment exposed

A review of The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness by Susannah Cahalan

“All of the little things—the wig, the lying about his hospitalization dates, the exaggeration in his medical records, the playing with numbers, the dismissal of Harry’s information, the unfinished book, his never tackling the subject again—all of these piled up. Rosenhan does not seem to be the man I’d believed in.”

You can say that again.

David Rosenhan (1929-2012) was the Stanford psychologist whose sensational “pseudopatient study” shook psychiatry to its foundations. Published to worldwide acclaim in 1973, it saw eight sane people fake their way into mental hospitals, get misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, and have trouble getting back out. Five decades later it is still regularly cited, taught, and invoked as proof that psychiatric diagnoses lack validity.

In this new book, journalist Susannah Cahalan makes a strong case that Rosenhan pretty much made it all up.

The Great Pretender is the book of the decade. Assuming Cahalan’s research is sound, it will force a retraction by the journal Science, and every psychology and psychiatry textbook in the world will have to be rewritten. It’s also a gripping detective story and a terrific read. Cahalan’s documentation is rich, her research seemingly exhaustive, and she thanks a fact-checker in her acknowledgments.

As Cahalan tells it, Rosenhan’s study is nothing but one lie or exaggeration after another: most of the “pseudopatients” never existed; there were only two, besides Rosenhan himself, and one actually enjoyed his experience in the hospital.

Rosenhan lied when he wrote that his sole presenting symptom was hearing a voice say “empty,” “hollow,” and “thud.” Not so, as Cahalan shows in a bombshell screenshot of his admission file:

He has felt that he is "sensitive to radio signals and hear what people are thinking." He realized that these experiences are unreal but cannot accept their reality. He has tried to insulate out the noises by putting "copper over my ears". One reason for coming to the hospital was because things "are better insulated in a hospital". He has also had suicidal thoughts.

Worse, Cahalan discovers that Rosenhan didn’t “gain admission” to the hospital. His wife had him committed.

After going home, Rosenhan then leveraged his “experiment” to (apparently) lie his way to fame and fortune. He landed a lucrative double appointment at Stanford, where he spent the rest of his career.

Alas, that career can only have been utterly miserable, because that is where his lies evidently caught up to him. The hospital he’d stayed in had leaked his file, and it found its way to psychiatrist Robert Spitzer, the architect of the DSM-III. Cahalan doesn’t use the word “blackmail,” but she does suggest Spitzer cowed Rosenhan into silence forever after while he pursued his own agenda of revising, expanding, and medicalizing the diagnoses of the DSM.

The irony of this whole sorry mess is that of all people, a psychologist should know that living a lie is the chief obstacle to achieving serenity, inner peace, or—as we call it now—mental health.

I take a great interest in these affairs because I met or spoke with Rosenhan, Spitzer, and the psychiatrist Thomas Szasz about the Rosenhan experiment just before their deaths, right around the time Cahalan found her own way to it.

Cahalan came by way of a misdiagnosis she’d been given (the topic of her previous book, Brain on Fire).

My own interest was purely academic. In 2011, I'd discovered a startling similarity to Rosenhan’s experiment in a stage comedy from ancient Rome titled The Menaechmus Brothers. As I realized, the central theme of that play is exactly the same that Rosenhan raised in the famous first sentence of his article: “If sanity and insanity exist, how shall we know them?” (Read my paper here alongside pages 83-93 of The Great Pretender.) It was eerie.

Flush and out of my element, I contacted Rosenhan, Spitzer, and Szasz for their thoughts. None of them knew the play, but their reactions were quite different. Szasz, who had published a critique of the Rosenhan Experiment, was eager to discuss my paper and sent me some immediate impressions. Spitzer professed himself uninterested in hearing more. Through his caretaker, Rosenhan initially expressed interest—especially in the title, which I chose to honor him—but he never got back to me. Since he was ailing and died shortly after, I’ll never know why.

With The Great Pretender, Susannah Cahalan will go down in history. Like her great predecessors—Dorothea Dix, Lady Rosina, Elizabeth Packard, Nelly Bly—she digs deep, investigates, and works to expose the psychiatric charades and charlatans of our times. If the facts are indeed as she presents them—and I call on Stanford to digitize and publish the materials she quotes from—then we all owe her a debt of gratitude.

SOURCE 







Understanding the Roots of the War on History

I am a historian by trade. One of the most important moments I experienced in my graduate training was when a professor explained that her doctorate was in the “philosophy of history,” not history itself. It is an important distinction because people equate history with mastering historical trivia. The possibility that there is a philosophy of or a way to think about history is rarely raised.

Actually, there are several different philosophies of history—often at odds with each other—not just one universal philosophy. During the early years of the American republic, history helped create a national identity and instill positive virtues in the public. Parson Mason Locke Weems turned to George Washington’s famous cherry tree-chopping incident to invent a memorable fable to teach children honesty. Other contemporaries agreed with this approach.

Early feminist educator Emma Willard wrote in The History of the United States, Or, American Republic that “The most important advantage of the study of history, is improvement in individual and national virtue . . . [especially in] the history of the American Republic.” These authors presented the Founding Fathers and military heroes as role models. The fact that white males dominated the nation’s early historical narrative reflected society as it existed at that time. Nevertheless, the pursuit of republican ideology, conveyed by words like liberty and freedom, was believed to be the engine that drove the United States toward a new enlightened age.

Even as the new age dawned, others lamented that only a few groups really prospered. Industrialization showered wealth on those who controlled capital but what about those who worked the machines and tilled the fields as well as the women and minorities who had even lower status? There could only be prosperity and justice when society shared its treasure with all its members. To these early critics, economic factors—not ideology—motivated human actions. Karl Marx became the spokesperson for this emerging philosophy—Marxism.

Shocker: Most College Students Think America Invented Slavery
In the early 20th century, a group of historians connected with the progressive movement declared war on traditional history. In 1921, husband and wife Charles A. and Mary R. Beard co-authored a high school textbook simply titled The History of the United States, a work that detailed the progressive movement’s plan to revolutionize teaching history. An online version of this important work can be found here. The volume’s introduction stated: “If the study of history cannot be made truly progressive [or organized] like the study of mathematics, science, and languages, then the historians assume a grave responsibility in adding their subject to the already overloaded curriculum.” Their approach expunged “The time-honored stories of exploration and biographies of heroes” and “all descriptions of battles” as unnecessary and even detrimental.

The Beards listed seven changes to the traditional narrative approach to history. First, their curriculum was topic-based. Second, these topics revealed how each had contributed to the nation’s development. Third, their approach “dwelt fully upon the social and economic aspects” of American history. Fourth, the causes and results of wars and the problems of financing and sustaining armed forces replaced military strategy. Fifth, discovery and exploration were omitted to make room for citizenship. Sixth, although recognizing America’s uniqueness in some areas, they believed attention must be paid to diplomacy, foreign affairs, world relations, and the influence of other nations. And seventh, they claimed that their approach would stimulate students to think and analyze, resulting in graduates ready for the modern world. Like Weems, the Beards believed historical instruction could mold the character of future citizens. We heard the fruit of the Beards' philosophical approach in Barrack Obama’s famous Berlin speech, where an American president declared himself a citizen of the world.

Other progressive historians reinforced this view of history in which economic factors drive history. In particular, the Marxist notions of property and class struggle began to gain favor. These authors and their works shaped several generations of students, who would, in turn, become authors and teachers. While the Beards and most progressive historians have largely been relegated to historiographic reading lists, their influence on the modern history profession cannot be overstated. The popularity of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States demonstrates how widely accepted and entrenched the progressive interpretation of history launched by the Beards has become.

This economic approach to history has been popular on campuses and in textbooks for years. Examples are familiar: the American Revolution was a war for economic independence; the Founding Fathers were rich white men who established a government to protect their own interests; the nation was built by the labor of workers who toiled for the benefit of slave owners and industrialists; the Westward Expansion stole land at the expense of Native Americans and Mexicans; and women and minorities endured a menial and minimal existence. Words such as liberty or freedom masked bigotry and greed. Heroes were not the misguided men who fought for kings and capitalists on faraway battlefields but those who struggled in factories and fields against oppression. It was a world that cried out for fairness and change as well as a world, too, in which the individual triumphed only if assisted by the power of the government, the basic tenet of progressivism. The case can be made that all historical interpretations have a political agenda at heart. However, progressive historians created a world view designed to help politicians reconstruct society.

Victimhood is key to the progressive interpretation of history. Basically, if someone gains then someone else loses. Thus, history becomes a scorecard for identifying winners and losers. Those with wealth and power use it to oppress others. The goal of progressive history is not to understand the past but to identify guilty parties. Assigning roles of oppressor and oppressed (i.e., victim) signal which past wrongs must be righted. Since the guilty culprits are dead, the responsibility to make things right rests with their progeny. The beneficiaries aren’t the original victims but their descendants. An economic redistribution of wealth is usually suggested to demonstrate contrition.

To modern progressives, no narrative can exist other than the claim that powerful groups oppress less powerful groups, which supports the moral, legal, and political implications that history’s victims deserve restitution. Progressive history strikes at the very root of the early American republican historical narrative by rejecting the notion of American exceptionalism. Rather than acknowledge and celebrate the Founding Fathers and other early heroes, progressive historians denigrate them and work to remove them from the public discourse. Look no further for an explanation of what is happening to statues deemed offensive and guilty of some past injustice.

Why do historical interpretations matter? The boundary between history and politics is razor-thin and too many practitioners claim to be historians when in fact they are political operatives. I am not referring to just the academic voices in the classroom crying for social justice but the advocational historians who strive to maintain their group heritage and/or identity. Both can be extreme in their own way, picking the historical “facts” that support their view of the past. Moreover, the struggle for control of the historical narrative has made the field unappealing to the public in general and students in particular. It is an unhealthy situation for both the profession and the society it professes to serve.

We have all heard the well-worn rejoinder, "Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it." Nevertheless, many in our society go about their daily lives with little or no regard for history or those who write it. It is enough to beg the question, "Is history obsolete?" The answer, of course, is no. However, it is time that those in the profession reevaluate how we present history to the public and adopt strategies to address the problem of societal disinterest. If no remedy is found, it is historians themselves who face becoming irrelevant.

SOURCE 






Priests across Australia will be forced to report child sex abuse admitted at confession or could face charges themselves under strict new laws

What stupidity.  It will achieve nothing.  All it will do is victimize a few faithful priests.  And how will they prove what is said in the confessional booth?

Australia's chief legal officers have agreed to standardise laws making it mandatory for priests to report child abuse revealed to them during confession.

Federal and state attorneys-general meeting in Adelaide on Friday agreed to three principles for the laws, which were recommended following the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Those principles say that 'confessional privilege' can't be relied upon to avoid a child protection or criminal obligation to report beliefs, suspicions or knowledge of child abuse.

They also dictate that clergy would not be able to use that defence to avoid giving evidence against a third party in criminal or civil proceedings.

Work on such laws is already well under way in most states and territories, but legal expert Luke Beck said the agreement will implement a nationwide standard.

'Some states are already in compliance with this and they don't have to do anything else,' said Mr Beck, an associate professor at Monash University. 'Now, all have signed up and said 'yes, we're going to do it'.'

In June 2018, the ACT was the first state to introduce laws which forced priests to admit any sexual abuse confessions.

The Victorian Labor government promised to push the law through in November last year.

Up until now, NSW, Queensland and Western Australia have protected priests.   

Teachers, police and medical practitioners are already legally required to report child physical and sexual abuse allegations.

The Catholic Church has insisted priests would be obliged to defy the laws, with Melbourne Archbishop Peter Comensoli previously stating he was prepared to go to jail rather than break the confessional seal.

'For Catholics, confession is a religious encounter of a deeply personal nature. It deserves confidentiality,' he said in August.

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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(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.

Bible references on homosexuality: Jude 1:7; 1 Timothy 1:8-11; Mark 10:6-9; 1 Corinthians 6: 9-11; 1 Corinthians 7:2; Leviticus 18:32; Leviticus 20:13


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



Index page for this site


DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism"
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart


BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:

"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral Reef Compendium.
IQ Compendium
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia


BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Bank of Queensland blues



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