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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30 June, 2020

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About White Privilege

Wayne Allyn Root

My name is Wayne Allyn Root. I'm an SOB (son of a butcher). I understand this "white privilege" controversy like no one person on Earth.

I've never had it. I've never even had a whiff of it. That's why I have no "white guilt." I have nothing to be guilty about. But I have met plenty of privileged white kids. You know what you call them? Liberal Democrats. More on that in a minute.

First, my background. My Jewish ancestors were far more likely to be slaves than to have one. My ancestors were persecuted, abused, robbed, enslaved and murdered by government -- just like Black Americans.

My Jewish grandparents got to America in the early 1900s -- long after slavery. They settled in New York City, not the South. If they ever met anyone from the Ku Klux Klan, it was only because they were being persecuted by white extremists -- just like Black Americans.

My father fought in World War II and faced sure death at Okinawa. Was that "white privilege"? He spent the rest of his life as a blue-collar butcher. He woke at 3 a.m. every day to drive to the meat market in the dark and freezing cold and buy the wholesale meat he'd sell at his shop. My father struggled his entire life as a working-class man and died with an estate of nothing (other than his home).

He worried every hour of every day how he'd pay his bills. No one gave him anything in his life -- let alone because he was white.

So, where was his "white privilege"? Can liberals please explain where all that hidden privilege was? Because my dad's story is the story of most middle-class white Americans. We are the "silent majority" that supports President Donald Trump. We've never caught a whiff of "white privilege."

My personal story is all about Black and white. I attended a rough urban high school on the Bronx borderline that was 90% Black. I was one of the few white kids out of 4,000 students. I was tortured 24/7 for being "the minority." I was beaten a hundred times. I was chased home from school, terrified, fearing for my life. My lunch money was stolen so often I stopped going to lunch. I knew better than to ever go to the school bathroom. That's where kids were terrorized and robbed. I was almost murdered by a thug with a machete. Is that what you call "white privilege"?

But, eventually, I learned to fight, knocked out a few bullies, became an athlete and won my classmates' respect. I graduated valedictorian and was accepted to my dream school, Columbia University.

That's where I first learned about "white privilege." As a matter of fact, almost every one of my classmates at Columbia University had it. They were almost all lucky-sperm-club, spoiled-brat, filthy-rich kids with rich, powerful fathers who opened every door for them, greased every wheel. They had everything handed to them on a silver platter, with no effort necessary.

Now that's white privilege.

Oh, and where did all these little spoiled brats with "white privilege" wind up? Today, my Ivy League classmates are mostly powerful politicians, lawyers and media figures.

So, "white privilege" is real. But it is only enjoyed by 1 percent of 1 percent of 1 percent of the country. And trust me, virtually every one of them is a liberal Democrat. Every classmate I ever met who was born rich was a liberal Democrat who hated Ronald Reagan, hated white people (even though they were all white), hated capitalism and hated America.

Today, they all hate President Trump.

So, yes, there is "white privilege." But it isn't me. Don't try to hang that guilt trip on me. I have no white guilt. This son of a butcher has earned every ounce of my success. That applies to 99 percent of the 63 million Trump voters. No one ever gave us anything. We don't owe anyone anything. "White privilege" exists. But we've never experienced it.

So, it's a free country. Everyone has free speech. March and protest for Black Lives Matter to your heart's content. Just do it peacefully. And understand that the tiny percentage of Americans who actually have "white privilege" are spoiled-brat, Ivy League-educated white liberals.

Whenever you meet a liberal lawyer, powerful Democratic politician or member of the media, there's your "white privilege." They're the ones you should be angry with. They're the ones you should be protesting.

So much for "white privilege."

SOURCE





JK Rowling blasts Labour as she hits back at shadow minister Lloyd Russell-Moyle who had claimed she was exploiting her sex assault ordeal in transgender row

JK Rowling has hit out at a Labour frontbencher who accused her of 'using her own sexual assault as justification for discriminating,' against the transgender community.

This morning Lloyd Russell-Moyle, a shadow environment minister, wrote a grovelling apology for comments he made in The Tribune about the Harry Potter author.

JK Rowling has hit back, warning people are 'concerned' about Labour's position on women's rights after saying: 'When so-called leftists like (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) demand that we give up our hard won sex-based rights, they align themselves squarely with men’s rights activists.

'To both groups, female trauma is white noise, an irrelevance, or else exaggerated or invented.'

Ms Rowling has found herself the subject of vicious trolling and accusations of being transphobic after responding to a headline on an online article discussing 'people who menstruate'. In a tweet, she said: 'I'm sure there used to be a word for those people. Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?'

Stung by criticism, the writer – whose Harry Potter books have sold more than 500 million copies worldwide – sought to justify her decision to speak out in a deeply personal essay.

Recalling how the trauma of 'a serious sexual assault I suffered in my twenties' had informed her thinking about the trans issue and women's rights, Ms Rowling explained: 'Like every other domestic abuse and sexual assault survivor I know, I feel nothing but empathy and solidarity with trans women who've been abused by men.'

Trans-rights activist Mr Russell-Moyle, claimed the author was 'using her own sexual assault' to justify her views on transgender issues in an article for left-wing magazine Tribune.

Hitting back in a series of tweets on Sunday evening, Ms Rowling wrote: 'This morning, Mr Russell-Moyle issued an apology on Twitter, although he didn’t trouble to tag me in. Coincidentally, his change of heart occurred after his remarks were repeated in national newspapers with higher circulations than.'

She told followers she had been 'moved to tears' after receiving more than 3,000 emails 'thanking me for speaking up,' about the abuse she had suffered.

Ms Rowling went on to say: 'As I stated in my essay, my primary worry is the risks to vulnerable women. As everyone knows, I’m no longer reliant on communal facilities, nor am I likely to be imprisoned or need a women's refuge any time soon. I’m not arguing for the privileged, but the powerless.'

She ended her Twitter thread by writing: 'I accept (Mr Russel-Moyle's) apology in the hope that he’ll dig a little deeper than hashtags and slogans. He might then understand why increasing numbers of people are deeply concerned about Labour’s position on women’s rights.'

SOURCE






Hope for the Muslim world?

FOR YEARS, Saudi Arabia worked tirelessly to export Wahhabism, its home-grown strain of intolerant Islam, to Muslim communities worldwide. It poured many billions of dollars into funding mosques, schools, and cultural organizations that promoted Islamist extremism — an extremism capable of turning murderous, as Americans learned on Sept. 11, 2001, when 19 Al-Qaeda terrorists, 15 of them Saudi citizens, murdered thousands of people.

Given the link between Saudi Arabia's monarchy and the rise of radical Islam, Muhammad al-Issa might not be your idea of a typical Saudi cleric.

The 55-year-old secretary general of the Muslim World League, a graduate of Imam Muhammad bin Saud University with a degree in comparative Islamic jurisprudence, has become a leading exponent of moderate Islam. Al-Issa vigorously criticizes religious extremism and vocally supports interfaith cooperation. He has been hailed by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Catholic archbishop of New York, as the "most eloquent spokesperson in the Islamic world for reconciliation and friendship among the religions" and extolled by the president of the Mormon church, Russell Nelson, as "a peacemaker [and] a bridge-builder."

Especially notable has been Al-Issa's insistence on condemning hate crimes against Jews, including the lethal synagogue shootings in Pittsburgh and Poway, Calif. In January he led a Muslim delegation to Auschwitz, then published a column calling Holocaust denial a "crime" that should appall true Muslims. This month, speaking from Mecca to an online conference on antisemitism, he said he had made it his "mission to work with my brothers and sisters of the Jewish faith" to advance interreligious harmony, and "to confront the extremists ... falsely claiming inspiration from our religious texts."

Naturally, some of those extremists were incensed by Al-Issa's words. On Qatar's state-owned Al-Jazeera network, senior anchor Ahmed Mansour sneered that the Saudi sheikh must have been angling for "the Great Medal of the Zionist," while the Muslim Brotherhood writer Mohamed Shanqiti mocked him for describing Jews as "brothers and sisters."

Clearly it is significant that a Saudi religious leader and politician (Al-Issa was his country's minister of justice from 2009 to 2015) is impassioned in defense of religious tolerance and so strongly opposes "political Islam," or Islamism — the supremacist doctrine that all societies must be ruled by uncompromising Islamic law. Al-Issa's moderation and open-mindedness are 180 degrees removed from the totalitarianism of the Taliban, ISIS, Nigeria's Boko Haram, or the hardline regime in Iran.

Yet Al-Issa's views haven't prevailed in his own land, either. Saudi Arabia is among the most unfree nations on earth, particularly for religious minorities and dissenters. Dissidents, reformers, and human-rights activists are frequently arrested, imprisoned, or brutalized. The grisly murder of Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul shocked the world. There have been real reforms in Saudi Arabia in recent years, but the country is still far from anything resembling Al-Issa's vision of openness.

Winston Churchill described Russia in 1939 as "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." But, Churchill added, "perhaps there is a key." If the same is true today of Saudi Arabia, perhaps the key to its internal contradictions is that Islamism is in retreat — not just in Saudi society, but across much of the Muslim world.

Writing in the Boston Globe four years ago, Daniel Pipes suggested that there were two weaknesses that might bring about an unraveling of the Islamist movement. One was internecine fighting among Islamists themselves — the classic dynamic of one-time allies turning on each other as they compete for dominance. Of that there have been examples aplenty, such as the falling out in Turkey between Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and the religious leader Fethullah Gülen, or the bitter clash in Iran between Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

But "the bigger peril for the movement," Pipes wrote, was rising unpopularity — "as populations experience Islamist rule firsthand, they reject it." He pointed to the widespread antipathy of ordinary Iranians to the theocratic regime in Tehran, and to the massive demonstrations in Egypt against the Muslim Brotherhood government of Mohamed Morsi in 2013.

Today, there is a profusion of indications that Islamism is losing its grip.

"Across the Arab world people are turning against religious political parties and the clerics who helped bring them to power," the Economist reported in December. In Iraq, Lebanon, and other Muslim-majority countries, the Arab Barometer polling network finds a notable drop in trust for Islamist political parties and a declining share of Arabs who think religious leaders should have influence over government. The Turkish analyst Mustafa Aykol writes that there has been a backlash to Islamism in the form of "a new secular wave breeding in the Muslim world." Another Turkish scholar, sociologist Mucahit Bilici, concludes: "Today Islamism in Turkey is associated in the public mind with corruption and injustice."

The 2019 Arab Youth Survey, a study of 3,300 men and women between 18 and 24 in the Middle East and North Africa, found that two-thirds believe "religion plays too big of a role in the Middle East" and 79 percent believe that "the Arab world needs to reform its religious institutions."

This may be what is unfolding, ever so gradually, in Saudi Arabia: a halting shift to moderate Islam in what was the world's foremost exporter of radical Islam. There are no guarantees, of course; this may be only a lull between storms. But the rise of so outspoken a Saudi moderate as Muhammad al-Issa offers reason for encouragement. For decades, Saudi Arabia peddled a version of Islam that was repressive and narrow-minded. Let us hope it now works just as assiduously to promote Al-Issa's message of tolerance, peace, and empathy, and thereby cultivate the very best in Muslim tradition.

SOURCE






Knights of Columbus sue Delaware city for banning Nativity: 'Blatantly unlawful'

A local Knights of Columbus council in Delaware filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the city of Rehoboth Beach for banning its Nativity from the bandstand on the boardwalk.

The Knights chapter, affiliated with St. Edmond Catholic Church and represented by First Liberty Institute, Jones Day, and Morton, Valihura & Zerbato, LLC, is claiming religious discrimination after the city prohibited all religious holiday displays beginning in 2018, according to the lawsuit.

“The Knights of Columbus simply wants to continue a beloved tradition of this town,” Roger Byron, First Liberty senior counsel, said in a statement to Fox News.

The Knights said they aren't aware of any complaints made since the 1930s, when the Nativity scene started being displayed in the Rehoboth Beach community. They claim the city unfairly has a holiday scene organized by a private organization with a Christmas tree, holiday lights and a Santa House, all of which were with the Nativity before it was banned in 2018.

“It is perfectly lawful to have a crèche on public property, and blatantly unlawful to ban it," Byron added.

The city's compromise was to move the Nativity to leased property a half-mile from the display at the Bandstand Circle, upsetting locals, including Crabby Dick's Restaurant, which put up the sign: "Wake up Rehoboth Beach (sic) Jesus is the reason for the season," The Daily Times reported.

When the controversy arose again in December, Mayor Paul Kuhns told the local news the city is being inclusive and won't be changing the policy anytime soon.

“I think from the perspective of the city it’s easier to not have anything and allow on any kind of private property any kind of display that anybody would like to do,” Kuhns told WMDT.

SOURCE






The Ideological View of Poverty, Wealth and Civilization

Jordan Peterson

The following is from a draft of my upcoming book, Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life

The poor are poor, so goes the [Leftist] ideological story, because they are oppressed (with no consideration given to their characteristics as individuals).

But the poor are poor for many reasons. Corruption, addiction, poor mental or physical health, lack of education, unwillingness to work (as conscientiousness is a normally distributed trait), narcissism, psychopathy, social upheaval, economic downturns, natural disaster—the list is virtually endless, and the cause cannot be laid simple-mindedly at the feet of the insufficient and corrupt social structure (even though it is insufficient, compared to what we would like; even though it is corrupt, compared to what it could be. But some perspective and some gratitude is in order).

The rich are rich because they are oppressors

With no consideration given to their potential competence and productivity and desire to improve the lot of those around them and to mentor and lead and to strive for self-improvement and to compete and cooperate in a fair and just manner and to accept additional responsibility and to solve complex problems and to take extreme entrepreneurial risks and engage in philanthropy and to leave a better world for their children and grandchildren

All of western civilization is the result of patriarchal oppression. All political, economic, religious and philosophical systems are based on the desire for power. Race (or class, or gender, or ethnicity) is the prime determinant of human value.

This is the replacement of actual knowledge with mere verbal fluency. You are not correct, merely because you can make an argument, even a good argument, nor because you can make your opponent’s position appear absurd (particularly if he or she is not particularly capable of verbal sparring). You are not correct if you spend your time creating straw man, and then lighting them on fire. There is nothing productive or good about this line of argumentation. It is mere simplification for the purposes of inciting divisiveness, regenerating tribalism, and justifying revenge. Of course the system is rife with problems. That’s not the point. Compared to what? The past? The present, in the rest of the world? And what are you planning to do, in your ideological certainty, to make even one thing better, without insisting that someone else changes to ensure that improvement occurs?

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 June, 2020 

Racial awareness is not racism

I think the story below points to the sloppy way "racism" is used.  If Elba exdperiences racism "every day", it cannot be very oppressive, given his popularity and success as an actor.

What he is clearly talking about is racial awareness.  He perceives, probably correctly, that people whom he meets do not -- at least initially -- see him as just a random person but as a black person.  And given the unhappy history of black/white relationships, that perception will almost inevitably be tinged with caution.

But how he is TREATED because of that is another matter.  These days "affirmative action" thinking may cause him to be treated BETTER than a random person. So using a word for that which also describes the evils of Nazism is very sloppy usage indeed.  Such sloppiness is sadly common  however.  To the Left almost any mention of race makes you a "racist".

Individual cases will differ of course but I suspect than most claims of racist treatment by blacks really refer to incidents where racial awareness has been perceived rather than incidents of racial oppression

Idris Elba has said that asking him about racism is akin to asking 'how long I have been breathing.'

While taking part in The Reckoning: The Arts And Black Lives Matter event, on Friday, the Luther actor, 47, also revealed how his parents instilled in him that in order to make it 'you have to be twice as good as the white man.'

During the live-streamed discussion about the Black Lives Matter movement and the arts, Idris explained that his success has not 'negated' his experience of racism.

The actor said: 'Success has not negated racism for me. Asking me about racism is like asking me about how long I have been breathing.'

Idris went on to explain that the first time black people have 'any consciousness' around their skin 'it is usually about racism'.

'That stays with you regardless of whether you become successful or you beat the system,' asserted the star.

Elba said his parents instilled in him a strong work ethic, telling him: 'if you want to make it in this world, you have to be twice as good as the white man'.

He detailed how this became like a 'mantra' to him, and helped to guide his work ethic.

The talented actor also explained that, although he was good at football, he 'still applied in cricket because I was always of that mindset.'

He added: 'Before you know it you realise you are quite multi-faceted,' before expressing how to be successful 'you have to have your fingers in many pies'.

Idris' late father Winston grew up in Sierra Leone, and his mother Eve is from Ghana.

The actor has forged an incredibly successful career, starring in Marvel films, including the Avengers, as well as for the lead role in Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.

He also starred in a Netflix movie about child soldiers, Beasts of No Nation, which was filmed in Ghana.

SOURCE






British iconoclasm is class warfare

The rage against monuments reflects a middle class ashamed of its country and history.

Recent iconoclasm in Britain, far from being a popular uprising of racial anger, is white middle-class performative anti-racism. Whatever the dynamic in the US, events in Britain have a unique class character.

The working and upper classes are generally more patriotic than the middle class. They are more comfortable in their skins, less self-conscious. Orwell observed, ‘England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution.’ The middle-class left is ashamed of British history, suspicious of our flags and anthems. This cosmopolitan, xenophile, predominantly white managerial caste provides our politicians, civil servants, senior police officers, journalists, media pundits and teachers.

It has not escaped anyone’s notice that many rioters in London and Bristol were middle-class white people. BLM in Britain barely exists. (When BLM protests took place in the UK a few years ago, it was a handful of white middle-class people protesting about airport runway expansion.) BLM in Britain overlaps with eco-activism and Antifa. As in the US, Antifa supporters in the UK are largely young, middle-class and white. Many activists join the Antifa movement while at university.

It was entitled middle-class vandals who defiled the Cenotaph that commemorates British and Empire dead – comprising a wide array of ethnicities and political creeds. Among those dead are socialist servicemen who were not motivated by chauvinism, but compelled by duty to defend family and nation. Images of the Cenotaph being desecrated – passively watched by police – will not be forgotten.

People know the protesters were middle-class anti-patriots who managed to accomplish so much because of the acquiescence of police chiefs, local councillors, mayors, cabinet ministers and the prime minister – all of whom are middle-class social liberals. Television news programmes and many newspapers downplayed the violence; the BBC portrayed riots targeting national symbols as ‘largely peaceful anti-racism protests’ (quickly altering that wording once it attracted criticism). British demonstrations are a clash of class values. By targeting symbols they nominate as racist, arrogant middle-class liberals assert they know how to fight racism; the working classes’ opposition to iconoclasm is therefore treated as evidence of their inherent racism.

When, subsequently, groups came out ostensibly to prevent monuments from being attacked, they were condemned by the press and politicians (including Boris Johnson) as ‘racist thugs’. When ordinary people – angered by lawlessness, lockdown flouting and defilement of public property – believe (correctly or otherwise) that those individuals were putting their safety on the line to protect statues that the police had so singularly failed to defend, this generates solidarity with those ‘thugs’. What next? After all, if holding ordinary views (such as patriotism, respect for law, venerating the war dead) is ‘far right’, then why not vote for far-right Patriotic Alternative or Britain First? If being normal is far right, then far right is normal.

There is a greater unaddressed grievance that the working class has against the middle class.

The murder of black man Stephen Lawrence in 1993 by a gang of racist white youths in South London catalysed a change that had awful implications for British race relations. The killers escaped initial prosecution because police failed to handle the crime correctly; some officers were implicated in an apparent cover-up, which allowed the killers to remain free for years. Incompetence, corruption and callousness on the part of police officers caused further injustice indirectly due to the 1999 Macpherson Report.

That report advanced the concept of ‘institutional racism’ – the idea that a whole organisation can be racist even though no perpetrators of outright racism can be identified. It established the Orwellian definition of racist incidents as ‘any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person’ – a dangerously subjective definition that has entered hate-speech legislation. Macpherson stated that ‘colour-blind’ policing was not legitimate and should be dropped in favour of colour-directed policing, thereby abandoning any attempt at neutrality. The new policing culture caused police to obsess about phantom prejudice among (working-class) officers who needed to be scrutinised by (middle-class) superiors; conversely, evidence of crimes committed by ethnic-minority perpetrators was actively suppressed. The Macpherson Report paved the way for decades of silence regarding the Muslim grooming-gang scandal.

Hundreds (perhaps thousands) of police officers, social workers, teachers, local councillors and journalists knew about the drugging, rape and torture of women and girls by Muslim men. When they reported this information, they were told by superiors to be quiet. An undeniable contributing factor was that middle-class individuals in authority did not trust or empathise with white working-class victims. People believe justice should have been served not only on gang members, but also individuals in authority who were more worried about race relations than rape. Yet a whole generation of people who colluded in silencing victims of abuse have retired with OBEs and substantial pensions, protected by the system they served. Read website comment sections or listen to pub conversations and you’ll be left in no doubt how strongly people feel about this.

In former eras we had noblesse oblige – the practice of nobility looking after families working for them (partly due to patrician beneficence, partly due to undiluted self-interest). Lords, bishops and gentlemen met ordinary people and understood their concerns. Nowadays, British society is governed by a managerial elite that only encounters working people when they pass them in Waitrose stacking shelves. Today’s politicians, journalists and police commanders consider ordinary people’s sentiments backward and view their concerns about crime and migration as bigoted.

If our system of technocratic governance exists without accountability or transparency – run by political parties populated by politicians of the same caste with nearly identical social outlooks – is it any wonder we are caught between poles of apathy and violence?

SOURCE





Some Church of England statues will have to come down, says Archbishop of Canterbury

Given my "Wee Free" Presbyterian background, I am no friend of Christian iconography but I think it is sad that Cantuar is not faithful to his church's traditions

The Archbishop of Canterbury has said that some of the statues and memorials in Church of England churches and cathedrals “will have to come down” in a review of their links to slavery and racism.

Anglican dioceses are conducting audits to document who is memorialised in their 16,000 churches and 42 cathedrals after church leaders backed the “alteration or removal of monuments” in some cases.

Canterbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey are among the ancient buildings whose memorials will be examined, while several statues on church land have been submitted by members of the public to the Topple the Racists website.

SOURCE






Unliked Likes: Cancelling Pastor Chris Hodges and Church of the Highlands

It started with Charlie Kirk, the conservative leader of Turning Point USA. Kirk is an outspoken supporter of President Trump and has been at the center of several high profile conflicts over the past few years. Like many other social media figures, Kirk seems particularly skilled at provoking outpourings of admiration and disdain in equal measure. He knows how to use social media.

Most recently, Kirk has been one of the more visible proponents of the belief that, while racism is evil, claims of systemic racism are not true or are exaggerated. In this, Kirk represents a significant number of Americans, many of whom identify as evangelical. As I’ve written about, marched for, and spoken on, I believe that Kirk (and those who agree with him) are wrong.

Please see the video we just put out this morning from the National Association of Evangelicals, which (I believe) presents a better approach. Or, put another way, I’m of a different view and have been quite vocal about it.

Simply put, systemic racism is real and we have a key national moment to address it.

This controversy soon invovled Chris Hodges, the pastor of Church of the Highlands in Birmingham, when he liked some of Kirk’s social media posts (details here). In a lesson about the power of social media to—as the Epistle of James warns about the tongue–set forests ablaze, Hodges quickly found himself in the midst of a firestorm. It looks like people are gathering with pitchforks and torches for him and his church.

So, why am I writing on this?

It’s true that Hodges was a Trump supporter when I was not. He has also led his church to be the largest diverse church in Alabama, to engage the poor and marginalized, and to minister widely and well in his community. He and the church he leads has served the poor, engaged the sick, volunteered in the schools, and more. During the pandemic, Church of the Highlands has served thousands of meals, made masks, hosted blood drives, and helped other churches with online services.

He also liked some social media posts.

Get the pitchforks.

Worth noting: the church will continue to resource the schools even after their church was kicked out saying, “Going forward, we will continue our financial support of the school system and encourage others to do the same.”

Of course, the school board was not offering the schools for free; the church was paying rent. Let me add that the people in that church are paying taxes to the school district and rent to use the space.

The Housing Authority of the Birmingham District and the Birmingham Board of Education also just cut ties with Church of the Highlands because Chris liked those social media posts.

But, the school district does not want the money and the housing authority does not want their service to the poor.

The Rise of Cancel Culture

While Hodges made a mistake, I am wary of the ways people have weaponized social media in response. I warned in Christians in the Age of Outrage that even as Christians need to be angry at injustice and hate, social media can make us exceptionally bad stewards of our anger.

This new practice is called the “cancel culture.” And, as President Obama weighed in at a summit last year, it is both easy and ineffective at bringing lasting change. In fact, he condemned the notion of responding by ‘canceling’ someone: “That’s not activism. That’s not bringing about change. If all you’re doing is casting stones, you’re probably not going to get that far. That’s easy to do.”

Simply put, the cancel culture refers to the practice of withdrawing support for those in the public after they say or do something considered offensive by a certain group. That’s what the Birmingham schools and housing authority just did.

The cancel culture communicates here, ”We won’t take your money, tweet liker. We won’t let you serve our communities either. Out with you—because we are inclusive.”

Perhaps a better way is to take the time to look at the larger picture of a person or organization. Each of us have said or done something at some point that deserves conversation or pehaps even confrontation. That is undeniable. But does every instance require a public shaming and, in this instance, a cessation of ties that has offered so much good to so many?

Here is a church that wants to serve—and has served—and is leading the way in its community. Unfortunately, as of this writing, “The Housing Authority of Birmingham Division voted on Monday to no longer allow church volunteers and clinic workers to do work at public housing communities.”

They want to cancel the church’s ministry to the poor because they did not like the pastor’s social media likes?

SOURCE






Enraged Madison Protesters Assault State Senator, Tear Down Statue of Abolitionist

Black Lives Matter protesters in Madison, Wisc., became angry when one of their leaders was arrested by police. Devonere Johnson, a local activist and organizer, was arrested after following a white customer into a restaurant with a bullhorn and a baseball bat. Johnson said the white man “provoked” him.

Johnson began shouting into the bullhorn, calling the white man a “racist” and ranting on about the pyramids, slavery, and other unintelligible things.

After this unhinged display, Johnson was taken into custody.

But the mob apparently believed Johnson did nothing wrong — at least, nothing that he should have been arrested for. They gathered in front of the capitol building on Tuesday night and decided to go on a statue-destroying binge.

Except, the statues they tore down represented the finest of Wisconsin’s progressive past.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel

Protesters, chanting for the release of the man who’d been arrested earlier, also broke glass at the Tommy Thompson Center on West Washington Avenue, smashed windows and lights at the state Capitol, and set a small fire at the Dane County jail before police arrived just before 1 a.m.

The destruction followed similar incidents in cities nationwide following the death of Floyd in Minneapolis. But in other cities, statues of Confederate soldiers and other symbols of slavery were destroyed.

In Madison, statues of Wisconsin’s motto “Forward” and of Col. Hans Christian Heg were dragged away from their spots guarding the statehouse. Heg was an anti-slavery activist who fought and died for the Union during the U.S. Civil War. His nearly 100-year-old sculpture was decapitated and thrown into a Madison lake by protesters.

One can almost imagine the conversation between activists before tearing down Heg’s statue.

Protester #1: Hey! We shouldn’t be doing this. This was one of the good guys, man.

Protester #2: He’s not good, He’s white, ain’t he? It’s a statue, ain’t it? Off with his head!

The “Focus” statue had stood in front of the capitol since 1885. A replica replaced the original in the 1990s.

Unfortunately, Democratic Governor Tony Evers was nowhere to be seen. He apparently is one of those Democrats who think it’s a healthy way to express yourself when tearing down historic works of art.

Tuesday night’s violence drew the fury of the Republican leader of the state Assembly, who called the protesters who knocked down the statues “thugs.”

“This is absolutely despicable. I am saddened at the cowardice of Madison officials to deal with these thugs,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, tweeted as the statues were being torn down.

Vos also questioned why Gov. Tony Evers hadn’t intervened in the destruction of the statues, given it took place on state Capitol property. Protesters also broke windows of a state building near the Capitol which houses the state jobs agency, among other state offices.

The state senator who was assaulted, Democrat Tim Carpenter, was a little bewildered. He says all he was doing was taking pictures of the riot — probably to approvingly share on social media later — when he was jumped by some “peaceful protesters.”

“I don’t know what happened … all I did was stop and take a picture … and the next thing I’m getting five-six punches, getting kicked in the head,” Carpenter told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel following the attack.

Senseless, mindless barbarism. I don’t know what else to call it.

SOURCE

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here.
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28 June, 2020


US police kill up to 6 times more black people than white people

The above headline is perfectly accurate.  But it is still misleading.  OF COURSE the police kill more blacks in Chicago.  There are more blacks there.

It is rare that raw numbers tell us much.  What is needed is context.  In this case we need to look at percentages.  Is the PERCENTAGE of blacks killed different?

More technically, if we control for population size, are blacks killed more often than whites?  The number of whites killed in Chicago is probably low.  But Chicago is primarily a black city.  So the absolute number of whites there is also low

It could well be that cops are more prone to killing people with brown skin than people with white or pink skin -- but we are not actually shown that.  Context is missing


In some parts of the US, police kill black people at a rate six times higher than they kill white people. The differences are most stark in the northern Midwest, especially Chicago, and in north-eastern states like New York.

Protest movements like Black Lives Matter have highlighted the disproportionate killing of black people by US police, and called for major changes in policing practices. However, official data on police killings can be unreliable. The database run by the Bureau of Justice Statistics is known to undercount deaths, partly because police forces don’t have to contribute data. That makes it harder to stop the killings.

Gabriel Schwartz and Jaquelyn Jahn at Harvard University compared police killings in different regions of the US between 2013 and 2017. They used data from Fatal Encounters, an independent organisation that gathers public and media reports of killings, and fact-checks them.

The researchers assigned each death to one of the US’s 382 “metropolitan statistical areas”. These are “cities and the areas surrounding cities”, says Jahn, and reflect where people spend most of their time.

Rates of police killings varied widely. For the overall population, the highest rates of killings were in south-western states like California and New Mexico, where more than 1 in 100,000 people were killed by police every year. In the north-east, rates were often lower than 0.3 people per 100,000.

However, the pattern changed when the team looked for differences linked to ethnicity. In south-western states, police killed black people 1.81-2.88 times more often than they killed white people. In the north Midwest and north-east, the disparity was often more than 2.98. In the Chicago metropolitan area, black people were killed 6.51 times more often than white people.

“They are showing for the first time that there’s a lot of variation by place in racial inequalities in police killings,” says Justin Feldman at New York University. That in turn should help us understand why some places have such large disparities, and how to reduce the deaths, he says.

Schwartz and Jahn’s study is the latest of a raft of studies showing that black people in the US are killed by police more often than white people. Young black men are at highest risk. A 2019 study found that black men aged 25-29 were being killed at rates between 2.8 and 4.1 in 100,000.

Neighbourhoods are also a factor. Death rates are highest in poor neighbourhoods and neighbourhoods with high non-white populations, but black people are at higher risk of being killed in white neighbourhoods.

SOURCE 





Be Careful Who You Call a White Supremacist

This past Saturday, after President Trump’s Tulsa rally did not draw the expected capacity crowd, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted, “Actually you just got ROCKED by teens on TikTok who flooded the Trump campaign w/ fake ticket reservations & tricked you into believing a million people wanted your white supremacist open mic enough to pack an arena during COVID.”

“Shout out to Zoomers. Y’all make me so proud. ??”

Ocasio-Cortez was responding to claims that TikTok, with apparent help from within China, flooded the Trump campaign with fake reservation requests, discouraging others from attending.

But what was most telling in her tweet was the reference to Trump’s “white supremacist open mic.” This dangerous and ugly accusation is now standard fare for the left. Trump is a white supremacist, as are his white supporters.

Of course, you could see this building for several years now.

First, the leftwing media branded candidate Trump a white supremacist, based especially on his comments about Mexican immigrants and Muslims.

Confirmation for this was found when men like David Duke endorsed him.

Then, there was the misrepresentation of his words about Charlottesville, where he allegedly said that there were some “very fine people” among the neo-Nazi demonstrators.

To the contrary, he categorically condemned those very people, saying, “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups.”

But the misrepresentation continues to this day, repeated regularly by presidential candidate Joe Biden.

The next step in the leftwing media’s strategy was to brand you a white supremacist if you were white and supported Trump. In fact, in some circles, it is assumed that, for white supporters of Trump, MAGA really means, “Make America White Again.” (House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made this very claim.)

For people like Ocasio-Cortez, this is simply taken for granted.

I documented these accusations in my new book Evangelicals At the Crossroads: Will We Pass the Trump Test?

In the book, I meticulously lay out the case against Trump, including the charges that he is an unashamed racist. And I do this, not to whitewash such charges but to examine them carefully and fairly. Is Donald Trump a white supremacist and racist?

Some of Trump’s statements have certainly lacked precision, leading to further misunderstanding and confusion. And I recognize that, in many ways, he has been highly divisive. I have no desire to defend those aspects of his speech or conduct.

Still, as I demonstrate in my book, the charges of “white supremacy” have no substance at all. (According to Merriam-Webster, a white supremacist is “a person who believes that the white race is inherently superior to other races and that white people should have control over people of other races.”)

White supremacists do not go out of their way to meet regularly with black leaders for input and wisdom.

White supremacists do not pass major criminal justice bills that largely affect non-whites.

White supremacists do not gain stories in the New York Times like this one, from September 10, 2019, headlined, “Trump Focuses on Black Economic Gains and Support for Historically Black Colleges.” As the Times reported, “Since the beginning of Mr. Trump’s presidency, the administration has, in fact, made an effort to support historically black schools, increasing investment in their programs by 14.3 percent.” (For further documentation of these points, see Evangelicals at the Crossroads.)

White supremacists do not immediately call for the FBI and the Department of Justice to look into the death of a black man, George Floyd, at the hands of a white cop, Derek Chauvin.

And white supremacists do not call for special forums titled “transition to greatness,” where the focus is on listening to black leaders address the problem of racism in America.

Cynics would say, “He’s a politician. He’s just doing this for votes.”

But real white supremacists do no such things, especially white supremacist politicians, whose very reputation depends on their racism. (When it comes to politicians doing things for votes, which politician does not do things for votes?)

Yet, as bogus as the charge of “white supremacist” is when it comes to Trump, it is even more bogus for the vast majority of his white supporters.

Many of them would have voted for Ben Carson in a heartbeat had the elections been between Dr. Carson and Hillary Clinton. White supremacists would not do this. (Of course, white Trump supporters would have voted for Hispanic candidates like Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio had they run against Hillary.)

And the vast majority of white Trump supporters opposed President Obama because of his policies, not because of the color of his skin. (The last I checked, both Hillary and Biden are white, so our rejection of them has nothing to do with skin color.)

Not only so, but some of Trump’s most prominent white evangelical supporters have been involved in interracial ministry for decades, with a long history of opposing racism. And of the many, white Trump supporters I know, not a single one of them fits the definition of “white supremacist” cited above.

Let us, then, call this ugly accusation for what it is: slanderous, libelous, and dangerous. Shame on those who use such ugly words as a political and ideological tool.

SOURCE






HHS Scraps Obama Rules on Gender Identity, Abortion

Federal health officials announced a final rule Friday scrapping an Obama-era regulation that forced medical workers to perform abortions despite their religious beliefs.

The Obama administration’s 2016 regulation, already vacated by a court ruling, also redefined sex-based discrimination in health care to include questions of gender identity.

The old rule would have imposed nearly $3 billion in costs on the economy, the Department of Health and Human Services said in announcing the change. Prompted by the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, the rule had not been implemented after being halted in court.

When Congress passed the Obamacare law in 2010, it included a section broadly prohibiting discrimination among health insurance plans.

Under the  Obama administration, HHS tried to apply that provision to both abortion and gender identity in the 2016 rule. The rule defined gender identity as “one’s internal sense of gender, which may be male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female.”

The real-world effects of prioritizing gender identity in health care became clear after a 32-year-old pregnant woman went to the emergency room complaining of abdominal pains and claiming to be a man.

The attending nurse treated the patient as a man, based on the electronic medical record, and the end result was a stillborn baby in a case first reported by The New England Journal of Medicine in May 2019.

“That’s one example where confusion over what the meaning of sex is—whether it’s based on biology or based on gender identity—can have some real-world and in this case tragic consequences. That’s why clarity is so important,” Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, told The Daily Signal.

“This [new] rule will establish clarity over the confusion that was unleashed by the Obama administration’s previous definition, which included male, female, neither, both or some combination, which is very difficult to administer in a health care setting.”

The new rule will enforce the provision by returning to the government’s interpretation of sexual discrimination according to the plain meaning of the word “sex” as male or female and as determined by biology, HHS said.

The 2016 regulation did not recognize sexual orientation as a protected characteristic, and the Trump administration’s rule doesn’t change that.

“The Obama administration itself thought that was a bridge too far. And this final rule leaves undisturbed that judgment from the Obama era,” Severino said. “So if people take issue with that, they should also take issue with the Obama administration as well.”

The Trump administration’s HHS says it will continue to enforce federal civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination in health care on the basis of race, color, national origin, disability, age, and sex.

The final rule keeps a section that ensures physical access for individuals with disabilities to health care facilities, as well as communication technology to assist those who have impaired vision or hearing. 

Regulated entities still will have to provide written assurances of compliance to HHS.

“Truth matters and words have meaning,” said Ryan T. Anderson, a senior fellow at The Heritage Foundation, asserting in a written statement that the Trump administration was right to rescind the previous rules:

In addition to being an unlawful abuse of agency power, these rules would have caused serious harm. They would have required doctors, hospitals, and health care organizations to act in ways contrary to their best medical judgments, their consciences, and the physical realities of their patients, or face steep fines and become easy targets for unreasonable and costly lawsuits.

All people should be treated with dignity and respect. Therefore, federal law should not outlaw reasonable disagreements about the best medical care for gender dysphoria. Nor should federal law force anyone to violate their pro-life conscience or the privacy and safety of others in the name of political correctness.

The revised rule provides protections for non-English speakers, including the provision of translators and interpreters.

However, the final rule relieves Americans of approximately $2.9 billion in regulatory costs over five years by eliminating a mandate for regulated health care entities to insert “notice and taglines” to patients and other consumers in 15 or more languages in almost every mailing. Those costs got passed down to consumers.

In December 2016, a federal court preliminarily enjoined the Obama administration’s attempt to redefine sex-based discrimination. The court said the provision likely contradicted existing civil rights law, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

In October 2019, a second federal court agreed. That same month, the initial federal court vacated the Obama HHS rule and remanded the provisions it found unlawful back to the department.

The court action stemmed in part from an Obama administration  rule regarding abortion. Existing laws said doctors and nurses can’t be compelled to perform an abortion if it would violate thier religious beliefs or conscience.

“Other federal laws prohibit discrimination against health care providers who refuse to participate in abortion,” Severino said. “If not performing abortion is sex discrimination, then of course you have clear conflicts of federal law protecting conscience.”

Also Friday, the Department of Housing and Urban Development began to undo an Obama administration regulation by proposing a rule to allow men’s and women’s shelters to make their own sex-specific housing policies.

“The Trump administration is also correct to unwind an Obama-era housing regulation that imposed a gender identity mandate at the expense of privacy and safety,” Anderson said. “The proposed HUD rule allows shelters to determine their own policy on single-sex housing, thus protecting female-only spaces.”

SOURCE 






Indigenous peoples’ problems show Australians are in denial about their racism

This article is completely empty of any proof or evidence for what it asserts.  There is NO evidence advanced to counter the argument that Aborigines bear a large part of the blame for their own backwardness.  Mentioning a couple of anecdotes proves nothing.  You can prove anything by anecdotes


Police on horseback gathered in a circle to defend the statue of Captain James Cook in Sydney’s Hyde Park. Australians inspired by American protests, and calling attention to the plight of their country’s indigenous peoples, might have toppled the statue. The moment was replete with historical irony. The “discoverer” of Australia met his end on a Hawaiian beach, at the hands of a crowd of angry natives. The police seemed determined not to let it happen to him a second time.

The whole messy issue of Australia’s past rose up and wound itself in knots around Cook’s bronze form. The conservative prime minister, Scott Morrison, condemned the protesters. But he drew a distinction between Australia’s history of white settlement and America’s. Australia had been “a pretty brutal place”, he conceded, “but there was no slavery.”

That is some gloss to the real story of white settlement. Australia’s indigenous peoples have endured land seizures, massacres, servitude and, well into the second half of the 20th century, children forcibly removed by government agencies and church missions in the name of racial assimilation—the so-called stolen generations. An uproar over his comments compelled Mr Morrison to backtrack and clarify that he had meant no legal slavery. To many of his government’s supporters, muttering over their barbies, the furore was political correctness gone mad.

Nobody denies that Australia’s indigenous peoples face bleak odds. Aboriginals and Torres Straits Islanders are 3% of the population but 27% of prisoners. Their life expectancy is eight years less than the national average. They do terribly at school.

But Australia has made strides to improve the Aboriginal condition, starting with a referendum in 1967 granting full citizens’ rights to indigenous Australians. In 1992 a High Court case over land title overturned the long-held legal fiction that Australia had been an uninhabited terra nullius for the taking. And in 2008 the then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, formally apologised to the “oldest continuing cultures in human history” over the stolen generations and other past mistreatment. Mr Rudd’s and successive governments have committed to “closing the gap” in socioeconomic outcomes.

Many Australians therefore share Mr Morrison’s contention that Australia is not a fundamentally racist country but its opposite, a “fair” one. From this some conclude that Aboriginals’ remaining problems—the drinking, the domestic violence, the supposed indolence—are of their communities’ own making, not a consequence of discrimination. One columnist even claims that the protesters are “enablers for systemic and entrenched indigenous problems to fester”.

In the past, bottom-up efforts by indigenous folk to improve their lot tended to work only if the political climate encouraged it. The “Uluru statement from the heart” in 2017, which called for constitutional change to give indigenous Australians a special voice in laws and policies that concerned them, was rejected by the ruling coalition, on the ground that the proposed body would constitute a third legislative chamber.

That argument, Mr Rudd contends, is “bullshit”: the body would have had no authority to introduce or vote on legislation. Rather, the rejection was a dogwhistle to the same kinds of voters who were encouraged to believe, after the High Court ruling on land rights, that Aboriginals would soon be camping in their back yard. Mr Morrison’s criticism of protesters was intended for much the same audience.

It is no surprise then that indigenous people believe Australia does not offer them a fair go. “There’s a view here that we’re all mates,” says Pat Anderson, an Aboriginal leader. “But this is a mythology they tell themselves.” Petty racism abounds. One Aussie-rules star, Adam Goodes, who complained when a 13-yearold called him an ape, was booed into early retirement.

Yet some think the social and political ground might soon shift. A younger generation of indigenous Australians, many better educated than their parents, is beginning to puncture the cosy selfimage of Australia projected by the likes of Mr Morrison—using wit to get their point across. It was hardly salutary that a recent study concluded that three out of four Australians have a “racial bias” against Aboriginals. But it did bring cheer when Briggs, an indigenous rapper, tweeted that the fourth Australian was probably “conducting the survey”.

SOURCE  

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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26 June, 2020

Britain's cultural revolution

According to The Daily Mail, Madeline Odent is the Curator of the Royston Museum in Hertfordshire. This museum is funded by Royston Council. In the past few days, Mrs Odent has taken to Twitter, giving expert advice on how to use household chemicals to cause irreparable harm to statues she dislikes.

It is, she says, “extremely difficult” to remove the chemicals once they have been applied. She adds that “it can be done, but the chemical needed is super carcinogenic, so it rarely is.” Again, she says: “We haven’t found a way to restore artefacts that this happens to.” Her last reported tweet features a picture of Winton Churchill’s defaced statue in Parliament Square, and says: “Stay tuned for our next edition, where we’ll be talking about marble memorials of racists.”

The newspaper and various people are calling for the woman to be sacked. It is, I allow, surprising for someone to hold a job that involves conserving the past, and then to advise an insurrectionary mob on how to destroy the past. This being said, and assuming the story is substantially true, Mrs Odent is less to be blamed for giving her advice than those who employed her as an expert on conservation and its opposite.

We have had a Conservative Government since 2010. We have had a Conservative Government with a working majority since 2015. For the past six months, we have had a Conservative Government with a crushing majority. It all counts for nothing, because the Conservatives themselves are useless.

Political power is not purely, nor mainly, a matter of being able to make laws. It is far more a matter of choosing reliable servants. Before 1997, we could suppose, within reason, that these servants were politically neutral. They often had their own agenda. They could use their status as experts to influence, and sometimes to frustrate, laws and policies with which they disagreed. But there were not self-consciously an order of people devoted to a transformative revolution. The Blair Government broke with convention by stuffing the public sector with its own creatures, loyal only to itself. This is to be deplored. On the other hand, the Blair Government did have a mandate for sweeping change, and it is reasonable that it should have given preference to employing those who could be trusted to further both the letter and spirit of this mandate. The Conservatives have had enough time to make the public sector into at least an obedient servant of those the people keep electing. Instead of this, they have spent this time employing and promoting people whom Tony Blair would have sacked on the spot as malicious lunatics.

Royston as a town and Hertfordshire as a county have been dominated by the Conservatives almost without a break since the creation of elected local government in the nineteenth century. Yet Royston Council allowed Mrs Odent to become the curator of its town museum. It allowed this in 2015 – five years into a Conservative Government. To her credit, she did not lie her way into the job. Once more according to The Daily Mail, she claims that she negotiated a contract with her employers that allowed her to “decolonise and diversify” the museum, and that her employers gave her a “safe platform” that she could use to “piss off some racists.” She adds: “a) my boss thinks I'm funny, b) she also supports BLM, and c) I'm the one reading [your direct messages].”

Ever ready to pose as the spokesman for a disenfranchised majority, Andrew Rosindell, the Conservative Member for Romford, announced that the spreading wave of vandalism was being driven by “a politically-correct gang of anarchists who hate everything about this country.” Fair enough, so far as these people do hate England. But this is not an insurrection of anarchists – not even the kind who like the power to destroy. It is an insurrection driven by the wealthy and the well-connected. Mrs Odone is the daughter of an American college president and the wife of a banker. She is part of a network of the rich who feel no twentieth century shame about their wealth, so long as they believe and act on their beliefs in a repeat of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. And they have been given the power to make this revolution by Conservative Governments.

A government of conservatives would long since have purged these people from every institution within its orbit of control or influence. It would have remodelled some and shut others down. This Conservative Government has instead left or even put them in charge of these institutions, and they are now acting in mockery of the parliamentary majority won just six months ago.

For the avoidance of doubt, I do not approve of police brutality. Indeed, I have long believed in abolishing the police. I am no fan of Winston Churchill. I do not believe, had I been alive at the time, that I would have supported slavery or the slave trade. I do not think, in retrospect, that having a big empire was a good idea. But the events that have been made the excuse for what is now happening took place in a foreign country, or a long time ago. What we now have is, I repeat, a cultural revolution – a cultural revolution led by what amounts to the ruling class. The BBC has incited it. Big business and the rich are cheering it on. The police have no wish to stop it.

It is also a cultural revolution that will not end with pulling down the statues of men whose actions may not have been spotless. Again, I quote Mrs Odent, whose honesty, if nothing else, is to be commended: “[W]e all immediately forget history when statues are destroyed.”

And a Conservative Government that, last December, swore blind it would stand by us has abdicated what little control it might still have. If disappointment is reasonable, we have no reason to be shocked. The Conservatives are, and always have been, unfit for any honest purpose. Sooner or later, I have no doubt – if it has not already happened – Mrs Odent and Boris Johnson will meet at some smart dinner. They will get on very well. Why not? She may despise him. Being herself intelligent, she has no choice. Being intelligent, though, she can also be sure that, unlike the average reader of The Daily Mail, he is not her enemy.

SOURCE






The ugly rise of left-wing racism

The contemporary British left has lost the moral high ground when it comes to debates over race. Many of us have known this for some time, but recent events have made it all the more clear.

In a remarkable exchange in the House of Commons recently, Labour backbencher Florence Eshalomi questioned whether home secretary Priti Patel truly understood racism in the UK. Essentially being hectored into doing so by Eshalomi, Patel discussed her personal experiences of racism in front of her parliamentary colleagues. This included recounting childhood experiences of being called a ‘paki’ in the school playground, as well as recently being the subject of an anti-Hindu cartoon published by that bastion of chattering-class intolerance, the Guardian. In response, Labour MPs sent Patel a letter, accusing her of ‘gaslighting other ethnic-minority communities’ – essentially of using her own heritage and experiences to downplay other forms of racism. As well as striking an unsavoury tone, the letter itself was authored by Bradford West MP Naz Shah – who is hardly the strongest authority on race relations.

Then there was the backlash to the announcement that Munira Mirza, head of No10’s policy unit, would be heading up a new commission on racial inequalities. Since the announcement she has been subjected to the most appalling forms of racism from the bigoted left. Mirza has previously criticised the politics of grievance, which she says acts as a barrier to meaningful policy change on issues of racial inequality. Leftist figures, in predictable fashion, have wasted little time in directing racially charged slurs towards her. Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar has labelled Mirza a ‘racial gatekeeper’ – a term used for non-white people who supposedly provide political cover for perceived injustices based on race. Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, arguably one of the most poisonous voices in Britain’s race-relations debate, labelled Mirza a ‘brown executioner’ of ‘white supremacy’. University of Cambridge academic Priyamvada Gopal conducted a class-based analysis on the background of South Asian surnames, in a desperate attempt to tie Mirza with a position of natural privilege. This was strange, not least because Mirza is the daughter of a factory worker and Gopal is the daughter of a diplomat.

It seems that this distinctly left-wing form of racism has almost become normalised.

While there is a serious discussion to be had on enduring forms of racial discrimination in the UK’s labour market, the existence of socio-economic ethnic inequalities is a complex phenomenon. Mirza’s role has ruffled feathers because, going on her past work in this area, she will not shy away from delving into politically sensitive territory. This would include, for instance, exploring how problematic internal cultural norms and social behaviours feed into economic disparities between British ethnic groups. This is deeply unsettling for the feelings-over-facts critical-race theorists, who refuse to acknowledge the possibility that family dynamics, lack of female empowerment, and a general failure to cultivate aspirational attitudes may be stalling the progress of certain non-white communities in the UK.

This reflects the hypocrisy and contradictions contained within Britain’s anti-racist movement. A growing number on the left are not welcoming of ethnic-minority advancement, unless the successful individuals fall neatly into their own political agenda on a range of matters – particularly ‘cultural’ issues such as immigration, multiculturalism and social cohesion.

Nor are they willing to discuss admittedly sensitive factors that are holding back the social progress of certain non-white ethnic groups in the UK. It is critically important that debates on race relations and ethnic inequalities are not hijacked by these ideologues. They label themselves as progressive anti-racists but are uninterested in truly getting to grips with and tackling what is driving inequality.

Worse still, they are guilty of indulging in one of the most dehumanising forms of racism: insisting individuals must think a certain way, purely on the basis of their racial identity. This ultimately strips non-white people of agency, and rejects the idea that they can think for themselves.

Mirza will no doubt be subjected to more left-wing racism. As a high-achieving, working-class northern woman of Pakistani-Muslim origin, and as someone who refuses to give an inch to tribal identity politics, she is a natural target of bigoted leftists. The same can be said for Priti Patel, a state-educated woman of Indian origin who has little time for metropolitan leftists and their attitudes towards immigration, crime and terrorism.

The foul treatment of these two ethinic-minority women, who refuse to play the role ascribed to them, shows how ugly – and racist – identity politics is.

SOURCE






Ignoring Black-on-Black Victimization

The deafening silence from Democrat Party race hustlers and their Leftmedia propagandists about the murder of thousands of black citizens.

Mark Alexander

In my column Wednesday, “Talking With a Democrat About ‘Systemic Racism,’” regarding the cognitive/emotive breakdown when discussing contentious issues, I also highlighted the gross racial disparity regarding interracial and intraracial crimes. I noted, “Don’t expect to hear a single objection about either of those issues from Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi, or Chuck Schumer.”

A friend and career federal agent recalled our post regarding a racially charged incident in Milwaukee in 2014, and it is worth revisiting.

In November of that year, Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn, a liberal Democrat, participated in a contentious meeting with black community leaders and residents after a Milwaukee PD officer shot and killed a schizophrenic black man. After the meeting, a reporter confronted Chief Flynn, asserting he had been rudely disrespectful because he was texting during the meeting.

Flynn responded: “This is a tragedy for the family. It’s a tragedy for the community. … But there are a lot of people lining up to take advantage of this tragedy to promote their own agendas. … If some of the [protesters] here gave a good G-d damn about the victimization of people in this community … I would take some of their invective more seriously. The greatest racial disparity in Milwaukee is getting shot and killed. Eighty percent of my homicide victims are African American. Eighty percent of our aggravated assault victims are African American.

Now [the protesters] know all about the last three people who have been killed by the Milwaukee Police Department in the last few years, but there is not one of them who can name one of the last three homicide victims we’ve had in this city. There is room for everybody in fixing this police department and … we’re not without sin. But this community is at risk alright. And it is not because men and women in blue risk their lives protecting it. … The [protesters] are absolutely MIA when it comes to the true threats facing this community.”

Today, those protesters and rioters, and the Democrat Party race hustlers and their Leftmedia propagandists who incite them in the name of “George Floyd,” maintain a deafening silence about the thousands of black citizens murdered by other black citizens. That does not fit their political narrative.

As a long-time Patriot Post supporter concurred: “As a black American male who was raised in the inner city, I am angry at the reaction of the hypocrites in Congress, corporate America, and their media outlets. If ‘black lives (really) mattered,’ they would stop ignoring the pandemic of black on black crime that has been raging through their cities for years. Hypocrisy won’t solve the real problems in our urban centers, but changing the policies that keep poor black Americans enslaved on what amount to ‘poverty plantations’ will.”

Barack Obama demonized cops with deadly results — for cops. Today’s leftist Democrats have taken that rhetoric to a dangerous new level, manipulating data to support their false narrative, and absurdly promoting efforts to “defund the police.” A quick look at the results in Seattle reveals where that will lead

SOURCE





Australia: Channel 7, Sam Armytage and Prue MacSween sued for racial vilification

Channel Seven, Sunrise host Samantha Armytage and commentator Prue MacSween are being sued for racial vilification over a 2018 discussion on the network’s breakfast program.

The decision to take the complaint to Federal Court was made after settlement discussions at the Australian Human Rights Commission crumbled.

The court case stems from a segment on Sunrise in March 2018 where the panel – which including Armytage, MacSween and radio host Ben Davis – suggested a second stolen generation was needed to help Aboriginal children.

“Just like the first stolen generation where a lot of kids were taken for their wellbeing, we need to do it again,” MacSween said on the program.

The discrimination case is being led by legal firm Susan Moriarty and Associates, which in a statement said the eight Aboriginal complainants were “forced” to take their case to the Federal Court after settlement discussions collapsed.

Indigenous elder Aunty Rhonda, who is leading the complaint, said the group just wanted “accountability and equality”.

“This nationwide broadcast by Channel Seven in March 2018 was another symbol of national shame and another appalling example of the deeply entrenched virus of racism that still plagues white platforms of privilege in this country,” she said.

“Channel Seven’s subsequent disingenuous downcast eyes and ‘we’re so sorry’ murmurs, after we protested and their racism was called out, mean nothing to us when they refuse all reasonable requests for proper repatriation of the pulverising hate, humiliation and distress we feel every day of our lives.”

Dozens of protesters chanted outside Sunrise’s Sydney studio in March 2018 in the days after the segment.

The Australian Communication and Media Authority also found the segment to be in breach of the Commercial Television Industry Code Of Practice.

The ACMA forced Channel Seven to independently audit the production process behind Sunrise and all editorial staff were required to undertake training on racism and Aboriginal affairs.

SOURCE 

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here.
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25 June, 2020

If Black Lives Really Mattered...

If black lives really mattered for something other than attracting attention to the rare incidences of police officers killing black criminal suspects, more attention would be paid to failing schools run by Democrat supported teachers unions and other deeper problems in black communities.

Defunding police departments, the de rigueur action step advocated by many on the left and BLM activists, makes no sense. This is because, at the local level, police spending is dwarfed by education spending, which amounts to 40 percent of local government spending nationwide, versus just six percent for police. Their return on education spending is indeed criminal. Attention should be also given to the epidemic of fatherless black households in America where boys turn into violent gangsters by the time they reach puberty.

There is an increasingly ignorant, hyperbolic push by progressives to capitalize on the recent police shootings of black men. CNN’s Don Lemon has stated, "It depends on the nutrients in the soil. So if you grew up in America, you came out of American soil. Considering the history of this country ... how can you not be racist? How can you not have racial blindspots, how can you not see that the factory reset in America is whiteness?" It is interesting that Don Lemon espouses this jaded perception. In an early interview with actor Morgan Freeman, Freeman dismissed Lemon's emphasis on racism limiting opportunity, saying, "look at you and me."

Freeman went on to say if you talk about it (racism), then it exists. On the Senate floor, Tim Kaine, the Democrat Senator from Virginia boldly stated: “The United States didn’t inherit slavery from anybody. We created it.” Kaine is a perfect example of Freeman’s statement, if you talk about it (racism), it exists. Kaine will create and perpetuate racism and slavery as long as it serves his political ambitions.

Those in the black community advocating for peaceful protest and change should toss the Democratic politicians out on their heads since the most violent cities in America are consistently run by Democratic politicians, from city councils, to mayors to legislators to governors, to the U.S. Congress. If these mindless hacks produced an automobile, no one would buy it. As Barton Swaim has pointed out, “The transformation of American society into a civil-rights regime…was carried out by decent and well-intentioned people. Were they right? Was it true that only massive federal spending and coercion could bring about racial parity between blacks and whites? The evidence around us leaves reason to doubt.”

Hard Data

Actual facts are irrelevant to the BLM movement, and attacking the police is an elite progressive luxury. Underlying facts don’t attract media attention and newspaper headlines. From 2012-2015, blacks in America committed 85.5 percent of all black-white interracial violent victimizations. That amounts to 540,360 felonious assaults on whites. Whites including police, on the other hand, committed 14.4 percent of all interracial violent victimizations. When five Dallas police officers were ambushed and murdered in 2016, the best our mixed-race president could muster was, “African-American parents are right to fear that their children may be killed by police officers whenever they go outside.” Veiled racism was a recurring theme in the rhetoric of Obama and continues to fester and erupt in American society as Democrats and liberals intentionally use it to push America towards socialism. Yes, if you continually talk about it, it exists.

In truth, much of the hyperbolized “white officers killing innocent black men” is apocryphal. In 2019, police officers fatally shot 1,004 people, most were armed or otherwise dangerous. Two hundred thirty-five African-Americans amounted to approximately 25 percent of those killed by cops. This ratio has remained stable for the past decade and is less than what the black crime rate would predict because police shootings are a direct function of how often police encounter armed and violent suspects. In 2018, black males made up 53 percent of known homicide offenders in the U.S. and committed about 60 percent of robberies. This stands in the face of the fact that they are only 13 percent of the population. As Heather Mac Donald concludes, “a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.”

Perhaps the most comprehensive study of police shootings comes from Michigan State researchers, Caroline Brooks & Joseph Cesario who conclude: “We found that the race of the officer doesn’t matter when it comes to predicting whether black or white citizens are shot. If anything, black citizens are more likely to have been shot by black officers, but this is because black officers are drawn from the same population that they police. So, the more black citizens there are in a community, the more black police officers there are.” Sadly, the left-leaning Democratic politicians and community organizers which include BLM, Black Visions Collective, Campaign Zero, Justice Collaborative, Justice Coalition and Reclaim the Block, all ignore these inconveniently true statistics and embrace the false narrative about “feelings and pain.” Again, if you continue talking about it, it exists, so forget the facts!

During the George Floyd and Rayshard Books riots, much the same constituent burned, looted and killed. Here is the essence of black lives really mattering, something that has been neglected by Democrats since the Civil Rights Act passed in 1965, 55 years ago. The way the BLM cohort can prove that black lives really matter is to quit blaming others—the police, conservatives, President Trump and his administration.

Solutions

Senator Tim Scott, a star in the Republican Party, says that “In our society we spend so much time on the ‘root causes’ and disadvantages that we forget to talk about the solutions…” Scott believes that family formation requires having two parents in the household...If you have two parents in the household you reduce poverty by 85 percent. That’s a stunning truth that needs more oxygen. Use the money you get from organizations and federal and state government to achieve four things.

First, instill programs in the black communities and churches that place value and insist on two-parent homes so that black children grow up with fathers.

Second, if you feel like demonstrating for something really meaningful to help black lives, do so nationally against marginal or failing school districts that have a symbiotic relationship with liberal teacher unions and demand placing a premium on excellent education like that in most charter schools.

Third, follow the likes of Senator Scott, Thomas Sowell, Dr. Ben Carson, Walter Williams, Shelby Steele, John McWhorter and countless other black men who were born poor, yet had the parental support and studied hard to become successful role models for black children instead of gangstra criminals. This means lobbying your local politicians to provide nonunionized charter schools.

Fourth, elect local and state government candidates who are committed to inner-city law and order enforcement and who are passionately committed to do whatever it takes to get drug dealers and drugs off the streets.

Coopt BLM and other likeminded organizations to support these efforts. If they don’t, black lives obviously don’t really matter to them.

SOURCE







There Has Been A Slew Of Violent Attacks Against White People. None Have Been Prosecuted As Hate Crimes. Why Not?

A white Macy’s employee was brutally assaulted by a black man in the middle of the store a few days ago. Video shows the assailant, Damire Palmer, punching the man in the head as he crawls on the ground begging Palmer to stop. The assailant’s brother, who filmed the crime and posted it proudly to social media, claims that the victim used the N-word. Even if true, that wouldn’t remotely justify felony assault. But it isn’t true. Macy’s investigated and confirmed that the attack was “unprovoked.” Also, the N-word claim is absurd on its face. A Macy’s employee is not going to casually refer to his black customers as racial slurs. If he had that habit, he would have been fired a long time ago.

What actually happened, from the looks of it, is that the Palmer brothers selected a victim based on his race, beat him mercilessly, and then slandered him. They damaged him physically and then tried to ruin his life. If the “hate crime” designation has any meaning, this should fit the bill. Yet, to this point, no hate crime charges have been filed, nor has there been any public discussion about filing them.

It should be noted that a man who assaulted a Macy’s employee last year was charged with a hate crime because he used anti-gay slurs during the attack. The prosecutor in that case said that the attacker “subjected [the victim] to offensive physical contact” and that this was done “because of his perception of the victim’s sexual orientation.”

Well, was this latest Macy’s assault not “offensive physical contact” due to the attacker’s perception of the victim’s race?

This, unfortunately, is not an isolated incident. Recently there has been a slew of horrific physical attacks against white people. Last week, a group of African-American men attacked a white man in a gas station parking lot in Texas, punching him, knocking him to the ground, and then stomping on his head. In New York, a black man pushed a 92-year-old woman to the ground. She bashed her head against a fire hydrant as she fell. No hate crime charges have been filed.

In another attack against the elderly, Jaden T. Hayden of Michigan repeatedly beat a 75-year-old nursing home patient in the head as he lay helpless on his bed. Hayden has YouTube videos where he claims that “the black race is supposed to rule the Earth.” No hate crime charges were filed, but try to imagine the same outcome if a white man with similar professed views about the white race were to film himself brutalizing an elderly black man.

There are more examples. During the riots in Rochester a few weeks ago, a white woman was attacked by a group of black men. She was punched in the face repeatedly and beaten with a wooden board. In Ocean City, where violence has been rampant of late, a white man was knocked out while sitting on a park bench. Again, no hate crime charges.

And hate crime charges aren’t the only thing missing. There has been little public attention to, or condemnation of, these attacks.

I am not personally a proponent of the hate crime designation. I don’t think prosecutors can look into a criminal’s heart and accurately assess whether a crime was motivated by hatred or not. And even if they could, I’m not sure why a crime of hate should be considered any more severe than a crime of greed, jealousy, anger, or boredom and indifference. Is it really worse to shoot a man for his race than for his wallet? Haven’t you treated him as less than human either way? Isn’t his family mourning him just the same?

But if we are going down this road, and if we have gotten into the business of doling out special punishments for hate-based crime, then equal justice under the law means prosecuting crimes against white people with all the same gusto as crimes against non-whites.

SOURCE







BLM Leader: Statues and Stained Glass of Jesus Are 'White Supremacy,' Must Be Torn Down

On Monday, Black Lives Matter leader and former Bernie Sanders surrogate Shaun King called for the demolition or removal of all statues, murals, and stained glass windows of “white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends,” i.e. the Twelve Apostles. He said religious imagery was a symbol of “white supremacy” and oppression.

“Yes, I think the statues of the white European they claim is Jesus should also come down. They are a form of white supremacy. Always have been. In the Bible, when the family of Jesus wanted to hide, and blend in, guess where they went? EGYPT! Not Denmark. Tear them down,” King tweeted.

“Yes. All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down,” the leftist added.

King’s comments came after CPAC leader Matt Schlapp warned that, in the Cancel Culture iconoclasm of the Black Lives Matter/1619 riots, “statues of Jesus are next.” Some activists made it a “separation of church and state issue,” saying they would topple government-funded Jesus statues. King took it one step further in branding Jesus statues “white supremacy.”

Mobs had already toppled statues of Confederates, then Christopher Columbus, George Washington, and Thomas Jefferson; then Ulysses S. Grant (who helped defeat the Confederacy and ending slavery in the U.S.), Francis Scott Key (writer of “The Star-Spangled Banner”), St. Junipero Serra (the leader of Spanish missions in California), and Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote and a former slave); and then Mahatma Gandhi, leader of the Indian independence movement, and the Robert Gould Shaw 54th Regiment monument, which celebrates the first all-volunteer black regiment of the Union Army during the Civil War.

The targeting of religious art and iconography seemed to follow in the progression. If mobs will vandalize the statue of black Union soldiers, what would prevent them from tearing down statues and stained glass windows of Jesus? Now, Shaun King has given them a racial reason to do so.

Yet King is utterly, inexcusably wrong about Jesus being a symbol of “white supremacy.” Jesus firmly condemned racism, crossing racial barriers to make the Good Samaritan the hero of one of His parables and speaking with the Samaritan woman at the well. His disciples would teach that “there is no Jew or Greek, no slave or free, no male or female, but we are all one in Christ Jesus.”

When white Europeans and Americans adopted their pseudoscientific racism — what King rightly condemns as “white supremacy” — they rejected the center of Christianity, which teaches that Jesus died to offer salvation to people of all nations, all classes, all races. European racism developed in part as an excuse to oppress black people and native Americans — oppression that many Christians condemned from the start.

Yet the “white” depiction of Jesus dates back further than any European pseudoscientific racism. What King describes as a horrific tool of “white supremacy” emerged about 1,000 years before the first tremors of “white supremacy.”

In 2018, a Christian origins professor argued that the most common portrayal of Jesus — a thin white man with a long beard, flowing locks, and a long robe — is based not on the carpenter from Nazareth but on paintings of the pagan gods Zeus and Apollo.

“That image can probably be traced back to the Byzantine period when artists had to make choices on how to represent the ‘son of God,'” Joan Taylor, a professor of Christian origins and Second Temple Judaism at King’s College London, wrote in her new book What Did Jesus Look Like? “And they were probably inspired by existing godly figures like Zeus and Apollo.”

The Monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai in Egypt boasts the magnificent “Christ the Pantocrator” painting, dating back to the 500s or 600s A.D. Most of the earliest surviving art depicting Jesus does not suggest a specific skin color, but what Shaun King would condemn as a “white Jesus” dates back at least as far as the 600s A.D., a time long before any “white supremacy” when people of different skin colors interacted frequently in the Mediterranean world.

Shaun King’s decision to contrast Egypt and Denmark proves rather interesting. Yes, Joseph and Mary fled to Egypt to escape King Herod’s murder of babies after Jesus’ birth, but that does not suggest that Jesus had dark skin. Egypt and Judea were both part of the Roman Empire at the time, while Denmark most certainly was not. The Holy Family fled for refuge to a close geographic area, not to a place where they would necessarily “blend in.”

Modern scholars are divided on the race of Egyptians, with many insisting they were “white” or pale-skinned and others insisting they had darker skin. Many peoples in the Mediterranean world had olive skin as well.

Just as the four Gospels do not focus on Jesus’s race, so ancient texts are not clear as to the skin color of Egyptians. Even if Egyptians were jet black, that would not prove that Jesus’s family sought refuge there for reasons of skin color. They did not intend to “blend in,” they intended to save their baby boy from death at the hands of a tyrant in Judea.

Shaun King’s argument is absurd, but it illustrates the destructive mob logic of the 1619 riots. This mob will justify destroying any statue or public monument in the name of equality, even if that monument celebrates the sacrifice of black Union soldiers who fought against slavery.

Shaun King encouraged roving bands of rioters to target churches, smashing stained-glass windows and altarpieces in the Black Lives Matter crusade. He would have black Americans condemn Jesus art dating back to the 600s A.D. as a symbol of the “white supremacy” that oppressed black Americans in the 1700s-1900s.

The truth and the real meaning behind such statues don’t matter to these crazed rioters. Black Lives Matter! Burn it all down.

SOURCE






Australia: 'Fire me!' Kerri-Anne Kennerley defends her VERY controversial television rants and says she 'can't resist' making politically incorrect comments

Kerri-Anne Kennerley says she 'can't resist' making politically incorrect statements that have landed her in hot water over her long and lucrative television career.

The Australian presenter appeared on Sky News' The Death of the Aussie Larrikin? on Tuesday night, which looks at social media's impact on Australian culture and whether political correctness has killed off humour.

The 68-year-old is no stranger to making outlandish comments, perhaps none more infamous than her rant about climate change protesters in October last year. 

The Studio 10 panel were discussing the Queensland government's plan to introduce tougher sentences for unruly protesters, some of whom glued themselves to roads in Brisbane.

Kennerley said she supported tougher sentences. 'Personally, I would leave them all super glued to wherever they do it,' she said at the time.

Referring to a protester who attached a hammock to a bridge in Brisbane, she said: 'The guy hanging from the Story Bridge. Why send emergency services to look after or get a moron down?

'Leave him there until he gets himself out. No emergency services should help them, nobody should do anything, and you just put little witches hats around them, or use them as a speed bump.

'Is that wrong? Put them in jail and forget to feed them. Put them in some of the aged care homes around Australia, that would really sort them out.'

On Tuesday night, host of the Sky News program Rowan Dean questioned Kennerley about her controversial comments and whether she ever takes a step back before speaking her mind after widespread backlash last October.

'They really pray I do. They really go, ''Now, you know, maybe, we don't want you to pull back, but you know, maybe'' and I go, ''Oh what the, so fire me!'' she said.

'If I'm on Studio 10 and I'm having a cheeky day, and something like [political correctness] comes up, I can't resist it.'

She explained her comments about Extinction Rebellion protests were just a 'joke' and were made because 'I thought they were funny'.

The television personality said it's fine if people disagree with her comments, but it becomes a different issue when they become 'vicious'. 

Kennerley called on the 'silent majority' to 'speak up'. 'There will always be an echelon of society who don't really know you and really want to play darts, and it would seem most of those people use social media,' she said.

'And it's very powerful, but it's also not as big as the silent majority. So silent majority, could you just speak up a little bit? Just a little bit more? Thanks. It'd be very helpful.'

Kennerley was joined by comedians Paul Fenech, Vince Sorrenti and Emma Malik, actor Delvene Delaney, who all agreed 'political correctness is killing the larrikin'.

Last year, Kennerley came under fire following a heated argument about protests against Australia Day with Yumi Stynes who labelled her a 'racist'.

Kennerley said Indigenous protesters and their supporters should be more concerned with the dire state of many Aboriginal communities.

'The 5,000 people who went through the streets making their points known, saying how inappropriate the day is - has any single one of those people been out to the Outback, where children, babies, five-year-olds, are being raped?,' she said.

'Their mothers are being raped, their sisters are being raped. They get no education. What have you done?'

After a pause, Stynes fired back at Kennerley. 'That is not even faintly true, Kerri-Anne. You're sounding quite racist right now,' she said.

Kennerley responded by stating she was offended, but Stynes doubled down on her insult. 'Well keep going then, because every time you open your mouth you're sounding racist.'

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 June, 2020

The riots are racist

By June, we have cities on fire and ideological gangsterism where, in the name of equality, Americans have been forced to kneel and confess, both figuratively and literally.

In 2020, if you go to church, you might get arrested. But if you destroy police cars and participate in civil insurrection, you are featured as the new mod civil rights movement on MSNBC.

Statues of men who risked their lives to end slavery are being torn down as racists in 2020.

Isn’t that the most delicious irony. Ulysses Grant, the man who, like Joshua’s obliteration of the Canaanites, unleashed civilizational warfare on the Confederacy, had his statue torn down in San Francisco. Like Joshua, Grant had his Shiloh where combat losses in two days exceeded every combat loss in all of America’s wars combined up to that date.

None of the blood and treasure America expended to eradicate slavery matters so much these days.

Grant’s Presidency also saw the enactment of the 15th Amendment and a stack of civil rights laws still in force. Never mind all that. The mob is on the march.

This really isn’t about Grant or Columbus, Thomas Jefferson or any of the other targets of the mob. This is about America and what it stands for. Even the mob admits that.

The mob also wants to redefine what racism is. They want you to think you can sin without knowing it. They want you to think America is bad even when you know it is good. Here, the mob goes too far.

So what should civil rights mean in America in 2020?

Civil rights should mean what they always have. All liberties, all civil rights, flow from the unchangeable fact that every individual has dignity, and deserves to be treated with respect by the state, by others, and by the police. This is the premise on which America was founded, even if the mob doesn’t like it. This is the premise that solves the strife.

In the middle of the dark age of Nazi racism, Pope Pius XI issued Mit brennender Sorge, a Papal Encyclical about racism.

Whoever exalts race … whoever raises these notions above their standard value and divinizes them to an idolatrous level, distorts and perverts an order of the world planned and created by God.

Confronting South African Apartheid in 1989, Pope John Paul II defined the active choice of racism saying, “harboring racist thoughts and entertaining racist attitudes is a sin.”

Racism is active. It isn’t hidden in dormant corners of your consciousness. Racism doesn’t slumber in the architecture. It is animus, and animus is an active choice.

At the center of all of these problems – the problem of slavery, the problem of Nazism, the problem of racism, is the exaltation of race. Exalting race means elevating race beyond standard value. Defining people by race, whether a suspect stopped by the police or the wife of an NFL quarterback, is wrong.

The mob doesn’t want to hear this. They are demanding racially soaked vengeance dressed up as corporate introspection and listening sessions. They want to exalt race.

The mob is using race and America’s long earnest struggle to rise above race as a justification to tear down and replace institutions that have nothing to do with what happened to George Floyd.

Quietly, in hearts across the nation, people are watching and contesting the charges. They do not hold the sin of racism in their hearts. They think America is good. They know how many hundreds of thousands have died fighting racist institutions. They know how many trillions of their own dollars have been spent to mitigate the vestiges of slavery and Jim Crow.

They see videos of people on the streets on their knees confessing the sin of racism to strangers who demanded they do so. They see black-owned businesses looted, destroyed and burned by the mob. They see great American institutions, people they trust, the policeman down the street, attacked in the media and on patrol. The see flags on fire and George Washington statues destroyed.

There is only so much destruction they will tolerate in silence.

The answer is simple. Appeal to the goodness of America if you want to improve America. Do what generations of Americans have done before, reject the exaltation of race.

Civil rights start with treating people like they have a right to be treated. It means treating everyone with the dignity they deserve, regardless of race. Nothing gets better about 2020 until we start with that premise. The more the mob, and those the mob has turned into cowards, exalt race, the worse it is going to get.

SOURCE






Do Facebook and Trump have a deal?

Ben Smith

Last Nov. 20, NBC News broke the news that Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Trump and a Facebook board member, Peter Thiel, had dined together at the White House the previous month. “It is unclear why the meeting was not made public or what Trump, Zuckerberg and Thiel discussed,” the report said.

That was it. Nothing else has emerged since. Not the date, not who arranged the menu, the venue, the seating, not the full guest list. And not whether some kind of deal got done between two of the most powerful men in the world. The news cycle moved on, and the dinner became one of the unsolved mysteries of American power.

But I was able to pry some of those details loose last week from White House officials along with current and former senior Facebook employees and people they speak to. Most said they would only talk on the condition their names not be used, since the company is not eager to call attention to Mr. Zuckerberg’s relationship with the president.

Their accounts painted a picture of an unusual gathering — something in between a highstakes state dinner between the leaders of uneasily allied superpowers and the awkward rehearsal dinner before a marriage that has both families a little rattled.

Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, pulled together the dinner on Oct. 22 on short notice after he learned that Mr. Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder, and his wife, Priscilla Chan, would be in Washington for a cryptocurrency hearing on Capitol Hill, a person familiar with the planning said. The dinner, the person said, took place in the Blue Room on the first floor of the White House.

The guest list included Mr. Thiel, a Trump supporter, and his husband, Matt Danzeisen; Melania Trump; Mr. Kushner; and Ivanka Trump. The president, a person who has spoken to Mr. Zuckerberg said, did most of the talking.

The atmosphere was convivial, another person who got an account of the dinner said. Mr. Trump likes billionaires and likes people who are useful to him, and Mr. Zuckerberg right now is both.

But looming over the private dinner is a question: Did Mr. Trump and Mr. Zuckerberg reach some kind of accommodation? Mr. Zuckerberg needs, and appears to be getting, a pass both on angry tweets from the president and the serious threats of lawsuits and regulation that face other big tech companies. Mr. Trump needs access to Facebook’s advertising platform and its viral power.

Both men are getting what they want, and it’s fair to wonder whether this is a mere alignment of interests or something more.

“I believe they have a deal,” said Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor who is now a fierce critic, who added that it was “probably implied rather than explicit.” “Mark’s deal with Trump is highly utilitarian,” he said. “It’s basically about getting free rein and protection from regulation.

Trump needs Facebook’s thumb on the scale to win this election.” Jesse Lehrich, the co-founder of Accountable Tech, a new nonprofit group pushing Facebook to tighten controls on its platform, suggested that the two men have a tacit nonaggression pact.

“Trump can rage at Big Tech and Mark can say he’s disgusted by Trump’s posts, but at the end of the day the status quo serves both of their interests,” Mr. Lehrich said.

Officials at Facebook and in the administration scoff at the notion that there is some kind of secret pact. And it’s hard to imagine that anyone — certainly not Mr. Zuckerberg — would be dumb enough to make a secret deal with a president known for keeping neither secrets nor deals.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Zuckerberg had met just once before the dinner, an Oval Office encounter last September. Afterward, the president boasted about his giant following on the platform. But October was a hot political month at Facebook: Mr. Zuckerberg was in an open battle with a leading Democratic presidential candidate, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was threatening to break up Facebook and whom he called “an existential threat” to the company. The morning of their dinner, a top British official demanded answers on why Facebook would tolerate false political advertising.

Mr. Zuckerberg, a Facebook executive said, seems to view Mr. Trump as a peer. By contrast, he told amused top aides at one of his regular Monday meetings in March that Mr. Kushner was calling him so often about help with the administration’s coronavirus response that he couldn’t keep up, two people familiar with the meeting said. (“Mark does not think of himself as a peer to this president or any president,” a Facebook spokesman, Tucker Bounds, said, adding that Mr. Zuckerberg had initiated the conversation with Mr. Kushner about coronavirus response.) Mr. Zuckerberg has played the high-stakes and unpredictable politics of the Trump years as well as any other corporate executive. And a week before the dinner last October, he made clear in a speech that his interests and the president’s aligned: Mr. Zuckerberg would reject a growing movement to limit the false or inflammatory statements of the American president.

“I don’t think it’s right for a private company to censor politicians or the news in a democracy,” he said in the address at Georgetown University on Oct. 17. “We don’t do this to help politicians, but because we think people should be able to see for themselves what politicians are saying.” Mr. Trump, for his part, has been notably softer on Facebook than on Amazon, Google, Twitter or Netflix at a moment when his regulatory apparatus often focuses on the political enemies he identifies in tweets.

Still Facebook, like other tech giants, finds itself in a political bind: Democrats hate and distrust them because they spread right-wing misinformation and helped elect Donald Trump; Republicans hate and distrust them because they’re run by California liberals and delete some right-wing speech. But Facebook has avoided that trap deftly over the last three and a half years, by moving faster and more earnestly than its competitors to mollify conservatives.

SOURCE






The 1793 Project Unmasked

Anyone who still doubts that woke progressives can pose a material threat to the pursuit of truth should consider the case of David Shor. A week ago, as protests over the unjust police killing of George Floyd took place in major cities across the country, Shor—a 28-year-old political scientist at the Democratic consulting firm Civic Analytics—tweeted some observations about the successes and failures of various movements. He shared research by Princeton University's Omar Wasow, who has found that violent protests often backfire whereas nonviolent protests are far more likely to succeed. The impulse behind Shor's tweet was a perfectly liberal one: He feels progressive reforms are more palatable to the public when protesters eschew violence.

But many progressive activists on social media didn't care whether the impulse was liberal, or even whether it reflected reality. They denounced Shor as a racist for daring to scrutinize the protesters, even if his aim was to make them more effective. One activist accused Shor of using his "anxiety and 'intellect' as a vehicle for anti-blackness." Then she tagged Civis Analytics, and invited the company to "come get your boy."

Get him, they did. Civic Analytics promptly fired Shor.

Liberal writer Jonathan Chait blames Shor's firing on "the spread of distinct, illiberal norms throughout some progressive institutions over the last half-dozen years." Chait knows what he's talking about: In 2015, he wrote an influential New York article titled "Not a Very P.C. Thing to Say: How the language police are perverting liberalism." Chait defined political correctness as "a style of politics in which the more radical members of the left attempt to regulate political discourse by defining opposing views as bigoted and illegitimate," and he arged that "the new p.c. has attained an influence over mainstream journalism and commentary beyond that of the old."

To understand why the "new p.c." attained that influence, it's necessary to revisit another influential magazine article from the same year: "The Coddling of the American Mind," an Atlantic essay penned by the social scientist Jonathan Haidt and the civil libertarian attorney Greg Lukianoff. Their article was later expanded into a book, in which Haidt and Lukianoff blamed an increase in "safetyism"—an impulse to be sheltered not just from physical harm but emotional turmoil—for some of the new hostility to free speech. Their thinking has deeply informed my own writings about the censorious streak in campus activism: In my decade or so of covering higher education, I've reported hundreds of examples of progressive students citing their personal sense of safety as the reason they were demanding that punitive actions be taken against some other individual or entity that had offended them.

While some critics have dismissed the idea that the antics of safety-obsessed college students matter very much to the broader culture, I've long warned that the small number—proportionally speaking—of young people inclined toward these tactics could do serious damage elsewhere. As I wrote in my book Panic Attack, "It's not impossible to imagine the same kind of thing happening in the workplace: picture a boss who is afraid to reprimand negligent young employees out of concern that they will say their PTSD is triggered."

Recent events at The New York Times are an almost perfect demonstration of how this is playing out. Staffers angry about an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) claimed that its publication threatened their very lives. They specifically chose "running this puts black Times staff in danger" as their mantra because it invokes workplace safety. When the authority figure—the boss, the principal, the government—is responsible for ensuring safety, and safety is broadly defined as not merely protection from literal physical violence but also the fostering of emotional comfort, norms of classical liberalism will suffer. (One activist told me that for him, safety requires other people to affirm him.) The Times conflict ended with opinion page chief James Bennet out of his job.

He's not the only one. UCLA recently suspended a lecturer, Gordon Klein, after he declined a demand that he make a final exam "no-harm"—that is, it could only boost grades—for students of color traumatized by the events in Minneapolis. Klein refused, in accordance with guidance from UCLA's administration not to give students much leeway on exams. In response, the activists launched a change.org petition to get Klein fired, and the school suspended him. His irritated reply to the activists—that he would not give preferential exam treatment to students because of their skin color—has prompted UCLA to investigate him for racial discrimination.

University of Chicago economist Harald Uhlig, who had the temerity to criticize some of the more radical demands the protesters have made, is now being pressured to resign as editor of the school's Journal of Political Economy. In this case, it's not random students doing the pressuring, but some of the biggest names in economics: New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, University of Michigan professor Justin Wolfers, and even former Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen, who told the Times that "it would be appropriate for the University of Chicago, which is the publisher of the Journal of Political Economy, to review Uhlig's performance and suitability to continue as editor."

The Times article is a master class in guilt-by-insinuation. The authors could not find a single fact to support the notion that Uhlig is a racist or that he has used his position to thwart black scholars. But he holds some views that would be in conflict with the more progressive Black Lives Matter protesters—he doesn't approve of rioting, and he criticized NFL players for kneeling—and that apparently is suspicious enough.

Chait's piece on Shor includes another, equally powerful example: Intercept journalist Lee Fang, a man of the left by any measure, was denounced as a racist and publicly shamed by a colleague for daring to interview a black protester who criticized violent tactics. The colleague

called him racist in a pair of tweets, the first of which alone received more than 30,000 likes and 5,000 retweets.

A journalist friend of Fang's told me he felt his career was in jeopardy, having been tried and convicted in a court of his peers. He was losing sleep for days and unsure how to respond. "All of us were trying to protect his job and clear his name and also not bow to a mob informed by an attitude that views that you disagree with are tantamount to workplace harassment."

The outcome of this confrontation was swift and one-sided: Two days later, Fang was forced to post a lengthy apology.

Fang was plainly terrified, and not unreasonably fearful of losing his job and being branded a racist forever. The Volokh Conspiracy's David Bernstein called Fang's forced apology "Maoist-style." It's a hyperbolic analogy, referencing the infamous "struggle sessions" of Mao Zedong's totalitarian communism regime. Thankfully, the dissenters from woke orthodoxy are not being tortured or executed for wrongthink. But they do face tremendous pressure to avoid saying anything that might provoke an online mob, or an illiberal colleague, or an activist with different priorities—even if that thing they want to say is plainly true.

This new reality has important social consequences: for the individuals caught in the crosshairs, but also the institutions attempting to navigate these very treacherous waters.

Given that so many cancellations hinge on the accusation that safety is being undermined, I would suggest a different metaphor than Mao.

Mine is no less hyperbolic, but it puts the focus where my reporting—and Haidt and Lukianoff's research—suggest it should be.

In 1793, the Committee of Public Safety took charge of the French Revolution on a promise to "make terror the order of the day." Evidence-free show trials and ideological purges followed, consistent with the radical leaders' belief that public safety requires public terror.

Needless to say, critics of today's radicals do not live in terror of being sentenced to the guillotine. But losing employment and social standing is no small matter. Having a job is usually connected to having health care and economic security: the ability to afford food, housing, and medicine. While some people weather and overcome their cancellation—even profiting from it—others aren't so lucky. We hear a lot about the cases where things worked out eventually (this Olivia Nuzzi piece is a must-read), but many cases never produce a sympathetic backlash that aids the cancelled. And being shamed online by thousands of people over a trivial offense is an unpleasant and exhausting experience, even if it doesn't permanently impact your employment.

This is not to say that every person being cancelled at the moment is a martyr for the cause of free speech. Los Angeles magazine has a list of the recently cancelled. Several were accused of fostering unpleasant work environments. Were they guilty? Maybe so. Recentlty ousted Bon Apetit editor-in-chief Adam Rappaport, for instance, seems like an unpleasant person to work for. Food writer Alison Roman, on the other hand, was dragged on social media for 1) daring to criticize Chrissy Teigen, and 2) wearing an offensive Halloween costume more than a dozen years ago. The photo of Roman was circulated on Twitter by the journalist Yashar Ali, a friend of Teigen with a history of fiercely defending her. Ali claimed the costume was intended as a "chola" stereotype of Mexican-Americans; Roman countered that she was dressed up as Amy Winehouse. Ali deleted his tweet but said he thought it was fair game because Roman had a history of "being called out for appropriation." (Twitter users immediately dug up a photo of Teigen in a culturally appropriative Halloween costume.)

Ironically, the same subset of people ostensibly exercised about emotional safety - the woke left - seem frequently inclined to level unsubstantiated accusations that inflict emotional harm. This makes it difficult to believe that these Twitter warriors' true aim is the promotion of psychological comfort. Did any of them consider Uhlig's mental health after the man was baselessly accused? Does anyone care about Roman, who probably did not expect her enemies to ransack her Myspace page for evidence of racism and then pillory her for a photo taken when she was 23? What about Shor, thrown to the wolves for making a reasonable objection to what one wing of the protesters was doing?

That sounds like terror, not safety. Call it the 1793 Project.

SOURCE





Australia: "Mr Incorrectness" strikes again

Polarising media personality Sam Newman has sparked further outrage after  describing COVID-19 as the 'Chinese virus' as he called for the official AFL season to be cancelled.

His comments came 48 hours after the former Footy Show host parted ways with Channel Nine, ending a 35-year partnership.

No stranger to controversy, Newman suddenly left the network on Friday following an extraordinary tirade about George Floyd during an online podcast.

The AFL season was thrown into chaos on Saturday after Essendon Bombers player Conor McKenna tested positive to coronavirus.

Newman weighed into the debate about the season after Essendon's round three clash against Melbourne was postponed, with Bombers players ordered to self-isolate until they can be tested again this week.

'Let’s face it. The AFL 2020 comp is a farce. How can a table ladder be set, when games and players are postponed. Cancel the official season and just play on to entertain the TV audience,' the Geelong Cats great posted on Twitter on Sunday, adding the hashtag 'Chinese virus'.

It was the second time within 24 hours he had referred to coronavirus as the 'Chinese virus'.

'Due to the Chinese corona virus, Essendon and Melbourne won’t be on TV this weekend. I know how they feel. Boo boo. #ChineseVirus,' he posted on Saturday.

His latest tweet divided the internet and sparked disagreement among his followers.  'You’ve deadset lost it mate. Take a spell!,' one man commented.  Another added: 'Wrong wrong wrong... Get a life.'

'I like you Sam for calling it for what it is! ChineseVirus,' one said.

'You should take over the AFL Sam and in addition start the Sam Newman Footy Show and let loose. I miss your antics and your full frontals, let em rip again Sam,' another wrote.

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 June, 2020

The Purity Paradox: How Tolerance and Intolerance Increase at the Same Time

The explanation below is interesting but I see it as an instance of "Give them an inch and they will take a mile".  Leftists have got a lot of traction and satisfaction out of arguing for more tolerance of various groups.  They have largely succeeded in getting tolerance for homosexuality, for instance.

But now that good targets for tolerance advocacy have all been used up, they are searching further afield for things to be tolerant of.  They have found arguing for tolerance to be a good racket so are not willing to let it go.

So now even the tiniest infractions are seized on to argue that more tolerance is needed.

So people have indeed become superficially more tolerant but the Left  think the tolerance is still not enough.  It never will be to them

So the cries of intolerance are just Leftist propaganda with very little behind it


How can intolerance be increasing when Western democracies are demonstrably more tolerant of historically marginalised identities than at any point in their history? It is, according to Douglas Murray, “a curiosity of the age” that as racial and sexual tolerance “at the very least appears to be better than it ever was, it is presented as though it has never been worse.” This paradox occurs because, as we address and overcome problems of intolerance and discrimination, we also expand the concept of intolerance to stigmatise new attitudes and behaviours. This makes it appear as if we are either making no progress at all or, worse, that we are becoming more intolerant. The upshot is that social problems appear increasingly irresolvable.

It is, of course, counter-intuitive to think of tolerance and intolerance increasing at the same time. Nevertheless, the idea is supported by a Harvard University study of human judgement, led by Professor Daniel Gilbert. In a series of experiments, Gilbert and his team of researchers showed that “people often respond to the decrease in the prevalence of a stimulus by increasing the concept of it.” He termed this phenomenon “prevalence-induced concept change.” In the first experiment, participants were shown 1,000 dots that varied on a continuum from very purple to very blue and then asked to identify the blue dots. After 200 trials, the number of blue dots was decreased for one group of participants but increased for another. In both cases, participants assessed the number of blue dots to be the same—the group with decreasing blue dots expanded their concept of blue to include dots they had previously excluded. This change was not altered by forewarning participants, by sudden decreases in prevalence, or by reversal in the direction of prevalence.

The same effect was noticed when participants were shown 800 human faces on a continuum of threatening to non-threatening—when the prevalence of threatening faces was reduced in one group, participants expanded their concept of threat to include faces which they had previously defined as non-threatening. In a third study, participants were shown 240 proposals for scientific research that were rated on a continuum from very ethical to very unethical. When the prevalence of proposals defined as unethical were decreased for one group, the group expanded their concept of unethical to include proposals they had previously defined as ethical.

The implications of this research should give us pause for thought across a wide range of social and cultural issues, especially when it comes to assessing the prevalence over time of bias against marginalised groups. There is no doubt that discrimination against people on the basis of race, gender, or sexuality continues, the view that it is increasing is likely to be an effect of prevalence-induced concept change. The concept of what constitutes discrimination has expanded, and as marginalised communities have splintered into mutually antagonistic groups, overall hostility and inter-community tension has been exacerbated.

Tests for the detection of “unconscious bias,” such as the Harvard Implicit Association Test (IAT), have played a significant role in the emergence of this paradox, and the IAT’s methods have been widely adopted. For example, the UK Government established a programme of diversity training to unearth unconscious biases in participants. So, even as people become more tolerant of racial and gender differences they find themselves condemned for intolerance so deeply buried they were not even aware of it themselves. The theory of intersectionality, meanwhile, now widely embraced in Western universities, has generated an ever-expanding “matrix of oppression.” In search of a solution to the resulting tsunami of newly discovered prejudice, the number of oppressors—from white cis-gendered men to “Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists”—proliferates, resulting in a feedback loop of exclusion, distrust, and resentment.

As concepts of discrimination and bias expand, the aggressive policing of behaviours increases in an attempt to rid society of all remaining prejudice. At the University of Sheffield in England, students were paid by the university to monitor the language of their fellow students for evidence of “microaggressions” that may unintentionally cause offence to a racial group. This inevitably leads to the needless demonisation of tolerant, liberal students as intolerant unconscious racists. And as the concept of intolerance increases in this way, tolerant behaviours and attitudes struggle to keep up. Like the Red Queen in Through the Looking Glass, we have to run faster just to stand still.

The outcome of all this is rampant no-platforming in universities and colleges, necessitated by the assumption that if people can’t be reformed then they must be silenced instead. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead described the University of Chicago as “the one place I have been that is most like ancient Athens.” He would doubtless have been disappointed to learn that protests derailed plans to invite Trump’s former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, to participate in a debate on campus. Although the event did not take place, the professor who invited him remarked, “whether you like his views or not, he seems to have understood something about America that I’m curious to learn more about.”

Similar culture wars are escalating around gender. British author J.K. Rowling was showered with spiteful invective simply for being “deeply concerned about the consequences of the current trans activism.” The Indian feminist Vaishnavi Sundar had the screening of her film pulled because she objected to pre-op transwomen sharing shelters and bathrooms with female survivors of sexual violence. Her sins were compounded by her belief that biological sex is not a social construct. Compare this kind of behaviour to the philosophy of Ira Glasser, a liberal Jew and former executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Glasser recently described the banning of speakers with racist views as “the most politically stupid thing I had ever heard.” As head of the ACLU, he had defended the right of neo-Nazis to march through a largely Jewish neighbourhood of Chicago on the grounds that “what happened in Germany didn’t happen because there was a good First Amendment there. It happened because there wasn’t.”

How can we encourage kind and decent people to become ever-more tolerant when they are vilified no matter what they say or do because the concept of intolerance keeps expanding to swallow their good intentions? Our desire for greater equality and inability to acknowledge progress are spinning us into a purity spiral—as new layers of intolerance are uncovered, coercive corrective measures increase in ferocity. Left unchallenged, this takes us to ever-more dangerous places. As Simon Schama explains in his magnificent study of the French Revolution, “the violence that made the Revolution possible in the first place created the brutal distinctions between Patriots and Enemies, Citizens and Aristocrats, within which there could be no human shades of grey.”

Allergy to ambiguity and nuance and to the complexity of human experience makes impossible demands of the individual. This in turn results in rising levels of frustration and recrimination because somebody has to pay the price for failure. “Il faut du sang pour cimenter la re?volution” (“There must be blood to cement the revolution”) cried Mme Roland at the height of the French Revolution only to find herself arrested and guillotined a short time later. When justified campaigns for racial justice and gender rights adopt this same approach, they are fuelling the very forces they claim to oppose.

“My ultimate objection to political correctness,” English writer, actor, and comic Stephen Fry has observed, “is not that it combines so much of what I have spent a lifetime loathing and opposing: preachiness (with great respect), piety, self-righteousness, heresy-hunting, denunciation, shaming, assertion without evidence, accusation, inquisition, censoring… My real objection is that I don’t think political correctness works… (It) is always obsessed with how right it is, without thinking of how effective it might be.”

By relentlessly expanding the concept of intolerance, prevalence-induced concept change ensures none of us can ever be good enough—if we pass one test of tolerance, we are sure to fail the next. Meanwhile those who believe they do not have to change, wait—endlessly and in vain—for the world to change around them. The Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin, understood clearly where this cycle takes us. Benjamin, who committed suicide as he fled Nazi persecution, wrote about the Angel of History whose “face is turned toward the past”:

Where we perceive a chain of events, [the angel] sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.

Benjamin’s logic is poetic and flawless in its illustration of a history of accumulated horror. As we disappear down the rabbit hole of identitarianism, hostile groups magnify existing divisions and manufacture new ones. But as we bask in the warm feeling of being good and right (and every identity group is always good and right), we should be wary of making ever-more exacting demands for tolerance which, by their very nature, can never be satisfied. The only way to “make whole what has been smashed” is to identify a common humanity that can obviate these divisions.

Prevalence-induced concept change seems to be a hardwired human trait, common to us all. Left unchecked, it will sow irresolvable division. If we are to attain a greater measure of social justice, we would do well to look at ourselves first and rescue our shared humanity from whatever sex, race, or culture we believe we belong to. Seeing the “Other” in myself, seeing in ourselves the things we dislike most in others, is a prerequisite to freeing the individual from the prison of the group. It means sacrificing moral purity in order to be effective in tackling intolerance.

SOURCE








A Tale of Two Monuments

Virginia Governor Ralph Northam has ordered the removal of the monument to Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue in Richmond. The social and political significance of this is different from what many (perhaps most) Americans, educated in our politically correct government schools, think it will be. Let’s compare the meaning of the Lee monument to its most famous counterpart, the Lincoln Memorial.

The Lee monument means different things to different people, but history is history, and one thing the monument stands for is the act of defiance against the central state that occurred when the Southern states seceded from the union. Nineteenth-century Southerners were the only group in American history to ever seriously defy what they believed to be unconstitutional dictates of Washington, D.C. They took seriously the Jeffersonian dictum in the Declaration of Independence that governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and whenever government fails, in their opinion, to promote their happiness, they have a duty to abolish that government and replace it with a new one. The U.S. government responded to Southern defiance by waging total war on the entire Southern population, which led to the death of one-fourth of the adult male population and some 50,000 civilians according to historian James McPherson.

Past generations of Southerners revered Robert E. Lee because he successfully defended Richmond for three years from the kind of looting and burning that occurred in Atlanta, Columbia, and many other Southern cities and towns. In his book, What They Fought For: 1861–1865, James McPherson concluded that the typical Confederate soldier believed he was fighting against an invading army that would loot and burn his town and threaten his family and friends; the typical Union Army solder thought he was fighting for “the flag” and “the Union.”

The Lincoln Memorial is a monument honoring the government’s waging of total war against its own citizens to prevent acts of defiance and to deter them in the future. As H. L. Mencken remarked in a critique of the Gettysburg Address, it was Southerners who were fighting for the consent of the governed; the North was fighting against it.

Lincoln did not invade the South to free the slaves. Both President Lincoln and the U.S. Congress informed the world in 1861 that the war had nothing to do with slavery. In his first inaugural address, Lincoln declared, “I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists.” In the same address, he also pledged his support for a constitutional amendment—the Corwin Amendment—that would have prohibited the federal government from ever interfering with slavery. It read: “No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said state.” It had already passed the Republican-controlled House and Senate and was ratified by Illinois, Ohio, Rhode Island, Maryland, and Kentucky.

The July 25, 1861, Crittenden–Johnson Resolution, also known as the “War Aims Resolution,” was issued by the House and Senate and declared that “this war is not waged on our part” for any “purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of the States,” by which they meant slavery. The official purpose of the war was to “save the union” by forcing the Southern states back into it at gunpoint and, most importantly to Lincoln, restoring their federal tax collections (mostly tariffs). In other words, its purpose was to destroy, not save, the voluntary union of the founders and replace it with a coerced union held together by violence.

The Lincoln Memorial celebrates this, above all else, as explained by a National Park Service publication entitled “Secret Symbol of the Lincoln Memorial” by Nathan King. The “true meaning” of the Memorial is represented by a “ubiquitous symbol” that is all over it. That symbol is the “fasces,” a “bundle of rods bound together by a leather thong.” The fasces (where the word “fascism” comes from) were used by Roman emperors as a “symbol of power and authority,” according to this U.S. government publication.

The rods of the fasces “suggest punishment by beating” and the axe “suggests beheading” of those who disobey the emperor’s orders. “Power, strength, authority [of government], and justice” are what the fasces mean. They represent “the power and authority of the state over the citizens.” Lest Americans be repulsed by such authoritarian and, well, fascist language, the article contends that the fasces were “Americanized” by placing an eagle above them all around the Lincoln Memorial.

So, according to the U.S. government, the “true meaning” of the Lincoln Memorial is essentially that the American people are no longer the masters but rather the servants of their own government. Government’s “just powers” are no longer dependent upon the consent of the governed, but on the opinions of the federal government itself, primarily through its own Supreme Court.

The one unequivocal good that came from Lincoln’s war was, of course, the ending of slavery in 1866 with the Thirteenth Amendment, although Lincoln’s role in passing the amendment has been exaggerated by historians according to Pulitzer Prize–winning Lincoln biographer David Donald. Lincoln’s biggest failure, however, was that the U.S. government did not end slavery the way all other governments of the world (including the northern states in the U.S.) did in the nineteenth century: peacefully. Only in America was there a war that caused hundreds of thousands of deaths associated with the ending of slavery. Following the British model, the North’s financial cost of the war alone would have been enough to purchase the freedom of all the slaves and end the evil institution once and for all, according to historian Jeffrey Hummel.

SOURCE






What racists and anti-racists have in common

Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility is as committed to racial identity as any of Richard Spencer’s foul ramblings.

Today, racists and anti-racists have something in common. Consider Richard Spencer and Robin DiAngelo. Spencer is a racist arsehole. He is a white supremacist who believes that white people should found an ethnostate, to the exclusion of all ethnic minorities. He spouts disgusting, racist ideas which are built on the notion that white and black people are irredeemably different from one another.

Any right-thinking person would reject Spencer’s racist nonsense. But the starting point that Spencer adopts in arguing for his views is not entirely alien to much that passes for anti-racist politics today. The idea that skin colour is essential to your identity is also important in contemporary anti-racism.

For a clear example of this commonality, consider Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. DiAngelo’s celebrated book has recently returned to the top of the New York Times bestseller list amid the Black Lives Matter protests. The book is frequently recommended as a means of educating white people about racism. Yet its arguments are eerily reminiscent of those made by white nationalists like Spencer, particularly when it comes to its obsession with white identity.

For DiAngelo, being white means a lot. It provides advantages. It bolsters opportunities. It shapes your worldview. White people are the beneficiaries of a system that presumes ‘white’ to be the default and people of colour to be a ‘deviation from the norm’. We are products of relentless ‘racist socialisation’ which embeds a sense of racial superiority from our childhood onwards. ‘White supremacy’ is an ‘invisible system’ which maintains privileges for white people. This is why, to be an anti-racist, you have to acknowledge the advantage you received as a white person in a white-supremacist society.

‘White fragility’ refers to the tendency among whites to become defensive when talking about race. Whites are said to be so used to living in a society which elevates whiteness that they react badly when told they benefit from racism. For DiAngelo, anti-racism begins by understanding that our racial identities are essential parts of who we are.

DiAngelo acknowledges that racism has changed since the civil-rights movement. It is no longer morally acceptable among white society to be seen to engage in racism. This, at least, is borne out by statistics. Research collated by the University of Illinois finds that ‘one of the most substantial changes in white racial attitudes has been the movement from very substantial opposition to the principle of racial equality to one of almost universal support’. This change in attitude appears to affect almost every social issue. In 1942, just 32 per cent of whites agreed that whites and blacks should attend the same schools. In 1995, 96 per cent of whites agreed. In 1944, only 45 per cent of whites agreed that blacks should have ‘as good a chance as white people to get any kind of job’. By 1972, almost all whites agreed. Many of the questions that used to be asked in racial-attitude surveys are no longer asked at all because the responses are so overwhelmingly in favour of racial equality.

Does this mean white people have become less racist? Not for DiAngelo. She claims that the civil-rights movement merely forced racism to change its form. White people are now ‘colour-blind racists’. In fact, it is those people who believe they are not racist, those who may have black friends or loved ones and who believe themselves to be progressive, who are likely to ‘do the most daily damage to people of colour’, she argues.

Remarkably, DiAngelo explicitly denies that millennials are any less racist than preceding generations. In one of her boldest claims, she suggests that ‘racism’s adaptations over time are more sinister than concrete rules, like Jim Crow’. She seriously alleges that the ‘adaptations’ that racism takes today are more sinister than the system of laws that explicitly segregated blacks from whites.

Of course, there are huge issues with race in America. DiAngelo is on strongest ground when pointing to ongoing issues of economic segregation and how this impacts on what white America considers to be ‘normal’. But rather than interrogate the causes of these economic problems, she presents scant and misleading evidence of ‘white supremacy’ as the cause of racial division. She points out that ‘79 per cent of teachers in the US are white’. When you break the figures down (DiAngelo doesn’t), you find that in the 2011-2012 school year (the most recent year surveyed by the Department for Education) nine per cent of teachers were Hispanic, seven per cent were black and two per cent were Asian. In the period between 1987 and 2011, ethnic-minority teachers in the US increased overall from 13 per cent to 18 per cent, though the portion of black teachers decreased at the same time. It is hard to see how this is explicable by ‘white supremacy’ alone. In the words of left-wing political scientist Adolph Reed Jr, ‘disparity is an outcome not an explanation’. By pretending that ‘white supremacy’ can explain all the economic and political issues facing black Americans, DiAngelo ignores the wider political and economic context in which these disparities arise.

But DiAngelo is not attempting a serious consideration of the problems that affect black people in America. She is only attempting to make white people able to appear more virtuous. She is not attempting to persuade, but to indoctrinate white people into woke politics. In her final chapter, titled ‘Where do we go from here’, her advice to white people is to ‘show you can do the work’ to understand your own racism. Not to go out and change things. Not to think about the real social and political problems facing Americans. But rather to self-flagellate about one’s own prejudices. White Fragility is essentially a self-help manual which encourages white people to tolerate an unequal world rather than do anything about it.

This is why DiAngelo is particularly uncharitable to those who claim ‘not to see race’. She cites the passage in Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I have a dream’ speech to the March on Washington, in which King argued that people should be ‘judged by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin’. DiAngelo claims that white people ‘seized on’ this line of King’s speech in order to avoid having to think about race at all (when, in her view, we should be thinking about it all the time). This is why refusing to see race is apparently racist: it ignores the system of white supremacy that still delivers privilege to white people. Ignoring our inherent racism allows racism to be held in place.

But to suggest that whites ‘seized on’ King’s sentiment to avoid talking about race underplays the significance of what King was arguing. DiAngelo acknowledges that it was American elites who ‘invented race’ in order to disrupt social solidarity among working-class blacks and whites. Today, many of the problems which feature at the centre of the Black Lives Matter movement are shared across the American working class. King’s point, which was echoed throughout his later life, was that class solidarity had the power to transcend racial difference. It is not ‘denying the reality’ of race to suggest that poor black people may have more in common with poor white people than they do with middle-class black people. By fixating on ‘whiteness’ as the route of all the problems facing black Americans, DiAngelo discounts the possibility that solidarity in the face of common problems can be more powerful than racial identity.

This is why DiAngelo and Richard Spencer have something in common. Both share the view that white and black people struggle to transcend their narrow racial identity. Both believe that whites and blacks will struggle to find common ground because their experiences of the world are so fundamentally different. Both racists and anti-racists today doubt our capacity to leave racial identity behind. They want us in a never-ending, inward-looking cycle of self-abasement and victimhood.

This is not a model of anti-racism we should adopt. Real anti-racism should start with the idea that we can work through our common experiences to change the world around us. It should start with the idea that genuine solidarity allows us to create an identity that is bigger than the colour of anyone’s skin. It’s a simple idea, but it is downplayed or ignored by many purported anti-racists today.

SOURCE






Western liberalism actually rests  on Christianity’s rock

The horrible death of George Floyd at the hands of a brutal policem­an in Minneapolis is producin­g very diverse reactions. One is a wholly good sense of human solidarity across racial lines. Such a response, that race is incidental to humanity, of no consequence in determining a person­’s worth, has no power to diminish human dignity, is a wonderfu­l response, and expresses traditional liberalism. This require­s the law to have no consideration for race, which means justice for every human being regard­less of race. Seeking that autho­r­ities live up to this is a necessary ambition.

But a good deal of reaction is heading down the destructive road of identity politics. Identity politics attacks the universalism which is the heart of liberalism.

Rejecting this universalism for an ideology which elevates race, gender, sexual orientation or some other features into the central ­organising principle in politics and culture is a disastrous wrong turn.

One reason we are in danger of taking this doleful path is the decline in Christianity as the animating inspiration of public culture.

It is worth understanding that the universalism of liberalism, indeed­ the whole of Western liberalism itself, is entirely a subset of Christian moral thought and develop­ment. One thing our culture rightly does is elevate and revere the experience and testimony of victims, especially powerless victims. This was not the way in the pre-Christian, ancient world. The humiliation and death by crucifixion of Jesus, both man and God, put a divine face on human suffering. It gave the suffering an unimagined dignity.

The Jewish scriptures of the Old Testament had already introduced a novel universalism. God created humanity in his own image. This elevated the status of humanity to a level it had never known. It was also a statement of the universality of humanity.

The Old Testament is assuredly the story of the Jewish people and the nation of Israel, but it is also the story of God’s relationship with all humanity, beginning with creation.

God does not create one race or another. He creates human­ity. Throughout the Old Testament, there are many ­statements of the universality of God and the universality of the human condition.

It is worth noting that African slaves in America took great inspir­ation from the experience of the Jewish people when they were enslaved in Egypt. The great black spiritual songs emerge in part from this inspiration.

The most radical statement of Christian universalism comes from Paul, in his letter to the Gal­atians: “There is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, there is no longer male or female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

The Christian concept of the natural law over time became ­universal human rights. At every step of history, many Christians have dishonoured their teachings with their behaviour. But equally many Christians have lived out their beliefs.

My point though is the intellectual and political development of liberalism. Everything we like in modern liberalism is a direct expressio­n of Christian teaching and thinking. The idea of human­ity changed fundamentally after Jesus. Instead of being primarily considered as a member of a family­, or tribe or nation, each individua­l was seen to have been created individually in the likeness of God, to possess an immortal soul and to be in a personal relationship with the living and eternal God. This meant that individuals had rights and obligations: the rights of nations and tribes were of a much lesser order.

The most important book in understanding the basis of modern Western society is the work of ­Oxford scholar Larry Siedentop: Inventing the Individual, The Orig­ins of Western Liberalism. He writes: “The Christian conception of God provided the foundation for what became an unprecedented form of human society. Christian moral beliefs emerge as the ultimate source of the social revolution that has made the West what it is.”

Siedentop argues that by the later parts of the Middle Ages Christians had thought through and begun to try to implement all the foundations of modern liberalism. It was a long and conscientious process. Third-century Greek theologian Origen confirmed the free will of every human being to choose between good and evil. Another third-­century theologian, Tertullian, in Carthage, affirmed religious ­liberty. Christianity produced a pro-woman sexual revolution. Marriage became for the first time an institution of mutual love and mutual consent. Christians didn’t kill their female babies. Benedictine monasticism, when it came round in the sixth century, was radically egalitarian and democratically self-governing — the monks chose their abbot.

Some Christians owned slaves but there were always fierce Christian voices, including popes, denouncing­ slavery. A fourth-­century bishop, Gregory of Nyssa, denounced a man who had bought slaves. He thundered: “For what price, tell me? What did you find in existence worth the price of this human nature? God himself would not reduce the human race to slavery since he himself, when we had been enslaved to sin, recalle­d us to freedom.”

Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century developed a full understanding of the sovereignty of human conscience. The church, seeking independence from princes and the state generally, gradually divorced the concepts of sin and crime. The church could pronounce on sin, the state on crime. Internal church government, which had to be universal among church members, led governments of states to also became universal in their jurisdictions, rather than leaving power, often abso­lute, in the hands of local lords.

Liberalism was not invented in a minute and the Enlightenment thinkers often given credit for it were mostly Christians and used Christian moral categories and concepts. The question now is whether liberalism can survive the total severing of its connections with its Christian roots. I have the most serious doubts. Liberalism survives for a while because the first generation or two are imbued with Christian moral concepts and traditions. But eventually it goes crazy, as it is demonstrably doing now.

Without Christianity, there is nothing absolute for liberalism to anchor itself to, so its very practice of tolerance can easily morph into intolerant ideological demands. The various impulses of liberalism always need to be integrated in a genius of balance. But when there is no overarching transcendent belief, there is nothing to provide this balance. Each impulse runs to extreme, often absurd, excess, which is why so many notionally liberal commentators have endorsed viole­nce in the recent protests.

This crisis of liberalism is a crisis­ in the heart of our civilisation. It is a vacuum where there should be belief.

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 June, 2020 

Black Lives Matter? Here’s What Doesn’t

The realities the media can't be bothered to cover.

“Black Lives Matter.” That’s their mantra, their battle cry, the idol erected by a gang of neo-Marxist, racist thugs who are trying to club us into submission to their vision. Democrat Congressmen get on their knees. Corporate America pays homage, as well as coin of the realm. If groveling reflected athletic ability, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell would be the starting quarterback for the New England Patriots

Statues are toppled and movies banned. I wonder when the book-burning will start.

At times it seems like nothing matters but some black lives. Regarding the rioting and mayhem that have swept the country since the horrific killing of George Floyd, here are a few things which apparently don’t matter to The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN and the rest of the media conspiracy-- given the amount of attention they’ve received:

Police Lives – In a few days in late May and early June: 4 officers were shot in St. Louis; an officer was shot in the head in Las Vegas; two officers were shot in Richmond; an officer was run down in the Bronx, and another in Buffalo. Thanks to the rage generated by agitators, the media and Democratic politicians, the lives of cops – the people we depend on most to protect us and our families – are the most vulnerable.

The lives of 7,000 black Americans murdered each year by other black Americans. Last year, there were 492 homicides in Chicago. Overwhelmingly, the victims and perpetrators were black. Only three of these deaths involved the police. Black men killing black men? Business as usual. Police killing black men (whether or not the homicides are justified) – institutional racism!

Jewish lives – In rioting in Los Angeles and adjacent areas, synagogues and Jewish-owned businesses were looted and defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti, in a way reminiscent of Kristallnacht.  Black Lives Matter is virulently anti-Israel, calling Israel an “apartheid state,” claiming it commits “genocide” and demanding a total boycott. ANTIFA is also part of the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement. Neither group has ever demanded an end to Palestinian terrorism. Call it professional courtesy.

The Real George Floyd -- the man, not the media-created myth of a “Gentle Giant” – The real George Floyd had a record stretching back over 25 years, including criminal trespass, aggravated assault, theft and various drug-related offenses. He was recently released from Texas State Prison, after serving a 5-year sentence for robbery. During a home invasion in 2007, the Gentle Giant pointed a gun at the stomach of a pregnant black woman while trying to rob her. When he died, Floyd had fentanyl and methamphetamines in his system. None of this, of course, justifies his death. But neither does it make him martyr material.

The absurdity of charges of institutional racism --  America has an $8 -billion a year equity, inclusion and diversity industry to overcome a non-existent problem. Almost 60% of blacks are in the middle or upper-middle class. They’re invisible to the media because they’re not rioting and looting. Do blacks represent a disproportionate share of arrests? How could it possibly be otherwise, with African Americans, who are 13% of the U.S. population, responsible for more than half of all murders and robberies?

The rate of fatherlessness in the black community fuels the rage. – In America, 57% of Black children grow up without their biological father, more than twice the rate among whites (20.7%). Most spend their childhood in a home with their mother and a succession of her boyfriends. This has a significant impact on the school-dropout rate, drug use and early sexual activity. Yet to talk about it, we are told, is being critical of black parenting, hence racist. So we simply ignore it and blame the pathologies in the black community on institutionalized racism.

The crime wave that accompanied the George Floyd protests – Marches and sermons at funerals make good visuals. The accompanying carnage and looting were largely unseen: burglaries up 220% in Minneapolis (May 26 to June 1) over the same period last year.  In Los Angeles, murders were up 250% (May 31-June 6). In Chicago, May 31st  was the city’s bloodiest day in almost 60 years – 18 dead (almost three times the body count of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre). Not to worry; none of them involved a white cop with his knee on the neck of a black man in custody, therefore all were irrelevant.

Black Lives Matter’s ideology – BLM doesn’t just want to get rid of the police, but prisons too. The group is anti-capitalist (“black people will never achieve liberation under the current global racialized capitalist system”) and anti-family (“We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.”) BLM is part black nationalism, part cultural Marxism and part Five-Year plans.

 The case for civilian gun ownership – Little wonder that the cities hit hardest by riots and looting – New York, Chicago and Los Angeles among them -- have made it practically impossible for ordinary people to legally possess firearms. Other than the police, practically the only ones who have them are criminals. Gun control advocates used to tell us: “You don’t need guns. If someone breaks into your home, call the police.” Would that be before or after law enforcement is defunded, or police budgets are slashed to the bone?

Again, given their invisibility, none of this matters. Democrats seek to harvest votes by pandering furiously. A deranged media want to use the chaos to defeat Trump. In the urban anarchy/nihilism now upon us, reality is the first casualty – but far from the last.

SOURCE






Muhammad Ali Jr., 47, said his dad believed 'all lives matter' and would have branded protesters demanding an end to systemic racism as 'devils'

Muhammad Ali's son has said his famous father would have hated the 'racist' Black Lives Matter protests, as he claims the movement is 'pitting black people against everyone else' and insists George Floyd's killer 'was doing his job'.

Muhammad Ali Jr., 47, said his dad believed 'all lives matter' and would have branded protesters demanding an end to police brutality and systemic racism as 'devils', in an interview with the NY Post on the fourth anniversary of the boxing legend's death.

'My father would have said, "They ain't nothing but devils," Ali Jr. said. 'My father said, 'all lives matter.' I don't think he'd agree.'

Ali Jr. insisted his father would have thought the Black Lives Matter movement was 'racist' and would have been a Donald Trump supporter if he was alive today.

The shock claims come as Ali was a vocal civil rights campaigner who called for an end to racism, marched with the Black Panther Party and refused to sign up to the Vietnam War.

Ali's only biological son, who was estranged from the sports star when he died, said Black Lives Matter is just 'pitting black people against everyone else'. 

'I think it's racist. It's not just black lives matter, white lives matter, Chinese lives matter, all lives matter, everybody's life matters,' he told The Post. 'God loves everyone - he never singled anyone out. Killing is wrong no matter who it is.'

Ali Jr., who like is father is a practising Muslim, added that it is 'a racial statement.' 'It's pitting black people against everyone else. It starts racial things to happen; I hate that,' he said.

Ali Jr. added his dad would have condemned the way some protests have descended into violence if he were still alive today.  'Don't bust up s**t, don't trash the place. You can peacefully protest,' he told the Post.

Ali Jr. also defended the actions of Derek Chauvin, the white cop charged with murder after he knelt on black man Floyd's neck for almost nine minutes, saying he was wrong to kill him but that Floyd had 'resisted arrest' and the cop simply 'used the wrong tactic'.

'The officer was wrong with killing that person, but people don't realize there was more footage than what they showed,' he told the Post. 'The guy resisted arrest, the officer was doing his job, but he used the wrong tactic.'

He insisted that most cops are not 'crooked' and that he had 'never had a bad scene with a cop'.

'Police don't wake up and think, "I'm going to kill a n**r today or kill a white man,"' he said. 'They're just trying to make it back home to their family in one piece.'

He continued: 'Not all the police are bad, there's just a few. There's a handful of police that are crooked, they should be locked up.'

He also insisted he had never had a negative encounter with a cop because of his race. 'I never had a bad scene with a cop,' he said. 'They've always been nice and protect me. I don't have a problem with them.'

Ali Jr. went on to describe Trump as a 'good president' and agree with his claims that left-wing radical group Antifa has stoked violence during the ongoing civil unrest, urging that 'they need to kill everyone in that thing'.

'They're no different from Muslim terrorists. They should all get what they deserve,' he said.

'They're f**king up businesses, beating up innocent people in the neighborhood, smashing up police stations and shops. They're terrorists - they're terrorizing the community.

'I agree with the peaceful protests, but the Antifa, they need to kill everyone in that thing.' He added: 'Black Lives Matter is not a peaceful protest. Antifa never wanted it peaceful. I would take them all out.'

The 47-year-old father-of-two went as far as to say his boxing legend father would have been a Trump supporter and insisted the president is 'not a racist'.

'I think Trump's a good president. My father would have supported him. Trump's not a racist, he's for all the people. Democrats are the ones who are racist and not for everybody,' he said.

He then slammed Democrats for supporting Black Lives Matter when they're 'not even black'. 'These [Democrat politicians] saying Black Lives Matter, who the hell are you to say that? You're not even black,' he said.

'Democrats don't give a s**t about anybody. Hillary Clinton doesn't give a s**t; she's trying not to get locked up. Trump is much better than Clinton and Obama… The only one to do what he said he would do is Donald Trump.'

His show of support for Trump comes despite him speaking during a forum on the consequences of Trump's immigration policies in 2017 after he was stopped and detained twice by immigration officers at a Florida airport following Trump's travel ban on Muslim-majority nations.

At the time, he said he was singled out because he is Muslim and considered suing.

Ali Jr. is one of nine children and the fourth eldest the boxing legend fathered by four wives. His mother is Ali's first wife Belinda Boyd, who also converted to Islam and now goes by the name Khalilah Ali.

Ali Jr.'s relationship with his father broke down some time after 'The Greatest' married his fourth wife Lonnie Williams in 1986 and they were estranged when Ali died from Parkinson's disease at the age of 74 in 2016.

At the time of his father's death Ali Jr. had fallen on hard times living in a small two-bed flat in Chicago's crime-ridden South Side and he split from his wife soon after.

He has since moved to Hallandale Beach, Florida, where he works as a landscape gardener and construction worker.

He has previously said he gets just $1,000 a month in allowance from his father's estimated $60 million estate.

Boxing legend Ali was a key figure of the civil rights movement in the 1960s and 70s and marched with the Black Panther party, the African-American revolutionary organization formed in 1966.

At a Panther rally in San Francisco Ali made the famous speech: 'Those of you who are white…have many white leaders who can speak for you. You have many whites in power who have the billions and trillions of dollars to help you.

'But black people also need a spokesman.'

SOURCE






African woman: I dared to question the aims of Black Lives Matter - and got the worst racist abuse I've ever suffered

When I first moved to the UK from Ghana with my family in my early teens, the country that welcomed me was one where multiculturalism flourished and neighbours were warm and unassuming.

Your achievements were not prefaced by the colour of your skin or your place on the totem pole of identity politics.

People from ethnic and racial minorities were not constantly looking over their shoulders and assuming that every social interaction was laced with disdain or racism. It was a Britain where confidence trumped victimhood.

But, much to my dismay, the tone has shifted entirely, and worryingly, over the past five years.

Now I, a 24-year-old black woman of West African heritage, am expected to be mortally offended if someone dares assume that my dark skin might signal heritage not native to the British Isles.

I am expected to voice loudly my approval of white liberals who inform me of my inherent oppression as a ‘woman of colour’.

Amid the demonstrations and tumult of recent weeks, I have grown increasingly concerned about the methods and the wider far-Left political agenda of the Black Lives Matter movement here in the UK.

I have been horrified to watch this ridiculous campaign of tearing down statues and relics of British heritage escalate. It is a campaign that has yet to make any progress in tangibly helping me as a black person. And in recent weeks I have been increasingly vocal on Twitter about my concerns. But in doing so I have become targeted by a wave of vile online abuse.

Earlier this month I tweeted: ‘Are Brits still allowed to be proud of their culture and heritage or is that racist now?’ I also said I was ‘fairly sick of all the protests’. Last week, I made clear that I do not support BLM, adding: ‘Never have. Never will. I don’t need to put a black square online or tie myself to that organisation to prove that I care about black people.’

Some of the comments on social media I have received following these tweets have been truly shocking. I have been targeted by a campaign of abuse, hate and false information aimed at tarnishing the reputation of a black woman. I wake up every day to horrible messages. Most of this abuse was seemingly coming from black supporters of Black Lives Matter, including a significant amount from African-Americans, although I have also been abused by white liberals. Some of the trolls have circulated a fake image, which they falsely suggest is me. It shows a black woman on her knees posing as the seemingly subservient cartoon dog Scooby-Doo and flanked by four white women. I have had racist language used against me that is as bad as the ‘N’ word.

I have had people tell me they hope I am barren.

What I have received this last week online has given me a glimpse into the darkest part of the human soul – the part that can muster up the most awful hatred. This will not, however, stop me from questioning the motives of this movement.

The slogan of this campaign is indisputable. Of course black lives matter. They matter in the same way that everyone’s life, by virtue of being human, matters. Every individual, of whatever skin colour, should have the right to pursue happiness and live free from prejudice. And where racial discrimination and injustice exists in this country, it should be stamped out.

But a simple glance at the ‘Who We Are’ section on its online fundraising page demonstrates that this organisation is about much more than ‘black lives’. The group’s GoFundMe page explains that it intends to be ‘guided by a commitment to dismantle imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, patriarchy and the state structures that disproportionately harm black people in Britain and around the world’.

What on earth does ‘defending black lives’ have to do with dismantling capitalism – a system that has lifted millions of people out of absolute poverty in just this century alone? How would the tearing down of wealth creation benefit black lives? I regard myself as a conservative (but not a Tory) and cannot sign up to the destruction of capitalism. In fact, I find such views abhorrent. Does that mean there is no place for me in this anti-racism movement?

There are also growing questions surrounding this organisation’s funding. BLM UK has raised over a million pounds in recent weeks and one can only assume that is a figure that is going to increase following the public show of support from Premier League football teams.

Esther says: 'The slogan of this campaign is indisputable. Of course black lives matter. They matter in the same way that everyone¿s life, by virtue of being human, matters'    +3
Esther says: 'The slogan of this campaign is indisputable. Of course black lives matter. They matter in the same way that everyone’s life, by virtue of being human, matters'

The group, however, appears determined to spend the money on a string of Marxist initiatives, which according to its GoFundMe page, includes ‘developing and delivering training, police monitoring and strategies for the abolition of police’.

But how can you defend black people, or indeed anyone for that matter, if you are endorsing an agenda that seeks to abolish the police? How will soaring crime help black communities? If we abolish the police, what do we replace it with?

The group also says it will organise in ‘the Black radical tradition’ in a bid to secure ‘Black liberation’. But what on earth is the ‘black radical tradition’ and wouldn’t resources be better dedicated to free the Sub-Saharan Africans who are still enslaved in many North African and Middle Eastern regions of the world?

As someone who studied for a degree in Bristol for four years, I was stunned by the virtue signalling that drove protesters to tear down the statue of Edward Colston. Many of those in the mob, I must add, were white individuals who are likely descendants of direct beneficiaries of the slave trade. Oh, the irony!

I would like to know from the, largely anonymous, leaders of the BLM UK campaign whether they are protesting in solidarity with the US movement or because of the actions of our own mainly unarmed police force, whose ‘policing by consent’ model is envied around the world. Are the protesters shouting ‘don’t shoot’ at British police officers aware that the batons our officers routinely carry are incapable of doubling up as a deadly firearm?

The deeply unpleasant experience of being targeted online has shown me how toxic this debate is becoming. Why are people who claim to care for black people so uptight and defensive when someone says there is an agenda that is destructive to black people that is being ushered in on the back of this movement?

We need to wake up and see that people are trying to divide this country and are using minority groups to do it. First it was statues, then it was a potential ban on Swing Low, Sweet Chariot being sung at rugby matches. When will this end? This small faction of Left-wing activists will never stop trying to tear this country apart and shaming every aspect of British heritage. It is incumbent on us all to fight this through education, a fierce defence of free speech, and to call out the hypocrisy of individuals and organisations attempting to weaponise minority groups to their political ends.

My parents taught me the value of hard work, honesty, humility and standing up for the truth. I was taught to judge individuals on the content of their character, and I will never surrender to race baiters who try to bully me into submission. I will never be silent. And neither should you.

SOURCE






Australian mother who criticised an event which saw drag queens read stories to children is baffled to learn she's facing legal action accused of discrimination

A mother is facing legal action accused of discrimination after criticising an event where drag queens read stories to children.

Katrina Tait shared a petition started by the Australian Christian Lobby on her Facebook opposing the Drag Queen Story Time event at a Brisbane library in January.

'I can't believe I have just had to sign a petition to try to stop drag queen story time happening at libraries in our country,' she posted.

'What happened to protecting children's innocence and letting them just be kids?'

That post has seen the mother-of-four investigated by the NSW Anti-Discrimination Boardwith after a complaint from activist Garry Burns.

She faces legal action and potential fines.

The case caught the attention of One Nation's Mark Latham, who accused the Board of taking on a 'vexatious complaint' from 'the serial complainant Garry Burns'.

Mr Burns has previously taken actions agianst the likes of former radio braodcaster John Laws and controversial footy star Israel Folau.

'Mr Burns has continued with his unhinged, vexatious and threatening messages in this and other matters, having been emboldened and empowered by the NSW Anti-Discrimination Board over the past seven years in hundreds of accepted and investigated complaints, including scores of investigations against people who do not even live in NSW,' Mr Latham said, as reported by The Daily Telegraph.

He labelled the complaint against Ms Tait, who lives in Queensland, an 'amazing waste of money' and 'abuse of process'.

Ms Tait is unsure why action has been taken against her.  'I really felt that what I had written was nothing more than any mother would write who was concerned about this type of public event,' she said.

Mr Burns, who has won 62 of 65 cases, denied being vexatious and said 'my case law speaks for itself'.

Protests at drag queen library reading sessions took a dark turn in January, when president of the University of Queensland's Liberal National Club Wilson Gavin was found dead in a suspected suicide after leading a divisive demonstration.

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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21 June, 2020 

Typical shallow journalism: race, racism and riots

Below is the conclusion of a "Time" magazine article that purports to survey and explain America's current racial problems.  Race relations in some parts of America have degenerated into something like civil war so the problem is an acute one and is much in need of explanation.

The article below does not cut it, however.  It goes down the tired old route of saying how awful slavery was and asserts a link between slavery and the current troubles.  Slavery was indeed oppressive but the chain of events linking it to present-day riots is not given.  A link is just asserted with no reasoning or evidence given.

The actual cause is only incidentally linked to slavery.  Slavery certainly explains how America got an African population but it does not explain why that population is such a problem.

The cause is asserted by the Left to be the fault of white society.  Whites are said to be unreasonably antagonistic to blacks and so "keep blacks down" by various forms of racial discrimination.  That is an explanation very destructive to racial harmony but it suits the Left in their quest to destroy American society as we know it.  So no evidence or argument will deflect them from that explanation.

And it is true that mainstream American society has always discriminated against outsiders:  The Irish, the Jews, the Chinese, the Japanese etc.

But that shows that any effect of discrimination fades away  within a generation or two.  Being of Irish, Jewish, Chinese or Japanese origin is no handicap of any sort today.  Even recent arrivals from poor countries often do very well. Even people with poor or little English somehow soon have jobs and rapidly succeed economically.

Most Indians in the USA today were not born there but they are in fact the highest-earning ethnic goup in America today.  They undoubtedly face some discrimination but it does not hold them back significantly.  They are roughly as brown as American "blacks" but neither their skin colour, their very different religions or their quaint English hold them back for long.

So "discrimination" is an explanation for black failure that only a reality-avoidant Leftist could love.  So what is the real explanation?  It has to be something in blacks themselves.

But the real explanation runs head on into Lefist mythology and so is fiercely resisted.  But it is not at all mysterious and is very well attested.  The difference is not my opinion or anyone else's opinion.  It is a fact that has been repeatedly demonstrated  for around 100 years and is supported by the American Psychological Association:  Blacks on average have very  low IQs.

That many of them function at all shows that the power of routine and education can substitute to a degree for IQ.  Some people behave adaptively not because they have figured out how to behave adaptively but because almost from birth they have had before them examples of how to behave.  It is imitation learning.

There is of course a small minority of high IQ blacks but that leaves a large population of blacks who have much more difficulty coping with challenges than whites do.  Blacks cannot of course help it if they are one of the many low IQ blacks so they need more help than most whites do.  Low IQ is just as much a handicap as other more visible form of disability and is as deserving of help.

But such help is not given to struggling blacks for a very good reason: The need for it is denied.  As long as the idiotic "all men are equal" gospel is believed, the need for special treatment of blacks will not be acknowledged.  It will in fact be fiercely denied.

The result will be that blacks can clearly see their disadvantaged position in white society and will get angry about it.  After all the Leftist talk blaming their disadvantage on "whitey", they will not blame themselves for their various failures; they will blame it on others.  And the obvious "others" are whites, who do clearly have their hands on all the levers of power in society.

So most blacks will have a racial explanation for their disadvantage.  Leftist propaganda tends powerfully to make blacks racist against whites.  It is a useful mask for Leftists to condemn racism but they are the principal authors of it.  They always have been.  Hitler was an old-fashioned socialist and both Marx and Engels were outspoken racists.  Amusingly, they both despised Russians, among others.

So the Left have brought about the near civil war we now see in parts of America so it is not surprise that they mostly seem to welcome it.  Leftist State governments have certainly sat on their hands while it happens


During Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, many Americans were outraged when news broke that the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s pastor, had uttered the words “God damn America” for “killing innocent people,” “treating our citizens as less than human” and failing “the vast majority of her citizens of African descent.” Obama condemned the comments and reminded the public that, actually, the U.S. had made great progress, even while acknowledging far more was needed.

Today, The conversation is different, and one wonders whether such remarks, as salient now as they were then, would still be met with disavowal. The U.S. cannot deny what is plainly before its eyes. Shocking videos depict George Floyd and Ahmaud Arbery murdered in broad daylight. Tens of thousands of black lives have been taken by the coronavirus. And, in the midst of all this, the President fans the flames of racial tensions with dog whistles so unsubtle that even the most skeptical can hear them.

In urban centers, black and white protesters have come forward together in defiance, joined by allies like GOP Senator Mitt Romney and longtime Koch Industries executive Mark Holden. In predominantly white cities across the country, white Americans have shown up by the thousands in solidarity. Even small towns in rural parts of the country have joined in the protests.

“Justice for George would be that the police officers who tortured him to death be held fully accountable to the full extent of the law,” Crump told Roye on June 7, at a Houston hotel, while waiting for Floyd’s extended family to arrive“Justice for George would be that the police officers who tortured him to death be held fully accountable to the full extent of the law,” Crump told Roye on June 7, at a Houston hotel, while waiting for Floyd’s extended family to arrive
A lot would need to change to address such deeply rooted bias. The first test may come this year as momentum grows in city halls, statehouses and Washington, D.C., for reforms to root out police brutality, perhaps the most flagrant and visible injustice. “Justice for George is something that many people who were killed through brutality of the police never get,” says Benjamin Crump, a civil rights lawyer representing Floyd’s family. “And that is a transformative justice, a systematic reform across the board.”

Whatever the progress transpires in the coming months, the U.S. still has a long way to go. Last year, I happened to find myself in both Berlin and Charleston, S.C. In Berlin, where Adolf Hitler planned and oversaw the extermination of millions of Jews, it felt as though I couldn’t walk a few blocks without a memorial atoning for that sin. In Charleston, I fell asleep on a picturesque beach, only to learn later that the site was a key node in the Atlantic slave trade, where traders imported 40% of enslaved Africans who came to North America. I spent the rest of the day feeling sick to my stomach, disgusted at the possibility that I had enjoyed a leisurely nap where, perhaps, one of my ancestors endured one of the most gruesome of human institutions.

Awakening can be painful. But in America, a reckoning is overdue.

More HERE






Coronavirus: Why the ‘second wave’ theory is flawed

Fear of a “second wave” of the coronavirus is creating “dangerous misconceptions” and could actually cause a resurgence of the disease before the first wave is over, a global expert has warned.

Dr Jeremy Rossman is a senior lecturer in virology at Britain’s University of Kent. He has a PhD in emerging infectious diseases.

In an article published by The Conversation UK this week, Dr Rossman wrote that the entire concept of a second wave was “flawed”.

“The idea of a second wave stems from the flawed comparison with the seasonality of the flu virus,” he explained.

When the coronavirus first emerged, analysis of the disease often focused on the various characteristics it shared with influenza. Both are respiratory infections. Both usually cause only mild symptoms, but can be deadly.

“It was tempting to assume that COVID-19 would behave similarly to a flu pandemic. Yet these are very different viruses with very different behaviour,” Dr Rossman wrote.

“COVID-19 has a far greater fatality rate compared with the flu, along with a much higher rate of hospitalisations and severe infection.”

Given the coronavirus’s similarities to the flu, many people have assumed the disease will be seasonal – that it will fade or even disappear in the summer months and come back with a vengeance in winter.

The flu dies down in the summer because of higher humidity, increased ultraviolet light and people spending less time indoors.

As it stands, we simply don’t know whether any of those factors will affect the coronavirus.

“Influenza is a seasonal virus. Every year we see cases of the flu begin in early autumn, increase over the winter and then wind down as we approach summer,” said Dr Rossman.

“This repeats years, and so if a new strain of flu emerges we would probably have a first wave of infections during winter-spring, then the virus would come back in a second wave in autumn-winter the following year.

“It is tempting to speculate that COVID-19 will decline or disappear during the summer, only to reappear gets colder. But we don’t know if COVID-19 is a seasonal virus.”

You might wonder what any of this has to do with the fears of a second wave.

Dr Rossman’s argument is that thinking of the coronavirus as a seasonal disease could lead us to assume it is beyond our control, and will return no matter what we do.

“The concept of a second wave implies that it is something inevitable, something intrinsic to how the virus behaves. It goes away for a bit, then comes back with a vengeance,” he said.

“But this idea fails to take into account the importance of ongoing preventative actions and portrays us as helpless and at the whim of this pathogen.”

This message is particularly relevant in Dr Rossman’s native Britain, where lockdown rules have been relaxed in recent weeks and talk has turned to dealing with a second wave – even though the first wave isn’t even over.

“We are not between waves. We have new cases in the UK every day. We are in an ebb and flow of COVID-19 transmission that is continually affected by our precautionary actions,” said Dr Rossman.

“Letting up precautions will lead to an increase in cases. This is the new normal, and what to expect until we have an effective vaccine with significant population uptake. Until then we have to depend on our actions to keep cases low.”

Health officials have used the spectre of a potential second wave to urge people to keep following the social distancing guidelines.

In China – the original epicentre of the outbreak – the threat of a second wave appears to be more immediate.

A new cluster of cases in the country’s capital, Beijing has led to a swift government crackdown in an attempt to prevent widespread infection.

Beijing has recorded more than 100 infections in the last week, which is China’s most significant surge of cases in months.

Many of the new cases have been linked to the city’s Xinfadi wholesale market. Authorities have been testing market workers, anyone who visited it in the last two weeks, and anyone else who came into contact with either group.

Fresh meat and seafood in the city is also being inspected, in case that is how the virus spread.

A lockdown has been imposed on residential communities around the market, and officials are barring residents of areas considered high risk from leaving Beijing. Anyone from such areas who has already left must report to local health bureaus as soon as possible.

Taxis and car-hailing services have been banned from taking people out of the city.

“The risk of the epidemic spreading is very high, so we should take resolute and decisive measures,” Xu Hejiang, a spokesman for the city government, said on Monday.

According to the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece newspaper, The Global Times, a total of 29 communities in Beijing have now been locked down, and the city is in “wartime mode”.

“Beijing is the capital of China, so the new epidemic outbreak will easily send shockwaves across the country. It is of vital importance that the latest outbreak in Beijing does not impede the national resumption of work and production. This is also a test for Chinese society,” the paper wrote in an editorial.

“The Chinese people need to stay calm, while officials shouldn’t be concerned about being held accountable if new infections appear. China should be more mature after each stage of the battle against the epidemic.

“Beijing has acted quickly and properly in handling the latest outbreak. We hope this case could be a lesson for China in facing the normalcy of the virus fight.”

China had relaxed many of its coronavirus restrictions after the Communist Party declared victory over the disease in March.

SOURCE







'I will continue to say what I believe to be true': Laurence Fox insists he will 'not stand by' and be silenced by the BLM protests despite fears he may never work again after backlash over comments on race and 'woke' culture

Laurence Fox has vowed to 'not stand by' and be silenced by Black Lives Matter protests and will continue speaking out against the 'inconsistent god of progressivism' even if he never gets another acting job again.

The star of ITV drama Lewis, writing in the conservative magazine The Spectator, said it was a 'cause of sadness' at the possible loss of his career and the 'bleak view of my prospects' came after his appearance on Question Time.

He accused Rachel Boyle, an academic at Edge Hill University, of racism after she called him 'a white privileged male' on Question Time.

He criticised the ethnicity lecturer's charges of racism last January amid claims that Meghan Markle was being hounded out of Britain on account of her skin colour. 

Fox, who was previously married to Billie Piper, was then embroiled in yet a further controversy after he was forced to apologise for comments he made about the inclusion of a Sikh soldier in Sam Mendes blockbuster 1917.

Writing in the  Spectator he said: 'I have come to the conclusion that I may never get an acting job again without expressing ‘correct’ opinions.

'While this probably isn’t the end of the world for you, it is a cause of some sadness and anxiety for me.

'Not least because I’ve always loved my job and also because I have two children who need dinner and clothes and a holiday once in a while.'

The actor courted further controversy this month after a recent tweet he posted, which said: 'Every single human life is precious! The end!'

It is a clear nod to the Black Lives Matter protests sparked by killing of George Floyd by police officers.

He suffered an immediate backlash online and said in his Spectator column that an actor friend phoned him and challenged him about the tweet, and they haven't spoken since.

He wrote: 'On 25 May the world watched as a policeman kneeled on a man’s neck for almost nine minutes, killing him. Our jaws dropped in horror and disgust.

'Something needed to be done. Justice needed to be done and seen to be done. On that, all were agreed. Black lives matter — three such powerful words. Words we all could unite behind. But was it that simple?

'A week later, I got a text from a very well-known young actor with a screenshot of a tweet of mine which read: ‘Every single human life is precious. The end.’

‘Can you explain this to me?’ said the message. My phone rang; I picked it up and knew straight away that my friend and I were not alone on the call.

‘Hey Loz… I want to really understand you… I mean… I defend you and as you know… I really love you… but this… this is really hard…’ He told how his friend told him 'how can i defend you when you are saying sh*t like this?' and called him 'racist.'

He said: 'This is the position I took last night and I live by in life. If you can improve on it, I'm all ears. Or you can keep screeching ''Racist!'' at me and I can carry on having a jolly good giggle at your expense. The tide is turning'.

January 17, 2020: The actor later went on to reveal that he does not date women under the age of 35 because they are 'too woke' and many of them are 'absolutely bonkers' during an interview with the Delingpod podcast.

During the podcast , Fox said that he called off a relationship with a former partner because she praised a Gillette advert which highlighted 'toxic masculinity.'

June 18, 2020: In a piece for the Spectator, Fox, questioned if Meghan Markle stepped down as a working royal because she did not get the 'limelight'

Fox also referred to Blackout Tuesday - where millions across the world boycotted social media by filling their feed with black squares - the actor wrote: 'Instagram seems to be broken'.

Referring to the protest movement in his Spectator column he added: 'Righteous global outrage at a cruel and vile killing has morphed into a different agenda.

'Similar things have happened with other movements; #MeToo,Extinction Rebellion, Brexit, even the Covid-19 pandemic.

'The left rightly expose great chasms of inequality and hypocrisy in society — then proceed to throw themselves like lemmings into that void, unable to obey their own edicts.

'Desperately important causes have been politicised to the point of meaninglessness, opportunities for action hijacked swiftly by the cynical actors.' 

Fox added that the pursuit of justice should 'bring us together, not divide us. Not social justice, not climate justice, not black justice. Just justice.'

He surmised: 'So here I am, a white posh bloke, who loves his job, who has worked hard to be good at it, facing an uncertain future — all for the heinous sin of shaking my fist at the ugly, hypocritical and inconsistent god of progressivism.

'But unhappily for some (my agent and bank manager mainly) I will continue to say what I believe to be true.

'I’m not always right and very often wrong, but unless we can accommodate multiple understandings of a situation soon, it will all end with us abandoning words and reason, the tools given to us to heal and come together, in favour of the simpler but far more terrifying tools of engagement: fists, knives and guns.'

‘Denounce him! Disgraceful!’ came the cries from the illiberal liberals, who see race in every injustice and cry ‘fascism’ at anyone who doesn’t view the world from their same narrow and unstable ledge of conformity.'

SOURCE





Student journalist sacked for column calling institutional racism a ‘myth’

Syracuse University student Adrianna San Marco was fired from her gig as a columnist at a local newspaper when she dismissed the notion of “institutional racism” in an opinion piece for a separate, conservative website.

San Marco, an outspoken conservative, stands by her column in The Daily Orange, despite widespread backlash. In the piece published by LifeZette, she called institutional racism a “myth” and claimed statistics indicate that police do not target African-Americans.

The Daily Orange is an independent newspaper that does not rely on New York’s Syracuse University for funding, but the paper’s editorial content is run entirely by university students, according to its website.

San Marco said the paper “is guilty of limiting dissent” and feels Syracuse University discriminates against conservative views altogether.

Daily Orange editor-in-chief Casey Darnell told Fox News that his paper “has published dozens of columns and letters to the editor from liberal and conservative writers alike” but feels San Marco crossed a line.

“Dismissing the existence of racism, whether institutional or otherwise, dismisses the lived experiences of people of colour, especially our black community members. San Marco’s article reinforces false and dangerous stereotypes of black people as criminals, and dismisses that police officers kill black people at disproportionately higher rates than white people,” Darnell said.

“We aren’t afraid of controversial views, but we have a responsibility to avoid promoting harmful ones. We don’t censor conservative columnists,” Darnell said. “In fact, we have already hired a conservative columnist to replace San Marco.”

In an email interview with Fox News, San Marco told her side of the story, explained why she feels The Daily Orange limits diversity of thought, and said cancel culture has become a “central pillar of social media”.

SM: There absolutely is a cancel culture, in fact it has become a central pillar of social media. If your views don’t align with the progressive left they attempt to silence your voice. Several conservative speakers … have been “cancelled” because they dare to defy the narrative written by the left. The solution for this could come from two sources, one being far more likely than the other. Either Twitter users mature overnight and stop the childish “cancel party” hashtags or those with power can stop listening. I doubt the mob will stop tweeting any time soon so the best solution is to ignore them. Media outlets shouldn’t be dictated by twitter hashtags nor should politicians. Cancel culture is only powerful if we give in to their ignorance.

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 June, 2020

Labor prepared to streamline environmental approvals for major projects

A pleasant surprise.  The conservatives are stressing this too

Labor is willing to fast-track approvals for major projects including mines and infrastructure in a new sign the Morrison government could reach a deal in Parliament to streamline environmental safeguards.

Labor environment spokeswoman Terri Butler backed the case for speedier decisions on big investments, declaring "every delayed decision is a delayed job" when projects deserved to go ahead.

The stance raises the prospect of an agreement between Labor and the Coalition on changes to environmental law after Prime Minister Scott Morrison this week said he would fix the regime in the name of creating jobs.

But Ms Butler blamed the government for allowing delays to blow out since the Coalition took power at the 2013 election with a pledge to cut red tape.

"They've been in government for seven years. Every delayed decision is a delayed job, a delay in getting a project kicked off and in getting jobs created," she said.

"Where an approval can be given to a project, where the project meets the environmental tests, where the environment can be protected, then that's not something that should be delayed."

Mr Morrison has opened negotiations with state and territory leaders to reach bilateral agreements that cut some of the duplication between the levels of government, potentially leaving more power with the states.

The idea has triggered warnings from environmental groups but the government is promising not to weaken safeguards and is not proposing detailed changes until it receives a review of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act next month.

Ms Butler said Labor wanted faster decisions where it was safe to do so, where environmental protections were upheld and where decisions were made well.

"What we don't want is reducing decision-making times through having shoddier, under-resourced decisions," she said.

"If you rush a decision and you stuff it up, then that exposes you to litigation."

Ms Butler said Labor would support bilateral agreements between federal and state governments to reach the Prime Minister's ambition of "single-touch" approvals but said this could not sacrifice federal responsibility.

"The starting point has got to be that for matters of national environmental significance there always has to be a role for the commonwealth," she said.

Labor calculates that 86 per cent of project decisions were made on time under the EPBC Act in 2012 but this fell to 60 per cent in 2019.

The Gillard government attempted a single regime but dropped the idea after intense criticism from environmental groups and concerns that it could not achieve uniform rules for all states and territories. The Abbott government also sought to create a "one stop shop" for decisions.

Mr Morrison has revived those ambitions in national cabinet in the name of creating jobs during the recovery from the coronavirus crisis, but he is yet to receive the EPBC review by former competition regulator Graeme Samuel.

Labor is open to the idea of bilateral agreements on approvals to achieve faster decisions but Ms Butler said this would depend on the details, which would have to be made public.

Ms Butler also said Labor was open to the idea of amending the EPBC Act itself but only if it improved environmental protections when the country faced an "extinction crisis".

"Some wags, who don't like any form of regulation, will try to oppose this as a contest between jobs and the environment but of course that's ridiculous, because so many of our jobs depend on the environment," she said.

"Yes, I will be very interested to see what Graeme Samuel says about improving the EPBC Act, but it's got to have the twin focus of jobs and protecting the environment."

SOURCE  






Lidia Thorpe thinks Victoria should be renamed over ties with Queen Victoria

An Aboriginal activist and former MP wants the state of Victoria to change its name under a new treaty with Australia's First People.

Lidia Thorpe, who represented the Greens in the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 2017 and 2018, is calling for the change because the state is named after British Empire ruler Queen Victoria.

'Anything that's named after someone who's caused harm or murdered people, then I think we should take their name down,' she told The Herald Sun.  

Ms Thorpe, the first Aboriginal woman to be elected to the Parliament of Victoria, believes Indigenous groups and the state government should consider the idea during treaty talks. 

'It could even stay the same if that's what people want, if that's part of the negotiation outcome of a treaty where everyone gets to understand both sides,' Ms Thorpe said.

Her comments come as Black Lives Matter protests spark calls to tear down monuments linked to Australia's colonial past across the country. 

City of Melbourne councillor Nicholas Reece said monuments dedicated to Melbourne co-founder John Batman could be up for review through his hand in hunting Aborigines in Tasmania.

'There's a number of monuments and statues to John Batman in Melbourne, and I think there's a case to be made around perhaps them being given a less prominent place in our city,' he told 3AW.

A 50-year-old statue of Captain Cook in Cairns is under threat after activists petitioned for it to be torn down over the British Royal Navy captain's treatment of Aboriginal people when his ship landed in Australia.

The petition claims the statue is a 'slap in the face to all indigenous people', saying Cook's legacy was one of 'forced removal, slavery, genocide and stolen land'.

Two other statues of the explorer, both in Sydney, have already been defaced as Black Lives Matter protests shine a light on racial inequality.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton told 9News he wants the statues to stay.

'I don't think ripping pages out of history books and brushing over parts of history you don't agree with or you don't like is really something the Australian public is going to embrace,' he said. 'There are good and bad parts of our history. You learn from that.'

Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese has also voiced his support for the statues to stay. 'You can't rewrite history, you have to learn from it,' he told Sydney radio 2GB. 'The idea that you go back to year zero of history is in my view, just quite frankly unacceptable.'

Mr Morrison has previously said he wanted to help the public to gain a better understanding of Captain Cook's historic voyage.

'That voyage is the reason Australia is what it is today and it's important we take the opportunity to reflect on it,' Mr Morrison said.

SOURCE  






Australia launches UK free trade agreement with a warning about protectionism

London: Trade Minister Simon Birmingham says the coronavirus-induced recession has made a new free trade deal between Australia and the United Kingdom even more important, arguing the agreement will help counter the damaging "lure" of protectionism taking hold around the globe.

Birmingham on Wednesday announced the immediate commencement of formal negotiations between Canberra and London, with the aim of striking a post-Brexit deal that will likely make it cheaper to import and export goods and easier to move between both countries for work.

The key phase had been delayed by the COVID-19 outbreak, but both sides are confident an agreement can still be struck by the end of the year.

Britain is particularly eager to secure a quick win because it would allow Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government to mount a case that leaving the European Union has allowed the country to pursue its own economic independence.

In an interview ahead of his address to the National Press Club, Birmingham said free trade should be embraced as the global economy rebuilds from the shock of the pandemic.

"The symbolism and ongoing policy benefits of nailing an ambitious agreement now is probably more important than it has been for years," he said. "We face a global environment where protectionist sentiment is causing more people to argue about the need to look inwards rather than be open, trading economies.

"I think in striking this deal and standing by our ambitions at this time, we will be providing a boost to confidence in our own countries but also an example to others to not be tempted by the lure of protectionism."

The UK’s departure from the European Union means it must seal new free trade terms with major economies - starting with the United States, Japan and Australia. The deals will help Britain's growth but struggle to cancel out the economic costs of leaving the EU.

The UK is Australia’s seventh-largest trading partner, with two-way trade valued at $30.3 billion in 2018-19. Britain is also the second-largest source of total foreign investment in Australia.

There is "a mountain yet to climb" as the Australian economy tries to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, Scott Morrison warned.

Officials from Britain and Australia have been quietly discussing a deal for two years and are familiar with each other's bargaining positions, suggesting that finalising the agreement should not take long.

"There's no reason why negotiations between Australia and the UK should be anything other than relatively straight forward but lofty in ambition," Birmingham said.

Australia is focussed heavily on the potential benefits for services industries - Australia's largest source of employment - such as banking and insurance, legal services, transport operations, technology and the health, education and tourism sectors.

"We see the real upside in terms of services liberalisation and investment flow because they're the areas where the relationship is already very strong and have the opportunity to get even stronger," Birmingham said.

Two-way services trade between the UK and Australia is worth about $14.5 billion compared to two-way goods trade at about $12.3 billion.

Negotiators might aim to relax visa rules to encourage the movement of more highly skilled workers between both countries, and the Youth Mobility Visa - which allows young Australians to spend up to two years working in the UK - could also be tweaked.

Birmingham said the deal would also help Australian agricultural producers but played down the prospect of goods trade to the UK ever returning to levels experienced before Britain joined the European Union in 1973.

The UK was Australia's third-largest two-way goods trading partner in 1973 but is now the 12th.

"For us, this is really about giving sectors like agriculture a bit more choice to deal with market conditions as they vary from year to year," Birmingham said.

"I wouldn't expect us to quickly return to the types of volumes that we saw back in the early 1970s but the wine industry provides a shining example that with the right branded product, pitched into the market the right way, there are still big opportunities in the UK relationship just as I have no doubt there are real opportunities for high value, well branded products from the UK to shine out from Australian shelves."

The UK formally left the EU on January 31 but existing trading terms remain in place during a so-called 12-month 'transition period' that expires on December 31. Both sides are scrambling to thrash out a free trade deal to come into force once the transition period lapses but those negotiations are at risk of collapse.

SOURCE  






Now you can't say 'GRUBS': Politician who used the colourful language to describe young criminals is reprimanded in parliament

"Grub" is Australian slang for a low-life person

A politician has been chastised for using the word 'grubs' in parliament when referring to youth crime in his electorate.

Liberal Queensland MP Sam O'Connor was pulled up on his use of the term on Tuesday while speaking about the issue of crime in his seat of Bonney in the Gold Coast's western suburbs.

The parliament's deputy speaker Jess Pugh also said it was 'unparliamentary' to quote a father - whose 17-year-old son was allegedly stabbed to death outside a Surfers Paradise supermarket - as saying the justice system 'sucks'.  

'I want to raise the concerns of my community about the level of crime in our suburbs,' the 28-year-old MP began his speech at the state's legislative assembly.

He said he had run a community crime forum at a pub in his area attended by 200 locals - many of whom expressed their concern about the subject of youth crime.

'Stories of juveniles getting caught and getting a slap on the wrist means residents feel like there is no point even reporting a crime - it means these kids will often laugh off the possibility of ever being held to account for their actions,' he said.

'Two very special people came along that night too - Brett and Belinda Beasley. Brett and Belinda lost their 17-year-old son Jack, last December.'

Five teenagers stand charged with the murder of Jack Beasley - who was allegedly stabbed to death when another group of boys approached him outside an IGA supermarket on Surfers Paradise Boulevard.

'The young men charged with Jacko's murder have been granted bail and that shattered the Beasleys' faith in our justice system,' Mr O'Connor said.

'Brett summed it up saying, It's a kick in the guts, but that's the system. It absolutely sucks.'

'Member, that is unparliamentary language and I ask you to withdraw,' Ms Pugh responded.

The member for Bonney continued talking about Mr Beasley's parents setting up a foundation to fight back against knife crime - but was again warned about his use of language.

'They have set up a foundation to change the culture of knife crime and to reform a system that is putting no fear in these grubs,' he said.

'Member you have used unparliamentary language again,' the deputy speaker responded. 'Even if you are quoting, you cannot use unparliamentary language. I ask you to withdraw.'

Mr O'Connor told Daily Mail Australia he had asked the state parliament's Table Office for clarification about accepted parliamentary terms. 

SOURCE 

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





18 June, 2020

University to admit students in 2021 even if they don't get an ATAR score this year due to coronavirus disruptions

Almost any scholastic aptitude test is a better filter for tertiary success than final exam results anyway.  Just an IQ test would exclude most of those unlikely to succeed.  Even parental income or parental attainments would make a good rough filter

A whole lot of factors can influence final High school marks so they have never been an efficient entrance criterion.  They are used because they are seen as "fair".  Good riddance to them as long as some other filter is used to keep out those unlikely to cope at university.

I suspect that they will in fact accept anyone who applies and can pay.  That would be most unfair to the less able

Another Australian university has announced it will accept year 12 students impacted by the coronavirus lockdown even if they don't obtain an ATAR score.

Swinburne University will offer an ATAR-free pathway to its most popular courses for all students that finish high school in 2020.

Students will be able to enrol in bachelor degrees such as business, science, design, arts, engineering and media, with just a recommendation letter from their high school confirming they meet the minimum English requirements.

In normal circumstances there are a limited number of places for each university course and students' ATAR scores determine whether they will secure an offer of enrolment in their chosen field of study.

Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Chris Pilgrim said although the transition from high school to university is always challenging, year 12 students have 'faced a year like no other' and deserve a shot at university even without an ATAR.

'We know that students in 2020 continue to rise to the occasion and achieve exceptional results, and that completion of VCE remains of utmost importance, Professor Pilgrim said.

'But we also understand it has been a unique year of study for many and we want to support students to continue their studies into 2021.'

Universities across Australia are experiencing a massive decline in profitability as the number of international students plummets due to COVID-19 border closures.

Foreign students make up about one third of Swinburne's total revenue and their absence this year means the university expects to see a deficit of $51million.

In 2021 and 2022, they've flagged losses totalling $101million.

Overall, the Australian university sector is bracing for a $16billion retraction over the next four years.

'We guaranteed them over $18 billion worth of funding as part of our COVID-19 package, and we'll continue to talk with the sector about increases in demand and how we best can meet those,' education minister Dan Tehan told ABC Radio National.

'We'll continue to work with the sector to make sure that this demand can be met ... Understanding, of course, that there are, huge, huge demands on the Budget at the moment, and we've got to make sure that everything we do is done in a very sustainable way.'

'We have to remember, that the international education sector provides 250,000 jobs to this nation, and we want those jobs back as we grow our economy, as we come out of the coronavirus pandemic,' Mr Tehan said.

Swinburne will begin offering university places for 2021 as early as August.

SOURCE  





Censoring history makes the past impossible to grasp

By Tom Switzer and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

Much of history is a story of unintended consequences. What began as a protest at the brutal treatment Minneapolis police meted out to George Floyd has turned into an international movement, hijacked by manipulative people – more often than not white – who appear for the most part to be experienced anarchists. They are seeking to impose their values and political ideas on the rest of society.

We don't doubt that those involved in the movement genuinely oppose the evils of racism. America, after all, has a toxic history, not just because slavery ended there less than 160 years ago, but because African Americans won full civil rights only in the mid-1960s. It's just that the fully justified desire to end police brutality in America can only be clouded by aggressive acts of vandalism and violence.

For too many of the present protesters, opposition is not an end in itself, but rather the means to a greater end: the reordering of a political and social settlement accepted by the vast majority of people in Western nations. For example, the anti-fascist movement Antifa makes no secret of the fact that it wants to redesign American society according to its own recipe of proto-Marxism, identity politics and anarchism.

What these protesters lack in numbers they make up for in noise and intimidation. As a result, they attract media attention.

However, it is not just the present and the future that these anarchists propose to change. Like Pol Pot, with his Year Zero, or Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution, they wish to change the past.

In university history departments across the Western world in the last decade or so, there has been a determination to "decolonise the curriculum". This is an approach that politicises the subject by imposing a Marxist slant on it. Far from paying attention to the main facts of history, it concentrates on imposing the "woke" values of a noisy, self-advertising minority on a very different past.

Without attempting to understand the dynamics of the 19th century, these demonstrators want to remove evidence of imperialism and imperialists. In Britain, the Black Lives Matter leaders also direct their guns at capitalism, and it is a short step from there to a movement for anarchy.

Context is irrelevant to these people: historical figures who had attitudes or performed deeds of which today's society rightly disapprove are to be vilified and despised, with no quarter given. That is why statues and monuments are being ripped down or defaced around the world. For these people, the purpose of history is not to seek the truth, but to deploy it as a weapon – however crude and distorted – to manipulate the present.

It doesn't matter how you dress this act up: it is the imposition of the views of a minority of agitators on the rest of society without any attempt at consultation or respect for democracy. Then again, the whole point of being an anarchist is to reject democracy and to seize any excuse to attack manifestations of the establishment – whether they are statues, other monuments or police officers.

Just look at some of the statues that have been attacked. Winston Churchill, who fought against fascism at a moment when Britain could have gone under the Nazi jackboot, had "racist" daubed on his statue in London's Parliament Square.

In Ballarat, busts of John Howard and Tony Abbott were vandalised with red paint, which suggests that monuments to anyone who failed to advocate leftist politics is now fair game.

In light of that, it is perhaps inevitable that Sydney's Captain Cook statue should become a target. Australia has certainly had distasteful episodes in its treatment of our Indigenous people, especially in the 19th century. But our nation, admirable by almost every international standard, only exists because of James Cook.

Colonisation of Australia's land mass was inevitable, and as Howard has all too often argued, British settlement was a far better outcome than other possibilities. Think of the English language, rule of law, representative democracy, a free press and a market economy. Context is everything.

Defacing the statue of Cook will make no difference whatsoever to the plight of Aboriginal Australians. How would eliminating Cook from our history reduce the rates of family violence, youth suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, welfare dependence and incarceration in Indigenous communities?

History cannot be undone; its legacies are in every society, everywhere. Censoring the past – by removing statues, or stopping the showing of Gone with the Wind or even an episode of Fawlty Towers – only makes a proper comprehension of history (and what the past was really like) impossible to grasp.

To us, much of history was horrible, but it is why Western society is as it is. Removing evidence of that history is the construction of an alternative reality. It is not reality itself.

SOURCE  






Bushfires: Fire experts downplay reduction burns

I would like to know what else is as effective

NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro wants landowners to have more access to national parks for hazard reduction burns but fire experts warn that while prescribed burning can reduce bushfire risk it is not the solution

In a late submission to the Berejiklian government's bushfire inquiry, Mr Barilaro - who is also the minister for disaster recovery - said "now is the time for significant change and action" over fires. "We cannot afford to be complacent or waste the opportunity for reform," Mr Barilaro said.

His submission, one of 1000 made to the six month state-based inquiry into the devastating bushfire season that killed 25 people, also calls for cattle grazing to be used as a fire prevention method.

Mr Barilaro's submission said hazard reduction and traditional ecological burns are "under-utilised" and burn activities should be "prioritised to a level appropriate for the risk".

"Where there is great risk due to weather, fuel load, population etc the intensity of the burn activities should increase," the submission stated.

It also says "inadequate access to public land, including wilderness areas of national parks, creates unnecessary barriers to bushfire prevention activities".

However a separate, national inquiry into the recent bushfire season, the Royal Commission into National Natural Hazard Arrangements, heard on Tuesday from three top fire analysts who said that reducing fuel loads needed careful planning to ensure hazards did not actually increase if landscapes became more fire prone.

"One of the primary motivations for changing fire behaviour by manipulating fuel is to increase the potential for active suppression of the fire," Ross Bradstock, head of the University of Wollongong's Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfires, said.

"So by reducing fire intensity, for example, and reducing the rate of spread [and] reducing ember propagation, you are increasing the chance that people can get in there and work safely and suppress the fire."

Professor Bradstock said there was clear evidence "the more you treat, the lower the risk" of house loss from fire, with the greatest benefit coming from burning near residential areas rather than in distant bushland. The practice, though, was more expensive given the resources needed to ensure fires remain controlled.

"If you want the most cost-effective strategy for protecting those assets or mitigating risk to those assets, then treatment in close proximity appears to be the best option at this stage based on the evidence," he said.

The royal commission heard that while hazard reduction burning was an important approach to curbing fire risks, it also needed significant funding commitments.

Kevin Tolhurst, an associate professor with the University of Melbourne's Ecosystem and Forest Sciences, said "a lot of case studies [show] that areas that have been burnt one or two years previously, have a dramatic impact on the spread of fire."

Over time, though, the bush grows back and "by the time you get to 10 or 11 years, the effect is largely gone".

David Bowman, a professor with the University of Tasmania's School of Natural Sciences, said some landscapes, particularly tall, wet forests, were not amenable to fuel-reduction efforts and yet, with the wrong weather conditions, "could burn terribly intensively".

"So prescribed burning is generally, we're talking about grassy systems, savannas, woodlands and dry sclerophyll forests, where we have this classical accumulation of fuel that can be burnt and maintained in different states and quite simple vegetation structures," Professor Bowman said.

SOURCE  






Margaret River's Colonial beers ripped from shelves over name controversy

A chain of bottleshops in the eastern states will no longer stock Margaret River brewery Colonial Brewing Co's beers after complaints about the brand name.

A Melbourne-based writer said it was through his advocacy that the Blackhearts & Sparrows chain of stores made the decision to no longer stock the product.

"This is small in the scheme of things, not like anyone has solved racism ...," Shaad D'Souza wrote on Instagram.

"Change is generally meaningless without structural change but I appreciate it — I have been emailing Blackhearts (a shop I like) and other booze retailers on and off about how stupid and degrading 'Colonial Beer' is.

"A lot of people call for 'civility' when advocating for things we care about but sometimes being a bratty little bitch in public really gets things done."

Blackhearts & Sparrows' owners said the decision was made in light of recent events, both in Australia and around the world. Staff and customers had also reached out with their concerns.

"While we appreciate that the people behind Colonial Brewing had no malicious intent in their choice of brand name, words have power. We’ve had discussions with Colonial in the past with concerns about their name, but with their branding remaining the same our decision was clear," they said.

"'Colonial' is still a problematic word that speaks to a broader history of colonialism and colonisation that has caused irreversible harm to the First Nations people in Australia and Indigenous populations around the world."

The team running the business decided if they could make their stores a more inclusive place for all by no longer stocking the line of beer, it was a step they were willing to take.

Colonial Brewing Co managing director Lawrence Dowd said in light of the current climate and recent events, the brewery acknowledged the significant stress and angst surrounding the Black Lives Matter community built to bring justice, healing and freedom to black people across the globe.

"We have had significant messages and comments regarding our name, we want you all to know; we hear you," he said.

"The brand and name Colonial Brewing Co was inherited in 2008 when purchased what was at the time a small microbrewery in Margaret River – it was not chosen, or intended to celebrate
colonialisation.

"The name Colonial was given to the brewery as it was one of the first to establish itself in the well-regarded wine region of Margaret River, colonialisng the wine region with one of the first craft breweries."

He said over the past six months Colonial Brewing Co had undertaken a process to review and understand the options to approach the name, considering its historical meaning.

It is now a national Australian-owned brand, with the Port Melbourne expansion giving it the ability to brew up to 7 million litres.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






17 June, 2020

'Times have changed': Push for Australia's iconic Coon cheese to be renamed because of its use as a racial slur

This is an old controversy.  Back in 1999 Aboriginal activist Stephen Hagan lodged a complaint with the Human Rights Commission about the name "Coon" on a popular brand of cheese. It's a brand I sometimes buy myself.

Hagan got nowhere with the Commission and I believe he went on to put the case before a UN human rights agency also with no useful outcome. 

Racial sensitivities have been hugely amplified recently however so the outcome may differ this time.  Owners of the brand have been very resistant to abandoning it, however so the outcome is far from certain.  The brand has a good reputation so is worth money to them

The brand no longer "honours" anyone.  It is just an identifier for a popular brand of cheese


Australian comedian Josh Thomas is leading calls for the country's Coon cheese to be renamed because of its historical use as a racist slur.

The Please Like Me star shared a photo of the cheese product - found in supermarkets across Australia - alongside the caption: 'Are we still chill with this?'

The cheese made by the Warrnambool Cheese and Dairy Company in Victoria is named after its American creator Edward William Coon, who patented the unique ripening process behind the brand.

But Thomas argued it was out of touch to still honour the cheese's creator more than 85 years after his death while disrespecting those for whom the term is still an ethnic slur.

'It's amazing the respect people have for the name of a man who invented a processing technique of cheese - who died in 1934. And the disrespect they have for black people,' he wrote on Twitter.

The word is pejorative when used as a reference to those with dark-coloured skin - including those of African-American or Aboriginal descent.

Coon's Canadian owner Saputo bought the Warrnambool Cheese and Dairy Company in 2017 and is also behind the popular Mersey Valley and Sun Gold brands.   

Production of the brand in Australia started in 1935 and continued through to 1942 before the war disrupted production, the company's website says.

Manufacturing restarted in 1948 at Allansford in western Victoria and was made at the time in a red waxed cloth known as 'Red Coon'.

SOURCE  






Super funds need reminding it’s not their moneyJ

Noticed the number of television ads promoting industry super funds? With expensive production values, they seek to bolster the case for compulsory superannuation as well as demonstrate the quality of the performance of particular funds.

It is hard to square this use of members’ funds with the sole purpose that governs super funds: to maximise retirement incomes. But the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority resorts to all the force of a powder puff to applying the sole purpose test. It has been a difficult time for the industry. The pandemic and lockdowns adversely affected its financial performance, and the government decided to allow members early access to their accounts.

Amounts up to $10,000 are permitted for this financial year and the same applies for the next. It is estimated about $15bn has been withdrawn, the typical amount being just above $7000.

It is a relatively small amount. It is estimated that super funds held about $2.7 trillion in January. Of course, some have been required to fund relatively more withdrawals than others

The super industry didn’t take too kindly to the government’s decision. The point was made that applicants were not required to give detailed reasons for seeking their money. Moreover, misleading figures were produced to exaggerate the effect on final retirement balances.

Industry Super Australia, the funds’ lobby group, was required to restate the financial impact. For a 30-year-old withdrawing $20,000, the revision it made was close to 20 per cent lower. This followed criticism from Treasury and the Australian Securities & Investments Commission

Sensing perhaps that a second withdrawal option might be reconsidered by the government, data has been presented indicating super withdrawals have been spent on gambling, alcohol and takeaway food. Actually, the largest single use has been to pay down personal debts.

But according to Andrew Charlton of economic advisory firm AlphaBeta — prime minister Kevin Rudd’s economic adviser — “superannuation is there for retirement, not for crises. If someone used super money to buy a $20 pizza, that pizza might end up costing them $150 at the time of their retirement. It will be the most expensive pizza they’ve ever bought.” What this demonstrates is the confusion about the ownership of the funds and the purpose of compulsory superannuation. There is a view the money belongs to the funds rather than the members, so any action that jeopardises the ability of the funds to hold on to the money should be queried.

The alternative view — that the money belongs to the members — is shared by the government. Given today’s circumstances, it has been entirely appropriate members have had access to their money based on their own judgment of need.

Adding to this confusion is that the purpose of superannuation has never been legislated. The government has proposed the following: “To provide income in retirement to substitute or supplement the Age Pension.”

The key objection raised by the industry was the absence of any reference to a comfortable or adequate retirement. But the real weakness is its vagueness. A dollar more in retirement would meet the goal but would require years of forgone consumption.

Unless substantial proportions of the population are able to move off the Age Pension, it’s hard to see the point. And we know from the modelling that the proportion of entirely self-funded retirees is not likely to rise above about one-fifth for the next 30 years or so. After the financial impact of COVID-19 is taken into account, this may be even lower.

The key weakness of the system is that low-income earners must sacrifice today’s spending, which they can ill-afford, only to rely on the full Age Pension when they retire, plus a small balance. Also, middle-income earners are particularly dudded as they enter the asset trap (presently above $400,000 a couple) and have full entitlement to the Age Pension reduced by an extremely high taper rate (read tax rate). They are taxed during their working years by virtue of the superannuation guarantee charge, then taxed in retirement. It’s hardly surprising there is a scramble among retirees to get below the asset cap.

The scheme makes sense only for the relatively well-to-do who can achieve a super balance north of $1m. Not only are they better placed to spend a little less while working, they are able to take full advantage of tax concessions associated with super contributions and earnings. And many in this group would have saved for self-funded retirement in any case.

Given these fundamental flaws, it’s extraordinary that ISA chief executive Bernie Dean declares our compulsory super a “national treasure”. (Note to Bernie: Clive Palmer was declared a national treasure.) Equally laughable was his notion that super policy is essentially settled. It’s about as settled as a tropical storm given the multiple changes made to the system, including in relation to contribution rate, contribution caps, taxation and other features.

His primary concern is that the government may backtrack on its commitment to lift the SGC from 9.5 per cent to 10 per cent in July next year, and 12 per cent in 2025. But the case for permanently freezing the rate at 9.5 per cent looks overwhelming. We are waiting for next month’s final report of the Retirement Income Review. Commissioned by the Treasurer, it was decided the review should continue in these difficult months.

Without doubt, some of the contradictory arrangements affecting retirees will be highlighted, including the asset trap. Hopefully, attention also will be drawn to the funds’ high fees and charges that significantly erode final balances. It will be fascinating to see if the panel can navigate a rational way out of this bizarre maze of rules and regulations. They create a climate of confusion and perverse incentives for retirees and workers, even if they provide a very comfortable living for those working in superannuation.

SOURCE  






Facebook has told the ACCC it could kick Australian news off its platform and it wouldn't have a 'significant' effect on its business

Australia’s competition watchdog released a proposed code of conduct for Facebook and Google that would force them to pay for linking to news sites. Facebook has rejected this and said if it kicked Australian news off its platform entirely it would not have a “significant” impact on its business.

Although this dispute is happening in Australia, Facebook’s remarks are a signal to publishers agitating for tech giants to compensate the media as revenue continues to erode.

Facebook said neither it nor Google should be expected to prop up Australian news media.

Faced with the prospect of having to pay for running news on its platform, Facebook issued a clear message to publishers: We don’t need you.

This emerged from a clash between Facebook and Australia’s competition watchdog, the ACCC, which was tasked with creating a mandatory code of conduct for tech companies in response to the advertising industry shrinking during the coronavirus pandemic. The ACCC released its recommendations for a code of conduct in mid-May.

Part of the ACCC’s proposed code of conduct was aimed at getting Facebook and Google to pay for news links on their platforms, bolstering the cashflow of media companies which have seen their business models upended by social media.

In a submission to the ACCC on Monday, Facebook said there is a “healthy, competitive rivalry” between itself and news publishers, per The Guardian. It added that it could get rid of news from its platform without any major impact on its business as news only makes up a “very small fraction” of what users see on their news feeds.

“Notwithstanding this reduction in engagement with news content, the past two years have seen […] increased revenues, suggesting both that news content is highly substitutable with other content for our users and that news does not drive significant long-term value for our business,” the company wrote.

“If there were no news content available on Facebook in Australia, we are confident the impact on Facebook’s community metrics and revenues in Australia would not be significant.”

Facebook said it’s not the responsibility of private tech companies to plug money into the media industry. “It is not healthy nor sustainable to expect that two private companies, Facebook and Google, are solely responsible for supporting a public good and solving the challenges faced by the Australian media industry,” it wrote.

Although this particular fight is happening in Australia, it represents more global concerns about social media undercutting the business models of established news publishers, having such a large sway over how traffic is directed to news sites.

The tech giant has strived to show it is not a journalism-killer, and promised in January 2019 that it would spend $US300 million in journalism partnerships over three years, and in March 2020 pledged $US100 million to support local news economically impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

SOURCE  






Investors face pressure over miner set to destroy Aboriginal artefacts

It's almost automatic for Aborigines to stand in the way of development projects.  The role of white Leftists in the background probably explains most of it

The world’s largest asset manager and a top superannuation fund are facing pressure to explain investments in a Chinese conglomerate set to destroy ancient Aboriginal artefacts at a coalmine in regional NSW.

China Shenhua Energy, the world's largest thermal coalminer, is planning to construct an open-cut mine next to the Liverpool plains near Gunnedah in the "food bowl" of the state.

The mine has been fiercely opposed by the site's traditional owners, the Gomeroi people, who fear it will lead to destruction of historic and culturally significant artefacts including grinding grooves showing markings of ancient warriors sharpening spears for battle, burial sites and sacred trees.

Funds management giant BlackRock, which manages more than $10 trillion in assets including substantial amounts of Australian retirement savings and money for the Future Fund, has billions of dollars invested in China Shenhua Energy, records show.

CBUS, the $54 billion super fund for construction industry workers, also confirmed a small investment in the firm, which is majority controlled by the Chinese government.

Failures by mining companies to preserve Indigenous artefacts have come into sharp focus after resources giant Rio Tinto last month decimated a 46,000-year-old site in Western Australia against the wishes of its traditional owners.

The Rio blast sparked an emergency Senate inquiry into how state and federal laws protect Aboriginal heritage.

There has also been rising scrutiny in the investment world over responsible and sustainable investing and best strategies for lifting corporate environment, social and governance standards.

The Gomeroi people last month filed submissions in the Federal Court against federal environment minister Sussan Ley in an attempt to overturn the mine's 2015 approval.

Gomeroi woman Dolly Talbott called on major institutional investors to boost transparency about where they put their clients' money.

"If you believe in preserving and looking after sacred sites, they need to know where they’re putting their money and what these companies are doing."

She said all Australians should be angered about cultural artefacts that will be destroyed if the mine proceeds, which include ceremonial corridors, burial sites and other items.

"Our direct ancestors are buried out there. You don’t go and blow up European burial sites so why should they be able to do that to us?" she said.

CBUS confirmed it owns around $4.5 million worth of shares in the company through a passive index fund.

The fund said it was considering divesting its stake as part of its broader climate change strategy and would ask its investment managers to incorporate First Nations heritage issues into engagement strategies.

"The sacred sites of our First Nations Peoples should be protected," CBUS head of responsible investment Nicole Bradford said.

BlackRock has positioned itself as a leader in socially responsible investing and last year pledged to reduce its holdings of thermal coal. The firm's founder, Larry Fink, has also been a prominent supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement.

Market Forces campaigner Will van de Pol said the outrage over Rio Tinto's blasting should serve as a reminder for super funds about the role they play in actively managing investments.

"The Western Australia example should serve as a turning point that should have come long ago," Mr van de Pol said. "But at least from now on, we need to see super funds ensuring that that sort of destruction never happens again on their watch."

"As a firm committed to racial equality, we must also consider where racial disparity exists in our own organisations and not tolerate our shortcomings," Mr Fink said in a public letter on May 31.

An archaeological report commissioned by China Shenhua Energy said it could preserve roughly half of the more than 60 significant artefacts identified by adding fencing or moving them to another location.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here








16 June, 2020

For protesters not all black lives matter

For both Australia and the USA, black-on-black violence is almost totally ignored, which indicates that the riots and demonstrations are about something other than black deaths.  For Leftist whites, it is just another expression of the hatred they have towards the whole society.  The riots are just Leftist anger and hostility unleashed

And for blacks the riots express resentment of their low status and general disadvantage  in society.  The Left always tell them that "whitey" is to blame for their disadvantage so it is no  mystery that they resent white society as a whole and welcome an excuse to smash what bits of it that they can

Not all black lives matter equally to Australian protesters. A life lost in custody, even to natural causes, is apparently a more worthy cause than the thousands of lives lost to black-on-black violence in Aboriginal communities.

It’s an issue blighted by a culture of forgetting. Those of us who were senior editors when the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report was handed down in 1991 have always known its flaw: the commission found death rates of indigenous people in custody were no higher than for white people.

Paul Kelly wrote here last Wednesday that the 2017-18 report of the Institute of Criminology showed that year “the death rate of indigenous prisoners was 0.14 per 100 prisoners, compared with 0.18 per 100 for non-­indigenous prisoners.” Add to that the fact very few of these deaths are at the hands of police or prison guards — most are by natural causes or suicide.

Kelly said the different ways the ABC and Sky News treated the Black Lives Matter marches in Australia on the weekend of June 6 highlighted a “totally split culture” in media terms. “The ABC narrative was of the injustice of Aboriginal deaths in custody”, while the Sky News “narrative was the irresponsibility of mass protests … given the health and political advice” in the middle of a pandemic. Especially so given that COVID-19 has not hit the indigenous community.

That dual media narrative highlights another problem, an issue that has plagued indigenous affairs for four decades — the left’s preference for talking about race symbolism rather than dealing with actual murder rates, domestic violence, property crime, addiction and a lack of economic opportunity.

Long-term readers of this paper will know it has been reporting the real situation on the ground in ­Aboriginal Australia for decades. Reporters such as Rosemary Neill, Paul Toohey, Tony Koch and Nicolas Rothwell have won Walkley Awards for gritty reporting on the rape of women and children by indigenous men, petrol sniffing, the killing on Palm Island of Cameron Doomadgee, foetal alcohol babies and murder rates many times higher than in the wider society.

Three Aboriginal thinkers were prepared to tell the truth last week. The always thoughtful Anthony Dillon, of the Australian Catholic University, in a letter here on Thursday wrote: “The best way of reducing Aboriginal deaths in custody is to focus on reducing the rates of Aboriginal deaths, full stop.”

Alice Springs councillor Jacinta Price, always brutally honest, wrote that 70 per cent of indigenous people in jail were there for crimes of violence against their loved ones.

Warren Mundine, in The Australian Financial Review last Tuesday, said governments could not fix Aboriginal disadvantage linked to over-imprisonment rates. Economic opportunity created by business investment was the only way forward.

Here is the real problem for the media. Many leftist journalists will not report the issue as it is. They will not look at the reality of the black lives they say matter. With a couple of notable exceptions — Russell Skelton at The Age a decade ago and Suzanne Smith at the ABC ahead of the NT Intervention in 2007 — the national broadcaster and the Fairfax papers (now owned by Nine) have not wanted to look at the issue beyond allegations of systemic racism.

In my 2016 book Making Headlines, I discuss the episode that first brought home to me how wilfully blind many journalists are to the facts of indigenous disadvantage. I was a young editor, and Paul Kelly was editor-in-chief.

I was at the Melbourne Walkley Awards in 1994 when this paper’s Rosemary Neill won best feature for a piece about black women and children victimised by black husbands and fathers. After the presentation, a group of Fairfax editors rounded on our table to criticise the decision to publish Rosemary’s piece. They thought the issue should be off limits and the piece “profoundly racist”.

Three decades later, not much has improved in the indigenous world, and the media is worse. Young reporters educated in the ways of identity politics are left to campaign on issues they have not yet reported honestly or begun to understand. Once, senior editors would have tested their work, but not many such positions remain as the business model for journalism continues to disintegrate.

None of this is to deny racism exists. The Colt With No Regrets, a new book by an old regional Australian newspaper editor, Elliot Hannay, includes fascinating discussions of his relationship with Eddie Mabo and being lobbied at the Townsville Bulletin by the local Ku Klux Klan. Young journalists should read it.

I worked for Elliot in the late 1970s when he ran a series of stories about local soldiers who had started throwing Molotov cocktails on to Ross River under the CBD bridge where Palm Islanders often slept on weekend visits to Townsville. Elliot faced down a backlash from local business leaders wanting the rough sleepers out of town.

Such racism should be exposed. But so should facts about black-on-black violence. Jacinta Price wrote in The Daily Telegraph on June 9: “In 2018 in the NT alone, 85 per cent (4355) of Aboriginal victims of crime knew the ­offender. Half were victimised by partners. Aboriginal women made up 88 per cent (2075) of those victims.”

Aboriginal children were 5.9 per cent of the population but five times more likely to be hospitalised after an assault than non-indigenous children. “Between 2007 and 2011, 26 per cent of all deaths among Aboriginal children … were … (from) abuse injury,” she wrote. “The leading cause of child death between 2014 and 2017 … was suicide. This is a quarter of all child suicides in Australia (85 of 357).

“Realising that there are fun­damental connections between child neglect, child sexual abuse, Aboriginal victims of crime and the high rates of incarceration will allow us to address these critical ­issues effectively.”

But most left-wing media don’t want to know.

The Australian Institute of Criminology, in a paper by Jenny Mouzos, says that from 1989 until 2000, 15.1 per cent of all homicide victims nationally were Aboriginal, as were 15.7 per cent of all homicide offenders — and yet ­Aboriginal people were less than 3 per cent of the population.

Campaigners against law enforcement agencies who say “defund police”, even neo-Marxist ANTIFA protesters, should look at a Chicago Sun Times report published on June 8: “18 murders in 24 hours: inside the most violent day in Chicago in 60 years.”

From 7pm on Friday, May 29, to Sunday, May 31, 25 people were killed in the city and another 85 wounded by gunfire, all in the name of protesting against the police killing of George Floyd. The victims and perpetrators were ­almost all African-American.

Australian indigenous communities need to be able to trust police will protect them. Of course Aboriginal actor Nakkiah Lui was right on Q+A when she said “Just don’t kill us”. But she and the wider ABC, especially hosts such as Q+A’s Hamish McDonald, need to report why Aboriginal Australians need police more than any other group — to protect them from black offenders.

Last word to Mundine in The Daily Telegraph last Friday: “We won’t see change unless indigenous kids go to school, indigenous people are working in real jobs and there are real economies in indigenous communities.”

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The universities always said Australians were racists, now look at their dilemma

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive"

Australian universities are in quite the pickle. Not only are they watching as potentially $12bn in revenue from foreign student fees slips away, but they are also being accused of racism by the country they rely on for so much of their funding. Last week, Beijing issued a statement in which it warned Chinese students to give Australian universities a wide berth because of both COVID-19 and endemic racism.

In response to Scott Morrison’s suggestions that this amounts to “coercion”, Beijing has retaliated with the suggestion that Australia needs to do some “soul searching” and that the “racist incidents” were “based on a host of facts”.

This is a delicious irony. For years so many Australian universities have been making money out of the racism industry. Now they are on the back foot, having to defend themselves against an accusation that is demonstrably false.

For decades academics employed in our institutions of higher education, especially those in the humanities, have been using taxpayers’ money to paint a picture of Australia as a country of racists. They have been using their positions in various faculties to propagate the myth that we are a xenophobic nation.

They have taken every opportunity to berate mainstream Australians about how they should be both ashamed of their history and ashamed of themselves. They have been telling Australians that it is somehow immoral to celebrate Australia Day, that Captain James Cook was an invader, and that the whole existence of the modern state of Australia is a terrible mistake, a crime to be endlessly deplored and for which we must constantly apologise. They have insisted that the values and institutions of Western civilisation are racist, imperialist and outdated, and must be expunged from our society.

The University of Sydney leads the way in the business of race. A couple of years ago, its academics infamously rejected the Ramsay Centre’s bachelor of arts in Western civilisation as “white supremacy writ large”. The faculty of arts and social science boasts a taxpayer-funded “Resurgent Racism” project, which has concluded that unless something is done by the faculty, Australian society will face a dystopian future of white supremacy. Last year, the university hosted a self-styled “anti-racism educator” from the US to lecture everyone on campus about how racist they all were.

The staff in the history faculty seem to spend significant waking hours thinking, writing and talking about race and racism, all at the expense of the taxpayer. Since 2002, the faculty has received almost $9m from the Australian Research Council to fund 18 historical studies research projects that focus on racism in one form or another.

Nine months ago, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, Michael Spence, appeared to comment that anyone who dared question the existence of Chinese influence on his campus was basically a racist. “We have to be careful that the whole debate doesn’t have overtones of the White Australia policy,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald. In this way, he ensured next year’s income — or so he thought at the time. No one predicted that COVID-19 would wipe out, almost overnight, $884m in international student fees for the University of Sydney, a generous portion of which would come from Chinese students.

Spence is the highest-paid vice-chancellor in Australia, earning $1.5m a year. As yet, he has not taken a pay cut like many of his colleagues.

This episode has revealed another crack in the crumbling facade of the Australian university, which is one of the crucial institutions of Western civilisation yet which fails the Australian public, having lost sight of its purpose. Our universities are facing a systematic crisis and have been exposed as incompetently run businesses more interested in ­foreign dollars, social justice, diversity and identity politics than they are the pursuit of truth, freedom of speech and intellectual inquiry. They are floundering in the midst of a free speech crisis, with a questionable commitment to academia and a terrible track record in dealing with academics and students who hold a contrary view to the established groupthink. Last year’s Independent Review of Freedom of Speech in Higher Education Providers (the French review) found that many of the higher education rules and policies in universities used broad language “capable of impinging on freedom of expression”.

Not only have we seen the censure and unlawful sacking of Professor Peter Ridd by James Cook University, but to add insult to injury, JCU’s court case is being funded by taxpayers, having already cost $630,000 in legal fees. Meanwhile, the University of Queensland employed one of Australia’s top legal firms to pursue philosophy undergraduate Drew Pavlou regarding his robust criticism of the university’s connections with China as well as that country’s history of human rights abuses.

Our universities have long ceased being institutions interested in the rigorous exercise of freedom or the scientific method and today better resemble elaborate public relations outfits.

Dr Bella d’Abrera is the director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at the Institute of Public Affairs.

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Left quickly turns on its own in Black Lives Matter debate

It was just a matter of time before the contemporary left started turning on itself. After all, this had been the practice of communist and other radical left-wing movements in the 20th century. Splitting is what ideologues do to proclaim the truth of their particular ideologies.

On any analysis, The New York Times is a liberal newspaper, in the North American sense of the term. In other words, it’s on the left. Not the extreme left but the left nevertheless. Look at it this way; Donald Trump cannot abide the NYT. For its part, the paper is a leading critic of the President and his administration.

The error of The New York Times was to publish an opinion piece by Republican senator Tom Cotton that supported the tough-minded policies of the Trump administration to deal with the looting and burning that followed the tragic killing of black American George Floyd by a white policeman in Democrat-run Minnesota.

In normal times, Cotton’s critics would have been content with a response on the op-ed page and perhaps some critical letters on the correspondence page. Not now. Op-ed editor James Bennet first apologised for publishing Cotton’s piece and thenresigned.

The left had forced out of a job another member of the left for allowing a conservative a say.

A less significant version of this attitude has occurred in Australia. Tasmanian Labor senator Helen Polley recently posted this message on Facebook: “Instead of black lives matter, how about every life matters, no matter what the colour of your skin is.”

This meme was condemned as racist. Polley removed the post and apologised. As a parliamentarian, she cannot lose her job because of public pressure.

Polley is a mainstream social democrat whose family has long-time connections with the Labor Party in Tasmania. She’s a conservative on social matters but is in no sense racist. Once again, as with Bennet, it was the left who condemned one of its own.

David Bartlett, a former Labor premier of Tasmania, tweeted: “It’s Hanson lite. It is tin-eared and a classic dog whistle. Remove it.” He also called on Polley to “educate yourself” — a term not distant from the “re-education” beloved of various communist regimes. And that’s the problem with the contemporary intolerant left. It’s not sufficient for the likes of Bennet to apologise.

No, they must be driven from their employment and/or volunteer for re-education. They are in error — and error has no rights.

There is nothing new about ideology-driven intolerance. It’s just that this is becoming increasingly widespread on the left.

At Australian universities in the late 1960s and into the 70s, the extreme left was into shutting down debate and driving speakers it regarded as conservatives off the campus.

A half-century ago, German-born American Marxist philosopher Herbert Marcuse was a hero of left-wing activists — although it was not clear if any had read his rather turgid prose. In his 1965 essay titled Repressive Tolerance, Marcuse advocated “intolerance against movements from the right and toleration of movements from the left”.

Marcuse’s essay was a long-winded effort aimed at intellectually rationalising the silencing of his political opponents — he called it “liberating tolerance”. It was a matter of out with debate and in with “truth” as determined by Marcuse and his like-minded comrades. What Marcuse did was to give an intellectual cover for old-fashioned political censorship. The rationalisation that conflicting views should not be heard because they are not deserving of a hearing. This concept pertains to the current debate.

The killing of Floyd has, or should have, opened up a genuine debate about race relations in Western societies and what makes for appropriate forms of protest.

Here a couple of case studies demonstrate the intolerance of the contemporary left.

On June 5, Fox News presenter Shannon Bream interviewed two commentators on the protests/riots in Washington on her Night Courtprogram, namely civil rights black attorney Robert Patillo and white lawyer and journalist Alex Swoyer.

Patillo was broadly critical of how the Trump administration had responded to the unrest in the capital while Swoyer was broadly supportive. It was a vigorous but respectful debate. Some viewers would have backed Patillo and others Swoyer, while others still might have changed their minds after hearing the intelligent but forceful discussion.

On June 9, ABC Radio National Breakfast presenter Fran Kelly did a long interview with two commentators on the unrest in US cities. They were Imani Perry, professor of African-American studies at Princeton University, and The Guardian columnist Richard Wolffe.

Fox News is owned by Rupert Murdoch and is subscription television. The ABC, on the other hand, is paid for by the Australian taxpayers and consequently has an obligation to be fair and balanced. But those listening to the Perry-Wolffe discussion would have heard only criticism of Trump and his administration to a greater or lesser extent.

Kelly quoted from various one-time Republicans who always were or have become “Never Trumpers” — the likes of Mitt Romney, Colin Powell, Jim Mattis, George W. Bush and so on.

Perry accused Trump of rejecting the stated core values of the US nation, putting out quite violent messages directed towards black Americans and engaging in the advocacy of Nazis.

For his part, Wolffe accused Trump of playing on racial prejudice, inciting violence at rallies and so on. No other view was heard.

A similar debate, for want of a better word, took place on RN Breakfast on June 3. Kelly interviewed Catholic priest Edward Beck followed by one-time Barack Obama counsel Jeffrey Bleich. Both bagged Trump. Once again, no other view was heard.

There is no conscious conspiracy here. It’s just that the ABC is a conservative-free zone in which many presenters and producers do not consider views contrary to their own to be worthy of a hearing. In this sense the impact of Marcuse’s thought extends beyond the grave.

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Australian kids as young as eight in public schools are told to study eco-warrior Greta Thunberg's speeches and spread her climate change message

Lesson plans telling primary school students to study climate activist Greta Thunberg and spread her message have been found on the NSW Education Department website.

The unapproved material on the official website was aimed at children between Years 3 and 5.

The material, in a lesson plan since taken down, asked students to watch and study a Thunberg speech.

'Read about Greta and the transcript of her speech … What is the key message?' the lesson plan prompted.

'What techniques does Greta use … Can you now state what needs to change and why?' the plan asked.

The lesson plan asked students to conduct an 'energy audit' of their school to find areas where change is needed.

The revelation prompted swift criticism from education researcher Kevin Donnelly who called the material 'indoctrination'.

'The great shame is education is no longer about being impartial or objective … it is about indoctrinating students,' he told The Daily Telegraph.

The lesson plan had a guidebook to go with it telling students that school air-conditioning adds 20,000 tonnes of greenhouse gases every year.  

The NSW school system was heavily criticised last year during the so-called Climate Strike for allowing climate activists to indoctrinate impressionable young children.

Thousands of school children truanted school to take part in the Climate Strike street protests.

One father pulled his son out of a state primary school in Bilambil, northern NSW, at the time after he was asked to 'dress like a hippy' by his teacher.

Matt Karlos, 38, took his 10-year-old son Max out, saying the teachers were making the kids terrified for the future and scaring them with climate change.

'The ideologies were in his face all the time,' Mr Karlos said.

In September, Alan Jones accused teachers of brainwashing vulnerable children.

The former 2GB radio host pointed to a report which claimed children under the age of 10 were experiencing anxiety from the climate change debate.

'Young people are going to be concerned, they believe their teachers, they actually think that they're at school and what they're being told is true,' he said.

'The notion of using children in all of this is scandalous and the politics of climate change has become poisonous.'

In February last year, former NSW Education Minister Rob Stokes warned students and teachers they would be punished if they skipped school to join the climate strike rallies. 'School children, on school days, should be at school,' he said at the time.

Greta Thunberg's Twitter account responded, saying her followers didn't care. 'Ok. We hear you. And we don't care. Your statement belongs in a museum,' Ms Thunberg's Twitter account tweeted.

A spokesman from the NSW Education Department said they would investigate how the Thunberg lesson plans made it onto the official website. 'This web page was published without approval. We will have the web page taken down and reviewed,' he said.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here










15 June, 2020

Now’s our chance to rebuild Australia

But it would require Greenies to compromise

It’s the greatest issue of our times, eclipsing even the War on Terror. As measured by the disruption and economic misery, the coronavirus pandemic is having a bigger impact than any event since World War II. And while more Australians will die each year from, say, cancer than from COVID-19, the precautions that shuttered large parts of the economy racked up debts that will hobble our recovery for years to come.

Coronavirus is disrupting the way we think, and it is resetting our priorities. In previous eras, such a contagion would have been interpreted as an act of God. Indeed, the clergy would have proclaimed that all this misery was divine retribution for humanity’s wickedness: “Repent now, lest the Lord wreak further havoc upon your wretched souls!”

Yes, well, humanity might have been able to conveniently blame God for disease, pestilence and famine in the past, but less so now. These days we are more scientific in our thinking and fairer minded in our search for a cause. I think most Australians are open-minded about where coronavirus began and how it spread. It may have come from Wuhan’s wet markets, but we are content to wait and see what the evidence suggests.

Today the cause of a natural calamity of this scale is likely to be attributed to a wilful disrespect for the environment – which, when you think about it, is a form of wickedness that demands contrition and personal change. Early in the virus’s spread there were attempts to make such a link: experts would talk about how mankind’s encroachment into native forests brings us into closer contact with wild animals, thus increasing the risk of cross-species infection.

Summer’s bushfires and the preceding drought were a case in point, too: both were “obviously” the result of climate change, exacerbated by the intransigence of denialists and vested interests. There is no doubt that during the bushfires most Australians supported action to mitigate the effects of global warming. But then came coronavirus, and our national priorities were reset. Out-of-control global warming by 2030, let alone by 2050, does not exert the same immediate threat to our lives as does the prospect of contracting coronavirus or losing our jobs.

Yet while our priorities are being reset, we have an opportunity: this is our chance to rebuild Australia in a way that is sustainable, that focuses on industries without trashing the environment, that delivers energy solutions without exacerbating global warming. Conversely, the urgency for action on climate change must now be viewed through other lenses such as the need for rebuilding the economy, strengthening the health system, delivering supply chain sovereignty, and perhaps shoring up alliances.

It’s a big agenda, and requires both climate change sceptics and environmentalists to make concessions. Maybe gas is a reasonable resource to exploit until renewables can deliver baseload power? Maybe acquiescing to global demand for coal is sustaining an industry that causes long-term damage to the environment? Maybe we should be having the discussion (again) about nuclear power? Maybe living in the suburbs and commuting to an inner-city job is an outdated concept?

Sometimes, adversaries are so fixated on winning that any concession is regarded as a loss. The way forward, I believe, involves both sides acknowledging that there is a better Australia to be built in the years to come, and that this will require concessions. And, more to the point, I don’t believe I am being overly optimistic in my hopes for the future.

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'Her views are something we would never endorse': Sonia Kruger is DROPPED from a popular podcast - following her controversial comments on Muslim immigration

Given the various attacks on Australians by Jihadis, it is surely reasonable to want to restrict the sub-population they come from

Sonia Kruger has been dropped from Mamamia's beauty podcast, You Beauty. As reported by The Daily Telegraph on Friday, administrators announced on Facebook that they have removed her episode this week on sensitive skin.

The lifestyle website informed followers that the decision was based on Kruger's past comments relating to Muslim immigration, that some found to be 'deeply hurtful'.

In February last year, a tribunal found Kruger, 54, vilified Muslims when she called for Australia to close its borders to followers of Islam because she 'didn't feel safe'.

The NSW Civil and Administrative Tribunal delivered their decision almost three years after Kruger's explosive comments were made on the Today Show in July 2016.

The tribunal found Kruger's 'vilifying remarks' had the ability to 'encourage hatred towards, or serious contempt for, Australian Muslims by ordinary members of the Australian population'. 

Kruger shocked former colleagues David Campbell and Lisa Wilkinson when she discussed a column written by conservative commentator Andrew Bolt following a terrorist attack in Nice on Bastille Day.

'I mean, personally, I think Andrew Bolt has a point here, that there is a correlation between the number of people who are Muslim in a country and the number of terrorist attacks,' she said.

'Now I have a lot of very good friends who are Muslim, who are peace-loving who are beautiful people, but there are fanatics.

'Personally I would like to see it (immigration) stopped now for Australia. Because I want to feel safe, as all of our citizens do, when they go out to celebrate Australia Day.'

The tribunal decided Kruger was 'calm and measured' in her comments and believed she made it clear she did not think every Muslim person was a fanatic.

'Broadly, the Tribunal accepts that the purpose of the discussion in question was to have a debate about the size of the Australian Muslim population, the levels of Muslim migration and whether an increase in the level of either increases the likelihood of future terrorist attacks in Australia,' the Tribunal said.

'Further, the Tribunal accepts that to have a public discussion on such matters was in the public interest.'

While the tribunal accepted Kruger and Nine acted in good faith and without malice, they could not accept that her remarks were 'reasonable'.

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 'What is wrong with you people?' Jacqui Lambie chokes back tears as she slams 'un-Australian' Black Lives Matter protesters

Lambie is an independent conservative

Jacqui Lambie has held back tears as she tore into 'un-Australian' protesters who took to the streets across the country for Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

Protesters gathered in their tens of thousands across Australia's largest cities on Saturday to rally against Aboriginal deaths in custody and the death of George Floyd allegedly at the hands of a white police officer in America on May 25.

But the Tasmanian senator hit out at the logic of gathering in such large numbers when the threat of a COVID-19 second wave still hung over the nation.

'Not only have Australians gone through the bushfires for months on end, we've now been through COVID-19 and people's mental health is really not dealing with this,' she told Today show host Allison Langdon on Thursday.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison also slammed the protesters, saying the rallies were the 'only legitimate blocker' to relaxing coronavirus lockdown measures further.

'We actually don't know right now whether those rallies on the weekend may have caused outbreaks. And we won't know, my health advice is, for at least another week,' he said.

'It just puts a massive spanner in the works. By all means, raise your issue but by doing this they've put the whole track back to recovery at risks and, certainly, any further action on this front would be absolutely unacceptable.'

Ms Lambie appeared to choke back tears as she called out the protesters. 'Quite frankly, I'll call it out today. I just find this [the protests] really, really reckless and if black lives matter so much then why are you putting them at risk and doing this?,' she said.

'What is wrong with you people? It is so bloody un-Australian.

'This is not good for the cause. Please don't do this. There are other ways around doing this.'

She also defiantly defended Australian police officers - calling on those who are criticising them to 'go spend a day in their shoes'.

'There are many out there suffering with their own mental health but still go to work every day to make sure we keep peace on our streets,' she said.

'For a couple of bad eggs, this is just unacceptable. Everybody in society has bad eggs but to blame everybody for that action, that's not on and that's once again un-Australian.'

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PM wants protesters charged if they breach COVID-19 restrictions this weekend

Scott Morrison says he wants to see protesters charged if they ignore coronavirus gathering bans to attend rallies this weekend.

The Prime Minister told 3AW's Neil Mitchell this morning there was “no doubt” the government would have been easing COVID-19 restrictions sooner if not for last weekend’s protests.

“I really do think they should (be charged),” Mr Morrison said.

“The issues of last weekend were very difficult, but I think people carrying it on now, it’s not about that. It’s about political people pushing a whole lot of other barrows now, and it puts others lives and livelihoods at risk.”

He said protesters were being selfish. “Millions of quiet Australians have done the right thing and they didn’t seem to be that concerned about their health, or their businesses, or their jobs,” he said.

“People who would turn up to a rally this weekend would be showing great disrespect to their neighbours. It’s a free country and we have our liberties but the price of that liberty is exercising it responsibly.”

His comments came hours before a person who attended a protest in Melbourne tested positive for coronavirus.

Authorities say the individual, who developed symptoms on Sunday, the day after the protest, wore at mask at the protest.

“They weren’t symptomatic at the time,” Victorian Chief Health OfficerProfessor Brett Sutton said. But he said it is possible the person was infectious at the time they attended the protest.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here




14 June, 2020

Trachoma among Aborigines

This is another desperate effort to blame whites for black failings.  He rightly notes the vast amount Australian governments spend on trying to help Aborigines with little result -- but goes on to say that yet more should be done.

He uses the example of trachoma incidence as an example of something that should have been fixed by now.  But he glides over the main reason why trachoma is so prevalent among Aborigines:  Dirty faces, particularly the dirty faces of children.

Aborigines do not have good facial hygeine.  I wash my face at least twice a day and I doubt that many whites do less.  But it is not an Aboriginal custom.

There are many contribhuting causes of trachoma among Aborigines but just keeping the kids' faces clean would break the chain of transmission.  I had Aborigines in my classes in primary school and I remember those dirty faces well

So what is the government supposed to do? Are they supposed to go around washing black faces?  It's not going to happen.  And it will not happen because of practicality, not racism


A common remark in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests around Australia shows many of us are still missing the point about race and inequality.

Australia spends billions of dollars on Indigenous affairs every year and yet the challenges facing communities don’t seem to ever get any better.

And so, the failing must naturally lie with Indigenous people, who are either unwilling or incapable of helping themselves.

That’s an argument I’ve seen and heard countless times in recent weeks, since Black Lives Matter protests erupted across Australia, seeing tens of thousands of people take to the streets.

The truth is that an extreme inequality exists in Australia that seems to disproportionately affect Indigenous people.

To illustrate this, I want to tell you about a horrific eye disease that was all but eradicated in developed and wealthy nations a century ago.

Trachoma causes an infection in the eye that sees the eyelid swell and scar, causing the eyelashes to turn inward and repeatedly scratch the eyeball.

It makes blinking excruciating. The sensation is akin to have a handful of small rocks stuck in your eye, with no relief possible.

Those with Trachoma slowly and painfully go blind. It’s one of the leading causes of preventible blindness.

I saw the horrific impacts of Trachoma while on a trip to Ethiopia with the charity The Fred Hollows Foundation a few years ago.

There, some 160 million people have the condition. It’s preventable and treatable, and if caught early enough, blindness can be avoided, and that’s what Fred Hollows is doing on the ground.

You know the other major hotspot for Trachoma? Remote and regional Indigenous communities in Australia.

We are the only developed country in the world where Trachoma still exists at endemic levels.

Surveillance in 131 remote and regional Indigenous communities conducted in 2016 found that 30 per cent of the population was experiencing Trachoma.

That rate puts us on par with Afghanistan. And yet, we haven’t seen it in the mainstream population for almost 100 years. Why does no one care?

Why is it up to charities to try to address this preventable but seemingly ignored problem and not our health system, which we’re told is one of the best in the world?

Indigenous communities are also plagued with higher instances of preventable disease, higher risk of acute illness, lower life expectancy and higher childhood mortality.

Access to health services, poor provision of care and systemic failure at the community intervention level contribute to these unnecessary problems.

With a disease like Trachoma, poor water and sanitation are typically to blame.

While we might spend billions on Indigenous affairs, it’s clear this money is being poorly administered or wasted.

But the public health experts I’ve spoken to tell me that it’s rarely the fault of the communities themselves.

Bureaucrats make spending decisions without the consultation of communities, who typically know what the challenges are and how they should be addressed.

Put simply, it seems those in government departments don’t trust Indigenous Australians to make their own decisions and do it for them. The results have been dismal, I think we can all agree.

When a wealthy nation leaves people behind on multiple fronts, and those people are all black, then you have to ask if race plays a role in our apathy.

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If separatism is such misery, do we try integration?

Henry Ergas does not seem to agree with affirmative action. He puts up in an intellectual way the "one nation" argument of Pauline Hanson

That indigenous Australians, who make up 3 per cent of this country’s population, account for 30 per cent of its prisoners is a national disgrace. That by the time they reach the age of 23, 75 per cent of young indigenous people in NSW will have been cautioned by police, referred to a youth justice conference or convicted of an offence in a criminal court — compared with just 17 per cent of their non-indigenous counterparts — makes the disgrace all the more searing.

And the fact that just in the past five years nearly a quarter of the indigenous male population has been arrested and more than 10 per cent jailed, while one indigenous child in five has, at some stage, lost a parent to prison, raises that disgrace into an outrage.

However, the worst of it is that the fault does not lie in the criminal justice system. After all, were these shocking outcomes due to racial bias, the path to a solution would be straightforward.

But indigenous Australians are not imprisoned at such appalling rates because our system of law enforcement treats them unduly harshly.

Rather, they are disproportionately represented in this country’s jails, and in the deaths that occur in those jails, because they are far more likely to commit violent offences. Nor is that seriously in dispute. On the contrary, as Don Weatherburn, perhaps Australia’s most eminent criminologist, concludes in a recent paper with Hamish Thorburn, “the overwhelming weight of evidence” confirms that “differences in rates of offending (and reoffending) account for most, if not all, of the difference in imprisonment rates” between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.

And with indigenous women being nearly 40 times more likely to be hospitalised for intentionally inflicted violence than are Australian women generally, it is also beyond dispute that the harm those offenders inflict falls most grievously on indigenous Australians themselves.

Yet none of that lets non-indigenous Australians off the hook. It was not indigenous Australians who destroyed thousands of Aboriginal jobs in country areas by suddenly raising the wages of cattle station labour in 1965; it was the Commonwealth Conciliation and Arbitration Commission.

Nor was it indigenous Australians who decided, just as the commission’s judgment was having its devastating effects, to massively subsidise remote Aboriginal settlements, condemning generation after generation to inadequate housing, an education scarcely worth having and a future shorn of jobs and hope; it was the Whitlam and Fraser governments.

And it was not indigenous Australians who removed the prohibitions on the consumption of alcohol by, and the sale of alcohol to, Aboriginal people that had been in force throughout Australia since 1929.

It was state and territory governments that, in keeping with the 1960s zeitgeist of self-determination, repealed those controls and decriminalised public drunkenness, plunging fraying Aboriginal communities into a spiral of alcohol-fuelled violence and helping to ensure that indigenous offenders are nearly three times more likely than non-indigenous offenders to be intoxicated when they commit their crimes.

The result, as one Aboriginal community after the other succumbed to the epidemic of substance abuse, was that indigenous incarceration rates, which had been falling since World War I, began to soar.

Far from slowing that rise, the explosive growth in welfare outlays that followed the onset of the crisis perpetuated the pathologies by allowing dysfunctional communities to survive. And instead of frankly confronting the root causes, successive governments relied on grandiose statements of good intentions and on torrents of cash in an increasingly futile attempt to paper over the cracks.

Had the thousands of Australians who marched last week learned from that history and drawn its lessons, one could only have cheered them on.

Of that, however, there was no sign. Epitomised by the participants’ slavish imitation of the ritual gesture of kneeling — which has clear resonance in America because of the prominence of the kneeling slave in the imagery of the abolitionist movement, but which lacks those associations in Australia — the rallies were copycat protests at which self-proclaimed representatives of indigenous people could vent imported rhetoric in tones of punitive hysteria.

No doubt the slogan-mongering went down well with the crowd, many of whom had been chafing at the bit to return to protesting, regardless of the health risks that imposes on the community as a whole.

And it would have been mother’s milk to the young Australians who had been taught since childhood that Europe’s expansion was a plague on the skin of the earth, that its civilisation was a monstrous imposture and that its arrival on these shores 2½ centuries ago heralded the destruction of a Garden of Eden.

But demeaning the past does nothing to heal the present. Nor, for that matter, does setting ambi­tious targets that we do not know how to achieve, as the government seems intent on doing.

Rather, what is needed is honesty and clear-sightedness. And the starting point must be to confront some uncomfortable realities. It is, to begin with, clear that much-touted nostrums, such as diverting juvenile offenders from the court system, have been tried and largely found to fail, with most studies concluding that they do not decrease the risk of reconviction, the time to reconviction, the seriousness of further offending or the number of reconvictions.

And it is equally clear that while those approaches are not a viable solution, imprisonment does reduce the extent and incidence of serious offending, as well as shielding, at least for a time, the victims of violence from their tormentors.

That hardly implies we should simply accept the dreadful costs mass incarceration imposes on indigenous Australians and on the moral fabric of the nation.

What it does mean, however, is that we face an alternative. We can salve our conscience by retaining the unstated premise that has led to the current calamity: that indigenous Australians are essentially a separate race, who should be funded to live at enormous expense in places where there are no viable jobs, where supplying basic services is prohibitively costly and where alcohol and drugs are the only antidote to squalor, boredom and despair.

If that is our choice, today’s pathologies, and the mass incarceration that is their symptom, will persist for decades to come.

Or, while recognising the deep and enduring scars, we can reconsider the whole notion of racial separateness, reaffirm our commitment to the ideal of integration and begin the transition to a country whose principles, policies and ways of life are genuinely colourblind.

The one thing we cannot do is pin the repeated failures on anyone but ourselves. They are a tragedy of our own making. And more than ever, they are our responsibility to repair.

SOURCE  






Two jokes derail a young Australian conservative

The money box joke is explained below and the second joke turns on the fact that "Fuehrer" in German simply means "leader".  To most people who know no German it is known only as a common title of Hitler. 

The student below however did know the meaning of the term and used it in that sense -- to indicate in a jocular way his admiration of a student who was critical of ties with China.  He was saying that he too was critical of ties with China. 

The Australian "Young Liberals" are a conservative group


A young Liberal who was fired as an MP's staffer over 'racist' social media posts has said his sacking was 'unfair' and political correctness has 'gone mad'.

University of Queensland economics student Barclay McGain, 20, said he reached a 'mutual agreement' to leave Coalition MP Andrew Laming's office this week after two offensive social media posts were unearthed.

One was a snapchat which he sent to friends and family showing him holding a money box featuring a picture of an indigenous person with exaggerated features.

The other was a Facebook post in which he called suspended student Drew Pavlou 'Mein Fuhrer' - German for my leader - alongside an altered video of a scene showing Adolf Hitler in the movie Downfall.

In an interview with Daily Mail Australia, Mr McGain - who was suspended from the Young LNP in December over a video of him laughing at a racist joke - apologised for the posts but said he should not have been sacked.

'I think it's unfair. My posts have been misconstrued and misinterpreted,' he said. 'All the things that have been tabled against me have been taken gravely out of context.

'The picture of me holding my stepfather's money box was to display the irony of me being cast in the media as some-one who disrespects indigenous culture when in reality I've grown up for the last 12 years with an indigenous stepfather who always respected an honoured his heritage,' he said.

'The Mein Furer comment to Drew was a joke and in no way insinuates that I sympathise with the despicable actions committed by the Third Reich in WWII. That's not the case.

'If anyone who wants to heavily misconstrue it that way then I apologise that they've taken offense. That was not my intention.'

Drew Pavlou is fighting his suspension by the University of Queensland for allegedly breaching its code of conduct by holding anti-Chinese government protests on campus. 

The 20-year-old, who yesterday left the LNP youth wing to focus on his studies, said he thinks his sacking is 'definitely linked' to the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement after the death of African-American security guard George Floyd.

He railed against the resulting 'cancel culture' which has seen demonstrators in the US and the UK topple statues they deem offensive while streaming services pull old shows they perceive to be racist, including Netflix which has axed Sydney comedian Chris Lilley's work.

'I think this is political correctness gone mad. My gripe with this is that companies are completely virtue signalling and telling us that we can't watch an Aussie icon's comedy without being racist,' Mr McGain said.

'I disagree with that assumption and I don't think them censoring anything on their platforms changes any racial attitudes that still exist today or any issues facing indigenous people today.'

SOURCE  





Sydney shows how to do it

Demonstrators stay peaceful.  No riots, no looting under a conservative administration

Hundreds of police officers in face masks have congregated at a banned Black Lives Matter rally in Sydney - and have warned they won't hesitate to arrest protesters. 

A rally calling for an end to Aboriginal deaths in custody - planned for Sydney Town Hall on Friday evening - was deemed unlawful by NSW Police because they weren't formally notified. 

Police officers showed up in force two hours early and protesters decided to move the gathering to Hyde Park in a last-ditch attempt to avoid authority.

'Due to the overwhelming police presence at Town Hall, we will now be starting from the Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park,' a Facebook post read.

Police followed the activists to Hyde Park at 6.30pm and immediately attempted to disperse the crowds.

One protester who had also attended Saturday's Black Lives Matter protest said there were 'a lot more police than last time'.

Protesters chanted 'we'll be back' as they were moved on by officers.

The demonstrators were moved on by police from Hyde Park at about 6.45pm. Some protesters walked to Town Hall but were again followed by officers and told to disperse.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






12 June. 2020

Aboriginal Today host Brooke Boney says comedies showing blackface SHOULDN'T be banned



Like most Aborigines who make it into the media, she is effectively white, with only a little Aboriginal ancestry.  Unlike most such, however, she is not a whiner

Brooke Boney has slammed streaming services for removing controversial shows featuring blackface and offensive racial stereotypes, claiming the move will not create real change.

The Indigenous Today show host spoke out after it was revealed Chris Lilley's controversial comedies were being pulled from Netflix in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.

'If these companies truly want to make lasting change and not just virtue signal in a moment of turmoil, then they need to support new talent,' Boney said on the show on Thursday.

'They need to open doors that have been closed to people of talent before.

'So if they truly want to make a difference in the way that we tell stories about who we are in society, then we don't do that by deleting things we've done in the past we do it by making sure we don't do it again in the future.'

Boney explained it was important not to remove the shows as they served as important reminders of how people of colour were viewed in the past.

'If I have children, I don't want them to see and to think that that is how they fit into the world. But I'd also like to show them how poorly our people were thought of and treated in the past,' Boney said.

'These things hurt because it feels lie these people are punching down. It's easy for people who are on the bottom rung of the ladder.'

On Wednesday, Deadline revealed four of Chris Lilley's shows - Jonah From Tonga, Angry Boys, Summer Heights High and We Can Be Heroes - had been removed from the service in Australia and New Zealand.

In the past, those shows raised questions about racial discrimination as several of the characters were portrayed in blackface and brownface.

SOURCE  





Must not speak Chinese to a Chinese person (??)

She was greeted in both Mandarin and Cantonese but neither was any good, apparently

I speak some German and some Italian and during my lifetime I have always found that German and Italian people were pleased when I tried to speak their language.  But we now live in more negative times, it seems


Newly eliminated MasterChef star Sarah Tiong accuses an Australian radio station of 'racism' after being greeted by the host in Mandarin Chinese

Newly eliminated MasterChef contestant Sarah Tiong has lashed out at an Australian radio station after they greeted her in Mandarin Chinese.

In a series of posts on Instagram Stories on Wednesday, the 29-year-old said she 'felt uncomfortable and shocked' by the incident. 

'Today, in an Australian radio interview with Triple M Sunraysia, the host greeted me by saying "ni hao ma",' she explained.

'I do not believe this went to air. However, I felt uncomfortable and shocked. The call was immediately ended. This is racism. What an insensitive, tone deaf thing to say. Please, check yourself and do better.'

A fan then responded to Sarah's post, asking why she thought it was racist, prompting the MasterChef: Back to Win star to explain further.

'It is racist to assume I identify as Chinese and speak the Chinese language,' she continued, after the fan commented that they thought it was 'respectful'.

'Even if I have referenced such heritage or knowledge in the past, it is privileged and ignorant to assume anything about me based on the colour of my skin.

'It is rude and privileged to assume that I understand that Asian language, just because I appear of that descent.'

Sarah continued, revealing the unnamed host had then asked her if it was 'lei ho ma' instead.

'The mere presumption that I speak or want to speak Mandarin or Cantonese with you followed by the flippant dismissal of distinguishing the two different languages is racist,' she added.

'It is not funny, or clever. It just illustrates how deep rooted racial toxicity is in this country, and anyone with a voice in media should know better,' the 38-year-old added.

SOURCE  






Global cooling!

If this drop had been a rise it would have "proved" global warming

Icy blast hits Australia as temperatures drop to their coldest in 75 years in some parts of the country – and it's only going to get worse

Temperatures have plummeted below zero across South Australia, with one part of the state shivering through its coldest June morning in 75 years.

A record low of 0.9 degrees was recorded at the West Terrace weather station at Adelaide hills, the coldest overnight temperature since 24 June 1944.

However the rest of Australia is being lashed with rain, and the wet weather isn't disappearing anytime soon.

The weather was so cold in Adelaide on Wednesday morning wet clothing was producing steam outside

The Perisher Valley in NSW reached a low of -6.6C on Tuesday morning with snow showers expected for alpine regions in NSW and Victoria at the weekend.

Snow is also forecast to hit the New South Wales alps at the weekend.

In the top end, Darwin will continue through the dry season with high temperatures of around 32C with sunny days and blue skies.

SOURCE  





Chinese international students defend Australia as a 'safe' educational destination

Chinese international students have defended Australia as a "safe" destination for study, despite a travel warning issued by the Chinese Government urging students to reconsider.

In a statement published on Tuesday, China's Ministry of Education cited both the risk of COVID-19 and "racist incidents targeting Asians" in Australia.

Anti-discrimination groups have reported a rise in anti-Asian racism during the pandemic, and media outlets, including the ABC, have covered cases where people of Asian appearance were targeted due to the coronavirus.

Chinese international student Mr Zheng, who did not want his first name used, told the ABC that Chinese people in Australia — including international students and Chinese-Australians — were having a hard time as the diplomatic tension between China and Australia escalated.

The 28-year-old, who is studying a masters degree in biomedicine at the University of Adelaide, said he felt safe in Australia over the last four years, and felt the warning was more of a Canberra-Beijing spat than a genuine concern for the safety of millions of students in China.

"The first warning [over the weekend] for travellers was not even necessary, and this one for students has gone too far," Mr Zheng said. "It's not even truly protecting its citizens, but a political debate in the guise of addressing racism."

Mr Zheng said he believed students in China should continue to be entitled to choose their destination to study abroad, and told the ABC that he still recommended Australia as a good place for interested Chinese students.

"I hope Chinese students who had an intention to study overseas would make their decisions based on their own career and life-planning," he said. "I hope they won't prioritise the authorities' warning for where they are going."

One of Mr Zheng's friends, 28-year-old Chinese student Primo Pan, who is currently studying a PhD in the University of Adelaide, told the ABC the warning was "over the top", even though he had been subject to racism a few times during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"There was an increase in racism targeting Chinese people in Australia, but it’s still a safe place where your personal security is not threatened," Mr Pan said.

"Ordinary Chinese people are caught up in the crossfire between Australia and China." 'I don't believe this allegation has any sort of solid ground'

"Finally education needs to give way to politics," Weibo user Zhenningyue said.

"The political sense is way more meaningful than the actually scenario. I live in Australia and I feel very well," another Weibo user said.

But Dr He-Ling Shi, an associate professor in economics at Monash University, told the ABC Beijing's allegation was unfair.

"I don't believe this allegation has any sort of solid ground. Since the outbreak of COVID-19, Australian universities have taken various measures and tried to help overseas students ... and also facilitated their studies in Australia," he said.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





11 June 2020

Three out of four Australians hold a racial bias against indigenous people: New survey reveals shocking invisible barrier faced by Aboriginal community

This is discredited science.  The IAT was presumably the instrument used.  All it does is detect response time.   Why the response time is fast or slow can only be conjectural. 

In the case of racial stimuli, the most probable reason for a slow response is caution when faced with something potentially controversial.  There is NO evidence that a slow response to a particular stimulus indicates ill-will towards that stimulus.

In fact there is evidence that the test does NOT detect racial bias.  Very anti-racist people often score high on it.  See here for background

No matter their age, gender, job, religion, education level or income - the majority of people on average held an unconscious negative view.

The findings from an Australian National University study released on Tuesday revealed an invisible barrier, author Siddharth Shirodkar says. 'It was certainly shocking ... but it also wasn't necessarily surprising,' he told AAP. 'It says something, not so much about indigenous people, it says something more about the rest of us.'

Men were more biased than women against First Australians.

Western Australians and Queenslanders showed higher levels of unconscious prejudice, while people in the Northern Territory and ACT showed less.

People who identified themselves as 'strongly left wing' still showed signs of negative views against Aboriginal people, while those who put themselves on the right-wing side displayed higher levels of bias.

Australians showed the same level of bias against Aboriginals as people held against African Americans in the United States.

The study tested 11,000 Australians over a decade since 2009.

It looked at the response time of online volunteers to an association test, which flashed images of white people and Aboriginal Australians as well positive or negative words.

It found the majority of Australians showed a preference for white faces.

Mr Shirodkar said while Australians might hold an unconscious bias, they still could choose whether or not to act on it.

'(If) we don't challenge that, then that can seep into our everyday decision making,' he said.

He said some demographics were over-represented in the survey, including capturing more women, left-leaning voters and university educated people.

This meant the level of implicit racial bias may be under-reported.

The report came as thousands of Australians protested against Aboriginal deaths in custody over the weekend.

Mr Shirodkar said the report's release was a coincidence, but the Black Lives Matter protests worldwide had given people a reason to pause and reflect.

'The study can maybe help us think more about internally how we treat one another but also how we think about one another,' he said.

SOURCE  





'Comrade Anna' claims lockdown HASN'T hurt the economy as she fights to keep restrictions in place - despite ZERO community infections Australia-wide and fury from business owners

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk says her state's border closures have not caused hardship for businesses and is determined to keep them shut - despite the entire nation recording no new COVID-19 community cases overnight.

A handful of business owners and individuals are challenging the state's hard border closure in the High Court, arguing the measure is 'irrational' and causing them 'financial harm'.

But the state government on Tuesday refuted the claims in documents filed to the court, saying it 'does not admit' financial hardships are directly related to border closures.

Gold Coast Central Chamber of Commerce president Martin Hall said he was astonished by the state government's defence.

'That is possibly the most ludicrous thing I have ever heard,' he told The Gold Coast Bulletin. 

The stunning development comes after Premier Palaszczuk on May 19 publicly acknowledged the impact border closures would have on the state's $12billion tourism industry.

'It has been heartbreaking to make tough but unavoidable decisions; for example, the decision to close our borders and place hard restrictions on the industry knowing they would hurt, while at the same time understanding they were absolutely critical to save lives,' she said when announcing the policy.

Ms Palaszczuk's refusal to open the border, against the advice of federal health experts and despite the pleas of NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, has earned her comparisons to fellow Labor Premier Daniel Andrews, who is accused of holding back the economy by relaxing rules too slowly in Victoria.

While Victoria's Liberal Opposition has dubbed him 'Chairman Dan' - after former Chinese Communist Party leader Chairman Mao - while Ms Palaszczuk has been mocked as 'comrade Anna' by some of her critics frustrated by her uncompromising stand on border closure.

Australia recorded zero new locally acquired cases of coronavirus on Tuesday for the first time since the peak of the pandemic, with two new cases in New South Wales identified as returned travellers who remain holed up in quarantine hotels.

While the milestone is great news for the nation, it is little comfort for businesses if it doesn't result in restrictions being eased.  

Nuccia Fusco, co-owner of Italian restaurant Costa D'Oro in Surfers Paradise, told Daily Mail Australia on Tuesday night the lack of interstate traffic and gathering restrictions had crippled her business since they closed their doors on March 23.

'Restaurants should be working together and demanding change... I think that will happen very soon,' Ms Fusco said.

Ms Fusco hopes strength in numbers will encourage state governments to reassess current measures. 'I'm meeting with a group of restaurateurs and bar owners tomorrow to start a Facebook group to give us a voice,' she said.

Ms Palaszczuk has faced increased calls to completely reopen her state by the July school holidays to inject much needed funds into the economy.

'It's not good for the economy, particularly as we go into this next school holiday season. Those tourism businesses need that support,' Prime Minister Scott Morrison previously said.

'So those individual states, they'll have to justify those decisions themselves because it wasn't something that came out of national cabinet.'

Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham also previously said the state was more reliant on tourism than most others in Australia, and would haemorrhage money.

SOURCE  





Five Australian universities crack the top 50 on list of the world's best places to get a tertiary education

Five Australian campuses have made a list of the top 50 universities in the world. The QS World University Rankings has published its annual list of the top tertiary institutions across the globe for 2020. 

The top place to get a higher education in Australia, according to the list, is the Australian National University in Canberra.

The university tied at number 29 with the Universirty of Toronto in Canada - with the two finishing just behind the University of California, Berkeley at number 28.

The number one place internationally to earn a degree is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, popularly known as MIT.

Stanford University and Harvard University rounded out a clean sweep of the top three places by the United States.

Oxford University was the highest ranking English institution, with the famous college town at number four.

The California Institute of Technology, or Caltech, was number five. 

Researchers said the majority of American universities had been slipping in the individual ranking indicator scores, while Australian scores had been improving.

They said this was largely because Australia was earning a reputation as a quality destination for international students.

Other local universities to make the top 50 included the University of Melbourne jumping several places from the previous year to number 38.

The University of Sydney reached number 42 while the University of New South Wales followed at number 43. 

The University of Queensland was Australia's only other top 50 entry at number 47.

The list, which ranks 1,000 universities in total, uses six performance indicators.

Academic reputation, is the major indicator, which was scored using the survey  responses of 94,000 individuals in the higher education space about the quality of work done at each institution.

Employer reputation was also scored by questioning nearly 45,000 employers.

Citations per faculty was also included - measuring how many times other academics referenced a university's work in research papers.

International student ratio was measured as an indicator of global awareness and brand reputation, which is a strong point of Australian institutions.

And lastly, faculty staff to student ratio  numbers were included as a measure of teaching quality, with Australian universities slipping in this category since the 2019 rankings.

SOURCE  





After years of drought, good rainfall will boost Australia's grain production by 50 per cent this year

Well-timed late summer and autumn rainfall, combined with a promising winter and spring outlook, will see grain production jump over by 50 per cent this season.

ABARES is pegging the winter crop; wheat, barley, canola, chickpeas and oats; at 44.5 million tonnes, 5 per cent above ABARES 10-year average to 2019.

The area planted to winter crops is tipped to expand by over 20 per cent from last year.

In Dumosa, 250 kilometres north-west of Melbourne, grain grower Brent Sheahan is enjoying the rare prospect of two good seasons in a row in the Victorian Mallee.

"We've had a near-perfect start," he said.

Like many growers in Victoria, South Australia and New South Wales, Mr Sheahan said between 20 and 30 millimetres of rain in the spring would be enough to ensure a good harvest.

Despite 90 per cent of NSW remaining in drought, the good early rains have forecasters tipping a huge boost to production.

"Last year, NSW produced 3.3 million tonnes, and this year it's forecast to be 12.1 million tonnes. That's a big jump," said ABARES senior economist Peter Collins.

Until recently the Bureau of Meteorology had been forecasting a high likelihood of above-average rain for large parts of inland Australia this winter.

But the latest outlook has revised down the chances of above-average rain for the coming three months.

The change has been attributed to cooling in the Indian Ocean and forecast onset of a positive phase of the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), resulting in high pressure dominating southern Australia.

Trouble in the west

Many Western Australian growers are still waiting for a decent shower, between 10 and 20 millimetres, to get this year's crop ticking along.

It is especially pronounced in the state's usually reliable southern regions.

In Ravensthorpe, nearly 500 kilometres south-east of Perth, Andrew Constance said the crops would suffer without good rainfall.

"We've had patchy rain over the farm —some parts are wetter than others, so we're just waiting for a big one."

ABARES is still predicting a bigger harvest in the export-focussed west than last year.

Mr Collins said the sudden announcement of steep Chinese tariffs on Australian barley came too late for grain growers to alter their sowing plans.

The tariffs send the price of barley tumbling, at a time when production, according to the ABARES Crop Report is tipped to grow by 17 per cent to 10.6 million tonnes this year, compared to the 2019/20 season.

"They may not get the same price they'd get in the Chinese market, but there's still overseas markets that will buy Australian barley," Mr Collins said.

Last year, large volumes of grain from WA, South Australia and Victoria were sold into drought-stricken NSW and Queensland to feed livestock, with local prices higher than export prices.

According to a recent Rabobank report, with a more favourable exchange rate, lower domestic prices and the boost in production, Australia will have more grain to sell overseas.

But, according to Rabobank's Dr Cheryl Kalisch Gordon, "finding a home for those exports will be challenging."

"Stagnant global demand, low shipping costs and depreciation of Black Sea region currencies will continue to challenge Australia's competitiveness in traditional markets," Dr Kalish Gordon said.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





10 June 2020

'Peaceful protests don't work!' Indigenous actor is overcome with emotion during racism discussion before delivering a powerful monologue about being black in Australia

Nothing works.  Australian governments, State and Federal have tried everything to bring average black lives up to white standards but in almost all ways most blacks remain at the bottom of the heap.  If the angry guy has something to suggest that has not been tried already, everyone would like to hear it

He himself would appear to have found a niche in white society so it is understandable that he is angry that not all Aborigines have done so. Rage is good theatre but it will do nothing useful


An Aboriginal actor delivered a powerful speech about racism in Australia during an emotion-charged episode of Q&A last night.

It comes three days after a 40-year-old Aboriginal man died after he collapsed at a medium security prison in Western Australia.

'It's still happening right now, to this day. Last Friday, a brother boy died in Western Australia. We're still talking about it now. It's a denial of what's happening right now,' Wyatt began.

'These institutions are killing us - it's just a continuation. The whole time, since 1770. It's the same thing. We're demanding justice. And those protests in America - they're not protests, they're demanding it.

'There are riots and people are talking about "order". Who cares about order if there's no justice? We want justice. I'm sick of talking about "order". It doesn't work. Being peaceful [and] peaceful protests - don't work.'

Wyatt later recalled how he was first searched by police at age 10 or 11 and said he hasn't trusted authority since.

'I was terrified. [But] that becomes fear, anger. When I see things around the world and I see my brother boys in my own country - how do you think I'm going to feel? I'm going to be scared from the get-go,' he said.

Wyatt was among tens of thousands of Australians who took to the streets for the Black Lives Matter mass protests on Saturday.

He admitted his lawyer's number was written on his arm in permanent marker when the protests were originally deemed illegal before the court ruling was overturned at the 11th hour.

'Who cares about the pandemic? The pandemic is Indigenous lives are dying. Black people are dying,' Wyatt said.

'It's been happening for thousands of years. That's the pandemic. That's why people are marching.

'That's why people are out there. That's why we're angry. And we're sick of it. We're tired of it. I'm tired of it. I don't know how else to put it.'

The program ended with as much emotion as it began as Wyatt delivered a powerful four-minute monologue from his play City of Gold about the struggles of being indigenous in Australia.

'Sometimes I want to be seen for my talent, not my race. I hate being part of some diversity angle,' he said.

'It's not your fault you have white skin, but you do benefit from it. You can be OK. I have to be exceptional. I mess up, I'm done. There's no path back for me. There's no road to redemption. Being black and successful comes at a cost.'

The monologue concluded with Wyatt calling for the end of deaths of Aboriginal inmates in custody. 

'Black deaths in custody - that s**t needs to stop. Never trade your authenticity for approval. Be crazy. Take a risk. Offend your family. Call them out,' he said.

'Silence is violence. Complacency is complicit. I don't want to be quiet. I don't want to be humble. I don't want to sit down!'

Wyatt has since been inundated with overwhelming support from viewers.

SOURCE  





Governments challenged to shake up 'Byzantine' vocational education system

A shake-up of the prices of vocational education courses, abolishing unnecessary regulators, expanding access to student loans, introducing government-funded vouchers for training and simplifying subsidies are among proposals floated by a Productivity Commission report.

In the interim report to be released on Friday, the commission calls on state and federal governments to fix the vocational education and training sector, which it says is "underperforming, excessively complicated and suffers from ad hoc policy approaches".

The findings support Prime Minister Scott Morrison's push for an overhaul of the national skills and workforce agreement, which governs federal, state and territory support for the training sector – viewed as a critical element of the country's economic recovery from the COVID-19 crisis.

The report found the current "Byzantine" approach was overdue for replacement and the total $6.1 billion spent by governments could be used more effectively. It found providers needed to be more responsive to the needs of students and employers.

Commissioner Jonathan Coppel said some of the options being put forward in the report were "pretty radical" and intended to provoke discussion about improvements needed in the system.

"The way in which we fund access to training can be done in a way where you get a bigger bang for your buck," Mr Coppel said.

A key issue highlighted by the report was the disconnect between accessible higher education loans that have fuelled university enrolments and the "extremely restrictive" loans scheme for vocational education.

Mr Coppel acknowledged the widespread rorting that arose under the previous VET FEE-HELP loans scheme, which damaged the reputation of the sector, but said that was a "symptom of poor policy" and an expansion of loans should be accompanied by better regulation.

"We would envisage further safeguards and integrity measures if those options were to be the ones that get embraced," he said.

The commission's review also highlighted significant variations in government subsidies provided in different states and territories. It noted the subsidies for one popular course, the certificate 3 in individual support used in the aged care or disability care sectors, varied by up to $3700 across the country.

A total of 13 new fee short courses are now available online to assist anyone across the State who wants to upskill and prepare for the workforce post-pandemic.

It suggested a number of ways to phase out the complexity, including a common and more transparent method for devising costs and simplifying rates across different courses.

One provocative option put forward by the commission was a shift away from government subsidies towards the introduction of vouchers for students, in a bid to support their choice and make providers more responsive.

There are about 4.1 million Australians in the vocational education system, with about 30 per cent of training hours offered by TAFEs and 60 per cent by private providers.

SOURCE  





'Sick to my stomach': Indigenous activist Jacinta Price slams 'virtue-signalling' Black Lives Matter protesters and says they 'aren't interested' in Aboriginal deaths - unless they are killed by a white man

Aboriginal activist Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has slammed Black Lives Matter protesters as ignorant 'narcissists' who don't understand indigenous problems.

'Just watching the footage of protesters and the conversations around white privilege makes me sick to my stomach,' she told Sky News.

'These are narcissists ... they don't have to do any hard work just appear as though they care.'

Ms Price, a Warlpiri woman and Alice Springs Town Councillor, said more Aboriginal people die outside of police custody than within it, with the majority of Aboriginal people killed and maimed by other Aboriginal people.

But because the violence is out of sight, out of mind, protesters don't care, she said. 'You don't care because the perpetrators are also black, and that's the big problem,' she said.

'People only care if there's seen to be a white perpetrator.'

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2014–15 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey, more than one in five or 22.3 per cent of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged over 15 had experienced physical violence or threats in the previous 12 months.

Half of all of those who had experienced physical violence over the 12-month period said that their most recent attacker was a family member. 

'This is the reality that goes on in the remote communities that these protesters care zero for,' Ms Price said.

'They do not care one bit. They stand there virtue-signalling and acting as though they're so terribly sorry for the racism that Aboriginal people are faced with.

'It's not racism that is sexually abusing our kids and it is not racism that is killing our people - it's the actions of our own people.' 

Ms Price's own nephew died on Friday - allegedly stabbed to death during a wild fight in Alice Springs.

NT Police said more than a dozen people had been 'fighting with weapons' at a home in the Central Australian town when the 36-year-old man was stabbed. He bled to death at the scene despite the efforts of ambulance paramedics and police officers to stem the bleeding and to save him with CPR.

There were more than 12 people involved in the mayhem but only two men were arrested, ABC News reported.

Ms Price said Aboriginal people are the most incarcerated people in the world - because of violent crimes and that if people were serious about protecting Aboriginal lives then they would focus on lowering the rate of family violence in indigenous communities.

'It's a horrible cycle that continues and the ignorance is gobsmacking,' she said.

'If you wanted to reduce the rates of incarceration then you would begin with being honest about the fact that almost 70 percent of Aboriginal people - men and women incarcerated - are incarcerated for acts of violence against their loved ones,' she said. 

Ms Price said for women it was largely because they were fed up with repeated beatings and had retaliated.

'On the other side of the coin we've got nasty individuals who think it's their right to hurt and maim and kill their own loved ones,' she said.  

SOURCE  






Top wages of Australia’s highest-earning public offices revealed

A new list ranks the highest-earning public servants in the country, with the job on top earning close to $1 million — and way more than the PM.

You’ve probably never heard of them, but the people leading Australia’s top public offices are earning close to $1 million a year, new figures reveal.

A list of publicly available figures from the Australian Government Remuneration Tribunal ranks the top 10 highest-paid full-time public office jobs in the country, with the highest wage exceeding $880,000.

The list does not include parliamentary secretary positions or chief executives of government-owned businesses, 9 News reports.

The top total remuneration — which includes superannuation and benefits — goes to Wayne Byres, who earns $886,750 as the chairman of the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA).

The second-highest remuneration of $775,910 is earned by three individuals: Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims, Australian Securities and Investments Commission chairman, James Shipton, and Solicitor-General, Dr Stephen Donaghue QC.

In fourth place on the list is Services Australia chief executive Rebecca Skinner with $748,210.

Three positions are in fifth place, receiving remuneration of $720,480. They are Australian Federal Police Commissioner, Reece Kershaw, Commissioner of the Australian Public Service, Peter Woolcott and Director-General of the Office of National Intelligence, Nick Warner.

The APRA deputy chair receives $709,390, and three positions round out of the list with $665,070: the APRA member position, Australian Security Intelligence Organisation director-general of security, and the Australians Signals Directorate director-general.

The remunerations were compiled as of May 2020 and took effect from July 1, 2019, according to 9 News.

And they top the wage of Prime Minister Scott Morrison, whose base salary as a member of parliament of $211,250. When added to his 160 per cent loading as prime minister, his salary is just shy of $550,000.

In April, the Federal Government announced a six-month freeze on Commonwealth parliamentary, ministerial and public sector wage increases, in order to “share the economic burden” of COVID-19.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






9 June 2020

How can 60,000 go to protests when Anzac Day marches were banned and there are still strict limits on weddings and funerals? Outrage over 'double standards'

The decision to allow enormous protests on the streets of Australian cities has led to a flurry of calls for all COVID-19 restrictions to be lifted completely.

Over 60,000 Black Lives Matter protesters flooded the streets of Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Adelaide on Saturday afternoon, despite being urged not to by their governments.

Sydney protesters were controversially given the green light at the last minute, after organisers launched a successful appeal against the NSW Supreme Court's decision of a day earlier which had ruled the protest illegal.

The Court of Criminal Appeal's decision outraged many, who claimed it was insulting to the millions of Australians who have suffered but done the right thing over recent months.

They include business owners - some of who have been financially crippled forever - and families who have been unable to attend the funerals or weddings of loved ones.

Rules vary across Australia, but in NSW - where the court ruled protests legal - pubs, clubs, cafes and restaurants can have no more than 50 people. Funerals and church gatherings have the same limit, while weddings can have no more than 20 guests.

Former federal senator and long-time broadcaster Derryn Hinch pointed out that just a few weeks before the protests, Australians were banned from gathering on Anzac Day to remember our fallen soldiers.  'You weren't allowed to honour our fallen on Anzac Day but thousands can breach lockdown rules and social distancing in Melbourne and Sydney,' Hinch tweeted.

While the protests - sparked by the death of American man George Floyd - received approval from the courts, they were opposed by Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Australia's leading health officials.

Brendan Murphy, the nation's Chief Medical Officer, said while people have a right to protest, mass gatherings were 'dangerous' in the midst of a pandemic.

But the government's finance minister Mathias Cormann went further, slamming those who protested as 'selfish' and 'incredibly self-indulgent'.  'It does impose unnecessary and unacceptable risk onto the community,' Mr Cormann told Sky News on Sunday morning.

In the wake of the decision by the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal, talkback lines were flooded with calls from irate listeners.

Many had been forced to shut down their businesses, unable to attend a loved ones' funeral or had to forgo seeing elderly relatives for months because of a ban on visits to nursing homes.

Mark Levy, who was hosting the Saturday afternoon program on Sydney radio station 2GB, was at a loss to explain to listeners why the protest can go ahead without social distancing but crowds could not attend sports games.

'I don't have a problem with people protesting, but at the moment when we're trying to get the economy back, we're trying to get people back to work, people are being told to social distance,' Levy said. 'We can't got to the football, we can't go to pubs or clubs in big numbers, I don't know how people are able to take to the streets in their thousands.'

NSW Liberal politician Jason Falinski echoed those sentiments on Twitter and said it was unfair to give the green light to the protests but not everything else.  'Before you can have equality, you must have equality before the law. You can't apply health orders to weddings, funerals, and ANZAC Day but not to protests' Mr Falinski said. 'Otherwise you can't have equality.'

Former Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said that after the protests received the go ahead, the continuing with any other restrictions was 'illogical'.

In particular he pointed to the continued closure of Queensland's borders which has been crippling for the state's tourism operators. 

'If we can have this protest then there is no justification for the ongoing (illogical) restrictions on our lives,' Mr Newman said. 'I bet the protesters details weren't recorded as would be required at any pub, club, restaurant or gym. And by the way, have some courage and open the border now.'

Queensland funeral director Wes Heritage told The Courier Mail he had watched on as grieving families struggled to come to terms with the fact only 10 people could attend the service for their loved ones.

Mr Heritage said any outbreak caused by mass gatherings would only make things even harder.  'We've nursed grieving families through the tough restrictions on funerals and now we're really happy to where we've got to - we don't need a backward step,' he said. 'We've been so strict and successful and would hate to see this protest create an issue that imposes further restrictions on families.'

SOURCE  





China tourism warning against Australia 'just the tip of the iceberg'

A furious China has let rip at the government saying guidance for its citizens to no longer visit Australia may be “just the tip of the iceberg”. It has warned that Australia could soon “completely lose the benefits of Chinese consumers”.

It’s a further ratcheting up of China’s animosity towards Australia which has already seen it impose tariffs on barley and accuse Canberra of being at the beck and call of the US.

The comments have come in weekend editorial from English language Chinese newspaper The Global Times. The paper is widely seen as a Communist Party mouthpiece that does Beijing’s bidding and accused Australian politicians of “attacking” China.

The editorial zeros in on Australian objections to recent guidance from the Chinese Ministry of Culture and Tourism for its citizens to think twice before heading off to Australia in the future. The warning, issued on Friday, said there had been a “significant increase” in racist attacks on “Chinese and Asian people”.

There have undoubtedly been a number of attacks on Chinese Australians during the coronavirus pandemic.

Last month, the Australian Human Rights Commission reported that one in four people who lodged racial discrimination complaints in the past two months were targeted because of COVID-19.

In April, news.com.au reported on a shocking video that showed a gang allegedly attacking a pair of Chinese students as they were on their way home in Melbourne.

A Hong Kong student was also reported to have been punched in the face in Hobart for wearing a mask, during the early stages of the pandemic.

However, Trade and Tourism Minister Simon Birmingham rejected Beijing’s claim that Australia was unsafe for Chinese visitors.  In a statement on Friday he said Australia was “the most successful multicultural and migrant society in the world”.

“The Chinese Australian community is a significant and valued contributor to that success story,” he said.

“Millions of tourists from all corners of the world demonstrate their confidence in Australia as a safe, welcoming and amazing destination by visiting each year, often returning multiple times.”

But the Global Times editorial hit back, naming Mr Birmingham directly as well as Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack who also criticised the travel warning.

“Their objections are feeble in the face of the facts,” the editorial stated. “Even the Australian media outlets have repeatedly reported stories of Chinese-Australian or Asian-Australian people experiencing increased racist attacks across the country.

“It is unlikely for those Australian politicians to overlook such overwhelming media coverage on increased racism, but political motives may probably make them turn a blind eye to it.”

The paper said the politicians were pushing back against the travel advisory because the government was “nervous” at the loss of Chinese tourists which pump more than $12 billion into the economy and account for 27 per cent of foreign spending by visitors.

“Australian politicians have always readily launched attacks against China even when they know clearly that their assertions are unjustified, because they are too easily swayed by US political attitude and too eager to win US favours.”

Australia’s supposed dependence on the US has been a recurring theme in Chinese media diatribes against Canberra in recent months.

The increasingly angry rhetoric has coincided with a number of Australian policy decisions that the government has made against Beijing’s wishes.

China was apoplectic with rage at Australia’s leading role in the push for a World Health Organisation inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 and only reluctantly backed the investigation last month. It continues to suggest the inquiry was at the US’ behest.

Tensions had also been simmering over Canberra’s decisions to lock out Chinese tech firm Huawei from the building of Australia’s 5G network.

In recent months China has urged international students to “be cautious” about studying in Australia. China has also announced an 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley and black-listed four major beef exporters due to labelling violations.

Beijing has denied the new trade measures are a retaliation.  “It is Australia’s unfriendly attitude, not the travel alert, that may really scare away Chinese tourists and students,” this weekend’s editorial said.

“From its push for a US-led inquiry into COVID-19 to its interference in the Hong Kong affair and the upcoming overhaul of its foreign investment rules that are expected to tighten scrutiny over foreign investment, Australian politicians are demonstrating their antipathy toward China.

“It is what they do, not what they say, that really determines which direction China and Australia will go.”

The paper suggested China could launch further action against Australia unless it modified its behaviour.

Certainly, Beijing would be keen for less international attention on its chipping away at Hong Kong’s autonomy which gives citizens there far great freedoms than their mainland counterparts. There have been suggestions Australia would look favourably on Hong Kongers looking to emigrate.

“If Australia wants to retain the gain from its economic ties with China, it must make a real change to its current stance on China, or it will completely lose the benefits of Chinese consumers,” it ranted. “The tourism loss may be just a tip of iceberg in its loss of Chinese interest.”

It’s an ominous threat from China that knows all too well that Australia, like many other nations, needs to kickstart its economy following pandemic-related lockdowns.

China is Australia’s number one export market with minerals, food and beverages some of the most in demand Australian commodities.

According to figures from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade figures, China imported over $100 billion worth of iron, coal and gas from Australia and $123 billion in goods and services in 2017-18.

Last month it was reported that China had drawn up a list of other Australian products to hit.

These include wine, seafood and fruit which could see more thorough and time-consuming customs checks, increased tariffs and even consumer boycotts spurred on by China’s state-controlled media.

SOURCE  






Australian doctor calls for Black Lives Matter protesters to self-isolate amid coronavirus fears

President of the Australian Medical Association Tony Bartone said there was a real "risk" of a virus flare-up.

"If everyone was wanting to keep the rest of the community safe, anyone who attended those rallies really should stay home and keep away from the rest of the community for at least two weeks," Dr Bartone told 3AW's Ross and John.

"More importantly, if they develop any symptoms they need to get tested immediately."

Rally organisers distributed masks among crowds on Saturday, with demonstrators told to use hand sanitiser and social distance where possible.

But Dr Bartone said the safety measures did not annihilate the risk of the virus spreading.

"No matter how much hand sanitiser, no matter much the masks were being worn, for those periods of time there is a risk of the virus passing," he said. "They should really think about what they've done over the weekend."

The bold suggestion comes as infectious diseases physician Sanjaya Senanayake told Today that recent protests could trigger a spike in infections. "I think from a public health point of view in the middle of a COVID crisis it was a risky thing to do," Associate Professor Senanayake said.

But Prof. Senanayake said that quarantining "tens of thousands of protesters" may not be a feasible option for authorities.

Australia's chief health officers will today meet to discuss the next step in easing coronavirus restrictions, which could see gatherings of up to 100 people, most employees returning to their workplace and interstate travel.

Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said the Australian Health Protection Principal Committee would consider the mass rallies which occurred when assessing the national cabinet's three-step plan for states and territories.

SOURCE  





Pacific islands plead to join Australia-New Zealand travel bubble

Countries have contained Covid-19 but tourism drought is causing severe economic damage

Tony Whitton recently swapped managing one of Fiji’s largest luxury resorts to handing out food parcels to 550 of his staff who were furloughed because of Covid-19.

Now he has joined hundreds of tourism operators in an appeal for Pacific island nations to be included in an Australia and New Zealand “travel bubble” that could rescue their businesses and some of the most tourist-dependent economies in the world.

“This virus is literally a dagger right through our hearts,” said Mr Whitton, who owns Rosie Group, a family business established in 1974.

“We have had no new cases in Fiji for a month and we are moving towards eradication. I view this travel bubble as our only hope during hopeless times.”

New Zealand and Australia have both suppressed the spread of Covid-19 and are progressively reopening their economies and hope to open a “Trans-Tasman travel bubble” by September.

We have had no new cases in Fiji for a month and we are moving towards eradication. I view this travel bubble as our only hope during hopeless times

Pacific nations are lobbying to join the proposed zone. Most governments in the region closed their borders in March to halt the spread of the virus, which health experts warned could decimate communities that have limited access to healthcare and suffer from high rates of diabetes and other ailments.

The closure kept the virus out of a dozen Pacific nations. But it came at a massive economic cost to a region reliant on tourism, which accounts for a third of jobs in Fiji, Palau and Vanuatu, and at least 40 per cent of gross domestic product. The IMF forecasts the island economies will shrink by 5.8 per cent, 3.3 per cent and 11.9 per cent respectively in 2020.

“A travel bubble that includes Fiji alongside Australia and New Zealand would do far more good than any aid or assistance,” said Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum, Fiji’s economy minister, who has warned government revenues could halve in 2020-21 due to the pandemic.

Fiji is trialling a contact-tracing mobile app to boost its case for inclusion.

The loss of Australian and New Zealand travellers, who make up almost two-thirds of tourists in the region, is crippling Fiji’s economy. Up to 340 hotel and resorts are closed and at least 86,000 people are out of work, according to the Fiji Hotels and Tourism Association.

“Tourism has the proven ability to bounce back and drive the recovery of other sectors, we need to kick-start the tourism industry as early as is safely possible,” says Fantasha Lockington, FHTA chief executive.

Travel bans are not just hitting tourism. They are disrupting seasonal work schemes that enable tens of thousands of Pacific islanders to travel to Australia and New Zealand to undertake farm jobs and send money back to their families. The World Bank has forecast a 13 per cent decline in remittances in the Pacific this year.

Pacific airlines will require state bailouts after spending A$2.5bn ($1.7bn) on new planes over the past three years, according to a report by the Lowy Institute, a Sydney-based think-tank. Last week, Fiji Airways laid off half its workforce and requested a A$227m government loan.

The Asian Development Bank also warned that reduced air and sea links would increase food security concerns for small island nations with limited agricultural production.

“Because there is less trade demand in the world there will be less ships going with food to these countries and other important imports,” said Emma Veve, deputy director-general of the ADB’s Pacific department. “Some countries are already stockpiling food.”

New Zealand and Australia have indicated Pacific nations will probably only be considered for inclusion in a travel bubble after it has been established, in part to protect vulnerable populations.

“The last thing we want to do is imperil those populations,” said Winston Peters, New Zealand’s foreign minister.

Some health experts say it might be safer for New Zealand, which is on course to eradicate the virus completely, to create a travel bubble with Pacific nations that are virus free rather than Australia, which is still reporting a handful of cases.

“It would be more logical to start the bubble with [Pacific nations completely free of the virus] once New Zealand has eliminated it,” said Nick Wilson, professor of public health at the University of Otago.

He said some virus-free Australian states, including the Northern Territory and Western Australia, could also join such a bubble as long as they kept their borders closed to states where the virus was still present.

Such an outcome would provide a lifeline for Pacific tourism operators and communities that rely on them for income, say advocates.

“We could all stay in our rooms out of fear forever, in which case we’d probably die of starvation. Or we could venture out, take a calculated risk and manage those risks,” said Mr Whitton.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





8 June 2020

Taking Australia back: PM announces tough new measures to stop foreigners buying our land and assets

This will be a popular measure on both the Left and the Right but it is not well thought-out.  Banning Chinese purchases of land is particularly silly.  The Chinese can't pick the land up and takes it back to China -- so what is achieved?

The Chinese normally employ Australian managers for their farm purchases so even the management remains mostly under Australian control.

Purchase of companies is less clear-cut but once again one has to ask what is achieved?  In the rare instances where there are commercial or scientific secrets that could be revealed, then by all means restrict those purchases but what else could go wrong?  The new owners will have the same motivation to make a profit so production of what the firm makes should be little changed


Foreign investment laws in Australia will be completely overhauled as part of tough new rules to protect the country's national security.

The federal government's zero-dollar approval threshold will mean all foreign bids for companies from large telecommunication businesses to small defence providers will be vetted by the Foreign Investment Review Board.

Treasurer Josh Frydenberg will also have the power to force a sale or impose conditions on foreign acquisition of Australian assets even after a purchase is made.

Previously the treasury could only block foreign purchases of Australian assets which exceeded a takeover threshold of $1.2billion.

The new laws follow a series of recent controversial takeovers by Chinese-owned companies - including the lease of the Port of Darwin to Chinese Communist Party-linked Landbridge Group in November 2015.

The deal was called into question by then-US President Barack Obama at the time, leading former deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage to say Australia had 'blindsided' its ally.

Government sources have claimed the agreement with the group's subsidiary Landbridge Australia would not have been approved had the FIRB's rules been in place, The Australian reported.

'Through the introduction of a new national security test, stronger enforcement powers and enhanced compliance obligations, we will ensure that Australia can continue to benefit from foreign investment while safeguarding our national interest,' Mr Frydenberg said.

In 2016, then-treasurer Scott Morrison also overturned a Chinese bid for energy company Ausgrid over national security concerns.

The intervention just 10 days before the deal's deadline led to the Chinese government accusing Canberra of 'discrimination' and 'protectionism'.

Chinese buyers spent $24billion on Australian real estate during the last year, making them by far the largest group of foreign purchasers.

China is also the largest foreign stakeholder in the Australian water market - with Chinese investors owning 732 gigalitres or 1.89 per cent of the water.

It comes as Australia strengthens ties with India as relations with China, its largest trading power, continues to sour.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi signed off a new agreement in a virtual summit on Thursday.

It aims to boost economic trade between the two countries, build closer partnerships around science and technology and strengthen defence cooperation.

SOURCE  






Student suspended for criticising his university's China ties is banned from his own appeal hearing - as 'victim' speaks out in his defence

A student who was suspended from the University of Queensland for two years after criticising its links to China has been banned from attending his own appeal hearing.

Drew Pavlou was banned from completing his philosophy degree until 2022 on Friday after the university accused him of 11 cases of misconduct, which were detailed in a confidential 186-page document.

The 21-year-old revealed he had been banned from the proceedings to review the penalty on Friday, and his lawyer planned to include proof from an alleged victims that one of the complaints against him was 'manufactured'.

'Despite being an elected representative to the UQ Senate, I've been barred from attending a meeting reviewing my expulsion. Kangaroo court!' he Tweeted.

The UQ Senate is reviewing his suspension in an out-of-session meeting, and Mr Pavlou will be banned from accessing the minutes of the meeting as well, due to conflict of interest concerns.

UQ vice-chancellor Peter Hoj, who was referenced in the complaints against the activist, will not attend for the same reason.

'I don't understand why, as a democratically elected representative of UQ students on the senate, I'm being barred from this meeting,' Mr Pavlou told the ABC.

'They are taking all these steps to ensure there is as murky a process as possible, that the Australian public does not know how they are making these decisions.'

A spokewoman from the university told Daily Mail Australia that the meeting was to brief the Senate on the outcome of Mr Pavlou's disciplinary matter.   

'It would be inconsistent with standard conflict of interest procedures if Mr Pavlou or Senate members directly involved in the appeal process were to attend,' she said. 'The Vice Chancellor will also not attend.'

Mr Pavlou also revealed that his lawyer, Tony Morris QC, was contacted by one of students Mr Pavlou had allegedly 'harassed, bullied, threatened or abused' on social media.

The student wrote that not only had he not made a formal complaint nor felt 'distressed' as written in the complaint, he had not been contacted by UQ.

'Apparently the complaint mentions that I was "distressed" which is from my point of view laughable,' the student wrote in an email viewed by the ABC.

'While I think it was characteristically crass of him to write to a female friend the way he did I feel this complaint has been largely manufactured.' 

Over the weekend the Chinese Communist Party-controlled tabloid Global Times rubbed salt in the wound of Mr Pavlou's suspension, citing anonymous students celebrating it.

The article labelled Mr Pavlou an 'anti-Chinese rioter' while saying his peers were celebrating that 'justice finally came'.

Four anonymous Chinese and Australian students were quoted in the piece accusing him of inciting violence and racism while smearing Chinese students.

In response Mr Pavlou claimed Chinese state media had directed UQ to expel him, and said the university was dependent on income from Chinese students and donors.

'Chinese state media have just decided to go full mask off, endorsing my expulsion from UQ,' he wrote on Twitter.

'UQ relies on the Chinese market for 20 per cent of its income. Moral courage!'

A statement from University of Queensland confirmed fees from Chinese students make up about 20 per cent of revenue.

The campus has the fifth highest international student fee income in Australia, and about 18,000 of the 53,000 students enrolled are from overseas.

Nine thousand of those students are from China.

Mr Pavlou will be able to continue his studies until the verdict of the appeal.

He is due to complete his degree in six months, meaning he may graduate before his suspension begins.

The politics student believes his university caved to pressure from Chinese influence to suspend him.

He led a series of campus demonstrations last year, in support of Hong-Kong's pro-democracy movement.

The activist also posted messages to social media criticising China's authoritarian regime and denounced the university's close financial ties with the Communist Party

SOURCE  





Black Lives Matter protesters in Australia are just ‘rent-a-crowds’

Dr Anthony Dillon (Dr Anthony Dillon is a lecturer at the Australian Catholic University and commentator on Indigenous issues)

An Indigenous academic says the Black Lives Matter protests were “ridiculous” and the “rent-a-crowds” did not care about the real issues.

So much has been said this past week in response to the shocking death of a Minnesota man and the hands of a dumb police officer.

All can agree, that this (former) officer’s actions, and that of his colleagues who stood by and watched him, are atrocious.

Sadly, the fallout from this act of stupidity has had a flow on effect in Australia.

Some activists reading that last sentence will reply with “Oh but it’s important, it’s solidarity …”

No, it’s just an excuse to protest for the sake of protesting.

I am all for people fighting for a cause they feel strongly about and taking to the streets if they feel that is the best way to deliver, what they believe, is an important message.

But what we are seeing now is ridiculous. If this was just a comedy show I would be laughing. But the antics of activists, social justice warriors, and their rent-a-crowds only move Australia backwards.

These professional protesters are latching onto the Aboriginal deaths in custody issue to enable them to justify their confected outrage and go out marching with their protest signs that say: ‘Black lives matter’.

For them, an Aboriginal death in custody is proof positive of racism.

For Aboriginal deaths in custody, let’s provide some context here. Aboriginal Australians in custody are less likely to die than non-Aboriginal Australians in custody.

An Australian Government publication, The Health of Australia’s Prisoners: 2015, states: “Indigenous Australians were no more likely to die in custody than non-Indigenous Australians” and “With just over one-quarter (27 per cent) of prisoners in custody being Indigenous, and 17 per cent of deaths in custody being Indigenous, Indigenous prisoners were under-represented.”

The ‘outrage’ from protesters for deaths in custody is about as authentic as Australia Day protests.

I and others have been asking for a long time: “Where is the outrage regarding the high rates of violence and child abuse in Aboriginal communities?”

In early May there was a report of a young Aboriginal woman (mother of two) found dead in a wheelie bin.

On the WAtoday webpage it was reported “a Martu elder stood in the boy’s place to receive a punishment dealt out according to customary law”—the boy referred to is the person charged with the woman’s murder. Where was the outrage?

I could give plenty more examples of hypocrisy but won’t.

I want to talk about why tension exists between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Australians, because by understanding the cause, we can find a solution.

Most Aboriginal people are either partnered up with a non-Aboriginal person or the product of the union between an Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal person.

It seems that we generally get along with one another. Of course, there are exceptions, as there are with the mixing of any groups or races.

Those exceptions can range from simple disagreements to acts that are outright vicious and fatal.

But here’s the problem, as humans we have quirky ways of thinking and analysing the world around us.

The exceptions I just referred to can be used to create a belief that simply is not true. Contrary to common opinion, psychologists tell us that people do not make observations and then draw conclusions, rather, they select theories that are consistent with their personal values, attitudes, and prejudices (often hidden from consciousness) and then go out into the world to make observations to validate their theories.

Observations not consistent with a pre-existing belief are discarded while confirmatory ones are clung to tightly.

Applied here for the person who believes Aboriginal people are the victims of endless racism, a death in custody or an altercation with a white police officer is seen as evidence of racism. Or even witnessing a true case of racism, it will be used to validate one’s personal belief that Australia is a racist country towards Aboriginal Australians.

Of course, non-Aboriginal people are just as capable of distorting their views of Aboriginal people, but I don’t believe it happens to the same degree as it does with Aboriginal people having distorted views of non-Aboriginal people.

There have been stories in the media describing atrocious acts of violence where an Aboriginal person kills a non-Aboriginal person, and not once have I heard of any movement or any individual that as a result of these atrocious acts, promotes the lie that Aboriginal people are a danger to non-Aboriginal people.

More succinctly, Goethe said “people find what they look for, and they look for what they believe.” Maybe it’s time we band together and start looking for the good in each other? There are no winners with the race riots and protests.


SOURCE  






Australian bank reveals findings from compliance review

Australian lender Westpac Banking Corp (WBC.AX) on Thursday blamed “faults of omission” and “not intentional wrongdoing” for breaching anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism laws.

Last November, Australian regulator AUSTRAC filed a civil lawsuit, accusing the bank of presiding over 23 million payments that violated anti-money laundering protocols, including those made by Australians to child pornography purveyors in the Philippines.

The country’s second-largest bank last month admitted to charges of breaching money laundering laws, but denied accusations it enabled illegal payments between known child sex offenders.

Unclear accountabilities as well as a lack of understanding and expertise caused compliance failures, the company said in a statement.

The bank, which concluded its investigation into issues raised by AUSTRAC, said that the failure to correctly report international transfer of funds was due to a mix of technology and human error going back more than a decade.

“Consequences that have been applied to individuals include significant remuneration impacts and disciplinary actions,” Westpac Chief Executive Officer Peter King said. “A number of relevant staff had already left the company.”

The allegations from the regulator have led to a string of senior management changes at the company, including the chief executive and chairman roles. Earlier this week, the bank announced that the head of its institutional bank was retiring.

A report from the advisory panel review into the charges noted that the directors could have recognised the systemic nature of the crimes the bank was facing earlier.

Westpac said it would continue to engage with AUSTRAC on the legal process.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






5 June 2020

Australia will 'continue to welcome' Hong Kong residents as calls mount to match UK's offer of safe haven

The Australian government has declared it will “continue to welcome” Hong Kong residents, but it won’t be drawn on calls for it to match the UK’s offer of safe haven for people fearing China’s planned security laws.

Australian parliamentarians from across the political spectrum are urging the government to help the people of Hong Kong, amid growing international concern about the impact of Beijing’s decision on the city’s rights and freedoms and on the stability of the international finance hub.

The British foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, revealed he had asked Australia and other partners to consider “burden-sharing if we see a mass exodus from Hong Kong”.

The UK is holding open the prospect of offering residency and work rights to as many as 3 million people, while the US is considering letting people who no longer “feel comfortable” in Hong Kong to move there. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, indicated he was also talking to allies, including Australia, about further responses.

On Wednesday Beijing lodged “stern representations” in response to the UK’s offer, warning it to “pull back before it’s too late, abandon its Cold War and colonialist mentality”.

Australia’s foreign affairs minister, Marise Payne, joined her counterparts from Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US for a teleconference to discuss the situation in Hong Kong earlier this week.

The group “reiterated their concerns about Hong Kong in light of the Chinese government’s proposed national security law”, according to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

When asked about the possibility of Australia offering to resettle Hong Kong residents, the department’s spokesperson pointed to existing avenues: “Outside the current Covid-19 restrictions, Hong Kong people can apply for a range of relevant visa categories to work and live in Australia.

“Our people-to-people links include close family connections, business ties and shared values. These and the considerable talent in Hong Kong underscore why we continue to welcome Hongkongers to Australia.”

The leader of the Greens, Adam Bandt, called on the government to follow the lead of the UK and offer safe haven for those “who are concerned about the growing risk of authoritarianism in Hong Kong”.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, a hawkish Liberal party backbench senator, said Australia needed to “join with our allies to take strong and decisive action against Beijing’s skulduggery”.

The Labor MP Peter Khalil said if China did not meet its commitment to guarantee Hong Kong’s rights, or diminished the city’s unique status, it could lead to a potential exodus. The Australian government would have to respond to the “emerging and fast-moving situation”.

Khalil said he had met with many Hong Kong students in Australia who had told him “of the violent threats being made to them and their families because of their support for the protests back in Hong Kong”.

Labor’s foreign affairs spokeswoman, Penny Wong, said the UK had a special responsibility to lead on this issue, should the need emerge, but the Australian government “could consider how existing visa arrangements can be used to respond to any emerging need, and we would expect it to act with compassion”.

The Liberal MP Dave Sharma, a former ambassador to Israel, said Australia’s highest priority for now should be ensuring Hong Kong’s Basic Law was respected and the handover agreement honoured. “Planning for other contingencies is not something we should be discussing publicly right now.”

The Liberal senator David Fawcett, who chairs the joint standing committee on foreign affairs, defence and trade, joined counterparts from the UK, Canada and New Zealand in calling on the UN to appoint a new special envoy to monitor the impact of the law on Hong Kong.

In a letter to the UN secretary general, António Guterres, they raised alarm over “the erosion of the rule of law and the increasingly serious and urgent human rights situation in Hong Kong”.

“Our concerns are heightened at this time in the light of the Chinese Communist Party’s record of abuses when faced with dissent from its rule, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre which occurred 31 years ago this week,” wrote the group.

The imposition of sweeping national security laws on the semi-autonomous region, bypassing its legislature, has been labelled the “end of Hong Kong” and a breach of China’s international obligations.

Under the 1997 Sino-British declaration, when Hong Kong was returned to China by Britain, the region was guaranteed 50 years of a high degree of autonomy under the “one country two systems” principle.

Its mini-constitution, the Basic Law, obliges Hong Kong to enact national security laws and the failure to do so for 23 years has been used to justify Beijing’s move. But other obligations, including universal suffrage for the people of Hong Kong, have also been left unmet.

Since mass protests erupted in Hong Kong a year ago – sparked by a bill which would allow for extradition to China – Beijing has made increasing encroachments on Hong Kong’s autonomy, including declarations by its offices in Hong Kong that Basic Law provisions did not apply to them.

SOURCE  





Israel seeks quarantine-free travel with Australia by December as gateway to Europe

Israel wants to introduce direct flights to Australia and waive quarantine requirements for travellers by December, as countries that have so far successfully contained Covid-19 jostle to be the next destination added to the Australia-New Zealand tourism bubble.

Israel, seeking to make permanent the roughly 17-hour direct flight from Tel Aviv to Melbourne or Sydney, is also working with other nations to position itself as a gateway hub for Australian travellers to transit quarantine-free on their way to European countries considered safe, such as Greece, Norway, Denmark and the Czech Republic.

Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Mark Sofer, said the plan would be “a win-win-win” for Australians and Israelis, noting both countries were working on plans to rescue their tourism-reliant economies and provide their airlines with commercially viable routes that would not require quarantine.

“This is the time to sit down and make the crisis into an opportunity,” Sofer said.

The feasibility of such a bubble would depend on the containment and avoidance of any second wave in either country, and would hinge on the successful removal of the 14-day quarantine period between Australia and New Zealand, Sofer said.

Costa Rica’s government is also exploring direct flights to Australia’s east coast and inclusion in a bubble agreement with New Zealand, with officials in the central American country – where 12% of GDP comes from tourism – working to have arrangements in place to welcome Australians quarantine-free by the beginning of 2021 “at the latest”.

The plans are emerging as a result of video meetings between leaders of the “first movers” group of countries that have contained the virus to the extent they are reopening their economies.

The group, led by Austrian chancellor Sebastian Kurz, includes Australia, New Zealand, Israel, Costa Rica, Norway, Denmark, Greece and the Czech Republic. Leaders first met at the end of April to begin sharing notes on reopening different sectors of society such as schools and medical facilities.

The first movers met most recently on Wednesday night Australian time, with Scott Morrison tweeting about the discussions for protocols to “reopen our borders”. The Australian government has been contacted for comment on the Israel and Costa Rica proposals.

Israel, which has recorded just under 16,800 coronavirus cases and 281 deaths, contained initial clusters, notably among its ultraorthodox population. It was one of the first countries to enforce gathering limits, strict hotel quarantine and phone tracing of close contacts.

At the height of lockdowns, residents were not allowed to move more than 100m from their home. The country of just under nine million citizens now records between 10 and 20 cases a day.

Since coronavirus shut down Israel in March – with its unemployment rate peaking at 27% in late April – Sofer has been discussing the practicalities of direct flights with the national airline, El Al. He said the carrier, which had trial flights to Melbourne planned before the pandemic, had always considered Australian destinations potentially profitable, but less so than European and American routes. But with nowhere else to fly, Australia now made economic sense.

“[Officials in Israel] are now looking at giving a permit to those from better performing countries that they won’t need to isolate in Israel ... This is definitely the direction we’re talking about,” Sofer said.

He said it was “not a pipe dream” for the arrangement to be in place by December, and noted Australia would make “a very attractive destination at that time for Israelis as we go into our winter and you go into your summer. They’ll come and spend.”

Sofer said he hoped the arrangement would also lead to an overhaul of the visa regime for Israelis entering Australia, which is more onerous than for Australians making the return trip.

He said that as Israel was “about the distance limit” that most planes could fly from Australia towards Europe, there was potential for it to act as a Dubai or Doha-type hub between Australia and European first-mover countries.

“You can’t fly from Australia to Denmark in one flight. But an Australian can get on a direct flight to Tel Aviv, then on to Denmark, or other first movers countries, and not have to isolate anywhere ... It will take a long time before you can do that with a country like the UK,” he said.

SOURCE  






Rents fall as landlords struggle to fill vacant properties during Australia's coronavirus crisis

Tenants are in a better position to demand lower rents than they have been for years as the devastating impact of the coronavirus crisis leaves landlords desperate to fill vacant properties for “whatever they can get”.

Figures released on Wednesday showed that rents for houses in Sydney have fallen to their lowest point since 2013 thanks to the Covid-19 triple whammy of economic standstill, lower migration and a flood of former Airbnb lettings left empty by the wipeout in the travel industry.

It now costs on average $646 to rent a house in Australia’s biggest city, according to the latest figures from SQM Research, the cheapest level since 2013 and a 6.5% drop from a year ago. An average unit is $480 a week, the lowest since since May 2015.

Scott, a tenant who was looking to upgrade from his one-bedroom apartment in Rhodes in Sydney, managed to secure a 15% reduction in his rent from $540 to $460 a week after noticing that the asking price was falling in many apartments in his area.

“I was upfront with the real estate agent about the situation,” said Scott, an IT manager. “I linked them to various apartments within the same complex in the $450-480 range before reaching an agreement of $460 on a 12-month lease. It took about four rounds of negotiation to get to that point – the owner was in denial for a few weeks about the state of the rental market in Rhodes.

“There have been a few ridiculously cheap listings on three month leases – as low as $300 – just to get a tenant in.”

Rents have not fallen so quickly in Melbourne in the SQM data series. But tenants in Victoria who have struck agreements with their landlords to drop their rent amid the effects of coronavirus are paying 31% less on average, according to consumers affairs data revealed to a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday by attorney-general Jill Hennessy.

Jade Costello, co-founder of the agency Melbourne Rental Search, said she was seeing something “we’ve never seen before” with landlords willing to negotiate on the price upfront.

“You might see somewhere for $500 but the landlord will be willing to drop it because they just don’t want places to be vacant,” she said. “It’s a tenant’s market for sure. For the time we’re seeing tenants having the power of negotiation. They are going in with the rent they want to pay and landlords and agents, who used to have so many potential tenants to choose from, are saying whatever we can get we will take it.”

A couple were moving to Melbourne from interstate and were offered a place for $800 a week, she said. But they asked for a $20 reduction per week and it was granted straight away despite the listing having been up only a few days.

The potential for the weakness in the rental market to spread into the housing market remains significant. In the latest sign that prices are under pressure, the research firm CoreLogic said on Wednesday that it was suspending the daily online publication of its closely watched index of house values due to the Covid-19 crisis.

CoreLogic blamed “material reductions” in transactions which had in turn created “additional volatility in the daily reading”.

“A robust volume of timely sales evidence is a critical component of accurately estimating the value of residential properties,” it said. “The monthly results of the index will continue to be reported, but should be interpreted with some caution until transactional activity returns to more normal levels.”

Louis Christopher, founder of SQM, said the economic uncertainty, rising unemployment and closure of the international border due to the pandemic would continue to put pressure on the housing market.

Some investors might come back into the market despite falling rents, but there was a lot of doubt about how soon the normality could be restored after the current shock.

“Its hard to see it coming back to normal and hard to see a full V-shaped recovery in the economy,” he said.

“When is that international border opening again? You’re looking at zero net migration and with 170,000 dwellings being completed in Australia this year, the domestic demand is only 70-80,000 so without migration there’s a 100,000 surplus. That’s a reality for builders

SOURCE  






Peter Ridd’s Fight For Academic Freedom In Climate Science

This week the Federal Court appeal hearing took place for the case of Peter Ridd, Australian scientist, who was fired by his university after he had criticized Great Barrier Reef science.

Australian scientist and journalist Jennifer Marohasy is following the case closely and reports about the latest chapter in this sad saga:

To be truly curious we must confess our ignorance. The person who knows everything would have no reason to question, no need to experiment.

If they went in search of evidence, it could only be to confirm what they already knew to be true. Knowledge then would be something that conferred prestige, rather than something to be built upon.

It was because of Peter Ridd that I had to know if all the coral reefs off Bowen were dead, or not. I went looking for mudflats with a Gloucester Island backdrop after the first judgment was handed down, which was back last April 2019.

Of course, Peter was cleared by Judge Vasta in the Federal Court of all the misconduct charges that had resulted in his sacking. Yet the University appealed, and that appeal was heard this last week.

The university appealed because the modern Australian university can’t let a comprehensive win by a dissident professor go unchallenged.

The modern university is all about prestige, and they probably thought that eventually, Peter would run out of money, the money needed to defend himself in the courts. But they don’t know Peter, or the team backing him.

Yesterday Peter thanked both the Union and also the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) for their support.

Peter also wrote:

    The Federal Court appeal hearing is over, and the lawyers have done their work. We now wait, possibly for some months, for the three judges to make the decision. In essence the appeal was about defining the limits of academic freedom, and what a university scientist can say, and how he or she might be allowed to say it.

    For example, was I allowed to say that due to systemic lack of quality assurance, scientific results from Great Barrier Reef science institutions was untrustworthy?

    JCU said I was not, [not] even if I believed it to be true.
    I am certainly not ashamed of anything I said, how I said it, or of my motivation.

    Irrespective of the outcome of the appeal, I can now focus on other matters.

    First, I will work tirelessly to raise the problem of hopeless quality assurance of the science of the GBR, including the effect of climate change on the reef. I am hoping that the Senate Inquiry will come out of Covid hibernation soon. I will also be pushing AIMS to release their missing 15 years of coral growth data, and JCU to release its buried report on possible fraud at its coral reef centre. It is shameful the contempt with which these institutions treat the people of the region.

    Second, I will work with those agricultural organisations that show a determination to fight, which is sadly far from all of them, to demonstrate that the recent unfair regulations on Queensland farmers are based on shoddy science.

    Third: I will work to encourage governments at both state and federal level to force universities to behave like genuine universities and not the glossy public relations companies that they have become. Governments must mandate the introduction of genuine and enforceable guidelines on academic freedom such as those outlined in the Commonwealth governments (unimplemented) review by ex-High Court judge, Robert French.

My IPA colleague Gideon Rozner has an important article in The Australian newspaper that provides much more context. The piece includes comment that:

    The Ridd case has resonated around Australia — and has attracted significant attention worldwide — for good reason. It confirms what many people have suspected for a long time: Australia’s universities are no longer institutions encouraging the rigorous exercise of intellectual freedom and the scientific method in pursuit of truth. Instead, they are now corporatist bureaucracies that rigidly enforce an unquestioning orthodoxy and are capable of hounding out anyone who strays outside their rigid groupthink.

    JCU is attempting to severely limit the intellectual freedom of a professor working at the university to question the quality of scientific research conducted by other academics at the institution. In other words, JCU is trying to curtail a critical function that goes to the core mission of universities: to engage in free intellectual inquiry via free and open, if often robust, debate. It is an absurd but inevitable consequence of universities seeking taxpayer-funded research grants, not truth.

    Worse still, it is taxpayers who are funding JCU’s court case. Following a Freedom of Information request by the Institute of Public Affairs, the university was forced to reveal that up until July last year, it had already spent $630,000 in legal fees. It would be safe to assume that university’s legal costs would have at least doubled since that time. The barrister who JCU employed in the Federal Court this week was Bret Walker SC, one of Australia’s most eminent lawyers. Barristers of his standing can command fees of $20,000 to $30,000 a day. And all of this is happening at the same time as the vice-chancellor of the university, Sandra Harding — who earns at least $975,000 a year — complains about the impact of government funding cuts.

    While Australian taxpayers are funding the university’s efforts to shut down freedom of speech, Ridd’s legal costs are paid for by him, his wife and voluntary donations from the public. As yet, neither the federal nor the Queensland Education Minister has publicly commented on whether JCU is appropriately spending taxpayers’ money and, so far, both have refused to intervene in the case.

Gideon Rozner is tireless and has also put together a fascinating 3-part podcast providing background into Peter Ridd’s fight for academic freedom. He interviewed me for this series.

The saga will continue for the next few years, whatever the judges decide. As will my interest in all things to do with the Great Barrier Reef.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






4 June, 2020

Race to shore up La Trobe University as cash crisis bites

La Trobe University has over 30,000 students

La Trobe University is at risk of going broke in a matter of weeks unless it secures a financial lifeline from the banks and an agreement from staff to cut wages.

La Trobe's cash reserves have been reduced to the minimum required to meet a single month's operating expenses as it grapples with the loss of overseas students because of the coronavirus crisis, which has wiped $16 billion from Australia's university sector.

Vice-chancellor John Dewar, in a briefing to staff on Tuesday, said the university had “no money tucked down the back of the sofa’’ and that unless they agreed to a 10 per cent salary reduction, La Trobe would resort to forced redundancies.

La Trobe sources told The Age that ANZ bank had declined to extend by $100 million an unsecured credit facility it holds with the university and that the university had already sold $29 million in shares to find more cash.

Professor Dewar denied the university had been unsuccessful in securing credit and said negotiations were continuing with the banks. As part of these negotiations, “the banks are interested to see actions around balancing our books over time'', he said.

Asked whether the university was at risk of insolvency, Professor Dewar said: “The actions we are taking are about setting up the ongoing financial sustainability of the university.’’

The university’s chief financial officer, Mike Smith, told staff in a 90-minute webinar that La Trobe was facing a revenue slump of $400 million to $520 million between now and the end of 2021. To date, only $207 million in savings had been found to fill the anticipated funding hole, he said.

Mr Smith said that in the absence of the proposed wage reduction, 450 positions would be made redundant.

La Trobe’s 2019 calendar accounts tabled in Parliament on Tuesday showed that before the pandemic interrupted the international student market, the university’s finances were already deteriorating.

Last year’s trading surplus of $19.4 million was down from $30 million recorded the previous year, and $75 million in borrowings for new student accommodation had trebled the debt-to-equity ratio.

A quarter of the university’s 2019 revenue came from overseas students.

Hannah Robert, a law lecturer who helped organise a Monday-night meeting of staff to discuss the university’s financial predicament, said the situation was difficult.

“The picture the CFO paints is dire. "I have been on boards before and if there is uncertainty over whether you will have cash reserves for a month's operational expenditure that is really scary.

“But I don't think it is fair to ask ordinary staff to carry so much of the losses through pay cuts.

"The fact that the federal government is hanging universities out to dry like this when we are the biggest service export industry in the country, it is just unbelievable. You have got a serious prospect of universities going under.”

Ms Robert said there was anger in Tuesday’s meeting at the refusal of university management to entertain larger salary cuts for executives. Professor Dewar has accepted a 20 per cent cut. He was last year paid between $970,000 and $980,000.

La Trobe staff have already rejected one offer under the Australian University Jobs Protection Framework, a variation to the university’s enterprise bargaining agreement negotiated with the National Tertiary Education Union.

Under a revised offer, staff would receive a sliding pay cut, depending on their classification, reduce annual leave to 10 days and receive no pay increases until 2022. There would be involuntary redundancies in “very limited circumstances.’’

NTEU members will vote on the proposal this week and non-union members next week, with the result to be known on June 17, subject to Fair Work approval.

Universities have received no federal government financial assistance to weather the COVID-19 fallout and cannot access the JobKeeper scheme. The umbrella group Universities Australia said new four-year modelling showed that universities were facing a combined revenue loss of up to $4.8 billion in 2020 and, at worst, a $16 billion hit by 2023.

In his address to staff, Professor Dewar quoted from a Melbourne University research paper showing that of all Australian universities, La Trobe and the University of Canberra were at greatest risk from the drop-off in international students.

“La Trobe is one of the two most financially vulnerable universities in this group,’’ said Centre for the Study of Higher Education honorary fellows Ian Marshman and Frank Larkins. “Its available reserves are not sufficient to cover any of the predicted loss situations.’’

Higher education expert Andrew Norton, of the Australian National University, said La Trobe was in a “wobbly situation’’ before the pandemic because it was struggling to attract domestic students and had lost prospective students to free TAFE courses.

Professor Norton raised the possibility of a federal government bailout, saying there was provision in the Higher Education Funding Act for the Commonwealth to advance money to universities against future years' grants. He also suggested the Victorian government could become a guarantor on the university’s loans, to ease the concerns of banks.

Professor Dewar said the university’s problems would not be fixed by the banks alone. “The banks are willing to lend to us and we are pursuing additional debt. However, this would be a short-term loan; borrowing in the longer term is not the solution to the financial situation we face.”

SOURCE  






Paper bags are back

Woolworths shoppers across the country will now be able to carry out their groceries in paper bags for the first time in four decades.

From today, all Woolies stores will offer customers the option of a paper bag option alongside reusable carry bags.

The old-school bags are being rolled out after a successful trial in 20 stores late last year and to meet increased demand from customers for easily recyclable bag options.

In decades gone by, paper bags were a common sight in Australian supermarkets, but they haven’t been widely available in most stores for around 40 years.

The new bags are made from 70 per cent recycled paper and will be sold for 20 cents each, while Woolies’ existing reusable plastic bags, foldable bags and Bag for Good options will also still be available at the checkout.

They will be able to hold up to 6kg of grocery items per bag, and are made from responsibly sourced paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

There are plans to offer the paper bags to online customers for home delivery and pick-up in the future.

Woolworths Supermarkets managing director Claire Peters said the bags were already proving to be a hit with shoppers. “While the vast majority of our customers bring their own bags, we know customers sometimes drop by a store unplanned or can forget their bags when they’re on the run,” Ms Peters said.

“For some time, customers have told us they’d like the option of a strong paper bag option, so we’re pleased to now offer that choice at our checkouts, alongside our existing reusable plastic bags.

“These paper bags resonated really well with customers when we trialled them in 20 stores last year and we expect to see a positive response from the customers who’ve been asking for this option nationwide.”

Meanwhile, each Bag for Good costs 99 cents but can be replaced free of charge if it is damaged, no matter when it was purchased.

The proceeds from those bag sales go to the Woolworths Junior Landcare Grants program.

Woolies’ reusable bags cost 15 cents each, are made from at least 80 per cent recycled plastics and can be returned to the store, along with other soft plastics, for recycling in REDcycle bins.

And in another major bag shake-up, shoppers will have an eco-friendly alternative for holding their fruit and veg, with reusable nylon plastic bags launching today.

They will cost $4 for a three-pack, are compatible with Woolies checkout scales and can be found in the fresh produce section at all Woolworths Metros and selected Woolies stores.

Woolworths began phasing out single-use plastic shopping bags in 2018, and the company claims since then, more than six billion of them have been removed from circulation, with just 15 per cent of customers now purchasing new bags when doing their grocery shop.

SOURCE  






Quad bikes now effectively banned by onerous safety regulations

A blow to the farming sector

Honda announced it would stop selling quad bikes in Australia from October next year because of the Federal Government standards, which require all quad bikes to be fitted with rollover protection at point of sale by October 2021.

Earlier this year, Polaris and Yamaha said they would also stop selling quad bikes in Australia if the regulation did not change.

The Government introduced the new regulations last year in response to an ACCC report outlining the risk of quad bikes rolling over and crushing riders.

Under the rules, by October this year quad bikes will also have to come with a warning sticker about the degree of slope at which they overturn.

ACCC deputy chair Mick Keogh said the decision by the three major manufacturers was unfortunate.

"We had to look at the safety of these vehicles, the continuing deaths that are occurring, and the injuries and take whatever steps that were practically useful in reducing those," Mr Keogh said.

The ACCC said nine people had died in quad bike and side-by-side related accidents in Australia so far this year, including two deaths in Central Victoria last month.

In a statement, Honda said the Australian Government standards could not be met by any quad bike in the market today.

"It's unlikely to be met by anything in the future and forces Honda to exit the ATV [all-terrain vehicle] category," Honda said.

But Mr Keogh said that did not accord with conversations the ACCC has had with the market.

"We've been advised by a number of manufacturers that they do not have any perceived difficulties associated with meeting the requirements of the standard, so what manufacturers do is up to them," Mr Keogh said.

Honda has been critical of the standards since they were announced last year arguing mandatory helmets, rider training, and banning children under 16 from riding adult bikes would be more effective.

Mr Keogh said that although helmets and training were important, the ACCC report found good evidence that rollover protection saved lives.

"We conducted a very detailed examination, including using expert advice from engineers … and looking in great detail at the statistics associated with fatalities on quad bikes," Mr Keogh said.

"By far the biggest issue from our observation was the fact that these vehicles were inherently unstable, and even very experienced riders that just happened to have that one unfortunate situation seemed to be over-represented in fatalities."

Mr Keogh said there had been no fatalities associated with bikes fitted with rollover protection.

In a statement made earlier this year, Polaris said it would be transitioning to the side-by-side market due to a decreasing demand for quad bikes.

Mr Keogh said that while there was some evidence that side-by-side bikes were less likely to tip over they were still dangerous.


A side-by-side farm vehicle can carry two people

The Victorian Automobile Chamber of Commerce (VACC) has raised concerns that motorbike dealers in regional areas would not be adequately compensated for losing one of their biggest-selling items.

"A lot of their business revolves around the sale of [quad bikes]," VACC motorcycle industry division manager Michael McKenna said.

"At the moment we are seeing really good sales in those products. But … we know it to be farmers and dealers stocking up on these products because they will become more and more scarce as we move forward."

Mr McKenna said dealership owners had bought or built businesses based on quad bikes adding significantly to their business model.

However, he said they were concerned side-by-side vehicles, touted as the replacement product for quad bikes, would not bring in the same amount of income.

Mr McKenna predicted they would sell fewer units as side-by-side vehicles were more expensive than quad bikes.

"We may see a bit of an upsurge initially because farmers have had a good season. But again, [dealers] are only one bad season away from the breadline. And they've been there for quite a while."

SOURCE  






Australia's great recession escapes

Australia has escaped a technical recession three times during a 29-year run of growth and avoided it 20 times since GDP figures were first tracked in 1960.

A technical recession, defined as two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, is being forecast by all the big four bank economists, who have factored in a negative June quarter from the COVID-19 restrictions.

However, there are some who expect Australia can replicate the luck – or good economic management – it had in December 2000, during the dotcom crash; December 2008, during the global financial crisis; and March 2011, as a result of the Queensland floods.

Deutsche Bank chief economist Philip O'donaghoe is expecting a 0.1 per cent growth figure in the March quarter, which would bring up Australia's 21st escape from technical recession.

"I don't think the 20 times we escaped recession is just luck," he said. "It's good economic management and governments and banks being in a good financial position."

The last negative quarter in 2011 was due to the weather, but avoiding a recession during the financial crisis was purely down to economic management.

"The stimulus package in the first quarter of 2009 after a negative quarter in December 2008 was entirely designed to ensure a positive March quarter," Mr O'donaghoe said.

He said the Morrison government has had less time to respond to the shock of COVID-19 than the Rudd government had for the GFC.

In 2000, the shock of the dotcom crash and the introduction of the GST sent economic growth in the September quarter slumping to just 0.2 per cent, before the December quarter registered -0.4 per cent.

But before that there hadn't been a negative quarter of growth since the country's last recession of 1991, where the June and September quarters took a -1.3 per cent and -0.1 per cent hit respectively.

During the 1980s, there was a smattering of negative quarters - in 1989 there was a one-off -0.3 per cent hit in the December quarter, while in 1985 the December quarter took a -0.3 per cent hit, and in June 1986 a -0.2 per cent hit. But none of them ended up in recession.

In March 1974 - widely regarded as the end of the oil embargo, which led to oil prices rising 400 per cent - Australia's March quarter flatlined at 0.0 per cent, and was followed up with a 0.2 per cent decline in the June quarter. But at 0.0 per cent economists do not consider that part of a technical recession.

"If we get a zero in the March quarter this time, we will be saying we have avoided a technical recession," Mr O'donoghoe said.

Bank of America is another of the five economists - out of 24 - forecasting a positive number in March.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





3 June 2020

People hear what they want to hear

They hear what she said as about police violence in Australia.  But she was not talking about that.  She was saying that Australians don't know much about the situation IN AMERICA

A clip from The Today Show has gone viral after an Australian reporter claimed that Aussies don't have the same understanding of a "history of police violence" as Americans do.

The comment came as the reporter thanked a black man for speaking to her during the protests — saying: "I really appreciate you giving your perspective mate, because people in Australia don’t have the understanding of the history of police killings and things here."

But Australians were quick to point out that, in reality, we have a long, tragic and ongoing history of police violence against Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in Australia.

SOURCE  





Youngest coronavirus vitim  did NOT in fact have the virus

The family of Nathan Turner are demanding an apology from the government after the coal miner was declared 'Australia's youngest COVID-19 victim' only for an autopsy to reveal he didn't have the virus.

The 30-year-old was found dead at his home in Blackwater, in regional Queensland, by his fiancee Simone Devon last Tuesday.

Queensland Health said Mr Turner died from coronavirus in a case that puzzled doctors given he had not left his small town since February.

Health authorities had been investigating whether a nurse from Rockhampton was the source of his infection. She had bizarrely driven in a 400km round trip to Blackwater to 'watch the sunset'.

But on Monday, in a shocking twist, an autopsy found Mr Turner did not have the deadly virus. 

Mr Turner's friends have created a Change.org petition calling on Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and chief health officer Jeannette Young to apologise to his family and the community for creating 'chaos and panic'.

SOURCE  






Listen to Adam Smith, not the ABC

Freedom is something you either believe in or you do not

James Allan

There’s a common misunderstanding by many of those on the left side of politics about many on the right side when it comes to big business.  The mistaken idea is that conservatives are largely in lock-step with the big end of town; what big business wants conservatives want. Wrong! Go back to Adam Smith, he of the invisible hand and the power of the specialisation of labour.  Adam Smith said, and I paraphrase, that if you put a group of businessmen (virtually all were men back then, so no PC quibbles please) in a room together by themselves, you will soon have a conspiracy against the public. Big business dislikes competition as much as the political Left dislikes it. The big business end of town does best with high entry costs and loads of regulation, the gamut of things that gives you crony capitalism.  But that’s precisely what most of us on the right don’t want. We want lots of competition. We want creative destruction and businesses that don’t adapt going bust. Basically, we don’t have much time for the big end of town. For us the key is competition and flexibility.

And boy does recent experience in Australia bear out that view of the uselessness of much of big business. We’ve gone from the cheapest electricity in the democratic world when I got here in 2005 to the most expensive and most of big business rabbits on stupidly about the worth of renewables. They parrot every idiocy going, the main competition for them these days being about which big business can better virtue-signal to the woke brigades on social media. Meanwhile, many HR departments appear to have become far too internally powerful – imposing hiring based on the worst sort of identity politics; shunning unvarnished merit as the only criterion (and even some big law firms have taken to masking from which university law graduates are applying, on the moronic premise that all unis are equal, even while senior partners brag on business cards about their masters of law degrees from Harvard, not Arkansas et al.); and buying into the whole identity politics agenda. Or look at how pathetically big business in Australia supported the Howard government’s Work Choices legislation while the unions ran smear campaigns on TV against it. Totally useless they were, and still are for that matter. This might surprise you until you realise that big business, more than small and medium competitors, can cope better with a super-regulated labour market (Australia is ranked at about the world’s 93rd least-flexible labour market, so pretty much more sclerotic than any competitor’s).

And don’t get me started on these Business Council-type groups supposedly representing the big end of town. You can predict their druthers before you hear them. Raise GST. (No, it never goes down and government just gets bigger.) Pile in on renewables. (Why? In a world where China is building a new coal-fired power station every week and the US has pulled out of the Paris Agreement nothing we do does anything at all, other than impoverish us. Oh, and make life tougher on smaller competitors.) Virtue-signal and cave in as corporate sponsors. Okay, maybe, just maybe, they’ll suggest some trifling little tangential tweak to weekend labour costs, as though that means anything in the big picture.

Adam Smith had it right over two centuries ago.

Want to know someone’s present-day attitude to issues related to freedom of the individual? Then look at their attitudes in the past. This lockdown has imposed an unprecedented level of infringements on personal liberty. As I argued last week, and have for some time now, I think it’s been a public policy disaster. The politicians panicked based on bad models and a fear-mongering press. But leave the merits of that debate aside. Ask yourself what sort of politicians might have stood up for individual freedom, the way the governor of Florida did (who has massively outperformed the governor of New York, though you’ll never hear that on the ABC). Or that the governor of Georgia did (ditto). A month and a half ago both ended the lockdowns in their states and stood up to a press that went crazy and claimed they were sacrificing the old, deaths would move out of control and that only lockdowns worked. Wrong, wrong and wrong (as a matter of fact, not modelling). My point, though, is that that takes deep personal conviction and core beliefs that individuals should make these choices and that freedom matters.

Compare Mr Morrison, our prime minister. Remember back when some on the right side of politics were trying to repeal our s.18C hate speech laws? ScoMo back then said this was a third-order issue. Fighting for free speech ‘won’t create one job’, he said, nor reduce unemployment. (Not like lockdowns, one is tempted to reply.) But my point is that if you are not a person with a deep conviction about freedom your chances of being over-swayed by models, doctors, a fear porn press and the rest are going to be higher. Principles matter. If you want to see someone’s commitment to liberty, look to see what it was in the past. For our Coalition government, or at least for a preponderance of its MPs, that commitment is pathetically weak. We’re seeing that right now with the disgraceful lockdown over-reaction.

Back to the press and especially our ABC. I don’t trust whole swathes of what it reports. How many readers would have learned from the ABC, or the mainstream US media for that matter, that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has probably mishandled the corona virus worse than any politician in the world? Cuomo, panicked about hospital bed shortages, ordered all sorts of old people who had tested positive for the virus to be sent back to nursing homes. Thousands of them. This saw deaths in the nursing homes explode. It’s why near on half of New York’s corona deaths (these being not that far off half of US corona deaths) were in nursing homes.

Florida’s governor, by the way, resisted doing this. And the shortage of hospital beds never eventuated. It never came close. The Navy hospital ship that President Trump sent up sat empty, as did many, many hospital beds.

But the ABC, wrongly, labels Trump’s corona performance as bad. On any comparative criterion with most any European country that’s blatantly false. Take out New York, and Cuomo’s decisions, and the US performance was very good. When it comes to Trump, or Tony Abbott, or anything that goes against the in-house ABC worldview, you simply cannot trust this billion-dollar-a-year broadcasting behemoth that all of us are forced to finance.

SOURCE  






Push to bring back Australia's lost oyster reefs

This is one environmental progran that makes sense -- if the costs can be curtailed

Australia's southern states had their own version of a Great Barrier Reef until it was erased almost entirely by the middle of last century.

Before European settlement, the flat oyster reef ecosystem that dominated southern waters lay like a wreath around the coastline in bays, inlets and harbours. But with the oyster beds harvested for food or broken up to be used in cement, these reefs were made functionally extinct.

Now scientists, recreational fishers, conservationists and local governments are calling for government funding to bring the reefs back. They say previous public investment in reef restoration has exceeded expectations and expanding it will be a cheap, quick and effective regional jobs stimulus.

What's more, bringing back an ecosystem from extinction to the point where it could regrow itself would be a world-first, James Cook University marine biologist Ian McLeod said.

"The reefs act as a catalyst for a new food chain … [they] support lots of fish and all sorts of marine life, seagrass, worms and crabs," Dr McLeod said.

"It's surprising how well things have been going" with the handful of installations already established, he said. Reefs have been rebuilt over recent years in places such as Victoria's Port Phillip Bay, South Australia's Gulf St Vincent, Western Australia's Oyster Harbour and Port Stephens in NSW.

Oysters, and the mussels that proliferate among them, cannot naturally recolonise without help. Since their natural habitat was removed, bays have silted over and they need a bedrock to cling on. However, it's an easy fix.

The only requirement is some quarried limestone, concrete or compressed old shells harvested from restaurants to serve as a bedrock, seeded with oyster sprat and dropped overboard.

The Nature Conservancy is leading the campaign for funding. With $100 million, 60 reefs – about a third of the natural range of shellfish reefs – could be brought back, generating 850 jobs in construction, fisheries and service industries, it said.

"The reefs come back like a miracle ecosystem and provide a huge environmental benefit," said Nature Conservancy Australia director Rich Gilmore.

"There's huge water quality benefits. Each oyster filters about 150 litres of water a day. And then there's the fish benefits too. One hectare of oyster reef can create 375 kilograms of fish a year."

Mr Gilmore said the pilot reef installations had met with "no community opposition, but have overwhelming community support".

Recreational Fishing Alliance of NSW president Stan Konstantaras said restoring oyster reefs was a "no-brainer".

"More habitat equals more fish," Mr Konstantaras said. "Places like Botany Bay have suffered huge amounts of habitat degradation … everywhere has been modified by development. Every estuary on the coast would benefit from having an oyster reef."

Dr McLeod said the world was at "peak oyster industry" when Australia was settled, with vast oyster industries in New York and London quickly harvesting all their native shellfish beds for food.

The same thing happened to Australia's flat oyster, which once flourished from Sydney to Tasmania and Perth, and the Sydney Rock oyster, which lives from around Noosa to Sydney. Limestone oyster reefs in bays and estuaries were also busted up and hauled ashore once Australia had exhausted its land-based limestone resources to make mortar and cement.

By the time the Second World War rolled around, the flat oyster reefs were gone.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here




2 June, 2020

Australia set to be part of Trump's G7 expansion

Australia is poised to join the world's most exclusive political organisation after US President Donald Trump called for an expansion of the Group of 7 nations without China in an attempt to build greater cooperation over restoring the global economy following the coronavirus pandemic.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has discussed the prospect of joining the G7 with a senior Trump administration official, senior government sources say, and is expecting a formal invitation in the coming days that could further test Australian relations with China.

The offer to Australia will come at a politically fraught moment with the US President facing a domestic crisis at home as violent riots rage across the country sparked by the death of handcuffed African-American man George Floyd while in Minneapolis police custody. At least 25 cities in the United States were under curfew on Saturday night as police cars were set ablaze, windows were smashed and stores were ransacked in the riots.

Mr Trump is also facing criticism on the global stage after he announced over the weekend he was severing all ties with the World Health Organisation over its handling of the coronavirus despite Australia and the European Union successfully establishing an independent review into the UN body's performance.

The move to expand the G7 but exclude China will also be seen as an attempt to sideline Beijing at a time when countries want it to fully co-operate with the review, which was established by a World Health Assembly motion in May.

After German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated she was hesitant to travel to the US in June for a physical G7 meeting, the US President revealed he would postpone the event until September and push for an expansion of the group. He singled out Australia, Russia, South Korea and India as possible additions. Mr Trump said the G7 - which includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States - was a "very outdated group of countries".

A spokesman for the government confirmed Mr Morrison had been in contact with the Trump administration about a G7 invitation.

"The G7 has been a topic of recent high-level exchanges. Australia would welcome an official invitation," the spokesman said. "Strengthening international cooperation among like-minded countries is valued at a time of unprecedented global challenges. The Prime Minister attended the 2019 G7 summit as a guest of President Macron.”

The invitation to Australia is another example of Mr Morrison looking to play a larger role on the world stage, after the Australian PM was invited by French president Emmanuel Macron a G7 meeting last year. Mr Morrison and Minister for Foreign Affairs Marise Payne have also been looking to use Australia's suppression of the coronavirus to push its diplomatic weight, including in its calls for the independent inquiry.

US Health And Human Services secretary Alex Azar told federal government officials last week "everyone wants to be Australia" when discussing its approach to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to senior government sources.

Lowy Institute executive director Michael Fullilove said Australia should pursue the opportunity to join the G7, saying it was outdated and needed reform. But he cautioned it did come at a sensitive moment with Mr Trump attempting to exclude China and sideline the world health body.

"There's a coherent argument to be made to include Australia because we have the 13th or 14th largest economy in the world and we plug a gap in the G7 membership because it is so Europe focused," Mr Fullilove said.

"It is in Australia's interests to pursue this opening, because as an organisation the 'G7-plus' would have more heft than the G20 and enables us to pursue our case and interests at the very top table.

"But Australia's interests would be better served if China were included and Russia excluded. We don't want it to be a 'China containment club'. Russia was excluded from the G8 for a reason - that being its annexation of Crimea."

A DFAT spokesman said Australia shared some of the US government's concerns about the WHO's response to the global pandemic, but its funding for the world health body would continue.

"Australia deeply values our longstanding cooperation with the US on international public health issues," the DFAT spokesman said.

"We note that, while the US has announced it will cut WHO funding, it has committed to redirect it to other international health initiatives."

Mr Morrison also announced on Sunday he would be holding a virtual meeting this week with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

SOURCE  







Extreme feminist Clementine Ford shouldn’t be censored

Leave political censorship to the Left

Joe Hildebrand

There is an old fable of various forms, known most famously as “The Frog and the Scorpion”.

The scorpion, who cannot swim, asks the frog to carry him across a river. The frog politely declines because, well, it’s a scorpion.

But the scorpion reasons with the frog. “If I sting you we both die,” he says. “So why on earth would I do that?”

The logic is inarguable and so the frog agrees. Then, when they are halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog and they both sink to their deaths.

“Why did you do that?” asks the frog with his dying breath.

The scorpion shrugs. “It’s in my nature.”

The same might be said of Clementine Ford, a firebrand feminist who seems programmed to self-destruct at every opportunity – usually in an attempt to destroy someone else in the process.

Strangely, perhaps even refreshingly, she does not present as a martyr. Indeed she often seems surprised when her fury implodes. She is like an out-of-control heat-seeking missile that lands upon a target only to realise too late that it is the end of them both.

I have been targeted by Clementine on more than one occasion and it is both a derailing and damaging experience.

The first time was several years ago when she generated a Twitter storm around her enthusiastic use of the C-bomb, a word I – like her – have never had a problem with.

The bizarre part was that while she was flying thick and fast with it in the public exchanges she was privately messaging me joking about how silly the whole thing was.

Much like the frog, I mistakenly thought we were friends.

This was underscored by the fact that we had a friend in common, someone very dear to me. We even bumped into each other at his wedding a year or two ago and exchanged cheery hellos.

I was therefore a little surprised but not particularly concerned when Clementine pitched a column to Ten Daily, my own network’s news website, to rebut some comments I’d made on Studio 10. She would not, she assured the editor, be disrespectful.

Indeed, the same editor ran the pitch by me as a matter of courtesy and of course I did not object – censorship is hardly in my nature – however that doesn’t mean I was happy with what was to follow.

By way of background, there had been a horrible killing in Melbourne and the Victoria Police response had been to say that this was “absolutely about men’s behaviour”. I described the comment as “nonsensical”. It quickly emerged there were far more salient factors in the case, including homelessness and mental illness. Maleness seemed the least of the accused’s problems.

But let us leave that to one side.

Clementine’s opening line was “Joe Hildebrand is trending again” and every part of it was directed specifically towards me. To be fair, the piece was not disrespectful – at least not by Clementine’s colourful standards – but it was certainly personal.

And the vitriol, abuse and threats it provoked from her followers was both limitless and acute.

Last week it was Clementine Ford who was trending and, as she well knows, this is rarely a good thing. She had tweeted the words “Honestly, the coronavirus isn’t killing men fast enough” and the response was everything you might expect.

Of course, medically speaking, she could not have been more wrong. In fact the coronavirus kills far more men than women and kills them quickly – as has been repeatedly reported.

Perhaps Clementine was aware of this and joking about it. Let us hope not.

And of course it is a pretty dumb thing to say, but the whole “kill all men” routine is a pretty staple part of Clementine’s act. I’d be less surprised if I’d found out the guy who ate the bat in Wuhan was Ozzy Osbourne.

And of course it is tempting to say that karma is a bi**h, another word which Clementine has become familiar within the sewer of social media, where she is both violator and victim.

But if you believe in freedom of expression you either support it or you don’t. You either believe in the right to be provocative and profane no matter how much it offends or up-ends you or you believe in censorship and sanitisation.

Here in Australia we have no explicit document or law to uphold that right – it exists only in the hearts of those who believe in it. And holding on to that belief is often tough and ugly and agonisingly frustrating.

There is nothing more hypocritical than screaming thought police trying to deplatform free discourse while defending the most appalling abuse. And there is nothing more nauseating than people who claim to be on the side of tolerance and compassion spitting out the most violent language imaginable – including threats of violence itself.

But calling for Clementine Ford to be shut down or sacked is hardly the answer. If Melbourne City Council wishes to be associated with her, that is their right and voters can deliver their verdict on it at the next election.

More importantly, if Clementine herself wants to be associated with the extreme and often ridiculous views she puts on social media that should be up to her, not the government or the Twitter mob.

Deplatforming people isn’t just a pastime of the new authoritarian left, it is their very ideology – a backwards and bone-chilling belief that only certain views should be permitted.

Cancel culture for them is not just a weapon, it is a world view, and it is a view that must be utterly rejected by anyone who values diversity and liberty.

So when the moderate left or libertarians or conservatives seek to censor the censors they are not using the woke left’s weapons against them, they are becoming them. Idiotic and even evil opinions need to be exposed, not expunged.

There is a big difference between shutting down debate and winning the debate and it is those of us in the rational world who are supposed to understand that.

Yes, it is frustrating, but frustration is the price of freedom. We fight for those we love but we must still protect those we hate.

And that means taking the scorpion on our back even though we know we might get stung.

SOURCE  





Morrison government announces return to mutual obligation for jobseekers

The federal government has announced a “limited capacity” return to mutual obligation requirements for Australia’s welfare recipients from next week.

The employment minister, Michaelia Cash, announced mid-May that mutual obligations for jobseekers, which had been put on pause at the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, would be further suspended until 1 June, after which a three-phase reintroduction would commence.

After declining to put a timeframe on the restart of the system, which forces unemployed people receiving benefits to show proof of jobseeking efforts to continue receiving their payments, Cash, along with the social services minister, Anne Ruston, announced stage one, through a press release, on Sunday afternoon.

“Mutual obligation requirements remain suspended until Monday 8 June 2020 to ensure job seekers and employment service providers are given time to prepare for the new arrangements,” the release said.

“From Tuesday 9 June 2020, job seekers will be required to undertake at least one appointment with their employment services provider, which can be done online or over the phone. During the initial period following the reintroduction of mutual obligations, suspensions and financial penalties will not apply to job seekers who do not meet this requirement.

“The government strongly encourages job seekers to maintain contact with their employment services provider at this time to ensure they are aware of opportunities available for training, upskilling or employment.”

Exemptions can be applied for, for those judged to have “special circumstances”.

In an analysis, ANZ found Australian job ads fell by more than 50% over April as the official unemployment rate rose to 6.2%, after 600,000 Australians reported losing their jobs as the nation was locked down.

Unofficially, the unemployment rate is thought to be much closer to 10% after almost 500,000 Australians dropped out of the labour force figures – meaning they stopped looking for work altogether.

As the federal government pushes to reopen the nation, and turns its focus to the economy in the face of a global depression, the stimulus measures, including a Covid-19 supplement used to double the unemployment payment, and the jobkeeper wage subsidy, are increasingly under the microscope.

Both are due to end in late September, although pressure is mounting to increase the jobseeker unemployment rate permanently, above the $40-a-day Newstart rate.

So far the government has not shifted. But the prime minister, Scott Morrison, did mention a return to mutual obligations as part of his National Press Club address on resetting the economy last week.

“We must always ensure that there is the opportunity in Australia for those who have a go, to get a go,” he said. “This is our Australian way.

 “Access to essential services, incentive for effort, respect for the principles of mutual obligation. Ensuring equal opportunities for those in rural and regional communities to be the same as those in our cities and our suburbs.

 “All translated into policies that seek not to punish those who have success, but devise ways for others to achieve it.”

Business groups had welcomed the suspension of mutual obligations during the pandemic lockdown, as it meant their members would not have to deal with countless job applications for positions which either did not exist, or which applicants did not meet the requirements for.

No further detail was given on when the next two stages of the mutual obligation requirement return. Phase two includes applying for work while in phase three, penalties – the suspension of payments – will recommence.

Labor has not yet finalised its position on what it believes the jobseeker payment should be beyond September other than it wants a higher rate than the previous Newstart payment offered.

The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, said he did not believe $40 a day was enough to live on but he also didn’t think the unemployment payment should stay at $550 a week.

“Now, I don’t think it should be kept at the level where it is, where jobseeker is higher than the age pension,” he said on 18 May. “That’s not a reasonable proposition. But it is the case, I think, that jobseeker shouldn’t go back down to $40 a day.”

SOURCE  






The decline of universities, where students are customers and academics itinerant workers

Donna Tartt’s much-loved novel A Secret History paints a classic university life. All white clapboard and ivied brickwork, it’s a world of eccentric talents, intense relationships, lunatic japes, glorious freedoms and scholarship of unparalleled autonomy.

These kids, drawn from Tartt’s own college experience in 1980s America, are the wealthy elite. Here in the antipodes, though, through the mid-century, university was a similarly immersive and life-changing few years. For some it became a lifetime, which was possible because it was free. These were teaching institutions, dedicated to cultivation of the mind. There were hurdles to be leapt, but money wasn’t one of them.

Now, bloated by a 20-year addiction to immense cash flow, glamorous buildings, corporate values, industry partnerships and a teaching model that is threadbare at best, our universities flap about like overstuffed geese on a deflating life raft. No one knows the future. Can these gross creatures even swim? Perhaps now is the moment for revolution.

Last year, UNSW responded to falling enrolments with a proposal to lower entry requirements. With an estimated 80 per cent of teaching now casualised, academics have become itinerant workers. Students have become customers. Teachers report widespread pressure to pass low-grade students but cannot speak of it, fearing reprisal. This too is indicative, since the whole point of tenure was to guarantee free speech.

Now, a leaked email shows that Cambridge University, wholly online since March, proposes to keep all lectures strictly digital for a year. That’s Cambridge, mind, the ultimate in physical branding, whose ancient colleges create their own language and mythology – the stone stairs, the double oak, the cloisters, the sacred lawns. Some “small groups” may be allowed. But imagine this place, this dreaming-spires town, all but empty of undergraduate life, of student pranks, punting on the Cam and of cycling, black-clad dons.

There’s no talk of dropping fees. Anyone who’s been alive these past four months knows that their gut-wisdom is correct: online teaching is no substitute for the real thing. Student attention wanders. Interrogation is difficult. Box-ticking becomes routine. Lectures, live-streamed but also recorded, can be watched by a student in the bath, in the pub, high. The exam is open-book, or open friend, or open adjacent expert. Key learning outcomes? Tick. Content? Pah.

As soon as the stuff goes online, meanwhile, the academics sign their content over to university ownership. Then, because the lectures can be rerun endlessly, for nothing, the creative mind itself becomes dispensable – casualised or dumped.

Casualisation means your law tutor or biomed lecturer, who’s spent perhaps 10 years earning a doctorate, is appointed for 10 or 13 weeks at a time, usually with just a few days’ notice. They get maybe $120 to deliver a lecture that could take three or four days to prepare. They receive half the super payments of proper staff, no holiday or sick pay. And if, for any reason, enrolment falls the course is summarily axed. No new shoes this semester, kiddies.

Yet the vice-chancellor must be paid. True, some of Australia’s vice-chancellors have taken special COVID pay cuts bigger than my total five-year income. Still, last year, the average Australian vice-chancellor salary hit $982,000. Sydney University vice-chancellor Michael Spence, declining the COVID cut, raked in $1.53 million last year (including non-monetary benefits worth $613,000).

Plus there are all those deputy and pro-vice chancellors to pay. And the billions to spend on campus development. No wonder universities can’t afford actual teachers. No wonder they must exert take-one-for-the-team-type pressure on the few academics who remain to accept pay cuts or job losses.

The fees, though, stand. Why might students be prepared to keep paying tens or even hundreds of thousands for an education that, like candy floss, disappears before you swallow it?

Because of the ticket. Because, explains Silicon Valley guru and New York University marketing academic Scott Galloway, content is irrelevant. It’s “not education. It’s credentialing”.

“I’ll have 170 kids in my brand-strategy class in the fall,” says Galloway. “We charge $7000 per student. That’s $1.2 million for 12 nights of me in a classroom – $100,000 a night. The gross margins on that offering are between 92 and 96 [percentage] points. There’s no other product in the world that’s been able to sustain 90-plus points of margin for this long at this high of a price point. Ferrari can’t do it. Hermes can’t do it. Apple can’t do it.”

This is possible because we’ve allowed our conception of higher education to morph from mind cultivation to a tool in the great global race to … what, exactly? I mean, what now?

The world has changed. Futurists such as Umair Haque (The Long Collapse) and Nassim Nicholas Taleb argue that the pandemic is not a blip but a portent of the new fragile. Fragile economies, fragile ecosystems, frequent “fat-tail” ruin events; it’s a world where the apparently unassailable – America, universities, airports – suddenly totter. Why? Too much globalism, too much connectivity. Too much attitude. We’ve been partying too long, too hard. And universities have been partying harder than most.

Yet never have we needed universities more. As Trump’s America shows, a system that restricts genuine education to the wealthy elite must eventually drown in its own ignorance. To think, as our governments clearly do, that education is about individual career trajectories is reductivist nonsense. Educating the educable, especially in the history of ideas, is about the culture we make. It is our best defence against world collapse. Education is survival.

Which is why hard-head countries such as Germany still offer free university education. It’s not altruism. It’s political recognition of the huge economic, cultural and wellbeing benefits from nurturing otherwise undiscovered young minds. Germany’s free universities regularly figure in the world’s top 100, so there’s no sacrifice of standards; entry is competitive, but on intellect not wealth. Still almost a third of Germans attend college, their rektors (or vice-chancellors) are paid about a quarter of our average and their institutions will survive COVID relatively unscarred.

But there’s also this. What’s wrong with a little modesty? Does anyone really need the huge status, the expensive toys, the win-at-all-costs mentality? Maybe a smaller, gentler life and smaller, more real institutions could bring back a world that’s nice to inhabit. Calling to the revolution: will you be long?

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here





1 June, 2020

Pubs and clubs allowed 500 people, beauty salons open and restaurants and cafes back with a bang from Monday

Life in Australia will get considerably easier from Monday as many states including NSW, Victoria and South Australia cut their coronavirus restrictions.

Pubs across Sydney will reopen as the customer limit is raised from 10 to 50 and Victorians can have small house parties of 20 friends.

Very big venues like RSL clubs may even be able to fit 500 people in by using a loophole spreading the 50 people across multiple bars and bistros.

Bigger weddings and funerals will also be allowed and nail salons and gyms will open in some states.

Other areas like Western Australia and the Northern Territory will have the most relaxed, almost back to normal, conditions by week's end.

Victoria is the only state to record new cases of coronavirus this weekend, bringing closer the day when Australia records zero additional cases.

The 11 new cases reported in Victoria on Saturday took the national total to 7,185. Just 22 of the 475 active cases nationwide are being treated in hospital.

More than six million of an estimated 16 million people with smartphones have downloaded the federal government's COVIDSafe tracing app since it was launched on April 26, helping authorities trace contacts of any diagnosed cases.

Several states have moved to lift restrictions early as students flock to public transport to return to school and workers to their offices.

Queensland

Queensland is ahead of both NSW and Victoria in reopening, and brought forward further cuts to restrictions by almost two weeks.

From Monday, gatherings of 20 people will be allowed outside and inside, and all businesses that are open can have 20 customers. 

These include playgrounds, skate parks, outdoor and indoor gyms, health clubs, yoga studios, Museums, galleries, libraries, amusement parks, zoos and arcades.

Also allowed more people are restaurants, cafes, pubs, RSL and other clubs, hotels, casinos, cinemas, theatres, auditoriums, arenas, concert venues and stadiums.

Beauty, nail and tanning salons, tattoo parlours, and spas can also 20 20 customers.

Queensland's tourism industry is pressuring the government to open a coronavirus travel bubble to support business. Pictured: a turtle at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef    +14
Queensland's tourism industry is pressuring the government to open a coronavirus travel bubble to support business. Pictured: a turtle at Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef

However, as with the 10-customer limit in much of Australia, many businesses may choose to stay shut as that is not enough people to stay profitable.

Open homes and auctions and places of worship will also be allowed 20 people.

The states borders will remain firmly closed despite attacks on the policy from the tourism sector and the NSW Government. 

The border closures are set for review at the end of this month however Ms Palaszczuk has said it was likely they would remain closed until September.  

Tourism bodies from Cairns, the Whitsundays, Mackay and Townsville have called for a North Queensland travel bubble of free movement to help the tourism industry.

SOURCE  






Science and free speech under challenge from Greenie correctness

A court case this week in front of three judges of the Federal Court was a further stage in Peter Ridd’s fight for freedom of speech on climate change. The case, James Cook University v Peter Vincent Ridd, has enormous significance for the future of Australia’s universities and scientific institutions.

Ridd’s case is a dramatic illustration of the free speech crisis in Australian universities, not least around matters as politically and emotionally charged as climate change. It will determine, in effect, whether universities have the ability to censor opinions that threaten their sources of funding. It is one of the most important cases for intellectual freedom in the history of Australian jurisprudence.

The Ridd case has resonated around Australia — and has attracted significant attention worldwide — for good reason. It confirms what many people have suspected for a long time: Australia’s universities are no longer institutions encouraging the rigorous exercise of intellectual freedom and the scientific method in pursuit of truth. Instead, they are now corporatist bureaucracies that rigidly enforce an unquestioning orthodoxy, and are capable of hounding out anyone who strays outside their rigid groupthink.

JCU is attempting to severely limit the intellectual freedom of a professor working at the university to question the quality of scientific research conducted by other academics at the institution. In other words, JCU is trying to curtail a critical function that goes to the core mission of universities: to engage in free intellectual inquiry via free and open, if often robust, debate. It is an absurd but inevitable consequence of universities seeking taxpayer-funded research grants, not truth.

Worse still, it is taxpayers who are funding JCU’s court case. Following a Freedom of Information request by the Institute of Public Affairs, the university was forced to reveal that up until July last year, it had already spent $630,000 in legal fees. It would be safe to assume that university’s legal costs would have at least doubled since that time. The barrister who JCU employed in the Federal Court this week was Bret Walker SC, one of Australia’s most eminent lawyers. Barristers of his standing can command fees of $20,000 to $30,000 a day. And all of this is happening at the same time as the vice-chancellor of the university, Sandra Harding — who earns at least $975,000 a year — complains about the impact of government funding cuts.

While Australian taxpayers are funding the university’s efforts to shut down freedom of speech, Ridd’s legal costs are paid for by him, his wife and voluntary donations from the public. As yet, neither the federal nor the Queensland Education Minister has publicly commented on whether JCU is appropriately spending taxpayers’ money and, so far, both have refused to intervene in the case.

Ridd describes himself as a “luke-warmist”. “I think carbon dioxide will have a small effect on the Earth’s temperature,” he told an IPA podcast recently. “But it won’t be dangerous.” He has been studying the Great Barrier Reef since the early 1980s and was even, at one point, president of his local chapter of the Wildlife Preservation Society.

But Ridd is sceptical about the conventional wisdom that the Great Barrier Reef is dying because of climate change. “I don’t think the reef is in any particular trouble at all,” he says. “In fact, I think it’s probably one of the best protected ecosystems in the world and virtually pristine.”

The problems Ridd’s views cause for JCU are obvious. The university claims to be a leading institution when it comes to reef science, and has several joint ventures with taxpayer-funded bodies such as the Australian Research Council Centre for Excellence in Coral Reef Studies.

Ridd challenged his sacking in the Federal Circuit Court on the basis that the university’s enterprise agreement (which determined his employment conditions) specifically guaranteed his right to “pursue critical and open inquiry”, “express unpopular or controversial views”, and even “express opinions about the operations of JCU and higher education policy more generally”. In September last year, Ridd won his case as the court found he had been unlawfully sacked and he was awarded $1.2m in damages and compensation for lost earnings.

The case in the Federal Court this week was an appeal by JCU against that decision. At issue was whether the intellectual freedom clauses in the enterprise agreement covering JCU staff protected his criticism of quality assurance issues in reef science at the university. The university alleges that in going public with his concerns that organisations such as the ARC Centre “cannot be trusted” on reef science, Ridd committed several breaches of the university’s staff code of conduct, with its vague, faintly Orwellian requirements to act “collegiately”, and to “uphold the integrity and good reputation of the university”.

In other words, even though the enterprise agreement specifically declared that staff had the right to intellectual freedom, it was for the university to determine the limits of what that freedom actually permitted. If it is accepted, it will be the death knell of free intellectual inquiry in Australia’s universities. As Ridd’s barrister, Stuart Wood QC, said to the Federal Court: “If you can’t say that certain science cannot be trusted because it is ‘discourteous’ and ‘not collegial’, then you cannot call out scientific misconduct and fraud. It’s not just the end of academic freedom, it’s the end of the scientific method. At that point, JCU ceases to be a university and becomes a public relations outfit.”

An academic who doesn’t have the ability to challenge the research findings of their colleagues because those questions threaten the university’s funding doesn’t have intellectual freedom. And if academics know they could get sacked, as Ridd was, for asking uncomfortable questions, they will stop asking uncomfortable questions.

Academics should of course be open to criticism — particularly for some of their more outlandish conclusions — but as a matter of public policy it is vital that universities be places where bad ideas can be expressed as well as good ones. The difference between the former and the latter should be resolved by free and open debate, not opaque “disciplinary processes”. We may not like what university professors say, but a strong university sector requires that we defend to the death their right to say it.

It is up to the Federal Court now to decide exactly how far universities can go to censor and sack their staff. But in Ridd, James Cook University has one professor who will not go quietly.

SOURCE  






University ignores lessons of the past

It has taken 50 years, but in their pursuit of anti-China student protester Drew Pavlou, the University of Queensland has achieved what Joh Bjelke-Petersen could not.

By HENRY ERGAS

Fifty years ago this month, 200,000 people marched through Australia’s cities in the first ­Vietnam moratorium. The period leading up to the demonstrations had been tumultuous on campuses across the country, including at the University of Queensland. ­Already by 1967, opposition to conscription had merged there with protests against the state ­government’s restrictions on civil liberties, unleashing an escalating tide of agitation.

Yet even when that mobilisation was at its peak, expulsions were not on the university’s agenda. And on the rare occasions when they were mooted, it was for offences involving violence and the destruction of university property rather than for demonstrating, insulting the administration or engaging in strident debate.

The university’s reticence was hardly due to lack of pressure. Infuriated by the unrest, the state government, which controlled the university’s funding, repeatedly demanded action, with premier Joh Bjelke-Petersen naming the “ringleaders” to be expelled.

But those calls fell on deaf ears. As distinguished biochemist Ed Webb, who was deputy vice-chancellor (academic), explained, when “there are real issues in society that need to be addressed”, the university had an obligation to permit “individuals in the university to see that others are made aware of them”. Yes, that might provoke a hostile reaction; but fear of that reaction could never be a “reason for prohibiting the expression of opinions on things of great importance”.

Five decades on, those lessons have plainly been forgotten. Instead, the university chose to commemorate the anniversary by initiating disciplinary proceedings against Drew Pavlou.

That Pavlou’s actions incensed the Chinese regime is entirely unsurprising. Organising protests in support of the pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong and against China’s repression of the Uighurs was bad enough; ridiculing the university’s cosy relationship with China by posting a “COVID-19 ­Biohazard” warning at its Confucius Institute can only have elevated the 20-year-old’s conduct into a hanging offence.

How many hundreds of thousands in Australian tax payer dollars has UQ's duumvirate of two Peter's burnt on their little ego trip vendetta against me?

After all, as Charlie Chaplin said on releasing The Great Dictator, with its merciless portrayal of Hitler as “Adenoid Hynkel”, “let’s laugh them to scorn”, for mockery is the little person’s most powerful weapon against the jackboots and truncheons of tyrants.

That truth has been confirmed time and again. “The surest defence against Evil is extreme individualism, originality of thinking, whimsicality, even — if you will — eccentricity,” declared Joseph Brodsky, the Nobel prize-winning poet who, before being expelled from the Soviet Union, was incarcerated in its insane asylums for denouncing the Soviet regime’s madness.

One might have expected the university’s leadership to know all that. And rather than submitting Pavlou to months of uncertainty for the crime of satire, one might have expected them to focus on identifying the Chinese students who assaulted the pro-democracy activists, as well as on removing from his position as an adjunct professor China’s consul-general in Brisbane, Xu Jie, who blatantly breached the university’s code of conduct by publicly commending the assailants.

Facing expulsion over his anti-Beijing stand, student activist Drew Pavlou has launched a blistering 11th-hour attack on the University of Queensland, branding vice-chancellor Peter Hoj “a barefaced liar.”

It is too easy, and too generous, to explain their decision to instead turn on Pavlou by pointing to the university’s dependence on Chinese students. No doubt, that figured in their minds; but the reality is that their predecessors’ dependence on Bjelke-Petersen’s government was far greater.

If that earlier generation didn’t buckle, it wasn’t because their choices were without con­sequence: it was because those choices involved matters of principle. There is, in that comparison, a crucial point. The problem is not that the leaders of our universities, in responding to incentives created by successive governments, have let themselves become vulnerable to the Chinese regime’s blackmail. It is that their ethical moorings are so fragile, the blackmail has every chance of success.

Unfortunately, they are not alone in leaving ethical standards behind. There is, as those with long memories will know, no doubt that if the administration had acted then as it has now, the university would have ground to a halt.

To say that is not to claim that things were better, nearly golden, in more or less remote times. Nor is it to gloss over the grievous faults of the students and staff who regularly packed the “forum” at St Lucia, as the campus’ main meeting ground was called. They were, on the contrary, blind to the crimes of the North Vietnamese and ignored the horrors their victory would bring.

But while they were almost wilfully naive, their commitment to freedom of expression was beyond question. The fact many of the university’s most influential activists came from the Catholic Newman Society and the Christian social movements, with their emphasis on sincerity, witness and engagement, merely made that commitment more intense.

Faced with cases such as ­Pavlou’s, they would have felt compelled to act. But, all too often, today’s staff and students feel no such imperative.

In part, that reflects the withering of campus life that had occurred even before the present lockdowns came into effect. With vast numbers of students working part-time, faculty routinely address empty lecture halls, eliminating the questioning and interaction that are central to teaching and to the formation of social networks.

The ever-growing number of foreign students, who struggle with English, and so tend to associate with their colingual peers, has compounded the social fragmentation, converting once bustling campuses into spiritual wastelands.

But if the commitment to free speech has waned it is also because students and staff can espouse the fashionable causes of the day without any danger to themselves. Far from risking prison sentences and hefty fines for demonstrating, as was the case in Queensland, they can indulge in protests about ­racism, refugees and “carbon pollution” basking in the glow of ­public approval. Goethe’s warning that “Man must win his liberty every day afresh” therefore means nothing to them, no more than Mill’s admonition that the freedom that really matters is that of those with whom we passionately disagree.

To that extent, Marx was right. Once they were comfortably dominant, he predicted, the bourgeois intellectuals would jettison the liberal values they had championed when they were an exiguous minority. Like the Anglican bishops with their 39 “articles of religion”, they would, at that point, far more readily scuttle 38/39ths of their principles than 1/39th of their ­income.

Marx could have had the ­University of Queensland in mind. But if an education is worth having, it is not because of the earnings it unlocks; it is because the ability to look at the world for oneself is the greatest gift of all. By pursuing Pavlou for doing just that, the university has accomplished, 50 years later, what Bjelke-Petersen could never achieve.

SOURCE  






School closures are all pain and no gain

School closures have wiped valuable weeks from students’ learning, and disadvantaged students will be hardest hit.

This has happened because some state and territory governments — Victoria, Tasmania, the ACT, New South Wales, and Queensland — ignored the consistent expert medical advice to the National Cabinet that it was safe for schools to remain open, and decided instead to close schools for most students for almost a whole term.

Many children from disadvantaged backgrounds have been set even further back as a result. They tend to have less access to effective parental support, educational resources, and fast internet at home, so they were always going to be hurt disproportionately by government school closures.

According to our new research, the educational cost of school closures to disadvantaged students amounts to between 2 and 3 weeks of lost learning in numeracy, and between 1 and 2 weeks of lost learning in reading. This will exacerbate existing inequities.

It’s true parents were told students would not be turned away from school and children of essential workers could attend — albeit with mixed messages about safety. But this is still ultimately closing schools, because the small minority of children who still attend school learn in basically the same way as students learning from home, without normal face-to-face classes.

Most parents kept their children home — amid the naïve, unreasonable government expectation that parents could simultaneously work from home and supervise their children’s education — with serious economic consequences.

But is there evidence of a public health benefit, at least? A study of NSW schools by the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance found the Covid-19 transmission rate in schools was “extraordinarily low” and there were no cases of students infecting staff. So it appears there was little or no public health benefit of closing schools — all pain and no gain.

The South Australia, Western Australia, and Northern Territory governments should be commended for following the Commonwealth’s lead and only closing schools for one or two weeks, meaning their disadvantaged students would be just minimally affected.

But the other five governments should reflect on the unnecessary educational and economic damage inflicted. They made a decision based on politics — influenced by teacher unions — not evidence.

SOURCE  

 Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).    For a daily critique of Leftist activities,  see DISSECTING LEFTISM.  To keep up with attacks on free speech see Tongue Tied. Also, don't forget your daily roundup  of pro-environment but anti-Greenie  news and commentary at GREENIE WATCH .  Email me  here






19 June, 2020

Boris Johnson scraps plan to make gender change easier

Plans to allow people to change their legal gender and “self-identify” as a different sex have been scrapped in a move that will fuel the culture war gripping Britain.

Ministers have scrapped plans developed under Theresa May’s government to allow transgender people to change their birth certificates without a medical diagnosis.

Instead they plan to announce a ban on “gay-cure” therapies in an attempt to placate LGBT people. New protections will be offered to safeguard female-only spaces, including refuges and public lavatories, to stop them being used by those with male anatomy.

A paper on the government’s plans is “basically ready” and is pencilled in for publication at the end of July before MPs go on their summer break.

Equalities Minister Liz Truss will publish the details in an official response to a public consultation on the Gender Rec­og­nition Act. That has been in the long grass since October 2018 amid controversy about the measures.

Under the leaked plans, proposals for people to self-identify their gender will be abandoned and those wanting to change their birth certificate will still need medical approval. At present, that means two doctors have to sign off a gender change.

And there will be a crackdown on “quack” doctors to ensure that only reputable medics can give approvals

New national guidelines on lavatory provision are likely to be introduced, replacing the “free-for-all” in which councils set their own rules, which has seen a rise in gender-neutral lavatories

A ban on “gay-cure” therapies that are run by some church groups and therapists will be announced on the same day.

Ms Truss has joined forces with Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s team to ensure the document is more in line with public opinion. Polls suggest voters are sympathetic to trans rights but do not support transgender women with male anatomy accessing female-only facilities such as prisons and changing rooms. Sources say Mr Johnson’s aides came close to announcing the change during the December election campaign and again before the coronavirus struck.

More than 100,000 responses were received to the consultation. Insiders say about 70 per cent of those backed the idea that anyone should be able to declare that they are a woman or a man. However, officials believe the results were skewed by an avalanche of responses generated by trans rights groups.

The move will be a challenge for Labour leader Keir Starmer, whose party is deeply divided on the issue. In the leadership contest, Sir Keir was the only candidate not to sign a pledge that branded feminists “transphobic” and said the party should “fight against” them. He signed a less contentious list of pledges that included a commitment to “introduce a self-declaration process”.

Under current rules, those wanting to change their gender pay £140 and apply to a panel for a gender recognition certificate. They have to produce two medical reports that they have suffered from gender dysphoria — usually from their GP and one other registered medical practitioner or psychologist.

Applicants are also required to show they have lived in their chosen gender identity for two years and intend to do so for the rest of their lives. The procedure is condemned by trans rights campaigners as dehumanising, bureaucratic and expensive. But the new proposals are likely to be supported by feminist groups, who argue that trans rights infringe women’s rights.

Ms Truss has already strengthened advice on medical procedures for under-18s which have irreversible effects on their fertility. “She’s made it more difficult for people to get that treatment easily,” a source said. “It has to go through much greater sign-off.”

No 10 declined to comment but a government source did not dispute the leak: “The report is not yet finalised and the Prime Minister will have the final say on the recommendations.”

SOURCE 






Despite praise, ‘community policing’ in Boston does not work for everyone, experts say

The approach has long been praised by police in Boston and elsewhere as evidence of a commitment to excellence

For years, city leaders and police commissioners have described it as the guiding principle of Boston’s approach to law enforcement — a seemingly simple two-word catch phrase that describes a progressive new approach: community policing.

As he announced an independent review of the Boston Police Department’s use-of-force guidelines last week, Mayor Martin J. Walsh once again touted the city’s community policing model, rattling off programs with names like “Coffee with a Cop” and “Shop with a Cop.”

But as calls for police reform have reverberated across the nation in recent weeks, the once-innovative buzzword has come under growing criticism.

Some deride it as a gimmick, or little more than a bumper-sticker slogan. Experts say that evidence of its effectiveness remains ambiguous. And as dozens of recent protests throughout the city have shown, the current system — despite the praise of city officials — is not working for everyone.

“On the surface, it sounds really good," said Fatema Ahmad, head of the Muslim Justice League, one of the groups seeking a 10 percent cut to the Boston Police Department’s budget. "If your assumption is policing is helpful, it seems like a good idea to have officers interacting with the community.

"But understand that at the core of policing, you expect people need to be punished, be incarcerated.”

In neighborhoods where the relationship with police has been historically fraught, for instance, some argue that strategies aimed at building community-police partnerships can have the opposite effect.

Some argue, too, that the very premise of the strategy — that an additional police presence is a good thing — is false.

“I think a lot of community policing efforts have led to more surveillance, this broken-window philosophy of small behaviors, and really just controlling people’s behavior — and Black and brown people, in particular,” said Dara Bayer, an organizer in Boston who works with young people on transformative justice, a nonpunitive framework that seeks to respond to and prevent harm through community relationships and practices.

“There are countless other ways to address harm that don’t include people with guns patrolling a neighborhood.”

In an interview last week, police Commissioner William Gross defended the concept of community policing, calling it the fabric of police work in Boston going back decades, to when he was a teenager on Dorchester’s streets and encountered mentoring police officers himself.

In Boston, he said, community policing is a philosophy and can range from officers partnering with mental health workers to help at-risk youth, to assisting those with substance abuse problems along Melnea Cass Boulevard, to having officers hand out masks during a pandemic.

The underlying goals, he said, are to prevent crime and assist residents.

“Community policing isn’t about ice cream trucks and basketball games," said Gross, who acknowledges that the term itself has become a sort of cliche. “These are hard-hitting civic programs and responsibilities. It’s about being responsible to the people you serve.”

The concept of community policing can be traced back to the 1960s and ’70s, said Stephen Mastrofski, a professor emeritus in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University. Then, like now, there existed issues with government legitimacy, and those concerns extended to the police.

In Boston, perhaps the most high-profile example was the so-called “Boston Miracle,” when police teamed with local clergy to address soaring youth violence in the early 1990s. Homicides, which had skyrocketed during the height of the violence, dipped sharply, and in the aftermath, Boston was held up as an example to other departments across the country of the good that could come when police worked in concert with the residents they served.

The effects of that effort, said the Rev. Jeffrey Brown of the Twelfth Baptist Church in Roxbury, can still be felt today.

“I know that the original players have all gone on to do other things, but I would say the legacy of what we started in Boston still persists,” said Brown, formerly of the Ten Point Coalition, the collection of ministers and community groups that worked with police officers in the ’90s to quell violence. "And the reason why I say this is because we’ve got community policing as an intention. It’s not a branch of the Police Department — it’s what the police department does.”

But without a concrete definition, police departments elsewhere have been left to enact their own brand of community policing, leading to versions that can vary significantly from department to department — even within different jurisdictions of the same department.

While some departments fully embraced the philosophy, experts say there are plenty more that went half-in — and more still that used it as a kind of bumper-sticker slogan while making no real effort to carry out the necessary work.

“It’s not a checklist,” says Wesley G. Skogan, professor at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. “It’s not a one-pager with some boxes, and if you [check] nine out of the 15 you’re doing community policing. Lots of police chiefs would like it much more if that was the case.”

Some of this has been the result of external factors: Police being increasingly relied upon to deal with issues, including mental health disturbances, not historically in their purview; a focus on antiterror policing after 9/11; and more recently, a federal anti-immigration push has often pulled local departments into the effort, taking time and resources away from other initiatives.

But there have been more insidious issues, too.

Though officer support for community policing appears to have grown in recent years — a 2014-15 national survey found that 73 percent of officers surveyed indicated some or strong support for community policing — convincing rank-and-file officers to adopt and support this type of policing has historically been a challenge, says Tammy Rinehart Kochel, professor of criminology and criminal justice at Southern Illinois University.

“One of the biggest — if not the biggest — hindrances to fully adopting aspects of community policing, is the police subculture,” said Kochel. “'We’re the heroes, we’re the white knights, we’re going to protect you and save you, and . . . being macho and in control of the situation’ — all of that goes counter to a lot of the ideas behind community policing.”

Quantifying the effectiveness of the strategy, meanwhile, has been difficult.

While a 2012 study from the Journal of Experimental Criminology found that community-oriented policing strategies had positive effects on citizen satisfaction and perceptions of police legitimacy, researchers also wrote that "our findings overall are ambiguous. The challenges we faced in conducting this review highlight a need for further research and theory development around community policing.”

And though there’s more evidence today than there was then, says Mastrofski, "there’s still a lot of gaps in our knowledge.”

But even when carried out optimally, some argue, there are limits to what the approach can accomplish.

“A lot of people have called for more community policing, which can include anything from putting in more community liaisons to handing out free ice cream during the summer,” said Boston city Councilor Julia Mejia, one of the first to call for the redirection of police resources and who recently suggested the city should transfer control of $1.7 million in state grants for gang prevention from police to the Boston Public Health Commission.

“But let’s be honest: While these initiatives might help build relationships, they don’t tackle systemic inequities and they don’t hold our government accountable.”

What’s no longer in question, however, is that trust between police and the communities they serve — one of the benchmarks of community policing — has eroded significantly across the country.

Even as it touts the successes of its efforts, Boston police announced changes recently to its use-of-force policy. Last week, Walsh joined other cities in declaring racism a public health crisis, announcing that $12 million from the police overtime budget would be transferred to social service programming, including $3 million going directly to the Department of Public Health.

SOURCE 






Facebook has removed almost 900 accounts associated with far-right groups promoting hate and violence during anti-racist protests across the US.

What they call "hate" is the issue


Facebook has removed almost 900 accounts associated with the far-right Proud Boys and American Guard, including those of supporters who marched into a protest zone in Seattle and confronted anti-racist demonstrators.

Facebook told Reuters the takedowns of more than 500 Facebook accounts and more than 300 Instagram accounts followed a smaller round of suspensions two weeks ago.

"We initially removed a set of accounts for both organisations on May 30 when we saw that both organisations started posting content tied to the ongoing protests," said a Facebook spokeswoman who asked not to be identified. "We were continuing the work to map out the full network."

Facebook had previously banned the groups for promoting hate, but individual members continued to post images with weapons and urging others to attend protests that followed the Minneapolis killing of George Floyd in police custody.

Facebook is under heightened scrutiny as provocateurs use it to coordinate and recruit. It has also acted to make it harder to find groups in the so-called Boogaloo movement.

Boogaloo adherents believe a new civil war is looming and are often heavily armed. Some ally with right-wing militias and have sought to capitalise on the protests by instigating violence they hope will escalate into a broader conflict.

On Tuesday, two adherents were charged in connection with the murder of a security guard on duty at a federal building during a protest in Oakland.

According to an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint, suspects Steven Carrillo and Robert Alvin Justus Junior belonged to the same unidentified Facebook group and discussed attacking federal authorities on May 28.

SOURCE 

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Leftmedia Creates Dubious Victim Narratives While Smearing Cops

The "social justice" narrative of "systemic racism" has no room for genuine justice.

Much of the mainstream media and the political class no longer care for nor believe in truth these days, at least not when the truth doesn’t confirm the “social justice” narrative. This reality has been typified by the MSM reporting surrounding the death of Rayshard Brooks, the black man who died while fighting and resisting arrest for a DUI.

For leftist politicians and their Leftmedia cohorts, the only two relevant facts are that he was a black man and he was killed by police. Both facts serve only to confirm their predetermined narrative of the U.S. being a country rife with “systemic racism.”

Yesterday, we concluded that Brooks’s death did not bare almost any resemblance to the unjust death of George Floyd. The two are not the same. But, as predictable as rain in a thunderstorm, the narrative being spun by the Left is that they are essentially the same.

As former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams ridiculously asserted, “Sleeping in a drive-thru must not end in death.” No, but resisting arrest, fighting with cops, taking one of their tasers, attempting to flee, turning and shooting at one of the cops — now that can get you killed.

CBS News ran a story entitled, “Who is Rayshard Brooks, 27-year-old black man killed by Atlanta police?” The article paints a sympathetic picture of Brooks as a doting father whose life was taken by a police officer who has been fired and is under investigation. Brooks may have indeed been a doting father, but he also had a rap sheet that included, among others, charges of cruelty to children. In any case, those details are essentially beside the point when investigating the events that led to his death. So why does the Leftmedia highlight only some of them?

The answer is simple: “social justice.” The neo-Marxist roots from which the social-justice ideology springs intentionally divides the world into two basic groups — the oppressors (the bad guys) and the oppressed or the victims (the good guys). Using this overly simplistic dynamic, everything is categorized into one of these two groups. “White privilege” (oppressor class), “persons of color” (victim class), law enforcement (oppressor class), blacks killed by law enforcement (victim class), and on and on and on.

For the social-justice activists like Black Lives Matter to make headway with their ultimate objective of fundamentally transforming the U.S. into a socialist society, any details or nuances that fail to support the narrative of “systemic racism” are either ignored or excused as “victim blaming.” Even the details of the incident itself fade into the greater milieu of the “cause.”

The truth — that Brooks is the one primarily responsible for the events leading to his own death — is at best denied or at worst used as “evidence” that someone is enjoying “white privilege.” The two officers who responded to the 911 call that day were not out on the war path looking for a black man to gun down; just the opposite, in fact. They put on that uniform to serve their fellow man by enforcing the law. Where is that narrative in the MSM? Where are the stories of police officers risking their lives day in and day out as they work to make our world a better place? Where are the stories of the grueling impact this very difficult job has on them and their families? Instead, these good guys are repeatedly smeared by leftist politicians and the MSM as oppressors and “part of the problem.”

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 June, 2020

Cancel the White Men -- And What's Left?

"Can we all just get along?"  That was the plea of Rodney King after a Simi Valley jury failed to convict any of the four cops who beat him into submission after a 100-mile-an-hour chase on an LA freeway.

King's plea came after the 1992 LA riots, the worst since the New York City draft riots in 1863 when Lincoln had to send in federal troops.

In the aftermath of today's protests and riots after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, we hear similar calls. President Donald Trump must "reach out" and "unify the nation." But how?

Many of these calls for unity come from the same elites who are all-in on tearing us apart by pulling down statues of the famous men of American history whom they most detest.

A second war on the Confederacy is underway, to disgrace and dishonor all who fought for Southern independence in the war of 1861-65. A second Reconstruction is being readied.

The St. Andrew's Cross, the battle flag of the Confederate Army, though seen as a banner of heroism and honor to millions, is henceforth to be treated like the Nazi swastika. It has been already been banned at Nascar races, where it has been widely popular.

Liberals will fight for the right of Marxist radicals to burn the American flag to show their hatred of it but cannot tolerate working folks flying the battle flag of the Confederacy to show their love of it.

A second front in the campaign to cancel history is the renaming of U.S. Army bases in Southern states that bear the names of Confederate generals, such as Forts Benning and Bragg. Trump has pledged to veto any defense appropriation bill that contains such a provision.

Third is the drive led by Nancy Pelosi and her allies to remove statues in the Capitol of any of those men of "violent bigotry" who were connected to the Confederacy.

First among them is General Robert E. Lee.

Gen. David Petraeus has put succinctly the crime of which Lee is guilty. Though "West Point honors Robert E. Lee with a gate, a road, an entire housing area, and a barracks," writes Petraeus, "Lee... committed treason."

The goal here is to impose the one-sided view of American history that is now ascendant, as official truth -- that the cause of Southern secession was unlike the cause of American secession from Britain. It was an act of treason rooted in the ideology of white supremacy.

To have that sole acceptable view predominate, our elites believe they must remove from public display the statues of any associated with the cause of Southern independence and stigmatize them all as traitors.

They have, however, a problem: Where do the elites stop when the radicals demand more?

If support of slavery disqualifies one from the company of decent men, does it disqualify George Washington, who owned slaves his entire life? What Washington fought for, independence, was what Lee fought for.

Lee did not challenge Lincoln's election. He did not seek to overthrow the government Lincoln headed. He resigned from the U.S. Army to go home and defend the people among whom he had been raised from an invasion to force-march them back into a Union the state's chosen rulers had voted to leave.

Not only does our national capital, Washington, bear the name of a lifelong slave owner, so does the capital of Missouri, Jefferson City. So does the capital of Mississippi, Jackson. So does the capital of Wisconsin, Madison. The capital of Ohio is Columbus. The capital of South Carolina is Columbia. Both are named for now-vilified Christopher Columbus whose statue still stands outside D.C.'s Union Station.

None of these men appears, from how they lived their lives, to have shared modernity's belief in democracy, diversity or social equality. Yet, it was they who cobbled together the United States of America.

Washington led us to independence and ownership of all the land from the Atlantic to the Mississippi. Jefferson negotiated the Louisiana Purchase, doubling the size of the U.S. Andrew Jackson added Florida. James K. Polk added the Southwest and California. Slave owner Sam Houston won Texas' War of independence and brought his Republic of Texas into the Union in 1845.

Two of the three greatest Senate statesmen of the 19th century, Henry Clay of Kentucky and John Calhoun of South Carolina, were slave owners. Both have statues in the Capitol. Do they go, too?

The newest bridge over the Potomac, like the premier dam in the TVA, is named for Woodrow Wilson, who resegregated the government.

These were among the decisive figures of American history. If all are dishonored, with their statues pulled down and their names taken off cities, counties, towns, rivers, canals, bridges, buildings, highways, roads, streets and dams, then what is left?

Detest all those white men if you will, but they were the ones who created the nation we inherited.

SOURCE 





Canceling Our History

It's no wonder that young people don't love our country when they're told to hate it.

Buried beneath news about sorry Supreme Court decisions and rebranded autonomous zones was this clear-cut sign of a sick society: a new Gallup poll indicating that U.S. national pride has fallen to a record low.

Most alarming of all is the poll’s finding that our young people — our future — are today less patriotic than ever, with just one in five adults between 18 and 29 declaring that they’re “extremely proud to be an American.”

But this isn’t a new phenomenon. Our Mark Alexander pointed it out a few years back when he recalled the words of our 44th president: “I believe in American exceptionalism,” declared Barack Obama back in 2009, “just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

A fish rots from the head. Or, as Jonah Goldberg put it back when he was still Jonah Goldberg, “Ultimately, it’s not that liberals don’t believe in American exceptionalism so much as they believe it is holding America back.”

So it’s no wonder that we find ourselves in this dismal spot. After all, we’ve spent the last three weeks deifying thugs, demonizing cops, and denying our shared past. We’ve been overcome by a Cancel Culture that sees “white supremacy” and “systemic racism” behind every tree and around every corner; a culture that declares our Founding Fathers irredeemable, and even our abolitionists unworthy.

“BLM,” said the spray can to John Greenleaf Whittier — the poet, Quaker, and anti-slavery activist for whom the California city is named. The rest of the graffiti is unprintable. But if you think this sort of vandalism is indefensible, you’d be wrong. Here’s Swarthmore College archivist Celia Caust-Ellenbogen: “It is important to acknowledge the reasons why the protesters are so frustrated. While Whittier is celebrated for his poetry and his activist legacy, there are numerous African American poets and activists of his era … who have received too little recognition. The statues in this country over-represent the influence of White people and under-represent the importance of people of color, especially African American people, in our nation’s history.”

Got that? It’s okay to vandalize our nation’s monuments if you’re “frustrated.”

The original Vandals were a Germanic tribe that spent 14 days plundering Rome toward the end of its empire days. This sacking of the Eternal City by barbarian tribesmen, and their wanton defacement and destruction of Rome’s magnificent statues and monuments, should give us pause. So should the lengths to which our academics and our elected officials will go to justify the vandalism in our midst today.

Today, it’s Robert E. Lee. But what about tomorrow? Will we rename our nation’s capital because its namesake, The Indispensable Man, was a slaveholder? What about renaming that trendy state to the northwest, the one with that same slaveholding Founder featured foremost in its flag?

Make no mistake: This effort to whitewash our nation’s history by defacing and destroying its statues and monuments will do lasting damage. Indeed, it already has. As Matt Walsh put it recently in The Daily Wire, “If we cannot be united around tradition, language, or heritage, and we also cannot be united around a shared belief in freedom and human rights, then what is left? We would appear to be, already, two different countries.”

SOURCE 






Virtue Signaling Maryland Officials Ignore Brutal Killing By Their Own Cops

They boast outrage over George Floyd, but refuse to tell us why Duncan Lemp was shot sleeping in his own bed.

Perhaps the most outrageous police killing of the year continues to be almost completely ignored by the American media.

Montgomery County, Maryland politicians and government officials have loudly lamented police killings in Minneapolis and elsewhere while continuing to cover up a no-knock raid that is difficult to distinguish from an extrajudicial killing. Since banning so-called no-knock raids has been included in the new House Democratic proposal for police reforms, let’s take a look at a recent one that ended in the death of a 21-year-old man.

At 4:30 a.m. on March 12, a Montgomery County police SWAT team commenced a no-knock raid by firing into a bedroom window and fatally wounding Duncan Lemp as he lay in bed next to his pregnant girlfriend.  Police then stormed the house, using flash bangs to intimidate Lemp’s mother and other relatives living in the house.  Lemp bled to death while family members were handcuffed on the floor nearby.

Lemp was a savvy I.T. guy who was volunteering to assist gun rights groups in setting up secure websites and communications systems. But Lemp had no security to protect himself against police bullets coming through his bedroom window before dawn that morning.

During the raid, police officers repeatedly shouted at family members that everything they said and did was being recorded. However, Montgomery police may have either destroyed any videos or never made a recording. On June 5, lawyer Rene Sandler, representing the Lemp family, sent a letter to Montgomery County prosecutor Haley Roberts: “We have been advised that Police Chief Marcus Jones made an ‘on the record’ statement that no body cameras existed for the raid of the Lemp home and the killing of Duncan Lemp.”  Sandler sought confirmation that the raid video footage existed and requested its immediate release.  She received no response.

After seeing the Sandler letter, I emailed Montgomery County chief executive Marc Elrich and Montgomery County Police Chief Marcus Jones asking: “Can you confirm or deny that there is no body cam footage of the Lemp shooting?” I received no reply. I sent the same question multiple times to county prosecutor Roberts, the same lawyer who threatened Lemp’s parents if they attended a protest over his killing at County police headquarters in April. Roberts replied on June 12: “This matter is an open criminal investigation being handled by the Howard County State’s Attorney’s Office, and as such any inquiries should be directed to that office.”

The coverup of the Lemp killing is being aided and abetted by the Orwellian-named “Law Enforcement Trust and Transparency Act” which the county council enacted last year.   Montgomery County  and Howard County have an agreement to conduct reciprocal investigations of police shootings. Individuals I have spoken to involved in this case have zero confidence in the independence of the Howard County investigation—which conveniently permits Montgomery County officials to shirk all questions. Perhaps some months or a year or two from now, an “official report” will reveal the following: “We investigated our  law enforcement friends and neighbors and found out that they did nothing wrong except for a glitch where one policeman’s finger accidentally bumped a trigger and inadvertently killed a dastardly gun owner who was also guilty of tweeting ‘The Constitution is Dead.’”

Montgomery County officials are offering endless dollops of piety in lieu of revealing how and why Duncan Lemp was killed, while the state government is perpetuating a “stay-at-home” dictate that is one of the nation’s strictest and has helped destroy tens of thousands of jobs. But county officials have nonetheless cheered mass rallies to protest the Floyd killing and the racial injustice. The county police shut down a major road to assist protest Black Lives Matters marches in the heart of Rockville, Maryland, right outside of D.C..

In a June 4 Washington Post op-ed,  county chief executive Marc Elrich declared, “The killings committed by members of the police force are truly horrible, without justification, often explained away and seldom punished appropriately.” But his fervor on this issue does not extend to revealing facts about killings by police under his command. Elrich has said nothing on the Lemp case.

On June 8, Chief Jones and the police chiefs of Rockville, Gaithersburg, and the chief of the National Park Service local division, issued a joint statement:  “We…are angry and outraged over the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota….We realize that we must work toward greater transparency and accountability in order to hold the public trust.”

The police chiefs then declared that they “hereby commit” to a set of reforms, including a pledge to “improve training in cultural competency for our officers.” “Transparency” was nowhere in the reforms.

Two days later,  Chief Jones bewailed: “Over the past couple of weeks, I have been beyond angry. I’m sick to the core of my soul” over Floyd’s killing. But there is no evidence he has lost a moment’s sleep over a killing by his own SWAT team. While Jones has had plenty of time to publicly condemn the action of the Minneapolis police, he has refused to meet with the mother and father of Duncan Lemp, who his own officers killed.

Selective outrage extends to the top law enforcement official in the state. On June 10,  Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh, speaking on a Montgomery County panel organized by Communities United Against Hate, lamented that “these past few weeks have been awful,” referring to the deaths of George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville.  Frosh declared, “It’s not a surprise that many members of our community have lost trust in law enforcement when they see live, on videos, these events occurring.”

Floyd was brutally killed by an eight-minute-knee-on-the-neck after police sought to arrest him for passing a counterfeit $20 bill. Breonna Taylor was killed during an unjustified no-knock raid in the middle of the night. Police charged into her apartment  seeking a drug suspect who she had dated years earlier but was nowhere near the scene. Taylor’s boyfriend fired at the police, hitting one officer in the leg.  Police fired a volley of shots that left Breonna dead.

People are justifiably outraged by Taylor’s killing. But in the Lemp case, there were no shots fired at police who apparently began their assault by shooting into a bedroom window. On June 12, I emailed an inquiry to Frosh’s press office, asking whether he had made any public comments on the Lemp case and why he would “publicly comment on a Kentucky case that sounds similar to a case under his own jurisdiction?” Frosh’s office did not respond.

For the Lemp case, not a single County Council member has requested body cam footage. Actually, not one Council member has shown any interest in the case. The Council has a Public Safety Committee but they appear to have never heard of Duncan Lemp. But the Council did take decisive action on June 11 to declare racism a “public health emergency.”

Who actually killed Duncan Lemp? Nobody in Montgomery County appears to care.    The police have not even disclosed the name of the officer or officers who killed Lemp. In a season when vast protests have occurred alleging racial bias by police, Montgomery County has gotten away with refusing to disclose whether Lemp’s killer(s) was white, Black, Hispanic, Asian, or native American. Montgomery County preens over its progressiveness but its police department procedures on disclosing the names of officers who kill are worse than Philadelphia, long renowned for police brutality.

Even more important than the name of the cop who killed Lemp is the question: Did the SWAT team intentionally turn a search warrant into a death warrant? If not, then why did they start the raid by firing into Lemp’s bedroom?  Will we ever learn the facts?

We hope that liberal Maryland hasn’t adopted some kind of warped double standard in which the color one of one’s skin determines whether there is a fierce investigation into a police killing or officers get away with murder. Duncan Lemp deserves more. As American citizens, we all do.

SOURCE 






Australia: Censoring history makes the past impossible to grasp

By Tom Switzer and Jacinta Nampijinpa Price

Much of history is a story of unintended consequences. What began as a protest at the brutal treatment Minneapolis police meted out to George Floyd has turned into an international movement, hijacked by manipulative people – more often than not white – who appear for the most part to be experienced anarchists. They are seeking to impose their values and political ideas on the rest of society.

We don't doubt that those involved in the movement genuinely oppose the evils of racism. America, after all, has a toxic history, not just because slavery ended there less than 160 years ago, but because African Americans won full civil rights only in the mid-1960s. It's just that the fully justified desire to end police brutality in America can only be clouded by aggressive acts of vandalism and violence.

For too many of the present protesters, opposition is not an end in itself, but rather the means to a greater end: the reordering of a political and social settlement accepted by the vast majority of people in Western nations. For example, the anti-fascist movement Antifa makes no secret of the fact that it wants to redesign American society according to its own recipe of proto-Marxism, identity politics and anarchism.

What these protesters lack in numbers they make up for in noise and intimidation. As a result, they attract media attention.

However, it is not just the present and the future that these anarchists propose to change. Like Pol Pot, with his Year Zero, or Mao Zedong and his Cultural Revolution, they wish to change the past.

In university history departments across the Western world in the last decade or so, there has been a determination to "decolonise the curriculum". This is an approach that politicises the subject by imposing a Marxist slant on it. Far from paying attention to the main facts of history, it concentrates on imposing the "woke" values of a noisy, self-advertising minority on a very different past.

Without attempting to understand the dynamics of the 19th century, these demonstrators want to remove evidence of imperialism and imperialists. In Britain, the Black Lives Matter leaders also direct their guns at capitalism, and it is a short step from there to a movement for anarchy.

Context is irrelevant to these people: historical figures who had attitudes or performed deeds of which today's society rightly disapprove are to be vilified and despised, with no quarter given. That is why statues and monuments are being ripped down or defaced around the world. For these people, the purpose of history is not to seek the truth, but to deploy it as a weapon – however crude and distorted – to manipulate the present.

It doesn't matter how you dress this act up: it is the imposition of the views of a minority of agitators on the rest of society without any attempt at consultation or respect for democracy. Then again, the whole point of being an anarchist is to reject democracy and to seize any excuse to attack manifestations of the establishment – whether they are statues, other monuments or police officers.

Just look at some of the statues that have been attacked. Winston Churchill, who fought against fascism at a moment when Britain could have gone under the Nazi jackboot, had "racist" daubed on his statue in London's Parliament Square.

In Ballarat, busts of John Howard and Tony Abbott were vandalised with red paint, which suggests that monuments to anyone who failed to advocate leftist politics is now fair game.

In light of that, it is perhaps inevitable that Sydney's Captain Cook statue should become a target. Australia has certainly had distasteful episodes in its treatment of our Indigenous people, especially in the 19th century. But our nation, admirable by almost every international standard, only exists because of James Cook.

Colonisation of Australia's land mass was inevitable, and as Howard has all too often argued, British settlement was a far better outcome than other possibilities. Think of the English language, rule of law, representative democracy, a free press and a market economy. Context is everything.

Defacing the statue of Cook will make no difference whatsoever to the plight of Aboriginal Australians. How would eliminating Cook from our history reduce the rates of family violence, youth suicide, drug and alcohol abuse, welfare dependence and incarceration in Indigenous communities?

History cannot be undone; its legacies are in every society, everywhere. Censoring the past – by removing statues, or stopping the showing of Gone with the Wind or even an episode of Fawlty Towers – only makes a proper comprehension of history (and what the past was really like) impossible to grasp.

To us, much of history was horrible, but it is why Western society is as it is. Removing evidence of that history is the construction of an alternative reality. It is not reality itself.

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 June, 2020  

Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò. The left strike again

In Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò’s recent letter to Donald Trump, he writes, “just as there is a deep state, there is also a deep church that betrays its duties and forswears its proper commitments before God.” Naturally, the deep church resented the letter. But it particularly didn’t like that Trump tweeted about it, saying: “So honored by Archbishop Viganò’s letter to me. I hope everyone, religious or not, reads it!”

An imagined deep church? How dare Viganò notice that an entrenched bureaucracy of clerics opposed to Catholic teaching exists in the Church.

Members of the deep church quickly moved into action, pooh-poohing the significance of Viganò and seeking to discredit him. The vanguard of the deep church, the Jesuits, led the charge. They used their magazine, America, to remind people that the former papal nuncio to the U.S. — brace yourselves — adheres to Catholic teaching on marriage and other matters. This, in their estimation, makes him “outside the mainstream” of “global Catholicism.”

Michael O’Laughlin of "America" writes,

The archbishop’s tenure in the United States was largely uncontroversial, but a new book by the Vatican reporter Christopher Lamb about Pope Francis, The Outsider, claims that during his time in Washington, Archbishop Viganò ‘aligned himself with culture warriors and anti-Francis supporters.’

Oh my. He is a dreaded “culture warrior,” which means that, unlike the deep church, he actually takes Church teaching seriously and opposes the West’s culture of death. America also finds fault with him for daring to support a marriage clerk opposed to gay nuptials:

Archbishop Viganò made global headlines in September 2015 when he orchestrated a meeting between Pope Francis and Kim Davis, the former Kentucky county clerk who was briefly jailed for refusing to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples. News of the meeting came at the end of the pope’s visit to the United States and created a storm in both the church and secular media, given the pope’s relatively positive views of outreach to L.G.B.T. Catholics. The Vatican later revealed that Pope Francis had been blindsided by the encounter, saying the pope was unaware of Ms. Davis’s background. In 2018, Archbishop Viganò disputed the assertion that he had deceived the pope, though Vatican spokesmen pushed back against that claim.

A 2018 story in The New York Times quotes Juan Carlos-Cruz, a clerical sexual abuse survivor who has become friendly with Pope Francis, as saying the pope told him that he “fired” Archbishop Viganò because of his role in arranging the meeting.

Yep, that sounds like Pope Francis. Remember, papal nuncios, never “blindside” him by introducing a Christian to him. In another America article, titled Archbishop Viganò is aligning with Trump to stay in the spotlight. Pay him no attention,” James Keane writes, “Mr. Trump was responding to yet another public letter from a marginal figure, one who has made a growth industry over the last two years of writing increasingly paranoid and disturbing missives against Pope Francis, the Second Vatican Council and many other enemies real and illusory, including most recently against an imagined ‘deep church’ that he told Mr. Trump parallels the purported ‘deep state’ that the president has blamed for so many of his troubles.” An imagined deep church? How dare Viganò notice that an entrenched bureaucracy of clerics opposed to Catholic teaching exists in the Church. Where could he have ever gotten that idea? America finds it very troubling that Viganò would praise a pro-life president who, unlike the Obama-Biden administration, isn’t warring on Catholics. Keane calls that “pandering”:

Archbishop Viganò, marginalized by his own rhetoric, wants to stay in the public spotlight by whatever method possible. In this case, it is by yoking his cause to that of President Trump. But this tells us more about Archbishop Viganò than it does about the Catholic Church or President Trump or anything else, and thus answers only unimportant questions. Our response at this point should be the one that so baffled us when Pope Francis first adopted it in August of 2018: Pay this man no attention.

And yet the deep church can’t stop talking about him. For such a “marginalized” man, he has struck an extraordinary number of nerves. The deep church is trying to mau-mau him into silence precisely because he is an effective voice against its liberal revolution. Like the deep state, which can’t abide critics like Trump, the deep church fears criticism from believing Catholics. Its project to take Catholicism out of Catholicism has crippled the Church, to which Viganò is drawing much needed attention. Let’s hope his “irrelevance” continues.

SOURCE 






Outrage Mob: With Tensions Running High, Cancel Culture Is Spinning Dangerously Out of Control

For more a more nuanced and substantive deep dive into the problem of outrage mobs and "cancel culture," I'll self-servingly direct you to the book I co-authored on this exact subject in 2015, which I'm afraid is holding up depressingly well. I've also written a number of posts lately about the aggressive purging of "wrong thinking" in American newsrooms, resulting in the resignations and reassignments of several senior editors at major publications. But the current spasm of preening intolerance and vengeance is hardly limited to the news media; it's also spreading like a destructive, intimidating brushfire in the entertainment world, academia, sports, and other corners of American life. It's becoming difficult to track and document all of the examples, but here is the beginning of a partial list:

(1) A sports broadcaster was fired from his radio show, then resigned from his play-by-play job, after stating that "all lives matter...every single one!" As I've written previously, "all lives matter" as a rejoinder to "black lives matter" misses the point of the latter sentiment, and people who disagree would be well advised to listen to why many black people feel that way. But asserting the value of all human lives should not be a professionally sanctionable event, let alone a fireable one.

(2) At UCLA, a lecturer has been put on leave after students demanded his firing for declining to grant special dispensation for black students on an exam, a request reportedly made by a non-black student. According to the Washington Examiner, instructor Gordon Klein emailed this reply to the student:

"Thanks for your suggestion in your email below that I give black students special treatment, given the tragedy in Minnesota. Do you know the names of the classmates that are black? How can I identify them since we've been having online classes only? Are there any students that may be of mixed parentage, such as half black-half Asian? What do you suggest I do with respect to them? A full concession or just half?...Remember that MLK famously said that people should not be evaluated based on the 'color of their skin." Do you think that your request would run afoul of MLK's admonition?"

He's now out. His is not the most sensitive response one could imagine, but did it merit being put on leave? Klein isn't the only member of the UCLA faculty whose position is at risk after quoting Martin Luther King, Jr. Lecturer W. Ajax Peris, who is white, read from MLK's iconic "letter from Birmingham jail," and showed portions of an explicit documentary about lynching, each of which contained the N-word. Peris continued his lesson on the history of anti-black racism despite objections from some students, leading to an investigation by the university, prompted by students' complaints. Teaching about such an ugly topic surely requires sensitivity and care, but the ugliness of the subject matter itself cannot be avoided in this context. It's arguably the point.

(3) The long-running reality television series "COPS" has been canceled, with other police-centric programming potentially in peril. The epic film "Gone With the Wind," an important classic that portrays a bygone era, has been unceremoniously de-platformed by HBO, pending "context." Both actions appear to have been at least partially spurred by woke op/eds demanding such outcomes. Satire and reality are becoming indistinguishable:

(4) In the world of theater, some community members in Los Angeles have circulated a document keeping track of which entities are "speaking out" in a manner deemed proper or sufficient. The ruling mob in this case is judging both the speed with which statements and approved actions are undertaken and the correctness of the language used. Insufficient obedience is not tolerated:

Andrew Alexander, the CEO and co-owner of famed The Second City improv theater, said he is stepping down after a former performer leveled accusations of racism against the comedy institution. In a lengthy letter posted on the company’s website, Alexander said he “failed to create an anti-racist environment wherein artists of color might thrive. I am so deeply and inexpressibly sorry.” ... Alexander’s announcement Friday followed online criticism from Second City alumnus Dewayne Perkins, an actor, comedian and writer (“Brooklyn Nine-Nine”). Perkins said the company had refused to hold a benefit show for Black Lives Matter unless half of the proceeds also went to the Chicago Police Department, and it also created obstacles for performers of color.

Alexander was driven out of his comedy company because an alumnus of the program said he was upset that Second City didn't conduct a specific fundraiser that met with his approval, in addition to unspecified complaints about "obstacles" for performers of color. Action is being taken to mollify the purgers: Alexander "vowed Friday that he will be replaced by a person of color...a Second City statement Friday laid out steps the company planned to take regarding the hiring and training of artists of color, along with diversifying its theater audiences and making donations to fight oppression and support black-owned businesses and schools." The aggrieved comedian celebrated this scalp collection on social media.

(5) The professional soccer franchise in Los Angeles has parted ways with a player over problematic posts by...the man's wife:

The LA Galaxy said it has released Serbian soccer star Aleksander Katai on Friday after his wife, Tea Katai, shared a series of "racist and violent" social media posts in response to the George Floyd protests occurring across the country. The Major League Soccer club met with Katai on Thursday after it was made aware of two of his wife's Instagram posts that she shared the day before. After fans protested outside the LA Galaxy stadium, the club announced in a one-sentence statement on Friday that it would drop Katai from its roster. The club said the two sides had "mutually agreed" to part ways.

The woman's Instagram posts were undoubtedly offensive. They were deleted after being condemned by the team and by the player himself, her husband. But he's out anyway. As others have noted, it seems as though wokeness now requires high profile men to...keep their women in line, and censor them, if necessary? This is progress?

The list -- which is being updated and aggregated here -- goes on and on. It includes an academic under fire for not emoting or communicating 'correctly' about racial issues and social unrest, a Yale student who could face discipline or expulsion for a highly offensive social media post made when she was 15, a fitness company getting canceled despite its CEO's resignation, editors of lifestyle and entertainment publications facing purges for various sins, and a food writer getting dragged for an old Halloween costume considered by some to be offensive. Question: If prominent 'progressive' politicians who've worn blackface on multiple occasions were not hounded from office, what's the standard for people with less power?

Scrolling through the expanding roster of supposed transgressions above and elsewhere, you may find certain examples more distasteful or problematic than others. What bothers me more than anything is watching the rapid spread of this rapacious, life-ruining bloodsport in which social infractions are ravenously sought out, in order for endless self-righteous applications "justice"  to ensue -- often performed with satisfaction, bordering on glee. For some of its practitioners, this may be a power trip. For others, it may be rooted in an overzealous desire to prove one's commitment to the cause, or the manifestation of learned over-sensitivity. It may also amount to old-fashioned score-settling in certain cases. Whatever the various motivations may be, marauding mobs stampeding from one target to the next, carrying virtual torches and pitchforks, feels medieval, destructive, and frightening. Grace is not only shunted off to the side; it's wielded as evidence of complicity. How can people whose careers or lives get bulldozed by all of this pull things back together, or demonstrate true contrition or evolution? And where do innocent victims go to restore their names when the mob crucifies the wrong sinner?

Around 10 p.m., [Peter Weinberg] received an irate message on LinkedIn from someone he didn’t know. He brushed it off, thinking it was probably just spam. Then he got another. And another. The third message was particular strange, as it mentioned something about the cops coming to find him. Perplexed, he watched as the messages continued to pile up. They were all so similar: angry, threatening, accusatory. His profile views suddenly soared into the thousands. He began to panic. He decided to check Twitter.  In his mentions, disaster was rapidly unfolding. People accused him of assaulting a child. Of being a racist. They shared a selfie he’d taken in sunglasses and his bike helmet and analyzed it alongside blurry images of another man in sunglasses and a bike helmet. The other guy had been captured on video hitting children and ramming his bike into an adult after becoming enraged that they were posting fliers around the Capital Crescent Trail in support of George Floyd...

But the Park Police had made an error. “Correction, the incident occurred yesterday morning, 6/1/2020,” they wrote in a follow up tweet. As with most such clarifications, it had only a fraction of the reach: a mere 2,000 shares. It was based on that initial, false information that Weinberg had become a suspect for the internet mob...His fiancée in New York, he spent the night alone, refreshing Twitter, watching helplessly as people tried to destroy his life. And Weinberg wasn’t even the only one: Another man, a former Maryland cop, was wrongly accused, too. The tweet accusing him was retweeted and liked more than half a million times.

The grim coda: "As for the woman who shared his home address: She deleted it and posted an apology, writing that in all of her eagerness to see justice served, she was swept up in the mob that so gleefully shared misinformation, depriving someone of their own right to justice. Her correction was shared by fewer than a dozen people." This was the equivalent of a social media drive-by shooting that perforated the wrong man's life. When mob ringleaders finally got around to recognizing their mistake, their corrections barely attracted any attention at all. People are hooked on the thrill of the virtual kill and had moved on to the next target, with little regard for what how the previous objects of their fury -- "guilty" or not -- are impacted. This is not how a civilized society operates.

SOURCE 






Black Woman Has a Meltdown... Over Not Being Able to Loot Neighborhood Stores

A black woman in Chicago filmed a Facebook live video of armed citizens defending local businesses. According to the woman, people should be allowed to loot stores because they're already insured.

"They let these people come outside with they AK-47s. Ak-47s to protect they stuff from black people. They ready to kill black people, the Arabs, the fake a** Ramadan mother f**kers. They got M-16s, AK with they people's out here. Everything y'all. Look at this s**t," she said, flipping the camera to a nearby store. "They got mother f**kin' AKs out here and I'm going to get my cousin that's a police officer right now and ask him are they legally able to carry these mother f**kin' guns like this."

The woman said she planned to call her cousin who is a homicide detective because she wanted to know if it was legal for the men to stand outside the stores with firearms.

"You tell me that those mother f**kers that don't live here, they don't live here. This is not a United States citizen and he is sitting outside with a whole AK-47 ready to blow black people's brains out, but they say they from America. And this is how they protect cheap a** sh*t."

The woman went on a tirade, saying the men outside are from Morocco and aren't legal citizens.

"They ready to kill black people over this cheap a** sh*t they got from China! They ready kill somebody," she said. "Got a black man out here with these guns ready to kill us! They said don't break into they store but they on our turf and this some mother f**kin' cheap a** China building supplies fake a** mother f**kin' Boost Mobile fake a** sh*t. And this is how they protect they sh*t. They ready to kill me!"

She went on to say she knows the men didn't have an Illinois license to carry.

"This isn't a right to bear arms! These people got the black man out here ready to kill more black people if we decide to loot they store. They ready to kill us!" she exclaimed. "But b**ch we gonna come back and you gotta have that gun all mother f**kin' day because you don't even know who I am!"

To make matters even more interesting, the woman drove off and asked her Facebook Live audience where the police were.

"I'm talking to the Chicago Police because I wanna know, can Arabs that don't have no mother f**kin' citizenship, can they carry AK-47s to protect their s**t that came from China? And I'm talking to the CPD right now!"

The woman pulled up on two officers in a nearby parking lot. She alerted the pair to the incident down the street. The police made her aware that the stores in question were outside of their territory.

"She gone say it ain't they district. That's what I'm gone tell you about these b**ch a** police. They don't want none of this, but I'm gonna go back over here because I wanna look at these punk mother f**kers," she said.

According to the woman, people shouldn't be defending their business because they're already covered by insurance.

"Mother f**ker, our life ain't insured!" she screamed.

SOURCE 






White Liberals' 'I Am Spartacus' Moment

In the classic movie Spartacus, the climax of the film sees the defeated slave army of Spartacus sitting dejectedly on the ground as a Roman soldier announces that instead of crucifixion, the slaves’ lives would be spared if they identify “the body or the living person of the slave called Spartacus.”

Spartacus, played with great skill and pathos by Kirk Douglas, appears ready to stand up and give himself up when his friend, Tony Curtis, beats him to it.

Slave after slave, one after another, stands up and proclaims “I am Spartacus” in solidarity with their commander. In the end, the Romans crucify all of them.

We are seeing something similar happen today. White, guilt-ridden liberals are proclaiming their solidarity with the radical, sometimes violent black activists of Black Lives Matter.

But unlike the slaves who stood up in solidarity with Spartacus, these white liberals have no such feelings of togetherness and unbreakable affection based on bonds forged in war and fellowship. The white liberals who so openly announce their support are making sure the rest of us know that they are morally superior. They are virtue-signalling — even if they fool themselves into thinking they really, really care about blacks.

Activists aren’t looking for and don’t desire “solidarity” with white liberals. They treat them with almost as much contempt as they treat white racists. But they find them useful to achieve their ends.

Vox:

In the past five years, white liberals have moved so far to the left on questions of race and racism that they are now, on these issues, to the left of even the typical black voter.

This change amounts to a “Great Awokening” — comparable in some ways to the enormous religious fomentin the white North in the years before the American Civil War. It began roughly with the 2014 protests in Ferguson, Missouri, when activists took advantage of ubiquitous digital video and routine use of social media to expose a national audience in a visceral way to what otherwise might have been a routine local news story.

In effect, these white liberals believe being an ally of activists is all about them. It’s their advocacy. It’s their support. It makes them better than the rest of us. It allows them to stand on the battlements, waving the bloody shirt, and calling for the rest of us to follow them.

Black activists know this and are tired of it.

San Francisco Chronicle:

“That’s why black people get brutalized by police officers over and over again, because white people go, ‘That was so bad, I feel so bad.’ But then a couple of weeks later (they say), ‘Back to my yoga classes,’” Bell told Conan O’Brien on his TBS show last week.

“It’s really about how are you in your personal life, because if your personal life is correct, your public life usually is more correct,” Bell said.

White liberals measure their “wokeness” by the level of the grandiosity of their gestures. But the key, always, is to let people know that you are woke and support Black Lives Matter.

Of course, that means dismissing the violence, the burning, the looting, and the murders as “anger” at “systemic racism.” Sacrificing your judgment about condemning riots by calling them “protests” shows just how eager, how desperate while liberals are to be seen as tolerant.

I have no doubt most white liberals sincerely want to help. But the way to assist your black brothers and sisters is to stand up for the law. There is no justice without law. There is no peace without order. To believe otherwise is to believe in the law of the jungle.

And that doesn’t help anyone, whether you’re woke or not.

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 June, 2020

Why You No Longer Recognize Your Country

Its population composition has changed greatly, bringing new values, attitudes and behavior, including the Fascist attitudes that are common South of the Rio Grande

Mass looting throughout the nation. Police precincts burned to the ground. Murdered cops. A historic church in Lafayette Park set on fire. Video after horrifying video of innocent Americans being beaten senseless by gangs of thugs, as one political party demands: “DEFUND THE POLICE!”

Everyone is saying it: I no longer recognize my country.

You don’t recognize your country because it’s not the same country. What you’re seeing is the third-world hellhole the left has been quietly assembling for us since 1970.

Minnesota, the crucible of the riots, has gone from having 2.6% foreign-born in 1990 to nearly 10% foreign-born today — and that’s not including their children or illegals.

Instead of liberal but non-rioting Scandinavians and Germans, the new immigrants are overwhelmingly African, Asian and Hispanic. In fact, Minnesota now has a much larger proportion of Asian and African immigrants than the nation as a whole.

Although the state has always leaned Democratic, thanks to its German and Scandinavian immigrants (Ben Franklin was right about them), the Norsemen elected Walter Mondale. Recent immigrants elected Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Hey, Republicans! Tell me again that immigration is just a “single issue.”

America’s first encounter with anarchist mobs trying to wreck our country came with the last wave of immigrants at the turn of the 20th century. Back then, most Americans liked America. So we had no trouble cracking down on the people who would destroy us. Seven of the eight anarchists behind the Haymarket riot in 1886 were sentenced to death (two of those sentences were commuted to life in prison by the governor), one to 15 years in prison.

A few decades later, Attorney General Mitchell Palmer put an end to the nonsense by arresting and deporting more than 500 leftist immigrants.

For the next century, these satanic meddlers were out in the cold. It’s not in the Anglo-Saxon character either to give or take orders. The anarchist agitating was wasted on us. Even the most hard-luck Americans had no patience with communists.

America was unusual that way. Everywhere else in the world, the backbone of the Communist Party — at least at first — is the working class. But to its eternal embarrassment, the American left was bereft of working-class members. Luckily for them, our post-1965 immigration policies gave them a major infusion of the third world’s working class.

Communist and anarchist groups are still — as always — top-heavy with recent immigrants, community college professors, unbalanced women and fatherless soy boys. But it used to be that voters were repelled by these freaks.

Not anymore! California went from being the state that gave us Ronald Reagan (smashed the Berkeley riots) and Richard Nixon (president during Kent State) to the state of Gov. Gavin Newsom (celebrated Black Lives Matter mural on the mall outside the capitol) and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti (took a knee at a BLM protest).

How did that devolution happen?

Answer: immigration. When Reagan was elected governor of California, the state was 77% white. Today, whites are a minority at 37%.

You wonder why Democrats are always crowing about how the “blacks and the browns” are voting for them? Another way of putting it is: White voters are the only ones who will ever, in a million years, give a majority of their votes to a Republican.

But the immigration of vast numbers of non-whites from dysfunctional cultures is just a “single issue.”

Yes, Newsom and Garcetti are white Americans — and they’re very sorry about that. But who elected them? The same ethnic groups that elected Hugo Chavez, Evita Peron, fought for Mao and wept fake bitter tears over Kim Jong Il’s death. (You can watch here.)

They’re the same ethnic groups that elected Omar, Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey and New York City Mayor Bill Di Blasio — mostly Asians and Hispanics brought in since the 1970s for the purpose of voting for Democrats (and also cleaning their homes and doing computer programming for less!).

Di Blasio, who distinguished himself during the riots, won 96% of the black vote, 87% of the Hispanic vote, 70% of the Asian vote and only 54% of the white vote.

Tell me immigration is a “single issue,” again, Republicans.

Becoming more third world is going to mean a lot more protests. It’s how third worlders express themselves — along with Molotov cocktails, as New York City police found out last week.

When Congress proposed cracking down on illegal immigration in 2006, half a million illegals lined the streets of L.A. to protest. During the L.A. riots after the Rodney King verdict, more than half of those arrested were Hispanic.

We don’t have the figures for the current, ongoing nationwide riots, but a Loyola-Marymount professor recently gushed to The New York Times that compared to the Rodney King riots, these have been “truly multicultural.” If we ever find out, I’ll lay even odds that a lot of the looters standing by with empty suitcases outside the luxury stores were our immigrant fraudsters, otherwise employed stealing billions of dollars from Medicare, Social Security and food stamp programs.

Conservatives think they’re so clever to point out that all of the cities being turned into war zones are run by Democrats. Yes, that’s true.

On the other hand, your country is burning. Might you want to give 10 seconds of thought to how to prevent even more cities — and states — from falling under these pernicious leaders?

No, no, immigration is just a “single issue”! Let’s get back to “Obamagate”! How about another pro-life march? Whither Iran? We need school choice now! Why do you carry on so about the wall? Immigration is just “one issue.” Yes, it’s the one issue that is going to make you lose every other issue, forever.

SOURCE 






Law and Order Isn't Fascist

Confronted by a clear and present fascist threat, the staff of The New York Times rose up last week to humiliate and punish quislings in its ranks.

In a now famous op-ed, Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton called for federal troops to quell riots and looting, an idea that the Times staff considered worthy of Oswald Mosley or Benito Mussolini.

As the Times was disavowing the Cotton piece and preparing to push out or demote its top opinion staffers for publishing it, columnist Michelle Goldberg wrote a response called “Tom Cotton’s Fascist Op-Ed.”

She acknowledged that the Times published Russian President Vladimir Putin and Taliban leader Sirajuddin Haqqani and “a similar case could be made for hearing from Cotton, an enemy of liberal democracy.” But the difference is that Cotton “is calling for what would almost certainly amount to massive violence against his fellow citizens.”

The sophomoric and ahistorical charge that President Donald Trump and his supporters are fascists is now a staple of elite left-of-center opinion. That it has gained such traction is a sign of the ever increasing ideological radicalism of Trump’s opposition and of the ever diminishing ambit for free and open debate — fascists are to be shut down, as the Times staff insisted, not tolerated.

There is no doubt that Trump’s periodic blustery assertions of having total authority are gross, would freak out Republicans if a Democrat made them, and deserve to be condemned. The president loves strength and is drawn to theatrical demonstrations of his own power.

But his critics are unable to distinguish between wild statements at press briefings or in cruel tweets on the one hand and establishing a one-party state or invading France on the other.

Law and order, a favorite Trump theme, is not fascism.

Consider Cotton’s op-ed. The senator called for federal troops to assist in subduing rioters and stipulated that “a majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.” If this is fascism, any effort to stop people burning down buildings now has to be considered dangerous.

Trump’s Rose Garden speech calling for an end to the disorder and for using federal troops if necessary got a similar reaction.

“The fascist speech Donald Trump just delivered verged on a declaration of war against American citizens,” Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said.

The New Republic warned of “an authoritarian gangster state.”

Masha Gessen of The New Yorker wrote of Trump’s subsequent photo-op with a Bible in front of St. John’s Church, “perhaps he had seen a picture of Hitler in a similar pose” (a photo of Hitler in a similar pose that circulated on social media afterward was a fake).

Trump, like Cotton, distinguished between peaceful protestors and rioters, and surely one purpose of his tough talk on federal troops was to prod governors and mayors to get a better handle on the situation on their own.

Much has been made of protestors being pushed back from Lafayette Park before Trump walked over to St. John’s Church, but Attorney General Bill Barr has explained this was an effort to expand the perimeter around the park, where there had been mayhem and fires the night before.

Kristallnacht it was not.

No one has talked about crushing peaceful protests. No one has urged the stifling of dissent (no one, that is, outside of The New York Times and other “woke” circles). No one has talked of suspending the election. In fact, to this point, Trump has been faulted for wanting an overly normal election, with a traditional convention and standard in-person voting.

In a long piece on Trump “collaborators” in The Atlantic, Anne Applebaum noted how “references to Vichy France, East Germany, fascists, and Communists may seem over-the-top, even ludicrous. But dig a little deeper, and the analogy makes sense.”

No it doesn’t. It only speaks of the lack of seriousness of those who insist on making it.

SOURCE 





For protesters not all black lives matter

For both Australia and the USA, black-on-black violence is almost totally ignored, which indicates that the riots and demonstrations are about something other than black deaths.  For Leftist whites, it is just another expression of the hatred they have towards the whole society.  The riots are just Leftist anger and hostility unleashed

And for blacks the riots express resentment of their low status and general disadvantage  in society.  The Left always tell them that "whitey" is to blame for their disadvantage so it is no  mystery that they resent white society as a whole and welcome an excuse to smash what bits of it that they can


Not all black lives matter equally to Australian protesters. A life lost in custody, even to natural causes, is apparently a more worthy cause than the thousands of lives lost to black-on-black violence in Aboriginal communities.

It’s an issue blighted by a culture of forgetting. Those of us who were senior editors when the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody report was handed down in 1991 have always known its flaw: the commission found death rates of indigenous people in custody were no higher than for white people.

Paul Kelly wrote here last Wednesday that the 2017-18 report of the Institute of Criminology showed that year “the death rate of indigenous prisoners was 0.14 per 100 prisoners, compared with 0.18 per 100 for non-­indigenous prisoners.” Add to that the fact very few of these deaths are at the hands of police or prison guards — most are by natural causes or suicide.

Kelly said the different ways the ABC and Sky News treated the Black Lives Matter marches in Australia on the weekend of June 6 highlighted a “totally split culture” in media terms. “The ABC narrative was of the injustice of Aboriginal deaths in custody”, while the Sky News “narrative was the irresponsibility of mass protests … given the health and political advice” in the middle of a pandemic. Especially so given that COVID-19 has not hit the indigenous community.

That dual media narrative highlights another problem, an issue that has plagued indigenous affairs for four decades — the left’s preference for talking about race symbolism rather than dealing with actual murder rates, domestic violence, property crime, addiction and a lack of economic opportunity.

Long-term readers of this paper will know it has been reporting the real situation on the ground in ­Aboriginal Australia for decades. Reporters such as Rosemary Neill, Paul Toohey, Tony Koch and Nicolas Rothwell have won Walkley Awards for gritty reporting on the rape of women and children by indigenous men, petrol sniffing, the killing on Palm Island of Cameron Doomadgee, foetal alcohol babies and murder rates many times higher than in the wider society.

Three Aboriginal thinkers were prepared to tell the truth last week. The always thoughtful Anthony Dillon, of the Australian Catholic University, in a letter here on Thursday wrote: “The best way of reducing Aboriginal deaths in custody is to focus on reducing the rates of Aboriginal deaths, full stop.”

Alice Springs councillor Jacinta Price, always brutally honest, wrote that 70 per cent of indigenous people in jail were there for crimes of violence against their loved ones.

Warren Mundine, in The Australian Financial Review last Tuesday, said governments could not fix Aboriginal disadvantage linked to over-imprisonment rates. Economic opportunity created by business investment was the only way forward.

Here is the real problem for the media. Many leftist journalists will not report the issue as it is. They will not look at the reality of the black lives they say matter. With a couple of notable exceptions — Russell Skelton at The Age a decade ago and Suzanne Smith at the ABC ahead of the NT Intervention in 2007 — the national broadcaster and the Fairfax papers (now owned by Nine) have not wanted to look at the issue beyond allegations of systemic racism.

In my 2016 book Making Headlines, I discuss the episode that first brought home to me how wilfully blind many journalists are to the facts of indigenous disadvantage. I was a young editor, and Paul Kelly was editor-in-chief.

I was at the Melbourne Walkley Awards in 1994 when this paper’s Rosemary Neill won best feature for a piece about black women and children victimised by black husbands and fathers. After the presentation, a group of Fairfax editors rounded on our table to criticise the decision to publish Rosemary’s piece. They thought the issue should be off limits and the piece “profoundly racist”.

Three decades later, not much has improved in the indigenous world, and the media is worse. Young reporters educated in the ways of identity politics are left to campaign on issues they have not yet reported honestly or begun to understand. Once, senior editors would have tested their work, but not many such positions remain as the business model for journalism continues to disintegrate.

None of this is to deny racism exists. The Colt With No Regrets, a new book by an old regional Australian newspaper editor, Elliot Hannay, includes fascinating discussions of his relationship with Eddie Mabo and being lobbied at the Townsville Bulletin by the local Ku Klux Klan. Young journalists should read it.

I worked for Elliot in the late 1970s when he ran a series of stories about local soldiers who had started throwing Molotov cocktails on to Ross River under the CBD bridge where Palm Islanders often slept on weekend visits to Townsville. Elliot faced down a backlash from local business leaders wanting the rough sleepers out of town.

Such racism should be exposed. But so should facts about black-on-black violence. Jacinta Price wrote in The Daily Telegraph on June 9: “In 2018 in the NT alone, 85 per cent (4355) of Aboriginal victims of crime knew the ­offender. Half were victimised by partners. Aboriginal women made up 88 per cent (2075) of those victims.”

Aboriginal children were 5.9 per cent of the population but five times more likely to be hospitalised after an assault than non-indigenous children. “Between 2007 and 2011, 26 per cent of all deaths among Aboriginal children … were … (from) abuse injury,” she wrote. “The leading cause of child death between 2014 and 2017 … was suicide. This is a quarter of all child suicides in Australia (85 of 357).

“Realising that there are fun­damental connections between child neglect, child sexual abuse, Aboriginal victims of crime and the high rates of incarceration will allow us to address these critical ­issues effectively.”

But most left-wing media don’t want to know.

The Australian Institute of Criminology, in a paper by Jenny Mouzos, says that from 1989 until 2000, 15.1 per cent of all homicide victims nationally were Aboriginal, as were 15.7 per cent of all homicide offenders — and yet ­Aboriginal people were less than 3 per cent of the population.

Campaigners against law enforcement agencies who say “defund police”, even neo-Marxist ANTIFA protesters, should look at a Chicago Sun Times report published on June 8: “18 murders in 24 hours: inside the most violent day in Chicago in 60 years.”

From 7pm on Friday, May 29, to Sunday, May 31, 25 people were killed in the city and another 85 wounded by gunfire, all in the name of protesting against the police killing of George Floyd. The victims and perpetrators were ­almost all African-American.

Australian indigenous communities need to be able to trust police will protect them. Of course Aboriginal actor Nakkiah Lui was right on Q+A when she said “Just don’t kill us”. But she and the wider ABC, especially hosts such as Q+A’s Hamish McDonald, need to report why Aboriginal Australians need police more than any other group — to protect them from black offenders.

Last word to Mundine in The Daily Telegraph last Friday: “We won’t see change unless indigenous kids go to school, indigenous people are working in real jobs and there are real economies in indigenous communities.”

SOURCE  







The universities always said Australians were racists, now look at their dilemma

"Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive"

Australian universities are in quite the pickle. Not only are they watching as potentially $12bn in revenue from foreign student fees slips away, but they are also being accused of racism by the country they rely on for so much of their funding. Last week, Beijing issued a statement in which it warned Chinese students to give Australian universities a wide berth because of both COVID-19 and endemic racism.

In response to Scott Morrison’s suggestions that this amounts to “coercion”, Beijing has retaliated with the suggestion that Australia needs to do some “soul searching” and that the “racist incidents” were “based on a host of facts”.

This is a delicious irony. For years so many Australian universities have been making money out of the racism industry. Now they are on the back foot, having to defend themselves against an accusation that is demonstrably false.

For decades academics employed in our institutions of higher education, especially those in the humanities, have been using taxpayers’ money to paint a picture of Australia as a country of racists. They have been using their positions in various faculties to propagate the myth that we are a xenophobic nation.

They have taken every opportunity to berate mainstream Australians about how they should be both ashamed of their history and ashamed of themselves. They have been telling Australians that it is somehow immoral to celebrate Australia Day, that Captain James Cook was an invader, and that the whole existence of the modern state of Australia is a terrible mistake, a crime to be endlessly deplored and for which we must constantly apologise. They have insisted that the values and institutions of Western civilisation are racist, imperialist and outdated, and must be expunged from our society.

The University of Sydney leads the way in the business of race. A couple of years ago, its academics infamously rejected the Ramsay Centre’s bachelor of arts in Western civilisation as “white supremacy writ large”. The faculty of arts and social science boasts a taxpayer-funded “Resurgent Racism” project, which has concluded that unless something is done by the faculty, Australian society will face a dystopian future of white supremacy. Last year, the university hosted a self-styled “anti-racism educator” from the US to lecture everyone on campus about how racist they all were.

The staff in the history faculty seem to spend significant waking hours thinking, writing and talking about race and racism, all at the expense of the taxpayer. Since 2002, the faculty has received almost $9m from the Australian Research Council to fund 18 historical studies research projects that focus on racism in one form or another.

Nine months ago, the vice-chancellor of the University of Sydney, Michael Spence, appeared to comment that anyone who dared question the existence of Chinese influence on his campus was basically a racist. “We have to be careful that the whole debate doesn’t have overtones of the White Australia policy,” he told The Sydney Morning Herald. In this way, he ensured next year’s income — or so he thought at the time. No one predicted that COVID-19 would wipe out, almost overnight, $884m in international student fees for the University of Sydney, a generous portion of which would come from Chinese students.

Spence is the highest-paid vice-chancellor in Australia, earning $1.5m a year. As yet, he has not taken a pay cut like many of his colleagues.

This episode has revealed another crack in the crumbling facade of the Australian university, which is one of the crucial institutions of Western civilisation yet which fails the Australian public, having lost sight of its purpose. Our universities are facing a systematic crisis and have been exposed as incompetently run businesses more interested in ­foreign dollars, social justice, diversity and identity politics than they are the pursuit of truth, freedom of speech and intellectual inquiry. They are floundering in the midst of a free speech crisis, with a questionable commitment to academia and a terrible track record in dealing with academics and students who hold a contrary view to the established groupthink. Last year’s Independent Review of Freedom of Speech in Higher Education Providers (the French review) found that many of the higher education rules and policies in universities used broad language “capable of impinging on freedom of expression”.

Not only have we seen the censure and unlawful sacking of Professor Peter Ridd by James Cook University, but to add insult to injury, JCU’s court case is being funded by taxpayers, having already cost $630,000 in legal fees. Meanwhile, the University of Queensland employed one of Australia’s top legal firms to pursue philosophy undergraduate Drew Pavlou regarding his robust criticism of the university’s connections with China as well as that country’s history of human rights abuses.

Our universities have long ceased being institutions interested in the rigorous exercise of freedom or the scientific method and today better resemble elaborate public relations outfits.

Dr Bella d’Abrera is the director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at the Institute of Public Affairs.

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 June, 2020

Stop this trashing of monuments - and of our past

The Cenotaph, Britain’s memorial in Whitehall to her dead of the two world wars, has been boarded up to protect it from desecration during the demonstrations this weekend. The statues of Winston Churchill, Sir Robert Peel, Henry Dundas, Earl Haig and others have been defaced.

A mob threw a statue into Bristol Harbour. William Gladstone has been expunged from Liverpool University. Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, Clive of India: all and many more are under threat. The Mayor of London – never one to miss a chance to grandstand – is setting up a commission to remove more memorials, as are 130 Labour-led councils.

Robert Baden-Powell, the hero of the Siege of Mafeking and founder of the Scouting movement, is under threat in Poole. Maps of the statues of other imperial heroes are being published on Leftist websites to encourage attacks, and the museum curator Madeline Odent – yes, a museum curator – has posted advice on the best acids for destroying bronze statues.

The culture war that many of us have been predicting ever since our imperial past started to be routinely trashed in our schools has now begun in earnest. (One of the ringleaders of the Bristol mob was a teacher, unsurprisingly.)

For decades now, the Left-dominated educational establishment have been intent on trying to make us ashamed of the British Empire, and to despise our forefathers for building and defending it.

People who think this latest campaign is primarily about either statues or the slave trade, and will therefore end once slavers’ statues are removed, are deluding themselves.

King George III signed the legislation into law that abolished the slave trade more than two centuries ago in 1807, yet there have still been calls to remove his bust from a churchyard in Lincoln.

Cecil Rhodes – contrary to what one ignoramus on a Radio 4 vox pop recently asserted – never bought or sold a slave in his life, yet we have been given orders that he ‘must fall’. This is thus not principally about slavery – it is about a much wider issue than that.

Of course black lives matter greatly, but so does our national identity, and they do not need to be in conflict. Nobody alive today knows anyone who knew anyone who knew anyone who was a slave of the British Empire, so this ought to be a discussion that can be conducted with rationality and evidence, not by anarchy and mob rule. The discussion about Churchill’s attitude to the native peoples of the British Empire, for example, is a nuanced one that cannot be summed up by three words spray-painted on his statue.

He undoubtedly made remarks and the occasional joke about non-white people that today we would find completely unacceptable, although it is worth pointing out that he also made equally or more disparaging remarks about Europeans too. Unlike Karl Marx, Churchill never used the N-word, which dyed-in-the-wool racists tended to in those days.

When Churchill was at school, Charles Darwin was still alive, and people believed that a hierarchy of races was scientific fact, however obscene and ludicrous we know that to be today. Yet throughout his life, Churchill fought to protect the non-white peoples of the Empire, and was proud of the way that Indians’ life expectancy doubled and their population massively increased under British rule.

He considered it his lifelong duty to try to improve the lives of the Empire’s native peoples. Black lives mattered to Winston Churchill. For Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu to denounce ‘the way he used his privilege, power and influence to cause untold misery and atrocities on non-white nations’ betrays an utter lack of understanding of the altruism that underpinned much of the imperial story.

To wrench historical figures out of their historical contexts and expect them to hold modern views on issues such as race is anyhow absurd. People’s reputations are being trashed for holding opinions that a large majority of people held at the time – essentially for being insufficiently woke. Even Mahatma Gandhi held what to us today are extremely offensive views about black Africans.

How to reconcile all this? By using our common sense. ‘The past is a foreign country,’ writes L. P. Hartley in The Go-Between. ‘They do things differently there.’ If we allow our statues and memorials and place names to be torn down because of our present-day views – and because some people claim to be offended by parts of our built environment that have been around for decades and sometimes centuries – it speaks to a pathetic lack of confidence in ourselves as a nation.

We are on the way to a society of competing victimhoods, atomised and balkanised into ever smaller communities, which, ironically enough, is something that racists want, too. The inescapable truth is that throughout history, nations have aspired to build empires, and that is not just true of white Europeans. The Hittites, Mongols, Aztecs, Zulus, Ottomans, and so many more throughout history – all built great empires and were not white Europeans. Many lasted much longer than the British Empire, although none was larger. Yet where is the Zulu who is ashamed of Shaka? The Mongolian who bemoans Genghis? The Uzbek who apologises for Tamerlane? The virus of self-hatred seems to be almost solely reserved for the English-speaking peoples. Where are the Italians who feel no pride in the Roman Empire?

Very often the facts used to justify tearing down statues are faulty, and the reasoning against natural justice. William Gladstone did not own or trade slaves, even if his father did. The activist Afua Hirsch wants Nelson taken down from Trafalgar Square because, although he didn’t buy or sell slaves either, he supported the trade when it was perfectly legal to do so.

Even though it was an unimportant part of his life – Nelson was put on the column because he saved the nation at Trafalgar – his memorialising has to be seen solely through the prism of race.

For the British Left, the Chinese Cultural Revolution is not so much a warning as a template. The Left cannot believe its luck that Tories seem so unwilling to denounce this lunacy, and to fight back. So we must put up with the destruction, driven in large part by ignorant, angry, woke under-30s who hate Britain’s past because they were never taught it objectively, snowflakes who can’t stand the fact that they live in a country full of history, some of it bad, most of it glorious.

Not to mention the Left’s mirror image on the extreme Right, who also hate Churchill because he defeated their fascist ideology.

Nobody in modern British society is valued or respected any the less because of a statue that was put up 100 years ago. We do not have to agree with everything done by those who came before us, but we should try to understand them, just as we hope that those who come after will try to understand us.

Fortunately, most British people are shocked and repulsed by this assault on the nation’s statues. Only 13 per cent supported the destruction in Bristol. So bring on the culture war. Even with the Left-wing media, academia, teaching unions and yobs with spray-paint against them, the British people will win, so long as the debate is conducted in a rational way rather than by the mob rule seen in recent days. We demand an end to this trashing of our monuments and of our past.

SOURCE 






PETER HITCHENS: As the Left now controls every lever of power, we face nothing less than regime change

What we now face is regime change. That is why these strange crowds have begun to gather round ancient and forgotten monuments, demanding their removal and destruction.

They do not know what they want, or understand what they are destroying. But that no longer matters. They think their moment has come, and they may well be right.

This is why the memorial to Winston Churchill, and the Cenotaph itself, were shamefully boarded up on Thursday night – an act of appeasement if ever there truly was one.

That is why police chiefs kneel like conquered slaves to the new gods of woke, and the leaders of the Labour Party do likewise. I have seen it happen before, but only when things were moving in the opposite direction.

Then, as the Soviet Empire fell and an evil thing was swept from the world, it was a matter for rejoicing. The bloody mass murderer Vladimir Lenin, and his equally gory secret police enforcer Felix Dzerzhinsky, were pulled from their pedestals by a people sick of being ruled by their heirs.

This time, as ignorant armies seek the final abolition of Britain, it is very frightening. I would not like to say where it will end. I cannot claim to have known this would happen but I will say that I had an instinctive fear of very bad things to come when the country began its mad, wild shutdown in March.

I have learned over many years to trust my instincts, to take that train, to make that phone call, to turn that corner. When I have heeded them I have either benefited or been saved from bad things. When I have ignored them I have been hurt. It may be inherited from our forebears, or learned by decades of experience. It may be a mixture of the two.

But on crucial occasions we know more than we think we do. And as the cities began to darken and empty, and the world as we knew it started to close, I feared that we should never again see the lights lit again as they had been before. It was like the start of a great war without limit, made more perplexing because there was no obvious end to it, ever.

This was not just about a disease and a wholly overdone response to it. It was like the death of Princess Diana and the fall of the Twin Towers gathered together into a single great mass of unreason and panic.

The Diana episode had been a Dictatorship of Grief, in which even the most revered parts of the establishment had bowed to the mob. ‘Show us you care!’ shouted the headlines. And woe betide those who did not.

Then came September 11, 2001, and a Dictatorship of Security. No argument could withstand the claim that safety was paramount, and we willingly made a bonfire of our freedoms, wrongly persuaded that we could trust our governments not to take advantage.

And now we have the Dictatorship of Fear. It is not the largely fictional ‘R’ number which governs the behaviour of our feeble Government, which is only just beginning to grasp how much damage it has done and how hard it will be to repair. It is the ‘F’ number, the number of people scared into pathetic timidity by the slick but false claim we were all at risk from a terrible and devastating disease.

The numbers of dead are grossly inflated by an incredibly lax recording system, which does not distinguish between those who died of Covid-19 and those who died of other things but may have been infected by it. Many who have died of Covid-19 are almost certainly victims of the Government’s failure to protect those who were in fact most vulnerable – the residents of care homes.

The sad but unavoidable fact, that the disease is little danger to most young and healthy people but is especially deadly to the old and ill, is also now beyond dispute.

The initial claims of Imperial College London, that half a million might die if strict shutdown measures were not taken, have been devastatingly dismantled by other experts, who believe its methods and codes are, to put it mildly, hopelessly wrong.

Yet Imperial’s chief spokesman, Professor Neil Ferguson (caught ignoring his own advice with a girlfriend), has the double nerve to claim the rules he flouted should have been introduced even earlier. By contrast, Sunetra Gupta, Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology at the University of Oxford, says that the shutdown should be lifted immediately.

Thanks to the barefaced dishonesty and unlawful bias of the BBC, and also the pitifully bad coverage of several newspapers, millions are unaware the whole basis of Government policy is now completely exploded by scientific experts. Even the truth about Sweden, which did not shut down, is obscured by incessant hostile reporting.

Sweden followed Britain in one thing – failing to protect care homes, and so it has had a higher death toll than it should have done. But even so, its experience – along with Japan – shows clearly that there is no link between shutdown and the number of deaths suffered.

The ceaseless assumption of the Government and the BBC that the shutdown ‘protected’ the NHS is simply not borne out by any facts. The NHS was never going to be overwhelmed. Covid deaths in this country peaked on April 8 – an event far too soon to have been caused by the shutdown announced on March 23 and begun the following day.

In fact, the country with the highest number of deaths per head is Belgium (843 per million). Yet Belgium introduced one of the tightest and most severe shutdowns on the planet. Sweden, without a shutdown at all, has suffered 472 deaths per million.

The UK figure of 620 per million may be inflated by our lax recording methods but hardly suggests that we did better than Sweden by throttling our economy and grossly interfering in personal liberty. Japan, which also did not shut down, suffered just over seven (yes, seven) deaths per million.

It is as if some establishments, including our own, wanted a crisis and used their control of information to achieve one. And still it continues. As of tomorrow, in a symbolic moment never to be forgotten, users of trains and buses will be compelled to wear muzzles or forbidden to travel.

The legal basis for this is highly doubtful. The medical basis for it is more doubtful still. These muzzles have been described as being as much use against a microscopic virus as a chain-link fence would be against mosquitoes.

As the distinguished pathologist Dr John Lee asked, after examining the evidence for and against, ‘does any of what is out there add up to a watertight case for compelling people to wear masks in public or at work (outside a healthcare setting)? The threshold for compulsion must surely be higher than “maybe” and “perhaps.’”

I am fairly sure these measures, like the house arrest and sunbathing bans which came before, have another purpose. They accustom us to being told what to do. Stand there. Wait there. Don’t use cash. Don’t cross that line. They permanently change the relationship bet­ween the individual and the state.

Not only can the Government now tell us where we must live and when or if we can go out. Not only can it tell us who we can sleep with (apart from Professor Ferguson, who is still allowed to pontificate after brazenly breaking these rules). It can now even tell us what to wear.

This is something I have not had to endure since my schooldays. What is even more startling is that it can tell me what to wear on my head and on my face, which is somehow even more personal and more intrusive.

I well remember the moment of liberation on the day I left my Devon preparatory school for the last time, and hurled my annoying cap from a high viaduct (it was a school tradition) as the train took me towards the grown-up world I longed to join.

All subsequent efforts to get me to wear such a thing failed. As soon as this lockdown began I could see most of this coming. It was clearly a revolution. And as the long weeks dragged by, something else became clear. The actual time it was taking was important.

During these long dreamy weeks we have bit by bit forgotten who we were before, how we lived, what we thought, what we expected of life. I believe that forces hostile to our country, its history and nature, have seen this as an opportunity. Probably incredulous to begin with, they realised the British people really had gone soft, accepting absurd and humiliating diktats, believing the most ridiculous claims.

They also noticed that formerly great institutions and forces – the church, Parliament, the police, the armed services, much of Fleet Street, the universities – submitted to it without so much as a sigh. So did what remained of our great industrial and commercial companies.

There was, on top of this, an increasingly feverish atmosphere. Deprived of normal routines and circles of friendship, many people became strained and suggestible.

They were discontented but not allowed to protest against the thing which was oppressing them, the shutdown, since from every quarter they were told it was justified. Almost any spark could have ignited this rich mixture.

As it happens, it was the death in Minneapolis, a city most British people will never even see, of George Floyd. Seeing the surging crowds, the rioting and the looting in the USA, the British radical Left grew jealous.

They imported the protest, converted it into outrage against some mouldering statues, and set the streets alight. Last week I attended one of these demonstrations, against the statue of Cecil Rhodes in Oxford. I have lived in Oxford for more than 50 years and I went out of interest, not because I care especially about this mediocre sculpture of a questionable man.

The event was utterly incoherent, moving from vague rage against the long-dead Rhodes to concerns about the oppression of West Papua to shouts against colonialism. As far as I know, China is the only major colonial power left. Peking is certainly raping Africa on a scale Cecil Rhodes never dreamed of.

But such people can’t quite bring themselves to attack that particular regime. Sometimes I think the radical Left are more nostalgic for the British Empire than any retired Indian Army colonel ever was.

They need it, to hate it. Its utter deadness is a nuisance to them. I became briefly famous because, when the crowd were invited to sit down for eight minutes and 46 seconds, with fists clenched, to commemorate Mr Floyd, I did not join in. One of the protesters accused me of refusing to ‘take the knee’.

It is true I would have refused to do so if asked, but in fact they were ‘taking the buttock’, a slightly different thing. The important thing about these protesters, lauded by the Labour Party and deferred to by police chiefs, is that they help to strengthen the new establishment and destroy the old one.

They have already helped to make it very hard for traditional, normal, Christian conservative and patriotic opinions to be expressed at all. By using social media as a form of discipline, they have made everyone – including the Left-wing multimillionaire author J.K. Rowling – fear them.

Anyone, as she learned last week, can now be ‘cancelled’ – the new radicals’ chilling word for the obliteration they like to visit on their victims. She has been pursued for saying the wrong thing about the transgender issue. In fact, there is no right thing. I have known for years it was futile to try to respond with fairness and reason to the new orthodoxy.

However carefully and generously I might argue, I would still be denounced for thought crime. You cannot be right, nor can you know if you are right. That is a large part of the trick.

No actual debate can take place in these conditions. And where there is no debate there is no freedom. I have also pointed out for years – without effect – that the police were long ago infiltrated with radical Left-wing thought.

I warned of Cressida Dick in 2004, noticing her early experiments in ‘negotiating’ with demonstrators rather than reclaiming the streets from them, and predicting that she would be the first female Metropolitan Police Commissioner.

I pointed out that Labour’s smoothie Mandelsonian and Blairite Eurocommunists were far more dangerous than Jeremy Corbyn’s crude and obvious Marxism.

Now, when Sir Keir Starmer (another one of those who dallied with a Trotskyist sect in the 1980s) kneels in supplication to the new orthodoxy, who wants to tell me he is a ‘moderate’?

People thought this frothing, intolerant Leftism did not matter or was a minor issue on the edge of our society. But in fact it was the first wave of a new orthodoxy which will shortly be dominating all our lives. And it is the Covid frenzy which has made its final triumph much closer.

For the Tory Party – in office but not in power – has over the past few months done the militant Left a huge favour. It has destroyed itself – voters will not forgive the mess it has made of their lives and of the economy, especially when they get the bill and the inevitable public inquiry reveals just how wrong they were.

The Johnson Government is now just keeping Downing Street warm for Sir Keir and his Blairite legions. But this will be far worse than 1997, when the Blairites moved softly and cautiously, nervous that they might rouse the Forces of Conservatism.

For the past few weeks have also demonstrated that all the pillars of British freedom and civilisation are hollow and rotten, and that we are ripe for a sweeping cultural revolution as devastating as the one Lenin and Dzerzhinsky launched in Petrograd in 1917.

Except that this time there will be no need to storm the Winter Palace, seize the railway station or the telephone exchange or the barracks. The Left are already in control of every lever of power and influence, from the schools the Tories are too weak to reopen to the police, the Civil Service, the courts and the BBC.

It is regime change. Do not worry too much about the statues which are now coming down. They mean surprisingly little. Worry more about the ones they are soon going to be putting up, and what they will represent. Perhaps our grandchildren will find the courage to pull them down.

SOURCE 





I did not kill George Floyd

The attempt to hold all whites responsible for the death of Floyd shows what a dead-end woke politics is.

There’s a new sin. Forget gluttony. Forget sloth. The great moral error today is whiteness. To be white is to be fallen. Whiteness has become a kind of original sin, an inherited moral defect one must atone for throughout one’s life. In the wake of the brutal execution of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis, this almost religious treatment of whiteness as an existential flaw has gone uber-mainstream.

Listen to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Yesterday he called on ‘white Christians’ to ‘repent of our own prejudices’. Repent, ye sinners! Or if you prefer your leaders to be secular, how about the high priestess of middle-class decency, Nigella Lawson, who instructs her fellow white people to ‘acknowledge [that] systematic racism exists’ and that we are ‘complicit in it’. That brutal killing in Minneapolis – it’s your doing, white people.

Or read Time, the most mainstream magazine in existence. ‘White people’, says one of its contributors, ‘have inherited this house of white supremacy, built by their forebears and willed to them’. Inherited. The sins of the father shall be visited upon the son. The Time writer says white racism is a spectrum, stretching from those white people who tell a black woman ‘how pretty our hair looks when we wear it straight’ to ‘the more extreme end of the spectrum… cops literally suffocating black people like George Floyd as they beg for their lives’.

To compare a compliment about a woman’s hair to the merciless killing of Floyd is deeply disturbing. It sanitises the crime committed against Floyd and debases his suffering by putting it on a par with a mere uninvited compliment. It also confirms how thoroughly whiteness has been pathologised in mainstream ideology. What was once said about black men – that it is problematic when they compliment women of another race and that their racial make-up drives them towards murderous behaviour – is now said about white men. Perhaps someone can explain how replacing one form of racial fatalism with another is progressive.

Whiteness-as-sin is everywhere. ‘White America, if you want to know who’s responsible for racism, look in the mirror’, cries the Chicago Tribune. ‘White people, you are the problem’, it continues, in case you didn’t get its message that this sinful race, these fallen people, are the scourge of our time.

‘I’m talking about white people’, said James Corden in his monologue on The Late Late Show on Monday. ‘This is our problem to solve’, he said of the murder of Floyd and the problem of racism. White people, all of you, you did this. This is how mainstream the pathologisation of whiteness has become: it is now beamed into suburban living rooms across the US by famously inoffensive TV hosts. A white man telling white people about the sins of white complicity – this is, at the very least, an extremely odd state of affairs.

Let’s be clear about what is happening here: this is an effort to establish racial collective guilt for the murderous suffocation of George Floyd. There are two problems with this approach. The first is that collective guilt on the basis of racial origin is always a wicked ideology to pursue. Whether it’s Jews being held collectively guilty of the alleged excesses of ‘rich Jews’ or blacks being collectively punished for the offences of individual black people, such racial extrapolation always leads to prejudice and suffering. There is a twisted irony in the fact that so many commentators and activists who pose as anti-racist are promoting the ideology of collective racial guilt in response to the killing of George Floyd.

The second problem with this sweeping anti-white reaction to Floyd’s death, and with the pathologisation of whiteness more broadly, is that it acts as a distraction from the real problems facing the US and other societies. Collectivising the crime committed by four police officers in Minneapolis turns attention away from the specificity of police brutality and of structural disarray in modern America, in favour of pursuing a blanket suspicion of all whites. The problem is dissipated, then obscured. We are implicitly discouraged from seriously analysing specific residual political problems in the United States in favour of joining in the thrill-inducing project of bashing all whites.

It is important to understand where this distracting moral project comes from. It is an outlook of the privileged elites, very often white elites. It comes from academia, from the media class, from the younger members of the political establishment. For years now, these privileged elites have promoted hostility to whiteness.

They have projected the sins of the past on to whites living today, claiming that white people are the beneficiaries of slavery and colonialism. They have pushed the ideology of ‘white complicity’ (that is, all whites bear responsibility for racial crimes) and ‘white fragility’ (that is, any white who pushes back against this idea of collective racial guilt is showing his moral weakness). They have encouraged the checking of one’s white privilege, which is really a modern form of penance.

Anyone who thought the cranky woke idea of privilege-checking was confined to PC campuses will have had a rude awakening over the past few days. We’ve had the Archbishop of Canterbury promoting a Christian version of white self-correction. And anyone who has seen the incredibly creepy videos showing groups of white people begging black people for forgiveness for the historic crimes of racism or chanting in a massive crowd about how they will do better in future will know that privilege-checking has become the new religion. Original sin, repentance, public self-flagellation – it has it all.

Anti-whiteness comes from the top. It is most pronounced among privileged whites. It has nothing in common with the noble struggles for racial equality in the past. Rather, it expresses the nihilism and fatalism of the contemporary liberal elites and intellectual classes. It is self-loathing disguised as radicalism. It is not the friend, by any stretch of the imagination, of black people or white people. On the contrary, it condemns both to an interminable status quo in which the former must perform the role of perennial victim and the latter must engage in penitence, publicly and noisily, forever. Elite fatalism sees no way out of inequality or injustice, precisely because it has reimagined these things as ‘traits’, as the Chicago Tribune puts it, of racial behaviour. All it can envisage is a technocratic system of racial management in which black victims are encouraged to speak and weep and whites are encouraged to listen and repent. Like a forever truth and reconciliation commission.

It is striking that where past black campaigners for racial equality spoke in terms of visions, dreams, better futures in which things would be different, today’s self-styled correctors of white privilege can only obsess over the past. History is their stomping ground. Slavery and colonialism are their obsessions. A writer for Slate says these things are America’s ‘original sin’ and George Floyd’s murder shows that they infect us still. This sums up the fatalism of the new racial guardians. In describing racism as America’s ‘original sin’, they utterly demean the agency of the black people, and white people, who fought for rights and equality over the centuries and who tangibly changed America for the better. Worse, they lock America into racial permanence, into round after round of racial accusation and racial repentance, into a never-ending self-whipping for the inherited sins of the past. It is an entirely dispiriting ideology that offers nothing whatsoever to blacks and whites fighting for freer, better futures.

This is why corporate America and the new political elites have no problem at all with the woke ideology of pathologised whiteness. In fact they embrace it. In recent days some of the most powerful corporations in the US have commented on the problem of ‘white supremacy’. Leaders and officials in Minneapolis and elsewhere initially refused to condemn rioting on the basis that, as white people, it wasn’t their place to do so. The academia-born new racialism can be easily internalised by the capitalist and political elites because it poses no threat whatsoever to their influence over society. On the contrary, in dissipating the problems of racism and social inequality, in personalising these things and reducing them to ‘traits’ that exist across the whole of society, the woke ideology takes the heat off the powers-that-be and even creates a space for them to perform their penitence and advertise their awareness and in the process become part of the ‘saved’ people. It empowers them.

This is the great tragedy in the US right now. People are on the streets marching and arguing for some kind of change, but the dominant political ideology and language of our time utterly fails to meet their expectations or even to allow that meaningful change is possible. In accepting today’s ruling-class ideology – the ideology of wokeness and of forever racialism – the leaders of these protests have defeated themselves already. They have embraced an ideology that makes solidarity virtually impossible, by constantly flagging the differential ‘traits’ between blacks and whites, and which elevates backward-looking historic repentance over moving towards a better, wealthier future.

George Floyd’s death has exposed how dominant, destructive and futile the woke worldview has become. Rejecting the new racialism, spurning the woke creed, turning one’s back on elite fatalism that today comes in the garb of caring about black people – these are the preconditions for proper solidarity and real change.

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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14 June, 2020

UK: Lord Baden-Powell statue to be torn down over Hitler ties

A statue of Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Scouting movement, is being removed by a local council because it was threatened by people who criticised his “homophobia, racism and enthusiastic support of Hitler”.

The statue was installed in 2008 and faces Brownsea Island in Poole Harbour, where the decorated military leader held an experimental camp in 1907 that led to the formation of the Scouting movement the following year.

Topple the Racists, a website published by the Stop Trump Coalition in support of the Black Lives Matter protests, lists the Baden-Powell monument among more than 70 statues across Britain, which they claim pay tribute to slave traders and “racists”. The website says the Scouts founder, who was born in 1857, “committed atrocities against the Zulus"

Baden-Powell was an officer in the British army during the successful British war against the Zulus but he was no racist. He romanticised the Zulus' discipline, and courage, and adapted many of their cultural institutions to scouting. "The Scouts' War Dance" was his adaptation of a Zulu chant

His "links" with Hitler arose because there were some similarities between the Scout movement and the Hitler youth movement. Baden-Powell was invited to meet Hitler after holding friendly talks about forming closer ties with the Hitler Youth movement.

Something not usually remarked about BP is that he was clearly a closet homosexual.  He spent most of his time with men, did not marry until late in life and it was clearly agony for him to sleep with his wife. He spent most of his married life sleeping away from his wife

So as a homosexual suffering from oppression of his sexuality, he should in fact be something of a hero to the Left

SOURCE 






Who Speaks for the Riots' Victims?

How many homes have been destroyed in the riots of the past weeks? How many businesses?

How many Americans have died in the riots that began out of justified and peaceful protests over the killing of George Floyd?

My colleague Tyler O’Neill highlighted two of them in this piece. Their names are Princess Pope, of Dallas, and K. B. Balla, of Minneapolis. Looters burned Balla’s sports bar, which he built using his life’s savings, to the ground. And then they ran off, presumably to burn someone else’s life down.

“The night of the destruction.. whew,” Pope told a local TV station. “When I came in, it just was just so terrible. It was so terrible. I stand with the protesters, but I do not stand with the looters.” ??

Pope makes a distinction too many politicians and the national media have failed to make. Peaceful protest is thoroughly American and is protected in the First Amendment. Rioting and looting are criminal activity, often done opportunistically while others peacefully protest for justice and police and engaged in protecting them.

K. B. Balla worked his whole adult life to get to the point where he could open his bar, but rioters destroyed his dream in minutes. Both of these victims of the looters and rioters are black. Princess Pope spent years building her Guns and Roses Boutique, only to see it looted and destroyed in minutes.

There are many victims beyond these two. They have names and faces, they have families. They’re in every major city in the country. They did nothing to warrant the violence and injustice done to them by rioters and looters.

Google “number killed 2020 riots George Floyd.” Other than a lone report from a local Fox affiliate, there isn’t much. That report has not been updated in several days. But it does list more than 20 Americans who have died because of the riots.

These are their names: David Dorn. David McAttee. Chris Beaty. Dorian Murell. Italia Kelly. Marquis Tousant. Patrick Underwood. Calvin Horton Jr. James Scurlock. Javar Harrell. Barry Perkins III. Jorge Gomez. Jose Gutierrez. Victor Cazares Jr. Marvin Francois. And there are two additional victims who as of the time or writing have not been identified. The youngest was athlete Dorian Murrell, 18; the oldest was retired police captain David Dorn, 77. Dorn was guarding his store when rioters broke in, killed him, and looted it. All of these victims were minorities, and most were black.

Patrick Underwood was a career law enforcement officer. He died literally guarding the rule of law.

“Pat was guarding the federal courthouse, a symbol of equal justice and the rule of law. During the riots in Oakland on the night of his death, it appears his death was part of a targeted attack on federal law enforcement,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy said at Underwood’s funeral.

“We pray that justice comes swiftly and completely for Pat, for George Floyd, and all victims of violence.”

But the media, along with most of the nation, is silent about these. If silence is truly violence, what does the media’s silence say to these victims and their families? The New York Times used its Memorial Day issue to print the names of 1,000 Americans killed by a mindless virus. It is ignoring the victims of the George Floyd riots.

There are many other victims. Right now a six-block section of Seattle is under the control of extremists calling the area the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, or CHAZ. There are 500 homes within the area the city and state have ceded to the extremists. There are businesses and jobs in that area. They’re all victims who have been left without a voice. CHAZ is under the control of an armed insurrectionist strongman who is extorting money from residents and businesses trying to continue their operations to keep their employees paid.

Who can they count on? Democratic governors and mayors have ceded their homes to extremists. Democratic candidates like Kim Olson in Texas say that “If people loot, so what. Burn it to the ground if that’s what it takes to fix our country.”

Those are Americans’ homes and their dreams and their lives. They deserve better than callous dismissal from the likes of Olson and the national media.

Thankfully both Balla and Pope will have their businesses restored. Their communities have come together, and Pope has a GoFundme and is working with local Vista Bank to get back to business. The Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce is also working with local First United Bank to help Pope and other Dallas victims of the riots including Coffney M Salon and BurgerIM. Those links go to their respective GoFundMe pages.

“We recognize how hard it is to build a small business and we are honored to play a small part in helping her come back from this,” Vista Bank President John D. Steinmetz said.

“First United Bank has been instrumental in helping the Black-owned businesses the Dallas Black Chamber of Commerce sent during COVID-19 and now is no different. We appreciate their support to businesses in our communities across North Texas,” DBCC President Harrison Blair says.

Balla, a former firefighter, has raised over a million dollars to rebuild his bar, another case of Americans coming together to restore what was all too easy to destroy.

Neither Pope nor Balla sound like victims. They both sound like overcomers. They will thrive and hopefully pull many up with them.

Patrick Underwood’s sister, Angela Underwood Jacobs, directly addressed the riots during her brother’s funeral.

“Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preached, always avoid violence,” she said. “If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in your struggle, unborn generations will be recipients of a long and desolate night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.”

The national media could do good by focusing on these stories and relentlessly drawing distinctions between the peaceful protesters and the violent rioters. The former seek justice for a fellow American. The latter are nihilists who want to destroy the country and they do not care what and who they have to destroy along the way.

SOURCE 






Sydney shows how to do it

Demonstrators stay peaceful.  No riots, no looting -- under a conservative administration

Hundreds of police officers in face masks have congregated at a banned Black Lives Matter rally in Sydney - and have warned they won't hesitate to arrest protesters. 

A rally calling for an end to Aboriginal deaths in custody - planned for Sydney Town Hall on Friday evening - was deemed unlawful by NSW Police because they weren't formally notified. 

Police officers showed up in force two hours early and protesters decided to move the gathering to Hyde Park in a last-ditch attempt to avoid authority.

'Due to the overwhelming police presence at Town Hall, we will now be starting from the Archibald Fountain in Hyde Park,' a Facebook post read.

Police followed the activists to Hyde Park at 6.30pm and immediately attempted to disperse the crowds.

One protester who had also attended Saturday's Black Lives Matter protest said there were 'a lot more police than last time'.

Protesters chanted 'we'll be back' as they were moved on by officers.

The demonstrators were moved on by police from Hyde Park at about 6.45pm. Some protesters walked to Town Hall but were again followed by officers and told to disperse.

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 June, 2020  

Oxford-educated American museum curator tweets how to destroy statues with household chemicals

Another example of how the elite feel contempt for the society they live in



An Oxford-educated museum curator is being investigated by police after she tweeted expert advice on how to dissolve bronze statues using corrosive chemicals in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests. 

Privately schooled Madeline Odent, curator of Royston Museum in Hertfordshire, sent a series of tweets last night to her 5,164 followers, which were then shared thousands of times.

The American-born banker's wife wrote that the damage would be 'irreversible' and 'practically impossible to stop' before saying her next target was 'marble memorials of racists' with a picture of Winston Churchill's plinth.

There are growing demands from protesters for statues all over the country to be torn down due to their links to the slave trade and Britain's colonial past. 

Mrs Odent's remarks on her private account prompted fury online, with one follower threatening to report her to the police, who have promised to investigate.

But the moneyed curator dismissed her critics, taunting them by saying 'my boss has my back' and that she intends to use her 'safe platform' to 'p*** off some racists'.

Glamorous curator Madeline Odent, whose maiden name was Madeline Briggs, comes from a wealthy family of American academics and is married to a banker.

Born in the United States, Madeline – known to her family as ‘Maddy’ – has two sisters, Morgan and Meredith. Her father, Dr Stephen Briggs, a personality psychologist, is the president of Berry College, a private liberal arts college in Georgia. He and her mother, Brenda Morgan Briggs, are old university friends.

Mrs Ordent went to Darlington High School, a private, co-educational boarding school in Georgia. Set in 500 acres of land, the school is based on the English public school system.

In 2017 she married prominent banker Pascal Odent. The couple staged two lavish ceremonies, one in an English country house and the other in the opulent surroundings of her father’s college in Georgia, which sits in 26,400 acres of magnificent landscaped gardens.

In the tweets, which MailOnline is not showing in full, the conservation expert used her knowledge of preserving ancient artefacts to suggest that people use substances found in household products to dissolve public statues.

It is 'extremely difficult' to remove the chemicals once they have been applied, she said, adding that 'it can be done, but the chemical needed is super carcinogenic, so it rarely is'.

And a spokesman for Hertfordshire Constabulary told MailOnline: 'We are aware of a series of tweets on a private twitter account, which we believe may relate to damaging statues, and we are currently looking into this matter along with our partner agencies.'

SOURCE 






Black Lives, Businesses, Neighborhoods, and Monuments Matter

Apparently, for some “protesters,” the irony of their unmitigated ignorance knows no limits. As Peter Heck notes at Discrn, “Exactly 123 years to the day that it was dedicated, the Shaw Memorial, a monument honoring the first all-volunteer black regiment of the Union Army in the Civil War, was defaced by rioters demanding justice for African-Americans.” Heck recounts, “One of the soldiers, Sgt. William Harvey Carney, carried the American flag throughout the battle, never dropping it despite being shot 7 times. Carney was the first black American to [receive] the Congressional Medal of Honor for action.”

The 54th Massachusetts Regiment of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw was memorialized in the 1989 movie “Glory.” According to Derrick Wilburn, executive director of the Rocky Mountain Black Conservatives, “They’re out there defacing the memory of the original Black Lives Matter crusaders. They gave their life’s blood for black lives.” Perhaps these “peaceful” protesters should learn some history.

Vandals in Washington, DC, weren’t any better. The U.S. ambassador to India issued an apology after “protesters” defaced the memorial to Mahatma Gandhi. Clearly, they don’t believe, as Gandhi did, in peaceful protesting.

Historical ignorance and criminal vandalism is certainly bad, but it only scratches the surface of how riots over black lives have mostly devastated — and taken — black lives. Black-owned businesses have been burned to the ground, costing the life’s work of those entrepreneurs. Black neighborhoods were torched, destroying the homes of poor blacks. At least 17 people have been killed during rioting, and the vast majority were black.

In Chicago, the weekend after George Floyd’s death was the deadliest in the city since at least 1961 (murder data doesn’t go further back than that), as there were 18 murders in 24 hours and 24 dead throughout the weekend. The victims (and perpetrators) were predominantly black. Ironically, the race-baiting and gun-grabbing Reverend Michael Pfleger, one of Barack Obama’s Chicago cronies, said it was “open season” because, as people told him, “There’s no police anywhere.” Remember that Democrats want to defund police in Democrat-run cities that will become even more dangerous killing fields without any presence of law and order.

Robert Woodson, a conservative civil-rights leader and founder of the Woodson Center, says, “The contradictions and the hypocrisy of these so-called social justice warriors — they are more concerned about their own virtue-signaling, even if it means the continued destruction of black Americans.”

Black lives DO matter. So do black businesses, neighborhoods, and monuments to past achievements and sacrificial service. Someone should clue in the rioters, vandals, arsonists, and murderers.

SOURCE 





Leftist ideology has left young men searching for meaning in destruction

A week into the peaceful protests that have after hours turned into looting and violent riots, it’s obvious this is the result of a toxic combination of issues. People have become entitled after living in cities run by liberals for decades and receiving state handouts. Young people are ignorant of any historical context. And a lack of purpose eventually erodes work ethic, personal responsibility, and morphs into lawlessness.

At first, when residents in Minneapolis—my home town—began to riot and loot the communities, it seemed like a knee-jerk reaction to the murder of George Floyd by a police officer. This was not an entirely productive or logical protest, but it was understandable given the fact that the police officer is white and Floyd was black and racism was presumed therefore to be the root cause.

However, as the destruction continued and worsened, then spread to Philadelphia, LA, Washington, DC, Dallas, Atlanta, New York, Houston, Louisville, Memphis, and Dallas it began to look like the murder of George Floyd was just lighter fluid, fanning a flame that had been smoldering for awhile.

To add to it, it looks like antifa, a left-wing, so-called “anti-fascist” group consisting of predominantly young, white males, has joined in the protests and exacerbated the violence and property destruction.

For all intents and purposes, there are two groups fanning the flames of discord in some of our country’s finest cities. While I suspect their origins and reasons for protesting—including violent looting and rioting—are different, they share some similarities: A progressive ideology and a lack of purpose. When combined with the pent-up frustration due to the COVID-19 lockdowns, the idleness has given way to pure lawlessness.

Ryan Griffith: "My neighborhood, burning. Median income $33k. Many have no transit. Our pharmacies, banks, gas stations, restaurants are destroyed. The six closest grocery stores are looted. Our post office is on fire. The nearest gas station is on fire. No response from our city or state."

From the dozens of videos I’ve seen on social media, the majority of Antifa and violent protesters destroying property look young and over half are male. This is not the first time we’ve seen this nor am I the first person to point out that this generation has a particular problem with authority and with how to handle anger, frustration, and loss.

Claire Lehmann: "Maybe saddling an entire generation of kids with debt & no hope of joining the property class while sending them to institutions that marinate them in neo-Marxist ideology wasn't such a good idea."

Christina Sommers: "The violence tonight is not about George Floyd.Growing numbers of young Americans have been taught to think of US as an evil empire—a white-supremacist, patriarchal hellscape.The part about the US being the best hope for humankind—a deeply flawed but noble democracy—not taught."

Indeed, this generation of twentysomethings has grown up in fractured homes, are numbed by video games and smartphones, without an immediate threat of war to toughen them mentally and physically as it has previous generations, but still just enough poverty, debt, and job loss to cause anxiety and fear.

What these young men and women have lacked in a strong parental figure they have made up in flawed, selfish peer groups. What they failed to find in terms of moral ethics, vocational purpose, or family, they made up for when they found each other and stoked one another a sense of anger toward a government that couldn’t make their lives better.

For those who have grown up in predominantly Democratic-run areas of the country, this has compounded things for this generation. Liberal ideology hasn’t just seeped into the fabric of many cities, like Minneapolis and Washington, DC, but it has shaped entire areas now for decades.

Where these ideas have taken root, they have caused serious, dire consequences. State programs offer handouts and yet little sense of personal responsibility. Both create a false supposition that property is in fact destructible and replaceable and people don’t have to step up to provide for their own, so they lack purpose.

In Democraticic-run cities, crime is rampant, abortions are common, disregard for life, property, and basic ethics runs high. While high taxes pour money into public schools, basic civics lessons fail to be taught, history is cherry-picked, and teachers care more about a student’s self-esteem than sweat equity in math, reading, history, and government classes.

This lack of education, and an effort to pour into a student’s feelings has backfired, creating a generation of me-centric toddlers who are so entitled yet so full of their own virtue, when they see injustice they can’t fathom squaring their shoulders and making real change: Instead they loot, raid, and dub it righteous indignation. And leaders prop up this view.

If the way to overcome trauma is to find purpose then surely the way to overcome decades of liberal ideas, a fractured family, and a coddled lifestyle that has never seen a threat of real war on our own soil, is for young people to establish their bona fides in a much healthier way.

To find a sense of purpose, work, family, education, meaning, they can pour this pent-up angst into and produce real change, not broken windows. Until they do and until we teach them how, cities soaked in liberal ideology combined with a swath of young people lacking any real meaning and purpose in life will bend towards lawlessness when given the opportunity.

SOURCE  




Australia: Aboriginal Today host Brooke Boney says comedies showing blackface SHOULDN'T be banned



Like most Aborigines who make it into the media, she is effectively white, with only a little Aboriginal ancestry.  Unlike most such, however, she is not a whiner

Brooke Boney has slammed streaming services for removing controversial shows featuring blackface and offensive racial stereotypes, claiming the move will not create real change.

The Indigenous Today show host spoke out after it was revealed Chris Lilley's controversial comedies were being pulled from Netflix in light of the Black Lives Matter movement.

'If these companies truly want to make lasting change and not just virtue signal in a moment of turmoil, then they need to support new talent,' Boney said on the show on Thursday.

'They need to open doors that have been closed to people of talent before.

'So if they truly want to make a difference in the way that we tell stories about who we are in society, then we don't do that by deleting things we've done in the past we do it by making sure we don't do it again in the future.'

Boney explained it was important not to remove the shows as they served as important reminders of how people of colour were viewed in the past.

'If I have children, I don't want them to see and to think that that is how they fit into the world. But I'd also like to show them how poorly our people were thought of and treated in the past,' Boney said.

'These things hurt because it feels lie these people are punching down. It's easy for people who are on the bottom rung of the ladder.'

On Wednesday, Deadline revealed four of Chris Lilley's shows - Jonah From Tonga, Angry Boys, Summer Heights High and We Can Be Heroes - had been removed from the service in Australia and New Zealand.

In the past, those shows raised questions about racial discrimination as several of the characters were portrayed in blackface and brownface.

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 June, 2020  

Poor Minorities Hurt Most by Violent Protests and Looting

Any business that does re-open in riot-hit neighborhoods will have to make large allowances for monetary loss.  It would make no sense otherwise. And that will mean much higher prices.  Only high prices would incentivize opening up there.

So the rioters will eventually pay for what they stole -- in the form of increased prices for everyday needs.  That will add up to increased poverty for everybody in the neighborhoods concerned.  Higher prices means that your money buys less.  It has just the same effect as being paid less  

Following the horrific and unjustified death of George Floyd, a black man, at the hands of white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, large groups of protesters gathered in cities across the U.S. Soon, however, peaceful protests turned into mayhem, with rioters kicking, punching, and throwing bricks at police and even innocent bystanders; setting homes, businesses, and vehicles on fire; and shattering store windows before rushing in to loot everything from the shelves.

Time after time in these Democrat-run cities and even in the halls of Congress, politicians rushed to literally prostrate themselves before not only the protesters but the antifa and Black Lives Matter thugs who are setting their cities aflame, eager to show solidarity with them.

In these same cities there is a growing call to “defund the police,” redirecting money from police budgets to mental-health programs, public housing, and education. In Minneapolis, decimated by rioters for more than a week, the all-Democrat city council went a step further, promising to “dismantle the police department” altogether, though members didn’t explain who will now protect lives and property.

Sadly, it is the poor minorities politicians claim to care so much about who suffer most.

In Chicago, Democrat Mayor Lori Lightfoot gained notoriety recently by threatening citizens with arrest and jail time for violations of her COVID-19 stay-at-home order. Yet she seems completely incompetent at quelling the rioting, looting, and arson that devastated her city.

These same politicians justify such lawlessness by blaming poverty, poor education, or “systemic racism” — a seemingly odd claim for cities run by Democrats for decades.

Whatever the excuses, it won’t exempt them from the consequences of their failure to control the waves of crime pouring over their neighborhoods and cities, and businesses are taking notice.

Mayor Lightfoot is now pleading with Walmart and other retailers not to abandon her city after their stores were looted, vandalized, and set on fire, with millions of dollars lost to theft and millions more in damage to the buildings. Walmart is silent on whether it will rebuild.

In Louisville, Kroger is one of two grocery stores serving 60,000 residents in the city’s predominantly poor, black West End neighborhood. The store was boarded up in anticipation of protests and looting, yet looters still managed to break into the store and steal carts full of merchandise.

In Minneapolis, the Lake Street Target was almost complete destroyed as looters stole everything in sight, destroyed shelves and displays, and broke open cash registers with hammers.

For years, minority advocates and “social justice” warriors have decried the “food deserts” in poor minority neighborhoods. A food desert is an area where crime, shoplifting, and looting have made it impossible for grocery stores to be profitable.

In Minneapolis, nine of the city’s neighborhoods have “nearly become a food desert” after a Cub Foods, Target, two Aldi stores, and numerous neighborhood markets were damaged during protests. Chicago also has new food deserts due to these “protests.”

These same activists publicly guilt and excoriate businesses and corporations for refusing to open stores in these poor minority neighborhoods but completely ignore why they won’t. Grocery stores operate on an average profit margin of 1-3%, so persistent shoplifting can easily cause the store to lose money, and no business can consistently operate at a loss. And in the aftermath of these riots, it is minority-owned businesses that were hit hardest. With many already struggling to make a profit, and with no cash reserves, they will simply go bankrupt.

Why would any major retailer or small business rebuild in these neighborhoods when politicians are siding with the looters and rioters and against police? Why invest in rebuilding with no assurance this won’t happen again?

And once these stores leave, where do residents go? How do poor minority senior citizens get groceries when they don’t have a car and all of the grocery stores have permanently shuttered? Many are forced to take a bus or walk miles to the nearest store, only able to buy what they can physically carry back. But what about those too frail or too sick to walk or take a bus?

At the end of the day, what have these “protesters” accomplished? Officer Chauvin had already been arrested when much of the rioting and looting occurred. Those engaged in the rioting and looting claimed to be doing so in an effort to bring attention to the injustices perpetrated against poor minorities.

How? By rioting, looting, and destroying homes and businesses in these poor communities? By destroying black-owned businesses that don’t have enough money to rebuild?

William Wright understands. He’s a black resident of Chicago’s notoriously poor and crime-ridden South Side. The store he takes his grandma to each Sunday was looted and destroyed last week, and Wright wants to know what good it did.

“What did we accomplish, aside from take our property value down and embarrass ourselves?”

Good question, William.

SOURCE 





Liberalism Kills Communities

Remember this week when it comes time to vote in November. What we’re seeing across America is what Democrats have created coming to fruition; it’s the natural end result of a progressive philosophy that works overtime to absolve individuals of their responsibility and place blame on others for political advantage. It’s rage for the sake of motivation to vote, to hate, to not think. It has worked for progressives in the past, and there’s no reason to believe it won’t work for Democrats now. But in order to work, it has to destroy. Liberalism, progressivism, or whatever they choose to call the Democratic Party’s agenda, kills.

It kills people, it kills businesses, it kills communities.

The first two are obvious, the last one may be less so. The political left spends a lot of time tossing around the word “community,” but they don’t mean it the way you likely understand it. It, like so many other words bastardized by leftists, has been redefined to be more useful to those who seek to use it to empower themselves. The new progressive definition of community kills actual communities; it was designed to do so.

Growing up, your community was where you lived, the people and places in your immediate area. When riding bikes was all the rage, I remember the thrill of combing the sides of the road the morning after the 4th of July with my friends looking for anything with a wick – the firecracker, bottle rocket, smoke bomb, or whatever – that slipped through some adult’s fingers in the darkness and excitement the frenzied night before. We’d gather them up, and with matches swiped from some adult (seemed like everyone smoked then), we set off to find a safe place to blow them off.

That “safe place” was not needed because we were concerned with our physical safety. No teenage boy is aware of that concept. It was needed because if we were spotted lighting off fireworks, let alone playing with matches, we were in trouble. The idea of losing a digit or eye wasn’t even a fleeting thought, avoiding getting in trouble was all-consuming.

My group of friends and I pedaled off to find a place where no adult could see us because almost every adult was the on-ramp for a pathway back to one of our parents. And that pathway ended with getting in trouble. We never did find that elusive foolproof place. After a couple of bangs, zooms, and pops, one of our parents would use the cell phones available at the time – going into their backyards and yelling their kid’s name, the siren call from nature’s intercom of either dinner or trouble – and the fun was over. If one of our parents knew, they all would soon.

Our community looked out for everyone in it. What we spent our time trying to thwart was actually what helped keep us healthy and sometimes alive. One time, we found a beat-up dirt bike laying in the woods. It had been trashed and crashed, was probably stolen and abandoned after being ridden to near-destruction. But we could make it run. The brakes didn’t work, neither did the throttle, which was stuck on full, but it could be started. It could also be stopped, sort of, by pulling the sparkplug wire off the plug and killing the engine as everyone sort of grabbed you as you slowed, or by simply jumping off of it and allowing it to crash. We found it, it was already trashed and all bent, so who cared?

After a couple of days, someone either talked or we were spotted on our makeshift track, about 10 feet of which was visible from the K-Mart parking lot, and the party was over. Our glorious motocross careers over before they began.

It was annoying at the time, as getting in trouble always was. The draw of that dirt bike, like the appeal of the fireworks stashed in the hope that we could return to them later (they were usually scavenged by some other gang of friends who then unsuccessfully set off to find their perfect place), was unrelenting. But it was soon replaced by something else stupid and self-destructive in the circle of a prepubescent boy’s life.

That definition of community is largely gone now. It’s not unusual for people to not really know their neighbors, but to not care at all about them or their kids. The word has been redefined away from meaning your immediate area where you live to now focusing on the least relevant, least interesting part of any human being: their immutable characteristics, like skin color, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, etc. All the things the left uses to define who someone is and how they should think or vote.

The progressive philosophy would have you care more about what happens to someone with whom you share any of these traits than you would your next-door neighbor who doesn’t. And it’s working.

We hear all the time about the white community, the black community, the Hispanic community, the gay community, the trans community, the whatever way you can think of to divide people community; they even subdivide people further – the black trans community, for example. Anything you can imagine, any difference that can be thought of and used, is.

Your gay neighbor, for example, is encouraged and conditioned to care more about what happens to someone 2,000 miles away who also happens to be gay, than they are encouraged to care about what happens to anyone across on their block who isn’t. One could impact them directly; the other would never be known to them were it not for liberals hyping it as if it’s all that matters in the world.

What happened to George Floyd is horrendous, and the officers responsible should pay dearly. But it’s no more or no less horrendous than what happened last year to Tony Timpa, who you’ve likely never heard of. He was killed by a police officer kneeling on him as others stood around joking too. It, too, was caught on film. You haven’t heard about it because he was white; his death didn’t fit the liberal narrative, so it was ignored as a local story.

It is a local story, but so is Floyd’s death. If you didn’t know either of them, your life was not impacted by either tragic event. All the virtue signally celebrities and public posturing by politicians in the world will not change that.

What they will do is empower further the very same people who’ve exploited and benefitted from previous tragedies. It’s good for ratings, it’s good for fundraising, it’s good for clicks and votes. Nothing changes because this is the change these “leaders” wanted: people being angry. Anger and fear are the best way to override logic and rational thought; they are the tools of manipulation.

The Democrat media spent days calling rioters “mostly peaceful,” while standing near burning buildings and looted businesses. It wasn’t until they became the targets that they started to care things had gotten out of control and lives were being ruined. “The violent protesters are from out of town,” they said. It’s highly unlikely someone carting a 70-inch TV out of Target was heading to the UPS Store to ship it back to Portland.

It is true that a lot of the agitators are from out of town, but they aren’t just from ANTIFA strongholds and Black Lives Matter headquarters. They’re from newsrooms in New York and Washington, D.C. They saw an opportunity to further stoke division against Republicans, who hold zero power where Floyd’s death took place. They saw ratings, they saw November and Donald Trump. They’ve spent years piling up barrels of gasoline and took another opportunity to flick a cigarette butt into it.

I could cite statistics about how more unarmed white people are killed by police every year than any other group (they’re all in my book), but that doesn’t matter. We’re dealing with emotions and an unscrupulous left that has declared any fact inconvenient to be racist. We’re dealing with well-funded professional agitators and protesters who know exactly how to whip up an angry mob. And we’re dealing with feckless leaders who are willing to let cities commit suicide for their political causes. (How’s Ferguson, Missouri, doing these days? You don’t know because it’s no longer useful to the left.)

Care about what happens in this country because you’re a citizen of this country, period. Your neighbors and where you live are your community no matter what the people around you look like or do. I care that a man was killed. His skin color is irrelevant. If you only care about a death that shouldn’t have been based on whether or not the victim looks or identifies a certain way, you’re the racist. You’re the bigot.

Society isn’t out to get or keep anyone down; society doesn’t know or care that any of us exist – it just is. Your life is 99 percent the culmination of the actions you’ve taken and the decisions you’ve made, nothing more. You either accept that and live your life accordingly, or you end up being trampled and used by the very people who are telling you that you can’t get ahead without electing them to keep those evil societal forces at bay. Because if it were really out to destroy these “communities” Democrats proclaim themselves to be the champions and defenders of, I’m not sure what “society” could have done differently to destroy lives than Democrats literally have done with their generational political control. Liberalism kills.

SOURCE  






Protests: liberal elites run risk of creating the racism they claim to hate

Across the US this week, 29 cities called out the National Guard to help control protests, riots and looting that broke out in response to the gruesome police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The nation seemed set to burn. This time water, fire next time.

Is it fire this time? Probably not. By week’s end, the protests seemed to be moderating, at least in their violence. But the words of Reverend Al Sharpton, at a memorial for Floyd, were ominous nonetheless. Floyd was blameless in the encounter that took his life, and his death was appallingly gruesome, cruel and needless. It understandably aroused great passion and anger.

But Sharpton saw it as the essence of America — the police knee in our neck, he said, is what America has been doing to us for 400 years.

Liberal media voices rang out: America has never atoned for the original sin of slavery. Former president Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden both said the murder of Floyd was “systemic racism”.

But was it really? What do the facts and the long trajectory of US history really show?

Racism in the form of slavery is indeed the country’s original sin. Yet the repudiation of racism, and the positive liberal embrace of humanity which transcends race, is America’s genius.

The Declaration of Independence begins with a magnificent declaration, biblical in its majesty: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights.”

Yet the author of these words, Thomas Jefferson, owned slaves. Hypocrisy plain and simple. Jefferson couldn’t see African-Americans as human beings deserving of human rights.

But the US is a creedal nation, a nation built, uniquely, on a creed. As the Christian gospels will shame a believer into better behaviour, so the Declaration of Independence shamed America into justice on race. The power of Jefferson’s words overcame the slave-owning example he set. For as slaves and their supporters, abolitionists of every race, campaigned against slavery, they did so by holding up to the US its own immortal creed.

The US, like most nations in the 18th century, was once institutionally racist. Is it now?

The answer is no, it is not. It has at times struggled bitterly not to be so. It fought a terrible civil war, by far the bloodiest conflict it has known, at first to ensure slavery could not expand into new territories, and then explicitly to end slavery altogether.

There was immense civil-rights work to do after that. Two of the first institutions to integrate were conservative: the military, and professional sports. The churches, though many had led the abolitionist campaign, had a mixed record. Billy Graham insisted from the start of his ministry in the 1950s that his congregations be integrated.

The progress has been spectacular. In 2008, the US elected its first black president. And even before that, back in 1996, the Republican who Democratic candidate Bill Clinton feared the most as a presidential opponent was General Colin Powell.

If European liberals sneer at the US, they might want to remind us of the names of all the black French presidents or black British prime ministers.

Since the great wave of civil-rights reforms in the US in the 1960s, black life expectancy has increased by nearly 12 years, more than white life expectancy has increased, although blacks still die 3½ years earlier than whites. According to a Brookings Institution study in 1964, 18 per cent of whites said they had a black friend. Now it’s nearly 90 per cent. In 1958, 44 per cent of whites said they would move house if a black family moved next door. By the time of the Brookings Study it was 1 per cent.

In 1968, only 50 per cent of African-American adults had graduated high school. Now it’s more than 90 per cent. In 1968, 10 per cent of blacks had college degrees. Now it’s just on a quarter.

More than half of African-Americans are middle class. At the same time, there is still striking inequality. In 2018, the ­median income of a black family was $US41,000, while for a white family it was $US71,000. Even that does not necessarily indicate active systemic racism operating today. Asian-Americans, many of whom are immigrants, have a substantially higher median income than whites. Asian-Americans have not suffered the tragic, historic disadvantages of African-Americans, nor have they been locked out by a racist US society.

The one measure where African-Americans have gone backwards since 1968 is the proportion of the black population in jail. This has risen from 604 per 100,000 in 1968 to 1703 per 100,000 in 2018.

Here we come upon a thorny knot of the most difficult problems. As President Donald Trump and his administration assert, the figures do not support the idea that US police forces are systemically racist, despite the shocking murder of Floyd. On the other hand, US society has organised itself in a way that is ­distinctly but unintentionally disadvantageous to blacks and that makes it difficult for blacks to escape these disadvantages.

I don’t believe this is racism at work. I have lived in the US on four separate occasions, as this paper’s Washington correspondent in 1986 and 1987, and for ­periods of several months each in three different attachments to US think tanks. Every time, I have lived in a racially diverse apartment building. I’ve had friends of every ethnic background. I have spent probably thousands of hours in the company of conservative Republicans and conservative Christians. I have never heard a single one ever make a ­racially derogatory remark.

That experience is surely subjective, but it’s worth something.

What do the figures tell us? Last year, police killed 10 unarmed African-Americans. This is in a nation of 330 million people. It’s difficult for people to remember just how big a number 330 million is. It will always throw up tragic and terrible cases and some abuses. A few terrible incidents, in this media and internet-dominated age, can look like a national pattern when they are nothing of the kind.

In any year of the past half dozen, the 800,000 police across the US’s 18,000 separate police forces will kill about 1000 people. One reason that figure is so high is because of America’s gun culture. Every person a US cop pulls over or talks to could likely be carrying a gun. In the four years from 2000, 250 police were killed in the line of duty. Blue lives matter too.

Generally, about twice as many whites are killed as blacks, and blacks make up about a quarter of those killed. Given that blacks are 13 per cent of the US population, that establishes that they die in disproportionately large numbers. But given that ­African-Americans commit more than half the homicides in the US and an even higher proportion of the robberies, they come into difficult contact with the police much more often than whites do.

If the police retreat into passive policing, it will be law-abiding African-Americans in high-crime neighbourhoods who suffer most.

That’s not to say there is no ­racism. Obviously, white racism survives in the US. Racism, I suspect, is an inherent human evil. It must always be opposed but can never be totally eradicated. There is no part of US law — or respectable US opinion — that sanctions racism. The national convulsion the Floyd killing has provoked ­indicates that very few in the US think it’s OK. When violence against blacks was more routine, as in pre-civil rights parts of the old Confederacy, it did not cause a national outrage.

New York’s Chief of Police Terence Monahan gave a powerful TV interview this week in which he pointed out that his police force is a “majority minority” — that is, white officers are less than half his force. He denied absolutely that he or his officers were racist. He condemned the killing of Floyd and pointed out, pretty convincingly, that his officers didn’t do it. Not only that, they have often died in defence of minority community members. Yet 170 of his officers have been injured, some seriously and often with intent, by rioters acting violently over the past week.

Sometimes Trump talks about race in a way that is unhelpful or stupid or gauche. When he tells congresswomen of African heritage that “they should go back where they came from”, that is ­offensive. And when he told ­protesters that if they breached the White House fence they would be met by “vicious dogs and ominous weapons”, that was needlessly bombastic.

But Trump is assuredly not a systematic racist. And as with many populists, much that he says is common sense. It was foolish of him to suggest this week that he would override states and use the Insurrection Act to deploy regular troops to US cities to quell riots. The military, though generally pro-Republican, absolutely hates the way Trump sometimes tries to politicise them.

Yet the demonisation of Trump is unreasonable and wildly exaggerated, and it makes its own contribution to every problem the US faces. Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, tweeted that Trump “openly incites the murder of his fellow Americans”. That is deeply misleading, grossly irresponsible and can only contribute to a dangerous over-reaction from protesters, which will in turn produce its own counter-reaction. This is the tenor of much of the comment on CNN and in much of the mainstream American media. It is at least as bad as anything Trump says or does and contributes to the prevailing sense of crisis, drama and mutual and inexplicable hatreds.

Some commentators talk of the return of the “riot ideology” of the 1960s. In 1967, liberal magazine The New Republic ran an editorial that said: “Terrifying as the looting, the shooting, the arson are, they could mean a gain for the nation if, as a result, white America were shocked into looking at itself.”

This is liberal foolishness at its most extreme. And it made a big comeback this week.

There is no doubt African-Americans are seriously dis­advantaged, and that this dis­advantage arises from the brutal history their forebears suffered. If the liberal Left tell them there is no hope because of systemic ­racism — that their only recourse is defiance and civil disobedience, that personal agency in work and education mean nothing whereas identity politics is everything — then this will have tragic consequences. Similarly, if the message of liberal ideology is that all white people are complicit in racism and enjoy white privilege, that may work OK as a meaningless affectation for affluent whites living in rich neighbourhoods where they never meet street crime, but it will cause suppurating retaliatory resentment among working-class, unemployed and otherwise disadvantaged whites. It’s a recipe for needless racial polarisation.

Many African-Americans, like many poor people in the US generally, are caught in the intersection of several US policy mistakes. The US ties health insurance to jobs. If you don’t have a job, or don’t have a well-paid job, you cannot afford health insurance. That means you don’t go to the doctor when you’re sick. This is one reason African-Americans have suffered so badly from COVID-19.

Globalisation has contributed to the loss of blue-collar jobs, which are great entry-level jobs. Truck driving is one of the last big employers of non-college graduates that pays a living wage. This dynamic hurts blacks the most.

African-Americans are concentrated in impoverished inner cities. The public schools are wretched and the power of the teachers’ unions makes their reform all but impossible. In wealthier districts, the schools are better.

The legal system, while not formally racial in orientation, punishes minor crimes that blacks typically commit much more heavily than minor crimes that whites typically commit. Which white American will tell you they didn’t smoke pot at college? But this never leads to jail.

And here is the final tragic irony, more bitter than any other. Before COVID-19 struck, Trump was actually delivering for African-Americans. Their unemployment rate, at just over 5 per cent, was the lowest in history.

Black poverty had declined substantially under the Trump administration. Black incarceration also declined under Trump. People with jobs don’t go to jail so much.

Despite his reactionary reputation, Trump sponsored and signed the First Step Act, which got thousands of non-violent black offenders out of prison.

The US is not systemically ­racist. Despite its history, it is systemically anti-racist. If the liberal elites, who more or less hate the US on principle, push the systemic racism line long enough and hysterically enough, they may create the reality they claim to oppose.

SOURCE 






Let Liberal Hellholes Defund Their Police and Burn

The protest/riot/no social-distancing get-togethers in Democratic enclaves around what I think used to be the United States of America don’t seem like they want to let up any time soon. Police are bad. White people are bad. Heaven help you if you’re a white cop. It’s a mess out there.

I’ve been watching some friends I’ve known for years opine on social media about their full-throated support for all that’s going on and, I have to admit, it mystifies me. Most of my liberal friends are comedians and are near my age. They’re old-school Democrats and I truly believe that they don’t quite understand that their party has been taken over by what used to be its lunatic fringe.

At first, I was wondering if they understood exactly what they were advocating for here. They don’t.

That led me to the point I want to make this morning. Perhaps we should just let the “defund police” lunatics have their way so they can see what that’s like on the other side.

Minneapolis is ground zero for anti-cop sentiment, taking the defund movement to the “disband” point. Stacey wrote a post yesterday about what a nightmare underfunded, unarmed policing is in the United Kingdom. It also featured this bizarre and disturbing wordbarf from the unhinged president of the Minneapolis city council:

CAMEROTA: "What if in the middle of the night my home is broken into. Who do I call?"

BENDER: "Yes, I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors. And I know — and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege."

What this idiot is basically saying is that white people are never in danger and don’t need police protection because the “system is working” for us or some nonsense. This is obviously not reality-based, but she and her colleagues have — as progressives are wont to do — told themselves a story so often that they believe it.

The current turmoil presents a perfect opportunity to let the progressives feel that they’ve gotten a victory and find out what a police-free — or underfunded police — existence is like. The lawlessness we’ve seen in the past couple of weeks has — to the surprise of no one — almost exclusively been happening in places under total Democrat control

The economic consequences of abolished or neutered police departments will be grave, of course. What is sure to be a business exodus from Minneapolis has already begun. It’s going to be difficult for the local chambers of commerce in these cities to make the sales pitch to tourists and businesses.

This tough-love lesson can’t include any federal bailouts for these police-free, dried-up revenue utopias. Give them the comprehensive progressive experience.

Have fun, little proggies. Do drop us a line from time to time and tell us how the privilege is working out.

SOURCE 

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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11 June, 2020  

Three out of four Australians hold a racial bias against indigenous people: New survey reveals shocking invisible barrier faced by Aboriginal community

This is discredited science.  The IAT was presumably the instrument used.  All it does is detect response time.   Why the response time is fast or slow can only be conjectural. 

In the case of racial stimuli, the most probable reason for a slow response is caution when faced with something potentially controversial.  There is NO evidence that a slow response to a particular stimulus indicates ill-will towards that stimulus.

In fact there is evidence that the test does NOT detect racial bias.  Very anti-racist people often score high on it.  See here for background

No matter their age, gender, job, religion, education level or income - the majority of people on average held an unconscious negative view.

The findings from an Australian National University study released on Tuesday revealed an invisible barrier, author Siddharth Shirodkar says. 'It was certainly shocking ... but it also wasn't necessarily surprising,' he told AAP. 'It says something, not so much about indigenous people, it says something more about the rest of us.'

Men were more biased than women against First Australians.

Western Australians and Queenslanders showed higher levels of unconscious prejudice, while people in the Northern Territory and ACT showed less.

People who identified themselves as 'strongly left wing' still showed signs of negative views against Aboriginal people, while those who put themselves on the right-wing side displayed higher levels of bias.

Australians showed the same level of bias against Aboriginals as people held against African Americans in the United States.

The study tested 11,000 Australians over a decade since 2009.

It looked at the response time of online volunteers to an association test, which flashed images of white people and Aboriginal Australians as well positive or negative words.

It found the majority of Australians showed a preference for white faces.

Mr Shirodkar said while Australians might hold an unconscious bias, they still could choose whether or not to act on it.

'(If) we don't challenge that, then that can seep into our everyday decision making,' he said.

He said some demographics were over-represented in the survey, including capturing more women, left-leaning voters and university educated people.

This meant the level of implicit racial bias may be under-reported.

The report came as thousands of Australians protested against Aboriginal deaths in custody over the weekend.

Mr Shirodkar said the report's release was a coincidence, but the Black Lives Matter protests worldwide had given people a reason to pause and reflect.

'The study can maybe help us think more about internally how we treat one another but also how we think about one another,' he said.

SOURCE  




British, European tourists swapping lockdown for Sweden

Sweden has kept pubs, restaurants and shops open throughout the Covid 19 pandemic.

The more open approach is attracting growing numbers of British and European tourists, who’ve broken national guidelines advising against non-essential global travel in search of a beer or even a haircut.

The BBC spoke to Oana Marcu, 34, from London, who’s been in Stockholm since March, British actor Lewis Sycamore, 25, who’s just arrived to visit his Swedish girlfriend, and Peter Clark, 32, a British barber in the Swedish capital who’s found it uncomfortable serving tourists escaping lockdowns in their own countries.

SOURCE 





Collective Guilt Is a Catastrophic Mistake

During my lifetime, the national conversation about race has gradually moved from culpability for individual behavior to culpability for ideology to collective culpability without regard to behavior or ideology.

This transition is significant. It is deliberate. And it is dangerous.

Focusing on "discrimination," as our laws have done for decades, places the emphasis on conduct, which can be clearly identified and prohibited. Individuals (or groups) who engage in that prohibited conduct can be penalized.

Punishing an attitude of racism, however, is more problematic. It is one thing to condemn it. But how do you penalize or sanction it, apart from the conduct that reflects it?

Contemporary race theorists and activists have chosen to expand their definitions even further to encompass what they now call "systemic racism" and "white privilege." These newer, broader definitions of the reprehensible sweep much wider swaths of people into the "racism" net, no matter how beneficent and inclusive their personal attitudes and actions may be.

According to these theories, one is culpable simply for having "benefitted" from a system in which blacks and other minorities were -- and are -- discriminated against. "Race" is not only a "social construct"; it becomes a matter of economic identity, rather than ethnic identity. Even nonwhites who have succeeded in this system become "white" by virtue of that success. Conversely, whites who have endured poverty, discrimination, broken homes, substance abuse or countless other factors beyond their control that have impeded their own upward mobility are told that those struggles are irrelevant to their "privilege."

It is one thing to acknowledge that blacks have suffered grievous discrimination and that the consequences of that continue to this day. Those are the ugly facts. Similarly, when white Americans -- or anyone who has not personally endured bias and discrimination -- vow to do everything in their power to make their community and our country a better place, that is individual agency, not collective guilt.

But some of the current calls for "honest conversations" entail members of the "privileged" classes admitting to collective culpability. This is cast as a precursor to "healing," and many well-intentioned people are more than willing to do it. I have read tweets and emails, and watched videos in which white Americans kneel, bow their heads in supplication, beg for forgiveness for the wrongs committed by other people or refer to themselves as "recovering racists" simply because they are white.

This is insulting, offensive and dangerous.

First, it runs completely counter to one of the most fundamental tenets of the American legal tradition: we do not punish people for the crimes or wrongdoing of others.

Second, there is no natural place where one can logically stop with the collective culpability racket. If I as a "white" American of multi-European ethnicities have "benefitted" from the political and economic systems in the United States, one could just as plausibly argue that I benefitted from the Irish Potato Famine, the Inquisition, the Thirty Years' War, the bubonic plague, the sacking of the library at Alexandria and every other historical event that somehow made it possible for me to be who and what and where I am at this moment. I am no more responsible for the abhorrent acts committed during the era of slavery, or the Jim Crow laws, or the brutality of corrupt police officers than I am for those atrocities.

Third, there is plenty of modern precedents to show us what happens when a country incorporates a system of collective culpability purportedly to remediate oppression. The Reign of Terror during the French Revolution sent tens of thousands of innocent people to the guillotine. Tens of millions were killed during Russia's and China's revolutionary upheavals of the 20th century, condemned as "bourgeois" or "running-dog capitalists." Even in tiny Cambodia, nearly 3 million people -- a fifth of the population -- were murdered by the communist Khmer Rouge regime, which condemned anyone who was educated as an "enemy of the poor."

Fourth, a system that blames classes of people for things they have not individually done also exonerates classes of people for things they have individually done. We need look no further back than the events of the past few days, as mobs of violent individuals have used justifiable outrage and lawful protests as a cover for vandalism, arson, looting, theft, destruction, brutal assault and even murder. And yet there are voices in our "national conversations" that would excuse this behavior as an understandable response by the oppressed in a system that is rigged against them.

Such a system will not long endure; it will collapse on itself.

As we watch our cities burn, we cannot fool ourselves by thinking that what happened in France in the 1790s, in Russia in the 1930s, in China in the 1960s and in Cambodia in the 1970s cannot happen here. We owe it to ourselves and our children to make sure that it doesn't happen here.

We can punish police brutality without smearing all police officers. We can acknowledge destructive policies and practices of the past and present; work together to eliminate them; and improve conditions for those who have been most negatively affected. But a move from individual responsibility to collective culpability will destroy our nation.

History has proven -- amply -- that a political system founded upon class resentment, blame, hatred and violence destroys everything and helps no one.

SOURCE 






Police Chief Praised Armed Citizens Keeping Out Looters. Then He Was Forced to Resign

Lowell, Michigan Police Chief Steve Bukala was forced to resign after using the department's official Facebook page to praise four armed citizens who protected businesses from being looted.

“We at the Lowell Police Department support the legally armed citizen and the Second Amendment,” the chief said in the now-deleted Facebook post.

The city manager said Bukala overstepped his bounds by providing “unneeded personal commentary and inserted political and debatable issues into a department notice and caused unneeded concern by some city residents," MLive reported.

The chief was given until 5 p.m. on Thursday to resign. If he didn't do it, at 5:01 p.m. he would be fired.

“I’ve decided it’s time to start my life outside of the Lowell Police Department and my future looks very bright,” Bukala wrote in his resignation email.

Something like this shouldn't be controversial, especially when we have the Second Amendment in our Constitution. Sheriffs have taken an oath to uphold the Constitution, which means protecting people's right to keep and bear arms. These young men should be commended for defending their communities. And Chief Bukala deserves to be applauded for not trampling on people's rights.

SOURCE 

********************************

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
`
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10 June, 2020  

Has the British scientific establishment made its biggest error in history?

The scientific establishment in this country has had a bad war. Its mistakes have probably made the Covid-19 epidemic, as well as the economic downturn, worse. Britain entered the pandemic late, with lots of warning, so we should have done better than other countries. Instead we are one of the worst affected in Europe and one of the last to begin to recover.

Not all the mistakes were driven by science. The decisions by Public Health England not to go out to the market for testing, protective equipment and logistics, to cease testing almost completely in March and to send people to care homes from hospitals affected by the virus – these were just bureaucratic bone-headedness. But the obsession with mathematical modelling lies behind other mistakes and continues to this day with the ridiculous fixation on a meaningless generalisation called R.

Expecting a typical flu virus, scientists were surprised by the explosion of cases in hospitals and assumed it signified exponential take-off of the virus in the community. In fact it was mainly the rapid spread of infection within hospitals, some of which probably started with staff returning from holiday in Italy and Spain. It was known in February that the virus is dangerous to the elderly and ill yet could be spread by the young and healthy. Was it therefore not obvious that infection control in hospital wards and care homes was vital? Apparently not if modelling an epidemic in a homogeneous “community” is your guide.

Government advisers became over-reliant on models that were both too complex and too simplistic at the same time, and failed to challenge underlying assumptions. The Imperial College model does not take into account high variability in social connectedness or susceptibility to infection among otherwise similar people. We now know that about 10pc of “superspreaders” cause 80% of infections, primarily because they meet many more people - which also makes them much more likely to become infected.

If you tell the models there is thus a correlation between susceptibility and infectiousness you get much lower forecasts of cases and deaths. Add that we now know that cross-immunity from common colds probably allows 40-60pc of the population to resist Covid-19, and the result is – as the work of Gabriela Gomes at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine indicates -- that herd immunity is probably reached when as little as 15pc of the population is infected, rather than the 50-60pc implied by Imperial’s model. Hence the epidemic is petering out in London despite crowded streets.

True, not all of this was known at the start, but that is exactly why it was a mistake to rely so heavily on models that were bound to have wrong assumptions. Modellers often come to mistake their models for the real world. There was an embarrassing moment in a press conference in April when a scientist was asked whether we could learn anything from Germany’s relative success in containing the epidemic and replied that our contribution was to lead the world in modelling.

We now know that outside the healthcare system the growth of the epidemic had ceased to be exponential before the lockdown. The peak of 3-day average deaths on 10 April implies that the peak of infections occurred around 20 March, before the country locked down, according to Professor Simon Wood of Bristol University. He argues that bans on large gatherings and voluntary social distancing would have been sufficient. The head of the Norway’s Institute of Public Health now says that the country’s lockdown was unnecessary.

The outcome of the epidemic in different countries or American states is pretty much uncorrelated with the severity of lockdown. Sweden, with no lockdown, did no worse than Britain and far better than the models predicted. By now the models say it should have had up to 40,000 deaths with a lockdown; it has had under 5,000 without. Had Sweden managed to keep the virus out of care homes and hospitals, as Germany partly did, it would have done much better than us despite no lockdown.

Reversing these mistakes will not be easy. Britain needs to get out of lockdown quickly, ditching the stable-door-locking policies like 2-metre distancing and travel quarantine before damage to the economy becomes terminal. And science needs to rethink its affair with models rather than data.

SOURCE 






Minneapolis' City Council president Lisa Bender defended the move to disband the city's police department on Monday

Minneapolis' City Council president is defending the move to disband the city’s police department following the brutal killing of George Floyd, saying that police can do more harm than good in some cases and expecting their help 'comes from a place of privilege'.

'What if, in the middle of the night, my home is broken into. Who do I call?' CNN’s Alisyn Camerota asked.

'Yes, I mean I hear that loud and clear from a lot of my neighbors, and myself, too, and I know that that comes from a place of privilege,' Bender replied.

'Because for those of us for whom the system is working, I think we need to step back and imagine what it would feel like to already live in that reality where calling the police may mean more harm is done,' she added.

Bender noted the city council isn't starting from an empty slate, they've worked to reform the police system for years.

'We are not starting from scratch we have invested in community-based safety strategies…we’ve done an analysis of all the reasons people call 911 and have looked at ways we can shift the response away from police officers into a more appropriate response for mental health calls. So the groundwork is laid already in Minneapolis for us to work from that,' she said. 

When asked if she feared dismantling the police system is giving Donald Trump a good talking point for the upcoming election, she said it's a system that needs to be addressed.

'It starts with telling the truth. I think we’ve been afraid of those political dynamics, of what would happen in our city to have our police force hearing those type of words and that fear is what we have to work through,' she said.

'That’s the fear that we see from George Floyd’s family or the family of Jamar Clark or Justine Damond who were also killed by Minneapolis police who have told us they never want to see this again,' she said, adding, 'so we have to try something new'.

'Now the hard work begins for us to rebuild systems that really work to keep everyone in our community safe,' Bender said.

On Sunday nine members of the Minneapolis City Council announced they intend to defund and dismantle the city’s police department.

'We committed to dismantling policing as we know it in the city of Minneapolis and to rebuild with our community a new model of public safety that actually keeps our community safe,' Bender said.

With nine votes the city council would have a veto-proof supermajority of the council’s 13 members to dismantle the police force, Bender said.

However, 38-year-old mayor Jacob Frey objected to dismantling the police department. He does not have the power to veto the move after a three-quarters majority of councilors back it.

Mayor Frey was booed by protesters Saturday when he refused to commit to defunding and abolishing the city's police force and forced out of the demonstration.

He said he would rather see reform to police unions that would make it easier to fire racist cops and keep them out of the force.

'There are so many areas where mayors and police chiefs have been hamstrung because we have difficulty both terminating and disciplining officers and getting it to stick.

'We're going after the police union... we need the ability to discipline officers to begin with,' he said.

By law, Minneapolis must maintain a police force of at least 723 police officers. It currently has some 800.

To completely get rid of the department, the city charter would have to be amended - which would require a public vote or the full approval of all 13 council members, including the mayor. 

Minneapolis has been the heart of Black Lives Matter protests unfolding across the country.

Activists are asking to replace police with mental health responders to attend mental health crises, street outreach teams, more shelters and affordable housing to help the homeless and stop the homeless from being criminalized, community members to attend domestic violence calls and to help establish long-term safety for the individuals.

Other demands include specialized physical and emotional support for victims of sexual violence, investing in sex trafficking prevention measures, the legalization of marijuana to stop the incarceration for possession of the 'harmless' drug, and better handling of drug offenses to stop 'criminalizing of communities of color', the decriminalization of sex work and restorative justice meaning meetings between victims and offenders to deal with property crimes such as theft and burglary.

Disbanding an entire police department has happened in 2012 in Camden, New Jersey where the police department was replaced with a new force that covered Camden County and in Compton, California in 2000, shifting its policing to Los Angeles County.

SOURCE 






Affirmative Action: The Systemic Racism No One Wants to Talk About

Some Americans are discriminated against because of their race, but it is not who you think.

The clearest definition of “racism” is treating people differently according to their race. Systemic or institutional racism is racism “expressed in the practice of social and political institutions.”

Many American policies and laws are designed to ensure that people of all races, creeds, ethnicities, genders, and sexualities are treated equally, such as the Sixth Amendment, guaranteeing the right to “a fair and speedy public trial by jury,” the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery, the Fifteenth Amendment, prohibiting the denial of the right to vote based on race, the Nineteenth Amendment prohibiting the denial of the right to vote on the basis of gender.

President Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925, following up similar earlier orders by Presidents Roosevelt and Eisenhower, required government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are employed and that employees are treated during employment without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin.” It established the President’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity (PCEEO). Title IX of the Education Amendments Act forbids unequal treatment based on sex (gender) in federally funded programs.

But everything changed with subsequent orders, such as President Johnson’s, that required “contractors with 51 or more employees and contracts of $50,000 or more to implement affirmative action plans to increase the participation of minorities and women in the workplace if a workforce analysis demonstrates their under-representation, meaning that there are fewer minorities and women than would be expected given the numbers of minorities and women qualified to hold the positions available.”

President Obama followed, and upped the ante, with “Executive Order 13583– Establishing a Coordinated Government-wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and Inclusion in the Federal Workforce.”

Notice the transition from “without regard to their race, creed, color, or national origin” to “increase the participation of minorities and women,” from color-blind to race and gender preferences. Between the Johnson and Obama directives, specification of qualifications—“qualified to hold the positions”—disappeared, and in its place, the unlimited instruction “to recruit, hire, promote, and retain a more diverse workforce.”

Today “underrepresented” is not based upon the pool of capable applicants, but in relation to the percentage of the general population. What this means in practice is that people of certain races and genders are given preferences and benefits, and are thus “more equal” than people of other races and genders.

During the eight years of the Obama-Biden administration, “diversity and inclusion” became the guiding principle of governments, federal, state, and municipal, of industry, and of colleges and universities. It was an ideological tsunami, washing away the universalistic standards, such as the colorblind assessment of achievement and merit, in favor of racial, gender, sexuality, and ethnic preferences.

The Supreme Court refused to stand for principle, and waffled about educational benefits, allowing preferences to remain. Sixty-five percent of Americans disagree with this decision. Sixty-three percent of blacks and sixty-five percent of Hispanics disagree with the Supreme Court decision.

In Canada too, preferences and special benefits were justified for particular racial, gender, sexuality, and ethnic populations. While according to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Section 15(1), “Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination and, in particular, without discrimination based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”

This principle is negated in the following section of the Charter, in the interests of preferred sections of the population, for whom special privileges and benefits are granted,

Section 15(2), “Subsection (1) does not preclude any law, program or activity that has as its object the amelioration of conditions of disadvantaged individuals or groups including those that are disadvantaged because of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.” Canada has Human Rights Commissions and Tribunals that prosecute any complaint about discrimination in housing, employment, and commercial service, and also suppresses any speech that offends someone.

What “affirmative action” and “diversity and inclusion” mean in practice is that in university admissions, hiring, promotions, funding, and organizational activities (living arrangements, social gathering, eating, and ceremonial activities), in government and business hiring, funding, and promoting, certain races and genders are given preference while others are low priority or excluded totally.

In a perfect example of the bigotry of low expectations, African American and Hispanic applicants with poor academic records are given university places, while whites and Asians with much stronger academic records are refused places. It is well established that in the sciences female hires are preferred, which of course means that male candidates are excluded. White male applicants and candidates, whatever their merits, are at the bottom of everyone’s list. For every “inclusion” based upon race and gender, there is an exclusion based upon race and gender. This seems a pretty clear case of official, systemic racism and sexism.

Americans dislike racial and gender preferences. According to the Gallup poll, “Americans continue to believe colleges should admit applicants based solely on merit (70%), rather than taking into account applicants’ race and ethnicity in order to promote diversity (26%).” Fifty percent of blacks and 61% of Hispanics say that college admissions should be based on merit alone. It seems likely that hiring, funding, and other functions would reflect similar views.

Previously marginalized minorities, who suffered under prejudice, discrimination, and legal restraint, are no longer welcome in the fields in which they excelled. Jews and Asians, highly “overrepresented” in medical, professional, and academic fields, are now no longer welcome. Jews today are deemed to be “white,” now that being white is regarded as a bad thing.

Asians, themselves people of color, have offended by being too successful, and have to be excluded to make room for preferred minorities. The new marginalization of Jews is reminiscent of the 1930s when elite universities excluded Jews through strict quotas, because they were not “Christian gentlemen” and they studied too hard. As for white men, you are the wrong sex and the wrong race, so good luck trying to get a place or post or funding in our feminist dominated universities.

What justifies the establishment of two classes of citizenship, the preferred and protected and the unpreferred and excluded? In one discussion of “systemic racism,” the justification is disparities regarding wealth, income, criminal justice, employment, housing, health care, political power and education, among other factors. The assumption is that “disparities” are unjust and intolerable, that we must jettison ideas of equality before the law and equality of opportunity in favor of equality of results and outcomes, so that every individual, group, and category of people is exactly the same.

Why are “disparities” unjust? According to race and gender theorists and activists, disparities are unjust because they are the result of prejudice and discrimination. Furthermore, these theorists and activists believe that no further evidence of prejudice and discrimination is necessary; the disparities themselves prove discrimination, because without discrimination everyone would be represented according to their percentage of the population.

There are many reasons that disparities–individual, group, and category–exist. People differ from one another, have different capabilities and interests. If people do different things, it is not usually because of discrimination. For example, Asian-Americans are “underrepresented” in the jobs of forest ranger, lumberjack, and truck driver, not because they are discriminated against in these occupations, but because they are motivated to pursue higher education and enter professions. Females are “underrepresented” in the jobs of fisherman, telephone and utility pole workers, and roofing, not because they are discriminated against, but because they prefer safer, cleaner, and more comfortable jobs in offices.

Females work fewer hours, fewer days, and fewer years than men, not because they are discriminated against, but because they prefer to spend more time with their children. Whites and Asian-Americans are heavily “underrepresented” in some professional sports, the NFL and NBA, not because they are discriminated against, but because African Americans have successfully competed for those jobs.

Females are “underrepresented” in engineering, the physical sciences, and mathematics, not because they are discriminated against, but because they prefer academic fields that deal with people, such as the social sciences, humanities, education, and social work, where they are vastly “overrepresented.”

Different groups and categories of people also have different community and family cultures and family structures. Some communities are highly education-oriented and push their children to gain educational attainment, while others are less so. Some communities have strong, two-parent family structures, while others have weak, one-parent family structures. Weak families lead to detrimental consequences for children in academic performance and risks of crime and incarceration.

To claim “discrimination” as an explanation for individual and group outcomes is to ignore individual and group differences. “Discrimination” becomes an excuse artificially to impose equality where no equality exists other than in basic humanity. The imposition of “affirmative action,” in which members of some categories of people are favored, and members of other categories unfavored and excluded, is a clear case of systemic racism and sexism. In this system, population statistics determine the outcomes, and no individual receives his due, what he has earned. They can call racial and gender preferences “social justice,” but there is no clearer case of injustice.

SOURCE 






Australia: Indigenous activist Jacinta Price slams 'virtue-signalling' Black Lives Matter protesters and says they 'aren't interested' in Aboriginal deaths - unless they are killed by a white man

Aboriginal activist Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has slammed Black Lives Matter protesters as ignorant 'narcissists' who don't understand indigenous problems.

'Just watching the footage of protesters and the conversations around white privilege makes me sick to my stomach,' she told Sky News.

'These are narcissists ... they don't have to do any hard work just appear as though they care.'

Ms Price, a Warlpiri woman and Alice Springs Town Councillor, said more Aboriginal people die outside of police custody than within it, with the majority of Aboriginal people killed and maimed by other Aboriginal people.

But because the violence is out of sight, out of mind, protesters don't care, she said. 'You don't care because the perpetrators are also black, and that's the big problem,' she said.

'People only care if there's seen to be a white perpetrator.'

According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2014–15 National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Survey, more than one in five or 22.3 per cent of all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people aged over 15 had experienced physical violence or threats in the previous 12 months.

Half of all of those who had experienced physical violence over the 12-month period said that their most recent attacker was a family member. 

'This is the reality that goes on in the remote communities that these protesters care zero for,' Ms Price said.

'They do not care one bit. They stand there virtue-signalling and acting as though they're so terribly sorry for the racism that Aboriginal people are faced with.

'It's not racism that is sexually abusing our kids and it is not racism that is killing our people - it's the actions of our own people.' 

Ms Price's own nephew died on Friday - allegedly stabbed to death during a wild fight in Alice Springs.

NT Police said more than a dozen people had been 'fighting with weapons' at a home in the Central Australian town when the 36-year-old man was stabbed. He bled to death at the scene despite the efforts of ambulance paramedics and police officers to stem the bleeding and to save him with CPR.

There were more than 12 people involved in the mayhem but only two men were arrested, ABC News reported.

Ms Price said Aboriginal people are the most incarcerated people in the world - because of violent crimes and that if people were serious about protecting Aboriginal lives then they would focus on lowering the rate of family violence in indigenous communities.

'It's a horrible cycle that continues and the ignorance is gobsmacking,' she said.

'If you wanted to reduce the rates of incarceration then you would begin with being honest about the fact that almost 70 percent of Aboriginal people - men and women incarcerated - are incarcerated for acts of violence against their loved ones,' she said. 

Ms Price said for women it was largely because they were fed up with repeated beatings and had retaliated.

'On the other side of the coin we've got nasty individuals who think it's their right to hurt and maim and kill their own loved ones,' 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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9 June, 2020  

Liberal Mayors, Racial Politics, and Fake News

There are three things you need to know about the unrest associated with the killing of George Floyd.

First, almost all major cities these days are governed by Democrats, usually liberal Democrats. Second, black Americans have suffered because of the public policies these cities have adopted. Third, the reason why city governments adopt policies harmful to black families is not because they are racists; it’s because they are liberal.

In city after city, all too often black families are forced to send their children to the worst schools; they are forced to live in the worst housing; they receive the worst city services (including policing); and they are subject to the worst environmental harms. The politicians who run these cities are Democrats. Many of them are black themselves.

Minneapolis, where George Floyd was killed, is an example. The city’s mayor is a Democrat and the only member of the City Council that is not a Democrat is a member of the Green Party. Most of them take pride in being liberal. Yet the economic gulf between black and white families is higher there than nearly anywhere else in America. Problems with the police department are not new. Civilians have lodged more than 2,600 complaints against Minneapolis police officers since 2012. Only 12 have resulted in disciplinary action, and the penalties in those cases were mild.

In general, the more liberal the city, the worse things are. According to The New York Times, the New York City school system is among the most segregated in the country; and nationwide, liberal states tend to have the most segregated schools. In many California cities, poor families can often be found living on the streets. In fact, blue state California has almost half the homeless population of the country.

In 1990, 57 percent of blacks lived in metropolitan areas and 95 percent of blacks in the Northeast, Midwest, and West did so, according to Census data. But as family incomes rose and more black families entered the middle class, they moved to the suburbs. It was there that the mayor and city council were more likely to be Republican, and black children were more likely to attend school with the children of conservative Republican parents. Today, there are more African Americans living in the suburbs than living in cities.

Those who remain in the inner cities, however, are often too poor to escape. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Dan Henninger says, "essentially little has changed in the neighborhoods at the center of those long-ago urban riots,” 55 years ago. "By current telling, they are about as poor, as crime-ridden, as under-educated and in poor health as they were when LBJ said he would change them” with his Great Society programs.

Why do politicians who call themselves “liberal” adopt policies harmful to poor black families who are subject to their governance? Because they preside over a political system in which special interests deliver votes to politicians who do them favors. These favors almost always consist of increasing the income of the special interests at the expense of everyone else. Special interest politics is dog-eat-dog politics. Politicians who survive in it are those who are willing to take from Peter to give to Paul if Paul has more votes than Peter.

[Conservative politicians might succumb to the same temptations. But they don’t brag about it. Normally, they don’t openly promise to rob the public for the benefit of a special interest. They almost never agree that it’s okay to take from Peter and give to Paul in return for Paul’s vote. The conservative view is that government should be limited and its actions should promote the general welfare.]

It would be a huge mistake to think that Democratic-run city governments are filled with racists. They aren’t racists. But they do what they have to do to get elected and maintain power. Why don’t they fire bad cops? They would lose the support of the police union. Why don’t they fire bad teachers? They would lose the backing of the teachers’ union. Why don’t they create low-income housing in neighborhoods that have good schools or give poor children vouchers so they can attend those schools? They would lose financial support from rich liberals who don’t want to send their children to school with the children of the poor.

It’s just that simple.

Now let’s turn to the news media. If you read the editorial pages of the New York Times, you would never learn any of this.

Under a heading that reads, “Trump Takes Us To the Brink” Paul Krugman explains the George Floyd incident by writing that “Republicans have … spent decades exploiting racial hostility to win elections” and “many police officers and their unions remain staunch Trump supporters, and they have been pretty clear about why: They feel that Trump will back them even, or perhaps especially, if they engage in abusive behavior toward racial minorities.”

Got that? It’s the Republicans’ fault. It’s Donald Trump’s fault. How’s that for an alternate universe?

The mainstream media is not much better, implying that racism runs rampant among the nation’s police officers. In fact, in the most complete study of its kind ever produced, Harvard University economist Roland Fryer writes:

“We didn’t find evidence for anti-Black or anti-Hispanic disparity in police use of force across all shootings, and, if anything, found anti-White disparities when controlling for race-specific crime.”

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Heather Mac Donald says that “a police officer is 18½ times more likely to be killed by a black male than an unarmed black male is to be killed by a police officer.”

I bet you didn’t read that fact in any mainstream newspaper.

SOURCE 





Chair of NYC Health Committee: If Coronavirus Spikes in the Big Apple, Blame Racism Not the Rioters

You know I had already slid into the camp where it was time to reopen during the COVID lockdowns. In the week leading up to the tragic death of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, which sparked riots across the country, everything flipped. The mortality rate by the CDC showed that the coronavirus was not as lethal as the flu, it doesn't spread as easily on surfaces as initially reported, hospitalizations were still stable, and deaths continued to decline. Florida was supposed to be a graveyard. It's not. Red states that were opening were supposed to be imperiling the nation. They weren't.

Now, with the Floyd riots, the liberal media and the social justice warriors have forgotten about COVID and shaming those who dare venture outside. They now say if there are spikes due to the mass protests, blame racism, not the rioters. Yeah, some member of New York City's health council said that:

And let's remember that the police are increasing covid risk by:

* using tear gas
* herding demonstrators into tight spaces
* putting people in crowded jails

Mark Levine in particular should have resigned in disgrace over this. Somehow, he remains chair of the NYC Council health committee. After NYC had the worst virus outbreak perhaps in the entire world. Now he's endorsing MORE mass gatherings. What the ...

"In powerful show of defiance of #coronavirus scare, huge crowds gathering in NYC's Chinatown for ceremony ahead of annual #LunarNewYear parade. Chants of "be strong Wuhan!"  If you are staying away, you are missing out!

Dozens of public health and disease experts have signed an open letter in support of the nationwide anti-racism protests.

Leah wrote yesterday about the swath of "health experts" who said that they're not really going to strongly protest those going out and rioting because racism is just as bad as the viruses. Oh, and the police shouldn't use tear gas because it could cause people to cough and gasp for air. Hey, here's a thing, how about these hoodlums don't loot? Yet, whatever was left of these experts' credibility has now been blasted away. It's just too transparent. It's not okay for one to reopen their business, but it's fine to attend a mass protest, where social distancing guidelines, which I was told was essential for everyone's survival for months, are not adhered to because these demonstrations are seen as a way to attack Trump. Go to hell, all of you (via NPR):

"White supremacy is a lethal public health issue that predates and contributes to COVID-19," public health experts say in an open letter as large protests erupt in cities across the United States.

Initially written by infectious disease experts at the University of Washington, the letter cited a number of systemic problems, from the disproportionately high rate at which black people have been killed by police in the U.S. to disparities in life expectancy and other vital categories — including black Americans' higher death rate from the coronavirus.

Who knew the lockdowns would end everywhere so quickly, and so soon? What elected officials have to say on this matter no longer applies. Sorry, it's dead. The experts and their Democratic allies have gutted the whole narrative on quarantine—it's over. You can't go outside unless you're protesting is quite the hill to die on, folks. But that's the Left in 2020.

These clowns will blame racism for anything.

SOURCE 






Chicago Mayor Condemns 'Vigilantism' After Men Are Seen Patrolling Streets Carrying Bats

Violence in Chicago during the George Floyd protests hasn’t been as bad as some big cities. Maybe because the reputation of the Chicago police for not-so-tender treatment of suspects precedes them.

In truth, Chicago police are brutal, corrupt, and, dare I say, many are racist. Of course, that’s no excuse to loot a liquor store or trash a high-end department store. But if you want an Exhibit “A” for police brutality, Chicago fills the bill nicely.

There have been incidents of violence, vandalism, looting and fires that have been set in some city neighborhoods. And the Chicago police, already walking on eggshells because of several high-profile murders of unarmed black citizens, can’t be everywhere at once.

So, Americans being Americans, citizens decided to simply protect themselves. There have been reports of people patrolling their neighborhoods with baseball bats to protect their loved ones.

Sound, sensible, and all-American. But this self-defense absolutely horrified Chicago’s woke mayor.

The Hill:

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot (D) this week condemned vigilantism after groups of predominantly white men were seen patrolling the streets with bats amid ongoing protests against racism and police brutality.

“It is absolutely not appropriate for people to take up arms, bats, pipes, whatever in patrolling neighborhoods,” Lightfoot said, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“We’ve seen that end with tragic results across the country and we’re not about to allow that practice to happen here in Chicago. If there’s an issue, call 911,” Lightfoot said.

First of all, I wonder if the fact that the groups of men are “predominantly white” has anything to do with her objection? If they were black men with baseball bats patrolling their neighborhoods, wouldn’t she say it was justifiable given the history of whites attacking blacks?

But the bottom line here is that in Lightfoot’s Chicago, you aren’t allowed to defend yourself, your property, or your family. It just isn’t necessary because, police. The cops respond to every 911 call with lightning speed. Besides, if the police are a little late and rioters were to murder your family, they’d get on it right away, scout’s honor.

“I absolutely support neighbors being vigilant as to what’s going on on the streets and in their blocks but taking up arms, that leads to chaos and we’re not supporting vigilantism in the city of Chicago under any circumstances.”

The groups of men were seen in Bridgeport, a diversifying neighborhood that previously served as an Irish American power base for the Daley political family, the outlet noted.

Yes, Bridgeport is “diversifying.” I hear they let Italians and Poles live there now. They’re very progressive like that in Bridgeport.

But as for protecting their neighborhood with bats, Lightfoot shouldn’t fret about it. She has the woke generation on her side.

In the times we live, when police are frozen into inaction by ludicrous and hysterical charges of “brutality,” it’s logical and reasonable to assume — whether you’re black or white — that you’re on your own when it comes to defending you and yours.

SOURCE 







The Woke Beast Cannot Be Appeased: Woke Employees at Woke Ohio Taco Joint Walk Off Job After Refusing to Fill Order for Cops

Several employees at a Columbus, Ohio, Condado Tacos restaurant walked off the job on Tuesday after refusing to fill a catering order for police, prompting the woke chain to close all of its 20 stores “out of an abundance of caution.”

Condado claims no employees were fired, and, moreover, the employees were not forced to prepare the order.

A tweet by an employee at the Polaris location of Condado Tacos went viral earlier this week when he claimed he was fired for walking out on the job:

His claim that he was fired has been retweeted more than 13,000 times and ignited a fiery debate about whether or not employees should be forced to feed cops in the wake of protests and riots over the brutal, unconscionable death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police.

Jake Widdowson also says he was fired:

Jake wrote on Twitter that “This is the one interview I could swear in, so this is my truest voice.” You’ve been warned if you decide to listen.

The taco chain told Eater that the Polaris location received a catering order on Monday night from the Ohio Highway Patrol for 250 “Bud Boxes.” At 12 bucks a pop, that comes to $3000.

Considering that restaurants are struggling to remain solvent in the wake of the COVID-19 shutdowns, Jake should be grateful to have a job at all at a time when more than a million Ohioans are out of work

“No employees were fired last night,” Condado insisted. “A few employees working did express they were uncomfortable with fulfilling the order and after a discussion with their regional manager about their concerns, were given the option to not work on the order. The employees who expressed their concerns chose to not complete their shift last night however, their jobs remain intact at Condado if they choose to return.”

“Because we understand that emotions and tensions are raw right now, we offered those employees the option to sit out making that order, without repercussion, while other team members handled it,” Condado said in a statement. “We want to make it clear that they are welcome to return to work, if that is their choice, but they must understand that Condado Tacos is an inclusive business and that we will continue to serve everyone, including law enforcement.”

I’m not going to mince words here: Jake and his virtue-signaling buddies should have been fired.

Serving food to customers is literally the job description when you work at a restaurant. If it violates your delicate sensibilities to serve people you don’t like, you need to find another line of work that insulates you from opinions and people you can’t abide. If you feel you must very publicly trash your employer on social media, you shouldn’t expect to keep your job.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol issued a statement:

Yesterday, the Patrol was made aware of a situation that occurred at the Polaris Condado Tacos. A large order was placed for personnel working the protests and while placing the order, which was fulfilled, the Patrol was treated with nothing but kindness and respect. At the time of the placing and receiving the order, we were unaware of any issues. The Patrol would welcome the opportunity to establish an open dialogue with the Condado’s employees in an effort to build inroads to open lines of communication that will help all of us. We are an agency who fosters understanding, communication and respect among all people.

Why bother? These entitled kids won’t stop until the police are abolished, our cities lie in ruins, and no one has a job.

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 June, 2020  

They came, saw and lingered — the Romans never really left Britain

What  the lady below says is mostly correct but how does it jibe with the fact that DNA studies reveal virtually no Italic genes among the English?  The answer to that rides on your definition of who was a Roman.  And they very early on ceased to be restricted to inhabitants of central Italy. As we know from the New Testament, even Israelites could be Romans.

And as we know from "De bello gallico", the Celtic inhabitants of Gaul rapidly fell under the Roman yoke.  And Rome took advantage  of Romanized subject populations to recruit Legions from them.  And because of Roman practicality, it was often  locally recruited troops who were used to defend the borders of the Roman world.  So there is little doubt that the Roman legions that invaded Britain would have been recruited from somewhere in Gaul. What point would have been served by bringing troops from Italy when other troops were much more  nearby?

So the Romans who invaded Britain would indeed have been led by Roman citizens and would have imposed Roman culture but they would have been Romanized Gauls -- Celts.  And we know from various sources that the Celts of Britain and the Celts of Gaul respected and sometimes shared the Druidic religions of Britain.  They were almost certanily two branches of a common ethnicity.

Knowing that the Germanic invaders of Britain  largely adapted to life in  Britain as they found it, we can understand that the Romanized Celts to a considerable extent absorbed the Germans, just as China once absorbed the Mongols.  So elements of Roman civilization did remain in the mixed Celtic/German population of Britain  long after the political authority of Rome was lost.


The English emerged not from the arrival of boatloads of fearsome Saxon invaders but in direct continuity from Roman Britons, an archaeologist claims.

Susan Oosthuizen, of the University of Cambridge, said that analysis of land use, burials, artefacts, texts and linguistics provided no support for the traditional view of a Germanic takeover following the withdrawal of Roman troops in 410 — or for the recent orthodoxy of an “elite replacement”, in which a small clique of incomers imposed its language and culture on a people.

She said that there was considerable evidence for continuity from the Roman period through the following centuries, with people in what’s now England using the same farms and common lands in the same ways as their Roman-citizen forebears and speaking the same languages.

In her book The Emergence of the English, which she discussed in an online lecture this week, Professor Oosthuizen argued that Gildas, a British monk writing around the 500s and often interpreted as describing an Anglo-Saxon invasion, paints a picture of relative stability, with enduring institutions on the Roman model. These included a functioning legal system, an ecclesiastical ­hierarchy and military structures organised on Roman lines.

Although Gildas describes a military threat from Saxons who had been recruited by British leaders as soldiers — following a standard Roman practice — she said that he portrayed Scots and Picts as a greater threat.

A Roman legacy was not only visible in the British kingdoms ­described by Gildas but also in later English-speaking kingdoms, where rulers continued to position themselves as heirs to Rome into the 8th century and beyond.

“The earliest Christian kings of Kent, Northumbria and Deira were buried in the ‘porticus’ of their principal minsters, emulating royal mausolea in Rome, and built churches whose design was based on Roman basilica used for civilian assembly, while the monumental architecture of early medieval palaces, too, may have been based on the forms and layouts of Roman villas,” she said.

Professor Oosthuizen ­acknowledged that significant changes occurred in the period, but said these were evolutions “from a traditional base” and sometimes part of long-term processes. For example, the decline of towns in Britain did not happen overnight after the breakdown of imperial rule but started in the 4th century, during the Roman period.

She said there were undoubted stylistic influences from across the North Sea from the 400s but this did not require there to have been any takeover.

Likewise she said the spread of the Germanic language Old ­English, which is often taken as evidence of conquest, could have been a gradual process, arising through trade or other circumstances that made it a useful lingua franca.

SOURCE 







The ceaseless culture war against Hungary

If you listen to the Western media, you might think that in the weeks following the outbreak of Covid-19 the government of Hungary had transformed itself into a brutal dictatorship. There was a constant stream of articles claiming that democracy had died in Hungary. Opinion pieces insisted that the Hungarian government had exploited people’s concerns about the pandemic to impose a 1930s-style authoritarian dictatorship.

The Covid pandemic has reinvigorated the Culture Wars in various different ways. And these alarmist accounts of democratic backsliding in Hungary were a key theme in these Culture Wars. On the anti-sovereigntist wing of the cultural conflict, Hungary was held up as symbolic of an ideology of evil.

In early May, the mistakenly titled US-based advocacy group Freedom House offered up an obituary on Hungarian democracy. In a report it asserted that, because of the emergency laws it passed in relation to Covid-19, Hungary should not be considered a democracy anymore. Given Freedom House’s longstanding hostility to the Hungarian government, its verdict was hardly surprising. The problem was that this verdict was uncritically repeated in the media. At times it seemed that almost the entire Western media were ganging up against this supposed new dictatorship.

The Economist responded to Hungary’s enactment of a state of emergency by claiming that Viktor Orban, the prime minister, ‘has in effect become a dictator – in the heart of Europe’. The Guardian declared that the ‘world must not let Hungary get away with this power grab’. Writing in the EUobserver, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, claimed that Hungary was now a dictatorship and therefore the EU had ceased to be a bloc of democratic states.

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Ben Kelly ranted that ‘if the EU cannot rein in Hungary’s dictator Viktor Orban, it will rot from the inside’.

According to the narrative, Hungary’s enactment of emergency measures meant that the normal process of parliamentary democracy had disappeared forever. It is worth noting that other governments that enacted emergency powers in response to the Covid pandemic were not accused of such malevolent intent. Why was Hungary held to a different standard? The answer was devastatingly simple. ‘Orban cannot be trusted’, Western observers implied. It was really another way of saying: ‘We don’t like him.’

Strikingly, these opinions did not change when, in late April, Die Welt reported that legal experts in the European Commission had said that they saw no reason to act against the supposedly authoritarian powers the Hungarian parliament granted to the Hungarian government. Inconvenient truths about Hungary are always met with a wall of silence in most of the Western press. If, on the other hand, these experts had said the opposite, there would have been wall-to-wall opinion articles praising their judgment and condemning Hungary.

And now there has been a development. This week, the Hungarian government initiated procedures to end the state of emergency. It will end on 20 June. This means Hungary has acted more speedily than many other governments to bring to a close its Covid measures. Will those who spread the idea that Hungary had become a dictatorship acknowledge that they were wrong? Will they apologise for their slanderous statements about Hungary? Don’t hold your breath. It really doesn’t matter what the Hungarian government does; its adversaries in the West will always portray it as a dangerous dictatorship threatening European values.

No doubt, some might argue that Hungary is rescinding these laws precisely because of the international pressure they put on it. But of course, supposedly authoritarian dictatorships are not known for giving up their powers just because of some criticism in the foreign press. ‘Hungary still isn’t a democracy’, others will no doubt cry. In which case, why did it need the emergency powers in the first place? Why didn’t it just carry on being the dictatorship it already was, in the Hungary-haters’ eyes?

In the current Culture Wars, Hungary has become a kind of lightning rod through which the negative sentiments of the Western cultural establishment – especially their anti-sovereigntist views – can be expressed. Throughout most of Europe and the Anglo-American world, the hegemony of the cultural elite remains intact. It is rarely questioned. Though millions of people resent the values of these elites, very few have the voice or the courage openly to question them. When they do – for example, in the vote for Brexit – they are bombarded with immense pressure to shut up and know their place. That is the case even in Trump’s America, where millions feel they have to mind what they say.

In Hungary, support for the Hollywood, Netflix, Big Tech globalist value system is quite weak. Of course, given its broad influence, the global media does have some influence in Hungary. But it is not hegemonic. Consequently, the people and their representatives are able to express opinions and values that are vilified in many parts of the Western world. In the eyes of the Western media, the refusal of the Hungarian government to accept the moral authority of the leaders of the EU or of the Hollywood woke consensus is a kind of cultural heresy. Like the Stalinist heresy-hunters of the 20th century, the globalist culture warriors will use everything in their power to humiliate their opponents and force them to fall in line with the ‘right’ way of thinking.

The cultural elites’ obsession with Hungary is not entirely about Hungary. Whenever a British, German or American newspaper editor or observer denounces the ‘dictatorship’ in Hungary, they are also indirectly attacking movements and politicians in their own countries who oppose the prevailing cultural norms. That is why those of us who supported Brexit in the UK, and who call for the valuation of national sovereignty in countries around the world, have a real interest in supporting Hungary against its Western detractors.

SOURCE 






'I won't take the knee!': Laurence Fox says terms like 'racist' and 'fascist' have become 'casual insults' and lost all meaning and refuses to kneel for Black Lives Matter due to its 'master-servant' connotation

Laurence Fox has said he won't take a knee with Black Lives Matter protesters as it has 'master-servant' connotations.

The outspoken actor said he would only kneel 'to propose, before god or before the queen' but stressed that others should be 'free to do what they want'.

Speaking on the 76th anniversary of the D-Day landings, Fox also said terms such as 'racist' and 'fascist' are now just 'casual insults' and have lost the meaning they carried during the war.

He said: 'These men died on the beaches on Normandy so people are free to do what they want and if you want to take a knee, you can take a knee you just won't find me doing it.

'I'm not a particularly religious man but the times I would kneel are to propose, before god or before the queen.

'It's a master-servant relationship that comes with taking a knee that I'm uncomfortable with.

'But that's my view and anybody else who wants to do what they want to do must feel free to do that as well.'

This week, police officers were photographed kneeling in front of Black Lives Matter protesters in London. The move showed solidarity with demonstrators.

The actor hit the headlines earlier this year after he accused ethnicity lecturer Rachel Boyle of 'being racist' after she called him 'a white privileged male' for denying the Duchess of Sussex was hounded from Britain for being mixed-race.

Since the Question Time slanging match, Fox quit Twitter stating that he became 'more and more depressed' following a ferocious left-wing Twitter backlash.

In his TalkRadio interview this morning he added: 'It's worth remembering today that hundreds of thousands of soldiers landed on the beaches of Normandy 76 years ago to fight fascism which was a real word back then and has now turned into a casual insult.

'And what we want to do is try and keep words like "racist" and "fascist" and all of those and apply them to what they genuinely mean and not use them as casual insults.

'So, it's a very difficult thing because there is racism in the world and it needs to be confronted.

'But also again overreaching the use of words like "racist" and "fascist" are unhelpful to the original cause of trying to get these things out and condemn them together.

SOURCE 





The uncivil war killing liberalism in the West

Many Western democracies have succumbed to the malaise, the US most disastrously, with Australia still conspicuous as a holdout. The malaise is the erosion of the political centre — the once great middle-class suburban stability, anchor of family life, aspiration and widely shared cultural norms.

Beneath the hollowing-out of the political middle ground lies a deeper and destructive phenomenon: the crisis of Western liberalism, evident to a greater or lesser extent today in most democracies.

The story of the past century has been the titanic struggle between three ideologies — liberalism, communism and fascism. Since World War II the Western narrative has been dominated by the victory of liberalism and its legacy — steady economic prosperity, a negotiated distribution of benefits, functioning democratic systems and societies where incentives for harmony outweighed the quest for disintegration.

But the wheel of history has turned. At every point liberalism is under assault. The ethic of liberalism as an idea that both honoured individual liberty and provided principles by which human beings of all races and creeds could live, work, trade and conduct politics short of war and civil unrest is being discredited. The governing idea that made democracies successful is being pulled part, under attack from both right and left.

Much of this assault arises because of the failure of American liberalism. This failure is integral to the current upheavals — liberalism means equality before the law regardless of race, equal access to healthcare and education on the principle of universalism.

Yet the US today is engulfed in a series of social crises, with life expectancy for Americans falling for three successive years from 2015.

Liberalism has always been a broad creed, its basic tenets accepted by social democrats and conservatives as well as card-carrying liberals.

Its favoured prophets, Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, will endure but they are far less invoked these days. The new age of rising anger and grievance is defined by excessive individualism and the relentless rise of subcultures, both trends advanced by technology. These are the killing agents stalking the liberal order.

Every political idea is subject to reinterpretation by succeeding generations. Liberalism is in trouble, betrayed by its friends as mirrored by ineffective government and under attack from a wide range of enemies.

From the right and left, ideologues, intellectuals, politicians on the make, champions of new causes and legions of the aggrieved are hacking away at liberal universalism, cursing its moral basis and consigning it to history’s dustbin. The conga line of such groups, extending as far as the eye can see, spans disillusioned Catholic conservatives, identity politics agitators, Trumpian populists and climate change radicals, a quartet that highlights the diversity of the political earthquake.

The shattering of centre-right liberalism in the US saw Donald Trump hijack the Republican Party and win the White House, the single most consequential event so far in the assault on liberalism. The next, with a different twist, was Brexit, where liberalism had been pushed too far in the embrace of open borders and was brought crashing back to earth.

Columnist Ross Douthat, in his 2020 book The Decadent Society, probes the cultural wasteland that Trump exploited: “He (Trump) is both an embodiment of our society’s distinctive vices and a would-be rebel against our torpor and disappointment; a figure who rose to power by attacking the system for its sclerosis while exploiting that same decadence to the very hilt. ‘Make America Great Again’ is a precisely calibrated statement of what you may call reactionary futurism, a howl against a present that wasn’t promised, the mixture of nostalgia and ambition that you would expect a decadent era to conjure up.”

Like most conservatives, Douthat believes politics follows culture. He sees Trump as a product of liberalism’s slide into cultural decadence. Trump exploits the decline of liberalism while being an agent of that decline. Douthat asks whether Trump’s meaning is that “our system could decay much more swiftly into authoritarianism or collapse into simple chaos — or whether Trump is instead fundamentally more farcical than threatening, too decadent himself to be a real threat to the system”. A clown at the bonfire.

Trump and Brexit have forged the stereotypical view about the assault on liberal values — that it comes from right-wing nationalistic and xenophobic populists. But this completely misunderstands the story.

The earlier assault on liberalism came from the centre-left in the form of a new elitism. It was the newly ascendant, highly educated, cosmopolitan, secularised, morally superior, opinion-making class that decided liberalism was hopelessly vapid and shifted to a more aggressive progressivism.

Its chief political casualty has been Hillary Clinton, whose presidential 2016 campaign based on a coalition of minority groups defined by race, gender, sexuality and generation led Clinton to mock Trump’s supporters as “deplorables”, a taunt she never lived down.

These forces possess their distinctive Australian parallels. At home, Scott Morrison seeks to hold the centre ground against pro-Trump conservative populists demanding he imitate their hero, while Anthony Albanese must calculate how many concessions he makes to the noisy progressive interest groups as the price for losing mainstream voters. With Labor’s vote at 33.3 per cent last election the nexus is set — the more progressive Labor gets, the more it loses middle-ground votes.

The progressive mantra is that Western liberalism is immoral with its tolerance of colonialism, invasion, racism, inequality, climate cowardice, sexism and patriarchy. While Australians are pragmatic and responsive to sensible changes in the liberal status quo, progressivism demands a new moral order that unnerves and divides the community. It is about power. It sees every issue in terms of a victim class and an oppressor class. It is more interested in power than solutions. It demands people change their values to fit its moral impositions and it is disgusted by how liberalism has tolerated so many reactionary views.

The betrayal of liberalism by progressive elites has been seductive, subtle and long in the making. As early as the 1990s this change in liberal culture was brilliantly captured by American writer Christopher Lasch, whose essays appeared in his 1995 book, The Revolt of the Elites.

Lasch wrote: “The new elites are in revolt against ‘Middle America’ as they imagine it: a nation technologically backward, politically reactionary, repressive in its sexual morality, middlebrow in its tastes, smug and complacent, dull and dowdy.

“Those who covet membership in the new aristocracy of brains tend to congregate on the coasts, turning their backs on the heartland and cultivating ties with the international market in fast-moving money, glamour, fashion and popular culture. Patriotism, certainty, does not rank very high in their hierarchy of virtues. ‘Multiculturalism’, on the other hand, suits them to perfection, conjuring up the agreeable image of a global bazaar … The new elites are at home only in transit, en route to a high-level conference, to the grand opening of a new franchise, to an international film festival or to an undiscovered resort.”

Lasch was describing what would become the central event on the left — the retreat from liberalism to progressivism. Elites decided that liberal universalism was boring, unexciting and out of step with the empowered individualism in which they exalted, finally freed from every cultural restraint.

American writer Yuval Levin argued in his 2016 book, The Fractured Republic, that culture was being re-engineered. It was now what the individual preferred it to be. Once your guiding star becomes your own self-expression then, as Levin says, we “recoil from any demands that we conform to the requirements of some external moral standard — a set of rules that keeps ‘me’ from being ‘the real me’, ‘true to myself’ ”.

Such rules were to be discarded. Indeed, they were to be mocked, with the Christian religion top of the list. Such individual empowerment leads to defiance of moral instructions handed down by church, state or nearly any authority. Those defying the authority are applauded because being “true to yourself” is seen as the ultimate morality.

Liberalism accepted the principle of non-discrimination. But this cannot satisfy progressives. They want minority-group distinctiveness to be validated. Rules and laws must change so any form of diversity and separateness is validated and celebrated. This is the super-highway to tribal culture and permanent political disruption.

In 1955 only 4.5 per cent of children in the US were born to unmarried mothers, while by 2015 it had risen to 41 per cent of births. If you believe the traditional family had a role in social and economic stability this transition is decisive. Data in the US shows deep tribulations in two groups — among African-Americans and the white working class. In their “depths of despair” analysis of American life, academics Anne Case and Angus Deaton find the most troubled category is people without a four-year college degree. Marriage rates at age 40 among that group declined by 50 per cent between 1980 and 2018, and this trend combines with falling wages and a dearth of good jobs.

The American demonstrations reveal a troubled but divided nation. In his New York Times column, Douthat said the riots were not just a testament to Trump’s “provocation and abdication” but exposed, in effect, the crisis on the left — what he called “the coalition of the liberal city” (think Democratic mayors and governors) — relying on an alliance of highly educated urbanites and an underclass “sharing a common political opponent but lacking a common way of life”.

Douthat nailed the malaise: “Above all, the liberal city lacks a middle — the ballast of a substantial middle class” and “the cement of shared religious and cultural institutions”. He said recent studies showed white liberals (think progressives) were “increasingly angrier about racism than the average black American”.

This links to my interview last year with American social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business, whose 2012 book, The Righteous Mind, remains the masterclass in answering “why is it so hard for us to get along?”.

Identifying the real nature of the US domestic conflict, Haidt said: “The current political civil war is between two groups of educated white people with radically different views about what the country is, what morality is and what we need to do to move forward. The modern civil war is being fought by the extremes. Most Americans are non-political, but in a sense they don’t exist.”

The killing of George Floyd is an undisguised act of racial violence and abuse of police power. Blacks and whites have every justification to protest. But these demonstrations have become about something much bigger — about competing views of America. And the ideological battle between these views is spearheaded largely by rival white politicians, leaders and agitators.

Reflecting last year on the divisions in America, Haidt said: “We just don’t know what a democracy looks like when you drain all the trust out of the system. So I don’t know what the future will look like. It may just be a continued decline in trust and efficacy such that everything is contested, everything is fought.”

But Haidt, again, nailed the core problem, saying the battle between progressives and conservatives was akin to a struggle between “different cultures”.

He urged Australians to avoid following the US down this path. He warned that any nation seeking to save its liberal democracy must work “very hard to turn down tribal identities and inter-group conflicts”.

Haidt said liberal democracy was predicated on the ability of groups “to compete but also to co-operate”. He predicted violence in the US would increase because this was a contest between competing moral claims where more people believed “the ends justify the means”.

This is the consequence when the universal liberal culture — based around nation, family, community and shared benefits — is weakened from within and without. This is not just an American problem; it is rife in Australia.

The essence of liberalism has been treating people as people regardless of race, gender, sex, religion, age and ethnicity. This idea is now being dismantled in both the US and Australia under the flawed notion of progressive social justice. It attacks the universalism that has been the cement holding the social structure together.

While progressives are pulling apart the ideals of liberalism, the alienated ranks of Catholic intellectuals are in ferment, appalled by the damage being done to human life particularly among children, the decline of cultural tradition, the attrition of Christianity and the growing inroads of progressive morality. This Catholics movement has become one of the most powerful critics of liberalism, blaming its inherent weakness for the moral and social ills they see nearly everywhere.

The ultimate statement reflecting this rage is the 2018 book, Why Liberalism Failed, by Catholic academic Patrick J. Deneen, a social conservative, economic primitive and misguided political analyst. The thesis is that liberalism is to blame for the decline of religious faith and the destruction wrought by progressive morality. Deneen says 70 per cent of Americans believe their country is moving in the wrong direction and half the country thinks its best days are behind it. He said liberalism, with its ideals of limited but effective government, independent judiciary, responsive public officials and free and fair elections, has betrayed virtually every promise made in its name.

“Liberalism has failed — not because it fell short but because it was true to itself,” he said. “In practice (it) generates titanic inequality, enforces uniformity and homogeneity, fosters material and spiritual degradation and undermines freedom.” Deneen argues the tragedy is that liberalism — the first of the modern world’s competitor political ideologues after fascism and communism — is now exposed for its vices.

So alien is its view of human nature that America may be witnessing “the bankruptcy of its underlying political philosophy”. He wonders whether liberalism is approaching the “natural cycle” of decay that limits the lifespan of all human creations. Deneen says the contradiction of liberalism is that its triumph meant the undermining of “the classical and Christian understanding” of liberty, tradition and individual primacy.

Deneen’s mistake is his misallocation of blame. He blames liberalism for the failures of the conservative and religious movement when its failures are its own. It is true, however, that the growing alienation of religious people from what now constitutes liberalism is another burden it must carry. The bottom line is that regardless of whether liberalism’s critics come from the left or right, populists or priests, Trumpians or progressives, as Francis Fukuyama said in 1999: “Liberal democracy has always been dependent on certain shared cultural values to work properly.”

Twenty years later, it is obvious those shared values are gravely undermined and equally obvious that liberal democracy is no longer working properly. History, however, suggests liberalism has been in worse trouble at various times in the past. Its demise has been frequently predicted but such predictions always misjudged its immense recuperative ability.

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 June, 2020  

When a White Man Can’t Breathe

Cary Aspinwall and Dave Boucher are investigative reporters for The Dallas Morning News. They deserve a Pulitzer Prize for an article written last summer that apparently no one in America has read, which is why I am summarizing it here today. It was about a man named Tony Timpa who cried for help more than 30 times as Dallas police officers pinned his neck to the ground. Before he died, Timpa shouted repeatedly, “You’re gonna kill me!”

And kill him the police officers did. After Timpa became unconscious, the officers who had him cuffed assumed he was asleep. As the minutes passed, the officers joked about waking him up for school and making him waffles for breakfast.

Body camera footage shows first responders waited at least four minutes after Timpa became unresponsive to begin CPR. Even worse, the police officers pinned his handcuffed arms behind his back for nearly 14 minutes and zip-tied his legs together. Shortly after he was loaded onto a gurney and put into an ambulance, Timpa was pronounced dead.

This culminated an incident that began when Timpa called 911 from the parking lot of a Dallas porn store. He told a dispatcher he suffered from schizophrenia and depression and was off his prescription medication. Later, police incident reports falsely claimed Timpa’s behavior that night was aggressive. In stark contradiction, the police video shows Timpa struggling to breathe and asking the officers to stop pinning him down.

In another contradiction, contained in a portion of a custodial death report submitted to the state of Texas in 2016, the department answered "no" to questions about whether Timpa resisted arrest or otherwise behaved aggressively. Indeed, a private security guard had already handcuffed him before police arrived.

Shockingly, footage from the police video shows officers mocking Timpa as he struggled to live. Shortly after one officer ridicules Timpa’s cries for help, an officer observes that he appears to be “out cold.” Nonetheless they joked that he was merely asleep and tried to wake him saying, “It’s time for school. Wake up!” One officer mockingly says, “I don’t want to go to school! Five more minutes, Mom!”

One of the medical responders to the scene falsely claimed, “I was unable to assess the patient due to his combativeness.” However, police video footage shows that the responders attempt to take Timpa’s blood pressure while he is still conscious, about five minutes before administering a powerful sedative.

Timpa died within 20 minutes of police arriving at the scene. An autopsy ruled Timpa's cause of death sudden cardiac death due to "the toxic effects of cocaine and the stress associated with physical restraint." Nonetheless, a criminal case against the police officers that were present never made it to trial.

The three officers -- Kevin Mansell, Danny Vasquez and Dustin Dillard -- were indicted by a grand jury in 2017 on charges of misdemeanor deadly conduct. After two days of testimony, the grand jury's indictment stated that the "officers engaged in reckless conduct that placed Timpa in imminent danger of serious bodily injury." However, in March, Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot dismissed the charges.

The Dallas Police Department's internal affairs investigation resulted in Dillard, Mansell and Vasquez being disciplined for "conduct discrediting" the department. However, those allegations were later dropped. Vasquez and another officer present at Timpa's death also received written reprimands for "discourtesy" and "unprofessionalism." 

Mansell and Vasquez were placed on administrative leave in December 2017. Dillard was also placed on leave in March 2018. But the officers returned to active duty in April after Creuzot dropped the criminal case against them.

The police video shows that Dillard pins Timpa to the ground with his knee in his back for more than 13 minutes. When the officers first arrived at the scene, they told Timpa he would be OK. “We’re going to get you some help, man,” one of the officers tells him. But within 15 minutes, Dillard can be heard saying: “I hope I didn’t kill him.” Finally, Dillard turned to someone before shutting off his camera and said, “Sorry. We tried.”

This is how three police officers presided over the death of Tony Timpa. There were no George Soros funded protests. There were no Antifa riots. He was only 32. And he was only white.

Nonetheless, it is time to re-open this case in the court of public opinion, if not a court of law. Only then will we learn whether current outrage over the death of George Floyd is based upon righteous indignation or political opportunism.

SOURCE 






Bush Condemns Riots but Promotes Myth of Systemic Racism

He calls for unity by capitulating to the "social justice" dogma that America is a racist nation.

George W. Bush released a statement calling for unity and racial justice while expressing solidarity with those currently protesting the unjust death of George Floyd while in police custody. However, rather than question the leftist “social justice” activists’ dubious narrative of “systemic racism” — a charge that has been repeatedly debunked by hard data and a variety of studies — Bush simply echoed the same narrative as Barack Obama. “It remains a shocking failure that many African Americans, especially young African American men, are harassed and threatened in their own country,” Bush lamented. “It is a strength when protesters, protected by responsible law enforcement, march for a better future. This tragedy — in a long series of similar tragedies — raises a long overdue question: How do we end systemic racism in our society?”

The former president added, “The only way to see ourselves in a true light is to listen to the voices of so many who are hurting and grieving. Those who set out to silence those voices do not understand the meaning of America — or how it becomes a better place.” In other words, anyone who dares question the “social justice” dogma of “systemic racism” is condemned as “part of the problem.” Feelings trump facts.

The only means to finding a genuine solution to any problem is to first accurately identify the problem. Unquestioningly accepting a narrative — in this case one that is itself based upon radical racial identitarianism — as the gospel truth will only lead to false solutions that may only exacerbate the genuine problem.

While Bush, like almost every American, is justifiably upset and angered by the callous, indifferent, and deadly actions taken by four Minneapolis police officers, that doesn’t excuse him or anyone else from propagating a false narrative. “Many doubt the justice of our country, and with good reason,” he asserts. “Black people see the repeated violation of their rights without an urgent and adequate response from American institutions.” Is that true? Is it only black Americans today who suffer repeated violations of their rights with no response from American institutions? Not according to the data. Do black Americans suffer repeated violations of their rights at a higher rate than other Americans? Again, not according to the data. Do black Americans feel their rights are violated more often than other Americans? Clearly many do, though thankfully not all, as there is a small but growing number of black Americans who reject this racist narrative — our own Patrick Hampton and Willie Richardson among them. But this subjectivity of feelings is being used as the primary “evidence” of “systemic racism.”

We’ll give Bush credit for speaking out against rioting and violence. “We know that lasting justice will only come by peaceful means. Looting is not liberation, and destruction is not progress,” he wrote. “But” — and there’s always a “but” — “we also know that lasting peace in our communities requires truly equal justice. The rule of law ultimately depends on the fairness and legitimacy of the legal system. And achieving justice for all is the duty of all.”

Recognizing that many people across the country are angry over a crime is understandable. Blaming wholly innocent people for somehow being a cause of the crime is unjust, and Bush should know better. After all, was he not falsely labeled a racist by many on the Left following Hurricane Katrina? Then again, maybe his own bitter experience is why he issued this statement.

SOURCE 






De-platforming in Daily Life

Complaining about censorship ahead of the 2020 elections, President Trump signed an executive order that encourages the Federal Trade Commission to probe whether Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media are biased against conservatives.

Such an order raises questions about de-platforming – excluding those who have the wrong politics on grounds that they are haters – to a new and welcome level. But it is mistake to focus only on companies dealing with information and communications, as is the case now. Yes, the educational system, traditional media, social media, non-profit organizations, and advertisements are problematic. Of course, information has vast importance; but de-platforming has quietly and ominously crept much further and affects much of daily life.

Left-wing organizations (the Southern Poverty Law Center in the United States, Hope Not Hate in the United Kingdom) drive this trend by pressuring businesses to refuse commerce with "haters." (Never mind that SPLC has its own severe problems). And while universities and the social media giants make a show of reaching out to conservatives, that's mere tokenism. In fact, de-platforming overwhelmingly targets those on the right, including social conservatives, limited immigration advocates, anthropogenic climate change skeptics, Islamism critics, and Israel supporters.

Some examples of de-platforming in daily life:

The Red Hen restaurant expelled Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Hospitality providers have jumped into the de-platforming business with gusto. On a micro scale, a restaurant owner expelled a White House official dining in Lexington, Virginia, for political differences. After this incident, Rep. Maxine Waters called on fellow-leftists to "harass" Trump aides: "they're not going to be able to go to a restaurant, they're not going to be able to stop at a gas station, they're not going to be able to shop a department store." The subsequent verbal assault on Tucker Carlson's daughter must have pleased Ms Waters.

On an institutional level, Eventbrite canceled issuing tickets for a talk by Pamela Geller for the New York Young Republican Club. Norwegian Cruise Line dropped Rebel Media after it had booked and advertised a cruise. Hyatt Hotels and Mar-a-Lago canceled events hosted by Act! For America. Airbnb de-platformed Jewish hosts living on the West Bank (while still accepting Palestinian ones). Uber and Lyft expelled Laura Loomer from their car-share services on account of her tweets.

Amazon Smile, a service that designates one-half of one percent of Amazon sales to non-profits, excluded organizations listed by the SPLC as "hate groups." O2, a UK internet provider, essentially blocked access to my website, DanielPipes.org. Internet de-platforming can have direct financial consequences: YouTube demonetized (another neologism: removed the ability to make money) videos presented by Dennis Prager and Tommy Robinson.

Financial institutions joined the movement. Citibank gave the Israel Independence Fund one month to decamp. Capital One dropped Appalachian Gun, a store in rural Georgia. MasterCard and Visa refused to process donations to the David Horowitz Freedom Center. PayPal suspended the accounts of United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) members and donors. Reviewing the role of credit-card companies in what he calls "financial blacklisting," Allum Bokhari of Breitbart concludes that "the encroachment of progressive ideology into the financial industry" poses a "terrifying new threat to freedom" in Western societies.

Add governments to the de-platforming trend. The federal U.S. tax authority improperly denied tax-exempt status to Z Street, a Zionist organization. In a first step toward denying tax-exempt status to 60 organizations that the SPLC deems to be "hate groups," Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives held a hearing in September 2019 on "How The Tax Code Subsidizes Hate." The German government already took this step by withdrawing the tax-exempt status of JournalistenWatch.com, a conservative website. Leading German politicians hope to exclude members for the Alternative für Deutschland party from holding civil service jobs. The British government refused entry to Geert Wilders, as did the Australian to Milo Yiannopoulos.

A unit of the British National Health Service, followed by the whole of England, announced that patients who engage in "racist or sexist language, gestures or behavior ... will be challenged and warned"; then, should the problem continue, treatment will be "withdrawn as soon as is safe." How soon before NHS employees exploit this regulation to deny service to a polite critics of climate change or Islamism?

A restaurant, a ticketing service, ride-share companies, a cruise line, a hotel chain, President Trump's private club, a lodging broker, a retail store, an Internet provider, a video hosting company, banks, credit-card companies, a payment system, governments, and hospitals: the list is long, scary, and constantly expanding.

For conservatives, these deprivations threaten livelihood, dignity, and enfranchisement. They do constitute a "terrifying new threat to freedom" and deserve much more attention, planning, and resources than at present. Resistance must be organized; new, neutral institutions must be established. The time is now, without waiting for government action, and before the walls close in further.

SOURCE 






Are You a White Supremacist?

A chart circulating on social media depicts “overt white supremacy” that is “socially unacceptable” above all the various things that amount to “socially acceptable” “covert white supremacy.”

Clearly, everyone but actual racists would argue that lynching, burning crosses, displaying swastikas, and using the N-word are indeed unacceptable and should have no place in American society.

But that’s where the chart jumps the shark. There are more than 50 other practices, thoughts, or phrases that the “woke” folks peddling the chart say amount to prevalent and accepted white racism. A few of the things are understandably labeled as such — when they’re actually happening. Ironically, though “Make America Great Again” makes the list for white supremacy, “mass incarceration” of blacks was largely brought about by the man who wants to defeat President MAGA, Joe Biden. And Donald Trump has taken concrete steps to rectify the system.

For the most part, however, this list of skin sins is largely the pulp fiction of the Left’s alternate reality. Several of the items are so absurd we’ll admit we had to look them up just to even know what the chart maker meant. (Did anyone else know what the heck “fetishizing BIPOC” means?)

Others are the same tired cultural battles we’ve been fighting for decades. “Celebration of Columbus Day” is not white supremacy. Sports mascots are not racist. (Who names a team after something they want to degrade? Do these yahoos even watch sports?) Exceptionalism is not bigoted. Saying “we’re all one big human family” should be unifying (E pluribus unum, and all that), not evidence of some phantom prejudice.

We could go on but why bother? This is not a thoughtful exercise prompted by those who love our country and want to encourage racial healing. It’s the petty airing of grievances by angry leftists who want to classify every white conservative as a white supremacist and every black conservative an Uncle Tom. It’s political horse pucky, not cultural advancement.

SOURCE 

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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4 June, 2020  

The Left Couldn't Care Less About Blacks

Dennis Prager

Virtually every conservative in America knows the title of this column is true. Virtually every leftist knows it, too, but lying for the cause is what the left does (think "Russian collusion"). And those liberals who have become increasingly indistinguishable from leftists know it's probably true but won't say so -- lest they side with conservatives and, more importantly, be branded "racist" by the left. How the left brands a person now determines many people's moral and political positions.

If the left cared about blacks, leftists would work to raise blacks to universal academic standards, not lower and abolish standards as they have done for decades, most recently in abolishing the SAT exam at the University of California.

If the left cared about blacks, leftists would work to elevate all people, including blacks, not only to universal academic standards but also to universal personal/moral standards. Perhaps the most obvious of these is that women should marry before having children, and men should stay in the lives of children they conceived -- ideally as the husband of their mothers, but at least as a father, mentor and breadwinner. But when University of Pennsylvania Law School professor Amy Wax wrote a column advocating such "middle-class, bourgeois" standards, leftists denounced her as a "white supremacist" (as if those are "white" values -- a racist view if there ever was one) and "racist." Nearly half her Penn Law colleagues denounced her.

If the left cared about blacks, they would encourage a vibrant religious life in the inner city (and everywhere else, for that matter). What proportion of black (or nonblack) murderers had attended church the Sunday before they committed murder? But the left despises traditional Judeo-Christian religions as much it despises America.

If the left cared about blacks, leftists would increase -- not lobby and demonstrate to decrease -- police presence in black neighborhoods, where blacks are murdered, raped and beaten in the thousands each year by other blacks -- almost never by whites, whether policemen or anyone else. In 2016, the last year for which I could find FBI data, 2,870 blacks were murdered. Of those, 2,570 of their murderers were black; 243 were white.

A typical left-wing reaction to all this was written in June 2019 by journalist Michael Coard in the Philadelphia Tribune: "Today's black so-called thugs/monsters are created by the evil American system that miseducates them, unemploys them, underemploys them, over-polices them, and over-incarcerates them. America is Dr. Victor Frankenstein." Note "over-polices."

Coard is correct about one thing: Today's blacks are often miseducated, which leads to their unemployment, underemployment and other terrible consequences. Who has been running America's schools for decades now? (Hint: Not the right.) But that doesn't cause violence. Black murderers and rapists are the only people in America told that no matter what they did, they are not responsible for it. America is. And the people telling them that are all on the left.

Why does the left do this?

First, because, as opposed to liberals, the left -- everywhere in the world -- hates America. And why does the left hate America? Because it is a living refutation of left-wing ideology. America is the most successful country while also being the most capitalist, most religious and most nationality-affirming of all the industrialized democracies.

The left-wing mantra of "America is racist" has little to do with caring for blacks; rather, it is indispensable to bringing America down.

Second, without a lopsided black vote for the left-wing party, the Democrats, no Democrat could get elected to national office. It is therefore imperative to repeat as often and as vociferously as possible how anti-black America is. The angrier a black person is at America, the more likely he or she is to vote Democrat. Some years ago, after talking to listeners of every race on my radio show for decades, I came up with this riddle:

"What do you call a happy black person?"

Answer: "A Republican."

To the left, blacks are not real people as much as they are an electoral bloc. How else to explain Joe Biden's recent comment, "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black." The contempt for blacks -- from the sentiment that one is "not black" unless one is a Democrat to his use of the word "ain't" -- is obvious to any nonleftist.

Further proof that the left doesn't care about blacks is that the left doesn't care about any group in whose name it speaks. The left uses groups to attain power and to give themselves moral legitimacy.

The communists never gave a damn about workers, but they preached incessantly on workers' behalf.

Left-wing feminists don't give a damn about women. Girls in Connecticut and elsewhere routinely lose track competitions to biological males who identify as female. Every rational person knows this is unfair to female athletes. But feminists, with very few exceptions, side with the biological males who identify as female. And the few who speak up on behalf of women -- such as the lifelong gay and feminist activist, tennis champion Martina Navratilova -- have been rejected as LGBT or feminist spokeswomen.

And whereas liberal Jews constituted a bedrock of support for Jews and the Jewish state, left-wing Jews, like George Soros, don't give a damn about Jews or Israel. Likewise, their support for Palestinians has nothing to do with care for Palestinians; it is all about hatred for Israel and America.

Tears for George Floyd are universal and justified. Anger at what happened to him is universal and justified. But for leftists, that poor soul is little more than a weapon to be used in their ongoing rage against America, the police and white people. And to further enrage blacks against them.

SOURCE 





Trump Holds Bible in Front of Church, Libs Everywhere Are Triggered

President Trump provided the nation a perfect social media snapshot of why so many of us are way beyond being able to see the American Left as anything but a bunch for raving lunatics.

Yeah, I may be a little over the top now, but I think I’ve been drowned in so much hyperbole and anti-Trump hysteria AMID THE PANDEMIC that I now feel like responding in kind.

It began when Trump gave a speech from the Rose Garden addressing the violence of the past few days that expressed some sentiments that are difficult to find fault with:

“All Americans were rightly sickened and revolted by the brutal death of George Floyd,” Trump said, adding that “For George and his family, justice will be served. He will not have died in vain. But we cannot allow the righteous cries of peaceful protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob.

“The biggest victims of the rioting are the peace-loving citizens in our poorest communities. And as their president, I will fight to keep them safe.

“I will fight to protect you. I am your president of law and order and an ally of all peaceful protesters,” Trump said.

Trump then pointed out what has been plain for all to see: there has been a complete failure of leadership in every city where the violence has gotten out of hand. He was polite and didn’t mention that they were all Democrats running those cities.

We all know the drill well by now: the liberals are going to complain no matter what Trump does. Prior to the speech, they were complaining that he was hiding. Then they bitched about the speech. Then they really lost it over what he did next. Victoria covered it here:

"And then he walked off and lead a group of government officials, including Attorney General Bill Barr and Defense Secretary Mark Esper and walked to St. John’s Episcopal Church across from the White House. The White House press corps was not aware of the plan."

Trump’s former press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders captured the proper sentiment of the symbolism of the moment:

The desecration of St. John’s church by an angry mob was an act of cowardice. President Trump standing before it and holding a Bible is an act of courageous leadership. Let’s honor #GeorgeFloyd by peacefully standing up against injustice and loving one another as God loves us.

Yes, it was a photo op. They happen all the time in politics. Politicians and media hacks who pretend to be outraged by them are generally full of crap. Some of them are rather pointless. Others — like this one — can be powerful and necessary.

Less than 24 hours earlier, St. John’s was on fire and the riot types were wreaking havoc all around the White House. Trump’s quick walk over to the church provided the message that the none-too-peaceful protesters would not prevail. It wasn’t offensive, but we’re living in the era of ORANGE MAN BAD.

Liberal heads were immediately on fire. Both the pastor of St. John’s and the local Episcopal bishop let the leftmedia know that they were unhappy with the president. That actually reflects more poorly on the Episcopalians than it ever would President Trump.

The very same people who were offended by Trump posing with a Bible have been twisting themselves into knots to pretend that all of the burning and looting going on across the country is the result of just a “few bad seeds” who happened to be interfering with all of the fine young protesters out there.

The Democrats do love to gravitate toward criminals and publicly badmouth all law enforcement

Almost every high-profile Democrat who’s spoken publicly about these riots has lied. I would say they all have, but I may have missed the one good seed out there. They would rather go easier on the people who are setting churches on fire than on a president who wants to de-escalate tensions.

It’s not difficult to pick sides here.  Yeah, I Like This Guy

SOURCE 





De Blasio Infuriates New Yorkers When He Explains Why Protests Are Allowed But Prayer Services Aren't

Mayors and governors were quick to shut down their cities and states in the wake of the coronavirus. But some of those same officials seem just as eager to encourage citizens to go out, break social distancing guidelines and protest.

Americans certainly have the right to protest the brutal Minneapolis police killing of George Floyd, who went motionless as officer Derek Chauvin kept his knee on his neck for several minutes. But riots are not the answer. And it can be argued that large scale protests run the risk of spreading COVID-19, right when it seemed the number of cases was starting to decline.

Mayor de Blasio is encouraging New Yorkers to peacefully protest, which made some reporters wonder why religious New Yorkers couldn't exercise their First Amendment rights as well.

Hamodia reporter asks why protest is allowed when prayer services aren’t.@NYCMayor @BilldeBlasio: “400 years of American racism, I’m sorry, that is not the same question as the understandably aggrieved store owner or the devout religious person who wants to go back to services”

New York continues to be a disturbing epicenter of violent riots. On Monday, multiple police officers were run over by protesters. Even Gov. Andrew Cuomo charged that the mayor just isn't doing his job and that last night was a "disgrace."

SOURCE 






America's Binary Lens - We Will Never End Racism With Racism

After protests and violent riots erupted across the country in the aftermath of George Floyd’s death, many resorted to the familiar attempt to segregate people into one of two categories - the good and the bad. Unfortunately, the American propensity for categorizing individuals by immutable characteristics results in descension into arguments over irreconcilable differences, promoting nothing but further division and hatred.

For some, the protests and riots were conflated as an equally valid expression of rage in the face of systemic racism and vicious police brutality. For others, they were seen as an opportunistic excuse to justify violence, destruction, and looting.

For some, Black Lives Matter is an entirely just cause, fighting against the perception that black lives are seen as less valuable in the eyes of law enforcement or general society. For others, Black Lives Matter is seen as a violent political activist group who judge the validity or invalidity of deaths solely by the racial characteristics of the victim and alleged perpetrator, while simultaneously ignoring a multitude of politically-inconvenient victims and politically-inconvenient perpetrators.

For some, All Lives Matter is built solely upon the refusal to acknowledge the notion of racism at any level in our society, or the existence of individual racists. For others, it is the acknowledgement that every innocent life that is lost is an avoidable tragedy which should be equally condemned, regardless of political implications.

The problem is that there are elements of truth and falsehood in every categorization, with a broad spectrum of positions in the ideological No Man’s Land which exists in between. However, with the destruction of nuance, objectivity, and respect, the extreme viewpoints are the only positions given any oxygen in our vicious political arena.

The Black Lives Matter and All Lives Matter movements should be arguing in favor of the same objective - the prevention of the destruction of innocent life. Instead, both sides are deliberately misinterpreted to solidify the division. Black Lives Matter becomes a movement which sees every police officer as a figure of racial injustice, and All Lives Matter becomes a movement which dismisses the notion that any single police officer is guilty of wrongdoing with racist intent.

Such binary categorization is the foundation of the very racism which many claim to abhor. While this foundation remains in place, nothing will change. Until we see people as individuals and judge their actions and choices accordingly, we will be incapable of achieving justice for those who fall victim to racial violence. Until we see people as individuals, we will be unable to separate the protesters from the rioters, the genuine activists from the political opportunists, or the consistent anti-racists from the sporadic anti-racists.

This past weekend was one of the worst in recent American history. However, through the smoke and the blood and the rage shone the moral righteousness that is at the heart of the American spirit. People of all races, all genders, and all backgrounds came together to protest peacefully and voice their valid opinions. They came together to decry the violence and protect businesses and police officers from violent attacks. They even volunteered to clean the streets in the mornings after the violence had temporarily subsided. These people didn’t share a skin color or a political affiliation, but they did share a common compassion and empathy for their neighbors, exemplifying what it means to be an American.

The toxicity of binary ideology is poisoning our country’s very core. Instead of acknowledging the broad and virtually unanimous position that racism is deplorable, it is seen as one of America’s most reliable political footballs. Politicians rush to blame their opponents, the media rush to focus on the worst amongst us, and we rush to categorize ourselves and our opponents as the entirely “good” or the entirely “bad.” Meanwhile, racism continues unchallenged.

Instead, let’s focus on where we agree. Let’s focus on what should be our common goal. Let’s focus on moving forward together in the objective fight against racist individuals, rather than allowing the fight against “systemic” racism to be hijacked by the politically hypocritical who only seek to fuel further hatred, division, and violence.

Judging those around us solely by skin color is racist, and we will never end racism with racism.

SOURCE 

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
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3 June, 2020  

Roberts Fails to Uphold First Amendment Religious Rights

SCOTUS rules 5-4 against California church's challenge of Gov. Newsom's restrictions.

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 5-4 against San Diego’s South Bay United Pentecostal Church in its lawsuit against California Governor Gavin Newsom’s restriction limiting places of worship to meetings no larger than 25% of a building’s capacity or no more than 100 people, whichever is less. Tellingly, Newsom has not applied these restrictions on secular venues such as supermarkets, offices, and restaurants — none of which are listed in the First Amendment. This conflict has been a theme during lockdown.

Siding with the four liberal justices against the church, Chief Justice John Roberts contended, “Similar or more severe restrictions apply to comparable secular gatherings, including lectures, concerts, movie showings, spectator sports and theatrical performances, where large groups of people gather in close proximity for extended periods of time. And the order exempts or treats more leniently only dissimilar activities, such as operating grocery stores, banks and laundromats, in which people neither congregate in large groups nor remain in close proximity for extended periods.” Essentially, Roberts views church services as “nonessential” activities. So much for the right to peaceably assemble and freely exercise religion.

Rejecting assertions that Newsom’s order violates Californians’ First Amendment right to religious liberty, Roberts argued a rather tortuous “states rights” rationale for refusing to challenge the constitutionality of the order — and in so doing threw the Court’s credibility under the bus. Roberts lectured, “Where those broad limits are not exceeded, they should not be subject to second-guessing by an ‘unelected federal judiciary,’ which lacks the background, competence, and expertise to assess public health and is not accountable to the people.” In short, Roberts both hid behind a reticence to be an “activist” and appealed to that tired trope of “trusting the experts,” as if all experts are always in unanimous agreement, in order to avoid actually addressing the issue.

Writing for the dissent, Justice Brett Kavanaugh was unequivocal: “I would grant the Church’s requested temporary injunction because California’s latest safety guidelines discriminate against places of worship and in favor of comparable secular businesses. Such discrimination violates the First Amendment. Absent a compelling justification (which the State has not offered), the State may not take a looser approach with, say, supermarkets, restaurants, factories, and offices while imposing stricter requirements on places of worship.” Kavanaugh added, “The State cannot ‘assume the worst when people go to worship but assume the best when people go to work or go about the rest of their daily lives in permitted social settings.”

Finally, it has become increasingly clear that Roberts can’t be counted on to be constitutionally consistent, demonstrated by his chastisement of the conservative justices’ dissenting opinion. What is the job of the judiciary if it is not to judge whether the actions of an executive or the laws passed by legislators are in conformity to the Constitution?

SOURCE 







Mayhem: Rioters Set Historic Church Ablaze Near the White House

It's past the 11 p.m. ET Sunday night curfew in Washington, D.C., but hundreds of people are still out rioting in the nation's capital. For several nights in a row now, major cities have been upended by rioters and looters in reaction to the police killing of an unarmed, African American man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis last week.

The mayhem in D.C., it seems, began in full force at Lafayette Park, not far from the White House. Demonstrators jumped the gated barrier, forcing park police to move forward and try to push individuals back.

The night only devolved from there. One of the most devastating scenes of destruction in D.C. has to be the fire at St. John’s Episcopal Church on H Street, which has stood in D.C. since 1816. Just how historic is it? Every president since James Madison has worshipped there at some point. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1960. But rioters, it appears, lit the church on fire Sunday, and the inferno was captured on camera by Fox News reporter Kevin Corke.

Thankfully, D.C. fire crews rushed to the scene and appear to have put out the fire.

At least 50 Secret Service members were injured in the riots.

Former D.C. homicide detective Ted Williams, who was sickened by this evening's scenes, said part of the problem was that the D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser set an "ignorant" 11 p.m. curfew, because law enforcement is at a disadvantage at this time of the night.

"This is no longer about George Floyd," he said. It's about committing crime.

SOURCE 






It’s Not About Race

The Left exploits another black victim

David Horowitz

A black man is arrested and murdered in an act of heinous violence while handcuffed and defenseless. Three fellow officers, in close proximity to the killer cop, watch the crime, listen to the black man plea for his life and do nothing to stop it. For the next several days angry mobs tear up American cities, looting stores, burning buildings, police cars and American flags and even killing individuals in their path.

The rationale offered for their violence and criminal acts is that they are protesting a racist system - or in Senator Bernie Sanders more colorful words, “a grotesque system of ingrained racism and economic disparity that now more than ever needs to be ripped down.” These attacks on America are what the riots are really about. Sanders’ “grotesque system of ingrained racism” is a leftwing fantasy that fuels the rage of the rioters and their violence, which is directed not only against white Americans but also black Americans whose neighborhoods and shopping centers and businesses Sanders’ comrades are pleased to torch.

No one knows for certain the motives that actually led Officer Derek Chauvin to take George Floyd’s life and to do so in such a brutal manner. Chauvin was a bad cop with a long dossier of misconduct complaints and three killings already on his record. But let’s posit the most logical explanation: he was a racist. And so were his three accomplices. What does this say about “a grotesque system of ingrained racism” in America? Absolutely nothing.

Is there a cop, or a politician from the president on down, or a publication that in the week of George Floyd’s murder rose up to defend the murderer? Is there any public voice claiming that there were extenuating circumstances – that he was resisting arrest for example – that would justify the act? There wasn’t. The attorney general for the state of Minnesota is black; the police chief is black; the vice president of the city council is black, the congresswoman for the district is black. A normal view of this matter would recognize it as an isolated incident involving four bad cops who should long before have been removed from the force by the Democrat politicians who control the state.

But these are not normal times. In the same statement, Sanders accused President Trump of “advocating violence” against black communities across the nation because he called for law and order, while at the time praising those demonstrators who were actually protesting and doing so peacefully. We live in times when the Democrat Party and its leaders conflate the black community with its criminal element in order to indict white Americans as “white supremacists,” bearers of “white skin privilege – a term coined by the Weathermen, a domestic terrorist organization in the 1960s.

Fueling the flames of hate against white people, against police, against America’s president and America itself is the daily message of Democrat leaders like Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Stacey Abrams and Joe Biden. This hatred is magnified by the Trump-hating and America-trashing leftwing media. This hate has now born bitter fruit across the nation.

There are voices, however – black voices on the left - who see through the hypocrisy. Atlanta is a major American city that has been run by black politicians for decades. In Atlanta  rioters attacked the CNN Center, site of a channel that is relentless in attacking Trump, white America, and its allegedly racist system. CNN is openly blaming “white supremacy” for the riots. An Atlanta black rapper named “Killer Mike” had this to say about CNN’s role in fueling the hatred whose chickens had come home to roost: “I love CNN, I love Cartoon Network. But I’d like to say to CNN right now, ‘Stop feeding fear and anger every day. Stop making people feel so fearful. Give them hope.’”

Virtually every official in Minnesota with influence over the Minneapolis police and the decision to keep Derek Chauvin on the force despite his alarming record is a Democrat: the governor, the attorney general, the Minneapolis congresswoman and the mayor. The city council consists of 12 Democrats and a Green Party member. The Democrat Party is the “system” that protected the bad cop and led to George Floyd’s death.

Just as the Democrats protected the bad cops, so they encouraged the rioters by fueling the myth of America’s systemic racism, by not providing a sufficient police presence, when the mayhem started, to nip it in the bud, and by attacking Trump for “glorifying violence,” when he warned the rioters that if the local authorities failed to protect law-abiding citizens he would meet force with force.

The organizers of the violence were two far left organizations – Antifa and Black Lives Matter. Until the Minneapolis riots Attorney General and former DNC head, Keith Ellison featured a picture on his website advertising the Antifa handbook for conducting civil war. The proximity of the Antifa-spearheaded riot in Minneapolis prompted Ellison to remove the photo, because Antifa’s destruction of his capital city would obviously lead to bad press.

The racist organization Black Lives Matter, which has led the war on cops for several years, is officially endorsed by the Democrat Party, was invited multiple times to the Obama White House, and is funded along with Antifa by Democrat donors like George Soros.

The Democrat Party’s leaders without exception have spread the lies that there is an open season on black Americans conducted by (white) police. They neglect to mention  that police departments in major cities are frequently run by black Americans; that black cops are actually more likely to kill black suspects than white police officers, and that an unarmed black is less likely to be killed by police than to be struck by lightning.

Black males are 6% of the population but they are responsible for more than 50% of the homicides and violent crimes. This is why virtually every civil rights cause celebre of the last fifty years has involved encounters with the law rather than racist vigilantes from the general populace.

Democrat leaders like Sanders, Warren and Harris feed the myth that economic inequality is a systemic oppression of blacks when the majority of African Americans are in the middle class, and the source of gross poverty is the bad behavior of individuals. It has been statistically shown that not having children out of wedlock and getting a high school education will lift an individual out of poverty. The Democrat Party controls virtually all the failed public schools in the nation where year in and year out 40% of the students drop out before they graduate and 40% of those who do graduate are functionally illiterate.

Democrat welfare policies and political dependence on teacher unions are 100% responsible for these deficiencies. The Democrats’ defense of their indefensible behavior is to blame Trump and Republicans for the resulting inequities and to call all their critics racists. Democrats are wedded to a collectivist ideology called Identity Politics, which erases the individual and individual accountability in order to indict and hold races responsible, as it happens the white race. This is the poisoned well of Democrat politics and it is why self-anointed champions of “black folk” have felt so free to dishonor the memory of George Floyd by burning American cities in order to advance their civil war against the United States.

SOURCE 






Erie County DA Makes Surprising Observation About Weekend Protests in Buffalo

Erie County, New York District Attorney John Flynn told the press on Sunday that police made 10 arrests the previous evening during riots in the city of Buffalo. It was the sixth straight night of protests around the country in the aftermath of the police killing of an unarmed African American man, George Floyd, in Minneapolis. One of the Buffalo rioters, 21-year-old Daniel D. Hill, was arrested for breaking into a liquor store, throwing bottles at police officers, and other violent acts. However, thanks to the state's recent bail reform, Hill was released Sunday morning and is expected to return to court on July 15.

Flynn's hands are full of investigations. His office is currently assessing this weekend's damage, including acts of arson, an attack on a young woman who is currently at ECMC with a serious injury, and an attack on a WIVB cameraman. There's also the incident involving a man who threw a flaming object through the window of city hall in Buffalo, an act which earned him the title "idiot" from the city's mayor, Byron Brown.

But, Flynn noted it could have been a lot worse.

"Buffalo police did a great job last night," Flynn said, adding that officers from neighboring cities came to help too. "All law enforcement last night did a fantastic job."

The riots we've seen in major cities across the country have been flooded with signs sounding off on "police brutality," or likening cops to the KKK. Derek Chauvin, the arresting officer who was filmed pressing his knee into Floyd's neck until he went motionless, and kept his knee there after Floyd was unresponsive, was white. Yet, Flynn perhaps surprised people in his remarks when he noted that the majority of the arrests Saturday night were of white individuals. The African Americans who came out to protest, the DA said, were largely peaceful.

"Just so you know, the overwhelming majority of the 10 individuals who were arrested last night, were white," Flynn said at the Sunday presser. "They were not African Americans. The African Americans who were down here last night were peacefully protesting, doing the right thing, as I have seen all across the country."

He charged that it is "white individuals who are the agitators and that is true here in the city of Buffalo."

Buffalo officials were forced to issue an emergency order Sunday night, and enforce a curfew. It appears to have worked because Mayor Byron Brown said the evening was largely peaceful.

SOURCE

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

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

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 
`
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2 June, 2020

Walter Williams: It's Full Steam Ahead for Left-Wing Insanity

Is it important to have racial or sexual diversity in our fight against the COVID-19 pandemic?

Heather Mac Donald suggests that some think it might be in her City Journal article "Should Identity Politics Dictate Vaccine Research?"

The funding priorities of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control suggests that they think diversity is an important input in making headway in the fight against the coronavirus. On April 20, NIH and CDC announced the availability of grants to increase the "diversity" of biomedical research labs. For example, academic virology researchers studying respiratory failure could receive hundreds of thousands more taxpayer dollars if they could find a woman or a minority to add to their project.

High school students and college students are eligible for the program, even though they cannot contribute anything of value. No scientific justification for the new diversity hire is needed. The scientists must promise to mentor the new hire, which will take time away from their research with no offsetting gain.

Mac Donald has written another article on academic insanity, "The Therapeutic Campus," bearing the subtitle: "Why are college students seeking mental-health services in record numbers?" Many colleges have created safe spaces where students can be sheltered from reality and not have their feelings hurt by others exercising their free speech rights.

Yale University has created a safe space that would be the envy of most other universities. It has named it the Good Life Center.

Mac Donald says it has "a sandbox, essential oils, massage, and mental-health workshops" and that "the center unites the most powerful forces in higher education today: the feminization of the university, therapeutic culture, identity politics, and the vast student-services bureaucracy."

George Mason University has a Center for the Advancement of Well-Being, headed by a chief well-being officer. At George Mason, well-being refers to social justice and "building a life of vitality, purpose, resilience, and engagement," the Center's chief well-being officer told The Chronicle of Higher Education. By the way, a George Mason University student can minor in well-being as a part of his college education.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, in justifying his draconian coronavirus measures, said during a press conference: "This is about saving lives. If everything we do saves just one life, I'll be happy."

Cuomo knows that many Americans buy into such a seemingly caring statement that would be easily revealed as utter nonsense if one had just a modicum of economic knowledge. If one looked at only the benefits of an action, he would do anything because everything has a benefit. Prudent decision-making requires one to compare benefits to costs.

For example, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that in 2019, 36,120 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes. Virtually all those lives could have been saved with a mandated 5 mph speed limit. Those saved lives are the benefit. Fortunately, when we consider the costs and inconvenience of setting a 5 mph speed limit, we rightly conclude that saving those 36,120 lives isn't worth it.

There are other news tidbits about politicians drunk with power that we Americans have given them. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot told city residents who disobeyed her stay-at-home order: "We will arrest you and we will take you to jail. Period. We're not playing games."

Meanwhile, in violation of her own stay-at-home order, Lightfoot slipped out and got her hair done. She explained her decision, "I take my personal hygiene very seriously."

Ventura County, California, health director Dr. Robert Levin said that his department would forcibly remove COVID-19 infected people from their own homes and put them "into other kinds of housing that we have available." Facing stiff criticism, Levin later explained: "I either misspoke or it was misinterpreted. I'll take the blame of having misspoke."

The biggest casualty from the COVID-19 pandemic has nothing to do with the disease. It's the power we've given to politicians and bureaucrats. The question is how we recover our freedoms.

SOURCE 






The Folly of Twitter’s Fact Check

No American, not even the president, has an inherent right to a social media account. Tech companies are free to ban any user they see fit.

They’re free to fact-check anyone they want, to create a framework of acceptable speech, and to enforce their policies either consistently or capriciously. They’re free to accuse Donald Trump—and only Trump, if they see fit—of being a liar. They’re free to do all of these things.

Even if they shouldn’t.

Yesterday, after years of pressure from media and Democrats, Twitter labeled two of Trump’s tweets—in which he had claimed that the use of mail-in ballots for large numbers of people would be “substantially fraudulent” and result in a “rigged election”—as “potentially misleading.”

It’s a mistake for any platform to drop its neutral stance and take on fact-checking duties, a task that’s going to be impossible to accomplish either objectively or effectively. It’s going to corrode trust in the brand, but it won’t change a single mind.

Once Twitter begins tagging some tweets and not others with “what you need to know,” it will be staking out partisan positions. The Trump tweets that precipitated its first fact check are a good example of this.

It would have been far more reasonable for the social media giant to label Trump’s ugly and slanderous tweets about Joe Scarborough as misleading. Instead, Twitter decided to inaugurate its policy by alleging that Trump had dishonestly claimed that mail-in ballots would lead to “a Rigged Election.”

Even if this contention were entirely baseless, it would be as untrue as saying Russia rigged the election—a claim that politicians such as Adam Schiff and Nancy Pelosi, along with most major media outlets, have been making for years.

But while the president’s rhetoric about voting is debatable, it is also well within the normal parameters of contemporary political discourse.

It’s not exactly “unsubstantiated” to assert that more mail-in ballots “would lead to voter fraud,” as Twitter holds. There are dozens of instances of potential voter fraud investigated every year. The Heritage Foundation has cataloged 1,285 prosecuted cases.

Which is to say that contending that “voter fraud” is a problem is no more misleading than contending tax cuts will hurt the poor or that repealing net neutrality rules will destroy the internet.

In practice, “voter fraud” is no more a conspiracy theory than is “voter suppression.” Both happen on occasion, yet there is no evidence that either has toppled the outcome of any modern election.

The problem is that only one of these two issues will earn a “more information” tag from Twitter, because only one of these two issues offends the sensibilities of the liberals whose concerns Twitter ultimately cares about.

In another tweet, Trump claimed that everyone in California will be mailed a ballot. This is factually untrue. But so is the pinned tweet of former Vice President Joe Biden: “I can’t believe I have to say this, but please don’t drink bleach.”

The president never instructed anyone to drink bleach, yet Biden repeats this incessantly, along with numerous other misleading statements about his record and GOP policies.

Which brings us to the problem: Who will Twitter designate as its judge? Its fact-checking page redirects users to debunkings by CNN, The Washington Post, Vox, HuffPost, and other outlets that often deceive their audiences with far more sophistication than the president. These outlets like to appeal to the authority of experts, but not experts whose conclusions contradict their own.

There is a reason we debate issues rather than appoint “truth magistrates” to hand down verdicts: For the most part, politics is a dispute not over facts but values.

As is often the case, Trump immediately ceded the high ground by threatening to “strongly regulate” or shut down social media platforms. Such threats are nothing new for this president, who has often menaced media with regulations and legal action, although one cannot help but notice a paradox.

Trump never follows through on his destructive threats to inhibit speech but does follow through on his promise to cram the courts full of judges who have deference for the First Amendment, while those who talk in the loftiest terms about the press tend to pressure tech companies to constrain interactions, to ban accounts, and to “fact check” their partisan foes.

The distress over social media is predicated on the idea that average Americans are too dim to grapple with the messiness of unfettered speech. Many leftists—those who wanted to institute Fairness Doctrines or overturn Citizens United—admit this openly when they suggest that unregulated speech is corroding “democracy.”

Trump is the first president to take advantage of direct, instantaneous access to millions of Americans. Whether this is helpful to his cause is debatable. Certainly, we are blessed that the president’s policies and rhetoric are often disconnected. Whatever the case, though, we have an entire industry that stands ready to challenge the veracity of his statements.

We don’t need Twitter to join in the fact-checking game. Silicon Valley doesn’t have the resources, knowledge, or people to do it correctly.

SOURCE 






Mayor Frey Gives Masks to Rioters But Says Opening Churches Would Be a 'Public Health Disaster'

What happens when virtue signaling and rabid ideology collide? You get Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey.

His (dis)Honor has presided over the most shocking display of nihilism and anarchy in an American city since the draft riots in New York during the Civil War. But by gum, if you’re going to burn his city down, you damn well better be wearing a mask.

And while you have Frey’s tacit permission to burn and pillage, under no circumstances are you to attend church services.

Fox News:

Before George Floyd died in police custody this week, triggering destructive riots as large crowds protested in Minneapolis, the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, warned that allowing 25 percent capacity in churches would be “a recipe in Minneapolis for a public health disaster” due to the coronavirus.

Now, as his city is overwhelmed by crowds causing property damage and clashing with police, Frey’s own government said that it is giving out masks to the rioters — even though the state has prohibited gatherings of 10 or more people because of the pandemic.

Truly surreal. The statement that accompanied the “suggestion” that rioters wear mask cannot be believed.

“The City encourages everyone to exercise caution to stay safe while participating in demonstrations, including wearing masks and physical distancing as much as possible to prevent the spread of COVID-19,” a press release read. “The City has made hundreds of masks available to protesters this week.”

“Remain calm. All is well.”

So when do the adults decide the kids have played at running the city long enough and it’s time for them to come home and wash up for dinner? After another night of mayhem last night, it may be sooner than anyone thinks. Trump has asked the Pentagon to put military police on alert to go to Minneapolis.

Associated Press:

As unrest spread across dozens of American cities on Friday, the Pentagon took the rare step of ordering the Army to put several active-duty U.S. military police units on the ready to deploy to Minneapolis, where the police killing of George Floyd sparked the widespread protests.

Soldiers from Fort Bragg in North Carolina and Fort Drum in New York have been ordered to be ready to deploy within four hours if called, according to three people with direct knowledge of the orders. Soldiers in Fort Carson, in Colorado, and Fort Riley in Kansas have been told to be ready within 24 hours. The people did not want their names used because they were not authorized to discuss the preparations.

It should go without saying that military police do not have the training to deal with an urban riot. The irony is that the Minneapolis police are very well trained to handle urban unrest but have been told to stand down by the mayor. Trump is courting disaster if he sends MP’s to do the work of cops.

The issue is how to get Mayor Frey to do his job and not look upon the rioters with “understanding and compassion.” Everyone is sad George Floyd is dead. No race, no ethnic group has a corner on sympathy when the police make a fatal error involving an unarmed civilian.

But Frey’s forbearance in the face of violence and anarchy is misplaced. This isn’t some social experiment where Frey can be allowed to tinker with mob psychology. It’s a riot. And the anti-social criminals who are looting and burning do not want or deserve our “understanding.” They don’t care.

Frey has opened Pandora’s Box and unleashed forces he can’t possibly understand. Someone has got to intervene and take control of a situation that is still spiraling out of control.

SOURCE 





For Those Who Love Justice, ‘White Fragility’ Cannot Be an Issue

Two years after its release, Robin DiAngelo’s book White Fragility: Why It's So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism, is a national bestseller. In fact, as I write these words, it is the number one bestselling book on Amazon. This is a very rare achievement for a book when it is first released, let alone 24 months later. DiAngelo obviously hit a nerve.

According to the New Yorker, “The value in White Fragility lies in its methodical, irrefutable exposure of racism in thought and action, and its call for humility and vigilance.” And note that word, “humility.”

Author Resmaa Menakem used the same word when reviewing the book, calling it, “A rare and incisive examination of the system of white body supremacy that binds us all as Americans. . . . With authenticity and clarity, she provides the antidote to white fragility and a road map for developing white racial stamina and humility. White Fragility loosens the bonds of white supremacy and binds us back together as human beings.”

Now, if you are white, you might already be reacting to the phrases “white fragility” and “white supremacy.” But rather than react, why not ask yourself a series of simple questions?

1) Do you want true equality for every American?

2) Is justice a value that you affirm?

3) Do you believe that, ultimately, there is one race, the human race?

4) Do you reject the idea that people of color are inherently inferior?

5) Do you reject any form of apartheid or segregation?

6) If you consider yourself a follower of Jesus, do you agree that the spirit of racism is contrary to the spirit of the gospel?

I would hope that every person of conscience would answer the first five questions in the affirmative and that every follower of Jesus would also answer the sixth question in the affirmative.

That being the case, there is no reason for “white fragility.” If something is wrong, let us fix it. If the problem runs deep, let us look for deep solutions. If we are part of the problem, let us be part of the solution. That’s what humility calls for. Let the truth come to the light.

There is no reason for fragility. Let us do what is right. And if we are falsely accused, let us push back with the truth.

If some of our earliest laws enshrined racism, let us acknowledge it. No one claims that America has been perfect, plus we weren’t the ones who made those laws.

That means that we can praise our founders for the good they did and remain indebted to that good while also acknowledging the wrong they did.

There’s no reason to be fragile when it comes to our history. Like the history of every nation, the history of our nation is mixed. And when it comes to the present, where this is wrong, let us face it. That’s what humility does.

It is those who are secure who can be humble. The insecure take refuge in carnal pride.

But being humble when it comes to race issues doesn’t mean that we justify today’s looters and rioters. Or that we follow the lead of professional race baiters. Or that we automatically affirm a group like Black Lives Matter. Or that we accept every claim of injustice.

Each instance must be judged on its own merit and each charge evaluated for itself.

For example, the Department of Justice, under the direction of Eric Holder, produced a scathing report on the practices of the Ferguson police department in the aftermath of the death of Michael Brown, my namesake. (See here for the full document.)

But when it came to Brown’s death, that same Department of Justice cleared Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed Brown. As the report stated, there “is no evidence upon which prosecutors can rely to disprove Wilson’s stated subjective belief that he feared for his safety.”

Yet many white conservatives who rejected the, “Hands up, don’t shoot” claims from Ferguson are outraged over the death of George Floyd. (I’ll be documenting this in a separate article.)

But, to repeat, there’s no reason for “white fragility.”

I am secure in the fact that I am not a racist. But when I have a blind spot when it comes to the treatment of a fellow American, I want to be made aware. I would hope you would feel the same.

That doesn’t mean we walk around feeling guilty. (Why should we, unless we are guilty?)

That doesn’t mean we embrace identity politics or intersectionality.

That doesn’t mean that we agree with every solution being put forth.

That doesn’t mean that we encourage others to have a victim mentality.

And that doesn’t mean that people of color bear no responsibility or are above criticism.

It simply means we are willing to ask the difficult questions, including the systemic questions, and that we are committed to working towards justice and equality for all.

Why be fragile about that?

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 June, 2020

UK: The two other casualties of the coronavirus crisis... our humanity and the truth

What will she tell her grandchildren in years to come? Holding up a placard saying ‘Cummings you are full of sh*t!’ as she joined a screaming mob haranguing the Prime Minister’s senior adviser outside his house, where he lives with his wife and four-year-old son.

Perhaps she’ll proudly show video footage of the scenes. And the newspaper articles. It’s probably too much to hope she’ll look back with any semblance of shame.

It’s become a feature of British political life – especially on the liberal Left – that the moral certainty of a position only exists in direct proportion to the viciousness deployed in defence of it

We’re near the end now. The point at which Coronavirus 2020 stops being our lived experience and enters the realm of legend and myth. Government Ministers privately acknowledge lockdown is collapsing.

Schools and shops are gradually reopening. Soon, what for the past ten weeks has been ‘the new normal’ will be elbowed aside by a return to the old realities of life.

When it does, we’ll begin to tell our own tales. Just like our parents and grandparents did with their wartime experiences. Of sacrifice and hardship and collective endeavour.

The Thursday evening clap for the NHS. The children’s rainbows spontaneously appearing in windows across the country. The Queen’s moving promise that ‘we will meet again’.

But there are things that will be forgotten. In particular, a convenient veil will be drawn over the fact that the population initially confronted Covid-19 with trademark British humour and stoicism. And then, slowly but surely, were driven to the edge of collective madness.

On one level, Dominic Cummings has no one but himself to blame for the firestorm that engulfed him and the Government. He’s characteristically fought his battles with ‘a no quarter asked or given’ brutalism.

And he can hardly complain when his enemies – having finally cornered their prey – opted to repay him in kind.

‘He can’t recover from this,’ said a normally loyal Minister.

‘He’s been exposed for the elitist he is. He’s been overrated since he won a referendum against a very poor Remain campaign and has worked to create an image of a mad genius that I’ve never seen a shred of evidence to support.’

But the last week hasn’t really been about Cummings the man. It’s been about us as a nation. And the way a country already being pushed to the brink by an unprecedented global crisis finally lost its way.

First, there was the gleeful savagery with which a mob turned not just on the PM’s aide, but on his family.

It’s become a feature of British political life – especially on the liberal Left – that the moral certainty of a position only exists in direct proportion to the viciousness deployed in defence of it.

So we had neighbours behaving like vultures, leaning out of their windows and baying at Cummings. As local Labour MP Emily Thornberry proudly proclaimed: ‘The people of Islington South and Finsbury can always be relied on to say it as it is.’

But, for me, the defining moment came during Cummings’s Downing Street rose garden inquisition.

It was his revelation that while isolating in County Durham, his sick son Cedi had to be taken to hospital by ambulance.

Normally a child’s serious illness would elicit nothing but sympathy. But not in Britain in 2020. Not in the Age of Coronavirus. This was a national scandal.

His family were condemned, literally, as plague-carriers. Being sick and having visited a ‘rural’ hospital, they were irresponsibly risking spreading their infection.

This is the prevailing distorted mindset. To take your ill child to hospital is a crime. One punishable by summary justice at the hands of the self-styled Covid vigilantes.

But if one of the first casualties of this crisis has been our sense of common humanity, another has been that other perpetual victim in our twisted culture. The truth.

On Wednesday, BBC bosses announced they had – correctly – censured Newsnight presenter Emily Maitlis for breaking impartiality guidelines over an introduction to the programme’s coverage of the Cummings story.

Her deliberately controversial opening statement – ‘Dominic Cummings broke the rules, the country can see that. But it’s shocked the Government can’t see it’ – was, her defenders angrily claimed, justifiable because it was a statement of fact.

It wasn’t. But let’s put that to one side and test just how important facts and truth really are.

The saga started eight days ago with headlines in The Guardian and Daily Mirror such as ‘Dominic Cummings investigated by police after breaking coronavirus lockdown rules’.

He hadn’t been. In fact, the police had been contacted by Cummings’s father.

He wanted advice on security issues about having the PM’s adviser staying on his property.

Durham Police have confirmed: ‘At the request of Mr Cummings’s father, an officer made contact.’ There was no issue about breaking lockdown rules.

As the police later added: ‘We do not consider that by locating himself at his father’s premises, Mr Cummings committed an offence.’

That initial sensational allegation wasn’t true. Just as the subsequent claim Cummings had driven to London, then back to Durham wasn’t true. And the claim he had been seen strolling along and observing ‘aren’t the bluebells lovely’ wasn’t true. And the claim from a so-called eye-witness ‘we were shocked and surprised to see him’ wasn’t true.

But it doesn’t matter. In the Age of Coronavirus, we again have to pick a side. Forget facts. Forget reality. By choosing to protect his family, Dom Cummings transferred off our team. So he must be destroyed. Along with those around him.

On Tuesday, I was invited on to The Emma Barnett Show on Radio 5 to comment on the affair. I raised the question: What should anyone do in a situation where they and their partner were coming down with the disease and realised there would be no one else to care for their vulnerable child?

To which the answer is simple. You use common sense rather than be rigidly governed by guidelines. Your priority is to take your child somewhere safe.

In response, Ms Barnett told of a friend who had texted her. She had been in that position, too. But she hadn’t sought help, she said, because ‘she would have been scared to be stopped by the police’.

This is what we have become in the Age of Coronavirus. Citizens of a country in which mothers are terrified of seeking help for their sick children for fear of being stopped by the police.

It’s time to call a halt to this grotesque charade. It’s ending anyway, so let’s bring it to a close with some degree of decency and dignity. No more baying mobs. No more coppers’ narks. No more police road blocks.

Over the past week, a nation lost its way. It’s time to find it again.

SOURCE 






Protest troublemakers mostly white, police say

Nearly two-thirds of the 60 people arrested during protests in downtown Detroit over the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis were from the city’s predominantly white suburbs, police say.

Thirty-seven of those taken into custody on Friday night were from places like Warren, Farmington Hills, West Bloomfield and even Grand Blanc, which is about 96 kilometers northwest of Detroit, Detroit Police Chief James Craig said Saturday.

Detroit was one of a number of US cities where protests were staged, but didn’t see the levels of violence, damage or altercations with law enforcement that occurred elsewhere.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz blamed destruction Friday night in Minneapolis - including setting a police station on fire - on out-of-state instigators. In Detroit, the message given Saturday by Craig, Mayor Mike Duggan and local activists to outsiders was clear: Stay home.

“To those who threaten the safety of our community, our police officers, who damage property, we will not tolerate your criminal actions,” Craig told reporters. “Our response will be both measured and effective.”

Although Detroit is about 80% black, many of those arrested were white. “We support the right to free speech. We support peaceful protests,” Craig added. “If you want to disrupt, stay home and disrupt in your own community.”

One person died in downtown Detroit after someone fired shots into a vehicle during a protest over Monday’s death of Floyd

SOURCE 





Pastor: Mayor Sent Police to Shut Down Sunday Services

Courtney Lewis, the pastor of Cornerstone Baptist Church in Chicago, was in the middle of his sermon when he heard loud banging on the front doors. It was the police.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot had dispatched three squad cars and two unmarked cars along with a representative from the mayor's office.

(On a side note - I warned Americans in my new book that the left would try and shut down American churches. Click here to read "Culture Jihad: How to Stop the Left From Killing a Nation.")

Pastor Lewis said the intent was to shut down their Sunday services. It was "like the Soviet-style KGB," he said.

"The only thing she hasn't done yet is beat the doors down and arrest our members," the pastor said.

Pastor Lewis tells the "Todd Starnes Radio Show" that the men of the church were instructed not to open the doors during the services -- per protocol. The officers were in fact denied entry.

"Thankfully our doors were locked as a normal safety precaution we take each service to protect our members from the escalating gun violence in Chicago," the pastor said.

A church usher, who is typically positioned outside the building during the services, saw the mayor's goon force attempt to enter the building and began taking photographs.

Even more disturbing, an individual in an unmarked car with tinted windows was seen filming and photographing church members as they arrived to worship Jesus Christ.

"The mayor wants to educate everyone into compliance - which means intimidate," the pastor said.

Rev. Lewis wrote a letter to U.S. Attorney John Lausch pleading for help and protection against the city's Democrat mayor and her jackbooted thugs. Click to read the Letter of Grievance.

He said the church has gone out of its way to follow CDC guidelines by having online services, outdoor services and engaging in social distancing. All church members must also have their temperature taken before entering the sanctuary.

"We are trying to follow the laws of man as much as reasonably possible but when the laws of man conflict with the laws of God I as a pastor have a duty to follow the laws of God," he wrote. "We will not be intimidated by this overhanded government bully, but we are requesting the assistance of our president and our Justice Department in correcting this grave miscarriage of the law."

Pastor Lewis said Christian pastors are under attack in Chicago and they need help.

"All we are seeking is the same consideration and trust that is being tendered toward the liquor stores, abortion clinics and Walmart," he told the "Todd Starnes Show".

SOURCE 






Pritzker Drops All Church Restrictions After Lawsuit Exposed Him 'Ignoring the Science'

On Thursday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) dropped his coronavirus restriction capping attendance at religious services to ten people, after five churches filed the latest of many lawsuits, claiming the governor’s church restrictions were “ignoring the best science.”

Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, which represented churches in three of the lawsuits, condemned Illinois for having “the harshest shutdown order in the country, with little regard for the rights of people of faith and ignoring the current best science. Every one of Illinois’ neighboring states has ‘followed the science’ and taken strong steps to safely reopen both their for-profit businesses and their not-for-profit houses of worship.” Yet Illinois did not revise its limits on churches until Thursday afternoon.

On Thursday afternoon, Pritzker announced that the Illinois Department of Public Health “has provided guidance, not mandatory restrictions, for all faith leaders to use in their efforts to ensure the health and safety of their congregants.” In other words, Illinois effectively lifted all restrictions on religious services.

“This is a total and complete victory for people of faith,” Breen said in a later statement. “Illinois’ governor and his administration abused the COVID-19 pandemic to stomp on the religious liberty of the people of Illinois. By issuing guidelines only and not the previously announced mandatory restrictions, he has handed a complete victory to the churches in Illinois.”

The Thomas More Society represented three separate lawsuits over the coronavirus restrictions, the latest of which involved five churches that filed the lawsuit on Wednesday.

Dr. George Delgado, M.D., served as an expert consultant to the churches. In a declaration to the court, he argued that “a limit on the number of persons attending church services diminishes the risk of transmission to a far smaller degree than other prophylactic measures that churches can implement.” He claimed that the risk of transmission in churches celebrating indoors with the appropriate social distancing measures is “far less than the risk of transmission in ‘essential business’ activities like grocery stores and manufacturing plants operating without attendance limitations.”

Delgado’s studies showed that “the calculated risk of contracting COVID-19 at a house of worship is 0.125 or 12% the risk [of contracting it] at the supermarket, and no one is arguing that going to the grocery store is not safe.”

One of the five churches in the lawsuit, Zion’s Christian Assembly, operates a state-funded community food pantry in the church’s building. That food pantry was allowed, even encouraged, to serve the community, and it had 25 people in the building on May 21. But the same church building was forbidden to host a service with more than ten people.

“There is no logic that can defend why a Sunday worship gathering would be more dangerous to one’s health than a food pantry distribution in the same location, with the same number of people. Yet the former is prohibited, and the latter encouraged,” Thomas More Society Senior Counsel Martin Whittaker argued. “That is blunt defiance of the Illinois Constitution’s Bill of Rights and of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.”

Called out on this horrendous violation of religious freedom, Pritzker caved, and now Illinois churches can open with no restrictions, only guidance. This comes just in time for Pentecost this Sunday, the holiday that celebrates the birthday of the Christian Church. What a celebration that will be in Illinois!

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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HOME (Index page)

BIO for John Ray






(Isaiah 62:1)


A 19th century Democrat political poster below:








Leftist tolerance



Bloomberg



JFK knew Leftist dogmatism



-- Geert Wilders



The most beautiful woman in the world? I think she was. Yes: It's Agnetha Fältskog



A beautiful baby is king -- with blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. How incorrect can you get?


Kristina Pimenova, said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair



Enough said


Islamic terrorism isn’t a perversion of Islam. It’s the implementation of Islam. It is not a religion of the persecuted, but the persecutors. Its theology is violent supremacism.



There really is an actress named Donna Air. She seems a pleasant enough woman, though


What feminism has wrought:

There's actually some wisdom there. The dreamy lady says she is holding out for someone who meets her standards. The other lady reasonably replies "There's nobody there". Standards can be unrealistically high and feminists have laboured mightily to make them so


Some bright spark occasionally decides that Leftism is feminine and conservatism is masculine. That totally misses the point. If true, how come the vote in American presidential elections usually shows something close to a 50/50 split between men and women? And in the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won 53 percent of white women, despite allegations focused on his past treatment of some women.


Political correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners


Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist.


The problem with minorities is not race but culture. For instance, many American black males fit in well with the majority culture. They go to college, work legally for their living, marry and support the mother of their children, go to church, abstain from crime and are considerate towards others. Who could reasonably object to such people? It is people who subscribe to minority cultures -- black, Latino or Muslim -- who can give rise to concern. If antisocial attitudes and/or behaviour become pervasive among a group, however, policies may reasonably devised to deal with that group as a whole


Black lives DON'T matter -- to other blacks. The leading cause of death among young black males is attack by other young black males


Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves. Leftist motivations are fundamentally Fascist. They want to "fundamentally transform" the lives of their fellow citizens, which is as authoritarian as you can get. We saw where it led in Russia and China. The "compassion" that Leftists parade is just a cloak for their ghastly real motivations


Occasionally I put up on this blog complaints about the privileged position of homosexuals in today's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings back and homosexuals are treated as equals before the law. To a simple Leftist mind, that makes me "homophobic", even though I have no fear of any kind of homosexuals.

But I thought it might be useful for me to point out a few things. For a start, I am not unwise enough to say that some of my best friends are homosexual. None are, in fact. Though there are two homosexuals in my normal social circle whom I get on well with and whom I think well of.

Of possible relevance: My late sister was a homosexual; I loved Liberace's sense of humour and I thought that Robert Helpmann was marvellous as Don Quixote in the Nureyev ballet of that name.

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



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