The primary version of "Political Correctness Watch" is HERE The Blogroll; John Ray's Home Page; Email John Ray here. Other mirror sites: Greenie Watch, Dissecting Leftism. This site is updated several times a month but is no longer updated daily. (Click "Refresh" on your browser if background colour is missing). See here or here for the archives of this site.


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

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

The picture below is worth more than a 1,000 words ...... Better than long speeches. It shows some Middle-Eastern people walking to reach their final objective,to live in a European country, or migrate to America. In the photo, there are 7 men and 1 woman.up to this point – nothing special. But in observing a bit closer, you will notice that the woman has bare feet,accompanied by 3 children, and of the 3, she is carrying 2.There is the problem,none of the men are helping her,because in their culture the woman represents nothing.She is only good to be a slave to the men. Do you really believe that these particular individuals could integrate into our societies and countries and respect our customs and traditions ???? ****************************************************************************************




31 March, 2017

After letting kids get sex-change surgery at 15, Oregon Democrats try raising smoking age to 21

They have no principles and no guiding theory.  All they have is hatred of the status quo

Growing up can be confusing, especially if you're a kid in Oregon. You can't drive a car until 16. You can't leave home until 18. And if a new bill passes the state legislature, you can't pick up a pack of cigarettes until 21.

But Oregon offers one state perk long before any of those other milestones. With or without parental permission, the state subsidizes gender reassignment surgery starting at age 15. To reiterate, kids can change their sex with help from the taxpayer, but soon many adults won't be able to buy smokes.

The pending legislation perfectly demonstrates the skewed double standard of the Left. There's a sliding scale of responsibility in Oregon and it's calibrated specifically to liberal pieties.

Ostensibly to keep the state healthy, the smoking bill rests on the premise that young adults are too foolish to make good decisions about their bodies. "One of the best things we can do in Oregon to prevent disease," said Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Steiner Hayward, "is to stop people from using tobacco." Or put another way, limiting choice is necessary to eliminate the danger.

But while Oregon lawmakers won't let adults light up, they'll pay for kids to change gender. Suddenly public health interests go out the window in Salem. The state's Medicaid program bows blindly in front of the personal autonomy of high school freshman still too young to drive.

Never mind the risks of going under the knife and the fact that there's no real chance to go back once the change is complete. Disregard the parental concerns of the families who will care for these children. And completely ignore evidence, like this UCLA study, showing that transgender kids are at a higher risk for suicide after surgery.

No matter the risks and regardless of parental rights, Oregon lets impressionable children identify however they choose. They won't let voting-age adults identify as the Marlboro man. The nanny state has officially run amok.

SOURCE




Trump Signals Change in Tone for Police From Obama

President Donald Trump told the nation's largest police union his administration will "always have your back," a departure from what many police organizations say they felt about the previous administration.

The Fraternal Order of Police visited the White House Tuesday. Many police organizations criticized the Obama administration for being quick to criticize the officers after a police shooting before knowing all the facts.

Trump met with nine police union officials from across the country, and was joined by Vice President Mike Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions, where he asserted "there is nobody braver" than law enforcement, and thanked them for their endorsement in last year's election.

"I made a crucial pledge," Trump told the police officials. "We will always support the incredible men and women of law enforcement. I will always have your back 100 percent."

Such words from a president mean a lot, noted Scott Erickson, president of Americans in Support of Law Enforcement.

Erickson wasn't part of the meeting, but asserted this first formal meeting with Trump and the Fraternal Order of Police marks a change in tone.

"Public perception of police is slowly improving for two reasons," Erickson, who was a police officer in San Jose, California, for 18 years, told The Daily Signal. "People got burnt out on the negativity, hearing the worst about cops. Two years ago, it hit a new low. Last year, approval for cops spiked. But what top government officials were saying filtered down to public discourse about cops. That is changing."

During his presidency, Barack Obama verbally criticized several police departments, asserting in July 2009 that the Cambridge Police Department "acted stupidly," when an officer stopped a Harvard professor outside his home. In December 2012, after winning re-election, Obama said some local police departments "are not trying to root out bias."

In July 2016, after shootings in Minnesota and Louisiana, Obama said while in Warsaw, Poland, "These are not isolated incidents, they are symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system."

That same month, during a memorial service for five slain police officers in Dallas, Obama talked about racial disparities in law enforcement, saying, "When all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, we can't just simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protest as troublemakers or paranoid."

These were the types of comments that framed the description of police officers, Erickson said. That seems to have changed with a new president, according to Erickson.

"Police no longer feel they are going to have an administration casting a skeptical eye on them before all of the facts are in," Erickson said.

On Feb. 9, Trump signed three executive orders to back law enforcement. The first stated the federal government is on the side of federal, state, tribal, and local law enforcement. The second established a task force for reducing crime, and the third created a separate task force to determine the best way to take on transnational criminal organizations and drug cartels.

During his meeting with police Tuesday, Trump said that police must be empowered to keep the public safe.

"Sadly, our police are often prevented from doing their jobs," Trump said. "In too many of our communities, violent crime is on the rise. These are painful realities that many in Washington don't want to talk about. We have seen it all over."

Trump noted, "I always ask, `What's going on in Chicago?'"

Dean Angelo, president of Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, was among those who met with the president. After the meeting, the Chicago Tribune reported Angelo said, "I just mentioned that the police officers want to work, and that [they] need people to support police officers to go back to work so they can work toward stemming the violence in our city."

Trump referenced during the meeting that Sessions on Monday talked about withholding Justice Department grants from cities that don't cooperate with federal law enforcement on immigration, commonly known as sanctuary cities.

Fraternal Order of Police National President Chuck Canterbury said the organization backed the president on cracking down on sanctuary cities.

"We believe in enforcing the laws of the country of the United States," Canterbury told reporters after the meeting, according to the Tribune. "We believe that sanctuary city status is not a good thing for America. We support the president on his sanctuary city initiative."

SOURCE




The Leftist reliance on censorship

JENNIFER ORIEL, writing from Australia

After a long winter of stultifying centrism, Australia has regained its two-party system. The left's -political persecution of artist Bill Leak and his untimely death have shocked the Liberal Party into resurrecting its founding principle of freedom. Labor has responded to the Prime Minister's plea for freedom by revealing its intent to censor the people and the free press.

In the fashion of 21st-century totalitarians, the left is using race and human rights as rhetorical weapons against liberty and civil society. The Liberal Party is -emerging once more as the party of freedom, fairness and democracy. It begs the question: what's left of the left?

In the midst of World War II, sociologist Robert Nisbet warned that we would not be able to detect the return of totalitarianism by searching for political absolutism in the form of an autocratic state. Rather, the rise of totalitarianism would become apparent by the gradual encroachment of the state into all areas of life traditionally assigned to society: family, friendships and secular faith.

The object of totalitarian -contempt is civil society because the ties that bind us in friendship, family and faith also effect our -independence from the state. The animating principle of civil society is free speech and we learn to master it by exercising public reason. As a result, the most distinctive feature of liberal democratic states is the protection of free speech and public reason from state coercion and control.

The Western left seems capable of discerning the totalitarian threat, but only when it comes dressed like an enemy. Thus, its members might criticise Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for suppressing free speech, or Vladimir Putin for punishing dissidents, but celebrate the silencing of fellow citizens deemed politically incorrect by state censors.

In the modern West, the most popular and effective rhetorical device to erode free speech has been race. Communists used class as a weapon to depict state censorship of dissenters as victory for the proletariat. In the 21st century, the left uses race as a weapon to shame and silence dissenters from the PC party line.

State censorship of dissidents is marketed as victory for state-designated minority groups. In the West, however, these -minority groups are rarely genuine political minorities. Under -affirmative action laws, they are given superior rights to other -citizens. They are usually numerical -minorities granted a range of -unearned privileges under law.

As a woman, I am one of the fake minorities singled out for special privileges under discrimination law and I have come to resent it. I believe in formal equality, not inequality and I dislike intensely any attempt to create hostility between people on the basis of biological traits. As history shows, a ruling class often comprises a numerical minority awarded political, legal and economic privileges that are denied other citizens. It is the meaning of systemic inequality and a reliable predictor of social unrest.

The Liberal Party seeks equality for all Australians under law. It wants to restore speech equality by reforming section 18C so that every citizen enjoys an equal right to freedom of thought and speech without fear of persecution by common slanderers, or the state. The Labor Party champions speech inequality by defending 18C. Under Labor, the people and the press are denied the right to speak freely.

Those who insist on free speech are often targeted for abuse by false accusers wielding the rhetorical weapon of race. As we saw in the persecution of Bill Leak by Islamist and PC censors, and the three-year-long case against QUT students, section 18C empowers a type of fraud. In its current form, the Racial Discrimination Act enables what I would call race fraud; the use of race to deceive/defraud Australians by means of false accusation and political persecution. The beneficiaries of race fraud include vexatious claimants, ambulance-chasing lawyers, race-baiting activists and establishment backers of 18C.

Section 18C is big business, as legal affairs editor Chris Merritt has revealed. Since 2010, respondents in race discrimination complaints handled by the AHRC have paid almost $1 million to avoid going to court. The complainant in the QUT case, Cindy Prior, sought $250,000 in damages from students over Facebook posts. Some of the biggest payouts have come from government -departments, which means that once again, the taxpayer is funding the harmful PC industry.

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane invited people online to complain about Leak's cartoon. Soutphommasane was appointed in 2013 by then Labor attorney-general Mark Dreyfus. During a panel hosted by the Jewish Community Council of Victoria last week, Dreyfus outlined plans that could result in the application of 18C to a growing list of protected attributes.

According to Merritt, Dreyfus indicated that: "A Labor government hoped to consolidate all federal anti-discrimination legislation and would consider . a general standard for the type of speech that would attract liability." Dreyfus plans on "consolidating the five anti-discrimination statutes when we are next in government" and establishing "a standard about speech generally".

When last in office, Labor launched the most totalitarian -assault on freedom of speech I have seen in the 21st century West. The Green-Left's attack on free speech and the independent media was categorically anti-democratic. Combined with a -proposed meta-regulator of the media, Labor's human rights and anti-discrimination bill would have ushered in state control of free speech under the guise of social justice. The bill created a raft of new protected attributes including immigrant status, nationality or citizenship, and social origin. They would have been protected from "unfavourable treatment", defined as "conduct that offends, insults or intimidates".

Labor's doomed bill was supported by the AHRC. The Liberal Party warned it would reverse the onus of proof, thereby destroying the presumption of innocence in Australian law. However, AHRC President Gillian Triggs contended that shifting the onus of proof to the accused was needed because complainants were "vulnerable".

The ethos of Australian equality and mateship is protected by formal equality. We should seek a state where speech equality is guaranteed by ensuring all Australians can speak freely without fear of political persecution under 18C.

SOURCE





Political correctness can't alter history

Recently the specter of "political correctness," which as I have previously stated is strictly political and not particularly correct, reared its ugly head once again. I refer to the removal of the bust/statue that commemorated former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America and Maryland native Roger Brooke Taney from the grounds of the Frederick County courthouse. This was done simply to appease those who wish to cleanse our history of anything that might make them the least bit uncomfortable by today's standards.

To be sure, the majority opinion that Taney wrote in the Dred Scott decision, if written today, would be unanimously declared unconscionable by the current standards, however it was written at a different time with much different social norms. It also must be remembered that this was a majority decision and the chief justice simply wrote the opinion with which at least four other justices agreed.

Having that statue on the grounds of a courthouse, instead of being hidden away in a local cemetery, seems to be the more proper location. It would serve as a reminder that even the best intentions of the finest legal minds of the day sometimes make decisions that could prove to be in error in future generations. Witness the decision that equates unlimited financial contributions to political parties and candidates by wealthy individuals and corporations with freedom of speech.

I wonder if eliminating every person or symbol with any connection to the practice of slavery might include removing the portrait of George Washington from the dollar bill or Thomas Jefferson from the $2 bill. Each of these Founding Fathers - and they were not alone in the practice - had slaves to till their fields and serve in their mansions. At Mount Vernon, the slave quarters are prominent displays that show the hierarchy present within the slave ranks.

In Baltimore City, there is an ongoing discussion about the removal and relocation of several commemorative statues featuring Confederate themes or people. I'm of the opinion that none of them be moved or removed. They represent the history of the United States. Although that period was unpleasant to say the least, in the end it did bring the country back together.

History is the story of what happened and to whom it happened. We cannot change the past. We can only hope to learn from it and strive to do better in the future. We cannot judge the actions and words of our ancestors through the prism of modern mores. They did what they did in their times and under the laws and customs of their day. It is simply wrong for modern man to attempt to hide from future generations the history and many conversions that this great nation has gone through.

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. 

***************************





30 March, 2017

Should This Policeman Be In Prison?

His supporters say that no one deserves a new trial more than Daniel Holtzclaw, the former Oklahoma City police officer convicted of being a serial rapist and sentenced to 263 years in prison. Holtzclaw has maintained his innocence from the start, and unlike the case with his accusers, his recounting of the facts has never changed.

On the other hand, he was found guilty at trial, with 13 accusers, and that makes most people lose interest in the case almost immediately, assuming that where there's smoke, there's fire and he must be guilty.

My own interest in this case was spurred by the fact that I work with Michelle Malkin, the firebrand conservative columnist. My company has syndicated Malkin's column to hundreds of newspapers and websites across the country since 1999, and many times she has gone out on a limb in her reporting - and I don't ever recall her getting it wrong.

So I was startled to see her two-part documentary on Daniel Holtzclaw, "Daniel in the Den," which is available on CRTV, a new online television channel that features Mark Levin and other conservatives.

I was startled because I had seen Juju Chang's report on the Holtzclaw case on "20/20," "What the Dash Cam Never Saw," and just assumed that Daniel was guilty. Chang followed the story as it existed - meaning Holtzclaw had been found guilty and the reporter assumed he was guilty because of that - and the audience was left with the impression that of course he was guilty.

But Malkin asks, "What if he is innocent?" And then she takes us on a journey. She points out some amazing flaws that occurred during the trial itself, and she says the jurors - who ultimately said it was the DNA that convinced them - based their decision on what she characterizes as false and misleading statements about the DNA evidence by the prosecuting attorney, backed up by her interview with DNA scientist Dan Krane of Wright State University.

I am writing this in hopes that other journalists will look into this case. Of course, if the state got it right - that eight of the 13 women were true victims of Daniel Holtzclaw - then he got all that he deserved in the sentencing. The image of someone using the power of the state - as a policeman with a gun targeting drug addicts and prostitutes, feeling confident that they would never complain precisely because they were drug addicts and prostitutes and no one would believe them - is beyond contemptible.

This explains why there is such a visceral reaction to the case. For example, a writer for SB Nation wrote a long piece shortly after Holtzclaw's conviction that was perceived to be sympathetic to Holtzclaw, and everyone went nuts. SB Nation fired the writer and an editor who worked on the story and took the piece off the website within hours. Nearly 100 percent of the comments condemned Holtzclaw as a monster who preyed on the most vulnerable. What was interesting about that "sympathetic" portrayal of Holtzclaw was that the story assumed Daniel was guilty and the author was addressing the reason he would have done these vicious deeds that were so out of character. The people he talked to who knew Holtzclaw described someone totally different from the villain who was found guilty in court.

But that only reinforces Malkin's question. What if the state got it wrong? What if the incidents never happened, or what if they got the wrong policeman? After all, many of the witness statements described someone other than Holtzclaw. ("He was a black man" or "He had blond hair" or "He was short.")

Daniel Holtzclaw was always big for his age, even in childhood.
The SB Nation reporter spent months talking to one person after another, and each one said what a wonderful human being Daniel Holtzclaw is. The article was trying to understand what had happened to cause him to become a serial rapist. Could it have been too many head traumas from football? Or maybe it was steroids or his rejection by the NFL. None of it made any sense to his friends. In fact, the only explanation that would make sense in light of the seemingly endless stream of character references is that he is innocent. But if he is innocent, why was he found guilty?

The case against Daniel Holtzclaw appears to have been created by two detectives in the Oklahoma City Police Department who said they decided early on that he was guilty. One of those is retired Detective Kim Davis, who said she was convinced from the beginning that the accuser was telling the truth. The other detective, Rocky Gregory, eventually concluded that Holtzclaw is a "psychopath," and both detectives were determined to prove their suspicions correct.

There are a number of analyses of this case on YouTube. There are two that I found especially intriguing. I'm not sure who the analysts are, and I can't vouch for their character, but both break down a lot of complicated reporting into easy-to-understand explanations. One is by Diana Davison (https://youtu.be/OIL-fbJL3as), and the other is by someone who calls himself Ferg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfksNwbGl68). They talk the way people might converse in a bar, especially Ferg, so if offensive language bothers you, at least you have been warned.

Then there was the involvement of Artists for Justice, an Oklahoma City group whose thinking parallels the Black Lives Matter movement. Its members' voices were heard inside the courtroom, even when they were protesting outside the building. They were shouting that the jury must convict. "We want life!" was one of their standard refrains.        

No change of venue? Is it enough for the judge to tell the jurors to ignore all those shouts day after day?

This was all occurring during the "summer of Ferguson," when riots made the nightly news. There were riots in Baltimore, too, after Freddie Gray's death. A half-dozen Baltimore police officers were charged, but there was not a single conviction.

Many things struck me when I watched Michelle Malkin's report, but the image that sticks in my mind is of Daniel Holtzclaw, a 27-year-old police officer at the time, being questioned by Detectives Kim Davis and Rocky Gregory. They told him that a woman he had pulled over claimed that he had forced her to perform oral sex for 10 seconds.

It is painful to watch the two-hour interrogation of Holtzclaw, which is available on YouTube. The investigating detectives, Davis and Gregory, are clearly obsessed by his size. Holtzclaw was a star football player in high school and at Eastern Michigan University, and he was a 6'1" bodybuilder with huge muscles at the time of the interview. This clearly intimidates the investigators, because they keep saying such things as, "You sure are a big guy" and "What a big fellow you are." They even joke about the size of his private parts and yuk it up.

Holtzclaw, who grew up in a Christian household and has a Bible verse tattooed on his shoulder, puts his head down and is clearly embarrassed.

Holtzclaw's father is white, and his mother Japanese, and the family - Daniel, his parents and his two sisters - is proud of its biracial heritage. Watching Daniel in the interrogation room, I could totally see a Japanese influence. Kim Davis said she assumed he was guilty because his answers were "robotic." He had not acted offended or raised his voice to a scream when she was throwing vicious charges at him; instead, he had simply answered "yes" or "no" to her questions. She told Juju Chang that if an investigator had asked her those same questions, her "voice would probably (have gone) up 10 octaves. `What?! I didn't do that!'"

Growing up in a biracial home, the Holtzclaws exposed Daniel and his sisters to the Japanese culture of their mother, Kumiko.
But Daniel's sister Jenny says the household was quiet and devoid of shouting and screaming. Asked about his replies during the interrogation, she said, "That's just Daniel. That's how he talks." Daniel's father spent his career with the military and the police, and his mother, who also was a police officer in Japan, taught their children to respect authority and answer questions politely and not raise their voices 10 octaves. I described the interrogation to a Japanese-American friend and asked what she thought. She used the word "respectful" rather than "robotic" to describe his "yes" or "no" answers. "This was Oklahoma meets Japan," she said.

The interrogation starts off with Davis telling Holtzclaw that he has the right to an attorney, and he says, in essence, "Why would I want an attorney? I didn't do anything wrong." She says they may find his DNA on the alleged victim, and he says they should go ahead and test her because they won't find anything, seeing as nothing happened. His message (in my paraphrasing) was, "Test me all you want. Take my DNA. Give me a lie detector test. And test her as much as you can. You will see that she is making this up. It never happened." Diana Davison breaks down the details of this interrogation in a way that is very amusing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJFb3KZsa4g.

So after questioning Holtzclaw and his accuser, the police did perform scientific tests, and the resulting data confirmed what he was saying during his interrogation. The SANE exam and all fingerprint and DNA tests corroborated Holtzclaw's story and not the accuser's, yet the detectives ignored the forensic evidence and built a case by going through hundreds of reports that he had made in his three years as a cop, and they managed to find a dozen women who agreed to testify against him. And now most of those same women are working with Michael Brown attorney Benjamin Crump to sue the city for a big payday.

Crump put it succinctly. This is not about Daniel Holtzclaw, he said. This is about "social justice" and centuries of oppression. Holtzclaw's conviction was "a statement for 400 years of racism, oppression and sexual assault on black women."

As Matthew Philbin of NewsBusters commented, "that certainly is a lot of weight to put on the verdict of a single trial involving a single cop and flies in the face of notions of blind justice. Whatever the actual truth in the case, Holtzclaw was tried and convicted in the court of public opinion."

Much was made in the media about Daniel's reaction to the verdict, where he broke down in tears. The video went viral on the internet, and many people have been quoted as saying that this was the reaction of a guilty man who thought he was going to get off. He was shocked that the jury believed his accusers and not him. But that strikes me as totally unfair, if you consider the possibility that he is innocent. Imagine if you were 29 years old and you were just told that you were guilty of crimes that you never committed. How would you react? I know I would have had exactly the same reaction as Holtzclaw.

Let's hope other television, newspaper, magazine and internet reporters go beyond the headlines in this scary story. So far, in addition to Michelle Malkin, it is the internet analysts who have offered the most revealing insights, in my opinion. Most of the mainstream news reports simply quote the officials who, at this point, would have much to lose if Holtzclaw's conviction were overturned.

Either Daniel Holtzclaw is the Monster of the Midwest - someone who preyed on vulnerable women, especially black women - or, as his sister says, this is the Duke lacrosse case on steroids. Stay tuned. The one thing we know for sure is that we haven't heard the end of it.

SOURCE






Obama racism defeated

After a lonely six-year battle, retired Air Force officer Arnold Davis, a resident of Guam, has finally won his right to register to vote in the U.S. territory and participate in a plebiscite on its future.

On March 8, Judge Frances Tydingco-Gatewood ruled that Guam's law limiting registration and voting to "Native Inhabitants" of the island is a violation of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments. As the judge said, the Constitution does not allow the government "to exclude otherwise qualified voters in participating in an election where public issues are decided simply because those otherwise qualified voters do not have the correct ancestry or bloodline."

This decision has been a long time coming. The suit, filed by J. Christian Adams and the Center for Individual Rights in 2011, arose when Davis tried to register to vote on the plebiscite. His application was rejected and marked as "void" by the Guam Election Commission because he is white.

Guam, you see, banned residents from registering or voting unless they were Chamorro "natives," which to the territorial government means people whose ancestors were original inhabitants of Guam. Chamorros constitute only about 36 percent of the island's present population.

The race-based voting ban clearly violated the Constitution and the Voting Rights Act, yet the Obama Justice Department refused to protect Davis or any of the other disenfranchised residents of the island. It neither filed suit against Guam nor intervened in support of the lawsuit filed by Adams and the Center for Individual Rights. Instead, it gave Guam $300,000 to help finance the plebiscite.

The case itself has a complicated procedural history that included a trip to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which reversed Tydingco-Gatewood's original decision dismissing the case. The dismissal was based on erroneous arguments that Davis didn't have standing to sue and that his claim was not ripe. The Ninth Circuit sent the case back to Tydingco-Gatewood, holding that Davis not only had standing to challenge Guam's race-based voting law, but that the claim was ripe because Davis was alleging that "he was currently subjected to unlawful unequal treatment in the ongoing registration process."

In her March 8 decision, Tydingco-Gatewood did what she should have done in the first place: applied the precedent set by the U.S. Supreme Court in Rice v. Cayetano (2000). In Rice, SCOTUS threw out a similar voting restriction enacted by Hawaii, holding that the Fifteenth Amendment "prohibits all provisions denying or abridging the voting franchise of any citizen or class of citizens on the basis of race," and making clear that ancestry cannot be used as a proxy for race.

Judge Tydingco-Gatewood also noted the Supreme Court's decision in another infamous case, Hirabayashi v. U.S. (1943). In that case, which concerned the treatment of Japanese Americans during World War II, the Court noted: "Distinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality." Judge Tydingco-Gatewood went on to cite specific discussions by territorial legislators that make it very clear that the Guam legislature intended to "manipulate the system to exclude" anyone other than Chamorros from voting - an obvious violation of the Fifteenth Amendment.

The judge also found that Guam had violated the Fourteenth Amendment by denying equal protection to its residents. All "Guam voters have a direct interest and will be substantially affected by any change to the island's political status." Guam had asserted that only the "colonized people" of the island should be allowed to vote on its future political status. But, the judge noted, the island failed to cite any legal authority that would allow it to "disregard or circumvent the U.S. Constitution and the laws of the United States."

The defiant attitude displayed throughout this litigation by Guam officials and plebiscite activists reared its ugly head again after the ruling came out. Joe Garrido, chairman of the "Free Association Task Force" organized by Guam's Commission on Decolonization, called Tydingco-Gatewood a "colonized federal judge" who is "not working for the Chamorro people. . . . She is working for the government that is colonizing Guam."

In his "State of the Island" address, delivered just two days before the decision, Guam governor Eddie Calvo said that if the federal court ruled against Guam, he would "petition the other branches of the federal government to secure the right of our people against this continuing subjugation." He promised that he would not turn his "back on the Chamorro people," although he is apparently willing to turn his back on the other 64 percent of island residents who don't fit his definition of a Guam "native."

After the ruling, Calvo issued a statement vowing to find a "way to work around" it, adding that when the judge "says we can't - I say we can." He even proposed changing the plebiscite by having "two separate boxes - one would be marked if you're a native inhabitant and the other would be marked if you're a non-native."

Calvo's defiance makes it all the more essential for the Justice Department to bring its heft to bear against any efforts to subvert the judge's ruling. If the governor actually tries to implement a racially segregated ballot as he has suggested he will, the Justice Department must act.

SOURCE






Forcing 'Gender' Conformity

On Friday, the Associated Press further embraced the transgender revolution via an email released to subscribers in which it listed updates for its style manual. These included an official redefinition to its understanding of the term "gender." The AP has concluded that "gender" is not "synonymous with sex," stating, "Gender refers to a person's social identity while sex refers to biological characteristics." The AP continued, "Not all people fall under one of two categories for sex or gender, according to leading medical organizations, so avoid references to both, either or opposite sexes or genders as a way to encompass all people." This has continued a long trend of redefining terms.

But it's not just style manuals. It's forced conformity in life.

At a high school in Jasper, Indiana, a creative student produced and displayed copies of a flier entitled "Straight Pride." The flier humorously and pointedly stated, "Celebrate being straight at JHS by not annoying the heck out of everyone about your sexual orientation! It's easy! Just come to the JHS, then you go about your day without telling everyone about how `different' and `special' you are!" School officials quickly removed the fliers, and superintendent Tracy Lorey told parents that the fliers did not represent the majority of the students: "It is our intent to provide students opportunities to express themselves in a way that helps them to be understanding of the unique qualities of all individuals." In other words, they only allow expressions of "diverse" thought which they find acceptable.

And of course, there is no room for freedom of speech or religion when it comes to the Left's sacred cow of sexual deviancy. They seek to get one fired for holding the wrong opinion, whether it's Mozilla's Brendan Eich or the celebrated firing of an old coworker who wouldn't bow to using the "right" pronoun. They pressure companies and sports leagues to boycott an entire state over a common-sense bathroom law as in North Carolina. They shut down a mom and pop bakery for refusing to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. They demand language usage be changed to accommodate the delusions of "non-binary" sexuality. Conformity, not diversity, is what the Rainbow Mafia and the Left demand.

SOURCE





The homofascists are on a roll in Australia



Having pressured Coopers, IBM and PwC and their senior staff to sever links with Christian associations, gay rights activist Michael Barnett has turned his sights on academia, demanding Macquarie University force one of its lecturers to renounce a Christian educational organisation.

The move led the Christian group to warn the onus was on the university sector, as a national pillar of freedom of thought and -expression, to back its academics against political pressure from LGBTI campaigners.

Mr Barnett, who tweets as -"mikeybear", re-posted the list of directors of the Lachlan Macquarie Institute, a training organisation established by the Australian Christian Lobby, and singled out Macquarie University senior research associate Steve Chavura as a member of the LMI board. "A bad look @Macquarie_Uni having a Lachlan Macquarie Institute board member and director on your payroll, as a @PrideDiversity member," Mr Barnett tweeted.

Mr Barnett yesterday told The Australian he believed Macquarie University was conflicted while it was a member of the Pride in -Diversity campaign which supports LGBTI individuals' rights and safety in the workplace, while Dr Chavura was a director of LMI.

Mr Barnett said he did not know if LMI or Dr Chavura had ever issued any anti-gay material, but said "I don't think they are going to be running floats down Mardi Gras." Mr Barnett issued the post as The Australian revealed that ACL and LMI had been granted official permission to keep their board members' names secret on the grounds of "public safety" after abuse and threats from gay activists forced IBM executive Mark Allaby to quit the LMI board.

Dr Chavura yesterday said he would not resign as a lecturer and director at LMI, and would resist what he described as an attempt by Mr Barnett to "weed out any dissenters from his view" about sexuality, in any public institution.

"I hope the university is strong enough not to capitulate" to this type of pressure, Dr Chavura said.

But Macquarie University yesterday declined to support Dr Chavura. "As a matter of practice, Macquarie University does not comment on individual matters pertaining to employees," spokeswoman Megan Wright said in a statement to The Australian.

"When commenting publicly, the university asks that employees adhere to the university's public comment policy."

Dr Chavura, who lectures in history and political theory at the university and LMI, said while he privately maintained traditional Christian views on sexuality and marriage and would talk about them if asked, he did not canvass them in his teachings which ranged widely from Karl Marx to liberalism to political concepts.

"I think it's a bad look for the tweeter, seeking to destroy the -career of someone who has engaged in no abuse, no inflammatory speech whatsoever," Dr Chavura said of Mr Barnett.

Mr Barnett, who describes himself as a campaigner for human rights and equality, is convener of Jewish LGBTI group Aleph Melbourne. He denied his post against Dr Chavura was an assault on the academic's rights to freedom of expression, religion and association. "No one is stopping him going to church, being a member of a faith," he said. "Being a member of a board is not religion."

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. 

***************************




29 March, 2017

Blacks, whites, genes and disease

An amusing dance around the point below.  It is the whole of an article just out in JAMA, a leading medical journal.  It says things that the Left do not want to hear.  But it says those things in verbose academic language that hides the point. So let me translate:

* The poor get more illness and die younger
* Blacks get more illness than whites and die younger
* Part of that difference is traceable to genetic differences between blacks and whites.
* But environmental differences -- such as education -- explain more than genetic differences do
* Researchers often ignore genetics for ideological reasons
* You don't fully understand what is going on in an illness unless you know about any genetic factors that may be at work.
* Genetics research should pay more attention to blacks

Most of those things I have been saying for years -- with one exception:

They find that environmental factor have greater effect than genetics.  But they do that by making one huge and false assumption. They assume that education is an environmetal factor.  It is not.  Educational success is hugely correlated with IQ, which is about two thirds genetic. High IQ people stay in the educational system for longer because they are better at it, whereas low IQ people (many of whom are blacks) just can't do it at all.  So if we treated education as a genetic factor, environmental differences would fade way as causes of disease.  As Hans Eysenck once said to me in a casual comment:  "It's ALL genetic".  That's not wholly true but it comes close

So the recommendation of the study -- that we work on improving environmental factors that affect disease -- is unlikely to achieve much.  They are aiming their gun towards where the rabbit is not. If it were an actual rabbit, it would probably say:  "What's up Doc?"

Some problems are unfixable but knowing which problems they are  can help us to avoid wasting resources on them. The black/white gap probably has no medical solution


Genomics, Health Disparities, and Missed Opportunities for the Nation's Research Agenda

The completion of the Human Genome Project occurred at a time of increasing public attention to health disparities. In 2004, Sankar and colleagues1 suggested that this coincidental timing resulted in an inappropriate emphasis on the contribution of genomics to health disparities, conflating racial patterns of disease with genetic ancestry, and distracting attention from the large and compelling body of scientific evidence pointing to social determinants of health disparities.2 For example, genomic research has emphasized discovery of genetic contributors to diabetes risk, but the recent increase in the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes, which disproportionately affects minority populations, cannot be attributed to genetic changes and rather reflects social forces affecting diet, food access, and patterns in physical activity. The introduction of new genomic health technologies could also exacerbate disparities in access to high-quality health care, if specific genomic testing improved health and was only available to those who were affluent. Nonetheless, the claim persists that genomic research can reduce health disparities-if only participation by minority populations in genomic research could be increased.3

The source of this claim is an idiosyncratic usage of the term health disparities that may result in missed opportunities for the nation's health research agenda. Health disparities are generally understood to refer to systematic differences in health effects resulting from social disadvantage, but the term is often used in genomics to refer to differing health outcomes associated with population genetic variation. This usage arguably stems from the US focus on the association of health disparities with race/ethnicity (vs socioeconomic status), together with a growing body of knowledge about population genetic variation. Compounding the problem is a tendency in the United States to conflate health disparities and health care disparities, perhaps based on the erroneous assumption that improved health care will resolve health disparities.4 The misunderstanding about the causes of health disparities leads to confusion about fruitful lines of research and potential remedies.

A causal association between social position and health is well established.5 This association has been documented in both developed and developing countries and dates back to the earliest records, despite substantial change over time in the principal causes of disease. A broad array of health conditions across the lifespan follows a social gradient, wherein better health and longer lifespans track with increases in social advantage. This pattern holds whether measured by proxies of social class, such as education, income, and occupation, or by race/ethnicity.5 In the United States, health disparities are significant and widening and have attracted considerable attention among policy makers and the general public. Yet this large body of knowledge is absent from genomics discourse, which remains largely focused on biological causes and biomedical interventions.4

Health care plays a crucial role in decreasing morbidity and mortality once disease processes are under way, but accounts for only a minor portion of population health status. A study comparing the major determinants of health estimated that only 10% to 15% of premature mortality could be prevented by improved or more medical care.6 The limits of health care were demonstrated in a statistical experiment, comparing deaths potentially averted if people were to have a college education vs those potentially averted by advances in health care technology and an 8-fold difference was found favoring education.7 Moreover, the kind of health care that makes the largest difference to population health is access to universal high-quality primary care, distinct from the specialty or high-technology care to which genomics is most likely to contribute.

Genetic susceptibility influences which individuals within a particular group experience a particular disorder. Genetics can help to explain why some African American, Native American, or Latino individuals develop diabetes, heart disease, or other common conditions whereas others living in similar environments do not, just as genetics contributes to individual variation in populations not experiencing health disparities. Research to clarify the genetic contributors to disease etiology has many potential benefits. It may help to elucidate disease mechanisms and could inform genetic tests and drug development. Inclusion of diverse populations in genetic studies will enable identification of a fuller range of genetic variation contributing to various health outcomes, potentially leading to improved genetic tests that are applicable to all populations. Well-designed gene-environment studies across multiple populations may also help to delineate important environmental modifiers of disease. All of these considerations point to the potential health value of genetic research. However, these efforts will not provide strategies for addressing the more substantial contributors to health that are rooted in social, material, and environmental conditions.

Given population genetic variation, it is to be expected that genetic effects will sometimes augment, and at other times run counter to, the effects of social disadvantage. For example, African Americans with chronic kidney disease on average progress more rapidly to end-stage renal disease than European Americans with chronic kidney disease. Two variants in the APOL1 gene, seen in people of sub-Saharan African descent, contribute to this disease progression.8 Nevertheless, a comparison of African Americans with and without APOL1 risk genotypes with European Americans demonstrated that the APOL1-associated risk, although significant, accounted for only about 10% of excess incidence of albuminuria (a marker of risk for end-stage renal disease) among African Americans; a disparity remains between African Americans with low-risk genotypes and European Americans.8 In this case, the higher risk of albuminuria appears to be due to a combination of social and genetic determinants. Conversely, the incidence of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in African American children is less than half that of European American children, due in part to a difference in the prevalence of 2 risk variants. Yet survival from this malignancy is lower in African American children. This survival disparity is eliminated in a clinical setting characterized by high-quality care, aggressive case management, and financial support that eliminates out-of-pocket costs.9 In this case, the genetic determinants lead to lower disease risk, but social determinants lead to worse outcomes for those African American children who develop the disease. These examples support the value of understanding the health implications of population genetic variation-but also illustrate that social determinants consistently reduce health outcomes in disadvantaged populations, independent of genetic risk.

Characterizing health disparities as a challenge for genomics, rather than as a challenge for health and social sciences more generally, generates several problems. It justifies studies that focus on genetic causes of complex diseases with the goal of developing medical interventions, rather than studies that assess genomics within the context of social and environmental contributors to disease. Genomics research could make a positive contribution to the elucidation of causal mechanisms of health disparities and development of potential remedies, but that dividend is likely only if such contributions are integrated into, rather than emphasized over, broader social models of disease and interdisciplinary research methods. Viewing health disparities as addressable by medical care also focuses translational science on health care innovation rather than on community-based health promotion and intersectoral policy approaches. In so doing, attention and resources are diverted away from approaches that are more likely to reduce health disparities, such as efforts to increase education levels, reduce income inequality, promote community-based dietary and exercise initiatives, and ensure universal access to primary care.

Importantly, an approach primarily based on the development of innovative health care also threatens to sideline genomic research that might offer more substantive benefit for populations experiencing health disparities. An emerging body of preliminary data related to epigenetics, the microbiome, and genetic modifiers of response to the environment points to a range of opportunities for genomic tools to elucidate the causal pathways of health disparities. Promising findings on epigenetic changes related to childhood adversity, for example, point to ways in which genomics could contribute to a better understanding of how social disadvantage is embodied and expressed. Research efforts of this kind might ultimately help policy makers to weigh priorities when allocating resources to address social determinants of health.

Health disparities are complex and multifactorial. Reducing health gaps in the United States will require researchers and clinicians from many disciplines who share a common understanding of key terms and the role of social determinants of health to work in close collaboration with affected communities. Resolving a fundamental misunderstanding about the relationship between genomics and health disparities may create new opportunities for research collaborations, allowing large research investments in genomics to be leveraged for promising population health research. Failure to do so has the potential to deepen mistrust of scientific research and health care among those populations most burdened by health disparities.

SOURCE




The intolerant and bigoted ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union)

Just as the ACLU raised millions of dollars painting the Patriot Act as a plot by President George W. Bush in the aftermath of 9/11 to turn "regular citizens into suspects," it is now using similar tactics to fundraise off President Donald Trump's executive order placing travel restrictions on countries that pose serious security threats to Americans-calling the order a "Muslim ban" that is merely "hateful, illegal discrimination."

The ACLU is happy to "stand for the rights" and religious freedoms of Sikhs to wear their turbans in a courtroom or Quakers who don't want to register for the draft, but when it comes to defending the right of an individual whose religious beliefs (think photographer or baker) prevents them from participating in a same-sex wedding or an employer from providing certain contraceptives in their health plans, well, not so much.

Apparently, only certain religious beliefs, and most definitely not the ones that uphold traditional sexual ethics, are worth defending.

Like many activist groups on the left, the ACLU is all about "rights" and "choices," except for the rights and choices it doesn't like. For example, the right of a Catholic hospital or health organization to not perform abortions or choices made by parents regarding certain education options for their child.

Another great cause taken up by the ACLU is suing multiple colleges in one state because they refused to give in-state tuition rates to illegal immigrants.

And let's not forget its campaign to rebrand sanctuary cities-you know, the ones that flout federal immigration laws and harbor illegal immigrants-as "freedom cities." Apparently, freedom to break the law and use taxpayer dollars to do so is now a core principle of the ACLU.

SOURCE





Rampant `rexism' joins conga line of political correctness

THERE is a new form of bigotry sweeping our nation. Potentially, it's as pernicious as apartheid, as revolting as the racism against blacks in pre-civil rights America, as vile as sexism against women before the feminist revolution of the '70s, and as subtle and insidious as the McCarthy-era black-listings.

Although it combines several prejudices, at heart it's a dangerous combo of racism and sexism. So I'm going to give this new form of bigotry a name: rexism.

Rexism means that in at least 33 per cent of hirings inspired by diversity and inclusion, organisation ends up with an employee who's not as good as they could be.

Rexism is directed against one specific group of people in our society - some of whom might actually be called Rex, but that's coincidental - and it's designed to cripple their careers, lower their earning power, and damage their self-esteem. Rexism is rampant throughout business and politics, and it is being deliberately cultivated by some of the most powerful institutions in the country. Indeed, rexists are encouraged and rewarded with money, power and influence.

I define rexism as "prejudice against heterosexual white males".

Of course, rexists, like racists and sexists, try to justify their prejudice. As in the past, when bigots would cite crackpot theories to "prove" that blacks or Asians or women were somehow genetically or intellectually "inferior" by the shape of their head or hormones or whatever, today's rexists hide behind weasel words and pseudo-science.

"Diversity", "inclusion" and "perceived merit" are some of those weasel words, and the theory of "unconscious bias" is the loopy science masking this prejudice against straight white men. (Often by straight white men, funnily enough.)

Martin Parkinson is the most powerful public servant in Australia. He is Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. He is also a leading rexist. He believes in the theory of "unconscious bias", that merit is "perceived", and he boasts -that he's committed to "diversity" and "inclusion".

In his own words: "Treasury's lack of diversity was largely a product of . my own biases. Recruiting on merit meant looking for someone who had done the job before - a safe pair of hands. The only candidates ticking this box tended to look, sound and think like those of us already in Treasury. The fault wasn't the concept of merit, but how we perceived merit."

Think through that logic.

Two people come in for a job requiring certain credentials and experience. Applicant One is a heterosexual white male who has the appropriate CV. Applicant Two is a gay/lesbian/transgender/Asian/African/Muslim/woman/take your pick, whose qualifications for the job are: a.) better than; b.) the same as; c.) worse than Applicant One's. Who gets the job?

In the past, it would - or should - have been the person most qualified to do the job. But now, throughout the public service and in many banks and corporations, that choice is deliberately skewed in favour of Applicant Two.

In all those businesses now boasting about diversity and inclusion (D&I), the person doing the hiring will not only be expected to counter their own "unconscious bias" by choosing Applicant Two, but they will be expected to prove it, thanks to the presence in many organisations of "D&I officers", whose job it is to monitor them. Thus, the hirer's own job is on the line if they don't repeatedly show that they have defeated their own "unconscious bias".

By definition, in at least 33 per cent of D&I-inspired hirings, the organisation ends up with c.) an employee who's not as good as they could be.

Diversity Council chairman David Morrison chided the army for being "overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male, overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon". Imagine if he'd said that about women, Muslims or gays.

Meanwhile, it gets harder for straight white men to be certain in their careers because the odds will always be stacked against them in favour of someone who represents "diversity" regardless of merit. Equally, gays/trans/Muslims etc will always have the nagging feeling they only got picked because of D&I. Ultimately, D&I means taxpayers, shareholders and consumers get dudded by political correctness.

And every day another non-gay white bloke is rejected, a victim of rexism.

SOURCE




Palestinian terrorist who led women's march will be stripped of citizenship

Last week we had a brief discussion about Iyman Faris and under what conditions the United States should be able to strip the citizenship of a naturalized citizen. At the time I opined that terrorism was a rather special set of circumstances which might allow for such an action. This week we've received news that a similar case has been handled (through a plea bargain agreement) which produced a productive result. It involves a rather high profile "activist" from the ranks of the Palestinians, one Rasmea Odeh. You may recall her as a leading figure in the highly vaunted "women's march on Washington" shortly after President Trump's election.

It turns out that Ms. Odeh is a convicted terrorist who had previously been handled by the Israeli courts before coming to the United States. She's not new on the progressive scene around here and has been lionized by liberal activists in the past. For one example, after she first came under the scrutiny of American law enforcement and faced arrest in 2015, Marc Lamont took to the pages of the Huffington Post to explain why everyone should stand with her during those proceedings.

    In Detroit in November 2014, Odeh was convicted and sentenced to 18 months in prison as well as deportation from the U.S. But she was reportedly not allowed to call the conviction by the Israelis in Palestine unlawful, or testify about the torture and rape. It seems she was not allowed a full and fair trial.

    This is why Odeh is appealing the conviction, and why I am supporting her. And I am not alone. Her case has become a cause celebre, and a campaign has been established for her defense, building support from over 50 community, faith, labor, anti-war, Palestine support and other organizations across the country.

No matter what happened in Israel, Odeh was already in violation of the law here in the United States when she was originally apprehended. She lied on her application for citizenship about being a previously convicted terrorist. How she wound up taking a prominent place at the women's march remains a mystery to some of us, but now the case has been settled. She's not only to be sent packing, but will be stripped of her US citizenship to prevent a repeat of these events.

    A convicted Palestinian terrorist and a key figure of the recent Women's March will be deported from the United States after accepting a plea bargain that allows her to escape a prison sentence.

    Rasmea Odeh will be stripped of her U.S citizenship and forced to leave the country and return to Jordan after failing to disclose to immigration authorities that she had been imprisoned in Israel for committing two terror attacks.

    As part of her plea bargain, however, Odeh won't have to spend time in U.S prison or detention, according to a statement on Thursday by the Rasmea Defense Committee.

There's two sides to this "controversy" and I can legitimately understand both of them. On the one hand, it sounds as if a plea deal has been struck which allows Odeh to "get off easy." Having been found guilty of various violations while she was technically a United States citizen, it might grind some folks the wrong way to see her allowed to board a plane and head on out of the country and back to her homeland without doing any time. But by the same token, the fraudulently gained right of US Citizenship (which is arguably worth more than her own weight in gold) is being stripped away and she no longer will be afforded the protections which American citizens enjoy. Nor will she be able to freely come and go as she pleases across our borders. Is that really such a bad deal?

While I can understand the annoyance some may feel at reading of her release, what's truly the bigger punishment? Being temporarily deprived of your liberty here in the United States only to later be released, or to be forever deprived of the rights and privileges of American citizenship? I'm not discounting the feelings of those who think she's being let off the hook, but in the long run she is paying a much stiffer price. Or at least that's how I'm reading the cards here.

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. 

***************************





28 March, 2017

Blacks, whites, genes and disease

An amusing dance around the point below.  It is the whole of an article just out in JAMA, a leading medical journal.  It says things that the Left do not want to hear.  But it says those things in verbose academic language that hides the point. So let me translate into plain English:

* The poor get more illness and die younger
* Blacks get more illness than whites and die younger
* Part of that difference is traceable to genetic differences between blacks and whites.
* But environmental differences -- such as education -- explain more than genetic differences do
* Researchers often ignore genetics for ideological reasons
* You don't fully understand what is going on in an illness unless you know about any genetic factors that may be at work.
* Genetics research should pay more attention to blacks

Most of those things I have been saying for years -- with one exception:

They find that environmental factor have greater effect than genetics.  But they do that by making one huge and false assumption. They assume that education is an environmetal factor.  It is not.  Educational success is hugely correlated with IQ, which is about two thirds genetic. High IQ people stay in the educational system for longer because they are better at it, whereas low IQ people (many of whom are blacks) just can't do it at all.  So if we treated education as a genetic factor, environmental differences would fade way as causes of disease.  As Hans Eysenck once said to me in a casual comment:  "It's ALL genetic".  That's not wholly true but it comes close

So the recommendation of the study -- that we work on improving environmental factors that affect disease -- is unlikely to achieve much.  They are aiming their gun towards where the rabbit is not. If it were an actual rabbit, it would probably say:  "What's up Doc?"

Some problems are unfixable but knowing which problems they are  can help us to avoid wasting resources on them. The black/white gap probably has no medical solution


Genomics, Health Disparities, and Missed Opportunities for the Nation’s Research Agenda

The completion of the Human Genome Project occurred at a time of increasing public attention to health disparities. In 2004, Sankar and colleagues1 suggested that this coincidental timing resulted in an inappropriate emphasis on the contribution of genomics to health disparities, conflating racial patterns of disease with genetic ancestry, and distracting attention from the large and compelling body of scientific evidence pointing to social determinants of health disparities.2 For example, genomic research has emphasized discovery of genetic contributors to diabetes risk, but the recent increase in the prevalence of obesity and type 2 diabetes, which disproportionately affects minority populations, cannot be attributed to genetic changes and rather reflects social forces affecting diet, food access, and patterns in physical activity. The introduction of new genomic health technologies could also exacerbate disparities in access to high-quality health care, if specific genomic testing improved health and was only available to those who were affluent. Nonetheless, the claim persists that genomic research can reduce health disparities—if only participation by minority populations in genomic research could be increased.3

The source of this claim is an idiosyncratic usage of the term health disparities that may result in missed opportunities for the nation’s health research agenda. Health disparities are generally understood to refer to systematic differences in health effects resulting from social disadvantage, but the term is often used in genomics to refer to differing health outcomes associated with population genetic variation. This usage arguably stems from the US focus on the association of health disparities with race/ethnicity (vs socioeconomic status), together with a growing body of knowledge about population genetic variation. Compounding the problem is a tendency in the United States to conflate health disparities and health care disparities, perhaps based on the erroneous assumption that improved health care will resolve health disparities.4 The misunderstanding about the causes of health disparities leads to confusion about fruitful lines of research and potential remedies.

A causal association between social position and health is well established.5 This association has been documented in both developed and developing countries and dates back to the earliest records, despite substantial change over time in the principal causes of disease. A broad array of health conditions across the lifespan follows a social gradient, wherein better health and longer lifespans track with increases in social advantage. This pattern holds whether measured by proxies of social class, such as education, income, and occupation, or by race/ethnicity.5 In the United States, health disparities are significant and widening and have attracted considerable attention among policy makers and the general public. Yet this large body of knowledge is absent from genomics discourse, which remains largely focused on biological causes and biomedical interventions.4

Health care plays a crucial role in decreasing morbidity and mortality once disease processes are under way, but accounts for only a minor portion of population health status. A study comparing the major determinants of health estimated that only 10% to 15% of premature mortality could be prevented by improved or more medical care.6 The limits of health care were demonstrated in a statistical experiment, comparing deaths potentially averted if people were to have a college education vs those potentially averted by advances in health care technology and an 8-fold difference was found favoring education.7 Moreover, the kind of health care that makes the largest difference to population health is access to universal high-quality primary care, distinct from the specialty or high-technology care to which genomics is most likely to contribute.

Genetic susceptibility influences which individuals within a particular group experience a particular disorder. Genetics can help to explain why some African American, Native American, or Latino individuals develop diabetes, heart disease, or other common conditions whereas others living in similar environments do not, just as genetics contributes to individual variation in populations not experiencing health disparities. Research to clarify the genetic contributors to disease etiology has many potential benefits. It may help to elucidate disease mechanisms and could inform genetic tests and drug development. Inclusion of diverse populations in genetic studies will enable identification of a fuller range of genetic variation contributing to various health outcomes, potentially leading to improved genetic tests that are applicable to all populations. Well-designed gene-environment studies across multiple populations may also help to delineate important environmental modifiers of disease. All of these considerations point to the potential health value of genetic research. However, these efforts will not provide strategies for addressing the more substantial contributors to health that are rooted in social, material, and environmental conditions.

Given population genetic variation, it is to be expected that genetic effects will sometimes augment, and at other times run counter to, the effects of social disadvantage. For example, African Americans with chronic kidney disease on average progress more rapidly to end-stage renal disease than European Americans with chronic kidney disease. Two variants in the APOL1 gene, seen in people of sub-Saharan African descent, contribute to this disease progression.8 Nevertheless, a comparison of African Americans with and without APOL1 risk genotypes with European Americans demonstrated that the APOL1-associated risk, although significant, accounted for only about 10% of excess incidence of albuminuria (a marker of risk for end-stage renal disease) among African Americans; a disparity remains between African Americans with low-risk genotypes and European Americans.8 In this case, the higher risk of albuminuria appears to be due to a combination of social and genetic determinants. Conversely, the incidence of acute lymphoblastic leukemia in African American children is less than half that of European American children, due in part to a difference in the prevalence of 2 risk variants. Yet survival from this malignancy is lower in African American children. This survival disparity is eliminated in a clinical setting characterized by high-quality care, aggressive case management, and financial support that eliminates out-of-pocket costs.9 In this case, the genetic determinants lead to lower disease risk, but social determinants lead to worse outcomes for those African American children who develop the disease. These examples support the value of understanding the health implications of population genetic variation—but also illustrate that social determinants consistently reduce health outcomes in disadvantaged populations, independent of genetic risk.

Characterizing health disparities as a challenge for genomics, rather than as a challenge for health and social sciences more generally, generates several problems. It justifies studies that focus on genetic causes of complex diseases with the goal of developing medical interventions, rather than studies that assess genomics within the context of social and environmental contributors to disease. Genomics research could make a positive contribution to the elucidation of causal mechanisms of health disparities and development of potential remedies, but that dividend is likely only if such contributions are integrated into, rather than emphasized over, broader social models of disease and interdisciplinary research methods. Viewing health disparities as addressable by medical care also focuses translational science on health care innovation rather than on community-based health promotion and intersectoral policy approaches. In so doing, attention and resources are diverted away from approaches that are more likely to reduce health disparities, such as efforts to increase education levels, reduce income inequality, promote community-based dietary and exercise initiatives, and ensure universal access to primary care.

Importantly, an approach primarily based on the development of innovative health care also threatens to sideline genomic research that might offer more substantive benefit for populations experiencing health disparities. An emerging body of preliminary data related to epigenetics, the microbiome, and genetic modifiers of response to the environment points to a range of opportunities for genomic tools to elucidate the causal pathways of health disparities. Promising findings on epigenetic changes related to childhood adversity, for example, point to ways in which genomics could contribute to a better understanding of how social disadvantage is embodied and expressed. Research efforts of this kind might ultimately help policy makers to weigh priorities when allocating resources to address social determinants of health.

Health disparities are complex and multifactorial. Reducing health gaps in the United States will require researchers and clinicians from many disciplines who share a common understanding of key terms and the role of social determinants of health to work in close collaboration with affected communities. Resolving a fundamental misunderstanding about the relationship between genomics and health disparities may create new opportunities for research collaborations, allowing large research investments in genomics to be leveraged for promising population health research. Failure to do so has the potential to deepen mistrust of scientific research and health care among those populations most burdened by health disparities.

SOURCE




London attack: Why no amount of political correctness will save the world from Islamist terrorism

The attack near the British Parliament, we have been told, was carried out by a Birmingham-based Briton called Khalid Masood whose birth name was Adrian Elms before he converted to Islam. The 52-year-old was a history-sheeter who had previously dallied with terrorists, without throwing his hat into the ring, and was briefly a subject of interest for British spy agency MI5.

Reuters quoted London police as saying that Masood "had a range of previous convictions for assaults, including GBH (grievous bodily harm), possession of offensive weapons and public order offences" but there was "no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack."

Till this Wednesday.

The Islamic State connection

A petty criminal without any known linkages with religious fundamentalism, Masood fits right into the profile of individuals targeted or recruited by Islamic State which has since claimed responsibility for the attack. The New York Times correspondent Rukmini Callimachi, who covers Islamic State/Al-Qaeda operations and has done extensive research in areas of global terrorism, recently wrote in an article how a "secretive branch" of Islamic State built a global terrorist empire by tapping into the local criminal network. Harry Safro, an Islamic State defector from Germany, told her that "new converts to Islam" with no established ties to radical groups are extensively targeted either online or through sleeper cells.

The bond between Islamic State and so-called 'lone wolf' attackers (who may have never travelled abroad and have either been self-radicalized or via an operative) is a trade-off. Islamic State finds it easier to transfer petty criminal "skills" to jihadism and for the crook, the act of terror offers a path to glory and perhaps even redemption.

A study on the link between petty crime and jihadism by authors Rajan Basra, Peter R. Neumann and Claudia Brunner (referred to by Callimachi in a tweet) finds evidence for this 'redemption narrative'. According to the study, "jihadism offered redemption for crime while satisfying the same personal needs and desires that led them to become involved in it, making the ‘jump’ from criminality to terrorism smaller than is commonly perceived."

At this stage it is not very clear whether Masood had been in any contact with an operative or had pledged allegiance to Islamic State but the telltale signs indicate that he perhaps got self-radicalised, becoming what the media describes him — 'the lone wolf'.

'Lone wolf', a semantic jugglery and study in self-delusion

There is already a mountain of literature, reports, studies and articles on why the term 'lone wolf' is misleading when it comes to Islamist terrorism. In an article for The Guardian Jason Burke has written why "talk of lone wolves misunderstands how Islamic militancy works"; research analyst Bridget Moreng has written in Foreign Affairsjournal on how Islamic State inspires, recruits and trains 'lone wolves' and Callimachi has cited the example of an aborted terrorist attack in Hyderabad to explain this in her article: 'How ISIS Guides World’s Terror Plots From Afar'.

Media has already started calling the London terrorist incident a 'lone-wolf' attack even though London Metropolitan Police have acknowledged its links with "Islamist terrorism" and have since arrested several people after raids in Birmingham and in other parts of Britain.

The term 'lone wolf' is a semantic jugglery and a study in self-delusion. It is an attempt to disconnect any instance of terrorism from larger ideological moorings and transfer the onus of the moral failing from society to the individual, as if he was "acting on his own".

Jason Burke, writing for The Guardian, says that this "implies that the responsibility for an individual’s violent extremism lies solely with the individual themselves or with some other individual or group, all of which could be eliminated. The truth is that terrorism is not something you do by yourself. Like any activism, it is highly social, only its consequences are exceptional… People become interested in ideas, ideologies and activities, even immoral ones, because other people are interested in them."

Reuters, quoting a US government source, has already informed us that though some of Masood's associates were suspected to have keen interest in travelling and joining jihadi groups overseas, he "himself never did so." But the signs are interesting.

The Kent-born Briton became a religious convert and according to Sky News, he was a "very religious, well-spoken man. You couldn't go to his home in Birmingham on Friday because he would be at prayer."

It's Birmingham again

This brings us to the curious case of the West Midlands city of Birmingham and its close links with Islamist terrorism. According to NBC News, cops have arrested two women in their twenties and four men in their mid to late twenties from separate addresses in Birmingham. Another person, a 58-year-old man, was arrested on Thursday morning at another address in Birmingham, according to the report.

This would then point us to the inference that Birmingham had some sort of influence on Masood in his transformation from a petty criminal to a jihadist. The city has a troubled connection with Islamist terrorism and Reuters tells us, quoting a study by Henry Jackson Society (a British think-tank), that 39 of 269 people convicted in Britain of offences related to terrorism between 1998 and 2015 came from the city. British newspaper The Independent further parses the figures, pointing out that one in 10 of all those linked to Islamist terrorism in Britain and abroad came from just five council wards in the city — Springfield, Sparkbrook, Hodge Hill, Washwood Heath and Bordesley Green. A fifth of Birmingham's population are Muslims (2,34,000) and Masood's vehicle was rented from the Birmingham branch of a car rental firm.

In an article titled: 'Why has Birmingham become such a breeding ground for British-born terror?', The Independent's Kim Sengupta writes that most of the terrorists (linked to 7/7 London bombings, 9/11 attacks) "have family links to Kashmir. Many young men went to Pakistan to train to fight against Indian forces in Kashmir… Some joined Al-Qaeda and Islamic State. Indoctrination took place in mosques which had been taken over by radical clerics and, it is claimed, a number of schools. Birmingham is in the centre of the so-called 'Trojan Horse' plot in which, it is alleged, an organised group of Islamists seek to infiltrate and take over state education establishments."

Why "inclusiveness" alone can't prevent terrorism

This clearly points to a huge problem of assimilation of culture and belies liberalism's core argument that multiculturism is the only antidote for Islamist terrorism. London's top counter-terrorist officer Mark Rowley recently said that if 13 plots of terrorism have been busted in the UK since 2013, when Lee Rigby was murdered,   then it stands to reason that despite its all-pervasive political correctness and fierce inclusiveness, there exists deeply dissenting areas of defiance against England's multicultural ethos.

From London Mayor Sadiq Khan, France President Francois Hollande to former US president Barack Obama, political leaders have harped on the grievance narrative of Islam whenever there have been Islamist terrorist attacks. Wide range of excuses — from poverty to victim-hood to alienation — have been offered to contextualise terrorism and the world at large has been constantly reminded that the moral failing of a terrorist attack lies with the people who have been victimised, not the poisonous ideology that lies behind it.

A little scratching of the surface exposes the truth. In an erudite article, Praveen Swami ofThe Indian Express explores the reasons behind Britain's brushes with Islamist terrorism and finds that the "idea that the English terrorist is a product of the well-documented economic and educational backwardness of its Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities isn’t true in all cases." He gives examples of a student from King's College, or members of Britain's affluent middle class or even the wealthy among 800 of its nationals who are actively engaged in terror or another 600 who have been reportedly prevented from doing so.

Swami argues that the problem lies with Britain's identity politics: when Britain "outsourced its engagement with ethnic minorities to a new contractor-class" and in time, this strategy backfired as it created pockets of profound resentment against the "secular-democratic order."

Swami writes: "Instead of a rich cultural landscape, official multiculturalism created a homogenised Muslim identity. Thus, Choudhry defended her attempt to kill Timms by pointing to his support of the Iraq war — a land she had never visited. 'We must stand up for each other,' she said. 'We must fight them,' said Adebolajo — 'I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same'. "

The solution

This then, right here, is the biggest problem with the argument that 'political correctness and more stress on multicultural inclusiveness will be enough to tackle terrorism'. France tried and failed. Britain, too, seems to be failing. The failure lies in the fact that we are barking up the wrong tree. Instead of throwing money or trying to figure newer and newer methods of contextualising and justifying terror and floating a multiplicity of grievance narratives, the world must encourage Muslims to have an honest self-engagement on terrorism.

Hussain Haqqani, member of US-based think tank Hudson Institute and a former Pakistan envoy to US, puts his finger on the pulse in his column for The Telegraph, UK.

"The violence over 'Islam’s honour' is a function of the collective Muslim narrative of grievance. Decline, weakness, impotence, and helplessness are phrases most frequently repeated in the speeches and writings of today’s Muslim leaders. The view is shared by Islamists – who consider Islam a political ideology – and other Muslims who don’t. The terrorists are just the most extreme element among the Islamists."

Let the liberal media and politicians urge Muslims to tackle the problem on their own while, as senior journalist R Jagannathan says, empower the reformist voices from within the community, only then may we rid the world of this scourge.

SOURCE






Stand up for our right to criticise Islam

Since the Enlightenment we’ve been free to poke fun at religion and a blasphemy offence has no place in a modern society

‘It is wrong to describe this as Islamic terrorism. It is Islamist terrorism. It is a perversion of a great faith.” This is what the prime minister said last week in parliament. While I completely accept that the sins of extremists should never be visited on the vast majority of moderate believers, I am increasingly uneasy about how we handle the connection between religion and extremism. The ideology to which Khalid Masood was converted in prison may indeed be a perversion of Islam, but it is a version of it. We should not shy away from saying so.

After Nice, Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation wrote that saying such terrorism has nothing to do with Islam (as some do) is as dangerous as stating that it has everything to do with Islam. The terrorists in London, Paris, Brussels, Nice, Munich, Berlin, Würzburg, Ansbach, Orlando, San Bernardino, Sydney, Bali, New York, Bombay and many other places have been white, black and brown, rich, poor and middle class, male and female, gay and straight, immigrant and native, young and (now) older. The one thing they have in common is that they had been radicalised by religious preachers claiming to interpret the Koran.

Moreover, while a few sick individuals find within Islam justification for murder and terror, a far larger number find justification for misogyny and intolerance. We must be allowed to say this without being thought to criticise Muslims as people.

Islamist terrorism has become more frequent, but criticism of the faith of Islam, and of religion in general, seems to be becoming less acceptable, as if it were equivalent to racism or blasphemy. The charge of Islamophobia is too quickly levelled. Friday’s press release from Malia Bouattia, president of the National Union of Students, is a case in point. It failed to mention by name the murdered policeman Keith Palmer, and highlighted how Muslims “will be especially fearful of racism”. Race and religion are very different things.

I admire many religious people. I am prepared to accept that being religious can make some individuals better people, though, as a humanist, I also think it is possible and actually preferable to be moral without having faith. I am even open to the possibility that the best defence against extremism is a gentler version of religion rather than none at all — though I need to be convinced. But I think that, rather than there being good religion and bad religion, there is a spectrum of religious belief from virtuous, individualist morality at one end to collectivist, politicised violent terror at the other.

At one end are people who are inspired by faith to think only of how to help those in need. At the other are people who kill policemen and tourists, throw homosexuals off buildings, punish apostasy with death, carry out female genital mutilation and throw acid in the face of women who have stood up against the male code (there were 431 acid attacks in Britain last year).

In between, though, are positions that also contain dangers, albeit more subtle ones. There are people who would not commit violence themselves, but think women should be the chattels of men, wearing of veils is mandatory and that Sharia should reign. Then there are people (and here I include those in other Abrahamic faiths) who think homosexuality is sinful, contraception is wrong, evolution could not have happened and slaughtering animals by cutting their throats is more moral than stunning them. I do not condemn such beliefs as evil, but nor do I respect them.

On LBC radio last week the journalist James O’Brien said of those, like Masood, who have made the journey from faith to extremism: “Don’t we have to start mocking the early stages of that journey? People who believe that chopping off a child’s foreskin is going to make it easier for them to get into heaven. People who believe that eating fish on Fridays is somehow going to please their god.”

In 1979, some Christians took offence at Monty Python’s Life of Brian, a witty if mordant satire on the phenomenon of cults (and Romans). The Christians were angry but the Pythons did not go into hiding.Two years ago, in the wake of the murder of his fellow satirists at Charlie Hebdo, the late Australian cartoonist Bill Leak went further than simply saying “Je suis Charlie” and drew cartoons of the Prophet. As a result he was forced to sell his house and move to a secret location. That does not feel like progress to me.

In 2004, after the media was filled with discussion of how the Boxing Day tsunami was an “act of God”, I said to a friend, in all seriousness: the tsunami was not an act of God, but 9/11 was. I was consciously echoing Voltaire’s mockery of the argument that the destruction of Lisbon in an earthquake must be a punishment for the sins of its inhabitants. Would I dare say the same today about the events of last week, or would I pause now to consider how it would get me into trouble?

Bishop Michael Nazir-Ali wrote at the weekend of the “creeping Islamisation of communities” and called for an Islamic reformation to respect freedom of religion, abjure legal punishment for blasphemy or apostasy and agree that women should be free and equal in law. Yet, despite two decades of partly religion-inspired violence, those who call for an Islamic reformation, such as Mr Nawaz, or the ex-Muslim campaigners Sarah Haider, Taslima Nasreen and Ayaan Hirsi Ali, are increasingly vilified by many on the left.

Three days before the Westminster attack, the BBC’s Asian Network quite rightly apologised for asking “what is the right punishment for blasphemy?” shortly after an outspoken atheist had been hacked to death in Coimbatore, India, for expressing his views. There have been 48 murders of atheists in Bangladesh in recent years. Yet it is now more acceptable to attack “militant atheists” than militant theists. Blasphemy is back.

We can and must make an offer to the fundamentalist Muslims: abandon your political ambitions and become a religion as this has come to be understood elsewhere in an increasingly diverse and tolerant world — a private moral code, a way of life, a philosophy — and you will find the rest of us to be friends. But threaten the hard-won political, intellectual and physical freedoms now accorded to every man and woman, yes even and especially women, in our essentially secular society and you will be resisted and, pray god, defeated.

SOURCE





Political correctness has become the new truth

Rex Jory

THE Australia I love is disappearing. It’s been hijacked by faceless people who worship at the altar of political correctness and personal offence.

These messengers of the new morality paint themselves as victims. They believe they are entitled to compensation or apology if they are offended. They seek reward or retribution for the slightest inconvenience.

These self-proclaimed victims use social media with such devastating effect they have wrested control of the nation’s political, social and moral agenda. They tear down people who dare express a contrary view. They humiliate and intimidate anyone who challenges their beliefs. Megaphone politics.

They know best. Their view of Australia in 2017 must prevail. My way or the highway. Never mind that it is not the view of the majority of people.

These purveyors of the new morality are reminiscent of the racially-based Ku Klux Klan in the US. They plant a burning cross in the front yard of someone they accuse of breaching their often warped moral code while dressed anonymously in white robes and pointed hats.

They have crushed free speech and free expression by destroying community debate. People are now too frightened to say what they believe.

Political correctness twists and manipulates truth. It has become the new truth, the selective truth. Yet truth is no longer a defence. Just because someone expresses an opinion based on fact, they are not immune from being attacked and discredited on social media.

If someone dares criticise or even raise political, religious or racial issues which are contrary to the beliefs of the anonymous purists, the reaction and retribution can be swift and brutal. Often it resembles hate-speak.

Look at poor old Coopers, the beer makers. They were lampooned for being associated with a private discussion between two Liberal members of Parliament about same-sex marriage. The attack on social media was vicious. Then IBM copped it because one executive is in a Christian group.

Now they’ve turned on proposed changes to section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which currently threatens freedom of speech.

The Kokoda Track in Papua-New Guinea has become a target, with words like mateship being quietly erased from the lexicon. Mateship has been replaced by friendship. Never mind the Diggers and their families — let alone the wider community — who are offended.

In the new social agenda, mateship has become hateship. It has transferred power from the individual and a structured system of authority to a faceless, intangible force fuelled by moral indignation.

We are no longer allowed to be involved in civilised debate or think for ourselves. If the trend continues, then as a nation we are no longer civilised.

The Australian character has been stripped and reconstructed in the image of political correctness. The Australian larrikin has become an endangered species. Whatever happened to Australia’s “have a go” spirit? What happened to our irreverent sense of humour? What happened to common sense and the brave “she’ll be right” credo which helped build this country?

The Australian community has fragmented. We are no longer a single, coherent society. People are judged on what they are, what they believe and not what they have achieved or contributed.

For too many people, the first reaction is to lay blame and seek compensation through intimidation or litigation. Whatever cloak they wear — race, colour, gender, occupation, age, religion, physical appearance — they claim the moral high ground.

I don’t begrudge people holding strong beliefs. That’s their right in a democracy. I agree with some of them. But I resent being bullied into accepting those views under duress — or remaining silent.

Those promoting victimhood and personal offence as the path forward have used social media to promote their agenda by fear and suppression.

It’s time those who have taken the alternative path of meek silence spoke out and exposed the politics of victimhood as a false god.

If not the face and character of Australia, the Australia I love, will be lost. At the moment the people with the loudest megaphone are winning.

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. 

***************************





27 March, 2017

Justice and "Social Justice" Are Two Very Different Things

It wouldn't need the adjective "social" if it were justice

Recently, Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen wrote in the Washington Post of “The most important phrase in the Pledge of Allegiance” — “with liberty and justice for all.”

Allen recognized that justice required “equality before the law” and that freedom exists “only when it is for everyone.” But she confused democracy — defined as progressives “build[ing] a distributed majority across the country, as is needed for electoral college victory” — with liberty, which is very different.

Similarly, she replaced the traditional meaning of justice (“giving each his own,” according to Cicero) with a version of “social justice” inconsistent with it. And her two primary examples of rights — “rights” to education and health care — were inconsistent with both liberty for all and justice for all.

Americans cannot have both liberty and this type of social justice — under whose aegis one can assert rights to be provided education and health care, not to mention food, housing, etc. Positive rights to receive such things, absent an obligation to earn them, must violate others’ liberty, because a government must take citizens’ resources without their consent to fund them. Providing such government benefits for some forcibly violates others’ rights to themselves and their property.

The only justice that can be “for all” involves defending negative rights — prohibitions laid out against others, especially the government, to prevent unwanted intrusions — not rights to be given things. Further, only such justice can be reconciled with liberty “for all.” That is why negative rights are what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, especially the Bill of Rights, were intended to protect. But those foundational freedoms continue to be eroded by the ongoing search to invent ever-more positive rights.

Echoing John Locke, The Declaration of Independence asserts that all have unalienable rights, including liberty, and that government’s central purpose is to defend those negative rights. Each citizen can enjoy them without infringing on anyone else’s rights, because they impose on others only the obligation not to invade or interfere. But when the government creates new positive rights — which require extracting resources from others — these new “rights” violate others’ true unalienable rights. In other words, people recognize these positive rights as theft except when the government does it.

Almost all of Americans’ rights laid out in the Constitution are protections against government abuse. The preamble makes that clear, as does the enumeration of the limited powers granted to the federal government. That is reinforced by explicit descriptions of some powers not given, particularly in the Bill of Rights, whose negative rights Justice Hugo Black called the “Thou Shalt Nots.” Even the Bill of Rights’ central positive right — to a jury trial — is largely to defend innocent citizens’ negative rights against being railroaded by government. And the 9th and 10th Amendments leave no doubt that all rights not expressly delegated to the federal government (including health care and education) are retained by the states or the people.

Liberty means I rule myself, protected by my negative rights, and voluntary agreements are the means of resolving conflict. In contrast, assigning positive rights to others means someone else rules over the choices and resources taken from me. But since no one has the right to rob me, they cannot delegate such a right to the government to force me to provide resources it wishes to give to others, even if by majority vote. For our government to remain within its delegated authority, reflecting the consent of the governed expressed in “the highest law of the land,” it can only enforce negative rights.

Our country was founded on unalienable rights, not rights granted by Washington. That means government has no legitimate power to take them away. However, as people have discovered ever-more things they want others to pay for, and manipulated the language of rights to create popular support, our government has increasingly turned to violating the rights it was instituted to defend. And there is no way to square such coercive “social justice” with “liberty and justice for all.”

SOURCE






Tim Allen's "it's like 30s Germany" remarks caused a predictable backlash

As “50 Shades of Grey” proved, Hollywood considers nothing to be sin. Wait, there is one thing. In a scenario that smacks of a bad re-run, Tinseltown has again taken aim at one of its own for the unthinkable offense of not being liberal.

Tim Allen, the comedic star of “Last Man Standing” and “Home Improvement,” has gotten a lot of flak for telling Jimmy Kimmel what it’s like to be conservative in Hollywood. “You’ve got to be real careful around here,” Allen said. “You get beat up if [you] don’t believe what everybody believes. This is like ‘30s Germany. I don’t know what happened. If you’re not part of the group — [They say,] 'You know, what we believe is right’ — I go, ‘Well, I might have a problem with that.’”

Twitter went, well, atwitter over the remarks, with some criticizing Allen for the Nazi comparison and others simply blasting him for supposing he’s oppressed despite his millions of dollars.

First of all, Allen’s a comedian and he was making a joke, which Kimmel and his audience thought was funny.

That said, comparing anything that does not involve the mass, systematic extermination of an entire population to Hitler or Nazi Germany isn’t usually a good idea. Of course, that hasn’t stopped the Left from comparing Trump (and every other Republican or conservative) to Hitler early and often. Cher, Ashley Judd, Sarah Silverman and Spike Lee are just a handful of the many Hollywood leftists to compare Trump to Hitler in recent months. And they weren’t joking.

The definition of “Nazi” is not “that person or idea I don’t like.”

More to the point, Allen’s observation regarding Hollywood’s disdain for conservatives is grounded in fact. For an industry that crosses every boundary in its films and praises itself as the god of tolerance, it’s pretty intolerant of anyone who disagrees with the leftist mindset.

Take, for example, the case of actor Antonio Sabato Jr., who has appeared on shows including “Dancing with the Stars,” “The Bold and the Beautiful, ” and “Charmed.” Last year, he shared the rejection he’s faced for his non-liberal political views: “For the last seven-and-a-half years, I’ve seen this country led by a leader that’s made mistakes. I spoke my mind about it. But because I’m in the industry, you can’t talk about that. The media and the liberals act the way they act: They will back up the president until the end. It’s been interesting. I’ve had fantastic directors who have said officially to my agents and managers they will never hire me again. They will never even see me for projects. That’s unfair. It’s just like Communism.”

Stacy Dash, who starred in “Clueless” and “Renaissance Man,” had a similar story: “My acting opportunities have ceased because of my political beliefs. I’m being persecuted in Hollywood. I’ve been blacklisted. My agents have dropped me. I haven’t auditioned in over a year because of my beliefs and what I stand for.”

And Musician Joy Villa has been the subject of numerous attacks for daring to wear a “Make America Great Again” dress to the 2017 Grammy’s.

Even non-Republicans recognize being labeled an “R” has consequences — so much that they’ve seen the need to deny rumors to that effect. As Newsmax reported several year ago, after rumors swirled, “Desperate Housewives” star Terri Hatcher’s attorney told the media, “Please be advised that Ms. Hatcher is not a Republican.” Actress Mandy Moore’s publicist issued an even stronger denial: “Mandy is not, nor has she ever been, a Republican.”

Of course, Hollywood blacklisting is legendary. In the era of McCarthyism, dozens of actors, screenwriters, producers and directors were summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee. On suspicion of communist sympathies, some lost their careers.

Hollywood today may be more appalled that the mid-20th-century blacklist targeted communists than that it existed at all. After all, finding a communist in Hollywood today is surely easier than finding a Republican. (And heaven forbid Hollywood formally renounce communism — or any other ‘ism’ other than capitalism. After all, they’re tolerant, remember?)

Yet, for all its talk of broad-minded acceptance, Hollywood has hung a scarlet letter around the necks of those who dare voice conservative opinions. It’s little wonder many Hollywood conservatives have gone underground with their political beliefs, congregating with other like-minded industry professionals through the Friends of Abe, a low-profile group where right-of-center Hollywood professionals can speak freely without fear of retaliation.

After all, in Hollywood, as in so many other elitist-populated arenas such as academia and journalism, diversity of thought is a beautiful thing — provided it all looks exactly the same.

SOURCE





The day I was accused of being racist, I saw how sick  political correctness had become



TREVOR PHILLIPS

A few weeks ago, I observed that Barack Obama’s iconic status as the first African-American U.S. President should not obscure his mixed political record.  For that, I was accused by one Radio 4 commentator of peddling a ‘racist narrative’.

As a black man and former chairman of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, you might think I would be surprised to face a charge of racism — but I was not.

For at a time when this country is crying out for frank discussion on issues such as race and sexuality, debate is being closed down because those who find offence in every-thing cry ‘racist’ or ‘sexist’.

The result — as I argue tonight in a TV programme — is that our political and cultural elite seem unable to speak plainly about things that concern many citizens.

While our rulers seem to have all the time in the world to debate who should use which lavatory (in deference to the transgender lobby), they dismiss anxieties about overcrowded schools or doctors’ surgeries as merely a bigoted dislike of migrants.

How has this come about?

Forty years ago, ‘identity’ politics was about trying to end discrimination. It led to revolutionary legislation on gender, disability and race.  But recently the recognition of diversity has grown into a cancerous cultural tyranny that blocks open debate.

In higher education, it has spread like wildfire.  Efforts to keep real racists off university platforms have been perverted so bans are imposed on, for example, speakers with unfashionable views on transsexuals.

Harmless academics are falling prey, too. Sensible people are appalled at the way Nobel Laureate Sir Tim Hunt was hounded out of his post at University College London for a weak joke about women crying in laboratories.

Hardly a day goes by on campuses without a demand for a statue to be removed or for ‘safe spaces’ where sensitive students can be sheltered from robust views in a cultural debate or sexual violence in a classic literary text.

But how is a young person to understand how precious are the freedoms we enjoy today without learning what the world was like before them?  Should I not tell my children about the agony and struggle for liberation of their own ancestors, who were once slaves on sugar plantations?

Unfortunately, this thin-skinned refusal to engage with the challenging realities of life is not restricted to academia.

There is no hiding place from the language police, even if you belong to a ‘vulnerable’ group.

Ten years ago, I suggested Notting Hill Carnival had become an international event and outgrown its roots in the West Indian community — hardly a deeply provocative observation.

In response, the then Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, opined I had become so Right-wing I really belonged in the British National Party.

Sometimes the pressures to conform are subtle and insidious but no less powerful.In 2009, several Labour MPs, including some ministers, mounted a private campaign to get Prime Minister Gordon Brown to dismiss me from the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC). 

My principal sin, I think, had been to support the appointment of a leading black evangelical Christian. I thought the thousands of black and Asian Christians who are reviving our churches should be represented.

But it happens that many of these evangelicals take a dim view of homosexuality. I don’t agree with them, but I felt the EHRC had to respect and reflect all points of view.

Some government ministers saw things differently. They also wanted to see a black commissioner appointed — but only one whose views echoed their own in every way.  Without the intervention of Harriet Harman, Brown would probably have sacked me.

Yet by striving to appease special interests, even well-intentioned ‘equality warriors’ lay themselves open to the charge that they value diversity only as long as it serves their political purpose.

Take the recent decision by John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, to try to ban President Trump from speaking in the Palace of Westminster because of his supposed Islamophobia.

There is no systematic persecution of American Muslims by their own government, yet in other countries Muslims fear for their lives.

Uyghur Muslims in China are forbidden from practising their religion if they are civil servants.

In Myanmar, thousands of Muslims have fled abroad to escape rape and murder at the hands of the country’s Buddhist majority.

And India’s Supreme Court ordered an investigation into prime minister Narendhra Modi’s complicity in the 2002 Gujarat riots in which more than 700 Muslims died.

Yet China’s president Xi Jinping, Myanmar’s leader Aung San Suu Kyi and India’s Modi have all been afforded the honour of speaking to both Houses of Parliament.

The new tyranny is also threatening the study of what really makes the world tick, even if that research might help to reduce inequality.

For example, we still have no proper explanation for the stunning academic success of pupils of Chinese heritage across the Western world.

My attempts to promote such research were resisted by academics, who claimed it would belittle other ethnic groups.

The real losers in this refusal to tackle race and gender issues honestly are, ironically, women and ethnic minorities.

A business leaders’ think-tank, the Centre for Talent Innovation, found that many female and minority executives in the U.S. complained their bosses were too afraid of being accused of racism or sexism to talk to them honestly about their performance. They only found out they had been failing professionally when they were fired.

Hypersensitivity about offending minorities has also stopped us having a grown-up debate about migration.

Last week, Tony Blair, in his speech on Brexit, said ‘immigration is the issue’. Whatever you think of him, most polls show he was right about that.

Yet since last June, most politicians have tried to pretend the Brexit vote had little to do with the cultural impact of immigration.

The Right fear sounding like racists; the Left won’t discuss it because their celebration of multiculturalism as a blessing makes them seem metropolitan elitists.

And when conventional politicians try to tackle the issue, they make a hash of it.

The hapless Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, recently called on Dutch Muslims to ‘be normal or be gone’. And he leads something that describes itself as the Liberal Party!

One Left-wing newspaper has denounced my TV film on political correctness as ‘unhelpful’. Unhelpful to whom, I wonder?

SOURCE





British rape reforms are wrong and unjust

The UK justice secretary Liz Truss has announced plans to allow rape complainants to give evidence via pre-recorded video. Rape complainants are already able to give portions of their evidence via video. Since 2009, they have been able to give their ‘evidence in chief’ – which is where they give their side of the story – on a video that is recorded almost immediately after they make their initial complaint. Truss’s plan is to allow pre-recording of their cross-examination, too. This is the part of the case in which their account is challenged, and the defendant’s version of events is put to them.

Of course, giving evidence about a crime you have been a victim of is deeply distressing. But Truss’s plans are terrible, for a number of reasons. First, they increase the inequality between the defendant and his accuser. Going to court as a defendant can also be extremely distressing, especially if you have been falsely accused. The fact that complainants will be afforded rights that are not afforded to defendants means their experience is uneven; it damages the ideal of legal equality.

In 2009, the Coroners and Justice Act introduced the giving of evidence in chief via video. The 1999 Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act created ‘special measures’ for vulnerable or intimidated witnesses,  including a right to give evidence from behind a screen. So our justice system already treats the evidence of complainants as more worthy of protection and security than the evidence of defendants. This is a dangerous trajectory, heightening the possibility of miscarriages of justice. Truss’s plan will make things even worse.

There are practical problems here, too. The cross-examination process is when the defence’s case is put to the complainant. If the complainant says something new when she/he is giving evidence, then the defendant must be able to challenge this new evidence and put his own case. But if the cross-examination is pre-recorded, then the ability of the defendant to respond to evidence will be severely limited. The defence case will be incapable of adapting or changing in light of what is said by the complainant.

Truss’s proposals will make things worse for rape victims, too. Pre-recording all of a complainant’s evidence means the jury will never see the complainant in person. They will see the defendant only. I imagine these proposals will be unpopular with prosecutors, who appreciate that having a witness in front of the jury, live, helps to make their case more believable. Judges will no doubt have to direct juries not to disbelieve a complainant merely because they have not seen her in person. But juries might well be reluctant to convict someone when they have not heard from the complainant directly, in the court. We should not be surprised if the conviction rate for rape actually goes down if Truss’s plan comes to fruition.

Sadly, prosecuting rape has become a deeply politicised issue. Liz Truss is the latest in a long line of politicians who see rape reform as a way of generating favourable headlines, with little thought to the impact they might have on the justice system. These proposals further erode the principle that a defendant and his accuser are equal before the law, and they make it more difficult for the justice system to deal with rape effectively. Scrap them.

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. 

***************************





26 March, 2017

London after the latest Muslim attack

This place is just like Sweden. Terrified of admitting the truth about the threat we face, about the horrors committed by the migrants we failed to deter — because to admit that we are sinking, and fast, would be to admit that everything the liberals believe is wrong.

That multiculturalism has not worked. That it is one big fat failure and one big fat lie.

President Erdogan of Turkey said there is a war being waged between the crescent and the cross. But he is wrong. Because the cross is not strong. We are down on bended knee, a doormat to be trodden on, a joke only funny to those that wish us harm.

The war is between London and the rest of the country. Between the liberals and the right-minded. Between those who think it is more important to tip-toe around the cultures of those who choose to join us, rather than defend our own culture.

How many more times?

And how many more attacks must pass before we acknowledge these are no longer the acts of ‘extremists’? That there is no safe badge with which to hold these people at arm’s length, in the way the liberals casually use the term 'far-right' for anyone who has National pride.

These events are no longer extreme. They are commonplace. Every day occurrences.

These people are no longer extremists. They are simply more devout. More true to their beliefs. Beliefs which will be supported endlessly across our state broadcaster for the next few months until we buy into the narrative that one religion is not to blame.

That in fact we should blame Brexit supporters. For believing in a Britain. As it was before.

Anything but the truth.

This is why there is no anger from me this time, no rage. No nod for those who pretend we will not be cowed, even as they rush home to text their mum they are safe. No surprise that the city of which I was so proud is now punctured by fear, and demarcated even more formally by places we cannot tread; there were always parts in which a white woman could not safely walk.

Now I feel only sadness, overwhelming sadness.

I will walk over the river tonight and look to the Thames, to the Union flag lowered at half mast, and the Parliament below, and I will wonder, just how much longer we can go on like this. 

SOURCE






We Have Now Hit Full-On Crazy

Ann Coulter  

Liberals are ecstatic that a judge in Hawaii is writing immigration policy for the entire country, and that policy is: We have no right to tell anyone that he can't live in America. (Unless they're Christians -- those guys we can keep out.)

As subtly alluded to in the subtitle of "Adios, America: The Left's Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third-World Hellhole," the goal of liberals is for the poor of the world to have a constitutional right to come here whenever they want.

I can't help but notice that the Third Worlders aren't moving to liberals' neighborhoods.

After nearly 1 million Rwandans were murdered by other Rwandans in 1994, our government asked itself: Why not bring more of this fascinating Rwandan culture to America? Ten thousand of them poured in. So far, nearly 400 have been convicted in the United States of lying on visa applications about their role in the genocide.

And that's why we have to tighten our belt, America! Massive international investigations don't come cheap.

Almost every immigration case is a con, something we find out every time there's a San Bernardino shooting and half the family turns out to have scammed our immigration officials. One hundred percent of the "humanitarian" cases are frauds.

Earlier this month, Rwanda's Gervais Ngombwa was convicted for lying on his immigration application by claiming to have been a victim of the 1994 genocide. In fact, he was a well-known perpetrator -- even featured in Rwandan newspaper articles as a leader of the genocide.

For most of the last two decades, Ngombwa has been living in Iowa with his wife and eight children in a house built by Habitat for Humanity -- because no Americans need houses. He came to the authorities' attention a couple years ago by setting that house on fire after a domestic dispute, then filing a fraudulent $75,000 insurance claim.

Another Rwandan genocidalist living in America was featured in "Adios, America": Beatrice Munyenyezi, granted refugee status as an alleged victim of the genocide, even though she, too, had helped orchestrate it.

Munyenyezi was living safely in Kenya when she applied for a refugee visa to America. The welfare is way better here. And, luckily for us, she had a "chronic medical condition" that required constant attention from a New Hampshire hospital.

Hesham Mohamed Hadayet arrived in the U.S. on a tourist visa, then immediately applied for "asylum" on the grounds that he was persecuted in Egypt -- for being a member of an Islamic terrorist group.

Being a member of a noted terrorist group cannot be used to block you from coming to America, thanks to Barney Frank's 1989 amendment to the Immigration and Nationality Act, because liberals love this country so very, very much. Being a talented neurosurgeon from Switzerland, however, is disqualifying.

Hadayet's refugee application wasn't denied until he'd already been living here for three years. When he was called in for a visa overstay hearing, he didn't show up, and the INS didn't bother looking for him. After allowing Hadayet to mill about America for another year, our government granted him permanent residency and a work permit.

On the Fourth of July following the 9/11 attack, Hadayet shot up the El Al ticket counter at the Los Angeles International Airport. I guess the Egyptians were right!

As bodies were being cleared away from the ticket counter, including Hadayet's, his wife blamed America for the attack, denying her husband had anything to do with it. "He is a victim of injustice," she explained. "In America, they hate Islam and Arabs after Sept. 11."

At least immigrants are grateful.

Immigration bureaucrats are so determined to transform America without anyone seeing what they're doing that the INS initially refused to release Hadayet's file to congressional investigators, in order to protect his "privacy."

Of course, anybody could miss Egypt's designating someone a terrorist. And maybe the INS's test for Rwandan "refugees" is: Would this person be able to convince Rolling Stone magazine that "Haven Monahan" raped her?

How about Rasmea Yousef Odeh? She waltzed into America after having been convicted and imprisoned in Israel for a supermarket bombing that left two Hebrew University students dead, and also for the attempted bombing of the British consulate in Israel.

She was released in a prisoner exchange -- whereupon Odeh made a beeline for the U.S.

True, Odeh wasn't subjected to the Inquisition-like vetting accorded the humanitarian cases, like the Boston Marathon bombers (we were warned by Russia), Hadayet (we were warned by Egypt) or the Blind Sheik (same).

But how did our immigration authorities miss a CONVICTION FOR BOMBING IN ISRAEL?

Apart from the terrorism, welfare and fraud, what great things did any of them do for our country?

Ngombwa was a custodian at the Cedar Rapids Community School District in Iowa, a job that, evidently, no American would do. Munyenyezi had a job as an advocate for refugees -- just one of the many jobs being created by immigrants. Hadayet ran a failing limousine company and was $10,000 in debt. Odeh was an unemployed waitress and a Palestinian grievance activist. Recently, she's been heavily involved in anti-Trump, anti-white male protests, because who doesn't like incessant Third World unrest?

In 1960, 75 percent of the foreign-born in America were from Europe. Today only about 10 percent are. More than a third of all post-Teddy Kennedy act immigrants -- not just the wretched humanitarian cases -- don't even have a high school diploma.

What is the affirmative case for this? How is it making America better? Improving the schools? The job market? Crime? The likelihood of terrorism?

Can the liberals doing cartwheels over a district judge's announcement that everyone in the world has a right to come here (except Europeans and Christians), give us the cost-benefit analysis they're using? Twenty million Third World immigrants give us ( ) terrorists, ( ) welfare recipients, ( ) uncompensated medical costs, ( ) discrimination lawsuits, but it's all worth it because ( )?

SOURCE





Cognitive Dissonance in Europe

It had to be galling. Geert Wilders, a member of Dutch Parliament, was found guilty three months ago of "inciting discrimination against Dutch Moroccans" - the very people who have been trying to kill him since at least 2003. Newsweek reported that he has to go around, "wearing a bulletproof vest and being shuttled between safe houses to avoid assassination. ‘I'm not in prison,' he says. ‘But I'm not free, either. You don't have to pity me, but I haven't had personal freedom now for 10 years. I can't set one foot out of my house or anywhere in the world without security.'"

The Wilders trial perfectly illustrates Europe's state of cognitive dissonance. In many European Union countries, one is charged with "hate speech" for criticizing Muslims who are terrorizing the entire continent. France's Marine Le Pen has also been charged in France, along with Brigitte Bardot.

It was interesting to watch media spin last Wednesday's Dutch election results as Geert Wilders' PVV Party, which they always call "far right," gained five seats (33%), yet he was "defeated." Prime Minister Rutte's VVD Party lost eight seats (-20%), but he won a "great victory." Prime Minister Rutte's governing partner in the ruling coalition, the Labour Party, lost nineteen seats (-75%). How is this a victory? Because Wilders didn't thump him as badly as polls suggested he might.

I met Geert Wilders seven years ago at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington, DC. He was surrounded by large, shaven-headed, tough-looking, unsmiling, body guards with ear pieces who were constantly looking around at the rest of us in the hotel function room. He cannot go anywhere without them and it'll be that way for the rest of his life. Why? Because he's "far-right"? No, it's because he has dared to criticize Islam, comparing the Koran to Hitler's Mein Kampf as both advocate slaughtering Jews. For that, Muslims put a fatwa on his head. That means Muslims are obligated to kill him whenever they get the chance.

He's been living like this since he came to the defense of a fellow member of Parliament, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who was a Somali immigrant. Hirsi Ali got off a plane in Holland rather than go on toward Canada where her family had arranged she be married to an aging relative. She was granted asylum and then got elected to Parliament. Hirsi Ali's Muslim parents had forced her to undergo a genital mutilation procedure when she was a girl.

Together with filmmaker Theo Van Gogh (great-grandnephew of the famous painter) Hirsi Ali made a short film called "Submission" depicting Muslim treatment of women. For his effort, Van Gogh was shot and stabbed on the street in broad daylight by a Muslim immigrant. Pinned to his body with a knife was a note declaring that Hirsi Ali was next. In 2003, Muslims staged an hour-long grenade assault on a building in The Hague where Ali and Geert Wilders were working in an effort to kill both. In spite of all this, it's still criminal to criticize the "Religion of Peace" in Europe.

Angela Merkel and other European leaders said the Dutch election last week was a "good day for democracy" and for Europe because Wilders wants to lead Holland out of the European Union. All across Europe, however, there's rising opposition to the EU's open-borders policy of accepting millions Muslim "refugees" in spite of what millions of native-born citizens want. That's one of the factors propelling the rise other conservative leaders in France, Austria, Germany, Italy, and other EU countries.

Meanwhile, Turkey is threatening to release 15,000 more Muslim "refugees" a month to "blow the mind" of Europe. The Turkish foreign minister said, "Soon, religious wars will begin in Europe." President Obama's good buddy, President Erdogan of Turkey urged Muslims living in Europe to have at least five children. It's part of the Islamic concept of hijrah, which Islam historian Robert Spencer calls "jihad by emigration."

If you ask ordinary Dutch, French, German, and British people, they'd say the religious wars are already underway and have been for years. Every day there's a stabbing, a rape, a bomb, a truck attack, or some other Muslim terrorist incident somewhere in Europe, yet Merkel alone let over a million Muslims into Germany just last year. She's up for re-election in September.

The left in Europe has for decades been pushing for ever more centralized government through the EU and the UN - and for open borders. To pave the way, they've attempted to indoctrinate the populace with the multicultural myth that all cultures are equal. Dutch, French, British, German, or any other European culture is no better than Muslim culture. All should be able to live together in harmony. Ordinary Europeans, however, aren't buying it.

SOURCE





Princeton Seminary Disses Pastor Timothy Keller

Princeton Theological Seminary in Princeton, N.J. (AP Photo)
Can we all agree that modern leftists tend to politicize everything they can get their hands on — in every venue? Even the sacred isn't sacred.

Princeton Theological Seminary reversed its decision to bestow the annual Abraham Kuyper Prize to New York City pastor Timothy Keller — for essentially political reasons.

Keller leads an enormously popular Reformed church in the heart of New York City. Before you challenge popularity as a meaningful yardstick for evaluating a pastor, know that his popularity is not based on straying from Scripture or Christian principles, but on being faithful to them.

Yes, even in New York City there is obviously a deep spiritual hunger for the truth and that is what Keller and his church provide, in spades.

I am familiar with Keller and his preaching, as I own several of his books and his entire sermon archive, which I purchased through Logos Bible Software — an amazing resource that I've used to research my Christian-themed books. I have visited Keller's church, and though he wasn't preaching that day, the pastor who was delivered a biblical, Christ-centered message without a hint of politics.

Neither in Keller's writings nor his sermons have I detected the slightest inclination toward the political. He preaches the Gospel and the entire Bible with clarity and inspiration. His insights are invaluable and routinely profound. He is truly gifted and seems to practice the Christlike humility he preaches, not seeking to make himself a celebrity or otherwise leverage his talents to redirect the focus from Scripture to himself.

His disqualifying sin was not that he joined the now defunct Moral Majority or publicly endorsed some evil Republican politician. Nor was it that he rejected any of the church's doctrinal tenets. It was not that his teachings might lead people away from the church's mission to spread the Gospel. Rather, it was apparently his refusal to deviate from Scripture and conform his teachings to the current liberal political line on certain hot-button issues.

Certain people raised Cain about Keller's "conservative positions" and the seminary decided it better renege on offering the award. Keller is a leader in the Presbyterian Church in America, which, according to Princeton Theological Seminary President Craig Barnes, "prevents women and LGBTQ+ persons from full participation in the ordained Ministry of Word and Sacrament." The Seminary is part of a different denomination — the Presbyterian Church (USA), whose position on this issue conflicts with Keller and the PCA.

"Many regard awarding the Kuyper Prize as affirmation of Reverend Keller's belief that women and LGBTQ+ persons should not be ordained. This conflicts with the stance of the Presbyterian Church (USA). And it is an important issue among the divided Reformed communions."

The Kuyper Prize is "awarded each year to a scholar or community leader whose outstanding contribution to their chosen sphere reflects the ideas and values characteristic of the Neo-Calvinist vision of religious engagement in matters of social, political and cultural significance in one or more of the spheres of society."

Keller apparently satisfied the criteria when he was chosen, but the ubiquitous forces of political correctness and social justice would have none of it. So Keller got the axe.

Keller won't get the award, but not to worry — he'll still get the consolation prize of being allowed to speak at the school's annual conference in April.

Ah, liberal tolerance — it's everywhere.

Keller is especially worthy of such an honor and the school's action is disgraceful. "If you can't give an Abraham Kuyper award to Tim Keller," asked Southern Baptist leader Daniel Darling, "who can you give it to?"

Even in the church and church-affiliated institutions, those who subscribe to biblical views on marriage, even universally respected Christian leaders, must be scorned. The Bible and those entrusted with teaching it must yield to the moral strictures of the culture.

People sometimes ask what Christians and conservatives can do to reverse the relentless advance of secularism, progressivism and moral relativism in our culture. Well, they can start by waking up to the reality of the ongoing attacks on biblical and traditional values and the vilification of those who openly embrace them. They can quit ignoring these assaults because they prefer to avoid controversy. The truth is often controversial and should not take a back seat to pseudo concerns for harmony articulated by those who daily sew seeds of discord unless you unquestionably submit to their views.

The Bible should be our guide, not the shifting currents of political correctness and the bullying demands of leftist malcontents. Pastor Timothy Keller will not be harmed by this rejection. This good and faithful servant has already received an infinitely higher award.

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. 

***************************




24 March, 2017

This Is What It’s Like To Be Wrongly Accused Of Being A Paedophile Because Of A Typo By Police

With any allegation of sexual impropriety, you are guilty until proven innocent, according to the British police. After 13 years under Tony Blair, the British police evolved from being a generally admired body of men and women to become a collection of politically correct lazybones with little or no concern for decency, justice or community service. That their pursuit of the innocent has repeatedly been thrown out by the courts seems to have produced no penitence in them whatsoever

One extra digit added to an IP address saw Nigel Lang wrongfully suspected of being a paedophile. Speaking about his ordeal for the first time, he tells BuzzFeed News how the mistake ruined his life.

On a Saturday morning in July 2011, Nigel Lang, then aged 44, was at home in Sheffield with his partner and their 2-year-old son when there was a knock at the door.

He opened it to find a man and two women standing there, one of whom asked if he lived at the address. When he said he did, the three strangers pushed past him and one of the women, who identified herself as a police officer, told Lang and his partner he was going to be arrested on suspicion of possessing indecent images of children.

He knew he was innocent but was powerless to prevent what happened next, as over the coming days, weeks, months, and years, through absolutely no fault of his own, events took place that would cost him his health and his career, and put serious strain on his relationships with those he loved the most.
Lang described the arrest, and what followed, as “the most horrendous and horrific time of my life.”

What makes Lang’s ordeal all the more shocking, BuzzFeed News can now reveal, is that his wrongful arrest, and all the consequences of it, stemmed from what police called a “typing error”.

He was told that when police requested details about an IP address connected to the sharing of indecent images of children, one extra keystroke was made by mistake, sending police to entirely the wrong physical location.

But it would take years, and drawn-out legal processes, to get answers about why this had happened to him, to force police to admit their mistake, and even longer to begin to get his and his family’s lives back on track.

Police paid Lang £60,000 in compensation last autumn after settling out of court, two years after they finally said sorry and removed the wrongful arrest from his record.

Much more HERE





How far will the violence go?

By Ben Shapiro

Two weeks ago, political scientist Charles Murray of the American Enterprise Institute went to speak at Middlebury College. There, he was quickly surrounded by protesters chanting: "Racist, sexist, anti-gay. Charles Murray, go away!" On his way out of the venue, a violent throng surrounded him and his security, as well as one of the university professors. She ended up in a neck brace. The same week, supporters of President Trump held a rally in Berkeley, California, and anti-Trump protesters threw smoke bombs and began punching people.

This sort of political violence is becoming more and more common around the country. I've personally been smuggled onto and off the California State University, Los Angeles campus during a near-riot caused by one of my speeches. When a fellow guest on CNN's HLN grabbed me by the back of the neck on national television in 2015, leftist commentators celebrated. In Berkeley, we saw Antifa rioters run roughshod through the town in honor of an upcoming visit by provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. During the presidential campaign, we saw a Trump event in Chicago shut down by leftists who were intent on causing havoc, and we saw Trump supporters beaten in the streets in San Jose. Meanwhile, we saw Trump himself encouraging supporters to punch protesters and vowing to defend those who followed through from legal charges.

When despicable white supremacist Richard Spencer was punched on a city street in Washington D.C., the media quickly began asking whether it was OK to punch a Nazi. And many Americans concluded that it was fine. After all, Captain America did it!

Here's the problem: Once we start punching one another, there are only two ways such violence ends. First, an overarching powerful government could step in to stop the violence, to the cheers of the group represented by it. Second, one of the sides could literally club the other into submission. Both solutions are anti-American and frightening.

Not all ideas are created equal. Some are terrible and should be dismissed. But that's not the same thing as banning ideas or treating them with violence. In fact, the irony of those who claim to be doing political violence in the name of freedom is that political violence between citizens never ends in freedom — it nearly always ends in tyranny.

The rise of the Nazis was preceded by heavy violence in Weimar Germany between communist bands and brownshirts. The two sides would go to each others' rallies and speeches and launch into serious bloodbaths in which people were killed. Brownshirts deliberately started violence with communists in order to draw supporters to their cause. They used that violence to create martyrs (Horst Wessel was the most famous) and prey on the reality of communist violence to seize power.

America isn't Weimar. Law and order still prevails. But if we want America to remain a free country, we're going to have to back away from violence, condemn it roundly on all sides and kill the notion that ideas must be fought with fists rather than other ideas.

SOURCE





Germany moved to deport two terror suspects born in the country Wednesday in a first of its kind landmark case

The duo — a 27-year-old Algerian and a 22-year-old Nigerian — were arrested in February in connection to a “potentially imminent terror attack.” Police found a gun and an Islamic State flag in their homes, but the men were never charged with any crimes.

Prosecutors dropped the case due to a lack of evidence suggesting the men planned an attack. A federal court in Lower Saxony still moved ahead with a deportation order despite a legal bid to overturn it. The suspects will now be barred from the country indefinitely.

“We are sending a clear warning to all fanatics nationwide that we will not give them a centimeter of space to carry out their despicable plans,” Boris Pistorius, Lower Saxony’s Interior Minister, said after the ruling, according to Deutsche Welle. “They will face the full force of the law regardless of whether they were born here or not.”

Australia recently stripped the citizenship of an Islamic State fighter who left the country for Syria. Australian legislation allows the government to revoke passports of dual citizens who are suspected or convicted of engaging in militant acts

The Netherlands passed similar legislation in 2016.

SOURCE







Political correctness kickstarted populism in the West

Melanie Phillips

For several years now, Trevor Phillips has been on a political journey. Originally a fully paid-up member of the metropolitan liberal set, the former chairman of Britain’s Equality and Human Rights Commission has been regularly denouncing some of the shibboleths to which he previously subscribed.

On Friday (AEDT) he will take this further. In a documentary on Channel 4, he will blame political correctness for the rise of populism throughout the West.

The reason nobody saw the people’s revolt coming is that political correctness is too easily dismissed. At best it is viewed as a kind of idiocy that takes the avoidance of giving offence to absurd lengths; at worst, as the unpleasantly assertive politics of identity and group rights.

Phillips appears to understand that, far more damagingly, it has corroded the very basis of moral accountability. “It was a clear statement,” he observes, “that some groups can play by their own rules.”

Those PC rules derive from secular ideologies such as anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, feminism, multiculturalism, moral relativism and environmentalism. All these and more are based on the idea that the white, male-dominated, Judeo-Christian West is the embodiment of oppressive global power — the political source of original sin.

So white Western men or Christians can never be offended or hurt because they are themselves innately offensive and hurtful, while “powerless” women or minorities can only ever be their victims. In other words, such victim groups are given a free pass for their own questionable behaviour.

The reason these secular and utilitarian ideologies are unchallengeable is that, in a pattern going back to the French Revolution, they are held to represent not a point of view but virtue itself.

Therefore, anyone who opposes them must be bad. This creates a moral imperative to drive dissenters out of civilised society altogether. For daring to question multiculturalism, Phillips found himself accused of being a fellow-traveller of the far-right British National Party.

Reason has thus been supplanted by a secular inquisition, complete with an index of prohibited ideas. It is in effect a dictatorship of virtue, drawing upon the doctrine first promoted by Jean-Jacques Rousseau of forcing people to be free.

Of course it’s not freedom at all but a form of moral extortion: extracting permission to behave badly or questionably under threat of character assassination and social opprobrium.

Phillips may not appreciate the comparison but my own experience echoes his journey. For nearly two decades I wrote for The Guardian and The Observer, from which Eden I was eventually driven out by the disgrace of my political heresies.

From the late 1980s, I followed where the evidence led me to challenge one politically correct doctrine after another. Lifestyle choice, I argued, was by and large a disaster for the children involved in such fractured families.

Multiculturalism would dissolve the glue that held society together. National identity, far from being xenophobic, was essential for democracy and the defence of liberal values.

I was appalled that women, ethnic minorities and the poor were being infantilised and even dehumanised by being treated not as grown-ups with responsibility for their own behaviour but as helpless victims of circumstance.

Racism was supposedly endemic in every institution. Social-work staff were reduced to tears when told their refusal to confess to racism was itself proof they were racist. Any curb on immigration was racist. To me this was absurd, oppressive and culturally suicidal.

The understanding that education involved a transmission of the culture was regarded as an attack on a child’s autonomy. When I supported a retired head teacher who protested that teachers were no longer guiding children but abandoning them to ignorance and under-achievement, I was denounced as “ignorant, silly, intellectually vulgar, vicious, irresponsible, elitist, middle-class, fatuous, dangerous, intemperate, shallow, strident, reactionary, propagandist, simplistic, unbalanced, prejudiced, rabid, venomous and pathetic”. All that over just one article.

Nor did it stop at name-calling. I found myself in a kind of internal exile. There was no more cosy camaraderie round the tea trolley or invitations to supper. I lost work and was blacklisted by every major publishing house.

As Phillips says, the social infrastructure of advancement, rewards and status depends entirely on having politically correct views. If not, social and professional ostracism follows.

People have finally had enough of this institutionalised attack on accountability, natural justice and freedom. It turns out that what I’ve been arguing for decades is supported by millions throughout the West.

Now those millions are being vilified in turn as neo-fascist, racist and too stupid even to know what they’ve voted for. Their uprising is being called populism.

I call it a return to decency and reason.

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. 

***************************







23 March, 2017

Do gooder laws not helping ex-cons in Massachusetts

Blacks are a large part of the ex-con population so now that employers cannot check a person's criminal background, they tend to make worst case assumptions about blacks.  Suppressing criminal records has hurt, not helped blacks

When Massachusetts enacted a series of changes beginning in 2010 to help ex-offenders get back into the labor force, the timing seemed fortuitous: the economy was growing again after the recession, and it was widely hoped people with criminal records would find work more easily.

Instead, in the years after the changes, the employment rate of ex-offenders went down, compared with those without records, according to a study released Tuesday by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.

The first change to the Criminal Offender Record Information system, or CORI as it is known, in 2010 forbid employers from asking applicants about their criminal backgrounds. Employers could still conduct background checks later in the process, but that little box prospective hires checked if they have a criminal record was dropped from job applications, a move known as “ban the box.”

Yet within the first two years of that change, the average employment rate of people with a criminal record dropped by 2.6 percentage points, compared with the employment rate of people without one.

“Clearly, the ban the box provision has not resulted in the policy outcome anticipated,” the study authors said.

Then in 2012, the state shaved five years off the time period an offender had to wait before getting his criminal record sealed so it is not subject to a background check — to 10 years after a felony conviction, and five years after a misdemeanor. Again, after those changes, the Fed analysts found no improvement in the job rate among ex-offenders.

There was one bright spot: Recidivism among ex-offenders, the rate at which they committed another crime, went down slightly after the changes to the records law. The Boston Fed analysts believe ex-offenders were more likely to stay out of trouble because they had higher expectations of getting a job.

“They know that at least they’d be able to get their foot in the door,” said Robert Triest, director of the Fed’s New England Public Policy Center, which conducted the study. “And so spending their time searching for a job might seem more fruitful than falling back on criminal behavior.”

As for their actual employment prospects, Triest and his colleagues aren’t sure why that hasn’t improved, but have several possible explanations: One is that with their criminal records no longer hanging over them, ex-offenders are pursuing better, but harder-to-get jobs, and turning down lower-paying opportunities they might have settled for in the past.

Conversely, the authors theorize employers are either hiring fewer ex-offenders, or requiring more work experience or education than in the past.

There are more people with records — 1.7 million in Massachusetts in 2014, up from 1.1 million in 2010, according to the Justice Department. And the FBI has been conducting more background checks on behalf of employers and others: roughly 17 million nationwide in 2012, six times the number a decade earlier, according to the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group in New York.

Differences in the tightening labor market were factored into the study, the authors said, as were other employment trends. And still the employment rates of ex-offenders took a hit.

The changes to the records law may have also increased the competition among ex-offenders for jobs, as more sought work, said Pauline Quirion, director of the CORI and Re-entry Project at Greater Boston Legal Services. This influx of applicants, many of whom were likely weeded out later by background checks, could be affecting the employment rate, she said.

The first change in the law, to job applications, went into effect just as employers started hiring again after the recession, she noted, which meant ex-offenders were competing with large numbers of unemployed people without records. “The reality is employers don’t like to hire anybody with a record,” Quirion said.

The new Fed study is in line with a previous analysis of the “ban the box” law by the Boston Foundation in 2012. That found ex-offenders were indeed getting more interviews, but those did not necessarily leading to jobs.

But in other states, similar changes to records laws have had a positive effect. In separate studies conducted in the District of Columbia and Durham County, North Carolina, the number of people with criminal backgrounds who found work increased after legislative changes.

So far 25 states, Washington, and more than 150 cities and counties have enacted policies to limit or delay employers’ access to candidates’ criminal histories. Nine states now don’t allow private employers to ask about a person’s convictions on job applications.

However, several other recent academic studies have found evidence that “ban the box” policies are hurting black applicants. Without the ability to see a candidate’s criminal history on a job application, employers are less likely to call back black applicants, according to the studies, suggesting employers assume these applicants are more likely to have a criminal record.

The Fed authors and advocates say more changes are needed to reintegrate ex-offenders into society. The wait times to seal records are still too long, said Lew Finfer of Jobs Not Jails, a coalition lobbying to cut the time to three years for misdemeanors, and seven for felonies.

The coalition also wants dismissed cases dropped from the CORI system, and charges for resisting arrest, which currently stays on a person’s record forever, to eventually be sealed.

Massachusetts changes have been limited, Finfer said, so it’s not surprising there hasn’t been much impact. “CORI is this huge barrier to people getting jobs,” he said. “It’s almost like prison continued.”

SOURCE






Homofascists target IBM executive

Marriage equality advocate IBM Australia is being targeted by ­militant gay rights activists who have condemned the company over a senior executive’s links to a ­Christian organisation.

Activists have criticised the IT giant and Sydney-based managing partner Mark Allaby, suggesting that his role on the board of the Lachlan Macquarie Institute, an internship program for young Christians, is incompatible with IBM’s public support on the issue.

The social media campaign comes after the same activists shamed Adelaide brewer Coopers into pledging allegiance to Australian Marriage Equality after its ties with the Bible Society were ­exposed.

Michael Barnett, convener of Jewish LGBTI support group Aleph Melbourne, and Rod Swift, a Greens candidate in the 2014 state election, have targeted IBM with a barrage of messages via Twitter in recent days, accusing the company of hypocrisy for ­allowing an employee to be ­involved with “an anti-LGBTI ­organisation”.

“A bad look … that IBM managing partner Mark Allaby sits on the anti-LGBT Lachlan Macquarie Institute board,” Mr Barnett ­posted on Thursday.

The next day he followed with: “As an LGBT champion @IBM­Australia, why did you employ a board member of a high-profile anti-LGBT organisation.”

Mr Swift pitched in, calling on IBM to explain whether it would “request this guy to step down” from the institute.

“If you are having a bet each way @IBMDiversityANZ then you must justify to your staff and customers why your guy is on their board,” he wrote.

It is not the first time Mr Allaby, a fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors who handles IBM’s financial services ­clients across Australia and New Zealand, has been targeted for his association with a religious organisation.

Last year, when employed by PricewaterhouseCoopers, he was pressured into standing down from the board of the Australian Christian Lobby, which opposes changes to marriage law.

Both PwC and IBM are active supporters of Australian Marriage Equality, and their chief executives were among 20 corporate leaders to sign an unprecedented letter lobbying Malcolm Turnbull to legalise same-sex marriage, revealed in The Australian last week.

The letter has sparked heated debate about the role of business in lobbying on social issues, with conservative frontbencher Peter Dutton telling business leaders to “stick to their knitting”.

However, the increasingly ­aggressive tactics being employed by some marriage equality activists has highlighted the risks for corporations — and their employees — in taking a position on ­divisive political causes.

Leading anti-discrimination lawyer Mark Fowler said employees with religious beliefs in conflict with their employers’ stand on marriage equality were particularly exposed. “In NSW and SA there are currently no laws protecting individuals from expressing their religious beliefs,” Mr Fowler said. “Nor are there religious protections for ­individuals under commonwealth laws.”

Australian Christian Lobby managing director Lyle Shelton said the ACL, which helped set up the Lachlan Macquarie Institute, denied that the organisation was “anti-LGBTI”.

“Quite frankly we are tired of this slur being used to intimidate people because of their beliefs,” Mr Shelton said. “Corporate Australia is obviously free to have and express views on political matters.

“Sadly, same-sex marriage activists are intolerant of different views and have co-opted some in the corporate sector to assist them in enforcing this to the point where people fear for their jobs.

“All Australians, including corporate Australia, should openly and forcefully condemn every instance of bullying and intimidation.”

Mr Barnett defended his role yesterday, arguing that when an organisation such as IBM employed an individual in a high-profile leadership role who did not espouse company values, a disparity emerged. “I have no desire to see IBM sack Mark Allaby. I want the conflict to go away,” Mr Barnett told The Australian.

“Mark Allaby can make whatever decisions he needs to resolve this conflict, and if IBM needs to assist with that process then they can do that. “My goal is to see IBM, and any other pro-LGBTIQ organisation, remain strong to their stated values.”

Mr Barnett said he had nothing against Mr Allaby personally but his links with the Australian Christian Lobby meant he was a “target for equality campaigners like me”.

IBM did not respond to questions about whether staff were free to engage with external organisations, including religious groups, outside of their employment with the company. “We will not be responding on this,” an IBM spokeswoman said.

Mr Allaby, who lives in Sydney, did not return calls.

SOURCE






UK: Courts must protect men as well as women

alice thomson

The justice secretary’s plan to allow rape accusers to give video-recorded evidence does a disservice to feminists

Last weekend I was driving down the M40 discussing feminism with my 14-year-old daughter and why women are equal, if not superior, to men. It was all very relaxed without her three brothers. She was talking about a debate she had seen on gender equality with the Labour MP Jess Phillips and the women’s march against President Trump.

Suddenly the car ground to a halt in the slow lane with no hard shoulder. Lorries had to swerve around us, we couldn’t move. I rang the AA who explained we had to leave the car and call the police.

Two officers arrived promptly and I explained rather pathetically that I don’t drive often, I hadn’t quite worked out the automatic dashboard and the car might conceivably have run out of petrol.

The officers couldn’t have been more helpful; they towed us to the nearest garage, filled the car with fuel and sent us on our way. “They were very chivalrous,” I said. “That was humiliating,” my daughter replied. “You may have a career but you sounded like a useless woman who can’t do anything on her own.”

That’s the problem with sexual politics: it’s never straightforward. Emma Watson insists that Beauty and the Beast is a feminist movie because her character, Belle, has a job inventing a washing machine, but she then allows herself to swoon in the arms of the beast at the end — and to promote the film she bared her breasts for Vanity Fair.

Theresa May has become Britain’s second female prime minister yet still gave her first serious interview to American Vogue, where she says that she loves clothes and that Mr Trump held her hand down a ramp because “he was actually being a gentleman”.

Meanwhile Dame Jenni Murray, presenter of Woman’s Hour, said this month that “it takes more than a sex change and make-up” to “lay claim to womanhood”, making it sound as though female traits are always the opposite of male characteristics and the sexes share no common ground. This was while MPs were debating whether women could still be forced to wear heels at work. “What about men forced to wear ties?” one male MP asked.

The feminist discussion has become increasingly complex. How far should we be promoting women’s rights as distinct from men’s and what does equality look like?

The trickiest area is in the courts. Everyone has a right under British law to be treated equally, gender should not be an issue. This is why Liz Truss’s feminist intervention this weekend is more troubling than most. The justice secretary said that from this autumn rape “victims” would be spared cross-examination at the witness box and instead will be able to provide recorded video evidence.

Her sentiments are understandable. Women who have been raped must find it devastating facing their attacker in a courtroom and being quizzed about their ordeal. Ms Truss says she is “determined to make their path to justice swifter and less traumatic” so they can give “the best possible evidence” without having to undergo this ordeal.

Rape, domestic abuse and sexual offences now make up 19 per cent of the Crown Prosecution Service’s caseloads. The volume of rape referrals from the police rose to 6,855 in 2015-16, up 11 per cent on the previous year. Of those referred, 3,910 resulted in charges and 1,300 in convictions. However, only about 6 per cent of all reported cases result in a conviction for the perpetrator. It is important for women to have the confidence to pursue a rape case and to receive a fair trial.

But this change isn’t fair for men who may have been wrongly accused. Ms Truss calls all women who say they have been raped “victims”. But there are occasionally women who lie, for all sorts of complicated reasons. It is the wrongly charged man is these cases who is the victim.

Being falsely accused of rape can devastate a man’s life whether he is a student, a teacher, a politician or retired. The defendant will almost inevitably be vilified by some of his peers, his community and, if the case reaches the press, the country. Rape cases take on average 18 months to go through the courts; meanwhile the accused will find it difficult to get work or continue with normal family relationships.

When a jury at York crown court this month cleared Lewis Tappenden of raping a student in a drunken sexual encounter, he cried and explained his life had already been ruined. The woman told the court she was “OK with it” at first but changed her mind halfway through.

Elgan Varney, who was acquitted this week of raping a student while at Keele University, explained: “You are never allowed to move forward when the fact that you have been accused is one click away on Google.”

Women can already give evidence from behind a screen or by live link but juries need to be able to see the accuser’s face. Rape is such a serious offence they must feel confident they can weigh up whether a woman gave her consent to sex. The defendant should also be able to challenge any new evidence.

Ms Truss wants to allow judges to be able to edit evidence to exclude questions about previous sexual history but this would be treating the two parties unequally. It may also not help the accuser. Some jurors could feel reluctant to convict when they haven’t heard the complainant being examined in the court.

Not all men are beasts or women Belles; no one should be stereotyped. It doesn’t work in life and it’s even more unjust in the courts where everyone must have a right to a
fair trial.

SOURCE







Liberal boycott of North Carolina backfires

In April, the Center for American Progress estimated that the state of North Carolina would lose more than $567 million in private-sector economic activity through 2018 due to the passage of the Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, otherwise known as the “bathroom bill.”

But indicators show that North Carolina’s economy is doing just fine:

    Tourism has thrived: Hotel occupancy, room rates and demand for rooms set records in 2016, according to the year-end hotel lodging report issued last week by VisitNC, part of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.

    Meanwhile, North Carolina ranked fourth in the nation for attracting and expanding businesses with the arrival of 289 major projects, and seventh in projects per capita — the same as in 2015, according to Site Selection magazine, which released its 2016 rankings in the March edition.

    North Carolina finished first for drawing corporate facilities in the eight-state South Atlantic region, said Site Selection, which uses figures tracked by the Conway Projects Database.

    And in November, both Forbes and Site Selection magazine ranked North Carolina the No. 2 state for business climate.

    Also unscathed was the state’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate, which registered at 5.3 percent in January 2016 and 5.3 percent in January 2017, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Ironically, those opposed to the bathroom bill are the ones hurting. The NBA moved its All-Star game from Charlotte to New Orleans in protest, and as a result suffered “the lowest ticket sales” in All-Star game history. Similarly, the ACC championship football game was moved to Orlando and attendance was the lowest in history.

Over and over again, liberal boycotts are failing. As this rate, business owners everywhere will start hoping that liberals complain about them.

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. 

***************************




22 March, 2017

Infanticide law in Australia: How is this not murder?

Comment from a reader involved in social work:

I have a particular dislike of the infanticide law. I personally know of several cases where mothers have deliberately killed their baby and never went to gaol for it. They simply got counselling.

Men are charged with murder and get 20 - 25 years for killing their babies, but women can drown them, stab them, dash their brains out on a door frame and get off free, and often without any publicity at all.

The only reason this one got publicity is because the woman was caught on tape, otherwise, like all such cases we would probably not know about it unless we worked in a counselling facility.

Feminists love the infanticide law, they want it extended to the killing of 5 years olds in states where it is only for killing up 1 and 2 year olds. Yet they protest when a father who killed his baby is released after 18 years gaol.

I have silenced a few groups of feminists -- when they are griping about the patriarchy and planning some silly protest -- by saying to them, You women want more rights but without accountability. When you are marching in the streets demanding the infanticide law be scrapped and women who kill their babies be charged with murder and sentenced just like men are, when you are demanding equal accountability with men, then I will be marching in the street with you. Until then, I find your talk about equal rights disgusting 


IN THE days leading up to April 10 last year things had got out of hand for Sofina Nikat, a court has heard.

According to a summary of her police interview from that day, which was last week read out in court, the 23-year-old mother was struggling to cope with her 14-month-old baby girl Sanaya Sahib.

She told police the baby would “look at the roof and cry and growl”, and that she had been advised by a priest that she and her baby were possessed and had negative energy.

After initially claiming her daughter had been snatched from her pram by an African man who reeked of alcohol, Nikat later admitted to police she had put her hand across Sanaya’s mouth and nose, and hugged her tight until she couldn’t feel her daughter moving.

Nikat had killed her baby, she told police, then dropped her daughter’s body in Darebin Creek.

Yet when she answered a charge of murder in Melbourne Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, she pleaded not guilty. Psychiatrists agreed.

Her defence lawyer Christopher Dane QC presented the court with two psychiatric assessments by different psychiatrists who independently concluded what Nikat did was not murder, but another charge.

“The balance of mind of Sofina Nikat was disturbed,” consultant psychiatrist Yvonne Skinner wrote in her report. “She is guilty of infanticide, and not murder.”

Mr Dane told the court if Nikat had been charged with infanticide, she would have likely pleaded guilty.

In Victoria, the charge of infanticide carries a maximum sentence of five years imprisonment, however it is believed no Victorian woman has been jailed for infanticide. A murder accused is up for 25 years behind bars.

The charge can only be applied to a woman — a mother — who “carried out conduct that causes the death of her child (under two) in circumstances that would constitute murder”, and, whose balance of mind is disturbed because she’s either not recovered from the effect of giving birth, or as a result of “a disorder consequent on her giving birth to that child”.

It’s a rare crime and one that carries different meanings and consequences in different jurisdictions. In New South Wales a mother can only be found guilty of infanticide if she has killed her child under 12 months, under similar circumstances as in the Victorian law, only the punishment will be the same as if it was manslaughter. The partial defence of infanticide is also available in Tasmania, but doesn’t feature in the remaining Australian states’ criminal codes.

When infanticide does come up in a high profile case, confusion and outrage often comes with it.

How is this not murder? Why is the sentence so light? Why should it be any different?

SOURCE






Congress passes legislation to undo Obama restrictions on drug tests for unemployed

The Senate on Tuesday passed legislation that would repeal an Obama administration rule that limits the ability of states to prevent drug users from receiving unemployment benefits.

The rule, which was published in the Federal Register last August, was meant to implement a law that requires people receiving these benefits to be able and ready for work. The law gave states the option of denying drug users these benefits.

The Senate voted 51-48 to kill the rule.

The resolution disapproves of the rule and compels the Labor Department to write another one. It was passed under the Congressional Review Act, a law that gives Congress the ability to block recently enacted rules by passing disapproval resolutions with a simple majority vote that are then signed by the president.

Republicans opposed the rule from the Labor Department because it limited this option, by only allowing states to deny benefits to people in the transportation or pipeline management industries, those who use firearms in their job, or people in jobs that normally require drug testing.

"The final regulation defined the role of an occupation so narrowly that it basically makes it impossible for states to implement any meaningful drug-testing policy," Senate Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said on the Senate floor Tuesday. He said with this legislation, the Labor Department will be able to rewrite the rule that better reflects Congress' intent.

Democrats worry that any changes to the rule would create too many obstacles for people to get unemployment benefits who are genuinely looking for work and who have already paid into the unemployment benefits program. They argued that lawmakers should focus on helping these people get treatment and not put down those individuals who have found themselves in a bind.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking member on the finance committee, said "this measure before us is simply bizarre." He argued that the new legislaiton "vilifies unemployed workers who are actually less likely to use drugs than the general population" and defies a bipartisan compromise in reached in 2012. He also warned of a "legal minefield" for those state who will still want to conduct the drug testing.

The Drug Policy Alliance, a group pushing for the decriminalization of drug use, said the Republican legislation is a waste of U.S. taxpayers' dollars.

SOURCE





UK: No freedom of cross examination in rape cases?

A new spasm of political correctness: Defence counsel might well have questions arising from recently revealed evidence but will now not be allowed to put those questions.  Drawing attention to new evidence can often lead to a withdrawal of allegations so this is a severe limit on justice.  And the price of a miscarriage of justice in rape cases will be high

Alleged rape victims will no longer face cross-examination live in court under reforms announced today by Elizabeth Truss, the justice secretary and lord chancellor.

From September victims will be able to give evidence in a pre-recorded video that will be played to the jury once the trial begins.

In an exclusive interview with The Sunday Times, Truss revealed that she is bringing forward plans for recorded cross-examination for all adult sexual offences tried in crown courts after three cities used taped evidence in child sex cases.

She said the pilot schemes showed that defendants, when confronted with the strength of the evidence against them before the trial, were more likely to plead guilty early, reducing the trauma for rape victims.

SOURCE





Australia: Opposition to free speech won’t end happily

GRAHAM RICHARDSON

Democracy should always be defended. The essential ingredient of a true democracy is freedom of speech: that freedom is under attack from the left and even, at times, the right.

When those opposed to marriage equality tried to hold a meeting at the Mercure Hotel near Sydney airport, supporters of marriage equality so pestered and threatened the hotel that they cancelled the event. Just as I have been critical of the left for preventing Israeli speakers from going to any university in Australia to put their case, this and every attack on free speech must be resisted. If you won’t let the other side speak, you must have limited confidence in your own argument.

This week saw two attempts to further muzzle free speech on marriage equality. The fiasco at Coopers says so much about intolerance. The performance of LGBTI activists over Coopers Brewery and the Bible Society video was as cruel as it was anti-democratic. Directors Tim and Melanie Cooper looked uneasy as they tried to distance the company from the video and stave off the rapidly growing boycott of their beer.

The video itself is merely an attempt at sane, sensible and orderly debate. The reaction of totalitarians with such outrage is really sad to see. The viciousness suggests that they will never allow the slightest hint of a view different to their own to see the light of day.

This blind insistence against the exercise of the right to free speech has been on graphic display in recent times. I attended the Bill Leak memorial on Friday to honour a great and talented Australian genius. One of the kindest men I ever met had been the subject of a bitter, savage assault on social media. The attack from the Human Rights Commission had accused him of racism and one commissioner called on people to lay complaints against him.

Just to make sure that the right got in on the anti-free speech bandwagon, Peter Dutton bucketed the CEOs who had the temerity to lend their support to an open letter calling for an early start for gay marriage.

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. 

***************************





21 March, 2017

Homofascist censors don’t want us thinking for ourselves

JENNIFER ORIEL writes from Australia as follows:

In their campaign for gay marriage, some activists have developed a regrettably totalitarian strategy. It is to target dissenters, gay or straight, and silence them through persistent bullying. It is a strategy where the ends justify the means. The ends are not the formal equality of homosexuals and gay marriage. It is absolute conformity to radical queer ideology.

Like many columnists, artists and voracious consumers of the late Bill Leak’s art, I have wondered what he might have made of the past week’s events.

In a discussion of Leak’s cartoons on Monday’s Q&A on ABC, panellists praised polite speech in contrast to his politically incorrect art. The prim thought police did not deem impolite the audience member who smeared Leak as a “racist” only three days after his death. At times like these, you need Leak on the illustration and Baudelaire on the caption.

In the following days, a draft letter on same-sex marriage was leaked to the press. The corporate chiefs who signed it apparently wanted the Prime Minister to abandon his pre-election commitment to a people’s vote on same-sex marriage.

Some queer activists have celebrated the idea of politicians snatching the plebiscite vote away from the people. They seem to ­believe that denying people freedom of thought is the constitution of equality. As a justification, they imagine some hypo­thetical harm that might result from fellow citizens exercising ­independence in a free vote on the matter of marriage. We are used to hearing the PC nonsense that free and civil speech causes harm. Now sections of the activist class contend that democracy too is harmful. They are unlikely to find accord among dissidents in totalitarian states.

In the same week, Islamophobia propagandists tried to stop ­enlightenment advocate and freethinker Ayaan Hirsi Ali speaking at events across Australia. She too has been criticised as harmful by people whose sense of self, status and taxpayer-funded careers rely on cultivating and maintaining a victim identity.

Just as the PC naval-gazers looked like they had reached peak narcissism, along came an outrage to outrage them all; a video of civil conversation between beer-drinking blokes. If not for the gallows of political correctness, the story could rival Springtime for Hitler in hilarity.

Consider the context. The scene is set on a balmy, late summer day. Two high-profile politicians from the political right — men in the prime of their lives — want to talk marriage. They have arranged to meet on none other than Valentine’s Day at, wait for it, Queen’s Terrace. Their brief, polite conversation is filmed by a fellow who recently has come out of the closet in Newtown, a Sydney suburb brimming with students, activists, lesbians and gays. Unfortunately, he has come out as a Christian and conservative in Newtown, which is something akin to staging a drag cabaret in the Kremlin.

The chat between the conservative straight politician who supports traditional marriage and the libertarian gay politician who wants same-sex marriage legalised is amicable. It is so civilised and friendly that it enrages activists who view dissenters as an enemy class to be silenced, not ­befriended. They dislike civility and public reason because it ­exposes their intemperance.

Some outraged activists took to Twitter and any social media platform they could find to launch a queer fear blitz on beer.

The video to discuss the meaning of marriage featured Coopers beer that was produced as part of a joint Coopers and Bible Society campaign, “Keeping it Light”. The brewer has a long association with the society and the campaign ­includes a series of beer cartons with inspirational quotes from the Bible. Such quotes shouldn’t be controversial in any country, let alone a Christian-majority nation.

In the past, some wine companies have inscribed bottles with scripture. It appears that the Coopers case became controversial for two reasons. Firstly, the company has a relationship with a Christian organisation (very politically ­incorrect). Secondly, the video cele­brated public reason on the question of marriage, which is an issue the PC class wants to monopolise. It targets dissenters, regardless of whether they are gay, bisexual or straight. The aim is to shut down all debate to create ­absolute ideological conformity.

Several Coopers boycotters were associated with the Greens. Adam Bandt and Christine Milne backed the boycott, as did Jason Ball, who stood as Greens candidate in the last election. On Twitter, Ball wrote: “… conservative Christians buy up cases of alco­hol to smite gay people”. James Brechney, a Mardi Gras board member, led an online petition to boycott Coopers. It read: “Coopers recent alignment with the Bible Society, who are openly against Marriage Equality, is shameful!” Brechney described the conversation on marriage between parliamentary mates Andrew Hastie and Tim Wilson thus: “A video where two Liberal Party MPs discuss the issue of same-sex marriage. It’s horrendous!”

On the Coopers Club forum, some members decried the company’s commercial relationship with a Christian group. However, when a member asked what they thought of Coopers’ halal certification, most declined to criticise the company’s relationship with an Islamic group. It is a double standard. Boycott and divestment campaigns against Christians or Jews are commonly justified while boycotts of Islamic organisations are deemed racist.

Coopers made the critical error of capitulating to PC bigotry. ­According to sources, the legal counsel for Coopers asked the Bible Society to take down the video. It is no longer available ­online. In a filmed apology, Tim and Melanie Cooper looked like a pair of thought reform victims in a re-education camp.

If you want liberty, democracy and Christianity to survive, never submit to the PC mob. In its ­response, Coopers might have stated simply that while the company didn’t finance the video, its ­leadership believes in free speech, freedom of association and a ­vibrant Australian democracy where mates can discuss any issue over a beer.

There was little to learn from the activist campaign against free speech between mates, but irony emerged in its wake. The biblical quote on Coopers’ controversial beer read: “Whoever lives by the truth comes into the light” (John 3:21).

SOURCE






No "safe spaces" for men?

Muirfield golf club voted by a large majority yesterday to drop its men-only policy and welcome female members for the first time. Members of the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers voted by 80 per cent in favour of allowing women to join the club.

The result means that Muirfield will again become a venue for The Open, thought to be worth around £80 million

In a statement the R&A - golf's governing body - said: "In light of today’s decision by the Honourable Company we can confirm that Muirfield will become a venue for The Open once again. Muirfield has a long and important history of hosting the Open and with today's vote that will continue.

"It is extremely important for us in staging one of the world's great sporting events that women can become members at all our host clubs."

In a second ballot on the question, the motion was passed by 498 votes to 123. Following the vote the club said: "We look forward to welcoming women as members."

The rule change required a two third's majority and Tuesday's vote appears to have exceeded that with ease. More than 92 per cent of members voted.

A first postal ballot on admitting women members held last May came up two per cent short, causing the R&A, the ruling body which oversees the game’s oldest major, to tell the privately-owned links that it would no longer be considered as a host venue of the Open.

“The Open is one of the world’s great sporting events and going forward we will not stage the Championship at a venue that does not admit women as members,” a statement at the time said.

At the time of the last May's vote the then Prime Minister David Cameron described the club’s policy as “outdated”, while Nicola Sturgeon, Scotland's First Minister, called the result of the ballot "indefensible".

She said: "Muirfield is a private club and they’re in charge of their own rules and regulations, and I accept that, but this is 2016.

“Scotland has women leaders in every walk of life, in politics, in law, in business and everywhere else.  I think this decision is wrong and I hope there’s a way of looking at it again and overturning it.

“As well as being wrong, it’s damaging to Muirfield as a club. I want to see The Open played at Muirfield – it’s a fantastic golf course – so this really is a regrettable decision.”

With politicians, golfers, media and, more pertinently, the public heaping their derision on Muirfield, the embarrassment was so great that another vote was quickly planned.

SOURCE





On 6th Anniversary of Syria Civil War, UN Body Releases Report – Accusing Israel of ‘Apartheid’

On the day that the Syrian civil war entered its seventh year, a United Nations body focusing on the Arab world launched a report in neighboring Lebanon charging that Israel is “guilty of the crime of apartheid” in its dealings with the Palestinians.

A spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres stressed that the report released Wednesday did not reflect Guterres’ views, but U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley said the secretariat should go further and withdraw it altogether.

Haley criticized both the body that commissioned and released the report – the U.N. Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (ESCWA) – and one of the document’s two co-authors, a Princeton international law scholar notorious for criticism of Israel and controversial statements on Islamist terrorism against the U.S.

Richard Falk worked as U.N. “special rapporteur” on the Palestinian territories from 2008-2014. His harsh condemnation of Israel, remarks on an “apparent cover up” over the 9/11 terror attacks, and suggestions that the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing was an understandable consequence of the “American global domination project,” prompted calls by the Obama administration for his removal.

But Falk served out his six-year term, before being commissioned by ESCWA to co-author a study into something that he had previously alleged in his reports for the U.N. – that Israel’s policies in the disputed territories bear characteristics of apartheid.

Apartheid was the system of statutory, harshly-enforced racial segregation introduced by the white minority Nationalist government in South Africa in 1948, until formally ended in 1994.

Falk and co-author Virginia Tilley argued in the report that the legal prohibition of apartheid had not been rendered moot by the collapse of the system in South Africa, and determined that “Israel is guilty of the crime of apartheid.”

The report went a lot further than make that determination: It recommended action from U.N. member-states’ governments including implementing “boycott, divestment and sanctions” against Israel; taking legal action “including allowing criminal prosecutions of Israeli officials demonstrably connected with the practices of apartheid against the Palestinian people”; and exploring “ways of cooperating in the discharge of their duty to oppose and overcome the regime of apartheid.”

It also recommended the revival of a U.N. “special committee against apartheid” (which existed from 1962-1994) and said Guterres should recommend to the Security Council and General Assembly that a “global conference” be held to discuss further action against Israel.

‘Propaganda’

Headquartered in Beirut, ESCWA comprises 18 Arab countries. (Its membership overlaps that of the 22-member Arab League, but excludes Algeria, Comoros, Djibouti and Somalia.)

In a hard-hitting statement responding to the report, Haley noted that most of those countries do not recognize Israel.

“That such anti-Israel propaganda would come from a body whose membership nearly universally does not recognize Israel is unsurprising,” she said.

“That it was drafted by Richard Falk, a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories, including about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is equally unsurprising,” Haley continued.

“The United Nations secretariat was right to distance itself from this report, but it must go further and withdraw the report altogether. The United States stands with our ally Israel and will continue to oppose biased and anti-Israel actions across the U.N. system and around the world. ”

The report’s release comes at a sensitive time for the world body, as the Trump administration reportedly mulls deep cuts to U.S. contributions to the U.N.

Guterres’ spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, was quick to distance his boss from the report when asked about it at a regular briefing in New York on Wednesday.

“We just saw the report today which, as you say, was published by ESCWA,” he said. “It was done so without any prior consultations with the secretariat, and the report, as it stands, does not reflect the views of the secretary general.”

Dujarric also pointed out that the report itself carries a disclaimer: “The findings, interpretations and conclusions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its officials or member-states.”

(Nonetheless, ESCWA at a meeting in Qatar last December passed a resolution stressing the need to disseminate the report widely.

And at Wednesday’s launch in Beirut, ESCWA executive secretary Rima Khalaf of Jordan embraced a report which she said was the first of its kind published by a U.N. body that concludes Israel has established an apartheid regime.)

A reporter pointed out to Dujarric that Falk was for many years attached to the U.N. (special rapporteurs are appointed by the Geneva-based Human Rights Council) but the spokesman noted that he was no longer in that role.

He added that U.N. special rapporteurs “are independent.”

In 2011, Falk in a blog posting wrote about an “apparent cover up” over the 9/11 terror attacks, and said mainstream media were “unwilling to acknowledge the well-evidenced doubts about the official version of the events.”

Then-U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice in response called on the U.N. to remove Falk from his special rapporteur post.

In 2012, Rice again called for his removal, after Falk recommended in a report that U.S. and other businesses operating in the disputed territories should be boycotted, and face “legal and political” measures.

Then-U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was critical, but said he could not dismiss Falk, since special rapporteurs are appointed by HRC member-states, not the secretariat.

In 2013, Falk linked the Boston Marathon bombing to U.S. policies, citing its support for Israel in particular.

“The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world,” he wrote.

Rice again called for Falk to go. Instead, he doubled down on the Boston comments, telling the Daily Princetonian, “The U.S. is really the only country that projects its military power to all parts of the world,” and adding that “engaging in military undertakings around the world is bound to produce some kinds of resistance, and that resistance as in the Boston incident can assume a pathological form.”

Earlier controversies included a 2007 article entitled “Slouching toward a Palestinian Holocaust,” in which Falk compared Israeli treatment of Palestinians to Nazi atrocities against European Jews.

“Is it an irresponsible overstatement to associate the treatment of Palestinians with this criminalized Nazi record of collective atrocity?” he asked. “I think not.”

Less than a year later the U.N. Human Rights Council named Falk as its special rapporteur. He reportedly was picked from more than 180 potential candidates.

SOURCE






Study Debunks Oft-Cited Research Alleging Voter ID Laws Are Racist

New research suggests a widely cited study that claimed proof of the racist effects of voter ID laws was false.

“The results on voter ID laws are in — and it’s bad news for ethnic and racial minorities,” ran a September 2016 op-ed in the Los Angeles Times, authored by University of California San Diego Professor Zoltan L. Hajnal.

“My colleagues Nazita Lajevardi and Lindsay Nielson and I analyzed validated voting data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study in order to follow voter turnout from 2006 through 2014 among members of different groups … in states with and without strict ID laws,” Hajnal wrote. “The patterns are stark. Where strict identification laws are instituted, racial and ethnic minority turnout significantly declines,” he wrote.

“Strict voter ID laws may reduce turnout, particularly among minorities, but the evidence presented [by the original authors] does not constitute reliable information documenting such a relationship.”

In February of this year, following President Donald Trump’s win and the installation of Sen. Jeff Sessions as attorney general, Hajnal recycled his op-ed in The Washington Post — this time with the other two co-authors of the study on the byline.

"Hispanics are affected the most: Turnout is 7.1 percentage points lower in general elections and 5.3 points lower in primaries in strict ID states than it is in other states. Strict ID laws mean lower African-American, Asian American and multiracial American turnout as well. White turnout is largely unaffected," Hajnal, Lajevardi, and Nielson wrote (note: in Zoltan's original LA Times op-ed, he claimed that voter ID laws actually increase white turnout).

The bottom line, according to the authors, is that voter ID "laws have a disproportionate effect on minorities, which is exactly what you would expect given that members of racial and ethnic minorities are less apt to have valid photo ID."

Unsurprisingly, the professors' op-ed and their study was enthusiastically repeated across much of the mainstream media. "New study confirms that voter ID laws are very racist," ran a Think Progress headline. "Study: Those Allegedly Racist Voter ID Laws Are Actually Pretty Racist," proclaimed GQ.

It paints a dark picture indeed — a shocking reminder of America's unspoken racial divides. Or it would if it were true. New research by scholars at Stanford, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania suggests the claims are not true at all.

"To study how voter identification laws affect participation in elections, Hajnal, Lajevardi and Nielson (2017) examines validated turnout data in five national surveys conducted between 2006 and 2014," noted the authors of the new study, published on Friday.

"The study concludes that strict ID laws cause a large turnout decline among minorities, especially Latinos. Here, we show that the results of this paper are a product of large data inaccuracies, that the evidence does not support the stated conclusion, and that model specifications produce highly variable results," the authors wrote.

"When errors in the analysis are corrected, one can recover positive, negative, or null estimates of the effect of voter ID laws on turnout. Our findings underscore that no definitive relationship between strict voter ID laws and turnout can be established from the validated CCES data," they said.

"Strict voter ID laws may reduce turnout, particularly among minorities, but the evidence presented [by the original authors] does not constitute reliable information documenting such a relationship," the authors of the new study concluded.

The results of the new study aren't surprising to advocates of voter ID laws and election integrity protections.

"If ever you wanted a good example for the term 'alternate facts,' look no further," said Public Interest Legal Foundation spokesman Logan Churchwell.

"For years, activists and academics have been searching for the silver bullet to prove voter ID is harmful to minorities, despite broad support for the laws across every demographic. Many federal courts have been asked to do the same: find a causal link between voter ID and intentional decreases in minority turnout. All eventually failed," he said.

"Despite this, too many in the media are willing to report an initial study as gospel before peer reviewers can weigh in," Logan continued.

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. 

***************************





20 March, 2017

More on privilege

I have written previously on white privilege and privilege generally.  I pointed out recently that the "white privilege" concept is racist -- very similar to Hitler's  thinking about Jews.  In both cases we see hostility to people purely on the basis of their race and their success.

I also pointed out here that privilege is not random and is generally earned.  As an example I offered an example of "Jewish privilege" being thoroughly earned.  Apropos of that one might note the flyer below that was being circulated recently at the University of Illinois at Chicago.  Privilege discourse has a continuing malevolent life.



But I think I need to say a little more about what might be called "unearned" privilege.

Some privilege is plainly inherited.  If you have inherited wealth that is undoubtedly a great privilege.  But is it really unearned privilege?  Someone earned that wealth.  And their choice to pass that wealth on to a descendant rather than give it to the stray dog's home was a choice they were entirely entitled to make. 

One may deplore that privilege can be gained by inheritance rather than by personal exertion but that is a somewhat separate issue.  In many places, swingeing inheritance taxes have been enacted to knock such privilege on the head but various destructive results of doing that have mostly led to the taxes concerned being withdrawn or greatly reduced. But whatever you think of it, earned privilege can be gained by inheritance

And there is such a thing as group privilege.  If you belong to a certain group, some favourable or unfavourable expectations may be held towards you.  There is, for instance, no doubt that a white car-driver pulled up by the police in America will be much more likely to survive the experience than a black driver would be.

But that too is earned. Why do blacks cop so much bad treatment?  It is perfectly clear why.  Blacks are hostile to the police so the cops are hostile to blacks.  It's tit for tat.  No doubt some people will argue that the cops started it and blacks are simply retaliating but I don't think that is so.  It is very commonly reported that blacks resist arrest, sometimes very vigorously.  Many blacks do not "go quietly".  And that is a big problem to the police.  It makes them nervous of blacks and resentful towards them. 

Given their experience, cops are always going to be quite reasonably on hairtrigger alert when approaching a black -- and that trigger will sometimes be inappropriately pulled through no fault of either party.  Making cops fearful and nervous of you is seldom going to end well even when neither party has ill intent.

So the behaviour of many blacks is going to rebound on all blacks to their disadvantage.  They gain a negative privilege.  But it is again earned.  Others like you have earned it for you.  It is easy to deplore that but deploring it is about all that you can realistically do.  And deploring it will get you nowhere.  To change anything, you have to go to the root cause of the privilege/anti-privilege.  And that may be unalterable.  Blacks are never going to become pacifists overnight.

Any idea that privilege is earned or deserved is however anathema to the Left.  There are none so blind as those who will not see.

So railing against privilege is just another version of the old Leftist claim that all men are equal.  If you believe that all men are equal, the obvious inequalities of real life are going to seem unfair or obnoxious in some way.  Since there is obviously no basis to believe that all men are or have ever been equal, however, the perception of unfairness is based on a delusion.  So a condemnation of white privilege or any other privilege will simply be a condemnation of deep-rooted inequalities in society.  And attempts to erase inequalities have a history of ghastly outcomes.  Check with "uncle Joe" Stalin or the "Great Helmsman" Mao Tse Tung -- JR





How odd that they placed her with a WHITE family!



A little girl whose biological parents were jailed for horrifically abusing her as a baby has now been adopted by a new family.

Faith Mason was dubbed Baby Faith back in 2013 when she was found in Southeast Texas with injuries so severe authorities had compared it to falling from a two-storey building.

Now three years on, Faith is still recovering but has a permanent home after being official adopted by her new family on March 10. 

The little girl has been living with her adoptive parents and three teenage siblings for the past six months, according to the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services.

Faith is still recovering from her horrific abuse injuries, but authorities say she has already improved much more than anticipated.

During a court hearing last year, prosecutors said Faith was still being fed through a feeding tube and her left arm had still not healed properly in the three years since the abuse was uncovered.

Faith was taken to a hospital in Southwest Texas back in 2013 by her mother Christine Johnson.

An emergency room nurse who was on duty when Faith was brought in called the abuse the worst case she had ever seen, the Port Arthur News reported. 

Doctors found she had suffered at least 40 broken bones and fractures, including two broken arms, two broken legs, a broken neck and dislocated shoulder.

They said many of the one-month-old's fractures were about three weeks old at the time she was examined. 

The little girl had an IV drip placed in her neck as doctors tried to stabilize her. Her injuries were so extensive, a team of doctors from a children's hospital in Houston had to fly down to help treat her.  

Her biological parents, Christine Johnson and Darrell Mason, were both charged with child abuse.  Johnson was found guilty in 2015 and sentenced to 65 years in prison. Faith's father Darrell Mason reached a plea deal and was sentenced to 25 years in 2016 for failing to stop the abuse.

The thing below is the "loving" father of the little girl.  With ancestry like that, she is bound to disappoint her adoptive family in her teenage years



SOURCE






Americans for Truth About Homosexuality: LGBT Push for ‘Equality’ is ‘Satanic’

Peter LaBarbera, founder of Americans for Truth About Homosexuality, gave a talk on Saturday about the destructive agenda of the LGBT movement and how it manipulates language in particular to disguise its evil intentions and spin them in a positive light -- darkness to light -- which, he added, is truly "satanic."

LaBarbera presented his talk at the Wisconsin Christian News Ministry Expo and Conference in Wausau, Wisc., on March 10. In a discussion about how "Words Lose their Meaning" when adopted and manipulated by the LGBT movement, LaBarbera gave the example, "Come Out of the Closet."

"This is one people don’t think about," he said.  "But think about it – come out of the closet. Come out of the dark closet of lies and self-hatred into the light of truth, right? You come out."

"But what is it really?  said LaBarbera. "You come in, into darkness. You’re embracing spiritual darkness as a personal identity, as who you are. Then you’re selling it to everyone you know. You’re doing Satan’s work in the name of light.”

“We don’t think about these things anymore because we’ve been – because they’ve been pounded into us through this powerful sin movement," said Labarbera.

Another example is "marriage equality."

“Marriage equality – it’s not equal," he said. "It’s not marriage. It’s not marriage, it’s not equal.   It’s really 'radical egalitarianism' pretending that things are equal that are not equal, which is cultural Marxism of a sort, right?"

“Radical egalitarianism," said LaBarbera.  "Now, egalitarianism is at the root of a lot of evil. If you look back, communism, Pol Pot, got to make everybody equal. Pol Pot, do people know that story of Cambodia? He was against the intellectuals. He was a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary."

"He had the people who wore glasses [intellectuals], he marched them out the fields and they slaughtered them," sid LaBarbera.  "That was done in the name of equality. Can’t have some people who are intellectuals, the bourgeoise – everybody’s got to be equal. So that word “equal” has probably been responsible for more murders in the world than anything else. Yet we’re rallying around ‘marriage equality’?

"And you notice now the left, and some of the elites in our culture, they don’t even say marriage equality anymore," he said. "It’s a code word now, they just say ‘equality.’ ‘I’m for equality.’ That’s supposed to symbolize this issue."

“For some reason, homosexuality has become the issue for the left,” said LaBarbera. “The issue. It’s satanic.”

Homosexuality is satanic because it is a complete rejection of nature -- the natural design, order of one's body, male or female -- and an attack on the natural world (biology) that was created by God to function in a specific way. The principal entity that rejected God and His creation from the start was Satan, Lucifer. As he said, "I will not serve." 

Satan also was a big promoter of a false "equality."  He promised Adam and Eve that if they rejected God the Father, they too would become as gods.

SOURCE





It’s Not Fake News: Predators Are Taking Advantage of Target’s Fitting Room Policy

In April 2016, retail giant Target waded into the raging national debate about whether bathrooms should be maintained as exclusively single-sex.

In a post on its blog titled “Continuing to Stand for Inclusivity,” the company announced, “we felt it was important to state our position” that in Target stores “team members and guests” are permitted “to use the restroom or fitting room facility that corresponds with their gender identity.”

No doubt the corporate executives behind the move were prepared for some blowback. But not quite at the decibel level that ensued. Target was in the headlines for weeks, its stock plunged by almost 10 percent the following month, and a boycott petition aimed at the retailer garnered over 1 million signatures.

Target insisted it was just stating a long-standing policy, and blamed everything but the boycott and the bad public relations. In one interview about declining sales, Target’s CEO actually blamed the weather.

‘An Inclusive Place to Shop’

Rather than address many customers’ apprehensions about its policy—specifically, how a company that boasts 1,800 stores would ensure that predators would not take advantage of a policy that permitted anyone to use the restroom of their choice—Target doubled down.

Its spokeswoman brushed off such concerns and reiterated that Target strives to be an “inclusive place to shop,” and that some Targets offer “single-stall, family restrooms for those who may be more comfortable with that option.”

When a Wall Street Journal story announcing Target’s move popped into my Facebook newsfeed, I had just returned from shopping there with my 4-year-old daughter. We were in the middle of the shoe aisle looking for sandals for her when she clutched my hand in panic with a familiar cry: “Mommy, potty! I have to go potty!”

We sprinted to the bathroom, making it without a moment to spare, not even a second to shut the stall door. My daughter relieved herself in plain view of about seven other women, all of whom smiled understandingly. After she went, I had to go, also with the door open, because my very mobile 18-month-old son was still in our cart, which would not fit in the stall. And there was no “single-stall, family [restroom] for those who may be more comfortable with that option.” I was grateful for our privacy.

To be specific, I was grateful for a place where my daughter and I could use the bathroom in a rather public way but still with the privacy afforded by being exclusively among members of our own sex.

sex-scandal-cover

The members of Target’s higher echelons do not seem to understand this everyday reality.

Moms like myself were mocked to kingdom come for registering even the slightest concern about what such a sweeping policy means for our privacy and safety. A wave of articles rushed to point out how silly it is to worry about an assault in the bathroom, forgetting the glaringly obvious reality that since the dawn of civilization, relieving oneself has overwhelmingly been practiced only among members of one’s own sex.

Until recently, bathrooms were one of the remaining places in society where men were not permitted to be with women and vice versa. Because of that clear barrier, even the sight of a man pushing open the door to a women’s restroom would raise eyebrows—and deter any would-be assailant with half a brain.

But all that is changing, as rules designed to protect privacy between the sexes are upended. Shortly after Target made its big announcement, a man recorded himself walking into his local Target and asserting his new right to use the women’s restroom. He did not state that he identifies as a woman; he simply said he wanted to make sure he had the right to use the women’s restroom. In the video, a manager assures him that he does, and when asked what the store will do if any women are upset, the manager says he will “take care of it.”

Apparently it was not long before Target’s lawyers got wind of the viral video; it was taken down almost immediately.

But the video was not an isolated incident. The following month, The New York Times ran the headline “Men Are Posting Videos of Themselves Testing Target’s New Bathroom Policy.” The piece reported, “Multiple videos have popped up on YouTube showing men confronting store managers about the policy and asking what would stop them from entering the women’s bathroom inside the store. In the videos, the managers can be seen (or heard, since some of the video is poorly shot) patiently saying that nothing would stop the men from using the women’s room.” Nothing.

This Report Is Real

Two weeks after Target announced that its women’s bathrooms were open to anyone whose “gender identity” led him there, police in a town in Texas issued a warrant for what was unmistakably a man who was spotted by a girl in a Super Target fitting room recording her as she undressed. The warrant charged him with “invasive visual recording.” A month later, the same thing happened at a Target in New Hampshire: A man was charged with filming women in the fitting room.

The following month, it happened again. In July, an Idaho paper reported that a “man dressed as a woman” was caught filming a young woman removing her clothes in the dressing room of a local Target. The predator was booked as a male under the name Shaun Smith, and according to a New York Times article on the incident, “Both the victim and her mother described the voyeur as a white male wearing a dress and blond wig.”

Nevertheless, the Idaho Post Register referred to Smith as “she,” reporting that “Smith admitted to committing similar crimes in the past, saying she makes the videos for the ‘same reason men go online to look at pornography,’ court documents show. Smith [said] she finds the videos sexually gratifying.”

It was the third such episode since Target had announced its policy, once for every subsequent month.

The Idaho incident prompted an entry on the rumor-investigating website Snopes, because the story was easily confused with a fake story that had been published on a comedy site just two months before, mocking concern over the possibility that unisex bathrooms might result in … exactly what happened in Idaho.

In the fake news story, a man who self-identified as a woman was captured photographing minor females in the bathroom. The only difference between the fake story and the real one was the location: In the real story, the snooping took place in the fitting room.

As Snopes was forced to admit in a post about the fake story, “This fake news article was later confused with a somewhat similar real-life incident that subsequently transpired at a Target store.” On the post about the real story, Snopes had to clarify, “Unlike a fake news report from April 2016 involving a woman supposedly arrested for taking pictures of underage girls in a Target bathroom, this report is real.”

But Target should not have needed these incidents to know that voyeurism is a real problem, because it was an issue even before the retailer broadcasted a policy that makes it easier for male predators to access women’s restrooms and fitting rooms.

Just one month before Target announced its policy, a 14-year-old girl noticed a man photographing her under the door as she changed clothes in a Target fitting room in Florida. She said that when she saw the camera, “I didn’t know what to do about it. So my body just locked up and I started shaking. … I don’t feel safe in a dressing room anymore.” Target knew that even its family restrooms were vulnerable; in 2015, a California man was caught hiding a camera in one.

Just a couple of weeks after Target’s announcement, a woman who was being verbally harassed in the swimsuit section of a Target in Florida videotaped herself chasing her harasser out of the store and into the parking lot. The man, it turned out, had a history of bothering women in public places and a previous conviction for photographing women in dressing rooms.

Under Target’s policy, men exactly like him can now walk right into the women’s restroom or fitting room, and any startled woman is the problem to be handled—not the offending man.

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. 

***************************



19 March, 2017

Politically correct court ruling against Trump travel restrictions reveals judicial tyranny

Under the ridiculous ruling from U.S. District Court Judge Derrick Watson of the District of Hawaii, temporary travel restrictions on immigration — grants of power to the president enacted by Congress decades ago — from any Muslim-majority countries somehow violate the First Amendment.

But only if the restrictions are issued by President Donald Trump.

Citing “significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order,” including Trump campaign statements purported to be discriminatory of Islam, the court found special First Amendment rights to immigrate to the U.S. to Muslims throughout the world who neither live here nor have any protections under the Constitution.

But not for Jews, Christians, Hindus or anyone else, apparently, because Trump had not promised announce to block immigration from Israel, Europe or India on the campaign trail. Presumably, Trump could restrict immigration from any country that is not predominantly Muslim, since there were no statements from the Trump campaign in 2016 about doing so.

And, under the ruling, any other president besides Trump might be able to exercise these same powers against predominantly Muslim countries, delegated to the president under the 1952 immigration statute.

There’s only one problem. That is not what the law says, which is a broad grant of power to the president. Not certain presidents based upon a judicially ascertained motive determined by what might have been said on the campaign trail.

Under 8 U.S.C. 1182(f), enacted in 1952, “Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.”

In other words, the law is blind to motive. It does not matter why Trump wants the travel restrictions, just that he finds certain immigrant entries would be “detrimental to the interests of the United States.” It is a subjective determination, a political question with which the executive has discretion.

Discretion is the key component there. Congress has authorized the president to close down the entire border if he feels it is necessary. It does not matter why. The court has overstepped its bounds.

Americans for Limited Government President in a statement noted the absurdity of the ruling, saying, “If it would be constitutional if issued by former President Obama, then it must then be constitutional under President Trump. The rule of law means equal application of the law and by the judge’s own words, that is not what we have here.”

The judge even acknowledged that “the Executive Order does not facially discriminate for or against any particular religion, or for or against religion versus non-religion.” But never mind what the order actually said. Or that other presidents could issue the order under Judge Watson’s precedent.

And never mind the fact that the government had narrowly tailored the order to apply to just six countries, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, thought to be of higher risk of exporting terrorism — leaving the vast majority of Muslim-majority countries unaffected by the order.

Not finding any evidence of any actual religious discrimination in Trump’s order, the court decided to invent some out of whole cloth, ruling against the order the court wished Trump had issued so that it could overturn it, relying on statements from the president on the 2016 campaign trail to somehow deduce a discriminatory motive by President Trump.

Which, by the way, even if Trump had issued an order barring new non-citizen Muslim entry into the U.S., as he had proposed on the campaign trail, it still would not have violated the Constitution or the statute, because those constitutional protections do not extend overseas.

As Manning concluded in his statement, “It is now clear that federal courts do not intend to hold the acts of President Trump to the same standards as other presidents past or future, instead imposing a separate body of law simply for his administration. In essence, by denying the powers of the president to Trump, the courts are attempting to render their verdict on the outcome of the 2016 election, an intolerable abuse by the judicial branch that Congress must now rein in.”

That is, the exercise of executive power in the conduct of foreign relations — in this case in the area of immigration — under the Constitution and as authorized by Congress, has absolutely zero recourse in courts of law. And it is time Congress said so, by limiting the jurisdiction of federal courts not to examine travel restrictions or any other executive functions where the rights of foreigners who have never set foot on U.S. soil are being invoked.

SOURCE







Politically correct media lies and misrepresentations

John Stossel

Has the media gotten worse? Or am I just grouchier? Every day I see things that are wrong or that so miss the point I want to scream. Four examples:

Storm Coverage

As this week’s storm approached the East Coast, the media reverted to breathless hype: “monster storm … very dangerous.” Here I blame my beloved free market: Predicting scary weather works. Viewers tune in.

What galls me more is the reporters' government-centric thinking. “Everything is closed,” they say. “Employees can’t get to work.”

But the corner grocery stayed open. So did many gas stations and restaurants.

Why is it that when government buildings close, so many private businesses stay open? Because their own money is at stake.

The store’s employees probably make less money than government workers. They are less likely to own all-wheel-drive cars. But they get to work. Some sleep there. Their own money is on the line.

Reporters don’t think about the distinction.

The Deep State

Monday, The New York Times ran the headline “What Happens When You Fight a ‘Deep State’ that Doesn’t Exist?”

The article explained that unlike Egypt or Pakistan, America doesn’t really have a powerful deep state, and to claim that it does “presents apolitical civil servants as partisan agents.”

Give me a break. “Apolitical civil servants”?

A deep state absolutely exists. Some call it “administrative state” or “regulatory state.” These are the people who crush innovation and freedom by issuing hundreds of new rules. Regulators, if they don’t pass new rules, think they’re not doing their job.

Even “anti-regulator” President George W. Bush hired 90,000 new regulators. Calling them “nonpartisan” doesn’t make them harmless — it just means we put up with them through multiple administrations.

Even if you exclude the military and post office, more than 20 million Americans work for the government. Because of civil service rules, it’s almost impossible to fire them.

The Times calls these 20 million people “apolitical”. Please. Most are just as partisan as you or I. Maybe more so, as leaks and signs of bureaucratic resistance to presidential edicts demonstrate.

People who choose to work for, say, the EPA, tend to be environment zealots. This should surprise no one. Somehow, New York Times reporters don’t see it.

“Chief of EPA Bucks Studies”

Speaking of the EPA and the Times, its front page claimed President Donald Trump appointee Scott Pruitt is “at odds with the established scientific consensus.” That makes Pruitt sound like an anti-science idiot. But the headline is bunk.

Pruitt only said that he does not agree that man is “the primary contributor to global warming.”

That’s “at odds” with Times reporters and government flunkies on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, but many scientists say there is so much uncertainty to climate measurements that no one can know if man’s greenhouse gases are the “primary” cause of warming.

The earth warmed similarly last century, well before we emitted so much carbon dioxide.

John Oliver

British comedian John Oliver hosts one of the better political talk shows. He’s like Bill Maher but funnier and not as mean. Yesterday, on an airplane, I watched an episode that led with a report on the chaos in Venezuela.

I perked up, expecting Oliver to at least mention Venezuela’s caps on corporate profits, abolition of property rights, media censorship, regulation of car production “from the factory door to the place of sale,” etc. In other words: socialism.

But no, Oliver didn’t mention any of that.

He mocked President Maduro’s speeches but said Venezuela was in trouble because its economy depends on oil and oil prices dropped. What?

Kuwait, Nigeria, Angola and other countries exported more oil than Venezuela. But they survived the price drop without experiencing the misery that Venezuela suffers. The suffering was created by socialism.

America’s leftists cannot see the horrors of socialism even when they are right in front of them.

SOURCE





European Populism Not ‘Going Away’ Despite Dutch Election Result

Wilders actually increased the number of seats he won. Another such increase next time and he might be in the box seat

A far-right nationalist party in the Netherlands led by charismatic and controversial leader Geert Wilders failed to score a decisive victory in what was billed as the first electoral test for European populism since last year’s “Brexit” referendum and Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States.

Indeed, Wilders did not meet expectations in the Dutch election Wednesday, according to unofficial results, failing to earn the support of a majority of voters to back his platform of barring Muslim immigration and leaving the European Union.

Though the Dutch result dulls populist momentum—with elections involving rising nationalist parties still to come this year in France and Germany—political observers and experts say Wilders’ defeat does not signal that European populism is waning.

“People will see this result demonstrating that the populist balloon has busted a little bit,” Mathew Burrows, who studies Europe at the Atlantic Council, said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “I don’t see populism going away.”

Center Keeps Power

To be sure, the Dutch vote was a relief to centrist and anti-populist politicians across the region.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy retained power despite possessing fewer seats than in the last Parliament. The left-leaning Green Party, led by 30-year-old Jesse Klaver and his anti-populist platform, at least tripled its seats.

In the Netherlands’ fractured political system—28 parties ran and 13 are likely to have positions in the 150-seat lower house of Parliament—Rutte will have to form a coalition with others.

But that coalition isn’t likely to include Wilders’ Party for Freedom despite the fact he is expected to finish second, with 20 seats, an increase of eight.

That’s because other parties consider Wilders’ views to be so toxic that they have refused to govern with him in a coalition.

“The center is holding—that’s the essential message of the Dutch election,” Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, said in an interview with The Daily Signal.

“The politics in Europe over the last year and a half seemed to be running away from the center, and away from the establishment and elite,” added Daalder, who previously was the U.S. ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and served on the National Security Council as director for European Affairs.

“But the Dutch voted for pro-system parties that are pro-EU [European Union] and support sensible immigration policies and free trade,” Daalder said. “So an essential part of the message of the post-World War II period is retained, and that’s an important message.”

‘Move to the Right’

Yet observers based in the Netherlands say Wilders’ proposed policies have had impact, forcing politicians such as Rutte to shift their positions to the right—especially on immigration—to appease a portion of the electorate that is apprehensive about rising migration from non-Western countries.

Wilders has called for banning the Quran and for closing mosques and Islamic cultural centers and schools.

“His radical positions have forced parties ideologically close to his to try to accommodate those stances,” Bert Bakker, a communications professor at the University of Amsterdam, said in an interview with The Daily Signal. “Other parties moved a bit to the right on immigration.”

The Netherlands’ immigration policy is among the toughest in the EU, Bakker says, and Rutte’s rhetoric and recent actions—which have included a spat with Muslim-majority Turkey—have become more hardline.

Bakker notes that Wilders—a veteran of parliament who first got elected in 1998—is not the first Dutch politician to target immigration and Islam.

List Pim Fortuyn, a party led by Pim Fortuyn, a gay conservative critical of immigration and Islam, won 26 seats in 2002, more than Wilders’ peak of 24 seats in 2010. Fortuyn was assassinated on the campaign trail, just days before the 2002 election.  “We have seen a revolt against multiculturalism earlier,” Bakker said. “That’s part of our brand as a country.”

Addressing Anxieties

Like other European countries, the Netherlands has been affected by the surge of asylum seekers and refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

According to the Netherlands Institute for Social Research, a government research agency, non-Western immigrants rose from 7.6 percent to 12 percent of the Dutch population between 1996 and 2015.

The total population of the Netherlands grew by more than 110,000 in 2016, driven by a net migration of 88,000—mostly from Syria—according to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics.

Conservative politicians in some European countries—and Trump, among others in the U.S.—have criticized the EU for its initial response to the refugee crisis, especially Germany’s Angela Merkel.

Merkel, who is scheduled to meet with Trump in Washington on Friday, allowed tens of thousands of asylum-seekers from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East to enter Germany. Merkel’s governing coalition praised the Dutch election result.

“One of the biggest takeaways from this election is that mass immigration, border control, and the Islamist threat will remain as major issues in elections across Europe, especially in France,” said Nile Gardiner, an expert on transatlantic relations at The Heritage Foundation.

James Jeffrey, a former U.S. ambassador to Iraq and Turkey who also has held diplomatic posts in Europe, predicts that populists in Europe, including France’s Marine Le Pen, will face challenges in actually taking power despite their growing sway.

“The far right will not be successful in seizing power,” Jeffrey told The Daily Signal. “They will continue to scramble politics, but many of these European countries are far more left wing and international and multicultural than the progressives we see in the U.S. These people are gonna fight like hell to preserve that. For them, these are values, this is peace, and they see themselves as the alternative to the 19th and 20th century in Europe.”

While cheering the center’s hold on power in the Netherlands, Daalder, the former ambassador to NATO, says politicians should pay attention to the underlying grievances that are inspiring populism and resistance to an integrated Europe.

“The sentiment of these people doesn’t disappear in any one election,” Daalder said. “The task of all governments whether populist or not is to address that anxiety. There is no doubt the next Dutch government will continue to demand a clawback of power from Europe. The reality of politics hasn’t changed.”

SOURCE




Why I, editor of the Jewish Chronicle, think anti-Semites should be allowed on YouTube

STEPHEN POLLARD

Should you choose to believe what has been written about me on social media, you will think I am a paedophile who threatens to rape women who disagree with me. I suppose I should point out that these are lies.

Unfortunately for me, so too is the assertion that I control the media, which is also said about me. That’s not just Jews generally controlling the media – but me, personally.

According to some posts on Twitter and Facebook, I determine not only what other Jews write, taking orders from my Israeli masters – I also order around the many non-Jews in my (heavily moneyed) pocket.

So the accusations contained in a now infamous video by the former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, titled “Jews admit organising white genocide”, are pretty standard fare to anyone who has ever seen what Jew hate looks like.

The video was posted on YouTube in 2015 but has only attracted attention this week when it was used as a stick by the Home Affairs Select Committee with which to beat Google, which owns YouTube.

Giving evidence to the committee on Tuesday, Peter Barron, Google’s vice-president for communications, said that the video was certainly antisemitic but that YouTube nonetheless had no intention of removing it.

Cue gasps of astonishment and ridicule.

Yvette Cooper, who chairs the committee, told Mr Barron: “Your answers feel like a bit of a joke.” And every right-thinking person has seemed to join in the pillorying of Mr Barron and Google.

It’s clear that the video is indeed antisemitic. In it, Mr Duke says: “The Zionists have already ethnically cleansed the Palestinians, why not do the same thing to Europeans and Americans as well? No group on earth fights harder for its interests than do the Jews. By dividing a society they can weaken it and control it.” So there’s no debate that this is Jew hate in all its traditional poison.

And I’m sure Ms Cooper is right when she says: “Most people would be appalled by that video and think it goes against all standards of public decency in this country.”

But the near universal assumption among politicians and policymakers that because the video promotes repellent views it should therefore be banned takes us into very dangerous territory. Had the video told viewers that their duty was to seek out Jews and attack them – as many posts on social media do – then clearly it should be banned. Incitement to violence is an obvious breach of any coherent set of standards.

But banning views simply because many, or even most, people them find abhorrent is a form of mob rule dressed up in civilised clothes.

My penchant for chicken soup doubtless sickens vegetarians. Some vegetarians have compared the slaughter of animals for human food with the murder of human beings for pleasure. I find such a comparison grotesque, as I imagine do most meat eaters. Should we ban vegetarians from making the comparison because it so offensive to so many people?

You say no, because the Duke video is different altogether. So who decides just what we are sufficiently appalled by to ban: Yvette Cooper? A judge? An algorithm? A popular vote? Since we are talking about Jews, the most obvious example of this is Holocaust denial.

In some countries, such as Germany and Austria, it is illegal to deny the Holocaust. Given their particular histories, one can understand why.

But understanding why a view might be banned is not the same as accepting it should be. Silencing the Holocaust-denier David Irving and his ilk through the law achieves nothing except a larger prison population. Silencing them through the destruction of their reputation and the exposure of their lies actually defeats them.

It was not Irving’s incarceration in an Austrian cell that destroyed his reputation. It was his lost libel action against the legitimate historian, Deborah Lipstadt.

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. 

***************************





17 March, 2017

New book on killing of Jews in Poland exposes raw nerve

I generally get on well with Poles, but in my experience, Poles to this day have a bug in their brain about Jews

A prominent Polish historian presented evidence Wednesday about Polish villagers’ widespread killing of Jews fleeing Nazis during World War II, touching a raw nerve in a country still grappling with its role during the Holocaust.

The research is likely to irk the nationalist Polish government, which has taken aim at those seeking to undermine its official stance that Poles were only heroes in the war, not collaborators who committed heinous crimes.

In launching the English-language version of her 2011 book, “Such a Beautiful Sunny Day,” Barbara Engelking details dozens of cases of everyday Poles raping Jewish women and bludgeoning Jews to death with axes, shovels and rocks. The book, which came out in Polish under the previous government, takes its title from the last words of a Jew pleading with peasants to spare his life before he was beaten and shot to death. It offers a searing indictment of Polish complicity that will now reach a far wider audience.

“The responsibility for the extermination of Jews in Europe is borne by Nazi Germany,” she writes. “Polish peasants were volunteers in the sphere of murdering Jews.”

For decades, Polish society avoided discussing such killings or denied that Polish anti-Semitism motivated them, blaming all atrocities on the Germans. A turning point was the publication of a book, “Neighbors,” in 2000 by Polish-American sociologist Jan Tomasz Gross, which explored the murder of Jedwabne’s Jews by their Polish neighbors and resulted in widespread soul-searching and official state apologies.

But since the conservative and nationalistic Law and Justice party consolidated power in 2015, it has sought to stamp out discussion and research on the topic. It has demonized Gross and investigated him on whether he had slandered the country by asserting that Poles killed more Jews than Germans during the war - a crime punishable by up to three years in prison.

Despite the current climate, Engelking said she had no fear of recriminations and proudly took on the government’s historical revisionism.

“People think I should be afraid, but I am not. I have a sense now of inner freedom and they cannot harm me in any way,” she said during a break at a symposium recognizing the launch of her book at Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial. “Let them try ... you cannot obey this idea because this is really not true. I am obliged to tell the truth, that is all.”

Engelking, the founder and director of the Polish Center of Holocaust Research in Warsaw, said her decade-long research relied on diaries, documents and court files that gave voice not only to survivors but also victims. The government has long pointed to Poland having the largest number of citizens honored by Yad Vashem for saving Jews as evidence of their heroism. Engelking, however, said there were far less who aided Jews than those who betrayed them and that climate made the actions of the few all the more noble.

“There was severe punishment from Germans for helping Jews. They (the saviors) acted not only against German law, but against their neighbors, against the atmosphere, against the common sense of anti-Semitism,” she said.

Mateusz Szpytma, a historian with Poland’s state-run National Remembrance Institute, said he found the book to be written in a “prosecutor’s style” and often relied on a single source.

“The attention is almost solely focused on negative events that took place but were not the only ones,” he said. “Almost every element that is unfavorable to Poles is taken as true. Positive things are pushed to the margin.”

The noted Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer said the significance of Engelking’s findings was the enormity of the cruelty toward Jews that she details. “It is something that we assumed but she proves,” he said.

He said there were parallels to the way Jews were treated by the local population in other European countries like Lithuania, Bulgaria and Greece. But the sheer scope of the genocide in Poland -- half of the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust were Polish -- made Engelking’s findings most pertinent.

Havi Dreifuss, a Tel Aviv University scholar and director of Yad Vashem’s center for research on the Holocaust in Poland, said Engelking’s research has shed new light on the last phase of the Holocaust, after Jews were packed into ghettos and sent to extermination camps, and how even those who had managed to survive that still faced the wrath of their compatriots.

She said estimates range between 160,000-250,000 Jews who escaped and sought help from fellow Poles. She said only about 10-20 percent of those survived, with the rest rejected, informed upon or killed by the rural Poles themselves.

“This research reveals not only the Jewish immense efforts to escape, as well as the Jewish despair and helplessness. It also exposes the terrible reality in which those Jews found themselves: a reality where very few acts of kindness were lost among the countless acts of cruelty, abuse and meanness,” she said.

Poles have been raised on wartime stories of Polish suffering and heroism and many react viscerally when confronted with the growing body of scholarship about Polish involvement in the killing of Jews.

A recent poll showed an overwhelming majority of Poles believe their ancestors helped save Jews and rarely turned them over.

Engelking said that was unlikely to change as long as this “propaganda” continued and the “truth about our behavior during the war” was not allowed to be shared widely in schools and with the public.

“I hope that after this counter revolution that we are experiencing now, next time we will have another counter revolution,” she said.

SOURCE






Why Report From Yemen When There Is Bacon In Jerusalem?

Here’s the reason why you don’t see much news about Yemen and the disaster unfolding there under a proxy war fought between Saudi Arabia and Iran:

Civilian deaths in Yemen Jan to July 2015: UN report
I wrote a long time ago about the disastrously high civilian death rate in Yemen. That gets nothing like the breathless coverage which Israel’s unbelievably careful airstrikes in Gaza get. I also wrote about the tragedy of ending a millennium of Jewish life in Yemen, with Jews finally driven out by Muslims fighting each other.

When so many journalists are hanging around Israel, enjoying the safety, security, fine restaurants and other amenities, you have to look at all the places where they don’t go. These journalists love the easy life here: pre-written, pre-researched “stories” are handed to them in the form of “research papers” by far left NGOs with strong anti-Israel agendas. That’s not happening in Yemen. Kudos to Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times for actually trying and reporting why he can’t go to Yemen.

A major part of the complaint against Lethal Journalism in Israel is undue and overblown attention on Israel. It’s worth remembering this from Matti Friedman’s earth shattering revelations from inside AP in Israel (Aug 2014):

Staffing is the best measure of the importance of a story to a particular news organization. When I was a correspondent at the AP, the agency had more than 40 staffers covering Israel and the Palestinian territories. That was significantly more news staff than the AP had in China, Russia, or India, or in all of the 50 countries of sub-Saharan Africa combined. It was higher than the total number of news-gathering employees in all the countries where the uprisings of the “Arab Spring” eventually erupted.

This vast oversupply of journalists is met with a corresponding plague of left wing, well financed NGOs and Palestinian “spokesmen” feeding them easy press release stories with little extra leg work involved.

The numbers have changed but the relative staffing levels haven’t. Obviously it’s damned dangerous to be a journalist in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and all the other Islamic states currently going through murderous turmoil. So stay in Jerusalem, the American Colony hotel has a non-kosher breakfast including bacon!

Ever since Trump’s infamous “last night in Sweden” line, my social media timeline has been filed with reports of every single shooting, stabbing, rape and bombing which occurs in the tiny nation of Sweden (population around 10m). The point being not that these events should or shouldn’t be international news, up to now they most certainly haven’t been. It is largely alternative media sources that are now reporting this, the established media tried hard not to cover the steadily deteriorating public safety situation in Sweden for years. Highlighting it would expose their failure to inform their audience. For years Sweden has demonized Israel with exactly this kind of undue focus on negative stories. It’s fun watching them freak out when applied to them.

It is not necessary for the established media to lie about something for them to create a completely #FakeNews impression. They only need to be highly selective on what they do report. If you report every act of unkindness perpetrated by an Israeli and every act of kindness by an Arab while ignoring so many terrorist attacks, your audience will reach a guided conclusion. If you ignore civilian deaths in Yemen and report only on civilian deaths when Israel defends herself, of course Israel will be demonized and Saudi Arabia and Iran will receive little attention.

That is the essence of lethal journalism.

SOURCE





REAL RACISM: BlackLivesMatter Leader Calls for Genocide of White People…

Yusra Khogali, a Canadian Black Lives Matter leader, is a real piece of work. And by that I mean she’s a racist stinkpot with the IQ of a two-by-four. We’ve written about Khogali at least once before. You may have spotted her in the news a while back, when she tweeted out a ‘prayer to Allah,’ asking him to keep her from killing white people. #LittleMuslimThings

Well, Yusra just made the news again. This time for calling white people subhuman and talking about wiping them out. No joke…

A Black Lives Matter leader has come under fire after arguing on social media that white people are “sub-human” and suffer from “recessive genetic defects,” and musing about how the race could be wiped out.

“Whiteness is not humxness, in fact, white skin is sub-humxn,” she wrote. “All phenotypes exist within the black family and white ppl are a genetic defect of blackness.”

“Melanin enables black skin to capture light and hold it in its memory mode which reveals that blackness converts light into knowledge. Melanin directly communicates with cosmic energy,” she added.

The Black Lives Matter leader then wondered how the white race could be wiped out. According to her, “Black ppl simply through their dominant genes can literally wipe out the white race if we had the power to.”

Imagine if a non-BlackLivesMatter-SJW said something like this? The whole of American conservatism would be held responsible. Actually, you don’t have to imagine, because it’s already happened (see UN Demands America Pay Black People. For… Slavery?! and College Football Star Says He Raped Woman As Payback for ‘400 Years of Slavery…’).

Conservatives, or anyone the left disagrees with, are still being lambasted for the racism of strangers who lived 100 years ago. To whom we have zero connection. But this? Perfectly permissible.

When it comes to the rampant racism from activist groups like BLM, we haven’t heard so much as a croak from the left. Who claims to care about all things to do with racial injustice. In fact, if pressed with these quotes, the left would likely say Yusra Khogali is a “bad apple” at most… Which is an understatement. She’s more like a hemlock-laced apple with a razor blade hidden inside. A savage snack.

But the point here? This she-beast’s statements aren’t an isolated incident (read Black Lives Matter Activist Wants To ‘Kill The White House.’ Yes, Really…). Her comments are vile and gross, yes. But surprising? Not so much.

Black Lives Matter has proven time and time again they share Khogali’s views on whites. Which is that they’re inferior and deserving of all the punishments and stuff – sometimes even including torture and death. But remember, it’s Trump and his supporters who are super duper racist.

Fighting fake racism with actual racism? Doesn’t do much in the way of convincing people of one’s cause. Oops.

In case you were wondering why people resent #BlackLivesMatter (see Petition to Classify BlackLivesMatter as a Terrorist Group Garners 130k Signatures…), this is it.

Oh yeah, they’re also lying liars

SOURCE





Obese female Canadian Leftist politician calls those who disagree with Leftist ideas  “sewer rats”

Leftist arrogance again

According to Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman, farmers, ranchers, concerned parents, small business people, oil and gas workers and every other normal person who does not support NDP ideas, are rats.

But not just rats, the worst kind of rats, the kind that live in the sewers and filth.

Imagine hating the people of Alberta that much.

Watch my video to see Deputy Premier Sarah Hoffman calling Albertans “sewer rats”.

I’ll even show you the first time the NDP tried this line. NDP have used this socialist Dr. Seuss routine at least once before and the media ignored it.

The list of insults the NDP hurl at Albertans is getting longer everyday: fear mongers, bigots, xenophobes, embarrassing cousins, anger machine, tin foil hatters, sexist, racists, chicken littles and now sewer rats.

None of these statements were misspeaks. Each one is rehearsed, calculated and planned.

These insults are exactly what the NDP think of Albertans. When they call us names, it might be the only time they're being honest with us.

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. 

***************************



16 March, 2017

Cultural Marxism and the Extreme Right

William Walter Kay looks at some of the fallacious explanations for the influence of Cultural Marxism, aka Political Correctness

Versions of the Frankfurt School's history as chronicled in Alt-Right videos are very similar. The videos often use identical quotations. William Lind's, The Origins of Political Correctness (2000) is the template.

Here is the Alt-Right's plot-line:

World War I threw Marxism into crisis because the working classes of Europe's warring states, rather than join in an international revolution as Marx predicted, dutifully donned uniforms and bravely fought for their homelands. Nationalism triumphed over communism.

The few uprisings occurring outside Russia quickly collapsed. One of these aborted revolutionary regimes, the Hungarian Soviet Republic, had for a Minister of Education Georg Lukacs. He later played a role in the Frankfurt School. As Education Minister, Lukacs foisted sex education onto the public school system, and this outrage facilitated the revolutionary regime's downfall.

After WWI, perplexed Marxists searched for alternative strategies.

In 1922 a wealthy German-Jewish Marxist, Felix Weil, summoned a symposium of Marxists: the First Marxist Work Week. Lukacs attended.

This symposium launched the Institute for Social Research (ISR, a.k.a. the Frankfurt School). While the ISR was founded by the "Marxist-Communist Party of Germany," it was named ISR to conceal its Marxist nature.

At this juncture, Alt-Right narrators introduce Italian communist Antonio Gramsci, usually referencing his Prison Notebooks, and citing a passage wherein Gramsci encourages fellow communists to embark on a long march through the cultural institutions of capitalist society in order to ready the proletariat for revolution. Other Marxists, often Lukacs, are then quoted to the effect that the previous revolution attempt failed because the proles were blinded by culture. Overthrowing the political order required first overturning the cultural order.

Thus the Frankfurt School dropped direct class struggle and switched to cultural struggle. They divorced Marxism from economics and replaced the proletariat with various, allegedly oppressed, races and genders. This reorientation of Marxism accelerated rapidly after Max Horkheimer became ISR director in 1930. Horkheimer prioritised the study of art and psychology. In 1932 Horkheimer welcomed Herbert Marcuse onto his team.

After the German Nazi Party assumed office (an event no Alt-Right commentator condemns) the Frankfurt School relocated to New York City as an adjunct to Columbia University. During its New York years (1934-1951) the Frankfurt School accomplished its most important work. The School's main figures were: Horkheimer, Marcuse, Theodor Adorno, and Erich Fromm.

Fromm and Marcuse focused on psychology and sex. They promoted sexual liberation and androgyny. Marcuse advocated "polymorphous perversity." Fromm contended that gender was merely a social construct.

In the 1940s Marcuse became a key member of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, forerunner of the CIA) while Adorno and Horkheimer moved to Hollywood.

In 1950 Adorno published The Authoritarian Personality – an influential and damning critique of American culture.

Marcuse's Eros and Civilization (1955) elevated him to guru status among sexual revolutionaries in the "New Left" movement which appeared during the late-1960s student protest groundswell. During this period Cultural Marxism was rebranded as "Critical Theory."

The by now ubiquitous university departments of: women's studies, black studies, native studies, whiteness studies, gender studies, and gay studies are branches of Critical Theory. The doctrine disseminated by Critical Theory is often referred to as "Political Correctness."

Political Correctness is similar to Marxism in that: (a) both are ideologies; (b) both deploy unifactoral explanations (economics or power); (c) both divide society between good and bad people; (d) both seek to expropriate either property or rights; (e) both rely on self-serving analysis (economics or deconstruction).

While Political Correctness has invaded the mainstream media, it is far more deeply entrenched on college campuses. Political Correctness is also deeply embedded in government-run multi-cultural and affirmative action programs.

There is an Orwellian aspect to Political Correctness. Diversity is praised, but certainly not the diversity of viewpoints. The attack on discrimination and racism translates into racist discrimination against white people. Inclusion is preached; exclusion is practiced.

Frankfurt School influence is vividly displayed by the use of psychological terms to censor opponents. Persons questioning the gay agenda or Muslim migration are dismissed as homophobes, xenophobes, or Islamophobes – as though they were mentally ill.

A mantra of the Politically Correct is "diversity is strength" yet their multicultural and reverse discrimination campaigns divide and weaken society. Their promotion of political lesbianism and victim feminism fuels gender wars, which further weaken and divide society.

The Frankfurt School/Cultural Marxism/Critical Theory/Political Correctness crusade is aimed at fomenting catastrophic discord within Western (i.e. European) civilization.

There is much wrong with the Alt-Right's Frankfurt School narrative. Some inaccuracies will be rectified in accompanying articles; however, six much-repeated errors can be quickly dispatched. (There are more ludicrous mistakes found in this or that video, but they are not worth debunking.)

Firstly, the crisis in Marxism, circa WWI, resulted not from the fact that workers were stuffed into uniforms and blasted off as cannon fodder in yet another inter-imperialist war – that much was anticipated by the Marxist paradigm. No, the crisis arose because Europe's Marxist leaders themselves wholeheartedly took up the battle cry and, in defiance of what they had been preaching, spewed war-mongering chauvinistic rhetoric.

Secondly, the Hungarian Soviet Republic lasted for 133 chaotic days. (Baron) Lukacs was an education commissar for a few weeks. During this time, battles raged on Budapest's streets. The dubious idea that his sex-education policies were either perverse or consequential is a meme exclusive to loopy anti-Semitic publications where it is never footnoted. More importantly, while Lukacs attended Weil's Marxist Work Week, he was never part of the Frankfurt School.

Thirdly, there never was a Marxist-Communist Party of Germany. There was a Communist Party of Germany (KDP, est. 1919) which the Frankfurt School opposed. A bait-and-switch in the Alt-Right videos involves starting the story with the same grainy black-and-white photo of the 19 attendees to the Marxist Work Week among whom there were a few Communists. The "Frankfurt School," however, consists of a famous clique of scholars (Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Herbert Marcuse, Erich Fromm, and Jurgen Habermas), none of whom attended the Marxist Work Week. The few associates of the Frankfurt School who were briefly in the KPD are better known for their later anti-communist writings.

Fourthly, Gramsci had no involvement in the Frankfurt School. Gramsci was arrested by Mussolini in 1926 and died in jail in 1937, age 48. He never visited Germany and never met the Frankfurt scholars. His connection to "Cultural Marxism" began in the 1980s when a few publish-or-perish professors established a fertile niche mining his prison notebooks. This project had the obvious ingredients of a successful academic enterprise: (a) a revolutionary martyr unsullied by power; and (b) 3,000-pages of turgid prose based more on classical scholars than Marx. The notebooks (which were vetted by Fascist prison censors) were not available in English until the late-1970s and thus could not possibly have had the timely influence on academia that the Alt-Right alleges.

Fifthly, every Alt-Right video contains a quote, misattributed to Gramsci, about a crypto-communist strategy called the "long march through the institutions of power." The quote is actually from the West German academic Rudi Dutschke (1940-1979) who was primarily involved in anti-nuclear activism, Christian proselytising, and supporting dissident groups in Eastern Europe. The phrase "the long march" elicits Mao Zedong, not Gramsci. The idea that Gramsci reviewed real-time Italian translations of pamphlets from obscure Chinese peasant leaders while on his death-bed is absurd.

Finally, Marcuse was hardly a "key" member of the OSS or CIA. Rather he (and several other Frankfurt Schoolers) were but foot-soldiers in a vast cultural army deployed by the American government at the outset of the Cold War.

Historical inaccuracy is the least of the Alt-Right's problems. These are men freighted with baleful baggage. Many Alt-Right websites are openly, extremely anti-Semitic. Many glorify known fascist monsters. Their videos rely heavily on argument by repetition. Snarl words like "Marxist" echo obsessively. As well, their videos wander off into topics such as the Federal Reserve, the gold standard, constitutional jurisprudence, and other affairs where elite policy, reprehensible though it may be, cannot conceivably be the puppeteering of the invisible disciples of the Frankfurt School.

The Alt-Right's great analytical failing is their lack of effort to properly insert Political Correctness into the command and control structure of the universities and mass media conglomerates. Had the Alt-Right done this, they would have learned that the directors of such institutions are people without any real or even likely connection to Marxism. Alt-Rightists believe radicalized students control both university curriculum and mainstream media policy; i.e. the lunatics run the asylum.

Whether stated or not, the Alt-Right's Cultural Marxist critique presumes the existence of a sprawling network of Jewish conspirators.

Despite the above, Alt-Right theories about Political Correctness should not be casually dismissed. The Alt-Right is a growing concern, not because of their worn-out Jew-baiting/red-baiting malarkey, but because they are pointing out something that is real and troubling about the world.

A massive anti-white, anti-male, anti-heterosexist, anti-Christian campaign is being waged by academic and media elites. This is not a hallucination unique to persons baptised into Judeo-Bolshevik diabolism. The Alt-Right is growing because they are discussing something we are all witnessing. What the Alt-Right projects onto this observation; is quite another matter…

SOURCE  






It’s okay to ban religious symbols: European Union court

COMPANIES may ban staff from wearing Islamic headscarves and other visible religious symbols, the European Union’s top court has ruled, setting off a storm of complaint from rights groups and religious leaders.

In its first ruling on an issue that has become highly charged across Europe, the Court of Justice (ECJ) has found a Belgian firm which had a rule that employees who dealt with customers should not wear visible religious or political symbols may not have discriminated against a Muslim receptionist it dismissed for wearing a headscarf.

The judgement on that and a French case came on the eve of a Dutch election in which Muslim immigration is a key issue and weeks before a similarly charged presidential vote in France, where headscarves are banned in public service jobs.

French conservative candidate Francois Fillon hailed the ECJ ruling as “an immense relief” to companies and workers that would contribute to “social peace”.

But a group backing the fired employees said the ruling may shut many Muslim women out of the workforce. European rabbis said the Court had added to rising incidences of hate crime to send a message that “faith communities are no longer welcome”.

The judges in Luxembourg concluded the dismissals of the two women may, depending on the view of national courts, have breached EU laws against religious discrimination.

They determined that the case of the French engineer Asma Bougnaoui, fired by software company Micropole after a customer complaint, may well have been discriminatory.

Reactions, however, focused on the findings that services firm G4S in Belgium was entitled to dismiss receptionist Samira Achbita in 2006 if, in pursuit of legitimate business interests, it fairly applied a broad dress code for all customer-facing staff to project an image of political and religious neutrality.

The Open Society Justice Initiative, a group backed by the philanthropist George Soros, said the ruling “weakens the guarantee of equality” offered by EU laws: “In places where national law is weak, this ruling will exclude many Muslim women from the workplace,” policy office Maryam Hmadoun said.

SOURCE






Australia: Why Coopers boycott is a disgrace

WHAT is happening to this country? There isn’t anything more Australian than two people sitting down, sharing a drink and having a yarn. Our core culture is built around this activity.

Our diversity and inclusiveness as a nation — by far one of the friendliest and most tolerant on the planet — has long been lubricated by people sitting down and sharing a drink together as they explore their differences, sort out their differences or just accept their differences.

And now we have this travesty. A beer boycott by inner-city hipsters who think they are right-on but actually are just outing themselves as ignorant twats.

If you haven’t heard, a bunch of pubs and bars in the “progressive” parts of Sydney and Melbourne have banned beers made by Coopers after the Bible Society produced a video featuring a debate about gay marriage.

Released last week, “Keeping it Light” features Liberal MP and former human rights commissioner Tim Wilson and Andrew Hastie having a “light discussion” on the “heavy topic” of gay marriage over a Coopers beer.

Wilson, who supports gay marriage, and Hastie, a conservative Christian in favour of traditional marriage, are each asked to state their case and then say which element of the other’s argument they found most convincing.

Coopers has released a statement saying it didn’t have any involvement in the video featuring its beer.

The video shows two perfectly respectable people offering two perfectly respectable but differing points of view.

The aim of the video is to foster rational and measured discussion about an important issue. What it’s done is flush some bigots out of their beard-grooming salons.

Bigots are people who are intolerant of other people’s points of view. The majority of Australia’s population can’t cop bigots.

The actions of the pubs and bars who have boycotted Coopers beer because of its appearance in the video are disgraceful. It is bigotry, pure and simple.

These venues are attacking an innocent party. They are having a hissy fit because an alternate view to the one they hold was given equal weight, and are punishing a neutral bystander to the exchange.

A cynic might say it is a marketing exercise to ingratiate themselves to their customer base. If that’s the case, shame on them.

What they should do is invite Tim Wilson and Andrew Hastie to their venues and use the occasion as a vehicle to promote inclusion, tolerance and recognition, the very things the gay marriage lobby are pleading for, and what the Bible society was hoping to foster. A society that accommodates opposing points of view is an admirable one.

Coopers will survive this. It is one of Australia’s great businesses and is a good corporate citizen. People love the company’s beer, and it is the largest Australian-owned brewery.

When Thomas Cooper first started making beer in Adelaide in 1862, Australia was a young country full of promise. The old codger had a beard that would make him feel right at home in the pubs and bars banning his beers. If he knew how prejudiced they were he wouldn’t be seen dead in them.

Beer has helped Australia recover from a dozen wars. Beer has helped people from dozens of nations assimilate into a country far from their original homes. Beer has been witness to our country’s greatest triumphs.

To ban a particular beer for no reason at all is bloody well un-Australian.

SOURCE





Australian public broadcaster has not learned the Trump lesson

Slavish devotion to minority causes tends to piss off the majority

IT seems to me the ABC is trying its hardest to become redundant. It focuses on progressive causes at the expense of reporting the news. No wonder it’s haemorrhaging viewers.

While the Brisbane ABC newsroom presents reasonably straightforward reports, the national shows like Q&A, Insiders and even the 7.30 Report have a distinctive left wing twang. It panders to the inner-city elites and leaves the rest of us scratching our heads.

I no longer turn to the ABC for the facts. I know I will not get balance and depth of coverage free from political influence.

And today ABC is again making the news rather than reporting it.

It has declined to apologise to the family of cartoonist Bill Leak for an on-air outburst in which an activist interrupted Monday’s Q&A program by calling him a racist,

Senator Seselja, who is Assistant Minister for Multicultural ­Affairs, yesterday labelled the protesters “a disgrace”, accusing them of “dancing on the grave of Bill Leak”.

“You really have a continuation of some of the Twitter ­hatred that’s been directed ­towards Bill Leak in his death, and I would just say to those individuals to perhaps have a little bit of decency and a little bit of compassion,” he told Sky News.

Senator Seselja said the pursuit of Leak over the cartoon through a complaint to the Human Rights Commission under section 18C had highlighted failures in the way the law dealt with race-hate allegations.

It is further proof the ABC has lost the plot and should be defunded.

Its broadcasters remain in denial about the threat of Islamic extremism and everything it touched reeks of political correctness.

Aunty, meanwhile, continues to pander to unions by giving them too much airplay. The ABC fuelled the hate campaign against Tony Abbott until his authority was so weakened he had to be removed.

It’s time our national broadcaster went back to its roots and did some in-depth reporting on the union underbelly controlling state and federal governments.

And I would like to see Aunty should stick to its original charter of providing radio and television and get out of digital this and online that. The ABC pays people to run no fewer than 350 websites. Why? It’s overkill and costly and you are paying for it.

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. 

***************************





15 March, 2017

One reason why Trump wants to build a wall and kick illegals out

A NOTORIOUS street gang dubbed “world’s most feared” is allegedly sacrificing underage girls in “Satanic rituals”, US police say.

More than a dozen members of the LA-based, Salvadoran gang Mara Salvatrucha, commonly known as MS-13, have been charged in connection with at least eight murders, many involving high school students, across the US since last month.

While MS-13 has long been associated with devil worship and uses plenty of Satanic symbolism, including its trademark “devil’s horns” hand signal, it is the first time evidence of members’ alleged participation in Satanic murders has been presented in the US.

In recent days, horror details of MS-13 crimes have been revealed in police documents tendered in two separate court cases underway in New York and Texas.

Two El Salvadoran illegal immigrants, Miguel Alvarez-Flores, 22, and Diego Hernandez-Rivera, 18, have been indicted in the alleged murder of a 15-year-old girl as part of a Satanic ritual as well as the kidnap, torture and rape of two other teens.

A 14-year-old girl who was allegedly held hostage in a Houston apartment by purported MS-13 leader Alvarez-Flores, his co-accused Hernandez-Rivera and four other gang members in January, is at the centre of the prosecution.

The girl told police she was plied with alcohol and drugs, sexually assaulted by a gang member called “Flaco” and held down while Alvarez-Flores tattooed an image of the Grim Reaper stretching from her knee to her foot, according to court documents cited by ABC 13.

She told police that during her 18 days in captivity, she met another hostage, a young girl called “Genesis”, whom she claimed was later murdered for insulting a Satanic shrine Alvarez-Florez had set up.

Alvarez-Flores then made a show of appeasing Satan by placing a lit cigarette on a Satanic statue at the centre of the shrine before declaring that “material” objects no longer satisfied Satan. Instead, “the Beast wants another soul”, he said, according to police documents.

The 14-year-old claimed when she woke up the following morning, Genesis had vanished.

On February 16, the shot and tortured body of female believed to be aged between 15 and 25 was found. Police struggled to identify her for almost two weeks before confirming her remains belonged to Genesis Conejo, a 15-year-old reported missing by her family, who believed she may have run off with an older man.

One night during her confinement, she observed an incident where Genesis made an outburst against a shrine dedicated to the gang members’ satanic beliefs,” the prosecutor said.

In the courtroom, Hernandez-Rivera brushed his nose.

“Diabolico (Alvarez-Flores) was offended at the outburst,” the prosecutor said. He approached the statue and offered it a cigarette. Then he walked back to the other gang members.

“The beast did not want a material offering, but wanted a soul,” Alvarez-Flores said, according to the prosecutor.

When the girl next woke, Genesis was gone.

She reappeared on the morning of February 16, dead in the middle of a street near Houston’s Chinatown area — no ID, a ring of little elephants around one finger.

She had a bullet hole in her head, and another in her chest, both of which appeared to have been fired at close range, police said.

It took detectives some time to piece together what happened. But last week SWAT officers raided the apartment and arrested Alvarez-Flores and Hernandez-Rivera — both of whom allegedly admitted involvement in the girl’s death.

“Prepare yourself; it is your turn,” Alvarez-Flores told Hernandez-Rivera after he returned from the shrine, prosecutors allege. “He knew this was an order by his leader to kill” Genesis.

A group of gang members then drove off with Genesis, telling her they were going to meet a marijuana dealer. Instead, they pulled over and instructed the teen to sit on the grass on the side of the road.

Police allege Alvarez-Flores pulled out a pistol and waved it at Hernandez-Rivera, who took it and shot the girl.

In a separate case, 10 MS-13 members have been indicted over seven murders, including the slaying of two young girls, in New York’s Long Island.

Best friends Nisa Mickens, 15, and Kayla Cuevas, 16, were beaten with baseball bats and hacked with a machete during an attack that began when gang members spotted them walking together in Brentwood.

The attack was allegedly in retaliation for derogatory comments Kayla had made about MS-13’s presence at her high school.

The accused men — all illegal immigrants from El Salvador or Honduras, and are among 13 people charged with crimes including racketeering and multiple counts of conspiracy to murder.

One of them was deported to El Salvador back in 2010 and sneaked back into the US by July 14, 2014, when he allegedly murdered Jose Lainez-Murcia, his co-worker at a landscaping company.

“The day Nisa Mickens and Kayla Cuevas were heinously murdered, the Suffolk County Police Department made a commitment to their families and to the residents of Brentwood that justice would be served, Suffolk County Police Commissioner Tim Sini said, Fox News reported. “Today, in collaboration with the FBI and the United States Attorney’s Office, we have delivered on that promise.”

Elmer Lopez and German Cruz and two other fugitives have been charged with the murder of Peña-Hernandez, who police allege was a MS-13 member and killed because he was suspected of violating gang rules.

A third juvenile MS-13 member has been charged with the Peña-Hernandez murder. Police say victim was killed in June 2016, but his badly decomposed remains were not recovered until October.

Police also found the bodies of 19-year-old Oscar Acosta and 15-year-old Miguel Garcia-Moran in a remote industrial area of the town. Acosta had been missing since May, and Garcia-Moran vanished in last February. None of the suspects indictedlast week have been charged with their murders.

Police have said MS-13 is the largest gang on Long Island with Suffolk County “cliques” concentrated in the villages of Brentwood, Huntington, Copiague, Farmingdale, and Islip. The gang has been blamed for 30 other killings on Long Island since 2010. “For far too long, MS-13 has been meting out their own version of the death penalty,” New York Attorney Robert Capers said.

Since the killings, Suffolk County police have arrested more than 125 suspected MS-13 gang members in Brentwood and elsewhere.

There are an estimated 100,000 MS-13 members worldwide, between 10,000 and 20,000 of them in the US.

SOURCE





Charles Murray’s Crime: Telling Liberals They Are Making Things Worse

Do you know the higher education version of the dog-ate-my-homework excuse? It is: “outside agitators.” We heard it from Berkeley at the beginning of February, and now we just got it from the president of Middlebury College, who has written that she was shocked, shocked that activism was taking place on her campus on the occasion of a visit by libertarian intellectual Charles Murray. But not to worry:

    "We believe that many of these protestors were outside agitators, but there are indications that Middlebury College students were involved as well"

So that’s all right.

The rest of us are waiting for the arrests, expulsions, suspensions, and general disregard for due process that apply when, e.g., a conservative student dares to publish a video rant by his class teacher.

On the other hand, there is nothing like flat-out liberal injustice to keep the Trump brigade in full fighting trim.

It is appropriate, of course, that the lefty social justice warriors at Middlebury College would want to shut up Charles Murray. His life work is a searing indictment of liberal welfare state policy. He is saying, in every sentence: Hello liberals, your grand plan isn’t working. In fact, you are making things worse.

I looked at my bookshelf and found four of Murray’s books immediately. Let’s quickly rehearse what they argue.

In Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 Murray argues that liberals were so confident that their Great Society programs would succeed that they instrumented them with social science research. But when the science settled out it showed that the programs didn’t work. The liberal response? Bupkis.

In The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life Murray worried that our current educational and cultural system was segregating people by intelligence, and this was favoring the intelligent against the not-so-intelligent. Murray got into trouble because he pointed out that African Americans tested low on IQ tests. You are not allowed to say this in America and so Charles Murray must be a racist. If what he was saying were true it would mean that liberals were making things worse for African Americans. QED: Murray is a racist liar.

Then Murray did something really racist. He wrote Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. If he was not allowed to write about blacks, then he would rewrite The Bell Curve for whites only. People of Color need not apply. In Coming Apart Murray argues that the top 25 percent of whites is doing fine, with great careers and merger marriages; the middle half of whites is doing only fair; and the bottom 30 percent, living in places like white-working-class Fishtown in Philadelphia, is in trouble: the men don’t work much and the women don’t marry much. Remember, this is just about white people. Nothing to do with People of Color.

Of course, there’s more. In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace the Welfare State speaks for itself. Murray proposes a curious mechanical idea, to give adult Americans a basic income of $10,000 per year instead of welfare. The idea is to attach money to useless young men. This would encourage young women to marry the fathers of their children, and then start playing “Why Don’t You Do Right” to hubby over the smartphone.

With By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission Murray gets radical. He proposes to mount a frontal attack on the administrative state and its regulations. All he needs is a billionaire to fund a foundation to hire lawyers and make life miserable for the middle-level bureaucrats that put out the regulations that have strangled the U.S. economy during the Obama years. These middle-level lifers want a quiet life. Murray’s Rottweiler lawyers will make that impossible.

Golly, that is five books already and I haven’t even mentioned Human Accomplishment which I also have floating around here somewhere.

You can see why Charles Murray must not be allowed to infect Middlebury College and pollute the special snowflakes that teach and study there. Why, a man that spends his life writing Wrongthink books like Losing Ground, The Bell Curve, Coming Apart, and the rest is just not who we are. And so the only thing to do is to bring in the outside agitators and then be shocked, shocked when the resulting demonstrations are only “mostly peaceful.”

I suppose that this is a good sign for conservatives. With their hysteria and their “mostly peaceful” protests liberals are unwittingly telling us they are out of ideas.

The problem is that if liberals won’t sit down and at least give a respectful hearing to a gentlemanly scholar like Charles Murray and his judgements on their policies then the only way to reverse the liberal failures will be through more robust methods of less gentlemanly folks.

Which is why we have President Trump.

SOURCE






Alt-Left Insanity: Can We Have a Day Without Whiny, Male Liberals, Too?

This week was the Day Without “Some” Women. Hopefully, next we’ll get a day without liberal men, too. We saw lefties proclaim that women shouldn’t work on International Women’s Day, essentially arguing that the way for women to get ahead is for them to skip work. That’s advice given by no boss ever. But it worked for the lazy lefties of Alexandria, Va., who opted out of teaching the children and decided to make parents do the job they were paid to do.

Our friends over at Fusion even bothered to interview some of the strikers in a piece headlined oh so subtly: “Talking to 11 NYC women (and one man) on Women’s Day about striking, Trump, and why capitalism sucks.” Yes, this is the site of an actual, alleged news organization. Anyhow, the comments from strikers include: When one couple was asked “Is this your first protest?” the “reporter” got an illuminating answer: “No! We try to go to one every week. We’re retired now.”

That cuts to the heart of the alt-lefty protest movement and why media and especially Republicans on the Hill need to ignore it. It’s not a tidal wave of growing opposition. It’s a group of people who do it as a vocation or even a vacation. Here’s the rest of the actual quote: “Sunday it was Standing Rock. [To her wife] Honey, what was the other one we went to on Saturday? There was Not My President, Planned Parenthood. Oh—and every day we make calls to our representatives in Minnesota.”

So let’s count on the alt-left for even more crazy from the previous week:

The Global Socialist Workers Paradise: So you thought the bogus strike was an event for women? Nope. Thanks to our friends at whackjob, lefty Fusion, it’s clear this was one more chance to put the red brigades into the street to protest President Trump.

Fusion, the voice of “The Resistance,” complained the holiday isn’t left-wing enough. Actual quote: “In the United States, International Women’s Day—much the same as the mainstream feminist movement—has been whitewashed, stripped of its origins in the socialist and labor movements, disconnected from its more radical global contemporaries, and repackaged as an anodyne, symbolic holiday in which corporations urge you to send cute gifs to your girlfriends.”

They were courteous enough show how sincerely nuts the largely Soros-funded strike organizers were. Actual quote from said organizers: “The idea is to mobilize women, including trans women, and all who support them in an international day of struggle—a day of striking, marching, blocking roads, bridges, and squares, abstaining from domestic, care and sex work, boycotting, calling out misogynistic politicians and companies, striking in educational institutions.” Libs: Strike while the iron is hot. Hey wait, is that a household chores comment?

Even Liberals Can’t Say They Persisted: Lefties might be getting tattoos about persisting, but they are limits to how much even they can handle. Like eight hours of boring pro LGBTQIAetc propaganda. No one wants to see that.

Witness the silly ABC docudrama (more drama than documentary) “When We Rise.” It was standard awful lefty agenda garbage, featuring numerous attacks on conservatives and this cool actual quote: “I say we just get rid of all the heterosexuals. They're so boring.”

But this was so bad even liberals couldn’t stomach it. During a recent Q&A, Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever was asked why the show “got only a cursory mention in the Post.” Here’s his priceless actual quote: “I did watch and it put me to sleep, over and over. Boring, clumsy, self-important – all the things you don't want to be when telling the great gay American story.

I know we're SUPPOSED to watch it, but there is such a thing as gaysplaining, and I can't imagine why ABC thought four nights of that was a good idea. My time this week, both as a gay American and as a TV critic, was better spent reviewing the Oscars and the extra-incredibly fabulous ‘Feud: Bette and Joan.’ Sorry – choices have to be made.”

So even a self-described “gay” TV critic at a liberal news outlet couldn’t stand that much lefty agenda. Yay, common ground!

Don’t Believe The SPLC: It’s spring, the time to spring forward and fall back. In the case of the media, they are falling back on racist allegations from more than 50 years ago. To do that, they need to rely on a group that simply can’t be trusted – the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Just ask Floyd Lee Corkins. He’s the dangerous nutbag that looked at the SPLC website before he decided to shoot people at the Family Research Council. He relied on the group’s “Hate Map” and decided to go shoot the haters.

You can find bios claiming several prominent conservatives are “extremists” such as the American Family Association’s talented host Bryan Fischer, FRC’s esteemed Gen. Jerry Boykin, and even FRC’s respected leader Tony Perkins.

Both lefty and traditional news outlets still refer to the SPLC as a hate expert when it’s more accurate to call it a hate group. Actual quote from a Salon interview with Heidi Beirich, director of the SPLC’s humorously named Intelligence Project on whether Trump can be blamed for hate crimes: “I do not think there’s any question that Trump is the cause.”

The article goes on to cite inflated hate crime stats that ignore the huge number of hate crimes that have been found to be entirely bogus, undermining the problem of actual crimes. The article ends, of course, with claims about “the parallels to the 1930s in Europe.” Because what good piece of alt-left lunacy doesn’t have Nazi links in it today?

SOURCE





Australia: Face cover ban for Victorian protests

Victoria will introduce laws banning face coverings at protests as authorities warn "idiots" not to try to disrupt the end of the Moomba festival.

Police made 53 arrests at the festival on Saturday night and Attorney-General Martin Pakula says they will be ready again if there was trouble as the event wrapped up.

"There seems to be a small band of idiots who want to chance their arm," Mr Pakula told reporters on Monday.

"All I can say to those people is Victoria Police is ready for you, they demonstrated that on Saturday night, and no doubt they'll demonstrate it again if anyone is stupid enough to try it on."

Moomba descended into violent riots last year as groups of youths battled each other in Melbourne's streets.

That incident - and other political protests that turned violent - has prompted the state to propose laws banning face coverings at protests.

Mr Pakula said the laws were meant to be ready earlier, but had been complex to draft.

They will give police the power to arrest people with covered faces if they believe the coverings are for avoiding detection or to prevent the use of capsicum spray.

Mr Pakula said the laws will be introduced into Parliament next week.

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. 

***************************





14 March, 2017

Is Harperson praising the Tories here?

The Tories have had two female prime ministers only because women in the party are not seen as a threat by men, Labour grandee Harriet Harman claims.

The former Labour deputy leader claimed it was ‘easier to be a woman at the top of the Conservative Party’.

The feminist campaigner said that, although Labour was the ‘party of women and equality’, its female MPs had not yet led the party because they were seen ‘as a subversive force pushing for change’.

The 66-year-old admitted it was ‘galling’ Labour has not had a woman leader.

But she said: ‘The reason they have had two female prime ministers and we have not is because women in the Tory party are not a challenge to power relationships and gender relationships.

‘They are not a subversive force pushing for change and therefore they are not felt as a threat by men in the way that Labour women who are self-consciously trying to change the system are felt to be much more of a threat.’

Speaking at the Women of the World festival in London on Saturday, Ms Harman also accused Theresa May of failing to stand up for women’s rights and insisted ‘she has not been a sister’.

This was, Ms Harman said, because Mrs May had opposed the 2010 Equality Act. She said: ‘She objectively has not been a sister.

SOURCE





How the ’68ers became warmongers

The political evolution of the 1968 generation is often understood in terms of the journey that some older people take pleasure in predicting for the young: that from naive idealism to the realism of maturity.

In the case of leading ’68ers who have gone on to wield considerable influence – notably Joschka Fischer, foreign minister of Germany from 1998 to 2005, and Bernard Kouchner, France’s foreign minister since 2007 – that journey also tends to raise a question: have political principles become compromised in walking the corridors of power instead of marching through the streets? These two men emerge as the key figures in Power and the Idealists, Paul Berman’s intellectual biography of the 1968 generation; Berman worries away at the question throughout.

It is posed particularly sharply by the divisions among former ’68ers over Iraq, when Kouchner and Fischer appeared to be on opposite sides. For Berman, wishing to rescue liberal interventionism from the wreckage of the 2003 invasion, it is supporters of the war like Kouchner who have remained ‘steadfast’ in their adherence to the spirit of 1968.  Opponents such as Fischer are seen as having betrayed their former radicalism and grown too close to the establishment.

Famously, Fischer very publicly rejected US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s arguments for war with Iraq, telling him emphatically: ‘Sorry, I am not convinced.’ For Paul Hockenos, in Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic, this was a ‘symbolic’ moment which dramatised how the influence of the ’68ers had ‘contributed decisively to Germany’s remarkable transformation… into a healthy, democratic country’. 

Weaving together a biography of Fischer with an ‘alternative history’ of postwar Germany, Hockenos argues that while the ’68ers certainly changed as they grew older, in their ‘long march through the institutions’ they also changed the world around them, creating ‘a Germany that reflected the 1960s cultural revolution’.

Both Berman and Hockenos tend to romanticise 1960s radicalism and, in different ways, seek to carry its legacy forwards into the present. A critical appraisal of the careers of Kouchner and Fischer, however, suggests that their ‘radicalism’ has nothing to offer – not so much because they have compromised their principles, but because their politics were flawed to begin with.

As student radicals who believed ‘Anything Is Possible’, we rattled our elders in the heady year of 1968. But looking back, it seems the real driving force of Sixties radicalism was the crisis and cowardice of the elite itself.

In the story of the 1968 generation as told by both these authors, the Second World War is even more important than opposition to Vietnam as a formative influence. Hockenos suggests that it was through confronting the Nazi past that the students of the 1960s defined their own political stance and, ultimately, reshaped contemporary German democracy. Questioning the values of their parents, the postwar generation asked themselves whether they would have been collaborators or resisters.

‘Vietnam is Auschwitz’, said the German anti-war activists.  Hockenos presents this as a peculiarity of German politics, but Berman sees it as a much wider phenomenon. Inspired by Kouchner, the French ‘New Philosopher’ André Glucksmann, for example, declared himself an enemy of both ‘totalitarianism’ and famine: ‘[T]o all extreme dictatorships and catastrophes he attached a single name: Auschwitz.’  Indeed, in Berman’s telling, the entire student movement of the 1960s was at root motivated by a fear that Nazism had not been defeated. One may doubt whether that is really true, but it does seem to capture something about the politics of leading figures such as Kouchner.

Viewing everything through the filter of the Holocaust hardly makes for clarity about the present. Instead, as discussed below, it has led time and again to moralistic posturing in support of dubious causes. Part of the fascination with the Nazi era was that, as Berman notes, the 1960s students were trying to live up to the generation who had fought the historic anti-fascist battles of the 1930s and 40s. Compared with the wartime résistant generation, the student radicals suspected that they might be ‘the generation of the second-rate… résistants with nothing to resist’.

Berman is right that many ’68ers were on the lookout for a grand cause to equal that of wartime anti-fascism, but what he misses is that in their rush to get to the barricades many were also looking for a way to avoid the difficult business of politics. Thinking that the workers had been seduced by the consumerism of the postwar economic boom, many young radicals doubted that the romance of revolution was close at hand.

There were, to be sure, sporadic attempts to ‘go to the factories’. Fischer worked on the Opel assembly line for a time as part of one such exercise undertaken by his group Revolutionary Struggle. The organisation’s anarchist politics made little headway and the radicals came away complaining bitterly of ‘workers who absolutely must have a colour TV, the new car or bedroom’.  Alternatives to the slog of building support and winning people over seemed far more attractive.

One such alternative was to look for a ready-made revolutionary vanguard in the national liberation struggles of the Third World. If one could somehow attach oneself to a movement elsewhere, its moral authority might rub off. This was the route taken by Kouchner in September 1968, less than six months after the squandered promise of the May événements, when he signed up as a Red Cross doctor in the Nigerian civil war.

Doctor to the World

In at least two key respects, Kouchner’s stint in Nigeria set the pattern for much of his subsequent career. Firstly, it afforded him exactly the opportunity he was looking for to replay the anti-fascist struggle with himself in the lead role. The Nigerian government, he thought, was committing genocide against the predominantly Ibo population of Biafra, a province which had declared independence in 1967, by imposing a blockade which caused widespread and appalling famine. Kouchner felt compelled to speak out against the ‘genocide by starvation’, but was prevented from doing so by the Red Cross’s traditional neutrality. To Kouchner, it seemed like a sinister echo of the organisation’s failure to expose the Nazi death camps. ‘By keeping silent’, he later recalled, ‘we doctors were accomplices in the systematic massacre of a population.’ (1)

Indeed, he could not keep silent: Kouchner established a Committee Against Genocide in Biafra to campaign on the issue. Yet while there was certainly terrible suffering in the region, there was no genocide. This should have been clear at the time, since there were seven million Ibo people living ‘without persecution in government-held regions’ (2). It looked like a genocide to Kouchner and other activists because they wanted it to. They fantasised that they were not stuck in the midst of a dirty civil war but rather were standing on the stage of History. This was their new anti-fascist struggle, to match the historic period that their parents lived through.

Kouchner repeated the performance in 1993, when he thought he had discovered more new Nazis committing genocide, this time in Bosnia. Again he felt compelled to speak out: his Doctors of the World organisation proclaimed that it could not ‘remain silent’ in the face of ‘mass executions’, and so it ran a $2million advertising campaign to publicise the Serbian concentration camps. One poster set photographs of Hitler and Serbian President Slobodan Miloševi? side by side, while another juxtaposed an image of a watchtower from Auschwitz with a contemporary picture of Bosnian Muslims being held in a detention camp.

Again Kouchner was seeing what he wanted to see. After the war, when Kouchner interviewed Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovi?, the topic of the camps came up again. ‘They were horrible places, but people were not systematically exterminated. Did you know that?’ asked Kouchner. ‘Yes’, admitted Izetbegovi?, offering the excuse that ‘I thought that my revelations [about the camps] could precipitate bombings’. One wonders what Kouchner’s excuse might be.

As the Greens’ foreign minister of Germany from 1998, Fischer’s readiness to deploy the armed forces was remarkable even for a pugnacious ecologist like him. When he took office, German troops were already stationed abroad in Bosnia and Georgia. Under Fischer they were sent to no fewer than nine further countries and, most significantly, were deployed during the Kosovo conflict in an active war-fighting role for the first time since 1945.

Kosovo truly was, as Berman says, the ’68ers’ war. With a former member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament as British foreign secretary (Robin Cook), a NATO Secretary-General who had once been an anti-NATO campaigner (Javier Solana), and a US president (Bill Clinton) who had avoided the draft and marched against the Vietnam War, Fischer was hardly exceptional. Nor were the terms in which he sought to reconcile his anti-militarist Green party with bombing: they were pure Kouchnerism.

In response to critics who reminded him that Germany had sworn ‘Never Again’, the foreign minister retorted that ‘Never Again Auschwitz’ took precedence over ‘Never Again War’. Fischer argued that he had discovered a new genocide and that, as a veteran anti-fascist in the former home of Nazism, he had a special responsibility to stop it. To prove his case, he even revealed secret documents outlining a premeditated Serbian plan, codenamed ‘Operation Horseshoe’, to commit genocide in Kosovo. It later transpired that the German government had faked the documents: the supposed blueprint for genocide had been fabricated, complete with an invented name and maps drawn up by the German Defence Ministry (5). Like Kouchner, Fischer made sure he saw what he wanted to see.

More HERE






Tensions rise ahead of Dutch elections

The "far right" in the Netherlands has demanded that all 400,000 ethnic Turks there be stripped of their dual citizenship amid rising tensions before the country’s elections on Wednesday.

Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party, described Turks as a “fifth column” as the Netherlands and Turkey became embroiled in a race row that resulted in rioting, diplomatic deportations and verbal insults.

The Netherlands sought to block loyalists of President Erdogan from trying to rally electoral support among the 4.6 million Turkish expatriates in western Europe before a referendum next month that could grant him sweeping new constitutional powers.

The dispute deepened after the Turkish foreign minister travelled to France for a pro-Erdogan rally in the northeastern city of Metz yesterday in the hope of securing the votes of 700,000 expatriates there.

Far-right parties in the Netherlands and France seized on the Turkish campaign yesterday as evidence of the creeping influence of Islam on their way of life. Dutch riot police sought to crack down on the rallies after the authorities expelled a Turkish minister who was hosting the campaign and denied a visa to the foreign minister.

As Mr Erdogan accused the Dutch government of acting like “Nazis” and threatened harsh sanctions, Mr Wilders, who has campaigned against the “Islamisation” of Europe, said: “We have a fifth column in the Netherlands. If your loyalty lies elsewhere then get out. No dual citizenship anymore. And shut the borders.”

Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front in France, said: “Why should we tolerate on our soil what other democracies refuse? No Turkish election campaign in France.” François Fillon, the centre-right Republicans presidential candidate, was also critical. “The French government should have banned this meeting,” he said.

The French foreign ministry had said that “there was no reason to prohibit the meeting”.

SOURCE





In the land where Jews are welcome, anti-Semitism is on the rise

by Jeff Jacoby

THIS WEEKEND, Jews the world over celebrate the festival of Purim, a highlight of which is the public reading of the biblical book of Esther. In 10 fast-moving chapters, it recounts the first recorded attempt at a Jewish genocide. The Persian emperor Ahasuerus (known to historians as Xerxes I) allows himself to be persuaded by Haman, a powerful courtier, that the Jews are a disloyal and disobedient minority who ought to be eradicated. The emperor signs an edict authorizing Haman and his followers "to destroy, to kill, and to annihilate all the Jews, both young and old, women and children, in one day." But the plot is foiled thanks to court intrigues involving Mordechai, the leader of the Jewish community in the imperial city of Shushan, and the courage and faith of Esther, the young Jewish heroine who becomes Ahasuerus's queen.

On the Jewish calendar, Purim is a joyful day. Families distribute gifts of food, alms are lavished on the poor, children (and even adults!) wear costumes — and at every mention of Haman's name during the reading of Esther, the congregation breaks out in a raucous din of boos and noisemakers.

It's easy to celebrate Purim with hilarity when Jews feel safe and welcome, and in modern times there is nowhere on Earth they have felt safer and more welcome than the United States.

Last month, the Pew Research Center released the results of a survey showing Jews to be the most warmly regarded religious group in America. It was Pew's second such survey in three years, and both times the finding was the same. "We love our country, and America loves us right back," wrote David Suissa, the publisher of the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, after the Pew numbers came out. Jews, who know only too well what it means to be a hunted minority, have been blessed to find in America a degree of benevolence, respect, and freedom unparalleled in their long and precarious history.

But Purim arrives this year amid an alarming surge in anti-Semitic menace.

Since January, Jewish community centers and organizations nationwide have been targeted with anonymous bomb threats — at least 140 such threats to date. At Jewish cemeteries in Philadelphia, St. Louis, and Rochester, N.Y., hundreds of gravestones have been toppled or smashed. In Evansville, Ind., a gun was fired through the window of synagogue classroom.

During the recent election cycle, Internet trolls from the so-called alt-right unleashed repugnant attacks on Jewish journalists who questioned or criticized the rise of Donald Trump, often suggesting that they prepare to die in a new Holocaust. Equally horrific anti-Semitic eruptions have come from the left, especially on college campuses, where virulent hostility toward Israel often boils over into undisguised hatred of Jews.

Thus the paradox: In the nation where Jews are more welcomed than ever, animosity toward Jews is more palpable than ever.

To many on the left, the upwelling of anti-Semitic incidents and rhetoric is plainly connected with Republican politics. Trump's strong appeal to white nationalists, the anti-Semitic memes and tropes that showed up in his ads and social media, and his seeming unwillingness until quite recently to explicitly condemn anti-Semitism — while Trump may harbor no personal ill will toward Jews, he has too often enabled, and pandered to, those who do.

To many conservatives, meanwhile, it goes without saying that contemporary anti-Semitism is overwhelmingly a product of the hard left, which seethes with bitterness toward the Jewish state. The anti-Zionist boycott campaign, the Israel "apartheid" slander, the ominous atmosphere in academia — all of it has had the effect of moving bigotry from the fever swamps on the fringe ever closer to the mainstream.

Haman's plan to exterminate the Jews of ancient Persia was thwarted by the courage, faith, and shrewdness of Esther, the Jewish heroine for whom the biblical book of Esther is named.
Both camps make a legitimate point. Jew-bashers can be found on the left and the right; often it is the only thing they have in common. In our hyperpolarized political atmosphere, it isn't surprising that anti-Semitism has become one more excuse for partisans to point fingers at each other. But history's oldest hatred has never been limited to one party or ideology or worldview.

Anti-Semitism is an intellectual sickness, a societal toxin that is endlessly adaptable. Jews have been tortured and tormented for not being Christian and for not being Muslim. They have been brutally persecuted for being capitalists, and just as brutally persecuted for being Communists. They have been hated for being weak and easily scapegoated — and hated for being strong and influential. Jews have been killed for their faith, for their lifestyle, for their national identity, for their "race."

A key teaching of the Book of Esther is that once the plague of Jew-hatred gets in the air, almost any environment can nourish it. Another is that Jew-hatred does not subside on its own. It must be confronted, denounced, and defeated.

"We love our country, and America loves us right back." That has been manifestly, wonderfully true for decades, but will it continue to be? Elsewhere, the post-Holocaust taboo on overt Jew-hatred has long since shattered. Can that now be happening in the United States? Pray this Purim that the answer is No. For if America succumbs to the anti-Semitic derangement, it isn't only Jews who will suffer.

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. 

***************************





13 March, 2017

Dutch economic conditions favour Geert Wilders in upcoming elections

Economic stagnation. Ballooning debt. Rampant unemployment. These phrases aren’t traditionally associated with the Dutch economy.

But while the Netherlands has never been Europe’s sick man, a rise in euroscepticism and the refugee crisis have fuelled a surge in populism that will test the political establishment next week.

Personifying this is Geert Wilders, the bleached-blond, anti-Islam firebrand politician who has just slipped into second place behind prime minister Mark Rutte’s party ahead of Wednesday’s election.

With one of the strongest fiscal positions in the eurozone, Dutch imbalances have focused on its huge current account surplus.

At 63.7pc of GDP in mid-2016, it is expected to be the first of the EU’s founder members to push its debt share below the Maastricht Treaty’s 60pc limit.

SOURCE






Civil liberties group ACLU seeks to ride groundswell of anti-Trump energy

The American Civil Liberties Union is launching what it bills as the first grassroots mobilization effort in its nearly 100-year history, as it seeks to harness a surge of energy among left-leaning activists since the November election of Republican Donald Trump as U.S. president.

The campaign, known as PeoplePower, kicks off on Saturday with a town hall-style event in Miami featuring “resistance training” that will be streamed live at more than 2,300 local gatherings nationwide.

It will focus on free speech, reproductive rights and immigration and include presentations from legal experts, ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero and “Top Chef” television star Padma Lakshmi.

Membership in the civil rights organization, which was founded in 1920, has tripled to more than 1 million since Trump’s election, the group says.

As activists have marched in streets, demonstrated at airports and confronted U.S. lawmakers regularly since election day, progressive groups like MoveOn and the newly formed Indivisible have sought ways to translate that frustration into local action.

That is the idea behind PeoplePower, which represents a major strategic shift for an organization that has traditionally focused on courtroom litigation, Romero said in a phone interview on Friday. Approximately 135,000 people have signed up for the campaign.

“Before, our membership was largely older and much smaller,” he said. “Our members would provide us with money so we could file the cases and do the advocacy. What’s clear with the Trump election is that our new members are engaged and want to be deployed.”

For example, the Miami event will encourage individuals to engage local officials in conversations about immigrant policies in their town or city. The ACLU has prepared “model” ordinances ensuring the protection of immigrant rights that supporters can press legislators to adopt, part of a campaign to create “freedom cities,” according to ACLU political director Faiz Shakir.

Suggested tactics, like the use of text messages as a mass mobilization tool, will mirror some of those employed by the insurgent presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, who mounted a surprisingly robust challenge to Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

“It’s completely unprecedented,” Romero said of the response since Trump’s victory. “People are wide awake right now and have been since the night of the election.”

SOURCE





Small-Town Judge Punished Because of Her Religious Beliefs

The Wyoming Supreme Court publicly censured a small-town judge who said her Christian beliefs would prevent her from presiding over same-sex marriages. Judge Ruth Neely has been a municipal judge in Pinedale for more than two decades. She also works part-time as a circuit court magistrate in Sublette County. Her views on marriage became public in 2014 after a local newspaper reporter interviewed her for a story regarding gay marriage. She reiterated her position on same-sex marriage under oath: “If I ever were to receive a request to perform a same-sex marriage, which has never happened, I would ensure that the couple received the services that they requested by very kindly giving them the names and phone numbers of other magistrates who could perform their wedding.”

It seemed like a reasonable compromise, but there is no compromise when it comes to the LGBT agenda. Activists demand complete allegiance and devotion. Hell hath no fury, as the saying goes. The Wyoming Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics accused Judge Neely of violating the state code of judicial conduct. It had recommended Judge Neely be removed from both of her positions. For the record, Judge Neely had never been asked to perform a same-sex marriage. In other words, this faithful member of the Lutheran church was bullied for expressing her belief that marriage is the union of one man and one woman. The Supreme Court agreed that she had violated the judicial conduct code, but decided not to remove her from the bench, arguing it would “unnecessarily circumscribe protected expression.”

“Judge Neely shall either perform no marriage ceremonies or she shall perform marriage ceremonies regardless of the couple’s sexual orientation,” Justice Kate Fox wrote in the court’s decision. Alliance Defending Freedom, the law firm that represented Judge Neely, claimed victory in the case. “By affirming that Judge Neely may remain in her judicial positions, the Wyoming Supreme Court has recognized that her honorable beliefs about marriage do not disqualify her from serving her community as a judge,” attorney Jim Campbell said.

In her decades on the bench, the judge has never been accused of wrongdoing or had a complaint brought against her, court documents state. The Wyoming Supreme Court made clear the case against Judge Neely was not about same-sex marriage or “imposing a religious test on judges.” But that’s exactly what the case is about. Either pledge your allegiance to militant activists or pay the price. I call on the Supreme Court to censure the Wyoming Commission on Judicial Conduct and Ethics for conducting an anti-Christian witch hunt and trying tarnish the reputation of a good judge.

SOURCE






Australia: Refugees told they will have to learn English if they want to keep their welfare payments

Refugees may be forced to learn English if they want to keep their welfare payments in a drastic move suggested by a migrant support group.

The Southern Migrant and Refugee Centre (SMRC) has proposed removing 'futile activity testing' and instead linking welfare payments to refugee's presence at English classes, The Daily Telegraph reported.

After arriving in Australia, refugees receive welfare for 13 weeks before they must find work or study - SMRC claims this means refugees often gave up English lessons in case they lose their payments.

Poor English skills can often prevent new arrivals, especially young people, from settling into the Australian community Liberal MP Jason Wood said. 'It is very apparent that the lack of English on arrivals for new migrants makes it extremely difficult,' Mr Wood said. 'Even though 510 hours of English is provided by government, evidence suggests most new arrivals only access about 340 hours.'

Mr Wood is currently a month into a joint parliamentary committee hearing looking in to services for refugees arriving on Australian shores.

For acting chief executive of SMRC Despina Haralambopoulos removing the activity test was an important step. 'The activity test takes away from their capacity to attend English language classes,' Ms Haralambopoulos told the Daily Telegraph.

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. 

***************************







12 March, 2017

California bill gives carte blanche for Leftist-run agencies to take children from their parents

The report below by Tim Bolen may seem alarmist to anyone who has read the bill but its sheer vagueness is the problem with the bill.  It clearly does give the State a responsibility for ensuring all sorts of "rights" for children and we know how Leftist bureaucrats can interpret vague words to suit their own ends. 

There have been many expressions of alarm from conservatives about the bill and Snopes had endeavoured to debunk the concerns.  All Snopes could find to say was that there was nothing specific in the bill, which we all knew anyway. 

There is a detailed dissection of the bill here.  In summary, there is just way to much leeway in the bill for Leftist social workers to apply it in oppressive ways


Liberal Democrats have moved to the next step in their efforts to control all of humanity, cancelling the US Constitution in a program to create a one-world order – by attempting to take control of California children away from their parents.

The primary effort is called Senate Bill 18, falsely identified as a “Children’s Rights” bill.  It gives the State of California  unlimited, ultimate, authority over children.

The bill is so vague it assigns that same body the power to decide, day-by-day, about children’s Education, Healthcare, and Emotional well-being – an absolutely insane concept.  The Democrats are planning surprise “home inspections.”

The sponsor of the bill, so-called Common Sense Media, raises serious red flags with parents.  As BolenReport Author Karri Lewis questioned in an earlier article “Just WHO IS Sponsoring California State Senator Richard Pan’s Destruction of Parental Rights?”   What she asked was:

“Why on earth would Common Sense Media, a supposedly family friendly company, support the stealing of parental rights by the state of California via Senator Richard Pan?”

In another article Karri points out that Common Sense Media, on one of their web pages promotes, and supports, an organization called “kidzworld.”  The entire excerpt text from Karri’s article on this is printed at the bottom of this page.

Surprise home inspections, by progressive liberal activists, will have the power to take the children, immediately, to a Child Protective Services (CPS) facility should they find what they determine, in the moment, to be contrary to THEIR version of what a child should be exposed to.

As we know, liberal Democrats OFFICIALLY DESPISE family units made up of heterosexual couples and children.

A “Home Inspection” of  NORMAL people’s dwellings conducted by teams similar to those we see in their “demonstrations” would not be productive.

Liberal Democrats also despise the idea of a Judeo/Christian ethic and could be counted on, during a “Home Inspection” to be appalled to find that a man and woman couple slept in the same bed.  A gun in the house would send the inspectors into an eppilectic seizure. Signs of Christianity or Judaism on the walls would cause those inspectors to drool uncontrollably.

If inspectors found, for instance, that little boys’ rooms contained baseball equipment, swords, toy guns, and war game videos instead of dolls, tea sets, make-up, and booklets on sex change operations, the CPS process might well suddenly accelerate.

SOURCE






Ann Coulter:‘Immigrant Privilege’ Drives Child Rape Epidemic

Before breathing a sigh of relief that, unlike Western Europe, we don’t have Muslim rapists pouring into our country, recall that we have Mexican rapists pouring into our country.

Almost all peasant cultures are brimming with rapists, pederasts and child abusers. Latin America just happens to be the peasant culture closest to the United States, while the Muslims are closest to Europe.

According to North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement, immigrants commit hundreds of sex crimes against children in North Carolina every month — 350 in the month of April 2014, 299 in May, and more than 400 in August and September. More than 90 percent of the perpetrators are Hispanic.

They aren’t even counting legal immigrants. Aren’t those worse? Only certain Republicans get excited about the difference between legal and illegal immigrants. The rest of America is trying to understand the point of the last 40 years of legal immigration. Why was this necessary?

Below is a very short excerpt from a few days in November 2013. As Stalin is supposed to have said, sometimes quantity has a quality all its own.

— Abundez, Jose, Juan (11/12/2013): Felony Sex Offense — Parental Role

— Aguilar-Sandoval, Jersson, Iss (11/21/2013): Felony First Degree Sexual Offense; Felony First Degree Rape; Felony First Degree Kidnapping

— Aguilar, Rafael (11/04/2013): Felony Indecent Liberties With Child

— Aguilar, Rigoberto, Castellano (11/04/2013): Felony First Degree Rape; Felony Indecent Liberties With Child; Felony Stat Rape/Sex Offn Def>4-<6yr br="">
(Note: That’s sex with a child between 4 and 6 years old.)

— Manzano, Gustavo, Adolfo (11/20/2013): Felony Indecent Liberties With Child; Felony Rape of Child

— Monje, Alcides, Aguilar (11/18/2013): Felony Stat Rape/Sex Offn Def >=6yr; Felony Indecent Liberties With Child, 13.

The list, for a single month in a single state, goes on in the same vein through 87 separate offenders. When not providing North Carolina meatpackers with cheap labor, immigrant workers seem to spend all their time raping little girls.

To be fair, there are also Asian names, such as Y’Hon Nie (Indecent Liberties With Child, First Degree Sex Offense-Child, Second Degree Sexual Offense); and David Vo Minh (First Degree Sex Offense-Child, Indecent Liberties With Child).

North Carolina’s cheap labor advocates better be paying Sen. Thom Tillis well. It sure isn’t the average North Carolinian demanding that he shill for amnesty. Illegal immigration alone costs North Carolina taxpayers billions of dollars per year.

Our nation’s epitaph, with a photo of Sen. Tillis, could be: “We built a powerful economic engine that attracted people, but then some businessmen saw their chance to screw the country and make a pile for themselves. Let’s bring in low-wage workers so we can externalize our costs to the taxpayer!”

Except North Carolina’s businesses aren’t just externalizing their costs to the taxpayers. They’re externalizing their costs to little girls.

The reason websites like North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement are so important is that the government and the media hide immigrant crime from the public.

They cite bogus studies that compare immigrants to America’s criminal class. (We didn’t want immigrants who are only slightly less criminal than our worst inner cities.)

Or they announce their impressionistic conclusions. (I heard about a crime in Montana — that state must have a lot of crime, is not a scientific way to argue.)

Or they refuse to count any criminal without an ICE detainer against him as an immigrant, at all. (Is the court translator a hint that the defendant isn’t a 10th-generation American?)

The way to determine how many immigrants are committing crime is to count them. Why does the government refuse to do this?

The number of immigrants in prison would be a good start, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Immigrant criminals flee back to their own countries after arrest. Prosecutors deport illegals rather than imprison them — and then the illegals come right back. Some George Soros-inspired prosecutors allow illegals to plea guilty to a minor offense, to prevent them from being deported.

To get the full picture, government investigators will need to talk to crime victims, police and prosecutors, too.

And we want honesty — not studies that count anchor babies and second-generation immigrants as “the native population.”

The media is the government’s co-conspirator in hiding immigrant crime. I have approximately 1,000 examples of media subterfuges on immigrant crime in Adios, America! The Left’s Plan to Turn Our Country Into a Third World Hellhole.

Here are a few recent examples from Sen. Tillis’ North Carolina.

Headline: “Burke County man convicted of raping 13-year-old girl,” Charlotte Observer, Feb. 1, 2017 (Ricardo Solis Garcia — an illegal whom Mexico refused to take back);

Headline: “Burlington man charged with child rape,” The Times News, Jan. 19, 2017 (Felipe Samuel Rivera Rodriguez);

Headline: “Angier man accused of having sex with 14-year-old girl,” The Fayetteville Observer, Aug. 29, 2016 (Estevan Roberto Silva).

NOTE TO READERS: The North Carolina Estevan Roberto Silva — sex with a 14-year-old girl — should not be confused with the Texas Esteban Villa Silva — sex with a 12-year-old girl about 60 times — or the Alabama Esteban Silva Jr. — 42-year-old man convicted of sex with a 12-year-old girl. All these child rapes were revealed in coded headlines like “Man pleads to sexual relationship with girl.”

Other informative North Carolina headlines:

Headline: “Man, 42, arrested for sexual offense with girl under 13” (Carlos Gumercindo Crus);

Headline: “Man charged with sexual assault of a minor” (Jose Freddy Ambrosio-Gorgonio);

Headline: Man Pleads Guilty in Child Rape Case (Luis Perez-Valencia).

It’s too relentless to be a coincidence.

There have been more stories in the American media about a rape by white lacrosse players that didn’t happen than about thousands of child rapes in North Carolina that did.

I’m pretty sure our media is opposed to rape. But evidently, not as opposed as they are to America.

SOURCE






UK: Hands up if you’re worried about being mown down, blown up or axed to death by a white, right wing nutter (unless, of course, you’re the Home Office). Thought not

One of the things that surprises me on an almost weekly basis, is how axe, machete, knife and bomb attacks against nationals across Europe are responded to by anti-terror squads even though they are not, apparently, terror.

We are categorically told: this was not a terror attack.

And as if to sugar-coat our daily dose of multiculturalism, we hear surprisingly quickly if the attacker came from anywhere that isn't a mainly Muslim country.

The authorities were virtually falling over themselves to report the lorry in the Christmas attack was licensed to a Polish driver. Only to discover, shortly afterwards, that he had been murdered in his cab by the Muslim terrorist at the wheel.

It was a long time before the crazed Dusseldorf axe attacker from last night could be named.

Eye-witness accounts describing him in the German newspapers as southern-looking (which translates as Mediterranean / dark-skinned) were quickly glossed over and replaced with a much more reassuring 'Yugoslavian'. A country which doesn’t even exist!

Does anyone remember what that conflict in Yugoslavia was all about? Religion wasn’t it?

Finally we find out that’s he’s one ‘Fatmir H’ from 95% Muslim Kosovo. Hmmm.

But he apparently has severe mental issues, and the attack as ‘nothing to do with terror’. So that’s all right then.

It’s a consistent messaging that we have become so used to that we've learned to take shortcuts to aid our own understanding.

If we are not given a name for a violent perpetrator, we can assume it's not Sven.

If we are not told the country of birth, it’s pretty much guaranteed to be on the list Donald Trump has wisely banned from the States.

And if we are eventually told the name and nationality, we can safely assume suddenly mental issues will be front and centre. Or at the very least he will be a wolf. And alone.

(What has always surprised me is how individuals with genuine mental illness have never complained about being bracketed together with the sort of people who shout a few religious words and then try to axe off the arm of a thirteen-year-old at a bus stop.)

Now it appears the Home Office is keen to push this narrative, one step further by shouting about the fact white people are scary too. If not worse. Their headline statistics released yesterday assert one in three terror suspects arrested in Britain last year was white.

Did you get that? One in three?

Less numerate minds might be looking around at their neighbours thinking one in three of them could be a terrorist. Next-door-but-one could be looking to machete you in the night. White van man over the road might be concealing some hard-core Semtex under his fluoro-vest.

But let’s think about this a bit. If one-third of terror suspects arrested were white, then two-thirds were not.

And the two-thirds who identify as non-white make up just 10% of the censored UK population. (As for the non-censored lot who prefer not to be counted, I will leave you to draw your own conclusions.) So two-thirds of all terror suspects arrested are from just ten percent, a tiny fraction, of our population. The non-white population.

That is the bigger story. But there is a bigger question.

Why is the Home Office so desperate to make white people the fear? Why the inference that the rise in the far right is just as big a threat as Islamic extremism, when all evidence is to the contrary?

And why is so much resource being thrown at domestic terror (where there are no links to either Northern Ireland-related or international terrorism), resulting in the arrest of just 35 domestic ‘terror suspects’, when their figures show a 30% fall in the use of counter-terrorism powers at the UK border (where just 19,355 people were 'stopped and examined' at airports and seaports)?

This is madness. An insane waste of resource to satisfy politically correct quotas.

We are focussing effort and energy on Fat Joe from the darts club who was alleged to have left a pack of bacon from the Co-op outside a mosque, and not on borders and airports where a reported 200 migrants a day are coming into our country -- in the back of a van -- no doubt many of them from places Thump has banned from America.

Our top terror expert in the UK, David Anderson QC, is equally keen to force this agenda in the face of statistical truths: 'Extreme right-wing ideology can be just as murderous as its Islamist equivalent'; he said.

'Increasingly, right-wing extremists such as Thomas Mair, the killer of Jo Cox MP, feed off the tension [caused by Islamist extremism] to plan violence of their own'

I’d argue the tensions around Jo Cox’s death were not of the making of Islamic extremists, but by liberal extremists. The far left. A group which, according to the media, does not exist. And a group who do not identify as far-left, but act that way all the same.

I would assert that there are powerful forces lobbying the government for the far-right to be in the spotlight at all times.

I wonder if it is just a coincidence the husband of Jo Cox, endlessly and relentlessly pushed across the BBC, was a senior political adviser to Gordon Brown and well connected inside Parliament.

I am not sure he is driven by grief alone. I think he is still a man with a political mission, determined to own hope and make white Brexiteers the custodians of hate.

No one is arguing her murder was not an appalling act. But as the ONLY fatal attack in the UK that is remotely attributable to the right-wing, why are we suddenly being asked to believe that terrorism by the right is on a par with the brutal acts of ISIS?

I listed the suspected terror attacks in Germany this year in a tweet:

And immediately those following the multi-cultural script told me 12,000 people are killed by guns in America each year. Or this was not relevant to UK news. Or the perpetrators country of origin was not relevant. Or I am racist.

This is the far left at work. They are the ones promoted across the BBC trying to own ‘hope’ when they are actually the biggest perpetrators of a new brand accepted form of ‘hate’.

And they are as delusional as the Dusseldorf axeman.

SOURCE






White men an 'endangered species' on boards, chairman of British supermarket chain claims

The chairman of Tesco has claimed that white men have become an “endangered species” on the boards of British companies amid the push to increase diversity in business.

In comments that are likely to court controversy, John Allan suggested it was becoming harder for men to become non-executive directors of firms.

“If you are female and from an ethnic background and preferably both then you are in an extremely propitious period,” the supermarket group’s chairman said at a panel discussion about how to become a non-exec, at Retail Week Live.

“For a thousand years men have got most of these jobs, the pendulum has swung very significantly the other way now and will do for the foreseeable future I think.

“If you are a white male – tough – you are an endangered species and you are going to have to work twice as hard .”

It comes as companies face mounting pressure to do more to increase the proportion of women and candidates from ethnic minorities on their boards, to better reflect the changing face of British society.

All 11 members of Tesco’s board are white and it comprises just three women. Two of its female non-execs - Alison Platt and Lindsey Pownall - joined the supermarket giant last year.

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. 

***************************




10 March, 2017

Women's Strike Hurts Women

Today seems like a great day for a “Day Without A Woman,” a strike organized to protest the supposed gender oppression of women in America. Women are encouraged to take the day off from work, refrain from shopping and wear red. With the same group of organizers who held the Women’s March earlier this year, the strike today is aimed at highlighting the same old collage of leftist complaints bound up in their favorite term, “inequality.” Women in America are victims of a sinister patriarchal society, which is robbing them of equal rights … or so we’re told. Absent any substantive evidence supporting this claim, the strike is aimed at convincing Americans of its reality.

But what is the reality? Are American women actually suffering under some insidiously oppressive patriarchy? Well, the facts would say otherwise. In 2014, the American Community Survey found that 37.5% of women ages 25 to 34 had a bachelor’s degree compared to only 29% of men in the same age range. And what of the supposed pay gap between men’s and women’s salaries? It evaporates when accounting for variables such as child bearing and rearing.

In fact, according to a Pew Research Center survey in 2013, 72% of women believe they have the same opportunities in the workplace as men, while 75% believe they are paid just as much as their male counterparts. It sounds like the women’s strike needs to convince just as many women of the supposed inequity in pay as it does men.

But the truth is, this strike has more to do with protesting Donald Trump and conservative values (sometimes two very different things) than in promoting women. Ironically, today’s protest will only prove to make the day harder for many women. Take, for example, any poorer single moms living in Alexandria, Virginia. So many teachers took the day off that the district closed public schools for the day. Working single moms whose children now have no school will lose a day of pay as they stay at home watching their children. Unless they hire someone to do it for them. Brilliant.

Maybe the biggest irony of the protest is that it infers women are merely helpless victims who need men to save them from their oppressed status. There are no laws preventing women from having access to the same opportunities as men. Equal opportunity exists in this nation more than any other. But the goal of socialists and leftists is not equal opportunity but equal outcome, and anywhere they find disparity they see an excuse for greater government involvement and control. This is the real message being sent by this strike. It’s not about women, it’s about promoting leftist policies.

SOURCE





‘A Day Without a Woman’ Strike Promotes Idea of Women as Helpless

The way to help women continue to move forward isn’t to propagate the myth that women in the United States are victims, oppressed by the system and unable to help themselves secure a better future.

Yet that’s exactly the message of the “A Day Without a Woman” strike happening Wednesday.

Various organizers, including the Women’s March crowd and other feminists, are pushing women to “take the day off, from paid and unpaid labor,” as well as by not shopping (except at “small, women- and minority-owned businesses”) and by wearing red.

An op-ed advocating the strike published in The Guardian last month by eight women (including a convicted terrorist, but hey, let’s not get hung up on details) explicitly makes the case that many women cannot improve their conditions:

Lean-in feminism and other variants of corporate feminism have failed the overwhelming majority of us, who do not have access to individual self-promotion and advancement and whose conditions of life can be improved only through policies that defend social reproduction, secure reproductive justice and guarantee labor rights. As we see it, the new wave of women’s mobilization must address all these concerns in a frontal way. It must be a feminism for the 99 percent.

What?

Here are some facts that belie the notion that women in the United States are facing some kind of rampant systemic injustice:

In 2014, 37.5 percent of women aged 25 to 34 had a bachelor’s degree, compared to 29.5 percent of men the same age, according to a Census Bureau analysis of the American Community Survey.

Among women, 75 percent think that at their workplace “women are paid … about the same as men for doing the same job,” and 72 percent believe “men and women have about the same opportunities” there, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey.

“Women with under two years of experience are asking for an average 2 percent more compensation than men. And, notably, they’re getting what they’re asking for: Final salaries for junior women hired on our platform are 7 percent higher than junior men,” wrote Hired.com in a report last year.

And that often-cited pay gap? As my colleague Romina Boccia has noted, much of the pay gap between men and women can be attributed to factors such as the fields women choose to work in, and the time off work that women choose to take.

“When accounting for relevant factors that affect pay, such as education, choice of industry and occupation, hours worked, experience, and career interruptions, the difference between average male and female wages shrinks to about 5 to 7 cents on the dollar,” Boccia, who focuses on fiscal and economic issues in her work at The Heritage Foundation, wrote.

Now, don’t get me wrong: There’s room for more progress. It would be good to eliminate the pay gap entirely, even if it’s significantly less than the left often acts like it is.

And while I don’t think there needs to be 50-50 representation in business leadership roles and elected positions, it would be nice to have more women in those positions than we currently do.

 (Although it’s telling that often feminists on the left seem to drift toward accepting a man’s view of success—i.e. high leadership positions—instead of questioning whether a successful, fulfilling life for some women might look different.)

And while I’ll acknowledge that Sheryl Sandberg, the Facebook executive and author of “Lean In,” certainly has had more opportunities than many women, it’s absurd to say 99 percent of women are powerless to change their fates. Women in a variety of careers and seniority statuses have the ability to ask for higher pay, switch jobs, acquire more education to be better positioned for jobs, and make a host of other decisions that could affect their lives positively.

In fact, one of the things most interesting about the Hired.com survey was that young women are actually asking for more compensation—and clearly, they’re getting results.

But here’s what won’t help: a strike that affects all companies—whether they are helpful toward women or not. In fact, given that over 7 out of 10 women think their workplaces treat them fairly, it stands to reason that most workplaces haven’t done anything to merit this strike.

And let’s not forget how this strike against the patriarchy is going to affect women: Already some school districts across the country are planning to be closed Wednesday, leaving moms (and yes, dads) who work facing a child care headache. That’s hardly the way to boost working women.

If women are serious about changing workplace attitudes, there are plenty of ways to do so. Applauding companies who offer paid family leave and encouraging consumers to support them can help promote a culture where workplaces are more family-friendly.

(Think public opinion doesn’t matter? Consider the fact that Netflix, after being criticized for offering extensive paid family leave to salaried employees but not hourly workers, changed its policy.)

A group called Parenting in the Workplace Institute, founded by mom Carla Moquin, tracks companies that allow parents to bring babies to work and advises companies on the best related practices.

We’re not in the “Mad Men” era anymore, and it’s time to stop pretending we are. Instead of throwing a temper tantrum, er, striking, women who want to change the status quo further likely would be more effective—not to mention more considerate of women and men who need services like schools during the week—by focusing on specific problems at specific companies. Such women also could encourage other women to become their own best advocates.

SOURCE






Is the American Elite Really Elite?

Victor Davis Hanson   

The public no longer believes that privilege and influence should be predicated on titles, brands, and buzz.   

Outraged New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman recently compared Trump's victory to disasters in American history that killed and wounded thousands such as the Pearl Harbor surprise bombing and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

The New Republic - based on no evidence - theorized that Trump could well be mentally unstable due to the effects of neurosyphilis.

Talk of removing the new president through impeachment, or opposing everything he does (the progressive "Resistance"), is commonplace. Some op-ed writers and pundits abroad have openly hoped for his violent death.

Trump is in a virtual war with the mainstream global media, the entrenched so-called deep state, the Democratic-party establishment, progressive activists, and many in the Republican party as well.

The sometimes undisciplined and loud Trump is certainly not a member of the familiar ruling cadre, which dismisses him as a crude and know-nothing upstart who should never have been elected president. (Had Hillary Clinton won in 2016 and served a full term, a member of either the Bush or Clinton families would have been president for 24 years of a 32-year span.)

But who, exactly, makes up these disgruntled elite classes?

In California, state planners and legislators focused on things such as outlawing plastic grocery bags while California's roads and dams over three decades sank into decrepitude. The result is crumbling infrastructure that now threatens the very safety of the public. Powerful Californians with impressive degrees also came up with the loony and neo-Confederate idea of nullifying federal immigration law through sanctuary cities.

Sophisticated Washington, D.C., economists produced budgets for the last eight years that saw U.S. debt explode from $10 trillion to nearly $19 trillion, as economic growth sank to its lowest level since the Hoover administration.

For a year, most expert pundits and pollsters smugly assured the public of a certain Hillary Clinton victory - until the hour before she was overwhelmed in the Electoral College.

Rhodes Scholar and former U.N. ambassador Susan Rice lied repeatedly on national television about the Benghazi debacle.

From the fabulist former NBC anchorman Brian Williams to the disreputable reporters who turned up in WikiLeaks, there are lots of well-educated, influential, and self-assured elites who apparently cannot tell the truth or in dishonest fashion mix journalism and politics.

Elitism sometimes seems predicated on being branded with the proper degrees. But when universities embrace a therapeutic curriculum and politically correct indoctrination, how can a costly university degree guarantee knowledge or inductive thinking?

Is elitism defined by an array of brilliant and proven theories?

Are elites at least better-spoken and more knowledgeable than the rest of us?

Long before Trump's monotonous repetition of "tremendous" and "great," Barack Obama thought "corpsmen" was pronounced "corpse-men," and that Austrians spoke "Austrian" rather than German.

Not long ago, Representative Hank Johnson (D., Ga.) warned that if Guam became too populated it might just tip over and sink.

The Western world is having a breakdown. The symptoms are the recent rise of socialist Bernie Sanders, Trump's election, the Brexit vote, and the spread of anti-European Union parties across Europe.

But these are desperate folk remedies, not the cause of the disease itself.  The malady instead stems from our false notion of elitism.

The public no longer believes that privilege and influence should be predicated on titles, brands, and buzz, rather than on demonstrable knowledge and proven character. The idea that brilliance can be manifested in trade skills or retail sales, or courage expressed by dealing with the hardship of factory work, or character found on an Indiana farm, is foreign to the Washington Beltway, Hollywood, and Silicon Valley.

Instead, 21st-century repute is accrued from the false gods of the right zip code, high income, proper social circles, and media exposure, rather than from a demonstrable record of moral or intellectual excellence.

In 1828, the wild and unruly Andrew Jackson was elected president because the rapidly expanding country had tired of the pretenses of an exhausted elite of tidewater and New England mediocrities.

The hollow, tiny coastal establishment of the 1820s perpetuated the ancestry and background of the great but all-but-disappeared Founding Fathers such as George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe. Yet otherwise, the Founders' lesser successors had not earned the status they had assumed from their betters. The outsider Jackson won by exposing their pretenses.

What got the brash Trump elected was a similar popular outrage that the self-described best and brightest of our time are has-beens, having enjoyed influence without real merit or visible achievement.

If Donald Trump did not exist, something like him would have had to be invented.

SOURCE






Melbourne set to create female walking signals to create 'street light equality'

Susie O’Brien

PLANS to make the traffic light crossing people gender-neutral is the silliest idea I have ever heard.

It’s political correctness gone mad. First we had restrictions on the word women (because it contains the word men), moves to ban terms like Miss and Mrs, rewriting of classic books and fairy tales to remove gender stereotypes, and now this.

What’s next? Traffic lights that look like those silly family stickers on the back of cars with dogs, cats, tall men and short women and kids with hockey sticks? I mean, we wouldn’t want to leave anyone out, would we?

Haven’t these people at the Committee of Melbourne got anything better to do?

Turning the crossing figures into females won’t create one single job, break down one single barrier or help one single woman.

And yet the Equal Crossings Initiative is proudly kicking off its plans to install 10 female pedestrian figures at one of Melbourne’s busiest intersections. The idea came from the committee’s Future Focus Group and is designed to challenge “unconscious bias”.

I am a woman and a proud feminist who has crossed thousands of roads in my life, but I have to honestly admit I have never seen the crossing men flashing at me and felt left out, subjugated or objectified.

Lord Mayor Robert Doyle hit the nail on the head when he suggested such a scheme was more likely to bring about “derision”. Clearly, Doyle is more in touch than the Future Focus Group.

The problem is that if you spend too much time and money obsessing about irrelevant stuff like whether the crossing figures are men or women, then people don’t listen when you talk about things that are really important.

You know, things like the cost of childcare, the gender wage gap, the lack of women running our companies, and the problem both women and men have accessing family-friendly work.

The Future Focus Group says it is committed to developing “the leadership that our city needs” and promoting “creative ways of thinking”.

Some of their ideas are pretty good, such as free trams in the CBD, Open House Melbourne and Eleos Place, a youth homeless crisis accommodation centre.

Putting skirts on traffic light crossing figures isn’t one of these good ideas.

It’s silly and absurd, and makes a mockery of the whole women’s movement.

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. 

***************************



9 March, 2017

A nod and a wink:  Decoding academic text

Academic text is notoriously difficult to read.  It can even be difficult for fellow academics to make much out of it. That fact lay behind one of the few compliments I have ever received from a fellow academic.  Ken Rigby once said to me: "John, we don't always agree with you but at least we can understand what you are saying".

See what you can make out of the excerpt below from JAMA.  It is from an editorial about the effect of diet on health.



Did you get the idea that the editorial is rubbishing the whole idea that diet has any significant effect on health?  That IS what it is saying in a cautious academic way.  It even nominates the chief reason why the existing studies are inconclusive.  The mention is super-brief but it is there.  Its inclusion is so brief that it is only a nod and a wink to readers in the know.  The mention is:  "particularly socioeconomic factors".  That's pretty vague isn't it?  What does it mean?  Does it set off any alarm bells?

It is in fact put in such a away as to avoid setting of alarm bells. It is designed to avoid highlighting something that is HUGELY politically incorrect:  The fact that the poor tend to experience more illness and tend to die young.  Mentioning that fact out in the open is likely to cause huge eruptions about justice and the like from Leftists -- and the innocent messenger of truth can get shot for telling that truth.  Chris Brand, for instance, got fired from a tenured university teaching job for mentioning that not all pedophiles are equal.

So the fact glided over in this case is that social class is seldom mentioned in medical research, not because it is unimportant but because it is in fact hugely important.  It is not going too far to say that most apparent diet effects are in fact simply social class effects.  The current dietary craze about the evils of sugar, for instance, is based on research which ignores social class.  The poor drink more fizzy, sugary  drinks so any evidence that sugar is bad for you may really be just another demonstration that the poor have more health problems.  The research will be presented as an association between the drink and health while the real thing going on is an association between the drinker and health.

So what we have here is an elite conspiracy to cover up an unpleasant truth.  To hang a conspiracy on the single paragraph I have reproduced would of course be absurd.  What is not absurd is the fact that this is only one pebble on the beach:  The great majority of research papers on diet completely ignore social class.  The writers concerned will usually be well up on the social class tree but mentioning social class is odious to them.

And there is a huge price to pay for that embarrassment.  By ignoring the possibility that what looks like a diet effect is in fact a social class effect, the papers concerned are rendered moot.  They prove nothing and are no evidence for anything.  Vast tracts of the medical literature might as well not have been written.

And perhaps the saddest thing of all is that most medical researchers would be aware of possible class effects in their data.  Social class is one of the most powerful predictors of ill-health that there is.  Any time class IS measured it does reveal itself as an important associate of whatever type of ill-health is being studied.  So for the sake of political correctness, researchers do and report work that is meaningless.  By ignoring social class, they completely waste their time and efforts.  So what we see above is just a nod and a wink where there should be a major scandal.

I suppose we have to be be thankful that the truth is still out there -- as it is above -- for those who know how to read it.

A bit more on the politics of the matter:  The editorial by the JAMA editors excerpted above was in response to an article by Micha et al. which they published in the same issue of the journal.  The article is rubbish.  It is all based on "estimates" that take the existing poorly controlled literature as gospel.  But because what Micha et al. did was completely conventional, the editors apparently felt obliged to publish it.  They should have rejected it but to do so would have put them at odds with the whole racket that is the conventional narrative about diet and health.  So they opted to put their doubts in a cautious editorial only.

REFERENCE: Noel T. Mueller et al. "Attributing Death to Diet: Precision Counts" JAMA. 2017;317(9):908-909. doi:10.1001/jama.2017.0946






D.C. Area School District To Close For ‘A Day Without A Woman’ Protest

It’s being billed as “A Day Without a Woman,” but apparently only pro-union, pro-choice, anti-Israel women who can afford to skip work need apply.

The one-day “general strike” is coming under fire from the right and the left for its mixed political messages, as well as the havoc caused by the closure of some schools Wednesday driven by anticipated staff absences.

At least two large school districts — Alexandria City Public Schools in Virginia and Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools in North Carolina — have announced that they will close in anticipation of hundreds of staff absences, igniting a backlash from parents.

A possible reason for the absences? The U.S. protest is being led by the Women’s March on Washington, whose partners include the nation’s two largest teachers’ unions — the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers, an arm of the AFL-CIO.

Conservative pundit Mollie Hemingway, who lives in Alexandria, posted phone numbers Monday for the school district along with the message, “Local gov’t schools are shuttering for leftist propaganda day. So thankful my daughters have better role models at their Lutheran school!”

The Wednesday protest, which coincides with International Women’s Day, is billed as a worldwide “one-day demonstration of economic solidarity.” Participants are urged to take the day off from “paid and unpaid labor” and wear red.

Organizers also have called on supporters to avoid shopping “with exceptions for small, women- and minority-owned businesses.”

“The goal is to highlight the economic power and significance that women have in the US and global economies, while calling attention to the economic injustices women and gender nonconforming people continue to face,” said the statement.

Like the Women’s March, however, the event is embedded with political messages that many women may find objectionable.

The Day Without a Woman manifesto includes strong support for unions, a “living wage,” “fair pay” and “solidarity with the sex workers’ rights movement,” without explaining what those policies entail.

One of the group’s premier partners is Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider, which effectively shuts out pro-life women, said Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America.

“Does Planned Parenthood, a main sponsor of the Women’s March, approve the closing of schools and putting unnecessary burdens on women, especially working mothers who rely on a regular school schedule?” said Ms. Hawkins. “Are they OK with children from low-income families who will go hungry on Wednesday? Women’s empowerment shouldn’t rely on putting other women and children in precarious situations just to make a point.”

Then there’s the Israel angle. Among the international organizers is Rasmea Yousef Odeh, a Palestinian activist who was convicted in a 1969 Jerusalem terrorist bombing that left two Israeli men dead and was released 10 years later as part of a prisoner exchange.

“So, here we are in 2017 and a convicted terrorist who murdered two people with impunity (even Odeh’s cousin confirmed in a documentary that she was responsible for the attack) is a leading figure in the contemporary women’s movement,” said Willem Hart in an op-ed on the B’nai B’rith Canada website.

He pointed to the prominent role in the Women’s March in January played by Linda Sarsour, an outspoken advocate of Shariah law and the anti-Israel Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement.

“And, just as Linda Sarsour’s political agenda was given credence in January, not to mention landing an audience of millions of people, now yet another vehemently anti-Israel, anti-Zionist, and antisemitic ‘activist’ will be given a platform to spew her radical ideologies,” Mr. Hart wrote.

Despite the protest’s staunch left-wing agenda, even some progressives are uncomfortable with the event, arguing that only “privileged” women have the wherewithal to take a day off without economic consequences.

“The idea behind the strike is a noble one. Who doesn’t want economic equality for everyone?” said feminist writer Maureen Shaw on online news outlet Quartz. “But in practice, most American women cannot afford to opt out of either paid or unpaid labor. This fact, coupled with the very broad aims of the strike, is concerning.”

The idea is modeled on events like last month’s “A Day Without Immigrants,” which was intended to highlight the economic importance of noncitizens. One key difference is that while most immigrants are not instantly recognizable to those who interact with them on the job, most women are.

“We are nearly half the labor force now. We are just as important in the workplace and to our families’ fiscal welfare as men. All things being equal (which is what we’re after, right?), we are too essential to play hooky,” said Los Angeles Times columnist Meghan Daum.

In its Monday statement, the Alexandria school district insisted that the decision to close for the day was based on staffing, not politics.

“The decision is based solely on our ability to provide sufficient staff to cover all our classrooms, and the impact of high staff absenteeism on student safety and delivery of instruction. It is not based on a political stance or position,” said the district.

Both the Virginia and North Carolina school districts were flooded with messages on their Facebook pages from parents and others. Some praised the closures as a way to stand with teachers, while many blasted the districts for kowtowing to political pressure.

“It’s illegal for public servants (and yes, that includes teachers) to strike in North Carolina. I would hope that CHCCS would put a stop to this nonsense — as in FIRE THEM,” said Megan Elise in a post.

SOURCE





Why Do American Jews Want Thousands of Jew Haters in America?

Dennis Prager

Last week, the Jerusalem Post and other news agencies reported that in a Paris suburb, two Jewish brothers wearing kippot (Jewish skullcaps) were attacked while driving their car by Middle Easterners driving another car.

According to a case report: “While the vehicle was in motion, the driver and a passenger shouted anti-Semitic slogans at the brothers that included ‘Dirty Jews, You’re going to die!’ … The vehicle forced the brothers to stop their car, and they were surrounded by several men … The men came out of a hookah cafe on to the side street … The alleged attackers surrounded the brothers, then kicked and punched them repeatedly while threatening that they would be murdered if they moved. One of the alleged attackers then sawed off the finger of one of the brothers.”

Attacks on Jews in France and elsewhere in Europe by Muslim immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, or MENA, are so common that for the first time since World War II, Jews in France fear wearing a kippah or a Star of David in public. So many French Jews are leaving France that two years ago, then-Prime Minister Manuel Valls gave an impassioned speech pleading with French Jews to stay in France.

It has gotten so bad for Jews in Europe that The Atlantic, a liberal magazine, recently featured an article titled “Is It Time for the Jews to Leave Europe?”

In Sweden, attacks on Jews in Malmo, the country’s third largest city, are so common that Jews are leaving the city and the country.

Last year, the Jerusalem Post published an article about a Jewish couple that had lived in Sweden since the middle of World War II. Dan and Karla (not their real names) are Danish Jews who were smuggled into Sweden as children. Their gratitude for Sweden has been immense.

But they have now left their homeland, the country that saved their lives, to live in Spain. They lived in Malmo. In Dan’s words, the immense saturation of Jew hatred in the city was caused by “the adverse effects of accepting half-a-million immigrants from the Middle East, who plainly weren’t interesting in adopting Sweden’s values and Swedish culture. … The politicians, the media, the intellectuals … they all played their parts in pandering to this dangerous ideology and, sadly, it’s changing the fabric of Swedish society irreversibly.”

The Post continued, saying, “Karla, who’d sat passively, occasionally nodding in agreement at Dan’s analysis, then interrupted, saying, ‘If you disagree with the establishment, you’re immediately called a racist or fascist.’” (Sound familiar?)

The British newspaper The Telegraph recently reported: “Jewish people in Malmo have long complained of growing harassment in the city, where 43 per cent of the population have a non-Swedish background, with Iraqis, Lebanese and stateless Palestinians some of the largest groups. The Jewish community centre in the city is heavily fortified, with security doors and bollards on the outside pavement to prevent car bombs.”

An article in the left-wing HuffingtonPost reached a now-familiar conclusion, saying: “Migrants streaming into Europe from the Middle East are bringing with them virulent anti-Semitism which is erupting from Scandinavia to France to Germany. … While all of the incoming refugees and migrants, fleeing Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and other Muslim lands, may not hold anti-Jewish views, an extremely large number do — simply as a result to being raised in places where anti-Jewish vitriol is poured out in TV, newspapers, schools and mosques. … ‘There is no future for Jews in Europe’ said the chief Rabbi of Brussels.”

Yet, despite all this Muslim-immigrant Jew hatred, more than a thousand rabbis have signed a petition to bring large numbers of MENA Muslims into America, and virtually all Jewish organizations outside of orthodoxy and the Zionist Organization of America have condemned President Trump’s administration for enacting even a temporary travel ban (one due entirely to security concerns) on immigrants and refugees from seven (of the world’s more than 50) Muslim-majority countries.

How is one to explain the widespread American Jewish support for bringing in a massive number of people, many of whom will bring in anti-Jew, anti-Israel and anti-West values?

First, they are staggeringly naive believing, for example, that marching at airports with signs that read “We love Muslims” will change those Muslims who hate Jews into Muslims who love Jews.

Second, never underestimate the power of feeling good about yourself that exists on the Left (the self-esteem movement originated on the Left). And it feels very good for these Jews to say: “Look, world. You abandoned us in the 1930s, but we’re better than you.”

And third, when American Jews abandoned traditional liberal and traditional Jewish values for leftist values, they became less Jewish, less American and more foolish.

Just ask the Jews of Europe.

SOURCE





Texas Legislature to Consider Bill to Ensure ‘Public Safety’ in Bathrooms

Texas is taking measures to protect its citizens from laws that hinder “common sense and public safety” when it comes to transgender persons being allowed to use both men’s and women’s restrooms.

“This is a public safety issue,” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, a Republican, said during a conference call with reporters Friday.

Legislation filed by Texas state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, seeks to ensure that men and women use separate bathrooms.

Kolkhorst said the bill, titled the Texas Privacy Act, will clarify who will be allowed to enter both men’s and women’s restrooms.

“I don’t view this bill as a transgender bill,” Kolkhorst said in the conference call. “It truly is about public safety … It is not against the law for a man to enter a woman’s restroom dressed looking like a man. There is nothing on the books here in Texas.”

The gender on a person’s birth certificate would determine which bathroom Texans could use.

“In Texas, there is a way to change your birth certificate and it is going before a district judge and presenting the date of either hormone therapy or the surgery and then the judge makes the decision that [the gender on] the birth certificate shall be changed,” Kolkhorst said.

Patrick said the bill is necessary because it is “common practice” that men and women use separate bathrooms.

“The people of Texas elected us to stand up for common decency, common sense, and public safety,” Patrick said in a statement. “This legislation codifies what has been common practice in Texas and everywhere else forever—that men and women should use separate, designated bathrooms.”

Patrick says the legislation has received bipartisan support and is viewed favorably by men and women, African-Americans, and Hispanics.

While ensuring that bathrooms remain separate for men and women, the bill also specifies that “no public school can institute a bathroom policy that allows boys to go in girls restrooms, showers, and locker rooms and girls to go in boys restrooms, showers, and locker rooms,” according to Patrick’s statement.

According to Patrick’s office, the hearing for the Texas Privacy Act is the first legislative hearing for privacy protection legislation following President Donald Trump’s revocation of President Barack Obama’s bathroom directive issued by the Justice and Education departments in May.

Obama’s directive allowed students identifying as transgender to be able to use the restroom that corresponded with their gender identity and mandated schools conform to the rule.

Trump rescinded the directive in late February, and a statement from the White House on bathroom usage specified that policy for those who identify as transgender should be decided by the states.

Opponents of the Texas bill say they are concerned that Kolkhorst’s legislation is too similar to the bathroom bill passed by North Carolina last March.

During a conference call with reporters, Patrick said that he does not believe the Texas Privacy Act will have adverse economic effects.

Critics of North Carolina’s bill claim the state lost out on economic opportunities because of the bill, CNN reports.

According to CNN, businesses chose not to expand because of the bill and the NBA moved its All-Star Game from Charlotte, North Carolina, to a location outside the state.

However, former North Carolina Commerce Secretary John Skvarla said North Carolina’s economy was not adversely affected, according to The Charlotte Observer.

“It hasn’t moved the needle one iota,” Skvarla said in October.

Patrick argued the Texas bill was different than the North Carolina bill.

“I think there has been significant misrepresentation in what happened in North Carolina,” Patrick said. “Our bill is not the North Carolina bill … Our bill is very narrow and it deals with public safety, keeping sexual predators pretending to be transgender people [from entering] adult bathrooms.”

Ryan T. Anderson, a senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal that this bill is appropriate because it seeks to protect the dignity of all people.

“While we must be sensitive to the dignity, privacy, and safety concerns of people who identify as transgender, that is not a reason to ignore the dignity, privacy, and safety concerns of everyone else,” Anderson said in an email to The Daily Signal.

The Texas Privacy Act hearing is scheduled for March 7 in the Texas Senate.

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. 

***************************





8 March, 2017

A confused feminist

By Piers Morgan

 ‘I really don’t know what my t*ts have to do with it,’ exclaimed an exasperated Emma Watson this week. ‘It’s very confusing. I’m quietly stunned.’

The Harry Potter star was responding to widespread criticism of her decision, as Hollywood’s most vocal young feminist, to pose topless for Vanity Fair magazine.

‘Feminism is about giving women choice,’ she explained. ‘It is not a stick with which to beat other women. It’s about freedom, it’s about liberation, it’s about equality. They were saying I couldn’t be a feminist and have boobs.’

Well, Emma, that would indeed be very confusing, I agree. But that wasn’t what the critics were actually saying.

It’s probably a given that the vast majority of feminists, unless they are men identifying as feminists, have boobs.

No, Emma, it wasn’t you flashing your boobs as a feminist that caused all the raised eyebrows. The problem is that you haven’t always had this attitude to feminism and boob-flashing.

In 2013, Beyoncé released her self-titled album which included a spoken word recording from the novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, taken from her TED speech We Should All Be Feminists.

The album was accompanied by provocative videos showing Beyoncé in various states of undress. Many lauded it as ‘fierce feminism’ at its ferocious best.  Others were less impressed.

‘As I was watching, I felt very conflicted,’ said one female critic. ‘I felt her (Beyoncé’s) message felt very conflicted in the sense that on the one hand she is putting herself in a category of feminist, but then the camera, it felt very male, such a voyeuristic experience of her.’

Wow. That sounds like precisely the kind of feminist that Emma Watson would deplore: a woman using feminism as ‘as stick with which to beat other women.’  Only, it WAS Emma Watson, in an interview for Wonderland magazine.

Yes, the self-styled global standard-bearer for feminism had decided that Beyoncé’s brand of feminism was not the right brand of feminism.

Why? Because, to deploy the parlance of Donald Trump’s notorious locker room, Emma felt it was incompatible for Beyoncé to claim to be a feminist when she was effectively getting her t*ts out for the lads.

Hmmm. This brings us back to Emma’s new photo shoot for Vanity Fair. It was no accident that she chose to take off her clothes and parade topless under a skimpy white crocheted bolero jacket.

She knew exactly what she was doing. After all, she’s a woman who’s been posing for magazine cover shoots since she was 14 years old.  So when Emma removed her bra for the first time like this, she was doing it very deliberately.

‘It felt incredibly artistic,’ she said this week, ‘and I’m thrilled with how interesting and beautiful the photographs were.’

Of course she was, that’s what all actresses say when they strip naked to promote themselves and their movies. Though they tend to take a much dimmer view of women who pose as topless Page 3 girls in British tabloids. That, they sneer, is ‘demeaning to women.’

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t disagree with Emma’s assessment; the photos are inarguably interesting and beautiful.

But how does exposing her breasts to the world fit with Emma’s condemnation of Beyoncé doing the same?

A generous observer might say ‘uneasily’.  A less generous observer would brand it flaming hypocrisy.

I don’t want to be too harsh on Emma Watson, not least because she is still young and should be allowed to evolve her views as she ages.

She’s also in many ways a very impressive young lady – an excellent actress who conducts admirable work as a United Nations ambassador.

In interviews, she comes across as intelligent and thoughtful, and she clearly cares passionately about this issue.  But by posing for this Vanity Fair photo, she exposed not just her breasts.

She also exposed herself to some as a feminist fraud; someone who professes to want other women to have the ‘freedom and liberation’ to decide how they behave as feminists, but who actually wants to dictate to them how they behave as feminists.

Beyoncé flashing her flesh to sell an album in the name of feminism dismayed Emma, because she feared it would simply serve to titillate men.

Yet she sees no conflict in doing the same thing herself, while promoting, with almost comical inappropriateness, the new Disney kids movie Beauty And The Beast.

We live in an age when the debate about feminism, women’s rights and sexism rightly rages hard, and men, as I know only too well, tip their toe into the fire at their peril.  But on the general principle, it shouldn’t be difficult to find consensus.

For instance, I agree whole-heartedly with Emma Watson’s own overview: ‘Fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. This has to stop. For the record, feminism is the belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. It is the theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes.’

She’s absolutely right. But other female celebrities don’t seem to have got the memo.

Every time Madonna rants and raves at a women’s march about blowing up Donald Trump, the cause of feminism is damaged.

Just as it is when Kim Kardashian posts another bird-flipping topless selfie, supposedly in the name of ‘female empowerment’.

Or, as happened at a Welsh university in Britain this week, when students are told that they can’t use words like ‘mankind’ or ‘sportsmanship’ any more because they are ‘gender-offensive.’

None of this nonsense helps anyone, particularly when there are far more important battles to fight.

This weekend, a Polish politician actually said in the European parliament during a debate on the gender pay gap, that ‘women must earn less than men, because they are weaker, they are smaller, they are less intelligent’.

Now THAT is outrageous sexism and if there’s a march to get this despicable misogynist dinosaur sacked, count me in.

But let’s also have some rational perspective to counter the more rabid, headline-grabbing brand of feminism.

Right now, the five most powerful people in Emma Watson’s home country are all women: Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II; Prime Minister, Theresa May; Scottish First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon; Home Secretary, Amber Rudd; and Metropolitan Police Commander, Cressida Dick.

With the exception of the Queen – who has turned out to be arguably the most successful Monarch of all time - they all got there strictly on merit.

As Oprah Winfrey put it so perfectly: ‘Excellence is the best deterrent to racism and sexism.’

SOURCE





Silicon Valley Subsidizes Hate

by Sam Westrop 

In many lines of work, a new job means a slow first day. My first day as the director of the Middle East Forum's Islamist Watch project, however, featured a clash with the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF), the nation's largest community foundation, which holds over $8 billion in assets.

I previously ran Stand for Peace, a British counter-extremism organization. I know that we face the enormous challenge of media, government and civil society that refuse to acknowledge the extent of Islamist influence over the American Muslim community, and the threat that it poses to our security. My first day was never going to be an easy one.

For several months before my arrival at Islamist Watch, the Forum had attempted to contact SVCF's staff and trustees, urging them to stop funding extremist groups such as the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Islamic Relief USA, a branch of the largest Muslim Brotherhood charity in the world. Since 2008, SVCF has given $330,524 to these two Islamist organizations.

The Forum's attempt to explain the extremist links of CAIR and Islamic Relief were rebuffed by SVCF, which refused to address MEF's concerns that they were not funding ordinary American Muslims, but international Islamism, an extreme form of the religion.

SVCF funding of extremists betrays moderate Muslims working to free their faith from the grip of Islamism.

SVCF's unwillingness to stop funding extremists betrays moderate Muslims working to free their faith from the grip of Islamism. So on March 1, the Middle East Forum published a petition that explained the anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic rhetoric that SVCF money is subsidizing.

Regular speakers at CAIR and Islamic Relief events include Hussein Kamani, who advocates sex slavery and calls for adulterers to be "stoned to death"; Jamal Badawi, who tells husbands they have a right to beat their wives; and Siraj Wahhaj, who cites the death penalty for the "disease" of homosexuality. Hardly the proudest product of Silicon Valley ingenuity and liberalism.

You can read our press release and sign our petition here.

Just a few hours after publishing our petition, SVCF responded. You can read their reaction here.

We had urged SVCF to work instead with moderate Muslim groups. Rather than examine the facts, SVCF chose to label our evidence "Islamophobic." The Forum, our Muslim staff and our Muslim allies disagree.

The Forum is not the only organization concerned about CAIR and Islamic Relief. Both CAIR and Islamic Relief are designated as terrorist groups in the United Arab Emirates. CAIR was named by American federal prosecutors as an un-indicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing trial. The FBI has banned outreach with CAIR since 2008, and the Anti-Defamation League accuses CAIR of promoting anti-Jewish sentiment.

In a recent article published at National Review, we revealed that Islamic Relief USA is funding a Hamas-linked charity in the Gaza Strip, whose officials have called for Jerusalem to be "free... from the filth of the most dirty Jews." Senior Islamic Relief USA staff have included Omar Shahin, who once preached: "oh (servant) slaves of Allah, there is a Jew behind me; come and kill him."

I have a lot of experience with Islamist groups like CAIR and Islamic Relief. Coming from the United Kingdom, I know exactly how dangerous it is when a society fails to challenge the forces of radicalization and extremism that run the charities, schools, community centers and mosques all across the country. It took Britain over a decade after 9/11 to realize that we had been giving power and money to the wrong people within British Islam, at the cost of thousands of recruits to foreign terror groups, increasing numbers of homegrown terrorists and whole Muslim communities that have segregated themselves from British society and teach their children to hate Jews, Christians, the West and all its values.

It's time to fix our mistakes and properly challenge Islamist forces at home and abroad.

Over the last few years, the British government finally started to realize the terrible mistakes they have made. They cut funding to Islamist groups and refused to meet with them. For many, it feels this insight was too late. In America, the extremism problem is less developed – we have time to fix our mistakes and properly challenge Islamist forces at home and abroad. But we have to start now.

If groups such as SVCF continue to fund the flagship institutions of Islamist extremism, they will further disempower moderate Muslim organizations, contribute towards the growing problem of radicalization, and aid Islamist incitement against Jews, women, homosexuals and Muslim minorities.

Help us show SVCF that by funding Islamist groups, they are not fighting prejudice; they are promoting it. Sign our petition, share it and tell SVCF that they're making a terrible mistake.

SOURCE





Pelosi Should Rebuke Fellow Dem for Sexist Conway Comment, CWA President Says

Fellow Democrats and liberal womens’ groups need to condemn a Democrat congressman’s insult of Kellyanne Conway, Concerned Women for America (CWA) President Penny Nance says.

Nance issued a statement Monday calling on House Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) to rebuke Louisiana Rep. Cedric Richmond (D-LA) for commenting that Conway, an advisor to President Donald Trump, was down on her knees in a “familiar” pose:

“Nancy Pelosi needs to call Mr. Richmond on the carpet and send out a clear, unmistakable warning to her caucus and all Democrats that neither she, nor the Democratic Party leadership, will tolerate sexism, misogyny and chauvinism in their ranks.  There can be no double standard for Kellyanne Conway who was viciously attacked by Democratic congressman.”

Nance also said that it would be hypocritical for liberal womens’ activist groups to let the comment pass without condemning it:

“Likewise the National Organization for Women and leaders of the "Women's March" need to do the same.  The silence from the feminist women’s groups is deafening. Their empty claims to fight for women will repeatedly fall on deaf ears unless they back up what they say. Otherwise, they look like the ultimate hypocrites, and they will only continue to lose credibility in the eyes of the American people. We’re still waiting to hear from them, and every hour that goes by without a forceful statement will only confirm their hypocrisy and small-minded elitism.”

Apparently drawing a comparison to the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal, Rep. Richmond made the controversial comment about Conway at the Washington Press Club Foundation Dinner last Wednesday:

“I really just want to know what was going on there, because, you know, I won’t tell anybody. And you can just explain to me that circumstance, because she really looked kind of familiar in that position there. But, don’t answer, and I don’t want you to refer back to the 1990s.”

Richmond released a “clarification” in response to backlash about his comment, but has yet to apologize.

On Sunday, Pelosi refused to condemn Richmond's comment.

SOURCE






UK: How a popular teacher lost his job and good name when he was accused of sex abuse by a boy he'd never met in a harrowing two-year ordeal

Jerked from sleep by the trill of the doorbell at his Suffolk home one crisp December morning, Simon Warr felt puzzled. At just after 7am, it was still dark outside and too early for a delivery.

Never in his wildest dreams could he have predicted who would be at the door: five police officers who proceeded to place him under arrest. The charge? Historical child abuse.

The complainant was a former pupil at a school where Warr, now in his early 60s, had taught 30 years previously. Warr had never met him and had certainly never taught PE, the lesson during which the 'abuse' supposedly happened.

He says: 'I was horrified, of course, but it was clearly a ridiculous mistake. I thought it would all quickly be cleared up.'

Yet that rude dawn awakening would mark the start of a two-year ordeal which would, to Warr's bafflement and despair, take him all the way to court – in a case driven by a police force apparently determined to build a case against him.

A jury would later find him not guilty in less than 40 minutes.

But by then the damage had been done: the man once labelled 'one of the outstanding school masters of his generation' had lost not only his profession and his livelihood, but his good name.

He says: 'Two hundred years ago if you were a criminal, they'd paint the word "criminal" on your forehead. 'Now, due to the internet, you just need to be accused of a crime to be for ever branded.'

How, then, could a man of unimpeachable character have found himself subjected to almost two years of agony on such flimsy 'evidence'?

It is possible that Warr's profile as a 'TV headmaster' in a successful Channel 4 series made him more vulnerable to false accusations.

Then there is Warr's concern that Suffolk police officers effectively 'canvassed' for evidence to build a case against him.  He says: 'If it was not actually a witch-hunt, it feels pretty close.'

Most of all, however, he believes that our [British] system of criminal justice has been seized by a collective madness following the exposure of Jimmy Savile, and that the innocent are paying the price

 Warr loved teaching, and in June 1981 he arrived to teach O-level languages at St George's in Suffolk, a boys' boarding school (now Finborough School) whose grand Georgian facade gave no hint of its somewhat austere atmosphere.

Nearly 30 years later, the headmaster, Derek Slade, would be sentenced to 20 years' imprisonment for sexual and physical abuse of children in his care. It is this, Warr believes, that laid the groundwork for his own subsequent arrest.

After two years at St George's, he moved to the Royal Hospital School, also in Suffolk, where he remained for what he calls '30 very happy years', dividing his time between school accommodation and a flat he owns in Osterley, West London.

'I loved my time there,' he says, and it seemed the school loved him back. In 2007, the then headmaster, Howard Blackett, labelled him 'one of the outstanding school masters of his generation'.

Warr was, then, wholly unprepared for the knock on the door of his house at the school that chilly December morning.

At the police station, he was told that a former pupil, known as 'A', had alleged that after a PE lesson at St George's, when Warr was supervising showering, Warr had asked the pupil to part his buttocks to check they were dry.

The former pupil, who said he was 11 at the time, would also claim that Warr had once touched his genitals.

'The first thing I said was that I had never taught a single lesson of PE in my life,' Warr says. 'I also didn't teach juniors. I'm a senior teacher – my pupils were 14 and over – and even with them I never supervised showers. It was patently nonsense.'

Basic checks, he assumed, would corroborate his account.

Yet after an exhausting 13 hours in the police station, he was released on bail and told he could not return to his school quarters at the Royal Hospital School.

It was to prove only the start of his ordeal. Initially bailed for three months, it would be nine agonising months before Warr would learn his fate.

In the meantime he was left in limbo: temporarily suspended from school while the investigation proceeded, he struggled to fill his days.

With his name now made public, he found himself the victim of vicious trolling by a small number of former pupils and their parents.

He was called a 'f****** paedo' and told to kill himself in a sewer.

He says: 'I can't describe the desperation. I couldn't eat and, though I was dead tired, I couldn't sleep. I felt utterly alone.'

 At his lowest moment, two weeks after his arrest, he recalls contemplating jumping in front of a Tube train, and was only stopped by the thought of the impact on the driver.

The climate was febrile: a month after the arrest, the then Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, announced that people reporting child abuse 'must be believed'.

Warr says: 'I knew then I was in trouble. It is not for police to believe or disbelieve. Their job is to collect evidence.'

The case against Warr was flawed from the start. Police documents would later reveal to him that 'A' had first approached the police in 2011 when he made the allegation that Warr had asked him to part his buttocks.

The police declined to act – until eight months later, when 'A' returned and now said Warr had touched his penis.

Warr says: 'In police documents it says they arrested me following further evidence. 'In fact it was an embellishment of his original statement, which was translated by the police into further evidence. How can a totally uncorroborated allegation be put forward as evidence?'

He now knows that, in the wake of Derek Slade's imprisonment, website forums were openly making accusations, mainly unsubstantiated, against all kinds of former teachers, himself among them.

Warr says: 'The police had approached the man who ran one of the websites to canvas for more information regarding my case.'

He accepts that his parallel career as a broadcaster might have marked him out as a target. By 2003 he had been given the role of headmaster in Channel 4's That'll Teach 'Em, in which 30 children experienced life as it would have been at a 1950s boarding school.

Nine months after his arrest, Warr was told that he would be charged and that the accusations against him had multiplied.   Another ex-pupil, 'B', a very close friend of 'A', was making similar claims – which Warr also vehemently denies.

And a third boy, 'C', a former pupil at the Royal Hospital School, had alleged that Warr had chased him and attempted to pinch his bottom and had, on occasions, endeavoured to remove his towel in the changing rooms.

Warr accepts he may, on occasion, have done the latter – in full public view and in nothing more than teasing locker-room spirit.  It is an interpretation accepted by 'C', who told police he felt it had been done as a joke.

Nonetheless, Warr now faced seven charges of abuse against three different children – four counts of indecent assault and three counts of indecency with a child.

'It was an effective strategy,' says Warr. 'A case of a few teaspoons of truth mixed with a whole ladle full of falsehoods, suggestions and innuendo.'

By the time the case came to court, nearly two years later, Warr had resigned of his own volition, believing that as he was near retirement age, it was in the best interests of the school.

On the day of his trial, in October 2014, Warr set eyes on his accuser, 'A', for the first time. 'A' was not a convincing witness.

Warr says: 'His testimony was an embarrassing shambles, full of inconsistencies.' Asked what Warr had been wearing to supervise the showers, 'A' stuttered that it was red tracksuit bottoms and white T-shirt.

'B', in his testimony, said he was wearing a suit and gown – 'an odd thing for me to wear to supervise PE', as Warr points out.

An astonishing courtroom revelation was to follow: 'Y', a witness produced by the prosecution to corroborate the accounts of 'A' and 'B', would inadvertently dismantle a key part of the case.  'One of the first things he said was, "Everyone knows Simon Warr didn't teach PE,"'

Warr explains. 'If the stakes weren't so high it would be comical.'

After a seven-day trial, he was declared not guilty on all counts. 'The relief was indescribable,' he says.

'I'd waited 672 days for that moment. I'm not ashamed to say I cried.' But he remains incandescent at the way he was, in his words, 'hung out to dry'.

'It seems that all that is now required to devastate someone's life, because these public arrests do exactly that, is an uncorroborated allegation.

The only thing that kept me sane and prevented me from killing myself during the period after my arrest was the knowledge that I was innocent.

'But this didn't stop agents of the state stripping me of my good name, my home, my career, my happiness.

'From the start the onus was on me to prove my innocence, not for the police to prove my guilt,' he says.

It is one reason he has written a book in which he lays bare the devastating nature of his ordeal and makes an impassioned plea for us to reconsider how our police handle historical child abuse cases.

Warr says: 'The furthest thing in my mind when writing this book was to drive victims of sexual abuse back into the shadows for fear they will not be believed.

'My purpose is to convey a clear message that all state agencies must also be mindful that there is a possibility that the complainant might not be telling the truth.

'I may have been exonerated by the court but the damage to my reputation is irreversible while the identities of the people who peddled untruths remain protected by the courts.'

A spokesman for Suffolk Police said: 'We carried out a thorough investigation after receiving complaints of alleged child abuse.

'We collated the evidence and presented it to the Crown Prosecution Service who chose to charge the individual with the respective charges.  'They also shared our view that it was in the public interest to prosecute the individual.

'The evidence was presented to a jury who returned their verdict. This is how the criminal justice system operates.'

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. 

***************************





7 March, 2017

Religious freedom is a tricky thing

Rob Forsyth below thinks that Muslims must be allowed to follow their religious dictates even when they clash with normal Australian customs.  And if the Muslim custom does no harm why not allow it?

The answer surely is that we want immigrants from chaotic parts of the world not to bring their dysfunctional beliefs and customs with them.  We want them to learn our ways -- the ways that have made Australia an attractive destination for them. 

And the various attacks on Australians by Jihadis do tell us that imported Muslim attitutudes are a serious problem.  We do well to ask Muslims for assimilation as the price for being here. 

Sikh customs, Hindu customs, Chinese customs are all fine and can  reasonably be accommodated -- because they do not bring hostility towards us with them.  It is precisely Islam that is the problem.  Sikhs, Hindus and Chinese do not attack us.  Some Muslims do.  All men are not equal nor are all religions

After all, Muslims can practice all the Muslim customs they like in the many Muslim countries. Why not go to one of those if our customs don't suit them? Malaysia is just to the North of us and it's not a bad place -- thanks to the large Chinese minority there


Two weeks have passed since the controversy over Hurstville Boy's Campus of Georges River College agreeing to a protocol allowing Muslim students not to shake hands with women.

A proper understanding of religious freedom suggests the school did the right thing and its critics are mistaken.  Freedom of religion is not just the freedom to believe but also, in the words of Article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR),the freedom "to manifest [ ...] religion or belief in worship, observance, practice and teaching." In this case, if there is a way to accommodate the manifestation of the religious views of the young men, why shouldn't it be done?

The views in question may be strange even to mainstream Islam. But religious freedom never depended on the reasonableness of the religion involved. Nor is it any good to assert that giving in at this point is the thin edge of a 'sharia' wedge. Religious freedom is not absolute. It is, as the ICCPR asserts, subject to such limitations that are "necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others." No sharia.

But is it sexist? Maybe, but in itself that is not a reason to deny religious freedom. And having an agreed protocol manages the risk of misunderstanding and substitutes another gesture of respect.

Government schools are essentially secular institutions, but they are not secularist imposing an Australian version of a French hard line laïcité -- a core concept in France's constitution, Article 1 of which states that the country is a secular one.

The School need not be criticised, but like any religion, Islam certainly can be. The right to religious freedom is not the right to be free from criticism or even ridicule. Something often goes wrong when Islam is discussed. The left forget their abhorrence of sexism, and others can lose their passion for freedom.

SOURCE






Understanding the Front National

Why Marine Le Pen’s Front National is now the largest single party in France

The two things I often hear from supporters of the Front National are ‘something has to change’ and ‘France was better in the past’. They have a desire for change that is largely driven by a sense of loss, a negative reaction to the state of France today. Shopkeepers list the prices of common items – eggs, milk – observing how much more expensive they are now. Everything, even inflation, is seen as evidence of French decline.

Front National supporters’ concern with immigrants (particularly Muslim immigrants) is best understood through the prism of this sense of loss. It’s not primarily about racism. Rather, it is born of the sense that ordinary French people are not being recognised or prioritised by the political class. The immigrant functions as a figure of those who are being prioritised in their place. Working French aren’t being put first, so someone else must be. Les Français d’abord! – French people first – is an FN slogan, and the party has policies for prioritising native French. ‘There are homeless people in France too’, people say, ‘why not help them before helping Syrians?’.

For FN supporters, the immigrant is also the figure that is undermining French culture, through his unwillingness to respect the ways things are done. Immigrants don’t want to integrate; they don’t respect France. They are apparently the reason that the French no longer feel at home in France. Nous sommes chez nous (We are at home) is another Frontiste slogan, often directed against the immigrant blamed for their own sense of unease.

The roots of the Front National lie in the 1950s Poujadist protest movement against government bureaucracy and big business. Poujadism, named after its driving force Pierre Poujade, was grounded in the worldview and interests of the small business owner and shopkeeper, who was being squeezed by taxes, Parisian bureaucrats and large business interests. The small business owner was a prime constituency of Jean-Marie Le Pen (a former Poujadiste) when he launched the Front National in the 1970s. The party was for independence and hard work, traditional morality and family values. It was against state bureaucracy, welfare, Europe and big business, intellectuals, immigrants and homosexuals.

The Front National still has a certain grounding in the values and perspective of the small business owner, particularly in the southern and south-west regions. These are regions where, to a degree, old-style French community and ways of life persist. Front National voters here are not talking about some fantasy of being French: it is the way they are actually living. They are calling for the way they are actually living to be recognised and protected. It is this that gives the party a social base, and means that it is more grounded than other populist parties, such as UKIP in Britain.

From the beginning, however, the Front National was something of a catch-all for various left-behind elements in French society. In the 1970s this included monarchists who regretted the French Revolution and the founding of the Republic, anti-Semites and wartime collaborators yearning for the Vichy, and pro-colonialists who regretted the loss of French Algeria in the early 1960s. This basket-case element has grown over time, as the Front National has mopped up voters released by the crisis of mainstream institutions. It has taken former Communists, former Socialists, former Gaullists, the young unemployed and now even parts of the business class. Every institutional disintegration has meant more Frontistes.

Marine Le Pen, the Front National’s leader since 2011, has sought to distance the party from its past, acrimoniously jettisoning her father and embarking on a policy of dédiabolisation (de-demonisation). There is an attempt to broaden the appeal, to absorb the discontented of the nation. Front National is making rapprochements with the Jewish community and setting up groups in elite colleges such as Sciences Po. The Front National says that it is neither left nor right, and its policies include disparate elements from various absorbed constituencies: tax-cutting measures on the one hand, and social-state measures such as the 35-hour week on the other.

Its supporters seem to have an energy and conviction that outstrips those of other parties. You always see Front National posters in the most out of the way places: on bridges, ring roads, in mountain villages. The posters may be vandalised (Marine Le Pen often sports a moustache) but they are the only posters there. The vandals didn’t bother to put up rival posters of their own.

The question of being for or against the Front National has become the primary schism in French political life. People vote for it, or they vote against it: the other schisms have become less important. Marine Le Pen derisively amalgamates the names of the Gaullist and Socialist parties to ‘UMPS’. Indeed, in the 2015 local elections, the Socialist Party withdrew some of its candidates from the second round, in order to send its supporters to the Gaullists and prevent a Front National victory.

This was an unprecedented act. The governing party showed that it was prepared to sacrifice its own candidates, sell over its supporters. What really mattered was the defeat of the Front National.

This schism of pro- and anti-Front National is grounded less and less in political differences. While Gaullists have taken on Frontiste policies and language, the Front National has taken on Socialist policies. Instead, the conflict increasingly takes the form of a sheer political polarity, a sheer mutual opposition. The Front National is defined by being anti-mainstream, anti-establishment; the mainstream is defined as being anti-Front National. It is the mutual opposition that defines the integrity of both parties.

Currently, the Front National is the largest single party, but the combined anti-Front National vote is larger. This suggests that Le Pen will win the first round of the presidential election but lose the second. But who knows? Maybe Le Pen will succeed in uniting a greater proportion of the disaffected underneath her tricolore. Were this to happen, the contradictions within the party would come more clearly into view.

SOURCE






Fury at 'ignorant' BBC for questioning whether an MP should have worn an Ash Wednesday cross on her forehead in parliament

The BBC has been accused of being ‘dismissive’ of Christianity and lambasted for its ignorance after questioning whether an MP should have attended a parliamentary meeting with an Ash Wednesday cross on her forehead.

An item on the BBC Politics Facebook site asked readers: ‘Was it appropriate for this MP to go to work with a cross on her head?’

It was accompanied by a picture of Glasgow MP Carol Monaghan, a Roman Catholic, displaying the symbol made of ashes that is traditionally marked on Christian worshippers at church services marking the start of Lent. The Facebook post was linked to an article on the BBC website in which Monaghan is quoted as saying she is not ashamed to appear with the cross.

Acting Bishop of London Pete Broadbent tweeted: ‘Is it appropriate for people working for @bbcpolitics to be so ignorant about the Christian faith that has shaped this country?’ while former Minister Ann Widdecombe, a convert to Catholicism, said she thought the question reflected a ‘dismissive’ attitude and said it showed the BBC’s ‘complete ignorance’.

SNP Cabinet Secretary for the Environment Roseanna Cunningham wrote on Twitter: ‘Is it appropriate for @bbcpolitics to even ask this?’

A BBC spokesperson said: ‘The Facebook post was meant to attract the audience attention and to encourage them to read the article.’

SOURCE






British police as judge and jury

The ITV police drama Broadchurch last week dealt a damaging blow to British justice. This expensively made, star-infested type of programme has a huge impact on those who watch it.

Beloved and respected actors in tense, enthralling stories influence viewers far more than any amount of news or documentary film. As the author Philip Pullman has rightly said, ‘Once upon a time’ is a far more effective way of getting into someone’s mind than ‘Thou shalt not’.

So I was appalled by a scene in the first episode of the new series – a high-impact moment just before the first commercial break.

The actors involved were David Tennant, a TV superstar since he played Doctor Who, Olivia Colman, a key character in the successful The Night Manager, and Julie Hesmondhalgh, for 15 years a mainstay of Coronation Street, as the transsexual Hayley Cropper.

People want to like these celebrities, and they want to be liked by them. Police often imitate what fictional coppers do on TV

This platoon of the glamorous, the earnest and the politically correct joined together to portray the investigation of a rape.

At least there was no attempt to pretend that the police still treat those who report rapes with dismissive callousness, something that stopped about 20 years ago.

On the contrary, Ms Hesmondhalgh’s character was caressed with endless consideration.

Mind you, this wasn’t one of those he-said she-said rapes where the complainant says there was no consent and the alleged rapist says there was consent.

This was a full-scale violent attack, with Ms Hesmondhalgh’s character covered in blood, bruises, scratches and cuts, and suffering from concussion.

So why on earth would a battered, blood-encrusted person, after being taken deadly seriously for hours, swabbed for DNA and the rest, suddenly ask the kindly, helpful, diligent police team: ‘Do you believe me?’

As far as I can see it was only so that David Tennant could say ‘Yes’. Later in the same programme, Olivia Colman’s character snapped at a colleague: ‘We always start from a position of believing the victim.’

These are words a police officer should never say. The police are servants of justice, not judges, let alone a substitute for independent juries. If they decide in advance that an allegation is true, they will not investigate the case properly because their minds are shut.

It was this misguided attitude that led to multiple police mess-ups, the worst of them being the ludicrous, inexcusable public persecution of Field Marshal Lord Bramall and the disgraceful treatment of the late Leon Brittan and his widow.

This has been the subject of a huge debate. It led to the excoriation of the police in a report by the distinguished Judge Sir Richard Henriques.

He says no judge would ever allow an alleged victim to be referred to in court as a plain ‘victim’ when there has been no conviction.

The police should do the same. But, partly because they have recently got much too big for their boots, and started to think they are judge, jury and executioner, the police don’t want to. They will have been pleased by this scene.

Julie Hesmondhalgh's incredibly emotional performance in Broadchurch

You may not care about this. But unless it is put right, every one of us, no matter how respected and apparently secure, is at the mercy of a false accusation and the ruin that can follow – think of the Dorset Fire Chief David Bryant, who spent three years in prison on the basis of an accusation of sexual assault. But the complainant was later found to be a fantasist with a history of mental illness.

Mr Bryant’s wife Lynn, who worked so hard to clear his name, has since died, probably thanks to the terrible strain of fighting a prejudiced justice system.

I have no doubt that the police ‘believed’ this horrible liar, and referred to him as a ‘victim’. Perhaps if they hadn’t, it might have crossed their minds to do the detecting that they are hired and paid to do, and that poor, devoted Lynn Bryant wore herself out doing.

All of us – and that includes TV scriptwriters and actors – have a duty to help put an end to this sort of injustice. Broadchurch has done a great deal of harm by endorsing police arrogance and folly.

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. 

***************************





6 March, 2017

That Nordic beauty ideal again

It is an almost worldwide  form of racism and I have commented on it a couple of times before (here and here): There is a largely wordwide ideal of beauty and that ideal is Nordic. A more "incorrect" thing to note would be hard to imagine but the facts of the matter are there. One cartoonist put it rather cruelly as under:



Even Mrs Obama clearly likes the Nordic look.  All she can do towards it is to straighten her normal "nappy" mop of hair but she regularly does that. Other than that she has no Nordic attributes at all.  If her skin were white she would be seen as ugly.  She has received acceptance for political reasons only

Like it or not, the de facto worldwide standard of female beauty is Nordic -- narrow faces, fine features, white skin, blue eyes and blonde hair. Light brown hair instead of blond hair can squeak into the top standard and tanned white skin is OK but that is about the only variation accepted.



Even some Japanese ladies blond their hair.  To black males, a white wife is a trophy. 

We may deplore the Nordic standard but saying that people should adopt other standards for females that they like to look at is pissing into the wind.  It won't happen.  It will have zero influence. 

An episode in my life highlighted the prestige of the Nordic look. When my son was about 18 months old, we took him to Lone Pine Koala park here in Brisbane so that we could all see the Koalas.  And a lot of Japanese people go to Lone Pine to see the Koalas too.  And they come with cameras at the ready.  So when Jenny was wheeling Joey along in his stroller, that came to the attention of the Japanese.  With his paper-white skin, emerald-blue eyes and golden-blond hair he looked like an angel to them.  So Joey was as much photographed as were the Koalas.

And something that Americans and Indians will find familiar has recently become big in South Africa:  Skin bleaching.  Even where the Nordic ideal of very white skin is not available, any approach to it is seen as prestigious. Report below:


MEN and women in South Africa are turning to highly dangerous skin bleaching creams, in a desperate bid to whiten their skin and become “more successful”.

In an underground report, correspondent Tania Rashid takes viewers into the “illegal” yet booming trade of skin bleaching products.

Speaking to young men and women living in Johannesburg, the desire is simple — to create a look of “yellow bone” — which is slang for light-skinned black men and women.

While it is illegal to sell any products that claim to bleach or whiten skin in South Africa, the products are huge business.

Containing the chemical hydroquinone, the creams have been slammed and banned by dermatologists and scientists because they can lead to skin cancer and other potentially deadly skin conditions.

But the warnings do little to deter the alleged one in three men and women who use the cream across the country.

Jeff says having lighter skin is the secret to his success rate in picking up women.

“I have four numbers so far,” he boasts while on a night out, indicating that wouldn’t be the case if he had darker skin.

Part of the push is celebrities in South Africa — and around the world — turning to the bleaching creams to enhance their look.

Famous singer and rapper Mshoza, who is “an icon in South Africa” and has been using the creams for many years — says lightening her skin colour has completely changed her image, and re-energised her career.

“I can’t stop [young black girls] from doing it. They are already doing it,” she said. “I am always on the TV, I am on newspapers. They are bound to read and want to be like someone who is on TV.”

Mshoza’s manager, Xolile Sonamzi, said that celebrities need to look lighter to get more work, especially in South Africa. “It works better on screen,” he said. “It works better with make-up, and we’re selling an idealistic world out there. “In TV we have to sell a fake world. That’s our job.”

With some creams able to take skin shades three to four shades lighter, there are some variations that only allow for a slight change in colour. “It depends on how you want to look and what your goal is,” one of the women applying the product to Mshoza said.

Mshoza’s make-up artist, who is also a fan of skin bleaching, said the attention of having lighter skin is worth the risks the product may cause. “When you walk in the club and you’re yellow, people notice you,” she said.

“Yellow-bone, yellow-bone yeah she’s light skin ... you are more visible to people. And even though you go to interviews, and you’re slightly fair skinned, you will probably increase the chance of getting the job by 50 per cent. It’s got a huge impact on how people treat you.”

While stockists who sell the product can face prosecution, vendors continue to restock the product through import because of the cream’s popularity. But the problem is, as soon as the creams are confiscated, the vendors restock through import.

SOURCE






Job losses behind the decline in marriage?

Kay Hymowitz thinks not but it seems obvious to me that it would be one factor.  Many couples delay marriage and children until they are financially secure

Over the past 50 years the United States has, like Australia and other modern economies, experienced a dramatic rise in the percentage of single mother families. 

During the same period the number of manufacturing jobs in those countries has plummeted, a development that may well be contributing to the rise of populism in the West.

Experts, most notably the sociologist William Julius Wilson, have speculated that there is a significant connection between the two trends, though firm proof has been elusive.

When Work Disappears: Manufacturing and the Falling Marriage-Market Value of Men, a new paper from David Autor, one of America's leading labor economists, appears to find strong, if not definitive evidence, that Wilson was right: manufacturing jobs disappeared. The authors concentrate on the trade shocks cause by outsourcing to China -- which led more women to decide to go it alone.

Autor and his colleagues compare local labour markets where those shocks were especially powerful with similar less affected areas.  The shocks were associated with lower wages and more distress for men under 40.  Perhaps more surprisingly, those areas saw a decrease in fertility but a rise in single mother families and child poverty.

Autor's paper has plenty of other findings of interest to policy makers.  To take just two examples, there is a close correlation between trade shocks and substance abuse and incarceration among young men, and though trade shocks affect earnings for both women and men, men lose ground relative to women, making them less "marriageable."

The authors avoid any claim that manufacturing decline is "the sole or primary driver of these trends." They are right to do so. Non-marital births, particularly among blacks and Hispanics, were reaching record highs in the United States long before manufacturers began to move their factories to China.

And it's unlikely that outsourcing can account for the rise in "multi-partner fertility," that is parents who have children with multiple partners. By further destabilizing children's lives, it's a related and arguably bigger problem than single mother households per se.  It also suggests something more than economics is needed to explain the disappearance of stable families among lower income populations.

None of that stopped Fox News from headlining their article on the study: "Trump's Jobs Plan Could Lead to a Marriage Boom." I wouldn't count on it.

SOURCE






Prejudice against Tasmanians?

Interstate rivalry is mostly a jocular affair in Australia but Tasmanians do seem to have a tendency to be more bothered by it than they should

INFERIORITY complex? Has political correctness spread from race, colour and gender to geography?  Yes, I choked on my organic, certified GM-free muesli with soy last week when I saw the front-page headline in the River City press: “Bullied for being Tasmanian”.

It was the story of an accountant working in Perth who was given a bad time for being from Tasmania.  “I was regularly the butt of office jokes,” he was reported as saying. “Jokes right to my face about me buying lunch from Subway, that I liked Hungry Jack’s, [about] my jumper, my mug [and] that I came from Tasmania.”

Well, in that order, initially I wondered if the bullying might have been more to do with his diet, the jumper and the mug, rather than state of origin.

Anyway he sued his accounting firm, one of the nation’s largest, and it stumped up $120,000 in damages, which should easily cover the cost of his relocation to the gentler confines of Tasmania.

I don’t know how bad the bullying was but I do know that if I had $120,000 for every time in my long career on the big island someone made a joke about me coming from Tasmania, I would now be spending winters in my beachside mansion at Byron.

As one of my bosses once told me when I was pitching a story about my home state: “Charlie, no one gives a rat’s about your crumb-bum, two-headed, inbred little island. There’s not a ratings point in the place.” I didn’t invoke section 18C but I did look annoyed.

“Maaate,” he cajoled. “Don’t go spiralling off with your nightie on fire back down to your rellies in Black Bob’s Country. Why don’t you just get a seat up the front on the next plane to New York? You can interview Hugh Jackman and stay at the Ritz Carlton.”

Well, that must have been $120,000 worth. Tassie was defended and honour was satisfied.

Maybe we are a touch thin-skinned in Tasmania. We grow up in a remote and protected little green bubble where bad things rarely happen – unless you are a marsupial. But when they happen to us, boy, do we remember them.

During recent reminiscing about the 1967 bushfires, a local historian worried that publishing too much detail might be traumatic for those who survived the ordeal.

Very down-home Tasmanian, I thought. Even historians are anxious about bringing up the past.

More than 40 years after the ship hit the span, we still close down the Tasman Bridge whenever a carrier sails under it.

Actuaries tell me the chance of it happening again is a more remote chance than winning a TattsLotto jackpot. But where optimists might say, “Well, someone’s got to win”, Tasmanians will likely say, “Well, someone’s got to lose.”

I get it. Growing up here, I too am a glass-half-empty kind of bloke. I expect the worst. That way, I am rarely disappointed.

I hardly dare mention Port Arthur, except that it so well represents the Tasmanian quandary of whether to remember or forget. I think there is good reason to forever consign the random half-witted maniac killer of April 1996 into outer-darkness and never again mention his name.

On the other hand, there is every reason for remembering the stark horrors of the penal settlement. It is a vital part of our history and the convict system has defined who we are, and is still in play in the high-handed attitude of the authorities in our daily lives.

By the 1880s, there was a movement abroad to destroy all trace of the place and so remove the “convict stain”.

When it comes to the inconvenient past, we could take advice from grand old Persian poet Omar Khayyam;

“The moving finger writes, and having writ,

Moves on; nor all thy Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line

Nor all they tears wash out a Word of it.”

SOURCE






The immigration issue in Australia heating up

The populist tide now surges towards a truly big target — Australia’s immigration intake, which was lauded by Donald Trump this week as a model — with the anti-immigration arguments based around city congestion, housing affordability, centralisation problems and the Muslim integration issue.

Tony Abbott has called for reduced immigration in recognition this is now the de facto stance of much of the conservative Right. Pauline Hanson wants a halt to further immigration. Liberal defector Cory Bernardi has called for the intake to be halved on economic grounds and expresses alarm about Muslim immigration. And Trump is invoked at nearly every stage of this political campaign.

There is a rich field of grievance for exploitation and Hanson is its most lethal manipulator. “High immigration is only beneficial to multinationals, banks and big business seeking a larger market while everyday Australians suffer from this massive intake,” she said in her maiden speech in the Senate. “Our city roads have become parking lots. Schools are bursting at the seams. Our aged and sick are left behind to fend for themselves. I call for a halt to further immigration and for government to look after our aged, the sick and the helpless.”

There is now intense competition between the Turnbull government and Shorten opposition over cracking down on the 457 visa system for temporary foreign workers. Bill Shorten flirts with his own version of Trump’s populist America-first mantra, saying he believes in “buy Australian, build Australian, employ Australian”.

Trump has made the attack on illegal migrants and Muslim immigration central to his presidency. In Britain, the absence of border controls was pivotal to the Brexit result, while migrant numbers and controls will be critical in the European elections, notably in France.

Australia’s situation is conspicuously different to that of both the US and Europe but it is idle to think such sentiments will not resound here. The immigrant issue or “big Australia” bogy lurks permanently below the surface, waiting to be unleashed.

Yet the foundations of Australia’s immigration policy, built over decades of trial and error, are far superior to that of nearly every other developed nation. Immigration Minister Peter Dutton tells Inquirer: “My approach as minister has been to return to and restore the Howard values and approach to immigration. This means we don’t have to apologise for seeking the best people from around the world to come to this country, and there are currently about 65 million people looking to migrate. We don’t need to be embarrassed about this.

“The objectives of our program are to employ Australians first but commit to skilled migration based on integrity and public confidence in the scheme. That means a hard-nosed approach. The immigration program is not some feel-good exercise. Our goal is to bring to this country people who will work, earn, contribute, educate their children and learn English.”

The principles are entrenched: strong border protection based on zero tolerance for asylum-seekers by boat; a lawful entry program geared heavily to the economy and labour market; separate principles for permanent and temporary entry; and a settlement philosophy geared to integration and embrace of Australian norms despite the radical wing of the multicultural lobby seeking to undermine this.

The test, however, is surely coming. In his speech nine days ago, Abbott drew the nexus between immigration and housing affordability, saying: “If we end the ‘big is best’ thinking of the federal Treasury and scaled back immigration (at least until housing starts and infrastructure have caught up), we can take the pressure off home prices.”

He warned that Australia had “land in abundance” but “Sydney’s house prices are close to Hong Kong’s”. The risk is obvious: linking house prices and immigration will become a media fashion and populist cause.

It is idle to pretend there is no relationship between immigra­tion, as it fuels demand, and house prices, but to justify major changes to the migrant intake on the basis of housing prices (as opposed to other demand and supply factors) lacks any sense of proportion.

The anti-immigration wave moves in cycles. Recall that when Julia Gillard became prime minister she launched a cynical Hansonite assault, exploiting Kevin Rudd’s blunder in calling for a big Australia. Gillard repudiated this notion, saying it was “time to reconsider whether our growth model was right” and declaring that our “clean beaches and precious open spaces” must be protected. It was a focus group project.

As part of his current tactics to fight for Australian workers, Shorten accuses some companies of exploitation and says nurses, carpenters, cooks, childhood educators, electricians and motor mechanics are missing out because “too many work visas are being used as a low-cost substitute for employing an Australian”. It slots perfectly into the crackdown demanded by the trade unions.

For Hanson, lower immigration is a crusade. She has generated huge support for immigration cuts from the conservative media bandwagon that promotes her. In her maiden speech Hanson said: “We have reached a population of 24 million this year, 17 years ahead of prediction. Governments have continually brought in high levels of immigration, so they say, to stimulate the economy. This is rubbish. The only stimulation that is happening is welfare handouts — many going to migrants unable to get jobs.”

Hanson’s campaign has a heavy religious bias. There is no doubt that Australia, like other Western nations, has a Muslim integration problem. But Hanson pushes this to intolerable extremes, saying: “Now we are in danger of being swamped by ­Muslims who bear a culture and ideology that is incompatible with our own.”

There is no point simply condemning Hanson. She has a misconceived response to one of the challenges of the age. Political progressives seem clueless about the extent to which ordinary Australians are worried about the ability of Muslims to integrate. The issue needs to be confronted, not denied, but banning Muslim immigration cannot be an answer for Australia.

In relation to the economic and housing impact of immigration, Reserve Bank governor Phil Lowe said recently: “I am fond of telling visitors 40 per cent of Australians were either born overseas or have a parent who was born overseas. I wouldn’t want to give up that kind of advantage just for property ­prices.”

It may be elitist but the point is valid. Immigration is pivotal to Australia’s economic and social success during the age of globalisation (and it’s not going to disappear despite Trump).

The relatively good news is that Australia is buttressed to some extent to meet the coming political onslaught. Our immigration program is even more geared than normal to economic and labour market needs. Net migration numbers (permanents plus temporaries) have been slashed by more than a third from their record high under Rudd. The 457 temporary worker visa program has been reduced and tightened under the Coalition.

Net overseas migration peaked at a huge 305,900 in the 12 months to March 2009. It became the zenith of the big Australia beloved by Rudd, who had genuine ambitions to build up Australia’s global weight. Since then, no prime minister has used the phrase, as the implications are too electorally risky.

In the current climate, any figure beyond 300,000 annually would be untenable in both economic and political terms. Officials looking back on that period are apt to use the phrase “out of control”. The peak was driven by student visa programs in which an education and migrant package could, in effect, be purchased together. Labor subsequently removed these concessions.

The net overseas migration figure (which counts people if they are onshore for 12 out of the previous 16 months) has fallen on a sustained basis to around 170,000 in 2014-15 with the current government using the working assumption of a 1 per cent annual increase to labour force growth, meaning numbers in the 160,000 to 2000,000 range.

Looking at the main component, the permanent immigration intake, the story has been a model of stability for a number of years. It sits at a 190,000 annual cap, extending from Labor’s final year through the entire Abbott-Turnbull period. This intake is high by our historical norms and high in per capita terms judged against other developed nations. To a large extent, this reflects Australia’s superior economic growth performance. Scott Morrison reminded us this week that Australia is growing faster than any of the G7 countries.

In his recent speech to the Australia-Canada Forum, Lowe said both nations had strong population growth for advanced industrial economies but that over the past decade Australia’s population growth had averaged 1.7 per cent compared with Canada at 1.1 per cent, though these rates were now coming closer together.

In relation to 457 visas, there has been a sharp downward trend since the peak that reflected Labor-initiated ambitions for foreign workers. Under Labor, the program expanded from about 70,000 to 110,000 in September 2013. Now Malcolm Turnbull and Dutton are hammering Shorten for his hypocrisy.

The current 457 numbers are running at 81,000.

“We are cleaning it (the 457 program) up because Labor made a mess of this migration program when they were in government,” Dutton says. “During the glory years of Rudd-Gillard-Rudd during which the Leader of the Opposition was the employment minister, the number of 457 visa, primary visa holders, went from 68,0000 to 110,000 people. This was at the time the Leader of the Opposition, the then employment minister, was saying to Australians that he was putting workers first.”

Shorten, in reply, has pointed to the resources boom as justification. The bigger point is that the politics are now pointing one way — limiting the number of 457 visas while still trying to cater for the demands of the economy.

Dutton says the government will run migration policy according “to the settings that are most effective”. This means “we can’t take people that don’t have the required skills or that can’t make the economic contribution we want”.

The feature of the program these days is the heavy bias to skills over family reunion compared with the pre-Howard era. For instance, in 2015-16 the family numbers were 57,400, compared with the skilled component running at 128,550.

“It was the Howard government that rightly set in place the fundamentals that exist today,” Dutton says. “They were abandoned during the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd period. But we have now returned to those principles.”

In the debate about immigration there are four benchmarks: the program has been a vital driver for economic growth; new migrants lower the age profile of the population; without ­migrants, the worker-retiree ratio would be worse; and migrants are vital in a connected world assisting our global networks.

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. 

***************************






5 March, 2017

"Privilege" again

A major obsession on the Left at the moment -- particularly in the universities --  is "white privilege"  It is alleged that  just being born white gives you privileges not available to others.  And whites are supposed to feel shamed and humbled about that and -- ideally -- give all their money to non-whites.  It is part of the general and quite deranged  attack on mainstream people that caused many Americans to become totally disgusted with the Obama/Clinton Left.  They were ready to vote for ANYBODY who would stop the rot.  So Donald Trump got the job, despite his hair and many other faults.

I pointed out recently that the "white privilege" concept is racist -- very similar to Hitler's  thinking about Jews.  In both cases we see hostility to people purely on the basis of their race.

So let me relate a true story about a privileged person I know.  L. is an elderly Jewish man who recently had a bad turn.  An ambulance was called to take him to hospital. When they were loading him on board, they asked him which hospital he wanted to go to. Brisbane has some big centrally located government hospitals plus a lot of excellent private hospitals scattered about. L. said to take him to WXY, a highly regarded private hospital with about 500 beds. 

But after about 15 minutes the ambulance had still not driven off.  The ambulancemen said that it was a very busy time with a lot of hospitals "on bypass" (full up) -- and WXY was one of those on bypass.  So the ambulancemen had been ringing around to find a hospital with an available bed.  L. said not to bother with that.  Just ring hospital WXY and tell them whom you have got on board.  The ambulancemen did that and L. was promptly whisked to his preferred hospital.  He was taken in where others were not.

So was that Jewish privilege?  Many people would leap to that conclusion.  And Jews are often generous donors to all sorts of charitable causes. So that could have been it.  It might have reflected gratitude to a donor.  But that was not it at all.

Even though he is in his '80s and has had a stroke, L. has that restless energy we so often see in Ashkenazi (Western) Jews.  After his stroke he could have just stayed at home all day and watched TV.  He likes watching football on TV so that would have had some appeal. 

But that was just alien to him.  He wanted to be active and to contribute something to others.  So he became a hospital visitor.  With his own recent experience of stroke he felt sympathy for people lying in bed all day waiting to get better.  So, by arrangement with the WXY hospital, he would spend days just walking around the wards and looking for people who felt like a chat.  He is himself a cheery, flexible, positive person who is a good listener so he brightened the days of many.

So you see why everybody at the WXY hospital knew him, appreciated him and leapt to help him when he needed it.  The "privilege" he had is the privilege of being a good man.  He EARNED his privilege.  He is just a good natured conservative man who likes to contribute to the society in which he lives.

And so it is with most privilege.  What you do to earn privilege can vary greatly. You can even inherit it. But privilege is not random and is not assigned just by something as incidental as the color of your skin.  There are many trailer park denizens -- poor people -- who just get by from week to week even though they are white.  Where is their privilege?  It doesn't exist because they have done nothing to earn it.  Just being white earns you nothing -- JR




 
Black Democrat makes sexual ‘joke’ about Kellyanne Conway

Feminist protests?  Crickets

Rep. Cedric Richmond spoke yesterday at the Washington Press Club Foundation dinner. His attempt at a comedy routine wound up being an example of what not to do. Few of his remarks were funny but he really face-planted when he brought up Kellyanne Conway “and the picture on the sofa.”

“I really just want to know what was going on there,” Richmond said to Sen. Tim Scott. He continued, “You know I won’t tell anybody and you can just explain to me that circumstance because she really looked kind of familiar in that position.”

Richmond was referring to Couchgate. That’s the outrageous outrage progressives briefly occupied themselves with between flare-ups of Russia fever.

It’s clear this was intended to be part of a comedy routine. But as Dirty Harry once said, “A man’s got to know his limitations” and Rep. Richmond is way beyond his limitations trying to do a stand-up routine. He could have resolved that very easily with a heartfelt apology to Conway. Instead, he made up an explanation that doesn’t pass the smell test. From the Washington Post:

On Thursday, Richmond insisted that there was no such intention behind his remarks. “Since some people have interpreted my joke to mean something that it didn’t I think it is important to clarify what I meant, ” he said in a statement. “Where I grew up saying that someone is looking or acting ‘familiar’ simply means that they are behaving too comfortably.”

The technical term for that explanation is bulls**t.

Let’s face it, if a Republican congressman had cracked this “joke” about the most powerful Democratic woman in Washington, it would have launched 1,000 feminist memes. Few would have cared it was supposed to be funny, only that a GOP male had turned an accomplished woman into a sex object. If that same GOP representative had then offered a lame excuse instead of an apology the left would be off to the races.

Put another way, if this incident isn’t grounds for a lecture on intersectionality and the glass ceiling then please spare me the next time some GOP backbencher says something equally dumb. The moral posturing from the feminist left really doesn’t deserve much attention until it stops being so selective with its outrage.

For her part, Conway told the Daily Caller, “I notice he did not apologize, he tried to clarify.” She also agreed the gaffe would get more attention if she were liberal and “pro-abortion.”

SOURCE





Spanish Catholic Group Promotes Biologically-Determined Gender, Gets Banned

Madrid authorities banned a bus carrying advertising promoting the biological determination of gender from appearing in public until its operators remove the “discriminatory ads,” Spain’s El País reported on Thursday.

Conservative Catholic group Hazte Oír (Make Yourself Heard) placed an ad on the bus that reads: “Boys have penises, girls have vulvas. Don’t let them fool you. If you’re born a man, you’re a man. If you’re a woman, you will continue to be so.”

Hazte Oír’s efforts appear to be in response to a pro-transgender advertising campaign by a Basque advocacy group with a transgender focus, Chrysallis Euskal Herria. It featured the slogan: “There are girls with penises and boys with vulvas,” and a drawing of nude children fitting that description.

An anonymous donor from New York funded the pro-transgender campaign with a 28,000 euro ($29,000) donation in exchange for assurances of anonymity, El País reported.

While the pro-transgender campaign did not encounter legal difficulties, city police impounded the Hazte Oír vehicle on Tuesday, acting on orders from Madrid City Hall.

Authorities determined that the ad’s message violated the “dignity” of people with “different” sexual orientations.

“There is a risk of perpetuating the perpetration of the [hate] crime, and of disturbing the peace, and of creating a sense of insecurity or fear among people, because of their identity or sexual orientation, specifically among minors who could be affected by the message,” a Madrid prosecutor wrote in his brief.

The regional government of Catalonia plans to take up the issue with state prosecutors, as they believe the advertisement campaign constitutes a possible hate crime against transgender people.

Freedom of expression “has a limit that is set by the law,” regional Madrid premier Cristina Cifuentes said.

Spanish politicians also expressed outrage, according to a report by Deutsche Welle.

Javier Maroto, a homosexual lawmaker for the conservative Popular Party, declared the project a “disgraceful campaign of hate.”

“Those from HazteOír may have penises and vaginas, but they clearly don’t have a brain, nor do they have a heart,” charged Pablo Iglesias, leader of the far-left Podemos party.

Hazte Oír, which has previously campaigned against abortion and in favor of traditional gender roles and heterosexuality, argued in a statement that the government “must exercise power democratically, not through political violence.”

“They should respect, just like we do, those who do not think the same as they do.”

SOURCE





The Need for Trump's Executive Order on Immigration

President Donald Trump recently announced that he will be issuing another executive order temporarily pausing travel of refugees and/or aliens from seven dangerous countries to the United States.

His first order on this subject stalled in Federal courts after hundreds of State Department careerists objected to the original order. His new action may once again displease the State Department careerists, federal judges and others opposed to his policy, but it may save lives in the American homeland.

During the first week of his presidency, President Trump ordered a temporary pause in refugee and alien travel to the United States from seven of the most dangerous radical Islamic terror-practicing, terror-infested, civil-war-ridden, and/or failed Muslim-majority states on earth (Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen). A prime purpose of the order was for the new administration to evaluate whether current U.S. visa screening procedures for travelers from those countries were adequate enough to prevent foreign terrorists entering the United States disguised as innocent refugees or aliens.

The president's action seems reasonable to many Americans, the extent of approval/disapproval varying according to polls. One of his presidential campaign promises was to install an "extreme vetting" protocol for refugees and/or aliens from dangerous countries, in the wake of murderous radical Islamic-driven terrorist attacks in the U.S. at places like Ft. Hood, Chattanooga, San Bernardino, Orlando and elsewhere.

Nonetheless, about 900 of approximately 24,000 State Department diplomats, Foreign Service officers and civil servants (whose Dissent Channel policy disagreement with the president on this matter was improperly released to media outlets in violation of the governing Foreign Affairs Manual) objected to the president's order. The objection came even though the State Department is the lead foreign affairs agency in implementing such presidential policies and its personnel serves on the diplomatic front lines overseas screening visa applications.

They claimed the order would, among other things, sour relations with the seven affected countries; inflame anti-American sentiments; and hurt those seeking to visit the United States for humanitarian reasons. Moreover, the four Federal judges in Washington and the 9th Circuit who stalled President Trump's original order ruled, among other things, that it was unconstitutionally focused on Muslim-majority countries without placing the overall global Muslim population in context or addressing the governing statute giving the president the authority to act.

Americans - including the State Department dissenters, federal judges and others opposed to the president's action - should consider the following as they evaluate the merits of the revised order which reportedly will also apply to refugees and aliens from the same seven countries:

    The U.S. Constitution's Article 2 gives the President the authority to conduct the nation's foreign affairs. And the Immigration and Naturalization Act, Section 212 F8 USC 82 F gives the President the broad authority to suspend the entry of aliens into the United States when the president deems it in the national interest.

    According to Pew Research, there are 50 Muslim-majority nations, with the global Muslim population estimated at 1.6 billion. The presidential executive order applies to only seven Muslim-majority nations with a collective population of about 220 million.

    The U.S. State Department's congressionally-mandated annual "Country Reports on Terrorism" identifies the governments that sponsor and support international terrorist activities and/or have significant terror groups and activity occurring within their nation's boundaries. All seven countries listed in the president's order are listed in this report and threaten U.S. citizens and national security. To achieve their political ends terrorists have used genocide, beheadings, crucifixions, drownings, burnings, hangings, shootings, roof-top tossings and home-made bombs - against innocent civilians in war zones and urban areas.

    There are ongoing sectarian civil wars between Shia and Sunni Muslims, tribal wars, and/or genocide occurring in 6 of 7 countries (Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen). The State Department lists the other nation, Iran - where chants of `Death to America' are routinely heard - as the world's leading exporter of terrorism.

    The U.S. State Department does not have open U.S. embassies or consulates in five of the seven countries (Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen). Without onsite U.S. representation, it is extremely difficult to have normal relations with host governments (if they even exist) or to properly and thoroughly scrutinize visa applications of citizens of those countries wanting to visit the United States. And in the cases where it does have representation (Iraq and Sudan), ongoing conflicts make it very difficult as well.

The actions of unelected officials - like the State Department careerists and federal judges who may have violated their own regulations or ignored the governing law or serious conditions in the seven countries affected by the presidential order - may be doing a great disservice to the American people by opposing this presidential action, and they will have blood on their hands if a terrorist, or terrorists, from any of these countries is granted entry and strikes the American homeland while courts adjudicate the president's order.

The most important job of an elected U.S. President is to keep the American people safe.  And it seems from the circumstances listed above that President Trump has the clear constitutional and statutory authority, responsibility and legitimate reasons to temporarily suspend travel from these seven dangerous nations until current visa vetting procedures are properly evaluated to better ensure that terrorists are not among those refugees and aliens cleared for entrance into the United States.  To do anything less would possibly endanger American lives

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. 

***************************




3 March, 2017

Are We Refugeed Out Yet?

There are more Iraqis living in the United States than there are in some major cities in Iraq. 156,000 Iraqi refugees have entered this country in just the last decade. 30,000 of those have ended up in California.

In Obama's first year in office, the United States resettled three-quarters of Iraqi refugees.

71% of Iraqi refugees are receiving cash assistance. 82% are on Medicaid and 87% are on food stamps. Compare those atrocious numbers to only 17% of Cubans on cash assistance and 16% on Medicaid.

It should be obvious why Obama shut the door on Cuban refugees while holding it wide open for Syrian Muslims (but closing it tightly on Syrian Christians), Iraqis and Somalis (77.4% food stamp use).

President Trump's migration pause was met with lectures about how much immigrants contribute to the economy. But the immigrants that the left likes are a drain. If the left finds immigrants who actually contribute to the economy, it fights tooth and nail to keep them out of the country. Notable Iraqi refugees include Waad Ramadan Alwan and Mohanad Shareef Hammadi.

Alwan and Hammadi were thoroughly vetted before they were resettled in Nevada and Kentucky. The only omission in their thorough vetting was an unfortunate failure to note that the refugees were terrorists who had spent years trying to kill American soldiers in Iraq.

Alwan had boasted that of how he had "f___d up" Hummers using IEDs and admitted to having taken part in an attack that killed Americans. He had even left his fingerprints on an IED in Iraq. But the thorough vetting had failed to turn that up.

Alwan and Hammadi tried to send grenade launchers, plastic explosives, missiles and machine guns to the branch of Al Qaeda that would become ISIS. Meanwhile the Al Qaeda in Iraq plotter had quit his job and was living in public housing and collecting public assistance. Like so many other "refugees".

And law enforcement was soon on the trail of dozens of terrorists who had arrived here as refugees.

The media has had a field day mocking Kellyanne Conway for referencing the fact that this Iraqi refugee terror plot resulted in a six month Iraqi immigration pause under Obama. No "Bowling Green Massacre" took place because the FBI was on to the two terrorists. Hammadi had been caught on tape discussing a domestic terror attack where "many things should take place and it should be huge."

Mocking Conway for misspeaking helpfully distracts attention from the massacre that nearly was.

And Alwan and Hammadi were far from the last Iraqi refugee terrorists.

Omar Faraj Saeed Al Hardan came here as a refugee. When the FBI searched his Houston apartment, agents found an ISIS flag. Hardan had been planning to leave bombs in the trash cans of two Houston malls. He had also been contemplating an attack on the Grand Prairie military base in Texas.

Hardan had been chatting with Aws Mohammed Younis Al-Jayab, another Iraqi refugee, over in California. Al-Jayab had come as a refugee through Syria, then began plotting to join a terrorist group on his first month here. He headed back to spend some time fighting with Islamic terrorists who later were linked to ISIS. Two of his brothers and a cousin were also arrested for smuggling stolen cell phones.

Al-Hamzah Mohammad Jawad, an Iraqi refugee from Michigan, was arrested while trying to join ISIS. Abdullatif Ali Aldosary set off a bomb outside a Social Security office in Arizona. The authorities found plenty of bombmaking materials in his home. He was also accused of a murder that had taken place a few days before the bombing and had previously been sent to jail for harassment. His case had been put on hold for "terrorism-related grounds of inadmissibility", but he still couldn't be deported.

And then there are the Special Immigrant Visas for Iraqi nationals who provided services to American forces. During the recent controversy, they have been depicted as heroes who helped us fight terrorism.

The reality is a lot more complicated.

Bilal Abood was a translator who came here on an SIV visa. He even briefly joined the army. On the surface he was exactly the sort of refugee that the media likes to depict as the ideal immigrant.

But Abood was also a member of ISIS. America was the "enemy of Allah", he insisted.

Even when the Iraqi SIVs weren't joining ISIS, they were doing other terrible things. Jasim Mohammed Hasin Ramadon and Ali Mohammed Hasan Al Juboori had come to this country with SIV visas.

Ramadon had even been dubbed a hero.

Then Ramadon, Juboori and three other Iraqi refugees brutally assaulted a 53-year-old Colorado Springs woman. When the police arrived at the scene of the Iraqi refugee sexual assault, they found blood splattered on the walls.

The Iraqi refugee rapists lured in their victim by complaining about how hard it was living in America and being called terrorists. The night nurse took pity on them because they reminded her of her son.

By the time the Iraqi refugees were done, she had been violated and left near death.

Ahmed Bahjat came here as a refugee from Iraq. He tried to leave by taking a plane to Canada after he "viciously sexually assaulted" a woman in Connecticut. Salam Al Haideri also came here as a refugee. He raped a 4'11 teenager behind a "I Love NY" pizza place dumpster while slamming her head into the ground. The Iraqi refugee's teenage 96-pound victim was left with broken ribs and a fractured nose.

Al Haideri was the third refugee to be convicted of a sex crime in the area.

Walid Nehma, another Iraqi refugee, also assaulted a woman in Albany County. After taking photos of women in local bars, he followed her, hit her in the face, tore off her clothes and tried to rape her.

Khalid Fathey had also received asylum after working with American authorities in Iraq. The Iraqi
refugee molested a little girl and warned her not to tell anyone. He fled trial by taking a flight to Dubai.

Kassim Alhimidi, an Iraqi refugee, murdered his wife in California and tried to blame it on American "Islamophobes."

Wisam Fadhil, an Iraqi refugee, stabbed his wife to death in Kentucky while their 8-year-old child slept in the room. He had previously assaulted a man at a gym. Do we need more of this?

Iraq is a failed state. Before we intervened, it was held together by torture, terror and genocide. Now the only things holding it together are torture, terror and genocide. We should take Christian refugees fleeing the Muslim conflicts in that country, but we should not import its Islamic culture of violence.

America has done far more than its share. We have opened our doors to Iraqi refugees. And in return, the people of this land were exposed to terror and horrific refugee crimes. Enough is enough.

There is a very rational solution to our immigration problem. Instead of taking in the refugees most likely to collect welfare or plant a bomb in a shopping mall, we should take those immigrants most likely to contribute to our economy and least likely to behead us while screaming, "Allah Akbar."

Don't call it a ban. Call it common sense immigration reform. Because that is exactly what it is.

We have the statistics. We know what works. All we need to do is start putting America first.    

SOURCE





DOJ Drops Out of Lawsuit Against Texas' Voter ID Law

The Department of Justice informed the Washington-based Campaign Legal Center (CLC) that it would no longer be joining in a lawsuit against the state of Texas. The CLC had originally brought the lawsuit against the Lone Star State claiming that its voter ID law discriminated against minorities and the poor. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had last year ruled that the law was indeed discriminatory and ordered that it be changed before the November election.

The law, which had required a voter to establish proof of identification with any one of seven forms of ID, was expanded to allow the signing of an affidavit declaring an impediment to obtaining the required identification which then permitted voting. The Fifth Circuit will soon rule on whether the law was designed in order to discriminate against minority voters.

Meanwhile last Friday, Virginia Democrat Governor Terry McAuliffe vetoed a bill that would have required “the local electoral boards to direct the general registrars to investigate the list of persons voting at an election whenever the number of persons voting at any election in a country or city exceeds the number of persons registered to vote in that county or city.” McAuliffe’s justification was that the bill would have imposed too much of a burden on local elections officials.

The motive for creating the bill was due to the unintentional discovery of over 1,000 people having illegally registered to vote in eight Virginia counties. It was not generated out of a merely reasonable yet hypothetical fear of voter fraud, but out of a genuinely verifiable one. And yet McAuliffe found the potential for over-burdening elections officials of greater concern than combatting the real threat of voter fraud. Talk about misplaced priorities.

An elected official’s job is to do the will of the people, and that will is most clearly voiced via the ballot box. Any elected official unconcerned with protecting the integrity of the vote displays a profound contempt for democratic processes to which they owe their privileged position of leadership.

A poll released by Gallup last August revealed that a vast majority of Americans favor some form of voter ID laws — this included majorities in both parties and both whites and non-whites. Opposing voter ID laws is not a winning issue for Democrats and is ironically un-democratic. All it does is continue to expose just how invested they are in opposing the sensible Rule of Law and the democratic process.

SOURCE





Just Because Liberals Call Something ‘Discrimination’ Doesn’t Mean It Actually Is

The biggest problem with current sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) laws—including “Fairness for All,” which proposes a grand-bargain compromise between SOGI laws and religious liberty—is that they do not appropriately define what counts as discriminatory.

As I explain in a new report for The Heritage Foundation, “How to Think About Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (SOGI) Policies and Religious Freedom,” these are the laws that are being used to shutter Catholic adoption agencies, fine evangelical bakers, and force businesses and public facilities to allow men into women’s locker rooms.

The problem is that liberals are calling anything they dislike “discrimination.” But liberals are getting it wrong. To illustrate this, consider several different cases of putative “discrimination.” The law must be nuanced enough to capture the important differences in these cases.

Racially segregated water fountains were one form of discrimination that took race into consideration—in a context where it was completely irrelevant—and then treated blacks as second-class citizens precisely because they were black. The entire point was to classify on the basis of race in order to treat blacks as socially inferior.

As a result, such actions were rightly described as invidious race-based discrimination, and—given the entrenched, widespread, state-facilitated nature of the problem—they were rightly made unlawful.

Likewise, throughout much of American history, girls and women were not afforded educational opportunities equal to those available to boys and men. This form of discrimination took sex into consideration and then treated girls and women poorly precisely because of their sex, barring them from education in certain subjects or at certain levels despite being otherwise qualified.

As with invidious racial discrimination, such treatment took a feature (in this case, sex) into consideration precisely to treat women as less than men. The law rightly deemed such actions invidious sex-based discrimination, and—again, given the entrenched, widespread, and state-facilitated nature of the problem—Title IX of the Education Amendments was enacted to ensure that girls and women received equal educational opportunities.

Appropriate and Rightly Lawful Distinctions That Are Not Classified as Discrimination

When Title IX was enacted in 1972 and its implementing regulations were promulgated in 1975, the law made clear that sex-specific housing, bathrooms, and locker rooms were not unlawful discrimination. Such policies take sex into consideration, but they do not treat women as inferior to men or men as inferior to women. They treat both sexes equally because they take sex into consideration (they “discriminate”—in the nonpejorative sense of “distinguish”—on the basis of sex) precisely in a way that matters: by appreciating the bodily sexual difference of men and women in things such as housing, bathroom, and locker room policy.

Would we really be treating men and women equally in anything but an artificial way if we forced men and women, boys and girls, to undress in front of each other?

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her majority opinion for the Supreme Court forcing the Virginia Military Institute to become co-ed, wrote that it “would undoubtedly require alterations necessary to afford members of each sex privacy from the other sex in living arrangements.” Yet we certainly would be treating people unequally if access to intimate facilities were based on factors wholly unrelated to privacy, such as race.

As a result, policymakers did not consider sex-specific intimate facilities as discriminatory in the first place, and laws explicitly reflected that commonsense understanding while rightly declaring racially segregated facilities to be unlawful.

The lesson here is that not all distinctions in fact should be deemed unlawful discrimination.

Not Discriminatory at All

If sex-specific intimate facilities are an example of lawful, legitimate policies that take sex into consideration, pro-life medical practices are examples of policies that are legitimate and lawful because they do not take sex into consideration at all.

That only women can get pregnant has no bearing whatsoever on the judgment of the conscientious doctor or nurse who refuses to kill the unborn. The insistence of LGBT activists that men actually can become pregnant highlights the point: Pro-life medical personnel refuse to do abortions on pregnant women and “pregnant men” (i.e. women who identify as men).

Thus, we can identify three different types of cases:

Cases of invidious discrimination, in which an irrelevant factor is taken into consideration in order to treat people poorly based on that factor, as with racially segregated water fountains;

Cases of distinctions without unlawful discrimination, in which a factor is taken into consideration precisely because it is relevant to the underlying policy and people are not treated poorly, as with sex-specific intimate facilities;

and Cases with neither distinctions nor discrimination, in which a particular factor simply does not enter into consideration, as with pro-life doctors.

Any proposed policy intended to address the documented needs of people who identify as LGBT must take these categories into account without conflation.

SOGI Discrimination: Real and Imagined

Consider a florist who refused to serve all customers who identify as LGBT simply because they identified as LGBT. That would be a case of invidious discrimination because the mere knowledge that they identify as LGBT should have no impact whatsoever on the act of the florist selling flowers, because there is no rational connection between the two.

Now consider Baronelle Stutzman, the 71-year-old grandmother who served one particular gay customer for nearly a decade but declined to do the wedding flowers for his same-sex wedding ceremony.

The customer’s sexual orientation did not play any role in Stutzman’s decision. Her belief that marriage is a union of sexually complementary spouses does not spring from any convictions about people who identify as LGBT. When she says she can do wedding flowers only for true weddings, she makes no distinctions based on sexual orientation at all.

This is seen most clearly in the case of Catholic Charities adoption agencies. They decline to place the children entrusted to their care with same-sex couples not because of their sexual orientation, but because of the conviction that children deserve both a mother and a father.

That belief—that men and women are not interchangeable, mothers and fathers are not replaceable, the two best dads in the world cannot make up for a missing mom, and the two best moms in the world cannot make up for a missing dad—has absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation.

Catholic Charities does not say that people who identify as LGBT cannot love or care for children; it does not take sexual orientation into consideration at all. Its preference for placing children with mothers and fathers is not an instance of discrimination based on sexual orientation—and the law should not say otherwise.

Purported gender identity discrimination presents similar problems. The Washington Post recently reported on a woman who was suing a Catholic hospital for declining to perform a sex reassignment procedure on her that entailed removing her healthy uterus. In that report, the Post captures the conflation of real and imaginary discrimination.

“What the rule says is if you provide a particular service to anybody, you can’t refuse to provide it to anyone,” said Sarah Warbelow, the legal director for the Human Rights Campaign. That means a transgender person who shows up at an emergency room with something as basic as a twisted ankle cannot be denied care, as sometimes happens, Warbelow said. That also means if a doctor provides breast reconstruction surgery or hormone therapy, those services cannot be denied to transgender patients seeking them for gender dysphoria, she said.

The two examples given, however, differ in significant ways. A hospital that refuses to treat the twisted ankles of people who identify as transgender simply because they identify as transgender would be engaging in invidious discrimination, but a hospital that declines to remove the perfectly healthy uterus of a woman who identifies as a man is not engaging in “gender identity” discrimination.

The gender identity of the patient plays no role in the decision-making process: Just as pro-life physicians do not kill unborn babies, regardless of the sex or gender identity of the pregnant person, doctors do not remove healthy uteruses from any patients, regardless of how they identify themselves.

As for the Human Rights Campaign spokesperson’s claim that emergency rooms “sometimes” refuse to treat the twisted ankles of transgender patients, there is no evidence—including on their own website—that it or anything similar in fact happens. Furthermore, insofar as this “sometimes happens,” it seems reasonable to think that the media would focus so much attention on it that the hospital would reverse course within hours. It therefore seems highly unlikely that this alleged problem merits a governmental response.

Need for Policy Shapes the Nature of Policy Response, Definitions, and Protections

My new Heritage report argues that any justified government policy must not penalize valid forms of action and interaction or burden the rights of conscience, religion, and speech. We can see this principle in action.

Because there was such widespread, entrenched systemic and institutional racism throughout American society in the 1960s, for example, and because social and market forces were not sufficient to remedy the problem, it was appropriate for government to respond. That response was properly tailored to meet this need. It defined discrimination to include racially segregated accommodations, places of employment, and housing providers while providing thin religious liberty protections.

Because the justification for antidiscrimination laws based on race was so strong and the need was so great, the law was appropriately broad with limited exemptions.

By contrast, consider laws that address discrimination based on sex. Because the nature of sex and the history of sexism did not represent an exact parallel to racism, the law did not treat them in entirely the same ways. Discrimination was legally defined so as not to include sex-specific intimate facilities, and much broader—and in some cases total—religious liberty exemptions were included. And to this day, sex is not a protected class for federal antidiscrimination law as applied to public accommodations.

In sum, because the justification for laws against sex-based discrimination was weaker than the justification for laws against race-based discrimination, the legal response was more modest: It covered less terrain, defined discrimination more narrowly, and provided greater protection for religious liberty.

Any proposed policies intended to meet the needs of people who identify as LGBT would need to be crafted in a similar manner. Without greater evidence of the justification for specific policy responses—greater documentation of what the needs truly are—it is hard to be specific. In general, however, the need clearly seems weaker than the need for policies designed to deal with discrimination on the basis of race and sex.

A policy response would therefore need to cover less ground, target discrimination more narrowly, define discrimination accurately, and avoid undermining the rights of conscience, religion, and speech. Alas, laws proposed by liberals today do not do this.

SOURCE





Donald Trump's speech to the joint session of Congress spoke highly of Australia's immigration rules

Donald Trump's interest in adopting Australia's so-called "merit-based" immigration system and switching away from low-skilled  foreign workers appears to be the culmination of 12 months of private talks between his advisers and Australian officials.

Mr Trump's senior policy adviser, immigration hardliner Stephen Miller, first met Australian diplomats last March at the Washington residence of Ambassador Joe Hockey.

At the time Mr Trump was leading the Republican primary elections and championing a tough stance against Muslims and illegal Mexican immigrants he labelled "rapists" and "murderers".

The ultra-conservative Mr Miller showed interest in better understanding Australia's immigration system - which prioritises higher-skilled workers in demand from business and blocks people who arrive illegally by boat - according to people familiar with the discussions.

Australian officials briefed Mr Miller on Canberra's targeted immigration rules and points system.

Visas are granted predominantly to skilled workers on their likely contribution to society based on factors such as age, education and work experience.

In contrast, the US residency rules are heavily skewed towards family reunions.

A series of exchanges over policy, including immigration, between Australian officials in Washington and Canberra and the Trump team continued over the past year, sources said.

On Tuesday night in Washington in his first speech to a joint sitting of Congress, President Trump hailed Australia's immigration rules and signalled he wanted to adopt a similar approach.

"The current, outdated [US] system depresses wages for our poorest workers, and puts great pressure on taxpayers," Mr Trump said.

"Nations around the world - like Canada, Australia and many others - have a merit-based immigration system.

"It is a basic principle that those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially."

Mr Miller was reportedly a major contributor to Mr Trump's speech.

The President's statement was ironic given that weeks earlier he lashed out on social media at a "dumb" deal he inherited from predecessor Barack Obama to accept 1250 refugees from Australian offshore processing centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

During a late January phone call, Mr Trump told Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull "this is the worst deal ever", complained that he was "going to get killed" politically and accused Australia of seeking to export the "next Boston bomber", The Washington Post originally reported.

In another twist, Mr Miller is understood to have been one of Mr Trump's advisers most sceptical of honouring the Obama-Turnbull refugee deal.

The referencing of Australia by Mr Trump this week in Congress may be interpreted as a nod to Mr Turnbull; that while the administration loathes the refugee deal, the President respects Australia's targeted immigration laws.

Mr Hockey last month visited the White House to smooth over relations with chief of staff Reince Priebus and chief strategist Stephen Bannon after the fiery phone call. Ambassador Hockey was on the floor of the Congress for the speech yesterday.

In the US, about 70 per cent of the approximate 1 million people granted permanent residency each year are approved on family-based migration.

About 15 per cent are employment-oriented and 15 per cent humanitarian, according to the US Department of Homeland Security.

Australia accepted 262,170 permanent immigrants last year, including many already living in Australia on temporary visas, according to government data. About 57 per cent were skilled, 34 per cent came through the family migration scheme and 9 per cent were part of Australia's humanitarian stream.

Under strict rules, asylum-seekers who attempt to illegally enter Australia by boat are dispatched to foreign detention centres.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton last October proposed a lifetime ban on adults who attempt to come to Australia illegally by boat.

In the United Kingdom, Australia's points-based immigration system was last year championed by Brexit campaigner Boris Johnson to "take back control of a system that is, at the moment, completely out of control" and to "neutralise the extremists".

A review of past presidential speeches shows that the last time Australia was mentioned in a president's inaugural address to a joint sitting of Congress was in 2001 when George W. Bush thanked Australia "mourning" the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks that killed about 3000 people.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

***************************




2 March, 2017

Why some immigrants in the Netherlands plan to vote for the 'Dutch Donald Trump'

It's Saturday — market day — in the small, blue-collar Dutch town of Spijkenisse just outside Rotterdam.

The snow is coming down thick and fast, but that hasn't stopped people from gathering in the main square to buy local vegetables, cheese, meat and fish for the week ahead.

One of the shoppers is Leonard, a Surinamese man in his 60s who has lived in the town ever since he left the former Dutch colony 25 years ago. He didn’t want to give his last name. Leonard prays weekly in the Protestant church here, and like many of the locals, he thinks Dutch politician Geert Wilders, known for his anti-Islam, anti-immigrant positions, is onto something.

Leonard, a Surinamese immigrant who's lived in the Netherlands for decades, plans to vote for Geert Wilders. "He has some good points about immigration and terrorism." Credit: Venetia Rainey "He has some good points about immigration and terrorism," Leonard says with a shrug. "Sometimes you have to face reality."
Wilders' version of facing reality is a harsh one. Often described as the "Dutch Donald Trump," he courts controversy constantly, calling for all mosques to be closed, the country's borders to be sealed and the Netherlands to pull out of the European Union. Last year, Wilders was convicted of inciting discrimination in a speech where he called for fewer Moroccans in the country.

Such policies may seem at odds with the liberal stereotype of the Dutch, but Wilders' PVV party is set to do better than any other come election day, March 15. Part of the reason is his long-standing argument that Islam is incompatible with Dutch culture, something that resonates with people like Leonard.

"You have to accept the norm for this country, you cannot come with your own things here," he says, referring to Muslim cultural practices, such as women wearing headscarves, which he says make him uncomfortable. "You have to accept the law here."

Like Trump — who Leonard also admires — Wilders boasts about saying what's on his mind, openly rejecting the idea of being politically correct. At a recent rally, for example, he called some Moroccans in the country “scum.” For many in the Netherlands, those kinds of comments are racist, plain and simple, but Wilders’ supporters don't see it that way.

"He's not racist," says Dave, a 40-year-old former welder (who also declined to give his last name). "He says what he thinks. And sometimes he says some little things that he [shouldn't] say, but it's things that a lot of people in our country think about but don't want to say."

Dave has been out of a job, he says, since his boss in Rotterdam replaced him with lower-paid workers from Poland several years ago. These days, Dave sells fries out of a truck in the market every Saturday, but he struggles to get by.

He votes for PVV every year and says a large part of the appeal is their promise to put Dutch people first. If Wilders gets into power, for example, he's said he will cut development aid to poor countries (which accounted for about 0.75 percent of the country's gross national income in 2015) and use the money at home instead.

"I have three children ... [who] don't have enough things for school and that sort of thing, because everything is getting expensive," Dave says fiercely. "And then you see that they [the Dutch government] give a lot of money to other countries and that sort of thing to help other people.

"I know they need help also, but first look at your own people and then look at the rest of the world."

Some of PVV's support comes from unlikely quarters, including first- and second-generation immigrants from Muslim countries — the very people Wilders wants to keep out or force to assimilate.

Aylin and her mother sell fruit and vegetables in the market in Spijkenisse. Aylin's parents are from Iran, and they all plan to vote for Geert Wilders. Credit: Venetia Rainey Aylin, who asked to be identified by her first name only, as well, is a 20-year-old university student who works at the market every week with her parents. They’re from Iran. Despite the fact that her parents were not born in the Netherlands, she says she agrees with Wilders' call to close up the border to anyone from Muslim countries — although not completely — and is planning to cast her first-ever vote for him.

"I think the statements he makes and the things he wants for this country will benefit us in the long run," Aylin says, before adding with a laugh, "My parents are also voting for him so I gotta keep them as friends; otherwise I can't sleep at home anymore."

She thinks immigration is the main issue driving support for Wilders in Spijkenisse. One in five locals voted for him in the last election in 2012, much higher than the national average of one in 10, and Wilders regularly holds rallies in the town.

Aylin says she can see that her customers at the market seem uncomfortable with the idea of foreigners in the town, in general, although she doesn't count herself and her family among them. For her, the foreigners are the ones who come to the country to take advantage of the benefit system rather than earn their own money and contribute to society, and those are the people who need to be kept out.

"As you can see, we are working hard for our money," she says proudly. "My parents have been here for the last 25 years, so we have basically become Dutch people."

SOURCE






British feminist politician banned cake, guests and photographs on her wedding day 'to fight the patriarchy'

She's a real misery -- but influential in the  British Labour party

Just last week she called for a ban on politicians talking about the importance of marriage.  Now Harriet Harman has taken yet another swipe at the institution of matrimony.

The 66-year-old revealed she had no photographs, cake or even guests at her wedding in 1982 to Jack Dromey, in a bizarre bid to fight against what she described as patriarchy.

She claims the couple had tried to avoid getting married, but were forced to when she became pregnant because she feared for her career in politics as an unmarried mother.

‘There are no photos of my wedding, no cake. We saw marriage as patriarchal,’ she said in an interview with The Times Magazine.

‘Jack and I were trying not to get married. We did it because I was pregnant.’ ‘Being a young woman MP was going to be hard enough as it was. But to do that when I was unmarried with a child...

‘I can’t even remember if I told my parents about it. I didn’t invite them or my friends. We just had a bottle of champagne in the garden afterwards,’ Labour’s former deputy leader added.

‘We were fighting against the idea that marriage was the point at which women were handed from the authority of the father to the authority of the husband.’

Last week, Miss Harman called for an end to politicians talking about the importance of marriage in an article for Prospect magazine titled ‘If I ruled the world’.

She wrote: ‘I’d ban them [politicians] from going on about how important marriage is and how damaging divorce is.’

Her comments were criticised by a number of Tory politicians including Iain Duncan Smith, who said her remarks were ‘unbelievable’ and not based on facts.

The former Tory leader said the Centre for Social Justice, which he set up in 2004, had produced research underlining the importance of marriage in keeping children out of poverty.

For example, it showed that 48 per cent of children in low income households lived with one parent, compared to 16 per cent of middle to high income households.

Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation, said it was ‘hypocritical’ for married politicians like Miss Harman to play down the importance of marriage.

He said: ‘Harriet Harman is still married after all these years, as are 89 per cent of the current Cabinet and a high proportion of the Shadow Cabinet.

'The real hypocrisy is that nine out of ten of all politicians in the highest income groups are married, but they have spent years telling us that it doesn’t matter.

‘The tragedy is that the poor have been listening, and are the least able to cope when families split up.’

SOURCE






The Roots of Islamic Anti-Semitism

By: Robert Spencer

"Anti-Semitism in Europe is at levels not seen since the heyday of Nazi Germany, and is growing more savage by the moment. Last week, i24News reported that "two French Jewish brothers were briefly abducted and abused by a group of men in a Paris suburb in an incident that ended with the brothers being beaten and attacked with a wood saw." This is the new Europe, the same as the old Europe, because of Muslim immigration: the attackers were "a group of men described as having a Middle Eastern appearance."

A group of men having a Middle Eastern appearance would have every reason, by their own lights, to abduct, beat, and attempt to mutilate two random Jews. The Qur'an depicts the Jews as inveterately evil and bent on destroying the wellbeing of the Muslims. They are the strongest of all people in enmity toward the Muslims (5:82); as fabricating things and falsely ascribing them to Allah (2:79; 3:75, 3:181); claiming that Allah's power is limited (5:64); loving to listen to lies (5:41); disobeying Allah and never observing his commands (5:13); disputing and quarreling (2:247); hiding the truth and misleading people (3:78); staging rebellion against the prophets and rejecting their guidance (2:55); being hypocritical (2:14, 2:44); giving preference to their own interests over the teachings of Muhammad (2:87); wishing evil for people and trying to mislead them (2:109); feeling pain when others are happy or fortunate (3:120); being arrogant about their being Allah's beloved people (5:18); devouring people's wealth by subterfuge (4:161); slandering the true religion and being cursed by Allah (4:46); killing the prophets (2:61); being merciless and heartless (2:74); never keeping their promises or fulfilling their words (2:100); being unrestrained in committing sins (5:79); being cowardly (59:13-14); being miserly (4:53); being transformed into apes and pigs for breaking the Sabbath (2:63-65; 5:59-60; 7:166); and more.

The classic Qur'anic commentators not do not mitigate the Qur'an's words against Jews, but only add fuel to the fire. Ibn Kathir explained Qur'an 2:61 ("They were covered with humiliation and misery; they drew on themselves the wrath of Allah") this way: "This Ayah [verse] indicates that the Children of Israel were plagued with humiliation, and that this will continue, meaning that it will never cease. They will continue to suffer humiliation at the hands of all who interact with them, along with the disgrace that they feel inwardly." Another Middle Ages commentator of lingering influence, Abdallah ibn Umar al-Baidawi, explains the same verse this way: "The Jews are mostly humiliated and wretched either of their own accord, or out of coercion of the fear of having their jizya [punitive tax] doubled."

Ibn Kathir notes Islamic traditions that predict that at the end of the world, "the Jews will support the Dajjal (False Messiah), and the Muslims, along with 'Isa [Jesus], son of Mary, will kill the Jews." The idea in Islam that the end times will be marked by Muslims killing Jews comes from the prophet Muhammad himself, who said, "The Hour will not be established until you fight with the Jews, and the stone behind which a Jew will be hiding will say. 'O Muslim! There is a Jew hiding behind me, so kill him.'" This is, not unexpectedly, a favorite motif among contemporary jihadists.

Not just contemporary jihadists, but modern-day mainstream Islamic authorities take these passages seriously. The former Grand Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi, who was the most respected cleric in the world among Sunni Muslims, called Jews "the enemies of Allah, descendants of apes and pigs." The late Saudi sheikh Abd al-Rahman al-Sudayyis, imam of the principal mosque in the holiest city in Islam, Mecca, said in a sermon that Jews are "the scum of the human race, the rats of the world, the violators of pacts and agreements, the murderers of the prophets, and the offspring of apes and pigs."

Another Saudi sheikh, Ba'd bin Abdallah al-Ajameh al-Ghamidi, made the connection explicit: "The current behavior of the brothers of apes and pigs, their treachery, violation of agreements, and defiling of holy places ... is connected with the deeds of their forefathers during the early period of Islam–which proves the great similarity between all the Jews living today and the Jews who lived at the dawn of Islam."

All this shows that leading Muslim authorities approach the Qur'an not as a document rooted in history, but as a blueprint for understanding the world today. Indeed, it is the primary blueprint for such understanding, and yet the one most persistently ignored by authorities. That's why those authorities keep misunderstanding the rising problem of Islamic anti-Semitism, and are woefully ill-equipped to deal with it.

SOURCE





Australia: Muslim fraudster caught but shows no remorse



We are just cattle to be exploited in her Muslim values

A millionaire Muslim woman who posed as a 'battling single mother' so she could live in public housing for 15 years has had her appeal thrown out of court.

Rebecca Khodragha, 44, appeared at Parramatta District Court on Wednesday to fight her three months home detention sentence, hoping for it to be lightened to community service.

The married mother-of-two, whose husband owns an electrical business which rakes in more than $1million each year, was given the sentence in 2016 when she was convicted of welfare fraud.

Rebecca Khodragha, 44, had her appeal thrown out in court on Wednesday and will now be kicked out of her housing commission apartment

The court was previously told that Ms Khodrangha's husband Khaled Sabsabi owned a lucerative electrical contracting business which was registered to the housing commission address.

At the same time Ms Khodrangha was claiming welfare benefits, the couple owned two other investment properties - in Lakemba and Greenacre - which they later sold for a significant profit.

Justice Martin Sides said mother-of-two had an 'absence of remorse' and 'complete lack of insight', and dismissed the appeal.

The court heard that despite the fraud conviction, Ms Khodragha is still living in public housing and receives Centrelink payments.

Ms Khodragha married husband Khaled in an Islamic ceremony in 1991 but their wedding was unregistered and the pair have been in a Punchbowl housing commission unit in the city's south-west since that year, 7News reported.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

***************************



1 March, 2017

Nutty white who thinks  she is black says she can't find job

I would not give a job to someone with such a messed-up head

The former Spokane, Washington, NAACP leader who resigned in 2015 amid criticism that she was passing herself off as black says she is near homelessness.

Rachel Dolezal (DOH'-leh-zhahl) tells Britain's The Guardian newspaper that she cannot find a job and the only work she has been offered is in reality TV and porn.

Dolezal has acknowledged that she is "Caucasian biologically," but says she identifies as black.

She explains to The Guardian that she "began to see the world through black eyes" as a teenager after her parents adopted four black children. Dolezal says she decided to be publicly black years later following a divorce.

Dolezal maintains that she did nothing wrong.

SOURCE





Chris Cuomo's Transgender Meltdown

Donald Trump rolled back Barack Obama’s overreaching transgender rule this week, and CNN’s Chris Cuomo lost his mind. The morning host, brother of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, tweeted more than 90 messages on the subject, including this sick exchange:

One user asked him, “What do you tell a 12-year-old girl who doesn’t want to see a penis in the locker room?”

“I wonder if she is the problem or her overprotective and intolerant dad? teach tolerance,” Cuomo shot back.

The truly intolerant ones aren’t 12-year-old girls or their loving fathers; they’re leftists like Cuomo who want to force their total lack of values and morality on the rest of us.

SOURCE





Hollywood Liberal Groupthink on Display at Oscars

Once again, Hollywood showcased its complete lack of diversity in thought at the Oscars.

Of course, it’s a free country, and Hollywood is fine to keep its liberal streak going … just as conservatives can continue to decide whether they want to support new movies.

But it does suggest that there might be a lot of fine stories left untold and moral dilemmas left unexplored, because Hollywood limits itself to such a narrow mindset.

Here are three “highlights” from Sunday night’s 89th Academy Awards ceremony:

1. Actresses Emma Stone and Dakota Johnson wear their support for Planned Parenthood.  What’s lovelier than plugging the nation’s largest abortion provider?

2. Host Jimmy Kimmel takes aim at President Donald Trump.

If you are among the half of all voters who supported Trump for president, Kimmel wasn’t interested in winning your support. The late-night host made several cracks about Trump, including: “This broadcast is being watched live by millions of Americans and around the world in more than 225 countries that now hate us.”

“I want to say thank you to President Trump. Remember last year when it seemed like the Oscars were racist? That’s gone, thanks to him,” Kimmel also said.

3. Iranian filmmaker attacks the travel ban.

“My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of the other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S.,” Asghar Farhadi, who didn’t attend the Oscars, said in a statement read out loud when his movie, “The Salesman,” won for best foreign language film.

“Dividing the world into the ‘us’ and ‘our enemies’ categories creates fears. A deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which have themselves been victims of aggression,” Farhadi added in his statement, which got a warm reception from the audience.

Right—because of course, it’s crazy to hit pause on people from seven countries considered terrorism hot spots entering the United States. The only possible reason could be inhumanity, not a desire to protect the security of American citizens.

SOURCE





Australia: An outspoken Chinese man gets away with stating a racial preference

HE’S loud, proud and is a man who definitely knows what he wants when it comes to dating.  And Alexander Montgomery makes no apology for what he considers to be the ultimate deal-breaker in any prospective partner — they must be white.

The man who calls himself the ultimate potato queen told news.com.au he refuses to date any other race and will only see caucasian men.  “To me white people are the epitome of class and the gold standard of desirability,” he said.  “I really feel the white race is the superior one today. I only date white men.”

He said caucasians ruled the global economy and spoke the dominant language.  Naturally he believes white men are also more physically attractive.

The Melbourne man insists his view on this is not unique and that he also knows plenty of Asian men who only date white.  “I know a lot of Asian guys who are like me,” he said.

“How often do you see Asian guys and white guys together in public?” They’re everywhere.”

The entrepreneur and True Confessions of a Potato Queen author said he knows his views are controversial, and even considered racist by some, but he was entitled to an opinion.  “Yes my view is controversial however this is my standard (for dating) and I stand behind my opinions,” he said.

Not only does he believe “white people are superior” but he also thinks “they are kinder and more sympathetic” which is one of the reasons the country has “the refugee problems it does.”

The 42-year-old features in Date My Race, which airs on SBS tonight.  The show aims to challenge what we think about what drives their own romantic attraction and connections.

However Mr Montgomery said he didn’t believe his views were racist.  “The definition of racism is someone who believes their race is superior,” he said.  “I don’t think other races are inferior to me — only that the white race is superior to me.

“Besides it’s not racism, it’s a preference, I am attracted to white guys.  “Do you call someone who doesn’t date tall people heightist?”

The show will also ask if racial preferences amount to racism when looking for love and follows Mr Montgomery, three others and show host Santilla Chingaipe on their dating experiences.

In an interview ahead of the program going to air, Mr Montgomery said he believes white privilege is a myth.

He also said while One Nation’s Pauline Hanson’s views on immigration was extreme to some, he was glad “people were speaking out to protect this great country of ours.”

During the show, Date My Race host and journalist Santilla Chingaipe embarks on her own colourblind dating experiment using three participants who all have expressed racial bias when dating.

The results are surprising and when Mr Montgomery is set up with another Asian man as part of an online blind test, the experiment goes exactly as you’d expect. He communicated with another man online, but hadn’t seen his face, and admits there was chemistry.

But things were very different when they met face-to-face. “There was no attraction, as soon as I saw him,” he said. “Attraction plays a key role in any relationship.”

During the show his views put him at loggerheads with Chingaipe who he described as a friend and wonderful lady.

He said an Asian guy had approached him during filming and revealed he had been racially abused in Australia, something he said has never happened to him.  “He told me he felt discriminated against and how he didn’t feel at home in Australia,” he said.

“Well you don’t like here, then leave.”

But Mr Montgomery said he learned a lot from going on the show and was constantly challenged by Chingaipe regarding his views.

And while he didn’t change his mind on his views, it did force him to do a lot of reflection about his dating preferences and why he was only attracted to white men.

He said growing up in Singapore and as part of an American-run church, white people were all around him and he looked up to them.

Having dated other races in the past, he said an 18-year relationship with a white man was his best experience and he couldn’t go back on that. “Once you go white, nothing else seems right,” he said.

He also said he is still looking for love and the only other thing he looked for in a potential relationship was someone who was easy going and confident in himself.

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, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

***************************








IN BRIEF



HOME (Index page)

BIO for John Ray






(Isaiah 62:1)


A 19th century Democrat political poster below:








Leftist tolerance



Bloomberg



JFK knew Leftist dogmatism



-- Geert Wilders



The most beautiful woman in the world? I think she was. Yes: It's Agnetha Fältskog



A beautiful baby is king -- with blue eyes, blond hair and white skin. How incorrect can you get?


Kristina Pimenova, said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair



Enough said



There really is an actress named Donna Air. She seems a pleasant enough woman, though


What feminism has wrought:

There's actually some wisdom there. The dreamy lady says she is holding out for someone who meets her standards. The other lady reasonably replies "There's nobody there". Standards can be unrealistically high and feminists have laboured mightily to make them so


Some bright spark occasionally decides that Leftism is feminine and conservatism is masculine. That totally misses the point. If true, how come the vote in American presidential elections usually shows something close to a 50/50 split between men and women? And in the 2016 Presidential election, Trump won 53 percent of white women, despite allegations focused on his past treatment of some women.


Political correctness is Fascism pretending to be manners


Political Correctness is as big a threat to free speech as Communism and Fascism. All 3 were/are socialist.


The problem with minorities is not race but culture. For instance, many American black males fit in well with the majority culture. They go to college, work legally for their living, marry and support the mother of their children, go to church, abstain from crime and are considerate towards others. Who could reasonably object to such people? It is people who subscribe to minority cultures -- black, Latino or Muslim -- who can give rise to concern. If antisocial attitudes and/or behaviour become pervasive among a group, however, policies may reasonably devised to deal with that group as a whole


Black lives DON'T matter -- to other blacks. The leading cause of death among young black males is attack by other young black males


Psychological defence mechanisms such as projection play a large part in Leftist thinking and discourse. So their frantic search for evil in the words and deeds of others is easily understandable. The evil is in themselves. Leftist motivations are fundamentally Fascist. They want to "fundamentally transform" the lives of their fellow citizens, which is as authoritarian as you can get. We saw where it led in Russia and China. The "compassion" that Leftists parade is just a cloak for their ghastly real motivations


Occasionally I put up on this blog complaints about the privileged position of homosexuals in today's world. I look forward to the day when the pendulum swings back and homosexuals are treated as equals before the law. To a simple Leftist mind, that makes me "homophobic", even though I have no fear of any kind of homosexuals.

But I thought it might be useful for me to point out a few things. For a start, I am not unwise enough to say that some of my best friends are homosexual. None are, in fact. Though there are two homosexuals in my normal social circle whom I get on well with and whom I think well of.

Of possible relevance: My late sister was a homosexual; I loved Liberace's sense of humour and I thought that Robert Helpmann was marvellous as Don Quixote in the Nureyev ballet of that name.


I record on this blog many examples of negligent, inefficient and reprehensible behaviour on the part of British police. After 13 years of Labour party rule they have become highly politicized, with values that reflect the demands made on them by the political Left rather than than what the community expects of them. They have become lazy and cowardly and avoid dealing with real crime wherever possible -- preferring instead to harass normal decent people for minor infractions -- particularly offences against political correctness. They are an excellent example of the destruction that can be brought about by Leftist meddling.


I also record on this blog much social worker evil -- particularly British social worker evil. The evil is neither negligent nor random. It follows exactly the pattern you would expect from the Marxist-oriented indoctrination they get in social work school -- where the middle class is seen as the enemy and the underclass is seen as virtuous. So social workers are lightning fast to take children away from normal decent parents on the basis of of minor or imaginary infractions while turning a blind eye to gross child abuse by the underclass


Racial differences in temperament: Chinese are more passive even as little babies


The genetics of crime: I have been pointing out for some time the evidence that there is a substantial genetic element in criminality. Some people are born bad. See here, here, here, here (DOI: 10.1111/jcpp.12581) and here, for instance"


Gender is a property of words, not of people. Using it otherwise is just another politically correct distortion -- though not as pernicious as calling racial discrimination "Affirmative action"


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


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


So why do Leftists say "There is no such thing as right and wrong" when backed into a rhetorical corner? They say it because that is the predominant conclusion of analytic philosophers. And, as Keynes said: "Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back”


Children are the best thing in life. See also here.


Juergen Habermas, a veteran leftist German philosopher stunned his admirers not long ago by proclaiming, "Christianity, and nothing else, is the ultimate foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights, and democracy, the benchmarks of Western civilization. To this day, we have no other options [than Christianity]. We continue to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern chatter."


Consider two "jokes" below:

Q. "Why are Leftists always standing up for blacks and homosexuals?

A. Because for all three groups their only God is their penis"

Pretty offensive, right? So consider this one:

Q. "Why are evangelical Christians like the Taliban?

A. They are both religious fundamentalists"

The latter "joke" is not a joke at all, of course. It is a comparison routinely touted by Leftists. Both "jokes" are greatly offensive and unfair to the parties targeted but one gets a pass without question while the other would bring great wrath on the head of anyone uttering it. Why? Because political correctness is in fact just Leftist bigotry. Bigotry is unfairly favouring one or more groups of people over others -- usually justified as "truth".


One of my more amusing memories is from the time when the Soviet Union still existed and I was teaching sociology in a major Australian university. On one memorable occasion, we had a representative of the Soviet Womens' organization visit us -- a stout and heavily made-up lady of mature years. When she was ushered into our conference room, she was greeted with something like adulation by the local Marxists. In question time after her talk, however, someone asked her how homosexuals were treated in the USSR. She replied: "We don't have any. That was before the revolution". The consternation and confusion that produced among my Leftist colleagues was hilarious to behold and still lives vividly in my memory. The more things change, the more they remain the same, however. In Sept. 2007 President Ahmadinejad told Columbia university that there are no homosexuals in Iran.


It is widely agreed (with mainly Lesbians dissenting) that boys need their fathers. What needs much wider recognition is that girls need their fathers too. The relationship between a "Daddy's girl" and her father is perhaps the most beautiful human relationship there is. It can help give the girl concerned inner strength for the rest of her life.


A modern feminist complains: "We are so far from “having it all” that “we barely even have a slice of the pie, which we probably baked ourselves while sobbing into the pastry at 4am”."


Patriotism does NOT in general go with hostilty towards others. See e.g. here and here and even here ("Ethnocentrism and Xenophobia: A Cross-Cultural Study" by anthropologist Elizabeth Cashdan. In Current Anthropology Vol. 42, No. 5, December 2001).


The love of bureaucracy is very Leftist and hence "correct". Who said this? "Account must be taken of every single article, every pound of grain, because what socialism implies above all is keeping account of everything". It was V.I. Lenin


"An objection I hear frequently is: ‘Why should we tolerate intolerance?’ The assumption is that tolerating views that you don’t agree with is like a gift, an act of kindness. It suggests we’re doing people a favour by tolerating their view. My argument is that tolerance is vital to us, to you and I, because it’s actually the presupposition of all our freedoms. You cannot be free in any meaningful sense unless there is a recognition that we are free to act on our beliefs, we’re free to think what we want and express ourselves freely. Unless we have that freedom, all those other freedoms that we have on paper mean nothing" -- SOURCE


RELIGION:

Although it is a popular traditional chant, the "Kol Nidre" should be abandoned by modern Jewish congregations. It was totally understandable where it originated in the Middle Ages but is morally obnoxious in the modern world and vivid "proof" of all sorts of antisemitic stereotypes


What the Bible says about homosexuality:

"Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind; It is abomination" -- Lev. 18:22

In his great diatribe against the pagan Romans, the apostle Paul included homosexuality among their sins:

"For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature. And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.... Who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them" -- Romans 1:26,27,32.

So churches that condone homosexuality are clearly post-Christian


Although I am an atheist, I have great respect for the wisdom of ancient times as collected in the Bible. And its condemnation of homosexuality makes considerable sense to me. In an era when family values are under constant assault, such a return to the basics could be helpful. Nonetheless, I approve of St. Paul's advice in the second chapter of his epistle to the Romans that it is for God to punish them, not us. In secular terms, homosexuality between consenting adults in private should not be penalized but nor should it be promoted or praised. In Christian terms, "Gay pride" is of the Devil


The homosexuals of Gibeah (Judges 19 & 20) set in train a series of events which brought down great wrath and destruction on their tribe. The tribe of Benjamin was almost wiped out when it would not disown its homosexuals. Are we seeing a related process in the woes presently being experienced by the amoral Western world? Note that there was one Western country that was not affected by the global financial crisis and subsequently had no debt problems: Australia. In September 2012 the Australian federal parliament considered a bill to implement homosexual marriage. It was rejected by a large majority -- including members from both major political parties


Religion is deeply human. The recent discoveries at Gobekli Tepe suggest that it was religion not farming that gave birth to civilization. Early civilizations were at any rate all very religious. Atheism is mainly a very modern development and is even now very much a minority opinion


"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" - Isaiah 5:20 (KJV)


I think it's not unreasonable to see Islam as the religion of the Devil. Any religion that loves death or leads to parents rejoicing when their children blow themselves up is surely of the Devil -- however you conceive of the Devil. Whether he is a man in a red suit with horns and a tail, a fallen spirit being, or simply the evil side of human nature hardly matters. In all cases Islam is clearly anti-life and only the Devil or his disciples could rejoice in that.

And there surely could be few lower forms of human behaviour than to give abuse and harm in return for help. The compassionate practices of countries with Christian traditions have led many such countries to give a new home to Muslim refugees and seekers after a better life. It's basic humanity that such kindness should attract gratitude and appreciation. But do Muslims appreciate it? They most commonly show contempt for the countries and societies concerned. That's another sign of Satanic influence.

And how's this for demonic thinking?: "Asian father whose daughter drowned in Dubai sea 'stopped lifeguards from saving her because he didn't want her touched and dishonoured by strange men'

And where Muslims tell us that they love death, the great Christian celebration is of the birth of a baby -- the monogenes theos (only begotten god) as John 1:18 describes it in the original Greek -- Christmas!


No wonder so many Muslims are hostile and angry. They have little companionship from women and not even any companionship from dogs -- which are emotionally important in most other cultures. Dogs are "unclean"


Some advice from Martin Luther: Esto peccator et pecca fortiter, sed fortius fide et gaude in christo qui victor est peccati, mortis et mundi: peccandum est quam diu sic sumus. Vita haec non est habitatio justitiae


On all my blogs, I express my view of what is important primarily by the readings that I select for posting. I do however on occasions add personal comments in italicized form at the beginning of an article.


I am rather pleased to report that I am a lifelong conservative. Out of intellectual curiosity, I did in my youth join organizations from right across the political spectrum so I am certainly not closed-minded and am very familiar with the full spectrum of political thinking. Nonetheless, I did not have to undergo the lurch from Left to Right that so many people undergo. At age 13 I used my pocket-money to subscribe to the "Reader's Digest" -- the main conservative organ available in small town Australia of the 1950s. I have learnt much since but am pleased and amused to note that history has since confirmed most of what I thought at that early age.

I imagine that the the RD is still sending mailouts to my 1950s address!


Germaine Greer is a stupid old Harpy who is notable only for the depth and extent of her hatreds


Even Mahatma Gandhi was profoundly unimpressed by Africans



Index page for this site


DETAILS OF REGULARLY UPDATED BLOGS BY JOHN RAY:

"Tongue Tied"
"Dissecting Leftism" (Backup here)
"Australian Politics"
"Education Watch International"
"Political Correctness Watch"
"Greenie Watch"
Western Heart


BLOGS OCCASIONALLY UPDATED:

"Marx & Engels in their own words"
"A scripture blog"
"Recipes"
"Some memoirs"
To be continued ....
Coral Reef Compendium.
IQ Compendium
Queensland Police
Australian Police News
Paralipomena (3)
Of Interest
Dagmar Schellenberger
My alternative Wikipedia


BLOGS NO LONGER BEING UPDATED

"Food & Health Skeptic"
"Eye on Britain"
"Immigration Watch International".
"Leftists as Elitists"
Socialized Medicine
OF INTEREST (2)
QANTAS -- A dying octopus
BRIAN LEITER (Ladderman)
Obama Watch
Obama Watch (2)
Dissecting Leftism -- Large font site
Michael Darby
Paralipomena (2)
AGL -- A bumbling monster
Telstra/Bigpond follies
Optus bungling
Bank of Queensland blues



ALSO:

Mirror for this blog
Mirror for "Dissecting Leftism"
Longer Academic Papers
Johnray links
Academic home page
Academic Backup Page
General Backup
General Backup 2
Pictorial Home Page
Selected pictures from blogs (Backup here)
Another picture page (Rarely updated)



Selected reading

MONOGRAPH ON LEFTISM

CONSERVATISM AS HERESY

Rightism defined
Leftist Churches
Leftist Racism
Fascism is Leftist
Hitler a socialist
What are Leftists
Psychology of Left
Status Quo?
Leftism is authoritarian
James on Leftism
Irbe on Leftism
Beltt on Leftism

Critiques
Lakoff
Van Hiel
Sidanius
Kruglanski
Pyszczynski et al.





Main academic menu
Menu of recent writings
basic home page
Pictorial Home Page
Selected pictures from blogs (Backup here)
Another picture page (Best with broadband. Rarely updated)



Note: If the link to one of my articles is not working, the article concerned can generally be viewed by prefixing to the filename the following:
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/42197/20151027-0014/jonjayray.comuv.com/

OR: (After 2015)
https://web.archive.org/web/20160322114550/http://jonjayray.com/